"... It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."....I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Researchers, more than a decade ago, found that more fatal heart attacks occur on Christmas Day than any other day of the year. The 2nd busiest day is December 26th and the 3rd busiest is January 1st.
The pattern has continued for so long that health care workers coined the term “Christmas Coronary.”
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/12/18/fatal-heart-attacks-occur-on-christmas-more-than-any-other-day/
Two uniformed NYPD officers were shot dead Saturday afternoon as they sat in their marked police car on a Brooklyn street corner — in what investigators believe was a crazed gunman’s assassination-style mission to avenge Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
“It’s an execution,” one law-enforcement source said of the 3 p.m. shooting of police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
The tragic heroes were working overtime as part of an anti-terrorism drill in Bedford-Stuyvesant when they were shot point-blank in the head by the lone gunman, identified by sources as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, who had addresses in Georgia and Brooklyn.
Moments after killing the two officers, he too was dead, having turned the gun on himself on a nearby subway platform as cops closed in.
NYPD officers Wenjian Lu and Rafael RamosPhoto: DCPI (2)
“I’m Putting Wings on Pigs Today,” a person believed to be the gunman wrote on Instagram in a message posted just three hours before the officers were shot.
“They Take 1 Of Ours…Let’s Take 2 of Theirs,” the post continued, signing off with, “This May Be My Final Post.”
He used the hashtag #ShootThePolice, along with two other hashtags referencing Garner and Brown.
http://nypost.com/2014/12/20/2-nypd-cops-shot-execution-style-in-brooklyn/
There has only been one other time in history when the price of oil has crashed by more than 40 dollars in less than 6 months. The last time this happened was during the second half of 2008, and the beginning of that oil price crash preceded the great financial collapse that happened later that year by several months.
Well, now it is happening again, but this time the stakes are even higher. When the price of oil falls dramatically, that is a sign that economic activity is slowing down. It can also have a tremendously destabilizing affect on financial markets.
As you will read about below, energy companies now account for approximately 20 percent of the junk bond market. And a junk bond implosion is usually a signal that a major stock market crash is on the way.
So if you are looking for a “canary in the coal mine”, keep your eye on the performance of energy junk bonds. If they begin to collapse, that is a sign that all hell is about to break loose on Wall Street.
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the shale oil boom to the U.S. economy. Thanks to this boom, the United States has become the largest oil producer on the entire planet.
Yes, the U.S. now actually produces more oil than either Saudi Arabia or Russia. This “revolution” has resulted in the creation of millions of jobs since the last recession, and it has been one of the key factors that has kept the percentage of Americans that are employed fairly stable.
Unfortunately, the shale oil boom is coming to an abrupt end. As a recent Vox article discussed, OPEC has essentially declared a price war on U.S. shale oil producers…
For all intents and purposes, OPEC is now engaged in a “price war” with the United States. What that means is that it’s very cheap to pump oil out of places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But it’s more expensive to extract oil from shale formations in places like Texas and North Dakota. So as the price of oil keeps falling, some US producers may become unprofitable and go out of business. The result? Oil prices will stabilize and OPEC maintains its market share.
If the price of oil stays at this level or continues falling, we will see a significant number of U.S. shale oil companies go out of business and large numbers of jobs will be lost. The Saudis know how to play hardball, and they are absolutely ruthless. In fact, we have seen this kind of scenario happen before…
Robert McNally, a White House adviser to former President George W. Bush and president of the Rapidan Group energy consultancy, told Reuters that Saudi Arabia “will accept a price decline necessary to sweat whatever supply cuts are needed to balance the market out of the US shale oil sector.” Even legendary oil man T. Boone Pickens believes Saudi Arabia is in a stand-off with US drillers and frackers to “see how the shale boys are going to stand up to a cheaper price.”
This has happened once before. By the mid-1980’s, as oil output from Alaska’s North Slope and the North Sea came on line (combined production of around 5-6 million barrels a day), OPEC set off a price war to compete for market share. As a result, the price of oil sank from around $40 to just under $10 a barrel by 1986.
But the energy sector has been one of the only bright spots for the U.S. economy in recent years. If this sector starts collapsing, it is going to have a dramatic negative impact on our economic outlook. For example, just consider the following numbers from a recent Business Insider article…
Specifically, if prices get too low, then energy companies won’t be able to cover the cost of production in the US. This spending by energy companies, also known as capital expenditures, is responsible for a lot of jobs.
“The Energy sector accounts for roughly one-third of S&P 500 capex and nearly 25% of combined capex and R&D spending,” Goldman Sachs’ Amanda Sneider writes.
