We Would Not Be So Sure That Supremes Will Reverse EPA. It Is Politically Sensitive, They May Pass!

Dick Morris: Supreme Court Will Reverse Obama's EPA Regulations

Tuesday, 03 Jun 2014 01:56 PM

By Courtney Coren

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President Barack Obama's move to enact new regulations on power plants through executive order is "a power grab" and will be "reversed by the Supreme Court," says political analyst Dick Morris.

"He couldn't get it through Congress, and he can't do it legally," Morris told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV on Tuesday.

"This is going to be reversed by the Supreme Court," he added. "The Supreme Court has allowed [regulations] for cars under the Clean Air Act, but has not ruled on stationary pollution sources like smoke stacks, and I don't think it's going to affirm that."

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday a plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2030 by imposing a new rule on the largest sources of greenhouse gasses in the country, power plants. The new rules are being issued by executive order by the president and encourages states to rely more on natural gas than coal for producing electricity.

"Anybody that depends upon coal for their electric power is going to see the utility bill skyrocket," Morris said. "With these new regulations, you're just going to see an explosion in those costs and the effect will be horrible for manufacturing."

The former adviser to former President Bill Clinton said that what Obama is doing in this move is "seizing control of another 17 percent of the American economy."

"The federal government spending is 35 percent — federal, state and local," Morris explained. "Then healthcare is another 17 [percent], manufacturing is 10 [percent], electric power generation and energy is seven [percent]."

"So he's now trying to control that entire range and that basically defines socialism, and don't think for a minute that global warming or health is what's motivating this. It's very simply a power grab by trying to regulate power plants," he contends.

Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky told Newsmax TV on Monday that this move by Obama will likely hurt the election chances of Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Bluegrass State, where "about 94 percent of our electricity comes from coal."

Liberal columnist Rick Ungar also told Newsmax TV on Monday that he was shocked "that the president would choose to announce [the new EPA regulations] now, knowing Senate races in some very key districts like Kentucky, like Alaska" are taking place in November "where the coal industry is a very big employer."

Morris agrees that this will have a negative impact politically for Democrats running in those states and others.

"It virtually guarantees McConnell's victory, and, if there was any question, [Rep. Shelley Moore] Caputo's victory in the Jay Rockefeller [Senate] seat in West Virgina," he added.

Related Stories:

• Obama Environmental Plan Part of a 'War on Coal,' Executive Says
•  Obama Makes Public Health Pitch for Carbon Rules

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Easy Way To Empty Jails, Release Illegal Aliens! Numbers Now Over 100k

Lamar Smith: ICE Release of Illegal Immigrants Like 'Jailbreak'

Thursday, 15 May 2014 04:30 PM

By Sean Piccoli

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More than 100,000 illegal immigrants either convicted of crimes or facing charges were released from U.S. jails by the federal government in 2013 while they waited for their cases to proceed, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas said Thursday on Newsmax TV.

Besides allowing 36,000 soon-to-be-deported convicts back into local communities, Obama customs officials approved releases for 68,000 more illegal immigrants whose criminal proceedings were still underway, the House Republican and Homeland Security Committee member told "America's Forum" host J.D. Hayworth.

"It's actually worse than this 36,000," said Smith. "There's another 68,000 individuals who were charged with crimes, who were in our jails last year, who were also released without any effort to deport them."

Story continues below video.

Smith said his numbers came from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division — but only because an independent think tank, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), obtained internal DHS documents. The department itself, said Smith, is stonewalling.

"This is information that didn't come from the Department of Homeland Security — they still refuse to give us the information." said Smith. "When we get to all the facts, my guess is it's going to be a lot worse than we even think it is."

The convictions and charges among those conditionally released were for rape, murder, domestic violence, burglary, theft, traffic violations and other offenses.

After Brietbart first reported on the releases, ICE issued a statement saying "many of the individuals … were released under restrictions such as GPS monitoring," and at the discretion of law enforcement professionals.

Smith has likened the releases to a mass prison break.

"When you have this administration — or any administration — releasing 36,000 individuals who have been convicted of 88,000 crimes and putting them back into our communities, back onto the streets — that is something that goes almost beyond comprehension, that any administration would do that," he said Thursday. "And it is the equivalent of a jailbreak because these people are being released. They're not being deported as they should be."

Smith said the revelations don't help to advance the immigration overhaul being championed by President Obama and debated in Congress.

"I have heard the speaker and other of our Republican leaders say that we can't trust the president to enforce current immigration laws and I agree with them on that," he said.

"If we can't trust the president to enforce current immigration laws and in fact if they're undermining immigration laws, the president can certainly not be trusted to enforce future immigration laws and this absolutely does slow down the process towards any kind of an amnesty bill."

Related Stories:

• Lamar Smith: Obama Responsible for Biggest Jailbreak in History
• Conservatives Prod House Republicans on Immigration Reform

© 2014 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

VA System Is A Mess. Shinseki Is Latest Example!

Newt Gingrich: VA Chief Shinseki Should Resign

Thursday, 08 May 2014 06:22 PM

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called on the embattled chief of the Veterans Administration, Eric Shinseki, to resign for his "extraordinary failure" amid a growing VA hospital scandal sparked by lethal delays in veterans' medical care and charges of an elaborate cover-up.

Appearing on Newsmax TV's "America's Forum," Gingrich on Thursday sided with two of the country's top veterans' advocate groups, American Legion and Concerned Veterans of America, both of which have taken the unusual step of urging a sitting VA secretary to quit.

"It is impossible to look at the range of scandals and believe that he [Shinseki] could possibly fix it," Gingrich told host J.D. Hayworth.

Story continues below video.

The crisis around Shinseki deepened on Thursday morning when the House Veterans Affairs Committee voted unanimously to subpoena the retired four-star general and former Army Chief of Staff for documents related to the inquiry.

CNN reported on Thursday that Shinseki has instead accepted an invitation from the Senate to testify. He'll appear next week, May 15, before the upper chamber's Committee on Veterans' Affairs, chaired by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.

Gingrich contended that Shinseki failed to inform Congress about the trouble unfolding on his watch.

"Gen. Shinseki had a long career — an honorable career — in the Army but he doesn't seem to understand the difference between serving in the Army and being a cabinet officer," said Gingrich. "Cabinet officers have a genuine, immediate obligation to report to the Congress."

The VA is reeling from a CNN report that 40 veterans died waiting for appointments at its Phoenix medical center. One whistleblower, a recently retired VA doctor, told CNN the hospital listed those patients and others on a sham appointments calendar created to hide the extent of the facility's backlog.

The real roster showed some 1,600 veterans having waited months to see a physician,according to CNN.

Shinseki has resisted calls to resign and vowed to get to the bottom of the VA's problems himself. "I serve at the pleasure of the president," he told The Wall Street JournalTuesday.

Gingrich suggested it's too late to take Shinseki's promise seriously: "This is a job he could not do, he did not do, and the evidence is overwhelming."

He said the VA's problems run much deeper and wider than a scandal at one Arizona hospital. The VA, he said, is a massive bureaucracy mired in a dangerously outdated model of service.

"If you want to make an airline reservation, if you want to make a hotel reservation, you don't have to wait 173 days," said Gingrich, "and yet the Veterans Administration, which is a paper-based, old-fashioned bureaucracy, is just hopelessly slow and hopelessly inefficient.

"I'm hoping we won't just go back to the same old scapegoating, let's fire 12 people, have a lot of noise, and think we solved it. I hope that it will look very deeply and seriously at fundamentally replacing the obsolete paper-based model of bureaucracy with a new information-age system."

Related Stories:

• VA Doctor: Staffer Saved ‘Secret' Waiting List
• Fla. Rep. Miller: Obama Needs to Act on Problems at VA

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