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October 2013

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 29, 2013 27 Comments
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

Posted by Hans Bader on October 29, 2013 17 Comments
Obamacare contains many racial preferences. But that fact has drawn remarkably little attention, even though the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded back in 2009 that the healthcare bill was racially discriminatory, in two ways. First, Obamacare is filled with “sections that factor in race when awarding billions in contracts, scholarships and grants” and give “preferential treatment to minority students for scholarships.” Second, as an African-American member of the Commission noted, it “creates separate and unequal operating standards for long-term care facilities that serve racial and ethnic minorities.” By granting HHS “the discretion to waive substantial penalties . . . for failing to report elder abuse and other crimes committed against residents of long-term care facilities that serve racial and ethnic minorities,” it “could increase the probability that residents of such facilities won’t receive the same level of protection as residents of nursing homes that serve non-minority populations.”

Posted by Andrew Branca on October 29, 2013 32 Comments
This morning Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois held a US Senate hearing nominally on the subject of Stand Your Ground laws. Here I'll just share an overview of the testimony, along with my own general observations. (More detailed posts will likely follow.) [caption id="attachment_69289" align="alignnone" width="450"]US Senate hearing: "Stand Your Ground: Civil rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force" US Senate hearing: "Stand Your Ground: Civil rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force"[/caption] My first general observation is that the anti-SYG folks were, as experience would suggest, big on emotion and small on actual facts, law, or data. One of the anti-SYG witnesses, Professor Sullivan from Harvard Law School, did raise some actual data--but when these were utterly destroyed by the later testimony of Dr. John Lott and Elliot Shapiro of CATA, Professor Sullivan was swift to discount the use of data (which he himself had introduced into the testimony) and instead focus on the "real people" behind the data. In sharp contrast, the testimony of the pro-SYG speakers was focused and direct. Second, the anti-SYG folks persistently conflated the legal concept of Stand Your Ground with utterly discrete legal concepts, such as presumptions of reasonableness and civil/criminal immunity.

Posted by New Neo on October 29, 2013 32 Comments

Here's Steny Hoyer on Obama's oft-repeated promise that if you like your health insurance plan you could keep it: “We knew that there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage,” Hoyer said in response...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 29, 2013 9 Comments

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois has removed the controversial Facebook post that sparked a firestorm last week after he accused a then unnamed Republican of having said ‘I cannot even stand to look at you’ to the President during a shutdown negotiation meeting.  That...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 29, 2013 31 Comments

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...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 29, 2013 23 Comments

Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), will testify Tuesday morning before the House Ways and Means Committee about the administration's implementation of the Affordable Care Act. A livestream of the hearing will be available at C-SPAN when the hearing...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 29, 2013 12 Comments

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...

Posted by David Gerstman on October 29, 2013 10 Comments
In the more recent iterations of the Star Trek television show, there were villains called Cardassians. They were even more ruthless than the Klingons. They also had a remarkable justice system as is shown in the following dialogue:
Gul Dukat: In Cardassia, the verdict is always known before the trial begins; and it's always the same. Commander Sisko: In that case, why bother with a trial at all? Gul Dukat: Because the people demand it. They enjoy watching justice triumph over evil, every time. They find it comforting. Commander Sisko: Isn't there ever a chance you might try an innocent man by mistake? Gul Dukat: Cardassians don't make mistakes. Commander Sisko: I'll have to remember that.
When reading Anne Bayefsky's latest account of the machinations of UN Human Rights Council, it's hard to think of a better analogy than the Cardassia's predetermined verdicts.  Israel is scheduled to sit before the UNHRC and be subjected to its Universal Periodic Review (UPR), here's how it works, as Anne Bayefsky explains:
As the UPR theory goes, once every four years the Council spends a few hours talking about the human rights record of each UN member state. The process has a number of stages. The country under consideration sends representatives to make some speeches about its terrific human rights situation. Other states are each given no more than two minutes to comment and make recommendations for improvement. The state concerned voices its acceptance or rejection of those recommendations. NGOs – including phony NGOs sponsored by governments – are allotted a limited time to make comments. And then the recommendations – and the government’s rejection of any of them – are put into a report which is perfunctorily “adopted.” In practice, the UPR looks like this. A very large number of friends of each rights-abusing country line up to praise its human rights record and generate a long list of faux congratulatory recommendations which can be easily “accepted.” The favor is repaid when their pals’ turns come along. These states then announce that serious recommendations “do not enjoy their support.” The praise and the rejections, all get included in a report that contains no findings and no conclusions, and there are no decisions to take action.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 29, 2013 18 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 28, 2013 75 Comments
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.”

