Illinois to Grant Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Aliens

From the Washington Times:

Top Illinois state officials said Tuesday they’ll push to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants — a move backed also by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who for years stood as Democrats’ key impediment to pushing immigration in Congress.

State Senate President John Cullerton said he’ll try to pass a bill in the legislature’s veto session next week to remove restrictions on illegal immigrants getting licenses there, and Gov. Pat Quinn said he’ll sign it, if it reaches his desk. Both men are Democrats.

…

Illinois would become the third state to allow illegal immigrants to get licenses, joining Washington and New Mexico.

“I strongly support state legislation that will allow every Chicagoan, regardless of legal status, to enjoy the rights and responsibilities that come with a driver’s license,” Mr. Emanuel, President Obama’s first White House chief of staff, said in a statement.

Now, I could go on for quite a while about how Congress writes immigration laws, and how that’s part of the Constitution.  I could go on for quite a while about the effects of drunk driving illegal aliens, of criminal aliens, and how illegal aliens are criminals with their first steps into the country they’re invading.  I could go on and on and on about that, comparing other nations’ immigration laws (Mexico’s are particularly harsh, and allow for citizen detention of non-Mexicans they catch), and make this solely about illegal immigration and the pandering of Democrats for more illegal alien voters is.

Instead, I’ll just quote these folks who think driver’s licenses are important:

“Eighteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists boarded those airplanes using driver’s licenses they never should have been issued,” said CSDL President Amanda Bowman. “After the attacks, it was learned that the terrorists possessed 63 licenses from states all across the country. And it was clear why they got them: The driver’s license is America’s internal passport, our de facto national identification card that allows holders access to airplane travel, truck rental, sensitive government and commercial buildings, wire transfers and a host of other terrorism tools and targets. The driver’s license is a terrorist weapon of choice, and Congress must act on that reality,” Ms. Bowman continued.

 

Ft Hood Terrorist Attack, 3 Years On

Big hat tip to Jawa Report:

Via Jawa, from NYT:

What do you call it when a self-proclaimed “Soldier of Allah” shouting “Allahu Akhbar” opens fire on dozens of US citizens — killing and maiming as many innocents as he can?

You call it terrorism, if you’re sane.

And “workplace violence,” if you’re the Obama administration.

That’s right: Three years after Nidal Malik Hasan’s jihadist shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in which he murdered 13 people and wounded 29 more, the Defense Department still refuses to classify the attack as what it is: an act of terror.

Instead, it continues to label the shooting officially a case of “workplace violence.”

Let’s not forget Obama’s response to Fort Hood, and giving shout outs and thanking Interior Secretary Ken “Boot Stamping On A Human Face Forever” Salazar, and some anti-colonialist diatribe going on about “First Americans”.

Lara Logan Explains the Afghanistan Situation and Islamic Terrorism

Via The Jawa Report:

The Taliban and Al Qaeda aren’t losing.  They aren’t quitting.

Lara Logan discusses what’s really going on, and how she researched the story.  She’s one hell of a reporter.  It’s well worth watching.

“This is terrorism.  It’s a completely and utterly different fight from anything we have faced in our history…  Our way of life is under attack – and if you think that’s government propaganda – if you think that’s nonsense – if you think that’s warmongering – you’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight.  In your arrogance, you think you write the script, but you don’t.”

Disgrace in Benghazi

Mark Steyn posted an excellent column today that pretty much covers the last week’s events in the Middle East.  A couple highlights:

So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets. Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that’s too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast. Make it Cleveland, or Des Moines.

…

As I say, I’m inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and General Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the secretary of state’s weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the chairman of the joint chiefs’ telephone call to a private citizen asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.

Forget the free-speech arguments. In this case, as Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher’s teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: That’s not a spontaneous movie protest; that’s an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower’s response to it. Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.

Worth reading the whole thing.

It’s 1979 All Over Again

Embassies and consulates attacked, flaccid Democrat president does nothing, Islamic terror attacks, wash, rinse, repeat.

The newest bit of info is that the consulate attack in Libya was planned, and the State Department knew about it, but did nothing, ultimately leading to the deaths of 4 Americans, including the ambassador.

The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.

American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.

The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.

Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

It’s an early report, it could be wrong, but it sure fits with the ineptitude that this administration has handled Libya, Egypt, and Syria.  High-falutin’ speeches don’t really mean anything to a terrorist mob who kill over perceived insults.  The White House has gone into spin mode, which might be believeable if it weren’t for things like Fast and Furious and Obama’s repeated lies about transparency.  The White House has much to lose if it’s true, and the Brit paper really doesn’t have a dog in the fight.

Meanwhile, back stateside, Romney was looking mighty presidential:

And of course, the media was more interested in Romney than the Islamic world attacking our embassies, burning our flags, killing our people, and generally acting like savages.  Or, as Jay Leno would end that line: “In the Middle East, they call it Tuesday.”

There are more attacks planned for the rest of the week, it seems, so this’ll get worse before it gets better.  1979 all over again.

Never Forget

 

 

 

Brett Kimberlin and Free Speech

Long story short, Brett Kimberlin is a terrorist.  Patterico/Liberty Chick has the story here.  Kimberlin set bombs in the 1970s to distract from a criminal case child molestation case that was going after him.

[Kimberlin] spent nearly 17 years in prison after being convicted of launching a week-long bombing spree that terrorized the residents of Speedway, Indiana in the late 1970′s. One of the blasts horribly maimed a man [a Vietnam vet] so badly that it directly led to that man’s suicide a few years later, which was proven when the widow of that bombing victim successfully sued and won a civil judgment against Kimberlin for $1.6 million.

Via LeeStranahan.com:

He’s a hardcore leftist.  And he doesn’t like criticism.  He’s taken it to a new level now, an Alinsky-type tactic called “SWATting”, where anonymous calls through skype are made to local police departments listing heinous crimes at the homes of bloggers, writers, and others who criticize him and his stories.  It uses law enforcement doing their duty against writers doing theirs.

Patterico’s story on it here.  Michelle Malkin’s story on it here.  Jawa Report’s story on it here.

Patterico:

In the last radio interview Andrew Breitbart ever gave, on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Breitbart talked about a new ruthless tactic used by thugs against political opponents:

[O]ne of the things they’ve done to people who have worked with me in the past, including an L.A. prosecutor, is to “SWAT.” That means that they’re spoofing phones, pretending to be somebody else’s phone, calling 911, and saying “I killed somebody” and then the person’s home is met with the guns drawn, the SWAT and the helicopters, in a horrifying act. It’s happened twice: once in New Jersey, once in Los Angeles, with an L.A. County . . . prosecutor who [is] associated with me.”

I am that L.A. County prosecutor. And in this post, you’ll hear the hoax call that sent police to my house, pointing loaded guns at me.

And the Tides Foundation funds this terrorist.

From Jawa Report:

No, this isn’t a blog war, this is about protecting our 1st Amendment rights. Both Right and Left[Update, linked for naysayers in comments]

[Patterico]One more point that I have made before and will make again: this is not about partisan politics. Kimberlin thuggishly went after a left-leaning attorney who represented Aaron pro bono. He went after the lefty author of the book Citizen K.

He is a lefty terrorist, but he’ll go after anyone that strikes his fancy.

The Blaze has more backstory on this dirtbag, including a bit of what sent him down his road of terrorism and crime.

The Indy Star reported that on July 29, 1978, Speedway resident Julia Scyphers, 65, answered a knock at her door only to find a strange man who claimed he was interested in purchasing items she had recently tried to sell at a yard sale. Scyphers let the man into her garage to show him the items and he “shot her in the head.” Her husband came out in time to see the perpetrator’s car and catch a glimpse of the man himself.

When police began looking for a motive in the Scyphers slaying, they found there’d been a recent family clash. Julia Scyphers’ daughter, Sandra Barton, had become involved with a man who seemed to Mrs. Scyphers to be inordinately close to one of Barton’s young daughters. Mrs. Scyphers told friends she was so concerned that she’d arranged for both of her granddaughters to come live with her. Whether or not Mrs. Scyphers’ fears were correct (no charges were ever filed to that effect), this incident led investigators to start looking at Brett C. Kimberlin.

Through pieces of information gathered from news reports, police records and descriptions from Singer’s book, it is suspected that Kimberlin had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Sandra Barton’s daughter, Jessica, who was only 10-years-old when Kimberlin met her (he knew her for a number of years). Her grandmother, Julia Scyphers, had attempted to thwart the relationship in any way she could, even by allegedly sending a handyman to change the locks on her daughter’s front door. When Kimberlin discovered Scyphers’ interference, he complained to the building management that he was being “harassed” (a meme that would later become all-too familiar to Kimberlin). While evidence has ruled out that Kimberlin himself pulled the trigger, it is believed by some that an associate committed the murder at Kimberlin’s behest.

As the heat against Kimberlin began to mount in the Scyphers slaying, he arranged a series of bombings that would take police attention away from the case at hand. Ironically, Singer’s book also describes how Kimberlin, after being apprehended for the Speedway bombings, plotted for another person to plant identical bombs around town in order to give the appearance that the suspect was still at large.

That’s right – child molester and terrorist, funded by the Tides Foundation, out to shut down anyone who disagrees with him.  He’s used as a tool by the left to silence targets, though he occasionally snaps at them, too.

Violence and intimidation works great to crush the free speech of a few… but not the many.

(This is yet another one of those things that’s much more important to write about than nationality law.)

US Taxpayers Subsidize Overseas Mosques… And Maybe Terrorism

From Gadi Adelman at Family Security Matters:

The story of the U.S. State Department funding mosques overseas was uncovered in July 2010 when reporter Justin Farmer from ABC affiliate WSBTV Channel 2 in Atlanta Georgia did an investigative report. Farmers’ story focused on how the U.S. was spending its tax payer dollars while supposedly trying to cut the budget.

That backstory here at WSBTV:

Updated: 5:23 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, 2011 | Posted: 3:57 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010
Mosque Makeovers With Your Tax Dollars

WASHINGTON, D.C —
A Channel 2 Action News investigation found that the State Department is sending millions of dollars to save mosques overseas. This investment has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in government spending.

Plenty of outrage following the announcement made Thursday afternoon by a government commission that suggested huge cuts to the budget, including eliminating the interest education for home mortgage. This juxtaposed with United States investing millions to refurbish mosques as a good-will effort in Muslim countries has upset many taxpayer groups.

Watch The Video And Subscribe To The WSB-TV Youtube Channel

The Channel 2 Action News investigation found a 1,300-year-old Egyptian mosque that was almost flooded by contaminated sewer water that is one of many ancient Cairo mosques and churches that were saved from destruction by the U.S. taxpayers.

This is part of a $770 million program to rebuild Cairo’s sewer system, paid for by the U.S. State Department’s USAID program.

“We are spending money we don’t have. This is all on a gigantic credit card right now,” said Jared Thomas, a taxpayer advocate.

Millions more dollars have been sent to places like Cyprus. The State Department displays before and after pictures of mosques refurbished with U.S. tax dollars.

The FSM piece goes on (no not that FSM):

But what was supposed to be a ‘sewer’ rebuild is much more. The USAID website shows both before and after pictures of one such mosque in Cairo, Egypt.

USAID site here.

Adelman continues, noting that spending money on building mosques is illegal:

205.1(d) of title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations, it states plainly,

 (b) Organizations that receive direct financial assistance from USAID under any USAID program may not engage in inherently religious activities, such as worship, religious instruction, or proselytization, as part of the programs or services directly funded with direct financial assistance from USAID

Long story short, these aren’t just mosques they’re subsidizing, there are also mosques that are being rebuilt in the West Bank and Gaza.  Given that the main exports of those places are terrorism, specifically terrorism of the islamic variety, it seems odd that we’re rebuilding religious infrastructure in an area that uses those religious buildings as places to recruit and attack their neighbors from (mainly Israel, but the same recruitment centers would also send terrorists around the world – most notably nearby Iraq).

