Here we go boys and girls, one more attempt by Fox and the Republicans to spin, color and skew public opinion against rational policies put in place by their favourite hate target, Obama and the Dems.

The caption reads:

Republicans decry ‘deadly’ policy as report shows illegal immigrants committing new crimes

Followed by the summary paragraphs (where most readers of Fox News stop, I warrant):

Roughly one in six illegal immigrants is re-arrested on criminal charges within three years of release, according to new government data being released Tuesday.

Those charges range from murder to drunken-driving and, according to House Republicans pushing out the report, are symptoms of what they describe as a “dangerous and deadly” immigration policy.

The implication here is that one in six illegal immigrants are arrested at least twice, with some ungodly high number of illegal immigrants arrested at least once. They make the attempt to equate illegal immigrants (later they do it to any immigrant) with violent crime.

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

First off, the database includes only those immigrants who were arrested between Oct 27, 2008 and July 31, 2011. It does not include all immigrants nor does it include all illegal immigrants.

The entire database contains 174,777 individuals.

Of those 174,777, 46796 are illegal immigrants, 96731 are legal immigrants and 559 are unknown.

[UPDATE] Correction, I missed Legal Permanent Residents under legal immigrant. The new total is reflected above. (96731)

The report had several questions to be answered, each of which narrowed the field from the previous answer.

1. How many individuals were identified through Secure Communities but not taken into custody?
2. Of those what is the breakdown of US citizen, non-citizen and immigrant status?
3. Of those non-citizens, how many were re-arrested?
4. Of those re-arrested, what was their immigration status?
5. Of those re-arrested, what offences led to re-arrest?

Here is the breakdown of the CHRI checks for aliens:

US Citizen					10867
Non-Immigrant BCC			868
Illegal						37135
Illegal under proceedings	2997
Lawful Perm Res				88693
Legal						10158
Legal under proceedings		1122
Legal Non-immigrant			15714
Removed						4561
Outstanding warrant			2103
Undetermined				519
Missing						40
Total in database			174777

Here is the breakdown of non-citizens who were not held in custody:

Non-Immigrant BCC			860
Illegal						36446
Illegal under proceedings	2750
Lawful Perm Res				86535
Legal						9201
Legal under proceedings		995
Legal Non-immigrant			15427
Removed						4538
Outstanding warrant			2005
Undetermined				490
Missing						39
Total						159286

Here is the breakdown of immigrants who were re-arrested:

Illegal						5210
Illegal under proceedings	480
Lawful Perm Res				16105
Legal						1433
Legal under proceedings		191
Removed						1015
Outstanding warrant			387
Undetermined				197
Missing						19
Total						25037

Since the main story line from Fox is the inability of the Obama administration to do anything about the alien problem, we can remove the numbers for those the Obama administration is obviously attending to, such as both legals and illegals under removal proceedings as well as those already removed and those with warrants for removal.

Total # of illegal immigrants re-arrested	5210 (20.8%)
	Recidivism rate							14.3%
Total # of legal immigrants re-arrested		17538 (70%)
	Recidivism rate							18.32%
Total unknown or missing re-arrested		216 (.86%)
Total being processed by OA					2073 (8.28%)

Overall US recidivism rate = 44.1% to 67.5% [Link: en.wikipedia.org…]

Overall immigrant recidivism rate = 15.72%

Maybe the US should keep the immigrants and get rid of everybody else?

More from Fox:

They allegedly committed nearly 8,500 drunken-driving offenses and more than 6,000 drug-related violations. The records also show major criminal offenses, which included murder, battery, rape, kidnapping and nearly 3,000 thefts. Roughly 2 percent of the crimes included carjacking, child molestation, lynching and torture, according to the 13-page Congressional Research Service report.

If we use the information in the report on only those individuals ICE had the authority to bring action against we find different numbers.

Drug violations				1420 (8.7%)
Major Criminal Offences		852 (5.2%)
Thefts						489 (3%)
Other Violent Crimes		253 (1.6%)

Total Offences				16226

Fox really screws up next, by making a statement that some of the offences included child molestation, lynching and torture when the report lists those under a general definition of a category called Other Violent Offences but does not specify those in the breakdown.

How is Fox claiming there were lynching and tortures when they have no evidence for or against?

The latest spin being offered by the Romney campaign about his departure from Bain Capital: according to Ed Gillespie, in 2002 Romney “retired retroactively to 1999.”

Gillespie on Sunday sought to clarify the matter, saying that Romney initially thought he would be leaving Bain on a temporary basis, but the challenges of the Olympics led him to “retire retroactively.”

“There may have been a thought at the time that it could be part time, but it was not part time,” Gillespie said.

“He took a leave of absence and in fact he ended up not going back at all, and retired retroactively to 1999 as a result,” he added.

“Retroactive retirement?” I have to admit, I never knew this kind of thing was even possible.

I’d like to retire retroactively too, back-dated to 2000, please.

