Feds probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield

San Francisco probation officials - citing the city's immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Hondurans caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.

The city's practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with San Francisco's policies aimed at protecting the rights of the immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation

Joseph Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in charge of the San Francisco area, said he was "flabbergasted that the taxpayers' money was being spent for the purpose of ferrying detainees home. You have to have a perfect storm of dumb moves to have it happen..."

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“America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The ‘near-strategic defeat’ of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government's security forces over illegal Shiite militias, including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the political process builds momentum.

“These tremendous gains remain fragile and could be lost to skillful enemy action, or errors in Baghdad or Washington. But where the U.S. was unequivocally losing in Iraq at the end of 2006, we are just as unequivocally winning today.”

—Kimberly Kagan, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of War

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Was the Iraq War Worth It?

While the war remains unpopular, our success there has been unmistakable. The Iraqi people, with the help of the U.S. led coalition, have succeeded in establishing the world’s first Arab democracy. Their achievement is a milestone in the war on terror and for the cause of liberty. [snip]

Before the war, state sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East were Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Today, only Iran and Syria remain -- with a democratic Iraq located between them. And in the information age, don't believe for a moment that the infectious seeds of freedom are not being sown in those countries and throughout the region. The promise of freedom for the oppressed is America's greatest strategic weapon in this war. In due time, tyrants in those countries may come to fear their own people more than any army that may threaten them.[snip]

The recent silence from the mainstream news media on Iraq, however, is speaking volumes.

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IS IT REALLY A "$3 TRILLION WAR"?

[HT:JH]
In their new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes estimate the true cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be $3 trillion, an outrageous figure nearly six times the defense department's own numbers, says John Lott, the author of "Freedomnomics," and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.

Stiglitz and Bilmes, make a number of errors in their calculations, says Lott:

• They put their estimate of total costs of veteran injuries at over $900 billion ($630 billion from taking care of the wounded and $273 billion from the harm done to wounded and injured soldiers), although the Congressional Budget Office's Matthew Goldberg testified in October that the future medical care costs, disability compensation, and survivors' benefits up to 2017 would likely range from only $10 to $13 billion.

• On oil prices, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue since oil prices have increased as the war has gone on, this suggests the war has something to do with rising prices; however, Peter Hartley, a professor at Rice University who specializes in energy economics, says that oil experts almost unanimously agree the wars have not affected oil prices.

• The authors also calculate interest rates using a rate that is far too low and makes the future expenditures on the war look larger today than they really are.

Some notable war critics estimate the costs of the war to be close to $1 trillion, with their most realistic estimates at less than half that amount; still others place the best cost of the war estimates at a sixth of what Stiglitz and Bilmes claim, says Lott.

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On the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Ruling in Boumediene v. Bush Affording Certain Rights to Terrorist Detainees:

“It is difficult to single out the most outrageous aspect of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s cataclysmic Boumediene ruling last Thursday: The reckless vesting of constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans; the roughshod ride over binding precedent to accomplish that feat; or the smug arrogance perfectly captured by dissenting Chief Justice John Roberts’s description of a ‘constitutional bait and switch’ — a Court that first beseeches the political branches to enact a statutory procedure for handling combatant detentions, and then, once a thoughtful law is compliantly passed, invalidates the effort for its failure to satisfy the eccentric predilections of five lawyers.”

— Andrew C. McCarthy, Former Federal Prosecutor
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Ad Featuring Popular Police Pup Sparks Anger

Muslims in the Scottish district of Tayside are outraged by the appearance of a wide-eyed, 6-week-old puppy on postcards distributed by the local police force.

"My concern was that it's not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards," said Dundee councilor Mohammed Asif.

The cute cards were meant to notify locals of a new telephone number for non-emergency phone calls but instead have become a flashpoint for a clash of cultures. Shopkeepers are refusing to display the offending ad and the Dundee city councilor is calling for an investigation...

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IOC raps China for politicising Games

Beijing - The International Olympic Committee has lost patience with China, issuing an unusual criticism of the authorities for linking policy on Tibet to the Olympics. It acted after the ruling Communist Party's top official in the province used a ceremony to mark the Olympic torch's passage through Lhasa, the capital, on Saturday to launch a fresh attack on the Dalai Lama.

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Russian, EU Leaders Discuss Energy and Security

Energy and security dominated the Russia-EU Summit in Western Siberia, where Kremlin leader Dmitri Medvedev called for creation of all-European institutions to replace long-standing structures, including NATO.

In an apparent attempt to increase Russian influence in Europe at the expense of the United States, President Medvedev said security responsibilities should not be passed onto neighbors. He says all European security issues, including missile defense and the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty should be decided collectively. [snip]

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso acknowledged EU dependence on Russian energy during a joint news conference at the end of the two-day summit, and praised President Medvedev for helping the European Union hold talks with Iran...

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The Imitators: Part III

Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."

Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests-- including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.

In the course of the twentieth century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth-- Communism, Fascism, Nazism-- in peacetime, and to start the two World Wars, the bloodiest in all human history. After both World Wars, the United States had to step in to save millions of people in Europe from starving amid the wreckage and rubble that their wars had created.

