-We begin today’s rattle with an interesting story about an Indian-or Muslim, depending upon PR needs of the open borders squad-athlete who was ushered into this country by our very own Senator Chuck Schumer. Unfortunately, this gifted sportsman is also a sex offender. Perhaps this isn’t quite as bad as having an alien interning for your office who is also a registered sex offender, but it does make you question the collective wisdom of our Democratic friends in Congress. Maybe we shouldn’t be taking their advice, vis-a-vis, controversial immigration decisions made by the Executive branch.

-In a reminder that there are actually rational people living in The People’s Republic of Vermont, the voters of Rutland have just turned out their incumbent mayor, Chris Louras, after he attempted to deluge their town with Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq. While ignoring the public’s deep discontent with our government’s refugee resettlement programs-when not imputing racism and bigotry to Americans who express reservations about these schemes-is the norm, even the alternative weekly was forced to concede the enormous political consequences of this decision.

-For those of you who were wondering whatever happened to the thousands of unaccompanied minors who were allowed to enter into this country, wonder no more. According to an in-depth backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, our government has absolutely no clue what it’s doing. While over 80 percent of their sponsors are illegal aliens, 44 percent of the UACs in question were ordered deported. Have the vast majority of these children been deported? Of course not, silly!

-You may ask yourself, “Why is this important?” It’s a good question. After all, it’s not as if these individuals will bring brutal Central American inter-gang warfare to the placidity of our nation’s suburbs, right? Well, I have some bad news for you on that score. It turns out that Latin American gangs, including MS-13, one of the most prolific and ruthless criminal networks in the Western Hemisphere, has actually established a pretty firm beachhead in our own backyard. Naturally, almost all of these gangbangers are criminal aliens. In an ironic twist, the moniker of the man who made an abortive attempt to unify the Mara Salvatrucha within the United States is, you guessed it, Dreamer.

-For those of you who think Europe’s approach to immigration is any less self-defeating and preposterous than the United States, I give you France. A nation where municipal authorities in Calais are attempting to prevent thousands of migrants from recreating the notorious refugee camp known as The Jungle. The biggest proponents of turning The Camp of the Saints into reality are, of course, other Europeans who believe Western civilization is uniquely evil. The ostensible plight of migrants from the third world is simply a cudgel with which the Gramscian left-with the help of corporate bean counters-can beat native Europeans into submission.

-After all, what are a few dozen, or a few hundred, honor killings in the grand scheme of things? Is the systemic dehumanization and murder of girls in nations which were responsible for the idea of religious toleration and freedom of conscience too high a price to pay for erecting the beautiful mosaic? When bad whites are saying intemperate, obnoxious things about people who are off-white, doesn’t that negate their entire philosophical worldview?  Even if that perspective is confirmed multiple times every single day?

-Everyone knows that the real reason millions of Muslims across the world support ISIS, Al Qaeda, and similar jihadist networks is because there isn’t enough inclusion in Hollywood casting decisions. See, the real villain isn’t Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It’s those bastards who refused to green light an all-Muslim reboot of Star Trek!

-The cognitive dissonance at work in the mind of an an open borders leftist must be overpowering. They want to live in a high-trust, quasi-collectivist techno-utopia-along the lines of something created by Gene Roddenberry-yet simultaneously support policies which make this already far-fetched goal virtually impossible. The mentality of a social justice warrior in high dudgeon can be found in this VICE piece, which laments the role homeless shelters have been playing in the deportation of migrants. The traditional liberal concern for the working class and the poor is discarded when it conflicts with the categorical imperative, i.e. preserving diversity. The spiritual hollowness and intellectual vapidity of this type of leftist ‘thinking’ was brilliantly and caustically skewered by George Orwell nearly a century ago. It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed all that much.

-I’d like to leave you on a good note, so here’s some refreshing news to come out of Austria. 8 Iraqi men have been convicted of the gang rape of a tourist. Unlike the Middle Eastern cab driver in Halifax who was, to all intents and purposes, high-fived by a Nova Scotia judge for raping an unconscious passenger, these rapists were actually given (relatively) stiff prison sentences. What’s more, we’ve discovered that these horrific incidents actually constitute an anomaly within the Islamic immigrant community.

Migrants and refugees from other countries expressed concern that the crime will make Austrians hostile toward all newcomers.

