Cagle World

Even the lowest hanging fruit is beyond the hapless Grand Old Party’s reach.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment, a ripe peach waiting to be picked, never happened.

Republican legislators have long promised to restore border security which, under Mayorkas’ criminal, anti-constitutional, impeachable refusal to enforce immigration law, has devolved into chaos. At the time that then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released the Commitment to America, Mayorkas had allowed 3.8 million illegal aliens to cross, and 900,000 gotaways to escape into the interior. In all, foreign nationals from more than 160 nations had been processed and released. There are 195 countries in the world.

The invasion continues unabated. Over the past 12 months, Customs and Border Protection has encountered 3.2 million illegal aliens, and the gotaway total has likely doubled.

A closer look at the 2023 statistics reveal more criminal disregard for Americans’ safety and security. In FY 2023, Customs and Border Protection caught 52,000 Chinese nationals. China is America’s greatest threat, according to the FBI director and others. Customs and Border Protection also encountered a record-high number of aliens who appear on the FBI’s suspected terrorist watch list: 172. Of this number, 169 were attempting to evade capture at the southern border, and three were apprehended trying to sneak in through the increasingly porous northern border.

The DHS guideline for a secretary’s competency is whether his agency has “operational control” of the border. The statistics cited above, and thousands of online and nationally broadcast videos, prove that unlawful entries have flourished since President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.

Because aliens keep arriving and continuously accessing costly affirmative benefits like medical care, education, housing and transportation, pinpointing the precise cost to citizen taxpayers is impossible. The House Committee on Homeland Security provided a dollar-cost range. But what a staggering range it is – from $150 billion to $451 billion annually.

Before Congress left on its Thanksgiving recess, the GOP had a golden opportunity to impeach Mayorkas, but it punted. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene brought Articles of Impeachment against Mayorkas to the House floor as a privileged resolution, which means that members would vote on it within 48 hours. But eight Republicans joined with Democrats to vote 209-201 to send Greene’s resolution to the House graveyard for possible consideration at some undefined future time.

Mayorkas gets off, free to keep the status quo of wide-open borders alive and well. Among the eight Republicans who joined Democrats was California’s Tom McClintock, the influential Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee.

If the GOP can’t count on high-ranking officials like McClintock to support the overdue Mayorkas impeachment effort, then border security is a fantasy. McClintock’s defense of his vote overlooked the national crisis that Mayorkas has encouraged and enabled.

While McClintock acknowledged Mayorkas had opened the border to drugs, terrorists and criminals, he concluded those crimes represent policy disputes and didn’t rise to impeachment level. Then, traveling far afield from Mayorkas’ malfeasance, McClintock said Republicans must not “allow the left to become our teachers,” a reference to the Democrats’ two unsuccessful impeachment attempts made on President Donald Trump.

In McClintock’s view, drugs, terrorists and criminals are okay, but the sanctity of the House impeachment process is more important than protecting the homeland.

Even though the Senate would never have upheld a House vote to impeach, the opportunity missed was huge. Impeaching Mayorkas would show that the Republicans are serious about protecting Americans from the danger that unvetted migrants represent. A related takeaway from a successful Mayorkas impeachment would be that the GOP also has its eye on the soaring costs of funding illegal immigration, a concern that taxpaying Americans share.

The most devastating outcome of shelving Mayorkas’ impeachment is that, over the coming months, hundreds of thousands of aliens will be processed and released into the interior – not an exaggeration. In South Texas, to select one example among many, border officials reported encountering 1,200 migrants daily, exposing the treasonous handiwork of Mayorkas.

By the time Inauguration Day 2025 arrives, likely more than 8 million people from locations across the globe will have been released into the general population in cities and towns across the U.S.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

World Series 2023 had the lowest television ratings in history. There’s no need to belabor the whys and wherefores. Instead of listening to the ceaseless chatter of announcer John Smoltz, fans would be better off acquainting themselves with the game’s rich history.

A good start: read Dan Taylor’s “Baseball at the Abyss,” which takes a deep dive into the forgotten 1926 scandal that involved Hall of Fame greats Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, as the principal scoundrels.

Baseball has a long, unhappy gambling history that dates back before the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. In baseball’s early days, bookmakers plied their trade in the open, working the ballpark areas inside and outside, taking wagers. The 1919 World Series may have, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, destroyed the faith of 50 million people, about half the U.S. population then, but throwing baseball games was commonplace. As Emil “Happy” Felsch, a White Sox fixer, said, “Playing rotten ain’t that hard to do.”

