Category: random

Vowing to “do something” about the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby ruling, Senator Harry Reid, who continues to work under a cloud of ethics charges, renewed Democrats’ plans to undermine the high court’s decision by attacking the “five white men” who voted in favor of the Christian, family owned business.

“The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determined by virtue of five white men,” Reid told reporters Tuesday. “This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous and we are going to do something about it. People are going to have to walk down here and vote.”

There’s just one problem with his statement — Justice Clarence Thomas is black.

This has left many wondering about Reid’s mental faculties. In May 2009 I posed the question: “Does Harry need Mental Health Help?” after he published an unfounded ‘memory’ about deceased Nevada Congressman Walter Baring in his book, “The Good Fight: Hard Lessons from Searchlight to Washington.”

In it, Reid claimed that on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated Baring told him it was good thing as JFK was leading the U.S. into Communism.

“But on the evening of Kennedy’s death, I sat with Congressman Baring of Nevada as he nursed his drink. And I was shattered. Then Baring said something that I will never forget. He was a conservative Democrat, reactionary actually, one of those guys for whom there was a Communist behind every bush. Fluoride was a Communist plot. And Kennedy, too, had been leading us down the path to Communism, Baring told me. It was probably a good thing that he was murdered. That’s what he told me.”

Reid’s assertion has been countered by Baring’s son, Jeff.

“There is no way my dad would have said anything like that, much less to Harry Reid,” the younger Baring said.

He also kept an Associated Press newspaper clipping from the day of JFK’s assassination which contradicts Reid and points towards his father’s real thoughts on the president’s death.

“I am stunned by the tragic death of our president and as congressman for Nevada; I join the people of the nation throughout the world in this dark hour, in mourning the death of our President, John F. Kennedy, and in extending our deepest sympathies to Mrs. Kennedy and family,” Congressman Baring stated.

Now — this strange statement about the only black member of the current Supreme Court is adding fuel to that fire.

Meanwhile others have wondered about Reid’s racist tendencies, and may interpret Reid’s comments as just another way of calling Thomas an “Uncle Tom,” thereby accusing him of not really being black. In 2008, Reid said Barack Obama was electable because he was “light skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Thomas was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito in the 5-4 Burwell versus Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case. Thomas is seen as a strict constitutionalist and one of the more conservative members of the Supreme Court.

Finally…

With a deep compassion in my heart, I’m pleading with Harry’s wife Landra, his daughter, Lana and his son’s Rory, Leif, Josh and Key to talk him into retirement before his mentation problems escalate. It’s obvious to even the most-casual observer that he’s dealing with onset of dementia and needs to leave public life.

It’s hard to understand why any family member, who loves their husband and father, would allow his situation to continue deteriorating to the point it would become a public spectacle. I may not agree with anything he does politically – but I do believe he deserves to leave the public spot light with his dignity fully intact.

Nevada’s Democratic Congressional Representative’s Steven Horsford and Dina Titus are co-sponsoring a bill that claims to protect women’s health in response to last week’s Supreme Court “Hobby Lobby” decision. Obviously, they’re picking up their cue from Senator Harry Reid, also of Nevada.

“This Hobby Lobby decision is outrageous and we are going to do something about it,” Reid complained Tuesday.

Titus, another Las Vegas Democrat, trumpeted the legislation she introduced with the aid of the Pro-Choice Caucus.

“The private beliefs of corporations and employers have no place in the health decisions of individual women,” said Titus.

“The Not My Boss’ Business Act” will prohibit for-profit employers from using religious beliefs to deny employees coverage of contraception or any other vital health service required by federal law. The bill would keep in place the existing exemption in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 for religious employers such as churches, as well as accommodations for religious non-profit groups.

“A woman’s fundamental right to make her own health choices in consultation with her doctor should not be subject to the discretion of her boss’s religious views,” Horsford said in a statement announcing he would cosponsor the bill.

The bill could be up for a vote in the Senate as soon as next week. But Senate Republicans are likely to block it.

In an Associated Press-CNBC poll, released in April 2010, only 33 percent of those questioned favored legalization of marijuana while 55 percent opposed it. People under 30 were the only age group favoring legalization, with 54 percent and opposition increased with age, topping out at 73 percent of those 65 and older.

Opposition was also greater among women and those in rural and suburban areas, 60 percent supported the idea and 74 percent believed the drug had a real medical benefit for some people. Two-thirds of Democrats favored medical marijuana as do a slim majority of Republicans, 53 percent.

What a difference four-years can make.

Nearly two years after voter’s legalized recreational pot for adults over 21, Washington State’s first licensed cannabis shops opened for business. The pot being sold at four stores in Seattle, Bellingham, Prosser and Spokane was regulated, tested for impurities, heavily taxed and in short supply.

Washington is the second state to allow marijuana sales without a doctor’s note. The state’s Liquor Control Board began working right away to develop rules governing just about every aspect of the industry, from what fertilizers can be used to how extracts are produced.

But the board has been overwhelmed — nearly 7,000 people applied to grow, process or sell pot, and those licenses are being reviewed by the board’s 18 investigators. Fewer than 100 growers have been approved, and only a dozen were ready to harvest in time for the market’s launch.

Much of the marijuana being sold Tuesday cost at least twice the $10 to $12 per gram offered by the state’s unregulated medical dispensaries.

And long before opening, the stores had to survive an in-state lottery for the 300 retail licenses being issued. Then they had to buy product from growers.

Meanwhile, the slow roll-out is limiting the state’s tax receipts. Washington says it may take in $586 million over the next four years, which is just a fraction of the $1.9 billion state officials estimated before the vote.

Colorado now has 206 stores licensed by the state for recreational sales. It has another 493 stores licensed for medical-marijuana sales.

The Colorado State Highway Patrol has started to keep track of marijuana-specific DUI citations. Month to month, pot-DUI’s make up about 10-to-15 percent of all citations with over 350 people cited in Denver alone this year.

The state has also collected more than $11 million in marijuana taxes.

And speaking of Colorado, while enjoying a night out in Denver on Tuesday with Colorado Governor John Hinkenlooper, President Barack Obama was approached by a man who asked him if he wanted to smoke some of marijuana.

“You want to hit this?” Matt Ashton asked while Obama was making his way through the crowd at a Denver bar. The president laughed, and while he didn’t say no, he didn’t indulge.

Meanwhile medical marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley, California could soon be required to give away some of their stash — to the poor. The city council approved the ordinance Monday.

The requirement is buried in a 20-page ordinance to amend the Berkeley Municipal Code. A new chapter in the code includes the section “Medical Cannabis for Low-Income Members,” requiring the town’s four medical marijuana dispensaries to provide “at least 2 percent (by weight) of the annual amount of Medical Cannabis” they sell to “very low-income Members who are Berkeley residents,” at no cost.

“Very low-income” is defined by the city council as less than $32,000 per year for an individual and less than $46,000 for a family of four. Not only that, it has to be the same high-quality marijuana given to regular paying customers.

The city council will also consider an ordinance to ban e-cigarette use in public spaces, despite the fact that e-cigarettes are a highly successful smoking cessation tool.

The story isn’t that poor people are getting their pot on the cheap – it’s about a government body telling a private business to give away what they sell for nothing.

This is what tyranny looks like.

“As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” ― Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The Senate on Monday approved a procedural voted in favor of the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act of 2014. The bill is a combination of several proposals aimed at allowing people to use land controlled by the federal government.

It would make sure more target ranges are placed on public land, and that target shooting, hunting and fishing can take place on these lands, ends a ban on fishing gear made with lead components, something that was put in place for environmental reasons. Additionally, it will let people import polar bear trophies from Canada harvested from bears taken before they were placed on the endangered species list.

The bill, however is not sitting well with Democrats, who opposed it by saying the Senate should not be trying to expand the rights of people with guns, including Senator Chris Murphy.

“There is a perfectly legitimate debate to be had about bringing more legal guns onto public property,” Murphy said. “But there is a more important debate than that about taking illegal guns off of our city streets.”

“If the United States Senate is going to spend a week debating a bill about gun policy, than we should be talking about getting rid of illegal guns,” he added. “We should be talking about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. We should be talking about stopping the epidemic of gun violence across this country.”

He and Senator Richard Blumenthal both said they would vote against the bill because the Senate should be considering tougher gun regulations citing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in late 2012. But they, along with others, were not enough to stop the overwhelming majority support for the bill.

Now, several GOP senators are hoping to offer amendments to strengthen gun right in the bill. However Senator Harry Reid is reportedly planning to block any floor amendments.

“These pro-gun Senators want to offer good amendments like concealed carry reciprocity,” Gun Owners of America notes, “but that won’t be possible if Harry Reid blocks their ability to offer pro-gun amendments with an ‘amendment tree.’”

Reid has often used procedural tactics, preventing Republicans from offering amendments that could put vulnerable Democrats on the spot in November. This and the gutting of the filibuster, has led too much of the legislative gridlock in the chamber.

Across the country in Washington State, a battle over gun rights is heating up with two opposing ballot initiatives concerning background checks. Initiative 594 would strengthen background checks on gun purchasers to include gun shows and online sales. Initiative 591, one the other hand would prohibit background checks by the state unless they conform to federal background check laws.

Initiative 594 says it would “apply the currently used criminal and public safety background checks by licensed dealers to all firearm sales and transfers, including gun show and online sales, with specific exceptions.”

On Sunday, the Seattle Times editorial board endorsed the increased background check initiative and opposed the ballot measure supported by the pro-gun groups, slammed the anti-background check measure as “wholly inappropriate, unnecessary and potentially a reckless retreat.”

“The firearm industry and its entrepreneurial forces know their market, so the notion of ‘confiscating’ guns is immediately mentioned,” the opinion piece added.

If passed, Initiative 591 would make it “unlawful for any government agency to confiscate guns or other firearms from citizens without due process” and “unlawful for any government agency to require background checks on the recipient of a firearm unless a uniform national standard is required.”

As the debate over gun control and the Second Amendment rages Independence day brought New York City’s “most concentrated explosion of gun violence this year,” the New York Post reported, as a dozen people were shot, three fatally, within a five-hour span.

One victim “suffered a head wound so grisly that cops couldn’t tell if he’d been shot, stabbed or beaten,” the Post reported.

Another seven people were shot in the early morning hours of Saturday in Indianapolis, and six more at a Houston music festival around the same time on the same day.

But it is in Chicago that the most gun violence took place with at 82 people shot and 14 deaths during the long Independence Day weekend. At five of those shootings were police-involved, ending with two people killed.

“There has to come a tipping point where this changes,” Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said. “The illogical nature of what’s happening here — that government can intercede and prevent this from happening is overwhelming. And I refuse to think otherwise in a great country like America that we can continue to allow this to happen — not just on a state, but on a federal level.”

A Florida teen remains under house-arrest in Jerusalem. Fifteen-year-old Tariq Khdeir was attending a demonstration related to the death of his cousin, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, when he was arrested and beaten.

Hassan Shibly, executive director with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, claims the beating came at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

“You can see video of them really stomping on his face,” Shibly said.

However a statement released by the Israeli Defense Force refutes Shibly’s claim.

“It seems that the Israel Police Forces were involved in the incident, and not the IDF Forces,” the statement reads.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that such beatings “should not happen.”

“Obviously, it is forbidden under Israeli law to beat up a suspect who is in handcuffs,” states Mark Regev.

A U.S. consular officer visited the teen in an Israeli detention center in Jerusalem and issued a statement following the visit:

“We are profoundly troubled by reports that he was severely beaten while in police custody and strongly condemn any excessive use of force. We are calling for a speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for any excessive use of force.”

Tariq described how police hit him.

”They hit me in the face, they hit me, they brutally hit me, they put me unconscious. I could not do anything about it,” Tariq said.

Israeli police say Tariq resisted arrest, attacked officers and was carrying a shepherd’s sling used for lobbing stones when he was arrested. Tariq was fined about $900 and sentenced to nine days of house arrest.

His mother, Suha Abu Khdeir, protested the continued restrictions on her son.

“I feel like he does not deserve to be on house arrest out of his own home for nine days and have a bail. On what charges? He has not been charged. There is no charge on him. Why are you putting him on house arrest? It makes no sense. I am American. I know the American law. This does not happen in America,” she said.

Tariq’s cousin, Mohammed died after being struck on the head with a blunt object and kidnapped off the street. An autopsy also showed traces of smoke in his lungs, indicating it was still breathing while the fire was burning.

Working quickly, Israeli authorities arrested six people believed to have murdered Mohammed. They have yet to release their names.