“Eight people raping a woman — that’s honor-less! Such a thing doesn’t exist in our religion,” Burhan Akbas, a migrant from Turkey, said.

“When such people come here and screw up like that, then everybody will think that Chechens, Afghans, all refugees from war areas are all the same,” Mansur Salamou, an asylum-seeker from Chechnya, said. “But it’s not like that. For example, the majority of us — we also cause problems, commit crimes. But no rape! Only criminal assaults and robberies.”

See, Europeans?! You only have to worry about being assaulted and robbed by the millions of North African and Middle Eastern refugees and migrants making their way towards Europe. What a relief.

Kudos to intrepid investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson for bringing attention to a noble cause. As most of you know, the investigation into the death of Agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican narco-insurgents has gone nowhere for nearly the past four years, in no small part due to the obstruction of this administration. Even so, the friends and family of Brian have never stopped speaking out on behalf of justice.

One of the ways they have done so is by establishing the Brian Terry Foundation, which not only spreads awareness of the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious gunwalking debacle but helps out those who have been victimized by the failure to secure our nation’s borders.

To that end, Erik “Trek” Utrecht will bicycle from his hometown of Flat Rock, Michigan, Brian Terry’s hometown, to Bisbee, Arizona-home of the Brian Terry Border Patrol Station-beginning September 15th. You can find more information-including how you can contribute to it-on the Brian Terry Foundation website.

The pilot episode of what will hopefully be a long-running podcast, co-hosted by writer and blogger Todd Seavey. For those of you who are Robocop fans, here’s a review of the long-awaited sequel by a professional film critic, the New York Post’s Kyle Smith.

One of the mainstays of this administration’s immigration policy is non-enforcement, coupled with an overwhelming tendency to deceive the public about what it is doing. Of course, its lapdogs in the mainstream media have been more than willing to facilitate this deception, so long as it bolsters the President’s chances of enacting an even more sweeping wholesale amnesty. The notion that there might be Americans who hold a differing perspective is inconceivable within the media bubble.

Forget for a moment that a well-respected, private research university had already established that Obama and his cronies were lying about their dereliction of duty over a year ago. Or that the head of the House Judiciary Committee had repeatedly proven that this administration’s deportation statistics were complete fabrications. Let’s overlook that Mark Krikorian had written an extensively documented monograph which demonstrated how President Obama and his administration was thoroughly undermining immigration enforcement prior to the 2010 Republican landslide.

Unfortunately, nothing came of that historic election due to the slavish devotion of the new speaker to the Chamber of Commerce and its cheap labor at all costs benefactors. Something else that didn’t change was the White House’s commitment to eviscerating the remaining vestiges of immigration enforcement. So it comes as no surprise that a breakup of the most lucrative immigration fraud ring in recent memory was initiated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and not the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After all, why should the training of ICE agents be put to waste enforcing immigration law when they can be used to protect the profits of multi-millionaire NFL commissioners, becoming, in effect, the Who Dat Police, or nab malefactors trying to dump malicious pots of Chinese honey upon American shores? It would be amusing, if it weren’t so tragic. The fraud-ridden nature of the immigrant investor visa is so transparent that even National Public Radio felt compelled to do a remarkably impartial story exploring its defects, which are evident to anyone who’s done even a cursory examination of the program.

This is the exception to the rule, however, as the mainstream media-from those blissfully immune from the devastating consequences of open borders at NPR to the demagogues at the New York Times-lay down the party line on mass immigration. Like those charged with overseeing immigration enforcement in this administration, the ostensible “gatekeepers” are not going to do anything in their power to address one of the most pressing issues of our time. That is our job as citizens, and one that is worthy of our efforts.

Civilization doesn’t see to be all it’s cracked up to be, does it? Perhaps these youths are merely the budding immigrant entrepreneurs of which Tamar Jacoby and her ilk wax poetic? Regardless, I’m sure they’ll make a lasting, positive contribution to American society.

h/t BlazingCatfur.

There are a number of problems with Thom Hartmann’s assertions, not the least being that approximately half of illegal aliens are not here because they overstayed their visas. Although he is correct in asserting that this group constitutes a growing portion of the illegal immigrant population living here, even if-like most things touching upon an activity that is illegal-accounting for specific sub-groups within this demographic cohort-much less pinpointing how they came here with any specificity-is nearly impossible. 

