The now-famous picture of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer shaking her finger at President Barack Obama is both appropriate and deserved. In America, we don’t have rulers entitled to the deference and obsequiousness other countries show to their kings; our elected officials are ordinary citizens whom we are free to criticize.

Obama apparently took offense at the way Gov. Brewer described her meeting with the president in the Oval Office. She said he had been “condescending,” “patronizing” and just wanted to lecture her, instead of showing any willingness to hear Arizona’s concerns about border problems. He also didn’t answer the governor’s five letters.

Her description sounds authentic because that’s exactly how he treated her when they met on the tarmac as he was campaigning for re-election. The background of this meeting is the insulting way Obama is treating Arizona by suing that state for trying to enforce laws against illegal aliens, withdrawing National Guardsmen from the Mexican border, initiating a civil rights investigation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the scandal of the “Fast and Furious” gun-sale operation.

Fast and Furious was a secret Obama administration program to sell guns to Mexican gangs, so the Democrats could later make a political case for gun control. It backfired when some of those guns were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the power of states to take steps to enforce laws against illegal immigration. The Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007, which requires Arizona employers to use the Internet-based, E-Verify system to confirm that a new employee is lawfully in the U.S. was upheld by the Supreme Court last year.

Obama is now having his Justice Department sue Arizona to try to get the court to strike down another Arizona law. It authorizes police to question people about their immigration status if the police have reason to believe the person is an illegal alien.

There are many other ways Obama is trying to frustrate state and citizen efforts to stop the tide of illegal aliens crossing our southern border. He shows no respect for the financial burden this puts on states from problems of crime, illegal drugs, public schools and hospital care.

Illegal aliens from Mexico are believed responsible for more than a third of deliberately ignited wildfires in Arizona over the last five years, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. Illegal aliens are believed to have started 30 of 77 fires from 2006 through 2010 that were investigated, and that figure doesn’t include 2010, the worst fire year in Arizona history, when two fires destroyed more than 60 homes.

In December 2010, Obama Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano flew to Mexico City to sign a “trusted traveler” agreement. This allows pre-screened Mexican airline passengers to bypass lengthy airport security checkpoints, a plan for which Mexico’s interior ministry secretary said 84 million Mexicans are expected to qualify.

I’m curious. Why couldn’t Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have been labeled a trusted traveler so he also could avoid airport hassle?

Word has leaked out which proves that, despite congressional law to the contrary, the Obama administration is granting amnesty to illegal aliens through backdoor procedures. The smoking gun is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Memorandum called “Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

This memorandum asserts that because Congress has not passed comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of notices to appear, and adopting significant process improvements. These policies will enable thousands of aliens who entered the U.S. illegally to become lawful permanent residents.

For example, USCIS could allow employment authorization for H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B visa holders who are applicants for permanent residence. And where there is no authority for granting residency to an illegal alien, USCIS could grant it anyway by alleging “extreme hardship.”

The 72-page “National Drug Threat Assessment 2011″ issued by the U.S. Department of Justice National Drug Intelligence Center warns us that “The illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs present a challenging, dynamic threat to the United States. … Major Mexican-based TCOs (transnational criminal organizations) … control the movement of most of the foreign-produced drug supply across the U S. Southwest Border. … The Southwest Border remains the primary gateway for moving illicit drugs into the United States.”

Barack Obama wasn’t interested in accepting Gov. Brewer’s invitation to visit the border himself. He just wants to use executive-branch powers to stop Arizona from doing anything to defend itself.

Obama picked a fight with a female governor, and she didn’t roll over. Three cheers for Jan Brewer.

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As the implementation of Obamacare rolls into high gear, we’ve been given insight into how it will be implemented in general. On January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would not exempt health plans provided by non-profit religious employers from the requirement to provide “contraceptive services.”

… Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA -approved forms of contraception. Women will not have to forego these services because of expensive co-pays or deductibles, or because an insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services.

