Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Cory Gardner’s new anti-Obamacare ad in the Colorado Senate race. They also discuss President Obama’s frequent leisure pursuits while major crises rage. And they remember the work of comedian and actor Robin Williams and discuss the horrors triggered by suicide.
‘They Don’t Want to Actually Secure the Border’
The southern U.S. border is largely unprotected and American leaders simply lie to the public when they claim otherwise, according to a new video from Project Veritas.
The report also depicts a border county sheriff in Texas declaring the border fence to be a joke, border patrol agents doing everything but patrolling the border and wondering if President Obama even cares that there is even an unguarded footbridge in his county that connects the U.S. and Mexico across the Rio Grande.
Project Veritas President and Founder James O’Keefe crossed the shallow, narrow river a total of five times and twice in video, one dressed as Osama bin Laden to emphasize how terrorists could exploit lax border security.
In his first crossing out of costume, O’Keefe takes just a few seconds to cross the Rio Grande.
“I don’t see a single federal officer anywhere, no walls, no guns, no people” says O’Keefe upon reaching shore on the American side in the video.
His efforts are shown immediately after video clips of Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano all insisting the border was very secure. In our subsequent interview, O’Keefe says the message of the video should be pretty clear.
“I think the message here is that border security is national security and that the American people don’t really understand just how bad it really is. The political representatives are lying to them. The president is lying. Senator Reid is lying. Members of Congress are lying and misleading people. If a person who’s dressed up as a terrorist can walk across the border in broad daylight with no federal Border Patrol agents to be found, I think the president is violating his oath,” said O’Keefe.
The video was shot in Hudspeth County, Texas, in the western part of the state. O’Keefe says the county is a microcosm of security problems across the southern border, ranging from small, separate components of the unfinished border fence to a footbridge connecting the U.S. to Mexico to a river that takes only a few seconds to cross.
O’Keefe is joined in the video by Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West. The sheriff didn’t directly answer when asked by O’Keefe whether President Obama is aware of the security problems in his county.
“It doesn’t matter whether he knows it’s here. Does he care? says West.
As for the border fence that President Obama once declared to be almost finished, O’Keefe says Sheriff West and other border security advocates know that’s not true.
“The sheriff intimated the fence is a joke. They don’t think there’s a fence. If you watch the video, there are these 20-foot high iron pillars that are attached to a concrete base. That goes on for about three miles and then just abruptly stops. You can walk around it,” said O’Keefe, who says Sheriff West believes he knows exactly what it would take to secure the border in his county.
“He said we could secure this border with about 75 guys. He currently has 12 deputy sheriffs in Hudspeth Couty for a 78-mile stretch. Remember, Congress is thinking about allocating three billion dollars. With just 75 deputies, that’s far, far less than three billion. He could secure an entire stretch of that border. So he’s giving a practical solution. Of course, given the way this government works and the way this country works, they’ll never look for that practical solution because they don’t want to actually secure the border,” said O’Keefe.
O’Keefe says another alarming result of his conversation with Sheriff West was to learn there are plenty of Border Patrol agents on the payroll, but most of them are nowhere near the border.
“The federal border patrol is not on the border. They’re inland, they’re elsewhere. They’re not actually protecting the border,” said O’Keefe.
Some observers of the video accuse O’Keefe of breaking the laws of two countries by publicly depicting how to illegally cross the border. He’s not sure what Mexican officials might do but says the U.S. Border Patrol has already issued a statement claiming they simply cannot be everywhere at once. O’Keefe isn’t worried about prosecution in the U.S. at all.
“What laws are people referring to? What law has been enforced on our border? There is no law,” he said.
Project Veritas is well-known for its hidden-camera investigations of Planned parenthood, ACORN, National Public Radio and how easily voter fraud can be committed without photo identification. As with those probes, critics say O’Keefe is finding the exception rather than the rule when it comes to our borders. He says that’s ludicrious.
“It’s pretty amazing the lengths my adversaries will go to undermine and discredit me and what we expose at Project Veritas. I don’t think that people are necessarily surprised by the notion that people can cross the border. I think it’s important to show people in the most outrageous way that this is the way it is,” said O’Keefe.
O’Keefe says Project Veritas hopes to act as a uniting force in the country because he believes people of all political stripes do not want to perpetuate a system that allows terrorists to waltz unimpeded into the country. He hopes people will demand answers from their lawmakers and from the president. O’Keefe says Obama is facing an important moment and his group will be ready to hold him accountable.
“What is his response to what we’ve shown? How is he addressing the issue of terrorists sneaking across the border? How are his solutions going to prevent what I just did from happening again? Maybe I’ll go and do it again. Maybe after his solution, I’ll go across, pose as ISIS or as if I have Ebola and we’ll see what happens then,” said O’Keefe.
Three Martini Lunch 8/11/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss Hillary Clinton’s first public criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy and enjoy the prospect of much more sniping as 2016 draws closer and Obama’s approval remains low. They also set the record straight as Obama tries to argue Iraqi leaders prevented a Status of Forces Agreement in 2011. And they wonder why Iraqis are deciding the best time for domestic political chaos should be right when the nation’s very existence is at stake.
Liddy Gives Inside Story on Watergate
Saturday marks 40 years since Richard Nixon resigned the presidency over the Watergate scandal. The saga began more than two years earlier, in June 1972. A group of political operatives known as the plumbers broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Northwest Washington.
What many Americans do not know, however, is how the plot started, what the plumbers were looking for in the DNC headquarter, why they got caught, and how the man lionized by liberals for breaking the scandal wide open actually deserves much of the blame.
The leader of the plumbers was G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI special agent and official in the office of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). In 2012, while a talk show host and colleague of mine at the Radio America network, Liddy detailed how the road to the Watergate break-in began.
“I was down in the office of what came to be known as the plumbers. I was called by Egil Krogh, who was an assistant to John Ehrlichman, and he said, ‘(White House Counsel) John Dean wants to pitch you on something and I think I ought to be there.’ That’s because nobody trusted John Dean. So I went up to Dean’s office. He said that he wanted an intelligence operation to operate against the Democratic Party in the 1972 election,” said Liddy.
“He wanted me to be in charge of it and Mr. E. Howard Hunt, whose background was CIA, to be assisting me. He said he wanted an all-out, full-bore offensive and defensive intelligence operation,” he said.
Liddy and Hunt came up with multiple elaborate plans to gather intelligence on the Democrats, but their superiors rejected most of them simply because they were too expensive. Finally, a pared-down plan received the green light.
So what were they looking for? In 1972, President Nixon was bracing for a re-election fight against Democratic Sen. George McGovern. While many believe the plumbers were looking for campaign secrets and strategies, Liddy says the break-in had a very different goal.
“The FBI was investigating not one, not two, but three separate call girl operations back then. The assistant United States attorney who was in charge of that was a man named John Rudy. He testified that the FBI came to him and said, ‘We have found a connection between (the DNC and) the call girl ring that’s being run out of the Columbia Plaza Apartments, which is across the street from the Democratic headquarters,” said Liddy.
The plumbers carefully scouted for a way to slip into the DNC offices without being noticed. They soon determined the nighttime cleaning crew was the weak link in the security because they failed to use a key to lock and unlock the headquarters every time they came in and out of the offices. That provided a way in but also led to the team being discovered.
“We watched what they did and they put tape across the spring-loaded lock so they could bump it back and forth and that’s what we did. The security guard came by and he saw the tape. And he said, ‘Oh geez, they’ve done it again.’ He ripped it off and started making his rounds again. We put the tape back on and that was our mistake. He came around again and saw the tape a second time. He knew the clean-up crew had left. So then the question in his mind was, ‘Who put the tape on there? Wait a minute, we’ve got a problem.’ And he called the police,” said Liddy.
While Watergate did not engulf President Nixon until after his re-election, Liddy was arrested and later convicted on multiple counts. He was sentenced to prison in January 1973. Between his arrest and his sentencing, Liddy became a household name for refusing to say a word about the Watergate plotting. Liddy says his silence was based on a very simple premise.
“It concerned me that it was a threat to the administration. I wanted to preserve the administration of Richard Nixon and I knew that if I didn’t talk, it would secure those above me. So I didn’t talk but Dean cracked and talked. That’s what brought down Richard Nixon,” said Liddy.
Through his eventual testimony to Congress, the Watergate plot was exposed by the very man Liddy says ordered the “all-out, full bore offensive and defensive intelligence operation” in the first place. Liddy already held Dean in exceedingly low esteem. when word of Dean’s actions reached Liddy in prison, he says it simply confirmed what he already knew.
“I said to myself, ‘This is consistent with what we’ve always known about Dean.’ What do I mean by that? When I first went over to the White House, Donald Santarelli, the deputy attorney general, said, ‘Beware Dean. Beware Dean.’ He said, ‘Dean’s the type of guy that you’ll be typing away on an idea you have. Dean will come over and ask what you’re doing and then you’ll tell him. Then it’s lunchtime and everybody will go to lunch except Dean. Dean will stay back, not have lunch, type up a memo with your idea and submit it. He’s an idea thief,” said Liddy.
G. Gordon Liddy served more time in prison than any other figure associated with Watergate. His sentence was commuted by President Carter after nearly five years of incarceration. He soon became a prolific author, actor and then a radio talk show host for some 20 years.
More than 40 years after the Watergate saga began, Liddy made it clear he has few regrets about the episode. He says he had good reasons to break the law and those reasons have since been validated again and again.
“I saw Democrats as being dangerous to the country. I see the Democrats now as being even more dangerous to the country. I wanted to prevent them from being able to damage the country further. So I chose to make use of the special knowledge that I had as a result of the FBI and so forth. That was it,” said Liddy.
Three Martini Lunch 8/8/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review offer all good martinis. They applaud President Obama for finally taking action against ISIS over its atrocities in Iraq. They’re also pleasantly surprised that New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker appears beatable in this year’s election. And they appreciate CNN actually covering the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
‘This Meets the Test of Genocide’
The leading voice for human rights in Congress is blasting President Obama for doing nothing as Christians and other religious minorities face slaughter, starvation, rape and other atrocities at the hands of the Al Qaeda branch known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) says the evidence is clear that ISIS is on a murderous rampage throughout parts of Iraq and Syria and action is needed urgently.
“It’s very dire. The administration has known this and they’ve done nothing. In fact, the president put together a genocide prevention board back in April 2012. Well, genocide is taking place. This meets the test of genocide against an ethnic group. The ethnic group are the Christians. The ethnic group are the Yazidis. It also is a crime against humanity which meets the whole UN test. Yet, the administration has watched this and done fundamentally nothing,” said Wolf.
“We’re saying do something. Act. Act. Act. People are without food. They’re without lodging. They’re without medicine,” said Wolf.
Reports from aid groups and others in the region depict horrors on a grand scale aimed at Christians and others. Another group in great peril are the Yazidis, a sect with ties to Zoroastrianism and other religious traditions. Wolf contends some 200,000 Yazidis were forced to flee their homes. Tens of thousands of them sought refuge on Mt. Sinjar without provisions and with summertime temperatures soaring far above 100 degrees.
Nina Shea is an international human rights attorney and Christian religious freedom advocate with the Hudson Institute. In a piece written for National Review Online, she cited a shocking report from the Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq.
“Yesterday 45 children died of thirst. Some families throw their children from the top of Sinjar mountain in order not to see them die from hunger or thirst, or not to be taken by the terrorists. 1500 men were killed in front of their wives and families, 50 old men died also from thirst and illness. More than 70 girl and women including Christians were taken, raped and being captured and sold,” the group reported.
Chaldean Christians are also a major target for ISIS in northern Iraq. Businessman Mark Arabo detailed the grisly atrocities for CNN.
“There is a park in Mosul where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park,” Arabo told the cable channel. “More children are getting beheaded, mothers are getting raped and killed and fathers are being hung.”
Additional reports suggest ISIS is making considerable military progress and seem to have captured a critical river dam near Mosul that controls much of the water supply to a wide area. All of this is even more frustrating when considering ISIS is making this advance largely with American-made tools of war that were abandoned by the Iraqis.
“They have humvees. They have automatic weapons. I heard they even have Black Hawk helicopters. I’m not sure they know how to fly them. But it is basically a nation-state now that you’re faced with and they have a lot of money.” said Wolf.
Rep. Wolf says strong leaders do not just sit back and allow these kinds of horrors to proceed.
“The administration says they’re going to lead from behind, which means they’re going to follow. I don’t know that I could tell you why they’re not acting. I think if we had somebody like President Reagan or President Truman. They would act. They would do something. We’re not talking about military activity. There’s a lot of things that can be done with regard to that, but the Christian community is waiting for someone to help them,” said Wolf.
“I think the president has to speak out. I think it was Martin Luther King who said, ‘You understand the silence of your enemies but you don’t understand the silence of your friends. I think the president has to speak out,” he said.
The congressman says ISIS needs to be confronted now or its agenda could succeed “all the way”. He says the immediate threat ISIS poses to the U.S. and our allies is much greater than many realize.
“Some of them are going to come to the United States perhaps. There are over 115 Americans with American passports that are fighting with ISIS, Americans who could fly back into the United States. There’ll be nothing on where they were and they won’t say where they’ve been. They fly to Turkey. From Turkey they go south and they joined ISIS. You have almost 2,000-3,000 western Europeans with British passports, French passports. They could fly here to the United States,” said Wolf.
So what could or should the Obama administration be doing?
“There are a number of things the U.S. could do. One, thank the Kurds for defending the Christians and the Yazidis and urge them to continue to do it. Two, help with some of the foreign aid. Re-program money, giving some to Catholic Relief, World Vision, Save the Children to bring the basic necessities there. Three, allow the Kurds to sell their oil,” said Wolf.
“This administration has a ship in the Galveston harbor. They won’t let it unload, because they say the oil belongs to the Maliki government in Baghdad. If the Kurds can’t sell the oil they can’t have any supplies. They can’t defend anybody and the last couple days, the Kurdish military have been withdrawing. As a result of that, you see what’s taking place yesterday and again today,” he said.
In addition to the obvious humanitarian crisis, Wolf says a tremendous amount of religious history for Christians and others is threatened or already destroyed by ISIS.
“More biblical activity took place in Iraq than any other country in the world other than Israel. Abraham is from Iraq. Esther ‘for such a time like this’, in Ninevah they blew up Jonah’s tomb over a week and a half ago in Mosul. Daniel, a great man of the Bible, is buried in Iraq. And yet, no one’s saying anything,” said Wolf.
On Thursday, Wolf sent another letter to the White House, demanding action from the president.
“We cannot pretend these atrocities aren’t taking place; there are now videos on the Internet being promoted by those sympathetic to ISIS proudly displaying their brutal and grotesque slaughter and abuse of Christians, Yezidis and other religious minorities in Iraq,” he wrote.
“Your administration is aware of what is going on, yet you are doing nothing. Just what is the point of having an ‘Atrocities Prevention Board” if it takes no action to prevent or stop atrocities? When was the last time this board has met? Has the board even been convened to address the genocide taking place in Iraq?” Wolf wrote.
“It is now clear to the nation and the world that your words were hollow; your ‘presidential directive’ apparently was nothing more than a token gesture. You will come to sincerely regret your failure to take action to stop the genocide in Iraq. Your conscience will haunt you long after you leave office. Mr. President, say something; do something,” Wolf concluded.
Three Martini Lunch 8/7/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see people like Ron Fournier of National Journal and the Washington Post editorial writers urging President Obama not to take unilateral action on immigration. They also recoil at the horrors ISIS radicals are inflicting on religious minorities and at the bland whispers coming from the Obama administration in response to this story and to Hamas using human shields. And they discuss Democrats fanning the flames of impeachment chatter far more than any Republicans are.
The Lessons of Afghanistan
The failure of the United States to recognize radical Islam as the driving force behind terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and beyond makes it impossible to address the problem and will quickly lead to instability there once we’re gone, according to a former Pentagon official who has spent countless days embedded with U.S. forces.
