AMNESTY PITS LAW VS. RELIGION

AMNESTY PITS LAW VS. RELIGION

Anonymous Attorney, Ohio

If nothing else, President Barack Obama’s executive decision to grant amnesty to a large subsection of illegal immigrants has polarized the country more than any other action he has taken in his six years as president. Praise from his constituent left has been as joyous as condemnation from his antagonist right has been shrill. As a Catholic lawyer, my own thoughts about this action are deeply conflicted. Powerful, persuasive commitments pull me both ways.

On the one hand, I am sympathetic to the argument that the president is flaunting the rule of law. In his speech Thursday night, he said that illegals “can come out of the shadows and get right with the law.” But that is not what will happen. The law has not changed, and will not change. The people that will benefit from this action will still be in the United States in violation of laws in the U.S. Code.

Their presence here will still be illegal.

The president is simply not going to execute these laws, despite his obligation under the Constitution to do so, and despite his oath that he would do so faithfully. Let us not parse it: This is a lawless act by what many see (and perhaps rightly so) as a lawless president. The president’s cynical caveat that this does not open the door to citizenship because “only Congress can do that” is laughingly disingenuous. The president has hurt himself and his office in deeply significant ways. On the other hand, I write these words on the weekend that a broad swath of Christians celebrate as the Feast of Christ the King. This feast reminds Christians that our first allegiance is to God, who is not bound by, or interested in, national and political boundaries. Indeed, this is a God who has no regard for such boundaries.

This is a God who has commanded Christians and Jews to welcome, love, and embrace the stranger, motivated by the powerful narrative of the Egyptian captivity. “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you,” says Leviticus 19:34; “you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Why does the accidental place of my birth give me a privilege over those who, by similar chance, found themselves citizens of a hostile, oppressive, or hopelessly impoverished country?

And of course, this is also the threshold of Advent, in which Christians begin to anticipate the arrival of a stranger among us. This was a stranger born to two immigrants, who found themselves in an inhospitable and unwelcoming land that was not their own. And he was a stranger who soon was forced to flee to an even stranger land, in order to avoid death from a jealous ruler.

Of course this analogy is far from exact, and I have already lamented the president’s lawlessness. But as a Catholic Christian, I cannot avoid the power of the narratives of Israel’s escape from, and the Holy Families’ refuge in, a strange land.

I invite others to join me in not simply having a knee-jerk reaction to immigration as a political issue, but in taking inventory of our priorities and prejudices, and balancing those against our commitment to the rule of law and the need for orderly progress. 

Immigration Executive Order -- All Smoke and Mirrors

Immigration Executive Order -- All Smoke and Mirrors

The Demos' REAL "Immigration Reform" Strategy

By Mark Alexander

"The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." --George Washington (1783)

So, the Imperial President claims that, because Republicans are not passing the immigration "reform" legislation that best suits the Democratic Party's political agenda, he is going to bypass Congress and issue an executive order (EO).

Don't believe it.

Oh, Barack Obama is going to center stage Thursday night to set up his EO play, and sign that diktat Friday in Las Vegas -- a fitting venue for a gutless gamble by a "big hat, no cattle" dude rancher. But what is the Demos' real strategy?

In leftist parlance, "immigration reform" means providing a jackpot to illegal aliens -- giving them official status so they can work and receive all associated taxpayer-subsidized services like housing, schooling and medical care. Once integrated, the second step is to provide a fast-track to citizenship. In other words, for Democrats, immigration reform means, first and foremost, seeding a large constituency.

But is Obama really attempting to give millions of illegal immigrants worker status?

In 2008, then President-elect Obama declared, "I can guarantee that we will have, in the first year, an immigration bill that I strongly support." In 2009 and 2010, Obama had the benefit of Democrat Party control of both the House and Senate, however, his congressional Demos never passed an amnesty bill and thus he did not sign one.

Why?

Because he and his fellow Democrats were just pandering to Latinos; they had no intention of passing legislation to provide worker permits for five to 10 million illegal immigrants.

Why?

Because another larger and more critical Democrat voter constituency is composed of low-income Americans, whom the Left baits with class warfare rhetoric centered on issues like "living wages" and increasing the minimum wage - Blacks!

As my daughter, a university student working toward a business degree, framed this issue, "Labor inflation results in wage deflation." In other words, the Democrats really don't want to dump millions of immigrant laborers, who are willing to take low wages, onto their dependable American low-income constituency, because that will, in effect, drive wages even lower. This is a fundamental supply-and-demand equation.

Just before Democrats were shellacked during the midterm "Republican wave," Obama borrowed a line from The Gipper for a national campaign interview: "Ronald Reagan used to ask the question, 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' In this case, are you better off than you were in six? And the answer is, the country is definitely better off than we were when I came into office." But according to BO, the problem is the American people "don't feel it," and he insisted, "The reason they don't feel it is because incomes and wages are not going up."

Of course, the reason for wage stagnation is that Obama's economic "recovery" policies have been a colossal failure. On top of that, the influx of cheap illegal immigrant labor effectively caps any increase in wages for unskilled workers.

Democrats argue raising the minimum wage will protect their low-wage constituents, but that is a fabrication. As the Congressional Budget Office made clear, artificially increasing wages will decrease employment.

The issue of immigrant labor undermining the ability of low-income earners to achieve a "living wage" is nothing new. A primary reason Abraham Lincoln did not emancipate slaves at the onset of the War Between the States is that the influx of black labor into northern markets competing for jobs held by white laborers would have undermined Lincoln's political support from the latter.

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass was so angry with Lincoln for delaying the liberation of some slaves that he scarcely contacted him before 1863, noting that Lincoln was loyal only "to the welfare of the white race." Apparently, more than a few Latino politicos are equally disenchanted with Obama's failure to provide immigrant work permits.

So what of Obama's EO?

The Demo strategy is to craft that EO in such a way that Republicans can successfully chip away at it, primarily by defunding and de-authorizing key components of its implementation, as well as by issuing legal challenges. Thus, Democrats will receive credit from both their legal and illegal Latino constituencies for, ostensibly, attempting to provide them with nine million Permanent Residency or Employment Authorization cards. Then they can blame those "obstructionist" Republicans for blocking them.

This week, Senate Democrats, in a letter to Obama supporting his EO plan, made clear their intent to share in the political fruits of this charade.

Obama, as we've often noted, is a master of the BIG Lie, and, just like the litany of lies that he and his party used to deceive Americans into supporting ObamaCare, they are also deceiving millions of Americans into believing Democrats support both "living wages" and "immigration reform."

Apparently, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) got it right when he interrupted Obama's 2009 introduction of ObamaCare to a joint session of Congress and the nation. "You lie! You lie!" Wilson memorably yelled.

Indeed, "lack of transparency" and "the stupidity of the American voter," in the words of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber, are also applicable to Obama's low-wage and Latino constituencies in regard to amnesty by EO. Of course, there is plenty of evidence that Obama constituents are too ignorant to know they're being duped -- after all, they elected him. Twice.

Not only do Democrats assume their constituents are too stupid to understand Obama's amnesty EO subterfuge, but Obama is willing to, once again, turn constitutional Rule of Law on end to accomplish this deceit.

Last week, Obama declared his intent to issue the immigration EO: "I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if in fact Congress failed to act I would use all the lawful authority that I possess to try to make the system work better."

Of course, "lawful authority" is whatever Obama defines it to be at a given time. He was against unlawful executive orders before he was for them.

On March 31, 2008, candidate Obama said, "I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we are facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America."

But having failed to pass immigration reform in his first two years in office when he owned the House and Senate, and then having lost control of the House in the 2010 midterm election, Obama repeatedly pleaded in Latino forums that he had no power to implement the changes he'd promised. Rebuffing calls that he legislate by executive order, Obama insisted, "I am not a dictator. I'm the president. ... If in fact I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress then I would do so. ... I'm not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed."

Obama may not have implemented his immigration policies by EO, but he certainly suspended enforcement of immigration laws with an executive order.

But by 2014, with his singular centerpiece legislation -- ObamaCare -- falling apart, and Democrats putting as much distance between him and them as possible, Obama believed the only way his party could stave off a resounding defeat in the midterm election was if he delivered Latino votes.

He began the year promising, "Where Congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own. ... I've got a pen ... and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward." In other words, when Republicans don't give Obama what he wants on immigration, he will pull an executive order end run.

