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Last week WWE Hall of Famer “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer found in the body’s lymphatic tissue. The lymphatic system helps filter out bacteria and is important in fighting diseases. Piper was sent home early from WWE’s early-November tour of the United Kingdom and hospitalized for surgery, where doctors removed a mass at the spinal cord with an enlarged lymph node. The mass was completely removed, but the lymph node was positive for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Piper is currently undergoing radiation therapy, which is used to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It is an extremely successful...

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Gilchrist, who was the speaker at the event, joins us now from Irvine, California. He is the founder of the Minuteman Project and the co-author of "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders". Here in studio in New York, I’m joined by Karina Garcia. She is the political chair of the Chicano Caucus at Columbia University. Her group organized the protest outside the Minuteman event. We asked a representative from Columbia University to join us as well, but they declined our invitation. Let's start with Jim Gilchrist. Can you talk about why you came to Columbia and...

After a recent spate of violent crimes allegedly committed by illegal or suspected illegal immigrants, Nashville has asked to become one of five American cities empowered to deport its own criminal illegal immigrants. On Aug. 15, Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall — with the full support of Metro Chief of Police Ronal Serpas and District Attorney Torry Johnson — filed paperwork to take part in a little-known federal government initiative called the Delegation of Authority Program or section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. The 287 (g) program gives local law enforcement agencies the “training and subsequent authorization...

Today's fans know him best as the patriarch of a three-generation wrestling family. But during his prime, Bob Orton lined up against everyone from Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino to Ed Asner, and there's no doubt that he prided himself in giving them all they could handle. Orton died Sunday night in his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, a week before his 77th birthday. He had suffered a heart attack on Friday at home, and another at the hospital. "He had an eight hour surgery that gave him a 20 percent chance to survive; he did, but about 10 hours...

Harry Browne, who was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, is reported by multiple sources to have died yesterday. I just confirmed the general information with Jim Babka of DownSizeDC. DownSizeDC intends to be distributing pertinent information by e-mail and on their website later this evening. Pending a statement from family or friends, the best (speculative) published source of information about his condition is currently on Wiki: "In June of 2005 an unknown neurological illness confined him to a wheelchair. After spending a considerable amount of time in the hospital, he resumed some of his writing and...

KNOXVILLE -- Tennessee's driving certificate for illegal immigrants isn't supposed to be valid as a form of ID, but it's so popular that people are paying hundreds of dollars and traveling hundreds of miles to get one. Tennessee has issued more than 51,000 certificates since 2004 when it became the first state in the nation to offer them -- since joined by Utah. But not every certificate has gone to someone living in Tennessee. Two major federal arrests in recent months exposed black-market shuttles carrying South and Central American immigrants south from New Jersey and north from Georgia to state...

Suspects accused of bribery, conspiracy, helping immigrants get fake licenses A widespread bribery scheme funneled hundreds of illegal aliens into a Winchester, Tenn.-based driving school, netting them fraudulent licenses. And six people, including one current and one former state employee, got more than $146,000, federal prosecutors said yesterday. The U.S. attorney's office yesterday unsealed a six-count indictment of the six people who are accused of helping hundreds of people since May 2004 obtain driver's licenses they didn't earn. They have been charged with bribing state employees, accepting bribes and conspiracy. About 100 people who got the fake licenses have been...

Top Nashville Radio Talk Show Host Organizes Anti-Illegal Alien Rally Nashville radio talk show host, Phil Valentine, is spearheading a rally to call attention to the problem of illegal immigration. Demagnetize Tennessee: Stop Illegal Immigration Now, scheduled for Thursday June 9, 2005 from 6PM-8PM at the Band shell at Centennial Park, will focus on what the state can do to stop illegals from coming to Tennessee. "This country was built on legal immigration," Valentine stated. "I'm in complete support of those who subject themselves to the process and come here to assimilate and contribute. However, we cannot and should not...

NACO, Ariz. - For obvious reason her name will go unreported, the lady who, like her father, stopped her all-terrain vehicle Friday afternoon at Station 12 of the Minuteman Project's Naco Line on Border Road. "My husband and I would like to join the Minuteman, but we live just a mile from the border and we fear retaliation," the lady said. "If the Mexican gang based in Agua Prieta, across the border from Douglas, Ariz., found out that we were involved, no telling what they'd do. They've been known to kill people, cut their bodies into pieces, and mail the...

Sen. Spector (in opening statements): "The department will have a major role in implementing President Bush's proposals to revise our nation's immigration laws and to deal with the 10 million aliens who are in this country illegally." "The attorney general has exercised the authority to overrule conclusions by the immigration judge and a board of immigration appeals. And this is an issue that lingers after considerable questioning of Attorney General Ashcroft as to what standards ought to be used. And the attorney general, John Ashcroft, conceded before this committee that it's not sufficient to simply cite national security. And that...

