Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Danielle Pletka

Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute takes on Bill Maher, Ben Affleck and an unsympathetic audience and acquits herself well. The Republicans should be getting this woman on television more.

Coddling the Freeloaders

This will astonish you. Or maybe not. Thousands of emigrants, including Americans, are migrating to England and claiming asylum. Why? Because they get free accommodations, free health care, and 35 pounds a week in free money. A lot of this story will sound familiar to anyone who has been following our own immigration controversy:

Britain is such a soft touch that even Americans are coming here to claim asylum and sponge off the state. The incredible revelation comes from immigration whistleblower Rory Clarke.

And yesterday the Government was forced to admit figures that backed him up. Disgusted Rory, 34, contacted The Sun to expose the true depth of the asylum shambles. He said:

"Britain is seen as such a soft touch that poor people from countries such as America are even coming here now. A couple of years ago I met two black guys from the States who were over here because they thought they could get a better standard of living. One was from Ohio and the other from Kansas. They claimed asylum because they said they were racially discriminated against at home. But they freely admitted they were here for the free healthcare and accommodation. It is an absolute joke. They could have been here for up to five years before their application was processed."

Last night the Home Office admitted five American nationals have claimed asylum this year alone. Rory also revealed a shocking catalogue of blunders by officials, and lying by applicants that is making our asylum system the gravy train of the world.

He spent five years heading a team evicting failed asylum seekers from their homes after applications were turned down. But [he] quit the Government's National Asylum Support Service (NASS) in disgust at what he encountered.

When he started the job he calculates 50 per cent of asylum seekers were genuine. But now he reckons that figure is five per cent. Those waiting for applications to be processed get immediate free healthcare, free accommodation and 35 pounds a week in benefits.

Rory maintains the deluge is dominated by freeloaders. These include fit young men from Middle Eastern countries who are here because they want to dodge compulsory military service back home, he added.

Rory - who does not want his face to be recognisable in our picture - said: "Working for NASS was like banging your head against a wall. For example, I helped evict 30,000 illegals from their homes. But they weren't taken to detention centres.

"Instead of them being kicked out of the country, we were told to let them go. We once rounded up 56 illegals and were told to send them to the detention centre at Oakington in Cambridgeshire. The Immigration Service said they didn't have the staff to take them there so they would have to make their own way. Unsurprisingly, only five ever turned up."

Government studies estimate 300,000 bogus asylum seekers are still in the country after having applications turned down. But Rory said: "The Government figures are just the tip of the iceberg. I reckon there are at least a million and that number is growing every day.

"What really scares me is that we have no idea who is coming into the country. Less than a third of those here illegally have official papers or any identification. We let people in and take their word for who they are and what they are doing in Britain. Nobody knows if they are murderers, rapists or even terrorists.

"If Osama Bin Laden got off a boat today and gave a false name and age he could be on benefits for three years without anyone being any the wiser. In the end I just became so angry I just couldn't hack it any longer."

The Home Office yesterday said the number of asylum seekers had fallen "dramatically" in the past year.

No wonder Europe is dying. I wonder if anybody in Washington has read this article?

Foley's Mistake

NewsBusters detects the pungent scent of media bias and hypocrisy in the differing ways in which Gerry Studds, who passed away last Friday, and Mark Foley have been treated. Studds, you will recall, was the Massachussetts congressman who was caught having a sexual affair with a 17 year-old male page back in the 1970s. Foley was the Florida congressman who was recently found to be conducting a lewd instant message correspondence with a 17 year-old male page. Studds was then, and is now, treated with respect and deference by the media and congressional Democrats like John Kerry (see here). Foley is treated with contempt and contumely. Why the difference between how they are treated? Evidently it's that Studds was a Democrat and Foley was a Republican.

Foley's "lapse in judgment" was not his decision to carry on an improper dialogue with a 17 year old boy, it was, presumably, his decision to run for office as a Republican. If he had been a Democrat we would doubtless be inundated by the media with articles deploring how the poor man, a devoted public servant, had been hounded out of office by the prudes and homophobes in the Religious Right and the Republican leadership.

How Long Would it Take?

Joe Carter asks how long would it take for all traces of humanity to disappear from the earth after humans went extinct. By way of an answer he links us to this graphic.

I suppose the graphic assumes that the extinction was caused by a natural loss of reproductive vitality, but the numbers would probably be different were the extinction caused by the effects of a large-scale nuclear war.

In any case the chart should give pause to those who sunnily assume that the meaning of anything we do here on earth is independent of whether there is an eternal destiny awaiting us. If there is not, if existence is transient, then whatever we accomplish, the graphic reminds us, is doomed ultimately to be reduced to nothing but overgrowth and decay. Our efforts only have meaning if our existence has permanence, and belief that our existence has permanence is a truly blind and irrational hope unless it is based on belief in the existence of God.