Free Republic

Yesterday the President delivered his much-anticipated address on immigration at the Chamizal National Memorial Park, a landmark that commemorates the settlement of a century-old border dispute centered around the Rio Grande, which has traditionally served as the demarcation line between what is Mexico and what is the United States. Unfortunately, Barack Obama used the occasion to yet again smear honest opponents of his administration’s open borders policy, obfuscate what the White House has actually done to secure the border, ignore the catalog of horrors occurring in Ciudad Juarez-El Paso’s neighboring city across the border-and engage in boilerplate rhetoric intended to...

This past tuesday I had the distinct pleasure of attending an Intelligence Squared debate whose subject is one that this website has addressed repeatedly in the past, although admittedly, not as often as I would have liked. The drive to thwart repeated amnesty proposals introduced throughout this past year has not given us the opportunity to address the innumerable problems presented by unfettered, mass (legal) immigration. That’s why I relish the chance to explore the flaws of our current, post-1965 wave of immigration. Or, as the framers of the IQ2 debate phrased their resolution: Don’t Give Us Your Tired, Your...

My apologies for beginning this entry with such a startlingly vulgar image, but I thought it appropriate to visually demonstrate the level of debate I encountered from open borders anarchists during the May Day rally held at Foley Square. These two characters-who obviously eschew fasting as a form of political protest-are from the very violent, yet strangely ineffectual, organization known as Antifa. They oppose what they describe as “fascism” by replicating the methods and tactics of brownshirts. More on them later. I will begin our journey into the depths of Marxist inadequacy, however, chronologically. I and several members of New...

May Day is upon us, and this year we can once again look forward to the spectacle of thousands of people who were not invited here, don’t belong here, and certainly contribute nothing of value to our society, demanding their “rights.” And by “rights,” I mean wealth extracted from taxpaying, American citizens and transferred to a resentful, greedy consortium of Marxists and officially sanctioned ethnic grievance organizations. The good news is that this year, unlike in the past, New York Ice will be able to combat the gaseous Zapatistas, the Salvadorian Communists, the Mexican death cultists, and stupid-looking hipsters with...

As many of you might know, today marks the official commemoration of Earth Day, a holiday conceived by the unfortunately named U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970 and celebrated by self-styled environmentally conscious individuals every year on this day since. You might be wondering why I would choose to address this subject on a website whose purpose is ostensibly far removed from the subject of environmentalism. The answer to that question is very simple. Although usually framed either as an economic or a cultural argument, one of the most compelling reasons to reduce the excessive immigration into this country that’s...

Today I had the opportunity to meet one of the kingpins of conservative new media, Andrew Breitbart. In town for a signing of his recently published book, Righteous Indignation, the creator of Big Hollywood , one of numerous Breitbart-inspired websites, delivered an entertaining speech that weaved together his personal narrative of embracing conservative activism with his current fight against the Obama administration and its many devout supporters. An at times irreverent, always impassioned, largely extemporaneous speech that explored everything from his pretensions of privilege as the child of an earnest middle class family living in Brentwood, California, to his dissolute...

In an excellent documentary called Stolen, which sets out to document a family reunion in the sole region in Africa where Spanish is spoken, filmmakers Ayala and Fallshaw uncover a bigger story than they had originally planned. What they find is a pocket of slavery still practiced in Western Sahara, Morocco, Mauritania, and elsewhere in Arab-African societies. The initial impetus for the film is the re-union of a generational family under UN auspices, a service the UN provides if the correct paperwork is filled out; family members long separated are brought together for a joyous 5-day reunion. What the documentarians...

I should probably preface this post with the caveat that it does contain numerous “spoilers,” so if you wish to see this film untainted by the disclosure of any plot lines, characterization, thematic development or surprise twists, I suggest you depart before the jump. I myself am not a fan of spoiler alerts, and have a hard time believing that anyone who wanted to see Robert Rodriguez’s much-discussed splatterfest has not availed himself of the opportunity in the past year. That being said, this is your chance to get out clean. With that preliminary warning out of the way, I...

Today I decided to return to my old stomping grounds at Brooklyn College in order to witness a lecture delivered by acclaimed polemicist, writer, political and human rights activist, and former leader of the new left, David Horowitz. Invited to speak by student leader Yosef Sobel, and sponsored by Professor Langbert-both of whom can be seen below-Mr. Horowitz delivered an impassioned, but unerringly rational, defense of freedom of speech, pluralism, and diversity, all values under attack in the Middle East and on American campuses-the primary theme of the evening. He began by noting the extreme impediments he-and the people who...

