Sorry You Don’t Like OUR Law

If it’s the second Sunday in May, it’s time with mom, according to Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

That’s the reason the second-term Democrat gave for declining an invitation to debate her primary opponent on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Lincoln’s campaign said she wouldn’t be able to appear with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter due to Mother’s Day plans.

“It’s not surprising that Bill Halter would welcome another trip to Washington since most of his support is based there,” Lincoln campaign spokeswoman Katie Laning Niebaum said. “However, Senator Lincoln will not interrupt her plans to be in Arkansas with her family on Mother’s Day in order to appear before a national television audience, most of whom do not vote in Arkansas.”

Dinging Halter for his connections to national political groups is nothing new for the Lincoln campaign. And Lincoln told POLITICO on Saturday that family time remains important to her in the midst of a tough campaign.

DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR TO ANYONE ELSE?

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Ford Motor Co. says it earned $2.1 billion in the first quarter, another sign the economy is improving as people spend more on big-ticket items like cars.

The Dearborn-based company says net income per share was 50 cents in the quarter. That’s an about-face from the same period last year when it lost $1.4 billion, or 60 cents per share, at the height of the recession.

The company says it was profitable in its key North American market, but it also made money in Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Ford’s U.S. sales rose 37 percent for the quarter and its market share climbed nearly three percentage points. The automaker is benefiting from a rebound in auto sales, higher quality rankings and a boost to its reputation for avoiding government aid.

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The debate over Arizona’s new illegal immigrant law will likely move from protest lines and talk shows to the courtroom, where a judge could be asked to decide whether the state can enforce laws that until now had been the federal government’s exclusive domain.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the bill on Friday, said Arizona must act because Washington has failed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico.

Opposition to the law grew Monday as opponents used refried beans to smear swastikas on the state Capitol, civil rights leaders and others demanded a boycott of the state, a petition drive began to put the measure to a public vote and the Obama administration weighed a possible legal challenge.

Activists are planning a challenge of their own, hoping to block the law from taking effect by arguing that it encroaches on the federal government’s authority to regulate immigration and violates people’s constitutional rights by giving police too much power.

The measure — set to take effect in late July or early August — would make it a crime under state law to be in the U.S. illegally. It directs state and local police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal.

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Everything is on the table when it comes to finding a way to get America out of debt, according to President Obama’s newly appointed debt commission, meaning a value added tax could be headed to a product near you.

Former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson will join former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles to lead the elite18-member debt commission convening Tuesday — a panel appointed by Democrats and Republicans to come up with a plan to save America from its spendthrift ways.

The commission’s charge is to produce a deficit no bigger than $550 billion by 2015, an amount equal to about 3 percent of the total U.S. economy. That would require deficit savings in the range of $250 billion or more.

The deficit for last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, was $1.4 trillion. Many projections show the yearly deficit not dipping below 4 percent of the economy over the next decade.

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In a post on its website, Gizmodo revealed late Monday that a California computer crime unit raided the home of the editor who posted an extensive review and photographs of an unreleased iPhone prototype.

The Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT), a Silicon Valley high-technology task force, entered editor Jason Chen’s house Friday evening under the authority of a warrant by a San Mateo judge. The warrant allowed for the search and seizure of computer systems, digital storage devices, video cameras, removable media and more.

The warrant, posted on Gizmodo’s site, lists numerous seized items including a Macbook, a camera, and several external hard drives. Chen confirmed the seizure in an account posted to the site, writing that upon returning from dinner, “I noticed the garage door was half-open, and when I tried to open it, officers came out and said they had a warrant to search my house.”

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A Muslim civil liberties group urged Congress to disinvite evangelist Franklin Graham from a prayer event, just days after the Pentagon booted the minister from another gathering because of his anti-Islam remarks.

