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Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) on Thursday warned his colleagues in the Senate that people who were "wearing some form of turban" were illegally immigrating into the United States by crossing the Southern border.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to consider amendments to the bipartisan immigration reform bill, Cornyn asserted that he had "anecdotal" evidence that only 25 percent of undocumented immigrants crossing the border were caught by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"In fact, anecdotally, the border patrol last -- on Sunday and Monday were telling me, they think they maybe catch one out of every four people coming across the border," he declared. "Maybe one out of every three. And that's a problem."

The Texas senator argued that this made the case for an amendment offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), which establishes "triggers" that prohibits legalizing undocumented immigrants until the Department of Homeland Security has established "effective control" of the border for six months.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, pointed out that a 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the Border Patrol had a 82 percent effectiveness rate at catching illegal border crossings.

"I would love to see that report because I don't believe that's the case," Cornyn replied. "The problem is the effectiveness rate you referred to doesn't take into account the people that cross illegally and the department is not tracking. In other words, it doesn't take into account the people that get away, which could, according to the anecdotal reports, be two out of every three, three out of every four."

Cornyn added that he had also been told during his recent visit to the southern border in Texas that "we're not just seeing the border penetrated by people from Mexico or Central America."

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A 39-year-old Muslim cab driver who served in the Iraq war says that an executive from an aviation company accused him of being a jihadist and broke his jaw in what activists are calling a hate crime.

Mohamed A. Salim told The Washington Post that Emerald Aviation President Ed Dahlberg attacked him after he picked him up at Country Club of Fairfax in Northern Virginia at around 2 a.m. on Friday. Dahlberg had been drinking and was told that he would have to finish his open beer before getting into the cab.

Salim recorded audio of the encounter on his cell phone.

Dahlberg can be heard asking Salim, who emigrated from Somalia, to define "jihad" and then lumping him in with "radical fucking Muslims blowing people up all over the world."

"Denounce those motherfuckers now!" Dahlberg demands. "If you're a fucking Muslim flying jets into the fucking World Trade Center then fuck you. I will slice your fucking throat right now."

After Salim threatens to call 911, Dahlberg can be seen grabbing for the cell phone.

Salim said that Dahlberg left the cab, but then returned and broke his jaw before running into the woods.

Dahlberg was charged with misdemeanor assault and police are determining if charges should be elevated to a felony hate crime. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday said that medical records and the 11-minute cell phone recording were being used as evidence in the case.

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Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is a Muslim, told Rep. Peter King (R-NY) on Sunday that he was making a mistake with calls to profile the Islamic community in the United States because similar actions in the past had created a "national stain" on the country.

NBC host David Gregory noted in a Sunday interview with both congressmen that King had insisted to the National Review that law enforcement should not be "bound by political correctness" after two Muslim men with a Chechen background were accused of carrying out bombings at the Boston Marathon.

"Absolutely," King agreed. "What the NYPD is doing in New York with a thousand police officers focusing on this issue, knowing where the threat is coming from. Now, most Muslims are outstanding people, but the threat is coming from the Muslim community."

"You're a Muslim," Gregory pointed out to Ellison. "This concerns you on civil libertarian grounds and other areas."

"Well, I'm an American," Ellison replied. "And I'm concerned about national safety -- public safety -- just like everyone is. But I think it's ineffective law enforcement to go after a particular community. I think that what we need to do is look at behavior and follow those needs where they would lead."

"Once you start saying, we're going to dragnet or surveil a community, what you do is you ignore dangerous threats that are not in that community, and you go after people who don't have anything to do with it," he added, noting that the recent poison ricin letters sent to President Barack Obama and other elected officials were terrorist attacks that had not come from the Muslim community.

"And remember, we went after one community in World War II. And the Japanese internment is a nation stain on our country. And we are still apologizing for it."

King interrupted: "No one is talking about internment! We are talking about following the Constitution."

