2007.05.31 "No Illegal Left Behind" Roundup;
-- Sleep well, America. Your government is awake.
See previous: 2007.05.30 "No Illegal Left Behind" Roundup, Sleep well, America. Your government is awake. This post is backdated. Scroll down for newer content.
Below the fold:
- U.S. Investigates How Man With TB Got Into Country
- Bush insults his most loyal supporters
- Shamnesty and reality
- TB Patient Identified as Lawyer; Border Agent, Aware, Let Him In
See also:
Flight 327
Today's Washington Times Editorial
President Bush the other day lashed out at opponents of the Senate immigration "compromise," declaring that opponents were "trying to frighten our citizens." By the very act of criticizing a bill granting legal status to tens of millions of illegal aliens, he added, critics are attempting "to scare the American people" about things they shouldn't worry their little heads about. Back in the real world, there are dangers that should be very alarming to anyone with common sense.
September 11 and thousands of grisly attacks in Iraq and other locations since drive home that civilized people all over the world -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- are under siege from violent jihadists who would welcome the opportunity to carry out more attacks on American soil. Any immigration proposal -- especially one that grants legal status to millions and millions of illegals -- could prove catastrophic if we lack the ability to screen out terrorists and criminals who engage in document fraud and other criminal activity to get into the United States, to board airplanes or enter government buildings. And, unfortunately, we are awash in government studies, reports and other data which make clear that nearly six years after September 11, the government bureaucracies that are supposed to keep out terrorists are in many ways as incompetent and dysfunctional as they were before Mohammed Atta and his associates killed nearly 3,000 people that morning.
A newly released report from the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the government's handling of 13 suspicious passengers on a June 29, 2004, Northwest Airlines flight serves as a reminder of why so many Americans are rightly skeptical of Washington's ability to manage a mass-amnesty program. ...
... Pilots and former air marshals told this newspaper that federal security managers have been concealing information on dry run probes from other federal agencies and that most of our flights today do not have armed pilots or air marshals aboard. And yet the president and "immigration reform" supporters on Capitol Hill insist that the dysfunctional bureaucracies responsible for Flight 327 security are up to the task of overseeing mass amnesty for illegals.
Do read the whole thing, friends and neighbors. Sleep well.
I'm going to hang this one at the top of the site for the day or until something that disturbs me more comes along. Original timestamp 2007.05.31.00:47
U.S. Investigates How Man With TB Got Into Country
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is investigating how a globe-trotting tuberculosis patient drove back into the country after his name was put on the no-fly list and given to U.S. border guards — a major gap in the nation's system to keep the direst of diseases from crossing borders.
That the Atlanta man and his wife were cleared by border agents told to stop them is one in a series of missed opportunities to catch a patient seemingly determined to elude health officials.
Worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the United States is, from outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international flight, to killer germs carried by travelers. What if, they ask, the now-quarantined man had carried something very contagious like the next super-flu?
"It's regretful that we weren't able to stop that," Dr. Martin Cetron of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.
Should the CDC have asked Italian health authorities to put the man in isolation there? That was under discussion when the CDC learned the man had fled, Cetron said.
"We need to rely on people to do the right thing," Cetron said, saying the CDC hesitates to invoke its quarantine powers. "Can we improve our systems? Absolutely. There will be many lessons learned from this." ...
Bush insults his most loyal supporters
The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper
WASHINGTON - President Bush wants Congress to approve an immigration compromise bill that will be supported mainly by Democrats.
He’s no longer worried about getting re-elected, so in his pushing for the bill’s passage, Bush has now told millions of voters to get lost. These are the people who have been his most loyal supporters on virtually every other issue.
Yet Bush now condemns them as unwilling to do “what’s right for America” and accuses their allies in Congress of using “empty rhetoric” to misrepresent the bill as a form of amnesty for illegal aliens. Bush appealed for “a chance to fix the problems in a comprehensive way that enforces our border and treats people with decency and respect.”
We don’t see how it is either decent or respectful to label critics of the immigration bill as unpatriotic and intellectually dishonest. ...
Read the whole thing.
Shamnesty and reality
Michelle Malkin
Satirist Frank J. writes up shamnesty talking points from the White House and Wall Street Journal. They are such parodies of themselves already, but Frank J. pulls it off.
Meanwhile, several Arizona readers have sent a link to this piece on the spillover of Mexican drug cartel- and human trafficking-related violence onto American soil. ...
TB Patient Identified as Lawyer; Border Agent, Aware, Let Him In
The man with a dangerous form of tuberculosis who flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon was identified yesterday as a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer. Department of Homeland Security officials said he re-entered the country from Canada when a customs agent let him pass despite knowing that the man was being sought by health authorities.
Congressional investigators, who will be holding hearings on the way the case of the man, Andrew Speaker, has been handled, say that the border agent at the Plattsburgh, N.Y., border crossing with Canada decided that Mr. Speaker did not look sick and so let him go. ...
Coming up next: "He didn't look like a terrorist so I let him in."
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