Tuesday, June 09, 2015

A Contrast in Delusions: The TSA vs. Domestic Immigration Enforcement

Posted By Michael Cutler On June 9, 2015 @ 12:07 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments
Berlin_Schönefeld_Airport_metal_detectors[1]On June 2, 2015 the Washington Times published a report about how massive failures of screeners employed by the TSA, an agency that operates under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), failed to find weapons, in the great majority of instances, when undercover operatives went through the screening process. 
The acting chief of the Transportation Security Administration [3] was ousted late Monday night after an embarrassing new report found that airport security officers badly failed a new test, missing almost every firearm and explosive investigators tried to sneak by them. 
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson [4] announced the move, saying Melvin Carraway had been “reassigned” to another part of the department and his deputy would take over, serving until the Senate can confirm a new chief. 
Earlier in the night Mr. Johnson [4] had said he’d just been given a classified briefing on the inspector general’s findings that found a major loophole in security that could allow people to sneak prohibited items by TSA [3] screeners and into what were supposed to be secure areas of airports. 
Mr. Johnson [4] said the preliminary findings were classified and said it wasn’t “appropriate or prudent” to talk about them — but ABC News reported that IG investigators managed to sneak contraband material by TSA [3] screeners in 67 of 70 tests.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and contains a number of agencies that are charged with addressing the failures that enabled the terrorists who carried out those attacks, to enter the United States, embed themselves in the United States and then hijack airliners, using them as de facto “cruise missiles.”

Among the agencies that operate under the aegis of the DHS are:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA): This agency is charged with keeping weapons or other harmful materials off of airliners along with people who appear on “no fly lists.” It is a simple concept and one that is apparently easy for people to comprehend. In order to achieve this goal officers employed by the TSA carry out ever more intrusive searches of airline passengers and their baggage. Passengers are subjected to x-rays, raising concerns. Passengers are also prohibited from bringing certain items into the passenger cabin of the airliners including large quantities of liquids, etc.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP): The mission of this agency, which includes inspectors at ports of entry, and Border Patrol, which operates between ports of entry, is to make certain that aliens and cargo are not smuggled into the United States and that the inspection of both people and objects keep criminals and terrorists along with other foreign nationals whose presence would be problematic, from entering the United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): This agency is charged with enforcing our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States to backstop the personnel at CBP. When aliens evade the inspections process by entering the United States without inspection, ICE is supposed to seek them out and take them into custody so that they can be removed (deported from the United States). ICE is also responsible for identifying, locating and arresting aliens who are lawfully admitted but then go on to violate the terms of their admission by overstaying their authorized period of admission, accepting unlawful employment, failing to attend schools (in the case of foreign students) or being convicted of committing crimes.

ICE is also supposed to conduct investigations into possible fraud when applicants lie about material facts in applications for various immigration benefits for aliens filed with USCIS and to conduct investigations to identify, arrest and prosecute fraud document vendors.
Finally, ICE assigns agents to work on various multi-agency task forces.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS): This agency employs adjudications officers who are responsible for adjudicating applications for immigration benefits. If an Alien Registration Receipt Card, a “Green Card,” and especially United States citizenship are the “keys to the kingdom,” then USCIS is America’s locksmith. This agency confers these benefits, in addition to others, upon aliens.

The ink was barely dry in the newspaper reports about the failures of the TSA to find planted weapons when the director of that agency was re-assigned. Jeh Johnson wasted no time in shaking up the agency that is supposed to keep weapons and terrorists off of our airliners.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he was as determined to keep alien criminals, terrorists and narcotics out of the United States and off the streets of towns and cities across our nation?

Time and time again politicians from both sides of the political aisle claim that the immigration system is “broken.” They claim that the presence of millions of illegal aliens prove how broken the system is. For most of the politicians, the “fix” is to provide millions of aliens who entered the United States without inspection is to simply provide them with lawful status and identity documents — knowing full well that the sheer number of aliens would preclude the ability to conduct in-person interviews or conduct routine field investigations to deter fraud. Effective enforcement of our laws to deter illegal immigration and other violations of our immigration laws is never discussed by anyone.

The 9/11 Commission Report [5] noted that flaws and vulnerabilities in the immigration system failed to prevent the entry and subsequent embedding of not only the 19 hijackers who savagely attacked our nation on that horrific day nearly 14 years ago, but other terrorists who were identified as operating in the United States in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11.

In point of fact, it was determined that the ability of the terrorists to travel around the world and cross international borders, especially the borders of the United States, and embed themselves were essential to ability of the terrorists to carry out those deadly attacks.

These obvious facts were not only a major theme of the 9/11 Commission report and findings, but also for the staff of federal agents, from a variety of federal agencies, and for the attorneys who were assigned to assist the work of the 9/11 Commission.

