I think race is definitely a factor in the immigration issue even on some Republican politicians.



The differences on their positions are quite similars. They seems that the only Undocumented Immigrants, Terrorists and drug dealers are coming from Mexico.

On immigration, all four Republicans running to represent the 52nd Congressional District – Duncan D. Hunter, Brian Jones, Rick L. Powell, and Bob Watkins – say they would tighten border security by lengthening the border fence, and they oppose amnesty for those who have entered the country illegally.

Democratic candidate Mike Lumpkin said he would use technology, an extended fence and increased Border Patrol presence to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Lumpkin's opponent in the Democratic primary, Vickie Butcher, would increase funding for the U.S. Border Patrol and hire more agents. Butcher said she would try to improve the quality of identification materials.

Lumpkin said he would tackle border security before attempting a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws. Butcher said she would support taking a broad look at immigration laws, including allowing paths to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.

Libertarian candidate Michael Benoit supports more legal immigration, and would withdraw American troops from Iraq and reassign them to the U.S.-Mexico border.

On health care, all four Republicans oppose a government-run, single-payer system and said they would seek alternative ways to expand access.

Hunter would allow more people to pay for health care using pre-taxable income. Jones would work to eliminate “frivolous” health care lawsuits that he said drive up costs, and look for tax incentives for businesses and individuals. Watkins supports personal savings accounts and portable insurance plans that workers can take with them when they change jobs. Powell would cut down on regulation that he said discourages some small businesses from providing coverage.

Lumpkin supports a single-payer system but first would increase funding for the federal government's State Children's Health Insurance Program. Butcher believes a single-payer system should be the eventual goal, and also supports increasing SCHIP funding.
Benoit is opposed to government involvement in health care

CNN sued for $ 1.3 Billion. We hope CNN will take this seriously, because what CNN said and did has not only hurt China's feelings, but also CNN's own image."

The new book of Jack Cafferty. " It's getting ugly out there at CNN"



A Chinese primary school teacher and a beautician have filed a suit against CNN in New York over remarks they say insulted the Chinese people and are seeking $1.3 billion in compensation -- $1 per person in China, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.

The case against the Atlanta-based cable channel, its parent company Turner Broadcasting and Jack Cafferty, the offending commentator, comes after 14 lawyers launched a similar suit in Beijing alleging that Cafferty's remarks earlier this month violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people.

Cafferty said the United States imported Chinese-made "junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food" and added: "They're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

CNN said Cafferty was expressing an opinion about the Chinese government, but the Foreign Ministry demanded an apology and accused the network of trying to drive a wedge between the Chinese people and leadership

Why U.S. society forgets to look at the human spirit, Values, compassion. Unfortunately we also forget what makes us as human. It is nor our race nor our gender, since they are both socially constructed, it is our life experiences that shape who we are Humans beings

Exposing the danger and reality of crossing the border hoping to an end with a different perspective. The American Dream.

Whoever tied the noose and hung it on his door knob was not ignorant of the symbol's meaning.




Unadilla Valley Central School officials have identified two students they believe are responsible for hanging a noose on a counselor's door last week.

School Superintendent Robert Mackey said Wednesday the students are being disciplined, but he would not release any specific information about who the students are or what disciplinary actions were being taken.

"I can tell you that the consequences will match the offensiveness of the act," Mackey said.

The students have not been attending school since they were identified, he said.

The noose tied from clothesline-type rope was found the morning of Feb. 6 on the door of the Liberty Partnership Program counselor's room while school was in session, troopers previously said.

The counselor was identified by the school as Mark Montgomery, who is black. He has been at the school for 11/2 years.

The incident remains under investigation by Norwich state police. Troopers on Wednesday said they were hoping to have closure in the case by Friday, but they would not indicate if that closure would involve criminal charges.

There are no other students involved, Mackey said.

"We are sure that this is it," Mackey said.

Mackey said school staff had heard from other students that the two suspected of hanging the noose may have learned how to tie it by watching a video on YouTube, the popular Internet video-sharing website.

Mackey said he couldn't speculate on a motive.

"We can't answer specifically what was going through the minds of the kids," Mackey said. "Many teenagers really act without ever thinking about the end result.

The school resource officer _ a state trooper _ was a huge help in bringing the incident to a quick resolution, Mackey said.

State police Bureau of Criminal Investigation officers were in the school within a few hours of the noose being found, he said.

Students began coming forward Sunday with information about who hung the noose, and by Tuesday, both students who participated were identified, Mackey said.

School officials are treating this as an isolated incident, he said, but as the school deals with the incident's aftermath, staff will be trying to gauge the depth of any racist sentiment that might exist at the school.

The school is planning an assembly for older elementary, middle and high school students after winter break next week, Mackey said.

Teachers will then "circle the desks" and talk with the students in a classroom setting about issues surrounding race and the noose incident.

"We're working on that phase now," Mackey said.

If there appears to be a need for a longer-term approach to any race or discrimination issues at the school, the district my opt to start an Alternatives to Violence program or participate in a course of study through Project Reach, which focuses on respecting ethnic and cultural heritage, Mackey said.

Ultimately, the noose incident could be an opportunity to educate students, he said.

"Our main goal is to facilitate learning every day," Mackey said.

Montgomery, a resident of Clayville in Oneida County, said Monday night he works with at-risk youth in his role with the Liberty Partnership program, which has a goal of reducing drop-out rates.

"I have sadly been exposed to racism my entire life," Montgomery said, but the hanging of a noose brought it to a new level.

Noose displays have garnered national media attention in recent months.

In late January, a federal grand jury indicted an 18-year-old Louisiana man on hate crime and conspiracy charges for allegedly fashioning nooses with a 16-year-old that were then displayed toward marchers traveling from a civil-rights rally in September.

