Lawsuit Claims ICE Mounted Campaign to ‘Purge’ Senior Officials Amid Immigration Changes

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

A longtime federal immigration attorney claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement managers mounted a campaign of “humiliation” and “brutal scape-goating” to purge officials they didn’t want, raising concerns from a top GOP lawmaker that the administration was trying to “force compliance” with its controversial policies.

The attorney, Patricia Vroom, made the allegations in a lawsuit filed last month. The lawsuit is getting renewed attention in the wake of President Obama’s executive actions to let potentially millions of illegal immigrants stay in the country and work.

In the suit, Vroom claimed she was rebuked for her “push-back” on a prior effort to drop cases against illegal immigrants with identity theft convictions, and received a low performance rating at the time.

“It was part of an orchestrated, coordinated effort … to purge [the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, OPLA] of senior Chief Counsel so that much younger, much less experienced, and thus much more impressionable individuals who were beholden to them, could be installed in their place,” the lawsuit alleges.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., cited the lawsuit in a letter on Monday to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and the acting ICE director. He said the suit shows the administration “bullied career lawyers” to “force compliance” with its policies, and ultimately replace them with “favored individuals.”

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Total US Debt Rises Over $18 Trillion; Up 70% Under Barack Obama

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Photo Credit: Human Events

Photo Credit: Human Events

By Tyler Durden.

Last week, total US debt was a meager $17,963,753,617,957.26. Two days later, as updated today, on Black Friday, total outstanding US public debt just hit a new historic level which probably would be better associated with a red color: as of the last work day of November, total US public debt just surpassed $18 trillion for the first time, or $18,005,549,328,561.45 to be precise, of which debt held by the public rose to $12,922,681,725,432.94, an increase of $32 billion in one day.

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Chart from U.S. Department of Treasury Shows Alarming Milestone the National Debt Just Passed

By Pete Kasperowicz.

The U.S. national debt hit $18 trillion for the first time on Friday, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

A website that tracks the national debt said it rose to $18.005 trillion, a jump of more than $40 billion from two days prior. There was no figure given for Thanksgiving, a holiday.

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The milestone is likely to renew Republican scrutiny over the federal government’s spending habits, just as the GOP is set to widen its majority in the House and resume control of the Senate in 2015. While Republicans have made a point of saying they would use their new control of Congress to fight Obamacare and ease federal regulations, they have also made a point of saying debt reduction is critical.

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Abortionist: We Let Babies Born Alive “Expire” (+video)

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

A while back, I wrote a series on abortions that resulted in the births of live babies. In the instances I wrote about, these babies were left to die or even killed by the abortionist. Also, in almost every case, the abortionist evaded any kind of punishment.

An investigation by Live Action revealed that many clinics are still willing to allow infants born after abortion to die. And a representative of Planned Parenthood gave shocking testimony where sherefused to condemn the killing of babies born alive after abortions and refused to say what Planned Parenthood doctors did in cases of live birth. Sadly, it seems that the killing of born babies, either by neglect or by direct action, goes on in abortion clinics to this day.

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GOP Aide Resigns After Online Digs at Obama Daughters

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120114_gop_aide_640By Fox News.

Republican congressional aide Elizabeth Lauten resigned Monday morning after making controversial comments about President Obama’s teenage daughters, Fox News confirms.

Lauten, the communications director for Rep. Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, had posted on Facebook about their casual demeanor during last week’s annual White House turkey pardon. She wrote that Sasha, 13, and Malia, 16, should “try showing a little class.”

“Rise to the occasion. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at the bar,” Lauten wrote. “And certainly don’t make faces during televised, public events.”

Though she wasn’t the first person to comment on the behavior and appearance of the president’s children during the event, Lauten was accused of crossing the line.

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Photo Credit: AP / Todd Williamson

Photo Credit: AP / Todd Williamson

CNN claims politicians’ kids are off limits. What about Bristol Palin?

By T. Becket Adams.

CNN has reported at length on the rise and fall of Elizabeth Lauten, the Republican congressional aide who resigned Monday after criticizing the first daughters in a weekend Facebook post.

But CNN has yet to address one of its own anchor’s gleeful handling of Bristol Palin’s alleged assault earlier this year by a male attacker.

Lauten resigned as communications director for Rep. Steven Fincher, R-Tenn., after she came under fire for criticizing Sasha and Malia Obama for their appearance at the White House’s annual turkey pardon.

“Rise to the occasion,” Lauten wrote in the now-deleted post. “Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar.”

The now-former GOP staffer apologized a few hours later, saying in a subsequent post that she understood “more clearly just how hurtful my words were.”

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Oil Price Plunge: Wide-Ranging Effects for Consumers and the Global Economy

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Tumbling oil prices are draining hundreds of billions of dollars from the coffers of oil-rich exporters and oil companies and injecting a much-needed boost for ailing economies in Europe and Japan — and for American consumers at the start of the peak shopping season.

The result could be one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history, potentially reshaping everything from talks over Iran’s nuclear program to the Federal Reserve’s policies to further rejuvenate the U.S. economy.

The price of oil has declined about 40 percent since its peak in mid-June and plunged last week after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries voted to continue to pump at the same rate. That continued a trend driven by a weak global economy and expanding U.S. domestic energy supplies.

The question facing investors, companies and policymakers is how low oil prices will go — and for how long. Every day, American motorists are saving $630 million on gasoline compared with what they paid at June prices, and they would get a $230 billion windfall if prices were to stay this low for a year. The vast majority of that will flow into the economy, with lower-income households living on tight budgets likely to use money not otherwise spent on gas to buy groceries, clothing and other staples.

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Map Tells Whether Obamacare Makes You Pay for Abortions in Your State (+video)

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141201_ObamacareAbortion

Pro-life Americans long have criticized the Obama administration for failing to disclose coverage of abortion under the Affordable Care Act. Now, taking matters into their own hands, they’ve come up with a solution.

Two leading pro-life organizations, the Charlotte Lozier Institute and the Family Research Council, teamed up to design a state-by-state map that clearly tells Americans whether the Obamacare plan they’re considering covers elective abortions.

The goal? To help individuals and families find abortion-free health insurance options that don’t require them to pay what many pro-life critics of Obamacare call a “hidden” or “secret” abortion fee.

“Federal funding for elective abortion was the most salient issue as the fate of the Affordable Care Act was hanging in early 2010, right up to the day of its passage,” Charles Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

After a Sept. 15 report by the Government Accountability Office confirmed what many pro-life individuals had warned—that more than 1,000 Obamacare plans covered abortion while remaining eligible for tax subsidies—pro-lifers called for more transparency.

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Why Legalizing Pot Is a Bad Idea

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

At first blush, it may appear that the fight to thwart marijuana legalization is a lost cause. Pot pushers want you to believe that legalization is inevitable. They point to legalization successes this November in Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia.

But Big Pot lost in Florida, and five cities in pot-crazy Colorado outlawed the sale of marijuana, including Lakewood, Canon City, Palisade, Palmer Lake and Ramah. And now comes the latest Gallup poll from Nov. 6, which shows that support for marijuana legalization is down seven points from last year, from 58 percent to 51 percent. Even liberal support for legalization dropped four points from last year.

So why did the pot pushers lose a large state like Florida, and why is support for legalization falling?

That’s a tough question. But perhaps the public is starting to pay attention to scientific data and the actual dangers of marijuana as well as the negative stories coming out of Colorado and Washington State since those states legalized marijuana.

The science is clear and unambiguous – pot is a dangerous substance. It is not like alcohol at all. There is a reason it is classified as a Schedule I controlled dangerous substance, right along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy. The American Medical Association, the American Lung Association and other reputable doctors and scientists all reject legalization.

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Backers of Alaska Gold Mine Win Court Battle with EPA

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

On-again, off-again plans for the world’s largest gold and copper mine could be back on again, after a federal judge in Alaska issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from its ongoing efforts to bury the project.

Pebble Partnership, the Canadian company behind the project, which would take place near Anchorage, claims the regulatory agency has conspired illegally with opponents of the mine to devise scientific and environmental justifications for blocking it. Salmon fishermen in Washington state and Alaska, Native American groups and environmental organizations have opposed the massive project for several years, and had appeared to have gotten it scuttled prior to Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Russel Holland, in Anchorage.

