Amid a budget crisis that’s negatively impacted public education across the country, the number of illegal immigrants benefitting from discounted tuition at colleges and universities in Texas continues rising, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in the last few years.

With the blessing of Republican Governor Rick Perry, The Lone Star State offers illegal aliens who graduate from Texas high schools heavily discounted tuition at any of the state’s public universities or two-year community colleges. The costly perk is supposed to be reserved for U.S. citizens or legal residents who live in the state. 

Instead, thousands of illegal aliens annually receive the benefit as well as other taxpayer-funded financial aid and the exorbitant tab keeps growing. Texas has awarded nearly $34 million in state and institutional financial aid to illegal immigrants in the last four years alone, according to a Dallas newspaper report that quotes figures from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Texas education officials continue the practice even though the Attorney General ruled last year that giving illegal immigrants discounted public college tuition is not legal. In an opinion published last June, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott stated that allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates breaks federal law.

Ironically, the undocumented students who obtain a U.S.-subsidized college degree can’t work in the country because of their immigration status. This hasn’t stopped a handful of states from investing in their publicly-financed educations, however. Led by Texas in 2001, nine other states have laws granting illegal aliens discounted tuition at public institutions of higher education. 

Among them are California, Utah, Kansas, Washington, New York and Maryland. The practice has been legally challenged in several states, including Texas and California. Filed in December, the Texas lawsuit asserts that illegal immigrants are not eligible for federal aid such as Pell Grants. 

In California a group of out-of-state American students argued that the Golden State’s public college system violates the law by charging them higher tuition and fees than undocumented immigrants. A California appellate court ruled in favor of the American students and the case is pending before the sate Supreme Court.

At least three states—Georgia, Oklahoma and Arizona—have solved the contentious issue by creating policies banning discounted tuition for illegal aliens at public schools. 

A corrupt Detroit councilwoman married to a prominent congressman with a $174,000 annual salary will use a taxpayer-financed attorney to appeal her jail sentence, even though her guilty plea waives the right to contest it.

Jail-bound Monica Conyers, wife of the famed Michigan Democrat (John Conyers) who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, claims to be indigent and unable to afford a lawyer to represent her in the appeal she promised in a federal court document not to file. Last week a federal judge sentenced Conyers to three years in prison and two years of probation for bribery.

Months earlier Conyers admitted taking bribes from a developer to change her vote on a multi million-dollar city contract to haul and treat the city’s sewage sludge. After vehement denials and public assurances of her innocence, Conyers pleaded guilty only because the FBI had electronic surveillance evidence of her taking cash bribes in fast-food parking lots. 

The developer had already pleaded guilty in federal court to paying Conyers more than $6,000 in bribes and to using a courier on four separate occasions to the deliver the money. The plea agreement signed by the disgraced councilwoman in June specifically says that if the sentence imposed falls at 60 months or less, “defendant waives any right to appeal her conviction or sentence.” 

Regardless, the public will finance the legal defense of a notoriously unscrupulous politician who has no grounds for an appeal. Although her husband has made six figures as a federal lawmaker for several decades, the bribed councilwoman signed an affidavit declaring that she can’t afford a lawyer because she has no money. 

Detroit’s largest newspaper, which has thoroughly covered the Conyers scandal, asks: How could she be married to one of the longest tenured members of congress and unable to afford counsel? The veteran legislator, who has been embroiled in a few public scandals of his own, refuses to comment on his wife’s sudden indigence or who financed the private attorney that represented her for more than a year. 

Could it be that Detroit’s acclaimed political power couple became estranged in the last few days? At last week’s sentencing Conyers invoked her husband and son in court to try to convince the judge not to send her to jail, pointing out that the “older man” and 14-year-old boy need her. Now the old guy with the lucrative salary refuses to pay her legal fees. 

The United States has overwhelmingly dominated Haiti earthquake recovery efforts yet President Obama has banned the American flag from flying in the dilapidated island to avoid looking like an occupation force even as other nation’s proudly wave theirs. 

In the Obama Administration outrage du jour, Old Glory has been shelved to appease left-wing liberals who early on accused the U.S. of occupying Haiti in the aftermath of the deadly January disaster. The U.S. has sent more money (tens of millions of dollars), search-and-rescue crews, medical personnel, life-saving supplies and sophisticated medical equipment than any other nation.

Americans have also led the effort to maintain a semblance of civility in the distressed island, where looting and violence were prevalent in the earthquake’s aftermath, by deploying the largest military force of any other nation. The western hemisphere’s poorest country, Haiti has long been a hotbed of crime and the tremor’s chaos only made things worse. 

While U.S. forces—around 12,000 in total—have saved the day, they can’t display the nation’s flag at their military compound like other countries. France's tricolor, Britain's Union Jack and even Croatia's coat of arms flap in the breeze, a national newspaper reveals, but the Stars and Stripes is prohibited by our beloved commander-in-chief who doesn’t want to give Haiti the wrong idea. 

