The Border Crisis is By Design

On October 8, 2005, Barack Obama  vowed to "fundamentally transform America" and he has certainly lived up to his promise.  With one crisis and scandal after another (IRS, NSA, VA, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, an out of control EPA, Obamacare, and negotiating with terrorists, to name a few) we are a much weaker and less esteemed country than ever before.  We are more racially divided, we are angrier, and we have little trust in our government or optimism for the future.

It's all by design.

He told you he was going to do it, and he did.

Obama's plan to transform America is no more evident than in the border crisis.  Andrew McCarthy has an excellent post on this topic at National Review Online:

The president has spent nearly six years giving effective legal immunity to millions of illegal aliens already here. His administration, meanwhile, hooks them on the government gravy train and fights state efforts to detain them, deny social services to them, and prevent them from fraudulently voting. Under those circumstances, the rolling out of a federal red carpet for teeming masses of illegal aliens must be understood as intentional.

It is absolutely intentional.

And, of course, Obama blames Bush for this.  No, really.  Andrew McCarthy explains that this is a clever ploy by Obama because much of this controversy involves a Clinton-era anti-human trafficking law which during the Bush years, in re-authorization, picked up an amendment added by Feinstein and Biden; in short, the anti-human trafficking law concerns those children who are "coercively trafficked into the country for purposes of sex-slavery or other indentured servitude."   

That is not the case here; so the blame-Bush's-law defense of the left does not play.  The Bush-era law attempts to protect those kids brought here unwillingly; the current crisis involved illegals coming quite willingly.

McCarthy again:

The January 2014 solicitation published by DHS’s bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement foretells (a) the arrival of 65,000 “unaccompanied alien children,” and, tellingly, (b) the administration’s intention to transfer them to “Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters located throughout the continental United States.” 

Refugee Resettlement.  That does not sound like deportation.

It is team Obama's plan to relocate these illegals throughout the United States and into your neighborhoods.

The end result is thousands of new, unskilled workers on the public dole, a further erosion of our American values, an increased drain on our already troubled education system, and utter havoc in an already ruined health care system.  Of these illegals that are, in fact, children (and not all of them are - get that image of sweet, doe-eyed, hungry toddlers out of your head), how many are vaccinated and know English?  How many will want to assimilate into our American culture and become productive members of society?

Lest I be perceived as a heartless bigot, let me assure you, I'm all for legal immigration.  I know people who have done it the right way and as Americans, we welcome them with open arms.  That is our way.  This, however, is not the Ellis Island of your ancestors.

These new immigrants are not refugees from war torn countries; they are political pawns.

One of the more troubling aspect of all this is the secrecy; the administration touts "privacy rights."  Some of these illegals are being housed at Fort Sill, OK, yet an Oklahoma congressional representative was barred from visiting the immigration center.

The administration won't say where all these kids are going.  Two hundred of these illegals were sent to Nebraska yet the governor was not notified and the administration won't identify them or their locations.

"Governors and mayors have the right to know when the federal government is transporting a large group of individuals, in this case illegal immigrants, into your state," Mr. Heineman told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Saturday. "We need to know who they are, and so far, they are saying they're not going to give us that information."

Here in Louisiana, Senator David Vitter sent a letter on July 10 to find out how many and where these illegals might be coming to this state.  He got no response.  According to the Louisiana Hayride:

And now, four members of the state’s congressional delegation – Bill Cassidy, John Fleming, Charles Boustany and Vance McAllister – have sent a similar letter.

Camp Minden is a possibility and local news station KSLA reported that Hirsch Coliseum has been contacted about holding some of them.  (Shades of Katrina refugees ... ).

Senator Vitter and Rep. Cassidy have introduced bills in both the House and Senate that would:

• Requires mandatory detention of all unaccompanied minors upon apprehension by border agents.
• Gives unaccompanied minors the option to voluntarily return to their country of origin.
• Places unaccompanied aliens children affiliated with gangs in an “expedited” removal proceeding.
• Raises the standards for “credible fear of persecution” to “substantiated fear of persecution” for unaccompanied minors seeking asylum under the law.
• Places unaccompanied minors without claims for asylum on the next available flight to their home countries within 72 hours of an initial screening, barring cost, feasibility, repatriation agreements with the minors’ countries and the health and safety of the minor.
• Extends the bar to reentry for all illegal aliens to 10 years.
• Requires Secretary of Homeland Security to submit an annual report to Congress detailing voluntary departures, deportations, and grants of refugee or asylum status.

In the end, it comes down to how much the states are willing to take of this nonsense.  As McCarthy pointed out:

And if a renegade United States government is not going to secure the borders of the United States, the states must secure their borders or surrender. As the Supreme Court recognized in 1837, each state has a sovereign right and duty of self-defense ...

Obama voters got what they wished for:  a fundamentally transformed America.

Obama Prepares to Surrender Afghanistan

Andrew McCarthy is sounding the alarm:  Obama is preparing to surrender Afghanistan back to the Taliban:

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.

ABC News reported yesterday that the Taliban is preparing to open its first official office in Qatar:

The office is expected to open as early as the next few months in Qatar, the officials told ABC News, and facilitate negotiations with the Taliban that will include unprecedented local ceasefires in Afghanistan and the transfer of Afghan prisoners from American prisons — even though they are labeled “high risk” to the U.S. and associated with the death of a CIA officer in 2001.

John Hinderaker at PowerLine points out that it would be a real "coup" for Obama to run for re-election on the boast that he's ended two wars, especially as unpopular as the Afghanistan incursion has been.

According to the Hindu report:

Earlier this month, the sources said, Mr. al-Qaradawi helped draw a road map for a deal between the Taliban and the United States, aimed at giving the superpower a face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan which is due to begin in 2014. 

In return for the release of prisoners still held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, the lifting of United Nations sanctions on its leadership and its recognition as a legitimate political group, the Taliban was expected to agree to sever its links to transnational organisations like al-Qaeda, end violence and eventually share power with the Afghan government.

Yet for Team Obama to recruit Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is stunning.  McCarthy has much more on him, referring to him as the "most influential Sunni Islamist in the world."  McCarthy also points out that in 2003 he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq.

Is this the best guy we can find to support American interests in the region? 

McCarthy has much more on Qaradawi:

I wrote about Qaradawi at length in The Grand Jihad and, here at NRO, have regularly catalogued his activities (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here; see also Andrew Bostom’s “Qaradawi’s Odious Vision”).

Debra Burlingame linked to this video in her Facebook feed of Qaradawi spewing vile antisemitism and vowing to kill Jews "even if in a wheelchair."  He is bent on the destruction of Israel.

This is who Obama calls upon to bring peace to the region?

McCarthy sums it up best:

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

It nauseates me.

Slaying the Budget Beast

Andy McCarthy must have missed his coffee this morning.  He has a glorious rant posted over at The Corner blasting the "half-pittance" the Republicans settled for in the budget deal last night.  He makes some valid points but I do think there are a couple of good things about the budget deal.  I like that Boehner is forcing a Senate vote on the repeal of Obamacare; nobody expects it to pass, of course, but I like that it puts everyone on record.  Now, is that enough of a concession to settle for this paltry amount in cuts?  Probably not, which is what has McCarthy riled up:

With due respect, I think those who are praising the budget deal are deluding themselves. Under circumstances where we are trillions of dollars in debt, the GOP just caved on its promise to cut the relative pittance of $61 billion in spending because it’s just not worth fighting for more than the half-pittance of $40 billion Democrats claimed was their drop-dead number. “Drop dead” meant daring Republicans to shut the government down (which, as we know, doesn’t actually shut the government down). The Republicans blinked. 

Boehner said last night that this was "as good a deal we could get."  Really?  Why?  McCarthy makes a valid point when he says

A mere four months ago, the big controversy in conservative and Republican circles was whether the GOP had reneged on their vaunted pledge to cut $100B in spending in the current fiscal year because they had seemingly come down to $61B. As I noted at the time, there was no question that, if you looked at the fine print of the pledge, the commitment was $61B — but that if you looked at reality, both $61B and $100B were laughably unserious. 

