JUDGE OUTRAGED: ORDERS JEH JOHNSON, TOP OFFICIALS TO ANSWER FOR VIOLATIONS OF EXEC. AMNESTY INJUNCTION

The federal judge who halted President Obama’s executive amnesty programs is demanding top immigration officials appear in his court to answer for the administration’s violations of his injunction.

In a court order, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen expressed frustration at the administration’s failure to correct the violations of his order in a timely manner.

“This Court has expressed its willingness to believe that these actions were accidental and not done purposefully to violate this Court’s order. Nevertheless, it is shocked and surprised at the cavalier attitude the Government has taken with regard to its ‘efforts’ to rectify this situation,” Hanen wrote in his order, obtained by Politico.

The problem is the issuance of more than 2,000 three-year work permits issued to illegal immigrants under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals under Obama’s expansion of the program, as opposed to current two-year permits. The administration admitted to issuing the three-year permits after Hanen issued his February injunction.

The violation came on the heels of another administration admission that it had issued three-year work permits to some 108,800 illegal immigrants before the injunction and before the official start date of executive amnesty.

Hanen has expressed outraged in past orders about the administration’s violations and lack of transparency about the missteps. In recent weeks the administration has further admitted that it has not recouped all of the three-year work permits that it erroneously issued, in violation of Hanen’s order.

“The Government promised this Court on May 7, 2015, that ‘immediate steps’ were being taken to remedy the violations of the injunction… Yet, as of June 23, 2015—some six weeks after making that representation—the situation had not been rectified,” Hanen wrote in his Tuesday order.

He also demanded the administration come into full compliance with his prior order, noting that even the government conceded that it directly violated his order, allowing two months to pass without fully remedying the violation.

“That is unacceptable and, as far as the Government’s attorneys are concerned, completely unprofessional. To be clear, this Court expects the Government to be in full compliance with this Court’s injunction. Compliance as to just those aliens living in the Plaintiff States is not full compliance,” Hanen added.

He noted that if the government comes in compliance with his order by July 31 he will cancel the August hearing at which he is expecting the named defendants in the case: Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Customs and Border Patrol Director Gil Kerlikowske, Deputy Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana, and Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez.

DHS spokeswoman Marsha Catron confirmed to Politico that it has received the order and “is currently reviewing it with the Department of Justice.”

Via: Breitbart

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[EDITORIALS] Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Corpus Christi Caller-Times. July 1, 2015.

Court’s rulings aren’t ‘lawless;’ they’re the law

Since when did the law of the land become “lawless”? Since never, that’s when.

Yet, repetitively, disturbingly, people in positions of real power and influence have described the U.S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decisions legalizing same-sex marriage and affirming the legality of Affordable Care Act subsidies as “lawless” acts perpetrated by “five unelected lawyers.”

Sure, these people in high places are entitled to express their opinion - note: that’s opinion singular, not plural because the same words are being said as if memorized from the same script.

But this is not mere rhetoric. The rest of America can’t just dismiss these people with a wave of the hand and a “consider the source” because, well, consider the sources - Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton and two dissenting members of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia.

All occupy positions powerful enough that their words carry more than meaning. By calling the lawful court’s lawful decisions lawless, as did Cruz and Paxton, they encourage and enable disrespect and lawless disregard of law.

And by dismissing the Supreme Court majority as five appointed lawyers, Abbott, Roberts and Scalia undermine the authority of an entire branch of government that is our protection from the other two. Which is more frightening, a five-lawyer majority of the Supreme Court or those other two branches?

Think seriously before answering. And while pondering, consider that the court also just ruled, 5-4, against the Environmental Protection Agency’s new power plant emissions standards opposed by Texas and 22 other states. Abbott and Paxton were only too happy to see five lawyers take down the executive branch on that one.

