The recent decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to

dismiss Virginia v. Sebelius and Liberty v.
Geithner on procedural grounds, though loudly trumpeted by the
“news” media and other Obamacare advocates, was written off by many
constitutional scholars as a disappointing but relatively
unimportant ruling. The
reaction of Cato’s Ilya Shapiro was typical: “The dismissal of
Virginia’s lawsuit on standing grounds merely removes one
particular plaintiff from consideration, even as 26 states and
numerous non-state plaintiffs remain in separate suits.” Shapiro
also noted, in passing, that the dismissal of Liberty v.
Geithner was “interesting” because it was the “first-ever
finding that the individual mandate is a tax.” For supporters of
the health care law this part of the ruling was more than merely
interesting.

Some left-leaning legal scholars see a ray of hope in the
Liberty v. Geithner ruling because Judge Diana Motz, the
Clinton appointee who resurrected the tax issue, invoked the
Anti-Injunction Act (AIA). AIA forbids legal challenges to taxes
before they go into effect and the IRS has tried to collect them.
Because the mandate doesn’t take effect until 2014, experts
sympathetic to “reform” hope this new perspective will cause the
Supreme Court to put off its encounter with ObamaCare.
According to Kevin C. Walsh, who teaches law at the University
of Richmond, “[T]he Supreme Court could conclude that it lacks
jurisdiction to rule on any of the challenges to the individual
mandate.” And, considering the denunciations to which the Court was
subjected pursuant to Bush v. Gore, the justices may
indeed be reluctant to join the judicial fray in 2012.

However, while this course might be convenient for a Court
chary of ruling at the height of a presidential election, it would
also suggest that Obama is a liar. In September of 2009, when
challenged by George
Stephanopoulos on the question of whether the mandate was a tax,
the President emphatically denied it. Stephanopoulos reminded him
that it forces individuals to give their money to insurance
companies or the government and asked, “How is that not a tax?”
Obama responded with the usual auto insurance canard.
Stephanopoulos then pulled out a
dictionary and read the definition of “tax,” whereupon Obama
laughed and made the Orwellian claim that the necessity of using a
dictionary somehow proved his point. He still insisted that the
mandate is “absolutely not a tax increase.”

The Justice Department has, of course, contradicted the
President in countless legal filings. The government lawyers tasked
with defending the law realized early on that Obamacare’s insurance
mandate was going to be a tough sell as part of Congress’ power to
regulate interstate commerce. Thus, within a few months of the
law’s passage, the DOJ was arguing that the mandate is
constitutional because “requiring individuals to buy health
insurance is an exercise of Congress’ taxing authority.” Until the
Fourth Circuit issued its ruling, however, this argument was
universally panned — even by courts otherwise disposed to view the
law in a
favorable light: “[The tax claim] has been consistently
rejected by every judge who has ruled on it, including several who
concluded that the mandate is constitutional on other
grounds.”

And, even if they wish to continue contradicting the
President, the government’s lawyers may find it difficult to
exploit the opening Judge Motz has provided by invoking AIA. In
their May 31 Fourth Circuit brief, they
conceded that “the Anti-Injunction Act is not applicable to
these proceedings.” The Obama DOJ’s already-tarnished credibility
would be damaged even further if it reverses itself at this late
date. As Bradley Joondeph of the Santa Clara Law School
asks, “What does the Justice Department do now? It has already
essentially flip-flopped on this question.… Does it now wish to
flip back?” One would think not. On the other hand, it should be
remembered that this is the same group of lawyers who successfully
petitioned U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson to
stay his own injunction last March.

Perhaps it’s time for the scholar-in-chief to weigh in on
the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act. As recently as a
month ago, the President was cheerfully
holding forth at town hall meetings concerning the various
constitutional questions surrounding his “signature domestic
achievement.” Presumably, his learned opinion on AIA would be every
bit as valuable as his pontifications on Supreme Court precedent
regarding the individual mandate. It would certainly be helpful to
know if he still disagrees with his own Justice Department lawyers
on whether the mandate is, in fact, a tax. Likewise, it would be
good to know if he believes the Anti-Injunction Act presents the
high court with what he and his fellow professors of constitutional
law refer to as a “jurisdictional bar.”

