It's what they're trying to do, and I get livid when people respond with "wahh wah you're minimizing the real episodes of ethnic cleansing in history." No, I'm doing my best to put a stop to yet another incident. They want all the brown people out, especially but not just Muslims, and they'll use whatever authority they can to do it. They didn't just prevent new people from coming in, they tried to prevent legal long term residents (green card holders) from returning. They've revoked who knows how many existing student and H1-B visas. Again, not just new arrivals or even people trying to re-enter, but revoking the legal status of people already here - people who have invested time and money in education and careers. Those people can be declared in violation, and even if they aren't being deported momentarily, they will be unable to return due for years or ever due to visa violation they weren't even aware they had made. Employers will have workers who have no right to work here - again, unknown to them. Families will continue to be ripped apart.
Sally Yates did not betray the Justice Department, she honored its greatest traditions by defending our Constitution. https://t.co/oOVAhKPXQK— Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) January 31, 2017
UPDATE: We should probably keep an eye open for future typos bearing Costa's name seeing as how, less than a year ago, he cosponsored a bill (HB1894) to help put an end to the "alien invasion" in Pennsylvania. You know, just in case he -- or any other elected official in a blue district -- doesn't get the message that Democrats are in no mood to let something like this slide anymore.Thank you all for your concerns but I have wrongly been listed online as a cosponsor of HB14 and have requested to be removed as a cosponsor— Dom Costa (@RepDomCosta) January 31, 2017
• Distended scumtroll Republican State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, chairman of the House State Government Committee, denied colleague Rep. Leslie Acosta, "herself an immigrant and the state's only Latina legislator," her allotted speaking time as she "attempted to lay out her argument" against the shiteous English-only bill, interrupting her and then cutting off her microphone. Metcalfe, who is a white, straight, Christian human-shaped agglomeration of dog shit animatronically operated by a groundhog, used the same tactic against another minority colleague in 2013, when Gay Fantasy Boyfriend™ State Rep. Brian Sims attempted to speak "about the Supreme Court's gay marriage rulings," informing us that "his religious views against gay marriage compelled him to do it." Fuck Daryl Metcalfe.But, True Patriot Metcalfe is even more 'Merican than stopping Latinas from speaking. According to Talking Points Memo, Metcalfe invited a
A Pennsylvania lawmaker objected to accusations that he had invited a white supremacist to testify in front of a committee by clarifying that the witness was merely a white nationalist.
The witness, Robert "Bob" Vandervoort, appeared at a hearing Monday on a bill to make English the official state language, the Patriot-News reported, prompting state Rep. Leslie Acosta (D) to allege that the committee had invited a white supremacist.
[snip]
The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Vandervoort as being tied "to white nationalist groups." But, as the Patriot-News noted, the center characterizes white nationalist groups as espousing "white supremacist or white separatist ideologies."
Metcalfe also said, "For whoever said the man was white to begin with, that person was actually the racist -- tying his skin color to his patriotism and what he stands up for for his country."Yes, you say "to-may-toe" and I say "to-mah-toe" and Metcalfe says pointing out racism is racist!
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other Members of Congress ignore the Constitution on a daily basis, and knowingly give support and comfort to special interest groups, foreign governments and the illegal alien insurgents they encourage to invade the United States, and betray everything their oath of office represents. Ask your governor, your federal and state judges why these traitors aren’t swinging from a rope? [Emphasis added]God Bless 'Merica! God Bless Pennsyltucky! And God Bless Daryl Metcalfe!
U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab, sitting in Pittsburgh, has taken considerable heat in some legal circles for ruling that parts of President Barack Obama's deportation amnesty are unconstitutional. The rap against Tuesday's ruling is that it has little or no practical effect because it came in a technically unrelated criminal deportation case. Nonetheless, Judge Schwab's finding stings: “President Obama's unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore is unconstitutional.” Credit the judge for having the guts to say so. And look for his legal rationale to be part of the eventual Supreme Court ruling that Mr. Obama truly is a constitutional reprobate. [Bolding in original]While the braintrust acknowledges "the rap" about the ruling ("that it has little or no practical effect"), you should note that they don't come out and agree with that point. They do, however, agree with the finding.
