At Freedom’s Expense . . .

. . . EPA Oppression along with the IRS and the NSA, Are having a big laugh at the thought of America being a free country.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Hamas Prepares For War | Muslim Brotherhood Visits The State Department | Taliban Not Terrorists? | Israel vs. Iran

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author:  Hamas Prepares For War - A couple of stories from the Middle East today caught my attention. Radical Islam is on the march and, as usual, Western leaders seem oblivious.

Today's Washington Post front page story on Hamas should be required reading in Congress. A Post reporter recently got access to terrorist training camps run by Hamas in Gaza. More than 17,000 teenagers and young men were trained to fire Kalashnikov rifles, throw grenades and build improvised explosive devices.

One 16-year-old, who was trained with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, told the Post, "I want to fight Israel. I want to kick them out of our land. I am ready now." A 15-year-old said, "I joined the camp because I want to know how to confront the Jews. . ." Another said, "Every day we have someone from Hamas giving us a lesson on jihad and the importance of it."

One Hamas trainer said they had to turn away hundreds of 12 and 13-year-old boys. "They were standing on their tiptoes trying to get in." Referring to last year's war in which more 2,000 Palestinians died, he added, "We have plenty who want to join. They want to retaliate. They want revenge." Of course, what he failed to mention is that Hamas started that war.

During the graduation ceremony, a senior Hamas commander told the young jihadis that Hamas was "busy getting ready for the next battle," and that they were preparing the "next generation . . . for Jerusalem, the West Bank and Palestine."

My friends, no one wants peace more than the Israelis do. But where are the peace partners with whom the Israelis are supposed to negotiate?

Let me remind you that Israel gave up Gaza ten years ago, hoping for peace. Look what has happened! The Post writes that Hamas has waged three wars against Israel in the past six years and it is clearly preparing for another one. Thousands of Palestinian families are sending their children to terrorist training camps to become jihadis, to learn how to kill Jews.

Muslim Brotherhood Visits The State Department - The Obama State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood leaders this week. The Brotherhood are radical Islamists who ascended to power in Egypt in 2011 with the support of the Obama Administration.

The Egyptian people rose up against the Brotherhood after it failed to curtail corruption and when its leader, Mohamed Morsi, unsurprisingly attempted to seize dictatorial powers. The Egyptian military arrested Morsi and ousted the Brotherhood in 2013.

A State Department official justified the meeting saying, "We meet with representatives from across the political spectrum in Egypt." That's an odd way to put it. Egypt banned the Brotherhood in December 2013 as a terrorist organization. Four other countries also consider it to be a terrorist group.

And with good reason. It's slogan is: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu Akbar!"

So it really shouldn't surprise anyone that, just two days after its members were walking the halls of our State Department, the Muslim Brotherhood is now issuing a call for jihad against the Egyptian government. A statement posted on the Brotherhood's website reads:". . .we are in the process of a new phase . . . where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom."Amazing, isn't it? The Obama Administration is trying to stop Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of America's friend and ally, from coming to the United States to warn Congress and the American people about the threat of a nuclear Iran. But it puts out the welcome mat for our enemies.

Taliban Not Terrorists? - Earlier this week, a White House spokesman argued that the Taliban wasn't a terrorist group. Today, the Taliban is claiming responsibility for an attack that killed three Americans in Kabul. And CNN is reporting that one of the Taliban leaders Obama freed from Gitmo last year in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl has been communicating with the Taliban about "trying to engage again in militant activity."

2016 can't come fast enough! But if America is fortunate enough to elect a conservative president two years from now, that individual is going to confront a monumental mess on the world stage.

Israel vs. Iran - The American left is absolutely apoplectic about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address before Congress. The New York Times, the unofficial mouthpiece of the Obama White House, is even attacking Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the United States.

A Times story today headlined, "White House's Dismay Over Netanyahu Visit Extends To Ambassador," contains leaks from senior officials who felt it was necessary to demonstrate just "how angry [the Obama White House] is." As my friend Bill Kristol noted, the Obama White House "doesn't get angry at . . . the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . . It is only with respect to the Jewish state that the Obama White House is impatient, peremptory, and angry."

House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that Netanyahu's visit "could send the wrong message in terms of giving diplomacy a chance." Really?

President Obama has been giving diplomacy a chance for six years now. The problem is that the Iranians don't take him seriously. The mullahs have watched Obama retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan. They have watched him do next to nothing when Putin invaded Ukraine. They watched him back away from his own red line in Syria.

They have watched him reverse American policy on Cuba and pressure Israel time and again. They saw how Obama virtually sided with Hamas in last summer's war. It is Obama's hostility toward Israel and weakness toward our enemies that is sending the wrong message to Tehran.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Hezbollah, the radical Iranian-backed terrorist group, attacked an Israeli convoy yesterday killing two soldiers and wounding seven more.

Here's what you need to know: Hamas is bad, but it isn't as dangerous as Hezbollah. Hezbollah has stockpiled tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, and there are fears that it too has dug terror tunnels into Israel.

When you read that Hezbollah is probing and attacking Israel, you need to understand that it is really Iran that is attacking Israel. That is why a senior Iranian general was killed this month when Israel took out several top Hezbollah commanders. (By the way, Iran is now threatening to assassinate Benjamin Netanyahu's children.)

But it isn't Israel that the ayatollah denounces as "the great Satan." That slur is reserved for America. When Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks to Congress, his goal is to warn us that Iran's ultimate desire is not just the destruction of Israel, but the destruction of America as well.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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DHS Ordered Immigration Agents To Help Illegals Stay In U.S.

GOPUSA: WASHINGTON (AP*) — The Obama administration has ordered immigration agents to ask immigrants they encounter living in the country illegally whether they might qualify under President Barack Obama's plans to avoid deporting them, according to internal training materials obtained by The Associated Press.

Agents also have been told to review government files to identify any jailed immigrants they might be able to release under the program.