To this point, one of the reports that the 9/11 Commission staff produced was the “9/11 and Terrorist Travel [6] Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” This report was one of several that members of the 9/11 Commission staff, the federal agents and the attorneys, wrote about the findings of the Commission,

This report focused specifically on the ability of the terrorists to travel around the world, enter the United States and ultimately embed themselves in the United States as they went about their deadly preparations. The preface of this report begins with the following paragraph:
It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.
Page 61 contained this passage:
Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists
In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.149 Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.150 With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel.
This paragraph is found on page 98 under the title “Immigration Benefits”:
Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.
On April 25, 2013 the Associated Press published an article, “GOP rep weighs asylum review in immigration bill” [7] that included this excerpt:
“People getting asylum because they are in the minority, but engaging in aggressive tactics in their home country that may cause them to be susceptible to doing the same thing elsewhere, that obviously ought to be a part of our consideration in granting political asylum to avoid situations like Boston,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who’s working to develop a series of bills to fix problems with the country’s immigration system. 
Goodlatte didn’t specify what might need to be changed in the asylum process, only saying it’s something that bears examination in the wake of the Boston bombings. So do with other aspects of the U.S. immigration system, including the naturalization process by which immigrants become U.S. citizens, Goodlatte said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a U.S. citizen while Tamerlan Tsarnaev had sought citizenship but had not had his application granted.
Chairman Goodlatte is certainly correct that the process by which applications for political asylum and United States citizenship need to be studied to make certain that this important humane program not undermine national security and public safety. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee he called hearings into abuses and vulnerabilities of the asylum program that defy comprehension.

On February 11, 2014, a hearing was conducted by the House Judiciary Committee on the issue: “Asylum Fraud: Abusing America’s Compassion [8]?”

On December 12, 2013, a hearing was conducted on the issue: “Asylum Abuse: Is it Overwhelming our Borders [9]?”

It is worth noting that the December 12th hearing limited its concerns to how abuse of the political asylum program was overwhelming our borders. In point of fact, this program has overwhelmed the entire immigration system in each and every one of our fifty states. Of course limiting the hearing to the issue of only “our borders” coincides neatly with the myth that all our nation needs to do in preparation for a massive amnesty program is to secure our southern border.

Both hearings made it clear that there is a serious lack of integrity to the political asylum program. This important humanitarian program processes thousands of applications each year. Yet, the fraud rate in this program bears witness to the lack of integrity. Because USCIS cannot effectively identify fraud and take measures to counter this fraud, national security is compromised.

Yet absolutely nothing has been done to address this vulnerability that was identified by the 9/11 Commission in its report issued more than a decade ago. In fact, the administations policies have so overloaded the immigration system that hundreds of thousands of applications for immigration benefits, such as the “DREAMers” have been processed without face-to-face interviews.

Could you imagine if the TSA, which has drawn the attention and ire of the media, and the administration conducted business the way that USCIS does its critical job?

The lack of integrity to the adjudications process has been the subject of a series of congressional hearings, Inspector General (OIG) investigations and reports, yet things have only gotten worse since.

On March 19, 2002 I was one of four witnesses called to testify at a hearing that was conducted by the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. The title of the hearing was: “INS’s March 2002 Notification of Approval of Change of Status for Pilot Training for Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi.” [10]

This hearing was covered by C-SPAN. Every member of Congress should be required to watch that C-SPAN video [11]. Virtually none of the promises made at that hearing to remedy the failures of the immigration system that were behind that glaring example of incompetence have been effectively addressed to this very day. Indeed, our nation has moved in precisely the opposite direction.

On November 20, 2013 ABC News reported, “Exclusive: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees. [12]” This is not a new problem. On July 13, 2011 the Washington Times published a truly disturbing article, “Visas reviewed to find those who overstayed / Aim is to find any would-be terrorists [13].”

Consider that on September 2, 2014 ABC News reported, “Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to ‘Track Missing Foreign Students.'” [14]

On May 2, 2013, I was interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News to discuss the immigration component of the terror bombing of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013 by the Tsarnaev brothers. Fox News posted a video of the discussion under the title, “Immigration Expert: The System Failed in Boston and Keeps on Failing [15].”

The New York Times published an article on May 20, 2015, “In Osama bin Laden Library: Illuminati and Bob Woodward” [16] that reported on what American commandos discovered when they raided bin Laden’s compound on May 2, 2011. Here is a significant paragraph:
He also appeared to have maintained a keen interest in what the United States government thought of Al Qaeda. A copy of “The 9/11 Commission Report” was found in the compound in Abbottabad, as were three reports on Al Qaeda by the Congressional Research Service. There was also an application for American citizenship (no word on whether it was filled out).
I addressed this issue in two of my recent commentaries.

On May 19, 2015 FrontPage Magazine published my article, “Terrorists Value U.S. Citizenship More Than Our Politicians Do [17].”

On May 22, 2015 Californians for Population Stabilization published my article, “Bin Laden, The 9/11 Commission Report and Immigration [18].”

