This month’s Rattle brings us a host of stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover sufficiently-preferring instead to shower accolades upon the man responsible for abandoning immigration enforcement in the name of political opportunism. We’ll cover everything from the latest spate of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens to Barack Obama’s continued roll out of administrative amnesty, which now includes directives to ignore both interior enforcement and border security.

But first, we’ll examine this administration’s ongoing obstruction of Congress’s investigation into the ever-broadening gun-walking scandals. Courtesy of Sipsey Street Irregulars-whose coverage of Fast and Furious is non pareil-we learn that the White House is blocking testimony from Kevin O’Reilly, a former staff member of the National Security Council who wants to speak with the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This administration’s invocation of executive privilege is just the latest example of obstruction of justice  relating to Fast and Furious.

It should be recalled that last July the acting head of the ATF told Congress that his agency was paying FBI agents to ignore the law in pursuit of this administration’s bizarre and opaque political goals. Immigration control, not gun control, is a solution that Barack Obama’s Justice Department dismisses out of hand. We can only hope that, as Katie Pavlich reports in Town Hall, Chairman Darrell Issa pursues this investigation to its conclusion, which hopefully will result in a more than a few stiff prison sentences. Speaking of Katie Pavlich, she has a fantastic new book about Fast and Furious entitled-appropriately-Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal, which I urge you all to read.

Obfuscation and evasion are hallmarks of this administration, especially as it pertains to immigration and border security, as an insightful commentary from Michael Cutler published by Fox News Latino illustrates. The former INS agent and current immigration watchdog points out that Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security is effectively “cooking the books” by relying solely upon  documented arrests-a misleading statistic-in order to pretend that this administration is cracking down upon illegal entry into the United States. FAIR’s Legislative Update further dissects this policy, which is drawing increasing scrutiny from Congress-particularly Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz- notwithstanding what Tom Tancredo accurately describes as a bipartisan conspiracy to hobble border security and immigration enforcement. By not logging and tracking the number of illegal border crossers who were not detained, Customs and Border Protection is painting a rosy picture of a much more dire situation.

The deceit of this administration extends beyond the CBP and encompasses virtually every aspect of immigration enforcement, both at the border and inside of the United States. Even though ICE is touting the Cross Check raids it initiated earlier this month-intended to apprehend ostensibly violent criminals, absconders and  fugitives from justice-this is merely a political expedient designed for election year consumption. The truth is that Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty proceeds apace, with four cities ordered to halt deportations, according to the Dan Stein Report. Remarkably, the Executive Office for Immigration Review has closed San Francisco’s immigration court and plans to completely halt its proceedings for the entire summer. Jim Kouri reports on yet another component of Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty, the decision to suspend deportations of illegal aliens with “families,” inside of the United States.

And while illegal aliens are not being deported, they will be able to enjoy state-of-the-art detention facilities, including some new amenities such as beach volleyball and cable TV. Lamar Smith excoriates this administration for its skewed priorities in a must-read op-ed published in The Hill. Although this new detention manual  might seem farcical, it’s far from a laughing matter. As Jim Kouri points out in his Examiner column, the Department of Homeland Security has taken virtually no action against foreigners who overstay their visas. This negligence persists over a decade after the September 11th massacres, which were committed by a cadre of jihadists whose visa applications are symptomatic of our country’s dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy. This is not merely an hypothetical problem, even after the destruction of the World Trade Center, as the case of illegal alien Amine El Khalifi demonstrates. The fact that this indifference to the lives of American citizens continues unabated, despite repeated pressure exerted by the GAO serves to illustrate this administration’s fundamental lack of accountability.

Even as it lags behind in locating and detaining criminal aliens, the administration of Barack Obama has deigned to grant Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Syrians living in the United States. As we’ve pointed out in the past, Temporary Protected Status is anything but temporary. In fact, it is merely another expedient used to grant de facto amnesty to a group of illegal aliens who can prove “hardship” circumstances, most of which persist indefinitely-making their stay in the United States permanent. This is even more disturbing when juxtaposed against the State Department’s recent decision to bar inspection of a visiting Egyptian delegation consisting of Muslim Brotherhood officials. Of course, Egypt isn’t the only country where the Ikwhan has a strong foothold.

The problem is that Barack Obama’s ostensible opposition, i.e. congressional Republicans, are doing virtually nothing to investigate the egregious overreach of his administration on immigration matters. Quite the contrary, some are hard at work developing proposals that would only worsen the situation, such as DREAM Lite, in hopes of  cultivating the ever-elusive Hispanic vote. Republican leaders in the states are not faring much better in this regard, as the difficult struggle in New Hampshire to prevent illegal aliens from capitalizing upon in-state tuition benefits demonstrates.

In an update to a story that we’ve covered recently, the North Carolina General Assembly held another hearing on illegal immigration and potential enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately, according to NC Listen, it was dominated by illegal aliens and their supporters in the legislature, including some of the very people who had disrupted a previous hearing about these problems. Heading further south, we learn that the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act has been killed in the Mississippi State Senate. Apparently, Judiciary Chairman Hob Bryan has caved knuckled under to the Mississippi Poultry Association and its desire for cheap labor, notwithstanding the harm such a decision may inflict on innocent Mississippians. Its neighbor to the East, Alabama, has revisited HB 56, the landmark legislation that targeted illegal aliens living in that state. Rep. Micky Hammon has decided to alter some of the provisions that have been enjoined by a federal court, but maintains that he and his fellow Republicans will not repeal the law, which is welcome news.

In not so good news, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has decided to defy Immigration and Customs Enforcement and refuse detainer requests for criminal aliens housed in her county’s jails. Saul Chavez is one beneficiary of Preckwinkle’s benevolence, having fled the country upon being released from jail after killing William McCann. The carnage our government’s policies wreak is not limited to the odd vehicular manslaughter though, as the massacre at Oikos University in California makes clear to any impartial observer. Limits to Growth has an insightful story about mass-murderer One L. Goh which explains the circumstances surrounding his rampage which the main stream media willfully ignores. Oikos was apparently more concerned with harvesting tuition payments by foreign students-often with loans backed by American taxpayers-than ensuring the safety of its student body. It brings to mind  9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose entrance to the United States was facilitated by a campus administration eager to recruit students from the Middle East, heedless of the potentially deadly repercussions.

The fact that there are visa mills exploiting the F-1 Visa program should come as no surprise to people who are aware of the extensive fraud and exploitation present in the legal immigration system. Just as in Canada-which recently charged attorney Sandra Zaher with inventing false refugee claims-the United States is plagued by immigration fraud so pervasive that the conviction of Earl Seth David, aka Rabbi Avraham David, head of a New York law firm, headlines an ICE press release. The irony of an agency headed by John Morton-who’s tasked with expediting illegal immigration-spotlighting the conviction of someone for immigration fraud is apparently lost on this administration.

In another prime example of abuse, a lawsuit by two former employees of Larsen & Toubro InfoTech Limited Inc alleges systemic fraud at the India-based IT firm for which they once worked. Joining an earlier class action filed against the firm, this suit asserts that the plaintiff was forced to not only forge documents related to H-1B visas-a program rampant with corruption and fraud-but told not to report the crime to outside authorities. Read the sickening story for yourself, if you feel you have the requisite stomach. The baffling purposes of the H1-B visa program weren’t illuminated by a recent decision by Judge Gregory Frost, who ordered suppressed almost all information related to the case of  Geza Rakoczi, who is described thusly,

…a young alien man with a mysterious legal status, probably an illegal alien, who has a bachelor’s degree from a marginal educational institution, a private one that accepts all applicants, and his employer, a mortgage finance company in trouble in two different states.

Putting the lie to the idea that these visas are reserved for “highly-skilled” immigrants. More often than not they are merely convenient bodies used to replace the more demanding, highly-compensated Americans who they’ve made redundant. If you don’t believe me, just ask the wife of unemployed semiconducter engineer Darin Wedel, who is still waiting to hear back from President Obama. But do not fear, the virtual border fence is back on track,which I suppose is small comfort to the thousands of hard-working Americans like Mr. Wedel.  However, India is not the only nation to take advantage of the nebulous, easily exploitable H1-B visa program. As Phyllis Schlafly  points out, the Islamist Gulen movement in Turkey has used these same visas in order to indoctrinate Muslim students in American charter schools. The dangers posed by the Gulen movement have been explored ad nauseam in other forums, but it should be noted that even if you ascribe the most benign of intentions to the Gullenists, the idea that fundamentalist Muslim teachers are somehow highly skilled workers is implausible on its face.  Focusing on yet another rising Asian power, the New American has an interesting story about the PRC’s use of the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program in the state of Idaho which is well worth reading.

Returning to more timely issues, we discovered this past week that it’s not all that difficult to register to vote using a fabricated identity, or even assuming the persona of the current Attorney General  of the United States. Thanks to James O’Keefe we’ve discovered how simple it is to game the system, although officials at the increasingly misnamed Justice Department don’t seem to agree. Of course, acknowledging that vote fraud exists would require the Obama administration to prosecute those responsible for it, which wouldn’t bode well for the electoral prospects of Barack Obama’s party. From New York to Florida, from Indiana to Arizona, stealing elections has become quite commonplace, even as the White House-and its complaisant cronies in the media-scoff at the notion. Some Democrats, though, readily admit that trying to manipulate the outcome of elections is a routine practice, and a few even have the integrity to support measures that would rectify this betrayal of democracy.

