He has hired counsel to look into his agreement to a plea deal?  Give me a break!  Not only is he a U.S. Senator that has helped pass laws in out country, he was smart enough to plead out to the minor misdemeanor of “Disorderly Conduct“, to avoid the higher misdemenor count of “Interference with Privacy” that could gotten him incarcerated.  Additionally, judges make sure you know what you are doing, before you agree to a plea deal.  This is another stupid move on his part.

It is just as stupid as him blaming the Idaho Statesman for going on a witch hunt to persecute him.  They had information on the incident long before they ever ran the story.  They sat on the story until the disposition of the case.  Craig agreed to a plea deal on a charge in which he was accused of soliciting sex from an undercover male officer in the men’s room at an airport, where they were investigating lewd behavior. 

Now, tell me something.  If you were accused of soliciting homosexual sex from an undercover officer and you really were innocent, would you ever agree to a plea deal to handle it “expeditiously”?  Not me!  If it were me and I were innocent, I would fight it tooth and nail to clear my name, period.

You know Mitt Romney has to be on edge right now.  I wonder why that video on Romney’s YouTube account disappeared?  I don’t guess that takes  rocket scientist, huh?

Fortunately, Allah has it over at HotAir.  Check it out.

Here is Craig’s full statement on the incident at his site.  Video of his press conference is over at HotAir.

Michelle Malkin is probably right, “He’s a lying crapweasel.”

Go way, Larry!  Now!

Others posting on this topic:  JunkYardBlog / Bill’s Bites / Liberty Pundit / Outside The Beltway | OTB / Say Goodbye Larry / The Purple Nation / Texas Hold ‘Em Blogger / Antony Loewenstein / politicalpartypoop.com / Neocon News / Think Progress / Minefeed.com / Sen. Craig: Fiddle Faddle in a non-Fiddling Party / PAXALLES / Radio Left / Jeremayakovka / Wonkette / Hot Air / Webloggin / the unequivocal notion / On a Quest… / Spokompton / Hot Air / A Blog For All / BIRD / Dust my Broom / Subject to Complete Defeasance  / Right Ringtail / Keith Burgess Jackson / Conservative Musings / Freedom Folks / Hardcore Politics / My Wired News / The Shot! @ shotpolitics.com

“Did the Newark murder suspects benefit from illegal alien amnesty programs?”  Michelle asks a very valid question. 

There has been quite a bit of coverage on the immigration status of several violent cases around the U.S., including Oregon, New Jersey and Texas, just to name a few.  There has also been concern noted about just who is or is not securing our borders.  There has also been concern raised over federal agencies asking to suspend illegal alien arrests and deportations.  We’ve seen discussion on sanctuary cities.  We have talked about Elvira Arellano’s thumbing of her nose at immigration laws and defying deportation orders for years.  And, we have even talked about Geraldo Rivera’s hysterical advocacy for criminal aliens in his tirades in recent days. 

But, let’s focus more on the Newark, NJ murders for a bit.  Who are the alleged perpetrators in the gruesome execution style murders in Newark, NK?  Let’s start with Melvin Jovel an 18 year old immigrant from Honduras who appeared in court this week.

Jovel, who is from Honduras, told the judge he does not have a Social Security number or a green card, but his immigration status remains unclear, prosecutors said. A U.S. passport was found among his belongings when he was arrested Sunday night, but officials are still trying to determine whether the passport is valid, Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Thomas A. McTigue said. Federal authorities have placed a detainer on Jovel because his status is uncertain, McTigue said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials participated in Jovel’s arrest, and a spokesman for the agency said it becomes involved “when they suspect a person is in the county illegally.”

But the spokesman, Michael W. Gilhooley, declined to comment today on whether officials had determined Jovel’s status.

They don’t know his status?  Now, let’s think about this, shall we?  No social security number…no green card…a questionable passport?  I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to put this together.

Maybe we need to go back a few months at look at the “Temporary Protective Status” that George W. Bush championed.    More on TPS can be found here.

Do you care to guess one of the countries for which TPS was applicable?  You guess it – Honduras.  By chance, that is also the country from which two of Jovel’s co-defendants, Rodolfo Godinez and his half-brother, Alexander Alfaro, originate.   

