Obama has apparently violated an FBI ban on release of security information to save his own face. He lost a ton of credibility when the Christmas bomber was mirandized in the middle of a valuable information dump and clammed up.

Later, the FBI got the fellow talking again, revealing the details of upcoming attacks on US targets in country and abroad. But the fact that the terrorist was once more spilling his guts was supposed to be kept under wraps, at the specific mandate of the FBI director (and, we should add, as standard operating procedure).

But the Obama team released that information to reporters. It looks like an intentional and knowing breach of security intended to help the President save face for his earlier blunder. As in, OK, so he made a big mistake, but in the long run it didn’t make any difference.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), Vice Chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, fired off a letter to Obama today:

….In the realm of national security, sometimes it is necessary to withhold critical information from the public that may be used by our enemies to harm the American people.

Accordingly, I am deeply disturbed with the official handling of vital national security information regarding the recent cooperation by the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab. On Monday afternoon, the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee received notification from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning Abdulmutallab’s recent willingness to provide critical information. FBI officials stressed the importance of not disclosing the fact of his cooperation in order to protect on-going and follow-on operations to neutralize additional threats to the American public; FBI Director Bob Mueller personally stressed to me that keeping the fact of his cooperation quiet was vital to preventing future attacks against the United States. Handling this information in such a sensitive manner struck me as entirely appropriate.

Twenty-four hours later, however, White House staff assembled members of the media to announce Abdulmutallab’s cooperation and to laud the events that led to his decision to cooperate with law enforcement personnel. This information immediately hit the air waves globally and, no doubt, reached the ears of our enemies abroad.

At the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Annual World Wide Threats Hearing Tuesday, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI Director, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency all stated they believe terrorists will attempt another attack on America within the next few months. I cannot understand, Mr. President, why the sudden cooperation by Abdulmutallab would be broadcast publicly to the media in detail when your intelligence chiefs are unanimously warning that another attack on our country is imminent. The release of this sensitive information has no doubt been helpful to his terrorist cohorts around the world.

It is deeply disturbing to me that the Intelligence Committee would be advised of sensitive information, and told of the vital imperative to keep such information secret for the sake of national security, only to see this information – less than twenty-four hours later –broadcast to the world from the White House. This distortion of the congressional notification process suggests that other considerations are taking precedence over keeping timely and sensitive information away from our enemies….

Robert Gibbs admitted bending the rules, but averred that this was done to “contextualize” the issue for reporters:

On Tuesday, the Senate intelligence panel hosted Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller, among others, on current and projected threats on the United States that included a discussion of the decision to give Miranda rights to Abdulmutallab. In the conversation, it was revealed that he was now talking.

Afterward, administration officials briefed reporters about cooperation by Abdulmutallab, who was read Miranda rights after just 50 minutes of interrogation about his attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas.

Gibbs said that briefing — and no other held by administration officials — uses information that shouldn’t be released. However, he conceded that the briefing to reporters on Tuesday was called in order to “contextualize” information released during the Senate hearing that Abdulmutallab was talking again to interrogators.

If an ordinary citizen spilled such beans, he or she would likely go to jail. But this president thinks he is above such rules, and can do this with impunity. Worse, he cares more about his image with reporters than the security of our country.

Note the underlying logic of this calculated decision to expose security info to reporters — that the president’s first mistake doesn’t matter because things came out all right in the end. Excusing mistakes that can be cosmetically covered is a Democratic thought pattern. Democrats care only about how things look and what they can get away with. That may sometimes be a strategy for short term success, but never holds up over the long haul.

On the other hand, Republicans are more data driven — they care how things really are in addition to some concern about appearances. They may be pragmatic, but they are more principled. That is a better strategy for shaping governance over the long term.

While the current flap between Kit Bond and Robert Gibbs is seen by many in terms of what happened — security briefing and security breach — the important lesson is the difference between the ideas and ethics that drive the two sides, and the effects those values can have on our country long-term.

Related:

NRO: The Corner — The Saga of Abdulmutallab, Underwear Bomber:

It is bad practice to tell the world that a terrorist has agreed to spill the beans on his fellow terrorists who are still walking around free overseas. That is, of course, unless the principal motivation is to try to save political hides at home, even at the expense of actually finding the terrorists Abdulmutallab worked with.

Studies of gay bars in Argentina are in, but benefits for families of slain police officers get slashed. The Obama administration does have its priorities!

From Fox News: U.S. Government Funds $400,000 Study on Gay Sex in Argentina Bars:

The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk — and just what can be done about it.

Doctors and specialists from the New York Psychiatric Institute are using the generous grant from NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to help tailor HIV prevention programs to work at bars and clubs.

Though public health officials say that HIV/AIDS rates are higher in Washington, D.C., than in some parts of West Africa, U.S. government funds are going to help curb dangerous liaisons in Argentina’s capital….

Meanwhile, back in the United States, Obama has found a couple of places to trim the budget. From Fox News: Administration Proposes Significant Cuts to Benefits of Slain Officers:

The Obama administration is asking Congress to slash almost in half a 43-year-old Justice Department program that provides death, disability and education benefits to the families of slain police and public safety officers….

The program offers a one-time disability payment to officers who suffer “catastrophic” injuries in the line of duty. It also provides higher education subsidies to spouses and children of officers killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty….

And here’s another place where we can save — port security. From the Washington Post: Obama’s Budget Eliminates New Funding for Nuclear Detection:

President Obama would eliminate new funding for advanced-generation equipment to detect nuclear weapons and radiological materials at U.S. borders and ports and around New York City in his 2010 budget, homeland security officials said.

The decisions, outlined in Homeland Security Department budget documents and briefings Thursday, mark a turn away from a priority of the administration of former president George W. Bush, who with former vice president Dick Cheney championed development of new technologies that could lead to a ring of domestic sensors of weapons of mass destruction….

Now that we have elected “the lightworker” as president, everybody is full of hope and dreams, everything is changed, and those in foreign countries will love us, so we no longer need to waste our federal budget money on security. How heartwarming!

The joke on the American public, reinforced by the mainstream media hype about budget cuts, is that there actually is not a net reduction. Congress passed a $3.4 trillion budget, but Obama reverted to his original $3.5 trillion budget. Steve Elliott, president of Grassfire, writes us via email:

President Obama’s team is lying about the “budget cuts” in Obama’s 1,500-page, $3.5 trillion budget.

They are not cutting the budget. In fact, Obama’s budget is over $400 billion larger than President Bush’s 2009 budget and $100 billion larger than the bloated budget resolution Congress just passed!

The fact is, the budget Obama released this week is basically the same budget his team released two months ago in “outline” form…

• This is the largest budget ever proposed by a President with the largest deficits in American history.
• It adds over $9 trillion to the national debt — doubling the total debt accumulated from the start of our country through the Bush presidency.
• It includes the Carbon Tax, which could be as high as $2 trillion.
• It includes the massive socialized healthcare program.
• It even ignores the $3.4 trillion budget Congress passed and reverts to Obama’s original $3.5 trillion budget.

…most Republican leaders are missing the real story here — and the liberal media are pushing Obama’s propaganda of “budget cuts.” Obama’s proposal is by far the largest and most debt-ridden budget every proposed.

Dear readers, there is still time to take some action this weekend. If you want to protest this reckless spending, you can add your signature to the petitions that Grassfire will be taking to Capitol Hill on Monday. Go here:

Say “NO!” To The Obama Budget With $1.6 Trillion In New Taxes!

Our electric power grid is vulnerable to missile attack, and Congress is doing nothing about it, according to the author of the book One Second After. The detonation of a small nuclear warhead above the center of the country would create an electromagnetic pulse sufficient to take out the national grid. (Remember what one little surge did in August 2003?)

From the National Review, here’s how it would work:

…one missile, properly targeted, could degrade the electronic grid of the entire continental United States… …even North Korea has weapons capable of doing this…

Rather than target the warhead at land, enemies deliver their payloads from 25 to 300 miles above the Earth’s surface. There, radiation from a nuclear explosion would interact with air molecules to produce high-energy electrons that speed across the earth’s magnetic field as an instantaneous, invisible electromagnetic pulse. Such an explosion would release a pulse strong enough to disrupt power grids, electronic systems and communications over the lower 48.

The United States never has prepared for this threat because experts long assumed it wouldn’t matter. An EMP attack, the theory goes, would come as a precursor to a full-scale nuclear exchange with our Cold War nemesis, the Soviet Union. At that point, the state of the power grid would be the least of our problems.

But today, we must consider a giant electromagnetic pulse (EMP) a significant threat on its own. The congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, calls EMP “one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces.” ….

During Bush’s presidency when the EMP commission did its research, United States Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, to which the commission reported. He had this to say:

[EMP is] a major threat to the United States, not only from terrorists but from rogue nations like North Korea.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack over American soil, one of the expert witnesses at the hearing said, is one of only a few ways that America could be essentially defeated by our enemies, terrorist or otherwise. A single nuclear weapon, detonated at the right altitude, would produce an electromagnetic pulse that — depending on its location and size — would knock out power grids and other electrical systems across much of the country, for months if not years.

Few if any people would die right away. But the long-term loss of electricity would essentially bring our society to a halt. Communication would be almost impossible. Powerless refrigerators would leave food rotting in warehouses, marooned by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still operable simply run out of gas (which can’t be pumped without electricity). The unavailability of clean water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention leave the inevitable fires raging unchecked. As we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, this kind of scenario often results in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.

Our society has grown so dependent on computer and other electrical systems that we have created our own Achilles’ heel of vulnerability, ironically much more so than less developed nations. Deprived of power in occasional blackouts, we are in many ways helpless. Typically, power is restored relatively quickly, but a large-scale burnout caused by broad EMP attack would create a much more difficult situation. Not only would there be nobody nearby to help, it could take years to replace destroyed equipment. Transformers for regional substations, for example, are huge and are no longer manufactured in the United States (emphasis mine).

Recent missile tests by North Korea and Iran involved trajectories over open water. Average citizens in the western world brushed them off and were not alarmed, because these did not look like the successfully targeted down-range tests we are familiar with. But that is because we always think of missiles as being aimed at a target. If the goal of rogue nations is simply to detonate a nuclear warhead over the continental United States to create an electro-magnetic pulse, then the delivery system only needs lauch and distance capability, not the technological refinement necessary for aiming. Iran declared its last test a success. For their purposes, most likely it was. This is not to say that Israel has no cause for concern, but that we should also.

The book One Second After by William R. Forstchen is fiction. But it is predicated on a very real situation. Its current popularity serves as a wake-up call to a dangerous threat.

Related:

Book website — One Second After

Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack — Website

Report of the Commission — Executive Report, 2004 (PDF)

Report of the Commission — Critical National Infrastructures Report, April 2008 (PDF)

Wall Street Journal — What a Single Nuclear Warhead Could Do

Heritage Foundation — The risk of electromagnetic pulse devastation is greater than ever. Why does Washington dismiss it?

CNN Inside Politics — FBI concerned about threat of terror-induced blackouts.

Wikipedia — Northeast Blackout of 2003

Tail wag: Larry Braden

These are my old stomping grounds. Based on my experience as a US law enforcement officer, I spent a year there training Iraqi police recruits, and got to see a lot of history. From Yahoo! News:

U.S. hands “triangle of death” to Iraqi troops
By Peter Graff Peter Graff – Thu Oct 23, 4:43 am ET

U.S. forces declared an area once known as the “triangle of death” safe enough for Iraqi troops to take charge on Thursday, handing over responsibility for security in Babil province to Iraqi forces.

The province south of Baghdad is the 12th of Iraq’s 18 provinces in which primary responsibility for security has been given to Iraqi forces.

With violence at four-year lows, only the capital Baghdad, four ethnically and religiously mixed northern provinces and Wasit province along the Iranian border still require day-to-day U.S. patrols of Iraqi streets.

Iraq’s National Security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said at a handover ceremony in the provincial capital Hilla that Iraqis will also take control of Wasit province within days.

“This is proof that our military forces have reached self-sufficiency, and can now be depended upon to preserve internal security,” Rubaie said.

Lieutenant-General Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. combat forces in Iraq, called the event a “milestone for Iraq in maturing as a sovereign and democratic nation.”….

The Federal immigration raid last Monday in Postville, Iowa evoked all the stereotypical dramas — illegal aliens, identity theft, stolen Social Security cards, underage workers, worker abuse, a drug lab, a local school system burdened with illegal Hispanic children, a Protestant (mostly Lutheran) small town co-opted by Jewish business interests, Jewish businessmen skirting the law to turn an extra buck, a Catholic church offering sanctuary, an American labor union pitted against the Jewish businessmen who were hiring the cheaper illegal labor, a clash between two US government agencies with competing jurisdiction, pandering politicians scrambling to collect points with the Hispanic vote, liberal sympathizers supporting illegals in suing the government, foreign consulates sticking their noses in, protests that the civil rights of these criminal invaders have been violated and finally the WaPo putting a liberal spin on the news.

It is the stuff of opera, but this plot would be difficult to stage, because there are so many sub-themes that an audience could not follow the action. Ditto for the American public, trying to follow this in the mainstream news media that omit relevant background out of political correctness.

Illegal Aliens

Last Monday, on May 12 at 10 AM in the morning, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the world’s largest kosher meat packing plant, located in Postville, Iowa. From the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier:

Federal agents converged on the grounds of the Agriprocessors meat-packing plant in Postville at 10 a.m., rounding up Hispanics on investigations of identity theft, use of stolen Social Security cards and for people in the county illegally. As many as 300 people were arrested….

The raid by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was the largest such operation in Iowa history, said Matt M. Dummermuth, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

He said the raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant was part of an investigation that started in October and came after months of planning. Agriprocessors is the world’s largest kosher meatpacking plant….

Underage Workers

Prior to the ICE raid, the Iowa state labor department served a subpoena on the local school district for student information. From The Des Moines Register:

School officials in early April were served with a 21-point subpoena from Iowa Division of Labor Services seeking the records of Postville middle and high school students and information about some school employees, the district’s superintendent said.
….

The article goes on to note that school guidance counselor Ron Wahl hired some students, and that he in turn was involved with Agriprocessors. His computer and records were also seized.

Education Week reports:

In fact, 12 minors were arrested at the plant during Monday’s raid, according to federal officials….

Michael A. Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston who specializes in immigration law, [e-mailed]. “I am not against legitimate law enforcement, including enforcement of child labor laws…. If that is accomplished by a legitimate subpoena, I assume it has met the test of such requirements. That it involves immigration … does not change the basics.”….

