This could shake up Apple’s world. Dan Frommer thinks not, “it’s probably toast.” Bloomberg:

Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, plans to introduce a tablet computer in November to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPad, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.

The device will have roughly the same dimensions as the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch diagonal screen, said the two people who wouldn’t be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. The device will include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology that will allow people to connect to the Internet through their BlackBerry smartphones, the two people said. [...]

RIM plans to call the tablet Blackpad, according to one of the people familiar with the company’s plans. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, acquired the Internet rights to blackpad.com this month, according to the Whois database of domain names.

Pricing for the device will be in line with the iPad, which starts at $499, the person said. RIM is focused on reaping additional profits from the tablet effort, rather than competing on price to sell a large number of devices, the person said.

RIM earned tech press attention yesterday for speculation that it would unveil a touchscreen iPhone competitor next week.

According to the Associated Press, NATO has just announced the deaths of six U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, bringing this month’s death toll to 66. This surpasses last month’s death toll of 60 and makes July the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war began nearly nine years ago.

But perhaps even more ominous is the increase in the rate of American soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan since President Obama took over as Commander-in-Chief. According to iCasualties, a website that has been tracking U.S. casualties in the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, a total of 1215 U.S. soldiers have died within the Afghanistan theater of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those 1215, 451 U.S. soldiers have died in just the last 12 months alone.

That means that more U.S. soldiers have died in the last year than during the first six years of the war combined.

Given this sharp increase in American soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan, it is nearly impossible to argue that conditions in Afghanistan are improving. Month after month, the death toll in Afghanistan continues to inch upwards, as does its enormous pricetag. According to the National Priorities Project, which has been tracking the cost of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the War in Afghanistan has now cost the American taxpayer $286.6 billion dollars. And just this week, the U.S. House of Representative voted (by a vote of 308 to 144) to give an additional $37 billion dollars to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is in addition to the $130 billion that Congress already approved for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq earlier this year. 148 Democrats and 160 Republicans voted in favor of the war-funding bill, while 102 Democrats and only 12 Republicans voted against it (see roll call).

The War in Afghanistan now stands as the second longest war in American history*, and what do we as a nation have to show for this nearly nine year long military adventure? Osama Bin Laden remains unfound. The Taliban remains in control of portions of Afghanistan. And there are reports that the war has now spilled over into Pakistan.

But perhaps the most disgusting part of the War in Afghanistan is the sheer hypocrisy being manifested by the politicians, pundits, and partisans within this country. After spending years criticizing President Bush for his handling of the war in Afghanistan and initiation of the War in Iraq, liberals and Democrats have been mysteriously silent in their criticism of President Obama despite the fact that Obama has significantly escalated U.S. involvement in Afghanistan during his presidency. Meanwhile, conservatives and Republicans continue to argue that there isn’t enough money pay for government services in this country even as they continue to support nation-building in Afghanistan.

It’s long past time for our politicians to decide once and for all what their principles truly are and what the ultimate purpose is of fighting this war in Afghanistan. Is there endpoint to this war, or our troops’ presence in Afghanistan simply an open-ended commitment? Is there an exit plan to this war, or can we expect our troops to be there another nine years?

*This assertion depends on whether one considers the official start of the American portion of the Vietnam War to have the issuing of military advisors during the Eisenhower administration, the initiation of joint American-Vietnamese operations during the Kennedy administration, or the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and subsequent escalation during the Johnson administration. For the purposes of this article, the Vietnam War is assumed to have been well underway during the Kennedy administration, making it the longest war in American history.

UPDATE: In the two hours since I posted this article, iCasualties has updated their data to include an additional three American soldier deaths that was not accounted for in the previous tally, bringing the total number of U.S. soldiers lost in War in Afghanistan to 1215. I have updated my article to reflect this new information.

Cross-posted from The Debate Link

Absolutely outrageous. The Anti-Defamation League has released a statement approving of efforts to bar the construction of a Muslim mosque in southern Manhattan, several blocks from the WTC site. While attempting to disassociate themselves from the conceded “bigotry” which they acknowledge animates some of the mosque’s opponents, the ADL claims that the site “will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.” “[U]ltimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.”

I submit that it is a question of both, and the precedent that the ADL is adhering to is one that is exceedingly detrimental to the safety and equality of religious minorities worldwide, including Jews.

The ADL’s attempt to distinguish folks whose opposition to the mosque is based on “bigotry”, and those for whom it isn’t, is unavailing. It’s all bigotry — some of it is simply better dressed than others. Restricting the civil rights of a given population because some members of that population committed horrible acts is bigotry per se. There’s no getting around it. We might sympathize with folks who — having been brutally victimized by members of religious group — are fearful or otherwise antagonistic towards that group as a whole. But such sentiments simply can’t be given force of law. To force members of a religious group to bear additional burdens based on the actions of their brethren in faith — actions which they themselves oppose stridently — is bigotry in its purest form.

I am literally shaking with rage over this, because I trust the ADL to be there when the rights of religious minorities are threatened. I can no longer do that. That the ADL apparently views Egypt’s treatment of its Jews as a model example of religious liberty is disqualifying for them to be taken seriously as a civil rights organization concerned with the fair and egalitarian treatment of all people. Their position on this issue is absolutely unconscionable, and is an embarassment to anyone who truly cares about the rights of religious minorities in the United States and worldwide.

Other commenters:

Greg Sargent: “On this one, you’re either with the bigots or you’re against them. And ADL has in effect sided with them.”

Adam Serwer: “I learned a very important lesson in Hebrew School that I have retained my entire life. If they can deny freedom to a single individual because of who they are, they can do it to anyone.”

Tablet Magazine: “Founded in 1913, the ADL, in its words, ‘fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all.’ Except when it does the precise opposite.”

There’s more bad news about the economy: the economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, after expanding a revised 3.7 percent in the previous three months – - a (bad) sign that consumers are growing more cautious.

This is not a forum for feel good scenarios where hope springs eternal. But a glimpse at our toy department in life’s struggles is a valid escape to soothe the sores of the Andrew Bretibarts and the money we spend on a war we cannot win.

The San Diego Padres on the next to last day in July are in first place in the Western Division 3 1/2 games above its closest rival and the best record in the National League.

That’s the same as saying Paris Hilton was nominated best actress by the Academy of Awards, the Detroit Lions are undefeated with two games remaining and as credible as Barack Obama born in Kenya.

Historically, the Padres are a losing franchise in a small market without the panache of the adorable New York Mets in their early days.

They have one player on their current roster who is a legitimate All-Star but few people have heard of outside San Diego and no one who is not a baseball fan.

The team is so bad that last year the betting line was the Little League world champion team from nearby Chula Vista could beat the Padres.

There is absolutely nothing sexy about the 2010 Padres. No catchy nicknames such as the old Miami Dolphins’ “No Name Defense,” the Washington Redskins’ “Over The Hill Gang,” the St. Louis football Cardinals’ “Cardiac Kids” or the Philadelphia Phillies’ “Whiz Kids.”

They just win, baby. They are doing it with outstanding pitching, mediocre defense and a pop gun offense.

The pitching is so good and the hitting so sporadic it reminds me of the famous line by Don Drysdale when Dodger teammate Sandy Koufax pitched a no-hitter.

“Did we win?” Drysdale asked.

As the sun set over the Pacific Ocean Thursday, some guy named Oscar Salazar whose fame is limited to family and friends, stroked a ground ball up the middle and teammate Tony Gwynn, the .200 hitting son of the .343-hitting Hall of Famer, scored the winning run in what in baseball is called a walk-off. The 3-2 victory over the rival Dodgers was the 15th time this season the Padres won on their last at bat.

Such heroics fall on deaf ears in the sporting world of ESPN and, most sadly, in San Diego where only die-hard baseball fans embrace the players they never heard of.

Even in the mild climes of San Diego, baseball seasons are often decided during the dog days of August followed by the stretch run to the finish in September.

It remains to be seen how this club of rejects, players “to be named later” and youngsters too young and dumb to know better will play out the string.

But they sure are having fun even though watching them is about as fun as undergoing a root canal.

So when October arrives, and the Padres make the playoffs, think about the time you read it here first. You can re-live the old Abbot and Costello routine of “Who’s on First?”

It’s Adrian Gonzales, of course, who made the All-Star team three times, never by fan acclamation, but by the managers filling out the rosters of second and third bananas.

Cross posted on The Remmers Report

Comments are welcome. Link to my blogsite or go to my email address at temeculakid@gmail.com . Remmers’ varied career spans 26 years in the newspaper business. Read a more thorough resume on The Remmers Report.

For years science fiction authors have tinkered with the theme of a time machine — one that could take man back in time. Now, lo and behold, it seems as if we’re in a time machine as America is being whisked back decades when race was a red-scab raw issue — and comments about all those powerful, rich Jews were shamelessly uttered without embarrassment.

