Monday Links - Again

Once again, Monday appears to be a good time to round up some stories in the news.  So here we go:

From The Guardian, as tensions rise in the wake of an apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria, the United Kingdom moves military equipment to a base in Cyprus.

From the Boston Globe, the full text of Secretary of State John Kerry's statement in response to these attacks.

From the Jerusalem Post, according to Israeli International Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz it is "crystal clear" that Syrian President Bashir Assad's forces used chemical weapons in an attack five days ago.

From CBS News, worries about Syria are affecting Wall Street.

From the Washington Post, the prospect of American intervention in Syria is very unpopular.

From Town Hall, the story of Shin Dong-Hyuk, who escaped the North Korean GULAG.

From Mashable, Bloomberg beat Reuters in web traffic for this past July.

From WRAL(dot)com, a charitable group in Raleigh, North Carolina has been threatened with arrest for feeding the homeless without a permit.  (via Breitbart's The Conversation)

From Breitbart's Big Government, the media ignore the killing of Americans by illegal aliens.

From Forbes, Donald Trump is being sued for fraud.

From Fox News, two House Democrats propose a bill to increase taxes on guns and ammunition.

From the Mail Online, investigators have requested the school records of the Sandy Hook shooter.

From Talking Points Memo, according to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the federal government will reach the latest debt ceiling in mid-October.

And from the Times Union, the best and worst dressed at the MTV VMAs.

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Thursday Links

A few stories and things going on:

From the Times Of Israel, an Arab member of the Knesset claims that Secretary of State John Kerry has promised that Israel will release all of its pre-Oslo prisoners so that peace talks resume.

From Natural News, the rover Curiosity is finding evidence that a "catastrophic event" stripped away the Martian atmosphere about 4 billion years ago.

From The College Fix, ten College Republicans were denied entry to President Obama's speech at Missouri Central University, even though they had bought tickets.  (via National Review Online)

From the Tampa Tribune, one of the jurors in the George Zimmerman trial says that he "got away with murder", but that there wasn't enough evidence under Florida law to convict him.

From the New York Post, there's a lake at the North Pole.

From the New York Daily News, former Congressman and current mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has admitted to more online relationships.  This comes via Gateway Pundit, with some video of comedians giving Weiner some well-deserved ribbing.

From Fox News, Mrs. Weiner, a.k.a. Huma Abedin is facing questions about working part-time for the government while also working as a consultant for Teneo.

Also from Fox News, a majority of voters now doubts that immigration reform will ever happen.  This, of course, is good or bad, depending on how you define "immigration reform".

From Russia Today, Great Britain is putting up ads telling illegal immigrants to go home or be arrested.  Now there's a bit of immigration reform I could get behind.

From Creeping Sharia, Crayola(dot)com celebrates Ramadan.

From Business Insider, Halliburton will plead guilty to destroying evidence relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

And from The Guardian, the newest heir to the British throne has been named George Alexander Louis.  The announcement of his name was relatively quick compared to other royal babies, such as his father and grandfather after their respective births.  Britain has had six kings ruling under the name George, the most recent being Queen Elizabeth's father.  Louis was the name of Prince Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten.

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What Took Them So Long?

Police in Rochester, NY on July 20th arrested a man and called the Border Patrol for assistance after he gave them three different names.  They soon learned that he was in the United States illegally and had no less than 37 convictions, occurring from 1982 to 2007.  He is thus being given an "Administrative Removal" and will be deported to Mexico.

Read the story at CNS News.  Seeing that he has that many conviction over such a long time, we can only wonder how many times he has already been deported only to return, and if he will again show up in time to benefit from the possible GOP suicide amnesty bill now pending in the House.

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Wednesday Links

Some stories from today's news:

From CBS News, a search for art stolen from the Netherlands appears to have turned up ashes in the oven of a woman in Romania.

Also from CBS News, a new "intelligent knife" can distinguish between healthy tissue and cancerous tissue.

From BBC News, the Greek parliament has approved budget cuts amid an atmosphere of protest.

From the Irish Times, a well-known defender of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has been gunned down in Lebanon.

From Boston(dot)com, Democrats pursuing an immigration bill are pinning their hopes on congressman and former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI).

From Breitbart's Big Government, congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) thinks that if Speaker John Boehner tries to salvage the "gang of eight" immigration bill, "it will blow up in his face".

From the Washington Post, the federal government's collection of phone records does not sit well with, believe it or not, the man who authored the Patriot Act.

From Yahoo News, state and local police have been using license plate scanners, thus tracking the movements of your vehicle.

From Time, the Rolling Stone's cover depicting accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev has not sat well with some retail stores.

From USA Today, the jury in the trial of George Zimmerman was correct, according to former president Jimmy Carter.

From Breitbart's Big Hollywood, Bill Maher tells some jokes about Zimmerman on the Late Show with David Letterman, and gets booed.

From CNS News, as the Pentagon furloughs civilian workers, the Army spends $81,000 on TVs for Gitmo.

From the Washington Free Beacon, Samantha Power, nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, promises to fight against anti-Israel sentiment if confirmed.

And from the New York Post, British researchers say that they have developed a cell phone that can be recharged by using a very convenient fuel.

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Flip-Flops Galore

It appears that the policy reversal by Senator Rubio (R-FL) that I noted a few days ago is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the "gang of eight" immigration bill.  Red State has compiled a list of statements by the 15 Republicans and 7 red state Democrats who voted for cloture earlier this week.  Since I've already mentioned Rubio, here's an excerpt quoting Kelly Ayotte, Republican from New Hampshire:

“For the people who are here illegally, I don’t support amnesty; it’s wrong. It’s wrong to the people who are waiting in line here, who have waited for so long. And we need to stop that because I think that’s where the Administration is heading next.”

Senator Ayotte, I couldn't have said it any better.  Read the whole article at Red State and check out their links.

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Rubio 2010 vs. Rubio 2013

Flip-flopping politicians are nothing new.  I would think that it's pretty much impossible to keep track of all the times a president, a senator or a congressman said one thing during his campaign and then pursued the opposite policy after being elected.  Thus, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), by helping to put forth the "gang of eight" immigration bill, is continuing a tradition that probably started in way back in 1776.  CNS News shows how candidate Rubio, then backed by the Tea Party movement, used to call the "earned path to citizenship" that he now advocates a "code for amnesty".  Read the full story.

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For New RPIs, Crime Will Pay

From Immigration Reform (dot) com via Fausta's Blog:

Under the immigration bill S744, known as the "gang of eight" bill, current illegal immigrants will be given a new status called Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI), and many types of crime that could be committed by RPIs will be eligible for a waiver.  For US citizens and legal immigrants, no such waivers exist.  Read more at the above links.  To paraphrase a certain former Speaker, we're finding out what's in this bill, and it ain't pretty.

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Illegal Immigration Opinion And News

In National Review Online, Victor Davis Hansen writes about how the "divide over immigration reform is not primarily a Left/Right or Democratic/Republican divide", but one that that cuts across class lines, pitting the elite against most everybody else.  This is something I had already realized about the debate over illegal immigration.  Many elites, it has seemed, both left and right, are at odds with other Americans over this issue.    Mr. Hansen, I think, does a good job of explaining the divide.  Read the full article.

In World Net Daily, Joe Farah tells us why amnesty is not compassion.

In The Hill, Jonathan Easley reports that Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal) warns that John Boehner's Speakership would be threatened if he allowed the "gang of eight" immigration reform bill (currently being debated in the Senate) to be voted on in the House.

In Heritage Action, Katharine Rosario shows us a speech by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), exposing the "gang of eight" bill's double standard.

In The Blaze, Madeleine Morgenstern writes about immigration activists marching on the house of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, protesting his deportations.  In other words, trespassers were marching on behalf of trespassers.  They left behind shoes they claimed were owned by people he deported, thus becoming litterbugs as well.

Fox News reports that fourteen 7-Eleven stores in New York and Virginia were raided, resulting in nine people being indicted for allegedly smuggling in workers from Pakistan.  (via Gateway Pundit)

Last month, Wired reported that hidden within the "gang of eight" bill is the creation of a new database to be administered by the DHS and "containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID."  (again, via Gateway Pundit)  This sounds like a database that will monitor citizens, not foreigners who enter the country, legally or not.

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Six Problems With The Immigration Bill

In an interview with Ginni Thomas of The Daily Caller, former New York lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey (D) points out what she considers to be six "big problems" with the "gang-of-eight" immigration bill, which she arrived at from reading the bill.  Ms. McCaughey is also the auther of Beating Obamacare.

