Our Stealth Congress

By Alan Caruba

We are living in an era in which our Congress and much of our government operates like a stealth bomber, destroying rights we assume to be protected by the U.S. Constitution and otherwise encumbering an ailing economy in ways known to make it worse.

Take, for example, the House passage yesterday of the Dream Act, an end-run around the widespread opposition to any form of amnesty for the problem of illegal immigration. While 38 Democrats joined Republicans to vote no on the measure, eight Republicans “crossed the aisle” to support Pelosi, Reid and Obama. The Senate is scheduled to take up the measure on December 9 and it is widely predicted it will fail in that chamber.

Even a massive rejection by the voters appears to have made no impact on the Democrat Party which gives every indication of not giving a damn about We the People even when a million showed up in Washington to protest Obamacare. One is reminded of Speaker Pelosi’s now classic statement that we would have to wait to find out what is in the Obamacare legislation until after the vote was taken.

The result is an increasing number of waivers from aspects of this noxious law for unions, fast food chains, and others to ensure their members and employees do not lose health insurance. This from a bill we were told would extend health insurance to thirty million more Americans.

So the Democrat majority, most of whom did not even bother to read the 2,000-plus monstrosity, voted to have the government take over one-sixth of the nation’s economy and destroy the patient-doctor relationship and just about everything else that made our health system the best in the world.

While Americans were making plans for Christmas and beginning to feel the sting of winter as far south as Florida, Congress voted to approve the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a government created entity that will impose huge tax increases on companies in the northeast in the name of preventing a “global warming” that is not happening.

RGGI is the nation’s first mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) cap and trade regulating entity even though the Cap-and-Trade Act is all but dead in the Senate. Everyone living in ten northeastern states will see their electricity bills soar due to caps on how much GHG their utilities and other major manufacturing facilities emit. This is, I would remind you, is occurring in the midst of the worst recessionary period since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This is equivalent to the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government entities that created the housing bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis.


The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) is concluding its latest and hopefully last conference in Cancun, Mexico, desperately trying to save the Kyoto Protocols. Widely seen as the end of the “global warming” hoax, the UN is far from finished trying to impose its will on the United States and other nations.

As this is written, the Obama administration is trying to get the U.S. to ratify the UN Small Arms Treaty. This is a major goal before it folds its tent in 2012. If the Senate were to ratify the treaty, some 90 million Americans would be required to turn in any banned firearms to local government “collection and destruction” centers. It would prohibit firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling their products to Americans. In short, it would negate the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

This is yet another stealth effort to undermine the U.S. Constitution, along with all the talk about putting government limits on Internet use and dangerous babble coming out of the FCC to impose a “value” system to determine what radio and television stations can report as news.

As this is written, Americans are still waiting to learn whether their taxes will rise or whether tax rates that have been in place for a decade will be extended. Even so, the President claimed that it was the GOP that was holding Americans “hostage.”

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” is not a cliché. It has never been more true than our present times.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Mexico, Bloody Mexico

By Alan Caruba

It is increasingly obvious that the Obama administration is more interested in protecting Mexicans than Americans.

Case in point; Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has eleven suspects accused of murdering law enforcement officers in his maximum security county jail in downtown Phoenix. As reported in the August 18 Washington Post, “Justice Department officials in Washington have issued a rare threat to sue (Arpaio) if he does not cooperate with their investigation of whether he discriminates against Hispanics.”

“The standoff comes just weeks after the Justice Department sued Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer because of the state’s new immigration law,” the Post noted. The latest word from Americans for Legal Immigration is that twenty-two States now have lawmakers developing versions of Arizona’s illegal immigration crackdown bill SB 1070.

So nearly half the States are aligning themselves with Arizona. Why?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that, according to Mexican figures released recently, the toll of the drug wars was said to be 28,000. It includes growing numbers of “civilian victims” ranging from toddlers caught in the cross fire to students massacred at parties. Mexico’s disintegration as a civil society is so severe its government is considering legalizing drugs to reduce the intercine battles between the cartels.

