The city of Houston, Texas is in the process of installing 250 to 300 cameras at downtown intersections for the stated purpose of preventing and fighting crime and terrorism. The cameras are part of a security initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Houston began installing the cameras last summer. According to the city, they have already been able to catch car thieves in the act. The city also says that the cameras will be useful in identifying perpetrators after they’ve committed their crime.

More than 50 cameras already have been installed around the George R. Brown Convention Center, Discovery Green Park, the theater district and Minute Maid Park. Every downtown intersection will be equipped with a camera. A city spokesman says that the cameras will allow police to monitor any scene from several viewpoints at once rather than having to staff events with officers surveying the scene in binoculars.

Big Sis is doing her thing again.

Houston has spent about $14 million in federal grant funding on the camera program, which it expects to finish by the end of January. The money comes from Urban Area Security Initiative funds doled out annually by Homeland Security to regions across the country.

In recent years, Houston has received an estimated $18 million to $20 million, money to spend on initiatives to prevent and detect terrorism.

Meanwhile, at America’s airports, The TSA continues to become intimately involved with America citizens.

And, while President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and his concerned minions tighten security on us average American Citizens, for our own safety, guess what they’re doing about securing our borders? 

Compared to everything they’re doing to us, not a whole heckuva lot.  There is some good news, though.

Yesterday, American authorities found a sophisticated tunnel used to smuggle drugs between Mexico and San Diego, the second such discovery in the region in less than a month.

The half-mile tunnel runs from a house in Tijuana to a warehouse in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area, according to the San Diego Tunnel Task Force.

The statement that they released went on to say that Federal border patrol, drug enforcement, immigration, and customs enforcement agents in the task force arrested several suspects and seized an undetermined amount of marijuana in a tractor-trailer on U.S. soil, the statement said.

Authorities believed more marijuana is still being stored inside the tunnel. Agents are working with the Mexican military on the investigation.

Officials are going to release further details of the probe this afternoon.

Earlier this month, federal agents made one of the largest pot busts in the United States when they confiscated 20 tons of marijuana they said was smuggled into the country through another tunnel connecting warehouses on either side of California’s border with Mexico. Mexican authorities seized more than four tons of pot from the warehouse south of the border.

The secret passageway ran the length of six football fields and had lighting, ventilation and a rail system to send loads of illegal drugs from Mexico into California.

And, is a related story, Obama is pushing Congress to pass the DREAM Act.  The DREAM Act is a piece of legislation introduced by Sen. Orin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL].  It is supposed to offer a six-year pathway to citizenship for the offspring of illegal aliens, which involves either a college or military commitment.

Per U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, the legislation actually breaks down this way:

1. The DREAM Act Is NOT Limited to Children, And It Will Be Funded On the Backs Of Hard Working, Law-Abiding Americans

2. The DREAM Act PROVIDES SAFE HARBOR FOR ANY ALIEN, Including Criminals, From Being Removed or Deported If They Simply Submit An Application

3. Certain Criminal Aliens Will Be Eligible For Amnesty Under The DREAM Act

4. Estimates Suggest That At Least 2.1 Million Illegal Aliens Will Be Eligible For the DREAM Act Amnesty. In Reality, We Have No Idea How Many Illegal Aliens Will Apply

5. Illegal Aliens Will Get In-State Tuition Benefits

6. The DREAM Act Does Not Require That An Illegal Alien Finish Any Type of Degree (Vocational, Two-Year, or Bachelor’s Degree) As A Condition of Amnesty

7. The DREAM Act does not require that an illegal alien serve in the military as a condition for amnesty, and There is ALREADY A Legal Process In Place For Illegal Aliens to Obtain U.S. Citizenship Through Military Service

8. Despite Their Current Illegal Status, DREAM Act Aliens Will Be Given All The Rights That Legal Immigrants Receive—Including The Legal Right To Sponsor Their Parents and Extended Family Members For Immigration

9. Current Illegal Aliens Will Get Federal Student Loans, Federal Work Study Programs, and Other Forms of Federal Financial Aid

10. DHS Is Prohibited From Using the Information Provided By Illegal Aliens Whose DREAM Act Amnesty Applications Are Denied To Initiate Their Removal Proceedings or Investigate or Prosecute Fraud in the Application Process

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has tentatively scheduled a vote for this Monday on the Dream Act. 

So, allow me a moment to try and grasp this.   Americans are being treated like non-citizens by this administration and non-citizens may be granted the rights of a citizen of the country that they illegally entered by this same administration and its minions? 

Is it just me or is there something awfully screwy going on around here?

According to Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary, the intimate, intrusive actions that average Americans are experiencing at the hand of the TSA in our airports could be put in place on buses, trains, and boats.

Big Sis’ excuse is that [Islamic] Terrorists will continue to look for cracks in America’s security, making tighter security standards necessary.

Appearing Monday night on The Charlie Rose Show on PBS, Big Sis said:

[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through.

 I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?

It is no coincidence that she made these comments one day before one of the nation’s busiest travel days. She made these comments in spite of a widespread public outcry over newly implemented airport screening measures that involve intimate body scanning and pat downs.

Of course, Napalitano justified the new security measures as necessary to the stopping of terrorists. Funny, Israel does not use them, and they are a prime target, also.

In response to the question: “What will they [terrorists] be thinking in the future?”, Napolitano said that her agency is now looking into ways to make other popular means of travel safer for passengers and commuters.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, introduced legislation this past September in favor of testing of body scanners at some federal buildings.

The nekkid body scanners are already being used at a Florida Federal Courthouse, where some 35,000 images have already been saved.

John Pistole, who heads the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), has been hitting the cable News channels defending the new measures.

On Monday, Pistole said that while he understood everyone’s concerns (yeah, right), the new measures would remain in place.

Members of both the House and the Senate have complained that the public should have been informed before the pat-downs and body-imaging techniques were put into practice.

Because of the outcry by American citizens, any move to implement new security screening measures for other modes of mass transportation is going to be met with a lot of resistance.

According to Big Sis, we just need to analyze the poor widdle Islamic Terrorists and try to figure out what makes them so mean:

The long-term is, how do we get out of this having to have an ever-increasing security apparatus because of terrorists and a terrorist attack? I think having a better understanding of what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful.

We don’t know much. (I’ll say.) If you were to try and devise a template about what connects this terrorist to this terrorist and how they were raised and what schools they went to and their socioeconomic status, or this or that, it’s all over the map.

I’ll give you a clue…STUDY ISLAM AND PROFILE.

I think there’s some important work that’s being done on that but…the Secretary of Homeland Security cannot wait for that.

This administration, time and time again, has shown that they perceive the American public as a bunch of ignorant sheeple, to be cared for from cradle to grave and led around by their shepherd’s crook.

The Administration did not announce these new security measures, because they thought that Americans would just passively go along with them.

Remember the story about putting a frog in a pan of water and placing it on a stove?   The story explains that if you turn the heat up gradually, the frog adjusts to the conditions and stays in the pan, until it is eventually par-boiled.

That’s what is happening to us, America.  Obama and his bunch expected us to simply adjust to these new security measures without saying a word. 

Between the unwanted usurpation of America’s wishes that is Obamacare, to Obama’s new touchy feely Draconian Security measures, he and his administration are attempting to lead the country around like a bunch of ignorant sheep.

What they did not count on and still do not understand, is the American spirit.  We are a stubborn lot, or in Biblical terms, a stiff-necked people.

The spirit that flowed through our pioneer ancestors, still resides in the people of this nation.  That’s what sets us apart for other nations.  That spirit of freedom that caused America to be carved from a hostile wilderness, the faith that Americans can overcome any obstacle that is thrown against us, thanks to the inalienable rights bestowed upon us by Our Creator.  Our rights do not come from some totalitarian idiot who insists that we share our wealth and give up our freedom for the greater good of the state.

This Administration can double-down on Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals all they want.  They can preach government expansion and anti-capitalism until they are blue in the face.  The American people have awakened and aren’t buying it.  Please reference November 2nd, 2010, if you do not believe me.  That’s why President Barack Hussein Obama’s popularity has hit 39% in the Zogby Poll this week.

And that’s also why the symbol of our country is not a frog.  It’s an eagle.

North Korea launched a rocket attack against a South Korean island near their western border Tuesday, burning buildings, killing at least two marines and injuring 16 others. The attack was in response to military drills by South Korea in the area.

