Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Friday, October 31, 2014

Still waiting for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her staunch defense of murderers and torturers

By Richard Poe

I CAN’T take it anymore. If one more person sends me that e-mail about Hillary and the Black Panthers, I’ll have to be dragged away screaming in a straitjacket.

You know the e-mail I’m talking about. It accuses Hillary of helping the Black Panthers get away with torture and murder during the early 1970s. With a presidential race drawing near, the spam mills are creaking to life, flooding the Internet once more with this agitprop classic.

Unfortunately, the e-mail mingles good information with bad, sowing more confusion than enlightenment. Some versions, for instance, carry the by-line of radio talk jock Paul Harvey, who says he did not write it. Such misrepresentations help Hillary defenders dismiss the e-mail as a hoax.

The story is no hoax, though. Its basic elements can be found in respected Hillary biographies and exposés such as Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay; David Brock’s The Seduction of Hillary Rodham; Joyce Milton’s The First Partner; and Carl Limbacher’s Hillary’s Scheme.

Here are the facts.

In May 1969, fishermen discovered the body of Black Panther Alex Rackley floating in Connecticut’s Coginchaug River. Rackley’s captors had clubbed him, burned him with cigarettes, scalded him with boiling water and stabbed him with an ice pick before finally shooting him in the head.

New Haven detectives learned that the Panthers suspected Rackley of being a police informer. Panther enforcers had tied him to a chair and tortured him for hours. Police arrested eight Panthers and later extradited Panther leader Bobby Seale from California, after a witness accused Seale of ordering Rackley’s death. (1)

Campus radicals supported the Panthers. They organized mass protests in support of the so-called “New Haven Nine.” Hillary was right in the thick of it.

By the time she entered Yale Law School in 1969, Hillary was already a radical celebrity on campus. Life magazine had featured Hillary in a piece titled, “The Class of ’69,” which showcased three student activists whom Life’s editors deemed the best and brightest of the year. A line Hillary used in her Wellesley College commencement speech appeared under her photo: “Protest is an attempt to forge an identity.” (2)

At Yale, Hillary helped edit the Yale Review of Law and Social Action — a leftwing journal which promoted cop-killing and featured cartoons of pig-faced police. (3)

Thursday, October 30, 2014

C'MON MAN! Obama White House Says Eric Holder's Wife is Covered by "Executive Privilege"

By Investor's Business Daily

Scandal: Documents obtained by a government watchdog group list emails between the attorney general and his wife regarding a White House statement on the "gun walking" scandal the White House wants kept secret.

The release of the government's Vaughn Index of documents that the administration withheld from the House Oversight Committee's investigation of Fast and Furious may not be the October surprise that the Obama administration hoped for. It raises more questions than it answers and shows the absurd extent of the administration's cover-up.

On July 18, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ordered the Justice Department to produce, in response to a lawsuit by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, its Vaughn Index of withheld Fast and Furious documents by Oct. 22. The DOJ had already had enough time to produce it, Bates said in denying a request to delay its release until after the Nov. 4 elections.

In a Vaughn Index, the government must list each withheld document, state the statutory exemption claimed for it and explain how the disclosure of each document would damage the governmental interests asserted by the exemption.

The index provided under Bates'order shows just how far the administration will go to protect its actions in Fast and Furious.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Dead Sacramento Police Officers, Rampant Drug Smuggling, And 37,000 Criminal Aliens Who Were Freed Last Year

By Sara Noble

Drug smugglers are welcomed into the United States. We can assume nothing else. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be allowed to pour across our borders; they wouldn’t be released willy nilly from prisons each year without any accountability: and we wouldn’t have a dormant deportation policy.

If we at least attempted to stop illegal immigration, a 17-year old illegal alien might not have been free to rape and murder his 5-year old cousin. An off-duty officer might be alive today. There is a family of four who might be living their lives as they should be.

There are two law enforcement officers who might not have died this past Friday if we at least deported narcotics traffickers.

Until they had no choice, the newspapers wouldn’t even release the fact that the alleged murderer of the officers was an illegal alien.

The man suspected of killing two deputies and wounding another during a shooting rampage in Northern California was deported twice to Mexico and had a drug conviction, federal authorities said Saturday.

Suspected cop killer Marcelo Marquez aka Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte is an illegal alien criminal who was arrested and deported in 1997 and 2001. He has been living in Salt Lake City with an arrest record for possession of narcotics.

Once illegal aliens get here, there is almost no internal enforcement of our immigration laws.

On Friday, the alleged drug dealing murderer, killed two Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies while he and his wife were on a crime spree.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

UN-FLIPPING-BELIEVABLE: Obama Administration Released Illegal Aliens Charged With Murder Into the U.S.

USA Today softens news of Yet Another Obama Administration Scandal™ as best it can, using the headline "U.S. misinformed Congress, public on immigrant release."

Translated into English, it means "Obama Administration Released Illegal Immigrants Charged with Homicide."

New records contradict the Obama administration's assurances to Congress and the public that the 2,200 people it freed from immigration jails last year to save money had only minor criminal records.

The records, obtained by USA TODAY, show immigration officials released some undocumented immigrants who had faced far more serious criminal charges, including people charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide.

The release sparked a furor in Congress. Republican lawmakers accused the Obama administration of setting dangerous criminals free. In response, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had released "low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records," a claim the administration repeated to the public and to members of Congress.

The new records, including spreadsheets and hundreds of pages of e-mails, offer the most detailed information yet about the people ICE freed as it prepared for steep, across-the-government spending cuts in February 2013. They show that although two-thirds of the people who were freed had no criminal records, several had been arrested or convicted on charges more severe than the administration had disclosed.

STRIKE BACK: A Graphic Tale

Based in part upon "Politician, Heal Thyself" by Jon Gabriel and illustrated by our summer intern @BiffSpackle.


You and I have a lot of work to do. But we're up to it. We're Americans.


Wednesday, October 22, 2014

TRY AND CONTAIN YOUR SURPRISE: Obama "deferred action" program is putting illegal aliens on voter rolls

By Kenric Ward

With early voting starting Thursday, North Carolina’s election board found 154 ineligible voters on its poll lists — and officials are examining thousands more questionable registrations.

The illegal immigrants landed on the state’s voter rolls, courtesy of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The State Board of Elections said late Tuesday that more than 9,000 additional voters’ names are being checked for legal status. They do not expect to finish checking before early voting starts Thursday.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” special counsel Brian LiVecchi told Watchdog.org.

Nearly 10,000 names on the rolls are tagged by the state Department of Motor Vehicles as “legally present,” but the Winston-Salem Journal reported that doesn’t mean all 10,000 are ineligible to vote.

When immigrants are certified under DACA deportation proceedings are frozen.

That opens a window for individuals to obtain driver’s licenses in North Carolina because the state opted into the DACA program, said James Johnson, president of North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement.

SHOCKING MAPS: Obama plans to open immigration floodgates; transforming 'America into nation no one will recognize'

You may have read that President Obama is quietly preparing to issue as many as 34 million green cards to illegal aliens, thereby transforming the country and the electorate into something other than a civil society.

And the process has already started.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday threw open the door to as many as 100,000 Haitians, who will now move into the United States without a visa.

...That was just the beginning. The immigration agency earlier this month had solicited a printer able to handle a “surge” of 9 million green cards “to support possible future immigration-reform initiative requirements.”

In an ordinary year, about 1 million green cards are issued, and over the life of this contract the company is expected to produce up to 34 million cards, a figure representing an increase of the population of the United States by 10 percent.

The cards do not come with automatic voter registration, but that’s obviously what the scheme portends. President Obama’s promised “executive actions” to bring about this enormous wave of amnesty constitute a transparent and cynical ploy to expand the Democratic voter base, creating a permanent majority.

...In economic terms, importing millions of unskilled workers creates competition for the diminishing number of available jobs. Combine a flooded job market with the Democratic proposals for a doubling of the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and millions more American citizens will be without a job.

Those who do have jobs will pay to provide federal freebies, from Obamaphones to Obamacare, to the formerly illegal aliens now with a green card.

As the recent influx of minor children over the southern border demonstrates, word of amnesty on the way travels fast. Handing green cards to those who cheated the system and entered the country illegally creates an incentive to millions more to follow in their path, collecting as many benefits as possible along the way.

It’s a disaster in the making — indeed already here — for public health and national security, straining the welfare state to its limit...

Yet President Obama intends to violate immigration law even though 74 percent of Americans do not want to expand immigration, according to a recent Gallup poll.

USA Today offers us a series of maps that illustrate the startling transformation of America into something resembling Central America.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

SHOCKA: Chicago-area voting machine casts GOP candidate’s vote for... his Democrat opponent

By Illinois Review


SCHAUMBURG, Ill. – Admitting his confidence in Cook County ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

voteballotbox“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” said Moynihan. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race. It is unknown if the machine in question (#008958) has been removed from service or is still in operation.


Read more at Illinois Review

Monday, October 20, 2014

GREAT NEWS: Obama Quietly Prepares 34 Million Green Cards and Work Permits for His Illegal Alien "Amnesty"

Remember, he's got a pen and a phone! And isn't that all that the Constitution requires?

Obama Quietly Prepares 'Surge' Of Millions Of New Immigrant IDs


Despite no official action from the president ahead of the election, the Obama administration has quietly begun preparing to issue millions of work authorization permits, suggesting the implementation of a large-scale executive amnesty may have already begun.

Unnoticed until now, a draft solicitation for bids issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Oct. 6 says potential vendors must be capable of handling a “surge” scenario of 9 million id cards in one year “to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.”

Hey, don't the American people overwhelmingly favor importing tens of millions of largely illiterate refugees from Third World countries -- with unknown health conditions and criminal backgrounds -- who will be dependent on the imploding welfare state?

Up to 34 MILLION blank 'green cards' and work permits


U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to seek a vendor to produce as many as 34 million blank work permits and 'green cards' – the paperwork that authorizes illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States – as the White House prepares to issue an executive order after the Nov. 4 midterm elections.

...Former State Department foreign service officer Jessica Vaughan, now an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart that the RFP 'seems to indicate that the president is contemplating an enormous executive action that is even more expansive than the plan that Congress rejected in the 'Gang of Eight' bill.'

These Ebola Democrats* have to be nuked from orbit in November. It's the only way to be sure.


* Which is the term they prefer, I hear.

Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

NICOLE LURIE: Obama's First Ebola Czar Was Embroiled in a Massive Scandal in 2011 and Still Holds Her Job

In November 2011, David Willman of The Los Angeles Times described another instance of taxpayer abuse by the Obama administration, this time in the Department of Health and Human Services. Obama's first "Ebola Czar" -- Dr. Nicole Lurie -- is said to have directed nearly half a billion dollars to a huge Obama donor for a vaccination no one wanted.

Perhaps some of the geniuses in the GOP can dredge up this article when they're accused -- falsely -- of slashing someone's budget. First off, no one's budget's been slashed. Second, MRC has documented the copious, criminal waste of money by the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control.

But back to the original Ebola Czar, Dr. Lurie. Let Willman tell the tale:

Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal


A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.


November 13, 2011|By David Willman, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington — Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor...

Costs "well above what" specialists said was reasonable


When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

ANALYSIS: Ebola Czar Ron Klain was Appointed to Cover Up New Cases of Deadly Virus, Not Protect Americans

Did you know that President Obama already has an "Ebola Czar"? Dr. Nicole Lurie is the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Nicole Lurie, a Scandal-Plagued Bureaucrat


Lurie has been mysteriously absent from discussions of the Ebola outbreak. The media seems rather incurious about her even though she's served in her very high-ranking position for five years. She is one of only eight direct reports to the HHS Secretary.

But Lurie has a sordid background: she was implicated in a major scandal three years ago, reportedly directing a $433 million grant to a major Obama donor "and away from a company that was developing a treatment now being used on Ebola patients."

So Lurie has been carefully written out of the media's stories on the government's response to Ebola. She's an embarrassment; one of thousands of incompetent, political hacks who have burrowed into the federal bureaucracy, seemingly more intent on thievery than on their actual jobs.

