Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Senator Dodd Scandals DC to Hollywood Favors

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The 2009 financial crisis included a few other people with brewing scandals that included AIG and Countrywide. Senator Chris Dodd was the most corrupt and is now living the life of glamour and glitz. In Hollywood, the dark favors continue, where Chris Dodd roams and where Hillary Clinton winked often.

From Pro Publica:

As Hollywood Lobbied State Department, It Built Free Home Theaters for U.S. Embassies

Four U.S. Embassies got upgraded screening rooms last year, paid for by the lobbying arm of the big studios. The industry and the government say there were no strings attached.

This story was co-published with The Daily Beast.

Hollywood’s efforts to win political clout have always stretched across the country, from glitzy campaign fundraisers in Beverly Hills to cocktail parties with power brokers in Washington.

Last year, the film industry staked out another zone of influence: U.S. embassies. Its lobbying arm paid to renovate screening rooms in at least four overseas outposts, hoping the new theaters would help ambassadors and their foreign guests “keep U.S. cultural interests top of mind,” according to an internal email.

That was the same year that the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the six biggest studios, reported it was lobbying the State Department on issues including piracy and online content distribution. Hollywood’s interests – including its push for tougher copyright rules in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact – often put the industry at odds with Silicon Valley.

The only public indication of the embassy-theater initiative was a February 2015 press release from American officials in Madrid, titled “U.S. Embassy Launches State-of-the-Art Screening Room.” It credited “a generous donation” from the MPAA.

Asked about its gifts to the State Department, the lobby group declined to say how many embassies got donations or how much they were worth.

“Because film is a great ambassador for U.S. culture around the world, MPAA assisted with the upgrade of some embassy theater facilities,” said spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield. “All gifts complied with the law as well as with State Department ethics guidelines.”

Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman, said at least three embassies besides Madrid received between $20,000 and $50,000 in entertainment upgrades last year – London, Paris and Rome. The revamped screening rooms, she said, aren’t intended to entertain U.S. officials, but rather to help them host screenings to promote an American industry and sow goodwill.

Thompson said the donations were proper and that all gifts to the department are reviewed to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. “The department has explicit authorities to accept gifts made for its benefit or for carrying out any of its functions,” she said.

The State Department routinely accepts gifts from outside groups, Thompson said. She couldn’t provide any other examples of major gifts from groups that simultaneously lobby the agency. Thompson declined to list the items given by the MPAA or their total value, and wouldn’t say whether the group had made similar gifts in the past.

There was at least one precedent. A spokesman for Warner Bros. Entertainment said the studio helped pay for the refurbishment of the screening room at the U.S. ambassador’s home in Paris in 2011. “This donation was coordinated with the State Department and complied with all appropriate rules and regulations,” the spokesman said.

State Department policies posted online specifically permit gifts from individuals, groups or corporations for “embassy refurbishment, ” provided that the donors are vetted to ensure there’s no conflict or possible “embarrassment or harm” to the agency. The posted policies include no caps on the value of donations, nor any requirements for public disclosure of foreign or American donors. The rules also say that the donations can’t come with a promise or expectation of “any advantage or preference from the U.S. Government.”

Obtaining an advantage, albeit a nonspecific one, sounded like the goal when a Sony Pictures Entertainment official wrote to the studio’s chief executive officer, Michael Lynton, to relay a request to fund the screening rooms from Chris Dodd, the former U.S. senator who heads the MPAA. The executive writing the note – Keith Weaver – sought to assure the CEO that such a donation wouldn’t be improper.

“The rationale being that key Ambassadors will keep U.S. cultural interests top of mind, as they screen American movies for high level officials where they are stationed,” reads the message, included in a cache of emails hacked from Sony and which were posted online by the website WikiLeaks.

“The cost implication is estimated to be $165k (aggregate of $$$/in-kind) per embassy/per studio. Apparently, donations of this kind are permissible.”

Besides Sony, the MPAA represents Disney, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Entertainment. The e-mails suggest that Sony executives decided against contributing to the project for budget reasons.

The MPAA has long been a powerful presence in the nation’s capital, spending $1.34 million on federal lobbying last year, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. One of its flashier tools has been to host exclusive gatherings at its Washington screening room, two blocks from the White House, where lawmakers get to watch blockbuster films, rub elbows with celebrities, and up until several years ago, enjoy dinner – a perk scuttled because of stricter rules on congressional lobbying.

