Free Republic

It's widely been reported that illegal aliens comprise upwards of 27 percent of the U.S. prison and jail population. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection--two agencies within the Department of Homeland Security--claim in several reports that they've apprehended over 100,000 criminal aliens whose offenses go far beyond violation of immigration laws and regulations. That figure doesn't include llegal aliens arrested and incarcerated in state and local penal institutions. Sadly, only about 25 percent of expenses for imprisoning criminal aliens is reimbursed by the federal government to state and local governments. This creates a hardship for taxpayers in...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Without much fanfare, the House of Representatives last week voted to give members of Congress yet another pay raise, as it has done almost every year for nearly a decade. For some reason, our elected officials decided against holding a news conference. Maybe that's because they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that they raise their own salaries almost every year while refusing to raise the pay of our lowest-paid workers.