Author Taylor explains that the dirty deeds had their inception in 1919, when the Cleveland Indians were in Detroit to face the Tigers. Neither the Indians nor the Tigers were going to win the pennant, but the Tigers were in a tight scrum with the Yankees for third place. In the dead ball era, a third-place finish meant a small share of the post-season loot for every Tigers’ member. The Indians had second place locked up. Cobb and Speaker, the respective managers of the Tigers and Indians, huddled prior to the September 25 game to iron out the details.

Speaker assured Cobb that he “wouldn’t have to worry” about the game’s outcome. The Cleveland team preferred, Speaker insisted, that Detroit finish in third. By virtue of that finish, the Tigers were likely to make about $500 for each player. Cobb, Speaker, Tigers pitcher Dutch Leonard and Indians pitcher Smoky Joe Wood all agreed to conspire in the fix.

Years later, Leonard confessed the four had agreed that since their post-season share would be small, they might as well wager on the game.

The Tigers won the game 9-5, plating four runs in the first two innings. The Indians committed three costly errors, and Cleveland starter Elmer Myers – perhaps tipped off to the fix or maybe acting on his own whimsy – floated pitches to the plate for the Detroit batters. Speaker banged out three hits, all of them well after the Tigers had control of the game and the outcome was clear.

No one is certain whether Cobb, Speaker or anyone else actually received money from their bets. The scant remaining evidence indicates that the wrongdoers may not have been able to place all the bets they hoped to.

That winter, Cobb, Speaker, Wood and Leonard went home, but the four men exchanged letters about the incident, sharing their regret that they were unable to get their bets down in time and that their shared proposition fizzled. The letters came back to haunt the four.

Several years later, the stench from the fixing incident wafted out. A vengeful Leonard wanted to settle a score with his former teammate, Cobb, now the Tigers manager. Once, Cobb kept Leonard in a 1925 game in which the southpaw surrendered 20 runs, and the manager mocked the idea that he yank his humiliated starter. Leonard never forgot, and the memory ate at him.

Cobb released Leonard, and insiders said Ty discouraged other American League teams from signing the lefty. Dutch stewed, and in May 1926 he presented the letters he received from Cobb, Speaker and Wood – the evidence – to Tigers owner Frank Navin, who turned them over to American League President Ban Johnson. To keep a lid on the percolating scandal, Johnson paid Leonard $20,000 to go back to Fresno where he owned a farm, and focus on his raisin growing. At the season’s end, Johnson forced Cobb and speaker to resign.

Eventually, the superstars appealed their cases to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis who, sensing that the public and the baseball writers were solidly behind the diamond, absolved Speaker and Cobb, facts be damned.

Landis read the room correctly. Baseball bugs were fed up with scandal. At least five World Series – 1905, 1912, 1914, 1918 and 1919 – were rumored to have been influenced by game-fixers. And the 1923 Teapot Dome Scandal that implicated President Warren G. Harding – considered the greatest presidential scandal until Watergate – was still reverberating among the citizenry.

Cobb and Speaker played until 1928, Speaker for one year with the Washington Senators and one year with the Philadelphia A’s, and Cobb two years with the A’s.

Better to remember Cobb as one of baseball’s all-time greats, .366 career batting average with nine consecutive titles, and Speaker, the “Gray Eagle” who holds outfielder records for assists, double plays and unassisted double plays. Balls hit to center field where Speaker patrolled were considered the place where triples go to die.

Cobb, Speaker, Wood and Leonard got off the hook, and played into their 40s. Pete Rose, however, who holds MLB career records for 4,256 career hits, 3,215 career singles, 3,562 career games played, 14,053 career at-bats and 15,890 career plate appearances, was permanently banned for his gambling infractions.

In life, good timing is invaluable.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

From the Oval Office, President Joe Biden made an impassioned mid-October address that laid out the stakes for Americans as to why they must support Israel and Ukraine in their wars against aggressors Hamas and Russia. He called the wars an American national security imperative, with victory critical to the future of democracies worldwide.

Biden spoke forcefully, but unconvincingly to many in his audience. Included in Biden’s message was an “urgent budget request” – his proposed $106 billion package which designated $64.1 billion for Ukraine. But Biden gave short shrift to Israel, a proposed $14.3 billion, and tagged on $10 billion for humanitarian assistance, a category that will give $850 million to process more illegal aliens at the border.

Since the start of Ukraine’s endless war with Russia in 2022, the U.S. has sent more than $135 billion on Ukraine. For its ally Israel, since its founding as an independent state in 1948, the U.S. has provided just over $150 billion. President Biden’s latest request would tie Israel’s $14.3 billion to Ukraine’s $61.4 billion. But Louisiana U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson’s election as House Speaker put Biden’s bid for continued Ukraine funding in doubt; Johnson is a long-time opponent to indefinite Ukraine funding.

