Yep, that's true. Here's Hizzoner's wisdom. The Republicans got their feelings hurt and managed to find a sufficiently supine federal "judge" in Texas to accommodate them. Jackass saw fit to release his order after hours on a holiday no less.
Quick update: This was the plan to grant work permits via "deferred action" to parents of U.S. citizen children. Several million people were likely to qualify. A gang of the usual troglodytes sued and claimed the President had exceeded his authority, causing some dubious sort of harm to their states, like putting Joe Arpaio out of a job, or something.
Update #2: From the Houston Chronicle:
HOUSTON — A federal judge temporarily blocked President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration Monday, giving a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit that aims to permanently stop the orders.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen's decision puts on hold Obama's orders that could spare as many as five million people who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation.
The federal government is expected to appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The Justice Department had no immediate comment late Monday night.
The timing of this couldn't be better for the House wingnuts. Now they can fund Homeland Security and they've got themselves out of a jam. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the announcement of a nationwide injunction on an evening on a holiday? That is unusual.
Update #3: From the New York Times:
Some legal scholars said any order by Judge Hanen to halt the president’s actions would be quickly suspended by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.
“Federal supremacy with respect to immigration matters makes the states a kind of interloper in disputes between the president and Congress,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. “They don’t have any right of their own.”
The states’ lawsuit quotes Mr. Obama as saying many times in recent years that he did not have authority to take actions as broad as those he ultimately took. Mr. Tribe said that argument was not likely to pass muster with appeals court judges.
“All of that is interesting political rhetoric,” he said, “but it has nothing to do with whether the states have standing and nothing to do with the law.”
I personally think Larry Tribe is overrated, and I also think that he doesn't have much of a clue as to how ideological the courts have become. But we'll see.