Governor Perry: “The Obama Administration Is Punishing Texas”

Governor Perry charges that the Obama Adminisration, through the  Alien Transfer and Exit program, is dumping  illegal aliens, captured in Nogales, AZ on the border between Presidio, TX, and the Chihuahua desert. He thinks that most illegals faced with the decision of heading toward the Chihuahua desert, and Texas, are going to choose Texas, and the small town of Presidio is not equipped to handle the influx of people, (92 a day) that will be needing social services, etc.

Perry has been steadfastly opposed to the program, and believes that the Obama administration is punishing Texas.

He exhorts: “I say it’s time to make tea parties twice as big a what they were”!

“This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”

Hat tip: Breitbart T.V.

Obama To Purge Republicans From The Civil Service

I swear to God, all of our worst fears about this man keep getting fulfilled nearly every day.

Erick Erickson at Red State says “This is what happens in third world kleptocracies and totalitarian regimes.”:

Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy.

You can read the OPM memo here.

It is a typical Washington process that many political appointees are able to take jobs within the civil service once their political appointment expires — usually at the conclusion of one administration. What often happens as well is Congressional staffers, before an election or shortly thereafter, will move over to the Executive Branch placed into the civil service, in effect, by appointment.

So, for example, when George Bush became President in 2001, a number of Clinton political appointees became civil service employees. As a result, they became subject to civil service hiring and firing rules, which meant they could no longer be replaced simply for having been a Democratic appointee.

Barack Obama is changing that. He intends to purge all Republicans from the federal bureaucracy retroactive to five years ago.

Much more at Red State.

Does Obama even care at this point that his popularity ratings are falling? People are slowly waking up to the fact that we have a radical in the White House. This will only reinforce that notion.

UPDATE:

Rush addressed this issue on his show, today, comparing the Obama administration to Venezuela’s  Chavez administration:

Video via Gateway Pundit.

“This is what Marxists do”.

MORE:

Erickson thinks that the recent leaks that have come out of the Pentagon, State Dept. and CIA may be spurring this on:

The Obama administration is increasingly exasperated by leaks of national-security-related information and is planning a major effort to root out and punish those responsible, top officials said Thursday.

ACORN Sues Feds Over Defunding

You’ve got to be kidding me. They were only defunded for *one month. The outrage is that the federal government continues to fund a blatantly partisan political outfit masquerading as a nonprofit. Why would they want to draw more attention to themselves…especially in the courts? Jake Sherman at the Politico, reported:

A non-profit organization filed a lawsuit against the federal government Thursday morning, seeking to overturn a law stopping the flow of federal funds to ACORN.

The suit, filed in federal court in New York, claims that bills passed by the House and Senate to defund the group qualify as bills of attainder, legislation that unfairly targets one group. Such bills are unconstitutional.

The suit will seek to restore funding and roll-back the ban, which was passed as part of the legislative branch appropriations bill in September.

ACORN claims that the legislation was of “malicious and punitive intent.” The suit also claims Congress violated the Fifth Amendment by skirting due process before doling out the punishment of the funding cut. OMB Director Peter Orszag and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are listed as co-defendants in the suit.

ACORN has repeatedly claimed that  the money it receives from the federal government is not essential to its existence, which of course begs the question…why take these extraordinary measures, then?

The organization that filed the lawsuit, The Center For Constitutional Rights claims:

“It’s not the job of Congress to be the judge, jury, and executioner. We have due process in this country, and our Constitution forbids lawmakers from singling out a person or group for punishment without a fair investigation and trial. Congress, as well as individuals and organizations must abide by the rule of law.”

*Correction: If this report from Byron York is correct, the ACORN funding ban is continuing through December.

Hat tip: Jackstraw

More at Big Government

Related:

Speaking of lawsuits…guess who’s right in the middle of a Staten Island imbroglio involving ACORN and a defeated Dem candidate for City Council?

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

A coalition of community groups, ACORN has been ensnared in controversy over hidden-camera videos and other incidents that have spawned law enforcement probes.

Levenson, ACORN’s national spokesman, said it was a “true sign of political immaturity to scapegoat anyone for Janine’sloss.”

The two sides had a meeting in Levenson’s Manhattan office, last week, which turned ugly with police eventually being called in. No arrests were made.

Big Government has more on this one, too.

Obama To Hold “Job Summit” In December

He should have done this back in February, instead of the disastrous “stimulus package”…now it’s too little, too late. Fox News reports:

President Obama took time Thursday — before jetting off to Asia for a 10-day tour — to announce a December jobs summit aimed at synching job growth with the massive government spending meant to “break the back” of the recession.

The announcement came as the Labor Department reported another 502,000 new jobless claims, two high-tech mainstays announced big layoffs and the unemployment rate reached 10.2 percent.

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups “to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again.”

Yael T. Abouhalkah at the Kansas City Star thinks it’s a “silly” idea, and explores the real reason for such a move:

The idea — announced Thursday — looks self-serving and too late now. The better time for holding one would have been about six months ago — before the nation’s unemployment rate rose above 10 percent.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that Obama is puffing up the idea now because he realizes the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. In other words, even though the economy is improving on many fronts, job losses have continued.

But that fact is likely to turn around in the next three to six months. So if Obama can hold a “jobs summit” and, in a few months, crow about all the jobs suddenly being created, he can take credit for that fact.

As Rush just said on his show (paraphrased).… a lot of talking, and no action…it’s what community organizers do.

John Boehner issued this statement on his House blog:

Boehner on Jobs: No More Stunts, Time for Solutions

GOP Leader: “Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs’ but all they are getting from out-of-touch Washington Democrats is more spending, more debt, and now, more talk.”

The nation’s jobs crisis demands immediate action, which is why Republicans sent a letter to the President last month reiterating our common-sense solutions to help small businesses create jobs and get the economy moving again.

“Washington Democrats’ half-hearted approach to the jobs crisis pales in comparison to the fierce urgency with which they rammed through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2,000-page government takeover of health care. As a matter of fact, Speaker Pelosi recently hosted a similar ‘summit’ with the same economists who helped create the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that has failed to create jobs immediately as the American people were promised. Unsurprisingly, that PR stunt failed to produce the bipartisan job creation plan out-of-work families struggling to make ends meet are looking for.”

NOTE: Last month, House Republican leaders sent a letter to the President urging him to consider common-sense solutions to help put Americans back to work. These proposals, some of which were presented to President Obama as early as his first week in office, were developed by House Republicans’ Economic Recovery and Health Care solutions groups. The Economic Recovery Solutions Group, led by Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), is also developing additional proposals to spur job creation.

Hoffman Still Has A Remote Shot In New York-23

Dang it. After hearing about the voting machine glitches on election day, I remember thinking that Hoffman had conceded too early, but I didn’t want to say anything at the time…

Now, it turns out that Owens’ lead was not as great as was thought due to those glitches, and Hoffman campaign officials are saying that with more military and absentee votes to be counted, they may have conceded too early.

Syracuse Post-Standard reports:

Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession — based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted — set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

Now a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

***

“I don’t know if we would have conceded on election night,” Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s campaign spokesman, said Wednesday while discussing the latest results of the recanvassing. “I’m someone who doesn’t like to look back. But would we have taken longer to make a decision on election night? Probably, if we knew it was only 3,000 votes making the difference.”

Ryan, while acknowledging that Hoffman’s chances of pulling off a come-from-behind victory are still remote, said the campaign is looking at its legal options.

“We’re basically watching and waiting,” Ryan said. “We’ve been looking very closely at the recanvass. We’re going to see how this week shapes up, and then we’re going to determine what to do.”

Ryan said an important factor in the decision to concede was the unexpected — and erroneous — close vote in Oswego County, where polls had Hoffman with a double digit percentage point lead heading into Election Day.

“That’s the thing that threw us off,” Ryan said.

The race will be decided by the 10,200 absentee ballots that were distributed, including thousands of military and overseas ballots.

As Jim Geraghty has noted, “it would be really tough to make up a 3,000-vote margin in a three-way race among 10,000 absentee ballots”.

But not impossible. Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

Ed Morrisey throws cold water on the whole thing:

Now that Owens has taken the oath of office, the count of absentee ballots is technically moot.  The House would have to reject Owens in a floor challenge in order to seat Hoffman instead.  That’s even less likely than Hoffman winning the election with a 3026-vote gap prior to the absentee ballot count.

Sooo…pretty close to impossible.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

Egad…NO

Did Nancy Pelosi actually say that she’s confident that she’ll have a health care bill as a “Christmas present to the American people”?

No…she wouldn’t that obtuse…would she?

She would?

OMG.

Hat tip: Breitbart T.V.