RESISTING THE DEMIGOD – AT 9:37 A.M. ET:  Was a time when no respectable Democrat would take on President Obama.  Obama was, after all, in a class above us all.  With the border crisis, those days are over.  Dems are worried about their own futures, and Obama is volunteering for the high office of lame duck.  From The Hill: 

A bipartisan 2008 bill intended to crack down on child trafficking has become a flashpoint in the debate over an emergency spending bill to address the immigration crisis in Texas.

President Obama has asked for $3.7 billion and increased authority to deal with 57,000 unaccompanied minors from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have streamed across the border illegally. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson warned Thursday the number could reach 90,000 by the end of September.

Unlike illegal immigrants from Mexico, these minors are guaranteed a court date by the trafficking law. They are often released to relatives to wait out their pending appeal, a process that results in only 1,800 per year being deported to their countries of origin.

Obama has asked Congress to amend the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act to let him send them home more quickly but has met with stiff resistance from senior Senate Democrats.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, informed Obama of his concerns in a recent phone call.

“I want to make sure that the children who are going through this have proper advocacy and representation,” he said.

Durbin said he would not support changing the law unless the unaccompanied minors are guaranteed proper representation. He also wants U.S. officials to ensure there are social infrastructures that can take care of them in their home countries.

“He called and we talked about the same thing,” Durbin said of his conversation with the president. “I told him I’m concerned about what’s going to happen to these kids. God forbid some of these children go right back in the hands of murderers and rapists.”

The surge of minors has come primarily from three Central American countries plagued by violence and gang activity.

COMMENT:  Obama is advocating an accelerated repatriation schedule to save himself politically.  If he was all that concerned, he would have appeared at the border yesterday when he was in Texas. 

Durbin is playing to his party's left, which really has no problem with the flooding of children across the border. 

One thing is clear, though, and that is that blindly following Obama is a thing of the past.  He's seen as a weak president with rapidly diminishing popularity.

July 11, 2014