CAINTV.COM 5 Hours Ago Politics: Do Paula Deen's words justify ruining her life? by  Dan Calabrese By DAN CALABRESE - Speech code. I don't really know a lot about Paula Deen, and whoever/whatever she is seems sort of beside the point. I guess she's an older southern belle with a cooking show, and for some reason she found herself getting deposed as part of a lawsuit - facing the question of whether she had ever used the N-word. Why yes, said the 66-year-old southerner. It's been a while, but yes. Paula obviously doesn't know the rules of modern American culture.  Her life is now over . The Food Network said Friday it's dumping Paula Deen, barely an hour after the celebrity cook posted the first of two videotaped apologies online begging forgiveness from fans and critics troubled by her admission to having used racial slurs in the past. The 66-year-old Savannah kitchen celebrity has been swamped in controversy since court documents filed this week revealed Deen ...

 COMMENTARY MAGAZINE 5 Hours Ago Putin Is Cleaning Obama's Clock by  Peter Wehner Barack Obama's "reset" with Russia is really going well, don't you think? Russia is defying America by granting Edward Snowden, who exposed some of the most classified secrets of our government, safe haven as he continues to elude capture. As Reuters  reports: Washington was stung by Russian defiance… The White House said it expected the Russian government to send Snowden back to the United States and lodged 'strong objections' to Hong Kong and China for letting him go. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to India that it would be "deeply troubling" if Moscow defied the United States over Snowden, and said the fugitive "places himself above the law, having betrayed his country". But the Russian government ignored the appeal and President Vladimir Putin's press secretary denied any knowledge of Snowden's movements. Asked if Snowde...

 BREITBART.COM 4 Hours Ago CBO Calculation Error Explodes Immigration Surplus Claim by  Wynton Hall by  Wynton Hall 24 Jun 2013, 12:14 PM PDT post a comment The CBO's projections are based on the assumption that immigrants will pay Social Security taxes for the first 10 years and receive no benefits. But as scholar Paul Gregory points out  in  Investor's Business Daily , the CBO incorrectly "counts each year's Social Security contributions by immigrants in the positive column without making provisions for future benefits, which will be about twice what the immigrants contributed over the long term." Gregory also notes the immigration bill's vague eligibility language is so hazy that the CBO had to provide four possible interpretations of it. He says "administrative agencies will use the most generous interpretation of eligibility," which will further expand deficits, not surpluses. The CBO also failed to report on the bill's impact on the states ...

 BLOG.CHRON.COM 4 Hours Ago Cornyn, Cruz lead conservative push against Gang of 8-backed border security 'surge' The Gang of Eight-backed border security amendment proposed by Republican senators was supposed to bolster GOP support for comprehensive immigration reform — but it has done absolutely nothing to change the minds of Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. The pair of Texas Republicans today blasted the amendment proposed by Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota and reasserted their opposition to the Gang of Eight proposal. The Corker-Hoeven amendment would require an additional 10,000 border control troops on the ground, 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and create a squadron of unmanned aerial drones to aid patrol. The price tag of the measure, dubbed a "border security surge" by its backers, is a whopping $50 billion. Cornyn said the new amendment "does nothing more than throw money at the problem." ...

 WEASELZIPPERS.US 4 Hours Ago Poll Finds Obama's Approval Rating Plummeting 16 Points In . . . Massachusetts? Glitch in the matrix? Via  Washington Examiner : The latest poll from Suffolk University shows Democratic Rep. Ed Markey leading Republican Gabriel Gomez 52%-42% in the special Senate election held tomorrow. That puts it roughly in the midpoint of the June special election polls as aggregated in realclearpolitics.com . So it's not a very interesting result, given that we'll know the actual election results in less than 48 hours. But there is one interesting thing in the poll. Suffolk asks Massachusetts voters to rate Obama's performance and to say whether they have favorable or unfavorable feelings about Barack Obama. As is often the case, his fav/unfav numbers are somewhat more positive than his job approval. But in both cases his numbers in Suffolk's Massachusetts special Senate election voters have been plummeting. [...] These are big d...

