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From Telegraph.co.uk:

Markets took Wednesday’s US and Chinese manufacturing data as just such a reprieve and celebrated with robust gains on equity markets. London even overcame earlier disappointment over slowing UK factory growth by ending up 2.7pc.

On the morning after President Barack Obama had declared an end to America’s seven year war in Iraq, highlighting the sacrifices both human and financial to the US, it was no doubt cheery for the land of the free to be reminded that there’s still an economy to focus on and fix as the troops gradually start to come home.

But yesterday’s market reaction was way over the top and is likely to be reversed just as quickly come tomorrow when we see the latest US employment figures. These are expected to confirm falls of 100,000 in August from the public sector, although private sector payrolls could be up by 41,000 according to analysts.

However, even that silver lining was dulled yesterday by the ADP Employer Services survey which claimed private sector employers unexpectedly cut 10,000 jobs last month. And this is the headache for President Obama. Desperate to rebuild his depleted political capital ahead of the November mid-terms, he needs good news on the economy and good news on the economy means jobs. But the recovery, such as it is, has been jobless.

While planned layoffs by US firms are now at a 10 year low there’s nothing to suggest America’s reserve army of unemployed are about to be mobilised. With the jobless rate expected to climb to 9.6pc on Friday we are inexorably heading to a point where one in ten Americans is out of work, a grim statistic expected to be reached within seven months, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Combine that with another 10pc figure – the number of US mortgages in arrears – and you get a whiff of the political smell still emanating from the US economy. While economic activity is positive, it’s still far too weak to keep an expanding workforce busy. A lacklustre policy response from Washington means many are blaming President Obama for not having done enough to head off exactly the problem the country now faces.

Bank of America has eloquently dubbed the country’s malaise a “growth recession” revising its GDP expectations for next year down from 2.3pc to 1.8pc as the President’s jobless problem curbs America’s passion – consumption, be it retail or housing related. Given America’s already enormous deficit no policy response, be it more quantitative easing, extended tax cuts or housing initiatives, can reverse the onset of a US stagnation.

From Human Events:

The nonsense about President Obama being a Muslim has got to stop. I rise to defend him from this absurd accusation by pointing out that he is obviously an atheist.

Leave aside Obama’s fanatical opposition to allowing Illinois hospitals to save the lives of babies with God-given souls inadvertently born alive during abortions. Also leave aside the fact that neither of his parents were Christians. And leave aside his current crop of “spiritual advisers,” which is a collection of Mother Earth worshippers, polytheists and other nonbelievers.

Now rest from all that “leaving aside.”

The only evidence for Obama’s Christianity is that he faithfully attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years.

Yes, the guy bellowing “God damn America!” is the one vouching for Obama’s Christianity. That’s like saying you got sober with the help of your A.A. sponsor Lindsay Lohan.

It is a fact that any non-retarded person (thank you, Rahm Emanuel!) sitting in the Rev. Wright’s church for 20 minutes, much less 20 years, does not believe in God. Even stepping inside Wright’s church for a moment to get out of the rain is borderline racist.

Going to Trinity United Church of Christ is even stronger evidence of nonbelief than Bill Clinton returning from Sunday services to receive oral sex from Monica Lewinsky. This isn’t mere sin — everybody sins (though some with more frequency and less remorse than others).

Attending Wright’s church is the conscious, calculated decision to immerse yourself in hate-filled demagoguery and call it “Christianity.”

But according to North Korean TV’s Chris Matthews, it is a provable, scientific fact that Obama is a Christian because he says so. “Everybody watching right now,” Matthews said to his several viewers last week, “gets credit for being of the religion you say you are. … We accept that in America. It’s called freedom of religion and respect for religion.”

That would make professions of religious belief, unlike all other self-professions, unchallengeable. Liberals say conservatives don’t believe in civil rights. I say liberals are godless traitors. Why is one statement debatable and the other not?

Doesn’t anyone question the Christianity of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker? How about the Satanists claiming to be Christians who stand outside soldiers’ funerals with signs that say “God Hates Fags”?

And, for the record, the allegedly inviolate assertion of one’s own religious belief wasn’t so inviolate when it came to Ronald Reagan.

