Oh yeah, and let’s build a big fence with armed guards to keep the drug traffickers, sex slave traders, kidnappers, and murderers out.

You know what else the left loves? The European Union. Especially countries like Greece, where an extravagant redistribution of wealth in the name of social justice has bankrupt the entire country.

I wonder if liberals still love the EU since news leaked of their strict border enforcement policy. Greece is the entry point for 90% of illegal immigrants trying to make it into Western Europe. The EU sent 175 border agents with guns to the Greek border with Turkey, but the Greeks have deemed it insufficient:

The socialist government has recently announced that it plans to build a razor-wire fence along the border. It will, say officials, be equipped with sonar systems and thermal sensors and be modelled [sic] along the lines of similar “walls” in Spain, Lithuania and France.

“If we could have it up tomorrow, we would,” said Christos Papoutsis, the country’s minister for citizen protection. “Greece is not a paradise… it is in the midst of economic crisis, wages are going down, unemployment is surging and there is not enough work for our own people or the migrants who are already here. Our hope is that this fence will send a message.”

You can’t have socialism and open immigration. Two plus two does not equal five. Liberals in our country can’t have it both ways. Either you allow everyone in and give them a chance to make a living, or you batten down the hatches and tell would-be immigrants, “No soup for you!”

Personally, I favor the approach that made America great to begin with. Let them in. Give them property rights. Don’t punish success with excessive taxation. Let anyone willing to work for it come in and take a shot at the American dream.  We might be welcoming the next Andrew Carnegie or Levi Strauss.

Kosovo wives are waiting years for their "ex" husbands to return with citizenship papers to the EU

Immigration is the “Trojan horse” of Islamization.   Immigration by marriage is one of the “tools” used by Muslim to gain citizenship to make new Muslim “majorities” in host countries. 

Sham marriage “rings” are periodically broken up in the U.S.   From Gates of Vienna blog via a recent article from Süddeutschen Zeitung, we learn of immigration fraud on a massive scale going on in Europe right now.  This opportunistic “preying” by Muslim men on young, impressionable “infidel”  women owes its success  to the poor economy.   We face losing our countries if we do not recognize this practice.

Henrik Clausen’s review of Sam Solomon’s book “Modern Day Trojan Horse: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration” is also a highly recommended read.

Discussion of this topic occurs in a Macedonian discussion forum. Interesting.

The article itself has been kindly translated by JLH:

To Europe by Marriage Certificate

by Jeton Musliu, Pristina, Kosovo
December 30, 2010

The advantages outweigh the taboos: For their dream of a German passport, many Kosovo Albanians are divorcing their wives — if only temporarily — to marry a foreigner.

For the fourth time, the Robert Bosch Foundation this year has invited young journalists from the Balkans to enter a reporting-and-research competition (“Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence”). The Süddeutsche Newspaper is the media partner for the competition,which is also being carried by the Austrian ERSTE Foundation. sueddeutsche.de is publishing the three winning texts.

Before going to sleep, Valbona (35) from Peja in the west of Kosovo looks at her marriage photo, taken 13 years ago. She sees her smiling husband next to her.

Today there remains only the memory of that moment. Two years ago, her husband married a German woman. Valbona, mother of their four children ages four to twelve, not only knew of this intention, she approved it.

You see, in the eyes of her family and the people of her immediate surroundings, Valbona is not really divorced. Many Kosovo Albanians divorce their first wives, in a mutual agreement, and go to Western Europe to find a new partner who will make it possible for him to get a residence permit.

They leave their children behind in Kosovo, so they can pretend to be single and get married quickly. As soon as they have a permanent permit to stay in Germany or some other EU country, they divorce their second wife, return to the first one and bring the whole family into the West.

Germany is a favorite goal for Kosovars seeking foreign women and ultimately an EU pass, since there is already a large population their with Albanian roots.

The women who marry these Kosovo Albanians believe they have found the ideal, attentive husband. Often, however, as soon as they have a permanent residence permit after five years of marriage to a German citizen, they demand a divorce.

Valbona is confident that her husband will do the same: leave his new wife after three more years and come back to Kosovo to take her and the children to a new life in the rich West.

“The divorce was difficult, but it was easier, since we both know what our goal is,” said Valbona, who — in her husband’s absence — has moved into a house next to his brother.

