Cartel Crime Wave in Phoenix

A chilling story from ABC News: Mexican drug cartels have made Phoenix the kidnapping capital of America. And Phoenix is now second only to Mexico City in the number of kidnappings worldwide. As we pointed out previously, the new Homeland Secretary is former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. It also should be noted that Sen. John McCain is a Phoenix resident. Is it past time for federal intervention? Does the the so-called stimulus bill contain any funding for improvements to the border security infrastructure?According to this related AP report, "U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels."

Obama Adopts Bush's State-Secrets Policy

The president tends to blame every mishap on "the last eight years," but he apparently seems to have a new-found regard for certain Bush-era legal policies:

In a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration.

In the case, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees filed suit against a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights for the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects were secretly taken to other countries, where they say they were tortured. The Bush administration argued that the case should be dismissed because even discussing it in court could threaten national security and relations with other nations

During the campaign, Mr. Obama harshly criticized the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees, and he has broken with that administration on questions like whether to keep open the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But a government lawyer, Douglas N. Letter, made the same state-secrets argument on Monday, startling several judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The full article can be found here.

Border Jumpers Sue Rancher

This is what you might call creative lawyering--except it's far more serious than a spilled coffee cup at a fast-food drive in.

An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

According to the news account, the defendant has been responsible for turning over over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998. The plaintiffs seek $32 million in civil damages. The trial is expected to run through Friday in Arizona federal court.

British Terrorists Threaten U.S. Homeland?

Breaking news from the London Telegraph about the terrorist threat here in America:

American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain.

They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.

Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.

A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain.

In another recent news item, the Telegraph reports on a development that won't necessarily please the Manchester Chamber of Commerce:

Maj Gen Andy Salmon told The Daily Telegraph that following months of steady improvements in the security situation in Iraq's second city, the rate of violent crime and murder in Basra has fallen below some major British cities."On a per capita basis, if you look at the violence statistics, it is less dangerous than Manchester," he said, hailing a "radical transformation" in Iraq's prospects.

Charges Against USS Cole Bomber Dropped

The president had a meet-and-greet with the families of the USS Cole victims on the same day that the government dropped charges against one of the ringleaders:

President Barack Obama was spending time with families of 9/11 victims and the 17 sailors killed in the bombing of the USS Cole after a senior Pentagon judge dropped charges against an al-Qaida suspect in the Cole attack being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The legal move Thursday by Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, upholds Obama's Jan. 22 executive order to halt terrorist court proceedings at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. The charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.

Groups representing victims' families were angered by Obama's order, charging they had waited too long already to see the alleged attackers brought to court.

On October 12, 2000, 17 U.S. sailors were murdered when Al Qaeda mounted a bomb attack against the Cole, which was docked in a Yemen port. Again, if this action is based on sound legal principles, fine. But if it is merely political grandstanding to get favorable publicity on the international stage, not good.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Crawford withdrew the charges against al-Nashiri. However, new charges could be brought again later, and al-Nashiri will remain in prison for the time being.

"It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantanamo," Morrell said.

Crawford's ruling also gives the White House time to review the legal cases of all 245 terror suspects held there and decide whether they should be prosecuted in the U.S. or released to other nations.

A mother of one of the victims, however, refused to meet with Obama on Friday and expressed regret for voting for him:
Investor Business Daily among others editorialized its skepticism about the administration's decision.

Separately, the administration has removed responsibility for the constitutionally mandated 2010 Census from the Commerce Department and centralized it in the White House. Does that mean that ACORN will be put in charge of the headcount? More here.

Update: On February 12, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) withdrew his nomination as Commerce Secretary over the politicization of the Census.

Cheney: WMD Attack Likely

Speaking from an apparent disclosed location, former Vice President Cheney said on February 3rd that the risk of terrorists attempting a large-scale WMD attack on American soil in the coming years is high, and that Obama administration legal policies may increase the likelihood that the attempt may be successful.

...Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects. And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said...

Citing intelligence reports, Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration — “that’s about 11 or 12 percent” — have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”

The 200 or so inmates still there, he claimed, are “the hard core” whose “recidivism rate would be much higher.” (Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have strongly disputed the recidivism figures, asserting that the Pentagon data have inconsistencies and omissions.) Cheney called Guantanamo a “first-class program,” and “a necessary facility” that is operated legally and with better food and treatment than the jails in inmates' native countries.

But he said he worried that “instead of sitting down and carefully evaluating the policies,” Obama officials are unwisely following “campaign rhetoric” and preparing to release terrorism suspects or afford them legal protections granted to more conventional defendants in crime cases.

Update: According to the Long War Journal, Saudi Arabia's new list of 85 most-wanted terrorists includes 11 former Gitmo detainees who went through Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation program.

Border Kidnapping

The stepfather of a Texas woman who went to Mexico for a concert in 2004 and never came back gives this interview to an emotional Glenn Beck, formerly of CNN and now of FNC: