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| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in Right to Bear Arms Will Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson make a back door move to ban lead bullets the day before the November 2 elections?
Several environmentalist groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are petitioning the EPA to ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Although EPA is barred by statute from controlling ammunition, CBD is seeking to work farther back along the manufacturing chain and have EPA ban the use of lead in bullets and shot because non-lead alternatives are available. Read full story here.
| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in Illegal Immigration EL PASO, Texas – The first bullets struck El Paso’s city hall at the end of a work day. The next ones hit a university building and closed a major highway. Shootouts in the drug war along the U.S.-Mexico border are sending bullets whizzing across the Rio Grande into one of the nation’s safest cities, where authorities worry it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt or killed.
Continue reading from The Daily Caller.
| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in Illegal Immigration The Obama administration said it would focus its enforcement of illegal immigration laws by targeting workplace activities, but a recent report shows that while audits of employers are slightly up over the Bush administration, worker arrests are down drastically since the end of 2008.
Under Obama, employer audits are up 50 percent, fines have tripled to almost $3 million and the number of executives arrested is slightly up over the Bush administration.
But under President Obama, the numbers of arrests and deportations of illegals taken into custody at work sites plummeted by more than 80 percent from the last year of the Bush administration. In the current fiscal year 2010, which ends Sept. 30, ICE has arrested 900 workers. Continue reading from Fox News…
| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in Illegal Immigration The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.
Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases. Continue Reading…
| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in Illegal Immigration Immigration enforcement officials have started to cancel the deportations of thousands of immigrants they have detained, a policy they said would pare huge case backlogs in the immigration courts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the new approach was part of a broad shift in priorities at the agency, to focus its efforts on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of crimes or pose a national security threat. The policy — announced in an Aug. 20 memorandum from John Morton, the head of the agency — drew praise from immigrant advocates, who called it a common-sense strategy, and was denounced by several Republicans as evidence that the Obama administration was weakening enforcement and making it easier for illegal immigrants to remain in the country.
Continue reading…
| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in US Politics The Obama administration’s plan to acquire millions of acres of private land is a bad idea since the government cannot maintain the lands it already owns, according to H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.
According to Burnett:
- The federal government owns approximately one-third of the land in the United States, and in some states almost 90 percent of land is government owned.
- However, millions of acres of government-owned land are lost to wildfires due largely to federal mismanagement.
- National parks — the crown jewels of the federal estate — suffer from a more than $9 billion backlog for repairs, routine maintenance and improvements. Continue reading from NCPA.
| September 5th, 2010 by Cindy in United States Military The Iraq War ends this month. The last combat brigade left August 19. Operation Iraqi Freedom, which began in 2003, will end August 31. September 1 marks the beginning of Operation New Dawn. Now that it’s over, what did the Iraq War cost?
Here are examples of what some people had been saying about Iraq War costs.
“It was under Mr Bush that the deficit spiralled out of control as we fought an unnecessary and endless $3,000bn war in Iraq…”
- James Carville, the Financial Times. “The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.”
- Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Washington Post. “First, the facts. Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars…”
- Christopher Hayes, The Nation.
The correct answer to my question, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is $709 billion. The Iraq War cost $709 billion. Why Carville, Bilmes, and Nobel-winning economist Stiglitz thought the answer was $3 trillion is anybody’s guess. But what’s a 323% error among friends?
The CBO breaks that cost down over the eight calendar years of 2003-2010. Below is a picture of federal deficits over those years with and without Iraq spending. Click here to see picture and continue reading from American Thinker.
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