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2016

Our Immigration System’s Failures Are More Outrageous than Skittles-gate 858 high-risk immigrants were mistakenly given citizenship instead of being deported. Why are the media ignoring it? By Deroy Murdock

Behold a perfect storm of federal incompetence and liberal media bias: Washington bureaucrats accidentally turned pending deportees into citizens, while the network news programs overlooked this outrage and gave ten times more coverage to Donald Trump, Jr.’s use of tainted Skittles to analogize ISIS members among Syrian refugees.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general revealed on Monday that 858 immigrants destined for deportation unwittingly were granted citizenship. These immigrants applied for citizenship using aliases and other false information. Their fraudulent applications flew beneath the radar and were approved, in part, because the paper fingerprint records that could have exposed them as imposters had not been digitized. (Some 315,000 aliens facing deportation orders lack fingerprint records.)

Worse, these 858 accidental citizens likely are not from Argentina, Botswana, Holland, or Singapore. Rather, they are from “countries of interest” that pose national-security threats or neighboring states that are rife with immigration fraud. Some of these deportees-turned-citizens received credentials that gave them access to secure areas at airports and other transit hubs. One of these devious-and-lucky 858 works as a law-enforcement officer.

This total fiasco gives the lie to the notion that America can screen the stampede of Syrian refugees that President Obama is waving into the USA, and Hillary Clinton wants to boost by more than sextuple — from Obama’s 2016 goal of 10,000 to hers for 2017: 65,000. Uncle Sam cannot vet deportees within this country’s borders. This dismal performance confirms GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s argument that Americans should have zero faith in Washington’s ability to discern peaceful refugees from ISIS agents.

Regardless, CBS Evening News spent exactly twelve seconds on this humiliation for Obama and Clinton. ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News ignored it altogether.

But the next night, all three networks pounced on Donald Trump, Jr. when the candidate’s son asked via Twitter: “If I had a bowl of Skittles, and I told you that just three would kill you, would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

CBS discussed this for 27 seconds and ABC for 30. NBC aired 70 seconds on this matter after anchor Lester Holt lured viewers thus, as the broadcast opened: “Skittles outrage: Donald Trump’s son getting backlash after comparing refugees to poisoned candy.”

A World in Denial by Barry Shaw

This article is not meant to, or intended to be interpreted as a political endorsement, or lack thereof, of any political candidate. Family Security Matters takes no political point of view whatsoever.

I am gravely concerned that the Obama-Clinton team is involved in an ongoing subversion policy not only on a national scale but on a global one. Certainly, as far as Israel is concerned there is a grand deception going on.

In his UN General Assembly speech, President Obama spoke about “deep fault lines in the existing international order.” He’s right. He’s responsible for a lot of the mess.

Unfortunately, politicians like Obama like to see what they want to see and ignore gross realities that do not jive with what they want to achieve. Take the Israeli-Palestinian issue, for example. At the UN podium Obama said, “Surely Israelis and Palestinian will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.”

To the uninitiated (i.e. the progressives who live in a virtual world that enables them to block out sounds and truth that invades their cocooned ‘safe spaces’), massive and ongoing Palestinian terror coming at Israeli civilians from the Hamas political front based in Gaza and the Fatah political front based in Ramallah is ignored, tippexed out of his song sheet. In his narrative, it simply doesn’t exist.

In this he is backed by Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who sang off the same song sheet. “Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion. Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarization and hopelessness. This is madness.”

Yes it is, Ban Ki. It’s madness not to see the violent passion to destroy Israel. He spoke as Israel endured another weekend of Palestinian terror attacks, eight in number. It’s madness for them to talk about Israel “illegally occupying Palestinian land” when 2000-year-old Jewish coins were recently dug up on land that was evidently Jewish.

Susan Jones:Obama Directs Federal Agencies to Consider Climate Change As a National Security Issue

In a Sept. 21 memo to his department heads, President Obama instructed all federal departments and agencies to consider the impact of climate change on national security.

Obama states that it is the policy of the U.S. government to ensure that current and anticipated impacts of climate change be “identified and considered” in developing national security doctrine, policies and plans.

“Climate change poses a significant and growing threat to national security, both at home and abroad,” the memo says. Those threats, according to Obama, include flooding, drought, heat waves, intense precipitation, pest outbreaks, disease, and electricity problems, all of which can “affect economic prosperity, public health and safety, and international stability.”

Obama also says those anticipated climate change issues could adversely affect military readiness; negatively affect military facilities and training; increase demands for federal support to civil defense authorities,; and increase the need to maintain international stability and provide humanitarian assistance needs.

He has directed his national security and science/technology chiefs to chair an interagency working group to study climate-related impacts on national security and develop plans to deal with those impacts.

The working group will include high-ranking officials from the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Energy, Homeland Security, Agency for International Development, NASA, Director of National Intelligence, U.S. Mission to the U.N., Office of Management and Budget, Council on Environmental Quality, Millennium Change Corporation, and “any other agencies or offices as designated by the co-chairs.”

Among other things, this bureaucratic working group will “develop recommendations for climate and social science data…that support or should be considered in the development of national security doctrine, policy, and plans.”

The working group will create data repositories, climate modeling, and simulation and projection capabilities.

The long overdue goodbye : Ruthie Blum

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with U.S. President Barack Obama at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, on the sidelines of the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Having just signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the “largest-ever” military-aid package granted to Israel by an American administration, Netanyahu had no choice but to grin and bear it when Obama issued a typical, not-so-veiled threat to the Jewish state.

Though the precise words that were exchanged between the two behind closed doors are not known, Netanyahu was well aware of what to expect ahead of the tete-a-tete — likely, and thankfully, the last he needs to have with the hostile American president. And if he had harbored any illusions about being spared yet another of Obama’s tiresome lectures on the plight of the Palestinians, Obama dispelled them while talking to reporters, just before the meeting.

“There is great danger of terrorism and flare-ups of violence, and we also have concerns about settlement activity,” Obama said, creating moral parity between evil deeds and benign ones. “We want to see how Israel sees the next few years … because we want to make sure that we keep alive this possibility of a stable, secure Israel at peace with its neighbors, and a Palestinian homeland that meets the aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

What Obama meant to say — and surely did say behind closed doors — was that Israelis living in any areas that the Palestinian Authority wants cleansed of Jews are the cause of the stabbing attacks, shootings, car-rammings, Molotov cocktail-throwing and bombings to which they have been subjected for decades. And now that he has given them a pile of money with which to protect themselves over the next decade, Netanyahu had better start capitulating to any and every Palestinian demand. You know, just as Obama did last year with the mullah-led regime in Tehran.

Netanyahu, too, spoke in code prior to the meeting. “The greatest challenge is, of course, the unremitting fanaticism,” he said. “The greatest opportunity is to advance peace. That’s a goal that I and the people of Israel will never give up on. We’ve been fortunate that in pursuing these two tasks, Israel has no greater friend than the United States of America.”

Netanyahu was actually conveying that Israel — a liberal democracy like America — has never been at fault for its enemies’ extremism. The trouble with this assertion is that Obama believes the United States is just as much to blame for the wrath of those bent on its destruction as Israel.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, a senior U.S. official said that during the meeting, Obama raised “profound concerns about the corrosive effect that settlement activity, which continues as the occupation enters its 50th year, is having on the prospect of a two-state solution.”

Netanyahu: Threat Iran Poses ‘to All of Us is Not Behind Us, It’s Before Us’ By Bridget Johnson

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted in his address to the United Nations General Assembly today that “the days when UN ambassadors reflexively condemn Israel, those days are coming to an end.”

But he spared no withering criticism for the world body, reminding members that what was “begun as a moral force has become a moral farce.”

“What I’m about to say is going to shock you: Israel has a bright future at the UN,” he began the speech. “Now I know that hearing that from me must surely come as a surprise, because year after year I’ve stood at this very podium and slammed the UN for its obsessive bias against Israel. And the UN deserved every scathing word – for the disgrace of the General Assembly that last year passed 20 resolutions against the democratic state of Israel and a grand total of three resolutions against all the other countries on the planet.”

Netanyahu called the UN Human Rights Council a “joke” and noted that the UN’s Commission on Women condemned only Israel this year — “Israel, where women fly fighter jets, lead major corporations, head universities, preside – twice – over the Supreme Court, and have served as speaker of the Knesset and prime minister.”

He touted the diplomatic, economic and security relationships Israel has with various nations outside of the UN framework, underscoring that “world leaders increasingly appreciate that Israel is a powerful country with one of the best intelligence services on earth.”