Johnson did, however, agree to $14.6 billion for Israel, slightly more than Biden requested, with the caveat that each dollar given must be offset by an equal amount in federal government spending cuts, a process called “pay for’s.”

Biden urged Americans to get behind Israel and Ukraine’s defenses because, in the president’s words, support “is vital for national security.” The president’s plea to send Ukraine more billions while the Southern border remains wide open, and exploitable to terrorists, is incomprehensible, and it is unacceptable to Johnson and millions of concerned Americans. Ukraine is a profoundly corrupt country. Transparency International, a worldwide movement that works to expose corruption and the injustice it inflicts, ranks Ukraine No. 116 out of the 180 nations it evaluated, a red flag to lenders since monies sent aren’t specifically accounted for in detail.

Biden and his administration’s like-minded, pro-war Secretaries of Defense and State, Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, are staunchly behind Ukraine. In September, Blinken made his fourth trip to Kyiv to give President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a message from President Biden: the U.S. wants “to reaffirm strongly our support” for Ukraine. Austin, in a recent telephone call to Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, reassured his Ukrainian counterpart of the U.S.’s continued support in the war against Russia.

Yet, none of the federal government’s three most powerful and influential – Biden, Blinken and Austin – have even hinted at what dangerous and possibly fatal consequences could evolve from the border invasion.

In October alone, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 100 Syrians and 50 Iranians. During the one-week period from October 8 to October 14,  six Iranians, three Lebanese, one Egyptian and one Saudi Arabian were arrested trying to cross the Rio Grande River in the Del Rio Sector, which includes besieged Eagle Pass.

Because of ongoing terrorism, instability and anti-American sentiments in the region, Syria and Iran are currently listed under State Department Level Four Travel Advisories: DO NOT TRAVEL. Adding to the homeland’s risk from Middle Eastern nationals who may harbor terrorist intentions is the growing number of what Customs and Border Protection refers to as “known gotaways,” 23,000 during October’s first three weeks, or about 1,000 per day.

Eli Crane, an Arizona U.S. representative whose 2nd congressional district includes portions of Maricopa and Pinal counties which have experienced a steady inflow of illegal aliens, is on the invasion’s front line. Noting that about 280 people on the FBI terrorist watch list have been apprehended at the border, Crane wrote in a “Newsweek” op-ed, “If you don’t think there are any lone wolves or terrorist cells that have come in through that wide open border, you’re a fool.”

To ignore the obvious risks that open borders present, and at the same time vigorously promote and magnanimously underwrite Ukraine’s defense of its border against Russia, insults all Americans, proving Biden’s contempt for Americans.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

During his Oval Office address to the nation last week about Russia’s invasion into the Ukraine and Israel’s offensive against Gaza, President Biden quoted former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who had once called America “the indispensable nation.”

The reference to the U.S. as indispensable struck many viewers as curious since the president, starting on the first day he entered the White House, has worked with such determination to destroy American sovereignty.

Since Biden assumed office, about 8.6 million foreign nationals have crossed the border and settled in the interior. Worth noting is that Albright is one of a long line of secretaries of state who can turn a patriotic phrase but are, at heart, devoted globalists. The line, post-Albright, includes Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

As expected, Biden pleaded for more money to fund the two wars and will send a $105 billion package to Congress where it will face an uphill battle. The bulk of the funding, $61.4 billion allocated for Ukraine at a time when Americans have grown tired of sending their tax dollars, without accountability, toward what appears to be an endless, distant conflict.

Within the $61.4 billion is $481 million to support Ukrainians arriving in the U.S. through the “Uniting for Ukraine” program which provides a two-year parole that includes work permission and other affirmative benefits. In other words, more immigration – another Biden policy that Americans are weary of, especially as they watch thousands of migrants cross the U.S. border unchecked daily.

Israel’s share of the $105 billion pie is a mere 25 percent of Ukraine’s – $14.3 billion. Biden’s proposed national security package will provide Israel with $10.6 billion in assistance through the Defense Department, including air and missile defense support, industrial base investments and replenishment of U.S. military stocks that have been drawn down to support Israel.

The $105 billion total also allots $10 billion for humanitarian assistance. Tucked into the $10 billion is $850 million for what’s referred to as “migration and refugee assistance” at the U.S.-Mexico border. Again, more immigration and more facilitating of immigration which voters oppose.

