SCOTUS tosses AZ law requiring proof of citizenship to vote & UPDATE

Election integrity thrown a curve by high court

In a ruling this morning, the U. S. Supreme Court said individual states cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system to register to vote.

Arizona’s voter approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal “Motor Voter” registration law was effectively tossed on its head by a 7-2 vote of the justices.

On March 18, 2013, Arizona’s Attorney General Tom Horne brought the issue of our state’s Voting Rights Act — requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote — to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he argued on its behalf. (Read his oral argument under link.) Our earlier post and additional background can be viewed here.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said Federal law “precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself. Justices Clarence Thomas (Bush) and Samuel Alito (G.W. Bush) dissented.

Scalia (Reagan) disappointingly joined by Chief Justice John Roberts (G.W. Bush) voted in concert with liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Clinton), Stephen Breyer (Clinton), Sonia Sotomayor (Obama), and Elena Kagan (Obama). Justice Anthony Kennedy (Reagan) filed an opinion con­curring in part and concurring in the judgment

After the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which doesn’t require such documentation, trumps Arizona’s Proposition 200 passed in 2004, Arizona appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

The genesis of this issue goes back to 2004, when Arizona voters passed — by an overwhelming vote of 1,041,741 to 830,467 – the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.

Although the case focuses on Arizona –  a border state that is the major portal for illegal alien trafficking, it has broader implications since four other states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee — have enacted similar requirements. Twelve other states are contemplating such legislation.

In his dissent, Justice Thomas, a Bush appointee to the court,  said “The Constitution authorizes states to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied.”

This outrageous opinion neuters the ability of states to pass laws to inhibit non-citizens from getting on their voting rolls.

The U. S. Supreme Court’s 51-page decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. can be read here.

 
Note: Names of the presidents who made the judicial appointment are in parentheses.

AZ AG Tom Horne: US Supreme Court Decision Shows Ultimate Path for Arizona Victory

Attorney General Horne’s Press Release addressing today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision can be read here. Watch this just released video.

 

Obama shakeup sticks finger in America’s eye

“Spontaneous protest” at embassy was known to be preplanned

Wednesday was a busy day for Barack Hussein Obama.  Determined to reward incompetence and promote far-left extremists, while simultaneously slapping down conservative voices raised in concern,  he has named former UN Ambassador Susan Rice as his top national security adviser. This key post is in gratitude for her repeatedly spewing deceitful tales regarding the murderous attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. She should have been fired when the truth was exposed.

At the same time, he has replaced the compliant Rice with radical, well-connected and anti-Israel, Samantha Power. To grasp the full extent of who and what Powers is, we recommend Katie Pavlich’s commentary, A Look at Obama’s New UN Ambassador: Radical Samantha Power.

Knowledge is power.

Previous bank closure information vanishes

Feds remove complete search list

It’s been a while since we visited the failed bank list. But bank closures in Scottsdale and Gold Canyon within weeks of one another are worthy of note.

Central Arizona Bank (click link for troubled asset ratio) was closed days ago by the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Western State Bank, Devils Lake, North Dakota, to assume all of the deposits of Central Arizona Bank. Presto! The Central Arizona Bank reopened as a branch of Western State Bank

Gold Canyon Bank failed on April 5, 2013. It was acquired by First Scottsdale Bank. 

The failed bank list for 2013, as of mid May (13), 2012 (50), 2011 (92), and 2010 (157).  The number of failures for each year are in parentheses. Arizona banks have appeared on three of the four lists.  The information is made available via an independent investigative reporting network.

Of significance is the fact that the list previously displayed all bank closures since October 1, 2000. The vast majority of bank failures have taken place since Barack Obama assumed office, January 2008. Interestingly, the list  no longer reflects years prior to 2010. Now the search goes back to 1934, but you need specifics which no one has in order to discover information.

On September 5, 2009 we noted the number of bank failures that year stood at 89 after regulators shut down banks in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Arizona the previous day. Such information has mysteriously disappeared. All data has been scrubbed.

Anyone with a bank account has heard of the FDIC, but have you ever wondered who runs it and how they were put in their positions?  Scroll down this lengthy list for names and titles. While detailed information is difficult to locate, the FDIC proudly proclaims its Mission, Vision and Values along with its 2013 Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan which “addresses the goals of President Obama’s executive order calling for federal agencies to develop and implement a more comprehensive, integrated, and strategic focus on diversity and inclusion” — an “important priority.”

All we wanted was the back list of bank closures going back to 2000. Apparently that information is not as important as “workplace diversity and sustainability.” Who’da guessed?

The FDIC is managed by a five-person Board of Directors, all of whom are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, with no more than three being from the same political party. Wanna hazzard a guess at which party controls the majority votes?

9th Circus Court overturns AZ law barring late term abortions

Last summer, we wrote that U.S. District Court Judge James A. Teilborg ruled HB 2036, titled Mother’s Health & Safety Act, “is constitutional,” denying the American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Reproductive Rights’ request to stop the law from taking effect. The bill prohibiting most abortions after 20 weeks into a pregnancy was signed into law by Gov. Brewer.

The Court wrote “Given the nature of [abortion procedures], and the finding that the unborn child has developed pain sensors all over its body by 20 weeks gestational age, the Court finds that the State has shown a legitimate interest in limiting abortions past 20 weeks.”

“Furthermore, Arizona expressed concerns for the health of the pregnant woman, finding that the instance of complications is highest after 20 weeks of gestation. This additional legitimate interest further supports HB 2036 regulations on abortions.”

Today in a 44-page opinion, the liberal and appropriately nicknamed Ninth Circus Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s order, denying declaratory and injunctive relief to plaintiffs and held that the Constitution does not permit the Arizona legislature to prohibit abortion beginning at twenty weeks gestation, “before the fetus is viable.”

The case Isaacson v. Horne, (link) was argued before a three member panel of Circuit Judges Mary M. Schroeder, Andrew J. Kleinfeld, and Marsha S. Berzon.

Has the ubiquitous and multifaceted maverick, John McCain, already enmeshed in granting amnesty to illegals, nosing into cable and satellite television offerings and being vexed by having to continually update his iphone apps, also found time to peddle his squishy abortion views to the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals?

Abortionist Gosnell,72, sentenced: Life isn’t long enough

Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist responsible for cutting the spines of babies born alive after botched late term abortions was convicted Monday of three counts of first-degree murder.  A 41-year-old mother also died. Today he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

Not nearly long enough.

A high living multi-millionaire, Gosnell was convicted of infanticide, racketeering and more than 200 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s abortion laws by performing third-term abortions.

ABC 6 Action News in Philadelphia has the report and video.

Seeing Red AZ’s previous posts about this murderous butcher are linked here, as is the horrific Grand Jury Report where the gruesome details were originally filed in January 2011 by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

Obama implodes: Feds stop at nothing to silence critics

Scandals, Benghazi, IRS scrutiny, phone taps = “I” word

MyWay News reports the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. When an agency clearly favorable to the Obama administration is under siege by the very regime they helped put in place, the impact of now seeing them bite the hand that fed them is monumental.

The Washington Post writes that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative and tea party affiliated groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed.

Breitbart News reveals Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s assertions regarding “the Obama effort to shut up opponents isn’t limited to the IRS. It applies to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission], SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], FEC [Federal Elections Commission], HHS [Department of Health and Human Services”

The Wall Street Journal exposes the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names — as the agency admitted Friday — to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to “make America a better place to live,” according to new details of a government probe.

The UK’s Daily Mail includes this threatening 11-page IRS questionnaire sent out to the Richmond Tea Party after it applied for tax-exempt status.

The Benghazi cover up alone has reached a level of either incompetence or deceit that makes Watergate — the senate hearings which began 40 years ago this week May 17, 1973 — resemble chump change.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said on his radio show this week, “I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. As bad as Watergate was because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die. And President Obama has yet to explain why did they did.”

No wonder Sen. James Inhofe the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee  told broadcaster Rusty Humphries that President Barack Obama could be impeached over the growing White House cover-up following last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya. Inhofe accused Obama of overseeing “the most egregious cover-up in American history.”

But the ubiquitous John McCain wants none of it.  No siree.

Although McCain told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he believes the Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, constituted a “cover-up” because “there was willful removal of information, which was obvious” — he has also defended his friend Obama against impeachment, saying, “I do not believe that the president has committed impeachable offenses — that’s high crimes.”

McCain might think covering up the Obama administration’s malfeasance, is not a high crime.  But even Señor Juan McCain should agree that illegally tapping the phones of reporters and the illegal targeting of conservative groups by the IRS do rise to the impeachable level:

“He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to ….cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

— Article II, Section 1, Articles of Impeachment against then-President Richard M. Nixon, adopted by the House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974.

Lack of Benghazi coverage? It’s a family matter!

NewsBusters busts the political maneuvering behind embassy terrorist attack and cover-up

Foreign policy consultant and media commentator Richard Grenell appeared on Saturday’s Fox News Watch with host Jon Scott and exposed the familial relationships that thread from the highest ranking network honchos all the way to the White House.

Grenell stated, “CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC (National Security Council) on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi.”

Read Noel Sheppard’s illuminating report — including the transcript and commentary — here.

Obama’s Marxist redistribution plan is underway

The Washington Post runs a 5-page report on the efforts undertaken by food stamp recruiters to coax people into signing up for taxpayer financed benefits. Potential recipients are lured with free food, gift packages for themselves and even their pets, and told “you deserve it.” Some states host SNAP-themed bingo games, others distribute fliers that read: “Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.” Still other states throw food stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse at the gift giveaway tables. Recruiters, functioning as commission sales reps, actually have quotas to fill — at least 150 new people a month. It matters not that one Florida husband and wife, just completing  nine holes of golf — clubs still on their cart — showed up and were signed up.

To help enroll more seniors, the government has even published an outreach guide instructing on “blending compassion with sales techniques,” generating some — but not enough —  protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’” even suggesting answers for likely hesitations:

Welfare stigma: “You worked hard and the taxes you paid helped create SNAP.” 

Embarrassment: “Everyone needs help now and then.”

Sense of failure: “Lots of people, young and old, are having financial difficulties.”

Today, nearly 50 million Americans now rely on what was previously known as food stamps, now going by the snappy acronym of SNAP for ‘Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.’ In Florida alone, enrollment has risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million in 2012.

As the Obama regime furloughs FAA traffic controllers and cancels school childrens’ planned  trips to the White House under the politically machinated sequestration strategy, ask yourself why taxpayer’s dollars are paying recruiters to expand programs that are already costing more than the economy can bear?

It was disgusting to read that the Boston Marathon bombers — whose next target was to be New York’s Times Square — and their families received welfare benefits, among the one in six Americans currently on the dole. In Britain, most terrorists turn out to be welfare recipients. Being unemployed, they have time on their hands to become radicalized and plan acts of violence. One U.K. extremist Islamic imam, who praises terror attacks, urged his followers to think of welfare benefits as a form of the jizya tax non-believers are supposed to pay Muslims – or, as he put it, “a Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”  Human Events reports here.

Redistribution has always been part of Obama’s Marxist mindset. Speaking at a conference at Loyola University in 1998, he admits, “I actually believe in redistribution.” Now as president, he is implementing that which was so near and dear to the hearts of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto, as they advocated the incentive busting, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

American Thinker clearly defines what the phrase “redistribution of wealth” actually means to the future of America.

Kolbe: Include same-sex foreign partners in amnesty

It was bound to happen

Amnesty. Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Whatever the incarnation, the numbers are not static. In addition to rolling out the red carpet to at least 25 million illegally in our country, are the issues of birthright citizenship and chain migration — affording relatives the ability to coattail. Criminality is as problematic as the exorbitant costs involved in providing education and social service benefits to those who disregard our laws. All developed nations have immigration laws. Without them sovereignty and national identity are destabilized, security is lost and a perpetual string of problems follow. Here at Seeing Red AZ, we’ve addressed these issues over the years.

But, just when you’ve thought you’ve heard it all, out from under a political rock comes Jim Kolbe. Formerly a Congressman who represented a chunk of southern Arizona, Kolbe was long at the center of controversy. An odd, loosey-goosey Democrat-endorsing Republican, he was one of only four GOP members of Congress who voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act a decade ago and was rated 100% by NARAL, a national pro-abortion group. On issues dealing with illegal immigration he scored an abysmal 0% by FAIR, disdaining a fence and voting to alert illegals to Minutemen reporting their presence on the border.

As a U.S. Rep., he was the center of a federal probe into a camping trip with two teenage boys, both former congressional pages, who accused him of “acting inappropriately.” Though long rumored to be “closeted,” he voted in support of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, riling The Advocate, a national homosexual magazine, that threatened to out him in retaliation.  Ultimately, Kolbe filed for divorce from his wife and acknowledged his long-time Panamanian male “partner.”

Which fast-forwards us to Monday. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kolbe implored, “Our laws should not separate American citizens from their loved ones for such unacceptably long periods of time,” as he advocated for expansion of the 844-page amnesty bill to allow homosexual Americans to bring their foreign-born, same sex lovers to the United States. He complained the process was arduous and expensive. “While the bill you are considering is an excellent starting point for reform, I submit to you that it is still incomplete,” Kolbe chided committee members. “Families like mine are left behind as part of this proposal. Equally important, U.S. businesses and our economy suffer because of the omission of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families from the bill introduced last week,” he pleaded.

Count on it. The number of sub-groups demanding to be included will be never-ending.

Illegals receive billions: Obama demands “fair share”

Foreign nationals exploit IRS loophole: Additional Child Tax Credit

Yesterday, April 18, marked the 108th day of 2013, or Tax Freedom Day — as calculated by the Tax Foundation.  That is the day, four months into the year, when Americans have finally earned enough income to pay the tab for all federal, state, and local taxes for 2013. In the simplest of terms, that means you”ve been working from New Year’s Eve until mid-April just to pay your taxes. With that hard fact in mind, watch this infuriating video to see how how billions of those tax dollars are being squandered, with the full knowledge of the Obama administration.

NBC Eyewitness News 13 investigative reporter Bob Segall in Indiana –1700 miles northeast of the Mexican border — examines a massive IRS tax loophole, providing over $4 billion per year in tax credits to millions of illegal aliens. In many cases recipients of American taxpayers’ misused monies have never set foot in the United States.  The device is known as the Additional Child Tax Credit. Segall spent three months looking into this scheme.

One Spanish-speaking thief admitted through an interpreter that his address is being used to file tax returns for numerous children, including multiple nieces and nephews who reside in Mexico. “If the opportunity is there and they give it why not take advantage of it?”  The IRS is aware of the magnitude of this fraud yet has done nothing to rectify it. In fact, the IRS website considerately provides ten tips on how to apply. The application forms are easily downloadable.

Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says report after report sent from his office has been ignored by the IRS. Here he is in 2009 reporting on more IRS deceit.

This is how redistributionist Obama addresses the topic: