The Federation for American Immigration Reform is at the forefront of documenting the manifold problems caused by our government’s sustained policy of mass immigration. Therefore, it’s not surprising that it was ahead of the curve in arguing against the amnesty proposal floated by the Gang of Eight.

Like the last wholesale legislative amnesty enacted in 1980s, universally acknowledged as a grand failure, this recycled concept is being advocated by leading members of the Republican Party, the most prominent among them being Senator Marco Rubio. Senator Rubio’s rapidly changing perspective on this issue is illustrated by a timeline charting his evolving stance, which you can view by clicking on the picture above.

FAIR has taken it upon itself to create a petition-you can sign here-which allows you to voice your opposition to the politically opportunistic actions taken by Republicans such as Rubio in the wake of last year’s electoral defeat for the GOP. Even as the Republican Party leadership seeks to resolve its political problems by compounding them, the majority of Americans continue to hold views that are diametrically opposed to those espoused by the amnesty caucus. Show that you agree with them by heading over to FAIR’s website and making your voice heard.

Video of Frank Gaffney’s speech can be found on Urban Infidel.

One of the unofficial mottos of the United States, this phrase-which is minted on this country’s coins and emblazoned upon our paper bills-embodies the common heritage of the American nation, which was created from the union of thirteen distinct, unique former British colonies. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it came to symbolize the melting pot forged from a collection of people who came to the United States from various European nations in order to reconstitute their lives.

It is a concept that, like many of its inhabitants, has become alien to contemporary America. We now live in a country comprised from a polyglot agglomeration of foreign tribes, individuals and extended families, many of whom would be unable to assimilate to American culture even if a coherent one still existed and they were encouraged to do so, both dubious propositions.

One of the most persistent questions raised by the September 11th attacks, and recurring periodically since, e.g. during the debate over the construction of Park 51, the debacle that the trial of Ft. Hood jihadist Nidal Malik Hasan has occasioned, and other terrorist attacks conceived by native or naturalized American citizens, has  revolved around whether Islam as it’s practiced today can be reconciled with traditional American values embodied in documents like the United States Constitution.

This question is what brought Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, to the Women’s National Republican Club last week, where he addressed the “civilizational jihad” he asserts Islamists are waging against the United States, as well as the West more broadly conceived. While the sight of Mr. Gaffney delivering a policy address is far from unusual, the fact that the event was hosted by Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies reflects a growing recognition among some conservatives-albeit, not all-that our nation’s immigration policy has a deep and profound influence upon national security and foreign policy concerns.

While some believe that the growing diminution of the traditional demographic profile of America will lead to a more pacific, non-interventionist foreign policy-analogizing it to the anti-war sentiment which prevailed in this country before its entry into World War I-it can be argued that the government’s embrace of heretofore foreign ethnic and religious groups will foster an even more aggressive, and in many ways detrimental, foreign policy, which might well endanger American diplomats, servicemen and civilians in the future-as it has in the recent past. What’s more, the union of multinational jihadist platforms with digital technology has given an entire generation of Arab, Asian and African Muslim young men who are essentially unmoored-having been transplanted to a foreign land at a young age-a distinct cultural and political identity; one which involves the replacement of Western norms and mores with a muscular, revanchist interpretation of Islam. The fact that the dominant legal, cultural, and political class have spent the past five decades attempting to minimize or nullify these very same values speeds their mission.

A perfect illustration of this dilemma was discussed by Frank Gaffney in relation to the Somali community within Minnesota, which now numbers in the tens of thousands. Resettled in previously homogeneous, tranquil parts of the United States at the urging of a United Nations bureaucracy and with the assistance of the U.S. State Department, these refugees have children who are now returning to the homeland of their parents and enlisting in battle against the Transitional Federal Government which our government helped to establish and killing African Union peacekeepers whose mission it ostensibly supports. Beyond the validity of their refugee claims-many of which are wholly fraudulent-there is the inescapable conclusion one must draw that the wealth confiscated from American citizens in the form of taxes-and lavished upon social welfare programs necessitated by the Somalis inability to support themselves or their families legally-is being used in some small measure to defray the cost of living of those who intend on blowing other people up.

In addition to the expense-born in our pocketbooks and  in the gradual erosion of American community-of this experiment, there is the the genuine threat posed by a large segment of migrants who dislike this country both because of specific foreign policy decisions and concrete Koranic injunctions. It beggars belief that the federal government would seek to import scores of foreigners from third world nations whose populations harbor significant hostility towards America while at the same time another branch of the state engages in nation-building experiments and military operations in those very same lands. The fact that this process is facilitated by the United Nations, a world body whose values are diametrically opposed to those cherished by most Americans, strains credulity.

One of the points emphasized throughout Gaffney’s lecture was the global, multidimensional nature of the jihadist threat. He focused extensively on the case of a particular individual who was detained while he and his hijab-clad wife filmed the support structure of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, an incident which would ultimately lead to one of the most critical pieces of evidence introduced during the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, at the time the largest Islamic charity in the United States. The HLF was eventually revealed to be not only a financial conduit for Hamas but also part of a network of institutions within the United States which were created under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to achieve their ideological goals on American soil.

Although it might seem absurd to believe that bedrock American institutions can be undermined by a small coterie of Islamic ideologues, you have to consider the havoc the institutional left has already inflicted upon our society. An Iraqi refugee-with prior criminal offenses-has been charged with maliciously damaging federal property for attempting to destroy a Social Security Administration office with an improvised explosive device! The systematic execution of over a dozen soldiers by Nidal Malik Hasan is deemed a case of  ‘workplace violence’ by our federal government. A premeditated jihadist assault on LAX’s El Al terminal is not even considered a hate crime, and the head of the Justice Department cannot even utter the name of the religion whose doctrines inspired the man who attempted to obliterate Times Square with an explosive device which dwarfed that used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

In this context, it’s not difficult to see how a machiavellian political apparatchik with an outsized influence over the conservative movement, or an influential Democratic congressmen popular among both leftists and militant Muslims, or a presidential advisor with dubious ties to apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood can do permanent harm, especially when constitutional rights like freedom of speech are being used as bargaining chips in relations with the Muslim world.

The fact that a would-be facilitator of regicide and terrorist financier was able to enter the good graces of a sitting president and establish a program for Muslim chaplains, which still exists, because of the oleaginous influence of someone who purports to represent American Muslims illustrates the toxic combination of  identity politics and K street lobbying. And while some maintain that establishing a pro-Arab/Muslim political infrastructure in this country is necessary to balance the existing pro-Israel bias among American lawmakers, it’s hard to imagine Israelis-regardless of the wisdom of their specific policy views-enacting violent revenge upon Americans for their government’s policy regarding the West Bank or votes on the UN Security Council.

Glenn Greenwald raises the question of whether Nidal Malik was engaged in an act of terrorism, since-from his perspective, at least-he was fighting those who had enlisted in an army which had attacked his coreligionists in the nation of Yemen. But a more pertinent question is why someone who places allegiance to a foreign religion or a terrorist group in the Persian Gulf above his oath to the U.S. Army, or even his  obligation not to slaughter unarmed Americans, is in the United States to begin with. Why must the cult of diversity take precedence over the lives of ordinary American citizens?

And the answer is not comforting. It’s because our immigration policy is not designed with the interests of Americans in mind. Our laws are built to satisfy the demand of  colleges and universities that need the tuition paid by tens of thousands of Saudi students. Of private and public institutions that demand the addition of Muslim chaplains, regardless of ideology. Of parasitical federal contractors which make a killing by resettling scores of refugees who are a drain on state coffers in towns and cities throughout the country.

The customary response from advocates of changing the cultural landscape of America is that we need to do these things in order to change the hearts and minds of those living in the Islamic world. We need to project an image of openness in order to change the negative image of the United States overseas. The problem is that it has not worked, and in all likelihood, will never work. Globalization, insofar as it facilitates the exchange of goods and services according to the law of supply and demand, is a good thing. However, importing the maladies, cultural neuroses and obscurantist religious dogmas of foreign cultures for the sake of appeasing the gods of diversity and multiculturalism, even as we engage in questionable foreign interventions urged on by figures whose interests are inimical to those of the United States, is madness.

The rotten fruit of the Arab Spring, like that from the most recent war in Iraq, is being brought to our shores, so this is as good a time as any to begin having a conversation about what we want our country’s future to look like. Like Frank Gaffney, I believe it’s time to discontinue the diversity lottery, stop issuing visas to imams for whom there is no demand, and begin to look out for the interests of Americans, first and foremost.

Most New Yorkers-especially natives-are inured to the daily spectacle which makes their city something of a super-sized freak show. However, most of the time that sideshow is of the sort one normally expects to see in Coney Island, i.e. entertaining enough as a diversionary pursuit, but not so garish or mind-altering as to force you to reconsider your general opinion of humanity.

However, every year the United Nations General Assembly-the Mos Eisley Cantina of international diplomacy-convenes in Turtle Bay so that ostensible heads of state from around the world can make pompous, almost universally forgettable speeches before an assembled crowd of profligate diplomats, spies, Islamic terrorists,  despots and indicted war criminals, among other political luminaries you would expect to find addressing an institution that was once headed by a man complicit in Nazi Germany’s numerous war atrocities in the Balkans.

Of course, because this collection of malefactors great and small decides to make New York City the backdrop for political theater-bankrolled by American taxpayers, of course-it means that the normally colorful streets of New York are graced with an even more eclectic selection of humanity. Including, as you’ll notice by glancing at the photograph atop this page, fans of newly elected Egyptian pharaoh and fan of sharia law Mohammed Morsi.

