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Ted Cruz's shift to the right on immigration (until recently he was a full-throated supporter of greater legal immigration) and his embrace of the economic argument on immigration are both very welcome. Check out this clever ad: Watch the ad: Invasion (Video)He's also now (rightly) criticized Trump for supporting a de facto amnesty with his proposal to deport everyone and bring many formerly illegal immigrants back into the country.

Police in Germany are investigating an alarming series of sexual assaults on women trying to celebrate the New Year by large groups of single men “of Arab or North African appearance”. Authorities in the city of Cologne are to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday after police described a group of some 1,000 men who took over the area around the main station on New Year’s Eve. Women were robbed, groped, and had their underwear torn from their bodies, while couples had fireworks thrown at them. Police have received 90 criminal complaints, around a quarter of them for sexual assault,...

Link only: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-01-05/cruz-immigration-ad-depicts-bankers-crossing-rio-grande

The mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after about 80 women reported sexual assaults and muggings by men on New Year's Eve. The scale of the attacks on women at the city's central railway station has shocked Germany. About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved. City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime". The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said. Women were also targeted in Hamburg.

Federal immigration enforcement agents last weekend arrested 121 migrants for deportation, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Monday, starting a wave of removals of parents and children, mainly from Central America, who came during the border surge in 2014 and failed to win asylum in immigration courts. Most of the arrests were in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina, officials said, and were of migrants who had lost their cases and were ordered deported by immigration judges. The deportations are part of “concerted nationwide enforcement operations” to achieve a “greater rate” of deportation of parents who crossed the border illegally...

RESOLUTION Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States. Whereas the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes and rhetoric have faced physical, verbal, and emotional abuse because they were Muslim or believed to be Muslim; Whereas the constitutional right to freedom of religious practice is a cherished United States value and violence or hate speech towards any United States community based on faith is in contravention of the Nation’s founding principles; Whereas there are millions of Muslims in the United States, a community made up of many diverse beliefs and cultures, and both immigrants and native-born citizens;...

Them against the rest Bigoted, juvenile Donald Trump — with a tax plan that would increase the U.S. deficit by up to $12 trillion over 10 years — dominates national Republican presidential polls. The billionaire boor’s competition with the rest of the field is but a proxy for a struggle of huge importance to the GOP, as well as to America. Two Republican strains are slugging it out: Rejectionists, represented by Trump and Ted Cruz, are pitted against candidates who offer greater hope of responsibly governing an ideologically diverse country. Voting in state primary contests, just over a month away,...

Jeb's dead. At least, that's the conventional wisdom, and has been for a few months. The man who would be America's third President Bush in as many decades never quite had a good night in the Republican debates. His polls numbers have continued to stagnate, and in some cases, plummet. Bush's initial blitz may have scared away Mitt Romney, but nobody else is frightened of him. Donald Trump calls him a "nice guy" in a way that seems designed to torture him. We haven't even gotten to Bush's heresies on immigration and education policy - that's how secure his rivals...

Czech leader calls migrant wave in Europe an 'organised invasion' Prague (AFP) - Czech President Milos Zeman called the current wave of refugees to Europe "an organised invasion", adding young men from Syria and Iraq should instead "take up arms" against the Islamic State (IS) group. "I am profoundly convinced that we are facing an organised invasion and not a spontaneous movement of refugees," said Zeman in his Christmas message to the Czech Republic released Saturday. He went on to say that compassion was "possible" for refugees who are old or sick and for children, but not for young men...

Astonishing footage from Calais has captured the moment hundreds of migrants stormed the streets in an attempt to break into the Eurotunnel on Christmas Day. Car drivers were forced to squeeze through the crowds of people - many of whom were pushing prams - as they strolled down the middle of the road. Local authorities admitted that 'since the traffic was low', it was decided to close the A16 highway in both directions until the crowds could be dispersed. 'Around 4pm, hundreds of migrants, in small groups, attempted to break into the site,' said the Pas-de-Calais prefecture. The port of...