Vacation with the old family

Without the German wife knowing about it, Valbona has already spent a summer vacation with her ex-husband in Kosovo. Benefits outweigh taboos.

Previously, Albanian families simply did not accept divorce. But since the Kosovo Albanians discovered how useful it is to marry a foreign woman, the taboo is forgotten.

Every Monday, Valbona’s ex-husband sends money for the four children. This means a lot in a land as poor as Kosovo, where 40% of the population is unemployed and the average monthly wage is only about 200 euros.

According to information from the National Bsnk of Kosovo, every year, Kosovars who have emigrated to West Europe send €530 home. These mailings amount to 13% of the country’s GNP. Sokol Havolli, a leading bank official, indicates that 30% of Kosovar households receive money from relatives working outside the country.

Against the background of such economic need, many people try desperately to achieve the right to live and work in West Europe.

But it is difficult to to get an entry visa to the EU. Unlike its neighnot countries in the Balkans, Kosovo does not have travel privileges inside the EU Schengen area. An easing of the visa regime is not in the immediate future.

More and More Divorces

It is almost impossible for Kosovars to attain German citizenship unless they are born there or come there as a small child.

However, adult Kosovars, like other non-EU citizens, can apply for a residence permit, when they have lived legally more than 5 years in the country. Normally, the basis for this is a higher education or marriage to a citizen.

Rising divorce rate

According to official sources, there were 127 divorces in 2007 in the Kosovar capital city, Pristina, population ca. 600,000. The number is low by West European standards. For Kosovars, it is high. As recently as 2003, there were 36 divorces.

The number of marriages to foreign citizens, mostly West Europeans, has risen in tandem with the rising number of divorces. In 2009 in Pristina, 98 marriages of this kind between Kosovar men and Western women were recorded officially.

Shefget Bugaj, a city official, claims to know instances of Kosovars marrying their first wife again after divorcing the foreign partner.

He admits the possibilities of authorities examining the motives for a marriage are limited. If Kosovar men want to marry their first wives again, the couple can just say that they have reconciled.

But Bugaj emphasizes that questions are asked, if the motives for the marriage of a Kosovar to a foreign woman seem dubious. He recalls that an especially suspicious case concerned a native man who married a foreign woman who was 15 years older.

But Bugal explains that they could find no good grounds to deny the marriage. “We spoke with them and came to the conclusion that it was not a fictional marriage,” he says.

Lonesome Western women

A Kosovo Albanian who aspired to a residence permit in Germany targeted Sonja, a German woman from Stuttgartt. Thirteen years ago the now thirty-year-old woman married the Albanian who came from the area of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo. Out of work and somewhat lonesome at the time, Sonja was flattered when spoken to in a Stuttgart café by a good-looking, black-haired man, a few years older than she.

She had no inkling that this alleged single man had actually married at age 18 in Kosovo and been divorced before he came to Stuttgart. She was also not aware that he was on the hunt for a German wife for reasons that had little to do with love. The knot was soon tied, and Sonja began eagerly learning Albanian and lead the modest life of a Kosovar housewife. For example, she did not leave home to meet friends for coffee anymore. Looking back, she says: “I became more Albanian than any Albanian wife.”

Surprisingly, Sonja’s husband did not demand a divorce after five years — apparently because they now had a small son, whose fate complicated the situation. Sonja’s husband wanted to secure sole custody of his son before leaving her. Sonja agreed to leave custody of their son — eight years-old at the time — to her ex-husband. He quickly married his first wife again and is now living outside Stuttgart with her and Sonja’s son.

Sonja does not know the whole story of her marriage, but several Kosovar Albanians living in the area know very well of the secret circumstances of Sonja’s ex-husband. She only knows that her ex-husband married “an Albanian woman with no papers.” She still believes she married for love, and does not understand what went wrong.

Matchmakers

Many Kosovo-Albanians defend the actions of men who go abroad looking for a second wife in order to improve their prospects. Vladrin Hoxha, an unemployed 23 year-old from Pristina says he would do the same, if he could.

Raising Respectability Through Marriage

“I would tell my family that I would divorce my foreign wife as soon as I had my EU documents I would get a divorce and marry a Kosovar girl.,” he says with conviction. Several years ago, couples could usually only divorce on grounds of infertility, says Hamdi Veliu (71) from Polac, a village situated in the middle of Kosovo.

