Haiti: If Fidel Castro or anyone else did a tenth as much good as the U.S. does abroad, you can bet they'd take credit for it. Strangely, however, the U.S. doesn't. It aids Haiti, but refuses to fly the American flag. It is a sorry spectacle to see the Joint Task Force-Haiti — the international rescue operation in that earthquake-ravaged country — flying the flags of France, Cuba, Croatia, Mexico and every other nation that sends Haiti a Band-Aid, while the United States, like some shamed delinquent in a corner, flies none. "We are not here as an occupation force,...
Illegal Immigration: The government puts the brakes on a problem-plagued "virtual" fence on our border with Mexico. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned kind? If ever there was a shovel-ready project, this is it. The much-ballyhooed "virtual" fence that was supposed to monitor and control illegal immigration doesn't work and is being scrapped as we evaluate alternatives and rely on existing technology. After years of delay and billions of dollars already spent, Secretary Napolitano on Tuesday halted work on SBInet. The system involves cameras, sensors and radars designed to let a small number of dispatchers watch the border on computer monitors...
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this afternoon brushed off Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s request for surveillance planes and 1,000 fresh troops along the Mexican border. That drew swift denunciation from the governor, who put state police and other assets on standby, citing the heightened risk of spillover violence from Mexico’s drug war.
WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) -- Work on the virtual fence along the U.S.-Mexican border will stop, freeing up its share of stimulus funds, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said. Napolitano said Tuesday the halt to work beyond the two pilot projects in Arizona was pending a broader reassessment of the concept, and the $50 million in economic stimulus funds planned for the project would be diverted to technology such as mobile surveillance devices, sensors, radios and laptop computers, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
At a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon last year, President Obama vowed to make ending border violence a "top priority." How's that hope and change working out? Drug-related crime is out of control, the State Department is warning spring-break vacationers to avoid the Mexican states of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua, and the bloodshed has now reached the U.S. consulate's office. A young American consulate worker and her unborn baby were slain this weekend in Mexico, along with her U.S. detention officer husband and the Mexican husband of another consulate worker. The wanton murders appear to have been...
While even moderate Catholic groups in the US are fed up with the bishops' refusal to endorse the current healthcare reform bill over the abortion funding issue, Hudson maintains the bishops are too liberal. . . . The Catholic world is rocked by a seemingly endless parade of scandals, from Ireland to Munich, and now Mexico, where the Rev Marcial Maciel Degollado, late founder of the secretive Legion of Christ, is accused of being "a sexual criminal of epic proportions who gained the trust of John Paul II and created a movement that is as close to a cult as...
Janet Napolitano scraps U.S.-Mexico fence By JEN DIMASCIO | 3/16/10 7:14 PM EDT Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has put the brakes on SBInet, the $3 billion plan to build a virtual fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. “Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost-effective way possible,” Napolitano said in a statement Tuesday. “The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines.” With that in mind, Napolitano is withholding funding for...
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has activated a secret spillover violence contingency plan, citing an increasing threat of violence crossing the Texas border from Mexico. ... snip ... The plan includes increased surveillance of border activity and increased ground, air and maritime patrols. Additional resources ready for rapid deployment also have been placed on standby... Texas Department of Public Safety tactical teams... Trooper Strike Teams... as well as Texas Ranger Recon Teams prepared to deploy based on the threat.DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION
The State Department's latest report on human rights practices in nations around the world mentions the 8,000 people, mostly Mexicans, who have died in Mexico from drug-related violence. Some of those victims are named, and details of their deaths are disclosed. But none of the 30 U.S. citizens who were murdered in Mexico between Jan. 1, 2009 and June 27, 2009 are included in the report. When asked why that was the case, Michael Posner, assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, told CNSNews.com that the report “is intended to give a broad view.”...
State Dept says consulate closed for security review U.S. says too early to say if diplomats targeted U.S. in for long haul in Mexico's anti-drug fight WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) - The United States pledged support for Mexico on Monday in its war against drug gangs as the FBI joined the investigation of the murders of two Americans and a Mexican linked to the U.S. consulate in a violent border city. "The tragedy of this weekend just underscores how severe and significant a danger this represents to Mexico, to the United States, to the hemisphere," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
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