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Forget Klownald Trump. This is your story of the day. Attorney General Eric Holder is on Capitol Hill day, facing another round of questions from relentless GOP watchdogs led by House Oversight and Govenrment Reform chair Darrell Issa.

You can watch the proceedings live on CSPAN online here.

The grilling comes as Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s family files suit against the lying ATF:

The family of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry charged Wednesday that the top federal prosecutor in Phoenix lied to them about the guns found at the crime scene in an attempt to hide the weapons’ connection to the ATF’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.

Terry was killed in December 2010, allegedly by Mexican bandits carrying at least two AK-47 semiautomatic rifles that had been purchased in Arizona as part of Fast and Furious. The operation was intended to catch drug lords using illegal weapons, but the ATF immediately lost track of 1,700 firearms.

The Terry family alleged that then-U.S. Atty. Dennis K. Burke told them last March that the two weapons came from a store in Texas and were not part of Fast and Furious.

The family made their allegations in a “notice of claim” stating that they intend to sue the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department for $25 million. They called the gun-tracking operation “abominable, reckless, nonsensical.”

Burke has resigned and has declined to discuss Fast and Furious. But the family’s claim notice strongly suggests that the federal government initially sought to keep Fast and Furious under wraps and hoped it would not be linked to the slaying.

House GOP leaders repeat what whistleblowers have been telling us from the start: Top White House/DOJ knew. They knew:

Top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, claims a new report released Thursday, hours before Attorney General Eric Holder’s scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The report released by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, top lawmakers investigating the botched gunrunning operation, claims Justice Department officials in Washington and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were involved in the coordination in the early stages of the operation.
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Report released by Issa and Grassley on Fast and Furious

Republican lawmakers Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) released a new report suggesting top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious.

Justice headquarters “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it has previously acknowledged,” the memo reads.

Rep. Issa’s preview statement in the advance of the hearing is here:

ate last year, after months of investigation, the Justice Department finally acknowledged the allegations were true. Fast and Furious was both reckless and flawed.

The Justice Department, however, has been less than forthcoming in cooperating with the efforts of Congressional investigators to determine exactly what happened and who was responsible:

• The Justice Department has delivered fewer than 8% of the 80,000 documents we know it has identified as being related to this flawed operation.

• It has refused to allow investigators access to numerous witnesses who participated in the operation – one witness, after being served with a subpoena, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protection against self-incrimination rather than answer questions.

• Justice Department now asserts that many documents pertaining to internal discussions and decision making about its response to Operation Fast and Furious are off-limits to investigators.

The American people deserve better from our nation’s top law enforcement agency. Thursday’s hearing will feature the nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Eric Holder, who will be asked to explain his decision to withhold this factual evidence from investigators. What he is concerned this information would reveal? Why is the Department trying to keep its internal discussions about Operation Fast and Furious from after February 4, 2011 secret? Why did it take nearly nine months for the Justice Department to acknowledge its earlier denials were false? Why did senior Justice Department officials who knew about and received briefings on the operation fail to stop it? Should Americans have confidence in their chief law enforcement agency even though these same officials remain in their posts?

There is now broad bipartisan agreement that the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has exposed a serious and deadly failure of government. We know that the life of a brave Border Patrol agent has been lost along with countless Mexican citizens who have been victimized by guns from Operation Fast and Furious. Attorney General Holder has acknowledged that the danger created by Fast and Furious will continue for years.

This hearing is not about controversial struggles between gun control advocates and supporters of the Second Amendment. It is about the unifying, and what should be bipartisan, expectation that the Justice Department be held to a high standard and that those who failed to meet this standard should be held accountable. I look forward to Attorney General Holder’s testimony.

After Issa threatened contempt charges against the Department of Justice Obstructionists, DOJ responded with…more obstruction:

The Justice Department response Wednesday rejected Issa’s February 9, 2012, deadline to produce all demanded documents. Cole called the deadline “impossible” to meet because of the broad scope of the request.

He did not directly refer to the threat of a contempt charge by Issa.

…The hearing Thursday will not be the end of the battle over Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department’s inspector general continues to work on a detailed account of the origins of the operation, and who was involved. The report is not expected to be complete for at least a couple more months.

Holder has promised when it is completed, he is prepared to make individuals accountable. But Holder says he has no plan to seek resignations or administer discipline until that report is complete.

The corruption keeps piling up. Matthew Boyle has a hard-hitting investigative piece in the Daily Caller exposing yet another DOJ scandal involving alleged bribery of top officials involved in a financial fraud probe:

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.

The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.

The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.

That source said that until the summer of 2011, the two compromised prosecutors were part of a team of more than 25 federal prosecutors pursuing a financial crime ring, and at least five other prosecutors tasked to the case were also compromised by the criminal suspects they were investigating, without being bribed.

Washington knew what it was getting when it confirmed corruptocrat Eric Holder. Innocent people have paid with their lives. Ignoring this man and his boss’s utter, systematic contempt for the rule of law has yielded deadly consequences.

America, let’s not make that mistake again.

***

Update:Go to my Twitter account for live-tweeting of the hearing.

Most jaw-dropping moment so far: Indignant Holder demanding he get “credit” for his work at DOJ.

Running joke: Every time gun-control Democrats call for more “tools.” There are plenty enough of them in charge in Washington.

Side note: Donald Trump stepping on this important hearing tells you everything you need to know about his purported interest in advancing conservative/GOP interests. Circus, circus.

Video clips:

GOP Rep. Issa’s opening statement:

GOP Rep. Patrick Henry underscores that there’s been no accountability for 13 months:

GOP Rep. Anne Marie Buerkle confronts Holder with Terry family’s plea for action. At the five-minute mark, you can’t hear it, but Democrats advised Holder: “Don’t answer:”

President Obama went to Arizona Wednesday afternoon, and according to Governor Jan Brewer who met him on the airport tarmac, the Book-Critic-in-Chief took her to task for something she recently published:

He stepped off Air Force One at 3:28 pm and was greeted by Gov. Jan Brewer. She handed him a handwritten letter in an envelope and they spoke intensely for a few minutes. At one point, she pointed her finger at him.

Afterwards, (I) spoke with the governor.

“He was a little disturbed about my book, Scorpions for Breakfast,” Brewer said. “I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So.”
[...]
It was clear from the moment they greeted one another that this would not be a run-of-the-mill encounter between the president and a local official. At one point, she was pointing her finger at him and at another, they were talking at the same time, seemingly over each other.

He appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking, and she confirmed that by saying she didn’t finish her sentence.

When Brewer spoke with your pooler, the AP and an NBC producer for several minutes afterwards, she appeared a bit flustered and taken aback by the conversation. Asked if she was, that’s when Brewer said, “I’ll regroup.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had a similar run-in during the BP Gulf oil spill.

Obama is expected to even both scores in his next book, “Sweat the Petty Stuff.”

Here’s video from a local news story:

Feel free to provide your own caption:

Over at Hot Air, Allapundit has audio of a radio interview with Jan Brewer describing what happened: “He was somewhat thin skinned and a little tense, to say the least.”

Jay Carney will probably be given the opportunity to distort what happened at tomorrow’s White House presser, so we’ll have to wait to get the Obama administration’s version of events.

Meanwhile, the fate of Arizona’s immigration law simmers in the Supreme Court.

Update: What better publicity for your book than by the President of the United States drawing attention to it?

(h/t Drudge)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Yesterday, the SEIU and left-wing USA Action launched Spanish-language radio attacks on Mitt Romney for his support of immigration enforcement measures. One of Romney’s advisers is Kris Kobach — a constitutional law professor, Kansas Secretary of State, and staunch leader in the fight against illegal alien amnesty and ACORN-style voter fraud.

Eliseo Medina, the secretary-treasurer of Service Employees International Union, blasted Romney on Monday during a conference call announcing a Spanish-language radio ad the union is launching in partnership with Priorities USA Action, a super-PAC supporting President Obama.

Medina, the No. 2 official at the influential union, was reacting to an answer Romney gave at a debate Monday night where he said “self-deportation” was the answer to ridding the country of illegal immigrants.

“It’s basically to say, ‘Make their life miserable’” by refusing to rent to them or to provide access to heat and water,” Medina said. “Make it difficult for their kids and their schools.”

Asked by The Hill how Romney’s comments could be construed to imply that illegal immigrants should be denied basic necessities, Medina pointed to Romney’s close relationship with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has endorsed Romney. Kobach has been credit with writing most of Alabama’s harsh anti-illegal immigration law, which has been challenged in the courts.

“Mr. Romney has said he wants to support and he joins in supporting Kris Kobach,” Medina said. “When he says he supports those kinds of policies, he has to own all of it.”

“This is a dishonest smear from President Obama’s liberal allies and a desperate attempt to distract from his abysmal record,” said Romney adviser Albert Martinez. “It will do nothing to help the millions of Hispanics who have been hit especially hard as a result of the Obama economy.”

Martinez said Hispanics, like all Floridians, believe Romney is the best person to rebuild the economy and to replace Obama.

Well, look now, who’s mimicking the open-borders SEIU and blurring the lines between illegal and legal immigration.

Yep. Newt Gingrich:

Sen. Marco Rubio scolded Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign over a Spanish-language radio ad that accuses rival Mitt Romney of being “anti-immigrant”

“This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It’s inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign,” Rubio told The Miami Herald when asked about the ad.

“The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant,” Rubio said. “Both are pro-legal immigration and both have positive messages that play well in the Hispanic community.”

Rubio’s sharp rebuke comes a day after he subtly corrected Gingrich for comparing Romney to former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, branded by conservatives as a turncoat who left the party before Rubio beat him in 2010.

The criticisms from someone of Rubio’s stature in the Republican Party comes as polls show a near-even race, albeit with Gingrich surging.

Rubio plans to stay neutral in the race. He’s a potential running mate whom both candidates would love to have on the ballot.

The truth is that neither Gingrich nor Romney has a strong, consistent overall record on border security and enforcement. But at least Romney’s been traveling in the right direction…while Gingrich once again echoes left-wing language and plays the race card to get ahead.

Nose plugs. Get out yer nose plugs.

***

Newt and his supporters have been deriding the notion of self-deportation as some sort of alien, offensive concept. Long-time readers of this blog and of my investigative work on immigration have been familiar with it for years. It’s attrition through enforcement, it’s humane, and it works.

***

Can you be more two-faced? Newt has been winning massive adoration and applause for claiming he’ll stand up for states like South Carolina and Alabama, which have been sued by the Obama DOJ over tough immigration laws. Then he joins the likes of the SEIU and slams the very “anti-immigrant” policies authored by Kris Kobach that the Obama DOJ wants to overturn.

Emetic of the day.

***

Update: Newt retreats. From GOP Hispanic leaders calling him out, via the Miami Herald:

While we may have differences of opinion with regard to some of Governor Romney’s policies on immigration, we nonetheless stand firmly behind him because we know he is the most qualified conservative candidate to defeat President Obama and to lift up all Americans, including Hispanics.

The White House is sending President Obama to a familiar place: the land of make-believe. He’ll be at Disney World on Thursday to push for relaxing tourist visa requirements in the name of boosting the economy.

From the Orlando Sentinel via William Amos:

President Barack Obama will visit Walt Disney World during a planned trip to Orlando on Thursday, according to a White House aide. There, he will “unveil a strategy that will significantly help boost tourism and travel,” the aide added.

