Couldn’t Help But Notice (122807)

A nominee for “Quietest Story in the Country” (HT Return of the Conservatives; I changed ROTC’s original link to a longer story):

Eight people were charged with filing bogus voter registration forms in St. Louis and St. Louis County for the 2006 general election, federal authorities announced Friday.

All eight worked for ACORN, the not-for-profit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN focuses on voter registration drives targeting low- and middle-income people across the nation.

The federal indictments were unsealed Friday morning. Authorities were still seeking some of the people indicted, so their names were withheld.

….. Questions about some of the voter registration cards surfaced in October 2006, when St. Louis Republican elections director Scott Leiendecker sent letters to 5,000 voters registered by ACORN, asking them to verify their registrations on the phone and with signatures returned by mail.

….. Earlier this year, seven ACORN workers were indicted in Seattle for submitting phony voter registration forms.

Questions:

• How many of those 5,000 forms got no response?
• When is ACORN, which also has been linked to voter-registration and other election-related fraud in 12 states, including Ohio, going to be barred from activities involving voter registration?

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Ya gotta love the sense of humor Tim Gaynor of Reuters inadvertently exhibits (bold is mine):

Illegal immigrants “self deport” as woes mount

In the past year, U.S. immigration police have stepped up workplace sweeps across the country and teamed up with a growing number of local forces to train officers to enforce immigration laws.

Meanwhile, a bill seeking to offer many of the 12 million illegal immigrants a path to legal status was tossed by the U.S. Congress, spurring many state and local authorities to pass their own measures targeting illegal immigrants.

The toughening environment has been coupled with a turndown in the U.S. economy, which has tipped the balance toward self deportation for many illegal immigrants left struggling to find work.

….. Aluisio Carvalho, 66, left a wife and four children behind in Brazil in 2001 when he set off to find work in Boston. Since then, he has managed to pay for the education of his children by working in a restaurant, but is now planning to leave himself in February

“Salaries are really low, and living costs are high. We also face too much exploitation at work here, too many demands,” he said.

Sigh:

• The economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.8% and 4.9%, respectively, in the second and third quarters.
• October’s and November’s activity indicators in Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing all came in with readings showing expansion.
• Consumer spending in November blew away expectations.
• The Christmas shopping season was at least decent (first item at link), if not better.
• Productivity? Way up. Jobs? Increasing. Unemployment rate? 4.7%, and holding.

I’ll allow for the remote possibility that the good news so far this quarter won’t somehow ultimately lead to a report of positive economic growth. But, for Mr. Gaynor to credibly assert, as if it’s a fact, that there is a “turndown in the US economy,” something besides one or two sectors needs to be, y’know, “turning down.”

If illegals like Mr. Carvalho are leaving, it’s more likely that there are fewer “exploitation” opportunities for illegal work than there were a year or so ago (Mr. Carvalho has learned about claiming victimization, has he not?). Especially given the stats cited, that does not mean that there are fewer legal opportunities.

Let’s not leave the out-of-proportion commission of crimes by illegals out of the picture either. An enforcement response is long overdue, and at least one city has responded. In October, the City of Scottsdale, Arizona, after a police officer in nearby Phoenix was slain by an illegal immigrant Scottsdale police had let go, began “routinely asking for proof of citizenship from every suspect they arrest and turning those who are in this country illegally over to federal immigration officials.” It’s. About. Time.

Once illegals cross the border into Mexico, their ongoing, day-to-day illegality will have ceased. This is a good thing, and it would appear, contrary to the “There Shall Be Open Borders” Wall Street Journal, that the economy might actually be able to handle their absence.

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“Charlie Wilson’s War” (CWW) is a Hollywood fantasy, per IBDeditorials.com:

Hollywood would have us believe that Democrats defeated the evil empire in Afghanistan, and that President Reagan played only a minor role and even helped pave the way to 9/11.

….. “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote.

….. The movie also perpetuates the left-wing myth that the covert operation funded Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and ultimately led to the 9/11 attacks. Reagan-era officials such as Ikle say Osama never got funding or weapons from the U.S. and that he didn’t launch his terror war until after U.S. involvement and the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

No, CWW is not a comedy — at least not on purpose.

Another fantasy may be that CWW, with a production budget of $75 million, will break even at the box office.

Nevertheless, like the pitifully inaccurate “Nixon” and “JFK,” it will probably be coming to a school classroom near you, unquestioned.