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News/Politics 9-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let’s start today with a good news story.

From FoxSports  “Still learned back in June that his daughter, Leah, has stage-four pediatric cancer. Since the diagnosis, Still’s mind understandably hasn’t been completely on football as he missed parts of organized team activities and minicamp this offseason to be with his daughter, which is why he understood the team’s decision to cut him.

“I completely understand where the Bengals were coming from when they cut me because I couldn’t give football 100 percent,” Still told ABC News.

But when Still received the call this morning that he had been signed to the practice squad and would receive health insurance as well as a weekly salary of $6,300, he was incredibly grateful. Still also will remain in the game he loves, for the team that drafted him, without all of the traveling, meaning he can be closer to his daughter as she undergoes treatments.”

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2. Providing cover for vulnerable Dems is more like it.

From ABCNews  “President Barack Obama said Saturday that the surge of immigrant children entering the U.S. illegally changed the politics surrounding the issue of immigration and led him to put off a pledge to use executive action that could shield millions of people from deportation.

Immigration reform advocates criticized Obama after White House officials said that the president would not act at summer’s end as he promised in June but would take up the matter after the midterm elections in November. In an interview taped for NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama rejected the charge that the delay was meant to protect Democratic candidates worried that his actions would hurt their prospects in tough Senate races.

By Obama’s own calculations, politics did play a role in his decision. In his remarks to NBC, which were to be aired on Sunday, he said a partisan fight in July over how to address an influx of unaccompanied minors at the border had created the impression that there was an immigration crisis and thus a volatile climate for taking the measures he had promised to take.

“The truth of the matter is — is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” he said. “I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”

Good luck with that.

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3. They can’t even handle the ones already here.

From YahooNews  “The backlog of pending deportation cases in federal immigration court has risen to nearly 400,000 amid a crush of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children and families caught crossing the Mexican border illegally this year, according an analysis of court data released Friday.

 The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said in its latest report that as of the end of July, 396,552 cases were pending in the Justice Department’s 59 immigration courts. TRAC collects and studies a variety of federal prosecution records.

The backlog has grown by more than 75,000 cases since the start of the budget year in October, according to TRAC.”

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4. Meet the President’s excuses.

From TheWashingtonPost  “In his Sunday interview President Obama was not asked some fundamental questions: Where does he get the authority to change laws unilaterally? He bragged about pulling troops out of Iraq and then denied it was his call–so which is it? Didn’t his failure to act in Syria allow the Islamic State to grow? When the next GOP president wants to unilaterally change the tax code, what is he going to say? Hasn’t he lost Ukraine? 

It is not that new “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd did not try to be aggressive, but opening with a sharp question, letting the president ramble and moving on to the next question is not going to pin the president down. The reason Tim Russert was so good was that he dove into particulars and then went back and back, challenging and debunking. He would not have let the president falsely say he was not referring to the Islamic State when he called them the “jayvee.” team. That excuse has already gotten four Pinocchios from my colleague Glenn Kessler. Todd was clearly an improvement over his predecessor, but he was, to be blunt, not all that effective.

Such is the state of left-leaning politicians and the MSM. The former feel they need not be constrained by facts or laws, and the latter are not sharp enough to pin them down. But on immigration, the president certainly has gone too far, and perhaps he has underestimated both the anger among Hispanic activists and those genuinely upset by a breakdown in constitutional order.”

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5. A PA. mom who gave her daughter abortion pills is going to prison.

From MSNNews  “A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to 18 months in prison for obtaining so-called abortion pills online and providing them to her teenage daughter to end her pregnancy.

Jennifer Ann Whalen, 39, of Washingtonville, a single mother who works as a nursing home aide, pleaded guilty in August to obtaining the miscarriage-inducing pills from an online site in Europe for her daughter, 16, who did not want to have the child.

Whalen was sentenced on Friday by Montour County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gary Norton to serve 12 months to 18 months in prison for violating a state law that requires abortions to be performed by physicians.

She was also fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service after her release. The felony offense called for up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.”

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10 thoughts on “News/Politics 9-8-14”

  1. Re the Chuck Todd interview and the new “optics”:

    The real problem, though is that ” … the photographs suggest that Obama wasn’t all that choked up about the beheading of James Foley. … ”

    Just seems that after making that horrific announcement about Foley that about the last thing you’d do is skip on out to the golf course … ??? But maybe that’s just me.

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/of-optics-appearances-and-excuses.php

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  3. Yeah Ricky!

    And I’ve decided to “self identify” as the real other Alan (spelled wrong) Jackson and demand that all future royalty payments be sent to my address, with the name corrected to the proper spelling. I can be anybody/thing I want now! I must say, it’s liberating. 🙂

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  5. FINALLY!!!!!!!

    Someone in the NFL does the right thing. Their delay was probably influenced by the new video released today, but at least they did it. Now the rest of the league should boycott him. But sadly, Jerry Jones is probably already on the phone with his agent.

    http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/9/8/6121917/ray-rice-cut-ravens-suspension

    “The Baltimore Ravens have released running back Ray Rice, the team announced on Monday afternoon. The release comes following a video of him striking his then-fiancee Janay Palmer and knocking her unconscious leaked Monday through TMZ.

    Ray Rice had been serving a two-game suspension handed down earlier this year by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Goodell has subsequently acknowledged his mistake in the face of widespread public criticism over the length of the suspension and the manner in which he investigated the matter. Goodell reportedly allowed Rice to be in the room when Palmer met with Goodell at the NFL offices.”

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  8. Donna, @11:22. Obama’s problem was that he didn’t have Valerie Jarrett to tell him what to say.

    I think I’ll identify myself and revoke all the presidential directives of the last 7 years.

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