Tip O’Neill used to question President Reagan’s Christianity all the time, taunting the president for not attending church regularly. Matthews might remember that: He was working for O’Neill at the time.

In fact, parading to church in front of the TV cameras carrying a 10-pound Bible — like a certain serial adulterer, impeached president I could name — is strongly discouraged by the creator of the universe. (“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 6.1)

Some conservatives have cited Obama’s near complete refusal to go to church to suggest he’s not the “devout Christian” who “prays every day” as the White House claims.

But that’s not your proof, Christians. To the contrary, it’s Obama’s church attendance — back in Chicago — that proves he’s an atheist.

This was inadvertently admitted by Obama’s leading butt-boy, Richard Wolffe, on North Korean TV Monday night. Wolffe acknowledged that Wright’s liberation theology was not Christianity, but then forcefully distinguished Obama from the Rev. Wright –- i.e., Obama’s sole character witness for his alleged Christianity.

Of Glenn Beck’s denunciation of liberation theology as a false religion, Wolffe said: “Is he debating Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama? They’re two different people. If he wants to debate liberation theology with Wright, he’s got something to talk about. But liberation theology hasn’t been anything espoused by this president.”

But it was espoused in the only church Obama ever attended regularly — for 20 years, no less — was married in and had his daughters baptized in. The title of Obama’s autobiography came from the title of one of Wright’s sermons and snippets from Wright’s sermons have appeared in Obama’s work.

So the sole evidence of Obama’s supposed Christianity is his longtime pastor, who everyone admits is a racist nut.

No sentient human is required to take Obama’s profession of Christianity any more seriously than if it were coming from a 1980s blow-dried, money-grubbing televangelist with a mistress on the side.

All liberals are atheists. Only the ones who have to stand for election even bother pretending to believe in God.

Not being acquainted with any actual Christians, they aren’t particularly good bluffers. That’s why Democrats babble incoherently whenever the subject of religion comes up. Liberals acting devout always looks like the love scenes between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in “Top Gun”: awkward and unconvincing.

Former divinity student Al Gore famously botched a biblical verse, switching God’s instruction that we put heaven before earthly things (“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” Matthew 6:21) by saying we should make the Earth our treasure. (In the druidical religion of liberalism, not separating your recyclables is a sin, but abortion is just a medical procedure.)

Howard Dean told a reporter his favorite book of the New Testament was Job.

It took the Democrats’ born-again Christian Jimmy Carter three decades to announce, in 2005, that he didn’t think Jesus would approve of abortion (“unless the mother’s life or health was in danger or perhaps the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest,” etc. etc.).

There’s only one true Christian liberal in the country and that’s Mike Huckabee.

From Michelle Malkin:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Obama job-killing machine get kicked in the ass one more time. They wanted federal judge Martin Feldman to dismiss the drillers’ lawsuit challenging their original moratorium. No dice.

Via Reuters:

A federal judge in New Orleans rejected on Wednesday the U.S. government’s request to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its original 6-month deepwater drilling moratorium…The drilling halt was subsequently amended, so the government sought to toss out the Hornbeck lawsuit, arguing it was no longer relevant.

But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who earlier this summer blocked the first drilling halt, said in a 20-page ruling that the government’s amended moratorium offered “no substantial changes” from the first one.

More scathing criticism for Salazar, via the WSJ:

Judge Feldman also noted that in crafting the second moratorium, Mr. Salazar appeared to have relied heavily on documents and data that he had at the time of the first moratorium order. “Nearly every statement in the July 12 decision memorandum is anticipated by documents in the May 28 record, or by documents that were otherwise available to the Secretary before May 28,” the judge said.

Related: A bipartisan call to lift the de facto shallow drilling ban NOW:

Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) and Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) have again written to Department of the Interior Secretary Salazar regarding the issuance of new permits for shallow water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The letter, co-signed by 37 Democrats and Republicans from across the country, is the second letter that Rep. Green and Rep. Boustany have sent to Secretary Salazar reminding him of the significance of the Gulf Coast economy and urging the immediate issuance of new permits.

“Before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, new shallow water drilling permits were being issued at the rate of 10-15 per week,” Rep. Green stated. “Since the shallow water moratorium was lifted on May 28, a total of 4 new permits have been issued.”

In a letter to Secretary Salazar sent May 20, Reps. Green and Boustany with 54 of their colleagues warned of the potential impact of losing shallow water oil and natural gas production. Since then, 14 rigs have been idled in the Gulf which represents 30% of the shallow water fleet. If the pace of new permits does not accelerate by the end of September, over 70% of the shallow water rigs will be inactive.

“There are thousands of jobs directly connected to shallow water drilling,” Rep. Green continued. “At a time when the economy is still coming back from the worst recession in recent memory, we just can’t afford to lose more jobs. My colleagues and I continue to share concern over this de facto moratorium and the deepwater moratorium as domestic energy production is not only vital to energy independence, but to the Gulf Coast economy.”

From Telegraph.co.uk:

The 8.5m who lost their jobs in the recession; the 1.2m who have given up looking for work and, finally, the Republicans who can smell a Democratic President in trouble.

Like the recession, America’s recovery is departing from the normal script. Since World War II, the deeper the downturn the economy has endured, the steeper the recovery it has enjoyed on the way up. But a summer that brought record temperatures to many parts of the country has seen the momentum that the economy began to lose in the spring evaporate further.

Manufacturing remains weak, despite better-than-expected numbers yesterday; consumer spending is no stronger and small businesses are still cutting jobs. Corporate America, which has plenty of cash, isn’t spending it.

It came as little surprise, then, that President Barack Obama used a national televised address on Tuesday night to tell voters that, as the combat mission in Iraq ends, the economy is now the “central mission”. However, if America’s war in Iraq proved a bloody quagmire, it’s not clear that fixing the country’s economy will be any easier.

Voters already appear sceptical that the administration has answers: just 41pc of the public approved of his handling of the economy, according to a poll last month from Associated Press-GfK, and the political clock is ticking. The Democratic Party is expected to face heavy losses at critical mid-term Congressional elections on November 2, a prospect that has galvanised the White House.

On Monday, in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama said that his team was examining new options to help revive growth. They include a $30bn (£19.4bn) package to encourage lending to small businesses, extra incentives to invest in green energy and a package of new spending on infrastructure, in an echo of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But it will be in turning aspirations laid out on the presidential lawn into legislation that the administration faces its greatest hurdle, experts say.

First, Republicans in Congress are unlikely to give their backing to more stimulus that they claim risks wasting taxpayers’ dollars.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader from Kentucky, lambasted the administration this week for growing “the size of the national debt, the federal government and the unemployment rate.”

Secondly, and perhaps more worrying for those who believe the economy is in urgent need of a government-administered electric shock, President Obama appears to be losing the intellectual argument that more needs to be done.

“The administration has done a very bad job of moulding public opinion,” says Barry Bosworth, a former economic adviser to President Carter. “A lot of the public believe that the original stimulus package did nothing, so there’s no coherence about what to do now.”

Critics of the administration cannot say it hasn’t taken action. There’s the original $800bn American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that was passed in February last year. Then there’s the HIRE Act, which provides a tax credit for companies that employ people who have been out of work for more than two months, and the list extends to the cash-for-clunkers programme, the homebuyers’ tax credit and the National Export Initiative.

But as our politicians have found in Britain, making the case to voters that these measures are effective is not straightforward. Christina Romer, who yesterday left her post as the government’s chief economist to return to academia, used her parting remarks to urge Congress to find the “will and wisdom” to deliver new measures for the economy.

But it’s around the question of tax cuts that the political paralysis enveloping Washington, and the threat it poses to the recovery, is most acute.

The two major tax cuts made by President George W. Bush expire at the end of the year, and Republicans and Democrats are at odds over how to extend them. The Republicans want the cuts made permanent for everyone, while the Democrats want to exclude individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and households with an annual income of over $250,000.

For Michelle Meyer, an economist at Bank of America, it all points to the administration being able to do nothing more until a new Congress is in place in early 2011. Americans will just have to hope that this summer’s slowdown doesn’t turn into something worse.

The President’s immediate priority, though, is to make sure he doesn’t have to replace the Recovery Blog, with a much nastier sounding Double-Dip one.

From Townhall.com:

Optimism about America’s future is in very short supply nowadays as we near the end of the third year of an economic recession with little or no relief in sight.