Regarding the same-sex marriage ruling, Abbott went so far as to issue a directive to state agencies to protect “religious liberties” at the expense of gay couples seeking to wed. The governor thus used the word “liberty” to try to deny liberty, which we find strikingly similar to Cruz and Paxton’s ironic misuse of “lawless.”

Paxton followed up with an opinion that public servants could refuse to grant marriage licenses or preside over wedding ceremonies based on their religious objections. How far might this frighteningly elastic new concept of religious liberty be stretched? Shall government services - they are, after all, government and not religious services - be denied to uncircumcised men? To unveiled women?

If that sounded like a joke, it wasn’t meant as one. It was meant only to point out the lawless joke being made of religious freedom by those seeking to use it to obstruct the Supreme Court.

Children who are raised right are raised to respect and abide by the law. The God-fearing among us take it a step further and raise children to believe in and love God. Calling the law lawless and twisting religious belief into nothing more than a weapon to attack a law - and to attack the people the law was meant to protect - undermines what we teach our children. Adults in positions of authority are leading by bad example - showing children how to disrespect and violate the laws they don’t like, to dismiss the people and institutions that make those laws, and to view religion cynically as a strategic tool rather than a system of faith.

One of these adults in authority, Paxton, is an actual lawbreaker who nevertheless was elected to be Texas’ chief lawyer. Paxton violated the law requiring him to disclose that he was an agent receiving commissions for investments he recommended. He has dismissed as a technicality this fundamental breach of honesty. What respect does this elected lawyer’s authority deserve? Certainly less than the five unelected lawyers who stands accused of lawlessness by this lawbreaker.

There’s a difference between criticizing and obstructing the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court - a perilous difference.

Via: Washington TImes

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Documents show execessive use of Massachusetts SWAT teams

I reported last year that many of Massachusetts’s SWAT teams were claiming to be private corporations that were immune from public records requests. Last month, the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), the corporation that overseas that region’s SWAT teams, settled with the Massachusetts ACLU and released records related to how SWAT teams are used. A number of publications have since been sifting through the documents.

The results are similar to what we found in other situations in which these records have been made public — the widespread use of the kind of militarized tactics, weapons, and gear that was once reserved only for emergency situations, when lives were at immediate risk. Most notable: Of the 21 times a NEMLEC SWAT team was deployed to serve a search warrant for drugs, the SWAT team reported finding drugs just five times.

From The Intercept:

Just one of the 79 SWAT deployments in 2012-14 — assistance with the search for the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing — involved terrorism. Other SWAT actions during that period show no hostage situations, no active shooters and only 10 non-suicidal barricaded subjects.

About half of the remaining cases involved everyday and often mundane police activity, including executing warrants, dealing with expected rioting after a 2013 Red Sox World Series game, and providing security for a Dalai Lama lecture. In one mission, 15 SWAT team members roved through Salem’s Halloween celebrations looking out for unspecified “gang-related activity,” but were warned by their commanders to maintain a “professional demeanor” given that “everyone has a camera phone and you don’t want to be on YouTube or the news later.”

The remaining 37 SWAT actions were either proactive drug operations, initiated by local police, or suicide response operations . . .

More than half of the SWAT teams’ drug operations were initiated at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. Furthermore, of the 22 narcotics operations detailed in the documents over the two years, 14 included warrants authorizing SWAT teams to conduct “no knock” raids and four authorizing “knock and announce” raids — both of which are forceful entry options that have made national headlines for the accidental killings, injuries, and trauma they can produce.

Via: Washington Post

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CNBC: Cramer: $30 oil could be around the corner

While most investors are freaking out about Greece, Jim Cramer thinks it would be more prudent to take a closer look at the price of oil, which has much more of a direct impact to U.S. companies.

The price of oil has been hit hard lately, dropping to about $50 during the day on Tuesday from $59 a week ago. Cramer is still in shock, because when oil was hovering around $60 he was convinced that the independent oil companies might provide some real leadership in the market.

But after the latest session of crude being put through the meat grinder, Cramer's opinion has been thrown out the window.

