Tag Archives: Homeland Security

Our Southern Border

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CNS News posted an article yesterday detailing what is happening at the southern border of America.

The article reports:

Rodolfo Karisch, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Management and Accountability on Thursday, that the Border Patrol in his sector has intercepted illegal aliens trying to enter the United States “from 40 different countries, including Bangladesh, Turkey, Romania and China.”

“I want to provide some perspective on the challenges facing our men and women at the Southwest border,” Karisch told the committee in his opening statement. “Though I cannot speak for all of the components of Customs and Border Protection, I can provide a first-hand account of the complex border-security environment and ask for your assistance in helping our frontline men and women.

The article includes some statistics to illustrate what is happening at our southern border:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has published a spread sheet listing the number of illegal aliens apprehended in each border sector in 2017 by their nation of citizenship.

Of the 303,916 who were apprehended that year along the U.S.-Mexico border, only 127,938—or approximately 42.1 percent—were from Mexico.

1,364 of the deportable aliens intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 were from the People’s Republic of China. Of these, 702 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

564 deportable aliens from Bangladesh were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 304 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

433 deportable aliens from Romania were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 94 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

35 deportable aliens from Turkey were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 21 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

It’s time to build a wall so that we know who is coming in.

This Explains A Lot

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article that explains a few things that were curious at the time. When viewing these events, it’s a good idea to consider the underlying currents–establishment Republicans don’t want the wall any more than the Democrats. Their reasons are different, but the goal is the same. That is why the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was never actually carried out.

100 percent fed up detailed the timeline of events following the passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in an article posted on August 16, 2015.

Here are some highlights from that timeline:

In his speech in El Paso on immigration reform on May 10, 2011, Obama declared that the fence along the border with Mexico is “now basically complete.” Like much of what comes out of the Obama administration, that was a lie. What was supposed to be built was a double-layered fence with barbed wire on top, and room for a security vehicle to patrol between the layers. Except for 36 of the seven-hundred-mile fence, what was built looks like the picture above or the one below.

This is the above picture:

This is the below picture:

Somehow the two pictures do not appear to be the same.

So what happened? The article reports:

The first blow against the promised fence was made by Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican Senator from Texas, at the urging of DHS she proposed an amendment to give the Department discretion to decide what type of fence was appropriate in different areas. The law was amended to read,
“Nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the 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.”
Hutchison’s amendment was included in a federal budget bill in late 2007 despite the fact that Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., had a cow…he argued the amendment effectively killed the border fence promised in the 2006 bill, he was right. Hutchison’s intentions may have been honorable, but she didn’t foresee Barack Obama being the next president.

The article concludes:

Here’s the bottom line. Back in 2006, the people of the U.S. were promised a border fence. Since then thanks to Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barack Obama 95% of the fence wasn’t built. The arguments against the fence are bogus especially if you look at Israel’s history. It’s time for America to demand that its leaders build the fence they promised. No one can honestly say it wont work, after all, it hasn’t been tried.

Yesterday after an interview with President Trump, The Daily Caller reported:

President Donald Trump says former House Speaker Paul Ryan promised to secure wall funding while Republicans controlled both Houses in exchange for the president’s signature on the 2018 omnibus spending bill.

But after the president signed the massive, $1.3 trillion spending package, Ryan reneged on his commitment.

“Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, ‘Please don’t do that, we’ll get you the wall.’ And I said, ‘I hope you mean that, because I don’t like this bill,’” the president recounted in an exclusive Wednesday interview with The Daily Caller.

“Paul told me in the strongest of terms that, ‘please sign this and if you sign this we will get you that wall.’ Which is desperately needed by our country. Humanitarian crisis, trafficking, drugs, you know, everything — people, criminals, gangs, so, you know, we need the wall.”

“And then he went lame duck,” Trump said.

“And once he went lame duck, it was just really an exercise in waving to people and the power was gone so I was very disappointed. I was very disappointed in Paul because the wall was so desperately needed. And I’ll get the wall.”

