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Those remarks drew the ire of conservative talk show host Sean Hannity, who on his Monday radio program declared he had enough and was abandoning his home state, where he hosts his widely syndicated radio show and his high-rated Fox News Channel television program.
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1) There will be some form of legalization (conditional amnesty) for the 11 million illegal immigrants already here. It won’t give them a “special” path to citizenship, but they will likely be able to pursue citizenship through regular old channels. Either way, the message sent to potential future immigrants will be, “If you come here illegally, you’ll get to stay legally.” Plus, once the bill has passed the Democratic campaign to paint the GOP as racist for not granting general citizenship to the whole group will begin.
2) There will be an attempt to describe Speaker Boehner’s “piecemeal” collection of immigration bills as an “enforcement first” arrangement that will prevent another, future illegal wave despite the incentive created by what will be two successive amnesties. Since Democrats and Latino groups would never go for an actual “enforcement first” approach–e.g., enacting universal E-verify, an exit-entry system, building a fence and waiting a few years for legal challenges to peter out**–this claim will necessarily be a fraud, the framing of which will be a key challenge for Boehner & Co.. Presumably just saying “Hey we passed the enforcement part of the bill a week before we passed the amnesty part” won’t do, nor will letting President Obama decide when the enforcement mechanisms are sufficiently “in place.” That means a convoluted debate over “triggers,” the traditional playground for legislative legerdemain.*** Legalizers will try to make the prequisites look tough when they aren’t — certainly nothing that can’t be easily dismantled once the undocumented get their documents. Do not count on the press to correct this misimpression. They’re in the “fool the rubes” camp too.
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Nat Hentoff does not think much of President Obama.
And now, the famous journalist says it is time to begin looking into impeachment.
Hentoff sees the biggest problem as Obama’s penchant to rule by executive order when he can’t convince Congress to do things his way.
The issue jumped back into the headlines last week when, just before his first Cabinet meeting of 2014, Obama said, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone … and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions.”
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A description distributed to hotels in the area says that the FSB, Russia’s internal security service, has received information that Ruzanna Ibragimova, the widow of an insurgent “neutralised” by security forces, may have travelled from Dagestan to the Sochi area on January 11 or 12.
“According to our information Ms Ibragimova may be used by the ring leaders of illegal armed groups for the organisation of terrorist acts in the zone of the 2014 Olympics,” the notice says.
While the notice does not mention the term, the widows of fighters killed in the on-going conflict between Islamist separatists and Russian forces in the North Caucasus have been used in the past as suicide bombers.
Russia has deployed 40,000 police and security personnel in a “ring of steel” around Sochi to deter attacks by Islamist militants from the nearby North Caucasus republics.
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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
The new USA Today/Pew Research poll found Obama’s Friday speech failed to make a mark with the public. Nearly half of those surveyed said they heard nothing about the speech, with 41 percent saying they had heard a little about Obama’s reforms and 8 percent saying they heard a lot.
Seventy-three percent who knew of Obama’s proposals said his NSA changes won’t do anything to increase privacy protections, with 21 percent saying the reforms will work.
The poll found that by a 70-to-26 percent split, Americans said they should not have to give up their privacy to prevent terrorism.
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The president, as he often does when facing a nettlesome problem, used his executive powers to implement changes. In his address on Friday, Obama said he’s approved a “new presidential directive for our signals intelligence activities both at home and abroad.”
The directive, Obama said, would strengthen oversight of intelligence and ensure trade and investment relationships are taken into account when spying. The president also went on to order a transition away from the bulk data collection program in its current form — and restrict the ability of analysts to access that database during the transition.
Some House Democrats said executive actions alone were not enough.
“It is now time for Congress to take the next step by enacting legislation to appropriately limit these programs,” Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said in a statement, adding that Congress must “trust but codify” when it comes to the president’s promises.
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Photo Credit: G.N. Miller/NY Post
Kang Wong was strolling north on Broadway and crossing 96th Street at around 5 p.m., when an officer told him to halt because he had walked against the light.
Police were targeting jaywalkers in the area following the third pedestrian fatality this month around West 96th Street.
Wong, who lives a block away, appeared to not understand the cop, the witnesses said.
“The guy didn’t seem to speak English. The cop walked him over to the Citibank” near the northeast corner of 96th and Broadway, said one witness, Ian King, a Fordham University law student.
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On the House floor last Wednesday DeLauro said, “Every generation of leaders in this institution has faced their own time of testing. Whether it’s an economic panic, Great Depression, slavery, Jim Crow, Civil War, World War, Cold War. There are times when our country is confronted with a crisis that poses an existential threat to our nation and our way of life and Congress needs to stand up and act.”
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The new allegation about Snowden’s contacts in Hong Kong comes as the leadership of the House and Senate intelligence committees also claimed the NSA leaker may have had help.
On the Sunday talk shows, the CIA’s former deputy director, Mike Morrell, along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for the first time publicly weighed in on that possibility — though neither pointed to specific evidence.
“The disclosures that have been coming recently are very sophisticated in their content and sophisticated in their timing, almost too sophisticated for Mr. Snowden to be deciding on his own,” Morrell told “Face the Nation.”
“And it seems to me he might be getting some help.”
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The case, which the high court will hear Wednesday, has the potential to rock the secretive world of child pornography. Few people’s fortunes could withstand rulings that require multimillion-dollar payouts to dozens, even hundreds, of victims.
Forcing offenders to pay full restitution to a victim “does nothing but good,” said Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough is Enough, one of the anti-pornography advocates closely watching the case. It is well-known, she said, that every time child pornography is viewed, “the victim is re-victimized.”
But most federal courts have ruled that a defendant can be held responsible only for specific harms caused by his or her specific conduct, greatly limiting the liability of many of those who must pay damages.
The case centers on “Amy Unknown,” an unidentified woman who is seeking $3.36 million in lifetime restitution from Doyle R. Paroline, a Texas man who was caught with two of Amy’s images in his child pornography collection.
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