“If a woman could not have children, she had two possibilities: divorce or stay,” he explains. “If she decided to stay, she had to accept that her husband needed a second wife.” Velieu says he knows of cases where Kosovar women are living somewhere in Germany while their husbands are living in another place and still with their German second wives. “Such conditions have nothing to do with our tradition,” he says sadly,

According to Veliu, the possession of the oh-so-important EU residence permits confers enormous prestige on men in modern Kosovo. With these papers, a man in his forties could acquire a local girl, even if she is twenty years his junior. Such men often use the services of a marriage broker or local matchmaker to find a young bride.

Smaji Shatraj (60), from the village of Llausha in the center of Kosovo, has pursued this activity often in the course of the years. “Now that most girls want to live abroad, it has become much simpler to make arrangements,” if the man has EU documents, he says.

In earlier times, he adds, couples were chosen who were about the same age and seemed suited to one another. Today, the most important criterion is whether the prospective husband has the right documents. He sighs,”They push tradition aside for personal interests.”

In fact, mixed marriages — especially marriages intended to improve the social and economic prospects of the men — are nothing new among the Kosovars. Previously, these marriages were customarily concluded inside the old Yugslavian nation. Kosovar men normally married Serbian women, since this ethnic group was regarded as the most powerful of those groups in the Yugoslavia of that time.

The European Dream

“In the former Yugoslavia, a person could gain respectability through marriage,” says Anton Berishaj, professor of sociology at the University of Pristina. An important distinction between these marriages and those with Germans, is that the men had no motivation to divorce their wives after a certain period of time. They stayed together and often moved to the Yugoslav capitol, Belgrade.

Some, for instance the Selimis, still live there together. But while an Albanian-Serbian marriage brought social advantages in the 1960s and 1970s, today — after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the declaration of Kosovo’s independence and the deteriorating Albanian-Serbian relationships — this is not at all the case. “Today, these couples live with a stigma,” says Professor Nada Raduski of the Demographic Research Center in Belgrade.

Sociology professor, Anton Berishaj is sharply critical of Kosovar men who marry foreigners to get a permanent right of residence in the West: “A double marriage in which one of the partners does not know all the circumstances and the family acts as if nothing will happen, is neither human nor moral nor correct.” Leading representatives of all the faiths in Kosovo likewise vehemently condemn this trend. Most Kosovo-Albanians are Muslim, but there is also a small Catholic minority. The clergy of both religions regard marriage as sacred. “Marriage is permanent and not temporally limited; it is forever,” declares Bedri Syla, an imam from Skenderaj in the center of Kosovo. The imam regards so-called “divorces” whose overriding purpose is getting documents as mockery and sacrilege.

“These are games on which families and morals founder,” he says and quotes verses from the Koran. Such deeds cannot be justified in Islam, he adds, no matter the potential advantages. Don Shan Zefi, a Catholic priest in Pristina, says the same: “Marriages like this are impermissible from the moral, psychological and legal standpoint.”

“The sacrifice is worth it”

Forty year-old Agron, however, thinks it pays to make exceptions to morals and tradition, in order to live the European dream. The gravestone carver now lives with his first wife in a village about 30 kilometers from Stuttgart, after completing a long and arduous divorce from his second, German wife, in order to re-marry his Kosovar first wife.

Agron tries to forget the fact that he had to leave his first wife and their children behind in Kosovo during the five years in which he was married to a German woman. “The sacrifice was worth it, so long as you don’t forget your wife and children in Kosovo,” Agron claims. “For me to living here is like in paradise.” he adds and means the small German village that is now his home,

To achieve a similar “paradise.” Valbona and her four children must wait at least three more years. In her happy anticipation of a new life elsewhere.she is not concerned with the nationality of the foreign woman her husband is married to, just so she gets into the West. “I just don’t care,” she says. “The catastrophic economic conditions drove us to it.”

Also:  ABC News Fact-checker on the speech

The Economic Collapse Blog:

Empty Promises: 5 Reasons Why Barack Obama’s State Of The Union Address Was Completely Wrong About The Economy

By Michael Snyder:

Barack Obama’s State of the Union address sure sounded good, didn’t it?  There were lots of solemn promises, lots of stuff about America’s “bright future” and a line about how we are now facing this generation’s “Sputnik moment” that will surely make headlines all over the globe.  But we all knew that Barack Obama could give a good speech.  That has never been the issue.  What the American people really need are some very real answers to some very real problems.  So were there any real answers in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address?  Well, Barack Obama promised that America will “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build” the rest of the world.  He also pledged that America will become “the best place in the world to do business” and that the government must “take responsibility” for our deficit spending.  But does all of this rhetoric mean anything or is all this just another batch of empty promises to add to the long list of empty promises that Barack Obama has already made and broken?

