The energy industry and coal-producing states are projecting a wave of power plant closures in the final two years of the Obama administration as Environmental Protection Agency regulations take hold.

The goal of the agency’s campaign is to cut down on carbon pollution. However, industry groups and agencies say the EPA’s demands are simply too difficult to meet and will lead to powering down many facilities — eliminating hundreds of jobs and hurting cash-strapped state economies.

“It’s a game we can’t win,” Alan Minier, chairman of the Wyoming Public Service Commission, told FoxNews.com.

The number of projected closures has steadily risen. Though estimates vary,according to the Institute for Energy Research a total of 37 states including Wyoming are seeing closures. The group lists nearly 170 plants that have closed or are closing, or are being converted to other purposes.

IER cites a handful of existing EPA regulations, as well as a major proposal to cut emissions from existing power plants. That calls for cutting emissions nationally by 30 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. The plan assumes emissions can be curbed through remedial action in four general areas: improved efficiency of coal plants, enhanced energy conservation measures, increased natural gas and renewable power generation.

Read more from this story HERE.

The University of Notre Dame is offering a one hour credit seminar discussing the critical issue of white privilege. The class is being offered in the spring semester of 2015.

In the course registrar, the course is listed as Sociology 25280 and is named “White Privilege Seminar.” The course will meet eight times next semester for two hours each time. The course description goes into more detail as to the logistics of the class. “This six-week preparatory class is designed to educate and train White Privilege Conference delegation participants on the definitions of, historical/current paradigm of, and causes/effects of white privilege.”

Along with the training seminar, students will be required to attend the White Privilege Conference after the training class from March 8-14. The course description’s claims the main objective for each student is “personal transformation: to leave the class and conference more aware of injustices and better equipped with tools to disrupt personal, institutional, and worldwide systems of oppression.”

Campus activist Mark Gianfalla found the class to be ridiculous, “The problem I see with this course is that it is teaching a flawed and inherently racist sociological theory as fact,” Gianfalla told The Daily Caller. “This isn’t education, it’s indoctrination. Where is the required counterpoint course on affirmative action? It does not exist because that idea does not fit with the social and racial agenda of the professor,” he continued.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: TownHall

What’s the easiest way to avoid getting sued by the Obama Administration? Well… If you come up with an answer, let the rest of us know. A company that has supported the President and his Affordable Care Act, is currently being sued by Obama for following the law. (Wait… “Affordable” Care Act? Can we sue Democrats for false advertising yet?)

Welcome to Obama’s America. Where you can literally get sued for trying to comply with the law. (Boy… That’ll teach you.)

Honeywell International Inc., and two smaller firms, are being sued for taking advantage of a specific provision in the ACA that allows them to lower their out-of-pocket medical expenses. Deroy Murdock at the National Review explains:

These firms are complying with Obamacare, which lets them offer wellness programs to their employees. These activities help workers lose weight, quit smoking, receive regular checkups, and otherwise become healthier. As an incentive, Obamacare offers participating employees as much as a 50 percent reduction in out-of-pocket medical expenses… The comically titled “Affordable Care Act” requires that employees in these programs undergo medical tests to qualify for lower premiums. Unfortunately, such exams violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Read more from this story HERE.

The following is a pretty remarkable lie, even for Obama.

Here he is, commenting on a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner:

“My tradition is not to remark on cases where there still may be an investigation.”

Yep, that’s his tradition, alright…

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Feds Balk at Releasing Docs Showing IRS Sharing Tax Returns with White House

By Paul Bedard.

Less than a week after ’fessing up that it found some 2,500 documents potentially showing that the IRS shared taxpayer returns with the White House, the Obama administration has reversed course and won’t release the trove to a group suing for access.

In an abrupt decision, the Treasury inspector general’s office said that the documents are covered by privacy and disclosure laws and can’t be provided to Cause of Action, despite a promise last week to hand over some 2,500.

The decision coincides with publication by the Washington Examiner this week of “Watchdogs, lapdogs and attack dogs,” a four-part series examining the successes and failures of the inspectors-general system, including multiple instances in which IGs provided cover for agency managers seeking to avoid more rigorous evaluations.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Obama Administration REFUSES To Release Documents About White House Role in IRS Scandal

By Patrick Howley.

The Obama administration said that it is withholding all of the thousands of pages of documents related to the White House’s coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the IRS conservative targeting scandal.

Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff, took the documents that were set to be released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Lew cannot release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information because that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.

The Daily Caller reported that the Treasury Department’s inspector general found nearly 2,500 pages of documents that chronicle investigations into the confidential taxpayer information that the White House exchanged with the IRS.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: AP

By Senator Jeff Sessions.

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following comment today on a bulletin issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announcing a new facility in Crystal City, Virginia, with plans to hire 1,000 staff, in order to begin immediate implementation of the President’s wage-reducing amnesty and work authorization decree:

“It has just been discovered today that the Obama Administration is now opening a new USCIS facility in Crystal City, Virginia, for the purpose of immediately implementing the President’s imperial immigration decree. They are in the process of hiring 1,000 full-time staff to quickly approve applications for the President’s illegal amnesty, which will provide work permits, photo IDs, Social Security, and Medicare to illegal immigrants—all benefits rejected by Congress. This action will mean that American workers, their sons, their daughters, their parents, will now have to compete directly for jobs, wages, and benefits with millions of illegal immigrants.

This facility is a clear symbol of the President’s defiance of the American people, their laws, and their Constitution. He is hiring federal employees to carry out a directive that violates the laws Congress has passed in order to foist on the nation laws Congress has repeatedly refused to pass.

Read more from this story HERE.

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BREAKING: Govt. Hiring Thousands of New Federal Employees to Immediately Approve Applications For Obama’s Executive Amnesty

By Katie Pavlich.

A December 1 bulletin from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) details the immediate opening of 1,000 permanent federal employee positions at a new operational facility that will open soon in Crystal City, Virginia. Newly hired employees will be tasked with approving applications submitted by illegal immigrants taking advantage of President Obama’s recently announced executive amnesty program.

“USCIS is taking steps to open a new operational center in Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, to accommodate about 1,000 full-time, permanent federal and contract employees in a variety of positions and grade levels. The initial workload will include cases filed as a result of the executive actions on immigration announced on Nov. 20, 2014. Many job opportunities at the operational center will be announced in the coming days and please continue to monitor USAJOBS if you are interested,” the USCIS bulletin reads, urgently listing the availability of jobs in red.

Read more from this story HERE.

By Nia-Malika Henderson.

President Obama announced this week that, in response to Ferguson and other cases of cops killing unarmed black men, the White House would call for $75 million to make 50,000 body cameras available to police departments across the country.

But on Wednesday, a grand jury declined to indict New York police officers in the choking death of Eric Garner — a case in which there was footage. And the timing couldn’t really be worse for the White House.

One activist who attended a White House meeting with Obama on Monday and talked with NBC News suggested that cameras weren’t exactly a cure-all:

Antoine White, a hip-hop artist from St. Louis who is known as T-Dubb-O, said of body cameras during an interview, “I still consider it a Band-Aid” on a much larger problem. “Giving a policeman a camera does not prevent him from shooting me in the head,” he said, noting officers at times don’t turn on the cameras.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Judge Napolitano: Eric Garner’s Death Was ‘Criminally Negligent Homicide’

By Al Weaver.

In a radio appearance Wednesday night, Judge Andrew Napolitano told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt the death of Eric Garner was a case of “criminally negligent homicide,” while also saying that this case is not “Ferguson, Missouri.”

“I think it is clearly a case for criminally negligent homicide,” Napolitano said during an appearance on The Hugh Hewitt Show Wednesday night.

“This is not Ferguson, Missouri,” Napolitano continued. “This is not somebody wrestling for your gun, this is not where you shoot or be shot at. This is choking to death a mentally impaired, grossly obese person whose only crime was selling cigarettes without collecting taxes on them. This does not call for deadly force by any stretch of the imagination.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: Breitbart

Seventeen states are involved in a lawsuit filed Wednesday challenging President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the governors of Mississippi, Maine, North Carolina and Idaho filed the suit in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas.

The states — led by Texas — charge that Obama’s actions violate the president’s duty under the Constitution to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

“The Constitution’s Take Care Clause limits the President’s power and ensures that he will faithfully execute Congress’s laws – not rewrite them under the guise of ‘prosecutorial discretion,’” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said after filing.

Abbott, who will become governor in January, went on to call the immigration orders “nothing but an unlawfully adopted legislative rule: an executive decree that requires federal agencies to award legal benefits to individuals whose conduct contradicts the priorities of Congress.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP / Susan Walsh

LEFT MOCKS: Claims ‘War’ on Obama’s Immigration Order Lasted About 5 Minutes…

By Sahil Kapur.

Five months ago, conservative were so livid over President Barack Obama’s upcoming “executive amnesty” that incoming House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) couldn’t bring himself to rule out impeaching the president as punishment.

Now, even firebrand Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Obama’s chief immigration foes, have ruled that out. GOP leaders were never seriously considering the idea, but they’ve successfully tamped down any talk of it.

What’s more, Republicans may be on the brink of avoiding a government shutdown fight, at least until March, and effectively permitting the executive actions by “Emperor Obama,” as Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office has dubbed him, with no pushback other than a symbolic vote of disapproval.

Republicans don’t have the votes for this watered down plan yet, and it could still collapse. But it has significant GOP support, a sign that the fury has calmed quite a bit.

How did things change so much?

Read more from this story HERE.

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Gutiérrez presses ‘millions’ to get documents ready for legal status

By Sarah Ferris.

Immigration reform champion Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) on Tuesday urged undocumented immigrants to take quick advantage of President Obama’s executive actions giving them temporary legal status.

Speaking in both English and Spanish, he urged those eligible for the new program to also get their paperwork ready for legal status.

“When that door opens, we should have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, with their documents, ready to submit them,” Gutiérrez said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “While Republicans are complaining and bellyaching, we’re going to act.”

Gutiérrez appeared with five other Democrats who sit on the House Judiciary Committee, which will consider on Tuesday the legality of Obama’s actions.

The Chicago-area lawmaker slammed Republicans for trying to derail Obama’s plans for immigration reform without presenting other options.

Read more from this story HERE.