“Because of our unmatched experience and proven capabilities in fighting terrorism, many of your governments seek our help in keeping your countries safe,” he said. “…Governments are changing their attitudes towards Israel because they know that Israel can help them protect their peoples, can help them feed them, can help them better their lives.”

Netanyahu said he had one key message for the delegates: “Lay down your arms. The war against Israel at the UN is over.”

FBI Gave Clinton Aide/Lawyer Cheryl Mills Immunity Deal in Clinton Email Probe By Debra Heine

A top Hillary Clinton aide and two other staff members were granted immunity deals in exchange for their cooperation in the now-closed FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) told the Associated Press on Friday.

Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that Clinton’s former chief of staff and counselor Cheryl Mills gave federal investigators access to her laptop only on the condition that the findings couldn’t be used against her.

“This is beyond explanation,” the exasperated congressman said in a statement. “The FBI was handing out immunity agreements like candy. I’ve lost confidence in this investigation and I question the genuine effort in which it was carried out. Immunity deals should not be a requirement for cooperating with the FBI.”

This arrangement brings the total number of publicly known immunity deals given in the Clinton case to five. With no prosecutions.

Chaffetz told the AP, “No wonder they couldn’t prosecute a case.”

Via Politico:

Chaffetz says the two others granted immunity were John Bentel, then-director of the State Department’s Office of Information Resources Management, and Clinton aide Heather Samuelson. Two other people were previously identified as receiving immunity deals.

If Not Trump, Who Will Cure the Rot? A Chicago murder wave and New York graft scandal are manifestations of political decay.By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

One of the brothers charged in the August shooting death of mother-of-four Nykea Aldridge in Chicago, which prompted a controversial tweet from Donald Trump appealing for black support (“VOTE TRUMP!”), was released only two weeks earlier on a firearms violation.

Ditto the murderer of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, whose 2013 killing was adopted as a symbol by the Obama administration. Her killer had also recently been released on a weapons charge.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson last month explained reality to the Chicago Tribune : Of the 1,400 people on the city’s “Strategic Subject List” of those believed responsible for its gun violence, most have been arrested and released multiple times on gun charges. By one count (that of the Chicago Sun-Times) 75% of those booked on gun violations in the first three months of 2016 were back on the streets by June.

“Clearly, [gun felons] don’t think there’s a consequence to their actions,” Supt. Johnson said in a public news conference. “And to be quite honest, we’re showing them that there’s not. If we’re not going to keep you in jail because you choose to use a gun, then what are we doing?”

In New York in the heyday of stop-and-frisk, these killers would not have been released—something noticeable even to a real-estate developer not otherwise known for the depth of his public-policy acumen.

Those convicted on firearms violations were hit with serious jail time. Even when aggressive stop-and-frisk didn’t result in a conviction, an illegal gun was confiscated, and word went out that packing an unlicensed weapon was likely to be unavailing given the city’s unrelenting focus on gun violators.

All this was part of a deliberate strategy in the 1990s to reduce New York’s then-towering murder rate. Chicago’s murder rate today is a bit of an anomaly in an America where crime has been dropping until recently, but it’s not a product of the city not knowing what to do.

To many liberal and African-American activists not living under immediate threat of gun violence, however, stop-and-frisk has become unacceptable. They reject the tactic because police, some of whom are white, would inevitably be stopping mostly black and Hispanic citizens on the street in search of illegal weapons.

Thus Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who sees his political career going down the drain due to the killings, has every reason to believe his career would only go down the drain faster if he took steps that he knows would save Chicagoans’ lives. If he has any doubt, he need only look at the New York Times ’s home page on Friday. Its headline on Mr. Trump’s endorsement of stop-and-frisk judged the most urgent lesson for the public to be: “Trump Crime Plan Seen as Hitting Minorities Harder.”

At bottom, it’s this rottenness of American political culture that allows Mr. Trump, for all his flaws as a candidate and human being, to find traction with so many voters. Not because he’s a uniquely attractive individual, but because he’s uniquely willing to violate the political taboos and challenge the status quo. Indeed, his most insidious offense may be his suggestion that some problems aren’t intractable. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Gathering Nuclear Storm Lulled to believe nuclear catastrophe died with the Cold War, America is blind to rising dragons. By Mark Helprin

Even should nuclear brinkmanship not result in Armageddon, it can lead to abject defeat and a complete reordering of the international system. The extraordinarily complicated and consequential management of American nuclear policy rests upon the shoulders of those we elevate to the highest offices. Unfortunately, President Obama’s transparent hostility to America’s foundational principles and defensive powers is coupled with a dim and faddish understanding of nuclear realities. His successor will be no less ill-equipped.