Obama has broadly demonstrated his willingness to end-run our Constitution via EO, most notably his so-called "climate change" policies and his repeated rewrites of ObamaCare.

Asked about his revised position to implement amnesty by executive order, Obama regurgitated this spin: "Well, actually, my position hasn't changed. When I was talking to the advocates, their interest was in me, through executive action, duplicating the legislation that was stalled in Congress. ... There are certain limits to what falls within the realm of prosecutorial discretion in terms of how we apply existing immigration laws."

Of course, that is just more constitutional obfuscation. Despite his faux devotion to our Constitution, Obama has wantonly violated his oath to "to Support and Defend" it.

Though Obama claims to be a "professor of constitutional law," a genuine constitutional scholar, George Washington University's Jonathan Turley, a self-acknowledged liberal Obama supporter, has issued severe criticism of Obama's "über presidency," his abuse of executive orders and regulations to bypass Congress.

According to Turley, "When the president went to Congress and said he would go it alone, it obviously raises a concern. There's no license for going it alone in our system, and what he's done, is very problematic. He's told agencies not to enforce some laws [and] has effectively rewritten laws through active interpretation that I find very problematic."

He continued:

 "What's emerging is an imperial presidency, an über presidency. ... When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in the establishment of our tripartite system of government. ... Obama has repeatedly violated this [separation of powers] doctrine in the circumvention of Congress in areas ranging from health care to immigration law to environmental law. ... What we are witnessing today is one of the greatest challenges to our constitutional system in the history of this country. We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis with sweeping implications for our system of government. ... We are now at the constitutional tipping point for our system. ... No one in our system can 'go it alone' -- not Congress, not the courts, and not the president."

When asked by Fox News host Megyn Kelly how he would respond "to those who say many presidents have issued executive orders on immigration," Turley responded, "This would be unprecedented, and I think it would be an unprecedented threat to the balance of powers. ... I hope he does not get away with it."

Over on Obama's MSNBC network, even leftist commentator Lawrence O'Donnell finds the prospect of Obama's executive amnesty diktat daunting. He asked Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) about Obama's authority to issue an EO giving work permits to millions of illegal immigrants: "No one at the White House has been able to give me the legal justification for the following component of the president's plan. ... Has the White House told you -- what is the legal justification for the president to create a new category of beneficiaries for work documents? How can that be done without legislation?"

Of course, Welch could not answer O'Donnell, because there is no such authority.

Before the midterm election, Obama declared, "Make no mistake, [my] policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them." Make no mistake: The American people resoundingly rejected his policies on November 4.

That notwithstanding, Obama has dismissed the election results. Perhaps he believes his immigration EO artifice will deliver enough Latino voters to Democrat candidates in 2016 to hold the presidency and regain the Senate, and somehow that will restore his "Dear Leader" status. After all, more than a million illegal immigrants were unlawfully registered to vote in the midterm election, particularly in states where Democrats have thwarted efforts to require voter IDs.

The bottom line for Republicans is that they need to drive home four points.

First, the "immigration reform" pledges by Obama and his Democrats are disingenuous because they would undermine the Left's entire "living wage" platform. But Democrats believe their low-income and Latino constituencies are too stupid to understand this ruse. Remember: "Labor inflation results in wage deflation."

Second, as Dr. Turley noted, Obama is willing to trash the Constitution in order to advance his ruinous policies. Republicans need to use his abject abuse of power and the threat it poses to Liberty as a constitutional teachable moment.

Third, any debate about immigration is useless unless it begins with a commitment to securing our borders first. As Ronald Reagan declared, "A nation without borders is not a nation." Likewise, it must address the issue of so-called "birthright citizenship," which is a gross misinterpretation of our Constitution's 14th Amendment.

And last, Republicans need to embrace the fact that Liberty is colorblind. It's not a "white thing." Essential Liberty is timeless. And because it transcends all racial, ethnic, gender and class distinctions, it will appeal to all freedom-loving people when properly presented.

Time to see what the incoming House and Senate Republican majorities are made of!

Gov. Jindal: 'I Don't Think the President Should Shut Down the Government'

Gov. Jindal: 'I Don't Think the President Should Shut Down the Government'

"I don't think the president should shut down the government to try to break the Constitution," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told a flustered Chuck Todd Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." Todd had just asked Jindal, "If the president goes through with his executive action (on immigration), do you think Republicans and Capitol Hill ought to use even the power of shutting down the government to stop him from doing it?"

"Two things," Jindal responded. "I don't think the president should shut down the government to try to break the Constitution. The reality is this. I do think the---Todd interrupted: "You think that the president would be shutting down the government?" "Oh, absolutely--" Jindal said.

"And so, you do want Republicans to fight him on this, to the point that it could shut down the government," Todd interrupted.

"I don't think the president should shut down the government," Jindal repeated.

"You're twisting my question," Todd complained. "That means you want that kind of showdown."

"Let's step back and understand what we're talking about," Jindal said. "So the president said, 'I want to break the law.' He purposely said I’m going to wait till after the election, because I know it's not going to be popular to grant amnesty to millions of folks...that are here illegally. We had an election. He said his policies were on the ballot.

"He lost in red states, purple states, blue states. The American people overwhelmingly ejected and rejected his policies. Now he's saying, 'I'm still going to break the law.' Talk about arrogance. This president used to say, 'Elections have consequences.' We're talking about how can the Congress force the president to follow the law.

"I would expect even Democrats who may agree with him on substance, to say the right way to do this is to follow the Constitution, follow the law. No, we shouldn't shut down the government, but absolutely Republicans should do everything they can to force the president to follow the law.

"Let's secure the border and no, the president shouldn't shut down the government so that he can break the law."

Liar Lies About Lies

Liar Lies About Lies

Facing growing questions about the BIG Lies used to sell ObamaCare to the American people, Barack Obama protests too much. As numerous videos surfaced of MIT professor and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about the "stupidity" of American voters and the like, Democrats have denied even knowing the man. “No. I did not" mislead the American people, Obama said. "The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run." Technically, no, Gruber was never on staff, but the government did pay him nearly $400,000 for his services. Obama challenged the media to find more old videos of the bill's debate, because, he said, "I think it's fair to say there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent -- it was a tough debate." There he goes again. Obama was the chief liar -- his if you like your plan, no added debt, no abortion funding, lower premiums promises were transparently false. For him to deny all this now is a bridge too far.

These are perhaps the most dangerous times!

These are perhaps the most dangerous times!

The President apparently met "off the record" with several protest leaders from Ferguson MO, to tell them to "stay the course".  The dangling question is why a sitting President would be weighing in before a grand jury has even announced its intent on the indictment of a white police officer who shot a black teen.

We know that Eric Holder is heavily involved in the investigation and it would be reasonable to assume that the Administration already knows of has a pretty good idea of what the grand jury is going to decide. If the evidence does not support an indictment, which many believe it will not, we can expect riots and civil unrest in Ferguson and the greater St. Louis area.

In the tradition of "never let a good crisis go to waste", if and when the rioting starts, expect the President to unleash a barrage of Executive Orders granting amnesty to illegal aliens, opening up the border more than it already is and hitting business with more regulation in the name of stopping global warming, a science that has been proven to be a fraud.

While the entire news media is busy reporting on riots, what better time to destroy as much of America's founding principles as possible before the new Republican Senate is sworn in mid January. This is the dream of the left and a good explanation of why a Presidential administration was so quick to jump into the controversy in Ferguson.

We are fearful of what may happen in Ferguson but are not going to let the distraction stop us from watching and fighting against a blatant abuse of power by the President or anyone else. As a co-equal branch of government, Congress has the power to stop Obama's overreach or impeach and remove him from office if necessary.

Only enough pressure from "We the People" will give Congress the backbone to do the right thing.

Help keep the pressure on. These are perhaps the most dangerous times we have seen in our lifetimes and letting our guard down now could be disastrous. Let your representatives know where you stand and demand they take appropriate action!

There’s no mystery to the midterm shellacking

There’s no mystery to the midterm shellacking

By Kathleen Parker

Post election analysis falls somewhere between amusing and clueless.

In the amusing camp are Democratic strategists who intone that more Democrats would have won if only more people had voted. The gods surely blush with envy.