Read the full story and watch the video over at The Daily Caller.

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This Date In History, And Today

June 6th is widely commemorated as the day in 1944 during World War II when the western Allies invaded Europe, landing on the beaches of the German-held French region of Normandy.  From their narrow foothold, they would eventually advance across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany itself, joining the westward-advancing Soviet army to defeat the once-powerful German military forces.  Here are a few links to some historical facts and modern tributes:

The History Channel has a page on D-Day, with lots of places to explore.

The British version of the History Channel likewise has a D-Day page.

The U.S. Army has a webpage remembering D-Day.

More information on D-Day can be found at the National WWII Museum, World War II History Info and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Paying tribute to the events of D-Day are Nola(dot)com (New Orleans being the site of the above-mentioned National WWII Museum), the Patriot-News, CNN and Business Insider.
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In more recent military history, June 6th was the second day of the Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated neighboring Arab countries, taking the Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.  This war is remembered by History Learning Site, the Jewish Virtual Library, Israeli Weapons and SixDayWar(dot)org.
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June 6th, 1799 was the birth date of Alexander Pushkin, considered to be the founder of modern Russian literature.  You can read about him at the Literature Network, Russiapedia, Poetry Lovers Page and AlexanderPushkin(dot)com.
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On June 6th, 1949, according to the History Channel, George Orwell's book 1984 was published.
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Moving on to today's news:

From ABC News, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has appointed Jeff Chiesa (R), currently the state's attorney general, to be interim Senator until the special election previously announced by the governor takes place later this year.  Chiesa has stated that he will not run in that election.

From the Washington Post, the FBI and the NSA have been data-mining from nine leading U.S. Internet companies.

From National Review, the House has voted to de-fund President Obama's DREAM policy, which he enacted by executive order.

And from The Hayride, Obama criticizes warrantless wiretaps.

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Links To Start The Long Weekend

The Memorial Day weekend, one of those "anchors" on the calendar, has just started.  This coming Monday, Americans will pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us free.  Today, here are some things recently in the news:

From the New York Post, a homeless teenage girl living near Atlanta has just become her high school's valedictorian.

From Fox News, the Boy Scouts of America have voted to accept openly gay members.

From Breitbart's Big Hollywood, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gets into a confrontation with Jersey Shore cast member Snooki.

From Biz Pac Review, polling expert Scott Rasmussen says that the recent scandals are bringing bad news for President Obama.  (Isn't that what scandals normally do to a president?)

CNS News reports on Obama's commencement speech as the U.S. Naval Academy, where he blamed the "misconduct of a few" for eroding the public's trust in the government.

From CBN News, an American missionary in Africa has gone missing.

From NBC News, the Department of Justice confirms that the search warrant for Fox News reporter James Rosen's e-mails was approved "at the highest levels".  One writer at National Review suggests that reporters "should just CC Eric Holder" from now on.

From The Hill, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) says that the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill does not have the votes to pass the Senate.

From the Washington Examiner, a former president of Guatemala has been extradited to the United States to face money-laundering charges.

Reason gives us three reasons, other than Lois Lerner, to fear the IRS.

From CNN, yesterday's collapse of a section of the Skagit River bridge on Interstate 5 in Washington state is believed to have been caused by an 18-wheeler hitting an overhead tress (and not from GOP obstruction, as reported by Mediaite).

And from Wired, on the 30th anniversary of Return of the Jedi, 30 things you didn't know about the movie.

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Tuesday Links

Some recent news and opinion:

From ABC News, according to a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 42% of Americans don't know that Obamacare is the law.

In Townhall, John Hawkins gives us 30 reasons to dislike President Obama.

From Breitbart's Big Government, Tea Party Patriots gets ready to rally against the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill.

From the Washington Free Beacon, extremists with ties to Al Qaeda have been using the Boston area as a base ever since 1993.

From Yahoo News, many in the Muslim world want Sharia as the official law of their lands.

From The Examiner, a study finds that over a quarter million Somalis have died from famine and terrorism.

From The Blaze, the FDA has approved over-the-counter sales the "morning after" pill - to girls as young as 15.

From the Washington Post, some officials say that Obama is "moving toward" sending weapons to Syrian rebels.

