(Phoenix, Arizona) Throughout his young life in Phoenix, illegal alien Erik Jovani Martinez (pic) has been in trouble with the law. He was a documented gang member, spending time in juvenile detention, the Maricopa County Jail and prison. Assaults, theft and drug charges pepper his rap sheet starting with his first arrest in 1999.

In March 2006, Martinez was finally deported.

In May 2006, Martinez returned to the Phoenix-area and was arrested by Scottsdale Police for a domestic dispute. Upon release from custody, a judge ordered Martinez to attend domestic-violence counseling. Martinez didn't attend and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

This week, 22-year-old Erik Jovani Martinez gunned down Phoenix Police Officer Nick Erfle.

My condolences to the family and friends of Officer Nick Erfle.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 06:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Kudos to Simi Valley.

Nigel asks the obvious question:

Just curious. Where's the father of the baby? If the church really wanted to keep the family together, don't you think they could go find the dad?

Posted by: Vinnie at 12:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Having gotten their asses handed to them on the "big amnesty," our distinguished gentlemen in Washington are now working to pass a "little amnesty." Posted at NRO:

Under the DREAM Act, applicants for amnesty who claim to be enrolled in a community college, technical school, or university will receive immediate “conditional” legal status. Sound familiar? The Migration Policy Institute estimates that about 1.3 million illegal aliens will be eligible for the amnesty. Because the act’s provisions are retroactive, additional illegal aliens will also qualify. Along with illegal aliens who have graduated from high school or completed a G.E.D., any illegal alien, regardless of age, who initially came here illegally before age 16 and meets the education provisions qualifies for a green card and eventual citizenship. As green-card holders, they can all sponsor their illegal alien parents for green cards. To accommodate DREAM Act aliens and their parents, numerical limits on green cards are lifted.

Posted by: Ragnar at 09:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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...or maybe not: more...

Posted by: Ragnar at 05:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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That's what I'm hearing:

WASHINGTON -- Senate GOP leaders called for an ethics investigation of Senator Larry Craig yesterday as he dug in for a legal and political fight to save his congressional career after acknowledging he had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges stemming from an incident with an undercover police officer in an airport men's room.

This isn't about whether Craig gets an impromptu prostate exam now and then. I really don't care about that so much. For my money, I think we'd all be better off if we could get past some of this stuff and just let the butt-pirates do their thing (in private). The truth is, though, that a closeted senator is, in this day and age, a prime target for blackmail, even if he's quiet about it. A senator whose hobbies include playing a rusty trombone in the back corners of a public john is a real problem. If your wife thinks that Snowball, Dirty Sanchez and Lucky Pierre are just the nicknames of your poker buddies, you may very well be a disaster waiting to happen. By knowingly allowing men like Mark Foley and Larry Craig to serve in positions of power despite their vulnerability to undue pressure, our nation's political leadership has, once again, let us down.

UPDATE : Below the fold, Sen. Craig from 1999, sharing his opinion on a "nasty, bad, naughty boy." (Warning: kinda creepy.) more...

Posted by: Ragnar at 08:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is just wierd:

I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport. I regret my decision to plead guilty and the sadness that decision has brought to my wife, family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans. For that I apologize.

In June, I overreacted and made a poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away. I did not seek any counsel, either from an attorney, staff, friends, or family. That was a mistake, and I deeply regret it. Because of that, I have now retained counsel and I am asking my counsel to review this matter and to advise me on how to proceed.

Video at HotAir.

h/t : Michelle

Posted by: Ragnar at 09:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ace weighs in on the GOP's latest resident perv:

Over at Hugh Hewitt, there are some comparisons to the David Vitter situation. Here's one difference: Vitter isn't up for re-election and I'm not even sure whoring around is a misdemeanor in Louisiana.

And Larry Craig has repeatedly stuck his thumb in the eye of his conservative base. He was pro-amnesty all the way home.

I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps he thought tacking to the left would protect him from the liberal media when this all came out. He certainly was behaving as if he were compromised. Well, if he had thoughts along those lines, I hope he realizes he was wrong to fear the liberal media more than his own conservative constituents. Perhaps if he'd been a good soldier we could manage to swallow our misgivings and fight (reluctantly) on his behalf.

Instead, we're left wondering which part of the Craig Agenda we're the most psyched about: The pro-amnesty agenda or trying to suck stranger's dicks in public bathrooms, which will of course benefit his very tolerant Democratic opponent.

I'm not sure I'm especially keen on either of them.

Posted by: Ragnar at 03:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Michelle:

For what it’s worth, I can’t say I’ll miss him.

Whatever his other merits or faults, Gonzales had to be one of the most politically incompetent people ever to hold such a high position in Washington. It's hard to think of anything he touched in six and a half years in Washington that didn't end up getting President Bush the worst possible press (with the arguable exception of when he advised Bush not to put Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court).

Gonzales was a man almost without fans in Washington at the end, because he was never much appreciated or accepted by the conservative base of the Republican party and the conservative activists in Washington. And he certainly wasn’t popular among the Democrats. He was simply a crony. And I don’t mean that word to sound any worse than it is, but that was the case here.

Gonzales’s only real offense seems to have been mediocrity. But mediocrity in an Attorney General is nothing new (think Janet Reno)

Posted by: Ragnar at 08:52 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Looks like he might be.

That, in and of itself, doesn't bother me too much. I don't care if the guy smokes a pole or rides around on a meat rocket or whatever. In my book, that's pretty much his own business. I'm generally a "live and let live" kinda guy--though I'd sorta prefer that U.S. senators "get their freak on" in their own homes rather than public bathrooms. The word "embarassing" doesn't even begin to capture it.

That said, looks like there's another piece to this little puzzle. Turns out that Sen. Craig voted for cloture on amnesty. Whoops.

Like a lot of conservative/libertarian types, I might be willing to look the other way on a little public pervitude once in a while, but public pervitude + total abandonment of national sovereignty and the rule of law is just a little too much for me to take. If Sen. Craig "goes down" over this (as I suspect he might,) I won't be shedding any tears.

Posted by: Ragnar at 05:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I don't know what any of this means, but it sounds pretty bad:

From 1985 through 1993, the state of California reported 29% of all cases of tuberculosis in children in the United States, ranking them first among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.1 During this period, tuberculosis cases in children and adolescents younger than 20 years old reported by the County of San Diego, California increased by 400% from 15 cases in 1985 to 75 cases in 1993. Reported cases were reviewed to provide possible explanations for this increase to better describe the epidemiology of tuberculosis among children and adolescents younger than 20 years old and to identify missed opportunities for prevention of tuberculosis in children.

H/t : Michelle.

Posted by: Ragnar at 10:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Those are some serious allegations. I hope to God that they aren't true. The worst part is that it seems that ICE is so badly understaffed that they cannot even investigate the allegations as a criminal matter. Sara Carter in the Washington Times:

A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain....

Two District Adjudications Officers are allegedly involved with known (redacted) Islam terrorist members," said the internal document obtained by The Washington Times.

The group "was responsible for numerous robberies and used the heist money to fund terrorist activities. The District Adjudications Officers made numerous DHS database queries to track (Alien)-File movement and check on the applicants' status for (redacted) members and associates."

This reminds me of a time when we sent out one of our calls to e-mail a terrorist supporter. When the al Qaeda supporter actually responded to one of our readers, we traced his IP to an immigration law firm in Britain. The immigration issue is intimately tied to the threat of terrorism.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sometimes the headlines just make themselves up. WaTimes:

The U.S. Border Patrol is asking for volunteers among its agents to help build fences on the U.S.-Mexico border, even as President Bush is withdrawing half the National Guard troops he sent there last year to build fences.

A memo circulated last week to Border Patrol sector chiefs said fence-building efforts on the Southwest border were going to fall short of Mr. Bush's goal of finishing 70 miles in fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30, "so the Border Patrol is now going back into the fence-building business."

Posted by: Rusty at 03:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I don't care who you are, that's damn funny right there.

stein hoist: Linda.

Posted by: Vinnie at 07:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yet another instance of liberals and leftist knuckledraggers perceiving themselves as infallible moral footsoldiers eliminating "racism," even when no racism is actually present. So much so that they are willing to inflict violence to communicate their "message."

They end up destroying dude's camera (a Navy vet) at a Minuteman protest and one of them gets his behind hauled off to the clink.

Sooo peaceful and tolerant of opposing viewpoints, these neo-Democrats.

ht: Jake @ AoSHQ

Posted by: Good Lt. at 10:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fred, making some sense:

Think about what this ruling means. Congress has preempted the field, so state and local governments are powerless to act. Then, Congress and the federal authorities do next-to-nothing to prevent illegal immigration, burdening the states and local communities around the country. But those communities cannot act because Congress said they couldn’t. What sense does that make?

Posted by: Rusty at 01:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Johnny Sutton is testifying before Congress today on why he decided to send two border patrol agents to federal prison for ten years for shooting a drug smuggler in the butt.

In advance of the testimony, Patterico forwards some talking points on the case:

The testimony of Agent Oscar Juarez, who corroborated parts of the story of drug smuggler (and shooting victim) Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, is in DRJ’s opinion “of questionable reliability” because he gave several conflicting stories before trial. Indeed, DRJ notes, even the Government’s investigator didn’t believe Juarez had been fully honest.

The facts at trial demonstrate that Johnny Sutton originally misstated the nature of the immunity given to Aldrete-Davila. In a previous press release, Sutton claimed that the government had merely agreed that Aldrete-Davila’s testimony at trial could not be used against him — a limited form of immunity. DRJ notes, with citations to the transcript, that the immunity agreement was actually much broader. It was essentially a promise of transactional immunity — i.e., Aldrete-Davila cannot be prosecuted for his actions on the day he was shot.