Mohammed’s mother welcomed news of the arrests but said she had little faith in the Israeli justice system.

“I don’t have any peace in my heart. Even if they captured who they say killed my son,” she said. “They’re only going to ask them questions and then release them. What’s the point?”

“They need to treat them the way they treat us. They need to demolish their homes and round them up, the way they do it to our children,” she added.

All this comes after the bodies of the three Israeli students were found, tied-up and buried beneath a pile of rocks in an open field in an area called Wadi Tellem north of the Palestinian village of Halhul. They were found after a “tip” to look in the field, which had been previously searched

Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, a 16-year-old with dual Israeli-American citizenship, were studying in West Bank yeshivas. They disappeared while hitchhiking home late at night June 12th, a week before the start of summer vacation.

Official reports are that “They know it’s the three, they will know for sure after they do the autopsy. It appears that they boys were shot to death, likely “very close to the kidnap” time, and that the prime suspects had still not been caught.

Hamas, a Palestinian militant group has been accused by Israel of taking the boys; however they have denied the kidnapping. Following the kidnappings, however Hamas ‘celebrated’ by handing out candy to Palestinian children.

In the meantime, Israel has identified at least two of the kidnappers as members of Hamas. Israel’s Shin Bet security service is working with Palestinian authorities to find Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisheh, who went missing the day the teenagers disappeared.

Both Qawasmeh and Aisheh have served time in Israeli prisons.

“If you step over that line, there are consequences to those actions,” Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said. “And I believe they stepped over that line. No doubt about it. They need to be held accountable for it.”

U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials say they agree with Gillespie’s position that rancher Cliven Bundy should be held accountable for his role in an April standoff with the BLM. Spokeswoman Celia Boddington, in a statement said the agency continues to pursue the matter.

“There is an ongoing investigation and we are working diligently to ensure that those who broke the law are held accountable,” she said, declining to elaborate.

The BLM claims Bundy owes over $1 million in fees and penalties for trespassing on federal property without a permit over 20 years. Bundy, whose ancestors settled in the area in the late 1800s, refuses to acknowledge federal authority on public lands.

A federal judge in Las Vegas first ordered Bundy to remove “trespass cattle” from land the BLM declared a refuge for the endangered desert tortoise in 1998. However the BLM only obtained court orders just last year allowing the roundup.

Gillespie blamed the BLM for escalating the conflict adding Bundy isn’t a hardened criminal, but a rancher who stopped paying his fees and that was not worth risking violence.

“I came back from that saying, ‘This is not the time to do this,’ ” said Gillespie. “They said, ‘We do this all the time. We know what we’re doing. We hear what you’re saying, but we’re moving forward.’”

Boddington disputed Gillespie’s contention the agency mishandled the roundup.

“It is unfortunate that the sheriff is now attempting to rewrite the details of what occurred, including his claims that the BLM did not share accurate information,” she said. “The sheriff encouraged the operation and promised to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us as we enforced two recent federal court orders.”

“Sadly, he backed out of his commitment shortly before the operation, and after months of joint planning, leaving the BLM and the National Park Service to handle the crowd control that the sheriff previously committed to handling,” Boddington added.

The BLM backed down during the showdown with Bundy and his supporters, citing safety concerns, released nearly 400 head of cattle collected from Bundy during the weeklong standoff.

Tensions escalated after a video showed one of Bundy’s sons being struck with a Taser.

“I think if anybody would look at how they handled the protesting with the use of Tasers and police dogs, anyone who had been in policing would question those tactics,” said Gillespie. “And I believe that led to the heightened interest and escalating the situation.”

Prior to the stand-off Gillespie was named by the National Sheriffs’ Association’s winner of the prestigious Ferris E. Lucas Award for Sheriff of the Year 2014. Senator Harry Reid presented Gillespie with a Congressional Proclamation for being selected at Reid’s office in the Lloyd George Federal Building.

The award was presented to Gillespie June 22nd during the opening part of the 2014 NSA Annual Conference in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Reid made himself a target after calling standoff supporters “domestic terrorists.”

“Those people who hold themselves out to be patriots are not. They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists,” Reid said. “I repeat: What went on up there was domestic terrorism.”

Reid also said Gillespie is continuing to work with the federal government on putting together a task force to deal with the Bundy family.

As former Libertarian vice presidential nominee Wayne Allen Root writes about the Bundy-BLM standoff, “I live in Las Vegas. I live and breathe Nevada politics. Something is very wrong. Something smells rotten in the Nevada desert. And Senator Harry Reid’s fingerprints are all over it.”

So far no charges have been brought against Bundy, his family or supporters.

However the BLM is being sued by a watchdog group that wants to review its decision-making and records about the standoff. The lawsuit by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is asking a federal court to order the BLM to turn over public records that may show agency employees were put at risk during the standoff.

The suit alleges the BLM isn’t responding to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents about the April 12th decision to abandon the roundup.

“They left themselves without a good option other than combing through thousands of acres for stray cows,” said Executive Director Jeff Ruch.

It also alleges the BLM refuses to provide an annual accounting of threats and attacks against agency employees. It also seeks records of criminal referrals the BLM has sought; any advisories or warnings to agency employees before and after the standoff; any directives or advisories for handling “similar incidents of armed resistance to lawful orders;” and all “decision documents” about the roundup and removal of the cattle.

Born in Franklin County, Indiana, in 1831, Jonathan Lyons later moved with his family to Iowa. It was from there that, as an asthmatic 18-year-old, he joined a wagon train bound for Oregon and worked his way across the country.

After spending some time farming in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, stories of gold strikes on the Salmon River in northern California enticed him to come to Klamath County in 1852. Unlike others, Jonathan planted a garden at the Forks of the Salmon River and drove cattle up from Sonoma to establish a grocery and butchering business.

Lyons traveled along the Salmon and Klamath rivers a side of beef slung on each side of his mule, earning his living mining the miners. He was always a welcome visitor in the mining camps.

In 1861 Jonathan met a young Hupa woman he called Amelia, from the village of Meskut in Hoopa Valley. They were legally married at Martin’s Ferry on the Klamath River.

Amelia’s Hupa family has been forgotten over the years as has the year she was born. Also not known is if Lyons married her according to Hupa tradition, but he likely would have paid her family the respect they were due with an appropriate dowry.

It was in Hoopa Valley that their first son, Anderson, was born in 1863. In the Klamath County Census of 1870, only three of the Indian-white marriages were recorded and the Lyons’ marriage was one of the three.

By 1864, Jonathan and Amelia had relocated to the Lower Klamath near Martin’s Ferry, when Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation was established. This was the result of Jonathan helping Indian’s during the “Indian Wars.”

An example is the case of a young Hupa woman who stabbed and killed a soldier from Fort Gaston who was trying to rape her. Jonathan stole a canoe in which she was able to escape to the mouth of the Klamath River, where she was sheltered by the Yurok Tribe.

By 1870, after having two more sons, Sherman near Martin’s Ferry and Harvey at the former Albee Ranch on Redwood Creek, Jonathan and Amelia moved to the Bald Hills where their fourth son, Antonio, was born. It was here that Jonathan began to buy land that came to be known as the Lyons Ranch in the Bald Hills.

On August 3rd, 1903, the Lyons’s were mentioned in the Humboldt Times for the success of their sheep ranches:

“Pioneer Jonathan Lyons and his estimable wife are surely enjoying the profit of their own labors, for beneath their own fig and vine they are now watching the third generation coming to replace them in part of the toils and tribulations of life. Jonathan Lyons and wife are still in harness. Miss Josie, a splendid girl who acts as postmistress, takes the heaviest load from her mother’s shoulders, while Mr. Lyons has a man or two outside to do the labor whom he guides. Four sons, men without a blemish to their name reside on fine farms, with plenty of fat, clean sheep to keep the larder well stocked.”

Jonathan Lyons died in 1913; Amelia died at her daughter’s home in Fortuna in 1921. They are buried beside each other in the Blue Lake Cemetery.

Philadelphia — A para-military extremist group has proclaimed its autonomy from the government, and plans to secede. The announcement comes more than a year after troops fired on protestors, leaving 72 people dead, including eight civilians.

In April of last year, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage, ordered the National Guard to seize a large cache of weapons from area locals. Soldiers however met armed extremists, the same organization now claiming the government lacks authority over the group.

Sources close to the situation say the rebel leaders voted July 2nd to approve the move to secede from the nation. Two days later the manifesto was formally adopted.

Despite a law prohibiting the distribution of propaganda, several copies the manifesto were handed out by local Philadelphia printer John Dunlap, along Market Street. While he remains free, Dunlap was questioned at length by officials.

Department of Homeland Security officials are currently searching for four Pennsylvania men who are said to have signed the document. John Morton, Robert Morris, George Clymer, and Benjamin Rush, have been identified as “ringleaders” of the extremist faction, and remain at large.

The 37-year-old Clymer is a known radical, who’s still being sought by authorities for inciting riots in Boston three years ago. In one incident, Andrew Oliver, a government tax collector, was threatened with hanging by an angry mob and later was the subject of a mock funeral.

The same mob also went to Oliver’s office, severely vandalized the building. They also set fire to some of Oliver’s property.

Meanwhile, Suffolk County Sheriff William Greenleaf, ordered by Massachusetts Lt. Governor John Penn to end the rioting, was assaulted by the mob, which also looted and destroyed Oliver’s house. So far no arrests have been made in the case.

Morton, 51, a former Justice of the Peace, is believed to be hiding out in the area of Ridley Township, where he has family. 42-year-old Morris, an immigrant has a home in Philadelphia and is thought to be there.

The youngest, 30-year-old Rush is a Princeton University graduate and medical doctor. The Byberry native is accused by DHS to be practicing medicine with out a license.

In December of last year, the government passed the ‘Prohibitory Act,’ in order to put a stop to extremist activities. Then last month there were several attempts to halt boat traffic along the Delaware River leading to shots being fired between extremists and DHS. Extremists have maintained a blockade on the river, preventing DHS from reaching inland ports.

It is expected that the administration will soon issue a directive authorizing military intervention to end the blockade.

The American War for Independence would last for five more years. Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.

Happy Independence Day — lest we forget…

Dozens of protesters blocked the road Tuesday, so buses full of undocumented immigrants couldn’t make their way to a U.S. Border Patrol Station in Murrieta, California. About 140 people were flown into San Diego from Texas and bused to Murrieta with more expected to arrive every three days or so.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses eventually left Murrieta and headed south to a detention facility in San Ysidro. Murrieta was one of the cities chosen to help process the immigrants because it has a federal border protection facility.

The increase in border crossings is linked to rumors in Central America that children are eligible for legal U.S. residency. The surge has also been prompted by violence and extortion from gangs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Murrieta held a town hall meeting Monday where Mayor Alan Long assured residents the immigrants have no criminal backgrounds and that health screenings will be done. Still, he urged residents to call their elected officials and voice opposition to the plan.

Speaking to a Latino group in Las Vegas Wednesday, Senator Harry Reid blamed House Speaker John Boehner for telling President Barack Obama that he won’t bring immigration up for a vote this year as well as Congressman Joe Heck, for not putting more pressure on the GOP leadership.

“It’s gone until next year,” Reid, said at a brief news conference after his talk to ‘Hispanics in Politics.’

Reid added, however, that there’s a slim possibility of getting something done following the November 4th general election.

“Maybe we’ll get something in the lame-duck (session.) The Republicans should suffer at the ballot box,” Reid said, adding of Heck, “He’s not been helpful.”

Heck is running for re-election to a third term in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District. Meantime, Reid is backing Heck’s Democratic opponent, Erin Bilbray, in the race.

Reid added the immigrant children need to be taken care of, although the law isn’t clear on what the U.S. should do with them.

“We can’t use the children as pawns,” Reid claimed.

However, by tying the ‘humanitarian-crisis’ to the upcoming elections, Reid has in effect made the kids’ ‘pawns.’

Obama is vowing to act on his own due to House inaction on immigration reform that proponents say could help address a wave of illegal alien children crossing the border from Mexico. Obama argues has to act in large part because of the recent surge in unaccompanied Central American children showing up by the thousands at the U.S.-Mexico border and the GOP-controlled House’s unwillingness to vote on the issue until at least after the November elections.

“American cannot wait forever … ,” Obama said Monday. “That is why, today, I am beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress.”

But there are limits to the power of his cell phone and pen, according to CNN.

He can redress rules on who to rank and prosecute in deportation hearings; send more border patrol agents as well as members of the National Guard to the affected areas; continue to allow illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. as kids to stay; continue using ankle bracelets or weekly mandatory check-ins with immigration officials as an alternative to detention; and increase the amount of free legal help to illegal aliens in deportation hearings.

