Free Republic

...President Obama intends to close "persistent gaps" between whites and minorities in everything from credit scores and homeownership to test scores and graduation rates. His remedy — short of new affirmative-action legislation — is to sue financial companies, schools and employers based on "disparate impact" complaints — a stealthy way to achieve racial preferences, opposed 2 to 1 by Americans. Under this broad interpretation of civil-rights law, virtually any organization can be held liable for race bias if it maintains a policy that negatively impacts one racial group more than another — even if it has no racist motive and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senators on opposite sides of the aisle are proposing comprehensive changes to the immigration laws that would include a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States. Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who promoted similar proposals on separate Sunday news shows said that no path to citizenship would be available until the country's borders were secure.

As Canadian political and business leaders expressed optimism the proposed Keystone XL pipeline will win approval under a re-elected President Barack Obama, environmental opponents and the U.S. ambassador to Canada cautioned the energy megaproject isn’t a slam dunk. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, had vowed quick approval of the $7.6-billion pipeline if he had won Tuesday’s presidential election. But Obama, who earlier this year rejected TransCanada Corp.’s initial application because it needed more environmental review, has remained noncommital about the fate of the line, which would ship Alberta oilsands product to the U.S. Gulf Coast. In Ottawa, federal Natural Resources...

The U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Smith, told the Arabic news outlet Asharq Al-Awsat that American foreign policy will now change after President Barack Obama's reelection. Smith made the comments at an election night party at his residence. Ambassador Smith "stressed the desire of President Obama to resolve a number of foreign issues, most notably restoring negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian sides, responding more strongly to Iran, and working with allies to end the Syrian crisis, (Snip) The ambassador appears not to have elaborated further.