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Monday, January 29, 2018

DoJ to Play Hardball with Sanctuary Cities

Attorney General Jeff Sessions gestures as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 13, 2017, before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about his role in the firing of James Comey, his Russian contacts during the campaign and his decision to recuse from an investigation into possible ties between Moscow and associates of President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The Department of Justice sent letters to 23 sanctuary cities and states requesting documentary proof that law enforcement is obeying federal immigration law. The letters came with the warning that if they didn't comply, subpoenas would be issued.

At stake for the cities and states is funding for several law enforcement programs. And the Department of Homeland Security has asked the Justice Department to look into filing charges against the leaders of sanctuary cities.

NBC News:

"I continue to urge all jurisdictions under review to reconsider policies that place the safety of their communities and their residents at risk," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.

Three states received the letters — California, Illinois and Oregon. Among major cities were Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

The letters said they would not be awarded new grants and that the government might come after them to return money they've received in previous grants if they are found to be out of compliance.

Beginning in the Obama administration, the Justice Department warned local governments that in order to receive money under a crime-fighting grant program, they must not block their law enforcement officers from giving information to federal immigration authorities. Wednesday's letters ask for proof of compliance.

Specifically, the Justice Department seeks documentation that local law enforcement is not prohibited from communicating with federal immigration agents when asked for information about undocumented migrants in local jails.

Federal courts have blocked the Trump administration from withholding grant money from local governments that refuse to give immigration authorities advance notice before illegal immigrants are released from custody or that decline to allow immigration agents to visit local jails.

Wednesday's letters involve the separate issue of whether local authorities are prohibited from giving any information to immigration agents about people in their custody.

Make no mistake, the Justice Department has thrown down the gauntlet to sanctuary cities. Since it is doubtful that states and cities will incriminate themselves by handing over the required documents, expect subpoenas to be on the way soon.

But sanctuary cities will almost certainly be able to fend off the efforts of DoJ and DHS to force them to comply with federal law. Liberal judges have shown no reluctance to back sanctuary cities by shielding them from the feds. That's why, unlike the funding issue where courts have taken the side of sanctuary cities, this is an issue of states and cities directly defying the law and is ripe for a Supreme Court challenge.

Meanwhile, criminal illegal aliens continue to be released to prey upon the general public.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/doj-play-hardball-sanctuary-cities/

Keep Dreaming, Dreamers

BY JIM TREACHER

Juliana Torres, 16, left, and Micaela Lattimer, 16, both of Baltimore, rally in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, outside of the White House, in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

I don't know a lot about the rest of the world, because by God I'm an American. I know as much as I need to know about all those other countries, which consists of one thing and one thing only: They're not us. And thank goodness for that.

But one thing I do know is that if I moved to Mexico or Canada or France or England or any of those other, lesser countries, I'd be expected to obey their local laws. I wouldn't be exempt just because my feelings might get hurt. If I didn't comply, those countries would kick me the hell out. They'd probably even send me off with a few good "Yankee" zingers for good measure. And I'd deserve it.

If I choose to live in another country, I need to follow that country's rules. That's part of the deal. It's just common sense.

For some reason, though, that reasoning doesn't apply to people from other countries who come to the United States. Apparently, those folks don't need to obey the same laws as the rest of us. They're above all that.

"People aren't illegal," we're told, as though "illegal immigrant" were an epithet instead of a completely accurate description. We're supposed to call them "undocumented" instead, or at least until that euphemism becomes a pejorative as well. Then, I dunno, I guess they'll be "differently legal" or "citizenship-challenged" or something. Anything to dodge the issue. Anything to avoid speaking the plain truth.

The whole process also involves "Dreamers" drawing attention to themselves for breaking the law and/or advocating lawbreaking. Witness the following public temper tantrum, as reported by Hailey Branson-Potts and Cindy Carcamo at theL.A. Times:

Beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and their allies temporarily blocked a vehicle entrance to Disneyland on Monday, just as the Senate reached an agreement to end the government shutdown brought on in part by a stalemate over the young immigrants' future.

The DACA recipients, commonly called Dreamers, stood in a crosswalk at South Harbor Boulevard around 10 a.m. and blocked buses from entering the Anaheim theme park. The 15 protesters were quickly removed by law enforcement officers and were relocated to a sidewalk, where they held signs and chanted, "No dream! No deal!"