Adelman:

Section 4 is titled “Contractor’s Vetting Information Was Incomplete”. In this section it actually stated,

Weaknesses in data accuracy also weaken the project’s efficiency and antiterrorism efforts.

Antiterrorism efforts? I thought this money was going to health reform and development. Perhaps proper health care will keep people from wanting to blow themselves up, I’m not sure on that one. At the end of section 4 as expected two more recommendations.

Now, maybe the program was specifically to rebuild infrastructure to prevent terrorism, and maybe it’s just rebuilding mosques tended to by reform clerics, and so maybe it’s just violating law spending US taxpayer money on mosques on the other side of the globe because… why?  But that part has already been addressed.  Adelman’s wondering where the money really went – and did we directly fund terrorism.

From the audit:

The unreliable partnership with the Minister of Health developed because of the lack of focus in the original statement of work for the project. USAID/West Bank and Gaza also allowed the relationship to develop in this way by approving whatever the Minister requested, regardless of how the requests fit into the mission’s vision and focus for the project.

Huh.

Adelman finishes:

The final part of the audit was the ‘scope’ and it states,

We reviewed compliance by the mission and Chemonics with Executive Order 13224, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism,” and with USAID/West Bank and Gaza Mission Order 21, “Anti-Terrorism Procedures.” Our antiterrorism compliance testing included reviews of relevant documentation, such as USAID/West Bank and Gaza’s agreement with Chemonics and eligibility notifications for trainees, subcontractors, and grantees.

I for one am glad that the compliance of “transactions with persons who commit terrorism” was reviewed through relevant documentation, especially since that documentation was provided by the group that “did not establish a reliable partnership”, “reported results that were not reliable”, “reported of achievements that were sometimes misleading” and provided “vetting information that was incomplete”.

Yes, our debt is growing and in the time it took me to write this it has risen over 2 million dollars. But no worries, we will still give money to our enemies to rebuild their mosques, after all we are sitting down with the Taliban, right?

For info, this is Gadi Adelman’s bio.

This isn’t the first time that US taxpayer money has been pushed to fund mosques.  Even lefty-Annenberg Obama-supporting Orwellian-named Factcheck.org can’t dodge it (of course they say “well, we’re funding other religions, so it’s okay!”).  Daily Caller had this piece on it a while back.

First off, why are we funding any religious buildings?  Especially overseas?  There should at least be atheists up in arms that not only are we not separating church and state, we’re actively rebuilding chuch-states around the globe.  The idea of rebuilding historic artifacts is nice, but there are musuems to do that, there are private charities to do that, and there are the actual nations wherein those historic sites reside to do that.

Second, if we’re funding mosques in hotbeds of terrorism, aren’t we de facto supporting terrorism?  Aren’t we rebuilding terrorist recruitment centers?

Third, even if we aren’t funding terrorism, aren’t we supporting gender discrimination and theocracies?

Not that the west has a particularly good recent history on that.   Note the above picture is from Valley Park Middle School in Toronto.  The boys pray up front, the girls in back, the girls on their periods are way back and not allowed to pray, since they’re unclean.  Enlightenend liberalism becomes enforced segregation.  The effects of cultural relativism.

So at absolute best, we’re supporting institutions that push treating women as “unclean” the same as pigs, dogs, and other things that islam hates.

But let’s check that other law:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

By Congress approving funding for USAID, they’re supporting/respecting an establishment of religion.  By fedgov supporting all of these religious programs, they’re supporting religions, some more than others, and some more dangerous than others.  If we were rebuilding Shinto shrines or Zoroastrian temples, it would still be just as objectionable on the tax aspect, but Shintoists pretty much gave up on suicide attacks over 60 years ago, and have been mostly harmless for a while now.

Marine Scout Snipers Make Living, Breathing People Into Dead Bags of Rotting Meat…

…they also offend the shit out of some people when they pose with letters they’ve coopted for their MOS.

The USMC scout sniper MOS has for a long, long time adopted the SS mark as theirs.  Of course, some other people made it famous first.  Of course, the Marines don’t care.  It contributes to the bad boy image using a logo that some people will get mad at.  I can’t think of any other units that have ever done that ever.