I know the White House and its allies will say that the recession is over and the national economy has begun expanding again. But for most of us, it still feels like a recession, with unemployment between 9 and 10 percent, a sharp slowdown in what was weak economic growth to little more than 1 percent now, and thousands of businesses, large and small, still struggling to keep their heads above water.

Nationwide polls show that two-thirds of Americans are deeply pessimistic about our country’s direction. The economic vitality that has been the hallmark of our country has vanished. Banks, investors and venture capitalists are unwilling to lend. The once-daring spirit of entrepreneurial risk-taking that we saw in the 1980s and 1990s is hard to find in the present economic climate.

Insecurity, uncertainty, doubt and fear permeate our business environment, paralyzing our once great American jobs machine.

New-business formation has slowed. Venture capital is locked up in safe, secure bonds and hedge funds. Major corporations that have survived the 2008-10 recession are keeping surplus cash in reserve funds because they don’t know what the future holds for them or the economy under the administration’s failed recovery programs.

What will be the impact of the new health-care law on businesses large and small? It is loaded down with new mandates, higher taxes and penalties galore that will impose higher costs on business and the health-care industry. What are the costs of the mountain of regulations, penalties and credit restrictions that will come out of the financial-reform law, costs that will in the end be born by consumers most of all.

And the biggest fear that has slammed the brakes on business expansion, capital investment and job creation is President Obama’s plan to raise the top two federal income tax rates on upper income people, investors and small businesses.

This is the dismal economic environment that Obama and the Democrat-run Congress has created in the past two years. More spending, bigger government and higher taxes, especially on the people who invest in our economy the most and the businesses that create most of the jobs.

In the 1980s President Reagan neatly described the government’s economic policies before he came into office this way: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Reagan’s characterization of the government’s approach to the U.S. economy at that time eerily fits the description of Obama’s anti-growth, anti-job- creation economic policies now.

The Congressional Budget Office, some of Obama’s top advisers and business economists are forecasting high unemployment and anemic, subpar growth well into next year and beyond. There are no substantive economic-policy initiatives in the works to boost growth to get this country moving again, except much higher taxes, more regulation by an army of bureaucrats and, in the end, more bailouts.

There’s nothing wrong with the American economy, its employers, workers, and venture capitalists that lower tax rates, incentives to invest and much smaller government cannot fix. We need to create a free market, free-enterprise growth environment for this to begin taking place.

We didn’t become the largest and richest economy in the world by punishing success with higher taxes and wall-to-wall regulations that will hit every business and every consumer in the country. This is a recipe for economic decline. The Obamacrats are trying to convince us that this economy is the “new normal” and that we have to get used to slower economic growth for years to come in what they foresee as the age of limits.

Ronald Reagan strode into office declaring that there are no limits on what free Americans can achieve, that we have entered “the age of the entrepreneur.” Obama, however, came into office declaring that this is the Age of Bigger Government that will now provide for all of our needs, if we give up more of our freedoms and turn over more of our income to Washington.

But government cannot create jobs, as we have seen over the past two years.

It can destroy them, however, as we’ve witnessed in the deteriorating economy and declining jobs numbers this summer.

“The economic ills we suffer … will not go away in the days, weeks or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom,” Reagan said after taking office in 1981.

As America descended into the 1981-82 recession, Reagan cut tax rates across the board, championed American capitalism and reignited the optimistic spirit of a dispirited nation. The economy shot upward, with astounding quarterly growth rates and jobs that rose at the rate of 200,000 to 400,000 per month. America has never lost its capacity to repeat that performance, and will do so again under a new leader who believes in the power of economic freedom to create wealth, put Americans back to work, and rekindle the American dream.

From Right Wing News:

Remember that iftar dinner the president sponsored? The dinner that got him in trouble because he came out in strong support of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero, support from which he backed away the very next day? Well, it turns out he delivered another blatant lie at that dinner, one that slipped under the radar because his support of the Ground Zero Mosque was so controversial.

In his remarks at the iftar observance, Obama claimed that the “first” iftar dinner in the White House was hosted by Thomas Jefferson.

Tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.

In this way, Obama tried to make it seem as if the United States has respected Islam since the early Republic and has observed its celebrations for two hundred years. But this is a major stretching of the truth. Thomas Jefferson did not hold an “iftar” dinner, unless you might call the dinner Obama references “iftar by default.”

