Women in Flight From Fanatical Churches

I always marvel at the human spirit when I hear about people who have fled oppressive fanatical churches. Imagine that moment when they finally realize that a spiritual leader they have trusted all their lives has betrayed them by creating a false world that has nothing to do with spirituality or knowledge, and everything to do with power and control. The most oppressed people are always the women and children who lead an existence of drudgery and powerlessness, sexual abuse or dysfunction. Their experiences bear little resemblance to normal family life in the outside world, which they usually realize only after leaving. Those who grow up in such churches are brainwashed into thinking everyone else in society is evil, so for years they may accept the justification that keeps them physically isolated, and become willing captives who might even view their jailors as saviors. For the more rebellious in the congregation, the church leaders intentionally block information and play emotional mind games to shame people into staying, or resort to blackmail with threats to withhold contact with loved ones, including children. To overcome such tactics you really need guts and a strong will, so to take flight from such a church is an inspiration. I wish all these women the best of luck.

Ruby Jessup grew up in the recently received custody of her ten children in Colorado City, Arizona, and escaped with them in January, helped by local law enforcement and a sister on the outside.
CNN Transcript

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 26- year-old Ruby Jessop has accomplished something very few women in Warren Jeffs' fundamentalist polygamist church have done. Late last week, she escaped.
(on camera): How old were you when you got married?
RUBY JESSOP, ESCAPED FROM FLDS: I'm 14.
TUCHMAN: How old were you when you had your first baby?
JESSOP: I was 16.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): And Ruby escaped with those babies, six of them. Babies she had with a husband that is still in the church. The children are now 10, 8, 7, 6, 4 and 2.

(on camera): Do you still believe that Warren Jeffs is the prophet?
JESSOP: No.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Warren Jeffs, the self-professed prophet of the FLDA since 2002 is now serving a life sentence in prison, but he continues to rule the religion with an iron fist from his cell. He made many of the laws here and forced countless young girls like Ruby Jessop into marriage.
Most never leave, but Ruby said she always dreamed of leaving. Hoping to get out of the twin towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hillsdale, Utah, where most FLDS members live.
But taking children away from a husband who is obedient to the church and Warren Jeffs is extraordinarily difficult. Just days ago, this was the emotional scene, Ruby receiving temporary custody of the children from a county court judge, these pictures showing Ruby being reunited with her children after this man, her husband, Haven Barlow, had allegedly kept them away from her for weeks.
JESSOP: Arizona law is very clear that one parent cannot keep another apparent from their children regardless of their religion.

TUCHMAN: Ruby then took her children and escaped into the outside world. Author and private investigator Sam Brower shot the photographs.
SAM BROWER, AUTHOR, "PROPHET'S PREY": The children were ecstatic to see their mother. They were all smiles. It was wonderful to see the looks on their faces when they saw their mom.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Ruby Jessop was raised by her father, mother, and two sister wives. She has 30 brothers and sisters. The man she was forced to marry is her second cousin. The man who presided over the wedding is Warren Jeffs. When she went to the altar, Ruby was in ninth grade. She never went back to school.
(voice-over): Ruby is filing for divorced from Haven Barlow, a man she said she never loved. We went to the house they shared to try to get her husband's response to all this.
. . . TUCHMAN (voice-over): Ruby and her children are currently living in her sister's house in Phoenix. She has no job, no high school diploma, and little knowledge of the outside world, but she said there's no turning back.

JESSOP: I want to raise my kids. I want to be free. Be able to make my own choices, to be happy.
TUCHMAN (on camera): Are you happy today?
JESSOP: I am. I am very happy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jenna Miscavige Hill, whose Uncle is a Leader of the Church of Scientology has written a book called Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Her parents were part of "Sea Org" which she described on ABC's The View as "the clergy of the church who sign billion-year contracts, sort of like a paramilitary organization." However, Jenna was separated from her parents for most of her young life, instead living in various communal camp situations where she worked at hard labor for the church for hours every day. According to Ms. Miscavige, Scientologists have no real god that they worship, which begs the question of whether the church should get tax-exempt status as a church, and why they display a big cross on top of their churches. When asked whether celebrities are treated differently than regular members, she gave an emphatic yes, saying the elite members such as Tom Cruise or Kirstie Alley wouldn't be harassed for money or favors the way ordinary members are, and their children wouldn't be expected to work at one of the camps the way she was raised. As she described it to Piers Morgan, celebraties have "willful ignorance" about what is really going on, and because they attend the fancier churches they just don't see how other members are treated. But Jenna does blame them for failing to check the internet about the realities of Scientology and Dianetics.