Biden’s address flummoxed viewers. The president passionately made the case for the U.S. to aid in defending the Ukraine and Israel, and few dispute that both embattled nations need U.S. aid. But Biden has created a U.S. border crisis and then continuously ignored the calamities that an unprotected border spawned, including migrant deaths, drug smuggling, human trafficking and environmental damage. Key administration officials, like Vice President Kamala Harris and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have rubbed salt into concerned citizens’ wounds by, in defiance of ample evidence, insisting that the border is secure.

While Biden, imploring Congress and the Americans it represents, to act as the “agents of democracy,” he never in his 15-minute address mentioned the border and the terrorism threats that leaving it unprotected represents.

Maybe – but only maybe – the latest Customs and Border Protect report will awaken Biden and everyone else to the homeland dangers percolating. Border officials arrested 18 people on the FBI’s terror watchlist in September, making fiscal year 2023 a record year for such encounters at the southern border. The watchlist, now officially called the Terrorist Screening Dataset, is the U.S. database that contains information on terrorist identities and includes not only known or suspected terrorists, but also affiliates of watch-listed individuals.

Border Patrol statistics released Saturday showed that 169 people on the FBI terror watchlist were encountered between ports of entry at the Southern border in the past 12 months, a number that exceeds not only last year’s record-setting total, 98, but the last six fiscal years combined.

Including encounters between northern border entry ports, the total for this year rose to 172. Thousands of “special interest aliens” from numerous countries, including the Middle East, have been arrested by Border Patrol agents while attempting to cross the U.S. southern border illegally over the last two years. Special interest aliens are people from countries the federal government identifies as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national security threat.

If the administration wants to avert what looks like the inevitable – a major terrorist attack on the homeland – it will have to get immediately busy shutting the border and deporting illegally present aliens.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

The troubling news that U.S. veterans hoping to see the Army-Navy game in Foxboro, Mass. earlier this month had their hotel reservations canceled to provide illegal aliens shelter could be a blessing in disguise, assuming the vets vote in unison to preserve the country they’re sworn to defend.

Kicking vets out of their lodging to reward aliens with coveted hotel rooms represents the latest affront to Americans by open borders advocates. Open borders are a continuing, shameful offense and assault on U.S. sovereignty. Most offended are veterans. Data that the Department of Veterans Affairs released showed that the veteran population is 19 million.

Imagine the 19 million plus their spouses, children, siblings, friends and neighbors disgusted by the audacity of federal and state officials sanctioning the unceremonious booting of vets from their rooms, leaving them to fend for themselves to find alternate housing for an event that’s sold-out months in advance. Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey claimed to be “distressed” when she learned that a New Jersey travel agent had displaced the vets to make rooms available to the migrants. Healey’s “distressed” claim cannot be taken at face value. Like most of Massachusetts, Healey is an immigration expansion advocate.

Massachusetts’ migrant crisis is so acute that Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll urged Bay State taxpayers to open their homes to illegal aliens. Reacting to Healey’s declaration that migration has put the state in emergency mode, Driscoll asked residents who might have “…an extra room or suite in your home, [to] please consider hosting a family. Safe housing and shelter is our most pressing need.” Driscoll said that Massachusetts is spending about $45 million monthly in taxpayer dollars on migrants’ shelter needs.

Some support Driscoll, and cited Massachusetts’ history as one of the first colonies founded by European migrants. The supporters have ample chance to back up their words with action. Massachusetts has 5,600 illegal alien homeless families that include infants and pregnant women, an 80 percent increase from the 3,100 families a year ago.

The governor could also step up to the plate. Healey has a four-bedroom, single family home in Arlington, Mass., that she shares with her partner. Healey’s living arrangement frees up three bedrooms, and would take some of the burden off the state she governs. Or, Healey could make sheltering aliens a condition of continued employment for the state’s 438,000 workers. As long as the northern and southern borders remain open, and unchecked migration continues, no solution that immigration advocates dream up is, in their view, asking too much. Remember Driscoll’s overview of the role residents should play in the state’s right- to-shelter crisis: “Everyone has something they can share.”

As long as the federal government welcomes millions of unvetted, impoverished aliens, including convicted criminals and FBI terrorist suspects, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis might as well shut their doors. The mission of the graduates of the institutions is to protect the homeland, a goal that the White House actively undermines. Under Biden, the homeland is wide open for the world to access. A House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement report found that through March 2023, 99 percent of the arriving 2.1 million foreign nationals remain in the U.S. Only 6 percent have been thoroughly vetted, showing a complete disregard for citizens’ “safe housing” that Driscoll rhapsodized about.

In the Biden administration’s latest nonsolution to a state’s migration catastrophe, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will send a team to Boston to, in government-speak empty words, “assess the current migrant situation and identify ways to improve efficiencies and maximize our support for communities that are addressing the needs of migrants.” The feds have already sent $2.8 billion in taxpayer funds to help Massachusetts out of a problem that has no monetary resolution.

New West Point grads, new Annapolis grads and veterans, along with their relatives and friends, might total 50 million taken together, a large enough bloc to swing the election toward a much-needed candidate committed to enforcing U.S. immigration laws.

In the 2024 presidential election, other simmering issues will be hotly debated – abortion, the economy, crime, war in the Ukraine and the Middle East – but nothing will be more important than restoring U.S. sovereignty.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

During much of Dianne Feinstein’s 20 years in the U.S. Senate, I lived in California and wrote political commentary for two San Joaquin Valley dailies. Regardless of my topic, out of professional curiosity, I asked my subjects’ off-the-record opinion about the California governor and their local congressional representatives.

When I inquired about Feinstein, most replied with indifference. At no point did I sense voter enthusiasm about Feinstein, or detect the feeling that, in their minds, her re-election was paramount to California’s well-being.

Yet, after Republican Sen. Pete Wilson resigned in 1991 to run for governor, Feinstein won the 1992 special election, and was then re-elected five times – 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018, a remarkable achievement. Prior to her Senate success, Feinstein came in third in the 1975 San Francisco mayoral election to winner George Moscone, and lost the 1990 gubernatorial general election to Wilson. As so often happens in politics, death, retirement and shifting winds played a major role in Feinstein’s ascendancy.

Elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969, Feinstein served as the board’s president in 1978, during which time Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor, and Wilson’s decision to give up his Senate seat opened up national office opportunities for Feinstein which she capitalized on. When fellow Democrat Alan Cranston retired in 1993, Feinstein became California’s senior senator.

Once an established incumbent, and even though California was not yet the solidly blue state it is today – Republican Wilson was, after all, just a few years removed from his governorship – Feinstein coasted. Feinstein’s uninspiring GOP challengers Tom Campbell, Dick Mountjoy and Elizabeth Emken eased her path.

As Feinstein’s Senate seniority advanced, she got plum assignments, including with the Senate Rules Committee. Feinstein also chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence, an ironic appointment since, as later discovered, she was chauffeured by a Chinese operative the FBI suspected of gathering government secrets before he absconded back to China.

Considered a moderate when she arrived in Washington, Feinstein quickly adopted the established Democratic positions, especially on an issue that roiled Congress from her career’s inception to its end: immigration.

In the early 1990s, at a press conference on the California-Mexico border, Feinstein said that illegal immigration was too costly to allow it to continue. In California alone, Feinstein continued, taxpayers spent $2 billion annually on illegal immigration. Feinstein added that illegal immigration involved a battle for “space” between the aliens and citizens – space for jobs, for classroom seats and for housing. More immigration means less space for citizens, said Feinstein.

Thirty years later, however, Feinstein joined the Senate’s open borders faction. Over her three decades in the Upper Chamber, Feinstein’s immigration grade dropped from C to D.

Unbeknownst to the public, Feinstein also championed private immigration bills. She introduced more bills that protected illegal immigrants from deportation than any other legislator. Her singular attempts to circumvent immigration laws to provide for her special causes mostly involved tourist visa overstays. Some remained unlawfully present for as long as 17 years after their visas expired, hardly compelling circumstances that require Senate intervention.

On October 2, Gov. Gavin Newsom named EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the remaining 15 months of Feinstein’s term. EMILY’s List works to elect female Democrats who support abortion rights. Per an August Federal Election Commission filing, Butler was a Maryland resident. Butler was then quickly sworn into office by Vice President Kamala Harris, for whom Butler had worked on Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign.

What happens next in the post-Feinstein era is uncertain. A special election involving Butler is probable, but no one knows whether the appointee or any of the other declared candidates for the full six-year term will run. Announced candidates Reps. Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff and Katie Porter are evaluating their decisions vis-à-vis the special election.

Despite California’s whopping $32 billion budget deficit, its affordable housing crisis, a soaring homeless population, endemic smash-and-grab crime and a collapsed education system, whoever permanently replaces Feinstein will vote straight “yea” on immigration expansion bills – as if more immigration is the solution to California’s monumental problems. Lee, Schiff and Porter have F- immigration grades from NumbersUSA.