Michelle offers some simple questions on determining Jovel’s immigration status: “Did Jovel or a parent/guardian file an I-821 application form for TPS or not? Was it approved or not? If so, when?”

About two years ago, Jovel took a trip back to Honduras and came back to the U.S.  So, if he had TPS, did he get the special permission required for this trip to leave the country?  If not, he was in violation of the TPS rules.  If he violated these rules, how was he able to get back here and why were deportation proceedings not done?

Michelle has the roundup on the others involved at her site, including an e-mail from an ICE agent who lays out some of the problems with our lax immigration practices in the U.S.

As much as Geraldo and his cohorts would like to try to convince us of it, illegal alien status of criminals is not “irrelevant“.

GIBSON: If his illegal status could have been known and he wasn’t on the street and the murder didn’t happen, wouldn’t that be better?

RIVERA: Why is it that of the 60 homicides in Newark, New Jersey, this year, this is the only one that anyone here cares about? Why is that? Why is that? Is it because we are using this issue to inflame the public on the issue of illegal immigration?

GIBSON: You’re asking the wrong guy. This show started to do it long before he was known to be an illegal. You can ask that of others, but you can’t ask that here.

RIVERA: I grant you that. On Monday you did the story 48 hours after it happened.

GIBSON: Partially because you did it over the weekend and we know…

(CROSSTALK)

RIVERA: And I love you. But all I ask for, if you can have a debate about immigration, as we are having in this country, that’s fine. But just don’t mix apples and oranges. Don’t incite the public with irrelevant detail and this is an irrelevant detail.

GIBSON: His illegal status was irrelevant?

RIVERA: To the murder he committed, yes. Why is the citizenship of the five co-defendants not an issue?

GIBSON: But if his status had been known, he wouldn’t have been there to participate.

There needs to be “answers” and “action“, as Michelle concludes.  The victims’ families deserve it, not the run-around they are getting.

***************************

Others posting on this topic:  Hot Air / Big Dogs Weblog / Thought Cops / Bud Simmons / Tammy Bruce / American Pundit /

So, was Michelle Obama, the wannabe first lady, taking a swipe at her husband’s Dem rival, Hillary Clinton?  Via the Chicago Sun-Times.

At another stop, in Atlantic, Michelle said she travels with her husband in part “to model what it means to have family values,” adding “if you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.” She didn’t elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.

Honestly, I think Michelle Obama is going to be an even bigger liability for Barack during his campaign in 2008 than Teresa Heinz was for John Kerry in 2004.  Now, that takes some doing.

But, to answer Michelle Malkin’s question, Michelle Obama was dissing Hillary.  It is common practice for the lagging candidates to take jabs at the leader of the pack in a primary.  Obama and Edwards are regularly taking shots at Hillary.  It is a way for them to try to work their way out of a slump in their lagging campaigns.  It happens in both parties.   But, come convention time, once the primaries are over, rivals now will be singing the virtues of their current opponents.  Some may even be

Interestingly, I was listening to The Hallerin Hilton Hill Show this morning on WNOX, I believe it was, and it was mentioned that Barack Obama appeals to young Americans.  It was also noted that young Americans don’t tend to vote.  That could explain some of his slump in the race, so far.  John Edwards, well he is a walking contradiction with the platform on which he is trying to run as a champion of the downtrodden with his expensive haircuts, a mansion for a home, etc.  That could explain his slump.  That may also explain why his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, is fighting for his candidacy.

Sick the ladies on Hillary, so the guys don’t get any backlash for doing it themselves.  Not the dumbest move on the record.

Others posting on this topic:  Neocon News /

UPDATE:  Well, the SPI has decided against holding the haiku contest now. 

The paper’s decision not to run photos of the two Seattle ferry passengers sought by the FBI didn’t take long yesterday to become part of a widespread debate that provoked readers around the country.

It also spread throughout the blogosphere. While most blogs pointed directly to the debate, some made some poignant comments about the topic of yesterday’s Daily Haiku contest, a topic that — considering the sensitivity of the issue — was probably not the best we could have come up with.