The official explanation from camp Obama this week is that the U.S. is not in Haiti as an occupation force, but rather as an “international partner” committed to supporting its government on the road to recovery. No comment on why other countries, which have contributed far less to the recovery effort, are dignifiedly waving their flag. 

This story was first reported last week by a military publication (Army Times) that said the U.S. flag is nowhere in sight at the Port-au-Prince airport or any other forward operating bases because of concerns over “host nation sensitivities.” In the piece, the Army colonel in charge of Haitian operations diplomatically explains his marching orders from the White House—“We are respectful as the invited guests of the Government of Haiti”—and stresses that U.S. forces “proudly wear an American flag” on their right sleeve.

It’s not enough, according to insulted military veterans and those currently serving. In a letter to the Army colonel in charge in Haiti, a veteran who served on numerous disaster relief missions says that the U.S. flag was always flown for two reasons; to remind the people they were helping who came to their rescue and pride.

Government agencies keep finding excuses to keep an alarming number of public records secret as President Obama sits idly watching his promise of unprecedented transparency repeatedly mocked. 

The commander-in-chief’s open-government guarantee has turned out to be a big joke that has actually led to more secrecy than under the Bush Administration. Federal agencies have increasingly used “legal exemptions” to withhold information that should probably be made public, according to an analysis conducted by a national news organization. 

The probe examined public records requests from more than a dozen federal agencies—including the Federal Reserve Board, Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security, Transportation and Treasury—during a two-year period to compare statistics from the Bush and Obama administrations. 

In Obama’s first year in office, major government agencies abused legitimate exemptions to withhold information tens of thousands of times more often than during George W. Bush’s final year, according to the findings. The federal agencies rejected public records requests 312,683 times in 2008—Bush’s last year—compared to 466,872 in 2009, Obama’s first in the White House.  

The most common exemption cited is one that lets the government hide records that detail “internal decision-making.” Because this particular excuse can be vague, broad and downright bogus, Obama specifically ordered agencies to cease using it so frequently and the Justice Department followed up by reminding agencies that disclosing such records is “fully consistent with the purpose” of a federal law intended to keep government accountable to the public.

Statistics prove that the executive directive and Justice Department order have been widely ignored because it’s the most frequently used excuse by government officials who deny public records requests. Major agencies cited that particular exemption at least 70,779 times during 2009 compared to 47,395 during Bush’s final year. 

A couple of examples involve the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency refused to provide records involving incidents of collisions between airplanes and birds as well as records related to its approval of a controversial publicity stunt involving an Air Force One flyover of New York City that cause panic among residents.

Evidently, Obama’s pledge to provide Americans with “transparency like you’ve never seen before” has instead turned out to be a level of government secrecy never before seen. 

A crooked Louisiana federal judge who took bribes from lawyers to pay off gambling debts has become the 15th in the nation’s history to be impeached by the House of Representatives for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Removing a federal judge from his or her lifetime position is a tough feat that requires overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing yet this case was a virtual slam dunk. For years U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Portreous took money and valuable gifts from attorneys with cases before him and he hid assets, filed for bankruptcy under a bogus name and defied a bankruptcy court’s order relating to credit. 

His many transgressions were discovered during an FBI investigation of state judges in New Orleans’s Jefferson Parish, where Portreous served until Bill Clinton named him to the federal bench in 1994. During a lengthy criminal probe, Porteous offered incriminating information relating to the broad judicial misconduct investigation and he was subsequently suspended from hearing cases though he continues collecting his $174,000 annual salary.

In November Porteous sued the congressional task force that just impeached him in a desperate effort to block it from removing him, alleging that the committee illegally used testimony he gave under a promise of immunity to make a case for his ouster. Prosecutors agree not to use immunized testimony against defendants but the deal doesn't effect impeachment proceedings which are conducted by federal legislators.

In its unanimous decision to impeach Porteous this week the House approved four articles accusing the shady judge of taking money, meals and other expensive gifts from lawyers and a bail bond company and of making false statements in his personal bankruptcy filing. The House Judiciary Committee said that although much of the judge's "improper conduct" occurred when he was a state judge, he had an obligation to disclose his actions during his confirmation process in 1994 when Clinton nominated him as to the federal bench. The Judiciary Committee found that Porteous had engaged "in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with the trust placed in him as a federal judge."

The matter will go to the Senate for a trial, which will be conducted by a 12-member committee that will recommend whether to remove Porteous from office. It would take a two-thirds Senate vote—67 senators voting to convict—to permanently remove Porteous from the bench. In an editorial, New Orleans’s largest newspaper says the sooner the Senate can conduct a trial to rid us of this crooked judge the better.

Only one federal judge has been stripped of his lifetime appointment in the last decade. That Texas judge, Samuel Kent (appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush in 1990), is serving a three-year prison sentence for obstructing an investigation into charges that he sexually assaulted two female employees.

Highlighting the U.S. government’s perpetual failure to secure the southern border, a Mexican military helicopter was photographed by a Texas sheriff this week flying over a residential neighborhood at least a mile into the American side of the Rio Grande. 

