Prevarication Rather than Verification

PERFerring to Pervaricate

June 2, 2010 · Leave a Comment · Edit This

The handful of police chiefs who complained to Attorney General Eric Holder about Arizona’s new immigration law don’t represent law enforcement. They have a liberal agenda.
The media have breathlessly reported how the police brass traveled to Washington to voice their concerns over the law in an hour-long meeting with Holder. Left unreported was that the whole thing was staged by a liberal Washington lobby group called the Police Executive Research Forum, which a month earlier hosted longtime supporter Holder at its annual confab.
PERF’s Web site describes itself as a “progressive” organization “challenging traditional police practices.” Media also failed to note PERF is partnered with the ACLU and has lobbied against even federal enforcement of immigration laws. In fact, PERF favors amnesty for the millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The police chiefs who attended the Holder meeting are members of PERF. One of them — Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villasenor — argued that his state’s illegal immigrant crackdown will target “a subset of the community.” Yes, a criminal subset, which is the whole point.
Still, Villasenor insisted, “This is not the focus of local law enforcement. Immigration is the focus of the federal government.”
Unfortunately, the feds aren’t focusing on the problem, forcing besieged border states like Arizona to protect themselves. And long before Arizona’s S.B. 1070 became law, Villasenor’s own county signed an agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help border agents ID and round up criminal aliens.
Tucson is the seat of Pima County — one of more than 70 law enforcement agencies across the country that ICE has deputized to crack down on illegals under the so-called 287(g) program, which PERF also opposes. Pima signed its agreement in 2008.
Rather than complaining, Villasenor should be grateful. The partnership has helped take dangerous criminals off the streets of Tucson and surrounding areas. Nationwide, it has ID’d and processed for removal more than 110,000 criminal aliens since January 2006.
Villasenor knows how bad the problem is in his state. Tellingly, he argued that the feds will be overwhelmed by the number of referrals once every cop in Arizona is empowered to check the immigration status of people they stop.
Villasenor argues the Arizona law, which takes effect July 29, will only divert resources from fighting crime. But much of Arizona’s recent crime wave involves immigrant-related drug-running, kidnapping, rape and murder. So attacking illegal immigration will at the same time reduce the overall crime rate.
It’s a shame he and other police chiefs would choose political grandstanding over the safety of the citizens they’re sworn to protect. (IBD)
***
Oh, and Obama found some time in his “busy” schedule to meet with Governor Jan Brewer on Thursday.
The initial response from the White House indicated a visit was not in the cards.
“We remain in regular contact with the governor and her staff,” White House spokesman Adam Abrams told reporters. “While the president’s schedule next week doesn’t allow for a meeting, he does intend to sit down with the governor in the future.”
On Tuesday, the author of Arizona’s immigration law — which Obama has called “misguided” and expressed concerns that it might be applied in a “discriminatory” fashion — criticized the president’s failure to make time to meet with Brewer, calling it “an insult.”
Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce told Fox News that the president is “willing to have a beer fest with an officer in Cambridge after he misspoke. … He misspoke on this bill also and he’s not willing to meet with the governor of the state of Arizona?”
Later on Tuesday the White House announced the president intended to meet with Brewer after all.(ABC)
So he was planning to have a meeting with Hillary and India so will they meet over a curry?
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Brewer will meet Obama on Thursday at the White House.
“This administration has dedicated unprecedented resources over the past 16 months to fulfill the federal government’s responsibility to secure the Southwest border. The president looks forward to discussing those efforts and other matters of mutual interest with Governor Brewer,” the official said. (Reuters)

Does this sound like the BS it was not intended to sound like? Meaningless Orwellian drivel.
***
By a 3-2 vote the board moves to suspend county-funded travel to the state, possibly terminate contracts with Arizona-based companies, and divest the county pension fund of Arizona state and municipal bonds. Residents attending the meeting spoke out on both sides of the issue.
Among the speakers against the boycott were family members of Jamiel Shaw II, a 17-year-old football player who was recruited by Stanford and Rutgers before he was shot to death in 2008. Pedro Espinoza, a member of the 18th Street gang who was in the U.S. illegally, has been charged with murder in the case. He had been released from jail a day before the shooting after serving time for another offense.
“I was coming here thinking what can I say to touch their hearts? But you don’t have one,” Tommie Shaw, Shaw’s grandmother, told the supervisors.
You go Grandma! And we, at least, are sorry for your loss. I don’t think the LA City Council cares enough to be sorry.
They are too busy pandering.
And that, after all, is what all the noise is about.

