Amnesty 2013

From the Jan. 30, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Amnesty 2013

By Matthew Vadum

Left-wingers are once again pushing a so-called comprehensive immigration reform package that helps their cause more than it helps America.

The proposal, still in rough outline, was unveiled at a Capitol Hill press conference Monday. It makes vague promises, the same promises that have been echoing in the corridors of power for decades, of finally enforcing the nation’s porous border with Mexico. It comes days after left-wing groups vowed to lay the groundwork to turn Texas deep Democrat blue.

The plan is backed by a bipartisan group of senators known informally as the Gang of 8. The four Democrats are Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Illinois), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Chuck Schumer (New York), and Michael Bennet (Colorado). The Republican half of the gang consists of John McCain (Arizona), Marco Rubio (Florida), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and freshman senator Jeff Flake (Arizona).

The proposal has less to do with helping immigrants, legal or otherwise, and more to do with helping politicians.

Obama Prepares to Community-Organize America

My article from the Jan. 22, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama Prepares to Community-Organize America

By Matthew Vadum

In his latest unprecedented move in American history, President Obama announced he is converting his campaign apparatus into a permanent in-your-face campaign aimed at furthering Obama’s divisive, radical politics.

The new tax-exempt advocacy group, Organizing for Action, will “play an active role” in “mobilizing around and speaking out in support of important legislation” during Obama’s second term, the president said last week.

In the same vein, in his second inaugural address yesterday, Obama bullied the opposition. Reinforcing his long-running “spread the wealth” theme, the president hectored successful people, declaring that “our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Obama also seemed to signal in his mercifully brief oration that he’s going to go all-out to make government bigger.

Americans, he said, “reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”

Now, like a Third World caudillo, Obama will be able to pursue his policies from inside government and from outside through his OfA thug army.

OfA is a less violent version of Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers use to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents. OfA units brought muscle to the recent fight in Wisconsin over that state’s out-of-control government labor unions. OfA has bludgeoned Democrats that Obama deemed insufficiently left-wing, especially red-state congressional Democrats who had been wavering on the issue of Obamacare.