"Judge Hanen's stay is no guarantee the president will lose the lawsuit the states have brought against him, or even that the stay won't be lifted.

"Still, it's nice to see a judge remind this former teacher of constitutional law that when he says he issued his executive orders 'to change the law,' he'€™s just undermined his own case."

"This Court, for the reasons discussed above, hereby grants the Plaintiff States' request for a preliminary injunction. It hereby finds that at least Texas has satisfied the necessary standing requirements that the Defendants have clearly legislated a substantive rule without complying with the procedural requirements under the Administration Procedure Act. The Injunction is contained in a separate order. Nonetheless, for the sake of clarity, this temporary injunction enjoins the implementation of the DAPA program that awards legal presence and additional benefits to the four million or more individuals potentially covered by the DAPA Memorandum and to the three extensions/additions to the DACA program also contained in the same DAPA Memorandum. It does not enjoin or impair the Secretary's ability to marshal his assets or deploy the resources of the DHS. It does not enjoin the Secretary's ability to set priorities for the DHS. It does not enjoin the previously instituted 2012 DACA program except for the expansions created in the November 20, 2014 DAPA Memorandum."

"The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

"Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, 'the Prophetic methodology,' which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn't actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We'll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State's intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal."

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"WASHINGTON -- Ever since President Obama ordered American warplanes to begin bombing terrorist targets in Iraq and Syria last year, members of Congress have insisted on having a say in the matter. The president, they declared, could not, or at least should not, take the country back to war without the input of the nation's elected representatives.

"Now, six months after he sent the military back into combat to take on the terror group calling itself the Islamic State, Mr. Obama has acquiesced and sent a measure to Congress asking it to formally authorize what he has been doing all along. And now that they have gotten what they asked for, few in Congress seem all that enthusiastic about the prospect.

"One side thinks the president'€™s request for war-making powers is too brazen and even reckless. The other side thinks it is too spineless and probably ineffectual. 'It does not seem to have resonated with anyone,' said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a member of the Intelligence Committee. 'I haven't found any colleague who'€™s been enthusiastic about it.'"

"It started with a groundswell of support and an appeal to 'Bring Back Our Girls.' Ten months later, with most of those Nigerian schoolgirls no closer to being home, the White House rarely invokes the mounting atrocities committed by Boko Haram.

"As President Obama devotes more time to confronting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria --” he requested formal war powers on Wednesday --€” and as his administration increasingly focuses on the bloodshed in Ukraine, the rising body count in Nigeria has become just a passing reference.

"Unlike the recent Paris terrorist attacks, Boko Haram wasn'€™t mentioned in Obama's State of the Union address last month. ...

"The terrorist group's grip on power has only strengthened since more than 270 girls were kidnapped in April from a Chibok boarding school in Nigeria. Similar kidnappings have multiplied, and an estimated 10,000 people have died during the past year alone, including 2,000 civilians during a single massacre in January."

"I know you'll be stunned to hear this, but even though Islamic terrorists have nothing to do with Islam, they appear to think Islamic scripture means what it says. So if you were randomly to peruse, say, the charter of Hamas --€” an Islamic terrorist group that has nothing to do with Islam and that is randomly the Palestinian branch of the 'largely secular' Muslim Brotherhood -- look what you find in Article 7:

"'Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah'€™s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!'

"Random? You'€™d almost think we were dealing with an identifiable enemy motivated by a distinct ideology that is drawn verbatim from a particular belief system'€™s scriptures. Nah . . . "

"President Obama will soon roll out one of the most ambitious and controversial programs of his presidency, an effort to grant a reprieve from deportation to millions of adult immigrants living in the country illegally.

"With time short and stakes high, the Obama administration knows it cannot afford another debacle like 2013's botched introduction of the Affordable Care Act.

"The challenges posed by the new immigration program will be enormous. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services projects 1.3 million people will apply in the first six months, starting in May, although no one knows for sure. Anything close to that will be a giant new workload for the agency, which processes about 6.3 million other applications annually.

"The cost of implementing the president's executive actions will be $324 million to $484 million over the next three years, according to a draft of a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson obtained by The Times."

"In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush 'lied us into war in Iraq.'

"I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction -- a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community's determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD -- I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the 'Bush lied' allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

"The intelligence community's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction -- a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject. ...

"In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam."

"On Tuesday, the so-called Islamic State released a slickly produced video showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a steel cage. On Wednesday, the United Nations issued a report detailing various 'mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children, and burying children alive' at the hands of the Islamic State.

"And on Thursday, President Obama seized the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to forthrightly criticize the 'terrible deeds' . . . committed 'in the name of Christ.' ...

"We are all descended from cavemen who broke the skulls of their enemies with rocks for fun or profit. But that hardly mitigates the crimes of a man who does the same thing today. I see no problem judging the behavior of the Islamic State and its apologists from the vantage point of the West's high horse, because we've earned the right to sit in that saddle."

"Musicians and Kardashians may claim they can break the Internet by posting alluring photographs, but they have nothing on Tom Wheeler.

"The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission unveiled on Wednesday a plan to demolish a policy that for two decades has allowed the Internet to become the jewel of world-wide communication and commerce. His new 'Open Internet' plan represents a monumental shift from open markets in favor of government control. It is a grave threat to American innovation.

"In a piece for Wired magazine, Mr. Wheeler announced that this week he will circulate to his fellow commissioners a plan to enact what President Obama demanded in November: century-old telephone regulation for today's broadband communications companies. ...

"Mr. Wheeler claims that his 'proposal assures the rights of internet users to go where they want, when they want, and the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone'€™s permission.' That's false. They will soon be asking his permission, an historic blunder that will politicize an Internet economy that has until now been dominated by innovators and consumers."