Mexico’s Violence Spilling-Over into Texas, Dan Calls for a Plan

By Cary Wesberry

Texas officials are drafting plans for law enforcement and military responses to the growing Mexican gang violence threatening to spill across the U.S. border.” Worst-case scenario, Mexico becomes the Western hemisphere’s equivalent of Somalia, with mass violence, mass chaos,” Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told Fox News. “That would clearly require a military response from the United States.”

With more than 5,300 people killed in Mexico last year owing to criminal activity, Mexico has been identified in a Department of Defense report as a country that could abruptly destabilize.

While Texas officials work on their defensive posture, the federal government has already developed a contingency plan that calls for armored vehicles, aircraft and teams of personnel along border hotspots. Military forces, however, would be deployed only if agencies like the Border Patrol were unable to quell the violence.

What is not being accounted for, however, is the flood of refugees that could swarm the United States in the event of a Mexican government collapse, according to Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry

“At this point, what we’re focusing on is spillover violence.” Cesinger told Fox News. “[Refugees] may be something that comes into consideration later on.”

Texas state Sen. Dan Patrick has called upon Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McGraw to present a comprehensive plan on refugees to the state’s Legislature.

“We have to seriously consider that as a remote possibility, so therefore, we need to have a plan,” he said.

Not an encouraging report. The longer we wait to secure the southern border, the worse it will be when the Mexican government hits the fan and goes splat.

4 key Dems in Congress seek inquiry into Arpaio sweeps

(Compiler's note: For an interesting video, clickon the title above.)

by Daniel González

Four leading Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Friday asked the new attorney general and Homeland Security secretary to investigate civil-rights complaints stemming from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's crackdowns on illegal immigration.

The four lawmakers called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate complaints that deputies used skin color as the basis to search for illegal immigrants. They also asked that a federal agreement allowing the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to enforce immigration laws be terminated if any problems can't be fixed.

The lawmakers are the highest-level officials, and the first under the new Obama administration and Democratic-controlled Congress, to make such a request. They are committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Zoe Lofgren of California, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Scott of Virginia.

Last year, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, along with civil-liberties and immigrant-advocacy groups, called for similar investigations of Arpaio.

The sheriff on Friday adamantly denied his deputies use racial profiling in arrests of illegal immigrants. "We're doing the right thing," he said. "If I was worried, with all the allegations, why would I keep doing it? I'm not stupid, having worked for the feds for 30 years."

The lawmakers' request, in the form of a letter, comes a few weeks after Napolitano ordered the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a wide-ranging review of immigration enforcement and border security. That includes a review of the federal program, known as 287(g), that gives state and local agencies the authority to enforce immigration laws.

In a memo, Napolitano ordered her staff to study the effectiveness of allowing police to arrest illegal immigrants vs. allowing jailers to identify and hold them when they are arrested for crimes. She also wrote that she wants to see what can be done to speed the process for signing more 287(g) agreements.

Arpaio said this week that he is worried the former Arizona governor will eliminate the provision that allows local police to arrest illegal immigrants.

Legal experts have said Arpaio's practices were likely to get more scrutiny under the Obama administration. Holder has a track record of investigating allegations of racial profiling against police departments when he was deputy attorney general under the Clinton administration. As governor, Napolitano yanked state funding that helped pay for Arpaio's controversial neighborhood sweeps, which critics said were aimed at arresting illegal immigrants.

In Friday's letter, Conyers and the other Democrats said that, in recent months, Arpaio had shown "a blatant disregard for the rights of Hispanic residents in the Phoenix area."

Lofgren is chairwoman of the immigration subcommittee. Nadler is chairman of the Constitution subcommittee, and Scott is chairman of the crime subcommittee.

The lawmakers wrote that Arpaio had apparently overreached his authority under the federal agreement by ordering deputies to "scour Latino neighborhoods" to search for illegal immigrants on the basis of skin color.

"As a result, members of the Latino community - whether they are U.S. citizens or foreign-born, whether they are legal immigrants or undocumented - feel under siege," the letter said.

The Democrats said an incident this month in which Arpaio, citing a need to cut costs, "paraded approximately 200 suspected illegal immigrants in shackles to a segregated area of his Tent City county facility" also warranted investigation.

Arpaio denied his policies are discriminatory toward Latinos and called the 287(g) program "a great success."

"We've done a great job when you look at all the arrests we've made and all the (illegal immigrants) we've found who have been booked into the jail," he said.

Arpaio compared the House members' request to similar ones made in the past year by Gordon and advocacy groups. None resulted in a federal investigation.

Vincent Picard, a spokesman for the Phoenix office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Arpaio has not violated the 287(g) agreement. The pact prohibits ICE-trained deputies from targeting illegal-immigrant suspects based on race or appearance.

Although allegations of racial profiling are common, not a single firsthand complaint involving ICE-trained officers in Arizona has been filed with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General or any other investigative agency, Picard said.

Some legal immigrants have been detained under the program, he said, but in every case, ICE determined they weren't carrying their green cards as required.

"Arizona's 287(g) program is working as intended," Picard said.

Conyers has come under fire from some Democratic lawmakers for pushing too hard for investigations of the Bush administration. Last year, Conyers threatened to file articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush that alleged constitutional violations of civil liberties. But he was discouraged by the Democratic Party leadership.

Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican and the only Arizona member of the House Judiciary Committee, was traveling Friday night and could not be reached for comment.

The Justice Department will review the letter, spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said.

Napolitano has asked for a review of the 287(g) program because of questions about how agreements with state and local agencies are administered and if uniform standards are being applied, said Dean Smith, a Homeland Security spokesman. The review is due next Friday.

Republic reporter JJ Hensley and John Yaukey of Gannett News Service contributed to this article.

Radical Muslim Chaplains – Root Causes of Islamic Fanaticism and Terror

Unreal... Dems Include Random-Undefined $1.6 Billion For "Science" In Stimulus With NO Description

by Gateway Pundit


Democrats rammed the largest spending bill through Congress yesterday without even giving members a chance to read it.

And, now we find out that they included whole undefined categories with hundreds of millions of dollars assigned to these mysterious pet projects.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) was on Hannity last night describing this horrific Democratic boondoggle:


This is the "Science" category Rep. Price was talking about:

Click to Enlarge
Page 63, Bill Text HR-1
Democrats just plopped down $1.6 billion for "Science" with no wording at all on where this money is going to be spent, who is going to spend it or what they are going to spend it on.
Unbelievable.

Democrats just voted to dump billions of taxpayer dollars on pet projects that are not even defined.
Do you suppose this might invite corruption?
Name one business that could get away with this.

Truly- The inmates are in complete control of the asylum.

US Predator strike in South Waziristan kills 25

Official: Economic Crisis Top US Threat

National Intelligence Director Warns Of Dangerous Recession

WASHINGTON -- The economic crisis has trumped bullets and bombs in the intelligence chief's latest assessment of the top security threats to the United States. In his opening statement Thursday, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair is telling the Senate Intelligence Committee about the potentially dangerous effects of a sustained and deep recession.

Blair also said al-Qaida is less capable than it was a year ago but remains a leading threat to the U.S. And despite U.S. and international efforts in Afghanistan, the Taliban is regaining power in many parts of that country. He put much of the blame on Pakistan's inability to control the tribal area on the Afghan border.

The Elephant in the Room: Intimidating critics of Islam

By Rick Santorum

Politicians and citizens who raise questions about the religion are targeted.

We lost more than a million jobs in the past few months, the headlines remind us. So last month's story about a Dutch court's ruling that Geert Wilders was "inciting hatred and discrimination" - and that "it is in the public interest to prosecute" him - understandably didn't make the American news.

Did Wilders rip off a minority in a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme? No, he's a member of the Dutch parliament, and his precise villainy was releasing a 15-minute film. Entitled Fitna, it suggests a direct link between certain verses of the Koran and acts of terrorism.

Not to be outdone, the United Kingdom this week banned Wilders from entering the country. Its reasoning: His "presence in the U.K. would pose a genuine, present, and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society." A letter from the home secretary went on to tell Wilders that "your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security."

In 2007, Cambridge University Press destroyed unsold copies of Alms for Jihad after it was sued by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi-Irish businessman whom the book accused of financing al-Qaeda. So much for academics standing up against book-burning.

In 2005, reporters from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were forced into hiding after publishing a series of 12 cartoons about Muhammad. Islamic fundamentalists found the images blasphemous and threatened to bomb the paper's offices and kill its cartoonists - apparently, in certain quarters, an alternative to a letter to the editor.

Last year, at the urging of the Canadian Islamic Congress, author Mark Steyn was forced to defend himself against charges of racism and "Islamophobia" that were filed with three Canadian human-rights commissions, based on his columns in Maclean's magazine.

And, following a 2008 U.N. resolution urging nations to outlaw "defamation of religion," several nations - including Italy, the Netherlands and France - are attempting to ban "hate speech" against religious groups.

All of these incidents are calculated to intimidate critics of Islam in Europe and across the West. The message in the European Union is clear: Politicians, religious figures, and even private citizens with religiously and politically incorrect opinions will be subject not only to Muslim protest, but to criminal prosecution and violent retribution.

What publisher will print Steyn's next book if it can be labeled a hate crime and banned in most countries? "Pretty soon, your little book is looking a lot less commercially viable," Steyn has said. "At the end of the day, there'll be a lot of . . . American books that will go unpublished here in America."

In addition, these incidents deflect attention away from real - rather than trumped-up - religious discrimination. In the arena of actual persecution of religious minorities, Arab and Islamic nations are much of the problem.

Look at the U.S. State Department's 2008 Report on International Religious Freedom. Among the dozens of limitations on religious freedom in the Arab-Islamic world are the crimes of apostasy - converting from Islam to another religion - and blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad, both punishable by death under Muslim Sharia law. Coptic Christians are, at best, second-class citizens in Egypt; Baha'is are savagely persecuted in Iran; and churches and synagogues are banned in Saudi Arabia, as is any non-Muslim religious activity in public.

This is not a front- or even back-page story in the American press today. Why? Because it has nothing to do with the economy.

The gathering storm I have been warning of for years has now formed over the West. Yet instead of fighting the gradual incursion of Sharia and the demands of an intolerant, even militant Islam, Westerners are cowering and fatalistic. Last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury conceded that acceptance of some parts of Sharia in Britain seemed "unavoidable."

So how did the market do today?

Federal obligations exceed world GDP

By Jerome R. Corsi

As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury. ....

Breaking Intelligence Report: Obama to Drop Sanctions On Iran!

by Gateway Pundit

This article was published in Geostrategy-Direct , an open source intelligence (OSINT) newsletter that has a good track record.

The report would probably seem preposterous if it weren't for the fact that Team Obama already waived sanctions on Syria and is considering opening travel to Cuba.
It's like watching Carter on Speed.

This latest news comes from the February 18, 2009 edition of Geostrategy Direct (subscribers only):

DOSSIER: Ehud Barak
'Change' the mullahs can believe in: Obama to drop sanctions on Iran

TEL AVIV — Israelis may have gone to the polls hoping for "Change" but the status quo is all any of the candidates could look forward to whatever the outcome. Defense Minister Ehud Barack, has already glimpsed the future and has warned about what it holds.

Meanwhile, the status quo means continued rocket and missile attacks while international aid pours into the Gaza Strip and bolsters a regime run by Hamas, which is still considered by the United States to be a terrorist organization.

But "Change" is taking place, Barak has intimated, originating not in the Mideast but in Washington, D.C. in the form of a U.S. reconciliation with Iran.

Such a process could result in U.S. acceptance of Teheran's nuclear weapons program and the downplaying of its threats against Israel.

Just as Barack Obama entered office facing a massive economic crisis beyond the scope of his experience, likewise the new Israeli leader will have to make or delay making difficult strategic decisions from the minute he or she enters office.

Barak has already signaled what the new government can expect, officials here said.

The United States has abandoned its policy of sanctioning companies that aid Iran's nuclear and missile program, they said.

The officials said the new Obama administration of has decided to end sanctions against Iranian government agencies or companies that aid Teheran's missile and nuclear program. The officials said Israel has been informed of the new U.S. policy.

"We were told that sanctions do not help the new U.S. policy of dialogue with Iran," an official said.

Barak confirmed the new U.S. policy. In an address to the Herzliya Conference on Feb. 3, Barak said Washington did not say whether it would resume sanctions against Iran.

"We must arrive at a strategic understanding with the United States over Iran's military nuclear program and ensure that even if at this time they opt for the diplomatic option, it will only last a short time before harsh and necessary sanctions are imposed," Barak said.

Obama decided to end sanctions against Iran after determining that the U.S. measures had failed to block Teheran's missile or nuclear weapons program, officials said. Under the administration of former President George Bush, the United States accelerated sanctions on Iran in 2008.

In his address, the Israeli defense minister indicated that Obama had forged an entirely new approach toward Iran. He said the Israeli government has sought a briefing from the new U.S. administration.

A U.S. defense source said the White House would no longer enforce sanctions imposed by the Bush administration. The source said the decision has already been relayed to Iran.

"The administration has abandoned sanctions entirely," the U.S. source said. "It is a completely new ballgame."

Similarly, Obama has decided on a new U.S. ambassador to Syria and is expected to lift sanctions against a nation charged with aiding Al Qaida in Iraq and secretly building a nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance.

Diplomatic sources said Obama, in consultation with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has asked Frederic Hof to become the first U.S. ambassador to Damascus since 2005. The sources said Hof, a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Middle East Policy Council, agreed to take the post.

The sources said the Obama administration was expected to suspend U.S. sanctions on Syria's military and energy programs.

They said Hof would be authorized to facilitate an expansion of U.S. relations with Syria, which deteriorated under President George Bush.

In 2005, the United States withdrew its ambassador to Damascus in wake of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syria was blamed for the car bombing in Beirut in which Hariri and many of his bodyguards were killed.

The sources said Obama sent emissaries to Syria in September 2008 and pledged that if elected he would reconcile with the regime of President Bashar Assad. After his election victory, they said, Obama sent another message that promised to appoint an ambassador within the first weeks of his administration.