Illegal alien amnesty is no longer the theoretical consideration of federal immigration officials inside the Obama administration. No more musings by Obama administration bureaucrats on how best to bypass Congress and implement illegal alien amnesty in stealth.

The secret is now out. And, as reported by The New York Times, illegal alien amnesty is now the official policy of the United States of America, courtesy of the Obama administration:

The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday (November 17) of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record.

The accelerated triage of the court docket — about 300,000 cases — is intended to allow severely overburdened immigration judges to focus on deporting foreigners who committed serious crimes or pose national security risks, Homeland Security officials said. Taken together, the review and the training, which will instruct immigration agents on closing deportations that fall outside the department’s priorities, are designed to bring sweeping changes to the immigration courts and to enforcement strategies of field agents nationwide.

First off, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should have but one priority: Protect American citizens by enforcing the law. The vast majority of American citizens believe if a law’s worth having it’s worth enforcing, including laws that prohibit people from sneaking across the border and living in the shadows, often on the taxpayer’s dime! But not this White House. This White House simply picks and chooses which laws it wishes to enforce based on its own whims and political and election needs. And that is a sure path to chaos, confusion and discontent.

And don’t believe for a second the Obama administration’s line that criminal illegal aliens won’t find themselves “outside the department’s priorities.”

Judicial Watch uncovered documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) proving that immigration officials were urged to use “prosecutorial discretion” to dismiss deportation proceedings against a wide variety of illegal alien criminals — including those convicted of serious crimes such as sexual assault, solicitation of murder, aggravated assault, assaulting a police officer, and kidnapping, as well as numerous drug charges.

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Looking back over the last 10 years and thinking about where many of us were and how we felt when the towers fell is surreal. These are sad thoughts. But what I find even more saddening is the fact that we have allowed our country to become more and more of a police state over the last 10 years. And apparently, the end is not in site…and will likely only become worse.

When the Department of Homeland Security was launched after 9/11 and the Patriot Act was launched as a bill that would last only 4 years, many freedom loving Americans squabbled. Most turned to those rebels and told them to “shut up,” that it was necessary to protect America. Then we allowed the TSA to militarize our airports and treat us like cattle. Then came the unsecured and blatant violation of personal privacy when travelers data was being collected. And of course the full body pat downs of children and colonoscopies full-body scans.

Oh, but a little before the whole body scan debacle was of course the hush-hush hiring of Ex-Stasi Spy Markus Wolf by the DHS. Who better to know how to teach the government how to spy on its own citizens and invoke citizen to citizen tattle telling than an ex-East German communist?

Is it any surprise that in the years following Wolf’s tenure as a consultant to DHS prior to his death we have now seen programs develop out of DHS that include the government asking its citizens to report on their neighbors, and the institution of a secret police force called “Viper Team”. It’s rumored they great each other with a hearty, “Shield and sword!”

Don’t forget the vans with X-ray patrolling our streets as well…

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In a hat tip to Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might be a Redneck” shtick, the Department of Homeland Security has instituted a “You Might be a Terrorist” campaign. It goes something like this: “If you are white, male (maybe female), and middle-aged…you might be a terrorist!”

The DHS has released yet another public service announcement-style video to push its If You See Something, Say Something campaign to encourage public vigilance in the War on Terror. The problem is, like previous PSA videos, the only way DHS can portray terrorists is as white men or women.

Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible for white, middle-aged American men and women to be terrorists, but the odds suggest otherwise. Over the last two years, 126 people have been indicted on terrorism-related charges, and all have been Muslim. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, only 50 of the 126 were Americans, but how many of these Americans were white men or white women has not been released.

This latest Janet Napolitano “Big Sis” production comes on the heels of a July 2011 PSA video which also characterized white Americans as likely terrorists.

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Janet Napolitano announced Monday an expansion of the Dpeartment of Homeland Security’s campaign “If You See Something, Say Something” to include hundreds of Walmart stores:

More than 230 Walmart stores nationwide launched the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign today, with a total of 588 Walmart stores in 27 states joining in the coming weeks. A short video message, available here, will play at select checkout locations to remind shoppers to contact local law enforcement to report suspicious activity.

The program:

The “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign—originally implemented by New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and funded, in part, by $13 million from DHS’ Transit Security Grant Program—is a simple and effective program to engage the public and key frontline employees to identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities.

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A federal judge conspired with the Bush Department of Justice to plan the largest immigration raid ever in the United States, and then presided over the trial of the plant’s manager, eventually sentencing him beyond even prosecutors’ recommendation.

New documents show Linda Reade, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, was involved in the planning of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raid on the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant at least six months before it occurred in May 2008. She asked for briefings from law enforcement and went as far as to ensure the raid was conducted around her vacation schedule.

But the judge never said a word of this to the defense lawyers for Sholom Rubashkin, the Agriprocessors manager, when she presided over his trial on bank fraud. She didn’t recuse herself from the case, either.