The American people certainly don’t need any more empty promises.  Millions of American families have been pushed to the edge of desperation by this economy.

There has been a lot of talk that the economy is “turning around”, but in many areas of the country the employment situation continues to get even worse.  Payrolls decreased in 35 U.S. states during the month of December.

The truth is that the number of “good jobs” produced by the U.S. economy continues to shrink.  In fact, only 47 percent of working-age Americans have a full-time job at this point.

The American people are not going to buy this “economic recovery” as long as unemployment remains at epidemic levels in so many areas.  Just consider some of the stunningly high unemployment rates in some of our most important states….

Nevada – 14.5%

California – 12.5%

Florida – 12.0%

So did Barack Obama propose anything substantial that will actually create real jobs?

No.

Instead, all he had to offer was just a bunch of empty promises.  It is almost as if Obama believes that a really good inspirational speech will somehow make things better.  The following are just a few of the empty promises Obama made during his address to the nation….

Empty Promise #1: America Will “Out-Innovate” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

During the State of the Union address, Barack Obama promised that the United States will “out-innovate” the rest of the world and that this will create more jobs.

Oh really?

Perhaps we could create some more cutting edge products like the Apple iPhone, right?

After all, Apple iPhones were one of the most wildly successful American technological innovations of the past decade.  Surely this is the kind of innovation that Obama would like to see more of.

Well, do you know where Apple iPhones are made?

Apple iPhones are manufactured in China by workers making about 293 dollars a month (and that was after a big raise).

But it isn’t just the Apple iPhone that is made overseas.  The truth is that almost all high technology products are made outside of the United States.

In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide.  So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States?  Zero.

Ouch.

Not only that, another fact to note is that manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

So exactly how is more “innovation” going to produce millions of U.S. jobs if all of the high tech manufacturing continues to be shipped out of the United States?

Empty Promise #2: America Will “Out-Educate” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

For decades, U.S. presidents have promised that “education” is the key to competing with the rest of the world.

Okay, if suddenly every single person in the United States had an extra college degree, would that mean that more jobs would suddenly start popping into existence?

Of course not.

Right now, we can’t produce enough nearly enough jobs for all of the college graduates that we already have.

Sadly, the truth is that we are already experiencing an epidemic of unemployment among our college graduates.  According to the Project on Student Debt, unemployment for new college graduates stood at 8.7 percent in 2009, which was way up from 5.8 percent in 2008.

But that is not the whole story.

Millions of college graduates that have been able to find jobs have ended up taking jobs that they didn’t even need a college education for.  The “underemployment rate” among college graduates is absolutely exploding.

In 1992, there were just 5.1 million “underemployed” college graduates in the United States, but by 2008 there were 17 million “underemployed” college graduates in the United States.

Many of our brightest young minds are now flipping burgers, waiting tables and welcoming people to Wal-Mart.

In fact, in the United States today 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

Oh, but certainly the answer is to get more Americans to go to college, right?

It certainly sounds good in a speech for a politician to say that “more education” is the answer, but in the end all it amounts to is a hollow promise.

Getting more Americans to go to college will not create any more jobs, but it will create more debt.  Americans now owe more than $884 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.

Empty Promise #3: America Will “Out-Build” The Rest Of The World And This Will Create More Jobs

So Barack Obama says that we are going to “out-build” the rest of the world?

Well, that certainly sounds good.

But what exactly does that mean?

Does it mean that we are going to quit shutting down our factories and tearing down our economic infrastructure?

After all, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good since 2001.

So is Obama going to do something to stop the flood of jobs and factories that are leaving the United States?

No, in fact he intends to “increase” trade with countries such as China and India.  That is going to mean that thousands more factories and millions more jobs are going to be “outsourced”.

Well, what about building up infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power grids, dams and ports?

That is certainly a very good idea.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we need to spend approximately $2.2 trillion on infrastructure repairs and upgrades just to bring our existing infrastructure up to “good condition”.

So we desperately need some investment in that area.

But there is a big problem.

We are flat broke.

As will be discussed below, the U.S. government is flat broke.  Not only that, our state governments are flat broke and our local governments are flat broke.

So where will the trillions of dollars that we need for infrastructure come from?

Obama did not even come close to answering that question.

Empty Promise #4: America Will Become “The Best Place In The World To Do Business” And This Will Create More Jobs

It was incredible that Barack Obama could suggest that America is “the best place in the world to do business” with a straight face.

First of all, when you consider all forms of taxation, U.S. businesses face one of the most oppressive taxation regimes in the entire world.

But not only that, U.S. businesses also have to deal with one of the most horrific regulatory environments in the history of mankind.

As I have written about previously, the mountains of red tape that U.S. businesses have to wade through just continues to grow every single year.

The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies.  In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600.  Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long.

So is Barack Obama going to do anything about that?

Of course not.

In fact, Barack Obama and the Democrats have been really busy passing even more ridiculous regulations.

For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is projecting that the food service industry will have to spend an additional 14 million hours every single year just to comply with new federal regulations that mandate that all vending machine operators and chain restaurants must label all products that they sell with a calorie count in a location visible to the consumer.

Empty Promise #5: Barack Obama Pledges To “Take Responsibility” For Our Deficit Spending

During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

In fact, since Barack Obama took office, the U.S. government has gotten us into so much new debt that it breaks down to $10,429.64 for each of the 308,745,538 people counted by the 2010 U.S. census.

So is that “taking responsibility” for our deficit spending?

When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars.

Today it is over 14 trillion dollars.

Government debt is absolutely out of control.  At this point, the U.S. national debt is increasing by roughly 4 billion dollars every single day.

If all of this debt is not brought under control, it will bring down the entire U.S. financial system.  According to a recent U.S. Treasury report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will reach 19.6 trillion dollars in 2015.

Can you imagine being 20 trillion dollars in debt?

That is 20,000,000,000,000 dollars.

So it would be really great if Barack Obama could do something about all of this debt, but based on his track record perhaps we should not be holding our breath.

Not that Obama is to blame for all of this.

The sad reality is that both parties have been involved in a massive debt orgy for decades and decades.  Now the day of reckoning is almost here and it is going to be incredibly painful.

We are in so much trouble that it is hard to even try to put it into words.  None of our politicians are telling us the whole truth.  We are headed for a complete and total disaster.

If you haven’t read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert on World Net Daily,  let me recommend subscribing to it.  Dr. Corsi does an amazing job scouring the net each week to come up with good background facts for you decision-making.

Here’s his summary of recent “inconvenient” facts on illegal immigration and how much it really costs us.

BORDER WARS 

By Dr. Jerome Corsi

1 million immigrants take U.S. jobs

States spend $113 billion a year for social services for illegals

In the past two years, as unemployment remained near 10 percent, more than 1 million immigrants, of whom 35 percent were undocumented or illegal, have gotten jobs in the United States.

The basic story is that in the last two years, U.S. employers have chosen to go for cheap immigrant help, while the economy as a hole has shed millions of jobs for U.S. workers.

At the same time, providing social services is costing cash-strapped states billions of dollars to pay for a wide range of services many states can no longer afford, including welfare payments, health services and education of children, with classes often provided in Spanish.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that the cost of illegal immigration to the states stands at about $113 billion, with nearly half that amount going to education costs.

1 million immigrants land jobs in U.S. since 2008

That more than one million immigrants have found employment in the U.S. since 2008 was the conclusion of a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data conducted exclusively for Reuters by researchers at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

“Employers have chosen to use new immigrants over native-born workers and have continued to displace large numbers of blue-collar workers and young adults without college degrees,” concluded Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies.

“One of the advantages of hiring, particularly young, undocumented immigrants, is the fact that employers do not have to pay health benefits or basic payroll taxes,” Sum told Reuters.

The study concluded that from 2008 to 2010, approximately 1.1 million new migrants who have entered the United States have obtained jobs, while U.S. household employment declined overall by 6.26 million during that same period of time.

The Reuters-commissioned study found immigrants were acquiring employment in traditional low-wage work associated with foreign, undocumented and especially Mexican labor: hotels and food services, retail trade, sanitation, cleaning and construction.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for all Americans without a high-school diploma in the age group under 30 is about 27 percent to 29 percent, at or near Depression areas, while unemployment in sectors such as construction is almost 21 percent.

Illegals intensify state-budget crisis

Last week, Michael Antonovich, the Los Angeles County supervisor, released new statistics showing welfare costs for the children of illegal immigrants cost the county $600 million last year, up from $570 million in 2009, as reported by Fox News.

Going beyond the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through the state program CalWORKS to include the costs of public safety and health care, the total cost for illegal immigrants to Los Angeles taxpayers for 2010 was more than $1.6 billion, not including education costs.

“The problem is illegal immigration,” Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell told Fox News. “Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services. We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world.”

The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that the illegal immigrants cost California $21.8 billion a year, for all social welfare services, public safety and health costs, as well as education costs.

California is estimated to have a $25 billion budget shortfall this year.

California opens state universities to illegals

In November, California’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that illegal aliens can continue attending California colleges at the cheaper in-state tuition rates, a move that threatens to expand California’s already severe budget crisis.

Right now, about 25,000 illegals are estimated to receive in-state tuition rates in California.

Last week, the California Department of Education released data indicating that for the first time Latinos now make up the majority of California’s public school students, cracking the 50 percent barrier for the first time in state history, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Even though the California Department of Education did not sort out the data to indicate what percentage of the Latinos were illegal immigrants, the report suggests the California Supreme Court decision could be costly to California taxpayers having to subsidize illegal immigrants at colleges and universities in the state.

The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to decide if allowing illegal immigrants the lower, in-state tuition rate for college and universities violates federal law.

Rep. Steve King (R- Iowa) Why would the point man on immigration not be given the chance to lead?

UPDATE:   Christopher Logan of Logan’s Warning :  “Peter King: Dazed and Confused”

Richard Falknor of Blue Ridge Forum brings us the story of two more, potentially very great, disappointments in the Republican party.   What was November FOR?   If we WON, why is the GOP acting like we LOST?

Rep. Peter King -- Long-awaited hearing on Islamic terrorism may be a whitewash

A Tale of Two Kings: See No Shariah, Speak No Illegals

By Richard Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum 

Judicial Watch doing the kind of illegal-immigration investigation the House GOP doesn’t like doing? “JW Files Taxpayer Lawsuit against Maryland Community College for Unlawfully Giving Illegal Aliens In-State Tuition Benefits“ “Maryland State Delegate Pat McDonough first alerted Judicial Watch to this issue last year, prompting Judicial Watch to conduct an independent investigation, which led to this taxpayer lawsuit.”

* * * * * * * * * * 

“In the short term at least, the country class has no alternative but to channel its political efforts through the Republican Party, which is eager for its support. But the Republican Party does not live to represent the country class. . . . Few Republican voters, never mind the larger country class, have confidence that the party is on their side. Because, in the long run, the country class will not support a party as conflicted as today’s Republicans, those Republican politicians who really want to represent it will either reform the party in an unmistakable manner, or start a new one as Whigs like Abraham Lincoln started the Republican Party in the 1850s.” (Underscoring Forum’s) — Angelo Codevilla in “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution“

New York Republican Representative Peter King has, to put the matter charitably, upset national-security conservatives with his unexpected change of course on his planned hearings on “radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorism.”

Wednesday in National Review on Line Robert Costa wrote:

“As Ben Smith of Politico reports, Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, plans to take ‘testimony primarily from Muslims’ during his upcoming hearings on radicalization . . . . King’s decision drew quick criticism from Steve Emerson, the executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, who sent the Long Island Republican a strongly worded letter this morning….”

On Wednesday Diana West evaluated Peter King’s approach in plain words: “Lame Hearings on Islam Will Do Nothing”–

“That phrase — ‘radical Islam’ — is truly a marvel: a 14-karat, bulletproof, titanium shield for Islam itself, which, sorry guys and gals, is the source of all things we deem ‘radical’ in Islam. ‘Islam is Islam and that’s it,’ as Turkey’s Erdogan so memorably put it. But since we don’t want Islam to be ‘it,’ we pretend and operate and make policy and even war based on some mythic radicalism of ‘twisted’ or ‘hijacked’ or ‘perverted’ Islam.

If these King hearings turn out to be about the threat posed by ‘radical Islam’ — and not about the threat posed by what is radical about Islam — ‘nervous’ Muslim groups have nothing to worry about, and anti-jihad, anti-Shariah citizens have nothing to gain.

Hope I’m wrong, but it looks like any rational analysis of jihad or of Shariah is already off the table.”

We have learned that there is a small priority list of House GOP leadership objectives, and that illegal-immigration concerns are not among them. Apparently the Shariah and Stealth Jihad threats are not either. 

Illegal Immigration

Another surprise to conservatives is the fact that the House GOP leadership failed to name Iowa Representative Steve King as chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement.

Earlier this month, Tom Beaumont of the DesMoines Register reported –

“Iowa Congressman Steve King, one of the House Republican majority’s most zealous illegal immigration opponents, will not lead the new Republican majority’s immigration-policy subcommittee.

King, a Kiron Republican, has been ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration and enforcement subcommittee since 2007. But Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas announced Friday that King would be vice chairman, and that California Congressman Elton Gallegly would lead the subcommittee.”

Beaumont quoted King’s reaction to the news –

“’I’m going to drive an immigration agenda, and it’s going to be with probably more vigor than I would have otherwise, with no reservations about pushing hard for it,’ King said. “It isn’t about selling people in Congress. It’s about winning the debate with the American people. If the American people take a position, they will adjust the positions of the members in Congress.’

‘I would suggest that I’m a member with fewer limitations than I might have had otherwise,’ he added.”

Why wasn’t King made chairman? Fawn Johnson in National Journal revealed –

“The public reason for King’s demotion was a reorganization of the committee. The post was given to Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., a senior member to King who is considered conservative enough on immigration to satisfy tea party Republicans but not as outspoken as King. But it was also clear from GOP aides that House leaders worried about King and his tendency to press on immigration issues that angered more moderate members of his own party.

“’John Boehner isn’t very aggressive on immigration,’ King said, noting that the GOP ‘Pledge to America’ barely mentions immigration or border security. ‘It’s the tiniest section,’ he said.” (Underscoring Forum’s)

In this regard, Elise Foley of the Washington Independent had reported last November that –

“Somos Republicans, a Latino group from the Southwest, wrote an open letter to the future House GOP leadership on Tuesday asking it to reconsider putting Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) in charge of the House subcommittee on immigration and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in charge of the House Judiciary Committee.The group argues that King and Smith’s anti-illegal immigration rhetoric and policy ideas, which include a proposal to end birthright citizenship for the American-born children of illegal immigrants, would alienate Latino voters and ruin the Republican party’s chances of defeating President Obama in 2012.” (Underscoring Forum’s)

So what is going in the only arena of government the GOP controls? 

Maybe it’s not just about Steve King pushing vocally against illegal immigration. Perhaps it was also about King’s hard-line approach to getting rid of Obamacare.  It is clear that Speaker Boehner and the GOP leadership have been on Steve King’s case at least since last summer — most notably about King’s discharge petition to get a bill to the floor simply repealing Obamacare. 

Last June 30 RedStates’s Erick Erickson wrote –

“Today, Eric Cantor and John Boehner are announcing that they’ll sign King’s discharge petition, but they’re also going to go with one by Congressman Wally Herger that would repeal Obamacare and replace it with a Republican alternative. Notice that Cantor and Boehner were absolutely silent on Rep. King’s efforts until they had Wally Herger’s discharge petition ready to go. Why? Because they want to bully Republican House members into signing the Herger petition and undercut the repeal effort with a [repeal] and replace with lame legislation’ effort. In effect, this undercuts a unified repeal effort and muddies the waters. This is a direct confrontation by the House GOP leadership with conservatives and with Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s spin off 501(c)(4) group.” (Underscoring Forum’s)

Is Immigration Control Still At the Bottom of the Political Class’ List?

 NumbersUSA got a “spirited” reaction this week from its followers when they published their “2012 Presidential Hopefuls’ Immigration Stances.”

“Most people are depressed that not one of the Hopefuls rates even a ‘B.’ But there is a lot of time to help these candidates improve their voice on this urgent issue.” . . . . “When we added everything up, we found that as of this week of Jan. 17, 2011, Tim Pawlenty has the best overall platform on immigration. ”

Clearly grass-roots voices have some work to do marketing vigorous immigration-enforcement and active strengthening of our borders – - both to the House GOP leadership and to GOP presidential hopefuls. Tea Partyers also need to have a heart-to-heart talk with their U. S. Representatives and Senators about the perils of Shariah.