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December 2013

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 06, 2013 30 Comments

As you read the rest of this post, please keep in mind that Elizabeth Warren never has authorized release of her hiring files at Harvard Law School or other employers to see whether her phony Native American and Cherokee status was known at the time...

Posted by David Gerstman on December 06, 2013 10 Comments
A few months ago, Secretary of State John Kerry allowed as to how he was worried about Israel's future if it did not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel's Prime Minister has played along sending his emissaries to negotiate with Palestinian partners who don't want to make a deal. So this week, out of his deep seated concern for the Jewish State, the New York Times reported Wednesday that U.S., Stepping Up Role, Will Present West Bank Security Proposal to Israel:
The presentation is to be made to Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday by John R. Allen, the former American commander in Afghanistan and a retired Marine general who serves as an adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry on the Middle East peace talks. ... “It will include many details and specifics,” said a State Department official who asked not to be identified under diplomatic protocol established by the agency. “He will be presenting a piece of what will be a larger whole.” ... State Department officials described the security briefing as an “ongoing process” and not a finished product on which the United States was demanding a yes-or-no vote from the Israeli side.
The Optimistic Conservative reacts skeptically to this last quote:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 06, 2013 23 Comments
I admit to not having followed the Obama illegal alien uncle saga very carefully. He previously said he knew nothing about his then illegal alien uncle. Now he says he knows something after the uncle gave up the goods at a recent immigration hearing. The Boston Globe reports (video at bottom of post):
President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting. Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks. At the time, Onyango Obama was here illegally and fighting deportation.
Roger Simon at PJ Media (via Instapundit) asks, What if It’s All True? (emphasis mine):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 05, 2013 24 Comments
The supporters of Obamacare are oblivious to their own self-parody. This isn't 2008, kids. It is about the Cha-Ching Cha-Ching and Ba-Bling Ba-Bling. Yes, These Really Are the Winners of the Obamacare Video Contest
Back in August, a group called “Young Invincibles” teamed up with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to host an online video contest to promote Obamacare, which sounds about as terrible of an idea as the videos actually turned out. Actor Kal Penn announced the ‘Healthy Young America’ video contest winners in a Google hangout on Monday, naming three winners in the following categories: “You are Not invincible,” “Perform a song,” and “Make an animation.” Young Invincibles’ announcement touted a prize pool worth up to $30,000 for more than 100 prizes. According to the Washington Examiner, First Place took home $3,000, while the Second and Third Place winners received $2,500, and the Grand Prize winner earned $2,000. Without further ado, I present just some of the winning videos:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 05, 2013 7 Comments
Authorities in Ukraine issued further warnings to protesters Thursday, coupled with sharp criticism from the prime minister, amidst continuing protests there that initially triggered a brutal crackdown and sparked broader anti-government sentiment. From Reuters:
Ukrainian police on Thursday warned pro-Europe protesters they faced a "harsh" crackdown if they did not end their occupation of public offices in Kiev, while President Viktor Yanukovich's prime minister denounced them as "Nazis and criminals". The authorities issued the tough warnings as foreign ministers held a European security conference in a city seething with unrest over the Ukrainian government's U-turn away from Europe back towards Russia. [...] A court ordered the protesters on Thursday to quit the Kiev mayor's office, where they have set up an operational hub, and halt their four-day blockade of government buildings. In perhaps the strongest signal yet that the authorities are contemplating action to reclaim the streets, the head of the Kiev police, Valery Mazan, said: "We do not want to use force. But if the law is broken, we will act decisively, harshly. "We will not try to talk people round. We have the means and capability laid down by the law," he added.