Paul Ryan began well. He stood up to President Obama on various issues (without actually accomplishing anything). He began as a budget hawk, trying to keep spending under control. However, he somehow became part of the Republican establishment and went down the wrong path. I seriously doubt that he ever had any intention of building the wall.

Do The Statements Line Up With The Actions?

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Yesterday CNS News posted an article that reported the following:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday reiterated that “Democrats are committed to border security” after President Donald Trump agreed to a deal to re-open the government for three weeks while the White House and Democratic congressional leaders negotiate over Trump’s proposed border wall.

“And we have no complaint,” Pelosi said on Friday.

The article continues:

“We look forward to Congresswoman Roybal-Allard [D.-Calif.] taking the lead in terms of the substance from her standpoint as Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee and commend, again, our Chair of the Appropriations Committee [Nita Lowey (D.-N.Y.] for her leadership on this,” Pelosi said. “They bring knowledge, they bring perspective, they bring the enthusiasm of the consensus of our Caucus to that conference.”

So let’s take a look at Congresswoman Roybal-Allard for a minute. The Center for Security Policy put her on a list of “national security failures” – legislators who scored a total of less than 25%, based on all scored votes for which they were present. The Center’s findings indicate 149 Members of the House of Representatives and 46 Senators are national security failures based on their voting record in the 111th Congress.

It gets better. Opensecrets.org listed the details of the Congresswoman’s campaign contributions:

I am not sure that this is the most qualified person to put on the committee. California has been something of a shining example of the negative impact of unchecked immigration on a state’s finances and quality of life.

Somehow I am not looking forward to rational solutions to the problem at our southern border from the Democrats on the Homeland Security Subcommittee.

When You Are Convinced You Know It All

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Power can do strange things to people. Some people handle it well, and some people are so impressed that they have some power that they decide they are all-powerful. Nancy Pelosi is a good example of the latter.

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about one of Speaker of the House Pelosi’s recent statements.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday night she “doesn’t care” if the Secret Service said it was prepared to appropriately secure the State of the Union address despite the partial government shutdown.

Instead, she stood firm in her resolve to delay the January 29 event until the government completely re-opens.

In a letter to President Trump, Pelosi claimed the lack of funds to Homeland Security posed a risk to the White House and the Congress during the event, but the Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen released a statement refuting that.

So Speaker Pelosi knows more about security than the Department of Homeland Security?

The article concludes:

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise called Democrats’ security concerns nonsense, telling reporters on Wednesday, “There are no security concerns that have been raised and that has nothing to do with that. Ironically, it seems like she’s only concerned about security when it’s a State of the Union that will expose what this fight is all about.”

It may be that the Democrat focus groups are starting to indicate that the shutdown isn’t going exactly the way the Democrats thought it would. Meanwhile there is another caravan headed our way. I wonder what the impact of that will be on public opinion.

The Coast Guard Will Get Paid

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported the following:

Concerned about U.S. Coast Guard forces losing a paycheck in the partial government shutdown, President Trump personally urged his team to find a solution that would allow the administration to make this week’s $75 million payroll, according to officials.

Trump stepped in on Wednesday, calling on top lawyers and staffers to determine if the Coast Guard could make payroll despite being included in the shutdown that has impacted about 25 percent of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the Coast Guard.

Military personnel under the Department of Defense are not included in the shutdown, because their appropriations were approved earlier in Congress.

Officials said that Trump was keen to find a “way we can fix this” as news media stories about the Coast Guardsmen’s plight started to pile up.

At his urging, the Office of Management and Budget, DHS and the Coast Guard determined that the rules governing pay to Coast Guard forces requires it be made through the end of the year. To make it, the lawyers said that unused funding could be tapped for pay. The service had a bit more than the needed $75 million left over from its past continuing resolution appropriation, enough to make this month’s last payroll check.

“The president is trying to make the shutdown as painless as possible for workers, and this case proved it,” said an official.

Remember that only 1/4 of the government is shut down because President Trump had the forethought to get the rest of the budget passed previously. The Democrats (who in the past voted for a fence (a.k.a. wall) have changed their minds and shut down the government because President Trump wants a wall. At least President Trump is attempting to make the shutdown as painless as possible while Representative Nancy Pelosi (who should be in Washington negotiating) vacations in Hawaii.

The Holy Land Foundation Trial

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I have been doing a short segment on a local talk show on Fridays. The segment airs sometime between 6 and 7 pm. The station is 107.1 WTKF out of Morehead City, North Carolina. This week Lockwood Phillps and I discussed the Holy Land Foundation Trial, a subject that does not get a lot of press. He asked me to share the information we discussed at rightwinggranny.com. This post is the result of that request.

The following information comes from two books—Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin and Sharia The Threat To America Report of Team B2. Some of the members of Team B2 were General Jerry Boykin, Major Stephen Coughlin, Frank Gaffney, Jr., John Guandolo, Clare Lopez, Andrew McCarthy, Tom Trento, Diana West, and James Woolsey.

In August 2004 Maryland Transportation Authority Police Office observed a woman wearing traditional Islamic garb videotaping the support structures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and conducted a traffic stop. The driver of the vehicle was identified as Ismail Elbarasse and detained on an outstanding material witness warrant issued in Chicago in a Hamas case.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office raided Elbarasse’s residence in Annandale, Virginia, and in the basement of his home they found a hidden sub-basement. In that sub-basement, they found the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The documents showed the connections between many of the Muslim-American groups in America and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Between July and September 2007, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, along with attorneys from the main Department of Justice in Washington, working with FBI case agents and analysts from the FBI Dallas Field Office, tried the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and its senior leadership in U.S. Federal Court. The HLF was funneling money overseas to Hamas.

The exhibits in that trial included “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in America.” This is the document that outlines the Muslim Brotherhood plan to undermine the government of the U.S. and create a sharia state in America.

In this memorandum is a list of organizations that the Muslim Brotherhood considers its ‘friends.’ Some of these groups still have access to our government at the highest levels.

 The first trial resulted in a mistrial. The second trial resulted in five convictions with sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years.

It gets worse:

In 2011 elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism—even insisting on firings, “re-training,” and “purges” of officers, analysts, special agents, and decision-makers who created or made such materials available. The letter was drafted by Farhana Khera, President and Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, and addressed to John Brennan, then Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (later director of the CIA). Days later, Brennan responded by agreeing on the necessity for the “White House [to] immediately create an interagency task force to address the problem’ by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.”

…Talks between the administration and the Brotherhood took place at high levels, with the Director of the FBI going so far as to meet with the Brotherhood in February 2012 against the expressed directives of Congress. More alarming, however, is that the FBI then proceeded to undertake the very purging of documents that the Brotherhood had demanded. The Department of Defense followed shortly thereafter with a Soviet-style purge of individuals along with disciplinary actions and re-education.

Not only did the Secretary of State endorse such curbs on speech, the Assistant Attorney General seemed eager to enforce them.

Just for the record, the Secretary of State in 2011 was Hillary Clinton.

The following is from an article posted at the Center for Security Policy on March 25, 2014:

Virtually every country there has found itself under siege from Muslims seeking to impose the supremacist Islamic doctrine they call shariah on everyone else.  The preeminent organization promoting this agenda is the Muslim Brotherhood, now banned as a terrorist group in its home country of Egypt, but prospering in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in what has been known as the Free World.  In fact, as Egyptian courts hand down death sentences to those engaged with the Brotherhood’s violent efforts to overthrow the government there, ours is opening the door to asylum for those who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism.

More insidious than the Muslim Brotherhood’s violence, however, is its stealthy subversion.  In a 1991 strategic plan introduced into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial, a senior Brother named Mohammed Akram described this form of warfare as “civilization jihad.”

In Akram’s words, the goal of the Brotherhood’s civilization jihadists is “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”  His “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” lays out how this ambitious goal is to be achieved under our noses by penetrating and subverting “from within” the West’s civil society and governing institutions.

