DOJ Files Lawsuit Against North Carolina’s 'Discriminatory' Voter ID Law (+video)

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Photo Credit: TownHallAre voter ID laws inherently racist? Do they curtail voting rights? Those are questions a North Carolina judge will ultimately determine sometime next July.

To recap, the North Carolina state legislature passed a law in 2013 that, among other things, abolished same-day voter registration and instituted a voter ID provision. Naturally, it has been pilloried by both civil rights groups and activists as discriminatory.

Such provisions limit access to the right to vote, they argue, and therefore must be struck down to preserve the integrity of elections held in the state:

A North Carolina law passed last year that requires voters to present photo identification and eliminates same-day voter registration has been called one of the farthest-reaching overhauls to election rules in the country. Now a judge will decide whether it will stay that way.

Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice, the North Carolina NAACP, the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union will argue the case against state lawyers over the law in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem on Monday. U.S. attorneys and civil rights groups are asking a judge for a preliminary injunction to temporarily delay implementation of parts of the law. The hearing is a prelude to a trial scheduled for July 2015 where a judge will determine whether to uphold or strike down the law.

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Arizona Lawmaker Aims to Send Border-Crossing Children Home Faster

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Photo Credit: Will Seberger / ZumaPress / Newscom By Josh Siegel.

Legislation proposed by an Arizona congressman would give federal officials authority to quickly screen and deport unaccompanied children from Central America who have crossed the Mexican border into the United States.

The bill from Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., would change a provision in a 2008 human-trafficking law that requires U.S. Border Patrol agents to turn over the children to the federal Department of Health and Human Services and guarantees those minors hearings in immigration court — a process that can take years.

Salmon, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, is part of a group assembled by Speaker John Boehner to address the border crisis.

“This is an issue he has been working to address for awhile,” said Tristan Daedalus, Salmon’s communications director, adding:

Basically, the crux of the bill is a small legal change that would give CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] agents the authority to immediately repatriate them back to their countries.

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Photo Credit: CBS 8Third group of migrants sent to San Diego

By Gene Kang, Shannon Handy and CNS.

Another group of undocumented Central American migrants arrived Monday in San Diego, continuing a process that has prompted intense opposition as well as widespread compassion for the plight of the exiles.

The group of about 140 immigrants, who entered the United States illegally in Texas, were flown into Lindbergh Field late this morning and then bused to a U.S. Border Patrol facility in San Ysidro for processing.

On Tuesday, an initial group of the same size arrived in San Diego and were driven to Murrieta, where crowds of angry protesters blocked their entrance to a USBP facility, prompting authorities to take them instead to San Ysidro.

The departure of the migrants from the Riverside area marked a victory for the roughly two dozen protesters who had gathered to decry the foreigners’ arrival there, many waving flags and others carrying signs reading “Stop Illegal Immigration” and “Return to Sender.”

Protesters have continued gathering at the Border Patrol facility in Murrieta. Some clashed with police on Friday while waiting to see if more migrants would be arriving.

San Diego, California News Station – KFMB Channel 8 – cbs8.com

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Couple Married 33 Years Separate So Wife Can Keep Insurance

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Photo Credit: Shelley Mays / The TennesseanThe day Linda Drain put baby’s breath in her hair and said “I do,” she had no idea that government policies would tear her apart from her husband.

But 33 years later, she and her husband, Larry Drain, separated so she could keep her health insurance.

Six months into the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the Drains are among 162,000 Tennesseans who got caught in a coverage gap. Their household income is too little to qualify for a government subsidy to buy health insurance, and they live in a state not expanding Medicaid.

Their predicament was caused by a series of legal, political and bureaucratic decisions that included the U.S. Supreme Court striking down part of the federal health law, but Larry Drain said he feels to blame.

“In September of last year, I made what looking back on it in retrospect was the worst decision I ever made in my entire life,” he said. “I decided to take early retirement from Social Security.”

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Veteran Arrested And Charged For Legally Open Carrying AR-15

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Photo Credit: MW / ExaminerA decorated Air Force veteran pleaded not guilty this morning to a charge of “trespassing with a weapon capable of producing bodily harm,” after being arrested by police in Vancouver, Washington, for legally open carrying an AR-15 rifle.

Last Saturday, Mack Worley, eager to exercise his second amendment, open carried his rifle while grabbing a soda and viewing a fireworks stand before attempting to walk back to his car.

“No one had said anything negative to me. A few people came up to me and asked a few questions about what I was doing and I just explained that I was asserting my second amendment right. I was explaining to people that it’s not against the law or a crime to open carry a firearm,” said Worley.

While walking on a public sidewalk toward his vehicle, Worley noticed an officer waiting down the street in a police car. Worley, assuming the police wanted to speak with him, continued walking down the sidewalk.

“As I started walking to them, I hear on a loudspeaker to my left a police officer telling me to put my hands up,” said Worley.

Read more from this story HERE.

D’Souza Declares A Strong Connection Between Hillary And Obama: It’s Saul Alinsky

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Photo Credit: Brett TatmanConservative filmmaker and commentator Dinesh D’Souza appeared on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday with stand-in host Martha Raddatz and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson to discuss his new movie “America: Imagine The World Without Her.”

Raddatz quickly veered into asking D’Souza about the claims that he believes there is some type of left-wing conspiracy aimed at undermining America, and that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are apart of it.

“You essentially have a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama turning this nation into a socialistic nation, something you said started when Hillary Clinton was in college,” Raddatz said to D’Souza.

“It’s not a conspiracy theory,” D’Souza quickly responded. “A lot of people think that Hillary is like Bill and say ‘We want Billary back in the White House’ because” of that.

He then explained that both Obama and Clinton have both been strongly influenced by the ideas of liberal activist Saul Alinsky, and that is the connection they share.

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Veteran With Concealed Carry Permit Shoots Back At Chicago Gunman

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller By Chuck Ross.

One of the spate of shootings that took place in Chicago, Ill. over the July 4th holiday weekend involved a veteran with a concealed carry permit who was forced to a shoot a man who began firing on him and a group of friends.

The incident occurred Friday night, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The veteran and three of his friends were leaving a party on the city’s south side. When the group reached their vehicle, a container with liquor was sitting on top of it. A woman from the group asked another group gathered next door who the liquor belonged to and removed it.

The move angered 22 year-old Denzel Mickiel, who approached the veteran and his friends shouting obscenities. The man then went into his residence and returned with a gun.

As Mickiel opened fire on the group, the veteran took cover near the vehicle’s front fender, according to assistant state attorney Mary Hain, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APStates look to gun seizure law after mass killings

By Associated Press.

As state officials across the U.S. grapple with how to prevent mass killings like the ones at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and near the University of California, Santa Barbara, some are turning to a gun seizure law pioneered in Connecticut 15 years ago.

Connecticut’s law allows judges to order guns temporarily seized after police present evidence that a person is a danger to themselves or others. A court hearing must be held within 14 days to determine whether to return the guns or authorize the state to hold them for up to a year.

The 1999 law, the first of its kind in the U.S., was in response to the 1998 killings of four managers at the Connecticut Lottery headquarters by a disgruntled employee with a history of psychiatric problems.

Indiana is the only other state that has such a law, passed in 2005 after an Indianapolis police officer was shot to death by a mentally ill man. California and New Jersey lawmakers are now considering similar statutes, both proposed in the wake of the killings of six people — three stabbed to death and three fatally shot— and wounding of 13 others near the University of California, Santa Barbara, by a mentally ill man who had posted threatening videos on YouTube.

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All Your Children Belong to Us

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Photo Credit: Seema Krishnakumar / Creative Commons Is any freedom more important, more sacred than the right to raise a family without government intrusion?

It’s a good question to ask this Independence Day weekend, as Americans reflect on the birth of a nation dedicated to the preservation of individual liberties: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But as government grows bigger and more powerful, as politicians, bureaucrats and busybodies increasingly think they know best, American families constantly must fight interference in their most personal decisions and judgments.

Of all the threats to our freedoms — warrantless snooping, government secrecy, expanded police powers — none worries me more than the relentless march of the Nanny State, which not only assumes that all parents are unfit to raise children, but that parents themselves must be treated like children.

It’s not a stretch to say that this movement considers all children the property of the state. As proof, look at what’s happening in Scotland.

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CLEVER! Leading New Hampshire GOP Governor Candidate Called Tea Party ‘Teabaggers’

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Photo Credit: YouTube screenshot / John StarkSomeone likely running against Walt Havenstein, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire, has unearthed a real gem of a video.

The 17-second video now on YouTube shows Havenstein speaking to a group of business students at the University of New Hampshire four years ago. In the clip, the GOP candidate derisively refers to tea partiers as “teabaggers.”

“We got a lot of problems in this country,” Havenstein says. “The teabaggers, or whatever they are, they’ve been telling us that all summer long. Alright?”

He then asks “Isn’t that who they are?” with his tongue stuck out.

“I’m a little out of touch,” he adds, with a big grin on his face.

Read more from this story HERE.

This List of Gov’t Bureaucrats Earning More Than $180K Makes The VA Scandal Even More Alarming

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The Office of Personnel Management maintains a list of the amount of civilian workers that each branch of the government has, in addition to their salary amounts. Although it does not mention individuals by name nor their positions, the numbers are quite surprising when the data is adjusted for an annual income of $180,000 or more.

Some facts to consider:

There are 25,356 government agency workers earning $180,000 or more.

18,709 of those workers work at the Department of Veteran Affairs (5% of workforce).

2,355 are at the Department of Health and Human Services (3% of workforce).

1,605 are at the Department of Transportation (3% of workforce).

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Obama’s Irresponsible Taunt: President Increasingly Willing to Go At It Alone

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Photo Credit: CHARLES DHARAPAK / APThe unanimous decision of the Supreme Court late last month that President Obama violated the separation of powers in appointing officials is the type of decision that usually concentrates the mind of a chief executive. Obama, however, appeared to double down on his strategy — stating in a Rose Garden speech on Tuesday that he intended to expand, not reduce, his use of unilateral actions to circumvent Congress.

Summing up his position, the President threw down the gauntlet at Congress: “So sue me.”

The moment was reminiscent of George W. Bush’s taunting Iraqi insurgents over 10 years ago by saying, “Bring ’em on.”

It was irresponsible bravado from a man who was not himself at the receiving end of IEDs and constant attacks that would go on to cost us thousands of military personnel. I imagine some lawyers at the Justice Department may feel the same way about Obama’s “sue me” taunt. They are the ones being hammered in federal courts over sweeping new interpretations and unilateral executive actions.

The renewed promise to go it alone is a familiar refrain from this President. He even pledged to take unilateral action to circumvent Congress in front of both Houses, in his State of the Union address this year — to the curious delight of half of Congress, which applauded wildly at the notion of being made irrelevant.

Read more from this story HERE.