Sheehan: Don’t Cry For Me, America … Exit Stage Left

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007 where House Democrats were meeting. Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's ranch, says she's done being the public face of the movement. 'I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush,' Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday, May 29, 2007 while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California. Image Credit: AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke

Sheehan: Don’t Cry For Me, America … Exit Stage Left

Moonbat and grieving mom, Cindy Sheehan, leaves Texas to pursue a “normal” life back in California.

In an open letter posted at the Daily Kos (a politically liberal commentary website), Sheehan finally comes clean as to her love of the country she lives in and will not leave.

Honestly, it is one thing to want to work for the things one wants to change about the country one lives in, it is clearly another to profess to want to better the country without recognizing what the majority of the people really want. In this case, Americans really want to pursue their freely lead lives without interruption … and that includes keeping ones focus on American Idol as opposed to responding to what Cindy Sheehan thinks or does.

I guess it really is “Up To Us Now” ... to live our lives without having to hear how horrible we are, while wanting to KEEP our freedoms.

Excerpts from the Associated Press -

'It's up to you now': Sheehan quits
By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer - 21 minutes ago

FORT WORTH, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's ranch, said Tuesday she's done being the public face of the movement.

"I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," Sheehan told The Associated Press while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California.

"I'm going home for awhile to try and be normal," she said.

In what she described as a "resignation letter," Sheehan wrote in her online diary on the "Daily Kos" blog: "Good-bye America ... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it.

"It's up to you now."
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"I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement," Sheehan wrote in the diary.

On Memorial Day, she came to some "heartbreaking conclusions," she wrote.

When she had first taken on Bush, Sheehan was a darling of the liberal left. "However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the 'left' started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used," she wrote.

"I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of 'right or left', but 'right and wrong,'" the diary says.
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Sheehan said she had sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement "that often puts personal egos above peace and human life."
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"Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives," she wrote. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."

"I am going to take whatever I have left and go home," Sheehan wrote.

"Camp Casey has served its purpose. It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?"
Reference Here>>

We at MAXINE, Cindy, feel that your "boy" did not fail the rest of us that love the freedoms this country affords all of us ... including you. Your son died protecting our country and our way of life ... try to be proud of that while you pursue a normal life back in California.

Quality Of Life Begins With Corrected Immigration

Margaret Koenig, of California, chants with other anti-immigrant demonstrators across from the White House in Lafayette Square Sunday, April 22, 2007, in Washington. .Several hundred protesters gathered to kick off a week of lobbying against illegal immigration in Congress. Image Credit: Lawrence Jackson -- AP Photo

Quality Of Life Begins With Corrected Immigration

The sign of the protester says it all - "KICK ME! I'm A Citizen!"

A legal United States citizen is the last consideration in a long line of issues that surround the problems created by our Government's decade’s long inattentive attitude toward our existing immigration policies.

Respect for the sovereignty of the borders of the United States begins with enforcement of the laws that govern our country. Due to the decades of neglect to our immigration laws, all laws become less important and the quality of life of the average citizen get dragged down.

Congress, reacting to the increased pressure to correct the inattention our civil authorities to existing laws, has placed more border agents in the field to address the ills brought about through unchecked and illegal immigration. The agents arrest law breaking illegal immigrants and expect the prosecution infrastructure to finish its job and bring final justice to the equation.

Judges in the court system and local police who manage the jail infrastructure apparently did not get the memo.

The average legal citizen is serious about the quality of life brought about through the enforcement of our laws. It’s high time the people who manage the justice side of law enforcement step up and finish the task – Quit Whining ... roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Our elected and appointed officials need to step up now and make good on the job they are being paid for. The notes paid for their usefulness have become DUE IN FULL!

Excerpts from the Associated Press via the Sacramento Bee -

Immigration-related cases clog courts
By JENNIFER TALHELM -- Associated Press Writer - April 27, 2007

Immigration-related felony cases are swamping federal courts along the Southwest border, forcing judges to handle hundreds more cases than their peers elsewhere.

Judges in the five, mostly rural judicial districts on the border carry the heaviest felony caseloads in the nation. Each judge in New Mexico, which ranked first, handled an average of 397 felony cases last year, compared with the national average of 84.

Federal judges in those five districts - Southern and Western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California - handled one-third of all the felonies prosecuted in the nation's 94 federal judicial districts in 2005, according to federal court statistics.
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"The need is really dire. You cannot keep increasing the number of Border Patrol agents but not increasing the number of judges," said Chief Judge John M. Roll of the District of Arizona.

A bill by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and co-sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, would add 10 permanent and temporary judges in Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern and Western Texas. This proposal, and others like it, have gone nowhere in the past two years.

"I can't even tell you how much we need that," Roll said.
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During a push to crack down on illegal immigration last fall, Customs and Border Protection floated a plan for New Mexico that would have suspended the practice of sending home hundreds of illegal immigrants caught near the border with Mexico. Instead, these people would be sent to court.

The idea, called "Operation Streamline," was to make it clear that people caught illegally in the U.S. would be prosecuted.
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"We said, 'Do you realize that the second week into this we're going to run out of (jail) space?'" Martha Vazquez, chief judge for the District of New Mexico, recalled telling Border Patrol chief David Aguilar.

"We were obviously alarmed because where would we put our bank robbers? Our rapists? Those who violate probation?" she said.

Border Patrol eventually dropped the idea. Officials said they could not get all the necessary agencies to agree to it.
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Congress has made available more than $1.2 billion for reinforcements, including fences, vehicle barriers, cameras and other security equipment.

Homeland Security officials say the increased security is working. In Yuma, Bush said that the number of people apprehended for illegally crossing the southern border into the U.S. has declined by nearly 30 percent this year.

Court officials, however, say they are in crisis mode trying to deal with all the defendants.
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Even lawmakers from border states say they cannot justify adding judgeships in one district when other districts also need them.
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Court officials say they have had to be creative just to try the cases they have. Visiting judges help out in some districts. In Arizona, magistrates hold sessions on the weekends and have seen as many as 150 defendants in a day.

In New Mexico, Vazquez, the chief judge, and former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias went on a Spanish-language radio station broadcast in Mexico this winter to warn people about the penalties for illegally entering the country.

Court administrators have trouble keeping employees, such as interpreters, because of the grind. Judges' staffs struggle with burnout. Everyone fights to keep up morale as they hear countless sad stories from migrants who broke the law searching for a better life in the United States.

"It'd be swell to have another judge or two," said Judge George Kazen, who is based on the border in Laredo, in the Southern District of Texas. "It would mean a little more time to spend on civil stuff, and a little more time to reflect. We have to make quick calls and move on."
Reference Here>>

How about green-lighting the justice process of immigrants caught breaking the law and do not have proof of being in this country legally as the good Judge suggests ("We have to make quick calls and move on.")? Why not suspend the deference afforded to citizens and lower the standards used to actually try a case and incarcerate an offender?

How many people do you think will want to get caught up into a meat grinder of serious justice?

We all could take a lesson from the attitude of the Sheriff in Phoenix, Arizona. If one is suspected of breaking the law ... we have room for you, even if we need to fence off an area in the desert and erect tents to keep you for your court date.

A legal citizens Quality Of Life is more important than the basic consideration given to the quality of life of a suspected law breaker, especially if the suspected law breaker is in our country illegally (that's two counts of disrespect for the rule of law in the pecking order).