RUTHFULLY YOURS

The San Bernardino attacks this month put the spotlight on a type of visa issued to a wide swath of foreigners, from camp counselors to physicians, and how easy it is for recipients to remain in the U.S. after the visa has expired.

A Russian woman who married Enrique Marquez Jr., the man accused of buying rifles used in the Dec. 2 attack, entered the U.S. six years ago on a three-month educational-exchange visa, known as a J-1 visa.

Once that visa expired, she remained for several years in the U.S. without legal status, according to law-enforcement officials.

In late 2014, Mariya Chernykh and Mr. Marquez were married, according to Riverside County, Calif., records. Last week, Mr. Marquez was charged with entering into a sham marriage to enable her to apply for permanent residency in the U.S. Mr. Marquez is also charged with conspiring to support terrorism.

Ms. Chernykh isn’t suspected of involvement in the attack, according to law-enforcement officials. But her case highlights the challenge to deter and identify visa overstays, those who enter the country legally and fail to leave by the stipulated date.

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

http://www.nationalreview.com/slideshows/today-history-6
DECEMBER 25, 1776: General George Washington crosses the Delaware River with a force of Continental Army soldiers in what would become an iconic moment of the Revolutionary War. Hoping to surprise a force of Hessian soldiers camped at Trenton, N.J., Washington organized a two-pronged attack, personally leading half the force, some 2,400 soldiers, across the icy river at 11:00 P.M. Christmas night. Reaching Trenton the following morning, Washington’s troops made quick work of the Hessians, groggy from holiday drinking and over-confident of their fighting abilities, and took nearly 1,000 prisoners and valuable supplies. Washington’s daring victory buoyed the spirits of the patriot cause at a pivotal moment when many doubted the war of independence could be won.

How disappointing to find such a glaring error in the WSJ….the definition of staunch is : steady, constant, trusty, hard-working, steadfast, redoubtable, unwavering, tireless The correct word should have been stanch which means to stop or restrict….Furthermore, it is the influx of Arab/Moslems that should be stanched ….the immigration policies are idiotic…..rsk
To staunch the flow of illegal migrants to the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security has been preparing a national operation to deport Central American families who have evaded removal orders, according to a government official.

Starting early next month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS unit, plans to start rounding up hundreds of families that entered the U.S. illegally and who have ignored a final order to leave the country, said the official. Such an order is issued by a judge in immigration court.

The number of families showing up at the southwest border has spiked in recent months as gang-related violence grips El Salvador and Honduras. The region also has been plagued by drought.
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Don’t be fooled by last week’s headlines about more money and greater accountability at the Veterans Affairs Department. It’s the usual malarkey coming out of Washington. The prognosis for veterans who need health care remains poor, with vets likely to get the run-around and face delays again in 2016.

On Friday, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill for the coming year that allocates a whopping $163 billion to the Veterans Administration – even more than the department requested. But as long as the VA is riddled with corruption and saddled with job-protection rules that favor employees instead of vets, that’s throwing good money after bad.

As for the latest highly touted whistleblower-protection law signed by President Obama last Friday, there were whistleblower protections already on the books. What’s lacking is the will to enforce them. Adding more pages of laws won’t fix that.

The last whistleblower-protection law, passed in 2002, mandated training for VA employees in how to treat informants. VA facilities are wallpapered with posters announcing whistleblower safeguards. There’s an entire federal agency – the Office of Special Counsel – to protect them. Despite all this, VA executives penalize whistleblowers and get away with it.

There is a war on police.

It’s the post-Ferguson truth that every cop knows, but there is one man who has emerged as a passionate and articulate spokesman for law enforcement and is willing to call it a “war on police.”

“War had been declared on the American police officer led by some high profile people, one of them coming out of the White House, and one coming out of the United States Department of Justice,” he said. “And it’s open season right now.”

For decades, Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr. put his life and his energies into protecting and serving the people of Milwaukee County. Though always a man of strong opinions, it was when the White House cheered a war on police and pushed through pro-crime policies, freeing drug dealers while locking up police officers that he emerged as a national figure of unquestionable moral authority.

When Attorney General Eric Holder met Sheriff Clarke he sneered, “What’s up with the hat?” Political opponents have mocked Sheriff Clarke as a “big cowboy.” And indeed, the Sheriff of Milwaukee County wears a cowboy hat and he can be seen riding a horse. He also preaches “cowboy values” like speaking frankly and telling people that they have to be ready to stand up to criminals.

In the wake of video disclosures earlier this year that Planned Parenthood employees appeared to be engaging in the sale of body parts obtained through abortions, Utah governor Gary Herbert ordered state agencies to end the practice of funneling federal grants to Planned Parenthood’s Utah affiliate. This required the state to end or not renew four contracts with Planned Parenthood — contracts involving sex education and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. Other states made similar decisions.

But Planned Parenthood of Utah immediately sued, asking for a temporary injunction. Their argument was that the decision to end the contracts was motivated by the governor’s opposition to abortion and had the effect of infringing the Utah affiliate’s constitutional rights to associate with other affiliates and to promote abortion.

As far-fetched as the argument for a constitutional obligation to fund Planned Parenthood and to maintain contracts with them would seem, the group had an initial legal victory at the end of September. A federal district court issued a terse opinion relying heavily on the idea that accusations stemming from the conduct disclosed in the videos had not been proven. The court assumed that the governor’s motivation for ending the state’s contracts with Planned Parenthood must have been motivated by unconstitutional reasons, and the judge ordered Herbert “to state in writing a legitimate basis” for defunding, declining to renew, or not issuing a contract to the organization.

The Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero insisted that gratitude was “the parent of all the other virtues.”

Cicero did not define gratitude as Mafia-like loyalty or mutual back-scratching. He was not referring to a pop socialism where all supposedly owe their successes to the government.

Instead, gratitude is proof of humility and offers perspective. It is an appreciation for others, often now dead, who have helped to make us what we are. Without it, we are narcissists and self-absorbed amnesiacs.

Unfortunately, our modern “me” generation has forgotten gratitude and replaced it with the art of victimization. Contemporary Americans prefer blaming others — parents, ancestors, their country, the world in general — for their own unhappiness while patting themselves on the back for anything that goes well.

Nowhere is the death of gratitude more acute than at our elite universities.

Today’s students hunt for micro-aggressions, slights that register only on their hypersensitive Richter scales of victimization. They pout over mean Halloween costumes, inauthentic ethnic food, or politically incorrect literature assignments. They are angry even at mute statues and century-old names chiseled on the arches of their ivy-covered halls.

We rarely hear students thank their parents, their universities, or the government for forking over an average of more than $30,000 per year to excuse them from the American rat race. An expensive education has become more a birthright than a gift from others.