RUTHFULLY YOURS

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has helpfully cataloged all 22 times that President Barack Obama admitted that tomorrow’s illegal immigration executive is illegal.

The president’s statements go back as far as 2008 and are as recent as this year. They repeat similar themes, so there is no Gruberesque “speak-o” here. It’s just Barack Obama saying things that he now intends to pretend he did not say, but which clearly show that he knows that what is doing is illegal.

Here is the full list.

“I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.” (3/31/08)
“We’ve got a government designed by the Founders so that there’d be checks and balances. You don’t want a president who’s too powerful or a Congress that’s too powerful or a court that’s too powerful. Everybody’s got their own role. Congress’s job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it. … I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress.” (5/19/08)
“Comprehensive reform, that’s how we’re going to solve this problem. … Anybody who tells you it’s going to be easy or that I can wave a magic wand and make it happen hasn’t been paying attention to how this town works.” (5/5/10)
“[T]here are those in the immigrants’ rights community who have argued passionately that we should simply provide those who are [here] illegally with legal status, or at least ignore the laws on the books and put an end to deportation until we have better laws. … I believe such an indiscriminate approach would be both unwise and unfair. It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. And it would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally. Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.” (7/1/10)
“I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules. I can’t simply ignore laws that are out there. I’ve got to work to make sure that they are changed.” (10/14/10)

I am with Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff on the too-clever-by-half choice by Speaker Boehner to retain leftwing law professor Jonathan Turley as counsel in the House’s long-delayed lawsuit against President Obama. In the end, I don’t think it will matter. As Paul points out, judges tend to decide cases based on the merits. When they don’t, their own political leanings matter a lot more than those of the lawyers for the parties.

Moreover, as I’ve opined, the lawsuit is frivolous: The Framers gave Congress its own powers to deal with a rogue president and would have been appalled at the thought of the powerful first branch asking the “least dangerous” third branch to do its heavy lifting. Moreover, as I recounted in Faithless Execution, Obama pays no more attention to court decisions against him than to statutes he dislikes. Since judges have no power to execute their rulings (they need the executive branch for that) a decision against Obama would have no effect – which makes it even less likely that a judge would agree to hear the case, in which the House already faces a daunting challenge to establishing legal standing to sue. (And by the way, that standing challenge now includes not only the fact that courts are not meant to resolve these policy disputes between the political branches, but the problem of mootness: Boehner talked a big game on the lawsuit but has waited so long to file it that many of the president’s Obamacare “waivers” that the suit was to target are about to lapse.)

But even if we indulge the dubious assumptions that a court will take the case and could give a rat’s rump about the politics of the lawyers, the relevant fact about Professor Turley is not that he is a liberal taking a principled stand against a Democratic president’s lawlessness. It is, as Paul notes, that he is an extreme opponent of executive power, even in areas where the president has broad inherent authority. So if a judge bothered to weigh Turley’s politics, he would either discount the professor’s advocacy as the product of excessive skepticism about presidential action; or adopt Turley’s theories and issue a ruling that hampers future Republican presidents in matters of foreign affairs and national security.

That is the problem with political stunts like the lawsuit. They don’t have real upside but they’re not always harmless.

Just a few years ago, a prominent national Democrat firmly and unequivocally rejected the idea that the president of the United States could singlehandedly enact an amnesty program for millions of illegal immigrants.

In 2011, for example, this Democrat reminded us that “there are laws on the books that Congress has passed,” and that therefore it would not be permissible for the president to “suspend deportations through executive order.”

In 2013, this same Democrat noted that granting a unilateral amnesty for adults residing in our country illegally was “not an option,” because it would amount to “ignoring the law.”

As you might have guessed, that Democrat was President Obama.

Yet the president is now poised to authorize the type of action that he previously opposed, even after his go-it-alone approach on immigration and other issues was soundly rejected by the American people at the ballot box.

Though the president promised he would tackle immigration reform with Congress during his first year in office, his record has instead been a series of empty promises and unilateral policy changes that have produced disastrous results. Because of his decisions to bypass the legislative branch and the rule of law, we have seen thousands of deportable criminals, including many with violent records, released from immigration detention. We also saw a genuine humanitarian crisis unfold along our southern border, as tens of thousands of Central American minors — motivated at least in part by President Obama’s non-enforcement of U.S. immigration law — made a treacherous journey in order to cross illegally into the United States.

Despite these results, the president has decided to announce yet another unilateral policy change that will dwarf all the others — and also make it that much harder for Congress to pass real immigration reform. Republicans and Democrats alike have ideas for how to improve the system, and many of these ideas command bipartisan support. Indeed, members of both parties agree on measures that would address border security, legal immigration, and legitimate commerce at our ports of entry. We agree on measures that would boost our economy, promote assimilation, and strengthen the rule of law. Yet the president is poised to sabotage the legislative process.

As head of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano followed the U.S. government’s official practice of refusing to negotiate with hostage-takers. As head of the University of California system, she has become the hostage-taker.

Napolitano is demanding that the cash-strapped state of California pony up an additional $100 million for the UC system, and she threatens to inflict a 5 percent tuition hike on students for each of the next five years in retaliation if Sacramento does not comply. This puts her on the wrong side of Governor Jerry Brown, who by being eternally fixed in anno Domini 1978 has become, strangely enough, the face of relative fiscal sanity as the rest of California rushes headlong into madness. It is easy to make too much of Governor Brown’s relative fiscal conservatism — much of the state’s purported budget miracle is the result of simply putting off necessary pension payments — but the Honorable Governor Moonbeam is here in the right: California is not out of the fiscal woods by any stretch of the imagination, and it cannot afford what Napolitano is demanding.

On the subject of what higher-education expenses California can afford: Napolitano is paid just shy of $600,000 a year in salary, along with $8,916 annually in car expenses, and a $142,500 relocation grant. Even in that tax bracket, she apparently cannot afford to live in the Bay Area, so the university system rents her a home at ten grand a month. And the usual shenanigans — a six-figure outlay to study whether unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook; similar expenses for Robosquirrel, “a taxidermied actual squirrel that is stored with live squirrels so it smells real” — turn up with diurnal predictability.

How much could it actually cost to provide California students with a first-rate college education? The answer — as predictable as the dawn of Robosquirrel — is this: Nobody knows. If there is one thing that government institutions excel at, it is ensuring that they do not know that which they do not wish to know. (E.g., How prevalent is sex-selective abortion in the United States?) The bundle of things that the University of California system does is large and complex, and a great many of them — most of them, by some calculations — do not have anything directly to do with undergraduate education.

John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams was the sixth President of the United States. He had one term and in 1828 lost to Andrew Jackson.After leaving office he was elected a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts and served for 17 years where he was a strident and articulate opponent of slavery.Prior to his election as President Adams had a distinguished career as diplomat- negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. As Secretary of State, he negotiated the northern border with Canada, and the annexation of Florida, and drafted the Monroe Doctrine.with Britain over the United States’ northern border with Canada, negotiated with Spain the annexation of Florida, and drafted the Monroe Doctrine. rsk

John Quincy Adams: ‘Emigrants from Germany or from elsewhere, coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments.’

We often hear about the glory days of immigration when America threw open her arms to the huddled masses, but one thing you don’t hear about is how those people had to make it on their own without a government safety net. There was plenty of private charity, which was highly encouraged, but health care, a minimum-wage job, college entrance, housing, legal representation, and education certainly weren’t promised—not like today.

In 1819, John Quincy Adams wrote a letter as secretary of State under President James Monroe to a man named von Fiirstenwarther, who had written a report about emigration in Germany and wanted the U.S. government to give him a job if he immigrated to the United States from his native country. The letter gives great insight into attitudes about immigration at a time when it was becoming a serious issue; the nation was in a financial crisis because banks were printing too much money, and the country was expanding at an overwhelming rate. Jobs weren’t as easy to come by as they had been in the past (sound familiar?). The idea of immigrants receiving government subsistence was nonsensical. The borders were open, but it was up to each individual to make his or her own way in the New World. Americans then valued personal responsibility and liberty more highly than security and public welfare.

Adam’s letter reveals this fact like nothing else. It is difficult to find (it was printed in Niles’ Weekly Register, Volume 18, in 1820), and it would be a surprise if most politicians today have even read it—but they should.

Here it is, in full (italics added). Let its wisdom be a lesson for today as we throw open our borders to the poor in an age of government largesse.
The Letter from John Quincy Adams

Sir—I had the honor of receiving your letter of the 22nd April, enclosing one from your kinsman, the Baron de Gagern, and a copy of your printed report, which I hope and have no doubt will be useful to those of your countrymen in Germany, who may have entertained erroneous ideas, with regard to the results of emigration from Europe to this country.

Nothing in history or current reality could possibly lead an honest observer to conclude that there’s a viable path to peace between Palestinians and Israel. Barring some dramatic exogenous event, this isn’t about to change. Give it up.

After the murder of five Jews Israelis (three of them American citizens and one of them a Druze) this week, “people fired celebratory gunshots in the air … and praise for God and the attackers poured from mosque loudspeakers soon after the synagogue shooting,” reported The New York Times. Fatah officials in Lebanon chimed in to let us know that: “Jerusalem needs blood in order to purify itself of Jews.” There were congratulatory message on Fatah’s official Facebook page and festive post-murder spree sweets for the kids. This celebration of death—whether dead babies or dead rabbis, it matters not—doesn’t only illustrate the colossal moral gulf that exists between these societies, it reminds us that any Palestinian government inclined to entertain a viable agreement with Jews wouldn’t last long, anyway.

Fatah, the thin thread that any workable agreement hangs on, is only in power because it refuses to hold elections. (And, to be fair, when you lose a campaign in Palestinian territories, there are no comebacks.) But even this more moderate faction brings with it archaic menu of nonstarters to the table. Arabs will not have meaningful control over Jerusalem proper. Or any “right of return.” Or the ability to control their borders as Sweden or Argentina controls theirs. At least, not any time soon. These are intractable disagreements. Every time the sides revisit the negotiations, it ends in disappointment and, inevitably, violence. And with each round, Palestinian society devolves further, becoming increasingly radicalized and violent. So what’s the point?

Barack Obama wants peace. But as always, after a round of failed talks, there is terrorism. The tensions in Jerusalem today—and by tensions, I mean the indiscriminate killing of Jews over the past weeks—are driven, in part, by a conspiracy theory that posits Israelis are about to occupy the Temple Mount. Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas has used the tension to agitate his people, reportedly urging Palestinians to prevent Jewish “settlers” (and by settler he means any Jews) from entering the Temple Mount and “fierce onslaught on Al-Aksa Mosque, Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre Church.”

For most of the modern era, the Republican party has been identified with a strong national defense. Through most of the Cold War, the GOP dominated the Democrats in polling on which of the two was to be trusted more on matters of the country’s security. And while Republicans’ reputation on defense suffered significantly in the 2000s, the party is recapturing much of its credibility on these issues with a public worried not only by the immediate threats of ISIS and Ebola but also by the palpable sense that the world is becoming a more unstable and dangerous place. With their message of the need for a potent military and the importance of a clear-eyed and resolute approach to threats, the new Republican majority in the Senate and the expanded majority in the House are well positioned to regain the national-security leadership mantle.

But this favorable political trend should not be taken as a reason for just doing more of the same. For while the Republicans are usually considered the more hawkish party, the deeper reason for their long-term ascendancy on defense issues is that voters have seen them as more serious in dealing with defense. Republicans have been most successful, in other words, when they have earned the reputation for being the more responsible party on defense — the sober experts on the matter — and not simply for always preferring the more hawkish course. Of course, being the more serious party has often meant being tougher on security issues than the Democrats. But the most successful Republican presidents have prevailed over their opponents — the Adlai Stevensons, George McGoverns, Walter Mondales, Michael Dukakises — by being seen as more trustworthy with the nation’s security rather than simply being bellicose. Republicans have been at their best when they have been seen as smart hawks rather than just reflexive ones.

Voters on Election Day chose Tim Scott as South Carolina’s U.S. senator. They also sent Utah’s Mia Love and Texas’s Will Hurd to the U.S. House of Representatives. Thus, the 114th Congress will include three black Republicans. This is a new high-water mark for black Americans.

Too bad the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People couldn’t care less. (America’s oldest civil-rights organization still plasters that retrograde expression all over its logo and website.)

NAACP has yet to congratulate, acknowledge, or even attack Scott, Love, and Hurd — now America’s three most powerful elected black Republicans. What you hear is the silence of the Colored People. Despite ten separate requests for comment on this “advancement of colored people,” I could not squeeze a consonant out of NAACP’s Baltimore headquarters, its Washington, D.C., office, or even its Hollywood bureau.

NAACP president Cornell William Brooks did say on November 5, “This election was not about who won but rather the citizens who lost the right to participate.” Despite complaints about malfunctioning polling machines and voters blocked for lack of photo ID, one wonders where NAACP is hiding these disenfranchised citizens. Why have we heard as much about them since November 5 as NAACP has said about Scott, Love, and Hurd?

NAACP did issue a November 14 press release expressing its “strong support of the new Qualified Residential Mortgage rule” under the behemoth Dodd-Frank financial-services law. The group praised the rejection of new down-payment rules for home loans. Who needs strong credit standards? What could go wrong?

NAACP has offered communiqués praising Obama’s new draconian carbon dioxide regulations and even applauding La June Montgomery Tabron for becoming president of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. As for three black Republicans getting elected to Congress? Crickets.

What a disgrace.

Jonathan Gruber’s disdain for the proverbial masses is thematic of the last six years.

Last week, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jonathan Gruber, one of prominent architects of Obamacare, was exposed as little more than an elitist fraud.

Gruber was caught on videotape expressing the haughty attitude that drove the Affordable Care Act, deriding the “stupidity” of Americans as a way to justify misleading them.

Gruber apparently thinks such deception is okay because yokel voters could not handle the truth about the looming chaos he helped to engineer in their health coverage.

Unfortunately, Gruber’s disdain for the proverbial masses — he was paid nearly $400,000 in consulting fees — is thematic of the last six years.

Another master-of-the-universe drafter of Obamacare was Ezekiel Emanuel. He scoffed on national television that the number of people covered by Obamacare at that point was “irrelevant.”

Emanuel also drew attention for his recent adolescent rant in a men’s magazine about the desirability of everyone dying at 75 to save society the expense of maintaining what he sees as the unproductive elderly.

Former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lectured of Obamacare that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” The same elitist message reverberates: that government and academic elites are smarter than average Americans, and so need not explain what they are doing.

This is a pattern of Obama administration ruling elites who express disdain or lack of concern about the people they are supposed to serve. Former energy secretary Steven Chu made a series of astounding statements about energy use, the most inane being that America would be better off if gas costs soared to Europe’s sky-high prices.

Who can forget the Obama acceptance speech in 2008 on a football field in Denver, the nominee standing amid Greek columns and scrolling through a long list of goals to 84,000 Democrats? That was the high. Six years later, the Democrats get the hangover. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will announce his presidency’s only declaration of war—against the Republicans. After describing how he will redesign the U.S. immigration system on his own authority, he’ll fly Friday to Las Vegas.

The remaining two years will be irregular warfare, with Mr. Obama deploying his weapon of choice, the executive order. This essentially turns the presidency into a cruise missile: The president tells the country what to do, and the country does it.

Before the U.S. political system goes to the mattresses, I’d like to spend a moment discussing Jonathan Gruber, ObamaCare and the American people.

Jon Gruber is the now-famous ObamaCare designer and explainer-for-hire who said the Affordable Care Act became law because the American people were too stupid to understand what was in it.

Within days, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were throwing Jon Gruber down the memory hole. You bet they were. The Gruber incident poses a direct threat to the Democratic Party.

Jon Gruber’s remarks matter not for what they say about the Democratic Party’s modus operandi but because of the truths he revealed about the Democratic Party’s reason for being. The Gruber threat to the Democrats isn’t reputational; it’s existential.

The Democrats have believed for decades that if they build it—a health-care entitlement or any other federal bestowment—the voters will come. That political model is cracking.