The Massive Tidal Wave Of Illegal Immigration That Threatens To Destroy The United States Economy

Accordingto some estimates, there are as many as 30 million illegal aliens inthe United States today. The vast majority of them pay absolutelyno federal or state income taxes. And yet they seem more than happy totake advantage of the free social services and benefits offered tothem. In fact, stories of how "good" life in America is justencourages more and more immigrants to come to the United Statesillegally. Not that all immigration is bad. The United States willalways be able to use immigrants who come in the "front door" legally. In fact, my wife is originally from Canada. But those who would breakthe law by entering the U.S. illegally also are the same kind of peoplewho are serial criminals, join gangs, deal drugs, bring diseases andare economic parasites. So can the U.S. economy ever fully recover ifwe continue to carry tens of millions of illegal aliens on our backs? If Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress open the door for illegal alienseven further, will it create a social and economic nightmare that noneof us would even dare to imagine?

Today, there are approximately 20 million American workers who areunemployed or who are underemployed. More than 36 million Americans areon food stamps and that number continues to increase each month. Over13 million American childrennow live in poverty. We cannot provide for the people that are alreadyhere, and yet the U.S. government is making virtually no effort to stemthe flood of illegal immigrants that are streaming into this nation.

In fact, it is projected that the United States will add another 100million people over the next 25 years. Where in the world will they getjobs? How in the world will we take care of them all?

With the U.S. economy already on the verge of complete and totalcollapse, can we afford to continue to allow the problem citizens ofother nations to pour into ours? Already, drug violence has turnedmany areas of northern Mexico into absolute war zones. Juarez, Mexico(which is just across the U.S. border) has become the murder capital of the western hemisphere. Much of that violence has begun to spill over into areas of the southwestern United States.

For example, NPR recently described one incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens....
A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed theMexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When thestudent's family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed theborder at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.
"By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him,which included his grandparents, with an ice pick," says schoolsuperintendent Jose Franco. "My understanding is that the gentleman islike 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. Ibelieve those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital inthe U.S."
Is this how we want to live?

To illustrate how draining illegal immigration is on the U.S. economy, an anonymous piece that has been floating around the Internet entitled "Joe versus Jose" is reproduced below. Try not to get too angry as you read this....
*****
Here is an example of why hiring illegal aliens is not economically
productive for the State of California...or any other state for that matter.
You have 2 families..."Joe Legal" and "Jose Illegal". Both families have
2 parents, 2 children and live in California . "Joe Legal" works in
construction, has a Social Security Number, and makes $25.00 per hour
with payroll taxes deducted.... "Jose Illegal" also works in construction,
has "NO" Social Security Number, and gets paid $15.00 cash per hour
"under the table".
Joe Legal...

$25.00 per hour x 40 hours $1000.00 per week, $52,000 per year...
Now take 30% away for state & federal tax...
Joe Legal now has $31,231.00
Jose Illegal...

$15.00 per hour x 40 hours $600.00 per week, $31,200.00 per year...
Jose Illegal pays no taxes...

Jose Illegal now has $31,200.00
Joe Legal pays Medical and Dental Insurance with limited coverage
$1000.00 per month $12,000.00 per year

Joe Legal now has $19,231.00
Jose Illegal has full Medical and Dental coverage through the state and local clinics at a cost of $0.00 per year

Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00
Joe Legal makes too much money to be eligible for Food Stamps orwelfare - Joe Legal pays for food $1,000.00 per month $12,000.00
per year - Joe Legal now has $ 7,231.00
Jose Illegal has no documented income, so he is eligible for Food Stamps and Welfare - Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00

Joe Legal pays rent $1,000.00 per month - $12,000.00 per year
Joe Legal is now in the hole minus (-) $4,769.00
Jose Illegal receives a $500 per month Federal rent subsidy...

Jose Illegal pays rent $500.00 per month (section 8 housing)
$6,000.00 per year - Jose Illegal still has $25,200.00

Joe Legal now works overtime on Saturdays or gets a part time job
after work or his wife must work. Jose Illegal has nights and
weekends off to enjoy with his family (and eat out!).

Joe Legal's and Jose Illegal's children both attend the same school.
Joe Legal pays for his children's lunches
Jose Illegal's children get a government sponsored breakfast & lunch,
and they also qualify to be bused to school at taxpayer expense.

Jose Illegal's children have an after school ESL program.
Joe Legal's children have to find a way to get to school and go home
after school as, "latch-key kids" with no adult supervision.

Joe Legal and Jose Illegal both enjoy the same police and fire services,
but Joe paid for them and Jose did not pay.

Jose Illegal can send most of his money back home to Mexico to build a
new home for retirement, and have money to buy a new truck
(and still have Medi-Cal benefits while living in a foreign country;
until someone turns him in to authorities....if they ever find out)
Joe Legal is still in the hole.

Any questions?

*****
But an even bigger problem may be the rampant lawlessness that manyof these illegal aliens bring. Crime, gangs and drugdealing are dramatically exploding all the way from Texas to southernCalifornia.

There are fewer and fewer areas that you can call "safe" in the southwestern United States.
But now Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress want to give illegal aliens amnesty.
If Barack Obama's amnesty for illegal aliens gets passed, will more ranchers like Rob Krentz get murdered?

Trying to make an honest and safe living anywhere near the Mexican border is becoming a very difficult thing to do.

In fact, one sheriff recently told the residents of one Texas border town that they better "arm themselves". As he warned them of the dangers that they are now facing, he delivered this sobering warning....
"As they say the old story is, it's better to be tried by 12than carried by six. Damn it, I don't want to see six people carryingyou."

Immigrants that are going to be productive members of society aregoing to come in legally. But we have made the legal process forimmigrating extremely complex and very expensive. So we have actuallydiscouraged legal immigration while at the same time highly rewardingthose who come in illegally. What kind of sense does that make?

Of course it seems like very little of what our political leaders dothese days makes sense. As the number of illegal aliens increases to40 million or even 50 million, what in the world is that going to do toAmerica?

And once the damage is done, is there any chance that it can ever be reversed?

by Michael Snyder

Support the troops — Pay Them

By Rick Manning

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama are playing a game of chicken with the paychecks of our men and women who are in harm’s way defending our nation, and it needs to stop.

Pelosi and her crew of future unemployed politicians failed to get the Senate to agree to their proposal to add $10 billion more in deficit exploding spending on behalf of local teacher unions into the defense bill. Amazingly, even with all of their sophisticated polling, Pelosi still hasn’t gotten the message that Americans are tired of politics as usual. Americans are tired of Congress larding on the pork and earmarks onto must pass legislation to fund our troops. Apparently, the reasons behind her Congress’ 11 percent approval rating are lost on Speaker Pelosi.

The Senate is commended for partially getting the message in their rejection of Pelosi’s $10 billion teacher union bailout. But the Senate version is far from clean including such non-defense items as: agriculture subsidies, foreign aid, and reforestation spending.

This isn’t just an academic exercise. Our fighting men and women are truly in jeopardy if this emergency appropriation is not passed by the end of July. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has identified the beginning of August as a drop dead timeline for getting the emergency appropriation passed before salaries may not get paid. In an early July article, Gates stated that “stupid” cuts will begin occurring by mid-July in order to keep the troops funded. Additionally, General David Petraeus has called the supplemental, “essential” for the conduct of this mission.

Get full story here.

Political Class Substitutes Renewable Needs for Global Warming Hysteria Without Media Scrutiny

By Kevin Mooney

With the Senate’s Democratic leadership now poised to introduce a “compromise bill” on energy policy to the floor this week, lawmakers are talking up the merits of renewable technology. Key concessions are being made to placate wavering Republicans who oppose the sweeping industry restrictions included in the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House last year.

But, there has been very little discussion of global warming concerns that have been invoked in the past as a rationale for “cap and trade” polices. Instead, the political class now says the legislation is needed to help spur green technology and alleviate American dependence on foreign oil.

Unfortunately, The New York Times and other compliant media outlets have allowed key U.S. Senators to shift away from global warming alarmism in the direction of new marketing techniques without any critical examination.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has been a key Republican player, openly acknowledges that the pending legislation has no correlation with any genuine climate concerns. Moreover, the “climategate” scandal involving leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Great Britain demonstrates that the science underpinning man-made global warming theories should be called into question. In any event, they are less politically useful.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other top Democrats who have deliberately sidestepped any discussion of the environment should be asked about the “climategate” scandal and the junk science they have all invoked in the past to advance industry restrictions. This time around the discussion revolves around the economy where there is also room for informative articles that measure rhetoric against reality.

Get full story here.

Conservative By Passion or Fashion?

By David Bozeman

Kathleen Parker, who inexplicably passes for conservative, spent muchof a recent column praising Sarah Palin's ability to market herself.While not exactly lauding Mama Grizzly on substance, Parker, perhapswith tongue slightly in cheek, acknowledged Palin's knack for definingthe issues, remaining relevant and keeping her critics on edge."Instead of changing her tune," Parker writes, "she turns up thevolume… Don't like her little red shoes? She'll add a red leatherjacket."

Provoking eye rolls, Parker compares herself to Palin, recalling herappearances to promote her book Save the Males: “I wore an aggressivelyfeminine suit — pink with a bow in the back — just to irritatehard-line feminists.”

Thus begins Chapter 1, Profiles In Courage: The Mushy ModeratesEdition. Parker, you see, routinely showers liberals, such as the latecolumnist Molly Ivins, with gushing praise, yet she achieved hergreatest fame to date by suggesting in 2008 that Sarah Palin removeherself from the GOP ticket. She wrote, “A brilliant 75-year oldscholar and raconteur confessed to me over wine, ‘I'm sexuallyattracted to her. I don't care that she knows nothing.’”

Parker couldn't defend arguably the most conservative — and maligned— nominee on a Republican ticket since Reagan before her wine-sippingcompatriots, not even by donning a feminine suit with a bow in the backto show solidarity with a sister conservative.

Get full story here.

Nancy and Harry’s Debt

By Robert Romano

$4.242 trillion. That’s how much debt has been added since Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control of Congress and passed their first budget. That’s a 32 percent increase to the national debt in less than three years, which now stands at to roughly $13.249 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Put another way, one out of every three dollars every individual American now owes in debt they can thank Reid and Pelosi for. That’s approximately $18,912 for every adult in the U.S., and $36,886 for every household.

Thanks, Nancy and Harry!

Although Barack Obama prefers to say that he inherited the bleak budget from the Bush Administration, it is more accurate to look at the composition of Congress, since it wields the power of the purse. By that measure, Obama has his colleagues in the House and Senate to blame for the budget deficits, and since 2007, Congress has been controlled by Democrats.

For 2010 alone, the deficit is expected to be a record $1.47 trillion, according to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Again, that falls right on Reid and Pelosi’s laps. Next year, OMB projects the deficit will total $1.42 trillion, $150 billion more than previously projected.

Get full story here.

Obama secretly supported release of the Lockerbie bomber before he publicly opposed it

Muammar Ghaddafi greets the Lockerbie bomber after they were set up by matchmaker Barack Obama

Most. Transparent. Administration. In. History.
We ran a story at the time of the Lockerbie bomber’s release in which British officials basically said, “Obama and Clinton are lying sacks of…uhhhh…let’s just leave it at liars.”
We remember seeing an article at the time – but can’t find it now – in which a British official cryptically noted something to the effect that “They know what they said secretly.” We always wondered what that comment meant, but now its meaning has been revealed.
The Australian reports the administration’s disgraceful deception:

THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.
Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.
The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.
The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s claim last week that all Americans were “surprised, disappointed and angry” to learn of Megrahi’s release.
Scottish ministers viewed the level of US resistance to compassionate release as “half-hearted” and a sign it would be accepted.
The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future “frank and open communications” with other governments.

Got that? Communications are to remain frank and open. Unless they prove embarrassing to Barack Obama, in which case they can be dishonest and secret.
Source: The Australian

"Avengers" Stars Hit Comic-Con, Ruffalo Named New Hulk

Confirmingrumors that he's turning superhero, it was announced at Comic-Con 2010that Mark Ruffalo is taking over Edward Norton's role of IncredibleHulk in "The Avengers" movie.

The "Shutter Island" star was all smiles as he took the stage at theSan Diego Convention Center on Saturday (July 24) alongside co-starsScarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth,Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg.


With director JossWhedon also on-hand, the impressive cast was called out by Marvel chiefKevin Feige as they happily posed for pictures - with Robert Downey Jrsoaking up the attention by lining up front and center while gettingdown on one knee.

The film, due in theaters in May 2012, will mix the stories of Hulk,Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow and others - which hasbeen a dream for Comic-Conners for some time now.

INTENSE SEARCH FOR TWO U.S. SOLDIERS CAPTURED BY AFGHAN TALIBAN

United States Marines and Afghan National Army soldiers walk in formation during an operation to clear the area of insurgents near Musa Qaleh, in northern Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, 23 Jul 2010

Voanews.com
NATO officials in Afghanistan say they are searching for two American sailors who disappeared from their compound in Kabul City.
NATO said Saturday that the U.S. service members left the compound in a vehicle Friday and never returned.
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Afghan officials said Saturday the two sailors were seen driving an armored vehicle in the country’s eastern Logar province, which borders Kabul to the south. They said the sailors drove into the insurgent-controlled Charkh district.

Taliban officials claimed Saturday to have captured two members of the U.S. military in that same area. Taliban officials also told reporters that one of them had been killed.

Local radio stations were broadcasting offers from the United States to pay $20,000 for information leading to their release.

Only one U.S. service member is known to have been captured by insurgents. Bowe Bergdahl disappeared June of last year after leaving his base in Paktika province with three Afghans. He has since appeared in videos posted on Taliban websites.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Mission in Kabul tells VOA’s Afghan service that three Bangladeshi workers and their Afghan driver have been kidnapped in the country’s northern Samangan province.
Civil Affairs Officer Reza Hassan said the Bangladeshis were working for a South Korean construction company and were driving to a construction site when they were attacked.

Afghan officials blamed the incident on the Taliban but no one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Earlier, NATO officials said five U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate bombings in southern Afghanistan, where international forces are stepping up their fight against the Taliban.

The International Security Assistance Force said Saturday that four of its troops were killed by the blast of an improvised explosive device, which is commonly used by the Taliban insurgency.

Later, NATO announced the death of a fifth soldier in a separate IED attack.
Seventy-five international troops have now died this month, including 56 Americans.

More than 100 international troops were killed in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month for international forces in Afghanistan since 2001.

EU Places New Sanctions on Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran is facing new sanctions from the European Union after it refused to give up its nuclear weapons program. Part of the package includes attempts to prevent Iran from modernizing its oil and gas infrastructure, damaging their economy in the long term. Still, gasoline shipments will continue, keeping the Iranian theocracy afloat.
There is an interesting quote:

“I have yet to meet anyone who thinks this issue is going to be sorted out by sanctions alone,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said. “There’s also a downside to sanctions. They tend to reinforce and strengthen and enrich the wrong people.”

Remember that the US, USSR, Europe, and the UN imposed much, much stricter sanctions against Iraq after its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Five months later Iraq still had not left Kuwait, forcing the issue militarily.

Posted by Matthew Avitabile

At least 45 civilians killed in NATO strike

The Afghan government has confirmed at least 45 civilians were killed in a rocket attack by a NATO-led force last week.

Many of the victims in southern Helmand province on Friday were women and children.
A government spokesman says they had crammed into a mud house to flee fighting between NATO troops and Taliban insurgents.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the alliance had conducted an operation against insurgents in Sangin on Friday and was investigating the reports of civilian deaths.

“We have an assessment team there right now” Major Michael Johnson said.
“The investigation shows that the rocket was fired by NATO and 45 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed” he added.

Rhee to Dismiss Hundreds of Teachers for Poor Performance

By Stephen Sawchuk

District of Columbia schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee plans to dismiss 302 employees, mostly for poor performance, the chancellor said this morning in an interview. They will be separated from the system as of Aug. 13.

The dismissals reflect results from the first full year of the district's new, rigorous teacher-evaluation system, known as IMPACT.

According to Rhee, 241 of the dismissals were of teachers who failed to meet performance standards. Most of those teachers garnered an "ineffective" rating on IMPACT. A handful of others are "excessed" teachers with a "minimally effective" rating who couldn't find new teaching positions in the district. And finally, some are being let go for licensure issues, such as not attaining "highly qualified" status under the No Child Left Behind Act, Ms. Rhee said.

The evaluation results also showed that 16 percent of the D.C. teaching corps attained the top rating on IMPACT. Those teachers will be eligible to earn performance bonuses, Ms. Rhee said.

D.C. has about 4,000 teachers in all.

The results are much different than those under prior evaluation systems. No teachers were fired for performance under the former evaluation, in 2006-2007, and 95 percent garnered ratings in the top two performance categories.

Ms. Rhee, who laid off 266 teachers based on performance rather than seniority last fall, has been accused by critics of putting teacher dismissal above professional development and remediation.

While acknowledging that the firings would be controversial, Ms. Rhee defended IMPACT as a much more accurate picture of teacher performance.

"It's so much more objective than what we had before, where it was one person's opinion [of the teacher], which is totally subjective," she said. "This system is much more rigorous."

She also noted the disparity between the high teacher ratings in the past and the school system's low performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an independent gauge of student achievement across the states.

States and districts across the nation are retooling teacher-evaluation systems to reflect student achievement. IMPACT is among the first of such systems that is now in operation and includes consideration of student scores.

In addition to student scores, IMPACT relies on a series of five observations of each teacher by administrators and "master teachers," keyed to a complex "Teaching and Learning" framework with about two dozen different categories. Only a fraction of the teacher corps teaches in grades or subjects where student-growth data is available; for those teachers without the data, the results are based more heavily on the Teaching and Learning framework observations.

Final scores are translated to a 100-to-400-point scale, and those teachers who score below 175, in the "ineffective" category, can be dismissed.

Ms. Rhee also said that 737 staff members earned the "minimally effective" rating. While they won't lose their jobs, they will have a freeze or "step hold" put on their pay. If they don't improve next year, they will also be subject to termination.

Under the terms of the district's recently ratified teacher contract, teachers can "grieve" or formally protest only procedural aspects of their evaluation—for example, if they didn't receive the five required observations—but they can't actually grieve their scores.

The Washington Teachers' Union could not immediately be reached for comment this morning.

[UPDATE 7/23 1:50 p.m.: George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, has released a statement saying the union plans to contest the firings of some of the teachers and that a survey released by the WTU today shows many teachers don't trust the IMPACT evaluation system and believe they have been provided little support by it or in implementation of the district's new teaching and learning framework.

"While the WTU wants teachers to be held accountable, teachers should also be evaluated fairly with a fair instrument," Parker said in the release. "D.C. Public Schools has yet again found a subjective way to fire teachers, many of whom were not evaluated fairly. We look forward to an independent evaluation of the IMPACT evaluation system as agreed to between WTU and DCPS in the new contract."]

Photo Credit: Susan Walsh/AP-File

WikiLeaks Publishes 92,000 Military Documents, Points to Pakistan as Ally of Afghan Insurgents

BY Dan Nosowitz

WikiLeakstoday released some 92,000 mostly-classified military documentsrelating to the nine-year-old Afghan War. The documents were given tothree major publications, the New York Times, The Guardian UK, and Germany's Der Spiegel (and no web-only publications) several weeks ago, with an agreement that the information would not be published until today. The Times included a note to readersexplaining the choice to publish classified information, the type ofresearch undertaken to assure veracity of the material, and, briefly,exactly how pissed the White House is that this is all coming out.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, explains some of his motivation in an interview with The Guardian, saying that these war logs "show the true nature of this war."

Thematerial is largely "Secret" level, which is a fairly low level on theclassified-documents scale, and mostly consist of logs from the troopson the ground, covering the time between 2004 and late 2009. The logsare exclusively from American military, not Pakistani or Afghanistan,and cover a wide range of topics, from specific military engagements topolitical unrest to suspicions held by the soldiers. Notably, thedocuments portray the war as much bleaker than official reports.

Logslike these are called "raw intelligence," meaning individual reportsfrom lower-level soldiers. These reports are then used by analysts toadvise those who create policy. That means it's difficult to find any"smoking gun" in the reports, but they do give a more specific look atthe war on the ground level, rather than the polished big picturereleased by the Pentagon and the White House.

The major story tocome out of these logs is a more detailed view at the relationshipbetween Pakistan, especially its spy agency, the Inter-ServicesIntelligences (ISI), and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Thatrelationship has been a fairly open secret over the course of the war,not just to the higher-ups in the military but to anyone following thestory closely. But the level of detail in these logs brings thatrelationship more fully into the light, and considering the ObamaAdministration's backing of Pakistan (both with words and with aidmoney), the fact that some of these government agencies are playing adouble game is very disturbing indeed.

Many of these allegationsinclude names, and one in particular pops up over and over: Lt. GeneralHamid Gul, director of the ISI for two years in the late 1980s.According to the The New York Times,Gul developed close ties with Afghan militias, supported by the CIA, inAfghanistan's fight against the Soviet Union. Those same militiaseventually became part of the Taliban, and Gul retained his ties tothem. Gul says he is retired, but the reports explicitly say that, forexample, he was a key member of a meeting of Afghan insurgentcommanders and representatives of Al Qaeda seeking to avenge the deathof Osama al-Kini, a leader of Al Qaeda, at the hands of the CIA.

Gul spoke to the Times by telephone and asserted these claims are "absolute nonsense."
There's also a particularly wrenching accountof one small US outpost in southeastern Afghanistan, one of the mostfiercely defended Taliban areas. The story explains in painfulstep-by-step detail as the security at the outpost fell, bit by bit, toan overwhelming Taliban force. Eight were killed and two dozen injuredbefore American reinforcements arrived. By then, the fighting hadstopped. The Americans cleared out of there, leaving so fast thatammunition stores were left behind--and were quickly looted byinsurgents before being bombed by American planes in an attempt to haltthe looting.
Other important findingsindicate that the civilian death toll has been significantlyunder-reported, that the Taliban has access to heat-seekinganti-aircraft missiles, and that unmanned drone aircrafts are usedextensively even though their performance is less impressive thanreported. In addition, some secret commando groups are tasked with a"capture/kill" list of about 70 top insurgent commanders. This programhas been enlarged by the Obama administration, but while it has claimedsome successes, it has also resulted in some civilian deaths.
TheWhite House, predictably, has condemned the release and publication ofthese documents as irresponsible and dangerous. The National SecurityAdviser, Gen. James Jones, gave this statement, as reported by Politico:

TheUnited States strongly condemns the disclosure of classifiedinformation by individuals and organizations which could put the livesof Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our nationalsecurity. Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents– the United States government learned from news organizations thatthese documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will notimpact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships withAfghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to supportthe aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.

Joneswent on to reiterate the US's "partnership" with both Pakistan andAfghanistan, showing only the tiniest chink in that partnership bysaying that Pakistan (and, notably, "Pakistan's military andintelligence services") must "shift decisively" against Al Qaeda andother extremists.
WikiLeaks, as is its custom, has not revealed the source of the leaks. The independent reporting muscle of the New York Times, The Guardian UK, and Der Spiegelhave taken it upon themselves to research and verify the findings. Inaddition, WikiLeaks has withheld about 15,000 of the documents in orderto redact certain sections as part of what WikiLeaks terms a "harmminimisation" process.
The original WikiLeaks documents can be found here, while a curated selection provided by The New York Times can be found here. To find out more about WikiLeaks and its mysterious founder, Julian Assange, I highly recommend Fast Company's crib sheet, which you can read here.

NAACP misguided resolution to condemn the Tea Party

By Tim McClellan 

Since the NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, there has been much discussion regarding this. I want to give you a South Florida perspective.
I have helped organize two Tax Day Tea Party rallies in Fort Lauderdale. I have been involved with the Tea Party since its inception, and I can tell you from my experience that I have not seen any racism at any Tea Party event.

That brings up the fact that politics is not about race (those days are over) and all about qualifications and beliefs. These candidates must promote issues that Americans can stand united on, such as fiscal responsibility, constitutional rights and a smaller government.

We have many African-American members, and we stand strongly behind them, including candidates like retired Lt. Col. Allen West, the congressional candidate for District 22 who happens to be African-American.
We have an African-American president, numerous members of Congress who are African-American, and they did not get there because of racism. If the NAACP wants to be fair, they should denounce President Barack Obama for his words that the police ``acted stupidly'' in arresting his friend, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, when he could not get into his home. Then came Maj. Nidal Hasan's killing of U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood, and his response was to ``caution against jumping to conclusions.'' Does racism only go one way?

I have not seen any Black Panthers here in South Florida, but I can tell you if two white guys stood outside a polling place with one of them holding a police baton, they would be put away for a long time. Is Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice racist?

The Tea Party does not condone racism, period. Considering there is no leader or master organization, I feel the grass-roots Tea Party has done an excellent job in policing its own. It has been easy to do this since we are focused on achieving a common goal. We review the records on incumbents and highly scrutinize candidates that want to enter politics. We promote and help the candidates that meet the criteria of the grass-roots Tea Party to get them elected.

This movement became huge as a consequence of out-of-control spending, the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP (with no conditions on how it would be spent), the removal of God from everything government-related, including the Constitution, the continued assault on our rights and the lack of help for people who are not able to find employment.

Why? Because the government has the country in a state of confusion and small businesses, which make up 85 to 90 percent of the companies in the United States are scared to death to expand or start a new business. As a result of the healthcare law, cap-and-trade, bank takeovers, insurance company takeovers, the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler and the massive national debt, small businesses are understandably not sure what their costs will be and, therefore, are taking a wait-and-see attitude. This stalls the hiring and growth of existing companies.

Add the difficulty in obtaining money to borrow from banks because the TARP money to help them was spent by the banks to buy up other banks or to clear debt from their books.

Then there is Cash for Clunkers, Cash for Caulkers and much, much more. Now, they want to pass a bill called the ``Disclosure Act'' to limit free speech from conservatives while leaving the Service Employees International Union exempt. It has passed in the House and since the Democrats have the majority in the Senate and Obama wants it, this will probably be passed this coming week. Americans have every right to be upset and concerned.

Now, it has come out that there will be a tax for healthcare for everyone except the poor who will get credits to pay for theirs. Another broken promise of no taxes on anyone under $250,000. The Tea Party wants to bring reality back to politics. The members of Congress and the president were elected to represent us, not to ignore us.

The NAACP's role in fighting racism when it was a big problem is commendable. I believe the NAACP is misguided on this because they should be smart enough to know that when you have approximately 15 million members of any movement, you will have a few bad apples. I believe it is a shameless way to promote themselves.

Add with all the things our government has done to permanently harm our country, it is surprising that the grass-roots Tea Party rallies are always peaceful. This past week, even Vice President Joe Biden said on television that racism was not a big issue in the Tea Party and that the president felt the same way. Case closed.

Lauryn Hill “Repercussions”

Whether Lauryn Hill‘s newly unleashed “Repercussions” is something new or old doesn’t really matter. It’s L-BOOGIE DAMMIT, and hell, we would go nuts over it if all it featured was her simply breathing atop a lone drum loop.

Thankfully, “Repercussions” actually involves lyrics and some production, with Hill’s much-missed husky alto wading through a shimmering sea of spacey neo-soul groove, reflecting on her own mortality (“Time has moved on/ And death has grown a little closer”) and offering a few pearls of wisdom along the way.


There’s, sadly, no rapping, and in the grand scheme of things, “Repercussions” likely won’t land as an essential part of the Lauryn Hill catalog (at least as is, this might just be a demo), but whatever, between the song’s unearthing and the earlier-this-summer announcement of Hill headlining next month’s 2010 Rock The Bells festival, we’re just happy to have a couple new reasons to keep celebrating our girl.
Grab “Repercussions” below, alongside a live performance of Hill taking on the 1970 Curtis Mayfield soul classic, “The Makings of You”.
DL: “Repercussions” (alt)

Report Says Terrell Owens Could be with the St.Louis Rams by Monday

First it was the Bengals and now the Rams. Terrell Owens may have an official offer on the table, and it may come from a team that isn’t likely to even be fighting for a playoff spot come November. That team is the Rams, as Chris Mortensen reports on ESPN that the Rams could make T.O. an offer Monday.

The St. Louis Rams have intensified discussions in hopes of signing free agent Terrell Owens, according to sources close to the player and team.
The Rams asked Owens through his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, if he would consider a serious contract proposal, even though they are not considered a playoff contender. Rosenhaus told the team Owens would definitely consider it, sources said.
A high-ranking Rams official said a formal offer for Owens could come on Monday.
The Rams believe Owens would take heat off their young wide receiver corps that includes Donnie Avery, Laurent Robinson and rookie Mardy Gilyard, as well as loosen up opposing defenses from focusing on running back Steven Jackson.

The move simply means a contender doesn’t want the possibly problem child in Owens, and instead he is going to a team that needs wide out and talent help across the board, which is what the Rams need – badly. It will be interesting to see if Owens fits in with a team that could only win 3-5 games in 2010.

Posted by Matt Loede

NBA player Lorenzen Wright Goes Missing

NBAplayer Lorenzen Wright, a 13-season NBA veteran whose played for theL.A. Clippers, the Grizzles and ATL Hawks, has been missing for over aweek and police don't have any clues. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the 34-year-old NBA vet has been missing since July 18 and this family have filed a missing persons report. Police tell the paper that Wright flew to Atlanta to his house inSmyrna. From there, a friend then picked him up to drive him to hisex-wife's house in Collierville, Tennessee to visit his kids. While there, Wright left while his ex-wife was asleep at 2 a.m. That's where the story stops for now. Police assume he was picked up by someone, but his ex-wife doesn't know who. Lt. Norm Dixon of the Collierville police said that was the last he was seen, but Wright's sister Savia Archie told the Memphis Commercial Appeal he was last seen the following morning at a Memphis barbershop. "There is nothing on his phone records, no bank transactions, hisvehicles are still at his house in Smyrna," Dixon said. "It's like heliterally dropped off the face of the earth." At press time, police do not suspect foul play. "There's just no information to make us draw that conclusion," Dixon said. His family, however, do suspect foul play. They say that if he didjust go somewhere, someone in the family would be able to get a hold ofhim. Wright's mother, Deborah Marion, told WREGthat his six kids are taking the disappearance hard, especially his13-year old daughter, who she says would talk to her father everyday. "The 13-year old is taking it worse than anybody. He always callsher and he always answers her calls and she doesn't understand why he'snot calling, why he isn't answering her calls." Wright played college basketball at the University of Memphis. In1996, he was drafted #7 overall by the L.A. Clippers. Since then, he'sbounced around the league, playing for the Atlanta Hawks, the MemphisGrizzles, the Sacramento Kings and most recently, the ClevelandCavaliers. By Randall Stevens

Tracy McGrady to the Chicago Bulls?

July 26, 2010 – Dr. J-Water

Word was moving quickly yesterday after an ESPN report, that Tracy McGrady might sign with the Chicago Bulls for next season. McGrady was one of the ‘Big Three’ that we discussed were on the verge of either signing or retiring this summer. The Bulls have definite interest, provided McGrady is healthy and is willing to come off the bench as a role player. Now although ESPN is basically talking like it’s a done deal. Those are two pretty big “if’s”. Actually i’d say they are gigantic.

The Bulls are prepared to sign Tracy McGrady if he proves to be sufficiently healthy in a workout Monday and can convince the team he is willing to accept a bench role, one source familiar with Chicago’s thinking said Sunday.

“Nothing is done until it’s done, but I expect the Bulls to sign McGrady later this week,” the source said.

Another unknown is what kind of contract McGrady can command from the Bulls. But McGrady has said money and years are not priorities after earning nearly $23 million last season with Houston and New York.

Although he has expressed interest in snagging one of the spots on Miami’s bench in support of the LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh triumvirate and he auditioned for the Los Angeles Clippers last week, Chicago is undeniably where McGrady has been hoping to wind up.

McGrady made his desires evident in several recent messages on his Twitter feed, including his pronouncements Saturday that he has “unfinished business” with the Bulls and that it “could be fate this time round” with Chicago after drawing serious interest from the Bulls in the 1997 draft and again during free agency in 2000. {via}

Instead of asking if he’s healthy, the more appropriate question from the Bulls should probably be: ‘Is T-Mac broken beyond repair?’. Why? Because the man has never been healthy. From constant back problems, to knee and ankle injuries, Tracy McGrady has been the Mr. Glass of the NBA All-Stars for many years now. He’s one of the least durable players around.

Granted he no longer plays the slashing, high flying style of game of his younger years, but I still wouldn’t put too much faith in McGrady playing a full 75+ games in a season if I were the Bulls. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be effective in limited minutes helping to spread the floor with his jumpshot. Which brings us to the second question the Bulls are asking. Is McGrady willing to accept a roster spot coming off the bench? My guess is, McGrady will say all the right things leading up to, and at the time of signing, but for a player who could score buckets with the best of them all-time in the NBA, he will likely not be truly happy without at least 25-30 minutes a night.

But who knows, McGrady could surprise us all. He may have finally gotten the time off to rest his body he’s needed to get right. He also may realize he’s closing in on retirement and be willing to accept a lesser role for a team that desparately needs bench production and depth.

Is McGrady the answer the Bulls have been looking for?

Israel, U.S. agree to cooperate in developing Arrow anti-missile system

Israel and the United States signed a deal on Sunday to upgrade the Jewish state's Arrow anti- missile system, a cooperation expected to expand the interceptor's defense range.

The two sides will work together to make the Arrow III system capable of tracking and shooting down ballistic missiles at a higher altitude, local news service Ynet quoted the Defense Ministry as saying.

The upgraded Arrow system will be able to intercept missiles while they are still "outside the atmosphere," the ministry said.

