By now you can probably read all about this in a revised report to the UN’s Human Rights Council that the Obama administration couldn’t wait to file like a nine year old girl tattling to momma after catching her brother behind the barn reading Playboy, but if you haven’t yet heard, here it is:

PHOENIX – The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against people with limited English skills.

If putting warning signs up in parts of Arizona to deter legal US citizens from travelling through certain areas where they might encounter dangerous illegal activity is an acceptable response to crime, can’t the government just put up signs warning illegals not to travel through Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction and leave it at that?

In an additional border security measure, the Feds are also investigating the national security threat that is Chuck E. Cheese. Apparently the manager of the Bensonhurst franchise was overheard calling a pizza “Italian food” and has been accused of profiling.

At a Robert Gibbs’ press conference, reporter Bill Plante asked Gibbs why President Obama has been AWOL while Democrats poll numbers have been nosediving. The fact is, Obama hasn’t been AWOL during the nosedive at all — he’s been the one pushing forward hardest on the stick.

Update: Arpaio’s office responds — “Not backing down” is an understatement:

The Obama administration has filed three lawsuits against Arizona in the last few weeks … one against a college district, one against the state of Arizona and now one against my office. Each lawsuit centers on something to do with alleged racial discrimination.

These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this Sheriff, IS Washington’s new whipping boy. Now it’s time to take the gloves off. As for today’s lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit. The Obama administration intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it.

Washington isn’t playing fair and it’s time Americans everywhere wake up and see this administration for what it really is. Calculating, underhanded at times and certainly not looking out for the best interests of the legal citizens residing in this country.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

We might as well go ahead and coin the phrase “undocumented erection.”

Via an email from “Infidel Joe,” here’s the scoop from Minnesota’s Shakopee News:

A man in the country illegally who committed a $27,000 identity-theft crime in Scott County was able to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in governmental medical assistance, including surgery for an inflatable penis pump.

In response to heightened concern about illegal immigration since a gang-related stabbing in Shakopee, Scott County Attorney Pat Ciliberto has been tallying known costs to taxpayers and gave this example.

“There’s no logical argument for why that should have been approved,” Ciliberto told county commissioners on Tuesday. “I don’t know how many illegal aliens are getting emergency medical assistance for such a procedure.”

Open for discussion: If Minnesota police decide to question somebody just because he’s trouser-tenting at the time, does that constitute profiling?

Eric Holder’s argument might be that this is equitable, because every time an illegal alien gets a taxpayer-funded penis pump, we all get the shaft. What’s not fair about that?

Update: The Daley Gator has a fitting video to go with this story.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Isn’t this the same guy who is all for deporting homeless people out of his city limits?

From Fox News:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is blasting U.S. immigration policy, calling it “national suicide.”

Bloomberg said Tuesday that Arizona would likely be hurt by its new immigration law. It requires authorities to question people about their immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally.

Bloomberg says countries that welcome immigrants prosper.

He says the U.S. has had some “disgraceful” and “stupid periods” in which it tried to close its borders.

Added Bloomberg: “Fortunately, sanity prevailed.”

Another one who hasn’t read the law and/or doesn’t care to relay the truth.

If Bloomberg thought for one second that illegals were bringing salt and Marlboros into the country (or smuggling middle-aged white guys unhappy with the health care bill for that matter) he’d send the Empire State’s National Guard down there to stop the insanity in a New York minute.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Answer: When you’re a liberal MSM editor openly admitting your hiring decisions amount to ethnic and religious bean-counting, of course!

Whoops. He just forgot it was there!

The Clearwater man pleads guilty, saying he had forgotten about the box cutter.

The X-ray image of a box cutter inside Benjamin Baines Jr.’s backpack caught the attention of federal officers Sunday morning at Tampa International Airport.

But it was the packaging that really jolted them: a hollowed-out book that hid the razor-sharp tool. Also inside the backpack: a Koran, a Holy Bible and rap music lyrics referencing police, drugs and guns.

Baines, 21, of Clearwater told investigators he forgot the box cutter was inside the copy of Fear Itself when he packed his bag for a trip to Las Vegas, states a report by Tampa International Airport police.

He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. He pleaded guilty Monday in Hillsborough County court and received a 30-day jail sentence. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is looking into the case but has not filed charges.

“What raises our concern is when an item is artfully concealed,” said Christopher White, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. “It’s different than a box cutter inside a backpack.”

Baines could also face a civil charge, with a fine up to $10,000, for carrying a prohibited item through a checkpoint.

Relatives say he’s a good kid with no previous criminal record.

It was all a misunderstanding, of course–and don’t forget to scream “RACIAL PROFILING!:”

Baines studies various religions, say relatives. They insist he’s no terrorist. “He’s not militant,” said James Layne, a 28-year-old cousin.
“He’s not a crazy blow-yourself-up kind of guy. It’s all a major misunderstanding.”

Butler said his nephew forgot the box cutter, which he used at his former job at the Sandpearl, was in the backpack. He recalls his nephew packing the book in a duffle bag that was checked as luggage. The police report tells the story this way. On Sunday, Baines was scheduled to fly Southwest Airlines Flight 338 to Jacksonville at 7:45 a.m., then catch another plane to Las Vegas, where his father lives. He reached security screening at Airside C at 7:30 a.m. An X-ray operator spotted the box cutter.

Another TSA officer found the tool inside a “compartment” within the book. Baines told officers he cut out the pages to keep marijuana and money from being stolen by roommates. Inside the backpack were the Koran and Bible and the books Muhammad in the Bible,The Noble Quran and The Prophet’s Prayer.

The violent rap lyrics, Baines said, were his work. “He stated that rap music lyrics is all lies and that rap music writers have to play the part,” the report states. A national records check found Baines had no criminal convictions.

At an initial hearing Monday, Hillsborough court records show, Baines pleaded guilty to the concealed weapons charge. He wasn’t represented by an attorney, said Butler. TSA and airport officers charged him because “he was black and carrying the Koran,” he said.

The top official in charge of fighting racial profiling for the American Civil Liberties Union says he was the victim of profiling at the Boston airport, and he has gone to federal court to challenge a screening technique that relies on suspicious behavior to identify potential terrorists.

King Downing said he was stopped and questioned by state police in October 2003 after arriving on a flight to attend a meeting on racial profiling.

Downing sued the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates the airport, and Massachusetts State Police, alleging they violated his constitutional right against unreasonable search. A trial in the case began Monday in U.S. District Court. Downing, who is black and wears a short beard, said in his lawsuit that he was stopped by a state trooper and asked to show identification after he left the gate area and made a phone call in the terminal.

Who were the supposed jackbooted bigots who stopped him? Well, take a closer look:

Logan officials say race played no role in the decision to question Downing. The first trooper to ask Downing for identification was black, and three of the four officers who arrived later were also black, according to court documents. The first trooper said he became suspicious when he saw Downing watching him.

(Here’s the complaint.)

The do-nothing ACLU won’t be satisfied until every last homeland defense is dismantled. They argue that national security profiling should be based on behavior, not race/ethnicity/nationality/national origin/religion–and then they turn around and sue to stop behavior profiling.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism.

The FBI is still sifting through hundreds of tips on the two suspicious men in Seattle whom ferry employees witnessed photographing restricted areas and pacing several ferry routes, “as if trying to measure distances,” over the past several weeks.

I have learned that these men have been the subject of much investigative energy within homeland security bureaucracies for quite some time. Indeed, one source told me that until the FBI released the photos of the men, the snapshots had been handled as classified material.

Arab-American and Muslim groups have suggested that the FBI is unfairly profiling Middle Eastern men (even though no one at the FBI has breathed a word about the men’s ethnicity or religion). But as I’ve noted many times in speeches and debates about profiling, if Filipinos were engaging in this same sort of suspicious behavior, I’d want the feds to give them every bit of extra scrutiny they deserve. And I believe they are.

Abu Sayyaf jihadists and other loosely-affiliated al Qaeda off-shoots in the Philippines pose national security risks not just to that country, but to the rest of the free world. Operation Bojinka, the precursor to the 9/11 attacks, was hatched in the Philippines. Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, trained operatives in the Philippines and set up bases and finances there with Khalid Sheik Mohammed for bin Laden. And as I noted in my first post on the Seattle ferry story on Aug. 21, al Qaeda-linked operatives in the Philippines have targeted ferries before for mass murder and violence.

Those plots and the jihadists behind them are worth a closer look.

Filipino Muslim convert Redendo Cain Dellosa, aka Habil Akmad Dellosa, admitted to carrying out the bombing of a superferry in February 2004 that killed 116 people in Manila Bay. Dellosa had trained under an Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya (JI) instructor in January 2003 in Jolo, Sulu and underwent further explosives training in Buti, Lanao del Su, according to Filipino authorities. Dellosa told police he had carted eight pounds of TNT in a cardboard box onto the ship, concealed it in a TV set in a cabin bunk, and deboarded the ferry before the timed bombing device exploded and partially sunk the vessel. Militant Muslims working for Abu Sayyaf were fingered in another ferry bombing in the Philippines in 2005. Stratfor looks at ferries as jihad targets here.

The Christian Science Monitor and Western Resistance outline the threat of Filipino Muslim converts who have spread from the southern islands to the main island of Luzon, where they blend in with Catholic names. They are part of a larger “Balik Islam” (Return to Islam) movement converting Filipinos in droves to the cause of jihad. Among the prominent Filipino jihadists arrested for terrorist plotting: Rajah Solaiman group founder Ahmed Islam Santos and No. 2 leader Pio Abogne de Vera. Others arrested in airport, mall, and church bombing plots have ties to JI and Abu Sayyaf. Four were apprehended as they got off a ferry in February 2005.

Saudi terror funding has poured into the Philippines through charity front groups. The financial interconnectivity is explored in more detail here.

Behind every picture, there’s a bigger picture. Behind the FBI photo of the suspicious Seattle ferry riders, there may be many more dots to be connected than are immediately obvious to the public.

In other words: Keep your eyes wide open. And as always, if you see something, say something.

CAIR or whatever grievance group be damned.

Police had boarded the plane in New York and removed a passenger of Middle Eastern descent after the flight crew had spotted the same man on an employee bus earlier, CNN television reported.

The passenger did not appear to have the correct identification showing he was an employee, CNN said.

The pilot told passengers there was a lack of fuel and he would land the London-bound plane at JFK airport in New York.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in an interview that he had been informed by the airline that the passenger was an employee after all.

“I have gotten a report that the individual in question was, in fact, an employee who was traveling in a private capacity,” Chertoff told CNN.

The crew member aboard Flight 136 questioned a passenger whom the employee had seen bypassing security by traveling on an employee-only bus from the parking lot to the LAX airport, according to spokeswoman Sonja Whitemon. Following that conversation, the decision to divert the plane was made. It landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport about 2:30 a.m. ET.

CNN quotes Chertoff praising the flight crew:

…the good news here is that you have somebody who’s alert on the crew and they take appropriate steps at that point to deal with what might be a potentially dangerous situation,” he added. “That’s exactly what we are asking people to do: If you see something, say something.”

Just one problem here, Chertie. Remember your speech the other day at the NAACP convention? You know, the one where you lectured about how we need to “respect the civil rights of Muslim Americans?” Well, when citizen John Does pratice “see something, say something,” it’s an automatic invitation to a CAIR lawsuit by the civil liberties absolutists.

Chertie has chosen to lie in bed with the very people who make a living intimidating and suing vigilant Americans who take homeland security seriously. Head full of lettuce, I tell ya…

***

Speaking of CAIR, Joel Mowbray shines light on the group’s duplicitous ways in the WashTimes today.

Many of the police departments mentioned in the story continue to maintain reckless sanctuary policies; other moonbat cities, like Portland, Oregon, refuse to cooperate with federal counterterrorism efforts.

The Times, of course, neglects to point any of this out–instead highlighting the fact that Seattle’s police chief refuses to engage in any kind of national security profiling.

There’s also this unintentionally comical paragraph in the story, which is headlined, “Suicide Bombings Bring Urgency to Police in U.S.:”

Barnett Jones, chief of the Sterling, Mich., Police Department, with 259 employees, was one of more than a dozen officials who went to Israel for training in April. “One would say it is the front line,” Chief Barnett said of Israel. “We’re in a global war.”

Asked whether he had specific concerns because of the large Arab and Muslim population in the Detroit area, he responded delicately, saying: “The reality is we have a large population in our community that immediately become suspect, whether that is right or wrong, because of the global war. For me to sit here and say, ‘I’m not concerned’ would be wrong, but for me to sit here and say, ‘Yes I’m concerned’ would also be wrong.”

Feel safer?

***
Previous:

NYC plays eeny meeny miney mo
Heather Mac Donald: Looking the wrong way
Paul Sperry: Politically Correct Suicide: Still No Subway Profiling

See also: Dennis Bailey, The Open Society Paradox

So, the Bush administration thinks it’s okay to use racial profiling to hand out government retirement benefits, but it’s not okay to use racial profiling to prevent terrorists from getting on planes?

Crikey.

In an unusual move, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has ordered inspectors at America’s largest airports to examine all travelers of Pakistani descent — including U.S. citizens — for minor injuries such as “rope burns,” “unusual bruises” and “scars” possibly suffered while training in terrorist camps in that ally Muslim country, according to internal U.S. documents obtained exclusively by WorldNetDaily.

A two-page “action” bulletin, labeled “For Official Use Only,” warns that recent intelligence gathered in Pakistan and elsewhere indicates that individuals traveling to train at terrorist camps in Pakistan may be planning to carry out terrorist activities within the United States between now and the presidential election in November.

The bulletin directs agents at major international airports in New York, New Jersey, Washington, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles to “increase scrutiny” of passengers who are naturalized U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents of Pakistani descent, and “who exhibit evidence of suspicious travel, including short trips to Pakistan not related to family or business.”

The closely held bulletin, dated June 17, orders primary inspectors at the airports to refer suspicious persons to secondary inspections areas for further questioning. The special inspections are authorized to run at least through late July.

“If we see any irregularities,” an immigration inspector told WND, “we escort them to secondary for a very in-depth interview and search.”

Inspectors also have been advised to examine travelers of Pakistani descent for physical signs that they’ve engaged in paramilitary training in Pakistan…

All well and good. But meanwhile, the Department of Transportation is busy suing airlines, making them pony up extortion funds, and forcing them to conduct racial/ethnic sensitivity classes so that their stewardesses and pilots refrain from engaging in exactly the kind of vigilant security measures that Customs and immigration agents are now undertaking!

Thanks, Norm Mineta.

Three months ago, my wife and I flew with our four children from Atlantic City to Ft. Meyers, Florida. We had E-tickets. At the counter, a pleasant woman asked for our identification, and then wanted to know “which one is Michael, Jr.?” I pointed to my 8-year-old. “Oh, that won’t work,” she said. She then explained that he’d been designated for secondary screening, meaning he would be subjected to more of a search than just taking off his shoes and walking through the metal detector. I told her I would gladly take his place and she obliged. (The fact that I could so easily negotiate someone else out of secondary screening was itself insightful.)

I didn’t complain about the inconvenience. Instead, I cursed bin Laden under my breath, and considered this to be my small part to play in the post-9/11 world. Well, I no longer believe that to be the case.

On the return trip, I had a similar experience. Once again, my son was selected for secondary screening, and again I took his place. Enter Secretary John Lehman. Two weeks after our return from Florida, I watched Condoleezza Rice testify before the 9/11 Commission. The media attention that day was focused upon the President’s Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001, about a month before 9/11. I was more interested in something I heard Secretary Lehman ask Dr. Rice:

Were you aware that it was the policy � to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory?

Her reply, that she did not know the “kind of inside arrangements for the FAA,” was inconsequential. Still, I wondered what in the world he was referring to. Here is what he told me: “We had testimony a couple of months ago from the past president of United, and current president of American Airlines that kind of shocked us all. They said under oath that, indeed, the Department of Transportation continued to fine any airline that was caught having more than two people of the same ethnic persuasion in a secondary line for questioning, including, and especially, two Arabs.”

I then asked him about the role of political correctness, and he said:

“That is really the source, because of this political correctness that became so entrenched in the 1990′s, and continues in [the] current Administration. No one approves of racial profiling, that is not the issue. The fact is that Norwegian women are not, and 85-year-old ladies with aluminum walkers are not, the source of the terrorist threat. The fact is that our enemy is the violent Islamic extremists, and the overwhelming number of people that one need to worry about are young Arab males, and to ask them a couple of extra questions seems to me to be common sense, yet if an airline does that in numbers that are more than proportionate to their number in a particular line, then they get fined and that is why you see so many blue-haired old ladies and people that are clearly not of Middle Eastern extraction being hauled out in such numbers because otherwise they get fined…”

Here’s the rest. Smerconish continues to hammer the issue in the Philadelphia Daily News. The mainstream media has maintained strict radio silence. Where’s the outrage?

I wish we enforced immigration law uniformly so that Maali and his supporters wouldn’t be able to make this argument. But that’s not going to happen. Until then, selective enforcement will have to do. Just as Bobby Kennedy vowed to go after mobsters who so much as spit on the sidewalk, the feds should use any law at their disposal to prosecute suspected terrorists and their financial backers.

Jesse Issa Maali