What Part of 'Enforcement' Don't They Understand?

What Part of 'Enforcement' Don't They Understand?
Michelle Malkin
December 1, 2004

The obtuseness of the open-borders lobby never ceases to amaze. Here we are, three years after the 9/11 hijackers easily exploited lax borders, and the OBL continues to argue that cracking down on illegal immigration and tightening terrorist-friendly loopholes are "anti-immigrant."

Banging. Head. Against. The. Wall.

How do you maintain sanity when wading through the emotional drivel that passes for the OBL's reasoning? Tip: Whenever they say "anti-immigrant," substitute "pro-enforcement." And shout it at the top of your lungs.

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism. By smearing the overwhelming majority of Americans who support real borders as racists and xenophobes, the OBL obscures its deadly agenda: sabotaging our existing immigration laws and blocking any new efforts to punish those who abuse the system.

Flavia Jimenez of the National Council of La Raza illustrates perfectly this blustering open-borders tactic in a hysterical "action alert" this week titled: "STOP ANTI IMMIGRANT PROVISIONS FROM BECOMING PART OF THE INTELLIGENCE REFORM BILL." La Raza and their fellow travelers argue that tough enforcement measures "needlessly scapegoat all immigrants," are "extraneous" and "harsh," "would not have prevented the terrorist attacks and will not make us safer," and are "non-solutions that will only drive people further underground and cause panic among immigrant communities."

"Extraneous"? These same critics had no problem when a $1 billion illegal alien health care bailout for border hospitals was tacked on to the mammoth Medicare Prescription Drug bill.

"Non-solutions"? The 9/11 commission itself blamed "a lack of well-developed counterterrorism measures as part of border security, and an immigration system not able to deliver on its basic commitments, much less support counterterrorism."

"Anti-immigrant"? If you actually read the immigration enforcement provisions supported by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner and his fellow maverick House Republicans (side note: just once, I'd like to see the mainstream media call a Republican other than John McCain a "maverick"), you will see clearly and unequivocally that these vital measures are anti-terrorist. Anti-criminal. Anti-fraud. And above all, pro-enforcement.

Open-border activists not only oppose the most-publicized provision that would deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens, they also oppose provisions:

Adding at least 2,000 new border patrol agents, 800 new interior enforcement investigators, and 150 additional consular officials overseas.

Increasing illegal alien detention facility space by 2,500 beds.

Expanding the number of foreign airports with counterterrorist passenger prescreening programs.

Creating a uniform identity document rule for all aliens present in the United States

Toughening criminal penalties for using or trading false identification documents.

Reducing bureaucratic delays that allow illegal aliens who obtained fraudulent visas to re-enter or remain in the country even after their visas have been revoked.

Creating an information- and intelligence-sharing system at the Department of Homeland Security to track terrorist travel tactics, patterns, trends and practices and disseminate the data to front-line personnel at ports of entry and immigration benefits offices.

Making it easier to deport terrorists and alien supporters of terrorism by curbing their avenues for appeal and delay.

Speeding up the development of a long-delayed entry-exit system to guard against terrorists slipping through the cracks.

Requiring asylum-seekers tied to guerrilla, militant or terrorist organizations, and who claim asylum without submitting corroborating evidence, to provide credible proof of their "persecution."

As usual, mainstream reporting on these specific immigration-related measures at issue has been skimpier than a Bratz doll's wardrobe. That's because so many national editors themselves subscribe to the open-borders gospel. Since 9/11, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have published countless news items and editorials decrying immigration enforcement: sob stories about families caught evading deportation orders; foreign students complaining about new registration requirements violating their "privacy"; Latino activists outraged about border patrol agents doing their jobs; Middle Eastern tourists protesting visa screening measures; and illegal aliens clamoring for protection of their "rights."

Rep. Sensenbrenner and his GOP colleagues face not only the OBL on the left and in the media, but also at the highest echelons of the Bush administration. The mavericks need all the help they can get. Before it's too late, call the White House now and yell: It's the enforcement, stupid!

this is one of the issues i believe needs addressing, just as Michelle Malkin does, now!. north and south, tighten 'em up.

Vicente Fox (down south) isn't helping matters in the least. and up north is completely laissez-faire.

nope. this is high on the list of "Things To Do" -- now!

A Broken Window Into Civilization

A Broken Window Into Civilization
Kathleen Parker
December 1, 2004

As we marveled over the basketball brawl between players and spectators at a recent Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons game - and then the fourth-quarter melee between Clemson University and University of South Carolina football players - I kept thinking, "broken windows."

The "broken windows" theory of social breakdown goes more or less like this: If a broken window in a building is left unrepaired, pretty soon all the windows are broken, and so goes the neighborhood.

By now familiar, the theory was conceived and popularized by Harvard professors James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They wrote in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly that if broken windows are not repaired, "the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside."

"Or consider a sidewalk," wrote Wilson and Kelling. "Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars."

The authors determined that the way to prevent vandalism - and thus more serious forms of crime and urban deterioration - was to fix the broken windows. To clean up the sidewalk. To fix the small things before they become big things.

As mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani put the theory to work by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes - subway fare evasion, for example - and major crime dropped significantly.

Wilson and Kelling explained that the reason one broken window leads to more broken windows is because human beings respond to these signs as an absence of caring or of anyone being in charge. In the absence of authority - the symbolic adult - children tend to behave badly. Order breaks down. Civility disintegrates.

Given which, it seems reasonable to extend the broken windows theory to the larger culture. Why wouldn't a similar lack of adult attention to standards of human civility eventually result in the cultural equivalent of broken windows?

It does not seem a stretch that what we witnessed on the basketball court and the football field is merely the inevitable conclusion of the general coarsening we've witnessed in the culture the past few decades.

Where Wilson and Kelling considered broken buildings and littered sidewalks, we might consider a profane and sex-saturated culture in which coarse language, base human interaction and incivility are no longer the exception but the norm.

In such a climate, shock jocks and post-pubescent television producers think scatological humor and titillation on public airwaves is a hoot. It's knee-slappingly funny during family time - the more and better to offend.

Setting aside for a moment the utter banality of what passes for entertainment - and the yawn that has replaced contempt amid extreme familiarity - such cultural coarsening nourishes the impression that nothing matters and no one cares.

Parents struggling to raise decent, well-mannered children in this swamp know, of course, that everything matters. Even the words we use. When we ignore the little niceties - tolerating coarse language or behavior in public - we invite larger fractures in civilization, which is a fragile facade after all.

Talking like this, of course, will get you labeled a rube, a prude, or worse - a censor. What's with profanity, anyway? They're only words. Comedian George Carlin, who is funny without the seven words he built his most famous skit around, made us feel silly for caring about language.

As for the relentless fascination with variations on ye olde bump 'n' grind, confusion sets in. What's wrong with sex? Not one thing - in the right place and time. But the courtesy of observing certain rules of decorum - previously known as manners and once taken for granted - is passe. Soooooo whenever.

It is considered sophisticated, on the other hand, to ridicule America's "obsession" with such things as Janet Jackson's nipple, famously revealed during her "wardrobe malfunction" in the Super Bowl halftime show. It was just a breast, for heaven's sake! What's the biggie?

Nipple-schmipple. No it wasn't just a breast. A mother nursing her infant is just a breast. Janet and Justin's little prank was a deliberate act of juvenile defiance, a self-indulgent, narcissistic display by emotionally stunted adults playing fast and loose with the rules for their own amusement. It was a middle finger shoved in Middle America's face.

The point then, as now, is only this. Either we believe in and honor community standards or we don't. Ignoring simple standards, constructed to protect and advance civilization, is like ignoring the broken window. In time, the culture - like the neighborhood - goes to you-know-where in a handbasket.

okay. i like profanity and all things sexual, but that's me. in the times and places appropriate. and that doesn't mean waiting in line at the grocery, parked in a car at the bank, or in the darkened seats of a movie theatre. but all the other stuff? *nodding* yeah. it's that sense of entitlement some have. that they're above the rules. and, if they get caught breaking them, "Daddy", or their high-priced attorney, will find some way of getting them excused. those that disrupt should not be excused. too many get away with "wrong" these days. respect for others completely eludes some people.

some are very good at "pretending" to care about others (they can talk the talk but haven't a clue how to walk the walk) when it is only themselves and their selfishness that counts. what they need and want, everyone else be damned. *whispering* entitlement.

i agree with this article.

Attack on Decency

Attack on Decency
Walter E. Williams
December 1, 2004

Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," Nicollette Sheridan's towel malfunction and naked leap into the arms of Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens in a promotion before ABC's "Monday Night Football," and the recent Detroit Pistons/Indiana Pacers game melee are just the most recent signs of a new culture that has emerged among Americans, and it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Years ago, the lowest of lowdown men wouldn't use the kind of language that's routinely used today not only in the presence of women but often to women. To see men sitting while a woman was standing on a public conveyance used to be unthinkable. Children addressing adults by their first name was also unthinkable, not to mention the use of foul language in the presence of or to adults. How about guys and girls walking down the street whilst the guy has his hand in the girl's rear pocket?

What might explain the differences in behavior today versus yesteryear? A significant part of the explanation is seen by recognizing that society's first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values. Customs, traditions and moral values are those important thou-shalt-nots such as: thou shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat. They also include respect for parents, teachers and others in authority plus those courtesies one might read in Emily Post's rules of etiquette.

The importance of customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. There are not enough cops, and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and the criminal justice system are the last desperate lines of defense for a civilized society. Unfortunately, too many of us see police, laws, and the criminal and civil justice systems as society's first line of defense.

For nearly a half-century, the nation's liberals, along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts, have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. Many in this generation have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes. Instead, what's moral or immoral is a matter of convenience, personal opinion, or what is or is not criminal.

During the 1960s, the education establishment launched its agenda to undermine lessons children learned from their parents and the church with fads like "values clarification." So-called sex-education classes were simply indoctrination that sought to undermine family/church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passe, and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortion. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extra-legal measures to assist teenage abortions with neither parental knowledge nor consent.

Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth, and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works and what doesn't.

Customs, traditions and moral values have been discarded without an appreciation for the role they played in creating a civilized society, and now, we're paying the price. What's worse is that instead of a return to what worked, many of us fail to make the connection and insist "there ought to be a law." As such, it points to another failure of the so-called "great generation" -- the failure to transmit to their children what their parents transmitted to them.

Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure

Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure

"At the risk of giving away the ending, it's all liberals' fault."

Amuse your conservative friends and annoy your liberal neighbors with the Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure. This incredibly lifelike action figure looks just like the beautiful Ann Coulter, and best of all... it sounds like Ann, too! Ann recorded these classic Coulter sayings especially for this action figure.

Push the button on the figure, and you'll hear such "Coulterisms" as:

"Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take more of our money, kill babies, and discriminate on the basis of race."

"At least when right-wingers rant, there's a point."

"Swing voters are more appropriately known as the 'idiot voters' because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you're either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster."

"Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil. What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?"

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like Liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

This highly collectible doll comes in a display box with information highlighting Ann's unique contributions to America's political discourse. If you can't get enough Ann Coulter, you'll want to order the Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure today!

* * * * *

Oh, SantaBaby! Put an Ann Coulter doll under my tree, please!

*laughing*

This is fabulous!

Madame Hillary: The Road to the White House - Book Review

Hillary: dishonest, grasping, and corrupt -- and now, says R. Emmett Tyrrell, she's going to do everything she can to become President

"This is a woman who's been first lady, who's lived in the White House and shared power with a president," says one of Hillary's fellow Senators. "Her ambition is not the Senate leadership. . . . It's obvious she has a much greater goal in mind. Her ambition is the White House, with all the moves to prepare the way." Now, R. Emmett Tyrrell and Mark Davis reveal in Madame Hillary: The Road to the White House that not only is Hillary determined to be President: she has the power, the influence, and the determination to attain that goal.

Tyrrell's American Spectator magazine was one of the Bill Clinton administration's most formidable opponents. For eight solid years it remained a persistent (as well as a devastatingly perceptive and witty) obstacle to the Clintons' attempts to hoodwink the public and whitewash their own corruption. Now Tyrrell, the author of Boy Clinton, has Hillary in his sights again! He reveals that her focus from the first day in the Senate (and long before that as well) has been to capture the presidency - and as a Senator puts it: "She's more disciplined than in the White House, and more poisonously partisan than Bill."

