The judge appeared with Neil Cavuto for a chat about the law and politics. Unfortunately, it will be a chilly day in hell [...]]]> Fox News’ resident expert on legal opinions of the courts discussed Tuesday’s decision of the Fifth Circuit to deny the administration’s request to lift a hold on Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty.

The judge appeared with Neil Cavuto for a chat about the law and politics. Unfortunately, it will be a chilly day in hell before the squishy Republican Congress will adequately defend the Constitution from the lawless black President. Anything as harsh as the impeachment remedy suggested by the judge wouldn’t celebrate diversity or appreciate the historic nature of America’s first black President. (The legislators should also read Daniel Horowitz’s informative list: 6 Reasons Congress Can’t Rely on Courts to Stop Executive Amnesty.)

NAPOLITANO: When the case is finally tried in district court, the government will probably lose, the President will probably lose, and for that reason they’re going to keep the injunction in place.

I cannot tell you how rare this is in American history for a succession of federal judges to stop the President of the United States from doing what he says he has the authority to do, but we saw it happen today.

CAVUTO: But what changes if the President is still freezing these deportations? He’s still doing it.

NAPOLITANO: The President is breaking the law. That’s what two judges said in United States courts.

CAVUTO: He’s gotta ship ‘em back in that event? Or let the deportation process continue?

NAPOLITANO: What’s the remedy when the President doesn’t do what he took an oath to do? It’s a Congressional remedy, it’s the “I” word that nobody wants to talk about — it’s impeachment.

But we now have three out of four federal judges who have looked at this have said the President is breaking the law, the President is acting outside that box of the Constitution gives him in which Presidential discretion [crosstalk] . . .

I would think that the White House will have to appeal this to the Supreme Court. The initial appeal is to Justice Scalia of all people because he happens to be the circuit justice, the member of the Supreme Court who hears emergency appeals from that part of the United States, the Fifth Circuit which is Louisiana and Texas and the surrounding states. So it would be up to the President if he wants to dispatch his lawyers there. This does not look good for him.

The Washington Times provided details on the decision.

Federal appeals court deals blow to President Obama’s amnesty, By Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, May 26, 2015

A federal appeals court refused to lift an injunction against President Obama’s deportation amnesty in a ruling Tuesday that delivers a second major legal setback to the administration and keeps millions of illegal immigrants on hold.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with a lower court that ruled Mr. Obama probably broke the law in taking unilateral action last year to grant an amnesty from deportation. The three-judge panel, ruling 2-1, shot down Mr. Obama’s hopes of quickly restarting the amnesty, and make it likely he’ll have to go to the Supreme Court to try to win his case.

The majority, Judges Jerry E. Smith and Jennifer Elrod, said the president’s new program, known as Deferred Action for Parental Accountability or DAPA, is a binding policy that should have gone through the usual public notice and comment period, instead of being announced unilaterally by Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson late last year.

“We live in a nation governed by a system of checks and balances, and the president’s attempt to bypass the will of the American people was successfully checked again today,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who as his state’s attorney general last year began the lawsuit challenging the new amnesty.

Twenty-five states joined Texas in suing to halt the amnesty, arguing they would bear new costs in having to issue driver’s licenses to the illegal immigrants and provide health care and other services to them. The states said the president’s actions were unconstitutional or, at the very least, illegal.

First a district court, and now a federal appeals court, have sided with Texas, serving as twin legal rebukes to Mr. Obama and his defenders, who had insisted the steps he took were consistent with the law and with previous presidents’ actions.

Immigrant rights advocates said they will keep fighting, and tried to cast both the district and appeals courts as legal outliers.

“We are on the right side of history, the right side of justice,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

The rulings do not affect Mr. Obama’s 2012 amnesty for so-called Dreamers, which has already granted tentative legal status to more than 600,000 illegal immigrants, and it also doesn’t take away Mr. Obama’s ability to decline to deport illegal immigrants. That means none of the more than 4 million people in question are likely to be kicked out of the country.

But the judges have ruled that Mr. Obama can’t go further and grant many of those people an affirmative status carrying all sorts of benefits, including driver’s licenses, tax credits and preferential work status under the terms of Obamacare.

Immigrant rights advocates challenged Mr. Obama to use his authority to halt all deportations until he can find a way to work with Congress on a new immigration law.

“We call on President Obama to immediately act on that power by halting all deportations until the day when our broken immigration system can be replaced by humane, rational policies that recognize the value and humanity of our immigrant community members,” said Jessica Bansal, litigation director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

The judges’ rulings hinged in large part on the findings of District Judge Andrew S. Hanen, who halted the program in February, just two days before it was to accept the first applications.

Judge Hanen ruled that an earlier version of the amnesty, which Mr. Obama announced in 2012 and which applied to so-called young adult Dreamers, showed that the administration was approving most applications. Judge Hanen said that undercut Mr. Obama’s argument that he was showing discretion rather than issuing a binding policy.

The judges in the majority opinion Tuesday said Mr. Obama’s expansion appeared to be the same kind of policy, and would have serious effects on the states.

“DAPA modifies substantive rights and interests — conferring lawful presence on 500,000 illegal aliens in Texas forces the state to choose between spending millions of dollars to subsidize driver’s licenses and changing its law,” the judges wrote.

The judges also said it would be unfair to illegal immigrants to let the program go into effect on the off chance it’s later ruled illegal or unconstitutional, because the government would then have a list of people who came forward but didn’t get status.

They also denied a government request to allow the amnesty to go into effect in the 24 states that didn’t sue, saying that it was critical to have a “uniform” rule on immigration, as the Constitution requires.

Judge Stephen A. Higginson dissented from Tuesday’s ruling, saying he would have left the fight over immigration policy to the White House and Congress, saying Mr. Obama should have broad discretion to decide who gets deported and how he goes about that.

Just Higginson also said the fight was a political battle, not a legal one, and said the courts should stay out of it altogether.

“The political nature of this dispute is clear from the names on the briefs: hundreds of mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs, attorneys general, governors, and state legislators — not to mention 185 members of Congress, 15 states and the District of Columbia on the one hand, and 113 members of Congress and 26 states on the other,” he wrote.

Immigrant rights advocates praised Judge Higginson and predicted other judges would agree with him as the case makes its way through the courts.

The administration will have to decide its next step, though the ruling is an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Obama, who earned a law degree at Harvard Law School and taught at the University of Chicago. That drew derision from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose state is host to the appeals court that issued Tuesday’s ruling.

“The Harvard Law School is getting a bad reputation. It turns out that their most famous graduate has a problem obeying the law,” said Mr. Jindal, who is pondering a bid for the White House in 2016.

Mr. Obama had hoped Congress would pass a law legalizing illegal immigrants, but prospects dimmed in early 2014 after House Republicans balked, saying they didn’t trust the president to carry out the law.

Mr. Obama, who had repeatedly denied he had powers to act unilaterally, then reversed himself after last year’s elections and announced his policy, promising to halt deportations for most illegal immigrants, and to grant a large subset of them specific legal status and work permits.

Since them, however, the administration has been beset with legal troubles, including violating Judge Hanen’s February injunction by approving about 2,000 amnesties even after the court had ordered its halt.

Mr. Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary, asked for an internal investigation to try to figure out how his employees violated the judge’s order. As of now, the department is blaming a technical glitch, saying applications weren’t weeded out of a computer system after the ruling.

Semi-limited anarchy turns out to be messy, because removing a major brick from the structure of laws necessitates specific repairs here and there. You can’t have just a little chaos. It spreads.

Here’s [...]]]> Funny how Obama’s temporary-but-generous amnesty for five million included a “loophole” of free money for the foreign grifters via the tax code.

Semi-limited anarchy turns out to be messy, because removing a major brick from the structure of laws necessitates specific repairs here and there. You can’t have just a little chaos. It spreads.

Here’s Senator Grassley’s press release on the issue:

Senators Introduce Bill Disallowing Tax Credit Under 2014 Executive Actions, March 10, 2015

WASHINGTON – Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, David Perdue of Georgia, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Jim Risch of Idaho, John Boozman of Arkansas and John Cornyn of Texas today introduced legislation to disallow the Earned Income Tax Credit for those made newly eligible for past benefits under the President’s executive actions on immigration.

“This tax credit is meant to help the working poor get into the workforce,” Grassley said.  “It isn’t meant to benefit individuals who aren’t authorized to work in the United States.  Congress implemented that policy in 1996. The legislation introduced today upholds the principle that many of us in Congress support.  The tax code shouldn’t reward those who broke our immigration laws.”

“Congress should always be looking to protect the tax dollars of hard working Americans.  This legislation would ensure that those individuals who were not here legally cannot use their new status to claim tax credits that they were not entitled to,” said Enzi. [. . .].

When Senator Grassley discussed the legislation on the Senate floor, he observed, “This bill should be a no-brainer for any of my colleagues that agree that we should not reward individuals for breaking our immigration laws and our employment laws.”

That’s the good news. The bad news is that GOP leadership isn’t interested in supporting Grassley’s legislation. Nothing angers citizens like the government giving free money to illegal alien swindlers, but the dense fellows at the top of the Stupid Party are clueless again.

Is it too much to ask that the government take human psychology into account when shaping policies? As Senator Grassley himself observed, later regretting his vote for the 1986 amnesty, “You know what I found out? If you reward illegality, you get more of it.”

GOP wary of new immigration battle, The Hill, March 12, 2015

Senate GOP leadership is staying away from a proposal to ensure illegal immigrants don’t get tax break payouts from the government, with the party still smarting from a battle over Department of Homeland Security funding.

Senior Republicans generally say they support the goals of the bill from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that seeks to keep immigrants protected from deportation by President Obama’s executive actions from claiming several years’ worth of earned income tax credits.

Conservative lawmakers and outside groups are still angry that the GOP didn’t continue the fight to withhold Department of Homeland Security funding, which they viewed as the best avenue to combat Obama’s decision to shield millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally from deportation.

“I’m clearly one of those who thinks that we need to continue to push very aggressively and that we should have pushed harder earlier,” said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), another co-sponsor on the tax credit bill.

But with a federal court having blocked Obama’s executive actions, Senate Republicans have increased their focus on other issues, including an anti-human-trafficking bill and nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Top Senate Republicans say lawmakers will have to deal with immigration again but now are less sure about when the matter will return as a central focus on Capitol Hill. The Senate is scheduled to deal with its budget at the end of March, and leadership aides have simply said Grassley’s measure is in the Finance Committee’s hands now.

“It’s an issue that’s always going to be with us,” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, said about immigration.

Grassley’s bill would bar unauthorized immigrants shielded by Obama from claiming the earned income tax credit, a refundable tax break aimed at working families, for the years they worked in the U.S. illegally.

Immigrants protected by Obama’s executive actions late last year could potentially receive work permits and a Social Security card, which also allows them to claim the tax credit. And the IRS has made it clear that those workers would be able to seek payments of the credit for up to three previous years, which Grassley calls a loophole that should be closed.

Grassley said Wednesday that he had yet to press his case with leadership about his bill and that his first priority would be talking up the measure with Hatch. But the Iowa Republican also said that any reluctance GOP leaders might have about his bill might fade, when they’re trying to cobble together packages for Medicare’s “doc fix” and the Highway Trust Fund, both of which face deadlines in the coming months.

“I don’t know very many people in the Republican Party that want to fritter away $1.7 billion,” Grassley said, pointing to how much congressional scorekeepers say his measure will raise over a decade.

The proposal also underscores the challenges Republicans face heading into the 2016 election season, after support for the GOP among Hispanics continued to plummet in the last presidential election.

Republican strategists and some lawmakers have said the party has to repair its relationship with Hispanic voters ahead of 2016, and some of the leading contenders for the GOP nomination, including former Gov. Jeb Bush (Fla.), have more centrist records on the issue.

But the GOP’s base is also full of hard-liners on immigration who oppose congressional efforts to broadly revamp immigration laws. And potential presidential hopefuls like Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) were among those pressing the hardest for Republicans to keep up the fight on Homeland Security funding.

Hatch, who supported the Senate’s 2013 immigration bill, said this week that he’d “certainly take an interest in” the measure introduced by Grassley, a former Finance panel chairman, and six other members of the tax-writing committee.

The Utah Republican has pressed the Obama administration on a related issue, seeking more information from the Social Security Administration about how many new numbers they plan to assign because of Obama’s immigration actions.

But Hatch also acknowledged that he wanted to take a deeper look at Grassley’s bill and that finding common ground on immigration remained a challenge for Republicans.

“I don’t know that I’d call it a divide,” Hatch said. “But there are different attitudes and different feelings and different bills even.”

Thune said Grassley’s bill could get “a good amount of support” if it hit the Senate floor, given Republicans’ past concern about the amount of fraud connected to the earned income credit and other refundable tax credits.

But other Republicans also wondered about pushing a measure that would almost certainly run into a wall of Democratic opposition.

“I think they could get behind it,” Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.) said of his fellow Republicans. “The question is, can you get it through the Senate?”

For a remembrance of what July 4 is about, below is a reading of the Declaration of Independence. The readers are serving members of the armed services, who have a particular enthusiasm.

Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration is both soaring and mundane. Noble principles frame the list of more ordinary problems felt by the colonists [...]]]>

For a remembrance of what July 4 is about, below is a reading of the Declaration of Independence. The readers are serving members of the armed services, who have a particular enthusiasm.

Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration is both soaring and mundane. Noble principles frame the list of more ordinary problems felt by the colonists in their complaints.

(For more good listening of foundational documents, check out Congress’ reading of the Constitution in 2011.)

Here is the text of the Declaration:

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare,

That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.