The Doctor of Common Sense
The NFL Protest are killing the NFL but they refuse to admit it. ESPN host attacks you the fan instead of reporting the damn Sports News.
More Roy Moore stories in the News and how the Washington Post May Have paid for women to come forward.
Trump blast the father of one on the men from UCLA that was caught stealing in China.
Media still covering for Fake News.
WWII Veteran dies while Nurses Laugh
CHECK OUT THE SHOW: https://www.spreaker.com/user/commonsensenation/nfl-dying-media-lies
Democrats are winning the war over the wall.
Despite President Trump’s request for more than $1 billion to fund the Mexican border wall this year, GOP leaders are expected to exclude the money in the spending bill being prepared to keep the government open beyond April 28.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says the choice is pragmatic and the money will come later.
But the issue has become a political thorn in the side of GOP leaders who are facing pushback from Republicans voicing concerns over the diplomatic fallout, the disruption to local communities and the enormous cost of the project, estimated to be anywhere from $22 billion to $40 billion.
With Democrats united against new wall funding, it’s unlikely the Republicans have the votes to get it through and prevent a government shutdown.
Among the loudest GOP skeptics are those representing border districts. Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), for instance, hail from districts that span a combined 880 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re pressing the administration to justify the huge costs.
“We recognize the need for robust border security and infrastructure to ensure public safety and increase cross border commerce,” the lawmakers wrote recently to top administration officials. “We also have an obligation to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
Grover Norquist, a conservative anti-tax crusader who has supported comprehensive immigration reform, told The Hill that payment for the wall has not been an issue in his discussions with allies on Capitol Hill.
And some Republicans are concerned that deteriorating relations with Mexico may be too high a price to pay for the wall.
In a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expressed concern to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly about a growing resentment in Mexico over the administration’s border policies.
“There is a lot of anti-American sentiment in Mexico. If the election were tomorrow in Mexico, you’d probably have a left-wing, anti-American president in Mexico. That can’t be good for America,” McCain said.
“It would not be good for America, or for Mexico,” Kelly conceded.
The thinly veiled reference to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who tops most polls in the lead-up to Mexico’s upcoming 2018 presidential election, raised eyebrows in Mexico.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray told Kelly in Washington Thursday that Mexico “expects the United States to respect the Mexican electoral process.”
Videgaray added that, although Mexico considers the wall an “unfriendly gesture,” it is “not part of a bilateral discussion and it shouldn’t be.”
Democrats have latched on to Mexico’s consistent denial that the country will pay for a border wall — various officials and former officials have panned the notion since Trump first brought it up during the campaign — to take swings at the president.
“It’s anywhere between $26 billion and $40 billion to build it, you can’t drive on it, you can’t use it for anything, it doesn’t do anything to drive economic growth and jobs in America beyond the building of a wall itself, and it probably wouldn’t be built using union jobs to begin with,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
In its budget request, the White House had sought $1.4 billion in 2017 funds for the wall. But hoping to prevent a government shutdown, Ryan has suggested the Republicans will largely delay the wall funding debate until September, when Congress takes up spending bills looking ahead to fiscal 2018.
“The big chunk of money for the wall, really, is … next fiscal year’s appropriations, because they literally can’t start construction even this quickly,” he told “CBS This Morning” last week.
Democrats are encouraged by those comments, but in the absence of specific legislation they remain leery that some Republicans, particularly those in the White House, will continue to push for wall provisions in the 2017 package.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she’s hopeful the Republicans will punt on the issue, citing recent polls indicating that voters are largely opposed.
“I would hope that they wouldn’t try that because … the American people don’t even support it,” she told reporters Thursday.
A Pew Research poll released in February found that 67 percent of voters oppose the wall, and only 35 percent support it.
Last month, Pelosi visited the border region in Texas and warned that the wall would damage communities without benefiting public safety.
“It’s about commerce. It’s about community. It’s about family. It’s about education. It’s about the environment. It’s about so many things,” she said. “So to put a wall there is really an insult and really an ineffective insult at that.”
In Texas, where much of the land along the Rio Grande is privately owned, the wall has met resistance from many locals, regardless of party affiliation.
Landowners have long fought the federal government exercising eminent domain to acquire land for border fencing. Plus, the river’s natural floodplain would require the wall to be built well north of the border, leaving some land on the Mexican side of the wall.
Land acquisition is less of a concern in other border states, where much of the land is owned by the federal government and, except for a short span on the Colorado River, the border crosses dry land.
Still, past administrations have found a double duty for the wall in some sectors by building border fencing atop levees that protect communities from floods.
In anticipation of potential litigation over border land, Trump’s Department of Justice budget request for 2018 included funding for “20 attorneys to pursue Federal efforts to obtain the land and holdings necessary to secure the Southwest border and another 20 attorneys and support staff for immigration litigation assistance.”
But focus is on the Homeland Security budget that provides for physical construction of the wall. And in that debate, the wildcard remains the question of how hard Trump will push fellow Republicans to help him make good on the central pillar of his campaign.
Democrats see the White House as the biggest threat to a spending deal this month.
“House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been making very good progress on an appropriations package to fund the government,” Matt House, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), said Friday.
“The only thing that could derail that progress is the White House insisting on their extraneous demands, which would meet bipartisan opposition.”
http://thehill.com/latino/327916-dems-winning-fight-over-wall
The Supreme Court on Tuesday will take up the case of a Mexican teenager who was shot and killed by a U.S. border agent and try to decide a question that is also at the heart of the legal dispute over President Trump’s foreign travel ban: Does the Constitution protect foreign citizens who stand at the nation’s borders?
Judges have blocked Trump’s order temporarily on the grounds it may violate the constitutional rights of foreign travelers from seven Muslim majority nations. Some of those foreigners live legally in this country and had traveled abroad, while others hold U.S. visas but have never been to the United States. However, the law in this area is far from clear, and it will likely remain so until the high court rules on the issue.
The border shooting case touches on a similar question, and the outcome may affect the travel ban litigation.
In June 2010, Sergio Hernandez, 15, was playing with two friends in the concrete culvert that marks the boundary between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Cellphone video shows the boys ran up the culvert on the U.S. side and touched the high fence. They turned to run back to the Mexican side when a U.S. border patrol agent on a bicycle came upon them.
Officer Jesus Mesa Jr. grabbed one of the boys and turned his gun toward the other, Sergio, who had hidden behind a pillar about 60 feet away on the Mexican side. The officer fired three shots and killed the teenager.
Mesa initially claimed he acted in self-defense because the boys were throwing rocks at him. While the video appeared to disprove that, Justice Department investigators later said Mesa was responding to reports of smugglers and he had encountered rocks being thrown.
The killing of the teenager, who was unarmed and posed no apparent threat to the officer, provoked anger on the Mexican side of the border, but U.S. officials refused to extradite Mesa to face charges in Mexico. They also decided against prosecuting him under U.S. law.
Sergio’s parents then sued Mesa, alleging the shooting was an unjustified violation of the Constitution. They cited the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable seizures and the use of excessive force as well as the 5th Amendment, which says no person shall “be deprived of life or liberty … without due process of law.”
A federal judge threw out the suit on the grounds that the Constitution’s protections stop at the border. Since the Mexican teenager was killed on the Mexican side, his family could not sue the border patrol agent, the judge said.
A divided panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals briefly revived the suit. The majority cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in cases regarding the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which the justices said the Constitution and the right to habeas corpus extended to the naval base on Cuban soil because U.S. authorities exercised complete control there. Similarly, the judges said, U.S. agents controlled the area on the U.S-Mexico border.
The full 15-member appeals court then took up the case and decided that because the law was not clear, the border agent could not be held liable for violating it.
The family appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the justices should not permit a “law-free zone in which U.S. agents can kill innocent civilians with impunity.”
The case of Hernandez vs. Mesa will be the first argued in the Supreme Court by lawyers representing the Trump administration.
In an interview, the family’s attorney, Robert Hilliard of Corpus Christi, Texas, said the case has similarities to the legal battle over Trump’s travel ban. “This is really about the separation of powers and whether the judiciary has a role in reviewing the conduct of the government,” he said.
He was referring to the government’s contention in the border shooting case that the Supreme Court should throw out the suit and shield U.S. agents from all such claims.
Defending the travel ban, government lawyers made a similar argument, contending judges had no authority to second-guess the president’s decision to exclude certain foreigners from entering the country. Last weekend, White House policy advisor Stephen Miller said in TV interviews that judges had no authority to block Trump’s order on foreign travelers. “The president’s powers here are beyond question,” he said. “We don’t have judicial supremacy in this country.”
As usual, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy appears to hold the key vote. In the past, he has said the reach of the Constitution should turn on practical concerns, including whether U.S. officials are in control. If so, he could join with the court’s liberals to say the Constitution constrains U.S. agents operating on a border, thereby clearing the family’s lawsuit to proceed. Such a decision would surely be cited by lawyers and judges in the litigation over the travel ban.
But he could also join with the court’s conservatives and refuse to open the door for noncitizens outside the country to bring legal claims against U.S. officials. If the court were to split, 4-4, the justices could choose to place a hold on the case and await the confirmation of a ninth justice.
The Senate will begin hearings March 20 on Judge Neil Gorsuch, the president’s nominee to fill the vacancy.
Several teachers in Jurupa Valley, California, have reportedly been placed on paid leave while the school district investigates controversial social media posts made during the nationwide “A Day Without Immigrants” strike.
In the now-deleted Facebook comments, at least five teachers and one counselor from Rubidoux High School reveled in the fact that their classes were smaller and more productive without the striking students, The Press-Enterprise reported. The comments were captured in screenshots posted by Rubidoux High alumna Guadalupe Lopez.
Science teacher Geoffrey Greer started the thread Thursday afternoon by saying the nationwide strike only proved “how much better things might be without all this overcrowding.”
“That’s what you get when you jump on some sort of bandwagon cause as an excuse to be lazy and/or get drunk,” Mr. Greer wrote. “Best school day ever.”
Art teacher Robin Riggle responded by saying the 50 absences in her classes made it “a very pleasant day.”
Science teacher Allen Umbarger wrote: “Unfortunately, statistically my cumulative GPA increased today. Mostly failing students were missing.”
Science teacher Chuck Baugh added: “Quieter classes, more productive – let’s do this more often.”
Agriculture teacher Rhonda Fuller wrote: “Same here! Small classes, trouble makers were gone fantastic day!”
Guidance counselor Patricia Crawford declared “more, please” after stating that the cafeteria was much cleaner after lunch and that there were less disciplinary issues than on a normal school day.
Facing backlash from the district and community members, Mr. Greer deleted the original post and issued an apology.
“While I stand by my assertion that skipping school is no way to demonstrate one’s value to society, I do apologize for the harsh tone and hurtful structure of the previous message,” he wrote, KTLA reported.
Jurupa Unified School District Superintendent Elliott Duchon said the teachers’ posts don’t reflect the “beliefs and core values of the district or staff.”
“We want to express that we are deeply concerned and distressed about the postings,” Mr. Duchon said in a statement posted on the district’s website. “We will investigate further and will take appropriate action in this matter.”
He didn’t say how many teachers were placed on leave and declined to elaborate on what further action might be taken against them, The Press-Enterprise reported.
Rubidoux students walked out of their classes about noon Friday to protest the controversial posts, The Press-Enterprise reported.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/17/teachers-on-leave-for-day-without-immigrants-posts/
