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Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:38 PM

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OUR VIEW: Jeff Sessions Comes Out Of Hibernation On Sancutary Cities But Where Is He On FISA Abuse, Dem Corruption

For the life of me, I'll never fully understand what is going on with the Attorney General of the United States. While Rip Van "Jeff" Sessions has basically been AWOL this past year on the Russian circus of a probe, he has been very strong on fighting illegal immigration. Guess when you bat .500 in baseball that's a good thing. In politics, I'm not so sure.

This editorial is to talk about the positive step Sessions took when he as head of the Trump Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday night against California, saying three recently-passed state laws were deliberately interfering with federal immigration policies. It marked the latest legal and political confrontation with the nation's most populous state, which the federal government says has repeatedly stood in the way of its plans to step up enforcement actions in the workplace and against criminal aliens.

Just last week Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf took it upon herself to warn illegal aliens in her state "of their rights" in warning of immigration sweeps in advance, while offering suggestions on how to "obstruct" ICE agents doing their job in rounding up those in the state who didn't belong here. ICE said Schaaf's actions allowed hundreds of immigrants to escape detention and capture.

It was determined this week that many of those who the ICE agents were rounding up were not  janitors and bakers. They were violent criminals with rap sheets of rape, murder, assault and all sorts of other lovely criminal acts.

“Oakland is a city of immigrants. We will continue to exercise our legal right to exist as a sanctuary city. We will continue to inform all residents about their Constitutional rights, and we will continue to support California’s sanctuary status,” the Democratic mayor responded.

An estimated 2.5 million immigrants are believed to be in California illegally. In the most recent figures, ICE has reported about 16 percent of its enforcement apprehensions take place in that state.
The latest legal action by the Trump administration is part of an aggressive push to enforce existing immigration laws, with Sessions in previous remarks citing a porous U.S. border with Mexico, and the threat of criminal activity by immigrant gangs.

It was this type of behavior that the Justice Department and Jeff Sessions vows will not be tolerated. On Tuesday night, they did something about it.

"The Department of Justice and the Trump Administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional policies," Attorney General Jeff Sessions was expected to tell California law enforcement officers on Wednesday. "We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America."

The state's Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, fired back: “At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don’t work here. SAD!!!”

According to a Fox News story, one of those laws offers additional worker protections against federal immigration enforcement actions. Senior Justice Department officials have said it has prevented companies from voluntarily cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

Employers are mandated under the law to demand ICE agents present a warrant or subpoena before entering certain areas of the premises, or when accessing some employee records.

Some companies have complained they've felt torn between trying to comply with seemingly contradictory state and federal statutes, since penalties for non-compliance can be steep from both entities.

Another state law dubbed known by critics as the "sanctuary state" bill protects immigrants without legal residency by limiting state and municipal cooperation with the feds, including what information can be shared about illegal-immigrant inmates.

A third law gives state officials the power to monitor and inspect immigrant detention facilities either run directly by, or contracted through, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The Justice Department has said it's confident the Constitution's Supremacy Clause gives it broad authority to supersede state laws that it says interfere with its immigration enforcement obligations.
Still, state officials in the past have cited the 10th Amendment’s guarantee of states not being compelled to enforce federal laws.

The response to the federal government seeking to force California to obey the law of the land was met with typical Democratic laced humor and blow off. “We’ve seen this B-rated movie before. So we’re not totally surprised,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in response to the new lawsuit. 

The illegal alien situation in California capsules liberal policy at its worst. These policies have been a failure wherever they have been allowed to flourish whether it be sanctuary cities like New York City, Chicago and Detroit, or entire sanctuary states such as California.

Illegal immigration is not the sickness, it's a symptom of a bigger sickness - liberalism.
Where liberalism flourishes, lives are destroyed every single day, every single week, every single month and every single year.

In California, the destruction of society and individual lives has become so overwhelming, the state’s liberal overseers now spend their time covering up where they can and normalizing the chaos as much as possible. That can be said for any area of the country run by these liberal fascists and American-hating leaders.

Since 2013, when now-liberal icon Eric Garcetti was elected mayor of Los Angeles, and the nation had just re-elected Barack Obama as president, Los Angeles’ homeless population has skyrocketed 46 percent. During the Obama years, where unchallenged liberalism was pushed and accepted (wrongly) as the new normal, the same leftist economic menace raged through the entire nation, destroying businesses and the full-time jobs that went with them.

In California, the destruction is particularly acute. As the social structure in major cities continues to break down, the state focuses on banning plastic straws, whether to release from prison a mass murderer from the Manson family, while cheering at becoming as sanctuary state.

Just this week, the Los Angeles Times issued an editorial titled, “Los Angeles homeless crisis is a national disgrace.” Actually, it’s not — it’s a California disgrace. The editorial exemplifies the refusal of liberals to not just admit their responsibility to social destruction, but an inability to even relate to reality.

The Times editorial board chided, in part, “Today, a greater and greater proportion of people living on the streets are there because of bad luck or a series of mistakes, or because the economy forgot them — they lost a job or were evicted or fled an abusive marriage just as the housing market was growing increasingly unforgiving.”

They refer to the “economy” as though it’s a mean thing with a life of its own, and simply “forgot” people. There’s no need to consider the actual people in charge of policy and the economy. That lost job, or domestic strife, a mean housing market are all pointed at, as though they were all dropped on earth by Martians.

The other factor is, of course, the social justice issue: “All the great social issues of American society play out in homelessness — inequality, racial injustice, poverty, violence, sexism. …” Never mentioned: idiotic and incompetent liberal leadership that destroys business and jobs; regulations, waste, fraud and abuse that leave human beings on the street because the theory of socialism is all that matters.

A Fox News story reported that 25 percent of the nation’s half million homeless live in California, the largest of any state. Why is California in such trouble?

In a recent oped, Todd Spitzer of the Orange County (California) Board of Supervisors says legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown over the past several years has eroded the penalties for drug use, possession and petty crimes to where police often don’t bother making arrests.

And when mayors of California cities refuse to uphold the law and obstruct ICE agents from removing those in our cities who are contributing to the crime problem, Sacramento, we have a problem!

The more disturbing fact is this for liberals to flourish and feel good about themselves, social chaos must ensue. They need it to prey on the emotions of others, while then using it as an argument for more government control of our lives. Hillary Clinton never offered solutions during the 2016 Presidential Campaign. She played the race and gender cards while slamming faith and other things that keep the fabric of American society together. She wanted power as all liberals do without the responsibility of preserving American values. Liberals hate American values and once they are in power, they do everything possible to destroy them!

A recent story out of Los Angeles reported that the ACLU tried to stop Mr. Spitzer's effort to clean up a homeless camp of 700 people living along a riverbed next to Angels’ Stadium. He prevailed, but so dangerous was the environment, it took hazmat crews to clear out the encampment.

“Trash trucks and contractors in hazmat gear have descended on the camp and so far removed 250 tons of trash, 1,100 pounds of human waste and 5,000 hypodermic needles,” the report said.

The left has a history of working hard to hide their failure, malevolence and destruction of society. Years ago, this column brought to you the effort by San Francisco to move their homeless to an island. Now the story is about how the city spends $30 million trying to clean city streets of hypodermic needles and human feces.

“[An] Investigation reveals a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco,” reported NBC Bay Area. Their “Investigative Unit photographed nearly a dozen hypodermic needles scattered across one block, a group of preschool students happened to walk by on their way to an afternoon field trip to city hall. ‘We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,’ said teacher Adelita Orellana. ‘Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”

As Democratic leadership tries to normalize their degradation of society, others have had to adapt. One person created the “Human Wasteland” map that, according to the Daily Caller, “charts all of the locations for human excrement ‘incidents’ reported to the San Francisco police during a given month. The interactive map shows precise locations of the incidents by marking them with poop emojis.”

Having used needles and human waste on your sidewalks isn’t just a disgusting inconvenience, it’s a deadly biological hazard and an indicator of the breakdown of civil society. So the next time a Democrat tells you they know best, laugh and let them know your family deserves better than poo maps, hazmat homeless camps, and little girls having to avoid drug needles on the sidewalk.

That's why they seek to protect illegal aliens because they know these same illegals are key to them keeping power in continuing to reign over a disgusting s***hole of a state.

Congratulations, Democrats!

Get your seat belt on and the popcorn ready. This fight between the Justice Department and California is about to get nasty but nasty it needs to get. California needs to pay a price for its lawlessness and its leaders need to be held to account.

I just hope this same bulldog of an Attorney General named Jeff Sessions will find the same fight  to go after crooked Hillary, Obama and the rest of those who spied on Americans, trampled the constitution and lied to four judges to obtain a FISA warrant based upon a false dossier. That would give him a batting average of 1.000. In politics that's what you want!

 

 

Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge

Great Smoky Mountain Journal