The cateory of “all FDA-approved forms of contraception” includes the abortifacients like the “morning after pill.” At the same time I couldn’t help but note that the group of health plans provided by “non-profit religious employers” who do not support contraception winnows the field down rather quickly to those provided by either the Catholic Church or one of its social service or medical subsidiaries.

The best is yet to come.

By way of full disclosure, I’m Roman Catholic. I’m a convert who became Catholic with eyes wide open rather than a “cradle Catholic” who was born into the religion. As such I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the antics of many of our Church leadership. I write it off to equal parts cognitive dissonance and a pathological desire to be popular.

The Democrat party has been anti-Catholic in its political positions since George McGovern ran for president yet the priesthood and heirarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in America tend to hail from Democrat constituencies. So on the one hand the Magesterium is teaching very traditional social values while on the other it is embracing without even a hint of credulity every lefty scheme that comes down the pike.

For instance, in 1983, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops declared nuclear weapons to be immoral and weren’t terribly fond of deterrence either. By 1988 they had decided SDI was destabliizing as was the US linking a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan to future arms treaties. When communist terrorists were trying to create a people’s paradise in El Salvador, many of our bishops ignored what was happening to personal libery under the Sandinistas in Nicaragua as they stumbled over themselves to create the “sanctuary movment”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement

Without putting too fine a point on it but there was no daylight between the position of the Magesterium and that of the Kremlin on these issues.

Not that they are all commies or anything. But there were MOVEMENTS out there that had freakin Pete Seeger singing protest songs and James Earl Jones and Ed Asner at their rallies. How could you not be in favor of these things?

Similar stampedes took place on global warming and immigration.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in. When given the choice between seeming to endorse a religious conservative for office and seeming to endorse a heterodox leftist there is no limit to the contortions a large share of our bishops won’t put themselves through to help the lefty. To wit: by the black letter of the Catechism of the Catholic Church supporting abortion is forbidden. If a public figure does so this failure is compounded by “scandal”, that is, an action that could cause others to question their faith. The fact that there are very few bishops in the nation who have taken steps to discipline pro-abort advocates and politicians especially when they proclaim themselves to be devout.

The second strain is the want to be liked. For most of American history, Catholics were THE OTHER. It was a foreign religion practiced by all manner of foreigners who either couldn’t speak English (Italians, Poles, etc.) or who could barely speak it (the Irish, it goes without saying). What other religion still has amendments to state constitutions directly aimed at its religious schools?

Just when things were going well with JFK (another devout Catholic) in the White House, he gets killed and the whole counter culture begins. If there was anything less cool in the 1960s than being in ROTC it was being a Catholic who believed in monogamy and abstinence until marriage not to mention avowing any religion that did not use mind altering drugs. Being cool is still important and despite his views on abortion Obama, that epitome of coolness, was invited to give a commencement address at a Catholic university.

This mindset was most egregiously on display during the 2008 election. The Catholic heirarchy — and I have to digress here for a moment to emphasize that we have many traditional bishops in this country who have fought the good fight for decades — wanted to catch the Hope-and-Change wave and had a problem: Barrack Obama loves him some abortion. Not just plain vanilla abortion. He is in favor of partial birth aboriton. He is in favor of killing a kid who happens to survive the abortion procedure.

Demonstrating again a contortionist skill that would gain them employment at any county fair in the country the bishops issued a document called “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

As first blush it looks like a strong statement in favor of life which would not have helped Obama, or any other elected Democrat for that matter, until one reads deeper.

34. Catholics often face dificult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.

35. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.

In other words if you feel like the opposition to the war in Iraq or midnight basketball or furthering the ends of labor unions or any other pet peeve are “morally grave reasons” you can vote for the pro-abort. And they got what they wanted: American Catholics gave a majority of their votes to Obama.

Then came Obamacare which gave the bishops a real taste of what happens when you create a moral equivalence between universal health care and abortion. You get them both.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was heartbroken and gobsmacked, or gobsmacked and heartbroken, when they got the bad news about the elimination of an exemption for religious conscience in health plans.

