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WASHINGTON - Forgers are making tens of millions, and possibly billions, of dollars selling counterfeit Social Security cards, driver's licenses, immigrant registration cards and other papers to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. The dominant forgery-and-distribution network in the United States is allegedly controlled by the Castorena family, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say. Its members emigrated from Mexico in the late 1980s and have used their printing skills and business acumen to capture a big piece of the booming industry. Only trained experts can spot the fakes, and the Castorena Family Organization - or CFO, as officials call...

WASHINGTON - Muslim-Americans trying to re-enter the United States after international travel should record instances in which they're singled out as security risks, a civil rights group said Tuesday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations asked traveling Muslims to record any examples of excessive security checks or fingerprinting when returning from a religious conference in Canada this weekend or from the annual hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, next month. Last year, three dozen Muslim-American men and women were searched, questioned, fingerprinted and photographed without explanation at two western New York border crossings after returning from a from an Islamic conference in...

The Instruction tacitly dismisses the tendentious claims that homosexuality is innate, or unchangeable, or changeable only in rare circumstances. While it acknowledges the disorder can be deep-seated in some persons, it maintains that it may also be just an adolescent hang-up one can leave behind. Here the Church's moral wisdom rescues her from the errors of politicized academic fashion. To treat adult homosexuality (except in rare cases) as a self-indulgent prolongation of juvenile weakness and infatuation may rattle some gay ideologues, but it's more realistic and more charitable than the standard APA account. In summary form, the Church is saying,...

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. employees union has criticized Secretary-General Kofi Annan for retaining his former chief-of-staff as an adviser despite accusations the aide authorized shredding three years of files on the corrupt oil-for-food program for Iraq. The Independent Inquiry Committee led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker criticized Iqbal Riza for giving approval to shred the documents on April 22, 2004 — a day after the U.N. Security Council authorized an investigation into the oil-for-food program. A resolution adopted by the Staff Council, the union's executive, and obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, said keeping Riza as a...

ALI BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- Photographers here are proving that a picture is truly worth a thousand words in fighting the war on terrorism. “Our images tell the military story to the American public, our children and their children, and beyond,” said Master Sgt. Maurice Hessel, base multimedia center manager and still photographer. “Military photographers have had a tremendous impact on history and document the horrors of war,” said Sergeant Hessel, who is deployed from McConnell Air Force Base, Kan. “The men and women of the U.S. military are considered heroes in the eyes of most Americans, and I believe...

UNITED NATIONS - History's largest gathering of world leaders fell far short Friday of completing the major changes U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought to fight poverty, terrorism and human rights abuses — but the leaders took a first step. Their approval of a modest document, which commits governments to achieving U.N. goals to combat poverty and creates a commission to help move countries from war to peace, came alongside important developments in other areas. Meetings on the sidelines of the summit marking the United Nations' 60th anniversary produced rare Arab-Israeli contacts, further talks on Iran's nuclear ambitions and a new...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down document on poverty, human rights and U.N. reform for world leaders to approve at a summit this week, after shedding many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's most ambitious goals during weeks of bitter debate. The compromise 35-page document is supposed to launch a major reform of the United Nations itself and galvanize efforts to ease global poverty. But to reach a consensus, most of the text's details were gutted in favor of abstract language. A definition of terrorism and details on how to replace the discredited U.N. Commission...

The Mexican national indicted by a federal grand jury in a multimillion-dollar scheme to distribute millions of phony identification documents to illegal aliens in the United States is, according to authorities, a leader of a crime syndicate that specializes in document fraud. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who sought the indictment after a lengthy investigation, said millions of phony documents were sent to illegal aliens in the United States in the past five years, including 3 million that were shipped to the Los Angeles area alone. The documents were available on the street for $80 to $300, authorities...

COVINGTON, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen put a halt Friday to document shredding in the state personnel department after learning that files were destroyed involving sexual harassment investigations of two men he appointed. The governor ordered the move until a new law can be passed to address the handling of such documents. The order requires the agency "to retain all investigative records, including those related to workplace harassment," said his spokeswoman, Lydia Lenker. The state's previous practice was meant to "protect people who would come forward," the governor said during an appearance in Covington, explaining that department investigators...