Details on that strategy were not disclosed. But it would be hard for Obama to pick a locale that’s better known than Disney for a tourism announcement. The resort giant in Orlando has four theme parks that collectively draw more than 45 million visitors a year.

It doesn’t appear, however, that he’ll get much love from local politicians. Aides to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said the Florida Democrat was unlikely to attend because the office “got word too late” of the visit and had meetings planned in other parts of the state. And Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer is scheduled to be in Washington that day for a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

While the details of the announcement are still unknown, there’s one topic at the top of the political wish list for Central Florida’s tourism industry: Visa reform. The tourism industry has been pushing Congress and Obama to make it easier for visitors from emerging nations such as Brazil, India and China to come to the U.S. as tourists.

In Brazil, where citizens have a reputation for loving Orlando’s theme parks, there are four consulate offices to conduct the required in-person interviews for people who want a visa to visit the U.S. That means families could have to travel several hundred miles before they are even approved to travel to the U.S.

In case anyone needs reminding, it was the relentless drive of the tourism industry and kowtowing State Department bureaucrats that led to the Bush-era Visa Express program — which relaxed visa policies, eliminated in-person consulate interviews, and opened the door to the 9/11 hijackers.

Brazil, may I remind you, is just the latest base for al Qaeda and other Islamic jihadi groups; it “does not recognize Hizbollah or Hamas as terrorist groups and disbanded the Federal Police’s anti-terrorism service in 2009.”

We never learn, do we?

Obama’s “Razist” Lobbyist Moves Up
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama’s top domestic policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises?

Cecilia Munoz, the current director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will now serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She’ll wield heightened influence at Obama’s daily morning briefings and expand her reach from immigration issues to education, health care and beyond.

Gushing headlines heralded the advancement of Obama’s top Hispanic civil rights “advocate” as a win for the “middle class.” But Munoz is a veteran member of the Beltway lobbyist class whose former organization is reaping a taxpayer-funded windfall as she climbs the government ladder.

Before joining Team Obama, Munoz spent two decades as chief registered lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza (“The Race”). Whose “middle class” does The Race represent? I’ve tracked the radical identity politics-driven group for years as it promoted drivers’ licenses and in-state college tuition breaks for illegal aliens; opposed cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities; and opposed a secure fence along the southern border.

Under Munoz, The Race advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty in the United States. Mexico’s Institute for Mexicans Residing Abroad rewarded her with its Ohtli Prize for her service to the country. Their country, not ours.

The Race vehemently protested post-9/11 homeland security measures and joined a failed lawsuit to block immigration information-sharing between the feds and local police. The group also has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents (including yours truly) off the airwaves, in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes.

Most recently, The Race and other open-borders groups pressured the White House to deliver the DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout by executive fiat — after it was defeated repeatedly by bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill. Obama started issuing the amnesty waivers last August. This week, the White House announced an even wider expansion of waiver status to illegal aliens claiming “hardship.”

Who has benefited from Munoz’s Beltway lobbying? No, not the American middle class. The biggest beneficiary has been La Raza’s coffers. According to analysts at nonpartisan Judicial Watch in Washington, The Race raked in $4.1 million in federal subsidies in 2009 and more than $11 million in 2010. Much of that money came straight from the Obama stimulus boondoggle, and much of it went to mortgage counseling.

As a result of “strategic partnerships” with Wachovia and Bank of America, The Race has succeeded in lowering mortgage application requirements and watering down documentation standards. Illegal aliens have secured countless federal and private home loans over the past decade thanks to the lending industry’s version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In addition, Munoz’s group collected a $1 million Democratic earmark that funded “community development” projects. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services kicked in $25,000 to co-sponsor the group’s annual conference in 2010.

Munoz’s multi-culti armor has shielded her radical lobbying from scrutiny. You’ll recall that the Obama administration made a lofty vow to end lobbyist conflicts-of-interest as we know them. The declaration was crystal-clear: “No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”

But something got lost in translation when the White House brought registered lobbyist Munoz aboard — to work on the very open-borders agenda she pushed at The Race. Team Obama invoked a shady “public interest” exemption to waive the lobbyist ban because, it determined, “Ms. Munoz’s knowledge and expertise are vital to the functioning of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.”

Has Munoz recused herself on any of the myriad public policy issues she has advised the president on over the past two years? Who knows? The most transparent administration ever refuses to disclose recusal orders involving the nearly 100 lobbyists and ex-lobbyists on its payroll. Obama’s “Razist” revolving door isn’t a victory for “civil rights” or the 99 percent. It’s a triumph of politically correct business as usual.

The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal.

Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill — that “one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals.” Conveniently, he defines scandal as a “widespread elite perception of wrongdoing.”

So as long as left-wing Ivy League scribes refuse to perceive something to be a scandal — never mind the actual suffering endured by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death came at the hands of a Mexican cartel thug wielding a Fast and Furious gun walked across the southern border under Attorney General Eric Holder’s watch — there is no scandal!

Self-serving much?

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum likewise proclaimed: “Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal.”

This after the year kicked off in January with the departure of lying eco-radical czar Carol Browner. In backroom negotiations, she infamously bullied auto execs to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The previous fall, the White House’s own oil spill panel had singled out Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence for the administration’s Draconian drilling moratorium and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.”

The Interior Department inspector general and federal judges likewise blasted drilling ban book-cooking by Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who falsely rewrote the White House drilling ban report to doctor the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.

In February, federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law.

