Another Federal Judge Blocks Another State's Immigration Law

After the state of Arizona passed its anti-illegal immigration bill, SB 1070 last year, Federal judge Susan Bolton blocked its full implementation by de-fanging the law's most important components. The law has wallowed in limbo ever since. When the state of Oklahoma passed a ballot measure last year that banned the implementation of Sharia law, a Federal judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange issued a permanent injunction that prevented its implementation, despited voters' support for the measure by 70%. Now, another Federal judge has decided to put a halt on another state's immigration law.

Via the AP:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of Alabama's new law cracking down on illegal immigration, ruling Monday that she needed more time to decide whether the law opposed by the Obama administration, church leaders and immigrant-rights groups is constitutional.

The brief order by U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Blackburn means the law - which opponents and supporters alike have called the toughest in the nation - won't take effect as scheduled on Thursday. The ruling was cheered both by Republican leaders who were pleased the judge didn't gut the law and by opponents who compare it to old Jim Crow-era statutes against racial integration.

Blackburn didn't address whether the law is constitutional, and she could still let all or parts of the law take effect later. Instead, she said she needed more time to consider lawsuits filed by the Justice Department, private groups and individuals that claim the state is overstepping its bounds.

The judge said she will issue a longer ruling by Sept. 28, and her temporary order will remain in effect until the day after. She heard arguments from the Justice Department and others during a daylong hearing last week.

Similar laws have been passed in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia. Federal judges already have blocked all or parts of the laws in those states.

As the Federal government continues to magically find judges all over the country to do their bidding, shouldn't it call into question the allegiance of these judges? From the Declaration of Independence:

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

It'd really be nice to see governors across the country unite against this type of tyranny.

h/t Free Republic

Guns Given to Drug Cartels Enough to Arm a Marine Regiment

This is not necessarily a new development so much as it is an entirely new perspective when it comes to the number of guns that our Justice Department placed into the hands of drug cartels. We hear that more than 2000 weapons were allowed to 'walk' into Mexico after being purchased by straw purchasers. At this point, that is not speculation; it is fact. To put that in context, however, imagine arming an entire Marine regiment. That's what was done with Operation Fast and Furious with one tiny exception. Instead of arming a Marine regiment, the DOJ armed the Sinaloa cartel.

Katie Pavlich has an excellent piece on this at Townhall but first, take a look at this excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

He (King George) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

As you read Pavlich's piece, keep that in mind but insert 'merciless Drug Cartels' where 'merciless Indian Savages' was written in 1776:

“These guns went to ruthless criminals,” Carlos Canino, ATF Acting Attaché to Mexico said in testimony on Capitol Hill Tuesday regarding the scandal-plagued Operation Fast and Furious. “It’s alleged that over 2,000 guns were trafficked in this investigation. To put that in context, upon information and belief, the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment has approximately 2,500 rangers. That means that as a result of this investigation, the Sinaloa cartel may have received almost as many guns that are needed to arm the entire regiment. Out of these 2,000 weapons, 34 were .50-caliber sniper rifles. That is approximately the number of sniper riles a Marine infantry regiment takes into battle.”

The Department of Justice proposed a southwest border strategy in October 2009 to combat Mexican cartels, with final plans for the operation now known as Operation Fast and Furious coming in January 2010. The new “strategy” included multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, ICE, the IRS and the FBI. This operation entailed ATF agents watching straw purchasers buy hundreds of high-powered weapons and allowed them to go back or “walk” into Mexico, with a goal of “tracing” them back to cartel leaders. As Americans learned in the second hearing about this operation on June 15, guns were lost, not traced, and now a cover-up has begun.

“The Acting Director of the ATF, in a transcribed interview with investigators, has said that the Justice Department is trying to push all of this away from its political appointees. That is not the response this committee, Congress and the public, should expect from the ‘most transparent administration in history,’” Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said during opening statements. “To date, President Obama has been keen to talk about who didn’t know about the program and who didn’t authorize it. These answers will not suffice. The American people have a right to know, once and for all, who did authorize it and who knew about it.”

The motive behind this Operation continues to befuddle everyone who thinks it was a stupid idea. To this day, the ATF agents who blew the whistle are at a complete loss when it comes to trying to make sense of it. When a nation's most powerful agencies and departments intentionally place guns in the hands of those who would do us harm, the only thing that makes sense is the unthinkable.

Read it all.

Obama Set to Sue Arizona........Again?

This time, it's not Arizona exclusively but they're on the list of states that will have to prepare to be sued by the National Labor Relations Board because those states support the right to secret ballots in Union elections. In short, the Obama administration is setting the table to enforce Card check on states that prevent it in their own Constitutions. Once again, we have the Obama Justice Department looking to impose its will on states that choose to assert theirs. Other states on the list include South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah.

Via the AP:

WASHINGTON – The National Labor Relations Board on Friday threatened to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over constitutional amendments guaranteeing workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

The agency's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the amendments conflict with federal law, which gives employers the option of recognizing a union if a majority of workers sign cards that support unionizing.
The amendments, approved Nov. 2, have taken effect in South Dakota and Utah, and will do so soon in Arizona and South Carolina.

Business and anti-union groups sought the amendments, arguing that such secrecy is necessary to protect workers against union intimidation. They are concerned that Congress might enact legislation requiring employers to allow the "card check" process for forming unions instead of secret ballot elections.

Obama is resembling King George more every day. In particular, this excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Prediction: Judges will put a hold on the amendments, thereby clearing the way for card check. Then the amendments will wallow in obscurity, never to be attended to.