Read more

The Hariri Tribunal and Hizbullah; Syria Loves Turkey

Joshua Landis will be traveling for two weeks. He will leave SC in the capable hands of Alex.
Lebanese PM calms fears over naming Hizbollah in Hariri inquiry
Mitchell Prothero, Foreign Correspondent
July 24. 2010

Hasan Nasrallah has refused to discuss Hizbollah’s response if some of its members are indicted in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Wael Hamzeh / EPA

BEIRUT // The potential indictment of Hizbollah members by an international tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri will not cause widespread civil unrest in Lebanon, the current prime minister and son of the slain leader has said.
Saad Hariri, in an interview published yesterday in the daily Al Hayat, also said any named suspects that may be members of Hizbollah will be regarded as rogue elements of the Shia militant group.
Mr Hariri made the statements in an effort to reassure the country that any indictments of Hizbollah members by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon would not lead to a return of sectarian violence between Sunni supporters of the Hariri family and the mostly Shiite supporters of Hizbollah.
The prime minister was said to have informed the Hizbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, during a meeting in May that the indictments – expected later this year – would include several members of the Shiite militant group….
“Mr Nasrallah called the indictments “a dangerous plot that is targeting the resistance”.
“We are not at all afraid, nor are we worried. We know how to defend ourselves,” he added.
Mr Nasrallah, who spoke for about an hour and answered several questions, refused to discuss how Hizbollah will react should the indictments be issued….. “As long as the probe does not look into the possibility that Israel is implicated, we believe it is biased,” he said. “Never has the investigation considered the hypothesis that Israel had the means and the motive” to assassinate Hariri…..
Mr Nasrallah used his press conference to imply that the March 14 movement has been duped by the United States and Israel into an overreaction to Hariri’s murder. He called on the movement to re-evaluate its positions now that it seems certain, he said, that Syria will not be directly accused in Hariri’s murder….

Posted by Joshua

Howard Dean Calls Fox News Racist For Getting Shirley Sherrod Fired

BY Rob Port

Apparently, to hear Dean tell it, it was Fox News chairman Roger Ailes to canned Shirley Sherrod. And that makes him and his organization racist.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean accused Fox News of promoting racism, including in the recent fracus over the Obama administration’s forced resignation of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod.
“Let’s just be blunt about this … I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist,” Dean charged on “Fox News Sunday.”
Dean said Fox helped promote the charges that Sherrod – who is black – made racist comments about white farmers, which led to her forced resignation Monday.
The fervor was built around a video of Sherrod speaking at an event hosted by the NAACP shown online by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

We can argue about whether or not Breitbart was right in the way he posted the Sherrod footage online. We can argue about Fox News’ subsequent coverage of that posting. But at the end of the day, Shirley Sherrod was fired by Barack Obama (I don’t buy for a minute that it was Vilsack’s call, and neither does Vilsack’s predecessor).
If anyone was racist for firing Shirley Sherrod, it was Barack Obama.
 

WSJ Reports Return of Rev. Ted Haggard

We wonder why the Wall Street Journal sees fit to covering the return to the ministry of the disgraced preacher Rev. Ted Haggard, "Humbled Haggard Climbs Back in Pulpit" by Stephanie Simon. The Journal is not known for its coverage of the religion beat.

Recall with Ms. Simon who precisely is this Rev. Haggard:

... Mr. Haggard was forced to resign nearly four years ago as president of the politically powerful National Association of Evangelicals and to step down from the megachurch he founded, after admitting that he had bought methamphetamine from, and had a sexual encounter with, a gay prostitute.

Once one of the most prominent church leaders in the U.S., Mr. Haggard confessed in a tortured letter, calling himself "a deceiver and a liar" who had long wrestled with desires he described as "repulsive and dark." He signed a contract promising to follow a path laid out by fellow clergy: to find a new career in a new state and to stay away from pastoral work....

Now, why does the leading business newspaper see fit to follow this story? The obvious answer is that the WSJ sees religion as just another business. And this then is an uplifting story of a disgraced businessman rebounding from bankruptcy to reenter the world of commerce.

Only this would not happen in most business environments. If suddenly and inexplicably paroled, Bernard Madoff would never be permitted to climb back into the investment business. Yeah. Religion is different. No standards.

What bothers us most in the story is the way it accounts for dishonesty that continues in the Haggard story line. Instead of fessing up to major sins (repeated violations of the sexual code of his own church) and taking credit for serious repentance (and moving on), Haggard minimizes his waywardness (it was a single instance of a massage gone wrong) and proclaims that he "over-repented."

Okay then. We've read lots of theology books from Judaism, Christianity and the other religions of the world. Credit Rev. Ted with a brand new idea in religion. He sinned a little and then repented too much.

We ponder just how weak is the church leadership in Colorado Springs to allow this guy back into town. The article informs us that some wacko NY theologian defends Haggard thusly:

"He has a humility of spirit and a recognition of how gripping sin can be in a person's life," said Paul DeVries, president of New York Divinity School, an evangelical seminary in Manhattan.

What humility of spirit? No, now this lying fraud minimizes and denies his sins. You can't have it both ways - minimize and recognize. Unless honesty, logic and consistency are outside your theological worldview.

Rebellion of the serfs: city officials in CA that became millionaires from public trough resign in disgrace

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the city of Bell, CA near LA, a poor city of only 38,000 residents that had a city supervisor
that got paid almost $800,000 per year, a police chief that was taking
in half a million a year and a part-time city council that was itself
bilking the taxpayers for almost $100k annually. When the mostly Hispanic community got wind of the pubic sector feeding frenzy, they had enough and marched on city hall. Video via American Power:

Instead of fighting the torches and pitchforks that were coming their way, the most egregious of the public servants looters have agreed to resign. It's a start. From the LA Times via Ace of Spades:

Bell's top administrators, whose hefty salaries have stirred public outrage and calls for investigations, agreed to resign Thursday night during a closed-door City Hall meeting.


City Manager Robert Rizzo, Police Chief Randy Adams and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia will not receive severance packages.
Rizzo will step down at the end of August and Spaccia will leave at the
end of September. Adams will also leave at the end of August, after
completing an evaluation of the Police Department...

The
larger story is that they will become some of California's highest paid
pension recipients, thus who cares about a paltry severance package?
From ABC News:

Robert Rizzo, the city manager, will leave behind a
$784,637 annual salary -- nearly twice the pay of President Obama --
and will not receive a severance package. Nevertheless the
56-year-old will draw an immense pension, between $650,000 and
$880,000, making him the highest-paid pensioner in California.

"Rizzo
resigns and still makes more than $600,000," said Ali Saleh, founder of
the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse, a grassroots community group.
"That's why I call him a predator. He's taking advantage of the
community whether he keeps his job or resigns."

That's
not a pension. It's a windfall. It's a looting of the public trust.
There needs to be a lawsuit in this case so this corruptocrat doesn't
get to live like a millionaire at the public teet. Such a thing may
happen as, per the ABC News article:

Four of the five council members, who approved the employees' salaries, earn over $100,000 for part-time work, sparking a preliminary investigation by the Los Angeles County District Attorney.


..."We're reviewing the facts to see if we need to launch a formal
investigation," said Jane Robison, spokeswoman for the L.A. Countydistrict attorney.

Biggest Leak In US Military History: WikiLeaks Posts Thousands Of Classified Docs On Afghan War

by Glynnis MacNicol

Early Sunday, in what is being called “one of the biggest leaks in US military history,” the whistleblower site WikiLeaks posted tens of thousands of classified “military field reports” about the Afghan war. According to the New York Times, the Times, the Guardian, and the German newspaper Der Spiegel were “given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.”


Based on that access and reporting, which WikiLeaks was not involved in, the New York Times has published a series of articles today which are too lengthy to go through here in detail but, broadly speaking, conclude that the Afghan war is not going as well as official reports might lead the public to believe. You can read a rundown of what they reveal here.



Perhaps equally as interesting is how the Times decided what to report on from the thousands of classified documents they were given access to. The paper explains its thinking in a note to readers.



Deciding whether to publish secret information is always difficult, and after weighing the risks and public interest, we sometimes chose not to publish. But there are times when the information is of significant public interest, and this is one of those times. The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not.



Most of the incident reports are marked “secret,” a relatively low level of classification. The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests. The Times and the other news organizations agreed at the outset that we would not disclose — either in our articles or any of our online supplementary material — anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations.



You can read the Guardian’s report on the leaks here.



Update: The White House is not happy about this. At all. From Mike Allen.



White House National Security Adviser James Jones issued a statement that begins: “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.



“Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.



The statement says nothing about the three newspapers that reported extensively on the leaks. However, in their note to readers the NYT does say that “to establish confidence in the information, The Times checked a number of the reports against incidents that had been publicly reported or witnessed by our own journalists. Government officials did not dispute that the information was authentic” suggesting that the government was at least aware these docs were out there and being examined.



Update #2: Michael Calderone confirms the administration was indeed aware the NYT had the documents. New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet tells Calderone: “I did in fact go the White House and lay out for them what we had…We did it to give them the opportunity to comment and react. They did. They also praised us for the way we handled it, for giving them a chance to discuss it, and for handling the information with care. And for being responsible.”

Washington Urged for Release of Lockerbie Monster

This current regime in Washington really enjoys having it both ways. In one breath they claim to be outrageously outraged that the Lockerbie bomber was released yet at the same time was OK with releasing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on "compassionate" grounds.




How about a little compassion for the victims' families?

Barack Obama's administration urged Edinburgh to base the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, it has emerged.



Newspapers had quoted a letter from Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US Embassy in London, to Scottish first minister Alex Salmond.



It read: "If Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer."



Mr Salmond told Sky News this morning that the American government's position was that they did not want Megrahi to be released - but preferred a compassionate release over a prisoner transfer deal.



"Presumably the reason that they were so opposed to the prisoner transfer agreement is on roughly the same grounds as the Scottish government had for opposing that agreement - because it was signed initially at the same time as an oil deal was being signed in the famous deal in the desert," he said.



Elsewhere, former prime minister Tony Blair was forced to deny he had paved the way for Megrahi's release during a meeting with Libya's leader Colonel Gadaffi.



"There was no deal in the desert," Mr Blair's spokesman told the Sunday Mirror newspaper. "His release was entirely a decision for the Scottish executive."

This comes after the fiction being peddled earlier this week that Obama was going to "grill" David Cameron, who had nothing to do with the deal, over the release.



COnsidering Obama's anemic approval ratings, how well will this go over with the American public? Oh, never mind, the media here will simply ignore the story.



Meanwhile, certain senators now preening for the cameras and bashing BP are having it thrown back at them.

US POLITICIANS demanding to know if BP lobbied for the release of the Lockerbie bomber were yesterday accused of taking a fortune in donations from the oil giant.



President Barack Obama is said to have received $71,051- around £46,000 - and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton $6700 from the firm that both have savaged since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.



Clinton has led the calls for the SNP government to explain their decision to send cancer-stricken Abdelbaset al-Megrahi home to Libya last August.



Other US politicians said to have received BP donations include two senators leading a special hearing trying to establish if BP lobbied for Megrahi's release to help the firm win lucrative drilling rights in Libya.



BP insisted the money was donated by individual staff members.



Last night, the US politicians faced SNP accusations of hypocrisy.



SNP Msp Michael Matheson said: "It's astonishing that after all the rhetoric ... that those senators attacking BP have benefited from their donations.



"It exposes some of the sheer political opportunism currently being played out over the tragic events at Lockerbie and in the Gulf."



Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill insisted he freed Megrahi on compassionate grounds and that BP had no contact with Holyrood.



He again refused to attend the senate hearing on Thursday provoking US fury. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey senator who is chairing the hearing, received $2000 in 2008 for his senate campaign.



Last week, he said: "If BP are found to have gained access to Libyan oil reserves by using a mass murderer as a bargaining chip then ... any money they make off of that oil is blood money."



New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand called for "greater transparency".



But documents show that she received a $750 donation this year.
 
posted by JammieWearingFool