All Issues
Archive: ‹ First < 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 > Last ›
10/24/2007 | Illegal Immigration
Senate faces new immigration-bill showdown today
Arizona Star News
WASHINGTON — The Senate faces another contentious showdown on immigration today when it considers legislation designed to put thousands of illegal immigrant students on track to U.S. citizenship. Though far more limited than an immigration bill that collapsed in the Senate in June, the debate on the proposed DREAM Act will nevertheless resurrect the same warring sides. The Senate faces a vote to take up the measure today, with backers needing at least 60 votes to move forward with debate. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the chief sponsor, acknowledged that his side has solid assurances of only about 55 votes. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act would allow illegal-immigrant children who have grown up in the United States the opportunity to apply for citizenship if they graduate from high school and get two years of college or serve in the military.
Recommended Guests:
10/23/2007 | Illegal Immigration
Amnesty is BACK in the Senate; Crucial vote Wednesday
WeNeedAFence
The Senate leadership is readying a new “sneak attack” on us – a massive amnesty for illegal aliens is coming up for a vote Wednesday in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) has just filed for "cloture" on S. 2205 (the DREAM Act amnesty). That bill, masquerading under the guise of being “all about the innocent children” of illegal immigrants reaches far beyond them and would have the effect of providing amnesty to millions of people, perhaps even tens of millions, many of them adults. As our friends at NumbersUSA have said, “After the American people overwhelmingly rose up against the big compromise in June that traded an amnesty for some mediocre extra enforcement, Sen. Reid is trying to push through an amnesty WITHOUT ANY ENFORCEMENT MEASURES!.” This time there will no hearings or deliberations. Filing for cloture means that he can bring the amnesty up on Wednesday. The first vote will be on whether to allow the amnesty to come to the Senate floor for full debate and eventual vote. Everyone must emphasize to your Senators that a YES vote on cloture will be interpreted by all of us as a vote for rewarding millions of illegal aliens with amnesty.
Recommended Guests:
10/23/2007 | Iraq, Terrorism
Worried Bin Laden Urges Iraq Insurgents to 'Unite'
ABC News
Showing apparent signs of concern over events in Iraq, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged insurgents to "unite your lines into one" in an audiotape played on al Jazeera Monday. "Don't be arrogant," bin Laden warned. "Your enemies are trying to break up the jihadi groups. I urge you all to work in one united group." People familiar with bin Laden's voice say the tape appeared to be authentic, although there was no reference to any event that would indicate when it was recorded. Bin Laden's message comes at a time when U.S. strategy to split Iraqi insurgent groups from al Qaeda units appears to be working.
Recommended Guests:
10/23/2007 | Property Rights
CA Wildfires Force Mass Evacuation
Time
(SAN DIEGO) — Wildfires blown by fierce desert winds Monday reduced hundreds of Southern California homes to ashes, forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee and laid a hellish, spidery pattern of luminous orange over the drought-stricken region. Firefighters described desperate conditions that were sure to get worse in the days ahead, with hotter temperatures and high winds forecast for Tuesday. At least 16 firefighters and 25 others were reported injured since the blazes began Sunday, and one person was killed. At least 655 homes burned — about 130 in one mountain area alone — and 168 businesses and other structures were destroyed. Thousands of other buildings were threatened by more than a dozen blazes covering at least 240,000 acres, the equivalent of 374 square miles. "The sky was just red. Everywhere I looked was red, glowing. Law enforcement came barreling in with police cars with loudspeakers telling everyone to get out now," said Ronnie Leigh, 55, who fled her mobile home in northern Los Angeles County as smoke darkened the sky over the nearby ridge line. Early Tuesday, President Bush declared an emergency for the seven-county region, speeding federal disaster relief.
10/22/2007 | Education, Radical Islam
Staff Editorial: It's the issues, dummy
The Daily Colonial
Today marks the beginning of “Islamo-Facism Awareness Week” on campus. The event, made famous by the flier controversy that captured the attention of the GW community, is sponsored by the conservative group Young America’s Foundation. In response, the GW chapter of the Muslim Students Association will conduct a “Peace, Not Prejudice” campaign. According to their Facebook group, "Peace, Not Prejudice" plans to “firmly meet free speech with free speech” and to “advance campus dialogue and provide a venue for constructive academic discourse.” By reacting to the YAF’s events with a movement of their own, the MSA, in conjunction with other, co-sponsoring student organizations, is helping to raise the level of debate on GW’s campus rather than unnecessarily prolonging the firestorm over the fliers. Despite many doubting the power and impact of activism on college campuses, the exchange of ideas at a university does matter. Especially at an institution like GW, where issues are magnified as campus sits just blocks west of the White House, it is important for students to keep discourse clean, honest, and intelligent.
Recommended Guests:
10/22/2007 | Abortion
Could One Man Influence Abortion Law?
ABC News
Depending on whom you ask, Johnson County, Kan., District Attorney Phill Kline is either an agenda-driven prosecutor operating outside the law or one of the best friends the anti-abortion rights movement has ever had. And there's no lack of witnesses in his home state willing to testify about their opinion. "He's a person who is incredibly principled to the point where he sacrificed his own political career to pursue justice and uphold the constitution and the laws of the state of Kansas," said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion rights organization that organizes protests outside many Kansas clinics. Newman's Operation Rescue named Kline "Man of the Year" in 2006. But just one year earlier, Planned Parenthood – the nation's leading provider of sexual and reproductive health care (including abortions) – placed Kline on its list of "Seven Politicians You Don't Want in Your Bedroom."
Recommended Guests:
10/22/2007 | Presidential Issues
The October 21 Republican Debate
FoxNews.com
WASHINGTON — The Republican presidential candidates were fanning out across America on Monday after spending a lively evening failing to agree on who is the most conservative candidate in the White House race, but reaching consensus on the most liberal: Hillary Clinton. Sunday night’s GOP presidential primary debate in Orlando, Fla., offered some of the sharpest jabs of the campaign season but much of the argument was good-natured and went for laughter over anger. Still, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, who both had great weekends keying in on conservative voters in Florida and Washington, D.C., were left to defend their performances as governor and mayor of largely liberal Massachusetts and New York City respectively. Right out of the box, latecomer Fred Thompson accused Giuliani of supporting both abortion and sanctuary cities — taboo positions for conservatives.
Recommended Guests:
10/18/2007 | Terrorism
What form of mass murder is Al-Qaeda preparing for?
Daily Star
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is paid to think about the unthinkable. As the US Energy Department's director of intelligence, he's responsible for gathering information about the threat that a terrorist group will attack the United States with a nuclear weapon. With his shock of white hair and piercing eyes, Mowatt-Larssen looks like a man who has seen a ghost. And when you listen to a version of the briefing he has been giving recently to President George W. Bush and other top officials, you begin to understand why. He is convinced that Al-Qaeda is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that will leave the ultimate terrorist signature - a mushroom cloud. We've all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since September 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists' job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. And truly, I wish I could dismiss Mowatt-Larssen's analysis as the work of an overwrought former CIA officer with too many years in the trenches. But it's worth listening to his warnings - not because they induce more numbing paralysis, but because they might stir sensible people to take actions that could detect and stop an attack. That's why his boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, is encouraging him to speak out. They don't want to anguish later that they didn't sound the alarm in time.
Recommended Guests:
10/18/2007 | Abstinence, Education
Maine Middle School to Offer the Pill
ABC News
Pupils at a city middle school will be able to get birth control pills and patches at their student health center after the local school board approved the proposal Wednesday evening. The plan, offered by city health officials, makes King Middle School the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to students in grades 6 through 8, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. There are no national figures on how many middle schools, where most students range in age from 11 to 13, provide such services.
Recommended Guests:
10/18/2007 | Presidential Issues
Bob Jones III Backs Romney
CR Daily
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Bob Jones III, chancellor of the Christian fundamentalist school named for his family, is endorsing Republican Mitt Romney for president. Romney's campaign confirmed Jones' endorsement Tuesday. "We're proud to have Dr. Jones' support and look forward to working with him to communicate Governor Romney's message of conservative change to voters," Romney spokesman William Holley said in a statement. Jones didn't immediately respond to a message left Tuesday evening by The Associated Press. But he told a Greenville newspaper that supporting Romney is critical to make sure former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani doesn't win the GOP nomination and that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn't win the election. "If it turns out to be Giuliani and Hillary we've got two pro-choice candidates, and that would be a disaster," Jones told The Greenville News for a story on its Web site Tuesday. Romney and Jones would appear to be a political odd couple, with the Southern fundamentalist Christian throwing his support behind the Mormon who was governor of Massachusetts. But Jones said his endorsement came after he decided Romney would do the most to represent the average conservative American.
Recommended Guests:
10/17/2007 | Terrorism
Who’s Afraid of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week?
FrontPageMagazine
Why is an idea so frightening to some members of the Columbia community that they need to organize a campaign to suppress it before it is even aired? Why have some Columbians taken it upon themselves to conduct a hate campaign against students who want to discuss issues that affect us all? Why, on the other hand, were many of these same groups determined to welcome to Columbia a dictator who is providing weapons to kill American men and women in Iraq, who has called for the extermination of the Jewish state, and who presides over a regime that has murdered 4,000 gays and hung women from cranes for alleged sexual improprieties? If the welcome mat was okay for Ahmadinejad, why do these people want to deny a platform to Columbia students who are concerned about the threat of Islamo-Fascism? Is Islamo-Fascism a threat? In fact, this is exactly the kind of question that will be discussed during the week of Oct. 22-26 at Columbia, unless campus leftists obstruct it the way they did Jim Gilchrist’s attempt to discuss the border issue last year. The fascist threat is real, and not just in Iraq or Iran.
Recommended Guests:
10/17/2007 | Education
Ban on 'Mom' and 'Dad' sparks call for exodus
WorldNetDaily - Schwarzenegger signs law outlawing terms perceived as negative to 'gays'
"Mom and Dad" as well as "husband and wife" effectively have been banned from California schools under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who with his signature also ordered public schools to allow boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa, if they choose. "We are shocked and appalled that the governor has blatantly attacked traditional family values in California," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute. "With this decision, Gov. Schwarzenegger has told parents that their values are irrelevant. "Arnold Schwarzenegger has delivered young children into the hands of those who will introduce them to alternative sexual lifestyles," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, which worked to defeat the plans. "This means children as young as five years old will be mentally molested in school classrooms. "We're calling upon every California parent to pull their child out of California's public school system," Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, told WND.
Recommended Guests:
10/17/2007 | Illegal Immigration
DHS Secretary Chertoff may overrule Judge who tried to stop border fence
Arizona Daily Star
PHOENIX — The nation's top security official may use his power to unilaterally trump a federal court order halting construction of a fence on a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is weighing whether to invoke a section of federal law that allows him to exempt border construction projects from any law, his press aide, Russ Knocke, told Capitol Media Services. That includes requirements for studies on environmental impacts of federally funded projects. The move would not be unprecedented: Chertoff used the power at least twice since it was granted. In 2005 he decided to build fencing near San Diego without conducting environmental studies. And in January he issued a waiver from all laws for a project along the edge of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Southwestern Arizona. The possibility of Chertoff again exempting his agency from environmental laws comes days after a federal judge in Washington stopped construction of a nearly two-mile stretch of fence at the foot of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area southeast of Tucson. The conservation area, designated by Congress in 1988, is described on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Web site as ecologically "one of the most important riparian areas in the United States."
Recommended Guests:
10/16/2007 | Terrorism
Al Qaeda in Iraq terror group is on the wane, say experts
DAILY NEWS
WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda in Iraq, once the war's most bloodthirsty and lethal insurgent group, is badly damaged and being forced to fend off both the U.S. and former Sunni allies, intelligence experts said Monday. But military and counterterror officials say it's premature to declare victory over the group that pledged loyalty to Osama Bin Laden long after its murder spree began in the summer of 2003. "Al Qaeda in Iraq has been dealt harsh blows in the past and bounced back," a defense intelligence official warned. "Don't count them out." When Al Qaeda in Iraq's Jordanian leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was slain in 2006, many wrongly thought it would cripple the group, several U.S. officials noted. "New cream rises quickly to the top," the defense intelligence official said. Evan Kohlmann, a government consultant who painstakingly tracks Iraq's diverse insurgency, said the Al Qaeda franchise there - now led by an Egyptian - has indeed "reached a crisis point." "To say their backs are broken is not right. They do have their backs against the wall," Kohlmann said. "Clearly there are some positive trends," agreed a U.S. counterterrorism official.
