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Author: William A. Jacobson

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William A. Jacobson

William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School.

He is a 1981 graduate of Hamilton College and a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School. At Harvard he was Senior Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal and Director of Litigation for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.

Prior to joining the Cornell law faculty in 2007, Professor Jacobson had a highly successful civil litigation and arbitration practice in Providence, Rhode Island, concentrating in investment, employment, and business disputes in the securities industry, including many high profile cases reported in leading newspapers and magazines.

Professor Jacobson has argued cases in numerous federal and state courts, including the Courts of Appeal for the First, Fifth and Sixth Circuits, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Professor Jacobson has a national reputation as a leading practitioner in securities arbitration. He was Treasurer, and is a former member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, a professional organization of attorneys dedicated to protecting public investors. He frequently is quoted in national media on issues related to investment fraud and investor protection, and in the past has served as one of a small number of private practice attorneys who trained new arbitrators for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Professor Jacobson is co-author of the Securities Arbitration Desk Reference (Thomson-Reuters), updated annually.

Professor Jacobson is frequently quoted in the media on political and legal topics, has authored many Op-Eds in major publications, and appears on television and radio to discuss politics and the law.

A more complete listing of Professor Jacobson's professional background is available at the Cornell Law School website. The views expressed here are his own and not those of any employer or organization,

The best way to reach Prof. Jacobson is by e-mail here.

We reported on this before.  Health insurance execs afraid to talk on record about Obamacare computer problems. CNN reports today, White House Pressuring Insurance Companies To Not Criticize ObamaCare:
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Now more breaking news, evidence that the Obama administration is leaning on insurance companies to keep a lid on problems with the healthcare law rollout. Now Drew Griffin on CNN’s investigations did the reporting. So Drew, What’s going on here, what have you learned? DREW GRIFFIN: Anderson, what’s going on is behind the scenes attempt by the White House to at least keep insurers from publicly criticizing what is happening on this Affordable Care Act rollout. Basically, if you speak out, if you are quoted, you’re going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet. Several sources tell me and my colleague Chris Frates that insurance executives are being told to keep quiet....
https://twitter.com/whpresscorps/status/395410470653661184 Why would the insurance industry be worried? Maybe because like all Obama critics, they are only one speech away from being demonized.

In our two prior posts, we explained how NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was shouted down at Brown University by protesters against NYC's stop and frisk policy: The protesters decided that others should not get to hear what Kelly had to say on the topic.  One protester, Jenny Li (pictured above) revelled in the shut down:
So we drafted a petition last Thursday and as of today [October 29, 2013] there are over 500 signatures. We delivered it to the Taubman Center [at Brown] and they didn't respond to our demand to cancel the lecture, so today we cancelled it for them.
It probably will not surprise you that Li is a fellow at the People for the American Way Foundation, the liberal activist group that runs the Right Wing Watch blog among other activities. Author Mychal Denzel Smith writing at The Nation plays into every stereotype of liberal intolerance in supporting the shout down, and terming it "glorious", Brown University Booed Ray Kelly and Racism (emphasis added):

The Nation Ray Kelly Booed

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly of stop-and-frisk fame was scheduled to speak at Brown University yesterday and deliver the school's annual Noah Krieger '93 Memorial Lecture. The title of his speech, and I'm not making this up, was "Proactive Policing in America's Biggest City." What happened instead was glorious.

If only it were that benign. What probably will be the most viral moment from the Sebelius hearing this morning: And The Only Obamacare/Sebelius GIF You’ll Ever Need, from our friend Steve Gutkowski: ...

This is a follow up to our post last night, Brown U. students shout down Ray Kelly. The Brown Political Review has produced an excellent video (embedded at bottom of post) with footage both inside and outside the auditorium as Kelly was shouted down, and interviews with students and administrators. Is is quite clear that there was an organized effort to shut down the Kelly speech, and that many of the people shouting were not even students.  Student Emily Kassie, who produced the video (speaking for herself, not BPR), told me via email:
The protestors were a mix of Providence community members and Brown students. There is a moment in the video where people are asked to raise their hands if they want to hear Kelly speak. About half the room raised their hands.
The woman in the image below (since removed) related how she was called a White Supremacist for wanting to attend the lecture (at 9:30):
I got called a White Supremacist when I tried to go inside, cause I told a man near the front door that I wanted to hear what Kelly had to say.  And I think that's pretty ridiculous. I think the idea that suppressing another person's right to free speech equals exercising your free speech is completely wrong.
In a press release, the BPR described what went on inside the auditorium:
Kelly had time only to thank the event organizers, before a group of students and community members in the audience rose simultaneously to read prepared remarks. “Asking tough questions is not enough!” they read together, fists raised in unison.

Welcome to your modern American college campus. Where the biggest mouths -- almost always left-wing -- shout down and shut down voices they don't like. Today it was NYC Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Prior to his appearance on campus, there was a petition drive demanding cancellation:
1) We demand that the lecture be cancelled. 2) We demand that the honorarium set aside for the lecture be donated to organizations working to end racial profiling and police brutality in Providence and in New York City. 3) We demand transparency in the Taubman Center for Public Policy's decision-making process for inviting speakers to campus.
According to the Brown Daily Herald, protesters against the NYC stop and frisk policy disrupted and caused the talk to end after just 30 minutes. The feature image above was posted to Facebook and shows protesters outside the building where the speech was to be held. Protesters were encouraged by protest organizers to "Bring Drums." Inside the auditorium there was loud shouting until the event was closed. https://twitter.com/BlogDailyHerald/status/395282152700391424

A tweet from our very own Aleister earns Tweet of the Day honors. His tweet was in response to this tweet of mine regarding Obama's voracious reading habits. I just tweeted the word that came quickest to mind. https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/395032821628035072...

From Israel National News, A List of Monsters As Israel prepares to release 26 more terrorist prisoners as a "gesture" to the Palestinian Authority, Arutz Sheva presents a partial list of those slated for freedom. It reveals a catalogue of atrocities, the majority of which involved the...

I took this in Burns, Harney County, Oregon, on Friday, 10/25. These folks keep coming up with the most revolutionary and politically incorrect ideas. I know the fellow on the billboard. He’s a USDA rangeland scientist at the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center. He’s a very bright...

The repeated promises that you could keep your doctor and health plan never had a basis. These were false promises of historic magnitude, and the ramifications are that the "Dem Party is F****d" and Democrats "will own this problem forever." One of the benefits of Ted Cruz's defund effort is that most Republicans can say we tried our best, but the Democrats and the Democrats alone are the reason your life has been messed up. Our hands are clean. The loss of health plans was not just a coincidence, however, or a mere byproduct of health plan mandates requiring people to buy coverage they don't want or need (although that was a root cause). Rather the Obama administration passed regulations that guaranteed people would lose their health plans.  As I've always said, watch the regs. The mechanism was to eviscerate so-called grandfathering of older plans. If there was even the slightest change in the plan, even an change in a co-pay, the grandfathering was lost under the regulations. Since details of plans change all the time, and people buy new plans, the regulations guaranteed that millions, and likely tens of millions, of people would not be able to keep their plans, and as a result in many cases, lose their doctors from networks. NBC reports, Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance [original link dead, new url here, see Update No. 2]:
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

By now the statements are legion. You can keep your doctor and your insurance plan if you want to.  Guaranteed. It was more of a "lie" than George W. Bush's statements regarding Iraq having WMD stockpiles, which were in reliance on faulty intelligence that most Democrats and others in the world believed too. With Obama, there was no bi-partisan cheering section as there was with Iraq. There never was a basis for the categorical sales pitch. To the contrary, a loud chorus of voices insisted that there was no basis for Obama's statements and that the result would be what it is today: Millions and eventually possibly tens of millions of American will not get to keep their doctor and their insurance plan. Obama himself played the central role in the creation of BernieMadoff.healthcare.gov. Jonah Goldberg calls it possibly the greatest policy lie by any President ever.  It's hard to dispute that.

