Fox News       sc    Health officials warn of mercury in skin cream from Mexico California health officials sent out a medical alert earlier this month after tracing the mercury poisoning of a 39-year-old Alameda County woman to an illegal skin-lightening cream smuggled in from Mexico. -- Health investigators are currently going undercover in some San Francisco Bay Area ethnic communities to root out the foreign-made products whose pigment-busting ingredient can have damaging health effects...

Baltimore Sun        Feds to check immigration status of people arrested in city    A controversial program that lets U.S. immigration officials check the citizenship status of people who have been arrested is being expanded to include Baltimore despite objections from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and immigrant advocates. -- The Secure Communities program, which began in 2008 and is being phased in nationwide, lets federal immigration officials review fingerprints collected...

Los Angeles Times        Crackpot L.A.P.D. Chief says illegals should get driver's licenses  Wading into a politically charged debate, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck [clown shown at left] said California should issue driver's licenses to illegal [aliens]. -- The chief becomes one of the most prominent local figures to support the idea and his stance is certain to further inflame critics who are already angry at Beck's efforts to liberalize the rules on how his officers impound the cars of unlicensed drivers... [MEChA Boy Villaraigosa agrees]

National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers   Disturbing photos       Latest NAFBPO update from south of the border    Donato Guerra, Mich., Mex. -- A working farm here hid rooms behind bales of hay and straw where methamphetamine was made. Authorities seized 3.6 tons of meth, ready to be made into crystal. The farm had a plowed field, animals including egg-producing chickens, cows, oxen and sheep. It was located in a mountainous region, surrounded by pines...

Roger Arnoff -- GOPUSA.com      It's time to hold the Obama regime accountable    While the mainstream media are still overwhelmingly intent on seeing Barack Obama reelected as President, a number of journalists and news organizations are apparently having second thoughts. Or at least they are willing to examine the claims and representations that the Obama administration continues to put forth. This has been the surprising case regarding Obama's State of the Union address in late January...

David North -- Center for Immigration Studies        Two hidden themes at the recent house immigration hearing    There were two underlying themes at a recent House Immigration Subcommittee hearing that deserve a little more attention. -- The hearing, on February 15, dealt with the explosive report by the Acting Inspector General of DHS, Charles K. Edwards, in which he explored the extent to which USCIS, during the Obama administration, has pushed rank-and-file staff members to approve marginal applications for immigration benefits...

American Border Patrol        Photo of the day    Cameraman Leonardo Pallejh and reporter Nick Purdon prepare to fly the border with Glenn Spencer of American Border Patrol. Leo and Nick represent the Canadian Broadcasting Company. They are in Arizona to cover the Republican debate. They visited ABP to give their viewers a taste of what is happening on the border...

Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin      Open-borders crowd tosses tantrum at state capitol    Connecticut [illegal alien "rights" zealots] rallied at the state Capitol against the federal Secure Communities program, which shares arrestee fingerprints with the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. -- CT Students for a Dream, Connecticut Center for a New Economy and other advocacy groups joined Wednesday to present Gov. Dannel P. Malloy with a letter urging him to delay the program's implementation...

CBS-TV -- Tampa      sc    Here's Your "Change": Gas nearly $6 at the pump   Talk about pain at the pump! Some Florida drivers are spending nearly $6 a gallon to fill up their gas tanks. -- According to GasBuddy.com, motorists are shelling out $5.89 for a gallon of regular gas at a Shell station in Lake Buena Vista, topping out at $5.99 a gallon for premium. It doesn't get better at a Suncoast Energy station in Orlando, where drivers are paying $5.79 for a gallon of regular...

Jeff Poor -- Daily Caller        Brock responds to Daily Caller's Media Matters exposé, sort of On Tuesday's broadcast of MSNBC host Ed Schultz's radio show, Media Matters for America founder David Brock finally broke his silence about The Daily Caller's investigative series on the liberal media watchdog organization's tactics. -- Brock, promoting his book "The Fox Effect," questioned the timing of the series and accused Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson, others at The Daily Caller...

Madison Ruppert -- The Intel Hub        Obama fights to keep unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping powers  So much for change. The Obama administration is continuing their efforts to go back on every single campaign promise and beyond all odds make themselves look even worse than the administration of George W. Bush. -- Personally, I didn't think such a thing was possible but with the extrajudicial killing of Americans, refusal to explain why they think they can engage in such activities...

Michelle Malkin -- GOPUSA.com        The high priests of eco-destruction    Rick Santorum is right. Pushing back against Democrats' attempts to frame him as a religious menace, the GOP presidential candidate forcefully turned the tables on the White House: "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones." -- Scrutiny of the White House anti-science brigade couldn't come at a better time...

Economic Collapse Blog       10 signs that America is decomposing right in front of our eyes The decay of society is so much harder to quantify than economic decline is. The government keeps lots of statistics on things like unemployment and inflation, but it really does not keep track of how sick and twisted people are becoming. Most of us recognize that the character of the American people has changed dramatically over the decades, but unlike the national debt, you can't easily point to a chart...

KPCC -- Pasadena, Calif.       Terminated illegals have audacity to demand jobs back  Two months after Pomona College fired 17 [illegal aliens], students and kitchen workers are still demanding their old jobs back and hoping to start a union. -- Pomona College President David Oxtoby has spent a lot of time defending the firings, but he has always insisted he was only following the law. -- "The rules, the laws are pretty straightforward and strict," he said, sitting in his campus office...

Mac Slavo -- SHTFPlan.com        Obama initiative may try end run around Second Amendment  With over 10 million guns sold in the United States in 2011, violent crime rising significantly as the economic crisis worsens, and self defense killings sky rocketing, it's becoming increasingly unpopular for politicians to call for restrictions on firearms. If anything, even though government officials in states like Illinois and New Jersey are attempting to outlaw guns completely, the public outcry has been deafening...

Cliff Kinkaid -- Family Security Matters        Glenn Beck and the death of free speech    Fox News has aired several interviews with Daily Caller editors and reporters on the influence of Media Matters, the Soros-funded left-wing attack machine. A series of articles in The Daily Caller sheds new light on the operations of the group, which masquerades as a non-profit but has partisan political ties to the Obama White House and the Democratic Party...

Lauren Fox -- US News & World Report       Americans' satisfaction almost as low as it was under Carter    It's February, nine months before a presidential election, and only 22 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going. Voters haven't been this unhappy with the country since George H.W. Bush's presidency, when only 21 percent of Americans reported being happy with the country's direction. And before that, the lowest approval rating was 19 percent during Jimmy Carter's first term...

Brenda Walker -- VDare.com        Criminal illegal alien brothers afflict Milford, Massachusetts    Milford, Massachusetts has already suffered too much illegal alien violence with the dragging death of young Matthew Denice at the hands of a lawbreaking Ecuadoran, Nikolas Guaman. Now the accused killer's brother has been arrested for stabbing another man. -- Despite a "severe cutting," the victim is expected to survive, no thanks to David Segundo Dutan Guaman, who knifed the guy at a party...

McAllen (Texas) Monitor        87 illegals detained in Alamo investigation    Federal agents took 87 illegal [aliens] into custody at a stash house on Monday. --U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement discovered the immigrants following five traffic stops that netted six arrests in the Alamo area, a criminal complaint states. That led to a stash house where agents found 74 illegal [aliens]. -- In all, agents detained 87 illegal [aliens] as part of the investigation, including six criminal suspects...

Robert M. McDonnell -- Wall Street Journal        The U.N. threat to Internet freedom    On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet"...

Dave Gibson -- The Examiner        Obama ending immigration enforcement program known as 287(g) The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it will no longer train local law enforcement to check the immigration status of those they arrest, identifying illegal aliens for detention and deportation. -- The program, known as 287(g) allows police to investigate a suspect’s immigration status after an arrest had been made for any offense and has been highly effective in identifying criminal aliens at the local level...

Austin Bay -- Strategy Page        Mexico's 2012 Election: A drug lord reconquista?    Last month, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper told the U.S. Senate that "Mexico's government remains committed to fighting the country's drug cartels and enacting reforms aimed at strengthening the rule of law." -- Credit the intelligence director with providing a crisp and public description of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's two-pronged cartel war strategy: 1) fight and 2) reform...

My Fox Boston        Immigration Reform: Push for Secure Communities     The illegal immigration debate is heating up again following the arrest of a suspected illegal [alien] in Milford for a stabbing. -- His name is David Guaman, who is the brother of Nicolas Guaman, another suspected illegal who's been charged with hitting Matthew Denice with his pickup truck and dragging him to his death. -- Police say Nicolas Guaman was driving drunk...

Dave Gibson -- The Examiner       El Paso woman hit by bullet from Juarez shootout    On Tuesday, a 48-year-old woman was struck in the leg while walking in downtown El Paso with a bullet fired on the other side of the border. -- According to Juarez police spokesman Adrian Sanchez, around 11:00 a.m., a shootout erupted between a gang of carjackers and police officers. -- The woman was shot at this same time. -- Fortunately, the woman's injuries were not life-threatening...

Press Release        Arizona border group on "Border Battles" just before debate    Hereford, Az. -- Today, just before the Republican debate, the Outdoor Channel's "Border Battles" will feature the work of Glenn Spencer and American Border Patrol, a non-governmental Arizona organization. The segment, called "The Crusader," will first air at 7 p.m. ET - one hour before CNN's coverage of the Republican debate held at Mesa, Arizona...

Rosella Age -- Daily Caller        Obama regime called derelict on immigration policy     While the numbers of illegal [aliens] living in the U.S. have leveled off during the Obama presidency, suspicion is rising about whether the president is pandering to Latinos to attract their votes in November. -- 'Despite the claims of the Obama administration that they've been tough on illegal immigration and that the border is more secure than ever,' Center for Immigration Studies director of policy studies...