Sen. Sessions: Immigration Spikes Income Inequality

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Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama is expected to discuss the plight of American workers. At the same time, he is pushing Republicans to pass an immigration plan making the problem worse by increasing the flow of immigrant workers to compete against unemployed Americans and those struggling to get by in low-wage jobs. Yet, alarmingly, the move is regarded as a part of Obama’s agenda that has a chance of becoming law.

House Republicans should reply to the president’s immigration effort with a simple message: Our first duty is to help struggling Americans find good work and rising wages.

The president’s own economic adviser, Gene Sperling, recently noted that there are three unemployed people for every job available. Wages today have been flat since 2000. Last year, a record one in five American households received food stamps.

This is a national emergency.

So what is the president’s proposal? With three job seekers for every open job, he proposes doubling the number of guest workers entering every year, granting immediate work permits to millions of illegal immigrants, and tripling the number of new immigrants granted permanent residency over the next decade.

Today, the U.S. admits 1 million immigrants a year. The plan supported by the president and Senate Democrats would increase that to 3 million a year, or 30 million largely lower-skill immigrants over the next 10.

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If You Like Obama’s Executive Orders, You Are Going to Love 2014

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

The American system of government has as it’s chief executive, a president who is carefully checked by a watchful Congress and a consientious judiciary.

Except, when it isn’t.

Case in point: Our president plans to rule us – not govern us – by using the vast powers of his office and absolute control of the federal bureaucracy to ram his vision of hope and change down our throats. Done without the approval of Congress and with little challenge from the judiciary.

Can he get away with it? Watch him:

The new plan “is to bring all of the government alive in a way we have never been very good at,” said another official.

“We’ll be doing that as aggressively as possible…. and if we succeed, that is a big presidency,” a senior administration official told the Post.

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HSBC Imposes Restrictions On Large Cash Withdrawals

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Photo Credit: BBC

Photo Credit: BBC

Some HSBC customers have been prevented from withdrawing large amounts of cash because they could not provide evidence of why they wanted it, the BBC has learnt.

Listeners have told Radio 4’s Money Box they were stopped from withdrawing amounts ranging from £5,000 to £10,000.

HSBC admitted it has not informed customers of the change in policy, which was implemented in November.

The bank says it has now changed its guidance to staff.

New rules

Stephen Cotton went to his local HSBC branch this month to withdraw £7,000 from his instant access savings account to pay back a loan from his mother.

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Iranian Official Confirms Country Sought to Build Nuclear Weapons

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

A founder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards now admits that the Islamic Republic was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. This is the first time any regime official has made such an admission, even as another report claims that one of Iran’s most radical clerics was the spiritual overseer of the nuclear weapons program.

“We pursued ways in order to gain nuclear arms,” Gen. Mohsen Rafiqdoost told the regime’s Mehr News on Saturday. “I asked Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] what his opinion was. He said do not pursue atoms, and we stopped.”

But that claim falls short of the truth. In the late 1980s, a letter by Mohsen Rezaei, then the chief commander of the Guards, asking Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Revolution, for approval of the nuclear bomb program was revealed. It showed the leader had approved of seeking nuclear weapons.

Rafiqdoost became the first minister of the Guards and was in charge of purchasing arms on the black market.

Iranian officials have for a long time denied that there ever was a nuclear bomb program and have consistently insisted that the country’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes to help feed its only existing nuclear power plant and ones the country plans to build.

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Michigan Gov Rick Snyder Endorses Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On Friday, Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder emphatically supported comprehensive immigration reform and implied that enforcement of the current immigration laws were “dumb” at an event with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“We need comprehensive immigration reform,” Snyder said at an immigration summit on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “That’s the bottom line. To be blunt, we have a dumb system.”

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US Forces Launch Missile Strike Against Shebab Leader in Somalia

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Mohamed Abdiwahab

Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Mohamed Abdiwahab

The US military launched a missile strike in Somalia on Sunday targeting a suspected Shebab militant leader, defense officials said.

One of the officials said an unmanned drone launched the missile in the late evening hours, but declined to confirm the suspect’s identity or whether the strike was successful.

The US government has “been tracking this guy for years,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A second US official said the strike in the southeastern port town of Barawe “was against a senior Shebab commander.”

“The US is assessing the results of the operation” to determine if the suspect was killed, the official added.

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Congressional Black Caucus Unhappy with Obama Judicial Appointments

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Photo Credit: Neon Tommy

Photo Credit: Neon Tommy

The Hill’s Mike Lillis, reports that leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) plan to “publicly rebuke” President Obama because of the “lack of diversity’ in his federal judicial appointments.”

It’s hard to understand the CBC’s complaint. According to Freddie Allen, Obama’s judicial appointments have resulted in a higher rate of Black judges confirmed than any other president in history. Research compiled by the Alliance for Justice, demonstrated that so far during the Obama administration, Blacks have accounted for 18.7 percent of the federal judicial confirmations, more than the 7.3 percent under George W. Bush or the 16.4 percent under Bill Clinton.

Its not just Blacks, Obama’s judicial appointees are more diverse among other demographics:

“During the Obama administration, 41 percent of the federal judges that have been confirmed are women, compared to 22 percent under George W. Bush and 29 percent for Clinton.

President Obama has also managed to get more Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and gays confirmed to the federal bench than either Bush or Clinton.”

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Man Found Dead in NY Hospital Waiting Room 8 Hours After Asking to See Doctor (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A man was found dead in a New York emergency room eight hours after he asked to see a doctor.

John Verrier, 30, came into Saint Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, complaining of a rash. Hospital officials say he was checked in and asked to wait.

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Family Promise Gave Life to Man in 31-Year Coma

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Paul Cortez can remember the night 31 years ago as clearly as if it was last week. He had walked into the pediatric intensive care unit of Riverside County Regional Medical Center to find his 7-year-old son, Mikey, barely clinging to life.

Bandages were covering his little body, seemingly from head to toe. Wires and tubes attached to machines were keeping him alive.

Doctors told Cortez that Mikey might not make it. A drunken driver had smashed into the car carrying the boy and relatives, sending four of them, including his mother, brother and sister, to other hospitals. Four other relatives, including Mikey’s oldest brother, were dead.

Not knowing what to do, Paul Cortez got down on his knees and, with Mikey’s hand in his, made a promise to God: If his son somehow survived, whatever the condition, he and his family would always be there for him.

It felt strange at first because, although he is a deeply religious man, Cortez had never before asked for any favors from heaven.

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Grammy Awards to Feature Live Homosexual Marriage Ceremonies

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY

Photo Credit: REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY

Dozens of couples will marry on air during Sunday night’s live broadcast of the music industry’s annual Grammy Awards as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis perform their nominated song “Same Love,” which has become an anthem in the campaign for legal gay marriage, the New York Times reported.

Queen Latifah will officiate at the nuptials, with pop diva Madonna performing the song with the hip hop duo and featured vocalist Mary Lambert, the Times said.

Lewis said that the weddings, including 34 couples of various ages and races, some gay, some straight, “will be in our minds the ultimate statement of equality, that all the couples are entitled to the same exact thing,” the report said.

“We’re serious about this,” the Times quoted Ken Ehrlich, the longtime producer of the Grammys, as saying.

Ehrlich, noting that the segment reflected his own personal beliefs – he has a gay daughter – said, “I would not want to make a broad statement that it represents the views of the academy or the CBS television network,” which broadcasts the awards live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles at 8 p.m. PST (0400 GMT on Monday).

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