The Justice Department filed a challenge to Alabama’s tough anti-illegal-immigration law Monday, arguing that the Constitution prohibits state and local governments from creating a national “patchwork” of immigration policies.

The suit, filed in Alabama’s Northern District, marks the second time the Obama administration has sought to block a state immigration reform law. Last year, the Justice Department filed a similar challenge to Arizona’s controversial SB 1070. A federal judge decided to temporarily block key parts of that law, including a provision that would have required police to determine suspects’ immigration status. (snip)

The federal complaint argues that the law, which is set to take effect Sept. 1, “exceeds a state’s role with respect to aliens, interferes with the federal government’s balanced administration of the immigration laws, and critically undermines U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

Well, if the Obama admin. is claiming that the Constitution prohibits…, then they should have no problem doing it themselves, right? It should be interesting to see what Alabama argues, which should certainly include the malfeasance of Los Federal government, along with the 9th and 10th amendments. The Law of the USA may be the supreme law, but, is there any reason why States cannot tighten those laws up?

Then there is Article IV Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;… That would seem to say that Los Federales are duty bound to stop illegal immigration.

Article IV Section 3: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. So, States have a claim to deal with their own property.

Moreover, the law, known as HB 56, “would result in the harassment and incarceration of lawful resident aliens — and even U.S. citizens who would not have readily available documentation to demonstrate their citizenship,” the government argued.

Yet, so far, any incidents have been so minor as to be meaningless. People who did not break the law have been harassed for other things in the past. Some people have been, unfortunately, put in jail for crimes they did not commit. Nothing is perfect.

But, hey, perhaps Team Obama has tanked the economy even further in order to get the illegals to go back to their home countries, because there are no jobs here.

Georgia, South Carolina, Utah and Indiana are surely next on the block for a lawsuit, as they also have tough illegal alien laws. Expect those suits to come quickly, if they come, because Team Obama surely doesn’t want these lawsuits during the general election season, since so many people are against illegal immigration.

The Texas and Arizona governors criticized the Obama administration’s border security plans Monday, saying not enough National Guard troops are being deployed to their states.

“What we heard wasn’t anything what we hoped to hear,” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer told reporters after a 90-minute briefing by federal officials sent by President Obama.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican like Brewer, said the deployment to his state was “insufficient to meet the needs of securing the Texas-Mexico border.”

A White House statement said plans to deploy 1,200 additional National Guard soldiers along the U.S.-Mexico border would “complement the unprecedented resources and additional efforts already devoted by this administration to securing the Southwest border.”

They can talk about “unprecedented” all they want, the fact is, our southern border is not being secured properly, which is why Arizona had to pass that law, and many other states are considering doing the same. Including non-border states.

Of course, the #1 idea is still to go after those who employ illegals mucho hard. No jobs; most will leave or not come. Then we can deal with the really bad ones, and look towards real lawful and legal immigration reform.

The federal team was led by John Brennan, a national security adviser whom Goddard said has the job of evaluating “the whole picture.”

“He never said this is all,” Goddard said. “He said this is what we’re going to do right now.”

So, they are doing it piecemeal. Funny how they want to wrap up a comprehensive immigration reform law, but, when it actually comes to securing the border, they’ll get around to it.

Anyhow, read the whole article.

Mark Tapscott echoes our current theme here on the blog by reporting that California is once again in a disastrous budget shortfall and one of the biggest reason that this is so is the undue power of the recalcitrant public employees unions. Tapscott says that California cannot get out of its mess because, “the unions refuse to consider relaxing their death grip on California’s rapidly shrinking legion of tax payers.”

Tapscott thinks that California is coming to realize that the unions are going to have to be confronted in order to solve the spiraling budget woes, but I am doubtful. Looking at the mess from the outside would certainly cause one to draw such a conclusion, but inside the legislature at Sacramento one sees no hint that the unions are becoming the bad guys as they should be.

Still, I hope that Tapscott is right and that California can finally lead the country in a good thing by breaking the public employees unions and, hope of hopes, eliminating them.

And why are these unions so dangerous? Tapscott’s conclusion is a refrain we’ve been touting for years.

It’s not only that public sector unions are driving many state and local governments into fiscal insolvency by forcing them to accept contracts providing compensation benefits that far exceed those in the private sector for comparable work and that cannot be paid for without crippling tax increases.

We agree, of course.

Add this report to the mounting number of individuals coming to the same conclusion we came to here on the blog.

So, since the economy and jobs (the Times reports that millions will remain without jobs for years, the worst ever) are being ignored, why not try cap and tax to destroy even more jobs and cause a double dip recession that never ends?

A last-ditch attempt at passing a climate change bill begins in the Senate this week with senators mindful that time is running short and that approaches to the legislation still vary widely, according to sources.

“We will present senators with a number of options when they get back from recess,” said one Senate aide knowledgeable of the compromise legislation that is being developed. The goal is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists say threaten Earth.

The options will be presented to three senators — Democrat John Kerry, independent Joseph Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham — who are leading the fight for a bill to battle global warming domestically.

It is definitely time for Graham to retire. Apparently, he is unable, or unwilling, to read about all the false, spun, made up, and/or downright disingenuous “science” performed by the UN IPCC and other leading climate alarmists. He hasn’t bothered to pay attention to all the issues that have come out, especially since the start of Climategate. The science is anything but settled, especially with leading climate alarmist Phil Jones stating that there has been no statistical warming in the past 15 years, and that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current warming period.

The aide said the Senate’s drive for a bill got a boost last week with President Barack Obama’s announcement of an $8.3 billion government loan guarantee to help start expanding the nuclear power industry, a top Republican priority. “The administration is really putting their money where their mouth is,” the aide said.

The one has nothing to do with the other. Republicans want nuclear power because it is a fantastic method to provide power. More bang for the buck, if you will.

The Senate trio’s success or failure likely will have a profound impact on international efforts to reduce carbon emissions and prevent Earth’s temperature from exceeding a possibly dangerous 2 degree Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) increase from pre-industrial times.

Ummmmmmmmm-huh. Right. Only problem is, that would be the climate of the Medieval Warm period, one which humans did just fine in. Vikings settled Greenland, and became farmers. Until the Little Ice Age wiped them out, of course. Considering that the temperatures have risen by less than 1 degree C since the end of the Little Ice Age, quite a bit during a time when SUVs and heavy industry were not present, it couldn’t be nature, could it? Considering that temps have been flat and even reducing over the past 10 years, yet CO2 levels continue to increase, perhaps that might mean that the science, based on alarmism and garbage in garbage out computer models, is false. What Alaska Congressman Don Young is calling a scam. Even Newsweek has noticed that the climate alarmist scientists have played fast and loose with the facts, such as they are.

You can email Lindsey Graham here, or give his DC office a ring (202-224-5972). And give your Senator a holler, tell them to vote “Nay” on this idiocy, and get back to work on jobs and the economy. Though, if they are a Democrat, their policies haven’t done very well over the past year, either.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

Congress and the Obama administration are about to take up one of the most fundamental issues stemming from the near collapse of the financial system last year — how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them when they get in trouble.

Sounds reasonable, right? When these huge private institutions fail, it harms lots and lots of Americans. So, what’s the answer?

A senior administration official said on Sunday that after extensive consultations with Treasury Department officials, Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would introduce legislation as early as this week. The measure would make it easier for the government to seize control of troubled financial institutions, throw out management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by the institution.

That, by definition, would be Socialism, where the Government is seizing the means of production.

The official said the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, was planning to endorse the changes in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday.

Shocking, I know!

The White House plan as outlined so far would already make it much more costly to be a large financial company whose failure would put the financial system and the economy at risk. It would force such institutions to hold more money in reserve and make it harder for them to borrow too heavily against their assets.

Setting up the equivalent of living wills for corporations, that plan would require that they come up with their own procedure to be disentangled in the event of a crisis, a plan that administration officials say ought to be made public in advance.

So, what you have is the “don’t call him a Socialist” president creating plans and legislation for the Federal government to actually become involved in the running of private companies before they get into any trouble.

Feel better about which way your Freedoms are heading?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

Several federal and local politicians would like the city to challenge the decision in court. They say voter apathy is the largest barrier to black voters’ election of candidates they prefer and that the Justice Department has gone too far in trying to influence election results here. Stephen LaRoque, a former Republican state lawmaker who led the drive to end partisan local elections, called the Justice Department’s decision “racial as well as partisan.” “On top of that, you have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., overturning a valid election,” he said. “That is un-American.”

The decision, made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, has irritated other locals as well. They bristle at federal interference in this city of nearly 23,000 people, two-thirds of whom are black.

In interviews in sleepy downtown Kinston – a place best known as a road sign on the way to the Carolina beaches – residents said partisan voting is largely unimportant because people are personally acquainted with their elected officials and are familiar with their views.

More here

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Comrade Obama revealed that he shares a conception of rights that would have horrified the Founding Fathers when he stated during a debate that healthcare is a human right, implying that you have a right for the government to force other people to pay for the goods and services you consume. Seen from the other side, this means you have the right for the government to expropriate the product of your labor and give it to someone else. You have the right to be a slave.

Now Spokane, a city that normally represents the sane side of Washington State, has climbed aboard the slaves rights campaign with a “Community Bill of Rights” that entails sacrificing basic freedoms to attain liberal utopia. It will be on the ballot next month, calling for the following:

1. Residents have the right to a locally-based economy

2. Residents have the right to affordable preventative health care

3. Residents have the right to affordable and safe housing

4. Residents have the right to affordable and renewable energy

5. The natural environment has the right to exist and flourish

6. Residents have the right to determine the future of their neighborhoods

7. Workers have the right to be paid the prevailing wage, and the right to work as apprentices, on certain construction projects

8. Workers have the right to employer neutrality when unionizing, and the right to constitutional protections within the workplace

No doubt all of this sounds wonderful to moonbats. But a moment’s reflection reveals that only a totalitarian government could guarantee these “rights,” and only by trampling the real rights enshrined in our constitution.

A “right” to a “locally-based economy”? This is a right for the government to impose draconian restrictions on trade. A “right” to affordable and renewable energy? This means the government has a right to spend your money on subsidies for windmills and pixie dust.

There’s a reason the Founding Fathers didn’t grant us the right to a chicken in every pot. Rights guarantee freedom. Entitlements, handouts, and moonbattery guarantee slavery.

On a tip from gibbswtr. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.