Achy Obejas

Obama’s lame letters don’t help as Romney out-fundraises president, again

By: Achy Obejas | Jul. 13, 2012

Jul. 13, 2012

You’ve probably heard by now that Mitt Romney and the Republicans have swept the fundraising floor with Barack Obama and the Dems for the second month in a row, beating them this time by a whopping $35 million.

"People understand that the path that President Obama is taking us on is one of socialism,” said Daniel Dumezich, one of the Mitt’s Hoosier fundraising co-chairs. "If he keeps advancing the causes of illegal aliens and those kinds of issues, then I think, yes, Gov. Romney will keep raising more money.”

…Read Full Entry

Five weird things about Mexico's next president (maybe...)

By: Achy Obejas | Jul. 5, 2012

Jul. 5, 2012

Enrique Peña Nieto will likely survive the post-election scandal brewing about his party, the PRI, having bought and given away more than $5 million of gift cards in exchange for votes, but he’s not going to have it easy no matter what. Peña Nieto won with only 38 percent of the vote -- and the PRI actually lost seats in Congress. (A partial recount is underway.)

In other words, a full 62 percent of Mexicans voted for somebody else.
And, you know, maybe for good reasons.
Or weird ones.
Here are five truly strange things about this man.

…Read Full Entry

Why is the Tribune scapegoating Clarence Page?

By: Achy Obejas | Jul. 3, 2012

Jul. 3, 2012

This morning, like thousands of other Chicagoans, I woke to the Chicago Tribune’s story essentially threatening to fire Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page, the paper’s most visible African-American writer and arguably one of its most popular staffers, both among the Trib’s readers and his colleagues.

…Read Full Entry

Contemplating shared origins after landmark health care ruling

By: Achy Obejas | Jun. 28, 2012

Jun. 28, 2012

My impulse, I confess, is to redeem John Roberts after today’s decision on the Affordable Care Act. I want to thank him for his role in letting stand the law that will very likely be the only reason my family and I have decent healthcare in the future. I turn 56 today, with not a few pre-existing conditions; I freelance for work and have no fixed salary; and my son is only seven months old.

I want to say that I knew Roberts would come through in the clutch, that when faced with the kind of life and death choice this decision presented for so many people, that the core values we both learned in the same idyllic Midwestern town were going to come through.

…Read Full Entry

No guidance for 'Papers please'

By: Achy Obejas | Jun. 25, 2012

Jun. 25, 2012

I asked Chris Bergin, a veteran immigration attorney with the Shiller/Preyar Law Office, about what directives the Supreme Court had laid out when it upheld today Arizona’s “papers please” section of the state’s controversial immigration law.

Here’s the deal, as Bergin explains:

*Section 2(B) allows state and local law enforcement to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested on some other legitimate basis, if "reasonable suspicion" exists that the person is illegally in the U.S.

But there are three limits on this section: 

  1. If person has a valid Arizona driver's license or State I.D., then he or she is presumed to be in the U.S.

…Read Full Entry

With immigration order, Obama steals thunder from Florida’s Rubio

By: Achy Obejas | Jun. 18, 2012

Jun. 18, 2012

President Obama’s people can insist all they want that his recent move to direct Homeland Security to defer deportation for DREAMers — young undocumented people who had no say in being brought to this country by their parents — is not political, but, frankly, that’s pure crap.

In fact, it’s about as political a move as Obama has made since he’s been in the White House. On March 28 of last year, the president himself rejected the idea that he could do exactly what he just did.

“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case,” he said at a town hall meeting sponsored by Univisión, the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S. “There are laws on the books that Congress has passed.”

…Read Full Entry

Veteran dies, but memorial, march live on

By: Achy Obejas | Jun. 15, 2012

Jun. 15, 2012

“I don’t know who put me in charge,” Tony Cutrano told me when I talked to him about his pet project, the Middle Eastern Conflicts Memorial in Marseilles, a tiny town by the Illinois River in western Illinois, “but that’s the way it is. Because this has to be done.”
 

Cutrano, 52, died last week in a motorcycle accident not far from the memorial he’d created from scratch and loved so much.

He’d put the memorial together by sheer force of will, talking municipal authorities into it, pushing the Pentagon to provide lists of the war dead. And he did almost all the administration of the project, for free, by himself.

The whole thing got kicked off because, watching an anti-war demonstration in Chicago on TV, he saw an American flag being burned. A Navy veteran, Cutrano decided a response was in order.

…Read Full Entry

The real impact of Obama’s immigration order

By: Achy Obejas | Jun. 15, 2012

Jun. 15, 2012

It’s absolutely a political move, but President Barack Obama’s executive order today allowing Homeland Security to use discretion in deportation procedures when dealing with young undocumented people who have grown up here and are American in all but their legal status was the right move.

First, what Obama’s order will and won’t do, and the politics on Monday.

The law will:

* Put an immediate halt to deportation of undocumented people 30 and under who came to the U.S. before their 16th birthday.

* Expand prosecutorial discretion.

* Create an opportunity to defer deportation proceedings for two years, renewable every two years until the DREAM Act or some variant of it passes, or the president (or his successor) rescinds the order. Not everyone who applies will get deferred action.

* Allow those granted deferred action to apply for a work permit.

* Allow those granted a work permit to apply for a driver’s license.

The law will not:

…Read Full Entry

Pages