So what could be next for oil prices?

To find out, Cramer turned to the help of Carley Garner, a technician and co-founder of DeCarley Trading, and a colleague of Cramer's a tRealMoney.com.

"Now, if there is one thing you need to keep in mind as the price of oil tumbles, it is that this is very much an issue of excess supply," the "Mad Money" host said. (Tweet This)

"If you agree with Garner that oil could be headed lower here, you have to hold off on buying the oil stocks in order to wait for better prices"-Jim Cramer

Looking at the long-term chart of U.S. oil production going all the way back to the 1920s, Garner pointed out that the U.S. has doubled its monthly oil output since the lows of 2008 and is nearly back to its peak levels set back in the 1970s. Thus, unless some sort of unforeseen powerful even occurs, she believes that the oil market will be over-supplied for a long time.

But to really understand what is going on with oil means knowing what the big money dogs are doing with it. That is why Garner took a look at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's weekly commitments of traders report, which tells investors how the big money is betting in the oil futures market.

Via: CNBC

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For Democrats, the Politics of Obamacare Are Still Dismal

July 8, 2015 Understanding the politics of the president's health care law has never been complicated. It was barely passed through Congress despite huge Democratic majorities in 2009, became the driving force behind the GOP's takeover of the House in 2010, and again was the leading issue Republicans campaigned on to retake the Senate in 2014. Nearly 15,000 advertisements aired about Obamacare in the last week of last year's midterms, and94 percent of the messaging was negative. One week later, Republicans won nine Senate seats and netted their largest House majority since the 1920s. For Republicans, it has been the political gift that keeps on giving.

Yet even though public opinion remains unfavorable towards the law, Democrats remain in denial about its political standing. Its supporters rushed to declare the issue closed for debate after the Supreme Court's ruling last month that federal subsidies remained constitutional. "After more than 50 votes in Congress to repeal or weaken this law, after a presidential election based in part on preserving or repealing this law; after multiple challenges to this law before the Supreme Court—the Affordable Care Act is here to stay," President Obama proclaimed after the ruling.

In reality, the law will likely remain a pivotal element of the GOP's argument against Hillary Clinton in 2016—and for Republicans in the battleground congressional contests. Adding to the political momentum for opponents of the law are unpopular mandates and provisions that were delayed after the midterms but will be taking effect as the presidential election draws closer. Most significantly, leading health insurance companies are seeking significant increases for premiums, as they're finding their customers are sicker than expected. At the same time, federal "risk corridors" established to help cover their rising costs are expiring and not likely to be renewed by a cost-conscious Congress.

(RELATED: Republicans to Test White House's Obamacare Swagger)

Even the Obama administration, by its own actions, has demonstrated the unpopularity of its signature law. In responding to political resistance to Obamacare, the White House purposely delayed critical elements of the law until after the 2014 midterm elections—when Obama would be heading out of office. Medium-sized businesses won't be required to provide health insurance to their employees until next year—a mandate that opponents of the law argued would be overly burdensome and drag the economy down. Consumers who received extensions for their old health care plans won't be able to keep them past 2017, renewing the prospect of another flood of politically-damaging cancellation notices. The funding streams to the insurance companies—or bailout, in the GOP parlance—that would help reduce consumer costs are unlikely to be maintained, given how expensive it would be. The theory was that if they kept buying time, public opinion would slowly get with the program regardless of its fiscal sustainability.

Via: National Journal

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Massive Government Overreach: Obama’s AFFH Rule Is Out

Today, HUD Secretary Julian Castro announced the finalization of the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. A front-page article pre-emptively defending the move appears in today’s Washington Post. The final rule is 377 pages, vastly longer than the preliminary version of the rule promulgated in 2013. 

AFFH is easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives, on a par with Obamacare in its transformative potential. In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood—imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning, to transportation, to education. Not only the policy but the political implications are immense—at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.