Hollywood studios depend on foreign markets for much of their profit but the MPAA’s interests don’t always align with those of other major American constituencies. For example, Hollywood studios have moved some film production to Canada to cut costs. American film workers have tried to get the federal government to stop the outsourcing of jobs, but have been met with resistance from the MPAA.

The trade group has also pushed federal officials to pressure foreign governments into adopting stricter copyright laws. An MPAA-funded study found that in 2005 worldwide piracy cost American studios $6.1 billion in revenue. That number has been disputed by digital rights advocates.

For the TPP trade deal, the MPAA has discouraged the American government from exporting “fair use” protections to other countries. In a hacked message from Dodd to the U.S. Trade Representative, the MPAA chief warned that including such provisions, which in American law allow limited use of copyrighted materials without permission, would be “extremely controversial and divisive.” Digital rights activists have characterized the efforts as overzealous.

“They’re basically encouraging other countries to adopt the most draconian parts of U.S. copyright law and even to reinterpret U.S. copyright law to make it more stringent,” said Mitch Stoltz, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Broadly speaking broadening copyright law harms free speech in many cases by creating a mechanism for censorship.”

The state-of-the-art screening rooms are a relatively minimal investment by Hollywood as it works to strengthen connections abroad.

This spring, the U.S. ambassador to Spain, James Costos, brought a group of foreign officials to Los Angeles for a meeting hosted by the MPAA. Among them were representatives from the Canary Islands, who came prepared to discuss filming opportunities and tax incentives for American studios in the Spanish territory. The State Department touted the trip as an opportunity to “expand bilateral trade and investment, including through ties between the entertainment industries.”

It’s not known whether the path to that particular meeting was eased by the new screening room in Madrid. At the theater’s debut in February, the ambassador’s guests were treated to a dark tale of corruption, lobbying and double-dealing in Washington – the Netflix series “House of Cards.”

 

 

The Words in General Dempsey’s Swan Song

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Si Vis pacem, para bellum

GW Bush said it was going to be a long war when the top enemy was al Qaeda. Defeat was realized until the rules of engagement and strategy were altered dynamically month by month beginning in 2009.

There is Russia and Ukraine as noted by the Institute for the Study of War.

Then there is the Baltic Balance as summarized by the Rand Corporation.

There is Islamic State throughout the Middle East region where the caliphate is beyond incubation.

An outcome of the Iran P5+1 talk on the nuclear program is eminent and that could spell an armed conflict that includes Saudi Arabia and or Israel.

The forgotten region is the South China Sea.

Dempsey’s Final Instruction to the Pentagon, Prepare for a Long War

By: Marcus Weisgerber

Non-state actors, like ISIS, are among the Pentagon’s top concerns, but so are hybrid wars in which nations like Russia support militia forces fighting on their behalf in Eastern Ukraine threaten national security interests, Dempsey writes.

“Hybrid conflicts also may be comprised of state and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine,” Dempsey writes. “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”

Dempsey also warns that the “probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is … low but growing.”

“We must be able to rapidly adapt to new threats while maintaining comparative advantage over traditional ones. Success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument can support the other instruments of power and enable our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey writes.

The strategy also calls for greater agility, innovation and integration among military forces.

“[T]he 2015 strategy recognizes that success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power and how it enables our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey said Wednesday.

The military will continue its pivot to the Pacific, Dempsey writes, but its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa will evolve. The military must remain “globally engaged to shape the security environment,” he said Wednesday.

The Russian campaign in Ukraine has military strategists questioning if traditional U.S. military force as it is deployed globally is still — or enough of — a deterrence to hybrid and non-state threats like today’s terrorism. “If deterrence fails, at any given time, our military will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale, multi-phased campaign while denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – another aggressor in a different region,” Dempsey writes.

The chairman also criticizes Beijing’s “aggressive land reclamation efforts” in the South China Sea where it is building military bases in on disputed islands. In the same region, on North Korea, “In time, they will threaten the U.S. homeland,” Dempsey writes, and mentions Pyongyang’s alleged hack of Sony’s computer network.