“We expect the case may take several months to complete,” Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier said Tuesday after the U.S. District Court ruling in Anchorage. “This means that, for the first time, EPA’s march to preemptively veto Pebble has been halted.”

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H8ers Gotta H8: In 2014, the Media Delivered a Torrent of Anti-Conservative Bile

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

The real haters are in the media, some of them the openly left-leaning media and some of them claiming to be mainstream. But oh, how vilely they spew their hatred.

That’s the most obvious takeaway from a perusal of this year’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2014: The Twenty-Seventh Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting,” sponsored by the indispensable Media Research Center. This is my 17th straight year as one of the 40 or so volunteer judges for the awards, and each year the media’s anti-conservative vitriol seems worse than before.

They accuse us of being “haters.” They, by contrast, are rational, fair-minded, and kindly. Really, they are. Consider, for example, the gentlemanly Chris Matthews on Hardball on October 27, speaking of the Republican nominee for Senate from North Carolina: “What’s worse: Thom Tillis, or Ebola?”

Of course, for others in the media, the dread disease apparently was a cynical figment of the right-wing imagination. Here’s Andrea Mitchell reporting on MSNBC on Election Night about why Republicans were winning: “It was a scare tactic by the Republican opponents of Democratic incumbents, who tried to focus on ISIS and Ebola in the scariest, most nonfactual ways.”

Then again, maybe the world would be better off if leading conservatives themselves contracted a hideous virus. Here’s Alan Pyke, deputy economic policy editor for the far-left Think Progress blog in reaction to the Fox News Channel’s coverage of the unrest in Ferguson: “I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.”

How nice.

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Oprah Targeted in Foiled Terror Bomb Plot

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Photo Credit: Judicial Watch

Photo Credit: Judicial Watch

The Chicago studios of talk-show superstar Oprah Winfrey and the iconic “Sears Tower” (renamed Willis Tower) were the targets of a terrorist truck-bomb plot in 2009. But initially unbeknownst to federal authorities, two of the conspirators recently were arrested for unrelated state crimes in different parts of the country. The alleged bombers targeted Ms. Winfrey’s Harpo Studios because they resented her popularity and power, while the tower was selected because of its obvious landmark status. The bomb plot itself, planned in 2009, was inspired by militant Islamist hatred of American military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to law enforcement and other sources interviewed by Judicial Watch.

Sources requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by terrorist bomb-plotter associates, as well as retaliation from embarrassed federal law enforcement agents who apparently mismanaged the subsequent counterterrorism case.

The alleged bomb plotters were based in El Paso, Texas and included two longtime friends and associates currently jailed for recent state crimes. They are:

• Emad Karakrah, currently held in Cook County, Illinois Jail on charges of making a false car bomb threat after leading police on a high-speed chase through Chicago with an ISIS flag waving from his car on August 28, 2014. Karakrah sought a plea bargain conference with Judge Evelyn Clay during his last court appearance on November 17, 2014. Karakrah’s public defender stated that she was waiting on additional discovery documents and an assistant state’s attorney disclosed that she was “looking for an FBI report.” Karakrah’s case was continued until December 3, 2014. It is not clear why Karakrah is not in federal custody pending terrorism charges.

• Hector Pedroza Huerta is an illegal alien currently held in the El Paso County Jail. On August 13, Huerta was arrested in El Paso for driving intoxicated, a crime he has been twice convicted of (in 2009 and 2011). The feds quickly took over, charging him for the third time in five years with “reentry of a deported alien,” court records show. A federal magistrate judge granted the government’s order to hold Huerta without bond on August 19 and a few weeks later Huerta pleaded not guilty to the immigration charges, according to court records obtained by JW. But on October 7 Huerta was granted a “rearraignment” that ended up getting reset to October 9. At that “rearraignment” the illegal alien changed his plea to guilty, court records show. He is scheduled for sentencing on December 16 at 9 a.m. in Courtroom 422 at the U.S. District Courthouse in El Paso. Like his friend, Karakrah, it is unclear why Huerta is not facing federal conspiracy charges associated with the Chicago bomb plot. U.S. District Court Judge Frank Montalvo, handling Huerta’s sentencing, had previously presided over one of Huerta’s prior immigration cases (in 2009)…

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