Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has requested a briefing with the Justice Department over a news report that U.S. law enforcement officials helped Mexican drug cartels launder millions of dollars into the country.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee made the request in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, in which he questioned DOJ head’s ability to lead the agency.

Issa has been investigating the DOJ’s authorization of a botched gun-tracking operation for most of the year and has increasingly criticized Holder, who is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

“The existence of such a program again calls your leadership into question,” said Issa in his letter. “The managerial structure you have implemented lacks appropriate operational safeguards to prevent the implementation of such dangerous schemes. The consequences have been disastrous.”

According to an article published in the New York Times on Sunday, undercover agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) helped transport millions of dollars in cash across the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to study and dismantle the trafficking routes of drug cartels.

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Read More at The Hill By Jordy Yager, The Hill

MEXICALI, Mexico — Arrests of illegal migrants trying to cross the southern U.S. border have plummeted to levels not seen since the early 1970s, according to tallies released by the Department of Homeland Security last week, a historic shift that could reshape the debate over immigration reform.

The Border Patrol apprehended 327,577 illegal crossers along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, numbers not seen since Richard Nixon was president, and a precipitous drop from the peak in 2000, when 1.6 million unauthorized migrants were caught. More than 90 percent of the migrants apprehended on the southwest border are Mexican.

The number of illegal migrants arrested at the border has been dropping over the past few years but appears to be down by more than 25 percent this year.

Experts say that Border Patrol apprehensions are a useful marker for estimating the total flow of illegal migrants, though imprecise because the U.S. government has no idea how many are not caught. But coupled with census and labor data from both countries that show far fewer Mexicans coming to the United States and many returning home, it appears that the historic flood of Mexican migration north has slowed dramatically.

“We have reached the point where the balance between Mexicans moving to the United States and those returning to Mexico is essentially zero,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, whose conclusion was shared by many migration experts.

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 Read More at The Washington Post Gabriela Martinez, The Washington Post

Ron Paul has long been the Rodney Dangerfield of the Republican presidential field: He just can’t seem to get any respect.

Despite polling consistently within the top three or four candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, the libertarian-leaning congressman has not convinced most of the media and the other campaigns that he can reach beyond a dedicated group of supporters and become a serious threat to win the nomination.

But with a month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Paul is leaving an increasingly significant mark on the race.

On Wednesday, his campaign released a 2½-minute Web ad titled “Newt Gingrich: Serial Hypocrisy,” which juxtaposed media commentary and Gingrich’s own words to eviscerate the former House speaker.

In a campaign that has seen relatively few hard-hitting attack ads, Paul’s takedown of the rising GOP front-runner was a potent reminder of Gingrich’s myriad vulnerabilities and earned Paul admiration for its effectiveness.

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Read More at Real Clear Politics Scott Conroy, Real Clear Politics

I turned about and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but opportunity and happenstance befall them all. For man does not know his lot: as the fishes caught in an evil net, and as hunted birds caught in a snare; so are the sons of man caught in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.
– Ecclesiastes, 9:11-12

In all that we do, we should strive to show the decency, the civility, the respect for human dignity that ought to characterize a free people. It is not our way to answer hate with hate. But we are a people conscious of our God-given right to live in peace and without fear. And it is our duty to make clear to all those who seek to deny that right that we are willing and able to answer war with war. (from the column “Remember who we are”)

Regarding those foreigners who are actually accused, or might be accused, of a crime under American law, the Constitution clearly indicates that due process must be followed – not just for citizens, but for all persons. For this reason, I believe that it would not be justified to try foreigners captured in America – even those accused of terrorist acts – outside the normal course of our legal procedures simply because they are foreigners.

What is also unclear is whether enough people in our citizenry and government understand that no degree of executive branch confidence in the guilt of a citizen can justify the suspension of that citizen’s constitutional rights.

Such suspension would indeed be a powerful government weapon against terrorists. But it would be a more dangerous threat to the liberty of American citizens. The Washington Post last week carried a story about a former Boston cab driver, once identified by authorities as a major terrorism suspect, who was kept in solitary confinement for more than eight months without seeing a judge or being assigned a lawyer.

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 Read More at WND By Alan Keyes, WorldNetDaily

One evening I was looking for some information on the National Institute for Standards website (www.nist.gov) when something on the sidebar caught my eye and it was an announcement about “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” at https://www.nist.gov/nstic/. Being the techie that I am I was curiously drawn to it as I remember a previous announcement Jan 7, 2011 on CNet about establishing an Internet identity system (https://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20027800-281.html.)

We’ve heard all the stories before about people getting their identities stolen through hackers, phishing, and workers within financial institutions illegally selling customers’ confidential information. This is the premise for President Obama’s proposed Internet Identity Ecosystem.

How does this affect you? Imagine this. Your child gets issued a smart card from their school. This smart card has all of your personal information on it and your child’s personal information, plus their school records. You can plug the card into a reader on your computer and access your child’s records online by sending verification data from the card to a centralized network to verify it’s “you,” and then to your child’s school to access the records.

This card is issued only to you. According to the proposed Internet Identity Ecosystem (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, pg 5), there will be no need to remember many different login passwords on the websites you like to visit. The issuer of the card could be from either an office of the government or a private issuing company (“standardized reliable credentials and identity media…in use in both public and private sectors,” National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, pg 13) has verified your identity so whenever you plug in the card, participating vendors will read the card and recognize that it’s “you.” No more painful memorizing a password for every site you interact with.

The card can also be tied into your banking records so it’ll work just like a credit or debit card. No more carrying around several kinds of credit or debit cards so you can use it for online shopping or public shopping. At participating businesses, your transaction remains anonymous to the business, but the transaction is recognized as having come from “you” as it goes around the network from the business to the government or private identity issuer network to your bank or credit card account.

 Read More at thedailysheeple.com By David Blair, thedailysheeple.com