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It's over. After bringing us within hours of a shutdown on Friday, congressional leaders backed down and voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the rest of the year today. That didn't happen because they suddenly came to their senses and decided to stop playing political games. It happened because they knew they couldn't get away with it any longer. They heard the voices of hundreds of thousands of Americans who stood up to let them know we were ready to hold them accountable. They saw reasonable members of Congress standing united, and refusing to budge. And you...

“Catch me if you can.” That’s what President Obama seems to be saying to the Republican-led Congress, to the Judicial Branch, and to every single American, regardless of political affiliation. He is daring all of us to try and stop him from implementing, on his own, the final act of his “fundamental transformation” of the country in the two years he has left in office. What’s worse is that we are letting him get away with it.

It’s started. As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is putting the ban on 5.56mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela’s, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president.

President Barack Obama’s love of country isn’t just a concern for Rudy Giuliani, according to a recent Huffington Post/YouGov poll. A plurality of Americans surveyed — 47 percent — said that Obama loves America, but the rest say the president does not or that they’re not sure. The responses break down an expected partisan line, with only 11 percent of Republicans saying Obama loves America, and 85 percent of Democrats responding the same way. Independents are mostly split, with 42 percent say Obama loves the U.S., while 38 percent disagree and 20 percent are not sure. Story Continued Below The...

If federal law enforcement officers apprehended a person who had been using a false Social Security Number, a federal prosecutor with a heavy caseload dominated by more serious crimes might decide not to indict the person. Whatever its merits, that would be an act of prosecutorial discretion. But what if the prosecutor were to tell this user of a false Social Security Number: It is okay for you to continue using that false Social Security Number tomorrow. In fact, you may do so with impunity for the next three years. Would that be an act of prosecutorial discretion? Or would...

....he’s prepared to veto hostile legislation, including an Iran sanctions package. Obama made clear Thursday in a closed-door session with Senate Democrats that he’s prepared to veto hostile legislation from the GOP-controlled Congress, including an Iran sanctions package on the front-burner of Capitol Hill. According to several sources at the Thursday summit in Baltimore, Obama vowed to defend his agenda against Republicans in Congress, promised to stand firm against GOP efforts to dismantle his agenda and called on his Democratic colleagues to help sustain his expected vetoes. The president also was explicit over his administration’s opposition to an Iran sanctions...

The Obamas are closing out their Hawaii vacation at one of the ritziest joints on Oahu. President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama dined Thursday night for nearly three hours at Vintage Cave, an exclusive restaurant that charges up to $500,000 for membership. According to the restaurant’s website, guests are whisked into a “cave-like environment” and encouraged to “escape the ordinary.” The Waikiki restaurant’s interior is composed of granite “quarried in the mountains of India” and custom-crafted furniture in a space that evokes the “underground architecture of ancient Rome.” And the meal? About as fine dining as it gets. According...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Now that Barack Obama is ruling by decree, he seems more like a king than a president. Maybe it is time we change the way we address him. "Your Majesty" may be a little too much, but perhaps "Your Royal Glibness" might be appropriate. It tells us a lot about academia that the president of Smith College quickly apologized for saying, "All lives matter," after being criticized by those who are pushing the slogan, "Black lives matter." If science could cross breed a jellyfish with a parrot, it could create academic administrators. Mitt Romney...

It was supposed to be a joke. “Are you still president?” comedian Stephen Colbert asked Barack Obama earlier this month. But the question seemed to speak to growing weariness with the president and skepticism that anything will change in Washington during his final two years in office. Democrats already are checking out Obama’s potential successors. Emboldened Republicans are trying to push aside his agenda in favor of their own. At times this year, Obama seemed ready to move on as well. He rebelled against the White House security “bubble,” telling his Secret Service detail to give him more space. He...

In his weekly address released on Saturday, President Barack Obama said that in the remaining two years of his presidency he plans to work with Congress but will take unilateral action when he believes he needs to do so. “I’ll act on my own when it’s necessary,” Obama said. […] “But I will never stop trying to make life better for people like you. Because thanks to your efforts, a new foundation is laid,” said Obama. “A new future is ready to be written. We have set the stage for a new American moment, and I’m going to spend every...

resident Obama announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba today, including opening an embassy in Cuba."We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests," Obama claimed, "And instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries."Specifically, the White House took three major steps today as part of their "New Course on Cuba": Initiating discussions to reestablish diplomatic relations, including a U.S. embassy in Havana, and a Cuban embassy in the United States.A review, by the State Department, of Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.Relaxing of regulations to facilitate the...

<p>Dana Perino, the Fox News co-cost and former spokeswoman for George W. Bush's White House, said that President Barack Obama's executive amnesty is well within the law.</p>

The Democrats have rolled out a couple of dishonest talking points in support of Obama’s executive order amnesty. One is that Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 both used executive orders on immigration. What that ignores is that both were cleaning up a law duly passed by Congress. In this case, Obama is explicitly acting because Congress won’t bend to his royal will. The new talking point, trotted out here by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) is that this executive order is just like Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and that Obama should do it and then just let the courts decide whether...

Former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday noted that previous U.S. presidents have issued some type of executive order on immigration, suggesting his Democratic successor was on “pretty firm legal ground.” The former president spoke on the eve of President Barack Obama’s scheduled announcement of executive actions to spare as many as 5 million immigrants from being deported from the U.S. Clinton said during an event honoring the magazine The New Republic that it was part of a larger debate about the nation’s role around the globe. “As far as I can tell, every president in the modern era has issued...

When President Barack Obama takes Air Force One on a fundraising swing, he is required under the law to reimburse taxpayers for certain travel expenses. But as Mark Knoller of CBS News reports, the White House has made it a practice of not publicly releasing specific reimbursement figures, making it impossible for the public to see exactly how much they pay every time the president goes on a political trip. Knoller says it’s not about national security reasons, but rather about saving face. “Very simply, the White House doesn’t want to disclose the material because it might be embarrassing and...

Chicago Big profit for Pritzkers on costly Chicago FBI deal Sun, 09/14/2014 - 3:30pm Better Government Association @bettergov | Email A deal involving the federal government’s most expensive lease in Chicago produced millions of dollars in profits for a development group that included Penny Pritzker, a top campaign fund-raiser for President Barack Obama who is now his commerce secretary, a Chicago Sun-Times / Better Government Association investigation has found. The developers also included Jack Higgins, a friend and political backer of former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Over the 14-year term of the lease, the government will pay $280 million in...

US President Barack Obama says he has the “legal authority” to order US airstrikes on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) forces in Syria, according to sources present at a dinner with foreign policy experts at the White House on Monday. Obama “thinks he has the legal authority he needs” to expand action in Iraq and Syria under the War Powers Act, according to Jane Harman, the president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who told the Washington Post about the dinner. Another attendee of the dinner, former undersecretary of defense for policy Michèle Flournoy, told the paper Obama...

For a few months in 1966, the budding romance between film star George Hamilton and Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of the 36th president, was the talk of Washington....But a previously confidential FBI file - which a Philadelphia judge last week outlined in an opinion and ordered to be released - shows for the first time how far Johnson went to protect his daughter and his presidency

With impeachment threats and potential lawsuits looming, President Barack Obama knows whatever executive actions he takes on immigration will face intense opposition. So as a self-imposed, end-of-summer deadline to act approaches, Obama’s lawyers are carefully crafting a legal rationale they believe will withstand scrutiny and survive any court challenges, administration officials say. The argument goes something like this: Beyond failing to fix broken immigration laws, Congress hasn’t even provided the government with enough resources to fully enforce the laws already on the books. With roughly 11.5 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally—far more than the government could reasonably deport—the White...

President Barack Obama faces a familiar question as he contemplates airstrikes in Syria: Should Congress have a say in his decision? […] This time around, the White House is suggesting it may not be necessary to get a sign-off from Congress. …