President: BARACK HUSSIEN OBAMA DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF A CATHLOC NUN.

Carlos A. Martinelly Montano, a multiple DUI offender, has been charge with killing a nun and injuring two more in a drunk driving accident Sunday morning. (Provided by Prince William County Police)

"While grieving and dealing with the death and severe injuries of our sisters, we would like to refocus attention on the consequences of drinking and driving, and on Christ's command to forgive," the community's Aug. 3 message said.

"The young driver of the other car will experience the consequences of his decisions through our justice system," it added. "We sincerely hope this heartbreak will help him evaluate his decisions and give him motivation to make life-changing choices."

After the accident, Sister Denise, who had been asleep in the back seat, was pronounced dead at the scene. Sisters Charlotte and Connie were airlifted to Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, where they remained in critical condition Aug. 4.

The injuries to Sisters Charlotte and Connie were severe, according to school officials. Sister Charlotte lost some of her intestine and has internal bleeding.

Sister Connie, who was driving the car, has a fractured leg, ankle and wrist. Part of her thumb was amputated, and she suffered organ injuries and internal bleeding.

Father Charles W. Merkle III, Catholic chaplain for Inova Fairfax Hospital, was paged at the hospital when the sisters arrived. He alerted Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde, who said he went to be with the nuns immediately after the accident.

"Our faith gives us the knowledge that the Lord is with us in all things, even in this profound sorrow," Bishop Loverde said in a statement Aug. 2. "This devastating event is a reminder that we are pilgrims on this earthly journey. In remembering the many ways they have supported the faithful of the Diocese of Arlington, I pledge to the sisters that our entire diocesan family is likewise lifting them to the Lord in prayerful support."

The Virginia man suspected in a drunken-driving crash that killed a Catholic nun in Prince William County this weekend is an illegal immigrant and repeat offender who was awaiting deportation and whom federal immigration authorities had released pending further proceedings, police said Monday.

Carlos Montano, a county resident, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and drunken driving. Mr. Montano had been arrested two other times on drunken-driving charges, and on at least one of those occasions county police reported him to federal authorities.

"We have determined that he is in the country illegally. He has been arrested by Prince William County Police in the past, said police spokesman Jonathan Perok.

He said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was notified at the time of one of those arrests. "At the time of this incident, the accident yesterday, he was in the deportation process and was out on his recognizance for court proceedings."

The crash at around 8:30 Sunday morning killed Sister Denise Mosier and injured two other nuns as they were driving to a retreat at the Benedictine Monastery in Bristow, Va. The two injured nuns were in critical but stable condition late Monday, according to St. Gertrude High School in Richmond run by the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia.

Mr. Montano was being treated for injuries he received in the crash and was expected to be released from the hospital into police custody as early as Monday evening.

Messages left with ICE and the Homeland Security Department were not returned, but the incident raises questions about the agency's policy of detaining only some illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.

"I have been saying for months now that this administration's new policy of concentrating almost solely on 'criminal aliens,' and not enforcing the laws by deporting known illegal aliens, would have devastating consequences. Now, we see the tragic results this 'virtual amnesty' policy of the Obama administration has caused," said Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee.

"A life could have been saved had ICE just simply done their job to begin with," Mr. Rogers said. "By implementing selective amnesty one case at a time, the U.S. government is literally putting lives at risk."

The Obama administration has issued a policy of putting a higher priority on convicted criminals and suspected terrorists.

In a June 30 memo, John T. Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for ICE, said agents should focus their capture and deportation efforts on illegal immigrants who were suspected of terrorism, had been convicted of violent crimes or were repeat offenders, gang members or "aliens who otherwise pose a serious risk to public safety." He did not define what rose to the level of serious risk.

The latest ICE statistics show that the agency has stepped up deportations of criminals, but has slowed deportation of other illegal immigrants. The agency also is holding fewer illegal immigrants at any one time than it did last year, according to the statistics.

Critics have long demanded that ICE increase its bed capacity. In the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, some proposals called for a capacity increase to 60,000 beds to try to keep illegal immigrants off the streets while awaiting deportation. The president and Congress, however, never funded that request, and so far in fiscal 2010 ICE is holding 30,349 people on an average day.

The incident comes at a thorny time for the Obama administration and the immigration issue.

Early last week, a judge halted key parts of Arizona's new immigration law, delivering a partial victory to the Justice Department, which had argued that the law intruded on federal jurisdiction.

But late last week, a draft memo obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, showed that the administration has pondered ways to work around Congress and use its authority to extend legal status to many illegal immigrants. The memo called one of the methods it explored "a non-legislative version of 'amnesty.' "

In the days since, Republicans have demanded that the administration rule out an end run around Congress.

Administration officials have said they won't use the powers to offer blanket legal status.

Napolitano seeks review of illegal immigrant's release

Man charged with manslaughter

"This administration believes that the only way to deal with immigration is to do it comprehensively, to do it through Congress with Democrats and Republicans working together," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Fox News in an interview last week after the memo surfaced.The Virginia man suspected in a drunken-driving crash that killed a Catholic nun in Prince William County this weekend is an illegal immigrant and repeat offender who was awaiting deportation and who federal immigration authorities had released pending further proceedings, police said Monday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has demanded a review of why federal immigration authorities released an illegal immigrant after a drunken-driving arrest in 2008 and who now has been charged with manslaughter stemming for a suspected drunken-driving crash that killed a Catholic nun this weekend.

The suspect, Carlos Montano, was first picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in October 2008 after Prince William County police arrested him and accused him of drunken driving, but ICE said he was released on his own recognizance and is still awaiting final deportation proceedings.

"Secretary Napolitano has ordered an immediate review into the circumstances leading to this individual being released in 2008," said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for Miss Napolitano, adding that the department "regrets the tragic loss of life in Prince William County."

Meanwhile, the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia, the slain nun's order, issued a statement Tuesday decrying the focus on Mr. Montano's immigration status.

"The Benedictine Sisters are dismayed and saddened that this tragedy has been politicized and become an apparent forum for the illegal immigration agenda," the order said. "While grieving and dealing with the death and severe injuries of our sisters, we would like to re-focus attention on the consequences of drinking and driving, and on Christ's command to forgive."

Sister Denise Mosier was sleeping in the back seat of a car Sunday morning when it was struck by a vehicle driven by Mr. Montano. She was killed and the two other nuns riding with her were critically injured.

Police said they had twice arrested Mr. Montano for drunken driving and on one of those arrests turned him over to ICE. An ICE spokeswoman said he was given a Notice to Appear, was released on his own recognizance and has checked in every time the agency requested.

But the fact that the agency, under both President George W. Bush and President Obama, did not detain him and never pushed to have deportation proceedings sped up has angered lawmakers.

"As the facts surrounding this tragic case continue to come to light, I think it demonstrates the need for ICE to be more efficient and effective in their deportation duties," said Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the ranking Republican on the homeland security appropriations subcommittee. "This appalling case illustrates why deferred action doesn't work. It underscores why immigration enforcement matters and why this administration's policy of selective amnesty is flawed and potentially dangerous."

Mr. Chandler defended the administration's record, saying under Mr. Obama they have focused "on identifying and removing criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety." He said they have deported a record number of criminal aliens.

Statistics released last week by ICE show the administration has stepped up removals of illegal immigrants with criminal records, but has slowed deportation of other illegal immigrants.

And ICE is detaining fewer illegal immigrants on an average day than the agency did a year ago, the statistics show.

Part of the problem is the government has not lived up to its promise after the Sept. 11 attacks to build more detention space.

In 2004, the agency had about 20,000 detention beds, but the intelligence overhaul bill passed late that year called for 8,000 more beds a year for five years, meaning the total should have reached 60,000 beds in 2010. But on any given day this year, ICE is detaining only slightly more than 30,000 illegal immigrants.

Drunken-driving arrests don't necessarily rise to the level of seriousness needed for the immigration authorities to detain someone or expedite deportation.

Mr. Montano now faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and a third drunk-driving arrest in a five-year period. He was still being treated at a hospital Tuesday afternoon.

The two surviving nuns were still in critical condition Tuesday, according to their order.

President's Budget: Record Deficits

Analysis of the President's Budget Request for 2011

The Long-Term Budget Outlook

http://www.senate.gov/fplayers/CommPlayer/commFlashPlayer.cfm?fn=budget071609&st=960


http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/112xx/doc11231/03-05-apb.pdf

Preliminary Analysis of the President’s Budget

CBO has just released its preliminary analysis of the President’s budget. This analysis presents CBO’s assessment of the budgetary outlook for the 2010-2020 period assuming enactment of the President’s policy proposals and reflecting CBO’s economic forecast and technical estimating procedures. The analysis compares that outlook with CBO’s baseline projections, which—unlike the President’s budget—assume that current laws and policies that affect federal spending and revenues remain unchanged. A report that presents the full analysis, including CBO’s assessment of the macroeconomic effects of the President’s proposals, will be published later this month.

CBO’s preliminary analysis (incorporating contributions from the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation) indicates the following:

• If the President’s proposals were enacted, the federal government would record deficits of $1.5 trillion in 2010 and $1.3 trillion in 2011. Those deficits would amount to 10.3 percent and 8.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), respectively. By comparison, the deficit in 2009 totaled 9.9 percent of GDP.
• Measured relative to the size of the economy, the deficit under the President’s proposals would fall to about 4 percent of GDP by 2014 but would rise steadily thereafter. Compared with CBO’s baseline projections, deficits under the proposals would be about 2 percentage points of GDP higher in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, 1.3 percentage points greater in 2013, and above baseline levels by growing amounts thereafter. By 2020, the deficit would reach 5.6 percent of GDP, compared with 3.0 percent under CBO’s baseline projections.
• Under the President’s budget, the cumulative deficit over the 2011–2020 period would equal $9.8 trillion (5.2 percent of GDP), $3.8 trillion more than the cumulative deficit projected in the baseline. Of that difference, roughly $3.0 trillion stems directly from proposed changes in policy and another $0.8 trillion results from additional interest on the public debt. By far the largest budgetary impact would stem from the President’s proposals to index the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for inflation and to extend various tax provisions contained in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA). Over the next 10 years, those policies would reduce revenues and boost outlays for refundable tax credits by a total of $3.0 trillion. Other policies would have smaller but still significant effects on the budget and would largely offset one another.
• Under the President’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020. As a result, net interest would more than quadruple between 2010 and 2020 in nominal dollars (without an adjustment for inflation); it would expand from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2010 to 4.1 percent in 2020.
• Revenues under the President’s proposals would be $1.4 trillion (or 4 percent) below CBO’s baseline projections from 2011 to 2020, largely because of the President’s proposals to index the parameters of the AMT for inflation starting at their 2009 levels and to extend many of the tax reductions enacted in 2001 (EGTRRA) and 2003 (JGTRRA). CBO’s baseline projections reflect current law, under which the parameters of the AMT revert to earlier levels and the reductions under EGTRRA and JGTRRA expire as scheduled at the end of December 2010. Other proposals—including ones associated with significant changes in the nation’s health insurance system—would, on net, increase revenues.
• Mandatory outlays under the President’s proposals would be above CBO’s baseline projections by $1.9 trillion (or 8 percent) over the 2011–2020 period, about one-third of which would stem from net additional spending related to proposed changes to the health insurance system and health care programs. Much of the rest of the increase in mandatory spending would result from increased spending for refundable tax credits and for the Pell Grant program for postsecondary students.
• Discretionary spending under the President’s budget would be about $0.3 trillion (or 2 percent) lower than the cumulative amount in CBO’s baseline, which assumes that appropriations continue each year at their 2010 amounts with adjustments for inflation. The largest factor in that reduction relates to funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: The President’s request includes a placeholder of $50 billion a year after 2011, whereas CBO’s baseline assumes that funding will continue, with adjustments for inflation, at the level provided so far this year, which is $130 billion. Excluding funding for war-related activities and the Pell Grant program (which the President proposes to convert to a mandatory program), discretionary outlays over the 2011-2020 period would be $0.5 trillion (or 4 percent) greater than the amounts projected in CBO’s baseline.

