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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; security</title>
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		<title>Immigration Wars</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/immigration-wars/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=immigration-wars</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/immigration-wars/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:40:23 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reform]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sessions]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246545</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An all-star panel takes on America's immigration crisis at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to the panel discussion “Immigration Wars,” which took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/113190066" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Sen. Jeff Sessions:</strong> For 40 years really, the American people have been right and just in pleading with their Congress to create a lawful system of immigration that&#8217;s fairly enforced and that serves the national interest.  It&#8217;s the politicians and the establishment that one time after another, that it always succeeded somehow in keeping the will of the people from being effectuated.  It&#8217;s just amazing.  I said in 2007 we&#8217;d offer amendments and they would offer things that would pass and we&#8217;d offer things, it wouldn&#8217;t pass, and I finally realized this was the test.  If it worked they wouldn&#8217;t pass it.  If it wouldn&#8217;t work, they&#8217;d pass it.  You&#8217;ve seen that, Louie, I know, and the bills that come through. If they&#8217;re moving and got a lot of support you&#8217;d read it carefully and there&#8217;s one loop hole after another and it doesn&#8217;t work.  So first the American people are right, decent and just in making that demand of their government.</p>
<p>Are we a sovereign nation or not?  A sovereign nation controls its borders.  If you have laws it should set forth criteria for entry that are objective and ascertainable and they ought to be followed.  People who apply that don&#8217;t qualify should not get in, and those who qualify should get in.  This is the right way America&#8217;s always thought about its business, and that&#8217;s the way we ought to do now, and that&#8217;s the biggest problem we&#8217;ve got.</p>
<p>The executive amnesty is one of the most breathtaking things I&#8217;ve seen since I&#8217;ve been in Washington.  I do believe it is a constitutional crisis.  It&#8217;s an overreach.  It&#8217;s an attempt by the President to do what a lot of liberal federal judges used to do.  This is the way they explain it.  Well, Congress won&#8217;t act, so I have to act.  When if Congress votes and rejects a bill, it is active.  It has made a decision.  This idea that just because you won&#8217;t pass the bill I want I&#8217;m now able to do it through my executive powers, is so far from the heritage of America, the constitutional order that we&#8217;re so proud of and served us so well is just beyond my comprehension.  So I hope people will push back on that.</p>
<p>So in the first executive amnesty that we probably did not hammer enough with the American people, the people that were here illegally now up to 30/31 years of age, they are given an I.D. card with a Social Security number and it says work authorization across the top of it.  Now the law of the United States is you enter the country unlawfully businesses cannot hire you, they commit an offense, and you&#8217;re not able to work.  Simple enough, first thing you do is you come to a country illegally you don&#8217;t let people start extracting money from the country and so that deal was a presidential overreach, really.  Because the President doesn&#8217;t have the power to authorize somebody to work in contravention of established law passed by the Congress of the United States.  He&#8217;s the chief executive officer.  He&#8217;s supposed to see the laws are enforced, not violate them by the millions, and now he&#8217;s talking about 5 to 6 million more, all of which would put us in a position I think of just collapsing any moral integrity that we have in the legal system.</p>
<p>So if the President, the chief executive, the prosecutor appoints immigration officers and ICE officers, if he just basically says, not only are we not going to deport anybody anymore, we are just gonna give you the right to work in the country, then I think we&#8217;ve reached a point in immigration law that&#8217;s really dangerous.  I just think it&#8217;s, the American people that need to know the enormity of it. And what about the people who didn&#8217;t get it? So there&#8217;s 11 million here, and now we do 5.  Is anybody going to deport the other 5 million?  Oh, you didn&#8217;t get in somehow, you didn&#8217;t make the cut?  There&#8217;s no plan to deport anybody else.  They&#8217;re not going to deport anybody else.</p>
<p>Then finally I would mention this point, and the polling data is very strong on it. Asked a simple question.  Should, at a time of high unemployment, millions of people unemployed, should we attempt to get our people working rather than bringing in people from abroad to take the jobs?  And this is an 80 percent polling number.  I mean we&#8217;ve got to get our people working.  Wages are down since 2000, wages are down about $3,000.00, median household income, $2,300.00 for a family since 2009.  This is not a healthy trend out there.  Dr. Borjas at Harvard has studied this meticulously and has demonstrated how much of that was caused by this very large, unprecedented historically, flow of immigrants into our country.  We are at about the highest level we have ever been and it&#8217;s continuing upward.  So I wanted to say that.</p>
<p>Republicans stopped it.  Not all Republicans, but Republicans did stop it.  You guys in the House, Louie and John, and the others were just heroic because they were trying to pass this thing and they just stood up and read the bill, fought back and were able to stop it right before we recessed for the election and I pleaded with them to also pass language that would block funding to execute the executive amnesty.  So you have to have money to buy I.D. cards, to process all these people.  Congress has the power of the purse.  We barred the President from spending any money to close Guantanamo Bay and he can&#8217;t close Guantanamo Bay because it cost money to close it.  And we do that all the time, every defense bill has things in it like that and other bills to do too, so we should simply say to the President &#8212; so the House passed it right before they left and I think it was a significant factor in the Senate elections that our candidates were demanding of Democrats, why are you blocking simple legislation that would block this President from executing an unlawful order?  And that exit polling that Louie mentioned showed that 80 percent of the American people opposed executive amnesty, who voted in this last election. 80 percent. And so the way it would work in my mind, you fund an entire government of the United States or a portion of it and you simply say also, but you can&#8217;t spend any money to execute the President&#8217;s dream of unlawful amnesty.</p>
<p>Finally it was a near run thing, Louie.  I really think it would have been bad, bad, bad had that bill passed without other things happening as it did on the your, and John&#8217;s leadership and others over there.  It was a battle, there was a lot of courage, there was a lot of pressure came on.  The last day they made Congress stay another day, people had their planes hooked up ready to fly and you all just shut it down and helped, I believe, put us in a position to preserve the rule of law.  Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Moderator:</strong> Thank you, Senator.  Congressman Fleming</p>
<p><strong>Rep. John Fleming: </strong>Yes, thank you.  It was great to be with you here for my first freedom session.  First word about my two friends and colleagues to my left, Louie Gomer talks about speaking truth to power but trust me I&#8217;ve been there many times.  He really does speak truth to power.  Yeah, absolutely.  Sometimes I slink down because I&#8217;m afraid something&#8217;s going to get thrown, but he&#8217;s very courageous when it comes to that, and his great leadership.  He really does, he&#8217;s often times, may times, if not all the time, ahead of many of us in the House when it comes to where we&#8217;re going and what we need to do to stop that forward motion.  Senator Sessions, vanguard on this and many other subjects, if you know anybody from Alabama you know just how highly respected Jeff Sessions is, so much so that I believe you didn&#8217;t have an opponent for your recent reelection.  And members of the House, and I have a lot of good friends from Alabama, we kind of work together as kind of a southeastern &#8212; they all look to Jeff Sessions for leadership, so he continues to be a vanguard on this and many other issues.</p>
<p>You may recall Milton Friedman, the famous 20<sup>th</sup> century economist.  He really said it best.  He said you can have open borders, but you can&#8217;t have a welfare system.  Now you can have a welfare system but you can&#8217;t have open borders, and that&#8217;s playing out today because really these were no problems until our welfare system, the infrastructure was put in place about 1965.  That&#8217;s when we began to have border problems.  Now it&#8217;s true that we all come from immigrants in one or way another, but the way it worked traditionally in America is it was the best and the brightest.  The people who were willing to take the risk who came here for greater opportunity, and still many do.  But what we also find is two important factors.  No. 1, if they don&#8217;t find that opportunity they find a very comfortable safety net system here, upon which to stay.  The other thing is that folks who immigrate here today, most of them come from countries where they look to the government.  That&#8217;s their tradition, is the government takes care of him.  Now when it destroys their civilization, when it destroys their economy, they look for another place to go and where do they come? They come here.  But then what you see is a progressive lowered standard of living.  Well, have we have seen that?  Well look at California today.  California today is not the California that we knew a generation ago and it&#8217;s going down rapidly, so these are all important factors.</p>
<p>Now Senator Sessions, we are pretty sure, is going to be our next budget chairman in the Senate and he will tell you that back in 1997 when we had the last balanced budget, two thirds of our budget was discretionary spending.  That is what we plan to spend each year on defense and on our agencies and departments out there, things that we could cut spending or increase spending from year to year.  Only a third was what we call automatic pilot spending, which is of course entitlement spending, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and all of these things.  Today it&#8217;s reverse.  It&#8217;s almost two thirds built in infrastructure spending which we can&#8217;t change from year to year and the other third is discretionary and it&#8217;s shrinking rapidly.  The point being that if you were entitled to a benefit we have to pay you whether we have the money or not.  We don&#8217;t plan that spending and so if we continue to grow our entitlement society we will eventually completely displaces discretionary spending and our ability to amount a defense, a common defense and to operate our government.  Remember we&#8217;re $18 trillion in debt and so there&#8217;s no way we can have open borders, accepting peoples with our arms open, allowing them then to fall back on our safety net system and think that we&#8217;re ever, ladies and gentlemen, going to balance our budget.  It just isn&#8217;t going to happen.  So it&#8217;s important that we get honest about the situation.  We do have a right to have sovereign borders; we do have a right to ask of people who come here that they carry their own weight.  Otherwise this nation, as we know it, not because we dislike them, not because we&#8217;re xenophobic, but only because there&#8217;s only so much taxpayers can do to support people from other nations who come here.  Many of them now when they come they refuse to learn our culture, they refuse to learn our language, they refuse to have or build the skills necessary to be successful in America. And as a result of that, that&#8217;s just an economic reality we have to understand, and if we&#8217;re going to remain the only super power in the world and our rightful place in leadership around the world, for what is good and what is generous, and to keep this world a peaceful place, we can&#8217;t allow our economic situation and the opportunities that come from that to diminish.</p>
<p>So I look forward to responding to questions as well but I think it&#8217;s important that we understand that there really is a serious economic issue behind this that even Republicans seem unable to understand.  I understand why Democrats want to do this.  Because as immigrants come into this country, they&#8217;re going to vote.  Usually they&#8217;re going to vote two to one Democrat.  I understand why they do it.  I don&#8217;t understand why Republicans want open borders and amnesty.  We hear that maybe it&#8217;s the Chamber of Commerce that somehow businesses want cheaper labor.  I&#8217;m a business owner; I have 500 employees still today in my private business.  I can tell you I&#8217;m not interested in that.  I want to have good American workers who are skilled and trained.</p>
<p>And finally I will tell you that we actually had a debate about a year ago.  Cato Institute said that it&#8217;s going to help our economy to really have open borders and amnesty.  Okay fine, then Robert Rector, who as you may recall from the Heritage Foundation, the guy who led the effort to put work requirements into Welfare, Welfare reform under Clinton that really dramatically improved the situation in those days, which since have been wiped away by President Obama.  And we have a debate between the two and Robert Rector went through line by line and in great detail to show how open borders are going to destroy our economy and our future and our opportunities that we hope are going to leave a better nation to our children.  The Cato Institute every time their answer was this, we have computer models that tell us that it&#8217;s going to make our economy better.  Well folks you can make a computer model say anything you want, it&#8217;s always garbage in and garbage out.  So once again thank you and I look forward to this important discussion.</p>
<p><strong>Moderator: </strong>Thank you Congressman.  And Mike Cutler</p>
<p><strong>Michael Cutler: </strong>It&#8217;s absolutely a pleasure to be here and a privilege to share the stage with three true leaders in the Congress.  For all the complaints we hear about Congress we do have some real good guys and Jeff Sessions in particular.  I&#8217;m going to tell a quick anecdote and then we&#8217;re going to get into what I want to say, but after 911 I started doing everything in my power to try to wake people up to the immigration issues, the immigration component to the terror attacks.  The ashes landed on my home.  My neighbors died and I had testified four and a half years earlier before a House Immigration Subcommittee Hearing on the nexus between visa fraud, immigration benefit fraud and terrorism.  Yes we had two terror attacks in &#8217;93 and it was because of those two failures of the immigration system that those attacks were possible.  And my wife and I &#8212; as you know, if you&#8217;re married you know how the back and forth goes &#8212; kept thinking, well, what are you doing? You&#8217;re spending all this time and effort and it&#8217;s going nowhere.</p>
<p>And I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times back in &#8217;07 that I had testified before three House and one Senate hearing about comprehensive reform.  And I wrote a commentary with bleary eyes and I decided to rename it.  I&#8217;m working on my candor, but you tell me if I&#8217;m being successful.  I called it the &#8220;Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act.&#8221;  I think we&#8217;re getting somewhere but I think Senator Sessions liked it so much that he quoted me on three separate occasions.  The last time you did this, Senator, I got a frantic phone call from one of the 911 family members, a former New York City police officer whose son-in-law was obliterated on 911.  I&#8217;m getting a little choked up.  He said Mike, quick, put the TV on and go to C-SPAN.  I said, Bruce, I&#8217;m in my car, I can&#8217;t.  He said shut up and listen and he held the phone next to his TV and there was Senator Sessions from the floor of the United States Senate quoting me by name, urging his colleagues to take my advice and telling them that I had referred to comprehensive reform as the &#8220;Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act.&#8221;  My wife gets into the car, I&#8217;m in Brooklyn, and she looks at me and says, &#8220;Are you okay?&#8221;  I said, &#8220;Why?&#8221;  She said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen that weird look on your face.&#8221;  I said, &#8220;You mean more than usual?&#8221; and she said, &#8220;What happened?&#8221; and I told her the story, and a couple of days later &#8212; so many people love to plagiarize and we&#8217;ve all experienced it, but not Senator Sessions.  This man is a class act from square one to whatever square you want to go to, sent me a certificate to commemorate this.  So this package comes, my wife opens it, it&#8217;s from Washington and her eyes get bigger and bigger and bigger and she turns to me and says, &#8220;My gosh, do you see what this is?&#8221;  I said, &#8220;Yes.&#8221;  I said, &#8220;Are we done arguing?&#8221;  She said, &#8220;Yes,&#8221; and she ran out and framed it and it hangs on the wall in my home and I want to thank you for that, Senator.  So when I heard I was going to be here and I heard that Senator Sessions was going to be here, I said, &#8220;Well, I hope I get to see him,&#8221; never thinking that I would have the privilege of sharing the stage with these three amazing leaders, so I thank all of you for all your dedication and hard work on our behalf.</p>
<p>Our immigration laws are not a single issue, but a singular issue because they impact every challenge and threat that America faces today.  I started working for the INS in 1971 as an immigration inspector at Kennedy Airport.  Did that job for four years, for one of the four years I was assigned as an adjudications officer doing the marriage interviews, like you&#8217;ve seen in the movies. And when I worked with the law firm retained by Governor Jan Brewer to defend that state against the outrageous lawsuit over SB1070, I said that for that four-year period that I had that inspector&#8217;s badge I had my eye to the peep hole on America&#8217;s front door.  Houses come equipped with doorbells, peepholes and door locks so we make certain not to allow people into our homes to pose a threat to our safety or wellbeing.  Why in the world shouldn&#8217;t the United States as a minimum do that for us and our nation today?</p>
<p>I happen to be registered as a Democrat, I&#8217;ve always voted as an Independent.  I think anybody who votes a straight party line without paying attention to who the person is, is an idiot.  I have campaigned for conservative Republicans.  I don&#8217;t care if you&#8217;re with the Hopping Kangaroo Party, there&#8217;s only one question for me in this day and age.  Do you stand with America and do you stand with Americans?  I became a special agent in 1975.  In 1976 I tripped over a PLO plot to blow up an Israel oil refinery.  Thank God we prevented it.  For the balance of my career I had a wonderful relationship with the Israeli National Police.  It was my introduction to the nexus between immigration and international terrorism.  1988 I was assigned to the Unified Intelligence Division of DEA as the first INS agent assign to that position and in &#8217;91 I became a senior special agent with the Drug Task Force, Organized Crime, Drug Enforcement Task Force.  I spent the next ten years there.  And I want you to understand something, with all the nonsense about the arrest statistics &#8212; I was on with Neil Cavuto and Neil said, &#8220;Well, if arrests are down it means that there&#8217;s fewer here,&#8221; and on and on and on.  I said, Neil, I don&#8217;t trust the arrest statistics and it&#8217;s just not the Mexican border.  I don&#8217;t know why we&#8217;re so fixated on that one border.  I wrote an article for Front Page Magazine.  I&#8217;m honored to be a columnist for Front Page, and I called the border security the immigration colander.  This notion that if we halfway, kind of, sort of plug one hole in the bottom of the colander that you use to drain pasta that now we can use it as a bucket to carry water is nuts.  We are a country of 50 border states.  In fact there&#8217;s an excellent film that just came out by the Tea Party Patriots.  I&#8217;m very pleased to be in it, Jeff Session, Louie Gohmert are also in that film, and it&#8217;s called the &#8220;Border States of America,&#8221; and they borrowed my tag line, the subtitle is &#8220;Every State is Now a Border State.&#8221;  See, we have 50 border states.  Any state with an international airport, any state that has access to our coastline, any state that lies along the northern or southern borders are all border states.  Now when aliens run our borders they don&#8217;t come by the way Neil Armstrong went to the moon.  They&#8217;re not coming to stand on our side of the border, plant a flag, grab a couple of rocks and go home.  They&#8217;re headed for the rest of the country, and people that are evading the inspection process know they&#8217;re excludable, and we&#8217;ll get into it in one moment about who we&#8217;re trying to exclude and who we&#8217;re supposed to exclude, but I said to Neil, this notion of figuring out who&#8217;s here based on arrest statistics is kind of like trying to take attendance by asking people not present to raise their hand.  It doesn&#8217;t work.</p>
<p>You want to know if the border is secure, do you want a really great solid metric that can&#8217;t be screwed around with?  Look at the price and availability of heroin and cocaine. Those poisons are not produced inside the United States.  Every gram of heroin, every gram of cocaine present in the United States provides graphic evidence of a failure of border security and they fund the cartels, the proceeds, those proceeds fund terrorism.  Those proceeds are funding the people who want us destroyed and those drugs are a big part of the violent crime we&#8217;re facing in cities across America and in destruction of American lives. So let&#8217;s come back to a primary idea.  America&#8217;s immigration laws and America&#8217;s borders exist for two primary reasons.  Protect innocent lives and the jobs of American workers.  What is unreasonable about that?  And now you mention the 911 Commission, so I want to read two quick sentences, and this is from the 911 Commission Staff Report on terrorist travel, and you should know that I provided testimony to the 911 Commission.  I&#8217;ve arrested several terrorist in my career in fact.  This is to be found in the preface, the very beginning of the 911 Commission Staff Report.  These are the agents and attorneys who worked with the 911 Commission.  It starts out by saying,</p>
<blockquote><p>It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country.  Yet prior to September 11 while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal.  Indeed even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. Visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy.  We believe for reasons that we discussed in the following pages that it must be made one.</p></blockquote>
<p>Now I want you to know on 911 there were 26 visa waiver countries.  They warned us that the way that visas were processed created vulnerabilities.  Today we have 38 visa waiver countries. Chili became number 38 March 31 of this year in large measure of pressure being applied by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they created a program known as the Discover America Partnership.  They&#8217;ve joined with hotel hospitality travel industries, and they&#8217;re pushing for it and they&#8217;re spending a ton of money.  Isn&#8217;t it nice to know that the people responsible for room service are now making national security decisions for the United States of America?  Think about it.</p>
<p>Now this is on Page 98 of that 911 Commission Staff Report:</p>
<blockquote><p>Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or imbed themselves in the United States if they&#8217;re operational plans were to come to fruition.  As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status [think of the DREAMers] or applying for asylum after entering.  In many cases the act of filing for immigration benefits sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated.  Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials and execute an attack.</p></blockquote>
<p>The DREAMers are not even being interviewed, folks.  We&#8217;re giving identity documents to people who could be as old as 31 years of age and the magic word is &#8220;I came in when I was 15.&#8221;  They&#8217;re in.  There&#8217;s no field investigations. What could possibly go wrong? Please understand what we&#8217;re talking about. And when I&#8217;m accused of being anti-immigrant I&#8217;ll end by saying this, and I hope you guys have some great questions so we can go further with the conversation, but let me tell you something: If you look at how bad it is right now, if we go down this path of providing these documents and we allow ourselves to be intimidated &#8212; when people say to me you&#8217;re anti-immigrant, there&#8217;s a very easy answer.  I am pro enforcement.  The same laws that tell us who to kick out and who to keep out also tell us who to let in.  Every year this country admits more than a million lawful immigrants, more than the rest of the world combined.  Every year this year provides naturalization, citizenship, to more than a half-million new citizens.  These are the laws that I support, that I enforced and administered for 30 years.  How in the world can you be anti-immigrant when you support the laws by which we admit more immigrants legally than the rest of the world and we are now admitting more foreign workers legally entitled to work in the United States each month than the number of new jobs we&#8217;re creating?  My suggestion is this, rather than create jobs, we need to liberate our jobs and get Americans back to work.  Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Rep. Louie Gohmert: </strong>I can&#8217;t emphasize it enough. You heard me, you&#8217;ve heard everybody up here.  John Fleming and I border, we share the Louisiana-Texas line and he&#8217;s an MD. Wouldn&#8217;t you have loved to have a doctor with his demeanor?  He&#8217;s brilliant.  His integrity is impeccable.  You&#8217;ll never tempt him to break his word, to be dishonest, and I can&#8217;t tell you what an honor it is to serve with a guy like that.  Just methodical, brilliant and impeccable integrity.  And then Mike has said many times, and it&#8217;s caught on big, but every state is a border state, and some of us, I think everybody up here, is pushing to have an analysis done of the enterovirus strain, that all of a sudden just appeared in all these different states at the same time.  It happened to be states where ironically our health and human services department shipped people without proper bedding medically all over the country and then all of sudden this enterovirus that&#8217;s killed more people in the U.S. than Ebola.  It is a danger, and then quickly, just so you understand, even though we have a lawless President, there are people that believe in following the law that are still able to come up with ways to enforce it around our President.  Spent many days and nights on the border in the last months, and you&#8217;ve seen on the news there&#8217;s a place, Anzalduas Park, south of McCallen.  There&#8217;s a big park on the Mexican side, a park on the American side, and people buy guys on jet skis to bring them across, and I&#8217;ve seen several guys do that.  The last one was a Chinese national.  Why he was there, but anyway, he paid them to bring them across.  But each time they come across a constable &#8212; they don&#8217;t come if they see any border patrol trucks or anything, but they come across and then all of a sudden the constable appears and arrests them.  And so I asked the constable, I&#8217;ve seen you do this a number of times.  You know after the Supreme Court case in Arizona, case said you can&#8217;t, local and state law enforcement, can&#8217;t enforce federal law.  I&#8217;m thrilled that you&#8217;re doing that &#8212; and they turn them over to the border patrol &#8212; but what&#8217;s your basis since the Supreme Court said that?  And the constable said, &#8220;Did you pay $4.00 to get in the park?&#8221; and I said, &#8220;Yeah,&#8221; and he said they didn&#8217;t, they&#8217;re trespassing.</p>
<p><strong>Moderator: </strong>Thank you, Congressman Gohmert.  We&#8217;re going to start the questions.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>I&#8217;m Bob Lawn. I&#8217;m from California, and my question is, just direct to the panel is, I&#8217;d like to, instead of talking about policy, I agree with policy, but I&#8217;d like you to talk about strategy.  We know that Barrack Obama doesn&#8217;t care about policy.  He only cares about winning the presidency for the next Democrat and that the reason that he&#8217;s doing what he&#8217;s doing is to activate the Hispanic base &#8217;cause he knows that they often don&#8217;t vote, but the one thing that activates them is that you can, everybody&#8217;s distracted by this issue, and I wonder what things can be done by Republicans to strategically tell people in the Hispanic base or find ways to counter his tactics in this situation?  He knows that we will come in and talk policy and do what we do in order to turn off that base.  Are there ways for us to let the Hispanic American voters who have Hispanic heritage know that we care about them and kind of counter what he&#8217;s trying to do?</p>
<p><strong>Moderator: </strong>And just again to save time I&#8217;m going to ask our Republican Congressmen and Senator here to caucus and pick one of them to answer that question, just to save time.</p>
<p><strong>Rep. John Fleming: </strong>Apparently I&#8217;ve been chosen for that.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Cutler: </strong>Congatulations.</p>
<p><strong>Rep. John Fleming: </strong>Let me first of all say that the thing we haven&#8217;t done as Republicans and what we should do really as Americans is attack the myth that we have to be pro-amnesty, pro-open borders in order to win elections.  The data doesn&#8217;t support that.  Even when you, and Louie was quoting this a few moments ago, if you ask the immigrants, people who are here already, they don&#8217;t want to be displaced by other immigrants.  What&#8217;s important to them is again kitchen-table issues just like everything else, so somehow somebody has gotten into the heads of Republicans, again I told you, Democrats, we know why they&#8217;re doing what they&#8217;re doing, but we need to get Republicans turned around on this issue to say look, this is not popular with the American people, it&#8217;s not even popular with recent immigrants and that what we really need is, again, a nation where people can have jobs and an economy again and get off this idea that we have to have open borders to win elections and that we&#8217;ll never get a President again.  That is absurd, folks.  Just look at the pyramid we have today.  We have more Governors, more State Houses than we&#8217;ve ever had in probably a hundred years.  We have the largest House majority than we&#8217;ve had since 1929 or 8, it depends on what number you land on, and in the Senate we&#8217;ve regained just in a few short years.  The American people are with us on these issues. &#8230; I&#8217;ll toss this, but I really think that&#8217;s a myth.  I think that people of color are with us as well.  We just don&#8217;t recognize it.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Cutler: </strong>I just want to take 30 seconds.  You know it&#8217;s amazing that the same journalists who jump up and down and talk about race, politics and police officers that profile, when you can say that everybody who&#8217;s last name is Rodriguez thinks and votes the same way, or every Jew thinks and votes &#8212; I&#8217;m Jewish.  I get crazy when I hear this.  It&#8217;s an insidious form of racism and profiling and they need to be talked about, and by the way, immigration laws don&#8217;t distinguish by race, ethnicity or religion and the members of the ethnic immigrant communities, Russian, Asian, Latino, Caribbean, doesn&#8217;t matter, they&#8217;re at the greatest risk from illegal immigration because that&#8217;s where the gangsters and the fugitives set up shop, set up houses of prostitution and peddle narcotics.  If you want to win their votes, tell them the truth, that this is about protecting them.  The grounds for exclusion are aliens with dangerous diseases, mental illness, convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, spies and terrorists.  Who do you want living next door to you if we fail on that mission?</p>
<p><strong>Louie Gohmert: </strong>During those nights I&#8217;ve spent down on the border, I was talking to an Hispanic Border Patrolman, and this is follow up to what you&#8217;re saying, and you&#8217;ve heard there are so many tens of thousands of children that come across unaccompanied &#8212; not a single child, young child, ever comes across unaccompanied. I&#8217;ve watched them separate after they get over to our side, but they don&#8217;t cross that river unaccompanied. But this Border Patrolman said we&#8217;ve got all these form questions we ask, and he said, I will ask, we&#8217;re supposed to ask, why did you leave your home country, Guatemala, El Salvador, and come here, and he said over 90 percent of the time they say to get away from gang violence. And he said since I speak better Spanish than a lot of them I don&#8217;t let them get away with it and I bear down on them and I say, now you may find some Gringo that buys that stuff, but you and I, you paid a gang to bring you into this country, so don&#8217;t tell me you came to escape gang violence, and he said then of those 90 percent that say that, 90 percent of them say well, you&#8217;re right, but we were told to say we&#8217;re coming to escape gang violence.  They know the game and we need to get engaged.</p>
<p><strong>Moderator: </strong>Thank you Congressman and thank you everybody for attending today.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Assault on the Military</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/obamas-assault-on-the-military/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-assault-on-the-military</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/obamas-assault-on-the-military/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Nov 2014 05:15:06 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[A distinguished panel diagnoses the frightening state of American defenses at Restoration Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to the panel discussion “Obama&#8217;s Assault on the Military,” which took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/112671257" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> What I want to hear from your guy&#8217;s perspective is on all the issues we could be looking at in defense and foreign policy and everything now, what are you hearing and what do you think is important for folks to know.  So maybe, Jerry, can start with you.</p>
<p><strong>Jerry Boykin: </strong>Yeah, one of the things that I was very concerned about going into this year&#8217;s election was the fact that there was not enough being said about national security.  There was not enough attention paid, and by the way, for those of you veterans who are Marines, I want you to know that I don&#8217;t use big words so you&#8217;ll be okay.  All right and if you do have a problem with something that I say, just get with one of the Army veterans and he&#8217;ll translate it for you so.  I know I&#8217;m in trouble.  I was very concerned about a lack of focus on the national security, and obviously we&#8217;re here to talk about the military and I think that one of the things that people are not paying enough attention to is the destruction of our military.  I mean that&#8217;s kind of the title of our &#8212; our military is being devastated at the same time that all of our enemies, all of our potential adversaries are ramping up.  Nobody&#8217;s coming down but America, so what am I concerned about Jim?  I&#8217;m concerned about the fact that our military will not be capable of meeting the threats of the future and America is not focused on it and thank God for ISIS because if it wasn&#8217;t for ISIS there would have been no focus and no attention.  I&#8217;ll say this as a final thing.  Our military&#8217;s been at war for 13 years.  Our military is broken.  They&#8217;re tired.  Suicide is at an all-time high.  PTSD is rampant and families are falling apart at the seams, but we&#8217;re going to send 4,000 people to fight Ebola.  Now, let me just say I don&#8217;t know what glue our President has been sniffing, but if you really want to protect America, close that southern border and stop the terrorists from coming across.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>Yeah, always a tough act to follow.  He is the senior guy here, by the way.  Name of the panel with the discussion is Obama&#8217;s assault of the U.S. Military.  That has an underlying assumption that he has a strategy against our military, and I would tell you that, that&#8217;s probably a falsehood as well because obviously he has a difficult time with strategy and articulating a strategy.  The difference between the ways, means and the ends, so what I think we&#8217;re suffering through is through a series of increments of benign neglect, where we&#8217;re not getting the attention but still being used.  I agree whole-heartedly with General Boykin, with Jerry that you can send people to Western Africa, but you certainly are going to add more advisors, but tie their hands and this has not been a discussion topic.  I think this is probably be something very good to take forward, and I think McKinnon said it today that it would be dead on arrival.  Congressman McKinnon said today that any more advisors going into Iraq without the proper rules of engagement to fully engage and beyond their advice is going to be dead on arrival into Congress and the same thing with any AUMF, and in terms of applied use of military force.  That also, unless it&#8217;s got the right rules of engagement, these kind of discussions are just on the periphery.</p>
<p>The real discussion is we&#8217;ve been used and used and used well beyond the capacity.  We have not recapitalized our force, our equipment manning, and it is now evident, and a systemic break across the force of the suicide rate as Jerry said, and also, I think you&#8217;ve got a combination of substance abuse, PTSD and the other injuries that we don&#8217;t really know what&#8217;s happened.  I think we talked about it last year a combination of traumatic brain injury being heavily researched, but very little done about so far.  That also fits into the PTSD portion, and then the substance abuse just has caused I think almost one veteran a day and I don&#8217;t know I forgot the numbers.  I just heard it, just a phenomenal amount of suicides, not just in the active military force, but also in the veteran force as well.  And these are system failures of wanting to use the force, but not wanting to renew the force and this is a conversation.  This is both Army officers, all army officers, the force that we love, being used and used and spent.  We&#8217;ll never say no to a mission, but we want to have the right things to do to them and that&#8217;s a conversation that needs to take place whole-heartedly.  Good place to start it is this year, but it&#8217;s got to be carried back to the people who can help make the decision.</p>
