Title :
link :
Daughter Sarah with Granddaughter Lauren
Joke of the week…
WWW.MOEISSUESOFTHEDAY.BLOGSPOT.COM
Sun.Jan. 13, 2019
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
*****
Going for another ring!!!
Steve King defends himself on House floor against ‘white nationalist’ criticism
lindseymcpherson@cqrollcall.com
Rep. Steve King spoke on the House floor Friday to address what he referred to as “heartburn that seems to be churning across the media and America today” after the New York Times quoted him questioning how labels like “white nationalists” and “white supremacists” became offensive.
The Iowa Republican read the quote from the New York Times article in which he was reported saying: “White nationalists, white supremacists, western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”
King suggested that the Times misrepresented the context of the comment, saying the conversation was about how those words became part of the nation’s political discourse.
“How did that offensive language get injected into our political dialogue?” he said.
King read into the record a statement he put out after the New York Times article published saying in part, “I reject those labels and the evil ideology they define.”
He said he regrets the “heartburn” his comments have caused while also expressing frustration at those questioning his character.
“The people know me know I wouldn’t even have to make this statement, because they do know me,” he said, noting, “There’s nothing about my family or my history or my neighborhood that [supports] these false accusations.”
SHOCK: U.S. State Department Approved 8,686 Child Marriages Entry Into U.S. Between 2007-2017, Some Children Just 14, Married to Men Over 40
WASHINGTON SECRETS
Report: Immigration loophole OK’d 8,686 child marriages, some children just 14
by Paul Bedard
A huge loophole in Washington’s messy immigration laws has paved the way for over 8,000 child marriages, mostly to girls brought in from outside the country, including 14-year-olds, according to a new Senate report released Friday morning.
In one case, a 71-year-old won a visa for a 17-year-old from Guatemala, according to the bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Reform Committee chaired by Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.
(Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs)
The report, the product of a year-long investigation, puts attention on a quirk in policies that promote child marriages and trafficking in the U.S. at a time when the State Department is fighting child marriages overseas.
It also shines a light on the complicated and sometimes contradictory web of immigration laws that President Trump and some in Congress are trying to rewrite and reform.
“U.S. law and U.S. Department of State policy aim to prevent and reduce the risks of child marriages occurring around the world, yet major loopholes in U.S. law have allowed thousands of minors to be subjected to child marriages,” the committee’s report said.
“Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a U.S. child may petition for a visa for a spouse or fiance living in another country, and a U.S. adult may petition for a visa for a minor spouse or fiance living abroad,” it stated.
In total, the committee estimated that over the past 11 years, mostly under the Obama era, 8,686 visas for child spouses or fiances were approved.
“In 95 percent of the cases, the younger person was a girl,” said the report. Many were from Latin America.
And overall, more than 3 million of the spousal and fiance visas were OK'd over that time.
The report has shocked many. Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton tweeted, "Horrifying: 'US approved thousands of child bride requests.' Yet, not surprising that our immigration system is complicit in supporting #childmarriage."
Some of those seeking visas were older citizens, others were to very young citizens seeking to bring their spouses into the U.S., including those who were forced into marriage overseas and encouraged to bring their spouses to America.
Said the report, “USCIS awarded petitions to people with significant age differences, including a 71-year-old U.S. citizen’s petition for a 17-year-old spouse from Guatemala and a 14-year-old’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse from Jamaica. USCIS approved 149 petitions involving a minor with an adult spouse or fiance who was more than 40 years old.”
In one case, the committee spoke with a U.S. citizen forced to marry her first cousin during a family vacation to Pakistan. “USCIS approved her petition for a spousal immigration benefit for her cousin when she was 13-years-old after she returned to the United States. She is just one of the thousands of U.S. women and girls forced into a child marriage involving the U.S. immigration system,” said the report, titled, “How the U.S. Immigration System Encourages Child Marriages.”
Getting a visa for a spouse or fiance requires an approval from State and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The government does not require parental consent even if the petition for a visa is made by a minor.
According to the report, “Over the last eleven years (FY2007 to FY2017), USCIS approved 3,595,447 petitions for spousal or fiance entry into the United States. Of those, 8,686 involved a minor. Two minors whose petitions were approved were 13 years old (and later rejected), 38 were 14 years old, 269 were 15 years old, 1,768 were 16 years old, and the remaining 6,609 were 17 years old.”
Why Climate Change Isn't Science
By Daniel G. Jones
Environmentalists first predicted impending climate disaster in the 1970s, but they didn’t call it global warming. Back then, it was “Global Cooling” that would end life on earth as we knew it. The smog of industrial pollutants was blocking out sunlight so severely, we were warned, that our planet would enter a new ice age unless we acted quickly. Magazine covers featured pictures of snowball earth.
In the eighties, we cleaned up our air, the threatened the ice age did not occur, and thousands of people with time on their hands and seeking purpose in life had discovered that they could make a career out of disaster prophecy. Thus, it was time for a new catastrophe: “Global Warming” Well, maybe not so new. Same villain: us and our machines. Same victim: our delicate planet earth. Same threat: the end of life as we know it. Only the predicted temperature had changed.
Global warming appealed to the press’s appetite for calamity and became an instant hit. The headlines wrote themselves: The poles will melt! The oceans will rise! Lakes and rivers will dry up! Farmlands will become deserts! Millions will starve to death! This was big. Government would have to join the fight.
In the nineties, environmentalists switched their emphasis to “Climate Change” This was a marketing move. Global warming could credibly be blamed for warming, but climate change could be blamed for anything. If hurricanes increase one year, that’s evidence of climate change. If they decrease the next year, well, that’s climate change too. Droughts are caused by climate change, but so are exceptional rains. Warmer winters prove climate change, but so do colder winters. (Claiming that frigid temperatures are caused by global warming would sound ridiculous.) “Climate Change” was disaster gold. It couldn’t be disproved.
Which is exactly why it’s not science. It’s pseudo-science, according to the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pointed out that for any theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. There must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved.
This may be technically true, but what was far more important was that “Climate Change” had already been proven -- by three decades of data, by the computer models of climate experts, and by the overwhelming consensus of scientists.
But those “proofs” aren’t science either. Looking backward, climate change the phenomenon has been a constant feature of our planet. Real climate science tells us that temperatures have been much colder and much hotter in the past. (Canada once had a tropical climate.). For the past ten thousand years, we’ve been living in an interglacial period. These pleasant periods have tended to last for ten to fifteen thousand years, so real climate science predicts that we can enjoy about five thousand more years of temperate weather until the next ice age hits.
The theory of “Climate Change” is entirely different. To claim that it has been proven is to entirely misunderstand how science works. No scientific theory is ever proven. Theories that appear to accurately describe how nature works -- like Darwin’s theory of evolution or Einstein’s relativity -- are assigned the provisional status of not yet disproven, with the understanding that the discovery of a single contrary fact could throw a wrench into the works.
Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of them all, water vapor.
What “Climate Change” is, is a bunch of doomsday predictions. Now, predictions are the critical part of the scientific method. They are what enable a theory to be proven or disproven. If they prove false, they’re also the best way to refute a theory.
Climate change alarmists have made lots of predictions. Perhaps too many, because not one of their predictions whose expiration date has passed has proven correct. Here’s a sampling, courtesy of Anthony Watts at wattsupwiththat.com:
-
1988, Dr. James Hansen. Asked by author Rob Reiss how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years, Hansen replied: “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change…There will be more police cars…[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
-
Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”
-
1990, Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund: “By 1996, the Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers… The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
-
October 15, 1990, Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ecological and agricultural catastrophe by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
-
1990, Actress Meryl Streep: “By the year 2000 – that’s less than ten years away -- earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”
-
July 26, 1999, The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”
-
April 1, 2000, Der Spiegel: “Good bye winter. Never again snow?”
