Illegal Border Crossings More than Double Since Amnesty Talks Started

by AWR Hawkins 1 Apr 2013

  Reports indicate that since Senator John McCain's "Gang of Eight" restarted their latest push for amnesty, illegal border crossing from Mexico to the U.S. have more than doubled. It appears those entering the country illegally want to be sure they are here in case a blanket amnesty pronouncement is issued.

As a U.S. Border Patrol Agent who spoke on condition of anonymity made clear, a number of those entering the country illegally are doing so to escape jail time or persecution in their own country: "We've seen the number of illegal aliens double, maybe even triple since amnesty talks started happening. [And] a lot of these people, although not the majority, are criminals or aggravated felons."

Making matters worse, Border Patrol Agents currently face hour and pay reductions which Obama is blaming on the sequester cuts he signed into law in August 2011. This means there is less and less chance of catching illegal aliens as they cross over.

Therefore, at the very time Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Robert Menendez (D-FL), Michael Bennett (D-Col.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are pushing for a path to citizenship as, our border is becoming more and more porous, and everyone who can get here illegally is doing it.

Big Government

Sen. Cornyn: 'Open the People's House'

by Mike Flynn 27 Mar 2013
 

 This Spring Break, thousands of students visiting DC won't be able to enjoy a time-honored tradition - a self-guided tour of the White House. President Obama canceled the tours, asserting that he needed to trim $2 million from the Secret Service budget as a result of the automatic sequester cuts. TX Sen. John Cornyn has blasted this decision and released a video demanding that the "People's House" be reopened to the public.  “Kids from Texas and across the country have been shut out of the White House because the President wanted to make the sequester as painful as possible," Sen. Cornyn told Breitbart News.

"Though billions in actual government waste have been identified for him, the President continues to insist on scare tactics to make a political point," Cornyn added. "When will he finally eliminate actual excess rather than shutting the doors of the People’s House to students on spring break?”

Cornyn's office estimates that, through April, over 1,000 Texas students will be denied the chance to tour the White House. As the Obama White House uses the cancellation of tours to trim Secret Service spending, the Obama family has increased Secret Service costs by taking a vacation a month so far in 2013. On Monday, Breitbart reported that First Daughters, Sasha and Malia, are spending Spring Break in the Bahamas.

The added Secret Service costs for the Bahamas vacation could likely have been used to keep the tours open through Spring Break. Of course, such a shift in priorities wouldn't allow Obama to score cheap political points. At least the First Family will have a nice Spring Break.



Big Government

Sequester: Obama Designates Five New National Monuments; Signing Ceremony Closed To Press

by Larry O'Connor 25 Mar 2013
 

 Despite continued protestations of doom over the sequestration cuts that have paralyzed all of Washington in the grips of terror over the past 25 days, President Obama somehow found it possible to commit the federal government to acquiring five new national monuments today.  He did so by using the Antiquities Act, thereby circumventing Congress in the process.  Coincidentally, (no, really, we're sure it's just a coincidence), all five national monuments are located in blue states that just a few months ago committed their electoral college votes to the re-election of President Obama.  Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio and Washington well reap the financial benefit of the new federally designated monuments.  Nothing like a nice reward for dedicated support, even while defense department employees are weeks away from receiving furlough notices.

The White House clearly recognizes the troublesome optics of the president's act while encumbered by the new sequestration ethos in Washington, so they chose to bar the press from the signing ceremony.  At today's press riefing, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest tried to claim that keeping the press away from the ceremony was no big deal:






Q Josh, just a follow-up on that. Doc Hastings, who’s the Chairman of the House of Natural Resources Committee, said that this was an odd time to be bringing this up when the government is struggling with the sequester, White House tours are closed, many agencies including the Park Service is struggling to keep open what they have. I think his quote was, this is the government spending money it doesn’t have on properties it doesn’t own. How do you respond to that?

MR. EARNEST: Well, my sense is, is that these designations today don’t necessarily -- are made for important reasons, as I laid out before; that they have an impact on local economies; that they will -- that you can see local economies growing up around the designation of these properties that as visitors come to enjoy these new national monuments that will have a stimulative impact on the local economies in these communities.

They also reflect a way to commemorate and, in some cases, even celebrate the history of this country. So there are important reasons for why the President took this step. In terms of the impact that this is going to have on the budget of the Department of Interior and the National Park Service, I’d refer you to them for that analysis. It’s my understanding, however, that a lot of the land for these new national monuments was either land that was already owned by the federal government or it was donated. And in terms of the immediate costs in terms of the management of the land, I think they’re pretty minimal in the early stages. But certainly future budgets that the administration will offer will reflect the acquisition of these new properties.