For 2010, CBO’s estimate of the deficit under the President’s budget is $56 billion less than the Administration’s figure, largely because of differences in baseline estimates of spending. In contrast, largely because it projects lower baseline revenues in future years, CBO estimates deficits that are $75 billion higher for 2011 and $1.2 trillion greater over the 2011–2020 period than what the Administration anticipates under the President’s budget.

In conjunction with its analysis of the President’s budget, CBO has also updated its baseline budget projections. CBO has not modified its economic forecast, so those updated projections just take into account new information obtained about various aspects of the budget since the previous projections were completed in January. The resulting changes are modest, adding $11 billion to the projected deficit in 2010 and reducing projected deficits over the 2011-2020 period by a total of $63 billion.

President Barack Obama Listening to a Liar

Listening to a Liar

by Thomas Sowell (more by this author)

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.

No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?

If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?

If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.

Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.

Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.

Consider the "stimulus" legislation. Here the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days-- after which it sat on the President's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. But, like the medical care legislation, the "stimulus" legislation takes effect slowly.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be September 2010 before even three-quarters of the money will be spent. Some economists expect that it will not all be spent by the end of 2010.

What was the rush to pass it, then? It was not to get that money out into the economy as fast as possible. It was to get that money-- and the power that goes with it-- into the hands of the government. Power is what politics is all about.

The worst thing that could happen, from the standpoint of those seeking more government power over the economy, would be for the economy to begin recovering on its own while months were being spent debating the need for a "stimulus" bill. As the President's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, you can't let a crisis "go to waste" when "it's an opportunity to do things you could not do before."

There are lots of people in the Obama administration who want to do things that have not been done before-- and to do them before the public realizes what is happening.

The proliferation of White House "czars" in charge of everything from financial issues to media issues is more of the same circumvention of the public and of the Constitution. Czars don't have to be confirmed by the Senate, the way Cabinet members must be, even though czars may wield more power, so you may never know what these people are like, until it is too late.

What Barack Obama says Wednesday night is not nearly as important as what he has been doing-- and how he has been doing it.

Thomas Sowell
CURRICULUM VITA

ADDRESS:	The Hoover Institution Stanford University Stanford, California 94305 (650) 723-3303
PERSONAL:	U.S. Citizen, born June 30, 1930

EDUCATION: Ph.D. in Economics, University of Chicago, 1968 A.M. in Economics, Columbia University, 1959 A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, Harvard College, 1958

EXPERIENCE: Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, September 1980 - present Professor of Economics, U.C.L.A., July 1974 - June 1980 Visiting Professor of Economics, Amherst College, September- December 1977 Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, April- August 1977 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, July 1976 - March 1977 Project Director, The Urban Institute, August 1972 - July 1974 Associate Professor of Economics, U.C.L.A., September 1970 - June 1972 Associate Professor of Economics, Brandeis University, September 1969 - June 1970 Assistant Professor of Economics, Cornell University, September 1965 - June 1969 Economic Analyst, American Telephone & TelegraphCo., June 1964 - August 1965 Lecturer in Economics, Howard University, September 1963 - June 1964 Instructor in Economics, Douglass College, Rutgers University, September 1962 - June 1963 Labor Economist, U.S. Department of Labor, June 1961 - August 1962

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS: On Classical Economics (Yale University Press, 2006) Black Rednecks and White Liberals (Encounter Books, 2005) The Quest for Cosmic Justice (Free Press,1999) Conquests and Cultures (Basic Books, 1998) Migrations and Cultures (Basic Books, 1996) The Vision of the Anointed (Basic Books, 1995) Race and Culture: A World View ( Basic Books,1994 ) A Conflict of Visions (William Morrow, 1987) Ethnic America (Basic Books, 1981) Knowledge and Decisions (Basic Books, 1980) Say's Law: An Historical Analysis (Princeton University Press, 1972)