Unfortunately, as Grace-Marie Turner recently
pointed out, the President has been unusually taciturn on
Obamacare of late. If his uncharacteristic verbal costiveness
continues, Obamacare’s shrinking cadre of supporters must put all
their hope in the ability of the DOJ to convince more judges that
the man is a liar. They must make the case that, the President’s
prevarications notwithstanding, the mandate is indeed a tax. If
they can get over that bar, plus make the sale on Judge Motz’ AIA
theory, there is a chance that ObamaCare and its mandate will
survive — until November 6, 2012.

View original article.

Let’s cheerfully and ungrudgingly give credit to Barack Obama for approving the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

In my column last Monday, I criticized Obama’s foreign policy, which was characterized by one of his advisers in an interview with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza as “leading from behind.” That criticism still stands.

But in tracking down and nailing bin Laden, Obama led from behind the right way: Behind the scenes he made a right but risky decision, without any leaks to the press, to achieve an objective sought by two presidents and thousands in the American government and military since Sept. 11, 2001.

The decision was risky because the operation could have failed, the way Jimmy Carter’s Desert One operation to rescue American hostages in Iran failed in April 1980.

But this time, even though one helicopter was lost, the operation succeeded. There was evidently a lot of redundancy in the plan and a lot of flexibility on the ground. A lot of good people did a lot of good things right.

While we may not know all the details about and behind this operation, it’s fascinating to see how many of the things that made the success of this operation possible were not so long ago decried by many of the president’s fans and fellow partisans.

For one thing, it apparently would not have happened without those infamous enhanced interrogation techniques — “torture,” according to critics of the Bush administration.

The enhanced interrogation techniques reportedly led to identification of the courier who eventually led our forces to bin Laden’s hiding place. Critics of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques assured us that “torture” could not produce reliable information.

They were probably right that sometimes such techniques yield false information. But the bin Laden operation shows that they can also produce actionable intelligence.

You may remember that many Democrats called for criminal prosecution of CIA interrogators who were acting under orders vetted by legal counsel. Attorney General Eric Holder actually considered bringing such prosecutions.

Fortunately, he decided not to do so — fortunately for the individuals involved but fortunately also for his own reputation. Who would want to be known for prosecuting the people who helped track down bin Laden?

It has also been reported that in hunting down bin Laden our forces relied on intercepted communications. I wonder if any of them included contacts between suspected terrorists abroad and persons in the United States.

This was the “domestic wiretapping” revealed to great acclaim by the New York Times and presented as an intolerable infringement of civil liberties. Given what we know now, it’s a good thing our folks were tuning in.

Obama deserves credit also for employing the Navy SEALs, who are part of the Joint Special Operations Command. It was fashionable a few years ago to call the JSOC “Dick Cheney’s death squad” and “Cheney’s assassination team.”

The assumption behind such criticism was that Bush administration officials were using what they termed the war against terrorism as a smokescreen for persecuting domestic dissidents. But there is not a scrap of evidence that either the Bush administration or the Obama administration was doing anything of the kind. They were too busy trying to protect us.

There was criticism as well of the idea of targeting particular individuals for assassination. But, in ordering the raid on bin Laden’s compound, Obama authorized the killing of bin Laden. And no Miranda warnings first.

Bin Laden’s death removes the possibility of any debate about where he would be confined or tried. On this, Obama has already been forced to keep the Guantanamo detention center open and Holder has had to concede that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will not be tried in a civilian court in Manhattan.

Finally, let us note that this was a unilateral operation. Obama didn’t go to the United Nations Security Council. He didn’t, so far as we know, consult NATO allies. He took care not to inform the government of Pakistan, some elements of which obviously knew that bin Laden was ensconced in a house 800 meters away from Pakistan’s military academy.

For years, we heard supposedly enlightened people excoriate our leaders for torture, lawlessness, unilateralism — the list goes on and on. Now the president they wanted has used the tactics and methods they excoriated to get bin Laden. Good for him.

 

Usually when governments use misinformation, they use it to make themselves look good. The Obama Administration gets points for originality, insofar as it’s been using disinformation and misinformation to make itself look arbitrary, unlawful, helpless and stupid. Here’s jj’s great summary:

Okay, what do we have here:

1) There was a firefight.
2) There was no firefight.
3) Bin Laden was “resisting.”
4) Bin Laden wasn’t armed. (Makes the concept of “resisting” interesting.)
[4.a) And the newest one: the SEALS thought bin Laden was reaching for a weapon.]
5) He used his wife as a shield.
6) His wife was killed too.
7) He didn’t use his wife as a shield. She ran at a SEAL who shot her in the leg, but she’s fine.
8 ) Some other woman — the maid? — was used as a shield. By somebody. Downstairs.
9) That other woman — downstairs — was killed.
10) Maybe not. She was killed unless she wasn’t — and who was she, anyway?
11) Bin Laden’s son was killed.
12) Unless it was some other guy.
13) Bin Laden’s daughter saw him get killed. She’s undoubtedly traumatized, poor dear.
14) They were going to capture Bin Laden until the problem with the helicopter, which was:

A) It had mechanical trouble
B) It did a hard landing
C) It crashed
D) It clipped a wall with a tail rotor, effectively a crash

15.) They were never going to try to capture him; it was always a kill mission.
16.) No, it wasn’t.
17) The chopper blew up.
18) The SEALs blew it up.
19.) Panetta said yesterday the world needed proof and the photo would be released.
20.) Obama said today in an interview he taped with Steve Kroft for “60 Minutes” to be broadcast Sunday that it won’t be released. It’s too gruesome, would offend Muslim sensibilities (something he worries about a lot — I personally do not give a warm fart on a wet Wednesday about Muslim sensibilities), and how would Americans feel if Muslims released pictures of dead Americans?
21.) Kroft — who’s not a total idiot — pointed out that ever since “Black Hawk Down” days, Muslims have been doing precisely that, filming American bodies being dragged through the streets, filming Daniel Pearl’s head being cut off, filming any and everything.
22) Obama gets pissed at CBS, the tape gets cleaned up, that question disappears. (Inside info.)
23.) We got a “treasure trove” of stuff from hard drives, etc.
24.) There were no phone lines, and no internet access at the “mansion,” they didn’t even have TV — what “treasure trove?”
25.) There is obviously in the pictures of the place a large satellite dish. I guess they used it for making salads.
26.) And now, just today: apparently the idea was to capture him, but only if he was naked. There was a suspicion he might be wearing a suicide bomber type explosive vest, or belt. So if he’s not naked and you can’t see if he has a vest on or not – shoot him.

The idiot Carney — they actually managed to find someone who makes Gibbs look good — is currently twisting himself into knots trying to explain why the photograph that the whole world was expecting isn’t going to be released. (Obviously the thing to do is get Trump on the case, he’ll force Obama to release it.)

The military did great, the administration — or whatever that bunch is, kind of like “The Little Rascals” — have managed to turn it into spaghetti. The story has changed so many times in the course of a mere three days it’s a joke — the world would be better off if Panetta had left the little shitwit on the golf course.

Cross-posted at Bookworm Room
UPDATE: I’m hearing a lot from people who think “there’s something wrong here” — and certainly jj’s witty and wonderful summary shows that there is indeed something deeply wrong. Here’s my take on the matter:

I have no doubt that OBL is dead. I also have no doubt but that, for reasons known only to itself, the Obama Administration is making its best effort to confuse the story so badly that people will doubt this ultimate truth.

When people say “something is wrong here,” they’re sort of right. The “here” in which the wrongness resides isn’t this specific news story. Instead, it’s an overarching pathology that we’re talking about.

That is, the SEALS did what they did.  What’s driving everyone bonkers is that this administration is incapable of being straightforward. Serpentine deceit is its MO, regardless of the topic, whether birth certificates, health care debates, or sanctioned assassinations. Everything is wrapped in a web of lies and confusion because of the paranoia, personality disorders, narcissism, and sociopathy that walk the White House halls.

UPDATE II: At Gateway Pundit (which gave me a link, so thank you very much), I learned that the video feed wasn’t working, so that the now iconic picture of Obama hiding in the back of the Situation Room while everyone stares at the monitor is — well, another mystery to add to jj’s list.

Over at Free Republic, though, someone has the right idea about that picture.

Long before his administration went into federal court to fight 27 states that are now challenging the constitutionality of the federal government forcing people to buy health insurance, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told Ellen DeGeneres that—unlike his opponent Hillary Clinton—he opposed forcing the uninsured to buy  health insurance, saying that it would be like forcing the homeless to buy homes.

“Both of us want to provide health care to all Americans. There’s a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy health care. She’d have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it,” Obama said in a Feb. 28, 2008 appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ television show. “So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it’s one that she’s tried to elevate, arguing that because I don’t force people to buy health care that I’m not insuring everybody. Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.”

In a ruling issued yesterday holding that the insurance mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson pointed to a similar statement that Obama had made in a Feb. 4, 2008 interview with CNN. “Indeed,” wrote Vinson, “I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.’”

Judge Vinson was the second federal judge to rule that the federal government does not have the constitutional power to force individuals to buy health insurance. Last month, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson also ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional. Vinson was ruling in a suit brought against the federal government by Florida and 25 other states. Hudson was ruling in a suit brought against the federal government by the state of Virginia.

The Obama administration is warning of catastrophic consequences if Congress does not increase the debt ceiling, the legal limit on how much the federal government can borrow, but Obama held a different view on the issue as a senator in 2006.

The White House is now stressing the need to increase the debt ceiling, currently $14.3 trillion, while Republicans in Congress believe a vote on the debt limit should be offset by significant debt-reduction spending cuts. The national debt stands at just under $13.9 trillion.

Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” that not raising the debt limit would mean the United States is “essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history. The impact on the economy would be catastrophic.”

However, in 2006, then-Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) voted against raising the debt ceiling and even spoke about it on the Senate floor before a close 52-48 vote to increase it during a Republican-controlled Senate.

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” Obama said on March 16, 2006. “Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

CNSNews.com reported last month that the 111th Congress, in the last two years with Obama as president, racked up more debt – $3.22 trillion — than the first 100 Congresses combined.

Nevertheless, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about Obama’s 2006 speech, blamed former President George W. Bush’s policies for the fiscal problems facing the country.

“Based on the outcome of that vote, the country’s full faith and credit was not in doubt,” Gibbs said on Wednesday. “The president used it to make a point about needing to get serious about fiscal discipline.”

“We are dealing with the legacy of decisions that have been made over the past several years, not paying for a prescription drug benefit, not paying for wars, not paying for tax cuts that changed out fiscal situation much more markedly than anything ever has,” Gibbs said.

“It is important for Congress not to play politics, not to play games, to find a way to raise that debt limit, understand that we are going to have to take some serious steps to get our fiscal house in order,” he added.

New House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said there should be significant spending cuts before Congress agrees to raise the debt limit.

“I’m only interested in raising the debt ceiling if we get concessions on spending, on real controls to get our fiscal situation turned around and headed in the right direction,” Ryan told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “I’m not interested in raising the debt ceiling on the hope that a promise will be fulfilled at a later time.”

While President Obama’s economic advisor Austin Goolsbee argued Sunday that a refusal by the Senate to increase the government’s debt ceiling (currently $14.3 trillion) would be “catastrophic” and a sign of “insanity,” that’s not the position the president has held in the past.

Here are Obama’s thoughts on the debt limit in 2006, when he voted against increasing the ceiling:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

In 2007 and in 2008, when the Senate voted to increase the limit by $850 billion and $800 billion respectively, Obama did not bother to vote. (He did vote for TARP, which increased the debt limit by $700 billion.)

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) told Human Events in an interview released today that the decision about the debt ceiling “needs to be a big showdown” in the Senate.

“We are going to cut [spending] necessary to stay within the current levels, which is over $14 trillion,” said DeMint.

Last week, Jillian highlighted the Obama administration’s sudden about-face on offshore drilling:

The Obama administration reversed course Wednesday and said it wouldn’t allow drilling off the Atlantic coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida, citing safety concerns after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The decision was a fresh setback for the oil industry following the BP PLC spill, and subsequent revelations about events leading up to the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and killed 11 people. The industry already faces a virtual freeze on permits to drill new wells on existing leases as regulators weigh tougher safety and environmental requirements.

Environmental groups cheered the decision. The oil industry and its supporters denounced it.

Perhaps the Wall Street Journal should update its piece to add another group to the “denouncing” column:  The American people.   It seems folks aren’t especially optimistic about the economic ramifications of Obama’s seven-year Atlantic drilling moratorium:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the new seven-year ban will increase gas prices, while just 11% think it will make gas prices go down. Twenty-five percent (25%) expect the ban to have no impact on prices at the pump. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Similarly, only 15% of voters feel the ban is good for the economy. Fifty-four percent (54%) predict that it will be bad for the economy, but 20% say it will have no impact.

In at least three court cases, President Obama’s Justice Department has argued in favor of federal law enforcement officers using race as a factor in determining whether to stop someone for a suspected immigration violation.

It has done so despite the fact that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that they do not engage in “racial profiling.”

The Justice Department’s legal arguments in defense of federal law enforcement officers using race as one factor among others in making immigration stops are based on the 1975 Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce. In that case, the court held 9-0 that an officer making an immigration stop must be able to cite “specific articulable facts” that “reasonably warrant suspicion” that illegal aliens are present.

“Except at the border and its functional equivalents, officers on roving patrol may stop vehicles only if they are aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion that the vehicles contain aliens who may be illegally in the country,” the court ruled in Brignoni-Ponce.

The Court said law enforcement officers could not stop a car merely because the occupants appeared to be of Mexican descent, but that they could consider such an appearance as one factor in making a determination that there was “reasonable suspicion” that illegal aliens were present.

“Even if they saw enough to think that the occupants were of Mexican descent, this factor alone would justify neither a reasonable belief that they were aliens, nor a reasonable belief that the car concealed other aliens who were illegally in the country,” the Supreme Court ruled. “Large numbers of native born and naturalized citizens have the physical characteristics identified with Mexican ancestry, and, even in the border area, a relatively small proportion of them are aliens. The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but, standing alone, it does not justify stopping all Mexican-Americans to ask if they are aliens.”

In 2003, the Justice Department published a “Guide Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.” The guide said federal authorities “may not consider race or ethnicity except to the extent permitted by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

In explaining what was permitted under the Constitution and the laws, the guide cited the precedent of Brignoni-Ponce.

Thus the rule of Brignoni-Ponce decision—that ethnicity alone cannot be used to make an immigration stop but can be considered as one relevant factor—has been adopted by both Immigration Customs and Border Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both components of DHS.

A Justice Department spokeswoman told CNSNews.com that department could not provide CNSNews.com with a full list of cases in which U.S. attorneys working for the Obama administration cited Brignoni-Ponce in federal court to justify immigration stops.

However, court records indicate there have been at least three such cases.

On May 15, 2009, U.S. Attorney John Murphy for the Western District of Texas cited Brignoni-Ponce in stating the government’s case in U.S. v. Aldo Antonio Hernandez-Moya.

Here Hernandez-Moya was appealing his conviction for transporting illegal aliens for financial gain and possession of counterfeit documents on the grounds that the stop of his vehicle had not been based on reasonable suspicion.

“Although ethnicity of a vehicle’s occupants does not alone justify a reasonable belief that they are aliens, the Supreme Court has stated that it is a relevant factor,” the U.S. Attorney argued to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit.

“In the instant case, the Hispanic ethnicity of the occupants in Appellant’s vehicle was a relevant consideration but was not the sole factor supporting reasonable suspicion that the Appellant’s vehicle was involved in the transportation of illegal aliens,” added the brief.

Hernandez-Moya’s appeal was denied.

On July 2, 2009, U.S. Attorney Matt Dummermuth submitted a memorandum in U.S. District Court for Northern Iowa opposing a motion by Agriprocessors to suppress evidence that had been collected in a search of its plant. The memorandum cited Brignoni Ponce to justify evidence obtained by ICE during the search.

“Defendant makes the allegation, without citation to any factual support, that ICE agents relied solely on race to detain workers,” argued the U.S. attorney. “ICE agents detained everyone at the plant long enough to determine if they were lawfully authorized to reside or work in the United States. This included the detention of workers regardless of race.

“Moreover, ICE agents detained, and ultimately arrested for deportation, Caucasians as well as workers of Hispanic ethnicity. Defendant asserts the detention of the workers constituted an arrest. First, as explained above, regardless of whether detention of the workers constituted an arrest, defendant lacks standing to challenge the detention.

“Second, the detention of the workers was lawful. The detention lasted only long enough for the ICE agents to determine whether the person had legal authorization to reside and work in the United States.”

The U.S. attorney furthered this point with a footnote that said: “Regardless, whether a person is of Hispanic origin is a relevant factor for officers to consider, among others, in determining whether to detain someone. See United States v. Brignoni-Ponce.”

On Dec. 22, 2009, U.S. Attorney Andrew Baxter for the Northern District of New York cited Brignoni-Ponce in opposing pretrial motions in the caseU.S. v. Charles Davidson et al.

The defendants, said the U.S. attorney, were “indicted in connection with conspiracies involving the encouragement, transport, concealment and harboring of illegal aliens.”

“Davidson,” said the U.S. attorney, “accuses the government of suggesting an ‘unconscionable interference’ that [ICE] knew the subject IFCO workers were illegal aliens because they were Hispanic.”

“While a stop based on the Mexican ethnicity of the occupants of a vehicle alone cannot be justified, appearance and ethnicity can be ‘a relevant factor’ in satisfying a reasonable suspicion standard for Fourth Amendment purposes,” contended the U.S. Attorney.

The 1975 Brignoni-Ponce decision has long been taken as a governing precedent defining the circumstances under which federal law enforcement officers can make immigration stops.

“Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice regularly makes such arguments and the courts regularly accept them,” Gabriel J. Chin, a professor at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law, told CNSNews.com.

Chin wrote about the cases mentioned in this report in a July 13 op-ed in the Washington Post.

CNSNews.com asked both ICE and CBP whether “your agency considers Mexican or Hispanic appearance a relevant factor, among others, during enforcement activities.”

ICE spokeswoman Gillian Brigham, in a written response, told CNSNews.com that ICE is not focused on “sweeps or raids to target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately.”

Joanne Ferreira, a CBP spokeswoman, told CNSNews.com, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not use racial profiling.”

She added that CBP “adheres” to Justice Department guidelines on the use of race by federal law enforcement. Those guidelines are partly governed by Brignoni-Ponce.

————

What follows is a transcript of the responses of ICE and CBP to CNSNews.com’s question.

CNSNews.com: Does your agency consider Mexican or Hispanic appearance a relevant factor among others during enforcement activities?

Gillian Brigham, ICE, responded in writing: ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes efforts first on those dangerous criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, not sweeps or raids to target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately.

In a world of limited resources, ICE enforcement activities must be based on tough, sensible priorities. These priorities include:
– Criminal offenders and national security threats;
– Recent border violators, whether visa overstays or people who snuck across the border;
– Those who game the system, whether by ignoring orders of deportation, reentering the country after deportation, or by gaining status through fraud.

Our priorities are based on:
– Promoting public safety and national security;
– Securing the border;
– Restoring integrity to the system.

CBP’s Joanne Ferreira: U.S. Customs and Border and Border Protection does not use racial-profiling, and we strive to treat all travelers with respect and in a professional manner while maintaining our mission to protect all citizens and visitors of the United States.

