A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

MY BLOG -- "ACSOL" -- HAS A NEW HOME !!!

2006-03-13T09:26:00.000-06:00

Dear Readers of ACSOL,

It's moving day ...

My blog -- A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT ("ACSOL") -- has a new home and if you'll kindly click your cursor on the following link, I'll take you there:

Oh, and now or once there, please take the time to copy and paste this new URL into your bookmarks, blogroll links, and subscriptions (i.e., syndication) for A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT:

http://acertainslantoflight.net/

That's right: no name change for my blog. Just a new home and a new URL and, for me, a new car to drive!

Thanks!

HOW TO SOLVE THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

2006-03-10T10:48:00.000-06:00

John Hawkins of Right Wing News gets off on the right foot (to his credit) in responding to this question; but, apart from enhanced border security, which must be the #1 priority, and enforcing federal laws vis-a-vis employers who knowingly employ illegals, which must be the #2 priority, the thorniest issues facing the U.S. Congress are twofold and John did not address either in his post.

Question #1: whether in the context of the ample existing federal immigration laws or those that may be forthcoming from a Congress that is beginning to take American sentiment seriously regarding illegal immigration and its deleterious impact on our country, what are we to do when the President of the United States and his choice of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, spend more time trumpeting tantamount-to-amnesty Guest Worker Programs in lieu of enforcing the law? The ballot box hasn't been able to change the reality of porous borders -- Clinton was as bad as Bush in encouraging a migration of "cheap labor" across our southern border and the Democratic Party opted not to play hardball on this issue in 2000 or 2004.

Question #2: what is to be done with the 12+ million lawbreakers already in this country given the impossibility of a massive federal round-up and mass deportation? Just count the number of major cities that have "Sanctuary City" laws on the books and provide "Day Laborer" centers for illegals and you begin to comprehend the unlikelihood that government will do a 180 degree turn and truly view border-jumpers as lawbreakers.

And, in terms of Question #2, I don't believe for a minute that most of the illegals already here will "self-deport," as John believes will be the case, once the federal government clamps down on employers flouting the law. Even if a large share of illegals were to become unemployed as a result of the federal government doing its job for a change, illegal aliens have proven themselves quite adept at working the system and maximizing the benefits they extract from federal, state, and local governments in terms of the broad, social safety net that has been afforded them. Besides, how do they "self-deport," if a wall goes up, electronic surveillance is heightened, and the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents is doubled or trebled?

I wish I had the answers.

But I know this much. The onus is now on the U.S. Congress because the Chief Executive has been derelect in enforcing the laws and, worse, in holding the government of Mexico accountable. Bush will leave office in January, 2009, and Vicente Fox long before him. And what these two leave behind in their wake is a problem of such massive proportions for the United States of America that it will not be solved anytime soon any more than a cancer that has metastasized throughout the body can be surgically excised.

FOLLOW-UP: Speaking of Mexico's Vicente Fox, do read the Business Week interview of El Presidente that Dan Stein of The Dan Stein Report links to for today's dose of disingenuous, political pabulum (but keep a barf bag nearby). Fact is, Fox does everything but personally escort Mexican nationals to our border and his government lives off of the $17+ million in remittances that the illegals send back to Mexico from the States year after year.

FOLLOW-UP II: You know what's absolutely discouraging about even contemplating the needed prescriptions to remedy the illegal immigration and border security problems in this country? Well, I'll tell you. It's that, much as has been the case with George W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton before him, were a John McCain (RINO-AZ) or a Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) to land in the Oval Office in 2009, no matter the immigration laws then on the books, we in America would still see no enforcement of them by the nation's Chief Executive. Read this and you'll understand exactly what I mean!

AMERICAN IDOL DOWN TO 12 (AND COUNTING)

2006-03-10T08:30:00.000-06:00

Paul at Wizbang handicaps the "Final 12" on American Idol and, as always, provides some clever commentary and humor along the way, including links to photos of the wannabes. My wife and I are devotees of the show and on those rare nights when most of the contestants rise to the occassion, Idol can be absolutely infectious provided you can get past the inanity of Paula Ab-dull whose only meaningful contribution to the show is in showcasing what hair extensions can do for a woman's looks.

Among the females, I'm in lockstep with Paul in liking Katharine McPhee's chances. She's gorgeous (reminds me of a young Crystal Gayle of C&W fame with those wide-set eyes and high cheekbones) and has the voice; but, and as Paul points out, she doesn't exude the requisite confidence and showmanship at this stage of the competition. It's all about improving from week to week and peaking toward the end.

Among the men, I part company with Paul, believing that there's not a one of them who comes close to the raw talent seen in Chris Daughtry. He has command of his vocals and plenty of stage presence to win it all in a year in which voters will likely try to find a male winner. He comes across as quite likeable and thoroughly self-confident, but in an understated way. Wish the sideburns weren't such a distraction (lose 'em, Chris).

I don't buy Simon's theory that the "Granny vote" is keeping the quintessential nerdy teenager, Kevin Kovais, in the hunt. There must be a lot of mean-spirited high school voters reveling in this weekly humiliation of an otherwise likeable young man. Taylor Hicks -- Joe Cocker in a sport coat -- suffices quite adequately as Idol's novelty act contestant, so Kovias makes no sense unless Lawrence Welk is voting multiple times from Heaven.

Kellie Pickler (the name fits), who Simon seems smitten with, is my longshot choice. While the "nice bad girl" moniker Simon applied to her seems so much Hollywood casting-couch perversion, her manifest innocence and naivette make her a heartbreaker and, oh, can this young lady sing. This may sound crazy, but close your eyes when she sings and if you have any affinity whatsoever for Country-Western music, you'll melt.

By the way, is there a "Dump Ab-dull" blog out there? If so, I want to put it in my blogroll.

PORTS WORLD DEAL BUNGLED BY WHITE HOUSE, NOT BY AMERICAN PEOPLE

2006-03-09T15:50:00.000-06:00

The ad hominem attacks continue unabated, even as the DPW imbroglio reaches its political denouement -- blistering attacks against those of us who took issue with the UAE-owned Dubia Ports World deal from the onset and held our ground against those determined to back the Bush administration unhesitatingly, no matter how bungled the hush-hush, rubber-stamp deal was and strident the ooops-based, after-thought of a defense became.

American citizens overwhelmingly objected to the deal and they did so from a pragmatic, common sense point of view -- namely, why should we put our country's national security at risk by having companies owned by foreign governments managing key infrastructure here in the United States and particularly during a time of war? In doing so, everyday Americans wrestled a dysfunctional, polarized U.S. Congress to the ground and put a bullheaded president on notice. They're to be applauded, not characterized as blithering fools full of political naivete!

Not only did their thinking make sense, but it became even more compelling with the linkage in their minds of the Ports Deal to the long-standing porousness of America's land borders with Canada and Mexico, the latter being breeched in unprecedented numbers by a human invasion of border-jumping Mexican nationals and Other Than Mexicans (OTMs), many of the latter of whom have come to our country from "countries of interest."

After all, 12+ million illegal aliens afoot in our land is a statement in itself and one not about to be lost on American citizens. Indeed, it's a statement about an unconscionable absence of border security in a post-"9/11" age of international, Islamofascist terrorism; and, to be sure, it's a statement about how the federal government and our president have defiantly abandoned existing immigration laws, genuflecting instead to the "cheap labor" mantra of the Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big money interests.

Americans get it and they are getting it more with each passing day.

Brand them zenophobes; brand them nativists; brand them racists; brand them "average Americans"; brand them dull-witted fools incapable of grasping the big picture (or the nuances) of international diplomacy; kick 'em and bash 'em and patronize them all you like, but understand this country is about "We the People" and not always about the legerdemain of Washington D.C.

Fact is, the American people hold veto power that transcends even Washington's machinations.

It's called the ballot box.

No weakness in Americans has been revealed in this exercise in which everyday citizens called Washington on the carpet and said: "Not on our watch!" Quite the contrary -- the pols were forced to do our bidding.

FOLLOW-UP: I heartily recommend this column by Joseph Farah, published in WorldNetDaily, which among other insights offers the following:

On this score, I agree with Robert Pfriender, the president of Alliance Development Corp., the company that offered the U.S. government a real, viable plan for port security – maybe the only real, viable plan for port security.

"Apparently, the collective wisdom of the American public is more accurate in its assessment that the country needs much better port security immediately and that it is absolutely absurd for the White House to provide an opportunity to any foreign-owned entity to participate in any capacity with the operation of a vital national security asset like our seaports," Pfriender observes.

If you believe this is an outrageous requirement, consider this: China doesn't permit any other country to operate its ports. Russia doesn't allow any other country to operate its ports. Saudi Arabia doesn't allow any other country to operate its ports. The United Arab Emirates, the country that owns Dubai Ports World, does not allow any other country to operate its ports. France does not allow any other country to operate its ports. Germany doesn't allow it.

In fact, Pfriender can't find any other significant country in the world that permits this.

AS WE DIG MORE AND MORE INTO WHAT PASSES FOR HOMELAND SECURITY ...

2006-03-08T14:34:00.000-06:00

I'll make this quick. The evidence is as plain as day!

Read here and here about the Dubai Ports World deal.

This is sure to comfort.

Read here about who looks after police, fire, and security services presently at Indianapolis International Airport.

Oh, and do not miss this bit of information.

And, of course, you probably already know how well our southern border is being managed and what the Bush administration plans on doing about the problem (i.e., more of the same).

So just how secure do you feel and how confident are you that our national security interests are being attended to by the Bush administration and its Department of Homeland Security?

OBSERVATION: Frosty Wooldridge deserves kudos! As does the Washington Times and all who inform the public about the hoax that is Homeland Security. Just go to this blog's sidebar and use the links under the "Vincent Omnia Veritas" heading. You'll get a real education.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PREPARED, BUT SO ARE CONSERVATIVES

2006-03-08T13:54:00.000-06:00

The Washington Times reports today that Emilio Gonzales, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has done a convenient about face and is claiming now that his agency is fully prepared to implement a Guest Worker Program -- a project so dear to the President of the United States that he appears willing to kiss off a good-size chunk of his base and any vestiges of the Red State, conservative coalition that returned him to office in 2004.

Simply put, if Mr. Gonzales eventually ends up running a GWP, this writer and countless conservative Republicans alike will be seen running from the president.

The first priority must be border security -- plain and simple, and unencumbered by broad-based immigration reform.

Let's first get our house in order and stop the human invasion from the south.

FOLLOW-UP: Here's a related piece by Juann Mann from The Immigration Blog. And I'm not too impressed with Michael Chertoff and the DHS either!

ILLEGAL ALIEN GOLD CARD -- PRICELESS!

2006-03-07T15:46:00.000-06:00

Michelle Malkin here and Dan Stein here give credence to precisely what I wrote about here and here.

Michelle Malkin:

For those deluded enough to think that the Department of Homeland Security would be able to competently conduct the background checks and police abuse of this massive amnesty plan, I point you to yesterday's post.

The cluelessness of Beltway elite Republicans continues to amaze. If you thought the port deal was a P.R disaster, just wait.

Gold card. For crying out loud.

Dan Stein:

Jaws dropped as the administration reps explained the centerpiece of the program, a "Gold Card" that would enable illegal aliens to enter the U.S. at will, and work at any job with no labor market or other tests needed but would deny them citizenship. "Gold Cards" would be valid forever, similar to current "Green Cards" but illegal aliens holding a "Gold Card" would not be able to adjust their status through naturalization.

Yours truly:

Many think Iraq will be his (President Bush's) undoing. I'm far more inclined to think that his open borders and Guest Worker Program bents will break him. Indeed, his well-camouflaged, "Amnesty-Light" GWP proposal, as Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) fittingly characterizes it, may, in the final analysis, prove to be the petard upon which his presidency is hoisted. 12 - 20 million illegal aliens in this country underscore that in an age of global terrorism the president talks national security, but can't see fit to secure our borders. That contradiction in terms has been distilled down to its essence in the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal. For this president, the only "national security issues" are overseas, not here at home right under his nose. The bumbling, ineffectual Department of Homeland Security attests to this. It should have another Condi Rice type at its helm. Instead, it has Michael Chertoff.

That must have been some phone call between President Bush and Mexico's Vicente Fox here recently! I suspect Fox will insist that his handsome mug be on the new GOLD CARD. Bush will no doubt oblige him, as he always does. After all, they're Harvard compadres.

Question: where do I secure my GOLD CARD from the Mexican government so I am free to cross the border into Mexico and become gainfully employed in the industry of my choice. I'm thinking I'd like to be a senior executive with Pemex or perhaps Cemex.

POSTSCRIPT: I should add that I do not know Spanish, but I trust Mexico would do for me what we here in America do for at least 12 million illegal aliens -- namely, they're permitted to speak the language of their country of origin and even retain unwavering patriotic allegiance to it. So, I'll pass on assimilation; but, I most assuredly want to send a chunk of my salary and bonus money back to the States in the form of remittances. We'll discuss the other perks I'm expecting as a border-jumper once I arrive in Mexico City.

FOLLOW-UP (03/08/06): More from Michelle Malkin on this subject, including a link to her syndicated column, which is a "Must Read."

THE DEGENERATION OF HOLLYWOOD

2006-03-07T10:58:00.000-06:00

Want to see in one stunningly depressing juxtaposition just how far Hollywood has slid down the slippery slope of becoming thoroughly inconsequential?

Here are the lyrics, first, from the Oscar-winning song, "The Way You Look Tonight" (1936), by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, followed by the lyrics (with expletives deleted) for this year's Oscar-winning "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," by Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard (of "Three 6 Mafia"):

Someday... when I'm awfully low
when the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
and the way you look tonight!
Oh... but you're lovely
with your smile so warm and your cheeks so soft
there is nothing for me but to love you
just the way you look tonight!

With each word your tenderness grows
tearing my fear apart
and that laugh that wrinkles your nose
touches my foolish heart!

Lovely... never, never change
keep that breathless charm
won't you please arrange it
'cause I love you
just the way you look tonight!

... just the way you look
tonight.

Gird yourselves, Dear Readers ...

[Chorus 2X: Shug - singing] + (Djay)
You know it's hard out here for a pimp (you ain't knowin)
When he tryin to get this money for the rent (you ain't knowin)
For the Cadillacs and gas money spent (you ain't knowin)
[1] Because a whole lot of bitches talkin sh_t (you ain't knowin)
[2] Will have a whole lot of bitches talkin sh_t (you ain't knowin)

[Djay]
In my eyes I done seen some crazy thangs in the streets
Gotta couple hoes workin on the changes for me
But I gotta keep my game tight like Kobe on game night
Like takin from a ho don't know no better, I know that ain't right
Done seen people killed, done seen people deal
Done seen people live in poverty with no meals
It's f-ed up where I live, but that's just how it is
It might be new to you, but it's been like this for years
It's blood sweat and tears when it come down to this sh_t
I'm tryin to get rich 'fore I leave up out this bitch
I'm tryin to have thangs but it's hard fo' a pimp
But I'm prayin and I'm hopin to God I don't slip, yeah

[Chorus]

[Djay]
Man it seems like I'm duckin dodgin bullets everyday
Niggaz hatin on me cause I got, hoes on the tray
But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water
Couldn't keep up with my hoes, that's when sh_t got harder
North Memphis where I'm from, I'm 7th Street bound
Where niggaz all the time end up lost and never found
Man these girls think we prove thangs, leave a big head
They come hopin every night, they don't end up bein dead
Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too
You pay the right price and they'll both do you
That's the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin
Gotta have my hustle tight, makin change off these women, yeah

Ah, many thanks to the august Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- composed of such liberal luminaries as Whoopie Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, Jessica Lang and Jane Fonda -- for this so-called "achievement in music."

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Zip-a-dee-ay!
My, oh my, what a wonderful day?

FOLLOW-UP (03/08/06): John H. Perry's OP/ED piece in today's Houston Chronicle makes the case that this "Best Song" category Oscar-win was no win for African-Americans. Mr. Perry seems to be taking a page out of Bill Cosby's admonitions to young black people and I applaud him for taking a stand.

DEMOCRATS' MYOPIA PLAYS INTO BUSH'S LETHARGY

2006-03-07T10:48:00.000-06:00

Over this past weekend I advanced the theory that a principal reason President Bush has lost touch with his conservative base is that, having kept Vice President Dick Cheney on the ticket in the 2004 campaign, he has avoided the onus of having to help propel the candidacy of a successor for the 2008 presidential election. Thus his second term is devoid of any real impetus to sustain the major campaign themes for which he was twice elected, other than to preserve his legacy among historians in the future. The "here and now" has been supplanted by the "far and away" and it shows.

But along comes this piece in the Washington Post on the Democratic Party's patent inability to forge a meaningful agenda for the country in response to the Bush years and to do anything other than to harp incessantly about the president's perceived failings, thus forcing me to add an addendum to my theory -- namely, that Bush may also be coasting along in the death throes of second-term-itis because the opposition party, for all of its gadflying and naysaying, hasn't been able to gain much in the way of traction for lack of any viable alternatives and solutions to the Bush presidency that resonate with a majority of Americans.

Indeed, I would suggest to you that were the Democratic Party controlled by a broad-based moderate element, as opposed to a far-left fringe element, the GOP would really have its hands full right now going into the November mid-term elections.

TWO APPROACHES TO SPENDING ISSUE

2006-03-07T10:16:00.000-06:00

President Bush, not one to have exercised his veto powers -- not even once -- during his two-term administration, and now feeling the heat from his conservative base for (among other things) failing to control the size of government and contain its free-wheeling spending through fiscal restraint, is asking for a "line item veto." This strikes me as a bit disingenuous. Bush '43, like his father, Bush '41, is a free spender and inveterate believer in all things government. Explain the spending appetite and woeful incompetence of the Department of Homeland Security in any other context. It's become a federal boondoggle of the first rank.

That's why I'm more encouraged to see this developing and I encourage you to read in its entirety the excellent post on the subject by Captain Ed of Captains Quarters.

FOLLOW-UP: More on this subject from John Hawkins of Right Wing News.

CHERTOFF'S A LIABILITY, PRESIDENT BUSH

2006-03-05T21:44:00.000-06:00

Former FEMA director Michael Brown has been reinventing himself of late politically (and doing a good job of it, it would appear), making the rounds of the talking heads' shows and positioning himself as more the victim of his former boss', DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, buck-passing, than the Katrina disaster, for which he received the bulk of the blame for the federal government's inept response. Brown's case is gaining traction within the MSM and the unhalting criticism of him appears to be in remission. Indeed, he may bounce back faster than the Tylenol brand name did in 1982.

Now it's Chertoff's well-deserved turn in the barrel.

But poor marks for the Department of Homeland Security (of which FEMA is a part) and its chief should not be confined to its lackluster response time and patent inefficiency in coping with a major natural disaster that struck the Gulf Coast and put most of New Orleans under water. There's much, much more to the story of DHS. One can start with its bloated budget, its reckless, unfocused spending, and its overreach beyond its principal mission. Then one can move on to the more substantive failures: our nation's long-standing porous borders and poorly-secured ports, which have not received the kind of focus from the Bush-created boondoggle that they merit. Indeed, citizen outrage vis-a-vis the borders -- best eptomized in the formation of The Minuteman Project -- and citizen outrage over the Dubai Ports World deal -- ineleuctably forged by the basic common sense of everyday Americans -- have politicians scrambling and the Bush administration on the ropes.

This piece, by Veronique de Rugy of the American Enterprise Institute, captures a flavor of what DHS is all about and what it has become:

Since September 11, Congress has appropriated nearly $180 billion to protect Americans from terrorism. Total spending on homeland security in 2006 will be at least $50 billion—roughly $450 per American household. But far from making us more secure, the money is being allocated like so much pork. States and cities are spending federal homeland security grants on pet projects that have nothing to do with homeland security; state and local officials fight over who will get the biggest share of the money, regardless of whether they have a legitimate claim to it. And when Congress isn’t doling out cash indiscriminately, it’s overreacting to yesterday’s attacks instead of concentrating on cost-effective defenses against the most likely current threats. The result is an edifice that, far from preventing terrorist assaults, actually makes us more vulnerable by diverting resources from worthier projects.

The president needs Rudolf Giuliani or someone of his stature, experience, and credibility in DHS, and sooner rather than later. There are other personnel changes he needs to make, including at the cabinet level, but surely this is the most pressing. Michael Chertoff may well be a litmus test of whether or not this president is going to do something about national security here at home, rather than just overseas.

WHY HAS BUSH LOST TOUCH WITH HIS BASE?

2006-03-05T15:58:00.000-06:00

President Bush's poll numbers -- the confidence American voters have in him and how they rate his performance in office -- are abysmal. Conservative bloggers can deconstruct the polls all they want, but there's no getting around the fact that the president has stumbled badly in his second term (save for his successful SCOTUS nominees) and, depending upon one's point of view, developed a debilitating tin ear or, worse, slipped into a dysfunctional stubborness that borders on denial. The political capital he gained in the wake of the election returns in November, 2004, has been haphazardly squandered.

Having voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and again in 2004, I am among those in his "base" who have not necessarily defected at this juncture, but who have developed grave doubts as to whether the president will aggressively engage his detractors and, more importantly, listen to his supporters and begin taking the pulse of the American people. Right now, he is doing neither. The Conservative Movement and the George Bush presidency appear a marriage bound for a separation. Many conservatives appear ready to pull their wagons out of Bush's wagon train.

More so than ever before, this is a White House that rather than showcasing an "Open For Business" sign at the front door, opts instead for one that reads "Out To Lunch." The presidency seems, if not altogether adrift, hellbent on going down roads for which the warning signs clearly indicate a wrong direction has been taken down a one-way street, but for which George W. Bush chooses to be oblivious or irrevocably bullheaded. No surprise, Americans are following his paths of choice less and less and he seems not to care. Communication with the American people is happenstance and revolves, at best, around tired bromides. His has become an insular presidency.

Many think Iraq will be his undoing. I'm far more inclined to think that his open borders and Guest Worker Program bents will break him. Indeed, his well-camouflaged, "Amnesty-Light" GWP proposal, as Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) fittingly characterizes it, may, in the final analysis, prove to be the petard upon which his presidency is hoisted. 12 - 20 million illegal aliens in this country underscore that in an age of global terrorism the president talks national security, but can't see fit to secure our borders. That contradiction in terms has been distilled down to its essence in the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal. For this president, the only "national security issues" are overseas, not here at home right under his nose. The bumbling, ineffectual Department of Homeland Security attests to this. It should have another Condi Rice type at its helm. Instead, it has Michael Chertoff.

Early in the 2004 campaign, my brother and I had a discussion that I provoked whether it was politic for George Bush to keep Dick Cheney on the ticket. My thought was that Bush needed to set the stage in his second term for a hand-picked Republican successor. Reagan did that with Bush '41. And, after all, Cheney was clear in having no desire to run in 2008. But my brother -- more conservative in his politics than even I -- echoed the prevailing sentiment at the time in the conservative ranks of the GOP. Dick Cheney was the straw that stirred the drink for conservatives and he was integral to retaining "the base" for the president. In other words, Cheney's credentials as a conservative were more compelling for Republicans than the president's.

But the upshot is that we have a second term, lame duck president now who doesn't have the onus of setting the stage for the successful launch of a conservative successor in 2008. And lacking that and to the chagrin of those who thought Cheney was indispensable to the ticket in 2004, George Bush may be, by his acquiescence and uninterest, helping a psuedo-conservative, John McCain (RINO-AZ), take dead aim at the Oval Office. Indeed, Bush isn't creating a slipstream, but rather a vacumn; McCain is busy now siezing the advantage.

NATIONAL SECURITY MUST TRUMP CERTAIN BUSINESS DEALS

2006-03-04T11:06:00.000-06:00

On February 27th, in the context of the controversial UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal, I wrote:

Which brings me to the essential question that seems to have been lost in the woof and warp of name-calling (example: the NYT's David Brooks describes negative reactions to the deal as a "xenophobic tsunami -- a nativist, isolationist, mass hysteria") from the president's minions in the government, the press, the GOP, and the center-right blogosphere against those of us having genuine concerns about placing a United Arab Emirates-owned company in charge of managing 22 of America's ports: do multi-national business interests under the aegis of economic globalization trump strategic national security concerns?

I continued:

So what it all boils down to is this: money decisions oftentimes get in the way of national security risks and assessments. Or, as a former president, himself an open borders' apologist and, unlike the current Oval Office occupant, profoundly oblivious to the threat of international terrorism, put it: "It's the economy, Stupid!"

And I then went on to observe editorially:

But what we don't have is a strategic assessment of those industries vital to America's security and the necessary laws governing their ownership to protect us and minimize the risk of terrorist attack. Seems economic globalization trumps strategic security interests. Money talks. Have enough of it and you can do most anything you want to do (or receive most anything you want to receive) in or from the United States of America.

Now Hugh Hewitt writes an impressive exposition of the Ports Deal imbroglio and, I think, delineates the sharp distinction between the opposing camps' points of view as well as anyone has in the blogosphere (albeit I don't care for the "Realist"/"Retreatist" designations he uses).

Writes Mr. Hewitt:

There are two categories of assets/businesses in the United States: those that have no or little bearing on the nation's security, and those that do.

Generally speaking, all nations that are not enemies of the U.S. are welcomed to invest in the former. We encourage our allies to do so, even those allies with whom we have deep foreign policy differences on such matters as the boycott of Israel. The country is committed to free trade and the global economy, and that commitment is not subject to suspension over particular differences in foreign policy, even on such a crucial matter as trade with Israel. The boycott of Israel is not for us a national security issue.

Assets/businesses in the latter category are different. Defense contractors and their wares, strategic resources and the companies that develop them, some supercomputing businesses etc. --these sorts of assets/businesses are not open to market purchases, as the very existence of CFIUS attests.

The first question is: Are port operations in the first or the second category. I, and most of the country, assumes that even though security at the ports is the duty of the Coast Guard, that nevertheless these are operations in the second category because they are border functions. After the attack on the Cole we became aware of the possibilities of port terrorism. After 9/11 we became aware that terrorists are willing to think way outside of the box and competent enough to carry out such schemes. Since 9/11 there have bulletins of alert focused on ports and a variety of stories about slips in port security and warnings that ports are our weakest link.

That's the divide in a nutshell: the business prerogatives of globalization versus national security requirements in an age of terrorism and during a time of war.

