Obama Moving Immigration ‘On My Own, Without Congress’

Prompted by a conversation with Speaker John Boehner, President Barack Obama said Monday he is done waiting for Congress to act and taking steps to reform nation’s immigration system through administrative action.

“America cannot wait forever for them to act. That’s why today I am beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress,” Obama said in the Rose Garden, with Vice President Joe Biden by his side. The President lamented that Republicans have “proven again and again that they’re unwilling to stand up against the Tea Party.”

At an event celebrating professional golfers last week, Boehner told Obama “Republicans will continue to block a vote on immigration reform at least until the remainder of this year,” Obama said.

In a statement, Boehner said “In our conversation last week, I told the president what I have been telling him for months: the American people and their elected officials don’t trust him to enforce the law as written.  Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.”

Obama said he will direct Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to figure out what Obama can do unilaterally to fix the nation’s immigration system, in addition to shifting resources southward to secure the border.

“I’ve also directed Sec. Johnson and Attorney Gen. Holder to identify additional actions my administration can take on our own, within my existing legal authorities, to do what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our immigration system as we can,” he said. “If Congress will not do their job at least we can do ours.”

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The president said he would be expecting the recommendations by the end of the summer and that he “intends to adopt those recommendations without further delay.” He added that he still would like Congress to move forward with immigration reform for a more comprehensive solution.

Obama prefaced his announcement by pinning the blame on Republicans for failing to move on immigration reform, saying that House Speaker Boehner

Boehner quickly hit back at the president. “It is sad and disappointing that – faced with this challenge – President Obama won’t work with us, but is instead intent on going it alone with executive orders that can’t and won’t fix these problems,” he said.

Obama further asserted that the reason he takes executive actions is due to Congress’ inaction.

“I don’t prefer taking administrative action. I’d rather see permanent fixes to the issue we face. Certainly that’s true on immigration. I’ve made that clear multiple times,” he said.

“I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing,” he stressed. And in this situation, the failure of Republicans to pass a darn bill is bad for our security, it’s bad for our economy, and its bad for our future,” Obama added.

Meanwhile Boehner blamed Obama’s executive orders for the ongoing crisis of unaccompanied minors illegally crossing the southwest border.

“The president’s own executive orders have led directly to the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, giving false hope to children and their families that if they enter the country illegally they will be allowed to stay,” Boehner said. “The White House claims it will move to return these children to their families in their home countries, yet additional executive action from this president isn’t going to stem the tide of illegal crossings, it’s only going to make them worse.”

[H/T Breitbart]

11 Shocking Facts About America’s Militarized Police Forces

The militarization of police is harming civil liberties, impacting children, and transforming neighborhoods into war zones.

The “war on terror” has come home – and it’s wreaking havoc on innocent American lives. The culprit is the militarization of the police.

The weapons used in the “war on terror” that destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq have made their way to local law enforcement. While police forces across the country began a process of militarization complete with SWAT teams and flash-bang grenades when President Reagan intensified the “war on drugs,” the post-9/11 “war on terror” has added fuel to the fire.

Through laws and regulations like a provision in defense budgets that authorize the Pentagon to transfer surplus military gear to police forces, local law enforcement are using weapons found on the battlefields of South Asia and the Middle East.

A recent New York Times article by Matt Apuzzo reported that in the Obama era, “police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” The result is that police agencies around the nation possess military-grade equipment, turning officers who are supposed to fight crime and protect communities into what look like invading forces from an army. And military-style police raids have increased in recent years, with one count putting the number at 80,000 such raids last year.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought more attention to police militarization when it issued a comprehensive, nearly 100-page (appendix and endnotes included) report titled, “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” Based on public records requests to more than 260 law enforcement agencies in 26 states, the ACLU concluded that “American policing has become excessively militarized through the use of weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield” and that this militarization “unfairly impacts people of color and undermines individual liberties, and it has been allowed to happen in the absence of any meaningful public discussion.”

The information contained in the ACLU report, and in other investigations into the phenomenon, is sobering. From the killing of innocent people to the lack of debate on the issue, police militarization has turned into a key issue for Americans. It is harming civil liberties, ramping up the “war on drugs,” impacting the most marginalized members of society and transforming neighborhoods into war zones. Here are 11 important–and horrifying–things you should know about the militarization of police.

1. It harms, and sometimes kills, innocent people. When you have heavily armed police officers using flash-bang grenades and armored personnel carriers, innocent people are bound to be hurt. The likelihood of people being killed is raised by the practice of SWAT teams busting down doors with no warning, which leads some people to think it may be a burglary, who could in turn try to defend themselves. The ACLU documented seven cases of civilians dying, and 46 people being injured. That’s only in the cases the civil liberties group looked at, so the number is actually higher.

Take the case of Tarika Wilson, which the ACLU summarizes. The 26-year-old biracial mother lived in Lima, Ohio. Her boyfriend, Anthony Terry, was wanted by the police on suspicion of drug dealing. So on January 4, 2008, a SWAT team busted down Wilson’s door and opened fire. A SWAT officer killed Wilson and injured her one-year-old baby, Sincere Wilson. The killing sparked rage in Lima and accusations of a racist police department, but the officer who shot Wilson, Sgt. Joe Chavalia, was found not guilty on all charges.

2. Children are impacted. As the case of Wilson shows, the police busting down doors care little about whether there’s a child in the home. Another case profiled by the ACLU shows how children are caught up the crossfire–with devastating consequences.

In May, after their Wisconsin home had burned down, the Phonesavanh family was staying with relatives in Georgia. One night, a SWAT team with assault rifles invaded the home and threw a flashbang grenade–despite the presence of kids’ toys in the front yard. The police were looking for the father’s nephew on drug charges. He wasn’t there. But a 19-month-old named Bou Bou was–and the grenade landed in his crib.

Bou Bou was wounded in the chest and had third-degree burns. He was put in a medically induced coma.

Another high-profile instance of a child being killed by paramilitary police tactics occurred in 2010, when seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed in Detroit. The city’s Special Response Team (Detroit’s SWAT) was looking for Chauncey Owens, a suspect in the killing of a teenager who lived on the second floor of the apartment Jones lived in.

Officers raided the home, threw a flash-bang grenade, and fired one shot that struck Jones in the head. The police agent who fired the fatal shot, Joseph Weekley, has so far gotten off easy: a jury trial ended in deadlock last year, though he will face charges of involuntary manslaughter in September. As The Nation’s Mychal Denzel Smith wrote last year after Weekley was acquitted: “What happened to Aiyana is the result of the militarization of police in this country…Part of what it means to be black in America now is watching your neighborhood become the training ground for our increasingly militarized police units.”

Bou Bou and Jones aren’t the only case of children being impacted.

According to the ACLU, “of the 818 deployments studied, 14 percent involved the presence of children and 13 percent did not.”

3. The use of SWAT teams is unnecessary. In many cases, using militarized teams of police is not needed. The ACLU report notes that the vast majority of cases where SWAT teams are deployed are in situations where a search warrant is being executed to just look for drugs. In other words, it’s not even 100% clear whether there are drugs at the place the police are going to. These situations are not why SWAT was created.

Furthermore, even when SWAT teams think there are weapons, they are often wrong. The ACLU report shows that in the cases where police thought weapons would be there, they were right only a third of the time.

4. The “war on terror” is fueling militarization. It was the “war on drugs” that introduced militarized policing to the U.S. But the “war on terror” has accelerated it.

A growing number of agencies have taken advantage of the Department of Defense’s “1033” program, which is passed every year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the budget for the Pentagon. The number of police agencies obtaining military equipment like mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles has increased since 2009, according to USA Today, which notes that this “surplus military equipment” is “left over from U.S. military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.” This equipment is largely cost-free for the police agencies who receive them.

In addition to the Pentagon budget provision, another agency created in the aftermath of 9/11 is helping militarize the police. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own grants funnel military-style equipment to local police departments nationwide. According to a 2011 Center for Investigative Reporting story published by The Daily Beast, at least $34 billion in DHS grants have gone to police agencies to buy military-style equipment. This money has gone to purchase drones, tactical vests, bomb-disarming robots, tanks and more.

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McDaniel Unveils Another Strategy Against Thad Cochran

Volunteers working for tea party challenger Chris McDaniel in Mississippi say they have already found 20 percent of the invalid double-votes they need to cancel Sen. Thad Cochran’s business-funded runoff victory.

“We’re finished with Hinds County, and we’re up to 1,500” invalid votes, said Noel Fritsch, Daniel’s press aide.

That’s critical because McDaniel can force another runoff if he can find more invalid votes than Cochran’s roughly 7,000-vote margin-of-victory on June 24. Votes are invalidated if voters cast ballots in both the Democrats’ June 3 primary and the GOP’s run-off on June 24.

However, McDaniel can also force another election even if he can’t find 7,000 invalid ballots, said Fritsch.

“We don’t have to prove that we have 7,000 [invalid] votes…. all there needs to be is enough doubt about the election, and we’re confident about that,” he said.

That “cancel by doubt” strategy gives the McDaniel campaign an incentive to collect evidence about possible vote-buying and other potentially unethical behavior by Cochran’s campaign.

So far, there are many reports about shady outreach to Democratic voters supposedly undertaken by Cochran and his allies, particularly done by relatives of former Gov. Haley Barbour.

For example, The Daily Caller reported that Henry Barbour, the head of the Mississippi Conservatives PAC and the nephew of Haley Barbour, paid Democratic operative Mitzi Bickers “to make paid calls to potential Cochran supporters.” Those calls may have spurred many loyal Democrats to cast invalid votes.

In the search for improper votes, GOP officials who are affiliated with Cochran’s campaign are trying to block McDaniel’s search for invalidated votes that are recorded in the poll books, Fritsch said.

“They’re stalling in at least half of the counties across the state,” he said.

[H/T Daily Caller]

Supreme Court Backs Hobby Lobby in Contraceptive Mandate Challenge

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that certain “closely held” for-profit businesses can cite religious objections in order to opt out of a requirement in ObamaCare to provide free contraceptive coverage for their employees.

The 5-4 decision, in favor of arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby and one other company, marks the first time the court has ruled that for-profit businesses can cite religious views under federal law. It also is a blow to a provision of the Affordable Care Act which President Obama’s supporters touted heavily during the 2012 presidential campaign.

“Today is a great day for religious liberty,” Adele Keim, counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which represented Hobby Lobby, told Fox News.

The ruling was one of two final rulings to come down on Monday, as the justices wrapped up their work for the session. The other reined in the ability of unions to collect dues from home health care workers.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in the ObamaCare case, finding the contraceptive mandate in its current form “unlawful.” The court’s four liberal justices dissented.

The court stressed that its ruling applies only to corporations that are under the control of just a few people in which there is no essential difference between the business and its owners.

But Alito held that in the case before the court, the religious objections cited were legally legitimate, under a law that bars the government from taking action in certain cases that “substantially burdens” freedom of religion. He noted that fines for one company could total $475 million per year if they did not comply with the ObamaCare rule.

“If these consequences do not amount to a substantial burden, it is hard to see what would,” Alito wrote.

The Supreme Court challenge was brought by Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby and a furniture maker in Pennsylvania, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. The for-profit businesses challenged the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that employers cover contraception for women at no extra charge among a range of preventive benefits in employee health plans.

It was the first major challenge to ObamaCare to come before the court since the justices upheld the law’s individual requirement to buy health insurance two years ago.

Dozens of companies, including Hobby Lobby, claim religious objections to covering some or all contraceptives. The methods and devices at issue before the Supreme Court were those the plaintiffs say can work after conception. They are the emergency contraceptives Plan B and ella, as well as intrauterine devices, which can cost up to $1,000.

The court had never before recognized a for-profit corporation’s religious rights under federal law or the Constitution. The companies in this case, and their backers, argued that a 1993 federal law on religious freedom extends to businesses.

The Obama administration had argued that a victory for the companies would prevent women who work for them from making decisions about birth control based on what’s best for their health, not whether they can afford it.

Democratic leaders blasted the court’s decision on Monday, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tweeting: “It’s time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women.”

In a dissent she read aloud from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision “potentially sweeping” because it minimizes the government’s interest in uniform compliance with laws affecting the workplace. “And it discounts the disadvantages religion-based opt outs impose on others, in particular, employees who do not share their employer’s religious beliefs,” Ginsburg said.

The question now before the Obama administration is how it might try to accommodate businesses that claim religious objections while also extending contraceptive coverage to female workers.

Alito suggested two ways the administration could ensure women get the contraception they want. It could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said. Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations — by letting the groups’ insurers or a third-party administrator take on the responsibility of paying for the birth control.

The Obama administration argued earlier this year that the case is not just about birth control, and that a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the businesses could undermine laws governing immunizations, Social Security taxes and minimum wages.

Alito clarified that the decision Monday is limited to contraceptives under the health care law. “Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs,” Alito said.

[H/T Fox News]

Sheriff Joe to Obama: Deploy U.S. Military to Mexico

‘The minute they cross the border put them on an airplane’

President Obama should deploy the U.S. military across the Mexican border to work bilaterally to curb illegal immigration, declared Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a radio interview Sunday.

“If we are worried about the danger, then I would send the military across the border, work with their military bilaterally and get the job done,” said Arpaio. “That’s what I would do and we’d clean up this mess.”

“Of course, you have to get the Mexican president to OK it,” he added. “I would just go in there and have a few drinks with him and get the job done.”

Speaking on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s 970 AM The Answer, the sheriff, known for his tough stance on illegal immigration, was asked how he would help clean up the immigration mess if he were advising the White House.

He continued: “Why do they have to go to court? The minute you cross the border put them on an airplane and send them back.”

Arpaio complained 38 percent of illegal-alien inmates in his own jails who are turned over to federal authorities for violating immigration law come back “over and over again on various criminal charges, which violates their own policy and criteria that they are supposed to be deported.”

“Either they (convicted illegal alien felons) are coming across that border multiple times or they are being dumped on the streets of Arizona,” he said.

[H/T WND]

White House Petition to Punish Central American Countries Is Underway

This is from the White House.gov website:

Our country is being invaded. We already have an overwhelming population and vast unemployment, but these invaders you call “undocumented immigrants” are being given jobs that could go to those who better deserve them, such as our veterans, scholarships that could go to truly hard working students, all in the name of “The American Dream”

Furthermore, they bring with them narcotics, disease, and a complete lack of respect for what has become normal American culture.

And now, within the last few months alone, the Mexican military has begun invading parts of our border, and even attacking our border agents!

We can no longer sit idly by. We the signed ask for Sanctions against Honduras, Salvador, Belize, and Mexico. We also ask for our troops to be called home to help in defending the border.

Every vote counts. Stand up and demand action from President Obama!

To sign this petition, please visit: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/punish-central-american-countries-provoking-their-citizens-emigrate-here-illegallydeclare-war-mexico/zcD0CflT

Give it back! Students Ask Selfish Hillary to Return $225K Speaking Fee

Students at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas have little interest in contributing to the Clinton’s vast wealth.

Hillary Clinton stirred up controversy with a recent comment that she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” after leaving the White House, in large part because they have a net worth today of up to 50 million dollars.

And students at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas have little interest in contributing to the Clinton’s vast wealth.

The likely 2016 Democratic presidential nominee — who commands about $200,000 for speaking engagements — is scheduled to speak at the annual fundraiser for the schools foundation in mid-October, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

UNLV is paying Clinton a premium of $225,000 — and student leaders are asking her to “respectfully” return the money.

“To be honest, it’s not surprising and we really appreciate anybody who would come to raise money for the university,” student Daniel Waqar told Jon Ralston on Ralston Reports. “But anybody who is being paid $225,000 to come speak, we think that’s a little outrageous.”

Waqar, the student government’s public relations director, said tuition just went up 17 percent and students could benefit from Clinton’s speaking fee, were she to donate it back to them.

UNLV Student Body President Elias Benjelloun was also not thrilled about the amount of the fee.

“We’re excited that Hillary Clinton would come to the university to fundraise on behalf of our university,” Benjelloun said. “We’re excited anyone wants to come to UNLV and fundraise on our behalf. When we heard $225,000, we weren’t so thrilled.”