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Former President George W. Bush openly wept while talking about some of the biggest disasters of his tenure at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on Thursday.

At the conclusion of his speech, Bush mentioned "the people of New Orleans who made homemade boats to rescue their neighbors during the floods" caused by Hurricane Katrina and "the servicemembers who laid down their lives to keep our country safe" during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"I dedicate this library with an unshakable faith in the future of our country," he said. "It was the honor of a lifetime to lead a country as brave and as noble as the United States."

At that point, the 43rd president began to get choked up.

"Whatever challenges come before us, I will always believe our nation's best days lie ahead," Bush concluded, struggling to add, "God bless."

With a wink and a tear, the former president exited the stage. And then in response to the audience's standing ovation, Bush wiped his eyes, cocked his head to the side, smiled and waved.

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Bill Maher had a warning for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, who seems all too willing to push his luck with the United States given the fact that our country has been addicted to war for far too long. Maher also told his audience that it's time that we "start defining peace as strength" instead:

In the last part of his weekly “New Rules” segment, Maher lambasted “Kim Jong Pugsley of North Korea” for his threats of war with the U.S. and the West.

“Have you seen a North Korean rocket test?” he asked. “They don’t even look like real rockets. They look more like that thing the Russian kosmonauts were in when they crashed on to ‘Gilligan’s Island.’”

No, he said, the real threat here is the war-mongering Americans who are looking for “any excuse to ramp up the war machine again.” [...]

“Just like we’re the gun country,” he said. “Come on, we’re the war people. We don’t need a lot of encouragement. Have you ever met John McCain? Offering to go to war with the U.S. is like offering to go out to drinks with Lindsay Lohan. We’re already in the car.”

“Just in my lifetime, we’ve invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again,” he said. “That’s when you know you’re war-mongers, when some countries are coming up twice.”

“At some point, don’t you have to look in the mirror,” he asked, “and say ‘Maybe it’s me?’”

“America needs to start defining peace as strength,” he said. “Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot.”

“And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”

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Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday explained to his viewers that "sophisticated" Americans receive fewer miracles because they learned "things that says God isn’t real," like evolution.

On Monday's episode of CBN's The 700 Club, Robertson responded to a viewer who wanted to know why "amazing miracles (people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking) happen with great frequency in places like Africa, and not here in the USA?"

"People overseas didn't go to Ivy League schools," the TV preacher said, laughing. "We're so sophisticated, we think we've got everything figured out. We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn't real."

"We have been inundated with skepticism and secularism," he continued. "And overseas, they're simple, humble. You tell 'em God loves 'em and they say, 'Okay, he loves me.' You say God will do miracles and they say, 'Okay, we believe him.'"

"And that's what God's looking for. That's why they have miracles."

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

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A Pentecostal bishop on Sunday told a rabbi and an imam that the U.S. was a "Christian nation" that was bridging religious divisions because Christians would "let" other faiths worship and "we're not going to persecute you."

Speaking to a interfaith panel on CBS News, Hope Christian Church Pastor Harry R. Jackson responded to Rabbi David Wolpe, who said that the Americans should "celebrate difference" because "God is greater than any religious tradition."

"In deference to the Christian foundation of this nation, it is that foundation that allows us freedom," Jackson explained. "I don't see this diversity in other places. So to the credit of our Christian foundation of this nation, this freedom we're experiencing is because folks came and said, 'We believe this is to be a Christian nation. We feel like we've been persecuted in the places we came from, and we're going to intentionally let this nation be founded in a way that if you come here and you're Islamic and you come here and you're Jewish, we're not going to persecute you.'"

"Although we don't worship as Jewish people, we're going to let this country be guided in a place where there's going to be liberty and freedom or worship. I feel we'd be remiss if we act like some other set of countries has operated in this way."

Imam Suhaib Webb, however, reminded Jackson that Christians persecuted Christians during the early days of the United States, while Jews and Muslims lived together in Harmony in Spain.

"You're saying I'm wrong that -- that foundation doesn't bring us to this point?" Jackson asked.

"I don't know if that was foundational or negotiated would be a better word for it," Webb pointed out.

"Negotiated by who?" Jackson replied. "Negotiated with Christians by Christians."

"Or by deists as well," Webb added. "I mean, I think we need to be really careful."

"We have strong disagreements," Jackson grumbled.

"But we still love each other," Webb said.

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Rachel Maddow highlighted, in real time, what CNN and MSNBC were showing versus what Fox News decided was relevant (repealing the health care law) when President Obama makes his first trip to Israel. The results were eye-opening, surreal even. At the very moment Obama was receiving the highest honor Israel can bestow, Fox News was quite literally declaring him an enemy of the state.

Text via Egberto Willies' blog:

After that big speech that was so well received by that huge Israeli audience in Jerusalem, President Obama was honored at a state dinner. He was awarded the Israeli Medal Of Distinction which is the highest honor a civilian can receive in Israel. He is the first sitting President to ever receive this award. Israeli President Simon Peres said to President Obama quote “The people of Israel are particularly move by your unforgettable contribution to their security”. He called President Obama, Dear Barack.

So that was what was happening live in Israel. CNN and MSNBC are carrying it live showing the President of the United States receiving this medal at this big state dinner in a foreign country… Fox News channel however is pretending like it is not happening. They’re talking about repealing Obamacare…. We are all watching as the Israeli president is saying to President Obama, “I know that you would not stop striving for a better world. What was running on Fox News instead was a commercial for their new special on President Obama as an enemy of Israel…

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A Republican congressman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan on Sunday looked back at the Iraq war and declared that it was a "just and noble war."

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for his views on the war 10 years after the U.S. invaded.

"The Iraq war noble and just war," the Arkansas Republican declared. "I would say it was worth it, but it's also a little too soon to tell because there's nothing ever certain in human affairs."

"But if you look at the accomplishments of our troops in Iraq, they deposed an evil tyrant who was an aggressive international dictator," Cotton continued. "He'd invaded across two boundaries. He had demonstrated the ability and the will to use weapons of mass destruction. He was believed by every Western government -- including senior high-ranking officials in President Obama's cabinet right now -- to be developing new weapons, who was in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions."

"But under those conditions, I think as I said, it was a just and noble war."

Many in Congress, however, now look back at the Iraq war as a mistake because President George W. Bush's administration used false information about weapons of mass destruction as a "pretext" to invade.

"You remember World War II, Korea, all the major wars of this nation," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said recently. "This is one that slips into the background, and people are comfortable with it slipping into the background. I think the legacy of this is always going to be that it was a mistake, that it was pre-emptive, that it wasn't based on real information, and that the whole struggle could have been handled differently."

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The Canadian Foreign Minister took to the floor of the House of Commons yesterday and vowed that a Zombie Apocalypse will never happen under his watch. Security exercises based on zombie attacks have been run in Quebec, British Columbia, and the United States. Canadians will no doubt be relieved to know that in the case of attack our governments are taking this matter seriously.

via The National Post

In a bizarre exchange in a place known for bizarre exchanges, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the House of Commons Wednesday that “Canada will never be a safe haven for zombies.”

“I want to assure this member and all Canadians that I am dead-icated to ensuring that this never happens,” Baird said.

Baird was responding to a question from NDP MP Pat Martin (who else, really?) who asked if Canada is working with the U.S. to ensure that its citizens don’t suffer from a case of the zombie apocalypse.

“I don’t need to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that zombies don’t don’t recognize borders and that a zombie invasion in the United States can easily turn into a continent-wide pandemic if it is not contained,” Martin said to chuckles and eventually cheers.

“So on behalf of concerned Canadians everywhere, I want to ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs, is he working with his American counterparts to develop an international zombie strategy so that a zombie invasion does not turn into a zombie apocalypse?”