To illustrate further Hugh Hewitt's point about "assets/businesses in the latter category," I cite for readers of this blog the fact (likely little known) that the federal government is currently vetting yet another UAE-owned company's interest in purchasing a British company with plants in the United States that manufacture "precision parts used in engines for military aircraft and tanks." Just how far should this sort of thing go -- is anything and everything open to purchase by the highest bidder in the world, regardless of its strategic value to the national security interests of the United States?

Some things in this country must remain beyond the reach and control of foreign governments and the companies they own. As blogger Frank Laughter writes:

It’s easy to see the REAL question: whom do you trust? To me, that’s pretty simple: Nobody. That’s exactly why the operations of ALL American infrastructures should be under the control of companies and agencies here in this country, so that WE THE PEOPLE can keep a close watch on what’s happening. Even that isn’t foolproof but at least we can reduce the risk considerably.

In short, there’s no good reason for China, the UAE, the British, or any other foreign government or company to be involved in U.S. port operations or U.S. port security.

If I had to select the lesser of two evils, I would certainly choose a publicly held corporation from an established democracy over any foreign government.

The most astonishing thing in this whole debate is how readily people lean on verbal assurances of an UK judge; P&O of the UK; the UAE; Bill Clinton; Bush (who never saw a guarded border he liked); CFIUS; admin spokespeople; etc.

NEITHER A BORROWER, NOR A LENDER BE

2006-03-04T07:06:00.000-06:00

Here's some financial data on the U.S. debt that's worth chewing on, Folks. Wonder what the grandkids would think about our Guns 'n Butter economy?

Somehow this is not the fiscal restraint and preference for small government that we conservative Republicans champion!

H/T: Free Republic

"FEARFUL FRINGE NATIVISM" CANARD JUST A SNOW-JOB

2006-03-04T06:32:00.000-06:00

Fox News' Tony Snow must have had people like me in mind -- we "fearful fringe nativists" -- when he wrote this sophomoric hit piece in support of the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal that President Bush insists not be rescinded for fear of alienating a good ally in the Middle East and the Muslim world at large. Mr. Snow has opted to resort to the "Fear Factor" canard in attempting to slay the judgement of an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned about a government-owned company in the Middle East managing vital infrastructure here in the United States -- infrastructure that anyone with an ounce of common sense would recognize as strategic to America's national security interests.

A fair number of analysts have linked the Dubai Ports World controversy with President Bush's approach to border security. The president, they say, can't keep our borders safe, so why should we trust his word when it comes to securing our ports?

The question unmasks the questioners. While our borders have become porous, they haven't become highways for terror, at least by the slender evidence available to laymen. Instead, they have become the focal point for fearful imaginings -- of Islamofascists secreted in otherwise empty trucks or train cars; underground railroads for bin Laden-trained thugs who have slithered around the world and up through South and Central America.

I have written here:

The UAE-owned Dubai Ports World imbroglio is but an ancillary element of the primary catalyst accelerating President George W. Bush's steep slide in popularity and his loss of credibility -- namely, his stubborn refusal to secure our nation's borders in a post-"9/11" age of Islamofascist terrorism. That congenital stubborn streak has become his political undoing in his second term and its enervating effects are seen in the schism fast developing in GOP ranks.

And I have written here:

Which brings me to the essential question that seems to have been lost in the woof and warp of name-calling (example: the NYT's David Brooks describes negative reactions to the deal as a "xenophobic tsunami -- a nativist, isolationist, mass hysteria") from the president's minions in the government, the press, the GOP, and the center-right blogosphere against those of us having genuine concerns about placing a United Arab Emirates-owned company in charge of managing 22 of America's ports: do multi-national business interests under the aegis of economic globalization trump strategic national security concerns?

After all, doesn't it follow that if, in the aftermath of 9/11, the nation's borders (north and south) continue to be porous and unsecured and Arab-owned companies run many of our ports, including two in Texas that supply 40% of the U.S. Army's cargo deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom , that this nation's government has yet to do a full-fledged risk assessment in the context of America's national security interests? Goodness, at present we still only inspect 3% - 5% of the millions of domestic and foreign containers that arrive at our ports! That's the so-called security provided by DHS and the U.S. Coast Guard that the president reassures us will not be compromised by the DPW deal. Security? What security?

But what we don't have is a strategic assessment of those industries vital to America's security and the necessary laws governing their ownership to protect us and minimize the risk of terrorist attack. Seems economic globalization trumps strategic security interests. Money talks. Have enough of it and you can do most anything you want to do (or receive most anything you want to receive) in or from the United States of America.

President Bush has long schooled Americans on why this country gorges on cheap labor: it's because illegal aliens ("immigrants," he calls them) are willing to do the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. To that canard, he must now add another to his repertoire to explain why the business of America is being recast: it's because Arab-owned and Communist China-owned companies are willing to do the work that American-owned businesses are unwilling to do.

Sorry, Tony, but your Townhall.com column unmasks the columnist, not the questioners -- i.e., those, like me, dubious that the federal government and its Department of Homeland Security know what they're doing in protecting us from another "9/11." Fact is, the DPW deal is all about second fiddles orchestrating Treasury Department deals under the auspices of the CFIUS and with nary a concern about protecting the country's national security.

Again, as I have previously written:

Stunningly, in this age of much ballyhooed economic globalization, assistant secretaries, sitting on obscure, secretive committees, are quietly making decisions involving America's post-"9/11" strategic security interests.

Do recall, Tony, that the World Trade Center had been hit prior to September 11, 2001. And to your notion that the Dubai Ports World imbroglio is all about paranoia and anti-immigrant animus, rather than legitimate national security concerns, kindly ask property owners along the contiguous U.S.-Mexico border if they're not being genuinely terrorized by the drug traffickers, human smugglers, MS-13 gang members, waves of Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) from "countries of interest" that harbor and support terrorists, and even elements of the Mexican army.

Just as President Bush has put insufficient troops on the ground in Iraq to secure that nation's borders and stop the steady infiltration of terrorists, thus protracting the war there, he has failed to put sufficient numbers of U.S. Border Patrol agents on the ground along America's borders to stop the human invasion and its concomitant violence from Mexico. The president just doesn't get it when it comes to border security and that monumental fact set against the backdrop of the GWOT and America's homeland security is the glaring contradiction in terms that is unraveling George W. Bush's credibility with his Republican base and with Americans at large.

When 12 - 20 million people who have entered this country illegally without proper documentation and oftentimes resorting to forged documentation are not seen as a risk to homeland security, then you have to wonder who's being dellusional and "uninterested in facts."

I would suggest to you it is Tony Snow and others of his ilk. It's not fear, Mr. Snow, that motivates Americans to question the federal government's indifference to
porous borders and millions of undocumented lawbreakers afoot in our land; rather, it's just good ol' American common sense in an age of international Islamofascist terrorism. Fact is, we get it and it is you who have some catching up to do.

FOLLOW-UP: To those who use the race card in debating with those of us who oppose the "ports deal" with DPW, calling us paranoids, Islamophobes, and nativists, among other ad hominem-style terms of endearment (just count the number Tony Snow utilized in his column), I encourage you to read the thoughtful posts by John Hawkins and The Anchoress on the subject. While both are not against "the deal," as I am, they bring a sober, objective perspective to the issues being sighted by many proponents. Do take the time to read them.

CONGRATULATIONS, HOUSTON CHRONICLE !!!

2006-03-03T15:28:00.000-06:00

Forgive my delay in publishing well-deserved kudos to the Houston Chronicle -- the newspaper of America's 4th largest city -- for being recognized as the nation's top blogging newspaper ("by a mile") by New York University, which just completed a study of major U.S. newspapers.

As the Chronicle's Dwight Silverman explains:

Both our staff and reader bloggers understand that this is more than just about getting information and passing it on -- it's about engaging with readers on the things they care most about, in a way that's useful, human and even entertaining.

The readers who have embraced and participated in our blogs are also key. Each blog is its own community -- those who post comments do so because they care about what's being said. You folks deserve the biggest kudos, because without your participation, it wouldn't be the conversation that it is.

My own blog has been linked in the Houston Chronicle's online edition's Opinion section and despite the fact that I have taken issue with the Chronicle's editorial board from time to time. That shows me something. In addition, I have had the courtesy several times now of an e-mail exchange with Dwight Silverman.

Kevin Whited and Anne Linehan of blogHouston.net provide their customary insights -- a mix of accolades and suggestions for the Houston Chronicle's team -- on this award.

Kevin, as an example, writes:

The sheer number of Chron blogs, their consistent look and feel (including comments, a feature bloggers take for granted), the ease with which they can be found, and the fact that non-Chron folks have been asked to start blogs seem to be the drivers responsible for Chron.com blowing away their MSM competition.

I'm not sold on the extent to which the non-Chron bloggers add value to the Chron.com news enterprise. That's not to say they aren't potentially interesting, or that the Chron.com label/vetting process isn't useful in providing local blog readers some assurance of quality. But it remains to be seen whether those blogs will actually enhance the core news mission of the Houston Chronicle in some fashion that isn't clear to me now.

Speaking of the "core news mission," while my blog was volunteered, but disappointingly not selected, Dwight Silverman arranged for Houston-area bloggers who chose to stay put during Hurricane Rita to have their hurricane-related posts published by the Chronicle's online edition, as a way to give "citizen journalists" an opportunity to report on the hurricane's impact in their immediate geographic area. I thought that a terrific experiment and a nice nod to local bloggers. My own disappointment, I should add, was short-lived, as Michelle Malkin gave me my first link ever to her widely-read site for a post I wrote on Rita! (Take that, Dwight!).

Anyway, it's a credit to a major mainstream media publication to do something so out of the mainstream with the blogger community!

TIME FOR THE RIGHT TO GET OUT OF DENIAL

2006-03-03T11:00:00.000-06:00

Frank Laughter of Common Sense Junction hits the nail on the head in this well-thought post: to wit, it's high time the Right gets out of denial.

Writes Frank:

Nearly every day, when the Left gets on the wrong side of an issue, the Right jumps with joy. But on those rare occasions when the Right gets it wrong, it’s always somebody else’s fault. They like to blame it on pollsters, the MSM, or the people themselves for not paying attention.

I’d like the Right to get out of denial.

The Bush administration is in trouble. George W. Bush's base is splintering. And that splintering did not just begin over the Dubai Ports World deal or no earlier than the Harriet Miers' brouhaha. But now the disenchantment in GOP ranks is at a boil and dangerously so because the root cause -- the contradiction in terms between the Bush-led GWOT versus his patent, long-term indifference to this nation's porous borders and unsecured ports -- has come front burner to burn him and undermine his second term.

The staples of the Bush presidency -- national security and the global war on terror -- are now seen through new optics given the immigration/border security fight in the U.S. Senate and the president's knee-jerk threat of a first ever veto were the Congress to try to thwart giving the keys to our ports to a UAE-owned ports' management company.

So I agree with Mr. Laughter's observation.

And, I am pleased to see that some conservative bloggers are publishing substantive, objective remedies to get the president out of the fix he's put himself in, rather than playing the "round up the usual suspects" game.

Kudos to Frank Laughter and to John Hawkins.

BORDER SECURITY: A "CREDIBILITY GAP" THAT IS BECOMING THE PRESIDENT'S UNDOING

2006-03-02T01:12:00.000-06:00

The UAE-owned Dubai Ports World imbroglio is but an ancillary element of the primary catalyst accelerating President George W. Bush's steep slide in popularity and his loss of credibility -- namely, his stubborn refusal to secure our nation's borders in a post-"9/11" age of Islamofascist terrorism. That congenital stubborn streak has become his political undoing in his second term and its enervating effects are seen in the schism fast developing in GOP ranks.

As the Washington Post reports this morning:

The Senate will begin work today on legislation to overhaul the nation's immigration laws and plug its porous borders, but a bipartisan push to create a new guest worker program has put Senate Republicans on a collision course with their counterparts in the House.

The immigration question -- one of the volatile issues in this election year -- has split Republicans as no other issue before Congress. Vociferous opponents of illegal immigration are at odds with business interests and their allies, including President Bush, who are keen on establishing new, legal avenues to bolster the labor force.

Interesting that the president was quick to say when the Ports Deal controversy broke that to rescind the deal now would send exactly the wrong message to a vital ally in the Middle East, but fails to see that porous borders with Canada and Mexico and, at best, marginal security at our nations ports, where millions and millions of shipping containers go largely uninspected, send exactly the wrong message to American voters who, at the president's behest, bought into the global war on terror as a salient in America's national security strategy.

Good ol' American common sense has come to see a fundamental flaw in the president's logic: we must fight terrorists overseas so that we won't have to fight them here at home, but, oh by the way, 12 - 20 million undocumented aliens here in our homeland (with 10,000+ more jumping our borders every day) are no big deal, as are poorly-secured ports whose day-to-day operations are to be managed by Arab and Communist Chinese companies.

This glaring inconsistency in the president's logic is exacerbated by a penchant for bluster over clear communication and "my way, or the highway" posturing, rather than an acceptance that we're all in this together. This was best shown in his threat to Congress, of which I recently wrote:

He didn't just threaten the Congress the other day with a veto. In his characteristic swagger, the president threatened to veto Americans' common sense.

I watched a report on cable news last night about an American property owner along the contiguous U.S.-Mexico border whose property has been overrun and vandalized repeatedly by illegal aliens. Because the federal government will not protect this American citizen's rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he felt compelled to arm himself and protect his and his family's property and material assets. A Mexican Consulate, in concert with left-wing Latino sympathizers, filed a lawsuit against the man. The good news: he prevailed in court; the bad news: lawyers' fees exceeded $100,000. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, that man and his family view themselves as victims of a form of terrorism (?) -- a veritable human invasion from the south, which, I should add, includes Other Than Mexicans (OTMs) from "countries of interest."

If borders and ports and American property owners aren't priorities of the president in this age of Islamofascist terrorism, then how much longer can President Bush expect that his policies will be supported when our country is being overrun by illegal aliens, our strategic security interests compromised by the allure of economic globalization, our jobs and manufacturing infrastructure exported overseas, our $8.3 trillion national debt and $726 billion U.S. trade deficit growing exponentially, and the FEMA-led rebuilding of the devastated Gulf Coast an unmitigated embarrassment?

Something is seriously amiss and Americans are on to the scent. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security 53 months after "9/11" is still more federal boondoggle than legitimate terrorism deterrent.

FOLLOW-UP: Bob Kemper, reporting for the Cox News Service, points to a growing fissure across the country over illegal immigration and what is needed most in the context of immigration reform. Senator Isakson (R-GA) is quoted as saying: "... illegal immigration is something that's really tearing the country apart right now."

FOLLOW-UP II: This Washington Post piece by Peter Baker analyzes the developing rift among strong supporters of the president over the GWOT and security-related issues, while pointing to the president's strained relationship with the GOP-controlled Congress. And more on the Congressional revolt here.

FOLLOW-UP III: And what exactly are Americans to think, Bush-supporters among them, when they read these kinds of reports being published in conservative, straight-shooting publications such as The Washington Times? What's your visceral reaction to the following?

Senators said one reason for the rise in violence on the U.S. side is that many illegal aliens are convicted criminals or persons wanted for crimes. More than 42,000 illegal aliens caught at the U.S. border in the past five months fell into that category, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

And when you read those numbers, do understand, as Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) advises, that for every illegal interdicted by the U.S. Border Patrol, 3 to 5 are successful and go undetected. That's why about 30% of our federal prison population is composed of illegal aliens.

FOLLOW-UP IV: Here's an excelllent post on the Illegal Immigration issue from Polipundit, citing, as he does, current legislation being considered in the U.S. Senate -- legislation that places a premium on Guest Worker programs with much-needed border enforcement as only a promised quid pro quo. It's just plain unacceptable and Washington and our elected representatives are deferring to business interests, rather than taking the true pulse of the nation. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) is among those trying to end run American voters.

FOLLOW-UP V: This Fox News' poll and this CNN/USA Today Gallop poll should be a wake-up call for the Bush administration. I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and again in 2004, regard myself as among his "base," would be appropriately characterized as a Reagan Republican and a conservative by any measure; but, and while even to this day I could not fathom Al Gore or John Kerry occupying the Oval Office, I'm developing serious misgivings about the president's performance and particularly vis-a-vis porous borders, unsecure ports, and administration foot-dragging and ineptitude in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. When conservative Republicans begin to get their backs up, the White House ought to pay attention! The situation on our southern border is nothing less than disgraceful and inexcusable.

MICHELLE MALKIN -- A PROFILE IN COURAGE

2006-03-01T11:28:00.000-06:00

Michelle Malkin returns fire today (and to her credit) with regard to the attacks leveled against her and others (like me) who have questioned the Dubai Ports World deal and continue to question it, even in the face of all the aspersions being cast. As she says, it's been race card baiting carried to an extreme.

It's one thing for feckless grievance-mongers on the Left to accuse Americans genuinely concerned about national security of Islamophobia. It's quite another for the Right to sink to such a level in accusing all good-faith critics of demagoguery.

Michelle Malkin is a profile in courage.

FOLLOW-UP: Cause enough for us to stick to our guns, Michelle! Frank Laughter makes the point, as well, in his inimitabe style!

GETTYSBURG CASINO AND LOUNGE

2006-02-28T20:58:00.000-06:00

... we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. (President Abraham Lincoln)

But ... we can damn sure turn it into a casino-lounge venue.

H/T: Free Republic

WOW -- DO NOT PASS GO !

2006-02-28T12:42:00.000-06:00

The Anchoress steers her readers in the direction of this important read: a trenchant, sobering piece by David Warren, published at RealClearPolitics.

An excerpt:

And from a mixture of fear of, and sympathy for, large, recent, Muslim immigrant communities in the West, we confuse domestic and foreign issues. I do not doubt the great majority of Muslims, in Canada and around the world, are decent, “moderate” people, who want no part in a “clash of civilizations”. But it has become obvious they can do nothing to stop the triumph of “Islamism” internationally, or oppose the fanatics proselytizing in their own communities.

Stop now and take the time to read it.

THE PRESIDENT'S POPULARITY WANES -- IS INSULARITY A CULPRIT?

2006-02-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

Frank Laughter of Common Sense Junction has his finger on the pulse in terms of the president's waning popularity and suggests between the lines that George W. Bush's penchant for insularity and habitual stubborness has caught up with him, both within the GOP's ranks and across the American heartland.

The president won re-election in 2004 largely on the basis of his leadership in the global war on terror (GWOT), which was cast in stark contrast during the campaign to the ever-vascillating, bumptiously "reporting for duty," John Kerry. But, George Bush cannot have it both ways. You cannot heighten Americans' concern about another "9/11"-type strike at our homeland, while at the same time allowing our nation's borders to remain scandously porous. And I'm not referring here just to our contiguous borders with Canada and Mexico. Our borders also include our east and west coasts, which are made particularly vulnerable by the off-loading at our ports of millions of domestic and foreign shipping containers that are only negligibly inspected (i.e., in the range of just 3% to 5%).

To borrow from the name of Frank Laughter's blog, it's all about common sense and Americans possess that in bushel baskets. But an insular president seems to have lost sight of that. He didn't just threaten the Congress the other day with a veto. In his characteristic swagger, the president threatened to veto Americans' common sense.

In offending an incredulous base (e.g., Harriet Miers' nomination to the SCOTUS) and disbelieving Americans at large (e.g., Portgate), the president has become in 2006 a tin ear caricature of his splendid first-term persona. And it's a shame. His political capital has been near exhausted and his second term is taking on every appearance of that of an inept lame duck.

James Joyner points to a dismal report card and draws from it the following conclusion: "The bottom line is that, even if the CBS poll is junk, it draws attention to something that is undisputed: President Bush has lost the confidence of a substantial portion of the general public."

And, to be sure, when a two-term, conservative Republican president, who has predicated the efficacy of his presidency on the war in Iraq, loses the imprimatur of the leader of the American Conservative Movement, that president can ill afford the impolitic decision (rather than the purely business decision) of installing a UAE-owned company into the day-to-day operations of 22 of America's ports in wartime.

It's just plain bad "strategery," Mr. President.

FOLLOW-UP: Frank Laughter amplifies his current view of the Bush administration in this post. An excerpt follows:

Whatever Bush’s motive for going into Iraq, the war has diverted public attention from such vulnerabilities as our borders, seaports, nuclear power plants, airlines, railways, trains, waterways, food supplies, cities, bridges, tunnels and other infra-structures. That’s the perception, whether accurate or not, and Bush has shown no interest in correcting it. In fact, his public conduct has been just the opposite. As it goes now, he’s on course to become the worst president since Jimmy Carter and if he surrenders sovereignty over our seaports to ANY foreign power, he’ll trump Jimmy’s surrender of the Panama Canal.

With many of his voters' perceptions of his presidency beginning to sour, President Bush had better get out of denial.

CONGRATULATIONS TO BOB OWENS; SYMPATHIES TO DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL

2006-02-28T09:28:00.000-06:00

Two well-regarded, conservative bloggers have received distinctly different forms of flattery for their writing skills.

The Anchoress reports that Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee has been given a guest blogger stint at The Washington Post. That and more: WaPo published an interview of Mr. Owens, as well. Congratulations, Bob!

Meanwhile, Debbie Schlussel expresses outrage in this post over what she contends is an egregious example of plagiarism by Swift Boat author, Jerome Corsi. Sympathies to Debbie!

PORTS DEAL: STRATEGIC SECURITY INTERESTS TRUMPED BY ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

2006-02-27T14:08:00.000-06:00

The furor over the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal seems to have been defused over the weekend by the Bush administration and its stalwart backers. Or, at the very least, the imbroglio has been placed in cold storage, pending a 45-day investigation of "potential security risks" (see: AP story, published in today's Houston Chronicle) that repeats a process (albeit broader the second time around) already completed and blessed by the rubber-stamp Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which consists of twelve (12) federal departments and agencies.

CFIUS blessed the deal on January 17th. I should add that the following happenstance (purely coincidental, I'm sure) occurred in parallel: "... that same day, the White House appointed a Dubai Ports World executive, David C. Sanborn, to be administrator for the Maritime Administration of the Department of Transportation." (see: UPI story by UPI Pentagon Corrspondent, Pamela Hess, published 02/24/06).

Interestingly, Dubai Ports World is winning kudos from the mainstream media (and the White House) for volunteering to this second due dilligence even though the law governing this Department of the Treasury body required a 45-day investigation in the first place, since DPW is a state-owned company (see: Forbes article by Jessica Holzer, published on 02/23/06). More telling is the fact that a swift, 30-day government approval was finalized first time around without the President of the United States, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, or the United States Congress, for that matter, being in the loop. Stunningly, in this age of much ballyhooed economic globalization, assistant secretaries, sitting on obscure, secretive committees, are quietly making decisions involving America's post-"9/11" strategic security interests.

And, even more telling, is the fact that the lone, overridden dissent on the CFIUS to the Dubai Ports World deal came from the Department of Homeland Security's representative, Stewart Baker. But President Bush's boondoggle, the DHS, apparently has no more impact on the CFIUS than it does on our borders.

Astonishingly, fact is "the highest ranking official to know about the deal before the furor began to erupt was Clay Lowery, the recently appointed assistant secretary for international affairs, a former career staffer at the Treasury and at the National Security Council." (see: Washington Post story by Jim Vandehei and Paul Blustein of 02/26/08). Wasn't one of the chief, more disturbing findings of the 9/11 Commission that our nation's intelligence agencies didn't talk to one another? Seems self-serving, national security-compromising firewalls continue to exist elsewhere in our federal government 53+ months after a horrific, Islamo-terrorist attack on America.

Which brings me to the essential question that seems to have been lost in the woof and warp of name-calling (example: the NYT's David Brooks describes negative reactions to the deal as a "xenophobic tsunami -- a nativist, isolationist, mass hysteria") from the president's minions in the government, the press, the GOP, and the center-right blogosphere against those of us having genuine concerns about placing a United Arab Emirates-owned company in charge of managing 22 of America's ports: do multi-national business interests under the aegis of economic globalization trump strategic national security concerns?

When the outcry over "the deal" first broke, the best a blindsided president could do was to make this lame claim,

If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward.

and followed by this disingenuous demand of those of us who questioned the DPW deal,

... step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great Britain company.

But, of course, the president has essentially embraced this same rationale in purposefully failing to deal with our country's porous borders during his two-term presidency. Mexico is a "friend" and "NAFTA partner," just as the UAE is "an ally in the war against terrorism," so questioning the motivations of either government is an invidious exercise and, on its face, unseemly. Accordingly, and by the president's logic, 12 - 20 million undocumented, illegal aliens should pose no more a national security threat than a foreign-owned, Middle East-based company operating nearly two dozen American ports in wartime.

But some of us think otherwise. David J. Johnson, in a compelling piece, published in the Canada Free Press on February 25th, writes:

The goal of Islamists, following in the footsteps of Muhammad is to create the Islamic kingdom of God on earth. The strategy to obtain this goal in our lifetime includes the control of the world’s energy infrastructure, the transportation systems, currency, media, elections, immigration and education. The control of the port facilities is hence a critical element. Foreign ownership, in and of itself, although important, is not as significant as the strategy and goals of the owner.

President Bush tells us he awakes every morning to the conscious threat of international, Islamofascist terrorism and asks himself if he is doing all he can do to protect Americans, yet he dismisses out of hand any national security threat posed by an Arab country running day-to-day operations of 22 American ports. That strikes this writer as disingenuous or absurdly naive. Nationally-syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas picks up this theme:

On Sunday, the Australian government issued the following alert to its citizens: "We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in the United Arab Emirates because of the high threat of terrorist attack. We continue to receive reports that terrorists are planning attacks against Western interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Commercial and public areas frequented by foreigners are possible terrorist targets."
The United States has approved a business deal that would turn over the operation of six major American ports to a company that is owned by the UAE, the very country Australians are to be wary of visiting. The obvious question is: If it is dangerous for an Australian to travel to the UAE because of terrorism, isn't it even more dangerous for a company owned by UAE to own the rights to American ports where terror might be directly, or indirectly, imported?

So what it all boils down to is this: money decisions oftentimes get in the way of national security risks and assessments. Or, as a former president, himself an open borders' apologist and, unlike the current Oval Office occupant, profoundly oblivious to the threat of international terrorism, put it: "It's the economy, Stupid!"