 It is a scandal that the mainstream press has largely refused to report on AFFH until the day of its final release. The rule has been out in preliminary form for two years, and well before that the Obama administration’s transformative aims in urban/suburban policy were evident. Three years ago, when I wrote about Obama’s policy blueprint in Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, the administration’s efforts to keep this issue under the radar were evident. Only last month, an admission of the stealth relied on by advocates to advance this initiative was caught on video. 

Obama has downplayed his policy goals in this area and delayed the finalization of AFFH for years, because he understands how politically explosive this rule is. Once the true implications of AFFH are understood, Americans will rebel. The only prospect for successful imposition is a frog-boiling strategy of gradual intensification. The last day the frog will be able to jump is Tuesday, November 8, 2016. 

Fundamentally, AFFH is an attempt to achieve economic integration. Race and ethnicity are being used as proxies for class, since these are the only hooks for social engineering provided by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Like AFFH itself, today’s Washington Post piece blurs the distinction between race and class, conflating the persistence of “concentrated poverty” with housing discrimination by race. Not being able to afford a free-standing house in a bedroom suburb is no proof of racial discrimination. Erstwhile urbanites have been moving to rustic and spacious suburbs since Cicero built his villa outside Rome. Even in a mono-racial and mono-ethnic world, suburbanites would zone to set limits on dense development.

Via: National Review

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CALIFORNIA: March of the Medical Interlopers Threatening Patient Care

Interlopers are government personnel who impose regulations that take me away from my work in order to check boxes, collect meaningless data, or fill out forms that address “nothing” about “something.”  Interlopers are vendors, insurers or bureaucrats who have something to gain in dollars and power at the expense of the health of America’s patients.

I am a physician and my job was to manage the health and medical care of my patients. That was the basis of my very extensive training and the focus of my life until the invasion of the interlopers. The schizoid attempt by the interlopers to confound me and other physician professionals is driving the health industry into an expensive civil war.

According to the Physicians Foundation there are already 2,167 quality metrics demanding a physicians’ time and attention. The individual private practice is overwhelmed by the increasingly irrelevant paper work while larger groups find it easier to purchase staff to assist.

Further, productivity has decreased by an estimated 30 percent with the implementation of the electronic medical record. The utility of the EMR should be the opportunity to provide patient data at the point of service. That has not been accomplished because the 2 major EMR vendors (Epic and Cerner) don’t integrate with each other or doctors’ offices. Every EMR is a silo of data: data collected so that doctors or hospitals might collect a bonus from the payer (government or insurer). This data is administrative, not clinical, data nor is it an accurate representation of a physician’s work. It is, however, readily available to hackers.

Ms. Faulkner, the multibillionaire CEO of Epic also sits on the government panel that recommends IT standards. Typical of an interloper, Epic has found a way to create a need for itself while supervising his or her own work.

ICD is an administrative coding system attempting to translate a patient’s clinical condition into a code. ICD 10 is the 10^th iteration of this code set and increases the codes available to 87,000 from the 14,000 codes in the ICD 9 code set. While this is the coding set used by the World Health Association as a means of documenting diagnosis, in the U.S., these codes are used as a means of validating payment. In either case, the data is useless as a means of legitimately documenting a patient visit or ongoing care. Our patients’ medical history doesn’t fit into a box created by a bureaucrat.

Via: California Political Review

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The IRS Scandal Just Got Even Worse

Former IRS official Lois Lerner

So the Obama IRS wasn’t just persecuting right-leaning nonprofits — it was out to prosecute them, too. And with the help of the Obama Department of Justice and FBI.

Via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the watchdog group Judicial Watch just got evidence of the plot. A “DOJ Recap” on an Oct. 8, 2010, meeting tells how officials from the three agencies discussed “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC law” against groups “posing” as tax-exempt nonprofits.

As part of the project, the IRS handed the FBI 21 computer disks with 1.23 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit 501(c)(4) groups — nearly every 501(c)(4). This, though federal law generally bans the IRS from sharing such data.