It must be believed that bin Laden read the 9/11 Commission Report. The obvious question is whether our political “leaders” from either party have read that report and the companion report issued by the 9/11 Commission Staff.

One member of Congress who has definitely read those reports, and is admanant about the contents of them, is Congressman Lou Barletta from Pennsylvania. I consider Lou Barletta to be a good friend. When he was the mayor of the town of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, prior to running for Congress, he was horrified to find that a Dominican drug gang had set up shop in his town. Suddenly he had to confront murder and a variety of other crimes attributed to illegal alien gang members.

He traveled to Washington to seek help from the Bush administration and was told, in essence, that he was on his own. He returned to Hazleton and, faced with no alternative, he installed the first local ordinances ever enacted on the local level against the hiring of illegal aliens. He was promptly sued. I was his final witness at the federal trial that followed.

On September 3, 2013 I joined Congressman Lou Barletta on the campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to participate in a town hall meeting on the topic of “Immigration Policy and Homeland Security.” Marc Bernier, a radio show host on Dayton Beach, Florida radio station WNDB, and an assistant to the president of Embry-Riddle University, moderated the discussion.
The video of that event is available online as a C-SPAN video [19].

Lou and I have worked closely on immigration issues ever since. He quoted me [20] when he participated in a congressional Homeland Security hearing into first responders and then went on to read relevant excerpts from the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel and asked if they agreed that it would make sense to prevent the next terror attack by following the advice contained in those reports rather than have to deal with an attack because we failed to take that advice seriously.

At a hearing on December 2, 2014 Lou questioned Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about amnesty and the 9/11 Commission report at a hearing. A video [21] of that exchange is well-worth watching. During their exchange Barletta became frustrated with Johnson’s responses and said, in part, “When it comes to illegal immigration, the conversation is always about the illegal immigrant and not about the people it would effect…and it’s not fair.”

On January 12, 2015 Lou discussed [22] the fact that there would be no face-to-face interviews for applicants for amnesty at a hearing on the funding of Homeland Security.

Nevertheless, thus far not a single presidential candidate has acknowledged the fact that America’s borders and immigration laws are our first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals. Not one of these politicians has connected the need to effectively enforce our immigration laws to protect the jobs of American workers. Leaders of both political parties, the “Repugnantcans” and “Demoncrats” as I have come to refer to them, talk about the need for defeating ISIS and addressing national security and protect America and Americans from terrorists. They all talk about creating jobs and getting the stagnant economy going. Yet no one has been willing to “connect the dots” between immigration and these threats to national security, public safety or the well-being of American workers and their families.

It is long overdue that our leaders, irrespective of political party, would be as determined to keep terrorists and criminals and narcotics out of the United States as they are to keep weapons and terrorists off of airliners. When an unauthorized person opens a wrong door at an airport the airport goes into lockdown. However, according to our “leaders,” aliens who run our borders have “earned” citizenship.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here [23].
LIKE [24] Frontpagemag.com on Facebook and Subscribe [25] to Jamie Glazov Productions [25].
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com


URLs in this post:


[2] TSA chief ousted after airport security flunks test, misses most weapons, explosives: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/1/tsa-chief-ousted-after-airport-security-flunks-tes/



[5] The 9/11 Commission Report: http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf


[7] “GOP rep weighs asylum review in immigration bill”: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/gop-rep-wants-asylum-review-immigration-bill



[10] “INS’s March 2002 Notification of Approval of Change of Status for Pilot Training for Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi.”:http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju78298.000/hju78298_0f.htm


[12] “Exclusive: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees.: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131

[13] Visas reviewed to find those who overstayed / Aim is to find any would-be terrorists: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/13/visas-reviewed-to-find-those-who-overstayed/#.TiMniZ96LSg.email

[14] Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to ‘Track Missing Foreign Students.'”: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/visa-program-struggles-track-missing-foreign-students/story?id=25208740

[15] Immigration Expert: The System Failed in Boston and Keeps on Failing: http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/05/02/immigration-expert-system-much-worse-shape-people-think

[16] “In Osama bin Laden Library: Illuminati and Bob Woodward”: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/asia/bin-laden-bookshelf-list-released-by-us-intelligence-agency.html?_r=0


[18] Bin Laden, The 9/11 Commission Report and Immigration: http://www.capsweb.org/blog/bin-laden-911-commission-report-and-immigration







[25] Subscribe: http://jamieglazov.com/
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Monday, June 08, 2015

Entire World Headed to Us: Ann Coulter Denounced for Noticing

By Mallory Millett
http://www.americanthinker.com/
June 8, 2015


Jorge Ramos and Ann Coulter

Of all the people I know in the world of political commentary, Ann Coulter is the most un-ransomable captive to truth, in-depth-study of facts, consequences and her Daughters of The Revolution passion for America.

The other week, I traveled to Miami with Ann for her debate with Jorge Ramos, of Univision TV, over her new book, "Adios America." She'd crawled out of her sickbed to keep that date.  I know, because I was the pal who for days dashed back and forth with the raw ginger, mango juice, Alka-Seltzer Plus/Nightime, cases of water, various lozenges and prescriptions from CVS.  It was imperative that she be well for what she considered an important interview.  And, whew, she made it!

Although still ill, Ann came with a fully loaded quiver and Jorge was no match for her.  I was disappointed, for I'd expected a sparkling event but this reporter came to the test without his homework. He began the interview by challenging her numbers.

Anyone with the slightest exposure to Ann knows never to do that.  She’s forever under the menacing microscopic eye of "The Vast left-wing Conspiracy" and makes it her business to come fully bolstered by indisputable facts, facts, facts.

The only racist on that stage was Jorge Ramos, who could not stop attacking the white lady long enough to truly hear the incontrovertibles she pronounced in rapid-fire sequence.  He constantly spoke over her.  Reality visibly bewildered Jorgito.  Truth hurt.  It was traumatic for him, super-surprising and threatening; he kept getting smaller and smaller as solid facts, logic and reasoning flew through the air and over his head.

I call Ann a "lady" because that's what she is -- through and through.  We've experienced much together for many years so I'm fully equipped to speak of her.  She is, indeed, a lady, kind, fine and generous.  A lady with a sting, yes, but I've found genuine ladies are pretty tough dames who suffer not knaves gladly.

She was wrong because she was too white.  An honest ear and open heart would not be coming from Ramos’ audience to her.  No mercy for white people!  Plug your ears and sing, "la, la, la, la, la, la, la" because anyone that white must be bad and should never be heard.  She's too white not to be a racist; too white to deserve belief.

Ann was the only one in the hall who added fresh insight to the encounter.  One point she made clear is that if an immigrant flees a Third World dump, the last thing he wants is to watch his country of sanctuary become the place he escaped. This possibility didn't faze Ramos, probably because his fondest hope for America could be utter failure: a brand-new deficient nation for the world: Northern Mexamerica.  

Ramos introduced Ann as someone "who doesn't want immigration reform"... that sort of sleazy semantic manipulation: (Newspeak for "This is a bad person")  

Wrong.  

Ann most definitely demands immigration reform -- total reform: shut down the agency; a triple fence on the border; no one coming in, even legally, for a decade; complete overhaul of the laws.  Now, that would be honest-to-gosh real reform.

When she mentioned crime statistics, Ramos did have his gotcha ready: "Oh, so do you think certain people are biologically predisposed to committing crimes?"  (You racist, you!)  Ann fired back, "No, I think there are cultures that are, obviously, deficient and if they weren't deficient you (Jorge Ramos) wouldn't be sitting here in America interviewing me.  I'd be sitting in Mexico.  You, yourself, fled that culture!"

She explained to Ramos that the America to which the immigrants ran can't sustain itself and won't exist; soon they'll be in the same stew out of which they jumped.  This is not a race issue; it's a culture issue.  They left for very good reasons.  "You fled Mexico!" she exclaimed, adding, "Why do you think Mexicans who came to America would want to recreate Mexico here?  You are not speaking for the legal immigrants who ran from Mexico.  They left."

"America needs diversity!" Ramos cried.  She cried back, "One quarter of the population of Mexico has emptied into America already. Thirty percent of legals are Mexicans; sixty percent of illegals are Mexicans.  That's not diversity!”

I couldn't grasp what she'd just said:  That 25% of Mexico's people had relocated to the US?  Do people know this?

Ann pressed on, "That's the Mexification of America. How many would be enough?" Jorge fell into shocked silence.  "How many?" Ann insisted.  "One half?... ALL of Mexico?  Should we just take in all of Mexico?"  Ramos was dumbstruck.
Perhaps if someone had clued him in that Ann was captain of her lacrosse team in High School as well as a fencing “champion” in the Connecticut State Finals he might have boned up a tad more.  Seeing him struggle to keep up was like having to watch me play tennis with Sharapova.

Jorge Ramos ain't got the chops to get on a stage with Ann Coulter any more than NBC’S Matt Lauer -- which is probably why you won’t see Ann on The Today Show anytime soon.  Nor was James Carville up to dueling with her in Atlantic City a few years ago.  She soooo demolished James that he was reduced to incomprehensible babbling, his body doubled into a hook-shape resembling osteoporosis, his face pitched toward the floor and during the last fifteen minutes he bobbled about like an unfit prizefighter facing Sugar Ray.  I got scared something was happening to Carville; was it a psychotic episode?  Woe betide anyone who doesn't have the stuff and climbs into a ring with Ann.  She made hash of him. It was embarrassing.  Had I been Mary Matalin, I'd have packed up and left that night with a kid under each arm.

