Charles Krauthammer: Soft on Terror

The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane — that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration — but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.

After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him. more…..

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CNSNews: Obama Wrong on Claim about Supreme Court Ruling on Corporate Campaign Donations

The high court’s 5-4 ruling in a First Amendment case, Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission (FEC), lifted restrictions for companies, unions, and other organizations to make independent expenditures in political campaigns.

The court decision, however does not allow unlimited contributions directly to a campaign or in coordination with a campaign. Nor did the ruling lift existing law that blocks foreign contributions to political campaigns.

In his speech, Obama also claimed the court reversed 100 years of law when, in fact, it overturned a 1990 decision in Austin vs. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. Also, parts of the McCain-Feingold reform bill from 2002 that restricted independent political advertising in the closing days of an election were struck down. more…..

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Red State: Chris Matthews and the Soft Bogotry of Low Expectations

So, after remembering that Obama is Black, Matthews then remembers that black = lesser. This sort of thinking is anathema to the ideas put forward by true deep thinkers and civil rights activists like MLK Jr., yet it is the wheelhouse of the left as Matthews continues to display. more…..

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American Thinker: The Lesson of an Affirmative Action President

Affirmative action was allowed by the Supreme Court as a temporary exception to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution until blacks had the same opportunities others did. It has now been about forty years, and the goal posts have just moved farther and farther Left. Today it’s not just blacks — it’s women, homosexuals, and illegal aliens. And it’s no longer equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, which was the goal of Communism for seventy years in the Soviet Union, until the whole Soviet Empire crumbled as a result.  more…..

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Nate Beeler: Explaining Healthcare Reform

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Washington Examiner: A Speech With Nothing For Everybody

That was some performance Wednesday night by President Obama, delivering one of the longest-ever State of the Union addresses but offering no evidence whatsoever of a willingness to listen to the swelling nationwide chorus of voices of discontent with his policies. For example, rather than acknowledging that clear majorities of Americans have decisively rejected his signature health care reform plan and suggesting a different approach, Obama doubled down on his insistence that Congress approve his proposal to put federal bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. Thus, Obama’s congressional supporters get nothing on which to try to build a credible health care compromise, and his congressional critics come away with nothing beyond vague rhetoric about working together. more…..

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Liberty Works: ObamaNomics: An Endless Downward Spiral

ObamaNomics is built on the assumption that politicians are better stewards of economic resources than the millions of individuals and business enterprises who created those resources.  The Democrats’ plan is to dramatically increase taxation to fund programs through which government can exert greater control over our lives.

But these data show that the private sector’s ability and willingness to generate wealth for government to seize through taxation is rapidly diminishing.  These data show that Obama’s own actions are are literally killing the goose that lays the golden eggs he needs to fund his agenda. more…..

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Judicial Watch Uncovers New Documents Detailing Pelosi’s Use of Air Force Aircraft

“Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel. And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. more…..

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-Cnation

It is time to take to the streets again.

From a story at Hot Air; according to Senator John Kyl, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi may have come to an agreement and found a way to get Obamacare through both chambers of Congress.

First, here’s the basic mechanics of how they will do it. From Dick Morris @ Newsmax:

Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are “flipped” and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.

Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?

That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.

But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?

According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.

Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.

This plan, of course, is a total subversion of the legislative process.

Typically, the Senate and House pass their own unique legislation and then both bills go to a conference committee. In conference, the leadership of both Democrat-dominated houses wheels and deals and irons out differences.

The final compromise bill is then sent back to the full Senate and full House for a vote and has to pass both to go to the president.

In the House, a simple majority passes the legislation. But under Senate rules, major legislation requires 60 votes to end a filibuster.

As it stands, the House bill and Senate bill have major discrepancies. Reid does not have 60 votes to pass a compromise bill that would no doubt include some of the radical provisions House members have been demanding.

But if the House passes the exact Senate bill that passed by a 60-39 Senate vote last month, there is no need for a conference on the bill. It will go directly to the president’s desk.

That was this past Sunday. Yesterday (Wednesday 1/27/2010), the LA Times reported:

Reporting from Washington – Laying out a possible path to approving healthcare legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Wednesday that the House should pass the Senate’s version and then use a process known as “budget reconciliation” to make the changes some lawmakers are demanding.

The politically fraught strategy might allow Democrats to salvage a version of the overhaul that senior lawmakers pushed through the House and Senate late last year. Because budget reconciliation requires only a simple majority in the Senate, it could enable Democrats to circumvent a threatened GOP filibuster.

But in order to get this cluster you-know-what in motion, Reid and Pelosi first have to rewrite the bill in a fashion that would not only satisfy the requirements of the reconciliation process, they’d have to write it in a way that’s agreeable to the relevent majority of both chambers. That brings us to the present.

From Fox News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion “fix” to the Senate health care bill, saying that her chamber could approve the Senate’s package if those changes are made first.

Senior Democratic aides told Fox News that Pelosi has offered up the new package of changes to Senate Democratic leaders, with the hope that they will be able to pass it using a controversial procedural maneuver known as “reconciliation.” The maneuver would allow Democrats to pass the measure with just 51 votes, without having to first overcome the normal 60-vote threshold.

Some Democrats are keen on using that process, since the election last week of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts broke the Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority. However, some Democratic moderates — notably Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh — have balked at using the controversial tactic to ram through health care reform measures.

Pelosi announced last week that she did not have the votes in the House to pass the Senate health care reform bill as is. But Pelosi is now floating the possibility that if the Senate, and House, approve the package of adjustments first, the House can then take up the original Senate bill.

So there it is. Morris was right, and the Dems, it seems, are going to be moving ahead, the voice of the American people be damned.

All is still not lost though. The reconciliation process has its own unique set of rules, one of which the Republicans have said they’d use to kill this thing. Unlike normal senate procedure wherein debate on a bill can be ended at any time, reconciliation has an open-ended amendment process, which means there is literally no limit to the number of amendments that can be offered, and each and every one would have to be voted on. The Republicans could therefore theoretically stall this all the way through the end of the current session, while simultaneously forcing Dems to vote on things that could hurt them badly politically.

If this thing does make it to reconciliation, and IF Harry Reid can scrounge up the 52 votes he would need, then it would remain to be seen if the Republicans have the stones to follow through on their threat.

They’d better. For all of our sakes.

Further reading:

TNR: How Reconciliation Would Work

Project Vote Smart: GOVERNMENT 101: How a Bill Becomes Law

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-Cnation

Just read this at Michelle Malkin’s site: The senate today voted to increase the debt limit to $14 TRILLION dollars. The vote was, of course, right along party lines. Also – for reasons not clear to me – Senator Paul Kirk from Mass, the man who Scott Brown is supposed to be replacing, is still voting.

Read the whole thing here, and then let your Democrat senator know how you feel about this.

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-Cnation

Red State: A Declaration Of War:

After reflection on Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, I am left with one overarching conclusion: while boring, preachy, dull, overly serious, then flipping to overly jocular tones while trying to balance pandering to the middle class with holding his base — Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was a declaration of war on the free market. more…..

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NRO: Statist Quo

Everything changes except President Obama. His agenda doesn’t change. He has had no second thoughts about the wisdom of his health-care policies, or any of his policies; resistance is always and only a reason for redoubling. Also unchanging is the condescension with which he articulates his agenda: He faulted himself for not explaining health care well enough to the easily confused American public. The same familiar strawmen dot the landscape of his rhetoric. (Republicans want to “maintain the status quo” on health care. This president is willing to listen to Republican ideas, just so long as he can then forget that he has ever done so.) Narcissism, too, is a constant companion. The opening of the speech, and the end, invited us to regard Obama as the embodiment of the nation. But it is not the country’s future that has suddenly come under doubt. It is his administration’s. It is not the country’s spirit that is in danger of breaking. It is contemporary liberalism’s. more…..

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Byron York: Obama: You liked my speech? Please send money.

About an hour after the end of his State of the Union address, in which he called for an end to the partisan conflict that has plagued his first year in office, President Obama sent out a political fundraising appeal through his permanent campaign organization, Organizing for America. more…..

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-Cnation

….and to absolutely nobody’s surprise – at least among those capable of rational thought – Zero is shown to have been somewhat less than honest.

From the AP via Yahoo, original article here:

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

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OBAMA: “I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can’t be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.”

THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted — a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

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OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said, “Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.”

THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage — the majority of Americans under age 65 — in the plans they already have. But Obama can’t guarantee people won’t see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans. Because of elements such as new taxes on insurance companies, insurers could change what they offer or how much it costs. Moreover, Democrats have proposed a series of changes to the Medicare program for people 65 and older that would certainly pinch benefits enjoyed by some seniors. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted cuts for those enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.

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OBAMA: The president issued a populist broadside against lobbyists, saying they have “outsized influence” over the government. He said his administration has “excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.” He also said it’s time to “require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress” and “to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.”

THE FACTS: Obama has limited the hiring of lobbyists for administration jobs, but the ban isn’t absolute; seven waivers from the ban have been granted to White House officials alone. Getting lobbyists to report every contact they make with the federal government would be difficult at best; Congress would have to change the law, and that’s unlikely to happen. And lobbyists already are subject to strict limits on political giving. Just like every other American, they’re limited to giving $2,400 per election to federal candidates, with an overall ceiling of $115,500 every two years.

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OBAMA: “Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. … And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million “compared with what those values would have been otherwise.” It said the ranges “reflect the uncertainty of such estimates.” And it added, “It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

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OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress “to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve.”

THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign — to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it’s acted upon.

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OBAMA: “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.”

THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.

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OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: “And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008.”

THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.

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-Cnation

I was going to try and live blog this thing, but I can’t keep up. Instead, here’s the bottom line:

Barack Obama is quite possibly the most corrupt, most intensely dishonest president in American history. This son of a bitch (yes, I just called the president of the United States a son of a bitch) is standing there taking credit for things he hasn’t done (creating/saving jobs), blaming banks for things they haven’t done (precipitating the financial crisis), and playing the populist angle to the hilt.

He’s now talking about a “jobs bill’. What the hell was the stimulus for then? Jobs, that’s what. ‘Shovel ready’ was the term he and his people threw around. So why, with over 500 BILLION in unspent stimulus funds just sitting there, do we need another jobs bill?

This stinks to hell and back. This man is a disgrace…I simply cannot watch any more.

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-Cnation

Competent criminals would have gotten their stories straight ahead of time.

Behold, the smartest administration evah!

I’m just surprised Valerie Jarrett didn’t start talking about puppy dogs and unicorns….

I’m sorry, but if you still support these people, you are a complete and total loser.

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-Cnation

NRO: Obama must change course, or he’s sunk.

The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and his is an old, passé leftism — one that is authoritarian and deviously presented, and was discredited in this country decades ago; it featured the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become “New Democrats.” Obama is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic, and intoxicated by what he modestly called “the gift” of his own articulateness. And, as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent. more…..

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CNN Poll: Most Americans applaud Democrats’ loss of supermajority

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday also indicates that 7 in 10 Americans believe that the Democrats’ loss of their 60 seat supermajority in the Senate is a positive move for the country. more…..

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American Thinker: Time to Take On the Unions

The dearth of additional special elections in the near future will allow the conservative movement to target the underlying causes of our ailing national economy and diminished national pride. No other single cause has been more disruptive to our economy and the principles of the American Dream than the pernicious undermining of commonsense capitalism by the greedy bullies in the teachers’, auto workers’, and public sector unions. more…..

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Missouri State Rep. Jeff Roorda, Douchebag

From Dana Loesch:

Rep. Jeff Roorda (D – Jefferson County) is the delightfully angry politician who decided to call about half the state a term used for sexual slang. These are the same people who had their menstrual cycles when Joe Wilson shouted “Liar!” on the floor, by the way. You know, the same people who defined the floor as a sacred place of political haranguing. more…..

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Fox News: Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

Obama in 2008: “I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all”

Despite President Obama’s long history of criticizing the Bush administration for “sweetheart deals” with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids,  more…..

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‘Hope and Change’ is for suckers.

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-Cnation

FOR THE WEEK OF January 25, 2010

• Scott Brown’s Victory in Massachusetts Demonstrates the American People Support Immigration Enforcement
• Rep. Chaffetz Files Bipartisan Resolution in Support of True Immigration Reform
• Homeland Security Grants Humanitarian Parole to Haitian Orphans
• Homeland Security to Fast-Track TPS Applications for Illegal Aliens; Fraud Likely
• Arizona and Indiana Move Forward With Immigration Enforcement Bills
• Aliens in U.S. Military Receive Fast-Track to U.S. Citizenship

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Scott Brown’s Victory in Massachusetts Demonstrates the American People Support Immigration Enforcement All eyes were on Massachusetts last week as the highly publicized special election for the U.S. Senate seat came to an end.  Scott Brown, the little-known Republican State Senator, defeated Democrat Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Attorney General, in an upset described as the second “shot heard ‘round the world.” Read the full article

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Rep. Chaffetz Files Bipartisan Resolution in Support of True Immigration Reform On Thursday, January 21, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), along with Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Frank Kratovil (D-MD), and Glenn Nye (D-VA), introduced a bipartisan resolution (H.Res.1026) in the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Members of Congress to support commonsense immigration reform. The resolution states that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that: (1) E-Verify should be mandatory, and that worksite enforcement policies should hold both employers and illegal employees responsible for violations of immigration law; (2) installing and sustaining border security infrastructure and manpower is a critical responsibility of the federal government; and (3) any immigration reform Congress adopts should not grant amnesty to, or confer legal status upon, illegal aliens in the United States. Read the full article

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Homeland Security Grants Humanitarian Parole to Haitian Orphans Last week, Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Napolitano announced that it will allow hundreds of Haitian orphans to enter the United States through the policy of humanitarian parole.  DHS will coordinate with the State Department (DOS) to provide travel documents, including immigrant visas and humanitarian parole authorizations, to Haitian orphans who are eligible for adoption in the United States. The legal authority to grant humanitarian parole stems from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which grants Homeland Security the discretion to temporarily parole aliens into the United States on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.  (INA § 212(d)(5)(A)). Read the full article

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Homeland Security to Fast-Track TPS Applications for Illegal Aliens; Fraud Likely Last week, troubling details emerged concerning the Obama administration’s recent decision to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Haitians present in the United States as of January 12, 2010 the date a tragic earthquake struck the Caribbean nation.  The TPS designation will allow Haitian nationals to remain in the United States for at least 18 months and grants these aliens work authorization, regardless of their immigration status.  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano has stated that the administration is expecting as many as 200,000 Haitians to apply for TPS. Read the full article

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Arizona and Indiana Move Forward With Immigration Enforcement Bills Faced with rising unemployment and the federal government’s refusal to enforce our immigration laws, state legislatures are moving to address these issues on their own. Last week, senate committees in Indiana and Arizona voted to move forward with two enforcement-oriented bills. Read the full article

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Aliens in U.S. Military Receive Fast-Track to U.S. Citizenship As part of an effort to attract new recruits, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced the publication of a rule that allows aliens in the U.S. military to immediately apply for citizenship if they served in active-duty status for any time after September 11, 2001. The rule also amends DHS regulations to reduce the time requirements for naturalization through military service from three years to one year for applicants who served during peacetime. Id. The rule formalizes a longstanding policy to expedite and streamline the citizenship process for aliens serving in the armed forces. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano stated that "The foundation of our national security is the patriotic service and extraordinary sacrifices made by the men and women of our armed forces. Expediting the citizenship process for service members reflects our commitment to honoring those who come from all over the world to serve our country and become its newest citizens." Id. Read the full article