Archive for November 2009

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos

Valletta – Spain will support Malta’s bid to host a new European asylum bureau, the Spanish foreign minister said on Thursday.

Earlier this year the European Commission said it would set up the European Asylum Support Office to help member countries deal with immigration.

“Spain understands the problems Malta faces over illegal immigration and we will make this issue a priority of our European Union presidency,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said.

Spain will take over the rotating EU presidency in January 2010.

At a joint press conference with his Maltese counterpart Tonio Borg, Moratinos said Spain wanted to address illegal migration in a concrete manner by giving Frontex, the EU’s border control agency, a new, more efficient role.

Madrid will keep close contact with Malta, Greece and Cyprus to achieve better results on immigration, Moratinos said.
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Brazil’s president says “gringos” should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting rich Western nations have caused much more past environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world’s largest tropical rain forest.

“I don’t want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said ahead of an Amazon summit. “We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago.” In Brazil, the word “gringo” does not only mean American, but generally refers to anyone from the northern hemisphere.

A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Tuesday sentenced an illegal immigrant to time served in jail for his 10th illegal entry into the country.

Uziel Jesus Lopez-Jiminez, 28, of Mexico has been deported nine other times between 1998 and 2007, prosecutors said. He was last deported in March, re-entered the country in May or June and was arrested in Beaver County on Aug. 16.

U.S. District Judge David Cercone sentenced Lopez-Jiminez to one year probation.
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November 28^th marks the passing of Enrico Fermi. Fermi was an Italian physicist who made many advances in the field of nuclear physics. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for producing radioactive elements through the bombardment of slow neutrons. During his trip to Sweden to receive his Prize, he took advantage of the situation to move his family to the United States. He became one of the members of the Manhattan Project working on the first atomic reactor.

In the squash courts under Stagg Field of the University of Chicago, Fermi supervised the design and building of the world’s first self-sustaining “atomic pile” that produced energy from controlled atomic chain reactions. The reactor consisted of bricks of carbon graphite with uranium with cadmium coated rods to control the number of neutrons produced by the reactions. On December 2, 1942, Fermi’s reactor reached critical mass and was allowed to continue the chain reaction for 28 minutes before being shut down.

This achievement is a landmark in the history of atomic research and made Fermi one of the foremost physicists of the 20^th Century. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.

A housing report prepared for the High Wycombe District Council has revealed that Third World immigrants already comprise nearly 60 percent of the population aged under 50 in that town.

According to the District Council report, Wycombe has a “substantial and increasing ethnic minority population, significantly higher the regional and national averages.”

The report proudly details the “significant differences in the age profile with a much larger proportion of older people in the white population” as follows:

In the age band 0 – 15, some 20 percent of the population are classed as “White British/Irish” compared to 27.8 percent classed as “BME” (Black Minority Ethnic).

In the 16 – 24 age band, some 9.3 percent are white and 15 percent are BME.

In the 25 – 49 age band, some 35.6 percent are white and 39.3 percent BME.

This means that the white British population of High Wycombe aged under 50 stands at 43 percent of that group.

The figures are only slightly different in the 50 years and up group. According to the report, in the 50 – 59 age band, 14.3 percent are white and 8.5 are BME.

In the 60 – 74 age band, 12.8 percent are white and 5.2 percent are BME.

In the 75+ age band, 7.2 percent are white, and 2.2 percent are BME.

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A news report that appeared on the website of the NBC affiliated television program in San Diego, California should be of huge concern - not only to the residents of California but to Americans across this nation.

According to the news article on Wednesday, students at UCSD (University of California at San Diego) are preparing software that will enable cell phones that have a GPS capability to guide illegal aliens across the border and into the United States. In essence this program would turn inexpensive cell phones into a sort of electronic smuggler.

Most of you know of my extensive background as a former INS special agent. I was, in fact, a member of the original Anti-Smuggling Unit at the New York City District Office of the former INS in the late 1970’s and I can assure you that I am no friend of smugglers.

In my view, there are few criminals that are nearly as vile and reprehensible as are smugglers. They often beat and rape the aliens who seek their assistance and will move any contraband for the right price. Smugglers are generally extremely violent and are responsible for the inundation of our nation with narcotics as well as illegal aliens among whom are members of violent gangs and drug trafficking organizations. I am confident that smugglers have also assisted terrorist sympathizers in crossing our nation’s borders without detection.

However, the solution to the violence of the pernicious smugglers is certainly not to provide a “high tech” alternative to those whose goal is to eradicate our nation’s borders.
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By Patrick J. Buchanan

With the House debate on health care at its hottest, the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a stunning ultimatum: Impose an absolute ban on tax funds for abortions, or we call for defeat of the Pelosi bill.

Message received. The Stupak Amendment, named for Bart Stupak of Michigan, was promptly passed, to the delight of pro-life Catholics and the astonished outrage of pro-abortion Democrats.

No member was more upset than Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, son of Edward Kennedy, who proceeded to bash the Church for imperiling the greatest advance for human rights in a generation.

Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin responded, accusing Kennedy of an unprovoked attack and demanding an apology. Kennedy retorted that Tobin had told him not to receive communion at Mass and ordered his diocesan priests not to give him communion.

False! The bishop fired back.

He had sent Kennedy a private letter in February 2007 saying that he ought not receive communion, as he was scandalizing the Church. But he had not told diocesan priests to deny him communion.

As Rhode Island is our most Catholic state, Kennedy went silent and got this parting shot from Tobin: “Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church.”

The clash was naturally national news. But Tobin’s public chastisement of a Catholic who carries the most famous name in U.S. and Catholic politics is made more significant because it seems to reflect a new militancy in the hierarchy that has been absent for decades

Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., just informed the city council that, rather than recognize homosexual marriages and provide gays the rights and benefits of married couples, he will shut down all Catholic social institutions and let the city take them over. Civil disobedience may be in order here.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York sent an op-ed to The New York Times charging the paper with anti-Catholic bigotry and using a moral double standard when judging the Church.

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The book finds its way on to the gift table of every newly married couple, though if you have a kitchen in Denmark your copy may have been handed down to you, dog-eared and stained, upon getting your first flat. The recipes are far from the decadence of ‘Babette’s Feast’, but for anyone who wants to learn the A to Å of the national cuisine-simple, hearty fare, cleanly presented – on which every youngster in the country cuts their teeth, ‘Frøken Jensens Kogebog’ (Miss Jensen’s Cookbook) is the tome no kitchen can afford to do without.

Like the fictional American Betty Crocker, Miss Jensen has acquired an ironic status as the spinsterish patron saint of the national kitchen.

The matronly Jensen was a real person, however, a product of a nineteenth century way of life that pushed girls into lifelong domestic service due to circumstances largely out of their control. Kristine Marie Jensen was born in 1858 in Randers, and was orphaned during her early childhood. Miss Jensen lived with her grandmother until reaching confirmation age, when she made her way to Copenhagen to pursue a course in household management at the famous Nathalie Zahle School.

After an apprenticeship in England, Miss Jensen was hired by the Melchior household, whose son, Laurentz, would go on to become one of the great Wagnerian opera singers of the age. Following years of faithful household service, Miss Jensen composed her modest guide to housekeeping in 1901 - a book which began, modestly enough, with Jensen’s preface: ‘How often one hears our housewives complain over the great burden they bear through housekeeping, and especially daily food preparation!’

The book became an instant bestseller, appearing in no less than 27 editions prior to Jensen’s death in 1923.
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Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration

Fresh from its legislative victory this month on abortion, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops plan next to turn its lobbying attention to comprehensive immigration reform.

The Catholic News Service has a story about the effort, to begin with a postcard campaign in January. Reporter Nancy Frazier O’Brien writes that the bishops want reform that would reunite families, regularize the status of the estimated 12 million foreigners now in this country illegally and restore due process protections for immigrants.

“We want to increase Catholic grass-roots support for immigration reform, but we also want to show members of Congress a strong Catholic voice and strong Catholic numbers in support of immigration reform,” Antonio Cube, national manager of the bishops’ Justice for Immigrants project, told reporters in a conference call.

The bishops have been successfully vocal on healthcare overhaul, winning new restrictions on federal funding for abortion in the House version of the legislation with a furious lobbying effort earlier this month.
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Robert R. Livingston

On this day in 1746, Robert R. (or R.R.) Livingston–later known as “the Chancellor”–becomes the first of nine children eventually born to Judge Robert Livingston and Margaret Beekman Livingston in their family seat, Clermont, on the Hudson River in upstate New York.

The Livingston family were proprietors of large land claims in the Hudson Valley and their attempt to enforce restrictive leases led to tenant uprisings in 1766, during which tenant farmers threatened to kill the lord of Livingston Manor, Robert Livingston (R.R.’s relative), and destroy his opulent homes. The British army suppressed the revolt, saving the Livingstons.

In 1777, the British army burned down Clermont and another of R.R.’s estates, Belvedere, in retribution for Livingston’s decision to side with the Patriots. During the 11 years between the tenant uprising and the burning of Clermont, Robert R. Livingston, who had graduated from King’s College (now Columbia University) in 1764, had established himself as a lawyer and political leader. He represented the Provincial Congress of New York at the Continental Congress in 1776 and helped to draft the Declaration of Independence, although he returned to New York before he was able to sign the document.

During the War of Independence, Livingston served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation. In 1783, he accepted the post of chancellor of the state of New York; he bore the title as a moniker for the rest of his life. “The Chancellor” was a Federalist delegate to the ratification convention in New York, and as New York’s senior judge administered President George Washington’s first oath of office. Under President Thomas Jefferson, Livingston negotiated the Louisiana Purchase and, while minister to France, sponsored Robert Fulton’s development of the steamboat.

Livingston died on February 26, 1813. Today, both a bust in the U.S. Capitol and the name of New York’s Masonic Library memorialize R.R. Livingston as “the Chancellor.”
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