After all, doesn't it follow that if, in the aftermath of 9/11, the nation's borders (north and south) continue to be porous and unsecured and Arab-owned companies run many of our ports, including two in Texas that supply 40% of the U.S. Army's cargo deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom , that this nation's government has yet to do a full-fledged risk assessment in the context of America's national security interests? Goodness, at present we still only inspect 3% - 5% of the millions of domestic and foreign containers that arrive at our ports! That's the so-called security provided by DHS and the U.S. Coast Guard that the president reassures us will not be compromised by the DPW deal. Security? What security?

Removing shoes from elderly air travelers and wanding pregnant women seem to be the staples of what we have; a DHS' color-coded, security advisory system, ignored by most Americans, we have; a costly, national debt-accelerating War in Iraq we have; a new, tax-consuming, federal government boondoggle, we have. And on and on it goes.

But what we don't have is a strategic assessment of those industries vital to America's security and the necessary laws governing their ownership to protect us and minimize the risk of terrorist attack. Seems economic globalization trumps strategic security interests. Money talks. Have enough of it and you can do most anything you want to do (or receive most anything you want to receive) in or from the United States of America.

President Bush has long schooled Americans on why this country gorges on cheap labor: it's because illegal aliens ("immigrants," he calls them) are willing to do the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. To that canard, he must now add another to his repertoire to explain why the business of America is being recast: it's because Arab-owned and Communist China-owned companies are willing to do the work that American-owned businesses are unwilling to do.

Americans must ask themselves if that dog hunts any better than the first one does.

FOLLOW-UP: Good example here (in the very first paragraph) of the spin being used by the Bush administration, regardless that the law demanded a 45-day due diligence by CFIUS. (H/T: Hugh Hewitt)

FOLLOW-UP II: How apropos! Michelle Malkin cites comments by David Limbaugh on the ports deal vis-a-vis Bush's "inscrutable immigration policy."

FOLLOW-UP III: (Breaking News) The United States Coast Guard has expressed security concerns about the Dubai Ports World takeover of U.S. ports' operations from Bristish-owned P&O, according to AP news accounts here and here. CNN is breaking the story at the top of its 5:00pm EST news hour. Makes one wonder if the Coast Guard will now be branded as a xenophobic, Arab-hating branch of the DOD.

FOLLOW-UP IV: A tangled web of intrigue is the Dubai Ports World deal -- if you question that statement, kindly read this important piece written by Judy McLeod, published by CFP. (H/T: Free Republic)

FOLLOW-UP V: Read the last sentence in my "FOLLOW-UP III" and then read this post of Michelle Malkin's. It'll be interesting to see how the Coast Guard's concerns will be discredited given the fact that President Bush told us the Dubai Ports World deal would not compromise DHS and Coast Guard security measures. Kind of a paradox!

FOLLOW-UP VI (02/28/06): Well now, what have we here? The Jerusalem Post reports today that "The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel ..." Let's see now, UAE is a much-needed ally in the GWOT and disturbing the Dubai Ports World deal, according to the president, could lead to a setback in Iraq; but, isn't Israel our most vital, long-standing ally in that part of the world and are not Jewish votes important in the political realm here in America? I wonder how the optics will play on this revelation? (H/T: Free Republic)

FOLLOW-UP VII (02/28/06): Further to the story cited above in The Jerusalem Post, Michelle Malkin points to a WorldNetDaily piece by Les Kinsolving, in which he poses a relevant question: "Why should any control of our ports be given to a company owned by such a dictatorship that refuses to recognize Israel?"

FOLLOW-UP VIII (03/02/06): The Houston Chronicle runs an Associated Press piece today that a second Dubai-owned company is being vetted -- this one buying a British precision-engineering company that manufactures "precision parts used in engines for military aircraft and tanks." Might such domestic, defense industry-related manufacturing be deemed of strategic importance in wartime? Maybe back in the World War II era, but apparently not today when we don't even get the U.S. Congress to formerly declare war! The beat goes on ...

ARLEN SPECTER'S IN LEAGUE WITH PRESIDENT BUSH ON GUEST WORKERS

2006-02-24T18:28:00.000-06:00

Do recall that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) owes his re-election in large part to President Bush, who backed Specter over conservative Republican challenger Pat Toomey.

Some think Senator Specter has shown his appreciation in ably steering the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for the two Bush nominees to the SCOTUS, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

I think the payback has come in spades with Specter's introduction of legislation that , were it to pass, would give the Bush administration (and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) its much-desired Guest Workers Program on a silver platter and, in the process, debunk what Bush has maintained of late is a GWP sans amnesty for illegals already in this country.

Be vigilant and keep an eye on Specter! And read this!

FOLLOW-UP (02/25/06): From today's edition of the New York Times (registration required for online edition), Rachel L. Swarns writes (excerpts follow):

The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee unveiled draft legislation on Friday that would create a temporary guest worker program that could allow hundreds of thousands of foreigners to fill vacant jobs in the United States for periods of up to six years.

The draft circulated by the lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, would also authorize millions of illegal immigrants who arrived in this country before Jan. 4, 2004 to remain here indefinitely, along with their spouses and children, as long as they registered with the Department of Homeland Security, paid back taxes and remained law-abiding and employed, among other conditions.

But the proposal touched off a furor among politicians, advocates for immigrants and union leaders across the political spectrum.

Conservatives condemned it as an amnesty for lawbreakers.

"By legalizing the millions upon millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., Specter makes a mockery of our laws and crushes our already strained legal immigration system," said Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, who pushed for the border security bill in the House.

Count me among those conservatives!

FOLLOW-UP II (02/25/06): More on Specter's slight of hand from The Lonewacko Blog.

FOLLOW-UP III (02/25/06): Here's a well-done analysis of Arlen Specter's proposed Guest Worker/Amnesty legislation from NumbersUSA.

FOLLOW-UP IV (02/25/06): Don't be misled by the "tempoary worker" propaganda of the Guest Worker Program apologists. Here's a good example from The Dan Stein Report of why, once they're here, even on "tempoary" visas, the politicians in Washington keep them here, as they bow to the pressure groups and ignore American citizens.

FOLLOW-UP V (02/27/05): There's a must read post up at NumbersUSA on Specter's bill. (H/T: Free Republic)

PORTS' DEAL: THE PLOT THICKENS !!!

2006-02-24T16:02:00.000-06:00

Question becomes: are the President of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, who were oblivious to the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal at the outset, now giving us a portion of the real story or are they still being misled by their staffers?

Why I ask this? Because WorldNewsDaily is now reporting a significant broadening of the scope of the deal that has a foreign government-owned entity assuming operations' management responsibilities for a number of American ports.

Indeed, Jerome R. Corsi reports the following:

Dubai Ports World is scheduled to take over operations at 22 U.S. ports, not six as previously reported by most major media.

According to the website of P&O Ports, the port-operations subsidiary of the London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O), DPW will pick up stevedore services at 12 East Coast ports including Portland, Maine; Boston; Davisville, R.I.; New York; Newark; Philadelphia; Camden, N.J.; Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore, Md.; and Virginia locations at Newport News, Norfolk, and Portsmouth.

Corsi continues:

Additionally, DPW will take over P&O stevedoring operations at nine ports along the Gulf of Mexico including the Texas ports of Lake Charles, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Galveston, Houston, Freeport, and Corpus Christi, plus the Louisana ports of Lake Charles and New Orleans.

This, of course, squares with information I cited in my earlier post of today. If we keep pulling on this thread, the president's suit pants may drop to the floor!

Maybe the center-right polibloggers who initially questioned this deal and then came around quickly to the legitimacy of the president's defense of UAE ought to get off the ice for awhile and take a breather. All of those triple sow cows, triple lutzes, and double toe loops to the music of the White House must be exhausting.

Meanwhile, the plot thickens, as does the political stew of mendacity.

A TSA ANALOGY VIZ-A-VIZ THE PORTS' DEAL

2006-02-24T11:36:00.000-06:00

In a recent post, I tried this historical analogy to make the case that simply because the United Arab Emirates is a trusted ally of the Bush administration in the GWOT they shouldn't necessarily get a pass in taking over port management operations for six of America's major ports.

Russia was a critical ally of the United States in World War II and integral to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Would that fact have made Americans comfortable were FDR to have staunchly defended (and with the threat of a presidential veto, no less) a deal "vetted" by his administration (and without his prior knowledge) for a Russian-owned company to take over the management of six critical American ports and during wartime?

Humor me. Let me try another.

What if "the deal" was that a UAE-owned company was about to assume management of the flight training of commercial airline pilots in the United States and the president and federal government high-ups were reassuring Americans that the TSA would continue performing airport security regardless -- i.e., that it, not a Dubai-owned company, would continue removing the shoes of elderly women sporting canes and posing serious security risks to the nation?

Just something to think about as center-right polibloggers continue their Olympic-class pirouette's, turning their "True North" compass bearings in the direction of President Bush's myopic justification of the Ports' Deal.

FOLLOW-UP: Kudos to Michelle Malkin for comprehensively covering the Ports' Deal imbroglio and sticking to her guns even in the wake of her blog being hacked and her receipt of a customary plethora of hate mail. And a tip of the hat as well to Frank Laughter of Common Sense Junction for putting 2 + 2 together and knowing that, even in this age of spin and glib ratiocination, it still equals 4.

FOLLOW-UP II: Conservative columnist and pundit Ann Coulter makes the following observation:

There are at least 3,000 reasons why a company controlled by a Middle Eastern Muslim emirate should be held to a different standard than a British company. Many of these reasons are now buried under a gaping hole that isn't metaphorical in lower Manhattan.

So maybe Bush could defend his port deal without insulting our intelligence by asking why anyone might imagine there's any conceivable difference between a British company and a United Arab Emirates company.

President Bush has painted himself into a corner on this issue, and he needs a face-saving compromise to get out of it. Here's my proposal: Let Harriet Miers run the ports.

WHAT ABOUT HOUSTON, MR. PRESIDENT (WHERE YOUR PARENTS RESIDE)?

2006-02-24T09:32:00.000-06:00

From World Trade Magazine, I quote an excerpt from this article by Jeremy N. Smith (published March 1, 2005):

Today, Houston takes the vanguard of a thorny new category of American port management: anti-terrorist protection. "Along the fifty-mile Houston Ship Channel, there are more explosive materials, toxic gases, and deadly petrochemicals than anywhere else in the country," observes the November 2004 Texas Monthly. "Most security experts agree that it's one of America's top targets." Chairman Edmonds concurs, estimating that about half of the nation's daily gasoline and petrochemical supply derives directly from private industry sited on the ship channel. Last March, the FBI announced a high terrorist alert specifically for the area.

All of which leads me to ask: if the President of the United States and Michael Chertoff are okay with Dubai Ports World, an United Arab Emirates-owned company, taking over the management of operations at six major U.S. ports, would they similarly be unconcerned if the deal further embraced an operations' management role in the Houston Ship Channel -- just a matter of miles from the downtown of America's 4th largest city and on a waterway where more explosive materials, toxic gases, and deadly petrochemicals exist than "anywhere else in the country?"

Little known to most Americans and all but ignored in the woof and warp of the Dubai ports' deal controversy is the following (H/T: blogHouston.net):

The company, Dubai Ports World, would also control the movement of military equipment on behalf of the U.S. Army through two other ports. From today’s edition of the British paper Lloyd’s List:

"[P&O] has just renewed a contract with the United States Surface Deployment and Distribution Command to provide stevedoring [loading and unloading] of military equipment at the Texan ports of Beaumont and Corpus Christi through 2010."

According to the journal Army Logistician “Almost 40 percent of the Army cargo deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom flows through these two ports.”

Thus, the sale would give a country that has been “a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia” direct control over substantial quantities U.S. military equipment.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reports in today's edition that Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) is concerned:

U.S. Rep. Gene Green, the Houston Democrat whose district covers the Ship Channel, joined other lawmakers Thursday who signed a letter asking Bush to revoke the deal.

"Unlike the private sector British company that previously operated the terminals at the six ports — New York, Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore, New Jersey, and Philadelphia — Dubai Ports World is owned entirely by the United Arab Emirates, a foreign government ruled by a monarchy," he said.

Green said in a phone interview that he sees a difference between such a company running the port and performing limited shipping services.

"It is the managing of the port that concerns me. If a company comes in and does business and leases facilities, that is one thing, but managing a port is something else," he said.

The Chronicle also reports:

When it comes to United Arab Emirates companies operating at the Port of Houston, "we're already there," to paraphrase one firm's motto.

Besides the Middle Eastern nation's company whose U.S. port business is causing political headaches for the Bush administration, other companies associated with the Muslim country have been at work in Houston for a while, without any known misgivings about port security or terrorism.

There was little to no public attention paid in January when UAE investment company Istithmar bought Inchcape Shipping Services, the world's largest private shipping manager, which has a longtime presence in Houston.

Well, the fact that public attention is coming to the fore belatedly does not diminish the legitimacy of the concern. And the fact that federal government officials have had no "known misgivings about port security or terrorism" here in Houston is hardly the point either. The Houston Chronicle knows full well there's cause for concern. And so should all of us who live in the Houston-Galveston area!

FOLLOW-UP: The Anchoress and I agree to disagree (respectfully) on this subject -- a rare instance of us not being pretty much in lockstep on political issues of the day.

WHO IS IN CHARGE THESE DAYS AT DHS?

2006-02-24T09:20:00.000-06:00

The president didn't know about it; nor, as it turns out, did DHS' secretary Michael Chertoff. Who, exactly, is minding the store? Well, if 12 - 20 million illegal aliens in this country (and more border-jumpers on the way daily) are any guide, you have your answer on the state of post-"9/11" national security. And to think that the president and the DHS chief are the two who have been reassuring us that security in place to protect our ports will be unchanged by the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Then there's this snippet from a retired U.S. Navy officer and reader of Hugh Hewitt's blog who sent Hugh an e-mail, a portion of which is very telling:

From time to time I go down to the port in LA and Long Beach. When I get to the gate, yes, there is a guard there. I tell him where I'm going, and he signs me in and waves me through. (There doesn't seem to be a system in place to validate that I am authorized on that given day to be in that particular place.) Our system isn't exactly air-tight today.

FOLLOW-UP: Further to the observations of the retired U.S. Navy officer who sent an e-mail to Hugh Hewitt, here's an article in today's Houston Chronicle (republished from the Baltimore Sun) that quotes longshoremen in Baltimore who are none too impressed with current port security -- you know, the "security" that President Bush and DHS' Michael Chertoff reassure us will not be taken over by DuBai Ports World:

There certainly are issues on the waterfront, longshoremen say: security issues from holes in the system set up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Sometimes guards don't always take a good look at ID cards at the gate, or foreign crews are allowed unchecked off the ships or even out of the port, some said. Or U.S. Customs and Coast Guard officials tasked with flagging suspicious cargo go home before the ship is unloaded, some said.

Maybe we need to eliminate the Bush boondoggle -- the Department of Homeland Security -- and outsource our national security to a foreign firm that can get the job done a whole lot better. Funny how the federal government defends these sorts of actions, but never wants to outsource its own jobs and responsibilities to other governments or third parties. Chew on that one for awhile!

THE "THEY'RE AN ALLY" DOG DON'T HUNT

2006-02-23T12:34:00.000-06:00

Russia was a critical ally of the United States in World War II and integral to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Would that fact have made Americans comfortable were FDR to have staunchly defended (and with the threat of a presidential veto, no less) a deal "vetted" by his administration (and without his prior knowledge) for a Russian-owned company to take over the management of six critical American ports and during wartime?

If the answer is a resounding "NO!," then someone kindly tell me what the difference is today vis-a-vis United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World.

FOLLOW-UP: Much is being made of the critical importance of preserving the UAE as a critical ally in the global war on terror by not offending them in rescinding the Dubai Ports World deal. The arugument is that Dubai is of strategic geographical significance in America's GWOT. Well, to continue the analogy I made in this post, do ACSOL readers understand that Russia's warm water port of Murmansk was critical to the Allies' merchant shipping route that armed Russia to defeat the German second front? Read up on the Murmansk Run.

SO MUCH FOR PRESIDENT'S DAILY SECURITY BRIEFING

2006-02-22T14:34:00.000-06:00

And here I had always heard that the President of the United States receives a highly-sensitive, daily, security briefing from the intelligence community.

Appears not.

That or the same intelligence agencies that had set up firewalls that prevented them from sharing intelligence with one another pre-"9/11," haven't learned a damn thing post-"9/11" and have now set up a firewall among themselves and the Oval Office.

Are we to assume that the intelligence agencies that "vetted" the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal decided that there was no inherent security risk in having an Arab company manage six of this country's key ports and that, accordingly, this little item didn't even become a bullet item on the daily security briefing?

That should give Americans a real sense of comfort. We're in so much better shape now then pre-"9/11" with our INTELL.

The president threatened his first veto ever yesterday in staunchly defending a deal that he knew nothing about until after his administration finalized the deal and word of it got out on the street and a firestorm ensued. Kind of like Middle Easterners receiving flying lessons -- no harm, no foul, no nothing until commercial jets are flown into skyscrapers!

This crap is getting old.

FOLLOW-UP: Your government at work.

FOLLOW-UP II: Wonder if this kind of information ever made it into the president's daily security briefing? DO READ IT, FOLKS. (H/T: Free Republic)

WHERE'S THE MOB WHEN WE NEED IT?

2006-02-22T10:52:00.000-06:00

If there's anything Elia Kazan, Mario Puzo, and David Chase taught me, it's that America's ports are made-to-order venues for mob infiltration and control. And there was a comfort in that, as amazing as that admission might sound. After all, as longshoreman Terry Malloy said to mob-controlled union boss Johnny Friendly:

You take them heaters away from you and you're nothing, you know that? You'll talk yourself in the river!

You take the good goods away and the kickbacks...and shakedown cabbage and the pistoleros and you're nothing! Your guts is all in your wallet and your trigger finger!

You gave it to Joey, you gave it to Dugan... and you gave it to Charley who was one of your own. You think you're God Almighty, but you know what you are? You're a cheap ... lousy, dirty, stinking mug ... and I'm glad what I done to you! You hear that? I'm glad what I done! And I'm going to keep on doing it ...

Life was so much simpler then. Get a cheese-eater -- you know, a canary -- to sing to the Crime Commission and law and order was restored to the docks.

But now, if George W. Bush and his accomplice, Jimmy Carter, have their way, the mob will be supplanted in short order by United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World and suddenly management of six major American ports, including the hiring and firing of dock workers, will become the province of Arabs!

The Johnny Friendlys are about to get a rude awakening, I'm afraid, from guys with names like Mohammed Zake Ammawi and Merwon Othaman El-Handi. And these guys are in to goat meat and suitcase bombs, not Veal Marsala and heaters. Worse, it doesn't take much to get their blood up. Michael Corleone may have always said, "It's business, it's not personal ...," but these new guys kill over cartoons and damn near everything under the sun is perceived by them as a slight to be avenged.

I guess the question for Americans is: do we want freight or an intifada to arrive at Hoboken's docks?

MORE ON THE PORTS' ROAR (OF WHICH I'M A PART)

2006-02-22T09:36:00.000-06:00

Here's a must-read column by Michelle Malkin on the Dubia Ports World deal and I found it linked in a well done post by Betsy Newmark on the same subject. I'm on the same page with Betsy and Michelle.

Captain Ed continues to stay on top of this boiling issue and adamantly opposes the deal.

Kevin Alyward of Wizbang! appropriately calls the president "politically tone deaf." Shades of the president's initial reluctance to pull his curious nomination of Harriet Miers.

Laura Ingraham is doing a splendid job on the subject on her morning radio talk show. I tune in on News Talk KRLA. And her Web site carries germane links. She's a gemstone of the Conservative Movement.

And Nick Anderson's political cartoon in today's Houston Chronicle makes the point well, I think (although perhaps I out did him this time around!). And, to be sure, kudos to the Chronicle's editorial writer.

President Bush has said that if there was any chance at all that the ports deal would jeopardize America's national security, then the deal wouldn't go through. This is the same president, of course, who has been a long-standing open borders' apologist and has done precious little to secure America's borders during his two-term tenure in the White House. I'd say a legitimate credibility gap exists, don't you think?

Hey, maybe in his phone call to Mexico's Vicente Fox on Monday, the two compadres kicked around the possibility of a Mexico-owned security firm taking over border patrol and customs' management at U.S. Ports of Entry. I'm sure the Wall Street Journal would endorse that transaction in a heartbeat and reassure Americans that the deal was "sufficiently vetted for the task at hand." Libertarian bloggers would, in turn, painstakingly instruct those of us deemed too dumb to get it that Mexico wouldn't own the border, but merely would be managing it and in that nuanced distinction all concerns about our country's national security should be allayed.

The inimitable James Lileks hones in on the likely outcome of this ports' imbroglio:

But if I had to make a prediction, I’d say this: the Dubai-ports fracas will become a flap, quickly swell into a firestorm, then become a debacle before settling into the history books as a “historic miscalculation” – providing the Republicans only lose the Congress. If they lose a city, it will be a “critical turning point.”

DUBYA DEBUTS AS MOVIE MOGUL

2006-02-21T21:50:00.000-06:00

"ON THE WATERFRONT"
(2006 REDUX)

Produced by: United Arab Emirates

Directed by: George W. Bush

Filmed on location: Hoboken's waterfront

Starring: Osama Bin Laden

Screenplay by: Michael Chertoff

Script Consultants: Department of Homeland Security

Production Costs: $6.8 billion

Distribution Rights: al-Qaeda

BUSH THREATENS FIRST-EVER VETO IF UAE PORTS DEAL DISTURBED

2006-02-21T17:22:00.000-06:00

Now, then, doesn't this beat all. President Bush, who has allowed a huge increase in the size and scope and cost of government during his two-term tenure without ever once exercising his constitutional veto power, says he will exercise it for the first time if Congress attempts by legislative fiat to undo the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World takeover of the management of six major American ports!

My, my, my -- seems the president's back is up over this deal to insinuate Arab management into America'a ports. Harvard Business School must have blessed its economics.

I suppose if tough border-security legislation sans amnesty and convoluted Guest Worker Programs ever passes Congress and reaches the president's desk he'll veto that too.

Well, this for me is the straw that broke the camel's back.

In an age of global, Islamofascist terrorism and at a time when America's fighting men and women are battling overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't want to be told that the Dubai Ports World scheme has been vetted at the highest levels of a government that didn't anticipate and thwart the "9/11" attack and has let our nation's borders go unsecured for decades. I'm hardly reassured!

I salute the president for the people he has placed on the SCOTUS and elsewhere in the federal judiciary. Neither the other party nor its presidential candidates were viable options and that political party continues its blind course of neither marshalling domestic and international solutions nor protecting unborn life.

But, that said, the president has, with his strong, vehement support today for the UAE deal (coupled with his persistent failure during his presidency to secure our borders) lost his GWOT credibility with me. I'm fed up.

Indeed, I freely admit to feeling how The Anchoress does:

President Bush seems to be going out of his way to confound even his most staunch supporters. One looks at this and thinks - he’s bending over and giving the Democrats the belt with which to beat him. Thank you, sir, may I have another?

I don’t pretend to understand it, but I’m frankly growing weary of it, and Bush should pay attention to my weariness, because if even “I” am getting tired of having to defend some of the stuff coming out of his White House, then that may indicate that his base is utterly weary of it, too. If you really want to lose in ‘08, make sure you’ve got everyone completely exhausted from your presidency and “ready for a change - any change” and make way too sharp a left turn.

And I'm with you, Frank Laughter: I smell a rat!

PLEASE NOTE: The "I Still Support President Bush" banner has been removed from this blog's right sidebar.

NEW ORLEANS NEEDS FEMA, NOT DUBAI PORTS WORLD

2006-02-21T09:24:00.000-06:00

Imagine this: you're a Katrina-displaced New Orleanian, you've just recently been forced out of your government-defrayed accomodations at a tired-looking motel, your FEMA-funded mobile home has proven anything but mobile and still sits in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas, your own flood-ravaged home in the Crescent City's Lower Ninth Ward has been condemned by government authorities and will be bulldozed, any opportunity to feed yourself and your family has been upended by hordes of illegal aliens landing the construction jobs for the federally-funded rebuilding of your city, and now you open up a newspaper and read that the Bush administration has blessed a business deal that would permit United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World to take over management of six major U.S. ports, including the Port of New Orleans.

Now is that what President Bush promised last September when he spoke to the nation from New Orleans' Jackson Square -- namely, that an Arab company would be esconced in the Port of New Orleans long before New Orleans' evacuees were able to return to their city and begin their lives anew?

Amazing how swiftly the government can move on behalf of foreign business interests and foreign governments, and how appallingly slow it responds when hapless American citizens need help.

And how preposterous is it that Department of Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff, of all people, is spending his time these days making the Bush administration's case for the Dubai Ports' deal, assuring Americans that the matter has been thoroughly vetted, safeguards are in place, and the arrangement poses no security problem to the nation, when he should be directing, among other things, the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast and the securing of our nation's porous borders?

ARABS' MANAGEMENT OF AMERICAN PORTS : GOVERNMENT AS PROTECTOR AN ILLUSION

2006-02-20T13:24:00.000-06:00

Millions and millions of illegal aliens are trampling our borders and insinuating themselves into every nook and cranny of American life, and the best an American president can say is that "they're here to do the jobs that Americans refuse to do" and pitch a Guest Worker Program geared to American business interests. Right, Mr. President!

Millions and millions of domestic and foreign shipping containers come inbound to our nation's ports each year and, at best, the suspect Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is inspecting only 3% to 5% of them, leaving what Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) calls "a gaping hole in America's security." Meanwhile, DHS Chief Michael Chertoff and Secretary of State Condi Rice pitch Arab management of six major U.S. ports and reassure Americans that all is well! Right, Bush Administration!

Does this most recent bit of insanity juxtaposed with 12 - 20 million illegal aliens afoot in our land cause you to think that government as protector of the people is an illusion and that our nation's security is being forsaken by big money interests? If so, you're thinking as I am.

The whole sorry situation brings to mind that scene in the 1976 movie "Network," in which business tycoon Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty) proselytizes demented news anchor Howard Beal (played by Peter Finch) on what really makes the world go round -- not nations, governments, and peoples, but the "multi-national dominion of dollars."

