THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: A Current Events Round-Up For Conservatives
† A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ (updates ninth item on the page): With U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn of AL upholding several provisions of that states’ anti-illegal immigration law that she ruled were not preempted by federal law. Those provisions – which authorize local law enforcement to request proof of a detainee’s immigration status; nullify contracts entered into by illegals; forbid transactions between illegals and any division of the stat;, and require public schools to verify students’ immigration status for informational purposes – have gone into immediate effect.
Blackburn temporarily blocked several provisions of the law until she can issue a final ruling, including those that permit discrimination lawsuits against companies firing legal workers while hiring illegal immigrants; prohibit business from claiming tax deductions on wages paid to illegal workers; and ban illegals from attending public colleges in the state.
The New York Times notes that Blackburn’s ruling “makes it much more likely that the fate of the recent flurry of state laws against illegal immigration will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court”:
“Today Judge Blackburn upheld the majority of our law,” Gov. Robert Bentley said in a brief statement he delivered outside the State Capitol in Montgomery. “With those parts that were upheld, we have the strongest immigration law in the country.” …
The governor, in his statement, said he believed even the sections that were temporarily enjoined on Wednesday would eventually be upheld, and added that the state would consider appealing if that did not happen.
For the most part, Judge Blackburn, who was appointed by the elder President George Bush, disagreed with the Justice Department’s arguments, including those that had been successful in challenges to laws in Arizona and Georgia. …
In both cases, she rejected the reasoning of district and appeals courts that had blocked similar portions of Arizona’s law. Legal experts expected the Justice Department to appeal.
“The department is reviewing the decision to determine next steps,” Xochitl Hinojosa, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We will continue to evaluate state immigration-related laws and will not hesitate to bring suit if, in fact, a state creates its own immigration policy or enforces state laws in a manner that interferes with federal immigration law.”
† It’s A Topsy-Turvy Campaign (updates last item on page): This past week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested more than 2,900 convicted criminal aliens in all 50 states and four U.S. territories as part of Operation Cross Check, The Washington Times reports:
ICE described the arrests as part of the Obama administration's "ongoing commitment to prioritizing the removal of criminal aliens and egregious immigration law violators."
The operation involved more than 1,900 ICE agents from 24 field offices as well as coordination with federal, state and local law enforcement partners throughout the United States. …
All 2,901 people arrested over the past week have prior criminal convictions, including at least 1,282 with multiple charges. More than 1,600 of those arrested had felony convictions including manslaughter, attempted murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, drug trafficking and aggravated assault. …
In Operation Cross Check, 681 of those arrested were immigration fugitives who previously had been ordered to leave the country but had failed to depart. Additionally, 386 were illegal re-entrants who had been removed from the country multiple times. Because of their serious criminal histories and prior immigration arrest records, 146 of those arrested were presented to U.S. attorneys for prosecution on a variety of charges, including illegal re-entry after deportation, a felony.
Curiously, in an online discussion with Latino journalists hosted by Yahoo!, MSN Latino and AOL Latino/Huffington Post Latino Voice, President Barack Hussein Obama reassured the audience that his administration’s immigration policies, including Operation Cross Check, are not resulting in a higher number of deportations overall – and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
Instead of stepping up the number of deportations, the Obama administration has instead decided to step up the number of challenges to state laws meant to curb illegal immigration, The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration is escalating its crackdown on tough immigration laws, with lawyers reviewing four new state statutes to determine whether the federal government will take the extraordinary step of challenging the measures in court. …
The level of federal intervention is highly unusual, legal experts said, especially because civil rights groups already have sued most of those states. Typically, the government files briefs or seeks to intervene in other lawsuits filed against state statutes.
“I don’t recall any time in history that the Justice Department has so aggressively challenged state laws,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University Law School. …
Conservatives have criticized the Obama administration for suing Arizona and Alabama, and some legal observers said they detect political motives in the administration’s additional legal steps. The White House and Obama’s reelection campaign have been trying to rekindle excitement among Hispanic voters, many of whom have been disappointed over his immigration policies. …
Hovering over the debate is the possible involvement of the Supreme Court. …
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is seeking Supreme Court review, and the court could decide to hear the case this term. That would mean a decision before the 2012 presidential election, one that would affect the other state laws as well.