These sorts of invasions by Mexico’s corrupt military, long on the drug cartel payroll, have been going on for years but the timing of this incursion is especially alarming since it occurred on the same week that Homeland Security officials revealed Mexican drug cartels are rapidly infiltrating federal law enforcement agencies along the southwest border.

Testifying before a U.S. Senate panel, Homeland Security officials said that more than 400 public corruption cases involving federal, state and local enforcement personnel in the crime-infested Mexican border region have been solved in the last two years alone. Additionally, 576 corruption cases were opened in 2009 involving Border Patrol agents.

This makes the repeated Mexican military incursions all the more abominable, especially since U.S. officials know they’re occurring. Last year Judicial Watch obtained Homeland Security records documenting 226 incursions by Mexican government personnel into the United States between 1996 and 2005. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the annual intelligence summaries of “Mexican Government Incidents” were designated as “limited official use” by the Department of Homeland Security requiring “special protection against unauthorized or inadvertent disclosure.”

Simply put, the government doesn’t want the public to know about these foreign invasions or that Homeland Security officials are aware that they’re occurring. This week’s incident was revealed in a San Antonio newspaper that quotes the Zapata County Sheriff who spotted the military chopper hovering over homes in the Rio Grande Plain region south of Laredo.

Armed personnel occupied the helicopter, which flew over a residential area known as Falcon Heights, just south of the Starr-Zapata county line, the sheriff said. He took pictures of the aircraft, which had the insignia of the Mexican Navy, and claims that U.S. military officials were informed of the incursion. This is an area where the U.S.-Mexico boundary is very clear because a major river and a large dam separate the countries, the sheriff points out.

For the second consecutive year taxpayers in a single U.S. county will dish out more than half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants.  

Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, may be in the midst of a dire financial crisis but somehow there are plenty of funds for illegal aliens. In January alone, anchor babies born to the county’s illegal immigrants collected more than $50 million in welfare benefits. At that rate the cash-strapped county will pay around $600 million this year to provide illegal aliens’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare perks.

The exorbitant figure, revealed this week by a county supervisor, doesn’t even include the enormous cost of educating, medically treating or incarcerating illegal aliens in the sprawling county of about 10 million residents. Los Angeles County annually spends more than $1 billion for those combined services, including $500 million for healthcare and $350 million for public safety. 

About a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the figures from the county’s Department of Social Services. In 2009 the tab ran $570 million and this year’s figure is expected to increase by several million dollars. 

Illegal immigration continues to have a “catastrophic impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers,” the veteran county supervisor (Michael Antonovich) who revealed the information has said. The former fifth-grade history teacher has repeatedly come under fire from his liberal counterparts for publicizing statistics that confirm the devastation illegal immigration has had on the region. Antonovich, who has served on the board for nearly three decades, represents a portion of the county that is roughly twice the size of Rhode Island and has about 2 million residents.

His district is simply a snippet of a larger crisis. Nationwide, Americans pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare benefits that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for low-income women and their children. Tens of billions more are spent on other social services, medical care, public education and legal costs such as incarceration and public defenders. 

In a pathetically desperate effort to avoid her destiny behind bars, the corrupt politician wife of the House Judiciary Committee chairman wants to withdraw her bribery guilty plea to dodge a three-year prison sentence. 

Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, married to the famed Michigan Democrat (John Conyers) who heads the House committee that oversees the U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI, clearly thought that pleading guilty to a few of her many transgressions was a noble enough deed that it would get her off the hook.

The flamboyant politician’s reaction to her sentence this week indicates that she views herself as invincible despite her lengthy history of public corruption as one of Detroit’s most powerful lawmakers. When a federal judge slapped Conyers with a 37-month prison sentence and two years of probation, the irate councilwoman exploded in court and declared that she wasn’t going to jail for something she didn’t do. 

Audacious behavior considering that last summer Conyers admitted taking bribes from a developer to change her vote on a multi million-dollar city contract to haul and treat the city’s sewage sludge. After vehement denials, she pleaded guilty only because the FBI had electronic surveillance evidence of Conyers taking cash bribes in fast-food parking lots. 

The developer had already pleaded guilty in federal court to paying Conyers more than $6,000 in bribes and admitted using a courier on four separate occasions to the deliver the money. The Detroit newspaper that has thoroughly covered the Conyers scandal links the charging document and plea agreement that the disgraced councilwoman wants to withdraw in an effort to avoid jail.

Her legal argument is decrepit because she signed a guilty plea in June that says if the sentence imposed falls at 60 months or less, “defendant waives any right to appeal her conviction or sentence.” Her signature effectively stymies an appeal, according to legal experts, and she must report to prison on July 1.

In a boisterous tone seldom used by defendants in federal court, Conyers assured that she’s “not going to be made a scapegoat for other people.” She also gave the judge a bit of a lecture, chastising him for making an example out of her and caving into media pressure to send her to jail. 

Responding to the unmoved judge, a despondent Conyers then invoked her husband and son, pointing out that the “older man” and 14-year-old boy need her. Perhaps she should have thought of them when she took the bags of cash at the fast-food parking lots.