Regarding the immunity agreement, DRJ notes: “There was no provision in Aldrete-Davila’s immunity agreement that the deal was off if he lied.” As a prosecutor, I must say that I find this astounding. The first rule of an immunity agreement is that the witness must tell the truth; thus, it is a standard condition that the deal is off if the immunized witness lies. I can’t imagine a legitimate reason that Aldrete-Davila’s agreement apparently contained no such stipulation.

More on Agent Juarez:

Agent Oscar Juarez corroborated parts of Aldrete-Davila’s version of the events of February 17, 2005, but Juarez’s testimony is of questionable reliability. The government’s investigator, Christopher Sanchez, did not believe Juarez’s initial statement, and he later learned that Juarez did not tell the whole truth. (Vol. XII, p. 18) By the time of the trial, Juarez had given 4-5 conflicting interviews and statements about the incident that Sanchez believed were incomplete or false. (Vol. XII, p. 15, 20-21,78-80, 84-88) Juarez’s testimony was so questionable and different from his initial interviews that ultimately he was threatened with indictment by the government. (Vol. XII, pp. 87-88) Thus, it’s interesting that the U.S. Attorney primarily relied on Juarez’s changeable testimony as conclusive proof that supports the verdict.

Posted by: Ragnar at 09:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Digger has the details.

Posted by: Rusty at 09:52 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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With all the hullabaloo going on around the shamnesty bill, the unfairness doctrine and the presidential primaries, I haven't spent much time looking into the U.S. Attorney firings.

Yes, I'm well familiar with the argument that Alberto Gonzales has the POWER to fire every single one of the U.S. Attorneys if he chooses to do so. I'm also fully aware that this information is ALL that die-hard W fans need to know. In other words, the Attorney General has certain legal powers. Gonzales (apparently) acted within those legal powers. Hence, there can be no scandal. By definition, in other words, there can never be a scandal in any situation in which the Attorney General exercises powers legally granted to him under the Constitution or laws of the United States.

As you may know, I'm not a Gonzales fan, so I don't find this argument persuasive. There are a whole lot of things a government official could legally do that would be completely unethical and scandalous. A President could, for example, pardon completely guilty people who just happen to be in a position to help him financially. That's legal. An attorney general could refuse to enforce the law against well-connected people who break it. That's legal, too. There are tons of other examples. The argument that a thing which is legal cannot be scandalous is ridiculous. I realize some people will stick with this administration no matter how many times it fails to tell us the truth, but I'm far beyond the point of taking this administration's word at face value. There was a time when I was willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt on something like this, but that time expired a while back.

The fact that Gonzales acted WITHIN HIS POWER doesn't, by itself, establish that nothing untoward happened in this situation. If, for example, we found out that the U.S. Attorneys were fired because they refused to back off on their enforcement of certain laws, that would be a legitimate scandal. I don't know for certain that anything like this happened. I'm just starting to look into this. I have noticed that six out of the seven U.S. Attorneys fired in December and January were from states along a U.S. border, and four out of the seven were from states along the southern border with Mexico:

1. David Iglesias - New Mexico
2. Kevin V. Ryan - California
3. John McKay - Washington
4. Paul K. Charlton - Arizona
5. Carol Lam - California
6. Daniel Bogden - Nevada
7. Margaret Chiara Mar - Michigan

Posted by: Ragnar at 10:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Johnny Sutton is the federal prosecutor responsible for locking up border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Unfortunately for Sheriff's Deputy Gilmer Hernandez, Sutton took an interest in him, as well.

Hernandez' crime?

He shot out the tires of a fleeing vehicle:

(Part II is below the fold) more...

Posted by: Ragnar at 01:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A bet that John McCain would win the Presidency, which once traded as high as $39 on News Futures, yesterday hit a new all-time low of $3.

The probability of McCain taking the race currently sits at 9%.

Ouch. (h/t: HotAir)

Posted by: Ragnar at 02:15 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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In this article, Linda Chavez exposes herself as even more of a fool and/or charlatan than she had previously. Her prior notable diatribe was mostly vitriol and hate. This one pretends to be a reasoned elaboration, though it's anything but:

What you won’t hear is that liberals are just as relieved that this bill didn’t pass as conservatives - and they know time is on their side. Their plan is to wait until January 2009, when they expect bigger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a Democrat in the White House, and then reintroduce immigration legislation.

MORE BELOW THE FOLD: more...

Posted by: Ragnar at 09:48 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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(Click image for more.)

Posted by: Ragnar at 11:47 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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...wouldn't it be a good idea to stick up for the men who defend it?

Free Ramos and Compean.

(More video below the fold) more...

Posted by: Ragnar at 02:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Posted by: Good Lt. at 09:53 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Allah has the audio.

Posted by: Ragnar at 10:17 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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