Part 29--July, 2011

* 7/1/11--Allowing hundreds of illegal aliens to participate in a congressional hearing sends a dangerous signal that it's okay to flout immigration laws in the U.S. That’s what some immigration watchdogs are saying about a Senate hearing Tuesday that intended to commend those who came to this country at a young age with their parents but were never granted legal status. Adding to the oddity of the occasion, which HUMAN EVENTS reported on earlier this week, the high-ranking witness testifying at the hearing was Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the nation’s chief immigration enforcement official. “It sends a signal that one of the top law enforcement officials in the country is clearly on their side and ignoring the rule of law,” said Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It’s one of the most profound and outrageous juxtapositions we have ever seen in a public hearing,” Dane said. “If ever there was a doubt which side of the law this administration is on, this visual graphic told the full story,” Dane said. The panel was led by Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D. –Ill.), who is sponsoring legislation called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to give legal status to those under age 35 who arrived in the United States before age 16, provided they complete two years of college or serve two years in the military. “The young people who would be eligible for the DREAM Act call themselves dreamers,” Durbin said at the hearing. “Over the years, I have met hundreds of these dreamers, and hundreds of them are here today.” After introducing about a half dozen of those in the audience by name, Durbin asked “everyone here today who is a DREAM Act student to stand and be recognized.” Nearly everyone in the audience, which seats more than 300 people, stood. “Thank you so much for being here,” Durbin said. "When I look around this room, I see America 's future. Our doctors, our teachers, our nurses, our engineers, our scientists, our soldiers, our congressmen, our senators and maybe our President." “Maybe he’s expecting to change the Constitution,” said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies. Camarota, who testified at the hearing, described the packed audience as a “well-organized showing.” “Durbin knew explicitly who would be there, and it was all planned, nothing was spontaneous,” Camarota said. “It sent a signal that we do not take our laws seriously. That you can come into a Senate chamber and admit it publicly and to the press, in large numbers, and it does not matter. It’s extremely troubling,” Camarota said. Press staffers for the Republican members who serve on the subcommittee did not respond to requests for comment on the incident. The intent of the hearing was to reassure some factions of the Democrat base that their issue was being tended to, “and yes, he's [Durbin’s] hoping that it will help him at election time,” Camarota said. Dane said that Democrats used the hearing to create a “visual symbol” and “mainstream” the issue that children of illegal aliens were brought here through no fault of their own, and should therefore be given citizenship through congressional action. Dane called the bill a “massive amnesty bill designed as an education initiative.” “It’s a game to suggest they have legitimate standing. It’s audacious and represents the scraping of the rule of law by the Senate,” Dane said.--humanevents.com

* 7/1/11--President Obama today threw down the Big Government gauntlet. Not only did he demand that Congress raise taxes but he fixed August 2, as the "hard deadline" for getting it done. Obama and the Big Government forces in D.C., have now raised the stakes and are saying they will accept nothing less than HIGHER TAXES AND MORE DEBT! Fortunately, tens of thousands of citizens are issuing their own clear DEMANDS to Congress regarding spending and debt: Cut, Cap and Balance! A strong coalition of grassroots organizations and members of Congress are uniting behind this straightforward solution to runaway government spending and debt. The "Cut, Cap and Balance" pledge demands that the following conditions are met before any increase in the debt ceiling:

#1 -- Substantial CUTS in spending that will reduce the deficit.

#2 -- Spending CAPS that put the government on a path to a balanced budget.

#3 -- Passage of the Balanced Budget Amendment BEFORE any votes on raising the debt ceiling!--Grassroots Action Alert

* 7/8/11--WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. jobs growth ground to a near halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest workers in nine months, frustrating hopes the economy would bounce back quickly from a slowdown in the first half of the year. Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists' expectations for rise of at least 90,000. The unemployment rate climbed to a six-month high of 9.2 percent from 9.1 percent in May even as jobseekers left the labor force in droves. "The message on the economy is ongoing stagnation," said Pierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision economics in New York. "Income growth is marginal so there's no indication of momentum. Stocks on Wall Street opened lower on the data, while U.S. Treasury debt prices rallied. The dollar was little changed against a basket of currencies. The government revised April and May payrolls to show 44,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported. The report shattered expectations the economy was starting to accelerate after a soft patch in the first half of the year.--Reuters

* 7/8/11--Has it really been 800 days since Senate Democrats began failing to pass a budget? Why, it seems like only yesterday. Time flies when you’re watching out-of-control politicians throw around huge piles of money without even the pretense of restraint. The Tea Party Patriots commemorated the 800-day anniversary with a trenchant press release:

