Judge blocks parts of South Carolina immigration law

South Carolina cannot enforce several key areas of its new law aimed at curbing illegal immigration, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
The law is set to take effect on January 1.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel granted a preliminary injunction, ruling that the federal government has exclusive constitutional authority to regulate immigration and the state's law would disrupt federal enforcement operations.
The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of civil rights groups had sued to block parts of the law from going into effect.

Justice Dept silent as Holder charges critics with racism

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 29: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (2nd L)) points his finger as he talks to a member of the press at the end of an event to launch a campaign to combat the purchase and sale of counterfeit and pirated products November 29, 2011 at the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House in Washington, DC. According to a news release from the Department of Justice, the campaign will educate the public on various forms of intellectual property theft, from counterfeit consumer goods and pharmaceuticals to illegal downloads and other pirated materials, with highlight on the potential health, safety and economic consequences for American citizens. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Attorney General Eric Holder accused his growing chorus of critics of racist motivations in a Sunday interview published in the New York Times. When reached by The Daily Caller Monday morning, the Department of Justice provided no evidence to support the attorney general’s claims.
Holder said some unspecified faction — what he refers to as the “more extreme segment” — is driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin. Holder did not appear to elaborate on who he considered to make up the “more extreme segment.”
“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder said, according to the Times. “Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”
The White House hasn’t returned requests for comment on whether President Barack Obama agrees with his top law enforcement officer’s allegations of racial motivations.
Holder’s accusations come as resignation calls mount from a growing list of 60 congressmen, two senators, every major Republican presidential candidate and two sitting governors, spurred on by the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.
Additionally, seventy-five congressmen have signed onto a House resolution for a vote of “no confidence” in Holder as attorney general. Between the two lists, there are 86 total in the House who no longer trust Holder to head the Department of Justice.
It’s not the first time the race card has come into play in efforts to protect Holder from criticism.

Most recently, during a December 8 House Judiciary Committee hearing into Fast and Furious where Holder was testifying, Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson argued that Fast and Furious wasn’t that big of a scandal because “white supremacists,” among others he described, were able to purchase weapons at “gun shows.” Johnson, who was concerned Guam may “tip over and capsize” if more military personnel are sent there, later told TheDC that he thinks the tea party movement and the National Rifle Association “manufactured” Fast and Furious as a scandal to try to attack the president.
The White House hasn’t denounced Johnson’s rhetoric, nor has Holder. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), however, wouldn’t side with him — even unofficially — last week. (RELATED: Rifts in Congressional Black Caucus over Fast and Furious, Holder)
Fast and Furious was a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, overseen by Holder’s DOJ. It sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers — people who legally purchased guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.
At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The identities of the Mexican victims are unknown.
Holder has said he was unaware of the operation, despite having been sent several personal memos from his top deputies and assistants. The memos contained intimate details of how Operation Fast and Furious worked. “This investigation [Fast and Furious, which is named earlier in the memo] — initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Phoenix Police Department — involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manuel Celis-Acosta,” one such memo that Holder was provided reads. “Celis-Acosta and straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug-trafficking cartels. They also have direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, which is suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the greater Phoenix area.”
In his Times interview, Holder again attacked the media who are covering the scandal. “Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing ‘Washington gotcha’ games, portraying them as frequently ‘conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was’ to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light,” Times reporter Charlie Savage wrote in the front page Sunday Times story.
Holder also attacked the media for covering the Fast and Furious scandal. Holder swiped at TheDC in late November, alleging that The Daily Caller is “behind” the calls for his resignation because it has been reporting on the subject.
“You guys need to — you need to stop this,” Holder told TheDC at a White House event. “It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”

Missouri State University chief sorry band played ‘Dixie’

NAACP complains, school retreats

December 18, 2011

Missouri State University interim president Clif Smart has apologised after the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter complained about the school’s band performing “Dixie” in Springfield, MO. The reason given for the offence is that the song was played at a site where three Black men were lynched more than century ago. Based on this the NAACP complained and Mr Smart immediately bent to their wishes. He says that the school will no longer play the Southern anthem publicly.
The NAACP complaint raises questions. Was the lynching of three men the only thing that ever happened in Springfield, MO? Of course not. Does the song glorify violence against Blacks or anyone else? Certainly not. It celebrates the South, where most Blacks in the United States live. And while the song was adopted by Confederates in the 1860s, it was written before Southern secession and the US war against the South and has remained popular with Southerners to this day. Was the Missouri State University band celebrating the lynching of three men a century ago? Absolutely not. And if “Dixie” conjures up memories of or associations with the lynching of three men in 1906, does “The Star Spangled Banner” conjure up associations with the nuking of a quarter million defenseless civilians in 1945, the US genocide of the Plains Indian nations in the late 1800s or most recently the deaths of one million Iraqis? Two can play this game and if songs are going to be banned because of such associations then the rule should be applied evenly across the board. But of course that will not happen.
The song “Dixie” is the most recognisable Southern anthem. Banning it is an act of cultural intolerance against the Southern people. Considered in light of the bans elsewhere and removals of Southern symbols and statues throughout the South, it smacks of an effort to eradicate Southern identity and culture. In their hay-day, the Marxists enacted similar bans on the symbols, songs and flags of the cultural groups they ruled over in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in an effort to destroy the national identities of their captive populations. Today’s cultural Marxist movement of political-correctness which has swept across the Southern States certainly bears great resemblance to something “Uncle Joe” and his murderous band of communist criminals would have tried back in the USSR. The goal is to eliminate us as a distinct people and culture.

The welfare state, the South & independence

Eliminating the destructive welfare state & restoring self-determination 

 

Dr Ralph Raico, an author, historian, free market economist and professor at State University of New York College at Buffalo, spoke at a conference back in 2003 in which he talked about the rise and fall of what we now call Classical Liberalism (though it was once just called liberalism – and still is in much of the world – before Left-wing statists appropriated the popular label in the US for their own cause). Dr Raico, who would almost certainly have been termed a “Copperhead” for his support of the South and the right of secession had he lived in the 1860s, applies his analysis of the decline of freedom and the rise of the welfare/warfare state in the Western World (especially since WWI though the process was underway well before then) to the South. In fact, he argues that Southern secession in 1860-61 was the last serious attempt to check an unlimited US Federal Government, which today recognises no limits on its powers at home and around the globe. He also talks about Southerners’ attempts to limit the Confederate Government in Richmond much as they had tried (and failed) to do to the Federal Government in Washington. Dr Raico discusses the US Federal Government’s conquest of the South and its disregard for Southern life and even for the slaves for whom they claimed to care so much. He goes on to talk about a development of the Western welfare state which its early advocates probably could not have envisioned – this being political correctness, multiculturalism and the destruction of Western people and their replacement with Third World immigrants. He talks about how the welfare state has eliminated references to Dixie and attacked Southern identity as part of this process. Perhaps most interestingly for Southern nationalists, Dr Raico argues that Classical Liberalism can not be restored in the United States and that the modern state can not be limited. Instead, he argues that free and homogeneous (he tackles the very politically-incorrect subject of “diversity” as the welfare state uses the term) communities across the South (and the Occidental world in general) need to be formed where people of similar backgrounds and cultures can govern themselves and preserve their culture, identity and liberty free from a central government or modern state. This is the only way we will survive and achieve freedom, Dr Raico argues.