CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Young African-Americans Embrace GOP

The Boston Globe reports that a July Gallup Poll of minorities' political opinions indicated that African-American voters still overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party, and the percentage of African-Americans who consider themselves Republicans remains at about 9 percent. However, according to the poll, of those African-American who vote GOP, most are under age 50 -- a generational shift that could be an opportunity for Republicans.

According to the Globe, Jeffrey M. Jones, who conducted the Gallup Poll, said it is too early to tell whether a slight increase in young black voters identifying with the Republican Party represents a long-term trend:

''There's a lot of hints out there that something is going on," he said. ''Nothing is totally conclusive, but the more hints there are out there, the more evidence you have that this could be real."

However, Republicans, billing themselves as ''the party of Lincoln," have launched a high-profile campaign to chip away at what has been a reliable voting block for Democrats. While older black voters still have strong attachments to the Democratic party, political specialists say, younger African-Americans are less likely to be bound by tradition: They grew up in an integrated society, they don't have personal memories of the civil rights movement, and they are more focused on entrepreneurship and opportunity, two of the GOP's selling points.

''The question people are going to have is, who wants to build on the civil right movement's success -- closing the wealth gap, closing the health gap, offering people real access to opportunity?" Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview.

He reiterated his pitch to black voters: ''Give us a chance, and we'll give you a choice."

Cindy Sheehan

California Yankee has been a Cindy Sheehan free zone. I have chosen not to post about what I consider to be Sheehan's descent into the depths of the loony left out of respect for her grief over the loss of her son. There is no way I can truly understand her feelings. But as the media has embraced her and continuously provides a vehicle for her message of hate for President Bush, I can't take it anymore. I haven't been able to write the words that adequately describe my feelings about Sheehan's hateful message. Thankfully others have.

In his column in today's Chicago Sun-Times, Mark Steyn writes what should be required reading about Sheehan and the lunacy that has embraced her:

The more Cindy Sheehan is heard the more obvious it is she's thrown her lot in with kooks most Americans would give a wide berth to.

Don't take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:

"The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect."

Read all of Steyn' column. Steyn notes that Casey's father, Pat Sheehan, filed for divorce from Cindy and the New York Times explained that although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalized. Steyn finds a lesson for Democrats in the Times' explanation of the Sheehan's divorce. There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalized Democrats out there, but you don't hear them. No unfortunately those less liberal and less radicalized Democrats have allowed their voices to be drowned out by the Cindy Sheehans and the looney left.

UPDATE: Boston Globe Columnist, Cathy Young, writes about "The Cindy Sheehan you don't know:"

IT IS ENORMOUSLY difficult to say anything critical about Cindy Sheehan, the Everymom of the antiwar movement, without sounding indecently callous. She is, after all, a woman who has lost her child -- one of humankind's most universal images of grief.

[. . .]

I respect Sheehan's pain, no doubt compounded by her mother's stroke last week. Yet Sheehan is not simply expressing her pain and rage, privately or even publicly; when she turns her grief into a political cause, her politics cannot remain off-limits.

Sheehan's first and foremost demand is that all American troops be brought home from Iraq immediately. On this scale, irrationality becomes dangerous. Even many of those who opposed the war in Iraq from the start are convinced that a quick pullout would be a disaster -- both for the Iraqis, and for all those who would suffer if Iraq became a fully operational terrorist base. Who will have to give account to the bereaved men and women whose loved ones will be killed as a result?

But there's more than that to Sheehan's politics. She is not simply against the war in Iraq (and, as she told talk show host Chris Matthews on CNBC, against the war in Afghanistan as well). She has thrown in her lot with the hardcore Michael Moore left, and this less savory aspect of her crusade has been largely ignored by the respectful media.

In her public appearances, Sheehan has not only called Bush ''the biggest terrorist in the world" but suggested that his ''band of neocons" deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to happen: ''9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through," she told a cheering crowd at San Francisco State University last April.

That crowd, by the way, was holding a rally in support of Lynne Stewart, a radical New York attorney convicted in 2003 of aiding and abetting a terrorist conspiracy.

There's more, read the whole thing.

Arming Iraqi Insurgents

The Washington Times reports that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says is arming Iraqi insurgents:

"I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding ian weapons inside the country," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on his way to visit Paraguay earlier this week. "They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there.

"And we know that has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq. And we know the system of government they have with a handful of clerics running the place and telling everyone what to do is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of a constitution that's currently being drafted in Iraq," he said.

Time magazine reports that the ian Revolutionary Guard Corps has established a network of insurgents headed by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani with the express purpose of committing violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. According to a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by Time, the U.S. believes al-Sheibani's team consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking teams and death squads. The U.S. believes they train in Lebanon, in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Sadr City district and "in another country" and have detonated at least 37 bombs against U.S. forces this year in Baghdad alone.

Time's investigation, found an ian plan for gaining influence in Iraq that began before the U.S. invaded:

In their scope and ambition, 's activities rival those of the U.S. and its allies, especially in the south. There is a gnawing worry within some intelligence circles that the failure to counter ian influence may come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies, if Shi'ite factions with heavy ian backing eventually come to power and provoke the Sunnis to revolt. Says a British military intelligence officer, about the relative inattention paid to ian meddling: "It's as though we are sleepwalking."

[. . .]

Before the March 2003 invasion, military sources say, elements of up to 46 ian infantry and missile brigades moved to buttress the border. Positioned among them were units of the Badr Corps, formed in the 1980s as the armed wing of the Iraqi Shi'ite group known by its acronym SCIRI, now the most powerful party in Iraq. Divided into northern, central and southern axes, Badr's mission was to pour into Iraq in the chaos of the invasion to seize towns and government offices, filling the vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam's regime. As many as 12,000 armed men, along with ian intelligence officers, swarmed into Iraq. TIME has obtained copies of what U.S. and British military intelligence say appears to be ian Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence reports sent in April 2003. One, dated April 10 and marked CONFIDENTIAL, logs U.S. troops backed by armor moving through the city of Kut. But, it asserts, "we are in control of the city." Another, with the same date, from a unit code-named 1546, claims "forces attached to us" had control of the city of Amarah and had occupied Baath Party properties. A 2004 British army inquiry noted that the Badr organization and another militia were so powerful in Amarah, "it quickly became clear that the coalition needed to work with them to ensure a secure environment in the province."

The U.S. is making a huge mistake in not effectively stopping 's interference in Iraq and retaliating for attacks against coalition forces.

Graduate Student Indicted for Supporting Terrorist Organization

At Kapitalismo, Republitarian Renegade laments that he has a terrorist wannabe for a neighbor.

Last week a federal grand jury indicted Arwah Jaber on charges of knowingly attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, failing to disclose an alias on government applications and using a fake Social Security number to apply for credit.

According to The Morning News, Jaber was pulled out of line and arrested June 16 at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport:

Jaber, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in the West Bank town of Yamoun, allegedly told federal authorities he told his doctoral professor and others at the university he was going to Palestine to "fight for freedom, peace and justice."

[. . .]

Jaber had been free on bond while the U.S. Attorney's Office took the case to the grand jury seeking an indictment. Numerous conditions on his release included putting up the family's home to secure the bond, electronic monitoring and limiting his travel to Washington County or Little Rock. Jaber is not allowed to drive or possess weapons and was ordered not to have contact with UA professors and students to whom he allegedly made statements or sent electronic mail. Jaber's passport was revoked and he is on a no-fly list.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Beverly Stites Jones also set a further condition that Jaber, a chemistry student, continue working to complete his doctoral dissertation and defense.

Why was an accused terrorist wannabe freed on bond and required to continue school work? And why does it take a U.S. Attorney two months to indict a terrorist wannabe?

At Jihad Watch, Robert sums up Jaber's claim that he was frustrated with his professor over delays in graduating and made the statments in an effort to sway the teacher into signing off on his degree:

Give me a doctorate or I'll blow up a restaurant full of unsuspecting civilians?

Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to Run for New York Governor

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld said Friday he will seek the Republican nomination for governor of New York.

If Weld becomes New York's governor, he would be only the second person in U.S. history to be governor of two states. Sam Houston was governor of Tennessee from 1827 to 1829 and Texas from 1859 to 1861.

The Associated Press reports that Weld has been calling top leaders of New York's Republican and Conservative parties in recent days to talk with them about his interest in the race.

Weld was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1990 and re-elected in 1994. He ran for U.S. Senate in 1996 but was defeated by Democratic incumbent John Kerry. Weld resigned as governor in 1997 when then-President Clinton nominated him to become U.S. ambassador to Mexico, but the nomination was blocked in the Senate.

At RedState, StevenK posts William Weld Deserves Conservative Support in New York I'm not sure that Weld will gather much conservative support in New York, but as Steven points out his Libertarian stance on social issues will garner wide support among New Yorkers.

New Yorkers Favor Subway Bag Searches 3-1

A Quinnipiac University poll found New Yorkers favor random searches of packages and backpacks carried by people entering city subways, 72 percent to 25 percent.