-
March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten years’ time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”
-
Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”
To suggest that the scientific validity of “Climate Change” is debatable is to speak charitably. But there’s never been a debate, not for want of trying. Many skeptics have called for debates. In particular, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a hereditary peer, journalist, political advisor, inventor, and a skeptic well-versed in the details of climate science, has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to debate. That Al Gore has never replied to these requests is difficult to reconcile with his comments on the CBS "Early Show" (May 31, 2006):
“…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science… Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”
These are not the words of a person who understands science. They are the tactics of a person who realizes he doesn’t have a scientific leg to stand on.
There must be another non scientific reason for the “Climate Change” agenda. That reason may involve the billions of dollars that proponents have demanded for solving this “problem.”
“Climate Change” is a scam.
Environmentalists first predicted impending climate disaster in the 1970s, but they didn’t call it global warming. Back then, it was “Global Cooling” that would end life on earth as we knew it. The smog of industrial pollutants was blocking out sunlight so severely, we were warned, that our planet would enter a new ice age unless we acted quickly. Magazine covers featured pictures of snowball earth.
In the eighties, we cleaned up our air, the threatened the ice age did not occur, and thousands of people with time on their hands and seeking purpose in life had discovered that they could make a career out of disaster prophecy. Thus, it was time for a new catastrophe: “Global Warming” Well, maybe not so new. Same villain: us and our machines. Same victim: our delicate planet earth. Same threat: the end of life as we know it. Only the predicted temperature had changed.
Global warming appealed to the press’s appetite for calamity and became an instant hit. The headlines wrote themselves: The poles will melt! The oceans will rise! Lakes and rivers will dry up! Farmlands will become deserts! Millions will starve to death! This was big. Government would have to join the fight.
In the nineties, environmentalists switched their emphasis to “Climate Change” This was a marketing move. Global warming could credibly be blamed for warming, but climate change could be blamed for anything. If hurricanes increase one year, that’s evidence of climate change. If they decrease the next year, well, that’s climate change too. Droughts are caused by climate change, but so are exceptional rains. Warmer winters prove climate change, but so do colder winters. (Claiming that frigid temperatures are caused by global warming would sound ridiculous.) “Climate Change” was disaster gold. It couldn’t be disproved.
Which is exactly why it’s not science. It’s pseudo-science, according to the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pointed out that for any theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. There must be something within the theory itself that can be disproved.
This may be technically true, but what was far more important was that “Climate Change” had already been proven -- by three decades of data, by the computer models of climate experts, and by the overwhelming consensus of scientists.
But those “proofs” aren’t science either. Looking backward, climate change the phenomenon has been a constant feature of our planet. Real climate science tells us that temperatures have been much colder and much hotter in the past. (Canada once had a tropical climate.). For the past ten thousand years, we’ve been living in an interglacial period. These pleasant periods have tended to last for ten to fifteen thousand years, so real climate science predicts that we can enjoy about five thousand more years of temperate weather until the next ice age hits.
The theory of “Climate Change” is entirely different. To claim that it has been proven is to entirely misunderstand how science works. No scientific theory is ever proven. Theories that appear to accurately describe how nature works -- like Darwin’s theory of evolution or Einstein’s relativity -- are assigned the provisional status of not yet disproven, with the understanding that the discovery of a single contrary fact could throw a wrench into the works.
Strictly speaking, “Climate Change” theory isn’t really a scientific theory at all. It doesn’t take into relevant account factors which arguably have a far stronger effect upon climate than CO2, like the sun, ocean currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of them all, water vapor.
What “Climate Change” is, is a bunch of doomsday predictions. Now, predictions are the critical part of the scientific method. They are what enable a theory to be proven or disproven. If they prove false, they’re also the best way to refute a theory.
Climate change alarmists have made lots of predictions. Perhaps too many, because not one of their predictions whose expiration date has passed has proven correct. Here’s a sampling, courtesy of Anthony Watts at wattsupwiththat.com:
-
1988, Dr. James Hansen. Asked by author Rob Reiss how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years, Hansen replied: “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be underwater. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change…There will be more police cars…[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
-
Sept 19, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”
-
1990, Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund: “By 1996, the Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers… The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
-
October 15, 1990, Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ecological and agricultural catastrophe by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
-
1990, Actress Meryl Streep: “By the year 2000 – that’s less than ten years away -- earth’s climate will be warmer than it’s been in over 100,000 years. If we don’t do something, there’ll be enormous calamities in a very short time.”
