Napolitano hasn't read Arizona law?

Under questioning from John McCain on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted that she hasn't read the Arizona immigration law "in detail." This hasn't stopped her from denouncing the law as a "bad law enforcement law."

Arizona governor mocks critics who haven't read immigration bill

In this video, Arizona governor Jan Brewer mocks opponents of her state's immigration law using a frog puppet that looks and sounds a lot like Kermit the frog.

The Shady ShoreBank Bailout

“No more bailouts, no more greed, how many profits do you need?”

That’s been a signature chant of community organizers and Big Labor thugs who have stormed bank offices and financial executives’ private homes decrying corporate welfare over the past several months. But now that the federal government and a coalition of big banking interests are poised to bail out a crony Chicago bank with longtime ties to the Obama administration, Saul Alinsky’s avenging angels are nowhere to be found.

ShoreBank is a Windy City investment bank with all the right (or, rather, left) ties. Its stated progressive mission isn’t merely to make good lending decisions, but to engage in Barack Obama-esque social engineering to “create economic equity and a healthy environment.” The ShoreBank corporate slogan: “Let’s change the world.”

The company website features a video of Obama in Kenya championing ShoreBank microlending projects overseas. ShoreBank has also touted itself as a “green” bank from its founding days — promoting dubious carbon credit programs, subjecting new borrowers to eco-litmus tests (“we look at how you use water, how you recover water and clean it, how you use energy, if you produce clean energy, how you manage CO2, whether you are offsetting CO2 that your product produces, if you are using sustainably produced materials”) and encouraging customers to participate in “EcoDeposits” to “directly support the green agenda.”

Social and environmental justice may make for good Volvo bumper stickers. They do not, however, make for a good bottom line. While the bank was on do-gooder missions around the world, business at home was in trouble. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Losses racked up during the recession have left the bank facing a demand to raise new capital or face likely closure by regulators.”

Enter the Chicago political friends and family of ShoreBank. The ties are long and deep, as the Central Illinois 9/12 Project has been chronicling for months:

– ShoreBank co-founder Jan Piercy was a Wellesley College roommate of Hillary Clinton’s, who has long supported the bank along with former president Bill Clinton.

– Former ShoreBank Vice Chairman Bob Nash worked for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid as deputy campaign manager. Board of Directors member Howard Stanback is a Hyde Park neighborhood pal of President Obama, who served with Stanback on the board of the radical Woods Fund (where Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers also sat).

– White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett served on the board of Chicago Metropolis 2020 with ShoreBank Director Adele Simmons, former president of the liberal MacArthur Foundation, where she focused on “climate change” and “global governance” issues.

– The bank and its employees donated some $12,000 to the Obama 2008 presidential campaign, and co-founder Mary Houghton reportedly gave advice to Obama’s late mother about small business lending issues.

In other words: ShoreBank is too politically connected to fail. And now you, the taxpayer, may be on the hook for helping its cronies engineer a special rescue. Fox Business News reported this week that a consortium of large lenders — including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and GE Capital — have partnered with the feds to pitch in a combined $200 million public-private bailout. (In addition, Illinois Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky has been crusading for a state-level bailout of the beleaguered bank.) The buzz on both Wall Street and Capitol Hill is that Goldman and perhaps others in the public-private partnership were pressured to lend a hand.

It wouldn’t be the first time that businesses have felt the Obama squeeze. And it wouldn’t be the first time that Democrats exploited the financial crisis to milk public money for their banking cronies.

The laggardly House Ethics Committee is still investigating Democrat California Rep. Maxine Waters, who had a personal and financial stake in Boston-based OneUnited, a minority bank that received $12 million in TARP bailout money under smelly circumstances. The bank’s executives donated $12,500 to her congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited. Waters secured meetings between OneUnited execs and Treasury Department officials.

That probe has dragged on for nearly a year, which doesn’t bode well for fresh GOP demands for an investigation into the shady ShoreBank bailout. House Financial Services Committee ranking minority member Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., has demanded that the White House cough up documentation about any possible overt contact with Goldman about the deal.

Team Obama is smarter than that, of course. To quote Obama’s environmental czar Carol Browner, who pressured auto industry execs last year to cooperate on a fuel standards increase, they know “to put nothing in writing, ever.”

The fingerprints may be missing, but the stench of the Chicago Way is impossible to cover up.

The U.S. Department of Blame America First

Gird your loins, meanwhile, for the full State Department pander-fest scheduled for Thursday, when Arizona-bashing, U.S.-bashing Mexican President Felipe Calderon marches to Washington with one hand demanding more foreign aid while the other hand smacks America around for failing to grant more amnesty and other taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens from his misery-racked, violence-plagued country — which, I remind you again, has no qualms about enforcing its own southern border and sending illegals home in a heartbeat. Will anyone speak truth to open-borders power in the Beltway when Calderon comes calling? He has been granted the rare honor of speaking to a joint session of Congress.

Don’t forget what Calderon said in his first inaugural address in 2007:

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying “Mexico does not end at its borders.”

Back in 1984, when the late Jeane J. Kirkpatrick gave her famous “Blame America First” speech to the Republican National Convention, liberals at least waited for something bad to happen before blaming America.

Today, Obama Democrats have now mastered the treacherous art of the pre-emptive global apology. Foggy Bottom is crammed with so many “human rights” zealots embarrassed by the country they serve that the State Department mission statement should be replaced with a condolence card.

Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner is probably not the first Obama State Department official to badmouth America in front of foreign delegations. He was just dumb enough to get caught.

Last week, the former head agitator at the transnationalist outfit Human Rights First trashed our country’s human rights record to Chinese government officials.

Posner is an unrepentant open-borders radical who has long fought immigration enforcement and vociferously opposed post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism measures to detain enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay. He was active in supporting the establishment of the International Criminal Court, an American sovereignty-undermining tribunal that would trump U.S. judicial authority over war crimes and “crimes of humanity.”

And New Yorkers may recall that he joined with Human Rights First board member Tom Goldstein, far-left billionaire George Soros and other American self-loathers in the failed effort to turn the Sept. 11 Ground Zero Memorial into a national guilt complex to showcase how George W. Bush-era counterterrorism policies were curtailing civil liberties.

In short, Posner views our homeland security policies as unforgivable sins of discrimination. And he couldn’t wait to let China know it.

From Posner’s press briefing on Friday:

Q: Did the recently passed Arizona immigration law come up? And if so, did they bring it up? Or did you bring it up?

MR. POSNER: We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session and as a troubling trend in our society, and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination. And these are issues very much being debated in our own society.
The Arizona law is indeed being “debated in our own society” — mostly by a parade of willful ignoramuses from Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano to Attorney General Eric Holder to State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who have all gone on television to attack the Arizona law and then admit they have yet to read the legislation.

At least all the know-nothings in Washington who voted to cram the health care and stimulus bills down our throats without reading them had a semblance of an excuse. Those mammoth packages were thousands of pages long. The Arizona law is a mere 10 pages.

The betrayal of America’s interests by the Obama State Department cannot be understated. Posner proactively brought up the Arizona law “early and often” as an issue of “discrimination or potential discrimination” to smear his own countrymen in front of one of the world’s leading repressive regimes — so repressive, in fact, that Posner’s own boss, Hillary Clinton, once demanded that former President Bush boycott the ChiComs over their miserable human rights record. Posner had nothing publicly to say at the briefing about China’s own draconian immigration enforcement measures, let alone how it treats its own citizen political dissidents.

But this extreme moral equivalence is par for the course. Remember: The State Department’s legal adviser is former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, who believes that America is such a flagrant violator of international law that it belongs in an “axis of disobedience” with totalitarian regimes like North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — and that U.S. Supreme Court rulings should “tip more decisively toward a transnationalist jurisprudence.”

And remember: One of President Obama’s closest foreign policy advisers is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Harvard law professor and State Department transition team leader Samantha Power, who pooh-poohs the threat of nuclear Iran and praises Obama’s commitment to “crossing boundaries” and “talk[ing] to dictators,” as the New Statesman reported.

Then there’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is busy coddling another government that has been bashing Arizona’s law while unapologetically policing its own southern border and kicking out illegal immigrants without a shred of due process: Mexico.

Instead of voicing concern about endangered American citizens, Clinton fretted about the political well-being of Mexican President Felipe Calderon: “We don’t want to make his life any harder,” Clinton said. I guarantee you he won’t show any of the same concern when he comes to Washington on Thursday to beg for more U.S. aid while attacking America as a racist, fascist country.

Foggy Bottom isn’t just stuck on stupid. It’s stuck on American self-sabotage.

“We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers,” he said. “The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle … for their rights.”

He also reached out to the millions of Mexicans living in the United States, many illegally, saying: “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”
I hope Joe Wilson is ready to call him out if and when needed. Here’s how to do it right.

Our busted deportation system strikes again

Wouldn’t it be grand if the Obama administration cared more about policing our borders than about policing our refrigerators? How about fixing our deportation system instead of fixing our junk-food diets?

First Lady Michelle Obama argued this week that obesity is a “national security” issue. But her husband allows far greater threats to go unabated. The FBI’s arrests of two Boston-area men tied to the Times Square bombing attempt — both held on immigration violations — underscore the continuing homeland security lapses.

FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say two men of Pakistani descent were taken into custody during a series of New England-, New York- and New Jersey-based raids on Thursday. Federal officials believe the individuals may have provided cash to Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad. One was here on an expired visa. The other was on the loose while an immigration court adjudicated his deportation and removal order. He had reportedly been ordered deported in 2002, yet managed to embed himself in American society for more than seven years. But for the ability to detain potential illegal aliens on “administrative” charges, the men most likely would have remained free.

(How convenient that the White House can choose to enforce immigration laws in the interest of public safety and then threaten to sue Arizona for stepping in and doing the same when the feds refuse to enforce those laws consistently.)

Failure to crack down on visa overstayers and failure to stop the deportation revolving door are two key security vulnerabilities that lawmakers vowed to address after 9/11.

There are currently more than 2 million illegal alien visa overstayers in the country, along with an estimated 500,000 illegal alien absconders who have ignored orders from immigration judges to leave the country. Voluntary departure policies — granting illegal aliens the privilege of deporting themselves on an honor system — have allowed countless law-breakers to remain in the country. There are federal laws mandating up to 20 years in jail for those who re-enter the U.S. illegally after being deported, but the provisions are enforced sporadically.

The endless immigration litigation system lets known deportation fugitives stay in the country pending endless appeals (just ask President Obama’s illegal alien absconder aunt Zeituni Onyango, whose 2002 asylum request was rejected and yet who remains here in taxpayer-subsidized public housing while awaiting the outcome of a second immigration hearing).

Just two months ago, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner reported on lingering obstacles to enforcement and deportation of visa overstayers and absconders, including insufficient detention capacity; limitations of its immigration database; and insufficient staffing. “While most visitors leave by the time their visas expire, many thousands remain in the United States illegally,” Skinner testified before Congress. “Overstays perpetuate the illegal immigration problem by using the visa process to break the law to remain in the United States. Moreover, some overstays represent a very real national security risk to the nation.”

Indeed, they do. The Nationwide Visa Overstayers Club includes dozens of jihadists, including 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Satam al-Suqami; 1997 New York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud and Mohammed Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil; and 1993 New York landmark bombing and conspirator Fadil Abdelgani.

Before 9/11, no comprehensive foreign visitor entry-exit tracking system existed. Open-borders lobbyists, the travel industry, civil rights absolutists and ethnic grievance groups have lobbied hard ever since to stall full implementation of coordinated databases.

The rallying cries of the May Day illegal alien marches this month implored President Obama to “Stop the raids!” and “Stop the deportations!” While their underlings launch select counterterrorism and immigration raids to track down the global network of “lone wolves,” Attorney General Eric Holder and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have been all too happy to threaten punitive measures against local and state officials who understand that reckless immigration enforcement moratoriums carry grave domestic security consequences.

Last time I checked, the government’s fundamental duty “to provide for the common defense” did not include the qualifier “when it’s politically expedient.” Or “as long as special-interest feelings are not hurt.” Or “only after catastrophic security breaches force us to do so.” Which version of the U.S. Constitution is Team Obama reading?

SEIU fatcats behind First Lady’s anti-obesity campaign

Remember: Big Government programs “for the children” are never about the children.

Behind every seemingly good deed in the Obama White House, there’s a deep-pocketed, left-wing special interest. Take First Lady Michelle Obama’s crusade against childhood obesity. Who really benefits from the ostensible push for improved nutrition in the schools? Think purple – as in the purple-shirted army of the Service Employees International Union. Big Labor bigwigs don’t care about slimming your kids’ waistlines. They care about beefing up their membership rolls and fattening their coffers.

Mrs. Obama earned a State of the Union Address shout-out from her hubby for taking on the weighty public policy issue of students’ physical fitness. The East Wing is now in full campaign mode – leaning on the nation’s mayors, traveling with the Surgeon General, and meeting with Congress and cabinet members to reauthorize the Lyndon Johnson-era Child Nutrition Act, which provides government-subsidized meals to more than 30 million children. It’s part of the Obama administration’s self-proclaimed “cradle-to-career” agenda for America’s youth.

