lframerica.com Blog

http://www.hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2008/04/01/news/doc47f27868d2928752698201.txt

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had said using the waivers would be a last resort. The department has held more than 100 meetings with lawmakers, environmental groups and residents in an effort to work out obstacles and objections to fence construction. The department will conduct environmental assessments when necessary, one of the officials said. But the waivers allow the department to start building before completing the assessments.

The department was expected to announce the plans later today.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/25/scotus.texas/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court has concluded Texas can execute a Mexican man sentenced to death for murder, ending an unusual capital appeal that pitted President Bush against his home state in a dispute over federal authority, local sovereignty and foreign treaties.

The 6-3 vote Tuesday means the pending execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin can proceed. He faces lethal injection for two brutal slayings.

At issue was whether the state had to give in to a demand by the president that the prisoner be allowed new hearings and sentencing.

Bush made that demand reluctantly after an international court concluded Medellin was improperly denied access to his consulate before his original prosecution, a violation of a treaty signed by the United States decades ago.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion saying the international court “is not domestic law,” thereby restricting the president’s power over states. “The executive’s narrow and strictly limited authority to settle international claims disputes pursuant to an executive agreement cannot stretch so far as to support the current presidential memorandum” that would force Texas to conduct a new state trial, he wrote.

Medellin was 18 when he participated in the June 1993 gang rape and murder of two Harris County, Texas, girls: Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16. He was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to death.

Medellin’s lawyers argued he was not informed upon his arrest of his right to contact Mexican consular officials. Those officials were never able to meet with him until after his conviction.

About 43 other Mexican nationals awaiting execution in various states — including 13 in Texas — also will be affected by the high court ruling. Only Oklahoma has commuted a capital inmate’s sentence to life in prison in response to the international judgment.

The Mexican government filed an appeal against the United States with the International Court of Justice in January 2003, alleging violations of international law. Medellin filed his own federal and state appeals based on similar complaints as well as a claim of ineffective counsel. Medellin has the support of the European Union and several international human rights groups.

The ICJ ruled in 2004 the United States had violated the rights of the Mexican prisoners, in part because officials and prosecutors failed to notify their home countries, which could have provided legal and other assistance. The ICJ judges ordered the United States to provide “review and reconsideration” of the sentences and convictions of the Mexican prisoners.

The court is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and resolves disputes between nations over treaty obligations. The United States is one of the signatories to the 1963 Vienna Convention, laying out rights of people detained in other nations. The case turned on what role each branch of government plays to give force to international treaty obligations.

Roberts concluded international court judgments cannot be forced upon individual states. The president cannot “establish binding rules of decision that pre-empt contrary state law,” he said, and the treaty does not specifically require states to remedy any treaty violations.

The chief justice was supported in his position by Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the presidential memorandum in this case was “self-executing,” and warned, “the nation may well break its word even though the president seeks to live up to that word and Congress has done nothing to suggest the contrary.”

He was supported by Justice David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who normally opposes the use of the death penalty, agreed with his conservative colleagues in this case. But he suggested the legal responsibility now falls on the state to give Medellin a fresh hearing, calling it a “modest cost of compliance.”

“Texas’ duty in this respect is all the greater since it was Texas that — by failing to provide consular notice in accordance with the Geneva Convention — ensnared the United States in the current controversy. Having put the nation in breach of one treaty, it is now up to Texas to prevent breach of another.”

Lawyers for the administration and Medellin argued Bush properly exercised his unilateral executive authority, which a majority of justices had questioned in oral arguments last September.

The Mexican government filed an appeal with the ICJ against the United States in January 2003, alleging violations of international law.

Medellin filed his own federal and state appeals based on similar complaints, as well as a claim of ineffective counsel. Medellin has the support of the European Union and several international human rights groups.

Bush said he disagreed with the international court’s conclusions but agreed to comply with them.

In a February 28, 2005, executive order, he said, “The United States will discharge its international obligations … by having state courts give effect to the decision.”

But a Texas appeals court later rejected that executive authority. In a sharply worded opinion, Judge Sharon Keller concluded the president’s “unprecedented, unnecessary, and intrusive exercise of power over the Texas court system cannot be supported by the foreign policy authority conferred on him by the United States Constitution.”

The Constitution does not directly give the president the power to enforce the treaties agreed to by the United States.

However, Article VI says that “all treaties made … under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby.”

