BRIAN HUGHES: Obama’s Other Immigration Problem:

President Obama is facing another immigration dilemma exacerbated by his efforts to spare up to 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation: how to address the roughly 6 million who were not covered by his executive action.

Soon after he announced his unilateral move, the most sweeping overhaul to the immigration system in decades, Obama heard complaints from immigration rights advocates that he hadn’t gone far enough. They urged him to grant protections to millions of additional illegal immigrants.

That isn’t so simple for the White House, which already is being accused by conservatives of extending benefits to those who don’t even qualify for a deportation deferral. And if deportations plummet among those not covered by his executive action, Republicans will have even more ammunition to argue Obama is ignoring laws.

While trying to find the middle ground on the contentious issue, Obama is in danger of simultaneously angering the far Left and far Right.

Actually, judging by the polling on immigration, I don’t think that characterization is quite right.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Leading Feminists Want To Accomplish This Year.

AT AMAZON, Up to 50% Off Contemporary Clothing, for men and women.

Also, organize your kitchen.

BY INTERFERING WITH THE LEFTY AGENDA, OF COURSE. DUH. How Do Decisions Upholding Freedom of Speech and Religion Violate Civil Liberties?

Slate’s list of last year’s “10 Worst Civil Liberties Violations” includes two Supreme Court decisions that do not constitute civil liberties violations by any stretch of the imagination: McCutcheon v. FEC, in which the Court overturned aggregate limits on contributions to federal candidates, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the Court ruled that the Obama administration violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) when it required employers to provide health insurance that covers forms of birth control to which they objected on religious grounds. I gather that the authors of the Slate piece, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, think these cases were wrongly decided. But even if that were true, it would not necessarily mean the decisions endorsed the violation of anyone’s civil liberties. To the contrary, people who welcomed these rulings (including me) believe they vindicated civil liberties.

Well, those are bourgeois civil liberties, which have to do with individual freedom of action. Real civil liberties are those freedoms — and obligations, especially — that advance the revolution, comrade.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: “Automatic belief of rape accusations was a central principle of the KKK’s war on rape, too. This was one of the things that most shocked Ida B Wells, the early twentieth-century African-American journalist and civil-rights activist. ‘The word of the accuser is held to be true’, she said, which means that ‘the rule of law [is] reversed, and instead of proving the accused to be guilty, the [accused] must prove himself innocent’. Wells and others were startled by the level of belief in the accusers of black men, and by the damning of anyone who dared to question such accusations, which was taken as an attack on the accuser’s ‘virtue’.”

Everything old is new again.

THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY IN A NUTSHELL: Joel Kotkin: Seven Years Ago, Wall Street was the Villain. Now it Gets to Call the Shots.

BOB ZUBRIN: Kim Jong Un, Slavemaster. “North Korea is sometimes described as the world’s last remaining Stalinist regime. But this is a slander — of Stalinism. In fact, North Korea is actually a vast — and monstrously cruel — slave labor plantation and human trafficking operation run for the profit and hedonistic pleasure of its morally degenerate rulers.”

SEX, LIES, AND DEMOCRATIC POLS: PolitiFact Gives “Mostly False” To Mark Warner’s Claim That It’s Safer For Women Not To Be In College.

That’s actually completely false, but he’s a Dem so he only gets the “mostly false” rating. But perhaps I can use him in the next Reynolds Online University ad. . . .

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Rick Perry Eyeing The White House?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is just weeks away from leaving office after more than a decade running Texas — and he is turning his eye beyond the Lone Star State as he looks to kick-start another presidential bid.

Perry will leave the governor’s mansion after 14 years on Jan. 20. Just a few days later, he’ll be in Iowa participating in the state’s first major candidate event of the 2016 campaign. It’s the latest stop in a heavy travel schedule as he edges toward a second run at the White House.

Perry and his allies are the first to admit that he faces a tall task in overcoming voters’ memories of his dismal 2012 campaign. But they’re convinced that this time around he’s much better prepared, and that leaving office will give him much more time to focus on a potential campaign.

“Our greatest enemy in 2011 was time. Our greatest asset in 2015 and 2016 is time. Hopefully now we’ll have the time to do this right if he and Mrs. Perry choose to do it,” Bob Haus, Perry’s top Iowa advisor, told The Hill.

“It’s going to free up a lot more of his time than having to actually govern 24-7. That was one of the issues in 2011 and 2012. He was trying to run for the highest office in the country as a sitting governor,” said Perry spokesman Mark Miner.

Actually, I think the back surgery was his biggest problem. And if Bill Clinton could come back from an utterly disastrous DNC speech, then Perry can come back from much smaller problems. Though “can” isn’t the same as “will.”

IT’S ALMOST LIKE TERESA SULLIVAN SEIZED ON A FALSE STORY TO ADVANCE AN ANTI-GREEK AGENDA REGARDLESS OF THE FACTS:

Declared “the worst journalism of 2014” by the Columbia Journalism Review, Rolling Stone magazine’s account of a gang rape at a fraternity house nonetheless continues to cloud collegiate life at the University of Virginia.

U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan did not lift the suspension of fraternal organizations after The Washington Post found discrepancies in the story that forced the magazine to back away from the allegations.

Instead, Sullivan said, the university will use the harsh national spotlight it is under as an opportunity to lead efforts to combat sexual assault on campus.

The University of Virginia: Where facts don’t matter, but agendas do.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: New York Law Schools Suffer Large (21%) Enrollment Declines.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Counter-Culture 2015 – Let’s Be Offensive! “It’s not a sin to offend people. It’s not even a problem really. Getting offended is just one of the ways people react to reality — it’s the way American culture has been teaching them to react for the past forty-five years.”