CNN is once again airing an incendiary ad by the an anti-immigrant front group, Coalition For The Future Of The American Worker, which warns that the US government is letting in 1.5 million foreign workers a year to take jobs from the 15 million unemployed Americans. Roy Beck, Executive Director of the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA and principal spokesperson for the Coalition, called on supporters to discuss the ad at town hall meetings and declared the need for an “immigration suspension” bill to “champion workers.” A previous version of the ad aired earlier this year. Watch it:

To begin with, the supposedly labor-friendly “Coalition” is nothing more than a self-proclaimed “umbrella group” of the country’s leading anti-immigrant organizations which includes several designated hate groups: Californians for Population Stabilization, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF). Several of these organizations have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the Center for Community Change New Community, FAIR and AICF have both received funding from the white supremacist and racial eugenic foundation, the Pioneer Fund.

The Coalition obviously has had little interaction with the nation’s two largest labor federations which are calling for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path to legalization for undocumented workers and recommend the creation of an independent commission to assess and determine future levels of immigration. The local AFL-CIO in Detroit — where so many American autoworkers have been laid off — recently adopted a resolution vigorously supporting the labor federations’ immigration principles.

How the Coalition arrives at the notion that the US is even accepting 1.5 million “new” foreign workers is baffling. A few months ago, when NumbersUSA trumpeted the data (then estimated at 1.6 million immigrant workers), Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center picked the far-fetched estimate apart. According to Ewing, the estimate is “so full of holes as to be virtually meaningless” and consists of two broken parts: an “extravagantly inflated estimate” of 744,000 “new” Green Card holders and “the unverifiable assertion” that the US is letting in another 913,000 non-permanent foreign workers. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statistics clearly indicate that the majority of “new” Green Card holders are not actually new immigrants, but rather students, refugees and temporary workers who have applied for an “adjustment of status” while already in the US. As for the second number, NumbersUSA doesn’t clearly define it and also fails to provide its source. All in all, legal avenues for foreigners wanting to work in the US are actually extremely restricted and green card numbers are tightly capped and limited to certain categories of persons.

This past election season, the Coalition sponsored a series of inflammatory ads that were blasted as “borderline racist” and pulled off their air by one Iowa station. While CNN refuses to air an ad criticizing the insurance industry which is actually backed by labor, the “Coalition” of anti-immigrant labor-friendly posers has its misleading ad placed on regular rotation.

Yesterday the New York Times revealed that 50 Afghan drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban were on the U.S. military’s “kill or capture” list. Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released the report that the Times article was based on, adding further detail.

The 50 traffickers on the 367-strong target list are not subject to “targeted assassinations,” but U.S. and NATO troops do have authorization to kill or capture them if they’re encountered on the battlefield. The ruckus over the addition of drug traffickers to the kill-or-capture list points to the increased importance of the international community’s counternarcotics effort in the renewed effort in Afghanistan.

It’s become conventional wisdom that the Taliban receive large sums of money from the drug trade – the SFRC report cites military and UN estimates of between $70 million and $125 million a year in drug income. But conventional wisdom could be wrong. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the United States’ Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has stated on more than one occasion that the Taliban’s primary source of funds are sympathizers in Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar – not the illicit opium trade.

But this uncertainty over the opium trade’s role in funding the Taliban doesn’t mean the United States should give up on trying to tackle the problem. As the SFRC report shows, the Taliban use protection of the opium trade as a critical component of their establishment of a parallel government in parts of Afghanistan. In exchange for this protection, the Taliban extract taxes from opium farmers, heroin manufacturers, and drug traffickers.