Jenna's parents eventually left Sea Org, but Jenna chose to stay behind, which she told Piers Morgan was due to years of brainwashing. On The View, she explained that in 2005 she could "no longer look away from the abuse, the mental, the physical, the verbal" and "realized I just wasn't helping anyone." If she had stayed with Sea Org, she wouldn't have been allowed to have children, but happily, she and her husband escaped together and they now have two children away from the world of Scientology. And to help others with the same background Jenna started a website called Ex-Scientology Kids

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And last but certainly not least, two high-profile women have fled the notorious Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, which is famous for loudly picketing any gathering they view as connected to homosexuality or gay life, even military funerals. Here are some of their craziest protests. They even threatened to come to Newtown and protest at the funerals of the dead children, but thankfully stayed away. It's really hard to understand what they hope to achieve by picketing all over the country holding signs that say "God Hates You." Nothing is more disturbing than seeing the innocent children of Westboro waving signs in the air with the word "F*g" on them as their parents have instructed them, but Leader Fred Phelps believes in all hands on deck when trying to shame the rest of the world. So Pastor Phelps must be in total shock that two of his granddaughters left the Westboro fold this week: Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister Grace Phelps.

From Washington Post

The Westboro Baptist Church may be the most controversial religious group in the country. By some accounts, it’s not a religious group at all -- the Southern Poverty Law Center has called it “the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America,” and a White House petition urging the government to label it as such earned more than 330,000 signatures in January.
For several years, Phelps-Roper was one of the WBC’s loudest and most believable defenders. By age 25, she led social media efforts for the church, gave hundreds of media interviews and tweeted regular Bible verses and inspirational quotes to an audience of more than 10,000. She briefly coordinated WBC protests at funerals and disaster sites, the church’s most reviled activity.
But something changed, Phelps-Roper told journalist Jeff Chu, when a Jewish friend she met online challenged the WBC’s teaching on homosexuality. Didn’t Jesus say to “let he who is without sin cast the first stone?,” he asked.
And so Phelps-Roper -- who once told the Kansas City Star the church was the only place she’d seen “people who serve God in truth” -- finally began to doubt.

To see just how confused the Phelps sisters may be as they move into the real world, watch the video below. There are several displays of pure cognitive dissonance in which the girls express both hate and love of the the people targeted by their church's hatred. While picketing the funeral of a Muslim and burning a Koran (which was 'doing the right thing,' according to Megan), the younger sister, Grace, also took a photograph of "an adorable Muslim boy," but she sees no contradiction because as Grace tells an incredulous journalist: "I didn't set the bounds of his habitation. I can't change that. And saying 'that's a cute picture' doesn't change that." You have to admire the complicated, yet innocent, use of church-speak. Megan rails about how horrible "those little Muslims" are while spewing one offensive epithet after another. She also seems to have no idea that the god of the Muslims was the same god of the Jews and Christians, and she speaks of her own "jealous and vengeful God" as if Jesus had never said "turn the other cheek." So much for her religious education, which up till now centered around targeting homosexuals and yelling at them from the side of the road.

Clearly these girls will have to relearn many things in order to function in society.


David Chu, a writer on gay issues for Medium.com, got to know Megan while interviewing her about Westboro, and now he's written the definitive article about her sudden change, her light on the Road to Damascus, so to speak.