The American Thinker asks, is Obama working hard or hardly working?

From CNS News, a Miami archbishop says that establishing gay marriage would spread "moral relativism" and eventually bring about tyranny.

The American Spectator tells the story of the "Pigs of Pigford".

From USA Today, a D.C. councilman has introduced a resolution calling for the Washington Redskins to change their name to the Redtails.

And from CBS Sports, San Diego cartoonist Steve Breen welcomes soon-to-be-Charger Manti Te'o.

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Riddle Me This

Under the recently-started sequestration, why didn't we have the money to allow the DHS to continue detaining several thousand illegal aliens at their detention centers (setting aside the question of why they couldn't find other places to save money) forcing their release, yet we still can pledge $450M to Egypt?  And do we still intend to grant $307B for research, development and education to expand Internet use in Africa, including a private-public partnership headquartered in Kenya?

The respective sources for these stories are CNS News, BBC News and The Big Bad Bank.

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Links For Presidents Day

A few things recently in the news as some of us get a day off:

The Washington Post, and in the spirit of the day, invites you to pick the most underrated and overrated presidents.

From the Daily Caller, the president of Brevard Community College in Florida has recommended the firing of a professor who forced her students to sign pledges to vote for president Obama.

From the New York Post, the former LAPD cop Christopher Dorner asked some fishermen to take him to Mexico.

From Fox News and the historical oversight department, Mississippi ratifies the 13th Amendment, which officially abolished slavery.

Also from Fox News, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has accused the Obama administration of not enforcing a century-old law requiring immigrants to avoid becoming a "public charge".

From The Blaze, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan claims that God sent the recent winters storms as punishment.

From Frontpagemag, the Glazov Gang discusses, among other things, Rubio's "Watergate".

From The Hill, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has raised more than $100,000 for his PAC from the sale of water bottles.  Watergate indeed.

From Yahoo Sports, for the first time since 1974, no Major League baseball salary disputes have gone to arbitration.

From the Los Angeles Times, details of Pope Benedict's physical ailments emerge, including blindness in one eye.

And from CBS News, two brothers in Kansas, while celebrating a lottery win, blow up their house.
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UPDATE:  One more, from Inventor's Business Daily.  That asteroid which flew by last Friday is coming back.

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A Few Things Going On

Some recent developments in the news and in the blogosphere:

National Review claims out that if electoral votes were awarded by congressional district, Mitt Romney would have won.  The number of electoral votes each state gets is equal to their total representation in Congress.  For example, if a state has 8 Representatives in the House, it has 10 votes in the Electoral College, the other two corresponding to the two Senators.  In the system that NR contemplates, each district gets its own distinct vote, with the state retaining the two "senator" votes to be determined by the overall popular vote within the state.  Currently, Nebraska and Maine each assign their electors in this manner.

Life Site News takes us into a recently-closed abortion clinic in Michigan, and gives us "10 surprising quotes from abortionists".

From Breitbart's Big Government, Vice President Biden will be meeting with the NRA.

From Newsmax, Obamacare is helping to create a shortage of physicians.

From CNS News, a history of Senator and apparent Secretary of State-designate John Kerry's criticism of America's foreign policy.

From The Foundry, regulations from the Obama EPA continue to bring about coal power plant closings.

From CNN, Illinois lawmakers have passed a bill that would allow illegal aliens to receive "temporary" driver's licences.

Remember the rash of church-burnings during the 1990's, the churches mostly belonging to black congregations, and how then-President Clinton recalled how they reminded him of the burning of black churches during his childhood in Arkansas?  I wonder what he thinks of the burning of churches in Nigeria?  (from Truth Be Told)

From Yahoo News, several hundred people in Boulder, Colorado hold a vigil for the victim of a police shooting - an elk.

From ABC10 News, after a couple ties the knot thousands of feet in the air, their balloon comes crashing down.

And last but not least, after being off the web for over a year, the blog And Rightly So, where yours truly used to contribute, has been restarted.  Raven has once again asked me to join the crew, so I'll be posting over there from time to time, in addition to what I post here.

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Links To End The Month

Here are some things going on as July 2012 comes to a close:

From the Los Angeles Times, a body believed to be of a missing FBI agent has been found in Burbank.

From Newsmax, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's Chik-fil-A support page on Facebook has been visited over 20 million times.

The Weekly Standard points out that what Mitt Romney said about culture impacting economic conditions during his recent visit to Jerusalem wasn't all that different from some things President Obama said during his 2009 speech in Cairo.

From LifeSiteNews, business has boomed for a bakery in Colorado, after it refused to provide a wedding cake for a gay couple.

From the Washington Times, the House Judiciary Committee reports on crimes committed by illegal aliens that the Obama administration won't deport.  (H/T Big Government)

From the Foundry, Republicans in the Senate say no votes on judges until after the election.

From Gateway Pundit, former Olympic organizer Mitt Romney gets the endorsement of former Olympic athletes including Christi Yamaguchi, and also from Lech Wałęsa.

From Smart Girl Politics, thanks to NY mayor Bloomberg, Obama's fictional Julia will learn to breastfeed.

From the Associated Press, the Syrian city of Aleppo has been under siege.

From the Wall Street Journal, a deal has been reached that will allow a female Saudi Arabian to compete in judo while wearing her head scarf.

Speaking of the Olympics, if the United States can't get all of the medals for the hammer throw, here's someone I'd like to see get one.  He used to compete for my alma mater, but now competes for one of my ancestral countries.

From Fox News, a Congressional report blames five ATF agents for "Fast and Furious".

From Yahoo News, Iraq will get some help from Great Britain in destroying the remains of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons.  You know, the stuff that Saddam didn't really have, but Dubya lied by saying he did.  (Admission by W's former leftwing critics that they were wrong in 4...3...2...oh wait, Hell will freeze over first.)

And finally, in one more from Yahoo News, a couple in New York state will remarry after 48 years of divorce.

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Clarisse Grime, RIP

Do you know about Clarisse Grime?  Chances are, if you live outside of the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, you've never heard of her.  Unlike some other people whose deaths I have recently noted, she was not famous.  But I also believe that if the national media were less biased, Clarisse Grime would be as famous in death as Travon Martin.  However, unlike Martin, she was not murdered or killed in self-defense (depending on your opinion in that case).

Clarisse Grime was killed in a horrible accident.  A driver of an SUV lost control of his vehicle, causing it to hit a fire hydrant and a "no parking" sign, and then to careen down an embankment to where Grime and her boyfriend were sitting.  The location was about 50 feet from the street, near a sign for their high school, but they were still struck by the out-of-control vehicle.  Her boyfriend suffered only minor injuries, but Grime died at the scene.

The driver was someone who had no business getting behind the wheel in the first place.  He has never had a Minnesota driver's license, and is an illegal alien.  This latter fact is probably why I believe most Americans will not have a chance to learn about Clarisse Grime and her tragic death at the age of 16.  The mainstream media is generally reluctant to publish stories about illegal aliens that put them in a bad light, even when it is deserved.  I don't believe that all illegal aliens are an accidental death waiting to happen, but when we tolerate the presence of millions of people in this country who should not be here, whose illegal entry or visa overstay indicates some degree of disrespect for American law, this kind of tragedy will inevitably happen.  "Sanctuary" policies are not compassionate.  People die because of them.

If anyone thinks that I have an anti-immigrant attitude, please allow me to tell you more about Clarisse Grime.  She and her mother, Martha Tamene Woldegiorgis, were originally from Ethiopia.  They immigrated, first to Italy, and then to Minnesota.  Both were in the process of becoming American citizens, which Woldegiorgis still intends to do.  In the death of Clarisse Grime, an illegal alien killed a legal immigrant.  If that is not a reason for distinguishing between people who come here legally from those who come illegally, then I don't know what is.  If anyone thinks that I don't like illegal aliens because a large number of them wear brown skin and speak Spanish, I should mention the name of Grime's boyfriend, who deserves our condolences: Eduardo Vazquez-Torres.

Read more at TwinCities.com.

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Parts Of Arizona's SB1070 Overruled By SCOTUS

Today the Supreme Court handed down in ruling on Arizona's controversial SB1070, striking down three of its provisions, but upholding the section 2(b), which allows law enforcement personnel to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone reasonably suspected of being an illegal alien.

Read the story at AZFamily.

Read the court's decision here.

The Obama adminstration has reacted to the decision by pulling back on a program known as 287(g).

Read the story at Fox News.

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