That makes sense, doesn't it? What better way to win people over to your cause than to ruin their family vacations? A guy works all year to take his kids to see Mickey Mouse, and then he can't get in because a bunch of people want to tell him how his tax dollars should be spent. They're taking advantage of his hospitality already just by being here, so why not really piss him off?

Meanwhile, on the other coast:

Chuck Schumer shut down the government for three days, and now all he's got to show for it is a bunch of his own people jumping up and down outside his house yelling at him. I don't know much about politics, but I know what I like!

At the same time all this is going on, we're also being told that America stinks and everybody else hates us. According to US News & World Report, we're now only the eighth-best country in the world, down from #7 last year. What's the best country in the world? Switzerland. Okay, so if you don't like where you live now, move to Switzerland. We're not stopping you. Their immigration laws might be a problem, but you can just block their amusement parks and protest outsidetheir leaders' houses.

Look, I get why people are upset about this. If somebody has lived in America for a long time and started a family and made a life, it's sad to see it broken apart. If you're a kid and your parents broke the law to come here, that's not your fault. But either laws apply to everybody or they don't. If they don't, they're not really laws.

Oh wait, I forgot: Everything I just said is racist. If you agree with any of it, you're a racist. Shut up and keep paying your taxes, racist.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/keep-dreaming-dreamers/

JOHN KERRY STABS AMERICA IN THE BACK

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN DEMOCRATS, JOHN KERRY

This shocking report comes from the Jerusalem Post:

Maariv reported that former US secretary of state John Kerry met in London with a close associate of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation about a variety of topics. Agha apparently reported details of the conversation to senior PA officials in Ramallah. A senior PA official confirmed to Maariv that the meeting took place.
***
During the conversation, according to the report, Kerry asked Agha to convey a message to Abbas and ask him to “hold on and be strong.” Tell him, he told Agha, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President [Donald] Trump’s demands.”

So if this report is true, Kerry tried to undermine U.S. foreign policy.

According to Kerry, Trump will not remain in office for a long time. It was reported that Kerry said that within a year there was a good chance that Trump would not be in the White House.

If a Republican did this the Democrats would say it was treasonous. I don’t know about that, but it is hard to imagine anything more contemptible. Or delusional.

He asked Abbas, through Agha, not to attack the US or the Trump administration, but to concentrate on personal attacks on Trump himself, whom Kerry says is solely and directly responsible for the situation.

According to the report, when referring to the president, Kerry used highly derogatory terms. Kerry offered to help create an alternative peace initiative and promised to help garner international support from Europeans, Arab states and the international community.

So again, if this report is correct, Kerry offered to conduct a foreign policy separate from and in opposition to that of the United States.

Kerry hinted that many in the American establishment, as well as in American intelligence, are dissatisfied with Trump’s performance and the way he leads their country.

For once, Kerry says something that is indisputably true, although I doubt that he appreciates its significance.

More delusion:

He surprised his interlocutor by saying he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. When asked about his advanced age, he said he was not much older than Trump and would not have an age problem.

And finally:

In a report on the conversation, Agha said that Kerry appears to be “crazy about things,” very energetic, and someone who is yearning to help realize the dream of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Crazy about things” describes not only John Kerry, but pretty much all the Democrats.

This kind of backstabbing is reminiscent of the occasions when Democrats tried to undercut President Reagan’s foreign policies, in effect siding with the U.S.S.R against their own government. Shameful.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/john-kerry-stabs-america-in-the-back.php

Sunday, January 28, 2018

CLIMATISTAS HEDGE THEIR BETS

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN CLIMATE

Most everyone who still bothers to follow the climate change cabal knows that 2016 was the second-warmest year in the modern temperature record, but occurred during a strong El Nino year, which has always driven temperature spikes in the past, especially 1998, the previous big El Nino year and the previous warmest year in the record. (Need I remind everyone that the temperature record we’re using for these claims goes all the way back to . . . 1880.)

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies is just out with its finding that 2017 comes in as the third warmest year in its instrumental temperature series (that goes back to . . . 1979), and emphasizes that this temperature reading came without benefit of an El Nino to juice it:

Global surface temperature in 2017 was the second highest in the period of instrumental measurements in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. Relative to average temperature for 1880-1920, which we take as an appropriate estimate of “pre-industrial” temperature, 2017 was +1.17°C (~2.1°F) warmer than in the 1880-1920 base period. The high 2017 temperature, unlike the record 2016 temperature, was obtained without any boost from tropical El Niño warming.