For our latest entry into evidence that in terms of attitudes some Americans seems to have discovered the secret of tim travel we now give you a quote that doesn’t seem just like it comes from the late 60s when black-white issues boiled to the forefront, but from the 30s and 1940s: a reported assertion from New York Democrat Mike McMahon’s campaign that his GOP challenger Mike Grimm is getting “Jewish money”:

Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger for Mike McMahon’s Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.

The file, labeled “Grimm Jewish Money Q2,” for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

“Where is Grimm’s money coming from,” said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon’s campaign spokeman. “There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.”

Aha!

Not to give it way but: can you guess how this post will end? (Make your bets in Vegas now.) (Keep reading)

Let’s quote a bit more of this New York Observer story:

As a point of comparison, the campaign also provided in-district and out-of-district fundraising totals from McMahon and Grimm’s G.O.P primary opponent, Michael Allegretti. However, they did not provide an out-of-district campaign filing from Grimm, but only a file of Jewish donors to him.

Nelson said that the list was compiled by the campaign’s finance director, Debra Solomon and that she did not know exactly how the finance team knew who was Jewish and who was not.

“She herself is Jewish so she knows a lot of people in that community,” Nelson said.

Nelson stressed that the point of compiling the list was not to show that Grimm had a lot of Jewish support, but that he had little support in the district.

“I don’t think ethnicity matters. When people look at who is funding his campaign it’s not people who have a direct vested interest [in the district.]”

The campaign also wanted to point out that Grimm benefited greatly from his endorsement by Rudy Giuliani, and made a separate column to denote donors who have to the former mayor’s presidential or Senate campaigns. Only five appear to have done so.

The story goes on to say how Grimm met recently with a famous rabbi and how McMahan
“has been trying to make his own in-roads into the Jewish community. A source said that he is scheduled to meet next week with several major Jewish donors.”

Note to McMahon: You can meet with all of the Jewish donors you want, be bar mitzvahed, and even get circumsized (I know a mohel who works for tips) on CSPAN but it’s unlikely that the “Jewish money” statement will win you a lot of Jewish votes.

On the other hand, if the comment was allowed to stand, it could mean a big infusion of money into the McMahon campaign by people who personally admire actor Mel “%@!*F^%!!” Gibson and Oliver “Conspiracy-Under-Every” Stone.

The story has the obligatory statement of outrage from Grimm.

So…now…can you guess how this story ends? You got it:

Staten Island Rep. Mike McMahon (D-NY) moved into damage-control mode Thursday, firing the communications director for his re-election bid Thursday night after she gave a reporter a breakdown of a Republican rival’s “Jewish money” contributions.

McMahon announced he was firing spokeswoman Jennifer Nelson after she provided a New York Observer reporter with a breakdown of Republican rival Michael Grimm’s second-quarter financial haul donations from Jewish donors, in an apparent effort to show the former FBI agent has little financial support within the district.

In an astonishing move – putting such a statement on paper – the file the reporter was given was titled “Grimm Jewish Money Q2.”

“Where is Grimm’s money coming from,” Nelson was quoted saying to the Observer. “There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.”

She added that the campaign’s finance director had compiled the list, and, by way of explaining how she managed to pick out donors by their religion from filings, said, “She herself is Jewish so she knows a lot of people in that community.”

Nelson also insisted the purpose wasn’t to show “ethnicity” in terms of who was outside the district, but that was the only list the Observer said it was given – and it came at a time when McMahon has reportedly been ramping up his outreach to Jewish donors.

“This is a United States congressman that’s segregating people out by their religion. I’m outraged. Even an apology isn’t going to make it right,” Grimm told POLITICO. “This goes to his thought process and his feelings.”

On the other hand, perhaps there are several reasons to avoid “Jewish money.”

I’ve been told Jewish money (including mine):
–Invariably winds up in the cash register of a Chinese restaurant.
–Wants to make a quick detour to Nordstrom’s.
–In older women relentlessly seeks out plastic surgeons (in one seniors’ facility in San Diego there was a drive by face-lifting).
–Is attracted to stores selling Barbra Streisand CDs and Adam Sandler movies.

Now, excuse me since I have to get off of TMV immediately so I can dominate the news media, run the entertainment industry and give millions of my trillions and gazillions of dollars to political campaigns (not to mention to run American foreign policy: Hillary is LATE checking in with me and her daughter’s wedding is NO EXCUSE!!!!).

Courtesy: guardian.co.uk

I have been not writing on national politics lately because I filed to run for local office in Baltimore so I have been a bit busy. I did not watch the President on “The View” yesterday but watched a few of the clips online.

The President, in a discussion about race during the interview, made the following statement: “We are sort of a mongrel people. I mean we’re all kinds of mixed up,” Obama said. “That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it.”

I do not ever remember having a conversation with my parents about being part of a mongrel people. I am not white but I wouldn’t imagine a conversation like that taking place around the dinner table or playing catch in the backyard.

I do not like being categorized as a mongrel. It is a ridiculous and insulting statement. If George W. Bush, or another white politician said those words, the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be all over the airwaves calling for a public apology. I am not part of a “mongrel people.” This is not how you have a discussion on race relations. I expect better judgment from the President of the United States. If this is how he sees African-Americans, perhaps it is time for them to find a new candidate.

Like Bill and Hillary Clinton, I also got my only child, a daughter, married in 2005. And, boy, I know what I went through!!! I can share with Bill and Hillary the emotional (or whatever) feelings/usual thing one goes through on such an occasion. I congratulate The Week for capturing this moment for me “as the media speculates about Chelsea’s wedding this Saturday, July 31, according to multiple sources.”

“Where will the nuptials take place? New York magazine’s Doree Shaffir reported in June that guests won’t get much warning: ‘The wedding planner will contact each guest directly a week in advance and let them know where it is,’ a source told the magazine. But, according the Hudson Valley News, the wedding will take place under a tent at the former estate of John Jacob Astor IV in Rhinebeck, N.Y.

“The mansion dates back to 1902 and boasts an indoor tennis court and white marble swimming pool, according to a release. The property is now owned by Kathleen Hammer, a contributor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential and Senate bids. The delivery of wedding gifts there last week and the building of tents there over the past weekend has all but confirmed that this is the location…

“Will the ceremony be religious? This is apparently a matter of debate. While Hillary is Methodist, Bill is Southern Baptist. Yet there’s Marc Mezvinsky’s Jewish faith to consider. ‘The bride and groom have a range of choices, including conversion or a melding of their two traditions into one ceremony,’ reports the Associated Press. After all, Chelsea was spotted last year attending Yom Kippur services with Mezvinsky in New York….

“Who’s the lucky groom? Marc Mezvinsky, 32, is a Goldman Sachs banker (a Private Wealth Management associate, according to a listing in the Spoke directory). He’s known Chelsea since their teens. They met in Washington, D.C., and both went on to attend Stanford University. Mezvinsky is the son of two former congressmembers…” More here…

Taylor Jones, El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico

The latest revolving door example from DC: Jacob Lew, deputy secretary of state (confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 28, 2009), made made $1.1 million at Citigroup in 2008. However, he also received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year, after Citi’s taxpayer bail-out.

Earlier this month, President Obama nominated Lew to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB Director is “the President’s top aide in charge of overseeing the budget for the entire Federal government.” Here’s the White House defense:

“Jack Lew has dedicated two decades to public service,” White House spokeswoman Moira Mack wrote in an e-mail to The Times. “He has served with distinction in two Administrations and in Congress, and has precisely the kind of experience we need at OMB at this critical juncture.”

Lew was OMB director in the Clinton administration

From earlier this week: three out of four of the 600+ registered oil and gas lobbyists (“more than 430“) first worked in the federal government.

Are unemployed Americans “sitting back waiting” instead of looking for work? Zach Wamp, the Republican candidate for governor in Tennessee, says they are. Indeed, he says more than that. He says that he wants to see “people out there scraping and clawing and looking for work and not just sitting back waiting.”

Zaid Jilani at Think Progress provides some details about some of the Tennesseans Wamp is talking about (emphasis is in original):

– Lori Hillard, an Ashland City native, was laid off a year ago from her job as an Internet program administrator. She began “stressing out and losing sleep” at the thought of losing her unemployment benefits, which were her only source of income. Yet she sends out “sends out at least 15 to 20 resumes per week,” desperately trying to find work. “I know how hard and diligent I have been in searching for a job,” she told a local paper. “The economic situation is just as bad for us. When 400 people are applying for an administrative assistant’s job, that shows how dire the situation is.”

– Kim Stokes of Hendersonville-based Stokes Production Services Inc. tells the Tennessean that she has so many applicants that she can’t even come close to hiring them all. “I have freelancers calling me constantly because they don’t have anything going on,” Stokes said. “Everywhere I look, people don’t have work — people like some of my friends who are older and have been let go. They’ve never been without work before in their lives.”

– Ellen Zinkiewicz, who is the director youth and community services at the Nashville Career Advancement Center, notes that “nearly three-quarters of teenagers who want a job haven’t been able to find one.”

– When Fontanel Mansion at White Creek Pines needed staff and held a job fair this spring, 1,200 people showed up to apply — six times what the business had capacity for.

So here is my question: Does Wamp expect these Tennesseans to vote for him? I mean, would you vote for someone whose campaign strategy was to mock you, insult you, and tell you that you needed to suffer more?

I’m really curious to hear from conservative TMV readers: Is this a good way to run for office? Is there a message of compassion and concern for ordinary Tennesseans that I’m missing here?

I would really like to believe that Republicans like Zach Wamp are not heartless — or perhaps better put, that most Republicans who are in office or running for office are not like Zach Wamp — but it’s hard. It’s really hard, you know, to believe that when this is what Republicans are putting in front of my face every day.

This story is so repulsive I’m just going to provide the link.

People like this deserve a special level of hell

The shock waves from WikiLeaks’ mammoth release of classified material continue to spread. One of the stories we’ve posted today, an editorial from Brazil’s Estadao, highlights that after the release of 97,000 classified U.S. military documents showing how badly the Afghanistan War is going, in the words of one senior diplomat, the NATO allies ‘don’t know how to respond.’

The editorial from Estadao says in part:

What came out was more than enough to confirm the military, political, strategic and moral failure of the Afghan enterprise during the Bush era – which doesn’t seem to have changed under Barack Obama.

The formidable mass of detail exposed about the day-to-day reality of the war, its astonishing richness, undoubtedly confirms everyone’s worst suspicions: the war hasn’t weakened, but rather strengthened, the Taliban. And all the while, as Pakistan has received $1 billion per year to help battle the insurgents, its fearsome military secret service, the ISI, has trained them to confront the U.S.; efforts at winning the hearts of Afghans are a fiasco.

Beyond this, the death of unarmed civilians, intentionally or through the indifference of soldiers, and the cover-up of these incidents, far exceeds anything we knew before. American forces have established a squadron [Task Force 373] for locating, interrogating and assassinating Afghan terrorist suspects put on arbitrarily-prepared lists, and of course, without judicial supervision. At least 195 people were killed under conditions that qualify as war crimes.

The truth, as one highly-placed source confided, is that “we don’t know how to respond.” That also applies to Pakistan’s double game – an ally infiltrated by the enemy, which the U.S. can’t do without. The “war of necessity,” as Obama has described it, is becoming worse than the “war of choice” in Iraq.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

You’ve drawn up your budget for the year based on your best guess for your income (salary, wages and the like) and your expenses (mortgage or rent, food, clothing, entertainment and the like). Just over half-way through the year, you realize that you guessed wrong: you need to spend more money than you had budgeted. What do you do?

Our Congress simply passes a “supplemental appropriations” bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Supplemental appropriations provide additional funding to a government program for the fiscal year already in progress, over and above the funding provided in regular appropriation laws.” Once-upon-a-time, these were emergency measures; for the past decade, at least, it’s S.O.P.

At 6.11 pm on Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 308-114-10 to approve a supplemental appropriations bill that includes, among other things, $37 billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, according to the NY Times. By my count (see the Google spreadsheet), this Supplemental Appropriations bill allocates $48 billion to the war effort – that includes allocations for DoD, State, USAID and the Office of the President. It also includes direct allocations for Pakistan and Jordan, not just Afghanistan and Iraq.

More House Republicans (160) than Democrats (148) supported the bill, which was requested by the Obama Administration. More Democrats (102) than Republicans (12) voted against the bill, which required a two-thirds majority for passage. Last year, only 32 Ds voted against a similar bill; it wasn’t an election year. So much for change, eh?

Back in May, the Senate had passed its version of this bill, HR 4899, Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2010, by a vote of 67-28-5. There it was the Republicans who opposed the supplemental appropriations bill: 26 of those 28 votes were Rs. (Only 12 Rs voted “yes” in the Senate.) So much for political party integrity and consistency.

Congress continues to, in effect, write blank checks to the Pentagon. For example, we learned this week that the Pentagon “cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, according to an internal audit.” The lost $8.7 billion came from Iraqi oil revenues from 2004 to 2007.

We learned five years ago that “$9 billion in UN oil-for-food reconstruction monies — funds administered by the US government for the Iraqi people via the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) — was unacccounted for.”

And Juan Cole points out that we are on track in Afghanistan to repeat our financial mistakes in Iraq:

AP notes that the US has put $51 billion into Afghanistan since 2001 for education, roads, water, jobs and electricity. Now Washington is planning to spend another $20 bn. in Afghanistan the coming year alone. That total sum, $71 bn. is greater than what was spent (from US monies) on Iraq.

Where is the outrage? Not only are we spending money we don’t have, we can’t even spend it well.

