Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Jarrett sees immigration rewrite, Obamacare, as top Obama achievements

Valerie Jarrett, one of President Barack Obama’s top deputies, said Tuesday that immigration reform would be as important to the country’s future as Obamacare.
“It will be a landmark piece of legislation,” she told a videotaped meeting of progressive allies in a building alongside the White House.“Together with the Affordable Care Act — two major pieces of legislation — that when we look back 50 years from now, I think we will all just be extremely proud,” said Jarrett.
Jarrett’s close relationship to Obama was underlined by her repeated use of the first-person plural. “We are confident that with everybody making [immigration] a priority, it will in fact pass, and we will sign it into law,” she said.
Jarrett’s pairing of Obamacare and immigration echoes her critics, who say the immigration rewrite is an effort by Democrats to gain political supremacy by adding tens of millions of Democrat-leaning immigrants to election rolls after 2020.
“Politically, pairing them in her mind suggests that the administration sees both pieces of administration as transformative,” said Mark Krikorian, a noted critic of immigration and the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
The two measures are very different from routine laws on spending or regulating the environment, which “are all matters of mundane management of a country’s affairs,” he said.
Via: The Daily Caller

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EMAILS PROVE FBI COULD HAVE PREVENTED FORT HOOD ATTACK

More evidence is piling up against the FBI when it comes to Nidal Hasan, the Army Major convicted for the mass killing of over a dozen people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. 

First, the New York Times published two emails Hasan provided them, and now Mother Jones is reporting the FBI released emails and other documents that prove they could have prevented the November 5, 2009 attack.
military panel found Hasan guilty of 13 premeditated murders and 31 premeditated attempted murders. The jury will begin to deliberate the sentence on Wednesday. The verdict was unanimous, which means the death penalty is on the table.
The prosecution wanted to use the emails and documents as evidence of Hasan’s motive, but Judge Col. Tara Osborn threw them out. They include a string of emails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, in which Hasan said he murdered his fellow soldiers because he wanted to protect al-Qaeda and Taliban soldiers. The FBI intercepted these emails almost a year before the attack. Hasan even wanted to discuss them for his defense, but Osborn dismissed this.
FBI officials always claimed the documents proved little, but they would not allow the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to review them. Even without these documents, however, the committee established in their report “A Ticking Timebomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack” that officials had enough evidence to stop Hasan.

Exclusive: U.S. delays deadline for finalizing Obamacare health plans

A Tea Party member reaches for a pamphlet titled ''The Impact of Obamacare'', at a ''Food for Free Minds Tea Party Rally'' in Littleton, New Hampshire in this October 27, 2012 file photo. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi//FilesCAN THIS ADMINISTRATION TRULY BELIEVE THIS IS GOING TO WORK!!
(Reuters) - The Obama administration has delayed a step crucial to the launch of the new healthcare law, the signing of final agreements with insurance plans to be sold on federal health insurance exchanges starting October 1.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified insurance companies on Tuesday that it would not sign final agreements with the plans between September 5 and 9, as originally anticipated, but would wait until mid-September instead, according to insurance industry sources.

Nevertheless, Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for HHS, said the department remains "on track to open" the marketplaces on time on October 1.

The reason for the hold-up was unclear. Sources attributed it to technology problems involving the display of insurance products within the federal information technology system.
Peters said only that the government was responding to "feedback" from the companies, "providing additional flexibility and time to handle technical requests."

Coming at a time when state and federal officials are still working to overcome challenges to the information technology systems necessary to make the exchanges work, some experts say that even a small delay could jeopardize the start of the six-month open enrollment period
Via: Reuters
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Juan Williams: 50 Years Later, King Is Alive, Waking from His Dream

6 Ways Syria 2013 Isn’t Iraq 2003

Presidential Reunion: Scenes from the Opening of the Bush LibraryAn American president says a Middle Eastern country has weapons of mass destruction. He builds a “coalition of the willing” for a military strike against said country.
Sound familiar?
It could be President Barack Obama in 2013 or President George W. Bush in 2003, or so fear liberal Democrats leery of getting involved in yet another war in the Middle East.
“While the use of chemical weapons is deeply troubling and unacceptable, I believe there is no military solution to the complex Syrian crisis,” Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who famously was the only member to vote against authorizing the war in Afghanistan, said Tuesday in a statement on her Facebook page. “Congress needs to have a full debate before the United States commits to any military force in Syria — or elsewhere.”

But Obama, who ran on a platform in 2008 of ending Bush’s wars in the Middle East, isn’t Bush, and there are important distinctions between the two scenarios. Here are six ways Syria 2013 isn’t Iraq 2003:

Via: Time Magazine


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Obamacare Challenge

JPG 5-more-ways-homepageARE YOU ELIGIBLE TO BE A PLAINTIFF??

Judicial Watch is considering litigation challenging President Obama’s rewriting of Obamacare.  Specifically, President Obama has unilaterally rewritten the law to delay the “employer mandate,” which was scheduled to go in effect on January 1, 2014, for at least a year.  At the same time, he did not rewrite the law to delay the “individual mandate,” which requires nearly all Americans to have Obama-approved health insurance by that same date or pay a tax penalty.

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Many Americans are caught in the middle.  They are obligated to have Obama-approved health insurance, but their employers are not obligated to provide it, at least for another year.  As a result, these Americans will be forced to purchase Obama-approved health insurance on an Obamacare-created health insurance exchange or pay the tax penalty.  Either way, they’re out-of-pocket.

If you are going to have to purchase Obama-approved health insurance through an Obamacare-created health insurance exchange or pay a tax penalty because your employer, which would have been covered by the employer mandate, is dropping or does not provide health insurance, you may have a claim to challenge President Obama’s unilateral rewriting of the law.