Feinstein is gone, but her age, 90, and her vast $64 million wealth, exclusive of prime real estate holdings, raise questions about imposing term limits, and whether millionaires married to billionaires can fairly represent the average citizen. Feinstein commuted from San Francisco to D.C. on her private $6 million Gulfstream G650 jet. Term limits and personal wealth should but will never be considered as candidacy restrictions.

Still, Feinstein’s congressional pro-immigration allies can take comfort that her replacement will carry on with the departed senator’s sovereignty-eroding immigration expansion legacy.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

For all of Kevin McCarthy’s bluster about his impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden’s corrupt finances, skeptics have deep doubts about the House Speaker’s priorities.

The Biden family’s financial double-dealing is small potatoes compared to the nation’s lost sovereignty that the administration’s open border agenda promotes. While the evidence that Oversight Committee Chair James Comer uncovered reveals a well-established pattern of the Biden family’s dubious dealings, McCarthy has said little about the more compelling border disaster.

Biden’s blatant refusal to enforce even to the minimum extent the nation’s immigration laws is easily proven. This flagrant abdication of duty to enforce laws for the security and safety of U.S. citizens and sovereignty of the country represents a series of impeachable offenses. McCarthy, Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, et al, don’t have to subpoena bank records or review the 5,400 emails that Biden wrote under his pseudonyms Robert Peters, Robin Ware and JRB Ware. House leadership simply has to visit the border to see that Biden has aided, abetted, facilitated, orchestrated and promoted illegal immigration, crimes for which he should be removed from office.

The latest Customs and Border Protection stats are shocking, even for people who follow invasion data regularly. A total of 35,000 illegal aliens entered the U.S. for the weekend beginning Friday, September 15 and ending Monday, September 18, and the agency processed most of them. More accurately, Customs and Border Protection released 35,000 unvetted aliens into the interior. Previous surges included convicted criminals and possible terrorists on the FBI watch list.

In this unending human flow across the border, thanks to the Biden administration, consider also the doomed migrants who never reach their intended destinations. Their deaths are true human tragedies. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that in FY 2022 U.S. authorities discovered 890 bodies at the Southwest border, while hundreds of migrants are considered missing. Speculation is that somewhere in the border’s broad, rugged terrain, thousands more corpses lie undiscovered.

Human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, and traffickers have taken advantage of Biden’s inexcusable refusal to secure the homeland against foreign invaders who deliver deadly amounts of fentanyl and transport minors predestined for the sex trade or used and mistreated as underage labor. Federal code states that one single person found guilty of a trafficking violation will face a lengthy prison term, “potentially including life imprisonment for conduct involving actual or attempted killing, kidnapping, or aggravated sexual abuse.”

Taken on whole, the administration has, with Biden’s blessing, permitted one immigration crime after another. While Biden’s financial chicanery should lead to jail time, enriching of family won’t destroy the nation. But Biden’s open borders policy has the gravest of consequences – an end to sovereign America.

In a preview of future border-caused fiscal calamities to come for Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other municipalities, Biden has brought New York City to its knees. Mayor Eric Adams is begging for a financial bailout to help subsidize the 110,000 migrants who have arrived in the Big Apple since April 2022. Evaluating his plight, Adams, speaking the truest words he’ll ever utter, said: “Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.”

Adams has correctly summed up the migrant invasion: no ending is in sight for New York or the nation. To offset the city’s projected cost of $12 billion to support aliens, some progressive Democrats propose a 5 percent state tax, the so-called “migrant tax.”

The GOP’s pre-2022 Election Day “Commitment to America” failed to deliver on lofty promises, including a pledge to prevent illegal crossings, stop cartel trafficking, end catch-and-release loopholes and require legal status to get a job. Keeping score, that’s zero for four, a .000 average. Such an across-the-board GOP failure diminishes confidence in the party and puts Speaker McCarthy on shaky ground when he’s trying to sell his point of view, in this case that Biden’s financial hanky-panky is more important than vanished borders.

If voters were asked which of the two crimes they consider more egregious, Biden’s open borders – the consequences of which are ruining their communities – or the money laundering and influence peddling, the result would be a landslide. The outcome: Impeach Biden now before he can do more harm to American sovereignty.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Congress is back from its August recess, the weeks-long period away from its always-contentious, mostly unproductive business.

The House and the Senate have about a week until the Sep. 30 deadline to pass a federal budget. On Oct. 1, a new fiscal year begins. If lawmakers cannot push through their spending bills, the nation will face a government shutdown.

With time short for congressional action, the more likely outcome, albeit a temporary one, is that lawmakers could pass a continuing resolution which would avert a shutdown and fund the government at its current levels until a mutually agreed upon date.

Some in the GOP caucus view shutdown threats, which would adversely affect only a small percentage of the population, as foolish saber-rattling. They suggest that a more urgent problem than a government services’ pause is the nation’s $2 trillion deficit and $33 trillion national debt.

Writing in “City Journal,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Nicole Gelinas in her article, “The Permanent Crisis Economy,” observed that during the administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, Congress has approved record levels of deficit spending, paid not through tax collections but via Treasury debt.

“In 2007, the government owed $8.6 trillion in today’s dollars. As of the end of 2022, it owed more than triple that, $26.9 trillion, including $4.8 trillion in pandemic-era borrowing,” Gelinas wrote. “Much of this was printed by the Fed: its balance sheet went from $1.3 trillion just before the financial crisis to a high of $8.9 trillion in 2022, as it conjured zeros on computer screens to buy Treasury debt, thus financing federal deficits.”

While Republicans are intent on cutting spending, a continuing resolution would also provide Congress with an opportunity to rein in the raging, unlawful border crisis, which is overwhelming major cities. including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver.

New York Mayor Eric Adams declared that the illegal alien surge into his city has the potential to destroy it. Adams’ prediction is dramatic, but spot on. The city, inconveniencing and displacing thousands of New York taxpayers who fund the invasion, is housing about 60,000 aliens in 200 sites, including more than 140 hotels.

At a press conference, the mayor did the math for his incredulous audience: “For each family seeking asylum through the city’s care, we spend an average of $383 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care and social services. With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care, on an average night, it amounts to $9.8 million a day, almost $300 million a month, and nearly $3.6 billion a year.”

Adams ominously added that these costs represent the floor, not the ceiling of potentially higher costs. New York’s Democratic congressional caucus that includes the powerful Sen. Majority leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have shown zero interest in border enforcement which would ease the ever-mounting pressure on Adams. Congressional Democrats to Adams: “Good luck. You’re on your own.”

For persons serious about ending the border crisis, now is the hour to use the upcoming spending battle to create meaningful border security and pro-American immigration reform. In May, the House passed H.R. 2, the Secure Border Act of 2023, which would end many of the immigration abuses that global migrants have unsurprisingly taken advantage of and that the Biden administration has fully encouraged.

Among many other positives, the bill would close asylum loopholes – the invasion’s main driver – and would mandate E-Verify which would protect American jobs. Other enforcement features include ending catch-and-release and parole abuse, while deporting visa overstays and tightening lax family unit and unaccompanied minors’ entry guidelines. The bill’s most significant provisions, restoring credibility to asylum petitions and cutting the jobs’ magnet through E-Verify, would end the pull enticement that lures migrants.

The House, which holds the purse strings of Congress, has an opportunity to end the border insanity if it attaches its immigration bill to the must-pass continuing resolution.

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” said Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The border calamity has already lasted more than two years, way too long. Assuming the GOP can get its act together, their immigration bill can be the key to ending the sovereignty-destroying invasion.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

When the Chicago Cubs called up Ken Holtzman from the Rookie Pioneer League in 1965, some within the organization predicted that the lefty would be the next Sandy Koufax. Both were tall, lean, and Jewish flamethrowers.

Holtzman had an outstanding 17-year-long career that included two stints with the Cubs, and one go-around each with the Oakland Athletics, the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees. He peaked in the mid-1970s, winning the 1972 World Series opener against the Cincinnati Reds and a stacked lineup that included Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez. Holtzman ultimately won three World Series with the A’s, and hurled two no-hitters during his 15-year career.

During his early years with the Cubs, Holtzman was matched up against his boyhood idol and the hurler he had been compared to, Sandy Koufax. The matchup took place at Wrigley Field on the day after Yom Kippur, and neither pitcher was in uniform – both were observing the Jewish Holy Day.

After Cubs manager Leo Durocher directed anti-Semitic slurs at Holtzman, the pitcher demanded a trade, a fortuitous development for the lefty. In exchange for outstanding Cubs outfielder Rick Monday, an Arizona State All-American, Holtzman went to the A’s, a team on the cusp of winning three consecutive World Series championships. One of Holtzman’s new teammates was Mike Epstein, a one-time University of California fullback and defensive tackle. The irreverent, bombastic A’s nicknamed Holtzman and Epstein, “Jew” and “Superjew.” Neither took offense at the crude clubhouse labels.

On September 5, 1972, during an off day in Chicago, when news reached Holtzman that Palestinian terrorists took 11 Israeli Olympic athletes hostage, and killed two, he sought out Epstein. They walked the streets, comforting each other, wondering what the Israelis had done to precipitate such hate, and why the Munich Massacre happened.