Dempsey scolds Iran, which is in the midst of negotiating a deal with Washington to limit its nuclear program, for being a “state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”

Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, Dempsey writes, are not “believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” but the U.S. military needs to be prepared.

“Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action,” Dempsey said.

Prepare for a long war. General Dempsey is retiring as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and will likely move on to academia. Meanwhile, on July 9, the Senate Armed Services will hold a confirmation hearing for General Joseph Dunford.

As General Dempsey is making his farewell rounds, his words speak to some liberation in saying what needs to be said in his swan song.

In a new National Military Strategy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warns the Pentagon to reorganize its global footprint to combat prolonged battles of terrorism and proxy wars.

The U.S. military needs to reorganize itself and prepare for war that has no end in sight with militant groups like the Islamic State and nations that use proxies to fight on their behalf, America’s top general warned Wednesday.

In what is likely his last significant strategy direction before retiring this summer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon that “global disorder has trended upward while some of our comparative advantages have begun to erode,” since 2011, the last update to the National Military Strategy.

“We are more likely to face prolonged campaigns than conflicts that are resolved quickly… that control of escalation is becoming more difficult and more important… and that as a hedge against unpredictability with reduced resources, we may have to adjust our global posture,” Dempsey writes in the new military strategy.

Dempsey, the president’s senior military advisor, criticizes Russia, Iran, North Korea and China for aggressive military actions and warns that the rapidly changing global security environment might force the U.S. military to reorganize as it prepares for a busy future.

The military has been shrinking since 2012, when the Obama administration announced plans to pivot forces to the Asia-Pacific region as troops withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq. But since then, Obama slowed the Afghanistan withdrawal as fighting continues there, and thousands of American military forces have found themselves back in the Middle East and North Africa conducting airstrikes, gathering intelligence and training and advising Iraqi soldiers that are battling ISIS. Since U.S. forces are not deployed to Iraq in a combat role, significantly fewer numbers are needed compared to the hundreds of thousands troops that were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. Still, U.S. commanders have repeatedly said it will take decades  to defeat ISIS, and a stronger nonmilitary effort to defeat the ideology that fuels Islamic extremist groups.

Non-state actors, like ISIS, are among the Pentagon’s top concerns, but so are hybrid wars in which nations like Russia support militia forces fighting on their behalf in Eastern Ukraine threaten national security interests, Dempsey writes.

“Hybrid conflicts also may be comprised of state and non-state actors working together toward shared objectives, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine,” Dempsey writes. “Hybrid conflicts serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”

Dempsey also warns that the “probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is … low but growing.”

“We must be able to rapidly adapt to new threats while maintaining comparative advantage over traditional ones. Success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument can support the other instruments of power and enable our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey writes.

The strategy also calls for greater agility, innovation and integration among military forces.

“[T]he 2015 strategy recognizes that success will increasingly depend on how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power and how it enables our network of allies and partners,” Dempsey said Wednesday.

The military will continue its pivot to the Pacific, Dempsey writes, but its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa will evolve. The military must remain “globally engaged to shape the security environment,” he said Wednesday.

The Russian campaign in Ukraine has military strategists questioning if traditional U.S. military force as it is deployed globally is still — or enough of — a deterrence to hybrid and non-state threats like today’s terrorism. “If deterrence fails, at any given time, our military will be capable of defeating a regional adversary in a large-scale, multi-phased campaign while denying the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – another aggressor in a different region,” Dempsey writes.

The chairman also criticizes Beijing’s “aggressive land reclamation efforts” in the South China Sea where it is building military bases in on disputed islands. In the same region, on North Korea, “In time, they will threaten the U.S. homeland,” Dempsey writes, and mentions Pyongyang’s alleged hack of Sony’s computer network.

Dempsey scolds Iran, which is in the midst of negotiating a deal with Washington to limit its nuclear program, for being a “state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”

Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, Dempsey writes, are not “believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” but the U.S. military needs to be prepared.

“Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action,” Dempsey said.

FBI Official Warning, Hackers Attacking Corporations

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The FBI Most Wanted hackers. Law enforcement is willing to pay $4.2 million to get them

Cybercrime represents one of the most serious threat to Governments and private industries worldwide, law enforcement hunt down this emerging class of criminals who are able to influence the social context like drug traffickers and terrorists.

The FBI has published the lists of most wanted cyber criminals and the rewards for their capture. According to FBI data these individuals are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, for this reason, the Feds are willing to pay a combined $4.2 million for information leading to their arrest.

U.S. Retailer giants Target and Home Depot are just a couple of samples of companies that suffered major cyber attacks, we cannot avoid mentioning other illustrious victims of the cybercrime like the Sony Pictures and government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management.

Recently Trustwave firm published a report related to 2014 incidents that revealed cyber criminal activities are paying with 1,425% return on investment. More details here.

***

But the warning bells are sounding from the FBI

FBI Warns U.S. Companies to Be Ready for Chinese Hack Attacks

by Shane Harris:
In a message obtained by The Daily Beast, the bureau strongly implies Beijing was behind the massive hack that exposed U.S. government employees’ secrets—and U.S. companies are next.
Within the U.S. government, there’s a debate about who’s responsible for the massive hack of federal employees’ darkest secrets. The FBI on Wednesday weighed in with its own answer, strongly implying that it was the work of China.

The FBI is warning U.S. companies to be on the lookout for a malicious computer program that has been linked to the hack of the Office of Personnel Management. Security experts say the malware is known to be used by hackers in China, including those believed to be behind the OPM breach.

The FBI warning, which was sent to companies Wednesday, includes so-called hash values for the malware, called Sakula, that can be used to search a company’s systems to see if they’ve been affected.

The warning, known as an FBI Liaison Alert System, or FLASH, contains technical details of the malware and describes how it works. While the message doesn’t mention the OPM hack, the Sakula malware is used by Chinese hacker groups, according to security experts. And the FBI message is identical to one the bureau sent companies on June 5, a day after the Obama administration said the OPM had been hacked, exposing millions of government employees’ personal information. Among the recipients of both alerts are government contractors working on sensitive and classified projects.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has publicly called China the “leading suspect” in the OPM hack, but he hasn’t offered any evidence publicly to substantiate those claims. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said the jury is still out on whether China is to blame.

In an email obtained by The Daily Beast, the FBI said it was sending the alert again because of concerns that not all companies had received it the first time. Apparently, some of their email filters weren’t configured to let the FBI message through.

The FLASH alert says the bureau has identified “cyber actors who have compromised and stolen sensitive business information and personally identifiable information.”
The FLASH alert says the bureau has identified “cyber actors who have compromised and stolen sensitive business information and personally identifiable information,” which includes names, dates of birth, and Social Security Numbers. The message notes that this information was a “priority target” of the hackers and that such data are frequently used for financial fraud. But “the FBI is not aware of such activity by these groups,” the message says.

Experts believe the data stolen from OPM is being compiled for espionage purposes, including targeting U.S. government employees and contractors who have access to classified information and could be blackmailed or recruited as spies.

The message also described the malware as being designed to copy information and send it to another computer, presumably being operated by a hacker. The Sakula malware has been linked to a breach of patient records at the health insurer Anthem. Some experts now believe the hackers who pulled off that breach are the same ones who penetrated the OPM’s computers.

The alert comes as Obama administration officials have been briefing members of Congress and their staff about the extent of the OPM hack. The Daily Beast reported earlier that the hackers had compromised so-called adjudication information, which includes revealing details, gleaned from background investigations, about government employees’ sex lives, their history of drug and alcohol use, and their financial problems. The OPM hack has also raised questions about whether the personnel records of intelligence agency employees, including covert operatives, were compromised.

 

Prisoners Have a Super PAC

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Political Action Committee that is…

There are over 1.5 million people in U.S. prisons today and with that all those people not only cost big dollars, they don’t and anything to the economic or financial engine. There is chatter at the Department of Justice to re-tool criminal sentencing and perhaps that is a good debate. Yet, discussions should also include the foreign nationals in our prisons that need to be incarcerated in home countries.

Meanwhile, when it comes to second chances, each case and individual is different for sure, so can a political action committee be the solution?

From the Center for Public Integrity:

Super PACs have been formed by journalists. By space nerds. Even comedian Stephen Colbert.

Now, for the first time, a super PAC is being masterminded from behind bars.

Adam Savader this week formed Second Chance PAC — it may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections — even though Savader himself can’t vote. That’s because Savader is serving a 30-month sentence in federal prison for cyberstalking and extortion after pleading guilty in November 2013 to the crimes.

A budding political activist who attended The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Savader had previously volunteered for the 2012 presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Around the same time, Savader was hacking into women’s email accounts, stealing nude photos of them and threatening to publish the pictures unless they sent more, according to court filings.

Several campaign finance lawyers, normally a tough bunch to surprise, said this appears to be the first super PAC set up by a jailbird.

“That’s a new one,” Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at law firm Akerman LLP, told the Center for Public Integrity. “I’ve seen former convicted people come out of prison and run for Congress again, but never saw someone set up a committee while in prison.”

“This is a first,” said Michael Toner, a former Federal Election Commission chairman who’s now a lawyer at Wiley Rein. “I haven’t recalled this. It really does show you how omnipresent super PACs are today.”

Paperwork for Second Chance PAC lists Savader as the group’s treasurer, custodian of records and “founder / director.” It also notes the PAC doesn’t have a bank account and hasn’t yet raised money.

Second Chance PAC uses the address of a post office box in Great Neck, N.Y., which is also the address used by a municipal credit analysis company called Savader Asset Advisors, LLC.

Perry Leardi, the company’s representative of sales, confirmed the company’s chief executive officer, Mitchell Savader, is Adam Savader’s father. But Leardi said he knew nothing about Adam Savader’s super PAC.

Mitchell Savader did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Update, 8:05 p.m. Tuesday, June 30, 2015: Mitchell Savader explained by phone Tuesday evening that he helped his son set up the super PAC.

“My son has a deep belief that people who have done something wrong” should have “a true second chance,” Mitchell Savader said.

He said the point of the super PAC is to help influence legislation that would support people who have spent time in prison and are trying to start over.

The paperwork was filed just to establish the group and allow it to secure its name and email address, Mitchell Savader said. He said the group won’t engage in fundraising until after his son is released.

At that point, he said, his son plans to finish college and will work on the super PAC as a side project.)

The super PAC’s paperwork arrived at the Federal Election Commission in an envelope return addressed to Adam Savader at “Federal Correctional Institution” in New Jersey.

The Bureau of Prison’s inmate search lists Adam Savader as an inmate in Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institute, a low-security prison in New Jersey.

“We have people who set up super PACs going to prison over it, but this guy is getting out in front of it,” said Kenneth Gross, the head of the political law practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

It isn’t clear whether prison rules specifically address inmates forming political committees, and the Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to questions.

Forming a super PAC isn’t inherently difficult. Fill out and submit several pages of paperwork, mail them to the FEC, and voilá, you’re on your way.

Operating a successful super PAC is another matter: Only a small fraction of the roughly 1,000 federally registered super PACs that today exist have raised significant amounts of money, and many haven’t raised any money at all.

Savader doesn’t indicate in his super PAC paperwork what candidates or causes the committee intends to support. The FEC doesn’t require such detail, either.

Michael Soshnick, Savader’s defense attorney at the time of his guilty plea, could not immediately be reached for comment by the Center for Public Integrity.

The judge overseeing the case acknowledged Savader had mental health issues, but that they weren’t excuses for his crimes.

According to a Politico story about Savader’s sentencing, the judge agreed that working on Gingrich’s campaign was his “breaking point.”

Savader’s scheduled release date is July 27, 2016 — the week after Republicans are slated to formally nominate a presidential candidate.

This story was co-published with the Daily Beast.

Forget the Confederate Flag, Alert on Immigration!

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From the Washington Times:

The Obama administration still hasn’t fully rescinded the 2,000 three-year amnesties it wrongly issued four months ago in violation of a court order, government lawyers recently admitted in court, spurring a stern response from the judge who said the matter must be cleaned up by the end of July — or else.

It’s the latest black eye for President Obama’s amnesty policy and the immigration agency charged with carrying it out. The agency bungled the rollout, issuing three-year amnesties even while assuring the judge it had stopped all action hours after a Feb. 16 injunction.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the amnesty, said it’s trying to round up all of the permits, sending out two-year amnesties and pleading with the illegal immigrants to return the three-year cards.

But they are having trouble getting some of the lucky recipients to send them back.

“USCIS is carefully tracking the returns of the three-year EAD cards, and many have been returned within weeks,” the agency said in a statement to The Washington Times. “USCIS continues to take steps to collect the remaining three-year EAD cards.”

The agency didn’t answer specific questions about how many remain outstanding, nor about what methods will be used to claw back the ones that folks refuse to return.

The three-year deportation amnesty was part of Mr. Obama’s November 2014 announcement when he proposed granting a three-year tentative deportation amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. It was to be a massive expansion, in both eligibility and duration, of his 2012 amnesty, which granted two-year amnesty to so-called Dreamers.

Judge Andrew S. Hanen blocked the expansion in February, issuing an injunction that remains in place even as the administration appeals it to a higher court. The next hearing on that appeal is due July 10.

But Judge Hanen was shocked to learn that USCIS issued the 2,000 three-year amnesties even after he’d issued his injunction.

“I expect you to resolve the 2,000; I’m shocked that you haven’t,” Judge Hanen told the Justice Department at a hearing last week, according to the San Antonio Express-News. “If they’re not resolved by July 31, I’m going to have to figure out what action to take.”

Homeland Security says it’s changed the duration of the work permits from three years to two years in its computer systems, but getting the cards returned from the illegal immigrants themselves is tougher.

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the lawsuit challenging the amnesty and who won the February injunction against the policy, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the outstanding permits.

Josh Blackman, an assistant professor at the South Texas College of Law, who has filed briefs in the case opposing the Obama administration’s claims, said he believes the administration is trying to comply in good faith with Judge Hanen’s order, but USCIS’s difficulties show how difficult managing the full amnesty would be.

“The entire nature of this case was that agents were given a free rein to approve as many applications as possible. DHS can’t keep track of its own agents and who’s being approved for deferrals and work authorization,” he said.

Mr. Obama announced the policy in order to circumvent Congress, which is moving the other direction away from legalization and toward a crackdown on most illegal immigrants. Read much more here if you dare.

Don’t go away mad just yet….sure there is more and Jeh Johnson is quietly very busy.

Obama administration goes for integration over deportation for illegal immigrants

Washington Post:

The Obama administration has begun a profound shift in its enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws, aiming to hasten the integration of long-term illegal immigrants into society rather than targeting them for deportation, according to documents and federal officials.

In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has taken steps to ensure that the majority of America’s 11.3 million undocumented immigrants can stay in this country, with agents narrowing enforcement efforts to three groups of illegal migrants: convicted criminals, terrorism threats or those who recently crossed the border.

While public attention has been focused on the court fight over President Obama’s highly publicized executive action on immigration, DHS has with little fanfare been training thousands of immigration agents nationwide to carry out new policies on everyday enforcement.

The legal battle centers on the constitutionality of a program that would officially shield up to 5 million eligible illegal immigrants from deportation, mainly parents of children who are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. A federal judge put the program, known by the acronym DAPA, on hold in February after 26 states sued.
The new policies direct agents to focus on the three priority groups and leave virtually everyone else alone. Demographic data shows that the typical undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States for a decade or more and has established strong community ties.

While the new measures do not grant illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, their day-to-day lives could be changed in countless ways. Now, for instance, undocumented migrants say they are so afraid to interact with police, for fear of being deported, that they won’t report crimes and often limit their driving to avoid possible traffic stops. The new policies, if carried out on the ground, could dispel such fears, advocates for immigrants say.


Deportations, for example, are dropping. The Obama administration is on pace to remove 229,000 people from the country this year, a 27 percent fall from last year and nearly 50 percent less than the all-time high in 2012.

Fewer people are also in the pipeline for deportation. The number of occupied beds at immigration detention facilities, which house people arrested for immigration violations, have dropped nearly 20 percent this year.

And on Johnson’s orders, officials are reviewing the entire immigrant detainee population — and each of the 400,000 cases in the nation’s clogged immigration courts — to weed out those who don’t meet the new priorities. About 3,000 people have been released from custody or had their immigration cases dropped, DHS officials said. There is more found here.

Now you can channel your anger where it needs to go, the White House, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

Don’t shoot the messenger. ;~)