All posts tagged Tom Tancredo

No, anti-immigration activists don’t trust Mitt Romney

by Admin on May 9, 2012 in Arizona, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo with No comments

Via:, Wonk Blog

Forget the White House.

Protesters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court (Mark Wilson – GETTY IMAGES)For activists who want to stamp out illegal immigration, the presidency is rather besides the point, at least while Mitt Romney is the nominee.“I could write in my mother’s name. I really wouldn’t make any difference, because nobody’s listening to me anyhow,” says Dan Beck, a cop and former sheriff from Ohio’s Allen County, who still wears a sheriff’s pin on his jacket lapel.Beck was among the activists, policy wonks, and Republican legislators who are lending their voices this week to conservative radio hosts who’ve gathered in Washington to focus on illegal immigration. Organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform — a leading advocacy group in the fight against illegal immigration — the confab made it clear that the presidency isn’t the movement’s primary battleground.

Many say they’re not entirely sure what Romney’s positions on immigration really are. And even they were, they wouldn’t believe the promises that he’s making anyway.

“At this point, we’re still trying to figure out — he’s still deciding his immigration position. I’d like him to be a little bit stronger on it,” says Rusty Humphries, a radio host from Atlanta, after he wrapped up a broadcast of his eponymous, nationally syndicated show. When I pressed him to elaborate, he stopped me. “Can I be honest? I’ve been in this room all day long, and this”— he gestures to a flyer — ”is the only thing I’ve seen, that’s been handed to me. So I honestly don’t have any idea what he’s said at this point.”

The flyer passed around the event highlighted a gaffe this week from Romney’s Hispanic outreach director, Bettina Inclan, who told reporters that the former Massachusetts governor was still deciding his stance on immigration. In fact, Romney has an entire section on his campaign Web site devoted to immigration: he wants to establish a verification system akin to e-Verify to screen employees on their immigration status, for instance, and “absolutely opposes any policy that would allow illegal immigrants to ‘cut in line.’” During the GOP primary, Romney routinely attacked Gingrich and other opponents for holding more moderate views.

But anti-immigration activists aren’t feeling too heartened: Inclan’s gaffe has made some even more wary about where Romney really stood, giving them even fewer reasons to believe that he’d stay faithful to his campaign promises. “I could not for a moment assure you that he would be a strong opponent of illegal immigration, or a strong supporter of illegal immigration. I don’t know. And I’m not sure he does,” former GOP Congressman and anti-immigration firebrand Tom Tancredo said outside the confab, shortly before a fan rushed up to get his autograph. (“Keep the faith!” he wrote in a copy of his book, “In Mortal Danger.”)

“[Romney’s] waffled so much. He claims to be a conservative, and he’s trying to convince people he’s truly conservative. Let me know the truth — I’ve been a cop for 30 years,” says Beck.

Instead, anti-immigration activists turning their sights to matters closer home: state laws to keep illegal immigrants away from the polls, bills to replicate Arizona’s police checks on immigration status, and initiatives by local law enforcement to carry out their own crackdowns. Beck, for one, wants more sheriffs to follow the model of Arizona’s Joe Arpaio — “my hero,” he says — and expand their efforts to identify and detain illegal immigrants, putting pressure on Washington from the ground up. Sheriffs “need to get out of their offices and band together as a group,” he says. “Then the group needs to come to Washington D.C. and start pounding on these legislators’ doors.”

They’ve also converged over voter ID laws, which have become a new battleground for conservative activists who want to crack down on voter fraud — and say that illegal immigrants are among the most common perpetrators. The Obama game plan, Tancredo claims, is “to identify those places, those cities and those states where you have high numbers of immigrants, welfare recipients, and that sort of thing, who can be energized to get to the polls — even if they’re not legally able to do so.” Tancredo, in response, is preparing to launch a project in Colorado focusing on the issue. “We’re going to be out in force in battleground states,” promises Tancredo. (As for Romney, he says, “I’ll take him.”)

The voter ID issue previously united the tea party and the anti-immigration movement in 2010, which came together to dispatch poll-watchers across various states and localities. Democrats cast that effort as voter intimidation and suppression, pointing out that there was little evidence of voter fraud in 2010, despite the right’s hullabaloo. But such grassroots focus on electoral nuts-and-bolts could end up helping the GOP ticket in 2012, Romney included: watching polling stations presumably also means voting at them.

Insurgent conservative candidates like Richard Mourdock, who just topped Richard Lugar in the Indiana Senate primary, could also inspire more enthusiasm from disillusioned conservatives. Anti-immigration activists hated Lugar’s support for the DREAM Act, which he originally co-sponsored. If Romney’s elected, Congress “is our only fallback position,” says Tancredo. If it’s Obama, “it’s the only thing we have.”

But like their counterparts on the left, the anti-immigration know that state and local efforts ultimately aren’t enough to overhaul the immigration system to their liking. If the Supreme Court strikes downArizona SB 1070, for instance, Tancredo admits that it will be “back to the drawing board.”

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FAVORING MULTICULTURALISM OVER AMERICAN CULTURE

by Admin on April 23, 2012 in Creeping Sharia, Illegal Immigration, Islamization of America, Multi Culturalism with No comments

Via: NewsWithViews.com, Frosty Wooldridge,

Ultimate breakdown of America: pretending another country’s culture stands superior to our own.

I question stickers that say, “Celebrate multiculturalism” and “I love diversity” as the new fad in America. Middle Eastern culture does not equate with American culture. India’s culture runs counter to American culture. Somalia’s culture clashes with our culture.

“This is our culture – fight for it. This is our flag – pick it up. This is our country – take it back.” –Former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo

Within the next 38 years, we expect to add 100 million immigrants from various cultures around the world. We, as a nation, stand on the precipice of our own cultural disintegration. Our culture stands in the crosshairs of clashing civilizations via importation of millions of immigrants from incompatible cultures.