European capital cities step up security amid warnings of terror attack planned for between Christmas and New Year Capital cities across Europe could be the target of a terror attack before the New Year, Austrian police has warned after receiving a tip off from a 'friendly' intelligence service. Security measures have since been stepped up around the continent, although no cities were named as targets. Tensions have remained high in Europe since 130 were killed in the Paris attacks. And with refugees and migrants flooding into Europe in record numbers, some fear that extremists could be sneaking in undetected among...

Dozens of angry Corsicans staged a fresh protest on the French Mediterranean island on Saturday, a day after demonstrators vandalised a Muslim prayer hall and trashed copies of the Koran after an assault on firefighters. As condemnation poured in from Muslim authorities and French officials over Friday's anti-Arab protests, around 100 demonstrators shouting "We're still here" turned out in the same low-income neighbourhood of the capital Ajaccio where the Christmas day violence took place. Despite a heavy police presence, one demonstrator managed to smash three glass entrance doors in the Jardins de l'Empereur housing estate perched on an Ajaccio hillside...

Two migrants drowned and 12 others were injured Friday when they tried to enter into the tiny Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa by swimming from Morocco or scaling a barbed-wire fence, officials in both nations said. Just before 4:00 am (0300 GMT) a group of over 300 migrants tried to get into the Spanish city which borders Morocco and is located across the Strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain, the Spanish government authority in Ceuta said in a statement. Moroccan forces intercepted over 120 migrants but 182 others managed to get into Ceuta by climbing over the fence...

It is as if Donald Trump just walked into a 40-year conversation on conservatism and instead of standing there, nodding his head politely as he got acquainted with the topic at hand, began shouting over the crowd. It is essentially what Trump has done to conservative policy gurus this year. Trump has reached over anti-abortion diehards, foreign policy neocons, and supply siders to tell base voters directly what he thinks they want to hear and it's working. But he still doesn't have a grasp on how what he's promoting fits into long-term movement conservatism objectives -- nor does he seem...

Senate bill 153, the Immigration Innovation Act (or I-Squared), led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), would allow for virtually unlimited Muslim immigration into the United States. Several of Rubio's most prominent financial backers are among the bill's boosters. Rubio's campaign theme, "A New American Century," employs a euphemism commonly used to describe demographic transformation of the United States brought about by immigration. A recent Pew Research report found that "nearly all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) and most in Iraq (91%) and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law." Yet in the last five years, the U.S. has issued 83,000...

Mitchell Large made the decision to break into a Florida home Monday morning but didn’t exactly face the greeting he was expecting. The family whose home he broke into were all packing heat. For Those Keeping Score: Armed Family 3; Intruder 0 [snip]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: “Let’s not mince words, Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” I cited a long list of incidents in which he targeted women, Latinos, African Americans, Muslims, Asians and the disabled. Here’s what I heard back from Trump’s defenders: “Let’s not mince words,” somebody tweeted under the name Helios Megistos. “Milbank is an anti-white parasite and a bigoted kike supremacist.” “[Trump] may well be a bigot and a racist,” one Michael Banfield wrote me via email. “But one thing is certain: The only thing missing from your photo is a [vulgar word...

The Iowa Republican Caucuses are about 6 weeks away and 3 candidates are firmly positioning themselves to be among the handful left standing after Super Tuesday. Donald Trump still maintains a significant lead over Ted Cruz by 5 percentage points (31-26%), while Marco Rubio rounds out the 3 candidates with double digit support at 13%.

A massive appropriations bill expected to be approved by Congress would provide more than $1.6 billion to resettle illegal immigrants arriving at the U.S. border through 2018. Congress would award the massive check to the government just as the U.S. is experiencing a surge in arrivals of immigrant children at the southern border. Last week, federal agencies said they were opening two temporary shelters with 1,000 beds in South Texas to cope with the surge. A 400-bed shelter is also to be opened in Southern California. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department...

Italian police arrested two illegal migrants, who attacked soldiers on patrol outside a historic Rome Basilica as part of security arrangements for jubilee celebrations. The assailants shouted Islamic slogans and attempted to snatch the officers' weapons but were instead subdued, authorities said. The incident occurred outside the Patriarchal Basilica of St Mary Major, Rome's largest Catholic Marian church, which dates back to the fifth century and is situated mid-way between the Colosseum and the main train station.