The evidence shows “that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” noted Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his re-election. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information.”

The IRS scandal surfaced years ago — and for all the administration talk of a full investigation, this huge news is only surfacing now, and only thanks to Judicial Watch.

The news of FBI and Justice involvement in the IRS scandal makes the need for some special prosecutor to probe this mess even more obvious.

After all, as Judicial Watch’s Fitton asks: “How can the Justice Department and the FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”

Via: NY Post

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Michelle Obama reveals her 'modest' $600k changes to White House State Dining Room - months after her florist quit amid reports of 'infighting' between designers

Michelle Obama has given a touch-up to the White House State Dining Room, the latest interior design change that will endure long after she leaves the building at a cost of $595,000.

Her modest changes to the room where many dinners and other events are held follow this year's more dramatic remake of the Old Family Dining Room and the unveiling of the Obama china service.

The change, which has been years in the making, comes just months after head florist Laura Dowling quit her post and was escorted from the building by security.

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Changes: Michelle Obama unveiled the new White House State Dining Room on Tuesday 

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New colors: Blue was added as well, meant to represent the water in Hawaii near where |president Obama lived

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Change: Everything was selected with the approval of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in consultation with first lady Michelle Obama

DailyMail.com reported that Dowling had been pushed out by 'jealous' rivals from her post.

Sources close to Dowling suggested she was upset at having to leave and blamed her demise on the intense rivalry that exists within the small coterie of decorators and designers that serve the White House.

'She is very sad about leaving the White House,' said one source on condition of anonymity.

'She was very proud to work there and this has come as a shock. It's all about jealousy - Laura has not put a foot wrong.

'She was very hardworking and she has always been professional and passionate about her work. She and her husband have said they can't talk about it now.

'But they've said that when the time comes they will reveal what really happened.'

Via: Daily Mail

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[VIDEO] Map: Over 200 'sanctuary cities' in 32 states and D.C.

There are over 200 "sanctuary cities" in 32 states that give safe harbor to illegal immigrants, even violent ones with felony records like the man accused of killing a San Francisco mother last week, according to a new analysis.

The Center for Immigration Studies on Wednesday posted a map of the cities. On their website, they reported:

"More than 200 cities, counties and states across the United States are considered sanctuary cities. These state and local jurisdictions have policies, laws, executive orders, or regulations allowing them to avoid cooperating with federal immigration law enforcement authorities. These 'cities' ignore federal law authorizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to administratively deport illegal aliens without seeking criminal warrants or convictions from federal, state, or local courts."

According to CIS and another website, Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC, Washington, D.C., and multiple cities around the nation's capital are included where local police forces are told to not cooperate with federal authorities.

Which cities fit the definition can be open to debate. Jessica Vaughan, CIS director of policy studies, who helped pull the map together, said the number could go over 300.

"One could also argue that any jurisdiction that provides drivers licenses, or welfare benefits, or public housing, or municipal ID cards is a sanctuary," she explained.

Via: Washington Examiner

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What Do a Family Restaurant in Oregon and a Car Dealer in Texas Have in Common?

What do a family restaurant in Oregon, a car dealer in Texas and a building supply store in Massachusetts have in common? They've found successful ways to capture the attention of customers spending more time than ever with "screens"—TVs, phones, tablets and computers. 

Those businesses joined others during a recent webcast, Take Five for Your Future, presented by Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales division of Comcast Cable. The companies participated in Comcast Spotlight's LAMP Awards, which recognize multi-screen advertising—combining television and digital marketing. 

The benefit is two-fold: some prospective customers will see a message on one screen that they missed on the other, while another group will see the message on both screens, and thus hear that message more often. 

Amy Schearer, Chief Marketing Officer of the Philadelphia Zoo, said during the webcast that this approach allowed the tourist attraction to "reach people at multiple points during the day." The zoo's multi-screen campaign, highlighting a new exhibit for children, contributed to one of the best years for total attendance. The growth came despite a harsh winter and spring, which dampens attendance. Once Mother Nature relented, though, the campaign worked its magic. 

