Monday, February 6, 2017
Looks like we need to build two walls: Canada has an illegal entry problem from the US, turning away refugees
Which means bad actors can easily penetrate unmanned border areas and get into the US.
From the story here:
Since late summer, 27 men from Ghana walked to Manitoba from the United States, Yeboah said. Two lost all their fingers to frostbite in December and nearly froze to death.
More than 7,000 refugee applicants entered Canada in 2016 through land ports of entry from the United States, up 63 percent from the previous year, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
Over 2,000 more entered "irregularly" during a similar time period, without official authorization, such as across unmonitored fields.
Four hundred and thirty asylum seekers crossed Manitoba's border irregularly in the first nine months of 2016-17, up from 340 the entire previous year, CBSA said. ...
In Quebec, 1,280 refugee claimants irregularly entered between April 2016 and January 2017, triple the previous year's total.
In British Columbia and Yukon, 652 people entered Canada irregularly in 2016, more than double the previous year.
More of these people would enter at border crossings, advocates say, if Canada didn't have a policy of turning many of them away when they do.
Thomas Sowell returns to his column to speak out on behalf of Betsy DeVos
Here.
While DeVos' previous support for Common Core is worrisome, the vehement opposition to her from the unionized education establishment indicates there is tremendous fear that she will succeed and shake up the current failed system.
She should be confirmed just for that reason.
Dr. John Bates, formerly of NOAA, blows whistle on data tampering to erase warming pause
From the story here:
But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data. ... In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.
Byron York says Justice Department demolishes Robart case against Trump order
Here:
Now the government has answered Robart, and unlike the judge, Justice Department lawyers have produced a point-by-point demolition of Washington State's claims. Indeed, for all except the most partisan, it is likely impossible to read the Washington State lawsuit, plus Robart's brief comments and writing on the matter, plus the Justice Department's response, and not come away with the conclusion that the Trump order is on sound legal and constitutional ground.
Read the rest at the link.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Ben Sasse is a so-called Senator because he is a lying liberal suck-up
He's also hysterical, but I repeat myself.
James Robart, who is trying to stop Trump, is a so-called judge because of his handling of a sexual assault case
And because he knows the courts have understood immigration to be the province of the president but doesn't care. His is pure political grandstanding in the matter, to make himself popular with people like Ben Sasse.
From the story here:
A judge recently blocked Doe's attempt to subpoena his female accuser's text messages on grounds that re-litigating the matter "would impose emotional and psychological trauma" on her.
Consider the implications of this decision. According to Seattle District Judge James Robart, a student who believes Amherst violated his due process rights, wrongfully expelled him, and ignored subsequent evidence that his accuser, "Sandra Jones," was the actual violator of the college's sexual misconduct policies, does not deserve the opportunity to make his case because someone else's feelings are more important.
What do ISIS and The DC Swamp have in common?
They are both using encrypted messaging to organize, plot and attack their enemies, the chief common one being Donald J. Trump.
From the New York Times story here:
They vetted each new member of the cell as Mr. Yazdani recruited helpers. They taught him how to pledge allegiance to the terrorist group and securely send the statement. ...
Because the recruits are instructed to use encrypted messaging applications, the guiding role played by the terrorist group often remains obscured. As a result, remotely guided plots in Europe, Asia and the United States in recent years, including the attack on a community center in Garland, Tex., were initially labeled the work of “lone wolves,” with no operational ties to the Islamic State, and only later was direct communication with the group discovered. ...
“If you look at the communications between the attackers and the virtual plotters, you will see that there is a direct line of communication to the point where they are egging them on minutes, even seconds, before the individual carries out an attack.” ...
One of the Islamic State’s most influential recruiters and virtual plotters was known by the nom de guerre Abu Issa al-Amriki, and his Twitter profile instructed newcomers to contact him via the encrypted messaging app Telegram. Among those who sought him out, asking for instructions on how to reach Syria, was Mr. Yazdani, who had convinced himself that it was his religious duty to move his family to the caliphate. ...
