Obama: If The GOP Passes An Immigration Bill, The Executive Actions That I Take Go Away

NBC political analyst Chuck Todd predicted Tuesday night that the president would have to back away from his threat to act unilaterally on immigration because of the Republican sweep.

“I think politically, tonight, it put an end to it. It would be a provocative act, politically,” Todd said. “The president is going to know that if he does this, he is starting a political war in Washington between the White House and the Republican Congress. He’d be stuck.”

That seemed like a reasonable opinion last night -- while the waves of the stunning political tsunami were still slowly subsiding.

But Dr. Charles Krauthammer, a trained psychologist, has Obama better pegged than that. He understands the psychology of a narcissist who loves conflict and "rubbing raw the resentments of the people." 

"I think the president's threatening this because he wants to do it," Krauthammer explained on Special Report Wednesday.  "I think he's all the more anxious to go ahead and do this because it makes him relevant, it makes him the center of the universe again. He is not a happy man that he was asked for a year by his own Democrats to stay away and be invisible. This is a guy who doesn't enjoy being invisible and, look, what are we talking about tonight? A little bit on the election itself, and now about what he's going to do. He's back in the game, he's relevant now. This is exactly why he wants immigration. Republicans have to resist the temptation, this is impeachment bait or all kinds of nonsense bait. Do what you can, suspend the financing of this because you have the power of the purse. But create your own agenda and don't allow Obama to suck you into a one-issue fall."

Obama doubled down on the amnesty threat during today's press conference, affirming that it would happen because Republicans haven't been willing to work with him for the past two years. He said that the best way to avoid his unlawful action would be for Congress to cooperate and put a bill on his desk. Sounding like a Chicago shakedown artist, the president promised that if Congress behaves and passes an immigration law he likes, the executive overreach will "go away."

"I think that the best way, if folks are serious about getting immigration reform done, is going ahead and passing a bill and getting it to my desk. And then the executive actions that I take go away. They’re superseded by the law that is passed. And I will engage any member of Congress who’s interested in this in how we can shape legislation that will be a significant improvement over the existing system.

Serious question: How is it not a form of extortion for a president to threaten to take an extreme unilateral action if Congress doesn't do what he wants? 

So far response from Republican leadership has been tepid: 

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, in line to be the next Majority Leader, said Wednesday that it would be a "mistake" for the president to take unilateral action on immigration and that it would "antagonize" Republicans.

But the American people who just handed the reins of power in the Senate to the Republicans, don't particularly care about their "feelings" regarding Obama's latest abuse of power. They want action.

Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and David Vitter of Louisiana have risen to the occasion, sending a letter to lame-duck Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Wednesday, saying that if Obama takes unilateral action to grant amnesty to illegal aliens, it "will create a constitutional crisis."
Via CNS News:

The senators told Reid that they would assist him in enacting a measure to stop Obama from unilaterally granting an amnesty, but that if Reid lets Obama go forward with such an amnesty they "would use all procedural means necessary" to make the Senate focus on the constitutional crisis they say that this "lawless amnesty" would create.

"We write to express our alarm with President Obama's announced intention to take unilateral executive action by the end of this year to lawlessly grant amnesty to immigrants who have entered the country illegally," the senators wrote Reid.

"The Supreme Court has recognized that 'over no conceivable subject is the power of Congress more complete' than its power over immigration," the senators said. "Therefore, President Obama will be exercising powers properly belonging to Congress if he makes good his threat.

Stay tuned. We are in for a bumpy ride.

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IF REPUBLICANS HAD EMBRACED THE TEA PARTY, MIDTERM RESULTS WOULDN’T EVEN BE A CONTEST

With just about every poll and pundit predicting Republican success in Tuesday’s elections, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told listeners the outcomes wouldn’t even have been close if the GOP paid more attention to its tea party base.

Limbaugh was reacting to a Politico piece posted Monday, “Mainstream GOP Sees Tipping Point vs. Insurgent Candidates,” that aimed to explain Republicans expected successes Tuesday as a victory for the party’s “establishment,” structure.

National Republicans managed this year to snuff out every bomb-throwing insurgent who tried to wrest a Senate nod away from one of their favored candidates ….

 The confrontational approach — by both party committees and outside super PACs — represented a sharp departure from the GOP’s cautious strategy in the 2010 and 2012 cycles, when cartoonishly inept nominees aligned with the tea party lost the party as many as five Senate seats.

So it was the Republican national party turning its back on the tea party that set the table for victory on Tuesday?

Wrong, Limbaugh said.

It was the tea party – vast and unorganized but deeply committed — that kept the conservative cause alive and thriving long before the rest of the country or the GOP establishment got a handle on the results of Barack Obama’s 2008 victory and liberal Democrats control of the House, Senate and White House.

And if Republicans win the midterm electoral victories that are being predicted, it will be in spite of the national party’s efforts to distance itself from the base that kept it alive in the first place. Had the national party been even open to what Politico describes as “insurgents” in the GOP ranks, it would have been seeing even more success, Limbaugh said.