And from WHO TV in Des Moines comes this report:

It turns out illegal immigration may not have been the only illegal thing going on at Agriprocessors in Postville. According to Dave Neil, the Iowa Labor Commissioner, his department has “an on-going investigation” into child labor and wage violations there.

According to Iowa law, people under the age of 18 are prohibited from working “in or about slaughtering and meat packing establishments.” But rumors that teens were working at Agriprocessors and getting paid off the books had been circulating for months….

Worker Abuse

Allegations surfaced that the illegal Hispanic workers, who would not dare to complain for fear of being deported, were being physically abused by their Hassidic supervisors. These were taken into account in the warrant for the ICE raid. The weblog Cedar River Salmon has been following the story:

Postville, Iowa is seemingly the picture of diversity, but underneath it is an example of multiculturalism gone bad…. Mexicans have become the slave labor of an industry that was once the economic lifeblood of many Iowans and their communities…. In one case, a supervisor covered the eyes of an employee with duct tape and struck him with a meat hook. The worker, who had entered the country illegally from Guatemala, was not seriously injured. He declined to report the incident for fear of losing his job….

The Drug Lab

Jewish Telegraph, the self-proclaimed “global news service of the Jewish people,” admits:

Feds: Drugs made at kosher meat plant

Federal authorities charged that a methamphetamine laboratory was operating at the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and that employees carried weapons to work.

The charges were among the most explosive details to emerge following the massive raid Monday at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.

But not to worry, the local Rabbi hastens to add. The meat is still kosher:

Rabbi Moses Weissmandel, the supervising rabbi at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa, called this morning to categorically refute every allegation made this week by government investigators — except the illegal worker business. “That’s not my department,” Weissmandel said.

What is his department is the rabbinical staff, some 40 rabbis responsible for the actual slaughter of meat and for supervising the plant to make sure everything’s kosher. He claimed his rabbis provide round-the-clock supervision, and that none of the allegations – among them that workers were producing drugs on site, and that rabbis abused the workers with meat hooks – are true.

“I categorically say it’s false, it’s not true, it’s a lie,” Weissmandel said. “I have my rabbis supervising 24/7. We supervise every inch of that place in order to be sure that the place is totally kosher.”

The School System

After the raid, fully half of the school children were absent:

Half of the school system’s 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.

In an article mentioning Iowa’s difficulties in coping with English as a Second Language (ESL) students, Edutopia notes:

Habla Ingles?

The influx of English-language learners … into communities across America has created new and unprecedented challenges for administrators and teachers, many already struggling with overcrowded classrooms, dwindling budgets, and strict performance standards for their students. Waves of immigration once limited to large cities such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are now reaching into … pockets of the heartland, bringing with them children whose needs go beyond language to issues of poverty and lack of stability, often associated with minimum wage or migratory employment.

CityTownInfo reports that Postville has a median family income of $40,125. Sperling’s reports a population of 2,314. If 600 of these are students (and that number only counted the public school population) then there are less than 1700 potential wage-earners to support approximately 300 expensive ESL students. Discounting the illegal immigrants under the radar who do not pay taxes and the stay-at-home moms, one can postulate a very expensive educational burden on the remaining legitimate workers/taxpayers.

Stealing A Small Town

The pain of the original, mostly hard-working Lutheran residents of this small mid-western town cries out from a lost website, hacked off the Internet but still partially available in Google cache:

What Happened To Postville? — Basically some New York Hassidic ‘Flim-Flam’ artists, walked into a small Iowa town, bought off the local politicians, and established a giant slaughterhouse. They quickly flooded the plant with Mexican, Guatemalan, and Chinese immigrants. The Rubashkin Family quickly took control of the town, and now it’s a cross between Krakow, and Mexico.

What Is Agri-Processors? — AgriProcessors bought a old processing plant and converted to a kosher meat processing plant for beef, veal, lamb, chicken and turkey.

Postville’s Only Employer — In 1988, Rubashkin and 300 Hasidic rabbis from the U.S., and Tel Aviv, came to Postville (Pop 1378), and bought a shuttered plant. The Jews despised the locals, started their own school, and refused to mix. Today the town has 2352 residents, and the plant employees 800.

Who Runs Postville — Mayor John P Hymen, and the town council of fellow Hassidics….

Skirting The Law

Trouble with the slaughterhouse is nothing new. The local paper reports:

Postville plant has record of violations, reprimands

The company has a long history of citations and fines from state and local officials for violation of labor, food safety and environmental laws….

Company officials admitted in federal court last year that they knew some employees at distribution centers in Brooklyn, N.Y., were using false Social Security numbers, according to court documents….

In April 2000, up to 40,000 gallons of turkey blood spilled into a stream near Postville. The spill was blamed on a malfunctioning pump….

The list of atrocities and violations is too long to include here, but readers can check the reference for more of this disgusting story. More details of specific violations are given in this article.

Catholic Church Sympathizes Panders To Illegals

The local paper notes that the Archbishop rushed into town to offer support to the illegals seeking sanctuary in St. Bridget Catholic Church in Postville:

Dubuque Archbishop Jerome Hanus will celebrate Mass in English and Spanish at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at St. Bridget Catholic Church in Postville.

The Postville raid and fedral Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency actions “highlight once again the need for comprehensive immigration reform,” Hanus said earlier in the week. “Families have been disrupted; parents and children are filled with fear. Many are uncertain whether their loved ones will be arrested, imprisoned indefinitely or deported.”….

No mention from the good archbishop of the fact that the reason these people are living in a state of uncertainty and fear is because … HELLO, THEY BROKE THE LAW BY COMING HERE and by using false or stolen documents.

Conflict With The Union

In constant conflict with organized American labor over pay and safety violations, AgriProcessors just lost another round with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union this past January. The premise of the company’s case will crack you up, dear readers. Agriprocessors held that their workers were not eligible to vote to join the union because they were illegals!

It has not been a good week for AgriProcessors, the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. …the company recently lost an appeal in federal court and continues to field attacks from the slaughterhouse workers’ union.

Last week, a federal court of appeals rejected AgriProcessors’ claim that workers in a Brooklyn distribution center should not be allowed to unionize because many of them are undocumented aliens. The decision ended a two-year court battle.

Conflicting Enforcement Interests

The United Food and Commercial Workers union (and, as a derivative, federal labor interests) was counting on the testimony of illegal workers at the Postville Agriprocessors plant in its ongoing battle with the company. Labor charged

“that the immigration raid disrupted a separate U.S. Labor Department investigation into alleged child labor law violations and other infractions.”

Liberal Sympathizers Sue The Government

You are going to love this. Three of those arrested (note the names) — Antonin Trinidad Candido, Roman Trinidad Candido and Maria del Refugio Masias — have filed a lawsuit against ICE on behalf of an “unspecific number of detained immigrant workers” courtesy of two law firms located in Omaha, Nebraska, — Peck Law Firm and Dornan and Lustgarten Law Firm PC, LLO. Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) has coverage:

A federal class action lawsuit filed Thursday by immigrants arrested in the Postville raid allege Agriprocessors acquired false identification for workers, along with numerous allegations of abuse from supervisors….

And, from the Peck Law Firm mission statement:

We believe that every person who is pursuing the dream of coming to the United States should be treated with dignity and respect throughout the immigration process.

We seek to create a positive atmosphere where our clients’ hopes and dreams are matched only by our dedication and excitement from success.

We believe that community education on immigration issues is essential to our nation’s understanding that from diversity comes strength….

Note that, even though this is a “law” firm, their approbation tacitly includes illegals.

The Obligatory Protests Begin

The WCF Courier reports:

Dozens protest immigration raid

More than 150 people marched Monday night in a peaceful but raucous protest outside of National Cattle Congress.

For two hours, demonstrators marched, chanted and waved flags along the sidewalk that runs along NCC grounds, where detainees from the immigration raid in Postville were being held.

At times, they turned towards federal agents on the other side of the barbed wire fence to chant slogans like “ICE go home.”….

Note to protestors — you are the illegal invaders, and ICE is OUR law enforcement. How about you go home?

Veronica Retuer-Villagrana, 17, said she was upset because most illegal immigrants stay out of trouble.

“We come here to work, not be criminals,” she said….

Note to Veronica — you have already broken our laws by coming here illegally. What is your definition of criminal?

Left-Biased Media Spin Begins

Today, the left-leaning Washington Post weighed in, typically beginning their coverage with a title criticizing law enforcement and an opening tear-jerker anecdote sympathetically told from the law-breaker’s point of view:

Immigration Raid Jars a Small Town
Critics Say Employers Should Be Targeted
By Spencer S. Hsu  |  Sunday, May 18, 2008

Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest.

“I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa,” said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. “Are they mad because I’m working?”….

The WaPo is being egregiously disingenuous. It is a long and difficult process to bring charges against an employer, and costly to the taxpayers. But it is easy to determine whether an individual is in this country legally or not, and so the roundup of illegals is the quickest and most cost-effective way to tackle the problem of illegal immigration short-term.

Describing A “Clash Of Cultures”

The whole sorry drama is spelled out in a book by secular Jew Stephen Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa. From Publishers Weekly:

Bloom’s account of a vicious clash between the residents of a small, intensely Christian town and the group of Lubavitcher Jews who open a highly successful kosher slaughterhouse there is a model of sociological reportage and personal journalism. In 1987, after a Hasidic butcher from Brooklyn bought a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, and began to relocate Jewish and immigrant workers to the area, the town began to change. While some residents were suspicious and anti-Semitic, most were happy to see the town rise above its previous financial destitution. But the Lubavitchers, who traditionally live and work within their own closely knit communities, were not interested in fitting into Postville, and many were dismissive of, or overtly hostile to, its original citizens. After the Lubavitchers started buying real estate and exerting greater influence on the town’s finances, longtime Postville residents began to feel marginalized, yet their reactions caused the Jews to become more isolationist. The slaughterhouse also caused problems: workers were paid below minimum wage and were uninsured, women workers were sexually harassed and fighting among the (often illegal) immigrant workers escalated. Finally, the town took legal action to gain more control over the slaughterhouse. Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa, writes cleanly and with great insight and temperance about these events….