For decades, this Great Society relic has been criticized by school administrators for outgrowing its initial conception. The program was originally created to use up post-World War II food surpluses. In the late 1970s, New York principal Lewis Lyman skewered it as a federal “boondoggle” in a seminal essay for the education journal, Phi Delta Kappan. But Democrats demagogued the GOP’s responsible attempts at financial reform during the Clinton years as “starving the children.” While spending on youth nutrition and wellness have ballooned, so have the kids. Nearly one-third of U.S. children are now overweight or obese. The feds spend $15 billion a year on nutrition in schools; the White House wants at least a $1 billion increase this coming fiscal year.

The well-intended program to feed poor kids has morphed into an untouchable universal entitlement with a powerful school lunch lobbying coalition of Department of Agriculture bureaucrats, food-service industry executives, and union bosses. Enter the SEIU. Headed up by the White House’s most frequent visitor, Andy Stern, the powerful labor organization representing government and private service employees has an insatiable appetite for power and growth. Working alongside the First Lady, the SEIU unveiled a major ad campaign this week demanding reauthorizing and funding increases in the Child Nutrition Act.

What’s in it for Big Labor? SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman explains: “A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC [the federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program] is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity, and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers (emphasis added).” There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more. “More robust expansion” of the federal school lunch law means a mandate for higher wages, increased benefits, and government-guaranteed health insurance coverage (the more luxurious the better now that SEIU has negotiated its Cadillac Tax exemption from the Democrats’ health care takeover bill).

The SEIU’s front group, “Campaign for Quality Services,” is clamoring for “the right to sick days and training” for school food-services workers. Never ones to let a crisis go unexploited, SEIU sent its members to lobby in front of Chicago public schools last year and scare parents into supporting their labor agenda. They accused the school system of “putting our kids at risk” during flu season by resisting the SEIU’s sick day coverage demands. “Without sick days, I can’t take a day off, so I have to bring germs to school,” an SEIU janitor lamented.

Along the same lines, they are casting food-services workers as indispensable saviors. The union has rallied behind p.r. efforts casting them as superheroes “serving justice, and serving lunch.” Opposing the union means opposing children’s health. SEIU propaganda features New Jersey school cafeteria workers like Leslie Williams of Orange, N.J. lamenting: “I love my work, but it’s getting harder to prepare nutritious meals on the low budget we’re working with…It breaks my heart to see a child who’s hungry. As I see it, part of my job is to make sure the kids are well-fed.”

Actually, that’s the primary job of parents. Mom? Dad? Remember them? But the more responsibility we demand of parents, the less power and influence SEIU bosses are able to grab. Unionized school dietician and nutrition jobs are booming. And in addition to school breakfast and lunch, the SEIU is now pushing subsidized dinner plans and summer food service to create a “stronger nutrition safety net.” Translation: Perpetual employment for big government and its public employee union au pairs.

Cede the children, feed the state.

Here come Michelle Obama’s Food Marketing Police

Big Mommy Michelle Obama launched her childhood obesity campaign in February by dragging her daughters’ BMIs into the public spotlight and carrying water for the SEIU’s legislative agenda. What’s next? Aggressive government pressure on, and policing of, food advertisers. Here they come:
The review by the Task Force on Childhood Obesity says one out of every three children is overweight or obese. The task force is a key part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to solve the problem of obesity within a generation. President Obama ordered the comprehensive review of the issue.

The report includes familiar themes, emphasizing the importance of improved nutrition and physical activity. It also calls for some new and dramatic controls on the marketing of unhealthy foods.

The task force wants junk food makers and marketers to go on what amounts to an advertising diet. It says media characters that are often popular with kids should only be used to promote healthy products. If voluntary efforts fail to limit marketing of less healthy products to young viewers, the task force suggests the FCC should consider new rules on commercials in children’s programming. It also challenges food retailers to stop using in-store displays to sell unhealthy food items to children.

The advisory panel proposes better food content labeling on products and vending machines. Restaurants and vending machine companies are urged to display calorie counts. The experts say the FDA and USDA should cooperate with the food and beverage industries to develop a standard system of nutrition labeling on the front of packages. The study also suggests that restaurants should re-evaluate portion sizes, improve kids’ menus and list more healthy food choices.

The White House study says school systems should consider efforts to promote healthier food in cafeterias. One idea: “swap deep fryers for salad bars.”

In a proposal that’s sure to be popular with children, the panel says schools should promote recess for younger students and “physical activity breaks” for upper level grades.
Because, you know, parents, teachers and administrators in their local school districts are too stupid and too uncaring to have figured this out already.

Quote of The Day

"A lot of the critics of this law are wrong. There is no new basis to stop and detain somebody. You can't just stop them because they are a Latino. There has to be a lawful basis to stop somebody in the first place and question them. And it can't be simply their ethnicity or their race. That's specifically in the 16-page law."