We obviously object to the employer mandate, the individual mandate, and the entire Obamacare law, but we understand that, under the U.S. Constitution, the law can only be changed by legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president.  President Obama evidently wants to delay at least some of the ill effects of his health care scheme until after the 2014 congressional elections.  But politics do not trump the Constitution or the rule of law.
If you think your circumstances fit the bill and would be interested in being a plaintiff in a challenge to Obama’s unconstitutional power grab, then please contact us by replying to this email address:obamacarechallenge@judicialwatch.org.


[CARTOON] Thelma and Louise


Via: California Political Review

Obama’s creeping amnesty plan

Photo - President Obama is expanding his administrative amnesty programs, further weakening the case for conservatives to trust him on the issue. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)As President Obama’s top second term legislative priority, citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States, slowly dies from lack of momentum in Congress, Obama is expanding his administrative amnesty programs, further weakening the case for conservatives to trust him on the issue.
On Aug. 23, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency issued a new policy directive directing all ICE personnel to “ensure that the agency’s immigration enforcement activities do not unnecessarily disrupt the parental rights” of illegal immigrant parents or guardians of minors. The memo encourages ICE agents to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in favor of parents “at any stage of an enforcement proceeding” but leniency in favor of parents is “preferable … as early in the case or proceeding as possible.”
In other words, as long as an illegal immigrant can show they have a child in the United States, they can stay.
“President Obama has once again abused his authority and unilaterally refused to enforce our current immigration laws by directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stop removing broad categories of unlawful immigrants,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said in a statement August 24. “The primary reason why our immigration system is broken today is because our immigration laws have largely been ignored by past and present administrations. It’s imperative that we prevent this from happening again by taking away the enforcement ‘on/off’ switch from the president.”
Obama’s August 23, policy directive on parents comes after his June 15, 2012 memo granting “deferred action” (also known as “non-priority enforcement status”) to all illegal immigrants who met the following criteria:
  • under 31 years of age as of June 15, 2012
  • came to the U.S. while under the age of 16
  • continuously resided in the U.S. from June 15, 2007 to the present
  • entered the U.S. without inspection before June 15, 2012, or individuals whose lawful immigration status expired as of June 15, 2012
  • physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012
  • currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a GED, or have been honorably discharged from the Coast Guard or armed forces
  • have not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor, or more than three misdemeanors and do not pose a threat to national security or public safety.

Obama and his team contradict past statements on war powers, Syria

As President Barack Obama weighs military action in Syria, it remains unclear whether he will first seek congressional authorization.
It is clear, however, that Obama once thought such authorization was necessary.
“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” candidate Obama told The Boston Globe in late 2007. He added that the president can only act unilaterally in “instances of self-defense.”
“It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action,” Obama continued.
President Obama did not seek congressional approval for his military strikes against Libya in 2011. That bombing campaign led to longtime dictator Muammar Gadhafi’s ouster.
Vice President Joe Biden, who voted for the Iraq War, agreed with Obama.
“The president has no constitutional authority to take this country to war… unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked,” Biden said in 2007.
Biden, then a Democratic senator from Delaware, suggested presidential war-making was an impeachable offense.
Via: Daily Caller

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Stocks Fall as Oil Reaches 18-Month High on Syria Concern

Stocks slid the most since June and oil surged to an 18-month high amid concern the U.S. will take military action against Syria. Treasuries, the yen and gold rose while Turkey’s lira and India’s rupee reached record lows.
Japan’s Topix Index declined 0.3 percent, falling a second day. Photographer: Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist for BlackRock Inc., talks about the outlook for stocks and bonds. He speaks with Sara Eisen and Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance." (Source: Bloomberg)

The MSCI All-Country World Index dropped 1.4 percent as of 4:35 p.m. in New York as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 1.6 percent, the worst declines for both in two months. Dubai’s benchmark gauge plunged 7 percent. Japan’s currency appreciated versus all 31 major counterparts and government bonds of the U.S., Germany and the U.K. rallied. The lira tumbled passed 2 per dollar for the first time and the rupee sank to 66.19 versus the dollar. Crude jumped 2.9 percent to $109.01 a barrel in New York and gold rose 1.9 percent to $1,420.20 an ounce.
U.S. benchmark stock indexes erased gains in the final hour of trading yesterday as Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday that President Barack Obama believes there must be accountability for the “moral obscenity” of using chemical weapons in Syria, fanning concern unrest may disrupt Middle East oil supplies. An Ifo institute report today showed German business confidence rose for a fourth month in August, while U.S. data showed home prices increased at a slower rate andconsumer confidence held near a five-year high.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

U.S. Gov't Funding $313M in Mortgages—For Palestinians on West Bank

West BankThe U.S. government will fund $313 million in home mortgages for Palestinians living on the West Bank, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.
The U.S. will also guarantee $110 million in loans to small- and medium-sized businesses located on the West Bank.
The mortgage and business-loan activities will be conducted by the federal Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). “OPIC is the U.S. Government’s development finance institution,” says OPIC’s website. “OPIC provides financial products, such as loans and guaranties; political risk insurance; and support for investment funds, all of which help American businesses expand into emerging markets.”
The GAO report released Tuesday described some of the actions OPIC is taking in the emerging market of the Palestinian territories.
“U.S. agencies and implementing partners participate in various programs with the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF) or PIF-owned entities that include home mortgage financing, loan guarantees, and educational initiatives,” says the report. “First, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) along with PIF and other entities have committed to lend $485 million to the Affordable Mortgage and Loan Company (AMAL) to support mortgages for low- and medium-income borrowers in the West Bank.
“OPIC has committed to lend about $313 million; PIF ha
Via: CNS News

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