Hillary Clinton’s robotic compulsion to power renders her immune to either respect for truth or clearheaded consideration of urgent problems. Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state once said that he was “pure act” (meaning action). Hillary Clinton is “pure lie” (meaning lie), with whatever intellectual power she possesses hopelessly enslaved to reflexive deviousness.

Donald Trump, surprised that nuclear weapons are inappropriate to counterinsurgency, has a long history of irrepressible urges and tropisms. Rather like the crazy boy-emperors after the fall of the Roman Republic, he may have problems with impulse control—and an uncontrolled, ill-formed, perpetually fragmented mind.

None of these perhaps three worst people in the Western Hemisphere, and few of their deplorable underlings, are alive to the gravest danger. Which is neither Islamic State, terrorism, the imprisoned economy, nor even the erosion of our national character, though all are of crucial importance.

The gravest danger we face is fast-approaching nuclear instability. Many believe it is possible safely to arrive at nuclear zero. It is not. Enough warheads to bring any country to its knees can fit in a space volumetrically equivalent to a Manhattan studio apartment. Try to find that in the vastness of Russia, China, or Iran. Even ICBMs and their transporter-erector-launchers can easily be concealed in warehouses, tunnels and caves. Nuclear weapons age out, but, thanks to supercomputing, reliable replacements can be manufactured with only minor physical testing. Unaccounted fissile material sloshing around the world can, with admitted difficulty, be fashioned into weapons. And when rogue states such as North Korea and Iran build their bombs, our response has been either impotence or a ticket to ride.

Nor do nuclear reductions lead to increased safety. Quite apart from encouraging proliferation by enabling every medium power in the world to aim for nuclear parity with the critically reduced U.S. arsenal, reductions create instability. The fewer targets, the more possible a (counter-force) first strike to eliminate an enemy’s retaliatory capacity. Nuclear stability depends, inter alia, upon deep reserves that make a successful first strike impossible to assure. The fewer warheads and the higher the ratio of warheads to delivery vehicles, the more dangerous and unstable.

Consider two nations, each with 10 warheads on each of 10 missiles. One’s first strike with five warheads tasked per the other’s missiles would leave the aggressor with an arsenal sufficient for a (counter-value) strike against the now disarmed opponent’s cities. Our deterrent is not now as concentrated as in the illustration, but by placing up to two-thirds of our strategic warheads in just 14 submarines; consolidating bomber bases; and entertaining former Defense Secretary William Perry’s recommendation to do away with the 450 missiles in the land-based leg of the Nuclear Triad, we are moving that way.

Supposedly salutary reductions are based upon an incorrect understanding of nuclear sufficiency: i.e., if X number of weapons is sufficient to inflict unacceptable costs upon an enemy, no more than X are needed. But we don’t define sufficiency, the adversary does, and the definition varies according to culture; history; the temperament, sanity, or miscalculation of leadership; domestic politics; forms of government, and other factors, some unknown. For this reason, the much maligned concept of overkill is a major contributor to stability, in that, if we have it, an enemy is less likely to calculate that we lack sufficiency. Further, if our forces are calibrated to sufficiency, then presumably the most minor degradation will render them insufficient.

Nor is it safe to mirror-image willingness to go nuclear. Every nuclear state has its own threshold, and one cannot assume that concessions in strategic forces will obviate nuclear use in response to conventional warfare, which was Soviet doctrine for decades and is a Russian predilection now.

Ballistic missile defense is opposed and starved on the assumption that it would shield one’s territory after striking first, and would therefore tempt an enemy to strike before the shield was deployed. As its opponents assert, hermetic shielding is impossible, and if only 10 of 1,500 warheads were to hit American cities, the cost would be unacceptable. But no competent nuclear strategist ever believed that, other than protecting cities from accidental launch or rogue states, ballistic missile defense is anything but a means of protecting our retaliatory capacity, making a counter-force first strike of no use, and thus increasing stability.