The American Civil Liberties Union has been shredding some documents over the repeated objections of its records manager and in conflict with its longstanding policies on the preservation and disposal of records. The matter has fueled a dispute at the organization over internal operations, one of several such debates over the last couple of years, and has reignited questions over whether the A.C.L.U.'s own practices are consistent with its public positions. The organization has generally advocated for strong policies on record retention and benefited from them, most recently obtaining and publicizing documents from the government about prisoners at Guantánamo Bay,...

Many judges these days like to refer to the Constitution of the United States as a "living, breathing document", implying that its text is designed to be flexible. It is not. The Constitution is a set of rules, and like any other set of rules, it is meant to be strict and uncompromising. Of course, the Constitution can be modified through the amendment process, but once ratified, any amendment becomes like the rest of the Constitution; rigid. And while any amendment may be repealed, as was the case with the 18th Amendment (The Prohibition Act), until that happens, it is...

I turned my eyes away from "In God We Trust," engraved deeply in the stone above the Speaker's chair, and walked under the direct stone gaze of Moses as I left the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives. I walked through statuary hall in the U.S. Capitol, where Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were among the first presidents to attend regular church services. The House chaplain had given the opening prayer to start the legislative day and our member's chapel in the Capitol was open for morning meditation as I walked briskly across the Capitol grounds to the Supreme...

Pentagon Document: U.S. Paid Pro-Saddam Figures, Chinese and French Charles R. Smith Monday, Feb 28, 2005 Millions Missing – French, Chinese Companies Involved Newly released Pentagon documents show that a former member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle has resurfaced inside the new Iraqi government, bringing charges of corruption, bribery and bid-rigging. The documents also indicate that many firms – including French and Chinese ones that had cozy relationship's with Saddam's regime – continue to reap millions in contracts from Iraq's new governing authorities. As a result, millions of U.S. aid dollars and billions in Iraqi government funds have disappeared in...

Sandy Burglar? Thursday January 13, 7:00 pm ET Ibd Scandal: Anyone remember Sandy Berger? To the media, the former national security adviser who might have lifted sensitive documents is a forgotten man. Not entirely forgotten, though. A couple of media outlets -- the New York Post and Fox News -- say the criminal probe of the Berger case is in front of a federal grand jury. But then, no one would ever mistake the Post or Fox with being part of the establishment media. As Washington scandals go, the Berger case had a short shelf life. It was in the...

The respected columnist Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald has gotten hold of a pretty seamy secret document showing an emerging alliance between South America and the Arab League. The 28-page draft document for a May 10-11 summit in Brazil will endorse Arab terrorism and condemn Israel. It would also 'study' the 'root causes' of terrorism, and 'distinguish' the kinds of terrorism they justify and the kinds they can condemn without consequence. We all well know what that means. Oppenheimer writes: My conclusion: South American countries are playing with fire by extending the focus of the summit to Middle Eastern...

My email to the FCC - fccinfo@fcc.gov - on 9/22/04 Where is the FCC on CBS? CBS News is investigating ITSELF on felonious behavior? Isn't this the job of the FCC? What if, after three months, CBS finds NOTHING? Is that when the FCC kicks in? This issue should be front and center at any and all staff meetings. No FCC investigation will be noticed - by everyone on the Internet. I fully expect a response from you within one day. Thanks for your help. The FCC responds 10/06/04 - You are receiving this email in response to your inquiry...

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com , show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders. One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support...

"Lockhart, the second Kerry ally to confirm contact with Burkett, said he made the call at the suggestion of CBS producer Mary Mapes. . . Yesterday's action comes 12 days after CBS reported that Mapes had obtained memos from the files of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian..."

A 1973 email from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's Yahoo! email address to Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges seems to confirm the authenticity of the disputed Bush National Guard documents, according to CBS News and Dan Rather. New York, Sept. 19, 2004 (CBS/Pair o' D News) CBS News has obtained an email written from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, George W. Bush's Commander in the Texas Air National Guard, to Major General Bobby Hodges, Killian's immediate superior, which tends to confirm the authenticity of disputed documents that CBS News obtained from Killian's personal file earlier this month. The email, sent on August 24,...

In an article Burkett wrote for the Internet last year he compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon as one of "the three small men" who sought to rule through tyranny. "Three small men who wanted to conquer and vanquish," Burkett wrote. Burkett confirmed authorship of that article in the February Chronicle interview.