“The Senate has a legal obligation to pass a budget every year but has not done so for more than two years,” said Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “Democrats have controlled the Senate and the White House since the election of 2008, and the House of Representatives up until this year. Certainly they could have passed any budget they desired, including one with tax increases and spending increases. But they chose to ignore the 800-day gorilla in the room because they don't want to be on record supporting a budget that actually does what they want. Then the public could hold them accountable for their cowardly and irresponsible behavior in the face of national fiscal calamity.”
“This week marks the 800 Days of Infamy—800 days without passing a budget,” said Mark Meckler, National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “This Senate, controlled by Democrats, will go down as one of the most irresponsible, do-nothing Senates in the history of the institution. May history judge them as harshly as they deserve, and may the electorate throw many of them out on their collective hind ends in 2012.” A couple of days ago, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) offered these thoughts in a National Review piece written with Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee:

While the House has passed a serious, credible budget that tackles this debt crisis head-on, 800 days — and $7.3 trillion dollars — have come and gone since the Democrat-led Senate has adopted a budget. Not only is a budget a concrete fiscal plan, but it expresses a philosophy of governing. Democrats’ refusal to pass a budget — and refusal to put their big-government economic theories on paper — is of extraordinary significance. Making matters worse, the only budget submitted by the president is a fundamentally unserious plan that doubles our debt and speeds us to economic decline. The Democrats have not even proposed a budget. President Obama gave a speech on the topic a few months ago, but it was a demagogic campaign speech intended primarily to attack Paul Ryan – author of the Republican “Path to Prosperity” package of very concrete proposals – who was sitting in the front row. Back in May, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stated, “There’s no need to have a Democratic budget in my opinion. It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.” Does he still consider it “foolish” fifty days later? Eight hundred days of political cowardice, reckless irresponsibility, and dereliction of duty. Enjoy your milestone, Democrats. May the American people remember it well in 2012.--humanevents.com

* 7/8/11--The truth always comes out, as Barack Obama is discovering. Despite having the Leftmedia in his corner, his epic mishandling of the economy is coming to light, and people are taking notice. The economy added a paltry 18,000 jobs in June, "far less than expected." (Who are these experts that continue putting forth wrong expectations?) This follows just 25,000 added in May, and, for the second straight month, the unemployment rate increased -- to 9.2 percent. Things aren't so bad for members of Obama's staff, though. The administration recently released a report confirming that 454 White House aides will earn a whopping $37,121,463 this year. By law, the information must be made public, but the ever-savvy Obama released the information on Friday afternoon before the July 4th holiday weekend. Obama said that those salaries had been "frozen," but apparently that means that only 75 percent of staffers got raises between 2009 and 2010. The average increase was about 15 percent. The report also excluded the identities of the 41 Obama staffers who owe $831,000 in back taxes. One would think a president so outraged at the tax breaks afforded to "millionaires, billionaires and corporate jet owners" would have a zero tolerance for this sort of thing. Also late Friday afternoon, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers released some interesting literature -- a report on the impact of the stimulus. The three advisers, handpicked by Obama himself, tried to sugarcoat the numbers, but the results are clear: The 2.4 million jobs that the stimulus has allegedly "saved or created" have cost, er, $666 billion, which comes out to $278,000 per job. The most telling part of all this is that six months ago, the stimulus had supposedly saved 2.7 million jobs. In other words, it's now leeching jobs from the economy instead of adding them. Some of those jobs may be coming from the banking industry. Banks across the country -- including the country's largest, Bank of America -- are closing branches left and right. In fact, for the first time in 15 years, they're closing them faster than they can open them. For Obama, self-proclaimed champion of the poor, this exposes another ironic truth: Low-income communities could be those most affected by the closures.--Patriot Post Digest

* 7/11/11--"There's no good way to spin the news that came out of [Friday's] monthly U.S. jobs report. The economy generated only 18,000 total new jobs, the unemployment rate increased to 9.2 percent, and the number of unemployed Americans has gone up by 445,000. In other words, the recovery appears to have slowed markedly. President Barack Obama's stimulus-infused 'recovery' refuses to ignite, unsurprisingly to all but him. And to make matters worse, May's paltry job growth numbers were revised even farther downward, from the initial estimate of 54,000 to 25,000. Sadly, the record continues -- the Obama recovery remains the weakest recovery of the post-World War II era. In past recessions, employment fully recovered within two to three years. Today, U.S. job growth is stopped dead in its tracks. If you want a comparison of what job growth could look like, go back to the 1980s' Reagan recovery. By the 20-month mark, the unemployment rate had dropped from 10.8 percent to 7.5 percent -- a 3.3-point drop. In contrast, under Obama, the unemployment rate has risen a full percentage point to today's 9.2 percent. ... The pace of America's economic recovery is unacceptable, and it's being made worse by the Obama Administration's adherence to a flawed philosophy of relying on government to do the work of the private sector." --Heritage Foundation's Mike Brownfield (From Patriot Post Brief)

* 7/11/11--"According to a shocking news report, California legislators have enacted legislation that gives the state the dubious distinction of being the first state in the nation to require public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in their social studies curriculum. ... The bill, SB 48, passed on a party-line vote, adds lesbian, gay, bisexual and so-called transgendered people as well as those with physical or mental disabilities to the list of groups that schools must include in the lessons. It also would prohibit material that reflects adversely on gays. ... It will prove instructive to see how the state's lawmakers go about the job of implementing this absurd legislation. ... The matter of the content of school textbooks has long been a controversial subject, but until now it has never reached the point where specific parts of the population are singled out for preferential treatment, especially when the segment of the population is distinguished solely by their sexual preferences." --columnist Michael Reagan (From Patriot Post Brief)

* 7/13/11-- Opposition is building on Capitol Hill to President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department, a cabinet position to which some Republicans say John Bryson is completely unsuited. "This is so ironic, because here's a guy who wants to kill commerce," said Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla.). Inhofe is the latest Republican to put a hold on the nomination, a process that is usually kept secret unless the member announced the hold during a press conference. And during a press conference Tuesday, Inhofe did just that. Along with two conservative organizations, Inhofe hopes to derail Obama's pick: "This is a recipe for disaster for our economy," Inhofe said. "With sky high unemployment and a struggling economy, who does President Obama choose to promote job growth? The founder of the radical Natural Resources Defense Council, a left-wing environmentalist organization, which in the name of global warming, seeks to increase drastically the price of electricity and gasoline across America," Inhofe said.--human events.com

* 7/13/11--"The ignorance about our country is staggering. According to one survey, only 28% of students could identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Only 26% of students knew that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Fewer than one-quarter of students knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States. ... Ignorance and possibly contempt for American values, civics and history might help explain how someone like Barack Obama could become president of the United States. At no other time in our history could a person with longtime associations with people who hate our country become president. ... The fact that Obama became president and brought openly Marxist people into his administration doesn't say so much about him as it says about the effects of decades of brainwashing of the American people by the education establishment, media and the intellectual elite." --economist Walter E. Williams (From Patriot Post Chronicle)

* 7/20/11-- As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he believed marriage was a union between a man and a woman, but this week the president says he is proud for pride and is supporting a bill that would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Just hours before Senate Democrats began their hearing on the measure sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the White House said Obama is "proud to support" it. DOMA passed on a bipartisan vote in 1996 and was signed into law by President Clinton. The law defined marriage as between a man and a woman and blocked the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. "Despite the clear will of the people we have this legislation before us today," said Rep. Steve King (R. Iowa), who testified before the Senate panel this morning. "President Obama has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of these laws. It is not the role of the executive branch to determine what is constitutional, but to uphold the laws," King said.
"It is clearly the will of the American people to maintain and uphold [DOMA]. This is good for families, good for society and good for government," King said. Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D. Ga.) testified in favor of Feinstein's bill calling it "an issue of dignity." "As a child, I tasted the bitter fruit of racism and discrimination, and I did not like it," Lewis said. Under Obama's leadership and the Democrat-led Senate, Lewis said Congress should lead the way and overturn the law. "We are called to be a headlight, not a taillight," Lewis said.--humanevents.com

* 7/20/11--A new study found that even a brief exposure to an American flag shifts voters to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior. Via US News and World Report: Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don’t believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science. What’s more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power. “A single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months,” the study found. “These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.” Theirs is the first study to look at the political impact on Americans who have seen an American flag, and it seems to back up another recent Harvard University professor’s study that found that kids who attended a July 4th parade ended up leaning Republican when they grew up. It’s also sure to prompt GOP presidential candidates to add more U.S. flags at their events and speeches.--thegatewaypundit.com

* 7/21/11--(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, pointing to a labor market that is struggling to regain momentum. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 418,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 410,000 from a previously reported 405,000.

7/21/11--Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign trumpeted hope for the future, but his legacy may include presiding over the withering of the American Dream. Belief that the American Dream is possible has dropped by nearly 20 points since his election, falling just below one-half of U.S. adults.--John Zogby, Forbes Magazine.

* 7/29/11-- The Wall Street Journal reports, "The U.S. economy expanded at a slower pace than expected in the spring as consumers cut back on spending, while revisions showed the slowdown since the beginning of the year was much more drastic than previously thought. The Commerce Department Friday said gross domestic product rose at an annualized seasonally adjusted rate of 1.3% in April through June, while first-quarter growth was revised down sharply to a 0.4% rate from the earlier estimate of a 1.9% gain."--Patriot Post Digest

* 7/31/11--Iraq is more dangerous than it was just a year ago, after a surge in bombings, assassinations and violence by Shi'ite militias, according to a report released today. In his quarterly review to Congress, a top government adviser accused the U.S. military of glossing over the issue, just months before soldiers are due to leave the country. The findings come during a 'summer of uncertainty' in Baghdad over whether American forces will stay past a year-end withdrawal deadline and continue military aid for the unstable nation. The review follows the bloodiest month for the U.S. military in two years, after 15 soldiers died in June.--dailymail.co.uk