As states across the nation consider legislation to give illegal immigrants enticing tuition breaks at public colleges, one state has become the first to ban illegal immigrants from all its campuses.

The North Carolina community college system, which serves nearly 1 million students, announced a statewide policy this week barring undocumented students entirely from seeking degrees at any of its 58 schools. A handful of public institutions forbid illegal immigrants from enrolling, but this marks the first statewide policy blocking illegal aliens seeking a taxpayer financed college education.

The order came from North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper who says federal law bans illegal immigrants from getting state benefits, including a higher education. Cooper ordered the state’s public colleges to immediately stop enrolling undocumented students into degree programs.

Outraged Latino advocates were quick to claim racism and discrimination but supporters of the new measure pointed out that it doesn’t make sense for illegal immigrants to be trained at taxpayer-supported U.S. colleges if they can’t even be legally employed here.

Federal law requires public elementary and secondary schools to enroll children regardless of immigration status but it prohibits illegal immigrants from obtaining tuition breaks that are not available to all United States citizens. Regardless, a handful of states—Texas, California, Utah, Maryland and New York—have passed legislation to grant illegal aliens the perk. Last year lawmakers in 22 additional states considered laws concerning the discounted tuition for illegal aliens.

The new, highly anticipated government passport cards for road and sea travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean pose a serious threat to national security because they can easily be copied or altered.

Scheduled to be issued by the State Department this summer, the electronic passport cards are about the size of a credit card and include a photo of the user as well as a radio frequency identification chip containing personal data. It will serve as a substitute for a regular passport book for U.S. citizens who travel frequently to the above mentioned destinations.

Security experts say, however, that the new cards are extremely vulnerable to counterfeiting or alteration and therefore pose a serious threat to U.S. security. One former FBI agent who spent nearly two decades countering credit card fraud says there is “no security with these cards.”

A former chief intelligence officer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who monitored fraudulent government documents at the agency, points out that the cards are poorly designed. Instead of featuring a counterfeit proof special optical security strip, the government opted for the radio frequency identification chip, which he says is “extremely risky.”

Even members of Congress from both parties have expressed serious concerns about the new cards, addressing the issues in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Noting that the bipartisan September 11 Commission report states that travel documents are as important as weapons for global terrorists, the lawmakers wrote that they need to be confident that the cards cannot be compromised by terrorists, drug smugglers, human traffickers and others who can do us harm.

Although that assurance cannot be made, the State Department will go forward with its plan to begin producing the cards next month and distributing them around July.

The thuggish private investigator hired by the Clintons to intimidate their political enemies and dig up dirt on Bill’s mistresses has been convicted on 76 federal criminal charges, including racketeering and wiretapping.

Anthony Pellicano, renowned private eye to Hollywood stars, has already served a 30-month prison sentence for possession of explosives and this week’s convictions by a Los Angeles jury could make jail his home for years to come. Among other things the jury found him guilty of racketeering, wiretapping, wire fraud, identity theft, conspiracy to intercept or use wire communications and manufacture or possession of a wiretapping device.

Pellicano specialized in digging up dirt for wealthy clients to use in lawsuits, divorces and contract disputes. He often bribed corrupt public officials and police officers for the information and was hired by Hollywood heavy hitters such as Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor as well as the heads of major studios.

His most famous clients, however, are a powerful duo consisting of a former commander-in-chief and his senator wife. The Clintons first hired Pellicano in 1992 to contact and intimidate some of the women who had romantic affairs with Bill, including his longtime mistress Gennifer Flowers.

In fact, Judicial Watch represented Flowers in a defamation suit against Clinton campaign officials and Hillary based on their attempts to use Pellicano's analysis to discredit and thus defame her. During a jailhouse deposition in the Flowers case, Pellicano refused to answer questions from Judicial Watch attorneys.

