Freedom Line Blog

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the Constitutional crisis set up by President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration and the lasting damage to the separation of powers that will result if left unchecked by Congress.

In an interview with CFIF, Wayne Kopping, Director, Editor and respected Filmmaker, discusses the new feature-length documentary film “Beneath the Helmet: From High School to the Home Front,” which highlights five young Israeli high school graduates who are drafted into the army to defend their country, and why it was important to create a documentary that brings to the screen the faces of the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Listen to the interview here.

Add the editorial board of the Washington Post to the list of people who think President Barack Obama is setting a very troubling precedent with his decision to grant temporary amnesty and work permits to as many as 5 million illegal aliens.

Key to the Post’s criticism is the revelation that part of the justification for Obama’s amnesty has been completely falsified. Since the president announced his executive order, he and members of his administration have said that the percentage of people who will benefit from his amnesty are similar to an amnesty granted by President George H. W. Bush. Specifically, Obama & Co. claim that Bush’s order benefited 1.5 million illegals, while Obama’s would benefit around 4 million. In both cases, the beneficiaries are estimated to be around 36 percent of all illegal aliens.

But according to Post reporter Glenn Kessler, that assertion cannot be verified. At best, the total number of Bush beneficiaries was no more than a couple hundred thousand – far less of a percentage than what Obama is targeting.

It gets worse. As the editorial board notes, “Even the apparent original source of the 1.5 million figure – Gene McNary, who led the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the time – told Mr. Kessler he believes the number is false and was based on a misunderstanding from testimony he gave to Congress. And no underlying data or methodology to justify the 1.5 million figure has been uncovered.” (Emphasis mine)

The facts don’t lie. What Obama is trying to do with his unilateral and unconstitutional immigration amnesty has no precedent in practice and no place in a country governed by the rule of law.

Hello, Greg Abbott!

In my column this week I mention that Abbott, the newly elected Republican Governor of Texas, would file a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s unilateral and unconstitutional order granting temporary amnesty and work permits to as many as five million illegal immigrants.

Alone, Texas’ lawsuit would have generated more attention than most challenges to federal action. But with the inclusion of sixteen other states, it’s sure to get a very serious look from the conservative-leaning federal Fifth Circuit.

According to My Way News, “The lawsuit raises three objections: that Obama violated the ‘Take Care Clause’ of the U.S. Constitution that limits the scope of presidential power; that the federal government violated rulemaking procedures; and that the order will ‘exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.’”

If the lawsuit can overcome an important legal technicality – and former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Robert Delahunty think it can – then this super-suit may, in time, serve as a Texas-sized roadblock to federal overreach.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

There’s no requirement that the Defense Secretary have actual military experience, but the selection of Ashton “Ash” Carter as the nominee to replace Chuck Hagel says a lot about what President Barack Obama wants from his next Pentagon chief.

“In addition to a broad understanding of the Pentagon bureaucracy, Carter is seen as a master of managing large budgets, a premium in the present era of continued belt tightening on Capitol Hill, as well as an expert on weapons acquisitions,” reports CNN.

“He also has a firm grasp on understanding the trends and technology of warfare in the future.”

Previously, Carter served as Deputy Defense Secretary – the Pentagon’s number two position – under Hagel and Leon Panetta. He’s bounced between academia and government with great success. Carter is apparently respected by the top military brass and is expected not to generate much controversy from Republicans when formally announced.

Yet for all the operational strengths Carter brings to the table – which appear to be considerable and surely appreciated on a day-to-day basis – missing from CNN’s bio piece is any mention of whether Carter as SecDef will have strong principles to guide his recommendations to President Obama regarding military strategy or foreign policy.

And maybe that’s the point.

From the looks of it, Ash Carter is a hardworking, intelligent man who knows how to get things done within a hugely important bureaucracy. Missing from his portfolio, though, is any indicator that he will be much more than yes-man.

Then again, maybe that’s the point.

The following statement was released earlier today by Senator Jeff Sessions in response to the current plan being floated in the House of Representatives in response to President Obama’s immigration decree.

“The Chairman of the Republican Party made a promise to America on executive amnesty: ‘We can’t allow it to happen and we won’t let it happen… everything we can do to stop it we will.’

Unfortunately, the plan now being circulated in the House fails to meet that test. The executive amnesty language is substantially weaker than the language the House adopted this summer, and does not reject the central tenets of the President’s plan: work permits, Social Security, and Medicare to 5 million illegal immigrants—reducing wages, jobs, and benefits for Americans.

Congress considered and rejected these changes to immigration law in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014. The President’s action erases the laws Congress has passed in order to implement laws Congress has refused to pass.

Now the President demands Congress fund his imperial decree and declare its own irrelevance.

That is why Congress must respond to the President’s unlawful action by funding the government but not funding illegal amnesty. This is a perfectly sound and routine application of congressional authority. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reports that last year’s omnibus spending bill included 16 such funding restrictions on fee-based programs.

Such a plan would put the focus where it belongs: on Senate Democrats. They are the ones who should be made to choose sides—save Obama’s amnesty or save Americans’ jobs and borders.

Polling shows voters believe that Americans should get preference for available jobs by almost a 10-1 margin. Republicans should not be timid or apologetic, but mount a bold defense of struggling Americans.

Billions of dollars and countless hours have been spent advocating immigration policies that help everyone but the actual citizens of this country. Who will be their voice, if not us?” 

BACKGROUND:

Since taking office, President Obama has engaged in a sustained and calculated campaign to dismantle the immigration laws of the United States. As his own former ICE Director, John Sandweg, explained: “if you’re a run-of-the-mill immigrant living here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.” ICE officers report that their agency caters to special interests and open borders activists, while they are ordered to ignore their oaths and the laws of the United States.

Additionally, since the year 2000, the U.S. has issued nearly 30 million lawful visas for permanent immigrants or temporary guest workers. As reported by the Pew Research Center, the total number of immigrants in the U.S. has reached a record 41.3 million. The share of the U.S. population that was born in another country, per the Census Bureau, has quadrupled.

According to Harvard labor economist Dr. George Borjas, current high immigration rates result in a $402 billion annual wage loss for American workers.

National Journal has a piece warning liberals not to dismiss the latest Supreme Court challenge to ObamaCare.

Specifically, it argues that liberals shouldn’t rely on the idea that the disputed statutory text – the part that limits federal subsidies to buy health insurance only to plans bought on an exchange “established by the State” – is simply a typo that can be brushed aside as a drafting error. Doing so would empower conservatives on the Court to say, in essence, that “they see the error, are powerless to fix it, and so must dismantle the statute.”

But here’s where the analysis goes off the rails. According to the NJ writer, the subsidies challenge should fail because “if you read the whole Affordable Care Act, taken together, the ‘established by the State’ line loses its clarity.”

In other words, when we read the relevant part of a federal statute and discover that it makes other parts of the same law undesirable – e.g. unsubsidized and thus unaffordable health insurance – the judges should ignore the plain text and substitute what they think Congress really intended.

That’s the kind of judicial activism that conservative justices like Antonin Scalia despise.

Or is it?

“…ObamaCare supporters have a pretty strong argument on the textual side because judges – even strict constructionists like Justice Antonin Scalia – have consistently said that courts should read the entire law as one unit when handling questions of statutory interpretation,” writes the author.

But that’s only true if the specific section under review is ambiguous. Zooming out to look at the entire law isn’t necessary when it’s plain to see that subsidies are clearly prohibited when States don’t operate their own exchanges. If ObamaCare is clear in the details and only loses clarity when read as a whole, that’s a problem for Congress to correct, not the Court.

No matter which way you read the subsidies provision, ObamaCare is proving itself to be a very badly written law.