Corey Stewart is still hasn’t learned he isn’t a delegate to the General Assembly nor is he a state senator.  Perhaps he is going to run for either Senator Colgan’s seat or Del. Miller’s seat so he can introduce  his immigration reform.

The News & Messenger:

On Thursday, Stewart plans to announce multiple pieces of legislation for the General Assembly to con-sider, one of which is based on legislation passed recently in Oklahoma.

The first item would require all law enforcement officers in the state to check immigration status upon lawful detention if there is reasonable suspicion that the person detained is an illegal immigrant.

The second piece would be similar to legislation currently passed in Oklahoma that taxes international money transfers. The fee, which went into effect last July, is $5 on money transmissions up to $500, plus 1 percent of the amount in excess of $500. Consumers who file state tax returns can get a refund of the fees.

Businesses that fail to remit the fees to the Oklahoma Tax Commission face possible suspension of their licenses.

Stewart said this would adversely affect illegal immigrants who don’t have Social Security numbers and do not pay state taxes.

“A normal guy who pays state taxes, you are going to get money your money back,” Stewart said.

Read more…

From Huffingtonpost.com:

On his Monday radio show, Glenn Beck highlighted claims that before he started targeting a little-known, left-leaning organization called the Tides Foundation on his Fox News TV show, “nobody knew” what the non-profit was.

Indeed, for more than a year Beck has been portraying the progressive organization as a central player in a larger, nefarious cabal of Marxist/socialist/Nazi Obama-loving outlets determined to destroy democracy in America. Beck has routinely smeared the low-profile entity for being staffed by “thugs” and “bullies” and involved in “the nasty of the nastiest,” like indoctrinating schoolchildren and creating a “mass organization to seize power.”

As Media Matters reported, the conspiratorial host had mentioned (read: attacked) the little-known progressive organization nearly 30 times on his Fox program alone since it premiered in 2009, including several mentions in the last month. (Beck’s the only TV talker who regularly references the foundation, according to our Nexis searches.)

So yes, Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and “turn the light of day” onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving.

And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He’s the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution.

Read more…

Getting the facts now…..Judge blocks police from determining immigration status.

Stay tuned. This post will be updated.

Key Portions Blocked:

*Officers to to check immigraton status
*Immigrants to carry legal papers at all times
*Undocumented worders not allowed to seek and perform work

Copy of Judge Bolton’s Ruling

From MSNBC:

PHOENIX — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents — including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places. In addition, the judge blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.

“Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked,” U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled.

She ruled that the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. Other provisions of the law, many of them procedural and slight revisions to existing Arizona immigration statute, will go into effect at 12:01 a.m.

Reminder: This is a temporary injunction.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch:

Richmond, Va. –

Gov. Bob McDonnell indicated today that he will try to sell ABC privatization to the General Assembly as “a windfall for transportation.”

The proceeds from the auction sale of ABC licenses — the state expects to realize $300 million to $500 million — will go entirely for road maintenance, McDonnell said.

He appeared on Washington radio station WTOP’s “Ask the Governor” program.

Asked about a recent VCU poll which showed him with a 48 percent approval rating — low by gubernatorial standards — McDonnell said it reflects the people’s concern about jobs and the economy.

He also said there are no plans to proceed with phasing out the personal property tax on cars and trucks because of the state’s current fiscal situation. The 2002 General Assembly froze the phase out was frozen at about 65 percent of the assessed value of vehicles.

– Tyler Whitley

Apparently McDonnell believes in flash in the pan money.  What will he do to make up all the money that the sale of liquor brings in to the state annually?  This seems like a George Bush live for today, hell with tomorrow kind of scheme to me, rather than carefully planning out a course of action to guarantee certain finances we can count on. 

Some of us don’t want to look like Maryland or DC with a liquor store on every corner.  I sure hope a certain someone cornered the governor last night and gave him a piece of her mind about Virginia tradition.

Sniff sniff sniff.  I smell a rat.  Last night the BOCS voted unanimously to deny Eric Finley a Special use Permit to build an asphalt plant in Bristow, VA, near the Victory Lakes, Sheffield Manor, and Saybrooke subdivisions.

At last, the asphalt plant question has been settled.  No asphalt plant for Mr. Finley, even though he was advised to purchase land in that area that had been  zoned as heavy industrial.  That zoning has been in effect for about 30 some years.   Last spring, all but one member of the planning council had voted to approve Mr. Finley’s request. 

The fly in the proverbial ointment seemed to be that the residents of Victory Lakes Community objected to having an asphalt plant so close to their homes.  That makes sense too.  NIMBY is a pretty common feeling, especially when one thinks about the possibility of being downwind from an asphalt plant.  It beats a pig farm but not by much. 

 In addition to smelling a rat, I also  see both sides.  Mr. Finley’s land was zoned for heavy industrial use.  Residents of Victory Lakes don’t want to live near an asphalt plant.  Let’s take this issue back a few approvals.  Why on earth would anyone build high density, expensive housing on a tract of land which butted up next to land zoned for heavy industry?  Where was the buffer zone?   Did the BOCS who approved the land for future homes in Victory Lakes have a clue that this might just become a problem? 

The one caveat in the whole deal and the one caveat that bit Mr. Finley in his hindquarters was that the aspahlt plant required a Special Use Permit on top of the correct zoning.  Apparently a Special Use Permit (SUP) is needed for all sorts of things like day care, large box buildings like a Lowes, churches, etc.  It’s the county’s way of maintaining a little control over what goes in where. 

I am not sure why the supervisors unanimously voted no.  One has to ask why they have a planning commission.  The planning commission voted to approve Mr. Finley’s request last spring.  I assume that panning commission, an appointed group, had checked things out pretty thoroughly. 

One has to ask why there is no buffer zoning between Victory Lakes and heavy industry zoning.  One also has to ask who advised Mr. Finley to buy that land.   Did he talk with anyone from the country, either elected, appointed or employeed? 

The schools also need to get into the act.  Are they not at all concerned about what is being built around them?  Were any school board members there at that meeting last night?  Victory Lakes Elementary is supposedly only a half mile from the former proposed alphalt plant site.  ?   Cheapest land isn’t necessarily the best land.   How about a peep or two from them.  Perhaps I missed it.  George Mason Univerisity weighed in, advising not to approve the SUP.  They cited traffic impact on  attracting high tech business as a major reason. 

Meanwhile, it was hard for me to take a side.  Mr. Finley appeared to be willing to do whatever was required of him by the county to keep the environmental impact at a minimum.  Why did he choose to buy land in that exact location?  Did he check out what hoops he might have to jump through before being allowed to build his plant? 

I can also see residential concerns.  Additionally there is the concern about 1 asphalt plant and then wondering what comes next.   An asphalt plant in close proximity can impact quality of life in ways seen (like huge trucks running you off the road) and unseen (environmental hazards, carcinogens, etc).   What kinds of checks and balances exist to hold any company to doing what is says it will do environmentally? 

Start asking the right questions and just watch the rats start to scurry.

Preliminary Story in News & Messenger

Michael Nowakowski, vice mayor of Phoenix, paints a different picture of what is going on in Arizona. He also feels that sb 1070 is being used to parlay people’s fears into an election win for the current governor. He speaks of the crime rate being down in his state. He believes people being scared off and he is tired of the governor telling the nation that people are being beheaded in Arizona all as a political ploy.

Maybe the vice mayor isn’t running for re-election this cycle?   A ruling is expected today or tomorrow ruling whether the injunction to halt 1070  going in to effect is granted.

Thank goodness, Jon Stewart is back from vacation. I was afraid he had quit. Elena and I have been discussing how he was going to cover Shirley Sherrod without being outdated by a week. He managed and shed light on a topic I thought had been discussed to death.

He declared Breitbart the most honest player in the whole mess. He has Breitbart on video saying he wanted to be the one to take down the institutional left. (whatever that is)

Lost in Race

Much is happening in the world that I just don’t have the understand to discuss.  Let’s go with an open thread so the contributors will have a place to discuss all the wiki-leaks and Scotland-gate, Afghanistan, Senator Webb’s backlash.  That way we can keep the other threads on topic.  Here is the spot for the free for all.

Finally, another look at PWC, three years later, without editorializing by Corey Stewart. Hear an immigrant, Latino businessman Carlos Castro, and Chief Deane three years after the Immigration Resolution was first introduced.

While this video shows the Prince William County story from a perspective that doesn’t involve Corey Stewart making a name for himself, we still aren’t seeing the whole story.

What is still missing from the discussion is that the initial Immigration Resolution is NOT in affect and it is NOT the same as sb 1070. Until this fact is brought out, the conversation really goes no where and the story is only half told.

2 state employees in Utah compiled and stole a list of 1,300 people thought to be illegal immigrants. They were caught and have been fired. However, the debate continues.

The Latino community is concerned. What stuck me in particular is the charge that illegal immigrants need to learn to speak English. Jesus seems to speak pretty good English. He came here as a 15 year old–brought by his parents. He is now 25.

What happens in Arizona very much affects Utah since it is directly north of the Grand Canyon State. Utah is also the most homogeneous state in the Union, according to Pat Buchannan.

The front page of the WaPo has Kevin Ricks plastered larger than life. The Washington Post reveals months of investigative reporting that uncover the a decades-long pattern of abuse, deceit, and duplicitous behavior of 49 year-old teacher Kevin Ricks. Ricks, a former teacher at Osbourn High School, left a trail of betrayal of public trust that stretched as far away as Japan.

From the Washington Post:

Kevin Ricks was a gregarious, well-traveled English teacher at Osbourn High School, a Walt Whitman devotee who was so popular that a photo of him in class was chosen to fill the opening page of the yearbook. A writer and photographer himself, Ricks would walk the halls of the Manassas school with a leather-bound journal of his musings tucked in his bag, next to his laptop computer

What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn’t know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks’s world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation.

They didn’t know about his library of homemade pornographic videos and explicit photographs capturing his tequila-soaked sex acts with teenage boys he had handpicked. They didn’t know about the makeshift shrine boxes containing mementos of the episodes, including sex toys, soiled tissues and hair trimmings.

Read more…

Moan, bitch, beef, whine, complain. It is just freaking hot out there. For the past 24 hours I have been without air conditioning and my neighborhood has lost electricity 3 times today. The first episode of no-juice was for over an hour.

Elliot (the Wonderful…..who has been cursed by me many times over since last night at 8 pm) finally rescued us today. He is our heating/cooling tech specialist. We weren’t getting the full 240 voltage to kick on the AC, so when it took a break, it couldn’t kick back on. Lafayette diagnosed the problem before Elliot ever got there. She said she just didn’t think they were giving us enough juice. She was right, although Elliot was more scientific.

For future reference, the Red Roof Inn takes pets. I was headed there when Elliot showed up. I had packed a tooth brush, dog food and water bowl, the ipad and a laptop and the latest netflix movie. I figured when I was done with that one I could call up one on the ipad.

What are the contributors doing during this horrible weather? Emma, how many movies total have you watched? I haven’t heard one nay-sayer anywhere make one of the usual snide cracks about global warming. If I had a choice, I would take a blizzard. My furnace is more reliable than the ac.

This weather is totally extreme. Who has the statistics?

Continuing similar themes from last week:

From Reuters: (In its entirety)

Analysis: Race issues beset Obama’s “post-racial” presidency

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON | Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:12pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Many supporters of Barack Obama hoped his election as America’s first black president might herald an era of post-racial politics, but race has been an issue his administration just can’t seem to avoid.

Division and tension between black and white Americans has cropped up repeatedly over Obama’s 18 months in office, hurting his popularity and distracting from his political agenda.

The issue surfaced this week when the Agriculture Department pushed a black official to resign after allegations she discriminated against a white farmer, only to apologize a day later for acting too quickly and without the facts.

Some said the White House was too eager to prove to its critics on the right that it does not favor blacks.

“The Obama administration lost some political capital because they acted without thinking things through,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University.

Obama and race relations have often grabbed headlines.

Last July — in the heat of the White House fight for its healthcare overhaul — when Obama was subjected to scathing criticism for saying police had “acted stupidly” when they arrested Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates, who is black, on charges he was breaking into his own home.

More recently, the Justice Department dismissed voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party, prompting criticism from conservative groups who said the black president was unwilling to prosecute fellow blacks for civil rights violations.

“When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn’t suspect that it’s fake — you should presume that it’s fake, until further evidence becomes available,” columnist Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times.

Read more…

From the Richmond Times Dispatch  7/23/10

Six in ten Virginians are unfamiliar with the Tea Party

By: Olympia Meola
Published: July 23, 2010 7:12 AM

We told you this morning that Virginia Commonwealth University released a poll showing a mixed favorability rating for Gov. Bob McDonnell.

It’s really the first independent poll aiming to capture the governor’s approval rating since he took office in January—other than a poll commissioned in June by his political action committee, Opportunity Virginia, which pegged his approval rating at 63 percent.

Of the 810 adults surveyed, 10 percent rated McDonnell’s job as governor as excellent, 30 percent as good, 34 percent as fair and 10 percent as poor.

The poll also found that the most Virginians are unfamiliar with the Tea Party movement, which has not only grabbed headlines for the past year but could have sway in the Congressional elections this fall. Six‐in‐10 Virginians hold no opinion about the Tea Party movement, while 19 percent have a favorable view and 21 percent have an unfavorable view of the movement.

Just out of curiosity, do some of the folks who were polled live in a cave? How can they not have heard of the Tea Party? I have no problem with their rating of the governor, but no not have heard of the Tea Party?

Of the 40% who have heard of the movement, I find it even more interesting that 19% have a favorable view and 21% have an unfavorable opinion. Where do these people live and do they own televisions? Maybe I am no longer a ‘real Virginian.’ I just don’t get it.

More on VCU Poll.

Southern people have always had a way of simply not talking about things.  We, as a group, all know the things exist but we don’t talk about them.  Kids learn at an early age  because their mothers have a way of grabbing them up under their arms and giving them this special squeeze….I used to call it the grocery store squeeze….not to ask questions about certain things.  Senator Jim Webb has grabbed the proverbial tiger by the tail in an op/ed piece in the Wall Street Journal as he comments on the myth of white privilege and how 95% of white southerns have perhaps been miscast. 

Senator Webb definitely has cojones for taking on this ‘unmentionable.’

Suggested by Poor Richard, from the Wall Street Journal:

By JAMES WEBB

The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.

Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

How so?

Read more…

From the Washington Post July 18, 2010

The largest immigrant detention center in the mid-Atlantic will soon open in Prince Edward County, an effort to accommodate Virginia’s unprecedented surge in detentions of illegal immigrants picked up on criminal charges.

The $21 million, privately run center will house up to 584 immigrant detainees when it opens its doors. Over the next year, it might grow to hold 1,000 prisoners, most of them snagged by the federal government’s growing Secure Communities program, which aims to find and deport criminal illegal immigrants.

Last month, Virginia became the second state, after Delaware, to implement the program statewide, requiring jails and prisons to screen prisoners by immigration status and check their fingerprints against the country’s immigration database.

With three months left in the fiscal year, the number of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions detained in Virginia and the District has increased by 50 percent from last year’s total, to 2,414. Those numbers are expected to increase now that the program is being implemented statewide.

The new facility “is mostly here to address the impact of Secure Communities,” said Robert Helwig, assistant director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We do anticipate a surge in detainees.”

The immigration debate has grown increasingly polarized, and the Secure Communities program has become a symbol of that division. John T. Morton, head of ICE, calls it the agency’s attempt to “secure the nation and protect public safety.” But many immigrant advocates, including Enid Gonzalez, a lawyer at CASA of Maryland, say the program “claims to keep violent criminals off the streets, but instead it’s just incarcerating innocent busboys.”

There’s one point on which experts across the spectrum agree: Without additional detention space, the program cannot function. ICE has detained fewer than one-quarter of the immigrants identified by Secure Communities, a range of suspected criminals facing charges as varied as misdemeanors and murder.

“The Obama administration can’t expect to increase enforcement measures without increasing detention capacity,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies

.

Prince Edward County is sure to appreciate the 300 jobs that will come to the county. It only makes sense that those states using the Secure Communities program will need a place to house criminal illegal immigrants rather than putting them in already overcrowded local detention centers. If we want to take violent criminals off the street, we must be able to detain them rather than have our criminal justice system merely serve as a revolving door.

If Virginia has implemented the Secure Communities program, how does it differ from our 287g program? Do we use both? Secure Communities seems to have tiptoed in without a great deal of notice. Contributors, what do you know about Virginia implementing this program?

From the June 21, 2010  Washington Post: (background)

It’s time for another free for all.  What’s on your mind?  Is it hot enough out there for you? 

Who uses peapod?  Pros and cons?

Cindy and Poor Richard, what’s happening over your way?

There is a reason we call wild animals, ‘wild animals.’ Wild animals are unpredictable and capable of causing great injury and even death. People always seem to want to defy the odds by either keeping wild animals as pets or invading the space of wild animals in nature. 

Sometimes the animals fight back.  There are signs all over Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to go near the buffalo and other wild animals. (the signs about the grizzlies are particularly stern.) However, I have personally watched far too many people fail to heed the warnings. Why would anyone approach a beast that is just huge? Buffalo make cattle look like wimps.  This buffalo showed these people who was the boss, with attitude. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Again, it should be painful to be stupid. We need a break in here from politics. Don’t forget to give to your national parks if you have any spare change.  National Parks have been hit hard by this economy and belt-tightening.  They also suffered under the Bush Administration.

http://www.nps.gov/index.htm

I would think that Rachel Maddow was madder than a bat, except Elena and I have been talking about this same theory for over a year. Nothing that happened with Shirley Sherrod was random. It was all part of political theater being played out to accomplish a political goal.

Maddow gets it. Here is her analysis:

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Rachel goes through what has happened this week, step by step. This video was from her show on Tuesday.

Pay careful attention to the dates in the video. Notice that Fox News was all over the story, vilifying Sherrod for her racism. By Wednesday, everyone else was wrong except Fox News.

This video was recorded on Tuesday, July 20, 2010. Maddow links up several stories that link ACORN, Sherrod, NAACP, and other ’scandals.’ All go back to www.biggovernment.com. That would be Andrew Breitbart’s less than reputable website.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maddow continues to ask, whose next? Whose next in the Fox/Breitbart sites? We all know what the object is.

According to Huffington Post, Smith stated the following:

“We here at Studio B did not run the video and did not reference the story in any way for many reasons, among them: we didn’t know who shot it, we didn’t know when it was shot, we didn’t know the context of the statement, and because of the history of the videos on the site where it was posted, in short we do not and did not trust the source.”

Smith was speaking of Breitbart’s websites, specifically, www.biggovernment.com. Shep Smith also took on the White House. He has a reputation for standing up for right and wrong, as he perceives it, even if it goes against the party line of Fox News.