It's Mexican Fiesta Day!

In asking anew for an immigration overhaul, Obama showed solidarity with his guest of honor, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who called Arizona’s law discriminatory and warned Mexico would reject any effort to “criminalize migration.” The United States and Mexico share a significant economic and political relationship that stands to be damaged the more the nations are at odds over immigration, which affects millions of people on both sides of the border.
Obama sought to show that he, too, is fed up with his own government’s failure to fix a system widely seen as broken. He said that would require solving border security, employment and citizenship issues all at once – the kind of effort that collapsed in Congress just three years ago.

It’s  called “COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM”  aka AMNESTY!

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who called Arizona’s law discriminatory and warned Mexico would reject any effort to “criminalize migration.”
The fact that coming here Illegal is a crime is lost on the Pro-Illegal crowd.
And that this is the president of the main country practically throwing his citizens at us.
And who get’s an estimated $1 Billion dollars from illegals sending money back to Mexico.
Oh, the sanctimony of it all.

“In the United States of America, no law-abiding person – be they an American citizen, a legal immigrant, or a visitor or tourist from Mexico – should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like,” Obama said.
The ignorance or the law would be sad, if it wasn’t so willfully done.
But the liberals and the Pro-Illegal crowd have no intention of actually reading the law. Why spoil a good “moral outrage” with facts.


Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in Washington D.C., meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, but his deputy chief of staff issued the following statement: “The mayor stands strongly behind the city council and he will not respond to threats from the state that has isolated itself from an America that values freedom, liberty and basic civil rights.”
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Then there’s the poser Michael Posner, who several days go apologized to the Chinese for the AZ Immigration law.
Well, he has gone into full political weasel mode ” Posner also told Foreign Policy’s blog The Cable that his remarks were taken out of context. He said the “broader context” was that the issue was raised to discuss the “political openness of this society.” He said he “should have been clearer,” but that “we never did get into the merits of the Arizona law.“
Deep Fat Fried Weasel Feast, Table One!!!
Politicians only use “misspoke” “misquoted” and “out of context” when they get their private parts caught in the cookie.
jar and someone catches them.
So maybe, Mr. Posner if ACTUALLY READ the law maybe you wouldn’t take IT “out of context” either.
That will never happen.
It would spoil the liberals “moral outrage” and their sanctimony feast.
*******
More high school hilarity from the Left:
There’s nothing wrong with the fact Debra Blessman kept secret from her students the name of the film she would require them to watch and analyze during finals week at Francis Howell High School. Today, however, the teacher might be wishing she had not kept her superiors in the St. Charles, Mo., school district in the dark about it. She planned to base final exams on the Michael Moore film, “Sicko“.
Apparently, however, Blessman did not expect any of her students to raise objections about the film. But one did.
On the morning of May 11, soon after learning about the film’s selection as the basis for the final exam in Blessman’s class, 18-year-old senior Celeste Finkenbine went straight to one of the school’s principals to raise her objections. Why? Because, based on her experiences with Blessman this semester and during a class three years earlier, Finkenbine didn’t think she would get very far pleading her case with the teacher she describes as a liberal.
When I contacted Dr. Renee Shuster, superintendent of the Francis Howell School District, she admitted the movie is not part of any district curriculum and that the teacher did not follow the process for having the film approved in advance. She also said that Finkenbine had been offered an alternative assignment that involves reading and analyzing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 7,000-word essay, “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
It’s somewhat ironic that Finkenbine’s alternative assignment relates to Dr. King, because it was during a recent class discussion that King’s name came up and, according to Finkenbine, her teacher laid her liberal cards out on the table.
Finkenbine said that, after she compared her participation in Tea Party rallies with the civil disobedience in which Dr. King participated, Blessman responded to her by saying, “Well, we all know you’re a ‘teabagger.’”
Afterward, Finkenbine recalled, the teacher started laughing and everyone in the class started laughing about Blessman’s use of the derogatory term, prompting the student to think, “Wow! Did she really just say that?”
Having heard this account of life in Blessman’s classroom, I contacted Dr. Shuster again.
In addition to wanting to find out how district officials would deal with the teacher for using a film that was not approved in advance, I wanted to know how they would address Finkenbine’s allegation that the teacher called her a “teabagger” in front of the class.
Schuster responded by e-mail, saying, “We would address this through the teacher evaluation process which hopefully leads to improvement but can lead to termination.”
Translation:   Nothing!
Unfortunately, it appears all of the other students in Blessman’s class ended up having to watch and analyze “Sicko”. (Biggovernment.com)
But don’t worry, your little cherubs of joy won’t be indoctrinated to be socialist when they grow up.
After all, that’s why they President was appealing some weeks ago to Minorities and young people ONLY for support.
And the divide and conquer Race War that Democrats have started and continue to pour Napalm on is just them being “morally outraged” ,”compassionate” and “sensitive” to the needs of people.

LA Vs. AZ

No, it’s no the Lakers vs. The Suns.
But it is LA vs Los Suns.
Los Angeles’ city council votes to boycott Arizona for its enforcement of existing federal law. No word yet on how China’s human rights violations will be treated. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
The next time the Lakers play Los Suns in Phoenix, traveling fans are advised to bring their own snacks. The L.A. City Council voted 13-1 on Wednesday to economically boycott the state of Arizona for daring to protect its borders against the crime, violence and illegal immigration that recently took the life of an Arizona rancher and has made Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the U.S.
Council member and co-sponsor Janice Hahn, who is also running for California lieutenant governor, was asked about the Lakers’ upcoming NBA playoff series with the Suns. Games 3 and 4 are scheduled in Phoenix. Hahn told NBCLA, “If you go, we’re hoping you take your own snacks and won’t buy things in Arizona.” This is beyond silly.
The Arizona law, SB1070, empowers local police officers to check the immigration status of individuals whom they have encountered during a “lawful contact,” if an officer reasonably suspects the person stopped of being in the country illegally, and if an inquiry into the person’s status is “practicable.”
Councilman Ed Reyes, one of the measure’s co-sponsors, sees it differently: “As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport. If I come across an officer who’s having a bad day and feels that the picture on my ID is not me, I can be … deported, no questions asked. That is not American.” Neither is it true.
The police are authorized to act only when an individual is suspected of some other violation of the law and “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States.” The law says that police “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” in inquiring about the immigration status of a suspect individual. However, if you’re caught speeding without a valid driver’s license and don’t speak a word of English, that’s probable cause.
This doesn’t make Arizona South Africa or require Councilman Reyes to carry a passport lest he be immediately taken to the transporter room and beamed to Mexico City. As Heather MacDonald of City Journal points out, the law does require legal aliens to carry their immigration documents. This mirrors an existing federal law that also applies to Swedish moms.
Failure to comply with the federal law on carrying immigration papers becomes a state misdemeanor under the Arizona law. Critics of Arizona enlisting local police to enforce federal immigration law fail to note the existence of the federal 287G program that trains local police to do just that.
Los Angeles, of course, is considered a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. This policy is embodied in Special Order 40, a more than 30-year-old Los Angeles Police Department rule that bars police from arresting anyone based solely on their immigration status, or from notifying immigration officials about an illegal immigrant in their custody.
We won’t even go into the irony of L.A. declaring a boycott of another state at the very time its most productive citizens have declared a silent boycott against the city — leaving it in droves due to the corrupt and highly racialized political culture, high taxes, excessive regulations and overtly hostile attitude toward businesses and entrepreneurs.
Addressing her state’s new law, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said: “It’s already the law in the United States, and I have a responsibility to stand up and protect the people of Arizona and we will do that. I find it really interesting that we have people out there that are attempting a boycott in favor of illegal actions in Arizona. That to me is just unbelievable.”
We find it unbelievable too. There are plenty of unsavory places on this planet to boycott. We also know Phoenix is lovely this time of year. (IBD)
I would add, since Arizonians love to to go to LA and San Diego for vacations in the summer time that maybe you should rethink that.
Your “racist” “Nazi” License plate may attack unwanted attention from the California Holy Crusaders.
After all, if they want to boycott us, why not boycott them?
Go to Utah instead. It’s beautiful country and they don’t have any “sanctuary” cities like California, Colorado, New Mexico and parts of Texas.
And you won’t risk some liberal vandalizing your property in the name of their “moral superiority”.
Or you could go to these places and just say “in your face”.
Your Choice.
******
As of yesterday, AG Eric Holder still hasn’t read the law. But Holder’s spokesman, Matthew Miller, said Friday that his boss “has been thoroughly briefed on the law, which has already been amended since the initial version passed, and has heard concerns from a range of law enforcement and community officials. He and the Department will continue to review it in detail to determine what options are available to the federal government.”
Translation: He hasn’t read it and probably never will.
It’s beneath his time and stature to do so.
But he will pontificate and pass judgment though.
Beside, it’s better to not know the truth and look a fool than to know the truth and BE a fool.
That’s what Liberals do.

