It's About Time.

Finally, someone is taking action to restrain the typical illegal and unlawful conduct of the Obama Administration.

A group of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have filed suit in Texas to stop the de facto "amnesty" program rolled out by the Department of Homeland Security. If you are not familiar with the program, DHS has basically decided the it will "reallocate resources" to deport only some illegal aliens, primarily only those with known felony criminal records.

As you may remember, part of the reason the Arizona Immigration Law was declared unconstitutional was that immigration and border protection is explicitly a Federal responsibility. And Federal law requires that Illegal Aliens (the correct legal name for "undocumented workers") be given a fair hearing as to their status and be deported. Some countries, like Mexico, complain about the supposed harshness of American policy. However, it's not as harsh as that of some countries, like Mexico, which imposes criminal penalties and years of imprisonment, but that's another issue.

DHS, for its part, denies there is any amnesty program in place. Rather, they say, they have utilized their "prosecutorial discretion" to determine that entire classes of illegal aliens will not be prosecuted for deportation to save resources. The DHS action is similar to a local prosecutor refusing to prosecute rape, drug, burglary cases or any crimes other than murder in order to save resources. While there is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion, it is hard to think of any case where it has been used to rewrite the law that grants it.

Vaulting over the limits of the law has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration. Amnesty is implemented in fact, with the DHS thumbing its nose at the constraints of Federal laws passed by the people's representatives. The Justice Department sets up a gun-running operation shipping thousands of guns to Mexico despite Federal laws prohibiting such transfers. Mr. Holder is summoned to Congress to explain the operation- and simply refuses to cooperate to the point of earning a Congressional Contempt citation. Like DHS, the Department of Justice thumbs it nose at the laws it swears to uphold. Remember the Gulf oil spill? Obama issued a moratorium on drilling after "clarifying" a report to say the opposite of what the authors had said, and without any legal authority. A Federal Court overturned the moratorium, and the administration then turned to "slow-walking" permit applications to stall and prevent drilling permits.

These ICE agents are doing what needs to be done, and should be done, when the Obama Administration acts illegally. Go to Court, and get the matter heard. Of course, you can't always trust the Courts to uphold the Constitution, because sometimes raw political calculation in the Courts will result in an obviously unconstitutional result, as the Obamacare decision shows. Yet, America cannot be abandoned to the lawlessness of this Administration. It's about time that someone tried to put the brakes on this lawless Administration.

GOP, hold on to your records!

The Democratic party is trying to create a stir by demanding Romney's tax records for the past decade. Harry Reid says Romney is not showing his taxes because of tax dodging; there's no evidence at all, but it plays well for the media. Madame Pelosi isn't releasing her financial information, either. Pelosi says she doesn't have to release her taxes because "she's not running for President." Which is fine, but there doesn't seem to be any legal requirement that candidates for President release tax returns.

Pelosi highlights an interesting, if perhaps psychotic, contradiction between the standards liberals hold themselves to, and those they hold conservatives to.

Remember the "birther" controversy? The entire reason that came about was Obama's claims that he was born in Kenya, and his intransigent refusal to release any records at all. Not even a certified birth certificate, until four (4) years of intense public pressure. And after four years of pressure, still nothing else; no school records, medical records, service records.

Candidate Obama simply will NOT be vetted. Given a chance, the mainstream media will continue to sit in the Obama campaign camp and point fingers at Republicans.

The GOP, and the Romney-Ryan team in particular, have a great opportunity to make "transparency" a campaign issue, and to go on the offensive if they have the guts to do so. Obama promised to have the most transparent administration. He didn't do it and never intended to: he didn't deliver anything but Chicago-style corruption and backroom cronyism.

For the GOP, it's simple. GOP, hold on to your records; release only what Obama, Biden, Pelosi, and Reid have released, and only when they do. They are the incumbents and they've had years to release important records. Let the incumbents lead by example.

And don't let the mainstream media off the hook, either. Many in the GOP worry that they will alienate the media, but they don't need to worry. The media folks are, for the most part, firmly planted in the Obama camp; they are no friend to the GOP, and some public accountability might do them some good. In fact, gently highlighting the left-wing bias in the news might open the eyes of some otherwise complacent voters, and cause them to become more aware of the subtle leftward push in news reporting. That would help level the playing field.

So, GOP, hold on to your records. Transparency should start with the Obama Administration. It's a promise they have broken for years. It's about information the public wants and needs, and information the media wants and needs to ignore.

Which Came First- the Chicken or the Egg?

If Mr. Obama has done nothing else, he has been able to help America discover the answer to an old children's riddle: which came first, the chicken or the egg? The problem, of course, is simple enough. The egg comes from chicken, but the chicken starts out as a hatchling from an egg.

The answer can be found in Obama's rant against business owners. You know the one; "you didn't build that."  In that speech, Obama suggests that business owners didn't build their business, because they use government roads and bridges, and had teachers as children, and used other government facilities along the way.

Obama bootstraps that argument as support for higher taxes on successful earners. Not, by the way, on the unearned income of the truly wealthy, but only on successful wage earners. Such people, he says, should be happy to give a little bit back.

To say the argument is disingenuous is charitable, to say the least. The first and obvious fallacy is that murderers, thieves, and drug users often have been to school, driven on roads, and used many of those same government facilities. While the availability of good schools and roads may promote the success of business, it hardly guarantees the success of a business, and never really causes business to occur, any more than schools and roads cause murder, robbery, or drug abuse.

The second, less obvious fallacy is rooted in the fact that governments don't actually have money; they have collected money to build the roads and schools, to pay the teachers and to operate any other facilities by levies of taxes. And those taxes aren't paid by the murderers, thieves, or drug users, but by the successful wage earners, and usually not the truly wealthy. So to say the successful wage earner needs to "give a little back" when their taxes paid for it in the first place is just absurd.

There are two other important points. It is true that in every society there are disabled and needy, but their care is not per se a government responsibility, but a societal choice between government and private charity. Also, while government may choose to finance projects by debt, that is not relevant, since debt repayment is also premised on taxes on the wage earners.

American history, which liberals ignore and Obama may not even know, clearly shows that business precedes government. People came to the New World, set up farms and businesses, and then created a government, and build schools and roads to service those farms and businesses.

Which answers the old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Without the chicken (the taxpayer) the government would never have its golden egg. In other words- government, "you didn't build that", the taxpayer did.