Adopting the rhetoric of the radical left, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) explicitly compared the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to those of Nazi Germany’s most infamous secret police force, the Gestapo.In response to that despicable comparison, the Federation for American Immigration Reform is joining officials of the Department of Homeland Security in condemning Mr. Gutierrez’s statement as an affront to law enforcement agencies and the rule of law.

Congressman Gutierrez has been a long-time proponent of amnesty and opponent of immigration enforcement. He even went so far recently as to openly call for a suspension of all such immigration enforcement actions until Congress passes “comprehensive” immigration reform.

However, in an article appearing in the online publication The Politico on Aug. 6, Gutierrez lowered himself to using inflammatory rhetoric simply unacceptable for a member of Congress. “You know who is in charge now? The Gestapo agents at Homeland Security. They are in charge,” Gutierrez told The Politico.

“Every American should be offended and outraged by comparisons between our dedicated public servants risking their lives every day to enforce our immigration laws and the Nazi secret police, no matter who is making the comparison. That such a vile statement was made by a member of Congress is truly reprehensible and irresponsible,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR.

In recent months ICE has increased its efforts to enforce laws against the employment of illegal aliens. In addition to arresting people for violations of U.S. immigration law, ICE has also taken action against people involved in identity theft and the employment of underage workers.

“ICE actions have been entirely legitimate and carried out in a professional manner in an effort to deal with a national illegal immigration crisis,” said Stein. “Such a reckless comparison to the Gestapo borders. In making such comparisons, Congressman Gutierrez is providing license for people to resist by any means necessary.

“FAIR joins with DHS Assistant Secretary Julie Myers in demanding that the House leadership take action against Representative Gutierrez. His statement deserves the strongest possible condemnation from his colleagues,” Stein concluded.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org).  In addition, he’s the new editor for the House Conservatives Fund’s weblog. Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty. 

He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations.  He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.   Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com.  He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com.   He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.  His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us

Jonathan Kay of the National Post (Canada) is sure that we’ll miss the old media when its gone. So sure he wrote a paean to how great the media is… and he missed the target by a wide margin on every point he made. Unfortunately, he took a good point and made a mockery of the truth of the matter with his wrongheaded reasoning.

In “You’ll miss us when we’re gone” Kay asserts that the media exists for “a genuine, altruistic desire for an educated citizenry” and hopes that predictions of its “imminent extinction” are wrong. He also claims that there are “certain kinds of important stories that simply cannot be covered, except by deep-pocketed traditional media organizations employing professional journalists.” Aside from imagining that the press is at all interested in “education” he isn’t too far off the mark here.

We do need the media, at least a media with “deep pockets” that can afford to cover things in some depth and at distance, the distance of the whole globe. Not too many bloggers and new media folks can afford to go about the world interviewing folks and investigating stories. Sure its a small world these days, but boots on the ground is an important thing to investigative writing. So, the old media does serve an important role. It isn’t a role that bloggers and new media people cannot do, of course. But it is an important role nonetheless.

But, back to Kay’s assertion that the media is interested in “education.” They most assuredly are not. What they are interested in is indoctrinating their readers in a certain worldview. Education implies giving readers all the relevant facts so that the readers might be informed enough to make up their own minds. Kay and his cohorts, on the other hand, only want to convey their own ideology, carefully excluding and screening out information that doesn’t fit their worldview. What they do does not educate. Of course, this is the main reason they are losing readers.

Yet, my quibble above aside, after his third paragraph he begins to effectively fail to prove his point altogether with the example that he thinks proves the old media is preeminent in investigative journalism.</p

Kay focuses on a New York Times story by Mattathias Schwartz headlined “The Trolls Among Us,” a feature he calls “extraordinary.”

Now, I read this same article when it debuted. It was a great piece. But for proof that we need the media, it fails to persuade.

The Schwartz piece delves into the nihilistic world of the Internet Troll. It is filled with jerks, creeps, and bigheaded nitwits who think they are somehow great philosophers. As all of you reading this are sure to know already, these are people who merely roam about the Internet posting mean things to and about other people whom they’ve never met and have no beef with. Trolls are inherently ignorant, no-accounts who do not deserve the attention Schwartz gives them. Still it was an interesting read.

But, instead of mere interest, Kay seems to think this story serves as an example of why the New York Times should never go away. He claims that because of the ” New York Times-financed shoe-leather reporting” the “readers were able to observe the piteous wreckage behind the trolls’ braggadocio.” And he insists, for some strange reason, that this story could never have come from a blogger or new media writer. “There isn’t a blogger in the world,” Kay claims, “who could throw all of these resources behind a single investigation.”

This is a specious claim. Especially considering that the story itself is one based on the Internet itself! Who else but a blogger might know enough of the ins and outs of the Internet and have the connections with other denizens of the Internet to write such a story? I mean, anyone reading the Schwartz story and found themselves surprised is surely one not himself familiar with the Internet. Trolls are quite old hat to anyone intimate with the Internet. Certainly there is not a thing wrong with Schwartz’ story and the “shoe leather” investigation was a key element of it. But to say that this particular story could never have been written by a blogger is somewhat absurd, really.

Kay certainly has some rather grandiose praise fore Schwart’z story and claims that bloggers cannot replicate the “original news reporting on complicated subjects” that we see in the old media. Kay then says, “…for investigative blockbusters like ‘The Trolls Among Us,’ you have to go to dinosaur media such as The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker.” This adulation is a bit over-the-top, to be sure.