Naturally, the left-wing Old Media took Obama’s blatant misconstruction of historical events and went even farther down the road of untruths and lies. The New York Times published a story the next day referencing Jefferson’s mythical iftar dinner and made of it a “White House tradition”!

In hosting the iftar, Mr. Obama was following a White House tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson, who held a sunset dinner for the first Muslim ambassador to the United States. President George W. Bush hosted iftars annually.

What tosh. There has never been a tradition of iftar dinners at the White House, sporadic or otherwise, until after the year 1992. Jefferson’s dinner was no iftar dinner and no other president until Bill Clinton even hosted one. We have a “tradition” of exactly three presidents holding iftar dinners, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. Not much of a tradition that.

So what of this claim of Jefferson’s iftar dinner? As Jihad Watch informs us, there never really was one. The truth is that in 1805 Jefferson invited to a dinner at the White House one Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, the diplomatic envoy that the Bey of Tunis sent to Washington. The time set for this dinner was 3:30 PM, the normal time that everyone then ate dinner in those days. Since it was Ramadan, however, the envoy informed Jefferson that he could not attend until the sun went down because he was observing his fasting ritual.

Jefferson then offered to push his dinner hour until the sun went down as a courtesy to his invited guest. It was as simple as that. There was no mention of any iftar anything. President Jefferson simply moved the hour of dinner to suit the envoy. There was no change to what was served in order to suit Muslim needs, there was no acknowledgement of the Muslim faith, and no observance of any “iftar” dinner. Jefferson was just being a nice guy.

And of this historical incident, Obama and his cohorts in the left-wing, Old Media have created a mythical “sporadic tradition.” But for Obama and the New York Times to mislead the American people into imagining that the White House has celebrated iftar all the way back to 1805 is simply a straight out lie.

From CNSNews.com:

While President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating averaged 48 percent for the first seven months of 2010, it was 78 percent among Muslim Americans, according to the Gallup Poll. That gave the president a higher approval rating among Muslims than among any other religious category reported by the poll.

Members of other non-Christian religions (not including Judaism) gave Obama his second highest approval rating at 64 percent, according toGallup, and people who described themselves as having no religion, or being agnostics, or atheists gave Obama a 63 percent approval rating.

Mormons gave Obama his lowest approval rating among the religious groups reported by Gallup. In the first seven months of 2010, only 24 percent said they approved of the job Obama was doing. He ranked next lowest among Protestant Americans, who gave him a 43 percent approval rating, then Catholic Americans, who gave him a 50 percent approval rating, and then Jewish Americans, who gave him a 61 percent approval rating.

Despite President Obama’s high approval rating of 78 percent among Muslim Americans during the first seven months of 2010 that was nonetheless still not as high as the approval ratings the president won from Muslim Americans last year. In the first half of 2009, Muslim Americans gave Obama an approval rating of 86 percent. In the second half of 2009, they gave him an approval rating of 83 percent. In all three periods, President Obama’s approval rating among Muslim Americans was higher than among any of the other religous groups reported by the Gallup survey.

The latest survey, in which Muslim Americans gave President Obama an approval rating of 78 percent, was completed on July 31, before the president gave a speech at the White House on Aug. 13 defending the right of Muslims to build a mosque in lower Manhattan.

From Telegraph.co.uk:

Mr Karzai also said there would be no progress in the nine-year-long campaign while insurgents still had safe havens in Pakistan.

His comments have intensified the debate about whether the July 2011 milestone outlined by Washington was feasible or had encouraged rebels to believe they could hold on until foreign troops start leaving.

The president told a visiting delegation of American congressmen that the date had boosted Taliban morale “to some extent”.

He added: “The lack of progress in the war on terror has two factors: one the terror sanctuaries have not been addressed and second because civilians were killed during this war.”

Earlier this week, Marine General James Conway said intelligence reports suggested insurgents were drawing “sustenance” from Mr Obama’s withdrawal deadline.

Washington has emphasised the deadline will only mark the start of a withdrawal process and depends on progress stabilising the country.

But several senior military commanders have this week suggested progress will not be fast.

Mr Karzai and his international sponsors declared at July’s Kabul conference that Afghan forces would take over front line fighting duties by 2014.

Mr Karzai has repeatedly voiced frustration that Nato is not doing enough to pursue the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, though his fraught relations with Islamabad have thawed in the past year.

Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, this week said America’s attempts in Afghanistan were being betrayed by Islamabad’s support for terrorists.

The fight against insurgents had been “compounded by another strategic failure: the mistaken embrace of ‘strategic partners’ who have, in fact, been nurturing terrorism,” he said.

“While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists’ main mentor continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified?” he added.

From Michelle Malkin:

Most of us are fully aware that the Health Care Bill will inevitably lead to rationing (it already has), but because these unpopular power and money grabs have put districts into play for Republicans that were once thought safe, it’s also leading to a rationing of campaign funds for the Democrats:

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen sent a cold-blooded message Friday to underperforming party candidates: Get your act together, or you’re on your own.

Facing a perilous political environment that has left the House Democratic majority in jeopardy, Van Hollen told reporters in a briefing at the National Press Club that the party faced a series of looming difficult decisions about which candidates to invest in this fall — and who to leave behind.

“At the end of the day, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will look at races we can win,” Van Hollen said.

If not enough Dems heed that warning, the follow-up message will be, “Hey, get your s*#t together or we’re sending Obama to campaign for you when and if he gets back from vacation!” Now that ought to do it.

Speaking of presidential vacations, here’s your photo of the day.

From The Heritage Foundation:

As Matt Mayer vividly describes in a new Heritage Web Memo, the Obama administration is implementing a de facto amnesty that will allow the vast majority of illegal aliens to remain in the United States without being disturbed by the Department of Homeland Security or any attempts to deport them. We can now add one more general amnesty that the administration is apparently extending – no prosecution of illegal voting by noncitizens and a green light to becoming a citizen even if you have violated federal law.

FOX News is reporting that DHS was informed by the county elections administration in Putnam County, Tennessee, about an immigrant in the U.S. on a work visa who registered and voted in the 2004 election. This immigrant has now applied to become a citizen. The only interest that DHS seemed to have in this information from Putnam County was asking the immigrant to submit evidence that he has been removed from the voter rolls. The letter also asks the immigrant, in an amazing example of bureaucratic incompetence, to explain when he “discovered” that he was “not a United States Citizen.” This would be funny if it did not illustrate such a profound lack of common sense.

Let me try to provide some advice to DHS that they don’t seem to be getting from their in-house lawyers: registering and voting in elections when you are not a citizen is a felony under federal law. 18 U.S.C. § 1015(f) makes it illegal to claim you are a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote for any election, punishable by up to five years in prison; fraudulent registration and voting is also a felony under the National Voter Registration Act. 18 U.S.C. § 611 prohibits a noncitizen from voting in an election where there is a federal candidate on the ballot. False claims of citizenship in general are also felonies under federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 911, punishable by up to three years in prison. For more on this, see the Heritage paper The Threat of Non-Citizen Voting.

The FOX story cites immigration advocates claiming that illegal voting can be an honest mistake. The director of the Immigration Advocates Network says that “a lot of people are truly very unaware about not being eligible to vote.” Really?! The official federal voter registration form available, here, asks you at the top of the form in its very first question (even before you fill in your name): “Are you a citizen of the United States of America?” In the signature block on the form, it specifically asks you to “swear/affirm that: I am a United State citizen.”

It is pretty difficult to believe that a noncitizen would not realize that they can’t vote when they are asked to confirm they are citizens twice on the voter registration form used in every state. The question in the DHS letter asking the immigrant when they knew they were not a U.S. citizen is also completely ridiculous – anyone here illegally and even noncitizens here legally who went through the visa application process know they are not citizens.

But this administration seemingly has no interest in enforcing federal immigration laws and apparently no interest in prosecuting aliens who register and vote in violation of federal law, stealing and devaluing the votes of legitimate American voters. And committing such voter fraud will apparently not bar you from applying for and being granted citizenship by the Obama administration. As the County Election Administrator of Putnam County rightfully said, “this frightens me for my country. Why would you let someone who committed voter fraud become a citizen? That’s what they’re doing.”

I could not have said it better myself.