It looks like the New York Times, America’s paper of liberal record, has been caught with its pants down again.

 Check this out from the federal Department of Homeland Security’s blog:

An Op-ed the New York Times Editorial Page Refused to Run

When it comes to illegal immigration, the American people are tired of thirty years of lip service. They want our laws enforced. As Secretary of Homeland Security, I have directed my department to pursue that mandate, using all the tools permitted by law.

This involves a three-fold approach.

First, we stem the flow at the border by increasing the likelihood that illegal entrants – and smugglers of all types – will be detected, apprehended, and removed.

Second, we drive businesses to comply with laws against employing illegal workers.

Third, when we encounter those who are here illegally, we remove them.

Granted, we need a long-term solution involving a temporary worker program, legal immigration reform, and a fair policy to deal with illegal immigrants long-rooted here.

But the American people have demanded that we first demonstrate an effective commitment to enforce current laws. And even those who are sympathetic to the painful circumstances of illegal immigration question any change that might trigger new waves of entrants seeking to benefit from still-future waves of “reform.”

Our policies respond to this demand and to Congress. They may be tough, yet they are fair, and they are succeeding.

That success has now bred a firestorm of opposition. Opponents are driven by factors ranging from an ideological commitment to open borders to reliance on illegal workforces. Apparently, their strategy is to challenge every enforcement action with exaggerated or misleading cries of outrage. These challenges add up to a position that would forbid any effective enforcement.

The New York Times editorial page is a case in point.

Regarding interior enforcement, a March 27, 2008 editorial (“A Foolish Immigration Purge”) attacked our proposal that businesses receiving letters about workers whose names don’t match Social Security numbers clear up the discrepancy within three months. Under this proposal, if a mismatch is caused by an innocent clerical mistake, the mistake is simply corrected. But if it’s caused by an illegal worker carrying a forged identity, the employer must act. Ignoring this distinction, the Times falsely implied that businesses would have to fire workers even for innocent errors.

A December 18, 2006 editorial (“Swift Raids”) protested earlier efforts at workplace enforcement. It was followed by an October 4, 2007 editorial (“Stop the Raids”) which depicted our enforcement efforts on Long Island and elsewhere as trampling on localities. But an April 16, 2008 editorial (“New Jersey’s Immigration Crackdown”) castigated Garden State localities for their enforcement efforts.

Concerning border security, an April 3, 2008 editorial (“Michael Chertoff’s Insult”) condemned our exercise of legal authority to waive certain environmental regulations that would have stopped us from fulfilling the explicit mandate of Congress to put fencing, roads, and lighting in place this year in order to stem drug and human smuggling.

The editorial failed to mention that we had previously conducted multiple environmental reviews or that the Interior Department has complained that some border areas are so endangered by smugglers that visitors and employees are turned away.

Taken together, these examples suggest that in some quarters, no enforcement technique is acceptable. Of course, if none is acceptable, enforcing immigration law becomes impossible.

Perhaps that’s what some critics really want. In a March 4, 2008 editorial (“Border Insecurity”), this newspaper takes aim at the very propriety of defending our sovereignty and our laws:

“From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Rio Grande, a steel curtain is descending across the continent. Behind it lies a nation….that has decided to wall itself off….”

In this rewrite of lines from Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain address, the editorialists outrageously compare America’s attempts to secure its own borders against smugglers with Josef Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe.

In the end, the debate is not about enforcement tactics. It’s about enforcing the rule of law. Do our critics want a country where employers create economic incentives for people to come here illegally? Do they desire an America with open borders and uncontrolled illegal migration? Should federal officials tacitly allow this to happen by rejecting every meaningful effort to enforce the law?

In the end, two truths stand out. We need to continue to discuss reforms to our immigration laws. But we must continue to uphold our current laws by enforcing them.

Michael Chertoff

Tags: Charles Gordon, Border Security, Immigration, Media

Tags: Christianity, Rod D. Martin

Wow.

Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth still warming?”

She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.”

Duffy: “Is this a matter of any controversy?”

Marohasy: “Actually, no.”

Read the rest here. It’s a real eye-opener, even to people who haven’t accepted Al Gore’s received wisdom.

UPDATE: And just for good measure, it turns out that it’s a record year for snowfall too.

Tags: Environment, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

This is not just because the Dems and their media allies have been glowing (for years) about the supposed “bipartisanship” of Democrats and Independents voting in our primaries, for Bob Dole, John McCain, Rudy (more…)

Tags: Democrats, GOP, Election 2008, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

As I’ve been telling anyone who would listen for weeks now, Hillary Clinton isn’t going anywhere.

And why would she? Everyone keeps saying it’s mathematically impossible for her to win the nomination on elected delegates, but the same is very much true for Obama (and was before Ohio and Texas).

The fact that you don’t hear it said that way is partly because the media keeps focusing on something the Democrat Party clearly doesn’t care about (more…)

Tags: Hillary Clinton, MoveOn, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Democrats, Rod D. Martin, Election 2008, TheVanguard.Org

But now it’s over. So what’s a newly famous term-limited ex-governor to do?

Well, he could certainly wait around to be picked for Vice President. But given the mercurial nature of that selection process, he could be in for a very long wait if he did.

But there is something he could do — for himself, his party, and his country — that would be worthy of all that support he just gained. And that’s run for the U.S. Senate.

The math is simple, in both directions. Looking at Arkansas, Huckabee could easily end the one-term career of more-liberal-than-he-claims-to-be Senator Mark Pryor, originally elected largely because of his daddy’s name. Indeed, the last time Huckabee was on the ballot for Senate (in 1996, just before Jim Guy Tucker went to the pen and catapulted him into the governor’s mansion), he was up twenty points over a popular Democrat nominee.

Which brings us to the national math. Huckabee would not only put Arkansas’ Senate race in play, he’d probably win, and that changes everything. Republicans, defending twice as many seats this time as their opponents, are expecting to have a nasty year, regardless of John McCain’s chances; yet in fact, what was looking to be a seven-or-eight seat loss (giving the Ds almost enough seats to block filibusters) is now looking like something more in the range of three, possibly even one. If we’re lucky.

But Arkansas doesn’t even have a Republican Senate candidate at all. Adding him to the mix could make that (admittedly highly optimistic) one-seat loss into a wash. And what if McCain pulled out a win, pushing votes in the direction of all the down-ticket races? Then that wash might become a one-seat gain, a 50-50 Senate, with ties broken by the new Republican Vice President. Which is to say, Mike Huckabee could give us back the Senate.

But not if he is the Vice President. Only if he isn’t.

A Senator Mike Huckabee would be in perfect position to advance his agenda, firm up some of the parts of his gubernatorial resume that a more-than-2/3 Democrat state legislature tilted left, and spend a lot of time articulating his message on national TV. He might also be in a position to help deliver the next Supreme Court justice, putting some powerful legs to his pro-life promise. And if his White House dream — for one reason or another — never came to pass, he, like many famous men before him, could be a major national figure for decades to come.

Today, at least. His filing deadline is March 10th. So carpe diem, Governor. This is your time.

UPDATE, March 11th: Unfortunately, Governor Huckabee had other plans, meaning that the perfectly winnable (for him, anyway) U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas will go completely uncontested by Republicans, and a crucial chance of changing the ugly national Senate math is lost. Far from us to question the Governor’s decision-making process, but this may be a crime which carries its own punishment: should John McCain win this fall — and at this point at least, Team Huckabee absolutely believes he won’t — there’s not likely to be a 2012 comeback; and without a Senate seat, 2016 could be a very long time indeed to maintain an already-tenuous national presence.

But we shall see.

Tags: Mike Huckabee, Supreme Court, Election 2008, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

No good reason judging by her comments, which were extremely hard core on Afghanistan (maybe there’s something about that completely landlocked mountainous country which devoured an entire Soviet army that makes it an easier win?). It’s just become Democratic dogma that Iraq is lost, and no Democrat — particularly one about to get smacked by Barack Obama — can afford to say otherwise, no matter what else is on the line.

But a lot is on the line. If you missed it, read my blog from two weeks ago on the degree of both our growing victory and what we’ve achieved. Abandoning Iraq would be one of the most childish, petulant, tragically needless defeats in human history. Brought to you as usual by the Defeatocratic Party.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, MoveOn, Barack Obama, Iraq, Democrats, Rod D. Martin, War on Terror, TheVanguard.Org

Or his Nobel Prize?

Hmmm.

Tags: Al Gore, Environment, Media, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

(And oh by the way, weren’t a lot of the same people saying she needs to drop out “for the good of the party” telling Bill Clinton the same thing about this time ten years ago?)

Tags: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, Election 2008, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

And what did that proposal include? First and foremost, it targeted doctors for significant cost savings by forcing anyone practicing medicine in New Mexico to prescribe whatever care the state or health-insurance companies deemed adequate. While such a move may appear logical to those who believe government is the font of all wisdom, the reality is that doctors — already scarce in the state’s rural areas — would flee New Mexico in droves if they became the target of ever-increasing demands for cost-savings.

If this is how you want your health — and that of your children and your aging parents — taken care of, vote Democrat this fall. It’s that simple.

Tags: Barack Obama, Socialism, Hillary Clinton, Health Care, Rod D. Martin, Election 2008, TheVanguard.Org

Tags: Technology, Media, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

More leftist “do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do” of course, but it rings a little hollow from the well-heeled Mrs. Obama, who proceeded to moan and cry for a bit about how much she has to spend on piano and dance lessons for her two children, an amount equivalent to almost 1/3 of the median household income of the town in which she was speaking.

Barack Obama could not be where he is today if he’d followed Michelle’s advice to these young women, who live in a town where only 12.2% of adults have a college degree and 20% are high school dropouts. But this is the left’s line, from Chicago to Cambodia to Chelyabinsk: the proletariat should “serve the needs of society”, while the elites should organize everyone for the greater good.

Has it ever occurred to you that socialism is just the old aristocracy, dressed up for a politically correct age?

Tags: Socialism, Barack Obama, Election 2008, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

Which, of course is true; although, as Geldof points out, you (tragically) aren’t likely to know it.

Geldof’s rather strong differences with Bush come through loud and clear in the essay, which only serves to highlight all the more the degree of his admiration for the President, the transformative nature of what the Administration has done in Africa, and the degree to which this foreigner is willing to work “across the aisle” in an important cause when his American co-partisans are not. Demonizing your opponents has become the first resort of the American left. It would appear Bob Geldof didn’t get the memo.

Tags: Africa, Culture War, George W. Bush, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

Story from page A-1 of the Washington Post.

UPDATE: Very interesting piece by Buchanan on this. Worth a look.

Tags: Homeland Security, Border Security, Immigration, Rod D. Martin, TheVanguard.Org

Perhaps the greatest sadness in this — for Buckley is surely with his Lord this day — is that it is mere millions and not billions who will miss him; for surely the entire world has benefited from his wisdom and tireless advocacy for freedom, the transformative global change his ideas begat, and the spread of a renewed belief in liberty which had been all but exhausted when his work began.

From Prime Ministers to Presidents to a little girl — my Sherri — sitting with her daddy watching Firing Line, those indelibly marked by his insight are all around us, in a world far better than that which Whittaker Chambers and Joseph Schumpeter imagined possible, believing in the inevitability of Communism as surely as they passionately promoted a different path. They did not believe their work could bear fruit; but Buckley did, the impetuous youth standing up in his day to an older, tireder generation, “standing athwart history crying ‘Stop!’” And stop it did: with the collapse of not only the Soviet Empire but the Keynesian and socialist mire into which the West had fallen too, and the rise of a new dawn of freedom, all made possible because someone not only nurtured the ideas but provided the hope required for victory.

The left, now at least nominally led by Barack Obama, preaches “change” and “hope” too, but the change they preach is a return to the old lost path, one of serfdom, of drones, of cogs in a statist machine. You can call it socialism, you can call it fascism, but what it is, on its very best day, is bleak, and dark, and hopeless.

It is up to us to stop this false hope, this “change” for change’s sake; and not just when it appears in one party, but wherever it shows its face. It is a task worthy of the great Buckley. It is our duty to rise to the occasion, to fill his shoes, and to triumph. His whole life was spent to make that possible. Now it’s up to us.

Tags: MoveOn, Barack Obama, Communism, Conservatism, Rod D. Martin, Election 2008, TheVanguard.Org