South Korea returned fire and launched fighter jets in response to the strike They claimed that the “inhumane” attack on civilian areas violated the 1953 armistice halting the Korean War. The two sides are technically still at war. A peace treaty was never negotiated.

Added to the tension is North Korea’s claim that it has a new uranium enrichment facility. Not to mention the fact that North Korea launched this attack just six weeks after their dear leader Kim Jong Il proclaimed his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his heir apparent.

America has tens of thousands of troops stationed in South Korea. President Barack Hussein Obama’s administration condemned the attack and called on North Korea to “halt its belligerent action,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in Washington. He also said the United States is “firmly committed” to South Korea’s defense, and to the “maintenance of regional peace and stability.”

In a surprisingly related story…

The U.N. Human Rights Council has presented our nation with 228 recommendations from 56 countries urging the U.S. to improve human rights for Native Americans, end the death penalty, eliminate racial disparities, stop torture, ratify key international treaties and more.

The council’s first review of the U.S. rights record took place Nov. 5 as part of the Universal Periodic Review, a mechanism by the U.N. General Assembly in 2006 to review human rights records of all 192 U.N. member states every four years. And the Obama administration, which doesn’t seem to like their own country very much, was more than happy to cooperate.

America joined the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009, ending a boycott of the hypocritical council by President George W. Bush.

Per heritage.org:

The HRC was created in 2006 to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, a body that had failed to hold governments accountable for violating basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. During negotiations to establish the HRC, many basic reforms and standards to ensure that the council would not simply be a repeat of the commission did not receive sufficient support in the General Assembly. As a result, the HRC has been no better—and in some ways, worse—than the commission it replaced.

Anticipating this outcome, the Bush Administration decided not to seek a seat at the Geneva-based council in 2006. Based on its subsequent disappointing record, the U.S. again declined to seek a seat in 2007 and 2008. The Bush Administration also withheld a portion of the U.S. contribution to the U.N. regular budget (equivalent to the part of the U.S. contribution allocated to the HRC) and distanced itself from the council’s proceedings except in instances of “deep national interest.”

The 30-member U.S. delegation was given an hour to present its report and respond to questions. Eighty-five countries had signed up to try to verbally tear down the United States, but there was time for only 56 to present. The results of the ensuing dog and pony show were compiled in a draft “outcome document” that was adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council on Nov. 8.

The U.S. will review the recommendations and present a formal response at the March 2011 session of the Human Rights Council.

Both countries and politically-driven Progressive organizations with an axe to grind against America presented a bunch of issues and recommendations involving anything that they could think up to try to harm America’s reputation. They were especially critical of our treatment of indigenous peoples.

Take this garbage for what it’s worth.  The Heritage Foundation reports that, during its review:

North Korea asserted that it “comprehensively provides” for fundamental rights and freedoms, including “the right to elect and to be elected, the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association, the rights to complaints and petitions, work and relaxation, free medical care, education and social security, freedoms to engage in scientific, literary and artistic pursuits, and freedoms of residence and travel.”

These outrageous lies were accepted and approved by the majority of member states in the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The endorsement of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its full implementation was recommended by several countries, including such paragons of virtue as Mexico, Nicaragua, the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).  Their contribution to the slamfest?  They want the United States to:

Unconditionally lift its measures of economic embargoes and sanctions unilaterally and coercively imposed upon other countries, as these measures are inflicting severe and negative impact on the human rights of the peoples.

No, North Korea.  Murderous, totalitarian regimes inflict a severe and negative impact of the human rights of the peoples.

I’m sure that Obama and his geniuses in the State Department have these two issues under control.

After all, we can’t let a little thing like Communism or a lust for World Domination get in the way of the brilliant “Smart Power” Foreign Policy Initiative of President Barack Hussein Obama, can we?

It looks like it’s time for Hillary to hit that Reset Button.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has threatened Americans seeking to travel by air.  They have proclaimed that if you refuse to allow them to view you through the nekkid body scanners or submit to an extremely intimate pat down by someone you don’t even know, you will not be allowed to fly.  However, you will not be allowed to leave the airport, either.

You, an average American citizen, will have to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. And for not allowing the TSA to treat you like a Terrorist, you could face a fine up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami said:

Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process.

She also stated that such passengers would be questioned “until it is determined that they don’t pose a threat” to the public.

Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Teri Barbera said PBSO deputies stationed at the airport would become involved if the TSA asks them to.

Barbera said that if a person is estimated to be a possible threat, deputies have the legal right to detain and search that individual:

The deputies will do it at the airport just as they would do it anywhere else.

According to her, once the TSA and deputies have determined that you’re just an average American, you will be allowed to leave.

The ACLU has gotten involved. (Of course.)  They want everyone to petition the Department of Homeland Security, and Big Sis, who oversees the TSA, to dump this ill-conceived security program.

The ACLU writes:

All of us have a right to travel without such crude invasions of our privacy. Tell DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to put in place security measures that respect passengers’ privacy rights. You shouldn’t have to check your rights when you check your luggage.

The ACLU also outlined ways for citizens to respond to TSA demands at checkpoints and also provided a form letter for filing complaints.

But the TSA is stomping up and down and holding its breath until it turns blue.

In a testimony before Congress Wednesday, TSA Administrator John S. Pistole said that the touch feely program would not be stopping anytime soon, because:

We have to ensure that each person getting on every flight is secure.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) asked about groups that objected to all forms of bodily search on religious grounds.  Pistole didn’t care:

While we respect that person’s beliefs, that person’s not going to get on an airplane.

The nekkid body scanners are now being used at more than 60 airports.

As we enter the busiest travel season of the year, hurried travelers will have to slow down and undergo treatment that has, in the past, been reserved for suspected Islamic Terrorists or citizens of some Marxist nation, not citizens of the United States of America.

Tales are surfacing of cancer survivors being humiliated,  young children being patted down, and massive lines already starting at America’s airports.

President Barack Hussein Obama (peace be upon him) was asked about the new TSA procedures in Lisbon, where he is attending a NATO summit.

Scooter says that he sympathizes with the Proletariat…errr….ummm…us little people:

I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive.

But at this point, TSA in consultation with counterterrorism experts have indicated to me that the procedures that they have been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.

All this because of the little ol’ Underwear Bomber?  Now, I realize that the failed Islamic Terrorist setting fire to himself on that plane was an embarrassment, Scooter, but why are you using police-state tactics, instead of using the profiling system employed by Israel and other nations?  Do you want  America’s Airlines to be financially damaged, so that you can benevolently bail them out like you did America’s Financial structure and Automotive Industry?

In an interview with ABC News, Isaac Yeffet, the former head of security for the Israeli airline El Al, says the only way to secure the skies is to employ highly educated, well-trained agents to question passengers. Forget bomb-sniffing “puffers” or scanners that can see through passengers’ clothes. Yeffet said that he has seen many terrorists outsmart airport security over the years, and as technology improves, so do the terrorists’ methods.

Yeffet, who now runs his own firm, Yeffet Security Consultants, says:

We are dealing with a sophisticated enemy who knows how to beat our technology.

Evidently, our administration, as usual, believes that they are smarter than all those other countries who have proven that profiling is successful.

At least, I hope that’s the reason.  It couldn’t have anything to do with the president’s political ideology, could it?  Hold on.  This just in:

Mark Knoller via Twitter:  Obama joked that he’d have AF-1 fly home via South America so he could see Hugo Chavez.  Some joke.

Sources:  sun-sentinel.com, twitter.com, msnbc.com, abcnews.go.com

The Great Debate among Americans for the past two years has been concerning the president of our country.  It goes something like this:  Does Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) actually know what he’s doing to us or is he in waaay over his head?

Recently, Vice-President Joe (Stand up, Chuck!) Biden sat down with Lisa De Paulo of GQ magazine and answered the following questions:

Do you think the perception of the president as aloof and not caring is a bad rap?

I really do. Look, one of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people. And so I think I’m a pretty good judge of folks who are. I watch this guy; I have lunch with him every single week. We sit for an hour alone, and there’s nothing on our agenda, just the two of us. I spend—when we’re both in town? I spend three, five, six hours a day with him, I mean literally.

Really?

Really. I start off with the presidential daily brief, which is on the economy, on national security. I meet with him when he meets once a week with Clinton and Gates. I meet with him when any congressman or senator or governor’s involved. I meet with him when there’s any event that has to do with foreign policy. I’m engaged. I’m with him in the situation room, because I do so much on the foreign-policy side. And so I watch the guy. And I find nothing, nothing about him that’s aloof. Look, I judge people in large part by how they treat people who wait on them at a table. Watch him. Watch how he treats ordinary people. There’s nothing aloof about him.

So what is it?

I think what it is, is he’s so brilliant. He is an intellectual. And the president, in a strange way, has more faith in the American people than about anybody I know. He sits there and says, “Look, we just tell ’em. Just tell them.” It’s almost kind of a blind faith. You know, when someone will say to him, “Well, look, Mr. President, you really oughta do it this way.” [He says] “No. The American people get this. Just tell them. Just go out there and do the right thing.” I don’t want to—I’m not making him—he’s not a moralizer. But he’s just… Look, think about the guy. This is an African-American who had a Caucasian mother, raised in a Caucasian neighborhood by Caucasian grandparents. Talk about a guy who knows what it’s like. This is a guy who gets it. This is a guy, for example, when we were talking about making compromises on health care just to get it done, he said, “Look, this is an historic opportunity. What about all those poor whites? What about all those black men who are gonna be left out? No, this is it.” He has a great expression. He says—and the reason why I’m confident we’ll be reelected—he says, “Look, I always joke, I always wanted to be a former president. If it has to be in four years, so be it. As long as we do the right thing.”

One of the reasons we kind of balance each other? I probably am too much of Scranton. Hi, you know, hug, touch. It was the way I was raised. Whereas he is not, you know, emotive that way. I think that’s why we make such a good team.

You said earlier that Obama knew, before the election, that he could never meet the expectations.

Yeah. I mean, the expectations were sooo inordinately high. But I think, in a sense—and this is gonna sound strange to you, probably—that the expectations of the press were higher than the people’s expectations. Because here comes this guy who is, you know, handsome, smart, athletic, ran an incredible campaign. This guy’s got a backbone like a ramrod, a brain bigger than his skull, and a heart that just keeps beatin’. And so the press saw that, too.

May I throw up now?

I don’t think you’ll find any Republican or Democrat, scholar or student, who’ll tell you that he didn’t accomplish more in the first two years than about anybody since Franklin Roosevelt. The only disagreement is, Republicans will say he accomplished too much of the wrong thing. And some on the left say he accomplished mostly good things but not enough of it. The truth of the matter is that I think the American people know where this guy’s heart is.

Out of the mouths of babes and Joe Biden.  Yeah, I would say that, judging from the Midterm Elections, Americans know exactly where Obama’s heart is.  Remember what he said to Joe the Plumber?

How about what he says in this speech, ironically posted on youtube.com by an adherent to the Muslim faith:

In the interview, Crazy Uncle Joe said:

Watch how he treats ordinary people. There’s nothing aloof about him.

Explain this, Mr. Vice-President:

This is brilliant?  By whose standards? 

As I have written before, this President and his administration as so out of touch with the American people, it’s unbelievable.  From his failed economic policies to the shoving down our throats of Obamacare, he has shown a blatant disregard for the wishes of the American people, projecting an image, not unlike that of a dictator who views himself as the smartest man in the room and does what is best for his subjects, regardless of their wishes.

Brilliant?  Mr. Vice-President, respectfully, sir, I do not think that you know what that word means.

Our Lame Duck Congress is living up to their name. They aren’t accomplishing anything.

After Senate Democrats met for hours yesterday trying to agreed on a position on extending the Bush tax cuts, Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged empty-handed, but Dinghy Harry still wants to hold a vote:

My friend [Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky] has offered some legislation to extend all them all, costing $4 trillion. I’ll be happy to arrange that, but he should also help arrange a vote on $250 thousand. Period.

Reid is adamant about only extending the tax cuts for those making $250 thousand or less, which even he seemed to recognize may not pass.

We want to give the Republicans an opportunity to vote on McConnell’s legislation. and we want opportunity and may be plural vote. We have to do it more than once, twice, whatever it takes, to show the American people that we support the middle class.

That’s garbage, Harry. You simply have orders from Obama to pass the legislation the way he wants it.

The legislation that Minority Leader McConnell introduced in September, was to permanently extend all the tax cuts.

According to McConnell:

This is the only bill that’s yet been offered that would prevent a tax hike on anyone. In other words, nobody in America would get a tax hike at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, back among those who pay the salaries of these politicians, fewer new businesses are starting in our country. and because of this, prospects for job growth and innovation are bleak.

