The Problem In A Nutshell

The Associated Press is reporting a story that exactly illustrates what is wrong with illegal immigration and why we are in the mess we are in right now. A Florida sheriff is coming under fire from the illegal immigrant lobbies because he is trying to enforce the laws that are on the books.

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. - The sheriff's department has developed a remarkably effective — and controversial — way of catching illegal immigrants: Deputies in patrol cars pull up to a construction site in force, and watch and see who runs.

Those who take off are chased down and arrested on charges such as trespassing, for cutting through someone else's property, or loitering, for hiding out in someone's yard, or reckless driving, for speeding off in a car.

U.S. immigration authorities are then given the names of those believed to be in this country illegally.

"It's not wrong for them to run, but it's not wrong for us to chase them either," said Sheriff Frank McKeithen, who created his Illegal Alien Task Force in April to target construction sites in this Florida Panhandle county.

Here's the various stances from various players in this little drama. From an "immigration advocates":

The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund is investigating the arrests because "the intimidation factor is of great concern," said Elise Shore, regional counsel for the organization.

Form the ACLU:

Benjamin Stevenson, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, said he finds the tactic troubling.

"Why are they sending out six or seven agents to investigate a paper crime, and are they causing them to run in the first place through intimidation?" he asked.

And a real estate developer:

Developer Louis Breland is finishing the first phase of a $750 million beach condo project.

"Subcontractors could not function without immigrant laborers for painting, rebar and steel work. They are the best workers," he said. "Without them, the cost of construction would be 10 times as much and nothing would get built."

And the AP throws in a tear-jerker about an illegal worker who can't get a job because of the crackdown because employers are having to check papers - in accordance with the law that has been on the books for years.

And you wonder why we have a problem? People who are supposed to be officers of the court who ridicule the laws as mere paper. Advocates for illegal immigrants worried that the laws are being enforced and using the highly loaded - and ridiculous - term "intimidation". And greedy developers who want maximum work for minimum wage. And who have obviously been knowingly violating the laws for quite some time. Oh, and Senators who don't appear to care what the citizens of this country want - or in this case, don't want.

That's it in a nutshell.

Killed By Kindness

I can't make this animal story humorous, folks. There simply isn't anything to laugh about here. A bunch of people in suburban Chicago apparently thought it would be a really keen idea to feed and pet a deer in the area. They made him a sort of community pet. And this Disney-fied view of nature and how to interact with it led to an inevitable result.

The deer had to be killed.

A male deer with 4-inch antlers that obviously had been raised around people and had been busy this spring visiting various neighborhoods and parks in Mundelein where kids would pet it and approach it, was euthanized by police last week.

Some people said the deer was named "Lucky" or "Darwin," but for police and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, it was becoming a dangerous threat. It was living in the Colony and Long Meadows Estates neighborhoods.

Mundelein Chief Raymond Rose said that the problem with this deer was that it was still part wild animal.

"The problem with this one is as they get older and get into rutting season, they get very aggressive. Wild animals are meant to be wild. . . They never lose that instinct," Rose said Tuesday.

"We had seven calls about this deer. People were afraid of it when it started to go towards them aggressively. We actually had one guy tussle with the deer because it went after his 2-year-old daughter. Then it attacked him when he defended his daughter," Rose said.

He called the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and was told the deer would have to be taken out because it had been "imprinted" and lost its fear of humans. The IDNR offered to have its people come in, track and kill it if police could not find the animal and euthanize it.

"It was a safety concern, especially males when they start rutting," Rose said, referring to the periods when male deer become sexually aggressive and will fight for territory and female deer.

The IDNR also pointed out that deer ticks, the size of a "period," carry Lyme disease, a serious disease, and they can also harbor fleas, lice, rabies and round worm.

"They are cute until someone ends up getting hurt,"

Here's a tip to bonehead "animal lovers": leave the animals alone. Do not feed them, do not pet them, just leave them alone. If you want to pet an animal get a dog or go to a petting zoo. Because when you interfere with a wild animal like this, you are habituating them to humans - and virtually guaranteeing that they will need to be put down or will simply get killed in some other way. I remember one jerk back in Illinois who "loved" deer so much that he put salt blocks out for them in his backyard so he could watch them out his windows. There were always a large number of car-deer accidents every year in front of his house. These inevitably resulted in the deer dying, sometimes quickly, sometimes in slow agony.

Leave the animals alone.

Goodbye, Tony

Tony Blair has been replaced by Gordon Brown as Prime Minister of Britain.

Gordon Brown entered No 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister for the first time this afternoon promising to be a force for change.

Prime Minister Brown quoted his old school motto, "I will try my utmost", as he posed for photographs with his wife Sarah.

Mr Brown sounded unexpectedly nervous even though he had finally achieved his lifelong ambition to lead the Labour party and govern the country.

He had been driven to Buckingham Palace - after being cheered out of the Treasury, his political home for the past decade - to meet the Queen at 1.52pm today, just minutes after his predecessor Tony Blair had tendered his resignation.

The tightly-choreographed transfer of power came after an emotional final appearance at Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons for Mr Blair, who brandished his P45 and told MPs: "That is that. The end.''

He received an unprecedented standing ovation from MPs, and Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, was in tears.

After his audience with the Queen, which lasted almost an hour, Mr Brown went to 10 Downing Street to put the final touches to his Cabinet and make introductory telephone calls to foreign leaders.

One of his first conversations was with George W Bush, a Downing Street spokesman said.

I can't say as I have thought too well of a lot of the internal things going on in Britain under the labor government, but Tony Blair at least stood tall for trying to fight the war on terror and for democracy. That counts for a lot.

Riots in Iran

The Telegraph is reporting widespread protests, including rioting and the burning of cars and gas stations (by "youths", just as it is reported when discussing France, incidentally) over the government's sudden imposition of gasoline rationing. Ahmadinejad's regime announced the strict controls three hours before they were put into effect.

Angry Iranians have torched petrol stations in protests against the sudden imposition of fuel rationing in one of the world’s most oil rich nations.

The rationing was announced on Tuesday only three hours before it was due to begin at midnight, leading to long queues at service stations as Iranians rushed out to fill up before the clampdown kicked in.

In the capital, youths set a car and petrol pumps ablaze at a station in the residential Pounak area of northwestern Tehran, throwing stones and shouting angry slogans denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to power in an election based largely on his promises to improve the Islamic republic’s faltering economy.

He has been facing growing criticisms over his economic policies, which a group of economists claimed earlier this month were fuelling inflation and hurting the poor.

The Iranian government had been planning for weeks to implement rationing, which was supposed to begin May 21, but has repeatedly held off from making the move.

In a country where citizens are used to having cheap and plentiful gas the issue is a sensitive one.

Lines of more than a half a mile long snaked out of some stations in Tehran, while riot police were in some streets to disperse the demonstrators.

Iran is pouring money into its nuclear weapons program and financing proxy wars all over the region. The money only goes so far and something had to give. Ahmadinejad chose to shaft his own people.

Running The Asylum

The Times of London takes a look at the farm stolen by Francis Nhema, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Environment, who also happens to be chairman of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Nhema ended up with the farm after driving off the white farmer who had been running it quite productively. It isn't productive any longer.

It looks as if no one has lived here for years. Tall, dense elephant grass grows everywhere. There is a rutted track that passes a nearly empty dam where a truck has broken down and been left to its own fate.

Sheds and barns for curing tobacco are deserted. Gates hang open and there is scant fencing. A fallen tree lies across the track. The only sign of activity is a flock of sheep owned by a neighbouring white farmer who leases the unused grazing.

This is the farm of Francis Nhema, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Environment, who became chairman of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development last month. He occupied Nyamanda farm, just south of the small town of Karoi in northern Zimbabwe in 2003, a year after its owner, Chris Shepherd, and his family were driven out by lawless ruling party militias.

On its 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres), Mr Shepherd had planted 80 hectares of high-grade tobacco and 200 hectares of maize. Cattle grazed on 300 hectares.

All that is a lead-in for the real meat of the story. The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum issued a report recently that charges that crimes against humanity were performed against the evicted farmers and their workers by the Mugabe regime and the people who stole the farms. And guess who is running the UN commission? Neat, huh?

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum says this week in a report – the first detailed study on the human rights violations against white farmers and their black workers during the land grab – that there is “a plausible case for crimes against humanity” having been committed in the past seven years by Mr Mugabe’s regime.

“There is a compelling need for these to be investigated and the perpetrators to be charged and tried,” it says.

More than a million people living on commercial farms suffered incidents of assault, torture, being held hostage, illegal detention and death threats, it estimates. More than 10,000 farm workers are believed to have died after their removal and the consequent loss of employment, housing, nutrition and access to health-care on the farms.

I wrote about the farce of the UN appointing this man from what is arguably the worst run country in Africa back in May. Obviously, Nhema isn't capable of taking care of a potted plant. The lunatics are running the asylum.