Calling this a “clash of cultures” is a bit too kind, and is the viewpoint of a sympathetic apologist. This is really the story of all the things that go wrong when an entire town looks the other way while the laws of our country are broken, due to economic self-interest. Then when their chickens … er, bloody turkeys … come home to roost, they realize too late that they have sacrificed their lovely little mid-western rural American iconic town. Too bad for them. They were willing to ignore the rule of law, and this is what they got.

---

Final thoughts — after reading the entire list of violations cited in the references included in this article which would, as the saying goes, “gag a maggot” I am left wondering, “Who would eat this meat?”

Last Monday’s raid on the Agriprocessor slaughterhouse unveiled an operatic American illegal immigration drama like no other. One is almost tempted to draft José Plácido Domingo Embil to sing the tile role.

Update 5/22: See also the great post by Angel at Woman Honor Thyself — Illegal “Criminals” not Undocumented “Workers”

There’s a shooting war raging on our southern border, but the MSM won’t cover it.

As many of you already know, there is ongoing chaos in Mexico. Much of this is not being reported in the mainstream media.

Well, things have gotten so bad that the US Dept. of State has finally issued a travel advisory warning tourists about the conditions there.

Below are excerpts from the official document issued by our government.

Excerpts from
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Washington DC
Bureau of Consular Affairs, Issued April 14, 2008

¡¡ Travel Alert – Mexico !!

Violence Along The U.S.-Mexico Border

Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, Mexican police forces, criminal justice officials, and journalists. However, foreign visitors and residents, including Americans, have been among the victims of homicides and kidnappings in the border region….

Recent Mexican army and police force conflicts with heavily-armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades. Confrontations have taken place in numerous towns and cities in northern Mexico, including Tijuana in the Mexican state of Baja California, and Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua. The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted.

Armed robberies and carjackings, apparently unconnected to the narcotics-related violence, have increased in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Dozens of U.S. citizens were kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana in 2007. Public shootouts have occurred during daylight hours near shopping areas. ? ?Criminals are armed with a wide array of sophisticated weapons. In some cases, assailants have worn full or partial police or military uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles.

U.S. citizens are urged to be especially alert to safety and security concerns when visiting the border region….?Criminals have followed and harassed U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Tijuana.

Crime and Violence in Mexico

U.S. citizens residing and traveling in Mexico should exercise caution when in unfamiliar areas and be aware of their surroundings at all times. Violence by criminal elements affects many parts of the country, urban and rural, including border areas…. In recent years, dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped in Mexico and many cases remain unresolved. Moreover, new cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom continue to be reported. No one can be considered immune from kidnapping on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors.

U.S. citizens who believe they are being followed should notify Mexican officials as soon as possible. U.S. citizens should make every attempt to travel on main roads during daylight hours, particularly the toll (“cuota”) roads, which are generally more secure. It is preferable for U.S. citizens to stay in well-known tourist destinations and tourist areas of the cities with more adequate security, and provide an itinerary to a friend or family member not traveling with them. U.S. citizens should avoid traveling alone as a means to better ensure their safety. Refrain from displaying expensive-looking jewelry, large amounts of money, or other valuable items.

The 79 item Iraq Study Group report achieves the distinction of being both fatuous and stultifying at the same time. Going for the trifecta, it is also, if fully implemented, damaging to U.S. security interests.

The report’s fatuousness is a function of its tone; has a bigger group of blowhards of limited talents–puffed up with self-importance–ever set pen to paper? Its stultifying quality is a result of its juvenile content. What 6th grader wouldn’t be proud to write recommendation #19–”the president and administration must remain in constant contact with the Iraqi government”–in an essay for social studies class? The report’s ability to negatively affect U.S. security is multifaceted. In the interests of simplicity, consider just 2 shocking recommendations: seek assistance from a country that desires only our failure and destruction–Iran, and betray the lone free state in the Middle East, and our ally–Israel.

This report deserves scorn and repudiation. The media, of course, have greeted these recommedations, delivered ex cathedra by the majestic co-chairs, with awe and wonder. That in itself should invalidate whatever credibility might have accrued to this report.

You can read more articles by ADMC contributor [Laconic J] at his own weblog, Laconic Blog.

Yaakov Lappin, YNet News reported that several Iranian newspapers urged Muslims around the world to prepare for a ‘great war’ to destroy the State of Israel. An excerpt:

“The great war is ahead of us, (and will break out) perhaps tomorrow, or in another few days, or in a few months, or even in a few Years… Israel must collapse,” the newspaper said.

