Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is David Cho and I’m undocumented.

I will be a senior studying International Economics and Korean at UCLA this upcoming Fall. While most of my friends will enter the workplace after graduation, I will not be able to even put my name down on a job application because of my status. I’m a hardworking student with a 3.6 GPA and I am the first Korean and actually the first undocumented student to ever become the conductor, the drum major of the UCLA Marching Band in UCLA history.

Hillary Clinton, Famous for Lying about Who is “Under Fire,” SAYS Someone Is, Conveniently — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

See what happens when you have college educated stooges running our off-shore drilling.

One of the canards we hear about immigration reform is that before we can work on the issues of the 12 million or so informal immigrants inside the United States we have to secure the border. This seems imminently reasonable, as long as one does not dig too deeply into what that means. It is a nice, simple and clearly intelligible idea, “Secure Our Borders”. Let’s talk a little bit about what that would actually mean.

The southern border of the United States is 1,969 miles long. The northern border is 1,538 miles long. These are just the land borders of course, the shoreline on the East and West coasts are bigger still. If we are to “secure the border!” then we have to guard, just on land more than 3,400 miles. These miles, both North and South snake through some very rough country, but they also cut through ranches and Native American nation reservations. The line includes cities and towns which have grown up on the border to take advantage of the fact of the line between nations.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

The remoteness of the war in Iraq “produces a feeling of isolation” among families who have lost loved ones in the war, says Ami Neiberger-Miller, spokesperson for TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Programme for Survivors, a non-profit independent organisation of the military that provides grief support to families.

On Mar. 10, TAPS estimated that the 5,398 U.S military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan had left 3,779 children without a parent, while 2,669 spouses had been widowed.

The organisation reported that 10,796 parents had lost a child and 4,264 siblings had lost a brother or sister.

Rachel Maddow just broke news that North Korean diplomats have been given permission to meet with Gov. Bill Richardson in New Mexico.

American Journalists Held in N.Korea Pardoned and Will be Freed