Immigrant Children Flood Across U.S. Border

"Tens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents or relatives are flooding across the southern U.S. border illegally," reports Reuters.

Now, Washington is trying to figure out how to pay for their food, housing and transportation once they are taken into custody.

The flow is expected to grow. The number of unaccompanied, undocumented immigrants who are under 18 will likely double in 2015 to nearly 130,000 and cost U.S. taxpayers $2 billion, up from $868 million this year, according to administration estimates.

The shortage of housing for these children, some as young as 3, has already become so acute that an emergency shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has been opened and can accommodate 1,000 of them, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in an interview with Reuters.

In a related editorial, Investor's Business Daily writes:

There are plenty of reasons for this migration wave — from the violence of the drug war in Central America to the leftist governments of the region, notably in El Salvador, that ensure low economic growth.

But there's a magnet effect coming from White House policymaking that's also pulling them north.
President Obama has talked up the DREAM Act of amnesty for young illegals and browbeaten Congress to pass it, using executive orders when it didn't. He's also let it be known he's not enforcing U.S. deportation laws.

Now we have a full-blown refugee crisis. They're convinced that amnesty is theirs if they just reach U.S. soil.

Mass Immigration and Racism

In Are We All Racist Now?, "Allison Pearson argues that the political elite's desire to advance multiculturalism with mass immigration has backfired." Her look back at the immigration policies in Great Britain over the past 13 years — and the consequences in terms of overwhelmed social services — offers a cautionary note to U.S. politicians considering comprehensive immigration reform.

I wish I were more surprised to learn that a new British Social Attitudes survey has found that more than a third of Britons admit they are racially prejudiced. Prejudice fell to an all-time low in 2001, but the latest figures show that the problem has returned to the level of 30 years ago. More than 90 per cent of those who say they are racist want to see immigration halted. More interestingly, 72 per cent of those who do not consider themselves racist also want to see immigration cut drastically.

As shell-shocked politicians from the main parties struggle to discern the causes of Ukip’s deafening electoral success, here’s a tip: look in the mirror, chaps!

It is politicians, not the British people, who are to blame for a resurgence in racism; politicians who have ignored public opinion and created the conditions in which resentments fester and grow. Specifically, though not exclusively, it is New Labour who welcomed workers from the new, accession countries of the EU at a time when countries such as France and Germany wisely exercised their right to keep them out for another seven years.

According to Jack Straw, this was a “spectacular” error. And Jack should know, because he was Home Secretary at the time. The plan of Tony Blair’s government, as laid bare by Andrew Neather, then a Blair speechwriter, was to banish that old, hideously white, retrograde England and usher in a new, vibrant, multicultural country which, rather conveniently, would vote Labour. Mr Blair now works in international conflict resolution, having stored up enough conflict in his homeland to keep future generations busy for centuries. [snip]

Constantly decried as racists by a bien-pensant elite, the overwhelming evidence is that, until recently, Britons have absorbed seismic shifts in this country’s ethnic make-up with remarkable patience and good humour ... And now we are going backwards, with more than a third of British people admitting they have racist feelings. If there had been a proper outlet for public disquiet over mass immigration, that would never have happened. Even settled immigrants, who have been here for more than two generations, say they are fed up with the level of immigration. Are they racist as well? [snip].

Well, they’re all talking about immigration now. Ukip has given them no choice. In his recent party political broadcast, Ed Miliband conceded that Labour would now address the issue it had tried to shut down for so long. Overnight, “racism” had stopped being racism or bigotry and become “people’s legitimate concerns about immigration”.

The deeply distressing and rapid rise in racial prejudice among the British people over the past 13 years maps on to a period of uncontrolled mass immigration. Cause and effect could not be clearer. Nor could the solution.

Read the full article at the UK Telegraph.

'Honor Killings" Produce Real Women Victims

If American feminists need a genuine example of women victims, they need look no further than international headlines: Pakistani Woman Stoned to Death by Family in Front of Court After Marrying for Love. The Associated Press story cited a Human Rights Commission of Pakistan report that "some 869 women were murdered in honor killings in 2013."

Punishment for these murders is light, according to a prominent Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist, who told AP "the courts either award light sentences to the attackers, or they are acquitted."

Tapscott: Casualty of VA Scandal Could Be Obamacare

"...it was all but impossible in 2014 to talk about Memorial Day without also talking about the VA scandal," writes Mark Tapscott. "There is simply no reconciling the contrast between the nation's love and respect for its veterans the the bureaucratic incompetence and abuse being inflicted on them by their government-run health care system."

Dr. Ben Carson, the world-famous neurosurgeon and potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, may have best captured the dilemma posed by the VA scandal for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

During an interview on Fox News over the weekend, Carson laid it out on these terms:

"I think what’s happening with the veterans is a gift from God, to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider.

"And if we can’t get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out."

Concludes Tapscott, "...no matter how Congress ultimately fixes VA, one thing seems all but certain — the biggest casualty of the VA scandal will be Obamacare."

Report: ICE Released 36000 Convicted Aliens in 2013

"In 2013, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] freed 36,007 convicted criminal aliens from detention who were awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings, according to a document obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies," reports Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center.

The vast majority of these releases from ICE custody were discretionary, not required by law (in fact, in some instances, apparently contrary to law), nor the result of local sanctuary policies.

The document reveals that the 36,007 convicted criminal aliens freed from ICE custody in many instances had multiple convictions. Among them, the 36,007 had nearly 88,000 convictions, including:

• 193 homicide convictions (including one willful killing of a public official with gun)
• 426 sexual assault convictions
• 303 kidnapping convictions
• 1,075 aggravated assault convictions
• 1,160 stolen vehicle convictions
• 9,187 dangerous drug convictions
• 16,070 drunk or drugged driving convictions
• 303 flight escape convictions

Public Employees - the New Millionaires

Government workers "are America's fastest-growing group of millionaires," writes Rich Karlgaard @ Forbes.

Doubt it? Then ask yourself: What is the net present value of an $80,000 annual pension payout with additional full health benefits? ...

Based on this small but unfortunately realistic 4% return, an $80,000 annual pension payout implies a rather large pot of money behind it—$2 million, to be precise. That’s a lot. One might guess that a $2 million stash would be in the 95th percentile for the 77 million baby boomers who will soon face retirement.

That $2 million also happens to be the implied booty of your average California policeman who retires at age 55. Typical cities in California have a police officer’s retirement plan that works as follows: 3% at age 50. As the North County Times of Carlsbad, Calif. explains: “Carlsbad offers its police and firefighters a ’3-percent-at-50′ retirement plan, meaning that emergency services workers who retire at age 50 can get 3% of their highest salary times the number of years they have worked for the city. City officials have said that in Carlsbad the average firefighter or police officer typically retires at age 55 and has 28 years of service. Using the 3% salary calculation, that person would receive an annual city pension of $76,440.”

Who are America’s fastest-growing class of millionaires? They are police officers, firefighters, teachers and federal bureaucrats, who, unless things change drastically, will be paid something near their full salaries every year–until death–after retiring in their mid-50s. That is equivalent to a retirement sum worth millions of dollars.

Williamson: The Emerging Junta

Arguing that the IRS's illegal actions—and its efforts at cover-up—undermine the foundations of our government, Kevin Williamson writes:

The characteristic feature of a police state is that those who are entrusted with the power to enforce the law are not themselves bound by it. ...

The most important question that must be answered in this matter does not involve the misbehavior of IRS officials and Democratic officeholders, though those are important. Nor is it the question of free speech, vital and fundamental as that is. The question here is nothing less than the legitimacy of the United States government. When law-enforcement agencies and federal regulators with extraordinary coercive powers are subordinated to political interests rather than their official obligations — to the Party rather than to the law — then the law itself becomes meaningless, and the delicate constitutional order we have enjoyed for more than two centuries is reduced to a brutal might-makes-right proposition.

Elected officials and public servants of both parties take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to faithfully discharge the duties of their office. That oath is now being tested. The IRS investigation is no mere partisan scandal, but a moral challenge for the men and women who compose the government of this country. Whether they are sufficient to meet that challenge is far from obvious, but the evidence so far is not encouraging.

Fiorina: No More Lectures from NYTimes on Treatment of Women Please

"Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina eviscerated New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. over the firing of executive editor Jill Abramson," writes Tim Cavanaugh @ NRO.

“Here is a woman who [has] been told she has an abrasive style — how many times have women heard that?” Fiorina said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “She has been a distinguished reporter for the New York Times, an editor for three years. There is not a single word in her departure announcement about her contributions, about her record, about her time at the New York Times. She is  excised from history. No more lectures, please, from The New York Times about the treatment of women.”

NRO added this update to the post:

New York Times head of communications Eileen Murphy on Twitter objects that the original press release announcing Abramson’s termination did in fact contain standard thanks-for-your-service boilerplate...

Obamacare Insurer: Must Break Americans' 'Choice Habit'

From Philip Klein:

In a line that says a lot about where health care is heading under Obamacare, an insurance executive offering plans through the law was quoted in the New York Times on Tuesday as saying, “We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has.”

Marcus Merz, the chief executive of PreferredOne, made the remark in an article describing the trend toward narrow networks in health care plans. The article notes, "In the midst of all the turmoil in health care these days, one thing is becoming clear: No matter what kind of health plan consumers choose, they will find fewer doctors and hospitals in their network — or pay much more for the privilege of going to any provider they want."

Read more:
Obamacare Insurer Says Americans Have to Break the 'Choice Habit' (Washington Examiner)

See also:
Obamacare Insurers: "We Have to Break People Away from the Choice Habit" (Veronique de Rugy, NRO)

CyberTheft - the new Weapon

U.S. corporations have the "most valuable intellectual property anywhere in the world," and its being "systematically stolen" by cyber attacks. Worse, U.S. intelligence agencies are withholding information that could help corporations fend off cyber-thefts, reports Kelly Riddell in the Washington Times.

The Heartbleed bug is one example:

The government’s lack of information-sharing with companies was spotlighted last month in a report about the Heartbleed bug, a security flaw that allowed hackers to steal computer users’ passwords and other data.

The National Security Agency had known about Heartbleed for two years before private researchers discovered and repaired it in April, Bloomberg News reported. The NSA used the flaw to exploit computer networks and gain intelligence at the expense of businesses, Bloomberg reported.

Reports about Heartbleed compelled thousands of computer users to change their passwords, the Canadian government to suspend electronic tax filings, and computer companies such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks to provide patches to repair their systems. 

Shawn Henry, the former FBI official who is now president of the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike Services, pointed to December's attack on Target stores as another example of cyber-thefts that often end by 'blaming the victims'.

House and Senate members questioned top managers of Target in hearings this year after the retailer disclosed that it had experienced one of the largest breaches in U.S. history. Hackers broke into its payment systems around Christmas and compromised 40 million customers’ credit and debt card data. Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel resigned last week partly because of fallout from the breach.

Mr. Henry said “blame the victim” attitudes must change if the public and private sectors are to work together on cybersecurity. Many companies are on the front lines of attacks from Russia, China and Iran, which have more technical savvy and finances than the businesses they target, he said.

“Can you imagine if all the houses in the neighborhood were being broken into every single day by a gang that were stealing people’s televisions, raping their family members, and the mayor of the city stood up and said, ‘You haven’t done enough to protect your house. You didn’t have the right alarms on your house, you didn’t have the right locks; therefore, we’re holding you accountable?’” said Mr. Henry. “Can you imagine? That would never happen. The citizens of that community would stand up and say, ‘What are you doing? Where is your chief of police? Why aren’t you arresting people?’

“In cyber, we just say the victims didn’t do enough to protect themselves,” he said.

What an Electromagnetic Pulse Attack Would Do to US

"Expert testimony before Congress on Thursday warned that an electromagnetic pulse attack on our power grid and electronic infrastructure could leave most Americans dead and the U.S. in another century," write Investor's Business Daily editors. "That dire warning came from Peter Vincent Pry, a member of the Congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security."

As the Heritage Foundation has reported, an EMP attack with a warhead detonated 25 to 300 miles above the U.S. mainland "would fundamentally change the world:"

"Airplanes would fall from the sky; most cars would be inoperable; electrical devices would fail. Water, sewer and electrical networks would fail simultaneously. Systems of banking, energy, transportation, food production and delivery, water, emergency services and even cyberspace would collapse."

Not many are killed or harmed by the blast itself, but as the EMP pulse spreads across America, life changes in an instant, coming to a screeching halt as a country dependent on cutting-edge 21st century technology regresses at least a century in time instantaneously.

The potential to throw the US back into a horse-and-buggy age makes the nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities of Iran and North Korea a "real threat and not the stuff of science fiction."

Wanted: A Devil's Advocate on Climate

In an editorial, the Boston Herald argues that the U.S. needs "a devil's advocate ... independent of the army of [climate] alarmists who have built careers on dubious dogma."

The Obama administration is trying to scare us with totally unverifiable projections of a disastrous global warming. We trust that most people are not going to fall for this outrageous scare-mongering.

The ballyhooed third National Climate Assessment, released last Wednesday by several agencies, alleges first, the world has warmed over the last century and second, it’s going to get much worse.

This is supposed to convince us of the wisdom of President Obama’s plans to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief gas said to be warming the planet.

It has indeed warmed slightly (by at most 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 100 years. Saying so ignores an unexplained cooling from about 1940 into the 1970s. It warmed from the 1970s to 1998; there has been no warming since even as carbon dioxide concentrations rose.

Predictions of floods here and heat waves there and falling sky somewhere else are produced by already failed computer models. None can reproduce changes in temperature observed in the past. Relying on such failed prophets is folly. ...

The country needs a devil’s advocate, with adequate funds for research independent of the army of alarmists who have built careers on dubious dogma.

What Socialist Economic Policies Have Done for Cuba

"Socialism is, by a very wide margin, the worst disaster in the history of the human race," writes John Hinderaker."Nothing else comes close. It always fails, and it always brings death-dealing totalitarianism in its wake. Socialism is, in essence, rule by a criminal gang. It generally works for members of the gang, but it never works for anyone else."

In City Journal, Michael Totten reports on his visit to “The Last Communist City,” Havana. Cuba has the fascination of a train wreck. Among the country’s most striking features is its rigid caste system. Members of the ruling elite–the criminal gang, i.e. the Communist Party–live in a semi-capitalist bubble and are able to enjoy not just power, but relatively luxurious living conditions. Everyone else bears the full brunt of socialism, and is mired in want and misery:

"Outside its small tourist sector, the rest of [Havana] looks as though it suffered a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami. Roofs have collapsed. Walls are splitting apart. Window glass is missing. Paint has long vanished. It’s eerily dark at night, almost entirely free of automobile traffic. I walked for miles through an enormous swath of destruction without seeing a single tourist. Most foreigners don’t know that this other Havana exists, though it makes up most of the city—tourist buses avoid it, as do taxis arriving from the airport. It is filled with people struggling to eke out a life in the ruins. …"

In Cuba, they don’t have a minimum wage: they have a maximum wage. The stupidity of their economic model can hardly be imagined:

"In the United States, we have a minimum wage; Cuba has a maximum wage—$20 a month for almost every job in the country. (Professionals such as doctors and lawyers can make a whopping $10 extra a month.) Even employees inside the quasi-capitalist bubble don’t get paid more. ..."

Read Hinderaker's post, When Will They Ever Learn?, for the rest of the story on what socialist economic policies have done to a once thriving island nation and its people.

IRS Abuse Directed By Washington After All

"New documents obtained by Judicial Watch demonstrate conclusively that the IRS policy of targeting tea party and conservative groups came directly from Washington D.C., not a rogue office in Cincinnati," writes Paul Mirengoff at powerlineblog.com. "They also show that Sen. Carl Levin was working with the IRS to make sure tea party and conservative groups were targeted for harassment."

As to the first point, a July 2012 email from IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky confirms that tea party group applications for exempt status were being handled in Washington. Grodnitzky wrote:

[We are] working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as examples in the development of their cases.

Chip Hull [another lawyer in IRS headquarters] is working these cases. . .and working with the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications are the subject of an SCR [Sensitive Case Report], we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob.

“Rob” is believed to be Rob Choi, then-Director of Rulings and Agreements in IRS’s Washington, DC, headquarters.

On Fox New's Special Report, Charles Krauthammer said the emails reveal "a major abuse of power" and "gives lie to the Administration claim that it had nothing to do with the election, nothing to do with targeting the opponents of the Administration."



For a timeline of key dates and revelations on the IRS scandal, see Pepperdine law professor Paul L. Caron's article in USA Today.

See also: 
NEW: IRS office in D.C. Heavily Involved in Tea Party Assault (Washington Times)
Documents Reveal Lies on IRS Scandal (American Thinker)

Timothy Geithner's Gamble with American Debt

Former Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner—"the man most responsible for the federal bailouts of 2008"—admits that he didn't see the mortgage crisis coming and didn't grasp the severity of the problems after it occurred," writes WSJournal editor James Freeman in a review of Geithner's book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.

One of the themes in "Stress Test" is Mr. Geithner's difficulty in understanding the health of large financial firms. He admits that he didn't see the mortgage crisis coming and didn't grasp the severity of the problems after it appeared. He didn't require that the banks he was overseeing raise more capital because his staff's analysis couldn't foresee a downturn as bad as the one that occurred.

None of this is particularly surprising in a man who, at the time he became president of the New York Fed, had never worked in finance or in any type of business—unless one counts a short stint in Henry Kissinger's consulting shop. At Dartmouth, Mr. Geithner "took just one economics class and found it especially dreary." After three years at Kissinger Associates, he spent 13 years at the Treasury Department, becoming close to both Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, and then worked at the government-supported International Monetary Fund. Messrs. Rubin and Summers recommended him to run the New York Fed. "I felt intimidated by how much I had to learn," he writes of taking up the job in 2003.

Freeman argues that we can't know if Geithner's actions—putting American taxpayers on the hook for private company financial failures—were better or worse than the alternative.

What we do know is that, six years later, the economy is suffering through a historically weak recovery and the emergency programs haven't ended. The Federal Reserve is still providing easy credit for banks and for the U.S. government, which has racked up more than $8 trillion in additional debt since the end of 2007.