Putting aside that cavil, much of his monologue correctly identifies the fatal flaws of past amnesties such as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which served as the predicate for the disastrous amnesty proposals now being crafted on Capitol Hill and promoted by the White House. It should come as no surprise that the authors of the law which opened the spigot of illegal immigration during the Reagan administration also support these ill-conceived plans.

The fact that Republican officeholders have served as one of the chief impediments to immigration enforcement is an uncomfortable yet inexorable truth. As Roy Beck explained in painstaking detail during his speech to the Penn Club earlier this year, the main reason E-Verify-which the Obama administration had signaled it might eventually support-was not implemented on a federal level during the last session of Congress was due to obstructionism on the part of House Republican leaders such as Speaker Boehner and powerful committee chairman such as Fred Upton.

It’s something to keep in mind the next time you watch John Boehner punish wayward House conservatives for daring to stand up for principle, even as he schemes with like-minded confidence men in Washington intent upon continuing the strip-mining of American citizenship.

Note:  Video footage, including a rousing speech made by the legendary Pamela Geller, as well as a moving speech by 9/11 mother Nelly Braginskaya, at Atlas Shrugs. Also, additional photos and footage provided by the indefatigable photo-blogger Urban Infidel. 

If  there was a single, overarching theme to the first Stop the Islamization of Nations Congress, it was just that. Freedom. The freedom exercised by Rifqa Bary-the courageous young woman who converted to Christianity despite the wishes of her Muslim parents, and whose portrait you see emblazoned upon the poster above-as well as the freedom to engage in critical inquiry regarding any and all subjects-including Islam-are one and the same. For fundamentally, they both come down to the exercise of free will. Individual choice is something that is not highly valued in authentic Islamic culture, as the plight of the recently freed Iranian Christian pastor  Yousef Nardakani, and the fate which befell Arab journalists who republished the famous Jyllands Posten Mohammed cartoons, demonstrate.

I traveled to the UN Millennium Plaza Hotel on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 massacres in order to listen to a roster of speakers who would illuminate just how precarious the freedom we enjoy is, why it is imperiled-not only in the United States, but across the globe-by whom, and how we can resist the encroachment of those who would circumscribe, and ultimately, eliminate it.

Notwithstanding the passel of amiably grouped American and United Nations flags in that photo, the  values of the United States and those undergirding the United Nations could not be further removed from one another. Anyone who has read the aptly titled The UN Gang by Pedro Sanjuan, a career diplomat and Foreign Service officer-a book that , ironically enough, was stolen while I attended the conference-would recognize just how different our nation is from the anti-American swamp in Turtle Bay. Unfortunately, those in power today-particularly within this administration-seemingly want to emulate the rogue’s gallery of Islamic theocracies, tinhorn military dictatorships, and third world socialist backwaters that currently comprise its membership. At least, with respect to the citizen’s relationship to the state.

Although the words from the Old Testament prophet are laudable-if a bit confusing when juxtaposed against the United Nations general opinion of Jews-they in stark contrast to most of the actions undertaken by the UN, which range from supplication before the preeminent state sponsor of terror, to deploying “peacekeepers” whose chief recreational activity consists of terrorizing the people they were putatively sent to protect. However, the most insidious threat posed by the United Nations is its attempt to nullify our natural rights in order to preserve the edifice of Islam as a great religion.

In decades past, the free world-led by the United States-would have led the fight against criminalizing dissent. However, the position espoused by the American government has been changed dramatically. The instinctive reflex on the part of government officials is exemplified by the craven tweet-since deleted-by the United States embassy in Cairo issued shortly before it was assaulted by a salafi mob. A mob which included, it should be noted, both the younger brother of Al Qaeda’s current emir and members of the terrorist organization whose leader is responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing. Of course, now that the Arab Spring is in full bloom, we should keep in mind that yesterday’s terrorist might very well be today’s democrat.

The most significant aspect of this transformation is the State Department’s active encouragement of a UN resolution, crafted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which would criminalize any substantive criticism of Islam. As Robert Spencer pointed out during the conference, this treaty would have the force of law, and there’s no reason to believe that the United States Supreme Court-McConnell vs. FEC made its cavalier attitude towards expressive speech plain-to honor our First Amendment rights any more than it has recognized those enshrined within the Second Amendment, or, I would add, the Fifth.

