Jay Leno Tests Trump Material, Talks Cosby, Questions Kimmel's "Mean Streak"

Jay Leno was in familiar territory on Thursday morning, when NBC kicked off its day in front of the Television Critics Association with a panel for the former Tonight host's new CNBC show.

[VIDEO] Jay Leno In-Depth: Post-'Tonight' Plans, Kimmel's Insults, Zucker, What He Taught Letterman (Q&A)

And while reporters had a surprising amount of questions about Leno's famous fixation with cars, as showcased in Jay Leno's Garage, there were a few pointed inquiries about the current Donald Trump media circus, the latest round of late-night musical chairs, his recent comments about Jimmy Kimmel and the ongoing Bill Cosby drama.

"It's interesting watching this whole thing unfold," Leno said of Trump. "He and Jeb Bush are the frontrunners... it's kind of like the race between the tortoise and the bad hair."

For anyone who's been missing Leno's monologues since his 2014 sign-off, he offered a few more cracks. "There are a few jokes," he continued. "Trump had medical deferment [during Vietnam... he had inter-rectum cranial inversion — which means his head is up his ass." [ba-dum chh!]

Leno had more insightful comments about the current late-night race. When asked what he thought of Stephen Colbert's upcoming arrival on CBS' Late Show, he said that he thought he'll be "terrific" but quickly made a crack about the current landscape.

"The idea of a white guy in late night, this is revolutionary," he said, lamenting the absence of women and lack of racial diversity in the field.  "I'd live to see more diversity. Arsenio Hall really blew things open [in the '90s]. I don't know why we haven't had someone else come in, just for a different perspective."

Leno, who appeared on the first episode of James Corden's Late Late Show, did not say whether or not he would be a guest on Colbert when he launches —"I'm kind of loyal to the night show and to Jimmy [Fallon]" — in part, seemingly, because he is very proud of The Tonight Show's No. 1 status.

"As long as its No. 1 when you hand it over to the next guy, you've done your job," he said. "And Jimmy will keep it there."

Speaking of Jimmys (and competition), it was just Wednesday night that Leno gave an interview to TVInsider, saying he thought Jimmy Kimmel was talented but his comedy has a "mean streak." After his panel, Leno spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the comments — and did not change his tune.

"I think he’s really funny and I think he’s talented, I just think he has a bit of a mean streak," said Leno. "The best thing you can have in this job is kindness. That’s the one thing you have to keep because this job makes you arrogant, it makes you think you’re superior. Consequently, there’s a tendency to nail the little guy. When I watch his thing where he takes the candy away from the kids at Halloween and they cry, I don’t get that. That seems mean to me. I guess it’s funny on some level. But on another level, it doesn’t come from the heart. It comes from somewhere else. And I think that’s maybe why he hasn’t achieved the success he’d like to because I think he’s just got a bit of a mean streak."

Before leaving the Beverly Hilton ballroom, Leno also touched on one hot-button issue: Bill Cosby and the critical mass of accusations of rape and sexual abuse levied against him in the last year.

Via: Hollywood Reporter

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Why Obamacare Could be Heading to the Supreme Court (Again)

This past week, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, over the vigorous dissent of four judges on that court, denied rehearing en banc (legalese for an entire court rather than just a panel of three judges) in the case of Sissel v. United States Department of Health and Human Services.

Sissel is a case against Obamacare led by the Pacific Legal Foundation, arguing that Obamacare is invalid because it violated the Origination Clause.

Now, the challengers have ninety days to file a writ of certiorari (an appeal) before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This important case deals with the Origination Clause of the Constitution— which reads:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

The Founders included this clause primarily to balance out the unique powers the Senate wields, and to ensure that the power of drawing revenue from the people by taxing them would be initiated by the branch that was closest to them (remember, at that time the Senate was elected by state legislatures, not by popular vote) and whose members would have to stand for re-election every two years.

In the first major Obamacare decision, NFIB v. Sibelius, the Court upheld the law as a tax—something that surprised many people.

But if it’s a tax, shouldn’t the bill have originated in the House?

As it happens, Obamacare “originated” in the House in only a very formalistic sense.

H.R. 3590, the bill that became Obamacare, was originally titled “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009” and had nothing to do with health care.

But to secure passage of Obamacare, the Senate decided to take this bill, which had passed the House, and gut it entirely, replacing the entire text of that bill with the Obamacare title and text and keeping only the bill number.

