Free Republic

The administration warned a federal judge Monday to stay out of the debate over President Obama’s deportation amnesty, saying decisions about whom to deport fall squarely within the executive’s job description, “which this court lacks authority to review. In its first extended legal filing in one of the court challenges to the new amnesty, the Justice Department says courts have long held that an agency’s decision whether or not to prosecute someone or to enforce the law is entitled to “absolute discretion.”“Federal courts sit to decide cases and controversies, not to resolve disagreements about policy or politics,” said Joyce R....

Seven states joined Texas's lawsuit challenging President Obama's executive amnesty plan this week, brining the total number of states on the suit to 24."More than 20 states have joined our challenge against the president’s unilateral executive action to bypass Congress and rewrite immigration laws," Texas Attorney General and governor-elect Greg Abbott said in a release. "The president’s proposed executive decree violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law, circumvents the will of the American people and is an affront to the families and individuals who follow our laws to legally immigrate to the United States.”The list of states now suing Obama...

<p>Earlier Tuesday, a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.</p> <p>According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority.</p>

the top 14 “movers and shakers” in health care in 2014 because his legal analysis led to the upcoming Supreme Court case on Obamacare’s state subsidies that may blow the ACA sky high. Anyway, Jon flags a U.S. District Court opinion out this morning that finds Obama’s immigration executive action exceeds the proper understanding of “prosecutorial discretion”: According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights...

A federal judge has found parts of President Obama’s new deportation amnesty to be unconstitutional, issuing a scathing memo Tuesday accusing him of usurping Congress’s power to make laws, and dismantling most of the White House’s legal reasoning for circumventing Congress. Judge Arthur J. Schwab, sitting in the western district of Pennsylvania, said presidents do have powers to use discretion in deciding how to enforce the law, but said Mr. Obama’s new policy goes well beyond that, setting up a full system for granting legal protections to broad groups of individuals. He said Mr. Obama writing laws — a power...