And of course, there’s the conventional wisdom that Democrats always suffer in midterms because they lack “intensity,” meaning they don’t care, and that presidents are always unpopular in their sixth year in office.

So much for insight.

Next we visit the clueless camp where professional pundits gather. The consensus here is that the election wasn’t a mandate for Republicans to overhaul government. I confess that I was one of these, but (mark your calendars) I was wrong. There is a difference between warning victors against the end-zone prance, as many of us did, and denying that Republicans were hired to do a job.

There’s also no denying that the midterms were a referendum on President Barack Obama. The president prefers to say they were a referendum on his policies, which is perhaps an easier pill to swallow. But Obama is his policies, which happen to rub many Republicans (and at least a few Democrats) the wrong way.

Moreover, people don’t like being insulted and misled, as many feel they have been by this administration. This is not just a feeling but a demonstrable fact, especially vis-avis the Affordable Care Act. And it’s not just the far-right fringe who object to the strategic misrepresentations along the way.

These obfuscations include telling the American people that they could keep the insurance they had if they liked it and also writing the law in such a way that the ACA’s mandate to purchase government-approved insurance was not a “tax,” despite the Internal Revenue Service’s role in policing its compliance.

The keep-your-insurance ruse is history now, but the memory still lingers in the minds of voters, who, contrary to what the Obama White House thinks, are not stupid.

There’s no dishonor – and it certainly isn’t stupid – to not understand the ACA. The then-Democratic-controlled Congress that passed the thing didn’t even understand it. I’d wager that most still don’t.

Punditry aside, there’s no mystery to the midterm shellacking.

It was a loud, clear shout-out to Congress to Just Stop It. Not only stop Obamacare, which more likely will end up being tweaked, but to stop executive overreach and disinformation to sway votes while betraying voters.

Those who feel defrauded by their own government got third-party confirmation recently when remarks by one of the ACA’s chief architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber – invoking the stupidity of voters and lauding the political advantage of a lack of transparency in government – went viral.

It is a beautiful thing when Truth trots out the door before Oops can catch him.

The comments were made on a panel about a year ago but were released a week after the midterms. Gruber was making the point that Obamacare never would have passed if the administration had been honest about the fact that the so-called “penalty” for noncompliance with the mandate was really a tax.

“And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing [Obamacare] to pass.” The irony is that the very thing the White House was trying to conceal (because the truth was just too complicated for regular folks), the Supreme Court essentially confirmed. Enforcement of the mandate constituted a tax, not a penalty. Thus spake Chief Justice John Roberts.

This ruling, indeed, was the reason the ACA was able to go forward, which is why so many Republicans were apoplectic with Robert’s siding with the liberals in a 5-4 ruling. In other words, Obama’s obfuscation was simultaneously revealed and rewarded by the court. And the American people were smacked with a health-system overhaul many more would have rejected had they known the truth.

Or would they? It’s hard to know what might have happened if truth had won the day. But we do know that truth squandered is trust lost.

We also know that once trust is gone, it’s very hard to restore. Over time, and not just during this administration, we have lost trust in one institution after another. But when we have lost faith in our government, we have lost faith in ourselves.

At their core, the midterms were really about restoring that trust. This, it seems, is the mandate that precedes all others and will require the good faith efforts of both Democrats and Republicans. 

ObamaCare Author Meant His 'Stupid Americans' Comment

ObamaCare Author Meant His 'Stupid Americans' Comment

Jonathan Gruber is eating his words. The MIT professor and author of ObamaCare was caught on video calling American voters stupid and saying he wrote the health care bill in a confusing way because "lack of transparency is a huge political advantage." Now, he's running damage control. First came the non-apology explaining the comments away. Gruber told MSNBC, "I was speaking off the cuff. And I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments." He regrets getting caught. Then came the diversionary attack. Gruber told a Boston TV station that it's the Republicans who are trying to confuse the electorate. "I think that this comes to the master strategy of the Republican Party," he said, "which is to confuse people enough about the law so that they don't understand that the subsidies they're getting is because of the law." But then Fox News aired a second video clip in which Gruber was recorded once again saying, "The American voters are too stupid the understand the difference." So much for an "off the cuff" comment, Gruber lied for the Left to get its way.