† Pol Apologizes For Hitler Comparison (second item): Many people thought that Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) crossed the line when he said he opposed the creation of a national security/police force equivalent to the U.S. Army - one of Barack Hussein Obama’s^* campaign proposals - on the grounds that totalitarian strongmen have historically used such citizen cadres as an instrument of oppression. This article from The Washington Post explains what Broun is talking about using a current example:

Yang Jia slipped into the Zhabei Police Station in north Shanghai through the service entrance. A knife in his right hand and a mask over his face, he fatally stabbed four police officers on the first floor and one each on the ninth and the 11th before finally being subdued.

Yang, 28, has confessed to the crime and is destined for execution. But in a bizarre twist that reveals the fissures that run beneath China's elaborately constructed social order, he is also an unlikely hero. Thousands of Chinese have lionized him for standing up to the security forces that are increasingly seen as a blunt instrument of the Communist Party's chief aim: to ensure its authority by maintaining stability and stifling dissent.

At one of Yang's hearings last month, hundreds of protesters descended on the Shanghai Higher People's Court, carrying signs that read “Long Live the Killer” and shouting “Down with the Communist Party” and “Down with fascists.” Many of the protesters were educated and middle-aged.

More than 4,000 people have signed an open letter posted online urging that Yang's life be spared. The letter has been erased from many Web sites by government censors, and coverage of the case in the state-run media has been strictly controlled. …

“There are many citizens who have suffered similar treatment but are too afraid to speak out," said Liu Xiaoyuan, the family's attorney. "They feel that if someone stands up to the police, he or she is fighting for justice on their behalf.”

And speaking of Big Brother: It now appears that in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, the OH Department of Taxation and OH Attorney General Nancy Rogers conducted database searches of Joe the Plumber. Where, oh where, is the ACLU? Oh yeah, only Repub government officials trample on privacy rights.

^* It’s OK to use his middle name now; The New York Times says so.

† ICE Goes After Fugitive Aliens (Finally): Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango, has spotlighted a serious Homeland Security failure that remains unresolved since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks - roughly 560,000 illegal aliens are believed to be living in the U.S. even after they have been ordered deported by an immigration judge, reports The Associated Press:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up efforts to catch fugitive aliens, as they are known, and now has about 100 “fugitive operations teams” around the country. In the past year, the teams have made 34,000 arrests, more than double the number two years ago. …

Fugitive aliens include people who, like Obama's aunt, sought asylum in the United States but were rejected and ordered to leave the country. Others were caught entering or living in this country illegally, and failed to show at their deportation hearings.

Often, illegal immigrants who have been issued deportation notices are given a certain amount of time to get out of the country on their own. They are not forcibly put aboard a plane; these deportations essentially operate on the honor system [emphasis, The Stiletto].

Generally, if these immigrants stay out of trouble - if they don't get pulled over by police or swept up in a workplace raid, for example - they are in little danger of being thrown out of the country.

Imagine, expecting people who have entered the U.S. illegally - and in many cases committed identity theft and document fraud to remain here - to spontaneously develop enough respect for our laws as to obey an immigration court ruling and leave on their own. Natch, ICE says it’s too undermanned and underfunded to go after all the alien fugitive absconders and concentrates on those who commit violent criminal acts while squatting in our house.

As for Obama’s auntie, she is now staying with the family of a cousin in Cleveland and has hired an immigration lawyer to fight her deportation. ICE has declined to state its plans regarding Onyango. Chances are, the agency will twiddle its thumbs as it did in the infamous case of Elvira Arellano, who was holed up in a Chicago church for over a year.

† If It’s Too Good To Be True The MSM Will Run With It: FOX News’ Carl Cameron claims that unlike The New Republic, MSNBC, The Huffington Post and other media outlets, the fictitious Martin Eisenstadt is not his source for his “Palin is a whacko moron diva” scoop. Uh-huh. Prove it, Carl. Who is your source? This ain’t the Pentagon Papers, and if you promised confidentiality to a live flesh-and-blood source for nothing more than salacious gossip, you are as incompetent as the so-called MSM “journalists” who got duped by a non-existent source. Meanwhile, The Telegraph (London) wonders whether the media will apologize to Palin for not checking out a story that played into their biases against her (that’s two journalistic no-nos in one shot) and possibly harming her political future. To borrow a phrase from the Brits, not bloody likely.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Do Local, State And Federal Agencies Hire Illegal Aliens?): The Department of Homeland Security is dialing back the requirements that will be  imposed on federal contractors starting January 15, 2009 to determine whether current and future employees are eligible to work in the U.S. via E-Verify, an electronic Social Security and immigration database maintained by the federal government, reports The Washington Post:

The Bush administration … [is] proposing to make its use mandatory for nearly 200,000 government contractors, covering about 4 million U.S. workers. Participation in E-Verify is now generally voluntary, although 13 state legislatures have enacted similar legislation for state contractors.

However, a revised final rule to be published today in the Federal Register would limit its application to contracts worth $100,000 or more, instead of $3,000, and require employers to check the eligibility only of workers on those contracts, instead of all their workers. The changes would apply to solicitations or awards made after Jan. 15, and exempt workers who have already received security clearances, contracts for commercial, off-the-shelf items, and contracts lasting less than 120 days. …

Enrollment in the program has grown from 3,000 companies to 92,000 since it was expanded nationwide in 2003, but it covers only 1 percent of an estimated 6 million U.S. employers and about 11 percent of annual hiring.

Even with these exemptions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - which initially claimed the requirement would cost contractors and subcontractors $10 billion to implement - may sue to drop the mandatory participation provision. It’s obscene that companies that will be awarded federal contracts will stop at nothing to be able to continue to use taxpayer money to pay the salaries of forged documented aliens.  

And it’s beyond obscene that the Dallas Independent School District was issuing fake Social Security numbers - some of which already belonged to other people - to foreign nationals with H-1B visas allowing them to enter the country to teach bilingual classes, reports The Dallas Morning News. Apparently, this had been going on for years:

[The Texas Education  Agency] had warned the district in 2004 that it was illegal to make up Social Security numbers and pass them off as legitimate. In July, TEA's division of educator investigations advised DISD's investigative unit that it had discovered the district issuing false numbers in 2004. DISD had sent the employees' names and the numbers for TEA to do background checks.

The fake numbers were assigned as a stopgap measure to expedite the hiring process, the report by DISD's investigative unit said. The numbers were supposed to serve as temporary identification numbers until employees received real Social Security numbers. Once employees got the real numbers, they were supposed to tell district officials so the fake ones could be replaced.

While the investigation uncovered no evidence that the SSNs were provided to the Teacher Retirement System, the IRS, the Social Security Administration or the Department of Homeland Security, they were sent to TEA so criminal background checks could be done on the new hires.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too):  Sholom Rubashkin former CEO of IA kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors was arrested Friday on a bank fraud charge and was ordered held until a hearing on Wednesday after a federal prosecutor argued that he was a flight risk, reports The New York Times:

Court records said that under a loan agreement with St. Louis-based First Bank, Rubashkin was supposed to deposit customer payments into an account at Decorah Bank & Trust as collateral on a loan.

Records show that Rubashkin instead diverted millions of dollars in customer payments into an Agriprocessors account at a different bank. The payments would then not be posted on the customers' Agriprocessors accounts until later.

That resulted in the inflation of the value of accounts receivable in Agriprocessors' books, allowing the company to borrow additional funds from the bank without proper collateral.

Rubashkin also is accused of telling an Agriprocessors employee to erase evidence of the scheme from company computers. The instructions allegedly began the day after Rubashkin was released after an Oct. 30 hearing in federal court, where he is facing charges of harboring illegal immigrants, document fraud and identity theft.

This is Rubashkin’s second arrest in less than a month – the first was related to child labor, wage and safety violations that came to light after an immigration raid of the plant on May 12^th in which 389 employees were arrested. Citing the raid as a contributing factor, Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy protection to stave off efforts by First Bank to collect on a $33 million loan.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Al Sharpton: Where’s His Beef?): Federal Election Commission auditors say Rev. Al Sharpton owes $486,803 to the U.S. Treasury for illegal donations and other financial improprieties that occurred during his failed 2004 presidential campaign, for which he received $100,000 in public financing, reports The Associated Press: 

“Virtually no effort appears to have been made by Sharpton 2004, the candidate, NAN [the National Action Network, a not-for-profit corporation Sharpton leads] or Rev-Als. Production Inc. to keep any sort of detailed records demonstrating what payments paid for which travel,” the report found, noting what it called the campaign's “nearly complete failure to produce any information on this subject in the course of the audit.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, It Takes A Village To Support Couple’s Lifestyle): Edward Anderton, 25, who perpetrated a $100,000 identity-theft scheme with then-girlfriend, Jocelyn Kirsch,22, to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included European jaunts, was sentenced to four years in prison, reports The Associated Press. Kirsch will serve an additional year in jail because she continued her life of crime after her arrest.