After it passed the Senate, the House then approved the new Senate-drafted bill through a reconciliation bill.

The House made no changes to the text, which, because of the Senate’s obscure procedural rules, meant that when the bill went back to the Senate, it was not subject to a filibuster.

This was significant because, in the interim, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., had died and been replaced by Scott Brown, R-Mass., thereby depriving the Democrats of the 60 votes they would need to defeat an otherwise inevitable Republican filibuster.

And thus was Obamacare born.

Via: Daily Signal

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Fidel Castro to US: you owe us millions

Havana (AFP) - Fidel Castro marked his 89th birthday Thursday by insisting the United States owes Cuba "many millions of dollars" because of the half-century-old American trade embargo.

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Castro spoke out in an essay published in local media a day before US Secretary of State John Kerry makes a historic visit to Cuba to reopen the US embassy as part of the countries' restoration of diplomatic relations.

The trade embargo that the United States slapped on communist Cuba in 1962, three years after Castro seized power by ousting a US-backed regime, remains in effect despite the thawing.

President Barack Obama wants Congress to lift it, although US officials say this will take time and is not an automatic part of the restoration of ties as it requires congressional action.

Many Republicans, who control both chambers of the legislature, oppose the idea, insisting Cuba has to improve its human rights record and make other democratic reforms.

Castro wrote: "Cuba is owed compensation equivalent to damages, which total many millions of dollars, as our country has stated with irrefutable arguments and data in all of its speeches at the United Nations."

He did not go into detail on precisely how much money he reckons Washington owes Havana. The Americans are also claiming compensation for US-owned property, such as real estate, that was confiscated when Castro took power.

Castro made no mention either of Kerry's visit to reopen the embassy, a step that comes eight months after Obama and Castro's successor and brother Raul announced plans to restore relations. It officially took effect July 20.

Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother in 2006, stepping down because of poor health.

Over the years, Fidel Castro has been a frequent contributor of essays to the communist party newspaper Granma and other media. Thursday's was his first piece since May 8.

"Writing is a way to be useful, if you keep in mind that we poor humans must be more and better educated in the face of the incredible ignorance that surrounds us all, except for researchers who use science to seek a satisfactory answer," Castro wrote.

Castro's 89th birthday is being celebrated with a wide array of events.

In town to take part is Bolivia's populist President Evo Morales, who often refers to Castro as his "wise grandfather."

Via: Yahoo News

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House Committee Calls EPA’s Gina McCarthy Testimony ‘False and Misleading’

Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology wrote to Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy and called her testimony at a hearing in July “false and misleading.”

On July 9, McCarthy testified to the House Committee on the transparency of the EPA’s regulatory agenda. Members of the committee asked McCarthy about the “secret science” that goes in to justifying EPA regulations because they want to ensure the data is available to the American people.

Rep. Frank Lucas (R., Okla.) asked McCarthy whether the agency had made data that was used to craft the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule public. While McCarthy said that the information was “available,” the Committee maintains that EPA did not provide any scientific or legal justification for the figures Lucas asked for.

“Your statement that the information and data requested in Mr. Lucas’ question was publicly available in the EPA docket was false and misleading,” the committee wrote. “Based on the Corps’ memorandum, it is apparent that the figures outlined in EPA’s final WOTUS rule were completely arbitrary and not based on any science.”

The letter cites three more examples during questioning at this particular hearing where the Committee deemed McCarthy’s statements either false or misleading.

It was at this same hearing that McCarthy said she did not know the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, information fundamental to EPA’s regulations.

“Providing false or misleading testimony to Congress is a serious matter,” the committee wrote. “Witnesses who purposely give false or misleading testimony during a congressional hearing may be subject to criminal liability.”

“With that in mind, we write to request that you correct the record and to implore you to be truthful with the American public about matters related to EPA’s regulatory agenda going forward.”

Members who wrote and signed the letter to McCarthy include Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), Rep. Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), Rep. Randy Hultgren (R., Ill.), Rep. Bill Posey (R., Fla.), Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.), Rep. Randy Weber (R., Texas), Rep. Bill Johnson (R., Ohio), Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), Rep. Steve Knight (R., Calif.), Rep. Bruce Westerman (R. Ark.), Rep. Gary Palmer (R., Ala.), Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R., Ga.), and Rep. Ralph Lee Abraham (R., La.).

“We will review and respond to the letter,” said Liz Purchia, deputy associate administrator at the EPA.