Graham is scheduled to attend the congressional National Day of Prayer event on Capitol Hill on May 6. He was to have led services at the Pentagon the same day but was told last week that he was no longer welcome after Army leaders decided his comments that Islam is a “very evil and wicked religion” were a problem. Graham refused to back down, saying on Fox News that Muslims were “enslaved” by their beliefs.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) pushed Congress to rescind evangelist Franklin Graham’s invitation to attend the National Day of Prayer on Capitol Hill. The Council on American-Islamic Relations “supports the desirable goal of bringing Americans, regardless of their faith traditions, together in prayer,” said Corey Saylor, the group’s national legislative director. “However, a congressional prayer observance should reflect the best of our nation’s ideals. Speakers such as Franklin Graham reflect a message of religious intolerance, rather than the more American message of differing faiths united in shared support of our nation’s founding principles.”

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Republican lawmakers stuck together Monday in preventing a massive financial regulatory bill from proceeding in the Senate, despite efforts by Democrats to portray the GOP as supporters of Wall Street — not Main Street.

In a key test vote Monday evening on bill, all Republican senators — and one Democrat — voted to block floor debate on the legislation, sending both sides back to the negotiating table.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., was the sole Democrat to break ranks and vote against the procedural measure to advance the legislation. He said later that he simply hadn’t seen the bill yet and, therefore, couldn’t vote to advance it. All 41 Republicans voted no, including Sen. Oylmpia Snowe, R-Maine, who had been seen as a potential defector.     

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National Security Adviser James Jones apologized Monday for telling a joke last week that depicted a member of the Taliban getting tricked by a Jewish merchant looking to make a sale.

“I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by it,” he said in a written statement.

Jones, a retired general, used the lengthy joke to break the ice before his address last Wednesday at an event honoring the 25th anniversary of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Interestingly, it was not included in the official White House-provided transcript of the speech.

But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday said nobody was trying to cover up what Jones said.

“It was obviously an on-camera speech. There was no attempt to deceive,” Gibbs said.

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Car rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. plans to acquire rival Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. for $1.27 billion in cash and stock, giving Hertz a larger foothold in the leisure-rental market while its core business-travel operation remains in the doldrums, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The boards of both companies approved the deal Sunday. The companies said they began talks last November.

The deal marks a significant consolidation in an industry that struggled in late 2008 and much of last year under the weight of slashed travel budgets, falling used-car prices, large debt loads and the credit crunch.

Car rental demand started showing signs of life late last year, and the industry was able to raise rental rates and cut costs. Hertz said it expects Monday to raise its forecasts for revenue and pretax earnings for the year, though expects to report a first-quarter loss.

Hertz plans to keep the Dollar and Thrifty brands. The acquisition is “really about having a multibrand strategy in the leisure segment,” said Mark P. Frissora, Hertz chairman and CEO.            

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Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday condemned Arizona’s tough new immigration law as discriminatory and warned that relations with the U.S. border state will suffer.

The measure, which will make it a crime under state law to be an illegal immigrant, “opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement,” Calderon said.

Calderon said he had instructed the Foreign Relations Department to double its efforts to protect the rights of Mexicans living in the United States and seek help from lawyers and immigration experts.   Furor grows over illegal immigration law

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NEW YORK (AP) — The homeless man lay face down, unmoving, on the sidewalk outside an apartment building, blood from knife wounds pooling underneath his body…. Homeless good Samaritan left to die on NYC street

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s largest retailer revealed Monday that it has started to crack down on the use of the toxic metal cadmium in children’s jewelry and other kids’ products…. Wal-Mart to limit toxic cadmium in kids’ products

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Hollywood sign, a beacon to stars and star-struck alike, has been saved from urban sprawl under a land conservation pact announced Monday after a donation by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner capped a multimillion-dollar fundraising drive…. Fundraising spares Hollywood sign from sprawl

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Crews raced to protect the Gulf of Mexico coastline Monday as a remote sub tried to shut off an underwater oil well that’s gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of a wrecked drilling platform…. Oil leak from sunken rig off La. could foul coast

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YAZOO CITY, Miss. (AP) — Some Mississippi residents cracked jokes Monday to keep from crying while they looked for salvageable items among the rubble left by severe storms that killed 12 people over the weekend…. Survivors assess damage from storms that killed 12\

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Air samples did not show high levels of explosive gases just before an explosion in a West Virginia coal mine that killed 29 workers, and what caused the disaster remains unknown, the mine’s owner said Monday…. Massey: W.Va. mine clear of gases before explosion

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The former director of the science program for Texas’ public schools asked a federal appeals court Monday to revive a lawsuit over her firing for forwarding an e-mail about a forum opposed to teaching creationism…. Firing over creationism e-mail leads to appeal

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ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — An Ohio man who authorities say was carrying a gun and driving a car loaded with law enforcement equipment when he said he wanted to see the president is a “public-service-minded” ham-radio, weather and police buff, acquaintances said Monday…. Friends suggest armed man no threat to Obama in NC

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EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) — An 11-year-old girl told police a man followed her home from school the day before registered sex offender John Albert Gardner III raped and murdered a 17-year-old girl in a nearby park, according to search warrants unsealed Monday….Warrants suggest Calif killer followed 11-year-old

OPINION

Whose Country Is This? 

by Patrick J. Buchanan

04/27/2010

With the support of 70 percent of its citizens, Arizona has ordered sheriffs and police to secure the border and remove illegal aliens, half a million of whom now reside there.

Arizona acted because the U.S. government has abdicated its constitutional duty to protect the states from invasion and refuses to enforce America’s immigration laws.

“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” said Gov. Jan Brewer. “But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation.”

We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington.

What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.

He has denounced Arizona as “misguided.” He has called on the Justice Department to ensure that Arizona’s sheriffs and police do not violate anyone’s civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in their midst.

How’s that for Andrew Jackson-style leadership?

Obama has done everything but his duty to enforce the law.

Undeniably, making it a state as well as a federal crime to be in this country illegally, and requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” is here illegally, is tough and burdensome. But what choice did Arizona have?

The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border.

Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk.

If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California.

What we are talking about here is the Balkanization and breakup of a nation into ethnic enclaves. A country that cannot control its borders isn’t really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.

The tasks that Arizonans are themselves undertaking are ones that belong by right, the Constitution and federal law to the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security.

Arizona has been compelled to assume the feds’ role because the feds won’t do their job. And for that dereliction of duty the buck stops on the desk of the president of the United States.

Why is Obama paralyzed? Why does he not enforce the law, even if he dislikes it, by punishing the businessmen who hire illegals and by sending the 12 million to 20 million illegals back home? President Eisenhower did it. Why won’t he?

Because he is politically correct. Because he owes a big debt to the Hispanic lobby that helped deliver two-thirds of that vote in 2008. Though most citizens of Hispanic descent in Arizona want the border protected and the laws enforced, the Hispanic lobby demands that the law be changed.

Fair enough. But the nation rose up as one to reject the “path-to-citizenship” — i.e., amnesty — that the 2007 plan of George W. Bush, McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama envisioned.

Al Sharpton threatens to go to Phoenix and march in the streets against the new Arizona law. Let him go.

Let us see how many African-Americans, who are today frozen out of the 8 million jobs held by illegal aliens that might otherwise go to them or their children, will march to defend an invasion for which they are themselves paying the heaviest price.

Last year, while Americans were losing a net of 5 million jobs, the U.S. government — Bush and Obama both — issued 1,131,000 green cards to legal immigrants to come and take the jobs that did open up, a flood of immigrants equaled in only four other years in our history.

What are we doing to our own people?

Whose country is this, anyway?

America today has an establishment that, because it does not like the immigration laws, countenances and condones wholesale violation of those laws.

Nevertheless, under those laws, the U.S. government is obligated to deport illegal aliens and punish businesses that knowingly hire them.

This is not an option. It is an obligation.

Can anyone say Barack Obama is meeting that obligation?