But he can’t bar people from applying for political asylum. Those guidelines are set by the United Nations Refugee Convention, which the U.S. has signed; he can’t increase the number eligible for green cards because their spouses or parents are U.S. citizens; eliminate judicial review for people ordered deported; round-up all illegal immigrants and deport them without some sort of legal hearing; or issue a blanket executive action legalizing all illegal aliens.

They fail to mention ‘closing the border,’ however. Then there is also the fact Obama tends to ‘act on his own.’

Since January 2012, the Obama administration has suffered at least 13 unanimous defeats in cases it argued, according to the Cato Institute. Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Institute, said unanimous decisions are “indicative of an administration that pushes and breaks through the envelope in its assertion of federal power.”

Obama will likely sidestep Congress on immigration reform by expanding on his so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals memorandum, which essentially allows young illegal immigrants to stay in the United States if they were brought into the country illegally by their parents and have not been convicted of a major crime, Federation for American Immigration Reform spokesman Ira Mehlman predicted.

“I expect him to continue to ignore U.S. immigration law,” Mehlman said. “This can all be traced back to the DACA program…under the guise of not splitting up families.”

Union membership has dropped from 18.5 percent in 1983 to 7.5 percent by 2013 in the private sector and 45.5 percent to 38.7 in the public sector. Because of this, there is an all-out assault on business, both big and small.

In 2009, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn issued an executive order unionizing the caretakers of in-home patients that received Medicaid benefits. This deliberate scheme to bolster the waning membership rolls of public sector unions spread with successful attempts in Missouri, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

However, most of these caretakers are not employees of the patient, but rather family members.

Such is Pam Harris’ case, who cares for her disabled son, Josh. Despite the fact she doesn’t receive compensation from the government, Quinn’s executive order reclassified her as a state employee, forcing her to pay membership dues to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) against her wishes.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled Illinois home health care workers cannot be required to pay fees that help cover a union’s costs of collective bargaining. In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take.

The ruling is limited to “partial-public employees” and stopped short of overturning decades of practice allowing public sector unions of teachers, firefighters and other government workers to pass through their representation costs to nonmembers.

Recently, SEIU spent more than $2 million of its members dues money to fund the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC), a so-called “worker center” that the union uses to skirt rules about union organizing. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union spends freely on another outfit called OURWalmart, trying to push unionization more deeply into the retail sector.

These groups like UFCW, ROC, OurWalmart, and Fast Food Forward hold protests and demonstrations, stage strikes and walkouts, chant slogans demanding outlandish minimum wage with bussed-in protestors who don’t work for any of the companies subject to the protests.

In early June, the Seattle City Council approved a large minimum wage hike to $15 per hour, giving larger businesses with over 500 employees three years to comply and smaller businesses seven. However, under current labor law, franchises like fast food chains are technically small businesses since they’re owned and operated locally.

A June 24 Seattle-Times survey shows 42 percent of businesses are “very likely” to cut staffing levels in response to the new law, and 44 percent are “very likely” to cut employee hours.

Meanwhile, 70 percent indicated that the new law will spur cost increases, while 43 percent are “very likely” to limit their future expansion in the city. In fact, one in seven businesses plans to close at least one location in the city in response to the new law.

Leading the wage-hike charge in Seattle is Socialist Alternative Councilmember Kshama Sawant. She also has it out for the practice of tipping.

“We don’t want any worker to be beholden to the mood of the customer on any given day,” Sawant stated.

The Seattle-Times reported ROC co-director Saru Jayaraman, “described tips as institutionalized sexism” and then to make her views perfectly clear added “the best option, she suggests, is to eliminate tips.”

She recently told the University of California, Berkeley’s alumni magazine: “Ultimately, this system of tipping needs to go.”

Jayaraman also told the Ford Foundation, who has given more than $2 million to ROC: “No portion of anybody’s income should be tips because tips are not wages.”

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows the average hourly wage for a restaurant employee earning tip income is $11.82, which by most definitions lifts them into the American middle class. It also shows top earners can collect $24 an hour or more.

The service industry in Seattle is fighting back, with a group called ‘Tips Are Wages.’