Woman Charged With Hate-Crime in Queens Subway-Push Murder

She hadn't been charged at the time of my earlier report, "Thirty-One Year Old Homeless Woman in Custody in Queens Subway-Push Death."

But now the New York Times reports, "Woman Accused of Hate-Crime Murder in Subway Push."

Robert Stacy McCain relates this story to the left's depraved gun control exploitation, "New York City Needs Subway Control."

And the sickening ghouls of the radical left fever swamps bubbled up to blame Pamela Geller for the murder, "WOMAN CHARGED WITH MURDER IN NY SUBWAY SHOVE DEATH, CLAIMS 9/11/01 WAS HER MOTIVE." (Via Memeorandum.)

It never ends with these scumbags.

Piers Morgan Threatens to Self-Deport

My dad always had guns in the house, most memorably a WWII-era M1 carbine, with a small-capacity clip kept in his top dresser drawer in the master bedroom. And he was a die-hard Cold War Democrat. He's gone now, but I doubt he'd be pleased with the left's ignominious child-death exploitation and its depraved push for extreme gun control measures. In his last few years, when he was in his 80's and 90's, my dad kept a small handgun on the pillow next to him while he slept. He had it just sitting right there. He felt safer with it.

Anyway, I'm just thinking about this while reading Piers Morgan's commentary at London's Daily Mail, "Deport me? If America won't change its crazy gun laws... I may deport myself says Piers Morgan" (at Memeorandum):

I have fired guns only once in my life, on a stag party to the Czech capital Prague a few years ago when part of the itinerary included a trip to an indoor shooting range. For three hours, our group were let loose on everything from Magnum 45 handguns and Glock pistols, to high-powered ‘sniper’ rifles and pump-action shotguns.

It was controlled, legal, safe and undeniably exciting. But it also showed me, quite demonstrably, that guns are killing machines.

Rarely has the hideous effect of a gun been more acutely laid bare than at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, two weeks ago – when a deranged young man called Adam Lanza murdered 20 schoolchildren aged six and seven, as well as six adults, in a sickening rampage.

He gets all whiney and admits that losing his cool with gun rights advocate Larry Pratt triggered the massive public relations campaign against him. Boo hoo. What a freakin' baby. A baby who wants to confiscate guns:

President Obama seems to agree it’s time for action. After four years of doing precisely nothing about gun control in America, he finally snapped after Sandy Hook and said he’s keen to pursue a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And he wants a closure of the absurd loopholes that mean 40 per cent of all gun sales in America currently have no background checks whatsoever – meaning any crackpot or criminal can get their hands on whatever they want.

These measures, which will be resisted every step of the way, won’t stop all gun crime. Nor all mass shootings. There are too many guns out there, and too many criminals and mentally deranged people keen to use them. But the measures will at least make a start. And they will signal an intent to tackle this deadly scourge on American life.

Obama should follow up by launching a Government buy-back for all existing assault weapons in circulation (as worked successfully in Los Angeles last week). I would go further, confiscating the rest and enforcing tough prison sentences on those who still insist on keeping one.

Either you ban these assault weapons completely, and really mean it, or you don’t.

It won't be just "assault" weapons, but progressives won't tell you that.

Continue reading.

At the essay's last line Morgan declares that he'd consider deporting himself if the laws don't change to reflect his decidedly un-American outlook.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, brother.

BONUS: A must-see entry at This Ain't Hell, "OK, CNN, you’re disqualified from the gun discussion."

UPDATE: EBL links, "Remember Piers Morgan is laughing all the way to the bank by making money off the blood of children." Thanks!

Laws Are for Little People

From Mark Steyn, at National Review (at Memeorandum):

A week ago on NBC’s Meet the Press, David Gregory brandished on screen a high-capacity magazine. To most media experts, a “high-capacity magazine” means an ad-stuffed double issue of Vanity Fair with the triple-page perfume-scented pullouts. But apparently in America’s gun-nut gun culture of gun-crazed gun kooks, it’s something else entirely, and it was this latter kind that Mr. Gregory produced in order to taunt Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. As the poster child for America’s gun-crazed gun-kook gun culture, Mr. LaPierre would probably have been more scared by the host waving around a headily perfumed Vanity Fair. But that was merely NBC’s first miscalculation. It seems a high-capacity magazine is illegal in the District of Columbia, and the flagrant breach of D.C. gun laws is now under investigation by the police.

It's classic Steyn. More at the link.

And commenting is AoSHQ:

Does Howard Kurtz embrace that understanding of gun laws? Does Glenn Thrush? Do the various other know-nothings in the media -- who know both nothing about law and nothing about guns, but opine with great force and velocity on gun laws -- embrace this conception of gun laws, that gun laws should never target simple possession but only possession during the commission of a crime or possession with intent to commit a crime?

If not -- if they are less the right-wing gun nut than Ted Nugent (and even the Nuge might find this position too "extremist" for his taste -- then they are duty-bound to demand David Gregory's prosecution, as they would demand that any other Citizen Not On Television would be prosecuted.

They are endeavoring to explicitly create a High Caste with greater privileges than the lower castes, and immunities to the laws the lower castes suffer under, and that is a blood anathema to any real American -- and will be treated as such.

Also at Althouse, Ed Driscoll, Jawa Report, and Twitchy.

The Fiscal Cliff and Congressional Dysfunction

From David Boaz, at Cato:

Annual federal spending rose by a trillion dollars when Republicans controlled the government from 2001 to 2007. It has risen another trillion during the Bush-Obama response to the financial crisis. So spending every year is now twice what it was when Bill Clinton left office, and the national debt is three times as high. Republicans and Democrats alike should be able to find wasteful, extravagant, and unnecessary programs to cut back or eliminate. And yet many voters, especially Tea Partiers, know that both parties have been responsible. Most Republicans, including today’s House leaders, voted for the No Child Left Behind Act, the Iraq war, the prescription drug entitlement, and the TARP bailout during the Bush years. That’s why fiscal conservatives should look very skeptically at the “fiscal cliff” and “grand bargain” proposals, most of which promise to cut spending some day—not this year, not next year, but swear to God some time in the next 10 years. As the White Queen said to Alice, ”Jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.” Cuts tomorrow and cuts in the out-years—but never cuts today.

If the “dysfunctional” fight that has sent us to the edge of the fiscal cliff finally results in some constraint on out-of-control spending, then it will have been well worth all the hand-wringing headlines. But that doesn’t seem likely. The problem is not a temporary mess on Capitol Hill and not a mythical default; it’s spending, deficits, and debt.

The entire political class is the problem, but again, the first order of business is getting the Democrats out of power.

The Los Feliz Eatery

A restaurant feature, at the Los Angeles Times, "Counter Intelligence: Storefront Deli in Los Feliz":

Have you ever had the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at the new Storefront Deli in Los Feliz? Because that sandwich, less made from scratch than reverse-engineered from a meat lover's fondest late-summer daydreams, is at the heart of one of the strongest culinary movements in the country at the moment: the radical reinvention of everyday dishes by deconstructing them and rebuilding them to the tiniest detail.

Stop. My mouth is watering already. Sheesh.

I could go for a corned beef on rye right now, come to think of it. Yum!

'If you are not illiterate, you can use civilization, monarchy, dominance, correspond, emphasize, opposition, chlorine, commotion, medicinal, irresponsible, and succession in one sentence...'

Via Mellow Jihadi:

Too Much Wishful Thinking on Middle-Class Tax Rates

From Greg Mankiw, at the New York Times, "Wishful Thinking and Middle-Class Taxes":

IN the continuing fiscal negotiations between President Obama and House Republicans, both sides have, from the very beginning, agreed on one point: Taxes on the middle class must not rise. But maybe it’s time to reconsider this premise. An unwavering commitment to keep middle-class taxes low could be one reason the political process has become so deeply dysfunctional.

Let’s start with the problem: the budget deficit. Under current policy, the federal government is spending vastly more than it is collecting in tax revenue. And that will be true for the next several decades, thanks largely to the growth in entitlement spending that will occur automatically as the population ages and health care costs increase. As a result, the ratio of government debt to the nation’s gross domestic product is projected to rise, substantially and without an end in sight.

That can happen for a while, or even a long while, but not forever. At some point, investors at home and abroad will start questioning our ability to service our debts without creating steep inflation. It’s hard to say precisely when this shift in investor sentiment will occur, and even whether it will strike in this president’s term or the next, but when it does, it won’t be pretty. The United States will find itself at the brink of an unprecedented financial crisis.

Republicans and Democrats agree on the nature of the problem, but they embrace very different solutions. My fear is that both sides are engaged in an excess of wishful thinking, with a dash of mendacity.

If Republicans had their way, they would focus the entire solution on the spending side. They say that reform of the entitlement programs can reduce their cost. The so-called premium-support plan for Medicare, from Paul D. Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice-presidential candidate, would let older Americans use their health care dollars to buy insurance from competing private plans. (Interestingly, it’s similar to the system envisioned for the nonelderly by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.) The hope is that competition and choice would keep health care costs down without sacrificing quality.

The premium-support model may well be better than the current Medicare system, but its supporters oversell what it would be likely to accomplish. The primary driver of increasing health care costs over time is new technology, which extends and improves the quality of life, but often at high cost. Unless the pace or nature of medical innovation changes, this trend is likely to continue, regardless of structural reforms we enact for Medicare.

Democrats, meanwhile, want to preserve the social safety net pretty much as is. They balk at any attempt to reduce this spending, including even modest changes like altering the price index used to calculate Social Security benefits. They focus their attention on raising taxes on the most financially successful Americans, contending that the rich are not paying their “fair share.”

Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Unfortunately, people’s judgment is often based on anecdotes that distort rather than illuminate. The story of the undertaxed Warren Buffett and his overtaxed secretary looms larger in the public’s mind than it should.

Here are some facts, so you can judge for yourself....

Even if President Obama wins all the tax increases on the rich that he is asking for, the long-term fiscal picture will still look grim. Perhaps we can stabilize the situation for a few years just by taxing the rich, but as greater numbers of baby boomers retire and start collecting Social Security and Medicare, more will need to be done.

Continue reading (via Memeorandum).

RELATED: I'm for shrinking government, so this is the bottom line for me, at The Lonely Conservative, "People Should Pay For the Government They Voted For." Raise taxes. Go over the cliff.  I guarantee you that Obama won't get off cost-free. The real cost of the election will start biting people in the ass.

Thirty-One Year Old Homeless Woman in Custody in Queens Subway-Push Death

At the New York Post, "Cops nab suspect in Queens subway-push death":

A suspect in the subway-pushing death of a Queens immigrant is in custody, police said.

Cops picked up a 31-year-old homeless woman in Brooklyn early this morning after spotting her wearing the same jacket seen in surveillance video the night that Sunando Sen, 46, was fatally shoved into the path of the 7 train at the elevated 40th Street-Lowery stop in Sunnyside, law-enforcement sources said.

The woman, who has not been charged yet, was grabbed around 5 a.m. on the corner of Empire Boulevard and Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights, the sources said.
The incoherent suspect was mumbling as cops questioned her, and at one point asked where the R train was, the sources added.

Her relatives called cops last night after seeing her on the news, law-enforcement sources said.

More at that top link.

'I think the idea is to enjoy life to its fullest...'

Johnny Rotten on death and mourning.

RELATED: "John Lydon Says 'Sons of Norway' Film Quashes Idea that 'Punk Is All Negative'."

Honda Z

This old Honda's been at the dealership in Huntington Beach for awhile now, so I finally took some pictures when I went back in this week to get a new battery for the Odyssey.

Called a "Z 600" commonly, it's technically an AZ 600, probably a 1972 (check Wikipedia for the background). This one had up-to-date vehicle registration until 2010:

MORE: "1972 Honda AZ 600 coupe" and "Honda 600 Source."

Consitutional Checks on Mob Rule

I was re-reading Federalist No. 10 and No. 51 the other day.

I think it was this post at Maggie's Farm that got me going, "Crawled out of a snowbank":

American exceptionalism contains the notion that government is a necessary evil, requiring containment and strict limitations by a virtuous people and a muscular Constitution to handcuff the state. The state is the enemy of individual freedom. GW: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

RTWT at the link.

Fiscal Cliff: $536 Billion Tax Hikes Over the Edge; Recession Risk

At IBD, "Fiscal Cliff: $536 Billion In Tax Hikes Over the Edge":

Even for those who aren't afraid of heights, peering over the fiscal cliff may be dizzying. The plunge in after-tax income that would occur in a worst-case scenario likely would put the economy back in a deep recession.

Yet a peek over the edge now seems unavoidable, at least according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

"It looks like that's where we're headed," Reid said in a Senate floor speech on Thursday.

So here's what the view looks like. The fiscal cliff is composed of $536 billion in 2013 tax hikes, the Tax Policy Center says.

The biggest tax hikes would be an end to President Bush's 2001 and 2003 income and investment tax cuts and President Obama's 2 percentage point payroll tax cut.

But that's just the beginning. Nearly 90% of households would face an average tax increase close to $3,500.

The fiscal cliff also would trigger roughly $115 billion in automatic spending cuts.

More at the link.

And at Instapundit, "COMMENT OF THE DAY":

“For ten years we have been told that the Bush tax cuts applied mostly to the rich. Now it is imperative that we extend them further or the middle class is going to take a big hit.”

Progressives suck.

Germans Say Afghan Forces Unready for West's Withdrawal

At Der Spiegel, "Ineffective and Unsustainable: Failure Threatens Afghan Police Training Mission":

German officials have been training police in Afghanistan for a decade, but a visit to their training center in Mazar-e-Sharif creates major doubts about the effectiveness of the mission. Afghan police remain poorly prepared to tackle the mighty challenges they will face as Western forces withdraw.

The Afghan national sport is called buzkashi. It's a game in which horsemen battle over a goat carcass. There are no established teams.

During a match, the competitors forge brief, continuously shifting alliances. They only work together until they have gained a short-term advantage. The game can last for hours, even days. The winner is the rider who manages to carry the carcass to the goal. Buzkashi is a mirror of Afghan society.
By contrast, the German police officers who train local recruits in Afghanistan have brought soccer balls and nets to their base in Mazar-e-Sharif. Football is all about teamwork and team spirit. The goal is to form a team and achieve an objective together.

In a corner of the training center, on a patch of parched earth, there is now a soccer field where the next generation of Afghan police officers is learning the game.

"What we want to achieve with the recruits is a change in mentality," says a German instructor. More team spirit, a better sense of community, more loyalty. More soccer, less buzkashi.

Over the past 10 years, Germany has instructed some 56,000 Afghan police officers at four training centers in the region. The training is part of Germany's responsibility as a member of NATO, and so far the project has cost some €380 million ($503 million). As many as 200 German police officers are regularly stationed in Afghanistan, most of them in Mazar-e-Sharif.

But anyone who accompanies the German security aid workers for a few days is bound to doubt the mission's effectiveness after observing the mood among the officers and reading between the lines of official statements. Even now, when Western security forces have entered their 11th year of training, the police in Afghanistan don't stand for public order and security -- but rather for helplessness, arbitrariness and corruption.

Oh boy.

This won't be good, as I reported on Thursday: "An Uneasy Separation in Afghanistan."

In any case, an interesting role the Germans have played as part of the NATO contingent. Continue reading at the link.

Senate Leaders to Work on Agreement

At LAT, "Obama 'modestly optimistic' that 'fiscal cliff' can be avoided":

WASHINGTON – President Obama said he was “modestly optimistic” that Senate leaders could reach an agreement to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, but he said that if the effort fails, he’ll demand a vote on his basic proposal to protect middle-class taxpayers from seeing their taxes rise.

Speaking to reporters in the White House on Friday evening, a stern Obama tried to ramp up the pressure on lawmakers as they cobble together a deal before a potentially growth-crippling combination of tax increases and spending cuts take effect in the new year.

“The hour for immediate action is here. It is now,” Obama said.

Obama spoke shortly after meeting with top congressional leaders at the White House, during which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed try to come up with a proposal before the Dec. 31 deadline.

The president called the meeting “good and constructive” and suggested there was still time to reach a compromise. But if lawmakers failed to find common ground, Obama said, he has asked Reid to bring up a vote on a scaled-back version of his original proposal.

“If members of House or the Senate want to vote no, they can,” Obama said. “But we should let everybody vote. That’s the way this is supposed to work.”

Lots more at Memeorandum.

Obama's Zero-Sum Universe

From P.J. O'Rourke, at the Wall Street Journal, "Dear Mr. President, Zero-Sum Doesn't Add Up":

Given that hypocrisy is an important part of diplomacy, and diplomacy is necessary to foreign policy, allow me to congratulate you on winning a second term.

I wish I could also congratulate you on your conduct of international affairs. I do thank you for killing Osama bin Laden. It was a creditable action for which you deserve some of the credit you've been given. Of course the intelligence was gathered, and the mission was undertaken, by men and women who, although they answer to your command, answer to duty first. And it is difficult to imagine any president of the United States who, under the circumstances, wouldn't have ordered the strike against bin Laden. Although there is Jimmy Carter. Thank you for not being Jimmy Carter.

But even though it violates the insincere amity that creates a period of calm following national elections, no thank you for the following, and it is only a partial list...

Continue reading.

In Ireland, Carbon Taxes Demonstrate Global Left's Radical Environmentalism in Action

This is a mind-boggling story, particularly since it's like a Twilight Zone preview of our Dystopian future, at the New York Times, "Carbon Taxes Make Ireland Even Greener":

DUBLIN — Over the last three years, with its economy in tatters, Ireland embraced a novel strategy to help reduce its staggering deficit: charging households and businesses for the environmental damage they cause.

The government imposed taxes on most of the fossil fuels used by homes, offices, vehicles and farms, based on each fuel’s carbon dioxide emissions, a move that immediately drove up prices for oil, natural gas and kerosene. Household trash is weighed at the curb, and residents are billed for anything that is not being recycled.

The Irish now pay purchase taxes on new cars and yearly registration fees that rise steeply in proportion to the vehicle’s emissions.

Environmentally and economically, the new taxes have delivered results. Long one of Europe’s highest per-capita producers of greenhouse gases, with levels nearing those of the United States, Ireland has seen its emissions drop more than 15 percent since 2008.

Although much of that decline can be attributed to a recession, changes in behavior also played a major role, experts say, noting that the country’s emissions dropped 6.7 percent in 2011 even as the economy grew slightly.

“We are not saints like those Scandinavians — we were lapping up fossil fuels, buying bigger cars and homes, very American,” said Eamon Ryan, who was Ireland’s energy minister from 2007 to 2011. “We just set up a price signal that raised significant revenue and changed behavior. Now, we’re smashing through the environmental targets we set for ourselves.”

By contrast, carbon taxes are viewed as politically toxic in the United States. Republican leaders in Congress have pledged to block any proposal for such a tax, and President Obama has not advocated one, although the idea has drawn support from economists of varying ideologies.

Of course they're politically toxic. Can political elites be more stupid?

It turns out that all is not well in Ireland:

Not everyone is happy. The prices of basic commodities like gasoline and heating oil have risen 5 to 10 percent. This is particularly hard on the poor, although the government has provided subsidies for low-income families to better insulate homes, for example. And industries complain that the higher prices have made it harder for them to compete outside Ireland.

“Prices just keep going up, and a lot of people think it’s a scam,” said Imelda Lyons, 45, as she filled her car at a gas station here. “You call it a carbon tax, but what good is being done with it to help the environment?”

The coalition government that enacted the taxes was voted out of office last year. “Just imagine President Obama saying in the debate, ‘I’ve got this great idea, but it’s going to increase your gasoline price,’ ” said Mr. Ryan, who lost his seat in the last election and now leads the Green Party. “People didn’t exactly cheer us on.”

Keep reading.

Taxes are added by as much as 36 percent of a car's market price at the point of sale, factored into the sticker price. And additional taxes are billed directly to drivers, often adding thousands of dollars to annual vehicle operating costs. And because people at lower incomes are less able to afford newer cars with all the latest "green" technologies, the tax system is heavily regressive. But read the whole thing. You can bet Ireland's experience will be touted as a model for radical environmentalists here at home, and folks in Washington (the progressive political class) have been talking about all kinds of alternative taxes systems, such as value added systems. Unless Americans start turning back toward freedom and free markets, such schemes will be increasingly a part of our lives as well, with the least well-off bearing the brunt of the impoverishment and with our overall standard of living imperiled.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Deploying 'Armed Posse' to Schools

At Fox News, "Arizona Sheriff Arpaio: Armed Volunteer Posse Should Guard Schools."

Video Credit: Nice Deb, "Sheriff Arpaio to Deploy Armed Posse to Guard Phoenix Schools (Video)."

Fiscal Cliff Reveals Long-Term Partisan Divide

Following up on my report yesterday, "America's Crisis of Big Government Cronyism and Corruption."

Here's Ronald Brownstein, at National Journal, "The Fiscal Cliff's Greatest Threat Is to American Unity":

The real issue in the frantic final flailing over the fiscal cliff isn’t whether Washington can balance its books. It’s whether blue America and red America are capable of, or even interested in, mediating their differences. The evidence is growing more discouraging.

Across almost every front, the process of pulling apart that has reshaped the political landscape over the past generation appears to be accelerating.

At the national level, President Obama and Mitt Romney mobilized almost mirror-image coalitions. Over 40 percent of Obama’s votes came from minorities; nearly 90 percent of Romney’s votes came from whites. Obama won three-fifths of voters under 30; Romney won more than three-fifths of white seniors.

Compared with Democrats, Republicans since the 1980s have been a more ideologically homogenous party that is more resistant to compromise—as last week’s rejection of House Speaker John Boehner’s fiscal “Plan B” demonstrated. (Electoral incentives help explain that imbalance: Because self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals among voters, Democrats in most places need to carry more moderates to win than Republicans do, and that creates greater pressure on Democrats to compromise.) But after an election in which Obama won despite historic deficits among the blue-collar and older whites that once anchored the conservative end of his party’s coalition, ideological cohesion is rising among Democrats too.

Consider the profile of Obama and Romney voters that Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz traces in an upcoming paper. In the Election Day exit poll, three-fourths of Obama voters said that government should be doing more to solve problems, while over four-fifths of Romney voters said that it is already doing too much. More than four-fifths of Obama voters wanted to maintain or expand his health care law, while nearly nine-in-10 Romney voters backed its repeal. Three times as many Obama voters as Romney voters supported legalizing gay marriage.

This same pulling apart is evident in the states. Eighteen states—what I’ve called the “blue wall”—have voted Democratic in at least the past six presidential elections. After November’s ballot victories in Maine, Maryland, and Washington, seven of them have now authorized gay marriage and six others have approved civil unions or broad domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. Depending on how legislative or court fights unfold, it’s conceivable that California and New Jersey, two blue-wall states, could approve same-sex-marriage ballot initiatives by 2016. Meanwhile, virtually every Republican-leaning state has barred gay marriage.

Similarly, 14 governors have agreed to join the expansion of Medicaid that represents one pillar of the Obama plan to cover the uninsured; Nevada’s Brian Sandoval is the only Republican among them. Almost all Republican governors also let the deadline pass earlier this month without establishing the online exchanges that comprise the other big coverage expansion. Even after Obama’s victory eliminated the possibility that his health reform bill would be repealed, Republican governors are continuing what amounts to a sit-down strike against it.

This centrifugal tendency is now embedded in Congress’s DNA. As split-ticket voting has declined, fewer legislators in each party are elected, in effect, behind enemy lines (by voters who usually prefer the other party for the White House).

Michael Franc, vice president for government studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, correctly observes that because of that dynamic, during a confrontation like the fiscal cliff, most legislators are more likely to face demands to stand firm than complaints about inflexibility. “When everybody goes back home, I don’t think they are feeling the heat from their constituents” for failing to reach agreement, Franc says. “If anything, they are hearing the opposite. So ... there’s no rational political incentive to back down.”

There's more at that top link. Brownstein concludes by lamenting the nation's "fraying sense of common purpose." Actually, that's not what the data are telling us. All those constituents back home in the red districts don't want America moving further into the socialist orbit, becoming a Sweden, or worse, a Cuba. The Democrats cling to power with a coalition of dependents. The Democrats welcome all manner of hard-line socialists and collectivists into their midst. And the president himself leads the morally bankrupt intransigence in government. It's all about punishing the successful demographics in the name of fairness. Screw these people. Republicans need to stay strong against the onslaught.

PHOTO: The White House Flickr page.

Homeless Woman Set on fire at Van Nuys Bus Stop

She's in critical condition.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Police identify suspect in attack on homeless woman in Van Nuys," and "Suspect in homeless woman's burning is mentally ill, police say."

The mental illness thing's a ruse. This is an unspeakable crime. When chased by witnesses the suspect pulled a knife.

Deportee Returns to the United States After More Than Year in Mexico

I have nothing to add on this one. The Times just makes heroic the illegals flooding over our borders.

See, "A risky return to the U.S.":

Luis Luna returned to his hometown of South Gate in May. His arms and legs were scraped raw from cactus needles and his eyes kept blinking, still starved of moisture from his eight-day journey through the Arizona desert the week before.

His friend, Julio Cortez, said it was hard to believe that this gaunt young man with patches of missing hair was the same person he knew at Southeast Middle School.

"I was in shock to see him back and see all he had gone through," Cortez said. "It made me sad and angry."

Cortez, a 22-year-old Cal State Long Beach student, took Luis to buy some clothes. Another former classmate gave Luis a cellphone. Luis slept on couches and in spare bedrooms and spent his days passing out resumes filled with the jobs of his teen years: flipping burgers, waiting tables at I-Hop. He fudged the dates to account for the 15 months he spent in Mexico after he was deported for being in the country illegally.

Luis had been pulled over three years ago for a broken headlight in Pasco, Wash., where he and his mother lived. He was cited for driving without a license, jailed and ordered out of the country in February 2011.

He had a wife back in Washington, but she had left him, in part because of the long separation. Luis decided to build a new life in Southern California, where he had grown up and where he still had friends

Weeks after arriving, he was still jobless and borrowing money to eat when he decided his future might lie in his past. He started retracing the route he took as a boy selling chocolates at warehouses and factories. The assembly line workers, truck drivers and managers knew him as Anthony, the name his mother told him to use to hide his identity.

They could vouch for his strong work ethic — that he'd been working for a living since he was 5 years old.

He eventually found the barrilero job, and a place to live. A swap meet vendor who picked through the bins of cast-offs looking for vintage garments told Luis he had extra space at his house.

Luis goes home to a converted two-car garage with no address in a middle-class neighborhood with trim lawns and streets lined with late-model cars. Much of his clothing is stuffed in a battered dark green suitcase that sits at the foot of his bed. The only other furniture is a mini refrigerator and two lawn chairs.

In some ways, he's a typical youngster with edgy tastes. He has a sleeve tattoo, wears skinny jeans and earrings, and is part of a deejay crew that plays at house parties. He cheers his beloved Los Angeles Lakers and hangs out in hookah bars, and is constantly texting flirty messages.

But his future is dimmer than most. Many of his friends are planning for life after college. Some are applying for work permits and temporary reprieves from deportation, taking advantage of an Obama administration program, announced in June, to help young people who were brought into the country as children.

Continue reading.

The Obama administration's "program."

Yeah, illegal immigrant voter registration program. Again, another massive fraud on our supposed system of rule of law. The Democrats certainly don't care.

That's all.