In a stunning revelation at an Arizona town hall meeting this past Friday, Republican Senator Jon Kyl told his constituents that President Obama privately insisted that he will not secure the border until amnesty for illegal aliens passes first. According to Kyl, Obama argued that Democrats would lose their bargaining chips for any type of amnesty if the government beefs up its presence on the chaotic border. “The problem is,” Obama allegedly told Kyl, “If we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6qOtpNochU

SEN. JON KYL:  I met with the president in the Oval Office, just the two of us… Here’s what the president said.  “The problem is,” he said, “If we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.”

[gasps from the audience]

KYL:  In other words they’re holding it hostage.  They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with comprehensive immigration reform.  I explained, “You and I have an obligation to secure the border.  That’s an obligation.  It also has some potentially positive benefits.  You don’t have to have comprehensive immigration to secure the border, but you have to have a secure border to get comprehensive immigration reform.  You may be surprised, maybe you don’t think that there’d be any more incentive, but I’m not so sure that that’s true.  In any event, it doesn’t matter we’re supposed to secure the border.”

That’s why this is being done.  They want to get something in return for doing their duty.  And that’s—

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Chicago politics.

KYL: Yeah.

A shockingly unsurprising and completely unexpectedly expected report

Just weeks after the failed car bombing of New York’s Times Square, the Department of Homeland Security says “the number and pace of attempted attacks against the United States over the past nine months have surpassed the number of attempts during any other previous one-year period.”

That grim assessment is contained in an unclassified DHS intelligence memo prepared for various law enforcement groups, which says terror groups are expected to try attacks inside the United States with “increased frequency.”

CNN obtained a copy of the document, dated May 21, which goes on to warn, “we have to operate under the premise that other operatives are in the country and could advance plotting with little or no warning.”

What’s behind this? Well, one reason mentioned by the report

The report say U.S. officials “lack insights in specific details, timing and intended targets,” but trends indicate terrorists are looking for “smaller, more achievable attacks against easily accessible targets.“

Changing tactics by al Qaeda and the wannabees. Makes sense. They have not given up, and, thanks to George W. Bush, it is extraordinarily difficult for terrorist groups to launch the large scale, complicated attacks anymore. But, all it takes, really, is one nut with a couple thousand bucks and a little knowledge.

Of course, then there is the “new presidents will be tested” theory, which is certainly true. Of course, Obama is no longer new, and nation-states and groups have been testing Obama since day one, and have found his policies awesome for their agendas. Notice that it is in the past 9 months. The left cannot blame this on Bush (though they will certainly try. I can think of a few “Blame Bush” spins offhand), as he is long gone. This is strictly laid at the feet of Obama and his administration, which, at least on the surface, appears to regard terrorism as strictly a law enforcement issue. Yes, law enforcement does play a part in it, usually at the point of arresting the suspect after the attack or attempted attack. Sometimes, they get the person beforehand, but, really, most law enforcement divisions do not have units that investigate pre-crime.

Terrorists see an administration which seems to want to do their investigations over here in the USA. In all fairness, that is not entirely true, as some releases of secret material, such as the report from the NY Times about using the military for spying, shows. And Obama is trying to kill them “over there,” allowing all sorts of expanded strikes in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa area. That said, the appearance of treating terrorists like drug smugglers certainly emboldens them to go for it. Hey, maybe they are just pissed off that the Obama admin and leading Democrats refuse to acknowledge their Islamic extremist nature, and want to show these chumps what it actually is in an “ignore me, will you? I’ll show ya!” moment.

As federal authorities continue to investigate the failed Times Square car bombing, New York lawmakers are lobbing accusations at the Obama administration of “short-changing” anti-terror funding there.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y says the Department of Homeland Security is giving the city $111 million for mass transit security, a 27 percent cut from last year, and $34 million for port security, a 25 percent cut from last year.

But the administration says King is ignoring $100 million in stimulus funding that gives New York City a total of $245 million for port and transit security, a 24 percent increase from the Bush administration.

King counters that the stimulus money is from last year and is not renewed each year.

The quarrel comes just two weeks after a failed car bombing attempt in New York’s Times Square. The primary suspect, Faisal Shahzad, is cooperating with federal authorities who arrested three Pakistani men on Thursday.