While the Big Blog mixes fun and news on a daily basis, in this case we undermined a serious issue and a serious debate, and made it seem as if we in the newsroom didn’t acknowledge its importance.

So thanks to all the bloggers who pointed this out. We agree it was a bad call and will learn from the experience.

P.S. — We’re not going to pick a winner.

Darn it all!  I was just getting ready to make my submission.

Fortunately, folks more conscious of their civic duty to do their part are coming forward and the FBI has been flooded with tips.

**************************** 

H/T to Brennan at The American Pundit.

Now, let’s see.  The FBI ask for your assistance in finding to suspicious characters possibly planning a future terror strike.  What do you do?  Well, if you are the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, you have a haiku contest instead.  Why didn’t everyone else think of that?!

But, why didn’t the SPI run the photos?  Well, they gave an excuse.

The P-I elected not to publish the photos, citing civil liberties and privacy concerns, which editors felt outweighed the newsworthiness of the images. “We have no confirmation that these men’s behavior was anything but innocuous, and to forever taint them by associating them with terrorism under these circumstances is not consistent with our policy,” said David McCumber, P-I managing editor.

As Michelle Malkin points out, “There’s no taint if there’s no terrorism. Were their actions nefarious or misinterpreted? The men could clear that up in a split second by coming forward and saying so.”  Bill Hobbs at Newsbusters weighs in on this. 

Of course it would be easier to find out which is the case if the FBI could find the guys. And it would be easier to find the guys if the Seattle P-I would publish the photos, so that Seattle-area residents would know what the men look like whom the FBI has asked the public to help them find. As it stands now, in the name of being politically correct, the Seattle P-I has decided to alarm the people of Seattle and leave them looking suspiciously at just about anyone who fits the general description of male and looking like they might be from the Middle East.

Others posting on this topic:  Random Nuclear Strikes / Bookworm Room /

Juan Felix Salinas

H/T to Michelle Malkin. 

Someone alert Geraldo Rivera!  Come to think of it, you probably won’t see him reporting on this story, since it doesn’t likely fit his agenda.

Felinda Williams, a mother who lost her daughter, son-in-law and two year old grandson to a criminal alien who was driving drunk is convinced they would be alive today, if our immigration system worked.  Via the Houston Chronicle.

Tenisha and S.J. Williams and their son Xavier

Felinda Williams couldn’t make herself go to court on a recent morning, couldn’t bring herself to look at the man accused of driving drunk and killing her daughter, her son-in-law and her 2-year-old grandson.

She knows few details of the Aug. 11 crash in Houston that killed the newlyweds and the little boy nicknamed “Peanut Butter.” She does know that her daughter didn’t die on impact. The young woman, according to reports, felt the flames and begged helpless bystanders to pull her free.

The grieving woman knows two things about Juan Felix Salinas, the man charged in connection with their deaths: She knows his name, and she knows he was in the U.S. illegally, out on bail after an earlier arrest.

“He’s been through the courts and the jail before, and nobody caught it,” Williams said. “If they’d caught it, he would have been in jail or deported, and then he wouldn’t have been out there on the streets, and my babies would still be alive.”

Is Juan Felix Salinas an isolated case?  Not by any stretch of the imagination.

In the past year, Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Houston Police Department officials said they have increased their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. But despite recent efforts, not all illegal immigrants who come into contact with law enforcement in Houston are referred to immigration authorities, which has frustrated some victims’ advocates and proponents of stricter immigration controls.

Salinas, 41, was arrested in Jacinto City after allegedly shaking his wife violently on March 31. He escaped the attention of immigration officials by posting a “non-arrest” bond at the Harris County Jail, which some victim advocates have called a loophole for illegal immigrants.

As Michelle says, “Repeat after me: Sovereign Nation or Sanctuary Nation–It’s your choice.“

Officials with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office ask each inmate during the intake process about nationality and citizenship, said Sgt. D.M. Mackey.

More than 4,606 inmates admitted to being illegal immigrants and had their cases referred to ICE from August 2006 through August 2007, Mackey said. In the previous 18 months, the sheriff’s office had identified 1,940 illegal immigrants in the jail.

