Wednesday, January 14, 2015
From: Gary L. Bauer
“Enough Is Enough!”
Speaker John Boehner threw down the gauntlet today. In a speech on the House floor closing debate on legislation to stop President Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal immigrants, Speaker John Boehner clearly stated what was at stake — obedience to the Constitution and the rule of law.
During his remarks, Boehner read 22 quotes attesting to the limits of presidential power — all of them from Barack Obama’s lips. Speaker Boehner even noted that the president once taught constitutional law but has seemingly forgotten what the Constitution’s words mean. Here is an excerpt of his remarks:
“This executive overreach is an affront to the rule of law and to the Constitution itself. . . . Enough is enough. By their votes last November, the people made clear they want more accountability from this president. And by our votes here today, we will heed their will, and we will keep our oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.”
After Speaker Boehner’s remarks, the House voted 236-to-191 to approve legislation funding the Department of Homeland Security, while defunding Obama’s executive amnesty.
Boehner’s speech articulated precisely why this debate is so important. My only advice is that he should give this speech every day and not back down from this fight.
More Pushback
Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Dean Heller (R-NV) have introduced legislation to relocate the American embassy in Israel to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Israel is the only country in which the United States does not maintain its embassy in the capital city. That double standard should end immediately.
Similar legislation passed Congress in 1995. Yet it included language that allowed the president to waive the law if it jeopardized national security. Every president has waived the requirement to move the embassy. Kudos to Cruz and Heller for removing the waiver language in their bill!
In addition, Senators Ayotte (R-NH), Burr (R-NC), Graham (R-SC) and McCain (R-AZ) introduced legislation to severely limit Obama’s ability to transfer or release terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Last year, Obama released more than two dozen Gitmo detainees, including five Taliban commanders.
Obama In Denial
After last week’s attacks in Paris, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls did not hesitate to state the obvious. He declared that France “is at war with terrorism, jihadism and radical Islamism.”
That’s something you will not hear from Barack Obama. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was pressed by a reporter (from National Public Radio of all places) about the administration’s refusal to use the term “radical Islam.”
Toward the end of the tortured exchange, Earnest said that the primary reason they refuse to use the term is “. . .accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened.” But that is exactly why Obama is wrong. It is terribly inaccurate to pretend that such acts of terror have nothing to do with Islam.
I’m no fan of Bill Maher, but at least he is willing to say what no one on the left will. During a recent exchange with Jimmy Kimmel, Maher stated just how deeply this cancer has metastasized within Islam. To Kimmel’s astonishment, Maher said this when asked about the Paris attacks:
“I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this. But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this.”
Maher is correct. Polling in Muslim countries indicates that significant percentages support violence against civilians to defend Islam.
The Left-Wing Mind
Here’s more evidence of the insanity infecting of the left-wing mind. Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided that it would be a really good thing for New York City to issue ID cards to illegal immigrants.
Why? According to de Blasio, “We don’t want any of our fellow New Yorkers to feel like second-class citizens. We don’t want them to feel left out.” The logic of the open borders crowd is stunning.
Yesterday the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in a lawsuit alleging discrimination against the NYPD’s mosque surveillance program. The plaintiffs contend that mosques and Muslim businesses were somehow harmed by the surveillance efforts.
This lawsuit is yet another example of the left ignoring reality. It’s not Baptists who are attacking newspapers. Catholics are not beheading journalists.
The jihadists who commit these atrocities hide in the Islamic community. They recruit in the Islamic community. They are inspired by messages in mosques. Yet the left and its allies argue that it is somehow a violation of the Constitution to have surveillance of the Islamic infrastructure that exists throughout the country.
I suppose one could argue that the program might be acceptable if the NYPD were also sending agents into churches and synagogues because then it couldn’t be profiling. But it would be a big waste of time.
If an Asian gang is terrorizing an area, does anyone think the appropriate police response is to blanket Italian neighborhoods? Apparently the left does.
And yet in spite of all the sensitivity to Muslims, the fact remains that Jews are far more likely to be victims of hate crimes. According the FBI’s latest statistics of anti-religious hate crimes, “60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias,” while just “13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.”
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