This spring saw rising public anger over the preferential Obamacare waiver process (which I first reported on in September 2010). Some 2,000 lucky golden ticket winners were freed from the costly federal mandates — including a handful of fancy restaurants in Aloha Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district, the entire state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada, and scores of local, state and national Big Labor organizations, from the Service Employees International Union and Teamsters on down. Meanwhile, as The Hill newspaper reported last month, other not-so-lucky Republican-led states seeking waivers, such as Indiana and Louisiana, were rejected.

But it wasn’t just Republicans objecting to the president’s arbitrary Obamacare fiats. In July, congressional Democrats turned on the monstrous federal health bureaucracy known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The constitutionally suspect panel — freed from normal public notice, public comment and public review rules — would have unprecedented authority over health care spending and an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates.

Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, faced separate legal questions over her overseer role in a hair-raising document-shredding case when she served as governor of Kansas. In October, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood. Bombshell court filings showed that Kansas health officials “shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces” and failed to disclose it for six years.

That same month, Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Alter gushed: “There is zero evidence … of corruption. Where is it?”

Alter’s declaration of the “Obama Miracle” came just weeks after the politically driven half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus “investment” went bankrupt, prompting an FBI raid and ongoing criminal and congressional probes of the solar company funded by top White House bundler and visitor George Kaiser.

As Solyndra and an avalanche of other ongoing green subsidy scams erupted, so did the LightSquared debacle — a federal broadband boondoggle involving billionaire hedge fund managers and Obama donors Philip Falcone and George Soros. In September, two high-ranking witnesses — William Shelton, the four-star general who heads the Air Force Space Command, and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — exposed how the White House had pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s interference threat to military communications.

The White House continues to block efforts to gain information about the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of a special waiver for the company, even as new government tests this month showed that the company’s “signals caused harmful interference to the majority of … general purpose GPS receivers.”

The Obama White House closed out the year with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri demanding a probe of the smelly $443 million no-bid smallpox antiviral pill contract with Siga Technologies — controlled by big lefty donor Ron Perelman. Then there was the small matter of massive voter fraud in Indiana, where a Democratic official resigned amid allegations that “dozens, if not hundreds,” of signatures were faked to get Obama on the state primary ballot in 2008. And while Americans busied themselves with the holidays, White House and Democratic campaign officials were dumping more than $70,000 in contributions from another deep-pocketed contributor — scandal-plagued pal and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who oversaw the collapse of MF Global.

All this — and so much more — yet erstwhile “conservative” journalist Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek/The Daily Beast scoffed, “Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin?”

There’s none so blind as those who will not see.

Since this blog was founded in 2005 and before that, since the publication of Invasion in 2002, I’ve covered the blood-boiling deaths of law enforcement and border security officials who put their lives on the front lines for us — only to lose them in part because of government negligence, malfeasance, and refusal to do what needs to be done to keep America safe.

We have mourned murdered National Park Service ranger Kris Eggle. And Denver detective Donnie Young. And Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy David March. And Houston police officer Rodney Johnson. And so many more.

All are etched in my consciousness permanently, but none have shaken me more than the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry one year ago today. The systemic incompetence, callousness, and corruption that created the conditions for his murder are unfathomable. The cover-up that continues today in the White House is unconscionable.

Look back at how Agent Terry’s death was first reported 12 months ago:

A Border Patrol agent was shot and killed Tuesday night near Rio Rico after encountering several suspects, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Agent Brian Terry was killed just 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, north of Nogales. Four suspects are in custody and one is being pursued, according to a press release from Customs and Border Protection.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office are investigating.

Now, reflect on the extent of the lies, leaks, deception, and obstruction in the investigations of Agent Terry’s murder.

Now, imagine the suffering of the Terry family a year later — still seeking answers and the truth about Operation Fast and Furious — as they endured the vile, cynical exploitation of the case by Attorney General Eric Holder, who released his Kabuki “apology” letter to the media before they had even received it.

Border security activists, Second Amendment activists, anti-corruption advocates, and all Americans who care about the security and sovereignty of this country owe this family their thoughts, prayers, and gratitude as they continue to fight for the truth.

***

Neil McCabe at Human Events has a moving tribute and retrospective.

Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com remembers.

Vigilant national security/second amendment blogger David Codrea at Sipsey Street Irregulars marks the anniversary:

A year. And still we wait for the FBI to figure out a way to prosecute the one wounded killer they were forced to retain without compromising their cover-up of the involvement of their one-armed paid snitch.

A year. And still we wait for the much ballyhooed Office of Inspector General Report. You know, the one that the administration always uses to justify not telling you anything about the Gunwalker Scandal.

A year. And still we wait for the “mainstream media” to actually engage on the story of the greatest scandal of federal misadventure to date.

Watch this video from the House GOP Oversight and Reform on Brian Terry’s service to our nation:

More calls for Holder’s resignation. And the no-confidence tide swells.

FBI Director Bob Mueller may get Fast and Furious questions today.

Bob Owens spotlights Mother Jones trying to shoot the messenger on F&F.

How long will national media outlets keep up the Fast and Furious blackout? Mary Chastain is keeping tabs.

Adding to the drama of an election year and the Supreme Court taking on the Obamacare law, SCOTUS will also hear the Arizona immigration law next spring/summer:

The high court agreed to review a ruling that put on hold the key parts of the law signed by Republican Governor Jan Brewer in April 2010. The case has been closely watched because several other states have adopted similar laws.

The law requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detained and suspected of being in the nation illegally. Other parts require immigrants to carry their papers at all times and ban people without proper documents from soliciting for work in public places.

The justices are likely to hear arguments in the case in April, with a ruling due by July.

Only eight Supremes will hear the case:

In its notice, the court said Justice Elena Kagan had recused herself from the decision to take the case.

Justice Kagan has come under fire for not recusing herself from the decision to hear challenges to the new health care law.