More businesses are closing in America right now than are opening up. And those that are opening up are hiring fewer employees. The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, within the span of a year ending March 31.

That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

The Administration has a lot to be proud of.

Newly opened companies created a seasonally adjusted total of 2.6 million jobs in the three quarters ended in March, 15% less than the comparable time when investors and entrepreneurs were still digging their way out when the Dotcom bubble burst.

Obama’s economic policies have caused more funemployed Americans into business for themselves, working as consultants or trying to sell something…anything online. But these desperate people are not forming a company and hiring employees.

Businessmen are reluctant to invest in start-up firms. Venture-capital firms invested $25.1 billion in the year that ended in September, up 10% from the same period a year earlier but still down 27% from two years earlier, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Angel investment amounted to $8.5 billion in the 2010 first half—30% below the average level in the five years leading up to the financial crisis, estimates Jeffrey Sohl, director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.

He plainly states:

I’ve never seen seed capital so low.

Obama , in his weekly Presidential  Address after the shellacking known as the Midterm Elections, said that extending tax cuts for everybody, including those that actually hire Americans, would be detrimental and would add to the deficit:

President Ronald Reagan  disagreed with increasing taxes to cut the budget deficit:

Obama and his administration have demonstrated over and over again they firmly believe in Keynesian Economics.  This is an economic theory stating that active government intervention in the marketplace and monetary policy is the best method of ensuring economic growth and stability.

However, Reagan believed that if you eased taxes and the restrictions of government bureaucracy on American Business that we, as a nation, would reap the rewards. More Americans would be employed as established businesses grew, and Americans would be able buy goods and contribute back to the economy as a result of their employment. And, due to the pro-business stance of the Reagan Administration, American entrepreneurs were able to start their own businesses, and hire their own employees.

It’s funny how, during the economic expansion of the Reagan Administration, that the ultimate practitioner of Keynesian Economics (aka Marxism), the Soviet Union, began to lose their position as a world power as America’s power and prestige in the world increased.

Now, under Obama’s failed economic policies, Americans are watching our country’s economic standing, both foreign and domestic, being weakened to the point where we are just about at the point of being laughed off the world stage. While this administration is preaching Keynesian Economics, the rest of the world is beginning to embrace Capitalism.

When the new Congress convenes in January, they need to begin to address the situation. Unfortunately, though, while the thin-skinned, self-proclaimed smartest man in the room remains in the Oval Office and is able to exercise his veto power, I’m at a loss as to what they can do.

I hope that they have some ideas… because I never got a job from a poor man.

Sources: wsj.com, foxnews.com

Approximately one year ago, United States Attorney General Eric Holder was appearing before Senate committee, defending the Administration’s plan to try 5 Islamic terrorists  in civilian courts who were complicit in the mass murder of 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. 

Holder proclaimed during questioning that:

Failure is not an option.  These are cases that have to be won.

The first civilian trial of a Guantanamo prisoner, Ahmed Ghailani, ended yesterday with the acquittal of the Al Qaeda operative on all but one count out of a total of 281.

Ghailani, 36, was convicted of conspiracy to destroy U.S. buildings and property in the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

The day before the 1998 bombings, Ghailani fled Africa with a one-way ticket to Pakistan, using an alias, according to prosecutors. While on the run, he lived in Afghanistan, working as a cook and bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden and later as a document forger for Al Qaeda.

He was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and was kept at a secret CIA camp overseas. He was transferred to Guantanamo in 2006 and was held there until last year.

It took the civilian jury 4 1/2 days to reach their less- than-just verdict. The Islamic Terrorist faces a mandatory 20-year-to-life sentence for the conspiracy conviction.

Ghailani naturally appeared relieved, hugging his lawyers after the verdict was read in Manhattan Federal Court.

The Obama administration, in a purely political move, went ahead with this dog and pony show, despite the objections of the American public, in an attempt to prove how effective the political philosophy of treating the War of Terror as a law enforcement issue would be.

So, now that they have eggs on their faces, what do they have to say for themselves? …Not a whole lot:

We respect the jury’s verdict and are pleased that Ahmed Ghailani now faces a minimum of 20 years in prison and a potential life sentence.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara attempted to cover the government’s failure, saying:

He will face, and we will seek, the maximum sentence of life without parole when he is sentenced in January.

Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), who has been against such trials since the beginning, called the mixed verdict

…a disgraceful miscarriage of justice

It shows how totally wrong the Obama administration is to bring a case like this to civilian court. He was acquitted of 224 counts of murder.

Judge Lewis Kaplan barred a key witness from testifying because the man’s name came to light while Ghailani was held at a CIA camp where suspects reportedly were tortured.

King explained:

If this had been before a military tribunal, evidence that was blocked in this case would have been admissable.

His defense attorney argued that Ghailani was a “dupe” who was kept in the dark about the plot. No witnesses were called to testify on Ghailani’s behalf during the month-long trial.

Per defense lawyer Peter Quijano:

This verdict is a reaffirmation that this nation’s judicial system is the greatest ever devised. It is truly a system of laws and not men.

Laws, not men…hmmm.  So legal jurisprudence trumps America’s safety?

Returning to the subject of that stalwart defender of America, AG Eric Holder, from 2001 until he became Attorney General, Holder worked in private practice for the prestigious law firm of Covington and Burling.  Researching his time there is quite illuminating.  Can you say Conflict of Interest?

In her best-seller, Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin wrote:

One wonders what the Obamas would say about Holder’s lucrative work for Chiquita Brands International if it had been performed by, say, John McCain’s top lawyer? As chief counsel for the global company, Holder won a “slap-on-the-wrist plea deal to charges that it had paid off” Colombian paramilitary death squads. Liberal critics of Holder point out that he used his influence as a former Clinton Justice Department official to negotiate a sweetheart deal for Chiquita.

…Putting on the best terrorist defense is a Covington & Burling specialty. Among the firm’s other celebrity terrorist clients: 17 Yemenis held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The law firm employed dozens of radical attorneys such as David Remes and Marc Falkoff to provide the enemy combatants with more than 3,000 hours of pro bono representation. Covington & Burling co-authored one of three petitioners’ briefs filed in the Boumediene v. Bush detainee case, and secured victories for several other Gitmo enemy combatants in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Falkoff went on to publish a book of poetry, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, which he dedicated to the suspected terrorists: “For my friends inside the wire, Mahmoad, Majid, Yasein, Saeed, Abdulsalam, Mohammed, Adnan, Jamal, Othman, Adil, Mohamed, Abdulmalik, Areef, Adeq, Farouk, Salman, and Makhtar. Inshallah, we will next meet over coffee in your homes in Yemen.”

Lovely.  

So, the man in charge of enforcing America’s laws kept Terrorists out of jail before he landed this job.  How unconscionable and/or stupid does Obama and his pinheaded minions in his administration and Congress have to be in order for Eric Holder to have been appointed Attorney General of the United States of America?

If Obama and Holder have the audacity to continue with the farce of attempting to try unrepentant Islamic Terrorists in our Federal Courts, regardless of which American city the trial is located in, they have more than proven their blatant disregard for the safety of Americans.

Between the accusations of racism with the Justice Department, the Federal Government’s war against the citizens of Arizona, and granting civilian trials to Islamic Terrorists who are waging jihad against our country, there is more than enough of a case to justify replacing Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General.

And we need to relieve his boss of his duties while we’re at it.

It was not very long ago that American travelers were complaining about the hassle of heightened Airport Security measures that were in place after the Islamic Terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.  Americans were being made to pass through metal detectors, passed over with detecting wands, and had their luggage sent through an x-ray machine. 

Well, after the embarrassment that President Barack Hussein Obama’s Administration experienced over the failed “Underwear Bomber”, Scooter and Janet Big Sis Napalitano have taken it upon themselves, without running it by Congress or anyone else, to install an extremely invasive system of physical pat downs of passengers, ranging from 3 year olds to seasoned citizens.

The head of the Transportation Security Administration, John Pistole, is defending the new procedure,which some have labelled sexual assault. The new procedure involves TSA employees running their hands up the inside of passengers’ thighs and touching around women’s topsides.

Pistole admitted that the government is not always ahead of the terrorists. He said that the TSA is seeking “the proper mix” between passengers’ rights and protecting airplanes. He told a Senate committee which was holding a meeting about the safety of cargo:

There is an ever-evolving nature of the terrorist threat.

