This should teach all those Amish terrorists not to mess with the U.S.A.:

A young Amish man and his family cannot return to the United States, and the problem seems to be a conflict between homeland security and immigration policy versus the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.
The man is a citizen of Canada, his wife and daughter are citizens of the United States. They are all Amish, and have a home among the Amish community in Licking Township.
The man went to Canada to visit his ailing father, and now U.S. immigration authorities will not allow him to return because he does not have a “green card,” showing he is allowed to stay and work in the U.S.
. . .
A green card � officially called a lawful permanent residence card � must include a photograph, but being photographed would violate the man�s religious beliefs.
Old Order Amish do not believe in being photographed because of the Biblical prohibition of the making of graven images.
. . .
The man tried at one point to get a green card without a photograph, Black said, but his request was rejected. He was officially issued a visitor�s pass, but immigration authorities never sent it to him, Black said.
Other Amish have been issued green cards without a photograph, but this was apparently before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent tightening of security.
Black said the man was “treated rudely by border officials and warned he would be permanently deported if he tried to cross the border.”
Black said the government�s refusal to issue a green card without a photo is a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion.
. . .
A background check on the Amish man should be able to solve the problem, Black said.
As things stand now, “it could take months or years to straighten out,” Black said.

This is silly. An Amish man should be able make arrangements so that border guards can verify his identity without taking a case to the Supreme Court. Where’s common sense here? If a terrorist in Canada is intent on coming into the U.S., he wouldn’t bother with this hassle. There’s hundreds of miles of open space where he can sneak across, just as the Mexicans do at the southern border.
Speaking of which, I thought it ironic to read of this Amish guy’s plight just as I was hearing about how the U.S. is considering easing Mexico border security checks. Interesting, eh? It’s almost as if Hispanics have more political clout than Amish or something.
Via The Seamus Press.

Yawn. Another uninspiring jobs report:

The economy added just 21,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported today, down sharply from January’s gain and far below the type of increase that was common in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.6 percent, the Labor Department said, mostly because many people have stopped looking for work since late last year, removing them from the government’s official count of the unemployed.

This versus forecasts of +125,000 jobs. Missing projections on the down side is becoming routine:

In October, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow estimated that 200,000 new jobs a month would be created over the coming year; since then, the economy has added 59,000 jobs a month on average, and the administration has distanced itself from the forecasts.

Brad Delong graphically depicts actual payroll numbers against administration forecasts. Suffice it to say, we’re way under the projections.
Combine this phenomenon with soaring health care costs and record gas prices, and the so-called recovery might not be feeling so great for a lot of voters.

Jesse at Pandagon brought to my attention this Tennessean story on a woman’s crusade to have a “Tennessee for the Ten Commandments” license plate:

Griffin, of Dayton, Tenn., has been crisscrossing the state for the past six years, urging county commissions to support the Ten Commandments. She’s now going to head up an effort to create a specialty license plate proclaiming ”Tennessee for the Ten Commandments.”
”I’d like to get it done immediately, if not sooner,” Griffin said. ”The Lord has sent me to do it, and I don’t want to make any money off it. I’m doing it for the pure love of God and country.”

I thought that maybe getting the legislature out of the license plate approval process might be a tolerable compromise to the license plate controversies, but apparently not. It will only be a matter of time before people are lining up for “God is love” and Trust Jesus” plates.
Putting aside the clear constitutional problems here, where’s this woman coming from? Are the Ten Commandments up for re-election and need our state’s support? I’m often amused when people claim God is telling them to do stuff. We’ve got hundreds of people being blown up in the world these days, and God is orchestrating license plate campaigns? His law has been out for thousands of years, is in millions of Bibles, and He’s needing this shore up support?
Why doesn’t this women simply post the commandments on her car? Or better yet spend her time talking to people about the meaning and the importance of the commandments. That’s what will change people, not a license plate slogan or meaningless state symbolism:

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Jeremiah 31:33

God wants His law on our hearts, not our license plates.