Today I attended the counterprotest held by supporters of Representative Peter King’s investigation into Islamic radicalism. A rally that was held approximately three blocks away from an event staged by radical leftists and Islamic extremists opposed to the very notion of Rep. King’s proposed hearings. Sponsored by the Liberty Alliance-and co-sponsored by numerous anti-sharia organizations throughout the area-it attracted a wide variety of individuals, including many New Yorkers opposed to the construction of the Ground Zero mosque, such as the man pictured above. The rally was in large part organized and emceed by Andy Sullivan from Blue Collar Corner, an...

The ringleaders behind the premeditated murder of special agent Zapata continue to be rounded up south of the border, including two very important handlers of the criminals who shot Zapata and his fellow ICE agent, Victor Avila. However, I’d like take a step back from the gritty details of this investigation and examine the some of the misguided media coverage of the purported “root causes” of the attack on these two courageous ICE agents. Specifically, the ongoing libertarian narrative that decriminalizing drugs and opening our borders will somehow cause narco-criminal/paramilitary groups like the Zetas and Beltran-Levy cartels to magically disappear....

While the police dragnet for the murderers of ICE agent Jaime Zapata continues, in spite of potential obstruction by a systematically corrupt Mexican polity, the brutality of the cartels that are thought to have been behind his murder continues to be documented by the news media. Thanks to Boing Boing, we’ve learned of the lengths to which paramilitary drug cartels such as the Zetas will go in order to intimidate their criminal rivals. In this case, posting the most gruesome images from their attacks on the popular video-sharing website owned by Google. As hideous as these videos might seem, they’re...

Last night, I had the distinct pleasure of attending one of the first New York City screenings of The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks. Produced and directed by Pamela Geller, with the assistance of her friend and colleague, scholar Robert Spencer, the documentary attempts to explore the at times dubious motivations behind Cordoba House’s financiers and spokespeople, including Imam Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan. As you can see from the pictures below, the film attracted a capacity crowd, one that was very animated in its opposition to the concept of locating what many view as...

For those of you who’ve followed our past coverage of Rep. Stephen Sandstrom’s efforts at curbing illegal immigration in his home state of Utah, you’ll be pleased to know that his bill, HB-70, has cleared an important legislative hurdle. Its passage by the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Standing Committee by no means ensures its eventual enactment by the legislature, but it does send a signal that a number of leaders within the Utah House of Representatives feel that this issue is compelling enough to warrant debate on the floor. This proves yet again that the tireless efforts by...

As we mark the end of the old year and the beginning of something new, it’s wise to take a step back and assess the accomplishments and setbacks of our movement. 2010 was probably the most significant year in terms of advancing the debate over immigration enforcement within the body politic of this country in recent memory. The most notable event, of course, was the decision by Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona to sign into law Senator Russell Pearce’s signature piece of legislation, SB 1070. As a quick reminder, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act makes it...

I should probably preface this post by admitting that I was a participant in the Washington Post's America's Next Great Pundit contest, a misguided and perhaps ultimately futile attempt by WaPo to expand its youth demographic among the ever-declining readership it lays claim to. In fact, my submission was drawn from an essay posted to this very website, entitled-appropriately enough, considering the subject of this post-Spin. You can judge for yourself whether it's worthy of being published in Washington D.C.'s most widely-circulated newspaper. My own view, even prior to submitting the piece, was that it would be rejected by the...

The following story was told to the American-Rattlesnake by a graduate of the Maritime College of the State University of New York, who has an unlimited master’s license and has been a sailor for over a decade. American-Rattlesnake has maintained their anonymity at their request.Working as a merchant mariner, stowaway stories were not new to me. I got my own story to tell on a vessel carrying two Ethiopian refugees back to the USA. This is not going to be a tale of woe and sympathy for refugees. It is a tale of woe for America – the great nation...

The Center for Immigration Studies provides an extended excerpt from William McGowan’s most recent, incisive analysis of the news media, Gray Lady Down, on its weblog this month. It’s worth reading in its entirety, simply because it illustrates the failure of the mainstream news media-and particularly the New York Times, which has heretofore been the standard bearer of professional journalism in this country-to accurately and fully cover the damage done to this country by our government’s lax enforcement of immigration laws, and counterproductive, overly generous immigration policies. It is a long read, but well worth the time, especially since so...

First of all, let me apologize for being derelict in addressing Will Wilkinson’s series of columns for The Economist. I had wanted to to respond to these short polemics, written as an ongoing dialogue between he and David Frum during the height of the DREAM Act’s legislative push during a lame duck session of Congress, earlier but multiple factors prevented me from doing so. Since the focus of this site at the time was on preventing passage of DREAM, I felt that our resources could be better utilized by conveying information that you could use in persuading key senators to...