Obama Justice Dept. Files Another Lawsuit Against Arizona Authorities

Thomas E. Perez, asst. attorney general for Justice’s Civil Rights Div. speaking before the hard left  American Constitution Society

This time, the lawsuit is against Phoenix area Maricopa Community Colleges for (if you can believe this) requiring noncitizens to provide their green cards before they could be hired for jobs.

No I’m not making this up.

This is from The Washington Post, okay?

The Justice Department filed another lawsuit against immigration practices by Arizona authorities, saying Monday that a network of community colleges acted illegally in requiring noncitizens to provide their green cards before they could be hired for jobs.

The suit against the Phoenix area Maricopa Community Colleges was filed less than two months after the Justice Department sued Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer (R) over the state’s new immigration law. It also comes as the department is investigating Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in Maricopa County, who is known for tough immigration enforcement.

In Monday’s lawsuit, Justice officials said the colleges discriminated against nearly 250 noncitizen job applicants by mandating that they fill out more documents than required by law to prove their eligibility to work. That violated the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, the department said.

The law’s anti-discrimination provision “makes it unlawful to treat authorized workers differently during the hiring process based on their citizenship status,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

He said the government “is acting now to remedy this pattern or practice of discrimination.”

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The government is asking a judge within the Justice Department unit to order the Maricopa colleges to pay a civil penalty of $1,100 for each of the 247 non-U.S.-citizen job applicants it says were required to produce the additional documents. It says the colleges ended the practice in January.

As Doug Ross notes, this lawsuit will intimidate employers into more permissive hiring practices:

A quarter of a million dollar fine will definitely have employers thinking twice about checking job candidates’ bonafides. And that is the intent.

And it’s but one step among many.

Keep reading. Among other things, the Justice Dept is investigating Joe Arpaio for enforcing immigration laws.

Up is down, black is white, night is day…I’m not sure how much more of this the country can take.

Byron York filed this report on Thomas E. Perez,  few weeks ago:

There’s no doubt Tom Perez is hopping a lot these days. Of all the transformations that have taken place in the Obama administration, perhaps none is so radical as that within the Civil Rights Division. Under Perez, it is bigger, richer and more aggressive than ever, with a far more expansive view of its authority than at any time in recent history.

Perez is playing a leading role in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law. He is promising a huge increase in prosecution of alleged hate crimes. He vows to use “disparate impact theory” to pursue discrimination cases where there is no intent to discriminate but a difference in results, such as in test scores or mortgage lending, that Perez wants to change. He is even considering a crackdown on Web sites on the theory that the Internet is a “public accommodation” as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

To do all this, Perez has come up with some novel ideas. For example, in a recent lending discrimination case, he forced the defendant — who settled the case without admitting any wrongdoing — to pay not only the alleged victims but to funnel $1 million to unrelated “qualified organizations” to conduct social programs.

The Discover The Networks profile of Perez is here. Like all Obama appointees, he is man of the hard left:

In 2008 Perez worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and then served on the transition team after Obama’s electoral victory. On March 31, 2009, President Obama nominated Perez to be Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (CRD). The U.S. Senate confirmed Perez in October 2009. Perez stated that, by his reckoning, CRD’s mission was to help those Americans who were “living in the shadows” – a reference not only to illegal aliens, but also to “our Muslim-American brothers and sisters subject to post-9/11 backlash”; “communities of color disproportionately affected by the subprime meltdown”; “LGBT brothers and sisters … forced to confront discrimination”; and “all too many children lacking quality education.”

Once he began his post with the Obama administration, Perez pledged to greatly expand DOJ’s prosecution of alleged hate crimes, which he depicts as a predominantly white-on-black phenomenon. Perez also made it clear that he would view “disparate impact” — such as when a company makes its promotion decisions based on exams where whites as a group score higher than blacks — as prima facie proof of discrimination.

In Perez’s view, compensatory payments to plaintiffs who win judgments in civil-rights cases should not go only to the actual victims of discrimination, but additionally to “qualified organization[s]” approved by the Justice Department. Such a policy enables DOJ to funnel cash into the coffers of activist groups that share the presidential administration’s political agendas.

In 2009, Perez and CRD pressured several universities to discontinue an experimental program whereby students could purchase their textbooks in digital formats which they could read via the Amazon Kindle. Perez complained that the Kindle was not yet fully accessible to blind students; i.e., while the device’s text-to-voice feature permitted the visually impaired to hear the content of their books spoken aloud, its menu options were not available in an audible format and thus required the user to be able to see. Until the Kindle rectified this injustice, said Perez, universities that made their textbooks available on the e-reader would be investigated for possible violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Perez has emphasized CRD’s “critical work” of “monitoring federal, state, and local elections across the country to ensure that voting takes place free of unlawful intimidation.” But in June 2010, J. Christian Adams, a five-year DOJ veteran, resigned to protest the “corrupt nature” of DOJ’s dismissal of a case involving two Philadelphia-based members of the New Black Panther Party who had intimidated white voters with racial slurs and threats of violence on Election Day, 2008. Adams cited Thomas Perrelli (the Associate Attorney General) and Thomas Perez as the two DOJ officials most responsible for dropping the case. In July 2010, Adams gave damning public testimony about how Perez and other Obama DOJ officials believed that “civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.”

Also in 2010, Perez and CRD led the fight against an Arizona bill deputizing state police to check the immigration status of any criminal suspects who they believed might be in the U.S. illegally.

On April 20, 2010, Perez, who views discrimination as a widespread problem in the U.S., testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He identified “fair housing and fair lending enforcement” as “a top priority” for CRD; cited his commitment to eradicating the “discriminatory practices” that had resulted in “discrimination against African American borrowers”; boasted that CRD’s Housing and Civil Enforcement Section had already initiated 215 matters (including 46 lawsuits and 42 consent decrees) during the Obama administration; trumpeted the fact that in the first year of Obama’s presidency, CRD had filed a record number of employment-related lawsuits; contended, falsely, that women were not compensated equitably for their work in relation to men; announced his intent to “hol[d] law-enforcement accountable” for “discriminatory police practices … and excessive use of force”; and pledged “vigorous enforcement of the provisions of the National Voter Registration Act.”

See also:

Van Helsing, RWN: Amnesty Is Already Happening

Our leftist rulers are starting to figure out that they can’t impose their radical agenda openly without paying a heavy political price, as they will for ham-fistedly seizing control of the healthcare industry. This is why their major initiatives are now imposed in the shadows, by faceless bureaucrats rather than legislation. Granting amnesty to tens of millions of illegal aliens might cause open revolt. A safer approach is to quietly implement de facto amnesty.

Video: Gretchen Carlson Catches Gibbs In A Bold Faced Lie

Does anyone in this administration have any sense of shame at all? How can Robert Gibbs, speaking for The Commander and Chief,  lie about an issue so important to the troops; one that can be easily fact checked, on YouTube no less?

Here’s Greg Hengler’s  video: Busted! Fox’s Carlson Catches Gibbs In A Naked Lie–Asks 6 Times If Obama Will Credit Bush Tonight

Props to Gretchen Carlson. I had no idea she was such a badass.

It seems that the White House is making a concerted effort to change the narrative, unaware, apparently that most people know how to use Google. Gibbs, in his White House briefing, yesterday, said:

“The president always believed that you would change part of the security situation by vastly increasing the number of troops.”

Uh….sure he did.

Peter Wehner wrote this piece in The Weekly Standard in July, 2008, when Obama was finally coming around to admitting the surge’s success, after months of  slamming it .

In October 2006–three months before the president’s new strategy was unveiled–Obama said, “It is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve, and we have to do something significant to break the pattern that we’ve been in right now.”

On January 10, 2007, the night the surge was announced, Obama declared, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” A week later, he insisted the surge strategy would “not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly.” And in reaction to the president’s January 23 State of the Union address, Obama said,

“I don’t think the president’s strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum–military and civilian, conservative and liberal–expressed great skepticism about it. My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we’re going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment. And, frankly, the president, I think, has not been willing to consider that option, not because it’s not militarily sound but because he continues to cling to the belief that somehow military solutions are going to lead to victory in Iraq”.

In July, after evidence was amassing that the surge was working, Obama said, “My assessment is that the surge has not worked.”

Obama, then, was not only wrong about the surge; he was spectacularly wrong. And he continued to remain wrong even as mounting evidence of its success gave way to overwhelming evidence of its success.

More via Polifact:

On July 18, 2007, Obama told Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show, “My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.”

He continued: “And it is my assessment and the American people’s assessment that this strategy has not worked, that al-Qaida has gotten stronger in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we are fighting on the wrong battlefield and the Iraqi government has not done the work it needs to do to resolve the civil war in Iraq.”

So while Bush was “clinging to his belief that military solutions would somehow lead to victory in Iraq”, Obama was slamming the effort every chance he got.  Well, it turns out the bitter clinger was right, and Obama was spectacularly wrong. But after watching Gibbs skirt Carlson’s question six times, I won’t hold my breath waiting for Obama to give Bush any credit for winning the war. I honestly don’t think he has it in him.

RELATED:

Q: Has Obama gotten anything right on Iraq?

A: No.

RCP: Krauthammer: Obama “Failed” His One Task In Iraq

MORE:

GOP.gov: Flashback: What Democrats Said Then

Mike Pence: Give Credit Where Credit is Due in Tonight’s Speech

Photoshop alert:

Gateway Pundit: If Saddam Was Still Alive Today…

You know he’s right.

Video: Brennan v.s. West On Jihad

Last week, The Washington Times released an amazing video of their editorial board’s meeting with Obama’s Counterrterrorism Adviser, John Brennan. The video shows him  opting to get up and leave the room, rather than answer a simple question about armed jihad.

Lieutenant Col. Allen West’s firm grasp of the dangers posed by radical Islam makes a great counterpoint to the weak and  feckless Obama administration’s stance, so, (with my hubby’s help), I created this video:

Here’s  Holder v.s. West, a video I made a few months ago, in case you missed that one:

Emanuel Cleaver, Fiscal Hawk

A Missouri news site, The Source incredulously asks: Did you Hear that Emanuel Cleaver is Tough on Spending?

Neither did we, until we saw his somewhat unlikely sounding “SAVINGS SPOTLIGHT”. According to Cleaver:

“You asked for more efforts to reduce the deficit, crack down on wasteful government spending, and impose fiscal discipline. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (enacted into law), according to the CBO, will cut the deficit by $19 billion over the next 10 years.”

Small talk, considering that the budget deficit for 2010 is $1.17 trillion – and that even if we could count all of those savings today, it would take more than 70 similar announcements to balance this year’s budget. To eliminate the national debt completely, we’d require thousands of “SAVINGS SPOTLIGHTS” from Emanuel Cleaver – and that’s assuming he could figure out a way to balance the budget, which he clearly hasn’t.

Here’s a clue – Stop spending so much. When Dems keep passing massive spending bills,   measures like this don’t make much difference.

And Cleaver has voted for every one of the massive spending bills the Dems have put forward since Obama was elected, including the $862 billion (failed) Stimulus bill, the pork laden Omni spending bill, G.I.V.E Act, Cap and Tax, and  disastrous and wildly unpopular ObamaCare, (which he doesn’t believe goes far enough). Plus he’s part of a majority party that neglected to pass a real  budget, this year, instead opting to ‘Deem’ a Faux $1.1 Trillion Budget ‘as Passed’:

Key points from the House Republican Budget staff on the House Democrats’ deeming resolution:

This is not a budget. The measure fails to meet the most basic, commonly understood objectives of any budget. It does not set congressional priorities; it does not align overall spending, tax, deficit, and debt levels; and it does nothing to address the runaway spending of Federal entitlement programs.
–       It is not a ‘congressional budget resolution.’ The measure does not satisfy even the most basic criteria of a budget resolution as set forth in the Congressional Budget Act.
–       It creates a deception of spending ‘restraint.’ While claiming restraint in discretionary spending, the resolution increases non-emergency spending by $30 billion over 2010, and includes a number of gimmicks that give a green light to higher spending.
–       It continues relying on the flawed and over-sold pay-as-you-go [pay-go] procedure. Pay-go – which Democrats have used mainly to raise taxes, and have ignored when it was inconvenient – does nothing to reduce deficits or restrain spending growth in existing law.
–       Outsourcing fiscal responsibilities. The measure is another hand-off by the Democratic Majority of Congress’s power of the purse – this time relying on the Fiscal Commission created by the President to do Congress’s job.

Congressman Paul Ryan called the scheme “an admission of fiscal failure”:

What House Democratic leaders call a “budget enforcement resolution” is in fact just another “deeming” scheme – one that concedes they cannot meet their most fundamental governing responsibility: writing a congressional budget. They have created a masquerade that only advances their spend-as-you-go philosophy, accelerating the march toward a fiscal and economic crisis. They are doing so because a majority of rank-and-file Democrats cannot vote for a budget with trillion-dollar deficits. As even House Budget Committee Chairman Spratt has acknowledged: “You can say that that’s a lack of courage.”

In spite of all this,  Congressman  Emanual Cleaver (D-MO) is trying to pass himself off as some kind of fiscal hawk.

Here are some more of  Cleaver’s SAVINGS SPOTLIGHTS as posted on his Facebook page:

•Emanuel Cleaver II SAVINGS SPOTLIGHT: You asked for more efforts to reduce the deficit, crack down on wasteful government spending, and impose fiscal discipline. I am proud to tell you I supported the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (signed into law July 22, 2010) which cracks down on improper federal payments and will help reduce wasteful, improper payments by $50 billion between now and 2012.

Basically, this bipartisan legislation stops paying dead people Medicare, and other federal benefits, which is a good thing, although a suspicious Michelle Malkin called it a “gimmick”:

…if he were so interested in rooting out fraud and saving taxpayers money, why the hell did he wait more than a year to issue his presidential directive?

And given how Team Obama has waged war on independent watchdogs, how long before these anti-fraud efforts get sabotaged or muzzled by this administration?

•Emanuel Cleaver II SAVINGS SPOTLIGHT: You asked for more efforts to reduce the deficit, crack down on wasteful government spending, and impose fiscal discipline. I am proud to tell you I supported the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act (now law), which saves taxpayers money by cracking down on Pentagon waste and cost overruns, which the GAO says amount to $296 billion just for the 96 largest weapons systems.

Unfortunately, within months of the onerous bill’s passing, a backlash was already being felt. NDIA reported:

One particular source of unhappiness is the creation under WSARA of a director of cost assessment and program evaluation. The DCAPE is expected to provide independent cost assessments of major weapons systems to the secretary of defense. But several insiders who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity question the usefulness of this new bureaucracy and predict it will create unnecessary complexity. They argue that independent cost estimates already were being handled by the program evaluation and analysis directorate (PA&E) and the CAIG, or cost assessment improvement group. The new office creates a chain of command that operates in parallel to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, so there is much confusion at the Pentagon as to how programs are supposed to be certified and approved under the new regime, said one acquisition official.

“They are making it harder to deliver systems,” he said. “At the Pentagon, they’re having trouble figuring out how to implement the new law.” A combination of confusion and fear of making mistakes is fueling paranoia and creating an environment where programs will see costs rise and schedules delayed, the manager said.

•Emanuel Cleaver II SAVINGS SPOTLIGHT: Since 2009, I have voted time and time again for measures that reduce the deficit, crack down on wasteful government spending, and impose fiscal discipline. For example, I was proud to support a new House rule to require periodic hearings on waste, fraud and abuse by House committees to ensure that tax dollars are spent wisely.

Please. With Dems controlling Congress, that’s like putting the fox in charge of guarding the hen house.

•Emanuel Cleaver II SAVINGS SPOTLIGHT: Since 2009, I have voted time and time again for measures that reduce the deficit, crack down on wasteful government spending, and impose fiscal discipline. For example, I was proud to support the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act (now law), which reinstituted a requirement to offset new policies that increase mandatory spending or reduce revenues, giving it the force of law.

ShamWow!  The ink was barely dry on the PayGo bill, passed, last Feb, when Dems began bypassing it to pass parts of their agenda. They’ve repeatedly bypassed PayGo, or used it as an excuse to raise taxes.

According to The Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget:

…the PAYGO law passed by Congress earlier this year contains several major exemptions totaling upwards of $2 trillion, including for the Medicare “doc fix” and extensions of the 2001/2003 tax cuts for the middle class.

“The new statutory version of PAYGO has loopholes so absurdly large, you could drive a tanker through them. The rules in the House and Senate are far more responsible and consistent with previous iterations of pay-as-you-go budgeting. Instead of trying to bypass the basic principle that we need to pay for what we spend and the sensible PAYGO rules, lawmakers should be figuring out how to comply with them.”

Cleaver is taking  credit for “savings”  while not consistently complying with the savings measures passed in the bill.

It’s time to retire this tax and spend, liberal Democrat. There is a true fiscal conservative  running against Cleaver –  His name is Jacob Turk, and  citizens of MO-5, who are concerned about the massive debt the Dems have been accruing for the past year and a half, would be wise to give him their vote.

Here’s Turk after sailing to victory in the August 3rd primary election in MO-5. He gave a heart-felt victory speech to a roomful of enthusiastic supporters.

See also: Vote Out Cleaver.

VA GOP AD: Run For The Lifeboats

I love this ad – it’s not flashy, quirky or offbeat…but it gets it sure gets its message across :

Perhaps “Obama’s favorite Congressman”, Tom Perriello believed the President a year and a half ago, when he assured wavering blue dogs who  were nervous about voting for all his toxic spending bills, that everything would be fine: ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’

If only they had stood up to the recklessness and arrogance. But then, they wouldn’t be Democrats, would they?

Hat tip: Jim Geraghty, Campaign Spot.

Audio: A Pep Talk From Mark Levin

Keep fighting, never surrender!

video via The Right Scoop.

Hat tip: Dan Riehl: Mark Levin’s Rousing Call To Arms For The Tea Party Movement

Related:

Doug Ross has a message for the union rank and file whose bosses are pouring millions of their dues to the Dem Socialist campaign coffers.

Do you want your money wasted on Democrat losers?

CFIF notes that two of the nation’s largest unions — Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) — will spend about $100 million supporting Democrats in the 2010 midterms. In addition, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME) will donate an additional $50 million to the Democrat cause.

Not only do they think you’re stupid, they think their members are even dumber. After all, that money could be spent on member benefits. Like a $1,000 check for 150,000 members. Or putting some money into the dramatically underfunded pensions.

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For decades, union bosses have directed millions and millions of dollars to their own generous pay packages and their Democrat cronies, while leaving rank-and-file members’ retirements at risk.

MORE:

Verum Serum posts another great pep talk : Chris Christie Video: The Day of Reckoning is Here