The Hindi-speaking handler guiding the men in Hyderabad also insisted on using a kaleidoscope of encrypted messaging applications, with Mr. Yazdani instructed to hop between apps so that even if one message history was discovered and cracked, it would reveal only a portion of their handiwork. As soon as Mr. Yazdani indicated he was willing to undertake an attack, the handler instructed him to download ChatSecure, a messaging app to be used when they spoke by phone. When he used his laptop, he was told to contact the handler via Pidgin, another encrypted tool. He was told to create an account with Tutanota, a secure email service. And the handler taught Mr. Yazdani how to use the Tails operating system, which is contained on a USB stick and allows a user to boot up a computer from the external device and use it without leaving a trace on the hard drive.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Friday, February 3, 2017
Boston mayor claims he doesn't know Boston bombers' immigration history
The Boston mayor pleads ignorance of the inconvenient facts.
But the Atlantic reported at the time of the bombing here:
At some point within their first year of being here, the family would have had to apply for asylum. (If they'd already outstayed their six-month visa, they could have applied defensively if the government was trying to deport them.) Asylum-seekers, like those seeking refugee status, must demonstrate that they have a "well-founded fear" of persecution in their home countries. This is a necessarily subjective determination for the government to make, one that has been subject to various legal decisions over the years. (For those curious: Asylum seekers apply for refugee status from within the U.S.; refugees seek it from their home countries.) ... After a year of holding status as asylum seekers, the family would be eligible to apply for green cards. Again, a security check, which by now would include reviews of the entire immigration application history to ensure that there was no apparent fraud. In 2007, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — the younger brother, suspect 2 — received this status. Despite early reports, his brother Tamerlan apparently never did. At some point, he returned to Russia to renew his passport, according to his father.
The French sculptor of The Statue of Liberty found most Americans insufficiently supportive of the pedestal for The Statue of Liberty, let alone of the statue itself
Bartholdi [from 1871] crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans who he thought would be sympathetic to the project. But he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign. ...
The committees in the United States faced great difficulties in obtaining funds for the construction of the pedestal. The Panic of 1873 had led to an economic depression that persisted through much of the decade. The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete. There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue. There was also a feeling that Americans should design American public works—the selection of Italian-born Constantino Brumidi to decorate the Capitol had provoked intense criticism, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen. Harper's Weekly declared its wish that "M. Bartholdi and our French cousins had 'gone the whole figure' while they were about it, and given us statue and pedestal at once." The New York Times stated that "no true patriot can countenance any such expenditures for bronze females in the present state of our finances." Faced with these criticisms, the American committees took little action for several years. ...
Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project in 1884. An attempt the next year to have Congress provide $100,000, sufficient to complete the project, also failed. The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal. With the project in jeopardy, groups from other American cities, including Boston and Philadelphia, offered to pay the full cost of erecting the statue in return for relocating it.
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, a New York newspaper, announced a drive to raise $100,000—the equivalent of $2.3 million today. Pulitzer pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when Pulitzer began publishing the notes he received from contributors. "A young girl alone in the world" donated "60 cents, the result of self denial." ... Even with the success of the fund drive, the pedestal was not completed until April 1886.
Read the whole thing here.
Gay Pakistani Indian subject of the Queen gets his green card, tells the story of what's wrong with our immigration policy
In a word, it's too thin.
Ask yourself if this guy would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for Donald Trump, Bob Dole, or your mother, and then tell me that your answer means the future is safe.
Here in The Wall Street Journal, the perfect place for the libertarian citizen of the world to tell his story:
What America offered [Nabokov], as it now offers me, was the opportunity to slough off the demands of the past. As a college student at Amherst, I had been unnerved by this aspect of the U.S. I thought my sense of self depended too much on the knots of intractable history that were integral to identity in the old world. I was afraid that identity in America would feel too thin, too much a thing of ink and paper.
What I had not counted on was what a relief that could be. Fifteen years later, it was what I had come back for. It was an immense freedom. No cultural attachment, no matter how great, can compete with it. The relief of being free of the past, and safe in the future . . ..
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Rush Limbaugh says there was zero immigration into the US after 1920, but of course that wasn't true
Relative to other periods it was practically zero, in other words quite neglible.
Between 1930 and 1950, legal immigration never exceeded 250,000 a year, and plunged to 23,000+ in 1933 and 1943.
The worst presidential administration for legal immigration in the post-war is George Herbert Walker Bush's. In fiscal 1991 he let in over 1.8 million
You can examine the interactive chart, here.
Gee, Chris Plante is as smart as Barack Obama
Just like Barack, he just said "forebearers" when he meant "forebears".
And I'll bet Chris didn't even go to Harvard Law.
Which just goes to show that a poor education doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)