Update 11-8-2013: 60 Minutes backs off Benghazi witness story. ------------------------- 60 Minutes had an absolutely devastating report on the Obama administration's failure to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans in Benghazi. I'll post the video when available (update - available and added), but the heart of the report is that there were clear and unequivocal warnings which were ignored, and the Obama administration lied about these warnings after the attack. Hillary and Obama blamed a video and stood by the caskets perpetuating that lie. And remember how almost all of the media obsessed with Mitt Romney's statement over Benghazi, and colluded to ask Romney gotcha questions while downplaying and obfuscating what really happened. 60 Minutes said its investigation took almost a year. (Transcript here) https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/394603707167686656 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/394603520760221696 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/394604224753184768

While looking for something else, I stumbled up this interview by Prof. Glenn Reynolds and the Insta-Wife of Andrew Breitbart from February 2010. It may be the best interview of Andrew I've ever seen. And it's as relevant, if not more so, now as it was back then. There's...

David Frum at The Daily Beast, and Alex Pareene at Salon.com, each write about Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz, and 2016. Frum sees a Warren run ending in defeat at the hands of the Clinton machine, How Ted Cruz Can Win in 2016: Democrats liked Hillary personally. But...

From Henry, taken in Ojai, CA: I hope this one is a bit more clear. Upper left sticker says, "Vote Obama" Sticker below plate says, "The Bush Legacy: No Child Left A Dime." I should have jumped out and offered to scrape off the Bush sticker for $20.  LOL  ...

Dick Durbin's Facebook comment that a senior House Republican told Obama "I cannot even stand to look at you" was exposed as a lie. The lie did not originate with Durbin, he merely passed on what Harry Reid told the Senate Democratic caucus based on information provided to Reid by The White House. That White House lie, now admitted but chalked up to a "miscommunication," inspired Chris Matthews and guests David Corn and Cynthia Tucker, to lash out at Republicans for demonizing the President:

Hardball -  A Pattern Of Disrespect Screen Shot

A main focus was the disrespect shown by Republicans by repeatedly calling Obama a liar, which the panel agreed was because of hatred of Obama for the "other" and not one of us, and in the case of Tucker, coming right out and calling it racist:

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel, was on Kelly File last night. (Video embed at bottom of post.) You may not remember Ezekiel. He was the Dr. Death Panel referred to by Sarah Palin in early August 2009 (emphasis added):
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion. Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.
In response to Palin's us of the term "death panel," we explored Ezekiel's writing to which Palin was referring, Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions (full embed at bottom of post). On August 8, 2009, we wrote An Inconvenient Truth About The “Death Panel”:

Republican split! Rift! Schism! The media is already salivating, Immigration Poses Threat of Another Republican Rift:
A push to bring immigration legislation to the House floor, led by an unusual coalition of business executives, prominent conservatives and evangelical leaders, threatens to create another schism in the Republican Party and could have a noticeable effect on campaign contributions before the midterm elections. Several Republican executives and donors who are part of a lobbying blitz coming to Capitol Hill next week said they were considering withholding, or had already decided to withhold, future financial support to Republican lawmakers they believe are obstructing progress on immigration. “I respect people’s views and concerns about the fact that we have a situation in the United States where we have millions of undocumented immigrants,” said Justin Sayfie, a lawyer from Florida who said he helped Mitt Romney raise more than $100,000 for his presidential campaign last year, in addition to helping other Republican candidates. “But we have what we have. This is October 2013. And the country will be better off if we fix it.”
In reality, the split, rift and schism is mostly over one issue: Amnesty. Democrats repeatedly have said no amnesty, no immigration "reform." It's their hill to die on, much as no meaningful changes to Obamacare was their hill to die on when it came to the "shutdown" and debt ceiling. Republican business interests and money men are willing to give amnesty in order to obtain other non-controversial immigration reforms. And in so doing, the Republican business interests and money men make it less likely they will get anything.

He did not act stupidly, this time: Black Harvard Prof Says it’s Time to End Race-Based Affirmative Action Post Title of the Week Award goes to Aleister: OOPS! College TA Emails T and A Pics to Class Brought to you by the good folks at healthcare.gov: Brown’s $400,000 NIH Study:...