(This unfortunate attempt at spin is coming in for severe mockery on Twitter, of course.)

Mitt Romney is on record saying that he would not enter Pakistan without permission “to kill one man,” meaning Osama bin Laden.

Obviously, Romney’s reflexive opposition to everything Barack Obama says has backfired on him with this one, big time.

So today he’s trying to walk back that statement, downplay the killing of bin Laden, and simultaneously take a swipe at a previous President: Romney on OBL: ‘Even Jimmy Carter Would Have Given That Order’.

Mitt Romney, asked if he would have given the order to go after Osama bin Laden, as President Obama’s new video and his campaign aides have suggested he wouldn’t have done, per POLITICO’s Ginger Gibson: “Of course, even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”

Classy! So the Republican position on the operation that took out Osama bin Laden is that it was no big deal? Good luck with that one.

Obama responds:

“I just recommend that everybody take a look at people’s previous statements in terms of what they thought was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden,” Obama said at a press conference in the White House. “I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they would do something else, then I would go ahead and let them explain it.”

Since wingnut blogger Patterico is bringing up, and distorting, an incident from years ago in his latest post, I thought I should write a short explanation of the facts about this incident, so I can point to it when people like Patterico (aka Patrick Frey, a Deputy District Attorney for LA County if you can believe it) start up again.

Here’s the post from Mr. Frey: Patterico’s Pontifications » Charles Johnson: An Unlikely Crusader Against Racist Comments.

Indeed, one of Johnson’s buddies (with whom he is still friendly) actually admitted planting racist comments at Hot Air in 2009. Specifically, in September 2009, trusted LGF Lieutenant Killgore Trout went over to Hot Air in the middle of the night to plant some racist comments.

Read the rest if you dare; it’s one of those strange wingnut fairy tales that has sprung up about me, often told when the tribal elders want to terrify the remaining members out of becoming a traitor, like little old me. The truth of it is irrelevant to people like Patterico and his audience; they’re already well aware of the facts, they just get off on the frisson of mean-spirited deception. So this isn’t for them, but for me to be able to say, “Here’s my final word, I have nothing more to say about this trivial incident, go look at this LGF article instead.”

First, you should understand the real reason Frey is bringing up this fairy tale again: he’s attempting to make excuses for the horrifying deluge of right wing racist comments we’ve been exposing on sites like FoxNews.com and Breitbart.com, and pretend that those comments are “planted” by people like LGF member Killgore Trout.

If you’re interested at all (and I’m so done with it I had to argue myself into writing this), here are the facts of what happened, that fateful night in September, 2009, the night when Killgore Trout got drunk and changed the course of blog history (not).

Our story begins with the election of Barack Obama, America’s first black President.

By 2009, right wing blog readers were getting so rabid in their hatred toward Obama that we began to be interested in what was happening in the comment sections of those blogs — because the overt racism had reached a level where the N word was actually becoming a frequent occurrence, and all kinds of other racial slurs were being posted as well.

One legendary night, Killgore Trout had a bit too much to drink (that’s what he says, anyway), and got fed up with the disgusting comments he saw being posted and not denounced or deleted at the right wing blog Hot Air.

Killgore had an account at Hot Air, and actually used to be a pretty regular participant in their discussions. So on this legendary evening, he decided to stage a protest against this overt racism. He posted a series of comments with the name he’s known for, “Killgore Trout,” using racial slurs and daring someone to call them out.

All of these comments were posted with the same name he uses at LGF to this day. He didn’t try to pretend he was someone else, and he made it overwhelmingly obvious why he was doing it. This was the last comment he posted on that historic night:

Ok, I’ll conclude my experiment….

Nobody’s minding the store. Hot Air, like so many other right wing blogs doesn’t care. Nobody’s minding the store. Absolutely nobody else chimed in and saif that they were uncomfortable with the Michelle Obama/wookie comparisons. Nobody cares and nobody finds this slightly unusual. This is the direction that conservatives have chosen. Good luck with your openly racist agenda.

/I’d still like a job that pays well enough to ignore this shit.

To sum up, nothing was ever planted by Killgore Trout. He used his own name and made it clear what he was doing and why. When Patrick Frey claims this was a case of “planting” comments, he’s being deliberately deceptive because he’s well aware of these facts.

And even more to the point — I didn’t put Killgore Trout up to it, or plan it with him. If he’d asked before getting all up in it, in fact, I would have advised against it.

It was kind of an obnoxious stunt, but it certainly got their attention. Hot Air tightened up their moderation a little after that, a tacit admission that KT had a point. The overt racism problem on right wing blogs was getting out of control.

Unfortunately, it’s only gotten worse since then. Much worse.

And people like Patrick Frey and many others in the right wing blogosphere are contributing to the problem by pretending it’s all a plot by liberals to make them look bad, instead of clearly speaking out against the problem of racism in right wing media.

Related:
Yet Another Deluge of Racist Hatred and Calls for Genocide at Breitbart.com
Still More Overtly Racist Comments at Breitbart.com
Another Sickening Deluge of Open Racism at Breitbart.com
Breitbart.com Commenters Spew Racist Hatred at Trayvon Martin
Fox News Commenters Respond to Whitney Houston’s Death With Deluge of Hatred and Racism
Fox News Commenters Respond to Common Story With Deluge of Racism and Hate
Update: Four Hours Later, Fox News Commenters Still Spewing Racism
Fox News Commenters Cheer for Serbian War Criminal
Fox Nation on ‘Fast and Furious’: A Deluge of Death Threats and Racism
Fox News Commenters Respond to Somalia Story With Deluge of Racism
Fox News Audience Spews Racial Slurs at Morgan Freeman
Fox News Commenters Spew Racial Slurs at President Obama (Again)
Fox News Commenters Spew Overt Racism at Wyclef Jean and Haitians

In the face of news that women are deserting the Republican Party in disgust, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is brushing the whole issue aside and calling it as fictional as a war on caterpillars.

Which are you going to believe: the countless forced ultrasound bills, the “fetal pain” bills and “personhood” bills, the attacks on Planned Parenthood, the attacks on contraception, Rush Limbaugh’s nasty misogyny … or Reince Preibus’s transparent attempt to spin it all away?

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and fellow party leaders have been hammering Republicans for supporting policies such as requiring women seeking abortions to get an ultrasound.

“The jury of women across America have ruled that the Republicans have been unbelievably extreme and out of touch and hyper-focused on cultural issues,” Wasserman Schultz said on “Political Capital.” That’s reflected in polling showing President Barack Obama beating former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney or other Republican presidential contenders by 18 points, she said. That gender gap showed up in a survey of swing states published April 2 by USA Today/Gallup.

The Republican Party’s war on women is absolutely real, of course — and so is the growing desperation of people like Priebus, because they know their focus on destroying women’s rights has turned into a huge disaster for their party. As it should.

Anyone who’s actually read the infamous Ron Paul newsletters knows how dishonest the Crazy Uncle is being here: Ron Paul Downplays Newsletters : Only ‘Eight To Ten Sentences’ Were Offensive.

Ron Paul on Thursday downplayed the fringe aspects of his old newsletters, saying on an Iowa radio program that the most offensive passages were probably only a small portion of the overall content.

“There were many times I did not edit the entire letter and other things were put in,” he told a caller on the Jan Mickelson radio show. “I was not aware of the details until many years later. These were sentences that were put in, eight or 10 sentences. It wasn’t a reflection of my views at all. It got in the letter and I thought it was terrible.”

Those “four happy, diverse women holding their thumbs up” have vanished from Herman Cain’s website tonight, leaving a rather conspicuous (yet somehow symbolic) empty space: Women For Herman Cain.

Before:

After:

Herman Cain’s latest ad is a real howler, as he claims he’s been vindicated of the charges of sexual harassment and affairs by “one of the foremost lie detector experts.”

But this “lie detector expert,” as we pointed out November 10th, is actually a private investigator who also happens to be a donor to Cain’s campaign.

He’s no “lie detector expert,” either, and he didn’t give Cain a polygraph test, although the ad hopes you’re dumb enough to believe that. He recorded one of Cain’s press conferences and ran it through a bogus “voice stress analysis” program, then declared Cain vindicated.

This is sheer pitiful desperation, folks. Who’s Herman Cain trying to fool at this point — America, or his wife?

Related:
Official CainTruth.com Website Attacks Herman Cain’s Accusers

I have to agree with Herman Cain that one of the big reasons for his plummeting popularity is “confusion.”

Oh… wait. He meant other people’s confusion.

“Obviously false accusations and confusion about some of my positions has contributed to it,” Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked by host Candy Crowley about his campaign’s flagging poll numbers.

Cain said criticism over his position on abortion and foreign policy matters was fueled largely by comments that were taken out of context, leading to voter confusion.

“Some people are heavily influenced by perception more so than reality,” Cain said.

And now, the second woman mentioned by Politico in the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain is stepping forward and identifying herself — and she’s asking for a joint press conference with the other three women.

A second woman — Karen Kraushaar, a communications official at the Treasury Department – has come forward to identify herself as a woman who says she was sexually harassed by Herman Cain.

Kraushaar was one of the two women originally mentioned in a POLITICO story that appeared Oct. 30. Kraushaar and another employee of the National Restaurant Association had complained about Cain’s behavior to colleagues and senior officials at the NRA, and both women left the trade group with a cash settlement. Kraushaar received about $45,000.

POLITICO initially had shielded Kraushaar’s identity to protect her privacy, but on Tuesday, Kraushaar agreed that her identity could be revealed.

Kraushaar, 55, said in an interview with POLITICO that she would like to band together with the other three women accusing Cain of harassment.

“That would be my preference, that we all go together in a joint press conference,” she said, noting that she’s turned down interview requests from a number of TV news shows.