The London Telegraph reports that this campaign has just scored a major success in Great Britain. That country’s trade association for lawyers, the Law Society, has declared its members can begin drawing up shariah-compliant wills that will be enforceable in British common law courts.

 The fight to preserve our republic is far from over. The deep state has many forms. I have met some of the analysts who were fired in the 2011 purge. As far as I know, they do not have their jobs back. The threat is still there, and most Americans have never heard of the Holy Land Foundation Trial or the government exhibits from the trial. You can find the exhibits on the Internet and read them for yourself. They include a list of groups in America that work closely with the Muslim Brotherhood.

A District Court Is Not More Powerful Than The President

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A District Court does not have authority over the President. However, that doesn’t stop some judges from trying to exercise that authority. Part of the President’s job is to defend the country. The courts do not have the right to interfere with that defense. However, one court is doing just that.

The Conservative Treehouse is reporting today that U.S. District Judge Jon Steven Tigar in San Francisco has issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s modified emergency asylum policy which barred asylum for aliens who enter the country illegally. Note that the President’s modified policy only applies to those who enter the country illegally. Since when did people breaking the law to come here have rights?

The article reports:

While a challenge was predictable, frustrating and likely to be spun up by media, the ruling only applies to aliens who gain illegal entry and request asylum.

Nothing in the ruling stops the hardened border enforcement and/or current expedited review and deportation program. In essence, keep the illegal aliens out and the judicial ruling is moot (until defeated in higher courts).

Though it might frustrate the left-wing media and the open borders crowd, no court can successfully demand the President of the United States to stop border enforcement.  This is why it is critical to have a strong DHS Secretary focused on stopping illegal entry.

This ruling will obviously be appealed by the DOJ; and politically the Democrats realize, in the bigger picture, this ‘open-border’ narrative is not good for them.  On its face this ruling is ridiculous as it eliminates/undermines the legal process for asylum requests by removing the distinction of illegal or unlawful conduct in the application process.

Yesterday Fox News reported:

More than 500 criminals are traveling with the migrant caravan that’s massed on the other side of a San Diego border crossing, homeland security officials said Monday afternoon.

The revelation was made during a conference call with reporters, with officials asserting that “most of the caravan members are not women and children”. They claimed the group is mostly made up of single adult or teen males and that the women and children have been pushed to the front of the line in a bid to garner sympathetic media coverage.

I am sorry that conditions in the home countries of the migrants are so awful, but why don’t the young men in the caravan stay behind and attempt to change things? I am reminded that many Americans lost their lives in the Eighteenth Century fighting for the freedom of America. Where is that spirit among the migrants in the caravan? Do they love their homeland enough to fight for it?

 

Why Border Security Matters

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The Daily Caller reported yesterday that a Jordanian national who allegedly smuggled six Yemeni citizens into the U.S. from Mexico was arrested Saturday. Yemen is know to be a hotbed of terrorism.

The article reports:

Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldairi, 31, was given an arrest warrant followed by a criminal complaint on May 29 for the supposed smuggling trips through the Texas border between July 1, 2017 and December 12, 2017, the DOJ reported Monday.

Aldairi was also a Mexican citizen and conspired with others who wanted to smuggle “Special Interest Aliens” across the border, according to the complaint.

…“The HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) interviews with the six (6) detained Yemenis revealed that each of them paid ALDAIRI varying amounts to be smuggled into the United States from Mexico,” the complaint said.

“Alien smuggling puts our national security at risk, and the Criminal Division is dedicated to enforcing our immigration laws and disrupting the flow of illegal aliens into the United States,” Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski said, according to the DOJ press release.

Does any thinking person believe that potential terrorists are not taking advantage of our porous borders–both north and south?