Tyrrell details her plans to capture the presidency -- with help from the liberal media establishment, which continues to treat her adoringly and ignore uncomfortable questions about her record. With an insider's access to Hillary's Senate colleagues and other key players, he examines in detail several strategies she may use to win. He also explains how she distorts the Clinton administration's sorry record in order to position herself for her own run for the Oval Office, forecasts the damage that a President Hillary might inflict upon the nation - and best of all, shows how she can be stopped. A sampling of what you'll discover:

• The Basic Hillary: abundant evidence that this hero of the Left is in fact little more than a controlling personality and a self-promoting dynamo
  
  

• Why Bill Clinton's decision to run for President in 1992 was the most brilliant choice the Clintons ever made -- and how Hillary plans to duplicate it in 2004 or 2008
  
  

• 2004 or 2008? Why, despite intense pressure from some of the Democratic party's heaviest hitters to run in 2004, 2008 looks like Hillary's best chance (although that could change quickly)
  
  

• How Hillary did all she could through 2003 to detract, distract, and denigrate her party's presidential hopefuls -- including trying to keep wll-heeled Democrats from supporting other candidates financially, thereby keeping her options open for 2004
  
  

• Howard Dean: why his hostility to the Clintons is real, and poses a genuine threat to Hillary
  
  

• The long-term strategy that might compel Hillary to run for Vice President in 2004
  
  

• How Hillary and her supporters might not run in a single primary, and then engineer a takeover of the Democratic convention in order to win the big prize
  
  

• Skillful ways Hillary has managed the transition from First Lady to Senator -- and even affected a deceptive veneer of bipartisanship and willingness to compromise
  
  

• Hillary's charm: says a fellow Senator, "She stares at you across the table, those eyes cold, calculating. She holds a grudge. She looks like she has ice water in her veins. . . . Her every action betrays a deep-seated hatred of conservatism"
  
  

• Why Hillary's attacks on the Bush administration are not logically planned thrusts in a strategic attack -- and why she prefers not to work off a hard and fast plan against Bush
  
  

• How candidate Hillary will try to run to the Right in a presidential campaign, although in a Hillary presidency she will govern from the hard Left
  
  

• Saul Alinsky: the astonishing truth about Hillary's radical ideological mentor -- and how, despite her disavowals, she continues to follow his program down to the smallest detail
  
  

• Hillary's Iraq War juggling act: how she managed to hold a dizzying variety of contradictory positions -- all in service of keeping her presidential ambitions afloat
  
  

• The four-step approach that both Bill and Hillary have used to great effect to blunt criticism and silence questions about the many blemishes on the Clinton record
  
  

• Living History: subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which her book reveals Hillary's vengeful, paranoid, grudge-holding tendencies
  
  

• How Hillary unscrupulously used the death of Daniel Patrick Moynihan to defy Senate tradition and position herself as a major power broker
  
  

• Bill Clinton's administration: how its lack of accomplishments could actually improve Hillary's chances to become President in her own right
  
  

• Hillary's private life? "I don't think she's had one," says Dick Morris -- evidence that without the narcissistic appeal of the klieg lights and applause, she would have no real identity
  
  

• The long-term strategic costs of the Democratic party's involvement with the Clintons: how they have weakened the party that nevertheless continues to fawn over them
  
  

• Abortion: how Hillary's unbending support for legalized abortion may actually end up hurting her chances to become President -- and her clever attempts to recast her support for abortion as an anti-Big Government position
  
  

• President Hillary: how she would be likely to govern -- and what conservatives will have to do in order to survive

There's a great deal at stake in Hillary's quest for the presidency. Says an Arkansas politician: "Hillary is the ideologue, the true-blue leftist." Packed with eye-opening facts and incisive insights, Madame Hillary proves conclusively that a Hillary victory in 2004 or 2008 would be an unmitigated disaster for our nation, doing damage that would take generations to repair. As Tyrrell puts it, "Freedom is the cause. And we need to show that if Madame Hillary loses, freedom wins." Madame Hillary gives you the ammunition you need to do just that.

Secretary and Son

Secretary and Son
Kofi Annan isn't Kojo's keeper, but he can't shirk responsibility for the U.N.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 12:00 a.m. EST

"He is a grown man, and I don't get involved with his activities and he doesn't get involved with mine."

Thus did the U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan distance himself at speed Monday from news that his own son, Kojo Annan, had received money right up until early this year from one of the U.N.'s prime contractors under the Oil for Food program. The elder Mr. Annan pronounced himself "disappointed," "surprised" and--lest he look completely clueless--able to understand "the perception problem for the U.N."

But at no point did the secretary-general suggest that he himself bore any responsibility for this glaring conflict of interest. That evasion deserves a closer look. It is a terrific cameo for the U.N. mindset that brought us the Oil for Food swindle in the first place--a culture in which secrecy is the norm, the buck stops nowhere, and some of the resulting surprises have most recently have included at least $17 billion grafted out of a U.N. relief program for Iraq, charges of rape and pedophilia among U.N. peacekeepers in Africa--and now this tale of the secretary-general's family ties.

If we go by U.N. chain of command, Kofi Annan is, however, correct that he cannot be held responsible for the activities of his grown son. One might hope, of course, that a U.N. secretary-general out of deference to the dignity of his own office would make a more diligent attempt to keep an eye on the business activities of his close kin. Instead, the discovery of Kojo Annan's ties to U.N. contractor Cotecna Inspection Services SA has required four separate bouts in which the press uncovered further financial links between Cotecna and the younger Mr. Annan.

The first round came in early 1999, just after Swiss-based Cotecna won a crucial U.N. contract to inspect Oil for Food relief goods filtering past sanctions into Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Back then, Secretary-General Annan was apparently surprised to learn he had any family ties to a major U.N. contractor--but gave us to understand that the pecuniary cord had been cut. This past year brought yet more surprises for the secretary-general, via disclosures eked out by the press in March, September and November. The current picture is that Kojo Annan's consultancy for Cotecna lapsed on the same day the company won the U.N. contract, Dec. 31, 1998 (not three weeks earlier, as the secretary-general's office previously conceded). For the following five-plus years, which comes to about twice the time Kojo Annan spent actually working for Cotecna, the company paid him $2,500 a month not to compete with its business. That would have summed to at least $150,000, plus incidentals for which the U.N. has as yet supplied no total.

It is a disturbing pattern that this information had to be dredged up after-the-fact, in fragments, by the press, rather than being publicly disclosed at the time by a secretary-general who has better access both to U.N. records and to his own son. What Secretary-General Annan neglected to mention, moreover, is that he himself does bear responsibility for how his Secretariat handles its procurement procedures, and what level of disclosure the U.N. requires of its contractors, and provides to the public. Instead, Mr. Annan miscast the case--and not for the first time--saying "I have no involvement with granting of contracts, either on this Cotecna one, or others."
That's not true. Under Oil for Food, there were two basic kinds of contracts. There were tens of thousands of deals signed by Saddam's regime with oil buyers and relief sellers. That was one kind of contract, which the U.N. was supposed to monitor. And then there were a handful of contracts signed by the U.N. Secretariat itself, with companies hired to help the U.N. monitor Saddam's Oil for Food deals. The contract that Mr. Annan referred to as "this Cotecna one," as if he weren't quite sure what whichamahoosy everyone was talking about, belonged to the handful signed by the Secretariat. That "Cotecna one" (rolled over into the Cotecna two) was handled by the U.N. Procurement Division. And the U.N. Procurement Division reports to the secretary-general.

Not that one would expect the secretary-general to spend long nights poring over details of every contractor hired by his own Procurement Division. But it is reasonable to expect that somewhere in the multibillion-dollar procurement operations of the United Nations there would be a functional mechanism to require disclosure by all U.N. contractors of such details as, say, a stream of payments to the immediate family of a top U.N. official.

That is not merely a matter, as Secretary-General Annan suggested, of "perception of conflict of interests." Even if nothing wrong gets done, it is a conflict of interest. Both Cotecna and Kojo Annan, through his lawyers, have denied any wrongdoing. Fine. But given that the U.N. is supposed to be a public institution, not a privately held secret society, what's needed here is systematic full disclosure. Had this been the prevailing climate at the U.N. during Oil for Food, there would have been far fewer opportunities for Saddam to scam billions out of the program, and maybe even a lot fewer surprises for the secretary-general.

Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.