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Immigration reform would have to wait for 2010. And then 2011. And then 2012. And then 2013. And...

In light of President Obama's decision to delay his much-anticipated edict on immigration until after November's elections, some critics are asking why the president and Democrats in Congress didn't pass immigration reform back when they had overwhelming majorities in both House and Senate. It's a good question and a good reason to revisit 2009 and 2010, when immigration reform could have become a reality.

As a presidential candidate, Obama promised to "put comprehensive immigration reform back on the nation's agenda during my first year in office." After victory in 2008, he had the clout to do so: sky-high approval ratings, 257 Democrats in the House and, for a while, a filibuster-proof majority of 60 Democrats in the Senate.

And yet, immediately after being sworn in, Obama began to send out subtle signals that immigration reform wasn't a top priority. Reform was a "serious concern," Obama told a group of regional reporters in March 2009, but not an urgent one. "We've started to talk to all the parties involved and both parties here in Washington about the prospects of taking legislative steps," Obama said. "But obviously we've got a lot on our plate right now."

Immigration activists pressed hard for Obama to act; after all, he had promised. As 2009 unfolded, Obama encouraged the activists to believe he was committed to introducing a comprehensive reform bill. After a White House meeting, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., told reporters Obama had promised a bill "in the very near future."

The next month, April 2009, the White House sent out word Obama was preparing to move. "Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May," the New York Times reported, "and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall."

Things seemed to be on track. Labor leaders representing some of the very organizations that had killed reform under George W. Bush announced their support.

Throughout June, Obama and top Democrats promised action. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said comprehensive immigration reform "is going to happen this session, but I want it this year, if at all possible." Obama told a Hispanic group he was "committed" to passing reform. After meeting with congressional leaders, he declared they all "want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now."

As the summer of 2009 went on, though, the talk slowed down as work on health care reform consumed the administration. Immigration fell out of the first tier, if it had ever really been there. By August, Obama put reform at the bottom of a long list.

"I've got a lot on my plate," he said, "and it's very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way where they don't all just crash at the same time. And what we've said is in the fall when we come back, we're going to complete health care reform. We still have to act on energy legislation that has passed the House We still have financial regulatory reform that has to get done That's a pretty big stack of bills."

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Why didn't Obama pass immigration reform when he had the chance?

Barack Obamas decision to put his immigration reform programme on hold is a bitter disappointment to millions of the undocumented across the US, Mexicans and countless Latinos and Irish alike. The forced deportations continue apace 368,644 last year and several thousand more will follow them between now and the mid-term elections in November, after which he has promised to re-engage with the issue.

Obamas problem is the same it has been throughout his two terms, congressional gridlock and a hardline, Tea Party-dominated Republican majority in the House which is deeply hostile to easing restrictions on immigration despite the reality that this may yet scupper its presidential hopes for 2016. After the 2012 presidential election, when Republicans received a paltry 27 per cent of the Hispanic vote they talked publicly of the need they needed to re-evaluate their hard line. But such a re-evaluation has been distinctly half-hearted, particularly in the House. Unlikely to dislodge its majority, Obama is desperate to maintain the three-seat Democratic majority in the Senate.

Frustrated by the defeat in the House of a bill agreed by the Senate last year to provide a path to citizenship for illegal migrants, the president had promised to push measures through by executive order that would allow five to ten million of them to work in the US, a measure certain to enrage Congress and certainly put that Senate majority in doubt. Some Democrats also warned that the move would jeopardise any future attempt to reach a bipartisan accord on moving forward on the issue. And, at stake then, would be more than immigration reform as a Republican Senate would also try to dismantle his landmark healthcare reform .

Vulnerable Democrats in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska, and North Carolina, have successfully pressed him to hold back on the immigration issue until after the elections. His retreat has a price, however, it has been met by howls of rage from the immigration lobby denouncing what it sees as another all-too-typical Obama retreat. The presidents pragmatic defence that it is a step back to get a better run at the issue later makes poor legacy material.

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Obamas retreat on immigration reform

The Alex Jones Show(VIDEO Commercial Free) Monday September 8 2014: Lew Rockwell
Russians Practice Nuking America -- Date: 09/08/2014 -- --SUBSCRIBE TO PRISONPLANET.TV-- http://www.prisonplanet.tv/ -Today - Alex breaks down recent attacks on the First Amendment and the...

By: Ron Gibson

Excerpt from:
The Alex Jones Show(VIDEO Commercial Free) Monday September 8 2014: Lew Rockwell - Video

Senators opened a historic debate Monday on whether to alter the First Amendment to give Congress the power to squelch free speech in the form of campaign spending, setting up a showdown vote later this week on the first alterations to the founding document in decades.

Democrats say the debate is a referendum on democracy and keeping the wealthy from distorting the system. Republicans counter its a debate about fundamental freedom of speech that all Americans should have.

For Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat driving the debate, its chiefly about two people Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who pour tens of millions of dollars into conservative and libertarian causes.

They are trying to buy America, at every level of government, Mr. Reid said.

Democrats are trying to undo several Supreme Court decisions that have ruled that spending money on issue ads is covered by free speech guarantees that neither Congress nor the states can ban.

Their legislation would give Congress or state legislatures the power to set reasonable limits on how much money political candidates could raise and spend in seeking election and power to prohibit outside groups from spending any money at all on ads.

That would apply particularly to corporations, whom Democrats say are increasingly being granted rights that should be reserved to individuals.

Their proposed amendment would specifically carve out an exemption for the corporations that own the press, which would be allowed to use its reporting to influence elections.

Republicans said Democrats were trying to silence political opponents rather than debate their ideas and accused Mr. Reid of forcing the issue to the floor in order to rally his political base ahead of Novembers elections.

This proposed amendment would be the biggest threat to free speech that Congress would have enacted since the Alien and Sedition Acts back in 1798, said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.

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Senate debates limiting campaign cash by altering First Amendment

Iowa State University submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against employees by two students who said their rights to free speech and due process were violated.

Paul Gerlich and Erin Furleigh, the president and vice president of ISU NORML an organization that advocates for the reform of marijuana laws filed a lawsuit against President Steven Leath and vice presidents Warren Madden and Tom Hill and Leesha Zimmerman, a program coordinator in the trademark office earlier this summer.

Furleigh and Gerlich said their First Amendment rights were violated when Iowa State did not allow them to use the mascot Cy on some T-shirt designs. According to the motion to dismiss, the two students said Iowa State created overbroad and vague trademark guidelines and then arbitrarily used them to reject some of NORMLs T-shirts.

The 13-page motion to dismiss from Iowa State, that was filed on Sept. 4, requested that the lawsuit against the four university employees be dropped for a number of reasons. According to the document, both Furleigh and Gerlich failed to provide facts that showed their First Amendment right to free speech was violated.

According to the document, the lawsuit should be dismissed because Furleigh and Gerlich did not allege sufficient facts to establish any constitutional right in the use of ISUs marks, that they lacked adequate alternative avenues for communicating their message without ISUs marks, that their proposed uses of the marks were fair uses, or that their proposed uses did not cause confusion.

According to the document, fair use allows others to use a trademark if it is used as something other than a trademark, in a descriptive nature or in good faith. The motion to dismiss said using the ISU trademark on the shirt was not claimed as fair use in the lawsuit.

Look for more coverage of this story on iowastatedaily.com.

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Iowa State asks court to dismiss First Amendment lawsuit