Via WFB

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Editorial: EPA’s double standard

Sure accidents happen — it’s why we call them accidents. But you can bet if some oil company had been responsible for filling a Colorado river with toxic sludge — rather than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the Obama White House would be all over it. The Justice Department would likely have already launched an investigation and company officials marched into federal court.

But the EPA — which in its zealotry to rid our air of pollutants wants to ride herd over every coal- and oil-fired plant in the nation — took 24 hours just to notify the residents of nearby Durango of their major-league screw up.

An EPA crew assigned to clean up the Gold King mine high in the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado accidentally opened up a passage from an old tunnel in the mine, allowing millions of gallons of yellow toxic sludge to spill into a creek, and from there into the Animas River. As of Monday it had already traveled 100 miles south into New Mexico. And from there who the hell knows because it’s still flowing, heading toward Utah, including Lake Powell — an area along with Durango itself jammed with tourists this time of year.

Local officials are furious because it took the EPA 24 hours to warn anyone of the arsenic and lead-laden stew headed their way. And the earlier estimate of a 1 million gallon spill later measured at least 3 million gallons.

Yes EPA officials have apologized, but then so did those BP officials after the Gulf Coast oil spill — before they were given the boot. And there are a host of questions still not answered by EPA officials — such as why was the EPA using heavy machinery in an area known to be filled with toxins. Why was the community not notified in a timely fashion. And who will compensate businesses along the route.

Remember the latter was a key requirement in the wake of the BP oil spill.

So where do the victims of the EPA’s incompetence go to have their lives and businesses made whole in the wake of this environmental disaster?

Via: Boston Herald

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Report: Democrats in panic over Hillary Clinton’s criminality

 Actually, they are in a near panic over her getting caught as they have been fine with her criminality for a couple of decades. From The Hill, Dems near Clinton panic mode:

Democrats are worried that the furor over Hillary Clinton’s private email server will be prolonged and intensified after her sudden move to hand it to the FBI.

The Clinton campaign’s decision to give up the server and a thumb-drive containing back-up copies of emails left Democrats scratching their heads as to why the former secretary of State had resisted turning over the server for months.

Coupled with new polls that suggest Clinton is vulnerable, Democrats are nearing full-on panic mode.

“I’m not sure they completely understand the credibility they are losing, by the second,” said one Democratic strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “At some point this goes from being something you can rationalize away to something that becomes political cancer. And we are getting pretty close to the cancer stage, because this is starting to get ridiculous.

…

Separately, Media Matters for America — the liberal watchdog group founded by Clinton ally David Brock — sent out a statement under the subject-line “Myths and Facts about Hillary Clinton’s email.” The first fact it listed was that “none of the emails sent to Clinton were labeled as classified or top secret.”

It goes without saying that aging pederast David Brock’s nasty little neo-Nazi propaganda machine is just an arm of the Clinton machine. But I was intrigued as to what possible defense they could offer. These are their points. I’m not providing a link because I don’t link to hate sites.

Rarely does one encounter such a brazen example of lying. Actually not a single fact in this is true.

Fact. At least two documents were imagery from the Talent Keyhole satellite and they were clearly marked.

Fact. Retroactive classification aside (though the Obama administration persecuted NSA whistleblower Tom Drake by retroactively classifying documents), the documents in question were and remain highly classified.

Fact. Actually the experts cited only debunked a comparison IF Hillary unknowingly stored classified information. That is not the case.

Fact. The only kind of referral from an Agency IG to the FBI is a criminal referral. The FBI does not investigate acts which are only administrative glitches. In fact, the initial Justice Department press release called it a “criminal referral” before Hillary’s campaign strong-armed the agency into calling it a “security referral for counterintelligence purposes.”

The problem for the Democrat establishment is getting more interesting by the day. The national mood demands change but their front runners are white, social security eligible, party apparatchiks who haven’t had an original thought in decades. The nation distrusts government and 57% of the nation doesn’t trust Hillary Clinton (I don’t even want to imagine where they found the 43% who do). Other polls find that in swing states EVERY GOP CANDIDATE either lead Hillary or is well with the MOE of the poll. More importantly, the nation is united in its dislike of Clinton:

This profile with a burgeon investigation that dovetails nicely with your main weakness is not what any candidate needs. While I’m stocking up on popcorn, the Democrats find themselves very late in the election cycle with a candidate who isn’t liked, isn’t trusted, and may very well see her inner circle indicted if she isn’t indicted herself. Do they convince her to step aside? Do they encourage more palatable alternatives to get in the race? Do they pull a Torricelli at some later point and replace her with another nominee? The only thing certain is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how Clinton stays in the race much less wins the White House…unless the GOP does what it does best…

Via: Red State

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[VIDEO] NBC Nightly News isn’t even buying the Hillary spin on the e-mail server

You’re telling me the Camp Hillary virtuoso of spin, Jennifer Palmieri, went to the trouble of sending out an op-ed length nonsense-gram to Hillary supporters today and she couldn’t even sway the network news? She may indeed be in trouble.