Q Just one more thing. Why was it closed, the signing closed? It fairly -- I’m sorry, I almost made a pun -- it’s a monumental -- (laughter) -- piece of legislation. I didn’t mean to do that.

MR. EARNEST: That’s pretty good.

Q But why close? I mean, there are not even stills in it?

MR. EARNEST: Well, I think that we were able at the last minute to include some stills in there. There were a lot of people moving in and out who are participating in the ceremony. But this is something that was announced a couple of days ago so maybe we underestimated your interest in it.

Big Journalism

Media Put Pro-Obama Propaganda Over Airline Safety

by John Nolte 25 Mar 2013

  Contrary to ongoing media propaganda, the story of the current sequester cuts is not what's being cut -- be it the closing of White House tours or 149 airport control towers. The real story is that our federal government is so mismanaged, greedy, and corrupt that what amounts to a 2% cut in a $3.5 trillion budget results in the closing of airport control towers.

The only thing more absurd than a federal government so out of control it can't cut enough bloat, repetition, and waste to keep those control towers open, is the fact that our media plays along. Rather than hold the White House accountable for refusing the GOP's offer for some discretion over the cuts,  the media keeps right on parroting Obama's talking points that the government is too small.

What we're currently seeing from the media is almost all lies of omission and pro-government propaganda. And as proof, out of the hundreds of stories the media has written while wringing their left-wing hands over nothing-cuts, I submit to you the only three I've been able to find that tell the real sequester story.

The first is Sharyl Attkisson's CBS News report on the IRS wasting $60,000 in taxpayer money on a "Star Trek" spoof.

The second is a Breitbart News exclusive about the First Daughters spring-breaking at a Paradise Island resort.

The third is about $385,000 being spent by the federal government to study duck penises.

It is unconscionable that our government and our media continue to stand helplessly by as airport control towers go unmanned. Rather than scramble to do whatever is necessary to protect pilots and passengers by reallocating resources from the unnecessary to the necessary, they prefer instead to push propaganda.  

Big Journalism

Obama Pursues Royal Prerogative as MSM Remains Silent

by Michael Patrick Leahy 25 Mar 2013
 

 On Monday, Breitbart's Matthew Boyle broke the story that First Daughters Sasha and Malia Obama are spending their spring break at a resort in the Bahamas. Breitbart's Mike Flynn followed up with an analysis showing how this reflected President Obama's budget priorities. There is enough money in President Obama's post sequester FY 2013 federal budget to provide Secret Service protection for his daughters vacationing outside the country, Flynn noted, but not enough to keep the White House open for tours for the children of average American taxpayers. Throughout the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, President Obama promised to transform America into something better, a land filled with hope and change. It appears, however, that the man who vacations in Martha's Vineyard, golfs with Tiger Woods, and sends the Secret Service to accompany his wife and daughters on international vacations to Spain, Mexico, and now the Bahamas has another agenda in mind. He seeks to transform constitutional presidential authority into royal prerogative. Judging by the failure of any media source other than Breitbart, Drudge, and Instapundit to cover this story, it is also quite clear that the mainstream media has decided to play the role of dutiful courtiers to this expansion of presidential powers.

Prerogative is not a word used very often these days. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as "an exclusive or special right, power, or privilege: as one belonging to an office or an official body  . . . [or] to a person, group, or class of individuals." During the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers used this word frequently to refer to those special powers and privileges that could be exercised only by the British monarch, King George III. Their complaint about George III was simple. In his treatment of the American colonies, he had far expanded the royal prerogative beyond those special powers and privileges identified in the unwritten English Constitution.

This, of course, was one reason why our Founding Fathers insisted on a written Constitution, ratified by the citizens, with a Bill of Rights that guaranteed freedom of the press. Presidential authority would be constrained by both the written words of the Constitution and the free press, acting as a watch dog of executive abuse.

But during the Obama administration, presidential authority has been unconstrained to a remarkable degree, ranging from the unconstitutional use of the "recess" appointment to blatant abuses of executive privilege. The courtiers of the mainstream media have been fawning in their treatment of these unfettered and apparently successful attempts to transform traditional constitutionally authorized presidential authority into extraconstitutional royal prerogative.

The mainstream media's protection of President Obama's budget hypocrisy in denying access to the White House to thousands of American school children while authorizing the latest international vacation for the First Daughters is but the latest example of the most troubling transformation of all--that of the watch dog media into fawning royal courtiers.

Big Journalism

Sequester: Pentagon Suspends Thunderbird, Blue Angel Air Shows

by Mike Flynn 25 Mar 2013
 

 In its continuing bid to make the automatic sequester cuts as painful to the public as possible, Obama's Pentagon has announced that it is suspending its aerial acrobatic flying teams, like the Air Force's Thunderbirds and the Navy's Blue Angels. With the decision, the Obama Administration is continuing the fiction that the last dollar government spends is on services most valued by the public.  Each branch of the military operates its own aerobatic team. The Navy and Marines have the Blue Angels. The Air Force has the Thunderbirds. The Army has a parachute team called the Golden Knights. These teams are publicly popular features of air shows across the country. After performances this past weekend, the Pentagon will suspend public appearances until at least after September 30th, the last day of the fiscal year subject to sequester cuts.

The decision raises two, almost conflicting, questions. First, is the Pentagon's budget so efficient that cutting the aerobatic teams is a natural place to trim spending? When the government has to shave pennies off every dollar it spends, does it always need to first go to the areas the public most sees? To save $2 million, over a 7 month period, out of the Secret Service budget, Obama chose to cancel self-guided tours of the White House. I appreciate the Obamas' predilection for luxury vacations, but couldn't they have scaled back these, rather than shutter the White House from the public?

The second question raised is more existential. Why is the military providing aerobatic teams to air shows in the first place? One promoter said that acts like the Blue Angels boost attendance at air shows by 25%.

There is a clear financial value, so why aren't air shows paying for the military entertainment? Beyond that question, are these aerobatic teams really critical to providing for the national defense?

Taming runaway federal spending will require a host of tough decisions. Many programs may make sense when budget deficits are just 2-3% of GDP, but look altogether different when deficits approach 10% of the economy.

Perhaps it is time to retire the Blue Angels permanently.

Big Government

Obama Prioritizes Family Spring Break Over White House Tours

by Mike Flynn 25 Mar 2013
 

 As spring break begins for schoolchildren across the country, thousands of students will travel to Washington, DC. The trips, funded by bake sales and other events throughout the year, will allow the students to take in Washington's historic landmarks.  One premier destination is off-limits this year, however.

A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration announced it was suspending public, self-guided tours of the White House as a result of the automatic sequester cuts that the administration proposed in 2011. While America's students stand outside the White House fence, the First Daughters, Sasha and Malia, are enjoying spring break with friends at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

Breitbart News' Matt Boyle broke the news Monday morning that numerous sources have reported seeing the First Daughters in the Bahamas this weekend. Presumably, the Obamas are paying the costs of the resort out of their own pockets. The robust Secret Service detail that must accompany the First Daughters, however, is funded by taxpayers.

The principal reason the White House canceled public tours was to save money on Secret Service staff. The White House reported that suspending the tours would save $74,000 a week. Other reports have put the savings at just $18,000 a week.

Whichever the true amount, the Secret Service detail necessary to protect the First Daughters on their spring break could likely have been used to keep the White House open to the rest of America's school children. Judicial Watch reported that Malia Obama's Spring Break in Mexico last year cost taxpayers over $115,000. That amount would cover 2-6 weeks of White House tours.

At the very least, it would ensure that, this spring break, thousands of America's students could cap their trip to DC with a uniquely American tradition--a tour of the White House.

Big Government

Ex-Secret Service Agent: Obama 'Absolutely Not Telling the Truth' on White House Tours

by Matthew Boyle 13 Mar 2013

  Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino told Breitbart News that President Barack Obama was lying when he blamed the cancellation of White House tours on his former agency. “The president’s absolutely not telling the truth when he said the Secret Service made that decision to cut [the White House] tours,” Bongino said. “That’s the core of it: he is not telling the truth.”

In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Obama said the decision, made as a part of sequestration, was not one “that went up to the White House.”

“But what the Secret Service explained to us was that they’re going to have to furlough some folks,” Obama said in the interview. What furloughs mean is--is that people lose a day of work and a day of pay. And, you know, the question for them is, you know, how deeply do they have to furlough their staff and is it worth it to make sure that we’ve got White House tours that means that you got a whole bunch of families who are depending on a paycheck who suddenly are seeing a 5% or 10%--reduction in their pay. Well, what I’m asking them is are there ways, for example, for us to accommodate school groups--you know, who may have traveled here with some bake sales. Can we make sure that– kids, potentially, can--can still come to tour?”

Bongino, who served 12 years in the Secret Service including five years working directly at the White House before leaving to run as a Republican for U.S. Senate in Maryland, said Obama is lying because the Secret Service does not make such decisions.

“The Secret Service does not make political decisions,” Bongino said. “The Secret Service makes security decisions. His statement that it was a Secret Service decision internal budget decision--and keep in mind, I’m not speaking for the Secret Service, I’m speaking from experience of being with them. All he’d have to do is cancel one or two of his political trips and his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, which two years ago I was on and helped coordinate, he would save that money times ten. There was just no way this was a sound decision. To insinuate this is the first administration where the White House social office and the Executive Office of the President had no role in cancelling public tours at the White House, that he was the first president who was left out of the decision, is absolute nonsense.”

Bongino said he thinks the president is using “the Washington Monument strategy”--a ploy by a politician who tries to garner public opposition to spending cuts by eliminating popular public services first--in doing this to White House tours. “He wanted to inflict, there is no question in my mind, maximum pain upon the American people. But here’s the caveat: it had to be public pain. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t hurt.”

But Bongino said all the public pressure Obama has taken for the decision to cancel the tours caused the ploy to “backfire.” Regardless, the ex Secret Service agent who served three years at the George W. Bush White House and two years at Obama’s White House said Obama still will not admit he was wrong and is now trying to blame the Secret Service for his own behavior.

“Instead of coming clean and being honest with the American people that your office and likely you as well had a role in this, he’s again pulling the wool over your eyes just like he’s done on Benghazi, the immigration release [of thousands of illegal immigrants] where he said he didn’t know and Janet Napolitano said she didn’t know, this is nonsense,” Bongino said. “These are not security or budget decisions. These are strictly political decisions. Make no mistake about it.”

Bongino said the Secret Service is not correcting Obama because the agency has “a great, elite group of guys and they’re always going to take it on the chin.”

“I don’t speak for them but they’re obviously a patriotic group of men and women and they’re not lying when they say there will be overtime costs saved so it’s not like they’re being disingenuous,” Bongino said.

“They’re trying to cover for this guy, I think, because they know it looks bad and they don’t want to get involved in the politics and I don’t blame them.”

Big Government

The Sad Truth About Immigration and the Sequester

by David Bossie 9 Mar 2013

  Out of President Obama's sequestration doomsday predictions, the one which best encapsulates what famed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward described as "madness" involves illegal immigration. And it is no laughing matter.

As Fox News reported, a few hundred illegal immigrant detainees were released by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which probably led to the early "retirement" of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations Director Gary Mead. ICE plans to let loose between 5,000 and 10,000 additional illegal immigrants to meet the terms of the sequester. Confirming the story this week was The Washington Examiner.

But don't worry: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has informed us that the illegals being released are "very low-level, low-risk detainees.” According to this New York Times profile, that can also be defined as illegals with convictions for “simple assault, simple battery, and child abuse." Are you comforted yet?

I have studied our porous Southern border closely. In 2006, I produced the award-winning documentary Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration. Since that time, the situation and the drain on our social services and entitlement programs have become even more dire.

With President Obama rushing to give every illegal immigrant a pathway to citizenship, what he and our leaders in Congress should do is tell the truth about the state of the fence at our southern border and asking: Why hasn't the border fence been built? 

To get that answer, we must look back to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush. While it authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of "at least two layers of reinforced fencing," the law was subsequently amended heavily by then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and others who gave DHS bureaucrats the ability to use less secure fencing at their discretion.

As Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama pointed out during a February 13 Judiciary Committee hearing, with more than $600 million in appropriations, and out of the 700 miles of fence we were promised, only 36 miles of doubled-layered fence actually exist. The rest of the fencing consists of single-layer fence or just small "vehicle barriers" designed to stop cars, which any pedestrian could easily hop over. This is an outrage and one of the reasons Washington politicians are so unpopular.

Now, while the border fence construction has essentially stopped, Mexican cartels continue to smuggle weapons, drugs, and illegals into our country who are more likely to commit crimes and fill our prisons. The United State Attorney General's office has released statistical reports showing crime rates along the southern border is increasing, with drug smuggling posing a serious organized crime threat for the country. And throughout the border, desperate Southern states have erected signs warning citizens to avoid certain federal lands because of the high levels of human and drug trafficking.

Before Congress discusses comprehensive immigration reform, we must enforce the laws on our books, finish building a legitimate and effective fence for the 21st century, and further secure our border with boots on the ground. With enemies throughout the world who do not wear uniforms, our liberty can only be secure if we know exactly who is coming into the country. If we are a nation of laws, we cannot reward lawbreakers while punishing those who wait in line to find a better life. And if we are to cut the size of government while reducing the burden placed on law enforcement and social services, conservatives must unite and finally get our border secured first.

Big Government