Bing West is a Vietnam veteran who served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and was frequently embedded with American troops, usually Marines, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to accusing the U.S. of turning a blind eye to radical Muslims, he is also ripping political and military leaders for what he considers their wrongheaded strategies and tactics throughout the past 13 years.
Security concerns arose again on Tuesday with the news that U.S. Army Major General Harold Greene was killed by a Afghan soldier during a training program. Despite multiple stories of this type of killing in recent years, West says the problem is not with the program but with the true motivation for these attacks.
“The problem in Afghanistan goes to the heart of the conflict that unfortunately the administration will not admit. This is a religious-based conflict. This is terrorism by dedicated Islamists who have committed to a jihad against the west and against all their enemies. They believe it ferociously and it is at the soul of their being,” said West.
West says there are plenty of trustworthy, hard-working Afghan soldiers, but he says even Afghan-Americans charged with obtaining intelligence from these Afghan fighters struggle to distinguish the good from the bad.
“I’ve spoken with a lot of them and said, ‘Look, can you tell a Taliban? Can you tell a genuine Islamist who’s out to kill you?’ And they said, ‘Absolutely not. They lie so well.’ Then they went on to say many times they don’t even know what they’re going to do themselves,” said West.
“You see a man praying, but just because he’s praying doesn’t mean he’s on a jihad, but some of them are, and the very best people we have cannot differentiate ahead of time,” he said.
He says the Obama administration is ignoring this obvious motivating factor at the nation’s peril for the sake of its cultural agenda.
“There’s this liberalism gone amok, notion of secularism where you cannot admit that religion plays any part in anyone’s life,” said West, noting that even the admitted terrorist attack at Ft. Hood by Maj. Nidal Hasan was labeled “workplace violence” by the Army.
“It’s extended far beyond the Obama administration, this denial that a person can be motivated by his religion. It’s It’s frightening. Therefore, if you say that, you’re considered to be some sort of bigot,” he said.
West says all Americans are suffering as a result of a relentless effort to protect the reputation of Islam.
“You have no way of making it legitimate to do investigations based upon religion or ethnicity. Therefore, everybody from a 90-year-old grandmother has to take her shoes off to go through the machines, etc. to get on an aircraft. We absolutely, resolutely refuse to look at the truth of who’s trying to kill us,” said West.
As the U.S. gets closer to removing the vast majority of our forces from Afghanistan, West believes it’s clear our long-term strategy was deeply flawed from the beginning and gave the benefit of the doubt to political and military leaders who didn’t deserve it.
“I think we went entirely too far in Afghanistan. I love our troops. I spent all that time out there. My next book is all about how brave the troops are. but I do not stand up and applaud our generals sent us down the wrong path,” said West, adding that even the most acclaimed military leaders are not held in high regard by the ones who matter most.
“We have certain generals like Gen. (David) Petraeus and Gen. (Stanley) McChrystal that we say are huge heroes. Well, down at the platoon level you have a different view. I believe that some of our famous generals were naive, so naive that the troops at the bottom know they are naive,” he said.
“They were just wrong about Afghanistan and Iraq…If you’re going to fight the tough guy, you have to want to go into that battle to kill him and to win, none of this stuff about saying you’re out to win the hearts and minds of people. That’s not war. You go into war, you have to be determined to fight,” said West.
What is likely to happen in Afghanistan when the U.S. leaves? West says the chaos will descend rather quickly.
“The fissures in that society run so deep that regardless of what we do as we pull out, there’s going to be continued violence. Pakistan is determined that they are going to have a government that they can tell what to do. Therefore, the idea that there’s going to be any kind of peace in Afghanistan simply isn’t true,” he said.
However, West is also confident that Afghanistan will not pose the same kind of threat to the United States that it did leading up to the 9/11 attacks.
“The notion that Afghans are going to be attacking the United States isn’t true either. If we have a problem with Afghans, just don’t give them visas. We don’t have to go through all this stuff of building nations to prevent somebody from coming to the United States and taking pilot lessons,” said West.
Three Martini Lunch 8/6/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Democratic attempts to keep a Senate seat in Montana apparently on the road to failure. They also shudder as health insurance companies in Florida announce major premium hikes for 2015. And they discuss the tale of sleazy politics of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife.
