By Nathan Thornburgh

Time Magazine

Published June 14, 2010

The trackers mustered at Tex Canyon Road, 20 miles north of the Mexican border, on the afternoon of March 27. There were border-patrol agents, six search-and-rescue units from the Cochise County sheriff’s department and dogs trained to track escaped inmates from nearby Douglas State Prison. Several ranchers were also there, many of them descendants of the Germans and Irish who came to the San Bernardino Valley a hundred years or more ago. Back then, the ranchers settled here in part to feed the U.S. troops stationed at the border. One military mission in those days: prevent the chaos of the Mexican Revolution from spilling into the Territory of Arizona. Now another period of powerful unrest in Mexico had brought a different kind of war to the valley, and the ranchers were mindful that the violence might have claimed one of their own, a man named Rob Krentz.

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by Brady McCombs

Arizona Daily Star

President Barack Obama will deploy 1,200 National Guard troops to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border. But Sen. John McCain of Arizona says that is not nearly enough. (May 25)

The White House plans to send as many as 1,200 National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist with surveillance, intelligence, training and drug enforcement.

President Obama has also asked that $500 million be included in supplemental spending legislation to be used to fund more agents, more prosecutors, more technology, and improve information sharing among local, state and tribal law enforcement, said an Obama administration official via email.

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by Brady McCombs

Arizona Daily Star

Smugglers using ultralight aircraft to fly drugs over the border could face stiffer penalties if caught, under proposed legislation.

A bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Tucson Democrat, would amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to include ultralight aircraft under the aviation smuggling provisions.

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by Megan Neighbor

Arizona Daily Star

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords held a conference call Monday to discuss her efforts to address border issues.

In her opening and closing comments, Giffords said she was angry “because the federal government has failed to secure the border, and this is unacceptable.”

She said she hoped to change that by encouraging more funding for the U.S. Border Patrol and projects such as Operation Stonegarden in the next U.S. budget.

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By Dennis Cauchon

USA Today

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

Some conservative political movements such as the “Tea Party” have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.

Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.

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By Kasie Hunt

Politico.com

Democratic and Republican lawmakers from border states are asking President Barack Obama to send National Guard troops to the southern border—and to allow them to shoot back.

“We urge you to deploy the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border, as has been requested by a number of border state governors,” the group of lawmakers wrote to Obama Wednesday. “Any National Guard troops that are deployed…should be armed and allowed to defend themselves if fired upon or attacked.”

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by Devlin Houser

The Arizona Daily Star

A bill introduced Friday by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords aims to curb the flow of drug money across U.S. borders by closing a loophole that lets money in “stored value cards” go undeclared.

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Arizona Daily Star

By Rhonda Bodfield

David Ladner finally came to the realization at a Saturday morning job fair that, at 59, he will likely end up a student again.

After 35 years in construction, he’s been out of work since November, with few prospects. After talking to a representative of ITT Technical Institute at the fair, he set up an appointment for Monday to talk about getting started on a new career.

“It stresses me out to have to go back to school and do a whole career change at this stage in my life, but you do what you have to do.”

More than 300 job seekers attended a three-hour expo at the downtown YWCA, hosted by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and geared toward helping the unemployed get information on retraining opportunities and connect with more than 40 employers actively seeking new workers.

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ARIZONA DAILY STAR | Posted: Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:00 pm

By Rhonda Bodfield

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will vote for the health-care reform bill.

Ending weeks of speculation about whether she will vote for the measure, Giffords said in a prepared statement Saturday that a vote in support “fundamentally is the right thing to do.”

Among the benefits of the legislation, she noted, children with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied coverage, children can stay on their parents’ insurance plan until they turn 26 and small businesses will receive tax credits to purchase health insurance for employees.

“As a member of the fiscally responsible Blue Dog coalition, I am very pleased that this legislation is fully paid for and will reduce our budget deficit by $138 billion over the next decade.”

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By U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Special to the Green Valley News

Published: Saturday, January 23, 2010

Americans are rightly outraged about intelligence and security failures that allowed a would-be terrorist aboard a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

This frightening incident highlights the fact that the security procedures implemented after 9/11 fell well short of their intended goals.

Stronger security measures are needed to ensure that Americans can board an airliner without fearing that a fellow passenger will turn on them.

President Obama has properly directed increased and random screening of passengers on flights from other countries into the United States. He also directed that every passenger from 14 specific countries be patted down and have their carry-ons searched.

The new rules apply to passengers from Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

These are strong first steps, but more needs to be done.

Several countries remain off that increased-screening list despite the insistence of intelligence sources that terrorism remains a problem there. I strongly urge that this list be expanded.

We must subject airline passengers to more intensive security checks if they fit a particular pattern of travel, originate from a suspect country or are of a specific age, economic or behavioral profile common among likely terrorists.

Some will claim this is an improper basis for scrutiny, but I reject that notion. We cannot ignore the fact that there are certain indicators of potential terrorist activity which can and should be used to initiate additional screening.

It is nonsensical to subject grandmothers in wheelchairs and babies in strollers to the same level of security as travelers from known terrorist safe havens.

We also must now reconsider the use of full-body scanners at airports. While giving proper consideration to privacy and civil liberty concerns, we must take all necessary steps to assure Americans that they can fly as safely as possible.

I fly frequently between Tucson and Washington, D.C. and stand in the same security lines, walk through the same metal detectors and remove my shoes as all travelers.

Like many, I wonder whether these procedures really make flying safer or if they are merely a facade to make us think that something is being done to improve security.

I have the utmost respect for the work done by the men and women of the Transportation Security Administration, who are on the front lines of airport security. But we must support the work of TSA by identifying threats before they reach an airport.

We created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to unify the efforts of security-related agencies in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Yet we still do not have a single accessible national database containing all terrorism-related information.

The review ordered by President Obama after the failed Christmas Day attack revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies remain unable to verify the visa status of all known or suspected terrorists on the No Fly list.

On Christmas Day a cascading series of failures allowed a person who was a known danger to come dreadfully close to exploding a commercial airliner over the United States. This should never have happened.

As a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, I have been focused on the issues of airport and border security, terrorism, defeating al Qaeda and denying terrorists safe havens.

It has never been clearer that terrorism remains a very real threat to the United States and to our freedoms.

We will need renewed vigilance – from our allies, our government and the traveling public. Most importantly, we also will need decisive leadership – from the intelligence community, Congress and the White House.

U.S, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is in her second term representing Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.