This post is by Afton Branche and originally appeared on the DMI Blog.

Today’s immigration hard-liners are characterized by an almost religious devotion to proposing draconian immigration laws; even when these policies plainly conflict with our nation’s economic interests. In a recent interview, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) gave a preview of his legislative priorities should he become chairman of the House’s immigration subcommittee next year.

One of King’s top priorities would be passing a bill that requires the IRS to share immigration status information with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. In other words, King wants the IRS to rat out undocumented immigrants who file tax returns to DHS and have them deported.

Since 1996, the IRS has given nearly 14 million Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to individuals without Social Security numbers, most of whom are undocumented immigrants. One IRS official estimated that ITIN filers have paid nearly $50 billion in income taxes to date. All of this hinges on the assumption that the IRS doesn’t share personal information with DHS or other agencies. Ending this firewall between federal agencies all but guarantees undocumented immigrants would no longer pay federal or state taxes, and retreat even further into the underground economy. In addition, undocumented immigrants would probably stop using ITINs to open bank accounts and establish credit histories needed to buy homes or open businesses.

Given the state of our economy, this is a ridiculous policy proposal. But it seems Rep. King is willing to pass any law that serves the interest of his restrictionist agenda, even if there’s no broader benefit. Not for nothing did he receive an A+ grade from NumbersUSA, an anti-immigrant organization that aims to reduce the number of immigrants—including legal immigrants—in the United States.

Immigration restrictionists are blind to the massive economic contributions immigrants make to this country, so blind that they can only support costly enforcement-only policies. The 2011 Congress needs to instead pass immigration laws rooted in the reality that we all rely on immigrants’ economic activities, regardless of their citizenship status. Unfortunately, with Rep. King and his cronies at the helm in the House, we’ll likely get nothing more than far-fetched enforcement schemes.

This post is by Paul Woodward and originally appeared on War in Context.

The story so far:

November 8: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) files a 260-page motion [large pdf -- don't attempt to download without broadband] in the District of Columbia Superior Court, in which AIPAC is attempting to fend off a $20 million defamation suit from former employee Steven J Rosen who claims he was wrongfully dismissed. AIPAC ditched him and his colleague Keith Weissman in 2005 when the pro-Israel lobby feared investigation by the FBI. READ FULL POST

This post is by Afton Branche, and originally appeared on the DMI Blog.

What characterizes a broken immigration system? Though the phrase has become shorthand in describing our current immigration policies, just what this means can sometimes get lost in the weeds. This week, an analysis of our immigration courts by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) adds to our understanding of what’s wrong with the status quo. READ FULL POST

To those who put a lot of weight on the opinion of the pundit class, this report from CNN may come as a surprise:

Forty-eight percent of Americans approve of how President Barack Obama is handling his job as president, while 45 percent disapprove of his job performance, according to a CNN Poll of Polls compiled and released on Friday. This Poll of Polls suggests that for the first time this election season, more Americans approve of how Obama is managing his duties in the White House. READ FULL POST

Yesterday, Talking Points Memo’s Eric Lach reported that a second woman had stepped forward with allegations that the Republican candidate in Ohio’s 13th district had sexually harassed her.

For the second time in a month, Republican congressional candidate Tom Ganley, running in Ohio’s 13th district, has been accused of sexual harassment.

In late September, a married mother of four filed a civil suit against Ganley, in which she accused him of attempted rape and sexual assault. Ganley’s attorney called the charges “baseless allegations.”

Now, a woman named Dianne Hill has filed a report with the Cleveland police, over an alleged incident that occurred in 2005, at Ganley’s Chevy dealership in Cleveland. READ FULL POST

This is a guest post by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman.

Ohio election attorney Cliff Arnebeck has filed a two-count complaint against The Partnership for Ohio’s Future, an affiliate of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. READ FULL POST

In an appearance on the Daily Show last night, Obama defended his record as Jon Stewart questioned the President about the gap between his hopeful campaign rhetoric and the realities of office. “When we promised ‘Change You Can Believe In’, it wasn’t ‘Change You Can Believe In, in 18 months’” said Obama. Watch below:

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The Rand Paul supporter who stomped on the head of a 23 year old protester as she lay on the ground has been identified as Tim Profitt, a member of Paul’s campaign. Profitt, who released a statement today admitting that he’d pressed his foot on 23 year old Lauren Valle’s face, is the Rand Paul for Senate Bourbon County coordinator. The assault was captured in a video that shows Valle getting shoved and wrestled to the ground by a group of men. Profitt then walks up and grinds his foot into her head.