Couple this with the fact that according to sources and contacts – as well as statements made in Lebanon over the past few weeks – all analysis indicates that Hezbollah is on the verge of an all out offensive in Lebanon to crumble the “March 14″ Seniora Government and to seize strategic control in the country, we could be seeing the presage to the greater war in the Middle East that many of us have predicted and feared.

Call it Armageddon, or the modern equivlant of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, which launced WWI, if Hizbollah moves on the Lebanese government, Israel cannot help but move in to stop this, which would bring it into conflict with Syria. In addition, Iran has 20,000 Iranian guardsmen on their border with Iraq, and even within Iraq, poised to take advantage of any weakness which would allow them to move on the American forces in Iraq, so we have the distinct possibility of American troops being directly engaged with massive numbers of Iranian forces, in a position that would be very hard to resupply them.

We have heard bombastic threats from Moslem leaders before, and this might very well be in that category. However, Hizbollah is Iran’s proxy in its war against Israel, and the Hizbollah threat to the sovereignty of Lebanon is not something to be ignored. One way or another, Israel is going to have to deal with the threat Hizbollah poses to peace in the region, and this would definitely be the spark to set this off.

First one political party and then the other tries to hype and spin the scandalous behavior of their opponents. A homosexual Congressman here, an unpatriotic and bungling Senator there.

And, of course, in those individual instances conduct and commitment to America do matter, and should count for those specific individuals. But for the profile of the nation as a whole, it is the generic issues that should decide the election.

The war against terrorism.

If our nation is lost to the terrorist agenda, none of the other issues will be relevant. There will be no economy. All of the life-style issues will be moot. And the Democrats have amply demonstrated that they want to concede the middle eastern conflict to the terrorists. Only the Republicans have shown the backbone to do what has to be done, however unpleasant.

If we “cut and run” from the commitments we made in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the war will come home to our own shores. The tragedy of 9/11 will pale in comparison to the nuclear events, biological threats, and civic disruption in our own cities that will occur. The weapons are already in place, imported through our porous southern border.

Illegal immigration.

If we persist in our efforts to establish democracy in the Middle East, do not lose our nation to the Islamofascist terrorists, and do not become a backward country ruled by sharia law, then we may be overrun by an invasion of uneducated and illegal Hispanics, who have allowed their own countries to be trashed by drug lords, and are now coming to destroy ours. The influx of potential voters who only want to exploit the United States to send money back to South America and do not understand the mechanics of democracy will dilute our electorate, and our way of life will be lost.

In general this issue favors Republicans, but it must be examined separately for each race — gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional. For a complete rundown on the candidate positions on immigration and border security visit Americans For Better Immigration.

The right to keep and bear arms.

Our founding fathers established a workable democracy. Its continuation depends on our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. The most important of those rights is defined in the Second Amendment, the “right to keep and bear arms.” This is the freedom that secures all of the other rights, and, in fact, the Constitution itself.

While this issue largely favors Republicans, it must be examined for each election contest. The best record of incumbent voting patterns and challenger platform positions is maintained by the National Rifle Association. To view the endorsements for races in your jurisdiction, click on your state in their map of the United States to bring up a complete list of all the races in the state.

The economy.

This issue decidedly favors the Republicans. The economy is prospering. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one measure of our general prosperity, has reached record highs. Employment is solid. The rise of all the traditional economic indicators is remarkably covariant with the passage of tax cuts by the Republicans.

Across the board, the Democrats favor increased government control and taxation, based on their theory of “redistribution of wealth.” Their traditional viewpoint favors penalizing the productive members of the society to grant unearned benefits to the non-productive citizens, as a way of buying their votes. This is a tremendous de-motivating factor for those individuals and businesses that grow our economy, and for the capital investors that enable them.

The right to life.

This issue generally favors the Republicans. Most of those who advocate abortion, research on human embryos, and euthanizing the disabled tend to be Democrats. However, not all Democrats deserve to be painted with this brush.

When the highly (and incorrectly) publicized battle was fought to save the life of Terri Schiavo in the spring of 2005, a subset of the Democrats in Congress, and a few Republicans, voted on the side of death. The American newspapers, consistent with their liberal bias, nowhere published a tally of the vote.

One courageous Canadian journalist did. We archived that issue of the Canada Free Press at the time, so that we could make it available before the 2006 mid-term elections. It gives a complete list, with pictures, of the Capitol Hill Death Squad.

This is a separate page from the archives at our old website, so after viewing it, you will need to use the “Back” button in your browser to return to this article. Check out the

Capitol Hill Gang

Suspicions Confirmed: The TSA Employees are BOZOS….

This ranks right up there with the TSA trying to confiscate the Congressional Medal of Honor from Gen. Joe Foss because its little star had sharp points on it….

From the Marine Times:

TSA detains Marine escorts — Trio escorting body of fallen comrade are stripped of dress blue coats, searched at airport
By Gidget Fuentes

It wasn’t the city of “brotherly love” for a trio of Marine noncommissioned officers escorting the body of a fallen Marine through the Philadelphia airport.