-
July 26, 1999, The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”
-
April 1, 2000, Der Spiegel: “Goodbye winter. Never again snow?”
-
March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten years’ time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rising sea levels.”
-
Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”
To suggest that the scientific validity of “Climate Change” is debatable is to speak charitably. But there’s never been a debate, not for want of trying. Many skeptics have called for debates. In particular, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a hereditary peer, journalist, political advisor, inventor, and a skeptic well-versed in the details of climate science, has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to debate. That Al Gore has never replied to these requests is difficult to reconcile with his comments on the CBS "Early Show" (May 31, 2006):
“…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science… Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”
These are not the words of a person who understands science. They are the tactics of a person who realizes he doesn’t have a scientific leg to stand on.
There must be another non scientific reason for the “Climate Change” agenda. That reason may involve the billions of dollars that proponents have demanded for solving this “problem.”
“Climate Change” is a scam.
Nancy Pelosi Whines That a Border Wall Discriminates Against People Entering Illegally
Katie Pavlich @KatiePavlich
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained that President Trump's border barrier proposal "discriminates" against those entering the country illegally.
"Quite frankly when the president talks about this being a national security issue, it really isn't. It's about a policy that is discriminatory about where people are coming into this country," she said.
She of course made this statement right after claiming Democrats really care about border security.
"We all support border security. We take an oath to protect and defend the American people," Pelosi said. "There's a better way. A more effective way to secure our borders and that is what the debate should be about."
As a reminder, Pelosi cares so much about border security that she's openly defended MS-13 gang members.
Meanwhile, when asked about whether she'd be willing to strike a deal over President Trump's $5.7 billion barrier request in exchange for DACA, she said the issue hasn't been discussed.
President Trump is in McAllen, Texas today hearing from Border Patrol agents on the ground. He met with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at the White House yesterday. President Trump offered to open the government in exchange for border barrier support. Pelosi said no.
How Bill Clinton Romanced a Teenager at Dinner with Us
By Dick Morris
President Bill Clinton (Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock)
In December of 1981, Eileen and I were introduced to Bill Clinton’s womanizing ways. He and Hillary were scheduled to have dinner with us at the posh Four Seasons Restaurant in Manhattan. When it turned out that Hillary was stuck in Washington and had to cancel, Bill brought a 19-year-old woman to dinner instead. Eileen remembers that she had long hair and could sit on it.
They held hands and rubbed knees under the table the entire meal and, at the end, he took her away to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
Clinton had come to New York to work with media expert Tony Schwartz and me on the ads for his coming campaign for governor.
After Bill and I worked on his ads during the day, he called to say that Hillary was detained in Washington. Then he called again to ask if it was OK to bring a “reporter” to dinner “if I pay.” I asked if it was OK to speak in front of a reporter and he told me not to worry.
It turns out that the “reporter” was a very young, attractive woman who had worked as a stringer on the “Today Show” in New York while Bill was being interviewed. Not quite a reporter, she told us she was writing a book on 30 men who made it by 30 and she was researching a chapter on Clinton.
At the end of the meal, as we waited for taxis outside the restaurant on 52nd street, Bill asked her if she had ever seen the Christmas tree that just went up at Rockefeller Center. “Why no,” she replied on cue, fluttering her eyelashes. “Don’t worry about us,” Bill told Eileen and me, “I’ll take her to see the tree and then drop her off after.”
We didn’t worry about her, but I did worry that he might destroy his career with such blatant conduct.
This story is in my new book “Fifty Shades of Politics,” a collection of a hundred short, autobiographical stories and anecdotes from my political career.
An easy read and, at $13.99 an easy lift.
Not in bookstores (it’s self-published) but on Amazon.com. It’s a lot of fun. The Clintons like you’ve never seen them before!
Order “50 Shades Of Politics” By Dick Morris in paperback edition — Click Here!
One Billion Barrels of Oil Discovered off US Coast
BP just discovered a billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico
British Petroleum announced this week that it had identified a drilling area capable of producing 1 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The discovery was made thanks to what the company referred to as “recent BP breakthrough in seismic imaging” used for oil exploration.
And the announcement came only days after Bloomberg reported that the United States had become became a net exporter of oil for the first time in decades.
In a news release, BP announced it expected to grow its gulf production to around 400,000 barrels of oil per day in the next decade.
“BP’s Gulf of Mexico business is key to our strategy of growing production of advantaged high-margin oil. We are building on our world-class position, upgrading the resources at our fields through technology, productivity and exploration success,” said Bernard Looney, BP’s Upstream chief executive, according to the news release.
“And these fields are still young – only 12 percent of the hydrocarbons in place across our gulf portfolio have been produced so far. We can see many opportunities for further development, offering the potential to continue to create significant value through the middle of the next decade and beyond.”
CNBC reported that BP is scheduled to start production on the new find in 2020 with eight new wells that will add 38,000 barrels per day to BP’s production in the area, which is off the coast of Louisiana.
The discovery “shows how our latest technologies and digital techniques create real value – identifying opportunities, driving efficiencies and enabling the delivery of major projects,” said Starlee Sykes, BP’s regional president for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada, said in the release.
“Developments like this are building an exciting future for our business in the gulf.”
According to its website, BP currently operates in 70 countries and has a, “larger economic footprint in the U.S. than in any other nation, and it has invested more than $100 billion here since 2005.”
In its report about U.S. oil production, Bloomberg quoted Michael Lynch, the president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, who said, “We are becoming the dominant energy power in the world.”
“But, because the change is gradual over time, I don’t think it’s going to cause a huge revolution, but you do have to think that OPEC is going to have to take that into account when they think about cutting,” Lynch clarified.
However, an energy columnist for Forbes cautioned that elation over U.S. oil production might be premature.
Robert Rapier, a veteran chemical engineer with experience in the international energy field, noted that Bloomberg’s verdict about U.S. energy independence isn’t quite the whole story. The numbers don’t cover the whole context of the oil industry, he wrote.
Nevertheless, he wrote, things are heading in the right direction.
“So the bottom line is that we aren’t net exporters of crude oil, and we aren’t energy independent. But, the U.S. has trended in that direction for over a decade. Regardless of whether it remains that way, this is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement. I know a lot of people — including myself — would have scoffed at such a prediction in 2005.”
The discovery was made thanks to what the company referred to as “recent BP breakthrough in seismic imaging” used for oil exploration.
And the announcement came only days after Bloomberg reported that the United States had become became a net exporter of oil for the first time in decades.
In a news release, BP announced it expected to grow its gulf production to around 400,000 barrels of oil per day in the next decade.
“BP’s Gulf of Mexico business is key to our strategy of growing production of advantaged high-margin oil. We are building on our world-class position, upgrading the resources at our fields through technology, productivity and exploration success,” said Bernard Looney, BP’s Upstream chief executive, according to the news release.
“And these fields are still young – only 12 percent of the hydrocarbons in place across our gulf portfolio have been produced so far. We can see many opportunities for further development, offering the potential to continue to create significant value through the middle of the next decade and beyond.”
CNBC reported that BP is scheduled to start production on the new find in 2020 with eight new wells that will add 38,000 barrels per day to BP’s production in the area, which is off the coast of Louisiana.
The discovery “shows how our latest technologies and digital techniques create real value – identifying opportunities, driving efficiencies and enabling the delivery of major projects,” said Starlee Sykes, BP’s regional president for the Gulf of Mexico and Canada, said in the release.
“Developments like this are building an exciting future for our business in the gulf.”
According to its website, BP currently operates in 70 countries and has a, “larger economic footprint in the U.S. than in any other nation, and it has invested more than $100 billion here since 2005.”
In its report about U.S. oil production, Bloomberg quoted Michael Lynch, the president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, who said, “We are becoming the dominant energy power in the world.”
“But, because the change is gradual over time, I don’t think it’s going to cause a huge revolution, but you do have to think that OPEC is going to have to take that into account when they think about cutting,” Lynch clarified.
However, an energy columnist for Forbes cautioned that elation over U.S. oil production might be premature.
Robert Rapier, a veteran chemical engineer with experience in the international energy field, noted that Bloomberg’s verdict about U.S. energy independence isn’t quite the whole story. The numbers don’t cover the whole context of the oil industry, he wrote.
Nevertheless, he wrote, things are heading in the right direction.
“So the bottom line is that we aren’t net exporters of crude oil, and we aren’t energy independent. But, the U.S. has trended in that direction for over a decade. Regardless of whether it remains that way, this is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement. I know a lot of people — including myself — would have scoffed at such a prediction in 2005.”
Pavlich Digs Up Video of Democrat Saying Proposed Wall Should Be Bigger
-
Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich shared video on Thursday of Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin — a harsh critic of President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a border wall — complaining in 2006 because border fencing legislation that year did not cover enough of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 enjoyed strong bipartisan support, passing the House of Representatives on a 238-138 vote and the Senate 80-19.
Sixty-four House and 25 Senate Democrats voted for the measure, including Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Joe Biden of Delaware and Dianne Feinstein of California.
The video shared by Pavlich notes the Democrats’ support.
Obama argued in favor of the bill saying, “It will authorize some badly needed funding for better fences and better security along our borders that should help stem the tide of illegal immigration in this country.”
FLASHBACK: When Democrat Senator Dick Durbin complained about the 2006 Secure Fence Act not covering *enough* of the 2,000 mile southern border -----> http://ow.ly/Jf3x30ngEBC
3,798
While Obama voted for the law, Durbin decided to vote against it, arguing in part the fencing would be inadequate because it wouldn’t cover enough of the border.
“Our border is more than 2,000 miles long, and we are building 300 or 700 miles worth of fencing and barriers,” the senior senator from Illinois said.
“I would say that that leaves a lot of area uncovered,” he continued. “I guess it’s not a leap of the imagination to believe that people will find a way to go around this wall, around this fence, over or under it, it’s going to happen.”
Durbin, like most of his fellow Democrats, opposes Trump’s push for funding for a border wall or barrier, describing the plan as “medieval.”
Following Trump’s Oval Office address Tuesday night during which he made the case for approximately 230 miles of new border barrier, Durbin said in a statement the nation had heard a “desperate attempt by the President to gain support for his medieval border wall. It won’t work. Democrats support strong border security.”
Currently, there exists about 700 miles of various forms of fencing or barriers along the nation’s 1,954-mile border with Mexico. Included in this total is approximately 350 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers, National Review reported.
During an Oval Office meeting with Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, the president said illegal alien traffic dropped 92 percent in the San Diego sector, 95 percent in El Paso, Texas, and 92 percent and 95 percent in Tucson and Yuma, Arizona, respectively, after fencing and other barriers were added
Pelosi called into question those figures; however, they are in line with statistics given by the Border Patrol to NPR in 2006 following the initial erection of double and triple fencing in the San Diego area.
According to the Border Patrol, the number of apprehensions of those trying to cross the border illegally dropped from approximately 162,000 at its peak in 2008 to 26,000 in 2017.
Earlier this month, Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told Fox News the fence also worked in his region.
As part of the Secure Fence Act, a 20-foot tall steel fence was built and the number of border patrol agents was tripled
“It was a 91 percent drop (in crime),” Wilmot said. “It obviously helped us curb some of the criminal activity that we unfortunately had to deal with.”
Like San Diego, apprehensions by Border Patrol went from over 138,400 in 2005 to approximately 12,900 in 2017.
“Our border is more than 2,000 miles long, and we are building 300 or 700 miles worth of fencing and barriers,” the senior senator from Illinois said.
“I would say that that leaves a lot of area uncovered,” he continued. “I guess it’s not a leap of the imagination to believe that people will find a way to go around this wall, around this fence, over or under it, it’s going to happen.”