From Medium.com

To some, this story might seem simple—even overly so. But we all have moments of epiphany, when things that are plate-glass clear to others but opaque to us suddenly become apparent. This was, for Megan, one of those moments, and this window led to another and another and another. Over the subsequent weeks and months, “I tried to put it aside. I decided I wasn’t going to hold that sign, ‘Death Penalty for F*gs.’” (She had, for the most part, preferred the gentler, much less offensive “Mourn for Your Sins” or “God Hates Your Idols” anyway.)

What “seemed like a small thing at the time,” she says, snowballed. She started to question another Westboro sign, “F*gs can’t repent.” “It seemed misleading and dishonest. Anybody can repent if God gives them repentance, according to the church. But this one thing—it gives the impression that homosexuality is an unforgivable sin,” she says. “It didn’t make sense. It seemed a wrong message for us to be sending. It’s like saying, ‘You’re doomed! Bye!’ and gives no hope for salvation.”

. . . Once a constant Tweeter, she hasn’t posted anything online since October. “I don’t know what I believe, so I don’t know what to say,” she explains. “I haven’t been ready to talk about any of this.” She’s only doing so now, and briefly, because, she says, “I was so proactive before and vocal about the church. My name means something now to others that it doesn’t mean to me. I want people to know that it’s not now how it was.”

It's a huge turnaround for the young woman who was called the "Heir to Hate" by the Kansas City Star. But she is not the first family member to leave the fold, nor will she be the last.

Fred Phelps . . . at 82 has grown increasingly removed from the church’s everyday business. His daughter, fire-and-brimstone figurehead Shirley Phelps-Roper, handles operations. But even she’s begun delegating more to others, with much of the work falling to Megan, her oldest daughter and the one who, more than any of her brothers, sisters or cousins, has been entrusted with the most responsibility.
As Shirley puts it, “She was always kind of my right-hand man.”
Megan’s importance to the movement stems also from the fact that for the past decade, the church’s future has been walking away at an alarming rate.

Since 2004, 20 members have left the Westboro Baptist Church, three-fourths of them in their teens or 20s. The defections have left a sizable dent in the group’s third generation, which, for a church that has relied almost exclusively upon family to populate its congregation, is not an insignificant development. There are those on both sides of the family who would like to guide Megan’s future.
“There’s still an element of hope,” says Megan’s uncle, Nate Phelps, who left the church in 1976 at the age of 18 and now travels the country speaking out against its practices, “that someone can get through to her.”

Megan has watched with unease as some of those closest to her have defected and then been cut off completely from the family. The older brother who left in the middle of the night the day before her high school graduation. The cousin and best friend who decided three years ago that the church’s practices had grown too extreme. Each departure forcing her to confront the same frightening possibility: That she, too, could succumb to the same temptations.

NBC's The Today Show did an interview with a cousin of the Phelps sisters, Libby Phelps Alvarez, who said that while she misses her family, leaving the church has brought her new joy in life, such as her recent marriage. She wishes that others in the church would realize that the world is not full of evil people.

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In a Press Release Phelps-Roper states:

Until very recently, this is what I lived, breathed, studied, believed, preached – loudly, daily, and for nearly 27 years.
I never thought it would change. I never wanted it to.
Then suddenly: it did.
And I left.
Where do you go from there?
I don't know, exactly. My sister Grace is with me, though. We’re trying to figure it out together.
There are some things we do know.
We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.
We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.
We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.
Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates F*gs.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.
Megan and Grace

Gabby Giffords at Senate Gun Control Hearing

In a powerful and poignant moment, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords opened the Senate Hearing on Gun Control with a simple but powerful message. Accompanied by her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, the pair made passionate pleas for the government to do something to stem gun violence. Giffords was shot through the head by Jared Loughner and suffered brain damage.



Giffords' Actual Notes for Today's Hearing



Later Giffords' husband Mark Kelly had this reply to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who believes background checks aren't necessary

The Tuscon shooter was an admitted drug user. He was rejected from the U.S. Army because of his drug use. He was clearly mentally ill. And when he purchased that gun in November, his plan was to assassinate my wife and commit mass murder at that Safeway in Tucson. He was a criminal. Because of his drug use, and because of what he was planning on doing. But because of these gaps in the mental health system, in this case, those 121,000 records, I admit did not include a record on him. But it could have.

