News/Politics 6-15-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. Something to keep in mind as Hillary campaigns on equal pay and equal economic opportunities. 

From TheGuardian  “Experienced, adult political operatives who want to do grassroots work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign currently have no choice but to work as unpaid, full-time interns, raising new questions about how the White House frontrunner runs her own labor force as she prepares to double down on young people’s role in the American economy.

The Clinton campaign is currently in the midst of what multiple Democratic sources described as a “hiring freeze” for paid organizing positions in the early campaign states where the former Secretary of State is laying the foundations of a massive national staff, with few if any paying jobs available for field operations.

Clinton’s camp has made headlines about its frugality and a hard sell on its fellowship program, which allows aspiring politicos between the ages of 18 and 24 to spend this summer as full-time campaign volunteers. The result, however, is the human-resources reality of a campaign – one scheduled to hold at least 26 fundraisers this month alone – that isn’t just taking on college students with political science degrees but expecting political veterans to gamble their careers on her without pay.

Clinton, according to her would-be employees, has left full-time organizers with little choice but to criss-cross the country and work as “free help”.”

So her campaign will spend a billion dollars on getting her elected, but it won’t be spent on the employees. How populist of her. 

_____________________________________

2. We’re not all equal when it comes to water. 

From TheWashingtonPost  “Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

Yuhas lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.

But a moment of truth is at hand for Yuhas and his neighbors, and all of California will be watching: On July 1, for the first time in its 92-year history, Rancho Santa Fe will be subject to water rationing.

“It’s no longer a ‘You can only water on these days’ ” situation, said Jessica Parks, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Irrigation District, which provides water service to Rancho Santa Fe and other parts of San Diego County. “It’s now more of a ‘This is the amount of water you get within this billing period. And if you go over that, there will be high penalties.’ ”

_____________________________________

3. Huh. And yet DHS is focused on right-wingers. 

From FoxNews  “Several Boston-area terror suspects, including the man killed by police earlier this month as he allegedly sought to behead cops and two alleged associates, have frequently attended sermons given by firebrand imam whose message to the faithful doesn’t match the conciliatory tone he struck when contacted by FoxNews.com.

Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, of the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury, Mass., has been seen on videos of his fiery sermons exhorting worshipers to commit acts of violence in the name of Islam. In videos of Faaruuq preaching, the former Northeastern University chaplain appears to skirt the line between metaphor and incitement.

“You must grab onto the rope, grab onto the typewriter, grab onto the shovel, grab onto the gun and the sword,” he railed in one video reviewed by FoxNews.com. “Don’t be afraid to step out into this world and do your job.”

It is not known if convicted or suspected terrorists including the Boston Marathon bombers, Usaamah Rahim, who was brandishing a knife when police shot him on June 2 or two men who have since been charged in the same plot heard sermons like these, but all have attended prayers with Faaruuq. The imam has been on the radar of researchers at Americans for Peace & Tolerance (APT), a conservative group devoted to exposing Islamic extremism, since 2009. Ilya Feoktistov, director of research at the organization, says he first spotted Faaruuq at a rally in support of now-convicted terrorist, Tarek Mehanna, who was convicted for providing material support to Al Qaeda and conspiring to kill Americans.

“We knew he was a prominent Imam in the Boston Muslim community,” Feoktistov told FoxNews.com. “We were concerned as to what he might be teaching.”

 Usaama Rahim, 26, who reportedly was obsessed with killing anti-Islamist activist Pamela Geller, allegedly plotted with Nicholas Rovinski, 24, of Warwick, R.I., and David Wright, 25, of Everett, Mass., to help ISIS by killing U.S. citizens. Rovinski was arrested Thursday, and appeared in court Friday on charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. Wright was arrested last week on a conspiracy charge and is due in court June 19.”

_____________________________________

4. What’s wrong with this picture?

From TheBostonGlobe  “For years, doctors warned federal immigration officials: Do not take your eyes off Santos Hernandez Carrera. He had raped a woman at knifepoint and spent roughly half his life in jail, where immigration officials hoped to keep him until they could send him home to Cuba. As far as the public knew, the strategy worked: Until last month, the public sex offender registry said Hernandez Carrera, who has been diagnosed with a mental illness, had been deported.

He never was. Instead, the Globe discovered that Hernandez Carrera is in Florida, one of hundreds of immigrants convicted of sex crimes who should have been deported but instead were released in the United States because their homelands refused to take them back.

They are convicted rapists, child molesters, and kidnappers — among “the worst of the worst,” as one law enforcement agency put it. Yet the Globe found that immigration officials have released them without making sure they register with local authorities as sex offenders.

And once US Immigration and Customs Enforcement frees them, agency officials often lose track of the criminals, despite outstanding deportation orders against them. The Globe determined that Hernandez Carrera and several other offenders had failed to register as sex offenders, a crime. By law, police are supposed to investigate if such offenders fail to update their address within days of their release. But local officials said they did not learn that ICE had released the offenders until after the Globe inquired about their cases.”

““It’s chilling,” said Thomas H. Dupree Jr., a former deputy assistant US attorney general who led a 2008 federal court battle to keep Hernandez Carrera locked up. “These are dangerous and predatory individuals who should not be prowling the streets. In fact, they should not be in the United States at all.””

_____________________________________

News/Politics 3-24-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. You knew they wouldn’t take this lying down.

From NationalJournal  “Telecom companies filed a pair of lawsuits Monday in an attempt to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules.

The suits are expected to be the opening shots in a long legal war against the controversial regulations.

USTelecom, which represents AT&T, Verizon, and other companies, filed its lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, while Alamo Broadband, a small Texas-based wireless Internet provider, filed its suit in the U.S. appeals court based in New Orleans.

“The focus of our legal appeal will be on the FCC’s decision to reclassify broadband Internet access service as a public utility service after a decade of amazing innovation and investment under the FCC’s previous light-touch approach,” Jon Banks, the senior vice president for USTelecom, said in a statement. “As our industry has said many times, we do not block or throttle traffic and FCC rules prohibiting blocking or throttling will not be the focus of our appeal.””

_____________________________________

2. But will the RINO’s vote for it?

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Conservative members of the House Republican caucus outbid their party’s official budget Monday, offering a plan to cut planned government spending by more than $7.1 trillion and balance the budget in just six years.

The aggressive plan to cut spending from all areas of government and erase deficits was introduced by the Republican Study Committee, a group of congressmen organized to push policy to the right.

The House this week will consider the budget authored by Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia. The Republican Study Committee budget outline will not supplant that plan, but it does outline where some conservatives would like to steer the government.

The conservative budget “is a bold, conservative plan that will balance the budget, rein in rampant overspending and restore solvency to America’s safety-net programs,” said Bill Flores of Texas, the head of the Republican Study Committee.”

_____________________________________

3. Democrats will not like this.

From HotAir  “Or maybe not such a surprise after all. The path to today’s Supreme Court decision to refuse an appeal by the ACLU against Wisconsin’s voter-ID law has been strewn with appellate decisions that supported its implementation, although a last-minute stay by SCOTUS kept it out of play for the midterms. The law will fully take effect for the 2016 election, which may complicate efforts by Democrats to keep the state blue:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a new Republican-backed law in Wisconsin that requires voters to present photo identification when they cast ballots.

The court declined to hear an appeal filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law. …”

“The SCOTUS stay in October had more to do with the timing of the law, thanks to the scheduling of the challenges through the courts. Regardless, the election still went in favor of Scott Walker and the GOP, preventing Democrats from repealing the voter-ID provision before it could come into effect.

This will put a huge dent in the Obama administration’s efforts to squelch voter-ID laws in other states. In order to grant certiorari, the ACLU would have needed four justices to vote to add it to the docket. The fact that they couldn’t even move the liberal wing to unite against a voter-ID law shows that the justices consider the issue settled. Requirements for identification at polling stations are legitimate, in the eyes of the court, as long as enough options for no-cost qualifying ID exist to keep the poor from being disenfranchised.”

_____________________________________

4. Obama’s former professor says he’s “burning the Constitution” with his new EPA rules.

Also from HotAir  “What happens when two Constitutional law scholars collide? Usually, the more learned of the two prevails, but don’t bet on it in this case. Harvard University Professor Lawrence Tribe, described as a mentor to Barack Obama, accused his protege of “burning the Constitution” in the EPA’s efforts to regulate carbon dioxide. Speaking to a hearing of the Energy and Power subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce panel on Monday, Tribe blasted the EPA and the Obama administration for running roughshod over the separation-of-powers doctrine, a concept that can best be described as ConLaw 101:

“EPA possesses only the authority granted to it by Congress,” Tribe told lawmakers in a hearing Tuesday. “Its gambit here raises serious questions under the separation of powers… because EPA is attempting to exercise lawmaking power that belongs to Congress and judicial power that belongs to the federal courts.”

“Burning the Constitution should not become part of our national energy policy,” Tribe added.

Tribe, along with other legal and energy experts, appeared before Congress Tuesday to give testimony on the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” — the agency’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants. Tribe told lawmakers the CPP is unconstitutional and outside the agency’s authority.

“EPA is attempting an unconstitutional trifecta: usurping the prerogatives of the States, Congress and the Federal Courts all at once,” Tribe told lawmakers.”

_____________________________________

5. Oh goody.

From CNSNews  “According to weekly detention and departure reports from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there were 167,527 non-detained convicted criminal aliens in the United States as of Jan. 26 of this year, a congressional hearing revealed Thursday.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah.) read the statistic aloud Thursday durin a hearing examining ICE’s priorities and procedures for removing criminal aliens currently living in the United States.

“In that report, it said that there are 167,527 non-detained, final-order convicted criminals on the loose in the United States,” Chaffetz pointed out while questioning ICE Director Sarah Saldana.

“These are people that are here illegally, get caught, convicted, and you release back out into the public,” he said, adding that some of the crimes committed by those who have been released include homicide, sex crimes, child pornography, drunk driving, robbery and kidnapping.

The federal government announced Wednesday that ICE had released about 30,000 convicted criminal aliens from ICE custody in 2014 alone, according to The Washington Times, which first reported the statistic.”

_____________________________________

6. Israel’s not the only one who should follow this advice.

From TheNYPost  “First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.

He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican “enemies.” He abandons our ­allies, appeases tyrants, coddles ­adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.

Now he’s coming for Israel.

Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest. He is transforming the whole world before our eyes. Do you see it yet?

Against the backdrop of the tsunami of trouble he has unleashed, Obama’s pledge to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel cannot be taken lightly. Already paving the way for an Iranian nuke, he is hinting he’ll also let the other anti-Semites at Turtle Bay have their way. That could mean American support for punitive Security Council resolutions or for Palestinian statehood initiatives. It could mean both, or something worse.”

_____________________________________