Just substitute President Bush for Arthur Jensen and imagine him haranguing those of us (you know, the erstwhile Howard Beals being characterized as "xenophobic" and "racist") wanting the deal killed that would permit the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) company, Dubai Ports World, to take over the management of six major American ports:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

The fictional Howard Beale got "mad as hell." What about everyday Americans whose fighting spirits are being enervated by the soporific of political spin -- will they get "mad as hell" and see that their duly elected representatives in Washington kill this latest insanity?

GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS MAY MAKE FOR UNINVITED GUESTS (JUST ASK THE COAL MINERS)

2006-02-19T17:48:00.000-06:00

Even as recently as this past week, President Bush was out on the political stump making the case for a Guest Worker Program in order that there be sufficient workers available to do the jobs that, according to him, Americans refuse to do. That's been his careworn refrain throughout his porous-borders' presidency and that's the hand-picked canard he's sticking with no matter how disingenuous.

Do take the time here (PLEASE) to read all of the president's words on immigration and border security and Guest Workers to get the flavor of the man who bends to the will of Mexico's Vicente Fox:

Let me answer immigration first, and then talk about the unfunded liabilities inherent in Medicare and Social Security as a result of baby boomers like me and you retiring with not enough people to pay it, to pay the bill.

First, immigration. There are a lot of people working here in America doing jobs Americans will not do. And that is a fact. And it's a -- as I told you, we deal with the way the world -- the way it is, not the way we hope that it is, and therefore, how to deal with that issue, what do you do? You got people working here, doing jobs Americans won't do.

My attitude is, you recognize it for what it is, and you say, you can do this on a temporary basis. You say, if there's a willing employer and a willing worker on a job an American won't do, then it's okay to fill that job, so long as you're not here permanently, so long as this is not -- (applause.) And so I believe there ought to be a temporary worker program. We've tried this in America before -- pretty successful, at least in my own home state of Texas. You got people -- Red Putnam over there, he's got people -- probably have been bringing people in to pick oranges, I don't know. Agriculture relies upon a lot of people willing to do the work that others won't do. And it seems like to me that there ought to be a legal way to make this happen without creating a sense of amnesty or permanency.

And so, one, I have to deal with immigration rationally. Now, we've got an obligation to enforce our borders and our coastlines, and we're spending a lot of money to do so. The Texas border is long and it's hard to enforce. I mean, it's a lot of miles, a lot of empty country. And so we're using new technologies -- drones, infrared, some mounds, some fencing in cities, to try to make it harder for people to cross. But the truth of the matter is, a lot of our Border Patrol agents are chasing people who are coming here to work, see. And it seems like to me that if we could have a rational system that would enable people to do this on a temporary basis, it would take the pressures off the borders. People would be able to come in here in a rational, legal way.

Now, as I told you, I'm not for amnesty. You got about 8 million-plus people here illegally. My worry is if the -- all of a sudden legal citizens, then another 8 million comes. And I don't think that makes any sense. So in terms of immigration, I'm for border enforcement, and strong border enforcement, with a rational guest worker program that's temporary in nature, where it's understood that you're working here for a period of time, then you're going back on home.

Now, I want to talk to you about what's happened as a result of the current program. When you make something illegal, and there's a -- you know, people coming here to work, people figure out ways around it. I'm not old enough to remember the old whisky days of Prohibition, but I remember reading about it -- people still made whisky, because people wanted to drink it.

And so guess what's happening today. We've got people getting stuffed in the back of 18-wheelers, driving across hot desert to find jobs that most often or not Americans won't do. There's a whole smuggling industry as a result of making temporary work -- not making it legal. A whole smuggling industry -- coyotes they're called -- and it's inhumane, it just is, any way you look at it.

You know, family values don't stop at the Rio Grande River. If you've got starving children and there's a job over here in America that pays you more than it does in Mexico that an American won't do, you come and do that job and get that money back to your family.

Secondly, one way to make immigration policy work is you've got to enforce the law. And so you've got to go to employers. I'm not going to come to your home building site -- but anyway. (Laughter.) You come to enforce the law, right? And so you're a home builder out here in the Tampa area; a bunch of people show up, roofers show up, and say, you know, we're legal, here's my card. You're not in the business of telling me whether or not that's a forged document, or not. You don't know. It looks real. And that's all you're expected -- but I'm telling you, they're forging these documents. There's a whole underground industry. They're smuggling people and they're forging documents. And our borders are being over -- it makes it much harder to enforce. And so I think by having a rational plan, temporary worker, no amnesty, will expose these people runners and drug -- document forgers for what they are. So that's my answer on immigration.

So the President of the United States wants us to recognize the situation for what it is -- namely, that Americans' patent refusal to do certain types of work that Mexicans are more than willing to perform is the bona fide engine of illegal immigration, not American industry's desire for cheap, taxpayer-subsidized, slave labor, or the federal government's manifest failure to secure our borders and enforce current immigration laws.

How convenient. And that's it in a nutshell. George W. Bush has decreed that the laziness of American workers is the genesis of 11 - 20 million illegal aliens being in this country. And in rationalizing his failure he insists only belatedly on a "rational, legal way" for foreigners to emigrate here on a "tempoary basis" to do the work that would otherwise not get done if left exclusively to American citizens to do.

I've written about this canard before -- this propaganda that fruits and vegetables must be harvested, as if cut-rate paying jobs in farm fields and orchards are the only jobs that illegals ever end up doing in this country. No matter that illegal aliens have turned up working in power plants, petrochemical plants and refineries, military bases, airports and nuclear facilities, and even a chemical and biological weapons testing center for the Department of Defense! No, this sort of information isn't well-known and well-circulated.

But isn't it interesting that in the same space of days that the president is out on the hustings promoting his Guest Worker Program, the Houston Chronicle is running the following story of how, in the wake of the coal mining disasters that have gripped Appalachia, the president of Sidney Coal Company, Charlie Bearse, is decrying the falling productivity of American coal miners and looking to replace them with Mexicans.

U.S. companies are constantly complaining they need migrant workers to do the low-paying, menial tasks Americans just won't do. But at $18 an hour and up, plus benefits, these are some of Appalachia's best jobs.

Here in Hatfield-McCoy country — where Hispanics make up less than 1 percent of most counties' populations — Bearse's comments were fighting words.

"They bring Mexicans in here, they'll get 'em killed," disabled miner Homer Black said over the rumble at the company's coal preparation plant. Added 23-year-old Shannon Gibson, who recently took the state test for the green card that would allow him to work underground: "They're just looking for more workers who'll work cheaper and work longer."

And, as the story continues, there's the ruse that not only are Americans unproductive, but there are insufficient numbers of them to get the coal mined:

Miller, one of the mining board's seven members, said 1,400 laid-off union miners in western Kentucky alone could go to work today. He echoed the sentiments of many who believe the industry is simply hoping to exploit Hispanics and drive down wages.

"They want people who don't have the ability to protect themselves," Miller said.

"If they can flood the market with Hispanic workers, if they can get away with paying a guy $8 and hour, the next guy will be willing to work for $7."

Remember this, folks: the same president who committed to rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast is steadfastly assuring through his administration's purposeful neglect in enforcing immigration law and in securing our borders that most of those taxpayer-funded federal dollars will go into the pockets of illegal immigrants and eventually be routed back to Mexico in the form of untaxed remittances! Their discretionary income is indeed the money you dole out to Washington each year in personal income taxes.

So don't abide this notion that illegal immigration is about filling jobs Americans refuse to do. Americans are losing good paying jobs to undocumented Mexican immigrants and that's the plain and simple truth of it despite what you hear out of Washington and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Just ask the coal miners in Kentucky and West Virginia about it in a few years' time.

FOLLOW-UP (02/20/06): John Hawkins of Right Wing News enumerates the issues involving a Guest Worker Program and in the context of this development in the coal mining industry in Appalachia; and, Brenda Walker at the VDARE.blog speaks to the "exploitation strategy," as I did. I can tell you this, as I've done business in that part of the country: Kentucky and West Virginia coal miners are not going to roll over and play dead if the mining companies choose to exploit illegal aliens, as other industries have. There are places in Appalachia where sheriffs are reluctant to serve warrants.

GET OVER IT!

2006-02-19T13:06:00.000-06:00

At 12:10pm CST I ventured into the family room and turned on the television, checking CNN first, followed by Fox News. CNN was airing a panel discussion, entitled at the base of the screen: "Cheney Misfire." That's right, they're still beating the Vice President's hunting accident to death, even after Dick Cheney gave a belated interview to Fox's Brit Hume, even after a formal accident investigation by the Texas' Parks and Wildlife Department exonerated the vice president of being intoxicated while hunting, and even after the man shot, Harry Whittington, was released from the hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. Same ol', same ol'.

Meanwhile, Fox News was running a story examining the possibilities of an "Iran Nuke Showdown."

Now you tell me which cable news channel is "fair and balanced," and (to my way of thinking) more "on point?"

SHANI DAVIS WINS THE GOLD IN 1,000-METER SPEEDSKATING

2006-02-19T11:40:00.000-06:00

There's a poignant, sharp-edged scene that I recall to this day (and I would ask you to recall) in the 1967 screen drama, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" -- an Oscar award-winning film about the conundrum presented by a black, on-the-rise-towards-prominence physician, played by Sidney Poitier, in seeking his fiancee's well-heeled, quintessentially-liberal parents' approval (the parents played wonderfully by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) to marry their daughter and thus enter into an inter-racial marriage, which by law in many states at the time of the film's debut was still verboten.

The scene I'm calling to mind is when Sidney Poitier and his character's father, a retired postman, meet privately in Spencer Tracy's study to air their differences about the impending marriage of a black man and a white woman, which has left both sets of parents dumbfounded and, initially anyways, in a most uncomfortable dilemma. In that scene, Poitier's character says to his intractable, set-in-his-ways' father, at the height of the emotions flying back and forth between the two:

I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself ... as a man.

That exchange came to mind during the strained interview of Shani Davis, a 23-year-old black athlete from the South Side of Chicago, on last night's Winter Olympics' broadcast by NBC Sports. Davis had just won the gold medal in the men's 1,000-meter speedskating event and was coming across as a near reticent, subject-predicate-only responder to the questions being put to him by the NBC interviewer. She went so far as to ask him if he was "angry" about something given his grim expression before the cameras and his taciturn disposition.

Today's Houston Chronicle's front page, below-the-fold story by Dale Robertson ("Davis' gold makes history for black Olympians" link) goes to great lengths to depict Davis' post-triumph behavior as the result of an internecine, U.S. Olympics' team feud between him and fellow speedskater-teammate Chad Hedrick, who hails from the Houston area; but I'm not so sure. Could it simply be that Shani Davis has the mindset of Sidney Poitier's character and he doesn't want to be hailed as the "first black (man) to win an individual gold in the Winter Olympics," but rather to be regarded rightly as an athlete who overcame the obstacles thrown at him by a hardscrabble life?

After all, Shani Davis isn't the Jackie Robinson of Olympic speedskating. Pigmentation doesn't keep you off the ice, even on Chicago's South Side. His gold-medal victory shouldn't be cast in racial terms, but rather in pure athletic achievement. Maybe that's what rankled Davis -- that an NBC Sports' interviewer couldn't wait to ask him about his blackness in the context of his Olympic triumph.

You see, you think of yourself as a white interviewer questioning a black athlete. I just think of myself as a man and an athlete.

Congratulations, Mr. Davis, for winning a gold medal in speedskating as a member of the U.S. Olympic team. And have no fear: NBC Sports' Melissa Stark will not be coming to dinner.

A PRE-ELDERLY, WET LEAF BOOMER?

2006-02-19T10:16:00.000-06:00

I'm just a skosh in age from the leading edge of the Boomer Generation and there's a touch of gray around my temples to prove it. So I'm unequivocally part of a demographic sea change about to be loosed on American society, and I feel as if I'm caught in a raging river current in which even the strongest of swimmers can neither return to shore, nor avoid the looming precipice and headfirst plunge ahead.

The inevitability of it all was reinforced recently with the advent of my kid brother's 50th birthday. I think I was more mortified by it than he, as enough years separate us owing to my parents' languorous baby-making that until now I regarded my brother as our family's own version of Peter Pan -- the youngest of four, well-spread-out siblings, who to the others seemed to be cast as forever young.

But then I read recently a column in which those of us in our 50s are now deemed "pre-elderly" by U.S. government statisticians and so a blue funk soon befell me and I grimly informed my brother and sisters that we were now irrevocably nearer the end than the beginning and caught in the dreaded vice grip of insurance actuaries.

"Pre-elderly." Ugh! Why it seems like only yesterday that friends were signing my high school yearbook and writing well-penned expressions of hopefulness, such as "Have a bitchin' summer!" and "Don't work too hard!"

But if the cold splash of water of being "pre-elderly" were not enough, now along comes a chilling piece in today's Houston Chronicle, written by Jeffrey Leving and Glenn Sacks, that the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) recently completed a study that divorce among "older couples" is on the rise and that more and more women are dumping their husbands, instead of the other way around, which is the common perception; and, furthermore, that this phenomenon is most pronounced in Japanese society where long-working husbands who never had the time to develop outside hobbies and interests (as well as deep-seated friendships) are now, in their early retirement years, seen as "wet leaves" by their spouses -- i.e., male mates with a characteristic tendency "to cling to their wives" and spend most of their time "at home."

One Japanese newspaper says "some Japanese women see their husbands as an obstacle to enjoying their sunset years. With few hobbies or friends to turn to, many Japanese retirees, often nicknamed 'wet leaves' for their tendency to cling to their wives, spend their time at home." These "wet leaves" are increasingly being swept aside by their newly independent wives.

In both countries this "Pin the Blame on the Husband" is unfair. For one, the stereotype of the husband trading in his wife for a younger model is by and large a myth. The women in the AARP study were 60 percent more likely to claim that they ended their marriages than the men were, and men were almost twice as likely as women to say that they never saw their divorces coming. In contrast to the Porsche and trophy wife stereotype, the AARP study found that these divorced men had many serious concerns, high among them their fear of losing touch with their children after a divorce.

My God. This is the official "Welcome Mat" awaiting Boomers: to be chronicled as pre-elderly, soon-to-be-divorced, wet leaves? Isn't it enough that swollen prostates and dribbling urine streams await us -- we who drive Buicks, married our high school sweethearts, and have kid brothers nearly nine years our junior?

BONE UP ON BLOGOSPHERE LINGO

2006-02-19T09:14:00.000-06:00

William Safire provides a Blogger's Lexicon in this fun column, re-published in the Houston Chronicle's" Sunday, online edition.

Not sure, however, that I like being referred to as a "wingnut" and a "link slut."

POROUS BORDERS; FOREIGN-OWNED PORTS

2006-02-18T12:02:00.000-06:00

The global war on terror (GWOT) is fast becoming a shell game of the Bush administration: now you see it; now you don't. LOGIC, that is. And Americans are being duped by the sleight of hand, drawn to the carnival stall by the consumate carnival barker, George W. Bush.

Bad enough that we've been told over and over again since "9/11" that we must fight Islamofascist-sponsored terrorism overseas so we won't have to fight it here in our homeland, when the Bush administration has purposefully maintained a porous borders' policy, willing to allow a veritable human invasion of illegal aliens from Mexico until it can get its amnesty-in-disguise Guest Worker Program launched.

But now there's something so fundamentally outrageous afoot that any semblance of logic behind the GWOT dissolves and leaves Americans aghast at the utter stupidity (and disingenuousness) of the federal government -- a government that can't (and won't) secure our borders, deal effectively with the devastating aftermath of Katrina and Rita, or implement a strategic energy initiative that reduces our country's dependence on foreign oil.

The outrage? At a time when the Department of Homeland Security -- George Bush's boondoggle of last resort -- continues to soak taxpayers without protecting them, the Bush administration is about to permit ownership of major American ports by Dubai Ports World, a United Arab Emirates' government-owned firm.

Arabs can own our ports and enter our country without proper documentation from Mexico (and even develop nuclear weapons), but American men and women in uniform must be maimed and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan so that we don't have to fight terrorists here in America? Come on! Where's the outrage? Who's kidding whom? Where's the logic in that?

My friend Frank Laughter has said it best.

FOLLOW-UP: More on this from Michelle Malkin.

FOLLOW-UP II: Here's a pertinent Newsday.com piece (H/T: The Anchoress)

FOLLOW-UP III: Here's more from Frank Laughter. And, I must say, I'm close to pulling that "I Still Support the President" banner from my site's right sidebar. Seems the president's kowtowing to business interests -- domestic and international -- is making a mockery of the DHS' obligations (and our country's chief law enforcement officer's) to secure our borders and our ports, and protect us from terrorist threats.

FOLLOW-UP IV: READ THIS and tell me if you're now mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?!

FOLLOW-UP V (02/19/06): Many Americans are unconvinced, as are many Congressmen; the fact that DHS' Chief Michael Chertoff is trying to reassure us that Arab ownership of American ports does not pose a national security risk ought to have ALL AMERICANS nervous as hell and demanding a full inquiry!

FOLLOW-UP VI (02/20/06): Frank Laughter is covering this issue like a glove. Now he raps Condi Rice on the knuckles for carrying the water for the Bush administration in support of Arab-owned American ports.

MEDIA TARNISHES JACOBELLIS' SILVER

2006-02-18T11:06:00.000-06:00

If, as I did, you found it utterly distasteful the lengths to which the mainstream media went in lampooning and, in some quarters, villifying Vice President Dick Cheney over the past week for accidentally shooting his hunting partner a week ago today during a quail hunt in south Texas, then you must share with me the revulsion in seeing what the MSM (led by NBC Sports) is doing to 20-year-old Lindsey Jacobellis for failing to win the gold medal for the U.S. in the inaugural women's snowboardcross race in the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Apparently the media looks askance at silver and bronze medals when the gold is so clearly in sight, as it was for Jacobellis until she fell after the penultimate jump owing to what many in the media are terming a "botched stunt" -- i.e., a little showboating before the cameras.

NBC Sports, in its coverage of the race, couldn't resist comparing Lindsey Jacobellis to the Dallas Cowboys' Leon Lett (for celebrating too soon) and even had a video vignette of one of PGA golfer Gregg Norman's famous meltdowns during The Masters at Augusta (to emphasize how Lindsey had choked in the face of sure victory). NBC was ruthlessly mean-spirited and showed no compunction in turning her winning of the silver medal for her country into something akin to a funeral wake. Bob Costas' interview of Jacobellis was particularly distasteful, as a barely audible "Congratulations" followed only after a lengthy probing of why the young woman blew the race. I guess it is lost on NBC that it is blowing the Olympics' coverage and doesn't hold a candle to ABC's long, award-winning tenure.

To be sure, I would liked to have seen Lindsey win the gold, just as I would loved to have seen Apolo Anton Ohno advance to the finals of the 1500 Short Track Speed Skating. But anything can happen in athletic competition and such vagaries lend drama to the sport and add an air of uncertainty to the chill air of the Winter Olympics' venue. Nothing is so certain as uncertainty in life.

But Jacobellis won a silver medal in her event and that should not be lost on Americans. And to my way of thinking she won a gold medal as well for her honesty and poise under fire from NBC Sports and much of the MSM, which thinks nothing of dismembering a 20-year-old woman and burying her in the snow of northen Italy.

Congratulations, Lindsey! I mean that from the heart.

FOLLOW-UP: Speaking of NBC Sports' hom-hum coverage of the Winter Olympics, do read this post by The Anchoress.

FOLLOW-UP II: Here's another example of the tar and feathering of a 20-year-old in her first Olympics by the MSM; and another; and another.

BUSH DUMP CHENEY? RIDICULOUS, PEGGY!

2006-02-16T10:54:00.000-06:00

So now even the more eminently level-headed among MSM columnists are coming up with half-baked theories of palace intrigues over Vice President Cheney having taken dead aim at a thrushing bird last Saturday afternoon and hitting instead a hapless hunting companion. Peggy Noonan, for one, paints a scenario in her WSJ OpinionJournal column (out today) in which President Bush may seek to turn the Cheney/Wittington misfortune into a changing of the guard in order to launch a GOP presidential contender for 2008 who would sustain the GWOT, particularly in Iraq, and support "the Bush Doctrine."

Writes Ms. Noonan:

Why would they be thinking about this? It's not the shooting incident itself, it's that Dick Cheney has been the administration's hate magnet for five years now. Halliburton, energy meetings, Libby, Plamegate. This was not all bad for the White House: Mr. Cheney took the heat that would otherwise have been turned solely on George Bush. So he had utility, and he's experienced and talented and organized, and Mr. Bush admires and respects him. But, at a certain point a hate magnet can draw so much hate you don't want to hold it in your hand anymore, you want to drop it, and pick up something else. Is this fair? Nah. But fair has nothing to do with it.

This is a White House that likes to hit refresh when the screen freezes. Right now the screen is stuck, with poll numbers in the low 40s, or high 30s. The key thing is Iraq. George Bush cares deeply about Iraq and knows his legacy will be decided there. It has surely dawned on the White House that "Iraq" will not be "over" in the next two years. Iraq is a long story. What Dick Armitage or Colin Powell said about the Pottery Barn rule was true: If you break it, you own it, at the very least for the next few years.

George Bush, and so the men and women around him, will want the next Republican presidential nominee to continue the U.S. effort in, and commitment to, Iraq. To be a candidate who will continue his policy, and not pull the plug, and burrow through.

This person will not be Dick Cheney, who has already said he doesn't plan to run. So Mr. Bush may feel in time that he has reason to want to put in a new vice president in order to pick a successor who'll presumably have an edge in the primaries--he's the sitting vice president, and Republicans still respect primogeniture. They will tend to make the common-sense assumption that a guy who's been vice president for, say, a year and a half, is a guy who already knows the top job.

Well, I don't buy it. Bush puts a lot of stock in personal loyalty. Just look how he's stuck by Donald Rumsfeld. And at a time when many conservatives in the Republican Party are growing weary of the exponential growth in government and government spending under George W. Bush and of the president's stubborn persistence in failing to address the illegal alien/porous borders problem, it is Dick Cheney, not the president himself, who gives the Bush Administration the imprimatur of conservatism. Indeed, the "Dump Cheney" movement in 2003 never gained traction for that very reason and supporters knew then that Cheney would not be a presidential contender in the future.

Noonan's premise is full of birdshot.

CHENEY'S DOG DON'T HUNT

2006-02-15T21:14:00.000-06:00

Members of the overwrought Washington press corps and talking-head, cable-TV pontificators have, in many instances, made egregious asses out of themselves in covering the Dick Cheney hunting accident that occurred this past Saturday in southern Texas. Tonight on Bill O'Reilly's "The Factor," Geraldo Rivera weighed in, saying the failure of the Vice President to report that same day the accidental shooting of a hunting companion rose to the level of Ted Kennedy's similar failure in the Chappiquiddick accident that involved the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. O'Reilly was incredulous. But then Giraldo went off half-cocked during the Katrina disaster in New Orleans and took hyperbole (and misinformation) to new heights, as is his propensity.

But, and regardless that I am a conservative Republican and one who twice voted for the Bush- Cheney ticket, I don't buy Mr. Cheney's explanation -- nor the wisdom in what he did -- to Fox News' anchor Brit Hume this afternoon that the 18-hour delay in initially reporting the shooting to the press was purposeful on his part because early news reports, in his experience, are oftentimes inaccurate and that he thought it best that an eye witness to the shooting (Katharine Armstrong) initiate contact with the press once the medical condition of Harry Whittington was better known.

That dog don't hunt, with all due respect, Mr. Vice President.

A hunting accident that shouldn't have been blown out of all proportion has, in part, because of the vice president's error in judgement in not going through normal channels and making as much information known to the press Saturday evening. It's bad enough that he shot Mr. Whittington; worse, Dick Cheney shot himself in the foot.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GRIPS HOUSTON

2006-02-15T17:32:00.000-06:00

So a professional soccer team dares not call itself the "Houston 1836" in honor of the city's founding lest it risks offending the Hispanic community, because the date of the Bayou City's founding might just promote divisiveness among Houstonians. How could that possibly be, you ask, in a city that handily-willingly accomodates 350,000 - 400,000 illegal aliens and, as a Sanctuary City, goes to great lengths not to offend even those here illegally and without proper documentation?

Because, you see, in 1836 Texas won its independence from Mexico, and although the Battle of the Alamo was fought and lost by out-numbered Texans to overwhelming Mexican forces led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, the Battle of San Jacinto was waged, too, that same year and won by out-numbered Texans over overwhelming Mexican troops, again led by the redoubtable Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. The first bit of history was okay, I suppose, unless of course your family tree includes the likes of Davy Crockett or Jim Bowie or William Travis; the latter, however, remains anathema to those in Houston of Mexican descent who still feel primary allegiance to Mexico. It follows, then, does it not, that a team called the "Sam Houstons" would have similarly been a slight to many in the Latino community?

So what gives with the hypersensitivity and nonsensical political correctness that apparently abound in America's 4th largest city? Report's the Houston Chronicle:

Many Hispanics have voiced their dislike for the controversial name, claiming it carries an anti-Mexican sentiment and lends itself to be a divisive tool among Houstonians.

Although 1836 was meant to symbolize the year Houston was founded, it also has links to other significant events some Mexican-Americans might find offensive. Those include Texas' independence from Mexico, the Battle of the Alamo and the defeat of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican army at the hands of Gen. Sam Houston in the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution.

The logo, a star with "Houston 1836" emblazoned on it, depicts a silhouette of Houston riding a horse.

I guess that means that Americans dare not ever allow a professional sports team to be named "1776" for fear of offending those of British ancestry (or "1945" for fear of antagonizing those of German, Italian, or Japanese descent).

In an age of Cartoon Wars, anything and everything can offend and one must walk on eggshells. Maybe the best choice would have been the "Houston No-Names."

THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD -- A DAY LATER

2006-02-14T08:54:00.000-06:00

I'm in agreement with a Houston Chronicle editorial published today that appropriately chides the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney for their failure to notify the news media in a timely manner on the shooting accident involving the vice president (the shooter) and a member of his hunting party, Harry Whittington, who was accidentally shot. The 18-hour gap between the inadvertent shooting and the subsequent acknowledgement of the accident is newsworthy.

The administration's failure to alert news media to a weekend shooting accident in which Vice President Dick Cheney pulled the trigger has magnified a minor incident into something far more substantial: a symbol of the disdain shown by the nation's top leaders for timely and truthful public disclosure.