 THENEWAMERICAN.COM 3 Hours Ago Obama Comment on Ireland's "Segregated" Schools Still Rankles in U.S., U.K. by  Jack Kenny One week after President Barack Obama made his controversial remarks about religiously "segregated schools" in Northern Ireland, the comments continue to draw sharp rebukes on both sides of the Atlantic. "His call for an end to separate Protestant and Catholic educational institutions does not generate widespread public approval," wrote former North Carolina congressional candidate Bill Randall in  Sunday's Washington Times . " Obama's comments would have caused less consternation if he'd been looking in his own American back yard and made a conscious effort to mend the divisions he and his administration have caused," Randall wrote. Obama, while in Northern Ireland for the G-8 economic summit last week, made the comment during what the White House billed a  "Town Hall"  meeting with "the youth ...

 CIS.ORG 3 Hours Ago Schumer-Corker-Hoeven Overstay Provisions Overstated by  Jessica Vaughan Among the faux enforcement improvements being hyped by supporters of the deceptive Schumer-Corker-Hoeven substitute amendment to the Gang of Eight bill is a new section titled "Removal of Nonimmigrants Who Overstay Their Visas". Not exactly. The new provision (Section 1201) says that no later than six months after the enactment of the bill, the DHS Secretary shall begin dealing with those foreign visitors who arrived after the bill's enactment and who overstayed their temporary visa by at least six months. The Secretary is required to deal with at least 90 percent of the overstayers. Here are the Secretary's choices: Initiate removal proceedings; Confirm that the alien is eligible for some form of relief; or Close the case. Hmm, I wonder, what Secretary Napolitano would do? The amendment also stipulates that the secretary must report to Congress every six months with an estim...

 HOTAIR.COM 4 Hours Ago White House "trying to rein in" John Kerry? by  Erika Johnsen posted at 4:01 pm on June 24, 2013 by Erika Johnsen Are the one-man diplomatic stylings of newly-appointed Secretary of State John Kerry perhaps getting a little too grandiose, even for the White House's liking? So reports the Associated Press, and it is certainly true that, in just the first four months of his tenure, John Kerry has made for himself a schedule that keeps him all kinds of busy traveling hither and yon. Kerry's long-term ambitions for the top job at State were hardly ever a secret, and it sounds like he might be  taking himself just a bit too seriously  in some White House officials' estimation: Since succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton as America's top diplomat, Kerry has issued several as yet undelivered — and perhaps undeliverable — pledges to allies and rivals alike, proving a source of concern for Obama's policy team. It is trying to rein in Kerry somew...

 NATIONAL REVIEW 3 Hours Ago Immigration Law Enforcement Officers Oppose Corker-Hoeven by  Andrew Stiles The Senate will vote shortly on whether to end debate on the Corker-Hoeven amendment, which is actually a revised version of the full 1,200-page immigration-reform bill. Proponents argue that the bill now includes some of the toughest border-security measures in the history of borders: 20,000 new border patrol agents, 700 miles of new fencing, and billions of dollars worth of surveillance drones and infrared sensores. (Of course, they said the same thing before those new measures were added.)  However, the unions representing nearly 20,000 immigration law-enforcement officers continue to have serious problems with the bill, and its  interior  enforcement provisions in particular. Chris Crane, president of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council, and Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration...

 CBO.GOV 2 Hours Ago Senate Amendment 1183 to S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act Posted on the website of the Committee on the Judiciary on June 21, 2013 Previous Estimate for the Committee-Approved Bill CBO and JCT previously analyzed S. 744, as reported by the Judiciary Committee on May 28, 2013 (with changes incorporated into a "star print" on June 6, 2013). In the cost estimate transmitted on June 18, 2013, CBO and JCT estimated that enacting the committee-approved version of S. 744 would have effects on direct spending and revenues that would reduce budget deficits by $197 billion over the 2014-2023 period and by about $700 billion over the 2024-2033 period. In addition, that version of the bill would lead to discretionary costs for immigration-related activities of $22 billion over the 2014-2023 period and $20 billion to $25 billion over the 2024-2033 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. Overall Impac...