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Employers feel heat on immigration Arizona leads the nation in population growth. More illegal immigrants cross its border than any other in the United States. Now, in an apparent backlash to those trends, the state is leading the charge to halt illegal immigration by cracking down on employers. Its new law effectively sets up a two-strikes penalty. A business employing an illegal immigrant would have its business license suspended temporarily. A second offense would mean a permanent revocation of that license. The new law "takes the most aggressive action in the country against employers who knowingly or intentionally hire undocumented workers," says Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), who signed the measure into law late Monday. She said she decided to sign the bill because "Congress has failed miserably." This get-tough attitude with businesses is growing across the US. As of April, 40 other states had introduced 199 bills related to employment of undocumented workers – the top subject of immigration-related legislation in the states, according to a report for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Although Arizona's new law is apparently the harshest so far, Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Tennessee, and West Virginia are still in the process of enacting legislation to force employers to verify their workers' legal status, cautions Dirk Hegen, an expert on immigration policy at NCSL. Now that federal immigration reform has stalled in Congress, more states are likely to act, he adds....
Residency Rules May Tighten in Pr. William Prince William County is moving to enact what legal specialists say are some of the toughest measures in the nation targeting illegal immigrants, including a provision that would direct police to check the residency status of anyone detained for breaking the law -- whether shoplifting, speeding or riding a bicycle without a helmet. The measures would also compel county schools and agencies -- including libraries, medical clinics, swimming pools and summer camps -- to verify the immigration status of anyone who wants to use services in Virginia's second-largest county. Courts have upheld the right of undocumented immigrants to a public education, raising the possibility of a legal challenge. Although similar efforts to create inhospitable conditions for illegal immigrants have been attempted recently in Hazleton, Pa., Farmers Branch, Tex., and Valley Park, Mo., the Prince William resolution appears to be unique, specialists say. And with federal immigration reform stalled in Congress, officials across the country are increasingly likely to experiment with restrictions that test legal boundaries and push for a greater role for local police in immigration enforcement....
After Libby, Bush pushed to pardon border agents U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who launched his bid for the Republican nomination for president after he announced no one else was addressing the issue of border security adequately, is calling on President Bush to pardon two former U.S. Border Patrol agents jailed for pursuing and shooting at a fleeing drug smuggler. Tancredo noted the presidential commutation this week of the 30-month prison term given to former vice presidential aide "Scooter" Libby, who was convicted of making false statements about the release of the name of an undercover CIA operative. "I believe the president should take it a step further and fully pardon Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean," Tancredo said. "The 11 and 12 year sentences they received were grossly unfair and a result of an overzealous prosecutor." He noted that both of the agents are "at risk of violent attacks" while in prison, where they've essentially been relegated to isolation because of their former status as law enforcement officers. "In fact, Mr. Ramos has already been brutally assaulted by violent criminals inside his cell," Tancredo said. "This not only takes a toll on them, but their families as well."....
OSHA Visits Wonderland Published to cricket-chirping silence in the Federal Register on April 13, 2007 was a rule proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to govern the manufacture, transport, and distribution of explosives. The Alice-in-Wonderland aspect is that the rule includes small arms ammunition and reloading components like smokeless propellant and small arms primers in its definition of “explosives.” If the rule were implemented as written, it would effectively eliminate the manufacture, transport, wholesaling and retailing of ammunition in the United States. You read that correctly. For years anti-private-gun-ownership zealots have wished that another head of the federal regulatory hydra, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, would “ban guns” as articles too dangerous for mere civilian mortals to handle or own. Apparently they are getting their wish, instead, from OSHA under the notion that firearm ammunition cartridges are so unstable and explosive that anyone storing or selling them would have to insure (by search if necessary) that no one carrying matches, a lighter, or any other source of flame or sparks approached within 50 feet in all directions. This is but one of several requirements that would make it impossible to make or sell ammunition. Anyone who shoots firearms or, especially, reloads firearm ammunition knows that ammunition and its components are not remotely similar to explosives. Ammunition cartridges are practically impossible to set off without basically crushing them with a hammer or cooking them at a relatively high temperature. Even then, cartridges that are so "cooked" don’t fire the bullet or "explode;' the brass cartridge case simply ruptures. The proposed rule would have us believe that shoppers at Wal-mart routinely set off chain-reaction explosions at the gun counter through negligent use of their Zippos, and that UPS trucks carrying ammunition are blowing up on every highway overpass, killing their drivers....
FBI: Suicide Bombs a Big Concern Suicide bombers have not hit the United States since the 9/11 terrorist hijacking attacks, but they remain a constant concern because of their prevalence around the globe and determination to die for their causes, according to the FBI's chief of counterterrorism. He does not believe America is overflowing with homegrown terrorists, but Joseph Billy said "a significant number" of attacks have been thwarted since airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania farm field on Sept. 11, 2001. While declining to divulge the nature of the averted plots, Billy credited intelligence that led to either fortified security around potential targets or identification of suspected terrorists. Authorities recently stopped homegrown plots targeting the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey and a jet fuel pipeline at New York's Kennedy International Airport....
U.S. appeals court orders dismissal of domestic spying suit A U.S. appeals court ordered the dismissal Friday of a lawsuit challenging President George W. Bush's domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. The ruling marks a legal victory for Bush, who last month suffered a pair of court defeats related to his anti-terror efforts. Those rulings barred the administration from locking up civilians indefinitely as enemy combatants, and another blocking the prosecution of two Guantanamo detainees. The 2-1 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Cincinnati vacated a 2006 order by a federal judge in Detroit, who found that the post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance aimed at uncovering terrorist activity violated constitutional rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers. U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the two Republican appointees who ruled against the plaintiffs, said they failed to show they were subject to the surveillance....
Katrina fraud swamps system Federal agents investigating widespread fraud after the Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 are sifting through more than 11,000 potential cases, a backlog that could take years to resolve. Authorities have fielded so many reports of people cheating aid programs, swindling contracts and scamming charities after the hurricanes that Homeland Security inspectors, who typically police disaster aid scams, have been "swamped," says David Dugas, the U.S. attorney in Baton Rouge. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita triggered more than $7 billion in disaster aid to Gulf Coast households, plus billions more in government contracts and rebuilding projects. Allegations of fraud have accompanied that assistance, and prosecutors have vowed zero tolerance for people who tried to cheat the government. About 700 people have been charged....
Unholy Alliance At the recent National Sheriff’s Association convention in the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, the triad of military technology, corporate manufacturing and law enforcement symbolized in RoboCop’s Ed-209 was more than just fiction. Besides six days of seminars on everything from in-custody deaths to character building, the annual gathering of sheriffs also acts as a marketplace for law-enforcement gadgetry. Everything was on offer in the exhibition hall: tracking devices, facial-recognition technology, communication networks, paddy wagons, riot gear, surveillance equipment and guns—lots of guns. But most conspicuous were the numerous permutations of America’s military machine—all at the disposal of the 6,000-plus sheriffs on hand. For example, Chris Kincaid, a senior consultant with the Department of Defense’s Technology Transfer Program, was present to aid law enforcement agencies with what he calls “technological transfer.” The federal program was set up in 2002 to aid the transfer of technology and equipment from the military to law enforcement. While much of the transferred equipment—such as medical supplies—is mundane, some of the items passed on to police by the DOD are much more militaristic. For example, 26 armored personnel carriers on loan in South America were returned to the U.S. military and sold to police departments across the country for use by their SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams, Kincaid says. This program, Kincaid says, continues what began in 1994 with the National Defense Authorization Act. The act made huge amounts of mothballed, Cold War military supplies available to local law enforcement, ostensibly for the war on drugs....
Our Militarized Police Departments Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak today. I’m here to talk about police militarization, a troubling trend that’s been on the rise in America’s police departments over the last 25 years. Militarization is a broad term that refers to using military-style weapons, tactics, training, uniforms, and even heavy equipment by civilian police departments. It’s a troubling trend because the military has a very different and distinct role than our domestic peace officers. The military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. The police are supposed to protect us while upholding our constitutional rights. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. But that’s exactly what we’re doing. Since the late 1980s, Mr. Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, millions of pieces of surplus military equipment have been given to local police departments across the country. We’re not talking just about computers and office equipment. Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American citizens. Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century....