In an ironic twist, labor unions-which were some of the most vehement supporters of President Obama’s Stimulus plan-are now complaining about some of the jobs stemming from stimulus projects going to Korean workers. I suppose the lesson is to be careful what you wish for, especially if it is over 700 billion dollars worth of taxpayer-financed boondoggles.

In more border violence, two illegal immigrants were murdered just northwest of Tucson on Thursday by two camouflaged gunman, echoing an attack that occurred  near the same city in 2007. This sort of bloodshed is rare but not unheard of in Arizona, especially in the Tucson sector, where over forty percent of this nation’s  illegal aliens come through. It is yet another reason why the constitutionality of SB 1070 must be upheld by the Supreme Court, in spite of the hostility of open borders dogmatists such as the misleadingly named Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Our final story is related to our relationship to the state as individuals, and how that relationship is changing as a result of our government’s decades-long recalibration of this country’s demographics. Courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center, we now know that over seventy percent of Latinos want the government to provide more services to Americans, not less. Limits to Growth has a fascinating summary of the survey’s other findings, which include a belief among Hispanics that they should learn English in order to succeed in the United States, but not in order to integrate into the broader society. The findings about faith in government are worth exploring though, because they reinforce something that our side has been saying for a very long time. Namely, that Hispanic voters’ support for Democrats and generally left wing political candidates has very little to do with the GOP’s position on immigration, but a lot to do with their endorsement of redistributive economic policies.

The findings of the Pew Hispanic Center demonstrate that the cause and effect most often cited in declining Republican Party affiliation among Hispanics-embodied by the specious narrative about Pete Wilson and the waning fortunes of the California GOP-is reversed. Hispanics do not support the Democratic Party because it advocates open borders, the Democratic Party supports open borders because it enhances its ability to win future elections. In effect, what is happening is that the political elite is electing a new people. This dynamic needs to be remembered whenever we hear mealy-mouthed Republicans exhorting us to abandon any attempt to impose reason upon an anachronistic immigration system that is designed to thwart the wishes of the vast majority of the American public.

It’s going to be a long, tumultuous election year.

A man dying in the prime of his life, even as he was ascending to the summit of his vocation, is something that rarely occurs in this country. Even my paternal grandfather, and his son, i.e. my own father, whose lives were tragically cut short by bad genes-as well some unwise personal decisions-lived long enough to see their children graduate from college, and in some cases, bear children. That was not the case, unfortunately, with respect to Andrew Breitbart, someone who was kind enough to inscribe my copy of Righteous Indignation-his stirring memoir cum polemical call to arms-and provide me with some useful advice on the art of political warfare during our sole meeting, which was chronicled on this website last year.

In addition to the remarkable photojournalist Tim Hetherington, he was the second person in his early forties I’ve met in the past year whose life has ended abruptly. And while it would be callous to say you ‘expect’ anyone that vibrant to die at such a premature age, I would be lying if I told you that the tragic killing of a photographer who routinely worked in war zones such as Iraq and Libya stunned me. Andrew’s passing, on the other hand, was inexplicable when juxtaposed against the frenetic, dynamic-albeit slightly jet-lagged-individual I met last April.

Like Tim Hetherington, however, Andrew Breitbart was a remarkable individual who left a mark upon our culture that’s impossible to quantify at this close remove. While most media obituaries have focused upon the instrumental role he played in exposing-figuratively speaking-disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner, illustrated by this Radar headline, Andrew’s accomplishments in his brief time on earth eclipse the downfall of any one venal, supercilious politician. Yet the Weiner scandal, and Andrew’s ultimate vindication, epitomize the essence Breitbart’s mission.

What began with a seemingly prurient allegation against an arrogant Democratic member of Congress beloved by the D.C. and New York press corps rapidly turned into a media witch hunt against a conservative icon who embodied everything that the drive-by media viewed with disdain. His impromptu press conference  is a tour de force defense against media and government libel and manipulation, which will long outlive the petulant screeds penned by his most small-minded, ideologically hidebound critics.

So too will his struggle to defang the left’s most potent, and regrettably, effective, weapon against conservative ideas. Namely, racial stigmatization. Uncovering the Pigford scandal-an extensive scheme to defraud American taxpayers couched in terms of racial reparations and social justice-is probably the most impressive feat of Breitbart’s meteoric career as a muckraking journalist-activist, although you’ll struggle to find mention of this achievement in any obituary published by mainstream media organs. Instead, you’ll read a steady stream of misrepresentations about what is one of the most frivolous class action lawsuits-and pusillanimous abdications by Congress-in recent memory.  Luckily, Andrew was his most capable defender on this score.

As heartbreaking as the loss of Andrew Breitbart is-not least to his widow and their four children-we must not forget that his ideas and spirit will persist. James O’Keefe, the young man who singlehandedly dealt a body blow to the institutional left’s keystone organization, continues to crusade for accountability among taxpayer-bankrolled political arms of the Democratic Party. As does Lila Rose, who has done to Planned Parenthood what her colleague did to ACORN, i.e. expose the underlying corruption of an organization shielded by its benefactors in Congress and allies in the media.

Both owe a debt of gratitude to Breitbart, as do all Americans whose eyes were opened by investigations credentialed journalists were unwilling to initiate due to timidity and ideological affinity for Breitbart’s targets. The complaisant relationship  the press had with organizations and individuals it was ostensibly charged with covering was a recurring theme of his Andrew’s work, and highlighting the vast gulf between how the fourth estate views itself and what it actually does will ultimately be one of his most enduring legacies. The grassroots, investigative journalism that Breitbart encouraged is thriving-just look at who uncovered this administration’s coverup of Fast and Furious-even as media dinosaurs totter and topple.

That is the real bequest of Andrew Breitbart. He inspired-or should inspire-people to get off their asses and take charge of their country. To shake off the listless torpor our nation’s rulers and gatekeepers have conditioned us into complacently accepting and to effect real, lasting change in our communities. Not the sort  driven by Harvard Law School or the Columbia School of Journalism, but change designed to expand the sphere of individual choice and autonomous decision-making. To reject the pretensions of power by those with no moral authority and to expand the freedom to do what you want to, regardless of how bien pensant it might seem at the National Press Club or in Hollywood production meetings.

That’s why the best way you could honor the memory of Andrew Breitbart is to emulate him. Go out there and do what Breitbart has done. A great way to start is by buying Righteous Indignation, which in addition to being a very entertaining autobiography is a wonderful how-to manual for grassroots political activists and citizen-journalists. Go and see Hating Breitbart when it’s released later this year, and discover what made this man tick. You’ll probably discover that it’s the same things which drive you, i.e. family, loved ones, and an abiding love for this country. Even if our passions take a different form, or our temperament is slightly more even-keeled, we all have some animating force that drives us. The job in this life is to cultivate and exploit that passion while we’re here, and whatever his shortcomings that is something that Andrew Breitbart always did, and it’s an example we should all try to follow in the short time we’ve been allotted.

Update: Andy Sullivan was also at the Breitbart book signing/lecture. You can find his thoughts on the event at Blue Collar Corner.

Today I had the opportunity to meet one of the kingpins of conservative new media, Andrew Breitbart. In town for a signing of his recently published book, Righteous Indignation, the creator of Big Hollywood , one of numerous Breitbart-inspired websites, delivered an entertaining speech that weaved together his personal narrative of embracing conservative activism with his current fight against the Obama administration and its many devout supporters.

An at times irreverent, always impassioned, largely extemporaneous speech that explored everything from his pretensions of privilege as the child of an earnest middle class family living in Brentwood, California, to his dissolute college years spent in New Orleans-and how the conservative values of his parents restored a sense of purpose to his life-to his infatuation with the new, ever-changing medium of the World Wide Web, to his groundbreaking exposure of the Pigford scandal, Breitbart’s lecture dovetailed with his new book, which chronicles the political and personal transformation he’s undergone over the past two decades. 

Breitbart’s message, as much as a single, coherent message can be gleaned from someone whose personality is so ADD-inflected-as he readily admits-and whose career is scattered in so many directions, is that conservatives should utilize the tools of the new media-whether they be social networking websites, blogs, or streaming Internet radio-in order to impress their ideas upon an American public that’s so often bombarded with a monolithic, unadulterated leftist critique of society. Even if it means bypassing the traditional bastions of conservatism in this country, for example, the Republican Party, the benefits of this strategy will become manifest in the larger cultural battlegrounds, where the left’s traditional strengths have been eroded by activists such as Hannah Giles, Lila Rose, and James O’Keefe.

 I was impressed both by the content and delivery of Andrew Breitbart’s message. Although often caricatured as an impetuous zealot, the overall impression I came away with after listening to him speak was one of a serious-minded, yet very passionate, crusader on behalf certain values which are shared by millions of like-minded Americans.