Durbin, like most of his fellow Democrats, opposes Trump’s push for funding for a border wall or barrier, describing the plan as “medieval.”
Following Trump’s Oval Office address Tuesday night during which he made the case for approximately 230 miles of new border barrier, Durbin said in a statement the nation had heard a “desperate attempt by the President to gain support for his medieval border wall. It won’t work. Democrats support strong border security.”
Currently, there exists about 700 miles of various forms of fencing or barriers along the nation’s 1,954-mile border with Mexico. Included in this total is approximately 350 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers, National Review reported.
During an Oval Office meeting with Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, the president said illegal alien traffic dropped 92 percent in the San Diego sector, 95 percent in El Paso, Texas, and 92 percent and 95 percent in Tucson and Yuma, Arizona, respectively, after fencing and other barriers were added
Pelosi called into question those figures; however, they are in line with statistics given by the Border Patrol to NPR in 2006 following the initial erection of double and triple fencing in the San Diego area.
According to the Border Patrol, the number of apprehensions of those trying to cross the border illegally dropped from approximately 162,000 at its peak in 2008 to 26,000 in 2017.
Earlier this month, Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told Fox News the fence also worked in his region.
As part of the Secure Fence Act, a 20-foot tall steel fence was built and the number of border patrol agents was tripled
“It was a 91 percent drop (in crime),” Wilmot said. “It obviously helped us curb some of the criminal activity that we unfortunately had to deal with.”
Like San Diego, apprehensions by Border Patrol went from over 138,400 in 2005 to approximately 12,900 in 2017.
Professor and political activist Angela Davis at the 37th Toronto International Film Festival, Canada, September 10, 2012. (Fred Thornhill/REUTERS) She was a longtime apologist forthe Soviet Union and now a backer of the anti-Semitic BDS movement.
When the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute first announced that it was giving its annual human-rights award to Angela Davis, the honor attracted little attention. Academia and the mainstream media have long treated Davis, a retired professor who has taught at Rutgers and the University of California, Santa Cruz, as something of a civil rights icon.
An early exponent of black-power philosophy and a member of the violent Black Panther Party, Davis had been linked to a notorious kidnapping and murder. A member of the Communist Party USA and an ardent supporter of the former Soviet Union and the Castro regime in Cuba, she denounced those who fought for freedom in those countries. She has also been a major figure in promoting intersectional theory to link the struggle for civil rights in the United States to various third-world struggles, including the war against the existence of the state of Israel.
But like so many other elderly radicals whose Communism is now seen as a romantic fling with idealism rather than evidence of morally dubious past, in recent decades Davis has acquired a patina of respectability in which her radical activities are viewed as part of the struggle for equality in the United States. That Harvard recently purchased a collection of her papers and memorabilia, including her “Wanted” poster, signals that as far as liberal elite culture is concerned, her role as an apologist for terrorist thugs at home and totalitarian tyrants abroad is considered just a colorful and even understandable aspect of the biography of someone who fought an unjust American system.
Few may still care about the people killed by the Black Panthers. Nor are there many who remember her role as the supplier of weapons to a man who gained control over a courtroom in Marin County, Calif., in 1970 and took the judge and three jurors hostage, leading to a shootout in which four people (including the judge) were killed.
If anything, the only way that atrocity is remembered is the way artists, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono and the Rolling Stones, rallied to her defense when, after a stint on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, she was apprehended and tried as an accessory to kidnapping and murder. A sympathetic jury acquitted her and she returned to academia.
If anything, the only way that atrocity is remembered is the way artists, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono and the Rolling Stones, rallied to her defense when, after a stint on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, she was apprehended and tried as an accessory to kidnapping and murder. A sympathetic jury acquitted her and she returned to academia.