And if it did, he would have failed that background check. he would have likely gone to a gun show, or a private seller, and avoided that background check. But if we close that gun show loophole, if we require private sellers to complete a background check, and we get those 121,000 records and others into the systems, we will prevent gun crime. That is an absolute truth. It would have happened in Tucson. My wife would not have been sitting here today if we had stronger background checks.

Votes Still Uncounted in Arizona as Arpaio Claims Victory

Good Grief - hundreds of thousands of votes are still uncounted in Arizona, which could affect all the election results including that of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the crazy birther. Reason: Most of the uncounted votes are from Latino voters who were the target of voter suppression techniques, such as forcing them to vote with provisional ballots that have to be checked individually. The ACLU is on the scene, and Harry Reid has chimed in on the situation. Stay tuned because this is far from over.


From Addicting Information

Nearly a third of votes cast in Arizona remained uncounted the day after the election. Most of them were probably cast by Latinos, organized and newly registered by multiple civil rights groups in the state to combat candidates like the notorious Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

On Thursday, the Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, announced the figures: 631,274 early and provisional ballots remained uncounted out of a total of 1.8 million votes. At least 350,000 of them are from Maricopa County (Phoenix metropolitan area), where Joe Arpaio has already claimed victory. Activist Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, told the Huffington Post, “We’re not conceding anything until every vote is counted. They’re just going to act like, ‘Oh, the election’s over, Arpaio wins.’ Hell no.”



Three Congressional races also remain in limbo. Although Democrat Rich Carmona originally conceded the Senate seat to Jeff Flake on election night, he changed his mind after hearing the unprecedented number of uncounted votes. On Friday, he sent this message to supporters: “We will take every necessary step to make sure all of our supporters’ ballots are counted.” Two U.S. House races are also too close to call until the remainder of the votes are tallied.

Protestors from a coalition of rights groups are maintaining a continuous presence outside of the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center. In a letter to the county recorder, Helen Purcell, the American Civil Liberties wrote that the “public confidence in the voting process” was at risk.

The situation has attracted attention all across the nation. Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid weighed in, issuing a statement of his concern: “All of the votes in Arizona must be counted promptly, accurately and equally. The uncounted votes in Maricopa County alone represent a major portion of the total votes cast in Arizona on Tuesday.” He also pointed out that this problem occurs just as the Supreme Court is ready to consider whether the voter protections in 1965′s Voter Rights Act should be scaled back. Specifically, the justices are being asked to rule that the part that prevents states from disenfranchising minorities is no longer relevant.

Immigration Ruling "Big Win" for Obama, Scalia & AZ - Not So Much

Editor Tom Goldstein of the SCOTUS Blog calls the Immigration Ruling a "Big Win" for Obama Administration in discussion with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.

I think the Administration has to be very happy with the decision in the Arizona immigration case. They clearly won with respect to three of the four provisions of the very tough Arizona immigration law and it was basically a tie on the fourth. They didn't lose. The Supreme Court saying that on the ask for your papers provision, they didn't know enough about how the statute would be applied to know whether it was constitutional or not and they would have to wait to decide that question. They made pretty clear that you could ask for immigration papers if you had a reasonable cause if you weren't going to hold people for too long just to check their immigration status. So it does uphold that principle which is very important to a lot of Conservatives who favor the law that you can ask about the status but beyond that, it was a big win for the Obama Administration.

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Wall Street Journal Law Blog also has a great interview with Professor Peter Spiro of Temple University,an expert on immigration law, talking about the Arizona Immigration Law Ruling:

Hi, Peter. Thanks for taking the time. After reading over the opinion, what’s your immediate takeaway?

Well, it’s a split decision in that both sides got a bit of what they wanted. But in my view, it’s really only nominally a split decision. I think it’s mostly a victory for opponents of the law.

...*snip*...

Remind us again what 2(B) enabled the federal government to do, if you would.

Sure. That portion allows state authorities to ask someone to show his or her immigration papers if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person might be here illegally.

But 2(B) really doesn’t have any teeth, at least not in the way other provisions of the law do. 2(B) allows state officials to call [the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] and say ‘hey, we think someone’s here illegally.’ But ICE doesn’t necessarily have to do anything in response to the state’s call.

And that’s part of why I really think this is mostly a win for the law’s opponents. Two of the three provisions that were struck down outright did have teeth — they allowed the state to put an alien in jail.

And 2(B) could be struck down later?

Right. The court ruled on the facial challenge to the law. But it’s kicking back to the lower courts the issue of whether the law is constitutional in the ways in which it gets applied. For now, we’ll have to allow those to work their way through the court system

...*snip*...

Justice Antonin Scalia, one of three dissenting justices, read a fairly scathing statement from the bench. What did you make of this?

It struck me as so much crying in the wilderness, to be honest. His view is pretty jurisprudentially extreme, and I think it could likely be the last time that Scalia gets to weigh on in immigration issues during his court tenure.

But I think a broad takeaway here is that on a court divided such as this one is, it’s Justice Kennedy who calls the shots.

The Supremes Rule on Immigration, Juvenile Parole, and Montana Corporations

Wow - news is still coming in after an intense morning.
You can read my collection of Pre-Ruling Tweets at Snark Amendment

No Health Care Ruling today ~ we must wait till Thursday. *sigh*

Today they ruled on three things:

1. Juveniles cannot be given life in prison without parole. Good all around.

2. The Court refused to hear an appeal from the State of Montana about corporations buying elections, therefore they upheld their previous Citizen's United decision. That's good for Mitt Romney, because as he says "corporations are people, my friends." But the decision will only get the Democratic base more fired up.

3. The biggest deal today - they threw out most of Arizona's state immigration law, except for the right to check someone's papers under "reasonable suspicion." Sheriff Joe Arpaio will be so happy about that, but it's also a win for the Obama Administration because Arizona lost everything else.

Angry scalia dissent to kennedy opinion on az sb 1070. Scalia makes harsh attack on obama dream act order at #scotus.
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) June 25, 2012

Read Scalia's Dissenting Opinion on Arizona Here (PDF)

Washington Post Story:

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected much of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, but upheld other provisions, giving a partial victory to the Obama administration.
The court ruled that Arizona cannot make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to carry identification that says whether they are in the United States legally; cannot make it a crime for undocumented immigrations to apply for a job; and cannot arrest someone based solely on the suspicion that the person is in this country illegally.
However, the court let stand the part of the law that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain, if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is unlawfully in the United States. Even there, though, the justices said the provision could be subject to additional legal challenges.

CNN ~ Court to Arizona: You Went Too Far

"The national government has significant power to regulate immigration," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion, adding that "Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the state may not pursue policies that undermined federal law."
Provisions struck down included:
-- Authorizing police to arrest immigrants without warrant where "probable cause" exists that they committed any public offense making them removable from the country.
-- Making it a state crime for "unauthorized immigrants" to fail to carry registration papers and other government identification.
-- Forbidding those not authorized for employment in the United States to apply, solicit or perform work. That would include immigrants standing in a parking lot who "gesture or nod" their willingness to be employed.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the minority, argued the court's ruling encroached on Arizona's sovereign powers.
"If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign state," Scalia wrote in the dissent backed by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

About the Montana ruling, Via UPI:

The challengers to the Montana law, a small group of non-profits and corporations, told the U.S. Supreme Court in their petition that the riot of independent spending following Citizens United is irrelevant.
The Supreme Court majority said there was little difference between the struck-down federal law and the Montana law.
"In Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, this court struck down a similar federal law, holding that 'political speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because its source is a corporation ...,'" the Supreme Court majority said in a per curiam, or unsigned, opinion, Monday. "The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law. There can be no serious doubt that it does."
Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by the court's three other liberals, dissented.

No More Juveniles Serving Life Without Parole

The high court on Monday threw out Americans' ability to send children to prison for the rest of their lives with no chance of ever getting out. The 5-4 decision is in line with others the court has made, including ruling out the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole for young people whose crimes did not involve killing.
The decision came in the robbery and murder cases of Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson, who were 14 when they were convicted.

PBS ~ Obama Created Mitt Romney's Worst Day Ever

This comes via eXtina on Daily Kos... and I'm glad she brought it to light because while my husband loves PBS, I'm an MSNBC addict. So I often miss these little political gems.

Mark Shields of PBS said that Friday was  "The Worst Day of Mitt Romney's Life" because President Obama usurped him completely with his announcement about immigration.

That makes me smile. :)  Shields said:

But, very bluntly, this is the worst day of Mitt Romney's life, as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Being president means that you are at a negative end when there's bad job numbers. But being president when you can take an affirmative action that makes your opponent squirm, even though it is an action that is totally consistent with where you have been in a policy sense -- and this for Mitt Romney is a character issue, because in 2008, 2012, he ran to the hard right of John McCain, of Rudy Giuliani, of Mike Huckabee there 2008, and of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry in 2012 on the immigration.

He embraced the Arizona -- controversial Arizona state law. He said he would veto the DREAM Act. And they're looking at the fastest growing constituency in the country. And he really is scrambling now to get back.

What does Mitt Romney do? Does he reject the president's action? Does he promise to repeal it? Does he promise to honor it? Does he support legal challenges against it? He -- I thought he was terribly slow off the mark today. His answer was equivocal.
It reminded you of the 3:00 in the morning phone call. What does a president do? Is he going to have to poll his consultants when that happens? I just think this is really dangerous, dangerous territory. And the White House effectively changed the entire terms of the debate and the narrative, where they have been on the defensive and losing, and put Romney I think squarely on the defensive, where he is squirming.

Mark Gerson of Washington Post:

Romney's promise to veto the Dream Act is a serious vulnerability from this campaign. The President drove a truck through that vulnerability today. He pre-empted Marco Rubio, whose legislation he's proposing on this topic.
This smacks a little bit of the "Chicago Way" to promise a benefit to a major target group in these key states five months before an election. I think that's a risk. There's also a procedural risk that the Congress is going to be concerned about. . . . the President went around the normal procedures. . . . but it is primarily a vindication of the power of incumbancy to change the dialogue.

And on Sunday Romney is going to be interviewed on CBS by Bob Schieffer, and while we can't expect hardball questions - eXtina calls Schieffer "that marshmallow" because he is always so pro-Republican - Romney doesn't need much help to trip over his own tongue and get mired in controversy once again. Stay tuned.

Watch Shields, Gerson on the Politics of Immigration, Watergate on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

President Halts Deportation While Republican Heads Explode

Wonderful Day!!!

On Friday afternoon, Obama announced an executive decision that will halt the deportation of "Dreamers" - illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children and who are now working or in school. He spoke in the White House Rose Garden about the fact that Congress and the Republicans have stalled out on the "Dream Act" that would have granted these young people a path to citizenship.

From CNN:

Those who might benefit from the change expressed joy and relief, with celebratory demonstrations forming outside the White House and elsewhere.

Pedro Ramirez, a student who has campaigned for such a move, said he was "definitely speechless," then added: "It's great news."

In a Rose Garden address Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama said the changes caused by his executive order will make immigration policy "more fair, more efficient and more just."

"This is not amnesty. This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It's not a permanent fix," Obama said to take on conservative criticism of the step. "This is a temporary stopgap measure."

Noting children of illegal immigrants "study in our schools, play in our neighborhoods, befriend our kids, pledge allegiance to our flag," Obama said, "it makes no sense to expel talented young people who are, for all intents and purposes, Americans."

This is the President at his finest playing multi-dimensional chess. The Latinos are jubilant that they can keep their jobs and finish their education; their families now have more hope than ever and a reason to stay politically active; the Democrats are thrilled that Obama is fired up about something that will also shore up the Latino vote; and Republican heads began to explode before he even finished his speech.

Chief Joe Arpaio, notorious birther, was sitting there on CNN even before the President began his speech, muttering to Wolf Blitzer that it wouldn't make his job any easier in Arizona and moaning "Why did he (Obama) have to go and do this? Why didn't he wait on the Surpreme Court?" referring to the fact that the Surpreme Court is about to rule as early as next week on Arizona's controversial law Senate Bill 1070 which would allow Arizona to have an "illegals round-up."

From USA Today

"The governor is optimistic that the heart of SB 1070 will be upheld and implemented," (Jan) Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said. "The governor thought this was an appropriate time to revisit the issue and make sure Arizona law enforcement is as prepared as possible for partial or full implementation of the law."
SB 1070, among other things, makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires an officer engaged in a lawful stop, detention or arrest to, when practical, ask about a person's legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally.
Federal courts halted that part and four other key parts of the law from being enforced. Brewer appealed to the Supreme Court to allow the entire law to go into effect.

Take that, Jan Brewer! :) Call off the police!

And take that, Mitt Romney - now Grandma won't have to "deport herself" back to Mexico, Honduras, or Cuba, as he talked about during the January Republican Debates. That was his far-right position pandering to the extremists, and it never sounded humane or convincing coming from Romney. Romney's etch-a-sketch will be shaking weekend as he tries to get back to the center and earn some goodwill from the 20% of Latinos who don't already see Obama as a better candidate.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, often mentioned as a possible VP for Romney, had some praise for Obama's move, but noted that it was only a stop-gap measure in effect for the next two years. He can hardly attack it too strongly or risk the censure of his own Latino constituents.

“Today’s announcement will be welcome news for many of these kids desperate for an answer, but it is a short-term answer to a long term problem. And by once again ignoring the Constitution and going around Congress, this short-term policy will make it harder to find a balanced and responsible long-term one.”

This actually puts Romney and Rubio on the outs with the Immigration Hawks like Brewer and Arpaio, along with many other Tea Party and Birther types.
From Washington Post - Republicans Struggle to Respond

The problem with that strategy is members of Congress like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).
King, one of the most outspoken Republicans on the issue of border security and illegal immigration, is now saying he will sue the Obama administration over the policy. While he agrees with Romney and Rubio that this raises issues of congressional prerogatives, he’s taking it a big step further.
“I’m prepared to bring a suit and seek a court order to stop implementation of this policy,” King said on Mike Huckabee’s radio show.
Other immigration hawks in the GOP were also quick to decry the decision.
“It rewards law-breaking,” said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). “And it’s deeply unfair to those who came to this country legally.”
The fact is that there are all manner of conservative members of Congress who are more than happy to prosecute this issue in the coming hours and days — even as Romney would rather not.

Need more proof that Republican heads are 'splodin'?

How about this - a rude reporter for the conservative website Daily Caller broke Press Corp etiquette by shouting out President Obama as he was speaking. The President was steaming mad and told him off, then walked away at the end without answering any questions. Hopefully that jerk will never darken the White House Rose Garden again, and I noticed by the end of the speech that he seemed to have an entourage of Secret Service Agents standing right behind him. So long, guy.

Just fun times all around for political watchers and especially Democrats.

Via Daily Kos

just know that Neil Munro, a reporter for the right-wag Daily Caller, attempted to interrupt President Obama while he was making an announcement on his new immigration policy this afternoon. The President wasn't having any of it, smacking down Munro and then telling him, "The next time I prefer you let me finish my statements before you ask a question."

Birther's Remorse: Coffman Warns Others to Drop It

It's really quite funny when Republicans try to shift so far to the right extreme that they fall off a limb. That recently happened to Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado). He said he didn't believe President Obama was really born in the United States, and now he is eating crow for breakfast. You have to laugh - it's beyond overdue for this to happen. The press should have called out every one of these birthers long ago, and I guess they tried. But now we've got Republicans themselves waking up like a drunk with a hangover saying "I said what? Oh, I didn't mean it . . . let's just move along . . ."

TPM: Coffman on his Birther Rant

“If I had to do it over again I think I would have said, ‘Let’s move from this birther question, the president was born in the United States, period,’” Coffman said in an interview with local station K-HOW. “‘Let’s just move on and let’s focus on the issues that are going to win this election. And secondly, let’s not ascribe this to those who oppose us that they’re any less Americans than we are.’”
A week earlier, Coffman had said at a fundraiser: “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” He quickly issued a press release walking it back, but shunned follow-up questions on the incident. On Tuesday, he repeated the same statement, “I misspoke and I apologize,” five times to a television crew that approached him after an event, offering no further explanation.

Coffman told K-HOW on Thursday that he regretted suggesting the president was anything other than American, and repeatedly emphasized that suggesting as much was also bad optics. The host asked Coffman whether he was “speaking from the heart” when he made his initial incendiary remarks and simply recanted “for political reasons.”

It was only a few days ago that Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett had to take to the airwaves to apologize for embarrassing his state after he harrassed the State by threatening to drop Obama from the November ballot - can you imagine? A sitting President not allowed on a state ballot just because some jerks (or racists) feel he is illegitimate? Luckily someone had a little talk with this nutcase.

From Huff Post:

"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn't my intent," Bennett said Tuesday during an interview with radio station KTAR, adding that he was just trying to "help as many Arizonians as I can" by looking into their concerns over the document.

Bennett also walked back his threat to keep Obama off Arizona's ballot this fall.
"He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has," Bennett said.
However, when pressed by the radio hosts on whether he was pandering to birther conspiracy theorists who believe the president was born outside the United States, Bennett pushed back.

"What is so sacred or untouchable about this question that you can't even ask the question?" he said, after insisting that he himself does not subscribe to the fraudulent birth certificate theories.

In the radio interview he says he wasn't trying to draw attention, and was just doing his "quiet little job." Yeah - how about doing it with some common sense? Do these people just not understand that Obama's mother was an American? And that Hawaii is a state of the union? Hello?

The birther movement is all about making President Obama seem alien, foreign, exotic, and just plain "un-American." They say "African" and "Kenyan" with comtempt, possibly forgetting that there are plenty of white Africans and Kenyans, and even some with American parents. Are they making outrageous statements just to get votes from Tea Partiers, or so some of them really believe this nonsense? Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is the Energizer Bunny of Birthers. No amount of verification from Hawaii will ever be enough for him to believe that President Obama was born there. He recently dispatched a "cold case" officer to go to Hawaii seeking more evidence, using taxpayer money to continue his own version of Captain Ahab and the Great Whale: Arpaio Not Giving Up on Birther Investigation

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it will take more than a letter verifying the President's birth certificate for him to call off his criminal investigation. “I'm trying to determine if any fraud occurred and who’s responsible,” said the Sheriff. The Sheriff's cold case posse has been investigating the President's birth certificate since August and is currently following up on leads in Hawaii. The Sheriff said the verification that the secretary of state received from the Hawaii registrar does nothing to change that.

That's right - logic and reason are not going to stop Sheriff Joe! He keeps on going and going and going . . .

Arizona's Birther Bennett Wants Obama Off Ballot

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett says he just isn't sure that Barack Obama should be on the presidential ballot this fall. Say WHAT???

This buffoon takes being a "birther" to a whole new level. The sane and rational people of Arizona need to take back their state, pronto, and quit looking to bogus "leaders" like Crazy Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The Low-Low-Down from Talking Points Memo

Bennett, the state’s No. 2 elected official just below Gov. Jan Brewer (R), said his investigation isn’t personal. He said the reason he started looking into it is because he got more than 1,200 emails asking him to do so after Arpaio’s investigation came out.
“I’m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii — or at least I hope he was,” Bennett said on the show. “But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.”
. . . On Thursday, Bennett said he sent his request to Hawaii officials eight weeks ago but has yet to get the proof he was hoping for. He said he didn’t want another copy of the birth certificate. He wants Hawaii to give him what he described as “a verification in lieu of a certified copy of a birth certificate.”
In the weeks since then, Bennett said, Hawaii officials have forced him to provide proof that he is who he says he is. They asked him to send them copies of the Arizona laws that prove the secretary of state really is the person in charge of handling the ballots. Admittedly, Bennett said they told him they were “tired of all the requests.” But he is continuing anyway.