Earlier today Rand Paul addressed the attack on Fox News, saying “We want everybody to be civil. We want this issue, the campaign to be about issues. We’ll tell you that when we arrived there was enormous passion on both sides.” Paul did not let on whether he knew the attacker was an official member of the Paul campaign. Paul and Profitt are pictured below.

Meanwhile, Valle described her harrowing experience to TPM:

Rand Paul’s car arrived, and as soon as it did, a couple of them stepped right in front of me and so I stepped off the curb to get around them, back out to the front, and at that point they started grabbing for me and I ran all the way around the car with them in pursuit, and the point at which they see the footage is after I’ve run all the way around the car and am in front of the car and that is when they take me down….

As you can see from the footage…one or two people twisted my arms behind my back and took me down. I got into the [inaudible] position to protect myself and it was about two or three seconds after that that another person stomped on my head. I lay there for 20 seconds or so and then my partner Alex came and got me up and that’s the point at which there’s that media clip that is out of me speaking.

This post first appeared on the Nation.com and was written by Greg Mitchell.

With the latest massive release of documents via WIkiLeaks, the media is abuzz with shocked reactions to the new revelations about the civilian death toll in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, now revised upward to over 115,000 (and that’s just the documented number). But no one paying even casual attention to this long-running catastrophe should have been surprised, let alone shocked.

It’s true that numbers and incident reports have been hard to get—and that’s the value of that aspect of the latest from WikiLeaks—but details about tragic incidents have filtered out before, most notably in releases forced out by legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups. Many of the earlier reports only emerged out because of probes into the massive cash payments (some of it from sachels lugged around Iraq for just this purpose) to victims’ families by the US military, a custom known as “solatia.”

I’ve followed the solatia angle for years, and in wake of the WikiLeaks release on Friday, you may find my report for Editor & Publisher back in April, 2007, highly relevant. It addresses questions, based on incident reports, such as: What price do we place on the life of a 9-year-old boy, shot by one of our soldiers who mistook his book bag for a bomb satchel? Would you believe $500? And when we shoot an Iraqi journalist on a bridge we shell out $2500 to his widow—but why not the measly $5000 she had requested?

The WikiLeaks documents present an opportunity to fact-check some of the many solatia claims denied for lack of evidence or our claim that we were not at fault. For example, here’s one case from the solatia papers that I previously  cited:

“Claimant alleges that on or about 24 February 2005, he was riding in a mini-bus with his nine-year-old son on his lap when Coalition Forces fired a round into the bus. The round allegedly hit his son in the head, causing the son’s death.   Xxxxx alleges that some Americans came to the hospital and apologized. He also states that one of the HMMWV’s had “32″ on the side. Claimant has enclosed an autopsy report.

“Allow me to express my sympathy for your loss, however, in accordance with the cited references and after investigating your claim, I find that your claim is not compensable for the following reason: In your claim you failed to provide suflicient evidence that US Forces and not someone else is responsible for your damages. Accordingly, your claim must be denied.”

Now I’ve found this incident report in the new WikiLeaks report for that same date in Baghdad and listed as “friendly” fire (meaning in this case on civilians). It sounds something like the incident above, and if a match clearly gives lie to our claim to not be involved.

Here’s my 2007 article with more.

*

The most revealing new information on Iraq—guaranteed to make readers sad or angry, or both—is found not in any press dispatch but in a collection of several hundred PDFs posted on the Web this week.

READ FULL POST

This post is by Jerome Armstrong and originally appeared at MyDD.

I don’t see how anyone can feign skepticism any longer– its called denial at this point. Nit-picking Gallup internals becomes quite the stretch when you have to start doing the same for Pew, AP/GfK, Rasmussen too, for pointing out the same truth. I will merely point out in summation what I’ve already posted as to the why: READ FULL POST