Even if it’s branded as a “hate symbol“.

Nope, never.  This is a totally new development that hasn’t totally been around for years.  You totally can’t buy the t-shirt.

Never happened before.  No bad boy units have ever copied anything done by other bad units before.

Now, the Schutzstaffel runes and the Confederate flag are obviously two very different things and have different histories, but they share common ground in that they are considered horribly politically incorrect and they offend, but they point to a strong martial heritage of those who’ve ultimately coopted the symbols for themselves.  Obviously Marines with the Confederate flag in the Pacific weren’t claiming islands for the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Marines with the SS flag aren’t blasting terrorists in Iraqistan in the name of der Fuhrer (not the least of which because der Fuhrer was and would be allied with the Islamic terrorists).  They took those symbols and adopted them as a statement of rebellion against the enemy, against challenges put before them, against convention, against threats to them – saying “screw you, we’ll do what we want and we’ll win”.

And it isn’t just because it’s a cool, stylized symbol that they decided to co-opt.  Totally not the case, it’s totally not because the letters are the same and it’s really convenient.

Meanwhile, some people are offended, but that’s also some people’s profession.

Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M., said the scandals hurt U.S. military missions. His organization sent a letter to the head of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Amos, and Panetta on Thursday calling on them to “condemn this stomach-turning display without equivocation or delay and severely punish all of those responsible.”

“This shameful display of SS ‘lightning bolts’ by U.S. service personnel enrages our regional allies, emboldens the extremist Islamist forces with whom we are contending, and eviscerates good order, morale, and discipline within the U.S. Marine Corps,” said Weinstein, who founded the advocacy group that calls attention to violations by the military in regards to respecting people of all beliefs.

Mikey, guess what?  They don’t care.  They shouldn’t care.  These are Marines in a combat zone.  They are under threat by people who will murder them and butcher them in the street, burn them, drag their bodies through the street and hang their lifeless bodies for the whole town to gather round and cheer.  Y’know what’s stomach churning?  That the people in Afghanistan who these Marines fight stone people to death.

Mikey, if by our regional allies you mean Israelis – if they don’t like it, they’ll say something.  They also know what it’s like to be in a state of conflict.  They probably don’t care – if they do, they’ll voice their opinion themselves.  You don’t need to go being offended on their behalf.  They can take care of themselves.  They also have a sense of perspective and know that one platoon of guys with one flag is not a great Nazi conspiracy that somehow simultaneously fights for freedom around the world.

Islamic forces make up propaganda anyway.  It doesn’t matter what the case is.  They do not care.  They lie.  Who cares what the enemy thinks?  The people of Afghanistan (where this photo was taken) in the region they were at probably knew these guys better than you do, Mikey.

Good order, morale, and discipline comes from a cohesive unit.  A unit that celebrates its own profession, albeit with a tasteless copy of a historically infamous banner, is one that is going to function well anyway.

Considering we’ve just gone over this whole sense of perspective thing just recently with Marines peeing on dead terrorists, it’s kinda sad we have to bring it up again.

Colonel Kurtz had this to say:

We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!

It’s worth noting that in 2003 there were units told to take down US flags in Iraq because they were offensive.  To some people, everything’s offensive.  The constant crying wolf really diminishes any sense of when something is upsetting.  The outrageously outrageous outrage that the blame-America-first crowd and the professionally offended whiners have is something that results in people just no longer caring what they have to say – especially when it comes to something like this, where again there is a world of difference between a symbol with bad associations used by the good guys and actual actions by the bad guys.

All the hand-wringing and whining for diversity and outrageously outrageous outrage and petulant demands for immediate punishment and sending them to the death-camp-of-tolerance teaches the fighting end of the Corps is that the whiners are non-warriors, non-hackers, weak, spineless cowards who attack with paper on the home front, who have no will to win, no understanding of war, no comprehension of the Marines’ lives, and that the whiners desire to make the Corps weaker and weaker in order to force it to succumb to the enemy, who the whiners ultimately empathize with as victims of ‘Murica.  Every time the Commandant and the SgtMaj have to deal with this, the response at the troop level is “oh, this shit again”.  The Commandant being politically forced to storm down to Stone Bay and wherever it is the rest of the scout sniper units are at and yell about offending no one and what is and is not politically acceptable is going to reinforce again that there are elements in the US that are out to get the US military, that everyone is always offended.  The snipers are still expected to put high-velocity projectiles into jihadis, but who are really just misunderstood freedom fighters fighting for their freedom to oppress women, but they’re really just oppressed third-world victims of American imperialism, and diversity must not be a casualty, and all that archetypal politically correct garbage.  SSDD.

