TAKING ORDERS FROM MEXICO

Outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox is upset about the 700-mile border wall that was approved by both houses of Congress last week. The bill is now headed for President Bush's signature. In case Mr. Fox didn't know, we have a bit of a problem with millions of his countrymen (and women) streaming across our border and entering this country illegally.

So El Presidente is urging Bush to veto the bill.

Hey, Amigo! This is an internal matter. Butt out!

According to a spokesman for Vicente Fox: "The Mexican government strongly opposes the building of walls in the border area between Mexico and the United States. This decision hurts bilateral relations, goes against the spirit of cooperation needed to guarantee security on the common, creates a climate of tension in border communities." If that's the case, then why have any sort of barrier at any border? Why have a border at all?

Fox, of course, opposes anything that would get in the way of the Mexican invasion of the United States. The Mexicans who come here to live and work illegally send about $15 billion a year back to their families in Mexico. This flow of money earned illegally in the United States is one of the largest segments in the Mexican economy. Fox sees that fence as a barrier to the continued flow of dollars into his country.

There's more. The border with America is an escape valve for Fox and the Mexican government. As Mexicans flow into the United States the pressure for economic reform and change in Mexico abates. Building that fence may be a lot like closing the valve on a pressure cooker. Things can get mighty agitate inside!

The only problem with the 700-mile long border fence is that it isn't 2,000 miles long...enough to cover the entire border. Vicente Fox wants no fence. We need more fence.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY STRATEGY: FORGET THE TRUTH

Democrats, dominated by their liberal-socialist wing, have swallowed whole the socialistic and pragmatist philosophy doctrine that truth is simply whatever opinion wins in the media marketplace. Whether it is right or wrong is immaterial.

Daniel Henninger’s editorial page article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, “Can the Democrats Beat Bush’s Beliefs With Poll Politics?” captures the unreality that has become the Democrat’s policy position on foreign affairs.

Mr. Henninger writes: “Democrats want voters to view the November election through the fogged and bloody prism of the war in Iraq…. It is difficult to imagine that the U.S. soldiers in Iraq would regard the political debate back home as measuring up to the seriousness of what they do every day. How would you like to roll out of your bunk in al Anbar province, Mosul or Baghdad on a Sunday morning and read across the top of the local U.S. paper that everything you’ve done in Iraq for three years has merely made the terrorism threat worse? You just might lose heart a notch, a dangerous thing when fighting a war.

“But at this late stage of the campaign, Iraq-as-failure has become the central narrative in the Democrats’ strategy. A memo sent out to Democrats last week by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a strategy group led by former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg, discusses Mr. Bush’s ‘failure in Iraq, which energized Democrats and dispirited Republicans.’ It urges Democrats: ‘On Iraq, stress Bush/GOP ‘mismanagement’ and need for a ‘new direction.’ ”

Advertisers of consumer products often structure advertisements to associate their products with a mood or a sense of pleasure, often without providing specifics about the product. Advertisers appear to believe that image, at least in the Baby Boomer world, is everything.

Basing their campaign strategy on the sort of focus-group polling employed by consumer-goods advertisers, Democrats just want voters to associate their party with peace and opposition to anything that might require our military forces to enter dangerous combat. The declared intent of Islamic jihadists to subjugate or destroy all non-Muslim societies must be ignored, as it would conflict with the nebulous image that fighting back is the root cause of terrorism. Appeasement, aka “negotiating” via the UN, is the Democrat’s Ned-Lamont socialist answer.

Such was the fantasy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 when he met with Adolph Hitler in Munich to sanction National Socialist Germany’s seizure of Czechslovakia’s Sudetenland. Mr. Chamberlain happily returned to England, on the eve of World War II, proclaiming, “Peace in our time.”

Democrats have convinced themselves that dealing with terrorists is the same as stopping ordinary criminals, with arrests after the fact, public trials, and rehabilitation programs.

This follows from another liberal-socialist doctrine: crime and war are the result of unequal distribution of income, which creates aggressive behavior among those deprived of their “constitutional rights” to the same level of income as everyone else.

The Democrats, the party of John Dewey’s socialistic pragmatism, resolutely oppose the data of real-life experience and cling to the Darwinian doctrine that the world is a matter of chance, producing a process of social evolution. Yesterday’s “truth” (of course, with the exception of socialism and pragmatism) will not be today’s or tomorrow’s “truth.” With everything in a continuous state of flux, according to that theory, there is no truth, merely valid or invalid propositions. If an action works to your advantage, regardless of what happens to others, it is “valid.”

