Obama Administration’s ‘Deferred Action’ Program Halts 102,000 Deportations

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The administration has issued stays of deportation for 102,965 illegal immigrants under President Obama’s new non-deportation policy, officials announced Friday.

Another 157,151 applications are still under review under the policy, officially known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which grants a tentative legal status to illegal immigrants who qualify — though it does not grant them a path to citizenship.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security branch that administers the program, said 12,014 applications were rejected off the bat, while as many as 177,000 more applications are having their biometric data taken before entering the final review.

Mr. Obama announced the policy in June, saying he would no longer deport illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children as long as they haven’t committed any major crimes.

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Bloomberg News Hid Conflicting Fiscal-Cliff Poll Numbers, Pushed Results Favorable to Obama

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A poll conducted last week by an Iowa-based firm showed Americans are conflicted about whether or not to support raising tax rates on wealthy Americans to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff.” But that’s not how Bloomberg News, which commissioned the poll, reported the results Thursday.

In a story headlined “Americans Back Obama Tax-Rate Boost Tied to Entitlements,” Bloomberg reported that the poll showed most Americans support President Barack Obama’s insistence on increasing taxes for high-income earners.

“A majority of Americans say President Barack Obama is right to demand that tax-rate increases for the highest earners be a precondition for a budget deal that cuts U.S. entitlement programs,” the story, written by reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis, began.

The poll asked respondents, “President Obama has said he will not negotiate with Republicans on cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare, until they agree to raise tax rates on the wealthy. Do you think he is right or wrong to insist on that as a precondition to broader negotiations?”

As Bloomberg reported in its story, 58 percent percent of respondents indicated that the president was “right” to insist on the precondition, while 37 percent said he was “wrong.”

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Americans for Prosperity Files Police Complaint Over Tent Destruction

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On Thursday the conservative group Americans for Prosperity filed a police complaint after union activists destroyed a tent they had set up in Lansing, Mich., Fox News reported.

One of those inside the tent at the time it was destroyed told Greta van Susteren that two knife-wielding men in ski masks entered the tent and began cutting the canvas straps that tethered the tent to the ground.

According to the witness, rampaging union supporters overturned tables with hot coffee.

“It was scary,” she said.

According to an article at Talking Points Memo, AFP spokeswoman Annie Patnaude said protesters “threatened to blow up propane tanks inside the tent, potentially creating a deadly conflagration.”

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Report: Solar Firms Under Investigation for Stimulus Swindle

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The nation’s three most productive solar installation firms are under investigation for allegedly exaggerating business costs to get larger cash payments through a federal stimulus program.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is asking SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity to justify the more than $500 million in federal grants and tax credits they got for their work, according to The Washington Post.

The companies in question received payments through Treasury’s 1603 program, which was designed to increase renewable energy use.

The cash grant program pays installers up to 30 percent of the project cost. So by inflating business expenses, the firms would be eligible for a larger payout.

The firms might have to repay the government if found to have abused the program and could face other penalties.

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US Troops to Syrian Border

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INCIRLIK AIR BASE, TURKEY — The United States authorized on Friday the deployment of 400 troops for two Patriot missile-defense batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria, a move that could put American forces near the front lines of the Arab country’s escalating civil war.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta signed the order authorizing the deployment of the batteries Friday morning while flying from Kabul to this military base in southern Turkey.

Speaking to U.S. airmen inside a hangar, Panetta said the crisis in Syria has made this base, roughly 60 miles from Syria, and others in the region exceptionally important.

“This is a challenging time, a critical time,” Panetta said. “You are in a critical place doing a critical task.”

Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters the U.S. troops operating the Patriots will be tasked with a defensive mission only. The surface-to-air missiles could technically be used to enforce a no-fly zone over northern Syria, but NATO officials have stressed that they are not gearing up for such a move, which would mark a sharp escalation in the West’s involvement in Syria’s conflict.

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Surrender: McConnell Prepares to Raise the White Flag on Taxes

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is privately signaling that Senate Republicans are open to a strategy that would effectively allow the Bush-era tax rates for high earners to expire in order to avert the year-end fiscal cliff.

At a dinner with lobbyists Thursday night, McConnell disclosed that Senate Republicans were eyeing a so-called “two-bill strategy” increasingly being pushed by lawmakers in both parties, according to multiple sources in the room.

The idea would be to advance two bills, giving each party an opportunity to vote on the approach they favored, but only one would be signed into law: The extension of the Bush-era rates for families who earn less than $250,000 annually.

But House Republicans haven’t bought into this scenario yet, the latest divide between the House and Senate GOP in the already tense negotiations.

Under one possible scenario, the House would take up a Senate-passed bill to extend the Bush-era rates for all but the top 2 percent of wage earners and increase taxes on capital gains and dividends from 15 percent to 20 percent, sending that to President Barack Obama’s desk on the backs of Democratic votes in the House.

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Family of Slain Border Agent Brian Terry Sues Federal Officials Over ‘Fast and Furious’

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PHOENIX (TheBlaze/AP) — The family of a slain Border Patrol agent has sued federal officials over the botched “Fast and Furious” gun operation.

Agent Brian Terry was mortally wounded on Dec. 14, 2010, in a firefight north of the Arizona-Mexico border between U.S. agents and five men who had sneaked into the country to rob marijuana smugglers.

Federal authorities conducting “Fast and Furious” have faced tough criticism for allowing suspected straw gun buyers for a smuggling ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest them and seize weapons. Further, there were no solid tracking mechanisms to trace the guns once they crossed into Mexico.

The lawsuit filed Thursday and made publicly available on Friday came from Terry’s parents against six managers and investigators for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The family also sued a federal prosecutor who had previously handled the case but is no longer on it, and the owner of the gun store where two rifles found in the firefight’s aftermath were bought.

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Knife-Wielding Man Injures 22 Children in China

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BEIJING (Reuters) – A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country.

The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Police arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as villager Min Yingjun, Xinhua said. It did not give further details of the extent of the injuries.

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A Deficit of Courage

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At the heart of the impending “fiscal cliff” is a problem more challenging than reaching whatever mix of revenue increases and spending cuts will be needed to bring America’s massive debt under control.

From the halls of government to corporate boardrooms and the corridors of America’s great universities, America seems gripped by fear.

Administration and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle appear immobilized by their own dread of constituents’ reactions to higher tax rates or austerity measures — or both.

Business leaders, knowing the need for realignment in a changing marketplace, nevertheless stand motionless because of the unknowns of new taxes and regulations and the fear of the reactions of shareholders and analysts.

On the campus of Penn State, it was fear that caused university administrators to sweep the horrendous crimes of an experienced coach under the rug.

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ObamaCare Will Bring Bureaucracy, Endless Rules And Coercion, But Improve Nothing

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A few years ago, my small local hospital asked a senate staffer if she could assist them in obtaining federal money for a new building. So she did, expediting the process by which that particular corner of northern New Hampshire was deemed to be “underserved” and thus eligible for the fed gravy.

At the ribbon-cutting, she was an honored guest, and they were abundant in their praise. Alas, in the fullness of time, the political pendulum swung, her senator departed the scene, and she was obliged to take a job out of state.

Last summer, she returned to the old neighborhood and thought she’d look for a doctor. The sweet old guy with the tweed jacket in the neatly painted cape on Main Street had taken down his shingle and retired.

Most towns in the North Country now have fewer doctors than they did in the 19th century, and the smaller towns have none. The Yellow Pages list more health insurers than physicians, which would not seem to be an obvious business model. So she wound up going to the health center she’d endowed so lavishly with your tax dollars just a few years earlier.

They gave her the usual form to fill in, full of perceptive inquiries on her medical condition: Do you wear a seat belt? Do you own a gun? How many bisexual men are you now having sex with?

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