http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342312,00.html
Throw the Book at 'Em: Judge Sentences Three Men to Learn English or Go to JailThursday, March 27, 2008
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — A judge known for creative sentencing has ordered three Spanish-speaking men to learn English or go to jail.
The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs, Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said.
The men, Luis Reyes, Ricardo Dominguez and Rafael Guzman-Mateo, plus a fourth defendant, Kelvin Reyes-Rosario, all needed translators when they pleaded guilty Tuesday.
"Do you think we are going to supply you with a translator all of your life?" the judge asked them.
The four, ranging in age from 17 to 22, were in a group that police said accosted two men on a street in May. The two said they were asked if they had marijuana, told to empty their pockets, struck on the head, threatened with a gun and told to stay off the block.
Attorneys for the men said they were studying the legality of the ruling and had not decided whether to appeal. One of the attorneys, Ferris Webby, suggested that the ruling was good for his client, Guzman-Mateo.
"My client is happy," Webby said. "I think it's going to help him."
The judge sentenced the four men to jail terms of four to 24 months. But he gave the three men, who already had served at least four months, immediate parole. Reyes-Rosario remains imprisoned on an unrelated drug charge.
Olszewski ordered the three to return with their parole officers in a year and take an English test. "If they don't pass, they're going in for the 24 (months)," he said.
Olszewski is known for outside-the-box sentencing.
He has ordered young defendants who are school dropouts to finish school. He often orders defendants to get full-time employment. But he also has his staff coordinate with an employment agency to help them find the jobs.
--------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
While I like creative rulings... paroling these men is a slap on the wrist.
Are these men LEGAL IMMIGRANTS???? That's my main question. If they are illegals.. they should serve their jail time and then be deported.
"The men, who faced prison for criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, can remain on parole if they learn to read and write English, earn their GEDs and get full-time jobs."
Ummmm... I don't see how this is punishment....
Friday, March 28, 2008
Texas Authorities Struggle Against Wave of Undocumented Workers
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/usworld/news-article.aspx?storyid=105474
Texas Authorities Struggle Against Wave of Undocumented Workers
HOUSTON, TX -- Police in Jackson County, Texas are hoping new funding will help them stem the tide of illegal immigrants being smuggled through their jurisdiction.
Sheriff's deputies, police and even game wardens have been taking par in recent round-ups, but they say they're simply overwhelmed by the number of illegal immigrants they're encountering.
"It seems there are seasons when they're coming and when they're not," said Louderback. "Most of the jobs they're after are construction, outdoor-related, manual labor jobs. Those come available in the summer."
"We're a main corridor," said Louderback. "We recently had some that were from China."
Louderback said dealing with these border-related problems can, at times, strain a department with only eight deputies and three investigators.
With the spring and summer months here, Sheriff Louderback expects an increase in human smuggling.
"It's an organized effort. There's money to be made from trafficking humans," said Louderback. "They're headed to Houston. Houston is the draw that they're headed to."
Louderback also said there have been times when his deputies spotted so many car loads of illegal immigrants on the road at the same time they had to let some of them go because they just didn't have the manpower to chase down all of the cars.
Jackson County is now getting help through the Governor's Border Star program, which gives grant money and extra resources to all border counties.
Jackson County is the tail end of the Coastal Bend region and will get more $200,000 specifically to help combat human smuggling.
Last year alone, Jackson County arrested close to 670 illegal immigrants, but also report approximately another 680 got away.
-----------------------
OTHERS COMMENTS:
Fool on the hill
Petaluma, CA
Well, I'm glad to see some governmental agencies are finaly begining to wake up. They won't realize that there is a problem until they try to put a stop to it and now they are trying to put a stop to it.
mick
Dallas, TX Where is the Gov Perry while this invasion continues? He is meeting with Mexico to inport even more Illegals!
American K
Cheyenne, WY this problem has been going on such a long time now. at least cities are finally starting to take notice and fight back. our government has failed us so far. i hear half of houston is hispanic and i'm willing to bet half of those hispanics are illegal.
it's horrible that so many of our tax dollars are spent trying to catch these illegal aliens but it has to be done. i'd much rather have my taxes go to law enforcement and get these invaders before they settle and have anchor babies. when they do that they get all the benefits.
i heard on the news today that the amt of food stamp recipients has gone way up since 2001. guess who's really been invading like crazy since that time. guess who's population has grown immensly since that time. yes, the hispanic population!!
you know what really ticks me off is that the media keeps reporting about the fastest growing minority, but NEVER differentiates between the illegal and legal hispanic population. why is this? it's to keep americans in the dark.
well, i think americans are finally seeing the light.
stop the madness!! end the invasion!! go after the employers and deport all of the illegal aliens. oh, and fix the 14th amendment. the loophole has been abused for way too long.
Madhatter
Hemet, CA
Wonder why all these illegals are overwhelming us?
Because of the last AMNESTY!
As well as the lack of immigration enforcement.
They've even allowed loans for illegal aliens!
The new worthless candidates have opened their big mouths about another amnesty so now millions more illegals are trying to make it in to win this big prize.
Nothing but worthless politicians in the U.S.
Ex_OC
Nampa, ID
The illegals are also coming from AZ and OK which have the best anti-illegal alien laws so far. TX is being bombarded on all sides. And yes, definitely, HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM! With all the illegals in Houston, it must look like a dump.
Bobby
Long Beach, CA
Some liberals are always blaming the U.S. and saying, well it's because of NAFTA that illegal aliens come here, etc. Absolutley TRUE. Ross Perot said there would be a giant sucking sound of jobs and money heading south. Question, does the Mexican government ever have any responsibility when it comes to "THEIR" poor. NAFTA, pushed by Bill Clinton and Hillary, has ruined many Americans also. We are going to have to fix it. The problem is the three shills for Corporate America running for President aren't going to do it. Dr. Ron Paul would but that's another story. Americans are too ignorant to even know what he is talking about.
Bobby
Long Beach, CA
I have to add another thing to my previous post. Just because illegal aliens come here looking for work, does that automatically imply that they should be allowed to stay here? They don't care about this nation. The Gran Marches in which they attacked, verbally and physically American citizens across the nation proved that. Also, why do taxpayers have to pay for their enormous social services while they work here, when so many Americans are themselves sturggling. Is the Bush Administration supported by the Democrats trying to replace Americans with a "New" people?
Still think there is no RECONQUISTA agenda?
Check out what these so called Americans have to say.
We have a mayor of Los Angeles, a speaker of to CA. state assembly, two professors, a Chairman of CA. Democratic Party, a CA. state Senator…( don’t know if they currently hold these positions)
http://nau.vodpod.com/video/1021472-the-natio...
Texas Authorities Struggle Against Wave of Undocumented Workers
HOUSTON, TX -- Police in Jackson County, Texas are hoping new funding will help them stem the tide of illegal immigrants being smuggled through their jurisdiction.
Sheriff's deputies, police and even game wardens have been taking par in recent round-ups, but they say they're simply overwhelmed by the number of illegal immigrants they're encountering.
"It seems there are seasons when they're coming and when they're not," said Louderback. "Most of the jobs they're after are construction, outdoor-related, manual labor jobs. Those come available in the summer."
"We're a main corridor," said Louderback. "We recently had some that were from China."
Louderback said dealing with these border-related problems can, at times, strain a department with only eight deputies and three investigators.
With the spring and summer months here, Sheriff Louderback expects an increase in human smuggling.
"It's an organized effort. There's money to be made from trafficking humans," said Louderback. "They're headed to Houston. Houston is the draw that they're headed to."
Louderback also said there have been times when his deputies spotted so many car loads of illegal immigrants on the road at the same time they had to let some of them go because they just didn't have the manpower to chase down all of the cars.
Jackson County is now getting help through the Governor's Border Star program, which gives grant money and extra resources to all border counties.
Jackson County is the tail end of the Coastal Bend region and will get more $200,000 specifically to help combat human smuggling.
Last year alone, Jackson County arrested close to 670 illegal immigrants, but also report approximately another 680 got away.
-----------------------
OTHERS COMMENTS:
Fool on the hill
Petaluma, CA
Well, I'm glad to see some governmental agencies are finaly begining to wake up. They won't realize that there is a problem until they try to put a stop to it and now they are trying to put a stop to it.
mick
Dallas, TX Where is the Gov Perry while this invasion continues? He is meeting with Mexico to inport even more Illegals!
American K
Cheyenne, WY this problem has been going on such a long time now. at least cities are finally starting to take notice and fight back. our government has failed us so far. i hear half of houston is hispanic and i'm willing to bet half of those hispanics are illegal.
it's horrible that so many of our tax dollars are spent trying to catch these illegal aliens but it has to be done. i'd much rather have my taxes go to law enforcement and get these invaders before they settle and have anchor babies. when they do that they get all the benefits.
i heard on the news today that the amt of food stamp recipients has gone way up since 2001. guess who's really been invading like crazy since that time. guess who's population has grown immensly since that time. yes, the hispanic population!!
you know what really ticks me off is that the media keeps reporting about the fastest growing minority, but NEVER differentiates between the illegal and legal hispanic population. why is this? it's to keep americans in the dark.
well, i think americans are finally seeing the light.
stop the madness!! end the invasion!! go after the employers and deport all of the illegal aliens. oh, and fix the 14th amendment. the loophole has been abused for way too long.
Madhatter
Hemet, CA
Wonder why all these illegals are overwhelming us?
Because of the last AMNESTY!
As well as the lack of immigration enforcement.
They've even allowed loans for illegal aliens!
The new worthless candidates have opened their big mouths about another amnesty so now millions more illegals are trying to make it in to win this big prize.
Nothing but worthless politicians in the U.S.
Ex_OC
Nampa, ID
The illegals are also coming from AZ and OK which have the best anti-illegal alien laws so far. TX is being bombarded on all sides. And yes, definitely, HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM! With all the illegals in Houston, it must look like a dump.
Bobby
Long Beach, CA
Some liberals are always blaming the U.S. and saying, well it's because of NAFTA that illegal aliens come here, etc. Absolutley TRUE. Ross Perot said there would be a giant sucking sound of jobs and money heading south. Question, does the Mexican government ever have any responsibility when it comes to "THEIR" poor. NAFTA, pushed by Bill Clinton and Hillary, has ruined many Americans also. We are going to have to fix it. The problem is the three shills for Corporate America running for President aren't going to do it. Dr. Ron Paul would but that's another story. Americans are too ignorant to even know what he is talking about.
Bobby
Long Beach, CA
I have to add another thing to my previous post. Just because illegal aliens come here looking for work, does that automatically imply that they should be allowed to stay here? They don't care about this nation. The Gran Marches in which they attacked, verbally and physically American citizens across the nation proved that. Also, why do taxpayers have to pay for their enormous social services while they work here, when so many Americans are themselves sturggling. Is the Bush Administration supported by the Democrats trying to replace Americans with a "New" people?
Still think there is no RECONQUISTA agenda?
Check out what these so called Americans have to say.
We have a mayor of Los Angeles, a speaker of to CA. state assembly, two professors, a Chairman of CA. Democratic Party, a CA. state Senator…( don’t know if they currently hold these positions)
http://nau.vodpod.com/video/1021472-the-natio...
GPO profits go to bonuses and trips
http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080327/NATION/338588834/0/BUSINESS
GPO profits go to bonuses and trips
Part two of a three-part series on the outsourcing of passports.
When the government's main printing agency booked $100 million in unexpected profit it went on a spending spree: large bonuses to top managers, trips to Paris and Las Vegas, and an official photo of the boss that cost $10,000.
The bonuses, some nearly as high as $13,000, and travel are raising questions among congressional investigators and Government Printing Office officials about whether the agency is misusing its newfound wealth and whether it received the proper authority for some of the larger compensation payments from the Office of Budget and Management.
Additionally, investigators are looking into whether Public Printer Robert C. Tapella paid close to $10,000 for photographs of himself for his office and during his swearing-in ceremony in November.
The spending comes as GPO recorded record profits of about $100 million over the past 16 months by selling blank passports produced by its printing and binding services to the State Department at more than twice the cost. The investigation also has raised security concerns about the use of overseas companies for components and assembly of the computerized electronic passports.
GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said the process for "goal-based performance" bonuses began five years ago and enables employees "to earn bonuses based on performance of the agency as a whole" as well as individual job performance.
The bonuses are part of a 2005 plan by GPO, which is a monopoly printer for the U.S. government, to generate greater revenues under the assumption that a private-sector business model is more efficient, GPO documents show.
Mr. Somerset said all travel was authorized in line with government regulations and funded through GPO's operating budget.
"GPO officials from all business units are continuously researching ideas and innovations in order to stay on the cutting edge of new technology for the 21st century," he said. "That requires GPO officials to travel domestically and internationally to pursue new manufacturing techniques, participate in conferences supporting the agency's mission of digitizing government documents, and meeting with officials from other countries ensuring the interpretability of the e-passport with supporting countries."
Mr. Somerset initially denied Mr. Tapella spent nearly $10,000 for a singled framed photograph.
Later, however, Maria S. Lefevre, GPO's chief of staff, said the work contracted for Mr. Tapella's official portrait, "was expensive," but said the high costs came from securing copyrights for five photos from the photographer. She said the costs were similar to what other government agencies pay for such portraits.
Ms. LeFevre said the purchase order for the photo for $10,000 included about $8,900 for the portrait, and an additional $2,600 for commercial photographs taken at Mr. Tapella's swearing-in ceremony Nov. 6.
Bonus question
Bush administration officials and congressional investigators said they are concerned about some of the travel by senior GPO officials and the bonuses they received.
Investigators say that at least 25 GPO officials received bonuses of between $2,000 and $12,920 that totaled $181,593. The bonuses were paid for fiscal 2005 and fiscal 2006, but have not yet been paid for 2007, investigators said.
Initially, the bonuses were only given to senior level executives, but later payments were given to other officials.
Ben Brink, the GPO official in charge of making secure documents like the e-passport, received a $5,000 bonus. Mr. Brink was the official who worked out a deal with the staff of Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, to shift the location of a secure passport production facility from Nevada, to Mississippi's Gulf Coast, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and vulnerable to severe weather.
Steven Shedd, GPO's chief financial officer, was paid a $12,920 bonus, and William Boesch Jr., the GPO comptroller, was paid $12,128 in bonuses. GPO Chief Information Officer Reynolds Schweickhardt, was paid $8,816 in bonuses, and Bruce O'Dell, director of technology integration and transformation at GPO, was paid about $8,500 in bonuses.
Gregory Brower, the GPO general counsel until last year, also received a $7,500 bonus. Mr. Brower, now U.S. attorney in Nevada, made a key legal opinion that permitted GPO to make large profits from the sale of passports to the State Department, despite laws restricting GPO to operating at basically a break-even business model.
Chief Human Capital Officer William Harris was paid $10,792, and a GPO production manager, Robert Schwenk, was paid $11,400. Another production manager, Jeffrey Bernazzoli, was paid $9,645.
Beth Telford, secretary to the public printer, also received a $2,000 bonus. Judith Russell, GPO's superintendent of documents was given a $7,500 bonus, and Veronica Meter, GPO's public relations director was given a $6,336 bonus.
Profit limits
Critics, however, said generating large profits is not part of GPO's allowed operating regulations, which limit the agency to operating at a break-even business model.
The pressure to generate GPO revenue has brought results. Investigators say overall revenues generated by GPO increased sharply from $775 million in fiscal 2006, to $888 million last year to a projected level of just over $1 billion this year. All the added revenues come from GPO's Security and Intelligent Document unit, which makes the blank e-passports.
"Encouraging increased revenues is proper for the private sector," said one administration official close to GPO. "But for a government monopoly, it translates into higher costs for customers and for the American taxpayer."
Additionally, records obtained by congressional investigators show unusual travel by senior GPO officials to conferences and other events in such places as Las Vegas; Atlantic City, N.J.; London; Paris; Hamburg, Germany; and Tokyo, among other locations.
Mr. Brink, the assistant public printer for Security and Intelligence Documents, for example, traveled to Paris in June 2006 for an electronic-passport forum that cost more than $5,000. He also traveled to London in May 2006 for a trip that cost $3,800.
Mr. Brower, who was the general counsel and acting inspector general, also traveled extensively throughout the United States, and Rick Grasso, GPO's information technology specialist, made trips to London; Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; Bangkok and numerous domestic U.S. trips between 2003 and 2007, totaling more than $50,000.
Former Public Printer Bruce James logged about $22,000 in travel including a trip to Paris in June 2006 that cost more than $15,000.
James A. "Tony" Ogden, a GPO lawyer and adviser, also made extensive travel costing more than $21,000, including a 2004 trip to Hawaii and a 2006 trip to Paris. He also traveled to Hamburg and Milan, Italy, in 2006. Mr. Ogden is currently the GPO inspector general.
Mr. Tapella, the current public printer in charge of GPO, also traveled extensively when he was GPO chief of staff, spending more than $50,000, including two trips to Paris in 2006 that cost $17,000.
Security question
Additionally, The Washington Times' investigation disclosed that the security of the blank-passport production involves computer chips purchased in Europe and then shipped to Thailand for outfitting with a wire antenna that transmits personal data to an electronic scanner at U.S. border entry points. Security specialists said the use of foreign chips and assembly abroad makes the blank passports, a key travel document, vulnerable to theft or counterfeiting.
GPO officials, however, insist the production process is secure.
A Dutch company that assembles e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., said it could not guarantee steady production of passports and warned in its annual report that social unrest in Thailand could halt production.
Internal GPO documents obtained by The Times revealed that GPO has faced security problems related to passport production, including the use of unsecure FedEx couriers.
Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department said they review security of overseas suppliers and that the production process is secure.
GPO said it chose foreign suppliers over U.S. chip manufacturers because no U.S. companies could make the chips needed.
GPO profits go to bonuses and trips
Part two of a three-part series on the outsourcing of passports.
When the government's main printing agency booked $100 million in unexpected profit it went on a spending spree: large bonuses to top managers, trips to Paris and Las Vegas, and an official photo of the boss that cost $10,000.
The bonuses, some nearly as high as $13,000, and travel are raising questions among congressional investigators and Government Printing Office officials about whether the agency is misusing its newfound wealth and whether it received the proper authority for some of the larger compensation payments from the Office of Budget and Management.
Additionally, investigators are looking into whether Public Printer Robert C. Tapella paid close to $10,000 for photographs of himself for his office and during his swearing-in ceremony in November.
The spending comes as GPO recorded record profits of about $100 million over the past 16 months by selling blank passports produced by its printing and binding services to the State Department at more than twice the cost. The investigation also has raised security concerns about the use of overseas companies for components and assembly of the computerized electronic passports.
GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said the process for "goal-based performance" bonuses began five years ago and enables employees "to earn bonuses based on performance of the agency as a whole" as well as individual job performance.
The bonuses are part of a 2005 plan by GPO, which is a monopoly printer for the U.S. government, to generate greater revenues under the assumption that a private-sector business model is more efficient, GPO documents show.
Mr. Somerset said all travel was authorized in line with government regulations and funded through GPO's operating budget.
"GPO officials from all business units are continuously researching ideas and innovations in order to stay on the cutting edge of new technology for the 21st century," he said. "That requires GPO officials to travel domestically and internationally to pursue new manufacturing techniques, participate in conferences supporting the agency's mission of digitizing government documents, and meeting with officials from other countries ensuring the interpretability of the e-passport with supporting countries."
Mr. Somerset initially denied Mr. Tapella spent nearly $10,000 for a singled framed photograph.
Later, however, Maria S. Lefevre, GPO's chief of staff, said the work contracted for Mr. Tapella's official portrait, "was expensive," but said the high costs came from securing copyrights for five photos from the photographer. She said the costs were similar to what other government agencies pay for such portraits.
Ms. LeFevre said the purchase order for the photo for $10,000 included about $8,900 for the portrait, and an additional $2,600 for commercial photographs taken at Mr. Tapella's swearing-in ceremony Nov. 6.
Bonus question
Bush administration officials and congressional investigators said they are concerned about some of the travel by senior GPO officials and the bonuses they received.
Investigators say that at least 25 GPO officials received bonuses of between $2,000 and $12,920 that totaled $181,593. The bonuses were paid for fiscal 2005 and fiscal 2006, but have not yet been paid for 2007, investigators said.
Initially, the bonuses were only given to senior level executives, but later payments were given to other officials.
Ben Brink, the GPO official in charge of making secure documents like the e-passport, received a $5,000 bonus. Mr. Brink was the official who worked out a deal with the staff of Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, to shift the location of a secure passport production facility from Nevada, to Mississippi's Gulf Coast, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and vulnerable to severe weather.
Steven Shedd, GPO's chief financial officer, was paid a $12,920 bonus, and William Boesch Jr., the GPO comptroller, was paid $12,128 in bonuses. GPO Chief Information Officer Reynolds Schweickhardt, was paid $8,816 in bonuses, and Bruce O'Dell, director of technology integration and transformation at GPO, was paid about $8,500 in bonuses.
Gregory Brower, the GPO general counsel until last year, also received a $7,500 bonus. Mr. Brower, now U.S. attorney in Nevada, made a key legal opinion that permitted GPO to make large profits from the sale of passports to the State Department, despite laws restricting GPO to operating at basically a break-even business model.
Chief Human Capital Officer William Harris was paid $10,792, and a GPO production manager, Robert Schwenk, was paid $11,400. Another production manager, Jeffrey Bernazzoli, was paid $9,645.
Beth Telford, secretary to the public printer, also received a $2,000 bonus. Judith Russell, GPO's superintendent of documents was given a $7,500 bonus, and Veronica Meter, GPO's public relations director was given a $6,336 bonus.
Profit limits
Critics, however, said generating large profits is not part of GPO's allowed operating regulations, which limit the agency to operating at a break-even business model.
The pressure to generate GPO revenue has brought results. Investigators say overall revenues generated by GPO increased sharply from $775 million in fiscal 2006, to $888 million last year to a projected level of just over $1 billion this year. All the added revenues come from GPO's Security and Intelligent Document unit, which makes the blank e-passports.
"Encouraging increased revenues is proper for the private sector," said one administration official close to GPO. "But for a government monopoly, it translates into higher costs for customers and for the American taxpayer."
Additionally, records obtained by congressional investigators show unusual travel by senior GPO officials to conferences and other events in such places as Las Vegas; Atlantic City, N.J.; London; Paris; Hamburg, Germany; and Tokyo, among other locations.
Mr. Brink, the assistant public printer for Security and Intelligence Documents, for example, traveled to Paris in June 2006 for an electronic-passport forum that cost more than $5,000. He also traveled to London in May 2006 for a trip that cost $3,800.
Mr. Brower, who was the general counsel and acting inspector general, also traveled extensively throughout the United States, and Rick Grasso, GPO's information technology specialist, made trips to London; Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; Bangkok and numerous domestic U.S. trips between 2003 and 2007, totaling more than $50,000.
Former Public Printer Bruce James logged about $22,000 in travel including a trip to Paris in June 2006 that cost more than $15,000.
James A. "Tony" Ogden, a GPO lawyer and adviser, also made extensive travel costing more than $21,000, including a 2004 trip to Hawaii and a 2006 trip to Paris. He also traveled to Hamburg and Milan, Italy, in 2006. Mr. Ogden is currently the GPO inspector general.
Mr. Tapella, the current public printer in charge of GPO, also traveled extensively when he was GPO chief of staff, spending more than $50,000, including two trips to Paris in 2006 that cost $17,000.
Security question
Additionally, The Washington Times' investigation disclosed that the security of the blank-passport production involves computer chips purchased in Europe and then shipped to Thailand for outfitting with a wire antenna that transmits personal data to an electronic scanner at U.S. border entry points. Security specialists said the use of foreign chips and assembly abroad makes the blank passports, a key travel document, vulnerable to theft or counterfeiting.
GPO officials, however, insist the production process is secure.
A Dutch company that assembles e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., said it could not guarantee steady production of passports and warned in its annual report that social unrest in Thailand could halt production.
Internal GPO documents obtained by The Times revealed that GPO has faced security problems related to passport production, including the use of unsecure FedEx couriers.
Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department said they review security of overseas suppliers and that the production process is secure.
GPO said it chose foreign suppliers over U.S. chip manufacturers because no U.S. companies could make the chips needed.
U.S. Based Revolution Muslim Website Spreading Messages of Hate
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341811,00.html
U.S. Based Revolution Muslim Website Spreading Messages of Hate
NEW YORK, N.Y. — On any given day, log on to RevolutionMuslim.com and a host of startling images appear:
— The Statue of Liberty, with an ax blade cutting through her side;
— Video mocking the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, entitled "Daniel Pearl I am Happy Your Dead :) ";
— Video of a puppet show lampooning U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq;
— The latest speech from Sheikh Abdullah Faisal, an extremist Muslim cleric convicted in the UK and later deported for soliciting the murder of non-Muslims.
Even more surprising is that RevolutionMuslim.com isn't being maintained in some remote safe house in Pakistan. Instead, Yousef al-Khattab, the Web site creator, runs it from his home in the New York City Borough of Queens.
And, because al-Khattab enjoys the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, all the authorities can do is watch.
Formerly known as Joseph Cohen, al-Khattab is an American-born Jew who converted to Islam after attending an Orthodox Rabbinical school, which he later described as a “racist cult.”
The 39-year-old New York taxi driver launched RevolutionMuslim.com with the mission of “preserving Islamic culture,” “calling people to the oneness of God” and asking them to “support the beloved Sheik Abdullah Faisal, who’s preaching the religion of Islam and serving as a spiritual guide.”
In 2003 Faisal was convicted in the U.K. for spreading messages of racial hatred and urging his followers to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. In sermon recordings played at his trial, Faisal called on young, impressionable Muslims to use chemical weapons to “exterminate unbelievers” and “cut the throat of the Kaffars [nonbelievers] with [a] machete.”Authorities believe Faisal’s sermons have influenced 2005 London transport bomber Germaine Lindsay and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who attended mosques where Faisal preached.
At times, al-Khattab's postings are farcical, such as a picture of him holding the book "Nuclear Jihad" with a wry smile on his face. Other messages call for radical Muslim rule worldwide.
Al-Khattab claims the Sept. 11 terror attacks were an “inside job,” and he blames U.S. foreign policy for spawning the terrorism that carried out the attacks.
He calls Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002 by Islamic extremists in Pakistan, “a convicted spy.”
“I could care less about Daniel Pearl,” al-Khattab said in an interview with FOXNews.com. “I’m happy to see that he’s gone.”
The content changes constantly. One reason is that the fast flow of information allows messages to spread through cyberspace quickly. Another, terrorism analysts say, is to make it difficult for law enforcement to monitor the site.
Despite his radical anti-Western views, al-Khattab says he does not support terrorism of any kind.
Yet, RevolutionMuslim.com claims to be the official site of “North American representatives” for Sheikh Faisal, and it appears dedicated to spreading his radical doctrine.
He says Faisal “never said to kill innocent people” and was unjustly imprisoned. He says the real terror organizations are the U.S. Army, the CIA, and the FBI — and the National Coast Guard, “to a lesser extent.”
According to RevolutionMuslim, Faisal — who was deported to his native Jamaica in 2007 — is now receiving donations solicited on the site, including money for a new laptop and DVD burner to spread his message.
It's not illegal to post these messages or collect money for Faisal, but it would be if Faisal were designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. He currently is not listed on any government terror list; a Department of Justice spokesman could not confirm or deny if Faisal is being investigated for any terror related activity.
RevolutionMuslim may look amateurish when compared with other extremist Web sites, but it is no less of a threat, says Mia Bloom, political science professor at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.
“It may lead people who become radicalized by it to turn to other, more dangerous Web sites,” such as those run by terrorist organizations, she said.
Bloom characterized al-Khattab’s message as “narrow” and “misinformed” and said he is attempting to “proselytize or radicalize people who share some of these same ideas.”
“[He] has obviously been duped or is duping others because that’s not what Islam preaches,” she said.
On his site al-Khattab appears to condemn the very democracy that guarantees him the freedom to express himself — a freedom he cites in a disclaimer on his homepage:
“We hereby declare and make absolute public declaration that revolutionmuslim.com operates under the first amendment right to freedom of religion and expression and that in no way, shape, or form do we call for war against the U.S. government or adhere to the enemies of the United States elsewhere.”
Under the law FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said it is difficult to bring criminal charges against the operators of Web sites like RevolutionMuslim.com unless specific threats are made against an individual or individuals.
Kolko while not speaking directly about RevolutionMuslim said radical sites like these are not often prosecuted.
"It's usually a First Amendment right if they don't cross the threshold of making any threats," said Kolko. "There's nothing we should or could do."
“Until the rhetoric reaches the point in which it’s no longer protected speech under the first amendment, it’s hard to stop it,” said security expert, Harvey Kushner.
--------------------
MY COMMENTS:
DEPORT THIS MAN IMMEDIATELY. There is a difference between freedom of speech and inciting hate.
U.S. Based Revolution Muslim Website Spreading Messages of Hate
NEW YORK, N.Y. — On any given day, log on to RevolutionMuslim.com and a host of startling images appear:
— The Statue of Liberty, with an ax blade cutting through her side;
— Video mocking the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, entitled "Daniel Pearl I am Happy Your Dead :) ";
— Video of a puppet show lampooning U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq;
— The latest speech from Sheikh Abdullah Faisal, an extremist Muslim cleric convicted in the UK and later deported for soliciting the murder of non-Muslims.
Even more surprising is that RevolutionMuslim.com isn't being maintained in some remote safe house in Pakistan. Instead, Yousef al-Khattab, the Web site creator, runs it from his home in the New York City Borough of Queens.
And, because al-Khattab enjoys the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, all the authorities can do is watch.
Formerly known as Joseph Cohen, al-Khattab is an American-born Jew who converted to Islam after attending an Orthodox Rabbinical school, which he later described as a “racist cult.”
The 39-year-old New York taxi driver launched RevolutionMuslim.com with the mission of “preserving Islamic culture,” “calling people to the oneness of God” and asking them to “support the beloved Sheik Abdullah Faisal, who’s preaching the religion of Islam and serving as a spiritual guide.”
In 2003 Faisal was convicted in the U.K. for spreading messages of racial hatred and urging his followers to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. In sermon recordings played at his trial, Faisal called on young, impressionable Muslims to use chemical weapons to “exterminate unbelievers” and “cut the throat of the Kaffars [nonbelievers] with [a] machete.”Authorities believe Faisal’s sermons have influenced 2005 London transport bomber Germaine Lindsay and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who attended mosques where Faisal preached.
At times, al-Khattab's postings are farcical, such as a picture of him holding the book "Nuclear Jihad" with a wry smile on his face. Other messages call for radical Muslim rule worldwide.
Al-Khattab claims the Sept. 11 terror attacks were an “inside job,” and he blames U.S. foreign policy for spawning the terrorism that carried out the attacks.
He calls Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002 by Islamic extremists in Pakistan, “a convicted spy.”
“I could care less about Daniel Pearl,” al-Khattab said in an interview with FOXNews.com. “I’m happy to see that he’s gone.”
The content changes constantly. One reason is that the fast flow of information allows messages to spread through cyberspace quickly. Another, terrorism analysts say, is to make it difficult for law enforcement to monitor the site.
Despite his radical anti-Western views, al-Khattab says he does not support terrorism of any kind.
Yet, RevolutionMuslim.com claims to be the official site of “North American representatives” for Sheikh Faisal, and it appears dedicated to spreading his radical doctrine.
He says Faisal “never said to kill innocent people” and was unjustly imprisoned. He says the real terror organizations are the U.S. Army, the CIA, and the FBI — and the National Coast Guard, “to a lesser extent.”
According to RevolutionMuslim, Faisal — who was deported to his native Jamaica in 2007 — is now receiving donations solicited on the site, including money for a new laptop and DVD burner to spread his message.
It's not illegal to post these messages or collect money for Faisal, but it would be if Faisal were designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. He currently is not listed on any government terror list; a Department of Justice spokesman could not confirm or deny if Faisal is being investigated for any terror related activity.
RevolutionMuslim may look amateurish when compared with other extremist Web sites, but it is no less of a threat, says Mia Bloom, political science professor at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.
“It may lead people who become radicalized by it to turn to other, more dangerous Web sites,” such as those run by terrorist organizations, she said.
Bloom characterized al-Khattab’s message as “narrow” and “misinformed” and said he is attempting to “proselytize or radicalize people who share some of these same ideas.”
“[He] has obviously been duped or is duping others because that’s not what Islam preaches,” she said.
On his site al-Khattab appears to condemn the very democracy that guarantees him the freedom to express himself — a freedom he cites in a disclaimer on his homepage:
“We hereby declare and make absolute public declaration that revolutionmuslim.com operates under the first amendment right to freedom of religion and expression and that in no way, shape, or form do we call for war against the U.S. government or adhere to the enemies of the United States elsewhere.”
Under the law FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said it is difficult to bring criminal charges against the operators of Web sites like RevolutionMuslim.com unless specific threats are made against an individual or individuals.
Kolko while not speaking directly about RevolutionMuslim said radical sites like these are not often prosecuted.
"It's usually a First Amendment right if they don't cross the threshold of making any threats," said Kolko. "There's nothing we should or could do."
“Until the rhetoric reaches the point in which it’s no longer protected speech under the first amendment, it’s hard to stop it,” said security expert, Harvey Kushner.
--------------------
MY COMMENTS:
DEPORT THIS MAN IMMEDIATELY. There is a difference between freedom of speech and inciting hate.
Charges dropped against Marine in Haditha case
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080328181017.afmb9h69&show_article=1
Charges dropped against Marine in Haditha case
Mar 28 02:11 PM US/Eastern
Charges against a US Marine allegedly involved in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha were dropped on Friday ahead of his trial, the military said in a statement.
A court martial for lance corporal Stephen Tatum had been due to start on Friday on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.
However in a statement released from the Marines Camp Pendleton base outside San Diego, the military said the charges had been dismissed "in order to continue to pursue the truth seeking process into the Haditha incident."
It was not immediately clear if fresh charges could be laid against Tatum at a later date or whether the soldier may now cooperate with prosecutors.
Tatum had been accused of shooting dead two unarmed children as Marines cleared houses near the scene of a deadly roadside bombing in Haditha, 260 kilometers west of Baghdad, on November 19, 2005.
The deaths were part of a grim civilian toll from the Marines' actions in Haditha. Four soldiers were initially charged with murder and four officers accused of staging a cover-up.
However, since charges against the soldiers were first announced in late 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.
Four of the eight have had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder were replaced by the lesser offence of manslaughter in the cases of Tatum and his squad leader Sergeant Frank Wuterich.
The military investigator overseeing Tatum's pre-trial hearing had recommended all charges against the soldier be dismissed.
The killings in Haditha are the most serious allegations of war crimes leveled at US forces since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
-----------------------
MY COMMENTS:
Do the reseacrh folks. THERE WAS NO MASSACRE AT HADITHA! IT WAS ALL A LIE!!!! These men did their job and did it well. These is video eveidence from drones to support this fact, and I hope the public will get to see the videos soon.
Charges dropped against Marine in Haditha case
Mar 28 02:11 PM US/Eastern
Charges against a US Marine allegedly involved in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha were dropped on Friday ahead of his trial, the military said in a statement.
A court martial for lance corporal Stephen Tatum had been due to start on Friday on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.
However in a statement released from the Marines Camp Pendleton base outside San Diego, the military said the charges had been dismissed "in order to continue to pursue the truth seeking process into the Haditha incident."
It was not immediately clear if fresh charges could be laid against Tatum at a later date or whether the soldier may now cooperate with prosecutors.
Tatum had been accused of shooting dead two unarmed children as Marines cleared houses near the scene of a deadly roadside bombing in Haditha, 260 kilometers west of Baghdad, on November 19, 2005.
The deaths were part of a grim civilian toll from the Marines' actions in Haditha. Four soldiers were initially charged with murder and four officers accused of staging a cover-up.
However, since charges against the soldiers were first announced in late 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.
Four of the eight have had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder were replaced by the lesser offence of manslaughter in the cases of Tatum and his squad leader Sergeant Frank Wuterich.
The military investigator overseeing Tatum's pre-trial hearing had recommended all charges against the soldier be dismissed.
The killings in Haditha are the most serious allegations of war crimes leveled at US forces since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
-----------------------
MY COMMENTS:
Do the reseacrh folks. THERE WAS NO MASSACRE AT HADITHA! IT WAS ALL A LIE!!!! These men did their job and did it well. These is video eveidence from drones to support this fact, and I hope the public will get to see the videos soon.
Doubting Global Warming Is Man-Made Is Akin To Believing Earth Is Flat
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389.shtml
Gore's Message To Climate Change Skeptics
Tells 60 Minutes That Doubting Global Warming Is Man-Made Is Akin To Believing Earth Is Flat
Gore On Climate Naysayers
Al Gore says that thinking climate change isn't manmade is like believing the moon landing was staged and that the earth is flat.
(CBS) Self-avowed "P.R. agent for the planet" Al Gore says those who still doubt that global warming is caused by man - among them, Vice President Dick Cheney - are acting like the fringe groups who think the 1969 moon landing never really happened, or who once believed the world is flat.
The former vice president and former presidential candidate talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in an interview to be broadcast this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Confronted by Stahl with the fact some prominent people, including the nation’s vice president, are not convinced that global warming is man-made, Gore responds: "You're talking about Dick Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat,” says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl.
Gore’s campaign to make the world more aware of man’s role in global warming won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He donated the $750,000 prize money to The Alliance for Climate Protection, the non-profit he started to help him on his quest. He and his wife, Tipper, tell Stahl they not only matched the Nobel money with their own, but they are also donating to the organization the significant profits from his book and Oscar-winning documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." The funds will help The Alliance for Climate Protection execute a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming set to start next week.
Some of the ads will feature unlikely alliances to drive home the message that people of all stripes are concerned about global warming. These include the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Pat Robertson, Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks, and Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich.
----------------------
MY COMMENTS:
WHAT A BUNCH OF WACKOS! If you honestly believe that mankind is the cause of global warming (if indeed there is such a thing as global warming which I doubt) you are a moron. The arth goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling. We have nothing to do with these cycles. Not saying we shouldn't try to help our enviroment, but passing ridiculous laws and all this PC green garbage is really starting to get downright annoying.
Gore's Message To Climate Change Skeptics
Tells 60 Minutes That Doubting Global Warming Is Man-Made Is Akin To Believing Earth Is Flat
Gore On Climate Naysayers
Al Gore says that thinking climate change isn't manmade is like believing the moon landing was staged and that the earth is flat.
(CBS) Self-avowed "P.R. agent for the planet" Al Gore says those who still doubt that global warming is caused by man - among them, Vice President Dick Cheney - are acting like the fringe groups who think the 1969 moon landing never really happened, or who once believed the world is flat.
The former vice president and former presidential candidate talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in an interview to be broadcast this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Confronted by Stahl with the fact some prominent people, including the nation’s vice president, are not convinced that global warming is man-made, Gore responds: "You're talking about Dick Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat,” says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl.
Gore’s campaign to make the world more aware of man’s role in global warming won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He donated the $750,000 prize money to The Alliance for Climate Protection, the non-profit he started to help him on his quest. He and his wife, Tipper, tell Stahl they not only matched the Nobel money with their own, but they are also donating to the organization the significant profits from his book and Oscar-winning documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." The funds will help The Alliance for Climate Protection execute a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming set to start next week.
Some of the ads will feature unlikely alliances to drive home the message that people of all stripes are concerned about global warming. These include the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Pat Robertson, Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks, and Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich.
----------------------
MY COMMENTS:
WHAT A BUNCH OF WACKOS! If you honestly believe that mankind is the cause of global warming (if indeed there is such a thing as global warming which I doubt) you are a moron. The arth goes through natural cycles of warming and cooling. We have nothing to do with these cycles. Not saying we shouldn't try to help our enviroment, but passing ridiculous laws and all this PC green garbage is really starting to get downright annoying.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Iran Youths' Hair Raising Rebellion.
Iran Youths' Hair Raising Rebellion.The strict dress codes imposed by Iran's religious leaders mean there is little room for personal expression for the country's youngsters.
Iran to build power plant in Nicaragua
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=599_1205389628
Iran to build power plant in Nicaragua
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:38:17
Iran will build a power plant in Nicaragua.
Nicaraguan Energy Minister Emilio Rappaccioli says Iran has approved financing to construct a power plant in the Central American country.
An Iranian firm will build the hydroelectric project which is expected to cost $120 million, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The construction of the power plant is expected to be finished by 2011.
Despite US warnings, the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has developed strong ties with Iran and Venezuela.
The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also sent large electricity generators to Nicaragua this year that have helped shorten the blackouts in the country.
MGH/RA
www.presstv.com
Iran to build power plant in Nicaragua
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:38:17
Iran will build a power plant in Nicaragua.
Nicaraguan Energy Minister Emilio Rappaccioli says Iran has approved financing to construct a power plant in the Central American country.
An Iranian firm will build the hydroelectric project which is expected to cost $120 million, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The construction of the power plant is expected to be finished by 2011.
Despite US warnings, the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has developed strong ties with Iran and Venezuela.
The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also sent large electricity generators to Nicaragua this year that have helped shorten the blackouts in the country.
MGH/RA
www.presstv.com
Silver Star to SPC Monica Brown
Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Silver Star to SPC Monica Brown in Afghanistan, March 20, 2008
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Vets for Freedom Banned From High School
Vets for Freedom Banned From High School
The socialist vermin prove everyday what side they are really on.
The socialist vermin prove everyday what side they are really on.
Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080326/NATION/840186493/1001
Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security
By Bill Gertz
March 26, 2008
FAKES: Experts fear the U.S. Government Printing Office's practice of outsourcing the manufacture of passports could lead to fakes like these counterfeit European Union passports.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the first in a three-part series on the outsourcing of passports.
The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.
The Government Printing Office's decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.
The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government's official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs.
Lawmakers said they were alarmed by The Times' findings and plan to investigate why U.S. companies weren't used to produce the state-of-the-art passports, one of the crown jewels of American border security.
"I am not only troubled that there may be serious security concerns with the new passport production system, but also that GPO officials may have been profiting from producing them," said Rep. John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department played down such concerns, saying they are confident that regular audits and other protections already in place will keep terrorists and foreign spies from stealing or copying the sensitive components to make fake passports.
"Aside from the fact that we have fully vetted and qualified vendors, we also note that the materials are moved via a secure transportation means, including armored vehicles," GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said.
But GPO Inspector General J. Anthony Ogden, the agency's internal watchdog, doesn't share that confidence. He warned in an internal Oct. 12 report that there are "significant deficiencies with the manufacturing of blank passports, security of components, and the internal controls for the process."
The inspector general's report said GPO claimed it could not improve its security because of "monetary constraints." But the inspector general recently told congressional investigators he was unaware that the agency had booked tens of millions of dollars in profits through passport sales that could have been used to improve security, congressional aides told The Times.
Decision to outsource
GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government's documents, from federal agency reports to the president's massive budget books that outline every penny of annual federal spending. Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country.
When the government moved a few years ago to a new electronic passport designed to foil counterfeiting, GPO led the work of contracting with vendors to install the technology.
Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.
According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.
Mr. Somerset, the GPO spokesman, said foreign suppliers were picked because "no domestic company produced those parts" when the e-passport production began a few years ago.
After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.
The stop in Thailand raises its own security concerns. The Southeast Asian country has battled social instability and terror threats. Anti-government groups backed by Islamists, including al Qaeda, have carried out attacks in southern Thailand and the Thai military took over in a coup in September 2006.
The Netherlands-based company that assembles the U.S. e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., warned in its latest annual report that, in a worst-case scenario, social unrest in Thailand could lead to a halt in production.
Smartrac divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America's e-passports.
Transport concerns
A 2005 document obtained by The Times states that GPO was using unsecure FedEx courier services to send blank passports to State Department offices until security concerns were raised and forced GPO to use an armored car company. Even then, the agency proposed using a foreign armored car vendor before State Department diplomatic security officials objected.
Concerns that GPO has been lax in addressing security threats contrast with the very real danger that the new e-passports could be compromised and sold on the black market for use by terrorists or other foreign enemies, experts said.
"The most dangerous passports, and the ones we have to be most concerned about, are stolen blank passports," said Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of Interpol, the Lyon, France-based international police organization. "They are the most dangerous because they are the most difficult to detect."
Mr. Noble said no counterfeit e-passports have been found yet, but the potential is "a great weakness and an area that world governments are not paying enough attention to."
Lukas Grunwald, a computer security expert, said U.S. e-passports, like their European counterparts, are vulnerable to copying and that their shipment overseas during production increases the risks. "You need a blank passport and a chip and once you do that, you can do anything, you can make a fake passport, you can change the data," he said.
Separately, Rep. Robert A. Brady, chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing, has expressed "serious reservations" about GPO's plan to use contract security guards to protect GPO facilities. In a Dec. 12 letter, Mr. Brady, a Pennsylvania Democrat, stated that GPO's plan for conducting a security review of the printing office was ignored and he ordered GPO to undertake an outside review.
Questionable profits
GPO's accounting adds another layer of concern.
The State Department is now charging Americans $100 or more for new e-passports produced by the GPO, depending on how quickly they are needed. That's up from a cost of around just $60 in 1998.
Internal agency documents obtained by The Times show each blank passport costs GPO an average of just $7.97 to manufacture and that GPO then charges the State Department about $14.80 for each, a margin of more than 85 percent, the documents show.
The accounting allowed GPO to make gross profits of more than $90 million from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 30, 2007, on the production of e-passports. The four subsequent months produced an additional $54 million in gross profits.
The agency set aside more than $40 million of those profits to help build a secure backup passport production facility in the South, still leaving a net profit of about $100 million in the last 16 months. GPO was initially authorized by Congress to make extra profits in order to fund a $41 million backup production facility at a rate of $1.84 per passport. The large surplus, however, went far beyond the targeted funding.
The large profits raised concerns within GPO because the law traditionally has mandated that the agency only charge enough to recoup its actual costs.
According to internal documents and interviews, GPO's financial officers and even its outside accounting firm began to inquire about the legality of the e-passport profits.
To cut off the debate, GPO's outgoing legal counsel signed a one-paragraph memo last fall declaring the agency was in compliance with the law prohibiting profits, but offering no legal authority to back up the conclusion. The large profits accelerated, according to the officials, after the opinion issued Oct. 12, 2007, by then-GPO General Counsel Gregory A. Brower. Mr. Brower, currently U.S. Attorney in Nevada, could not be reached and his spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
Fred Antoun, a lawyer who specializes in GPO funding issues, said the agency was set up by Congress to operate basically on a break-even financial basis.
"The whole concept of GPO is eat what you kill," Mr. Antoun said. "For the average taxpayer, for them to make large profits is kind of reprehensible."
Likewise, a 1990 report by Congress' General Accounting Office stated that "by law, GPO must charge actual costs to customers," meaning it can't mark up products for a profit.
Like the security concerns, GPO officials brush aside questions about the profits. Agency officials declined a request from The Times to provide an exact accounting of its e-passport costs and revenues, saying only it would not be accurate to claim it has earned the large profits indicated by the documents showing the difference between the manufacturing costs and the State Department fees.
Questioned about its own annual report showing a $90 million-plus profit on e-passports in fiscal year 2007 alone, the GPO spokesman Mr. Somerset would only say that he thinks the agency is in legal compliance and that "GPO is not overcharging the State Department."
Mr. Somerset said 66 different budget line items are used to price new passports and "we periodically review our pricing structure with the State Department."
Public Printer Robert Tapella, the GPO's top executive, faced similar questions during a House subcommittee hearing on March 6. Mr. Tapella told lawmakers that increased demand for passports — especially from Americans who now need them to cross into Mexico and Canada — produced "accelerated revenue recognition," and "not necessarily excess profits."
GPO plans to produce 28 million blank passports this year up from about 9 million five years ago.
A State Department consular affairs spokesman, Steve Royster referred questions to GPO on e-passports costs.
Congress to weigh in
GPO's explanations have not satisfied lawmakers, who are poised to dig deeper.
Mr. Dingell, the House Commerce chairman, said The Times' findings are "extremely serious to both the integrity of the e-passport program and to U.S. national security" and he has asked an investigative subcommittee chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, Michigan Democrat, to begin an investigation.
"Our initial inquiry suggests that more needs to be done to understand whether the supply chain is secure and fully capable of protecting the manufacturing of this critical document," Mr. Dingell told The Times.
Mr. Stupak said that considering the personal information contained on e-passports, "it is essential that the entire production chain be secure and free from potential tampering." He added: "The GPO needs to make every effort to ensure that future passport components are made in America under the tightest security possible."
Michelle Van Cleave, a former National Counterintelligence Executive, said outsourcing passport work and components creates new security vulnerabilities, not just for passports.
"Protecting the acquisition stream is a serious concern in many sensitive areas of government activity, but the process for assessing the risk to national security is at best loose and in some cases missing altogether," she told The Times.
"A U.S. passport has the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind the citizenship and identity of the bearer," she said.
"What foreign intelligence service or international terrorist group wouldn't like to be able to masquerade as U.S. citizens? It would be a profound liability for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement if we lost confidence in the integrity of our passports."
--------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
Outsourcing ANYTHING dealing with our National Security is INSANE! WHat the hell, it doesn't take a genius to figure this out. What the hell is going on in Washington?
Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security
By Bill Gertz
March 26, 2008
FAKES: Experts fear the U.S. Government Printing Office's practice of outsourcing the manufacture of passports could lead to fakes like these counterfeit European Union passports.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the first in a three-part series on the outsourcing of passports.
The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.
The Government Printing Office's decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.
The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government's official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs.
Lawmakers said they were alarmed by The Times' findings and plan to investigate why U.S. companies weren't used to produce the state-of-the-art passports, one of the crown jewels of American border security.
"I am not only troubled that there may be serious security concerns with the new passport production system, but also that GPO officials may have been profiting from producing them," said Rep. John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department played down such concerns, saying they are confident that regular audits and other protections already in place will keep terrorists and foreign spies from stealing or copying the sensitive components to make fake passports.
"Aside from the fact that we have fully vetted and qualified vendors, we also note that the materials are moved via a secure transportation means, including armored vehicles," GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said.
But GPO Inspector General J. Anthony Ogden, the agency's internal watchdog, doesn't share that confidence. He warned in an internal Oct. 12 report that there are "significant deficiencies with the manufacturing of blank passports, security of components, and the internal controls for the process."
The inspector general's report said GPO claimed it could not improve its security because of "monetary constraints." But the inspector general recently told congressional investigators he was unaware that the agency had booked tens of millions of dollars in profits through passport sales that could have been used to improve security, congressional aides told The Times.
Decision to outsource
GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government's documents, from federal agency reports to the president's massive budget books that outline every penny of annual federal spending. Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country.
When the government moved a few years ago to a new electronic passport designed to foil counterfeiting, GPO led the work of contracting with vendors to install the technology.
Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.
According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.
Mr. Somerset, the GPO spokesman, said foreign suppliers were picked because "no domestic company produced those parts" when the e-passport production began a few years ago.
After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.
The stop in Thailand raises its own security concerns. The Southeast Asian country has battled social instability and terror threats. Anti-government groups backed by Islamists, including al Qaeda, have carried out attacks in southern Thailand and the Thai military took over in a coup in September 2006.
The Netherlands-based company that assembles the U.S. e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., warned in its latest annual report that, in a worst-case scenario, social unrest in Thailand could lead to a halt in production.
Smartrac divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America's e-passports.
Transport concerns
A 2005 document obtained by The Times states that GPO was using unsecure FedEx courier services to send blank passports to State Department offices until security concerns were raised and forced GPO to use an armored car company. Even then, the agency proposed using a foreign armored car vendor before State Department diplomatic security officials objected.
Concerns that GPO has been lax in addressing security threats contrast with the very real danger that the new e-passports could be compromised and sold on the black market for use by terrorists or other foreign enemies, experts said.
"The most dangerous passports, and the ones we have to be most concerned about, are stolen blank passports," said Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of Interpol, the Lyon, France-based international police organization. "They are the most dangerous because they are the most difficult to detect."
Mr. Noble said no counterfeit e-passports have been found yet, but the potential is "a great weakness and an area that world governments are not paying enough attention to."
Lukas Grunwald, a computer security expert, said U.S. e-passports, like their European counterparts, are vulnerable to copying and that their shipment overseas during production increases the risks. "You need a blank passport and a chip and once you do that, you can do anything, you can make a fake passport, you can change the data," he said.
Separately, Rep. Robert A. Brady, chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing, has expressed "serious reservations" about GPO's plan to use contract security guards to protect GPO facilities. In a Dec. 12 letter, Mr. Brady, a Pennsylvania Democrat, stated that GPO's plan for conducting a security review of the printing office was ignored and he ordered GPO to undertake an outside review.
Questionable profits
GPO's accounting adds another layer of concern.
The State Department is now charging Americans $100 or more for new e-passports produced by the GPO, depending on how quickly they are needed. That's up from a cost of around just $60 in 1998.
Internal agency documents obtained by The Times show each blank passport costs GPO an average of just $7.97 to manufacture and that GPO then charges the State Department about $14.80 for each, a margin of more than 85 percent, the documents show.
The accounting allowed GPO to make gross profits of more than $90 million from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 30, 2007, on the production of e-passports. The four subsequent months produced an additional $54 million in gross profits.
The agency set aside more than $40 million of those profits to help build a secure backup passport production facility in the South, still leaving a net profit of about $100 million in the last 16 months. GPO was initially authorized by Congress to make extra profits in order to fund a $41 million backup production facility at a rate of $1.84 per passport. The large surplus, however, went far beyond the targeted funding.
The large profits raised concerns within GPO because the law traditionally has mandated that the agency only charge enough to recoup its actual costs.
According to internal documents and interviews, GPO's financial officers and even its outside accounting firm began to inquire about the legality of the e-passport profits.
To cut off the debate, GPO's outgoing legal counsel signed a one-paragraph memo last fall declaring the agency was in compliance with the law prohibiting profits, but offering no legal authority to back up the conclusion. The large profits accelerated, according to the officials, after the opinion issued Oct. 12, 2007, by then-GPO General Counsel Gregory A. Brower. Mr. Brower, currently U.S. Attorney in Nevada, could not be reached and his spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
Fred Antoun, a lawyer who specializes in GPO funding issues, said the agency was set up by Congress to operate basically on a break-even financial basis.
"The whole concept of GPO is eat what you kill," Mr. Antoun said. "For the average taxpayer, for them to make large profits is kind of reprehensible."
Likewise, a 1990 report by Congress' General Accounting Office stated that "by law, GPO must charge actual costs to customers," meaning it can't mark up products for a profit.
Like the security concerns, GPO officials brush aside questions about the profits. Agency officials declined a request from The Times to provide an exact accounting of its e-passport costs and revenues, saying only it would not be accurate to claim it has earned the large profits indicated by the documents showing the difference between the manufacturing costs and the State Department fees.
Questioned about its own annual report showing a $90 million-plus profit on e-passports in fiscal year 2007 alone, the GPO spokesman Mr. Somerset would only say that he thinks the agency is in legal compliance and that "GPO is not overcharging the State Department."
Mr. Somerset said 66 different budget line items are used to price new passports and "we periodically review our pricing structure with the State Department."
Public Printer Robert Tapella, the GPO's top executive, faced similar questions during a House subcommittee hearing on March 6. Mr. Tapella told lawmakers that increased demand for passports — especially from Americans who now need them to cross into Mexico and Canada — produced "accelerated revenue recognition," and "not necessarily excess profits."
GPO plans to produce 28 million blank passports this year up from about 9 million five years ago.
A State Department consular affairs spokesman, Steve Royster referred questions to GPO on e-passports costs.
Congress to weigh in
GPO's explanations have not satisfied lawmakers, who are poised to dig deeper.
Mr. Dingell, the House Commerce chairman, said The Times' findings are "extremely serious to both the integrity of the e-passport program and to U.S. national security" and he has asked an investigative subcommittee chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, Michigan Democrat, to begin an investigation.
"Our initial inquiry suggests that more needs to be done to understand whether the supply chain is secure and fully capable of protecting the manufacturing of this critical document," Mr. Dingell told The Times.
Mr. Stupak said that considering the personal information contained on e-passports, "it is essential that the entire production chain be secure and free from potential tampering." He added: "The GPO needs to make every effort to ensure that future passport components are made in America under the tightest security possible."
Michelle Van Cleave, a former National Counterintelligence Executive, said outsourcing passport work and components creates new security vulnerabilities, not just for passports.
"Protecting the acquisition stream is a serious concern in many sensitive areas of government activity, but the process for assessing the risk to national security is at best loose and in some cases missing altogether," she told The Times.
"A U.S. passport has the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind the citizenship and identity of the bearer," she said.
"What foreign intelligence service or international terrorist group wouldn't like to be able to masquerade as U.S. citizens? It would be a profound liability for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement if we lost confidence in the integrity of our passports."
--------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
Outsourcing ANYTHING dealing with our National Security is INSANE! WHat the hell, it doesn't take a genius to figure this out. What the hell is going on in Washington?
AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080327/tc_nm/att_workforce_dc
AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India.
"We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company's headquarters is located.
So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000, a target it set in 2006, the company said, adding that it maintains the target.
Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent.
"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," he said.
Gone are the days when AT&T and other U.S. companies had to hire locally, he said.
"We're able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we're able to do it in Austin, Texas," he said, referring to the Indian city where many international companies have "outsourced" technical and customer support workers.
"I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is," he said.
Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as AT&T's repatriation of service positions and education grants, he added.
(Reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Gary Hill)
-----------------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
This article is a joke. Perhaps if AT&T wasw illing to pay a decent wage to American workers they'd find the "skilled workers" they are looking for. Only a person without a college degree is going to work for $8.00 an hour. Pay a decent wage like $15.00 min. an hour and you'll find more than burger flippers sending in job aps.
AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India.
"We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company's headquarters is located.
So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000, a target it set in 2006, the company said, adding that it maintains the target.
Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent.
"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," he said.
Gone are the days when AT&T and other U.S. companies had to hire locally, he said.
"We're able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we're able to do it in Austin, Texas," he said, referring to the Indian city where many international companies have "outsourced" technical and customer support workers.
"I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is," he said.
Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as AT&T's repatriation of service positions and education grants, he added.
(Reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Gary Hill)
-----------------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
This article is a joke. Perhaps if AT&T wasw illing to pay a decent wage to American workers they'd find the "skilled workers" they are looking for. Only a person without a college degree is going to work for $8.00 an hour. Pay a decent wage like $15.00 min. an hour and you'll find more than burger flippers sending in job aps.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Leaders push PR campaign for North American Union
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58244
Leaders push PR campaign for North American Union
Business council members to confront and refute critics of trilateral agenda
Posted: March 06, 2008
9:30 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
The controversial Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, continues closed-door meetings with business leaders while the heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada now openly urge them to launch a public relations campaign to counter growing criticism of the trilateral cooperative some fear is a step toward a North American Union.
The information is contained in an internal memo from Canada's Foreign Affairs and Internal Trade ministry, obtained by WND under an Access to Information Act request.
The text of the undated memo is an internal government summary of the third SPP summit meeting held Aug. 20-21, 2007, in Montebello Quebec.
The redacted memo does not disclose the author or the date the memo was written.
The first sentence of the memo makes clear, as WND previously reported, the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, was the only participant invited to meet behind closed doors with the SPP bureaucrats. The SPP consists of 20 working groups plus the attending cabinet officers from each country and the heads of state.
"Leaders had a successful meeting with the members of the NACC, which had been launched at the leader's meeting in Cancun in March 2006, to counsel governments on how they might enhance North American competitiveness," the memo begins.
The NACC is a largely secretive SPP advisory council of representatives of 30 North American corporations selected by the Chambers of Commerce in the three nations.
The NACC has issued no press releases disclosing specific recommendations made to the SPP trilateral working groups tasked with "integrating" and "harmonizing" administrative rules and regulations into a North American format.
Nor have any minutes of SPP meetings with NACC participants ever been made public.
The PR offensive is clearly discussed in the third paragraph of the internal memo, where following an initial redacted sentence, the paragraph discusses comments made by the three heads of state in the closed door discussions, noting, "He also urged NACC members to assist in confronting and refuting critics of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP)."
The "He" in the sentence is not identified.
The fourth paragraph continues the PR theme: "In closing, all leaders expressed a desire for the NACC to play a role in articulating publicly the benefits of greater collaboration in North America."
Later, the memo admits, "Leaders discussed some of the difficulties of the SPP, including the lack of popular support and the failure of the public to understand the competitive challenges confronting North America."
After a redacted sentence, the memo continues, "Governments are faced with addressing the rapidly evolving competitive environment without fueling protectionism, when industry sectors face radical transformation."
The memo then documents a comment made by President Bush: "In terms of building public support, President Bush suggested engaging the support of those who had benefited from NAFTA and from North American integration (including small business owners) to tell their stories and humanize the impressive results."
The document says, regarding import safety, "President Bush underlined the importance of tackling the issue more broadly and showing that governments are ahead of this issue in order to prevent a trade protectionist backlash, especially against China."
Toward the end, the memo reinforces the public relations theme, emphasizing, "NACC members should have a role in communicating the merits of North American collaboration, including by engaging their employees and unions."
Meanwhile, the SPP ministers and trilateral working groups continue to pursue a policy of secret, closed-door meetings, where the press and the public is not invited to participate or observe the process.
In a meeting that was virtually unreported in the U.S. and Canada, a SPP ministerial meeting Feb. 27-28 in Las Cabos, Mexico, was disclosed openly in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada.
The report in La Jornada said Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez visited Mexico City prior to the Los Cabos meeting "to renegotiate NAFTA" by offering to Mexico that undisclosed U.S. corporations and the U.S. government are planning to put as much as $141 billion in new investments in Mexico under Mexico's National Infrastructure Project 2007-2012.
A press release on the U.S. Trade and Development Agency website published Feb 21 presented the agenda for a Feb. 26-28 meeting in Mexico City at which Secretary Gutierrez planned to announce USTDA grants totaling more than $1.7 million were being made "to promote the development of transportation, energy and environmental projects under Mexico's National Infrastructure Program (NIP)."
A separate press release on the USTDA website documented that Mexico's National Infrastructure Program, launched by President Calderon in July 2007, was intended to create $141 billion in new infrastructure investment opportunities for U.S. firms by 2012.
An announcement posted on the homepage of the Department of Commerce's SPP website Feb. 28 confirmed Gutierrez and Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff traveled to Las Cabos to meet with their Mexican and Canadian counterparts in a ministerial meeting, preparing for the fourth SPP annual summit meeting scheduled for New Orleans April 21-22.
The SPP press release also confirmed the NACC attended the Los Cabos closed-door ministerial meeting.
Several other important points were disclosed in the Foreign Affairs and Internal Trade document obtained under the Access to Information Act request.
The document confirmed a much-rumored concern that the Harper government intended to downplay the SPP summits, as part of a strategy to defuse the intense criticism the effort has received from the political left in Canada.
"Prime Minister Harper described the SPP as a worthwhile project driving numerous low-profile, but important initiatives," the documents noted under the heading, "SPP Management."
The document further disclosed Harper's recommendation that each government appoint a single lead minister with overall responsibility for managing the trilateral bureaucrats involved in the 20 SPP working groups.
The commerce minister in each country, or "prosperity minister" as identified by the document, was tasked with this responsibility.
Until the document had come to light, the three governments had not given a clear explanation of the tasks or areas of responsibilities of each of the three ministers assigned in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to SPP.
Now, it appears the foreign minister representative, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the United States and her counterparts in Mexico and Canada, represent the top state-level official among the three, a designation that clearly places the SPP within the top foreign policy diplomatic level in each country.
Commerce Secretary Gutierrez and his counterparts would be considered the "SPP Prosperity Ministers," while Secretary Chertoff and his counterparts would be considered the "SPP Security Ministers," with overall management of the SPP coming under the "Prosperity Ministers" sphere.
Also, the document disclosed President Bush's continuing determination to favor only a virtual fence, not the placement of a physical fence, along the U.S. border with Mexico.
"President Bush outlined his vision of the border, with a strong emphasis on the use of technology," the document stressed.
As WND previously reported, an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, gutted the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by leaving the building of a 700-mile double-layer fence along the border with Mexico up to the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security and Chertoff.
WND has also reported Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., author of the fencing provisions of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, has introduced new legislation in the House of Representatives to put back the requirement of constructing double-layered fencing along the Mexican border within six months.
Leaders push PR campaign for North American Union
Business council members to confront and refute critics of trilateral agenda
Posted: March 06, 2008
9:30 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
The controversial Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, continues closed-door meetings with business leaders while the heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada now openly urge them to launch a public relations campaign to counter growing criticism of the trilateral cooperative some fear is a step toward a North American Union.
The information is contained in an internal memo from Canada's Foreign Affairs and Internal Trade ministry, obtained by WND under an Access to Information Act request.
The text of the undated memo is an internal government summary of the third SPP summit meeting held Aug. 20-21, 2007, in Montebello Quebec.
The redacted memo does not disclose the author or the date the memo was written.
The first sentence of the memo makes clear, as WND previously reported, the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, was the only participant invited to meet behind closed doors with the SPP bureaucrats. The SPP consists of 20 working groups plus the attending cabinet officers from each country and the heads of state.
"Leaders had a successful meeting with the members of the NACC, which had been launched at the leader's meeting in Cancun in March 2006, to counsel governments on how they might enhance North American competitiveness," the memo begins.
The NACC is a largely secretive SPP advisory council of representatives of 30 North American corporations selected by the Chambers of Commerce in the three nations.
The NACC has issued no press releases disclosing specific recommendations made to the SPP trilateral working groups tasked with "integrating" and "harmonizing" administrative rules and regulations into a North American format.
Nor have any minutes of SPP meetings with NACC participants ever been made public.
The PR offensive is clearly discussed in the third paragraph of the internal memo, where following an initial redacted sentence, the paragraph discusses comments made by the three heads of state in the closed door discussions, noting, "He also urged NACC members to assist in confronting and refuting critics of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP)."
The "He" in the sentence is not identified.
The fourth paragraph continues the PR theme: "In closing, all leaders expressed a desire for the NACC to play a role in articulating publicly the benefits of greater collaboration in North America."
Later, the memo admits, "Leaders discussed some of the difficulties of the SPP, including the lack of popular support and the failure of the public to understand the competitive challenges confronting North America."
After a redacted sentence, the memo continues, "Governments are faced with addressing the rapidly evolving competitive environment without fueling protectionism, when industry sectors face radical transformation."
The memo then documents a comment made by President Bush: "In terms of building public support, President Bush suggested engaging the support of those who had benefited from NAFTA and from North American integration (including small business owners) to tell their stories and humanize the impressive results."
The document says, regarding import safety, "President Bush underlined the importance of tackling the issue more broadly and showing that governments are ahead of this issue in order to prevent a trade protectionist backlash, especially against China."
Toward the end, the memo reinforces the public relations theme, emphasizing, "NACC members should have a role in communicating the merits of North American collaboration, including by engaging their employees and unions."
Meanwhile, the SPP ministers and trilateral working groups continue to pursue a policy of secret, closed-door meetings, where the press and the public is not invited to participate or observe the process.
In a meeting that was virtually unreported in the U.S. and Canada, a SPP ministerial meeting Feb. 27-28 in Las Cabos, Mexico, was disclosed openly in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada.
The report in La Jornada said Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez visited Mexico City prior to the Los Cabos meeting "to renegotiate NAFTA" by offering to Mexico that undisclosed U.S. corporations and the U.S. government are planning to put as much as $141 billion in new investments in Mexico under Mexico's National Infrastructure Project 2007-2012.
A press release on the U.S. Trade and Development Agency website published Feb 21 presented the agenda for a Feb. 26-28 meeting in Mexico City at which Secretary Gutierrez planned to announce USTDA grants totaling more than $1.7 million were being made "to promote the development of transportation, energy and environmental projects under Mexico's National Infrastructure Program (NIP)."
A separate press release on the USTDA website documented that Mexico's National Infrastructure Program, launched by President Calderon in July 2007, was intended to create $141 billion in new infrastructure investment opportunities for U.S. firms by 2012.
An announcement posted on the homepage of the Department of Commerce's SPP website Feb. 28 confirmed Gutierrez and Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff traveled to Las Cabos to meet with their Mexican and Canadian counterparts in a ministerial meeting, preparing for the fourth SPP annual summit meeting scheduled for New Orleans April 21-22.
The SPP press release also confirmed the NACC attended the Los Cabos closed-door ministerial meeting.
Several other important points were disclosed in the Foreign Affairs and Internal Trade document obtained under the Access to Information Act request.
The document confirmed a much-rumored concern that the Harper government intended to downplay the SPP summits, as part of a strategy to defuse the intense criticism the effort has received from the political left in Canada.
"Prime Minister Harper described the SPP as a worthwhile project driving numerous low-profile, but important initiatives," the documents noted under the heading, "SPP Management."
The document further disclosed Harper's recommendation that each government appoint a single lead minister with overall responsibility for managing the trilateral bureaucrats involved in the 20 SPP working groups.
The commerce minister in each country, or "prosperity minister" as identified by the document, was tasked with this responsibility.
Until the document had come to light, the three governments had not given a clear explanation of the tasks or areas of responsibilities of each of the three ministers assigned in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to SPP.
Now, it appears the foreign minister representative, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the United States and her counterparts in Mexico and Canada, represent the top state-level official among the three, a designation that clearly places the SPP within the top foreign policy diplomatic level in each country.
Commerce Secretary Gutierrez and his counterparts would be considered the "SPP Prosperity Ministers," while Secretary Chertoff and his counterparts would be considered the "SPP Security Ministers," with overall management of the SPP coming under the "Prosperity Ministers" sphere.
Also, the document disclosed President Bush's continuing determination to favor only a virtual fence, not the placement of a physical fence, along the U.S. border with Mexico.
"President Bush outlined his vision of the border, with a strong emphasis on the use of technology," the document stressed.
As WND previously reported, an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, gutted the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by leaving the building of a 700-mile double-layer fence along the border with Mexico up to the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security and Chertoff.
WND has also reported Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., author of the fencing provisions of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, has introduced new legislation in the House of Representatives to put back the requirement of constructing double-layered fencing along the Mexican border within six months.
Murtha granted exemption from explaining
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58123
Murtha granted exemption from explaining
Judge: Congressman won't testify about Haditha accusations
Posted: March 05, 2008
9:25 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
A member of Congress who publicly condemned U.S. Marines fighting the war on terror in Iraq for killing civilians in "cold blood" is being granted an exemption that means he will not have to answer questions about his statements, including his earlier explanation that his information came from the highest levels of the Marine Command.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani
The exemption has come in a military court proceeding against Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, one of four Marines still facing charges in the battle that erupted when a team of his Marines was attacked by insurgents in the city of Haditha.
Murtha's statements are key to the defense of Chessani, according to officials with The Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Chessani against the charges.
"If you go back [to Murtha's description] there was no [Improvised Explosive Device], there was no firefight, it was like there was a phantom menace," said Brian Rooney, a spokesman for the center, told WND.
"However we have the firefight on video. You can't deny it," Rooney told WND after a recent two-day motions hearing in Chessani's case came to a conclusion.
But now the hearing officer, Col. Stephen Folsom, has exempted Murtha from having to answer any questions.
"Military Judge Col. Stephen Folsom's, USMC, ruling yesterday refusing our request to take the deposition of Congressman John Murtha, D-Pa., is the latest indication that it will be impossible for Marine Lt. Col. Chessani to get a fair trial regarding [the] Nov. 19, 2005, Haditha incident," said Richard Thompson, chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center.
"This entire prosecution is politically motivated and stinks to high heaven. Denying us the right to take Murtha's deposition so that we could show undue command influence, as well as denial of our request for production of documents in the possession of Lt. Col. Chessani's superiors makes it impossible for us to render this loyal Marine officer the effective assistance of counsel he deserves – they are attempting to throw him under the bus," Thompson said. "In many ways this is a trial like the one in 'Alice in Wonderland'' – the verdict first and then the trial."
Chessani is accused of "dereliction of duty" and "orders" violations for the terrorist attack in Haditha, Iraq. At the time, Chessani was battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which is one of the most decorated battalions in the nation's history.
There were 14 Marine casualties, one Marine killed in action and 13 others injured. The insurgents were hiding amongst women and children in civilian homes, and 15 civilians died in the firefight between the Marines and insurgents.
But the law center said months before the investigation was finished, Murtha "made the rounds on TV news programs claiming there was no firefight in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, and that the Marines killed innocent Iraqi civilians in 'cold blood' and officers 'covered it up.' Murtha publicly stated he received his information from the highest levels of the Marine Command – this statement in itself is enough to cause a dismissal of the charges because of undue command influence."
Murtha, the law center noted, "holds significant influence over military appropriations and in the past has boasted he can get the Pentagon to do what he wants."
Murtha also has ties to Navy Secretary Donald Winters, who assigned five dozen investigators to look into the Haditha allegations.
"In the next couple of weeks we will reveal startling facts tracing the impetus for this prosecution to the highest levels of military and civilian command," Thompson said.
"We remain undaunted despite these latest rulings. We will continue to vigorously defend Lt. Col. Chessani against this politically driven prosecution. At least one more motion hearing is scheduled in April, and we intend to file several more motions that will be argued during that time," Thompson said.
The law center had wanted to question Murtha, the same congressman who was caught on tape negotiating bribes with Arab sheiks during the FBI's 1980 Abscam investigation and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, about his comments because of his well-known anti-war stance and the fact the Haditha claims were ammunition for his political perspective, the law center said.
The defense team had presented five motions in the hearing. They included: a motion to compel the deposition of Murtha, a motion to dismiss all of the charges due to their constitutional vagueness, a motion to dismiss some of the charges because the same allegations have been charged in multiple ways, a motion to compel discovery that the government has kept from the defense because the government judged it was not relevant, and a motion for a new Article 32 hearing because the last hearing was defective.