The institutionalization of this dhimmification of our legal system is occurring in our own backyard. State Senator David Storobin, who-regardless of any other criticism that can be leveled against him-should be congratulated for having the temerity to attend this conference, explained why this is such a pernicious development. A man whose family escaped from the Soviet Union-the largest totalitarian empire in world history-and whose relatives were slaughtered by Islamic separatists-Senator Storobin is perhaps uniquely qualified to speak to this issue. He denounced hate speech laws, which he correctly described as penalizing thought rather than criminal action, and averred that he believed in the principles of the Founders. “The founding fathers of America, not the Soviet Union. Madison, not Lenin.”

It’s a quote worth keeping in mind when the vanguards of the left insist upon adopting a policy of prior restraint against the only religion of global breadth they seemingly venerate.  What makes matters even more grave is the fact that those whose sensitivities will be preserved at the expense of our liberty, unlike the victims of other thought crimes-or perceived thought crimes-the left has sought to give protected status, these individuals have the propensity to vent their displeasure in ways much more colorful than public protests or civil disobedience. This fact was brought home to the audience during the speech of the man you see below, David Yerushalmi, founder of the American Freedom Law Center and tireless advocate for American civil liberties.

Mr. Yarushalmi’s speech focused on the nexus between the application of sharia law within Western societies and the inexorable diminishment of civil rights and liberties of citizens living in those societies. Contrary to the anodyne picture of sharia which has been painted by the press, academe, and assorted lapdogs of CAIR touted by our intellectual betters, the facets of Islamic law-provided we ever agree on a school of Islam to impose-which many have no trouble with in principle are diametrically opposed to the values we cherish as American citizens. A perfect illustration of this conflict in practice occurred earlier this year during an Arab American festival held in the city of Dearborn, Michigan.

Exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble and voice their opinions, several Christian missionaries decided to demonstrate their profession of faith in Christ-and disbelief in the assertions found within the pages of the Koran-during this event. Doubting the claims of Mohammed-or his adherents-is a criminal offense-in Islam, not in the United States-which led to these men to being stoned by a frenzied mob of “Arab Americans.” Despite the fact that it was the peaceful protesters who were attacked-to the point of bloodshed-they were the ones told to vacate the premises, lest they be arrested.

The Orwellian revision of the facts by local and national media outlets-where the victims and aggressors were inverted-was not surprising. However, the willingness of a large municipal police department to enforce the legal code that contradicts the 1st Amendment is what led Mr. Yarushalmi to pursue a lawsuit against the officials responsible for this outrage.

While this incident might be interpreted as speaking to the depressing lack of respect for constitutional rights by those entrusted with the use of deadly force by the state, the tenacity with which this lawyer is seeking redress is what stands out in my mind. This determination to protect the sacred right of free speech can also be seen in the legal battle between the American Freedom Defense Initiative/Stop the Islamization of America and the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority over the content of the subway ad you see presented in the powerpoint presentation below.

Questioning the rationale behind the construction of a mosque within sight of Ground Zero, the ad was initially deemed unacceptable by MTA executives before a lawsuit reminded them that freedom of speech trumps the tender sensibilities of a teflon-coated religion. The same MTA was forced to back down again after a federal judge chastised it for refusing to consent to the display of another AFDI/SIOA ad which supported the state of Israel.

However, the most intriguing recent legal victory of Mr. Yarushalmi’s was the decision by the corresponding public transportation governing authority in the city of Detroit.

The poster you see above is nearly identical in content to billboards commissioned by atheist activists exhorting non-Muslim believers to abjure their faith. The only difference being that a the consequence for individuals who answer the question posed here in the affirmative is death. As the tragic fates of Jessica Mokdad…

…and Aqsa Parvez make clear.

It is precisely the willingness among adherents to the Koran to inflict often lethal violence upon its critics which leads governments to attempt to circumscribe the actions, and police the expression of thoughts, of the people whom they ostensibly serve. However, the complicity of almost every major media organ-both in print and on television-in the whitewashing of Islam’s intolerance of dissent-among other less than admirable traits-has as much to do with affinity for the ends-if not always the means-of its followers, as it does any craven abdication of responsibility linked to fear. We’ll examine the responsibility of the press for the current state of affairs in Part II of our coverage.

-We begin the blotter with a bone-chilling story focusing upon a particularly senseless, brutal murder by a 27 year-old Mexican national in Stark County, Ohio. The heartless, illegal killer of 61 year-old taxi company owner and driver Jerry Laury-a man who, as his sister points out, had survived both a kidney transplant and open heart surgery-was given a 33 year sentence, after which he can be deported, although I’m sure that’s small solace to Mr. Laury’s surviving family members. The death of Jerry Laury at the hands of this piece of sub-human detritus concretizes the senselessness of our country’s open borders policies.

-Meanwhile, on the Left Coast, jury selection began in the trial of another 27 year-old illegal alien who gunned down 60 year-old Charles Ellsworth Richardson in front of his trailer repair shop in Riverside County, California. This charming fellow, in addition to being a cold-blooded killer, has already been convicted of the following crimes:

...possession of marijuana for sale, transportation of marijuana for sale, possession of an assault weapon and a misdemeanor count of carrying a loaded firearm in public.

Aren’t you glad this “undocumented American” is part of the wonderful new mosaic of California?

-Next, we move a bit north, to the Pacific Northwest, where another Mexican national who had been deported just three weeks prior murdered his 21 year-old former girlfriend, who was the mother of his five year-old son, Griselda Ocampo Meza. A statutory rapist with previous convictions for domestic violence? Good to know that in the future such pettifogging crimes won’t merit the attention of American immigration enforcement.

-Finally, we head south to the Sunshine State where, courtesy of the New American, comes word of the 13 year sentence handed down to a 26 year-old, illegal border jumper convicted of vehicular manslaughter in Sarasota, Florida. We wish we could say this was an isolated incident, but as the New American points out-and as has been reported on American Rattlesnake in the past-the link between drunk driving and illegal aliens is one that continually reappears, and one that will keep cropping up if our government persists in its lackadaisical policies, re: immigration enforcement.

I suppose I should have prefaced the title of this post with the qualifier “allegedly,” although for the sake of argument I’ll assume that the allegations contained in the Justice Department indictment are true.  There are a number of angles from which this story can be approached, and many of them have already been teased out by analysts, reporters, and foreign policy experts over the past day. These include conspiracy theories asserting that this development is merely a means of deflecting the widening fallout from Operation Fast and Furious, commentary on the regional power struggle between the House of Saud and the mullahs in Iran, and rumblings that this might be a prelude to hostilities between the United States and the IRI. 

What interests me about this story-aside from the fact that one of the purported plotters is a naturalized American citizen-is the rush by pundits to dismiss the idea that members of the Quds Force, a paramilitary, terrorist arm of Iran’s military-would collaborate with a Mexican drug cartel. Leaving aside the question of whether this plot was undertaken by actors within the Iranian regime, the notion that terrorists and Mexican narco-traffickers would cooperate is hardly outlandish. It’s been well established that Hezbollah, the cat’s paw of the ayatollahs in charge of Iran, has extensive operations in Latin America, including Mexico, so the means to effect a consequential terrorist assault certainly exists, as the Jewish community in Argentina knows all too well. And the nexus between drug lords and international terrorists has certainly been well documented, in countries ranging from Colombia to Afghanistan to other nations throughout the world.

Plus, the cooperation between Iran and anti-American regimes within Latin America, such as those of Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, is an established fact. So the question is not whether this sort of terrorist collaboration is possible, but whether the Zetas and an arm of the Iranian regime worked together in this specific case. That’s something that federal prosecutors and policy-makers will have to contemplate in the days ahead.

Update:  I’ve been informed that Seth Thompson’s body has, tragically, been recovered by authorities in Eaton, Michigan. You can find more details about this horrific turn of events in the comments section below, courtesy of LBell. We at American Rattlesnake extend our deepest condolences to the Thompson family and friends of the deceased.

I’ve just been informed of a missing persons case in Midland, Michigan. For any reader living in that area, who’s seen the man pictured above in the past day, I’d suggest you contact the authorities. Here’s a link to an article that contains more details about the case. Here are some of the most relevant details:

Kramer said Thompson’s vehicle, a silver 2003 Dodge Caravan with a handicapped license plate, number 8754M, was located at 3:25 p.m. Monday at the Eastlawn Plaza. It was parked in the row closest to Saginaw Road between the Dairy Queen and Walgreen’s, facing the roadway.

Seth Thompson is described as a white man standing 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighing 207 pounds with blue eyes and white hair, though he is balding. It is unknown what he was wearing. Anyone who knows where Thompson is or has information about the case is asked to contact officers at (989)-839-4713, Detective Caryn Weiland at (989)-839-4708 or 911.