President Obama telephoned Archbishop Dolan on Friday morning to tell him of the decision, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The pair had discussed the issue during a November meeting, during which the archbishop “got the message that they could work together,” said the spokeswoman, Sister Mary Ann Walsh.

The issue was likely to form the “backdrop to future relations,” she said. “It’s too big to ignore… the elephant is tramping around in the sanctuary.”

An administration official on Tuesday confirmed the call was made on Friday and reiterated comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the administration is committed to its partnerships with faith-based groups.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), a Catholic who supports abortion rights and access to contraception, said she thought the White House had handled the decision “very well” by being open to listening to religious leaders. “Contraception is about preventing unintended pregnancy,” she said. “I think that they did what they needed to do.”

So up until November Archbishop Dolan was being led to believe that he and the Obama Administration could work together and there would be a conscience exemption in the health care reform regulations and then he gets a call telling him that he’s been played for a chump.

It is really difficult to understate the cultural significance of this decision. If Congress doesn’t intervene and we end up with a pro-abort in the White House, which seems virtually certain regardless of how Obama fares in November, it is hard to see how this precedent will not be applied first to euthanasia, which seems to be the next big thing, and then to abortion. If left as it is, it really marks the end of independent churches in the United States.

The decision even managed to concern the Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, another of the “smells and bells” Catholics on the left, or Catholycs as my friend Tom Crowe terms them, whose collective ass gets tired when confronted with the whole issue of morality.

One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.

His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.

Reading all of this I was reminded of one of my favorite jokes, involving a guy in a bar and leprechaun. I won’t retell it here because this is a family website but I will link to one of the many variations here.

And I’d like to ask Archbishop Dolan and a lot of other members of our heirarchy, “You’re how old? And you still believe in leprechauns?”

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President Obama went to Arizona Wednesday afternoon, and according to Governor Jan Brewer who met him on the airport tarmac, the Book-Critic-in-Chief took her to task for something she recently published:

He stepped off Air Force One at 3:28 pm and was greeted by Gov. Jan Brewer. She handed him a handwritten letter in an envelope and they spoke intensely for a few minutes. At one point, she pointed her finger at him.

Afterwards, (I) spoke with the governor.

“He was a little disturbed about my book, Scorpions for Breakfast,” Brewer said. “I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So.”
…
It was clear from the moment they greeted one another that this would not be a run-of-the-mill encounter between the president and a local official. At one point, she was pointing her finger at him and at another, they were talking at the same time, seemingly over each other.

He appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking, and she confirmed that by saying she didn’t finish her sentence.

When Brewer spoke with your pooler, the AP and an NBC producer for several minutes afterwards, she appeared a bit flustered and taken aback by the conversation. Asked if she was, that’s when Brewer said, “I’ll regroup.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had a similar run-in during the BP Gulf oil spill.

Obama is expected to even both scores in his next book, “Sweat the Petty Stuff.”

Here’s video from a local news story:

 

Feel free to provide your own caption:

Over at Hot Air, Allapundit has audio of a radio interview with Jan Brewer describing what happened: “He was somewhat thin skinned and a little tense, to say the least.”

Jay Carney will probably be given the opportunity to distort what happened at tomorrow’s White House presser, so we’ll have to wait to get the Obama administration’s version of events.

Meanwhile, the fate of Arizona’s immigration law simmers in the Supreme Court.

Update: What better publicity for your book than by the President of the United States drawing attention to it?

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First the Obama administration sued Arizona over its illegal immigration law, then Alabama over its law. Now the administration is suing South Carolina.