Even more troubling is what this could mean for the financial markets.
As I mentioned above, energy companies now account for close to 20 percent of the entire junk bond market. As those companies start to fail and those bonds start to go bad, that is going to hit our major banks really hard…
Everyone could suffer if the collapse triggers a wave of defaults through the high-yield debt market, and in turn, hits stocks. The first to fall: the banks that were last hit by the housing crisis.
Why could that happen?
Well, energy companies make up anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of all U.S. junk debt, according to various sources.
It would be hard to overstate the seriousness of what the markets could potentially be facing.
One analyst summed it up to CNBC this way…
“This is the one thing I’ve seen over and over again,” said Larry McDonald, head of U.S strategy at Newedge USA’s macro group. “When high yield underperforms equity, a major credit event occurs. It’s the canary in the coal mine.“
The last time junk bonds collapsed, a major stock market crash followed fairly rapidly.
And those that were hardest hit were the big Wall Street banks…
During the last high-yield collapse, which centered around debt tied to the housing sector, Citigroup lost 63 percent of its value in the following 60 days, Kensho shows. Bank of America was cut in half.
I understand that some of this information is too technical for a lot of people, but the bottom line is this…
Watch junk bonds. When they start crashing it is a sign that a major stock market collapse is right at the door.
At this point, even the mainstream media is warning about this. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent CNN article…
That swing away from junk bonds often happens shortly before stock market downturns.
“High yield does provide useful sell signals to equity investors,” Barclays analysts concluded in a recent report.
Barclays combed through the past dozen years of data. The warning signal they found is a 30% or greater increase in the spread between Treasuries and junk bonds before a dip.
If you have been waiting for the next major financial collapse, what you have just read in this article indicates that it is now closer than it has ever been.
Over the coming weeks, keep your eye on the price of oil, keep your eye on the junk bond market and keep your eye on the big banks.
Trouble is brewing, and nobody is quite sure exactly what comes next.…
The United States will bid for the 2024 Olympics, seeking to host the Summer Games for the first time since 1996, the country's Olympic committee said Tuesday.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Washington are under consideration as sites, and the U.S. Olympic Committee said it expected to make a decision in January.
"We're so lucky to have four great cities... they all have compelling strengths," USOC Chief Executive Scott Blackmun said during a news conference. "We need to have a discussion of the pros and cons of each individual city."
USOC Chairman Larry Probst said the next step in the process would be to assemble the USOC board of directors again in January.
"Hopefully in the early part of next year we will reach a final decision about the city that we will take to move forward as our candidate city,'' Probst said. "This is going to be a really, really difficult decision and that's why we want to take our time and make sure that we get to the best possible decision."
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/12/18/2014121800607.html
President Obama on Friday said building the Keystone oil pipeline would “not even have a nominal benefit” to consumers, pushing back at claims it would lower gas prices further.
Obama stressed that the issue at hand for Keystone is “not American oil, it is Canadian oil.”
“That oil currently is being shipped out through rail or trucks and it would save Canadian oil companies, and the Canadian oil industry enormous amounts of money if they could simply pipe it all the way down to the Gulf,” Obama said during his final press conference of 2014.
“It’s very good for Canadian oil companies, and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers, it’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers,” Obama said.
U.S. Army snipers could soon have access to a new .50-caliber bullet that would make them the most precise shooters on the planet.
The Defense Department is funding development of the EXACTO bullet, which can change directions mid-air. The bullet is fitted with a sensor which works in tune with a laser. The sniper aims the laser at his target, lighting it up. If the target moves or weather patterns change, the laser follows the target, and the bullet follows the guiding light.
The Defense Department’s research arm has recently released a video showing the bullet in action (see video below).
EXACTO stands for “extreme accuracy tasked ordnance.” The system, developed by Teledyne Scientific & Imaging with funding from the DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, greatly expands a shooter’s range.
The longest “hit” ever recorded by a sniper is 1.5 miles by a shooter from the United Kingdom. A shot at that range can take 3 seconds to reach its target and is extremely difficult because the trajectory of the bullet becomes even more sensitive to wind, rain, the earth’s gravitational pull and even humidity. But a sniper using EXACTO rounds could strike a target with relative ease from even further than 1.5 miles.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/army-finds-silver-bullet-in-fight-against-taliban/
President Obama and his family will head this evening to Hawaii, where he's expected to vacation until the new year.
"On Friday, December 19, President Obama and the First Family will travel to Honolulu, Hawai’i. The arrival of Air Force One is open to pre-credentialed media and closed to the public," the White House said in a statement.
"The President and First Family do not have any scheduled public events during their time in Hawai’i. There will be travel pool coverage of their trip."
He leaves this evening on the direct Air Force One flight, according to the White House schedule:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-heads-hawaii-rest-year_821902.html
The minor opposition Unified Progressive Party was disbanded Friday in a first-ever decision by the Constitutional Court that a political party is unconstitutional.
With the ruling taking immediate effect, the party no longer exists as a political entity, and UPP Reps. Kim Mi-hyui, Kim Jae-yeon, Lee Sang-kyu, Lee Seok-ki and Oh Byung-yun lost their status as members of the parliament. Three of the seats will be filled in the by-elections in April, while the two proportional representatives’ seats will be left vacant.
All assets including government subsidies and funds raised by supporters will be given over to the government. The party had received about 6.1 billion won ($5.5 million) in government subsidies since the petition for its disbandment was filed, and the party’s current assets stand at about 1.36 billion won.
The ruling comes more than a year after a petition from the Ministry of Justice. On Nov. 5, 2013, the Justice Ministry filed a constitutional petition calling for the UPP to be disbanded, claiming that the party was pro-North Korea. Citing the UPP’s constitution, which closely resembles North Korean ideology, the Justice Ministry argued that the party should be disbanded.
Although the Constitutional Court concluded the UPP’s constitution could not be definitively linked to North Korea, the court judged that the party aimed to overthrow South Korea’s government.
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The State Department's Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary for arms control and international security, spoke at the Brookings Institution Thursday where she reaffirmed the United States' "unassailable" commitment to putting the nuclear weapons genie back in the bottle. Gottemoeller told the attendees at the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative-sponsored event that "the U.S. commitment to achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons is unassailable."
She went on to note that the nation's stockpile of active weapons is down 85 percent from maximum cold war levels, falling to 4,804 in 2013 from a high of 31,255. But, she said, "We still have more work to do."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/state-dept-us-nukes-down-85-31255-4804_821888.html
If black lives matter, and we all know they do, we need to work to end the unnecessary and early deaths of black people. It’s not enough to look at one minor source of black mortality – shootings by law enforcement officers – and ignore the reasons for the vast majority of black deaths.
While hard numbers are not readily available, the best estimates available put the total number of people killed by the police across the country in any given year at significantly less than 1,000. For example, the best estimate for 2011 shows that the police killed 607 individuals.
According to the CDC, roughly 290,000 blacks die each year. If we include blacks killed by abortion, the total becomes ~590,000.
If we use the CDC number, that means that if every single person killed by police in the U.S. were black, 0.2% of blacks would die from police action; if we include unborn blacks who are killed, the value is 0.1%.
Clearly, if black lives truly matter, fixating on how less than 0.2% of blacks die is not the best way to help blacks.
Because the unborn, according to science, are human, the leading cause of death of black Americans is abortion. More blacks are aborted each year than die from the other 7 leading causes of death combined. That’s why Jesse Jackson said that abortion is genocide against blacks.
Surprisingly, the same liberals who say they are concerned about the tiny percentage of blacks killed by police not only don’t care about the mass elimination of blacks in the womb, but they in fact work constantly to protect those who slaughter blacks.
A Chinese real estate developer has purchased the vast Los Angeles Airport Marriott for $160 million and vowed to make substantial improvements.
It was the largest hotel sale of the year in Los Angeles County, brokers said, and a sign that the appetite for Southern California properties remains strong among Chinese investors.
Sichuan Xinglida Group Enterprises Co., which has built numerous mixed-use projects in mainland China, bought the hotel through its U.S. subsidiary, XLD Group. The seller was DiamondRock Hospitality Co., a Maryland real estate investment trust that owned it for about a decade, according to Karin Chao of Asia Pacific Capital Co., an adviser to the buyer.
The Airport Marriott is one of the largest hotels in Los Angeles County, with 1,004 rooms in 18 stories. It was completed in 1972 at 5855 W. Century Blvd.
About $35-million worth of improvements are coming to the hotel, said Eddy Chao of Asia Pacific. Meeting rooms on the top floor will be eliminated to create a new "executive floor," where guests in Marriott's rewards program can lounge and eat breakfast.
The smaller existing executive floor will be converted to suite-style hotel rooms, he said. The hotel market around the airport is booming, Eddy Chao added, with more than 90% of the Marriott's rooms occupied on an average night.
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-1219-airport-marriott-sold-20141219-story.html
A US visit by Cuban President Raul Castro is a possibility, the White House said, a day after he and US President Barack Obama announced a historic bilateral rapprochement.
With developments proceeding apace, a high-level US diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, revealed she will travel to Havana in late January for the first direct talks to "begin the process of restoration of diplomatic relations."
But amid celebrations on Havana's streets and plaudits ringing out from China to Chile over the prospects of burying a final vestige of the Cold War, American lawmakers smothered prospects of any rapid roll-back of the trade embargo at the heart of the dispute.
Obama, who said Washington will move to "end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests," on Wednesday raised the previously unthinkable possibility of his visiting the island.
http://news.yahoo.com/us-cuba-announce-historic-thaw-ties-024723062.html
For the first time, the U.S. Army will auction off its surplus Humvees, the Army Times reports.
On GovPlanet.com starting Wednesday, the Army's 4,000 surplus trucks will be available with starting bids set at $10,000 (10.9 million won).
The decommissioned Humvees were all demilitarized, with their bullet-proof armor removed. They are to be used off-road only, however, so anyone dreaming of rolling down the street in a Humvee is out of luck.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/world/2014/12/182_170115.html
North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report.
The DIA report, dated Sept. 13, 2004, reveals that five units of covert commandos were trained for the attacks inside the country.
According to the report, the “Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea, had agents in place to attack American nuclear power plants.”
The document states that the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established five liaison offices in the early 1990s, to train and infiltrate operatives into the United States to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in case of hostilities.”
“One of the driving forces behind the establishment of the units and infiltration of operatives was the slow progress in developing a multi-stage ballistic missile.”
North Korea is known to have at least two long-range missiles capable of hitting the United States, the Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile, and the KN-08 road-mobile ICBM, which has not yet been flight tested.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/dia-north-korea-planned-attacks-on-us-nuclear-plants/
US President Barack Obama has signed legislation authorizing new sanctions against Russia, but he said he does not plan to impose them for now.
In a statement on Thursday, Obama said he had signed into law the Ukraine Freedom Support Act.
Under the law, the US could supply weapons to the Ukrainian government and step up sanctions against Russian arms manufacturers.
But Obama said his administration does not intend to impose the sanctions right away. He also said the US remains prepared to roll back existing sanctions should Russia take the necessary steps.
The statement called on Russia to stop its support of separatists in eastern Ukraine, and implement the obligations of a ceasefire agreement.
The Russian economy has been hard-hit by sanctions imposed by the US and European Union, as well as by the recent plunge of the country's currency, the ruble.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20141219_16.html
“During that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf,” Michelle Obama says. “Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn't anything new.”
As president, they now travel in limousines, helicopters and have unlimited access to an Air Force 747. But the Obamas say it wasn’t always this easy for them to move from place to place.
"Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs," Michelle Obama tells People. “There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys,” Barack Obama adds.
However, the president notes race relations are getting better.
“The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” Obama says. But more improvement is needed. “It's one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress,” he concluded.
The entire interview will be published in People magazine later this week.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/17/Racism-Reaches-Even-The-White-House-Obamas-Say
President Obama moved Wednesday to normalize relations with Cuba, tearing down the last remaining pillar of the Cold War after after more than 60 years.
Under measures announced by the administration, the United States plans to re-open its embassy in Havana and significantly ease restrictions on travel and commerce within the next several weeks and months.
The result of more than a year and a half of secret negotiations with the Cuban government of President Raul Castro, the changes followed Cuba’s agreement to release Alan Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development contractor imprisoned for five years, and to exchange an unnamed U.S. intelligence asset, held for two decades, for three Cuban nationals convicted of spying in this country in 2001.
Gross, a Maryland resident, left Cuba aboard a U.S. military aircraft Wednesday morning, accompanied by his wife and several members of Congress, and arrived at Joint Base Andrews. The Cubans have landed in Havana.
President Obama has issued a form of executive action known as the presidential memorandum more often than any other president in history — using it to take unilateral action even as he has signed fewer executive orders.
When these two forms of directives are taken together, Obama is on track to take more high-level executive actions than any president since Harry Truman battled the "Do Nothing Congress" almost seven decades ago, according to a USA TODAY review of presidential documents.
Obama has issued executive orders to give federal employees the day after Christmas off, to impose economic sanctions and to determine how national secrets are classified. He's used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations. Tuesday, he used a memorandum to declare Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration.
Like executive orders, presidential memoranda don't require action by Congress. They have the same force of law as executive orders and often have consequences just as far-reaching. And some of the most significant actions of the Obama presidency have come not by executive order but by presidential memoranda.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania has released an opinion in a case of a deported illegal alien who returned to the U.S. that appears to torpedo the amnesty plan President Obama announced Nov. 20 and implemented through memos to government officials, ruling it unconstitutional.
“President Obama’s unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore, is unconstitutional,” said U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab.
The judge noted Obama “contended that although legislation is the most appropriate course of action to solve the immigration debate, his executive action was necessary because of Congress’s failure to pass legislation, acceptable to him, in this regard.”
“This proposition is arbitrary and does not negate the requirement that the November 20, 2014, executive action be lawfully within the president’s executive authority,” the judge wrote. “It is not.”
Quoting from a previous precedent, the just said that in the “framework of our Constitution, the president’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.”
“The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad,” Schwab said.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/federal-judge-obamas-amnesty-unconstitutional/
The collapsing oil price that is reshaping the global economy could derail the green energy revolution by making renewable power sources prohibitively bad value, experts have warned.
Oil tumbled below $60 a barrel for the first time in more than five years yesterday – a fall of 44 per cent since June. It is forecast to fall further.
A new “era of cheap oil” would be good news for consumers and motorists – but analysts say the consequences for politics, industry and the climate could be even more radical.
The ripple effects could help the Conservatives to remain in power at next year’s general election by making voters feel richer as bills fall – while hurting Scotland’s oil-reliant economy and setting back its campaign for independence.
The falling prices could damage the North Sea and fledgling fracking industries and make it harder for the UK to hit its legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions. But the biggest threat posed by falling oil and gas prices – in the UK and globally – is to the renewable energy industry dominated by wind-, solar- and hydro-power, experts say.
The two innocent victims tragically killed during a terrorist siege at a Sydney cafe have been named as cafe manager Tori Johnson and barrister Katrina Dawson.
Mr Johnson, 34, was shot dead after he heroically tried to wrestle the gun from the hostage-taker inside the Lindt cafe in Martin Place just after 2am on Tuesday morning.
Ms Dawson, a 38-year-old mother of three children under 10, later died in hospital after being held hostage for more than 16 hours. She was a barrister at Eight Selborne Chambers in Sydney's Phillip Street, opposite the Lindt cafe.
It comes after revelations the remaining hostages made a break for the exit of the Lindt cafe about 2am after gunman Man Haron Monis began to fall asleep - more than 16 hours after he took 17 people captive.
The 50-year-old gunman is believed to have fired the first shots before teams of heavily armed police swooped on the cafe in a hail of gunfire and brought an end to a tense stand-off.
Mr Johnson, Ms Dawson and their Iranian-born captor were killed in the dramatic and chaotic firefight as terrifying details continue to emerge of the terrorist siege.
Hundreds of floral tributes have started to appear in Martin Place, with the NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and Premier Mike Baird personally visiting the site on Tuesday morning.
Women were photographed standing outside the Lindt cafe on Tuesday morning with tears streaming down their faces just hours after the siege ended.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2873855/Gunman-takes-hostages-cafe-Sydney.html
Twenty-four Republicans voted late Saturday night to pass a $1.1 trillion spending bill that will fund most of the government through the end of fiscal year 2015, ending a full week of drama over whether the government might shut down.
The Senate approved the spending bill in a 56-40 vote that split both parties. While many Republicans supported the bill, many others were angry at the idea of approving a spending bill that doesn’t defund President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.
Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voted for the huge spending bill Saturday night.
Image: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Still, most Republicans voted for the measure — GOP members supported it 24-18 in the final vote. Republicans voting for the bill were Sens. Alexander, Ayotte, Barrasso, Blunt, Boozman, Burr, Coats, Cochran, Collins, Cornyn, Enzi, Fischer, Graham, Hatch, Hoeven, Isakson, Johanns, Kirk, McConnell, Murkowski, Roberts, Thune, Toomey and Wicker.
While Democrats were more predisposed to the huge funding bill, many were upset over language in the bill that eases federal regulations against banks. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led the charge against that issue, and she and several other Democrats voted against the bill. Overall, Democrats and Independents supported it 32-22.
Republican attempts to force a vote on immigration threatened to delay the spending bill vote until Monday, but by Saturday evening, the Senate agreed to hold an immigration vote that was demanded by Cruz.
While Republicans came away without any language that blocks Obama’s immigration plans, the bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security through February 27. That means the Republican-led House and Senate will have a chance in early 2015 to try again to fight Obama’s executive action.