Pellicano also helped the former First Couple with damage control in the Monica Lewinsky scandal by unearthing Lewinsky’s old boyfriend (Andy Blieler), who told reporters that Lewinsky told him she wanted to go to Washington to earn her “presidential kneepads.”

Four officials in one major city’s Department of Education have been federally indicted for soliciting bribes from bus companies that serve special education students.

The New York City Department of Education employees took cash payments—of up to tens of thousands of dollars a year—from companies in exchange for preferential treatment on inspections, the reduction of hefty fines for safety violations and for falsely classifying routes as extended which resulted in extra pay for the company.

In some cases the bus companies gave the public officials hefty sums simply to secure the future good will of the agency’s employees. Sometimes the bribes were based on the on the number of new routes the firm was granted by the district.

The indictment charges the officials with extortion, bribery and conspiracy. Three of the defendants (Neil Crimin, George Otriz and Ira Sokol) are Office of Public Transportation supervisors and one (Milton Smith) is a safety inspector. Each faces a maximum prison sentence of 55 years.

It was only four months ago that the president of the city’s main union for school bus drivers (Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union) pleaded guilty to federal extortion and bribery. Evidently this latest indictment resulted from that investigation.

The Democrat attorney general whose campaign centered on returning ethics—supposedly diminished by Republicans—to state government has resigned under fire for his involvement in a massive sexual harassment scandal that has rocked is office for years.

Disgraced Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann initially refused to resign although he proudly fired three top aides for their roles in the fiasco. The man elected to uphold Ohio’s laws and Constitution claimed he simply had an extramarital affair with a young secretary in his office and therefore he should keep his job.

Dann did fire the mistress, however, who had been in charge of scheduling in the attorney general’s office. The other fired aides included the directors of general services and communications and a third high-ranking administration official.

A bipartisan group of outraged state legislators immediately called for Dann’s resignation, pointing out that he also committed perjury by amending sworn testimony to investigators in order to conceal the extramarital affair. The attorney general evidently lied about the fact that the mistress (Jessica Utovich) stayed overnight at a condo he rented with several ill-qualified friends that he hired as highly paid aides.

Last week Dann said he was embarrassed about the affair but refused calls to leave office. Incensed Democrats kicked him out of the party, filed articles of impeachment against him and refused to block a state inspector general’s investigation launched by Republicans.

He finally got the message and quit this week. In a resignation letter addressed to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Dann apologized and accepted responsibility for not conducting his personal life in a way that is consistent with the important mission of the office.

Perhaps the unemployed attorney general can give the soon-to-be unemployed mayor of Detroit (Kwame Kilpatrick) a ring. He also refuses to resign, even after getting busted for lying under oath to conceal an extramarital affiar with an employee. Now he faces impeachment as well as criminal charges.    

Fearing racial tensions, a Democrat governor refuses to act on a city council’s plea to remove its corrupt mayor amid a series of scandals and multiple felony charges.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is a white woman and the indicted mayor, Detroit’s Kwame Kilpatrick, is a black man still highly popular among constituents in his mostly black city.

Political insiders say Granholm, a former federal prosecutor who is also popular among the state’s black residents, would create a strong political backlash if she exercised her authority to remove Kilpatrick. So she refuses to take action, ignoring pleas from local lawmakers who say they can no longer work with the mayor.

The point is that, race aside, Kilpatrick has been a disgrace to the city since he took over six years ago and his colleagues—including blacks—on the council want him out. In fact, they have voted three times to oust him but he has refused to leave. This week the desperate council turned to the governor, who has authority under state law to remove the scandal-plagued mayor.

In March Detroit’s self-described “Hip-Hop’ mayor was charged with numerous felonies, including perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office. Kilpatrick lied under oath to cover an extramarital affair with a city staffer during a police whistleblower trail last year.

He subsequently masterminded a secret multi million-dollar settlement with the officers, who had been fired for raising questions about his security team which could have led them to discover the affair. The city paid the wronged officers $8.4 million and covered up the mess by keeping details of the arrangement secret even though tax dollars were spent.

It was just the latest of many scandals since Kilpatrick became mayor in 2002. He spent a great deal of his first term partying with strippers at the mayor’s mansion and got busted for charging more than $210,000 on his city-issued credit card for personal travel, meals and entertainment.

Kilpatrick also used $25,000 of public funds to lease a fancy sports utility vehicle for his wife at a time when Detroit’s $230 million budge deficit forced the elimination of 3,000 city jobs and cuts in bus service.

The outlaw mayor also gave companies owned by his good friend at least $45 million worth of city contracts and he assured his buddy sealed the deals by delivering bid strategies and sensitive information through his chief of staff and mistress, Christine Beatty. Incidentally, Beatty also committed perjury relating to the affair and had the decency to resign from her city job.

Removing Kilpatrick from office is a no-brainer, but one Detroit newspaper points out that it’s a no-win situation for the governor. If she doesn’t act, she looks like a wimp and if she removes him, she risks a backlash from his many supporters—mostly black—in Detroit.

A veteran Detroit political consultant said "The ugly reality is that she wouldn't want the racial [animus] that would come from removing a black mayor from the blackest American city." It seems evident that the governor needs to get a spine.

A Lebanese illegal immigrant who spied for a militant Islamic group after becoming an FBI and CIA agent received a comical punishment for violating federal law and compromising the nation’s security.

It was embarrassing enough for the nation’s so-called intelligence agencies that an illegal immigrant with ties to Hezbollah lied through national security background checks to make their roster.

The Lebanese national (Nada Nadim Prouty) then used her position as an intelligence agent to secretly access classified information about her terrorist-linked relatives and the U.S. government’s investigation into their radical militant group, Hezbollah.

This week a federal judge in Michigan, appointed by none other than Islamic terrorist advocate Jimmy Carter, sent a scary message to those who illegally penetrate the U.S. to aid Middle Eastern terrorists.

Judge Avern Cohn justified the criminal behavior, saying the Hezbollah double agent simply “erred in judgment.” Then he fined her $975 and let her go because she has provided “exemplary service to the country.”

That exemplary service includes helping terrorist relatives by illegally accessing top-secret national security files and collaborating with other Lebanese nationals to obtain U.S. citizenship through fraudulent marriages in order to get government law enforcement, intelligence and military jobs that require security clearance.

The disgraced agent actually admitted doing these things in November when she pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship, unlawfully accessing a federal computer system and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The crimes carry a maximum total penalty of 16 years in prison and a fine of $600,000.

At her joke of a sentencing hearing this week, Prouty told Judge Cohn that she accepts full responsibility for her “error in judgment” but added that she has “never been disloyal to the United States in any way, shape or form.” Incredibly, the judge agreed.

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Hillary Clinton paid poor minorities in two states thousands of dollars for primary votes in their respective communities by using a controversial and ethically suspicious campaign tool.

Camp Clinton paid hundreds of Hispanics and blacks in Texas and Ohio to help buy influence among those crucial constituencies in the presidential primary elections. In one poverty-stricken Texas border town, Clinton paid a Hispanic family of eight residing in rundown trailer park about $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and get voters to the polls for the Democratic primary on March 4.

In Houston she paid black constituents to gather votes and in Ohio, the New York senator gave nearly $40,000 to a black state legislator (Eugene Miller) to pay hundreds of people to get out and vote in Cleveland’s predominantly black neighborhoods.

In each case, Clinton used what is known in political circles as street money. Though legal, the tool is highly controversial and has been ethically challenged because operatives have manipulated elderly voters and actually paid others to cast ballots for a certain candidate.

This exchange of campaign cash for political participation is also suspicious because the recipients of the money are known to negotiate their pay with rival campaigns before committing their support. It should be noted that many political candidates, at a variety of levels, use street money to get local votes in certain communities.