Andy Kahan, director of the Mayor’s Crime Victim’s Office, questioned why local authorities don’t refer all cases involving suspected illegal immigrants to ICE.“We can’t expect ICE and federal officials to act if we don’t give them all of the information to act on,” he said. “If we don’t give them the tools to make a decision, we reap what we sow.”

Our political views tend to evolve slightly over time.  Mine for example, in my younger years, were slightly right-of-center.  As I have gotten older, studied, read (contrary to Pat Schroeder’s position) and researched issues, I have moved farther and farther to the right.  As a result, I am a pretty staunch conservative, both fiscally and socially.

As Maynard points out on Tammy Bruce‘s blog, there are several prominent people whose positions have evolved over the years, including Tammy’s.  But, he also notes that Ronald Reagan and David Horowitz both stood with the Left in their youth, quite the contrary to Reagan as our 40th president or Horowitz as the editor of FrontPage Magazine today.  So, it is not impossible for a person to gradually take on different views.

But, I am not quite sure that Hillary Rodham Clinton has changed that much from her radical youth.  She is trying to convince voters that she is a centrist.  Now, pandering to the nutroots at the YearlyKos would seem rather contradictory to that effort but she professes a centrist position, nonetheless.

But, this may not make any sense to the average reader until they get a chance to look at Hillary’s thesis at Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1969.  Her paper was on Saul Alinsky and deals with how to change America’s political culture.  The militant title, “There is only the fight…“, speaks to the Alinsky’s approach and, quite possibly, the author’s.

GOPublius has an HTML version of Hillary’s thesis and Freedom Underground has the PDF version of the same.  The HTML is an easier read on the eyes but having to click to get to different pages is a bit time consuming.

Oddly enough, the paper was locked away at the Clintons’ request, when Bill Clinton was elected as the 42nd president.

…the Clintons asked Wellesley [College] in 1993 to hide Hillary Rodham’s senior thesis…

Wellesley’s president, Nannerl Overholser Keohane, approved a broad rule with a specific application: The senior thesis of every Wellesley alumna is available in the college archives for anyone to read — except for those written by either a “president or first lady of the United States.” So far, that action has sealed precisely one document: Hillary Rodham’s senior honors thesis in political science, entitled ” ‘There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”…

…Under Wellesley’s rule, Clinton’s thesis became available to researchers again when the Clintons left the White House in 2001 — available only to those who visit the Wellesley archives. But few have made the trip, and the document’s allure continued to grow. A purloined copy was offered for sale on eBay in 2001, then withdrawn when Clinton’s staff cited copyright law.

What was with the mystery of the paper written by the young leftwing Hillary?  Why would they want it secured from the public’s eye?  Interesting questions.  Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten any answers.  But, I would suspect that there is information there that they did not want the public to see.  Perhaps it could be Hillary’s fundamental political leanings? 

Does Hillary’s paper give us some deep insight into the aspiring Dem nominee for president?  You will have to read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions.  I think it does and I do not appear to be alone in that analysis.  Peggy Noonan, co-author of “The Case Against Hillary Clinton“, referred to Hillary’s paper as “the Rosetta Stone of Hillary Studies.” 

For those a little foggy on the Rosetta Stone, Cassandra has a refresher course on its significance in Noonan’s description.

Happy reading!

Well, The New Republic has finally said something about the Scott Thomas Beauchamp debacle.  But, don’t get your hopes up.  They aren’t confessing their failings.  

Nope.  Instead, Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at TNR, decided to come out taking shots at Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard for one of his editorials on 7/30/07, “They Don’t Really Support the Troops.”

Two progressive magazines have taken complementary approaches in this effort. In its July 30 issue, the Nation has a 24-page article based on interviews with 50 Iraq veterans. The piece allegedly reveals “disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq”–indeed, it claims that the war has “led many troops to declare an open war on all Iraqis.” Needless to say, the anecdotal evidence in the article comes nowhere close to supporting this claim. There are a few instances of out-of-control behavior, some routine fog-of-war and brutality-of-war incidents, and much that is simply trivial. The picture is unpleasant, as one would expect–but it comes nowhere close to living up to the authors’ billing: “The war the vets described is a dark and even depraved enterprise.”

