Lawmakers pushing for immigration reform say job losses and a sluggish economy should not deter legislation legalizing illegal immigrants.

A coalition of Democrats say fixing the immigration system can help American workers as well.

OBAMA, SEIU, ACORN Different names, same substance

Black, Hispanic, Asian, progressive and other Democrats unveiled the kind of immigration reform they want at a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday.

They are proposing that illegal immigrants register with the government, pay a $500 fine for each adult, learn English, pass background checks and meet other requirements. They then are eligible for a six-year visa and when that is done a green card.

In reference to the bad economy, “It certainly will confuse the debate a lot more, but at the end of the day what we have to understand is fixing this system will be good for

American workers,” said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, (ACORN) which is one of the major advocates for legalizing illegal immigrant workers.  They are also on the books for having spent more time in the White House with the Obama Administration than any other group.

Conservative lawmakers are not buying into the propaganda being pushed by the liberals, ACORN and other leftist advocacy groups.  “With 15 million Americans out of work, it’s hard to believe that anyone would give amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “Even the open-borders crowd agrees that illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers, particularly poor and disadvantaged citizens and legal immigrants. This is exactly why we need to oppose amnesty.”

The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee on Tuesday night accused the White House of withholding information on the Fort Hood attack.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) said administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman, raising “red flags” about what the White House was hiding.

“When they withhold information, you always start asking questions,” Hoekstra told Fox News. “That’s what raises red flags. What do they know that they don’t want us to know?”

Hoekstra linked President Barack Obama’s handling of Fort Hood to a chain of other GOP criticisms of the president, including the administration’s treatment of detainees and an investigation into possible CIA abuse.

“It is a political correctness that is making it unable for us to identify the real threat of homegrown terrorism,” he alleged.

Hoekstra warned that “we have similar Hasans” in the country. The Michigan Republican has called for his committee to investigate the incident. Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) has so far declined, preferring to wait for the conclusion of the joint FBI-Army investigation.

Please go here to read the on-line comments:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/67341-top-republican-says-white-house-hiding-info-on-ft-hood

WASHINGTON (AP) – An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

For example:

- A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.

- A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.

- A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.

There’s no evidence the White House sought to inflate job numbers in the report. But administration officials seized on the 30,000 figure as evidence that the stimulus program was on its way toward fulfilling the president’s promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

The reporting problem could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

The White House says it is aware there are problems. In an interview, Ed DeSeve, an Obama adviser helping to oversee the stimulus program, said agencies have been working with businesses that received the money to correct mistakes. Other errors discovered by the public also will be corrected, he said.

“If there’s an error that was made, let’s get it fixed,” DeSeve said.

For the rest of the story please go here:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091029/D9BKMVMG0.html

Face Forward Comments: (Sarcasim Alert)

Oh yes, I know it was just an honest mistake.  This president, who learned all about honesty in politics by working in Chicago, and reading the works of Saul Alinsky would never knowingly mislead anyone.  He would be especially disheartened to know that Fox (his best friends ever) would be disapointed in him.

The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama’s promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information.

“The White House has not been adequately transparent, particularly on how it makes use of new social media techniques, such as this example,” he said.

For the rest of the story please go here:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/16/obama-wh-collects-web-users-data/