REAL ID

Andy McCarthy, Barack Obama, Congress, detainees, Gitmo, Guantanamo, REAL ID

Transferring terrorist prisoners to the U.S. means setting them free here, too: Andrew McCarthy

by  • 

“If Guantanamo Bay is closed, scores of trained jihadists, committed to killing Americans, will be released to dwell among us: It is that simple.” — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Online, October 23, 2009

McCarthy was not fear mongering; if President Barack Obama brings Guantanamo detainees into the United States, federal judges will order trained terrorists released free onto America’s streets. McCarthy explains:

Criminal trials also proceed in accordance with a pair of centuries-old legal principles. First, pieces of evidence are viewed not in isolation but in conjunction; second, jurors do not check their common sense at the door when they enter the courtroom. This is why the vast majority of defendants who go to trial get convicted. Even a not-so-clever defense lawyer can always come up with a reason to degrade this or that aspect of the prosecution’s case: Maybe the teller didn’t get a good look at the bank robber; the defendant’s fingerprint could have been left in the getaway car weeks before the robbery; the robbery money might be in his house because he unknowingly borrowed it from the real robber; and the accomplice may have falsely fingered him in hopes of saving his own skin. But if the prosecution shows an identification by the teller, a fingerprint in the getaway car, possession of the robbery proceeds, and a co-conspirator saying the defendant was in on it, that’s not a shaky case. Taken together, those facts spell slam dunk to a rational, objective fact-finder.

But Gitmo terrorists don’t have to deal with jurors vetted to ensure their objectivity. They get highly opinionated judges. Those judges first make up the rules, procedures, and presumptions, and then purport to apply this “law” to the facts — in many cases, just as a defense lawyer would do. As Joscelyn demonstrates, Kollar-Kotelly simply ignored some of the facts (like the Kuwaiti intelligence that Mutairi was an al-Qaeda operative) and speciously minimized or explained away others, studiously averting her gaze from the mosaic composed by the proof.

Will we literally risk life and limb by leaving it to unelected, lifelong federal judges to decide — without Constitutional authority in matters of war and contrary to the Real ID Act — whether to set terrorists free on our streets?

Our Constitution says it is the Executive alone, the President who conducts war, national security, and foreign policy with Congress regulating the President’s authority through the power of the purse and ratification of treaties. It also says Congress can limit the Judiciary branch; it could deny the courts any authority concerning detainees. Yet that would require both a majority in Congress and this President to care more about the lives of Americans than the “rights” of terrorists. Barring that, judges will decide, common sense and the common defense be damned.

Aviation Security, Debra Burlingame, Mike Huckabee, REAL ID

Congressman tells DHS that consular ID cards should not be used to board airplanes

by  • 

The primary function of Mexico’s many consulates in the United States is to provide illegal aliens with consular ID cards as a means to circumvent our passport requirements for foreign visitors. Those cards are not attached to a secure database and if an applicant has no birth certificate, they can present a letter from virtually anyone attesting to the fact the applicant was born in Mexico as “proof” of citizenship there. Yet most consular ID cards (known as Matricula ID cards) are cheaply purchased on street corners around our nation.

It gets worse. Our Department of Homeland Security says a consular ID card is sufficient photo ID to board an airplane.

In 2003, then Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee:

…went to Mexico … to urge the Mexican government to open a consulate in Arkansas. He leased the consulate state office space for $1 per year (obligating Arkansans to subsidize the rest of the costs of nearly $600 a month). And he put together a sweetheart deal for Mexico to enjoy a permanent facility in Little Rock without having to pay rent for three years.

Elton Gallegly of Simi Valley is a member of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and chairman of the 1995 Congressional Task Force on Immigration Reform. He wrote this morning in a commentary that:

Consular cards are issued by foreign governments to their nationals in the United States. There is no attempt to determine whether the person obtaining the card is legally in the United States and, in fact, the only people who need these cards are illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists. No one denies this fact.

In testimony before a congressional committee, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the FBI had identified a route through Brazil that illegal immigrants from al-Qaida nations use to obtain false identities — including assuming Hispanic surnames — before heading for Mexico and the U.S. border. While no one in the intelligence community will say publicly whether or not any terrorists have been captured along our southern border, all warn it is a serious loophole in our Homeland Security net.

It is clear terrorists have the means and the motive to come here, obtain a consular card and use it to kill Americans.

Consular cards are easily obtained with no proof of true identity and are easily forged. Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, made that point when she presented consular cards to members of the House Homeland Security Committee with their names, addresses and photos.

Representative Bennie Thompson's Matricula ID card

Congressman Gallegly continued:

REAL ID regulations will make America much safer by taking from terrorists a key piece of their arsenal — the ability to move freely and anonymously about the United States.

When it’s implemented.

In the meantime, we don’t have to wait until REAL ID is in place to close other security loopholes. With that in mind, I’ve once again asked Secretary Chertoff to eliminate consular cards from the list of acceptable forms of identification used to board airplanes. It’s just common sense, and the time is now.

In the following YouTube video, you’ll hear that Governor Huckabee dodges when asked about his providing Mexico a place to pass out their phony consular ID cards:

I wonder if Mexico issued Governor Mike Huckabee a consular ID as a souvenir.

Michael Huckabee's Matricula ID card