What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Here comes more overreach.
From NationalReview “Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) called for Americans to pressure their senators about voting against President Obama’s expected executive orders on immigration, which he described as a “chilling” plot with activists to undermine national laws.
“Recent developments suggest the president’s planned executive amnesty could be increasingly imminent and broad in scope. House Democrat Leader Pelosi — clearly one of the White House’s closest allies — has just urged the president to issue ‘the broadest possible’ executive actions,” Sessions said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Open-borders groups have grown bolder and louder in their unlawful demands, launching a campaign for the president to ‘go big,’ and demanding that he ‘stand up’ to Congress and ‘expand DACA,’” he added, citing an Associated Press report that administration officials were meeting with immigration activists and the Chamber of Commerce.
“It is chilling to consider now that these groups, frustrated in their aims by our Constitutional system of government, are plotting with the Obama administration to collect their spoils through executive fiat,” he said.”
______________________________________________
2. On a related note….
From TheHill “The Obama administration is preparing the nation’s schools to accept thousands of new students who illegally crossed the southwest border and are now awaiting trials on their possible deportations.”
“It says all children in the United States “are entitled to equal access to a public elementary and secondary education, regardless of their or their parents’ actual or perceived national origin, citizenship, or immigration status.”
The prospect of tens of thousands of children mostly from Central American countries attending school as they wait for their immigration status to be decided has the potential to be explosive after this summer’s emotional public debate about the border.”
______________________________________________
3. Is California about to try to force two Catholic universities to pay for abortion coverage, even after giving them approval to eliminate such coverage?
From TheSFGate “California has some of the nation’s strongest protections for abortion rights. But the recent decisions by two Catholic universities, Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount, to eliminate most abortion insurance coverage for their employees were cleared in advance by state agencies.
Now Gov. Jerry Brown‘s administration is taking another look.
The state Department of Managed Health Care is conducting “an in-depth analysis of the issues surrounding coverage for abortion services under California law,” said Marta Green, the department’s chief deputy director.
What the department is reconsidering, as first reported by California Lawyer magazine, is whether the universities are violating a 1975 state law that requires managed health plans to cover all “medically necessary” procedures. Until the current controversy arose, insurers in California had treated all abortions sought by women in their health plans as medically necessary.”
______________________________________________
4. Things continue to simmer in Ferguson, Missouri. Actions like these by police won’t help the public”s perception that the police are out of control and regularly harass people.
From STLToday “Wesley Lowery, a reporter with the Washington Post, was arrested Wednesday evening along with Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post, Lowery relayed on Twitter.
He wrote that police came into the McDonald’s on West Florissant Road where the two were working, and tried “to kick everyone out.”
“Officers decided we weren’t leaving McDonalds quickly enough, shouldn’t have been taping them,” he tweeted.
“Officers slammed me into a fountain soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of,” he wrote. He said that he was detained, booked, “given answers to no questions. Then just let out.”””
STL Today has been on this story from the start and offer a lot of details and a timeline of events. I recommend it.
______________________________________________
5. Finally some good news out of Iraq.
From StarsAndStripes “In a dusty camp here, Iraqi refugees have new heroes: Syrian Kurdish fighters who battled militants to carve out an escape route for tens of thousands trapped on a mountaintop.
While the U.S. and Iraqi militaries struggle to aid the starving members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority with supply drops from the air, the Syrian Kurds took it on themselves to rescue them. The move underlined how they – like Iraqi Kurds – are using the region’s conflicts to establish their own rule.
For the past few days, fighters have been rescuing Yazidis from the mountain, transporting them into Syrian territory to give them first aid, food and water, and returning some to Iraq via a pontoon bridge.“
““The (Kurdish fighters) opened a path for us. If they had not, we would still be stranded on the mountain,” said Ismail Rashu, 22, in the Newroz camp in the Syrian Kurdish town of Malikiya some 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the Iraqi border. Families had filled the battered, dusty tents here and new arrivals sat in the shade of rocks, sleeping on blue plastic sheets. Camp officials estimated that at least 2,000 families sought shelter there on Sunday evening.“
______________________________________________
Wandering Views 