Earlier in January, the editor of Golfweek magazine was fired for using a noose on the magazine's cover to illustrate coverage of controversy over comments regarding lynching and Tiger Woods made by a Golf Channel broadcaster.

President Bush spoke about the symbolism of the noose during an event Tuesday marking African-American History Month.

"The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice," Bush said. "Displaying one is not a harmless prank. Lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest."

Montgomery said that whoever tied the noose and hung it on his door knob was not ignorant of the symbol's meaning

Some Americans do not understand why the sight of a noose causes such a visceral reaction among so many people. Bush condemns racial provocations.




Honoring African American History Month, he says noose displays and lynching jokes 'have no place in America today.'

WASHINGTON -- Responding to a rash of racial incidents in the last year, President Bush on Tuesday denounced displays of nooses and jokes about lynching, and said that as past racial injustice fades in memory, the nation risked forgetting the suffering it brought.
The president's remarks, at a White House program marking African American History Month, were among his most pointed in recent years on the subject of racial tensions.

They grew out of concern, his spokeswoman said, that even as the nation made progress toward overcoming racial inequality, symbols of past injustice still flared up.

The president's focus on race coincides with the attention being devoted to the role of race in politics, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in contention to be the first African American candidate to receive a major political party's presidential nomination. He is drawing the support of a cross section of voters and is finding a deep well of votes in states with large white populations.

"The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history. The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice. Displaying one is not a harmless prank. And lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest," Bush said.

"As a civil society, we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive," the president added. "They are wrong. And they have no place in America today."

Bush, who leaves on Friday for his second trip as president to sub-Saharan Africa, saluted four African Americans: Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who was a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s; former Transportation Secretary William T. Coleman Jr., the first black to clerk on the Supreme Court and the first to hold a Cabinet post in a Republican administration; Ernest Green, who with eight other African American students integrated Little Rock, Ark.'s Central High School in 1957; and Otis Williams of The Temptations, the singers who drew fans across racial lines.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, citing news accounts, said there had been more than 70 reports of nooses being displayed since December 2006.

The Justice Department said that the agency, along with state and local officials, had investigated "dozens" of noose displays and other racially motivated threats.

In perhaps the most infamous recent incident, the town of Jena, La., was roiled after three nooses were hung from a tree that had long been a gathering point of white students.

Bush said the reports of such activities had heightened racial tensions and "revealed that some Americans do not understand why the sight of a noose causes such a visceral reaction among so many people."

He noted that for decades it had been a tool of murder and intimidation directed at African Americans, when "summary executions were held by torchlight in front of hateful crowds," with law enforcement officers who were responsible for protecting the victims instead being "complicit in . . . their deaths

This is an Outrageous and Sad news for me. Every time i heard a children has been murder, died or sexually abuse; make me sad and see how easy we forget our Values, Humanity, respect and dignity for the Children's. Why children's has to paid for the poor judgement of the parents. They were more concerns about their life than a poor child.

Man Convicted of Killing 2-Year-Old Smoked Crack While She Died.

A man who beat and scalded his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter, then smoked crack and played video games while she died, was sentenced today in San Diego to five years and eight months in state prison.

Rodney Jeffcoat, 45, of Riverside, was convicted Nov. 14 of involuntary manslaughter, assault on a child likely to produce great bodily injury, conspiracy to obstruct justice and assault and battery.

Jurors acquitted him of second-degree murder and assault on a child under 8 causing death, which could have sent Jeffcoat to prison for 25 years to life.

According to court testimony, Jeffcoat whipped and knocked Kenvesia Blount's head against a wall and threw boiling water on her because she wet the bed while she and her mother, Trevesia Blount, 28, of San Diego, were visiting his mother's Riverside home on July 23, 2006.

Jeffcoat then played video games and smoked crack while Blount sat in a chair next to her comatose daughter for one to three days, hoping the child would recover.

The couple didn't seek help because he didn't want to get arrested for driving on a suspended license and she was concerned Child Protective Services would take Kenvesia and her older daughter Alexandria away.

They finally drove the girl to a hospital in San Diego after her mother found maggots on her.

They told authorities the girl scalded herself in San Diego by knocking a pot of boiling water for hot dogs from the stove onto herself.

"Everybody was concerned with themselves and not concerned with this child," Judge Peter Deddeh said. "It makes me angry (that) this child died when she didn't have to die."

Deputy District Attorney Harrison Kennedy told jurors that Jeffcoat began abusing Kenvesia after he started dating her mother in December 2005.

Alexandria Blount testified that Jeffcoat hurt her sister by knocking her head against a wall and pouring boiling water on her.

Trevesia Blount pleaded guilty to felony child abuse and was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison.

The judge noted with frustration that although Jeffcoat was more responsible for the girl's death, because of the plea agreement and sentencing requirements, her sentence had to be harsher than his.

Today in court, Kennedy said the case was one of the most egregious homicides imaginable.
"It simply does not get much worse than that," the prosecutor told the judge.

Deddeh noted that a defense expert said, "you're joking," when the circumstances of the child's death were explained to him.

The judge said the actions of the defendants were "awful, uncaring and insensitive."

"No one could have written a story like this," he said.

Deddeh said the case "pulled on everybody's heart strings," including his.

He said Jeffcoat had a "long and storied record of violence" including a felony conviction in 2004.

Defense attorney Jack Hochman told Deddeh that Jeffcoat's maximum punishment should have been four years and eight months behind bars, but the judge imposed an extra year in prison for a separate assault on the child.

Hochman said the case will be appealed because Deddeh had no legal authority to make a factual finding that Jeffcoat assaulted the child on a separate occasion