Meeting with leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus at the White House Tuesday, President Obama reiterated his support for fixing the country's "broken immigration system" — but gave little indication that in this year's remaining lame-duck congressional session, his administration could win passage of key legislation granting legal status to some illegal immigrant students.

The president, in a White House statement released following the meeting, thanked caucus members Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) "for their constant efforts on this issue" and highlighted earlier bipartisan support for the DREAM Act.
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Token payback for helping Harry Reid in Nevada and Boxer in California win re-election

Some have asked why we just don’t use the handwand. Good question. Threats can be both metallic and non-metallic. Pat-downs, like AIT, allow us to screen for nonmetallic threats that handwands would not find.

And finally, the $10,000.00 question of the day… Will you receive a $10,000.00 fine if you opt out of screening all together and leave the checkpoint? While TSA has the legal authority to levy a civil penalty of up to $11,000.00 for cases such as this, each case is determined on the individual circumstances of the situation.
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Wow!

Guess I will have to decide whether to fly or not. The airlines cannot be happy with Obama's Big Brother TSA.

Nevada Sen. John Ensign said Tuesday he has been planning to run for reelection “for a long time,” suggesting that the ongoing fallout of his extramarital affair won’t doom him politically.

“Mainly what I’ve been focusing on is earning people’s trust back in Nevada, getting around the state and doing my job,” Ensign told POLITICO in the Capitol. “We’ve been planning on it for quite some time.”
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There will be either Sharron Angle or another GOP candidate to run against him in the GOP primary

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., wrote a $390,000 check to boost the California Republican Party's efforts in the final days of the campaign. The contribution, made Oct. 28, was reported in an amended campaign filing posted yesterday on the secretary of state website.

Adelson, whose estimated net worth of $28 billion landed him the No. 3 spot on Forbes' list of richest Americans in recent years, owns several major properties on the Las Vegas Strip, including The Venetian, The Palazzo and the new Sands Expo and Convention Center
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Conservatives should frequent the Venetian and boycott Dem supporting Harrah's and MGM

Key Republicans hoping to prevent Michael Steele from another term as chairman of the Republican National Committee, who just a week ago were anxious they might not be able to stop Steele, are now confident he will be defeated.

There is still no consensus candidate to run against Steele. But that no longer worries Steele’s adversaries, who told The Daily Caller that they believe the embattled chairman does not have the support he needs to win 85 votes when the RNC’s 168 members vote on Jan. 11.

Sentiments among Steele’s enemies – and there are many in the GOP – changed dramatically over the past week. Barely more than a week ago, there was grave concern that no clear front runner existed who would have the support of a majority of RNC members.
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Michael Steele should NOT run for another term. He should accept his thanks for the past year and move on.

What happened to the Central Valley?

We've heard for years about the man-made water shortages, high unemployment, local Latino politicians switching to the Republican party and how unpopular are the democrats. The only problem is that 5 key counties failed to vote.

Where was the gusto ?

The statewide average of registered voters is about 55%. Yet Fresno [44.7%], Kern [53.1%] , Merced [50.9%], Stanislaus [50.7%] and Tulare [42.5%] didn't pull their respective weights. Some Republican power bases performed well, such as Ventura [59.5%] and San Diego [ 60.3% ! ].

Had the 5 central valley counties voted at 55% , we might have a new congressman Andy Vidak. Steve Cooley would have netted an additional 30,000 votes. Today, Cooley is behind some 14,000 votes.
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What happened?

An ineffective GOTV plan in the Central Valley and other GOP dominated areas.

In the just concluded election, Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer captured 65% or 80% of that vote (depending on which exit poll you believe). More importantly, it was a bigger pie – 3 times larger than back in 1992. It was one of the major factors that kept the red tide out of California – and a factor that will only get bigger.

Here’s the story of how that happened…
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Read it all.
This analaysis will not bode well for the national GOP to ever fund California statewide races in the near future nor support illegal alien amnesty.

The Wall Street Journal has a lead editorial arguing that one of the big tests of whether Republicans are serious about limited government is whether they embrace a ban on earmarks. Earmarks only represent a small portion of federal spending, the editors note, but they help grease the wheels of massive spending bills and are also of great symbolic importance. While I agree with this as far as it goes — and support a ban on earmarks — I also think that the overemphasis on earmarks has distracted attention from the much more important issue of how to deal with the entitlement spending mess.
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Agreed – entitlement spending has to be cut and the states must do their part as well re: welfare.

But for all the maneuvering, not one of the possible 2012 Republican presidential contenders is planning to make a formal announcement before early next year or even later. Seeking to avoid the scrutiny and expenses that come with opening a full-fledged campaign, the potential candidates, including Sarah Palin and former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, are instead quietly testing campaign messages, wooing local activists and trying to assess the shifting political climate.
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It will take $50 Million to run a good primary campaign. Romney plus either Palin or Huckabee are the most likely challengers to Mitt.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: But what is going to happen? I mean, are you clear on where a compromise is going to be? It's got to be discussed before the end of the year, no?

KRUGMAN: No. Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now.

So, we've got to get Medicare under control by deciding "what it's going to pay for…which medical procedures are not effective at all and should not be paid for at all."

AKA "death panels."

Desperate transplant patients are being given the lungs of chain smokers because the NHS is so short of organ donations.

Surgeons are also being forced to use diseased body parts from cancer sufferers, drug addicts and the very elderly.

Experts say that the waiting list for transplants has now grown so long that hospitals are increasingly resorting to implanting so-called 'high risk' organs.

There are around 8,000 people needing an organ donation at any one time and every day three patients die because they do not get one in time.

As a result, doctors say that most patients would probably accept a 'high risk' or 'marginal' organ as without it they may not survive the year.

They are also using tissue from those more at risk of carrying HIV and Hepatitis C such as gay men and drug users.

These groups are not allowed to give blood but they can donate organs simply because there is such a shortage.
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Good ol' socialized medicine. A preview of ObamaCare?