Category: Domestic Politics

Frank Crimi in FrontPage The Democratic Party’s categorical opposition to fair elections has just hit a new, but unsurprising, low. A high-ranking official with Congressman Jim Moran’s re-election campaign was recently caught on video encouraging an undercover reporter to forge documents in order to cast phony ballots in the upcoming Virginia election. The incident is particularly compromising for Congressman Moran, as he has been a vocal opponent of the state’s voter ID law, which is designed to protect against voter fraud. More hypocritically, Moran had been previously caught on film demanding that constituents show their IDs at a local town hall meeting. Patrick Moran, son of Democratic Virginia Congressman Jim Moran and field director of the congressman’s reelection campaign, was forced to resign after the video was made public. Moran’s transgression was captured in a conversation he had on video with an undercover investigative reporter with Project Veritas, a conservative nonprofit group investigating election fraud in the United States. The undercover reporter had approached Moran, asking him how he could cast votes on behalf of nearly 100 Virginia residents he knew

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Elizabeth Warren’s introductory speech at the Democratic National Convention came with a predictable broadside aimed at Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a tool of big corporations who wants to “pulverize financial reform, voucher-ize Medicare, and vaporize Obamacare.” In contrast to the wicked Romney agenda, Warren regaled the assembled Democratic delegates with the comforting notion that President Obama would defend their interests against those evil forces, since Obama “believes in a country where everyone is held accountable.” Yet, while Warren was extolling the virtues of accountability, her own lack of accountability was glaringly on display in the days leading up to her speech — namely with her refusal to meet with Native Americans over her fraudulent claims of American Indian heritage. Warren’s attendance at the sit-down had been requested by a contingent of Native Americans attending the DNC, all of whom were hoping to receive an explanation as to why Warren had long misrepresented herself as an American Indian minority. Warren has been able to parlay her now debunked claim of Cherokee heritage into a distinguished

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Sharply declining enrollment in half the nation’s largest public school districts spells bad news for the union-dominated monopoly of government-run public schools. School districts in longtime economically stagnant cities like Detroit and Cleveland hemorrhaged the most students, losing 32.1 percent and 17.7 percent, respectively. However, economic stagnation is but one of many reasons for declining student enrollment; factors that also include the collapse of the housing market, declining birthrates, migration from the cities, and increased school violence. In that latter case, for example, Philadelphia, which saw a 10.2 percent drop in enrollment, reported that over the past five years in Philadelphia’s 268 public schools, 4,000 students, teachers, or other staff members were “beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes.” In Chicago Public Schools, twenty-four students were fatally shot during the 2011-12 school year, with the overall shooting toll at 319, the highest in four years and a nearly 22 percent increase from the previous school year. Yet, for some school districts, the most compelling reason for student flight was increased competition from charter

Frank Crimi in FrontPage A new report by the Government Accountability Office shows that eleven years after 9/11, the US government is allowing illegal foreign nationals to train at American flight schools. The GAO’s findings were delivered before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security in a hearing that focused on the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) inability to thoroughly screen potential foreign security threats from receiving flight training at American schools. In particular, the security failure was laid at the doorstep of the TSA’s Alien Flight Student Program (AFSP), a screening program created after 9/11 for non-citizens or permanent residents attempting to enroll at American flight schools. To that end, foreign applicants undergo a “security threat assessment” to determine whether they pose a known or suspected threat to “transportation or national security; airline or passenger security; or civil aviation security.” Once applicants are cleared for flight training by AFSP, they can then obtain a pilot’s license or certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration, which relies on the TSA for conducting criminal and immigration background checks on foreign national student

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Now in a case of life imitating comedic art, the Obama administration is instructing Border Patrol agents to “run away and hide” when confronted by an “active shooter,” an armed individual opening fire in public places. The new “run-and-hide” directive for agents in US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the form of a mandatory computer training course on the proper protocol to be used when confronted by active shooters. That appropriate conduct, outlined in an hour-long video entitled “IS-907- Active Shooter: What You Can Do,” consists of three specific options available to Border Patrol agents: Evacuate, Hide Out, and, if that fails, Take Action. Unfortunately, the DHS definition of “taking action,” according to Border Patrol union officials, is to “act aggressively and throw things at the shooter,” a plan that could prove unworkable given that the DHS did not specify what thrown objects would prove adequate in stopping a hail of gunfire. Nevertheless, if the gunman is not subdued by an avalanche of tossed shoes, belts,