The first sight that greeted me before arriving at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza was, oddly enough, a group of fervent devotees-including the group of veiled women seen above-of the Muslim Brotherhood, i.e. the organization that’s served as the intellectual seedbed of virtually every pan-Islamic jihadist and/or terrorist movement that’s arisen over the past century. I know what you must be thinking at this point: “Ain’t multiculturalism grand?”

This being a free country, where everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion-for the most part, at least-there were two bold Egyptian Christians willing to counter the Islamic supremacist perspective espoused by Mohammed Morsi’s New York welcoming committee.

One of the interesting aspects of this small band of counter-protestors was their devotion to their native land. Like Ashraf Ramelah, they obviously consider themselves true Egyptians, even if their Muslim countrymen vigorously disagree with that assessment.

A slightly more baffling sight confronted me as I made my way deeper into the protest pen cordoned off by the NYPD. I’m not quite certain why the man above chose the United Nations for his platform-which seemed to focus upon the inerrancy of Biblical prophecy-although he undoubtedly could have had a feisty conversation about millenarianism with one of the UN’s featured speakers this week.

Needless to say, there were individuals and groups there with a much less eschatological message, one of the most prominent among them being exponents of Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa teachings. In addition to practicing their meditative exercises, these Chinese men and women-most of whom probably can’t return to their homeland, for obvious reasons-highlighted the torture-such as that depicted in the drawings above-experienced by Falun Gong practitioners at the hands of the Chinese regime.

In addition to the routine harassment and imprisonment experienced by anyone in the People’s Republic of China expressing political, philosophical or spiritual beliefs not sanctioned by the ruling Chinese Communist Party oligarchy, Falun Gong adherents have the misfortune of being perceived as an organized political opposition.

Therefore, its followers are subject to a range of horrific penalties, such as the CCP’s penchant for organ-harvesting from those within China’s extensive laogai.

One need only glance at the starkness of contrast between the two photos seen above in order to grasp the horrors inflicted upon ordinary Chinese citizens who run afoul of the their government’s perverse political priorities.

While I don’t have enough information about the subject to state, without reservation, that Falun Gong is “good,” I do know enough to assert that the state which persecutes its followers-and is responsible for the tableau seen in the photograph below-is not.

And although Chinese dissidents were well represented on Wednesday, the vast majority of protestors were assembled to rally against the current Iranian regime, which most regard as criminal in nature, if not so ghastly as to invoke images of one of cinematic horror’s most reviled figures.

One of the more striking features of the anti-IRI activities this week was the artistic dimension of the protests. Some of the efforts seemed redolent of typical political agitprop, using a caricature of Ahmadinejad’s physical features while pointing out the bloody hands of the current president…

As well as his well-publicized Holocaust denial, which was tied into the Iranian regime’s somewhat implausible claims about its nuclear program.

That said, there were some clever, less obvious mockeries of Ahmadinejad, such as the “I’m with stupid” cut-out seen below.

As well as the doormat with the dictator’s face emblazoned upon it, created by United Against a Nuclear Iran, a nonpartisan organization founded by  former ambassador to the United Nations Mark Wallace, which is dedicated to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

One of their campaigns, prior to Ahmadinejad’s arrival in New York, was a call to boycott the Warwick Hotel, which hosted the Iranian leader’s large entourage while he was staying in the Big Apple. Personally, I don’t find the Warwick’s decision nearly as objectionable as the one that allowed he and his cronies to set foot on American soil.

The “silent” partnership alluded to in the above poster is a reference to the unusual relationship between the Iranian regime and the leadership of Al Qaeda, much of which sought refuge in Iran after the September 11th attacks. Although the nature of this relationship is a matter of great dispute, the fact that Iran has been willing to support Afghan, Sunni insurgents-including the Taliban-with both tactics and weaponry is something to consider before dismissing the allegation out of hand.

One of the chief organizers of the protests against the clerical dictatorship of Iran was Iran 180. The UNwelcome campaign consisted of a combination of street theater and personal testimony from Iranian-Americans about the true nature of the Khomeinist regime.

FWIW, I felt some sympathy for the individual inside of the gigantic mock head, especially considering the unusually warm temperature that day. I do credit his enthusiasm-possibly the most entertaining part of this street theater being his pantomiming bass-playing on what I think was intended to be a machine gun as For Whom The Bell Tolls played in the background.

One of the costumed personages represented the real ruler of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. Under velayat-e-faqih, he-along with an equally undemocratic clique of obscurantist Shiite clerics and politically connected hacks-determines the course of Iranian domestic and foreign affairs, as recent events demonstrate.

One of the main, if largely unspoken, themes of the rally was the incestuous relationship between the IRI and the blood-soaked Baathist regime which currently rules Syria. Although the alliance between the government of Iran and that of Syria has been in place for over three decades-virtually since the inception of the Islamic Republic-the imminent threat of Bashar al-Assad’s political demise has forced that blood pact into the open. In fact, the symbiotic nature of the relationship has become so transparent that even Iran’s leading officials have trouble denying it.

Even though foreign policy played a prominent role in Iran 180′s demonstration, there was also a lengthy exposition of the domestic crimes of the Iranian regime, especially with respect to religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities. Gigi Nikpour, the woman seen above, described how the clerical regime which controls Iran had institutionalized many of the canonical aspects of Islam, including Koranic injunctions against homosexuality. These religious proscriptions are not merely theoretical points of discussion, as the scores of gay men and lesbians executed by the theocratic regime in Tehran illustrate.

This is yet another reason why the ubiquitous creeping sharia the rest of the country has just become aware of poses such an ominous threat. It seeks not only to regulate and/or circumscribe our thoughts and speech, but dictate the most minute aspects of our private lives and daily behavior, and eliminate those activities its enforcers deem contrary to the tenets of Islam.

In our next post we’ll explore one of the groups that helped propel these Koran-thumping megalomaniacs to power in Iran, but who soon found that the enemies of Islam are manifold, and subject to arbitrary changes depending upon the needs and political whims of the revolution.

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.

…the best use of the boats would be to deal with what border lawmen call ‘splash downs.’ When drug smugglers are confronted with law enforcement officers in Texas, they currently can speed back to the Rio Grande, drive their vehicle into the river, and then, using rafts, float themselves and their drug cargoes back to Mexico.

“Currently, they have just been allowed to do that,” (Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom) Vinger said. “Now, with these boats, we will be able to arrest and interdict these smugglers.”

The Rio Grande has been the scene of deadly violence in the recent past:

Last year, U.S. law enforcement officials exchanged shots over the Rio Grande with suspected drug runners near the south Texas town of Abram, according to news reports. In a separate incident, a West Texas road crew in Hudspeth County, east of El Paso, came under fire from Mexico.

Then in September 2010, U.S. citizen David Hartley was fatally shot while riding a personal watercraft on Falcon Lake, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border.

 

Reminder: You can read the live tweet of the RevPac fundraiser here. 

The RevPac event I attended on Monday night was an quite an experience. First of all, the choice of setting seemed designed to highlight some of the recurring themes in Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. While most of his primary opponents have held Manhattan fundraisers targeting donors in this city’s ever-dwindling, yet still potent, financial services sector, the rigidly anti-corporatist, free market dogma of the Paul campaign-highlighted by the appearance of bearish Euro Pacific  CEO Peter Schiff-lent a new dimension to what would otherwise have been a routine campaign fundraiser.

The optics of the event were pleasing, which I suppose was by design. Even on an ordinary day, the South Street Seaport, bordering the nearby Financial District,  is one of the pleasing parts of New York City. But on the cusp of Christmas, one of the more beautiful historic districts in Manhattan really comes to life.

The South Street Seaport Museum is a beautiful reminder of New York’s proud naval heritage. The Peking, pictured below, is a four-masted barque that was built in Hamburg, Germany. The evening’s host, professor of finance at Ramapo College and New Jersey Republican and Libertarian candidate Murray Sabrin, utilized the opportunity provided by the location in order to compare Ron Paul to a captain who would right a ship-in this case, the United States-veering off course. Although the analogy was a bit labored, the sentiment it expressed seemed to be well received by the audience.

Before the evening’s official schedule began I was able to chat with some Ron Paul supporters, mostly about the dire economic situation the United States is facing. The staggering corporate misfeasance by former MF Global head Jon Corzine was a topic of particular interest to some of the investors RevPac was courting that night, although I also overheard some attendees discussing the career of Bret Favre. Unfortunately, that is one topic that probably won’t go away, regardless of who is elected POTUS a year hence.

Dr. Sabrin set the tone for the evening, using his introductory remarks to counter what he felt were unjustified, inaccurate attacks leveled against Ron Paul by his critics. He set aside for specific condemnation the leaders of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who’ve decided to exclude Paul from an upcoming presidential forum, and conservative evangelical leaders such as Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, who’ve dismissed the Paul campaign in the past. I must admit, one of the more surprising elements of the RevPac fundraiser was the emphasis some of the speakers gave to issues of faith-including several strong religious references-an element I hadn’t antcipated in this type of setting.

The subjects addressed by each speaker fell roughly into three broad areas: warfare and diplomacy, budget and economy, and constitutional limitations. Dr. Alieta Eck, president of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, focused on the latter two, exploring why Ron Paul’s opposition to PPACA-and promise to sign a repeal of Obamacare into law should he become President-was essential to improving the health care delivery system. She described the difference in approach between  Newt Gingrich, who lobbied for changes in government policy that would benefit his health care clients, and  Paul, who has recommended policy changes like negative outcomes insurance, health savings accounts, and a reduction in the scope of FDA regulatory authority.

Kevin Gutzman, Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, used his speech as a platform to synthesize the foreign policy and economic critiques voiced by Ron Paul into a broad Constitutional argument supporting his presidential candidacy. He attempted to make the case that both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama had no genuine regard for upholding the Constitution, and viewed the document-like most politicians-more as a totem than an actual check on Executive or legislative authority. He cited as examples the notorious reply of Elana Kagan during her Senate confirmation hearings to a question posed by Senator Tom Coburn about the extent of authority of Congress, as well as the American-led, NATO intervention in the Libyan civil conflict, which was a  non-defensive military operation that in his view flagrantly disregarded the admonition by the Founders not to become enmeshed in foreign military entanglements.

Gutzman touched upon the catalogue of Constitutional breaches responsible for our current structural problems, highlighting what he saw as the Supreme Court’s rendering of the Commerce Clause effectively moot, the apotheosis of which is Wickard v. Filburn, perhaps the biggest realignment in individual rights in relation to the state effected by the Supreme Court during the 20th century. The peroration of his speech being, of course, a summary of why Ron Paul was the only candidate capable of and willing to reverse course on these issues.

Jim Grant, an economic author and former writer for Barron’s, spent the bulk of his speech attacking the Federal Reserve, emphasizing a chief theme of the Paul campaign. It was framed by the assertion that there had been no progress in economic thinking since 1914, i.e. the year in which the Federal Reserve was created. His speech was in keeping with the spirit of the event in the sense that it was a radical, libertarian critique of the fiscal and monetary system we’ve had in place for the better part of a century.  He advocated a return to the concept of double liability and repeal of federal deposit insurance, as well as the reintroduction of the Gold Standard and the end of what he described as the “socialization of risk,” epitomized by programs like TARP.

Michael Scheuer was the penultimate speaker, and his speech was one of the more interesting-which is to say odd-of the evening. Professor Sabrin introduced him as the creator of President Clinton’s extraordinary rendition program-which elicited surprisingly few cheers from the libertarian crowd-and the former head of the CIA unit tasked with finding and capturing the late Al Qaeda emir and FBI most-wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. Although most of his talk was taken up with an extended lecture on how our foreign policy has inspired enmity among the Muslim world, primarily through our alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel, he reserved a section of his speech to address criticisms of Ron Paul made by some Jewish organizations and public figures.

The wisdom of trying to refute these accusations, which prominent Jewish supporters of Paul’s presidential campaign have addressed in the past, in the context of a fundraiser is itself a dubious proposition. However, Scheuer’s decision to analogize the attacks against Rep. Paul to what he described as the defamation of Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee during World War II was a baffling decision, to say the least. Leaving aside the historical debate over how sympathetic Lindbergh was to the aims of Nazi Germany, the fact that he held and voiced anti-Semitic views should have been enough to give Michael Scheuer pause before embarking on this train of thought.

The keynote speaker of the evening was Euro Pacific Capital CEO and libertarian activist/talk show host Peter Schiff. Perhaps appropriately, the capstone of this event was a campaign pep talk, focusing upon the necessity of Ron Paul supporters doing their part to help their preferred candidate win the upcoming Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire primary. After outlining how his forecasts of an imminent housing bust/recession had been predated by Ron Paul’s equally pessimistic but prescient predictions in Congress, Schiff claimed that the current frontrunners in the Republican field-especially Newt Gingrich-were as evanescent as the real estate boom that preceded our current, prolonged recession.

Whether Schiff’s political prediction holds true remains to be seen, but his speech unquestionably inspired those in attendance. Overall, the atmosphere seemed optimistic, possibly because of the weakness of the Republican field and/or the favorable polling coming out of Iowa. Personally, I’m still not convinced that Ron Paul has the momentum to win the GOP nomination, but from a purely intellectual standpoint, he’s probably the most logical alternative for those primary voters seeking the “anti-Romney” at this point in time.

Such was the title of a debate held at the Asia Society, sponsored by Thomson Reuters, which I attended several weeks ago. Coming at a time of agonizing societal fissures arising from debates over austerity, stimulus, and the wisdom of government intervention into the economy, this event pitting the backers of a Hayekian view of economics against those who espoused a Keynesian model seemed incredibly timely. After explaining to the audience the general structure of the debate and how it would be judged-spectators were given gadgets similar to those distributed at IQ2 debates, which they were to use to vote for the side they agreed with at the beginning and conclusion of the debate-Harold Evans and Nicholas Wapshott, author of Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, limned the underlying philosophical division that gave rise to this debate. 

As the introductory remarks made clear, the 80 year-old clash between Keynes and Hayek was “one of the most vituperative divisions in economics,” and the fact that this debate still carried resonance many years after the deaths of both men demonstrated the pertinacity of both schools, which reflected in some measure the confidence that both men had that their views reflected the definitive understanding of how economics works at an empirical level. Despite the deep esteem in which Hayek held the world-renowned English economist as a young man in post-war, inflation-wracked Austria-Keynes was celebrated throughout the territory  of vanquished Central Powers for his anti-Versailles manifesto, The Economic Consequences of the Peace-he would eventually become the chief intellectual antagonist of Keynes among neo-classical, liberal economists.

Although attempting to synopsize either man’s complex body of work into a few sentences is impossible, it’s generally understood that where the two men differed was in their philosophies about economic growth. Whereas Hayek was adamantly opposed to the easy money policy pursued by some central banks and felt that inflation was the primary scourge of humanity, Keynes believed that deflation and mass unemployment were more pressing concerns. He felt that there were moments in history where a misallocation between supply and demand because of microeconomic actions led to recession and unemployment. Therefore, the government needed to spur demand in certain sectors of the economy whose stagnancy could not be sufficiently addressed by the free market.

This point was emphasized by one of the Keynesians in particular, Steven Rattner, who most of you might remember as President Obama’s car czar. Others might remember him chiefly for the 10 million dollar settlement he was forced into by Andrew Cuomo after a lengthy SEC investigation involving his private equity firm, Quadrangle. Either way, he maintained that, despite his abiding faith in capitalism, there were moments in history when the government needed to rescue the free market from itself. His chief example of such a case was the large federal bailout of failing Detroit auto-makers Chrysler and General Motors, which he supervised. Rattner asserted that the domestic auto industry would have collapsed, had it not been for the direct intervention of Congress and the White House in 2008 and 2009. The capital markets were simply not willing to lend to GM or Chrysler, with the result being that both companies faced imminent bankruptcy-and their suppliers a similarly parlous fate-if the government did not step in to save both corporations with a desperately needed line of credit. In this case, one extended at the expense of American taxpayers.

It should be noted that the federal government’s response to what Rattner described as a “market failure,” but which his Hayekian opponents-during the question and answer period-labeled a “market verdict,” has come in for criticism from both the left and the right. This critique of the actions by Washington D.C., at least from a Hayekian perspective, is remarkably similar to the criticism leveled against the New Deal policies Keynes played a large role in shaping during the Roosevelt administration. Namely, that the government does not have enough knowledge, and certainly hasn’t the right tools, to redress structural, macroeconomic problems such as unemployment and deflation. Even if there is a place for government intervention-and James K. Galbraith, the lead debater for the Keynesians, was quick to specify all the areas in which Hayek believed the government should play some role-it must recognize the inherent danger of trying to manipulate economic outcomes.

The two most critical areas where that danger manifests itself are fiscal stimulus in the form of deficit spending, which inevitably leads to a greater debt to GDP ratio, and the inflation that results from monetary easing. These were also the two areas that came in for the most criticism from the Hayekian side. In particular, Manhattan Institute economist Diana Furchgott-Roth, who pointed out that our current debt to GDP ratio was higher than at any time in this nation’s history since the Second World War. She also took aim at a report co-authored by former Obama administration officials Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, which attempted to predict future  unemployment rates both with and without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill. Romer-then in charge of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors-famously predicted that without the stimulus plan the unemployment rate could rise as high as 8.8%. Of course, our currently unemployment rate, stimulus included, well exceeds that figure.

Sylvia Nasar, a business journalist who teaches business journalism at Columbia University, countered that monetary policy is more effective in dealing with problems like persistent unemployment, citing the work of Milton Friedman, probably the most emblematic monetarist of the latter half of the 20th Century. She also invoked the examples of pre-WWII Sweden and Japan, neither of which experienced the deep economic depressions of Western Europe and North America, yet both of which  ”ignored Hayek’s advice” with regard to monetary policy. Nasar insisted that there was a deep correlation between monetary stimulus and economic recovery, using the two examples above as evidence that determined policy had prevailed against “nature’s cure” in the realm of ideas. This raised yet another point of contention during the debate, which was the Keynesians’ accusation that their Hayekian opponents were complacent do-nothings who had no concrete plan to address pressing macroeconomic dilemmas such as unemployment.

Lawrence H. White, an economics professor at George Mason University, vigorously disputed this assertion, noting that Hayek advocated constancy in the money supply when advising central banks, and advocated the maintenance of nominal spending in order to avoid deflationary spirals. Even so, White reiterated the Hayekian critique of fiscal stimulus, reasserting a classical liberal maxim that we “don’t undertake public works whose costs exceed their benefits.” This jab was aimed at the public infrastructure investment envisioned by the Obama stimulus package, which Diana Furchtgott-Roth described as a thinly-veiled payoff to President Obama’s supporters among organized labor. In a swipe at an iconic passage from Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, White summed up his contempt for this sort of public investment for the sake of stimulating the economy by asserting that “we can’t restore prosperity by having the government build pyramids.” This, in turn, prompted a retort by one of the Keynesians that the construction of the Giza pyramids was an abundant source of jobs for Egyptian laborers. Hence, a boost for the economy of Egypt.

In addition to the standard Hayekian critique that this sort of fiscal stimulus debases the currency, and therefore impoverishes the standard of living, White also tackled what most feel is the proximate cause of the 2008 economic crisis. Namely, the burst of the housing bubble. He claimed that “we had permanently reduced our living standards by over-investing in real estate during the economic boom.” John Cassidy, a staff writer for The New Yorker and perhaps the most solidly anti-Hayek speaker on the Keynesian side, also identified the cause of America’s economic as being the collapse of the housing market, but assigned blame to the private sector. He dismissed the Austrian diagnosis of the causes of the collapse, asserting that the Community Reinvestment Act had little to with the skyrocketing foreclosure rate, and the culpability of GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was minimal when compared to the exposure of private sub-prime lenders who engaged in reckless lending and catastrophically bad or ill-timed investments. Cassidy went even further than most of his colleagues on the Keynesian side, asserting that “Hayekianism is not even a distinct policy doctrine,” and that Hayek himself “gave up the debate with Keynes about macroeconomics.” Cassidy wrapped up his remarks by quoting current chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan, who at a congressional hearing during the 2001 recession encouraged deeper tax cuts that would “juice the economy.” Cassidy, echoing the sentiment of other Keynesians, such as Ezra Klein, claimed that this statement demonstrated the resonance of stimulus spending, even among those who would reject the label of Keynesianism.

For his part, Stephen Moore agreed that tax cuts were an integral component of economic growth. However, he rejected the notion that Keynesianism was responsible for the economic growth the United States experienced during the 1980s. Using September 1983 as a benchmark, since it was the same point in the Reagan presidency as we are experiencing in the Obama presidency, he contrasted that month’s employment figures, which saw the creation of over 1.1 million jobs and a third quarter growth rate of 8.4%, with the anemic growth our economy is currently experiencing. Moore also pointed out that the Paul Volcker-led Federal Reserve had applied precisely the Hayekian remedies that the other side decried, yet his constriction of the money supply not only slayed the inflationary dragon but seemed to disprove the Keynesian assumption-voiced by Keynes followers like Sylvia Nasar-that monetary easing was inextricably linked with economic growth and robust employment. At the same time that Moore praised the policy prescriptions adopted by President Reagan, he faulted his inability to encumber spending by Congress. Of course, John Cassidy took a contrary view, asserting that David Stockmam’s failure to rein in discretionary spending as Chairman of the Office of Management and Budget was a boon to the U.S. economy. He also claimed that the tepidity of the current economic recovery should be attributed to the decline in spending at the state and local level, which is commensurate with the rise in spending at a federal level.

Perhaps the most intriguing statement made during the course of the hour and a half-long debate was the claim by James K. Galbraith that “the United States is not in a debt trap; debt levels, by historical standards, are not that large.” While this might seem like an implausible claim when viewed in the context of a national debt that eclipses 14 trillion dollars, and a government whose payment obligations range from 100 to 200 trillion dollars, it is not an entirely aberrant perspective. In fact, there is a rather popular book whose author attacks the very notion of retiring the national debt.

What was surprising about this debate was the willingness among some of the Hayekians to countenance government intervention into the economy, although perhaps it shouldn’t have been considering the political views of Hayek himself, who supported numerous interventionist policies during his lifetime. To the chagrin of my anarcho-capitalist friends in the audience, Edmund Phelps-a 2006 Nobel laureate in Economics-repeatedly emphasized areas in which he supported government intervention into the economy, at one point during his closing statement even rejecting the label of “Hayekian.” During his opening remarks, he made the point that the depressions experienced by Keynes were monetary in origin-signaled by rapid deflation-and that, as a response, monetary policy had to be altered. Since the economy in our current financial crisis initially faced what was essentially a liquidity problem, “the Keynesians were right to urge the Fed to increase demand for money.” Phelps contended, however, that since today what we are facing is a “structural slump” Keynes’s theory of employment was not applicable. In addition to supporting the first round of quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve, in his closing remarks Phelps seemed to imply that portions of the jobs’ plan put forth by President Obama were worthy of consideration.

I’m not sure if it was this nuance that led to the ultimate result, but at the conclusion of the debate a slim majority, 52% of the audience, professed themselves to be “pro-Keynes.” It should be noted, however, that this was only an increase of 5% from the outset of the evening’s debate, whereas the “pro-Hayek” side of the ledger gained the support of an additional 9% of the crowd, from a starting point of 33%. The Hayekian interpretation of this result is that the anti-Keynes forces were more persuasive in making their arguments, although strategic voting might have also played a role. In either case, I think the debate over whose ideas are more sound will persist for some time. Perhaps it will even be expanded to include an even more consistently anti-state Austrian viewpoint that will satisfy my disenchanted anarcho-capitalist friends.

Mises vs. Fisher anyone?

I wasn’t planning on discussing this issue today, but we do address important foreign policy issues on this site when the occasion demands it. Needless to say, President Obama’s insistence that the state of Israel, which has heretofore been our most trusted and reliable ally in the Middle East, return to annihilatory borders  is such an occasion.

Putting aside for a moment the observation that these borders are utterly indefensible, which has been made by experts much more well-versed in this subject than me, there are several issues with the President’s new “peace” proposals that pose even greater barriers to the adoption of what he seems to think will be a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of them being the fact that these new guidelines are an explicit repudiation of the ironclad guarantees enunciated by President Bush when he and former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided that Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s disengagement from Gaza required the heart-breaking removal of Israeli civilians from the homes in which they had lived for decades, not to mention the complete and utter destruction of a thriving economy that was in short order replaced by Hamas military bases from which rockets are now launched into Israeli territory. Israel withdrew from that territory based upon the promise that the United States government would not force it to retreat behind indefensible borders. Now, the President has not only shredded the pledges and agreements made by his predecessor in office, he has reneged on his own promise to the Jewish State, made not more than three years ago.

As if this were not enough, Barack Obama compounded this egregious insult with yet more superfluous, fawning outreach to the Arab-Muslim “street,” including a reaffirmation of the false sense of victimhood Palestinians use to batter Israel’s reputation on the international stage. As Democratic pollster and Fox News analyst Pat Cadell has said, this is simply yet another attempt to assuage the feelings of Muslims at the expense of our national security priorities overseas. If anything, it only emboldens the forces intent on doing us and our allies harm, as the recent pronouncements by Hamas, those charming fellows who belong to the Osama Bin Laden Fan Club, make clear. The more of the Palestinian/Islamic supremacist narrative you accept, the more they will demand of you, as Israel has learned to its regret. The “humiliation” of the Palestinians is not something that can be alleviated by giving Hamas and the PA-and possibly Al Qaeda-yet more territory, it can only be addressed by tangible achievements that do not involve murdering Jews and Americans.

That is why Prime Minister Natanyahu’s bracing response to the President’s speech was so welcome, at least to those of us who have been waiting for a foreign leader who will resist the ill-conceived foreign policy decisions of the current adminstration. It seems like he has taken the advice of Caroline Glick and decided to assert an independent foreign policy based upon the best interests of Israel. Even though I’m not a huge Ron Paul enthusiast-especially after his recent embrace  of the worst of open borders dogma-I have to admit that his suggestion, i.e. that we disengage from the “peace process” altogether-instead of trying to impose a solution that will be disastrous for both the United States and Israel-makes a lot of sense. At the very least, we will not be forced to have endless discussions over what our obligations are to the participants in the current conflict. Our obligations should be to protect American lives and American interests abroad, which means letting Israel defend itself in the manner she sees fit. Her enemies are our enemies, which is as true now as it was decades ago.

A satirical article published by the website Big Peace  illustrates the absurdity of President Obama’s plan for “peace,” but it also highlights the disregard he has shown for national sovereignty as a general principle. Just as he wants to erase the borders of Israel by ceding territory to a terrorist entity, he desires the erasure of our borders through the wholesale adoption of amnesty. American land, which couldn’t be conquered militarily, must be relinquished through the force of law-that’s essentially the guiding principle of the Obama presidency, and it’s one that should be rejected by American voters, regardless of what position they hold on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Covered by this website at the time, this ruling would have defanged some of the most important aspects of Arizona’s landmark immigration law, including the provision that allowed for state and local law enforcement officers to ascertain the immigration status of people who had willfully violated the law. Now, instead of seeking an en banc review of the injunction, Governor Brewer is hoping to appeal directly to the Supreme Court of the United States. 

That’s why Americans who support Governor Brewer and the citizens of Arizona, which includes nearly sixty percent of the U.S. population according to most surveys, need to make their voices heard. And the most efficacious way of doing that at this moment is by supporting the men and women defending SB 1070 in court. I’ve done this before, but considering the enormous legal costs that will be incurred during the appeals process, I’m going to once again link to the website for Arizona’s legal defense, Keep Arizona Safe. 

The people of Arizona are being besieged by our own federal government, which can literally print money-a luxury not available to Governor Brewer and the Arizona State Legislature-so they need all the help they can get. I’m confident that the faithful readers of American Rattlesnake will do their part to ensure that this call does not go unheeded.