That explains why Lurie has been "unavailable for comment".

So who is the new "Ebola Czar", Ron Klain?


He's a far left Democrat political operative, who has served as a chief of staff for both the dumbest Vice President ever (Joe Biden, who previously served as the dumbest senator in American history) and the infamous global warming grifter and Al Jazeera supporter, Al Gore.

As Mark Levin pointed out on Friday, Klain has a "shady past" and was involved with Gore's lawless efforts to steal the 2000 presidential election.

And, like so many Clinton cronies, Klain is said to have profited from protecting Fannie Mae from proper oversight, one of the primary factors behind the 2008 housing meltdown.

What does Klain know about Ebola, or any infectious disease, for that matter?

What qualifies him to lead this critical effort?

It turns out: absolutely nothing.

My contention is that Klain is there to to cover up new cases of Ebola, to threaten hospitals and other medical facilities with financial retribution, and to otherwise attempt to salvage Democrats' midterm hopes by excising the word Ebola from the nation's headlines.

There is no other rational reason for Klain to serve in this capacity.

As Dan McLaughlin notes, putting Klain in charge of the government's Ebola response is somewhat akin to George W. Bush naming Karl Rove the head of Katrina recovery in 2006.

As with every decision this administration makes, politics trumps protecting the American people.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

WHY, OF COURSE HE WILL: Obama Plans to Let Ebola-infected Foreigners Into U.S. for Treatment

By Judicial Watch

Washington, DC – Judicial Watch has learned that the Obama administration is actively formulating plans to admit Ebola-infected non-U.S. citizens into the United States for treatment. Specifically, the goal of the administration is to bring Ebola patients into the United States for treatment within the first days of diagnosis.

It is unclear who would bear the high costs of transporting and treating non-citizen Ebola patients. The plans include special waivers of laws and regulations that ban the admission of non-citizens with a communicable disease as dangerous as Ebola.

One source tells us that the Obama administration is keeping this plan secret from Congress. The source is concerned that the proposal is illegal; endangers the public health and welfare; and should require the approval of Congress.


Related: VIRAL SUICIDE: Obama DHS Now EXPEDITING Visa Requests From Ebola-Infected Countries.

Marxist Propagandists at "The Advocacy Project" Blame Obama's Dysfunctional CDC on... Republicans

By Roger Aronoff

A new ad put out by the left-wing Advocacy Project seeks to link Republican budget cuts with the spread of the Ebola virus, a shameful fear tactic that could take hold among a populace rightfully concerned about this epidemic. While media organizations such as Time Magazine and Real Clear Politics have reported on the existence of the video, all they did was cite the ad, not challenge the veracity of its information. In doing so, they’re acting as vehicles for spreading its misinformation.

The Heritage Foundation’s news website, The Daily Signal, reported that “Erica Payne, the founder and president of The Agenda Project, told CNN that ‘people should be deathly afraid of Republican policies,’ and that there is ‘no question’ about the link between budget cuts and Ebola.”

The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler calls the arguments in this ad, and the similar strategy by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee of blaming Republicans for cuts, “absurd.” He bestows such claims with four Pinocchios. According to him, appropriations for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health are down, but this has as much to do with bipartisan action and inflation as anything else. “Obama’s Republican predecessor oversaw big increases in public-health sector spending, and both Democrats and Republicans in recent years have broadly supported efforts to rein in federal spending,” he writes. In other words, both parties have increased and decreased health care budgets. “There’s no doubt that spending has been cut, or at least failed to keep pace with inflation, but the fingerprints of both parties are on the knives,” he writes.

But the news media have taken this Democrat message and tried to further it in its own reporting, either by disseminating the ad or through outright partisanship. MSNBC’s Joy Reid tweeted on October 12, “To the anti-government wingers in my thread: so far, the only ‘spread of Ebola’ in the U.S. was caused by a private hospital in a red state.” This comes from the same news channel where a host claimed that Alton Nolen’s beheading of an innocent woman in Moore, Oklahoma had as much to do with Islam as what the alleged perpetrator ate for breakfast.

Friday, October 17, 2014

ANOTHER CDC COVERUP? Reported Source of New Virus Killing Kids: Obama's "Unaccompanied Alien Children"

By Investor's Business Daily

Public Health: A disease that was once rare in the U.S. is killing Americans, and its rise coincides with the tidal wave of unaccompanied minor children arriving from Latin America under our de facto open-border policy.

Eli Waller, a 4-year-old New Jersey boy, died Sept. 25. He was reportedly fine and healthy when he went to bed but died overnight, with the cause confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control to be enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68), one more casualty in an epidemic that has swept the country seemingly out of nowhere.

The CDC website reports that from mid-August to Oct. 10, the CDC itself or state authorities confirmed that 691 people in 46 states and the District of Columbia had come down with some sort of respiratory illness caused by EV-D68. Five children, including Eli, died from their infections.

More than a few observers have noticed that the sudden increase in EV-D68 cases coincides with the rapid rise of unaccompanied minors crossing our porous border. These children, often without proper health screenings, have been distributed throughout the U.S.

The CDC denies any connection, noting that cases of EV-D68 have occurred in the U.S. for decades, having first been detected in California in 1962.

"There is no evidence that unaccompanied children brought EV-D68 into the United States, we are not aware of any of these children testing positive for the virus," the CDC told World Net Daily in an email response to an inquiry into the possible connection.

It is true that EV-D68 has been in the U.S. at least since 1962. But according to a study done by doctors from the Division of Viral Diseases at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases published on the CDC's own website, EV-D68 "is one of the most rarely reported serotypes, with only 26 reports throughout the 36-year study period (1970 through 2006)."

Top 10 #BetterEbolaCzars

Even though he already has one, President Obama today hurriedly named an "Ebola Czar". He's a political hack -- with no medical experience whatsoever -- name Ron Klain. Oh, and Klain's one of the same crooks fine officials "who gave the green light to pissing away billions of federal dollars on Solyndra."

Which prompted the fast-trending Twitter meme #BetterEbolaCzars. My favorites?



Thursday, October 16, 2014

Center for Disease Control Spent 3 Times as Much on "Community Transformation" Than On... Disease Control

By Sara Noble

While the nurses in Texas were dealing with an Ebola patient without protocols and proper equipment, the CDC continued to claim the protocols were in place and the hospitals in the U.S. were ready.

You have to understand. Ebola takes them away from their real mission which is to build bike lanes, get rid of guns, tell you what to eat, and harass anyone who builds a playground.

Politico reports (in an article written by Gov. Bobby Jindal) that “over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the fund. Yet only 6 percent—$180 million—of that $3 billion went toward building epidemiology and laboratory capacity.”

Protecting Americans got $180 million while community transformation got $517.3 million!

Did you think detecting and fighting infectious diseases was still their business?

What is community transformation you ask?

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

WE'RE IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Ebola-Infected Nurse Called CDC to Ask If It Was Okay to Fly. They Said... Yes.

What else would you expect from an administration that proudly proclaims it "leads from behind"?

Not only did nurse Vinson call the CDC multiple times before boarding the flight, she was already running a fever when she called the CDC before taking her flight and they still allowed her to board the flight, which means she was infectious while on the plane...


One health official said to me somebody dropped the ball. I then called the CDC and the agency said that this nurse, nurse Vinson, did in fact call the CDC several times before taking that flight and said she has a temperature, a fever of 99.5.

But the person at the CDC looked at a chart and because her fever wasn’t 100.4 or higher, she didn’t officially fall into the group of high risk. Now I think what’s disconcerting to people is that you would think common sense would tell you, well, after the first nurse, Nurse Pham became sick with Ebola, you would have thought, well, out of an abundance of caution let’s just keep her there and not have her get on the flight.

But maybe we're not borrowing, spending and redistributing enough.

Mark Levin has more information that should infuriate you -- and motivate you -- to vote every single one of Obola Democrats out of office in November.

Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Déjà vu all over again: Clinton henchman Cheryl Mills reportedly hid incriminating Benghazi documents

The invaluable Sharyl Attkisson has the scoop.

To Sonya Gilliam, a recent account of improper sorting of Benghazi-related documents at the State Department brought back vivid memories of her own encounters with high-level government officials who withheld, deleted or destroyed public records.

And one name stood out for its familiarity: Cheryl Mills.

A former deputy assistant secretary of state had told The Daily Signal that Mills was present during an after-hours document operation in a basement room of the State Department in October 2012. Mills was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The purpose of the session, former State Department official Raymond Maxwell said, was to “separate” documents damaging to Clinton before records were turned over to an independent review board probing the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Mills declined to comment on Maxwell’s account to The Daily Signal.

“My stomach dropped,” Gilliam says about hearing the allegation last month that Mills was involved in Benghazi document sorting:

I said to myself, oh my gosh, here we are, 14 or 15 years later, [and] Cheryl Mills is still in charge of document ‘production’—I’ll use that term loosely.

Gilliam, now retired, was responsible for Commerce Department responses to Freedom of Information Act requests during the Clinton administration.

Back then, Mills was deputy White House counsel to President Clinton. At the time, multiple probes sought to determine whether the administration was fundraising illegally by selling seats on Commerce Department trade missions.


You can read the entire report here.

Reason #4,032 that I penned an open letter to Rep. Michele Bachmann asking her to get to the bottom of these Clinton scandals once and for all.

After all, what difference does it make?


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

CDC Head Thomas Frieden Proven an Incompetent Liar, i.e., a Perfect Fit for This Administration

By Investor's Business Daily

Public Health: The man whose one job is to safeguard America's health has failed, saying that we must change our responses to Ebola after a Dallas health care worker becomes infected despite the rules he championed.

After 26-year-old Dallas health care worker Nina Pham became the first person to contract Ebola on U.S. soil, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said during a press conference that (we) "have to rethink the way we address Ebola control."

Yes, we do. Pham's infection, just as Thomas E. Duncan's death in Dallas after a multistop trip from Liberia, wasn't supposed to happen with CDC's protocols. Frieden's repeated assurances that everything possible was being done have been demonstrably false.

Blaming Pham, who contracted the disease while caring for Duncan despite taking recommended protections and wearing the proper gear, Frieden said that "at some point there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection."

He later walked back his remarks. But if the protocols were adequate, why do we need to rethink them?

Pham isn't alone. Maria Teresa Romero Ramos, a Spanish nurse's aide, contracted the disease while caring for an Ebola patient in a Madrid hospital.

She got infected when her gloved hand inadvertently touched her face while removing her protective gear.

In August, two American aid workers who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia returned to the U.S. for treatment. That those trying to treat Ebola patients and fight the disease's spread — people aware of the dangers and practicing the prescribed protocols — still catch the disease doesn't bode well. Bringing back infected Americans under controlled conditions is one thing. Unrestricted air travel from West Africa is quite another.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

MINIMUM WAGE HIKE ONLY THE START: Forced Unionization of Fast Food Workers is the Democrats' Real Goal

By Brady Cremeens

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The effort to raise the minimum wage in Chicago and throughout the state of Illinois in general is not just about a higher salaries but about the ability to unionize, a labor leader said this week.

Speaking at a panel at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference in Washington this week, Kendell Fells a national coordinator for Service Employees International Union, said an increased minimum wage is not the ultimate goal of his group.

Fells, who also serves as president of Fast Food Forward – a group that advocates for an increased minimum wage for fast food employees across the country and including in Chicago – said his movement is more about unionizing employees in the fast food sector than it is about them making more money.

“Just to be clear, this is not a minimum wage campaign, these fast food workers are not trying to raise minimum wage,” Fells said. “They want to sit down with the $200 billion fast food industry and get the money out of their pockets and negotiate a union contract with them.”

Patrick Semmens is the vice president of public information at the National Right to Work Foundation. He says fast food workers should be careful what they wish for, because it might not be as great a deal as they think.

“Some of these jobs would be eliminated,” Semmens said. “It’s not too hard to see that technology and robots could take the place of some workers if it gets too expensive. That’s something that needs to be weighed.”