President Bush is trying to portray his leadership as a “steady” force in a time of turmoil. That’s not such a good trait when you continue to get things wrong.
A story in today’s Washington Post offers insight into the intelligence behind claims that Iraq had a fleet of mobile bioweapons labs. According to the report, claims about this fleet were largely based on the testimony of an Iraqi defector who U.S. intelligence never even interviewed. In the buildup to war (i.e., the scare campaign), the administration simply broadcast hearsay they received from another country without any solid evidence to support his claims.
The blunders continued after the war commenced. You may recall that upon the May 11 NBC announcement that we had discovered some “suspicious” trailers, Bush proclaimed it proof Iraq had banned weapons (“We found them”). Within a month, David Kay learned that analysts doubted the trailers were part of a biological-agent production system. Yet as late as January Dick Cheney was still claiming the trailers “conclusive evidence, if you will, that he [Hussein] did in fact have programs of mass destruction.”
I guess you can call that “steady.”
Jeff-perado (stutz[at]unlv.nevada[dot]edu) has been assessing Bush’s war-time campaign talk and observes:

It seems as though before the war, there was “no doubt” of “grave and gathering danger” to Americans living on American soil due to Hussein’s weapons and Al Qaeda connections. It seems (according to Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld) that before the war, the liberation of Iraqis from Hussein would be greeted with enthusiasm and flowers thrown at the feet of soldiers. Now we, as Americans, today know the truth, these were only hyped up excuses for furthering the administration’s clandestine and secretive goals. So as a result of reality creeping into the media, Bush and Co. has had to backpedal and suggest that they didn’t say what they actually did say. Bush now says WMD’s and the threat to our homeland was actually NOT the reason for the deaths of American sons and daughters, but the freedom of Iraqis from their own tyrannical government was the main goal. Bush in 2000 said explicitly that the U.S. was not in that business (nation building). Today Bush, the man clinging to his ill-gotten job, says; no, I was not clear in my intent (I am never wrong, so nation building then — in 2000 — is not the same as nation building today — in 2004) in my year 2000 campaign claims. It is, in fact our responsibility to bomb and rebuild other nations in America’s image.”
. . .
A lot has been made on both sides about Bush labeling himself as a “war president.” I think we all know this is a self-identification. America has been at war for decades against drugs. Tens of thousands of Americans have died at the hands of, and as a result of the wares of narco-terrorists from such countries as Columbia, Afghanistan, Mexico and many others. But only when four airplanes absconded by radical Mid-East religio-terrorists did this assault against America become a true war. It was at that point that the “war on drugs” was dropped in favor of a “war on terror.” Only this war (on terror) involved the U.S. military on a full-out scale. (Since the 80’s and the days of Reagan, we have sent “advisors” to Columbia, and that constituted the war (on drugs).) This makes this “war president” a total hypocrite, as the real danger to American citizens still goes unopposed, yet nearly 600 Americans, to date, have died because Saddam was a “madman,” yet posed no real threat to Americans, but a huge threat to his fellow Iraqis. Again, I will say, the Chinese and Cuban dictatorships are as equally as guilty as Hussein of “being a madman.” Since Bush now says WMD’s was not his REAL reason for the invasion, then Bush is a hypocrite for not invading and “nation building” both China and Cuba.
But since Bush’s logic is so screwed up as to be incomprehensible, then debating his philosophy becomes much like arguing with the weather. What needs to be done is to spread the truth among his followers, so that hopefully they begin to grasp the absurdities Bush spews forth. Why would Bush tell Americans we are all in “grave danger” if the truth is Bush wanted to depose Hussein for the sake of Iraqis — NOT AMERICANS! Why not start with the truth? Americans prefer to truth to a lie… unless the truth suggests an error that was made on our part. Then a lie seems to be preferable. This is the only logical reason I can ascertain as to why ANYONE would want to vote for Bush, that the Big Lie is preferable to the ugly truth.

Hatamaran hosts the festivities.