Little wonder that Mexicans are fleeing their war-torn nation to the safety of the United States. Earlier this year at least thirty residents of El Porvenir, located about four miles from the Texas border town of Fort Hancock, crossed into the U.S. and asked for political asylum, telling authorities they fear for their lives. The chief deputy sheriff of Hudspeth County reported that a cartel had threatened to kill children in schools across the border unless the parents paid $5,000 pesos.

Mexico has a slim hold on anything resembling a civil society where the law enforcement authorities can stem the violence or journalists can report it.

Support for building a Mexican border fence is up to 68% according to Rasmussen Reports in late July. Other surveys indicate that 56% of voters nationwide oppose the Justice Department’s decision to challenge the Arizona law and 61% favor passage of a law like Arizona’s in their own State.

Why would anyone would consider vacationing in Mexico when, according to State Department figures, 79 U.S. citizens were killed there in 2009, up from 35 in 2007. In Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, 23 Americans were killed in 2009, compared with two in 2007. Earlier this year, in April, three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez were ambushed and murdered. As many as half of the 2,660 killings in that city are attributed to paid assassins from the Barrio Azteca gang.

The most widely reported murder was that of Robert Krentz on his southern Arizona ranch in March. An illegal alien is the primary suspect in the killing. Meanwhile, La Raza (the “Race”) an immigration advocacy group in the U.S. is supporting driver’s licenses and in-state tuition discounts for illegal aliens. They are, of course, opposed to a secure fence and cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state, and federal authorities.

The worst of all this data is the further fact that Congress continues to progress toward “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”, another way of saying mass amnesty for illegal aliens. In 2007, as a Senator, Obama voted to double legal immigration from 1.2 million annually to 2.4 million.

The costs to the United States, already experiencing the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, are extraordinary. With millions of unemployed Americans, two new studies of the impact on the U.S. labor force revealed that, of the jobs we’re told Americans won’t take, the majority of job-holders are in fact native-born. This includes maids and housekeepers, taxi drivers, meat processors, grounds maintenance workers, construction laborers, porters, bellhops and concierges, and janitors.

Beyond the labor market, U.S. taxpayers are spending $52 billion annually to educate the children of illegal aliens with local governments taking the biggest hit of nearly $50 billion.

The pressures on the U.S. healthcare system and on the law enforcement system are comparable and the irony is that the U.S. has spent billions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of nation building, but is doing little comparatively here at home to cope with the flood of illegal immigration.

Instead, the U.S. Department of Justice is doing whatever it can to punish States like Arizona for taking even the most minimal steps to protect Americans. As for the Department of Homeland Security, its preference is to ignore the problem. We are being ill-served by the Obama administration and are likely to be stabbed in the back by a lame-duck Congress.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Thinking About Mexicans

By Alan Caruba

For some time now friends have been asking me why I haven’t written anything about the Arizona law, amnesty, illegal immigration, and Mexicans.

The problem with trying to see all sides of the problem is that, sooner or later, you have to pick a side. That is what Americans are doing in light of the recent law passed in Arizona; a law that mirrors a federal law that, quite simply, is not being enforced.

What exactly were Arizonans expected to do in light of the fact that their border with Mexico is now a war zone?

A typical bachelor, I pretty much have the same thing for lunch every day, a soft tortilla in which two thin slices of smoked turkey are placed. Thirty seconds in the microwave and about six bites later lunch is over. And every day I look at that damned tortilla and I think about Mexicans.

Not Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the world, but those poor souls trekking across deserts or sneaking in any way they can because, presumably, Mexico sucks so badly that their only hope is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

There are a number of factors that encourage Mexicans to come here, not the least of which is that their per capita income is about one-third of that in the U.S. Mexico has always had an oligarchy of families that controlled the bulk of the money there and, on top of that, there are the drug lords whose income allows them to corrupt those in government positions and to kill those who oppose them.

President Felipe Calderon has made strides to improve the economy which has largely depended on its national oil company, tourism, and the billions in remittances sent home by those illegally in the United States.

Trade with the U.S. and Canada has tripled since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994 and with forty trade agreements with other nations. There are an estimated 46.1 million in its labor force. Nearly 60% are in the services sector, 25.7% are in industry, and 15.1% are in agriculture. Overall, 18.2% live below the poverty level and, in terms of their personal assets, 47% can be defined as poor.

A growing amount of agricultural harvesting in America is mechanized, but I have heard estimates that up to 80% depend on farm labor to do the hard work of picking produce. The Mexicans who cross the border often seek to make enough to send money back home and return there. Others decide not to return. A simple guest worker program is needed and long overdue. Agriculture is a huge part of our national GDP.

Arizona arrived at its decision to deal with its illegal immigration problem because of a dramatic rise in crime of every description. It did so because the federal government has paid lip service to protecting its and the other 2,000 miles of our southern border. Rasmussen Reports indicate that 59% of those polled support Arizona’s action.

What has myself and many other Americans thinking about Mexicans who are here illegally is as much a question of their attitude as of statistics. These are people whose heroes are not George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or any other American icon. These are people who do not grow up celebrating the Fourth of July. National differences are important and should not be discounted.

Something is very wrong when illegal aliens, Mexicans and others from south of the border, feel empowered to march in the streets of our nation’s cities to demand instant citizenship. They have no right to be in the streets. They have no right to be in America.

Something is very wrong when America makes all manner of accommodation with what is essentially an invasion by millions of people who are here illegally.

The warnings against a bilingual society are based in the reality of how this undermines national cohesion. Generations of immigrants, including my own grandparents, learned to speak English. The provision of all manner of free social services costs taxpayers billions. It has distorted our educational and healthcare systems, and put an extraordinary burden on law enforcement and incarceration.

Americans are not opposed to legal immigration. They are opposed to a federal government that fails to meet its primary obligation to defend our borders and, by doing so, defend our native-born and naturalized citizens.

Politically, the current administration and the Democrat Party want to depict Republicans as racists because they want the Constitution and other applicable laws enforced. We need to see through this deception; a position designed to enhance their political power by luring Hispanics into their party by offering amnesty.

We tried amnesty in the past. It doesn’t just extend to those receiving citizenship for having broken our laws, it invites a new wave of illegal aliens. It is an extraordinarily bad idea and this is particularly true when the nation is in the midst of a financial crisis.

So, while I personally harbor no ill will toward Mexicans, I do oppose they’re being here illegally and I resent the resulting costs that must be borne by Americans. The problem is that there are anywhere from twelve to twenty million illegal aliens, including all such people, Hispanic and others, in the nation.

Other nations, including Mexico, have extremely harsh laws regarding illegal aliens. Unless and until the federal government begins to seriously enforce our laws, it puts our lives, our economy, and our nation at risk.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010

Cry Treason!

By Alan Caruba

Treason is generally defined as the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one's country or of assisting its enemies in war. Benedict Arnold burned his name into U.S. history by conspiring with the British to turn over West Point to them. When his plot failed, he fled to England.

Having all formerly been traitors to the Crown, the framers of the Constitution defined treason narrowly. Historians tell us this was to lessen the possibility that those in power might falsely or loosely charge their political opponents with treason.

Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution says “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

Let it be said that probably all presidents have been called treasonous by their political opponents.

A growing body of popular opinion, however, is beginning to regard the actions of Barack Obama as treason because they coalesce into a pattern that suggests a deliberate effort to undermine national security and the economy. The liberties we take for granted, privacy, freedom of speech, and others are seen to be in jeopardy.

What is troubling to many was the way Obamacare was foisted on a nation that clearly opposed the takeover of one sixth of the economy. The political process by which passage was achieved was ugly, but it was not treason.

Now the Cap-and-Trade Act is being ushered hastily into the Senate for a vote despite widespread opposition to the fact that it is based on a total fraud, “climate change”, otherwise known as “global warming.” Can a law based on a lie be lawful? Is passing such a law treasonous?

The President’s displeasure with the Arizona law that mirrors almost word for word the federal law regarding illegal aliens presages a likely effort to grant amnesty to millions here illegally; a measure that is also widely opposed by the majority of Americans.

The hasty passage of any or all of these laws, now that the midterm elections loom in November, is completely legal, but they all represent a refusal to acknowledge the will of those in whom the Constitution posits ultimate power, the People.

The Tea Party movement, taking its name from an act of insurrection against the Crown, is ample evidence of the unrest among many Americans. The effort to smear members as racists or violent suggests the seriousness with which the White House takes the movement.

Given the virtual free hand any president has to determine foreign policy, he has consistently offended our allies and raised questions among them as to his judgment. That is not treason, but it is harmful when the U.S. needs to call upon them for support.

His actions regarding Iran have been a green light to continue their quest for nuclear weapons. His actions toward Israel are nothing less than astonishing given the long record of cooperation and mutual support that has existed since its founding.

Surrounding himself with White House staff, one of whom was an admitted communist, another who praised Mao Tse Sung, and still others whose views reflect bizarre “scientific” theories or proposals, raise questions and legitimate concerns regarding his true political philosophy, but it is not treason.

The takeover of General Motors, his firing of the company’s CEO, the disgraceful treatment of investors and creditors should have raised serious constitutional questions. When Harry Truman tried to take over the nation’s steel manufacturers, he was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. The U.S. retains an ownership position with AIG, the insurance company.

Obama’s attacks on insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, even physicians, then migrated to attacks on Wall Street despite the fact that banks receiving TARP funds swiftly repaid the loans. There is at this point no aspect of life in America that has not been sharply criticized by the President.

None of this can be called treason under the strict and narrow definition of the Constitution, but taken together it is a pattern of acts that pose what many are coming to see as a clear and present danger to the nation.

The midterm elections in November represent the only constitutional means to rebuke the passage of legislation that has saddled the nation with greater debt than all previous administrations, with the takeover of key elements of the economy, and the prospect of the further erosion of our national security and sovereignty.

Everything that President Obama and the Democrat leaders in Congress have done has the sanction of law, but not the approval of the people whose lives will be affected by it.

It is not treason, but it has the look, the feel, and the smell of treason.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

A Thousand More Days of Damage

By Alan Caruba

On Saturday, April 24, President Barack Hussein Obama, will have one thousand days left in which to ruin America.

As we know from his first fifteen months in office, he is capable of doing a lot of damage. This is rather extraordinary insofar as he only had 142 days as a U.S. Senator before he was inaugurated.

He has had the support of a majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, but he has set the agenda. The result is trillions of dollars of debt, despite the fact that the banks and investment houses have all paid back the TARP funds they received.

We know the “stimulus” billions had little or no effect on the economy because the rate of unemployment has risen continually since he took office and is like to exceed Depression era rates by the time he leaves.

We know he reneged on a missile defense system for Poland and Czechoslovakia that would have been a deterrent to Iranian missiles (that could reach the U.S.) and Russian ambitions to gain control again of Eastern Europe.

We know he has taken control of General Motors and his “reforms” of the nation’s healthcare system puts one-sixth of the nation’s economy under government control. In an unfolding chapter of our history, twenty States have signed onto a court challenge to nullify Obamacare.

We know he is now seeking control over Wall Street. Legislation for its “reform” and it will give the government extraordinary and unwarranted powers. It will likely be rammed through the Senate in a week or so.

We know that his administration is doing nothing to secure the nation’s southern border and is likely to ram through “amnesty” legislation that is opposed by as wide a margin of Americans as was healthcare reform.

We know that he wants Cap-and-Trade legislation which would declare carbon dioxide (CO2) a “pollutant” even though it is vital to life on planet Earth, but more importantly, its regulation would give the Environmental Protection Agency control over all energy use, generate billions in the biggest tax on energy ever enacted, and further kill the economy as manufacturing flees for other nations.

We know he wants to close down “Gitmo” and likely place known terrorists in federal prisons where, of course, they will be able to claim Constitutional rights. Many of those released from Gitmo are known to have returned to the battlefield.

He will have accomplished much of this in just over 450 days in office so another thousand, unless he is deterred by a Republican-controlled Congress, will magnify this horrendous level of damage.

Who would have ever believed that a majority of American voters would elect a President who hates America?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Caruba's Crystal Ball

By Alan Caruba

I rarely make predictions. Events can change the entire direction of a nation in the blink of an eye. It happened in my lifetime with Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, and with 9/11.

As this is being written, air traffic to, from, and throughout Europe is barely recovering because of an Icelandic volcano and no one really knows how long that will continue.

So, barring any catastrophic natural events or wars, I will look into my crystal ball and narrow my predictions to the period between now and the midterm election on November 2, 2010.

Having forced a healthcare program on America that 85% of the voters did not want, the Obama White House now knows it can do the same with other major pieces of legislation intended to “transform” America into a socialist wreck comparable to European nations, one of which, Greece, is bankrupt while two others, Spain and Italy, are close to it.

The Obama administration is getting ready to put a chokehold on the nation’s financial sector by claiming it needs more regulation. It is a lie. Few sectors of the nation are more heavily regulated by the government. What is needed is more effective enforcement of existing regulations. Had that been the case there would have been no Bernie Madoff and the 2008 crisis brought about by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could have been avoided.

The next piece of legislation to be imposed on Americans before November will be Cap-and-Trade, a law based on a “global warming” crisis that is not happening. It will impose “caps” on how much energy industries, businesses, and finally individuals can use and it will institute a “trade” mechanism in bogus carbon credits that will make a few companies, utilities, and individuals very rich while bleeding Americans by taxing energy use at every level.

The era of abundant and affordable energy will end and, with it, the economy of the nation. Companies that manufacture goods will move offshore to friendlier places such as China and India. Both were exempted in the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol intended to force greenhouse emission caps on industrialized nations like America and Europe.

The coal industry, responsible for providing the source of half of all the electricity generated in America, will be under attack in every way at the government’s disposal. Mountain top mining will be the next target. Beyond that, all coal-fired plants will encounter a regulatory hell. There will be no offshore exploration for new sources of oil and natural gas.

When the brown-outs and black-outs begin, the nation will be five to ten years from providing new sources of electrical power whether it’s coal, natural gas, or nuclear. By then billions in government (your money) subsidies will have been wasted on “green” or “clean” or “alternative” energy in the form of wind and solar. They currently represent about one percent of all the electricity generated in America.

By the midterm elections, the unemployment rate will have likely increased. A growing, permanent class of the unemployed will be maintained with endless extensions of government support.

The southern border from Texas to California is becoming a war zone. There’s a reason the State of Arizona just passed a law allowing its citizens to carry concealed weapons and another law to empower its law enforcement authorities to rid the State of illegal aliens. Do not be surprised by the rise of southwestern state militias to deal with the constant invasion. Watch for an effort to pass an amnesty law as well.

What Americans have not caught onto as yet is that the Obama administration’s policies and actions are now fully controlled by people who did not have to go before the U.S. Senate for approval. They are Obama’s “czars” and they wield as much influence or more than constitutionally appointed cabinet secretaries.

So the real question between now and November is “How much damage can the Obama White House inflict?” and the answer is a lot.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Amnesty is not the Answer to Illegal Immigration

A Thousand Lies

By Alan Caruba

The question is, how long can a nation sustain itself when its president, its government, and its news media tell a thousand lies every day?

Americans are drowning in lies. The biggest lie is the budget, burdened with trillions in debt, and behind that are the virtually insolvent entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

Despite the judgment of legal scholars, the healthcare “reform” is unconstitutional and will be challenged in the courts by many of the States affected by it. These are, however, the same courts that have resisted addressing Obama’s eligibility to be president.

A thousand lies every day.

Americans must now get ready for a new flood of lies. These are already coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency, now completely in the control of radical environmentalists. The big lie is that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” and, as such, can or should be regulated by the Clean Air Act. The EPA has already moved to increase its demand for more mileage from autos when it is common knowledge that lighter cars just mean more deaths from collisions. People will die.

So we are being lied to regarding entitlement programs, regarding the budget, regarding environmental issues, and then there is the biggest lie of all, that the man sitting in the Oval Office is a natural-born American citizen qualified under the terms of the Constitution to hold the presidency.

I spent decades since the 1980s being called a “denier” and a “skeptic” as I wrote repeatedly that global warming was a complete fraud based on bad science. In November 2009, leaked emails revealed it has been based on deliberately falsified data by a handful of British and American scientists colluding together to maintain the hoax.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been the vehicle for this fraud, but the president, members of Congress, and various U.S. agencies continue to speak of “climate change” as the code word.

Now I and many others are being derided as “birthers” because we know Barack Hussein Obama is not a natural-born citizen. The issue was important enough for a congressional hearing to determine if Sen. John McCain, born in Panama where his father was serving in the U.S. Navy, qualified as a natural-born citizen, but not for his opponent whose Kenyan grandmother says he was born there.

As Michelle Obama so eloquently said in a recent speech, “When we took a trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya…” Many Americans can claim a foreign heritage, but unless they are recent immigrants, they do not refer to their “home country” except in the past tense.

Then there is the question of why Obama would reportedly spend more than a million dollars in legal fees to ensure that his alleged Hawaiian birth certificate would remain, as it is, under seal. Almost anyone can find and produce their birth certificate with ease; anyone other than the man pretending to be president.

A thousand lies every day.

Meanwhile our southern border, long neglected as a route for illegal aliens and drug smugglers, worsens as word of increased murders drive some Mexicans to flee and seek asylum here and Americans living near the border to fear for their lives.

No word of any action regarding the 10 to 20 million illegal aliens living here except for the intention of the Obama administration to grant them all amnesty, the implications of which hold little good for the millions of native and naturalized Americans, an estimated 16 million of whom are currently unemployed or have given up seeking employment.

A thousand lies every day.

There are some signs of hope.

Newly minted Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown was elected because he told the truth.

The new Republican governors of Virginia and New Jersey were elected because they told the truth.

Four out of every ten members of the Tea Parties are self-identified Democrats and independents who joined because they want the truth and want an end the depredations of this administration. The majority of members are women, but the mainstream press continues to depict them as violent, racist vigilantes.

Neither the White House, the Congress, nor the arrogant press understand that it is their lies that will defeat them. They hold Americans in contempt, but Americans are determined to rid themselves of these liars.

In the meantime, though, Obama appoints hard-core socialists to positions of power throughout his administration.

This is a time in which courage is required until America can be saved by November’s midterm elections. Are Republicans perfect? No, but they are not socialists.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Mexico: The War Next Door

By Alan Caruba

It is amazing how little national coverage there is of the vicious drug wars next door in Mexico that are driving Mexicans across the Texas, Arizona and New Mexico borders to seek asylum under the threat of death for themselves and their families.

It is a war that now includes the murder of U.S. consulate staff and an American rancher. There are other casualties who have already fallen victim to murder and rape about whom the national media make little or no mention.

On April 1, The Washington Times published an excellent and extensive report on the border violence, written by Ben Conery and Jerry Seper. “For more than two years, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have been warning that the dramatic rise in violence along the southwestern border could eventually target U.S. citizens and spread into this country.”

The U.S. shares a 1,951-mile border with Mexico. It is so porous that millions of Mexicans and others from South America and the Caribbean have simply walked across while others are busy exporting drugs into the nation. Estimates of how many illegal aliens reside in the U.S. range between 12 and 20 million.

The rumors in Washington, D.C. are that the Obama administration wants to pass an amnesty bill granting instant citizenship to people who have illegally entered and live in the United States. A previous such effort during the last administration met with intense resistance that stopped the effort. The Obama administration, however, has demonstrated that it can and will ignore such resistance.

Why is this a very bad idea? On Sunday, April 4, William Booth of the Washington Post, writing from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, reported that “A cross-border drug gang born in the prison cells of Texas has evolved into a sophisticated paramilitary killing machine that U.S. and Mexican officials suspect is responsible for thousands of assassinations here, including the recent ambush and slaying of three people linked to the U.S. consulate.”

The gang, Barrio Azteca, “may have been involved in as many as half of the 2,660 killings in the city in the past year. Ciudad Juarez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. There are other such gangs employed by rival drug lords.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has said that the rising violence demonstrates the “abject failure of the U.S. Congress and President Obama to adequately provide public safety along our national border with Mexico.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry has instituted a “spillover violence contingency plan” that includes increased border surveillance, intelligence sharing, and ground, air and maritime patrols. An effort by Gov. Perry to secure help from the Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano (the former Arizona Governor) has met with failure.