Brian Rooney, a Marine veteran and attorney for the Law Center, said the most dramatic testimony during the motions hearing came from Marine intelligence officer Maj. Jeffrey Dinsmore.
He said Dinsmore told the judge about the intelligence provided to the Marines that they should expect an attack, and the video showed the attack and provided confirmation that the attack had been carried out by insurgents in Iraq.
He said Dinsmore provided to the judge the same "story board" Marine intelligence officers used to brief Chessani after the attack.
Rooney said the documentation showed how the insurgents' IED exploded, killing one Marine and injuring several others, and how the Marines tracked the fleeing insurgents through several homes, eventually leading to a home Chessani ordered attacked.
"The followup showed one of the insurgents escaped, hid in a house, and Col. Chessani ordered the house surrounded. When he [the insurgent] finally came out, he was carrying a baby, with a family around him," Rooney said.
At the time the attack happened, the case was investigated through the Marine chain of command with no allegation of inappropriate action. But then months later, a Time magazine story, "planted by an insurgent propaganda agent," according to the law firm, raised the profile of that particular battle, prompting Murtha to make his public accusation that Marines murdered civilians in "cold blood."
The actual court-martial for Chessani is scheduled to start April 28, 2008.
Chessani, who grew up in Rangely, Colo., and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado, was one of eight originally accused in the case.
Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum also has been ordered to be court-martialed and the case against Cpl. Andrew Grayson also remained pending, as does the case against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, although the charges against him were reduced.
Two other officers, Capts. Randy Stone and Lucas McConnell, have had their charges dismissed. Charges against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz also were dismissed, as were charges against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt.
Murtha granted exemption from explaining
Judge: Congressman won't testify about Haditha accusations
Posted: March 05, 2008
9:25 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
A member of Congress who publicly condemned U.S. Marines fighting the war on terror in Iraq for killing civilians in "cold blood" is being granted an exemption that means he will not have to answer questions about his statements, including his earlier explanation that his information came from the highest levels of the Marine Command.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani
The exemption has come in a military court proceeding against Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, one of four Marines still facing charges in the battle that erupted when a team of his Marines was attacked by insurgents in the city of Haditha.
Murtha's statements are key to the defense of Chessani, according to officials with The Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Chessani against the charges.
"If you go back [to Murtha's description] there was no [Improvised Explosive Device], there was no firefight, it was like there was a phantom menace," said Brian Rooney, a spokesman for the center, told WND.
"However we have the firefight on video. You can't deny it," Rooney told WND after a recent two-day motions hearing in Chessani's case came to a conclusion.
But now the hearing officer, Col. Stephen Folsom, has exempted Murtha from having to answer any questions.
"Military Judge Col. Stephen Folsom's, USMC, ruling yesterday refusing our request to take the deposition of Congressman John Murtha, D-Pa., is the latest indication that it will be impossible for Marine Lt. Col. Chessani to get a fair trial regarding [the] Nov. 19, 2005, Haditha incident," said Richard Thompson, chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center.
"This entire prosecution is politically motivated and stinks to high heaven. Denying us the right to take Murtha's deposition so that we could show undue command influence, as well as denial of our request for production of documents in the possession of Lt. Col. Chessani's superiors makes it impossible for us to render this loyal Marine officer the effective assistance of counsel he deserves – they are attempting to throw him under the bus," Thompson said. "In many ways this is a trial like the one in 'Alice in Wonderland'' – the verdict first and then the trial."
Chessani is accused of "dereliction of duty" and "orders" violations for the terrorist attack in Haditha, Iraq. At the time, Chessani was battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which is one of the most decorated battalions in the nation's history.
There were 14 Marine casualties, one Marine killed in action and 13 others injured. The insurgents were hiding amongst women and children in civilian homes, and 15 civilians died in the firefight between the Marines and insurgents.
But the law center said months before the investigation was finished, Murtha "made the rounds on TV news programs claiming there was no firefight in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, and that the Marines killed innocent Iraqi civilians in 'cold blood' and officers 'covered it up.' Murtha publicly stated he received his information from the highest levels of the Marine Command – this statement in itself is enough to cause a dismissal of the charges because of undue command influence."
Murtha, the law center noted, "holds significant influence over military appropriations and in the past has boasted he can get the Pentagon to do what he wants."
Murtha also has ties to Navy Secretary Donald Winters, who assigned five dozen investigators to look into the Haditha allegations.
"In the next couple of weeks we will reveal startling facts tracing the impetus for this prosecution to the highest levels of military and civilian command," Thompson said.
"We remain undaunted despite these latest rulings. We will continue to vigorously defend Lt. Col. Chessani against this politically driven prosecution. At least one more motion hearing is scheduled in April, and we intend to file several more motions that will be argued during that time," Thompson said.
The law center had wanted to question Murtha, the same congressman who was caught on tape negotiating bribes with Arab sheiks during the FBI's 1980 Abscam investigation and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, about his comments because of his well-known anti-war stance and the fact the Haditha claims were ammunition for his political perspective, the law center said.
The defense team had presented five motions in the hearing. They included: a motion to compel the deposition of Murtha, a motion to dismiss all of the charges due to their constitutional vagueness, a motion to dismiss some of the charges because the same allegations have been charged in multiple ways, a motion to compel discovery that the government has kept from the defense because the government judged it was not relevant, and a motion for a new Article 32 hearing because the last hearing was defective.
Brian Rooney, a Marine veteran and attorney for the Law Center, said the most dramatic testimony during the motions hearing came from Marine intelligence officer Maj. Jeffrey Dinsmore.
He said Dinsmore told the judge about the intelligence provided to the Marines that they should expect an attack, and the video showed the attack and provided confirmation that the attack had been carried out by insurgents in Iraq.
He said Dinsmore provided to the judge the same "story board" Marine intelligence officers used to brief Chessani after the attack.
Rooney said the documentation showed how the insurgents' IED exploded, killing one Marine and injuring several others, and how the Marines tracked the fleeing insurgents through several homes, eventually leading to a home Chessani ordered attacked.
"The followup showed one of the insurgents escaped, hid in a house, and Col. Chessani ordered the house surrounded. When he [the insurgent] finally came out, he was carrying a baby, with a family around him," Rooney said.
At the time the attack happened, the case was investigated through the Marine chain of command with no allegation of inappropriate action. But then months later, a Time magazine story, "planted by an insurgent propaganda agent," according to the law firm, raised the profile of that particular battle, prompting Murtha to make his public accusation that Marines murdered civilians in "cold blood."
The actual court-martial for Chessani is scheduled to start April 28, 2008.
Chessani, who grew up in Rangely, Colo., and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado, was one of eight originally accused in the case.
Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum also has been ordered to be court-martialed and the case against Cpl. Andrew Grayson also remained pending, as does the case against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, although the charges against him were reduced.
Two other officers, Capts. Randy Stone and Lucas McConnell, have had their charges dismissed. Charges against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz also were dismissed, as were charges against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt.
Report: China trying to crack U.S. computers, buy nukesStory
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/03/03/pentagon.china/?iref=mpstoryview
Report: China trying to crack U.S. computers, buy nukesStory
Officials worry China is trying to hack into U.S. military computers
"Intrusions" have already happened, officials say, though info was not classified
From Mike Mount
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Chinese military continues to increase spending on efforts to break into U.S. military computer systems, expand its Navy, and invest in intercontinental nuclear missiles and weapons to destroy satellites, according to the latest U.S report on China's military power.
Chinese military officers after a meeting about the People's Liberation Army in 2007.
The annual report from the Pentagon to Congress says China's total military spending in 2007 was between $97 billion and $139 billion, but it is hard to tell exactly how much was spent and on what.
In comparison, the U.S. military budget request for 2008 is $481.4 billion, not including war requests.
Pentagon officials said a chunk of China's spending went to cyberwarfare, because 2007 saw several "intrusions" believed to be from the Peoples Liberation Army. In the incidents, unclassified U.S. military computer systems were broken into and information was taken, according to Pentagon officials.
While the information taken was not classified, Pentagon officials said the worry is the Chinese hacking required many of the skills and capabilities that would also be required for a computer network attack.
Last summer, a cyber-attack on Department of Defense computer systems took down the e-mail capability of hundreds of staffers for weeks, but the Pentagon still will not comment on who initiated the attack. It is widely believed among the military to have been the Peoples Liberation Army.
China is also investing heavily in and fielding improved nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and antisatellite missiles, according to the report.
The United States expressed its concern last year after China fired a missile at one of its old satellites and destroyed it, sending thousands of dangerous pieces of space debris into orbit.
The United States conducted a similar strike last month on a broken U.S. spy satellite before it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. U.S. officials said the satellite was hit and broke into thousands of small pieces that burned up as they re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
The United States is also concerned about the purchase of more submarines by the Chinese navy as well as plans for more aircraft carriers. The Chinese once had a small Navy. Now the United States is keeping an eye on the growing service amid concerns over Taiwan.
The concerns include "China's near-term focus on preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait, including the possibility of U.S. intervention, which is an important driver of its modernization," the report says.
Additionally, the Chinese have placed about 100 more short-range missiles on the shore opposite Taiwan in the past year, it says.
Pentagon officials worry the continued increase in Chinese military spending is slowly tipping the balance of power between China and Taiwan in China's favor. The United States has said it would help defend Taiwan if China invaded.
The report also says the Peoples Liberation Army is "pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries."
Such an army, the report says, would have "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could, over time, offset traditional U.S. military advantages."
The United States says the lack of transparency by the Chinese on its spending poses "risks to stability by increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation," and that China has yet to explain to the international community the purpose of its military expansion, Pentagon officials said.
Report: China trying to crack U.S. computers, buy nukesStory
Officials worry China is trying to hack into U.S. military computers
"Intrusions" have already happened, officials say, though info was not classified
From Mike Mount
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Chinese military continues to increase spending on efforts to break into U.S. military computer systems, expand its Navy, and invest in intercontinental nuclear missiles and weapons to destroy satellites, according to the latest U.S report on China's military power.
Chinese military officers after a meeting about the People's Liberation Army in 2007.
The annual report from the Pentagon to Congress says China's total military spending in 2007 was between $97 billion and $139 billion, but it is hard to tell exactly how much was spent and on what.
In comparison, the U.S. military budget request for 2008 is $481.4 billion, not including war requests.
Pentagon officials said a chunk of China's spending went to cyberwarfare, because 2007 saw several "intrusions" believed to be from the Peoples Liberation Army. In the incidents, unclassified U.S. military computer systems were broken into and information was taken, according to Pentagon officials.
While the information taken was not classified, Pentagon officials said the worry is the Chinese hacking required many of the skills and capabilities that would also be required for a computer network attack.
Last summer, a cyber-attack on Department of Defense computer systems took down the e-mail capability of hundreds of staffers for weeks, but the Pentagon still will not comment on who initiated the attack. It is widely believed among the military to have been the Peoples Liberation Army.
China is also investing heavily in and fielding improved nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and antisatellite missiles, according to the report.
The United States expressed its concern last year after China fired a missile at one of its old satellites and destroyed it, sending thousands of dangerous pieces of space debris into orbit.
The United States conducted a similar strike last month on a broken U.S. spy satellite before it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. U.S. officials said the satellite was hit and broke into thousands of small pieces that burned up as they re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
The United States is also concerned about the purchase of more submarines by the Chinese navy as well as plans for more aircraft carriers. The Chinese once had a small Navy. Now the United States is keeping an eye on the growing service amid concerns over Taiwan.
The concerns include "China's near-term focus on preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait, including the possibility of U.S. intervention, which is an important driver of its modernization," the report says.
Additionally, the Chinese have placed about 100 more short-range missiles on the shore opposite Taiwan in the past year, it says.
Pentagon officials worry the continued increase in Chinese military spending is slowly tipping the balance of power between China and Taiwan in China's favor. The United States has said it would help defend Taiwan if China invaded.
The report also says the Peoples Liberation Army is "pursuing comprehensive transformation from a mass army designed for protracted wars of attrition on its territory to one capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries."
Such an army, the report says, would have "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could, over time, offset traditional U.S. military advantages."
The United States says the lack of transparency by the Chinese on its spending poses "risks to stability by increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation," and that China has yet to explain to the international community the purpose of its military expansion, Pentagon officials said.
Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett testifies and jury begins deliberations in murder case
http://www.svherald.com/articles/2008/03/05/news/doc47ce3f453d4ea988386918.txt
Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett testifies and jury begins deliberations in murder case
By Jonathon Shacat
Herald/Review
Published on Wednesday, March 05, 2008
TUCSON — U.S. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett took the stand in U.S. District Court on Tuesday to tell jurors what happened when he fatally shot an illegal immigrant last year, saying he did so in self-defense.
But he was unable to recall or explain some parts of the story.
Francisco Dominguez-Rivera was shot on Jan. 12, 2007. (Submitted) On Jan. 12, 2007, while Corbett was apprehending four Mexicans who had illegally entered the United States between Naco and Douglas, he killed Francisco Dominguez-Rivera with his service pistol. The prosecution claims the slaying was unjustified, while the defense says the action was self-defense.
Corbett was one of two witnesses the defense called on Tuesday. It was the first time he’s spoken publicly about the incident. He did not speak with investigators about the incident, but did speak to other Border Patrol officials about it, according to reports.
On Tuesday, the prosecution also called two rebuttal witnesses. The jury then heard closing arguments and began to deliberate for about 30 minutes before going home for the evening.
Corbett testified that he pulled up near Dominguez-Rivera, his two brothers and one brother’s girlfriend, put his Chevy Tahoe in park and saw the victim bend down and pick up a rock that he described as about the size of a softball but not as rounded.
Corbett, who is about 6 feet 4 inches tall and who weighed 250 pounds at the time, opened the door and exited the vehicle. He drew his weapon, headed around the back of the vehicle and confronted Dominguez-Rivera, who was 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 145 pounds. He told the victim in Spanish to “sit down,” but Dominguez-Rivera began walking toward him until they got within 3 feet of each other.
The agent said Dominguez-Rivera had an expression of “hatred” on his face.
The defense showed the jury an artist’s rendition of how the defendant and the victim were standing at the time of the shooting. In the drawing, Corbett is holding the gun in his right hand and pointing it down and toward the left side of the victim’s body. Dominguez-Rivera is holding a rock in his right hand, and Corbett is stretching out his left arm to block it.
Corbett denied statements by eyewitnesses that he shot the victim from behind or while the victim was kneeling down. He also denied he struck the victim in the back of the neck with his gun or pointed the gun while he was driving his vehicle.
Sean Chapman, the lead defense attorney, asked Corbett why he shot Dominguez-Rivera, and he replied, “Because he was going to smash my head in with a rock.”
Three Border Patrol agents testified last week regarding what Corbett said took place when he shot Dominguez-Rivera. One other agent testified during a preliminary hearing in August. They gave varying accounts as to what happened, but none gave a description that matched Corbett’s testimony.
During cross-examination, Grant Woods, the lead special prosecutor, asked Corbett if all four of them were “wrong” about what occurred.
“Yes. They had the wrong impression,” Corbett replied. And, Woods countered, “You are the only one who had it wrong.”
John Maciulla, a criminalist employed by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, was called by the prosecution as a rebuttal witness. He had testified last week that the bullet fired by Corbett entered the victim under his left arm, but it made a hole through the chest area of his sweater. Attorneys suggested that the sweater was moved to the left side either because one of the victim’s brothers pulled on his sleeve or if Corbett grabbed the victim and shoved him down.
On Tuesday, Maciulla said that if Corbett were pushing his left arm against the right shoulder of the victim, then the sweater would move in the opposite direction of the left armpit.
During another part of his testimony, Corbett said he did not announce the shooting over his radio. But, last week, Steve Berg, the Border Patrol agent who was the first to arrive on the scene, testified that he heard a “shots fired” call from Corbett via his hand-held radio. Woods asked Corbett if he recalled hearing that testimony from Berg, but said he could not remember it.
Corbett also was unable to say which direction his body was facing at the time of the shooting after Woods asked him several times to describe and explain the situation.
Also Tuesday, the defense called Elmer Pellegrino, director of the police academy at Fullerton College in California, who testified that officers involved in shootings may experience framing or tunnel vision. As a result, they may distort some facts as a result of undergoing the stressful situation.
Pellegrino said he was retained by the defense at $250 per hour, plus $125, and he had worked a total of 35 to 40 hours.
The other rebuttal witness that the prosecution called was Justice of the Peace David Morales, who presided over the preliminary hearing in August in Bisbee. He testified that he did not observe anybody coaching the three eyewitnesses during their testimony.
His statement contradicts a claim from Dove Haber, a public information officer for Border Patrol, that she saw Oscar de la Torre, the Mexican consul in Douglas, make gestures in order to lead the witnesses. But on cross-examination from Chapman, Morales acknowledged that his attention was not completely focused on members of the audience in the court room.
Last week, prosecutors made the court aware that they wanted to present evidence of prior bad acts committed by Corbett that shows violence or propensity toward violence. On Tuesday, Judge David Bury refused to allow the prosecution to do so basically because the evidence was not disclosed prior to the start of the trial.
Reporter Jonathon Shacat can be reached at 515-4693.
-------------------------
OTHER'S COMMENTS:
Sick and Tired wrote on Mar 6, 2008 11:29 AM:
" All of you Border Patrol haters should come on down and spend some time alone in the desert chasing groups of five to 40 plus "poor migrants" by yourself. It might give you a new outlook on how quickly things can go bad. These "poor migrants" do not care about our laws, our values or our families. They leave family members, including children and babies, alone in the desert if they can't keep up/get lost. All for the not so mighty dollar. America has no idea what really goes on down here. "
RLEE wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:22 AM:
" All Border Patrol Agents need to band to gether and officially resign, thereby forcing the federal government to send troops to the borders. The Mexican/American border will never be secure as long as one country is more corrupt than the other. America needs to send a bill, not aid to Mexico for all the costs related to that countrie's continued negligence and border safety/security. BP Agents-just resign! Hey Grant Woods-you working for or against the citizens of America? Sounds like you're working for Mexico. "
Don wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:08 AM:
" This short man had an equalizer, a rock that can kill, break bones, and cause permanent physical damage. If this illegal alien, or any other person for that matter, is stupid enough to approach a law enforcement officer with a rock, threatening physical harm, he can expect to get shot. Law enforcement officers, just like you and me, have a right to defend themselves. "
Wildfire wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:04 AM:
" Let’s look at this another way: if this had happened in Mexico, with a Mexican “Border Patrol” and the illegal had been from Guatemala: Would prosecution been so important to the Mexican Government?
Then Mexico shouldn’t expect any better treatment than is dished-out to their illegals. "
Paul wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:00 AM:
" If this happened more often then crossing the border illegally would stop.