 

Funding Terrorism Because You Don’t Think You Will Get Caught

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Iran is known to be one of the major suppliers for weapons and terrorists around the world. The IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) American troops encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan generally originated in Iran. This is not a country that we want to give a lot of money to–the  money doesn’t go to the people–it goes to the military and to fund terrorism. So what in the world was President Obama thinking when he made a deal with Iran that gave them a boatload of money? It gets worse.

The Washington Times posted an article today about an attempt by President Obama to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the large amount of money Iran received after the nuclear agreement into American dollars.

The article reports:

The Obama administration — despite repeatedly assuring Congress that Iran would remain barred from the U.S. financial system — secretly mobilized to give Tehran access to American banks to convert the windfall of cash it received from sanctions relief under the 2015 nuclear deal into dollars, an investigative report by the Senate has revealed.

A copy of the report, obtained by The Washington Times, outlines how Obama-era State and Treasury Department officials discreetly issued a special license for the conversion to a major Omani bank and unsuccessfully pressured two U.S. banks to partake in the transaction, all while misleading lawmakers about the activities.

The document, compiled by the Senate’s Republican-led chief investigative subcommittee, began circulating Tuesday, just as the Trump administration issued its harshest warnings to date to foreign governments and companies to avoid doing business with Iran or find themselves in the crosshairs of Washington’s reimposition of sanctions as part of Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

The article explains that Congress was not informed of what was going on–in fact they were lied to:

The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations probe contends that the Obama administration went out of its way to keep U.S. lawmakers in the dark about calculated and secretive efforts to give Tehran a back channel to the international financial system and to U.S. banks, facilitating a massive U.S. currency conversion worth billions of dollars.

“Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” according to a draft copy of the document obtained by The Times. “Despite these claims, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, at the direction of the U.S. State Department, granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system.

“Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” the report said.

The article concludes:

Mr. Portman said in a statement Tuesday night that “the Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran.”

“Despite claims both before and after the Iran deal was completed that the U.S. financial system would remain off limits, the Obama administration issued a specific license allowing Iran to convert billions of dollars in assets using the U.S. financial system,” Mr. Portman said. “The only reason this transaction wasn’t executed was because two U.S. banks refused, even though the administration asked them to help convert the money.”

Such sanctions, he added, “are a vital foreign policy tool, and the U.S. government should never work to actively undermine their enforcement or effectiveness.”

Thank God our banks had more integrity than President Obama.

The Facts Aren’t Important–Just Create Outrage

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It seems as if every week there is a new dust-up about some horrible thing Donald Trump has done. Oddly enough, when these stories are disproved (as they often are), the media seems to ignore that fact. One recent example of the mainstream media’s hysteria is the missing children who came here illegally without their parents who were housed in wire cages. Somehow much of the media has ignored the fact that the pictures of children in wire cages were from 2014. President Trump wasn’t even active in politics at that point! So what is the actual truth about the missing children?

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial on the subject yesterday.

The editorial cites one blatant example of news that simply is not true:

Next, there was a picture showing a bus outfitted with child safety seats being used at an ICE family detention center in Karnes County, Texas. ABC Houston reporter Antonio Arellano tweeted the picture on Sunday, describing it as “a prison bus just for babies.”

Again, outrage ensued.

“Unconscionable and inhumane, “said Texas Sen. Sylvia Garcia. “This is what we’ve come to under Donald Trump,” said Stephen King. Others tweeted: “your new gestapo at work,” “this is what fascism looks like,” “we live in a dark period of American history,” “moral abomination.” Etc., etc.

Oops. Turns out this picture, too, was taken when Obama was president. And, the bus was actually used to take the children on field trips to places like the San Antonio Zoo, a nearby park, the movies, as well as for medical treatment and court appointments.

So much for the Trump-era inhumane prison bus for babies.

About those missing children…The editorial reports:

Back in 2008, the inspector general for the Health and Human Services department noted that HHS and Homeland Security weren’t regularly checking in on these children to make sure they were doing OK with their sponsor families. So, HHS started following up with the sponsors 30 days after the children’s release.

