Archives for May 2014

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says House Speaker John Boehner is very anxious to get an immigration reform bill done this year, but Gohmert says there’s no reason to believe President Obama will enforce new border security provisions when he’s ignoring the existing ones and he contends that extending any sort of amnesty will be economically crippling to the U.S. and politically lethal to the Republican Party.

Boehner is study in contrasts on the immigration issue.  Early this year, he introduced the House leadership’s principles for reform only to announce days later that the bill was on hold because Republicans simply don’t trust President Obama to enforce provisions he doesn’t like.

Two weeks ago in Ohio, Boehner mocked House Republicans who oppose reform, saying they don’t want to take a difficult vote.  Now, Boehner says he was teasing and reiterated GOP distrust of Obama.

“The Speaker has made clear he wants an immigration reform bill done.  He wants it done quickly.  He wanted it done a year ago.  But what he doesn’t seem to understand, or didn’t for most of the last year, is the problem is the border not being secured,” said Gohmert.

“I’ve never said we need to seal the border because I don’t want to do that, but we do need to be able to control who comes in and make sure they’re coming legally.  Until that happens as confirmed by the border states, not Homeland Security (since) we’ve found we can’t trust them, until that happens we should not be talking about legal status, amnesty or any of those words.  (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents say every time we just talk about it lures more people through the deserts, more people become susceptible to human trafficking and sex trafficking,” said Gohmert.

“It’s time to stop talking about amnesty legal status.  Force the president to comply with and enforce the law as it’s written, not s he would speak it to be.  Once that’s done, we should and will get an immigration reform bill done very quickly,” said Gohmert.

Supporters of the Senate’s Gang of Eight immigration bill and backers of the emerging legislation in the House insist border security is among their top concerns and that their bills are jammed full of stringent border security measures designed to prevent this crisis from developing again.  Gohmert says none of that matter.

“The law is already there.  If this president will not follow the law and enforce the law as it is, then what good does it do to make the law tougher in some future bill when he’s already ignoring this one.  I think it’s so critical that we get the president to follow the law now.  Then if he actually needs help in getting the border secured, we’ll give him that help.  Until it is secured, it should not be part of some bigger bill and used as a trigger.  We already have the trigger.  It’s called the law as it is right now,” he said.

Gohmert also expanded on his assertion that renewed chatter of immigration reform leads to much more illegal immigration and reduced economic opportunity for Americans.

“Every time we talk about it, including this latest push towards some kind of amnesty bill, it increases dramatically the numbers of people coming across the southern border illegally.  It really puts more people at risk,” said Gohmert.

“That comes on the heels of this horrendous employment report that although there may have been a couple hundred thousand jobs created, they’re underpaying and it doesn’t address the 800,000 Americans that gave up hope and quit looking for employment.  How in the world is bringing in more people right now going to help the millions that are either underemployed, out of work or trying to get a better job,” said Gohmert.

The Republican National Committee has been very clear that comprehensive immigration reform is it’s number one policy goal in this Congress.  Following the 2012 elections, the RNC concluded passing immigration legislation is key to opening the door to Latino voters on a host of other issues that those voters would naturally embrace.

Gohmert agrees it is vital to make the GOP attractive to the nation’s fastest growing demographic, but he says the party is going about it all wrong.

“It’ll take more than pandering to convince people that we’re the proper party.  In fact, it will make people more cynical.  I want more Hispanics in (the GOP).  I like any culture that generally has a faith in God, devotion to family and a hard work ethic, but it has to be done legally.  Just pandering has never convinced anybody to go with a party,” said Gohmert.

“Democrats have handed out so much in the way of benefits to buy people’s votes, it’ll take more than one act to persuade them that we are the people who believe like they do, that believe in hard work, that believe in opportunity and want them to be presidents of companies and the country and things like that,” he said.

“But we’re not going to do it with one bill, pandering.  We cannot outpander the Democrats,” said Gohmert.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see the Supreme Court uphold the constitutionality of prayers before public meetings, even if they overwhelmingly trend toward one faith.  They also shake their heads at the Obama administration’s new “climate disruption” agenda.  And they contrast Obama’s ‘Year of Action’ with his actual actions.

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The leader of a radical Muslim movement in Nigeria is admitting his group abducted over 300 Nigerian girls and now says he’s ready to sell them because he’s got plenty of buyers.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see a new Pew survey showing Americans severely soured on the economy, Obamacare and Democrats in general.  They also react to Democrats trying to label the select committee on Benghazi as nothing more than the politicizing of a tragedy.  And they weigh in on President Obama’s biting humor at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see many mainstream media reporters grilling the White House over Benghazi and being skeptical of the administration’s answers.  They also groan over news that more than 800,000 Americans left the job market in April.  And we have fun with the “dude” comments of former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor.

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For the second straight day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied a recently released email was proof of the administration’s attempt to spin the deadly Benghazi terrorist attacks as the result of a spontaneous protest, an explanation that a key member of the House committee investigating the attacks dismissed as “laughable”.

The email from White House official Ben Rhodes came to light as part of a Freedom of Information request from the watchdog group Judicial Watch.  In it, Rhodes urges then-Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to attribute the attack to spontaneous street protests in many Arab cities over an internet video that was critical of Islam and Mohammed.  Ambassador Chris Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were killed in the attack at the consulate.  Ex-Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died hours later at the CIA Annex in Benghazi.

Carney rejects the notion that the email is evidence of any sort of cover-up for the administration’s failure to protect the consulate in Benghazi or take action to assist Americans under fire during the seven-hour assault.

“This document was not about Benghazi,” said Carney, who asserts the references to the protests in the email were about major demonstrations Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia the same day that the protesters said were in response to the video.

“(Rice) relied for her answers on Benghazi on the document prepared by the CIA, as did members of Congress,” said Carney.

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its national security subcommittee.  He isn’t buying Carney’s explanation.

“That’s laughable, actually laughable, and it’s sad.  We constantly look back at the emails then between Cairo and Libya and they pointed out there was a document that showed people hardly even knew about the video,” said Gosar.  “This is laughable if it wouldn’t be so tragic, that the White House and Jay Carney actually hold to this narrative.  It’s deplorable.”

Gosar says the significance of the Rhodes email takes on further credence in light of the administration’s actions in the wake of the attacks in September 2012.

“I think it’s very significant.  It gets even worse.  You see the perpetration almost two weeks after Benghazi with the president’s speech at the United Nations, in which he addresses this very video,” said Gosar.  “This actually tries to establish the president with a better narrative going into the election.”

If in fact the administration’s emphasis on the video was fabricated, Gosar says it’s certainly not a unique occurrence.

“This shows an intentional pattern.  We see the lies in Obamacare.  We see the lies in Benghazi.  We see the lies in regards to the IRS.  There’s got to be accountability in this administration.  Somebody’s got to take a fall,” said Gosar.

Despite the current White House efforts to minimize the significance of the email, Gosar believes this reignites the commitment of Republicans to get to the truth and puts pressure on the White House to be more forthcoming.

“This puts the onus back onto the White House to come clean and get the documents out here.  It also puts the onus on the attorney general of the United States to do his due diligence to make sure that the people who were involved in this have the ability to speak clearly to the oversight committee and the committees of reference.  That is absolutely part of the problem,” he said.

“In my district and throughout the state of Arizona, this constantly comes up because it’s one of the few times that we watched men die and did nothing,” said Gosar.

While the White House might be on its heels at the moment, Gosar admits there are two factors working against the committee’s efforts to get more answers.  He says first major hurdle is a Democratic Party completely disinterested in the truth.

“They’re toeing the party line.  I think what they need to do it put their justice hats on, blindfold themselves and listen to the facts.  The facts ring loud and clear.  The biggest thing we’re entitled to is to let the facts come forward and let them fall where they may,” said Gosar.

The other great frustration for Gosar and other Republicans is what they characterize as the slow drip of paperwork being provided by the administration, which they say is evidenced by the Rhodes email coming forth in a legal request by a private organization and not made available to the committee in the first place.  The congressman there’s plenty of information yet to be gathered.

“There’s a lot more.  When you look at the tons of paperwork that is required by the federal government’s own admission, there’s a lot more out there and we need to get that.  Once again, we’ve got to get back to the rule of law and make sure that we have the documents that we, in our Constitution, are entitled to have for oversight of the executive branch,” said Gosar, who adds it is the job of the attorney general to make sure the committee has all of the documents it has requested.

But while the effort to discover all the facts on Benghazi has been challenging, Gosar says the pursuit of the truth will not stop.

“It’s now taken us 20 months to get information.  Senator (Ted) Cruz made the comment we know less now than we knew before because we lack the due diligence of this administration to give us the information as it occurred.  We need to get to the bottom of these answers,” said Gosar.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Wisconsin Democrats concluding that making the 2014 governor’s race about the 2011 union battles is a losing fight.  They also react to reports that Syria is still holding onto chemical weapons components despite its vow to give them up.  And we critique MSNBC’s revisionist take on ‘Animal Farm’.

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