Constitutional Showdown on Amnesty
A leading border security advocate says Democrats are panicking over the immigration debate because their number one argument for reform has imploded in recent weeks, and he says the bill House Republicans passed on Friday is vital because it sends a clear message to President Obama that Congress makes the nation’s laws.
House Republicans provided considerable drama on the issue last week. Leaders initially called off a vote on a border security bill because they didn’t have the votes. After members started heading for the exits, they were ordered to come back and consider an amended bill that eventually passed on Friday.
Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian freely admits the House bill will never become law, but he says it serves a far important function beyond this debate and this year’s elections.
“There’s a tug of war going on between Congress and the president over who gets to make the law. The Constitution’s pretty clear on that. That’s why it starts with Congress and the presidency only comes after Congress. Yet, the president seems to be saying that if Congress doesn’t pass the legislation that he demands, that he is just going to go ahead and do it on his own,” said Krikorian.
“So even though the House bills, especially the one on this executive amnesty, obviously are not going to be passed under this Congress because Democrats run the Senate, it was a very important political marker making clear that Congress is not going to just lie down for the president’s usurpation of the separation of powers,” he said.
While no legislation will pass anytime soon, Krikorian is convinced the immigration has changed drastically as a result of the recent flood of illegal border crossings. He says the news has Democrats badly flustered and looking for a new argument to pass comprehensive reform.
“The whole premise of it was that the border is pretty much fixed, that we more or less have control and that now we can move on to clearing the decks, fix the problems that were created by past bad policy and move forward. The problem is the border crisis exposes that as false. We haven’t yet fixed our immigration enforcement problems so how can we even talk about amnestying people who are already here. I think that resonates with lots of people, even people who are open to the idea, at some point, of amnesty down the road,” said Krikorian.
Last week, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) said he believed recent events at the border and on Capitol Hill triggered a genuine change in perspective for his party’s leaders.
“Our leadership has changed. I think they’ve come to a more realistic understanding of where the Republican constituency is,” he said. “I think that events have caught up with the decision makers in Washington. Now, at least the decision makers in the Republican Party are together and they’re going in the right direction,” said Rohrabacher.
Krikorian was a fierce critic of GOP leaders for much of the immigration debate. Now, he also believes they see the light.
“The Republican leadership in the House initially wanted a much softer approach, weaker language, all of that stuff. You know, just the kind of thing you would expect from (House Speaker John) Boehner and his crew. The backbench members of Republicans in the House as well as a pretty clear public push back, and not just from conservatives but lots of independents, convinced them this is really something they really needed to stand up to the president on. So I’d say Congressman Rohrabacher probably had that right,” said Krikorian.
In addition to the House bills making a statement about which branch of government makes the laws, Krikorian is also impressed by the principles they espouse. Two bills were passed and Krikorian says both would put the nation on the right track.
“One was some extra money plus some changes to the law to make it easier to return illegal alien minors than it is now. So that was a positive step and it was a much tighter piece of legislation than the one they had considered the day before,” said Krikorian, noting the other was aimed directly at the White House.
“The other thing they passed was essentially a rebuke to the president, who has unilaterally and illegally amnestied half a million people on his own authority and is threatening to do it for millions more without any input from Congress. They essentially said, ‘We want to cut money off for this. You’re not allowed to do that,'” he said.
No one in Washington holds out hope for the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-led Senate to find common ground on the issue. President Obama is now vowing to act on his own, and Krikorian has some educated guesses on what Obama would like to do.
“The word that’s coming out is that he’s going to amnesty, and I mean amnesty by giving work permits, Social Security numbers and everything short of a green card, to potentially several million people. They’re talking about maybe as many as five or six million, which would probably be the most sweeping executive power grab in our history, certainly in peacetime,” he said.
However, Krikorian predicts Obama will tread lightly just weeks away from midterm elections that already look like bad news for his party.
“I think he’s going to do something smaller before the election so as not to rock the boat too much politically. After the election, especially if the Republicans take the Senate, he might then try to slip through a much larger amnesty by decree, without any input from Congress,” said Krikorian.