Senior Adviser: Obama Will Take Executive Action On Immigration after Summer

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Photo Credit: Michael Bonfigli / The Christian Science Monitor

Photo Credit: Michael Bonfigli / The Christian Science Monitor

President Obama will go ahead with a “very significant” executive action on immigration after the summer – a move that may well trigger impeachment proceedings against him, senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer told reporters at a Monitor breakfast Friday.

“The president acting on immigration reform will certainly up the likelihood that [Republicans] would contemplate impeachment at some point,” said Mr. Pfeiffer, who has been at the Obama White House since its inception.

A lot of people in Washington laughed off Sarah Palin’s call to impeach the president for executive overreach, Pfeiffer said, but “I would not discount that possibility.” Polling shows strong support for the idea among the GOP base, he said, adding that House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio has opened the door to the possibility with his lawsuit against Obama.

Speaker Boehner has flatly denied an interest in impeachment, saying, “I disagree” with those who support it. Next week, the GOP-controlled House is expected to pass a resolution to sue the president for executive overreach on the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.”

“This is a fundraising exercise for Democrats,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel in an e-mail response to Pfeiffer’s impeachment comments. “It is telling, and sad, that a senior White House official is focused on political games, rather than helping these kids and securing the border.”

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Maybe Democrats Should Have Read Obamacare Before They Passed It

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

First, a fact. Obamacare’s legislative text reads that tax subsidies administered by the IRS to help Americans pay for health insurance they are federally mandated to purchase reads that those tax subsidies will only apply to people who purchase coverage from insurance exchanges “established by the State.” An exchange “established by the State” refers to state-run health insurance exchanges, established in ACA section 1311, as opposed to federally-run exchanges, established in ACA section 1321. The legislative language is pretty clear.

What ACA proponents want to say is that this just amounts to a “drafting error.” Congress, of course, intended for the subsidies to apply to the exchanges run by the federal government; they just made a mistake.

It seems odd that we’d be able to divine the “intent” of the general will of 535 people, but some have now fallen back to asking if there was even a single legislator who thought that tax subsidies wouldn’t apply to federal exchanges.

This is a good question, because it’s unlikely that any legislator thought that would have been a good idea. But this gets to the heart of the problem with ACA: many legislators didn’t know what they were crafting and voting on.

In the era of ACA’s crafting, Republicans repeatedly brought up the point that legislators couldn’t read the bill, because the legislative text hadn’t been written. The Senate Finance Committee voted on what’s called “conceptual langauge,” but did anticipate that some states would not set up their own exchanges. Democrats also insisted that the “conceptual language” was enough to actually understand and vote on the law.

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Obama Administration Knew Islamic State Was Growing But Did Little To Counter It

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Photo Credit: JACQUELYN MARTIN / AP

Photo Credit: JACQUELYN MARTIN / AP

Like the rest of the world, the U.S. government appeared to have been taken aback last month when Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell to an offensive by jihadis of the Islamic State that triggered the collapse of five Iraqi army divisions and carried the extremists to the threshold of Baghdad.

A review of the record shows, however, that the Obama administration wasn’t surprised at all.

In congressional testimony as far back as November, U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials made clear that the United States had been closely tracking the al Qaida spinoff since 2012, when it enlarged its operations from Iraq to civil war-torn Syria, seized an oil-rich province there and signed up thousands of foreign fighters who’d infiltrated Syria through NATO ally Turkey.

The testimony, which received little news media attention at the time, also showed that Obama administration officials were well aware of the group’s declared intention to turn its Syrian sanctuary into a springboard from which it would send men and materiel back into Iraq and unleash waves of suicide bombings there. And they knew that the Iraqi security forces couldn’t handle it.

The group’s operations “are calculated, coordinated and part of a strategic campaign led by its Syria-based leader, Abu Bakr al Baghadi,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk told a House committee on Feb. 5, four months before fighting broke out in Mosul. “The campaign has a stated objective to cause the collapse of the Iraqi state and carve out a zone of governing control in western regions of Iraq and Syria.”

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Congresswoman Sees 'Threat' In Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The head of a gun-rights organization is delivering a lesson on the Constitution to a member of Congress who claimed his statements on the Second Amendment constituted a threat against her.

“Allow me to explain the obvious,” Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, wrote in an open letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

“I have never encouraged, or even suggested, that anyone harm anyone. Rather, my speech was designed to educate citizens, and politicians, that it is the fact that Americans are armed that allows them to resist efforts to be dominated, intimidated, or controlled by politicians.”

His letter came after Maloney reported him to Capitol Police and the House Sergeant-at-Arms because of his statements in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

In the interview, she alleged, “Mr. Pratt is actively encouraging his members to threaten violent action against members of Congress.”

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In Israel’s Desperate Hour, Obama Leads from Behind

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

“We have your back,” President Obama told Israelis when he visited that embattled country recently. Way back, apparently. Mr. Obama’s administration famously claimed to “lead from behind” in overthrowing Libya’s strongman, Khaddafi. Young Sergeant Benjamin Anthony spoke to the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Washington Summit this week. Sgt. Anthony described a different vision of leadership. Ahalai he gave as the Hebrew word for “after me.” Officers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) they should lead from the front. That used to be America’s idea of leadership, too.

You cannot say Secretary John Kerry isn’t alert to his opportunities. He sees another chance to be a peacemaker. He is rushing to the Mideast to broker a cease-fire. Sgt. Anthony says Israel needs a victory over HAMAS terrorists who have been hiding rockets in schools and hospitals.

Kerry wants Israelis to stop trying to root out those who have sent more than 9,000 rockets into Israel. Canada’s National Post recently reported that the UNWRA—the world body’s refugee agency—closed down a school it was operating in Gaza after a cache of HAMAS rockets was discovered next door. The UN bureaucrats did what they usually do: they turned the rockets over to “local authorities.” In Gaza, that means they gave the rockets back to HAMAS. The cartoonist wasn’t kidding when he said HAMAS means “hiding among mosques and schools.”

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Troop Leader: Border Agent Held Boy Scout at Gunpoint

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Boy Scout troop from the nation’s heartland is demanding answers and a U.S. senator is expressing outrage after a group of scouts was detained by Border Patrol agents and one child allegedly was held at gunpoint.

Jim Fox, the leader of the Mid-Iowa Boy Scout Troop 111, said the incident occurred earlier this month at a checkpoint along the Alaska – Canada border. The scouts and their leaders were on a 21-day trek from Iowa to Alaska – a trip that had been three years in the planning.

As their vans were moving through a checkpoint into the United States, one of the scouts snapped a photograph. Agents stopped the van and ordered all the passengers to get out. They told the underage photographer that he had committed a federal crime.

“The agent immediately confiscated his camera, informed him he would be arrested, fined possibly $10,000 and ten years in prison,” Fox told Des Moines television station KCCI.

During the search, one of the scouts tried to retrieve a bag from the roof carrier. When he turned around, Fox said a border guard had a loaded pistol pointed at the child.

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Another Missing Boeing Airliner Now Confirmed as Crashed

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Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

By Caroline Schaeffer.

Air Algérie lost contact with flight 5017, which was en route in northern Africa from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to Algiers, Algeria. The Boeing MD-83 jet was carrying 116 on board when it disappeared an hour after take-off over Northern Mali.

An Algerian official confirmed to Reuters that the airliner has crashed, though the cause remains unknown, as does the number of casualties. A Burkina Faso official said the plane asked to change routes because of a storm in the area.

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700 Dead or Missing This Year in Plane Tragedies

By Colleen Curry.

The numbers are stark, and chilling.

Four commercial planes have crashed or disappeared in just four months this year and, perhaps more startlingly, 700 lives have been lost.

The latest news of potential tragedy in the skies came this morning, when an Air Algerie plane flying over Africa with 116 aboard disappeared off radar.

The disappearance comes on the heels of two other high-profile incidents: the crash of TransAsia Flight 222 in Taiwan Wednesday, which killed 47, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine last week, which had 298 aboard.


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Doctor ‘Saved Lives’ By Shooting Hospital Gunman

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A Pennsylvania police chief says that a doctor undoubtedly saved lives after he shot a gunman who opened fire Thursday in an incident that left a hospital case worker dead.

The gunman, Richard Plotts, of Upper Darby, opened fire at Mercy Elizabeth Hospital, just outside of Philadelphia, shortly after entering an office with the case worker, the Associated Press reports.

Witnesses said that when they opened the office door after hearing shouting, they saw Plotts with a gun. The witnesses closed the office door and called 911. Minutes later, they heard gun shots.

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Dem Senator Plagiarized His War College Thesis

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Photo Credit: Getty

Photo Credit: Getty

Montana Democratic Sen. John Walsh is in deep water after revelations surfaced that he copied the work of others for his U.S. Army War College thesis without proper attribution — a practice otherwise known as plagiarism.

The New York Times reports that the former National Guard general’s thesis contained at least a quarter of work that was not attributed to the original authors.

Additionally, all six of the recommendations he places at the conclusion of his paper were lifted entirely from another article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Times points out that the entirety of one recommendation was exactly the same as it was printed in the original source. He did not cite the article at all in his thesis.

Walsh also extensively copied material from a paper published by a Harvard research institute without citing or footnoting it. Both papers are easily accessible through the internet.

Walsh’s paper, entitled “The Case for Democracy as a Long Term Strategy,” dealt with America’s Middle East policy and was conducted as a “strategy research project.”

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Pew Research Report: Nearly 90% of Illegal Immigrant 'Children' are Teenagers

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Tony Lee.

Nearly all of the illegal immigrant children who have been apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last two years have been teenagers.

According to a new Pew Research report, in fiscal year 2013, 91% of illegal immigrant “children” apprehended at the border were teenagers. Of the nearly 60,000 illegal immigrant “children” who were apprehended since October of last year, 84% have been teenagers.

Pew obtained the government figures through a Freedom of Information Act request, and the numbers paint “the first publicly available detailed portrait of the age and home country of child migrants —unaccompanied and accompanied – caught at the U.S.-Mexico border from Oct. 1, 2012, to May 31, 2014.”

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Fake cop allegedly targeted Central American aliens for sexual assault

By Adelle Nazarian.

A licensed San Francisco security guard allegedly posed as a police officer and attempted to sexually assault immigrant men by luring them into his home.

Authorities have alleged that Jeffrey Bugai, 35, convinced at least two men with limited English-speaking abilities to come to his home, where he proceeded to drug them, handcuff them, and force them to perform sexual acts, according to the San Franciso Chronicle.

It is not known how many victims Bugai might have assaulted, as police believe the individuals Bugai allegedly preyed upon are not coming forward for fear of being deported. Authorities also believe Bugai may have threatened his victims with deportation and police retaliation, notes the Chronicle.

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