It's amusing the way the Left is dependably bewildered by well-armed, well-equipped adversaries. Inevitably, they resort to trickery, sleight of hand, their infernal sound bites and bumper-sticker philosophies.  Mr. Ramos's repertoire was composed of just such feeble blips that we've heard and, moreover, disproven, time and again.  He repeated something to the effect of, "Immigrants created this country; immigration is the history of this country; immigrants made America" over and over again; a monotonous chorus interwoven with Ann's substantive and narrative verses.

She responded that settlers, not immigrants, made this nation.  "You came from immigrants," he pled.  "No, I did not," she said.  "No, everyone here is from immigration," he insisted. "No, my people were settlers," she said. "There was no country when my people came and it was settlers who made this country."  He just kept yelling that immigrants made America.  "No," she instructed him, "The Dutch and British invented America.  The first seventeen Presidents were settlers, not immigrants."

"In your book you say Americans should ‘fear illegal immigrants more than ISIS.’"  "Yes," Ann replied calmly, "I have a tip for you: if you don't want to be killed by ISIS don't fly to Syria.  If you don't want to be killed by a Mexican I don't know what to tell you." At this, Ramos was breathless, hung out to dry in a vast stone-cold silence.  (One might have gotten away with a quickie powder room dash.) 

It was the telling moment of the debate; a blinding light had stopped that deer in his tracks.  Ann broke the emptiness, reasoning to his incredulous face, "If you don't want to be killed by ISIS don't go to Syria."
"But it's good economics," he sputtered at one point.  "You need the workers and these people need jobs."  "No," she said, "it is not economics.  There are (billions) out in the world who are suffering on what? -- two dollars a year?  They'd all like to come here.  Mexico happens to be within walking distance.  You're the one discriminating against the poor Bangladeshis who would love to come here but they cannot walk across the border.  Why do you discriminate against them?  It is not humanitarian. It is not diversity.  It's just changing our culture into Mexico without checking with the American people."

We are a people who rue past slavery so why would we import a layer of second-class workers? No, as usual, the Democrats, feigning "compassion," persist in creating a proto-slavery with high numbers of second-class virtual slaves undercutting citizen workers who dare to ask an honorable wage.  Yes, the Democrats, once again, are trying to pull an end-run around The Civil War, so they can form a new slave-class. They never saw a form of dependency, of slavery, they didn't love and have spent long hard years fighting the Republicans over this.  It has always been the Republicans wrestling the Democrats to the ground in order to get slavery out of our society.

Ramos was undaunted in defending his delusions, much to the admiration of his cohorts.  This guy has a constituency depending mightily on his fake numbers and their audacious demand that we suffer uninvited intruders into our home, despoiling, raiding our labors and resources and dragging our culture down into deficiency, dependency, inertia.  

I was once a Leftist but I got hip to their tricks and feints.  I learned that they're pretty much a bag of tricks.  In fact, a big part of the fun of being "a revolutionary" is the lying, dodging and obfuscating. (Google "Clinton.") It's fun to fool people.  The Left has only slim truth for their favorite quarrels; there's little recourse for them but to yell "racist!" or "sexist" in crowded theaters.  When I was in the thrall of my Marxist sister, Kate, that's what we did when confronted with "squares", "straights"... trickery and clever ploys… the coinage of the Left.

During the Q and A, one of Ramos' fans, a known political activist, an illegal herself (for 22 years) disingenuously begged Ann to come down from the stage and "acknowledge her humanity" by hugging her. Aha!  The parlor trick, the preposterous signature antic that eternally oozes out of the Left!  Here it was! They never go anywhere without it.  As if you or I, discovering a stranger in our upstairs bathroom, would respond happily to his demand for a hug.

We had wondered what circus-trick they might pull. Here was the inevitable "plant." Now I, the one making runs to the grocery and pharmacy, am proof positive Ann was miserable with a "thing" we tried, for days, not to spread.  She wasn't hugging her friends so she wasn't about to hug this trickster or, as she joked with Hannity a day later, "The headlines would have read, 'Coulter infects illegal alien.'"  She didn't recoil from her, per se, but rather, from spreading her own germs.  Had Ann the same sinister malice as that "plant", she might have hugged her huge illegal body and sent her packing off to ICE for deportation along with a nasty virus.

Mexico, which thinks this land was or is theirs, is slyly snookering the dismantling of our Constitutional Republic, the erasing of our hard-won borders: Mexico, herself, will only admit people, "according to their possibilities of contributing to national progress."  Here they are, a deficient culture, a failing nation, yet they have high standards of admission while we, a truly fine culture, ask for nada, taking whatever intrudes.  

America needs to do the same as Mexico: to oversee the "raising of our average not the lowering of our average.  The USA is not a charity organization," said Ann.  As she put it to Ramos,  "We're not running an international humanitarian process.  This isn't a charity mission!  The American government exists to protect the American people who live here not to help out all the people of the world.  America is the best in the world and we are about to lose it and everyone who lives here is going to lose that!" she wisely warned.

