I Suppose We’re Expected To Feel Bad

Want any evidence that the Associated Press is firmly in the tank for illegal immigrants? Look no further. Apparently, they want everyone to feel really bad because a woman who repeatedly broke the laws of this nation is now in custody. We are supposed to be ashamed, for some reason, that a woman who is a convicted felon, who stole an American's identity is now in custody. We are also, apparently, supposed to overlook that the only reason she is in custody is because she left the Chicago church where she claimed "sanctuary" - which is not recognized in American law - and willingly - or willfully traveled to Los Angeles to stage a press conference. And her subsequent arrest.

Wah.

Elvira Arellano was arrested before 3 p.m. outside Our Lady Queen of Angels church on L.A.'s historic Olvera Street where she had been speaking to reporters, said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago where she sought sanctuary.

Coleman said he was with Arellano when she was detained, but declined to provide other details.

"We're trying to determine her situation right now," he said……..

……Arellano came to Washington state illegally in 1997. She was deported to Mexico shortly after, but returned and moved to Illinois in 2000, taking a job cleaning planes at O'Hare International Airport.

She was arrested in 2002 at O'Hare and later convicted of working under a false Social Security number. She was to surrender to authorities last August.

She sought refuge at the storefront church on Chicago's West Side Aug. 15, 2006. She had not left the church property until deciding to be driven to Los Angeles, Coleman said.

Arellano stole the identity of a citizen of this nation and she and her supporters want her to be given a free pass. Her son was born in this country only because she came across the border in violation of the laws of this country - and subsequently stole the identity of a citizen to stay here. Then she is talked into a theatrical stunt of leaving the church where authorities had chosen to leave her alone and drive across the country to stage her arrest.

Gee, I'm sorry. I really don't feel bad for Arellano. No, actually, I'm not sorry. I have no sympathy at all for her or for the manipulative AP report that is supposed to jerk at our heartstrings. But I suspect most people will not feel any sympathy, either.

There is no reason - at all - that the border cannot be secured and a really lenient immigration policy cannot coexist. And I suspect that such dual policies would be embraced by almost all of the people in this nation who are here legally. If it is done properly, it should even be wildly popular with the immigrant communities because it will help them make better livings. The flood of illegals is suppressing wages for the lower rungs of the economic ladder in this country. Border control and a sane immigration policy would help everyone. The first politician to float a real policy that does all of that will be very, very hard to beat.

UPDATE: And, in a real surprise, other illegal immigrants are very, very angry at Arellano:

Local Spanish-language radio host Javier Salas said he felt badly for what happened to Arellano. But in leaving the sanctuary of Adalberto United Methodist Church and heading to Los Angeles, it was only a matter of time before she was arrested.

"I'm not happy that this happened, but it was bound to happen because she was challenging the system," said Salas, the host of the morning-drive talk show La Tremenda on WRTO AM-1200.

By Sunday afternoon Salas was already talking about the arrest on the radio, and callers were weighing in too.

Callers were "saying that she was traveling to Los Angeles and around the United States, she would provoke [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the anti-immigrant groups," he said. "There would be checkpoints everywhere."

Salas questioned why it appeared that mainstream media make Arellano out to be the face of undocumented immigrants, when her actions have exacerbated the animosity toward them.

"She wasn't down to earth," he said, adding that Arellano acted "entitled" to rights "when there's thousands and thousands of people in the same situation."

"She made everything worse," Salas said. "She's not a face of the immigrants. My family without papers, she doesn't represent them."

Whoopsie. No sympathy from pretty much anyone except the AP.

Iowa Voice Is Moving

Iowa Voice is moving to a whole new site, Liberty Pundit. Adjust your bookmarks/blogrolls accordingly. (I knew what they were doing a few days ago when they hit me with a test ping.)

The Clowns Of August

Britain is suffering another clown infestation.

This is the Camp For Climate Action, due to culminate this weekend in 24 hours of mass direct action. As a virgin activist, I am not pleased that I have been unable to wash for days.

But I have signed up for two days of training with the Rebel Clown Army, which has had a presence at some of the most intense protests in Europe: Gleneagles in 2005, G8 in Germany among them.

