You can try to put “conservative” lipstick on the lawless amnesty mob. In the end, however, it’s still a lawless mob. The big government/big business alliance to protect illegal immigration got a lot of mileage using foolish Republicans Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as front men. But the true colors of the open-borders grievance-mongers always show through.

After America said no to a pork-filled security-undermining amnesty bill in 2007, the No Illegal Alien Left Behind lobbyists changed their overtly thuggish tactics. They put down their upside-down American flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts and cloaked their radical “Aztlan” aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of “reform” and “opportunity.”

It was all just an act, of course. Inevitably, the mask has slipped. Over the weekend, illegal alien protesters descended on the private residence of Kansas Secretary of State and immigration enforcement lawyer Kris Kobach. As Twitchy.com reported on Saturday, 300 amnesty activists marched into Kobach’s neighborhood and barged up his driveway and right onto his doorstep. It’s how the Alinskyite “community organizers” roll.

Shouting into a bullhorn and waving their fists from his front porch, the property rights-invaders dubbed Kobach “King of Hate” for his work representing border security activists and federal customs enforcement agents who are fighting the systemic sabotage of immigration law. Thankfully, Kobach, his wife and their four young daughters were not home at the time.

But the aggrieved amnesty demanders are not done yet. And Kobach is not the only one in their crosshairs.

After tea party activist turned Kansas state representative Amanda Grosserode condemned the mob action publicly on Facebook, racist insults and threats littered her page. Roberto Medina Ramirez wrote: “I’ll give her something to be disgusted about!” Doris Lynn Crouse Gent chimed in: “OMG! Maybe her drive should be next.” Matt S. Bashaw echoed the call: “Maybe her house should be next.” Facebook user Jude Robinson also ranted on Grosserode’s page: “Since Kobach steals taxpayer money spreading hate around the country, he deserves what he gets.”

Dennis Paul Romero left this message for Grosserode: “(N)azi kkk and she is proud of it.” A user writing as “Paul-says Fckmarkzuck” left death threats under Romero’s comment: “Gotta start killing all the Nazis. Politicans (sic), bankers, and priests. Cops, lawyers, and Judges. ASAP.” The same user added: “Just another b*tch that needs to die off already.”

The radicals of Occupy Kansas posted an inflammatory photo of Grosserode with the race-baiting caption: “Kansas State legislator Amanda Grosserode says she is ‘disgusted’ by Hispanic protesters.” Grosserode wasn’t disgusted by their ethnicity. She was disgusted by their actions. No matter. Race/ethnic card: activated.

Gina Long pounced: “(S)he is stupid and doesn’t like brown people.” So did Diana Bauer: “Ah, poor Ms Grosserode; sorry that you find our Constitution so difficult to stomach. Or is it only whites that have the right to freedom of speech.” One Lupe Ramirez left his own message for Grosserode: “We are starting our fundraising and campaign to unseat you. Do you not realize how many Hispanics are in Kansas. You no longer live in Dorothy’s Kansas. You cannot represent your state, you don’t even know who they are.”

Grosserode isn’t backing down. She told me Tuesday that she will remain “vigilant” and has given local law enforcement a heads-up. The conservative mom and lawmaker notes sadly that “there are some who would say that when you are in elected office that you should expect this kind of thing. I would disagree. No one deserves threats nor threats to their home and family.”

But the amnesty vigilantes have no respect for borders, let alone private front porches, in their quest for another massive federal illegal alien bailout. They have no respect for law-abiding U.S. workers. They have no respect for law-abiding foreigners applying to get into our country the right and proper way.

As they besiege Capitol Hill this month demanding more rights and payoffs, take note: These groups do not stand for the American dream. They are a nightmare conglomeration of George Soros-funded social justice operatives, transnationalists and La Raza militants who detest U.S. sovereignty. National People’s Action, which spearheads progressive “direct actions” at the private homes of their political foes and led the march on Kobach’s home, is a “community organizing” nonprofit based in — you guessed it — Chicago.

NPA’s past shakedowns have involved busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families. They relish their brass knuckles with this anthem:

Who’s on your hit list NPA?

Who’s on your hit list for today?

Take no prisoner, take no names.

Kick ‘em in the (a–) when they play their games.

As I first reported in 2004, NPA is funded by the Tides Foundation, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and the MacArthur, Ford and Rockefeller foundations. It’s also funded by your tax dollars. My research found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Education had all given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to NPA members for left-wing activism, identity politics and illegal alien benefits.

Rubio, Ryan and other Republicans who’ve made common cause with these welfare-state goons have betrayed fundamental principles of limited government and the rule of law. They’ve allied themselves with the mob. There’s nothing, not one thing, “conservative” about mass illegal alien amnesty. It’s the complete Chicago-ization of America.

Michelle Malkin is the author of  Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

The post The Amnesty Mob vs. America appeared first on Human Events.

In honor of this occasion, we thought it might be nice to revisit the historic Ronald Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech from 1987.

Thank you. Thank you, very much.

Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, and speaking to the people of this city and the world at the city hall. Well since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn to Berlin. And today, I, myself, make my second visit to your city.

We come to Berlin, we American Presidents, because it’s our duty to speak in this place of freedom. But I must confess, we’re drawn here by other things as well; by the feeling of history in this city — more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer, Paul Linke, understood something about American Presidents. You see, like so many Presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: “Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin” [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]

Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, I extend my warmest greetings and the good will of the American people. To those listening in East Berlin, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic South, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same — still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state.

Yet, it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world.

Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German separated from his fellow men.

Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

President Von Weizsäcker has said, “The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed.” Well today — today I say: As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.

Yet, I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.

In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State — as you’ve been told — George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”

In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by a sign — the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: “The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world.” A strong, free world in the West — that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium — virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty — that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders — the German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany: busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city’s culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there’s abundance — food, clothing, automobiles — the wonderful goods of the Kudamm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. Now the Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn’t count on: Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze. [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner Schnauze.²]

In the 1950s — In the 1950s Khrushchev predicted: “We will bury you.”

But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind — too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now — now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty — the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev — Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent, and I pledge to you my country’s efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So, we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.

Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment (unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution) — namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days, days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city; and the Soviets later walked away from the table.

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then — I invite those who protest today — to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. Because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

As I speak, NATO ministers are meeting in Iceland to review the progress of our proposals for eliminating these weapons. At the talks in Geneva, we have also proposed deep cuts in strategic offensive weapons. And the Western allies have likewise made far-reaching proposals to reduce the danger of conventional war and to place a total ban on chemical weapons.

While we pursue these arms reductions, I pledge to you that we will maintain the capacity to deter Soviet aggression at any level at which it might occur. And in cooperation with many of our allies, the United States is pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative — research to base deterrence not on the threat of offensive retaliation, but on defenses that truly defend; on systems, in short, that will not target populations, but shield them. By these means we seek to increase the safety of Europe and all the world. But we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled; Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.

In the Philippines, in South and Central America, democracy has been given a rebirth. Throughout the Pacific, free markets are working miracle after miracle of economic growth. In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place, a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications.

In Europe, only one nation and those it controls refuse to join the community of freedom. Yet in this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice: It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete.

Today, thus, represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with the East to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safer, freer world. And surely there is no better place than Berlin, the meeting place of East and West, to make a start.

Free people of Berlin: Today, as in the past, the United States stands for the strict observance and full implementation of all parts of the Four Power Agreement of 1971. Let us use this occasion, the 750th anniversary of this city, to usher in a new era, to seek a still fuller, richer life for the Berlin of the future. Together, let us maintain and develop the ties between the Federal Republic and the Western sectors of Berlin, which is permitted by the 1971 agreement.

And I invite Mr. Gorbachev: Let us work to bring the Eastern and Western parts of the city closer together, so that all the inhabitants of all Berlin can enjoy the benefits that come with life in one of the great cities of the world.

To open Berlin still further to all Europe, East and West, let us expand the vital air access to this city, finding ways of making commercial air service to Berlin more convenient, more comfortable, and more economical. We look to the day when West Berlin can become one of the chief aviation hubs in all central Europe.

With — With our French — With our French and British partners, the United States is prepared to help bring international meetings to Berlin. It would be only fitting for Berlin to serve as the site of United Nations meetings, or world conferences on human rights and arms control, or other issues that call for international cooperation.

There is no better way to establish hope for the future than to enlighten young minds, and we would be honored to sponsor summer youth exchanges, cultural events, and other programs for young Berliners from the East. Our French and British friends, I’m certain, will do the same. And it’s my hope that an authority can be found in East Berlin to sponsor visits from young people of the Western sectors.

One final proposal, one close to my heart: Sport represents a source of enjoyment and ennoblement, and you may have noted that the Republic of Korea — South Korea — has offered to permit certain events of the 1988 Olympics to take place in the North. International sports competitions of all kinds could take place in both parts of this city. And what better way to demonstrate to the world the openness of this city than to offer in some future year to hold the Olympic games here in Berlin, East and West.

In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You’ve done so in spite of threats — the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there’s a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there’s something deeper, something that involves Berlin’s whole look and feel and way of life — not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something, instead, that has seen the difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence, that refuses to release human energies or aspirations, something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says “yes” to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin — is “love.”

Love both profound and abiding.

Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront.

Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw: treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere, that sphere that towers over all Berlin, the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner (quote):

“This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.”

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall, for it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

And I would like, before I close, to say one word. I have read, and I have been questioned since I’ve been here about certain demonstrations against my coming. And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so. I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they’re doing again.

Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you.

The post Watch Ronald Reagan’s Brandenburg speech appeared first on Human Events.

WASHINGTON — It is a well-known axiom of presidential politics that when things aren’t going well at home, chief executives go abroad.

With his presidency beset by a wave of scandals — from the shocking politicization of the IRS to damaging national security leaks — and his declining job approval polls, President Obama fled town this week for a European tour. Surely, his once-legendary popularity abroad would give him a much-needed boost at home.

But Obama found that the political climate wasn’t much better there than it was back here. Not only did the nasty scandals follow him overseas, but he also discovered that he wasn’t the rock star he was in his heyday.

Indeed, a Gallup poll in March found public approval of U.S. leadership in Europe had plummeted 11 percentage points since his first year in office, to 36 percent. Half of that decline was in the past year alone.

“Europe’s love for Obama fades,” a Washington Post headline blared Monday as he flew across the pond to Northern Ireland for the G-8 economic conference.

“Obama will be confronting the diplomatic fallout from his actions and inaction on some of the most urgent concerns of his European counterparts,” the Post said.

There was his long, indecisive, timid delay over whether to support the Syrian rebels in their fight to overturn the brutal regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that has frustrated allied leaders in France and Germany.

Then there’s the National Security Agency’s telephone and Internet surveillance program disclosures that have angered European leaders, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And Obama’s stepped-up use of the terrorist-killing drone program, launched under George W. Bush’s presidency, has dismayed Europe’s leftists who once cheered his presidency.

Not anymore. A critical story from France’s Le Monde newspaper ran under the headline, “George Obama and National Security.”

The latest damaging disclosure by former NSA leaker Edward J. Snowden, now a fugitive from justice, didn’t produce any warm and cuddly feelings toward the United States and Obama, either. Snowden gave London’s Guardian newspaper documents purportedly showing that U.S. and British intelligence agencies monitored emails and phone calls of G-8 foreign leaders at 2009 summits.

The top issue at the G-8 gathering was, of course, the economy. Much, if not most, of Europe is in a recession, with an unemployment rate at 9 percent or higher. But the tepid U.S. recovery, with unemployment nearly 8 percent, hardly suggests that Obama has the answers to Europe’s sagging economy, either.

“We expect that G-8 leaders will express a consensus that growth and jobs are a top priority,” Caroline Atkinson, senior director for international economic issues at the National Security Council, said last week.

But Obama rarely talks about either economic growth or jobs, except when he insists that more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under his policies since 2010. But economic growth is barely running at 2 percent, and his jobs claim was declared totally bogus by Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who gave the president “Two Pinocchios” for dishonesty.

“(T)he fact remains that manufacturing employment is still about 600,000 jobs smaller than it was when he took office,” Kessler reported Sunday.

Obviously, no one at the G-8 meeting was looking to Obama for economic leadership to pull Europe out of its slump. Not with his mediocre record.

There was a time when Europe looked to America’s stronger economic growth to lift its economy onto a higher track, but not now. This wasn’t Ronald Reagan marching into his second term with the U.S. economy growing by 6 percent and job creation soaring in the wake of across-the-board tax cuts.

Nevertheless, the No. 1 item on the G-8′s economic agenda was a new trade agreement between the United States and the 27-nation European Union.

Yet, over the course of Obama’s presidency, he’s shown his political devotion to the AFL-CIO by giving the cold shoulder to new trade deals. Sure, he gave the trade issue lip service Monday, but don’t look for any real leadership on that score.

There was little or no serious expectation that Obama was going to lead America’s European allies on the thorny foreign policy and military conflicts in Syria or Iran.

He diddled and delayed over the civil war in Syria while Assad killed an estimated 93,000 Syrians in the past two years in an attempt to quell the rebellion.

Now in the 11th hour, shortly before the G-8 powers met, he meekly decided to give the rebels some light arms and other benign assistance — hardly a match for Assad’s vaunted air power and, we now know, his large supply of deadly chemical weapons.

Obama came to the meeting hoping to produce a break in the unending Syrian conflict, but after an unproductive, two-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin, Assad’s chief arms supplier and ally, the icy Russian president made it clear he wasn’t interested. “Our opinions do not coincide,” Putin said.

Neither was there any hint of a breakthrough between the U.S. and Hassan Rouhani, the newly elected Iranian president who is touted as a “moderate” reformer, but not on the issue of its nuclear-enrichment program and its ongoing development of nuclear weapons that threaten Israel.

Obama was elected on the dubious pledge to sit down and negotiate with Iranian leaders over the long-standing nuclear impasse, but that’s not going to happen, Rouhani indicated this week.

“All should know that the next government will not budge defending our inalienable rights,” he said defiantly in Tehran on Monday. So much for this so-called reformer.

Obama’s road trip may have gotten him away from his domestic troubles here at home for a few days, but they’ll be waiting for him with a vengeance when he returns.

As for the early reviews of his European tour, let’s just say they weren’t anything to write home about.

The post Scandal-Ridden Presidency Follows Obama Abroad appeared first on Human Events.

So, even as the President gears up for a $100 million junket to Africa (hastily cancelling a big Tanzanian safari after the press got wind of it) and the First Lady checks into a palatial $3,300-per-night suite in Ireland (with 30 more rooms in the five-star hotel booked for her gigantic imperial retinue), we learn that everyone’s favorite government agency is getting ready to hand out $70 million in bonuses.

That’s right: the IRS, at the center of the worst abuse-of-power scandal in modern history, is about to choke down $70 million in taxpayer cabbage to reward itself for a job well done, even though its officials routinely defend themselves from charges of corruption by pleading incompetence.  And according to the Associated Press, they’ll be collecting those bonuses despite a White House directive to cancel them… written by the man who is now acting IRS commissioner.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says his office has learned that the IRS is executing an agreement with the employees’ union on Wednesday to pay the bonuses. Grassley says the bonuses should be canceled under an April directive from the White House budget office.

The directive was written by Danny Werfel, a former budget official who has since been appointed acting IRS commissioner.

“The IRS always claims to be short on resources,” Grassley said. “But it appears to have $70 million for union bonuses. And it appears to be making an extra effort to give the bonuses despite opportunities to renegotiate with the union and federal instruction to cease discretionary bonuses during sequestration.”

The IRS said it is negotiating with the union over the matter but did not dispute Grassley’s claim that the bonuses are imminent.

There seems to be some confusion over whether the IRS is legally obligated to pay these bonuses under its collective bargaining agreements.  Which is one more reason public employee unions should be abolished immediately.  It’s an insult to the American taxpayer that they’ve been allowed to continue this long.

According to Senator Grassley, the IRS was originally going to scuttle these bonuses, but in March they worked out a new collective bargaining agreement that put the $70 million back on the table:

In a letter to Werfel on Tuesday, Grassley said the IRS notified the employee union March 25 that it intended to reclaim about $75 million that had been set aside for discretionary employee bonuses. However, Grassley said, his office has learned that the IRS never followed up on the notice. Instead, Grassley said, the IRS negotiated a new agreement with the bargaining unit to pay about $70 million in employee bonuses.

Grassley’s office said the information came from a “person with knowledge of IRS budgetary procedures.”

“While the IRS may claim that these bonuses are legally required under the original bargaining unit agreement, that claim would allegedly be inaccurate,” Grassley wrote. “In fact, the original agreement allows for the re-appropriation of such award funding in the event of budgetary shortfall.”

You just know some of this bonus money is going to your favorite IRS scandal all-stars, don’t you?  Especially since absolutely none of them have been officially reprimanded in a way that would activate some “no soup for you” clause in their union contracts.

Besides illustrating the absurdity of public employee unions, these bonuses give us another reason to get started on big government spending cuts immediately.  When the big spenders try to protect their turf, they claim the current budget crisis isn’t really so bad… and if things get really dicey tomorrow, why, we can always talk about budget cuts then.  But the engine of government spending is massive.  It has tremendous inertia, due to everything from powerful congressional representatives protecting their pork, to countless little rules and agreements that say you can’t cut this, or that, no matter what.

And as we saw during the sequester drama, the people in charge of implementing budget cutbacks have every incentive to make them as painful as possible to the American people, while preserving the stuff most taxpayers have in mind, when we think about cutting back on unnecessary spending.  There’s certainly nothing necessary about paying $70 million in bonuses to the IRS, and it looks as if the White House actually did try to stop it… but it couldn’t.  Keep that in mind the next time you’re told this brilliantly organized, agile super-government can manage both the private sector and its own insolvency.

The post Horrors of austerity: $70 million in bonuses for the IRS appeared first on Human Events.

It should be noted that the number does not include around 1.6 million temporary workers and their dependents, nor does it include the 8 million illegal immigrants the CBO says would gain legal status if the bill passed. Those people “would not affect the size of the U.S. population”.

The CBO also claims the bill would increase direct federal spending by $262 billion from 2014–2023, but that revenues would increase by $459 billion over the same period.  Supposedly the bill would  lower deficits by $700 billion in 2023-33.

The increase in the number of legal residents stemming from the bill would boost direct spending for federal benefit programs; direct spending for enforcement and other purposes also would rise. Under the bill, federal revenues would be higher as well, mostly because of the larger size of the labor force.

Also, the aggregate annual costs of the implementing mandates on private entities — they would kick in around 2016 —   will cost businesses $700 million.

A Heritage  Foundation’s study found that immigration reform would cost taxpayers nearly $900 billion per year.

Though I’m on the reformist side of this debate, I’m going to stick with my rock-ribbed belief that any economic study offering projections exceeding one or two years is merely guesswork.  And because of its constraints — having to base its calculations on current law — you should be particularly skeptical of the CBO’s guesswork. How can we possible calculate with any certainty the number of future Americans who will become eligible for means-tested federal welfare programs, or the future cost of Obamacare — already rising by the day — or even the state of the economy in five years? You can’t.

—————————
Follow David Harsanyi on Twitter @davidharsanyi. 

The post The CBO says immigration reform will cut deficit appeared first on Human Events.

Sessions described the current incarnation of comprehensive immigration reform as a “disastrous event,” saying that “people do want something done, but the polls show that four-to-one, the enforcement needs to come first, and amnesty second.  We’ve got it just backwards in this bill, and that’s one of the fundamental problems.”

The Senate gang’s refusal to put border security first was one of several criticisms Sessions offered.  He also opposes the “dramatic” increase in legal immigration contained in the bill, which he feels is unwise in a time of long-term high unemployment.  He noted the bill has swelled to over a thousand pages, and is “very difficult to read,” with hundreds of loopholes and special waivers… much like another bill of great concern to the Tea Party, namely ObamaCare.  Passing a bill to find out what was in it didn’t work out very well in that case, and it probably won’t work any better this time.

“I think this bill diminishes middle-class America,” said Sessions.  ”It’s going to make it harder for them, and their children and grandchildren, to get jobs at good wages.  And also, it’s eroding the rule of law, making it more difficult for us in the future claim that our immigration laws should be enforced.”

He confessed to some worry about what the immigration reform battle would do to Senator Rubio, until now considered a rising star in the Republican Party.  ”Now, Marco, to his credit, is the only one of the group, the Gang of Eight, to criticize the bill.  He says it needs to be improved.  But he also recently said that 96 percent of it was perfect… and that’s not accurate.”  Sessions found it odd that Rubio hasn’t appeared with the seven co-forgers of this legislative Excalibur for over two months.

“He wants to solve a big national problem, and it’s not easy to do so,” Sessions said of Rubio.  ”The problem was, we had several of our members within the Republican conference, the most liberal on immigration, who went and met with Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Bob Menendez – the most liberal members of the Democrat conference on immigration!  And with President Obama, and the special interests, they wrote a bill.  And it’s not a good bill for America.”

In response to Rep. Paul Ryan’s offer to debate anyone who says the immigration bill represents amnesty, Sessions said he loved Rep. Ryan, but… “Look it’s amnesty.  They have to pay a fine, it’s $2,000 over ten years, that’s about $18 a month… Amnesty is what you want it to mean.  I believe for most Americans, it means somebody is basically forgiven for their error, and they’re given a full path to citizenship in the United States of America, and that’s what this bill does.  It has some steps you have to undertake, but it’s still basically not requiring them to be deported, as the law requires.  It allows them to stay here permanently.  They’ll immediately be given Social Security numbers, and the ability to compete for any job in America immediately… and then they’re put on a path to permanent residence and citizenship… what do you call that?”

He concluded by judging the fate of the Gang of Eight bill uncertain, but said the Senate should kill it.  He seemed to think that was more likely to happen in the House, whose “good work” he encouraged listeners to appreciate.

The post Sen. Sessions: Gang of Eight immigration bill “nowhere close to what the American people really want.” appeared first on Human Events.

To reiterate my earlier reservations, I’m not a big fan of party switchers.  Party affiliation is a big deal, something voters take into account when casting their ballots.  Switching parties in the middle of a term has never seemed entirely fair to me.

Having said that, I thought Guillory’s speech at the time of his party switch was excellent, and this video is even better.  The gentleman from Louisiana is playing my tune when he says, “At the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful Big Government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans.  But the Left is concerned with one thing: control.  And they disguise this control as charity.”

“The idea that blacks – or anyone else, for that matter – need the government to get ahead in life is despicable,” says Guillory.  ”And even more important, this idea is a failure.  Our communities are just as poor as they have always been.  Our schools continue to fail our children.  Our prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home, being fathers.  Our self-initiative, and our self-reliance, have been sacrificed, in exchange for allegiance to our overseers.”

The post Elbert Guillory explains why he went Republican appeared first on Human Events.

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Thursday, while he was ringing in Gay Pride Month with LGBT revelers, a staffer, Ben Rhodes, informed the White House press that U.S. weapons will be going to the Syrian rebels.

For two years Obama has stayed out of this sectarian-civil war that has consumed 90,000 lives. Why is he going in now?

The White House claims it now has proof Bashar Assad used sarin gas to kill 100-150 people, thus crossing a “red line” Obama had set down as a “game changer.” Defied, his credibility challenged, he had to do something.

Yet Assad’s alleged use of sarin to justify U.S. intervention seems less like our reason for getting into this war than our excuse.

For the White House decided to intervene weeks ago, before the use of sarin was confirmed. And why would Assad have used only tiny traces? Where is the photographic evidence of the disfigured dead?

What proof have we the rebels did not fabricate the use of sarin or use it themselves to get the gullible Americans to fight their war?

Yet, why would President Obama, whose proud boast is that he will have extricated us from the Afghan and Iraq wars, as Dwight Eisenhower did from the Korean War, plunge us into a new war?

He has been under severe political and foreign pressure to do something after Assad and Hezbollah recaptured the strategic town of Qusair and began preparing to recapture Aleppo, the largest city.

Should Assad succeed, it would mean a decisive defeat for the rebels and their backers: the Turks, Saudis and Qataris. And it would mean a geostrategic victory for Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, who have proven themselves reliable allies.

To prevent this defeat and humiliation, we are now going to ship arms and ammunition to keep the rebels going and in control of enough territory to negotiate a peace that will remove Assad.

We are going to make this a fair fight.

What is wrong with this strategy? It is the policy of an amateur. It treats war like a game. It ignores the lessons of history. And, as it continues a bloodbath with no prospect of an end to it, it is immoral.

In every great civil war of modernity — the Russian civil war of 1919-1921, the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939, the Chinese civil war of 1945-49, one side triumphs and takes power. The other loses and lives with the consequences — defeat, death, exile.

What is the likely reaction to our escalation from humanitarian aid to military aid? Counter-escalation. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are likely to rush in more weapons and troops to accelerate the progress of Assad’s army before the American weapons arrive.

And if they raise and call, what does Obama do?

Already, a clamor is being heard from our clients in the Middle East and Congress to crater Syria’s runways with cruise missiles, to send heavy weapons to the rebels, to destroy Assad’s air force on the ground, to bomb his antiaircraft sites.

All of these are acts of war. Yet under the Constitution, Congress alone authorizes war.

When did Congress authorize Obama to take us to war in Syria? Where does our imperial president get his authority to draw red lines and attack countries that cross them?

Have we ceased to be a republic? Has Congress become a mere spectator to presidential decisions on war and peace?

As Vladimir Putin seems less the reluctant warrior, what do we do if Moscow answers the U.S. escalation by delivering on its contract to provide S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Damascus, which can cover half of Israel?

Obama has put us on the escalator to a war already spilling over Syria’s borders into Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, a war that is now sundering the entire Middle East along Sunni and Shia lines.

He is making us de facto allies of the Al-Qaida-like al-Nusra Front, of Hamas and jihadists from all across the region, and of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi just severed ties to Syria and is demanding a “no-fly zone,” which one imagines the United States, not the Egyptian air force, would have to enforce.

Our elites shed tears over the 90,000 dead in Syria. But what we are about to do will not stop the killing, but simply lengthen the duration of the war and increase the numbers of dead and wounded.

At the top of this escalator our country has begun to ascend is not just a proxy war with Iran in Syria, but a real war that would entail a disaster for the world economy.

If the ouster of Assad is what the Sunni powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt demand, why not let them do it?

Anti-interventionists should demand a roll-call vote in Congress on whether Obama has the authority to take us into this Syrian war.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

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Tiptoes to War appeared first on Human Events.

Bush chose to deal with this unease by attacking the uneasy, referring to them as “chirpers” in a CBN interview following his appearance before the Faith and Freedom Coalition.  ”I will be able to, I think, manage my way through all the ‘chirpers’ out there,” he said, apparently playing off Senator John McCain’s reference to his conservative colleagues Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee as “wacko birds.”  Bush’s comment comes near the end of the video clip embedded below:

Bush does have some good conservative points in his resume, and I’ve always thought it was facile to assume he can’t possibly win based solely on his last name.  (I’d compute it as a net minus, especially if the Democrats don’t run Hillary Clinton, because then they could exploit the general American reluctance to establish political dynasties.  But it’s not an insurmountable obstacle.)

But are Republicans really eager to run another candidate who drops a lot of “inartful” statements?  Last week, at another Faith and Freedom Coalition event, he said this: “Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans.  Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population.  Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.”

There might be a valid demographic point buried in there somewhere, and it plays into Bush’s view of the importance of traditional families for every demographic, as he mentioned in the CBN video above… but “immigrants are more fertile?”  Hoo boy.  I would not relish running a campaign with sound bites like that hanging from my neck.

And do we really want another candidate who runs harder against Republicans than he does against the Democrat?  Do the A-list Democrat candidates ever disrespect parts of their own coalition by calling them names?  That seems to be an exclusive fetish of the Stupid Party, in part because the media’s not interested in goading Democrats into public battles with large segments of their base.  They’re not even terribly interested in forcing Democrats to denounce their extremists.

Too many Republicans at the top of the ticket underestimate the effects of damaging the Republican brand.  They don’t understand how indelicate criticism and name-calling come back to haunt them.  They’ll receive no credit from the media for needling the people they don’t like, and it doesn’t sway a lot of moderate Democrats or independents, because they’re not attracted to a party that seems to be at war with itself.  But they do manage to depress their own base turnout.  The Republican base includes plenty of serious voters with long memories.  Do we need another lesson in how they’ll stay home during the general election, if they were insulted during the primary, or even long before the primary begins?

There will always be factional struggles during the run-up to a national election.  Democrats have them too.  Some of Hillary Clinton’s most loyal supporters are still miffed at the way she was treated by the Obama campaign in 2008.  But I don’t recall Barack Obama calling Hillary’s supporters names, or describing them as an obstacle he thought he could “manage.”

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