If their campaign to destroy President Bush succeeds, no matter what happens to our troops around the world or to our nation in the future, the necessary actions are, by Democrats’ pragmatic lights, “valid.”

Given liberal-socialist control of most of the opinion-forming media – newspapers, magazines, TV, movies – Democrats may win on image without substance. After three quarters of a century of educational indoctrination in the religion of socialism, too few Americans have been given the historical knowledge necessary to distinguish fact from fiction.

—

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 (www.thomasbrewton.com)

DISGUSTING

Well .. .I guess it was anything but a slow news weekend. In case, though, you have been on a camping trip for the last few days, here's the news. Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley resigned from the congress Friday afternoon. It would seem that Mr. Foley is what we can fairly call a sexual predator .. and he seems to like teenaged boys.

The gist of the story is that Mark Foley has been sending rather suggestive emails and text messages to former Congressional pages. There's no need to detail the content of those messages here. Suffice it to say that mark Foley asked these teenage boys for pictures of themselves. In one conversation he asked the young boy if his messaging was making him horny. He asked another young boy who wrote that he and his girlfriend has broken up "..did you spank it this weekend yourself?" Foley then went into a lengthy discussion with this boy about masturbation.

In the Foley case you have a sexual predator preying on young, under-aged teenage boys. Not only that, but the Republican leadership knew it! There have been many news accounts that the House Republican leadership knew of Foley's actions for perhaps a year or more ... and did NOTHING! Well, "nothing" may not be the best choice of words there. Perhaps telling Foley to knock it off and lay low may be counted on as taking action ... but it simply is not enough. These people are lawmakers. As soon as they discovered Foley's actions they should have turned the information over to the FBI or some other agency for a full investigation of Mark Foley and his actions. For al they knew this email interaction with one page from Louisiana might have been the tip of the iceberg. Surely there were conversations among House leadership as to whether or not there were other young men involved, and whether or not any had been physically violated by Foley.

This is disgusting beyond words. We're talking about a 52 year old man having sexually explicit discussions with 16-year-old boys over whom he exercised some degree of authority. This is not a situation that calls for covering your party's political rear end. This is a situation that calls for the involvement of law enforcement ... not, not later.

Some people are going to make the excuse that the Republican House leadership didn't really know that Foley's emails had a sexual content ... that they were just, as is being said, "over-friendly." Perhaps so. But there are congressional staff members who are saying that Foley's conduct and language with young aides was well known on Capitol Hill ... and to the House leadership.

I may be wrong ... often am ... but my hunch here is that the House leadership knew something was going on here, and decided to lay low and try to exercise some control over Foley. Better to keep the house than to turn in a sexual predator.

What isn't really being reported over the weekend or today is that Democrats probably knew about it also. The Republicans kept quite in the hopes that the scandal would just go away. But if the Democrats knew why didn't they expose Foley months ago ... maybe last year? Perhaps the Democrats decided to wait to expose Foley until it was effectively too late for the Republicans to salvage that House seat with a replacement candidate. The election is five weeks from tomorrow.

Let's not hear any nonsense about moral equivalency here.

Over the weekend I received emails about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, and some reminders of the alleged homosexual prostitution ring that was run out of Barney Frank's Washington DC home. Sorry .. there is no comparison here. Foley actions with these teenage boys were far, far worse than the Clinton - Lewinsky mess or whatever was going on in Barney Frank's home. In those cases the participants were willing adults. Sure, Clinton's actions brought shame on him and defiled the Whit House; and yes, he did lie about what he had done. But just the same they were both adults.

Now Foley's actions would have a moral equivalence with Bill Clinton's rape of Juanita Broaderrick, but the Democrats don't seem to be worried about that, the Republicans have enough sense not to pursue it. Clinton, by the way, has never personally denied it.

I think that the truth here is that somewhere along the line a decision was made that holding that seat in Congress was more important than going the extra mile to protect these young men who come to Washington to serve as Pages.

Would the Democrats have done the same? You bet. I do wonder, however, if this had been a Democrat congressman if the Democrats would have cranked up the machine that attacked the reputations of Broaderrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willy and Monica Lewinsky. Could the Democrats have brought themselves to attack the credibility and character of teenage boys to protect their own? I guess we'll never know, but that's really not the point here. The point here is the Republican leadership knew of this man and his actions, and did nothing.

Disgusting.

BOBBLEHEAD RAGE!

By Michelle Malkin

I'm going offline the rest of the day, but had to blog this.

From fresco rage to book rage to film rage to beauty pageant rage to Koran-dropping rage to cartoon rage to Pope rage, it's always something with the Religion of Perpetual Outrage (hat tip-Andrew Bostom via NY Daily News). Introducing...Bobblehead Rage:

A ceramic bobblehead doll of the Prophet Muhammed - created to resemble the infamous caricature published by a Danish newspaper - is being hawked online for $22.99 a pop by an ex-Marine.

The unapologetic creator, Timothy Ames, 28, said the bobblehead is similar to "dashboard Jesus" figurines that can be stuck with adhesive to flat surfaces. "I thought, 'If they flipped out over some cartoons what will they do with a dashboard Muhammed?'" Ames said from his home in Hawaii.

But Islamic experts are not amused, saying the bobbleheads could anger Muslims, whose religion strictly prohibits depictions of the prophet.

"No depiction of the prophet, even if it is positive, should be made ever - and certainly not one as ridiculous as the bobblehead Muhammed," said Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, an assistant professor at New York University. "I don't think it's about freedom of speech. This is the freedom to insult, which he shouldn't be doing."

Or else what, Professor Benite? Oh, never mind. We know:

Another warning:

Frank Peters, a professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at NYU, warned that a bobblehead Muhammed was "a really bad idea."

"Jews and Christians have gotten used to this kind of thing, but Muslims haven't," he said. "This may not be his intention, but these things have consequences."

Yes, we know. We know. We know.

Timothy Ames is now a marked man. I will add him to my prayers.

***

Flashback: Take a tour through Zombie's archive of Mo depictions throughout history.

SOMETHING'S UP IN LOUISIANA

By Michelle Malkin ·

Reader D.H. sends an interesting news item from WWLTW-TV in New Orleans:

The FBI temporarily shut down and raided a handful of local convenience stores Thursday, leading Arab store owners to decry the search-and-seizure operations as racial profiling.

Terrebonne Narcotics Task Force agents Steven Bergeron (foreground) and Shane Fletcher carry items confiscated by the FBI out of Smoke Plus in the 5500 block of West Main Street in Houma. FBI officials have not said what they confiscated or why they were at several Terrebonne stores Thursday.

The government agents targeted clothing and smoking materials during their searches, store owners said, but authorities did not reveal the reasons for the searches or whether any arrests were made by late Thursday afternoon.

Agents on the scene referred questions to the FBI field office in New Orleans, where FBI Agent John Rook said Thursday’s raids were part of a statewide sweep. Because they are based on sealed federal indictments, however, Rook said he could not discuss anything about them.

The indictments could be opened sometime today, Rook said, but had not been as of 9 a.m.

Assisting in the raids were agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Terrebonne Narcotics Task Force. A customs spokesman said that because his agency was only assisting the FBI, he could not answer any questions about the operation. Likewise, the local narcotics agents also said they had only been asked to assist and were not given any information about the operation.

Among the stores raided were Smoke Plus, at the corner of the Del Ray Bridge and West Main Street; the Amigo Mini-Mart, just on the west side of the Houma Tunnel; and NY Style and Beauty, just across the street. Other Terrebonne locations may have been raided as well, store owners said, but officials have not released a list of sites they searched.

Given how publicly averse the FBI is to charges of "racial profiling" and how politically incorrect many of its bureaucrats are, you know these raids mean business. The indictments are still sealed, but this flashback from 2002 sheds light:

Authorities are quietly investigating more than 500 Muslim and Arab small businesses across the United States to determine whether they are dispatching money raised through criminal activity in the United States to terrorist groups overseas.

The investigation into Arab businesses, many of them convenience stores, is part of a sprawling inquiry launched after Sept. 11, when law enforcement agents dramatically stepped up scrutiny of small-scale scams that they think are generating tens of millions of dollars a year for militant groups, federal officials said.

The criminal activity includes skimming the profits of drug sales, stealing and reselling baby formula, illegally redeeming huge quantities of grocery coupons, collecting fraudulent welfare payments, swiping credit card numbers and hawking unlicensed T-shirts.

Some of the criminal rings have operated in this country for decades. But until recently, law enforcement agencies paid only scant attention to the schemes because they are difficult to crack and time-consuming to prosecute. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, however, they have deployed hundreds of investigators to pursue the plots.

A number of law enforcement task forces involved in the crackdown are searching for similarities in the convenience stores' financial practices and money transfer methods to determine whether their activities are centrally directed.

As part of the overall effort, a U.S. Customs Service supercomputer program has been diverted from analyzing the flow of drug money to tracking terror funds. That effort has led to raids on Pakistani operators of jewelry kiosks in seven states, authorities said.

"It wasn't until after September 11th that we understood the magnitude of the [terrorist] fundraising from our own shores," said John Forbes, a former U.S. Customs Service official who directed a financial crimes task force in New York. "We were always looking to catch the big rats" in terror financing, he added. "But in looking for rats, thousands of ants got by."

Investigators suspect that some of the money has gone to Palestinian groups that use suicide bombings to kill Israeli civilians, including the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, federal officials said.

Senior U.S. officials said they are concerned that the inquiry might be seen as ethnic profiling but are simply going where leads take them.

"The fact is that al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas are Middle Eastern groups that are financed from the Middle East, and groups here send money back to the Middle East. So of course we have to look at them," a senior official said.

And of course the boys who cry "Islamophobes" will protest and whine and sue.

Related:

Is black-market baby formula financing terror?
Cigarette smuggling linked to terrorism

WHO'S REALLY IN DENIAL?

It's not President Bush.
by William Kristol

"Americans face the choice between two parties with two different attitudes on this war on terror."
--George W. Bush, September 28, 2006

President Bush is right. It would be nice if he weren't. The country would be better off if there were bipartisan agreement on what is at stake in the struggle against jihadist Islam. But despite areas of consensus, there is still a fundamental difference between the parties. Bush and the Republicans know we are in a serious war. It's not the Bush administration that is in a "State of Denial" (as the new Bob Woodward book has it). It's the Democrats.

Consider developments over the last week. Democrats hyped last Sunday's news stories breathlessly reporting on one judgment from April's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)--that the war in Iraq has created more terrorists. More than would otherwise have been created if Saddam were still in power? Who knows? The NIE seems not even to have contemplated how many terrorists might have been created by our backing down, by Saddam's remaining in power to sponsor and inspire terror, and the like. (To read the sections of the NIE subsequently released is to despair about the quality of our intelligence agencies. But that's another story.) In any case, the NIE also made the obvious points that, going forward, "perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," while jihadist failure in Iraq would inspire "fewer fighters . . . to carry on the fight."

What is the Democratic response to these latter judgments? Silence. The left wing of the party continues to insist on withdrawal now. The center of the party wants withdrawal on a vaguer timetable.

Bush, on other hand, understands that the only acceptable exit strategy is victory. (If, as Woodward reports, he's been bolstered in that view by Henry Kissinger, then good for Henry. Invite him to the Oval Office more often!) To that end, Bush should do more. He should send substantially more troops and insist on a change of strategy to allow a real counterinsurgency and prevent civil war. But at least he's staying and fighting. And the great majority of Republicans are standing with him. The Democrats, as Bush has put it, "offer nothing but criticism and obstruction, and endless second-guessing. The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut-and-run."

So there really is a profound difference between the parties, as Democrats are happy to acknowledge, since they think Iraq is a winning issue for them. The Democratic talking point is this: We're against Bush on Iraq, but we are as resolute as Bush in the real war on terror (understood by them to exclude Iraq). Except that they're not.

That's why last week's votes in Congress on the detainees legislation were so significant. The legislation had nothing to do with Iraq. It was a "pure" war-on-terror vote. And the parties split. Three-quarters of the Democrats in the House and Senate stood with the New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union for more rights for al Qaeda detainees, and against legislation supported by the Bush administration (as well as by John McCain and Joe Lieberman). Some Democrats in competitive races--such as Rep. Harold Ford, running for the Senate in Tennessee--supported the legislation. But it remains the case that a vote for Democrats is a vote for congressional leaders committed to kinder and gentler treatment of terrorists.

No wonder voters think the country will be safer from terrorism if the GOP retains control of Congress. And no wonder that focus groups--according to the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner--show that "attacks on Democrats for opposing any effort to stop terrorists . . . were highly effective." The Democratic pollsters recommended countering the attacks forcefully. But how? There are votes, in black and white in the Congressional Record, ready to be used in campaign ads.

The most important front in the confrontation with terror-sponsoring, WMD-seeking Islamic jihadism in the next two years may well be Iran. Republicans are viewed by a 12-point margin as the party that would be more likely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. We have been critical of the Bush administration's lassitude in attending to this task. But with sand in the diplomatic hourglass running out, voters can fairly be asked: Would Bush have more help in denying Ahmadinejad nuclear weapons from a Congress controlled by Republicans or by Democrats (whose main suggestion has been to cozy up to Iran without insisting that it verifiably suspend its nuclear program)?

Off-year elections--especially when one party controls the presidency and Congress--are almost always dominated by the expression of grievances with that party's performance. The Bush administration and the congressional leadership have given cause for grievance. But the choice is so stark this November that grievances should be put aside--if Republicans have the nerve to continue to clarify the choice over the next month. Last week was a good start.

--William Kristol