Lawyers for the administration and Medellin argued Bush properly exercised his unilateral executive authority, which several justices had questioned in oral arguments last September.

Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz told the high court the president’s action was “a very curious assertion of presidential authority,” saying it “singles out the states, commandeers those judges.”

The Bush White House typically backs states in their power to carry out executions, but Justice Department officials said that in these instances, the president’s power to conduct foreign policy outweighed states’ interests.

The Supreme Court originally heard the Medellin case in 2005 but did not rule on the merits, waiting instead for lower courts to resolve the federalism angle.

March 14, 2008

There is nothing wrong with Obama making a donation out of his own checkbook, but when he uses tax payer money to make his donations, then there is a problem. 

It also seems Mrs. Obama has made out very well, with a pay increase that doubled her already enormous salary. For being a not-for-profit it sure seems that Mrs. Obama makes a good profit.  It would be wonderful if all those vice-presidents salaries would be cut in half and put back into the hospital.  Think of all the aid and research they could provide for American citizens then.  

American’s can be sure of one thing if they elect Obama President, he will bring home the bacon to his own family.

Newsmax 

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president.

The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion.

“I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times.

In any case, the 2006 request for the hospital was not approved by the Senate, as was about $7 out of every $10 the Illinois senator asked for in earmarks.

Bud he did manage to secure $1.3 million for a high-explosive technology program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The program was overseen by General Dynamics, and one of Obama’s top supporters, James Crown — a member of Obama’s national finance committee — serves on the board of General Dynamics.

Obama also secured a $750,000 earmark for renovation of a space center named for Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

And Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones Jr., a close personal friend of Obama and one of his benefactors, has been a strong supporter of Chicago State, according to the Times.

Other earmarks sought and secured by Obama include more than $10 million for a military arsenal in Rock Island, several million dollars for research on soybean disease and livestock genes, and $100,000 for after-school programs at the Chicago Jesuit Academy.

Michelle Obama is on leave from her job while her husband campaigns for president, but after Barack was elected to congress, she received a big raise.

USA Today reports that officials at the University of Chicago Hospitals told the Chicago Tribune that Michelle is “worth her weight in gold.”

“She’s terrific,” added Michael Riordan, who was president of the hospital in March 2005, when Michelle Obama was promoted to vice president for external affairs and had her annual salary increased from $121,910 to $316,962.

Hospitals spokesman John Easton told the Tribune that Michelle Obama’s salary is in line with those of the 16 other vice presidents at the not-for-profit medical center.

For those that keep watchful eyes on out Government happenings, so frequently we see Unconstitutional actions and deceitful acts on the floor being played off as something else.  This is a wonderful read about yet another Unconstitutional action that our Government squeaked through. 

NewsWithViews 

By Cliff Kincaid

March 9, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

The liberals have come up with a clever way of ratifying dangerous treaties, which now require a two-thirds vote (67) to pass in the Senate. They will introduce them as legislation, requiring only a majority vote to pass. The model for this new approach is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which President Bush mistakenly refers to as a treaty.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been portrayed by our media as being opposed to it. In fact, they want to make NAFTA stronger. They want to renegotiate the pact and attach binding commitments and strong enforcement mechanisms on labor and environmental issues. In effect, the Democrats are calling for NAFTA to assume even more supranational authority over economic activity in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. This could be the next step on the road to a proposed North American Union.

Regarding NAFTA, Hillary says she wants “to fix NAFTA by making it clear that we’ll have core labor and environmental standards in the agreement. We will do everything we can to make it enforceable, which it is not now. “Obama says, “As president of the United States, I intend to make certain that every agreement that we sign has the labor standards, the environmental standards and the safety standards that are going to protect not just workers, but also consumers.”

When President Bush criticized these comments as tantamount to threatening a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, he said that “It’s not good policy on the merits and it’s not good policy as a message to send to…people who have in good faith signed a treaty and worked with us on a treaty.”

But it was not treated as a treaty in the U.S.

Clinton submitted NAFTA as an agreement, requiring only a majority of votes in both Houses of Congress for passage, and not a treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote in favor in the Senate. NAFTA passed by votes of 234-200 in the House and 61-38 in the Senate.

Clinton did it this way because he didn’t have the votes to pass NAFTA as a treaty (requiring 67 votes) in the Senate. But how did he pull off such a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional move?

Although the strict text of the U.S. Constitution includes the treaty clause as the only means by which the U.S. can enter into such international agreements, there’s a growing body of mostly liberal-left “legal opinion” that holds that “congressional-executive agreements” like NAFTA can serve as substitutes for treaties.

Clinton’s move was seen at the time, even by some on the left, as an effort to bypass constitutional processes and the United Steelworkers challenged NAFTA’s constitutionality in court. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001, after lower courts had thrown the case out, saying it was a political matter between the President and Congress. The Bush Administration sided with Clinton and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

The Bush Administration’s support for the unconstitutional Clinton approach could easily backfire on conservatives if the Democrats take the White House and hold Congress in the fall elections. Citing NAFTA as a precedent, liberal Democrats could submit and pass treaties by a simple majority vote.

In an article in the liberal American Prospect, Thomas Geoghegan lamented that the Kyoto global warming treaty and the International Criminal Court “are among the great global projects of our day” but are not getting through the Senate because of the two-thirds majority required for passage. “So what’s the way out of this bind? It’s the same way out we used for NAFTA or for fast-track free-trade agreements. That is, we just pass a simple law,” he said.

Geoghegan says the reason liberals can’t get these measures currently passed in the Senate is because this body “overrepresents” states like “Wyoming, Idaho and America’s backwoods.” In other words, Red State Senators have too much clout under the Constitution. They are obstructing the “progressive” vision.

Geoghegan says legal justification for this new approach can be found in an article in the American Journal of International Law by Steve Charnovitz, an associate professor of international law at the George Washington University School of Law. The article complains about Senate inaction on such treaties as the feminist Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the anti-parent U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on Biological Diversity, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and various U.N. human rights treaties.

Since this article appeared, in October of 2004, the Bush Administration has been trying to pressure the Senate into ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty. It now awaits full Senate action.

Charnovitz admits the approach of pushing these treaties as mere agreements would be controversial. But he finds comfort in the fact that the legal action against NAFTA was thrown out.

It would make a good issue for John McCain, except for the fact that he’s for NAFTA and most of the U.N. treaty agenda.

© 2008 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved

Houstonians line up for hours on the last day of early voting to cast a ballot in the Texas primary election. In many locations a two-hour wait was the norm Friday afternoon.

But the question remains, do those masses voting really know the issues before making their selection?

Is the Trans-Texas Corridor part of their decision making, are they putting the voice of many destined to lose their houses and business into their voting choices? What about Border enforcement and security, are they aware of the agents being attacked daily, or the huge abundance of drugs coming into this country? What about the current Illegal Immigration crisis happening in their own city? Perhaps a more important question is, do they even care?

In almost American Idol fashion, voters are voicing out about their favorite candidate. Yet just like American Idol, many are going for the outward package, without looking to see if the candidates have any substance.

One can only hope that these many questions are considered before the vote is ever placed.

Radiff India Abroad

India may have taken giant strides in every possible sphere of life across the world, but there are things that come as real blot to its global image.  

Quoting a US Department of Homeland Security report, mercurynews reports that Indians are the fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The report says there are 2,70,000 unauthorized Indians in the United States - a 125 percent jump since 2000, the largest percentage increase of any nation with more than 100,000 illegal immigrants in that country.

What continues to shock is that they are able to give accurate figures of how many illegal aliens are in this country, yet claim they are unable to find them to return them to their homelands  

The report says though the number of Indian immigrants is low when compared to people from Mexico, the Indian context is appalling as the illegal immigrants mostly consist of high-skilled workers. Illegal immigrants from other countries are mostly low-skilled workers. 

This combination of high-skilled illegal workers and low-skilled illegal workers end up forcing all American’s into  having to fight each other for middle-skilled jobs or deal with unemployment all together.

Mercurynews, in its report, also says if the trend continues India will only trail only Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in illegal immigration.

The report quoting experts says virtually all immigrants enter the US legally and then violate the visa terms, thus becomimg illegal immigrants.

“How do you get in? You come across the border, or you arrive here with a visa,” Lindsay Lowell, policy director for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University told Mercurynews.

“Indians aren’t going to be walking across the border like Mexicans,” he said.

There have been numerous reports of OTM’s (Other Than Mexican’s) crossing our Southern and Northern borders.  Some learning Spanish, and carrying mexican passports and documents.  

Federal officials calculated the number of illegal immigrants by using census estimates of the total number of immigrants from individual countries, compiling the total number of legal immigrants using federal immigration and naturalization records, and then subtracting the number of legal residents from the total immigrant population to determine the number of undocumented people, the report said.

Asked by Mercurynews about the number of illegal Indians in Silicon Valley, Banjit Singh, an Indian-born taxi driver, said, “Here, there is a little bit. But you go to another city or state, like Los Angeles or New York, there are many illegal people.”

Local immigration lawyers say that particularly among Indians, the ups and downs of Silicon Valley’s economy since 2001 are one reason why Indians have fallen out of legal status.

The problems with the ups and downs would be less an issue and reduce illegal aliens if companies made a motto and lived by it of “American’s first” 

“Most are bachelors; the way they get here is they have a job,” Gabriel Jack, a San Jose immigration lawyer, said of many of his Indian clients.

“They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a start-up coming in,” Jack said.

“The problem with the H-1B program is, you can’t have any significant time between jobs” without falling out of legal status.

In most countries, if you loose your job you are returned to your home country.  Why is this policy not implemented in the United States? It was stated that the whole reason they came here is due to having a job, once that job goes they should be returned home until another hires them on a new H-1B.

Indians made up 44 percent of H-1B applicants in the 2005-06 fiscal year, five times the number from second-place China, the report says.

The report says another source is relatives from India who arrive for a visit on a tourist visa and never go home.

“America is a very attractive country; everybody who comes here wants to stay,” said Shah Peerally, a Silicon Valley immigration lawyer. “I can tell you right now, there are nearly 1 billion people in India, of which maybe 800 million want to come here.”

The United States deported close to 500 Indians a year in recent years, another expert tells Mecurynews.

500 deported out of 270,000 currently here and how many more entering yearly?  It seems progress in fixing this situation is failing.  

“Unless Congress reforms the immigration system we are going to see this high-skilled, illegal workforce emerging,” said Frank D. Bean, director of the Immigration Research Center at the University of California-Irvine.

No, unless Congress finally agrees to enforce the current Federal Laws regarding illegal aliens, we will see this illegal trend continue.  But then I guess it’s easier to rebuild the house, rather then just tighten the loose screw in the door handle.

Lou Dobbs will not be silenced! Lou Dobbs 3 hour radio program via live satellite.

Launching March 3, 2008

Monday - Friday, 3-6pm ET.

LOU DOBBS RADIO 

It’s been five years Mr. President…Unemployment rates, foreclosures, bankrupsy at all time highs and our Country is held in a recession.  This war is not aiding anything or anyone in this country but a very very select few.

Press TV 

US President George W. Bush has denied that there is any link between faltering US economy and huge money being spent on the Iraq war.

“I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs…because we’re buying equipment, and people are working,” Bush said in strange remarks about US economy.

“I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting,” Bush said in an interview on NBC’s Today Show.

National unemployment in the United States is increasingly going up five years after the US invasion of Iraq.

Death Penalty Case Puts Bush and Texas at Odds Over Mexican’s Fate.
Fox News Article

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the state’s execution of a Mexican national for the brutal killing of two teenage girls.

The case of Jose Ernesto Medellin has become a confusing test of presidential power that the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears the case this week, ultimately will sort out.

The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.

That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.

“The president does not agree with the ICJ’s interpretation of the Vienna Convention,” the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the U.S. agreed to abide by the international court’s decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said.

Texas argues that neither the international court nor Bush has any say in Medellin’s case.

Medellin was born in Mexico, but spent much of his childhood in the United States. He was 18 in June 1993, when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered two teenage girls on a railroad trestle.

The girls were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.

Medellin was arrested a few days later. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate.

Medellin gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.

Medellin did not raise the lack of assistance from Mexican diplomats during his trial or sentencing. When he did claim his rights had been violated, Texas and federal courts turned him down because he had not objected at his trial. Mexico later sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Representative Dennis Kucinich has introduced H. Res. 333

Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced legislation to impeach Vice President thingy Cheney.

It is up to you if you want to see Vice President Cheney impeached, please contact your Representative in the US House and ask them to support HR333.

You may also ask them to introduce legislation to impeach the President. Representative John Conyers, House Judiciary Committee Chairman, has similarly indicated his intention to intensely scrutinize Bush Administration policies and the actions of the President and Vice President.

Read the Full Bills Text at the following location:

http://kucinich.house.gov/SpotlightIssues/documents.htm