She was Mr. Obama’s solicitor general from March 2009 up through May 2010, though she stopped taking part in cases in March 2010 so she would preserve her ability to hear them as a justice.

The health care law was signed in March 2010. Arizona’s immigration law passed in April 2010.

In May the Supreme Court upheld a separate 2007 Arizona law that imposes sanctions on businesses that hire illegal aliens. Kagan sat that one out as well.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

I’m sure you all saw what the Washington Post did this weekend.

The newspaper tried to macaca Rick Perry.

The frenzy is over a now-overturned stone on a secluded property — “associated” with Perry through his father, partners or his signature on a lease — that once had the word “Niggerhead” painted on it.

The Post interviewed dozens of people. The New York Times followed up with another crack investigation of hazy memories of bygone days.

They’ve given “stoning” a whole new meaning.

Has Perry actually used the racial epithet himself — you know, like the late, former KKK leader Robert Byrd did as recently as 2001?

Did Perry condescendingly refer to a black politician as “articulate and bright and clean” like Biden did when he described Barack Obama in 2007?

Did Perry racially stereotype Hispanics for political gain or refer offensively to President Obama’s “light skin” and “lack of a Negro dialect” like Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid did just last year?

No.

The same lib media outlet that took down George Allen over a dunder-headed moment on the campaign trail in order to perpetuate the GOP=racist meme is trying to kick up dirt over a stone — a stupid stone — that has been painted over and turned over for years.

What does it say about Rick Perry? Nothing. Nada. Zip.

While the Post tries to impose an old narrative on Perry and squeeze blood from a stone, the reality is that Perry has gone out of his way to pander to left-wing impulses on race.

This is the guy that has disparaged his own base as racist in two separate GOP debates.

Remember?

During the presidential debate in Tampa last night, in the midst of a discussion about illegal immigration, Texas governor Rick Perry defended granting lower in-state tuition rates to illegals as follows:

In the state of Texas, if you’ve been in the state of Texas for three years, if you’re working towards your college degree, and if you are working and pursuing citizenship in the state of Texas, you pay in-state tuition there.

And the bottom line is it doesn’t make any difference what the sound of your last name is. That is the American way. No matter how you got into that state, from the standpoint of your parents brought you there or what have you. And that’s what we’ve done in the state of Texas.

And I’m proud that we are having those individuals be contributing members of our society rather than telling them, you go be on the government dole.

This was Perry’s low point, and it’s exactly the kind of insulting garbage we don’t need out of Republican candidates, because we’re going to get plenty of it from the Democrats. So the opponents of providing taxpayer-funded lollipops to illegal immigrants are reacting badly to the sound of their last names? What a vile insinuation.

Remember?

“If you say that we should not educate children who come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought their through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.”

It sucks to be falsely accused of racism.

Maybe Rick Perry, now under siege by the ruthless race card-playing media, will remember that the next time he’s tempted to accuse conservatives who disagree with him of heartless bigotry.

Illegal alien and drunk-driving arrestee Obama Onyango (a.k.a. “Uncle Omar”) was spotted in court in Framingham, MA.

The joke’s on all of us.

Via the Boston Herald:

A giggling Onyango Obama — the president’s illegal alien half uncle — made a brief appearance in Framingham District Court today on charges he was drunk when he nearly struck an unmarked police cruiser last month.

Obama, 67, was visibly amused at the media spectacle, stifling laughter several times before his 30-second court appearance where a judge set a Nov. 17 pre-trial conference.

Obama did not acknowledge a Herald reporter’s question upon arrival at Framingham District Court and neither he nor his lawyer made any comment on his way out where they were followed to the parking lot by a horde of media.

His attorney, P. Scott Bratton, did, however, tell the Herald that Obama, who has been living illegally in the United States for nearly 20 years, has returned to work at Conti Liquors in Framingham.

“He has. He’s doing well,” Bratton said.

Tax-evader. Deportation fugitive. Document fraud artist. Drunk. And now, he’s back to work with his bogus documents at a liquor store facing no sanctions for employing an illegal alien while taking another bite at the immigration court apple even though his case was already reviewed and rejected.

Like they say in the open-borders community: “It ain’t over ’til the alien wins.”

…And giggles all the way to safe harbors from the rule of law.

***

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, another drunk deportation fugitive hits an 11-year-old girl:

Police: 11-Year-Old Massachusetts Girl Hit, Dragged by Truck Driven by Illegal Immigrant

You can read the full decision and analysis here.

The parts of the law she upheld can be read here.

A federal judge has ruled on Alabama’s controversial immigration law. Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn has struck down some parts of the law, but allowed other key parts to stand.

She has refused to block the law’s requirement to check the immigration status of students. Judge Blackburn said in her ruling issued Wednesday that federal law doesn’t prohibit the state from requiring schools to check the immigration status of students or from requiring police to determine the status of suspected illegal immigrants.

The judge upheld the U.S. Department of Justice’s objections to other sections of the law, including making it a crime for an illegal immigrant to solicit work or for anyone to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant.

Also upheld: The provisions authorizing local police to inquire about detainees’ immigration status.

Alabama didn’t wait for the feds to do the job they should be doing. Before the ruling, they implemented “AL-Verify:”

Monday Governor Robert Bentley unveiled a new development in the illegal immigration debate. It’s a state-developed computer system that can verify citizenship as quickly as you can show your driver’s license.

It’s called AL-Verify. Some say this isn’t needed until a judge rules on Alabama’s new immigration law.

John McMillan, with the Alabama Commission of Agriculture and Industries says he will definitely be watching.

“Some of our farmers have been in talks with legislators. I have been involved in some of those meetings, and my role is going to be keeping legislators informed of what I see out there on the ground,” said McMillan.

McMillan, and many others are waiting to see what an up or down vote for Alabama’s immigration law means, or if there will be any provisions.

While many people wait, the governor and his cabinet members are moving forward, and they’re doing it through the AL-Verify program.

“We provided an automated way to be compliant so the process for getting a title or a tag hasn’t really changed but because of the immigration bill we had a compliance issue. Now with this technology we’ve solved the compliance issue,” said Julie Magee, the Commissioner for the Department of Revenue.

Magee said she didn’t know how much the technology cost, but the program is live, and here’s the way it works: You put your driver’s license info in and AL-Verify tells you whether it’s valid.

Cries of “heartless!” in 3, 2, 1…

***

Speaking of heartlessness, Rick Perry kinda sorta walks back his smear of immigration enforcement activists:

“I was probably a bit over-passionate by using that word and it was inappropriate,” Perry admitted. “In Texas in 2001 we had 181 members of the legislature – only four voted against this piece of legislation – because it wasn’t about immigration it was about education.”

His comments are being construed as an “apology.”

Only in politics can you apologize without really being *sorry* — or actually saying the word.

Meantime, Mr. Irascible — our thin-skinned commander-in-chief — gets peeved over an illegal alien student’s carping about lack of DREAM Act passage…and then doubles down by telling Latino leaders to quit complaining.

Heal thyself, whiner.

GOP presidential front-runner Rick Perry was in New York today delivering a speech in defense of Israel’s sovereignty.

Back at home, Texas Tea Party activists had their own press conference to call attention to Perry’s inattention to home state border and sovereignty issues:

Texas Tea Party leaders are unhappy with Gov. Rick Perry’s immigration-related positions and want him to call another special legislative session to give state lawmakers a third opportunity to ban sanctuary cities.

“This is an issue that is simmering and bubbling up to the surface … We are tired of lip service. We are fed up. We are fed up, too, Gov. Perry,” Texas Tea Party Caucus Advisory Committee chair JoAnn Fleming of Tyler said Monday.

Perry declared sanctuary cities an emergency issue in January and put it back on the legislative agenda in June after lawmakers failed to approve legislation during the regular session. Legislation to ban so-called sanctuary cities – and subject anyone stopped for a traffic violation to document their citizenship – also failed during the special session.

Tea Party leaders said they thought they had Perry’s support following a June 28th meeting in the governor’s Capitol office.

…Maria Martinez, executive director of the Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas, and others believe that legislative leaders conspired to ensure that sanctuary cities legislation would die. Several business leaders in the home building and food industries opposed it.

“We witnessed the use of tricks, delays and special deals to (help) cheap-labor advocates,” Martinez said.

More than 40 immigration-related bills were introduced this year, but only 21 got a hearing and all but two died, she complained.

“He needs to address whether he is serious about illegal immigration,” Martinez said.

Tea Party leaders told Perry during their June 28th meeting that it “wouldn’t look good” if he tried to run a national campaign with a failed illegal immigration policy hanging around his neck.

More from the Texas Tea Party:

“My father migrated from Mexico, legally, and became a U.S. citizen. He came to the US because he knew the great opportunities America offered. Today, things are very wrong in Texas! Our elected officials have failed to serve and protect citizens and legal residents of Texas. They have failed to remove sanctuary city policies throughout Texas. They have failed to enforce the law. They should protect our Texas families and those who protect us – law enforcement officers. Sanctuary city policies have cost the lives of five Houston police officers and left another officer seriously impaired. It is time our state officials took care of this unfinished business.”

– Maria Espinoza, Co-Founder of The Remembrance Project

“As legal immigrants in the late 1960’s, my family and I fled communism. We came here with the mission to become “Americans,” and we did so to become part of all that makes this country great. We cannot sit by and have our laws ignored by politicians who take an oath to uphold the rule of law and then proceed to choose the laws they want to ignore. We cannot afford the burden of paying the tax liabilities for those who cross the border, remain “under the radar” and use this country for their purposes without any responsibility whatsoever. I am here today to say that our Texas elected officials need to do their job and quit playing games with our security and financial future.”

– Roberto Gonzalez, Clear Lake TEA Party

News round-up at The Jawa Report, including these insights about why and how the sanctuary city ban died:

Although Perry proclaimed the bill a top priority, the measure drew behind-the-scenes resistance from influential business leaders, including Houston home builder Bob Perry, one of the governor’s biggest individual political donors.

…Despite Perry’s public commitment to the measure, some critics questioned the depth of his support after reports that Bob Perry, who is not related to the governor, and San Antonio grocery store magnate Charles Butt were waging a subsurface effort to scuttle the bill.

Bob Perry and his wife, Doylene, have contributed more than $2 million to Rick Perry since 2001. The Houston home builder has also donated to the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, whose members led opposition to the sanctuary cities bill.

The Cash-for-Visas Program
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

As part of his warmed-over jobs plan, President Obama is repackaging “Buy American” stimulus subsidies to help hard-hit homegrown businesses. At the same time, however, Congress is pushing to expand a fraud-riddled investor program that puts U.S. citizenship for sale to the highest foreign business bidders.

Call it the Buy America Cash-for-Visas plan.

As I first reported 10 years ago, the EB-5 immigrant investor program was created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act. The law allows 10,000 wealthy foreigners a year to purchase green cards by investing between $500,000 and $1 million in new commercial enterprises or troubled businesses. After two years, foreign investors, their spouses and their children all receive permanent resident status — which allows them to contribute to U.S. political campaigns and provides a speedy gateway to citizenship. The program is set to expire in 2012.

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee’s Immigration subpanel entertained calls to save the EB-5 law. Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren is sponsoring a bill to salvage the immigrant investor visas. The legislation (sponsored by open-borders Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar in the Senate) also creates a second program with lower barriers to entry that would provide “start-up visas” for foreign entrepreneurs. They would be granted unconditional permanent-resident status if they create a government-determined number of jobs.

And there’s the rub. Obama’s make-believe math on stimulus jobs saved or created — coupled with the snowballing $535 million, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bankruptcy scandal — tells you all you need to know about Washington’s credibility in picking economic winners and losers.

If the feds can’t be trusted to invest government subsidies wisely in American companies, how can they possibly determine which overseas investors will be successful here? And if top U.S. loan officials have demonstrated such sloppy, politically driven disregard for financial due diligence on risky half-billion-dollar enterprises, how can immigration officials be trusted to better protect the national interest?

Answer: They can’t. In fact, the benefits of the EB-5 economic development plan have gone to former Immigration and Naturalization Service officials who formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access, and to shady foreign fraudsters. And a recent Los Angeles Times report on the program noted: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers the program, can’t say how many net new jobs have been created. Under USCIS rules, the projects don’t even have to hire 10 workers. Instead, an investor’s money can be used to preserve 10 jobs that economic models show, and the government concludes, would otherwise disappear without such funding.”

Whistleblowers told me how immigrant investors paid token fees to these partnerships. The partnerships secured promissory notes for the remainder of the foreign investments, which were forgiven after investors received their permanent green cards. Former INS employees, working for these partnerships, aggressively lobbied their old colleagues to accept such bogus financial arrangements. As a result, according to an internal U.S. Justice Department investigative report, “aliens were paying $125K” instead of the required $500,000 to $1 million minimum, and “almost all of the monies went to the General Partners and the companies who set up the limited partners.”

In 2007, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the “program between 1995 and 1998 was frequently abused when would-be immigrants were allowed to pay a small amount in cash for a green card, signing a promissory note for the balance. The note didn’t come due for several years — long after the two-year conditional period built into the EB-5 visa had ended and permanent residency had been granted.”

An earlier Baltimore Sun investigation found “only a tiny fraction of the money ever made it to the companies seeking assistance.” Many of the distressed U.S. firms that the program intended to help have closed because they never received promised funding.

Instead of allowing the troubled program to sunset, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has “streamlined” the EB-5 immigrant investor green card process — guaranteeing processing within 15 calendar days for foreign business “projects that are fully developed and ready to be implemented.” The same expedited rush for government-directed investments gave us Solyndra. What’s worse in this case is the sordid peddling of the privileges of citizenship.

Twenty years ago, when the program’s failures were first exposed, Rep. John W. Bryant, a Texas Democrat, protested on the House floor: “This provision is an unbelievable departure from our tradition of cherishing our most precious birthright as Americans. Have we no self-respect as a nation? Are we so broke we have to sell our birthright?”

Apparently so.

Go here and scroll down for the whole tweet-fest.

Speaking of Fast and Furious, it was once again skipped as a debate question — as were any major Obama scandals (Solyndra, Interior Department corruption, DOJ corruption).

Rick Perry lost big-time as he tried to do the Texas two-step on the Gardasil executive order and earned a wave of boos from the grass-roots Tea Party crowd on the Texas DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout.

Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum effectively refuted Perry’s “err on the side of life” cop-out and offered powerful defense of parental sovereignty. Bachmann also astutely pointed out the Merck conflict of interest and Santorum emphasized the difference between vaccines for traditional communicable diseases vs. HPV. Watch the exchange here. Perry’s press team immediately sent out a rehashed press release “setting the record straight” within minutes of the exchange, prompting debate watchers to jibe that that’s what the debates are for.

When I raised the issue a month ago, I was dismissed as “fringe.”

Judging from the overwhelming negative response to Perry on this issue from the Tea Party crowd, the “fringe” is mainstream Tea Party.

I repeat:

Perry supporters continue to invoke the “opt out” clause as a defense of the Texas measure. But undergirding the Perry decree is the anti-free market belief that it is necessary and right to force private insurance companies to pay for middle-school-age children’s Gardasil injections. Under Texas law, health insurance plans must provide coverage for all mandated vaccinations. There is no “opt out” provision from this mandate. So if Perry’s EO had been implemented, every private insurance plan would have been required to pay for Gardasil vaccinations.

This is not merely a “social” issue. It goes to core fiscal and free-market principles. Forcing insurers to cover treatments is generally referred to by us limited government advocates as a, yes, mandate. Interfering with existing contracts between private companies and their clients is generally referred to by us fiscal conservatives as, yes, big government. These bottomless benefits mandates drive up the cost of health insurance and contribute to the problem of the uninsured (be sure to click that link and check out page 3, which shows that Texas has the 4th highest number of mandated benefits laws in the country). Texas, perhaps not coincidentally, also has the highest rate of uninsured in the country.

Those of us who have opposed Obamacare from day one have argued that policymakers should be trying to reduce the cost of health insurance, not increase costs by mandating coverage of every A-to-Z treatment and procedure.

I’ve already addressed the critical distinction between traditional school-age vaccines for communicable diseases such as polio and measles versus behavioral/lifestyle immunizations for sexually-transmitted diseases such as HPV and Hepatitis B. They are simply not comparable.

As a follow-up to debate over my recent Perry/Gardasil post, I’ll add a few more points.

My intellect, integrity, political motives, and sanity have all been questioned as a result of my long-held opinions on the need for vigilant scrutiny and skepticism of top-down vaccine initiatives sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats. I’ve been called “anti-vaccine” despite the fact that my kids are up to date on their plethora of vaccines with the exception of Gardasil, which I have refused for my 11-year-old daughter for now. Vaccine experts themselves admit the wear-off time for Gardasil is uncertain; some estimate it might be 10 years. Why not wait then until my daughter’s 15 or 16 instead of 11?

Unlike the old days (which some of my critics who may not have children seem to still be operating under), the current CDC vaccine schedule is clogged with more than a dozen different vaccines, many of which must be taken several times during the course of childhood. The long-term synergistic effects of all of these vaccines are unknown; as the vaccine pipeline fills up, concerns about those synergistic effects should give parents even more pause.

…Gardasil mandate-promoters glibly point to “opt out” provisions with a naivete or willful blindness toward the hostility conscientious objectors face in the government-run health care and education systems. Just ask Catholic medical providers in the Age of Obama how it’s working out for them.

I have been a staunch defender of the pharma industry against anti-capitalist attacks from the left and right. But I have refused to be coerced or bullied into anything regarding my kids’ health– especially when it comes to new behavioral/lifestyle vaccines. I cannot ignore lobbyists and politicians who provide incomplete/incorrect information and obfuscations about the duration of vaccine protection. And whether the mandate-pusher has an “R” or “D” by his or her name, his or her crony ties to Big Pharma lobbyists and donors are and will be fair game for scrutiny and exposure.

If this makes me “fringe,” I’ll wear it proudly.

If more taxpayers and patients were as immune to Nanny State schemes, imagine how much healthier we’d all be.

Perry’s second major stumble came on the DREAM Act — which he defended as a “states’ right” issue. Granting in-state tuition to illegal alien students incentivizes yet more illegal immigration at taxpayer expense. And mainstream Tea Party voters just ain’t buying it. Perry’s only saving grace was that he didn’t do as John McCain did and insult his critics as bigots.

Progress, I guess.

Oh, wait: Update. Never mind. I didn’t catch this earlier: Perry defended DREAM Act by saying the in-state tuition benefits should be awarded to illegal aliens “regardless of what their last name sounds like.” Perilously close to ethnic-baiting. Dumb move.

When he wasn’t sticking to economic issues, Ron Paul was singing from his worn “Blame America”/”Blame Israel” playbook.

Herman Cain was amiable, but stuck to his gimmicky 9-9-9 campaign line.

Jon Huntsman set off my auto-mute button every time he spoke.

Romney looked every bit the careful, calculating flip-flopper he was the last go-around and remains today.

Newt Gingrich plugged his books and websites, threw out some red meat, and prayed that the audience wouldn’t remember all his left-leaning, anti-Tea Party lurches over the last several years.

Bachmann’s strongest asset is her staunch, consistent opposition to TARP, Obamacare, and the debt-limit increase.

Questions for you, dear readers: Is that enough?

Did this debate make a difference?

Uncle Omar is once again the beneficiary of America’s reckless immigration catch-and-release policies.

He has been quietly released from federal custody and all lips are sealed. DHS won’t say a word. The White House won’t say a word. Onyango Obama’s immediate family in Boston won’t say a word. And the lawyer who was all set to appeal his deportation is out of the loop.

Where in the world is Uncle Omar?

Officials released President Obama’s uncle from Plymouth County jail yesterday after holding him for more than two weeks on an immigration detainer for violating an order to return to his native Kenya in 1992.

US officials refused to disclose any other information about Onyango Obama, who remained in the United States undetected until Framingham police arrested him Aug. 24 on drunken driving and other charges.

Yesterday, federal immigration officials refused to say whether the 67-year-old Framingham resident posted bond, whether they are keeping track of his whereabouts, or even whether they are still seeking his deportation, raising questions about public accountability in the case.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement website confirmed Obama’s release by listing him as “not in custody.’’

As I said last week — and it bears repeating again this 9/11 anniversary weekend:

Open-borders advocates will call Uncle Omar “harmless.” But it turns out he’s not only a repeat deportation absconder who has ignored two court orders to leave the country, but he is also a deadbeat who owes thousands in back taxes and a fraudulent Social Security card-holder who has managed to evade authorities for half a century.

The policy that allowed Omar to disappear is “voluntary departure” — a security-undermining mechanism that allows illegal alien border-jumpers and visa-overstayers to simply deport themselves after going through the federal immigration court system. Omar lost his first case to stay in the country in 1989; he lost a second bid with the Board of Immigration Appeals in 1992.

Then, as 400,000 to 700,000 illegal alien deportation absconders have done over the past two decades, Omar simply thumbed his nose at the law again and treated his entry into America as an entitlement instead of a privilege.

Now, we know there was at least one other Obama deportation fugitive hiding in plain view who benefited from the freeze.

More damningly, we know that both Republican and Democratic administrations continue to play politics with homeland security while paying lip service to the 9/11 dead.

After the attacks, DHS officials discovered the full danger that the vast ocean of deportation fugitives posed. Consider the case of Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian bomb-builder who entered the U.S. illegally through Canada in 1996 and 1997. He claimed political asylum based on alleged persecution by Israelis, was released on a reduced $5,000 bond posted by a man who was himself an illegal alien, and then skipped his asylum hearing after calling his attorney and lying about his whereabouts. In June 1997, after his lawyer withdrew Mezer’s asylum claim, a federal immigration judge ordered Mezer to leave the country on a “voluntary departure order.” Mezer ignored the useless piece of paper. He joined a New York City bombing plot before being arrested in July 1997 after a roommate tipped off local police.

Countless jihadists have benefited enormously from lax enforcement of deportation orders and asylum loopholes. Jihad plotters Ramzi Yousef and Mir Aimal Kansi also exploited our catch-and-release system by invoking asylum and evading swamped authorities before plotting and executing jihadist attacks.

The post-9/11 absconder apprehension initiative has been decimated. The total number of apprehensions of illegal aliens by immigration enforcement agencies is less than half of what it was five years ago, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. And the White House is dispensing deportation waivers like Pez candy en masse.

“Always remember. Never forget.” Words, just words.