ICE Chief Morton to Field: See No Illegal Aliens

From the Center for Immigration Studies - By Jessica Vaughan - ICE's misleadingly-named Office of State and Local Cooperation (OSLC) has announced the next step in the Obama administration's efforts to drastically diminish the scope of immigration law enforcement. According to a draft policy document now being circulated among a limited group of stakeholders, ICE chief John Morton intends to prohibit not only his officers, but also local officers with 287(g) immigration authority, from busting illegal aliens who are discovered as a result of traffic violations. Morton has already implemented a "catch and release" policy, whereby ICE catches removable aliens in jails or through local arrests, and then releases all but the most serious offenders from custody. But this policy goes farther, stipulating that ICE will not even take a look at the illegal aliens who expose themselves to law enforcement by committing a traffic violation. And, neither will those local officers who have discovered lots of illegal aliens in the course of enforcing traffic laws. Read more
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Mid-Afternoon Update on War in Mexico

Mexico City police are investigating the murder of a businessman in the capital’s trendy Roma neighborhood after three gunmen broke into a bar after hours and fired 10 shots. Witnesses told police that the Bengala bar was closed when the gunmen forced an entry and shot Oscar Javier Paredes, said Armando Ortiz, a spokesman for the city attorney general’s office. Two other men were injured, including Paredes’s assistant.
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Federal Reserve Cuts Growth Forecast

The U.S. economy is contracting again, a sign that the recession never really ended, and the unemployment rate will exceed 10 percent, said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., a wealth management company, in Toronto. Second-quarter growth “looks as though it’s going to be revised down. We just had the Fed cut its forecast,” Rosenberg said today in an interview on Bloomberg Radio’s “The Hays Advantage” with Kathleen Hays, citing recent economic indicators. “We’re really building in something that’s negative for the third quarter,” he said. “My sense is the (economy) will contract in the fourth quarter as well.” Read more here:
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EEOC - We Are Not Making This Up

Unidentified EEOC Commissioner
Washington, DC - The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is warning employers that it is illegal to use a prospective employee's past conviction records, even for serious felonies, as an "absolute measure" as to whether they should be hired because this "could limit the employment opportunities of some protected groups." This is, the EEOC says, because blacks and Hispanics are over-represented among felons. Read more here:
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War in Mexico Rages in All States

Mexican President Felipe Calderon
Mexico City, Mexico (CNN) -- Five police officers and a transit worker have been arrested in the abduction and killing of a mayor this week in the Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon, the state's governor, Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz, announced Friday. The bound and blindfolded body of Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos Leal was found Wednesday, two days after his abduction. "The investigation is just beginning," Medina de la Cruz said. Four of the police acted as lookouts on a major road out of Santiago, while the fifth participated in Monday's early morning abduction, said Alejandro Garza y Garza, attorney general of Nuevo Leon. The mayor's bodyguard also was involved in the abduction, Garza y Garza said at the news conference. Read more here:
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Border War - More U.S. Government Insanity

From the El Paso Times - ACALA, Texas -- On each side of a towering West Texas stretch of the $2.4 billion border fence designed to block people from illegally entering the country, there are two metal footbridges, clear paths into the United States from Mexico. The footpaths that could easily guide illegal immigrants and smugglers across the Rio Grande without getting wet seem to be there because of what amounts to federal linguistics. While just about anyone would call them bridges, the U.S.-Mexico group that owns them calls them something else. Read more here:
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Thomas Sowell: The Dismantling of America Part IV

Thomas Sowell
How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing? Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.
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Dr. Michael Swickard - Education "Debate"

by Michael Swickard, Ph.D. (Educational Administration, minor Curriculum and Instruction) -
Susana Martinez (R)                Diane Denish (D)
I listened carefully to the governor candidates debate about education Thursday and was left with no idea what either candidate would really do to improve the educational outcomes in New Mexico schools. Both spoke in clichés and generalizations other than to metaphorically slap each other around and posture trying to get a good sound clip for the ten p.m. news.
What was apparent is that this format did not favor understanding really anything about the candidates. Yes, we know now that Susana Martinez did not vote in the special education election in September 2003 and Diane Denish is still using the state jet to visit rural schools. They kept hammering at their talking points and little else. Yawn!
Whoever prepared Susana Martinez should be dropped down an empty elevator shaft for arming her with the notion that “Short Cycle Assessment” was lacking in New Mexico. Hello! Every day in every school they are already doing that as part of the No Child Left Behind, Response To Intervention procedures. RTI is core to every school every day. Martinez brought it up as if she just now thought of it. Sad.
Not to be outdone, whoever prepared Diane Denish gave her the talking points that the way to make schools better is to fully fund them. Are you kidding me? The state budget goes up 54% in the last seven years and the issue is fully funding the schools? Sad. Neither could hit water from a boat about education. Both could have hit homeruns if better prepared. First, Diane Denish has actually pushed for more involvement with children before they enter Kindergarten. She could point out that the core problem in New Mexico schools is that the population of Kindergarten students is spread in ability from that of students with the literate skills of a three year old to a child with literate skills of a seven year old. Those students who on their first day in public school are two years of reading level behind certainly needed an intervention so they could start school reading on grade level. Otherwise, those students will need to make one year of regular progress in reading while they also make two years of catch up progress, rather an impossibility unless it becomes the goal of the schools for students to read on grade level.
That said, Susana Martinez could rightly point out that throughout the course of the Richardson/Denish administration students continued to not read on grade level while every textbook students use is designed for their intended grade reading level. What the heck is wrong with those leaders who continue to spend so much money on textbooks that half of the students cannot read because they are not on that reading level? Simplifying the goals of the schools to just two points would have seemed very good: first, all students must read on grade level and all students must have the math skills of their grade level. And, then let the school do that task. Focus not on comparing schools but get students reading and doing math equal to their grade level. All in all, what the debate showed is that neither has been near any classrooms in decades. Sad.

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Linda Chavez - Out of Touch

Linda Chavez
His supporters are genuinely puzzled at President Obama's slip in popularity. They're racking their brains to explain how a man who swept into the Oval Office on a tide of good will could have fallen so low. According to recent polls, most Americans now disapprove of the job Obama is doing. That's a dramatic change from his early months in office, when the president held a 2-to-1 advantage in his approval ratings. Former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta suggests the president has been acting more like a prime minister and less like a president, relying on legislative accomplishments to define his presidency. Others, like former President Jimmy Carter, have even blamed racism for the president's unpopularity. But the explanation for the president's disapproval is pretty simple. He seems to have no clue what to do about the economy -- and everything he's done so far has either failed or made matters worse. Read more here:
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22 States Look to Mimic Arizona

Jan Brewer
(CNSNews.com) – Twenty-two states are now in the process of drafting or seeking to pass legislation similar to Arizona’s law against illegal immigration. This is occurring despite the fact that the Obama administration has filed a lawsuit against the Arizona law and a federal judge has ruled against portions of that law – a ruling that is now being appealed. Next month, two Rhode Island state lawmakers, a Democrat and a Republican, will travel to Arizona to speak with Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, local sheriffs, and other officials about how to better craft their own bipartisan immigration bill for Rhode Island, which already has been enforcing some federal immigration laws. Meanwhile, 11 Republican state lawmakers from Colorado traveled to Arizona this week to meet with officials there on how to craft legislation for the Mile High state. Read more here:


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