So it’s likely that the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which runs a museum in a city once on the front lines of that struggle, assumed that no one would seek to resurrect the old arguments dating from the 1960s or to debate the process whereby radical-chic liberal elites had transformed the perception of Davis, a Birmingham native, until the supporter of totalitarianism and terror was anointed a civil-rights icon.01:02
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Instead, it was another line on her résumé — her recent role as an advocate for the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement against the state of Israel — that created a ruckus and led to the Institute’s rescinding the award and canceling the February dinner where she was to be honored.
Credit for the protest goes to the Alabama-based Southern Jewish Life magazine and its editor, Larry Brook, who published an article that highlighted Davis’s support not only for BDS but also for Palestinian terrorists who had been convicted of murders of Israeli civilians. The article led to protests from the Birmingham Jewish community and successful pressure on its leadership to back away from honoring a person who has a long record of anti-Semitism.
That in turn led to a counter-protest by Davis, who claimed she was being shunned because of her support for “the indivisibility of justice.” She and her supporters in Birmingham and elsewhere argued that her support for the Palestinian cause was inextricably linked to civil rights in the United States. That resonated with some Institute board members who resigned in protest over the institute’s treatment of Davis, as backlash against its decision to rescind the honor grew. This week the Birmingham city council unanimously passed a resolution honoring her career.
The incident has became one more front in the battle over BDS, which has recently roiled Congress, where opponents of an anti-BDS bill have falsely called it an attack on free speech rather than an attempt to curb discriminatory commercial conduct. But like that debate, in which Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) resurrected the notion of dual loyalty, a traditional theme of anti-Semitism, to smear those who oppose BDS, the argument about Davis shows how intersectionality has helped normalize anti-Semitism.
BDS is not a protest against Israeli policies or a tactic by which it can be pressured to withdraw from the West Bank in order to facilitate the implementation of a two-state solution. To the contrary, it is a movement dedicated to the eradication of Israel and to the denial of rights, including a people’s self-determination and ability to live in peace and security in their own homeland, that BDS advocates seek to deny no one else: It is an act of bias against Jews. Wherever BDS raises its banners, invariably anti-Semitic statements (like that of Tlaib) or acts of intimidation or even violence soon follow.
Moreover, this is not the first time that anti-Semitism has played a part in Davis’s career. As a radical celebrity in the 1970s as well as a prominent Communist and supporter of the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes, she was asked to support the struggle for human rights in those countries. In particular, some on the left pleaded with her to aid Jews who were prosecuted by the anti-Semitic Soviet government, which refused them the right to leave for Israel or to freely practice Judaism at home.
Her response was not merely silence. She actively supported the repressive regimes in Russia, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia and opposed the activities of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents. Though she styled herself a “political prisoner” for being called to account for her role in an act of domestic terrorism, Davis was quoted as saying of Czech dissidents, “They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.” According to Alan Dershowitz, who also asked for help for Jewish refuseniks and other prisoners of conscience, she told him, “They are all Zionist fascists and opponents of socialism.”
Davis and her defenders have sought to depict her critics as racists. But the idea that a person with a record of support for totalitarianism and consistent anti-Semitism deserves to be honored as a human rights-advocate is an insult not so much to the Jewish community but to genuine civil-rights heroes who fought for justice — and not, like Davis, to defend injustice.
One needn’t re-litigate the history of Communism or her personal role in Black Panther violence to understand that neither Davis nor the liberals who fawned over those who committed violence did nothing to make the United States a better place or to destroy the edifice of institutionalized racism that once prevailed in this country. Similarly, her support for efforts to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet and her cheers for those who shed Jewish blood to advance that despicable cause is antithetical to advocacy for human rights.
Harvard may consider Davis a figure of historical importance, but whatever one may think of that dubious designation, she supported violence and hate as well as anti-Semitism. To treat that fact as an insignificant or irrelevant detail in an otherwise blameless life is as absurd as it is morally obtuse. For Birmingham, academia, or civil-rights groups to continue to ignore or falsify her past does no service to the cause of justice.
Opposing honors for Angela Davis isn’t so much an indication of support for Israel or remembering the moral imperative of anti-Communism as it is as matter of public decency.
JONATHAN S. TOBIN — Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review. @jonathans_tobinG'day...Ciao…
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