The Quiet Education Overhaul

Heritage "Duncan certainly got the quiet part right. Since his Administration came into office, President Obama has quietly been reworking the country’s education system, doing an end-run around normal legislative procedure. With the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) funding doubled thanks to the so-called “stimulus,” the Administration has little need or incentive to bother negotiating its education agenda through Congress. Instead, the DOE is using that windfall of funding and power to stage a significant overhaul of local schools; dangling grant money before cash-strapped states on the condition they adopt key pieces of the Obama education agenda. And this is all happening without public consideration..."

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/MichaelRamirez

Pampered Populists

Victor Davis Hanson "It's surreal to see President Obama play the class-warfare card against the Republicans while on his way to vacation on the tony Maine coast, and even more interesting to note that now gone are the days when the media used to caricature Bush I ("Poppy") for boating in the summer off the preppie-sounding Kennebunkport. The truth is that the real big money and the lifestyles that go with it are now firmly liberal Democratic."

Court upholds expulsion of student from public university for Christian beliefs

Mark Hemingway "A few weeks ago we saw a University of Illinois professor who was fired after a student complained that he was teaching Catholic doctrine on homosexuality in a course titled, appropriately enough, “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought.”
"Now a court has upheld the expulsion of a Christian student at a public university in Michigan over her personal beliefs on homosexuality:" Via Beltway Confidential

The Amnesty Memo and the term, "Deferred Action"

National Review "According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action” — that is, without the consent of the American  people through a vote in Congress."

USCIS Draft Memo Leaked Discussing Ways to ByPass Congress on Amnesty "The National Review article claims that the USCIS is thinking about using “Deferred Action”. The Definition of Deferred Action according to the USCIS is:"

“an exercise of prosecutorial discretion not to pursue removal from the U.S. of a particular individual for a specific period of time.”

Iran Starts to Feel Heat

Charles Krauthammer "This is the kind of brinkmanship you get when leaders of a rogue regime are under growing pressure. The only hope to get them to reverse course is to relentlessly increase their feeling that, if they don’t, the Arab states, Israel, the Europeans, and America will, one way or another, ensure that ruin is visited upon them." If Obama mans up and grows a pair, he'll have more support from conservatives than he will from his own supporters. Including the ladies on "The View".

Wikileaks (Updated)

Wikipedia "Wikileaks states that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.""

They appear to have no problem, however with those who rape, murder and behead others who are not leftist or Islamic enough for their tastes.


From WikiLeaks to the Killing Fields ; Liberals contemplate withdrawal from Afghanistan, heedless of the consequences.
"But somewhere in the bowels of the State Department, somebody might want to think hard about the human consequences of American withdrawal. What happens to the Afghan women who removed their burqas in the late fall of 2001, or the girls who enrolled in government schools? What happens to the army officers and civil servants who cooperated with the coalition? What happens to the villagers who stood with us when we asked them to?
"It is a peculiar fact of modern liberalism that its best principles have most often been betrayed by self-described liberals."

The Art of Blowing It Bigtime

Victor Davis Hanson "Overseas, so far, our nation has been lucky, but the world abroad is likely to reap what Obama has sown, and soon. “Bush did it” whining, “reset” diplomacy, outreach to thugs, serial apologies, and a habit of treating allies as neutrals or enemies and enemies as new friends — with this kind of foreign policy, some bad actor is bound to try a Falkands, a Kuwait, or a Georgia to gauge our response, which in turn will determine the behavior of other nefarious agents."

The Two Faces of the Ground Zero Mosque

Raymond Ibrahim "...the reader may well be surprised to discover that the controversial Cordoba Initiative, which plans on manifesting itself as the largest American mosque, situated atop Ground Zero — that is, atop the carnage caused by none other than bin Laden — also has two faces, conveying one thing to Americans, quite another to Muslims."

"Dear Mayor Bloomberg" "A bit of relevant history: Islam began, proudly, as a warriors’ religion. Beginning in the seventh century, Islamic armies burst out of Arabia and conquered much of the known world. Among their practices: They razed the houses of worship of those they defeated and built mosques upon the ruins. This was a way of sending a message. These early Muslims were not just adept fighters — they also were skilled communicators.
"The al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is built on the site where the First and Second Temples of the Jewish people once stood. However, some Muslims deny that there ever were Jewish houses of worship on that site. "

Federal Debt and the Risk of a Financial Crisis

Congressional Budget Office Neal Boortz calls this "the scariest thing you will read all day".

What Would Happen if the Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Wall Street Journal "The tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, are front and center now and will be a hot issue going into the elections this fall. Unless something is done by the end of the year, they'll expire. With the economic recovery looking shaky, expiration is particularly controversial. Most of the attention has understandably focused on highest earners, who are likely to be most affected by whatever happens. But as the debate has gathered pace I have been wondering what it might mean for everyone else. After all, according to the IRS just 4% of Americans earn more than $200,000 a year."

Surviving the Obama Assault on the Rule of Law

Heritage "But no amount of pause by states and localities could ever possibly satisfy the Obama administration, its amnesty allies, and activist judges like Bolton. In a textbook case of judicial activism, Judge Bolton rewrote the Arizona law to her own needs, invented her own facts and ignored clear federal law. President Jimmy Carter appointee and immigration law professor at Yale Law School Peter Schuck told The New York Times: “She rushed to judgment in a way I can only assume reflects a lot of pressure from the federal government to get this case resolved quickly.” "

On Arizona and Immigration: Judge Ignores Rule of Law "Arizona should continue its court fight to implement all of the provisions of the Arizona law. The chances are very good as this case works its way up through the courts and eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court, that Arizona will win in the end. It is a battle well worth fighting and it is one that other states should join, particularly in the face of this administration’s refusal to take the steps necessary to secure our borders and protect our national security. In fact, if other states participate in this battle in other federal circuits, it is highly likely that they will get rulings directly conflicting with Judge Bolton’s erroneous decision. The Justice Department should be forced to fight as many states as possible on this issue."

81 Members of Congress Support AZ Law "The immigration issue is also before the Supreme Court. We intend to file an amicus brief with the high court in support of a 2007 immigration law enacted by Arizona - a case that will be heard next term by the high court. This is a very important issue. We will keep you posted as developments unfold." , Jay Sekulow,ACLJ, July 21

Detaining Arizona "The judge twists facts and logic to support the Justice Department’s claim that the state law preempts the federal immigration scheme. To do so, she accepts Justice’s implicit argument that it’s not the letter of the federal law that matters, but what parts of the law the executive decides to enforce. If her reasoning stands, we will basically cut Congress out of immigration policy and the states out of enforcement. Instead, our immigration system will entirely depend on executive discretion at a time when the executive has little interest in enforcing the law." National Review Online.

Andy McCarthy on the Arizona Immigration Decision : "The Arizona law is completely consistent with federal law. The judge, however, twisted to(sic) concept of federal law into federal enforcement practices (or, as it happens, lack thereof). In effect, the court is saying that if the feds refuse to enforce the law the states can't do it either because doing so would transgress the federal policy of non-enforcement ... which is nuts."Emphasis added.

 What Judge Bolton’s Injunction Doesn’t Say "The real threat posed by S.B. 1070 was that it would disrupt the de facto amnesty that the executive branch has accorded to the vast majority of illegal aliens. It would start to implement congressional mandates and the public will that the immigration laws be enforced. For that reason, it had to be stopped." Heather Mac Donald, via Neal Boortz.