Where is the outrage? The Washington Post details chaos and a “throw money at the problem” mentality in our “homeland security” efforts … and the other media yawn and columnists talk about why it’s not good (“Pulitzer”) journalism.

Where is the outrage? WikiLeaks reveals an escalating counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, data that put to rest any government or NATO claim of “winning” — and the media and political pundits yawn (“we already knew that“).

For almost nine years, Congress and the President (first Bush, now Obama) claim that we need to borrow billions of dollars — and have supplemental appropriations every year — in order to conduct a war half-way around the world … for what? It’s not going to “stop terrorism” (see Israel). It’s not going to introduce a secular democracy (see Iraq). It’s not going to magically introduce “western capitalism” (see the break-up of the Soviet Union).

What we are doing is continuing to line the pockets of America’s military-industrial complex with money borrowed from the rest of the world …. while sending our young men and women to die for … what, exactly?

And the media — supposedly the government watchdog — remain largely silent on the latest debit in this credit-card war.

Perhaps we are so numb that our only logical response is no response. And if that’s the case, I truly fear for the future.

Here is the central difference between the previous administration and the current one on civil liberties: Former Pres. Bush’s infringements were carried out illegally; Pres. Obama wants Congress to make violating Americans’ civil liberties the law of the land:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.

But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

The money comment comes from Kevin Drum: “You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him.”

More commentary at Memeorandum.

If you aren’t old enough to remember Bush v. Gore (serious trivia: for those who’ve followed California’s Prop 8, check out the attorneys in Bush v. Gore and who they represented), don’t worry. The debate it highlighted — should our president be selected by popular vote or the electoral college system — lives on in the efforts of many states, catalogued by National Popular Vote to dump the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, and Massachusetts is just the latest state to walk that way.

Read the rest at Massachusetts’ Legislature Favors Popular Vote over Electoral College: Will Your Vote Get Neutralized?

How will Charlie Rangel talk himself out of this one?

Washington Post: Ethics panel outlines 13 charges against Rangel

Case against the New York congressman goes before House ethics committee after efforts to reach a settlement apparently fall short…..

MORE

Behind the Leaked Documents

by Michael Reagan

The man behind the torrent of leaked documents wants to end the war in Afghanistan, and he doesn’t care how much damage he does to the troops on the ground in that hostile environment. Now hailed by anti-war liberals as some kind of a hero, Australian computer hacker Julian Assange is part of an international cabal dedicated to doing mischief that endangers U.S. national security.

Last April, his website Wikileaks posted a video, “Collateral Murder,” making Wikileaks what has been described as a prime source of unauthorized but accurate accounts, video and documents. Last week came the flood of leaked documents.

The viciousness displayed by Assange against the U.S. forces in Afghanistan was shown in sickening detail when he published the Social Security numbers of U.S. servicemen and women, exposing them all kinds of dangers.

His latest outrage is designed to do nothing less that end U.S. efforts to prevent Afghanistan from falling into the bloody hands of a band of international terrorist thugs.

Wikileaks, described by Wikipedia as an “international organization based in Sweden” and run by Assange, an Australian and skilled computer hacker. They brag that they have a database comprising more than 1.2 million documents.

Last week Assange released the so-called “Afghan Diary,” a staggering hoard of some 92,000 documents dealing primarily with the war in Afghanistan and the role of Pakistan in that conflict.

The alleged source of these documents in an American G.I., Bradley Manning, an allegation Assange denies, saying, “There is no allegation as far as we can determine” that the documents posted on Wikileaks Sunday are “connected to Bradley Manning.” He added however, that nonetheless his group has “committed funds” to Manning’s defense.

The information contained in these 92,000 documents among other things deals with civilian casualties, and the role of Pakistan in assisting the Taliban terrorists. Such allegations are designed to do nothing less than drive a wedge between the U.S. and Pakistan.

Summed up, the information is more than a year old, prior to the onset of the surge now underway. The documents are designed to bring unbearable pressure on the U.S. to bug out of Afghanistan much as America shamefully bugged out of Vietnam, leading to the massacre or imprisonment of over a million South Vietnamese U.S. allies. A similar fate would await those Afghan villagers who cooperated with U.S. forces. Only worse — the North Vietnamese didn’t behead their victims.

The import of these leaks can be measured if compared to what would have happened had American plans and capabilities had been revealed to the enemy in World War II during the Battle of the Bulge or any other key engagement in World War II.

And imagine what kind of penalty a leaker would have paid.

There is no doubt that the leaks had one overriding motive: get the U.S. and its allies out of Afghanistan, handing victory to a band of terrorist thugs.

This a war the U.S. must win if the struggle to end international terrorism is to succeed. Any actions designed to end that struggle without success are actions against the vital interests of the American people.

Jullian Assange, alleged anti-war crusader, has revealed himself for what he is — a subversive who has no qualms about the damage he does to the United States and to the members of our armed forces.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is chairman and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation (www.reaganlegacyfoundation.org). ©2010 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate and is licensed to run on TMV.

I was reading reactions to the Arizona immigration law being shorted with a temporary injunction and the snowballing impact it has on similar legal efforts by other states and municipalities.
What struck me was the legal costs these states and cities must drain on their public treasuries. No dollar figures here. But the fight to take matters into their own hands with their own peculiar ways of addressing the problem as they see it is costing them as much money as the financial burden of providing illegal immigrants with public services. That’s probably a stretch but consider the plight of Fremont, Neb.:

In a special election last month, voters approved an ordinance barring illegal immigrants from renting a home and requiring employers to verify the legal residency of anyone they hire.

That ordinance was also supposed to go into effect Thursday. But it was suspended Tuesday in the latest step on a legal journey every bit as convoluted as the road to implementation in Arizona.

The trail began twisting in 2008, when the Fremont City Council narrowly rejected the measure. That prompted activists to launch a petition drive for a special election, which the state Supreme Court ordered over the objections of city officials. Ordinance 5165 — which city officials argued would unconstitutionally pre-empt federal immigration law — passed with 57% of the vote. But within weeks, it was met with lawsuits filed by the ACLU and Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.

As Thursday’s implementation date drew near, Fremont officials warned that the measure could be ruinously expensive, estimating that simultaneously implementing it and defending it in court could cost the town of 26,000 as much as $1 million.That landed the issue on the City Council’s agenda yet again.

Tuesday night, the council voted unanimously to suspend the ordinance, citing the pending legal challenges and the cost of defending them.

The tortured history of the ordinance has deeply divided the people of Fremont.

“I’m so disappointed that a law like this could have passed here,” said Mario Martinez, a Mexican American who lives in Fremont with his wife and young child. “I always thought in this day and age laws are meant to prevent discrimination, not encourage it.”

But Larry Gitt, who has run an electrical company in Fremont for 30 years, said the ordinance was about upholding the law, not targeting Latinos.

“Everybody I talk to has no problem with legal immigration,” Gitt said. “I don’t see why people can’t interpret where illegal is illegal.”

The msnbc.com reported the extent of anti-illegal immigration laws:

During the first half of 2010, lawmakers in all 50 states introduced 1,374 bills and resolutions seeking in some way to restrict or eliminate illegal immigration, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Lawmakers passed 319 of them, in 44 states. (Five of those were vetoed.)At that rate, states would approve nearly 650 immigration measures over the full year — nearly double the 353 approved last year and a 17-fold increase since 2005, when just 38 such measures passed, the conference said.

The legislatures in at least five states — Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina — are considering full statewide crackdowns modeled on the Arizona law, and lawmakers in at least 18 other states have said they are preparing similar bills. Most of the new laws are more limited, applying restrictions like employment verification and requirements for drivers licenses.

That’s just at the state level. Hundreds of local communities have passed or are considering measures like Fremont’s.

Just a guess on my part but appears the only segment of society gaining anything of value in this debate are the litigating attorneys.

One of the complaints I hear regularly from readers is that the federal government does not take action against “sanctuary cities.”

The website Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC: Sanctuary Cities, USA, defines these generally as policies:

“(i)nstructing city employees not to notify the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens living in their communities. The policies also end the distinction between legal and illegal immigration–so illegal aliens often benefit from city services.”

It also claims a 1996 federal law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, “requires local governments to cooperate” with Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This means nothing but I read the amended law and could find no such reference. If there is, there are no sanctions or penalties against sanctuary cities. I think that argument is a ruse. I could be wrong.

The website listed the cities in each state documented as “sanctuary cities.” Among the Mexican border states, California had 30, Arizona 4, New Mexico 4, and Texas 13. in each case, the largest cities were sanctuary havens and the smaller ones were high in Hispanic population. Sanctuary cities in other states were enacted for humanitarian reasons in many cases.

My conclusion is the larger cities have greater priorities in fighting crime than reporting those illegal immigrants involved in minor offenses they stumble across to ICE. With a few isolated cases in San Francisco involving Hispanic gangs, most illegals involved in felonies are reported by law to the feds by the big city cops.

The conflict posed by sanctuary cities on one side and the Arizona law on the other puts local law enforcement officers in a legal pincher movement between upholding oaths of ethical training standards and state and local laws. One of the plaintiffs in the Arizona suit made such an argument.

Here is a sample of the flurry of lawsuits as reported in the msnbc.com report:

• Arizona: A new law imposes citizenship requirements for tuition loans and teaching degrees.

• Indiana: A new provision of the state code requires proof of legal residence to obtain a driver licenses.

• Iowa: As part of an occupational safety law, the Legislature requires every person, firm or corporation employing migrant laborers to keep on file a work permit for migrant laborers prior to their employment.

• Kansas: A new law makes it illegal to knowingly employ an illegal immigrant.

• Massachusetts: A new law bars illegal immigrants from receiving state benefits.

• Minnesota: As part of a mental health care law, the Legislature declared undocumented noncitizens and immigrants ineligible for general assistance medical care.

• Mississippi: A new law bars illegal immigrants from receiving state unemployment benefits.

• New York: A new law requires that college students must be U.S. citizens to receive certain scholarships and financial aid packages.

• Oklahoma: A new law requires any illegal immigrant to submit to DNA testing for law enforcement identification purposes upon arrest.

• South Carolina: A new law restricts illegal immigrants from receiving state higher education assistance.

• Tennessee: A new law requires county jails to report illegal immigrants in their custody to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

• Virginia: A new law prohibits state funds from being spent on legal services for illegal immigrants.

• Washington: A new law requires that people receiving disability benefits be legal residents of the United States.

The result:

(T)he Center for Public Policy Studies, a nonpartisan research institute at California State University-Stanislaus, projected in a report on state immigration measures last year that the increasing number of state and local laws — and the lack of clear guidance from the federal government — could lead to an explosion of lawsuits that would put a measurable strain on court caseloads.

“The complicated nexus of federal, state and local immigration law, policy and practice is likely to lead to numerous unanticipated consequences for local trial court operations and policy,” the authors concluded.

But the prevailing opinion of lawmakers remains:

To Walter Bailey, a member of the Summerville, S.C., Town Council, the lack of a clear nationwide immigration policy is precisely why local governments should wade in, not hold off. Bailey has introduced a measure closely mirroring the Fremont ordinance because, he said, “I don’t think the federal government or the state is doing anything at all to control illegal immigration.”

As I have said repeatedly, the priorities of states and the federal government are not on the same page and 100% enforcement in the interior and at the border is impossible.

It’s not that the Obama administration is not enforcing existing immigration laws. They are in whopping numbers. The Washington Post:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10% above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25% more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush’s final year in office.

Rhetoric, politics and the race card dominates this debate. That’s unfortunate. A reading of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act convinces me there is adequate legislation on the books. We don’t need new laws. Money and priorities prevent us from enforcing those we do have.

Comprehensive immigration reform is a joke. The only issue not already addressed in law is what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now residing in the country. That’s where the policy debate should focus.

Cross posted on The Remmers Report

Comments are welcome. Link to my blogsite or go to my email address at temeculakid@gmail.com . Remmers’ varied career spans 26 years in the newspaper business. Read a more thorough resume on The Remmers Report.

With all the bad things we have to write about these days it’s nice to have something pleasant to comment on.

Sixty years ago Mary Price Walls was a high school student with a dream, she wanted to be a teacher. The dream seemed quite reachable, after all she was the salutatorian of her high school class and she had applied to a college with a good teaching program.

But Southwest Missouri State College not only didn’t admit her, they never even responded to her application.

Was it an oversight ? Was it a case of an application lost in the mail ?

No…. it was a matter of pigmentation. Mary Walls is black and in 1950 many colleges, including SMSC did not admit non white students. So Mary went on to a career as an elevator operator, a janitor and a number of other jobs.

She never really discussed the story with her family, but they had always heard whispers about it. Her son eventually looked in to the situation and found the records showing the injustice. When he contacted college officials they decided to do what they could to fix the problem.

This week 77 year old Mary Price Walls will get the first ever honorary degree from Missouri State University, as the college is now known.

Obviously this can’t make up for a lifetime lost, but at least today she, and we, have something to smile about.

The Phoenix Airport [Gateway Airport in Mesa, not Phoenix Sky Harbor Int'l.] has deep-sixed CNN and Fox News from its airport TV sets. The reason: too many some passengers see them as political biased. (Welcome folks to the 21st century when seeing a network or show that you think is politically biased in an airport means you have to complain to have it removed since — as we all know — when you are exposed to a different opinion, a different take on an issue, or see someone interviewed in a way that is either too biased for you or not in keeping enough with your own biases it will disintegrate your head and possibly kill you).