If they keep putting our Border Patrol Officers in jail for protecting our border the US will be over run with illegals. They MUST respect our laws. "
Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett testifies and jury begins deliberations in murder case
By Jonathon Shacat
Herald/Review
Published on Wednesday, March 05, 2008
TUCSON — U.S. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett took the stand in U.S. District Court on Tuesday to tell jurors what happened when he fatally shot an illegal immigrant last year, saying he did so in self-defense.
But he was unable to recall or explain some parts of the story.
Francisco Dominguez-Rivera was shot on Jan. 12, 2007. (Submitted) On Jan. 12, 2007, while Corbett was apprehending four Mexicans who had illegally entered the United States between Naco and Douglas, he killed Francisco Dominguez-Rivera with his service pistol. The prosecution claims the slaying was unjustified, while the defense says the action was self-defense.
Corbett was one of two witnesses the defense called on Tuesday. It was the first time he’s spoken publicly about the incident. He did not speak with investigators about the incident, but did speak to other Border Patrol officials about it, according to reports.
On Tuesday, the prosecution also called two rebuttal witnesses. The jury then heard closing arguments and began to deliberate for about 30 minutes before going home for the evening.
Corbett testified that he pulled up near Dominguez-Rivera, his two brothers and one brother’s girlfriend, put his Chevy Tahoe in park and saw the victim bend down and pick up a rock that he described as about the size of a softball but not as rounded.
Corbett, who is about 6 feet 4 inches tall and who weighed 250 pounds at the time, opened the door and exited the vehicle. He drew his weapon, headed around the back of the vehicle and confronted Dominguez-Rivera, who was 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 145 pounds. He told the victim in Spanish to “sit down,” but Dominguez-Rivera began walking toward him until they got within 3 feet of each other.
The agent said Dominguez-Rivera had an expression of “hatred” on his face.
The defense showed the jury an artist’s rendition of how the defendant and the victim were standing at the time of the shooting. In the drawing, Corbett is holding the gun in his right hand and pointing it down and toward the left side of the victim’s body. Dominguez-Rivera is holding a rock in his right hand, and Corbett is stretching out his left arm to block it.
Corbett denied statements by eyewitnesses that he shot the victim from behind or while the victim was kneeling down. He also denied he struck the victim in the back of the neck with his gun or pointed the gun while he was driving his vehicle.
Sean Chapman, the lead defense attorney, asked Corbett why he shot Dominguez-Rivera, and he replied, “Because he was going to smash my head in with a rock.”
Three Border Patrol agents testified last week regarding what Corbett said took place when he shot Dominguez-Rivera. One other agent testified during a preliminary hearing in August. They gave varying accounts as to what happened, but none gave a description that matched Corbett’s testimony.
During cross-examination, Grant Woods, the lead special prosecutor, asked Corbett if all four of them were “wrong” about what occurred.
“Yes. They had the wrong impression,” Corbett replied. And, Woods countered, “You are the only one who had it wrong.”
John Maciulla, a criminalist employed by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, was called by the prosecution as a rebuttal witness. He had testified last week that the bullet fired by Corbett entered the victim under his left arm, but it made a hole through the chest area of his sweater. Attorneys suggested that the sweater was moved to the left side either because one of the victim’s brothers pulled on his sleeve or if Corbett grabbed the victim and shoved him down.
On Tuesday, Maciulla said that if Corbett were pushing his left arm against the right shoulder of the victim, then the sweater would move in the opposite direction of the left armpit.
During another part of his testimony, Corbett said he did not announce the shooting over his radio. But, last week, Steve Berg, the Border Patrol agent who was the first to arrive on the scene, testified that he heard a “shots fired” call from Corbett via his hand-held radio. Woods asked Corbett if he recalled hearing that testimony from Berg, but said he could not remember it.
Corbett also was unable to say which direction his body was facing at the time of the shooting after Woods asked him several times to describe and explain the situation.
Also Tuesday, the defense called Elmer Pellegrino, director of the police academy at Fullerton College in California, who testified that officers involved in shootings may experience framing or tunnel vision. As a result, they may distort some facts as a result of undergoing the stressful situation.
Pellegrino said he was retained by the defense at $250 per hour, plus $125, and he had worked a total of 35 to 40 hours.
The other rebuttal witness that the prosecution called was Justice of the Peace David Morales, who presided over the preliminary hearing in August in Bisbee. He testified that he did not observe anybody coaching the three eyewitnesses during their testimony.
His statement contradicts a claim from Dove Haber, a public information officer for Border Patrol, that she saw Oscar de la Torre, the Mexican consul in Douglas, make gestures in order to lead the witnesses. But on cross-examination from Chapman, Morales acknowledged that his attention was not completely focused on members of the audience in the court room.
Last week, prosecutors made the court aware that they wanted to present evidence of prior bad acts committed by Corbett that shows violence or propensity toward violence. On Tuesday, Judge David Bury refused to allow the prosecution to do so basically because the evidence was not disclosed prior to the start of the trial.
Reporter Jonathon Shacat can be reached at 515-4693.
-------------------------
OTHER'S COMMENTS:
Sick and Tired wrote on Mar 6, 2008 11:29 AM:
" All of you Border Patrol haters should come on down and spend some time alone in the desert chasing groups of five to 40 plus "poor migrants" by yourself. It might give you a new outlook on how quickly things can go bad. These "poor migrants" do not care about our laws, our values or our families. They leave family members, including children and babies, alone in the desert if they can't keep up/get lost. All for the not so mighty dollar. America has no idea what really goes on down here. "
RLEE wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:22 AM:
" All Border Patrol Agents need to band to gether and officially resign, thereby forcing the federal government to send troops to the borders. The Mexican/American border will never be secure as long as one country is more corrupt than the other. America needs to send a bill, not aid to Mexico for all the costs related to that countrie's continued negligence and border safety/security. BP Agents-just resign! Hey Grant Woods-you working for or against the citizens of America? Sounds like you're working for Mexico. "
Don wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:08 AM:
" This short man had an equalizer, a rock that can kill, break bones, and cause permanent physical damage. If this illegal alien, or any other person for that matter, is stupid enough to approach a law enforcement officer with a rock, threatening physical harm, he can expect to get shot. Law enforcement officers, just like you and me, have a right to defend themselves. "
Wildfire wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:04 AM:
" Let’s look at this another way: if this had happened in Mexico, with a Mexican “Border Patrol” and the illegal had been from Guatemala: Would prosecution been so important to the Mexican Government?
Then Mexico shouldn’t expect any better treatment than is dished-out to their illegals. "
Paul wrote on Mar 6, 2008 10:00 AM:
" If this happened more often then crossing the border illegally would stop.
If they keep putting our Border Patrol Officers in jail for protecting our border the US will be over run with illegals. They MUST respect our laws. "
GOP senators to introduce toughest-yet immigration package
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig5mar05,0,2074519.story
GOP senators to introduce toughest-yet immigration package
Bills would mandate prison time for illegal border crossings and compel English in dealing with federal agencies.
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 5, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are set to announce today the hardest-hitting package of immigration enforcement measures seen yet -- one that would require jail time for illegal immigrants caught crossing the border, make it harder for them to open bank accounts and compel them to communicate in English when dealing with federal agencies.
Most of the bills stand little chance of being debated in the Democratic-controlled Congress. But the move by some of the Senate's leading Republicans underscores how potent the immigration issue remains, particularly in a presidential election year.
The bills give Republicans a way to put pressure on the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to take a tougher stance on immigration. They also reflect a shift toward harsher immigration rhetoric and legislative proposals from both parties since Congress failed to pass a comprehensive overhaul in 2007.
The package -- an enforcement smorgasbord assembled by at least eight lawmakers -- consists of 11 bills, but it could expand to as many as 14. Some elements echo House bills, but others go beyond House proposals.
One would discourage states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants by docking 10% of highway funding from states that continue to do so.
Another would extend the presence of the National Guard on the border, and a third would end language assistance at federal agencies and the voting booth for people with limited English ability.
A bill by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is leading the effort, would impose a maximum two-year prison sentence on someone caught illegally crossing the border a second time.
"The point is to reinforce the idea that most of us here feel that we need to make enforcement and border security a first step to solving the overall problem," said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), one of the sponsors.Although Congress usually avoids tough legislation during an election year, Vitter insisted that he and his colleagues could still get something done. "There are concrete steps we can take. None of us see any reason to waste this time," he said.
Other bills in the package would:
* Block federal funding to cities that bar their police from asking about immigration status.
* Give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to use information from the Social Security Administration to target illegal immigrants.
* Require construction of 700 miles of fencing along the southern border, not including vehicle barriers.
* Impose sanctions on countries that refuse to repatriate their citizens.
* Deport any immigrant, legal or illegal, for one drunk-driving conviction.
* Enable local and state police to enforce federal immigration laws.Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said the Republican proposal "falls far short of what is needed." Democrats want to combine enforcement with a guest-worker program and a way to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Reid "continues to support legislation that is tough on people who break the law, fair to taxpayers and practical to implement," Manley said.
But Democrats have also begun embracing a tougher stance on immigration. A confidential study assembled for the Democratic leadership earlier this year urged them to start using tougher language. Democrats have focused on offering opportunity to immigrants, but the study by two public-policy groups urged them to begin speaking in terms of "requiring" illegal immigrants to become legal and about what's best for the United States.
Many House Democrats have gone a step further, endorsing an enforcement-only bill by freshman Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) that would bolster border security and require employers to verify their workers' legal status with an electronic verification system.
The SAVE (Secure America through Verification and Enforcement) Act has drawn 140 cosponsors, 48 of whom are Democrats, many of them vulnerable freshmen who won seats from Republicans.
The Democratic leadership dislikes Shuler's bill and has refused to schedule a debate. Republican leaders are considering collecting signatures for a special petition that requires House leaders to bring a bill up for debate if 218 members sign. There are 198 Republicans.
Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center, said Senate Republicans might be trying to match their House colleagues. "They might feel they're being upstaged by House Republicans," she said. But she also suggested that the Senate bills could provide political protection to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has clinched the GOP presidential nomination.
Conservatives consider McCain soft on immigration. McCain, along with Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, has backed giving illegal immigrants some form of legal status, which conservatives consider "amnesty."
If McCain endorsed the Senate package, that could "create a platform for McCain to look tough on immigration, create distance from Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.] and erect a shield around the amnesty charge," Kelley said.
Besides Sessions and Vitter, the bills are being introduced by GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
----------------------
MY COMMENTS:
VOTE REPUBLICAN!
GOP senators to introduce toughest-yet immigration package
Bills would mandate prison time for illegal border crossings and compel English in dealing with federal agencies.
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 5, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are set to announce today the hardest-hitting package of immigration enforcement measures seen yet -- one that would require jail time for illegal immigrants caught crossing the border, make it harder for them to open bank accounts and compel them to communicate in English when dealing with federal agencies.
Most of the bills stand little chance of being debated in the Democratic-controlled Congress. But the move by some of the Senate's leading Republicans underscores how potent the immigration issue remains, particularly in a presidential election year.
The bills give Republicans a way to put pressure on the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to take a tougher stance on immigration. They also reflect a shift toward harsher immigration rhetoric and legislative proposals from both parties since Congress failed to pass a comprehensive overhaul in 2007.
The package -- an enforcement smorgasbord assembled by at least eight lawmakers -- consists of 11 bills, but it could expand to as many as 14. Some elements echo House bills, but others go beyond House proposals.
One would discourage states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants by docking 10% of highway funding from states that continue to do so.
Another would extend the presence of the National Guard on the border, and a third would end language assistance at federal agencies and the voting booth for people with limited English ability.
A bill by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is leading the effort, would impose a maximum two-year prison sentence on someone caught illegally crossing the border a second time.
"The point is to reinforce the idea that most of us here feel that we need to make enforcement and border security a first step to solving the overall problem," said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), one of the sponsors.Although Congress usually avoids tough legislation during an election year, Vitter insisted that he and his colleagues could still get something done. "There are concrete steps we can take. None of us see any reason to waste this time," he said.
Other bills in the package would:
* Block federal funding to cities that bar their police from asking about immigration status.
* Give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to use information from the Social Security Administration to target illegal immigrants.
* Require construction of 700 miles of fencing along the southern border, not including vehicle barriers.
* Impose sanctions on countries that refuse to repatriate their citizens.
* Deport any immigrant, legal or illegal, for one drunk-driving conviction.
* Enable local and state police to enforce federal immigration laws.Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said the Republican proposal "falls far short of what is needed." Democrats want to combine enforcement with a guest-worker program and a way to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Reid "continues to support legislation that is tough on people who break the law, fair to taxpayers and practical to implement," Manley said.
But Democrats have also begun embracing a tougher stance on immigration. A confidential study assembled for the Democratic leadership earlier this year urged them to start using tougher language. Democrats have focused on offering opportunity to immigrants, but the study by two public-policy groups urged them to begin speaking in terms of "requiring" illegal immigrants to become legal and about what's best for the United States.
Many House Democrats have gone a step further, endorsing an enforcement-only bill by freshman Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) that would bolster border security and require employers to verify their workers' legal status with an electronic verification system.
The SAVE (Secure America through Verification and Enforcement) Act has drawn 140 cosponsors, 48 of whom are Democrats, many of them vulnerable freshmen who won seats from Republicans.
The Democratic leadership dislikes Shuler's bill and has refused to schedule a debate. Republican leaders are considering collecting signatures for a special petition that requires House leaders to bring a bill up for debate if 218 members sign. There are 198 Republicans.
Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center, said Senate Republicans might be trying to match their House colleagues. "They might feel they're being upstaged by House Republicans," she said. But she also suggested that the Senate bills could provide political protection to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has clinched the GOP presidential nomination.
Conservatives consider McCain soft on immigration. McCain, along with Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, has backed giving illegal immigrants some form of legal status, which conservatives consider "amnesty."
If McCain endorsed the Senate package, that could "create a platform for McCain to look tough on immigration, create distance from Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.] and erect a shield around the amnesty charge," Kelley said.
Besides Sessions and Vitter, the bills are being introduced by GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
----------------------
MY COMMENTS:
VOTE REPUBLICAN!
N.M. Town Split Over Immigrant's Removal
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/ROSWELL_IMMIGRATION_FLAP?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
N.M. Town Split Over Immigrant's Removal
By DEBORAH BAKER
Associated Press Writer
ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) -- Karina Acosta's senior year at Roswell High came to an abrupt end after she was ticketed for blocking a fire lane outside a school and driving without a license.
The officer who stopped her - a Roswell policeman assigned to the school - asked her for proof of legal U.S. residency. Acosta, an illegal immigrant, had none. The officer telephoned immigration authorities, and Acosta, 18 and pregnant, was sent back to Mexico.
The episode has caused a furor in town, with teachers and others complaining that Acosta's treatment violated the spirit, if not the letter, of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has all but made the nation's public schools safe havens for illegal immigrants.
"The school was considered a place you could come and not have to worry," said Coreta Justus, a teacher at 1,300-student Roswell High. She added: "My job is to educate whoever walks in my classroom."
Complaining of racism and unfair treatment, students demonstrated on Main Street and drew adult counter-protesters. Irate parents confronted school officials. The police officer was taken off the school beat, and the program that put him on the high school campus was suspended. At least one teacher reported a few students stayed away for weeks after the incident, afraid they would meet the same fate as Acosta.
Three months later, Acosta's case is still dividing people in Roswell, a town 200 miles north of the Mexican border that has built a tourism industry around a rumored UFO crash in 1947 that was supposedly covered up by the government. Roswell, population 45,000, is at least 44 percent Hispanic.
Officer Charlie Corn reported that he spotted Acosta blocking a fire lane in late November while she was dropping off a youngster at a middle school. Corn, who was on traffic duty at the school, followed Acosta to the high school nearby, discovered she had no license and ticketed her.
He gave her several days to produce proof of legal residency, after which he called her into his campus office and contacted immigration authorities. They immediately took her to a juvenile detention center, and she agreed to be sent back to the Mexican state of Chihuahua rather than fight deportation.
A 1982 Supreme Court ruling guarantees children who are in the U.S. illegally the right to a public education, and says schools cannot inquire about their immigration status. Federal authorities have a policy of not enforcing immigration laws on school grounds.
But the question of whether police may do so is murkier.
Marisol Perez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said Corn's actions were "certainly questionable and problematic." She said the case was "just as egregious" as that of three students who were arrested at an Albuquerque high school in 2004 on immigration charges. The students sued the police, who later settled.
Jennifer Moore, who teaches international, human rights and refugee law at the University of New Mexico, said making students vulnerable to deportation at school is "making a mockery" of their right to public education.
And it is occurring "in the very place where they have the greatest chance at getting the skills they need to participate in this society that they are living in," she said.
Roswell's interim police chief, Scott Douglass, defended Corn, saying that the 10-year veteran was investigating a crime and that officers may ask people in the course of a criminal investigation about their immigration status.
But the chief said that in the future, "Enforcement action like that would probably be taken after school hours and off of campus."
Assistant School Superintendent Mike Kakuska told parents immediately after the incident that the school system didn't support the officer's actions and had protested Acosta's arrest to immigration authorities.
The legal question aside, some of Acosta's former teachers said she was wronged.
Dolores Fresquez said her former student was well-behaved, had good grades and held down a job. Fresquez, who teaches Spanish and English as a second language, estimated that up to 90 percent of the students in the old, yellow brick high school are Hispanic, and perhaps 40 percent of those are illegal.
"The thing that made me angry is that schools are supposed to be safe for any student, regardless of what nationality, what age they may be," the teacher said.
But others in Roswell resent the influx of Mexicans who are in the U.S. illegally and complain the newcomers are using resources such as hospital emergency rooms without paying enough in taxes.
"They're here freeloading, and that's exactly the reason I think they should not be allowed in the school system," said Gene Warren, a retired telephone repairman.
An Acosta family friend, Rosie Delgado, said that Acosta's mother, who has also been living in Roswell, was terrified after the incident and that the girl's two younger sisters were afraid to return to school for a week or so. Delgado said family members don't want to talk to reporters, and she would not disclose their whereabouts.
The Rev. Juan Montoya of St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church said many in his congregation live in fear of being picked up by police in Roswell.
"It's not just about Karina. Karina is just one of many," said Montoya, a Mexican-American. "I know people who have been picked up - didn't break a law, they didn't pass a stop sign, they didn't do anything."
-------------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
I feel for the girl, but if you are'nt here legally why should we foot the bill? Better yet. She's freeloading a public education, and being pregnant would most likely have free medical care as well. Sorry, but I'm fed up.
N.M. Town Split Over Immigrant's Removal
By DEBORAH BAKER
Associated Press Writer
ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) -- Karina Acosta's senior year at Roswell High came to an abrupt end after she was ticketed for blocking a fire lane outside a school and driving without a license.