And if the Republican Party had embraced the most amazing political event of our lifetime, and that’s the rise of the Tea Party … — ah, you might want to say the fall of the Berlin Wall, but that also had foreign policy connotations.  But out of nowhere this massive political movement rises. Out of nowhere in 2010 it arises precisely because of its opposition to the Democrat president, the Democrat Party, and what they are doing to the country, and to this day the Republican Party has refused to embrace it.  In fact, it’s the opposite.

They’ve attempted to diminish and impugn the Tea Party to the point now we’ve got a Politico story, which says that the real thing the Republicans are gonna celebrate if they take the Senate is not taking the Senate but vanquishing the idea that the Tea Party is needed for Republicans to win.

As usual, Rush is right.

Of course there were primary fights between Republicans – that’s what primaries are for. But none of the Republicans in competitive races Tuesday had the luxury of turning their backs on the tea party movement.

Nor should they, even if election politics were different this year. The goal, after all, is not winning intra-Republican disputes. And it’s not winning elections just for the sake of winning elections in 2016. The goal is repairing some of the damage wrought over the past six years by the victory of “hope and change” illusions in 2008.

And that’s going to mean the tea party movement is more important even than it was before – no matter what GOP sources might be telling lefty news website reporters inside the Beltway.

 “It’s not about stopping the tea party, for crying out loud!” Limbaugh said. “It’s about stopping Obama.”

It has been since Day One. And the tea party knew it long before the “mainstream” GOP did.

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Scientists Refute IPCC’s Latest Alarmism On Global Warming

The latest United Nations climate report is sounding the alarm on man-made global warming, saying that fossil fuels needed to be eliminated from the energy supply in the coming decades to avoid catastrophe.

“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” reads the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report.

“Decarbonizing… electricity generation is a key component of cost-effective mitigation strategies in achieving low stabilization levels,” the IPCC noted, adding that green energy needed to make up 80 percent of the world’s energy supply by 2050 and 90 percent by 2100 in order to kep temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

Despite the stark warning from the IPCC, some scientists have said the warning is not dire enough. The Washington Post’s Chris Mooney reported last weekabout scientists who thought the IPCC’s global warming predictions were too cautious. These scientists argue that the IPCC process can “lead to downplaying the full ranges of future scenarios.”

But while some scientists are saying the IPCC isn’t alarmist enough in its reporting on global warming, others argue that the UN climate bureaucracy is too alarmist in its predictions.

“The IPCC should be lowering their estimates of future impacts, most definitely not raising them,” Cato Institute scientist Chip Knappenberger told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “There is a major flaw in the IPCC [fifth assessment] (and all previous reports as well) in that the climate models that are used to produce all the scary climate projections are very likely, collectively, too sensitive to the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Knappenberger is referring to a measurement called “climate sensitivity” — referring to the estimated temperature rise from a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide levels. Increasingly, scientists have been lowering their climate sensitivity measures as temperatures refuse to increase in two decades.

“Only desperate climate alarmists would have the gall to suggest the IPCC produces ‘conservative’ estimates of climate change in light of a growing mountain of evidence that the IPCC actually exaggerates potential climate change,” echoed Pat Michaels, director of Cato’s Center for the Study of Science.

Satellite temperature data shows average global temperatures have not displayed a warming trend in more than 18 years. This so-called pause in global warming has baffled scientists, who have offered dozens of explanations for why global temperatures have not trended upwards in nearly two decades.

“Sometimes, the smartest thing a forecaster can do is look out the window,” Michaels said. “Obviously, way too much warming has been and is being predicted.”

The IPCC has actually overestimated warming since 1950, according to Michaels. “It turns out that the average warming trend predicted for every period of record [1950-2013, 1951-2013, 1952 and others] are greater than what has been observed,” he said.

Scientists and environmentalists, however, have fired back at claims that climate models are running too hot by noting that surface temperature records show the last three decades have been hotter than any other on record. In fact, scientists predict 2014 is on track to be the hottest year on record globally.

Knappenberger noted, however, that even if 2014 is the hottest year on record, the observe average global temperature has been well below what climate models predicted.

Knappenberger wrote that “global warming fear-mongers point out that the average global temperature so far this year is a few hundredths of a degree higher than the previous record. Yet they fail to point out that the same temperature is more than two-tenths of a degree (about 10 times as much) below where it was supposed to be based on computer model projections of climate change resulting from the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

“They throw out statistics like ‘the 12 hottest years on record have come in the past 15 years.’ And yet never mention the fact that 15 of the past 15 years are cooler than their (obviously overheated) global warming predictions,” Knappenberger added.

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The Pyrrhic Victory: Tuesday Could End the GOP

Some prominent Republicans seem to be feeling their oats, assuming what are sometimes infamously referred to as "RINOs" or Republicans in name only by the Conservative GOP base, eat oats, of course. Mitt Romney is merely channeling Jeb Bush here in an increasingly obvious last-minute GOP establishment gesture to reach out to Hispanics, perhaps especially in Colorado, as we move closer to election day.

On "Fox News Sunday, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) said a Republican-led Senate would pass new, stronger legislation on immigration reform.

To be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the GOP welcoming more and more Hispanics into a Right-leaning fold. In fact, it needs to do that. Unfortunately, there are few if any across the GOP's traditional - and much broader - rank and file supporters who still believe they'll do it with anything other than something amounting to trying to be better Democrats, than the Democrats themselves.

Republican Mike McFadden tried that in his bid to oust Al Franken in Minnesota. He's currently down by a Real Clear Politics average of ten points. The Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and perhaps now Jeb Bush led GOP refuses to accept the reality that they never will, nor can they be better Democrats than actual Democrats. Furthermore, the growing lack of enthusiasm and numbers across what was once a vibrant GOP base as they continue to try may indeed signal bad years ahead for a national party increasingly out of touch with their own past supporters around the nation.

Norm Ornstein at National Journal recently touched upon a potential disaster waiting in the wings for the GOP should it actually win the Senate this coming week. If an over-exuberant GOP ekes out a Senate majority in what by every measure should have been a banner and even better year, the disaster could easily be even worse than Ornstein suggests.

A Republican Senate Victory Could Splinter the PartyThe tension between setting out a positive agenda for governing and the pressure to continue to block and obstruct will be very, very high.

Not surprisingly, today, the AP seems to be feeding into the current GOP delusion. 

GOP Rebels Mind Their Political Manners

Tea party groups and other Republican rebels that thrive on bedeviling the party establishment are minding their political manners in the run-up to Election Day, while Democrats are struggling.

I'd suggest, the real question is, are so called 'GOP rebels' really minding their manners, or have they now grown so tired of holding their noses that they are increasingly disengaged? In conversation after conversation I've had with GOP-aligned activists I've known for years, the latter appears to be the case. 

Even Rand Paul recently pointed out how bad the GOP brand is hurting: Rand Paul: GOP brand 'sucks'. Try to square that with any notion of a triumphant GOP taking control of the Senate and marching on to victory in 2016.

It doesn't add up. Then think about a second scenario. It's a mid-term election in which, by any measure, from the long history of mid-term elections, to Obama's current dismal approval numbers, the GOP should have won this year in what would have been viewed as a crushing wave of voter resentment. But it didn't happen. 

Face it, the GOP is poised to win today only because the Democrats are having a bad year, not because they're having a good one. And an establishment GOP that by Mitch McConnell's own admission sought to "crush" it's own base in the primaries can't blame conservatives, or so called Tea Party-aligned candidates. They got pretty much the slate of candidate they wanted and still under-performed, even if they do eke out a win on Tuesday.

If that's all they can achieve with the wind at their backs and everything else going their way ... how does that suggest they'll do in what will surely be a more challenging scenario in 2016? In reality, even if this version of the GOP wins the Senate, it's performing so weakly, it may have to wait for a mid-Winter run-off in Louisiana to celebrate it.

No doubt the usual suspects, from the establishment GOP operatives, to so many now out of touch D.C.-based capitol hill GOP staffers and the lobbyists in between will drink and celebrate no matter how small the GOP's margin of victory in a year when it should have been huge ... but then, they did the very same thing on the decks of the Titanic not long before she went down, too.

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Gang of Eight Republicans Discourage Obama Against Executive Amnesty

Three of the Republicans who worked to push comprehensive immigration reform through the Senate last year are calling on President Obama to refrain from taking executive action on immigration reform.

In a letter to Obama Thursday, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) urged Obama not to offer amnesty to illegal immigrants until the southern border is secure and immigration law is effectively enforced. 

“It is our view, along with many of our colleagues and a majority of the American people, that no action should be taken to legalize undocumented immigrants who are living and working in the United States until we have properly secured our southern border and provided for effective enforcement of immigration laws,” the trio wrote. “Moreover, the need to secure our southern border and effectively enforce the law has been underscored – not diminished – by recent developments at home and abroad of which you are well aware.”

They further argued that if Obama takes the action that many expect him to take he would “flaunt the separation of powers and our system of checks and balances, undermine the rule of law, and frustrate the proper administration of our current immigration system.” 

Additionally, they wrote, such amnesty would “incentivize illegal immigration and open the floodgates to more visa overstays and illegal entries over our southern border.”

They concluded by calling on Obama to work with Congress to accomplish immigration reform. 

“Unilateral action by the executive branch on this issue would be detrimental to finding and enacting much-needed long-term policy and legislative solutions to our broken immigration system,” they wrote. “In this regard, acting by executive order on an issue of this magnitude would be the most divisive action you could take – completely undermining any good-faith effort to meaningfully address this important issue, which would be a disservice to the needs of the American people.”

Read the full letter:

Dear Mr. President:

You recently indicated that you plan to sign, perhaps sometime after next Tuesday’s elections, an executive action that could give work permits and green cards to millions of people who entered the United States illegally. We write to you today to strongly discourage such action.

