Owens Signs Immigration Bills

Designed to put the hurt–state felonies for those convicted–on those who deal in trafficking illegal immigrants and those who falsify “documents” designed to keep them here:

Gov. Bill Owens signed four immigration bills into law this afternoon that target human smugglers, human traffickers and people who make fake identification documents.

* Senate Bill 110, sponsored by Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, creates a $50,000 civil fine for making counterfeit identification documents and pays for a law department investigator. Revenues from collected fines would go to immigration enforcement.

* Senate Bill 20, sponsored by Sen. Peter Groff, D-Denver, makes human trafficking — selling adults into indentured servitude or prostitution — a state felony.

* Senate Bill 206, also sponsored by Groff, makes human smuggling — sneaking an illegal immigrant into the country — a state felony.

* House Bill 1306, sponsored by Matt Knoedler, R-Lakewood, requires an audit of a 2003 law that limits the use of identification issued by foreign governments.

Owens has already signed into law Senate Bill 90, which directs police to notify immigration officials if they have reasonable cause to believe that an arrestee for offenses other than domestic violence or minor traffic violations is an illegal immigrant. Two other immigration bills are awaiting the governor’s action.

Perhaps by putting the focus on those enabling and encouraging others to risk their money and their lives to come here illegally, and making the punishment a state felony, there will be a reduction in trafficking at least here in Colorado, as the state becomes a less desirable route for those “coyotes” and others who stack human beings in vans and speed across our highways. Unfortunately, as this is not part of a national program, the diverted and discouraged smugglers will only seek ways around Colorado and possible felony convictions.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of these bills was the show of bipartisan support for the measures:

“Clearly, illegal immigration is one of the most serious issues facing our country, and that’s why this legislation is so important,” Owens said. “The number of illegal immigrants living in Colorado is growing exponentially, and many of the issues and impacts have to be dealt with at the state level.

“However, as I have said on a number of occasions, individual states cannot solve the overall problem. The heavy lifting must be done at our nation’s Capitol, and I think most people understand that.”

House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, touted the work of the General Assembly.

“I think the package that we produced with bipartisan support is one that we can be proud of,” he said.

“Democrats and Republicans agreed this year on three points. First, that illegal immigration is a significant problem. Second, that the pace of reform in Washington is not satisfactory. And third, that states don’t have to wait – that there are some things that states can do.”

Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, who sponsored two of the bills signed by Owens, said the mood in the legislature changed in the midst of the session.

Wiens contends that Democrats scheduled a one-day hearing on about a dozen Republican-sponsored immigration measures with the intent of killing all of them. Democratic leaders said the Republican measures were unconstitutional, too expensive or mean-spirited.

But anger over the Democrats’ action, plus the debate stirred by the massive pro-immigration marches and rallies, pushed lawmakers into a serious bipartisan effort.

“Then we had some real honest discussions between Democrats and Republicans on this issue,” he said.

A great step forward? No, but better than nothing.

Ethnic Studies Chair Questions Churchill Report

From the People’s Republic of Boulder:

The chairman of the University of Colorado department where Ward Churchill works urged CU officials Friday to take a long, hard look at their motives for investigating Churchill and warned any action against him could have a negative effect on faculty.

Ethnic studies chairman Albert Ramirez also called on administrators to publicly affirm his department, which has received numerous phone calls and e-mails – many of them “racist and extremely acrimonious” – since the Churchill controversy began more than a year ago.

“The university can no longer continue to remain silent in this regard, unless it wants to send a message to other academic departments on campus that, when they are at risk and under attack by a vocal segment of the bureaucratic and political establishment, they, too, are on their own,” Ramirez wrote in a 3 1/2 page letter to CU leaders.

Ramirez did not say in his letter whether he thinks any action should be taken against Churchill. In an interview, he said he preferred to let the process – which will likely include a lawsuit – run its course.

. . .

In his letter, Ramirez referred to an analogy in the committee’s report that compared the Churchill investigation to police pulling over a driver because the officer didn’t like a bumper sticker on the driver’s car.

While the reason for stopping the driver may be improper, if that driver were speeding, no court would think it were improper to issue a ticket, the panel concluded.

Similarly, the committee concluded that Churchill’s misconduct was so egregious he should be punished, even if the reasons for the investigation were questionable.

But Ramirez argued CU officials must consider those circumstances more deeply, and the possibility that firing or suspending Churchill might have a chilling effect on other professors’ free speech.

“The university’s decision will have a significant effect on the entire university community,” he wrote. “The faculty, in particular, must remain reassured by the results of this investigative process that they will not someday be targeted because of their own ‘bumper stickers.’”

Thankfully, as evidenced by the following editorial, not all CU faculty support Churchill, and certainly disavow his research “methods” as incompatible with CU’s mission, or academia in general:

In short, the committee found two cases where Churchill extensively plagiarized the work of others. They found other cases where he first wrote articles under a false name, and then in a later work cited those earlier articles as providing independent confirmation for his own claims.

They found a great many places where apparently detailed footnotes turned out on close inspection to offer no support whatsoever for the claims being made, and found that Churchill continued to stick with these false sources in later work even after being confronted in print with their inadequacy.

Assessing the cumulative impact of these tactics, the committee describes “a pattern and consistent research stratagem to cloak extreme, unsupportable, propaganda-like claims of fact that support Professor Churchill’s legal and political claims with the aura of authentic scholarly research by referencing apparently (but not actually) supportive independent third-party sources.”

The fact that this disparate group of highly distinguished scholars could reach its verdict with complete unanimity — save for the final, delicate question of what sanction to impose — should give one a great deal of confidence in their verdict. No such confidence can be taken from Churchill’s own statement (available on the Camera’s Web site). A careful reading of the original report, next to his response, shows him to have misstated and ignored the committee’s findings at every stage. Indeed, one might almost laugh at the way his slipshod responses re-enact the very sorts of intellectual failings that the report originally highlighted.

One might laugh, that is, if the whole affair were not so depressing. Perhaps its most unfortunate aspect, beyond the immediate and very serious damage to CU, is the impression it seems to have left in some quarters that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here my own experience is relevant. In the course of my duties evaluating the work of my colleagues, I have never encountered a single instance of fraud or misconduct, or even the bare allegation of such. Additionally, in all of the graduate seminars I have conducted, and dissertations I have read, I have never seen anything even remotely resembling this sort of conduct. Furthermore, over many years of evaluating thousands of job applicants, reviewing their qualifications with the greatest care, I have never seen or heard of even the shadow of this sort of behavior. Finally, in all my years of scholarly research, over the countless articles and books that I have read, I have never encountered anything of this kind.

Happily, it does not fall upon me to decide what sort of penalty is appropriate in this case. But were such misconduct discovered among my own faculty, or in my own field at large, I would be the first to seek that person’s dismissal.

As a professor and chair of the CU philosophy department, Robert Pasnau can certainly and credibly speak from authority. He can also attest to the disdain that the academic community can and should have for indiviuals who besmirch their good name for political gain. These infractions were not made in the course of political tirades such as Churchill’s infamous 9/11 “little Eichmanns”, but in the matter of serious academic research. Employing sock puppets (writing under another’s name), fabricating sources in footnotes, and plagiarism are serious accusations, and having been found guilty of violating established academic norms that safeguard the search for truth and the credibility of academics everywhere, Churchill should be dismissed. His subsequent lawsuit would be much harder to prove, given his guilt. And as a former CU graduate student in History, as well as an undergraduate (class of 2001) at CU, it is with great pleasure that at least one of the faculty suggests his dismissal–although it would be much more heartening if the same number who advocated dropping the investigation over a year ago would now step up, acknowledge that Churchill fooled them, and call for his resignation.

No, Really, Communism Will Work This Time!

Apparently the voters in Calcutta, India haven’t gotten the memo that, a) Communism has not, does not, and will not ever “work”, and b) pictures of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Che are so 20th century:

The people of West Bengal have voted in the Communist Party for the seventh successive time. Humphrey Hawksley has been in the capital, Calcutta meeting the new communists.

Subodh Roy, I see when he stands up to greet me, is a small yet powerful figure.

. . .

“Stalin,” I said. “Was he a good leader?”

“Yes. Yes. Stalin was strong,” he says, his eyes straight on me.

“And Mao Tse-Tung of China?”

“Yes, Mao. He was good. He fought for communism, too, in the Chinese way.”

“But I thought communism had failed?” I said.

“No. No,” replies Mr Roy. “We will get it right this time.”

We are in the headquarters of the Communist Party of West Bengal where the meeting room is adorned with portraits of Stalin, Marx, Engels and Lenin.

There is a bust of Mao and a painting of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, with red banners of the hammer and sickle stretched across the walls.

Also, they seem to have missed the lessons drawn from one of Communism’s greatest gifts to humanity and the Chinese people in particular–the Cultural Revolution.

Reason #1523654 Why A GOP Governor Is Necessary

Especially if the Democrats continue to control both legislative bodies–another reason for Holtzman to drop out:

DENVER — Gov. Bill Owens vetoed 18 bills on Friday, including key Democratic proposals to relieve prescription-drug costs, expand the use of ethanol fuels and ban employers from requiring staffers to participate in political or religious meetings.

Also vetoed were bills to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation, monitor state contracts and simplify contracts for doctors.

Are all of the vetoed bills liberally oriented? No, but Gov. Owens knows how to wield the veto pen, and curtail the Democrats. Was his support of other liberal legislation surprising (Ref. C)? Yes. But at least he defended his position, though he faced a good deal of opposition from his own side. Elected officials won’t always act consistently, or can even live up to lofty ideals (can’t please everyone, all of the time), but in general having Owens for the last eight years was certainly better than a Schoettler or whatshisface (Heath, ha ha).

A successful conservative GOP candidate will certainly help to shape state politics in this state for the next four years, including the 2008 Presidential election and the battle for Allard’s seat. 2010 brings a re-election campaign as well as the ability to structure the congressional layout after the census in 2012, something the Denver Post astutely picked up on. In vetoing the Dems’ legislation Owens is “angering Democratic lawmakers“:

The sweeping range of the vetoes shows that the governor is still in the driver’s seat when setting key policies for the state despite a Democratic takeover of the legislature two years ago.

That is the largest number of vetoes Owens has ever issued in a single day and raises the total number of bills vetoed this session to 32. He also has used his line-item veto power on three budget bills. Last year, Owens vetoed 47 bills.

To top Democratic leaders in the legislature, the vetoes are proof they need a Democratic governor to enact changes.

“Bill Owens provided a pretty good argument for Bill Ritter,” House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, said of the party’s gubernatorial candidate.

“November now looms larger for a lot of reasons, especially in solving the health care crisis,” Romanoff said. “Every month that passes, some Coloradans will be forced to choose filling their refrigerator or filling their medicine cabinet or filling their gas tank, and that’s an unhappy choice.”

That is why a united, conservative GOP candidacy is necessary this year. Beauprez, like any politician, has his faults–and Ritter might be viewed as relatively innocuous as far as Democratic candidates come–but faltering support stemming from a divisive primary battle will not help. As said in a previous post, Holtzman’s support would not come from the “middle” or “independents”, most of whom vote pretty consistently for one side or the other without declaring a party affiliation, but the disaffected GOP voters, fed up with the party nationally, or as a result of a Colorado party breakup. Holtzman might attract the anti-establishment conservatives or libertarians voting in the GOP primary, only to see them sit out the November election, withholding a key segment for a successful Beaurprez campaign.

Nothing would make conservatives happier than to see on a yearly basis the continued effect that vetoes have in “angering” a Democratic legislature–something only possible if the GOP unites now for a single candidate, and Holtzman concedes:

Owens continued to serve as a vigilant watchdog for bills that he considered hurting the economic climate of the state.

“I think the message is the same as last year,” said Owens spokesman Dan Hopkins. “He certainly watches for things like overregulation. He watches for bills that are anti-business.”

Ain’t gonna happen if Ritter gets elected.

Springsteen Plays To The Crowd In Kennedyana–aka Massachusetts

Preaching to the choir just about sums up the latest anti-Bush tirade by “The Boss”:

MANSFIELD, Massachusetts (Reuters) – Branching off from his rock’n’ roll roots, Bruce Springsteen kicked off his summer U.S. tour on Saturday with songs made famous by folk musician and activist Pete Seeger and strong political overtones.

Backed by a raucous 18-piece band, Springsteen played folk tunes including “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the U.S. civil rights movement and “Bring Them Home,” an anti-war song dating to the Vietnam War era.

During a break between songs, he offered harsh words for the administration of President George W. Bush and its handling of last year’s devastating Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, which killed more than 1,500 people in Louisiana alone.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in any American city,” Springsteen said of the flooding and destruction. Referring to Bush, whom he called “President Bystander” in a performance in New Orleans last month, Springsteen added, “He managed to gut the only agency, through political cronyism, that could help people at a time like this.”

Many of the fans at an arena in Mansfield, about 30 miles

south of Boston, said they were happy to hear his thoughts on politics, although they were not sure if he had changed many minds.

“If it gets people informed about the issues, I think that’s good,” said Julie Tambascio, 39, of Boston.

Flemming Rose And The European Politics Of Victimology

Flemming Rose of Jyllands-Posten fame has a new column over at RealClearPolitics–a great daily read–that highlights the culture of victimology, cultural relativism, and immigration failures brought on by negligence and a Left that sees racism and imperialism everywhere, and where those factors will take Europe:

The worldwide furor unleashed by the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that I published last September in Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper where I work, was both a surprise and a tragedy, especially for those directly affected by it. Lives were lost, buildings were torched, and people were driven into hiding.

And yet the unbalanced reactions to the not-so-provocative caricatures — loud denunciations and even death threats toward us, but very little outrage toward the people who attacked two Danish Embassies — unmasked unpleasant realities about Europe’s failed experiment with multiculturalism. It’s time for the Old Continent to face facts and make some profound changes in its outlook on immigration, integration, and the coming Muslim demographic surge. After decades of appeasement and political correctness, combined with growing fear of a radical minority prepared to commit serious violence, Europe’s moment of truth is here.

Europe today finds itself trapped in a posture of moral relativism that is undermining its liberal values. An unholy three-cornered alliance between Middle East dictators, radical imams who live in Europe, and Europe’s traditional left wing is enabling a politics of victimology. This politics drives a culture that resists integration and adaptation, perpetuates national and religious differences, and aggravates such debilitating social ills as high immigrant crime rates and entrenched unemployment.

Read it all.

Holtzman Petitions Onto Primary

Gets the required signatures to make it to the August 8 primary against Beauprez, even after failing at the state assembly:

“The Republican Party has always stood for ballot access. Today is proof that Republican voters of Colorado want a choice in determining who best represents their values,” Holtzman said.

Joshua Sharf at View From a Height sees the Holtzman tactic of painting Beauprez as a RINO as a non-starter, and that Holtzman’s standing as a future candidate will suffer if he ends up costing the GOP the governorship.

The most puzzling thing is that Holtzman’s tactics will endear him to few “moderates” in Colorado in terms of the independent, non-affiliated vote–they can not vote for him anyway in the primary. The state as a whole is trending “purple”, and the anti-incumbent/party sentiment is growing, and no doubt a furious and angry primary run-up will damage the GOP’s image further with that bloc of voters.

Also, Holtzman seems the type–contrarian, anti-establishment, and deep pockets–that would continue even after the primary to target Beauprez, perhaps either by not publicly supporting his candidacy, or even attempting to form a third party/write-in candidacy as a protest vote. There might just be enough hard-line GOP voters to swing that way, and given Gov. Bill Owens’ small margin of victory in 1998, could be enough to give Dem. Bill Ritter the slightest edge in a narrowly contested race.

Cloaking Device A Possibility?

Now we can wage secret wars even more secretively–more fodder for the black helicopter/tinfoil hat moonbat crowd:

Researchers in the US and Britain have unveiled their blueprints for building a cloaking device.

So far, cloaking has been confined to science fiction; in Star Trek it is used to render spacecraft invisible.

Professor Sir John Pendry says a simple demonstration model that could work for radar might be possible within 18 months’ time.

Two separate teams, including Professor Pendry’s, have outlined ways to cloak objects in the journal Science.

These research papers present the maths required to verify that the concept could work. But developing an invisibility cloak is likely to pose significant challenges.

Both groups propose methods using the unusual properties of so-called “metamaterials” to build a cloak.

These metamaterials can be designed to induce a desired change in the direction of electromagnetic waves, such as light. This is done by tinkering with the nano-scale structure of the metamaterial, not by altering its chemistry.

Vicente Fox Visits Utah, Stirs Protests

Gateway Pundit has a roundup and a bunch of photos.

Aljazeera And More Wacky Cartoons

Aljazeera.net’s English website has more wacky cartoons, this time taking aim at a purported Bush invasion of Iran being stalled due to “limited invasion capabilities” and another that sees Statue of Liberty snuffing out a protestor in the immigration debate with a spray canister with the label “Laws”. Funny, when you think about it.

Cartoon series 1–Bush invasion of Iran:

Cartoon series 2–Statue of Liberty snuffing dissent:

The figure being sprayed, having watched the cartoon, is not of an immigrant, but of protestors–protestors being squelched by America’s laws, which is funny a) given the first amendment, and b) the sheer number of people who protested.