Having said that, I also think the White House press corps was over-the-top in many of its questions -- a good number rhetorical -- to White House spokesman Scott McClellan in what became a contentious, over-heated exchange yesterday. You'd think the Vice President had given a speech in the Middle East to a group of Saudis charging that the U.S. government had committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs on the heels of the "9/11" attack on American soil.

But, folks, that wasn't Dick Cheney. No, that was Al Gore, and neither he nor his office has provided any substantive evidence of his preposterous charges. And yet the national press is giving the former vice president a pass, while forging full steam ahead into whether or not the current Republican veep was properly licensed, incontrovertibly sober, and wearing the obligatory orange vest. Captain Ed provides a good example of just how unprofessional and trigger-happy some in the press have behaved in the wake of the hunting incident. Aren't journalists supposed to be distinguishable from late night comics?

At least it can be said fairly of the injuries to Harry Whittington that they were the result of an accidental shooting. Certain of the Washington press corps are now seen taking dead aim at Dick Cheney and the Bush administration with malice aforethought. Trigger-happy journalists gunning for Cheney may, in short order, become more the story than the failure of the White House to provide a timely press release.

IF THERE'S ANY LINGERING QUESTION WHETHER AL GORE IS SUITED FOR THE PRESIDENCY ...

2006-02-13T07:58:00.000-06:00

Americans owe the United States Supreme Court and Florida's voters a debt of gratitude for keeping Al Gore out of the Oval Office.

Power Line has a good account of the latest example of Al Gore's downward spiral into unadulterated America-bashing. Shades of when his former boss, Bill Clinton, took to the streets of England, while there as a Rhodes Scholar, to protest the Vietnam War.

Wonder what Michael Moore is thinking about Gore's unabashed ass-kissing? After all, it was Moore who tried in his "Fahrenheit 9/11" pseudo-documentary hit piece to make the case during the last election that Bush '41 and Bush '43 were in bed with the Saudi royal family.

FOLLOW-UP: Captain Ed weighs in as well on Al Gore's disservice to America.

FLIPPANT, CATHOLIC-BASHING EDITORIAL IN LOS ANGELES TIMES

2006-02-13T07:08:00.000-06:00

The Los Angeles Times betrays the secularist-progressive agenda of the Left-leaning mainstream media in a flippant, Catholic-bashing editorial in today's edition.

ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION to what's been happening to hell in recent years has surely realized that limbo was not long for this world — or the next one. Limbo is the nether region where, according to Roman Catholic tradition, unbaptized babies go after death. It's a pleasant enough place, though devoid of the bliss of God's presence. But now its future is in peril.

A group of Vatican theological advisors signaled after a recent meeting that they would recommend eliminating the concept of limbo. Pope Benedict XVI is expected to agree, meaning unbaptized babies would go to heaven instead.

Of course, the LAT is convinced that this is less about a serious-minded re-evaluation of Catholic domga than a crass example of theological opportunism:

There are practical reasons to eliminate limbo. It hinders the church's conversion of Africa — normally more receptive to Roman Catholic orthodoxy than the United States or Latin America — because limbo is a hard sell in a place with high infant mortality rates. Mothers are repelled by the thought that their lost children can never enter heaven and that there will be no reunion in the afterlife. Sending unblessed infants to heaven also lends gravitas to the church's position on abortion, allowing a fetus to be accepted into the presence of God.

You just had to know that the LAT's editorialist would weave Pro-Choice propaganda into its assault on The Church. Note the invidious distinction between "unblessed infants" and "a fetus." The term "unborn child" is anathema to the people who want to preserve a woman's "reproductive rights" to have this done.

Did I characterize the editorial as "flippant?" Read the following and tell me otherwise!

One big indicator of hell's downfall came in 1999, when Pope John Paul II said that rather than being a fiery torture chamber, hell was a more docile place, "the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God."

In other words, not a bad place to hang out but lacking the grace and joy of God. With hell now just limbo for adults, there's not much left for the original article.

And even the blessed Sacrament of Baptism is not left unscathed:

But consigning limbo to nonexistence brings up other issues — such as the catechism, which implies that baptism is needed for salvation. A related worry is that people will go in the other direction and view baptism as unnecessary. Then there's the concern of the poets. If hell is stripped of color, and limbo demolished, can purgatory be far behind? Dante perhaps was lucky to live in his time; these days he might have been relegated to scriptwriting for "The O.C." — another sort of place altogether.

The writer of this insensitive hit piece ought to be relegated to doing stories on Ground Hog Day and April Fools', and confining his limited intelligence to those things of the temporal world that he can marginally comprehend.

My wife and I lost a son years ago -- a baby boy born prematurely and whose lungs were insufficiently developed. He never left the hospital. As Catholics, we had a priest come to the hospital to baptize our son. Tenets of faith are not to be trifled with, nor are abiding acts of love.

FOLLOW-UP: Worth reading, particularly if you're a Catholic.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND BORDER SECURITY: TOP ISSUES AMONG CONSERVATIVES

2006-02-13T06:18:00.000-06:00

According to a Fox News' story, the president of the American Conservative Union, David Keene, indicates that the twin issues of illegal immigration and border security score among 85% of conservatives as the primary political issues facing Republicans and that President Bush's stubborn insistence on a Guest Worker Program is a source of irritation to them.

Keene said he estimates that 85 percent of conservatives consider illegal immigration and border security the primary issue to be addressed, and they don't agree with the president's plan to allow illegal immigrants living in the United States to stay in the country with temporary work visas.

Top officers of The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and the Eagle Forum concur:

"It is important for the Republican Party to realize that … we have a public safety issue here," said Simcox, who warned that conservatives could turn to third party candidates who make opposition to illegal immigration a cornerstone of their campaigns.

"I think there is apprehension when we get away from our conservative message," said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. "The White House is not good on the immigration issue. That's the clearest example."

All the more reason, I suggest to readers of ACSOL, that we all get behind Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who has been leading the charge in Congress on the illegal immigration and border security front.

CHENEY SHOOTS A LAWYER (SENATOR LEAHY IN HIDING)

2006-02-12T18:58:00.000-06:00

George Herbert Walker Bush -- alias Bush '41 -- was credited with bagging a Quayle in 1988 and, despite his protestations to the contrary, lived to regret it. The national press was unmerciful, as was Lloyd Bentsen. Quayle was shot full of holes in the ensuing presidential campaign and became a caricature.

Bush 41's son, George Walker Bush (alias Bush '43), ever the wiser, did his damnest in 1999 not to repeat his father's mistake in judgement, so there would be no such regrets bird-dogging him during his own tenure in the White House. Ironically, his choice, Vice President Dick Cheney, belatedly went for quail here in southern Texas yesterday and instead shot a man full of holes. And a lawyer no less! (No wonder he and the president are all for litigation reform).

One suspects once Leno and Letterman begin lampooning The Veep come Monday night that in short order a veritable covey of political cartoonists will emerge from their cover and do to Dick Cheney and shotguns what Dutch cartoonists did to the Prophet Mohammed and bombs. It won't be pretty.

Expect America's skeet and trap shooters to take to the streets, particularly those with first names like Ammar and Hashim.

Cheney, meanwhile, will no doubt be placed in a secure location (as will Senator Patrick Leahy!) and his shotgun sent to the Smithsonian.

NAFTA FUELS ILLICIT DRUG TRADE (AS DO AMERICAN USERS)

2006-02-12T08:50:00.000-06:00

In a recent post of mine -- "Two Front War On Border -- Mexico's Corruption and America's Apathy" -- I wrote:

American business' appetite for so-called "cheap labor" (only "cheap" because of heavy taxpayer subsidization) and the enormous appetite for drugs by America's legions of addicts and (pardon the euphemism) "casual drug users" exacerbates the myriad problems emanating from our corrupt neighbor to the south.

In today's edition of the Houston Chronicle, James Pinkerton (among my favorites of the Chronicle's writers) writes on the growing drug-related violence in Mexico's border town of Nuevo Laredo and an unintended consequence of the North American Free Trade Agreement:

U.S. agents say police corruption in Nuevo Laredo is a big problem, a point that Suneson concedes.

"Corruption runs deep, deep in Mexico," said Suneson, whose family has owned Marti's, an upscale Nuevo Laredo arts, crafts and jewelry store, for 52 years.

There's plenty of blame to go around.

Americans buy more than $62 billion in cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines per year, according to a February 2005 report by the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center.

And Texas is one of the country's leading drug-distribution centers.

Fact is, people are dying in Nuevo Laredo and U.S. Border Patrol agents are being threatened (and newspapers intimidated) by Mexican drug cartel enforcers, because, in part, Americans refuse to give up their fascination with illicit drugs and the moral turpitude that goes hand-in-hand with drug use.

As one who writes often on America's porous borders and illegal immigration, and the need for far tighter border security in a post-9/11 age, I nonetheless recognize that we in America share a good part of the blame for the fact that 12 - 20 million illegals are here, that the notorious MS-13 gang operates in 33 states, that a wide network of Mexican consulates insinuate themselves into U.S. domestic and foreign policy, that our country's social fabric is being torn asunder, its educational and healthcare systems ravaged, and much of its treasure depleted because American drug use fuels drug-trafficking and many American politicians, including this nation's president, play to the interests of businesses flaunting federal law in their insatiable appetite for "cheap labor" from the south.

It's not just all about Mexico and Vicente Fox.

Much of it is about us.

And when a patriotic group, such as the Minuteman Project, tries to do something about our porous borders, our Sanctuary Cities, and our day labor sites, the president unabashedly dismisses them out of hand as vigilantes and reveals his accomodating mindset vis-a-vis illegal immigration and all that attends it.

NAFTA may well be among the root causes of all that's going awry along the contiguous U.S.-Mexico border, as the Houston Chronicle piece suggests, but many Americans, many American politicians, and much of American industry must be held accountable, too.

HOUSTON'S CHAD HEDRICK WINS GOLD !!!

2006-02-12T07:30:00.000-06:00

As improbable as it may seem at first blush, a Houstonian, 28-year-old Chad Hedrick from Spring, Texas, has won the gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, in the 5,000-meter speedskating event.

Somehow the insufferable heat and humidity of Houston make it difficult to conjure up the thought that this city of ours, resolutely centered in the nation's sunbelt, has produced a world-class athlete who takes to ice, as a duck to water, but there's more to the story, as Paul Harvey might say ...

Chad Hedrick donned roller skates not long after he learned to walk and eventually became a world champion inline skater only to segue to ice skating in 2003. Sure didn't take him long to master blades instead of wheels with ball bearings!

And there's still more to his remarkable victory -- the inspiration for his feat:

But when times got hard and emotions bubbled to the surface on the biggest day of his competitive life, he did it for Nanny — Geraldine Hedrick, his maternal grandmother. She died Feb. 11, 1993 — 13 years ago Saturday — from brain cancer.

On the blade of his right skate, Hedrick inscribed her name and the date of her death. In his heart, he carried the love and encouragement she gave him as a child.

And as his coach, Bart Schouten, shouted, "For Nanny! For Nanny!" the blade bearing her name zipped across the ice, and Nanny Hedrick's first-born grandson carved his name into the annals of U.S. speedskating.

Is that a great story or what?

CONGRATULATIONS, CHAD !!!

OH NO! YOKO ONO "IMAGINES" THE UNIMAGINABLE

2006-02-11T11:52:00.000-06:00

How many of you watched Yoko Ono recite a lame poem on peace last night during NBC's coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games from Turin, Italy?

My wife and I did and we couldn't decide what was more incongruous: her inane poem, coming as it did in the midst of the over-wrought protestations of the Muslim community over some political cartoons published last September, or the sappy manifesto -- "Imagine" -- that her deceased husband, John Lennon, wrote years ago, which, no matter how poorly sung (as it was last night), always brings out the cigarette lighters and gets the audience swaying back and forth, as if they've been hypnotized or smoked too many joints (or just read Karl Marx).

No heaven, no country, no religion, no possessions ...

Funny, as I watched the pomp and circumstance unfold and all of those nations represented by all of those flags, Lennon's goofiness seemed naive and altogether out of place.

Rather than ponder the lyrics, my wife and I were more concerned about what the natural gas bill would be to keep the Olympic Cauldron burning through the Games!

A DOLLOP OR TWO OF COMMON SENSE

2006-02-11T11:04:00.000-06:00

There are gemstones to be found in what Hugh Hewitt characterizes as the "tail of the blogosphere" -- i.e., what he terms in his book, "BLOG," to be "the 95 to 99 percent of blogs that are not giant traffic getters." Audience size for a writer's work published on the Internet is not necessarily a hard and fast measure of the merits of a writer's craft.

A case in point: Frank Laughter and his blog, "Common Sense Junction." I'm a regular reader and I suggest that you should be too.

In this post, he challenges a view held by H-Bomb, a favorite blogger of Frank's (and of mine, I should add), that so-called "rightwingers" should be extra careful in upsetting the hypersensitive Muslim community. You'll enjoy Frank's paraphrasing of the inimitable Mark Steyn! And the antecedent to this post: this sharp-edged piece of commentary.

In this post, Frank takes on religious hypocrites and political fence-sitters with "sore crotches" and draws a laser-like bead on libertarians, in particular. It's a terrific read. Frank will never be acused of splitting hairs or weak-kneed political analysis.

But the best example in recent days of the strength of Frank's intellect was a link within this post of his on the Cartoon Wars and the "current perfervid terrorism in Europe." Frank provides a link to an essay he wrote way back on September 14, 2001, on the heels of the dastardly "9/11" attack on America by Islamofascists. It's a lengthy essay, to be sure, but a marvelous piece of writing. Were Frank Laughter among the big gun bloggers on the Internet, any number of high-hit-count blogger colleagues would be characterizing it as a "must-read" and he'd be receiving dozens of kudos from center-right bloggers for his most deserving essay.

But, of course, that hasn't happened.

Well, Frank, this "tail of the blogosphere" blogger read it, from beginning to end.

Treasure doesn't just stare you in the face, Dear Readers. You have to mine it. The blogosphere isn't just a Gold Rush to the treasure troves of the top-tier bloggers, or shouldn't be anyway. Seek out the gold nuggets in the more obscure venues and you'll be richer for it.

PEGGY NOONAN EUPHORIC OVER KING FUNERAL ANTICS

2006-02-10T08:44:00.000-06:00

Peggy Noonan is a favorite columnist of mine, but every now and then she falls off of her high perch and takes a header. Today's OpiononJournal column, extolling the virtues of Coretta Scott King's funeral and calling the political antics of eulogists Jimmy Carter and Rev. Lowery "the authentic sound of a vibrant democracy doing its thing" is a case in point. I didn't know a funeral service in a church, even for a civil rights' movement icon, was supposed to resemble a floor fight in the Senate chamber. I was taught as a youngster that when you walk into a church you're to be on your best behavior -- respectful of the House of the Lord, dutifully mindful of your manners, and matching your demeanor with the solemnity of the service for which you are there.

Noonan waxes breathlessly:

That funeral honored us, and the world could learn a lot from watching it. The U.S. government should send all six hours of it throughout the World Wide Web and to every country on earth, because it said more about who we are than any number of decorous U.N. speeches and formal diplomatic declarations.

Really, Peggy? I suppose you would have been orgasmic if Jimmy Carter had done a PowerPoint presentation on the Bush administration, replete with a dozen or so political cartoons lampooning the president and his policies, and with some of the more egregious Abu Ghraib photographs thrown in for good measure.

I wonder what Ms. Noonan's reaction would have been (and that of the elite mainstream media) had Bill Cosby been invited to eulogize Mrs. King and instead used the occassion to lambast blacks and exhort them to honor the legacy of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr. by tackling high rates of juvenile delinquency, untoward school drop-out rates, babies out-of-wedlock, crime, drug abuse, and single-parent households in their community -- you know, something on the order of this?

Maybe it's all about who's getting embarrassed -- who is on the receiving end of someone with an axe to grind.

My suggestion to you, Peggy (and to borrow from your column): Go home and have a nice cup of cocoa!

And give up the glue sock you were sniffing while watching the political convention in Atlanta.

FOLLOW-UP: Here's my earlier post on the King funeral, in case you missed it. The online edition of the Houston Chronicle linked to it for several days.

FOLLOW-UP II: The Anchoress is, as usual, a must read. I'm not sure that she's read the Noonan piece yet.

TEXAS GOVERNOR MOVES ON BORDER VIOLENCE

2006-02-10T07:27:00.000-06:00

Texas Governor Rick Perry, reports today's edition of the Houston Chronicle, declared yesterday that "Texans must combat escalating crime and drug violence along the Mexican border."

Toward that end, the Republican governor "announced 'Operation Rio Grande' to ramp up law enforcement from El Paso to Brownsville."

Writes the Chronicle's Polly Ross Hughes:

The governor also placed the State Operations Center on highest alert, meaning members of four state agencies will work around the clock supporting the new operation. The emergency status is typically reserved for natural disasters such as hurricanes.

Perry declined to reveal the cost of Operation Rio Grande or how many extra law enforcement officers it deploys to the border.

The new initiative follows his December announcement of $10 million in state aid for "Operation Linebacker," which lets local law enforcement provide greater support to U.S. border officers.

While stating that the federal government remains responsible for enforcing the sovereignty of the border, Perry said he felt compelled to act as well.

Such action, of course, is not unique to Texas. Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona has moved National Guard troops to the border in an effort to curb the flow of illegal immigrants ravaging her state's resources.

Texas' taxpayers should be mindful that the state was already expending $4.7+ million annually owing to illegal immigration before Governor Perry's announcement. Arizona, a far less populated state than Texas, nonetheless spends $1.3+ billion a year owing to the impact of illegal border-jumpers. (Californians, as information, have to cough up a whopping $10.5+ billion annually because of porous borders and lackluster federal enforcement).

It is the federal government's responsibility to enforce the sovereignty of America's borders, of course, but the Bush administration and its Department of Homeland Security have been asleep at the wheel (as was the Clinton administration before it) throughout Geroge Bush's tenure in the White House and the upshot is that anywhere from 12 - 20 million illegal aliens reside in the United States -- all here illegally, lawbreakers one and all.

That's why DHS Chief Michael Chertoff is being more than disingenuous in saying (according to the Houston Chronicle's story):

"To the extent we are giving money to states or letting states use Homeland Security money, we are welcoming their assistance but it has to come within the framework of a common strategy, a common picture," Chertoff said. "We don't want to have two different groups of law enforcement folks operating in an uncoordinated fashion."

What unadulterated crap! What "common strategy," Mr. Chertoff? Are you referring to the cheap labor "Welcome Mat" that the president has placed along the contiguous border with Mexico to placate the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Big Labor?

FOLLOW-UP (02/11/06): Matt Drudge links today to this NYT's piece on border violence.

VICENTE FOX MAY HIT TRIFECTA

2006-02-09T12:26:00.000-06:00

El Presidente Vicente Fox of Mexico may hit the trifecta, owing to the Bush administration's (and administrations before it) patent indifference to illegal immigration, as well as the legions of open border apologists and liberal do-gooders who aid and abet the human invasion of our country from the south.

The trifecta in the making? Imagine this: Mexican textbooks in American classrooms; illegal alien students in American classrooms; and, incredibly, illegal alien teachers in American classrooms.

Mexican textbooks

Last December, I published this post and wrote the following:

What American taxpayers need to understand, and especially those with school-age children attending public schools, is that the government of Mexico is striving to imbue American school children and the offspring of illegal aliens sharing classrooms with them with Mexico's culture and its nation's history. That's right ... you read that correctly. Fox News reported yesterday that a public school student in the Santa Ana School District in southern California is not only studying American history, but is receiving textbooks from Mexico via its Los Angeles-based consulate on Mexico's history. American school children in possession of Mexican textbooks!

Mexico has absolutely no business doing this -- interfering in American public education -- and the Bush Administration, which champions its No Child Left Behind educational initiative, is altogether disingenuous in not sharing this fact with American voters. Fact is, the U.S. Department of Education is a co-conspirator!

I went on to recommend to my readers an important, must-read column by Heather MacDonald, published in the prestigious, widely-read "City Journal." I heartily recommend once again that you read it in its entirety.

Illegal Alien Students

The Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C. estimates, according to Frosty Wooldridge, that 1.1 million illegal aliens currently occupy seats in America's classrooms and that number can only grow. And the cost to American taxpayers of educating other than American citizens? A staggering $12.0 billion annually, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (and $24 billion when you account for children born here in this country to illegal aliens).

As Mr. Wooldridge challenges parents of schoolchildren in this alarming column:

American parents must ask what kind of an education their kids receive from parents’ hard earned tax dollars. Short answer: severely degraded. No teacher can administer the educational curriculum with the chaos of 40 languages. They can’t teach with the fear of weapons and drugs in classrooms. As shown in Denver and in much of the USA, one in five teachers quit out of complete frustration.

His prescription?

What can be done? We must insist that our publicly elected leaders, first of all, stop the illegal alien invasion. We cannot survive it much longer. It creates a non-viable underclass, which in time will create hopelessness for millions. It will also create violence as their numbers grow. Second, we must insist that all people speak English in America as their first language. We cannot have foreign language television and radio stations that enhance non-assimilation. We must not allow multiple languages to be offered in any official public documents. We fracture our society and separate it into multiple language factions and an uneasy tension if we continue on this path with over 40 to 100 languages. Third, we must insist on 90 percent graduation rates from high school by ensuring that all students are here in this country legally and that they and their parents want to invest in the American Dream. Without the horrific confusion and costs of illegal alien students, we have a greater chance of realizing that kind of success.

Illegal Alien Teachers

In California alone, illegal and legal immigration have led to state agencies and California's public school districts having to grapple with adults and schoolchildren who speak over 100 different languages. The California Department of Education (CDE) "recognizes 54 languages in data from its annual census."

The upshot? Would you believe in Los Angeles County alone 3.8 million adults (53% of L.A. County's adult workforce) are effectively illiterate? And the numbers only get worse, as VDARE reports.

But some school districts in the United States intend to get creative in coming up with innovative solutions for educating their large, non-English speaking student populations. Enter the Dallas School District. They're considering hiring illegal alien school teachers to overcome the hurdle of bilingual education!

Some Dallas Independent School District trustees said they look forward to discussing the issue while others are treading cautiously. The district's attorneys will also participate in the discussion at today's meeting.

"I'm open to listening to the legal points they might make," trustee Hollis Brashear said. "But I don't know if we can discuss something that involves not complying with U.S. law."

"We as trustees can no longer solve problems like we did 10 years ago," Mr. Garza said. "We have to be innovative."

For Mr. May, no idea is too far-fetched. Last year, he successfully pushed a proposal, initially greeted with considerable skepticism, that requires some principals to become bilingual. The issue divided blacks and Hispanics and received nationwide attention.

This is precisely why America must secure its porous borders and stop the invasion. And this is why what Rep. Tom Tancredo refers to as "Amnesty-Lite" -- namely, President Bush's proposed, Ted Kennedy-endorsed, Guest Worker Program -- must be defeated.

Maybe, just maybe, the issue of what's happening in America's classrooms will get American parents off their collective hindquarters to join the fight for border security and immigration reform sans amnesty. If they won't fight the political fight for themselves, let's hope they'll do it for their children. The K-12 public school classroom has become a microcosm of illegal immigration's deleterious effects on this country -- a veritable petri dish for the insidious Bush-Fox alliance, determined as it is to forge an "integrated North America with open borders and a common labor market." The children, of course, get lost in the politics and are compelled to learn Spanish, read Mexican textbooks, and, perhaps not in the too distant future, receive their education from teachers here illegally.

And do remember: quality educations are not just a function of quality teachers. Students also benefit from the quality of the students around them. If you accept that premise, this and this should give you pause.

What say you? Had enough?

FOLLOW-UP (02/11/06): James Fulford adds to the immigrant teachers' controversy that I point to in my post and provides some important links. Do read it.

MORALITY HAS BECOME A FICTIONAL CARTOON CHARACTER

2006-02-08T19:00:00.000-06:00

The Muslim world is in an apocalyptic uproar over cartoons printed last September in a Danish newspaper which, in its view, desecrated Islam, its god, Allah, and crossed a line of demarcation between freedom of expression and downright blasphemy.

The elite MSM, while for the most part refusing to republish these cartoons, is nonetheless using tons of newsprint and videotape to cover the story (and to cover its hindquarters).

In turn, the blogosphere is cranking out thousands of posts on the subject, raising the stakes to a veritable clash of civilizations.

Meanwhile, the purposeful killing of unborn human beings -- God's creations falling victim to the greatest blasphemy of all in the name of women's "reproductive rights" -- continues unabated worldwide and where is the outrage to be found?

The world is focused on the wrong sick cartoon. Abortion mills hum, while religious zealots burn flags and buildings and hang Western political leaders in effigy. The human remains of hapless unborn infants fill up bio-waste containers daily, while the nightly news focuses on "Cartoon Wars."

Abortion is an abomination and an outrage to the God who first created life. But the august Senate chamber of the most powerful nation on earth (and purportedly one of its most religious) bristles at the thought that its Supreme Court's composition might change enough to overturn a 1973 ruling that gave women the "right to choose" whether life can be "ended." Meanwhile, 19 million women worldwide get abortions each year.

If only an international intifada could be mounted against infanticide. But the world is more concerned about cartoon depictions than this despicable sacrilege.

CORRECTION: The cartoon depiction that fomented the rioting was of prophet Mohammed as a terrorist.

TWO FRONT WAR ON BORDER: MEXICO'S CORRUPTION AND WASHINGTON'S APATHY

2006-02-08T14:36:00.000-06:00

El Presidente Vicente Fox of Mexico can howl and grind his teeth all he wants over the ruthless power that drug cartels wield in his country, but lacking major moves by him to end endemic corruption within his own government and Mexico's military, the cartels will hold sway and his country's border towns (e.g., Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, and Tijuana) will remain the personal fiefdoms of drug runners and human smugglers. Fact is, corruption is to Mexico what salt is to sea water.

Randall H. Nunn, writing for MichNews.com, makes the compelling point:

If Mexican President Vicente Fox had real courage, he might be able to defuse somewhat the tension caused by this immigration crisis by speaking honestly and frankly to his county. He might say something like the following:

"My fellow Mexicans, it is time to face the reality that illegal immigration from our country into the United States is creating friction between our two countries and, if something is not done to address this issue, the good relations between our countries and economic benefits we each bring to each other will be lost amid growing friction. Let us be honest. If we could improve economic opportunities for our citizens, rid our country of corruption and make our country a desirable place to live with economic and political opportunity for our people, there would be less interest in illegally crossing the border into the United States. Lawful immigration would be available but the massive illegal exodus of our citizens to the north would slow. I intend to give priority to developing Mexico's natural resources, combating corruption in government, destroying the power of the drug cartels and creating economic opportunity for all citizens in every way possible. We must make living in our country more desirable than leaving to illegally enter the United States.

Of course, this is probably just a dream, since President Fox is unlikely to do this, based on his actions and statements to date.

But border violence, a flourishing, illicit drug trade, illegal immigration, and incursions by the Mexican army into the United States are not the exclusive fault of the Fox regime by any measure of the situation. Complicit too have been the Clinton and Bush administrations and the two major political parties of the United States, courting as they do Latino voters and political contributions from business interests. Homeland Security is a misnomer in the context of porous borders, and George Bush knows that, as does Michael Chertoff. But they do precious little, making grandiose speeches, while belying their words in under-funding the U.S. Border Patrol. And, fact is, open borders' apologists and Hamlet-like fence-sitters abound in the U.S. Congress vis-a-vis border security. American business' appetite for so-called "cheap labor" (only "cheap" because of heavy taxpayer subsidization) and the enormous appetite for drugs by America's legions of addicts and (pardon the euphemism) "casual drug users" exacerbates the myriad problems emanating from our corrupt neighbor to the south.

All of which leads to what Sheriff Arvin West of Texas describes as a two-front war along the contiguous border with Mexico: Mexico's corruption and Washington's apathy.

West, sheriff of Hudspeth County, is considered a giant in his neck of the woods, and he'll need all his strength to battle the international incident that has landed at his front door.

"It's a two-way battle we're fighting between the drug wars, which includes Mexico's corruption," West said Saturday from the sheriff's office. "And we're also fighting the American government to get them to listen to us.

"I have yet to find in the federal government who swings the big stick," he said. "In Hudspeth County, if my deputies get out of line, the buck stops with me. Where does the buck stop in Washington?"

In the western border areas of El Paso and Hudspeth County, law-enforcement officials are making their last stand. They are in a fight to save their own communities and a nation from what they believe is a serious national-security risk at their southern border.

The upshot:

What used to be generations of American families living peacefully with their southern neighbors, mainly migrant farm workers crossing the desolate frontier, has now become a portal for drug cartels, human smuggling and international gang members who have discovered the United States' most vulnerable doorway.

Is this the America you want for your children and grandchildren? Do you want the MS-13 gang desecrating your neighborhoods and spreading violence through your cities? Are you okay with the fact that trained Mexican para-military assassins -- Los Zetas -- are already operating in the United States?

What, for you, will become the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back? Are you mad enough to write the president and your Congressmen and demand real action? Will you help move border security and immigration reform to the front burners of American politics?

FOLLOW-UP: Frosty Wooldridge may provide just the encouragement you need (i.e., the proverbial kick in the pants) to get busy and join the causes of border security and immigration reform sans amnesty that I and others champion who are thoroughly fed up with the present situation -- namely, 12 to 20 million illegals afoot in our land, lawbreakers one and all, who are taking advantage of the broad social safety net available to them, while at the same time sending billions of dollars back to their homelands (homelands to whom their primary, patriotic allegiance remains steadfastly intact). Understand, please, that they have that kind of discretionary income because of income tax avoidance and taxpayer subsidization of many of their common needs, including healthcare and education.

FOLLOW-UP II: Looking for a leader to get behind? You can do no better than to support Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO).

FOLLOW-UP III: Looking to educate yourself on the issues? You cannot do much better than to read the blogs and Web sites I've listed in the right sidebar (scroll down, please) under the "Vincent Omnia Veritas" heading. And do read me regularly, as I link to other blogs, such as "Common Sense Junction" and "Polipundit," which regularly report on immigration and border security issues. Join the cause! Let's put Washington on notice!

KING EULOGIZED; THE PRESIDENT SCOLDED

2006-02-08T10:06:00.000-06:00

To his credit and the traditions of dignity and decorum that mark most funerals, President George W. Bush eloquently eulogized Coretta Scott King during a six-hour tribute to her yesterday, then took the abuse heaped on him by former president Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery in stride, with aplomb and Christian restraint. The President was at Mrs. King's funeral to represent the nation in honoring her memory and in paying tribute to her work and leadership in the cause of civil rights. That he had to endure political salvos instead of the respect that the office of the presidency deserves was a slight to all Americans.

Jimmy Carter and Reverend Lowery were grossly out of line yesterday (nothing new for either). For their patent disrespect of the president and the office he holds, as well as for their insufferable behavior in politicizing a funeral, both are deserving of rebuke. And I'll go a step further. Many attendees at the funeral, seated in the House of the Lord, applauded the egregious remarks made by Carter and Lowery. In doing so, they, too, were complicitous in turning a solemn event into a political rally and in trying to embarrass the president.

The King family would do well to censure those specific remarks, but I don't expect this to happen. After all, the family made the selections of who would speak and knew full well that Carter and Lowry were predisposed to attack the president. Ironic, isn't it, that it was the President of the United States who best exemplified yesterday the Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King legacy of turning the other cheek and persisting in doing the right thing even while others pilloried them.

Sadly, civility was nowhere to be found at a memorial service honoring a splendid woman whose cause was civil rights and whose demeanor was the personification of civility and grace. Harry Truman said: "If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen." Regrettably, this nation has become so polarized and ill-mannered that former president Truman's exhortation must now include "the church."

FOLLOW-UP: Ben Johnson provides the particulars -- distressing particulars -- in this piece in FrontPageMagazine.com of the Democratic Party's political rally that passed for a funeral in Atlanta yesterday. Do read this piece in its entirety!

HOUSTON CHRONICLE HAS GONE TO THE DOGS

2006-02-07T10:42:00.000-06:00

Ever since passage by the House of Representatives last December of HR 4437 -- a sweeping, no-nonsense piece of immigration reform legislation designed to secure our borders and materially reduce illegal immigration -- open borders' apologists in the mainstream media have stepped up the frequency of immigration-related puff pieces designed to play on the humanity and charity of Americans in an effort to defeat a proposed border fence and promote amnesty for the 12 - 20 million illegal aliens in this country. Indeed, anyone tuned in to the porous borders' fight and the Tancredo vs. Bush fissure in the Republican Party has been aware of the marshalling of forces in the media to depict border-jumpers as simply desparate people seeking a better life in America and willing to do the jobs that America's bona fide citizens refuse to do. Examples of this canard abound. I'm sure you've read them.

But, with this morning's unabashed, front page, above-the-fold photograph of "The Refugio San Franciscano" (a dog and cat shelter outside of Mexico City), entitled Compassion extends across the border, in the print edition of the Houston Chronicle (accompanied, as it is, by a Section B "Stray dogs in Mexico finding homes in U.S." piece by Eliza Barclay), the newspaper of America's 4th largest city takes the Grand Prize for masterful MSM manipulation of pro-immigrant sentiment. W.C Fields may have once said sardonically, "Anybody who hates dogs and children can't be all bad ...," and gotten away with it, but truth be told his observation was bad form and politicians have long used dogs (and children) as efficacious props in endearing themselves to American voters. This lesson hasn't been lost on the editors and editorial board of the Chronicle.

Amazing, isn't it, that hapless, stray dogs in Mexico, being given new lives in America by the Houston-based "Saving Animals Across The Border," share top-tier, front page space with a story on the swollen, $2.77 trillion federal budget and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' defense before the Senate Judiciary Committee of the Bush administration's electronic eavesdropping? While stray dogs may well be an appropriate juxtaposition with the likes of Senate Judiciary Committee member Ted Kennedy, it nonetheless boggles the mind that with so many Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita-dispossessed Americans still living a hardknott life in the wake of these natural catastrophes and waiting on FEMA to get its act together that the Houston Chronicle concerns itself with stray dogs in Mexico.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers in Texas, Chucha, Nena and six lucky companions will be traveling this week to America — land of freedom, opportunity and bacon-flavored treats.

These four-legged migrants faced a grim life on the streets — or an almost certain death at the pound — until they were rescued as part of a new Houston program aimed at drawing attention to the struggle of stray and abandoned pets in Mexico.

And here's the money quote:

"Mexican dogs make such great pets," Karger said. "They really appreciate it when they've been rescued and don't have to worry about where their next meal comes from."

By the way, first mention of the raging Muslim cartoon intifada is on page A10 of today's Houston Chronicle and no examples of the offending cartoons are published for the edification of its readers. Michelle Malkin has it right.

FOLLOW-UP: This is worth reading to put the issue of stray dogs in perspective: about 17,000 "loose and stray" dogs are rounded-up in Houston each year and the problem is termed "dangerous." Additionally, recognize that Katrina and Rita had a significant impact on pet populations, as well as people.

FOLLOW-UP II: For animal lovers concerned about stray dogs in Mexico, you might want to read this post from the well-regarded The Dan Stein Report on the impact of illegal immigration on plants and animals indigenous to the southwestern deserts of the United States.

BORDER SECURITY-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION LINK ROUND-UP

2006-02-07T09:48:00.000-06:00

Frank Laughter of Common Sense Junction, who kindly (and often) extolls the virtues of my blog vis-a-vis reporting and commentary on border security and illegal immigration issues, has put up a couple of exceptional posts that I encourage you to read.

In "Meet Your Congressperson, Frank references a NumbersUSA analysis of voting records vis-a-vis the thorny issue of illegal immigration. If you're represented by a "fence straddler," I'd suggest you take paper and pen in hand. In "Our Borders Runneth Over," Frank, referencing a NumbersUSA newsletter, paints a bleak, but accurate picture of the post-HR4437 Congress that appears more inclined now to lay down for President Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and support a Guest Workers Program, rather than first assuring that our borders are secured. Moreover, newly elected Majority House Leader Boehner (R-OH) is anything but tough on illegal immigration, so his elevation bodes poorly for vigorous efforts and legislation to secure our borders.

For those of us who have remained unconvinced that President Bush and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff have had a belated epiphany on border security, The Dan Stein Report tells us to follow the money -- namely, the federal budget submission of the Bush administration for the upcoming fiscal year. This post is a must read. If that post doesn't get your blood boiling, this one of Dan Stein's will. While our porous borders present an ongoing national security threat, President Bush seems more concerned with feeding immigrant talent to California's Silicon Valley. Interesting, isn't it, that Bush wants "really bright folks" via H-1B visas to help propel the American economy, but at the same time allows millions of uneducated border-jumpers to enter the United States illegally every year to feed off of the largesse of the American economy and to send billions of dollars in remittances back to their homelands. How do you like that math?

James Fulford's post at the VDARE.blog is an important read that draws a line in the sand between "multiculturalism" that evolves through legal immigration and "colonization" that is the deleterious upshot of one country -- Mexico -- purposefully encouraging a human invasion of another -- the United States of America.

And Juan Mann's post at Michelle Malkin's "The Immigration Blog," points to the extremes Latino activists will go in painting border security advocates as racists. I suggest they and their apologists take a long, hard look at the homogeneity of Mexico's population. And while they're at it, they ought to take a look at how Mexico treats border-jumpers on its southern border with Guatemala (information courtesy of the well-respected "Center for Immigration Studies").

FOLLOW-UP: The Washington Times reports today that the Bush budget "again fails to fund the entire number of Border Patrol agents mandated by Congress but for the first time includes funds for his proposed guest-worker program." I guess that shows where the president's head is at and at a time when border incursions by the Mexican military further threaten this country's Border Patrol agents.

BUSH '43 DESERVES NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

2006-02-07T08:26:00.000-06:00

The Associated Press (AP) reports that four presidents -- Carter, Bush '41, Clinton, and Bush '43 -- will be attending the funeral of Coretta Scott King. In my view, President Bush ought to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for sitting under the same roof with his irrepressible gadfly, Jimmy Carter, who at virtually every turn has thrown darts at the president, while having a self-serving, selective memory about his own abundantly failed presidency. Jimmy Carter ought to stick to peanuts and poetry and leave world affairs to decisive realists who act.

Follow-UP: My post of this morning has proven prescient, as former president Jimmy Carter made a horse's ass out of himself in his eulogy at Coretta Scott King's funeral service, taking characteristic shots at President Bush, who was in attendance, and trying his damnest to politicize what should have been more memorial service and solemn tribute to an outstanding civil rights leader. Carter has become as shameful a former president, as he was an incompetent one while in the White House. (H/T: Drudge Report)

Follow-UP II: True to form, Michelle Malkin is all over this.

Follow-Up III: The Anchoress puts her spotlight on Jimmy Carter and makes peanut butter out of the former peanut farmer. Bulldogpundit does a slice 'n dice on the Democrats and Carter in particular, and given their undignified behavior its thoroughly appropriate.

Follow-Up IV: Lorie Byrd weighs in on the Dems turning a funeral into a political convention.

Follow-Up V: John Hawkins writes of the Democrats: "What a lack of class."

FOLLOW-UP VI: Jay Tea at Wizbang! delivers the knock-out blow on the legacy of Jimmy Carter.

Follow-UP VII: President Bush's eloquent and dignified eulogy of Mrs. King can be read here. I quote in part:

We gather in God's house, in God's presence, to honor God's servant, Coretta Scott King. Her journey was long, and only briefly with a hand to hold. But now she leans on everlasting arms. I've come today to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole.

In the critical hours of the civil rights movement, there were always men and women of conscience at the heart of the drama. They knew that old hatreds ran deep. They knew that nonviolence might be answered with violence. They knew that much established authority was against them. Yet they also knew that sheriffs and mayors and governors were not ultimately in control of events; that a greater authority was interested, and very much in charge.

The God of Moses was not neutral about their captivity. The God of Isaiah and the prophets was still impatient with injustice. And they knew that the Son of God would never leave them or forsake them.

THE STAR-MANGLED BANNER

2006-02-05T22:34:00.000-06:00

True, many, many Americans (I, for one) would rather have this country's national anthem be the more easily sung, melodic "God Bless America" than the turgid, difficult-to-remember Francis Scott Key poem that celebrated the American defense of Fort McHenry against British forces in September, 1814. To be sure, the "Star-Spangled Banner" can be a vocalist's worst nightmare.

Nonetheless, it's interesting that it took the United States Congress 117 years to make "The Star-Spangled Banner" the official national anthem of the United States, but the NFL just 40 Super Bowls to have it thoroughly mangled by Aretha Franklin and Aaron Neville.

Two years ago, Paul Tagliabue & Company gave us the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake wardrobe malfunction. This year we get the worst televised performance of a song since William Hung rendered Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" a laughingstock on "American Idol." What was the NFL thinking?

If given the unenviable choice among Janet Jackson's 40-year-old breast, a corpulent, over-the-hill gospel singer, and a prime candidate for plastic surgery, I'll take the breast.

Meanwhile, couldn't the choir from West Point or Annapolis have sung "The Star-Spangled Banner" out of respect for our men and women in uniform?

FOLLOW-UP (02/06/06): Michelle Malkin links to some other bloggers who were similarly annoyed, as I was, over two observations I made in this post: 1) the nation's national anthem was mangled; and, 2) our troops were not recognized or honored.

WHAT ROBERT NOVAK FAILED TO CITE

2006-02-02T09:40:00.000-06:00

If, as I, too, believe was the case, conservatives were sorely disappointed in President Bush's sixth State of the Union address Tuesday night, this conservative is even more disappointed in what columnist Robert Novak overlooked in his Op-Ed deconstruction of the SOTU on behalf of conservatives.

Novak writes:

WHILE jumping up on cue to cheer during the speech and delivering rave reviews afterward in the Capitol's Statuary Hall, conservative members of Congress were deeply disappointed by George W. Bush Tuesday night. It was not merely that the president abandoned past domestic goals. He appeared to be moving toward bigger government.

The consensus on the right was that President Bush's fifth State of the Union address was his worst.

I agree, but Novak's assessment of what was wrong with the SOTU fails to point at all to the short shrift paid to border security, the president's failure to link border security to the war on terror and homeland security, and Bush's stubborn refusal to abandon his Guest Worker Program, while disingenuously maintaining that it is not a form of amnesty for the 12 - 20 million illegal aliens already in the country. Moreover, "illegal aliens" were referred to in the SOTU as "immigrants" and cited by the nation's Chief Executive as indispensable to the economy and the objects of invidious immigrant bashing. Federal immigration laws already on the books have been consistently flouted by the Bush administration and Novak doesn't devote a sentence to the consequences.

A majority of Americans are fed up with porous borders and the human invasion from the south, and even more annoyed that the president enforces the laws of the land selectively. And they know intuitively that the president's preoccupation with the war on terror is incongruous with his indifference to the human invasion from the south. We fight in Ahghanistan and Iraq, so that we don't have to fight Islamofascist terrorism here at home? Come on! You can't have millions of OTMs ("Other Than Mexicans") from "countries of interest" jumping our borders and maintain that the war in Iraq is essential in the GWOT, but secure borders and the deportation of illegal aliens are not.

I voted for the president in 2000 and again in 2004. Chief Justice Roberts' and Associate Justice Alito's elevation to the United States Supreme Court make those votes meritorious. But the president's bullheaded determination, in concert with the corrupt government of Mexico, to feed undocumented, illegal aliens to American industry -- so-called "cheap labor," requiring such massive levels of subsidization from American taxpayers that, truth be known, it is anything but cheap -- will be the undoing of his two-term legacy and of this country.

Robert Novak didn't see the forest for the trees Tuesday night. He ought to make a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border and see firsthand what conservatives are justifiably infuriated over.

FOLLOW-UP: To my point, please read this post at The Dan Stein Report. 8,000 illegal aliens entered the United States on the same day that President Bush gave his SOTU, calling them "immigrants" and championing a Guest Worker Program. Rep. Ric Keller (R-FL) gets it now, calling the economic consequences of illegal immigration "catastrophic." Not exactly the storyline Bush used Tuesday night.

YAWN -- BLOGGERS' PREOCCUPATION WITH CINDY SHEEHAN

2006-02-01T09:40:00.000-06:00

Surely, Folks, President Bush's SOTU is more newsworthy and deserving of analysis and commentary than Cindy Sheehan's failed attempt to sit in the gallery and continue to make an ass of herself.

FOLLOW-UP: The federal "thought police" were busy last night! Cindy Sheehan was chased from the gallery, but so was Beverly Young, the wife of a Republican congressman, for wearing a "Support The Troops" T-shirt. The right side of the blogosphere is all over the Sheehan story, but is under-reporting what happened to Mrs. Young.

FOLLOW-UP II: More on this subject from Lonewacko.

BUSH'S SOTU IS "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

2006-02-01T09:14:00.000-06:00

No surprise this morning that what I took issue with last night in President Bush's State of the Union address was the one point of agreement the Houston Chronicle resoundingly applauded:

The president was at his best when he boldly declared that the strength of the U.S. economy depended upon immigrants. The president differs on this matter from other Republicans who seek to stop illegal immigration at the border by force, impediment or both.

The president, of course, was purposefully disingenuous with the American people in saying "we hear claims that immigrants are bad for the economy ..." Baloney! What the president has heard, again and again, is that illegal immigrants are lawbreakers and that the Bush administration (and administrations before it) have failed to protect and defend the United States of America by not securing our nation's porous borders and by not enforcing immigration laws already on the books. The immigrant-bashing canard is careworn and as we like to say here in Texas: "That dog doesn't hunt." It certainly doesn't hunt anymore.

What the president of the United States said last night in his address to the nation, and has over the course of his administration underscored through his purposeful inaction on border security and immigration reform, is tantamount to this: "If cheap labor is the engine of economic growth, than the laws of the nation be damned."

If, as the president claimed in his SOTU address, America's competitiveness -- its distinct competitive advantage -- will come from legions of educated, creative minds, steeped in mathematics and the sciences, then isn't that a contradiction in terms with his history of being an open borders' apologist, both as Texas' governor and during his first five years in the White House? Mathematicians and scientists and Nobel Prize laureates are not jumping our borders.

Fact is, what the president has been all about for far too many years is feeding American industry's appetite for cheap labor by refusing to enforce immigration laws?

The president said that federal judges must be "servants of the law." In terms of the 12 - 20 million illegal aliens already afoot in our land, the president needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror and heed his own admonition. The President of the United States must be a servant of the law, too, and its chief enforcement officer.

Just as the president called for renewing "the promise of our institutions," he should renew his oath of office to "preserve, protect, and defend" the United States of America. A good start would be to secure our borders. Next would be to deal with 12+ million lawbreakers and a government -- Mexico -- that has encouraged a human invasion of our country.

The president cannot just enforce those laws he chooses to and ignore those with which he is in disagreement. That solemn oath of office he took does not give him that latitude.

You said it yourself last night, President Bush:

A hopeful society expects elected officials to uphold the public trust.

FOLLOW-UP: Here's a transcript of the SOTU (courtesy of the Houston Chronicle).

FOLLOW-UP II: To its credit, the Houston Chronicle has linked in its online edition to this post of mine on the SOTU; and, further to its credit, and in sharp contrast to its editorial position, it has published in today's edition this piece by Gebe Martinez, which merits a complete read.

FOLLOW-UP III: The Dan Stein Report was kind enough to link to my post and you'll find his post includes a link to Congressman Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) response to the SOTU, as well as that of the Minuteman HQ Blog.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S "STATE OF THE ADDICTION" ADDRESS

2006-01-31T21:50:00.000-06:00

President Bush spoke with undiluted candor in his "State of the Union" address -- indeed, so much so that it is fair to call it the "State of the Addiction" address. The president underscored that America is addicted to foreign sources of oil; and the president unabashedly affirmed that America is addicted to cheap, undocumented labor. For the former, he proposed broad new initiatives to reduce this country's dependency on Middle East oil and to develop innovative, alternative energy sources; for the latter, however, he proposed more of the same, calling on Congress to pass a Guest Worker Program, while eschewing any reference to the 12 - 20 million illegal aliens already in our country, preferring instead the euphemistic "immigrant" designation. To the president's way of thinking, oil dependency is an Achilles Heel, but cheap labor (cheap labor subsidized by American taxpayers) is an engine of the economy. In that view, of course, Mexico becomes the "Hopeful Society," not America -- hopeful that it can continue to export its poor, uneducated, and lawless to its northern neighbor, while receiving $16 - $18 billion annually in remittances from the hapless citizens both countries exploit.

Interesting, is it not, that the president emphasized the need for Americans to be better educated in math and the sciences to keep our country on the cutting edge of the global economy. Someone should remind him that scientists and mathematicians are not jumping our borders.

And interesting, is it not, that in an address largely devoted to international terrorism and the war in Iraq, the president refused to suggest there was any linkage between the war on terror and the need to secure our porous borders. Someone should show him that tunnel recently discovered between Tijuana and San Diego County and explain that, for all we know, it may have been the well-lighted, well-ventilated transportation conveyance for a nuclear device or canisters of nerve gas.

If eavesdropping on telephone calls between al Qaeda operatives and American citizens is essential to our nation's national security, then so too may be eavesdropping on telephone calls between the corrupt Vicente Fox government and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

TONIGHT'S "STATE OF THE UNION" ADDRESS

2006-01-31T14:34:00.000-06:00

I'll be succinct (how unlike me): I want the President of the United States to devote a significant portion of tonight's speech to border security and a commitment to enforce immigration laws already on the books. I don't want to hear about immigration reform or his fascination with a Guest Worker Program.

Fact is, the "State of the Union" is more than suspect when 12 - 20 million illegal aliens -- lawbreakers one and all -- reside here, plunder our treasury, healthcare and educational systems, tear the fabric of our culture, fill our jails and prisons, and send billions in remittances back to their homelands, for whom they refuse to revoke their allegiance.

This country has been suffering from a massive, long-standing invasion from the south that, arguably, pre-dated the Bush '43 presidency, but has gone on unchecked and unrestrained during his watch.

ALITO CONFIRMED; CONSTITUTION REAFFIRMED

2006-01-31T14:08:00.000-06:00

Samuel Alito's confirmation today by the Senate's Republican majority (and subsequent swearing in) is a victory in many respects: 1) the kind of nominee that a re-elected President Bush had committed to to his base during his campaign has been placed on the SCOTUS, and on the heels of John Roberts' confirmation as Chief Justice and in the wake of an efficacious uprising of conservatives over the misguided Harriet Miers' nomination; 2) the power center of an effete, Left-controlled political party -- the Democratic Party -- has been soundly defeated, both in national elections and on the floor of the Senate, and the idiocy of its liberal icons shown in bold relief before the nation; 3) the United States Constitution has been and will be reaffirmed, and the Democrats' affinity for "legislation from the bench" debunked; 4) Senator John Kerry's failed fillibuster attempt showed him for the egregious loser and thorough buffoon he is; 5) Leftie polibloggers proved themselves yet again as more squall line than powerful persuaders and the voices of reason; and, 6) it's two down and, hopefully, at least one more strict constructionist nominee to go in the Bush '43 era!

My heartiest congratulations to Justice Alito and his family, and to President Bush and Senate Republicans (save for one miserable RINO, Lincoln Chafee)!

GOOGLE REPLACED WITH YAHOO SEARCH AT ACSOL

2006-01-29T09:10:00.000-06:00

In keeping with my blogging friend Frank Laughter's well-expressed sentiments vis-a-vis Google's regrettably misguided politics (example), I have removed Google's search engine link from my site's sidebar and replaced it with Yahoo's. It's only a small gesture, but imagine if everyone followed Frank's lead?

FOLLOW-UP: More on this issue.

FOLLOW-UP II: As Frank Laughter alluded to, Michelle Malkin weighs in on this issue.

FOLLOW-UP III: Patterico asks his readers for alternatives to Google and his readers' comments are very interesting.

TOM, DICK, OR HARRY? HARDLY!

2006-01-27T11:44:00.000-06:00

A 2,400 foot tunnel discovered running from a location near the Tijuana Airport, under the U.S.-Mexico border, and on to a warehouse in Otay Mesa, California, is no "Tom," "Dick," or "Harry" of "The Great Escape" fame. No, this threat to U.S national security is sophisticated beyond anything found to date in Mexico's purposeful invasion of America.

Reuters reports:

The tunnel has cement walls and supporting planks, is no less than five feet (1.2 meter) tall and wide, and runs as far as 60 feet underground, Unzueta said. It has lighting and ventilation, and a pumping system to drain groundwater.