The clowns may look ridiculous – and they vow they are non-violent – but their mission is serious: to provide diversions to more vigorous protests and highlight what they see as the nonsense of non-thinking actions likely to damage the environment.

While those around us started the day with serious meetings on subjects such as "Fight The Power, Know The Law", we began by squeezing and relaxing our facial muscles and roaring to "free our inner voice".

As other folk discussed "Permaculture In Practice", we played "hug-tag". Later, we were asked to run around, point to things and give them any name we chose – except the right one. Grass, for example, could become petrol and tent, pelican.

Best of all:

Even the staunchest environmental protesters – some of whom come from the most far-flung fringes of society – regard the clowns with suspicion, as slightly untrustworthy anarchists. But then, almost everybody else was so earnest.

There was a smattering of middle-aged, grey-haired folk, but many were cliches of "Swampy" – thin, vegan and humourless.

The camp was heaving with middle-class eco-warriors with their expensive brand-name tents, backpacks and costly boots, which looked to have been freshly purchased. ……..

……..But at night, as fires burned in empty kerosene barrels, the scene was reminiscent of the doom-laden movie The Fisher King.

The food was vegan and absolutely awful. And, despite an uplifting evening learning to tango with a dedicated group of ballroom dancers, I was ready to slit my wrists by Thursday morning.

But if you're tired of awful humorless, swampy people and hideous vegan food, you can always go after the Jews:

The move came after 20 anarchists from the camp broke into a warehouse in Hayes, owned by Carmel Agrexco, an Israeli fruit and vegetable importer. Up to six were arrested on suspicion of burglary, police said.

Amos Orr, general manager of Agrexco UK, said: "They broke in. A lot of them were drunk, they broke doors, spread papers everywhere and they were very aggressive. They were singing about Hamas."

A spokesman for the protesters said of Sunday's planned activities: "Some might be the same as Agrexco - some won't. From midday there will be stuff going on for 24 hours around the wider Heathrow area. We are still seeing people arriving. There are about 1,200 here now."

Some get a few thousand cans of ClownOff® over there at once.

UPDATE: It was even more anti-Semitic than initial reports indicated. Gateway Pundit has the environmental stormtroopers - and I am using that term advisedly - in all their pathetic ingloriousness. Time for a bit of repellent - for the truly repellent.

Wealthy Saudi Rats Travels First Class

Apparently, even the rats in Saudi Arabia (the four-legged ones, just so there isn't any confusion) are getting rich off oil revenue. They are flying first class when they travel.

ABHA — A rat running between seats — First Class seats! — aboard Saudi flight 1692 from Abha to Dammam caused a one-hour delay, Asharq Al-Awsat reported yesterday. While the plane was en queue for takeoff, a Saudi woman saw the rodent scurrying among the seats and alerted the flight attendants who alerted the captain who ordered all 480 passengers off the plane to search for the rat. The flight attendant called the airport fire department for help, but a one-hour search failed to turn up the furry little stowaway. The captain ordered the flight to resume, and one rodent got a free ride to the east coast.

One wonders if the woman who "alerted" the flight attendant did so by levitating up onto the overhead bins while shrieking. That's our preferred method of warning about rats.

Pricey Pork

There is a new ham in town. Billed as the most expensive ham in history, the 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve ham will cost just about $2,100 each - or around $160 per pound. You have to buy the entire ham, you can't get a slice.

Now, hard-core foodies are drooling over the prospect of something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a salt-cured ham costing about $2,100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham in the world.

Don't grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for just a slice.

The 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve (as this pricey pork will be known) won't be available until late 2008 and you must buy the whole ham or nothing at all. But that hasn't dissuaded gastronomic Web sites and blogs from buzzing with talk of the farm where it is being produced, likening it to a Mount Olympus of pork.

Its mastermind, Manuel Maldonado, 44, comes from a long line of ham producers in a country that's nuts about the stuff. In bars and restaurants, legs of ham hanging from the wall are as common as TV sets.

But Maldonado is taking the art of the ham to new heights, pampering his pigs with a free-range lifestyle and top-quality diet of acorns before slaughtering them, then curing the meat for two years _ twice as long as his competitors.