But, as the IG noted in a follow-up July 2017 report, HHS doesn’t always succeed in its attempts to reach the sponsors. It reported that in the first half of 2016, HHS couldn’t reach 16% of the 25,975 children placed with sponsors during those months.

In other words, under President Obama, the government “lost” 4,156 illegal immigrant children in just the first six months of 2016!

It is generally a good idea if you choose to get outraged to check your facts first.

A Resettlement Program Gone Awry

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Yesterday Scott Johnson (one of the regular writers at Power Line Blog) posted an article at The City Journal website. The article was related to some recent events involving large amounts of cash flowing from Minnesota to Somalia.

The article reports:

When it was noted that the carry-on bags of multiple airline passengers traveling from Minneapolis to Somalia contained millions of dollars in cash, on a regular basis, law enforcement was naturally curious to know where the money came from and where it was going. It soon emerged that millions of taxpayer dollars, and possibly much more, had been stolen through a massive scam of Minnesota’s social-services sector, specifically through fraudulent daycare claims. To make matters worse, the money appears to have wound up in areas of Somalia controlled by al-Shabab, the Islamic jihadist group responsible for numerous terrorist outrages.

The article goes on to explain that beginning in the 1990’s, the State Department began sending refugees from the Somalia civil war to be resettled in Minnesota. Minnesota now has the largest population of Somalis outside of Somalia.

The article reports:

As the Washington Times noted in 2015, in Minnesota, these refugees “can take advantage of some of America’s most generous welfare and charity programs.” Professor Ahmed Samatar of Macalester College in St. Paul observed, “Minnesota is exceptional in so many ways but it’s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state.” A high-trust, traditionally homogenous community with a deep civil society marked by thrift, industriousness, and openness, Minnesota seemed like the ideal place to locate an indigent Somali population now estimated at 100,000.

Fast forward to 2015 when the House Homeland Security Committee task force on combating terrorist and foreign-fighter travel discovered that Minnesota led the nation in contributing foreign fighters to ISIS. It gets worse. The refugees masterminded a very lucrative daycare fraud scheme that sent millions of taxpayer dollars to terrorists in Somalia.

The article cites one such example:

The case of Fozia Ali, recently sworn in as a member of the park board of an upscale Twin Cities suburb, is illustrative. Ali’s daycare center in south Minneapolis was suspected of billing the government for more than $1 million of bogus child-care services. According to Special Agent Craig Lisher, the FBI “found records that she was collecting a significant amount of money for a much larger number of children than were actually attending the center.” Ali’s case also had an international component. “We are aware that some of the funds went overseas, what she was cashing out, money from the business,” Lisher noted. He declined to specify the purpose to which the funds were put.

Ali used a phone app to register charges to the Minnesota state government while she stayed at an $800-per-night hotel in Nairobi. She pleaded guilty in March to charges of wire fraud and is serving time in federal prison. But the scam goes well beyond Ali. Though the total loss to the state’s $248 million daycare program remains to be determined, we have a serious case of deceit, obviously. But the real damage, harder to measure, is likely to be to the high-trust values of Minnesota, where newcomers can dupe the natives so easily.

These are not the sort of refugees we need.

A Proposed Solution That Will Only Make The Problem Worse

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Yesterday the Associated Press posted an article about a proposal to designate election systems as critical infrastructure. On the surface this sounds like a really good idea, but when you examine the idea closely, there are some problems with it.

But first, let’s look at the article, which states:

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the move Friday with 30 minutes’ notice to the National Association of Secretaries of State and U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent bipartisan federal agency that develops voluntary voting guidelines and certifies voting systems.

Officials at both agencies are criticizing the department for what they said was a failure to work with state officials to fully answer their questions about the designation before making the change.

“We’re having trouble understanding exactly what they’re going to do, that we’re not already doing,” Connecticut Secretary of State Denise W. Merrill, who heads the national secretaries association, told The Associated Press. “States were already doing much of this (security work) themselves using very different products.”

The U.S. Constitution states in Article I Section 4:

The times, places and methods of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, will be decided by each State legislature. Congress may override these regulations at any time by  Law.

