Photo Credit: TownHall
By Guy Benson.
It’s symbolic because it’s dead on arrival in Harry Reid’s Senate (a formulation that will meet its glorious expiration date in a few weeks), and because President Obama has already issued a veto threat if Reid and company accidentally passed the thing. Congressional Republicans, and some Democrats, believe that Obama lacks the authority to impose his amnesty fiat. Obama disagrees, naturally — although his stance on that question was both adamant and completely different not too long ago. Barack Obama’s legal constraints depend on Barack Obama’s political needs. Regardless, this afternoon’s vote was little more than an on-the-record ‘sense of the House’ rebuke:
A small handful of partisans on each side broke with their parties; conservative Democrats, and a number of Republicans from heavily Hispanic districts. The narrative that this vote was at its core about immigration, rather than preserving the Constitutional order, was too powerful for some to resist, evidently. Which helps explain why the White House has zero problem flouting the law and pushing executive power as far as its has: Republicans have few viable retaliatory options, and the separation of powers issue at stake is easily sidetracked and demagogued as just more proof that the GOP hates brown people, or whatever. So long as the public loathes the idea of a shutdown, and so long as that same public is primed to reflexively blame Republicans for any shutdown, the GOP is basically cornered. They and their base don’t want to allow Obama’s power grab to go unchallenged, but many of the tools at their disposal aren’t politically attractive or practical. Hence the White House’s extraordinary arrogance.
Read more from this story HERE.
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SOWELL: ‘PSYCHIATRIST’ NEEDED TO EXPLAIN GOP WANTING MORE FOREIGN WORKERS
By Breitbart TV.
Thomas Sowell, author of “Basic Economics,” argued that increasing the number of foreign workers in the US “will keep down the wages of American workers” and that “you would have to get a psychiatrist” to explain the GOP’s support for increased foreign labor on Thursday’s “Laura Ingraham Show.”
“The competition will keep down the wages of American workers, I mean, this is not a new principle. I mean this has been known for hundreds of years,” he stated.
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Senate Conservatives Huddle With House Members to Plot Immigration Revolt
By Joel Gehrke.
A trio of senators crossed the Capitol last night to discuss the congressional response to President Obama’s recent executive orders on immigration. The consensus: Republican leadership doesn’t want to fight Obama, so the lawmakers have to hope that grassroots activists can goad their colleagues into a more aggressive posture.
“I hope that the American people will speak up and share their views with Congress and good strong language will come out of the House,” Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) told NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE Thursday afternoon.
Sessions demurred when asked about coordination with House colleagues — “all of us are curious about what they’re doing,” he said — but multiple sources tell NROthat Sessions, Senator David Vitter (R., La.), and Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) met with a group of House members last night in the office of Arizona representative Matt Salmon. Vitter also organized a conference call with some House Republicans Wednesday afternoon. The purpose of the two encounters, which happened on the same day that Texas senator Ted Cruz met with Iowa representative Steve King, was to emphasize that “the first bill that you guys do was really our best and only chance,” according to one Senate aide; the Senate hawks won’t be able to instigate a fight if the House passes a bill that provides long-term funding for the entire government.
In the evening meeting, the lawmakers compared notes about their distrust for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and House speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio)
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In China, a newborn girl miraculously survived being buried alive after her parents thought she was stillborn. Lu Xiaoyun was having severe stomach pains at home when she called her husband, Mr. Ye, to tell him something was wrong.
Jordan’s King Abdullah believes battling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other terrorist groups is “our third world war.”
The University of Notre Dame is offering a one hour credit seminar discussing the critical issue of white privilege. The class is being offered in the spring semester of 2015.
The energy industry and coal-producing states are projecting a wave of power plant closures in the final two years of the Obama administration as Environmental Protection Agency regulations take hold.