And the Bill of Rights, too....
Goodness gracious. RT @SheaDiamond: F**k you #hobbylobby keep your rosaries off my ovaries!!! #womensrights
— Bethany Bowra (@BethanyBowra) June 30, 2014
RT @ofirgendelman: ISA and IDF: The bodies of the 3 kidnapped teens were found near Hebron
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 30, 2014Israeli troops on Monday discovered the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, who were kidnapped on June 12, north of Hebron in the West Bank. The bodies were found in an area between Halhul and Karmei Tzur on Monday afternoon. Israeli security forces, which had been conducting extensive searches in the area, sealed off the area and declared it a closed military zone.Buzzfeed reports that the teens likely were shot during the kidnapping:
BuzzFeed spoke to an Israeli official involved in the case, who confirmed that during the police call a gunshot can clearly be heard. The car, he added, had clear evidence of foul play. Over the last week. Israeli soldiers could be seen digging through rocks and dredging wells in Hebron in the search for the teens. “We have been operating, for some time now, with evidence that these boys were killed,” he said. “It is with a heavy heart that we realized we were looking for bodies.” An Israeli army officer, who spoke to BuzzFeed by phone from the Hebron area, said that an autopsy had not yet been conducted. He said that the bodies of three teens had been found shot, likely very close to the time of their abduction.This post will be updated as additional details are released. There are plenty of alleged facts and photos circulating on Twitter and Facebook -- we're going to stick with official and/or confirmed news reports. UPDATES:
In contrast, her rulings in favor of the defense were few and far between. It was surely a similar perception by the defense that inhibited them from ever seeking self-defense immunity for Zimmerman, as provided for under Florida statute 776.032 "Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force."
That the same judge who so consistently ruled against Zimmerman at his murder trial would be the one chosen to also preside over his libel suit against NBC is eye brow raising, to say the least.
Zimmerman's libel suit against NBC was based on NBC's admitted doctoring of the audio of his 911 call to police, apparently done with the intent of making Zimmerman appear to be racist.
Purported evidence of racism on the part of Zimmerman was, at the time, extremely important to the prosecution of the case, for two reasons.
No contraception mandate for closely held corporations....
(1) Whether a state may, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs; and (2) whether the lower court erred in holding that the claims of providers in the Home Based Support Services Program are not ripe for judicial review.The ruling was 5-4, with the majority authored by Justice Alito, as tweeted by ScotusBlog:
Breaking: SCOTUS limits power to compel contributions to public employee unions but does not forbid it
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 30, 2014The decision says that union bargaining fees cannot be imposed on employees that are not full public employees
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 30, 2014This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support. We hold that it does not, and we therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Speaking amongst friendly colleagues last Monday at the third roundtable, Mike Jungers, the dean of students at Missouri State University, made the surprising statement that new investigation procedures of campus sexual assault were resulting in the alleged perpetrators agreeing to be interrogated without obtaining an attorney.
He considered this to be a good thing.
Note: You may reprint this cartoon provided you link back to this source. To see more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here. Branco’s page is Cartoonist A.F.Branco...
President Barack Obama has chosen former Procter & Gamble Chief Executive Bob McDonald, an Army veteran, as his nominee to be the next secretary of veterans affairs, a senior Obama administration official said on Sunday. Obama's announcement of McDonald, 61, will be made this week, possibly on Monday. If confirmed by the Senate, McDonald would be tasked with repairing the Veterans Administration after widespread evidence of delays in military veterans getting healthcare at VA facilities. The announcement is to come days after a White House review found significant and chronic failures across the board at the Veterans Administration and evidence that a "corrosive culture" prevails.If confirmed, McDonald would replace Eric Shinseki, who resigned in late May after significant problems at the VA, including secretive wait lists, became highly publicized.
Gazette opinion: Obama earned the low ratings Sometimes, you have to admit you're wrong. And, we were wrong. We said that things couldn't get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush. But, President Barack Obama's administration has us yearning for the good ol' days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show that Americans are giving Obama lower marks than in 2006 when Iraq was going poorly for Bush and a tepid response to Hurricane Katrina sunk Bush's ratings. It's not that popularity polling should be the final or even best measure of a president. There is that old saw that points out there's a difference between doing what is right and what is popular. For us, though, it's the number of bungled or blown policies in the Obama administration which lead us to believe Obama has earned every bit of an abysmal approval rating.John Nolte of Breitbart summarizes the rest of the piece:
"She knew under the Federal Records Act that she had an obligation for these documents to be preserved."...
As for Mr. Brown, we'll address his flaws first. We have been consistently critical of his lack of transparency in discussing his role in Maryland's disastrous health insurance exchange launch. His explanations have been guarded and convoluted; a simple apology and a pledge to learn from the experience would have been much better. Mr. Brown was, officially, Maryland's point-person for health care reform. Had the website been a success, he would have taken credit; thus, he must accept a share of blame for its failure. That said, the buck stops with Gov. Martin O'Malley, not Mr. Brown, whose actual role appears to have been more symbolic than managerial.That's an endorsement? He wasn't incompetent he really wasn't supposed do anything? Worse the Sun called Gansler, "able public servant during his long career." The Sun's criticisms of Gansler stemmed from his campaign not for his governance. To endorse the guy whose managerial role they described as "symbolic" over someone with a track record is ridiculous. I bring up the endorsements again even though the race is over, because it shows the lengths that Brown's supporters have to go to get past his failure. Either they ignore it or they say he was a no show. Neither one is a ringing endorsement for the guy's leadership. But the failure isn't just Brown's, or the O'Malley/Brown administration. It's the failure of Maryland's Democratic party - as nearly the entire leadership of the party in Maryland endorsed Brown. And the leading newspapers in Maryland endorsed him too. So the Democrats want power without responsibility. And the media that should be serving as a check on government's power have failed miserably in their civic responsibility. Look at Brown's last ad before the primary, called "Step up." Brown comes across as confident, but even as he asks viewers for their help to "build a better Maryland," he offers no qualifications for the job, only that he is driven by the value his father instilled in him that "service to others comes first." He sounds like it is his convictions not his record that should be the criterion for choosing him. He wants us to forget his record.
Unverified footage posted to YouTube on Saturday appears to show the Israeli air strike carried out Friday afternoon on a car carrying two operatives belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of armed groups in Gaza. The footage shows a vehicle driving along a coastal road before being struck. Passersby remain seemingly unharmed. Israel confirmed carrying out the targeted killing of Osama Hassumi, 29, and Mohammad Fatzih, 24, on Friday, charging that they were involved in a cell responsible for repeated rocket fire on Israel’s southern cities over the past several weeks and were planning terror attacks on Israeli civilians.Interesting comment at YouTube:
Lois Lerner has no records of two years of missing emails and Republican claims that she’s hiding something are “silly,” her lawyer said in his first interview since the controversy around the former IRS official erupted two weeks ago. “She doesn’t know what happened,” lawyer William Taylor III said of the 2011 computer crash that erased two years worth of Lerner’s correspondence. “It’s a little brazen to think she did this on purpose.”Taylor indicated that Lerner “requested that IT use every possible resource” to try and recover the contents of her hard drive. Regardless of the misfortune of Lerner’s unrecoverable hard drive, many have asked if the emails were printed in hard copy anywhere as a backup. IRS rules specify in part that agency emails “created or received in the transaction of agency business” are to be printed and kept on file. IRS commissioner John Koskinen has said that not all emails are necessarily considered an “official record.”