[H/T Infowars]

PC Police Call Army’s Apache Helictopter Racist

Veterans aren’t happy with a recent op-ed by the Washington Post, which charged that the Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa military vehicles were a “greater symbolic injustice” than the NFL’s Washington Redskins’ name.

“Even if the NFL and Redskins brass come to their senses and rename the team, a greater symbolic injustice would continue to afflict Indians — an injustice perpetuated not by a football club but by our federal government,” Simon Waxman of the Boston Review wrote for the Post on Thursday.

He added that the helicopter names were “propaganda” that needed to end, because Native American life expectancy statistics indicate the “violence is ongoing, even if the guns are silent.”

Readers at the popular military news gathering website Doctrine Man reacted Friday.

“I suspect that the author is less unhappy that our choppers have Indian names, and more unhappy that there is a U.S. military,” wrote Alex Kuhns.

Kevin Schooler wrote: “What floors me is that for the most part, it isn’t American Indians who are offended. It is guilt-ridden white liberals being offended on their behalf. How’s that for paternalism?”

Even the website’s moderator weighed in, saying that the names the military chooses for weapons platforms “are anything but derogatory, they convey strength, honor, and courage. @SimonWaxman is grossly uninformed.”

[H/T Washington Times]

Murray Energy CEO: The President is Grossly Wrong

Neil Cavuto interviews the CEO of Murray Energy and discusses President Obama’s plans to attack the coal industry.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.comRemember, under President Obama’s plan “energy prices would necessarily skyrocket”

[H/T Fox News]

5 Things Obama Has Whined About in His Sad, Sad Life as President

On Friday, President Obama spent a good chunk of his public speech in Minneapolis complaining about how tough it is to be President Obama. “They don’t do anything except block me!” he complained of the Republican House of Representatives, as though it were the job of Congress to rubber stamp the Great Monarch’s imperial dictates. “And, and, and call me names!”

The most powerful man on earth is a petulant whiner.

But this isn’t the first time he’s had a crying jag over his sad, sad life. Get out your tiny violins.

Whining About The Press. Here’s Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, channeling Richard Sherman:

Sometimes I feel disrespected by you reporters, but that’s okay…Jake Tapper, don’t you ever talk about me like that. I’m the best president in the game!

He was joking. But not about how he feels disrespected. After all, he told Bill O’Reilly in his Super Bowl interview that O’Reilly is “absolutely” unfair for asking basic questions about issues like Benghazi. Poor baby. And in January, he mewled to The New Yorker’s David Remnick that he couldn’t “penetrate the Republican base” because he couldn’t break through the right-wing media firewall to show conservatives he’s “not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh.”

Whining About Republicans. In December 2012, Obama stated that Republican opposition to a fiscal cliff deal sprang from personal hatred of him. “I don’t know if that just has to do with, you know, it is very hard for them to say yes to me.” And again in March 2013:

I recognize that it’s very hard for Republicans leaders to be perceived as making concessions to me… Is there something else I could do to make these guys — I’m not talking about the leaders now, but maybe some of the House Republican caucus members — not paint horns on my head?

And just yesterday: “We’ve got a party on the other side whose only rationale, motivation seems to be opposing me.”

Whining About Supposed Conservative Racism. In that same interview with The New Yorker from January 2014, Obama stated, “There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president.” That’s just the most recent iteration of Obama’s longstanding complaint that some conservatives (and Jews) don’t like him because of his “funny name” or because he doesn’t look like the other guys on the dollar bills.

Whining About The Constitution. In May, Obama complained about the structure of the Constitution stopping him from doing what he wanted. In April 2013, Obama complained that he was having a tough time passing gun control because “I am constrained as [other government officials] are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.” In March 2011, Obama stated that it would be much simpler to rule China.

Whining About His Own Scandals. President Obama continues to trot out long-discredited nonsense about how he has been victimized by a spate of “phony scandals.” Yesterday, he stated, “They’re fabricated issues, phony scandals.”

The whining will continue. President Obama always feels he has been wronged: by Republicans, by the Constitution, by his country. He, by contrast, is never wrong. “I’m not going to apologize for trying to do something while they’re doing nothing,” he said today.

Of course he won’t. It’s his party. He can cry if he wants to.

[H/T Breitbart]