The directives from the Homeland Security Department mark an unusual change for U.S. immigration enforcement, placing the obligation on the government for identifying immigrants who might qualify for lenient treatment. Previously, it was the responsibility of immigrants or their lawyers to assert that they might qualify under rules that could keep them out of jail and inside the United States.

It's akin to the Internal Revenue Service calling taxpayers to recommend they should have used certain exemptions or deductions.

The training materials apply to agents for Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They instruct agents "to immediately begin identifying persons in their custody, as well as newly encountered persons" who may be eligible for protection from deportation.

One training document includes scenarios describing encounters between agents and immigrants with guidance about how agents should proceed, with a checklist of questions to determine whether immigrants might qualify under the president's plans. ICE officials earlier began releasing immigrants who qualified for leniency from federal immigration jails.

Obama in November announced a program to allow roughly 4 million parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to apply for permission to stay in the country for up to three years and get a work permit. The program mirrors one announced in 2012 that provides protection from deportation for young immigrants brought to the country as children.

CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said having his agents ask questions about whether an immigrant might qualify for leniency upfront saves time and money and "let's us use our resources, particularly the Border Patrol, for the people who are going to be at the highest level."

Immigrants caught crossing the border remain a top enforcement priority.

Crystal Williams, executive director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington, said the training will help filter people the government said should not be a priority anyway. She said the training marked the first she has heard of officers being directed to screen immigrants for potential leniency before they were arrested.

"Just because it's a change doesn't mean it's anything particularly radical," Williams said.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat and vocal supporter of Obama's immigration plans, said having CBP officers screen immigrants out of the deportation line lets the government "move criminals and recent arrivals to the front of the deportation line. The emphasis now is on who should be deported first, not just who can be deported."

A former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, John Malcolm, said the new instructions limit immigration agents.

"Agents are being discouraged away from anything other than a cursory view" of an immigrant's status and qualification for leniency, said Malcolm, who works as a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.

Under Obama's plans, the government is focused on deporting immigrants with serious criminal records or who otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety. For the most part, under the new policy, immigrants whose only offense is being in the country without permission aren't supposed to be a priority for immigration officers.

While the administration has estimated that as many as 4 million people will be eligible for protection from deportation, the Congressional Budget Office estimated about 2 million to 2.5 million immigrants are expected to be approved for the program by 2017. As many as 1.7 million young immigrants were estimated to be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but since its 2012 creation only about 610,000 people have successfully signed up.

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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* Shared for "Educational Purposes" under the Fair Use Doctrine. Article provided by and linked to GOPUSA.com.

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Choosing Tyranny Over Freedom: The Obama Legacy

by Newt Gingrich: In deciding to skip the Unity March in Paris for a football game but cut short his trip to India to go to Saudi Arabia, President Obama chose tyranny over freedom.

His comments about the Saudi regime in advance of his trip confirmed the President’s priorities. As the Associated Press reports:"Sometimes we need to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns we have in terms of counterterrorism or dealing with regional stability," Obama said in a CNN interview aired while the president flew from New Delhi to Riyadh.

Although Obama will meet formally with the new king, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, he suggested he would not be raising U.S. concerns about Saudi Arabia's flogging of blogger Raif Badawi, who was convicted of insulting Islam and sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes.

His first flogging took place in early January in front of dozens of people in the Red Sea city of Jiddah, though a second round has been postponed after a doctor said his wounds from the first lashes had not yet healed.You have to read these paragraphs several times to understand how committed the Obama Administration is to apologies and appeasement of Islamist tyranny.

The man sentenced to 1,000 lashes wrote a blog calling for a more open Saudi Arabia.

And the blogger is not an isolated example. Another human rights activist received a 15-year prison sentence last month. Two others are serving 15 year sentences, another blogger is serving an 11 year sentence, and a human rights lawyer is serving a ten year sentence.

As Diana West writes in her remarkable book American Betrayal, we have "new totalitarians who look to Mecca instead of Moscow."

Maybe we should be grateful that First Lady Michelle Obama declined to wear a headscarf during her visit there. It was a tiny demonstration of freedom in a country where rape victims have been sentenced to 200 lashes for being alone in a car with a man who was not a relative.

The First Lady’s fashion choices aside, the modern left has strayed so far from the classical liberal commitment to a free society that they condemn irreverent cartoonists (victims of a terrorist massacre, no less) even while they praise a totalitarian regime as a powerful voice for tolerance, moderation and peace.

It’s simply extraordinary to have an administration that “questions the judgment” of Charlie Hebdo but calls Saudi tyrants “important partners in the fight against terrorism.” And to have a president who personally attends the funeral of an Islamist monarch but sends no senior officials to the Unity March in Paris or to the funeral of Margaret Thatcher (an authentic hero in the fight against totalitarianism).

We have an administration that offers too many apologies for Islamists and too weak a defense of freedom.

For at least thirteen years since 9/11, our elites in both parties have failed to take seriously the radical Islamist war against Western civilization. As I described in a speech in Iowa on Saturday, this is a danger we can no longer afford to ignore.Clearly the current occupants of the White House have no intention of being honest about the threats we face. Congress can and should lead with hearings to present the facts, despite the administration's apologies of and appeasement for those who would impose tyranny.
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Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

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Crony Socialism: Candy Crush Edition

Tiny Competitors - 

Meet the Big Government/Big Candy Alliance

by Seton Motley, Contributing Author: Hershey’s - the Candy Man - is a BIG business. Its May 2014 market cap was $23.26 billion.

And Hershey’s is very generous with government. Through the second quarter of last year, it had spent $8,332,000 on lobbying and $845,534 on candidates and elected officials. Tallies no Mom & Pop Candy Shoppe can come close to matching.

Greasing the government to grant you special favors — or impose special impediments on your competitors — is crony socialism. It isn’t crony capitalism — because it has nothing to do with capitalism.

This anti-free market practice is best practiced by big businesses like Hershey’s. Small businesses don’t have the resources to bribe politicians — excuse me, contribute.

