Presumptuous Politics : Jul 30, 2015

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Brady Cartoon

Illegal immigrant ordered freed by feds now suspected of murder in Ohio

An illegal immigrant suspected of murdering one woman, wounding another and attempting to rape a 14-year-old girl was released earlier this month by Ohio sheriff's deputies after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents told them not to hold him, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Juan Emmanuel Razo, 35, was arrested Monday after a shootout with police following a crime spree police say began with the attempted rape of a girl in a park in Painesville, about 30 miles northeast of Cleveland. He later shot a woman in front of her children and murdered a 60-year-old woman in nearby Concord Township, according to police. While Razo is being held on $10 million bond, authorities are trying to explain why he was allowed to remain in the U.S. illegally after local authorities questioned him just three weeks ago.

"I can't set a bond high enough."
- Painesville Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti

“I have somebody who we don’t know who he is, why he is in this country, why he is here illegally and why he allegedly committed a murder," Painesville Municipal Court Judge Michael Cicconetti thundered at Razo's arraignment, noting the suspect has no green card, birth certificate or driver's license.
"I can't set a bond high enough," he continued. "How in the hell do I even know it's him?"
Cicconetti later told Fox News he did not understand how federal authorities could have ordered Razo released on July 7 when local deputies questioned him and contacted Border Protection officials, given that no one could even verify his identity.

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Should 'sanctuary cities' lose their federal funding?

"If you are stopped, at that point, whether it be by law enforcement or you make your first court appearance, at that point we have to have some kind of identifier on him," he said.
Deputies who questioned Razo say Border Protection officials told them Razo is from Mexico and in the U.S. illegally, but said they would not pick him up for deportation. Lake County Sheriff Dan Dunlap said at a news conference that deputies released Razo because he hadn't committed a crime at that point.
A Border Protection spokesman did not return telephone messages seeking comment. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement said in an email that ICE was closely monitoring the case. The email identified Razo as Juan Emmanuel Razo-Ramirez.
A detective said during the arraignment that Razo has confessed to the deadly, one-day crime spree in the quiet Lake Erie town. Police began seeking Razo late Monday morning after the girl described him to police and said he had tried to rape her. Hours later, he allegedly shot a 40-year-old woman in the arm as she walked with her two children along a bike path and an hour after that, a man told park rangers he'd found his wife, 60-year-old Margaret Kostelnik, shot to death in their home near the bike path.
The Lake County coroner said Kostelnik, who was an assistant to the mayor in nearby Willoughby, was shot multiple times.
“People always say, ‘Oh, she’s the nicest person in the world,’” Willoughby Mayor David Anderson told FoxNews.com. "But Margaret Kostelnik is the nicest person you could ever meet.”
Anderson said he worked with Kostelnik for the 24 years he served as mayor and that her family is deeply entrenched in the 23,000-person community. Her husband has worked as the town’s cemetery sexton for the past 25 years.
“She genuinely cared,” Anderson said.
Willoughby and Concord Township are in Lake County, and Painesville is the county seat.
A public defender entered a not guilty plea for Razo on Tuesday.
Tension between local and federal law enforcement agencies over how to handle illegal immigrants was brought to the forefront after the killing of Kathryn Steinle July 1 on a San Francisco pier. The 32-year-old was allegedly shot by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez who had been deported five times and had a felony record.
Lopez-Sanchez has said he came to San Francisco because he knew local police would not turn him over for deportation because of the city’s sanctuary policy, which has caused Republicans to blame these policies adopted by liberal enclaves nationwide.
Lopez-Sanchez was freed in March on an old marijuana charge even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement had filed a detainer request with San Francisco law enforcement. The city's sheriff's department was criticized for releasing Lopez-Sanchez and not notifying federal immigration authorities.
Lopez-Sanchez pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and weapons charges in the case. His bail was set at $5 million, which means he will stay in jail until the murder trial, where he faces a possible sentence of life imprisonment.

GOP Rep. Rohrabacher proposes bill authorizing Obama to detain Iranian officials

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher wants President Obama to detain non-diplomatic Iranian government officials in the United States until Tehran releases several Americans being held in that country.
The California Republican introduced the bill Tuesday, following the recent Iran nuclear deal that did not include the release of any American captives in Iran.
The deal, in which Iran agrees to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of billions of dollars in economic sanctions, must be approved by Congress in the coming weeks. The situation has prompted Secretary of State John Kerry and other top administration official to go to Capitol Hill to win support.
“The inexcusable plight of these long-suffering Americans perfectly illustrates the contempt Iran’s ruling mullahs show America in general and the Obama administration specifically,” said Rohrabacher, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee chairman.
At least three Americans are known to be held -- Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, pastor Saeed Abedini and Marine veteran Amir Hekmati. A fourth, Robert Levinson, is reportedly missing in Iran.
Kerry said after the deal was reached early this month that every meeting included discussions about the Americans.
Obama said that getting back the American citizens couldn’t be included in the deal but that his administration is “working every single day to try to get them out, and won’t stop until they’re out and rejoined with their families.”
Rohrabacher’s bill calls for the authorization of the president’s power to detain Iranian officials to expire when the Americans are released.

Court bars anti-abortion group from releasing new videos of Calif. company officials

Why would the court do that?

LOS ANGELES – A temporary restraining order has been issued preventing an anti-abortion group from releasing any video of leaders of a California company that provides fetal tissue to researchers. The group is the same one that previously released three covertly shot videos of a Planned Parenthood leader discussing the sale of aborted fetuses for research.
The Los Angeles Superior Court order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. It appears to be the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization.
The Center for Medical Progress has released three surreptitiously recorded videos to date that have riled anti-abortion activists. The Senate is expected to vote before its August recess on a Republican effort to bar federal aid to Planned Parenthood in the aftermath of the videos' release.
In a statement Wednesday, center leader David Daleiden said StemExpress was using "meritless litigation" to cover up an "illegal baby parts trade."
"The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of our investigative journalism work," he said.
StemExpress is a Placerville-based company started in 2010 that provides human tissue, blood and other specimens to researchers. Planned Parenthood is one of the company's providers of fetal tissue.
A company spokesman said StemExpress is "grateful its rights have been vindicated in a court of law."
In the first video released by the Center for Medical Progress, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, describes techniques for obtaining fetal body parts for researchers to activists posing as potential buyers from a human biologics company over lunch. When asked about partnering with Planned Parenthood directly rather than through its affiliates, Nucatola mentioned StemExpress as one company that had approached them.
In another previously released video, a woman identified as a former StemExpress phlebotomist describes drawing blood and dissecting dead fetuses.
"I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses," the employee, Holly O'Donnell, said.
Planned Parenthood's affiliates in fewer than five states provide fetal tissue for researchers, according to the organization. The Center for Medical Progress accuses the group of illegally making a profit from that.
Planned Parenthood has said it only receives reimbursements for costs of providing tissue donated by women and that it has done nothing wrong.
The temporary restraining order issued Tuesday will remain in place until a hearing on Aug. 19.

Swiss bank's donations to Clinton Foundation increased after Hillary intervention in IRS dispute

Donations to the Clinton Foundation by Swiss bank UBS increased tenfold after Hillary Clinton intervened to settle a dispute with the IRS early in her tenure as secretary of state, according to a published report.
According to the Wall Street Journal, total donations by UBS to the foundation grew from less than $60,000 at the end of 2008 to approximately $600,000 by the end of 2014. The Journal reports that the bank also lent $32 million through entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs it launched in association with the foundation, while paying former President Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of corporate question-and-answer sessions with UBS Chief Executive Bob McCann.
Though there is no evidence of wrongdoing, ties between the Clinton Foundation, major corporations and foreign governments have come under increasing scrutiny as Hillary Clinton begins her presidential campaign. The UBS case is unusual in that it shows a top U.S. diplomat intervening on behalf of a major overseas bank in a situation where federal prosecutors and the Justice Department had been the lead entity.
UBS' legal battles with the U.S. government date from 2007, when a whistleblower told the Justice Department that UBS had helped thousands of Americans open secret accounts to avoid U.S. taxes. In 2009, the bank paid a $780 million fine and turned over the names of 250 account holders to U.S. authorities as part of a deferred-prosecution agreement.
However, that same year, the IRS requested that UBS turn over the names of U.S. citizens who owned 52,000 secret accounts worth an estimated $18 billion. The bank maintained that doing so would be a violation of Swiss privacy laws. The Journal reports that UBS enlisted the Swiss government to settle the matter. Clinton, recently sworn in as secretary of state, first met with her Swiss counterpart, Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, in March of 2009.
Over the next three months, the Journal reports, the U.S. and Switzerland engaged in a series of complex negotiations. Citing diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks as well as people involved in the case, the Journal reports that the U.S. pressed Switzerland to work for the release of American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was being held by Iran. Another issue Clinton brought up was alleged violations of international sanctions by a Swiss energy-consulting company thought to be providing civilian nuclear technology to Iran. The Swiss embassy represented U.S. interests in Iran, which has not had formal diplomatic relations with Washington since 1979.
After Saberi's release that May, the shutting down of the Swiss energy company's Iran operations that July, and the expressed willingness the Swiss government to accept some low-level detainees from Guantanamo Bay, the Journal reports settlement talks intensified.
Under the terms of the deal, which was announced by Clinton and Calmy-Rey July 31, UBS would turn over information about 4,450 account-holders, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.
The deal was criticized by members of Clinton's own party in Congress. Then-Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. called the agreement "disappointing."
In recent weeks, Clinton's corporate ties have been harped on by Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has made some gains on her in polls of early-voting states.