Case in point: SB 1070

h/t Weasel Zippers

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE KEY TO IMPEACHMENT

Recently, while reviewing the Declaration of Independence, I noticed that Barack Obama's words and deeds since being inaugurated don't just run counter to the founding document's sentiment; he seems to have been channeling King George with his policies. Obama has been saying and doing things right out of the former British king's playbook. Why would he do that when he seems to despise Great Britain?

I also explored these similarities in the second half of my December 5th show.

Floyd Reports has picked up my recent column, which deals with this very subject:

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE KEY TO IMPEACHMENT
Ben Barrack

When it comes to the impeachment and subsequent removal from office of a sitting president, the ‘how’ is found in the Constitution; much of the ‘why’ is found in the Declaration of Independence. The former was an extension of the latter.

As a Constitutional law professor, Barack Obama is extremely familiar with our founding documents but – quite ironically in light of his nearly palpable contempt for Great Britain – he seems to be channeling the individual most responsible for the Declaration’s authorship – King George.

For example:

He (King George) has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Two states have passed laws recently that have, in effect, been “suspended.” In the case of Arizona’s SB 1070, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked the most key parts of the law one day prior to its scheduled implementation. This never would have been done had Obama’s Department of Justice not filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona. As for the neglecting-to-attend-to-them part, the law has virtually faded from public view since the ruling.

The other state to have an activist judge rule in favor of the Obama administration – inferred based on the president’s ideology and past statements – is Oklahoma. After 70 percent of that state’s voters decided they wanted to preemptively eliminate the possibility of Shari’a law factoring in to any court rulings there, an activist judge “suspended” the results of the ballot measure.

How courts rule on the multiple lawsuits already filed in different states challenging the legal standing of Obamacare will further demonstrate the degree to which this administration’s luck may not be luck at all.

He (King George) has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

Speaking of Obamacare, isn’t this precisely what happened? The twisting of arms behind closed doors and under the cover of darkness is what allowed it to pass. The supposed Democratic champion for the pro-life movement, Bart Stupak was the last one to cave; he did so for a worthless Executive Order, which ultimately put the bill on Obama’s desk. Earlier, Nebraska senator Ben Nelson had his arm twisted until he took a bribe.

During his 2008 campaign, Obama demonstrated his knowledge of our founding documents by running on a platform of transparency, telling voters that C-SPAN would be part of all negotiations, thereby appealing to our country’s ideals; the exact opposite happened.

He (King George) has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

In the wake of Obamacare becoming law, the IRS is expected to add over 16,000 new agents to enforce the newly signed law which, as mentioned previously, is being challenged in court by more states than not.

Lest we also not forget the Travel Safety Administration (TSA), which has been harassing our people by feeling their “junk.” Unlike some other bureaucracies, the president cannot hide behind this one; the policy in place today can end today if the president so chooses. The TSA is under the supervision of the DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who reports directly to Obama.

As for new offices, this administration, more than any other, has appointed ‘Czars’ that are accountable to no one but the president and who were able to circumvent the senate confirmation process entirely. There is even a health care czar in Donald Berwick who has openly stated that a good health care system is “redistributional,” which takes us back to those judges, who coincidentally seem to be ruling in favor of Obama.

He (King George) has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

To this day, Obama has yet to explain what he meant when he said on the 2008 campaign trail, “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we have set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Though we haven’t yet seen this national force manifest itself in the form of an identifiable body, an increasingly intrusive TSA and a beefed up IRS coupled with SEIU thugs certainly seem to exist if only in the spirit of such a notion. Another indicator of this could be the words of former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones; at Washington University recently, he outlined a “potential nightmare scenario.”

Said Jones: “As a nation….(we’re) getting more and more ethnically diverse….but less and less economically prosperous…If you know anything about history, that’s not a recipe for common ground. That’s a recipe for a battleground.”

While Jones resigned from his position in the administration in 2009, he is now a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, which has significant influence on White House policy. His message at Washington University is very key – especially if he retains any degree of influence with this White House – because it speaks very specifically to another excerpt from the Declaration.

He (King George) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The intent of community organizing as defined by Obama’s mentor is to “rub raw the sores of discontent.” Isn’t this what Jones is doing? As a senior fellow for the organization led by the man who headed Obama’s White House transistion team – John Podesta – we have an impeachable problem if he is vocalizing White House sentiment to even the slightest degree.

Again, Obama knows these documents inside and out. The aforementioned passage identified King George as having excited “Indian savages” to fight the colonists on the King’s behalf. If Obama hates America, he almost necessarily resents that part of the Declaration.

On November 5, 2009, an Islamic jihadist named Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 14 people and injured 32 on Fort Hood’s military base in Texas. Ironically, Obama had been scheduled to speak at the Tribal Nations Conference, an event designed to show support for all of the federally recognized Indian tribes. As the details of the shooting became known, America was told Obama would speak about the massacre. In a moment of shocking insensitivity, President Obama gave a “shout out” to an American Indian named Joe “Medicine” Crow and talked about the conference for nearly three minutes before getting to what happened at Fort Hood.

On May 4, 2010, then House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-VA, spoke at the Heritage Foundation and was asked the following question about Obama by a member of the audience: “In light of all that Obama has done…What would he have to do differently to be defined as a domestic enemy?” The crowd applauded the question and groaned when Cantor forthrightly denied the insinuation.

Ok, fine. How about, “In light of all that Obama has done, Mr. Cantor, what would we have to do differently to get you to read the Declaration of Independence before you answer?”

Read it all with links.