Annnnnd here’s their chart:

Looks pretty scary! (Note: although the abstract quoted above says 2017 is the second-warmest year, later in the report they clarify that much of their data indicate 2017 is the third-warmest year, but they’re going to go with second-warmest anyway.)

But funny thing. As you read down toward the end, the climatistas who wrote this report, including James Hansen, appear to be hedging their bets, predicting the possibility that there might be another “pause” in warming, though they are quick to reassure everyone that this “pause” will be phony:

However, the solar variability is not negligible in comparison with the energy imbalance that drives global temperature change. Therefore, because of the combination of the strong 2016 El Niño and the phase of the solar cycle, it is plausible, if not likely, that the next 10 years of global temperature change will leave an impression of a ‘global warming hiatus’.

In other words, no matter what happens, the climatistas can say, “We told you so—we expected this all along!”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/climatistas-hedge-their-bets.php

What Do We Do About the FBI?

BY ROGER L SIMON

Suppose what many are now suspecting is completely true -- that the FBI, or parts of it, exonerated Hillary Clinton and her cohorts with a mock investigation, attempted to swing our presidential election against Donald Trump and then continued to undermine the new administration after they had won with illegitimate claims of Russian collusion orchestrated by sleazy political lowlifes?

While this is not quite Stalinist -- no one was tortured in Lubyanka or sent to the Gulag for life -- it's not all that distant. It's tantamount to an internal coup d'état that is still ongoing. And just as in many coups throughout history, many of the participants are convinced they are doing the right thing, that they are on the side of justice, even though they are bending it, especially because they are bending it. The ends justify the means, as the old homicidal slogan goes.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page -- that low-rent Hero and Leander of the Beltway -- certainly believed that. You know that from the contents of their compulsive text messages even though five key months are suddenly "missing." The inside of the FBI, particularly at the higher reaches, seems to have been filled with a band of smug, self-righteous ideologues who would do anything, erase or rephrase anything, to get their way. And then lie about it. Either that or quote scripture. Or form "secret societies."

Or just cover up, as Robert Mueller did when Strzok and Page were caught, literally and ideologically, with their pants down. He simply shipped them off Soviet-style to FBI Siberia, not saying a word to the public, hoping no one would notice, hoping it would be ignored that those "secret societies" and "insurance policies" they referred to smack of exactly the kind of behavior that would open one to RICO charges in a normal FBI investigation. This coverup only came out by accident months later. (As Marc Antony might have put it, "And Robert is an honorable man." He might add now: "And Loretta is an honorable woman.")

Put another way, should "lying to the FBI" be a crime, when the FBI itself lies?

That's not a zen koan. That's reality.

So if -- and it's not that big an if anymore -- this story out of a spy novel (the density of Le Carré coupled with the outlandishness of Fleming) is indeed the truth, what do we do about it? The answer is not easy. At minimum it would necessitate a massive over-hauling, possibly even a dismantling, of the FBI and the Department of Justice. But how would we do that? That too will not be simple.

Critics of the FBI often acknowledge, seemingly paying obeisance, that there are many good people at the heart of the organization. Can we assume that to be accurate? Undoubtedly there are a significant number, but how do we determine who is who in an organization so adept at, and wedded to, stonewalling? Moreover, we can assume that the perpetrators at the top will be backed up and supported -- some of the time anyway -- by leaders of other investigative and intelligence branches, notably the CIA and the NSA, that have been similarly infiltrated over the years.

A second special counsel has been suggested, but we need considerably more than that. We need a through investigation via a full-on commission of the FBI and the DOJ themselves and, unfortunately, the intelligence agencies as well that could -- and most likely would -- take years. So many issues are at play here it's mind-boggling. How do we deal with the dishonesty of our officials and bureaucrats when those same people are the keepers of our secrets and the enforcers of our laws (both of which are related)? When is transparency necessary? When is secrecy justified? Who will watch the watchers? Are the congressional oversight committees enough? Do they have sufficient power?

The questions are indeed endless and the solutions will necessitate more than just firing or indicting the most recent miscreants. Deep structural problems have allowed this to happen. They must be corrected. Nothing should be sacrosanct. We face a complex future as technology advances inexorably and the capabilities of these organizations increase exponentially. We have to know -- in advance and to the extent we can -- how to prevent totalitarianism from within.

Mueller and current director Christopher Wray may not fully realize it -- longtime denizens of D.C. and its culture that they are -- but a significant portion of the American public outside Washington no longer believes in the fairness of our justice system and those people, with cause, are getting more skeptical by the day. There's no telling where this will end. Attempts to salvage the Trump-Russia investigation with charges of obstruction when no collusion occurred in the first place will only exacerbate the situation and drive a further wedge into a broken society.

This alienation has a powerful emotional affect on all us that often we cannot even see, although we sense it. For homework, everyone should watch, if they haven't, what may be the most insightful film of recent decades, the German-made movie about the Stasi, The Lives of Others.

In sum, as Peter Strzok himself texted, "there's no big there there" for the Trump collusion investigation. Unfortunately, and sadly for America, there is a big there there for corruption in the FBI -- and he's part of it.

Sen. Ron Johnson: FBI Informant Says 'Secret Society' Held Secret Meetings Off-Site

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn't Already.

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/what-do-we-do-about-the-fbi/

Legislation Tries to Block Census from Adding Citizenship Question as DOJ Requested

BY BRIDGET JOHNSON

A Census form held by a USPS carrier in 2010

(AP Photo/Jason E. Miczek)

WASHINGTON -- D.C.'s delegate to Congress said Monday that she'll introduced legislation in an effort to block the Census Bureau from asking questions about citizenship, nationality or immigration status in the 2020 survey.

Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she was spurred to take legislative action after a Dec. 12 letter from a Justice Department official asked Acting Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin to reinstate a citizenship question on the survey.

In the letter, Justice Management Division General Counsel Arthur E. Gary called the data provided by the question, which used to be on the long-form Census questionnaire until 2000, "critical to the Department’s enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting."

"To fully enforce those requirements, the Department needs a reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population in localities where voting rights violations are alleged or suspected," Gary wrote.

Instead of the long-form Census questionnaire going to about one in six households, the 2010 Census sent the American Community Survey, which included a citizenship question, to about one in 38 households.

"The Department formally requests that the Census Bureau reinstate into the 2020 Census a question regarding citizenship. We also request that the Census Bureau release this new data regarding citizenship at the same time as it releases the other redistricting data, by April 1 following the 2020 Census," Gary wrote. "At the same time, the Department requests that the Bureau also maintain the citizenship question on the ACS."

Norton argued Monday that "if the point of the census is to get an accurate count, the least effective way to do it in the anti-immigrant atmosphere engineered by the president is to tuck it into the Census questionnaire."

“Professionals at the Census Bureau know how to get an answer to this legitimate inquiry and we should follow them, not step on their professional efforts," she added. "My bill seeks to ensure that no respondent to the all-important Census feels intimidated.”

In July, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced legislation, which has stalled in the Oversight Committee, that would "require that any questionnaire used in determining the decennial Census of population shall contain an option for respondents to indicate citizenship status or lawful presence in the United States."

“For the last 15 years, I have heard the same figure advanced by Amnesty proponents regarding the number of illegal aliens in the country. I do not believe that the static number they offer is accurate as it seems more like a well-established talking point. In fact, I believe the number of illegal aliens in the country is far higher than many suppose," King explained in a statement at the time. "The Census should be better equipped to measure this number so that policy makers can take appropriate actions to reduce the deleterious impact illegal immigration has on our nation.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/legislation-tries-block-census-adding-citizenship-question-doj-requested/

Saturday, January 27, 2018

George Soros: Trump Presidency Will 'Disappear' in 2020—or 'Even Sooner'

BY DEBRA HEINE

At the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week, liberal billionaire investor George Soros declared that the Trump presidency is a "danger to the world" which will "disappear" in 2020 or sooner.

"Clearly, I consider the Trump administration a danger to the world," Soros said. "But I regard it as a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020, or even sooner. I give President Trump credit for motivating his core supporters brilliantly, but for every core supporter, he has created a greater number of core opponents who are equally strongly motivated. That is why I expect a Democratic landslide in 2018."

Soros, a major left-wing donor, also said that his "goal" is to "reestablish a functioning two-party system" in the United States.

"My personal goal in the United States is to help reestablish a functioning two-party system. This will require not only a landslide in 2018 but also a Democratic Party that will aim at non-partisan redistricting, the appointment of well-qualified judges, a properly conducted census and other measures that a functioning two-party system requires," he said.

"In the United States, President Trump would like to establish a mafia state but he can’t, because the Constitution, other institutions, and a vibrant civil society won’t allow it," he argued, amping up his hyperbole. “Not only the survival of open society but the survival of our entire civilization is at stake. The rise of leaders such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Donald Trump in the United States have much to do with this.”