During the Cold War, may European intellectuals once again misread the threat of a totalitarian dictatorship-- in this case, the Soviet Union. When they finally recognized the threat, many saw the question as whether it was "better to be red than dead." They were no more prepared to stand up to the Soviet Union than they had been to Nazi Germany. Worse yet, much of the European intelligentsia objected to America's standing up to the Soviet Union.

Are we now to blindly imitate those who have been so wrong, so often over the past hundred years? These do not seem like people whose sophistication we should defer to...

[Recommended > ]

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North Pole ice melting fear mongers strike out

Kudos to John L. Daly, who has written a very interesting study of ice at the North Pole. Global Warmists are once again observing cyclical changes and declaring them "proof" of the dire effects of global warming.

Among the interesting pictures posted to this site is this one from 1987, when we were supposed to be worried about global cooling:

HMS Superb, USS Billfish, and USS Sea Devil in a North Pole rendezvous in 1987
(U.S. Navy Photo)

This was not exactly a harbinger of global warming, as this picture of unbroken ice at the North Pole three years later attests:

USS Hawkbill at the North Pole, Spring 1999. (US Navy Photo)

Daly explores the various factors influencing ice at the North Pole. It is accessible to laymen like me. His conclusions:

...both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is certainly subject to variation. But it would be a mistake to assume that a brief period during which the Arctic is in a thinning cycle is anything more than that - a cycle. We know from past history that it has been subject to earlier retreats as suggested by the opening quote from 1817. [snip]

There is nothing in the data to suggest anything but natural cycles at work.

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Are Volcanoes Melting Arctic?

While the media scream that man-made global warming is making the North Pole ice-free, another possible cause is as old as the Earth itself. They just have to look deeper. (Snip) As reported in the June 26 edition of ScienceDaily, a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of massive undersea volcanic eruptions deep beneath the ice-covered surface of the Arctic Ocean. "Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to the WHOI team.

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[FLASHBACK> 080627 NNBrief > Study finds Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes...]

Ignorance You Can Believe In

From the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama took a poke at his Republican opponent on Tuesday, saying that for Senator John McCain to talk of a "psychological benefit" from expanded offshore drilling is to define that policy as a gimmick.

Mr. Obama was responding to remarks that Mr. McCain made on Monday in Fresno, Calif., when he observed that even though the nation might take years to benefit from offshore drilling, "exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial."

Mr. Obama seized on those comments while speaking at a town hall-style meeting here.

" 'Psychological impact'?" Mr. Obama said. "In case you're wondering, that's Washington-speak for 'It polls well.' "

The "psychological impact" to which McCain refers is quite simple: The expectation of greater oil supplies in the future would make it more attractive to sell oil now, when supplies are restricted and prices are high, thereby bringing prices down in the short term. Is Obama really too ignorant to grasp this, or does he just think voters are?

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[good point: anyone really think any known alternative energy will be matured to replace oil in less time than simply bringing more on-line? So why doesn't the 'effect will take years' argument apply to them?]
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The EU Trash Police [for a profit, natch]

[UK]
Threatened with steep fines if they dump too much trash, local governments around the country are imposing strict regimens to force residents to produce less and recycle more:

• Many local governments now collect trash only twice a month, instead of every week.
• They restrict households to a limited amount of garbage and refuse to pick up more.
• They require that garbage be put out only at specific times.
• They impose fines (often in the hundreds of dollars) for failure to comply with their rigid restrictions.
• Other forms of punishment include receiving a "sticker of shame" that informs the public a resident has violated local garbage laws.

The British government says the new regulations are necessary if Britain is to adjust to the changing times: Britain has been ordered to reduce the waste it puts in landfills -- by 2015, to 50 percent of what is was in 1995 -- or face untold millions of dollars in European Union fines.

[no wonder Ireland said no thank you to the Lisbon 'treaty'. The moral? It never stops; once government is let out of it Petri dish it acts like a virus, consuming everything before it {think 'Andromeda Strain'}]

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6 Mexico police officers killed in ambush

Mexico's raging drug war claimed the lives of six more police officers, ambushed on patrol in the marijuana-rich state of Sinaloa, authorities said Friday.

The attack followed the slaying Thursday of a senior police commander, part of a long string of killings apparently aimed at eroding public confidence in the government's ability to challenge drug gangs. The six officers were killed when two carloads of heavily armed men cut off their vehicle in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan.

More than 4,400 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico, among them hundreds of police officers, since President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug cartels after taking office in December 2006.

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Medco, Wal-Mart Merging Electronic Prescription Networks

Medco Health Systems, CVS Caremark Corp. and Express Scripts Inc., the three largest managers of U.S. pharmacy plans, will merge their electronic drug prescription network with one operated by a group of drugstore chains that includes Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The merged network expects to transmit 100 million drug orders this year via computer, accelerating the nation's move toward paperless prescribing, said Rick Ratliff, acting chief executive officer of SureScripts, one of the two services. Benefits managers will get the chance to steer more patients toward lower-cost generic or mail-order drugs, while pharmacies save the cost and time of deciphering poorly written prescriptions

[private sector]

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