King and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have voiced frustration this week that the administration has decreased the amount of money New York will get to protect against terror attacks.

Schumer says New York is “the prime target for terrorism in the US,” and that “federal anti-terror funding needs to reflect that reality.”

But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the city has left more than $275 million in federal anti-terror funds on the table going back to 2006.

On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sent a letter to King, saying her department is “concerned” that the funding for port and transit security “has not yet been drawn down.”

In the letter, Napolitano said that DHS wants to “ensure these funds are put to work quickly.”

But King says that is news to him.

“I met with Secretary Napolitano on Thursday morning. She never even mentioned this to me. What they are talking about?” King told Fox News on Saturday.

“Any money that has not been used is because it’s being held up in their bureaucracy,” he said. “For them to take this cheap shot is really disgraceful. Do you really think Mayor Bloomberg would be holding $275 million in the bank with all the terrible economic crisis that face New York and the terrible security crisis that face us?”

It is not only New York’s early evening theatre-goers who have reason to be thankful for the incompetence of the man who attempted to blow up Times Square. Barack Obama’s reputation for being a lucky president has been further enhanced – he might, after all, have been dealing with the horrific aftermath of yet another major terrorist act on American soil. Filled with three propane tanks, gas cans, a gun box, firecrackers and two clocks, the car bomb parked in the heart of the entertainment district at 6.30pm last Saturday was designed to cause carnage.

But in a rerun of the failed al-Qaeda attempt to blow up a London nightclub in the summer of 2007, the bomber’s device produced only a tell-tale plume of white smoke. This alerted the city’s bomb-disposal teams, which were then able to disarm the apparatus in good time.

The bomber also conveniently left his keys in the ignition, which, with the mobile phone number he kindly provided to the woman who sold him the rusting 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, enabled law-enforcement agencies to have their prime suspect safely locked up just 53 hours and 20 minutes after the vehicle was abandoned.

If nothing else, the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Pakistani-American who has been charged with a wide range of terrorist offences and faces life imprisonment without parole if convicted, demonstrates the ability of America’s anti-terrorism agencies to deal efficiently and effectively with such threats. Since the events of 9/11, senior national security officials have taken great pride in the fact that they have succeeded in preventing a repeat attack. Last year, astute police work foiled a plot to bomb New York’s subway, and planned attacks against a New York synagogue and a Dallas skyscraper have similarly been thwarted.

But the Americans have also had their fair share of lucky escapes, including the attempt last Christmas by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a British-educated Nigerian student, to detonate explosives sewn into his underpants as his flight prepared to land at Detroit. Had Abdulmutallab succeeded, he might have inflicted a mortal wound on Mr Obama’s presidency. Jimmy Carter, another idealistic Democrat president, never recovered from the humiliation suffered after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized the staff of the American embassy in Tehran in late 1979.

At the end of last year Mr Obama’s popularity ratings were in free fall, and a terror attack on US soil would probably have ensured he shared with Mr Carter the ignominy of serving only one term in office – particularly as it transpired that Abdulmutallab was known to intelligence officials, and should never have been allowed to board a flight bound for American airspace.

Since then, the passage of the president’s health reform legislation, and his recent attacks on Wall Street, have seen his fortunes recover.

But many Americans continue to entertain doubts about their commander-in-chief’s ability to defend the country from its enemies. This is partly due to the confused approach Mr Obama has adopted in confronting the threat posed by Islamist extremists. At a time when former inmates of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility have been blamed for establishing a new al-Qaeda infrastructure in Yemen, the Obama administration remains committed to closing the camp – while admitting it has no idea what to do with the remaining inmates.

The decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, in a Manhattan court as a common criminal has provoked much criticism, with even prominent Democrats arguing that he should be treated as a mass-murdering terrorist, and be tried by a military tribunal. Decisions such as this are prompted primarily by Mr Obama’s desire to distance himself from the uncompromising methods adopted by the previous Bush administration. But the attempt to claim the moral high ground has also made him vulnerable to accusations that he is giving terrorists an easy ride.

Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, publicly criticised the White House for charging Abdulmutallab immediately after his arrest, rather than treating him as an enemy combatant and referring him to America’s “High Value Interrogation Group”, which specialises in interrogating al-Qaeda terrorists. Similar accusations are being made over the handling of Shahzad, who was charged with terrorism offences within hours of his arrest, thereby limiting the opportunity for counter-terrorism experts to interrogate the al-Qaeda suspect.

Shahzad’s case is different, in that, as a naturalised American citizen, he is afforded more rights than a foreign suspect. The emergence of home-grown Islamist terror cells is a relatively new phenomenon, and the authorities will now pay particular attention to the estimated 200,000 Pakistani Americans resident in the country. Critics argue that Shahzad could have provided valuable information about the links between Pakistan-based cells and US-based Islamist militants had he been handled differently.

Mr Obama will insist that his approach is right. But all it would take is one successful al-Qaeda attack for the president to find that his lucky streak had come to an abrupt end.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xupOQSvnas

Ryan Mauro, an intelligence analyst with the Asymmetric Warfare and Intelligence Center, flags this new video by the Russian company Concern Morinformsystem-Agat selling its Club-K Container Missile System. Mauro reports:

The system allows a weak nation to strike the land and sea targets of a superior force by placing cruise missiles into any type of 40 foot container. The video uses a ship, truck and train as examples of potential launching platforms. This means that once this weapon is sold, any of these transportation vehicles have to be seen as missile pads.
…
these vehicles can cross borders, making it more difficult to identify the perpetrator of an attack and impossible to predict where an attack might come from. The missiles might from a shipping vessel off the coast or a truck that crossed via the Mexican border. With a range of 220 kilometers, or about 136 miles, they can either be fired from a safe distance from the border or the distance can be minimized by getting close to the target by being hidden.

This game-changing new threat is not new to conservatives, but the Obama administration has chosen to completely ignore it thus leaving our nation vulnerable to attack. Heritage fellow Baker Spring explains:

The [Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report's] assessment of the projected expansion of ballistic missile capabilities suffers from a central contradiction and several errors of omission. The report’s central contradiction is that, while pointing to the increasing range of missile inventories around the world, it downplays the capabilities to attack the U.S. homeland.

In fact, justifying the distinction between capabilities to attack the U.S. homeland and regional threats is difficult on two grounds. First, missile development programs do not pursue shorter-range and long-range missile technology independently of each of other. For example, Iran has already fielded a number of different shorter-range missiles and has launched a satellite, which demonstrates an inherent capability to field longer-range missiles capable of carrying light warheads. Second, states with shorter-range missiles could pursue alternative deployment options to give them the ability to attack the U.S. homeland. The most obvious option is to place short-range missiles and launchers on cargo vessels off the U.S. coast.

And what could the U.S. possibly deploy to protect against such a weapon? The Airborne Laser. Problem is, since the Obama administration decided to ignore the threat from short-range missiles like the Club K, President Obama decided to kill the program. Heritage fellow James Carafano explains the consequences:

If Iran has one missile and nuclear weapon, it might have two. It could detonate one over New York in a low-altitude air burst that would kill up to a half-million and cripple Manhattan forever.

Iran could fire a second at high altitude over the mid-Atlantic states, creating an electro-magnetic pulse that would take down a large portion of the national grid and plunge Washington, D.C., into permanent darkness.

America would be crippled in a flash, with no obvious enemy at which to shoot back.

An ABL could help neutralize this threat, and others. Advancing the technology alone will give the U.S. a dramatic advantage over potential adversaries.

But if the administration has its way, we’ll see the ABL in the Smithsonian, rather than defending our coasts.

The Pentagon on Monday will release long-classified statistics about the total size of America’s nuclear arsenal, part of an effort to make the case that the country is honoring its treaty commitments to shrink its inventory of weapons significantly, senior administration officials said Sunday.

The American initiative will be cast by the White House as a small but significant step toward allowing the world to measure whether President Obama makes good on his promise of reducing American reliance on nuclear defenses. The commitment to make the figures public will be included in a speech that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver at the opening of aUnited Nations conference reviewing progress on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Mrs. Clinton will also announce new funds for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

For years, American intelligence officials have objected to publishing quantitative descriptions of the American nuclear arsenal, concerned that the figures might help terrorist groups calculate the minimum nuclear fuel needed for a weapon. But administration officials said reputable Web sites that track such issues have long noted that American weapons designers need an average of around 4 kilograms of plutonium, or 8.8 pounds.

“It became clear there was a way to get the transparency without revealing any state secrets,” a senior administration official said, declining to speak on the record because the numbers had not yet been declassified.

The numbers will combine three categories of weapons: deployed, in “active reserve” and in inactive storage. They exclude weapons designated for decommissioning. The United States and Russia have already revealed the number of deployed strategic weapons they possess. Britain and France have recently revealed details of their stockpiles. China has said little. India, Pakistan and Israel — which have all refused to sign the treaty — have not revealed numbers.

As you know, the Sage of 1600 Pennsylvania took a snippy shot at Sarah Palin yesterday over his nuclear policy:

“I really have no response,” he told ABC News. “Because last I checked, Sarah Palin’s not much of an expert on nuclear issues.”

Someone get him a skin thickener, stat.

It’s funny. Not so very long ago, renowned nuclear scientist Barack Obama was on the campaign trail in Washington state when he was forced to admit to a supporter that he had no clue about one of the country’s longest-standing and most notorious nuclear controversies.

Remember? Video: Obama stumped on Hanford nuke waste clean-up, “Uhhhhhhhhhh.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGZbgMQZATs

Refresher from May 2008:

If you put yourself out there as the presidential candidate most in touch with The People, if you put yourself out there as the champion of the environment, and if you put yourself out there as the candidate best able to represent the Pacific Northwest and bring about “change,” you should have a staff competent enough to brief you on the biggest policy issues consuming the electorate’s energies there as you campaign for votes.

The Hanford nuclear waste clean-up has gone on for decades. It’s been a cause celebre for environmentalists and the PNW congressional delegation. When I worked at the Seattle Times, I took a tour of the now-closed Fast Flux Test Facility at Hanford, which some cancer researchers said could have been used to produce life-saving medical isotopes. Every year brings new funding battles. Hanford is to the region as Yucca Mountain is to Nevada, and Obama was plenty opinionated about the latter issue.

…Over the weekend, Obama also took a question about Hanford. Let’s underscore here that Hanford is not some tiny municipal dump. It’s the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Obama’s response?

The transcript:

Here’s something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I’m not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I’ll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport.

Yes, typical Obama supporters applauded and cheered him for announcing his ignorance and then using it as an exercise in self-congratulations.

Humility is becoming, Mr. President. Try it more often.

***

Update 1:49pm Eastern: Palin at SRLC in New Orleans strikes back at Obama’s jibe, poking at his acquisition of nuclear knowledge through “community organizing.”

Transcript from Weekly Standard:

In foreign policy, we’ve got the makings of the Obama Doctrine: coddling our enemies while alienating allies.

The administration eased sanctions on Cuba and sided with Chavez against Honduran democracy. They won’t bring up human rights with China because, quote, ‘we know what they are going to say.’ They offer tepid sanctions on North Korea and ‘gold stars and cookies’ for the Sudanese President. They send letters to Iranian mullahs but can barely muster a word of support for the Green Movement seeking freedom and women’s rights in Iran!

And President Obama, with all that vast nuclear expertise he acquired as a community organizer, a part-time senator, and a candidate for president, has accomplished nothing to date with Iran or North Korea.

Meanwhile, this administration alienates our friends. They treated Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai poorly and acted surprised when he reacted in kind. And they escalated a minor zoning decision into a major breach with Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East.

Folks, someone needs to remind the President: Jerusalem is not a settlement. Israel is our friend. And the critical nuclear concerns of our time are North Korea, who has nuclear weapons, and Iran, who wants them.

Update: Here’s the video, thanks to The Right Scoop:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0BYYbjEznE

Leading national security expert Frank Gaffney has a few choice words for President Barack Obama’s policies on the production and use of nuclear weapons: “reckless,” “dangerous,” “irresponsible,” “ill-advised,” “very risky,” and “catastrophic.”

Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, also tells Newsmax that Obama is taking “considerable risks” with Americans’ security, and his policies could ultimately lead to the disarmament of the United States.

Editor’s Note: See the full interview with defense expert Frank Gaffney below

And he says the policies raise questions about the president’s judgment “and his faithful execution of his constitutional responsibilities for the common defense.”

Gaffney was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in April 1987 to become assistant secretary of defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control and U.S.-European defense relations.

He also served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy.

The Obama administration is altering the country’s decades-old nuclear weapons policy to reduce the role and number of such weapons, with the target of a nuclear-free world, according to a newly released document called a nuclear posture review.

Obama would renounce the development of any new nuclear weapons, and commit the United States not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty —  even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons.

He is also about to sign a “New START” [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] with Russia reducing long-range nuclear weapons.

In his exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Gaffney says: “Both the new nuclear posture review and the START treaty reflect the president’s overarching ambition, something that’s been a fixation of his going back to 1983 when he was a young radical at Columbia University, and that is with the idea of disarming the world.

“But as a practical matter, the only country he can disarm is the United States, and I think both of these are steps in that direction.

“He is foreclosing any modernization of our nuclear deterrent. He is saying we’re not going to modernize our forces. The practical effect of the president’s decision not to modernize our nuclear deterrent is to condemn it to obsolescence, and [to lead] ultimately to the disarmament of the United States.”

Congress could reject the decisions Obama has made on the use of nuclear weapons and the modernization of our arsenal, and could opt not to ratify START, Gaffney says.

But “whether under a Democrat-controlled Congress dominated by leftists, who probably see more or less along the same lines as the president on the virtues of nuclear disarmament, it’s not clear that is going to happen,” he adds.

“But I hope there is going to be a response from the American people to some of these very risky ideas that I think most people are going to find defy common sense, and certainly are not prudent in a world in which countries like North Korea, Iran, China, Russia are [developing] nuclear threats, and perhaps other capabilities as well, in a way that will be very dangerous to us in the future . . .

“The American people are being confronted with a president who believes that he can take considerable risks with their safety and security. I think they probably won’t see it that way, and they’ll let their elected representatives know they don’t.”

Asked whether Secretary of Defense Robert Gates opposed the new policies, Gaffney responds: “We know for sure that during the last administration, when he was also the secretary of defense, he spoke very vociferously about the necessity of modernizing our nuclear forces . . .

“Anybody in a position of real responsibility who appreciates that it is and will remain vital to the security of the United States to have a credible, safe, reliable nuclear deterrent, will tell you you need to modernize the ones we have — because they’re increasingly not safe, increasingly not reliable, and certainly ever less effective.”

Obama has said he is now convinced the course Iran is on will provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities. Gaffney was asked whether he is alarmed that the administration is not taking a more aggressive approach with Iran.
“It alarms me that at the very moment the president is acknowledging that he is, essentially, just going to get used to [a nuclear-armed Iran] — that one of the most dangerous countries on the planet, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is getting nuclear weapons — he is saying we’re going to permit the increasing devaluation, in fact disarmament, of this country.

“I just think that the juxtaposition of these two realities further raises questions about President Obama’s judgment and his faithful execution of his constitutional responsibilities for the common defense.”

The START pact Obama has agreed to sign limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 operationally deployed nuclear warheads. Asked if that will be enough to preserve our defense, Gaffney says:

“I don’t know what the right number is and I’m very leery of people who tell you they do know.

“The Russians are busily modernizing their forces. They have fewer numbers but they are going to have very modern nuclear weapons. Communist China is busily expanding both the number and the quality of the nuclear weapons in its inventory.

“At the same time every other nuclear power is modernizing its nuclear arsenal. Some of them are friends of ours, some of them are not necessarily. Then there’s the rogue states North Korea and Iran.

“When you put all this together, I’m not sure whether it is advisable for the United States to have fewer nuclear weapons than it has had. But it is catastrophic not to have whatever number we wind up with be as modern, as safe, and as reliable as we know how to make them. And President Obama has foreclosed that option explicitly.

“The only nuclear power in the world, actual or incipient, that will not be able to produce any nuclear weapons will be the United States of America. I think that is wrong. I think it is irresponsible. And I’m fearful it will prove reckless.

“Then there’s a whole class of weapons of which [the Russians] have thousands, unmatched by us, called tactical nuclear weapons, that aren’t counted in this treaty at all. Some of them are off the coast of the United States today, weapons the size of the weapon that devastated Hiroshima pointed at our cities. And they don’t count at all.”

Ronald Reagan had stated that his ultimate goal was the elimination of nuclear weapons. Newsmax asked Gaffney what he thinks Reagan would say about Obama’s policies.

“Having worked for him in the nuclear weapons policy business, I can tell you that President Reagan was committed to assuring the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent. Most of the nuclear weapons that we have still in the inventory today were deployed during his time in office.

“So while he had an aspiration, I think he was very clear that in the interval he was determined to maintain effective deterrent forces . . .

“I think he would be appalled by what is going on today, and probably most appalled by those who are using his sentiments about nuclear weapons to justify this reckless and ill-advised denuclearization of the United States that is going on under the Obama administration today.”

Asked whether Obama would use nuclear weapons if he faced a crisis, Gaffney responds: “I think any president would be very, very reluctant to use nuclear weapons. This president, by virtue of everything he has said and done to date, I think would be exceedingly unlikely to do it.

“Here’s the rub: Most of our enemies — and we do have enemies in the world — probably have figured that out as well and may be emboldened by it.

“Even if he is persuaded that the circumstances require the use of nuclear weapons for the safety and security of the American people, and even if he were willing to use them, if this present practice persists of allowing our nuclear deterrent to atrophy, it’s not clear they’ll work when they should. And that I’m afraid would be a very, very dark day for America.”

A week ago today, third-generation Arizona rancher Rob Krentz was murdered on his ranch 15 miles from the Mexican border. Border Patrol and sheriff’s deputies followed the assailant’s tracks back to the border. It may be too much to hope that our national self-delusion about border security on the cheap also died that day.

The myth of border security is the grand self-delusion of our governing class, but Obama’s secretary of homeland security has fortified this delusion with persistent lies about the border fence. It’s time to stop the lies and face the truth: We have no border security.

The belief that our border security is “imperfect but adequate” is a gold-plated bipartisan charade, the kind of charade that never goes out of season in Washington, D.C. There are Republicans as well as Democrats who perpetuate the lie of border security. Why? It allows the amnesty parade to move forward while denying there is any price to be paid. Dick Armey, Grover Norquist and Lindsey Graham are prominent Republican cheerleaders in this farce.

Rob Krentz was not a crusader; he was not a Minuteman or a political activist of any kind. He was a rancher whose family roots in Cochise County go back to 1907. Over the past 15 years, like many Cochise County residents, he and his brother had spoken publicly about the financial and human costs of the rising tide of intruders crossing their land – the vandalized water lines, dead cattle, robberies, car-jackings, assaults and home break-ins.

The Krentz ranch is less than 15 miles from the Arizona-Mexico border, and on most of the border east of Douglas there is no real fence to halt intruders. For 15 years, like their neighbors, the Krentz family asked again and again for increased Border Patrol protection, and again and again their pleas were ignored. In February of 2003, I visited that region and met the Krentz family, and on March 25 of that year I spoke about him on the floor of Congress. I called him one of the “homeland heroes” in Cochise County who struggle to live out the American dream on the front lines of the border invasion. But despite the warnings, the invasion continued, and the lies about border security continued.

Open-borders enthusiasts in Congress and the media cannot allow the murder of Rob Krentz to be seen and acknowledged for what it is: an indictment of open-borders policies. Thus, the guardians of open-borders orthodoxy have kept Rob Krentz’s murder off the front page and invisible to most Americans. The last thing our Washington overseers want is an open and honest debate about the true state of border security.

The indisputable fact is that contrary to the official DHS border fence map, there is no border fence to interrupt the work of drug smugglers or thousands of illegal-alien trespassers on a 25-mile stretch of border directly south of the Krentz ranch. What Janet Napolitano and her few Republican allies insist on calling a fence is only a vehicle barrier, and it stops not one single intruder. I have seen the video from a hidden camera on one of the trails in that Cochise County corridor in early March. It shows a steady stream of intruders. That daily stream produces on average 500 to 1,000 border invaders each day. And that is but one trail of many. Do the math.

In the debate over amnesty in Congress in 2006 and 2007, Republican advocates like John McCain and Lindsey Graham discovered that Americans would not even consider the idea of another amnesty unless we first secured our borders. They discovered that 80 percent of Americans want secure borders, which meant more Border Patrol officers, more fencing and better use of technology.

At that point, the amnesty lobby had two choices. The government could do the right thing and secure our borders so we could then have a debate over what to do about the 15 to 20 million illegal aliens already here. Or they could pretend to secure the borders and hope no one noticed they were lying. We know which path they took. Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and the charade of building pseudo-fences began.

After Obama’s inauguration, even the modest and inadequate efforts of the Bush administration were put on hold by his DHS appointee, Janet Napolitano. New pedestrian fence construction was halted, and the expansion of Border Patrol manpower was reversed. There are fewer Border Patrol agents on the Arizona-Mexico border today than in December of 2008.

It’s not one death on the border that is the outrage. Our outrage comes from Obama’s and Napolitano’s contempt for the truth about border security, which is a contempt for the safety of our communities and our nation. Three border state governors have now called for Obama to send the National Guard to the border. The response from the Obama White House? They will “continue to monitor” the situation.

Napolitano has lost any credibility as the guardian of homeland security. She must go.

A former member of Congress says last weekend’s shooting death of an Arizona rancher on his own land is what will happen more and more unless America takes back its own borders – even as President Obama makes promises that ultimately could reward those who break federal laws to gain entrance to the U.S.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., now chairman of the Rocky Mountain Federation and co-chairman of TeamAmericaPac, told WND today, “Janet Napolitano lied and Rob Krentz died.”

He was referring to police reports in Arizona that said Krentz was found shot to death late Saturday on the Arizona ranch that had been run by his family for more than 100 years. Officers are investigating it as a homicide and believe he was shot with a 9mm gun allegedly stolen from a nearby ranch. He had radioed to his brother a reference to an illegal alien on his property before his radio went silent.

“I believe this,” Tancredo told WND. “Every single person who has worked so hard to keep those borders open, the president, in Congress and at every level of government – these people have blood on their hands.”

Obama’s latest promises on immigration came as Congress passed his unprecedented takeover of health care – the effective nationalization of some 17 percent of the nation’s economy.

“I have always pledged to be your partner as we work to fix our broken immigration system, and that’s a commitment I reaffirm today,” he said in a video message to open-borders supporters rallying in Washington the same day Congress approved “Obamacare.”

Tancredo had been en route to the border area to visit Krentz and others who have been dealing first-hand with the impact of smuggling – both human and drugs – from Mexico across their land.

He said details about Krentz’s death remain sketchy, but the underlying cause of such violence isn’t a surprise to him.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insists U.S. borders are secure, Tancredo said, but “the violence in Arizona is beginning to reach the level of some states in Mexico.”

“The violence is here. Our borders are not secure, they can never be secure unless you have the military there,” he said.

Tancredo said Democrats view illegal aliens as votes, and too many Republicans see the illegals as cheap laborers.

But he argued national boundaries are there for a reason, as are federal requirements to obtain immigration documentation through proper procedures. The consequences of not enforcing those laws are harsh, he warned.

“We will suffer, and people will die,” he said.

Border-enforcement advocates such as Vision America fear legislation that could grant a “path to citizenship” for millions of people who have broken federal law to enter the U.S.

“The system ‘broke’ when Washington stopped enforcing our immigration laws and winked at millions of illegals that streamed across our borders every year,” the group said. “Now, the president would ‘fix’ the problem by [making] millions of border-jumpers into citizens who doubtless will return the favor by becoming Democratic voters.”

Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proposed legislation that apparently included amnesty. However, Graham suddenly dropped his support, saying instead that Obama should produce a bill and bring it before Congress if he wants the issue addressed.

Vision America said amnesty is critical to the Obama administration, because the “left is desperately in need of new voters who will march in lockstep to the drumbeat of big government. That’s why they’re eager to legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens (8 million of them potential voters), bestow citizenship on them and get them to the polls.”

Tancredo said  he has “no doubt whatsoever” that Obama’s next agenda item will be amnesty.

“Don’t forget, Barack Obama will do anything – anything – in order to make this country a better place in his socialist system,” Tancredo said.

WND previously reported on the violence that is an everyday occurrence in Mexico and which Tancredo said was becoming more present in southwestern American cities.

Drug-related bloodshed killed more than 4,400 people across Mexico in a year – a body count that could be compared to the U.S. military death toll in Iraq since March 20, 2003.

The Mexican crime syndicate deaths have been especially hideous. Bodies riddled with bullets is routine; one man was handcuffed and decapitated and his body was put in a plastic bag hanging from a bridge. His head was found in a nearby plaza. Drug criminals also murdered a 5-year-old boy by injecting acid into his heart.

Statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, several years ago documented that about 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens.

WND also reported when Eliseo Medina, the international executive vice-president of Obama-supporting Service Employees International Union, said, “We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters.”

During an appearance just months ago, he said, during the presidential election in November 2008, Latinos and immigrants “voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.”

“Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

According to William Gheen, of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, the plan isn’t that complicated. Democrats will work to make all illegal aliens eligible for health care and citizenship to make them voters.

He said the 2007 amnesty proposal under President Bush failed but the new plan is on an aggressive path to the president’s desk.

Gheen warned the situation could become much worse than simply a huge number of new voters being groomed by one political party.

“We’re in the legalization phase [now],” he said. “In a reparations phase they would use minority voting blocs to extract exorbitant amounts of taxation out of taxpayers,” he said. “When that stone will give no more blood, then we expect it to go to the autonomy phase.”

That would be when concerns that southwestern United States could be reclaimed by Mexico could become reality.

Columnist Michelle Malkin reported on the Krentz death, and participants in her website forum were more than alarmed.

“The MSM and the politicians won’t care,” wrote one. “He was just an old white guy in the way of cheap labor and future Democratic voters.”

“If stuff like this is going on … I say ‘lock ‘n’ load,’” added another.

“As the Democrats prepare to take up immigration – aka, increase the roll of new Democrat voters – the media will continue abet the Left by ignoring the detrimental state of America’s southern border,” said a third.

Added another, “Obama hopes to welcome these people into our country with open arms. I predict, here and now, that illegal immigration will be one of Mr. Obama’s next big pushes, and it will be his political suicide.”

At the left-leaning Center for American Progress, however, a commentary praised the idea of “immigration reform,” and said such actions would “add a cumulative $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years.”

“In the program’s first three years, tax revenues would increase from $4.5 billion to $5.4 billion and generate enough new consumer spending to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs in the United States. The real wages of workers – U.S. born and immigrants – will also rise under comprehensive immigration reform,” the report claimed.

In a recent published commentary, Tancredo said, “Ordinary citizens didn’t buy it in 2005 when George Bush and the Republican Party establishment tried to sell amnesty. Grass-roots Republicans rebelled, and the Minutemen put a big media spotlight on the cross-border traffic in Arizona, Texas and California. Millions of Americans said, ‘First, secure the borders!’

“In 2006 and 2007, so-called bipartisan amnesty legislation was killed in Congress because ordinary Americans took the time to read it and demanded it be defeated,” he said.

“The upcoming amnesty battle in Congress will be brutal. In winning the health-care vote, Obama has tasted blood, and he likes it. Democrats in Congress may be willing to fall on their sword for amnesty after all, now that the November election looks like a disaster anyway.”

But he wondered “if the amnesty lobby will use the same dirty tricks and phony accounting to sell amnesty as they used to sell Obamacare.”

“The answer is yes. And they will play the race card again and again. If you oppose amnesty, you will be discredited as a bigot,” he warned.

More links about the murder of Rob Krentz by an illegal alien:

• Border Rancher Rob Krentz And Dog Found Shot To Death After Aiding Illegal Alien
• Tancredo calls for Napolitano to send National Guard to Border after Murder of Cochise County Rancher
• Cochise County Rancher Murdered
• Fox News: Arizona Rancher’s Killing Sparks Calls to Beef Up Border Security
• Ariz. rancher’s slaying sparks debate over illegal immigration
• Just 2 months earlier in same community: A border-area home invasion has forced residents to take action