Since the Nation has held this view of every American war (except when we were fighting side-by-side with Stalin’s Soviet Union), and loves nothing more than accounts of American war crimes, its story is no surprise. At least they interviewed real soldiers on the record. The New Republic, in its July 23 issue, takes a different tack. Its slander of American soldiers appears to be fiction presented as fact, behind a convenient screen of anonymity.   more… 

And, how does TNR, via Chait, respond?  I suppose it is all in how he wraps up his diatribe (emphasis mine)…

Kristol’s good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he’s too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing.

I know the irony can’t be lost on readers that Chait has the audacity to speak of “a fake thug” after the discredited Scottie Beauchamp by whom TNR was duped.

Hello!  Jonathan?  Do you care to finally confess to the fact that you were duped by Beauchamp?

My previous posts on TNR and Scottie are here, here, here, here, here and here.

Bryan at Hot Air has a novel concept – “doesn’t that line about the Border Patrol being ‘guardians of Our Nation’s borders’ mean that they actually, you know, guard the borders?”  One would have thought so, except that the Border Patrol is on record as seeing their job in a different light.

Border Patrol agents dont have the responsibility of apprehending illegal immigrants, Carlos X. Carrillo, chief patrol agent for the Laredo sector, said at a town hall meeting Wednesday.”The Border Patrol is not equipped to stop illegal immigrants,” Carrillo said, noting that illegal narcotics are also not on the agents priority list.

“The Border Patrol mission is not to do any of those things,” he emphasized.

The Border Patrols mission is to keep the country safe from terrorist and terrorist weapons, he said. Carrillo added that when and if terrorists come into the country, the agents will be ready.

Now, aren’t you glad that Agent Carrillo enlightened us to the fallacy that the Border Patrol would actually be stopping illegal aliens from entering our country and the similar threat of illegal drugs entering the country.

Read Bryan’s entire post.  He also has info on crimes by illegal aliens.

I’m with Brennan at The American Pundit, “This sounds like it should becoming from The Onion…or TNR.”

“Border Protection?”  Hah!  No wonder the government’s efforts have been so dismal.

So, what does this do to the Border Patrol’s Core Values?  Hmmm?

Do you think this explains why Ramos and Compean are being prosecuted – no one told them that they weren’t actually supposed to patrol the border and enforce immigration laws or stop illegal drugs?

Tammy’s right, when she says “it’s the gift that keeps on giving.” 

It may not be your birthday but, please, accept this video as my gift to brighten your day. 

I know it did mine! 

That’s one down.  I wonder how many more inept users they have for mortars to replace that one?

Scott Beauchamp – Elspeth Reeve - Franklin Foer

H/T to Brennan at The American Pundit. 

Richard Miniter at Pajamas Media has the scoop on how Scott Thomas Beauchamp took TNR for a ride.  

An insider-turned-whistleblower and the fabricator’s former fiancée, as well as other sources, have spoken to PajamasMedia.com—providing a plethora of new details that raise new questions.

Those questions include: Did the fabricator’s wife, Elspeth Reeve, fact-check her husband’s articles? Did her staff position make other fact-checkers go easy on him? Why didn’t Reeve’s knowledge of Beauchamp’s character and history make her skeptical of his work? (Remember the old journalist saw: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”) Did Foer’s friendship with Beauchamp affect the fact-checkers or provoke Foer to defend him in the face of mounting evidence? And, why was the whistle-blower the only New Republic staffer to be fired? Finally, what does the magazine intend to do to ensure that it does not get fooled again?   more…

Come to think of it, since Franklin Foer still refuses to own up to the debacle that is so clear to everyone but most of his TNR staff and him, I guess you could say that Scottie is still taking them for a ride.

Richard’s article at Pajamas Media is kind of long but it is full of interesting details that I am sure many readers will find interesting.

So many questions, so few answers.  Hello, Franklin?  Any response for us on how you can get duped so easily and so many times?  Or, is refusing to admit that it happened to you going to be the plan going forward still?

VOJ prior posts on Scott Thomas Beauchamp are here, here, here, here, here and here.

Others posting on this:  Michelle Malkin /