A simple letter from a Jewish vet, patiently worded, not outraged, but outlining why he would prefer the scout sniper profession cease the use of the SS runes, would probably go a lot further.  Chastising Marines who face death every day just reminds them that the REMF brass and some citizens back home are wretched coward bastards like Bill Arkin.  By contrast, a solemn old-school vet, who’s been in their shoes, who has been too young to drink but old enough to kill in a foreign land – if he were offended (pretty good chance he would be) – he would be the kind of guy who these Marines would look up to, and whose words would make a world of difference.

Coming from the quarters it comes from, this helps no one, and reinforces this:

Hope they never learn about Teufelhunden.

Update: Welcome Jawas.  Utinni!

Update 2: Follow up post 2, follow up post 3, and follow up post 4.

Gunwalker, the ATF, Factcheck.org, and the 90% Myth Revisited

The myth that 90% of the guns in Mexico come from the US has been addressed here before at The Patriot Perspective in the context of Gunwalker/Fast and Furious being a public relations move to prove the myth.  Stratfor disproved it quite a while back (a copy of that story can be found here, the original was deleted when somebody hacked Stratfor – I guess they didn’t know the second tenet).

From the LA Times in 2009:

On his recently concluded first visit to Mexico as president, a week after telling Europeans that his country had been at times arrogant, President Barack Obama blamed his own country for providing 90% of Mexico’s recovered crime guns.

According to a report by the independent FactCheck.org this afternoon, that’s incorrect. By a, uh, long shot.

In the first draft, FactCheck cited other pieces saying that Obama was flat-out wrong.  Then they retracted it, as the LA Times notes:

(UPDATE: On April 22 FactCheck.org withdrew its flat statement that the president was wrong, saying it could not prove that. An updated item appeared here.)

FactCheck.org isn’t exactly trustworthy to begin with.  FactCheck has a very authoritative name, as though they’re The Last Word in what’s correct, what’s fact, and what’s opinion.  The NRA disproved them during the campaign.

Factcheck And Brady Campaign Share Same Sugar Daddy

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Impartial? Independent? NO!
FactCheck and Brady Campaign in Bed with Annenberg FoundationFactCheck supposedly exists to look beyond a politician’s claims. Ironically, in its analysis of NRA materials on Barack Obama, these so-called “FactCheckers” use the election year campaign rhetoric of a presidential candidate and a verbal claim by one of the most zealous gun control supporters in Congress to refute facts compiled by NRA’s research of vote records and review of legislative language.

There’s another possible explanation behind FactCheck’s positions. Just last year, FactCheck’s primary funding source, the Annenberg Foundation, also gave $50,000 to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence for “efforts to reduce gun violence by educating the public and by enacting and enforcing regulations governing the gun industry.” Annenberg made a similar grant for $100,000 in 2005. (source)

Regardless of the cause, it’s clear that while FactCheck swoons over a politician’s rhetoric, NRA prefers to look at the more mundane details – like how that politician voted on a bill and what kind of impact that legislation had or may have had on law-abiding gun owners.

FactCheck claims that NRA advertisements “distort” Barack Obama’s anti-gun positions, but FactCheck’s own sources prove otherwise. In fact, even Obama’s campaign has refused to deny his most extreme positions.

FactCheck also dismisses NRA’s statements as “contrary to what [Obama] has said throughout his campaign.” But as FactCheck says, “believing something doesn’t make it so.” And unless FactCheck is an arm of the Obama campaign, isn’t it their job to find out if Obama is telling the truth?