It's that last step that Maldonado credits with creating a delicacy that justifies the heavenly price.

When informed about the costly ham, several Congressmen raised their heads from the trough long enough to snort that their pork costs much, much more.

Taxation Without Responsibility

The Las Vegas Review-Journal positively rips into a proposal by Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn to raise gasoline taxes to pay for "infrastructure repairs". Oberstar made the proposal in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, of course. The Review-Journal points out the obvious: Why is a tax increase necessary when some $69 billion was glad-handed away in Federal pork in the last three years alone. If infrastructure is such a priority, why is so much being wasted - such as the $14.6 million Oberstar secured to extend a paved recreation trail in his district.

But Rep. Oberstar and his ilk can't avoid the most obvious question, one that should be raised anytime a subordinate asks his boss to bolster his expense account: What are you doing with the rest of your money?

Rep. Oberstar would have Americans believe there isn't a spare nickel in all of Washington. As the watchdogs at Citizens Against Government Waste so dutifully point out, Congress has spent more than $69 billion on frivolous pork over the past three years alone. The 2005 highway bill, which was larded up with low-priority projects including Alaska's "Bridges to Nowhere," already allocates $2 billion per year for bridge repairs.

Rep. Oberstar himself partook in the 2005 porkfest, scoring $14.6 million for his Duluth-area constituents, primarily to extend the nation's longest paved recreation trail.

Now Rep. Oberstar wants all of Congress to go cold-turkey on earmarks. He assures us that despite the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on earmarks and low-priority road projects over the years, the madness will finally stop if only his 5-cent per gallon gasoline tax increase is passed.

"Yes," taxpayers will reply. "Just as the 1986 Immigration Reform & Control Act was the absolute last amnesty Congress would ever award to illegals."

It's good that Rep. Oberstar has sworn to adhere to fiscal responsibility, but not unexpected that it took a disaster in his own back yard to make him realize that Congress has been derelict in maintaining federal infrastructure. Had he and his spendthrift colleagues paid attention to their duties and fought for this principle but a few years ago, he wouldn't have to ask for a tax increase.

If there is a consensus in Washington that bridge and highway repairs must be a higher priority in the federal budget, lawmakers should simply cut back on the pork and have the Transportation Department make it a significant priority.

If the estimates that the editorial notes are correct, infrastructure repairs will cost some $200 billion over the next twenty years. If Congress had not been busy feeding on fresh, glistening gobbets of pork they could have been almost one third of the way through the necessary repairs just in the past three years. Shouldn't we voters be demanding that out Congress show some responsibility with the taxes they already have before we grant them additional funds?

(Note: The editorial rips into a "Democrat" for raising the taxes. This actually is not a partisan issue. Everyone should be dead set against the porkfests that Congress wallows in. Because the irresponsible waste of our money must stop.)

No Sanctuary

Mark Steyn reflects on the murder of three young people in Newark, New Jersey, lined up against a wall and shot execution-style. Iofemi Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel were executed by a group led by Jose Carranza, an illegal immigrant from Peru who was out on bail from "31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child." The problem, as Steyn sees it, is that cities like Newark, New Jersey have declared themselves sanctuary cities and defy US laws on illegal immigration.

Not exactly. Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he's alleged to have committed, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child, for which Mr. Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have now been revoked.) No, Mr. Carranza's criminal career in the United States began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.

Jose Carranza isn't exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.

America has a high murder rate: Murdering people is definitely one of the jobs Americans can do. But that's what ties young Malvo to Jose Carranza: He's just another killer let loose in this country to kill Americans by the bureaucracy's boundless sensitivity toward the "undocumented." Will the Newark murders change anything? Will there be an Ioefemi Hightower Act of Congress like the Matthew Shepard Act passed by the House of Representatives? No. Three thousand people died Sept. 11, 2001, in an act of murder facilitated by the illegal-immigration support structures in this country, and, if that didn't rouse Americans to action, another trio of victims seems unlikely to tip the scales. As Michelle Malkin documented in her book "Invasion," four of the killers boarded the plane with photo ID obtained through the "undocumented worker" network at the 7-Eleven in Falls Church, Va. That's to say, officialdom's tolerance of the illegal immigration shadow-state enabled 9/11. And what did we do? Not only did we not shut it down, we enshrined the shadow-state's charade as part of the new tough post-slaughter security procedures.

