† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that three people who were convicted of crimes that came to light during investigation of Category II terrorism-related cases were later naturalized as U.S. citizens by the Obama administration, CNSNews.com reports:

The three individuals in question can be found in a DOJ list of unsealed terrorism-related investigations conducted from Sept. 11, 2001 through Mar. 18, 2010. There are 403 defendants on that list of which, according to the GAO, at least 43 percent were aliens - both legal (26 percent) and illegal (17 percent) - at the time they were charged with crimes. …

 “Based upon our analysis of USCIS and DOJ data, three of the individuals on the DOJ list received U.S. citizenship after their convictions,” stated the GAO audit report. “Two were convicted of unlawful production of an identity document and one was convicted of transferring funds out of the country in violation of U.S. sanctions.”

“An individual applying for naturalization must demonstrate good moral character for a statutory period of time - from 5 years preceding the application up to admission to citizenship,” added the GAO. “This includes not having been convicted of crimes, such as murder, rape, drug trafficking, or other aggravated felonies prior to or during that period, as well as not having been convicted of other crimes during that period, such as certain drug offenses or convictions that led to 180 days or more of prison time.”

In explaining why the individuals were allowed to become naturalized U.S. citizens, USCIS indicated that “the convictions were outside of the [five year] statutory period, were not aggravated felonies, and resulted in no prison time for the defendants; all required background checks were conducted and resolved with appropriate law enforcement agencies; and no national security, public safety, or other grounds of ineligibility existed.”

† Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound: Of the royal wedding, The Washington Times asks: “[D]id Americans, whose entire national identity is based on not having monarchs of our own to support with our tax dollars, really want all that coverage?”:

Turns out we didn't. A Pew Research Center poll conducted prior to the wedding found that 64 percent of Americans believe that the event has received too much media attention.

Alex Weprin, editor of MediaBistro.com's TVNewser blog, believes that the networks misjudged audience interest in the story.

"The last royal wedding, between Princess Diana and Prince Charles, was huge," Mr. Weprin said. "But back in 1981, the TV landscape was totally different. Cable was brand new. Everyone watched broadcast TV, and there were three networks that people watched. There was definitely a significant amount of interest in this, but I suspect that it's probably less than the interest that you saw back when Charles and Diana were married."

According to Mr. Weprin, the royal wedding presented the networks with a rare and ultimately irresistible opportunity - the chance to monetize news coverage. Despite the early start time, the wedding allowed the networks to prepare hours-long, feel-good broadcasts that would prove attractive to advertisers. But with so much invested in turning a story about two wealthy socialites into the TV event of the century, there was little bandwidth left for news of genuine import, such as the aftermath of tornadoes that ravaged the American South on Thursday.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Roughly one in four renters - or 10.1 million people - spent more than half their pre-tax household income on rent and utilities in 2009, according to a Harvard University study. “The share of renters who spend more than half their income on housing is at its highest level in half a century and it’s no longer just low-income tenants who are feeling the pain,” The Washington Post reports:

The supply has not kept up with demand in part because of a shortage of apartments, a key source of new rentals. Developers cut back on such projects when the economy deteriorated in 2009, which drove down vacancies and boosted rents. …

In many areas, the demand is driven by families who lost their homes to foreclosure during the housing bust and ended up searching for rentals. Meanwhile, as the job market recovers, more newly employed young adults appear to be seeking their own apartments instead of living with their parents, putting even more upward pressure on rental rates, according to one of the study’s researchers.

Ideally, renters should not spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, the study said. Low-income tenants have struggled during the past decade to stay within that limit. And increasingly so have renters with moderate incomes, defined as making between two and three times the minimum wage. By 2009, 7.5 percent of moderate-income renters spent more than half their income on rent, twice as many as in 2001. …

A separate study released in February by the Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that higher-income families who are struggling with shrinking incomes are competing for a limited amount of affordable rental housing, further driving down already low vacancy rates.

† The Reverend And The Rent Boys: Rev. Kevin Gray pleaded “no contest” to first-degree larceny for stealing more than $1 million from the Sacred Heart parish and spending it on male escorts and a lavish lifestyle, and will serve three years in prison. But the Archdiocese of Hartford has not asked for restitution, so the priest was not ordered to return any of the money he stole, Republican-American reports.

† Honor Killing And Beheading: Stereotype Or True To Type?: Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner fulminates over Turkish soap actress Sila Sahin, 25, who went the way of all (attention-seeking) flesh and posed topless in the German edition of Playboy:  

Raised in Germany by conservative Turkish parents, she is casting her actions as a form of personal liberation, a brave rebellion against the strict moral standards and repressive sexual norms of her traditional religious upbringing. …

Her parents are rightly outraged by her shameless behavior. Ms. Sahin has not been the victim of some extreme fundamentalist upbringing. She was not forced to wear a burqa or denied the right to work or go to school. In fact, by all accounts, her parents supported her career aspirations and desire to be a TV actress. They just don't want their daughter degrading her body. In other words, they value something most Europeans - and Americans - no longer do: chastity.

Not that The Stiletto has any quarrel with Kuhner’s consternation, but just as she was about to mutter under her breath that he missed the point, he adds:

Islamic websites have posted threats. "She must pay," one said. "She needs to be very careful," another warned. German TV crews then asked some ordinary Muslims on the street what they thought of Ms. Sahin's actions. To their shock, some openly espoused the right to honor killing. A kebab shop owner vowed that if she were his daughter, "I would kill her. I really mean that. That doesn't fit with my culture."

Honor killings are on the rise in Germany and throughout Europe. For numerous Muslims, public criticism and social ostracism is not enough; only violence can ensure that Shariah law is enforced. The contradiction of multiculturalism is that it seeks to accommodate simultaneously both radical Islam and contemporary liberalism: the crescent and the condom. The problem, however, is that they are locked in a mortal struggle - and only one side will emerge victorious.

"I think what she did was either very brave or very stupid," said a German police officer. "She will be double-locking her door at night for a long time to come." Sadly, Ms. Sahin eventually may pay the ultimate price: her life. She will learn - tragically - that her fellow feminists, those applauding now, will not be there in her moment of need. In the West, no one is willing to die to defend a porn star.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Waterboarding Works): So much for the liberal myth that enhanced interrogation techniques yield unreliable intelligence because “A person will say anything to make the pain stop.” The Telegraph (London) reports that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was “repeatedly subjected to methods including ‘waterboarding’ and stress positions” [at CIA prisons in Poland and Romania], provided … the name of Usama bin Laden’s personal courier.” The intel provided by KSM was corroborated by a second Gitmo detainee, terrorist operations chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Politico reports that on their way out of UBL’s lavish compound, Navy SEALs “snatched a trove of computer drives and disks … yielding what a U.S. official called ‘the mother lode of intelligence.’ The info on UBL’s hard drive will no doubt be used to cross-check information obtained using enhanced interrogation techniques, and The Stiletto expects waterboarding to be validated as an effective intelligence-gathering tool.

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times): A new law takes effect on June 1^st in NJ meant to prevent employers in the state from posting job listings that require an applicant to be currently employed. Violators will be fined $1,000 for the first offense and $5,000 for a second offense.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!): Writing for The Daily Beast, columnist Eric Alterman puts another check mark in the "He's Jimmy Carter" column, noting that “the two men have a great deal in common in their approach to the presidency, and not one of these similarities is good news for the Democrats or even for America”:

Both were possessed with superhuman self-confidence when it came to their own political judgment mixed with contempt for what they understood to be the petty concerns of pundits and party leaders. And worst of all, one fears, neither one appeared willing to change course no matter how many storm clouds loomed on the horizon.

For his part, former George W. Bush deputy chief of staff Karl Rove likens Obama’s re-election campaign to Carter’s predecessor:

President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is now up and operating. It's an interesting amalgam: Tactically, it's Bushian - but strategically, it's Nixonian.

The Obama approach copies the tactical emphasis of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election effort. On Monday, Mr. Obama's manager Jim Messina told volunteers that the campaign would focus on "expanding the electorate . . . growing the grass roots . . . measuring progress; and working for every vote." …

But Mr. Obama is making a mistake by following the advice of President Richard Nixon, who argued White House hopefuls must run to their party's flank in the primary and tack back to the center for the general election. While Mr. Obama doesn't face a primary challenge, the White House is worried about the intensity of the Democratic base and feels compelled to feed it red meat now. …

Many swing voters are repelled by the class-warfare rhetoric Mr. Obama uses to fire up the Democratic base.

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ): The OK legislature approved an AZ-like anti-illegal immigration bill that would make it a misdemeanor for illegal aliens in the state to work, apply for work or solicit work in a public place grants police officers more authority to question citizenship status of suspects, Reuters reports that the bill:

‡ Targets the common practice of employers hiring day workers who gather along roadways by making it a misdemeanor to stop a vehicle in a roadway and impede traffic while picking up workers. In addition, it prohibits undocumented workers from entering vehicles stopped in a roadway.

‡ Prohibits employers from hiring workers who do not have proper identification issued by state or federal authorities, but it does not call for any specific punishment for violations.

‡ Makes human smuggling for profit a felony offense punishable by no less than a year in jail and/or a $1,000 fine; it also allows for the forfeiture of vehicles used to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on 11^th-grader Richard "Ricky" Gilleland III, who “has created the only digitized record of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans laid to rest at Arlington” by “poring over Web development manuals for the right program language [and inputting] hundreds of names, photos, links to obituaries and newspaper accounts.” Los Angeles Times reports:

His website, preserveandhonor.com, is a reverent catalog of the fallen, and one young man's response to a scandal of Army mismanagement, mismarked graves and unmarked remains that has rocked this hallowed place for two years. …

While discussing Arlington's outdated record-keeping over dinner one night last summer, Ricky - who had just gotten an A in his Programming 1 class at school - announced, "I can fix that." …

Ricky didn't have his driver's license yet, so he hitched a ride with his mom on her 45-minute commute from their home in Stafford, Va., to her workplace in Washington. He hopped the Metro the rest of the way to the cemetery. This was July and he wanted an early start before the heat set in.

His focus was Section 60, where about 700 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, more than anywhere else in the country. He combed all 18 acres of it, row by row, and found more than just names. At one grave was a baby's sonogram; he thought about the child who would never know his dad. He saw parents who looked a lot like his own, standing, staring.

Ricky took it all in. This is a side of service he had never fully appreciated, even for a military brat - his great-great-great-grandfather fought at Gettysburg, his father is a retired Army sergeant first class, his stepfather is a retired Navy lieutenant commander and both of his brothers are Air Force senior airmen. (He intends to apply to the Naval Academy at Annapolis and wants to be an officer.)

"Sometimes I look at the birth date and they are about the same age as my brothers, or a year older than me. It puts a whole new perspective on life to think there are 18- or 19-year-old kids who give their lives," he said.