Explaining their long walk on Chicago’s empty streets, Epstein who had once drawn the Star of David on his mitt, said to a Pittsburgh Press reporter: “I put on tefillin at different shuls in different cities. I was Bar Mitzvahed. I can read Hebrew. I’m a Jew.” The next day, in remembrance of the deceased, Holtzman and Epstein donned black arm bands on their jerseys’ sleeves, and kept them on through the playoffs. Remembered Epstein: “It was an emotional period. I’m glad we did something.”

After Epstein went hitless in the 1972 World Series, A’s owner Charles O. Finley dumped him and his 26 home runs to the Texas Rangers. Two years later, Epstein ended his nine-year career with the California Angels where he hit .206. Out of baseball, he began a successful batting school on the West Coast. Now retired, Epstein is 80.

Holtzman never achieved the Koufax-like Hall of Fame success that some had predicted for him. He won nine more games in his career than Sandy Koufax’s 165 total which made Holtzman history’s winningest Jewish pitcher.

In 2007, Holtzman briefly returned to baseball when he managed the Israel Baseball League’s Petach Tikva Pioneers. His experience with the league was an unhappy one, and he left the team before the season ended. Holtzman, now 77, is retired and lives outside St. Louis, his birthplace.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

President Biden’s Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against SpaceX, the Elon Musk-founded company. In its 13-page complaint, the Justice Department alleges that SpaceX “discriminated against asylees and refugees throughout its hiring process, including during recruiting, screening, and selection, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

The case’s outcome will be a landmark in corporate, immigration and labor law.

The Justice Department contends that from September 2018 to May 2022, the privately owned space company discouraged asylees and refugees from applying for positions “by wrongly stating that SpaceX can only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.” The department further argues that Space X’s illegal hiring policies were “routine, widespread, and longstanding, and harmed asylees and refugees.”

For its part, SpaceX countered that because the company designs, manufacturers and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft, it can only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, pursuant to U.S. laws and regulations. A complex series of federal laws and regulations govern SpaceX and its competitors. Known as “Export Controls,” the regulations are comprised of the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and EAR (Export Administration Regulations) and collectively administered by the Departments of Commerce, State and Treasury. Export Controls are “designed to prevent the spread of sensitive technologies to foreign actors that could threaten U.S. interests… [These] controlled technologies include defense articles, e.g., missiles, defense services, e.g., integration of a spacecraft onto a launcher, and dual-use items, e.g., commercial spacecraft and components.”

“Foreign actors that could threaten U.S. interests” deserves further analysis. Bona fide asylum seekers who filed an Application for Asylum, Form I-589, but have not received approval within 180 days, qualify for a work permit and employment despite potentially being in the U.S. illegally. Refugees admitted legally must apply for permanent residency within a year of arrival or are subject to deportation, but are immediately employable.

Through a non-lawyer’s eyes, Musk and his SpaceX legal team appear to have the stronger hand. In Musk’s defense and in support of hiring citizens only, recent asylees and refugees include foreign nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Cuba, Iraq, Somalia and Iran, active or potential U.S. enemies. Furthermore, SpaceX contends it can’t hire non-U.S. citizens because it must comply with the above-referenced export control restrictions.

Musk also cited a current Executive Order 11935, and called upon the Justice Department to sue itself for its seemingly, in view of its suit against SpaceX, discriminatory hiring practices. As per the executive order, “only United States citizens and nationals” can be hired for federal jobs. As an example of the feds discrimination against SpaceX, a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, cited a tweet by economist George Mason University economics professor Alex Tabarrok, who pointed out that the job requirements for the federal Bureau of Prisons specify “U.S. citizenship is required.” Musk concluded, correctly, that DOJ’s action is “yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.”

The most foreboding challenge SpaceX faces is the Biden administration’s contemptible disregard for immigration law. For nearly two years, Biden and his corrupt Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have unconstitutionally sanctioned granting parole, which includes work permission, to thousands of unvetted worldwide migrants.

In 1952, Congress granted the executive branch parole authority, which “should be surrounded with strict limitations … in emergency cases, such as the case of an alien who requires immediate medical attention … and a witness or for purposes of prosecution.” Instead of obeying congressionally passed law – the absolute minimum Americans should expect from their president – Biden has paroled en masse unvetted aliens who are inadmissible under any immigration category.

The sad but unsurprising truth is that, given what’s known about Biden and his anti-American agenda, the Justice Department is suing SpaceX because Musk’s company wants to hire U.S. citizens.

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Copyright 2023 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].