Rev. Cornelius: 'I have failed'

The Rev. John Cornelius, a prominent Roman Catholic priest, resigned yesterday amid allegations that he molested at least a dozen men between 1968 and 1985. In a contritely worded statement, Cornelius apologized for the pain he has caused his accusers and the church and for the humiliation he has brought to his family, especially his adopted children.

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I had neglected to post this one, but here's a tale of some jailers who dropped the ball in the maintenance department:

Murderer David Ivy has done the near impossible - twice. Ivy escaped a second time from the Shelby County Jail on Thursday evening - an almost identical jailbreak to one he made 11 years ago. As he did in 1991, Ivy bolted the hard way from the six-story jail, scrambling over sharp razor wire and shimmying down a drainpipe. The local report here said that he had gone through the same hole in the fence and that it hadn't been fixed, but this link is from the Memphis paper, where the escape actually occurred.

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2 pursue, subdue truckload of illegal entrants, police say

A 23-year-old Avra Valley man was arrested early Friday after he and a relative chased a truckload of migrants, pistol-whipped the driver and forced 14 others to the ground at gunpoint, authorities said. The men, Nathan Marty Ryan and 44-year-old Victor H. Cantrell, told Pima County sheriff's officials that the migrants' truck almost hit their Chevrolet Blazer while speeding with its lights off near Avra Valley Road near the Silverbell Mine at 1:30 a.m.

The two vehicles came to a stop at a bar in the 16500 block of West Avra Valley Road and Ryan grabbed the driver, 29-year-old Juan Rubio, striking him in the head several times with his handgun, according to the migrants. The group said Ryan continued assaulting Rubio as the man tried to escape.

Four of the migrants ran into the desert, the report says, while Cantrell ordered the 14 others from the truck at gunpoint and had them lie on the ground until deputies arrived.

Nathan Ryan was taken to the Pima County Jail on one count of aggravated assault with a firearm and held until early Friday afternoon, when he was released to Pre-Trial Services.

EXCUSE ME? This man was protecting his country, and was outnumbered 15-2. What did they expect him to do? In the days after September 11, we can't be too careful, and anybody crossing the border illegally should be treated as a criminal, regardless of what Vicente Fox may think. The migrants are just lucky that the guy didn't start shooting first and asking questions later.

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SCAM ALERT - The Internal Revenue Service is warning taxpayers of a fraudulent scheme currently circulating that uses fictitious bank correspondence and IRS forms in an attempt to trick taxpayers into disclosing their personal and banking data. The information fraudulently obtained is then used to steal the taxpayer’s identity and bank account deposits. The full press release can be found here.

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This is pretty wild. Twelve Muslims and twelve Jews that have been getting together on a regular basis for the past two years. And it's happening right here in my home town.

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Glenn Reynolds asks if this teen sex debate will set off more Google hits among the blogosphere. I figured someone had to check, and that someone might as well be me. I did a Google search on "teen sex blog." The first one to come up among bloggers I recognized was Ben Domenech. Others not far behind were Matt Welch and, of course, Glenn Reynolds. If this debate continues, the numbers may swell.

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Via OxBlog:

A NYT MASTHEAD EDITORIAL today praises a bill sponsored by Representative Stephen Horn (R-CA) which would annul President Bush's executive order allowing a sitting or former president to indefinitely allow the public release of the former president's papers. This bill isn't necessary. As this New Republic article explains, any attempt to keep non-classified, non-private presidential papers out of the public realm more than 12 years after the president leaves office violates the 1978 Presidential Records Act. An executive order can interpret the law, but it can never authorize violation of the law. President Bush's continuing refusal to release the records is illegal, plain and simple, and someone needs to take him to court on this one.