"Others are in need!" we hear.  But we also know well that "charity begins at home." It's a cliché because, apparently, we need to be reminded often.  If we help others while ignoring our own households and starving our offspring we know this defies decency and common sense.  We are honor-bound to feed, educate and medicate those who already make up our families and legal citizenry.  

You'd have resentful, traumatized children if you had two of them in a three-bedroom house and allowed fifty strangers to move right in and sleep in their beds, inhale their food, tear up your house, raiding what you've provided for your own family. It is utterly merciless and hardly sincere charity to deplete resources we earn for our own for the upkeep of stealth invaders who enter criminally and make a beeline for U.S. government assistance and food stamps.  

"What kind of country would do that?" Ann demanded of him.  "It's madness!"

Americans have mistaken weak policy for goodness, kindness and charity.  What is not charity and what is mean-spirited is to give your own little one's spaces, care and futures to aggressives crawling through the basement window.  Charity must be parochial, first! We need to demonstrate to generations coming up that we are seriously cultivating the country we hand to them.

What sense would it make to your kids to let those fifty home-invaders stay with you after they've broken in?  What?  You say, "Gee, guys, these folks came in through the window in the middle of the night and we're afraid to kick them out!?"  What would your children think or say about you?  We have given our all to creating this blessed place of order, civility, sanctuary.  We are mandated by common sense to stand up solidly for it and ourselves and to prevent American culture from morphing into the Third World hellhole next door.

I used to live in Asia and without a trace of exaggeration can tell you that every single person, from 6 to 65, whom I met in The Philippines, India, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Japan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan (and also, University of Mexico where I did my Junior year of college), every single one was brimming with visions of America somewhere in their near or distant futures.  I was very young and charmed and happy so many people admired us.  Except that after a few years charm had turned to alarm!

By the time I returned to the States it was full-blown panic.  I wanted to run up and down streets, boulevards and avenues screaming, Paul Revere style,  "Everyone in the world is coming... batten down the hatches... they're all on their way!!"  Letting this happen is an unsustainable plan and seriously lacking in wisdom. 
Ann's last remark to Jorge Ramos was, "You're a cultural imperialist!!"

When people speak so dismissively about the border; act so blasé about our borders; this is propaganda in an effort to overrun and eliminate borders. Of course the Left, as they do with everything, claim, "It's all about race and racists!"  No more is it much a matter of getting to be an American, at least on the activist level.  With them, in the larger picture, it's about dissolving our sovereignty so that "American" would become an obsolete label replaced by "Citizen of the World."  Many have plans to liquidate the sovereignty of America and with it the sovereignty of the American individual.

At the heart of Judeo-Christianity is the sacredness and saving of the lone soul.  We nurture purity in that soul... accountability for sins and errors endured by the solitary being.  This is what is being assaulted... the very existence and meaning of personal integrity is under siege. At the core of it is The Collective. There's nothing to do with race here and bringing in race is bunk, a pernicious distraction. This attack on America is all about the triumph of The Collective over the singular.   

Imagine, actually, the loss of American sovereignty.  Then imagine, actually, the loss of your personal sovereignty.  Now, read "Adios America" and discover a lot of surprising stuff you definitely don't know.
Take your choice… whatever race you happen to be: Do you want to be a Citizen of the World or do you want to be a Citizen of The United States of America?

What was especially fascinating about this encounter was that you could visibly track Ramos' handpicked audience coming over to Ann.  By the end they liked her.  It was palpable in the studio.

It takes some nerve to stick up for yourself when you are wrong... when what you're defending is a whopper of a lie. But Jorge Ramos hung in there passionately, gasping, interrupting and spinning on the spot.  I witnessed how he was transfixed by Ann's logic. I saw that he kind of wished he could switch sides because she was clearly smarter than he and perhaps he had a flash of wishing she could put him in her purse and take him home with her. Everyone loves a winner and Jorge clearly admired Ann. He knew better than anyone that he had been bested.

Would someone please produce a worthy opponent for a robust debate with Ann Coulter?

Mallory Millett resides in New York City with her husband of over twenty years.  She has lived, studied and traveled extensively throughout the Third World. CFO for several corporations, she is a long-standing member of The David Horowitz Freedom Center and sits on the Board of Regents for the Center for Security Policy.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/entire_world_headed_to_us_ann_coulter_denounced_for_noticing.html#ixzz3cTEnEZOr
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Day of Greatness


By Joe Posnanski
http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/
June 6, 2015

American Pharoah ridden by Victor Espinoza made his way to the record books by winning the 147th running of the Belmont Stakes and thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown June 6, 2015 at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN
American Pharoah ridden by Victor Espinoza made his way to the record books by winning the 147th running of the Belmont Stakes and thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown June 6, 2015 at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) 
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The wonder of horse racing’s Triple Crown is that it seems utterly impossible for so long … and then, when it actually happens — like it finally happened Saturday with American Pharoah — you wonder why it doesn’t happen every other year or something. That’s the thing about legendary performances. We know intellectually that we are seeing extraordinary things, rare things, unforgettable things. But it doesn’t always feel that way. The great ones make it look too easy.

Saturday was packed with those extraordinary things. It was a day for Serena Williams, a day for Lionel Messi, a day for the misspelled but indomitable Pharoah. It was also a not-so-great day for another legend, but we’ll get back to him later.

Serena Williams is the greatest women’s tennis player of them all. There’s really little to argue about anymore. You can never PROVE that a player from one time could beat a player from another (especially in tennis, where the game changes so rapidly because of the equipment). And yes, for statistically driven people like me, it is true that Williams does not yet have the number of grand slam victories as Steffi Graf or Margaret Court.

That said, there seems to me no doubt watching Serena Williams play that nobody in history could touch her. Look, Steffi Graf couldn’t beat the young Monica Seles. Martina Navratilova had Chris Evert and vice versa.

Look at Serena Williams’ record against the Top 10 players in the world:
2. Maria Sharapova: 17-2
3. Halep, 5-1
4. Petra Kvitova, 5-1
5. Carolina Wozniacki, 10-1
6. Eugenie Bouchard, 2-0
7. Ana Ivanovic, 8-1
8. Carla Suarez-Navarro: 6-0
9. Ekaterina Makarova, 4-1
10. Andrea Petkovic, 4-0

If you want to add that up – that’s 61-7, which is 90 percent, which is essentially Steph Curry’s free-throw percentage. Serena Williams is beating the other nine best players in the world at the same rate that the greatest shooter of our time makes an uncontested 15-foot shot. That’s the sort of dominance we’re talking about here.

Saturday in the final of Paris, Williams played the French Open’s happy story, Lucie Safarova, who made it to her first Grand Slam final after a decade of kicking around the Top 30. She is, by all accounts, beloved by the other players for her grace and sportsmanship. Serena Williams’ record against her was 8-0 when the day began.

And for about an hour or so, it seemed like Williams would dispatch Safarova quickly. Williams had a strange French Open, filled with drama and near-losses and some sort of killer flu bug that Saturday made her look like the before picture in a NyQuil commercial. She wanted to get off the court quickly and get back into bed. The first set was like a professional hit – no fuss, no mess, an early break, easy service victories, leave the gun, take the cannoli. She was up 4-1 and 40-15 in the second set, and it seemed time to start brewing some tea.
Then two things happened. One, Safarova proved to be feistier than expected. And two, Williams – by her own account – choked. She started double-faulting and hitting balls three-feet long, She played an abysmal tiebreaker, then fell behind 2-0 in the third set, and she gave every indication of being in complete freefall.

But this is what I mean when I say that the greatest athletes can make things look so simple. Because at that point Serena Williams ran off six straight games by hitting breathtaking shots and making them look roughly as easy as the puzzles on children’s menus in restaurants. Safarova would hit a serve and Williams would almost casually swing at the ball, rocket a winner into the open court, and … it just can’t be that effortless can it? You watch her hit those shots, time and again, and after a while you lose a little bit your sense of awe and can’t help but think: Why can’t everybody do that?

SERENA WILLIAMS OF THE UNITED STATES POSES WITH THE COUPE SUZANNE LENGLEN TROPHY AFTER WINNING THE WOMEN'S SINGLES FINAL AGAINST LUCIE SAFAROVA OF CZECH REPBULIC ON DAY FOURTEEN OF THE 2015 FRENCH OPEN AT ROLAND GARROS ON JUNE 6, 2015 IN PARIS, FRANCE. (PHOTO BY DAN ISTITENE/GETTY IMAGES)


That’s the wonder of Lionel Messi, too. If you only watch Lionel Messi play soccer, you would think soccer was a pretty undemanding game. All you have to do is keep the ball at your feet, slip and slide and cut and dance past comical henchmen defenders, rocket a shot toward the open corner of the net or (could this be easier?) flick the ball to a teammate who has sprung free and is in perfect position to score.

Messi did not score in Barcelona’s UEFA Champions League final against Juventus, but he set up Luis Suarez’s game-winner with a spectacular (for anyone else) run where he easily disposed of two would-be defenders, tilted a third with a salsa move, unleashed a shot that goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon somehow blocked. Suarez, as Doc Emrick might say, tucked home the rebound. Barcelona won 3-1.

But this one moment of brilliance from Messi was routine – he had a dozen moments just as good. He had so many other brilliant moments (and echoes of his goal for the ages last week still reverberate) that, once again, it’s natural to ask: Why can’t other people do that? What’s so hard about it? All he does is keep the ball close, dribble through, pass smartly, shoot accurately. Why is it that the soccer ball bounds away from other people’s feet? Why do their shots sail 20 feet over the goal? Why don’t other players see the passing angles he sees? Every single time Messi touched the ball against Juventus, three defenders jumped at him … but it did not matter, he imposed his will, he moved as he liked and the ball followed him as if magnetized.

Horse racing’s Triple Crown had not been won for 37 years, not since Affirmed dueled with Alydar in 1978. Affirmed became the second horse in a row to win the Triple Crown; Seattle Slew had won the year before. One year after Affirmed, Spectacular Bid went to the Belmont with a chance to win and famously stepped on a safety pin. No one knows if he would have won otherwise, but the point is that it was almost three in a row. Affirmed jockey Steve Cauthen remembers people saying then that the Triple Crown was too easy.

And then it was 37 years – horse after horse went into the Belmont Stakes with a chance to win, and horse after horse failed. Pleasant Colony didn’t fire down the stretch. Alysheba was no match for Bet Twice. Sunday Silence was clearly beaten. Silver Charm got caught by Touch Gold. Real Quiet faded and was beaten by a nose. Charismatic couldn’t hold on. War Emblem stumbled at the stretch. Funny Cide wilted on a muddy track. The beloved Smarty Jones was passed by Birdstone. Big Brown didn’t show up. I’ll Have Another was hurt and retired. California Chrome labored and gave way.

After Chrome lost, his owner Steve Coburn said that there would be no Triple Crown winner in his lifetime, and even though it sounded an awful lot like sour grapes, well, the logic seemed pretty sound. It sure seemed like asking a 3-year-old horse to win three grueling races in five weeks against the best of his class was asking too much.

And then, one year later, American Pharoah not only won the Triple Crown … he won with such comfort that it hardly even seemed notable. He won the Kentucky Derby in a pretty decent stretch duel with Firing Line, but he was not too troubled. He won the Preakness on a muddy track, pulling away.

Then came Saturday, the Belmont, so much drama coming in, so much talk about history, so much talk about the difficulties, so much talk about all the things that could go wrong. Then, at the start, Victor Espinoza took Pharoah to the front, and he stayed in front, and he kept staying in front, and then he won, wire-to-wire, nothing to it. When Espinoza was asked when he knew he had the race won, he said, “At the first turn.”

And, like with Serena, like with Messi, I found myself asking: “Why is this so hard?”

One of the wonderful things about the Triple Crown is that, generally speaking, everybody in America wants it to happen. There are people who root against Serena, against Messi, against Clayton Kershaw, against LeBron James, against Jonathan Toews, against Usain Bolt. Their particular genius is viewed through different prisms; some idolize them, some admire them from a distance, some look for flaws and hope for cracks.

But when it comes to horse racing, unless you have money on another horse, you want the Triple Crown. Watching Saturday’s race with my daughters felt important somehow. When it ended, the 14-year-old said, “I feel like I just watched history.” That’s how it did feel. Each of those 37 years without a Triple Crown felt like a disappointment, but that only made this one feel more special, a brilliant end to a brilliant day.

A final few words must be saved, though, for Tiger Woods. He shot an 85 on Saturday, the worst round of his professional life, and I watched every painful minute of it on my phone while Serena Williams soared on television. No athlete of my lifetime more perfectly demonstrated the point I tried to make about Serena and Messi and Pharoah – he made golf, that ridiculous and unbeatable game, look like a 20-piece jigsaw puzzle. He hit the longest drives, hit the highest approach shots and made the most putts. When he made the rare mistake, he hit the most amazing recovery shots. When he faced the most difficult obstacles, he imagined the most astonishing shots, and then he hit them. When the pressure was at its thickest, his power of focus was awe-inspiring. When the tournament was there to be won, he won it.

Tiger Woods was just so much better than everyone else – like Serena. Think of this: He made the cut 142 consecutive times. Rory McIlroy is the best golfer in the world now, and he misses cuts all the time. Tiger Woods did not miss a cut for SEVEN YEARS. At his worst, he was still among the best. When he was merely average, he often won. When he was good, nobody could come close.

All that’s gone now, and there’s no real point in asking if any of it will ever come back because (1) Nobody knows, including Woods and (2) It’s not likely. The best hope at this point seems to be that he can get his game back to something reasonable and that, every now and again, he will have a hot week and maybe offer a few more thrills. But, honestly, after enduring a year when he has gone through chipping yips, when he has stepped away from the game for a couple of months to relearn how to play, when he has shot an 82 and 85, even that meager goal seems like a faraway dream.

But if there’s one good thing about watching Tiger Woods play this way it is this: It does help put into focus just how great he once was. He was too good then, perhaps, to fully appreciate. He hit the ball so purely, he putted so flawlessly, he played so brilliantly that at some point it was easy to shrug and say, “Hey, easy game.”

Saturday, though, he looked positively mortal – and it was a stark reminder of what mortality looks like. On a day when we watched Serena win her 20th grand slam, the day we watched Messi will his team to the Championship, the day we saw American Pharoah go wire-to-wire, it’s good of Tiger Woods to remind us just how high they are flying.
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