The U.S. Constitution states in Article 2 Section 2:

Each State, (and Washington D.C.), must appoint a number of electors equal to the total number of Senators and Representatives which that State (or District) is entitled to in Congress. The legislator of each State may determine the manner in which the electors are chosen. No Senator or Representative, or person holding an official position under the United States, may be appointed as an elector.

What is illustrated here is the fact that the individual states control elections within their states–the federal government does not. One reason it is difficult to ‘hack’ voting machines is that they are often not networked–they are individual machines and must each be ‘hacked’ individually. Although this suggestion by the Obama Administration sounds like an idea that would protect our elections, it would, in fact make hacking easier for hackers by centralizing the voting machines on one network.

Aside from being a federal power grab, this is a really bad idea. The goal here is federal control of elections. This will no longer limit corruption to some of our major cities–anyone will be able to be able to participate!

 

This Should Make Us All Feel Very Secure

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the Syrian refugees coming to the United States. The article brings up a rather obvious but somehow unmentioned fact–Homeland Security has no way to vet the refugees because Syria has no police or intelligence databases to check the backgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records. Syria is a failed state at this point. There is not enough order to keep a reliable database.

The article reports:

Senior FBI officials recently testified that they have no idea who these people are, and they can’t find out what type of backgrounds they have — criminal, terrorist or otherwise — because there are no vetting opportunities in those war-torn countries.

Syria and Iraq, along with Somalia and Sudan, are failed states where police records aren’t even kept. Agents can’t vet somebody if they don’t have documentation and don’t even have the criminal databases to screen applicants.

So the truth is, we are not vetting these Muslim refugees at all. And as GOP presidential front-runners duly note, it’s a huge gamble to let people from hostile nations enter the U.S. without any meaningful background check. It’s a safer bet just to limit, if not stop, their immigration.

“If I win, they’re going back,” Donald Trump vowed. “They could be ISIS. This (mass Syrian immigration) could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time.”

Ben Carson, for his part, said that he would bar refugees from Syria because they are “infiltrated” with terrorists seeking to harm America. “To bring into this country groups infiltrated with jihadists makes no sense,” Carson asserted. “Why would you do something like that?”

The Obama regime claims to have no evidence of terrorist or even extremist infiltration. But Sessions made public a list of 72 recent Muslim immigrants arrested just over the past year who were charged with terrorist activity.

This seems to be a rather large gamble for a national security issue. The other untold part of the story is the unwillingness of the stable Muslim countries in the Middle East and elsewhere to take in these refugees. Saudi Arabia offered to build mosques in Germany for the refugees; why didn’t they offer to build them houses in Saudi Arabia?

There is a political element in the Middle East that thrives on using refugees as pawns. The Palestinians were not Palestinians until 1967. They have never been able to settle in the lands they actually came from–they have been kept in refugee camps and blocked from forming a viable non-terrorist state.

The following quote tells it all:

Walid Shoebat Quote

One wonders what purpose the political forces in the Middle East have in releasing all of these Muslims to western countries.

Illegal Immigration In 2014

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On Friday, the Washington Times posted an article about the illegal immigration numbers for 2014.

The part of the article that caught my attention was:

Mr. Johnson (Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson), in a statement releasing the figures, blamed this summer’s surge of illegal immigrant children for the poor results.

“This year’s statistics are informed by a number of complex and shifting factors, most notably the 68 percent increase in migration from countries other than Mexico, predominately from Central America, and a 14 percent drop in Mexican migration since fiscal year 2013,” he said.

An administration official said this is the first time on record that border authorities have caught more non-Mexicans than Mexicans at the border, underscoring the changing demographics.

It is interesting to note that in order for illegal immigrants to come to America from Central America they usually have to cross through Mexico. It seems to me that we should be putting some pressure on the Mexican government concerning that. The number of ‘other than Mexicans (OTM’s)’ is also a concern. How many of these OTM’s are from countries that sponsor terrorism? This is no way to run a country.

