2011 Apr 29 - Headline News

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/barack-obama-senior/2011/04/28/slippery-character-new-details-emerge-about-obamas-father#ixzz1L2aPphuz

MIAMI (AP) -- Stepping up his demand to change the nation's immigration laws, President Barack Obama on Friday promised graduates at a vast, multicultural community college that he'll keep working to help students not legally in the U.S. to become American citizens.

The president's renewed endorsement of the DREAM Act, which has become a rallying cry for Hispanic and other students around the country, drew enthusiastic applause from more than 3,000 graduates of Miami Dade College at their commencement ceremony. The students are part of an increasingly important political constituency in a state that will be crucial to the president's 2012 re-election hopes.

The college graduates more Hispanic students than any other higher education institution in the U.S. Obama took note that some students had recently identified themselves publicly as immigrants without legal status in the country.

"Some were brought here as young children and discovered the truth only as adults," he said. "They put their futures on the line in hopes they will spur the rest of us to live up to our most cherished values."

It was Obama's first commencement address of this graduation season. He called on students to take responsibility for the future and portrayed the United States as an optimistic land with vast opportunities. But the speech had a clear political tone as well, demanding that older Americans have proper access to health care and calling for an overhaul of the immigration system.

Obama has made little progress on his commitment to immigration changes since taking office, discouraging some Latino voters and particularly students.

More than two dozen students, many of them undocumented, chanted and waved signs outside the graduation ceremony, calling on Obama to take executive action and halt the deportation of youths who would qualify for the DREAM Act. Inside, Obama said that he could not act on his own and that he needed Congress to change the law.

The students, from universities throughout the South Florida area, were dressed in black gowns striped with white masking tape to make them look like prisoners.

"Education, not deportation!" they shouted.

[more....]
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_COMMENCEMENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-04-29-20-52-46

Three people convicted of crimes as a result of a terrorism-related investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) were later naturalized as U.S. citizens by the Obama administration, according to federal auditors.

The March 2011 audit (released on April 21, 2011) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled Criminal Alien Statistics: Information on Incarcerations, Arrests and Costs, shows that three individuals were among "defendants where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism but they were charged with violating other statutes [not directly related to terrorism], including fraud, immigration, drugs, false statements, and general conspiracy charges," referred by DOJ as Category II terrorism-related cases.

The three individuals in question can be found in a DOJ list of unsealed terrorism-related investigations conducted from Sept. 11, 2001 through Mar. 18, 2010. There are 403 defendants on that list of which, according to the GAO, at least 43 percent were aliens--both legal (26 percent) and illegal (17 percent)--at the time they were charged with crimes.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/american-citizenship/2011/04/29/obama-grants-citizenship-terror-convicts#ixzz1KylhES2w

Read the full story at CNSnews.com
http://bit.ly/jja4Db

The White House threatened a San Francisco reporter for filming a crummy protest song at a fundraiser in California this past week.

Obama complemented the song but was surprised by the fundraiser protest. The administration threatened the reporter who recorded the protest song but later denied it.

Today the San Francisco Chronicle said the White House is lying.
SFGate reported:

In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The Chronicle’s report is accurate.

If the White House has indeed decided not to ban our reporter, we would like an on-the-record notice that she will remain the San Francisco print pool reporter.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/bronstein/detail?entry_id=87978&tsp=1

Friday, April 29, 2011
By Edwin Mora

CNSNews.com) -- Three people convicted of crimes as a result of a terrorism-related investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) were later naturalized as U.S. citizens by the Obama administration, according to federal auditors.

The March 2011 audit (released on April 21, 2011) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled Criminal Alien Statistics: Information on Incarcerations, Arrests and Costs, shows that three individuals were among “defendants where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism but they were charged with violating other statutes [not directly related to terrorism], including fraud, immigration, drugs, false statements, and general conspiracy charges,” referred by DOJ as Category II terrorism-related cases.

The three individuals in question can be found in a DOJ list of unsealed terrorism-related investigations conducted from Sept. 11, 2001 through Mar. 18, 2010. There are 403 defendants on that list of which, according to the GAO, at least 43 percent were aliens--both legal (26 percent) and illegal (17 percent)--at the time they were charged with crimes.

“Prosecuting terror-related targets using Category II offenses and others is often an effective method--and sometimes the only available method--of deterring and disrupting potential terrorist planning and support activities,” explained the DOJ in the document that listed the defendants.

Staff members of GAO's Homeland Security and Justice team who worked on the audit told CNSNews.com in an e-mail that the three individuals were naturalized as U.S. citizens under President Barack Obama.

“One of the individuals was naturalized in late 2009. The other two were naturalized in 2010,” says the e-mail from the GAO.

[more...]
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/3-persons-convicted-terrorism-related-ca

This DAY in History:

Apr 29, 1854:
First African-American college chartered

By an act of the Pennsylvania legislature, Ashmun Institute, the first college founded solely for African-American students, is officially chartered.

Established in the rolling farmlands of southern Chester County, Pennsylvania, Ashmun Institute was named after Jehudi Ashmun, the U.S. agent who helped reorganize and preserve the struggling African-American colony in Africa that later grew into the independent nation of Liberia. The Ashmun Institute, chartered to give theological, classical, and scientific training to African Americans, opened on January 1, 1857, and John Pym Carter served as the college's first president. In 1866, the institution was renamed Lincoln University.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-african-american-college-chartered