Punishments for Being Illegal; Energy Bill Update; and Primary Turnouts

[I notice that liberals are condemning the email which is circulating which tells about how other countries handle illegals.  Contrary to what they are declaring, that conservatives want America to go to such lengths with our illegals, I wish to point out that once again, they are misrepresenting us.  What conservatives are demonstrating is that what Arizona has decided to do, actually uphold the laws of America, is not so bad after all.  We don't want to kill illegals or imprison them.  We wish to remove them until they find a legal way to become a working, contributing resident or an American citizen.] 


                          [Here are a few examples of other countries and their policies]:
The Washington Times notes that "Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals. The law also says Mexico can deport foreigners who are deemed detrimental to "economic or national interests," violate Mexican law, are not "physically or mentally healthy" or lack the "necessary funds for their sustenance" and for their dependents."
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/03/mexicos-illegals-laws-tougher-than-arizonas/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The BBC  reports: North Korea is to put a US citizen on trial for illegally entering the country, its state news agency has said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) _ Russian border guards shot and killed two drug smugglers trying to cross from Afghanistan into Tajikistan with more than 176 pounds of heroin, the border guards' office said Sunday.
The smugglers were spotted as they crossed the muddy Pyandzh River, 118 miles west of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. One of the smugglers opened fire …
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Department of Foreign Affairs in China declares: All foreigners are required to register their place of residence with the local Public Security Bureau within 24 hours of arrival.  Foreigners staying with family or friends in a private home must comply with this requirement. If you are staying at a hotel, this is done as part of the normal check-in process. This applies every time a foreigner re-enters China.  Chinese authorities are now rigorously enforcing the registration requirement and failure to do so could result in fines and detention. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Wikipedia:  In the first six months of 2005 alone, more than 120,000 people from Central America have been deported to their countries of origin. This is a significantly higher rate than in 2002.   In September 2007, Mexican President Calderón harshly criticized the United States government for the crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it has led to the persecution of immigrant workers without visas. “I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico,” he said
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Again from Wikipedia:  Illegal border crossing is considered a crime, and on occasions captured illegal border crossers are sentenced to a prison term. For example, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported in October 2008 the case of a North Korean who was detained after illegally crossing the Amur River from China. Considered by Russian authorities an "economic migrant", he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and was to be deported to the country of his nationality after serving his sentence, even though he may now risk an even heavier penalty there. That was just one of the 26 cases year-to-date of illegal entrants, of various nationalities, receiving criminal punishment in Amur Oblast.^{[90]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------}

[The email continues with these points, along with some that I believe are not valid]:  if you cross the US border illegally you get.....  

           1 - A job        
             2.  A free education
             3.  Free health care        

             4.  A lobbyist in Washington
             5. A drivers license
             6.  And the right to carry your country's flag while you are protesting that you don't get enough 
respect, [and while your President declares that "Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."]  

[This country should be allowed to defend its sovereignty by controlling its borders, and U.S. law says so!] Thanks for this, Suz!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                       

The Associated Press managed to report on yesterday's primaries in North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio while muddling the incontrovertibly disastrous results for Democrats in those states. Even while touting the races as harbingers for November, the AP failed to extrapolate the trends right before their eyes. In short, turnout for Republican primaries in all three states was up almost across the board, while Democratic turnout "dropped precipitously," in the words of National Journal's Reid Wilson. The AP noted the "exceptionally light [turnout] in Ohio and North Carolina," failing to mention that GOP turnout in these states was up in virtually every race, while a drop in Demcorats at the polls produced the "light" numbers it mentions.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2010/05/05/ap-downplays-large-gop-turnout-advantage-early-primaries#ixzz0n6oYltFF

Liz Sidoti and Deanna Martin, who penned the AP piece, bizarrely postulate that  low turnout in those two states is "a possible indication that voter anger over economic woes, persistently high unemployment and Congress itself wasn't influencing elections - and, perhaps, a reflection of the limited influence of the conservatives and libertarians who make up the fledgling tea party coalition."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Politico writes: In a high-stakes move, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are planning to forge ahead with or without Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and introduce an energy bill next week, according to sources familiar with the planning. In addition to the uncertainty about Graham’s status on the bill, Kerry and Lieberman are gambling that the dramatic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will help, rather than hurt, momentum for the legislation. That’s not a sure thing.  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36837.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More hope and change… Faisal Shahzad was removed from the national terrorist surveillance list before the Times Square attack. Confessed terrorist Faisal Shahzad was removed from the Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list sometime after Barack Obama came into office. CBS reported: Sources tell CBS News that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad appeared on a Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list – Traveler Enforcement Compliance System (TECS) – between 1999 and 2008 because he brought approximately $80,000 cash or cash instruments into the United States.
http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/05/06/breaking-obama-administration-removed-faisal-shahzad-from-terror-surveillance-list-before-attack/ 

Swat Team for Tea Party; Divisive Talk; GM Payback Sham; and Ft. Hood Info

A Quincy, Ill., Tea Party protest convened several weeks ago as President Barack Obama spoke at the nearby convention center. Things got SO out of hand, the SWAT team was called in for crowd control. Check out some of the horrifying images from the riot, via GatewayPundit: well, the photos are of peaceful , smiling people who love their country, many of them with gray hair - those who have never had reason to protest anything in their lives before now......  It is yet one more attempt by this Administration to demonize Tea Party attendees...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

From ABC News:  Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.

In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republican party.

Tea Party activists loath the term “tea baggers,” which has emerged in liberal media outlets and elsewhere as a method of mocking the activists and their concerns.

On Saturday, the president delivered a commencement address at the University of Michigan in which he said that he condemns those who say all government is bad. [I just don't know whom he is talking about, as conservatives think that far-reaching, dictatorial, over-spending government is bad - not all of it.]  He said that one way “to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate … But we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down.”  [How about it, Mr. President?  Maybe you could lead by example.]   http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/05/president-obama-gop-opposition-to-stimulus-helped-to-create-the-teabaggers.html

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
From the Washington Post:  The Obama administration has refused to comply with a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoena demanding access to documents and witnesses from last year’s Ft. Hood terrorist attack. Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and raking Republican Susan Collins (R-Maine) issued the subpoena when the Obama administration refused to provide the documents voluntarily. The Pentagon says giving the committee access to investigative reports and witnesses might interfere with their prosecution of Major Nidal Hasan, the terrorist shot at the scene of the attack.  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Real Clear Politics is reporting that Forbes reporter Shikha Dalmia reports:  GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced in a Wall Street Journal column Wednesday that his company has paid back its government bailout loan "in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule."As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as "working capital" in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money--government money--to pay back the government loan.  In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM's government debt--not pay it back.

Here are the facts according to the inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program:  his most recent quarterly report explained that "the source for the debt payments will be other TARP funds currently in escrow accounts. In a letter to Whitacre from Reps. Issa and Jordan, they say that the "GM chairman's words come "dangerously close to committing fraud" and "your false statements may expose GM to millions of dollars in damages, further reducing the value of the taxpayer-owned company.  The American people, as the majority shareholders of GM, have a right to know the truth behind the cost of the GM bailout and BM's genuine financial condition."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AP reports: The no-fly list failed to keep the Times Square suspect off the plane.
Faisal Shahzad boarded a jetliner bound for the United Arab Emirates Monday night before federal authorities pulled him back. Although under surveillance since midafternoon, he had managed to elude investigators and head to the airport.
The night's events, gradually coming to light, underscored the flaws in the nation's aviation security system, which despite its technologies, lists and information sharing, often comes down to someone making a right call.  [And I suppose Obama will continue to say he has full faith and confidence in Janet Napolitano, that she is not incompetent....]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health Care Costs, Its Illegal to be Illegal!

The AP reports:
Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.
But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.
It's a worrisome assessment for Democrats.
In particular, concerns about Medicare could become a major political liability in the midterm elections. The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, "possibly jeopardizing access" to care for seniors.
"During 2010-2019, however, these effects would be outweighed by the increased costs associated with the expansions of health insurance coverage," wrote Richard S. Foster, Medicare's chief actuary. "Also, the longer-term viability of the Medicare ... reductions is doubtful." Foster's office is responsible for long-range costs estimates.
In another flashing yellow light, the report warned that a new voluntary long-term care insurance prog created under the law faces "a very serious risk" of insolvency.
[It has been suggested that this report was ready one week prior to the big vote, but was withheld because they didn't want to "influence the vote".  Now isn't that just terrific?]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_law_costs
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Republican Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona, a move state Democrats say would be a mistake.

Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday's editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fox News reports:  After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.  The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.
The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne called passage in the state House a victory for the principle that education should unite, not divide students of differing backgrounds.
"Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds," Horne said. "This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism."
Horne began fighting in 2007 against the Tucson Unified School District's program, which he said defied Martin Luther King's call to judge a person by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Horne claimed the ethnic studies program encourages "ethnic chauvanism," promotes Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States and tries to intimidate conservative teachers in the school system.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Human Events has written:  It has been revealed 33 employees over the last several years, making between $90,000 and $222,000 a year, paid for with your hard earned money, were spending up to eight hours daily downloading pornography during working hours.
The names of these offenders have not been revealed, but the biggest offender was a SEC lawyer making in excess of $222,000 a year who spent so much time downloading porn he filled up his government hard drive. He then began “burning” porn to CDs and DVDs that were stored in his office. If you began watching the videos he downloaded, you’d be watching porn for over 16 years without a break. That seems like an obsession, but worse, how does anybody get any work done in that environment? 
The Obama Administration continues to demonize businesses in the healthcare industry and now the financial sector without looking at the corruption in the federal government. If the President was really for “hope and change” he’d start with cleaning up his own mess first. Make sure every agency of the federal government is tightened up from top to bottom.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now, in response to those critics, lawmakers have removed “lawful contact” from the bill and replaced it with “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” In an explanatory note, lawmakers added that the change “stipulates that a lawful stop, detention or arrest must be in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state.”
“It was the intent of the legislature for ‘lawful contact’ to mean arrests and stops, but people on the left mischaracterized it,” says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush Justice Department official who helped draft the law.  “So that term is now defined.”
The second change concerns the word “ In a safeguard against racial profiling, the law contained the phrase, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”  Critics objected to that, too, arguing again that it would not prevent but instead lead to racial profiling.  So lawmakers have taken out the word “solely.”
“There were misstatements by the opponents of the law that this was written to permit some consideration of race in the enforcement of this law,” says Kobach, “and that’s not the case at all.”
“They are minor changes to clarify some of the terms the ACLU and others had been distorting in public.  In an abundance of caution, the legislature and the governor’s office have made a few minor adjustments to respond to the mischaracterizations.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/in-response-to-critics-arizona-tweaks-new-immigration-law-92495249.html#ixzz0mbOlV7Tf

[On the subject of the new Arizona Immigration Law, I find it laughable that a state has to have a law saying that the law is the law, that being illegal is illegal.  Already the illegals are returning to Mexico!  I find it terrifying that our President is once again fomenting class warfare and hatred of selected groups.  And he is doing so by saying that the police will ask for the papers of a family taking their children out for an ice cream cone.  The bill clearly states that profiling is not to be used, that some other legal contact has had to have occurred prior to asking for proof of citizenship.  If there is to be any fault, it will be for rogue cops who may not follow the law.  I recall that during the health care bill campaign, Obama accused doctors of cutting off limbs and tonsils just to get patients and more money.  Barack Obama has in other words called the 70% of Arizonans who like this bill RACIST.
As I spoke at the time he was elected, I have feared that, rather than being a "post-racial" president, this Obama administration would prove to be a dangerous one for our country, with an administration and media which will turn to the accusation of racism whenever Obama doesn't like what some Americans believe. Statements such as these should never come from our President.  To me, unfortunately, it is no longer shocking.]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/04/026189.php      Powerline reports that:  President Obama has selected Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick is a Harvard professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit that, according to its website, has a staff of over 100 people. These seem like dubious qualifications to head a massive organization with a budget greater than that of the Department of Defense. As Jeffrey Anderson explains, however, Dr. Berwick is a perfect pick for Obama. For like Obama, Berwick believes that our health-care system should be run through Washington,

Unlike Obama, Berwick is completely up-front about this. His view of the rationing of health care is that "the decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open." Berwick has his eyes on the British method of rationing, as implemented through Great Britain's National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE).