Gun Control Being Done "Under the Radar", says Obama; Supremes Asked About Wisconsin's Collective Bargaining; 500,000 Central Americans Smuggled into America Each Year; Mexico Immigration Laws; Nonprofit Status Granted to James O'Keefe's Group; Misclassified Children Results in High Pay from Taxpayers; American Citizenship Not Valued by Students; Clarence Thomas Targeted for Recusal, Elena Kagan Is Not

 The Obama administration, after keeping gun control on the back burner for over two years, is prompting concern among gun rights groups that it's slowly starting to squeeze the trigger on tighter regulation.

"They're doing a pretty good job ... as Obama has said, 'under the radar.' There's a lot going on under that radar," Gun Owners of America Director Larry Pratt said, referring to a remark Obama reportedly made in a private meeting with gun control advocates. "They've shown us how much they are prepared to do through regulation."

"The American public does not support gun control. ... What the American public wants is for criminals to be punished for their mistakes," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said. 

The NRA and other groups have also harshly criticized the administration for its own gun-control problem -- a Justice Department project by which hundreds of guns were allowed to "walk" across the border and into the hands of Mexican cartels.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/28/obama-administration-eyeing-gun-control-radar-groups-warn/#ixzz1Nezza9iA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writes: The state Department of Justice asked the state Supreme Court on Friday to immediately vacate a judge's decision that voided a plan by Gov. Scott Walker to greatly limit collective bargaining for public workers.
In its filing, the department said Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi made so many errors in a ruling Thursday that the Supreme Court should throw out her decision even before it hears oral arguments in the case June 6.
"These errors amount to a fundamental denial of due process and reveal the extent to which the circuit court was willing to exceed its jurisdiction in order to invalidate a politically controversial act of the Legislature," wrote Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John.  http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/122749469.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The LA Times wrote: Nearly 500,000 people from Central America and beyond traverse Mexico each year en route to the U.S., according to the Mexican government human rights office. Most now have to pay a smuggler, and increasingly, they are kidnapped, held for ransom and in the most brutal of cases, killed. Their tormentors are criminal gangs often working in cahoots with Mexican immigration and police agents, authorities say         While the vast majority of the migrants were Guatemalans, a dozen were from India and a handful from Nepal and China, as people from far-flung corners of the world look to the Mexican route for entry into the U.S. Authorities say more than 2,000 people listed as Asians were registered at migrant shelters in Mexico last year.
"As long as the United States does not have a legal framework that permits this natural flow and channels it in an orderly way," Calderon added, "migrants will continue to run the risk of becoming part of a market run by unscrupulous criminals. That is the reality."  [Actually, Calderon, America DOES have a legal framework for immigration - FAR more generous than your country's framework.]
  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-migrants-20110528,0,7733401.story
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Human Events writes about Mexico's immigration laws:  Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:

• in the country legally;

• have the means to sustain themselves economically;

• not destined to be burdens on society;

• of economic and social benefit to society;

• of good character and have no criminal records; and

• contributors to the general well-being of the nation.

The law also ensures that:

• immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;

• foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;

• foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;

• foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;

• foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;

• those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.
• http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14632 
• -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• The NYT writes: The Internal Revenue Service has granted nonprofit status to the group that brought down two senior executives at NPR and dealt a death blow to the community organizing group Acorn with videos of its employees giving tax advice to people claiming to be a pimp and prostitute.  Project Veritas, a group founded by the videographer James O’Keefe, received the status from the I.R.S. in April, according to documents gathered by The Chronicle of Philanthropy through a Freedom of Information Act request.
  He said the money saved with the status would help Project Veritas train and equip “an army” of citizen journalists to carry out its mission: “to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society.”  In its application, Project Veritas said it planned to pursue as many as a half-dozen journalism projects and conduct five two- to three-day training sessions for people interested in learning how to do such projects on their own. “I can’t tell you the secret sauce of it, but we do have a training method,” Mr. O’Keefe said. “There are many people learning this method and learning how to expose abusive power in creative ways.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27veritas.html?_r=1
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  The Boston Globe writes: Given the strong possibility that children are being misclassified as disabled to make their families eligible for checks of up to $700 a month, Congress should happily pay the $10 million or so needed to fund a study of the program by the well-regarded Institute of Medicine. And then it should quickly implement any changes based on the institute’s findings before more children are misclassified.
  Supplemental Security Income program, which was originally meant for families of children with such disabilities as Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, has long since expanded to cover such mental conditions as attention-deficit disorder. In 1990, 8 percent of the poor children on SSI had qualified because of mental, learning, or behavioral disorders; in 2009, more than half did. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/05/29/mislabeling_kids_as_adhd_investigate_federal_rules/
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  [Illustrating a contention of mine that liberals and progressives have been brainwashing our children while educating them in public schools comes this, from the Weekly Standard]: a recent study conducted by Stanford education professor William Damon, in which students were asked what American citizenship means to them, some of the responses include:
  "We just had that the other day in history. I forget what it was."
  "I mean, being American is not really special.... I don't find being an American citizen very important."
  "I don't know, I figure it really shouldn't mean anything."
  "I don't want to belong to any country. It just feels like you are obligated to this country. I don't like the whole thing of citizen.... I don't like that whole thing. It's like, citizen, no citizen; it doesn't make sense to me. It's like to be a good citizen.... I don't know, I don't want to be a citizen ... it's stupid to me."
  Earlier this week, in a lunch hosted by the Hoover Institution, Damon discussed his latest book, Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society.
• As it turns out, the problem is us—specifically educators today who lack that commitment to teaching about America, the emphasis being on so many other cultures as opposed to stressing what it means to be an American.   http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/forgetting-who-we-are_571537.html
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Fox News reports: Eyeing a potential 5-4 decision on President Obama's Affordable Care health care reforms, some Democratic lawmakers are trying to pressure Justice Clarence Thomas to sit out any health care case that may come before the Supreme Court. [A 4-4 decision would leave Obamacare as the law of the land.]
  Thomas reveals that his wife, Ginni Thomas, received a salary in 2010 from Liberty Central, a group that she helped found and which supports the repeal of the health care law. 

  "We knew that Justice Thomas' family had a financial stake in opposing health care reform. Now we know even more," Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. "It's pretty clear the justice has one option here: recusal."

  Defenders of Justice Thomas note that nothing in the ethics rules compels Thomas to report the sums his wife earned on his financial disclosures. They add that it's no secret where Ginni Thomas worked. 

  Supporters of Thomas also say the effort to remove the justice from the court is an attempt to extract rulings -- 4-4 decisions at the high court leave appellate court decisions in place -- that they may not otherwise get on a divided court. 

  "If there's anyone who needs to recuse themselves from the health care cases it's Elena Kagan," said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network. [Elena Kagen has been proven to have coordinated with the Obama administration on his Obamacare issues, as written about here recently.]

  Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/30/groups-target-thomas-wife-seek-ouster-high-court-rulings/#ixzz1NvmabUEV

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The UK Telegraph weighs in on Obama's 70th golf game: [In the UK], above all, it would be viewed as an act of extremely bad taste on a day when the nation remembers and mourns her war dead. I can’t imagine the PM even considering it, and I’m sure his advisers would be horrified at the idea. And if the prime minister ever did play golf on such a sacrosanct day he would be given a massive drubbing by the British press, and it would never be repeated. Contrast this with President Obama’s decision to play golf yesterday, Memorial Day, for the 70th time during his 28-month long presidency.

  The story has not been reported so far in a single US newspaper, but was made public by veteran White House correspondent Keith Koffler on his blog. Here’s Koffler’s report:

  The business of memorializing our war dead done, President Obama headed out to the Fort Belvoir golf course today, finding his way onto the links for the ninth weekend in a row.  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100090074/obamas-decision-to-play-golf-on-memorial-day-was-disrespectful-and-hardly-presidential/

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------