It's difficult to argue with him when he says that $40 billion is pittance when you're looking at trillions.  
One person in the comments to McCarthy's post said:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Until we take the Senate and/or the White House we are going to have to do this incrementally. One salami slice at a time...

That's a lot of salami.  At this rate it would take us lifetimes to get the deficit under control. 

 On the other hand, there are plenty of people out there praising the deal and calling this deal a big win.  Phillip Klein calls it a deal "Republicans should be happy about":

But [Boehner]  did use what leverage he had to get a lot more out of Democrats than they wanted to give up. Democrats didn't want any spending cuts, and President Obama's original budget proposed spending that was $78.5 billion higher than what was agreed upon tonight. (The House and Senate are passing a seven-day stopgap measure that will cut the first $2 billion and give lawmakers more time to craft a final draft of the bill.) The deal includes a provision that would deny federal funds to pay for abortions in Washington, DC and would allow for Senate votes on the Planned Parenthood funding ban and repeal of ObamaCare -- both of which will force vulnerable Democrats into tough votes. And keep in mind that the ban on Planned Parenthood funding would have expired at the end of the budget year -- Sept. 30 -- anyway.

Klein stresses the fact that with a liberal Senate and a liberal President, at this point, we need to take what we can while still "holding Republicans' feet to the fire."  No doubt.

I sympathize completely with Mr. McCarthy's frustration but I think at the same time this is a battle that, as Klein and others have stated, is just going to have to be done incrementally.  Win the White House, win the Senate, and then let's talk.

(Much more at Memeorandum)

Have Some More Coffee and Read These Links

Here are some quick links for you this morning:

A must-read is this post at The Foundry regarding the unconstitutionality of the Nebraska Compromise. The Attorneys General of 13 states have written a letter to Nancy Pelosi in protest:

The deal is said to involve an agreement that the Federal Government’s taxpayers will assume indefinitely the full share of the costs that Nebraska will incur as the result of the expansion of Medicaid that is one of the Act’s effects. The result is not only preferential treatment for Nebraska but it also hurts the rest of us because the other States will have to make up the difference. Such preferential treatment is constitutionally suspect; it cannot be reconciled with several important principles incorporated in the Constitution. The Founders would not have dreamed of taking a burden that all of the States should share and allocating it to only some of them. Likewise, they would not have seen the spending of taxpayer money for the benefit of only one State to be in the general interest.


Professor Jacobson reports that Scott Brown is shaking things up in MA:

Rasmussen is the first major polling organization to poll the Massachusetts Senate special election, and the "pre-released" poll numbers show Martha Coakley (D) with just a 9% lead over Scott Brown (R), which would be consistent with other polls. This post will be updated with further analysis once the official numbers are released. [See Update No. 2 below - official results released - Brown within 2% among people who definitely will vote and has a large lead among indepenents.]


William Murchison questions whether or not Obama really understands the war on terror:

Why is the government decanting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab into the civilian justice system after he tried to destroy an airliner filled with innocent passengers? Why are we affording this enemy agent the legal protections that obtain in a land he wants to destroy? The administration is going to answer for this one, with volume turned up.

Andy McCarthy exercises some caution on the decision to uphold the conviction of Moussaoui:

The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed the conviction and sentence of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Enthusiasts of the law-enforcement approach to terrorism will undoubtedly claim this development as more evidence that their strategy works. To the contrary, I have argued several times (see, e.g., here and here) that we dodged a bullet with Moussaoui — i.e., if he had not surprised everyone by pleading guilty, if he had instead insisted on proceeding with his trial (not just the penalty phase but the guilt phase), the case might well have ended disastrously.

And finally, Michelle Malkin is all over the upcoming health care debate, including C-SPAN's request that they be allowed to televise deliberations.

A Constitutional Crisis in National Security

Don't miss Andy McCarthy's article at NRO today about the constitutional crisis we find ourselves in right now. Here is a condensed recap:

On courts demanding release of detainees:

The courts have no more right to tell the president to release an enemy combatant than a president has to tell a judge how to rule on the validity of a contract. The president’s war powers are more than adequately checked by Congress, which could close Gitmo and require the repatriation of all enemy combatants tomorrow if it were disposed to do so. The courts should have no say in the disposition of alien enemy combatants in wartime.

*****

A judicial finding that there is insufficient evidence to hold a detainee as a combatant ...does nothing more than impose on the executive branch a duty to make good-faith efforts to deport the combatant in a manner that is consistent with American national security. That means finding a country willing to take the prisoner, and — here’s the important part — ensuring that such a country is a functioning, responsible state that can guarantee the detainee will not threaten the United States.

On the President's responsibility to protect the nation:

What is the administration thinking? As the intelligence debacle surrounding the Christmas Day attack shows, President Obama will be blamed for failures to take obvious steps to thwart terrorists. He has the constitutional obligation to protect the nation, and Congress is firmly in the grasp of his party. If he proposed sensible procedures for terrorists’ detention cases, he’d get nigh-unanimous Republican support — and Democrats would go along regardless of the Left’s grumbling. The Bush administration, through Attorney General Mukasey, tried to spur Congress to act, but Democrats turned a deaf ear. Politcally, Obama can get it done. Why doesn’t he?

On the Justice Department's failure to appeal bad judicial decisions:

These are cases involving jihadists trained to kill innocents. They are not the cases you compromise on: You take them all the way. If a district judge gives you a lunatic ruling, you appeal to the D.C. Circuit. If you lose there, you take it to the Supreme Court. Aside from having good-faith reasons to play out the string, this gives you months or years of time — time during which dangerous people stay detained while you have the opportunity to go to Congress and ask for help in the form of a legislative remedy to rein in the judges.

Why isn’t this being done? Americans are more than entitled to surmise that it is because there is a serious pro-detainee bias in this Justice Department.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

I don't think anyone would argue that terror attacks have stepped up in the past year. I heard the spin meisters on the Sunday shows yesterday saying things like, 'Well al Qaeda hasn't progressed very much if they're still focusing on conducting terror using airplanes.' I'm paraphrasing but that was the essence of it. Another said something to the effect that 'Boy we sure have al Qaeda on the run if they're resorting to sewing explosives into underwear; they're running out of ideas.'

It's a real stretch, to my mind, to find anything positive in the latest terror attacks, excepting the fact that it failed - that is certainly positive. Although, one could say that on one level it was a success because we certainly are terrorized now. We are afraid.

McCarthy is spot on when he attempts to hold the President and Congress responsible for protecting this nation. It's time they stepped up to that responsibility and setting terrorists free, or bringing them to U.S. soil, is not the way to go about it.

(Cross posted at What Would the Founding Fathers Do?)

"This 'case' tees up like a slam-dunk."

Andy McCarthy is making the same point that I, and probably others, was making earlier today with regard to the Underpants Terrorist. Since this administration treats terrorists like shoplifters, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will likely exercise his right to remain silent, lawyer up, and reveal nothing to investigators.

Imagine the information this clod could provide if he were actually treated like a terrorist! Training with al Qaeda in Yemen is bound to be somewhat interesting to interrogators. Any knowledge of future attacks? Names of active terrorists? Locations? Anything? No, as a result, we'll get nothing but, as McCarthy puts it, a "success" in the books of the Obama administration for catching a terrorist:

Here, no thanks to the government, the plane was not destoyed, and we won't get to the bottom of the larger conspiracy (enabling the likes of Napolitano to say there's no indication of a larger plot — much less one launched by an international jihadist enterprise) because the guy got to lawyer up rather than be treated like a combatant and subjected to lengthy interrogation. But the terrorist will be convicted at trial (this "case" tees up like a slam-dunk), so the administration will put it in the books as a success ... just like the Clinton folks did after the '93 WTC bombers and the embassy bombers were convicted. In their minds, litigation success equals national security success.