Cutting on the Bias

Any foodie would recognize the phrase, but this is not about food, it’s about The Mainstream Media.
The Fifth Column.
The Ministry of Truth.
The Mainstream Media.
The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history and change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction), for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong. (1984 by Orwell)

ABC,NBC,CBS,CNN,MSNBC, LA TIMES, NY Times, et al anyone?
And Today’s Ministry of Truth-Busting: Arizona and The Illegal Immigration Law

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd seemed astonished by how a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll confirmed solid agreement with Arizona’s immigration enforcement law – “a whopping 64 percent support the law,” Todd marveled, “and we read them the law verbatim exactly as it’s been written” and still, he repeated, “64 percent approve of it.” NBC also treated as surprising the majority backing for racial profiling to prevent terrorism.
Whopping?
BTW: that similar to “Unexpectedly” when things don’t go the way the Liberals wanted it to. Like, unemployment UNEXPECTEDLY rose last month…
As noted above, Todd pointed out that on Arizona “we read them the law verbatim exactly as it’s been written.” Here’s that question, #34:

The Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. It requires local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally, making it a crime for them to lack registration documents. Do you support or oppose this law? (IF SUPPORT/OPPOSE, THEN ASK) And, do you strongly (support/oppose) or just somewhat (support/oppose) this law?

(46 percent “strongly support,” nearly double the 24 percent who “strongly oppose.”)
So even though they asked the question with an obvious bias they didn’t get the answer they wanted.
In fact, the statute requires a prerequisite lawful reason for stopping someone before the law enforcement officer can check their immigration status:
For any lawful stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of this state or a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and  is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation.
Something the Ministry of Truth just completely forgets about. Call it a blind (Partisan) spot.
CBS and ABC promoted the cause of activists in the minority. Both devoted full stories to the “uproar” and “emotional civil war” over the law and moves by a few liberal local government bodies to enact boycotts, only getting late in their stories to those who like the law.
The Thursday night stories were pegged to a boycott vote by the Democratic city council of Los Angeles, but CBS’s Bill Whitaker and ABC’s Barbara Pinto both also played a three-day old clip of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger mocking Arizona and pointed to the cancellation of a trip to Arizona by a suburban Chicago high school’s girls basketball team – not to deride adults for using teens to grind a political axe, but to illustrate the supposed depth of opposition to Arizona’s law.
“The boycott of Arizona is spreading,” Katie Couric trumpeted before Whitaker touted: “The city of Los Angeles, the latest to react strongly to Arizona’s tough new anti-illegal immigration law.” He pushed how “a growing number of states and municipalities are boycotting or considering boycotting Arizona,” citing how “Highland Park High School in Chicago’s suburbs is pulling its champion girls’ basketball team from a tournament in Arizona because of the law.”

I saw an interview with the father of one of the girls and another one with 1 of the girls on the team, they don’t get it.
“What does the immigration law have to do with us going to play sports in Arizona?”
Using kids as political weapons is frankly disgusting, but that’s nothing knew to the “for the children” liberal crowd.
Cuing up Schwarzenegger, Whitaker insisted: “The state has become the butt of jokes.” Schwarzenegger, from Monday, on not traveling to Arizona: “But with my accent, I was worried they were going to deport me back to Austria.”(MRC)
One LA Councilman I saw on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 said he afraid to drive in Arizona now because they would just randomly stop him because of his looks and DEPORT him.
Deport Him? Where? L.A.?
Anderson Cooper ignored this and continued.
From April 23 to May 3, the top three television networks offered viewers 50 stories and interview segments on their morning and evening news programs. The tone was strongly hostile to the law and promotional to the “growing storm” of left-wing protesters: 37 stories (or 74 percent) were negative, 10 were neutral, and only three were positive toward the Arizona law’s passage — 12 negative stories for every one that leaned positive. Stories were much kinder and sympathetic to illegal aliens than they were to police officers. Cops were potential abusers of power. Entering the country illegally was not an abuse of power. It was portrayed as an honorable step by the powerless.
The soundbite count was also slanted, with 92 quotes against the law and only 52 in favor. The pro-law numbers, however, included many soundbites of Arizona public officials defending themselves against liberal charges that they were racists or in favor of racial profiling.
Opponents of the law didn’t even have to speak English to be quoted sympathetically. In a May 3 CBS Evening News story, Katie Couric fretted “many” illegals “no longer feel welcome.” Reporter Kelly Cobiella focused on the story of non-English-speaking Manuela Quintana, who decided to move to Colorado. Cobiella cued up the mother of ten to deny she was a criminal: “‘No,’ she says, ‘a criminal is someone who kills. I just want to work.’” Over video of the kids piling into an SUV, Cobiella concluded: “The family packed up before dawn today and headed north to Colorado. Manuela says she’s lost hope in this state. She thinks she’ll find it again in another.” (NewsBusters)
I guess they could find any of the Coyotes or other Smugglers for a comment…
ABC Good Morning America host Bill Weir chided Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a well-known enforcer of immigration law, “With this new law, will you ramp it up?…Will you grab people on street corners?”
No media bias there, kids…
While the harshest Tea Party activists were scorned by the networks for any suggestion President Obama was a “Nazi,” on 11 occasions these same networks unquestioningly forwarded smears that proponents of the Arizona law were like Nazis or Civil War-era slaveholders. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell used these slurs from liberal comedians to demonstrate how Arizona was becoming a “laughingstock.”
Violence was downplayed. Only one ABC story reported violence by the protesters (in a “mostly peaceful” protest), and only one CBS story mentioned vandalism (smearing refried-bean swastikas on the state capitol building). There were only two references to the murder of rancher Robert Krentz, and four to the shooting of a deputy in Pinal County, all four in larger celebrations of May Day marches.
Viewers would assume protesters were in the majority. ABC Saturday anchor David Muir touted May Day protests on World News. “Angry backlash from coast to coast. Huge rallies across this country tonight against that new controversial immigration law.”
The networks were very reluctant to note that the Arizona law was popular: only five stories mentioned that the protesters were on the losing side of public opinion, where almost 90 percent of those polled by CBS consider illegal immigration a serious problem. It’s a stunning contrast, then, that 74 percent of the stories channel the view of a tiny minority. (NB)

But they aren’t biased at all, just ask them…
And here’s the Kicker!
Sanctimonious Attorney General Eric Holder who has been making the round of the Liberal Talk show and in Press Conference has been decrying Arizona for the Law, BUT he admitted on camera Yesterday(!!!) THAT HE HASN’T EVEN READ IT!!!!
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/05/13/attorney-general-holder-admits-never-reading-arizonas-immigration-law
REPRESENTATIVE TED POE, (R-TEXAS): So Arizona, since the federal government totally fails to secure the border desperately then passed laws to protect its own people. The law is supported by 70 percent of the people in Arizona, 60 percent of all Americans, and 50 percent of all Hispanics according to the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll done just this week. And I understand that you may file a lawsuit against the law. Seems to me the Administration ought to be enforcing border security and immigration laws and not challenge them, and that the Administration is on the wrong side of the American people. Have you read the Arizona law?
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have not had a chance to, I’ve glanced at it. I have not read it.
POE: It’s ten pages. It’s a lot shorter than the healthcare bill which was 2,000 pages long. I’ll give you my copy of it if you would like to have a copy. Even though you haven’t read the law, do you have an opinion as to whether it’s Constitutional?
HOLDER: I have not really, I have not been briefed yet.
CBS (apr 27th, 2010): Headline: Arizona’s New Law is Subject to Potential abuse, Attorney General Eric Holder Said Today
Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were critical Tuesday of Arizona’s new law on immigration and Holder said the federal government may challenge it.
Napolitano said the new state law could siphon federal money and staff from hunting down dangerous immigrants.
Dear Janet,
You’d have to hunt them down to begin with first! You fraud!
And is over 2 weeks before Mr. Holder attempted he hadn’t EVEN READ IT!!
No Media bias here…
Holder’s response will even FURTHER amaze most Americans on both sides of the aisle:

HOLDER: Well, what I’ve said is that I’ve not made up my mind. I’ve only made, made the comments that I’ve made on the basis of things that I’ve been able to glean by reading newspaper accounts, obviously, looking at television, talking to people who are on the review panel, on the review team that are looking at the law. But I’ve not reached any conclusions as yet with regard to. I’ve just expressed concerns on the basis of what I’ve heard about the law. But I’m not in the position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people doing the review, exactly what my position is.

Yep. The most powerful law enforcement official in our nation hasn’t bothered reading an important, sixteen-page bill that he and the Administration have been making negative comments about since it was passed weeks ago.
Instead, he’s relied on “newspaper accounts” and “looking at television” to establish his opinion.
You really can’t make this stuff up!
But The Ministry of Truth is hard at work do there very best to do just that and to do it convincingly.
1984 By George Orwell on the Ministry of Truth:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.  Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
Just a “racist”, “Nazi” “bigot”…