In a follow-up email, Ferreira wrote: In 2004, DHS adopted the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) “Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.”  The DOJ guidance articulates DHS’s policy against racial profiling, and, as a component of DHS, CBP adheres to the DOJ guidance.

President Obama and the Democrats have been calling out Republicans who opposed extending unemployment benefits without a way to account for the expenditure and piling on more debt. “May God have mercy on your souls,” said resident lunatic Rep. Alan Grayson in a fit of non-secularism to Republicans opposing the unfunded extension.

But, in fact, Republicans are simply doing what Obama himself told everyone last year was “fiscally responsible.”

This fact didn’t escape CBS News’ Mark Knoller:

In signing the bill restoring unemployment benefits to 2 million Americans jobless for more than 26 weeks, President Obama is also adding $34 billion to the deficit and the National Debt.

That’s the reason nearly all Republicans voted against the measure. They wanted the cost of the benefits paid for with unspent government funds or by other budget cuts.

The White House dismissed GOP concerns as partisan game-playing.
[...]
But Republicans were quick to remind Mr. Obama what he said after signing a previous extension of unemployment benefits on November 6th of last year.

“Now, it’s important to note that the bill I signed will not add to our deficit. It is fully paid for, and so it is fiscally responsible,” he said.

So eight months ago, he said paying for the benefits was the right thing to do, but now he sees no need to do so.

Asked about the contradiction, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he needed to examine what Mr. Obama said last November and would get back to this reporter. He didn’t.

In November of 2009 when Obama signed that unemployment benefits extension, the Wall Street Journal quoted a couple of professors:

The probability that a laid-off worker will find a job grows smaller the longer people have been out of work, according to studies in the 1980s by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago.

The above is often used as justification for extending unemployment benefits, but conversely, I don’t think the probability that a laid-off worker will find a job increases if he or she is mailed a check for years on end, either. Intentionally turning 15-20% of the would-be working population into permanent welfare cases is neither prudent on a national level nor dignified on a personal level, and it certainly shouldn’t be something promoted by people who claim to want everybody to be proud, self-respecting human beings.

As Knoller reported, the latest benefits extension will need to be re-extended by around Thanksgiving. Rest assured Democrats are already preparing any number of “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” references for Republicans who oppose that new extension.

From the September 20th ABC News This Week interview between George Stephanopolous and President Barack Obama:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Probably the most definitive promise you made in the campaign is that no one in the middle class would get a tax increase on your watch.

OBAMA: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yet this week, Senator Rockefeller and several other Democrats say that this bill by Senator Baucus is a big middle class tax increase.

Do you agree and does that mean you can’t sign it?
…
OBAMA: What — what — if I — if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that’s not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don’t want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I — I don’t think I’m making it up. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: Tax — “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.

The Merriam Webster Dictionary is not the only document that identifies the Baucus bill mandates as a tax middle class tax increase. There is also the Baucus bill itself, whose text on page 29 reads:

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. If a taxpayer’s MAGI is between 100-300 percent of FPL, the excise tax for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or an individual claimed as a dependent) is $750 per year. However, the minimum penalty for the taxpayer unit is $1,500. If a taxpayer’s MAGI is above 300 percent of FPL the penalty for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or as an individual claimed as a dependent) is $950 year. However, the maximum penalty amount a family above 300 percent of FPL would pay is $3,800.

And who would be enforcing what President Obama insists is not a tax? Heritage’s health care team explains:

In order to enforce these provisions, the Baucus bill would require individuals, health insurers, employers, and government health agencies to report detailed health insurance information on all Americans to the IRS, adding significant administrative costs and reducing privacy protections. The IRS would also be required to report personal income data to state exchanges, insurance companies, and employers, because premium credits and out-of-pocket limits would depend on income.

And the individual mandate is not the only middle class tax hike in the bill:

[B]eginning in 2013, the bill would impose a new federal excise tax on high cost health insurance plans. The tax would be applied to health plans valued at $8,000 for single policies and $21,000 for family policies. Because not all workers in such plans are high income, many will likely be on the receiving end of a middle class income tax increase, which contradicts President Obama’s promise that “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”