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ACLU TRAMPLES RIGHTS OF MINUTEMEN
March 31, 2005
On April Fool’s Day, the American Civil Liberties Union will show us what a joke its commitment to American civil liberties really is.
April 1, in case you haven’t heard, is the launch of the Minuteman Project, an all-volunteer effort by law-abiding American citizens to call attention to the nation’s wide-open southern border. Hundreds of Americans from New York to California will travel down to the Arizona-Mexico border for a month to monitor illegal aliens and alert immigration enforcement officials if they witness law-breaking.
Call it the mother of all neighborhood watch programs.
In doing this, the Minutemen will be exercising their constitutionally protected freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Those would be fundamental civil liberties found in something called the, uh, First Amendment, of which the ACLU is supposed to be the foremost expert and champion. Or so the group and its celebrity supporters say. In sanctimonious new fund-raising ad campaigns, the organization features the likes of liberal actress Holly Hunter, who asks:
“Do you want to be heard without fear? I am not an American who believes that questioning or criticizing my government is un-patriotic.”
Uh-huh. “Dissent is patriotic,” the Left likes to preach. Except, apparently, if the questioning and criticizing deals with the government’s failure to enforce immigration laws. Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist has been harassed by open-borders activists at his home. The group is reportedly being targeted by savage illegal alien gangsters from Mara Salvatrucha (a.k.a. MS-13). Mexican government officials are lobbying American law enforcement officials to suppress the Minutemen’s rights to speak and assemble.
But instead of coming to the defense of the Minutemen who are challenging our government, the ACLU has warned the 1,000 volunteers that it will send monitors to document the American’s activities. Moreover, the ACLU has already threatened lawsuits against the American dissenters for exercising their rights.
This bullying of pro-immigration-enforcement activists comes as no surprise to those of us who have followed the ACLU’s aggressive open-borders agenda – from its support for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, to its opposition to detaining illegal terror suspects after 9/11 and profiling foreign visitors from terror-friendly countries, to its efforts to stop local and state law enforcement officers from helping federal homeland security efforts.
ACLU of Arizona spokesman Ray Ybarra argues that the mere presence of the Minutemen at the border constitutes “unlawful imprisonment” of illegal (excuse me, “undocumented”) aliens (excuse me, “migrants”). Ybarra told the Washington Times that the ACLU will have lawyers on standby ready to file civil cases against the volunteers. He warned that the Minutemen could “come to our state as ‘vigilantes’ and end up leaving as ‘defendants.’”
The Minutemen have made it clear on their Web site and in repeated statements that they “will not violate anyone’s civil rights, and will not abuse anyone from any country…. We will alert Border Patrol to the location of illegals, and wait for (the Border Patrol) to come and pick them up. We will follow illegal aliens from a distance and continue spotting them until authorities answer our cellphone and/or back-pack radio calls. All spotting, calls for assistance, and the response from the appropriate authorities will be chronicled and provided to any media representative.”
Contrary to the ACLU and mainstream media representations of the group as racist and immigrant-bashers, the Minutemen are a diverse volunteer group that includes Americans of Mexican, Armenian, Russian, Lebanese, Indian and Cuban descent; and Black and Native American minorities. Also among the volunteers are 19 legal immigrants from Mexico, Peru, Russia, New Zealand, England, Australia and the Philippines.
By recklessly linking the Minutemen to White separatists and casting them as outlaws, the civil liberties crowd engages in the very guilt-by-association smear tactics it has so loudly condemned. And in putting the protection of illegal aliens’ rights over law-abiding Americans’ civil liberties, the ACLU demonstrates on which side of the border its true allegiances lie.
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RICE, BUSH AND CONGRESS VS. MINUTEMAN PATRIOTS
By Frosty Wooldridge
April 5, 2005
NewsWithViews.com
While in Mexico kissing and polishing Fox’s boots recently, Secretary of State Condi Rice blurted out that she does not support lawless vigilantes patrolling America’s vulnerable southern border. Never mind 4,000 illegal aliens and drug smugglers cross nightly over the Arizona sector alone—according to Time Magazine! She felt the Minute Man Project represented lawless behavior on the part of American citizens.
What is a vigilante? The dictionary defines one as watchful, sensible, aware, alert, to keep watch and to stay alert in times of danger.
When it comes to danger, the Christian Science Monitor presented disturbing news, March 22, 2005, “Concern is growing at the top levels of government about the US-Mexican border becoming a back door for terrorists entering the United States. While Al Qaeda infiltration across the nation’s southern border has been a constant concern since 9/11, US officials cite recent intelligence giving the most definitive evidence yet that terrorists are planning to use it as an entry point - if they haven’t already.”
The report continues with, “In the Brownsville sector alone, border patrol officials reported they caught 23,178 OTMs (other than Mexicans) crossing through August 2004,” Mr. Ortiz says. “Of those, 16,616 were released.” Ortiz also points out that another loophole is entering Mexico through Brazil, where a visa is not required to travel to Mexico. “We believe there is an international Salafist jihad movement with a goal to attack the near enemy and far enemy - the US,” says Richard Shultz, an international security expert at Tufts University’s Fletcher School in Medford, Mass. “These terrorists are smart. They study these issues and learn from one other. And one way in is right through the southern security perimeter.”
Since the president of the USA encourages illegal immigration, The Minute Man Project fills the bill and sports Americans from 50 states while numbering over 1000 volunteers. Congress is nervous. Condi Rice is upset. Bush is clueless.
Four years after 9/11 killed 3,000 people, Bush violates his oath of office. He has not and will not place troops on the border. He won’t enforce immigration laws. He won’t pursue employers of illegal aliens. He won’t deport illegal aliens. He is clueless to the crime, drugs, school chaos, diseases and lawlessness facing all of us in every state in the Union. He insults Americans by telling them that Mexicans do the jobs that Americans won’t do. He’s doing nothing more than inviting ‘working slaves’ into our country from the Third World.
Therefore, Jim Gilchrist and Simcox created the Minute Man Project to do the jobs that Bush and Congress won’t do. This is the largest citizen ‘Neighborhood Watch’ group ever assembled in defense of America.
Gilchrist said, “The Minute Man Project protests the refusal of the Congress and the president to protect our borders from illegal immigrants who have not had criminal or disease background checks thereby creating imminent danger to all Americans.”
Charges of racism stem from pro-illegal immigration groups such as La Raza who encourage illegal migration. However, Gilchrist said, “The racism is all on the other side. People who want to protect and save America from this invasion include all colors, religions and nationalities.”
These vigilante dastardly do-badders include six wheelchair bound Minute Men who will stand ‘sit’ guard at the border. So far, 31 Native Americans from various tribes will man lookout posts. They want to make sure charges of ‘racism’ don’t get spread too quickly by the ACLU. Seventy-five year old women will point binoculars toward Mexico. Fox is worried those ‘gray power’ ladies will tackle his army of illegals crossing with their load of cocaine! A massive patrol of over 200 media personnel with laptops, video, digital cameras, microphones and notepads will keep a sharp eye on the lawless vigilantes! They are certain to report any lawbreaking by American citizens while they completely ignore the 20 million illegal aliens already roaming America in defiance of our immigration laws. Americans and legal immigrants from 21 to 81 will make up this dangerous/lawless Minute Man force Condi Rice chastises.
“We are simply going about our Constitutional right to peaceful assembly,” Gilchrist said. “We neither condone nor endorse violence. Nothing will stand in our way to exercise our First Amendment rights.”
What Gilchrist protests is the doublespeak of Condi Rice issue when she says, “We try and make sure that our borders are as safe as possible and that it is every important the laws of the United States be respected.”
Fat chance! Mexico’s Vincente Fox distributes handbooks showing his citizens HOW to break into the United States against our laws. She didn’t utter one remark condemning a foreign president advocating breaking laws of another country. Over 20 million illegal aliens, half from Mexico, usurp our Constitutional government while Bush and Rice give lip service to the deadly crisis building within our country. Over 500,000 illegal aliens fill our state and federal prisons, but Rice or Bush haven’t blinked as they continue allowing, even encouraging illegals to cross our borders. Never mind what those half million illegals cost Americans in rapes, murders, robberies, extortion, auto theft, drug distribution and worse. Rice and Bush are so out of touch; it makes an American’s head hurt.
But when American citizens, from 21 to 81 bands together to protect and defend their own country, a major political figure calls them, “Vigilantes and we will not allow them to break the law.” Ms. Rice, whose country are you working for?
Who pays your pay check? Whose Constitution did you swear to uphold?
Fellow Americans what we have is, as Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke said, “A failure to communicate.” We have a confrontation of Americans who demand our laws be carried out against lawless elite who saunter through the Halls of Congress oblivious to the destruction of our country. Thomas Jefferson turns over in his grave daily! If he were alive, he’d slap Bush upside the head to knock some sense into him. While we spend billions guarding Iraq’s border, we suffer an invasion that will make 9/11 look like a kindergarten bubble blowing party. Twenty million illegal aliens is no small number and it grows by three million annually. We’re being displaced out of our own country by a Third World invasion without an end to the line.
Bush and Rice need to take a primer on what the Constitution means. It means the rule of law is to be enforced by those who swear on the Bible to uphold its concepts. It doesn’t mean working against citizens who make up the legal population of this society. It doesn’t mean ignoring 20 million people illegally operating in the USA. It doesn’t mean encouraging more terror by leaving the borders stark raving open to any nut case from the Middle East.
When Americans see a line of 50 state flags stabbed into the soil garnished with hundreds of the Stars and Stripes, they will once again stand for their country. It’s worth fighting for. It’s our country. It’s our future. It’s our children.
Rice and Bush don’t know what’s going on at the border. They are aloof, insulated, isolated and totally clueless. The Minute Man Project will be the next Boston Tea Party. Kind of like a 2X4 whacked upside Bush’s and Rice’s noggins to get their attention.
“At the current rate of invasion the United States will be completely over run with ILLEGAL aliens by the year 2025...only 20 years away. ILLEGAL aliens and their offspring will be the dominant population in the U.S. and will have made such inroads into the political and social systems that they will have more influence than the U.S. Constitution over how the U.S. is governed. That ugly consequence is already taking place. The United States of America is under invasion.” —- James Gilchrist - The MinuteMan Project “ Let’s Roll !”- Todd Beamer -Deceased Hero of Flight 93, September 11, 2001.
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GOVERNOR’S VETO IGNORES PEOPLE’S WILL ON VOTER ID
April 07, 2005
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano has thrown another roadblock in the path of attempts to implement Proposition 200 provisions, which were approved by voters last November. She vetoed a bill Friday that would have implemented the election requirements of the law.
The governor based the decision on her opinion that the requirement to present identification in order to get a ballot would be a violation of the federal Help America Vote Act because it could hinder the ability of people to get provisional ballots. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard also raised issues about the provisional ballots and identification, delaying efforts to use the identification procedures in local elections in March.
Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer, who requested the implementation law, disagrees with the governor, saying the issue of provisional ballots is separate from the voter-mandated identification requirement, which she says meets federal muster because it applies to everyone who seeks to vote.
She contends that the provisional ballot issue would only come up after the identification is provided and the person is determined to be who they say they are. It is only after that identification point that questions might arise about whether the person is properly registered to vote or at the correct poll. In those cases, a provisional ballot, for which there are already steps available, would be provided. Those ballots are not counted until the person is determined to be an eligible voter.
Brewer’s position makes sense. It also would seem to be supported by the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees voting requirements, and has already reviewed and given its approval to the Proposition 200 identification rules.
Nevertheless, the governor’s veto could end up preventing use of the new requirements in the upcoming September elections unless a new bill that is acceptable to her can be passed by the Legislature before it adjourns, which is targeted for April 15.
We are disappointed in the apparent efforts of the attorney general and the governor to thwart the will of the people. Proposition 200 has withstood every legal challenge to this point and been given the go-ahead by the Justice Department.
At this time, the correct place to decide any issues about the constitutionality of the voting provisions is not in the governor’s office, but rather in the court system. The governor and the legislature should implement the provisions of the law unless the courts or the Justice Department say otherwise.
It makes no sense to continue to stall this process. The voters have spoken. Gov. Napolitano should be listening to them.
Otherwise she should resign, or she will certainly be removed from office by votors and will forever be shamed out of ever being able to run for public office again.
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