It’s important to note what Factcheck.org says at the top of their page.  It states “Annenberg Political Factcheck”.    Just as the NRA notes, they’re part of the Annenberg Foundation.  Note what’s right next to each other here:

Annenberg Challenge In 1993, the largest gift to public education was made by Ambassador Walter Annenberg, a $500 million grant named the Annenberg Challenge. The grant was designed to unite the resources throughout the United States and ideas of those committed to increasing the effectiveness of public schooling. Recognizing that no single gift could improve all schools, the Challenge served as a catalyst to energize and support educational reform efforts across the country.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania developed FactCheck.org. Factcheck.org monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.

What’s that Annenberg Challenge thing?  Oh, yeah, this thing.

The three co-authors of Chicago’s winning Annenberg Challenge $49.2 million grant proposal were:^[17][18]

William Ayers, associate professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago; co-director of the Small Schools Workshop; co-director of the Chicago Forum for School Change—an affiliate of the Coalition of Essential Schools;^[19] chairman of the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs) coalition;^[20][21] former Chicago assistant deputy mayor for education (1989–1990);^[21] brother of John Ayers, executive director (1994–2004) of Leadership for Quality Education (an affiliate of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago) and former associate director (1987–1994) of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago; son of Thomas Ayers, former president (1964–1980), chairman and CEO (1973–1980) of Commonwealth Edison and former vice president (1980) of the Chicago School Board

Yeah, this Bill Ayers:

“I don’t regret setting bombs” …”I feel we didn’t do enough”  – Bill Ayers, quoted on 9/11/2001 in the NYT

And who else was there?

The founding Board of Directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge as announced in 1995 were:^[38][39]

Barack Obama, civil rights attorney at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland; lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School; member of the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation and the Woods Fund of Chicago; winner, Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40 award, 1993; former president of the Harvard Law Review (1990–1991); former executive director of the Developing Communities Project (June 1985–May 1988); current President of the United States^{[24][40][41][42]}

Now, isn’t it interesting that a political “fact-checking” organization is able to kind of ignore the facts when it comes to the things they need to be true to support their guy?

And even more interesting:

There’s no dispute that thousands of handguns, military-style rifles and other firearms are purchased in the U.S. and end up in the hands of Mexican criminals each year. It’s relatively easy to buy such guns legally in Texas and other border states and to smuggle them across.

But is it true, as President Obama said, that “[m]ore than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States?” Government statistics don’t actually support that claim.

Except then:

Correction, April 22: We originally concluded that Obama’s 90 percent figure was “not true” and based on a “badly biased” sample of recovered guns. We are retracting both those characterizations, and we apologize to our readers for this error. We have rewritten the article throughout to correct this.

Our error was to think we had confirmed that Mexican officials submit for tracing only those guns they believe likely to have come from the U.S. Law enforcement officials say they don’t know if that’s the case.

So who did they ask for data that finally corrected them and showed them that what Obama said was really pretty much true, and that the numbers FOX and Stratfor were using were really the real fake numbers, even though they were hard data a few minutes ago?  Oh, Factcheck went to info from this guy (interesting that FOX got different numbers from the same guy):

However that may be, the Fox figure of 17 percent is based on a misreading of some confusing House subcommittee testimony by ATF official William Newell . The Fox reporters come up with a figure of 5,114 guns traced to U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 2008. That figures to 17.6 percent of the 29,000 figure for guns seized in Mexico, as given by the country’s attorney general.

The 5,114 figure is simply wrong. What Newell said quite clearly is that the number of guns submitted to ATF in those two years was 11,055: “3,312 in FY 2007 [and] 7,743 in FY 2008.” Newell also testified, as other ATF officials have done, that 90 percent of the guns traced were determined to have come from the U.S. So based on Newell’s testimony, the Fox reporters should have used a figure of 9,950 guns from U.S. sources. That figures out to just over 34 percent of guns recovered, assuming that the 29,000 figure supplied by Mexico’s attorney general is correct.

Y’know, Bill Newell:

Y’know, ATF Special Agent in Charge of Phoenix and Fast and Furious Bill Newell:

Interesting how all these people and groups are linked in together, isn’t it?