The statistics on immigration and deportation for last year were listed in the article:

Apprehensions on the border, which Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says is a yardstick for overall illegal immigration, rose 16 percent in fiscal year 2014, while deportations from within the interior of the U.S. — the measure of how much the administration is going after long-time illegal immigrants — fell 24 percent.

I am not against immigration, but it seems to me that a government that wants to control what children eat for lunch should be able to control its borders.

 

Something To Consider

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As a conservative (and as an American), I am not yet ready to decide who I would like to see run for President as a Republican in 2016. There are a lot of good conservative young leaders in the Republican party who would run a good campaign and do a good job as President. To name a few (but not all)–Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry. You will notice that Rand Paul is not on my list. That is simply because I don’t know enough about him or his policies. The people on the list are state governors with experience in running a state that they could bring with them to being President. Rand Paul and Ben Carson are both extremely smart men who have run medical practices, but I don’t know enough about their administrative abilities or policies to be convinced–yet. However, that could change.

Last night I attended a fund raiser for Congressman Walter Jones where Rand Paul was the main speaker. There were a number of comments he made about our current state of affairs in America that impressed me.

Senator Paul spoke about the Boston Marathon bombing. As someone who was living in Massachusetts at that time, that event was earthshaking. He reminded us that the Russians had warned us about the brothers who set off the bombs. The brothers had recently traveled to a part of the world known for terrorism. Because of a variation of the spelling of their last name, Homeland Security was not tracking them. How hard would it be to create a computer program that would account for variations in spelling? Senator Paul also pointed out that the government has gotten so busy spying on Americans’ cell phones and emails that it cannot find the terrorist threats in the midst of such enormous amounts of data. He stated,”Sometimes we make the haystack so big we can’t find the needle.” That sounds like basic common sense to me!

Senator Paul also pointed out the need for a debate in Congress before we send American troops into war. The Constitution puts war powers in Congress–not with the President. We need to get back to the Constitution on deciding when and where to send our troops. He also reminded us that in every Middle Eastern country where we have toppled a secular dictator in the name of democracy we have brought instability and chaos. We also need to get back to political leaders who put the good of America ahead of their own political ambition.

Senator Paul also cited some egregious examples of government’s wasting of American taxpayer’s money.

I left the event wanting to know more about Senator Paul’s foreign policy and his specific plans to bring America back to the limited government our Founding Fathers envisioned. I hope to hear more about those things in the future so that I can make an educated choice in the 2016 Republican primary election.

Why We Can’t Trust Congress With Taxpayer Money

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Today’s New York Post posted an article about the bill for Hurricane Sandy relief now before Congress. President Obama has requested $60.4 billion in relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The article reports:

The pork-barrel feast includes more than $8 million to buy cars and equipment for the Homeland Security and Justice departments. It also includes a whopping $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to dole out to fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for the Smithsonian Institution to repair museum roofs in DC.

An eye-popping $13 billion would go to “mitigation” projects to prepare for future storms.

Other big-ticket items in the bill include $207 million for the VA Manhattan Medical Center; $41 million to fix up eight military bases along the storm’s path, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; $4 million for repairs at Kennedy Space Center in Florida; $3.3 million for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and $1.1 million to repair national cemeteries.

We truly need to take away the credit card away from Congress. The problem is that the money that the victims of Hurricane Sandy need will be held up if the bill is carefully scrutinized, but the taxpayers will be fleeced if the bill is not examined carefully and the pork spending removed. What we really need is a few grown-ups in Washington.

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Who Is Teaching Our Children and What They Are Teaching Them ?

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I have spoken before on this website about Reza Kahlili. The Daily Caller describes him as follows:

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

His website, A Time To Betray posted an article today about Abbas Maleki, the Iranian regime’s former deputy foreign minister and adviser to the Supreme Leader. Mr. Maleki is set to begin his academic career in America at Harvard and MIT.

The website includes a video:

It’s time to think about what our ‘best and brightest’ are learning in college.

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