Thread: US Senate sends Bush $31 bln security bill

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07732722.htm

US Senate sends Bush $31 bln security bill
07 Oct 2005 15:26:49 GMT

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday passed and sent to President George W. Bush a $30.8 billion bill to fund domestic security programs including airport screenings and tighter border controls.

The Senate's voice-vote approval of the fiscal 2006 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security came a day after the House of Representatives passed the compromise bill worked out between the two chambers.

The legislation would provide $1.1 billion more than the previous year and $1.2 billion more than Bush requested.

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the measure was a vast improvement over what President George W. Bush had proposed but it still shortchanged domestic emergency preparedness and response.

"Sometimes, I say to the White House, you have to spend money to save lives, and you do have to spend it here, in this country, in America," Byrd said.

Byrd noted that emergency funds approved by Congress following Hurricane Katrina were double the budget of entire Homeland Security Department.

"And yet in this bill we fail to make the investments to help us avoid future $60 billion supplementals. We should be increasing pre-disaster mitigation efforts," Byrd said.

The legislation provides $2.6 billion for the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency's response and recovery activities.

FEMA was widely criticized in Congress for a slow and ineffective reaction to Hurricane Katrina, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly in Louisiana.

The bill passed by the Senate on Friday would also fund the hiring of 1,000 more border patrol agents and the construction of more border detention facilities.

http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/A ... A3MG1.html

Homeland Security bill funds more Border Patrol agents

10/07/2005

By SUZANNE GAMBOA / Associated Press


A Homeland Security spending bill passed by Congress on Friday includes about $5.6 billion for border controls, including an additional 1,000 Border Patrol agents.

The Border Patrol agents were called for in an intelligence reform bill approved by Congress last December but were never funded. The Senate passed the bill by voice vote Friday, the House passed it Thursday 374-70.

President Bush's budget proposed an additional 200 agents. The agents would be paid for from about $1.8 billion in the bill for border security and control.

"We can't allow our borders to be a weakness as we work to protect our cities, towns and neighborhoods from terrorist threats," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said in a news release. Hutchison serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

A number of Republicans have said they want improved border enforcement before they will consider President Bush's proposal for a program that allows immigrants to work temporarily in the country.

The border money includes $3.4 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, some of which will pay for 250 criminal investigators and 100 immigrations enforcement agents. Another $41 million would pay for technology and surveillance.

An Iraq and Afghanistan spending bill passed in May paid for the hiring of 500 additional Border Patrol agents and 568 new ICE agents.

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, said the bill also includes $562 million for Customs and Border Patrol Air and Marine operations for border and airspace security, $1 billion immigration custody and detention operations

Also included in the total is $40 million to put in place the REAL ID Act, which requires states to issue drivers licenses to U.S. citizens or legal immigrants or create specially marked licenses if they are issued to people who cannot prove they are in the country legally. Several states oppose the new law because of its cost.

The bill provides $5 million for training of local and state law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws. State and local law enforcement officials are required to undergo such training before they can enforce immigration laws.

"These measures are especially important to a state like Texas that witnesses an abundance of illegal immigration and potential threats along the porous Mexico border and the Gulf Coast," DeLay said in a statement.

DeLay stepped down from his job as House majority leader after he was indicted last week by a grand jury investigating a Texas political fundraising committee he founded. He has denied wrongdoing.

Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, said the bill also funds 2,300 more detention beds, but he said another 3,750 are needed this year to meet recommendations by the 9/11 Commission that studied the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"We have always known that it doesn't matter how many Border Patrol Agents or detention beds the Congress gives permission for, it only matters how many we fund," Ortiz said.

Ortiz has been a vocal critic of U.S. policies of allowing non-Mexican immigrants to be released on their own recognizance within the country while they await deportation hearings. Many never show up for the hearings.

"I continue to believe that terrorists can and have crossed the border illegally, many of whom may have been caught and released into the general population of the U.S. merely because we didn't have the resources to hold them. That's untenable given the state of security we need today," he said.




http://www.dentonrc.com/sharedcontent/A ... AMS86.html

Border security money in Homeland Security appropriations bill

10/07/2005

Associated Press


Highlights of border security and immigration enforcement spending in the Homeland Security spending bill:

_ $1.8 billion for border security and control, including hiring 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents.

_ $562 million for Customs and Border Patrol Air and Marine Operations.

_ $41 million for border security technology, including unmanned aerial vehicles.

_ $3.4 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including to pay for 250 criminal investigators and 100 ICE agents.

_ $1 billion for immigration detention and custody operations, including 2,300 detention beds.

_ $40 million for REAL ID act grants.

_ $340 million for US-VISIT, program that fingerprints and photographs foreigners entering the country at airports, seaports and land ports of entry.

_ $103 million for Fugitive Operations teams, including adding three more teams to seek out fugitive illegal immigrants.

WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday passed and sent to President George W. Bush a $30.8 billion bill to fund domestic security programs including airport screenings

So is this the lady who had a t-shirt with bush in a profanity the other day?

Woman Is Kicked Off Airline Because Of T-shirt

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Passenger booted off Southwest Airlines flight because of expletive on shirt.

Reno, NV -- A woman whose T-shirt used an expletive to express her feelings about the nation's leaders was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight, and now she plans to sue.

Lorrie Heasley was flying from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon. Halfway through the flight, at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, she was told to turn her shirt inside out or leave.

She and her husband left and drove a rental car to their Washington state home.

Heasley says she agreed to cover up the expletive with a sweatshirt, but when she fell asleep the sweatshirt slipped.

Heasley tells the Reno-Gazette-Journal that while Americans troops are fighting for freedom in Iraq, she's forced to leave a plane because of her shirt. She says "that's not freedom."

But a Southwest spokeswoman says the airline reserves the right to deny boarding to any passenger whose clothing is "lewd, obscene or patently offensive."

Associated Press
Lee Wimbs , Special Projects Engineer
created: 10/6/2005 4:37:40 PM
Last updated: 10/6/2005 4:45:18 PM

Woman Booted Off Flight For Anti-Bush Shirt

POSTED: 12:49 pm EDT October 6, 2005

RENO -- A Washington state woman was bounced from a Southwest Airlines flight in Reno for wearing a T-shirt with the pictures of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and the F-word.

The shirt was a play on words taken from the movie "Meet the Fockers." It had the title of the movie, with the last word changed to a curse word, according to KRNV-TV in Reno.

Lorrie Heasley said she plans to press a civil-rights complaint against the airline over Tuesday's action at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. Heasley said the airline offered to let her continue her flight if she were to change her shirt, which she refused to do.

"I didn't feel that I should have to change my shirt, because we live in the United States, and it's freedom of speech and it was based on the movie 'The Fockers,' and I didn't think it should have offended anyone," Heasley told KRNV.

Southwest officials said other passengers complained about her shirt, and that rules prohibit offensive clothing.

But the American Civil Liberties Union said Heasley's T-shirt is "protected" free speech under the Constitution.

Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.thewmurchannel.com/irresi...35/detail.html

Originally Posted by rakishoner

"I didn't feel that I should have to change my shirt, because we live in the United States, and it's freedom of speech and it was based on the movie 'The Fockers,' and I didn't think it should have offended anyone," Heasley told KRNV.

Who cares, it is her right to offend any one whom she wishes. Freedom of speech! Welcome the PC America devastating the freedom of speech!

Boy imagine me, and what I have to say about the good ‘ol boys. I would be banned from the internet and telephony system!