But campaign contributions aren’t the problem — huge government is. If the government wasn’t so gi-normous — and didn’t wield such a massive checkbook and regulatory hammer — just about all of the Crony Socialist donations would dry up and go away.

Lobbying isn’t the problem either. Lobbying to keep government off of you is Constitutional redress of grievances. Lobbying to sic the government on others is anti-Constitutional obnoxiousness.

And having Huge Government in your back pocket allows you to “negotiate” private sector “agreements” you otherwise would never, ever get. If they know you can unleash the Leviathan - you rarely have to unleash the Leviathan. Having a Big Brother means almost never actually getting into a fight.

So when we read Big Candy Hershey did this:After a Deal, British Chocolates Won’t Cross the PondWe have to wonder how free both sides were to “deal.” When is an agreement actually an acquiescence? A capitulation? After all, Let’s Buy British Imports (LBB) - the other side of this “deal” - ain’t anywhere near Hershey’s King Size.Jeff Beckman, a representative for Hershey’s, said L.B.B. and others were importing products not intended for sale in the United States….Says who? Why can’t they be intended for sale here? Because Hershey’s says so? In fact, they were sold here - for quite a while. Another retailer of British goods, who wished to remain anonymous because she feared reprisal from Hershey’s, said she imagined she would go out of business soon.

“Cadbury’s is about half of my business,” she said, while eating leftover Cadbury’s Christmas chocolate, “and more than that at Christmas. I don’t know how we’ll survive.”What problem does Hershey claim exists?L.B.B. agreed this week to stop importing all Cadbury’s chocolate made overseas. The company also agreed to halt imports on KitKat bars made in Britain; Toffee Crisps, which, because of their orange packaging, and yellow-lined brown script, too closely resemble Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups; Yorkie chocolate bars, which infringe on the York peppermint patty; and … Maltesers…

Jeff Beckman, a representative for Hershey’s, said L.B.B. and others were … infringing on its trademark and trade dress licensing. For example, Hershey’s has a licensing agreement to manufacture Cadbury’s chocolate in the United States with similar packaging used overseas, though with a different recipe.The Cadbury licensing agreement I get. If Hershey’s cut a deal to be the U.S. manufacturer — albeit with different recipes — that’s the deal. Though, again, they are the Candy Titans — and can cut “deals” most others can’t.

And British and U.S. KitKat are nearly identical in content and presentation. Get that too.

But orange and yellow packaging? The British bar in said wrapping is the Toffee Crisp – Hershey’s the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. At some point, caveat emptor has to reign. The fact that the names of the bars, not to mention the ingredients, are totally different should be more than enough.

The British Yorkie isn’t peppermint — Hershey’s York Peppermint Pattie is. I’d be more concerned with the Old Country’s version if I were the American Kennel Club.

Maltesers are chocolate malt balls — a competitor to Hershey’s Whoppers. Maltesers have no packaging or name similarities — it’s just a Hershey’s Whopper competitor. And thus it too is blocked.

Free markets are great. Free trade is great.

This is neither, and it is lousy.
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Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes to ARRA News Service. Please feel free to follow him him on Twitter   /   Facebook.

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Will President Support Jobs - Congress Passes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill

Today in Washington, D.C. - Jan 30, 2015:
The Senate at 10:30 Am and adjorned at Noon. It will reconvene on Monday at 4 PM.

On Monday at 5:30 PM, the Senate will vote on passage of H.R. 203, a bill to provide mental health assistance and suicide prevention for veterans.

On Tuesday at 2:30 PM, the Senate will hold a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 240, the House-passed Homeland Security Appropriations bill.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 62-36 to pass S. 1, the bill authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. And notified the House and sent the bill to the President.

Prior to final passage, the Senate rejected 3 more amendments to the bill. Senators voted down an amendment from Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), which would have allowed permitting agencies to go back and reopen the permitting process, by a vote of 41-56, and two amendments from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), one which would have required yet another study, this time of extreme weather events before allowing the pipeline to be constructed, and another which would have imposed an excise tax on petroleum products derived from oil sands. The Markey amendments were rejected by votes of 36-62 and 44-54, respectively.

In all, 41 amendments to the bill were voted on, almost 3 times the number of amendments that received votes in all of 2015 under democrat Senator Harry Reid's leadership.

The House will reconvene at 2 PM and then recess until Monday at 2 PM. No legislative business will be conducted.

The New York Times writes, “The Senate passed a bill on Thursday to force approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline . . . . When Republicans won control of the Senate late last year, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, chose the Keystone bill as the first measure Republicans would send to Mr. Obama. The White House promptly said that Mr. Obama would veto the measure, which would force the approval of a proposed 1,179-mile oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. . . .

The Times notes, “[P]ressure is mounting on the president from both sides to make a final decision on Keystone construction, which has been pending since he took office.” And the article then goes through the litany of excuses the president has used to stall on the decision, pointing out that they’ve all run out.

Meanwhile, The Hill observes, “The Senate closed its first month under Republican rule on Friday by passing legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline — moving a step closer to sending the controversial bill to President Obama’s desk. It’s the most significant accomplishment McConnell's had so far as majority leader, but is far from the only one. The Senate under McConnell has already held twice as many roll call votes on amendments as the chamber held in all of 2014."

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Marriage on the Chopping Block?

by Phyllis Schlafly: Within hours after the Supreme Court announced it would decide whether the Constitution requires every state to recognize marriages between persons of the same sex, the New York Times published an editorial gleefully predicting the inevitable outcome. When its ruling comes down in June, the Times assures us, the Supreme Court will “end the debate once and for all.”

It’s undeniable that a sense of momentum, skillfully propagated throughout the media, including the “conservative” Fox News Channel, has carried the gay movement to the brink of final victory over traditional values and religious beliefs of most Americans. If the Supreme Court rules as predicted, its decision will achieve the longtime goal of the gay movement: to silence Christians from freely expressing their traditional beliefs in the public square, allowing them, at best, the privilege of speaking to each other privately inside the four walls of their churches.

To increase the pressure to accept the inevitable, we’re told that more than 70% of Americans already live in the 36 states that have recently begun to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The truth, of course, is that only 12 states made that decision through a democratic process; in the other 24 states, the change was imposed by unelected judges — in several states (including California and Pennsylvania) by only a single judge.

But if the justices follow their own precedents, as they are supposed to do, the court will fail to deliver the result that the Times and most pundits have declared is a done deal. After all, no previous Supreme Court decision has ever questioned the authority of the states to define marriage as the union of husband and wife.

Once before, a gay couple from Minnesota asked the high court to rule that their state’s husband-wife definition of marriage violated the U.S. Constitution. The question then was identical to the one the Supreme Court has agreed to decide this year: “Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?”

Despite the presence of such liberal judicial activists as William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun, the Court in 1972 summarily rejected the Minnesota gay couple’s appeal “for want of a substantial federal question.” In other words, the court unanimously thought the claim was so outlandish that it didn’t even warrant a formal hearing.

Some have questioned whether a one-sentence decision from 43 years ago should really be binding today. But that’s not the only precedent that should prevent federal courts from requiring the states to change the definition of marriage.
A series of cases have established the principle known as the “domestic relations exception” to federal court jurisdiction. That principle explains why federal courts do not accept cases involving divorce, alimony, child custody or support, which are exclusively heard in state courts.

That principle was recognized as early as 1859, but its clearest statement comes from a Supreme Court decision in 1890, which said: “The whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the States and not to the laws of the United States.” That ringing declaration was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1992 and again in 2004.

The domestic relations exception should have prevented federal judges from ordering states to redefine marriage, but a string of recent decisions by federal district and circuit courts (most recently in Mobile, Alabama) have ignored that historic rule. It’s long past time for the Supreme Court to reaffirm the principle that federal courts have no business intruding on the States’ authority over domestic relations.

Many Americans wrongly assume that the concept of “judicial review,” which originated in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, authorizes a single federal judge to overturn any state law which the judge thinks is unconstitutional. Actually, for the first 87 years of our country, federal courts below the Supreme Court were not allowed to decide questions “arising under the Constitution.”

So-called federal question jurisdiction was withheld from the courts because Congress rightly feared that federal judges would abuse their power. When Congress finally conferred the “federal question” power in 1875, the law creating that new jurisdiction was expressly limited to “cases in law and equity,” a phrase that historically excluded marriage and thereby preserved the “domestic relations exception” as the Framers understood it.

Some have urged Congress to pass a new law explicitly prohibiting the federal courts from invalidating state laws reserving marriage to persons of the opposite sex. While there’s no doubt that the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass such a law, Congress could simply reaffirm that the law it passed in 1875, which is still on the books, already limits judicial power to redefine marriage.
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Phyllis Schlafly has been a national leader of the conservative movement since 1964. She founded and is president of Eagle Forum. She has testified before more than 50 Congressional and State Legislative committees on constitutional, national defense, and family issues.

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FDIC Changes Tactics in Response to Operation Choke Point

Republican Lawmakers Demand Answers From
Justice Department on Operation Choke Point

by Kelsey Harkness: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has acknowledged its role in Operation Choke Point and is taking dramatic steps to reverse its policies in targeting legal and legitimate industries that are disfavored by the Obama administration.

“We’re very pleased they’ve acknowledged their wrongdoing and they’ve accepted our suggestions to put in place measures to stop this activity,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., told The Daily Signal in a phone call this morning.

Luetkemeyer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee and leader in the fight to end Operation Choke Point, met with FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenbery and Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig earlier today as a follow-up to concerns voiced last November.

The Justice Department contends that Operation Choke Point combats unlawful, mass-market consumer fraud by “choking” their access to banking systems. But a report by the House Oversight Committee found the program’s targets, under direction of the FDIC, included legal businesses such as short-term lenders, firearms and ammunition merchants, coin dealers, tobacco sellers and home-based charities.

To address concerns raised about Operation Choke Point, the FDIC will now require bank examiners to put in writing any recommendation or requirement for an account termination.

The examiner will also be required to indicate what law or regulation they believe the bank or the customer of the bank is violating.

The policy shift was announced today in an official Financial Institution Letter sent to all FDIC supervisory staff. In it, the FDIC states:The FDIC is aware that some institutions may be hesitant to provide certain types of banking services due to concerns that they will be unable to comply with the associated requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The FDIC and the other federal banking agencies recognize that as a practical matter, it is not possible for a financial institution to detect and report all potentially illicit transactions that flow through an institution.The letter reiterates that decisions on accounts need to be made on a case-by-case basis and stresses they should not be made based on industry or moral objection.

The Daily Signal has reported multiple cases of legal business owners being dropped by their banks and payment processors simply because their industry is considered a “reputational risk.”

Last December, a 20-page investigative report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee detailed FDIC officials working closely with the Justice Department to implement Operation Choke Point.

Emails unearthed by investigators showed employees scheming to influence banks’ decisions on who to do business with by labeling certain industries “reputational risks,” ensuring banks “get the message” about the businesses the regulators don’t like, and pressuring banks to cut credit or close those accounts, effectively discouraging entire industries.

FDIC officials were also seen inserting their personal and moral opinions into banking decisions.

“The FDIC has allowed a culture within their agency to blossom that they believe it’s OK to impose their personal opinions and value system in a regulatory way,” says Luetkemeyer. “They are not a regulatory police—their job is to enforce the law.”

Luetkemeyer left his meeting this morning pleased that the FDIC has implemented the majority of his proposed policy changes administratively, but says he still intends to move forward with a bill introduced last year that aims at ending Operation Choke Point.

The Missouri congressman, who has a background in banking, told The Daily Signal he will work with Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., to pass that legislation in the coming weeks.

The bill will affect other regulatory agencies in addition to the FDIC, and would also provide a legal basis for citizens to take action against banks or regulatory institutions.

“While these other agencies are not necessarily the main problem with Choke Point, they have been implicated in a story or two and therefore we need to have this bill in place to stop them from being a part of this activity as well,” says Luetkemeyer.

Luetkemeyer says the FDIC also intends to work with the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate Operation Choke Point and hold those within the FDIC accountable for any wrongdoings.

“We’re pleased that they’re working with the [inspector general] so that they can change the culture of what goes on in their agency,” he said. “But we’re not going to take anything off of the table until we get this program stopped.”
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Kelsey Harkness (@kelseyjharkness)is a news producer at The Daily Signal.

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Increasing Demand For Refined Products Will Increase Oil Prices

by Dan Steffens, Opinion Editorial: In last week's article I posted a chart from the International Energy Agency's recent Oil Market Report that shows global demand for refined products catching up to supply by the 3rd quarter of this year. My opinion is that all of the analysts who are now blaming the sharp drop in oil prices on a “glut” of supply could change their tune quickly as consumers adjust to lower fuel costs. Just as higher costs reduce demand for any commodity, lower costs will increase demand. This is especially true for a commodity that has a direct impact on standard of living, like oil does.

When the price of gasoline plunged below $1.00/gallon in 1986, demand for motor fuels and other refined products increased by almost 5% within twelve months. Today, world demand for hydrocarbon based liquid fuels (including biofuels) is over 92.5 million barrels per day. You can go to the IEA website and see for yourself that normal seasonal demand is expected to push demand over 94.0 million barrels per day within six months. I think both the IEA and our own Energy Information Administration (EIA) are grossly underestimating the price related demand increase that is already starting to show up in the data.

Last week's EIA report confirms that demand is already surging in the United States. Granted, part of the year-over-year increase in gasoline consumption may be a result of the harsh winter weather we had last year, but I think this story is going to play out. If gasoline prices remain low until this summer, we should see a sharp increase in the number of Americans that decide to take long driving vacations this year. We do love our SUVs.

Today's low crude oil price is blamed on Saudi Arabia's decision not to reduce supply even though the world is oversupplied by an estimated 1.5 million barrels per day. If gasoline under $2.00/gallon increases global demand for motor fuels by half of the amount it did back in 1986 (2.5%), demand for oil will increase by 2.4 million barrels per day and today's “glut” will soon fade from memory.

Gasoline prices in Texas are now under $1.75/gallon at many discount stations.
It is going to take a while to work off the build-up in both crude oil and gasoline inventories, but if the IEA and EIA start reporting that demand is catching up with supply the NYMEX strip price for crude oil will adjust quickly. The December, 2015 futures contract for WTI crude oil closed at $53.12/bbl on Friday, January 23 ($7.83/bbl above the front month contract). By the way, this has a lot to do with why crude oil inventories are building.

Keep in mind that oil production is also going to drop in response to lower prices. The U.S. active drilling rig count dropped by another 43 for the week ending January 23, 2015 to 1,633. Based on the upstream companies' capital budgets that I'm seeing, I expect the active rig count to drop below 1,000 by the end of May. We will soon have less than 700 rigs drilling for oil in this country and that means U.S. oil production will be on decline by the 4th quarter. In the last three years, only the U.S., Canada and Brazil have increased production. The rest of the world's oil production has been in decline despite previous $100/bbl oil prices.

Even before the sharp decline in oil prices, global demand for oil was growing at a rate of 1 million barrels per day per year. In my opinion, within six months the rate of demand growth will accelerate to over 2 million barrels per day. Demand could go even higher if consumers adjust their driving habits like they did back in 1986.

The upstream oil and gas producers will soon be reporting 4th quarter results, including updated reserve reports. Now is the time to add the best oil producers and MLPs to play the coming rebound in oil prices.
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James Stafford is Editor, OilPrice.com and contributes articles to the ARRA News Service. Dan Steffens is President of Energy Prospectus Group (EPG), a networking organization based in Houston, Texas. A former CPA, he he transitioned to the oil & gas industry with 18 years with Amerada Hess Corporation (HES).

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#SchoolChoice Week Is Freedom Week

Univ. of New Orleans was the focal point that marked the beginning
of National School Choice Week. Gov. Bobby Jindal is preparing to
advance an education reform agenda which makes School Choice
scholarships available statewide to parents. [Via Pelican Post]

by Gov. Bobby Jindal: This week marks one of the most important weeks of the year — for reasons that have nothing to do with Sunday’s Super Bowl. For this week is National School Choice Week, in which parents, teachers, policymakers and legislators from both sides of the aisle rally to support the right of parents to choose the best education for their child. I couldn't agree more with the important principles that National School Choice Week represents — namely, equal opportunity in education for millions of Americans.

On the most basic level, school choice represents the freedom to choose — empowering parents to select the best educational options for their sons and daughters. That could be a charter school, a private school, a religious school, home schooling, or even online learning. Governments should provide parents with the personalized and individualized tools they need to help their children excel academically.

That freedom to choose in turn will provide children with the freedom to succeed. With the right educational environment, teachers and academic training; students from all locations, income brackets and demographic groups will have better tools to compete in the global economy. We need to develop the talents of every American — no matter where he or she is from, and no matter the color of his or her skin — to maximize our country’s potential.

School choice also serves another important purpose — freeing low-income children from failing schools. No child should see his God-given talents go to waste because he is stuck in a failing school — and no parent should face the disempowerment that comes from knowing her son or daughter remains trapped in a poor school, and she lacks the financial means to move that child elsewhere. We can do better — and, by allowing parents dissatisfied with their school to move with their feet, school choice gives both high-performing and low-performing schools more incentive and motivation to improve their offerings.

Finally, school choice provides parents with freedom from the status quo — an educational-industrial complex that thinks bureaucrats, not parents, can best make decisions about the lives and futures of America’s children. It’s about pushing back when the then-head of Louisiana’s largest teachers’ union said low-income parents had “no clue” how to choose the right school for their children. And it’s even about standing up to the Attorney General of the United States, when the Department of Justice asked a court to block Louisiana’s school scholarship program on civil rights grounds — even though 90 percent of the program’s participants come from racial minority groups.

For here in Louisiana, we've put those principles to practice. Since we removed the cap on charters in 2009, we've authorized almost 200 charter schools throughout the state — that’s 70,000 kids who now have a choice about where they go to school. This last year, our Recovery School District became the nation’s first school district with 100 percent charter school enrollment. And the results are dramatic: The graduation rate in New Orleans has increased from 54.4 percent before Hurricane Katrina in 2004 to 72.8 percent; the percentage of New Orleans students scoring basic and above has increased from 35 percent to 63 percent; and the percentage of failing schools in New Orleans has dropped from 67 percent in 2005 to 17 percent.

We expanded our school choice scholarship program, which was initially confined to New Orleans, statewide. Parental satisfaction with the statewide scholarship program stands at a whopping 91.9 percent. We went even further though and created a dollar for dollar rebate for donations used to fund nonpublic school scholarships low-income students through our “school tuition organizations." Between 2008 and 2013, the percentage of students in the scholarship program who are proficient in third grade English language arts has grown by 20 percentage points and in math by 28 percentage points. Again and again, we've proven that giving more choice to parents is not only vital, but it gets results.

We also expanded access to online and dual enrollment courses for students across the state. This year, we've had over 19,000 students take advantage of our Course Choice program enrolling in advanced placement courses and career and technical courses that they otherwise wouldn't have access to.

Because of our work in Louisiana, and the work of many hard-working legislators, teachers, and parents across the country, literally millions of young Americans now have school choice options. But we should not stop until all Americans have the same opportunities available to them. That’s why I fully support National School Choice Week — to bring that educational and economic freedom to every student, and every parent, across this great land. For freedom is a lamp that should not be left under a bushel basket.
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Bobby Jindal (R) is the governor of Louisiana. He also shared this article as an Op-Ed in the Washington Examiner.

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Obama: Tons of Practice & Fairwell To William Warren

President Obama has had "tons of practice" vetoing the will of the American People and responsibility of the Presidency!

Editorial Cartoon by William Warren

Today, we say goodbye to one of this editor's most favorite cartoonists William Warren. He has worked with and has provided editorial cartoons for Americans for Limited Government (ALG) for seven years.  I have worked with ALG on various issues and projects and will continue to share their research, articles and comments with readers.  During that time, I had an opportunity to talk with William Warren and to share his work on this site.  During his time at ALG, he completed his degree and then examined new ventures and opportunities.  He has joined in launching a new business which he tells you about in the below cartoon. I wish William the very best in this future.  ~ Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service.

Editorial Cartoon by William Warren

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His Kingdom Come . . .

. . . He will be done in 2 more years.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Sons of Liberty: A Review

Sons of Liberty promotional image via History Channel

by Nelson Hultberg, Contributing Author: The History channel’s new miniseries, Sons of Liberty, will anger the purists and the prudes. But it will delight the swashbuckler in the rest of us. It is a big, bodacious screening with superb production values that covers the lead-up years to the American Revolution, 1765-1775. Yes, certain liberties are taken with some of the facts and events. The main characters are glamorized. But the essential theme of America’s birth is kept intact: we as a nation were spawned by a band of rebels made up of assorted firebrands, smugglers, and philosophers all coalescing together under the rubric of Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man.” Besides, what depiction of history is not romanticized by making the main characters a bit handsomer and younger than they, perhaps, were. Certainly not any depiction made for television.

The main character striding through Sons of Liberty is the famous Samuel Adams, played robustly by British actor, Ben Barnes, who doesn't give us an actualization of Adams’ role in history, but rather a symbolization of it. First of all, Barnes is in his early thirties, and Adams was 51 years old when he fomented the Boston Tea Party. So the producers of Sons of Liberty are trying to give us the symbolic Sam Adams and what his role was in the creation of America. Sam Adams was the quintessential rebel mind. He didn't have the scholarly genius of Thomas Jefferson, but he had a brilliant revolutionary mind. And valor permeated his entire life. He blended mind and defiance as well as, and perhaps better than, any of our Founders.

Sam Adams told his fellow patriots in 1773 in the build-up to the Boston Tea Party, “It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

This is what brings about all revolutionary change in history – small minorities of men and women fervently committed to a cause that will require courage and resourcefulness to bring into fruition. Yes, luck is also necessary, but mostly courage and resourcefulness because luck eventually descends upon us all. It’s the ones with courage who ride the luck into history and change the fate of mankind. Sam Adams and the “Sons of Liberty” were these kind of men. They seized the opportunity that the arrogant, blundering British gave to them.

The valor of Sam Adams was the spark that made him one of our most important Founders. As we all know, the colonists were by no means united. Sons of Liberty portrays this Rebel-Tory division clearly, and it demonstrates how remarkable the likes of Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Dr. Joseph Warren were. They were willing to break from the security and stability of life under the British Crown to venture into uncharted waters for a new future – a break that offered them certain death or prison if they failed, yet they eagerly proceeded. In the process they galvanized a band of rebels and lit the match to “the shot heard round the world.”

The Partnership
In the first segment, we see Sam Adams and John Hancock initiate their partnership, which eventually leads to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Adams is a scruffy, roguish firebrand, while Hancock is portrayed as a rich, cautious, unbearably foppish socialite who relies on trade and imports to bring him the lavish life he desires. In dddition, the director, Kari Skogland, has him constantly urging Adams and his band of street rebels to “stop their insanity.” Unfortunately this is not the historical Hancock at all. Yet at every turn, Skogland and her writers insist on painting this false picture of Hancock as timidly opposing the rebellion, even opposing the dumping of the tea into Boston Harbor.

All historical records clearly show Hancock was a vigorous supporter of the colonial protests against the British from 1765 on in concert with Adams. Yet Skogland has him reluctantly and timidly dragging his feet throughout these crucial years. Hancock was not a warrior, but he was very much a willing rebel who financed the agitations and the dumping of the tea. He was upper class, yes, but hardly a fop. He fervently favored the revolution, and served admirably in various roles of political leadership for the American cause from the beginning. For some reason, however, Skogland’s writers have quite incorrectly portrayed him. Not good.

The British Are Coming
In the second segment, we are introduced to the tyrannical British Gen. Thomas Gage (played to menacing perfection by Marton Csokas) and also to the renowned Paul Revere and his epic ride (played forcefully by the rugged Michael Raymond-James). Revere was a silversmith, but he had a warrior persona. The Boston Tea Party is presented in a sensationalized manner with Sam Adams standing astride one of the ships to stare down a regiment of British regulars with muskets raised on the wharf, daring them to shoot him. Quisling Governor Hutchinson arrives just in time to halt the British regiment leader for fear of making the heroic Adams into a martyr.

If director, Skogland, is lacking in historical accuracy, she is certainly not deficient in the ability to entertain her viewers. She gives us action, conflict, suspense, and charismatic characters we care about, as well as a salacious romance between Dr. Joseph Warren and Gen. Gage’s ravishing wife, Margaret, played by Emily Berrington. Ryan Eggold is very appealing as the clever and courageous Dr. Joseph Warren. Berrington is pristinely beautiful as Margaret Gage. Their love affair is total fiction; but it’s insertion into the story allows Sons of Liberty to avoid being just a litany of politics and battles. It becomes a sexy romp as well. After all, America’s rebels were not prudes; they lusted after women in their day as we do in ours. This tale is not meant to be a staid documentary with sidebar commentaries by dreary Doris Goodwin types. It is meant to be a TV blockbuster. Sex is necessary for that.

Lexington and Bunker Hill
The third and final segment begins with the British rout of the rebels at Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 and the following rebel victory at the Concord munitions storage. Thus begins our War for Independence. These and the later battle scenes are carried off spectacularly with big sophisticated production values. The Concord surprise victory for the rebels shakes Gage and his troops severely, which is demonstrated by Gage’s hurried request to London for more troops and his demand to recklessly attack the rebels at Bunker Hill despite the certainty of heavy British casualties and warnings from his subordinate officers. Gage is vile and icy in demeanor. He will surely go down as one of the great villains of TV entertainment. There is a grisly inhumanity about the man. Gen. Washington termed him a ruthless cancer.

At John Adams’ insistence, our rebel heroes then pay a visit to Benjamin Franklin for advice and support. Apparently the historical Franklin is not in Skogland’s memory bank either, for the Franklin we encounter here seems more like a brawny biker with a Harley outside at the hitching post. He is played by Breaking Bad’s robustious Dean Norris. He pours forth the braininess we expect from Franklin, but Skogland has injected a few choice morsels of modern dialogue into his part. “You’re talking about a new country,” he informs a startled contingent of Sam and John Adams, and Paul Revere. They reply hesitantly that they guess they are, to which Franklin responds, “That’s a bat shit crazy idea.” But he assures them that he agrees with this crazy idea. Inserting modern slang into the revered mouths of the Founders may be “progressive” and “avant-garde” to Skogland, but to me it is a stink bomb for the script.

Next comes the Battle of Bunker Hill, and it is as gritty and grotesque as a battle can be. Huge casualties are suffered by the rebels as they are overrun by the monster British war machine and Gage’s fanaticism. In the aftermath, Gen. Washington, who up till now has remained a non-participant in the rebel hostilities, manifests as the heroic leader we know from history and assures the rebels that all is not lost. A fierce war is coming, but he will lead them.

The finale is a stirring speech for liberty by Sam Adams in front of the delegates of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in July of 1776 that prefaces the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock inscribes his now famous signature to the storied document, a war begins, and a new country is born.

The Lesson for Us Today
In conclusion, Sons of Liberty is far from accurate history, but it is splendid entertainment. Most importantly it is true to the fundamental fount of America – that we were spawned by a new philosophical vision of strictly limited government instituted to protect men’s rights rather than manipulate men’s lives.

How did these scruffy “Sons of Liberty,” and the rag-tag army they morphed into, pull off defeating the most powerful military force in the world at that time? They did it because there exists a dynamic force in our lives that all tyrannical systems lack and all rational revolutionaries possess – moral truth! This is what brings the most powerful of tyrannies down. No matter how much military or regulatory control they possess, no matter how ruthless they are – they are always vulnerable in face of men and women who are in possession of truth and willing to take a moral stand against overwhelming odds. Moral truth connected to unbending human will is what eventually destroys the most entrenched of evil.

We have this force on our side today in the crisis we now face, which is identical in principle to the crisis our Founders faced. We possess the same moral truth that they had, and we can use it to overcome today’s Washington tyrants. We just have to design the right strategy to implement it. There are countless Americans out there just waiting for the right mix of political savvy and passion to come along and sweep them up into a crusade.

In 1776, the Tories timidly hid behind closed doors where it was safe and popular. They wallowed in pessimism and lamented that nothing could be done. The British were too strong. Why make a big fuss? But the rebels – men like Samuel Adams and John Hancock, Paul Revere and Joseph Warren – would have none of it. They knew they had moral truth on their side, and that the British Gargantua would fall precisely because of that. And if they weren’t absolutely certain they would prevail, they knew they still must fight, or their lives were meaningless. This is the lesson we glean from the Sons of Liberty for our lives today.

Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Dr. Joseph Warren are eternal archetypes of what is required as human beings to live freely and justly. If you missed this original History channel presentation of their fight, it will come around again. Don’t miss its rerun.
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Nelson Hultberg is a contributing author to the  ARRA News Service. He is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic and author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values.

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Obama ad Nauseum

by Alan Caruba, Contributing Author: I made a promise to myself that I would not write about President Obama’s State of the Union speech because that would require me to watch him deliver it. Like many others I can barely watch him under any circumstance because, to my mind, that means having to watch a psychopathic liar. The problem with that is that he is the President for two more years.

And then I read an article on Politico.com, “Republicans outfox Democrats on climate votes” subtitled “The GOP accepts the notion of climate change, but not in the way the Democrats wanted them to.”

In a rational world, politicians voting on whether the climate changes or not is an absurdity. Of course the climate changes. It always has and always will. But when Democrats use the term “climate change” they really mean “global warming.” And global warming has been the greatest hoax of the modern era, getting its start in the late 1980s and becoming a huge academic industry generated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Global warming put billions in the pockets of “scientists”, universities, and any think tank that would lie about it, telling the nation and the world that carbon dioxide, a gas that is barely 0.04% of the Earth’s atmosphere was warming it when, in fact, the Earth stopped warming some 19 years ago at the same time the Sun entered a natural cycle of lower solar radiation.

Few of these “scientists” bothered to tell the public that, without carbon dioxide, we and all other life on Earth would die as it is critical to the growth of all vegetation. The fact that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has actually been increasing at the same time the Earth has been cooling is proof enough that all the warming claims were and are pure hogwash.

It turns out that all the computer models that they and others have generated to predict a catastrophic global warming have been wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Obama didn’t have a word to say about al Qaeda and the other Islamic fascists eager to destroy modernity and drag the world back to the Dark Age, but he did lie about 2014 as “the planet’s warmest year on record.”

That lie was initially put out by NASA and National Oceanic and the Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA) two government agencies that shortly thereafter admitted that they might be wrong, seeing that their assertion of the 0.02 degree Celsius increase wasn’t even outside their own margin of error. They could have taken a look at their own satellite data and saved themselves from looking like idiots.

Obama said, “I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what—I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA and NOAA, and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all tell us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, long, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger great migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.”

This is lying on a galactic scale. The United States doesn’t need to do a single thing to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions”, nor should it bother to do so. Obama’s claims of catastrophic change bears no relationship to the fact that in recent years the planet has had a record low in the numbers of tornadoes and hurricanes, and a record gain in Arctic and Antarctic ice. There has been no change of any significance in the sea levels. Those who study such things note that “Until about 7,000 years ago the rate of rise was about 100 mm/decade. Since then rate of rise has averaged 10 mm/decade.” That’s “mm” as in millimeters.

In late December, the world’s second largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, reported on the losses from natural events in 2014 and, despite predictions that climate change would cause more frequent natural catastrophes due to man-made worsening of the climate, it saw “markedly less damage claims than in previous years” and far less loss of lives.” In terms of the dollars it cost the insurance industry, Swiss Re estimated that costs insurers covered were USD $113 billion in 2014, down from USD $135 billion in 2013. Losses were down 24% from 2013.

That, of course, doesn’t matter to Obama. It should, however, matter to the rest of us because the Environmental Protection Agency has been using those computer models and abjectly phony “science” to wage Obama’s war on the nation’s providers of the energy on which we all depend. From coal-fired plants to drilling for oil and natural gas, anything that might provide energy is under attack by the EPA.

As Katie Tubb, a research assistant for the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, responded to Obama’s claim saying that “The EPA’s proposed regulations would have almost zero impact on global temperatures, but will certainly impact Americans now and for future generations.”

So, when you read about a bunch of U.S. Senators, only one of whom, Oklahoma’s Sen. James Inhofe (R) has a grasp of the real science, spent time voting back and forth over amendments and their language regarding the climate, you were in fact really reading about the debate leading up to the passage of the bill that would remove Obama’s authority to prevent the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Between a President who lies about global warming and climate change, and a Congress composed mostly of lawyers who are clueless about the actual science, the best we can hope for is a Republican Party determined to rein in the EPA and other government agencies; the reason they were voted into office.
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Alan Caruba is a writer by profession; has authored several books, and writes a daily column, Warning Signs. He is a contribution author on the ARRA News Service.

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@SpeakerBoehner - 'It Is True,' Republicans Plan to Sue Obama Over Executive Amnesty

by Susan Jones, CNS News: House Republicans are finalizing a plan to sue the Obama administration over its unilateral decision to defer deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.

"It is true," House Speaker John Boehner told Fox News Wednesday night. "The president's overreach when he took executive action to -- to deal with the immigration problems in our country, frankly, in my view, is a violation of our Constitution, is -- it's a violation of his oath of office.

"I said in December, we were going to do everything to try to stop it."
Boehner said that's why the House blocked funding for Obama's immigration plan in a Homeland Security appropriations bill, which now awaits action in the Senate.

"But in addition to that, we believe that the filing of a lawsuit to try to stop the president from -- from violating our Constitution is an important step for our institution. This isn't about immigration. This is the president violating the Constitution, violating his oath of office and, frankly, not upholding the rule of law."

This is the second lawsuit challenging Obama's executive overreach. Last November, Republicans sued the Obama administration for unilaterally waiving provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Earlier this week, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of "crawling to the courts to relieve them of their responsibility to govern." Drew Hammill said Republicans "should stop wasting millions of taxpayer dollars suing the President, and start showing some seriousness for the security of the American people."

At her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Attorney-General nominee Loretta Lynch said Obama's directive to prioritize the removal of criminals and other dangerous people instead of aliens that pose no threat seems "to be a reasonable way to marshal limited resources to deal with the problem."

Boehner noted that President Obama himself said 22 times that "he did not have the authority to do what he did...Yet he decided to do it anyway."

Boehner said a border security bill pending in the House eventually will pass, after Republicans expand it.

"We've got members who want more in the bill outside of the committee's jurisdiction. We have some members who believe that we ought to include a lot of other things. So there's a lot of conversation going on about how best to address this," Boehner said.

On another topic, Obamacare, Boehner said Republicans plan to come up with an alternative, after they once again vote to repeal the law"

"There are three committee chairmen that have the jurisdiction over the health care policy in our country. And those three chairmen are working together to craft what we believe would be a better approach with regard to health care for the American people than ObamaCare...There will be an alternative, and you'll get to see it."

Boehner listed several areas where Republicans should be able to find common ground with the president, including trade promotion authority; an authorization for the use of military force against ISIS/ISIL; a long-term infrastructure bill; and cyber security.

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Tags: Speaker, John Boehner, will sue,   President Obama, executive amnesty, CNS News To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!