The U.S. entrance has a cement ramp with a washboard pattern for better footing. "We believe this tunnel is, in fact, the largest tunnel ever found on the Southwest border," he said.

And here's the money quote:

We know it's been used for drug traffic but this really illustrates the dangers and risks of security to Americans," said John Fernandez, special agent at the DEA in San Diego.

It will be interesting listening to President Bush's upcoming "State of the Union" address to see if he points to the fact that our country is being invaded from the south by Mexican nationals and OTMs ("Other Than Mexicans") and that our porous borders, the tunnel systems being uncovered, the numerous incursions by Mexico's federal troops, and the presence of the notorious MS-13 gang in 33 states, constitute "a clear and present danger" to this country's national security in an age of international terrorism.

I suspect we'll not hear a word to that effect; but, we may well hear about the attributes of his Guest Worker Program.

The war in Iraq is not President Bush's Achilles Heel. No, it is the persistent invasion from the south and the fact that 11 million to 20 million patent lawbreakers are afoot in our land and the president wants for them what Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) terms "Amnesty-Lite."

Read about this tunnel and tell me that our nation is not vulnerable. Read about this tunnel and tell me you're comfortable that the Department of Homeland Security is doing its job.

FOLLOW-UP: Here's the Los Angeles Times story on the tunnel.

FOLLOW-UP II: here's the San Diego Union-Tribune account.

SCHWARZENEGGER'S BECOMING THE GOVERNOR HE REPLACED

2006-01-25T08:00:00.000-06:00

You'd think Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's slip-sliding away from Republican principles of fiscal restraint and his political degeneration into a walking-talking facsimile of the big-spending democrat he replaced -- Gray Davis -- would be sufficient waywardness to draw the attention of right-of-center bloggers, but to date the silence has been deafening. I've commented to this effect previously. And back on January 8th I wrote:

Even the Left Coast's pre-eminently Left-leaning, MSM-propaganda mill, The Los Angeles Times, which vehemently opposed Arnold Schwarzenegger's ascendancy to the governorship of California in the 2003 recall election, now mocks him as a laughingstock for his all too transparent transmogrification this week into a spendthrift liberal democrat.

And rightfully so! Schwarzenegger is deserving of scorn. The man clearly has no core political beliefs. He is a political chameleon -- a proponent of expediency over principal. Reagan he is not. It didn't take long for California's powerful special interests to bend The Terminator to their will and extinguish his short-lived commitment to Republican principles of fiscal restraint and limited government. Pumping iron can transform the body, but not the heart.

The powerful public employees unions and well-entrenched, Democrats-dominated state bureaucracy have had their way with The Arnold, turning him into the kind of "Girlie Man" he claims to disdain. And if this capricious, self-serving shift to the Left effects his election to a second term, than no doubt Governor Schwarzenegger may well become for the Democratic Party the Zell Miller equivalent of 2008 -- i.e., the keynote speaker at the Democratic Party's national convention.

Now comes this piece on Schwarzenegger by Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee and I feel vindicated. Walters writes:

The irony of Davis' political undoing is being compounded three years later by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder-turned-actor to whom California voters turned on his promise of "action, action, action, action." As he begins his third year in the governorship, Schwarzenegger is retreating from confronting the Capitol's dysfunctional status quo and is, in a sense, channeling Davis.

Schwarzenegger's annual appearance Tuesday before the Sacramento Press Club was vintage Davis, advocating only policies that he knows will find favor with the voters (infrastructure investment), sidestepping questions on controversial issues (the Iraq war, assisted suicide) and paying homage to the legislative leaders he was trying to kneecap last year.

Schwarzenegger, it would appear, has convinced himself that avoiding risk and telling voters about the highways and other goodies he wants to deliver to them will overcome his less-than-stellar popularity and gain him another stint in the Capitol this year. "It is all about the quality of life," he told the Press Club as he pitched his plan to spend $222 billion on transportation, waterworks, schools and other public facilities over the next decade without raising taxes, while insisting, with a straight face, that "we won't win votes with this proposal."

And he comes to the key observation:

The governor clearly will bend almost any direction to please Democrats, but the more he caters to them, the more he alienates himself from Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, who are leery about massive spending of any kind and who are insisting that there should be reforms to streamline projects, the kinds of reforms that environmentalists and unions intensely oppose.

Conservatives are already complaining that Schwarzenegger is leaning too far to the left on spending. Some want to strip him of the Republican Party's re-election endorsement at next month's state convention, citing his appointment of long-time Democratic Party activist Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff.

So I continue to ask: why is the Republican governor of America's most populated state getting a pass from conservative bloggers?

MEXICO PUBLISHES MAPS TO HELP ILLEGAL BORDER JUMPERS

2006-01-25T06:02:00.000-06:00

It's not enough that the corrupt, Vicente Fox-led government of Mexico has published a guide, euphemistically entitled "The Guide for the Mexican Migrant," to encourage Mexican nationals to emigrate illegally to America. Now the Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission has joined in such complicity by publishing 70,000 maps to aid illegal border jumpers in entering Arizona safely and crossing its desolate desert regions.

The Los Angeles Times reports today (excerpts follow):

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission will print and distribute at least 70,000 maps showing immigrants the safest routes to cross the border into Arizona, officials said Tuesday.

The project, which immediately drew fire from groups organized against illegal immigration, is aimed at reducing the number of people who die trying to cross 50 miles of Sonoran Desert to reach highways in southern Arizona, according to Humane Borders, the Tucson-based humanitarian group that created the maps.

The new maps will show spots where people have died — presumably discouraging some prospective migrants — as well as main roads, rescue beacons and the locations of water stations maintained by Humane Borders.

While such patriotic organizations as The Minuteman Project draw the ire of President Bush, misguided, open borders' apologists such as Humane Borders aids and abetts the Mexican government in its purposeful invasion of the United States of America.

The Arizona Star reports (excerpts follow):

Four maps have been prepared, each one centering on a different migration corridor along the Arizona-Sonora border including Douglas, Nogales, Sasabe and Lukeville. The maps show the locations where deaths have occurred and also show where Humane Borders water stations have been set up and Border Patrol rescue beacons have been installed. The maps also indicate how far would-be illegal entrants can expect to walk in one to three days.

Mauricio Farah, one of the commission's national inspectors, said about 70,000 maps will be distributed throughout Mexico starting in March.

But some critics say the map, much like a controversial comic-style guide that Mexico distributed last year, will serve only to push more migrants north.

Jim Nixon, who belongs to Tucson's Arizonans for Immigration Control, said he had no doubt the map would encourage more border-crossers to make the trip.

"The map tells them where to go and where not to go," he said. "Humane Borders is aiding and abetting, there's no question in my mind."

What's at stake for Mexico? Why does it encourage massive illegal emigration to the United States? Simple. As the San Bernardino Sun reports:

Mexicans working in the United States are a huge source of revenue for Mexico, sending home more than $16 billion in remittances in 2004, Mexico's second largest source of foreign currency after oil exports according to the country's central bank.

FOLLOW-UP: I've written previously on the Humane Borders' leader, Rev. Robin Hoover.

FOLLOW-UP II: Debbie Schlussel weighs in on Fox, Bush, and the idiocy of the Humane Borders' folks who are co-conspiring with Mexico to facilitate the invasion of the United States by Mexican nationals.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (01//27/06): The Dan Stein Report advises that Mexico has decided not to distribute the maps! Now if the Humane Borders' folks will migrate to Mexico and take their misguided humaneness with them.

WHO SAYS IT'S NOT A WAR ON THE BORDER?

2006-01-24T13:36:00.000-06:00

The Houston Chronicle carries the following Associated Press (AP) story in today's edition (excerpts follow):

Men dressed as Mexican Army soldiers, apparent drug suspects and Texas law enforcement officers faced off Monday on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, an FBI spokeswoman said today.

Simmons said the FBI was not involved and referred requests for further details to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin similarly reports (excerpts follow):

Mexican soldiers and civilian smugglers had an armed standoff with nearly 30 U.S. law enforcement officials on the Rio Grande in Texas on Monday afternoon, according to Texas police and the FBI.

Mexican military Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border into the United States, said Chief Deputy Mike Doyal, of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department.

Mexican Army troops had several mounted machine guns on the ground more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border -- near Neely's Crossing, about 50 miles east of El Paso -- when Border Patrol agents called for backup. Hudspeth County deputies and Texas Highway patrol officers arrived shortly afterward, Doyal said.

"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal said. "When you're up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first? Certainly not us."

An FBI spokeswoman confirmed the incident happened at 2:15 p.m. Pacific Time.

If, after reading these newspaper accounts, you still agree with President Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that increased border security must be linked in comprehensive immigration reform legislation with a "Guest Workers Program," then you, too, are insisting that the invasion from the south and armed incursions by the Mexican Army should be tolerated in the interest of so-called "cheap labor."

This incident renews my call for the president to place troops on the border and to bolster the ranks of the U.S. Border Patrol. It's high time the Bush administration hold the government of Mexico accountable for its actions!

FOLLOW-UP: No wonder only 25% of Americans in a recent Gallup poll approved of President Bush's immigration policies! H/T: The Dan Stein Report." Porous borders defies common sense, particularly in an age of international, Islamofascist terrorism.

FOLLOW-UP II: A reader of The Dan Stein Report left a "comment" at the site's post regarding this armed incursion that I feel compelled to quote in part, because the outrage expressed is so on point and indicative of how I feel:

This story should hit Michael Chertoff and President Bush up side the head like a bag of hammers! How can they continue to turn a blind eye to these constant incursions by the Mexican military!

FOLLOW-UP III (01/25/06): The Dallas Morning News reports the following:

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a frequent critic of the administration's border security efforts, called Tuesday for the federal government and the governments of southern border states to immediately deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in light of what he termed "recent armed assistance Mexico's military has given to drug smugglers."

"Our border has literally turned into a war zone with foreign military personnel challenging our laws and our sovereignty," Mr. Tancredo said.

"The only way to deal with this dangerous situation is to tap the resources of our own military," Mr. Tancredo said. "I call on President Bush and the governors of border states to immediately deploy military personnel to defend our borders against the Mexican military."

FOLLOW-UP IV (01/25/06): The El Paso Times reports the following:

The Mexican government will not allow its soldiers within 3.2 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border as a result of a standoff Monday near Sierra Blanca between Texas law enforcement officers and men dressed in military uniforms.

In response to Monday's incident, the Mexican government has ordered its military to create an alert zone, extending 3.2 miles from the border, and not to allow soldiers in the alert zone unless they have authorization, Foncerrada Berumen said.

SENATOR FEINSTEIN HAS IT "RIGHT"

2006-01-24T10:12:00.000-06:00

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on SCOTUS nominee Samuel Alito are again underway and California's Senator Dianne Feinstein is presently rationalizing her Pavolvian "Nay" vote on Alito. She's such a pompous ass. The Golden State, long since tarnished by the impact of liberal democrats and the Gray Davis era, deserves her, as it does Barbara Boxer.

But on one score she is absolutely right this morning: Samuel Alito is, as President Bush promised his faithful, a future SCOTUS justice in the strict constructionist, originalist, Scalia-Thomas bolt of cloth mold.

That's why Bush is in the Oval Office and John Kerry is not, Ms. Feinstein.

What is the far Left cabal of the Democratic Party all about? Simple answer: upholding Roe v. Wade and the right to choose that (since 1973) 46 million unborn babies be aborted and cast in bio-waste receptacles. How does such an unconscionable genocide of the innocent constitute a woman's "right to privacy" and her "reproductive rights?" Sick euphemisms, one and all.

PS: I have "grave" concerns about you and others of your political-moral ilk, Senator!

FOLLOW-UP: This "Daily Breeze" editorial says it all:

This week the Senate is expected to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of federal appeals Judge Samuel Alito, a former prosecutor and Justice Department attorney who won the American Bar Association's highest recommendation. Months of digging by journalists, Democratic operatives and Senate investigators turned up near-uniform testimonials from people of all ages and backgrounds who swear by Alito's brilliance, kind temperament, work ethic and devotion to the law. Attempts to smear Alito on extenuated guilt-by-association grounds and with wafer-thin conflict-of-interest allegations went nowhere.

Yet only a handful of the Senate's 44 Democrats are expected to vote to confirm Alito. If this occurs, it will be unprecedented, outrageous and unfortunate.

FOLLOW-UP II: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has done himself and the Republican Party proud during the Alito confirmation hearings. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make a mad dash to the bathroom, as Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has begun bloviating and the nausea is already beginning to sweep over me.

FOLLOW-UP III: More obstructionist antics from the Dems.

FOLLOW-UP IV (@11:21am CST): Vote out of committee was 10-8 in favor of Alito.

FOLLOW-UP VI: Kudos to Polipundit for this post and the observations made.

FOLLOW-UP VII: Bravo, Don Surber! If there were a Howard Cosell Award in the blogosphere for "telling it like it is, " you'd win for your post-Senate Judiciary Committee vote post on the Dems. What a sorry bunch they are. All those hateful questions, all of that boorish posturing, and a pre-ordained vote the predictable outcome. What crap!

MARCH FOR LIFE

2006-01-24T09:38:00.000-06:00

ProLifeBlogs provides photographs of the mightly successful "March For Life" in Washington D.C.

While not in attendance yesterday, President Bush nonetheless addressed Pro-Life forces assembled in the nation's capitol, and, in his stirring, from-the-heart remarks, underscored the principal reasons I voted for him in 2000 and again in 2004 -- his commitment to the sanctity of life and his promise to place strict constructionists in the Scalia-Thomas mold on the SCOTUS.

I appreciate so very much your work toward building a culture of life-- (applause) -- a culture that will protect the most innocent among us and the voiceless. We are working to promote a culture of life, to promote compassion for women and their unborn babies. (Applause.) We know -- we know that in a culture that does not protect the most dependent, the handicapped, the elderly, the unloved, or simply inconvenient become increasingly vulnerable.

The America of our dreams, where every child is welcomed in law -- in life, and protected in law may still be some ways away, but even from the far side of the river, Nellie, we can see its glimmerings. (Applause.) We're making progress in Washington. I've been working with members of the Congress to pass good, solid legislation that protects the vulnerable and promotes the culture of life. I signed into law a ban on partial birth abortion. (Applause.) Infants who are born despite an attempted abortion are now protected by law. (Applause.) So are nurses and doctors who refused to be any part of an abortion. (Applause.) And prosecutors can now charge those who harm or kill a pregnant woman with harming or killing her unborn child. (Applause.)

This is precisely why I still support this president. I have my issues with him -- profound issues -- on fiscal responsibility and border security, but his advocacy of the culture of life places him head and shoulders above the Pro-Choice, progressive-secularists that the Democratic Party would place in the Oval Office if Red State America would permit.

I applaud you, Mr. President. I deplore you, Mr. Kerry, and the liberal cabal that runs the Democratic Party and has no compunction about 46 million dead.

CONSERVATIVES PREVAIL IN CANADA

2006-01-24T08:34:00.000-06:00

Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper prevailed in Canada's national election, turning Prime Minister Paul Martin out of office and erasing the Liberals' 12+ year hold on Ottawa, albeit with insufficient gains in the legislature to give Harper and the Conservative Party the kind of strong mandate needed to push our northern neighbor genuinely to the right in law, rather than simply in spirit. Harper is from Calgary, Alberta, which, if you've traveled in Canada, is the difference between day and night in political thinking from that found in the eastern provinces. And Harper, to his credit, is pro-life and opposed to gay marriage. That's the good news ...

The bad news: conservatives in Canada are not conservatives as we know them in America. Newspaper headlines today trumpeting a "Conservative" victory in Canada may wrongly suggest to many Americans that a Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan equivalent will be riding into Ottawa on horseback ready to restore political order to North America's version of effete France. Well, don't hold your breath. Canada is a country that anytime it tacks to the Right politically, finds the Left wanting out of the regatta altogether and threatening to secede.

Meanwhile, the Left-dominated MSM in America has wasted no time in turning its guns on Harper, terming his politics extremist, as Frank Laughter perceptively notes in pointing to an Associated Press piece on the election.

FOLLOW-UP: The inimitable Mark Steyn on Canada's election results!

FOLLOW-UP II: Speaking of "inimitable," don't miss Bulldogpundit's observations on our northern neighbor's election results.

FOLLOW-UP III: Peter Brimelow reminds readers of his prescience and offers insights on what the Canada election results may usher in in time.

FOLLOW-UP IV: Human Events looks at what defines conservatism in Canada (H/T: Free Republic).

Canada today is more liberal (in the American sense) than the United States: with no laws regulating abortion, legal same-sex marriage, no death penalty, high income taxes and a federal sales tax, a financially-strapped military and a deep reverence for the United Nations.

But the problem with defining Canadian conservatism exclusively in the above terms is that it overlooks the fundamental issue plaguing Canada since the 1960s: the separation movement in the French-speaking province of Quebec.

THE BIG RNC RUSE -- GUEST WORKERS, BUT NO AMNESTY

2006-01-21T11:04:00.000-06:00

The Washington Times reports what the VDARE folks (and others of us opposed to porous borders, illegal immigration, and amnesty for illegals) feared would happen:

The Republican National Committee voted yesterday to back President Bush's call for a guest-worker program.

"The question is not 'Is there an issue?' -- the question is 'How you deal with it?' and I think we have to deal with it in a comprehensive way -- we don't have to deal with it in a way that's anti-immigrant," said party Chairman Ken Mehlman, who said the resolution "reflected where the president was."

The resolution, adopted by voice vote, was a major victory for Mr. Mehlman and headed off a divisive vote on an alternate resolution that would have put the party on record as opposing a guest-worker program, thus at odds with Mr. Bush.

Now it becomes highly likely that GOP Senators will take the teeth out of the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act" that passed in the House of Representatives last December.

This is one long-standing Republican who is now seriously considering re-registering as an "Independent."

"National Security" and "Amnesty-Lite" (i.e., Guest Worker programs for the 11+ million illegal alien lawbreakers already in the country) are mutually exclusive. If the GOP under Bush's leadership is intent on integrating the two, then I have a problem. They have already integrated so-called "national security" with "porous borders" for the first five years of Bush's two-term presidency.

The borders must be secured first -- secured before any forms of immigration reform are discussed in the halls of Congress.

If the Republican Party has, as Karl Rove asserts, a "post-9/11 worldview," then why in Mr. Rove's important speech at the RNC's Winter Meeting this week -- a speech setting the GOP's tone and tactics for the upcoming 2006 elections -- are the issues of porous borders and illegal immigration not prominently mentioned? Take the time as I did, and read the entire speech and tell me how many times these issues came up? Read the speech and you'll know that the Bush administration's position vis-a-vis border security is more of the same and that in the president's mind there is no linkage between national security and border enforcement.

FOLLOW-UP: Do read Bryanna Bevins' piece at the VDARE blog in reaction to the RNC vote. Her post includes a quote from Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who promises a continuing fight.

AL QAEDA IN THE U.S. -- REALLY, DO YOU THINK SO?

2006-01-21T09:22:00.000-06:00

Don't you love these periodic pronouncements from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to the effect that al Qaeda may have terrorist cells operating in the United States?

"We have to assume that there are persons out there that want to attack us," said FBI director Robert Mueller.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said police chiefs have been told to review all the intelligence the federal government has given them in the last two years about al Qaeda tactics.

Chertoff told ABC News: "We've seen them attack in London, for example. We've seen them attack in Spain. We've seen them attack elsewhere, so I think we have to operate on the assumption that they do have some capability and they certainly have the intent."

This, coming from an administration that has allowed millions of illegal aliens to jump this country's borders and live and work here with impunity -- lawbreakers without proper documentation in an era of international terrorism.

This, coming from an administration that has allowed one country in particular -- Mexico -- to encourage an invasion of our country and to make armed incursions into our land.

Chertoff insisted that the country has made security upgrades since the attacks of 9/11. He admitted though that a number of vulnerabilities remain.

Right, Mr. Chertoff -- two such "vulnerabilities" being our porous contiguous border with Canada and our porous contiguous border with Mexico. And a third "vulnerability" being President Bush's determination to install a "Guest Worker Program," tantamount to blanket amnesty, that will permit anywhere from 11 million to 20 million illegal aliens (lawbreakers, one and all) to live and work in this country, and become citizens.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the GWOT is a contradiction in terms when 4 years and 5 months later, after the horrific "9/11" Islamofascist terrorists' attacks on the U.S. homeland, our country's borders have not been secured. Fact is, the Bush administration put too few troops on the ground to secure Iraq's borders (with deadly consequences for our troops and the Iraqi people) and has put no troops on the ground (and too few U.S. Border Patrol agents) to secure our contiguous border with Mexico to repell an invasion that continues largely unabated.

The president has patronized the American people in telling them time and again that America is fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan so that it does not have to fight them here at home.

Meanwhile, our borders can be virtually breeched at will. We see that; we read about it; we know the Bush administration is sucking and blowing on national security. We're not fools.

After all, if our lack of border security has led to a ruthless illegal immigrant gang -- MS-13 -- establishing itself in 33 states, than is it any leap in logic to presume that al Qaeda operatives are here and poised to hurt us, owing to unsecured borders?

FOLLOW-UP: If you challenge my comment to the effect that the Bush administration is talking out of both sides of its mouth vis-a-vis enhanced border security, then gain some clarity by reading this important post at The Dan Stein Report. OTMs ("Other Than Mexicans") pose a serious threat to national security. According to Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), 48,000 OTMs from "countries of interest" were interdicted in 2005, which statistically suggests that around 240,000 entered our country undetected.

FOLLOW-UP II: Yet another post that reinforces what I'm talking about.

FOLLOW-UP III: Don't miss this eye-opening post from Lone Wacko!

WAPO ANSWERS QUESTION POSED BY ANN COULTER

2006-01-20T08:32:00.000-06:00

It appears that the Washington Post has answered the question posed by Ann Coulter in the title of one of her books -- "How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must)."

The answer: you don't. Or, maybe better put: you can't.

This story explains the genesis of WaPo's epiphany!

The Washington Post shut down one of its blogs Thursday after the newspaper's ombudsman raised the ire of readers by writing that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to the Democrats as well as to Republicans.

In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff "had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties," prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog.

There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper's staff could not "keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff," and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.

"We're not giving up on the concept of having a healthy public dialogue with our readers, but this experience shows that we need to think more carefully about how we do it," Brady wrote on the newspaper's Web site.

Progress? Maybe so. While the Washington Post rethinks how to have a "healthy public dialogue" with the left side of the blogosphere (good luck), maybe the Democratic Party could similarly do some soul-searching. Its liberal figureheads, after all, sound more like chatting Harry Bellefonte dolls these days than the party's statesmen of old.

"BLOGGER.COM" DOLDRUMS

2006-01-19T09:14:00.000-06:00

"Blogger" has been acting up this week and my frustration level is spiraling. For reasons I don't understand and that the "Blogger" Help Desk has yet to resolve, I cannot append Technorati tags to my posts. I wrote to the Help Desk and received back one of those customary auto-replies that asks you to do the obvious while you cool your blogging heels waiting for some bona fide assistance. Earlier this week I experienced an HTML meltdown in my site's template and had to reload my template with a copy I had saved at the end of last year. It certainly was my fault for not doing at least weekly copying of the template and dutifully saving those copies in Notepad; but, that said, I lost in the process a number of new links I had loaded into my sidebar since the first of the year. As if this were not enough, there have been frequent episodes this week of my blog not entirely loading banners and photos. This has occurred with Microsoft and with Mozilla Firefox. One minute, ACSOL loads just fine; another minute later, it does not.

I apologize to my regular readers and to those who have visited this week for the first time. I'm trying to get these issues resolved, but I'm afraid I'm hamstrung at the moment by a Help Desk that hasn't gotten to me yet.

WHAT IF THE SCOTUS ROLES WERE REVERSED?

2006-01-18T10:50:00.000-06:00

Imagine, just for a minute, if Samuel Alito were already on the United States Supreme Court and had written the SCOTUS decision upholding New Hampshire's parental notification law, rather than retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Conner.

And imagine if Sandra Day O'Conner were instead President George Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court and the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings were beginning next Monday.

I wonder what kinds of questions Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer would put to her in attempting to draw her out on her views of the New Hampshire statute and Alito's majority opinion? Would she get hammered or get the kid's gloves treatment?

SENATOR KENNEDY QUITS HARVARD'S SPANISH CLUB

2006-01-18T08:58:00.000-06:00

Much has been made of Senator Ted Kennedy's belated (some 50 years after joining) withdrawal from the all-white, males-only, Owl Club -- a club long ago disavowed by and chased from the Harvard University campus. We have The Washington Times to thank for that bit of investigative reporting in the wake of Kennedy's persistent grilling of SCOTUS nominee Samuel Alito over his membership in Princeton University's Concerned Alumni of Princeton ("CAP").

But what about a new rumor swirling about in Boston and Washington D.C. political circles -- namely, that the senior senator from Massachusetts has had a long-standing stand-in maintaining his membership in Harvard's Spanish Club and that dues' money was routed through this individual to the campus?

"Film at 11:00!"

FOLLOW-UP: Wizbang! reports that the plot thickens.

ACE OF SPADES HQ "TOP 10 LIST"

2006-01-18T07:48:00.000-06:00

Hillary Clinton, the shrill, "It Takes A Village," left-of-Left Liberal camouflaged by her handlers as a wayward democratic centrist (which is laughable), popped off on the occassion of the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to use the race card and equate the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives with a "plantation."

Well, leave it to ACE to come up with a piece of well-honed brilliance.

Enjoy!

FOLLOW-UP: The MSM, of course, is rationalizing Hillary's race-baiting. Big surprise, right?

FOLLOW-UP II: Don't miss reading Michelle Malkin's townhall.com column, linked at La Shawn Barber's Corner.

"A CHOCOLATE NEW ORLEANS" -- "GOD WANTS IT"

2006-01-17T12:30:00.000-06:00

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans is no better at proselytizing, than he is at employing under-utilized school buses and outfitting "shelters of last resort" in a crisis. The man is incompetent and two quarts low on intelligence.

And someone ought to break the news to him: New Orleans is fast-becoming a Mexican settlement.

NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate.

After all, I tried to tell him.

FOLLOW-UP: Priceless!

FOLLOW-UP II: The inevitable Robertson-style, post-inflammatory-remarks apology has been issued by Mayor Nagin (linked by Michelle Malkin).

MEXICAN ARMY INCURSIONS INTO U.S.

2006-01-17T11:20:00.000-06:00

On January 7th, in a post entitled, "Isn't It About Time America Holds Mexico Accountable?," I wrote:

Assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents, including shootings, increased dramatically in 2005 and included not only rock-throwing, but automatic weapons fire. Mexican soldiers have even crossed into the United States illegally and fired on Border Patrol agents! That's right: the Mexican military poses a clear and present threat to the U.S. Border Patrol. And, fact is, you can go back as far as 1999 and still find a record of 341 assaults on Border Patrol agents. It's disgraceful and it continues unabated.

President Bush must stop mollycoddling Vicente Fox and allowing Mexico to interfere in U.S. domestic and international policy. Mexico poses, through its actions and inactions vis-a-vis the illegal alien invasion of the United States, a significant threat to America's national security.

Troops should be placed on the border to complement and bolster the efforts of U.S. Border Patrol agents, and to protect them. If Mexican military troops, federal police, and/or paramilitary elements hereafter illegally cross into the United States, the United States should respond by taking out illegal alien staging areas in northern Mexico.

Today, "Mark In Mexico" makes the following statements in this post of his:

The last time the United States was invaded by a foreign army, in uniform, was 2005, and it may have happened again this year, we just don't know about it, yet. This shocking report and graphic relates that the Mexican Army has repeatedly violated our sovereignty - 9 times in 2005 and many more times in the previous years, totaling 216 incursions since 1996. These incursions into United States territory are to protect drug smugglers. These Mexican incursions have been met on more than one occasion by lightly armed US Border Patrol officers who have had to withdraw.

Read the whole thing and then write to your congressman!

FOLLOW-UP: Peter Brimelow of the VDARE blog provides the names of some RNC members deserving of kudos. More from VDARE's Bryanna Bevins on the MSM amazingly getting the story out on the Mexican Army's incursions into the United States.

FOLLOW-UP II: Do read The Washington Times' piece on the brazenness of Vicente Fox's government and its armed forces. Why does President Bush not act?

FOLLOW-UP III: And don't forget we also have the issue of Mexico's consulates in the United States insinuating themselves into America's domestic policies!

FOLLOW-UP IV: The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, is apparently getting religion and issued a hard-hitting, five-page "newsletter" last Friday to the Vicente Fox government in Mexico. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's been appropriately termed a "stealth" press release in that it cannot be found on the U.S. State Department Web site, nor anywhere else that I can tell. I wish it had landed an endorsement from President Bush. As with similar hard-hitting pronouncements from the DHS' Michael Chertoff, the proof will be in the pudding.

"24" SEASON OPENER

2006-01-17T10:48:00.000-06:00

I have flown extensively on business most of my adult life and, for a time, flew in and out of Ontario Airport in Ontario, California, back when it more resembled a distended farmer's market than a modern-day commercial airport, and only a good bout of smog, common to the area, could obscure its harsher, dissonant attributes. I was reminded in the riveting, tension-filled, 4-hours', season-5 opener of Fox's "24" of all of the ramshackle airports I have killed time in (White Plains Airport is another that comes to mind) in my lifetime and the thought occurred to me: "What ungodly places to die in!"

In watching, along with some 16+ million other inveterate fans of "24" the Sunday-Monday night, 4-episode, season kick-off, I still don't know which was more disheartening: the death of TCU's (Counter Terrorist Unit) comely Michelle Dessler (played by Reiko Aylesworth) in a car bomb explosion in the opening minutes of the first segment or the memory of dreary Ontario Airport in the old days and the dreadful thought of being a terrified hostage held there in a nondescript terminal, forced face down on a dirty tile floor by hooded fanatics. It's a fate worse than a center seat on a filled-to-the-gills 737.

Sean Astin of "Rudy" fame joined the "24" cast in last night's episodes and, in recognizing Jack Bauer's "duress code," saved the day and should have been carried out of Los Angeles' CTU offices on Chloe's shoulders. These heroics aside, one is not sure at this point whether or not his character will prove to be a team-player or a White House-placed nemesis. "24" has an inimitable way of keeping its faithful guessing and, in part, that's the allure of the show.

But what "24" is really all about is tantamount to comic book heroics and what's wrong with that? Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) may not run into phone booths and strip down to his Superman costume before fending off terrorists, but "here he comes to save the day" would be a thoroughly apropos theme song lyric for the show. He's to the GWOT what Charles Bronson's character, Paul Kersey, in "Death Wish" was to street crime -- a well-armed, single-minded Ubermensch who rids the world of rank undesirables with impunity.

I know this: I'd rather watch four hours of Jack Bauer fending off terrorists at Ontario Airport than two gay cowboys herding sheep in Wyoming.

FOLLOW-UP: RightWingNuthouse provides "24" fans with plot summaries!

FOLLOW-UP II: One of the Houston Chronicle's resident bloggers, Kyrie O'Conner (author of the "MeMo" blog), has decided to pull an indignant arrow from her quiver and take a cheap shot at me (a "Houston Chronicle" subscriber no less!) for my uninterest in watching two gay "sheepboys" fall in love on the big screen. That, of course, leads to her testiness in thinking that I'm trying to prove I have testes. I'm comfortable in my manhood, Kyrie, and, as information, only really enjoyed one movie that John Wayne made -- "Red River" -- which had as its principal supporting actor a marvelous actor, Montgomery Clift, who was gay in his private life and preferred men over Elizabeth Taylor. Since I've watched that movie on Turner Classic Movies at least a dozen or more times I hope you'll let me off the hook and not infer that I'm a "homophobe" for having no interest in supporting Hollywood's Leftie agenda. You strike me as being more than "cranky and feverish" today. You must be hallucinating on ground portobello mushrooms to characterize the Jack Bauer character on "24" as a "homoerotic figure." Just what kind of magazines do you keep by your sick bed?

EFFETE HOLLYWOOD

2006-01-17T07:54:00.000-06:00

This line from the Associated Press (AP) story on last night's Golden Globe awards says it all: why I didn't watch and why my wife can seldom drag me to the movie theatre.

Homosexual and transsexual themes dominated Monday's Golden Globes with the key wins by "Brokeback Mountain," plus acting honors for the film biography "Capote" and the gender-bending "Transamerica."

FOLLOW-UP: Hurrah for blogger-journalist Debbie Schlussel; I couldn't agree more!

HOUSTON CHRONICLE PUBLISHES YET ANOTHER OVER-THE-TOP EDITORIAL ON ILLEGAL IMMIGATION

2006-01-16T01:28:00.000-06:00

An editorial published in today's edition of the Houston Chronicle -- hyperbolically entitled "Dickensian America" -- is yet another example of its editorial board's hard-wired, open borders', pro-sanctuary city agenda on illegal immigration; but today's portion of undiluted propaganda is a super-sized helping of Pablum and begs a response, just as another of its quantum leaps in sophistry deserved a reply recently.

It is the Chronicle's position that there is a striking, incontrovertible parallel between today's treatment in America of children illegally migrating here alone and the "horrendous cruelty of the Industrial Revolution," in which "small children" were forced into "factories and debtors' jails as if they were adults" -- a Dickensesque landscape of unimaginable horrors in which "globalization" and "free trade incentives" become, for the Chronicle's hand-wringing editorialist, the modern-day antecedents of a horrific fate for unaccompanied, adolescent border-jumpers. That fate here in the States, suggests the Chronicle, is no better than the one found in the children's homelands: a fate of "persecution, abuse, and other (forms of) hardship."

This gloom and doom scenario is predicated on a three-year-old Amnesty International report, "Why Am I Here?," which describes, according to the Chronicle, "what these child migrants must endure" -- namely, the slings and arrows of an indifferent country (i.e., the United States of America) which "punishes child refugees and illegal migrants like adults." Need I go into the percentage of children who cross the border eluding interdiction, who make up a goodly portion of the 11 - 12 million illegals already here in this country (some say it's more like 18 - 20 million) or of the 350,000 - 400,000 right here in Houston? Need I go into the amount of taxpayers' money expended to provide education, healthcare, and a variety of social services to these minors?

But having painted such a grim picture and pulled at the heartstrings of its readers, the Houston Chronicle offers no prescriptions (or corroboration to support the "AI" report), other than to say the obvious, if indeed the picture it limns is truly so bleak:

Whatever Americans decide about illegal immigration policy, unprotected, solitary child migrants cannot serve as pawns. Citizens should insist that whatever legislation is passed include the Unaccompanied Child Act. Any minor who migrates here alone has been propelled by adult failures. It is the duty of all who find child refugees and child migrants to protect them.

No mention is made, of course, of the U.S. Border Patrol's BORSTAR program, which engages in search and rescue missions along the contiguous U.S.-Mexico border, helping illegals, including children, suffering medical emergencies, or, for that matter, of its humanitarian work to train Mexico's Beta Group and Civil Protection force in search and rescue techniques. No mention is made of ICE's successful "Operation Predator" -- a program targeting "foreign nationals who have previously been convicted of sex crimes against children -- including rape, statutory assault on a child, aggravated sexual battery, sexual abuse, and indecent liberties." Nor is there any mention in this stilted editorial of Amnesty International's issues with the government of Mexico. Nor, to be sure, is there any mention of how the Mexican government turns its back on its hapless, under-privileged children. Why does the Chronicle point its finger of scorn at the United States, rather than at the government of Mexico?

Well, I'll provide a prescription: border fencing, state-of-the-art electronic surveillance, sufficient U.S. Border Patrol agents, National Guardsmen, and, if necessary, U.S. Armed Forces personnel staged along the border to complement and protect the Border Patrol. That's for starters. There's also the issue of the Vicente Fox regime encouraging Mexican nationals to emigrate illegally to the United States.

Fact is, if adolescent border-jumpers cannot get into this country, then our government can devote itself to helping American citizens, under the age of 18, who need humanitarian assistance, such as those children impacted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, who have been dispossessed of homes and, in many instances, lost one or both parents in these natural disasters. Let's do some hand-wringing over the plight of American citizens and reinforce that it is the obligation of Mexico and other Central America governments to help their own, rather than export them illegally.

Moreover, let's remind ourselves that our own country's children are impacted by the illegal alien problem and this nation's porous borders. This blogger, for example, has written extensively about the notorious MS-13 gang and one of its alleged victims -- Houston-area toddler, Aiden Naquin. How about a Chronicle editorial on the impact to American citizens -- men, women, and children -- of illegal alien crime?

"ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS OUR TROJAN HORSE"

2006-01-14T11:48:00.000-06:00

That's a quote of Arizona State Representative Russell Pearce's -- a recipient of the "Medal of Valor" award -- who made that statement in an interview on border security and illegal immigration, published in FrontPageMagazine.com on January 9, 2006.

I encourage ACSOL readers to find the time to read Russell Pearce's thoughts and observations, among them:

We must secure our borders (yes, build a wall, even the Governor of Colorado called for a wall) and enforce our laws now! Currently, local law enforcement has the authority to enforce immigration laws without prior permission. Our citizens deserve it, our Constitution demands it, and our Oath of Office requires us. We have the ability, the technology, the resources we just need honest and dedicated servants to honor the Rule of Law and the will of this great nation, before any talk about a Guest Worker program.

I do believe there is hope. We must, with compassion, but without apology enforce our immigration laws. I believe this is the number one issue/crises facing America. Illegal immigration is our Trojan Horse. Today in Arizona (and the nation mirrors this) 91% of those polled want more done on immigration. I don't believe there has ever been such a disconnect between the "elite" and the people, as there is on this issue. Yet we continue to have those in Washington and in the state legislatures pander for alternatives to enforcing the law.

You can't just "want more done," Folks. You have to do something about it. Call or write to your government representatives at the city, state, and federal level. Write a "Letter to the Editor" of your local newspaper. Post about border security and the illegal alien problem, if you're a blogger, as I regularly do. Get behind, as I did this week, elected officials who have the guts to stand tall and fight for strict border enforcement and immigation reform that does NOT include amnesty for lawbreakers. And use your votes to defeat elected public officials who countenance porous borders and are apologists for so-called "cheap labor" and the illegal alien invasion of this country.

And do scroll down my blog's right sidebar to the heading, "Vincent Omnia Veritas," where you will find a number of links to outstanding sites that will provide information on the hydra-headed problem of porous borders and provide guidance on how to join and support efforts to secure our borders and deport illegal aliens back to their countries of origin.

BE INFORMED AND DO SOMETHING. BE A PATRIOT!

DO PRESIDENT BUSH AND DHS SECRETARY CHERTOFF CARE ABOUT U.S. BORDER PATROL AGENTS?

2006-01-14T10:50:00.000-06:00

Recall back in October of last year New York's and the federal government's overarching response to intelligence that later proved to be a hoax that terrorists were going to blow up portions of the subway system of America's largest city? The major television network and cable news outlets were abuzz and the nation was truly gripped by the threat that New York City might be struck yet again. Not only were extra New York City policemen -- uniformed and undercover agents -- put on duty to patrol New York's subway system, but hundreds of New York State national guardsmen were also brought in to thwart the expected attacks.

But now that the woefully under-staffed and out-gunned U.S. Border Patrol may be the target of MS-13 for-hire assassins, where is the federal government, its glaringly inept Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and this country's chief law enforcement officer and the DHS' secretary when U.S. Border Patrol agents come under the threat of America's most notoriously violent, illegal immigrant gang?

It's pretty lame, don't you think, for the Department of Homeland Security merely to issue a confidential memorandum (i.e., an "officer safety alert") when its Border Patrol agents may now be at grave risk of death or serious injury at the hands of paid, MS-13 hit men? In point of fact, few Border Patrol agents were even aware of the memorandum or the threat to them until the news media picked up the scent. How would you like to work for an employer who cared so little about your personal, on-the-job safety?

So why haven't federal troops and state national guardsmen been moved to the border to beef up border security in a demonstrable show of force that would put MS-13 gang members, their Mexican drug cartel employers, and the corrupt government of Mexico on notice that America has the will to protect its border agents and to defeat a deadly gang that now operates in 33 states in our country?

MS-13's insidious reach is but one of many terrible consequences of three administrations' (Bush-41's, Clinton's, and Bush-43's) indifference to the human invasion that crosses our southern border, largely unimpeded, each and every day of the week. That's why we have, by conservative estimates, 11 -12 million illegal aliens afoot in our land right now, and why a gang composed largely of illegal aliens can threaten with impunity a law enforcement agency of the federal government.

Chertoff has proven to be no Elliott Ness. And President Bush talks about the national security implications of the terrorists' threat in Iraq, but looks askance at our country's porous borders and the fact that some 40,000 to 50,000 "Other Than Mexicans" (OTMs) were interdicted at our southern border in 2005 (approximately 60,000 in 2004) coming from "countries of interest" (i.e., countries that recruit, train, support, and export terrorists), which means that as many as 250,000 OTMs actually made it across undetected and now pose a material threat to our nation's homeland security! Why? Because for every interdicted illegal alien, 3-5 more enter the country undetected and unapprehended.

This blogger has reported countless times on the MS-13 threat, as well as the threat posed right here in Texas by the Zetas -- trained, Mexican para-military, for-hire assassins, working in collusion with the Mexican drug cartels. But until American voters demonstrate their concern at the voting booth not much good will come from the advocacy of strict border enforcement and immigration reform sans amnesty. The voting booth is where the rubber will meet the road. And don't look for the mainstream media in this country to keep you informed.

FOLLOW-UP: I encourage my readers to take the time to read Jerry Seper's comprehensive piece, published yesterday in "The Washington Times," on the MS-13 threat to U.S. Border Patrol agents. Apart from that threat, do understand that American citizens are regularly being murdered, raped, robbed, and assaulted by these "undocumented aliens" who have come to America, as the liberals would have us believe, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Right!

N.Z. BEARS' APPEAL FROM CENTER-RIGHT BLOGGERS

2006-01-13T16:04:00.000-06:00

I subscribe and lend my name -- Bernard Higgins of "A Certain Slant Of Light" -- to N.Z. Bear's appeal from center-right bloggers to the leadership of the House of Representatives: to wit ...

The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

H/T: Lorie Byrd of Polipundit

"WE'LL KNOW WHERE TO LOOK ..."

2006-01-13T11:30:00.000-06:00

I wish there were a better term than the over-used, ubiquitous "must-read," but this post of The Anchoress' falls neatly into that category and if I have any cachet with my readers, trust me that hers is an important read that will impact you. And kindly don't insult great writing by skimming through the piece. Read every last word of it.

TANCREDO (R-CO) WAS IN TOWN, BUT THE MSM WAS OUT TO LUNCH

2006-01-13T10:46:00.000-06:00

The nationally-recognized and, in some quarters, controversial Republican congressman from Colorado, Tom Tancredo, was in the Houston area yesterday, as this blogger reported last evening, to address a "Secure America" town hall-style meeting in Conroe, Texas, on his hot button issues: border security and illegal immigration.

Conroe, Texas, is about a 40 minutes' drive north of the George Bush International Airport and easily within reach of the mainstream media: e.g., the Houston Chronicle, Local 2 News, and Channel 11 News. But, a review of area MSM outlets reveals no coverage today of a meeting that attracted easily 150 Houston-area citizens yesterday keenly interested in Congressman Tancredo's prescriptions for this country's porous borders, the national security threat they pose, and the thorny problem of illegal immigration and its impact on our nation's culture, treasure, health, and national identity.

Houston is America's 4th largest city and is the southcentral United States' equivalent of sprawling, concrete-ridden Los Angeles. It is also home to 350,000 to 400,000 illegal aliens and a city government and major metropolitan newspaper that endorse Houston's "sanctuary city" laws. And, to be sure, its geographical proximity to the contiguous Mexico-U.S. border and a major south Texas' corridor for illegal aliens -- the Rio Grande Valley -- make the topics Tancredo addressed as important locally, as they are nationally among concerned Americans.

So why do you think the MSM was absent? I didn't see a single news truck at the venue -- you know, the big straight trucks that appear at news scenes. I didn't see television and newspaper reporters gathered to record Tancredo's observations and recommendations and to pepper him with questions after his address. There were no television cameras or bank of microphones. What there was there was nada -- the MSM ignored the man and ignored 150 or so citizens who thought Congressman Tancredo's viewpoints deserved a fair hearing.

I did, however, find a story this morning that the Wendy's hamburger chain is no longer putting tomato slices on its burgers unless the customer specifically requests them. That, of course, is need-to-know information. The threats posed by the MS-13 gang, Mexican Zetas, illegal drugs, and serious diseases reappearing in our country pale by comparison.

NOTE TO READERS:

Blogger John Hawkins' of Right Wing News published an interview he did of Congressman Tancredo and I heartily recommend it to you for the insights it provides into Mr. Tancredo's viewpoints on homeland security, porous borders, illegal immigration, and terrorism. I encourage you to read it, as the elite, Left-leaning MSM is too busy for this sort of thing.

FOLLOW-UP: This report in American Chronicle gives you a good sense of Congressman Tancredo's backbone. I only wish President Bush would see Mexico's Vicente Fox for what he is and put Mexico on notice! He needs to take a page out of Tom Tancredo's book.

FOLLOW-UP II: Here's a piece by William F. Jasper, published in "The New American," which points to the MSM's purposeful lack of coverage of newsworthy items related to dealing with border security and illegal immigration. Writes Jasper:

Completely unnoticed by many Americans - because it went largely unreported - were some important Christmas presents delivered by the House of Representatives in the closing hours of the 2005 congressional session. Thanks to the unyielding persistence of Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and two dozen members of his House Immigration Reform Caucus, aided by a growing public outcry, the House took long-overdue action to address our escalating immigration crisis. Here are the big-ticket presents that made it through the House in hard-fought battles during the final hours before the Christmas break: adoption of important new border security and immigration enforcement legislation; defeat of dangerous amnesty/guest worker proposals; and stripping from the year-end omnibus spending bill an outrageous Senate provision to vastly increase the number of H-1B visas for foreign professionals and IT workers.

All of these House actions were major victories for middle America and major defeats for the combined big government/big business/big media/big labor forces that comprise the imposing "open borders" lobby.

FOLLOW-UP III: If you'd like an opportunity to hear Congressman Tancredo speak, here's a press release issued today that lists dates and venues for his "Secure America Now" speaking tour. I found the experience yesterday worthwhile and he certainly is deserving of your support and a writing campaign aimed at all levels of government.

FOLLOW-UP IV: Businesses bail on contributing to Tom Tancredo because of his tough, no-nonsense call for strict border security and amnesty-free immigration reform. The man has integrity.

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT

MY BLOG -- "ACSOL" -- HAS A NEW HOME !!!

HOW TO SOLVE THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

AMERICAN IDOL DOWN TO 12 (AND COUNTING)

PORTS WORLD DEAL BUNGLED BY WHITE HOUSE, NOT BY AMERICAN PEOPLE

AS WE DIG MORE AND MORE INTO WHAT PASSES FOR HOMELAND SECURITY ...

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PREPARED, BUT SO ARE CONSERVATIVES

ILLEGAL ALIEN GOLD CARD -- PRICELESS!

THE DEGENERATION OF HOLLYWOOD

DEMOCRATS' MYOPIA PLAYS INTO BUSH'S LETHARGY

TWO APPROACHES TO SPENDING ISSUE

CHERTOFF'S A LIABILITY, PRESIDENT BUSH

WHY HAS BUSH LOST TOUCH WITH HIS BASE?

NATIONAL SECURITY MUST TRUMP CERTAIN BUSINESS DEALS

NEITHER A BORROWER, NOR A LENDER BE

"FEARFUL FRINGE NATIVISM" CANARD JUST A SNOW-JOB

CONGRATULATIONS, HOUSTON CHRONICLE !!!

TIME FOR THE RIGHT TO GET OUT OF DENIAL

BORDER SECURITY: A "CREDIBILITY GAP" THAT IS BECOMING THE PRESIDENT'S UNDOING

SUGGESTED READS FOR SEASON OF LENT

MICHELLE MALKIN -- A PROFILE IN COURAGE

GETTYSBURG CASINO AND LOUNGE

WOW -- DO NOT PASS GO !

THE PRESIDENT'S POPULARITY WANES -- IS INSULARITY A CULPRIT?

CONGRATULATIONS TO BOB OWENS; SYMPATHIES TO DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL

PORTS DEAL: STRATEGIC SECURITY INTERESTS TRUMPED BY ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION

ARLEN SPECTER'S IN LEAGUE WITH PRESIDENT BUSH ON GUEST WORKERS

PORTS' DEAL: THE PLOT THICKENS !!!

A TSA ANALOGY VIZ-A-VIZ THE PORTS' DEAL

WHAT ABOUT HOUSTON, MR. PRESIDENT (WHERE YOUR PARENTS RESIDE)?

WHO IS IN CHARGE THESE DAYS AT DHS?

THE "THEY'RE AN ALLY" DOG DON'T HUNT

SO MUCH FOR PRESIDENT'S DAILY SECURITY BRIEFING

WHERE'S THE MOB WHEN WE NEED IT?

MORE ON THE PORTS' ROAR (OF WHICH I'M A PART)

DUBYA DEBUTS AS MOVIE MOGUL

BUSH THREATENS FIRST-EVER VETO IF UAE PORTS DEAL DISTURBED

NEW ORLEANS NEEDS FEMA, NOT DUBAI PORTS WORLD

ARABS' MANAGEMENT OF AMERICAN PORTS : GOVERNMENT AS PROTECTOR AN ILLUSION

GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS MAY MAKE FOR UNINVITED GUESTS (JUST ASK THE COAL MINERS)

GET OVER IT!

SHANI DAVIS WINS THE GOLD IN 1,000-METER SPEEDSKATING

A PRE-ELDERLY, WET LEAF BOOMER?

BONE UP ON BLOGOSPHERE LINGO

POROUS BORDERS; FOREIGN-OWNED PORTS

MEDIA TARNISHES JACOBELLIS' SILVER

BUSH DUMP CHENEY? RIDICULOUS, PEGGY!

CHENEY'S DOG DON'T HUNT

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GRIPS HOUSTON

THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD -- A DAY LATER

IF THERE'S ANY LINGERING QUESTION WHETHER AL GORE IS SUITED FOR THE PRESIDENCY ...

FLIPPANT, CATHOLIC-BASHING EDITORIAL IN LOS ANGELES TIMES

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND BORDER SECURITY: TOP ISSUES AMONG CONSERVATIVES

CHENEY SHOOTS A LAWYER (SENATOR LEAHY IN HIDING)

NAFTA FUELS ILLICIT DRUG TRADE (AS DO AMERICAN USERS)

HOUSTON'S CHAD HEDRICK WINS GOLD !!!

OH NO! YOKO ONO "IMAGINES" THE UNIMAGINABLE

A DOLLOP OR TWO OF COMMON SENSE

PEGGY NOONAN EUPHORIC OVER KING FUNERAL ANTICS

TEXAS GOVERNOR MOVES ON BORDER VIOLENCE

VICENTE FOX MAY HIT TRIFECTA

MORALITY HAS BECOME A FICTIONAL CARTOON CHARACTER

TWO FRONT WAR ON BORDER: MEXICO'S CORRUPTION AND WASHINGTON'S APATHY

KING EULOGIZED; THE PRESIDENT SCOLDED

HOUSTON CHRONICLE HAS GONE TO THE DOGS

BORDER SECURITY-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION LINK ROUND-UP

BUSH '43 DESERVES NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

THE STAR-MANGLED BANNER

WHAT ROBERT NOVAK FAILED TO CITE

YAWN -- BLOGGERS' PREOCCUPATION WITH CINDY SHEEHAN

BUSH'S SOTU IS "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

PRESIDENT BUSH'S "STATE OF THE ADDICTION" ADDRESS

TONIGHT'S "STATE OF THE UNION" ADDRESS

ALITO CONFIRMED; CONSTITUTION REAFFIRMED

GOOGLE REPLACED WITH YAHOO SEARCH AT ACSOL

TOM, DICK, OR HARRY? HARDLY!

SCHWARZENEGGER'S BECOMING THE GOVERNOR HE REPLACED

MEXICO PUBLISHES MAPS TO HELP ILLEGAL BORDER JUMPERS

WHO SAYS IT'S NOT A WAR ON THE BORDER?

SENATOR FEINSTEIN HAS IT "RIGHT"