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 28, 2013 4 Comments

The account for a link shortening service connected to the Obama support organization Organizing for Action (OfA) was reportedly compromised today.  Shortened links in President Obama's Facebook and Twitter postings were in turn briefly redirecting readers to a video with pro-Syrian regime propaganda.  The pro-Assad...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 28, 2013 7 Comments
A UK man has been charged in connection with hacking into multiple US government computer systems, causing personal data of US military personnel to be compromised and millions of dollars in losses, according to US Attorney Paul Fishman in NJ. From Reuters:
A British man has been arrested in England and charged by the United States and Britain with infiltrating U.S. government computer systems, including those run by the military, to steal confidential data and disrupt operations, authorities said. U.S. prosecutors said the alleged hacker, Lauri Love, infiltrated thousands of computer systems including those of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. space agency NASA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Love, 28, and three unnamed co-conspirators, believed to live in Australia and Sweden, intended their activity to "disrupt the operations and infrastructure of the United States government," according to a U.S. indictment unsealed on Monday. "Such conduct endangers the security of our country and is an affront to those who serve," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey, who announced the charges, said in a statement. Love was charged in Britain with violating the Computer Misuse Act, and charged in the United States with accessing a U.S. government computer without permission and conspiracy, authorities said. Fishman said the hacking took place from October 2012 until this month. He said it compromised personal data of U.S. military personnel, and information on defense budgets, contract bidding, and the demolition and disposal of military facilities, and caused millions of dollars of losses.
The indictment in New Jersey alleges that, once inside the systems, Love and the unnamed co-conspirators also installed “back doors” that would allow them to return at a later time to steal additional confidential information. Additional details from a press release from the US Attorney's office in NJ:
Love and his conspirators planned and executed the attacks in secure online chat forums known as Internet relay chats, or IRC. They communicated in these chats about identifying and locating computer networks vulnerable to cyber attacks and gaining access to and stealing massive amounts of data from those networks. They also discussed the object of the conspiracy, which was to hack into the computer networks of the government victims and steal large quantities of non-public data, including PII [personally identifiable information], to disrupt the operations and infrastructure of the United States government.

Posted by A.F. Branco on October 28, 2013 8 Comments

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...

Posted by New Neo on October 28, 2013 39 Comments
In a Slate article entitled "Canada has death panels, and that's a good thing," Yale law student Adam Goldenberg applauds the idea.

Canada Death Panels Slate Title Only

The "experts and wise community members" (Goldenberg's words) who make up Ontario's Consent and Capacity Board have the final say and can overrule a family's decision about whether to continue life support for an ill member if there is a dispute between the family and the patient's doctors. Who are these people, and why are they given that power? The group is a government-appointed board heavy with lawyers (and not necessarily those whose practice involves relevant areas of law), psychiatrists, and an assortment of others from the community with a great range of professions, many of them seemingly unrelated to the task at hand. All the physicians on the board appear to be psychiatrists, which is most likely a reflection of the fact that the bulk of its business (80%) involves issues of involuntary commitment to mental institutions and/or decisions about mental capacity to consent to or refuse treatment, rather than its work as a "death panel." Goldenberg notes that at present in Canada and the US, many disputes over end of life care are decided by judges:
When these family members disagree with a patient’s doctors, and when the doctors are nonetheless determined to act, the dispute generally goes to court, where it can take months or even years to resolve. That is how it works in other Canadian and American jurisdictions, anyway.
But in the US such disputes have mostly been between family members about end-of-life decisions, a la the Schiavo case.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 28, 2013 45 Comments
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.

Posted by Laurel Conrad on October 28, 2013 8 Comments
The launch of healthcare.gov, the Obamacare website, continues to be extremely unpopular due to glitches and long wait times. According to Pew Research, only three-in-ten Americans responded favorably to its launch. The glitches are even turning-off many liberals. Some top Democrats insist on making excuses and down-playing the failures of the website as just "glitches."  Here are 5 of the website glitchers:

1. Pres. Obama

During the week following the failed launch of the Obamacare website, Obama defended the policy and went after Republican critics in his weekly address. But even liberals are not buying the president's hyper-positive rhetoric. On Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show," Stewart compares clips of Obama speaking at a press conference to the character of Gill, a desperate and unsuccessful salesman from "The Simpsons". The clips, which are from 5:02- 5:25, reveal Obama enthusiastically proclaiming things like, "the health insurance that is available to people is working just fine," "The product is good," and "I want people to be able to get this great product; and that product is working, it's really good!" (language warning)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 27, 2013 89 Comments
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
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