According to the Associated Press, while support for the searches was solid among blacks, whites and Hispanics, most of those polled, 55 percent to 38 percent, said government security measures should not violate basic civil rights. The poll did find a divergence of opinion between Democrats and Republicans:

The 255 who considered themselves Republicans were an exception, with 60 percent of them agreeing that the government should take "all steps necessary to prevent additional acts of terrorism in the United States even if it means your basic civil liberties would be violated."

The 854 who consider themselves Democrats were 62 percent to 32 percent against that proposition. Independents also rejected violations of civil liberties, 54-39 percent.

The poll of 1,601 registered voters in New York City was conducted August 9 - 15 of 1,60 and has a margin of error of 2.5 percent for the overall poll, 3.5 percent for the Democratic segment and 6 percent for the Republican segment. Complete poll results are available here.

Over the last month support for the searches has grown from 30 percent to 38 percent. I consider myself to be very supportive of most security measures, but I do not favor these random searches. I believe they do little to deter any attack. Searches based on suspicious behavior would be more effective. I fear all the random searches do is undermine our constitutional right to be secure from unreasonable searches which our founding fathers so wisely secured for us.

It has been a long time since I agreed with the New York Civil Liberties Union ("NYCLU"). But on these random searches I think the NYCLU has it about right:

"This NYPD bag search policy is unprecedented, unlawful and ineffective, said Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the NYCLU. "It is essential that police be aggressive in maintaining security in public transportation. But our very real concerns about terrorism do not justify the NYPD subjecting millions of innocent people to suspicion-less searches in a way that does not identify any person seeking to engage in terrorist activity and is unlikely to have any meaningful deterrent effect on terrorist activity."

In addition to violating the constitutional rights of millions of subway riders, the NYPD policy appears to be ineffective as a security measure. The NYPD is not conducting searches at most subway entrances at any given time, is giving advance notice about searches at those entrances where searches are being conducted, is allowing people selected for a search to walk away, and is not basing the searches on any suspicious activity of individuals. As common sense would suggest, the NYPD's program is virtually certain neither to catch any person trying to carry explosives into the subway system nor to deter such an effort. Indeed, given the way the Department has implemented its search program, the only people being searched are innocent users of the subway system.

[. . .]

"We have no objection to reasonable searches, but we cannot and will not stand by while the police department seeks to expunge the Fourth Amendment from the Constitution with a program that subjects millions of people to suspicion-less searches and that serves virtually no public-safety purpose," said Christopher Dunn, Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU, lead counsel on the case.

Long-established constitutional principles hold that individuals retain the right to move about on our public streets and thoroughfares freely and without police intrusions and that, as a general matter, police officers may not search individuals on our sidewalks and thoroughfares in the absence of individualized suspicion.

The NYCLU has sued New York City in federal court seeking an injunction to halt the random searches. Judge Richard M. Berman has scheduled an evidentiary hearing on the matter for September 7, 2005. No court ruling is expected until later in the month. A copy of the Complaint filed by the NYCLU can be accessed in PDF format here.

Missile Fired At US Navy Ship In Jordan

The BBC reports a missile was fired at the USS Ashland docked in the Jordanian port of Aqaba:

"I can confirm that a rocket flew over the bow of USS Ashland and the rocket impacted in the roof of a warehouse. No sailors or marines were injured," said Commander Breslau, of the US Fifth Fleet.

[. . .]

The USS Ashland and its sister amphibious ship, the USS Kearsarge, have been docked in Aqaba, Jordan's only sea port, for the past 10 days, witnesses said.

Both ships are reported to have left the port in response to the attack.

According to Bloomberg, second rocket landed at the airport in the neighboring Israeli city of Eilat at about 8:45 a.m. local time, partly exploding and causing unspecified damage.

UPDATE: Reuters reports that a group claiming links to al Qaeda said it had fired rockets at U.S. Navy ships in Jordan and an Israeli port, according to an Internet statement:

The statement, which could not be authenticated, was signed by the Abdullah al-Azzam Brigades of the al Qaeda Organization in the Levant and Egypt. It was carried on an Islamist Web site not often used by other groups which say they are linked to Osama bin Laden's network.

Earlier this month, the group was one of several organizations that said it was behind the bomb attacks on a market and hotels in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. It has also claimed the October 2004 bombings at another Egyptian Red Sea resort.

Sept. 11 Suspect Gets Seven Years

A German Court today found Mounir el-Motassadeq guilty of membership of the Hamburg terror cell that took part in the 9/11 attacks and sentenced him to seven years. El-Motassadeq was accused of providing logistical help to the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that included 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, but was acquitted of being accessory to Sept. 11 attacks.

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. denied the Hamburg court's request to hear testimony from Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged mastermind of the attacks, who is held by the U.S. at an undisclosed location after his capture in Pakistan in 2002. The U.S. only sent a summary of minutes from his interrogations that indicate El-Motassadeq may not have known about the attacks.

According to CNN, the U.S. Justice Department faxed the German court summaries of the interrogation of two key detainees: Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed:

Binalshibh, believed to be the Hamburg cell's contact with al Qaeda, said "the only members of the Hamburg cell were himself, Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah," according to the summary. He also said, "the activities of the Hamburg group were not known to el-Motassadeq."

The group was "well known by a number of Arab students," but "Binalshibh said that the people in question had no knowledge and were not participants in any facet of the operative plans of September 11."

Mohammed is believed to have masterminded the 9/11 plot, and Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man, is suspected to have been an al Qaeda contact in Germany.

According to the summary, the Justice Department had "doubts" about some of the testimony, but the summary did not elaborate.

Binalshibh also said that while el-Motassadeq had transferred money on behalf of one of the plotters, he did not know for what purpose. Mohammed told interrogators that Binalshibh had not told el-Motassadeq of the details for security reasons.

Binalshibh gave interrogators a list of more than a dozen names of people who he said had no knowledge of and did not take part in any aspect of the 9/11 plan. The list included Zacarias Moussaoui, a suspect being held in the United States.

Motassadeq is one of only six men worldwide who have been tried or have trials pending in connection with the 9/11 attacks.

Shuttles Grounded Until March

NASA is now targeting March 2006 for the next Space Shuttle mission, STS-121. NASA is now referring to the "test flight to the International Space Station in the Shuttle Return to Flight series."

The NASA announcement stated a pair of "Tiger Teams" continues to investigate the External Tank foam loss during Discovery's launch on July 26. It was also announced that Discovery will be used for STS-121 instead of Atlantis. Atlantis will fly the following mission, STS-115, carrying Space Station truss segments which are too heavy to be carried by Discovery.

The Announcement of no flight until March came after a "minority report" said NASA had not learned key lessons that had emerged from the Columbia disaster. The BBC reported that seven members of an oversight panel said NASA had not learned key lessons that had emerged from the Columbia disaster:

Their "minority report" was contained within the final report by the 26-member Return to Flight task group appointed to evaluate how the US space agency meets the recommendations by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (Caib).

So much emphasis was placed on trying to meet unrealistic launch dates that some safety improvements were skipped, said the group.

"We expected that Nasa leadership would set high standards for post-Columbia work...we were, overall, disappointed," the panellists wrote in the report.

The seven critics included a former shuttle astronaut, former undersecretary of the Navy, a former congressional budget office director, former moon rocket engineer, a retired nuclear engineer and two university professors.

NASA should have fixed the foam debris problem long ago, but certainly after the loss of Columbia.

UPDATE: The Final Report of the Return to Flight Task Group can be accessed, in whole or in part, here. The "minority report" can be found at Annex A.2, pages 188- 216. The minority report is scathing:

Summary

It is difficult to be objective based on hindsight, but it appears to us that lessons that should have been learned have not been. Perhaps we expected or hoped for too much. The CAIB report should have served NASA as a “wake-up” call. As the CAIB noted (Vol. I, p. 208), “The recognition of human spaceflight as a developmental activity requires a shift in focus from operations and meeting schedules to a concern for the risks involved. Necessary measures include … Barring unwarranted departures from design standards, and adjusting standards only under the most rigorous, safety-driven process.”

We expected that NASA leadership would set high standards for post-Columbia work. We expected upfront standards of validation, verification and certification. We expected rigorous and integrated risk management processes. We expected involved and insightful leadership from NASA Headquarters. We were, overall, disappointed.

[. . .]

Conclusion

Among the most damning observations CAIB made of NASA was the sense of complacency toward the problem of the External Tank shedding of foam. Despite program requirements that no debris should be shed, there were over 15,000 instances of damage to the Orbiter, most of which came from debris from the Space Shuttle elements. As has been widely reported, two flights before Columbia, a large piece of foam was shed and caused minor damage to one of the Solid Rocket Boosters. Photographic documentation was available of major foam shedding from the External Tanks on at least seven previous flights (CAIB Vol. I, p. 85). Despite all this evidence, foam had never destroyed an Orbiter and the program relied on this. “flight history” to justify inactivity before and during the flight of Columbia.

This “We’ve seen this before” mentality is still present, and it appeared on more than one occasion during MMT simulations. In addition, leading up to the return-to-flight, the program justified not pursuing potential ice damage to the Orbiter umbilical doors because there had not been substantial damage on previous flights. Despite the evidence of impacts all around the area, the official rationale for accepting the risk was listed as “flight history;” i.e., we’ve never had critical damage there before.

NASA’s leaders and managers must break this cycle of smugness substituting for knowledge. NASA must be able to quantify risk, even if imperfectly, set requirements and expectations, and hold organizations and individuals accountable, Analytical models – while valuable tools – cannot substitute for engineering judgment and conscience. Rigor must be reestablished throughout the Agency. Opinion, no matter how well informed, cannot replace objective evidence. Flight history, while critical for informed judgment, cannot substitute for it. “We’ve been lucky” is a statement that should never be associated with the human spaceflight programs.

Illegal Aliens Win Another Round

Jorge Mora Ramirez, the admitted illegal alien who became a cause célèbre after he was charged with criminal trespass, has so little fear of our criminal justice system that he told his story to the Associated Press:

Jorge Mora Ramirez paid about $2,000 to get from Mexico City to Massachusetts, first getting space on a truck with 20 people and making it across the border into Arizona. He eventually joined his father in Massachusetts, and his siblings followed.

He started working for a Jaffrey-based roofing company. In April, on the way to pick up his paycheck, he stopped his car along the road in the town of New Ipswich to make a phone call. He left his hazard lights blinking.

A police officer approached and asked to see some identification. He gave him a driver's license from Mexico and insurance documents from Massachusetts. Then he was questioned there for about an hour, then later at the police station, where he was charged with trespassing, the first case of its kind in New Hampshire.

Ramirez at first entered a guilty plea to the trespass charge. He retracted the guilty plea after the Mexican consulate got a firm specializing in immigration law to represent him.

Last Friday Judge L. Phillips Runyon III dismissed trespassing charges against Ramirez and seven other illegal aliens. The illegal aliens, from Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, were charged with trespass after traffic stops when they produced fake identification and admitted they were in the country illegally.

The Daily News Tribune reported that Judge Runyon agreed with defense lawyers that the police chiefs in New Ipswich and Hudson were improperly trying to enforce federal laws:

"The criminal trespass charges against the defendants are unconstitutional attempts to regulate in the area of enforcement of immigration violations, an area where Congress must be deemed to have regulated with such civil sanctions and criminal penalties as it feels are sufficient," Jaffrey District Court Judge L. Phillips Runyon III ruled.

[. . .]

"The current charges clearly conflict with the comprehensive menu of federal immigration offenses, sanctions and penalties by attempting to add a new one to them," Runyon wrote.

He said federal law has a mechanism to let local officers assist in enforcing immigration law.

"This role for local law enforcement exists within the federal plan for enforcing immigration violations, which is further indication that Congress intended to preclude any local efforts which are unauthorized or based on other than federal law," he said.

The New York Times explained that Judge Runyon noted that under the federal system, local police departments that want to be involved in immigration enforcement may go through a training process that allows them to become "deputies" of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. That process, Justice Runyon wrote, "is further indication that Congress intended to preclude any local efforts which are unauthorized or based on other than federal law."

Before Ramirez retracted his guilty plea, Judge Runyon ordered him to pay $120 on the charge of operating without a license, and a $1,000 fine for the criminal trespass charge. Judge Runyon then suspended the latter fine for a year, provided Ramirez stays out of trouble and reports to the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Manchester by Friday.

ICE spokesman Paula Granier said that if Ramirez turned himself in, he'd find himself before a federal judge. "He will be put into proceedings for removal from the United States," she said. That's the politically correct way to say deported. Granier was quoted by the Portsmouth Herald as saying:

But the fact is, she said, this case is about one illegal immigrant whose only crime was being broken down on the side of the road.

Granier is wrong, entering the United States illegally is a crime. Ramirez admitted he was in the U.S. illegally.

Has Ramirez faced deportation proceedings? Has his employer been fined? No, Ramirez is just another example of the ICE's "catch and release" policy. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, has called the ICE's "catch and release" policy insane.

The United States is a nation of immigrants, and immigration still provides great economic and cultural benefits. But the borders simply cannot be left unchecked. Our security demands tougher policing of immigration. If the feds refuse to do it, and courts refuse to let local police do it, who will?

If the immigration authorities would just deport these illegal aliens when they are caught, it would be a small step toward gaining control of our borders.