The Obama administration, through Attorney General, Eric Holder, on Monday filed a lawsuit against a new immigration law, this time in South Carolina. The White House is accusing that state of interfering with the federal government's authority …

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While being grilled by co-host Ann Curry on Wednesday's NBC Today on Arizona's illegal immigration law causing racial discrimination, Governor Jan Brewer hit back and declared: “I believe truly that the media and others have tried to throw out that race card to shut down the debate. It's not about that. It's about illegal immigration.” Audio available here

Earlier, Curry fretted: “Now what would justify such a law that required people, essentially, to carry papers, identification, something that proved that they're American citizens?” Brewer replied: “…it's under reasonable suspicion, it's no different than what law enforcement actually does today….So it's a simple issue, and the press, the liberal media tried to blow that completely totally out of perspective.” View video after the jump

Curry pressed Brewer on whether police in Arizona would racially profile: “You say the people in Arizona are not racist or bigots. And so the question has been raised, why wouldn't an officer…not take into account the color of someone's skin in weighing whether or not to believe that someone might be an immigrant, an illegal immigrant?…wouldn't they weigh in the color of a person's skin in deciding whether or not that person?”

---

Here is a full transcript of the November 2 interview:

8:44AM ET

ANN CURRY: Illegal immigration is one of the hot button issues in the presidential campaign and the state of Arizona is right in the middle of that debate. More than a year after its Republican governor signed a controversial illegal immigration bill into law. Well now, Governor Jan Brewer has written a book about her struggle called “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border.” Governor Brewer, good morning to you.

JAN BREWER: Good morning to you, Ann.

CURRY: First, let me ask you about what you wrote about in this book about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. You describe her as a good friend despite your political differences. As such, she appears to be making a remarkable recovery.

BREWER: She does.

CURRY: Would you like to see her run for re-election?

BREWER: I would like to see what Gabby do whatever she can do and what she wants to do. She's a terrific gal, she's a wonderful elected official in Arizona, and more than that, she's been terrific for Arizona in the United States Congress. So I certainly hope that she can do whatever she chooses to do.

CURRY: Given all that she's endured, I imagine for a lot of people and maybe even for you, there would be sort of a sweet smile if you see her do something like that.

BREWER: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. She's a terrific – she really is terrific and it was such a tragic thing that happened down in Tucson. Our hearts were just broken for all, everybody that was murdered and injured down there. It was just a terrible day.

CURRY: You also write in this book, as we just mentioned, a lot about illegal immigration.

BREWER: I do.

CURRY: Why would you want to write a book about your experiences during this huge controversy that started to rage after the signing of this bill?

ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: “Scorpions for Breakfast”; Controversial Battle to Secure America's Border

BREWER: Well, it was really important to me that I was able to put down what I believe was the truth about what we were doing in Arizona, and what we were more or less forced to do because the federal government wouldn't do their job. We are the gateway for illegal immigration into America, bottom line is, is that we can't afford it, we can't tolerate it, and we are the recipient of a lot of criminal acts. And the bottom line is, if the federal government won't protect our borders then Arizona will.

CURRY: You know, let's be very specific about what the bill said. The bill you signed, which is still being challenged in court, would let law enforcement check the immigration status of a suspected illegal immigrant if stopped during a lawful traffic stop, detention, or arrest. And it would require that suspected illegal immigrants show proof that they're here legally. Now what would justify such a law that required people, essentially, to carry papers, identification, something that proved that they're American citizens?

BREWER: Well, first of all, let me just say, Ann, that, you know, it's under reasonable suspicion, it's no different than what law enforcement actually does today. And you know, if you're here in our country or if you're in any other country, it's your responsibility to carry identification with you. So it's a simple issue, and the press, the liberal media tried to blow that completely totally out of perspective.

So I try to talk about that in my book, I'm trying to explain to people, that the people in Arizona are not racist, they are not bigots. We have tried to do the best that we can given the circumstances that we have been given. They closed down the borders in California, they closed down the borders in Texas, and they funneled everybody through Arizona. And we just can't expect our citizens to continue to pay the price. It's costing us $1.6 billion out of an $8 billion budget a year to take care of that issue.