It’s not just the border. The Washington Times report noted that in 2009, the Justice Department “identified more than 200 U.S. cities in which Mexican drug cartels ‘maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors’—up from 100 three years earlier.”

The Times further reported that the 2010 drug threat assessment by the National Drug Intelligence Center described the cartels as “the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States.” Not only established in our cities, it is expanding into more rural and suburban areas.

The immediate question facing the U.S. government is whether to grant asylum to Mexicans streaming across the border. Given the millions of illegal aliens in the nation, this could potentially add hundreds of thousands more.

So the war next door will soon impact America in ways no one really wants to think about, at least at the White House level that is widely believed to see every illegal alien as a potential new Democrat.

This is not a problem that will go away. It is not a problem that is being vigorously addressed by the Obama administration. It will, as in the case of Ciudad Juarez, turn the streets of our cities into killing grounds, far worse than the barely contained mayhem that drugs presently represent.

The war next door has arrived.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Obama: The Worst President Ever!

By Alan Caruba

Barack Obama’s deep bow to the emperor of Japan and earlier bow to the Saudi Arabian king is so deeply offensive to America’s history and traditions that it cannot and must not be explained away in any fashion.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution were particularly sensitive to the conditions under which a President could serve or any hint that a privileged, monarchal class might emerge.

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States. And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever from any King, Prince, or foreign state.”

It follows that no U.S. President or office holder shall ever bow to a king, prince or foreign state. Obama has done this twice now in less than a year of taking the oath of office. Stated or unstated, the protocol of such matters precludes bowing.

This protocol is reflected in flag etiquette that prohibits it from being “dipped to any person or thing.”

For a man who allegedly taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, it is doubtful that Obama does not know this. It is doubtful that he cares. His first instinct with foreign leaders and foreign nations is to toady to their perceptions in the belief that America will gain their acceptance.

Any leader, however, knows that it is wiser to be feared than loved. It is the reason the U.S. maintains a powerful military. It is well to remember that our present Department of Defense used to be known as the Department of War.

That is why Ovbama’s decision to bring the 9/11 perpetrators to the United States and accord them all the rights of the Constitution in a trial for acts of war is a further abomination. This was not Eric Holder’s decision as Attorney General. This was Barack Obama’s decision, completely in line with his continued obeisance to Middle Eastern and Muslim sensibilities.

It is in line with the recent announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that the Obama administration will push for “immigration reform” which is a euphemism for amnesty to an estimated 14 million illegal aliens. The American public has made it abundantly clear they oppose this.

The majority of Americans oppose healthcare “reform”, a euphemism for a government takeover of one sixth of the nation’s economy and an unholy intrusion into the privileged relationship between doctor and patient. It is socialism.

All Presidents have had to make decisions and take positions that are unpopular with some element of the public. No former President, however, ever increased the national debt more than all the previous presidents combined and did so within months of taking office.

This President simply does not care what Americans want. He does not “represent” Americans and cannot even manage to salute properly when the national anthem is played, though he did stage a photo opportunity to be seen saluting the returning war dead from Afghanistan.

This President may not even be “a natural born citizen” of the United States as required by the Constitution. He may have been born in Kenya. He may have been a citizen of Indonesia as a child and young man. We have no verifiable, authentic records of his early life, even as a college student.

None of his fellow students at Columbia University ever recall knowing him. His records at Occidental College and Harvard University remain sealed from view, as is his alleged Hawaiian certificate of birth there.

Based on his actions since January 20, 2009, he is in my opinion the worst President to ever hold that high office and he may have committed “a high crime or misdemeanor” when he took the oath of office. That is an impeachable offense.

In the meantime, by his actions, he gives every evidence of trying to bring this nation to a state of economic collapse, is deliberately undermining its Constitution, and by giving enemy combatants, terrorists, the stature of U.S. citizens, is encouraging our Islamo-fascist enemies to attack again.

He is an offense to every American and we are on a roller-coaster to a major Constitutional and economic crisis every day he remains in office.