A recurring theme from webcast participants was the ability of cable TV and digital advertising to reach specific neighborhoods. For People's Federal Savings Bank in Massachusetts, it turned out that their network of branches aligned well with Comcast Spotlight's zones, or groupings of neighborhoods, in the market. 

According to Thomas Long, Principal of the Long Group, the bank's marketing agency, a targeted approach meant their advertising "worked smarter and harder." The result of the campaign was a 250% increase in monthly checking account sales. Also noteworthy was that the new customers coming to the bank were, on average, 16 years younger than the bank's existing customers, meaning a new generation of consumers was getting the message as a result of TV advertising on networks like ABC Family and Bravo coupled with the same commercial appearing before online video and in banner advertisements on XFINITY.com. 

That approach also worked wonders for Chace Building Supply, the Massachusetts retailer. Chace competes with several national, "big-box" retailers, a challenge for many small businesses. In addition to being able to focus advertising near its store location, what also benefited the store was the ability to reach both men and women. For men, it meant commercials in programs like ESPN's Monday Night Football and Boston Bruins games; for women, networks like Lifetime, E! and Food Network hit the mark. 

For Elmer's, the Portland restaurant chain, reaching multiple audiences meant something different: attracting new customers, including those new to the region and not familiar with Elmer's 55-year history, while appealing to long-time guests. Like other webcast participants, Elmer's took advantage of the cost savings by using its existing commercial as an online advertisement, and added a little something extra to the online ads: pictures of seasonal menu items. That had customers clicking to learn more: 12% of the 12,000+ people who watched the online video visited Elmer's website. In the hyper-competitive restaurant business, Elmer's recorded a five percent increase in total sales, a figure Director of Restaurant Support Jill Ramos called "truly a win in the restaurant industry

." Some businesses take a hybrid approach to local advertising. Ron Carter Cadillac, the Texas auto dealer, aired advertising throughout the full Houston market, with additional commercials focused on the area immediately surrounding the dealership. It was an effective strategy to maximize the marketing budget, and included a mix of morning, primetime and weekend time periods. Ron Ross also wanted to reach a younger audience than is typically thought of as a Cadillac customer, so networks like ESPN, TNT and USA were a key component in its plan. The digital advertising element of the media plan did its job, nearly doubling traffic to Ron Carter's website, while overall vehicle sales increased about 50%. Chris Premant, E-commerce and Business Development Manager for the dealer noted that those results underscore "the reality that traditional drives digital" when it comes to advertising. 

Comcast Spotlight recently began accepting entries for this year's LAMP Awards, and will announce the winners this fall.

Via: National Review

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[VIDEO] Shooting renews scrutiny on 'sanctuary'-backing San Francisco sheriff

The murder of a young woman in San Francisco allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant has brought renewed scrutiny on the sheriff who released the defendant before the attack and has ardently backed policies making the city a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in March handed over defendant Francisco Sanchez on a drug-related warrant to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department.

However, the department released him several weeks later, after the charges were dropped, following a policy of not complying with federal requests to detain illegal immigrants for deportation.

"My long-held belief is that local law enforcement should not be in the civil immigration detainer business," San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said last year, after the policy was adopted.

Mirkarimi, a Democrat and former Green Party member, has argued since Sanchez allegedly shot to death 32-year-old Kate Steinle on July 1 that federal authorities should have issued a warrant or court order to hold Sanchez, who has seven prior convictions and has already been deported five times. 

But this claim has been met with skepticism, given the circumstances. “He should have honored the immigration hold,” immigration lawyer Francisco Hernandez told Fox News on Tuesday. 

Mirkarimi, elected in 2011, is up for re-election in November. Now, Steinle’s death, coupled with personal and departmental missteps, pose potential problems. 

Via: Fox News

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