GOP Rep. Hal Rogers' Campaign Donor Stands to Profit from Executive Amnesty

A defense contractor and top campaign contributor to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) is in the running to get a contract to print millions of IDs and other government documents associated with the president’s planned executive amnesty, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

The contractor, General Dynamics, is on the list of “interested vendors” for a draft solicitation that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out to vendors in October. If the president goes through with an executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and General Dynamics gets the contract, a top official with the firm told Breitbart News that he expects the printing of the documents -- including ID cards, work permits and Social Security cards for illegal aliens -- would occur at a facility inside Chairman Rogers’ congressional district in Kentucky.

The government facility, in Corbin, Kentucky, already prints green cards, work permits, IDs, and other documents for immigrants under a long-term multi-million-dollar General Dynamics contract with USCIS. The facility, and its efforts to eliminate the production of fraudulent green card production by including tiny images of every U.S. president on green cards, was profiled in 2011 by Government Security News magazine—a trade publication for insiders in various Homeland Security contracting fields.

“In what some may see as an excessive burst of patriotism, tiny photographs of every U.S. president -- so small they can barely be seen -- are printed on every new U.S. permanent resident card issued to an immigrant authorized to live and work in the United States,” Jacob Goodwin wrote for the April 2011 profile. “In fact, those presidential photos are not a demonstration of patriotism, but one of the latest steps U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of DHS known as USCIS, has taken to make the nation’s new permanent resident cards, commonly called ‘green cards,’ harder to counterfeit.”

Goodwin quotes General Dynamics Information Technology’s director for Homeland Security Programs Chris Jensen as detailing how that elaborate printing effort was done to attempt to reduce fraud by those who wish to print their own green cards.

“There are a lot of attempts to counterfeit cards,” Jensen told the magazine. “We’ll never stop the counterfeiting attempts, but we can make it hard to pass off a card as authentic.”

Goodwin detailed for the magazine how the General Dynamics IT division has been working with USCIS—“and its predecessor agencies” before the creation of the DHS post-9/11 by the George W. Bush administration, a move that drastically altered the makeup of federal immigration agencies—printing such documents together since the mid-1990s. The contracts are worth millions of dollars, and Goodwin highlighted one such contract signed in October 2010 worth $24.8 million that has General Dynamics printing the immigration documents at the Corbin, KY, facility.

“Along with its team member, LaserCard Corp. (a major card manufacturer recently acquired by HID Global), General Dynamics oversees the production of 1.5 to 2.0 million green cards each year; another 1.0 to 1.5 million cards for people with ‘temporary protected status’; 300,000 to 400,000 Transportation Worker Identification Credentials, called TWIC cards; and a slew of ‘Employment Authorization Documents,’ known as EAD cards, according to Jensen,” Goodwin wrote. “GD provides production support and quality assurance services for the processes by which an individual’s name, personal history, photo, fingerprint and other data are applied to a specific plastic card. This process occurs in a production facility in Kentucky that more closely resembles a ‘clean room’ – with workers wearing white lab coats and footies – than a factory assembly line, explained Jensen.”

Goodwin proceeded to detail the close-up operations of the creation of the documents—and General Dynamics’ lucrative role in doing so—throughout the rest of his piece. In a followup July 2013 article for Government Security News magazine, Goodwin noted how General Dynamics landed yet another contract worth millions with USCIS to print more documents and keep that Corbin, Kentucky facility rolling.

“U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has awarded a contract worth as much as $5.5 million to the incumbent vendor, General Dynamics Information Technology, to continue to maintain the production facility in Corbin, KY, that manufactures each year millions of permanent resident cards (known as ‘Green Cards’) and Employment Authorization Document cards,” Goodwin wrote in the followup. “GD is responsible for what is called the Card Personalization System Technology Refreshment, or CPSTR, for the document production division of USCIS.”

Goodwin added that the original contract was awarded to General Dynamics on a competitive basis, but the agency now has an “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract” with the company—meaning General Dynamics can make millions upon millions more dollars every couple years with USCIS continuing to renew its relationship with the company for more documents.

In mid-October, Breitbart News broke the story about how the Obama administration was gearing up for a “surge” in the creation of new immigration documents like these ones. That story detailed a draft solicitation that USCIS had published seeking potential government contractors ready to handle as many as 9 million new immigrant IDs in one year sometime very soon.

The document states that such a “surge” in document production would be necessary “to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements” and that the “guaranteed minimum for each ordering period is 4,000,000 cards. The estimated maximum for the entire contract is 34,000,000 cards.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest originally punted when asked about this solicitation, referring Breitbart News White House correspondent Charlie Spiering to USCIS for comment. When he was asked again the day after, Earnest said he thinks it is “a relatively clever way to ask about the policy that the president has not yet announced as it relates to executive actions that he’s prepared to take to address the problems of our broken immigration system.”

When pressed by Major Garrett for a followup to that, and whether Earnest was saying the printing of the documents was “unrelated or coincidental,” Earnest dodged again.

“I’m saying there are decisions that are made by lots of agencies including the ordering of specific colored sheets of paper,” Earnest said. “Those sorts of decisions are not micro-managed by the White House.”

“Don’t be absurd with us,” Garrett pressed further. “That’s not just an ordinary colored piece of paper. It’s central to what the president has promised in public to do.”

“It’s also central to what they’re already doing,” Earnest replied. “It’s also central to what they’re already doing.”

“That’s why I asked you the question: Is it coincidental or unrelated?” Garrett followed up again.

“You would have to ask DHS about orders for green colored paper that they’ve ordered,” Earnest responded. “Not the executive order, but the order of the colored copying paper is coming from the Department of Homeland Security.”

After another minute or so of back and forth between a bewildered Garrett—visibly frustrated with Earnest refusing to confirm or deny that the solicitation from USCIS was connected to Obama’s planned executive immigration action—pressed further.

“If the president has said that ‘I’m going to do this’ and there’s a mechanism by which it can be achieved once the executive order is put in commission, and suddenly there’s this contract to print more of them, why isn’t it just obvious that that seems to be related?” Garrett asked.

Earnest dodged and continue to refuse to confirm or deny the connection, laughing off the questions before cautioning the media in the White House briefing room. “The fact of the matter is there are still decisions to be made about what that policy will entail,” Earnest said. “When we’re ready to announce that policy, we will announce it. What I will caution you against doing is making assumptions about what will be in those announcements based on the procurement practices of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Despite the unclear answers from the White House or the government in general about these contracts and draft solicitations, immigration expert Jessica Vaughan—a former State Department official who now works for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)—says the solicitation draft from USCIS “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.”

Government contracting documents not available to the public, but only to government contracting vendors, obtained by Breitbart News indicate that General Dynamics is angling for that USCIS draft solicitation assuming it turns into a contracting opportunity—which would likely be worth millions of dollars for the defense contracting company. Government contracting vendors can bid for such solicitations like the USCIS one, or pretty much any government contract, on a website called FBO.gov. “FBO” stands for “Federal Business Opportunities.”

For this specific contract for the “surge” in immigrant documents for which USCIS has circulated the draft solicitation, General Dynamics is on the “Interested Vendors List.” Much of FBO.gov is available to the public, but the “Interested Vendors List” lists for various contracts are not public information.

General Dynamics is on page three of the four-page document, embedded here, which shows many different other defense contractors are vying for the job.

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Report: 42 percent of new Medicaid signups are immigrants, their children

Immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up more than 40 percent of new Medicaid recipients at a cost of $4.6 billion, according to an analysis of government data.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a low-immigration advocacy group, released a report early Thursday that found both legal and illegal immigrants and their minor children made up 42 percent of Medicaid growth from 2011 to last year.

Part of the increased enrollment came as a result of the new healthcare law’s expansion of Medicaid to impoverished and low-income adults.

“The high rate and significant growth in Medicaid associated with immigrants is mainly the result of a legal immigration system that admits large numbers of immigrants with relatively low-levels of education, many of whom end up poor and uninsured,” the report says. "This fact, coupled with the extensive supports we provide to low-income residents, unavoidably creates very significant costs for taxpayers.”

The report was issued as President Obama prepared to unveil his executive action to reduce deportations and allow more illegal immigrants to remain in the country.

According to CIS officials, most of the immigrants tallied in the report entered the United States legally. The report also found that two-thirds of the Medicaid recipients were the adult immigrants and not the children of immigrants born in the United States.

The report makes the case that immigrants and their children are benefiting more from Medicaid expansion than non-immigrants. The report found that 25 percent of immigrants and their children were enrolled in Medicaid, compared to 16 percent of non-immigrants and their children.

The report also determined that Medicaid expansion helped decrease the number of uninsured immigrants and their children from 28 percent in 2011 to 23 percent in 2013.

Comparatively, 11 percent of non-immigrant adults and their children were uninsured in 2013 thanks to Medicaid, compared to 13 percent in 2011, which represents a much less significant decline.

The data was culled from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplements.

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Capture of 4 Turkish men suggests border network capable of smuggling terrorists into U.S.

Four men flew from Istanbul through Paris to Mexico City in late August, where they were met by a Turkish-speaking man who stashed them in a safe house until their Sept. 3 attempt to cross into the U.S. over the border with Mexico.

Their capture by the Border Patrol in Texas set off a fierce debate over the men’s intentions, with some members of Congress saying they were terrorist fighters. Homeland Security officials, including Secretary Jeh Johnson, countered that they were part of the Kurdish resistance which, like the U.S., is fighting the Islamic State’s advance in Iraq.

But whether the men are linked to anti-U.S. jihadists or not, they admitted to being part of a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and their ability to get into the U.S. through the southern border — they paid $8,000 each to be smuggled into Texas — details the existence of a network capable of bringing terrorists across the border.

The four men’s story, as discerned from internal September and October documents reviewed by The Washington Times, also seems to contrast with what Mr. Johnson told Congress in September, when he assured lawmakers that the four men were not considered terrorist threats to the U.S., even as behind the scenes his department proposed the four be put on terrorist watch lists.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Marsha Catron said the individuals weren’t associated with the Islamic State, which is also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS.

“The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the southwest border is categorically false, and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,” Ms. Catron said. “DHS continues to have no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.”

She did not reply to questions about the status of the four men or why her department proposed they be put on terrorist watch lists.

As of a month ago they were being held at the South Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall, Texas.

The men initially claimed to be members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, known by the acronym DHKP/C. The group is a Marxist insurgency that claimed credit for a 2013 suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, last year.

But U.S. counterterrorism officials said the men were more likely members of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been battling for Kurdish rights within Turkey for decades, though recently PKK and Turkish leaders have tried to broker a political agreement.

Both the PKK and DHKP/C are listed by the State Department as terrorist groups.

Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the fact that avowed members of terrorist groups got into the U.S. shows it’s possible to sneak across a porous border.

“This incident proves what enforcement experts have always known, and that is there are existing networks in Mexico and Central America that have been set up and cultivated by a variety of terrorist organizations to enable them to move people into the United States illegally,” Ms. Vaughan said.

It’s unclear what the men were trying to do. None of them admitted to being part of a plot against the U.S., and several told investigators they were hoping to seek asylum, saying they believed they were being targeted back home by police in Turkey.

Two of the men had tried to enter the U.S. before but had been denied visas when they couldn’t prove they intended to return to Turkey, the documents showed.

Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said he would be surprised if the men were part of a plot against the U.S.

Read the entire article

Why Obamacare Architect's Admission of Dishonesty Should Matter to Every American

Five years ago it was already obvious that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats were engaged in an elaborate deception, a series of them really. But back then most of the media and much of the public didn't seem to believe it. Now things have changed.

A list of administration lies might be a good topic for a book. But to just hit a few of the health care related highlights, we were told that the public option was not a Trojan horse, that it was about choice and competition. This was a bald faced lie. We were told we could keep our plans and doctors period, end of sentence. That was a lie. We were told Obamacare would reduce premiums by $2,500. That was a lie. That Obamacare was not a tax. Lie. That the VA was a model of socialized medicine. True, but not in the way they meant. All of these lies built upon one another, creating a vision of health reform that was all upside and no downside. And the Democrats barely, despite the obvious displeasure of citizens, forced it through, though only just barely.

What followed was several more years of various lies being told to adjust and protect the program. We were told, still incredible, that the White House had no idea what a disaster the launch of the federal exchange was going to be. We were told it was off to a great start, when in fact it only managed to enroll 6 people on the first day. We were told the problem with the site was too many excited customers when in fact the site crashed under just over a thousand users. We were told HHS had no enrollment targets when in fact there was an enrollment target memo. We were told the figures on enrollment were not available when in fact HHS was collecting data from insurers. We were told the rollout was just like the one in Massachusetts when in fact it was not. We were told the rollout was just likeMedicare part D when in fact it was not at all. We were not told about a hidden Obamacare exemption that could have applied to almost anyone (it was finally added to the website after a WSJ report about it). On and on the administration and its allies in the media just lied about what was happening.

And slowly, slowly under the weight of all these lies and lies to cover up other lies, people got the message. The government isn't being honest with us. They're just saying whatever they need to say at that moment. And, despite the fact that the major media didn't touch a lot of these individual stories, word still got around as if by osmosis. The President's poll numbers started to go down and Obamacare's numbers went down or, at best, never went up.

And now, with the statement by Jonathan Gruber we may have reached the ne plus ultra of statements confirming this administration's essential dishonesty. Here you have one of the consummate Obamacare insiders--cited 71 times in DNC emails in 2009 alone-- saying on video that the bill was designed to fool stupid voters, in fact to fool them by fooling the non-partisan CBO which is supposed to be an honest broker.

Incredibly, even at this point, there are some, like MSNBC's Ronan Farrow and Washington Post writer Jose DelReal willing to suggest we're just missing the nuance. Somehow this plain admission of dishonesty isn't about what Gruber said or about what it tells us about the administration he worked closely with for years (even on the HHS payroll), it's about missing context.

This is standard operating procedure for the far left but unlike 5 years ago, I don't think many people are buying it these days. It has taken a long time, but Gruber's embarrassing admission may be the last one some people needed to see what has really been going on all along. What his statement shows is that if there's any possible political advantage in doing so, this administration is going to lie to your face. And that applies not just to Obamacare but to everything.

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Wind credit could roil House GOP tensions

Including a wind energy incentive in a tax extenders package during the congressional lame-duck session threatens to drag the simmering civil war between conservatives and establishment Republicans into the spotlight, potentially complicating the congenial tone the GOP hopes to strike as it takes over both the House and the Senate in January.

Conservatives want House GOP leaders to abandon the production tax credit for renewable energy that lapsed last year. The incentive primarily aids wind power through a 2.3-cent per kilowatt-hour credit awarded to power producers. But Republican leaders in both chambers appear willing to extend a suite of tax credits that includes the wind incentive to "clear the deck" before the next Congress so that lawmakers can focus on overhauling the federal tax code.

"If they do just a straight-up tax extender package and put in the [tax credit], I think you could see it pass in the current House and Senate. But you're going to have defections from the Right," an aide for a conservative House Republican told the Washington Examiner. "It's an issue that draws [internal GOP tensions] to the front."

With Republicans poised to take control of the Senate, some of the party's rank and file on Capitol Hill want to use that as leverage to get a better deal on the extenders in the lame duck or address them on their own terms in January. But business groups are pushing House leadership to move quickly on tax extensions, some of which lapsed this year, to give the private sector certainty.

Many conservatives on and off Capitol Hill agree that there isn't enough opposition to shoot down a tax extenders package, though there's some outstanding tactical questions about whether to address them in the lame duck or when Republicans control Congress in January.

The energy tax credit in particular would underscore longstanding schisms between conservatives and business-oriented members in the GOP if it's included in a tax extenders package, sources said. Fifty-four House members signed an August letter led by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., imploring House GOP leadership to nix the 22-year-old credit. And last week, 66 conservative groups pressed House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., likely the next majority leader, to kill it as well.

"[That letter] was meant to be exactly what it said — don't give away something to [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-Nev.] that the groups that spent millions helping you get the majority are fighting," Tom Pyle, president of the conservative American Energy Alliance, told the Examiner. His group has taken a prominent role in killing the wind credit.

Conservative groups have increasingly targeted the wind production tax credit in recent years. They say it is a market-distorting subsidy that prices out coal- and nuclear-fired generation and that "hides the cost," in Pyle's words, of some of the Obama administration's climate change regulations.

The credit garnered attention heading into 2013, when a key change allowed wind power producers to collect the credit for up to 10 years as long as wind turbines were "under construction" — which means having 3 percent of its cost paid for — rather than already producing power, by the end of the year. That alteration came with a $12 billion price tag, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The wind industry, for its part, notes that the credit leverages millions of dollars in private-sector investment and that its supply chain supports jobs in nearly every state.

Groups aligned with the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers have aggressively ramped up lobbying in recent months, as have some electric utilities with sizable nuclear fleets, to press for an end to the tax credit, said an industry source. A group of about 20 to 30 House Republicans will stand against the wind tax credit on conservative principles, a group that could grow if the measure is put on the floor for a vote, the source said.

"If and when it hits the sort of echo chamber — that changes everything, too, when that 20 becomes 60," the source said.

But the credit also enjoys support from many Republicans, particularly those in windy states. It was first introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who continues to defend it. In the House, Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., has been a vocal proponent.

That's partly why the credit likely won't derail any tax extenders package. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is still pushing his legislation that would extend tax provisions for two years, spokesman Keith Chu told the Examiner.

Dysfunction within the House GOP caucus, stemming partly from disagreement over the PTC, also could leave the lower chamber simply voting for whatever the Senate chamber sends its way.

"They want a 'kumbaya' moment," said the House GOP aide. "I think they're going to want to show that with passing something right before taking over Senate that everything can be bipartisan. But that's not going to work with conservatives."

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Sharyl Attkisson: America Is ‘Being Manipulated’ By The Media

Americans are “being manipulated” according to a 21 year CBS correspondent who has written a new book, “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington“.

Sharyl Attkisson, who rejects having any political allegiance while focusing on the truth, discusses here how powerful, hidden special interests in the media increasingly hide the truth and homogenize American news. The media, to her, seem nonplussed by government privacy invasions, even when it happens to themselves.

In Part 1 of our exclusive video interview with Attkisson, she tells us how she found and reported the sophisticated, remote intrusions in her own computer and how she used her own forensic specialists to confirm the government’s intrusions prior to public awareness of similar offenses to media outlets and reporters. She even identified that someone planted classified documents in her computer, seemingly to frame her or her sources.

In this exclusive video, she says she was “outraged” and finds the actions “chilling and dangerous” to a free press and civil liberties.

Responding to how her employer reacted, Attkisson seemed surprised by the lack of alarm by CBS, who, she thinks, should have worried about others in their system who may have been compromised.

As for her peers in the media, Attkisson courageously speaks almost as a whistleblower when she says others are worried but may be unable to speak the truth and keep their jobs.

She believes there is an “odd complacency” and “tacit acceptance” in Washington, D.C. that the government is monitoring your emails and listening to your phone — even among Members of Congress.

When asked about attacks from the ideological left and their allies, who are pushing back at her efforts to expose how the news is resembling propaganda, Attkisson says the attacks are ineffective — as it only reinforces that she is on the right path. She says their effort is likely designed to influence uninformed readers or risk-averse, weary editors who often succumb to censoring the news under pressure and criticism from cultural elites in and outside of government.

Part 1 of the two series concludes with her advice to citizens once they learn of how the media is operating. The journalist advises working hard to get to the truth and not sitting back when you are outraged.

WATCH Part 2 of our interview of Sharyl Attkisson next Sunday, November 16th, when she discusses Benghazi and more.

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GOP official goes off on NAACP for ignoring Mia Love and Tim Scott

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People addressed the Nov. 4 midterm elections this week in a statement that failed to make any mention of the historic wins of Congresswoman-elect Mia Love, R-Utah, and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

Love is not only the first Haitian-American elected to Congress, but she is also the first black woman running as a Republican to be elected to Congress. Meanwhile, Sen. Scott’s victory on Tuesday makes him the first African-American senator to win an election in the South since the Reconstruction.

GOP deputy press secretary Raffi Williams responded Thursday to the NAACP'S statment, issuing a series of tweets criticizing the organization for its failure to mark Love’s and Scott’s major wins.

“If the [NAACP] was a truly bipartisan org thay [sic] would support all blacks not just dem Blacks,” he said in a tweet. “I wish an org like the [NAACP] would support black ppl of ideologies. Unfortunately they are proving how out of date they are.”

The NAACP “should support all black ppl who are working to affect positive change in their communities. But they don’t,” he added.

Williams complained in another tweet that the organization "wont celebrate black republicans."

The NAACP statement reads as follows:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is committed to leading the effort alongside other civil and human rights organizations and our newly elected Congress to pass a robust Voting Rights Act Amendment.

Equal access to voting remains paramount as numerous reports of voting irregularities emerged during the midterm elections yesterday. Malfunctioning voting machines, voters turned away because of erroneous voter ID laws, missing names of registered voters and long lines were among the major challenges that the NAACP fielded along with our Election Protection partners via the 1-866-Our-Vote hotline. We assert that passage of a robust Voting Rights Act Amendment is essential for the states previously protected under section 5 as well as for all Americans for the sanctity of our republic. We urge the newly elected Congress to join us in ensuring that all registered voters in our great country have unfettered access to the ballot box.

Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the NAACP.

“This election was not about who won but the rather the citizens who lost the right to participate. This first election post the Shelby vs. Holder decision resulted in problems in every single state previously protected by the Voting Rights Act. For 49 years, these states were singled out because they had a history of discriminating against American voters. The Election Protection Hotline we manned with other concerned organizations fielded over 18,000 calls yesterday, many in those same states previously protected by the VRA. As we move forward — it is imperative that our newly elected Congress work with the NAACP and our partners to pass Voting Rights Act Amendment legislation that assures that all Americans have the franchise — our very democracy depends on it.”

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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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