The murderers of Iofemi Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel were affiliated with the MS-13 gang. Originating from El Salvador's civil war in the 1980s, MS-13 is one of the worst manifestations of illegal immigration run wild. But cities increasingly will do nothing against illegals - even ones doing extremely illegal things.

We are being failed by a political class that is increasingly out of touch with what the voters want. More than 2/3 of citizens in this country want borders strengthened and the flood of illegals halted. There is no reason - at all - that the border can't be fixed and immigration policy revised to encourage legal immigrants rather than illegal ones. All it takes is some political will - something not in evidence in Washington. Or in cities like Newark where there is no longer any sanctuary for citizens, only for people here illegally.

Donkey Island

More than a week after German magazine Der Spiegel ran an article about it and more than six weeks after the battle itself, the Washington Post writes a long article about the Battle of Donkey Island. One the night of June 30, 2007 American forces engaged a large, determined group of al Qaeda suicide bombers attempting to infiltrate Ramadi. A small, routine patrol by soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment encountered two large semi-trucks loaded with about 70 heavily armed al Qaeda fighters, More than half of the men wore suicide vests. The resulting desperate battle showed that al Qaeda is finding Anbar an increasingly hostile place to try to operate.

About 200 yards from the canal, Stark's Humvee crested a small dirt berm, and his driver, Spec. Kevin Gilbertson, saw something odd: two large semitrucks parked just to the left of the road ahead.

"I wonder what they're doing?" Gilbertson called to Stark. Then they spotted a few men fleeing across the field to the south and accelerated toward the trucks.

Stark recalled that he turned and to his disbelief saw clustered behind the trucks — only a few feet away — at first 10, then 20, then as many as 70 heavily armed men.

"Traverse left, open fire!" he yelled instinctively to his gunner. Startled, Pfc. Sean Groves unleashed a rapid burst from his M240 machine gun.

In the same instant, the insurgents returned a barrage of fire with AK-47 assault rifles, heavy machine guns and hand grenades. Bullets shattered the ballistic glass on Stark's Humvee, breaking the driver's window and cracking the windshield like a spider's web. Shrapnel tore into Groves's face and hands. He dropped down inside the vehicle. Gilbertson jumped into the gunner's sling, and Groves took control of the Humvee, now limping with two flat tires on the left side. Stark tried to radio the two vehicles behind him but had lost communication.

"Red 8, what the hell is going on?" Sgt. 1st Class Feliciano Young, the platoon sergeant in the next Humvee, recalled shouting into the radio, using Stark's call sign. There was no reply.

It is a long article, but an important one. When it was all over, 11 Americans were wounded and two were dead. But an estimated 32 al Qaeda fighters had been killed and a major attack that had been carefully planned for a very long time was completely thwarted.

U.S. commanders said the battle was a major defeat for al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents, showing how hard it is for them to operate in Anbar, where they face an increased U.S. troop presence and rejection by the Sunni population.

"Al-Qaeda is on its back foot," said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "They have largely lost Anbar province."

But U.S. officers in Ramadi say it is only a matter of time before al-Qaeda in Iraq strikes again.

"We're still expecting attacks similar to this one," said Maj. Andrew Wortham, the 1st Brigade Combat Team's intelligence officer in Ramadi.

Soldiers who fought in the battle say they feel extremely lucky to have happened upon the insurgents — and to have survived. They're concerned that if U.S. forces leave, the insurgents will return and easily kill local police and officials. "I worry about pulling out of this area early. If we do, these guys are dead meat," Lauer said.

The Post ends the story, predictably, on a down beat. But the fact is that it is becoming harder for al Qaeda to operate in Anbar - but it is becoming increasingly easy for them to die there. And the soldiers know what would happen if the US suddenly withdraws from Iraq - even if many of our politicians pretend not to.