Funneling of entrants onto Goldwater Range is feared The U.S. Border Patrol's latest plans to build more fences, roads and other facilities along the Arizona-Sonora border might send more illegal entrants onto the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range, critics say, and further stress the environment. Some of the proposed improvements are in the agency's Yuma Sector, where a new port of entry is planned east of San Luis by 2007. The Border Patrol wants to install more than three miles of new primary fencing and nearly seven miles of secondary fencing, as well as utilize several miles of permanent and...

MEXICO CITY, Nov 5 (IPS) - A torch honouring Mexico's patron saint, Our Lady of Guadalupe, was carried across the border into the United States on Friday, as part of a two-month relay from Mexico City to New York aimed at demanding respect for the rights of Mexicans and other Hispanic immigrants in the United States. Like many other Latinos in the United States, the majority of Mexicans living there are unhappy with the re-election of President George W. Bush. "Bush's victory was not good news for a lot of people, but it's a fact, and what we have to...

PHOENIX (AP) - Law enforcement officials in the Phoenix area are using new tactics to cut off illegal immigration: They are going after used-car salesmen who sell vehicles to smugglers and are arresting operators of safe houses where immigrants stay after crossing the border. Unlike past crackdowns, which have focused more on stopping immigrants at the border, immigration officials say the new campaign frustrates smugglers by zeroing in on the tools of their trade. The tactic seems to be working in Phoenix, the nation's hub for transporting illegal workers throughout the country. Smugglers, also known as coyotes, typically charge thousands...

"I pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would've stayed home," Bob Dylan wrote many years ago. This week, that immigrant had a face and a name: Cristina Fialho Cassiano. "I'm sorry for what I did," she said, sobbing in a Cambridge courtroom. She pleaded guilty to receiving fraudulent documents and asked the judge to expedite her deportation "so I can return to Brazil and start my life over." In the days that followed, a dozen immigrants, mostly from Framingham and Milford, entered guilty pleas and were turned over to federal authorities for deportation. The feds have sent letters out...

Sunday at noon Wolicy Ponk, Wardaddy and I dropped in on the Nashville Coalition for Peace and Justice as they waged a demonstration just south of downtown Nashville. These activists busy themselves with a variety of projects for our mutual benefit. Some of those projects include: returning voting rights to convicted felons, overturning Tennessee’s death penalty, opposing the marriage amendment, preventing law enforcement from using racial profiling (“He looked a like a man”), and promoting everyone’s favorite street performers, The Women in Black. They also wish to involve the U.S. (under UN supervision) in Africa’s ethnic cleansing problems. Last week...

Is there is an invisible army of terrorists gathering in America today? The mainstream media and the Bush administration do not want to talk about it. In July, Defense Watch reported that, in Arizona, an area called the Naco Strip has become a primary route of illegal entry by “significant numbers of Arab-speaking males.” It took a small town weekly newspaper, the Tombstone Tumbleweed, to reveal that, “males of possible Syrian and Iranian descent have been detained in the past few weeks.” Since October 1, 2003, 5,510 illegal aliens designated “Other Than Mexican” (OTM) have been apprehended while crossing the...

It was not much of a night for supporters of Proposition 200. Religious leaders were against it. The audience was predominantly against it. And a prominent Tucson homebuilder who admitted his industry relies on undocumented workers was against it. But Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf stood his ground, telling about 200 people at St. Philip's in the Foothills Episcopal Church on Thursday night of his support for the initiative that would require proof of citizenship to vote and receive certain public services. Graf was the only one of nine candidates to endorse the "Protect Arizona Now" initiative at a candidate...

PROVO - Dismissing claims that his actions were a mistake made in anger, a 4th District judge ruled Friday an Orem man will spend 10 years to life in prison in the rape and near-fatal beating of his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter. "I feel really bad for everything that has happened," Juan Pablo Garcia-Miranda, 22, told Judge Claudia Laycock through an interpreter. "I know I have caused damage to some people. . . . I want to ask forgiveness." But Laycock noted the child suffered permanent brain damage and had to relearn to walk. The extent of the damage will not...

As federal authorities continue their crackdown on immigrant smugglers operating in Phoenix, smugglers are scattering drop houses in more rural communities to avoid detection, immigrations officials said. Two immigrant drop houses discovered in Sierra Vista this month are just another example of that. "The level of enforcement in urban areas has forced smuggling organizations to move to other areas to accomplish their ends," said Russell Ahr, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix. Drop houses are hiding places for smugglers bringing in illegal immigrants, serving as a stopover point for immigrants headed elsewhere. Ahr said there have...

Two recently published articles point up how confused some conservatives are on the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico. Heather Mac Donald's article, "A New Latino Underclass," which appeared in the Dallas Morning News (July 25, 2004), and "A Conservative Manifesto for Solving Border Woes" in The Arizona Republic (Aug. 15, '04) seem to be working at cross purposes. Heather Mac Donald claims that "Hispanic gang violence is spreading across the country," and is "the sign of a new underclass in the making...With gang violence up, social trends down, some fear an immigration influx will overwhelm the tradition of assimilation."...