Maybe because Obama and his handlers looked up and discovered he was down 36 points from 2008 with Hispanics, the president issued an executive order that stands immigration law on its head.

Besides...it had been at least 48 hours since he had shamelessly pandered to a minority group and he was about due.

The Hill:

Democrats in both chambers are cheering Thursday after the Obama administration unveiled more lenient rules surrounding the deportation of illegal immigrants.

The changes - announced by the Department of Homeland Security - will allow many illegal immigrants to remain in the country and apply for work permits.

Under the new rules, DHS officials will perform a case-by-case reviews of those in line for deportation, weeding out violent criminals and other high-priority cases while closing the books on those considered no threat.

The changes could be particularly beneficial to people who would be eligible for the DREAM Act, an immigration proposal pushed by Democrats that has yet to pass Congress.

Raise your hand if you actually believe DHS will "weed out" all the violent criminals and other "high priority cases?"

If you raised your hand, no cookie for you.

Yes, this is de facto amnesty via executive fiat. Ed Lasky puts it this way: "Obama decides what laws to enforce and what laws to ignore--and our jobless rate is sky-high."

There is no provision that I've heard of in US law that grants a known criminal a benefit without virtue of a trial or even a hearing. This is an electoral sop thrown to the Hispanic community as well as being an arbitrary exercise of government power that supercedes immigration law and makes deportation for violating our law optional.

So Democrats are cheering? Fine. Let them change the law and the rest of us will join in. But the man responsible for making sure that the laws - all laws - are faithfully executed just fell down on the job.

Why are they cheering?

Hat tip: Ed Lasky