The officer who stopped her - a Roswell policeman assigned to the school - asked her for proof of legal U.S. residency. Acosta, an illegal immigrant, had none. The officer telephoned immigration authorities, and Acosta, 18 and pregnant, was sent back to Mexico.
The episode has caused a furor in town, with teachers and others complaining that Acosta's treatment violated the spirit, if not the letter, of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has all but made the nation's public schools safe havens for illegal immigrants.
"The school was considered a place you could come and not have to worry," said Coreta Justus, a teacher at 1,300-student Roswell High. She added: "My job is to educate whoever walks in my classroom."
Complaining of racism and unfair treatment, students demonstrated on Main Street and drew adult counter-protesters. Irate parents confronted school officials. The police officer was taken off the school beat, and the program that put him on the high school campus was suspended. At least one teacher reported a few students stayed away for weeks after the incident, afraid they would meet the same fate as Acosta.
Three months later, Acosta's case is still dividing people in Roswell, a town 200 miles north of the Mexican border that has built a tourism industry around a rumored UFO crash in 1947 that was supposedly covered up by the government. Roswell, population 45,000, is at least 44 percent Hispanic.
Officer Charlie Corn reported that he spotted Acosta blocking a fire lane in late November while she was dropping off a youngster at a middle school. Corn, who was on traffic duty at the school, followed Acosta to the high school nearby, discovered she had no license and ticketed her.
He gave her several days to produce proof of legal residency, after which he called her into his campus office and contacted immigration authorities. They immediately took her to a juvenile detention center, and she agreed to be sent back to the Mexican state of Chihuahua rather than fight deportation.
A 1982 Supreme Court ruling guarantees children who are in the U.S. illegally the right to a public education, and says schools cannot inquire about their immigration status. Federal authorities have a policy of not enforcing immigration laws on school grounds.
But the question of whether police may do so is murkier.
Marisol Perez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said Corn's actions were "certainly questionable and problematic." She said the case was "just as egregious" as that of three students who were arrested at an Albuquerque high school in 2004 on immigration charges. The students sued the police, who later settled.
Jennifer Moore, who teaches international, human rights and refugee law at the University of New Mexico, said making students vulnerable to deportation at school is "making a mockery" of their right to public education.
And it is occurring "in the very place where they have the greatest chance at getting the skills they need to participate in this society that they are living in," she said.
Roswell's interim police chief, Scott Douglass, defended Corn, saying that the 10-year veteran was investigating a crime and that officers may ask people in the course of a criminal investigation about their immigration status.
But the chief said that in the future, "Enforcement action like that would probably be taken after school hours and off of campus."
Assistant School Superintendent Mike Kakuska told parents immediately after the incident that the school system didn't support the officer's actions and had protested Acosta's arrest to immigration authorities.
The legal question aside, some of Acosta's former teachers said she was wronged.
Dolores Fresquez said her former student was well-behaved, had good grades and held down a job. Fresquez, who teaches Spanish and English as a second language, estimated that up to 90 percent of the students in the old, yellow brick high school are Hispanic, and perhaps 40 percent of those are illegal.
"The thing that made me angry is that schools are supposed to be safe for any student, regardless of what nationality, what age they may be," the teacher said.
But others in Roswell resent the influx of Mexicans who are in the U.S. illegally and complain the newcomers are using resources such as hospital emergency rooms without paying enough in taxes.
"They're here freeloading, and that's exactly the reason I think they should not be allowed in the school system," said Gene Warren, a retired telephone repairman.
An Acosta family friend, Rosie Delgado, said that Acosta's mother, who has also been living in Roswell, was terrified after the incident and that the girl's two younger sisters were afraid to return to school for a week or so. Delgado said family members don't want to talk to reporters, and she would not disclose their whereabouts.
The Rev. Juan Montoya of St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church said many in his congregation live in fear of being picked up by police in Roswell.
"It's not just about Karina. Karina is just one of many," said Montoya, a Mexican-American. "I know people who have been picked up - didn't break a law, they didn't pass a stop sign, they didn't do anything."
-------------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
I feel for the girl, but if you are'nt here legally why should we foot the bill? Better yet. She's freeloading a public education, and being pregnant would most likely have free medical care as well. Sorry, but I'm fed up.
3 imprisoned for hiring illegal immigrants for cleaning firm
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-flpillegal0305pnmar05,0,4670611.story
3 imprisoned for hiring illegal immigrants for cleaning firm
By Sally Apgar | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
March 5, 2008
A West Palm Beach man was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison and ordered to pay $16 million in unpaid taxes for his role in a nationwide tax scheme that employed illegal immigrants as janitors to clean for restaurant chains like Hard Rock Cafe, Dave & Busters and Yardhouse.
Scott Cunningham, 44, the former vice president of Rosenbaum-Cunningham International (RCI), was sentenced to four years and three months by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Maloney in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Along with Cunningham, the company's former president, Richard M. Rosenbaum, 61, of Longwood, was sentenced to 10 years and ordered to pay $16.9 million. A third defendant, Christina A. Flocken, 60, who once served as RCI's controller, was sentenced to 2 1/2 and ordered to pay $15.7 million.
Maloney also ordered the three to forfeit bank accounts, life insurance policies and cash totaling more than $3 million that prosecutors said was derived from their illegal activities. Cunningham is expected to forfeit a home in the gated community of Ibis Golf and Country Club.
In handing down the sentence, Maloney said the crimes involved a "massive tax scheme involving illegal aliens."
Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security Julie L. Meyers said, "For too long, unscrupulous employers like those who owned and operated RCI have been able to undercut their competition by building their work force with illegal labor."
Myers added that "targeting employers who profit from illegal hiring is a key component to stopping illegal immigration."
Prosecutors said that between 2001 and 2005, RCI was paid more than $54 million and evaded $15.7 million in federal taxes.
In February 2007, the three were charged in a 23-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the United States, evading federal employment taxes and harboring illegal immigrantsfor profit. If convicted on all charges, they each faced 15 years in prison.
Just before the indictment was handed down, more than 200 undocumented workers from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti were rounded up in a raid on 63 RCI job sites across the country, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They were detained pending deportation proceedings.
After a plea agreement was reached in November 2007, Cunningham and Flocken pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to defraud the government and harboring illegal immigrants. Rosenbaum reached a similar agreement in October 2007.
The indictment said that illegal immigrants were "essential to the success of their scheme" because they were willing to be paid in cash, could be fired without legal recourse and were "highly unlikely to report the irregular nature of their employment."
Sally Apgar can be reached at sapgar@sun-sentinel.com or at 561-228-5506.
3 imprisoned for hiring illegal immigrants for cleaning firm
By Sally Apgar | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
March 5, 2008
A West Palm Beach man was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison and ordered to pay $16 million in unpaid taxes for his role in a nationwide tax scheme that employed illegal immigrants as janitors to clean for restaurant chains like Hard Rock Cafe, Dave & Busters and Yardhouse.
Scott Cunningham, 44, the former vice president of Rosenbaum-Cunningham International (RCI), was sentenced to four years and three months by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Maloney in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Along with Cunningham, the company's former president, Richard M. Rosenbaum, 61, of Longwood, was sentenced to 10 years and ordered to pay $16.9 million. A third defendant, Christina A. Flocken, 60, who once served as RCI's controller, was sentenced to 2 1/2 and ordered to pay $15.7 million.
Maloney also ordered the three to forfeit bank accounts, life insurance policies and cash totaling more than $3 million that prosecutors said was derived from their illegal activities. Cunningham is expected to forfeit a home in the gated community of Ibis Golf and Country Club.
In handing down the sentence, Maloney said the crimes involved a "massive tax scheme involving illegal aliens."
Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security Julie L. Meyers said, "For too long, unscrupulous employers like those who owned and operated RCI have been able to undercut their competition by building their work force with illegal labor."
Myers added that "targeting employers who profit from illegal hiring is a key component to stopping illegal immigration."
Prosecutors said that between 2001 and 2005, RCI was paid more than $54 million and evaded $15.7 million in federal taxes.
In February 2007, the three were charged in a 23-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the United States, evading federal employment taxes and harboring illegal immigrantsfor profit. If convicted on all charges, they each faced 15 years in prison.
Just before the indictment was handed down, more than 200 undocumented workers from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti were rounded up in a raid on 63 RCI job sites across the country, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They were detained pending deportation proceedings.
After a plea agreement was reached in November 2007, Cunningham and Flocken pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to defraud the government and harboring illegal immigrants. Rosenbaum reached a similar agreement in October 2007.
The indictment said that illegal immigrants were "essential to the success of their scheme" because they were willing to be paid in cash, could be fired without legal recourse and were "highly unlikely to report the irregular nature of their employment."
Sally Apgar can be reached at sapgar@sun-sentinel.com or at 561-228-5506.
Next on school agenda: TEACHING COMMUNISM
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58061
Next on school agenda:
Teaching communism
Family advocate: 'Just when we thought
indoctrination couldn't get any worse'
Posted: March 04, 2008
10:47 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who led his nation through decades of communism
A new plan by a California lawmaker would allow schools to be used to promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, and let teachers in public district classrooms "inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," according to a traditional values advocacy organization.
"Just when we thought the indoctrination in California's public schools couldn't get any worse, state lawmakers introduce bills that will further brainwash innocent children," said a statement from Capitol Resource Institute, a traditional values and family advocacy organization based in California.
"We're in California. Of course it has a chance of succeeding," CRI spokeswoman Karen England told WND. "These people get bolder and bolder every year."
Her organization, along with several others, already has been battling over lawmakers' orders, already placed in law, that public schools in the state teach nothing but positive messages about homosexuality, transsexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyles.
Those plans are being challenged in court, by citizens' attempts to place the issue on the 2008 election ballot and by family advocates who say the best option is for families to abandon public schools for private schools or other alternatives.
Now comes the plan, SB 1322, from state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat elected from the state's 27th District, including the towns of Artesia, Avalon, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Lakewood, Long Beach, Lynwood, Paramount, Signal Hill, South Gate and others.
"This bill would actually allow the promotion of communism in public schools," CRI said.
That's because the state's Civic Center Act already requires a school district to grant the use of school property, when an alternative isn't available, to nonprofit groups, clubs or associations set up for youth and school activities.
"But the law also states that the property may not be used by anyone intent on overthrowing the government," CRI said. Now, the group said, "SB 1322 would delete the requirement that an individual or organization wanting to use the school property is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization.
"This bill would also strike the law that a public school or community college employee may be fired if he or she is a member of the Communist Party," the group said.
Worse yet, the group said, "the bill would also strike the law that prohibits a teacher giving instruction in a school or on public school property from teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," CRI said.
"SB 1322 is simply shocking," said Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for the affiliated Capitol Resource Family Impact. "The socialist members of the legislature are now advocating that communism, one of the most brutal forms of government in history, be taught favorably to government school students. Anyone espousing communism, which does advocate for the violent overthrow of existing government, will be permitted to not only use government property, but work in schools and colleges, and teach their freedom-hating propaganda to impressionable young people."
"Less than 20 years after the fall of the communist Soviet Union, California lawmakers are eager to once again begin advancing a political ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people," England said. "Instead of promoting communism in our schools, lawmakers should be focused on actually teaching students to read, write and think for themselves."
On a blog on the Red County website, Mike Spence concluded: "I know there is plenty of indoctrination goin' on already but I gues (sic) they won't be staisfied (sic) until all school children are gay loving (SB777) and Communist. If only they could all read at grade level."
The bill itself explains that it would delete provisions "regarding a person who intends to use school property on behalf of an organization to deliver a statement, signed under penalty of perjury, that the organization is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization required to be registered with the Attorney General of the United States or does not, to the best of that person's knowledge, advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the State of California by force, violence, or other unlawful means."
The plan also outlines it would drop provisions that school and college employees could be dismissed for being a part of the Communist Party and drop a ban on "teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism."
The proposal itself noted that the teaching about the facts of communism was allowed, and the previous requirement banned teaching "for the purpose of undermining patriotism for, and the belief in, the government of the United States and of this state." However, the new plan drops that.
Also deleted was: "For the purposes of this section, communism is the political theory that the presently existing form of government of the United States or of this state should be changed, by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means, to a totalitarian dictatorship which is based on the principles of communism as expounded by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin."
Also deleted was the conclusion from the California Legislature other nations already had fallen into totalitarian dictatorships through the establishment of communism as well as the recognition that "the successful establishment of totalitarian dictatorships has consistently been aided, accompanied, or accomplished by repeated acts of treachery, deceit, teaching of false doctrines, teaching untruth, together with organized confusion, insubordination, and disloyalty, fostered, directed, instigated, or employed by communist organizations and their members…"
Also tossed out of California law was the recognition that communism even presents "a clear and present danger."
The earlier school indoctrination into alternative sexual lifestyles has prompted creation of Rescue Your Child a coalition of various groups encouraging parents to withdraw their children from the state's public school system.
That's the result of the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wrote and signed into law Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 394 as law, plans that institutionalize the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices.
The Discover Christian Schools website reports getting thousands of hits daily from parents and others seeking information about alternatives to California's public schools.
WND reported leaders of the campaign called California Exodus say they hope to encourage parents of 600,000 children to withdraw them from the public districts this year.
The new law itself technically bans in any school texts, events, class or activities any discriminatory bias against those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, said Turney. But there are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however. Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.
"SB 777 will result in reverse discrimination against students with religious and traditional family values. These students have lost their voice as the direct result of Gov. Schwarzenegger's unbelievable decision. The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured," she said.
England told WND that the law is not a list of banned words, including "mom" and "dad." But she said the requirement is that the law bans discriminatory bias and the effect will be to ban such terminology.
"Having 'mom' and 'dad' promotes a discriminatory bias. You have to either get rid of 'mom' and 'dad' or include everything when talking about [parental issues]," she said. "They [promoters of sexual alternative lifestyles] do consider that discriminatory."
Next on school agenda:
Teaching communism
Family advocate: 'Just when we thought
indoctrination couldn't get any worse'
Posted: March 04, 2008
10:47 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who led his nation through decades of communism
A new plan by a California lawmaker would allow schools to be used to promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, and let teachers in public district classrooms "inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," according to a traditional values advocacy organization.
"Just when we thought the indoctrination in California's public schools couldn't get any worse, state lawmakers introduce bills that will further brainwash innocent children," said a statement from Capitol Resource Institute, a traditional values and family advocacy organization based in California.
"We're in California. Of course it has a chance of succeeding," CRI spokeswoman Karen England told WND. "These people get bolder and bolder every year."
Her organization, along with several others, already has been battling over lawmakers' orders, already placed in law, that public schools in the state teach nothing but positive messages about homosexuality, transsexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyles.
Those plans are being challenged in court, by citizens' attempts to place the issue on the 2008 election ballot and by family advocates who say the best option is for families to abandon public schools for private schools or other alternatives.
Now comes the plan, SB 1322, from state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat elected from the state's 27th District, including the towns of Artesia, Avalon, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Lakewood, Long Beach, Lynwood, Paramount, Signal Hill, South Gate and others.
"This bill would actually allow the promotion of communism in public schools," CRI said.
That's because the state's Civic Center Act already requires a school district to grant the use of school property, when an alternative isn't available, to nonprofit groups, clubs or associations set up for youth and school activities.
"But the law also states that the property may not be used by anyone intent on overthrowing the government," CRI said. Now, the group said, "SB 1322 would delete the requirement that an individual or organization wanting to use the school property is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization.
"This bill would also strike the law that a public school or community college employee may be fired if he or she is a member of the Communist Party," the group said.
Worse yet, the group said, "the bill would also strike the law that prohibits a teacher giving instruction in a school or on public school property from teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," CRI said.
"SB 1322 is simply shocking," said Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for the affiliated Capitol Resource Family Impact. "The socialist members of the legislature are now advocating that communism, one of the most brutal forms of government in history, be taught favorably to government school students. Anyone espousing communism, which does advocate for the violent overthrow of existing government, will be permitted to not only use government property, but work in schools and colleges, and teach their freedom-hating propaganda to impressionable young people."
"Less than 20 years after the fall of the communist Soviet Union, California lawmakers are eager to once again begin advancing a political ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people," England said. "Instead of promoting communism in our schools, lawmakers should be focused on actually teaching students to read, write and think for themselves."
On a blog on the Red County website, Mike Spence concluded: "I know there is plenty of indoctrination goin' on already but I gues (sic) they won't be staisfied (sic) until all school children are gay loving (SB777) and Communist. If only they could all read at grade level."
The bill itself explains that it would delete provisions "regarding a person who intends to use school property on behalf of an organization to deliver a statement, signed under penalty of perjury, that the organization is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization required to be registered with the Attorney General of the United States or does not, to the best of that person's knowledge, advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the State of California by force, violence, or other unlawful means."
The plan also outlines it would drop provisions that school and college employees could be dismissed for being a part of the Communist Party and drop a ban on "teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism."
The proposal itself noted that the teaching about the facts of communism was allowed, and the previous requirement banned teaching "for the purpose of undermining patriotism for, and the belief in, the government of the United States and of this state." However, the new plan drops that.
Also deleted was: "For the purposes of this section, communism is the political theory that the presently existing form of government of the United States or of this state should be changed, by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means, to a totalitarian dictatorship which is based on the principles of communism as expounded by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin."
Also deleted was the conclusion from the California Legislature other nations already had fallen into totalitarian dictatorships through the establishment of communism as well as the recognition that "the successful establishment of totalitarian dictatorships has consistently been aided, accompanied, or accomplished by repeated acts of treachery, deceit, teaching of false doctrines, teaching untruth, together with organized confusion, insubordination, and disloyalty, fostered, directed, instigated, or employed by communist organizations and their members…"
Also tossed out of California law was the recognition that communism even presents "a clear and present danger."
The earlier school indoctrination into alternative sexual lifestyles has prompted creation of Rescue Your Child a coalition of various groups encouraging parents to withdraw their children from the state's public school system.
That's the result of the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wrote and signed into law Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 394 as law, plans that institutionalize the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices.
The Discover Christian Schools website reports getting thousands of hits daily from parents and others seeking information about alternatives to California's public schools.
WND reported leaders of the campaign called California Exodus say they hope to encourage parents of 600,000 children to withdraw them from the public districts this year.
The new law itself technically bans in any school texts, events, class or activities any discriminatory bias against those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, said Turney. But there are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however. Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.
"SB 777 will result in reverse discrimination against students with religious and traditional family values. These students have lost their voice as the direct result of Gov. Schwarzenegger's unbelievable decision. The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured," she said.
England told WND that the law is not a list of banned words, including "mom" and "dad." But she said the requirement is that the law bans discriminatory bias and the effect will be to ban such terminology.
"Having 'mom' and 'dad' promotes a discriminatory bias. You have to either get rid of 'mom' and 'dad' or include everything when talking about [parental issues]," she said. "They [promoters of sexual alternative lifestyles] do consider that discriminatory."
Illegal Immigrant Jailed for Shooting at Raleigh Officer
http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/2524755/
Illegal Immigrant Jailed for Shooting at Raleigh Officer
Posted: Mar. 4, 2008
Raleigh, N.C. — Hector Hernandez was sentenced Tuesday to 33 months in federal prison for the shooting at an off-duty Raleigh police officer in 2007.
Hernandez, an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported, was arrested July 19, 2007, after a shooting at El Deso nightclub at 7429 Capital Blvd. in Raleigh. The officer, who was working security for the club, observed shots being fired from a white van. When he pursued and pulled the van over, Hernandez fired towards the officer.
A handgun was recovered from the van, and Hernandez was arrested
Illegal Immigrant Jailed for Shooting at Raleigh Officer
Posted: Mar. 4, 2008
Raleigh, N.C. — Hector Hernandez was sentenced Tuesday to 33 months in federal prison for the shooting at an off-duty Raleigh police officer in 2007.
Hernandez, an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported, was arrested July 19, 2007, after a shooting at El Deso nightclub at 7429 Capital Blvd. in Raleigh. The officer, who was working security for the club, observed shots being fired from a white van. When he pursued and pulled the van over, Hernandez fired towards the officer.
A handgun was recovered from the van, and Hernandez was arrested
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Man Butchers 15-Month-Old Nephew in Jeddah Supermarket
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=107428&d=3&m=3&y=2008
Man Butchers 15-Month-Old Nephew in Jeddah Supermarket
Samir Al-Saadi, Arab News
JEDDAH, 3 March 2008 — Early morning shoppers at a supermarket in Jeddah were left reeling yesterday, with some falling unconscious, after a well-built Syrian man clinched a knife and decapitated his 15-month-old nephew in front of his mother in the store’s fruit and vegetable section.
In a brutal murder that has shocked the city, the 25-year-old man beheaded the boy, who was out shopping with his mother — in full glare of shoppers and staff at Al-Marhaba supermarket on Sari Street around 9.30 a.m. The man, who is the boy’s maternal uncle, apparently killed the boy following a dispute with his sister and brother-in-law.
Eyewitnesses said that the man picked up a knife from inside the store and severed the boy’s head. The mother and a shopper standing close by fainted, while several other stood in shock and disbelief over what had happened.
A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Arab News, “The murderer was in a dispute with the boy’s mother and her husband. He chopped off the boy’s head in front of the mother to get back at her.” He added that the mother has been left traumatized and is in hospital. The boy’s father was at work at the time of the incident.
Following the murder, police sealed off the supermarket while forensic experts gathered evidence. Ambulances were also called to the scene. The supermarket reopened for business at around 1.15 p.m. “It happened so quickly. Before people could intervene, the man had cut more than half way through the child’s neck,” said Abu Muhammad, a grandfather in his mid-60s.
A Saudi till attendant at a nearby cafe said, “One of my colleagues went to see what was going on and returned shivering. He saw the kid’s body and so we gave him the day off. He was in a bad state.”
An eyewitness, who lives in the neighborhood, said that the victim’s family lived close by and frequented the supermarket. “I’ve seen the murderer carrying the same child and playing with him on a number of occasions,” he added.
“No one could bear the gruesome sight of the boy’s decapitated body lying on the floor,” said Muneer, a Turkish car mechanic, who works at a garage close by. “How could someone do such a thing? I just can’t understand it... I still can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head.
When the store reopened, employees were still in a state of shock. A guard, standing at the entrance, stood frozen and oblivious to the rush of shoppers. Pain and anguish were writ large on his face.
-----------------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
This is just horrifying. My condolences are with the family. This man was definately insane! Before everyone jump in saying how all Muslims are crazy please know that these occurances are not commonplace and that just like in America there are crazy people everywhere. I am a firm believer that most people are good regardless of religion, but a few rotten apples can ruin a whole bunch.
Man Butchers 15-Month-Old Nephew in Jeddah Supermarket
Samir Al-Saadi, Arab News
JEDDAH, 3 March 2008 — Early morning shoppers at a supermarket in Jeddah were left reeling yesterday, with some falling unconscious, after a well-built Syrian man clinched a knife and decapitated his 15-month-old nephew in front of his mother in the store’s fruit and vegetable section.
In a brutal murder that has shocked the city, the 25-year-old man beheaded the boy, who was out shopping with his mother — in full glare of shoppers and staff at Al-Marhaba supermarket on Sari Street around 9.30 a.m. The man, who is the boy’s maternal uncle, apparently killed the boy following a dispute with his sister and brother-in-law.
Eyewitnesses said that the man picked up a knife from inside the store and severed the boy’s head. The mother and a shopper standing close by fainted, while several other stood in shock and disbelief over what had happened.
A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Arab News, “The murderer was in a dispute with the boy’s mother and her husband. He chopped off the boy’s head in front of the mother to get back at her.” He added that the mother has been left traumatized and is in hospital. The boy’s father was at work at the time of the incident.
Following the murder, police sealed off the supermarket while forensic experts gathered evidence. Ambulances were also called to the scene. The supermarket reopened for business at around 1.15 p.m. “It happened so quickly. Before people could intervene, the man had cut more than half way through the child’s neck,” said Abu Muhammad, a grandfather in his mid-60s.
A Saudi till attendant at a nearby cafe said, “One of my colleagues went to see what was going on and returned shivering. He saw the kid’s body and so we gave him the day off. He was in a bad state.”
An eyewitness, who lives in the neighborhood, said that the victim’s family lived close by and frequented the supermarket. “I’ve seen the murderer carrying the same child and playing with him on a number of occasions,” he added.
“No one could bear the gruesome sight of the boy’s decapitated body lying on the floor,” said Muneer, a Turkish car mechanic, who works at a garage close by. “How could someone do such a thing? I just can’t understand it... I still can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head.
When the store reopened, employees were still in a state of shock. A guard, standing at the entrance, stood frozen and oblivious to the rush of shoppers. Pain and anguish were writ large on his face.
-----------------------------------
MY COMMENTS:
This is just horrifying. My condolences are with the family. This man was definately insane! Before everyone jump in saying how all Muslims are crazy please know that these occurances are not commonplace and that just like in America there are crazy people everywhere. I am a firm believer that most people are good regardless of religion, but a few rotten apples can ruin a whole bunch.
Texans ponder where superhighway might take them
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/03/04/texans_ponder_where_superhighway_might_take_them/
Texans ponder where superhighway might take them
By Peter Canellos
Globe Staff / March 4, 2008
REFUGIO, Texas - With an abandoned Wild West-vintage town of storefronts slumbering just a block from old US 77, tiny Refugio is a place where myth and reality coexist in a ghostly silence.
And now this South Texas outpost is swept up in one of the more intriguing tests of myth vs. reality in today's political life: the battle over the so-called NAFTA Superhighway.
Local residents came together last week for one in a series of public hearings on the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive public works project that in this area would take the form of a superhighway from the Mexican border to the Arkansas border, with special trucking lanes and rail lines, along with communication and utility cables.
Texas officials say the superhighway is necessary to relieve chronic road congestion. Local opponents say it will cut through their ranches and destroy the area's ecology. And politicians like US Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, and national commentators like CNN's Lou Dobbs have condemned it as a betrayal of American interests - the very road by which American jobs will move out of the country.
"This is a major conduit for getting cheap imported goods into the heartland," insisted Hagan Parmley, a local property owner who is also part of Corridor Watch, an opposition group of residents who gathered in the Refugio community center late last month.
Parmley said Texas business interests support the highway because it would allow Asian-manufactured products to be shipped to deep-water ports in Mexico and then quickly brought into the United States. With reduced transportation costs, it would be even easier for businesses to move American manufacturing jobs to Asia or Mexico.
Parmley's newsletter, which he distributed to the 80 or so residents at the Refugio hearing, expressed excitement that Dobbs, whose television show is devoted to attacking global trade deals and illegal immigration, has taken up the cause of defeating the Trans-Texas Corridor.
But given all the portentious state-of-the-world rhetoric that has surrounded the project, the big surprise at the Refugio hearing was how comfortingly normal the objections seemed.
"I think it's overkill," said Wilson Toudouze, a San Antonio rancher whose mother lives in Refugio. "I think there's probably better alternatives than taking this enormous amount of private property and giving it to the state."
"This wasn't what we were sold in the original I-69 - all those pipelines and train lines," added Melvin Santiago, who came down from the Houston area to express his opposition. "People are a little worried."
Indeed, the state of Texas has had trouble settling on a precise route. In the northeastern part of the state, officials had to bypass Houston's sprawl. Down by the Rio Grande they had to avoid several giant ranches that have been preserved as heritage areas.
The people who gathered in Refugio were, by their own description, the inheritors of the Texas of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" - large men and women of late middle age, almost all wearing boots, some with cowboy hats, and many with waistlines proudly bulging out of their tight jeans.
One stood up and proclaimed that his family has been on the land longer than there's been a Texas, and that he figures he can take better care of it than the government can.
Preserving property rights was a far bigger concern than the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which some concede has benefited Texas. Others mentioned the trade deal not as an evil in its own right but as evidence of the selfish motives of the business interests backing the highway.
One group was not heard from. Refugio County is almost half Hispanic, and recent immigrants make up the bulk of the workers in town. For them, the highway represents a different kind of threat - bypassing US 77, whose truckers give the town its only economic lift by stopping for food and fuel.
But the translator brought in to assist Spanish-speaking residents wasn't needed. Only the property owners had their say.
"Right now we get $70,000 per month in sales tax revenue that is generated by traffic through the town," explained Karen Watts, a selectwoman. "If we're bypassed, that number will drop tremendously. We're a community of people who are aging and we're a poor community. We have some large ranches but they don't help most people."
NAFTA may get the goat of national commentators, but to the people of Refugio, the superhighway battle is more about land and money - just like in the old days.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
Texans ponder where superhighway might take them
By Peter Canellos
Globe Staff / March 4, 2008
REFUGIO, Texas - With an abandoned Wild West-vintage town of storefronts slumbering just a block from old US 77, tiny Refugio is a place where myth and reality coexist in a ghostly silence.
And now this South Texas outpost is swept up in one of the more intriguing tests of myth vs. reality in today's political life: the battle over the so-called NAFTA Superhighway.
Local residents came together last week for one in a series of public hearings on the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive public works project that in this area would take the form of a superhighway from the Mexican border to the Arkansas border, with special trucking lanes and rail lines, along with communication and utility cables.
Texas officials say the superhighway is necessary to relieve chronic road congestion. Local opponents say it will cut through their ranches and destroy the area's ecology. And politicians like US Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, and national commentators like CNN's Lou Dobbs have condemned it as a betrayal of American interests - the very road by which American jobs will move out of the country.
"This is a major conduit for getting cheap imported goods into the heartland," insisted Hagan Parmley, a local property owner who is also part of Corridor Watch, an opposition group of residents who gathered in the Refugio community center late last month.
Parmley said Texas business interests support the highway because it would allow Asian-manufactured products to be shipped to deep-water ports in Mexico and then quickly brought into the United States. With reduced transportation costs, it would be even easier for businesses to move American manufacturing jobs to Asia or Mexico.
Parmley's newsletter, which he distributed to the 80 or so residents at the Refugio hearing, expressed excitement that Dobbs, whose television show is devoted to attacking global trade deals and illegal immigration, has taken up the cause of defeating the Trans-Texas Corridor.
But given all the portentious state-of-the-world rhetoric that has surrounded the project, the big surprise at the Refugio hearing was how comfortingly normal the objections seemed.
"I think it's overkill," said Wilson Toudouze, a San Antonio rancher whose mother lives in Refugio. "I think there's probably better alternatives than taking this enormous amount of private property and giving it to the state."
"This wasn't what we were sold in the original I-69 - all those pipelines and train lines," added Melvin Santiago, who came down from the Houston area to express his opposition. "People are a little worried."
Indeed, the state of Texas has had trouble settling on a precise route. In the northeastern part of the state, officials had to bypass Houston's sprawl. Down by the Rio Grande they had to avoid several giant ranches that have been preserved as heritage areas.
The people who gathered in Refugio were, by their own description, the inheritors of the Texas of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" - large men and women of late middle age, almost all wearing boots, some with cowboy hats, and many with waistlines proudly bulging out of their tight jeans.
One stood up and proclaimed that his family has been on the land longer than there's been a Texas, and that he figures he can take better care of it than the government can.
Preserving property rights was a far bigger concern than the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, which some concede has benefited Texas. Others mentioned the trade deal not as an evil in its own right but as evidence of the selfish motives of the business interests backing the highway.
One group was not heard from. Refugio County is almost half Hispanic, and recent immigrants make up the bulk of the workers in town. For them, the highway represents a different kind of threat - bypassing US 77, whose truckers give the town its only economic lift by stopping for food and fuel.
But the translator brought in to assist Spanish-speaking residents wasn't needed. Only the property owners had their say.
"Right now we get $70,000 per month in sales tax revenue that is generated by traffic through the town," explained Karen Watts, a selectwoman. "If we're bypassed, that number will drop tremendously. We're a community of people who are aging and we're a poor community. We have some large ranches but they don't help most people."
NAFTA may get the goat of national commentators, but to the people of Refugio, the superhighway battle is more about land and money - just like in the old days.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
China speeds pace of military buildup
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080303/NATION/507590403/1001
China speeds pace of military buildup
By Bill Gertz
March 3, 2008
China is speeding up its military buildup and developing high-technology forces for waging wars beyond Taiwan, according to the Pentagon's annual report on Chinese military power.
"The pace and scope of China's military transformation have increased in recent years, fueled by acquisition of advanced foreign weapons, continued high rates of investment in its domestic defense and science and technology industries, and far-reaching organizational and doctrinal reforms of the armed forces," the report states.
The report also warned that China's expanding military forces "are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China's strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region."
The new weapons include road-mobile long-range nuclear missiles.
The report to Congress is required under 1999 legislation and is the only U.S. government publication providing a close look at China's military strategy, and force structure and recent advances in technology.
The report stated that excessive secrecy by China about its motivation and decision making and key weapons systems are prompting fears over the threat posed by the buildup.
"Absent greater openness and transparency, international reactions to China's military growth will understandably hedge against these unknowns," the report said.
The report said U.S.-China defense ties are improving and that Beijing agreed Friday to set up a telephone communications link between the U.S. and Chinese military that could be operational this month.
Key finding of the report include:
• China's military spending continues to increase by double-digit figures and that official Chinese claims of spending $45 billion are short of actual spending, which could be as much as $139 billion
• China has deployed between 990 and 1,070 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to garrisons opposite Taiwan and is adding more than 100 missiles per year, including more advanced systems.
• Chinese computer hackers have launched sophisticated strikes on computer networks around the world in the past year, including U.S. government networks, that might be the work of the Chinese government.
• China's strategy of defense includes conducting pre-emptive attacks "if the use of force protects or advances core interests, including territorial claims, for example, Taiwan and unresolved border or maritime claims."
• China's anti-satellite weapon test in January 2007 shows that the military's space warfare capability is “more than theoretical.” Additional space weapons include jammers, laser blinders and microwave weapons to disable satellites and ground stations.
• China is engaged in "wide-ranging espionage" targeting officials, businessmen and scientists prompting more than 400 U.S. investigations..
• China's military buildup is shifting the cross-Strait military balance in its favor, through a long-term expansion designed to fight "local wars" with high-tech weapons using speed, precision targeting, mobility, and the role of information technology as a force multiplier.
The report counters the findings of U.S. intelligence analysts who have sought to play down China's buildup by saying it is limited to preparing to fight a war against Taiwan.
The report stated that while the near-term focus is on a Taiwan conflict. "long-term trends suggest China is building a force scoped for operations beyond Taiwan."
However, the report said that China's military currently lacks the ability to defend sea lanes that carry oil to China from the Middle East, but is discussing ways of doing so in the future.
China speeds pace of military buildup
By Bill Gertz
March 3, 2008
China is speeding up its military buildup and developing high-technology forces for waging wars beyond Taiwan, according to the Pentagon's annual report on Chinese military power.
"The pace and scope of China's military transformation have increased in recent years, fueled by acquisition of advanced foreign weapons, continued high rates of investment in its domestic defense and science and technology industries, and far-reaching organizational and doctrinal reforms of the armed forces," the report states.
The report also warned that China's expanding military forces "are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China's strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region."
The new weapons include road-mobile long-range nuclear missiles.
The report to Congress is required under 1999 legislation and is the only U.S. government publication providing a close look at China's military strategy, and force structure and recent advances in technology.
The report stated that excessive secrecy by China about its motivation and decision making and key weapons systems are prompting fears over the threat posed by the buildup.
"Absent greater openness and transparency, international reactions to China's military growth will understandably hedge against these unknowns," the report said.
The report said U.S.-China defense ties are improving and that Beijing agreed Friday to set up a telephone communications link between the U.S. and Chinese military that could be operational this month.
Key finding of the report include:
• China's military spending continues to increase by double-digit figures and that official Chinese claims of spending $45 billion are short of actual spending, which could be as much as $139 billion
• China has deployed between 990 and 1,070 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to garrisons opposite Taiwan and is adding more than 100 missiles per year, including more advanced systems.
• Chinese computer hackers have launched sophisticated strikes on computer networks around the world in the past year, including U.S. government networks, that might be the work of the Chinese government.
• China's strategy of defense includes conducting pre-emptive attacks "if the use of force protects or advances core interests, including territorial claims, for example, Taiwan and unresolved border or maritime claims."
• China's anti-satellite weapon test in January 2007 shows that the military's space warfare capability is “more than theoretical.” Additional space weapons include jammers, laser blinders and microwave weapons to disable satellites and ground stations.
• China is engaged in "wide-ranging espionage" targeting officials, businessmen and scientists prompting more than 400 U.S. investigations..
• China's military buildup is shifting the cross-Strait military balance in its favor, through a long-term expansion designed to fight "local wars" with high-tech weapons using speed, precision targeting, mobility, and the role of information technology as a force multiplier.
The report counters the findings of U.S. intelligence analysts who have sought to play down China's buildup by saying it is limited to preparing to fight a war against Taiwan.
The report stated that while the near-term focus is on a Taiwan conflict. "long-term trends suggest China is building a force scoped for operations beyond Taiwan."
However, the report said that China's military currently lacks the ability to defend sea lanes that carry oil to China from the Middle East, but is discussing ways of doing so in the future.
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SOCIALIST HILLARY STRIKES AGAIN!