Honestly, they don't get it and it scares the crap out of me.

Maybe this is what Napolitano meant when she said "the system worked." Maybe she's thinking about the future conviction. What a dolt.

Because, trust me, "the system" didn't work. And it isn't going to at this rate.

210 - 6 = 204

New this morning is that six of the Yemeni detainees at Gitmo will be released to their home country and the Washington Post reports that this is "a transfer that could be a prelude to the release of dozens more detainees to Yemen, according to sources with independent knowledge of the matter."

Nearly one hundred of the remained detainees at Gitmo are Yemenis. The Post reports that the transfer will be "closely monitored" and if it is successful, meaning, I suppose, if they don't return to active jihad against us, that more will follow. Given that this White House can't properly manage security for a State Dinner, I'm not sure how much confidence I have in their ability to monitor six Yemeni terrorists.

In related Gitmo news, Andrew McCarthy has posted two spot on articles this week regarding the Thomson, Illinois transfer.

Yesterday's article makes the point that it's not Gitmo that causes terrorism, despite what the Obama administration would have us believe. Today, he explains how terrorists could, in fact, be released into the United States from Thomson:

Nevertheless, Durbin is being disingenuous — doubly disingenuous, in fact. First, the principal fear is no longer that the Obama administration will try to free the terrorists and relocate them here. It is that the federal courts will order the release of the detainees. And second, the senator’s brave assurance that if “a detainee is found not guilty, he will not be released inside the United States” is a smokescreen. As he well knows, most of the Gitmo terrorists are not going to be found guilty or found not guilty — they’re not going to be tried at all.

Be sure to read them both.

The fact is, this administration cares little for national security and has demonstrated that over and over and over again from their attacks on the CIA to bringing terrorists to American soil. It doesn't matter where these detainees are held! Nobody can be so naive to believe that simply bringing them to a new prison will change how the Islamofascists view Americans. They won't suddenly call a truce on us because we've closed Guantanamo.

They won't even call a truce on us for leaking detainees from Gitmo to various countries around the world. Six here, four there, ten there, one over there.... In fact, many of those will return to war against us. I'm sure they have no bitter feelings, right?

"The problem on this ride is not the destination; it's the journey."

Andrew McCarthy has an OpEd in The New York Daily News regarding the decision to bring KSM to New York for trial. I consider McCarthy a worthy source on this subject as he was one of the prosecutors on the Blind Sheikh trial in 1995.

McCarthy argues against this move for the same reason I have been trying to convey. He says "The problem on this ride is not the destination; it's the journey."

That's exactly why this is such a bad decision. The left keeps accusing opponents of this decision of "having no faith" in the American justice system. That is NOT the case. Nobody doubts that a conviction can be obtained. Well, barring a crazy, off the reservation kind of judge who decides to "go rouge" and throw out everything.

No, the problem is what will be revealed in the mean time. We're still at war. We still have American soldiers in harm's way fighting this enemy every single day. We're putting them at risk by turning over our intelligence gathering secrets and information to KSM and his attorneys.

McCarthy points out:

Now, our enemies will be given a full-blown civilian trial with all the rights of the American citizens they are sworn to kill. They will get a year or more to sift through our national defense secrets. They will have wide latitude to turn the case into a trial of the Bush administration - publicizing information about anti-terrorism tactics that leftist lawyers will exploit in their quest for war crimes prosecutions in foreign courts against current and former U.S. officials.

As these guys had already confessed and had asked for the death penalty in a military commission, why back up and start all over in a civilian court? You must ask why, ALWAYS, with Obama.

In a military trial, McCarthy says, "we could have denied them access to classified information, forcing them to accept military lawyers with security clearances who could see such intelligence but not share it with our enemies."

Holder and the Obama administration are knowingly putting American citizens, national security, and American soldiers under undue risk.

Even worse, it sends a message to other terrorists out there that "If you kill thousands of civilians, we will give you better rights than if you attack military assets. That is dangerously irresponsible."

Why?