Each decked in their blue dress uniforms, the three enlisted Marines made their way through a security checkpoint at the Philadelphia International Airport about noon on May 3 when they were pulled aside by security workers with the federal Transportation Safety Administration.

The Marines — a sergeant and two corporals — were escorting the body of Sgt. Lea R. Mills from Dover Air Force Base, Del., to his family in Gulfport, Miss. Mills, who was married and lived in Oceanside with his wife, was killed in Iraq on April 28 by a roadside bomb. He was one of three leathernecks killed that day in Iraq’s Anbar province.

They were brothers-in-arms. Like Mills, the Marine escorts are members of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion.

The trio had to go through the terminal’s security in order to reach their flight that would take them to Houston and make sure that Mills’ body was properly placed on the airplane. While their uniforms likely would trigger the metal detector, they had figured they would be able to zip through the screening process and get on with their business.

“Wearing the blues, the metal detector is going to go off,” said Sgt. John Stock, a mechanic, who was accompanied by Cpls. Aaron Bigalk and Jason Schadeburg.

But as the Marines went through the initial screener in their dress blues, they were stopped by several TSA agents. Each was told to remove their dress uniform blouse, belt and black dress shoes, which were scanned by the detector, as the agents scanned them with hand-held detecting wands.

“They had me take off my shoes and ran them through the screening,” Stock said, speaking by phone May 5 from Gulfport, where the men are helping with Mills’ family and funeral support. “We all got searched.”

Then they were taken to a nearby room, where TSA workers patted them down. At one point, Stock’s shoes disappeared, leaving him to frantically search for them and retrieve them from a TSA agent. Separated from their belongings, which included the flag that they bore that would drape Mills’ casket for the rest of the journey home, they worried about getting to the gate in time to ensure his safe placement in the airplane.

Time, it seemed like a half-hour, clicked by. “I was like, hey, we need to be on the tarmac,” Stock recalled. “It just took longer than it should have had to take.”

The agents said nothing to explain why all three were singled out for additional search and the Marines didn’t protest. “We were just trying to get there as quick as we could,” he added. In all, it was a humiliating experience that left them angry….

The entire article is here.

Maybe the airport screeners are profiling Marines. Here’s another recent incident reported by Aero-News:

Big Brother Is Watching WHO??
Fri, 14 Apr ’06

The Transportation Security Administration bagged a terrorist in Los Angeles International Airport Tuesday, or so they thought. Daniel Brown’s name came up on their no-fly watchlist, so they dragged him into interrogation and grilled him, despite the protestations of Brown and his fellow travelers, who swore they could vouch for him.

The others in Brown’s party went on their Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where they waited on a bus at the airport. You see, the detained man was Staff Sergeant Daniel Brown, USMC Reserve, and he was traveling with the other members of his Marine Reserve Military Police unit, which was heading home to Minnesota from eight months of combat in Iraq. The Marines were in full uniform and all, including Brown, had travel orders and military identification cards.

After attempts to stonewall under claims of “security,” TSA spokesmen finally admitted that Staff Sergeant Daniel Brown was placed on the no-fly list, and ultimately detained, because they had detected gunpowder on his footgear — not on this flight, but on a prior flight, which earned Brown a permanent place on the TSA’s mysterious terrorist lists.

The footgear that had been exposed to gunpowder? Brown’s combat boots, and the occasion of that flight was after his return from his first combat tour in Iraq. Gee… a combat Marine in Al-Anbar Province being exposed to gunpowder.

Exposure to gunpowder isn’t something the TSA knows a lot about …. Ultimately, the TSA screeners figured out that Brown really was a Marine, and no threat to his fellow passengers, and let him board a later flight. When he deplaned at MSP, his unit’s bus was waiting — his fellow Marines in it.

Marine 1st Sgt. Drew Benson explained why. “We don’t leave anybody behind. We start together, and we finish together.” All 26 Marines waited for Brown — even though their families were waiting for them at a scheduled welcome-home bash at Fort Snelling.

Brown’s mother Terry was glad they did. “They all come back together… no matter what it takes and I think that’s very important,” she told WCCO-TV.

Frequent TSA critic Richard A. Altomare, Founder and Chairman of the Coalition for Luggage Security — and a former marine — said, “I’m proud that Sergeant Dan Brown’s Marine unit refused to report to their post until the ‘man left behind’ was permitted to get on a passenger plane…”

Reference:   Decorated WWII veteran detained, searched at airport

February 27, 2002

PHOENIX, Arizona (CNN) — Retired Gen. Joe Foss, 86, one of the most highly decorated U.S. war veterans, recently was detained at a security checkpoint at the Phoenix, Arizona, airport because he was carrying an item with sharp edges.

The sharp object turned out to be the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he had received in 1943 from President Franklin D. Roosevelt….

This incident occurred on January 11, 2002 on America West Airlines. USMC Brigadier General Joe Foss passed to his reward on January 1, 2003 and was buried in Arlington Cemetery.

An editorial cartoonist summed up the general take on TSA at the time of the America West incident.