<p>We have opportunity now with the change in the Congress and the Senate, and I hope that we use that wisely.  It&#8217;s our moment.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> Yeah, we should get back to that point because I think it&#8217;s really key as to where we go from here.  Because I&#8217;d like to take that same question from a different direction, which is part of the reason why the force is stressed out is because of all the things we&#8217;re sending them to do.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>Right.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> So this President&#8217;s remarkable.  I mean he&#8217;s an incredible strategist.  He&#8217;s managed to make every part of the world less safe for us, which is &#8212; how do you do that?</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>Yeah, good way of looking at it.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> But actually, one of the things that we&#8217;ve been doing at the Heritage Foundation is if you actually look at, there&#8217;s two curves.  As the world&#8217;s getting increasingly less safe, but if you actually look at all the documents that the Pentagon has produced consistently since 2010, it all tells you that the world&#8217;s getting safer and it&#8217;s all because of Obama and therefore we can spend less, have a smaller military and everything else and we haven&#8217;t had a real honest strategic assessment &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>That&#8217;s fair.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> &#8211; since the President came in office. It&#8217;s extraordinary.  So one of the things that we&#8217;ve been doing is developing something called the Index of Military Strength, which is every year beginning this year, we&#8217;re going to issue a report that says this is where we stand today, and part of that is not only looking at the state that your military is in.  I want to get to that, but part of it&#8217;s also looking at the things you have to deal with in the world.  Where are the trouble spots you have to go in the state of where your adversaries are?  So one of the decisions that we made, when we were doing this, and what would be great, is we said well look, lots of bad things can happen lots of places in the world, but there are three parts of the world that are just absolutely vital, you just cannot get wrong and that is Europe and the Middle East and Asia.  And so we really focused on those three, and of course there&#8217;s no good news coming from any of them, but I&#8217;d be interested from your perspective is if you were talking to a new congressman or senator or somebody that was interested in running for President, and they asked you the question what&#8217;s the most dangerous part of the world, what really keeps you up at night, what do you really worry about?  What you&#8217;d answer.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>I&#8217;m still and probably will be for a long time, I&#8217;m extremely concerned about Iran and will continue to be concerned about a nuclearized Iran because what that is going to do to the rest of the Mid East in terms of a potential nuclear arms race.  That&#8217;s what keeps me up at night that we continue to, you know, they buy time with negotiations and that time gives them more time to do whatever they want to do sub-surface, no pun intended.  That continues and the mixed message you get from Washington is, hey, this is great.  We have, the State Department&#8217;s wonderful about it, and I think besides the existential threat to Israel, you have got a grander threat to the rest of the Mid East.  You&#8217;re going to have the Saudis, you&#8217;re going to have Kuwaitis.  The rest of them are going to say, if that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going to happen over there, we&#8217;re going to need to deter as well.  We can&#8217;t rely on anybody else we&#8217;ve seen.  And that&#8217;s also part of the witness of the Obama administration establishing red lines that you do not commit to, commit force or anything to, and have those red lines just become pink.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> So November 24 is the deadline for a nuke deal.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>It is.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> What do you think&#8217;s going to happen?</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>They&#8217;re going to push it off to the right again.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>I think they will.  They&#8217;ll find some way.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano:</strong> Play rope-a-dope.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano: </strong>Continue to get sanctions.</p>
<p><strong>David Fridovich: </strong>Correct.  Because they&#8217;re happy with that, they can live through the sanctions.  They just want to extend the time.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano: </strong>Well, yeah, true, Jerry, because we talked about this because one of the reasons why Iran has to be our friend is they&#8217;re going to help us out with ISIS.  And I know that&#8217;s an issue that you&#8217;ve got some concern about.</p>
<p><strong>Jerry Boykin: </strong>Yeah, I do.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano: </strong>I just ask the questions, folks.</p>
<p><strong>Jerry Boykin: </strong>Listen, this whole strategy of shifting our focus to the Pacific Rim, look, China&#8217;s a problem.  China&#8217;s a huge threat economically more than anything else probably, but we&#8217;re never going to get out of the Middle East.  We&#8217;re never going to get out of the Middle East first and foremost because we are dependent upon Middle East oil.  If we would drill here drill now, build a pipeline, become energy independent, we could get away from that.  And that&#8217;s a huge problem for us, but there&#8217;s another reason that we&#8217;re never going to get out of the Middle East, and that&#8217;s this little speck of land there called Israel.  We made a commitment to Israel in 1948 that we&#8217;d be there if they needed us.  Okay, this President, and I have &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano: </strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Jerry Boykin: </strong>&#8211; and I want you to understand my children are Jewish.  Their mother is a Jew, so I am very passionate about Israel, but the idea that this President has not been anti-Semitic is absolute nonsense, and when I discuss this with my Jewish friends, they act like I&#8217;m an idiot.  We are going to be in the Middle East forever because we have made a commitment to Israel that we must fulfill and Israel is now, every time we ignore the threats of things like ISIS and the Iranian nuclear program and the serious threats coming out of Syria and other parts of the Middle East, every time we ignore that we do that by risking the future of Israel.  So I think that we are going to stay tied to the Middle East.  We have to stop Iran.  We cannot avoid this and this administration thus far has done absolutely nothing to stop Iran.  In fact, I think Jim would tell you the same thing.  They&#8217;re actually cooperating with Iran and Iran&#8217;s going to have a nuclear warhead and when they do, the first target is Israel.  The second target is Saudi Arabia and what&#8217;s America going to do about it?</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano: </strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Jerry Boykin: </strong>And the answer is thus far absolutely nothing.</p>
<p><strong>James Carafano: </strong>And I mean you can have this thing that they&#8217;re not disengaged from the Middle East, but, for example, you can think what you want about Benghazi and why those four men died and why it went down the way it did and what kind of response should have been in place, but the reality is today the footprint that the U.S. military has to respond in that part of the world is smaller.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Oh great &#8211;</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Smaller than it was on the day those four guys died.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">David Fridovich: </b>Yeah, greatly reduced.  Right, yeah.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>So let&#8217;s go, let&#8217;s do that.  Let&#8217;s look at this from the other perspective of because the challenges in the Middle East are only on top of the problems we have with the rest of Russia and a rising China and a proliferating transnational terror threat.  Let&#8217;s look at the capabilities we bring to the table.  Let me ask you what part of the force you worry about the most, and for me this is a really personal issue.  There&#8217;s this thing called the hollow force, which is when you have a military and it maybe it looks fine on paper until they actually have to do anything and then people die.  So by my account, I&#8217;ve already been through this three times and I count my dad&#8217;s service.  My dad fought in the Korean War, and what we did in Korea was horrific, sending men into battle with sneakers and machine guns that didn&#8217;t work and ammunition that was rusted shut.  We survived that experience.  We had this horrific hollow force in the 1970s coming out of Vietnam, Jimmy Carter&#8217;s military.  I used to call it the Okay Army.  They were already old guys by then, but that was the one I was commissioned in.  Everything was okay.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>What?  You talking about us?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>No, no it really was an Okay Army.  I didn&#8217;t have the troops I needed to train with but that was okay because we didn&#8217;t have any money to train with, and that was okay because we didn&#8217;t have any equipment to train on so everything was fine as long as we didn&#8217;t actually have to fight anybody.  Ronald Reagan did this and we all lived through that military, some miraculous effort to rebuild the U.S. military, arguably the finest military that&#8217;s ever been put in the field, and then under President Bill Clinton, the military was going hollow again.  I remember being with the Army Chief of Staff when the senior guys came in to talk about a deployment in Kosovo and they said we have to send 15,000 guys to Kosovo.  That&#8217;s going to break the back of the Army, that was a 15,000-man deployment and we&#8217;re heading off the cliff when 911 happened, but now if you look what&#8217;s happened the last 6 years.  The threat of the hollow forces is I think a greater than error and the difference between 2012 and 2016.</p>
<p>In 2012, we could have had a different President, could have made different decisions.  He could have fixed some alliances.  He could have made some investments, we&#8217;d have been fine.  In 2016, I think it&#8217;s going to be broken and just being real.  So I&#8217;d be interested from your perspectives, what part of the force do you worry about the most and why?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>There is no constitutional right to serve in the United States Military, it&#8217;s a privilege, but nobody has a constitutional right to serve, which is why we need to stop all this nonsense we call social experiments inside of our military.  We&#8217;ve got to stop it.  There&#8217;s no such thing as fairness in a war.  We got to stop it.  We&#8217;re destroying the readiness of our military.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Thanks.  So let me turn to the far left of the panel.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>Oh my gosh.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>That&#8217;s painful you know that don&#8217;t you?</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>Well, from their perspective he&#8217;s on the far left.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">David Fridovich: </b>I know that I got that part too.  Of the more parochial, I&#8217;m much more concerned about the Army and primarily because while you do defend sea lanes communication and all that converse and all that, the Navy seems to be doing all right.  My parochialism has to do with the land force and the unnecessary requirement to actually occupy and interface with people on the surface of the earth, land, and also because special operations forces draw their force primarily from the Army.  If it goes from 570,000 to 420 or less, we won&#8217;t be able to maintain the two forces, the operational force, the divisions that Jerry talked about and the institutional force that creates and trains and grows young soldiers into older soldiers and capable leaders.  Which is also something that I found over the course of 37 years that&#8217;s unique to our military that we really do look after our middle management and understand that&#8217;s how things actually get done in the force that those lieutenant colonels and majors and colonels really run the force with that great NCO background that executes the orders.  That&#8217;s unique to us.  Foreign armies strive to that, to get there, but they don&#8217;t have that.  That&#8217;s being broken right now.  I also see a U.S. military in the hole that&#8217;s just kind of handcuffed because of sequestration; we used to be able to say we&#8217;re going to fight two wars.  We&#8217;re going to do a win or a hold and win.  No one can sight &#8212; and then from there you could figure out how many divisions and how many fleets and how many Air Forces you needed to do all that.  We don&#8217;t have a strategy we can wrap our brains around.</p>
<p>I believe the service keys are really handcuffed at this moment.  They couldn&#8217;t tell you, and I think the Army&#8217;s been beaten up a lot lately about telling their story what they&#8217;re supposed to look like in the future primarily because we don&#8217;t have a national military strategy.  We don&#8217;t have a national strategy.  We keep coming back to those words that what is it you want us to do.  If it&#8217;s these &#8220;eaches,&#8221; we&#8217;ll put together forces, but at a certain point you&#8217;re going to reach into that bucket and they&#8217;ll be nothing there, or if it&#8217;s there it&#8217;s not trained and ready.  That goes to your point, Jim, about the hollow force.  So it&#8217;s the point about what is it in the long term you envision this force doing, whether that long term be &#8212; I&#8217;d be happy with 6 months from now.  I&#8217;d be really happy with 3 or 5 years from now, we could build a force not just use a force.  And like I said earlier, we have to recapitalize the force itself.</p>
<p>The other part that I think that we&#8217;re missing is as the youth of the America looks, and I think this is your point about the privilege to serve, what is it that draws them to the military?  I think that&#8217;s a key part.  If they see the way the veterans are treated, they&#8217;re not that much more willing to come, so that&#8217;s the other part, the end state of how we do on the end in taking care of our veterans, whether they served 3 or 4 years or whether they served 30-odd years, but that&#8217;s the whole human dynamic to this, but it comes back to what&#8217;s the direction.  And we get our direction, we get the money from Congress, we get the direction from the President, and that&#8217;s again, that&#8217;s what&#8217;s lacking.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Yeah.  So I&#8217;m going to put one more on the table, which is the state of our nuclear and missile defense forces.  And Chuck Hagel came out and said he&#8217;s very worried about the state of our nuclear forces.  Chuck Hagel is a brick.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Yeah, that&#8217;s true.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>If Chuck Hagel is woken up and worried about something, then you ought to be very, very afraid.  So we have about 10 minutes.  I want to put one more question out there because for me it&#8217;s really important and then I want to get in as many of your questions as we possibly can, so be ready.  So this is a really quick &#8212; so here&#8217;s my prediction: 2016, everybody running for President is going to be running against Obama&#8217;s defense and foreign policy.  Even if Joe Biden&#8217;s the candidate for the Democrats, he&#8217;s going to be.</p>
<p>Because everybody look at this, you look at what&#8217;s going on around the world today.  Nobody can say this is working.  Nobody can say our military&#8217;s better off, so they&#8217;re all going to find their way to see their thing, which I think&#8217;ll be a change for conservative Republican candidates differentiating their brand from a sense, from what the Democrats are going to say.  Because they&#8217;re all going to say, we&#8217;re going to do better than Obama too so just real quickly from both you guys.  What would you advise people to say about how they&#8217;re going to rebuild the American military and our presence to the world?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Well, first of all, we&#8217;ve got to stop these budget cuts, they&#8217;re devastating our military.  Secondly, we&#8217;ve got do what we should have done when we went into this and that is start with an understanding and appreciation of who the enemy is in the future and then what the risks are and determine what we&#8217;re risking, we&#8217;re willing to take. So after you&#8217;ve done that we can come up with a reasonable, logical budget to include cuts in the defense budget.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Right.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>But we didn&#8217;t start with that.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">David Fridovich: </b>That&#8217;s not that difficult.  I mean, that&#8217;s, what you describe is exactly the way it&#8217;s supposed to happen.  What are the threats or the long-term threats?  What are the forces that you need to go ahead and manage those threats in, defeat them without apology, defeat them?  Unconditional surrender is a very good term and then to take that and say this is the best case and let&#8217;s say what the requirements are to get the force that we&#8217;re going to need to do this and it&#8217;s a total joint force as well.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>Let me say this and I&#8217;ll stop.  I could save the Pentagon a $1 billion this afternoon.  At 3:30, I can walk down the hall of the Pentagon and anybody&#8217;s that not in their office, I can fire them and they&#8217;ll never know they&#8217;re gone and we&#8217;ll save $1 billion this afternoon.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Can I get some hands? Some hands, yeah. Questions?  Yeah, question over here.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>But my concern is for the VA, for the veterans and how they are taken care of at the Veteran&#8217;s Administration and the care that is given to them, and also I&#8217;m concerned about the fact that I understand that Obama put out some type of literature to the veterans and end of life choices so that they would not take advantage of medications and medical equipment to shorten their life.  Because the administration realized that, they could save a lot of money if veterans did not enjoy a long life.  I&#8217;m concerned about that and my question is will Israel do &#8212; I have a shirt that one of my kids came back from Israel that says, &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry America, Israel&#8217;s behind you.&#8221;  Do we anticipate Israel doing the dirty work for the rest of the world with this wonderful relationship that Obama has built with Netanyahu and so forth?  And then and probably will come to pass that Israel has to do this.  What do you think?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>So let me ask Jerry if you want to just briefly &#8211;</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Here&#8217;s what will happen, I think Israel is going to have to strike because America won&#8217;t and when that happens Iran will try to shut down the Straits of Hormuz.  The Saudis will go behind closed doors, open a bottle of wine, drink it and high five each other and then go to the U.N. and condemn Israel.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Yeah.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>But they&#8217;ve got to do it, they&#8217;re reaching a point where there&#8217;s no, there&#8217;s no option.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>But they&#8217;ll be a &#8212; there&#8217;s another question over there and let me ask while we&#8217;re doing it.  Dave, you want to talk give me a brief assessment what you think of the new VA leadership?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Not much.  I mean, I saw the 60 Minute thing and I think this President picks people who are going to get along with him, and not give share bad news.  It&#8217;s just, the service chiefs are like that.  I think the VA chief is like that.  I think General Shinseki, a man I still admire.  He used the military model where he trusted people.  He didn&#8217;t know everybody.  It&#8217;s not the same model, he got caught very short and I think a lot of veterans paid the price because of that.  It&#8217;s a difficult place to fix.  It&#8217;s going to take a long, long time.  The effort that you make is a phenomenal effort and all those other organizations, to include, now as a member of a Jewish organization, I appreciate what you do for us as well, all the other organizations but it&#8217;s a matter of, we&#8217;re going to have to have a concerted effort.  Again, it goes back to what is it you want it do.</p>
<p>And I will tell you, General Shinseki shared this with me, he said, this is well in his first term there, he said that he&#8217;s got the best job in the world.  He loves it because he&#8217;s taking care of the military.  What he didn&#8217;t realize was, he had been the Chief Staff of the Army, he could take care of that 570,000-person force.  Now he&#8217;s got the entire Department of Defense from World War II veterans all the way to the War on Terror veterans.  Population is immense with about a $440 billion budget not enough and here&#8217;s a man with great skills.  It&#8217;s going to take a concerted effort, so one guy for a couple months is not enough.  But it&#8217;s going to take groups like this asking those tough questions of their legislators and of the President to make sure they stay on task.  I&#8217;m not going to say you owe me, but I saw you, all the veterans and I know you all, this is a family crowd when it comes to that.  That&#8217;s the thing that stands between us and being a completely different country.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Right.  $22 million  and second largest federal budget.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Yeah, I was wondering what is your opinion on the traditional lack of leadership to fight for the military by the highest levels of management in the military.  The shut up and do your duty mantra, it&#8217;s repeated over and over by the highest levels, that the generals are so worried about doing their duty, which means keeping my job that they don&#8217;t fight for the fighting force.  There has been no mention of anything about the VA crisis that&#8217;s been going on for 30-plus years from the generals themselves.  Is there any way that they can have their male parts put back on them so that they can fight for their troops?</p>
<p><b>James Carafano: </b>Well, let me ask Jerry if he still has his male parts?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Yeah.</p>
<p><b>James Carafano: </b>It&#8217;s what it says here, I mean.  How are you?</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>I wrote an op-ed yesterday.  I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve seen it, if you haven&#8217;t go to Breitbart and that was the whole focus on my op-ed and what I said was it is time for some generals and admirals to walk in and lay their stars on the table and tell the President I will no longer preside over the demise of this military.  It is time.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>But that is the last thing they want to do.  They need to be inside the machine to fight.  They don&#8217;t need to pinching out and walk away.  Maybe one, but they all just need instead of speaking up and risking their reputation on what they know is right.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>Presumably you&#8217;d rather have a Leon Panetta that stays there, supports bad policies, and then gets out and writes a tell-all book.  No, the courageous thing to do is to standup and say I will not support this.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Fighters fight and they need to fight from the inside in the &#8211;</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>Yeah, that&#8217;s a copout.  That&#8217;s an absolute copout.  That&#8217;s a copout.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Gentlemen, thank you.  Jim, thank you.  It&#8217;s good to see you.  The last time I saw Jim was at a congressional hearing, where we testified together, but one quick point and then two quick questions.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>But I was innocent though.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>That&#8217;s what they all claim.  You mentioned about the southwest border, as a former INS agent, we&#8217;re leaking everywhere.  We&#8217;ll talk about that tomorrow, but the southwest needs to be secured, but the whole system is permitting terrorists to enter and imbed themselves right now.  The two quick questions, No. 1, there&#8217;s been seemingly a purge of officials within the Army, which I find very disconcerting, so I&#8217;d love your comments on that.  Item No. 2, apparently, China has done a great job of stealing our technology with their new aircraft and so forth.  How do we address that issue?  So first, what do you read into the purge and second, how do we deal with this problem with the Chinese stealing our technology?  Thank you and thank you for your service gentlemen.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Pick one and I&#8217;ll give him the other one.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Give him the other one, he&#8217;s pretty good.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>Which one you want?</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">David Fridovich: </b>He&#8217;s pretty good.  Stealing technology goes both ways, it does, but what we know from the open source is that we can find it is state sanction.  It&#8217;s state run, and they just give a very good blank face and shrug their shoulders and go, okay.  Yeah, we got it.  I don&#8217;t think that new fighter that you&#8217;re talking about is the one that they, they showed it off, but I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s really the one that they really have is their highest level and I think you&#8217;re probably aware of that as well, but the technology, we&#8217;ve got to do a better job inside our own military defense industrial complex to secure it, and I think that&#8217;s a real issue.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Do you think having the students at our school with the Chinese students &#8211;</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">David Fridovich: </b>Absolutely.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>They&#8217;re within the top ten number of students in our schools and I worry about the fact that we&#8217;re training our enemy.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">David Fridovich: </b>Yes, it&#8217;s a great question and I&#8217;m in agreement with you.  It&#8217;s by design when you have that large of a population.  You have that large of a population you can almost mandate I want all of 100 million of you take this test.  The top 10 percent, 10 million, the top 1 percent of that become those engineers, get visas, go to America, go to Stanford, Cal Poly etc., etc. on the West Coast, MIT, Harvard, the whole area on the East Coast and inculcate and take back and then also get jobs in those places after a while.  So yeah, I would say it&#8217;s by design and because they&#8217;re generational, they can take their time and do it.  They&#8217;re very patient unlike us.  So yeah, I&#8217;m in agreement with you.  I&#8217;d love to talk more about just that, but part of the weaknesses and inherent weakness in our own system.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Yeah, I&#8217;m going ask Jerry to address the &#8212;  I didn&#8217;t want to jump on the cyber thing real quick because this is one area where Congress says, oh, we can actually get together and legislate on this.  And so there is a potential for legislation in the next Congress and the answer is these are serious threats so be careful what you ask for.  The Internet is the greatest engine of liberty and freedom and economic development that mankind&#8217;s ever created.  We don&#8217;t want to turn it over to the government to control it.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Right.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>We don&#8217;t need an Obamacare version of cybersecurity.  We don&#8217;t need a Dodd-Frank version of cybersecurity, so whatever legislation they pass it should do no harm.  I mean, the President&#8217;s already has policies that tax the Internet, bad idea to have net neutrality, which is nothing about being neutral.  It&#8217;s about empowering some people and disadvantaging everybody else, and about turning the Internet over to the United Nations and countries like China and Russia to run.  These are all incredibly bad ideas something we should be very, very concerned about.  Michael, we need to do a cyber-panel next time.  Okay purges.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>The purging, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s what you think it is.  It&#8217;s not what you see, it&#8217;s what you don&#8217;t see.  A lot of these generals and admirals needed to go because they&#8217;d been involved in some pretty bad behavior so they needed to be fired.  Now, that said, there&#8217;s been a state of people getting into trouble.  So you have to ask yourself how did they get into these senior positions?  And I think it&#8217;s what you don&#8217;t see.  What you don&#8217;t see are those really good young brigadiers and major generals and rear admirals that are passed over because they are considered to be not supportive of the President&#8217;s agenda and people who will support it are put into those positions and then their real character comes out.  So that&#8217;s what I see as being the bigger concern about the purge.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Yeah, I want to say how often on David Horowitz&#8217;s panel do you hear about purging and male parts, really? So we have, okay.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Question here, what if anything should we do about ISIS?  Do we care if ISIS wins or Iran wins or Syria wins?  Anybody who wins is bad anyway, why should we waste our treasure fighting ISIS?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>So there&#8217;s an ancient Chinese saying the enemy of my enemy can also be my enemy and they all need to die, but Jerry?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Well, first of all it&#8217;s important to understand that ISIS, once they&#8217;ve accomplished what they&#8217;re trying to accomplish in Iraq and Syria, where do you think they&#8217;re going to go next?  Some would speculate they&#8217;re going to go into the Persian Gulf, but I speculate their next big target for credibility globally is Israel.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Is Israel.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>So I go back to what I&#8217;ve said, we&#8217;ve got to support Israel.  Now, if our blood and treasure, trust me, it means a great deal to me.  That said, we either fight ISIS there or we fight them on the streets of America.  It&#8217;s just that plain and simple and when, thank you, but when the members of Congress standup and say as Chaffetz did and who was the other one?  Was it Jordan or something?  Forget who it was.  ISIS is in America.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Yeah.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>We&#8217;ve caught a dozen of them coming across the border.  Ask Robert Spencer. They&#8217;re in America.  ISIS is in America and more are coming because they&#8217;re coming into the South America and Central America and they&#8217;re making their way up across our border.  They&#8217;re coming across our border.  Their Korans, prayer rugs and terrorist training manuals in the &#8212; on the American side of the border.  We fight them there or we fight them here.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Yes, and Dr. Bob, they said that they were coming.  They said, I mean they gave us a message.  It just said, hey, look we&#8217;re coming and we&#8217;re running that play, get ready, and again, like I cited before, generationally, they&#8217;ll wait a long time, but they&#8217;ll get here.  Make it an away game, kill them there, and be prepared to kill them here.</p>
<p><strong>Ken Timmerman: </strong>Generals, Ken Timmerman, I wanted to ask you a question about Benghazi.  I spoke to people at Africa Command when I was doing my book Dark Horses: The Truth about What Happened in Benghazi.  You know that General Carter Ham has said two things to Congress.  The first is that they looked at the possibility of doing an overflight over the annex and they said that it wouldn&#8217;t make any difference so let&#8217;s not do it, and the second thing he said, when he was asked by Jason Chaffetz precisely, why didn&#8217;t you do everything you possibly could have done to bring forces to bear at the Benghazi?  His answer was we were never asked.  I wondered what your opinion is of General Ham.</p>
<p><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>Go ahead, David.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Well, because I do have my male parts, in that situation I&#8217;ll be honest with you, I don&#8217;t know.  I know him very well.  We were brigadiers.  We were in the same cohort together, and I would up until that point I&#8217;d say, a good man.  Obviously, you&#8217;re getting a mixed message.  So am I.  I don&#8217;t know what happened.  I know that the part of the force that we come from would have made every attempt to get there no matter who was on the ground doing what.  We don&#8217;t care the odds, the rest of it, we&#8217;ll get there, we&#8217;ll get them out.  He&#8217;s lived that.  We&#8217;ve all had those get on the helicopter and go moments and you don&#8217;t second-guess.  You have Americans in trouble.  I&#8217;m getting chills now.  You have Americans in trouble, you go, and you take everything possible to get them out.  So I don&#8217;t know what happened and I don&#8217;t know why the mixed message, but that is clearly a mixed message, so if we&#8217;re both leaving confused that&#8217;s the answer.  Sorry.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>There was, for those of you who don&#8217;t know, Mr. Timmerman has written a pretty dog gone good book on this, haven&#8217;t you?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>So we have copies out, there&#8217;s copies in the &#8211;</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>And it&#8217;s a good book and thanks for your question.  I think the military&#8217;s going to get pinged on this thing.  I think the military&#8217;s comfortable.  I think the military could have gone and could have made a difference and they didn&#8217;t, and this idea that we weren&#8217;t asked is a hyphenated word for that and in mixed company I won&#8217;t use it, but I&#8217;ll just say nonsense. Okay? The military could have gone and the idea that we left those four men there when they, when said look William Tecumseh Sherman said to Ulysses S. Grant in a letter on the 8th of March 1864, when he came out of Tennessee, he said I knew wherever I was that you thought of me and that you would come if I got in a tight spot.  That&#8217;s in American English that&#8217;s, an American value, violated at Benghazi.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Yeah, so we&#8217;re going to keep going until Mike gives me the high signs.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Two quick things, how can we address the restrictive rules of engagement for our troops and sort of, what I see as a cultural shift in our military?  It&#8217;s anecdotal but I think that even West Point is much more liberal in its mindset now.  Can you talk about those things please?</p>
<p><b>David Fridovich: </b>The rules of engagement, commanders do have the right to push back on the rules of engagement that they need.  So they go into an environment and you&#8217;re asking me to do X.  I mean, I lived this in the Southern Philippines.  They said hey, here are the state and we go okay and we would go back and we would get very creative with the rules engagement so much so that when yeah, Paul Wolfowitz showed up to visit us to visit us in the Southern Philippines we briefed him.  We were very honest.  We&#8217;re transparent, we said here&#8217;s the situation and he said okay.  I&#8217;d wish you wouldn&#8217;t get as creative as you are to get the work done, but what do you need from me to get that done and we told him what we needed and we got re-written rules of engagement when Rumsfeld was on leave, which was the Secretary Defense.  And he signed, I mean that&#8217;s what happens and he signed the order and shot it out.  We were good.  It might have been just an afternoon off, but it was enough.</p>
<p>Commanders have the responsibility in the field and operationally to go back and say you&#8217;re putting these guys in harms&#8217; way here&#8217;s, what I need and keep pushing.  And saying, because it&#8217;s not yes, the President&#8217;s going to say hey, I&#8217;m assuming the risk.  He&#8217;s not assuming the risk.  It&#8217;s that force on the ground, it&#8217;s that force in the sea, on the air that&#8217;s assuming the risk and they need to know.</p>