We want to be sensitive to people’s sensitivity to privacy and their being while ensuring that everybody is secure on every flight.

Pistole insists that he is concerned about fliers’ safety and privacy and asked the flying public to “work together” with his agency.

According to him, the only people who undergo the patdowns are those who refuse to go through very revealing full-body scanners or those who somehow trip other detectors.

He said:

It’s a very small percentage of all passengers. Our patdown approach is very similar to what is being used in Europe.

Explain that to 3-year-old Mandy Simon. She had to go through security with her daddy at the airport in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Mandy became scared and started crying when she was asked to put her teddy bear through the X-ray machine. Because she was upset, she set the machine off twice, which meant she “must be hand-searched.”

A TSA employee patted down Mandy and she started screaming and kicking her legs. Her daddy, Steve, happens to be a TV reporter and caught 17 seconds of the ordeal on his cell phone:

And if  you think that Mandy’s is an isolated case, watch this pat down of a 3-year-old boy:

The Obama Administration has reassured the flying public time and time again that any naked images of them at airport checkpoints would be destroyed immediately.

However, information has come out that the U.S. Marshals Service, in at least one case, has been keeping thousands of similar naked images recorded by its body scanners.

Gizmodo reports that U.S. Marshalls in a Florida courthouse have saved 35,000 body scanner images.

Just don’t point and laugh, people.

The new TSA procedure has unleashed a firestorm over the internet, driven in part by an airport traveler who famously resisted a full-body scan and groin check with the words:

If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.

John Tyner’s online story,complete with cell-phone video of the encounter,has helped fuel a campaign urging travelers to decline the body scans next week during the busiest travel day of the year.  Here’s Tyner’s story from an interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News:

Tyner is a 31-year-old software engineer from Oceanside, Calif.  He insists that he was not looking to be famous when he stood up to TSA agents last weekend at the San Diego airport.

Tyner said:

I don’t think I did anything heroic.  I stood up for what I thought was right.

After he refused to go through the full-body scanner, he then refused to submit to a groin check as part of a pat-down. He was tossed from the airport Saturday after being threatened with a fine and lawsuit.

HIs defiance has inspired online sales of T-shirts, bumper stickers, hats and even underwear emblazoned with the words, “Don’t Touch My Junk!”

Tyner is hesitant to advocate that Americans do what he did, saying he appreciates that most people cannot afford to put expensive trips at risk:

But people ought to do what their consciences say they should do. If civil disobedience is a way they think would work, I think they should do it.

Tyner’s actions have resulted in an online campaign urging air travelers to refuse body scans in a “National Opt-Out Day” the day before Thanksgiving, one of the year’s busiest travel days.

There are 300 of the scanners in use at 60 U.S. airports. The Transportation Security Administration will be using approximately 500 of them by the end of the year.

In Israel, where Palestinians attacked planes in the 1970s, passengers face tough questioning and multiple inspections. Single women who are not Israeli citizens are sometimes inspected more intensely because militants have tried to use them as couriers.  El Al and British Airways employ profiling as well, and they have never had a hijacking.

Wow.  Actually providing intelligent security measures through the use of profiling. What a concept!

Big Sis Janet Napolitano has defended America’s new Airport Security Procedure, proclaiming:

It’s all about security. It’s all about everybody recognizing their role.

Shut up, she explained.

As regular readers of my Blog can attest, I’m a proud patriotic American, the son of a D-Day veteran.  I bleed red, white, and blue. 

Having said that, I, like a lot of other proud Americans are asking why, with the best intelligence network at their fingertips, are Scooter and Big Sis attacking the delicate problem of Airport Security with all the finesse of a bull in a China Shop?  Has their political ideology trumped their concerns for Americans’ safety?  Is this administration so afraid of offending the Muslim community that it has clouded their memory of exactly what happened and who it was that murdered innocent Americans on 9/11/2001?  Rumors are floating that the TSA may discontinue searching Muslim women wearing traditional garb.  If this namby pamby administration does not put the safety of Americans first, before their political ideology and misguided world view,  and shelves this literally touchy feely security procedure for a smarter one, such as the Israelis use,  they will continue to propagate unrest among their own citizenry, which, as Glenn Beck said yesterday, may be the whole purpose of this new security procedure in the first place.