In Denver, Colorado, last October, immigrants wanted Halloween celebrations taken out of the school systems. Peter Boyles, talk jock of KHOW 630 AM said, “Next they will demand Thanksgiving be taken away from us.”

Americans like Boyles do the job Congress refuses to do! Diversity proves a great divide that dissolves American culture.

Why do we allow multiculturalism to trump 236 years of successful U.S. culture?

Chicago Sun Times reporter Warner Todd Huston wrote, “At the end of September the school district in Oak Lawn, Illinois announced it was considering eliminating holiday celebrations like Christmas in its schools. Oak Lawn has seen increasing numbers of residents that identify with the Muslim faith who are naturally sending their children to the public schools there and school board members are afraid that Christian holidays are “offensive” to Muslim students.”

What drives the school culture? American history and American values!

Columbus Manor Principal Sandy Robertson said, “It’s difficult when you change the school’s culture.”

Ask yourself if you resided in Mexico if you would allow a Middle Eastern immigrant to change your wedding customs. If you hailed from Nepal, would you allow immigrants to change your flag festival? Would the Chinese allow an immigrant to change their national holidays to fit their sensitivities? Should the French give up their language to placate immigrants? Would France remain French if all its citizens spoke Arabic? What if Americans immigrating to Saudi Arabia demanded they speak English and celebrate Christmas?

“Since we have become a culture that won’t back a homogeneous observance of being an American, how do we address this issue?” Huston wrote. “How do we serve local communities that are made up mostly of “immigrants” – here unlawfully?”

This travesty illustrates America losing its cultural identity to a massive influx of people from incompatible cultures that will not assimilate into America but inject their own culture against ours. They cannot comprehend that our national culture and history form the bedrock of our existence. Culture permeates our cells. Our schools must teach our children about our culture in our country.

Nothing about America remains more sacred than our culture. Without it, we become listless, lose our moorings and drift on an unidentifiable sea. To lose one’s identity is to lose one’s individual self. What happens next? Depression, apathy and futility—ultimately spiritual and physical suicide!

A country that loses its identity suffers the same kind of disintegration as a child who loses its family. As proven around the world today with examples in Great Britain, France, Holland, Palestine and Sweden—multiculturalism fails at every level of human interaction. It proves, ultimately, one of the greatest dangers to humanity.

If America loses Christmas, Halloween, Easter, 4th of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day, President’s day and Thanksgiving to multiculturalism, we lose the foundation of our spiritual grounding in an uncertain world. Huston wrote, “In fact, we should not be celebrating any other holidays but American holidays. American holidays reflect our national culture. The holidays and traditions of other cultures deserve to remain in their homes, not in the halls of our schools. By NOT indulging their desires to obviate American influences – replacing them with ideas antithetical to our American first principles – we would be doing a far better service to our children than to twist-and-squeeze every district to a different standard, to placate foreign nationals.”

This greatest of nations on the planet became successful BECAUSE of its culture. If we bend it, break it and turn it into multicultural mush soup, we, as a people will not stand together nor will we succeed into the future. Do we want Spanish to conflict with our language in our schools? Can we withstand the trauma of multiple languages? Can we bend over backwards for the Koran that has nothing to do with our history or culture? Do we want our children bent into the violence and intolerance of much of the world from which these immigrants fled? Can we survive as a cohesive civilization if we lose our culture? Do we not see their failed cultures will become our failed culture if we continue importing millions from failed countries?

Stephen Steinlight answered it best in his, “Amnesty and the Plot Against America”: “Everything we hold most sacred in our national life and civil society, in our public places and private spaces, from our splendidly rambunctious democratic culture to the experience of solitude in our sublime untouched natural environment is at stake in this battle—because the forces that reign against us are powerful, the fate of the nation unimaginable—if they prevail.”When will Americans start speaking out about open borders, American culture and demand English first? These facts must be publicly and factually disclosed to every American and their children. That disclosure must be based on facts, not the emotional rhetoric and deception of teachers, politicians and biased “politically correct” news media. The discussion of diversity must be made openly and recognizing the opinions and needs of Americans, not pro-multicultural vested interests that buy and pay for elected officials.

Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show “Connecting the Dots” atwww.themicroeffect.com at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

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Ex-lawmaker, Tom Tancredo, wants popular vote

by Admin on April 7, 2012 in National Popular Vote Movement, Tom Tancredo with No comments

La. ballots said meaningless

Via: The Advocate, BY MARK BALLARD
, member of the United States House of Represe...

Louisiana’s votes in the presidential election don’t really matter and, as a result, federal leaders pay little attention to the state, a former congressman from Colorado said Friday. Tom Tancredo, of Littleton, Colo., was in Baton Rouge pushing House Bill 1095 before the state Legislature that would join Louisiana to a national movement to elect the president of the United States by popular vote instead of through the Electoral College. “Why should a Louisiana Democrat even bother cast a vote for president?” asked Tancredo, who is lobbying for the National Popular Vote Bill. The majority of Louisiana voters likely will back whomever the Republican Party nominates, said Tancredo, echoing what pollsters, political observers and officials with both parties have said repeatedly. That means Louisiana’s eight electoral votes will go to the GOP candidate and the votes cast for the Democratic candidate will be ignored. Barack Obama received 782,989 votes or 40 percent of the 1.96 million cast in Louisiana for the November 2008 presidential election, according the Secretary of State’s office. But all of the state’s electors went to Republican John McCain, who received 1.15 million votes. Tancredo said almost all of the presidential candidates focus their visits – and advertising dollars – on the 15 or so “swing” states whose majorities are in doubt. After the election, the attention and policies of federal officials necessarily focus on those states, he said. For instance, Tancredo said federal response to the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010 provides a good example. It wasn’t until the leaked oil started threatening the coast of Florida, a state whose electors are up for grabs every four years, that the federal government really became engaged, he said. That would change if the votes for the losing candidates in winner-take-all states like Louisiana went towards a national tally that would select the president, Tancredo said. Under the U.S. Constitution, a president is chosen by a majority of electoral votes, currently it’s 270 out of the 538 available. The idea presented by the founding fathers — before the advent of political parties — was for the electors to mull over possible candidates, Tancredo said. Louisiana is among the 48 states, and Washington, D.C., that awards all its electors as a single bloc to the candidate who wins the balloting in the state. HB1095 provides the legal procedures for awarding electors to candidates proportional to the popular vote totals and for joining a compact of other states willing to use the same procedures. The legislation would not eliminate the Electoral College. Tancredo said enough states are needed to join the compact so that the members, together, would have enough electoral votes to decide the election. Nine states have passed legislation to join the compact. This is not the first time Louisiana legislators have looked at this proposal. In 2011, the House and Governmental Affairs committee advanced the bill over the objections of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office. But the legislation languished on the House calendar and was never voted upon by the full chamber. The National Popular Vote effort is distributing a brochure aimed at Republican legislators that says awarding electors by popular vote, rather than the current winner-take-all system, would help Republican presidential candidates because more GOP voters live in the states that go Democratic in national elections than vice versa.

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William Blaine Richardson III or George Zimmerman: Who is the White Hispanic?

by Tom Tancredo on April 2, 2012 in Barrack Obama, Media Bias, Media Corruption, Obama Propaganda, Obama Ties, Obama's Media, Obama's Radical Ideology with No comments

Originally posted at American Thinker, By Tom Tancredo

During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama won the votes of African-Americans and affluent whites by a landslide.  Hillary Clinton, however, had the edge working class whites and Hispanic voters early on.  Clinton stayed alive on Super Tuesday by winning the Hispanic vote by 2-1, giving her victories in California, New York, and New Jersey.  Obama’s campaign scored a major victory when New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson endorsed him in late March.

The New York Times reported, “As the nation’s only Hispanic governor, Mr. Richardson could become a champion for Mr. Obama among Hispanic voters, who have been an important voting bloc for Mrs. Clinton in the primaries thus far.”

Bill Richardson and Barack Obama

Richardson was born William Blaine Richardson III.  He attended prep school at Middlesex, known for educating the WASP elite in New England.  His paternal grandfather was a WASP, and his paternal grandmother is Mexican.  His maternal grandfather is from Northern Spain, and his maternal grandmother is Mexican.  If anyone is a “white Hispanic,” it is William Blaine Richardson III.

While occasional media profiles of Richardson mention his background, he is always described as Hispanic or Latino.  They never question whether he is really Hispanic or explain how “complicated” classifying Latinos is, much less describe him as a “white Hispanic.”

Geroge Zimmerman

It is worth contrasting the media’s treatment of Richardson’s ethnicity with their treatment Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother is Peruvian.

The media almost initially called Zimmerman white, and it fit into their narrative of white racism holding down Hispanics.  However, after Zimmerman’s father sent a letter to the Orlando Sentinel (and major conservative news sites like Breitbart.com and Drudge Report linked to the letter), they stopped referring to Zimmerman as white.  The New York Times and Reuters began referring to him as a “white Hispanic.”  Virtually the rest of the media followed suit.  If you put “white Hispanic” and “Zimmerman” into a Google News search, over 1,200 stories pop up.  If you put in “white Hispanic” excluding the word “Zimmerman,” there are about 50 stories, but a closer look shows that every single one of them is indirectly referring to Zimmerman, or else the two words are next to each other as a coincidence (e.g., “Asian, white, Hispanic, or African American.”)

The New York Times used the phrase “white Hispanic” only five times before Zimmerman, and never to describe someone who is half-Hispanic and half-white.  The Times‘ standards editor Phil Corbett defends their use of the term by noting, “There are no absolute, clear-cut rules on this.  People often treat white, black and Hispanic as three parallel categories, but it’s not always that simple.”

This is true.  Hispanic is a linguistic category, to describe people who come from Spanish-speaking countries.  However, groups like The National Council of La Raza (the Race) have turned it into a ethno-racial group, while lobbying Hispanics to receive racial preferences in education, hiring, and government contracts.  In practical terms, this usually means someone who is of mixed Spanish and Southern Amerindian descent.  George Zimmerman certainly looks like that.  As Ann Coulter blithely put it, “[n]ot being a race-obsessed liberal, I don’t particularly care, but it’s indisputable that Zimmerman is brown. I saw his face carved on the side of a Mayan temple in the Yucatan.”

Corbett acknowledged that the Times rarely uses the term “white Hispanic,” but the people at the Times say this is because “[o]ur guidelines say we mention race or ethnicity if and only if it’s pertinent to the story. Given that this is being investigated as a possible civil-rights case and has stirred protests in part because of concerns about racial elements, it seems clear that race and ethnicity are pertinent.”  This may justify mentioning Zimmerman’s race, but it does not explain why they decided to use “white Hispanic.”

In an attempt to try to downplay the fact that he is Hispanic, or even a “white Hispanic,” many media outlets are reporting stories on how “complicated” Zimmerman’s ethnicity is.  The Associated Press ran a story, “Florida shooter’s race a complicated matter.”  The reporter interviews an old neighbor of the Zimmermans who said she did not remember “seeing the family carrying out any traditional Peruvian cultural activities.”  Do you imagine William Blaine Richardson III engaging in many Mexican cultural activities while boarding at Middlesex?

The Washington Post reported in an article entitled “In Trayvon Martin shooting, background of George Zimmerman can confound” that “[l]ooking at Zimmerman’s photograph made Darren Soto, a Florida state legislator, think he might be Latino. But he just as easily might have been Italian or French, he thought.”

If I saw William Blaine Richardson III with no other data, I would never have guessed he is Hispanic.  The same can be said of Obama advisor and former La Raza VP Cecelia Munoz, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Charlie Gonzales, and plenty of other Hispanic leaders whom I never hear referred to as “white Hispanics.”

Personally, I don’t care about whether not George Zimmerman is white or Hispanic.  However, so long as the New York Times and other media outlets run puff pieces about Hispanic honor students and sob stories about white racism against Hispanics, then they should not turn Hispanics who they believe are racistcriminals into whites.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/william_blaine_richardson_iii_or_george_zimmerman_who_is_the_white_hispanic.html#ixzz1qvfc2pvM

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THE LEFT’S SEWAGE-SOAKED RACE CARD

by Tom Tancredo on March 31, 2012 in Big Brother, Creeping Communism, Marxism, Race Baiting, Tyrrany with No comments

We should not hold our breath waiting for Attorney General Eric Holder to launch an investigation into the very public death threats against Florida resident George A. Zimmerman. The threats from Spike Lee, Louis Farrakhan and the New Black Panther Party will not be investigated. In Obama’s post-constitutional regime, our federal government only prosecutes civil rights violations against blacks and “protected classes,” meaning friends of Obama and allies of the Democratic Party.

George Zimmerman

The ugly spectacle of mass media, Hollywood celebrities and dozens of Democratic politicians rushing to judge a man before be is even charged with a crime, much less given a fair trial, would be almost comical if it were not so typical of the deeply cynical demagoguery that now permeates our nation’s political discourse.

The really scary part is seeing the government itself join in the demagoguery, with the federal government’s highest law enforcement officer joining the chorus. When this happens, you can be sure there is more at stake than the fate of one lone Florida citizen. What is at stake is also more than the fate of one election cycle: We are witnessing, and in fact experiencing, the harbingers of a totalitarian state.

Spike Lee

Internet petitions calling for Zimmerman’s prosecution are being promoted by celebrities in the film and music industry, while anyone who suggests waiting until all the facts are known is attacked as an “apologist for racism.” Little tidbits of supposed “facts” have been leaked by various parties to support a particular version of events. Headlines in the Huffington Post and other purveyors of leftist orthodoxy play up one set of “facts” while ignoring others so as to keep the pot well stirred and the fires well stoked.

The simple truth is, we do not yet know what happened that evening between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. We have bits and pieces and a lot of spin, but the unvarnished facts of the matter are still unclear. If Zimmerman is charged with a crime, he deserves a fair trial, and any judgment made outside that courtroom is based on someone’s political agenda, not the demands of justice.

But the American left is no longer interested in justice, racial or otherwise. It is interested only in power. And in practice, for the left today, holding onto power means playing the “race card” at every opportunity.

Led by the liberal media and celebrity surrogates, Democrat officials are quite openly attempting to use the tragic death of a 17-year-old black man in Florida to create a massive “backlash against racism.” Their problem is, the “pervasive racism” they scream about exists only in their own fervid imaginations, not in American society.

Politically speaking, the motives in this ugly “rush to judgment” are transparent. Obama needs this “backlash” as a distraction from the real problems facing the country. College graduates can’t find jobs? Get them marching to Selma again!

The problem for more thoughtful Americans is that this cynical exploitation of a tragic event makes the quest for justice by local authorities and courts extremely hazardous. Have you heard the phrase “tainting the jury pool”? Well, think about the damage done not only to the jury pool but to the national psyche by the dumping of a quadzillion tons of raw political sewage.

In the hysterical lynch-mob atmosphere engineered by the leftist media, you can be called a racist for suggesting that “white on black crime” is not quite a national epidemic. Never mind that by all objective measures, a black citizen is nine times more likely to be murdered by a fellow black than by a white person.

To these new totalitarians, if you suggest that this rush to judgment is irresponsible before all the facts are known, you are suspect of harboring racist views. If you insist that all citizens, black or white or brown, are entitled to due process and the protections of the Bill of Rights, you are an apologist for racism.

This well-orchestrated symphony of intimidation is a signal that our media and our cultural elites have lost their moral compass. They have become so invested in the precept that America is a racist nation to the core that every event and every crime must be interpreted through that ideological prism.

Are we on a very slippery slope? No, it looks more and more like a water slide fueled by the ideological sewage of “pervasive American racism.” Sadly, our president and attorney general are more than happy to keep the odious sludge flowing.

 

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Memo to Congress: Impeachment probe needed now!

by Tom Tancredo on March 5, 2012 in The Constitution, Tom Tancredo, Tyrrany with 2 Comments

by 

Barack Obama is indeed succeeding in his plans to “transform America,” but not in the way voters expected on Election Day in 2008. The number of the president’s actions that arguably qualify as impeachable offenses is staggering.

The question before the country is what to do about it.

True, Obama faces the voters in 8-9 months, and that will be seen by many as a reason to avoid the turmoil of an impeachment proceeding. But one process has nothing to do with the other. Elections proceed on an established calendar, but if he has committed acts that warrant removal by way of impeachment, that process should proceed independent of the election calendar. While impeachment must never be used to override an election victory, neither should the prospects of electoral defeat be used as an argument to avoid impeachment.

Constitution of the United States of America (...

Image by The U.S. National Archives via Flickr

Obama has demonstrated contempt for the Constitution and is increasingly resorting to rule by decree. He is recognized by a growing number of Americans as a danger to the republic – certainly a danger to our liberties and also a serious threat to our national security.

It is time for the House of Representatives to take its constitutional responsibility seriously and launch an impeachment investigation. The investigative committee should hold hearings, collect and weigh the evidence, and then present its findings to the Congress and the nation.

Has Obama committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” that warrant impeachment and removal? There is much evidence that says, yes, he has.

With his family by his side, Barack Obama is s...

2008 swearing in of President Barrack Obama.

A special report with evidence galore: “The Case for Impeachment: Why Barack Hussein Obama Should be Impeached to Save America” just $4.95!

Impeachment of the president is justified on constitutional grounds if any of the following 12 questions is answered in the affirmative:

  • Did President Obama have personal knowledge of the illegal “Fast and Furious” project run by ATF and approved by top officials in the Department of Justice, a plan to sell over 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels, weapons now linked to numerous crimes on both sides of the border including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry?
  • Did the president have knowledge of the ongoing effort by Attorney General Eric Holder and other Justice Department officials to cover up the true purpose and scope of that ill-conceived, illegal project?
  • Did the president direct his appointees on the National Labor Relations Board to bring a lawsuit against Boeing as a political payoff to organized labor?
  • Did the president act contrary to the advice and pleas of his own CIA director, four previous intelligence agency heads of both parties and numerous experts on covert operations when, on April 16, 2009, he made public four internal Justice Department memos on terrorist interrogation techniques, thereby deliberately emasculating our anti-terrorist intelligence operations and endangering the lives of many intelligence agents?
  • Did the president have knowledge of a plan by the Department of Homeland Security, ordered by Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and the deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, David Aguilar, to distort and falsify the Border Patrol’s southwest border illegal-alien apprehension numbers by means of a deliberate, planned undercount – for the purpose of misleading the public and Congress about the true (abysmal) state of border security?
  • By choosing not to secure the border against unlawful entry, has the president willfully disregarded his clear duty under Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution to protect the states from foreign invasion? Did the president admit this in a candid exchange with Sen. Jon Kyl, telling him the reason he was not stopping the cross-border human trafficking was to force Republicans in Congress to strike a deal for amnesty legislation?
  • Is the president showing contempt for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law by ordering an “administrative amnesty” for millions of illegal aliens through the implementation of the John Morton memo of June 2011?
  • Has the president demonstrated contempt for the Constitution and violated the separation of powers by issuing numerous executive orders and agency rules that have no basis in statute and often contradict congressional votes against such actions?
  • Did the president authorize Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to violate current federal laws against aiding and abetting illegal aliens by signing agreements with foreign countries and pledging to protect and fund educational efforts to inform illegal aliens of their workplace “rights”? Also did these “agreements” she signed with foreign countries violate Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution which clearly establishes the manner in which treaties are to be undertaken and ratified?
  • Did the president violate his oath of office when he instructed the Department of Justice not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts? Does the Constitution permit the person designated by Article II, Section 1, as holding the “executive power” of government to decide unilaterally to not enforce a law he disagrees with?
  • Did the president authorize or approve the offer of a federal job to Rep. Joe Sestek if he would withdraw from the 2010 Democratic primary race for U.S. senator in Pennsylvania?
  • Did the president violate the War Powers Act by conducting military operations in Libya beyond the 60-day limitation?

If the president is not guilty of any of these crimes, then a thorough investigation by a House committee with subpoena power will clear the air. If he is guilty, then the U.S. House of Representatives has a moral obligation to vote for a resolution of impeachment, and the U.S. Senate must bring him to trial.

If the leaders of the House believe that some or all of these actions are indeed impeachable offenses but nonetheless refuse to launch a formal investigation to ascertain all the facts, then there are two parties involved in Obama’s assault on the Constitution – the perpetrators and their accomplices. In layman’s terms, Obama and his radical cronies are busy robbing the bank, while the House Republican leadership waits in the getaway car.

If some or all of the allegations are adopted as true by the House but rejected by the Senate as inadequate grounds for removal, that means the president of the United States can ignore the particulars of his oath to defend the Constitution. It means he can govern by edict instead of “taking care to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” It means that Barack Obama has indeed succeeded in his plans to “transform America.” It means we are perilously close to crossing the line between constitutional republic and dictatorship.

There is no question that the impeachment and removal of Barack Obama is within the proper scope and purpose of the Constitution’s impeachment provisions.

The history of the nation’s two presidential impeachment cases shows that although treason and bribery are the only crimes mentioned by name, this does not limit Congress’ authority to bring an indictment on other serious charges. Constitutionally speaking, “high crimes and misdemeanors” can mean almost anything Congress in its wisdom wants it to mean.

Clearly, the authors of the Constitution did not intend that presidents should be vulnerable to removal for light or petty reasons, hence the use of the adjective “high” in front of the words “crimes and misdemeanors.” Nevertheless, what constitutes a “high crime” is up to Congress to decide.

It is also clear from history that the identification and naming of impeachable offenses is as much a political judgment as a legal one. The assignment of separate and distinct roles to the House and the Senate – and the two-thirds vote requirement for conviction and removal – were deemed by the founders as sufficient safeguards against removal of a president for transient or narrowly partisan reasons.

We learned that lesson forcefully in the Clinton impeachment case. Politics can and will play a part in the process, but that is expected and entirely consistent with constitutional principles.

President Clinton was charged with two counts each of perjury and obstruction of justice. The House thought the crimes serious enough to adopt the impeachment resolution in December of 1998. Two months later, the Senate disagreed and voted for acquittal – or more precisely, failed to muster the required two-thirds vote for conviction. In the House vote, only five Democrats voted for impeachment, and in the Senate, not a single Democrat voted for conviction. So much for keeping politics out of the courtroom.

The peculiar and revealing thing about those two Clinton impeachment votes is that no one seriously doubted the guilt of the president on the perjury and obstruction charges. But Democrats in Congress believed that even if true, the charges did not warrant removal from office. They reasoned that the charges dealt with a private matter – Clinton’s sexual escapades – and not government business.

The Clinton case illustrates that for both Democrats and Republicans, in the last analysis, what is an impeachable offense is inevitably a political question as much as a legal one. Scholars and lawyers may have an opinion, but Congress’ opinion is the only one that matters. Congress’ supreme authority on impeachment questions is as much an embodiment of our separation of powers doctrine as the president’s broad prerogatives in foreign policy.

Admittedly, the likelihood of the present Democrat-controlled Senate casting a two-thirds vote for conviction and removal is almost zero. However, this does not discharge the House from its constitutional obligation to pursue the matter if – in their considered judgment – the evidence warrants.

The questions posed above all relate to actions affecting national security and unlawful political intervention in the execution of our nation’s laws – not mere policy differences. Obama’s disastrous economic policies, his ideological war against domestic energy production and his reckless proposals to add new trillions to our national debt– all are policies that are damaging to our nation’s well-being. However, such policies are not in themselves impeachable crimes. His contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law is a different matter altogether.

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Tancredo: One language will unify us

by Tom Tancredo on March 5, 2012 in Colorado, English Language Unity Act, Multi Culturalism, Tom Tancredo with No comments

By Tom Tancredo

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo

I am constantly baffled by the contradictions among our cultural and media elites when it comes to proposals for establishing the English language as the official language of our nation. Although they admit the necessity of English proficiency for both educational and economic advancement, they habitually oppose any policy proposal to establish English as our national language.

No law can or should compel individuals to give up their native tongue, and no one is proposing to do that. Yet clearly, there are steps we can take to encourage acquisition of essential English language skills by immigrants and newcomers. That is what a bill in Congress, the English Language Unity Act, seeks to do. It requires that all official business of the federal government be conducted only in English.

A study sponsored by the Denver Public Library in the last five years found that about 75 percent of Hispanic families are bilingual at home. That should surprise no one. First-generation immigrant families have historically been bilingual, whether Italian, Ukranian, Vietnamese or Pakistani. The problem is not foreign languages spoken in private homes.

US states where English is an official language

US states where English is an official language

Increasingly, the problem is the lack of incentives for new arrivals to learn the English language while at the same time there is a proliferation and celebration of native languages and cultures in school classrooms and the popular media.

The fact is, the conduct of official government business in foreign languages — at the federal, state or local level — sends the wrong message to new immigrants, legal or illegal. That practice tells new arrivals it is OK to retain your native tongue and postpone learning English. The message is: “We will accommodate you.” That is a message previous generations of immigrants did not hear, and it is a message that undermines and obstructs assimilation.

Why should any foreign national — whether tourist, foreign student, business traveler, or immigrant — be offended by the requirement that they conduct official government business in English? What other country of the world makes it so easy not to learn the native tongue? Can you do business with the Mexican government without learning Spanish or using a translator? Can you do government business in Poland while speaking Spanish? Can you do government business in France while speaking Farsi?

Countries where English is an official or de f...

Countries where English is an official or de facto official language

The proposed federal law would affect only official federal government business and government documents, not private businesses or other institutions. Banks, auto dealers and other commercial enterprises would still be free to advertise and do business in other languages if they choose, and customers are free to patronize those businesses or not. That’s freedom of association and freedom of choice.

Government business is a different matter entirely. Conducting official government business in foreign languages makes no sense except as a pandering to the cult of multiculturalism.

Everybody understands that lack of English language skills is a major barrier to the social and economic advancement of immigrants, yet proposals to promote this goal are routinely slandered as “xenophobic.” A true xenophobe would want to hold foreign-born individuals back, not help them move forward with additional incentives for learning English.

In the political arena, is it not contradictory to require naturalized citizens to pass an English language exam but then offer bilingual ballots for the act of voting? Such a policy strongly implies that the English language exam for citizenship is only symbolic, not substantial. But how can new citizens participate fully in debates and discussions about issues and candidates if they really can’t read, write or speak English? Providing a ballot in a foreign language sends a confusing and hypocritical message: “We want your vote, but not your participation.” A mailed-in foreign language ballot is about as American as a Yugo assembled in Brazil.

No one law can fix this problem, but the federal government can set a good example. The English Language Unity Act is a good first step.

Tom Tancredo is a former congressman from Colorado.

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YES, SANTORUM CAN BEAT OBAMA

by Tom Tancredo on February 27, 2012 in 2012 Election, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Tea Party, Tom Tancredo with No comments

One of the most reliable truisms in politics is full of irony: When it comes to predicting presidential elections, conventional wisdom is nearly always wrong.

Washington pundits talk and write mostly for themselves, and certainly not for the history books. If they were paid according to their track records as political prognosticators, they would all be on food stamps.

The conventional wisdom in 1960 was that John Kennedy could not win a debate against the experienced Richard Nixon. In 1966, the conventional wisdom said a lightweight movie actor named Ronald Reagan had no chance to unseat the popular incumbent Democratic governor of California. Conventional wisdom in 2008 said Barack Obama has no chance to beat the popular wife of a popular ex-president.

The conventional wisdom a year ago said Mitt Romney would run away with the Republican nomination.

Is there a pattern here? Politics is full of surprises, and 2012 is no different.

Forgive me if I am not impressed with today’s conventional wisdom about Rick Santorum and the handicap imposed by the so-called social issues: “A social-issues conservative like Santorum cannot win the presidency.”

Supposedly, social issues are “divisive.” So, this means economic issues are not? The class-warfare rhetoric of Barack Obama is the most divisive and demagogic rhetoric we have seen since the Progressive campaigns of the 1890s.

The rhetoric of the environmentalist lobby is not “divisive”? Oil companies who want to drill in the Gulf of Mexico are “raping Mother Earth”?

It’s easy in hindsight to see the errors in past predictions; their assumptions were all wrong. So, looking at Rick Santorum the candidate, let’s ask, how smart are today’s assumptions about his “electability”?

The first thing to understand about the 2012 presidential race is that it is unlike any other election in our history. It’s not comparable to 1948, nor 1960 or 1980, and not to the campaigns against incumbents in 1996 or 2004.

Our country is at a crossroads that is unparalleled in our history – and people know it. They may not understand why, but they know it in their hearts and feel it in their guts.

Put in the most simple terms, we are at a crossroads because Barack Obama has brought us there. He is the first genuine Marxist to sit in the White House, and his agenda is to dismantle our capitalist economy and destroy American influence in the world.

Obama’s policies place us at this crossroads of history. This year is different because there will be no turning back from the road to European-style socialism and Caesarism if Barack Obama wins a second term. Rick Santorum understands this.

Now, forgive me, but I cannot take seriously some celebrity pundit telling me Rick Santorum cannot beat Barack Hussein Obama because he has misgivings about the wisdom of schools distributing free condoms to 12-year-olds. And Santorum has the audacity to wonder aloud if rampant promiscuity promoted by popular culture might have a corrosive effect on our social fabric. As another prisoner of conventional wisdom once said in similar circumstances, “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”

The “social issues lose elections” mantra is historically ignorant and embarrassingly shallow in its political correctness. Ordinary folks understand that many issues dismissed condescendingly as “mere” social issues are in fact loaded with economic significance. Remember the “welfare reform debate” of the1970s and 1980s? Was that a social issue or an economic issue? How about the civil rights revolution? Was that about jobs or was it about freedom and human dignity? The Vietnam War? Was that about oil or student loans?

Closer to home in 2012, how about the “jobs debate”? Is our ability to generate good jobs only a debate about the principles of economics? Is this not equally a religious debate between two contrasting worldviews? In truth, White House energy policy is not based on economics, Keynesian or otherwise. It takes the religious fervor of extreme environmentalism to block the Keystone Pipeline and offshore drilling while insisting on taxpayer subsidies for the Chevrolet Volt.

The unemployed pipe fitter or underemployed truck driver probably understands there is something deeper at work here. Obama’s ideology has abandoned economic development as a cornerstone of public policy: Obama simply does not give a damn about jobs in the energy sector unless they are taxpayer-subsidized “green jobs.”

And what happens if the economy continues to improve, gradually but steadily? Should the election be canceled and Obama declared president for life? Do these purveyors of moral myopia and intergenerational piracy have a “Plan B” for the Republican Party?

Come to think of it, why do so many self-styled “pragmatists” talk about the spiraling national debt as only an economic issue? Isn’t passing unsustainable debt to our children and grandchildren as much a moral issue as an economic one? Living in denial of approaching catastrophe is as much a case of moral indifference as it is economic sleep-walking.

What seems to upset so many Republican “strategists” is that Rick Santorum is as comfortable talking about these moral issues as he is discussing marginal tax rates or the cost of Obama’s failed stimulus program. Why is that a handicap?

When every pillar of American prosperity, every principle of American virtue and every article of constitutional liberty is under attack by Obama’s bureaucracy and its allies, why is it not an asset for a candidate to be able talk about all of these issues, not just unemployment trends? If “all of the above” is good energy policy, why isn’t it good politics as well?

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Why is Boehner blocking immigration enforcement bill ?

by Tom Tancredo on February 17, 2012 in Illegal Immigration, Immigration, John Boehner, Tom Tancredo with 3 Comments

As if we needed a reminder that America has a unique two party system—“the evil party and the stupid party”—Republican House Speaker Boehner has provided it yet again. He is blocking a floor vote on a bill that could create a million or more jobs –and at no cost to taxpayers.

That Boehner thinks this is smart politics tells you all you need to know about the bankruptcy of Beltway Republican strategic thinking.

The Legal Workforce Act, H.R.2885, would require all employers to use the federal E-Verify program to identify fake or stolen Social Security Numbers used by illegal workers. Participation by employers would be phased in over a two year period. The program is largely self-enforcing because the list of participating companies is posted on the Homeland Security Department web site and updated quarterly.

Over 300,000 employers already participate in this Social Security Number verification system at over 1,000,000 worksites. The program has an error rate of less than 1%. Currently the E-Verify program is required for most companies doing business with the federal government, and it is required of all employers in a half dozen states. In Colorado, companies doing business with state agencies have been using the program since 2006.

After extensive public hearings, last September the Legal Workforce Act was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee and then sent to the House Ways and Means Committee. It has languished there ever since.

This important bill – which has 74 cosponsors – is being buried by Speaker Boehner and the House Republican leadership: they have ordered the Ways and Means chairman to sit on the bill indefinitely. Translated, that means do not allow the bill to be sent to the floor for a vote.

What is behind this sabotage of a bill that is a keystone of an immigration enforcement agenda supported by 80% of all Republicans and 70% of independents? At a time of over 8% unemployment nationally, who is opposed to a system that helps guarantee that scarce jobs go to citizens and other legal workers? What’s going on?

Blocking H.R.2885 is only the latest example of Beltway Republican hostility to the immigration enforcement movement. When John McCain and his open-borders allies could not get their amnesty bills passed in 2006 and 2007, they resolved to block any meaningful legislation aimed at border security or interior enforcement. They were not able to block the Secure Fence Act of December, 2006, but they did succeed in amending and sabotaging it in the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2007. So, the double fence it authorized for 700 miles of the southwest border was never built.

The pattern is well established, but the political motivation behind that pattern is paradoxical. These jokers actually think they are doing the Republican Party a favor by suppressing immigration enforcement legislation. They worry the Republican Party will “lose the Hispanic vote” if such legislation is enacted.

Well, these political gurus have overlooked one little historical fact. The Republican Party has never HAD the Hispanic vote, so how can they lose it? Even their hero, President George Bush, could not get more than 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004 after proclaiming his support for amnesty legislation. Republican congressional candidates have never earned more than 35% of the Hispanic vote nationally.

These supposedly brilliant Beltway strategists and pundits have strangely overlooked what happened in 2010: Every single Republican elected to an open seat in either the House or Senate in that magnificent landslide ran on a pro-enforcement platform! 

It is well established in poll after poll, including the polls sponsored by the liberal Pew Hispanic Center, that Hispanic voters do NOT put immigration issues at the top of their list of vital concerns. Ironically, this is well illustrated by Obama’s failure to expand his Hispanic support despite his shameless pandering to the National Council of La Raza through the administrative amnesty program.  Obama’s support among Hispanics has actually DECLINED from the levels of 2008.

What lessons should Republicans draw from Obama’s pandering? That Republicans should imitate Obama? Do they hope to out-pander the Master Panderer?

In reality, Republicans have nothing to lose and much to gain by advancing a pro-enforcement agenda with features like mandatory E-Verify for employers, an end to automatic citizenship for children born to illegal aliens and tourists, and genuine border security. First, that agenda is good for the country, and then it’s smart politics as well. Is that formula too complicated for the Beltway Republicans like Speaker John Boehner?

Let’s not be naïve. Nothing will change the minds of these Nervous Nellies. They need to be replaced.

We need more than a new occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Republicans need new leadership in the Senate and the House as well. The debacle of the stalled Legal Workforce Act is only one more piece of evidence in a long train of stupidities and betrayals by Boehner and his crew.

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Tancredo calls Obama ‘Occupier in Chief’

by Admin on February 5, 2012 in Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, Tom Tancredo with 1 Comment

“Does the Occupy Movement or the Tea Party best reflect the needs and goals of America?”

Via: CCU

That was the debate question at CCU on Jan. 30 as an overflow crowd cheered, laughed, and occasionally hissed at the crossfire between former congressman Tom Tancredo and Colorado Springs activist Michelle Morin on the Tea Party side and Democratic legislators Sen. Pat Steadman and Rep. Daniel Kagan on the Occupy side.

More than 200 partisans of the two viewpoints (conservative for the most part) packed the Beckman auditorium for the 90-minute event, moderated by Centennial Institute Director John Andrews.

Occupy Denver Getting Evicted For The 5th Time. from Tanner Spendley on Vimeo.

Denver Tea Party 2009

Video of the full program will be posted online later this week.  Here is Tancredo’s opening statement:

I begin by congratulating CCU and John Andrews for hosting this program. Our political season is largely devoid of good quality humor, and this debate question should get awards for political parody: Anyone who takes the “Occupy Movement” seriously as a force for fulfilling America’s destiny probably also believes Stephen Colbert is a serious political commentator.

Maybe in Greenwich Village, Hollywood and Boulder, but not in the America I know and love.

However, in a perverse way, the debate question is indeed a good jumping off place for a vigorous debate on “America’s needs and goals” because the differences between those two political forces are about as stark and extreme as you can find in politics today.

The debate may put a bright spotlight on the deep divide in America today, a divide between two radically different understandings of America—

And I mean more than differences over “needs and goals.” I mean deep differences over the very meaning of the Constitution, different concepts of our “core values,” and extremely different visions of what constitutes American greatness.

On the most obvious level, the Tea Party Movement began as a citizens’ protest against high taxation and government debt, whereas the Occupy Movement wants even higher taxes and ENDLESS GOVERNMENT DEBT.o which of THOSE visions do you think offers hope for America?

  • On the level of political activism and civil behavior, the Tea Party movement has followed and respected traditional American tools of protest—public rallies under legal permits, speeches, petitions, and organizing for political participation in caucuses, conventions, primaries and elections.
  • On the question of civic virtue and the rule of law, it is worth pointing out that at the HUNDREDS of Tea Party rallies across the country since the first ones in February 2009, conducted in full view of a critical and often hostile media, there was not one rape, one shooting, or one reported theft of property. YET, in the dozen or so OCCUPY movement’s tent cities, there have been several such crimes.
  • On the level of grassroots legitimacy versus “Astroturf choreography,” the Tea party Movement is as genuine a grassroots protest movement as we have seen since the Populist revolt of 120 years ago.
  • It is totally funded by local donations. Led by local citizens, young an old, and not coordinated by national funding or national structures.  And its program of grassroots organizing and protests does not rely on or depend on media favoritism or messaging.
  • WHEREAS, BY CONTRAST, the “Occupy” movement is totally dependent on a fawning media to tell its story and gain a national audience.
  • The Occupy Movement explicitly rejects the traditional American means of protest and chooses — instead—WHAT? –
  • The “Occupy Movement” chooses PHYSICAL VIOLENCE as its preferred means of protest, not petitions, not rallies, not speeches, not organizing for candidates in an election.
  • The very NAME of the movement – “OCCUPY” is a PHYSICAL assault, not a form of speech.

You see, behind the choice of its name and its choice of violent rhetoric, the “Occupy Movement” has made a choice to reject the basic institutions of American democracy.

Its primary tactic is not persuasive argument but physical threats and intimidation. We know where those tactics come from, and its called totalitarianism.

To the “Occupy” movement, all of these American institutions are illegitimate.

To the Tea Party Movement, by contrast, America is a nation with problems that can still be fixed and our basic institutions are still legitimate.

To the Tea Party Movement, our problem is to restore faith and adherence to basic values and core institutions that have been slowly undermined and weakened over the past decades.

In short, the Occupy Movement cannot claim to represent America’s needs and goals because it does not understand what America IS. And to the extent it does have any understanding of American values and institutions, it REJECTS them.

The contrast between the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party Movement is not a contrast between Republicans and Democrats, for I cannot believe all Democrats or even a majority of Democrats share the thoroughly socialist principles of the Occupy Movement.

I prefer the Tea Party Movement, which reveres the legacy of freedom and seeks to preserve and extend our freedoms, not further control our lives through an expanded and avaricious federal government as envisioned and championed by the Occupier–in-Chief, Barack Obama.

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