<p>So when we jump out of an airplane, you have two parachutes, a main that&#8217;s supposed to work and a reserve.  You don&#8217;t ask permission to pull your reserve.  If the main&#8217;s not working, you know what you&#8217;re supposed to do to save your life.  Why would we ever put people in a situation where they don&#8217;t have that choice, and that&#8217;s what I believe in and I believe commanders.  This is where it gets to the other gentleman&#8217;s comment, commanders to safeguard the thing that they love, the force, have got to go back and say wait a minute.  Here&#8217;s the situation.  We&#8217;ve assessed the ground situation.  It&#8217;s real.  Here&#8217;s what we need to be able to safeguard our force.  Nothing you, nothing a commander or even the commander in chief can ever say well, limit the soldiers&#8217;, sailors&#8217;, airmen, Marines&#8217; inherent right of self-defense, and that&#8217;s the start point of everything.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>I really want to add though that you can talk about culture all you want, this generation of soldiers like every generation of Americans is the greatest generation.  They&#8217;re an unbelievable group of young men and women.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Yeah.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>I remember a couple years ago coming to a Horowitz event and they had Tibor Rubin here, who is an incredible Medal of Honor winner from the Korean War, and you ask how can anybody have that kind of courage and the truth is all of them have that courage.  And this generation of kids, they are the best that you could ask for and God bless them the ones that fight for us, they really are.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Yes and thank you.  I would just like to submit that everything that&#8217;s been discussed here is just the symptoms, and that one only need read Obama&#8217;s own books and then read Dinesh D&#8217;Souza&#8217;s analysis of those books to conclude that this is not an accident.  This guy I wish he were incompetent.  He is not incompetent.  He&#8217;s the most competent President we&#8217;ve ever had.  They just think that you want to go to Los Angles but he&#8217;s headed for Moscow.  This guy is malevolent and somebody like the Heritage Foundation or someone should start telling the truth.  This is not an accident.  You say foreign policy looks ad hoc, no.</p>
<p>If your goal is worldwide chaos, this guy gets an A plus.  If your goal is to destroy America, if your guy &#8212; I spent my whole life in the financial services business.  We were dominant, with Dodd Frank, but he&#8217;s killed it.  He&#8217;s destroyed financial services.  He&#8217;s tried to destroy the energy industry, but it&#8217;s too hard to control.  See the reason too big to fail was to make them all bigger, because you can control five big guys.  These oil and gas people, you can&#8217;t control, that&#8217;s what his problem has been.  But when are we going to face the fact that this is all intentional.  This is not an accident.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Yeah.  I don&#8217;t think the panel disagrees, so one last question.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>I wanted to ask now that we have &#8211; look I was on the board at Visitors of West Point 30 years ago and I used to lecture at the National War College.  What&#8217;s happening in the Army particularly in the military, but the Army most particularly, is really frightening.  What I have not seen and I&#8217;m going to ask you this question, I&#8217;ve not seen from the House Armed Services Committee, that the Republicans have controlled, and I&#8217;m wondering now that the Senate Arms Services Committee will be chaired by John McCain, the man who said that Samantha Power and Ms. Rice were perfect for their jobs.</p>
<p>What do you feel, will the Senate Republicans, will anybody stand up and take on and investigate what is in fact you&#8217;re describing the hollowing out, the purging of the military, the turning it into &#8212; all bureaucracies have leadership that is &#8212; people would rather get ahead than care about their country or anything else, and we&#8217;ve seen that now presently at the top of the military.  When will we, well, do you have any confidence in that?  Do you have any belief that we will see that coming out of this newly Republican-controlled Congress?</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Jerry on that.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>Jerry Boykin: </b>I think that what you will see is you will see a sincere effort to stop the sequestration cuts as a first order of business and think that they are recognizing now that those cuts are way too deep and that they&#8217;re going to hollow out our military.  Now, will they succeed?  I don&#8217;t know.  Will Obama sign legislation?  I don&#8217;t know, but I think that you&#8217;ll see an effort to do that.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>That&#8217;s, my question is, all right, I agree on the sequestering, that&#8217;s one thing, I&#8217;m asking a different question. Will they go into what is a preplanned and clearly being executed effort to hollow out the moral leadership in the military particularly the Army?  Besides the sequestering, I want to know when you expect the Republicans, if ever, to standup on this issue and do you have any confidence in John McCain, as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee will do that?</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">Jerry Boykin: </b>No.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>James Carafano: </b>Well, let&#8217;s just poll the panel. No.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>No.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>Okay so you&#8217;re 3 for 3. But actually, you bring up the really the most important point.  We always say what is our President doing?  What is our Congress doing?  And what really matters is what are we doing, all right?  So the most famous battle in American history is maybe Gettysburg, and at Gettysburg, the Union stood because one guy at the far left of the flank, who was just a guy.  He wasn&#8217;t a general, he wasn&#8217;t a President, he wasn&#8217;t a congressman.  He might have even been drafted.  He was just a guy and he was standing there, and they said if the Confederates get around you we will fall and if we fall, the army will fall and if the army falls the nation will fall and that person stood their ground.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;"><b>David Fridovich: </b>Yeah.</p>
<p><b style="color: #323333;">James Carafano: </b>So when you ask whose going to save this country?  Who&#8217;s going to make sure that the men and women that defend us have what they need then look around yourselves at the table because we are them. Thank you.  Thank you everybody.</p>
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		<title>Obama &#8216;Solves&#8217; Immigration Crisis by Ordering &#8216;Shields Down&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/obama-solves-immigration-crisis-by-ordering-shields-down/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-solves-immigration-crisis-by-ordering-shields-down</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/obama-solves-immigration-crisis-by-ordering-shields-down/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2014 05:11:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Cutler]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246041</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The catastrophic impact Obama's immigration power grab will have on America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/6364423ec44b012d660f6a70670060f2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246042" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/6364423ec44b012d660f6a70670060f2-417x350.jpg" alt="6364423ec44b012d660f6a70670060f2" width="311" height="261" /></a>That we live in a perilous era is hardly a headline &#8212; this is a well established fact.  America and Americans face an existential threat posed by terrorist organizations.  Additionally, huge quantities of heroin and cocaine have flooded across our borders, smuggled by pernicious drug trafficking organizations that have set up shop in communities across the United States.  There is a strong nexus between narcotics trafficking and narcotics use and crime, especially violent crime.</p>
<p>The tens of billions of dollars, the annual proceeds from the drug trade, flow into the coffers of transnational drug trafficking organizations and international terrorist organizations.</p>
<p>Finally, our nation&#8217;s economy continues to falter and struggle as do tens of millions of American workers and their families find that their incomes shrink as their expenses rise as more foreign workers enter the United States each month than the number of new jobs that are being created.</p>
<p>All of the above-noted issues have a clear nexus to failures of our nation to secure its borders and enforce the immigration laws effectively.  In point of fact our immigration laws were enacted with two primary goals, protect American lives and the jobs of American workers.</p>
<p>In point of fact, our borders and our immigration laws are supposed to shield America and Americans.  Given all of the threats and challenges confronting America and Americans those shields should never be more important.  However, you would never know it to listen to the President and, frankly, to all too many of our nation&#8217;s politicians from both sides of the political aisle in Washington and on the state and local levels.</p>
<p>On November 20, 2014 President Obama went before the cameras at the White House and laid out his plans to unilaterally “fix” the broken immigration system.  That there are millions of illegal aliens present in the United States indicates that our immigration system is failing.  That terrorists have been able to enter the United States and embed themselves in the United States provides further evidence of failures of the immigration system.  Consider, if you will, that the Tsarnaev brothers were able to gain lawful entry into the United States and apparently game the political asylum program. This provides a graphic example of a failure of that component of the immigration system.</p>
<p>“The Social Contract” published my article in its Summer 2013 edition, on how fraud in the political asylum program currently enables our enemies to see in America&#8217;s compassion, weakness. The title of my article was <span style="color: #386eff;"><a href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_23_4/tsc_23_4_cutler.shtml">&#8220;Political Asylum: Where Compassion and National Security Intersect.&#8221;</a></span></p>
<p>What has never been explained, by President Obama or others who claim that the immigration system is <i>broken,</i> is how their proposals will greatly reduce the number of illegal aliens present in the United States.  What has never been explained is how the proposed “fixes” will create integrity to the processes by which aliens are granted visas or immigration benefits such as gaining lawful immigrant status or United States citizenship.  These are critical issues that were identified by the 9/11 Commission.</p>
<p>Traditionally when laws are violated our leaders call for enhanced enforcement efforts to combat and deter the crimes.  Because of concerns about those who have trespassed on New York City landmarks, Senator Chuck Schumer has proposed that a law be enacted that would subject those trespassers to a period of imprisonment of five years rather than the maximum of one year currently on the books.  He stated in part:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>“While individuals like this (trespassers) may have meant no harm, their acts put commuters and first responders at risk,” Schumer said. “They also inspire copycats who may have much more evil plans in mind.”</i></p>
<p><i>Critical infrastructure is defined by the Patriot Act as systems and assets so vital to the U.S., that the incapacity or destruction to them would have a debilitating effect.</i></p>
<p><i>“That would be a bridge, a power plant, the air vents to one of our tunnels,” Miller said.</i></p>
<p><i>Miller and Schumer said </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/13/sen-schumer-proposes-bill-to-make-trespassing-on-critical-infrastructure-a-federal-crime/"><span style="color: #011480;"><i>the new legislation</i></span></a><i> will help serve as a deterrent.</i></p>
<p><i>“When stunts like this occur, the New York City trespassing law has a maximum of one year and it’s often three months,” Schumer said. “That’s not enough punishment to deter this behavior. It’s time to change that.”</i></p>
<p><i>Schumer said this legislation is based on another federal law protecting railroads.</i></p></blockquote>
<p style="color: #011480;"><span style="color: #000000;">His statements were reported upon in an October 14, 2014 CBS News report, <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/14/mayor-de-blasio-heads-to-d-c-for-meetings-on-nyc-security-and-counter-terrorism/">&#8220;Mayor De Blasio Heads To D.C. For Meetings On NYC Security And Counter-Terrorism.&#8221;</a></span></p>
<p>However, Senator Chuck Schumer has been the staunchest advocate for providing a pathway to United States citizenship to illegal aliens who have trespassed on America by running our nation&#8217;s borders and evading the crucial screening process conducted by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors at ports of entry.  This serves to encourage, not deter, aliens to run our nation&#8217;s borders.</p>
<p>Where our broken immigration system is concerned, the obvious questions not being asked or answered is, “Where is the deterrent?”  “How is the lack of integrity in the immigration adjudications program being addressed?”</p>
<p>President Obama&#8217;s tone has been defiant, claiming that if members of Congress wanted to stop him from taking his actions that they should pass an immigration bill that he agreed with.  It was a stunning statement especially considering that Obama was a constitutional law instructor.  On numerous previous public appearances he made it clear that he did not have the authority to act alone to take the actions that he is now taking to deal with immigration.  Yet, for reasons never articulated, he has now made it clear that he will now do what he had previous claimed he lacked the legal authority to do.</p>
<p>He has also never explained how his actions would curtail future illegal immigration or address the recommendations and findings of the 9/11 Commission.  But then, these are critical questions that virtually no journalists have ever asked or members of the Republican Party have ever addressed, either.</p>
<p>Obama is attempting to extort immigration legislation by using the sort of “strong arm” technique of Tony Soprano rather than the conciliatory and constitutionally mandated technique befitting the President of the United States, who leads the most powerful democratic republic on the planet.</p>
<p>While the media has fixated on the procedural issues of whether or not what Obama is promising (threatening?) to do is within the bounds of his legal authority as the President of the United States, what has never been discussed to any great degree is the other procedural question &#8212; how would USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) implement this massive amnesty program involving millions of illegal aliens with even a sliver of integrity?</p>
<p>On November 30, 2013 Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) posted my commentary, <span style="color: #011480;">&#8220;Political Asylum Fraud: Where America&#8217;s Compassion Becomes Vulnerability&#8221;</span>that was predicated on a hard-hitting report posted by ABC News on November 20, 2013, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131"><span style="color: #386eff;">&#8220;Exclusive: US May Have Let &#8216;Dozens&#8217; of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees.&#8221;</span></a></p>
<p>The number one priority of the government of the United States is national security and, with it, public safety.  How on earth could the administration successfully administer that program in a manner that would not undermine national security and public safety?  Let us remember that America&#8217;s borders and immigration laws are its shields, its first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists, transnational criminals and other foreign nationals whose presence in the United States would undermine national security, public safety, public health or otherwise compromise the well-being of America and Americans.</p>
<p>On September 10, 2014 the New York Post published a disturbing report, <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/homeland-security-we-cant-stop-isis-from-coming-into-us/"><span style="color: #011480;">&#8220;Homeland Security: We can’t stop ISIS from coming into US.&#8221;</span></a></p>
<p>Here is an important quote from this report:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>‘Terrorists could be just one visa-free flight away from arriving in the United States.’</i></p>
<p><i>-Rep. Candice Miller</i></p>
<p><i>Members of Congress cited estimates that 12,000 foreigners have traveled to Syria to engage in the civil war, including more than 1,000 Europeans and more than 100 Americans, with a dozen Americans believed to be fighting alongside ISIS.</i></p>
<p><i>“ISIS is a threat to the United States and to the people of the United States,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas).</i></p>
<p><i>“We may be reminded on 9/11 the count was approximately 19 who created the most heinous terrorist attack, killing more than 3,000.”</i></p>
<p><i>One Frenchman who trained with ISIS went to Brussels to murder four people at a Jewish museum in May, authorities say.</i></p>
<p><i>State Department and Homeland Security leaders said they’ve been working diligently with the tools at their disposal, including constantly upgrading border security procedures, reviewing the terror watch list and vetting visas.</i></p>
<p><i>“Though we currently have no credible information to indicate that ISIL is planning to attack the homeland, we remain concerned in the long term that their access to Westerners … will allow them to plan and coordinate attacks in the US,” Lasley said.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>On November 10, 2014 Newsweek published a report about how the CIA is unable to effectively vet just 5,000 Syrians who claim to be moderates who want to help fight ISIS.  Realize that these are people who are in their country of citizenship and the CIA is able to conduct in-person interviews and are able to conduct investigations in the towns and villages where these people live, yet the vetting process is a disaster.  If it is virtually impossible to effectively screen 5,000 Syrians within their own country, how on earth could USCIS properly vet 5 million or, likely, many more aliens in the United States without an interview or field investigation?</p>
<p style="color: #011480;"><span style="color: #000000;">The Newsweek article, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/21/moderate-rebels-please-raise-your-hands-283449.html">&#8220;Inside the CIA&#8217;s Syrian Rebels Vetting Machine,&#8221;</a> begins with this passage:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i>Nothing has come in for more mockery during the Obama administration’s halting steps into the Syrian civil war than its employment of “moderate” to describe the kind of rebels it is willing to back. In one of the more widely cited japes, The New Yorker’s resident humorist, Andy Borowitz, presented a “Moderate Syrian Application Form,” in which applicants were asked to describe themselves as either “A) Moderate, B) Very moderate, C) Crazy moderate or D) Other.”</i></p>
<p><i>After Senator John McCain allegedly posed with Syrians “on our side” who turned out to be kidnappers—a report later called into question—Jon Stewart cracked, “Not everyone is going to be wearing their ‘HELLO I’M A TERRORIST’ name badge.”</i></p>
<p><i>Behind the jokes, however, is the deadly serious responsibility of the CIA and Defense Department to vet Syrians before they receive covert American training, aid and arms. But according to U.S. counterterrorism veterans, a system that worked pretty well during four decades of the Cold War has been no match for the linguistic, cultural, tribal and political complexities of the Middle East, especially now in Syria. “We’re completely out of our league,” one former CIA vetting expert declared on condition of anonymity, reflecting the consensus of intelligence professionals with firsthand knowledge of the Syrian situation. “To be really honest, very few people know how to vet well. It’s a very specialized skill. It’s extremely difficult to do well” in the best of circumstances, the former operative said. And in Syria it has proved impossible.</i></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="color: #386eff;"><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Monograph.pdf">The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel</a></span>was prepared by the staff that assisted the 9/11 Commission.  The preface of that document began with this paragraph:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.&#8221;</i></p></blockquote>
<p>That report also detailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists not only made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud to enter the United States, but to also embed themselves in the United States. Page 47 of this report noted:</p>
<blockquote><p>“<i>Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.”</i></p></blockquote>
<p>It is significant to note that the Seasonal Agricultural Program, also known as the Special Agricultural Program (SAW), were major components of the 1986 amnesty and that New York&#8217;s then-Congressman Chuck Schumer was one of that program&#8217;s major architects even though there were absolutely no farms in his congressional district when he concocted it.</p>
<p>This paragraph is found on page 98 of the report, under the title “Immigration Benefits”:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The program that the administration is about to create violates the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission yet, incredibly, this issue is never raised in the mainstream media or members of either political party in either the House of Representatives or the Senate.</p>
<p>While Obama and others have stated that the program being by the administration would involve five million illegal aliens, there is no assurance that humongous as that number is might not quickly swell to double or triple that number.  In 1986 the Reagan administration predicted that roughly one million illegal aliens would participate in the amnesty program that was a part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. By the time that the bureaucratic dust had settled between 3.5 and 4 million aliens had gained lawful status.</p>
<p>While the majority of these illegal aliens are not likely to have serious criminal histories or affiliations with terrorist organizations, the sheer magnitude of this program would create a monstrous haystack in which some truly deadly needles will easily be able to conceal themselves.  Because of the huge number of applications that will likely be filed, there would be no capacity to conduct routine face-to-face interviews with the applicants.  There would be no capacity to conduct routine field investigations to seek to verify information contained in the applications.</p>
<p>Furthermore, because of the huge number of applications and relatively sparse numbers of USCIS adjudications officers, applications will need to be processed quickly.  This raises yet another area of concern.  It takes just minutes for an adjudications officer to approve an application but may take hours, days or even weeks for those adjudicators to deny an application.  Adjudications Officers will be required to process a minimum number of applications per day or week to satisfy the standards established in their evaluations which are prepared periodically.  This will force these dedicated employees to be pressured to approve the great majority of the applications that they are given to adjudicate.</p>
<p>On November 1, 2013 CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization posted my commentary: <a href="http://www.capsweb.org/blog/speed-kills-uscis">&#8220;Speed Kills at USCIS”</a></p>
<p>USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) is the woebegone division of the DHS that would be tasked with administering this program. As it is, this beleaguered and inept agency cannot keep up with its workload without “rubber-stamping” approvals on many applications where this slipshod approach enables fraud to often go undetected.  It only takes minutes for an Adjudications Officer to approve an application for a benefit such as lawful status or citizenship, but it may require hours or days to deny an application.</p>
<p>The adjudications officers will be pressured to “get to yes” as was reported by the media about instructions given to these USCIS officials.  Furthermore, their evaluations contain productivity requirements (quotas).  A diligent adjudicator will find his/her career imperiled for not meeting quotas that all but preclude denying more than a very few applications.</p>
<p>I wrote an article about the plight of these officials in my article for CAPS, <a href="http://www.capsweb.org/blog/immigration-bon-bon-factory"><span style="color: #011480;">&#8220;The Immigration Bon Bon Factory.&#8221;</span></a>  In my piece I noted that a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbNcQlzV-4"><span style="color: #011480;">hilarious episode of &#8220;I Love Lucy&#8221;</span></a> found the hapless Lucy and her comedic side-kick Ethel working in a candy factory and were assigned to wrap morsels of bon bons. They were unable to keep up with the pace of candy hurtling at them on a conveyor belt that started slowly but quickly accelerated to warp speed.  They were warned that if they failed to keep pace with the candy they would be fired.  To keep from losing their jobs they began stuffing the candy down their clothing and eating them, but to no avail.</p>
<p>While the situation Lucy and Ethel found themselves in were designed to entertain their audience, there is nothing amusing about the plight of the employees of USCIS or what it means for national security.</p>
<p>This is not just speculation on my part but is, in fact, based on the current reality in terms of how the hundreds of thousands of applications for DREAMERS are being adjudicated now.  Indeed, the approval rate for the DREAMERS under the DACA (Deferred Action- Childhood Arrivals) Program now exceeds 95%.</p>
<p>Because of this illegal aliens, who, for reasons only known to them, evaded the inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would be problematic for America and Americans, will see an opportunity to secure lawful status and official identity documents by committing fraud that is most likely to go undetected.  Aliens will be able to succeed in lying about their identities, including potentially their true countries of citizenship.  They will also likely be able to successfully make false claims concerning their dates and methods of entry into the United States.</p>
<p>That these aliens evaded the inspections process is all but ignored in the media and in the statements made by our supposed political leaders.  Aliens who run our borders entered the United States by evading the inspections process conducted at ports of entry by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens into the United States whose presence would be dangerous to the safety and well-being of America and Americans.</p>
<p><span style="color: #011480;"><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182">Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182</a></span><span style="color: #0d2f87;"> </span>enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded. Among these classes are aliens who suffer from dangerous communicable diseases or extreme mental illness. Additionally convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, terrorists and spies are to be excluded, as well as aliens who would seek unlawful employment thus displacing American workers or driving down the wages of American workers who are similarly employed and aliens who would become public charges.</p>
<p>It should be obvious that aliens who evade that inspections process do so because they know that they belong to one or more categories of aliens who are to be prevented from entering the United States.  What is not obvious about these aliens is any information as to what would prevent them from being lawfully admitted.  There is no way to readily determine their true identities or backgrounds.  This means that they may successfully lie about their countries of citizenship as well as their names and dates of birth.  Their is no way to even know when or how they actually entered the United States.</p>
<p>The National Review Online posted an article that coincided with the New York Post Post article, <b> </b><span style="color: #011480;"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/389829/isis-fighters-getting-caught-coming-across-us-mexican-border-jim-geraghty">&#8220;ISIS Fighters Getting Caught Coming Across the U.S.-Mexican Border?&#8221;</a></span></p>
<p>Here is the text of this relatively short and disconcerting report:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>From the midweek edition of the </i><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/newsletters"><span style="color: #011480;"><i>Morning Jolt</i></span></a><i>:</i></p>
<p><b><i>Say What? ‘At Least Ten ISIS Fighters Have Been Caught Coming Across the Border’</i></b></p>
<p><i>Rep. </i><a href="http://hunter.house.gov/"><span style="color: #011480;"><i>Duncan Hunter</i></span></a><i>, Republican of California, does not seem like a nut job or prone to wild exaggerations. But </i><a href="http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2014/10/stunner-rep-duncan-hunter-r-ca-ten-isis.html"><span style="color: #011480;"><i>last night he said something that should make jaws drop</i></span></a><i>:</i></p>
<p><b><i>Van Susteren:</i></b><i> Hold on. Stop for one second.</i></p>
<p><b><i>Hunter:</i></b><i> They are going to be bombing American cities coming across from Mexico.</i></p>
<p><b><i>Van Susteren:</i></b><i> Let me ask a question. You say that they are coming in the southern border, which changes all the dynamics Do you have any information that they are coming in through the southern border now?</i></p>
<p><b><i>Hunter:</i></b><i> Yes.</i></p>
<p><b><i>Van Susteren:</i></b><i> Tell me what you know.</i></p>
<p><b><i>Hunter:</i></b><i> At least ten ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the border in Texas.</i></p>
<p><b><i>Van Susteren:</i></b><i> How do you know that?</i></p>
<p><b><i>Hunter:</i></b><i> Because I’ve asked the border patrol, Greta.</i></p>
<p><b><i>Van Susteren:</i></b><i> And the border patrol just let’s ISIS members come across the border?</i></p>
<p><b><i>Hunter:</i></b><i> No. They caught them at the border. Therefore, we know that ISIS is coming across the border. If they catch five or ten of them, you know that there are going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the border patrol. That’s how you know. That’s where we are at risk here, is from ISIS and radical Islamists coming across the border. Once again, they don’t have a navy, air force, nuclear weapons. The only way that Americans are going to be harmed by radical Islam — Chairman Dempsey said the same thing. He said that’s where the major threat is here, that’s how these guys are going to infiltrate through America and harm Americans.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Providing millions of illegal aliens with lawful status and official identity documents would not provide a deterrence to millions of aspiring illegal aliens from around the world and with the abject lack of integrity to the process, could potentially wind up with the additional consequences of providing terrorists with official identity documents in false names.</p>
<p>Mr. Obama&#8217;s plans could be the ultimate bad news.</p>
<p>Given the foregoing, Star Trek&#8217;s Captain James T. Kirk would likely command, “Shields up!”</p>
<p>Incomprehensibly, Mr. Obama is ordering just the opposite and the focus of attention of the media and politicians from both parties is solely on whether or not the President&#8217;s executive orders are constitutional, certainly a major issue.  However, what is being ignored is the impact this will have on our nation and our citizens in this particularly perilous era.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> interview with <strong>Michael Cutler</strong> on <strong>“The Immigration Crisis”</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pXthT43Cbok" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Immigration Politics: Where Facts and Commonsense Are Ignored</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/immigration-politics-where-facts-and-commonsense-are-ignored/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=immigration-politics-where-facts-and-commonsense-are-ignored</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2014 04:48:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Cutler]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sanctuary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trespassing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243979</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The deceptive tactics the Left uses to undermine border security. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/51533286_custom-d3a6c58e870df3bee1f4b9bd0ce279d571233bb3-s6-c30.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243982" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/51533286_custom-d3a6c58e870df3bee1f4b9bd0ce279d571233bb3-s6-c30-450x296.jpg" alt="51533286_custom-d3a6c58e870df3bee1f4b9bd0ce279d571233bb3-s6-c30" width="307" height="202" /></a>On October 22, 2014 CBS News, New York posted a brief report, <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/22/city-council-bill-seeks-to-protect-jailed-immigrants-from-feds/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;City Council Votes For Bills To Protect Jailed Immigrants From Feds.&#8221;</span></a> This report illustrates the unholy alliance forged between many politicians and news agencies to skew the truth about immigration. The article begins with this excerpt:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><b><i>NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)</i></b><i> — Bills passed by the City Council Wednesday aim to </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/02/lawmakers-to-introduce-legislation-to-only-honor-immigration-detainers-with-federal-warrant/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>keep detained immigrants from being deported by the federal government</i></span></a><i>.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>The City Council voted in favor of the legislation 41-6 Wednesday.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>As WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb reported, the measures, supported by </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/09/18/nyc-municipal-id-cards-to-offer-free-incentives/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>Mayor Bill de Blasio</i></span></a><i>, would prohibit correction officials and police from handing over detainees to immigration officials.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The report went on to note:</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“<i>The law will only allow the city to honor the detainer if the subject has been convicted of a violent or serious felony in the last five years or if the person is a possible match on the federal terrorist watchlist,” she said.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>The bill would also shutter the federal immigration office </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/22/ap-rikers-island-deaths-suggest-poor-medical-treatment-of-inmates/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>on Rikers Island</i></span></a><i>.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">First of all, let&#8217;s consider that the title of the CBS article incorporates the phrase, “Protect the Jailed Immigrants From the Feds.” There are two key words that paint a deceptive image and both evoke a strong emotional response and virtually create the illusion that the efforts to impede the effective enforcement of our immigration laws against aliens who have been arrested for allegedly committing crimes is no less than <i>heroic.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The term “protect” is a term that engenders a sense of an appropriate action taken to make certain that no harm comes to someone, especially an innocent person. Police departments around the United States adopted the phrase “to protect and serve” as their mission statement. In considering this infuriating news report, the question that must be asked is: “Who is being protected and who is being served?”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Our nation&#8217;s borders and our immigration laws are America&#8217;s first line of defense and last line of defense to protect America and Americans from aliens whose presence poses a threat to the safety and well-being of our nation and our citizens.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Our immigration laws are utterly blind as to race, religion or ethnicity and were enacted to achieve two primary goals: <i>protect</i> innocent lives and <i>protect</i> the jobs of American workers. While the CBS report focuses on how the majority of the members of the City Council are seeking to protect illegal aliens who have been arrested from being deported, the article neglects to mention that this proposed action would fail to protect Americans and others present in the United States by blocking ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents from being able to identify and take into custody aliens who are subject to being removed (deported) from the United States.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It would be wrong-headed to shield any illegal alien from detection by ICE (although ICE is no longer mounting a meaningful effort to enforce our immigration laws). However, in this instance we have the great majority of the members of the NYC Counsel seeking to prevent the removal of aliens who have been arrested by the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The term “immigrant” as used in the headline is currently being used deceptively throughout the United States to describe all foreign nationals (aliens) who are present in the United States, irrespective of their status. The term “alien” has come to be (falsely) equated with a slur, not unlike the “n-word.” In reality, under the immigration laws of the United States, which are encompassed within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the term <i>alien</i> simply means, “any person, not a citizen or national of the United States.” There is no insult of any sort in that definition &#8212; only clarity. Clarity is something that must be avoided at all costs when a con artist attempts to swindle his (her) intended victim. This is no different from the dreaded and infamous “small print” contained in contracts designed to confuse the person signing the contract to get them to agree to terms that they would never knowingly agree to.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By using the term “immigrant” to describe all aliens present in the United States it then becomes easy to talk about the wonderful contributions that immigrants have made to the United States. After all, they remind us, “We are a nation of immigrants!” Of course this fails to note that among illegal aliens are criminals, fugitives from justice in foreign countries and others whose presence is harmful or even dangerous.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By hammering away at the lie that all aliens should be deemed “immigrants” immigration anarchists have set the stage to label as “anti-immigrant” anyone of wanting our borders to be secured against those who would evade the inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would pose a threat to national security, public safety, public health or otherwise be detrimental to the well-being of America and/or Americans. They go on to attack anyone seeking effective immigration law enforcement branding them “bigots,” “racists” and “nativists.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In my effort to provide clarity to this issue I have come to say that the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar. It is not anti-social or uncharitable for a person to lock his (her) doors at night to make certain that burglars or criminals do not enter their homes as they sleep. It is only prudent and commonsense.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In point of fact, our immigration laws not only establish the grounds by which aliens are to be prevented from entering the United States and the grounds under which aliens should be deported from the United States, but also establish the lawful means by which more than one million aliens legally immigrate to the United States, are granted Alien Registration Receipt Cards and are immediately placed on the pathway to United States citizenship. These laws also provide for the naturalization of hundreds of thousands of lawful immigrants each year, conferring United States citizenship upon them.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Furthermore, the most likely victims of crimes committed by transnational criminals are the members of the ethnic immigrant communities of the same origins of the criminal aliens. This holds true for all ethnic communities, not just from Latin America. As an INS agent I investigated and arrested many such individuals from countries around the world.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Therefore, how on earth can supporting the effective enforcement and administration of our immigration laws constitute an anti-immigrant position?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Let us briefly revisit the notion of “protecting immigrants” as noted in the headline. The more appropriate phrase should be “shielding and harboring.” Theses terms appear in the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that addresses alien smuggling.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Consider that under <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324"><span style="color: #386eff;">8 USC § 1324 &#8211; Bringing in and harboring certain aliens</span></a>, a section of law that is comprehended within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), it is a felony to aid, abet, encourage or induce aliens to enter our country illegally or remain in our country illegally and a crime to harbor, shield or conceal such aliens from detection.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Here is an excerpt from that section of law:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a) Offenses</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a) defines several distinct offenses related to aliens. Subsection 1324(a)(1)(i)-(v) prohibits alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Subsection 1324(a)(2) prohibits bringing or attempting to bring unauthorized aliens to the United States in any manner whatsoever, even at a designated port of entry. Subsection 1324(a)(3).</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Harboring &#8212; Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) makes it an offense for any person who &#8212; knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals harbors, shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Encouraging/Inducing &#8212; Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) makes it an offense for any person who &#8212; encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Conspiracy/Aiding or Abetting &#8212; Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(v) expressly makes it an offense to engage in a conspiracy to commit or aid or abet the commission of the foregoing offenses.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">On February 25, 2014 Californians for Population Stabilization published my article <a href="http://www.capsweb.org/blog/nyc-mayor-determined-give-illegal-aliens-id-cards"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;NYC Mayor Determined to Give Illegal Aliens ID Cards&#8221;</span></a> that addressed the program being created by New York City&#8217;s Mayor Bill de Blasio to provide illegal aliens with identity documents, violating commonsense and the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commmission.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">I focused on the nexus between immigration and the threat of terrorism and how the creation of “sanctuary cities” undermines national security in my September 24, 2014 article for FrontPage Magazine, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/sanctuary-cities-or-safe-havens-for-terrorists/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">‘Sanctuary Cities’ or ‘Safe Havens’ for Terrorists?</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What is truly incomprehensible is how New York Senator Chuck Schumer recently railed against those who have trespassed on important landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the new World Trade Center Tower. Consider the October 14, 2014 CBS News report on de Blasio heading to Washington to participate in meetings focusing on city security and counter-terrorism, <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/14/mayor-de-blasio-heads-to-d-c-for-meetings-on-nyc-security-and-counter-terrorism/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;Mayor De Blasio Heads To D.C. For Meetings On NYC Security And Counter-Terrorism.&#8221;</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The article noted that the meetings would be held the day after, “<a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/13/schumer-wants-tougher-bridge-trespassing-laws/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Sen. Charles Schumer</span></a> proposed making trespassing on critical infrastructure like major bridges or important buildings punishable by up to five years in prison.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Here is the brief report in its entirety:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><b><i>NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) –</i></b><i> Mayor Bill de Blasio is heading to Washington, D.C. Tuesday for meetings about city security and counter-terrorism.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>De Blasio, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism John Miller are set to meet with the heads of Homeland Security and the FBI.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>The meeting comes a day after </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/13/schumer-wants-tougher-bridge-trespassing-laws/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>Sen. Charles Schumer</i></span></a><i> proposed making trespassing on critical infrastructure like major bridges or important buildings punishable by up to five years in prison.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>The proposal was made in the wake of several recent trespassing cases in the city.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Over the summer, two German artists climbed the Brooklyn Bridge, switching the American flags with white washed versions.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Berlin-based Mischa Leinkauf and Mattias Wermke said they replaced the flags on top of the bridge </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/08/08/bratton-says-nypd-has-idea-of-who-was-involved-in-brooklyn-bridge-flag-swap/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>with bleached-out versions</i></span></a><i> as a tribute to public art.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“<i>The stuntman placed aluminum pans over the floodlights to keep them from being seen and for awhile, it was scary,” Schumer said Monday.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>A Russian tourist was then arrested in August after </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/09/19/russian-tourist-facing-charges-for-climbing-brooklyn-bridge-signs-up-for-community-service/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>climbing the Brooklyn Bridge</i></span></a><i>.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Yaroslav Kolchin was seen walking back and forth on the landing, taking photos with his iPhone, police said. They said once a police aviation unit was hovering at an altitude next to the tower, Kolchin began to descend safely down the same way he had climbed up.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>He was met by police at the security gate, where he was taken into custody without further incident.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Also in August, an activist group </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/08/20/police-investigate-after-palestinian-protest-flag-is-unfurled-on-manhattan-bridge/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>unfurled a Palestinian flag</i></span></a><i> on the span of the Manhattan Bridge.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>In March, 16-year-old Justin Casquejo was charged after climbing to the top of the World Trade Center. He </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/07/30/nj-teen-pleads-guilty-in-1-world-trade-center-climb/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>admitted in July to breaking a city misdemeanor law</i></span></a><i> against scaling tall buildings without permission.</i></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;"><i>About a week after his trade center climb, </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/03/25/port-authority-wtc-parachute-jump-lawless-selfish/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>three extreme-skydiving fans were arrested for a leap off the tower last year.</i></span></a></span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“<i>While individuals like this may have meant no arm, their acts put commuters and first responders at risk,” Schumer said. “They also inspire copycats who may have much more evil plans in mind.”</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Critical infrastructure is defined by the Patriot Act as systems and assets so vital to the U.S., that the incapacity or destruction to them would have a debilitating effect.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“<i>That would be a bridge, a power plant, the air vents to one of our tunnels,” Miller said.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Miller and Schumer said </i><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/13/sen-schumer-proposes-bill-to-make-trespassing-on-critical-infrastructure-a-federal-crime/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>the new legislation</i></span></a><i> will help serve as a deterrent.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“<i>When stunts like this occur, the New York City trespassing law has a maximum of one year and it’s often three months,” Schumer said. “That’s not enough punishment to deter this behavior. It’s time to change that.”</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>Schumer said this legislation is based on another federal law protecting railroads.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">This is the same Schumer who, as a member of the “Gang of Eight,” has championed providing a pathway to United States citizenship for millions of illegal aliens who evaded the vital inspections process designed to prevent the entry of aliens who would pose a threat to public health, public safety and, indeed, national security by <b><i>trespassing</i></b> on the United States. There can be no greater example of a lack of mouth-ear coordination than that demonstrated by Mr. Schumer.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In case you missed it, this is the next to last paragraph of the news report, quoting Schumer:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">“<i>When stunts like this occur, the New York City trespassing law has a maximum of one year and it’s often three months,” Schumer said. “That’s not enough punishment to deter this behavior. It’s time to change that.”</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Schumer&#8217;s own ears apparently are unable to hear the words he utters from his own mouth when the issue of immigration is raised. Clearly, he understands that undesired behavior can be deterred by tougher laws coupled with tougher enforcement, particularly where the crime of trespassing is concerned.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Schumer, however, is hardly the only politician to be afflicted with a lack of mouth-ear coordination. On September 27, 2012 New York City&#8217;s then mayor, Michael Bloomberg, was the focus of a New York Post article, <a href="http://nypost.com/2012/09/27/bloomberg-blasts-bronx-da-for-not-prosecuting-trespassing-arrests/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;Bloomberg blasts Bronx DA for not prosecuting trespassing arrests.&#8221;</span></a> It must be pointed out that Bloomberg continued the immigration sanctuary policies of the previous administration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The continuing sanctuary policies were, in fact, the subject of a hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on February 27, 2003 on the topic, <a href="http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju85287.000/hju85287_0f.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;New York City&#8217;s &#8216;Sanctuary&#8217; Policy and the Effect of Such Policies on Public Safety, Law Enforcement and Immigration.&#8221;</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">I was one of the witnesses called to testify at that hearing, more than a decade ago. As the saying goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">We are continually told that the immigration system is broken. The reality is that what is broken is the moral compass of this administration and all too many politicians. The administration lacks the will to effectively secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws and follow the advice Schumer provided concerning trespassing: increase the penalties for such crimes and effectively enforce the laws.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There is an old Yiddish expression that translated declares, “When the fish goes bad, it smells from the head!” The lack of moral leadership in Washington permeates our nation and is being felt from coast to coast and border to border.</p>
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		<title>Independents Fear Terrorism &#8212;- Dems Prioritize Global Warming &#8216;Threat&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/independents-fear-terrorism-dems-prioritize-global-warming-threat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=independents-fear-terrorism-dems-prioritize-global-warming-threat</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/independents-fear-terrorism-dems-prioritize-global-warming-threat/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 04:38:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Independents]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241646</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New polling shows progressives' peculiar priorities. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c61.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241649" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c61-450x334.jpg" alt="140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6" width="295" height="219" /></a>A Pew Research Center/USA Today <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/08/28/as-new-dangers-loom-more-think-the-u-s-does-too-little-to-solve-world-problems/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">survey</span></a> conducted between Aug. 20 and 24 reveals a startling disconnect between Democrats and the rest of America.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A staggering 68 percent of Democrats consider global climate change a greater threat to the United States than either Al Qaeda at 67 percent, or ISIS at 65 percent. By contrast, 80 percent of Republicans cited Al Qaeda as the principal threat facing the nation, followed by 78 percent citing ISIS, and only 25 percent expressing concern about global climate change. Among Independents, Al Qaeda led the way at 69 percent, followed by ISIS at 63 percent, and global climate change bringing up the rear at 44 percent.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The survey addressed nine categories, including Iran’s nuclear program; China&#8217;s emergence as a nuclear power; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; extremist groups like Al Qaeda; Islamic militant groups like ISIS; North Korea’s nuclear program; growing tension between Russia and her neighbors; the country-to-country speed of infectious diseases; and global climate change.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For Democrats, global climate change was concern Number One. For both Republicans and Independents, it came in dead last.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Such findings should surprise no one. Global climate change has assumed a cult-like status among the American left, one that not only transcends scientific reality, but engenders an unseemly level of rage directed at skeptics, and a monumental level of hypocrisy among its adherents.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The scientific reality has been scarred by politics. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/08/07/global-warming-pause-puts-crisis-in-perspective/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">admits</span></a> that many of their hypotheses are based on &#8220;best guess” assumptions. Yet those best guess assumptions have consistently over-estimated the amount of warming, with predictions far exceeding that which is actually taking place. We are currently in a global warming “pause&#8221; that has <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/03/rss-shows-no-global-warming-for-17-years-10-months/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">exceeded</span></a> 17 years. Yet even if one goes back to 1979, when satellite instruments began to consistently measure temperatures in the Earth’s lower atmosphere, the overall temperature rise has been approximately one-third of one degree Celsius, or approximately one degree Celsius per century. Since 1990, IPCC computer models have predicted at least 2.4 degrees of global warming per century, almost two-and-a-half times the actual amount.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps such measurements are honest mistakes. Or perhaps not. In 2009, the Climategate scandal revealed scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/18555-global-warming-hoax-unraveling-someone-tell-obama"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conspired</span></a> to suppress data that conflicted with their apparently preconceived conclusions. According to Real Science blogger  Steven Goddard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has also been <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">involved</span></a> data manipulation, replacing real temperature readings with data compiled on computers. And much to Al Gore’s chagrin, the Arctic ice cap he <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">predicted</span></a> in 2007 could be &#8220;gone in summer in as little as seven years,” has now expanded two years in a row by as much as 43 to 62 precent, depending how one measures it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">None of these inconvenient realities (and countless others) are presented to entirely dismiss the notion that global temperatures may be increasing, but rather to demonstrate that among leftists, hysteria and fear-mongering remain an integral part of the climate change debate.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is hysteria and fear-mongering that demands any skepticism whatsoever must be threatened. Thus when Swedish climatologist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson expressed his own reservations about climate change, his fellow colleagues <a href="http://humanevents.com/2014/05/16/the-new-climategate-scandal/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">turned</span></a> him into a pariah that made it impossible &#8220;to conduct my normal work and ….even start to worry about my health and safety,” he said in letter explaining his resignation from a London think tank—not because he questioned global warming, but because he challenged the rate of change demanded by the dogmatists.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On Monday, Robert Kennedy Jr. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/23/robert-kennedy-jr-we-need-laws-punish-global-warmi/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">epitomized</span></a> the left’s determination to silence the doubters, insisting there should be a law allowing authorities to punish skeptics who are “selling out the public trust,” even as he accused the left’s favorite target, the Koch Brothers, of engaging in climate “treason.” Getting even more hysterical, Kennedy stated that the Kochs should be thrown in &#8220;the Hague with all the other war criminals.” Yet when a reporter <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2765461/Robert-F-Kennedy-Jr-loses-cool-grabs-mic-reporter-pushing-carbon-footprint.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">confronted</span></a> Kennedy about his own rather large carbon footprint, he became irate and accused her of “destroying democracy,” before stating that he does not believe quality of life should sacrificed for the environment.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The exchange highlights the glaring hypocrisy that animates Kennedy, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and a host of other celebrities and politicians more than willing to talk the talk, as they conspicuously avoid walking the walk. Even the 300,000 marchers who took part in New York’s &#8220;People&#8217;s Climate March” Monday were apparently unconcerned by the <a href="http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/268575/speedreads-climate-change-marchers-leave-behind-mounds-of-trash"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tons</span></a> of non-biodegradable garbage they left behind in their wake. Furthermore, it’s quite easy for jet-setting, yacht-squatting celebrities to pontificate about preserving one’s “lifestyle”—as long as one is willing to ignore the reality that millions of people’s <i>lives </i>depend upon the economic development that requires energy expansion.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/23/350911527/obama-to-lays-out-approach-to-climate-change-in-u-n-speech"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speech</span></a> yesterday at the United Nations, President Obama addressed party’s favorite issue, warning the developing nations of the world that, because of global warming, they cannot repeat the “dirty phase” of industrial development. According to a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/23/fact-sheet-president-obama-announces-new-actions-strengthen-global-resil"><span style="color: #1255cc;">fact sheet</span></a> from the White House’s Office of the Press Secretary, the president’s initiatives include an &#8220;Executive Order on Climate-Resilient International Development, requiring agencies to factor climate-resilience considerations systematically into the U.S. government’s international development work and to promote a similar approach with multilateral entities.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That didn’t sit particularly well with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with one insider <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2767000/Obama-s-new-climate-change-rules-create-unnecessary-hurdle-global-relief-development-work-warns-CDC-official-including-EBOLA-efforts.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterizing</span></a> such considerations as “an unnecessary hurdle” to leap over during emergencies that require urgency. On Monday the CDC offered up a sobering example of such urgency, predicting that as many as 1.4 million people could be affected by the Ebola outbreak by January of next year.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Furthermore, the multilateral entities to which Obama referred don’t include India and China. Both countries decided to <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-china-ignore-un-climate-change-summit/article1-1267288.aspx"><span style="color: #1255cc;">ignore</span></a> yesterday&#8217;s UN Climate Summit, despite being responsible for one-third of the total carbon emissions in 2013. Both nations have little interest in curbing their emissions until the United States and the European Union offer “substantial incentives” for doing so. Their resistance is likely exacerbated by the reality that the Green Climate Fund, established by the UN at the 2010 talks in Cancun to <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0923/UN-Climate-Summit-China-India-leaders-are-no-shows.-Why-that-s-ok.-video"><span style="color: #1255cc;">finance</span></a> green energy projects in Third World nations, has failed to get off the ground. Absent the transfer of wealth from rich nations to developing nations this fund represents, there is little likelihood of either nation jumping on board the “green” bandwagon anytime soon.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, Democrats’ &#8220;less-urgent” national security priorities have forced the Obama administration’s hand. A bombing campaign was initiated in Syria Monday, driven in large part by the reality that a virtually unknown group of al Qaeda affiliated terrorists called the Khorasan Group &#8220;was in the final stages of plans to execute major attacks against Western targets and potentially the U.S. homeland,” <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/defense-official-al-qaida-affiliated-group-was-in-final-stages-of-planning-attacks-against-the-west-20140923"><span style="color: #1255cc;">according </span></a>to Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. American officials <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/us-sees-other-more-direct-threats-beyond-isis-.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contend</span></a> the group, comprised of al Qaeda operatives from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, is even more intent on initiating domestic terror attacks than ISIS is. Moreover, they have a special affinity for terrorists plots involving concealed explosives.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">ISIS may disagree. In a 42-minute speech released Monday, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/23/islamic-state-followers-urged-to-launch-attacks-against-australians"><span style="color: #1255cc;">called</span></a> on Western Muslims to perpetrate domestic attacks in a series of “lone wolf” operations. &#8220;Do not ask for anyone&#8217;s advice and do not seek anyone&#8217;s verdict,&#8221; Adnani said. &#8220;Kill the infidel, whether he is civilian or military for they have the same ruling. Both of them are disbelievers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One is left to wonder whether Democrat “true believers,” who view global climate change as a greater threat than Islamic terror, are swayed by the possibility of  “imminent” domestic terror attacks. Perhaps they need reminding that 9/11 was a “two-fer,” as in a terrorist attack that also precipitated an <a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/wtc/html/know/know.shtml"><span style="color: #1255cc;">environmental disaster</span></a> in Lower Manhattan. Nor does it take much of an imagination to envision the “environmental impact” of a “dirty” bomb, or outright nuke, detonated in an American city. It takes even less of an imagination to know how a majority of Americans would view the warped priories of Democrats if Islamic terrorists make good on any of their murderous designs. Perhaps that majority should remember those priorities in November.</p>
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		<title>Reforming the Department of Homeland Surrender</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/the-dhs-must-finally-live-up-to-its-name/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-dhs-must-finally-live-up-to-its-name</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/the-dhs-must-finally-live-up-to-its-name/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 04:26:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Cutler]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[drugs]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239145</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Holding Congress accountable. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Department+Homeland+Security+Headquarters+TpSfGFx0T7-l.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239255" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Department+Homeland+Security+Headquarters+TpSfGFx0T7-l-450x293.jpg" alt="Department+Homeland+Security+Headquarters+TpSfGFx0T7-l" width="306" height="199" /></a>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  Federal agencies understood to play an integral role in protecting the American homeland from terrorist attacks were folded into this bureaucratic leviathan and included, among other federal agencies, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs Service and components of the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service).</p>
<p>The title of the agency, &#8220;Department of Homeland Security,&#8221; certainly created the appearance that the issue of national security was at the heart of the massive reorganization of federal agencies, but it became readily apparent that this was not the case.  In fact, the myriad failures of this agency have caused me to come to refer to the DHS as being the “Department of Homeland <i>Surrender.</i>”</p>
<p>As noted on the <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/dhs-budget"><span style="color: #011480;">official DHS website</span></a>, the budget for the DHS for Fiscal Year 2015 has been set at more than $60 billion.  ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has been provided with more than 5.4 billion dollars, CBP (Customs and Border Protection) has been budgeted for nearly 12.8 billion dollars while USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) has been budgeted to receive more than 3 billion dollars and the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) will receive more than 7.3 billion dollars.</p>
<p><span style="color: #011480;"><a href="http://www.dhs.gov/our-mission">The Official DHS Website</a></span> lists it mission as follows:</p>
<p><b>The Core Missions</b></p>
<p>There are five homeland security missions:</p>
<p style="color: #011480;">1. <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/prevent-terrorism-and-enhance-security">Prevent terrorism and enhancing security</a><span style="color: #000000;">;</span></p>
<p style="color: #011480;">2. <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/secure-and-manage-borders">Secure and manage our borders</a><span style="color: #000000;">;</span></p>
<p style="color: #011480;">3. <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/administer-immigration-laws">Enforce and administer our immigration laws</a><span style="color: #000000;">;</span></p>
<p style="color: #011480;">4. <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/safeguard-and-secure-cyberspace">Safeguard and secure cyberspace</a><span style="color: #000000;">;</span></p>
<p style="color: #011480;">5. <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/building-resilient-nation">Ensure resilience to disasters</a><span style="color: #000000;">;</span></p>
<p>While all sorts of arguments are being made about how secure or insecure our borders truly are, the irrefutable metric about border security has nothing to do with the arrest statistics offered by the administration (which are, at best, highly suspect), but can be found in the fact that our nation finds itself awash with heroin and cocaine.  In point of fact, police departments and other first responder agencies across the United States are providing their members with the antidote to heroin overdoses.  This is an unprecedented measure.</p>
<p>Neither heroin nor cocaine are produced in the United States.  Therefore, every single gram of these substances that are present in the United States provides graphic and incontrovertible evidence of a failure of border security.</p>
<p>How secure can our nation be when our borders are not secure and unknown millions of foreign nationals freely roam the towns and cities of our nation while their very presence in the United States represents a violation of the essential immigration laws that are America&#8217;s first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals?</p>
<p>If a company made promises such as those articulated in the DHS mission statement, and did as an abysmal job as the DHS does, it would face all sorts of lawsuits and sanctions &#8212; ultimately putting it out of business.  These failures of the DHS are hardly “victimless.”  Every year thousands of people in the United States die because of crimes committed by criminal aliens.  Illegal drugs play a role in most violent crimes committed in the United States &#8212; creating still more carnage.</p>
<p>Terror attacks have killed and injured thousands of innocent victims and we have never been more vulnerable to this threat than we are today.</p>
<p>No one has been made accountable for these failures of the immigration system.  The only people who have lost their jobs were those who were slaughtered because of those attacks.</p>
<p>There is an expression that mocks those who fail to act until a tragedy strikes &#8212; doing too little, too late.  The expression is, “Closing the barn doors after the horses are stolen.”  This administration, aided an abetted by politicians from both sides of the aisle and those local and state politicians who gloat about creating “Sanctuaries” for illegal aliens are in fact, guilty of taking the barn doors off the hinges after the horses were stolen.</p>
<p>Of course, if, God forbid, there is another terror attack carried out on American soil, these supposed leaders may claim the “insanity defense.”  It has been said that insanity is “Doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different outcome.”</p>
<p>On March 9, 2005 I testified before the Subcommittee on Management, Integration and Oversight of the Committee on Homeland Security on the topic: <i><a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg20756/html/CHRG-109hhrg20756.htm">CBP and ICE: Does the Current Organizational Structure Best Serve U.S. Homeland Security Interests? </a></i></p>
<p>In my <a href="http://cis.org/node/544"><span style="color: #011480;">prepared testimony</span></a> I made it clear that in my judgement, the creation of the DHS caused many more problems than it solved.</p>
<p>This is an excerpt from my prepared testimony:</p>
<blockquote><p>The fact that the issue of re-organizing the agencies which bear the responsibility of securing our nation&#8217;s borders is the focus of this hearing encourages me that this subcommittee is intent on making the protection of our borders and the enforcement of the immigration laws the priorities as well they should be. But I would implore you and your colleagues who represent us in both houses of congress to act swiftly and resolutely to secure our nation&#8217;s borders which at present are anything but secure. The clock is ticking and time is on the side of our nation&#8217;s enemies. To quote the first two sentences of the preface of a report entitled, &#8220;9/11 and Terrorist Travel, A Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,&#8221;</p>
<p><i>&#8220;It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and </i><i>carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the </i><i>country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance </i><i>border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border </i><i>security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>The failure of our nation to impose even a modicum of control over who is able to enter our nation, even now, is a clear indication of the inability of the United States to protect its citizens from the potential of another terrorist attack. And it is not only terrorists who threaten our well-being. It has been estimated that 30% of the federal inmate population is comprised of aliens.</p></blockquote>
<p>I concluded my testimony at that hearing by stating:</p>
<blockquote><p>It is my opinion, and the opinion of many of my former colleagues at the former INS, that this management structure is unwieldy and ineffective. The enforcement of the immigration laws is critical and shares little with the other agencies which have been combined with the former INS. The mission of each of these agencies is critical, but also unique. The mission of the former U.S. Customs Service bears little in common with the work and priorities and orientation of the former INS. In fact, prior to the merger, Customs was a division of the Treasury Department and the INS was a division of the Department of Justice. Its primary responsibility was to prevent contraband from entering the United States and to collect tariffs and duties. Customs is responsible for the movement of goods and currency across our nation&#8217;s borders.</p>
<p>The INS was concerned with the movement of people across our nation&#8217;s borders and has been involved with issues that more closely paralleled what the employees of State Department, the Labor Department, and the FBI are involved with. To re-enforce this point, I would point out that while it was relatively rare for INS agents to work with their Customs counterparts it was relatively common for us to work with agents of the other agencies I have just mentioned. The primary similarity between Customs and the INS was the border. Once you remove the border from the equation the differences become obvious and profound.</p>
<p>Since the merger of INS into ICE the new special agents who are now being trained are no longer even receiving Spanish language training. It is estimated that some 80% of the illegal alien population is Spanish speaking. This language training was an integral part of the curriculum for all new enforcement officers at the old INS. You cannot investigate people you cannot communicate with. It is worth noting that most of the Special Agents-in-Charge of the ICE offices came from the U.S. Customs Service further eroding the immigration mission. I have come to think of the current situation as the &#8220;Customization of immigration law enforcement.&#8221; I have been told that few, if any employers of illegal aliens were fined under the auspices of the employer sanctions program in the United States last year. Additionally, the investigation of immigration benefit fraud has been relegated, from what I have been told, to being pursued by very few field agents and computer systems.</p>
<p>We are currently engaged in a war on terror where control of our nation&#8217;s borders is critical to the outcome of this battle where the stakes are so high. In order for the borders to be secured we need to have a coordinated enforcement program that creates a seamless effort from the borders to the interior. This can best be done, in my estimation, by putting the CBP and ICE under one roof. It is also essential that separate chains of command be established for the immigration enforcement program with specific training and funding and accountability. This is the era of the specialist. One size does not fit all. It is critical that our nation gains control of its borders and the entire immigration bureaucracy if we are to protect our nation from illegal immigration. Illegal immigration has a profound impact on more other aspects of this nation than does any other issue. It impacts on everything from education, the environment, health-care and the economy to criminal justice and national security. It is vital, in my view, that this mission be effectively dealt with. The current structure does not provide the framework or leadership to enable this to happen. Morale among the former INS personnel is at an all-time low.  Clearly this situation needs to be remedied. A reorganization such as I outlined would represent a major step in the right direction.</p></blockquote>
<p>On March 10, 2005 I testified before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on the topic: <a href="http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju99785.000/hju99785_0f.htm"><i>Interior Immigration Enforcement Resources.</i></a></p>
<p>Here is how my prepared testimony began:</p>
<blockquote><p>A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls. The task of securing America&#8217;s borders falls to the dedicated men and women of CBP and ICE. These law enforcement officers are often put in harm&#8217;s way as they try to prevent aliens from gaining unauthorized entry into our country. They are not succeeding in this vital mission as evidenced by the millions of illegal aliens who currently live within our nation&#8217;s borders. This is not because of failings for which the employees of ICE or CBP bear the responsibility, but rather because our government has consistently failed to provide them with the resources they need to make certain that this basic job gets done.</p>
<p>The 9/11 Commission ultimately came to recognize the critical nature of immigration law enforcement where the &#8221;War on Terror&#8221; is concerned. In fact, page 49 of the report entitled, <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Monograph.pdf"><span style="color: #386eff;"><b><i>&#8216;</i></b><i>&#8217;9/11 and Terrorist Travel, A Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States&#8221;</i></span></a><span style="color: #386eff;"><b><i> </i></b></span><span style="color: #386eff;"><b><i> </i></b></span>contains a sentence that reads, &#8221;Thus abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>In point of fact, there are precious few members of Congress who are even willing to suggest that America&#8217;s borders be made truly secure or that our immigration laws be effectively enforced even though the 9/11 Commission and its staff of federal agents and attorneys identified failures of border security and the overall lack of integrity to the immigration system as playing a key role in enabling the terrorists to enter the United States and embed themselves in the United States as they went about their deadly preparations.</p>
<p>To this very day, it is all but impossible to find members of Congress willing to talk about the nexus between immigration and terrorism or other threat to national security or public safety.</p>
<p>On Sunday, August 10, 2014 South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham went on Fox News to discuss his concerns about members of ISIS attacking the United States.  The Huffington Post ran a report about Graham&#8217;s televised interview.  The title of the article summed up Graham&#8217;s statements, succinctly: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/10/lindsey-graham-syria_n_5665831.html">Lindsey Graham: If Obama Doesn&#8217;t Go On Offense, Terrorists Are &#8216;Coming Here.&#8217;</a></p>
<p style="color: #011480;"><span style="color: #000000;">Fox News also reported on Graham&#8217;s interview:  <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/10/graham-islamic-state-will-attack-on-us-soil-obama-must-stop-terror-groups-rise/">&#8220;Graham: Islamic State will attack on US soil, Obama must stop terror group’s rise.&#8221;</a></span></p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from the Fox News article:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>However, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat and the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is taking a more hawkish stance, similar to Graham’s.</i></p>
<p><i>“It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront [Islamic State] now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future,” she said Friday after the airstrikes were announced. “Inaction is no longer an option.”</i></p>
<p><i>She and others have said for months that Islamic State is recruiting and training fighters from Europe and the United States who could come home and launch a terror attack.</i></p>
<p><i>Graham also argued that Islamic State’s nearly unchecked rise is the result of Obama failing last year to take action against the group in Syria, even after the FBI and other U.S. intelligence officials warned the White House and Congress of its growing, global threat.</i></p>
<p><i>“Your game plan cannot protect the United States,” Graham said Sunday, addressing Obama.</i></p>
<p><i>Such rhetoric tracks closely to that used in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, lawmakers from both parties voted to give President George W. Bush the authority to take military action against Iraq in the hopes of combating terrorism.</i></p>
<p><i>At the time, many said the United States faced a choice of fighting terrorism on American soil or on foreign soil.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>What is being ignored by the politicians and most news organizations is that the “War on Terror” is not an “either/or” situation.  Terrorists can certainly launch attacks inside the United States whether or not we hammer them with our military forces in the Middle East.</p>
<p>While the emergence of ISIS has justifiably ratcheted up concerns about the Damoclean threat of global terrorism, these concerns have been raised for years and, incredibly, many of the very same politicians have turned the issue of border security into a bargaining chip for a program that would ultimately provide unknown millions of illegal aliens with lawful status and official identity documents even though they know full well that there would be no way to interview those aliens in person &#8212; let alone conduct actual field investigations to determine the truthfulness of the claims made in their applications.</p>
<p style="color: #386eff;"><span style="color: #000000;">On December 1, 2013 the Huffington Post ran a worrying report:  <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/01/dianne-feinstein-america-less-safe_n_4367906.html">&#8220;America Is &#8216;Less Safe&#8217; Than 2 Years Ago, Intelligence Committee Chairs Say.&#8221;</a></span></p>
<p>The report focused on statements made by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate&#8217;s Intelligence Committee, when she was interviewed for CNN&#8217;s program, “State of the Union.”</p>
<p>Here is how the report began:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Interviewed on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she believed that there are now more terrorists with the technological means to carry out a bombing in the U.S.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Here is an additional important excerpt from the Huffington Post article:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;I think terror is up worldwide,&#8221; said Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. &#8220;There are new bombs, very big bombs, trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb-maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there.&#8221;</i></p>
<p><i>Feinstein added that there was &#8220;a real displaced aggression in this very fundamentalist jihadist Islamic community, and that is that the West is responsible for everything that goes wrong and that the only thing that&#8217;s going to solve this is Islamic Sharia law.&#8221;</i></p></blockquote>
<p>On the same day, December 1, 2013 Newsmax posted the report that provided an even more dire warning: <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/feinstein-rogers-terror-threat/2013/12/01/id/539316?ns_mail_uid=4092516&amp;ns_mail_job=1548232_12012013&amp;promo_code=15C7C-1">&#8220;Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Rogers: Terror Threat Greater Than Before Sept 11&#8243;</a></p>
<p>This report began with this unambiguous assessment:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The U.S. is in greater danger of a terrorist attack than it was prior to September 11 and has less ability to prevent such aggression by Islamist radicals, key congressional intelligence leaders said Sunday.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>This report ended with the following statement:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Feinstein is pushing legislation to protect NSA practices but require more congressional reporting.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The disconnect is nothing short of astonishing.  Feinstein is willing to accept a loss of privacy in the name of national security while she blithely ignores anything that relates to the 9/11 Commission, its findings or its recommendations.  Having mentioned the 9/11 Commission, the first paragraph of the preface of the &#8220;<span style="color: #386eff;"><a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Monograph.pdf">The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel</a>&#8220;</span><span style="color: #011b44;"><b><i> </i></b></span>begins with the following paragraph:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United </i><i>States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were </i><i>efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border </i><i>security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers </i><i>demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the </i><i>United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security </i><i>policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made </i><i>one.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist travel went on to detail numerous examples of instances where terrorists not only made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud to enter the United States but to also embed themselves in the United States. Page 47 of this report noted:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title “Immigration Benefits:”</p>
<blockquote><p>“<i>Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.</i>”</p></blockquote>
<p style="color: #386eff;"><span style="color: #000000;">On July 20, 2013 the Washington Times published a truly disturbing report:  <i><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/30/homeland-security-loses-track-of-1-million-foreign/print/">&#8220;Homeland Security loses track of 1 million foreigners; report could hurt immigration deal.&#8221;</a></i></span></p>
<p>Here is how this important report begins:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won&#8217;t meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system. </i><i>The findings were revealed as Congress debates an immigration bill, and the Government Accountability Office&#8217;s report could throw up another hurdle because lawmakers in the House and Senate have said that any final deal must include a workable system to track entries and exits and cut down on so-called visa overstays.</i></p>
<p><i>The government does track arrivals, but is years overdue in setting up a system to track departures — a goal set in a 1996 immigration law and reaffirmed in 2004, but which has eluded Republican and Democratic administrations.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>It is foolish &#8212; indeed extremely perilous &#8212; to think that terrorists would not want to strike at the heart of America today to demoralize our nation.</p>
<p>We have numerous examples of terror attacks that had been carried out, or were attempted to be carried out in the United States.</p>
<p>But then you need to remember that Graham was one of the “Gang of Eight” that concocted Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  On Feb. 18, 2013 Accuracy In Media (AIM) published my paper:  <span style="color: #386eff;"><a href="http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-gang-of-eight-and-immigration-reform-bordering-on-a-national-security-nightmare/">The “Gang of Eight” and Immigration Reform: “Bordering on a National Security Nightmare.”</a></span></p>
<p>From the day that the DHS was created concerns about the ability of this huge agency to truly enhance national security was questioned by the employees of the various component agencies.  Many of my former colleagues at the INS who suddenly found themselves to be part of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) became concerned that by splitting up the immigration mission among three agencies and positioning many managers from what became known as “legacy customs” in charge of the enforcement of the immigration laws would compromise the ability of this cobbled-together entity of ICE to properly enforce the immigration laws.</p>
<p>Additionally, while the former INS had its share of problems, putting the Border Patrol and inspectors assigned to ports of entry into the newly created agency known as CBP (Customs and Border Protection) would only exacerbate the challenges to mounting a coordinated effort to secure our nation&#8217;s borders and effectively enforcing our immigration laws.  There were additional concerns that moving the adjudications officers who were charged with adjudicating applications for immigration benefits, such as conferring refugee status and resident alien status as well as United States citizenship upon lawful immigrants, would add to the lack of coordination that is vital to making certain that there is meaningful integrity to the immigration mission</p>
<p>It is unlikely that DHS was created to truly cure the ills of the former INS, but if it was, then you could compare the creation of this Frankenstein agency with the statement, “The surgery was a success but the patient died.”</p>
<p>I have testified before more than a dozen congressional hearings and on several occasions I was called upon to provide insight about my concerns about how the creation of the DHS migh impact effective enforcement and administration of our immigration laws.</p>
<p>In the days, weeks and months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 a veritable parade of political “leaders” seeking that all-important photo-op and print in the newspapers, stood before the forest of microphones and television cameras and thumped their chests and the podiums demanding to know, “Why no one had connected the dots?”</p>
<p>Of course, the vulnerabilities created by failures of the immigration system were well known to many politicians for years prior to the attacks of 9/11.</p>
<p>On May 20, 1997, more than four years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I participated in my first Congressional hearing. That hearing was conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims and was entitled: <i>&#8220;</i><a href="http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju44195.000/hju44195_0f.htm"><i>Visa Fraud and Immigration Benefits Application Fraud.&#8221;</i></a></p>
<p>This important hearing was predicated on two terrorist attacks that were carried out more than four years earlier, in 1993 by aliens from the Middle East who, as was determined, gamed the visa process and/or the immigration benefits program.</p>
<p>In January 1993 a Pakistani national by the name of Mir Kansi stood outside CIA Headquarters with an AK-47 and opened fire on the vehicles of CIA officials reporting for work on that cold January morning in Virginia. When the smoke dissipated, two CIA officer lay dead and three others were seriously wounded. Kansi fled the United States and was ultimately brought back to stand trial.  He was found guilty and executed for his crimes. He had also been granted political asylum and had been subsequently found to have lied on his application, thereby committing a felony: fraud. Had the fraud been detected and had he been deported from the United States, those who were killed and wounded would not have been harmed.</p>
<p>Just one month later, on February 26, 1993 a bomb-laden truck was parked in the garage under the World Trade Center complex and detonated. The blast nearly brought one of the 110 story towers down sideways. As a result of the explosion, 6 innocent people were killed, hundreds were injured and an estimated one half billion dollars in damages were inflicted on that iconic complex of buildings located just blocks from Wall Street. That attack was also carried out by alien terrorists who managed to not only game the visa process in order to enter the United States, but the immigration benefits program that enabled them to remain in the United States and embed themselves as they went about their preparations to carry out that attack.</p>
<p>Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 there have been numerous congressional hearings that focused on how the terrorists were able to enter the United States and carry out their attacks.  In fact, there have been other terror attacks and attempted attacks.  Many experts from many fields have consistently warned about the existential threats America and Americans face today.  Yet, for the most part, they are ignored by the news media and ignored by our “leaders.”</p>
<p>I am only one of many witnesses who have done everything possible to get the “Fools on the Hill,” as I refer to all too many of our supposed political representatives in Washington, to listen.</p>
<p>It has been said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Where terrorism is concerned, in point of fact, nn ounce of prevention is worth many tons of cure.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Get Ready for Denials</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/walter-williams/get-ready-for-denials/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=get-ready-for-denials</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2014 04:10:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[When terrorists finally exploit our open borders, how will progressives save face? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Border-Fence.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238489" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Border-Fence-450x327.jpg" alt="Border-Fence" width="271" height="197" /></a>Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera accused Matt Drudge&#8217;s website of &#8220;the worst kind of jingoistic rhetoric ever&#8221; for carrying news stories about the dangers of illegal immigration. He said Drudge &#8220;is doing his best to stir up a civil war. I mean, shame on Matt Drudge.&#8221; Republican Rep. Todd Rokita and his Indiana delegation have been criticized for suggesting the possibility that Latin American children pouring across our southern border are carrying deadly diseases. Some of them have already been discovered to be carrying lice and suffering from disease. We&#8217;ve yet to find out what kind of communicable diseases they could spread to American children when schools across the country are forced to admit them.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many people approach our recent southern border problem as a &#8220;humanitarian crisis&#8221; and hint that congressmen who want to make securing our border our No. 1 priority are, as President Barack Obama says, &#8220;mean.&#8221; Others who argue for border security run the risk of being dismissed as racists. The Democrats are hoping that painting the Republicans as mean racists will help them with the Latino vote in November.</p>
<p>Securing our border is not only an immigration issue but, more importantly, a national security issue. International terrorists know that our southern border is insecure. They can simply fly to a Latin American country and then sneak across the border with deadly germ or chemical warfare weapons and dirty bombs, which could be planted anywhere.</p>
<p>According to Breitbart, &#8220;a leaked intelligence analysis from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reveals the exact numbers of illegal immigrants entering and attempting to enter the U.S. from more than 75 different countries.&#8221; It reports that 28 &#8220;individuals from Pakistan were caught attempting to sneak into the U.S. this year alone, with another 211 individuals either turning themselves in or being caught at official ports of entry.&#8221; Texas Gov. Rick Perry says that the number of apprehended illegal aliens who come from countries with &#8220;substantial terrorist ties&#8221; is at a record high, countries such as Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>On top of this, individuals from nations currently suffering from the world&#8217;s largest Ebola outbreak have been caught attempting to sneak into the U.S.</p>
<p>Deroy Murdock&#8217;s article titled &#8220;The Southern Border: Our Welcome Mat for Terrorists,&#8221; for National Review Online (April 25, 2013), reports that &#8220;Somalia&#8217;s Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane told authorities in 2011 that he earned up to $75,000 per day smuggling East Africans into America. His clients included three al-Shabaab terrorists. As the House report states: &#8216;Dhakane cautioned that each of these individuals is ready to die for their cause and would fight against the United States if the jihad moved from overseas to the U.S. mainland.&#8217;&#8221; Many Syrians and Iranians have been caught making illegal entry. Both Syria and Iran are supporters of Hezbollah, have chemical weapons and materials for dirty bombs, and hate &#8220;the Great Satan.&#8221;</p>
<p>Murdock makes reference to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency study titled &#8220;A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border.&#8221; It explained that between September 2001 and September 2012, there were 59 homegrown violent jihadi plots within the United States. The study said that the more violent threat to Americans is the ability of Islamist terrorist organizations, resulting from their growing presence in the Western Hemisphere, to exploit our porous southwestern border and enter the United States undetected.</p>
<p>Here are some questions that should be of concern to every American: Can the U.S. Customs and Border Protection assure Americans that it has arrested every terrorist attempting to make illegal entry to our country? Can it assure us that there are no terrorist cells operating in our country and awaiting word from our enemies to attack us? There&#8217;s another question that&#8217;s just as important: If there is a terrorist attack through our southern border, will Americans allow President Obama, congressional Democrats, the news media and progressives and liberals to deny that their weak border security policy was responsible?</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Vision of an Independent Kurdistan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/vision-of-an-independent-kurdistan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=vision-of-an-independent-kurdistan</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2014 04:10:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The crucial significance of Netanyahu’s call for an independent Kurdish state.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/kurd.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237243" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/kurd.jpg" alt="kurd" width="293" height="223" /></a>In an address delivered at Tel Aviv University on Sunday, June 29, 2014, Israel’s Prime Minister called for an “Independent Kurdish State” in northern Iraq. Citing the collapse of Iraq amid the ISIS insurgency and sectarian violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the de-facto independence of Iraqi Kurds. Netanyahu has also called for support of the “<a href="http://rt.com/news/169252-netanyahu-kurds-independence-iraq/">Kurdish aspiration for independence</a>.” Netanyahu’s support for Kurdish independence is not only strategic, it is emotional as well. Jews and Zionists identify with the Kurdish quest for self-determination of a scattered people that have been discriminated against and abandoned by the international community.</p>
<p>The open recognition of Kurdish rights to self-determination by a major international figure such as PM Netanyahu has finally shone a light on the 40 million Kurdish people without a state of their own. The Arabs have 22 states already, and the international community including the Obama administration, are clamoring for a Palestinian State. This would add another rather unstable state to the existing Arab states. It is therefore a moral imperative to recognize the right of the Kurdish people to an independent state of their own.</p>
<p>Kurds have unsuccessfully sought freedom and self-determination since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The legal basis of their modern-day independence efforts was the Treaty of Sèvres signed on August 10, 1920. It was annulled in the course of the “Turkish War of Independence” and the parties signed and ratified the superseding Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which was silent regarding Kurdish rights due to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s tactics (founder of Turkey), where he presented himself as the representative of Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood of the newly created republic, and removed all reference to the Kurds.</p>
<p>Turkey has been the major obstacle to Kurdish independence. In recent years however, as the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara found itself more isolated in the region, the vision of a friendly and perhaps independent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil (Northern Iraq) has been seen more positively in Ankara and Istanbul. A July 14, 2014 visit to Ankara by KRG President Massoud Barzani was widely speculated to be Barzani’s search for Turkish endorsement for an independent Kurdish state.</p>
<p>Turkey is in no rush to endorse an independent Kurdish state. The upcoming presidential elections in Turkey make it necessary for Erdogan to show friendliness toward the Kurds. Yet, as a foreign policy issue, Turkey is in line with President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who oppose an independent Kurdish state. Not long ago, Turkey, Iran and Syria were in an alliance to forestall any manifestation of Kurdish self-determination.</p>
<p>Sherkoh Abbas is President of Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria (KURDNAS) and the organizer of an all-Kurdish conference in Germany in late August, 2014. He shared his vision of a future Kurdish independent state with this reporter.</p>
<p>“The Kurds merit an independent Kurdistan based on the treaty of Sèvres. Kurds arrived in the region now inhabited by Arabs, Persians and Turks (Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey) more than 4,000 years ago, and have continuously lived in these areas. The Kurds have been moderate, tolerant, pro-western, democratic, and protective of minorities. In fact, the Kurdish controlled areas in Iraq and Syria have recently become a haven for Christians and other minorities seeking refuge from Sunni Islamist radical groups such as the Islamic State (SI). Why then can there be 22 Arab states, one Turkish state, one Persian state, one Jewish state, but no Kurdish state? Why is it that 40 million Kurds do not enjoy the same rights of self-determination as the Arabs, Persians and Turks under the UN Charter that provides for ‘universal recognition of the inalienable right of self-determination?’</p>
<p>U.S. and Western nations support for an independent Kurdistan comprised of northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) and northern Syria (Syrian Kurdistan) would accomplish the following: It would expand the area currently under control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) where political and social stability exists, economic development is in full swing, and where security and peace provide a refuge for minorities. It would also serve as a beacon of democracy for the region and prevent radical Islamist groups such ISIS /Al-Qaeda from controlling the resource rich (oil included) Kurdish region of Syria and Iraq. Moreover, it will deny them a base to spread terror in the region and worldwide. The independent Kurdish state would become an economic oasis, and simultaneously serve as a barrier against the threat of Sunni (Islamic State)/Shiite (Iran) radicals threatening U.S. interests and its allies.</p>
<p>We, at the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria (KURDNAS) and our allies, including the Kurdish National Council (KNC) have a considerable influence among the Kurds of Syria. Our people in Syria prefer an independent Kurdistan comprised of Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan. At a minimum, our people seek the Kurdistan region of Syria to be free and confederated with Iraqi Kurdistan.</p>
<p>The current opposition groups in Syria, including the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Coalition do not serve the interests of Syrian people and are instrumental in creating divisions and conflicts, which are aiding radicals groups such as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham changed to Islamic State or (IS) recently) and al-Nusra. Kurds reject an alliance with the opposition groups for just such reasons, and because they are no different than the Assad regime with regards to Kurdish rights. Following decades of Arabization by the Assad regime, which spawned a culture of hate and violence, that denied human and national rights to Kurds and other minorities, it would be farfetched to expect reform from the embattled Assad regime. Hence, the Kurdish need for independence. The KRG in Iraq is a success story unlike the 22 Arab states which are mostly failed states that have achieved little in terms of human and religious rights, women and minority rights and democracy.</p>
<p>While KURDNAS and KNC accept all Kurdish representation, they will not accept the affiliation of PKK and associated groups such as YPG and PYD that can’t be considered Kurdish because they are working for the interests of neighboring regimes and against the interests of Kurdish leaders and organizations.</p>
<p>We recognize that in our region, military power alone can guarantee a nation’s survival. The Syrian Kurdistan region has the capacity to establish a force of 35,000-40,000 Kurdish National Guard or “Peshmerga,”which would providesecurity from external forces and would be under the command of the civilian Kurdish authorities.</p>
<p>As a final comment, I would like to stress the importance of a combined polity of Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan that could serve as a free and democratic Pro-western barrier to the hegemonic ambitions of the Iranian regime and its allies, and similarly prevent the spread of the Caliphate-seekers of the Islamic State.”</p>
<p>The international community and certainly the U.S. should echo Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for an independent Kurdish state. If we believe in what we preach about democracy, human rights, religious freedom, tolerance and shared values, then an independent Kurdish state fulfills our vision. Conversely, the failed unitary states of Syria and Iraq lack all of them. An independent Kurdish state is in the interest of the U.S. and the West. It is also a moral imperative that an historic wrong has been righted.</p>
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		<title>Border Security and the Immigration Colander</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/border-security-and-the-immigration-colander/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=border-security-and-the-immigration-colander</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2014 04:56:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Cutler]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235702</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the breakdown of the Southwest border is only the tip of the iceberg. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/r-ILLEGAL-IMMIGRATION-large570.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235703" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/r-ILLEGAL-IMMIGRATION-large570.jpg" alt="r-ILLEGAL-IMMIGRATION-large570" width="289" height="204" /></a></p>
<p>When you consider how many ways an alien may enter the United States it is absurd to focus all attention on just the Southwest Border of the United States that involves just four of America&#8217;s 50 states.</p>
<p>In point of fact, it has been estimated that 40% of the illegal aliens who are present in the United States did not run our border and evade the inspections process that is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens whose presence would be harmful to America or Americans but entered the United States through ports of entry and went on, in various ways, to violate the terms of their admission into the United States.</p>
<p>Furthermore, some illegal aliens gain entry into the United States by stowing away on ships, illegal disembark from ships on which they work and are referred to as “ship-jumpers” or enter without inspection from Canada.</p>
<p>Yet the immigration debate has disingenuously focused nearly exclusively, on the need to secure America&#8217;s Southwest Border that is <i>supposed</i> to separate the United States from Mexico.</p>
<p>Of course, given the ongoing crisis involving tens of thousands of unaccompanied minor illegal aliens, primarily from Central America, who are showing up along the Southwest Border of the United States having illegally entered the United States, it is clear that this border <i>must </i>be made secure.  However, it is foolhardy to not pay attention to all of the other entry points and methods of entry employed by illegal aliens.  It is no less foolish to ignore the other failings of the immigration system that enable criminals and terrorists to game the process by which visas are issued and immigration benefits are conferred upon aliens.</p>
<p>The easiest way to visualize the immigration system is to consider the configuration of a colander.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colander">Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a colander</a> thusly:</p>
<blockquote><p><b>col·an·der </b><i>noun</i> \ˈkä-lən-dər, ˈkə-\</p>
<p>: a bowl that has many small holes and that is used for washing or draining food</p></blockquote>
<p>Consider that each of the holes in the colander is comparable to a hole in the immigration system.  Politicians who attempt to convince us that all that is necessary as a pre-requisite for implementing Comprehensive Immigration Reform is to secure the US/Mexican border are, in essence, claiming that if you plug one hole in the bottom of a colander it could then be used as a bucket to carry water.</p>
<p>How preposterous is that?</p>
<p>If you want to use a colander as a bucket to carry water, all of the holes need to be plugged.</p>
<p>No less than national security and public safety hang in the balance.</p>
<p>Imagine that from time to time that colander is not used to carry water but a deadly liquid, that must not be released.  This is not unlike the fact that among the aliens seeking to enter the United States in violation of our laws, are terrorists and pernicious criminals with deadly intentions.</p>
<p>Yet the politicians are so hell-bent on passing Comprehensive Immigration Reform that they willfully ignore the other failures of the immigration system upon which national security depends.</p>
<p>Think back to the politicians who, in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, demanded to know “Why no one connected the dots?”  Think back to the statements frequently made that the terrorists need to get it right only once while our government needs to get it right 100% of the time.</p>
<p>Each hole in the colander represents a hole in the system which must get it right 100% of the time.</p>
<p>The concept of getting it right at all times was, and continues to be used, as justification for the continual erosion of our expectations of privacy and freedom.</p>
<p>This concept is used as justification for the ever more invasive search we are forced to undergo before boarding airliners.  Indeed, we generally accept these invasive searches because of our concerns about the potential that hijackers could once again take control of an airliner and use it as a de facto cruise missile.</p>
<p>However, there are many ways that terrorists can launch attacks inside the United States that don&#8217;t involve airliners, as we saw on May 1, 2010 when Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had immigrated to the United States from Pakistan and naturalized the year before he attempted to set off a car bomb, parked in highly congested “Crossroads of the World,” Times Square.</p>
<p>At the time of his arrest two days after the attempted attack, Shahzad was arrested as he sat on an an Emirates Airline flight waiting to take off for Dubai.  Reportedly more than a dozen of his accomplices were arrested in Pakistan.  All were reportedly acting under the direction of the Taliban.</p>
<p>On April 15, 2013 the Tsarnaev brothers carried out a deadly attack on the Boston Marathon.  The Tsarnaev family had been granted political asylum in the United States when they claimed “credible fear” that they could not safely return to their native Russia &#8212; that they would face persecution or worse.  No sooner had their applications for asylum been approved than they voluntarily returned to Russia.  It would certainly appear that they committed fraud in their applications.</p>
<p>On May 2, 2013 I was interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News to discuss the immigration aspects of this case. Fox News posted a video of the interview on its website with the title: <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/05/02/immigration-expert-system-much-worse-shape-people-think">&#8220;Immigration Expert: The System Failed in Boston and Keeps on Failing.&#8221;</a></p>
<p>Our government should be as determined to keep terrorists and transnational criminals out of the United States as it is determined to prevent terrorists from gaining access to airliners.</p>
<p>Yet our government refuses to do what is necessary to prevent the entry of international terrorists and transnational criminals into the United States.  As a consequence we live among millions of illegal aliens who evaded the inspections process conducted at ports of entry by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Inspectors, that is supposed to keep dangerous foreign nationals out of the United States.</p>
<p>Consider the first paragraph found in the preface of the <a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_terrtrav_monograph.pdf"><span style="color: #092770;">The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.&#8221;</i></p></blockquote>
<p>If you doubt that our borders lack integrity, you may certainly consider the situation unfolding on the Southwest Border that has, of late, garnered such focused press coverage.  You may also consider that the United States is currently suffering from such a massive epidemic of heroin overdoses that police departments across the United States have taken to the unprecedented strategy of providing their officers with the antidote to heroin overdoses.</p>
<p>Heroin and cocaine are produced outside the United States.  Every gram of heroin and every gram of cocaine present in the United States represent incontrovertible evidence of a failure of border security.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that the proceeds from the sale of heroin and cocaine enrich the coffers of transnational criminal organizations and terrorist organizations, further endangering America and Americans.  It is worth noting that there is a direct nexus between drug use and crime- indeed, it is believed that the majority of crime, especially violent crime is connected to narcotics trafficking and the use of illegal drugs.</p>
<p>On July 4, 2014 NewsMax posted an article, <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/texas-border-immigration-surge/2014/07/04/id/580857/?ns_mail_uid=4092516&amp;ns_mail_job=1576071_07042014&amp;promo_code=kz5zmk6d"><span style="color: #011480;">&#8220;Rep. Michael McCaul: Military Bases Turning Into Refugee Camps&#8221;</span></a> that began with the following paragraph:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Texas lawmakers have demanded that President Barack Obama finally secure the border, saying military bases are being overwhelmed as they house thousands of illegal immigrant children pouring into the United States every month.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The article further noted:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>During a Homeland Security Committee field hearing in McAllen, Texas, attended by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, McCaul said that government statistics show 70 percent of the alien children risk life and limb to get into the United States illegally because they believe they will be allowed to stay.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>&#8220;The border between the U.S. and Mexico is less secure than at any point in the recent past,&#8221; Perry told the field hearing, according to the Times. &#8220;Secure this border, Mr. president. Finally, address this issue and secure this border.&#8221;</p>
<p>Finally it is worthwhile considering this quote attributed to Rep. Bob Goodlatte the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said Border Patrol agents had told GOP and Democratic lawmakers during their field trip that &#8220;the best way to stop this crisis is through deterrence,&#8221; The Washington Times reported.  &#8220;They were very clear that deterrence must be the focus and there must be an end to the so-called catch-and-release policy.&#8221;</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Chairman Goodlatte is absolutely correct &#8212; effective deterrence is undoubtedly the only effective solution to the immigration crisis confronting America and Americans today.</p>
<p>However, thus far, precious few members of Congress are willing to go beyond the concept of securing the Southwest border to include plugging the other gaping holes in the immigration system that go well beyond the U.S./Mexican border.</p>
<p>“The Social Contract,” a quarterly journal, published my article, <a href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_23_4/tsc_23_4_cutler.shtml"><span style="color: #386eff;">&#8220;Political Asylum: Where Compassion and National Security Intersect”</span></a> in its Summer, 2013 edition, on how fraud in the political asylum program currently enables our enemies to see in America&#8217;s compassion, weakness.</p>
<p style="color: #386eff;"><span style="color: #000000;">On November 20, 2013, ABC News published this disconcerting article <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131">&#8220;Exclusive: US May Have Let &#8216;Dozens&#8217; of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees.&#8221;</a></span></p>
<p>On December 1, 2013 the Huffington Post ran a worrying report: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/01/dianne-feinstein-america-less-safe_n_4367906.html">&#8220;America Is &#8216;Less Safe&#8217; Than 2 Years Ago, Intelligence Committee Chairs Say&#8221;</a></p>
<p>The report focused on statements made by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate&#8217;s Intelligence Committee, when she was interviewed for CNN&#8217;s program, “State of the Union.”</p>
<p>Here is how the report began:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Interviewed on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union,&#8221; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she believed that there are now more terrorists with the technological means to carry out a bombing in the U.S.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Here is an additional important excerpt from the Huffington Post article:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;I think terror is up worldwide,&#8221; said Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. &#8220;There are new bombs, very big bombs, trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb-maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there.&#8221;</i></p>
<p><i>Feinstein added that there was &#8220;a real displaced aggression in this very fundamentalist jihadist Islamic community, and that is that the West is responsible for everything that goes wrong and that the only thing that&#8217;s going to solve this is Islamic Sharia law.&#8221;</i></p></blockquote>
<p>On the same day, December 1, 2013 Newsmax posted the report that provided an even more dire warning: <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/feinstein-rogers-terror-threat/2013/12/01/id/539316?ns_mail_uid=4092516&amp;ns_mail_job=1548232_12012013&amp;promo_code=15c7c-1">&#8220;Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Rogers: Terror Threat Greater Than Before Sept 11&#8243;</a></p>
<p>This report began with this unambiguous assessment:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The U.S. is in greater danger of a terrorist attack than it was prior to September 11 and has less ability to prevent such aggression by Islamist radicals, key congressional intelligence leaders said Sunday.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>The report ended with the following statement:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Feinstein is pushing legislation to protect NSA practices but require more congressional reporting.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Feinstein is willing to accept a loss of privacy in the name of national security while she blithely ignores anything that relates to the 9/11 Commission, its findings or its recommendations.  She has many like-minded colleagues on both sides of the political aisle and in both the Senate and House of Representatives.</p>
<p>These politicians need to hear from their constituents, especially as election day approaches.</p>
<p>Democracy is not a spectator sport.</p>
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		<title>The Thinning of the Thin Green Line</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/the-thinning-of-the-thin-green-line/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-thinning-of-the-thin-green-line</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2014 04:40:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Cutler]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Border Patrol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234903</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America's first line of defense against foreign threats is wearing thin. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/02-border-bikes-full.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234905" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/02-border-bikes-full-450x300.jpg" alt="Border IOU" width="270" height="180" /></a>The term “The thin blue line” is associated with law enforcement, especially the police. The phrase is based on the usual color of the police uniform and the fact that the relatively small numbers of sworn police officers is all that stands between the citizenry of towns, cities and states and criminals.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The uniforms that the members of the United States Border Patrol wear is green. Sometimes the Border Patrol has been referred to as the “Green Machine.” The mission of the United States Border Patrol is to secure America&#8217;s borders between ports of entry against the illegal entry of aliens whose presence would be harmful or dangerous to America and Americans. The idea is to make certain that aliens seeking entry into the United States are subjected to the inspections process conducted by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) Inspectors.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The guiding principle behind the inspections process is to make certain that aliens who should be excluded from the United States are prevented from entering the United States. <span style="color: #000000;">One of the sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182"><span style="color: #386eff;">Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182</span></a></span><span style="color: #0d2f87;">, </span><span style="color: #000000;">enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded </span>and includes aliens who suffer dangerous contagious diseases, severe mental illness and are violent, aliens who are convicted felons, human and/or narcotics traffickers, human rights violators, war criminals, spies, terrorists and aliens who would likely become public charges or work illegally therefore displacing American workers or driving down the wages and/or working conditions of American workers.</p>
<p>The law, incidentally, is utterly and totally blind as to race, religion and ethnicity.</p>
<p>While the advocates for open borders describe aliens who evade the inspections process as being “Undocumented,” in point of fact, these aliens are <i>Un-Inspected</i>. In fact, my colleagues and I at the former INS referred to the method of entry of aliens who evaded the vital inspections process as being EWI (<b>E</b>ntry <b>W</b>ithout <b>I</b>nspection).</p>
<p>This is hardly inconsequential. To draw a comparison- would you, or any reasonable person be willing to board an airliner if you observed several passengers sneak past the TSA inspectors and get on the airliner you were about to board? I am very confident you would not.</p>
<p>Why then are we being forced, by our own government, to live among unknown millions of foreign nationals (aliens) whose true identities- including their country of citizenship, possible criminal histories and possible affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations or medical or mental well-being is unknown and unknowable?</p>
<p>You should also consider that an alien who is “undocumented” has no official and reliable identity document to provide clear evidence about his (her) true identity. It may, in fact, be that this individual has such an identity document but has decided to conceal or destroy it, knowing that his name is on terror watch lists or is a wanted fugitive. The term “undocumented” is hardly as innocuous or inconsequential as the immigration anarchists would have us believe.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In addition to preventing the entry of aliens whose presence would be problematic for America and Americans, the Border Patrol is also charged with preventing the entry of contraband.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The valiant men and women of the United States Border Patrol constitutes that “Thin green line” that is all that stands between America and its citizens and international terrorists, transnational criminals and contraband and including narcotics and possibly, God forbid, a weapon of mass destruction.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Today with tens of thousands of illegal aliens charging our southwest border, Border Patrol agents have been taken off of their usual duties relating to securing our already extremely porous borders and assigned to providing concierge service to these illegal aliens, many of whom are reportedly unaccompanied minors.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">I wrote about this outrageous situation in my previous commentary for Front Page Magazine that was published on June 11, 2014, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/obamas-manufactured-crisis-at-the-border/?utm_source=FrontPage+Mag"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;Obama’s Manufactured Crisis at the Border.”</span></a></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The reassignment of these Border Patrol agents endangers national security and public safety as well as public health. It also makes it far more likely that aliens who evade the inspections process will succeed in covertly entering the United States. As more aliens succeed in evading detection and apprehension, more aspiring illegal aliens will become encouraged and emboldened to charge our borders.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The mission of the United States Border Patrol, as noted on the <a href="http://www.cbp.gov/about"><span style="color: #1255cc;">official website of CBP</span></a> (Customs and Border Protection) the parent agency of the Border Patrol, is as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><b><i>MISSION</i></b></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>We are the guardians of our nation&#8217;s borders.<br />
We are America&#8217;s frontline.<br />
We safeguard the American homeland at and beyond our borders.<br />
We protect the American public against terrorists and the instruments of terror.<br />
We steadfastly enforce the laws of the United States while fostering our nation&#8217;s economic security through lawful international trade and travel.<br />
We serve the American public with vigilance, integrity and professionalism.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Considering the critical significance of securing the borders of the United States, the question that has not been raised by our political leaders from either political party, however, is why on earth are Border Patrol agents being used (misused) this way?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">When other countries around the world experience humanitarian crises, members of our armed forces are generally sent to those countries to lend assistance. Why then is the administration not similarly using members of the armed forces including the National Guard to deal with the humanitarian component of this crisis along our Southwest Border, thus freeing up our beleaguered Border Patrol agents?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There is an expression that says, “You can never be too safe!” Considering that our borders (and our immigration laws) is our first line of defense and last line of defense, the corollary of that statement is that our borders can never be made secure enough.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Indeed, our borders are far from secure. While the administration may try to “spin” arrest statistics of the Border Patrol to bolster claims that our borders are secure, the best metric has nothing to do with the numbers of illegal aliens claimed to have been arrested by the Border Patrol. The best metric to determine the true state of U.S. border security can be found in the price and availability of cocaine and heroin, two substances that are not produced in the United States but are smuggled into the United States from foreign countries.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Today our nation is awash in those illegal substances as evidenced by the undeniable fact that police departments across the United States are providing their members as well as other first responders with the antidote to heroin overdoses which are currently at historically high levels. Every gram of these drugs represents a failure of border security.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">How much more contraband will be successfully smuggled into the United States as our Border Patrol agents are diverted from their essential mission of securing our border to change diapers and act as baby sitters and chauffeuring illegal aliens to bus terminals and airports, arguably acting in violation of the laws contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).</p>
<p><span style="color: #232323;">Under the provisions of one of the sections of law contained in INA, <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324"><span style="color: #386eff;">Title 8 USC § 1324 &#8211; Bringing in and harboring certain aliens</span></a></span>, it is a felony to aid, abet, encourage or induce aliens to enter our country illegally or remain in our country illegally. It is also a felony to harbor, shield from detection or transport such illegal aliens.</p>
<p>So-called “Sanctuary Cities” would certainly appear to be in violation of this section of law, but that is an issue for another day and another commentary.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Out of stated concerns about public safety, politicians from a number of cities and states have enacted laws to tighten up on the issuance of carry permits for personally owned weapons and concealed carry permits as well as limiting the number of rounds of ammunition that magazines used in semi-automatic handguns can hold.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The theory offered in conjunction with these laws and regulations is to keep high-capacity magazines out of the hands of those who might engage in acts of violence as we have seen in the horrific images and reports of mass shootings. Of course, this presumes that the mentally unbalanced, criminals and terrorists will carefully count the number of bullets they place in their magazines and not seek to purchase or manufacture large capacity magazines. What is never discussed is that the great majority of crimes, especially violent crimes, have a direct nexus with use of illegal drugs and violent gangs which, coincidentally, receive much of their funding from drug trafficking and related crimes. Terror organizations also derive huge sums of money from the sale of illicit drugs.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Once again, these crimes and activities are the direct result of failures of border security.</p>
<p>On June 11, 2014 FrontPage Magazine posted my article, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michael-cutler/obamas-manufactured-crisis-at-the-border/?utm_source=FrontPage+Mag"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;Obama’s Manufactured Crisis at the Border.”</span></a></p>
<p>In that article I provided this paragraph from the conclusion of my <a href="http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/3-20-13CutlerTestimony.pdf"><span style="color: #000000;">prepared testimony</span></a> for the March 20, 2013 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing <span style="color: #232323;">on the topic of “<a href="http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/building-an-immigration-system-worthy-of-american-values"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Building an Immigration System Worthy of American Values</span></a>.”</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i>Law enforcement is at its best when it creates a climate of deterrence to convince those who might be contemplating violating the law that such an effort is likely to be discovered and that if discovered, adverse consequences will result for the law violators. Current policies and statements by the administration, in my view, encourages aspiring illegal aliens around the world to head for the United States. In effect the starter’s pistol has been fired and for these folks, the finish line to this race is the border of the United States.</i></p></blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Of course when I testified before that hearing more than one year ago, no one could have imagined just how bad things would get along the Southwest border, with reverberations being felt from coast to coast and border to border.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">While local, state and the federal government generally all ramp up enforcement when laws are violated, creating a deterrence against those violations of law, where violations of our borders and our immigration laws are concerned, many of our “leaders” from both political parties trip over themselves to create more incentives for aliens to violate our borders and our immigration laws. They use uncharacteristic creativity to find ways to exacerbate the situation, thereby imperiling the safety and well-being of America and Americans.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This must stop before America suffers yet another catastrophe. The clock is ticking and time, most certainly, is not on our side.</p>
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		<title>John Bolton: &#8216;The Biggest Threat to National Security Is in the White House&#8217;</title>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:55:22 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Amb. John Bolton discusses the threat within at the Freedom Center's Texas Weekend. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: Below are the video and transcript to Ambassador John Bolton&#8217;s address at the Freedom Center&#8217;s 2014 Texas Weekend. The event took place May 2nd-4th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/96452968" height="281" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Daniel Pipes:</strong> Please join me in welcoming John Bolton.</span></p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p><strong>John Bolton:</strong> Thanks, Daniel.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m always delighted to be able to be part of a Freedom Center event.  The work that everybody does is just so important, and becomes more important.  So for all of you who are supporters, believe me, it&#8217;s support that&#8217;s put to very good use.  I can assure you of that.</p>
<p>I wanted to talk for just a little bit tonight about some of the problems that the United States and its friends in the world face.  And I&#8217;m acutely conscious that I&#8217;m the only thing now that stands between you and dinner.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>So I&#8217;ll try and make these remarks as pointed as I can.</p>
<p>It is a very dangerous time for the United States and its friends in the world.  And in large measure, it&#8217;s not because of the individual crises that we see in the world around us.  The biggest threat to our national security is sitting the White House.  And it&#8217;s &#8211;</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>It&#8217;s something that we never could&#8217;ve predicted.  It&#8217;s unquestionably the case in my view that the President&#8217;s the most radical President that we&#8217;ve ever had, and not just on domestic issues.  He has a fundamentally different view of America&#8217;s place in the world than any other President in history, to the point where I think most of us already look back at the Jimmy Carter Administration in the late 1970s as the good old days.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Which tells you something right there.</p>
<p>So before I get into some of the specifics, I want to talk about what it is about this President that makes him different, and the particular reasons that his worldview is so contrary to our national interest.</p>
<p>I think, to start with, it&#8217;s important to understand that the basic concept is he just doesn&#8217;t believe in American exceptionalism.  Now, this is a subject that&#8217;s controversial sometimes even with our friends when we talk about American exceptionalism.  My view it&#8217;s not a statement or a belief in American superiority; it&#8217;s a recognition that our history has been fundamentally different from virtually every other country around the world.</p>
<p>And it wasn&#8217;t the United States or its citizens that first proclaimed American exceptionalism; it was a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who, in &#8220;Democracy in America,&#8221; his insightful analysis of the United States in the first part of the 19th century, said that it may be said of the Americans that they are truly exceptional, in that no other democratic people will repeat their experience.  And it&#8217;s right.  And it has shaped our view of America and America&#8217;s role in the world.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s sometimes controversial.  But the fact is that it&#8217;s been so widely shared among Americans that nobody&#8217;s ever really given it serious thought, until we got Obama.  And the views that he picked up during his time at Columbia and Harvard Law School, and working as a community organizer in Chicago, have made him fundamentally different.</p>
<p>Now, it&#8217;s quite interesting &#8212; in his first trip to Europe as President, a British reporter asked him if he believed in American exceptionalism.  That&#8217;s how apparent it was to the rest of the world that he didn&#8217;t that the reporter actually put the question to him.  And Obama&#8217;s answer, which a number of people have commented on since 2009, is worth reviewing again as we look at the policies he pursues today.  In response to this question, he said &#8212; yes, I believe in American exceptionalism, just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.</p>
<p>Now, let&#8217;s parse this sentence, which is classic Obama.  In the first third, he says &#8212; yeah, I believe in American exceptionalism.  So all those people who say that I don&#8217;t are wrong.  But then, in the second two thirds of the sentence, he takes it back by referring to the British and Greek views.</p>
<p>You know, there are 193 countries in the United Nations.  And he certainly could&#8217;ve gone on &#8212; just as the Papua New Guineans believe in Papua New Guinean exceptionalism &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; just as the Burkina Fasians believe in Burkina Fasian exceptionalism.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>The point&#8217;s clear.  If everybody&#8217;s exceptional, then nobody&#8217;s exceptional.  And that&#8217;s what he really thinks.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s not the first Democratic Party leader to believe that.  I think if you go back to 1988, George H.W. Bush said about Michael Dukakis &#8212; &#8220;my opponent believes that the United States is a nice country out there somewhere on the UN roll call between Albania and Zimbabwe.&#8221;  In other words, just one more country.  That&#8217;s what they think.</p>
<p>And so, in his view, since America&#8217;s not exceptional, since we&#8217;re not different than any other country &#8212; we have our interests, they have their interests &#8212; he looks at American strength as part of the problem in the world &#8212; that we&#8217;re too much &#8212; we&#8217;re too assertive, too dominant, too successful, really, over the years.</p>
<p>And so in the Obama view, because our strength is part of the problem, one way to get to a more peaceful, more stable environment is for the United States to withdraw, to be less assertive, to be less in the world.</p>
<p>Now, I think this is like looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope.  It&#8217;s not American strength that&#8217;s the problem; it&#8217;s American weakness that&#8217;s the problem.  And certainly, Obama is proving that on a daily basis.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s not, though &#8212; although his policies get you to a declining, withdrawing America, it&#8217;s not that he&#8217;s an isolationist, in the sense that we see a rising isolation in some parts of the Republican Party; he&#8217;s a multilateralist.</p>
<p>And he doesn&#8217;t view what happens in the world through a nationalist prism.  He said &#8212; and these are really chilling words, when you think about it &#8212; he said in 2009, in his first speech to the United Nations &#8212; it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009, more than at any point in human history, the interests of nations and peoples are shared.  No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.  No balance of power among nations will hold.</p>
<p>Now, that is a statement that essentially says everything that we&#8217;ve seen in, you know, roughly 100,000 years of human history doesn&#8217;t apply anymore.  Coincidentally, 2009, more than at any point in human history, when Barack Obama becomes President &#8212; which is when history begins for Barack Obama &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; these are core beliefs of his.  And they are reflected in his policy.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve worried for a long time what he meant when he said no world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.  I wondered, what is he talking about there?  What does he really mean?  And the more I looked it, it finally came to me &#8212; he&#8217;s talking about us.  He&#8217;s talking about us.  We&#8217;re one nation elevated over another, that&#8217;s not going to succeed.  So his determination is to make sure that in fact we are not the dominant power in the world.</p>
<p>Now again, this is not the first person to hold this view.  I think it&#8217;s very similar to what Woodrow Wilson believed, and caused us so much trouble.  Wilson said, in his famous Fourteen Points speech &#8212; the interests of all nations are also our own.  He talked about peace without victory in 1918.  And Wilson said &#8212; there must be not a balance of power, but a community of power.  And he wasn&#8217;t even a community organizer.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Not organized rivalries, but an organized common piece based on &#8212; listen to this &#8212; the moral force of the public opinion of the world.</p>
<p>Now, nobody&#8217;s ever told us how to get the public opinion of the world, unless you&#8217;re Woodrow Wilson or Barack Obama and you know it.  I mean, it speaks to you.  This is a very, very precarious and dangerous basis for a President of the United States to make policy.  It is detached from the interest and views of the American people.  Because he&#8217;s listening to the public opinion of the world.</p>
<p>Now, the opposite view on this was expressed very clearly at the time by Theodore Roosevelt, when he was asked &#8212; well, what do you think of this business of making the world safe for democracy?  And Roosevelt, the Republican Roosevelt, said in response &#8212; first, we&#8217;re to make the world safe for ourselves.</p>
<p>And that is the real bedrock, or should be the bedrock, of American foreign policy.  We can&#8217;t shape the rest of the world, but we can shape it adequately to defend ourselves and to defend our interests around the world.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why when I hear within the Republican Party voices that hark back to the isolationism of the 1930s, I get worried.  Because by moving away from the Theodore Roosevelt view, they end up &#8212; although they start with a very different analytical premise &#8212; they end up in the same place as Barack Obama &#8212; that it&#8217;s America that causes the problems, and that if indifference to the world, withdrawing from the world, makes us less provocative, that that&#8217;s what we ought to do.</p>
<p>You know, that leads to a real absence of thinking about American national security.  We already see in the Democratic Party, they don&#8217;t have a national security wing anymore.  There&#8217;s no Scoop Jackson wing, there isn&#8217;t even a Joe Lieberman wing anymore.</p>
<p>And yet, we see within the Republican Party today a view of America&#8217;s place in the world that will fundamentally leave us in the same position as the Obama view, which is a weaker, less outward-looking, declinist America.</p>
<p>This is fundamentally the opposite of Ronald Reagan&#8217;s view of the world &#8212; the view that brought us to a successful conclusion in the Cold War, which rejected multilateralism, which rejected isolationism and which, in the phrase that Reagan used over and over again, was based on peace through strength.  That is, to achieve American objectives without the use of military force.</p>
<p>It is a way that protects America and its friends and allies because of the strength, military, political and economic, of our position.  It dissuades and deters adversaries from trying to take advantage of us.  And it recognizes that you are best able to achieve peace when you are strong &#8212; that it&#8217;s not American strength that&#8217;s provocative; it&#8217;s American weakness that&#8217;s provocative.  And that&#8217;s something that Obama, and some people in the Republican Party today, unfortunately, have never really understood &#8212; that it&#8217;s the first duty of the sovereign, as Adam Smith said, to protect the society against the violence of other societies.</p>
<p>So it&#8217;s a basic chore of government, and it&#8217;s something that really our way of life, our standard of living in the United States, depend on.  Whatever minimal order and stability there is in the world &#8212; and there&#8217;s very little of it &#8212; is because of the United States and its structure of alliances.  If we don&#8217;t fulfill that role, you&#8217;re going to have others attempting to fill the void, or you&#8217;re going to have anarchy.  And it&#8217;s going to be the worse for us here.</p>
<p>Now, many people complain &#8212; and rightfully so &#8212; that other countries benefit from this and don&#8217;t pay their fair share, they don&#8217;t bear their fair share of the burden; that&#8217;s true.  And it&#8217;s something we should try and fix.  But let&#8217;s be clear &#8212; we&#8217;re not doing this for them; we&#8217;re doing it for us.  And there isn&#8217;t anybody else that can cover our back if we&#8217;re not able to do it.</p>
<p>And I&#8217;m afraid that the proof of this is something that we see around us in the world almost everywhere.  And I think that, in fact, I worry that over the next three years, the pace and the scope of the challenges that the United States faces is going to grow.  Because our adversaries and our friends have watched the Obama Administration in its first nearly five years in office.  They fully understand what the President&#8217;s about.  And those who want to take advantage of us understand that the 2016 election may bring something very, very different.  So if you want to move on your agenda contrary to American interests, this is the time to do it.</p>
<p>And you can pick so many places around the world where this is evident.  Let&#8217;s just start with Russia and Ukraine.  You know, this problem has been evident for quite some time.  If you go back to 2006, when he was last president of Russia, Vladimir Putin said &#8212; the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century and a tragedy for the Russian people.  He was saying even then that his objective was to reestablish Russian hegemony within the space of the former Soviet Union.  Not necessarily to take it over again, because I don&#8217;t think he wanted the problems that the newly independent republics had.  But he wanted Russian domination.</p>
<p>And I think the West understood that.  I think that&#8217;s one reason we expanded NATO membership to Eastern and Central Europe.  I think it&#8217;s why we put the Baltic Republics in NATO.  But we failed to follow our own logic.  We left a gap between NATO&#8217;s eastern border and Russia&#8217;s western border &#8212; Ukraine, Georgia, and other countries.</p>
<p>George W. Bush moved to try and fill that gap in April of 2008 &#8212; to bring Georgia and Ukraine on a clearly defined path to NATO membership, to end the ambiguity and to allow those countries to join the West, and to pick up that space for Europe and the United States.  The Europeans, even then fearful of what Russia might do with their oil and gas supplies, rejected the Bush proposal.</p>
<p>And four months later &#8212; this is kind of like a laboratory experiment you don&#8217;t often get in international affairs &#8212; four months later, the Russians invaded Georgia and carved off two provinces of Georgia that they still hold onto.</p>
<p>Now, at the time of that Russian attack, Barack Obama, candidate for President of the United States, was asked what he thought about it.  And his first response &#8212; he later walked away from it, but his first response was to call on both Russia and Georgia to exercise restraint.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>I mean, just think about that for a minute.  He had to &#8212; as I say, he had to reverse that position.  But in the Kremlin, they took very careful note of what his first reaction was.</p>
<p>So, Obama comes into office.  He could be thinking about the strategic implications of what Russia had just done in Georgia.  But instead, he spends his time pressing the famous reset button, giving up bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, where we would&#8217;ve put missile defense assets to protect the United States itself, to protect us in the homeland, against the potential for ballistic missile attack with nuclear warheads from rogue states in the Middle East.  He gave that up.  Because the Russians were afraid of it.</p>
<p>He gave the Russians the New START Arms Control Treaty.  Very ill advised.  He gave concession after concession to the Russians in controversy after controversy.  And as was entirely predictable and in fact predicted by some of us, the Russians did what they did during the Cold War.  They took one concession after another.  They put it in their pocket and said &#8212; what have you got for me next?</p>
<p>So Obama today is utterly unprepared for what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine.  Putin suffered a setback when the Yanukovych government was overthrown.  And he&#8217;s systematically, for the past three months, going about reversing that.  And he&#8217;s accomplishing it.  Even the New York Times today had to admit that the economic sanctions the President&#8217;s put in place have been utterly ineffective in deterring Russian conduct.</p>
<p>And let&#8217;s be clear what Putin has done here.  First, in 2008 &#8212; but even more boldly in the past few months &#8212; he has used military force on the continent of Europe to change international boundaries.  And in response, the West has done nothing.  So that the signal to Putin and all the other former Soviet Republics is basically &#8212; you&#8217;re on your own.</p>
<p>Moreover &#8212; and we have to acknowledge the problem &#8212; the European response, if anything, has been weaker than Obama&#8217;s.  That&#8217;s not an excuse for anybody.  It&#8217;s a cause of a cyclical problem, where Obama can say &#8212; well, you know, the Europeans really aren&#8217;t up for tough sanctions.  And therefore, I don&#8217;t have to do anything.  And the Europeans can say &#8212; well, the Americans aren&#8217;t leading.  So we&#8217;re not going to lead, either.  And this downward cycle simply encourages Putin to continue his agitation, his destabilizing of Ukraine, to achieve the objective he wants, which is regime in Kiev that&#8217;s compliant with his wishes.</p>
<p>But the signal to others, to the Baltic Republics who are NATO members, leaves them in fear.  Because they now worry that Obama, even though they&#8217;re NATO members, won&#8217;t protect them, either.  And I think Putin didn&#8217;t start out this way.  But he sees a chance &#8212; potentially, potentially &#8212; to shatter the NATO alliance, something he never could&#8217;ve dreamed of four or five years ago.</p>
<p>So when you add to the internal problems of the European Union, the possibility of the post-Cold War arrangement in Europe coming unstuck, I think is rising.  And it&#8217;s rising in substantial measure because of the absence of any American leadership.</p>
<p>Now, there&#8217;s no country in the world watching what&#8217;s happening in Ukraine, other than the participants themselves &#8212; nobody watching it more closely than China.  Because China is engaged in its own expansionist effort in the waters off its seacoast.  And this is an issue vastly underreported in the United States, even with the President&#8217;s recent trip to Asia.  It&#8217;s like it just &#8212; it&#8217;s too hard for people in the media to cover.</p>
<p>Certainly, Obama didn&#8217;t give them any reason to cover it while he was in Asia, because he simply repeated the same policies that his administration has pursued for five years.  And they are policies that are failing in the face of an increasingly assertive China.</p>
<p>You know, in the government, and even in American business circles, there&#8217;s a kind of a mantra that China&#8217;s engaged in a peaceful rise, and it&#8217;s going to be a responsible stakeholder in world affairs.  Well, okay.  That&#8217;s possible; a lot of things are possible.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not the most likely scenario by a long shot.  In fact, China&#8217;s modernizing its army, it&#8217;s building up its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities.  It&#8217;s creating a blue-water navy for the first time in 600 years.  It has one of the world&#8217;s &#8212; certainly the most aggressive and one of the most sophisticated programs in cyber warfare.  It has developed anti-satellite weapons to blind our capabilities to surveil China from space.  It has extensive development of what are called anti-access area denial weapon capabilities to push the US Navy back from the Western shores of the Pacific, where we&#8217;ve been dominant since World War II.  And all the while, it is making territorial claims in the East and South China Sea that make what the Russians are doing in Ukraine look timid.</p>
<p>Now, people say that these claims are these little rocks and reefs and islands that are barely above water at low tide, and that&#8217;s true.  But they&#8217;re not the issue.  The issue is whether China can break free of the island chain that prevents it from getting out into the Pacific, and whether they can turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake, taking it from being international waterways to being Chinese water.</p>
<p>What difference does that make?  Well, if you&#8217;re in Japan or South Korea or Taiwan, all of your oil from the Middle East comes through the South China Sea.  So if China makes that a territorial lake, they&#8217;ve got their hands around the throats of the economy of Japan and the other countries, and puts them in an enormous position to affect Southeast Asia, which is obviously &#8212; all of the trade and investment and commerce we have with East and Southeast Asia is at risk.  And this is at a time when the American Navy has the lowest number of warships at sea since 1916.</p>
<p>And you know, Romney tried to raise this during the debate with Obama.  And Obama&#8217;s response was again &#8212; it&#8217;s very revealing.  He didn&#8217;t have an answer; he had snark.  He said &#8212; well, you know, our ships are much more sophisticated than the ships of 1916.  We have submarines, we have aircraft carriers.  So, you know, you&#8217;re just counting numbers.</p>
<p>Well, that would be a good answer if the ships of our adversaries had been built in 1916.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, they&#8217;re not.  They&#8217;re building ships that are just as sophisticated as ours are.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s where the blindness of Obama&#8217;s vision is so important.  He just doesn&#8217;t see how declining American strength affects others &#8212; the Japanese are very worried, the Koreans, the Taiwanese, obviously, most worried of all.  The Indians are now very worried about what this rising Chinese capacity means.  And they see no answers from the United States.  And when they look at Ukraine, and they see actual military territorial aggression, and no American response, you can imagine what conclusion they draw.</p>
<p>But to me, the biggest threats that we face in the near term are the continuing threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction &#8212; nuclear weapons especially.</p>
<p>And here, the Obama Administration has failed completely.  They&#8217;ve failed to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, they&#8217;ve made a deal with Iran that essentially legitimizes Iran&#8217;s uranium enrichment capability.  Iran made superficial, easily reversible concessions on its nuclear program.  And in return, they blew a hole through the international sanctions, which were not slowing down the nuclear weapons program but were imposing a cost on the Iranian economy.</p>
<p>They&#8217;ve done nothing in the White House to stop the North Korean program.  And there&#8217;s ample evidence that Iran and North Korea are cooperating on ballistic missiles for sure, and quite possibly on the nuclear weapons side as well.</p>
<p>This is, again, a huge lesson to our adversaries &#8212; to any would-be nuclear weapon state &#8212; that if you are simply persistent enough, you too can have nuclear weapons.  And the threat that that poses to Israel, to friendly states in the Middle East, is really extraordinary.</p>
<p>You know, Israel is a small country.  Half a dozen nuclear detonations &#8212; there is no more Israel.  That&#8217;s why Ariel Sharon once described it to President Bush as the threat of a nuclear holocaust.  And he was not exaggerating.</p>
<p>The Iranian nuclear weapons program is not Israel&#8217;s problem; it&#8217;s our problem.  Because we&#8217;re the only country ultimately that can stop would-be proliferators from getting the capability.  And yet, we&#8217;re doing nothing, which is why the spotlight is on Israel to take the very hard decision, whether they will, as they have twice before in Israel&#8217;s history, strike a nuclear weapons program in the hands of a hostile state.</p>
<p>Frankly, if I were in Israel, I&#8217;d have done this five years ago.  And I think they&#8217;re wasting time.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>And I think it will be incredibly important for the United States to come to Israel&#8217;s defense if we wake up one morning and find that they are already attacking Iran.  This will be an entirely legitimate exercise of Israel&#8217;s inherent right of self defense.  And the United States ought to say that immediately after we learn that the attack has begun.  We ought to resupply Israel militarily immediately.  And frankly, we ought to do a lot more.  I just don&#8217;t think the Obama Administration will do anything.</p>
<p>And the Iranians understand that.  They don&#8217;t believe the President when he says all options are on the table.  I don&#8217;t even think the President believes the President &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; when he says that.</p>
<p>And the Iranian nuclear threat is not simply a regional threat in the Middle East.  It forms the basis of the risk of a perfect storm with terrorists &#8212; that Iran would supply nuclear weapons to al-Qaeda or others that they don&#8217;t need a ballistic missile to deliver, that they can put in a boxcar, put in a ship, sail it into any harbor in this country or anywhere in the world and detonate it.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s where, really, the threat of international terrorism remains so acute.  Now, we&#8217;ve had developments just this week on one of the central issues of the war on terrorism &#8212; the attack on Benghazi on September the 11th, 2012, with the revelation of what we knew all along &#8212; that the White House had no intention of being candid about what happened in that attack.  But also, today, as I think most of you probably heard, Speaker Boehner has finally announced the formation of a select committee in the House which will unify &#8211;</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>&#8211; the investigative efforts from six committees, six committees, into one.</p>
<p>And as I said to a few of you before dinner, I was at the Justice Department when we had to face in the Reagan Administration the Iran Contra select committee.  And let me tell you, it is a powerful, powerful tool in the congressional arsenal.  And the fact that we&#8217;re finally going to have it, I think, could make a real difference.</p>
<p>But the fundamental point on the ground in the region remains that the threat of international terrorism is just as acute today as it was before 9/11.  The administration&#8217;s own Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said as much two months ago in testimony before Congress.  It&#8217;s a different structure for al-Qaeda than it was before the first 9/11.  But if anything, it&#8217;s a graver threat because it&#8217;s metastasized into countries all over the region.  And other terrorists have come along.  We&#8217;ve seen what they&#8217;ve been able to do in Iraq, what they&#8217;re doing today in Syria.</p>
<p>And so the whole approach of the administration, which is to say &#8212; well, we&#8217;ve hurt al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we were able to kill Osama bin Laden &#8212; and therefore, what they define as core al-Qaeda has been weakened.</p>
<p>Now, it&#8217;s not like al-Qaeda sat around in caves in Afghanistan drawing corporate organization charts and working out exactly how they were going to do things.  They had objectives.  They knew that different people would be attracted to their efforts for different reasons, and they accepted that.  And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happened since 9/11.</p>
<p>While Obama has focused on defining terrorism down to Al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda down to core al-Qaeda, and core al-Qaeda down to Osama bin Laden so he can take credit for it; the rest of the terrorists have been ignoring this esoteric discussion and conducting terrorist operations.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s what the attack in Benghazi was, and why it was such a threat to the administration&#8217;s entire tissue fabric of argument that al-Qaeda was on the run, Osama bin Laden was dead and General Motors was alive.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>They knew that if people really understood what had happened at Benghazi, the American public would understand that the threat of international terrorism is very real.</p>
<p>So the whole argument about how they had failed to understand that Libya was dissolving into anarchy, that the terrorists had come back to use it for training and for base camps; and that therefore, the notion that the Arab Spring had brought progress to the Middle East and reduced the threat of terrorism was fundamentally wrong.  They did nothing in the months before the September 11th attack to build up capabilities in the region to protect not just our diplomats but American citizens who are even more vulnerable than people in the embassies and consulates.</p>
<p>You know, in February of 2011, we withdrew all civilian personnel from Libya.  This was at the time Khadafi was about to fall.  Things were very dangerous.  We didn&#8217;t have naval assets that could bring those people out.  We had to rent a ferryboat in Greece and bring it to Tripoli to pull the Americans out.</p>
<p>So from February of 2011 to September of 2012, what did we do to put capabilities in the region to protect Americans who might be at risk?  Zero.  That&#8217;s what we did.  Zero.</p>
<p>You know, Americans don&#8217;t realize that the Sixth Fleet, our Mediterranean fleet, on a permanent basis, consists of one ship &#8212; the flagship in Italy.  The rest of the Sixth Fleet is whatever happens to be going between the Strait of Magellan and the Suez Canal at any given time.  We don&#8217;t have the capability in the Mediterranean anymore.  And that&#8217;s the result of years of budget cuts.  And it is a tragedy, and it&#8217;s embarrassing.  And we saw the impact on 9/11 in Benghazi.</p>
<p>Could we have done anything on that day?  People whose military judgment and understanding out of respect say no.  I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s an excuse; I think it&#8217;s a confirmation that we failed in the months before that attack to be ready for it and to protect Americans in danger elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East.</p>
<p>But the worst part of it is not the failure before 9/11, not the failures on 9/11; but the failures since the attack in Benghazi.  And this to me is both the most troubling and the most indicative of what&#8217;s wrong with the Obama foreign policy.</p>
<p>You know, an American ambassador in a foreign country not only presides over an embassy staff from all different departments &#8212; Agriculture, Defense, as well as State &#8212; the ambassador is the President&#8217;s personal representative to the country where he or she is accredited, the President&#8217;s personal representative.  When the ambassador drives around the capital city, the American flag flies from the right front fender of their car.  Everybody knows what the American ambassador does.</p>
<p>So, let&#8217;s be clear &#8212; what happened in Benghazi, with four Americans being murdered, was a tragedy for all of them.  But in particular, it showed that the terrorists could kill the personal representative of the President of the United States and have nothing happen to them &#8212; that under Barack Obama, you can murder his personal representative and get away scot free.</p>
<p>That is a terrible lesson for the terrorists, the state sponsors of terrorists, and our adversaries generally, to learn.  It is a sign for 20 months &#8212; 20 months!  We&#8217;ve done nothing.  Not only have we not arrested anybody; there&#8217;s no revenge, no retaliation, no retribution, and no prospect that anything&#8217;s going to happen.</p>
<p>So this signal of American weakness, I think, is something they understand in the Kremlin.  They understand it in Beijing, they understand it in Tehran, they understand it all around the world.  They understand it in the capitals of our allies, too &#8212; that if the Obama Administration won&#8217;t even go after people who are killing his representative, who are they going to come to defend?  How can you trust the word of the United States to meet its commitments when they won&#8217;t even defend their own people?</p>
<p>This is something that I think we need much more discussion of at the national level.  And maybe this select committee will help jog the national media into doing it.</p>
<p>But fundamentally, it&#8217;s for American citizens.  You know, we get the kind of government that we deserve.  And if we don&#8217;t make national security a higher priority going forward, if we don&#8217;t insist that our candidates for President and Senate and House explain to us how they&#8217;re going to protect America, then we&#8217;re not doing our job.</p>
<p>So I think, looking forward to this November, looking forward to the 2016 election, we&#8217;ve got to re-center this debate.  And we&#8217;ve got to demand of candidates at the presidential and congressional level that they explain whether or not they agree with Ronald Reagan&#8217;s view of peace through strength, and that a strong America is the best way not only to protect our interests, but to protect our interests and preserve the peace.  This is absolutely critical to ourselves and our friends around the world.</p>
<p>Thank you very much.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Republicans Go On an Immigration Reform Bender</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/republicans-go-on-an-immigration-reform-bender/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=republicans-go-on-an-immigration-reform-bender</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/republicans-go-on-an-immigration-reform-bender/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Feb 2014 05:40:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Aliens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218186</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[That little thing that needs to be done -- before talking about what to do with 11 million illegal aliens.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/il.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-218187" alt="il" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/il.jpg" width="268" height="188" /></a>Rather than twisting the political knife in the gaping wound that is Obamacare, House Republicans are off on a “comprehensive immigration reform” toot. The latest news has the Speaker putting off any action for now, and waiting until after the midterm elections in order not to anger the anti-amnesty base, and “to goose Latino turnout or to swing purple districts” in 2016, as political blogger <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/06/emerging-house-gop-consensus-on-immigration-wait-til-next-year">Allahpundit</a> put it. In other words, electoral timing rather than principle is determining what happens.</p>
<p>But principle, not to mention common sense, is what’s at stake here. Anyone proposing “comprehensive” anything after the debacle of Obamacare is delusional. Complex problems are not going to be solved with grandiose legislation that tries to politically please everybody. Nor are most sensible voters likely once again to play Charlie Brown to the Congressional Lucy jerking away the promised “enforcement triggers” and “border security” football after the de facto amnesty is already in place. We went through all that in 1986, when the same promises of employer checks of legal residency and beefed-up border security were broken, more than doubling the number of illegal immigrants from 5 million to 11 million today.</p>
<p>And please, let’s stop all the delusional dreams of Hispanic “natural conservatives” flocking to the GOP after the boon of amnesty is bestowed upon them. John McCain partnered with Teddy Kennedy in 2005 and 2007 to craft legislation to create a “path to citizenship,” and still got half as many Hispanic votes (31%) as Barack Obama did in 2008. By the way, McCain beat Mitt “self-deport” Romney by a whole 4 points with Hispanic voters. Voters vote their interests, and the interests of the majority of Hispanic voters are best served by the Democrats, as evidenced by the fact that 75% percent favor a “bigger government providing more services,” according to a <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/v-politics-values-and-religion/">Pew</a> poll. That’s why the best a Republican candidate has done with Hispanics, George W. Bush in 2004, was still 18 points behind the Democrat John Kerry, one of the least likable and most incompetent candidates since Mike Dukakis. To think that being nice will trump those interests is nonsense. And any gain that might accrue is likely to be offset by losses among the base angered at such pandering.</p>
<p>Also ridiculous is the fear that not doing <i>something</i> will allow Democrats to tar Republicans with the racism or xenophobia brush. Here’s a newsflash: they are going to do that no matter what Republicans do. The “preemptive cringe” as Margaret Thatcher called it is the worst form of defense. The only way not to be labeled “racist,” or accused of waging a “war against women,” is to give the liberals everything they want. Rather than give in to such threats, go on offense with data detailing the enormous costs of illegal immigration in states like California. Take those hidden cameras into San Joaquin Valley emergency rooms on Saturday night, the jails and prisons, the Social Security Disability office, the stores and groceries accepting EBT cards, and the small towns stricken with hit-and-run drivers, drunk drivers, county roads turned into dumps, unregulated buildings and restaurants, and rampant theft.</p>
<p>Of course, there are numerous illegal aliens and their children who are hard-working, law-abiding, and eager to become Americans, not remain Mexican at heart while they benefit from America’s opportunity and freedom. Having lived 60 years in the San Joaquin Valley and experienced immigration legal and otherwise long before tony liberals discovered this issue, I have known many such immigrants. But in the immigration debate today, all we hear are the feel-good stories about hard-working family-values Hispanics, and nothing about the other side of the coin: the thug, the welfare leech, the thief, the law-breaker, and the gang-banger. If we are going to debate this issue honestly, then let’s talk about the whole reality rather than ignoring the side that doesn’t advance our political interest, whether this be more Democrat voters and welfare clients, or more cheap labor. Then explain how amnesty is going to change that behavior and lower those costs.</p>
<p>Moreover, let’s demand that the amnesty crowd explain exactly how they plan to sort out those two sets of illegal immigrants, the ones we should keep and the ones we need to kick out. Expel the felons? OK, then start with the tens of thousands already housed in American prisons. But why stop at felons? Anyone with a DUI should be gone, anyone determined to have illegally received welfare benefits or food stamps or Social Security Disability Insurance should be gone. Anyone in possession of a fraudulent Social Security Card should be gone. Anyone caught driving without a license or insurance should be gone. Anyone using hospital emergency rooms as a doctor’s office for minor ailments should be gone. And anyone who thinks I’m making up racist slanders needs to take a tour of the San Joaquin Valley and see the reality too many people pretend does not exist.</p>
<p>If the Republicans want to start doing something about immigration, then build a fence on the border, period. And don’t tell me it’s impossible. In the 14<sup>th</sup> Century the Ming Dynasty in China built 5,500 miles of the Great Wall using nothing but animal and human muscle power. Don’t tell me the country that between 1940 and 1944 increased military aircraft annual production from 3660 to 96,300, that in 1942 was producing 4,000 Sherman tanks a month, 70 years later can’t fence off the 1933 miles of border between Mexico and the U.S.</p>
<p>Do that first, and when the border is secure, then start talking about what to do with the 11 million illegal aliens. Meanwhile, reform our immigration policies by getting rid of family reunification programs, and making admission to this country conditional on what the immigrant has to offer Americans, not what Americans have to offer immigrants. Start enforcing labor laws and putting teeth into sanctions against violating them. And most important, start returning to the old model of immigration that made it work for most of American history: assimilation to American political principles and virtues, facility in speaking English, and a rejection of self-loathing multicultural nonsense about American guilt and the superiority of the countries immigrants risk their lives to leave.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>The Obamacare Security Nightmare: It Gets Worse</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/the-obamacare-security-nightmare-it-gets-worse/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-obamacare-security-nightmare-it-gets-worse</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/the-obamacare-security-nightmare-it-gets-worse/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Feb 2014 05:15:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hacking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Identity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218004</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Out: "Got Covered?" In: "Got Hacked?"]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Ocare.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218005" alt="Ocare" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Ocare-450x304.jpg" width="315" height="213" /></a>Fraudsters on the inside, hackers on the outside. Here we are, stuck in the middle with the security nightmare called Obamacare. Can it get any worse? Yes, it can.</p>
<p>After the spectacular website crashes during last fall&#8217;s federal health insurance exchange rollout, enrollees will soon wish the entire system had stayed down and dead. &#8220;404 Error&#8221; messages and convicted felon Obamacare navigators may be the least of our health care tech problems now. The latest? U.S. intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services last week that the Healthcare.gov infrastructure could be infected with malicious code.</p>
<p>Who&#8217;s responsible? Washington Free Beacon national security reporter Bill Gertz writes that U.S. officials have &#8220;warned that programmers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, were suspected&#8221; of possible sabotage. A government tech bureaucrat in the Belarusian regime bragged last summer on Russian radio that HHS is &#8220;one of our clients&#8221; and that &#8220;we are helping Obama complete his insurance reform.&#8221;</p>
<p>Gulp. When an authoritarian minion from the country known as &#8220;Europe&#8217;s last dictatorship&#8221; boasts about &#8220;helping&#8221; the Obama White House, be afraid. One of our intel people spelled it out for Gertz: &#8220;The U.S. Affordable Care Act software was written in part in Belarus by software developers under state control, and that makes the software a potential target for cyber attacks.&#8221;</p>
<p>No kidding. The friends of Vladimir Putin are not our friends. If you&#8217;ve been paying attention, you know that Belarus and other Eastern European hacking gangs have been at the center of several recent international cybercrimes. These aren&#8217;t merely schemes to steal credit card numbers or vandalize websites with annoying graffiti. They&#8217;re acts of espionage and sabotage — like using malware in a phishing scheme aimed at White House employees to gather military intelligence and pilfer sensitive government documents.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not just the federal health care system&#8217;s problem. Former Obamacare website contractor CGI still holds dozens of contracts with other federal agencies and state governments worth billions of dollars — and wide access to health and financial data.</p>
<p>In my state of Colorado, for example, CGI has a $78 million contract to &#8220;modernize, host and manage&#8221; the state&#8217;s financial system. Have they checked to see whether Belarus hackers are standing by?</p>
<p>For their part, Obamacare officials are making their usual &#8220;don&#8217;t worry about it, the problem&#8217;s under control&#8221; noises. But we already know the problem is far out of control. Last month, GOP oversight hearings exposed persistent failures by Obamacare overseers to fix security lapses.</p>
<p>Former most-wanted cybercriminal Kevin Mitnick concluded in a letter to Capitol Hill: &#8220;It&#8217;s shameful the team that built the Healthcare.gov site implemented minimal, if any, security best practices to mitigate the significant risk of a system compromise.&#8221; If the latest warnings from our intel agencies are any indication, it appears that Obamacare Keystone Kops didn&#8217;t just leave out security protections, but also may have allowed foreign programmers to write in cyber-traps.</p>
<p>David Kennedy, head of computer security consulting firm TrustedSec LLC and a former cybersecurity official with the National Security Agency and the U.S. Marine Corps, warned that &#8220;Healthcare.gov is not secure today&#8221; and said nothing had changed since he gave Congress that assessment three months before. Among the vulnerabilities that the Obama administration still hasn&#8217;t fixed:</p>
<p>—TrustedSec &#8220;identified the ability to enumerate user information (first, last, email, user id, profile, etc.) through one of the sub-sites that directly integrates into the healthcare.gov website.&#8221;</p>
<p>—&#8221;Tens of thousands of user-based data appears to be vulnerable on the specified website and has not been addressed. There are a number of other exposures that have been reported privately that continue to expose users of the healthcare.gov website.&#8221;</p>
<p>—Another exposure identified is &#8220;the ability to perform an open redirect.&#8221; In fact, &#8220;there are multiple open redirects still vulnerable on the healthcare.gov website and supporting sub-sites.&#8221; What this means is that &#8220;an attacker can send a targeted email to an individual that has signed up for healthcare.gov or is looking to and have it appear valid and legitimate and originate from the healthcare.gov website.&#8221; These can open avenues so that victims click on links &#8220;redirecting to a malicious website that hacks the computer and takes complete control over it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Out: &#8220;Got Covered?&#8221; In: &#8220;Got Hacked?&#8221;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Clinton &#8220;Regrets&#8221; Benghazi</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/hillary-spins-benghazi/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillary-spins-benghazi</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Jan 2014 05:34:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217446</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The shaping of the narrative for the 2016 presidential campaign begins.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/465461291.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217447" alt="Hillary Clinton Addresses National Automobile Dealers Association Convention" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/465461291-450x342.jpg" width="270" height="205" /></a>At a keynote appearance before the National Automobile Dealers Association on Monday, Hillary Clinton began <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/196494-hillary-benghazi-my-biggest-regret">laying</a> the groundwork for how she will respond to the Benghazi scandal during her likely 2016 presidential run. &#8220;My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi,” she answered in response to a question asking her to identify “do-overs” during her stint as Secretary of State. She then proceeded to double down. “I mean, you know, you make these choices based on imperfect information,” she contended. “And you make them to, as we say, the best of your ability. But that doesn&#8217;t mean that there&#8217;s not going to be unforeseen consequences, unpredictable twists and turns.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One is left to wonder what “imperfect information” Clinton was vaguely referring to in her response. The alleged &#8220;imperfect information&#8221; that led Clinton and company to lie for weeks about the nature of the attack? The &#8220;fog of war,&#8221; as Clinton previously described it? Of course, &#8220;imperfect information&#8221; had nothing to do with the Obama administration&#8217;s deceitful portrayal of the terrorist attack to the public. Declassified documents made public two weeks ago reveal that AFRICOM commander Gen. Carter Ham told members of the House Armed Services subcommittee that he learned about the &#8220;terrorist attack&#8221; on the consulate compound only 15 minutes after it commenced. &#8220;My first call was to [Joint Chiefs of Staff General chairman] General Dempsey, General Dempsey&#8217;s office, to say, &#8216;Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,&#8217;&#8221; Ham testified on June 26, 2013. &#8220;I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary [of Defense] Panetta.&#8221; Ham further testified that Dempsey and Panetta “had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The meeting to which Ham referred was a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/panetta-and-joint-chiefs-chair-obama-talked-them-only-once-night-benghazi-attack">pre-scheduled</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> session with President Obama at 5 p.m. EST. A Defense Department timeline reveals that this meeting occurred one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began. The meeting lasted half an hour. That means that Obama knew it was a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012, before the battle that lasted approximately </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/why-obama-sent-no-rescue-benghazi-lasted-8-hours-was-over-30-minutes">eight hours</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> was less than two hours old.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Obama </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/wh-obama-called-hillary-night-benghazi-attack-more-six-hours-after-it-started">phoned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Clinton at 10 p.m. that same night, more than six hours after that attack began, but more than an hour before Navy SEALS Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty were killed. “Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national security adviser,” Carney told </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/">CNSNews.com</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on Tuesday. Feb. 19, 2013. “He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the Secretary of State at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Carney&#8217;s statement </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/14/white-house-no-phone-calls-benghazi/">contradicts</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a letter released to Congress by the White House five days earlier. It claimed Obama made no phone calls at all the night of the attack. Carney was forced to &#8220;amend&#8221; the record because Clinton had testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a month earlier that she learned of the attack on Benghazi at 4 p.m. In the ensuing hours, Clinton </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348677/10-pm-phone-call-andrew-c-mccarthy">testified,</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> “we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally.” One of those conversations was with the president. “I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective,” she revealed.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thus, unless one is willing to believe that no one, including Obama, told Clinton it was a terrorist attack, the words &#8220;imperfect information&#8221; are nothing more than an attempt to again revive the &#8220;fog of war&#8221; canard that the former Secretary of State relied on to initially explain away the administration&#8217;s false account of the attack and changing story.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As for &#8220;unforeseen consequences&#8221; and &#8220;unpredictable twists,&#8221; a scathing </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/benghazi2014/benghazi.pdf">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> released Jan. 15 by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the attack in Benghazi was preventable. Clinton&#8217;s State Department was singled out for its failure to bolster security in response to an increasing threat level. The report states that the intelligence community &#8220;produced hundreds of analytic reports&#8221; in the months preceding the attack that &#8220;militias and terrorists &#8230; had the capability and intent to strike U.S. and Western facilities and personnel in Libya.&#8221; There were &#8220;at least 20 security incidents involving the Temporary Mission Facility,&#8221; including one in which an &#8220;IED exploded near the main gate of the Mission facility in Benghazi, creating a 9&#215;12 hole in the exterior wall.&#8221; Responsibility for this attack was claimed by followers of the &#8220;Blind Sheikh,&#8221; united under the banner of the &#8220;Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman Brigade.&#8221; </span></p>
<p>Ambassador Stevens himself was seriously concerned with the rapidly deteriorating security situation and made requests for support, which were not heeded. Stevens sent numerous cables regarding the vulnerability of the mission. In late June, Stevens wrote, &#8220;that the attacks were the work of extremists who are opposed to western influence in Libya. A number of local contacts agreed, noting that Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al-Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities in Derna.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, according to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304302704579332732276330284">Gregory Hicks</a>, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, who was privy to intimate details of the security decision process, Stevens&#8217; &#8220;requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador&#8217;s authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris&#8217;s authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi,&#8221; Hicks wrote.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">By all accounts, what happened in Benghazi was the result of extreme negligence on the part of Clinton and her cohorts. It was not &#8220;unforeseen&#8221; or &#8220;unpredictable&#8221; &#8212; precisely the opposite. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was willing to take Clinton to task for her latest remarks, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/369568/cruz-clintons-benghazi-talk-cheap-if-she-doesnt-demand-action-andrew-johnson">contending</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> she needs to back up her &#8220;regrets&#8221; regarding an attack for which no one has been fired, and none of the attackers has been captured. “If she was really sorry&#8211;talk is cheap, she needs to stand up and demand action,” he told Fox News. Cruz&#8217;s idea of action is a call for her to join him and other lawmakers in convening a select committee to fully investigate what happened.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">With all due respect to Cruz, Clinton knows what happened. She&#8217;s known it for a long time. And it is more than likely the only regret she truly harbors at this point in time is the reality that, despite her best efforts, along with those of her fellow Democrats, and a mainstream media fully invested in her 2016 election, Benghazi is not going to be the irrelevant issue they are trying to make it. When four Americans have been killed in a preventable tragedy, &#8220;shaping the narrative&#8221; isn&#8217;t going to cut it.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Hero of 2013 &#8212; on The Finch Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/freedom-vs-security-on-the-finch-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=freedom-vs-security-on-the-finch-gang</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jan 2014 05:05:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213904</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ The warrior who stood out amongst all others in his stand for freedom. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/tc.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214270" alt="tc" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/tc-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>This week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang, </em>hosted by <strong>Michael Finch</strong>, the Freedom Center&#8217;s Chief Operating Officer, was joined by <b>Mark Vafiades</b>, the Chairman of the <em>Republican Party of Los Angeles County</em>, <strong>D</strong><b>r. </b><b>Karen Siegemund, </b>Founder of<em> Rage Against the Media</em> and <b>Orestes Matacena, </b>a Hollywood filmmaker and actor. The Gang gathered to discuss <em>The Hero of 2013. </em>The discussion occurred in <strong>Part II</strong> (starting at the <strong>13:17 mark</strong>) and<em> </em>gave respect to the warrior who stood out amongst all others in his stand for freedom.<em> </em> The episode also focused on <em>Freedom vs. Security, </em><em><em>2013: Year of the Scandals, </em></em>and<em><em> <em>Predictions for 2014</em></em>. </em> Watch both parts of the two-part series below: <strong>Part I:</strong> <iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KQbjaejL6js" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe> <strong>Part II:</strong> <iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4W6HxpyeRYk" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe> <b>To watch previous <i>Glazov Gang</i> episodes, </b><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b> <strong>To sign up for </strong><em><b>The Glazov Gang</b></em><strong>: </strong><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Click here</b></a><strong>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Kerry’s Oh-So-’90s Security Nonsense</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/kerrys-oh-so-90s-security-nonsense/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kerrys-oh-so-90s-security-nonsense</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Dec 2013 05:35:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213795</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where has the secretary of state been for the last 20 years? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/John-Kerry-008.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213797" alt="John Kerry" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/John-Kerry-008.jpg" width="263" height="192" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Our-World-Kerrys-oh-so-90s-security-nonsense-335927">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Like his supporters, US Secretary of State John Kerry has apparently been asleep for the past 20 years.</p>
<p>Kerry has proffered us security arrangements, which he claims will protect Israel from aggression for the long haul. They will do this, he argues, despite the fact that his plan denies the Jewish state physically defensible borders in the framework of a peace deal with the PLO.</p>
<p>There are several serious problems with Kerry’s arrangements. But in the context of Kerry’s repeated claims that his commitment to Israel’s security is unqualified, their most glaring flaws are rooted in their disregard for all the lessons we have learned over the past two decades.</p>
<p>Kerry’s security arrangements rest on three assumptions. First, they assume that the main threats Israel will face in an era of “peace” with the Palestinians will emanate from east of the Jordan River. The main two scenarios that have been raised are the threat of terrorists and advanced weaponry being smuggled across the border; and a land invasion or other type of major aggression against Israel, perpetrated by Iraqis moving across Jordan.</p>
<p>It is to fend off these threats, Kerry argues, that he would agree to a temporary deployment of Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley even after Israel expels all or most of the 650,000 Israeli civilians who live in Judea, Samaria and eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem.</p>
<p>We will consider the strategic wisdom of his plans for defending Israel from threats east of the Jordan River presently. But first we need to ask whether a threat from across the border would really be the only significant threat that Israel would face after surrendering Judea, Samaria and much of Jerusalem to the PLO.</p>
<p>The answer to this question is obvious to every Israeli who has been awake for the past 20 years, since Israel started down the “land for peace” road with the PLO. The greatest threat Israel will face in an era of “peace” with the Palestinians will not come from east of the Jordan. It will come from west of the Jordan – from the Jew-free Palestinian state.</p>
<p>The Palestinians don’t give us peace for land. They give us war for land. Whether they support the PLO, Hamas or anything in between, the Palestinians have used every centimeter of land that Israel has given them as launching bases for terrorist and political attacks against Israel.</p>
<p>There is no peace camp in Palestinian society. There are only terrorist organizations that compete for power and turf. And to the extent there are moderates in Palestinian society, they are empowered when Israel is in control, and weakened when Israel transfers power to the PLO. Back in halcyon 1990s, Israeli supporters of “land for peace” told us, “It’s better to be smart than right.”</p>
<p>By this they meant that for peace, we should be willing to give up our historical homeland, and even our eternal capital, despite the fact that they are ours by legal and historic right. That peace, they promised, would protect us, neutralize the threat of terrorism and make the entire Arab world love us.</p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, we learned that all these wise men were fools. Even as the likes of Tom Friedman and Jeremy Ben Ami continue to tell us that the choice is between ideology – that is, Jewish rights and honor – and peace, today we know that they are full of it.</p>
<p>Our most peaceful periods have been those in which we have been fully deployed in Judea and Samaria. The more fully we deploy, the more we exercise our legal and national rights to sovereign power in those areas, the safer and more peaceful Israeli and Palestinian societies alike have been.</p>
<p>The only way to be smart, we have learned, is by being right. The only way to secure peace is by insisting that our rights be respected. We won’t get peace for land. We will get war – not from the Iraqis or anyone else to our east, but from the Palestinians. And since the Palestinians are the people Kerry is intending to empower with his peace plan and his security arrangements, both his peace plan and his security arrangements are deeply dangerous and hostile.</p>
<p>As for the threat from east of the Jordan, here too, Kerry’s security arrangements are absurd. Kerry and his supporters claim that by enabling Israel to maintain a limited force along border with Jordan for a period of 5-15 years, he will build, in the words of Jeffrey Goldberg, his biggest fan, “an impregnable security system.”</p>
<p>But this is ridiculous. When Israel withdrew from the international border between Gaza and Egypt, it wrongly assumed two things – first, that the regime of Hosni Mubarak would always be in power, and second, that Mubarak’s regime would secure the border.</p>
<p>In the event, Mubarak, Israel’s peace partner, did not secure the border. According to then Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, in the three months after Israel withdrew from Gaza in August 2005, the Palestinians smuggled more weapons into the Gaza Strip from Egypt than they had in the previous 38 years, when Israel controlled the border.</p>
<p>And of course Mubarak did not remain in power. He was replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>While it is true that for now, the Egyptian military has wrested control over the country from the Muslim Brotherhood, and is reportedly cooperating with Israel in the Sinai, there is no reason to assume that the present conditions will prevail.</p>
<p>Kerry’s security arrangements along the Jordan Valley are predicated on two similarly dim-witted notions. First, that the Hashemite regime will remain in power forever. And second, that the Hashemites will want to protect the border forever.</p>
<p>Given the instability of the Arab world as a whole and the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jordanians are Palestinians, the most likely scenario is that the Hashemites will be overthrown at some point in the eminently foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Moreover, even if King Abdullah II manages to remain in power, his children are half Palestinian. So even if the Hashemites remain in power, there is no reason to believe that their commitment to peace with Israel will be maintained over time. This is doubly true given the rise of jihadist forces aligned with Iran and al-Qaida battling for power in Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>The third foundation of Kerry’s security arrangements is that Israel can trust America’s security guarantees.</p>
<p>This position of course was completely discredited by the nuclear deal that Kerry and President Barack Obama have concluded with Iran, which paves the way for the genocidal Islamic Republic to acquire nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>After the Iran deal, only the most reckless and irresponsible Israeli leaders could take American security guarantees at face value.</p>
<p>Israelis frustrate the land-for-peace processors from Washington because we have actually been awake for the past 20 years. And we refuse forget what we know.</p>
<p>Land for peace was killed by Palestinian terrorists.</p>
<p>Jordan is not forever.</p>
<p>And US security guarantees are about as useful as a three dollar bill.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Time to Reassess Israel’s Strategic Assumptions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/its-time-to-reassess-israels-strategic-assumptions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=its-time-to-reassess-israels-strategic-assumptions</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Nov 2013 04:41:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the greatest threat may lie within. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/163492843.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209622" alt="163492843" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/163492843-450x339.jpg" width="270" height="203" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Its-time-to-reassess-Israels-strategic-assumptions-330602">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu apparently believes the greatest threat the country now faces is an escalated European trade war. He’s wrong. The greatest threat we are now facing is a national leadership that cannot get its arms around changing strategic realities.</p>
<p>Over the weekend, Yediot Aharonot reported that during Secretary of State John Kerry’s seven-hour meeting in Rome last week with Netanyahu, Kerry warned that the price for walking away from the talks with the PLO will be European economic strangulation of Israel.</p>
<p>According to the newspaper, “[T]he secretary of state told the prime minister that he heard from his European friends&#8230; that if the negotiations fail, Israel can forget about participating in the European research and development program ‘Horizon 2020.’ “And that will only be the beginning.</p>
<p>More and far weightier actions to boycott Israel will follow. They are already being prepared. This will cause incalculable damage to the Israeli economy.”</p>
<p>On Sunday, outgoing National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror warned the cabinet that Israel’s diplomatic standing and ability to avert a European economic war is dependent on continuing the negotiations with the PLO.</p>
<p>In his words, “It is absolutely clear that our ability to handle international pressure is dependent on making advances in the negotiations. If the negotiations fall apart, it will give justification to all the forces that want to boycott us to do so.”</p>
<p>In other words, the viability of our economy is dependent on the PLO’s willingness to sit at a table with us.</p>
<p>Actually, according to Amidror, the PLO’s sufferance of our leaders is only half the story. The other half is President Barack Obama. As he sees it, Israel’s international position is directly related to Obama’s position.</p>
<p>“Everyone hoping for Obama to be weakened needs to [understand that]&#8230;</p>
<p>Israel will also be weakened. There is a connection between these things.”</p>
<p>Apparently based on fear of angering Europe or weakening Obama, Netanyahu has reportedly agreed that early next year the Obama administration will put forward a bridging proposal in the talks. The proposal will have two parts. First, it will contain the details of a new interim arrangement. Second, it will contain the details of a final settlement.</p>
<p>From Obama’s prior statements and consistent policies that castigate the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and united Jerusalem as “illegitimate,” it is fairly clear that Obama and Kerry expect Israel to relinquish its legal claims to Judea, Samaria and united Jerusalem in the framework of a final peace.</p>
<p>From a legal and diplomatic perspective, such a move by Israel would be the most disastrous it has ever made. It would empty out our sovereign rights in general. And it would imperil our military viability.</p>
<p>As to the interim deal, from American and European projects on the ground today in Judea and Samaria it is apparent that the plan will require Israel to cede to the PLO its control of planning and zoning in Area C.</p>
<p>Such a move will enable the Palestinians, Europeans and Americans to strangle the Israeli communities in the region and render it practically impossible for the IDF to operate in Judea and Samaria without PLO permission.</p>
<p>THE PROBLEM with the government’s behavior is not simply that it is maintaining allegiance to a policy paradigm that works to our extreme strategic disadvantage.</p>
<p>That’s old news.</p>
<p>The problem is that we are maintaining allegiance to a policy paradigm that is based on inaccurate strategic assumptions.</p>
<p>Amidror spelled them out.</p>
<p>Israel is operating under the assumption that there is a cause and effect relationship between our actions and Europe’s. To wit, if we ditch the phony peace talks, they will destroy our economy.</p>
<p>But there is no cause and effect relationship between Israeli actions and European actions. Europe made hostility toward Israel the centerpiece of its unified foreign policy without connection to Israeli actions. So undertaking strategically damaging talks with the Palestinians to appease Brussels is a fool’s errand.</p>
<p>Then there is Amidror’s assertion that Israel has an interest in strengthening Obama, because if he is weakened, we are weakened.</p>
<p>Certainly such an argument could have been made with regard to Obama’s predecessors in office. But can it be made today? Last week The New York Times revealed Obama’s foreign policy goals for his second term. They are: “negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria.”</p>
<p>Will the achievement of these goals – that is, the success of Obama’s second term foreign policy – be helpful to Israel? Consider Syria. Obama negotiated a deal with Russia regarding Syria’s chemical weapons that leaves Iran’s Syrian proxy Bashar Assad in power, and according to chemical weapons inspectors, likely in possession of parts of his chemical arsenal.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Obama administration’s repeated exposure of Israeli military operations against Hezbollah in Syria has harmed Israel’s national security. The administration’s leaks have increased the prospects of war between Israel and Syria.</p>
<p>So a key part of Obama’s Syria policy involves exacting a huge, unexpected cost for every strike Israel has undertaken to prevent Hezbollah from acquiring weapons systems that will imperil Israel.</p>
<p>Then too, Monday Kuwait’s al Anbaa newspaper reported that the State Department is carrying out talks with Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to Lebanese sources quoted in the article, US Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale has told Lebanese leaders that “a cabinet cannot be formed without Hezbollah participation.”</p>
<p>Israel is a victim, not a partner in the US’s Syria policy. Israel is weakened by Obama’s success.</p>
<p>As for Iran, it is now inarguable that the US’s primary objective is not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. Here too, success for Obama requires Israel to be imperiled.</p>
<p>Finally, our experience has shown us that peace is not a possible outcome of Obama’s pro-Palestinian policy. The only beneficiaries of administration’s use of European economic blackmail to force Israel to make strategically suicidal concessions to the PLO are the PLO and Hamas, and the anti-Semitic forces in Europe.</p>
<p>All of these parties reject Israel’s right to exist. Weakening Israel in the manner Obama has laid out will increase their appetite for aggression.</p>
<p>SO HERE we are, three for three. All of Obama’s second term foreign policy goals are harmful to Israel. Everything that is good for Obama is necessarily bad for Israel.</p>
<p>It is easy to understand why our leaders insist on holding on to strategic assumptions that are no longer valid. The region is in a state of flux. In stormy seas, our natural inclination is to go back to what has always worked. Since 1968, the conviction that a strong Israel is consonant with US global interests has guided US policy in the Middle East. It’s hard to accept that this is no longer the case.</p>
<p>But we have to accept it. By clinging to our now outdated strategic assumptions, not only are we engaging in dangerous behavior. We are blinding ourselves to new strategic opportunities presented by the chaos in neighboring countries.</p>
<p>True, the new opportunities cannot replace our lost alliance with the US or Europe as a trading partner. But they will get us through the storm in one piece.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Airport Security &amp; Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-menzies/airport-security-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=airport-security-double-standards</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-menzies/airport-security-double-standards/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 04:09:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Menzies]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[airport]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hijab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LAX]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Los Angeles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[niqab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203710</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At LAX, some head coverings are more equal than others. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/niqab-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203750" alt="niqab-2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/niqab-2.jpg" width="288" height="193" /></a>“Take off the cap!” barked the TSA official working security at Los Angeles International Airport.</p>
<p>The recipient of this curt order was my young son, Sean, who was brandishing a Batman baseball cap. News Flash: Apparently, 11-year-old Canadians are responsible for a disproportionate amount of terrorism. But I digress…</p>
<p>In any event, the kid complied and dad (for a change) kept his triple-XL mouth shut. When you have a flight to catch it’s seldom prudent to perturb those ever-so-pleasant folks working airport security.</p>
<p>Still, I felt compelled to return to the screening area once the family was safely seated in the departure lounge. And here’s what I observed: some Muslim women proceeded through the checkpoint without having to remove<i> their</i> headwear (hijabs.)</p>
<p>How odd. If one can presumably stash a box-cutter or a dollop of C4 underneath a baseball cap, surely an hijab can serve the same purpose?</p>
<p>I approached a policeman standing guard. I politely asked him: why the apparent double-standard?</p>
<p>He told me hijabs cannot be removed because “that would be against their religion.”</p>
<p>I corrected the officer, noting there’s nothing in the Koran that mandates the wearing of the hijab.</p>
<p>“OK,” he conceded. “But it’s a cultural thing or something.”</p>
<p>Or something.</p>
<p>Then he said in a tone reminiscent of how a principal would speak to a seven-year-old: “You see, sir, in America, Americans and people visiting America have rights.”</p>
<p>No argument there. Except for a small caveat: surely there’s a reasonable expectation that one’s “rights” will be curtailed somewhat when one enters an airport. That’s why we are prodded and poked and X-rayed when we proceed through security in the first place. That’s why one can’t waltz into a terminal brandishing a legal handgun.</p>
<p>The cop simply shrugged. I upped the ante: if those women had been wearing full-face coverings such as a burqa or niqab, would they have been forced to unveil to confirm their identities?</p>
<p>“Nope,” came the reply. “It’s because that’s a religion thing, too.”</p>
<p>My jaw was now resting on the linoleum.</p>
<p>Reminding him that the vast amount of terrorism in the world today emanates from those shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before pressing the detonator, the poor constable’s face contoured as though he had just bitten into a sour lemon. Our conversation was over.</p>
<p>Still, on reflection, perhaps I got off easy. After all, I wasn’t detained against my will and put through the wringer – which is precisely what happened to author David Jones at London’s Gatwick Airport last year.</p>
<p>According to an article in <i>The Telegraph</i>, Jones placed his belongings into a tray to pass through the X-ray scanner when he spotted a Muslim woman in a niqab breeze through the area without showing her face.</p>
<p>In a light-hearted aside to a security official who had been assisting him, the 67-year-old said: “If I was wearing this scarf over my face, I wonder what would happen?”</p>
<p>Oh dear. Red alert! Jones was promptly accused of racism and sequestered. An airport security guard, a British Airlines official, and even a policeman all agreed he had been “insensitive” with his comment and needed to apologize. After being detained for almost half-an-hour, Jones issued a <i>mea culpa</i>; otherwise, he risked missing his flight to Portugal.</p>
<p>But Jones also rightly noted: “I had not made a racist remark but purely an observation that we were in a maximum security situation being searched thoroughly whilst a woman with her face covered walked through. I made no reference to race or religion.”</p>
<p>Amazingly, Department for Transport rules don’t prevent people covering their faces at U.K. airports for – you got it – “religious reasons.”</p>
<p>Bottom line: Wednesday marks the 12<sup>th</sup> anniversary of 9/11. How sad that whatever lessons we supposedly learned on that dark day back in 2001 already seem to have been sacrificed upon the alter of political correctness.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>A False Sense of Border Security</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/a-false-sense-of-border-security/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-false-sense-of-border-security</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/a-false-sense-of-border-security/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2013 04:55:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gang of 8]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reform]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194001</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Debunking the newest lies rolled out by the proponents of amnesty. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/0704L_IMMIGRATION2.jpg"><img class="wp-image-194004 alignleft" alt="0704L_IMMIGRATION2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/0704L_IMMIGRATION2-450x347.jpg" width="315" height="243" /></a>On Thursday, the Senate <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/senate-tightens-border-immig-reform-bill-article-1.1378201">reached</a> a tentative deal on border security aimed at encouraging more Republicans to support so-called comprehensive immigration reform. Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) put together a deal with the &#8220;Gang of Eight&#8221; that calls for 700 miles of new fencing along the Mexican border, a near doubling of Border Patrol agents, and the purchase of aerial drones for additional border policing. Breitbart&#8217;s Matthew Boyle accurately describes the real objective behind this effort. &#8220;The so-called &#8216;compromise&#8217; on border security&#8230;is a sham meant to give political cover to Republicans who want to vote for amnesty but cannot be seen opposing border security.&#8221;</p>
<p>Boyle&#8217;s spot-on assessment is burnished by the reality that earlier the same day, the Senate <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/306739-reports-senators-reach-tentative-deal-on-border-security-">defeated</a> an amendment offered by Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX), calling for mandatory border security triggers to be put in place before illegal aliens were granted legal status. The vote was 54-43 to table the effort, with Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), all voting to kill the measure outright, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voting to table it. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who may have sensed that he needed to save what little is left of his shredded credibility, broke ranks with the Gang of Eight and supported Cornyn. Yet later in the day, when the aforementioned compromise was reached, Rubio was effusive. “If you look at what’s being proposed here, this is a dramatic expansion and improvement in border security that I hope will allow finally for this legislation to have the support it needs,” he told Fox News.</p>
<p>Nonsense. Moreover, Rubio has a short memory. Seven years ago, Congress <a href="http://usactionnews.com/2010/05/feds-have-built-only-32-miles-of-700-mile-double-border-fence-originally-mandated-by-congress/">passed</a> the &#8220;Secure Fence Act of 2006.&#8221; It ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to &#8220;provide for at least 2 layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors” along 700 specific miles of the almost 2000-mile border dividing the U.S. and Mexico. A year later, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) quietly added a provision to an omnibus appropriations bill essentially eliminating the mandate, &#8220;if the (DHS) Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.” Today, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/18/senate-rejects-border-fence/">according</a> the <i>Washington Times</i>, only 36 miles of fencing are double-tier, 316 miles are single-tier pedestrian  fencing, and another 299 miles are nothing more than vehicle barriers that do not stop people from crossing the border. At least 49 miles have no fencing at all.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s to stop Congress from changing the parameters again, once this bill is passed? Absolutely nothing.</p>
<p>The doubling of Border Patrol agents is another sham underscored by reality. In August 2012, 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and deportation officers <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/23/immigration-agents-sue-stop-obamas-non-deportation/?page=all#pagebreak">sued</a> the Obama administration, contending that they were forced to choose between enforcing immigration law and getting reprimanded by their superiors, or obeying those superiors and violating the law. “ICE is at a point now where agents are being told to break federal law,&#8221; said the agents&#8217; attorney Kris W. Kobach. &#8220;They’re pretty much told that any illegal alien under the age of 31 is going to be let go. You can imagine, these law enforcement officers are being put in a horrible position.” The litigation was engendered in large part by the president&#8217;s unilateral declaration that allowed any illegal under 30 years of age to avoid deportation and acquire work permits renewable every two years indefinitely.</p>
<p>In April, Federal Judge Reed O&#8217;Connor <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/24/judge-administration-cant-refuse-arrest-illegals/">sided</a> with the plaintiffs, noting the the DHS &#8220;does not have discretion to refuse to initiate removal proceedings.&#8221; But O&#8217;Connor further noted the ruling remains incomplete until both the administration and the agents supply him with additional information. Regardless, this case reveals the fatal assumptions behind the idea that more agents equals better border enforcement: that is only true if Border Agents <i>are allowed to do their jobs.</i></p>
<p>The use of aerial drones to patrol the border is another idea that might look good on paper, but is once again belied by reality. Assuming drones are effective in locating illegals crossing the border, that effectiveness only matters if the information is acted upon in a timely manner&#8211;meaning Border Patrol agents or other law enforcement officials must be present to detain the crossers. And again, unless those agents are allowed to enforce the law, drones are irrelevant.</p>
<p>Yet even that may not matter. During her <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/24/Big-Sis-declares-Obama-has-power-to-pick-which-laws-to-enforce-as-immigration-bill-would-grant-admin-more-authority">testimony</a> on April 23 before the Gang of Eight Committee, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) she believes that administration officials can tell law enforcement agents which laws to enforce or ignore. “There are tensions with union leadership, unfortunately, but here’s what I expect as a former federal prosecutor and attorney general, and that is that law enforcement agents will enforce the law in accord with the guidance they’re given from their superiors,” Napolitano contended.</p>
<p>Furthermore, one could make the argument that the use of drones on the border will inevitably involve &#8220;mission creep&#8221;&#8211;if that reality had not already occurred. On Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller not only <a href="http://rt.com/usa/fbi-director-mueller-drones-947/">admitted</a> to Congress that drones have been used for surveillance on U.S. soil, but that the agency has no guidelines or policies to regulate their usage.</p>
<p>All of the above ought to be more than enough to convince Senate Republicans that comprehensive immigration reform is a disaster. Yet there are even more inconvenient realities that this legislation will engender. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reveals that illegal immigration into the United States would be <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/cbo-senate-bill-still-allows-illegal-immigration-173045274.html">decreased</a> by a paltry 25 percent compared to the current law. Proponents of the legislation <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/18/CBO-releases-report-on-immigration-bill-s-costs">tout</a> the report&#8217;s estimate that it would reduce the nation&#8217;s deficit by $875 billion over 20 years, completely contradicting a Heritage Foundation Report that estimates amnesty would add $6.3 trillion to the national debt over a longer time frame. Sen. Sessions explains that this is the result of the same kind of accounting gimmicks used to hide the true cost of ObamaCare. In this case, he notes that &#8220;eligibility for the most expensive federal benefits was largely delayed outside the 10-year scoring window.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet the most damnable part of the CBO report reveals that Americans on the lower end of the workforce will take a tremendous <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/18/CBO-Immigration-bill-would-drive-down-American-workers-wages">hit</a> if this bill is passed. &#8220;Although the average wage would be lower than under current law over the first dozen years, the minimum wage would keep the wages of some less skilled workers from falling, dampening businesses’ demand for those workers,” the analysis states. That would be lower wages and a dampening demand for <i>American</i> workers. On the other hand, investors and business owners will do <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/20/cbo-says-immigration-bill-aids-investors-not-wage-earners/">quite well</a>. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” says the report. On the &#8220;sunny&#8221; side, it further notes that average wages will once again begin to increase &#8212; in 2025.</p>
<p>Sessions <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/20/cbo-says-immigration-bill-aids-investors-not-wage-earners/">minced</a> no words regarding these realities. &#8220;This bill guarantees three things: amnesty, increased welfare costs and lower wages for the U.S. workforce,” he said. “It would be the biggest setback for poor and middle-class Americans of any legislation Congress has considered in decades.”</p>
<p>Yet above all else, the so-called Corker-Hoeven compromise can&#8217;t obscure the reality that legalization first, border security second remains the order of the day. The Associated Press confirms that reality. &#8220;Under the legislation as drafted, legalization could begin as soon as a security plan was drafted, but a 10-year wait is required for a green card,&#8221; it reported. Despite that unambiguousness, Linsey Graham epitomized the fecklessness of Republicans looking for any excuse to support this legislation. &#8220;We’re on the verge of doing something dramatic on the border,&#8221; Graham told reporters. &#8220;What we’re trying to do is put in place measures that to any reasonable person would be an overwhelming effort to secure our border. This is a key moment in the effort to pass the bill.&#8221;</p>
<p>A Republican Senate aide who contacted Matthew Boyle has warned Americans what to expect in the upcoming weeks. &#8220;Proponents of the bill have shown they can&#8217;t sell the bill without lying about what&#8217;s in it,” said the aide. “Now that most of the lies have been exposed, the strategy is to pretend to fix all the problems in the bill with a new magical compromise amendment. The talking points will come out days before anyone gets to see actual legislative text so that the media will sell it while no one has the opportunity to see what it really says. And once we finally see it, we&#8217;ll be lucky to have a few hours to read it before senators vote. We saw this with the fiscal cliff, Toomey-Manchin and other terrible bills the Washington Establishment wants to pass. This is the new &#8216;regular order.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>It is a “new regular order” with disastrous prospects for our nation. Democrats couldn&#8217;t care less, because the tradeoff for them is a permanent majority. Spineless Republicans have deluded themselves into believing that they too will win the hearts and minds of Hispanics.</p>
<p>Again, they have a short memory. In 1984, Ronald Reagan <a href="http://blog.mysanantonio.com/georgerodriguez/2013/01/conservatives-immigration-and-the-hispanic-vote/">won</a> 37 percent of the Hispanic vote in a landslide victory over Walter Mondale, who got 61 percent of the Hispanic vote. Four years later&#8211;and two years after Reagan signed the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform Act granting unambiguous amnesty to 2.7 million illegal aliens, George H.W. Bush got 30 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared to 69 percent for Democrat candidate Michael Dukakis.</p>
<p>Yet even more importantly, the other two provisions in the 1986 bill, the same promise of border security and the same promise about cracking down on employers who hired illegals were, and have been, calculatingly ignored. Not enforcing that bill is precisely why there are now 11 million illegals&#8211;assuming that&#8217;s an accurate number&#8211;<i>demanding</i> legalization. And if the CBO&#8217;s estimate that 75 percent of illegal crossings won&#8217;t be stopped even with the passage of this bill, what then?</p>
<p>Just before the 2008 election, President Obama told his supporters they were &#8220;only five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.&#8221; That Republicans would aid and abet that transformation&#8211;even as they more than likely assure their own irrelevancy in the process&#8211;is pathetic.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Beirut: The Next Benghazi?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/beirut-the-next-benghazi/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=beirut-the-next-benghazi</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/beirut-the-next-benghazi/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:30:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beirut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Embassy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inspect General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vulnerable]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192923</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How long before jihadists ransack another under-protected consulate?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/050813_dcl_biasbash_640.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-192926" alt="050813_dcl_biasbash_640" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/050813_dcl_biasbash_640-450x319.jpg" width="270" height="191" /></a>Nine months after four Americans, including our ambassador, were killed at the US consulate in Benghazi, a new State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report warns that a series of security vulnerabilities at the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon leaves it vulnerable to a similar attack in that unstable area.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.washingtonguardian.com/sites/default/files/beirutembassyreport.pdf">report released in May concluded</a> that a series of security deficiencies, including weaknesses in the physical structure itself, leave the Beirut embassy vulnerable. While the State Department has put in place a plan to upgrade the facility, a new structure won’t be completed until 2016. As the OIG report said,</p>
<blockquote><p>Physical security vulnerabilities at mission facilities, which include office buildings and residences, place employees at risk. Compliance with Overseas Security Policy Board standards is not possible at the current location.</p>
<p>Construction of a new embassy compound (NEC) in Beirut, including office and residential facilities, was scheduled by the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) as an alternate candidate for 2016.</p></blockquote>
<p>The report further concluded that staff wasn’t receiving proper counter-terrorism training:</p>
<blockquote><p>Some embassy employees feel they lack training for responding to an attack or a crisis. Unlike staff at other critical threat posts, Embassy Beirut employees do not take the foreign affairs counterterrorism course, which provides training on emergency medical procedures, chemical biological remediation, and driving in dangerous situations.</p></blockquote>
<p>The OIG report also pointed out that the State Department didn’t classify the embassy in Beirut to be in a “high threat” area.</p>
<p>Not only does Beirut have a high presence of the terrorist group Hezbollah, but the civil war in Syria has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling over the border into Lebanon.</p>
<p>The report comes at a difficult time not only for the State Department but for security in Beirut. Over the weekend, a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/anti-hezbollah-protester-shot-dead-outside-irans-embassy-in-beirut/2013/06/09/d0cab710-d114-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html">protest in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut</a> left at least one protestor dead. (It should be noted that Iran’s state run media has denied any such attack occurred.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, this State Department OIG report comes on the heels of a separate <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/hillary-turned-over-embassy-security-to-hired-guns/">OIG report on the embassies in Kabul and Baghdad</a> that concluded that inefficiencies there led to wasting over $200 million in tax payer dollars.</p>
<p>The State Department didn’t respond to a comment for this story.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57588456/state-department-memo-reveals-possible-cover-ups-halted-investigations/">CBS News is reporting that in a separate unreleased OIG report top deputies of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton</a> actively attempted to shut down investigations including an investigation into child abuse allegations against the US Ambassador to Belgium and reports that Secretary Clinton’s security detail routinely visited prostitutes.</p>
<p>As all this is going on, the State Department recently approved a <a href="http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130306/FACILITIES01/303060010/More-embassies-becoming-environmentally-friendly">$140 million upgrade to make the embassy in Mauritania more energy efficient, including a 50 kilowatt wind turbine.</a> Furthermore, security at the embassy in Benghazi was outsourced to local militias, with ties to Islamists, on the night of the attack last September. <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/12/19/177888/benghazi-security-was-grossly.html#.UbeRRfnp2uk">The militias were mostly absent on the night of the attack.</a> Taken together, all these report raise serious questions about the priorities and management of the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.</p>
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