Unfortunately, Kay really missed an opportunity to find a better story to make his case. Perhaps a story on the Iraq war, or Israel penned by a reporter on the scene would better have made his case. After all, it is probably too much to expect a citizen blogger to be able to cover the Middle East, America and trolls on the Internet with equal aptitude. The one stop shop of the old media, however, does have those “deep pockets” to do so. This is not to say it is impossible for the new media to replicate, but it is without question certainly harder for it to do so.

Furthermore there really is something to be said for the so-called “professional” journalist. While most out there don’t seem very professional, the simple fact that it might pay reasonably well to be a journalist for the old media encourages people to go into that line of work. Whereas, blogging attracts hobbyists and the level of reporting and writing can far more often not rise to the level of a “profession” the way salaried journalism might. This is simply a fact of life. People go where the money is and in droves avoid the places where hard work does not necessarily result in adequate remuneration.

Finally, though, at the end of the piece he gets back on track and makes a good point. It is a point I, too, have pondered and I have found that I’ve come to grudgingly agree with Kay’s fears.

Will I be here in a year, or five, or 10, still lecturing you on the importance of my industry? Or will I be taking your burger order through a staticy speaker? I don’t know. But I can promise you one thing: If print scribes do go the way of buggy-whip makers, the marketplace of ideas is going to be more superficial and unedifying than it already is.

So, as much as I like to carp about the old media, there is a reason not to wish for its demise. I, for one, do not want the old media destroyed. I want it reformed into a more ideal, worthwhile industry that will better fulfill the charge of educating the public that Kay posited is its charge. I’d like to see a media reformed away from the nearly monolithic leftism it now peddles to a more balanced presentation. Or, baring that, I like to see the creation of enough media outlets that give the conservative side of the issues to balance the preponderance of wild-eyed leftism seen throughout the current old media establishment.

So, while I don’t particularly care what Mr. Kay’s personal future is I do not want to see the entire old media wiped away leaving only the new media to pick up the pieces.

We really do need them. We just need them to get better at what they do.

(Photo credit: The National Post Newspaper)

United States immigration and State Department officials fear that their newly developed, high-tech visas are being sold on the Mexican black market.

The US government hoped the newly designed visas would help in curtailing rampant illegal immigration at the Mexican border, but investigators believe many of them are being bought or rented by Mexicans seeking illegal entry into the US.

Well over 11,000 of these Laser Visas, issued to Mexicans for legitimate travel into the United States were reported stolen or “lost” in just two border cities. Government officials claim this is a 15 percent jump from previous figures.

The ATM card-sized documents, which include the legal holder’s photograph and scanned fingerprints, were actually developed for use in 1998 hopefully to increase security and standardize documents used by Mexicans to cross the border since so many different types of documentation made the screening process cumbersome and confusing.

“While many may have been legitimately ‘lost,’ it seems probable that quite a few are either ’stolen’ or ‘reported stolen’ in order to sell them,” a U.S. consular official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

“There appears to be a healthy market for both buying and renting laser visas on the border,” she added.

Mexicans call these visa cards “Micas,”  which allow bearers to cross into the US without other supporting documents. The card also allows them to travel up to 25 miles inside California or Texas and they may remain in the US up to 30 days.

According to figures provided by Reuters, 8,745 of the border crossing cards went astray last year in Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso, Texas, and 3,095 in Tijuana, opposite San Diego, California. No figures were available for other cities along the 2,000-mile border.

The problem got so bad that the US Embassy in Mexico City revamped its visa policy late last year, but did not inform anyone of the mounting problem. The embassy now replaces “lost” or stolen cards with stickers placed inside passports hope this will curb the illegal market of the laser cards.

The paradox is that in an effort to beef up security at the Mexican border using state-of-the-art technology, the US may have made it even easier to compromise that very security.

Also, the US is getting zero help from the Fox government in Mexico City during the course of investigations. While not speaking “on the record,” off the record some US law enforcement people believe elements within the Mexican federal and local governments are assisting in the diversion of legitimate visas.

While US authorities say they possess no concrete evidence that organized Mexican  human trafficking rings overseeing the illicit trade are using these cards, many security experts believe there are several organizations trafficking in this document.

But Tijuana police claim most of the stray visas are sold by cash-strapped holders to human traffickers in the gritty industrial city of 2 million people, on a widely used route for Mexican illegal immigrants headed for the Californian border.  

Recently, seven illegal aliens from Mexico were arrested for allegedly operating a fraudulent document ring in Chicago’s “Little Village” area. The organized crime enterprise generated approximately $2.5 million a year.

Found inside the residence was equipment used for making fake government documents, including: five high-speed computers, printers, ID card printers, scanners, laminating pouches, foil strips with security features, dozens of counterfeit identification cards, and other document-making paraphernalia. The estimated value of the seized items is approximately $10,000; the street value of the software is believed to be about $100,000.

Law enforcement commanders throughout the US believe that there are similar operations being conducted by Mexican organized crime cells. The Castorena crime family, a Mexican organized crime family that has controlled the majority of the fraudulent document manufacturing and sales trade in the US over the past 10 years, is believed to be trafficking in these new high-tech visas. Some even believe they are attempting to duplicate these cards.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org).  Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty. 

He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations.  He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country.   Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com.  He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com.   He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.  His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us