CURRY: You say the people in Arizona are not racist or bigots. And so the question has been raised, why wouldn't an officer, if he's looking under these words, if he's thinking about a suspected illegal immigrant, are you saying that he would not, he or she would not take into account the color of someone's skin in weighing whether or not to believe that someone might be an immigrant, an illegal immigrant?

BREWER: Well, and in the law, it says, you know, it has to be under reasonable suspicion, meaning they have to have already committed something, another crime or illegal-

CURRY: Or be suspected of, I mean they're not necessarily committed, they may have had a-

BREWER: Of course, they're law enforcement. They've been trained. They know what to look for. But it's reasonable suspicion. You can't just walk up to somebody and arrest anybody. And when I signed this bill-

CURRY: But wouldn't they weigh in the color of a person's skin in deciding whether or not that person?

BREWER: No.

CURRY: Why wouldn't they?

BREWER: Why would they? I mean, we have grown up in the southwest, we have grown up – these are our friends, these are our neighbors, they're part of our families, it's just ridiculous and it's – you know what? I believe truly that the media and others have tried to throw out that race card to shut down the debate. It's not about that. It's about illegal immigration. It's about the spillover from Mexico and we're just asking the federal government to do their job.

And when I signed Senate Bill 1070, I wanted to make absolutely sure that it would work, that it would be constitutional, and nobody's civil rights would be offended. That was my main goal and that's why I wrote the book “Scorpions for Breakfast,” I want to tell the truth. And I hope everybody that reads it, that they get that story and they understand we are just simply trying to do the job the federal government won't do. And if the federal government doesn't want to do it, well then they ought to change their laws.

CURRY: What do you say to the Obama administration, that has put out this information that under President Obama more people have been deported for illegal immigration status than under any other president since Eisenhower?

BREWER: Well, I say that's good, if that's factual and if that's true. The General Accounting Office, the GAO, says 55% of our border is not secured, and only 15% of those illegals that are coming across are arrested. That's not a secure border. That's not doing your job.

CURRY: We know you're feisty, Governor Jan Brewer, and in this book you're a fighter. Thank you so much…

BREWER: Thank you.

CURRY: …for speaking to us, and really it's been a pleasure.

BREWER: Thank you.

CURRY: The book is called “Scorpions for Breakfast.”

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A House subcommittee is
set to take up a bill that would restrict travel in the United
States for senior Chinese officials, in a protest over China’s
one-child “family planning” policy.

Republican Representative Chris Smith, a frequent and
fierce critic of China’s human rights record, authored the
legislation going before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on
Immigration Policy and Enforcement.

Smith’s proposal would empower Obama to deny US entry
to any senior Chinese official, or family members of any official
closely tied to policies that set back democratic reforms in
China.

China’s one-child policy has been in the news recently beyond
this new legislation. Joe Biden, you’ll remember, made waves
recently for seemingly dismissing the one-child policy as something
he wouldn’t be “second-guessing.”

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David Freddoso

Online Opinion Editor

“We can no longer wait for Congress to do its job,” President Obama said in his Saturday radio address. To hear him tell the story, he has the answers for putting Americans back to work, and Congress is the only thing standing in his way.

Rob Nelson of the Elmer Candy Corp. in Ponchatoula, La., can offer a more nuanced…

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Since Arizona passed SB 1070, an anti-illegal immigration law that allows local law enforcement officers to inquire about legal status after a crime has been committed, in April 2010, at least 30 other states have…

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ICE union president Chris Crane told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration that the new ICE policy puts both the public and ICE agents at risk. In order to slash the number of deportations and arrests for traffic offenses or lack of proper identification, law enforcement agencies in a major U.S. county are accepting Mexican-issued Matricula Consular cards –determined by …

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Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself during his testimony regarding “Operation Fast and Furious.”

Republican lawmakers are demanding a special counsel to investigate the Obama Administration's “Operation Fast and Furious” snafu. Newly released documents appear to strongly suggest Attorney General Eric Holder committed perjury when he testified under …

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