Insurgents often impose taxes on populations as a means of legitimating their rule in addition to the obvious purpose of raising funds. The underlying argument runs like this: unlike the Afghan government and international forces, we, the Taliban, will let you farmers (and drug traffickers) continue to grow and trade opium as you’ve been doing. All we ask in exchange for our protection is a small tax. Read more

Last week, an internal memorandum written by Boston-based Israeli consul general Nadav Tamir was leaked to the Israeli press, causing a media “firestorm” in Israel. In the memo, Tamir writes that the US-Israeli relationship is suffering as a result of Israeli hostility towards President Obama’s efforts to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end:

During a visit to Israel, I became more aware that we have a damaging misunderstanding regarding the intentions and policies of the American administration. I must note that even if I am wrong in my assessment of the American administration, the way in which we manage our relations nowadays is causing strategic damage to two very important aspects that make up our special relationship and they are the level of intimacy in coordinating policies, and the support of US public opinion towards Israel. [...]

In many American circles, there is a feeling these days, that while the Obama administration tries to resolve global conflicts, it must deal with the refusal to cooperate by governments in Iran, North Korea, and Israel. Aaron Miller’s words, spoken after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, clearly show this feeling. He said it was a meeting between Obama yes we can and Netanyahu no you won’t. [...]

There are, of course, players in American and Israeli politics who oppose Obama ideologically and are willing to sacrifice the special relationship between the countries to further their own political agenda, but we cannot let these players damage the bipartisan attitude that rightly characterized the conduct of Israeli governments toward the US.

As a result of his memorandum, Tamir was recalled back to Israel and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman angrily told the press that “if someone is not happy and can’t live with government policy, the way is not to criticize and leak but to resign.” Some in the conservative community in Boston have sympathy for Lieberman’s position. Tom Mountain, a right-wing columnist for the Jewish Advocate, wrote in response to the controversy, “The bottom line is that the Obama government has been hostile to the Israeli government from the beginning. … Tamir is writing as an apologist for the Obama administration.’’

Yet many in the Jewish community around Boston have come to Tamir’s aid. Jonathan Sarna, a Jewish historian at Brandeis University, told the press that Tamir has “been seen as the most effective [consul] that anyone can remember.” And Michael Ross, the President of the Boston City Council and a son of Holocaust survivors, called Tamir a “dedicated advocate for Israel.”

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe defended Tamir in an editorial titled “Called out for telling the truth” today. The Globe writes, “Tamir was acting well within the rules of his position…when he offered his government some frank advice about how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies are alienating some Americans. Monitoring local opinion is part of what consuls do, and Tamir shouldn’t be punished for doing his job.”

Back in June, Lou Dobbs vowed to “absolutely forbid the use of the expression on my [Dobbs] broadcast and in my writing, of ‘illegal alien’” while praising Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for referring to foreigners who are not legally present in the US as “illegal immigrants” and not “undocumented immigrants.” Just a couple weeks ago, Dobbs also claimed to have never antagonized the immigrant community:

DOBBS: What do you mean crotchety old white guys can foam at the mouth about immigrants and blacks? First of all, you’ve never heard me foam at the mouth or in any way complain about immigrants. Don’t play your little left-wing games here because I have never said anything against any legal immigrant ever.

Old habits die hard. Less than a couple months later, Dobbs couldn’t help himself from using “illegal alien” while decrying the “Latinization” of the country:

DOBBS: An editor of the New York Times actually said to me point blank ‘we are absolutely driving Latinization of America. We think it’s important for the country.’ I’ve heard by the way, that’s from the left, from the right I’ve heard the same nonsense from the Chamber of Commerce. I mean, it’s crazy. We’ve gotta have illegal aliens in this country, according to one of their officers, so that we can pay Social Security. The nonsense you hear from the so-called “establishment” — whether the left or the right — is absurd.

Anyone who has ever listened to Dobbs has likely heard him repeatedly “foam at the mouth” about “illegal aliens” and legal immigrants alike. Aside from having warned that “the invasion of illegal aliens” was bringing leprosy to the US, Dobbs has also promoted the “Aztlan,” or “reconquista” conspiracy theory that Mexican-American U.S. citizens who have lived in this country for generations secretly plan to reconquer the southwest.

All of his “foaming at the mouth” led The New York Times to report that “Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality.” It turns out Dobbs has a rather flexible perception of himself and his inflammatory rhetoric as well. Listen here: