Day: September 27, 2010

Somalis hijack a Kansas City election

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 8th:  Appeals Court ruling expected soon, here.

Jack Cashill has this stunning story on American Thinker today.

Through a combination of massive, Somali-driven voter fraud, stunning Election Board incompetence, and the willful blindness of the Kansas City Star, machine Democrat J.J. Rizzo managed to beat conservative Democrat Will Royster by one vote in a Missouri State House primary on August 3.

There is no Republican running in this heavily Democratic, multi-ethnic Kansas City district. The Democratic nominee will face only a seriously outgunned Libertarian in the November election, and truth be told, Royster may be to the right of the Libertarian.

What the Democratic machine and the Star, which endorsed Rizzo, did not count on was for the intrepid Royster to challenge the election in court. In so doing, he has provided a sneak preview on how a desperate Democratic Party will attempt to neutralize the will of the people this November, and not just in Kansas City.

The account of the court proceedings is difficult to summarize but is well worth reading if you like Monty Python or Alice in Wonderland. Some highlights:

In this primary election in which only 1,300 people voted, as many as 100 Somalis showed up to vote. Most did not speak English but claimed to be citizens. They were “helped” by fellow Somalis who directed them to vote for Rizzo. Rizzo won by one vote.

First to testify was Lindy Hobkins, a Republican supervisory election judge. As she related, a group of Somalis came into her Kansas City election site led by one Somali man.

“They were unable to communicate on the most basic levels,” said Hobkins of the Somalis. To help his voters along, the leader “left the premises, went outside to where the electioneers are out at the appropriate space allotted for them, and he brought in a sign for Mr. Rizzo.” Hobkins continued: he “held it up and pointed at it and said this one, this one, this one.”

In a disturbing little twist, David Raymond, the attorney for the Kansas City Election Board, grilled Hobkins as though she were a hostile witness. After she acknowledged that the Somalis were all somehow registered to vote, Raymond asked snidely, “Do you believe these voters should be disenfranchised?”

Thanks to the exposure of ACORN by the conservative media, it is now widely known that many people who are registered are not eligible. But if that thought ever entered the judge’s mind he kept it closely sequestered there. People who cannot speak English at even the most basic level are not eligible to become citizens. Therefore a law was broken somewhere along the line. If these Somalis were citizens, someone broke the law by giving them citizenship. If they were not citizens but were registered to vote, then their registration was fraudulent. But the judge had no interest in looking into any of this.

“How could they be registered to vote,” [Lindy Hobkins] asked Raymond, “if they did not know how to speak English on any level?” Other than Hobkins, Royster, and Royster’s attorney, no one else involved — the Democratic Party, the Star, the Election Board, the trial judge — expressed the slightest interest in the answer to this question.

And despite a lot more damning testimony, the judge ruled against Royster.  Royster is appealing. Cashill concludes:

The Kansas City Star has given this challenge only the slightest coverage. And in no article in a print edition has the word “Somali” appeared in relationship to the controversy.

In November, rest assured, the Somali vote and that of others of dubious citizenship will be turned against Republicans. There is a way for readers to fight this. Call your local Election Board today. Sign up to be a judge or a poll watcher. Ask for an inner-city precinct. And make sure you know the law better than your Democratic counterpart does. It won’t be hard

Did George Bush consider taking 100,000 Palestinians?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t doubt for a minute that this wasn’t discussed in the Bush White House, heck they were taking other large groups of refugees without Congressional approval.

Olmert says details and numbers were discussed.  Hadley says they didn’t get specific.  Abrams says it never happened. 

From the Jerusalem Post:

The idea of the US accepting 100,000 Palestinian refugees as part of a Middle East peace agreement was suggested by extremely senior figures in the Bush administration, not by Israel, sources close to former prime minister Ehud Olmert told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

The reference to “extremely senior figures” is assumed to relate either to president George W. Bush himself or to his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

The sources spoke to the Post after Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said that the administration envisioned that the US would participate in refugee resettlement activities, but could not have known in advance how many refugees the US might have been able to take in.

In a speech in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Olmert said he had reached an agreement with the US on accepting 100,000 refugees. Hadley’s former deputy, Elliott Abrams, denied this on Monday.

According to Hadley, the Bush administration discussed with Israel how the international community could assist in implementing a peace agreement, including how it could help the Palestinian refugees. Ideas discussed included compensation to refugees or to countries such as Jordan and Lebanon that would take them in, and aid in resettling refugees outside the Middle East who wanted to leave the region.

Abrams:  No President has that power?  Really?

“In that connection, we envisioned that the US would participate in any refugee resettlement activities, along with others in the international community, but that anything the US would do would be done through our normal immigrations process,” Hadley said.

“Therefore, there is no way to know in advance the number of refugees that the US might have been able to take, should any refugees have wanted to come to the US.”

When he spoke, Hadley was unaware of Abrams’s flat denial.

“President Bush did not, I am sure, promise or pledge to take 100,000 Palestinian refugees,” Abrams said. “The president knew, as everyone in the White House knew, that no president has the power to make such a commitment.

“We have immigration laws and they don’t allow that kind of move by a president. He would have had to ask Congress to change our laws.

Moreover, we would never have committed to a specific number anyway, nor did Olmert ask us to or raise that number.”

Then answer me this?  How could a lowly Asst. Secretary of State (Ellen Sauerbrey) make the committment to take 60,000 (a specific number) Bhutanese refugees without going to Congress?   Bottomline,  she did it and it can be done.  

Of course if Bush and Rice did decide to bring that many Palestinians to the US, I’m guessing Congress would have gotten involved because of the huge firestorm of public opinion it would have created.

I’m thinking Olmert is closer to being right:

Olmert’s office reacted to Hadley’s comments the same way it reacted to Abrams’s – by saying that the commitment was made at a higher level.

We all know that it would never have happened because by removing the thorn (the so-called refugees) from Israel’s side, Islamic extremists would have lost their power.  They need the ‘refugee’ problem to continue.  And, besides UNRWA needs your money.

To learn more about this topic, visit our category ‘Israel and refugees,’ here.

Endnote:  There was no talk of Congressional approval here when John Podesta and friends (citing earlier precedents) asked Obama to airlift 100,000 Iraqis.