Rubashkin was convicted of causing $20 million in loses to a bank because he overstated Agriprocessors’ assets to get a larger loan. The raid destroyed Agriprocessors and the bank then called the loan. Reade sentenced Rubashkin in June to 27 years in prison. That’s more than Jeffrey Skilling, convicted of causing $80 million in losses from Enron, who got 24 years. And Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco, got 8 ½ to 25 years in prison for a $150 million fraud.

Rubashkin’s sentence is extreme, especially for a first-time, non-violent offender. After all, six former U.S. attorneys general sent Judge Reade a letter arguing against a multi-decade sentence for Rubashkin before she announced her decision. And prosecutors asked for 25 years.

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More hope and change…

Faisal Shahzad was removed from the national terrorist surveillance list before the Times Square attack.

(CBS News)

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.

The New York Times reported that the person who bought Faisal’s apartment back in 2004 was interviewed by federal investigators.

George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out.”

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We have learned of an apparent conflict of interest for a senior Obama administration official already in hot water over questions about his communications with his former employer.  Andrew Mclaughlin is the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the Office of Science & Technology Policy at the White House. His prior job was as the top lobbyist for Google. President Obama made numerous promises about not having lobbyists in his administration.

Big Government previously reported that privacy flaws in Google Buzz’s social networking tool exposed McLaughlin’s Buzz account to the public.  The analysis showed that McLaughlin’s Gmail included more than two dozen senior lobbyists and lawyers from Google with whom he is apparently still communicating.  Following a consumer group’s FOIA request for all of McLaughlin’s communications with his former employer, his Google Buzz account was deleted.

Now we’ve learned that McLaughlin may be actively advocating on his former employer’s behalf in his position as Deputy CTO — a big no-no for government employees who are required to abide by rigorous conflict of interest policies. For reference here is the pertinent part of the ethics agreement former lobbyists sign and agree to abide by.

“2.Revolving Door Ban – All Appointees Entering Government.  I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.

“3.Revolving Door Ban – Lobbyists Entering Government.  If I was a registered lobbyist within the 2 years before the date of my appointment, in addition to abiding by the limitations of paragraph 2, I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my appointment:

(a)participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the 2 years before the date of my appointment;

(k)”Directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients” shall mean matters in which the appointee’s former employer or a former client is a party or represents a party.

This past January when the earthquake hit Haiti, one aspect of the U.S. emergency response was to determine how to get some form of communications restored to the island as quickly as possible.

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Many a partisan and pundit-provocateur has spent the last year trying to convince us that the tea parties consist of violent extremists.  The multi-front attack has come from the media, Hollywood, and the current White House.

At the genesis of the movement, David Axelrod couched criticism of the Obama agenda as “unhealthy” on national television.  Last April, the infamous “right-wing extremism” report released the week before the tax day tea parties by the Department of Homeland Security.  The report referenced “disgruntled veterans” and lumped those that believed in states’ rights in with white supremacists and militia members.  It was an embarrassment to the Department of Homeland Security and the administration.  Public apologies to veterans and regrets regarding the extremely broad language were issued.

A while back, “Law and Order” ran a ridiculous episode where a lawyer declared that Rush, Beck, and O’Reilly drive people to commit violent hate crimes.  Before that, there was an episode referencing a tea party in the context of discussing extremists. In February of this year, Marvel Comics issued an apology after a comic implicitly painted tea parties in a racist, violent light.

Countless guests have appeared on Keith Olbermann’s show to dissect the tea party movement psyche.  Most notable was budding amateur psychologist Janeane Garofalo who erroneously dismissed tea partiers as intellectually deficient violent racists.  More recently a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show, talking about the recent Midwest militia arrests, conflated the tea party movement and right-wing militant extremists and implied that the nation is somehow in danger of the tea party splintering into militia terror cells.

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Last Thursday President Obama, whose commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is “unwavering,” met with Sen. Chuck Schumer D-N.Y. and Sen. Lindsey Graham R- S.C. to discuss a proposed bill to fix the broken immigration system. While the details remain somewhat elusive, according to the Los Angles Times:

“The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.”

With the recent failures of the government agencies on full display during the failed Christmas Day bombing of flight 253, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that would be responsible for processing millions of illegal aliens should a path to citizenship become law, deserves national security scrutiny. Like the State Department, the USCIS is on the front lines of America’s defence. As we now know, Hillary Clinton’s State Department revoked known al-Qaida member Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab’s, visa after he allegedly attempted to blow up an airliner with explosives in his underwear. The credit for thwarting the Christmas Day terrorist attack goes to the passengers and the crew of flight 253—not to government agencies. Under the Department of Homeland Security, the USCIS’ mission includes keeping nefarious people off U.S. soil while preserving America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants by processing lawful foreigners’ applications for visas, residency and citizenship.

According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report,  Immigration Benefits: Actions Needed to Address Vulnerabilities in Process for Granting Permanent Residency,  “Terrorists and other individuals posing a threat to national security have applied for lawful permanent residency–” the Green Card. The “available data” provided to the GAO found that the “USCIS background checks identified individuals who were (1) KSTs [Known or suspected terrorist], (2) associates of terrorists, (3) involved in providing material support to terrorists or terrorist organizations, and (4) agents of a foreign government involved in espionage. From March 2003 through December 1, 2007, FDNS [Office of Fraud Detection and National Security] received about 14,500 national security referrals for all application types. According to FDNS officials, about 10 percent involved individuals on TSC’s [Terrorist Screening Center ] watch list and the balance of these cases involved individuals who were not on the terrorist watch list, but whose background checks indicated other possible national security concerns, such as those having associations with known or suspected terrorists.” The same applies for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. As the GAO report documents: “In addition to identifying potential national security concerns from checking an alien’s name against watch lists in TECS [Treasury Enforcement Communications System], name checks against the FBI’s investigative files have uncovered individuals who raised national security concerns. We reviewed a random sample created by FDNS of FBI name check results provided to USCIS to ascertain the types of national security concerns identified during the name check process. We found that the FBI provided information to USCIS that these individuals:

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I lose things all the time.  Last month I lost my wallet.  Once a week I lose my car keys.  Every day I lose the TV remote.

Thankfully, I’ve never lost a computer.

The Department of Homeland Sercurity (DHS), on the other hand, cannot say the same.

New documents show that component agencies of DHS, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) combined to lose no less than 985 computers in fiscal year 2008.  Along with other component agencies in DHS, well over 1,000 computers were lost.

But the inventories of lost stolen and damaged equipment don’t stop with just computers.  They include radiation detectors, night vision scopes (hundreds of them), night vision goggles, lost vehicles, lost blackberries, computer servers, expensive radios and radio repeaters.

CBP maintains that the computer losses were within acceptable standards for asset management, saying the losses only represented about .5% of their total computer inventory.

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It has been reported, a company by the name of PharmAthene, which is closely tied to the late Congressman John Murtha and Tara O’Toole, an Under Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has received preferential treatment by our good friends in the federal governmenat the expense of Joe Taxpayer.

BIG GOVERNMENT has learned that a little known entity named the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is adding millions of dollars to a contract awarded way back in 2003 that PharmAthene inherited, rather than conducting a fair and open competition. In government speak, that means PharmAthene is about to get huge sums of additional cash without ever having competed for it. Coverage of this sole-source award has already received significant news coverage and attention from numerous outlets, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

But it’s not as if PharmAthene is hiding it. They’re actually promoting the fact that they’re getting sole-source contracts that do away with any competition and fatten their bottom line.

According to a recent PharmAthene press release:

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Everyone keeps saying how lucky we are that the “crotch” bomber on Flight 253 was unable to ignite the explosives hidden in his underwear, but I am sorry to report  that  the attack was a actually a huge success.  The plane was not destroyed and no lives were lost, but the larger, strategic goals of al Qaeda were certainly advanced.

Too many Americans, and many in our Department of Homeland Security, forget that al Qaeda targeted our economic power and symbols on 9/11.   The goal, as Osama bin Laden announced, was to force, or cause the US to take actions, that would erode our economic prosperity and weaken us as a  nation .

Unfortunately, we have given bin Laden a victory he does not deserve.  DHS has, for some time, been unaware that the failure of many of the security measures and procedures that they have championed, has resulted in additional, self inflicted wounds.

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From the great folks at Sen. Tom Coburn’s office:

Political scientists lobbying Congress for federal subsidies

The National Science Foundation spends about $8 million annually to support political science research

Research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force attempts to predict individuals’ political affiliation based on Facebook profiles

Congress earmarks $3 million to a company owned by Goldman Sachs and two private equity funds

Congress raids the military’s maintenance budget to pay for $5 million earmark for digital scrapbooks

The Federal Aviation Administration has spent more than $270 million in federal stimulus grants on projects that scored poorly on the agency’s own national priority rating system

Department of Homeland Security steers nearly $1 million in federal funding, typically distributed to fire departments, to ACORN

Earlier this month and despite the public scrutiny over the voter fraud and felony criminal activity associated with ACORN, the Department of Homeland Security went ahead and granted $997,402 to ACORN under the FY 2008 Fire Prevention and Safety Program. 

To most people, the timing and the amount of the grant would seem off base, but when you take into account the fact that DHS awarded ACORN–an organization with no clear expertise in fire safety and prevention–a fire prevention and safety grant, it’s just plain offensive.

With fire departments all over Louisiana – and the rest of the country – struggling to make ends meet and get the equipment and training they need to protect their local communities, the idea of a million dollar grant going to ACORN is unsettling, to say the least. 

I’ve had grave reservations about ACORN for some time, and over the past year we’ve seen numerous examples of serious allegations of wrongdoing on the part of this organization and its employees across the country.  I simply can’t see the logic behind diverting much needed funding from worthy fire departments to this organization.

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