Archive for July 2010

The fact that the fingers have been adulterated is usually pretty obvious, one expert said.

In crime labs across the country, law enforcement officials say more and more suspects are attempting to conceal their identity through fingerprint mutilation — defacing the skin of their fingertips.

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors in Massachusetts charged three men in a conspiracy to “help illegal aliens evade detection through the mutilation or surgical removal of their fingerprints,” according to a release from the U.S. attorney’s office.

One of the accused, Jose Elias Zaiter-Pou, a doctor originally from the Dominican Republic, allegedly performed the procedure on patients for a fee $4,500.

According to Stephen G. Fischer Jr., a spokesman for the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services, whose department receives approximately 200,000 fingerprints daily, methods of fingerprint mutilation can vary depending on the circumstance and the criminal.
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When students register for school this year, there will be a change in the ethnic/racial category that must be filled out on forms.

According to Sallie Boden, who has been doing the state reporting for RE-1 Valley School District for eight years, there has been a change in the October count report that will affect every form. This means a change on the registration forms.

“We’re hoping to let parents know ahead of time that there will be a change and to be ready,” Boden said.

In the past, students and staff had six races to choose from when providing racial/ethnic data. However, racial data collected from schools in the past did not match information collected in the U.S. Census.

The Census asked individuals to identify the ethnicity and race of themselves, as well as other household members. Individuals were asked if they are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin. They were also asked to select their race from a list of races, including: White; Black, African American or Negro; American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian Indian; Chinese; Filipino; Japanese; Korean; Vietnamese; other Asian; Native Hawaiian; Guamanian or Chamorro; Samoan; other Pacific Islander; or some other race. Individuals were allowed to choose more than one race.
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Ten years ago, the only gang problem in Staunton, Va., population 24,000, was the occasional appearance of graffiti.

Not any more.

Gang-related drug dealing, beatings, robberies, burglaries, stabbings and even murders are on the rise.

Hundreds of rural communities face similar situations, as gang membership exceeds the 1 million mark nationally, according to the Justice Department’s 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment.

Gang members are fanning out from cities, looking for fresh recruits and new markets to sell drugs and guns. Some flee to rural areas to hide from the police or other gangs.

That migration has steadily increased over the past few years, according to the study, which includes the most recent national statistics. In 2004, 45 percent of all law enforcement agencies reported gang activity within their jurisdictions. By 2008, that had risen to 58 percent.

“We have seen gangs that were centered in one city become national,” Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee in April. “We in law enforcement have to adapt to that and break old models, old ways of thinking. Gangs are not simply an urban phenomena any more.”
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Virginia Sen. Jim Webb called for ending government-run diversity programs in a newspaper column Friday, saying they have disadvantaged struggling whites and hurt the cause of racial harmony.

Webb wrote an op-ed column in Friday’s Wall Street Journal that said a “plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.”

Webb’s press secretary, Jessica Smith, said Friday that the senator felt the column speaks for itself and that he would not comment further.

As an author, Webb expressed misgivings about how affirmative action programs have grown beyond their initial intent in two of his books, “Born Fighting” and “A Time to Fight.”

Federal diversity programs now primarily benefit new immigrants over whites and even black Americans, their original beneficiaries, wrote Webb, D-Va.
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A new Gallup poll released today has found that only 11% of Americans are willing to say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. Half of Americans now say they have “little” or “no confidence” in the institution.

The core institutions of representative government in America have been effectively discredited in the eyes of the American people. The Presidency and Supreme Court fare a little better with the confidence of 36% of Americans.

In contrast, 76% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military. That’s a chilling fact.

In their wildest dreams, the Founding Fathers could never have imagined the day would come when a standing army would be more popular with the American people than the House of Representatives.
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Let me just preface this by stating that I support Mike Cox (R) for governor. Mike Bouchard (R) is the Oakland County sheriff and I know him pretty well as I live in Oakland County. I’ve been to several of his events this primary season. I like Mike for the most part. He did well in the primary debates. But one thing bugs me about Mike, and it goes back more than 4 years ago when a drive was launched to ban racial discrimination (aka - affirmative action) from school admission and government hiring. I wasn’t directly involved withe the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), but I knew people that were, including the late Chetly Zarko. What saddened me the most at that time was when the Republican establishment took the politically correct route and came out against the MCRI. Among the establishment politicians that came out against the MCRIwas one Mike Bouchard who was running for US Senate at the time. From WWMT back in 2005:

Bouchard opposes affirmative action ballot issue

U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Bouchard has joined a list of prominent Republicans opposing a proposal that would ban some affirmative action programs in Michigan.

Bouchard said he can not support the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative proposal that appears headed to the November 2006 ballot.

He joins Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos and Senate hopeful Keith Butler opposing the proposed constitutional amendment.

Last week ended with some promising news on finally stopping the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, the administration still seems to believe that shutting down working oil wells is a higher priority than effectively dealing with the broken one. They are again issuing a moratorium on off-shore drilling, while maintaining a de facto ban on new permits even for shallow water drilling, which they previously stated would be unaffected. The courts have twice declared this unconstitutional, over 70 percent of the people see this as unreasonable, yet the administration seems determined to simply end off-shore drilling, at least for those producers that cannot afford to sit idle for an unknown period of time until the ban is lifted.

Whether or not this latest effort will hold up in court is yet to be seen. Sadly, many smaller oil producers in the Gulf see the writing on the wall, and instead of waiting around and risking their livelihoods on the whims of American politicians and judges, they are leaving for friendlier business climates. What is happening to this country when the Republic of Congo is better for business than the United States? One big factor is regime uncertainty.
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Eleven years ago, like every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position, I swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

I’ve always thought it significant that the Founders included domestic enemies in that oath of office. They thought liberty was as much at risk from threats within our borders as from outside, and French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville agreed with that warning.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the greatest threat to our nation was clear - and foreign. While Islamic terrorism still represents the greatest external threat to America and American lives, the avowed program of the Obama regime has changed the picture in a fundamental way.

For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That’s why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.

Barack Obama is one of the most powerful presidents this nation has seen in generations. He is powerful because he is supported by large majorities in Congress, but, more importantly, because he does not feel constrained by the rule of law. Whether he is putting up the weakest possible defense of the Defense of Marriage Act despite the Justice Department’s legal obligation to support existing law; disenfranchising Chrysler and GM bondholders in order to transfer billions of investor dollars to his supporters in the United Auto Workers; or implementing yet a third offshore oil-drilling moratorium even after two federal courts have thrown out two previous moratoriums, President Obama is determined to see things done his way regardless of obstacles. To Mr. Obama, the rule of law is a mere inconvenience to be ignored, overcome or “transcended” through international agreements or “norms.”

Mr. Obama’s paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to “fundamentally transform America.” He has not proposed improving America - he is intent on changing its most essential character. The words he has chosen to describe his goals are neither the words nor the motivation of just any liberal Democratic politician. This is the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist - a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.
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On Monday, the Department of Agriculture demanded the resignation of Shirley Sherrod over a two-minute videotape where she appeared to describe to a cheering crowd of the Georgia NAACP how she denied assistance to a poor white farmer about to lose his land.

Declaring itself “appalled” at this “shameful” act of racism, the NAACP said it would investigate the Georgia crowd that cheered her and praised the Department of Agriculture for firing her.

On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was begging for Sherrod’s forgiveness, and the NAACP was burbling apologies.

For the video turned out to be an excerpt from a speech in which Sherrod described her growth from a bitter black woman whose father was murdered by a white man into one who found joy helping poor white folks keep their farms.

What was it that caused the rush to judgment by Vilsack, the NAACP and a White House that supported the ouster of Sherrod without talking to her or viewing the full tape?

Panic. The White House fears it is losing white America because of a false perception that it harbors a bias against white America.

Outrageous, rail those journalists who celebrated the NAACP’s accusation that the tea party is harboring racists and is too cowardly to confront them.
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