In a nuclear world, unsentimental and often counterintuitive analysis is necessary. As the genie will not be forced back into the lamp, the heart of the matter is balance and deterrence. But this successful dynamic of 70 years is about to be destroyed. Those whom the French call our “responsibles” have addressed the nuclear calculus—in terms of sufficiency, control regimes, and foreign policy—only toward Russia, as if China, a nuclear power for decades, did not exist. While it is true that to begin with its nuclear arsenal was de minimis, in the past 15 years China has increased its land-based ICBMs by more than 300%, its sea-based by more than 400%. Depending upon the configuration of its missiles, China can rain up to several hundred warheads upon the U.S.

As we shrink our nuclear forces and fail to introduce new types, China is doing the opposite, increasing them numerically and forging ahead of us in various technologies (quantum communications, super computers, maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicles), some of which we have forsworn, such as road-mobile missiles, which in survivability and range put to shame our Minuteman IIIs. CONTINUE AT SITE

France: The Great Wall of Calais by Soeren Kern

Around 200 migrants from Calais, the principal ferry crossing point between France and England, are successfully smuggled into Britain each week, according to police estimates cited by the Telegraph.

In recent months, masked gangs of people smugglers armed with knives, bats and tire irons have forced truck drivers to stop so that migrants can board their vehicles.

“Before, it was just attempts to get on trucks. Now there is looting and willful destruction, tarpaulins are slashed, goods stolen or destroyed. Drivers go to work with fear in their bellies and the economic consequences are severe.” — David Sagnard, president of France’s truck drivers’ federation.

“They want to go to England because they can expect better conditions on arrival there than anywhere else in Europe or even internationally. … They can easily find work outside the formal economy…” — Natacha Bouchart, Mayor of Calais.

“The asylum seekers could apply for protection in France or the European country they first landed in… they only reached Calais by crossing French borders. France is part of the borderless Schengen Area of the EU, whereas Britain is not.” — James Glenday, ABC News.

Building work has begun on a wall in the northern French city of Calais, a major transport hub on the edge of the English Channel, to prevent migrants from stowing away on cars, trucks, ferries and trains bound for Britain.

Dubbed “The Great Wall of Calais,” the concrete barrier — one kilometer (half a mile) long and four meters (13 feet) high on both sides of the two-lane highway approaching the harbor — will pass within a few hundred meters of a sprawling shanty town known as “The Jungle.”

The squalid camp now houses more than 10,000 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are trying to reach Britain. The migrants at the camp are mostly from Sudan (45%), Afghanistan (30%), Pakistan (7%), Eritrea (6%) and Syria (1%), according to a recent census conducted by aid agencies.

Construction of the wall — which will cost British taxpayers £2 million (€2.3 million; $2.6 million) and is due to be completed by the end of 2016 — comes amid a surge in the number of migrants from the camp trying to reach Britain.

Lawrence J. Haas : A Problematic Aid Package

Hailing the new 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Israel on U.S. security aid, President Barack Obama couldn’t pass up the opportunity to chastise the Jewish state for failing to secure a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, Obama said in a prepared statement as officials from both countries signed the agreement last week, “has been unwavering and is based on a genuine and abiding concern for the welfare of the Israeli people and the future of the State of Israel. It is because of this same commitment to Israel and its long-term security that we will also continue to press for a two-state solution … despite the deeply troubling trends on the ground that undermine this goal.”

Obama’s statement, and some of the terms of the memorandum, reflect everything that Israel’s supporters find so irritating about the administration – its condescension toward Israel, its confusion about the region and its ill-advised efforts to reshape U.S. relations with regional allies and adversaries.

Any new 10-year security agreement between the United States and its closest ally in that turbulent region should herald warm feelings and a hearty sense of accomplishment in both capitals, but the atmospherics around this agreement are fueling lots of resignation, bitterness and second guessing.

At first blush, the memorandum reflects the close ties between Washington and Jerusalem that long predate Obama. At $38 billion, or $3.8 billion a year for 10 years starting in 2018, it surpasses the $31 billion of its expiring predecessor and represents the single largest U.S. security package ever proffered for any nation.

But dig below the top-line numbers, and you find terms and restrictions that belie the boasts of Obama and other top U.S. officials about “unwavering” commitments and “genuine and abiding” concerns.

For starters, the new agreement includes $500 million a year for missile defense, which Washington has been providing outside its current package, not as part of it. If you add the $500 million to the current $3.1 billion annual payment, total annual U.S. security aid to Israel is $3.6 billion. Thus, the $3.8 billion annual payment under the new agreement represents only about a 5 percent increase – and that doesn’t account for inflation.