“My guess is that they will take it,” said Jonathan Benner, a Washington lawyer who has argued numerous cases involving federal-state conflicts. “This is the kind of case that is most interesting to the Supreme Court.”
† There’s Many A Slip ‘Twixt The Cup And Lip (updates ninth item on page): The Department of Justice and the National Federation of Independent Business both filed petitions asking The Supreme Court to review a ruling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit last month that found the Affordable Care Act’s “individual mandate” requiring the purchase of health insurance was an unconstitutional exercise of Congressional power, The National Law Journal reports:
The Obama administration's decision to face the music on the landmark legislation came on the same day that the winners in the 11th Circuit case also urged high court review. Even though the 11th Circuit struck down the individual mandate, it said that provision was "severable," meaning that the rest of the law could survive without it. The National Federation of Independent Business and 26 states that joined to challenge the law in the 11th Circuit filed petitions Wednesday urging the justices to rule that the mandate provision was not severable and that the entire law should fall.
"Everything is on track to ensure Supreme Court review this term," said Jones Day partner Gregory Katsas, who filed the petition for the NFIB on Wednesday. He said it was "99.99-plus percent certain" that the high court would grant review in at least one of the several cases testing the law's constitutionality. …
With both sides wanting the Court to review a decision that in part struck down a major segment of federal legislation, it seems inevitable that the Court will grant review soon and schedule argument in the spring, with a decision likely before the end of June 2012.
"The end game now appears to be fast approaching," said Santa Clara University School of Law professor Brad Joondeph, who writes for the ACA Litigation Blog. "A cert grant by late October, oral argument likely in February or March, and a decision by June."
† SOTU = Stuff Our Taxes Underwrite (updates second item on page): Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and CFO Bill Stover invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at least eight times while testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is looking into whether the solar panel company that received a half-billion dollar federal loan weeks before going belly up misled the government about its viability and whether the Obama administration rushed its loan approval. But the company’s now-jobless employees are singing like canaries, and one of them tells The Washington Post that company executives started spending money like drunken sailors as soon as the Department of Energy had approved the loan:
A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said. …
“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.”
The 300,000 square foot facility – as large as five football fields – also boasted robots that whistled Disney tunes and spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature. Another employee likened itto the Taj Mahal.
Wanna bet they were serving $16 muffins at breakfast meetings in that fancy-schmancy conference room? In any case, President Barack Hussein Obama’s visit to the state-of-the-art (meaning, way cool) factory was “choreographed down to the last detail – the 20-by-30-foot American flags, the corporate banners hung just so, the special lighting, even coffee and doughnuts for the Secret Service detail,” reports The New York Times:
“It’s here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future,” the president declared in May 2010 to the assembled workers and executives. The start-up business had received a $535 million federal loan guarantee, offered in part to reassert American dominance in solar technology while generating thousands of jobs.
But behind the pomp and pageantry, Solyndra was rotting inside, hemorrhaging cash so quickly that within weeks of Mr. Obama’s visit, the company canceled plans to offer shares to the public. Barely a year later, Solyndra has become one of the administration’s most costly fumbles after the company declared bankruptcy, laid off 1,100 workers and was raided by F.B.I. agents seeking evidence of possible fraud. …
[I]ndustry analysts and government auditors fault the Obama administration for failing to properly evaluate the business proposals or take note of troubling signs already evident in the solar energy marketplace.
Shyam Mehta, a senior analyst at GTM Research who follows the solar energy industry, tells The Times, “There was just too much misplaced zeal at the Department of Energy for this company.” No doubt Obama was dazzled by all the shiny toys at the Solyndra factory, because even after the DOE found out in December that Solyndra was violating its federal loan deal, the agency changed the loan terms to allow the company to continue receiving taxpayer funds, The Washington Post reports:
The company was unable on Dec. 1 to make its first $5 million payment [of six] into a special reserve fund, which was required under the loan terms and designed to help protect taxpayers.
Congressional investigators have questioned why the Obama administration agreed to help the company in late 2010 when it was warned that the firm was at risk of collapse. Internal e-mails show federal reviewers initially estimated they could save the taxpayers as much as $168 million by letting the company go under in December 2010, rather than resuscitating it and allowing it to draw down more federal money. …
By the end of 2010, Solyndra had withdrawn an estimated $460 million of its loan, approved and guaranteed by the Energy Department. With the restructuring, which some federal officials said in internal e-mails they considered highly risky, it was able to tap an additional $67 million.
The DOE has just approved two new loan guarantees, one $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy for a 110 megawatt solar tower on federal land in NV, and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 for a 150 megawatt solar plant near Phoenix – rushing to beat the September 20th sunset of the agency’s1705 Loan Guarantee program, which had been established under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Wall Street Journal is willing to “go out on a limb and say the rush raises questions about how carefully these outlays are being vetted.”
Meanwhile, The FBI’s investigation into whether Solyndra cooked its books and misrepresented its financial health to government officials continues, and the company filed a motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to hire attorney Jeffrey L. Bornstein of K&L Gates law firm as special counsel at a rate of $625 per hour and his colleague, Mikal J. Condon, at $525 per hour. Solyndra has already received approval to retain the law firm McDermott Will & Emery law firm as special counsel; former MA Gov. William Weld (R) will be paid $825 per-hour for his services.
Against this backdrop, the Justice Department filed its own motion seeking to a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee because of “"the inability or refusal” of Solyndra executives to answer questions about its finances and operations, reports The Wall Street Journal. The trustee would then assume control of company operations and decide to either liquidate the firm or restructure it.
† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race (updates ninth item on page): In an interesting turn of events, it’s not just The Associated Press that got accused of “racism” for transcribing President Barack Hussein Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus to include the deliberate use of “folksy” inflections. Obama himself has been accused of perpetuating the invidious stereotype that blacks are lazy for exhorting the audience to "take off your bedroom slippers" and work for his re-election, The Washington Times reports:
Some prominent blacks have criticized the president's language as racially tinged. PBS commentator Tavis Smiley, a frequent critic of Mr. Obama, has said the president would never use the same imagery with a white audience or other ethnic groups.
"How does he get away with saying this to black folk, when he would never form his lips to ever say that to any other constituency?" Mr. Smiley said.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri Democrat and chairman of the CBC, has said he received numerous calls from CBC members and Obama supporters who were offended by the president's comments.
And Crystal Wright, a conservative blogger in Washington who is black, said Mr. Obama's language stereotyped blacks.
"The implications here that ALL Blacks are waiting for a government handout; All Blacks wear bedroom slippers and/or are sitting on the couch not working is despicable and demonstrates how out of touch the nation's first BLACK president really is," she wrote in a blog post. "Why would the nation's first Black president make such an incendiary statement telling blacks to 'take off their bedroom slippers,' which conjures up a stereotypical image of Blacks being lazy. Can you imagine Obama saying the same thing to an all-white crowd in Iowa?"
Oh, and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain has also been accused of “racism” for his observation that blacks have been “brainwashed” into voting for Democrats – as has Rep. Allen West (R-FL) for his references to the “Democrat plantation.” What the critics do not know – or deliberately ignore – is that when Cain talks about black voters being "brainwashed" he means that after decades of progressive propaganda, they have forgotten that Republicans freed the slaves and thatDemocrats are the party of Jim Crow. And when West talks about the "Democrat plantation," he means the culture of dependence created by various means-tested entitlement programs Dems have instituted over the past 40+ years that guarantee recipients won't starve to death but won't have a successful life, either.
In any case, it’s official: During Obama’s “post-racial” presidency, every single one of us is now “racist.”
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