Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Monday, December 29, 2014

You won't believe how Common Core tries to teach kids subtraction

You'll think this is satire, but Michael Snyder assures us that it is anything but.

...A massive federal takeover of education known as “Common Core” is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country. Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools. Unfortunately, these “standards” are doing to public education what Obamacare is doing to our health care system – absolutely ruining it. Just look at how basic math instruction has changed. Posted below is a comparison between the “old method” of subtraction and the “new method” of subtraction being taught in many of our schools. When I first came across this on Facebook, I thought that it was a joke…


...I thought that there was no possible way that this could be real. I really thought that this must have come from some sort of parody website.

But it is actually true.

Here is another example of this. The following is an incredibly bizarre Common Core math problem and the response by one very frustrated parent that has gone viral all over the Internet recently...

Saturday, December 27, 2014

GELERNTER: States Can End "Executive Amnesty" Without a Lawsuit

Writing in National Review, Josh Gelernter offers a very different spin on the "nullification" debate. While acknowledging that the judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, insisting only it has the authority to declare laws unconstitutional, Obama's "Executive Amnesty" is something very different from a law.

This week, Tennessee became the 25th state to join a lawsuit against the president’s executive amnesty order. The lawsuit may work, but there’s another, more direct, and considerably more interesting redress against executive overreach [first p]roposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

...The nullification doctrine posits that, as the federal government is the product of the Constitution, and the Constitution is a compact of the states, it’s the states that have the final say on any law’s constitutionality. If a state determines that a law exceeds the terms of the compact to which it agreed, it has the right to nullify that law within its own borders.

Jefferson and Madison’s idea was for states to declare the Alien and Sedition Acts null and void. Instead of joining a lawsuit against the executive amnesty, those 25 states could simply deem the executive amnesty null and void, and refuse to recognize illegal aliens’ work permits or issue them driver’s licenses.

Why, you wonder, would that be better than filing a lawsuit? In a certain sense, it wouldn’t — because winning that suit would strike down Mr. Obama’s order in all 50 states. Which is not an unlikely outcome, given the order’s extremely shaky legal footing. However —

The judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, asserting its unique, judicial right to declare laws unconstitutional. But this executive order isn’t a law. And given its extremely shaky legal footing, it isn’t difficult to imagine a federal bench recognizing the states’ right to disregard federal orders that don’t clearly have the force of law. And that would be a tremendous — tremendous — blow against the executive’s assumption of legislative powers.

But in the shorter, directer term: It [nullification] would force the Obama administration to go on offense, suing the states to enforce a law that isn’t a law. And I don’t think that case can be made.

I think this is an intriguing idea. Gelernter notes that your state's governor and attorney general should be contacted, especially if you live in a red or purple state.

Nullification may be a non-starter under normal circumstances, but nullifying non-laws should be anything but controversial.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Friday, December 26, 2014

Best Public School Signage Evah

A post by Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection set me off an a hunt for the signage behind this story. It didn't take long:

I suspect Santa will be bringing former New Jersey principal Antoinette Young a dictionary for Christmas this year.

A large sign outside a New Jersey elementary school that misspelled “December” appears to have cost the principal her $108,000 a year job.

The Bergen Record says the sign outside School 20 in Paterson also notified people of the date for “progress reepor” and contained a backward numeral 1.

City school board member Corey Teague circulated a photo of the error-filled signage and complained why nobody noticed for more than a week. December was spelled “Dicember.”

“If this is how the administration takes care of signage, how can we expect the students to do better? We must be held to a higher standard,” he wrote in an email accompanying the photo.

Days after Teague brought up the sign, education officials announced that the principal, Antoinette Young, was being demoted and transferred to another school.

By all means, libs, let's make sure that the poorest kids and their parents have no choice when it comes to their education.

Let's lock them into failing public schools where there's literally no accountability for teachers or administrators.

Because teachers' unions are for the children, right?


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

WHY, OF COURSE HE DOES: Eric Holder's DOJ Funds Rap Videos Extolling Cop-Killing

By Evan Gahr

The Obama administration’s Justice Department funneled at least $1.5 million in grants to a New York legal-aid group featured in a new rap video that depicts two young black men aiming handguns at a white police officer.

Some may find the lyrics eerily similar to the social media postings of the man accused of shooting and killing two New York City police officers execution-style in Brooklyn on Saturday.

The video for “Hands Up,” which also shows a white police officer gunning down a black motorist wearing a hoodie, contains lyrics suggesting revenge for much-publicized deaths of black men in confrontations with police.

Credited to rappers Uncle Murda and Maino, the video is subtitled “Eric Garner Tribute,” a reference to a black man who died while being pinned and restrained on a sidewalk by New York police officers.

The taxpayer money that went to the organization shown in the video, the Bronx Defenders, comes from a Justice Department program named for Edward Byrne, a New York Police Department officer who was shot dead at close range in 1988.

>>> Watch the Entire Video at Bottom

Among the lyrics to “Hands Up”:

For Mike Brown and Sean Bell, a cop got to get killed

’cause I’m black, police think they got the right to shoot me

No jail time, their punishment is death’s duty

… By any means necessary let’s make them respect us

Police investigators say that hours before he shot Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos as they sat in their squad car in Brooklyn, Ismaailyl Brinsley wrote these words on his Instagram account: “I’m putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours, let’s take 2 of theirs.”

THE TIME IS NOW: An Article V Convention To Shrink Government and End Political Corruption

By Jim Rubens

Every two years, we hear that the coming election is a historic watershed.

Then on November 5, faced with the choice between making the hard choices needed to tackle our nation’s big challenges and positioning themselves for the next election, most Washington politicians instantly fixate on the next election.

Meanwhile, our national debt and unfunded future promises have mounted to a crushing $100 trillion. Our economy is fueled almost entirely on printed money and is producing too few living-wage jobs. Federal power is so dangerously concentrated that Washington now monitors much of our personal communication and controls the curriculum in our local schools.

Regardless of Republican or Democrat control, we are stuck with the Ex-Im Bank (half of whose taxpayer subsidized loan guarantees go to just one company, Boeing), corn ethanol mandates, the Raisin Control Board and sugar import restrictions (all drive up food cost to benefit a handful of agribiz campaign contributors), and the M1 Abrams tank upgrade program (lives on despite fervent opposition by the sequester-constrained Pentagon because program suppliers are spread across 173 Congressional districts). Congress rams through hyper-complex, purposefully unintelligible 2,000 page bills, unread by members and written by special interest lobbyists seeking economic and regulatory privileges at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Little has changed over the past thirty years, other than that the underlying problems have grown worse. Only by amending our constitution can we force Washington to exercise fiscal discipline, address systemic political money corruption, and relinquish power back to the states and the people.

There are two means provided in Article V to amend the constitution. All 27 amendments to date have been proposed by Congress and ratified by the necessary three-quarters of the states. But our constitution’s framers had the immense foresight to anticipate a Congress so corrupted by political careerism as to be incapable of self-reform and therefore provided a second and as yet unused amendment route. If the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (now 34) pass resolutions applying for a convention to debate and shape proposed amendments, Congress is compelled to call an amending convention. If a convention agrees on the language of one or more proposed amendments, legislatures or conventions of three-quarters of the states (now 38) must agree to ratify.

Twenty-four states, including New Hampshire, have already applied to Congress to call a convention to shape an amendment to require a balanced federal budget, other than in times of emergency. Supermajorities of the American people also want term limits for members of Congress, a smaller federal government, and a means to reign in systemic political corruption. Several national organizations on the right and left are asking state legislatures to apply for a convention to address one or more of these subjects.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Here comes the United Nations' Gun Grab

By Investor's Business Daily

Gun Control: To some, concern over a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty set to take effect Dec. 24 is much ado about nothing. But a president unconstrained by Congress or the Constitution may try to impose severe limits on gun rights.

All treaties must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate, and that's not about to happen in the case of the unratified Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), particularly after the 2014 election that gave the GOP Senate control.

The same, of course, could have been said about the Kyoto Protocol and other climate change deals that mandate that governments tie their economies in knots to meet arbitrary emission goals to save the planet. The Senate has not and won't ratify any of those either.

Yet a president who pays no attention to Congress or the Constitution has through Environmental Protection Agency regulations sought to impose Kyoto and cap-and-trade through regulation and fiat.

The Orwellian-named United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, which has disarmed none of the world's tyrants or terrorists, has announced on its website that the ATT will take effect on Christmas Eve, a lump of coal in the stockings of anyone who believes, as our Founding Fathers did when they wrote the Second Amendment, that guns in the hands of private citizens are the best defense against predators, terrorists and, yes, tyrannical governments.

The Obama administration and its allies at the state and local level have gone after our Second Amendment gun rights through what they call "common-sense restrictions," and it wouldn't be beyond this president to seek to implement the treaty's gun-control provisions with his phone and pen as he's done with climate change.

Under the title of "General Implementation," Article 5 of the ATT requires that all states participating in the treaty "shall establish and maintain a national control system, including a national control list."

MARK LEVIN: We Are Experiencing an All Out War on Cops

By Mark Levin

My blood has been boiling, I have been grinding my teeth listening to all this, watching this. Two dead police officers. Murdered. The president of the United States issues a statement, a written statement. The attorney general the United States always wants to debate race. Nowhere to be found but. Another coward, another phony. Yes, they do have blood on their hands; no, they didn't kill the police officers but they have created an environment with their political war against the cops in this country.

Borne out of Ferguson, Missouri where a police officer there whose career is destroyed. Who has a death warrant on his own head. Was defending himself and shot a thug who first tried to take his pistol and then returned for more and out of that -- out of that -- the president of the United States, the attorney general the United States, that piece of crap Sharpton. Wherever he shows up, isn't it funny, things happen, usually violence. Out of that we get riots. Stores are burning in Ferguson, Missouri. People are throwing Molotov cocktails. People are shooting their guns.

The liberal Democrat governor pulls back the National Guard and the police have the walk around their hands in their pocket afraid to do any thing to protect the citizenry. Borne out of what?. A lie, a fraud because Michael Brown didn't have his arms up in the air. He was trying to assault again if not kill a police officer. And at that time, as I've pointed out, Obama and Holder and their surrogates were throwing fuel on the fire and that's exactly what they did. Holder even went there to personally throw fuel on the fire.

And all of a sudden, it's not just a Ferguson problem, it's a national problem. I intend to go up, what's going on there? It's a war on the cops. They want to nationalize local police departments. Nationalize them to ruin them. To control them. Every miscreant and malcontent suddenly has his say so over how our police officers are supposed to conduct themselves. All of a sudden every cop is supposed to wear a video camera. Why? Because they can't trust be trusted don't you know?

All of a sudden all the police departments are overly-militarized. Why? Has somebody been shot with a tank? All of the sudden you can't profile. But of course you have to profile on a legitimate basis. It's done all the time. Obama does it endlessly.

We get a grand jury decision out of New York and all of a sudden the whole grand jury process is corrupt. It didn't matter that there were blacks on the grand jury. Oh, no, that doesn't matter. It didn't matter that the sergeant in charge was a female black. That doesn't matter, we only learned that five days after the fact.

And you know ladies and gentlemen, we even have pseudo-conservatives on TV and the radio. Remember they were wringing their hands. Weren't sure how to take a position on Ferguson for the first month, on the grand jury in New York. Oh, yes, yes I'm shocked by what happened. Shocked. Obama driving his radical leftist ideological agenda. Of course there is a war on the cops. There's a war on the private sector. There's a war on the American citizenry. He's fundamentally transforming America, and if you fundamentally transform America law and order goes out the door.


Read more at Real Clear Politics

Monday, December 22, 2014

BRILLIANT: U.S. offers $5 million reward for Al Qaeda terrorist it released from Gitmo

Just when you think the Left's tactics have hit rock bottom, they pull out a Tunnel Boring Machine and start digging a new sub-level. Judicial Watch has the summary of another brilliant maneuver by the Smartest President Ever™ with an assist from everyone who thinks Gitmo should be shut down:

Years after liberating an Al Qaeda operative from the military prison at Guantanamo, the United States government has put him on a global terrorist list and offered a $5 million reward for information on his whereabouts.

The unbelievable story comes as President Obama frees more and more terrorists—including four to Afghanistan over the weekend— long held in the military compound at the U.S. Naval base in southeastern Cuba. The president’s goal is to close the prison, a campaign promise that dates back to 2008, by relocating the last of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Still left at the facility are 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi as well as USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Hundreds of Gitmo terrorists have been discharged over the years under a program that started with President George W. Bush and continued full-throttle with this administration. Intelligence report after intelligence report has revealed that many rejoin terrorist missions after leaving the military prison. In fact, Judicial Watch has been reporting this for years. Back in 2010 JW wrote about a report that the Director of National Intelligence gave Congress documenting that 150 former Gitmo detainees were confirmed or suspected of “reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities after transfer.” At least 83 remained at large, according to the document.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Movie Poster From 2012 Is Startlingly Prescient

I can't discern the name of the artist, but if someone recognizes the work, please let me know in the comments. This startlingly accurate poster is dated 2012, but it applies just as much today as it did in January of 2009.


Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, and Bill DeBlasio own this madness.


MIKE LEE: How Illegal Aliens Will Receive Fast Track to Citizenship Under Obama’s Executive Amnesty

By Senator Mike Lee (R-UT)

As we all know, the President has recently announced executive action on immigration — what he calls “deferred action” for millions of aliens who are here illegally, but who have children who were born here and are therefore U.S. citizens. 

The President has repeatedly assured the American people that he is not creating a path to citizenship for those people.  But the President is not telling the truth.  He and his Administration have cleared the pathway to citizenship for millions of people who crossed our border illegally; they know that’s what they’ve done; and it is illegal.

Immigration law is very complicated, but here’s the bottom line:  If you are a foreign national and a parent of a U.S. citizen, when that child reaches age 21, assuming you haven’t committed certain crimes or done certain other things, you can get a green card and, eventually, citizenship. 

However, if you crossed the U.S. border illegally — “entered without inspection” as the law says — you first have to leave the country, wait a period of either 3 or 10 years before returning (depending on how long you had resided in the U.S.) and then come back into the United States lawfully in order to get back on the path to citizenship.

That’s how the system is designed to work. That’s what the law says.

But the President is now opening a huge loophole, using a program called “advance parole,” that will allow millions of illegal aliens, who are not currently eligible for citizenship, to bypass the rules and become eligible for green cards and eventually citizenship.

Here’s how it works:

Saturday, December 20, 2014

With his "Executive Order on Amnesty", Obama throws Americans workers under the bus

By Sen. Jeff Sessions

The U.S. Department of Commerce informs us that “today’s typical 18- to 34-year-old earns about $2,000 less per year (adjusted for inflation) than their counterpart in 1980.” That is a sharp and painful wage decline for young Americans. What has happened in the labor market since 1980?

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau offers this insight: “From 1930 to 1950, the foreign-born population of the United States declined from 14.2 million to 10.3 million. . . . [but s]ince 1970, the foreign-born population of the United States has increased rapidly due to large-scale immigration.”

Census Bureau statistics report that in 1980, the foreign-born population stood at 14.1 million.

From 1980 through 2013, the immigrant population tripled from 14 million to more than 41 million.

This large increase in the size of the immigrant population is the direct product of policies in Washington.

Legal immigration during the ’80s averaged around 600,000 a year. But since 1990 through today it has averaged about 1 million annually — meaning the annual rate almost doubled. The sustained large-scale flow of legal immigration, overwhelmingly lower-wage and lower-skilled, has placed substantial downward pressure on wages.

We have, right now, a very slack labor market, with more jobseekers than jobs.

The White House has itself estimated that are three unemployed persons for each one job opening. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that, in the construction industry, there as seven unemployed persons for each available job opening.

This large-scale immigration flow, paired with the forces of globalization and automation, has made it ever more difficult for American workers to earn a wage that can support a family.

Consider this report just published in the New York Times:

The 5 Biggest Lies From President Obama's Friday Press Conference

Josh Siegel at the Daily Signal provides us with some transcripts from one of Emperor Obama's rare press conferences. What struck me about Dear Leader's answers is that virtually every significant assertion was a blatant and unconscionable lie. Consider:

Obama, on Sony’s decision to cancel the release of “The Interview” (the FBI confirmed that North Korea did, in fact, carry out a cyber attack on Sony):

“I am sympathetic to the concerns they faced, but having said that, yes, I think they made a mistake. I wish they had spoken to me first. I would have told them don’t get into a pattern where you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.


In fact, Sony CEO Michael Lynton responded on CNN that Czar Obama was full of it: "...the president, the press and the public are mistaken... We do not own movie theaters. We cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters! I don't know exactly whether he understands the sequence of events that led up to the movie not being shown in the movie theaters. Therefore I would disagree with the notion that it was a mistake."

On relations with the new Republican-controlled Congress in 2014:

“I am sincere when I say I want to work with the new Congress to get things done to make sure government is better and smarter. We saw during the lame duck that perhaps a spirit of compromise may be coming to the fore. I take Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell at their word.”


The truth, as Democrats and Republicans alike admit, is that Obama never works with Congress directly, never compromises, and despises spending any time on the business of government.

So the notion that Obama "wants to work with the new Congress" is as laughable as it is disingenuous.

On his use of executive actions:

“I am energized and excited and I won’t be stopping for a minute in an effort to make life better for ordinary Americans... Where I see a big problem and opportunity to help the American people, and I am within lawful authority to do it, I will do it.”


As federal judges have already ruled -- in strenuous language -- Obama's executive actions are blatantly unconstitutional and unlawful. For example, Judge Arthur J. Schwab, ruling in a deportation case earlier this week, wrote that "President Obama’s unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore, is unconstitutional."

Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley of Georgetown likewise ripped Obama's executive order as blatantly outside the scope of lawful behavior: "What the President is suggesting is tearing at the very fabric of the constitution... I always tell my friends on the Democratic side, we will rue the day when we helped create this uber presidency. What the Democrats are creating is something very very dangerous."

On the Keystone pipeline (incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said this will be Congress’ first order of business):

“It won’t be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers. It will not be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers. When you consider what we could be doing if we rebuild roads and bridges, there are lot more direct ways to create well paying construction jobs.


Well paying construction jobs? Like those the Stimulus was supposed to create? As anyone who has graduated from sixth grade could tell you, Keystone would create "thousands of jobs", increase "economic security for the U.S.", and -- unlike Obama's failed "Stimulus" -- is actually "shovel-ready".

On the state of black America:

“Like the rest of America, black America in the aggregate is better off than when I came into office."


Since Obama took office, unemployment, poverty, and dependency on government are all up for vast segments of the black community. And, of course, as even the ludicrously biased Politico admits, race relations have worsened dramatically under Obama.

In short, Obama's ridiculous press conference was a cacophony of lies. It was a symphony of propaganda that perfectly befits the most lawless and most deceptive president in American history.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Friday, December 19, 2014

China Tests Ballistic Missile That Uses Guidance Technology Traded by Bill Clinton for Campaign Donations

By Investor's Business Daily

Defense: China has just tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver up to 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads, using technology given to them on President Clinton's watch to launch communications satellites.

The Dec. 13 test of the DF-41 was the third for the new weapon. But it marked the first test of a multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle, or MIRV, technology and raises by an order of magnitude the nuclear threat to the U.S. as China continues its massive arms buildup. And disturbingly, the threat is in large part of our own making.

"The DF-4, which could be deployed as early as 2015, may carry up to 10 MIRVs, and have a range as far as 7,456 miles, allowing it to target the entire continental United States," according to the latest report produced for Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"China could use MIRVs to deliver nuclear warheads on major U.S. cities and military facilities as a means of overwhelming (existing) U.S. ballistic missile defenses," the report added.

The Cromnibus, Illustrated

Courtesy of our pals at Liberal Logic 101:


And they wonder why Americans in flyover country are crazy about Ted Cruz and Mike Lee?


Who is On the Obama Enemies List?

By Judicial Watch

We are pleased to announce that Judicial Watch has joined forces with investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed jointly against the Department of Justice (DOJ). We want “any and all records” relating to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) background checks on the award-winning correspondent. The request includes correspondence between Attkisson and FBI agents.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch one month ago, the DOJ and the White House targeted the former CBS correspondent as a result of her investigations into the growing Operation Fast and Furious scandal. In an October 4, 2011, email to White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz, Attorney General Eric Holder’s top press aide, Tracy Schmaler, described Attkisson as “out of control.” Schmaler added ominously, “I’m also calling Sharryl’s [sic] editor and reaching out to Scheiffer” (an apparent reference to CBS’ Chief Washington Correspondent and Face the Nation moderator Bob Scheiffer). Schultz responded, “Good. Her piece was really bad for the AG.”

Leaving no stone unturned, the Judicial Watch/Attkisson lawsuit specifically asks for:

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Jeb Bush's Unseemly Love Affair with Communist Core

By Investor's Business Daily

Election 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush embraces one-size-fits-all national education standards that would turn schools into re-education camps for the left. His decision could cause trouble with GOP primary voters.

As is the tradition these days, Jeb Bush, brother of one former president and son of another, has announced via social media that he is preparing to run for president, setting the stage for another Bush-Clinton contest in 2016 should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination.

To be the Republican nominee, Bush must run a gauntlet of primaries where he'll need to persuade Tea Party types and hard-core conservatives to get behind an "establishment" candidate who supports Common Care, a program that former Rep. Allen West has called "the ObamaCare of education."

Common Core is a set of education and learning standards that so far has produced bizarre lesson and learning plans. Some see it as a progressive dream of turning K-12 schools into leftist re-education camps — much as many major universities and colleges already are.

Some five years ago, a majority of states gave up a big chunk of their sovereignty by embracing a set of national teaching and education standards. Because the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) concept originated with a coalition of state governors and the goal of setting a uniform standard for grades K-12 nationwide, the common belief was: What could go wrong?

Since Washington stepped into the picture, Common Core has morphed into a tool to eliminate local control of education. Instead of teaching kids how to read and count, CCSS lesson plans often contain subliminal messages that teach them what to think.

Consider the worksheet that asks students to rewrite sentences to make them "less wordy." Sentences such as "The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all." Presumably, "commands" include executive orders that shred the Constitution.

These worksheets, published by New Jersey-based Pearson Education, ask fifth-graders to edit such sentences as "he (the president) makes sure the laws of the country are fair" and "the wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation."

That last sentence, by the way, sounds to us suspiciously like the old Marxist axiom "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Déjà vu: Corrupt, Senile GOP Leaders Viciously Attack Party's Statesmen, But Not a Rogue President

By Josh Withrow

The "CRomnibus" government funding bill passed handily last weekend, but not before Senators Lee and Cruz had their say. In a controversial move, the two senators managed to put their colleagues on record voting for or against funding President Obama's latest unconstitutional executive power grab. Many Republican senators, however, protest too much, claiming that Lee and Cruz may have allowed the Democrats to pass a number of executive nominees because of their insistence upon making their point.

As the story goes, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had promised to adjourn the Senate after passing the CRomnibus and a couple of other bills, leaving these controversial nominees on the table. The Republicans lambasting Senators Lee and Cruz are making the argument that Reid was absolutely, totally going to keep his word and not advance these controversial nominees. As Senator Lee has pointed out this was not only unlikely, but it would be “political malpractice” for a departing Democrat majority leader to fail to cram through every one of his president’s nominees as possible. In Lee's words, "if you think… that [Reid] was going to leave town without confirming everybody that he wanted to confirm in the post-nuclear Senate, they’re crazy."

Even the same day that Lee and Cruz put forth their point of order, Reid and the Democrats were reportedly searching for ways to get their nominees through before the end of the session. Were Lee and Cruz really supposed to let Reid’s non-binding promises stop them from exercising their ability to get the Senate on the record against executive overreach?

The point that dissenting Republicans are covering up is that their party alone could and should have held up the bloated spending bill on account of its many flaws, but they chose not to. But apparently, they were more concerned with getting home for the holidays without controversy, since 77 Senators, including 28 Republicans, voted to let the bloated Cromnibus through without a contest.

In the end, the real story is that a few principled senators exercised their ability to force their colleagues to go on the record supporting a massive presidential breach of Constitutional authority. The fact that their fellow Republicans are upset about this speaks volumes.


Read more at FreedomWorks

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

LAME-DUCK DEMOCRATS SPIT ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Confirm Radical Leftist as Surgeon General

By Investor's Business Daily

Rights: No longer fearing electoral revenge from the National Rifle Association, an outgoing Democratic Senate pushed to confirm an anti-Second Amendment radical, who thinks guns are a health issue, as the nation's top doc.

A Democratic Senate that earlier balked at the nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to be surgeon general of the U.S. no longer feared the possible electoral consequences of approving him in the wake of November's Republican tsunami.

That, along with the GOP's obsession to not be blamed for a government shutdown, gave us a bad budget deal and the Democrats a chance to confirm Murthy.

A brief rebellion over immigration led to a weekend session that arguably gave outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid an opportunity to advance several of President Obama's nominees toward confirmation, including the once-stalled nomination of Murthy.

On Saturday, the Senate voted 52-40 to bring Murthy's nomination to the floor for a vote. With Murthy confirmed to a post that had been vacant since July 2013, the White House push for gun control will proceed with renewed vigor.

The NRA's Chris Cox called Murthy a "prescription for disaster for America's gun owners," in a letter to Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in February. Spooked red-state Democrats stalled Vivek's nomination. With the election over and control of the Senate lost anyway, Democrats seized the opportunity to leave America a going-away present.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

ERICKSON: House Conservatives Have the Power to Depose Speaker Boehner and Should Do So in January

Erick Erickson has some sage advice that could transform a handful of House conservatives into living legends in flyover land.

The vote on whether Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) will be Speaker will occur in January, and 30 conservative House members can deny him re-election. It will be an actual public vote—not a behind-the-scenes, paper ballot vote. Although many would have you believe otherwise, Boehner has not yet been elected Speaker for the new term. House Republicans elected him as their nominee for Speaker in November, but the full House of Representatives needs to vote on his nomination in January.

House conservatives must summon the courage to oppose Boehner’s nomination on the floor in January. It is a moral imperative. You cannot consistently complain about Leadership’s many failures—and the treachery involved with a Speaker fresh off a successful wave election conspiring with President Obama to fund amnesty and enjoy a celebratory phone call in the aftermath—and then vote for him to continue in this role. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, that is the definition of insanity, and it is enabled by a vote for Rep. John Boehner.

...Boehner’s team lied to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) to get his vote on the all-important procedural “rule” setting up the debate on the cromnibus. He promised to pull the cromnibus if Stutzman voted for the rule. Stutzman gave his vote, and Boehner went back on his word.

House conservatives need to understand that they are not conspiring against a family member or team member. They are conspiring against an adversary intent on thwarting the change they came to Washington to bring. It is that simple.

Federal Judge Rips Obama's Executive Amnesty as Unconsitutional

Jeff Dunetz offers a sliver of hope for those who still believe in the Constitution:

Judge Arthur J. Schwab, sitting in the western district of Pennsylvania has found parts of President Obama’s new deportation amnesty to be unconstitutional, and he issued a scathing memo accusing him of usurping Congress’s power to make laws, and dismantling most of the White House’s legal reasoning for circumventing federal statute.

Stephen Dinan adds some colorful detail.

“President Obama’s unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore is unconstitutional,” Judge Schwab wrote.

The judge also said the policy allows illegal immigrants “to obtain substantive rights.”

The memo came as part of a deportation case before the judge, and Judge Schwab’s order does not invalidate the president’s policies. But it serves as a warning shot as other direct challenges to the new amnesty begin to make their way through the courts.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., will hear one of those challenges in oral arguments next week, and a similar case is proceeding in Texas.

...The administration lawyers also said the policy doesn’t grant illegal immigrants any rights, and said they could still be deported “at any time.”

But Judge Schwab went point-by-point in refuting those arguments, saying that since Mr. Obama couched his policy as a moral imperative to keep families together, it is not so easy to undo his policy... And the judge repeatedly used Mr. Obama’s own words against him, listing some of the times the president had previously said he didn’t have the power to take the exact actions he has now taken.

It's an encouraging baby-step.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.