It is our view, along with many of our colleagues and a majority of the American people, that no action should be taken to legalize undocumented immigrants who are living and working in the United States until we have properly secured our southern border and provided for effective enforcement of immigration laws. Moreover, the need to secure our southern border and effectively enforce the law has been underscored – not diminished – by recent developments at home and abroad of which you are well aware.

With this in mind, the issue of immigration is clearly one that must be debated and decided by the representatives of the people. Congress must fulfill its obligations under the Constitution and address this issue. Furthermore, it is not clear under what authority you would take such action, if you chose to do so. Taking executive action along the lines that have been reported would flaunt the separation of powers and our system of checks and balances, undermine the rule of law, and frustrate the proper administration of our current immigration system. Additionally, providing legal status by executive order to people who entered this country unlawfully will only incentivize illegal immigration and open the floodgates to more visa overstays and illegal entries over our southern border.

Mr. President, we urge you to work with Congress to secure our borders and address the serious issues facing America’s immigration system. Unilateral action by the executive branch on this issue would be detrimental to finding and enacting much-needed long-term policy and legislative solutions to our broken immigration system. In this regard, acting by executive order on an issue of this magnitude would be the most divisive action you could take – completely undermining any good-faith effort to meaningfully address this important issue, which would be a disservice to the needs of the American people.

We thank you for your consideration of this important request. 

Respectfully,

John McCain

Lindsey Graham

Marco Rubio

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Democrats Accused Of Posing As Republican Election Judges In Colorado

The Colorado secretary of state is investigating allegations that some Boulder County Republican election judges are actually Democrats in disguise.

Boulder County GOP Chairwoman Ellyn Hilliard initially raised the alarm when visiting polling locations where she didn’t recognize some of the GOP judges who are tasked with comparing voter signatures on mail ballots to protect against vote fraud.

She became alarmed when she noticed some ballots whose signatures clearly didn’t match those on file for the voter being accepted.

Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert began investigating and confirmed to the Daily Camera that she found “some troubling inconsistencies with some election judges.”

“One of them was a Democrat who had changed party affiliation on Oct. 10, so we are concerned that Boulder didn’t follow the list, then resorted to advertising for these positions,” she told the paper.

Hilliard submitted a list of 95 potential Republican election judges to the Boulder County election coordinator after the GOP caucus earlier in the year. The coordinator is supposed to appoint a roughly equal number of judges from the major parties to ensure a fair election.

But according to the Camera, if not enough judges agree to participate from a certain party, the law allows the county clerk some leeway in filling the vacancies with judges from other parties.

Molly Tayer, Boulder County elections coordinator, said that’s what happened in this case.

“[Hilliard’s] original list was 95, and only five have joined this year’s workforce,” Tayer told the Camera. “We performed repeated outreach to the Republicans’ list: emails, notes, calls. We exhausted the list and as much as we reached out to them, people did not come. After that, we just moved on to getting people to do this work.”

Prior to a rally for Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner Tuesday, Hilliard made what the Camera called an “emotional” plea for more Republicans to volunteer to oversee the election, telling attendees that elections officials are currently helping “the Democrats steal the election.”

She cited instances in which she said she saw judges accept ballots with signatures that clearly did not match those on file for the voter. At one point, the Camera reported, Hilliard had tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I get emotional because this is how they win.”

Boulder County has about 245 election judges, including 100 registered Democrats and 78 registered Republicans. The rest, according to the Camera, are either unaffiliated or registered with a third party.

“We’re on the same side,” Tayer told the Camera, in response to Hilliard’s complaint. “We both want bipartisan election judges working on our processes together. We told her that if she could find people from her caucus list that wanted to do the work, she could bring those people on, and we thanked her very much for doing that.”

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Eric Holder, Jeh Johnson to Give Final Input on Executive Amnesty One Week After Midterms

Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will reportedly give President Barack Obama their final executive amnesty recommendations in two weeks, a week after the midterm elections in which Republicans could take back Congress.

And pro-amnesty activists are unhappy that Obama, who has promised to unilaterally act on immigration "before the end of the year," may not enact the biggest executive amnesty possible.

According to BuzzFeed, the final executive amnesty recommendations "are expected to be delivered in the next two weeks." Obama administration officials are reportedly deciding whether illegal immigrants have had to be in the country for five or ten years to receive temporary amnesty and work permits. In addition, officials are considering whether the parents of DREAMers should be given temporary amnesty and work permits. 

As Breitbart News first reported, the Obama administration has ordered immigrant ID cards to prepare for a potential surge ahead of Obama's planned executive amnesty. But amnesty advocates told BuzzFeed that they are disappointed that Obama may only give amnesty to just 3 million illegal immigrants. 

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has said that he demanded interest in the form of a bigger and broader executive amnesty after the White House asked him and other Hispanic leaders for "forbearance" after Obama missed his self-imposed "by the end of summer" deadline to help Senate Democrats preserve the Senate. And a "Draft Gutierrez" for president group is reportedly planning to convince him to run for president if Obama's executive amnesty is underwhelming. 

Pro-amnesty advocates vowed to the left-wing outlet that they were going to "unleash the ferocity of the movement." Another pro-amnesty advocate said the Obama administration has "disrespected" illegal immigrants by not granting them amnesty as soon as possible. 

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IPCC Climate Scientist: Global Warming ‘Pause’ Could Last 30 Years

Global warming? Maybe not anytime soon, according to a top United Nations scientist.

Dr. Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences told Bavarian Radio that the so-called “pause” in global warming could continue for another three decades.

Currently, satellite datasets show that the average global temperature has not warmed in more than 18 years. Latif told BR that temperatures would start accelerating between 2020 and 2025, meaning global warming could be on pause or slowed down for the next 6 to 11 years. This could put the total time of the pause between 24 and 29 years.

Latif, who is also a top scientist with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the pause in warming was no surprise to him since he predicted the warming hiatus back in 2008.

“That does not surprise climate scientists like me at all, as for us this is completely normal,” Latif told BR. “When one takes a look at the development since 1900, that is the last 110 years, then we see that it has not always gone up. Rather it has progressed in waves. This is why it is necessary to look at long time periods.”

“If we look at the entire time period, then it is impossible to miss seeing the rise,” Latif added. “In 2008 in the journal ‘Nature’ I myself predicted the pause… Back then it created a huge echo in the global media. I’m wondering why all of this seems to have been forgotten in the meantime.”

Latif is referring to a study he did back in 2008 that found the world could be entering an era of cooler temperatures, one that could last a decade or two. But liberal pundits pointed out that Latif’s forecast only went to 2015 — everything beyond was too hard to predict (kind of makes you wonder about other century-long climate predictions).

“The reaction went in every direction. The reaction was, as you just formulated: ‘Everything can’t be so bad!” Latif said.

Think Progress’s Joe Romm wrote in 2009 that, “No, Latif does not ‘anticipate’ maybe even two decades of cooling.  He doesn’t even predict it.  Again, as Latif will happily tell anyone who asks, ‘my only forecast is to 2015.’”

But now that it’s 2014, Latif seems to be reiterating what people (except Romm) thought he was saying in his 2008 study: the pause could last another decade.

“In this study I expressly said that it does not mean that it’s all over, but that the temperature increase will rise even faster – starting in 2020, 2025,” Latif told BR.

Interestingly enough, a recent study by Latif made a similar veiled prediction that temperatures would cool over the next decade due to natural oceanic cycles in the North Atlantic.

“Our model tells us that the phase with a rather high surface temperatures in the North Atlantic will continue also over the coming decade, however with a slightly negative trend,” Latif and fellow scientists wrote in a study published last month.

[h/t No Tricks Zone]

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Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Law Lets IRS Seize Citizens’ Cash When No Crime Is Suspected

Imagine being informed that the Internal Revenue Service has seized your bank account. They don’t accuse you of any crime, they simply acted because your account, used for your small business, has too much money in that was deposited in increments of less than $10,000 – the amount that requires the transaction to be reported to the IRS.

That may sound absurd, but it’s happening across the country.

The New York Times introduces us to Carole Hinders, an Iowa woman who owns a small, cash-only restaurant. Last year she had her checking account, all $33,000 of it, seized by the IRS. Not because she didn’t pay taxes on her business (she did), and not because she was suspected of any crime (she wasn’t), but because “she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.”

How can the IRS do this when not only no crime has been alleged, but none is suspected? The Times reports:

Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.

Hinders is not alone. According to the Institute for Justice, the IRS “made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.”

After being contacted by the Times this week, the IRS said it would change this practice, and switch its focus “on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by ‘exceptional circumstances.’”

In a written statement, IRS chief of Criminal Investigations, Richard Weber, said, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.’s mission and key priorities.”

Depositing money specifically to evade the $10,000 threshold for scrutiny will still remain illegal, but the IRS will exercise discretion when it comes to small and cash-only businesses where no criminal activity is alleged or suspected. These new guidelines will only apply to future cases, not past seizures.

But the IRS is not alone in exercising this power. Law enforcement agencies are incentivized to search for transactions, illegal or not, that could qualify for seizure by the fact that any agency that triggers such seizures gets to keep a portion of the money forfeited.

The Times reports critics saying, “this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks and other financial institutions must report cash deposits greater than $10,000.”

Many innocent people can’t afford the legal fight to get their money back. “The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs can easily mount to $20,000 or more.”

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True the Vote's Lawsuit Against IRS Gets Tossed by Federal Judge

On Thursday, a federal judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered an order dismissing a lawsuit filed by True the Vote, a Houston, Texas-based non-profit organization focused on "voters’ rights and election integrity" against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The order alleged that the IRS had improperly delayed granting their application for 501(c)(3) status and targeted them as a conservative organization. The opinion, by Judge Reggie B. Walton, found that the IRS had taken sufficient "remedial steps to address the alleged behavior." 

Breitbart Texas spoke with Logan Churchwell, True the Vote's communications director, after the court's ruling was released, and he shared some important details about the timeline of this case. One of the main issues argued in True the Vote's lawsuit was that the IRS had improperly delayed granting their 501(c)(3) application, which is the section of the IRS code conferring tax-exempt status on qualifying non-profit organizations. True the Vote filed their application during the summer of 2010, and pursuant to the IRS's own rules, the agency had a duty to send a response within 270 days. That deadline was not met. Instead, years went by, while True the Vote, founder Catherine Engelbrecht, and King Street Patriots, another tea party group with which Engelbrecht was affiliated, all found themselves subject to invasive requests for records and information from not only the IRS, but also the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In May 2013, news broke that the IRS admitted targeting conservative organizations applying for 501(c)(3) status with "special scrutiny," and True the Vote filed their lawsuit later that month. "We knew we were getting questions about a lot of things other than tax returns," said Churchwell, describing the "strange questions" asked by IRS agents that seemed far beyond the scope of what they had expected, including number of Facebook "likes," membership lists, and content of internal organizational communications.

The IRS finally granted True the Vote's 501(c)(3) status in September 2013. Almost a year later, in July 2014, while waiting for the judge to issue a ruling on the parties' initial briefs, more news broke: that emails from Lois Lerner's computer had been "lost" in a computer crash. True the Vote filed a new motion seeking to begin discovery, arguing that the news meant that there was a real risk that relevant evidence could be lost or destroyed. The court denied that motion and then took no further substantive action until today's ruling, which dismissed the entire case.

Judge Walton's opinion stated that because the IRS had finally granted True the Vote their 501(c)(3) status, the case "no longer warrant[ed] the Court’s attention and further use of its resources," and deemed True the Vote's lawsuit to now be moot. However, True the Vote had argued specific costs that the IRS' delay had caused them, including fees for attorneys and CPAs, as well as fundraising losses. A number of other non-profit organizations and other donors had either pledged or donated money to True the Vote with the understanding that the group would have official 501(c)(3) status soon. Some of these groups even had requirements in their organizational documents that they could only give money to other approved 501(c)(3) organizations. According to Churchwell, the IRS' years-long delay acted as a "functional denial of our application" and True the Vote was forced to return some donations, and other pledges were revoked. Churchwell described the total costs to True the Vote caused by the IRS' delay to be nearly $90,000.

Churchwell told Breitbart Texas that while today's ruling was not the result they had sought, they were nonetheless "appreciative of the D.C. District Court's service and opinion on this matter and is currently considering all legal options," including possible appeals of the decision. Engelbrecht also released a statement to Breitbart Texas:

"We are stunned by today's judgment. The notion that the IRS can target Americans for years because of their political beliefs is reprehensible.  The Court acknowledges in its opinion that the IRS did in fact target True the Vote for our perceived political beliefs, but then it holds that neither the agency nor the individual IRS agents or officers are responsible for this unconstitutional conduct. Right now, we are considering all legal options and will announce our next steps very soon."

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First Ever EPA Chief May Have Lied To Congress

Environmentalist attempts to showcase Republican support for “climate action” this summer may be backfiring because of one former political appointee. The Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever chief administrator may have lied to a congressional committee about his ties to environmental groups.

William Ruckelshaus was appointed to be the EPA’s first administrator in 1970. He quickly gained renown among environmentalists for banning the chemical DDT, which he said could cause cancer.

In June, Ruckleshaus along with three other former Republican-appointed EPA chiefs, was brought before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to testify on the urgent need to address global warming.

During the hearing, Ruckelshaus and the other former EPA chiefs opined on the need to make major policy changes to stop global warming. Ruckelshaus later complained in an interview that global warming “is just so polarized.” He told E&E News that “Republicans on that committee– it’s a completely ideological position they take.”

But while the hearing itself was a pretty boilerplate affair, the questions posed by senators for Ruckelshaus to answer in writing after the hearing have raised some questions. Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter asked Ruckelshaus about his connections to environmental groups while he was heading the EPA under President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Ruckelshaus subsequently ran the EPA for President Ronald Reagan.

“In what year did you first start fundraising for the Environmental Defense Fund? And how much money in total would you estimate you’ve helped raise for EDF?” Vitter asked.

“I have never raised money for EDF,” Ruckelshaus wrote back.

“Were you associated with any environmental organization at the time of your [DDT] decision?” Vitter pressed.

“No, and never while at EPA,” Ruckelshaus responded.

The former EPA chief may be denying involvement with environmental groups, but evidence obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation suggests that Ruckelshaus has fundraised for environmentalists.

TheDCNF obtained an undated fundraising typed on letterhead from Ruckelshaus’s office in Washington, D.C. The letter states that “EDF’s scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won…. It’s well worth the $15 dollars it costs to join EDF.” The letter is also signed by Ruckelshaus.

An undated fundraising letter signed by William Ruckelshaus.

Though there is no date on the fundraising letter, an EDF advertisement in Backpacker magazine from winter 1974 shows the cost of joining the group was $15. This advertisement was place just two years after EDF and the Audubon Society successfully campaigned to ban DDT in the U.S.

Neither Ruckelshaus nor the EDF responded to TheDCNF’s request for comment, thus neither could verify the date the fundraising letter was sent.

As to Ruckelshaus’s belonging to an environmental group while in office, a speech from 1971, the year before DDT was banned, the former EPA head gave a speech to the Audubon Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In the speech, Ruckelshaus said, “As a member of the Audubon Society myself, and knowing the impact of this chlorinated hydrocarbon in certain species of raptorial birds, I was highly suspicious of this compound [DDT], to put it mildly. But I was compelled by the facts to temper my emotions… Certainly, we’ll all feel better when the persistent compounds can be phased out in favor of biological controls.”

This speech was given on May 22, 1971. Ruckelshaus was appointed by Nixon to head the EPA on Dec. 2, 1970. So Ruckelshaus gave this speech to the Audubon Society, one of America’s oldest environmental groups, months after he was appointed to head the EPA.

Audubon, along with EDF, was a major supporter of a ban on DDT, which they said was killing birds and could be causing cancer in humans. DDT, or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, is a chemical substance used to kill mosquitoes, flies, fleas and other insects that invade crops and cause illnesses, like malaria and yellow fever, in humans.

DDT was effective at lowering malaria and other disease rates in the U.S. after it was introduced in the late 19th century. By 1959, the U.S. and Europe were virtually malaria free thanks to DDT, according to a 2004 report. But in 1962, author Rachel Carson released her book “Silent Spring,” which said DDT was linked to cancer in humans and was contributing to ecological collapse.

The fear caused by Carson set off a mass movement to ban the substance in the U.S. After the creation of EPA, environmentalists pushed the newly-formed agency to ban DDT use, sparking months of public hearings and inquiry into the effects of the chemical.

Judge Edmund Sweeney, who was tasked with overseeing months of hearings on the effects of DDT, issued a 113-page opinion in April 1972, saying, “DDT is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic hazard to man.” Sweeney added that DDT’s uses under regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on fresh water fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife… and… there is a present need for essential uses of DDT.”

But Sweeney’s stance against banning DDT was overruled by Ruchkelshaus– who reportedly never attended a single day of the DDT hearings and never actually read Sweeney’s report.

Ruckelshaus handed down a 40-page opinion on June 2, 1972 , overruling Sweeney and declaring DDT potentially cancer causing.

Ruckelshaus later wrote to the American Farm Bureau Federation that his 1972 decision was ultimately based on politics, saying “the ultimate judgment remains political.”

The U.S. decision to ban DDT was used by environmental groups to force U.S. AID to convince to poor countries to stop using the disease-stopping substance. Gerald Sirkin and Natalie Sirkin wrote in The American Spectator that the “effects of giving up DDT were immediately felt in the malarial areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America… South American countries gave up DDT and suffered the customary rise in malaria. Ecuador, which manufactures DDT, resumed using it in 1993. By 1995, Ecuador had reduced its malarial cases by 61 percent.”

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This is the White House's explanation for discrepancies between official transcripts and remarks by the president

White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday addressed discrepancies between remarks made by President Obama at a Chicago fundraiser earlier this week and an official transcript of the event, explaining that the difference between the two is due to malfunctioning recording equipment.

“There was a problem with the recording of the event,” Earnest said.

He added later: “I will take this opportunity to remind all of you, something you all know, that the only reason that we’re having this discussion is because of the unprecedented commitment to transparency that this administration has put in place by opening up the president’s comments at fundraisers and private homes to press coverage.”

The president joked during Monday’s fundraiser that he discovered he had some “unpaid bills” when he left Chicago to move into the White House after he won his election in 2008.

"One of the nice things about being home is actually that it's a little bit like a time capsule. Because Michelle and I and the kids, we left so quickly that there’s still junk on my desk, including some unpaid bills,” the president said, according to the White House press-pool report. “I think eventually they got paid — but they're sort of stacked up. And messages, newspapers and all kinds of stuff."

But this is how it appeared on the official White House transcript: "[T]here’s still junk on my desk, including some — newspapers and all kinds of stuff."

The White House pool reporter noted after the event: "The White House's transcript of tonight's DNC fundraiser omits the president's reference to unpaid bills being stacked up on his desk at home in Chicago. I included a partial quote in the pool report earlier, but in the interest of transparency, especially since this was a print pool only event, I'm sharing the full quote, as I transcribed and checked just now, and as it was in the transcript.”

The discrepancy between the president’s remarks and the official White House transcript comes at a time when reporters have grown increasingly wary of the Obama administration’s tweaking of their pool reports.

The mention of "unpaid bills" at an Illinois event might rub a few people the wrong way just before an election, since the state of Illinois has been failing to pay vendors in a timely manner for several years running.

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Obama Admin: We May Need 'Surge' Of Millions Of Immigrant Ids 'For Any Number Of Reasons'

In its first public response after Breitbart News reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is quietly preparing the capacity to issue more than double its baseline number of green cards and employment permits, a USCIS spokesman said such preparation is routine and that a spike in immigration applications could arise “for any number of reasons.”

“Solicitations of this nature are frequent practice for all USCIS contracts and allow the Agency to be prepared for fluctuations in the number of immigration applications received, which can arise for any number of reasons,” Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS said in a statement.

At issue is a solicitation for materials to print as many as 34,000,000 ids over five years. The request for proposals says vendors must be capable of handling a “surge” of five million ids in one year “to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.”

Republicans have denounced the draft proposal, saying it shows the Obama administration is already beginning to implement a broad executive amnesty that President Obama has said he is planning for after the midterm elections.

The USCIS statement includes two examples of previous USCIS contracts that included options to increase capacity, one for “security support services,” the other for “records operations support services.”

It's not unheard of for federal agencies to plan for contingencies, but the request specifically explains that the surge is related to potential changes in immigration policy.

“The Contractor shall demonstrate the capability to support potential 'surge' in PRC and EAD card demand for up to 9M cards during the initial period of performance to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements,” the document says.

A year ago, such a plan might have been attributed to a forthcoming immigration bill. Now, following the summer's border crisis, the chances of such a new law are extremely low, giving additional credence to the possibility the move is in preparation for an executive amnesty by Obama.

The RFP “seems to indicate that the president is contemplating an enormous executive action that is even more expansive than the plan that Congress rejected in the 'Gang of Eight' bill,” Jessica Vaughan, an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies and former State Department official, said.

Earlier Monday, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner ripped Obama's planned executive amnesty.

“The Speaker has made perfectly clear to the president that it is unacceptable for him to unilaterally re-write immigration law on his own and the Speaker will never support this type of action,” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a leading immigration hawk, called the document a “startling confirmation of the crisis facing our Republic.”

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Obama Administration Quietly Prepares 'Surge' Of Millions Of New Immigrant IDs

Despite no official action from the president ahead of the election, the Obama administration has quietly begun preparing to issue millions of work authorization permits, suggesting the implementation of a large-scale executive amnesty may have already begun.

Unnoticed until now, a draft solicitation for bids issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Oct. 6 says potential vendors must be capable of handling a “surge” scenario of 9 million id cards in one year “to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements.”

The request for proposals says the agency will need a minimum of four million cards per year. In the “surge,” scenario in 2016, the agency would need an additional five million cards – more than double the baseline annual amount for a total of 9 million.

“The guaranteed minimum for each ordering period is 4,000,000 cards. The estimated maximum for the entire contract is 34,000,000 cards,” the document says.

The agency is buying the materials need to construct both Permanent Residency Cards (PRC), commonly known as green cards, as well as Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards which have been used to implement President Obama's “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program. The RFP does not specify how many of each type of card would be issued.

Jessica Vaughn, an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies and former State Department official, said the document suggests a new program of remarkable breadth.

The RFP “seems to indicate that the president is contemplating an enormous executive action that is even more expansive than the plan that Congress rejected in the 'Gang of Eight' bill,” Vaughn said.

Last year, Vaughn reviewed the Gang of Eight's provisions to estimate that it would have roughly doubled legal immigration. In the “surge” scenario of this RFP, even the relatively high four million cards per year would be more than doubled, meaning that even on its own terms, the agency is preparing for a huge uptick of 125 percent its normal annual output.

It's not unheard of for federal agencies to plan for contingencies, but the request specifically explains that the surge is related to potential changes in immigration policy.

“The Contractor shall demonstrate the capability to support potential 'surge' in PRC and EAD card demand for up to 9M cards during the initial period of performance to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements,” the document says.

A year ago, such a plan might have been attributed to a forthcoming immigration bill. Now, following the summer's border crisis, the chances of such a new law are extremely low, giving additional credence to the possibility the move is in preparation for an executive amnesty by Obama.

Even four million combined green cards and EADs is a significant number, let alone the “surge” contemplated by USCIS. For instance, in the first two years after Obama unilaterally enacted DACA, about 600,000 people were approved by USCIS under the program. Statistics provided by USCIS on its website show that the entire agency had processed 862,000 total EADs in 2014 as of June.

Vaughn said EADs are increasingly coming under scrutiny as a tool used by the Obama administration to provide legalization for groups of illegal aliens short of full green card status.

In addition to providing government approval to work for illegal aliens, EADs also cost significantly less in fees to acquire, about $450 compared to more than $1000. In many states, EADs give aliens rights to social services and the ability to obtain drivers' licenses.

Vaughn noted there are currently about 4.5 million individuals waiting for approval for the green cards having followed immigration law and obtained sponsorships from relatives in the U.S. or otherwise, less than the number of id cards contemplated by the USCIS “surge.”

USCIS officials did not provide additional information about the RFP by press time. 

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