As Ed wrote earlier, Palmieri’s weak attempt at justifying Hillary’s conduct when it came to State Department e-mail, had many, many lies in it. It also had the tone of a teenager prepping Mom and Dad for a crap report card— “So, guys, you’re gonna hear some things in the near future…but I don’t want you to be alarmed.”

Peter Suderman at Reason ran over the lies in detail. Perhaps now Chris Matthews will understand why Carly Fiorina feels secure saying Hillary Clinton is lying about her e-mails. It’s because pretty much everything she’s said about her e-mail situation has turned out not to be true. She didn’t only use one device. She didn’t turn over everything work-related. She didn’t mostly send e-mails to government employees so they were immediately archived. She didn’t avoid classified information in corresponding over her private e-mail account. The classified information found by IGs in her relinquished e-mails was not classified after the fact but when she sent it. Oh, and there was a subpoena.

I can’t believe something put together by this consummate communications professional wouldn’t have worked like a charm. Here’s Palmieri earlier this year explaining the difference between ’08 Hillary and ’12 Hillary:

“I can’t talk — I wasn’t part of — ’08 was a very different race in terms of, uh — there was like extraordinary interest on the Democratic side and I think it’s hard just to compare the two situations,” Palmieri said. “But she’s talked about this at times. Obviously, she’s written about it in her books. But it’s true that a lot of people just don’t know it about — and I talked to reporters yesterday about this. And they said she does — you think people don’t know it? No, we don’t. We don’t think people know it. And we do think that, uh, she — she’ll talk about it tomorrow. We’ll do more of that. She has been doing it too. And it is, I think it illuminates, if you think that you need this kind of fighter in the White House, it illuminates why. And it’s true that it hasn’t taken, and I think that this is a different campaign in terms of, you know, what the press might focus on with her, and we’ll stay at it.”

And yet, NBC Nightly News declares Hillary Clinton in “damage control” tonight, with Andrea Mitchell reporting the story.

Via: Hot Air

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[VIDEO] Coulter: 'Immigrant': The New N-Word by Ann Coulter

Americans have got to drop their weird verbal tic of inserting “illegal” into any discussion of immigration.

After I pointed out on “Fox News” that the dispute between Sen. Rand Paul and Gov. Chris Christie over spying on “Americans” was entirely a problem of immigration, “Fox Insiders” put these two sentences together:

“[Coulter] explained that halting illegal immigration would help solve other key issues such as the economy and national security. ‘Don’t make terrorists citizens through immigration, and we’ll have a lot less of a national security problem,’ Coulter said, pointing to the attacks at the Boston Marathon and in Chattanooga.” (Emphasis added.)

Were those guys illegals? Did Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev swim across the Rio Grande to get to Boston? Did Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez hire coyotes to sneak him across the border so he could shoot four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga?

No. Our government invited them in.

Some of our other beloved legal immigrants include:

— Anwar al-Awlaki, the man whose death in Afghanistan provoked Rand Paul to stage a 13-hour filibuster in opposition to the use of drones against — I quote — “American citizens”;

— the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan;

— the attempted Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad;

— all those Somali immigrants living in Minnesota, bloc-voting for Al Franken before flying to Syria to fight with ISIS;

— Sirhan Sirhan;

— the 9/11 hijackers;

— the Pakistani terrorist Daood Sayed Gilani, American anchor baby, responsible for four days of bombings in Mumbai in 2008;

— the New York subway bomb plotter, Najibullah Zazi;

— Pakistani terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, who shot a U.S. Army captain in 2010;

— the “local man” arrested this week for trying to organize an army of ISIS fighters in New York and New Jersey, Nader Saadeh — anchor baby “American citizen.”

ALL LEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN! Why were any of them in this country? What are we getting out of this?

It’s not just the Fox website. Wherever I go on this book tour, I find people injecting “illegal” into the discussion, as if they’re being polite, like saying “Jewish” instead of “Jew.” But all these “homegrown,” “American” terrorists aren’t Americans, at all — except as a result of recent government policy.

This week, Sens. Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz have sent a letter to the Obama administration asking how many “non-citizens, naturalized U.S. citizens and natural-born U.S. citizens have been involved in terrorist-related activity since 1993.” National Review’s headline? “Cruz, Sessions: How Many ‘Homegrown’ Terrorists Were Illegal Immigrants?” (The headline was later changed, after complaints.)

It’s a national neurosis! People simply refuse to see what’s right in front of their faces.

Admittedly, the media hide the evidence, but did anyone read this 2010 New York Times headline, “2 New Jersey Men in Terrorism Case Go Before a Judge,” and think, Oh my gosh! What is America coming to?

The “New Jersey men” were Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte. Alessa, born to legal immigrants from Jordan and the Palestinian territories, told his Boy Scout troop, “Osama bin Laden is a hero in my family” and expressed a desire to mutilate homosexuals and subordinate women. (He was the first member of his troop to earn a merit badge in female circumcision.)

Alessa’s co-conspirator, Almonte, is a legal immigrant from the Dominican Republic. (Raising suspicions, he doesn’t play baseball.) He could be heard on a wiretap saying that he wanted U.S. troops to come home “in caskets.”

He also attended an anti-Israel rally with a large sign reading “DEATH TO ALL JUICE” — which he posted to his Facebook page, a social media platform created by a juice. (Naturalization officials must have high-fived one another when they got that guy.)

CNN was so relieved to have a “homegrown” terrorist who wasn’t a Muslim, the network abandoned its own rule book and identified Almonte as the child of “Latino immigrants” — amid fulsome descriptions of him as “an all-American kid” and an “all-American altar boy.”

So the good news is: Not all “American” terrorists are Muslim immigrants. Some are Latino immigrants — who typically become radicalized after coming into contact with one of our prized Muslim immigrants.

In addition to “DEATH TO ALL JUICE” Almonte, there was Bryant Neal Vinas, whose parents were legal immigrants from Argentina and Peru. Vinas fought with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and, in 2008, plotted to bomb New York’s Penn Station.

At least he’s not one of those icky illegal immigrants!

I have a word limit, so I’ve limited today’s discussion of legal immigrants to the terrorists. But I note that the big news this week is about an illegal immigrant, Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, who raped, then murdered 64-year old Marilyn Pharis with a hammer at her home in Santa Maria, California. Has anyone noticed that Martinez Ramirez’s co-conspirator in the rape-torture-murder was legal immigrant Jose Fernando Villagomez?

It’s getting to the point where we’re going to need cattle prods and shock collars to break people of the neurotic compulsion to slip “ILLEGAL” in front of the word “immigrant.” The reality of legal immigration cannot make a dent in the elite’s make-believe world, where legal immigrants are only hot Swedish models, Rupert Murdoch and Sergey Brin.

Instead of Christie and Paul sparring over government policy on search warrants in a post-9/11 world, could we reconsider the government policy of admitting legal immigrants who need to be spied on?

Copyright 2015 Ann Coulter

Via: Daily Caller

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[OPINION][VIDEO] Hillary Clinton, what are you thinking? We don't need another education subsidy

If elected president, Hillary Clinton has promised to spend $350 billion to make college "more affordable." The U.S. already has an $18 trillion debt (and growing by the day), but Clinton wants to add to it. That's not affordable.

Too many young people are graduating from universities unable to find jobs, or are underemployed. Slate.com references a 2014 study of youth joblessness by the Economic Policy Institute. It found "...roughly 8.5 percent of college graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 were unemployed. That figure is based on a 12-month average between April 2013 and March 2014, so it's not a perfect snapshot of the here and now. Still, it tells us that the post-collegiate job market, just like the rest of the labor market, certainly isn't nearly back to normal. (For comparison, the unemployment rate for all college grads over the age of 25 is 3.3 percent, which is also still higher than normal.) More worrisomely, the EPI finds that a total of 16.8 percent of new grads are 'underemployed,' meaning they're either jobless and hunting for work; working part time because they can't find a full-time job; or want a job, have looked within the past year, but have now given up on searching."

The problem isn't just at the university level; it's at the jobs level where Obamacare, higher taxes and overregulation have reduced incentives to hire people, or forced many to accept part-time work.

When I entered American University as a freshman in 1960, tuition was $450 a semester. Today you probably can't get out of the bookstore for that amount. I received no federal subsidies. My father paid for the first year and I paid for the rest by working and getting a small student loan from the bank, which I quickly repaid.

Via: Fox News

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Census: Record 42.1 million immigrants in U.S., Mexicans drive latest surge

A new analysis of legal and illegal immigrant counts by the Census Bureau revealed Thursday that there is a record 42.1 million in the United States, an explosion that is being driven by Mexicans flooding across the border.

In a report provided to Secrets by the Center for Immigration Studies, the total immigrant population surged 1.7 million since 2014. The growth was led in the last year by an additional 740,000 Mexican immigrants.

The 42.1 million tabulated by Census in the second quarter represent over 13 percent of the U.S. population, the biggest percentage in 105 years.

What's more, the numbers of immigrants coming and going from the U.S. is actually higher since many return home every years, said the report. "For the immigrant population to increase by one million means that significantly more than one million new immigrants must enter the country because some immigrants already here return to their homeland each year and natural mortality totals 250,000 annually," said the Center.

The stunning growth is sure to pour fuel on the already white-hot immigration debate in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail.

"Illegal immigration came up in the presidential debates, but there has been little discussion of the level of immigration; this at a time when total immigration is surging according to the latest data," said Steven Camarota, co-author of the report and the Center for Immigration's director of research.

"The rapid growth in the immigrant population was foreseeable given the cutbacks in enforcement, our expansive legal immigration system, and the improvement in the economy. But the question remains, is it in the nation's interest?" he added.

Some key findings in the new report:

• The nation's immigrant or foreign-born population, which includes legal and illegal immigrants, grew by 4.1 million from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2015 — 1.7 million in just the last year.

Via: Washington Examiner

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SANCTUARY STATE IS A HAVEN FOR CRIMINALS

Another murder, another undeported illegal, another law unenforced. 

By Debra J. Saunders – 8.13.15

I am not remiss to say that from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, there is a blood trail to Marilyn Pharis’ bedroom,” Santa Maria, California police Chief Ralph Martin charged last week. On July 24, two burglars allegedly broke in to Pharis’ home as she slept. They sexually assaulted and beat her. Pharis, 64, a U.S. Air Force veteran, died in the hospital Aug. 1. It turns out that one of the two men charged for the crime, Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, 29, is an undocumented immigrant against whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer in 2014. Ramirez has pleaded not guilty.

The case seems like Kate Steinle all over again. On July 1, Steinle was strolling on Pier 14 in San Francisco with her father, when a bullet pierced her heart. Authorities charged Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a seven-time convicted felon and undocumented immigrant who had been deported five times, with murder. He pleaded not guilty. If the San Francisco sheriff had honored an ICE detainer, Lopez-Sanchez would not have been in San Francisco on July 1.

I always thought there was a covenant with those who come to this country, legally or illegally. They’re supposed to be on their best behavior as a condition of staying. I thought President Barack Obama understood that when he promised to focus on deporting “felons, not families, criminals, not children, gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” But the administration has overly narrowed its view of criminal behavior, such that ICE targets only felons and undocumented immigrants convicted of three or more serious misdemeanors.

To me, racking up misdemeanors should make an immigrant who is here illegally a suitable subject for deportation — but the law has evolved.

Santa Barbara, California, law enforcement first booked Ramirez in 2009 for driving without a license. In May 2014, authorities booked Ramirez on felony sexual assault and drug possession. The charge was changed to misdemeanor battery. It was not reduced, Santa Barbara District Attorney Joyce Dudley told me. “The standard for arrest is probable cause.”

 Last month, authorities charged Ramirez with felony possession of a concealed dirk or dagger and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. On July 20, he pleaded “no contest” to a misdemeanor knife charge; he was supposed to start serving a 30-day sentence in October.

For his part, the Santa Maria police chief is steamed because he has watched state and federal law work together to undermine law enforcement. The voter-approved Proposition 47 downgraded classification for drug possession, shoplifting, and theft from felonies to misdemeanors. And a 2013 California law, the TRUST Act, prevents local law enforcement from honoring ICE detainers absent a serious or violent felony conviction. (Ramirez has no prior felony convictions.) “We’re a sanctuary state,” explained Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento.

There is a cascade effect: Washington relaxes standards for deportations, and Sacramento cranks out bills and ballot measures to reduce the number of crimes classified as felonies. Deportation is not the law enforcement tool it once was. When there are laws against laws, the immigration and criminal justice systems are destined to fail.

Via: American Spectator

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