Recommended Guests:
10/16/2007 | Economy
Oil Prices Rise to New Intraday Record
Time
(SINGAPORE)— Oil prices rose to new intraday highs in Asia Tuesday on fears Turkey will pursue Kurdish rebels into Iraq and disrupt oil supplies in the region. A weakening U.S. dollar, low U.S. crude inventories and increased buying by investment funds also supported prices, analysts said. The Turkish government's decision Monday to ask Parliament for permission to pursue Kurdish rebels into Iraq stoked the worries about disrupted oil supplies. "Whenever there is any escalation in political tensions in the Middle East, oil markets become concerned," said David Moore, a commodity strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. "There is production and there are pipelines that people worry may be affected if there are any issues in Iraq."
Recommended Guests:
10/16/2007 | Iran
Gates says all options on table for Iran
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday all options for dealing with Iran must remain open and called for international pressure and tougher sanctions to curb Tehran's nuclear aspirations. "With a government of this nature, only a united front of nations will be able to exert enough pressure to make Iran abandon its nuclear aspirations -- a source of great anxiety and instability in the region," Gates said in speech to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. "Our allies must work together on robust, far-reaching, and strongly enforced economic sanctions," he said, also noting a need for political and diplomatic pressure. "And, as President (George W.) Bush has said, with this regime, we must also keep all options on the table," said Gates in comments prepared for delivery to the nonprofit group that advocates a link between U.S. and Israeli security interests.
Recommended Guests:
10/15/2007 | Terrorism
Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled
Washington Post
The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq. But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past. "I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.
Recommended Guests:
10/15/2007 | Economy, Iran
Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Bill Directing Divestment from Iran
CA.GOV
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed AB 221 by Assemblymember Joel Anderson (R-El Cajon) which prohibits the state’s pension funds from investing in companies with active business in Iran. “I couldn’t be more proud to sign this bill,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “Last year I signed legislation to show our defiance against the inhumane murder and genocide in Sudan. This year I am pleased to support additional efforts to further prevent terrorism by doing what’s right with our investment portfolio and signing this legislation to divest from Iran.” “As we all know, money is the mother’s milk of terrorism. I was never more proud of our Governor then when he announced at the United Nations that he would sign this anti-terror bill. At a time when the world is desperate for leadership, the Governor has proven that courageous leaders can make a difference in fighting evil,” said Assemblymember Anderson. AB 221 by Assemblymember Anderson creates the California Public Divest from Iran Act which prohibits CalPERS and CalSTRS from investing public employee retirement funds in a company with business operations in Iran. CalPERS, the state’s employee retirement fund, is the largest pension fund in the nation and CalSTRS, the state’s public education retirement fund, is the second largest pension fund in the nation.
Recommended Guests:
10/15/2007 | Iraq, Terrorism
Al Qaeda Dealt Devastating Blow in Iraq
FoxNews.com
The U.S. military says it has dealt devastating and potentially irreversible blows to Al Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq, the Washington Post reported Monday. But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States, the newspaper said. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. Simultaneously, the intelligence community, and some military members, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown surprising resilience in the past. "I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said to the Washington Post of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization, the Post reported.
Recommended Guests:
10/12/2007 | Iraq
Pentagon supports British troop cuts
USA Today
LONDON — Britain's plan to halve its troop levels in Iraq was based on improved security in southern Iraq and was "closely coordinated" with U.S. commanders, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday. Gates' comments after meeting with British officials were another element in the Bush administration's attempts to blunt criticism that the United Kingdom has been distancing itself from U.S. policy in Iraq. Britain, long the United States' strongest ally in Iraq, announced this week that it expected to reduce its troop presence there by half. The British have about 5,000 troops there and expect to make the withdrawals by next spring. Gates met with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Britain's defense secretary, Des Browne. Under Tony Blair, Brown's predecessor, Britain closely aligned itself with the United States in pursuing the war in Iraq. Browne said the plans to reduce forces were based largely on progress in the Basra area, where most British forces are based.
Recommended Guests: