RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Supreme Court has decided to hear 26 states’ challenge to President Obama’s unpopular and constitutionally dubious plan that amnesties up to 5.5 million illegal aliens and provides incentives for foreigners to have so-called anchor babies in order to gain legal immigrant status here.

After the Obama administration lost twice in lower courts, the high court gave the administration a win Tuesday when it decided to review a November ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s order earlier last year halting implementation of Obama’s executive amnesty.

As attorney Gabriel Malor writes at The Federalist:

“At the most basic level, this case is about stopping yet another President Obama end-run around Congress. In accordance with its constitutional authority, Congress has established an elaborate immigration scheme governing which aliens may enter the United States, how long they may stay, and which aliens must be removed. Obama and the Democrats do not like Congress’ immigration scheme, but they lack the votes to change it.”

The decision to take up the politically explosive issue sets the high court up for high drama in this election year in which illegal immigration, and immigration policies in general, figure prominently. The Supreme Court is expected to render its decision on the merits of the case by June. Led by Donald Trump, most Republican presidential candidates oppose amnesty in varying degrees while all Democrats favor it.

Mayor Dayne Walling, a Democrat, led a cheerful countdown at the Flint water treatment plant to press the button moving the city over to river water. Walling and Darnell Earley, the Democratic emergency manager, even raised glasses in a toast and drank the water to show that it was safe.

“It’s a historic moment for the city of Flint to return to its roots and use our own river as our drinking water supply,” Walling said. “The water quality speaks for itself.”

Flint’s city council had voted in favor of the move 7-1. Despite claims about the power of the emergency manager, the switch could not have gone forward without that vote.

Even once the problem had surfaced, the EPA knew and kept quiet. It was only once the crisis broke, that the Democratic establishment attempted to redirect the blame at Michigan’s efforts to fix broken Democratic cities like Flint using emergency managers. The war against the emergency managers is not about clean water; it’s about protecting the dirty Democratic politics that destroyed these cities.

Flint’s dirty water had its origins in dirty politics. The Democratic Party had badly mismanaged the city.

On four separate occasions, President Obama swore that he would “faithfully execute the Office of President.” Yesterday, the Supreme Court told him to prove it. As expected, the justices voted to review Texas’s challenge to Obama’s executive action on immigration, known as DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans). Critically, the Court ordered the Obama administration to answer a pivotal question: Whether DAPA “violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.” In 225 years, the Supreme Court has never had occasion to ask the president whether he has reneged on his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. However, with pens-and-phones replacing checks-and-balances, the Supreme Court is now poised to break new constitutional ground in order to preserve our embattled separation of powers.

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced DAPA. This executive action purported to rely on “prosecutorial discretion” to defer the deportations of up to 5 million aliens and grant them work authorization. Two weeks later, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott (who had just been elected governor and would take office in January 2015) challenged DAPA in federal court in Brownsville. Two months later — and two days before the Department of Homeland Security would have begun accepting new applicants — Judge Andrew Hanen put DAPA on hold nationwide.

Judge Hanen found fatal the government’s failure to comply with the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Because Hanen ruled on narrow grounds, the court did not need to address whether the president had failed to comply with the Constitution’s requirement that he “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The case was then appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. In July, a divided court affirmed Judge Hanen’s ruling on administrative-law grounds. It, too, did not reach the constitutional question.

How is it that this appalling story came to the authorities and government so late? rsk In case you missed it.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2016/01/15/political-poison-how-many-flints-until-we-learn-our-lesson-by-kevin-d-williamson/
Political Poison How many Flints until we learn our lesson? By Kevin D. Williamson
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2016/01/11/appalling-breakdown-of-infrastructure-in-michigan/

Snyder Apologizes, Blames Dirty Water on Michigan Environmental Department Breakdown By Rod Kackley
For years, the people of Flint, Mich., and state inspectors were waving red flags that the water people were drinking was not safe. Their warnings were ignored or covered up. So for several years, people in Flint were cooking with, drinking and bathing in water that contained too much lead.

There are many layers of responsibility for the poisoning of the city’s municipal water supply.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) resignation. Hillary Clinton told a Martin Luther King event audience in Charleston, S.C.,“We would be outraged if this happened to white kids, and we should be outraged that it’s happening right now to black kids.”

Although he failed to remind Clinton that white kids live in Flint, too, Snyder did accuse her of “politicizing” the problems of the people in that community.

But Snyder apologized to Flint residents in his State of the State address Tuesday, and said they deserved better.

Snyder didn’t fall on his sword alone. He also blamed the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their lack of response to the first alarms of bad water in one of the state’s most economically depressed cities.

I am no fan of David Petraeus for his rules of engagement which put our soldiers at higher risk to avoid offending the sensibilities of Moslem enemies, nor, do I think the “surge” saved Iraq…. but this is pure hypocrisy….rsk

Whatever more may come in the career of David Petraeus, historians will remember him as one of America’s outstanding military men, whose “surge” strategy saved Iraq from chaos before President Obama squandered its gains. So what does it say of the Obama Administration’s priorities or sense of proportion that it may strip the retired general of one of his four stars, thereby docking his Army pension?

We’ll assume this isn’t Ashton Carter’s idea of parsimony, though the Secretary of Defense took up the case after then-Army Secretary John McHugh decided last year to take no action against the former general for sharing classified documents with his biographer and paramour Paula Broadwell. The breach was exposed in 2012 when Mr. Petraeus was CIA director. He lost his job and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling classified information and was punished with two years probation and a $100,000 fine. That and his public humiliation are punishment enough.

The Pentagon’s case against him seems to rest on an FBI claim that he shared some of his personal notebooks with Ms. Broadwell days before he retired from the Army. To our knowledge none of the information in those notebooks was publicly disclosed by Ms. Broadwell or anyone else, and what the bureau seems to think is a high crime is what most journalists would call a leak.

This suggests that what’s mainly at work here is Pentagon vindictiveness, perhaps including an effort to derail Mr. Petraeus’s prospects in the next Administration. Great strategists aren’t abundant, as this Administration proves, and it would be a shame for a future President not to use Mr. Petraeus’s talents.

Meantime, it will be instructive to see how the suddenly punctilious Administration deals with a far graver case of mishandled classified information—the one involving a certain former junior U.S. Senator from New York.

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court took up the divisive political issue of immigration on Tuesday, agreeing to rule by June on the Obama administration’s stalled plan to defer deportation of more than four million illegal immigrants.

The court’s move sets the stage for a blockbuster ruling on presidential powers just as the major parties settle on their 2016 nominees. As if the stakes weren’t high enough already, the justices added a provocative question to the case, asking the parties to address whether President Barack Obama violated his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

The immigration case joins a docket loaded with politically charged issues that underscore the court’s relevance to the presidential campaign: Abortion rights, affirmative action, contraceptive coverage and public-employee union powers all are before the court.

The immigration dispute stems from Mr. Obama’s second-term embrace of executive action to shift policy, in the face of a Republican-controlled Congress that has stymied his legislative initiatives. From the campaign trail to Capitol Hill, Republicans have stated nearly universal opposition to Mr. Obama’s agenda on energy, guns and foreign relations, and criticized his use of executive authority.

The Supreme Court will rule on President Obama’s immigration plan that would defer deportation for parents of children born in the U.S.

The president has made no apologies. With Congress deadlocked over an immigration overhaul, Mr. Obama in November 2014 cited his authority to give a temporary reprieve to illegal immigrants whose children hold U.S. citizenship or permanent residency. The plan sought to prioritize the removal of serious criminals while allowing parents of these children to work without fear of deportation.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, came to the United States in October, 2012. He left in 2014, as he explained, to visit his grandmother in Turkey. On that trip, however, he rejoined the armed struggle in Syria, in company with terrorists. In his first court appearance in Sacramento, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab drew some good press as a hip young man fond of fast cars and posing before the Golden Gate Bridge. On January 15, a somewhat different portrait emerged.

A Sacramento Bee report cited documents that emerged during the refugee’s January 15 indictment. On his overseas adventure, the refugee praised acts of violence against Americans and took part in the execution of three Syrian soldiers. Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab boasted of using silencers in the attacks. Friends on the refugee’s Facebook page included supporters of Ansar Al-Islam and ISIS. The FBI found that he corresponded with a site ISIS used to distribute propaganda and communicate with terrorist organizations.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab also posted a photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, and praised him as a Muslim who humiliated the United States, belongs to God’s nation and enjoyed divine protection. According to the Bee report, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab also praised a deadly 2009 suicide attack against CIA analysts in Afghanistan.

The refugee’s public defender said his client planned no acts of violence in the United States and will plead not guilty to charges of lying to U.S. officials and participating in international terrorism. The January 16 Sacramento Bee report included no quotations from local CAIR director Basim Elkarra, who previously told reporters that nobody in local mosques recognized the Iraqi refugee. The day of his indictment, the FBI released more information on the December 2 San Bernardino attack.

What do some top Myrtle Beach hotels, campgrounds, family entertainment venues, and several serial Myrtle Beach entrepreneurs all have in common? They were the beneficiaries of taxpayer subsidized SBA lending practices since 2007.

The motto of the Small Business Administration (SBA) supports entrepreneurial grit and the little guy: “The SBA helps Americans start, build and grow businesses.” Yet, proponents of Small Business Administration (SBA) loan programs will be hard pressed to justify many of the examples cited within our 2015 released OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – SBA Loans to the Wealthy Lifestyle.

In America, we should never demonize success, but we don’t need to subsidize it either. We identified taxpayer loans to luxury car companies selling Bentleys, Beverly Hills, California diamond suppliers, and upscale destination resorts in Palm Beach, Cape Cod and Lake Tahoe which do little to advance the common good.

— John Thune is a United States senator representing South Dakota and chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Last week, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address. In the lead-up to the speech, there was a lot of discussion about the nature of the president’s legacy. Less discussed, however, was that most of the president’s so-called legacy may not outlast his presidency, since most of his supposed achievements have never been enacted into law.

Early on in his presidency, it became clear that the president didn’t have much interest in working with Congress in a bipartisan manner, and after losing large majorities in the House and Senate, he made it clear that he did not want to listen to the American people, who had overwhelmingly rejected his far-left agenda. His determination to circumvent Congress and ignore the American people has not only been an affront to the democratic process and an attack on the balance of power our Founding Fathers envisioned, it has also failed as a strategy for securing long-lasting achievements.

As a result of his contempt for Congress and his unwillingness to engage with the legislative process, the vast majority of the items that make up the president’s “legacy” — including the national energy tax, executive amnesty, and the flawed Iran deal — are not actual laws. Instead, the president’s legacy is largely made up of regulations, executive actions, and executive agreements, most of which can be easily overturned by the next administration.

After Congress and the American people rejected Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal, he turned to the EPA to impose his will through heavy-handed regulations, including the national energy tax that will increase energy costs for those who can afford it the least. But because these regulations have been imposed through the administration’s rulemaking process instead of through congressional action, a new president could start the process of repealing these rules as soon as he or she takes office. In fact, at least two of these rules could be eliminated even sooner, since they are currently being challenged in the courts.