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The U.S. News cover story is about teen sex. It's a very controversial issue in these times:

Kids from all walks of life are having sex at younger and younger ages–nearly 1 in 10 reports losing his or her virginity before the age of 13, a 15 percent increase since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 16 percent of high school sophomores have had four or more sexual partners. One in four sexually active teens will contract a sexually transmitted disease, or STD, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. And despite a solid 20 percent decrease in the teen birthrate between 1991 and 1999, 20 percent of sexually active girls 15 to 19 get pregnant each year, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

It seems like everyone from the blogosphere has an opinion on this issue: (all links courtesy InstaPundit.

Glenn Reynolds fueled the debate by daring to put the subject in the open. I tend to agree with Glenn on this subject.

Any reader over the age of 40 likely has a parent that was under the age of 20 when they were married. Do the math. It was okay for our parents, so we saw no problem with it when we came of age. Yet we condemn it in our own children. It does appear to be out of hand. However, rather than to brand these youth as morally tainted, which is what the religious right would like to accomplish, conservatives need to look back on their own teenage years. Kids are GOING to have sex. It happened then, it's going to happen now.
Again, do the math. The abstinence programs that the Bush administration is palnning aren't going to cut it. Bush is pandering to the so-called conservatives and the religious right, when what will indeed work is education. These kids need to know what the consequences of their actions will be. We don't live in the 1970s any more. Sex can kill you. Period. And there's no reason to play politics with a child's life.

Jonah Goldberg over at The Corner had this to add:

We aren’t allowed to worry about pre-marital sex anymore – and you wouldn’t necessarliy catch me getting on a soapbox about it. But teen sex is premarital sex with a host of problems piled on top. Glenn, if it makes you feel better, think of "Teen" as a catchall phrase for poorly-educated people with raging hormones and bad or no jobs, little life experience and few life skills, who mostly live with their parents. People -- of any age – who fit this description shouldn’t be having too much sex, if you ask me.

Katie Allison Granju, who runs a blog regarding parenting issues, had her spin:

Charles Oliver has a whole series of posts regarding this issue.

Also, at the Corner, Robert George added this to the debate:

Hmmm...after 8 on a Friday evening and The Corner is still active--proving I guess that conservatives REALLY have no lives! On the sex vs. teen sex debate, Oliver does make a good point, on which conservatives will agree: "Teen" sex is a relatively recent phenomenon because the "teenager" is a recent phenomenon. For all intents and purposes, teenagers are a 20th century creation, maybe even second half of the 20th century at that. Consider Teddy Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush were men doing manly things (like going off to war and such) well before their 20th birthdays. "Teendom" is a conceit of the post-war suburban leisure class. Furthermore, there is an interesting tension in society's where we insist that teenagers be treated as children when it comes to sex, but as adults when it comes to murder. Of course, this is not to say that people should murder only after they are married.

RiShawn Biddle offers up something I wish I had said myself. I'd never read RiShawn's blog until now. It appears to be a libertarian page, and the writing is very good. Welcome to the permalinks, RiShawn! You'll be getting an e-mail soon. Anyway, here's what I gleaned off his page:

What we should be concerned about is the fact that teenagers aren't being adequately educated either about contraception. Yes conservatives and my fellow pro-lifers, teens should learn about abstinence as well. But since teens eventually progress from heavy petting to getting busy behind the blechers, they should have a fail-safe. According to the pro-abortion outfit Alan Guttmacher Institute, only one in six jailbait are using both condoms and another form of birth control, while many teens don't use the stuff consistently or adequately. The solution to this problem neither lies in government or churches. It lies with parents. Couldn't agree with you more, RiShawn. If anyone saw The O'Reilly Factor last night, it was about the corruption of children. It basically came down to parents.

Naturally, the gang over at TAPPED has come to Glenn's defense. But listen to what they say:

We basically agree with Reynolds about this topic. We're surprised it's controversial, because A) nobody is going to stop teenagers from having sex; and B) while it's undoubtedly a bad or risky thing for some teenagers, for others the opposite is probably true. Here's the key point, though. Not only can we not abide the culture warrior scolds who make out that teen sex is inherently evil. Such talk is hardly a good way of making sure that teenagers don't have sex until they're ready, or that when they do have sex (as they inevitably will) they do so safely.

Apologies for the lengthy post. Thanks again to Glenn Reynolds for the links.

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When priests commit suicide:

This article shows what happens to an abusive priest when he can no longer deal with the consequences of his actions.

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It only gets worse:

A Phoenix FBI agent's memo warning about terrorists at flight schools last summer was sent to the same FBI counter-terrorism supervisor in Washington who dealt with suspicions in Minnesota surrounding flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui, government officials said Friday.

But, for unknown reasons, the supervisor apparently never saw agent Kenneth Williams' memo, officials said.

This might explain things...

Many field agents echoed Rowley's complaints about how things don't get taken seriously at headquarters unless they are developed there. Even special Al Qaeda trackers in a New York-based unit complained that their efforts weren't given proper respect at headquarters, even before Mueller moved earlier this month to consolidate almost all counter-terrorism activities at headquarters.

"It just shows the dissatisfaction with Mueller among street agents," one official said. "He is not perceived as defending the people in the field. There are two FBIs: headquarters and people in the field. And the feeling is that they are circling the wagons only at headquarters. There are some really bright investigators in the field, and they sometimes feel like they are not taken seriously enough."

At what cost, Director Mueller?

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I was waiting for this to break. I heard it mentioned on Fox News earlier and it ticked me off. Pregnant South Korean women are traveling to the United States to deliver their children. Why? So they can be born here - and automatically enjoy the benefits of United States citizenship.

One might say it is the ultimate gift that South Korean parents can give their newborns. Those who can cough up the $20,000 or so it costs are coming to the United States by the thousands to give birth so their newborns can have American citizenship. Their reasons range from a desire to enroll their offspring in American schools to enabling them to avoid South Korean military service.

"Even though it is not illegal immigration per se, it is exploiting a loophole," said Jack Martin, a project director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based group that advocates restrictions on immigration.

The federation is especially critical of what it calls anchor babies, whom mothers arrange to have in the United States with the hope that the child will later help the entire family immigrate. Under the law, a U.S. citizen cannot sponsor anyone for immigration purposes until the age of 21, but according to Martin, the long wait is not a deterrent.

"It is hard to conceptualize a strategy that is so long-term with regard to U.S. citizenship, but that's what they are doing--establishing a foothold," he said. The federation says 165,000 babies are born in the United States each year to illegal immigrants, most of them from Mexico.

If foreign citizens are going to come over here for the simple reason to establish citizenship for their children, perhaps they may want to think about leaving the country from whence they came, and entering here - legally. It sounds like they wanted to be here all along.

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The FBI was apathetic toward terrorism according to an agent assigned to the Phoenix bureau.

The letter, written five months before the now-famous flight school warning memo by Phoenix agent Kenneth Williams became public, portrayed counter-terrorism as "the lowest investigative priority in the Phoenix Division."

Despite such activities, the commitment to anti-terrorism by some in top management at the Phoenix office was lukewarm at best, according to Hauswirth. One top Phoenix FBI official described anti-terrorism investigations as "hokey-pokey work" before Sept. 11, he wrote.

The article goes into further detail, but you get the idea.

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Steven den Beste reports that there has been a resolution to the "Internet Twins" case. Well, sort of.

The parents of twin girls caught in an international adoption dispute last year will not be granted custody and the toddlers will remain under state care, a judge ruled Friday.

Two years ago, a California couple, Richard and Vickie Allen, said they paid an Internet broker $6,000 to adopt the twins. They said Tranda Wecker later took them for a visit and never returned. The twins were subsequently adopted by a Welsh couple, Judith and Alan Kilshaw, who said they paid the same broker $12,000. The Kilshaws gave up their custody fight in Britain last year and a judge there ordered the twins sent back to St. Louis in April.

I remember seeing this story on Dateline a while back. The girls are probably better off wherever they end up, considering what I recall of the report.

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The "shoe bomber" may not be tied to Al-Qaeda after all: (link courtesy Ken Layne)

U.S. officials disclosed Thursday that they are investigating whether Richard Reid's attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner last year was part of an effort by an Islamic militant group other than Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network to wage war against America.