Today’s federal district court decision striking down President Obama’s executive order on immigration has serious flaws. Strikingly, Judge Arthur Schwab attempts to dispose of a complex and important constitutional issue in just three or four pages. In the process, he ignores important weaknesses in his position.And more damaging to the braintrust's argument:
If the Supreme Court were to adopt Judge Schwab’s reasoning, federal law enforcement agencies would be barred from issuing general systematic guidelines about how their officials should exercise prosecutorial discretion. The exercise of discretion would then become arbitrary and capricious. Alternatively, perhaps they could still follow systematic policies, so long as those policies were not formally declared and announced to the public, as the president’s order was. Neither possibility is particularly attractive, and neither is required by the Constitution.In fact at Reason.com, Somin out right states:
In reality, Obama’s actions were well within the scope of executive authority under the Constitution. In a world where authorities can prosecute only a small fraction of lawbreakers, all presidents inevitably make policy choices about which violations of federal law to prosecute and which to ignore. Such choices are inevitably affected by policy preferences. Obama’s decision to defer deportation is in line with those of past presidents.Can't these guys get their stories straight?
If you closely and honestly examine FAIR’s agenda, you will see that many of our policies are designed to protect the “99%” from abuses by corporate America which desires to relentlessly flood the jobs market with unnecessary foreign labor. Immigration must serve our broad national interests – not political parties and not corporate welfare which occurs by way of availability to cheap and illegal workers that displace U.S. workers, corrode wages, increases income inequality and reduces the middle class overall.He also asked me to correct my earlier "smear." I wrote him back saying that there's nothing for me to correct. Unless the SPLC didn't call FAIR a "hate group" or they've since rescinded the charge (neither of which is true) what I posted is accurate.
FAIR condemns any individual or group that engages in hateful or violent behavior, and has done so publicly on many occasions. While FAIR has been consistently critical of many aspects of U.S. immigration policy and long-term failures to adequately enforce immigration laws. We have a longstanding abiding policy of never advocating discriminatory immigration policies. If the record proves anything at all, it is that FAIR draws a clear distinction between immigration policy and immigrants. Immigration is an important public policy that can and must be debated openly; immigrants are human beings who must always be treated with respect and dignity. (page 4-5)The document then looks to discredit the SPLC on roughly the same points that Dane wrote to me about - adding a few pages on how they think the SPLC manipulates data.
At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, a senior FAIR official sought "advice" from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party.None of which is actually addressed in the document FAIR sent me.
Roughly one in six illegal immigrants is re-arrested on criminal charges within three years of release, according to new government data being released Tuesday.And this from NewsMax:
Those charges range from murder to drunken-driving and, according to House Republicans pushing out the report, are symptoms of what they describe as a "dangerous and deadly" immigration policy.
The Obama administration’s policy of not deporting illegal immigrants arrested for criminal activity “is not working for public safety in the United States,” Texas Rep. Ted Poe tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.And now the editorial page of the Tribune-Review:
The federal government’s policy of catching and releasing illegal aliens has had the expected unsavory consequences. A House Judiciary Committee report says the program had a recidivism rate of 16 percent between 2008 and 2011. Or, put another way, illegals who were cut loose have been charged with 19 murders, three attempted murders and 142 sex crimes. Yet another example of “enlightened progressivism,” eh? ...Too bad none of the actual, you know, reality based numbers actually support this right wing narrative.
Recidivism is the act of reengaging in criminal offending despite having been punished. The prison recidivism rate—the subject of this report—is the proportion of persons released from prison who are rearrested, reconvicted or returned to custody within a specific time period. Typically, recidivism studies follow released offenders for three years following their release from prison or placement on probation.And what does Pew say is the recidivism rate overall?
The Pew/ASCA survey found the threeyear return-to-prison rate for inmates released in 1999 to be 45.4 percent, and 43.3 percent for those released in 2004.Now ask yourselves a question: Is a 16% recidivism rate greater or lesser than a 43% recidivism rate?
The Obama administration's lax immigration enforcement includes failure to reform immigration courts that illegal aliens routinely ignore.Media Matters lists about $1.4 million dollars in grants from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife between 1991 and 2007. This does not count the additional grants of $150,000 and $125,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008 and in 2009, respectively.
Mark Metcalf, a former Miami immigration court judge, extensively details the problems in a new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report, "Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts."
He says deportation orders are rarely enforced -- in part because immigration judges lack authority to enforce their own orders -- even when those targeted ignore them or skip court. Among 1.9 million aliens freed to await trial from 1996 through 2009, 40 percent vanished.Look at the dates. Tell me again who was president from 2001 to 2009? This can't be Clinton's fault can it? I mean he was President from 1996 to 2001. Those were also the Lewinsky years. Brought to you, in part, by the Scaife funded Arkansas project. Thanks, Dick.
Department of Justice statistics mask the grim truth, too. Justice contends 39 percent of aliens missed immigration court dates in 2005 and 2006; Mr. Metcalf says the real figure is 59 percent.
From 2002 through 2006 — in the shadow of 9/11 — 50 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. Court numbers show 360,199 aliens out of 713,974 dodged court.In the Shadow of 9/11 the Bush Administration allowed this to happen?
The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday that illegal immigrants may continue to be eligible for in-state tuition rates at the state's colleges and universities rather than pay the higher rates charged to those who live out of state.Here's that LA Times blog post, by the way. The Trib dutifully quoted the first paragraph. Know what happens in the second?
Thus began a Nov. 15 Los Angeles Times blog post about a ruling in a case whose very existence shows how ridiculously off-base the terms of America's immigration debate are these days.
The court upheld a California law that allows in-state college tuition for illegal aliens who attend California high schools for at least three years and graduate there. It ruled that law doesn't conflict with a federal ban on residency-based educational benefits for illegals.[italics in original]
In a ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin, one of the panel's more conservative members, the state high court said a California law that guarantees the lower tuition for students who attend California high schools for at least three years and graduate does not conflict with a federal prohibition on giving illegal immigrants educational benefits based on residency. [emphasis added.]Huh. The Trib used the term "Left Coast Supremes" - a pun of sorts. Because if you look at a standard map of the US, California is on the left side of the page. The Trib is punning that the Supreme Court of California is also on the left politically.
This court has received many briefs making policy arguments for and against section 68130.5's tuition exemption. We have received arguments that section 68130.5 affords deserving students educational opportunities that would not otherwise be available and, conversely, arguments that it flouts the will of Congress, wastes taxpayers' money, and encourages illegal immigration. But this court does not make policy. Whether Congress's prohibition or the Legislature's exemption is good policy is not for us to say. Rather, we must decide the legal question of whether California's exemption violates Congress's prohibition or is otherwise invalid. We must decide the statutory question by employing settled methods of statutory construction.Which is, of course, another way of saying that had they're saying that they decided the case based on policy they'd be guilty of (now wait for it) JUDICIAL ACTIVISM.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, during last week's state visit to Washington, publicly chastised as "discriminatory" Arizona's crackdown.The reason, Editor No-brains, that the president "failed to immediately cite Mexican law" on this subject is that that law was rescinded some time ago.
Not only did President Barack Bumfuzzled fail to immediately cite Mexican law that makes illegals felons and eligible for jail time in one of Calderon's dungeons, Mr. No Gonads failed to also click his fingers and command the Secret Service to grab el presidente by the collar and escort him to the White House gates.
Then Barack the Bower hosted Calderon at a state dinner.
In 2008, the Mexican Congress voted unanimously with 393 votes to decriminalize undocumented immigration to Mexico. Before then, the Washington Times description of Mexican immigration law would’ve been accurate. Following the 2008 reform, however, undocumented immigration is a minor offense punishable by fines equivalent to about $475 to $2,400. The approved reform identified Mexico’s old immigration laws as “inadmissible” and a violation of human rights.So Colin, what you wrote about people in Mexico being thrown in dungeons for being an illegal immigrant is just plain wrong - you see that now, right? And this, Colin, is why you need to always fact-check what you write before you publish it. You'll look less like an idiot that way.
In criminal proceedings, citizens of the United States are guaranteed their rights by the Constitution. Any chipping away of this bedrock principle should invite alarm -- and never mind any high-minded excuse offered by the government, even if it involves national security.And ends with:
In arguing for the change, Sen. Lieberman said, "We're fighting an enemy who doesn't wear the uniform of a conventional army or follow the law of war." True enough, but a murky situation is not helped by disrespecting the rights of citizenship.The fact that, according to Talkingpointsmemo, no one is supporting this bill (not even the conservatives) shows how mistaken it was.
Rep. Altmire said, "Individuals who actively support terrorist organizations dedicated to harming our nation do not deserve to enjoy the privileges of American citizenship." And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, head of the department that would judge Americans according to the overly broad words of this bill, said: "United States citizenship is a privilege -- it is not a right."
Memo to both: A driver's license is a privilege. Citizenship, whether attained by birth or naturalization, is sanctioned by the Constitution, the guarantor of the rights of citizens. That document does not have an asterisk on the people's rights saying, "Not applicable to alleged enemy combatants." This constitutionally dubious legislation promotes fear, not security.
It's probably a safe bet that if House Republican Leader John Boehner backs away from a conservative, terrorism-related bill called "TEA," the legislation both goes too far, and isn't going anywhere.And how much of a mistake it was for Altmire to support it.