But in an interview, the federal law enforcement official confirmed that authorities are now looking particularly hard at whether two Palestinian terrorist organizations--Hamas and Hezbollah--were also somehow involved, which would mark a dramatic shift in the agendas of both groups.

This could be particularly troubling. These guys are trying to take over the PA, and if they're getting militant on American targets, we could be in for a heap of trouble.

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I know it's a big case, but Chandra Levy is dead. My condolences go out to her family. However, she ain't coming back. And I'd rather not hear media reports every 15 minutes about the latest new forensic evidence. I'm already getting tired of it. It's time to move on to the Next Big Thing.

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More drivel from the INS:

The U.S. immigration service hopes to expand use of a commuter lane that allows motorists who have passed criminal background checks to quickly cross the border from Mexico, the head of the agency said Friday.

James Ziglar, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the agency will spend $1 million to reduce the time required to pass the background check required for the "Sentri" commuter lane at two border crossings in San Diego.

This is money that could have been given to the Border Patrol to help stem the flow of illegal immigration. Instead, it only helps them to get into the country.

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If there is any wonder why the INS is in such a mess, look no further than the person in charge:

"No one likes the idea that people came into the country illegally, but it's not practical or reasonable to think that you're going to be able to round them all up and send them home," James Ziglar said during a joint press conference with Mexican officials at the Tucson Border Patrol station.

Added Ziglar: "We need to set up a regime where we don't have to spend so much of our time and effort in enforcement activities dealing with people who are not terrorists, who are not threats to our national security, who are economic refugees."

Mr. Ziglar, in your idyllic situation, how do you know that one of these "economic refugees" is NOT a terrorist in disguise? The enemy may have outsmarted you - big time. We are probably fortunate that terrorists haven't already crossed our southern border, or our northern border, for that matter. The border with Mexico will always be insecure, until we take it seriously, or something awful happens. Let's not allow politics to get in the way of our national security.

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UPDATE:

Pope accepts Weakland's resignation

Pope John Paul II has quickly granted Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland's request to speed up his retirement, with the Vatican announcing on Friday that Weakland's resignation had been accepted.

Archdiocesan officials were holding a series of internal meetings Friday as repercussions continued to flow from the previous day's revelations that the archdiocese paid $450,000 in 1998 to silence a former Marquette University theology student who alleged that Weakland sexually assaulted him more than 20 years ago. At the time, the student was in his early 30s and Weakland was in his early 50s.

Andrew Sullivan has a different spin on this event. Since Weakland didn't abuse a minor, he didn't commit a crime. He's only guilty of crimes committed against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, since he paid his lover with church funds. Andrew, you're exactly right. However, what the former archbishop did was abuse his power. As a respected figure in the community, he knew that his word was golden, and that nobody would believe the student had he gone to the authorities. Archbishop Weakland could have gotten away with doing this with anyone - adult or not. You and I seem to agree on this issue, however, I have little compassion for the archbishop. He may have been in an adult relationship, as you claim, but as a priest, he had taken a vow of celibacy. He was required to give up one life to keep the other.

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I'll admit it. I'm a big John McCain fan. However, I doubt I'm as big a fan as Elizabeth Drew is right now. Her book, "Citizen McCain," is revied in today's New York Times, and she heaps on the praise:

"He understood that there was a more civic-minded streak, an idealism, in the public than more conventional politicians appealed to. His disdain for the conventions of politics had gained him a large following — which went beyond the more than six million people who voted for him in 2000. He had an effortless feel for the national psyche and a natural instinct for the right thing to say."

I may have to pick up a copy. After all, the man is one of my senators.

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The government is misleading us on the air marshals thing:

The government has cut training for federal air marshal applicants and put new hires on flights without requiring the advanced marksmanship skills the program used to demand, USA TODAY has learned.

HOWEVER...
According to this post from the FAA website:
The Civil Aviation Security Specialist (Federal Air Marshal) vacancy announcement closed May 14, 2002. We are not currently accepting applications for Federal Air Marshal positions.

So they're not only training the ones they have, they're not hiring any more! What happened to this big plan that Congress had of putting marshals on every flight?

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As a Phoenix resident, I don't really read the Tucson papers much. It's not that nothing goes on down there, it's that Tucson is the "other" city to us up in the Phoenix area, and we really don't follow the goings on there. It's a type of state rivalry that goes on in other states as well, where there are two decent sized markets in the same state, and both go about their business as if the other didn't exist? For example, when was the last time somebody in Cincinnati picked up a copy of the Plain Dealer? Or a Philadelphian ventured to read the Post-Gazette? However, the most blatant example of this has to come in the Empire State. Could you imagine seeing a person sitting in Central Park reading the Albany Times-Union? Me either.

However, I've decided to think outside the box for a bit. The Tucson newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, is not a bad newspaper. I like it because they are not afraid to publish articles that "mainstream" newspapers won't run because they are afraid to offend people. The story about the Border Patrol agent being shot DID NOT RUN in any major newspaper. It did make the Washington Times, but not the Post. The Arizona Republic failed to run it and it happened here. The only news network to air it was Fox News, and that was only because it got the ear of Bill O'Reilly.

Why am I so outraged over this? Because the congressman whose district this shooting this occurred has yet to make a statement in. That's Rep. Ed Pastor (D-AZ), by the way. After redistricting, he'll become my congressman. I plan on making his term in office an uncomfortable one, if he plans on "business as usual."

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Just what we need. The government creating more instant millionaires in our society.

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are nearing agreement on changes in the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund that would allow scores of American families from past terrorist attacks to receive hundreds of millions of dollars collectively in compensation.

The deal calls for providing compensation to the families of the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as the families of the 168 killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, according to aides to both men. On average, the payments would total $1.85 million per family, according to Senate negotiators. The changes would add nearly $324 million to the final cost of the victims' fund. Fund officials estimate that the total cost will be $4 billion, after taking into account benefits that families receive from other sources.

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MUST HAVE BEEN SOMETHING I SAID. - This blog is fairly new, as it just went up in March. However, my hit counter went from under 400 to over 800 in less than 24 hours. It stayed at under 100 for a LONG time. So a big THANK YOU to those of you that are reading, and as always, feel free to refer me.

UPDATE: I just noticed that I've been permalinked over on Bill Quick's page. That might be a better explanation, as he gets more hits over there.

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The INS is spending more of your hard earned tax dollars. Why? To assist illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants lost in the vast desert near Yuma this summer will be able to summon help by pressing a button on one of six 30-foot tall rescue beacons.

The Mexican government also announced Wednesday that it's setting up similar solar-powered rescue towers. The 100-foot-high beacons will be visible from up to six miles away.

The Mexican government is going to HELP its people leave the country, and we're going to make sure that they arrive safely. I say to heck with that. Replace or enhance the Border Patrol with an blockade made up of soldiers, tanks and helicopters. If Ronald Reagan had caught wind of Mexican troops crossing the U.S. border and firing on our agents, the Marines would have landed on Vicente Fox's doorstep in 24 hours or less. Remember how quickly Grenada and Panama took effect? Maybe President Bush might want to consider tearing a page out of the history books.

Kathryn Jean Lopez agrees with me as well.

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They may be able to catch one of these cardinals after all:

Archbishop Rembert Weakland and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee paid a former Marquette University graduate student $450,000 in 1998 after he claimed he was sexually assaulted by Weakland more than 20 years before, documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel show.

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Here's an example of a man who's sacrificing for his country:

Cardinals strong safety Pat Tillman is ready to sign a three-year deal - not with the team, but with the U.S. Army.

Tillman, 25, informed Cardinals coaches and owner Bill Bidwill on Wednesday that he plans to join the Army and wants to be a Ranger. He has taken a physical and plans to sign papers next week and enter boot camp.

Last year, he declined to pursue a five-year, $9 million offer from the St. Louis Rams because he felt loyalty to the Cardinals.

One at least has to admire the man's unselfishness.

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Guess it can happen in my hometown as well:

A Scottsdale priest with a history of sexual misconduct was allowed to continue ministering to women and children despite a warning from therapists that after six months of counseling he posed a risk to the church.

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Abercrombie and Fitch is in trouble again:

Abercrombie & Fitch Co., an apparel retailer that is no stranger to controversy, has sparked outrage again by selling thong underwear to young girls.

Some underwear had the words "wink wink" and "eye candy" printed on the front, said Don Wildmon, founder and executive director of the Tupelo, Miss.-based association.

I personally think they're doing this for publicity's sake. Any of these thongs that actually got sold will become collectors items, and go for top dollar on the Internet. The Asian T-shirts were going for over $1000 apiece on EBay shortly after they were pulled from the shelves. Although A&F will likely not lose its main customer base, it may have turned off some parents - who control a lot of the purse strings of the teenagers that shop there. Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for the story.

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Joanne Jacobs sends us yet another sob story of the poor Mexican immigrant in San Francisco.

Groups also have pointed to institutionalized racism as a barrier to success for Mexican-Americans, along with the added disadvantage for some of arriving without documents to work legally.

Their ancestors came here illegally. Now we have to bail them out for generations to come? By the way, if you'll look at the article below this one, you'll also notice that their army is shooting at us. Sorry, Joanne, but I don't buy it.

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UPDATE #2:

Arizona Daily Star:

A U.S. Border Patrol agent shot a Mexican border-crosser on the Tohono O'odham Reservation last week in an incident apparently unrelated to Friday's shooting involving what are believed to be Mexican soldiers.

Agents on all-terrain vehicles intercepted a pickup carrying four illegal entrants last Wednesday, said Dulce M. Rojo Mascareño, spokeswoman for the Mexican consulate in Tucson. The encounter was near what's known as the Christmas Gate, an informal border-crossing in the southwestern part of the reservation, said Border Patrol spokesman Ryan Scudder.

The Mexican consulate in Tucson has requested an investigation of the shooting by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General. The FBI is investigating the case as an assault on a federal officer.

Naturally, the Mexican government wants an investigation when their citizens enter the United States ILLEGALLY and get fired upon. What do they expect? If a U.S. citizen ends up in a Mexican jail, he's pretty much on his own. So which Mexican state should we annex? Sonora? Sinaloa? Baja California? Chihauhua? This could be fun.

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UPDATE:

From the Washington Times:
A Justice Department official, who asked not to be named, said there were reports of other incursions Tuesday night and yesterday morning.
In the first incident, an agent spotted at least six individuals in U.S. territory along the All American Canal in California who appeared to be Mexican officials, though he couldn't determine whether they were law enforcement or military, armed with machine guns. They recrossed the border into Mexico after a few minutes. Then, yesterday, an agent saw three people who appeared to be Mexican military officers carrying rifles at a different location along the canal.

When are we going to send troops into Mexico? It's certainly startegically more important to us than Israel, which is halfway across the world, and devoid of natural resources. And the Israelis aren't crossing our borders and shooting at our citizens. Time to go into Tijuana with a tank.

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From Eristic comes a valid argument for racial profiling on airlines.

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Via Bob Owen: Captain Kirk's chair is going up on the auction block. The dealer estimates the value of the chair to be between $100,000 and $150,000.

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A terminally ill Australian woman has commited suicide. What separated this woman from others like her? She was a blogger.

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Appeal denied.

DEDHAM, Mass. -- An appeals panel on Wednesday refused to reduce defrocked priest John Geoghan's nine- to 10-year sentence for groping a boy, a punishment his lawyer called overly harsh.

Is the lawyer referring to Geoghan or the boy when he says that the punishment was "overly harsh?"

• • • • •

 
O'Reilly lends his support to Hillary's presidential campaign?

Now, some people say I'm misguided. Mrs. Clinton is certainly not a socialist, that extreme. But they're wrong. In the year 2001, Senator Clinton voted for almost every spending bill that crossed her desk. The Taxpayers Union says she is the biggest-spending freshman senator in U.S. history.
And the reason for that is Hillary Clinton believes that government has a right to take an enormous amount of money from affluent Americans and give it to other Americans who don't have much money.

That is called the redistribution of income. Mrs. Clinton also believes in cradle-to-grave entitlements, that the government has a responsibility to make sure every American has a certain level of care paid for by working taxpayers.
So what Mrs. Clinton wants for the USA is to take a huge amount of money from private citizens and give it to other citizens in a never-ending government merry-go-round.
That's what they do in Sweden, Norway, and other quasi-socialistic countries. But it is not what the founding fathers had in mind for America.

Now, the reason Mrs. Clinton is doing this is political, not ideological. She herself lives in splendor, two multimillion-dollar homes, all living expenses paid. So she's not a Spartan socialist in her personal life. But Mrs. Clinton knows the only way she can get elected to public office is by pandering to Americans who don't have very much, promising to give them more.
And the key word here is "give them."
So I did call Mrs. Clinton a socialist, and I'm not sorry. She will run for president in the year 2008 on the Democratic ticket, which Talking Points has now renamed the Democratic Socialist ticket.

• • • • •

 
Jeers to the Washington Post and the L.A. Times for biased headlines regarding the Mideast conflict. There was indeed another (insert favorite adjective here) bombing in Israel today, and also Israeli forces killed a Palestinian militant. According to the reports, two Israeli civilians died in the attack, along with the attacker. In addition to the militant, that means that two people on both sides died today. Why are the headlines regarding the attack on the Israelis so much larger? The story on the Palestinian militant is a subheadline and is smaller. Had it been the other way around, I still would have protested the way it was presented by these two publications. I would have rather seen it presented from one side only, like the New York Times and most everyone else chose to do, or not at all. But to see on side trivialized by two of the largest newspapers in the country makes me want to get my news from Arab News.

• • • • •

 
The remains of Chandra Levy have been found. Now the question remains - how did they get there?

• • • • •

 
Why does it seem as if we are ignoring things like this?

Investigators are trying to confirm whether it was a Mexican soldier who shot at a U.S. Border Patrol agent Friday night on the Tohono O'odham Nation.

An agent reported coming across three heavily armed Mexican soldiers riding in a Humvee near Papago Farms, about 90 miles southwest of Tucson.

The agent said he drove away, but a shot ripped through the windows of his Border Patrol vehicle as he fled.

[Edward 'Bud'] Tuffly questioned why the U.S. government was slow to acknowledge the incident publicly and he said in an online message to union members that he expects "the politicians will run like hell to avoid 'offending' anyone."

It took until Tuesday afternoon for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to issue a statement confirming the incident, including the Mexican military's possible involvement.

I actually heard this story yesterday on O'Reilly. From a United States Congressman. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has been aware of this all along. And he's pretty ticked off about it too.

The U.S. Border Patrol Agent, who wishes to remain anonymous, informed Rep. Tancredo during a phone conversation that approximately five miles north of the U.S./Mexico border, one the "GS-11" agents out of the Ajo border patrol station noticed a military helicopter flying overhead, heading south towards Mexico. Shortly thereafter, he came upon a humvee, which not only began to approach him, but to fire upon his vehicle. According to the agent’s testimony, the vehicles rear window and back driver’s side windows were destroyed. Fortunately, the agent was able to flee the incursion unharmed and concluded the conversation by stating, "As far as I am concerned, that [incursion] should be an act of war."

On May 3, 2002, Rep. Tancredo issued a letter to Mexican President Vicente Fox to reveal the "incursions" made by members of the Mexican Army and law enforcement agencies onto American soil. Rep. Tancredo never received a response from President Fox.

Maybe President Fox needs to hear from a higher source. President Bush, are you listening?

UPDATE: This isn't the first time this has been reported in recent years.

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