Posted by A.F. Branco on December 05, 2013 4 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 David Gerstman on December 05, 2013 16 Comments
The Washington Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler asks, "Did the United Nations demand Iran suspend uranium enrichment as part of a final deal?" At issue are statements made by Senators Robert Menendez and Bob Corker about Iran's right to enrich on the Sunday morning talks shows. Kessler, for example, took exception to Corker's response here:
CBS NEWS’S JOHN DICKERSON: Senator Corker, is it a red line for you? You talked about the standards of any ultimate deal. Is enrichment of any kind by Iran, is that something everybody should stay focused on? That any deal that includes that is a non-starter for you, because, of course, the Iranians say that they expect to be able to keep enriching? SEN. BOB CORKER (R-Tenn.): Yes, so to me that’s a baseline that the U.N. Security Council has agreed to, I think, six times, certainly this administration negotiated that in 2010. So they negotiated that in 2010. So as long as they can enrich, it seems to me that we are violating the very standards that we set in place in the first place. – exchange on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Dec. 1, 2013
Kessler didn't hand out any Pinnochios to the senators but still found fault with their responses:
With their comments, Menendez and Corker might have left viewers with the impression that the U.N. resolutions already require a suspension of enrichment in any final agreement. That’s not the case — though it can certainly be an ongoing demand. The administration, for its part, appears to have set that goal aside in an effort to keep the diplomacy moving. The lawmakers are certainly within their rights to call attention to this decision, but they should be more precise in their language about what the U.N. resolutions actually require. Given that they were speaking on live television and this is a complex issue, their comments, at this point, do not yet rise to the level of a Pinocchio.
Perhaps the senators were a bit sloppy, but I think the question asked of them was misleading. The question shouldn't have been whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium as part of any final agreement, but whether Iran would prove that its nuclear program was strictly civilian. In introducing his analysis, Kessler wrote:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 05, 2013 7 Comments
It looks like the District Attorney’s office will not be filing any charges against the man who decided to play a Thanksgiving Day “joke” on his sister by telling her there was a bomb in her car, prompting the shutdown of a busy San Diego highway and stranding holiday drivers for hours. From NBC San Diego:
The San Diego District Attorney’s office decided not to file charges Wednesday against a man who made a prank phone call to his sister saying there was a bomb in her car, resulting in a massive law enforcement response and the shutdown of Interstate 15 on Thanksgiving. Victor Diaz, 28, was taken into custody Thursday after pulling the bomb hoax on his younger sister, Deanna Diaz, 27. He spent the holiday weekend in jail awaiting punishment for the stunt. Originally, Victor faced felony charges for making a false bomb threat. He was supposed to be arraigned on Wednesday, but the case took another turn when the DA’s office ultimately chose not to file charges. The case will now be passed onto the San Diego City Attorney’s office for review. At this point, the prankster’s case can be reduced to misdemeanor charges for making a criminal threat. He may also still face hefty fines. Officials said Victor will likely be released from jail Wednesday night, and will receive a letter in the mail notifying him of the next steps in his case.
Victor Diaz had called his sister Deanna from a number that she did not recognize (and apparently in a disguised voice), and told her there was a bomb in her car.  His sister then pulled over and called 911, triggering a law enforcement response that included multiple agencies and bomb sniffing dogs, and shut down the highway and snarled traffic for several hours on Thanksgiving Day. That call was followed by another one, threatening to follow her home.

Posted by New Neo on December 05, 2013 17 Comments
Perhaps the most important Obamacare lie among many will turn out to be the one that says that the Obamacare Medicaid expansion will lead to quality health care for the people newly covered by it. Anyone who was even remotely familiar with the way Medicaid already worked was quite aware of this at the time Obamacare was passed.  Medicaid recipients were already having great difficulty getting a doctor to see them due to the low reimbursement rates. The Obamacare Medicaid expansion provides people with the trappings of care but is unlikely to be able to deliver all that much of it---unless, of course, more doctors come under the thumb of government and are forced to accept Medicaid levels of reimbursement. Oh well, doctors. They earn too much money anyway, don't they? Not in the Soviet Union they didn't. Not even in post-Soviet Russia.  Here's why [emphasis mine]:
Soviet doctors never had anything like the status and money of Western doctors. The medicine they practice was considered to be below the levels of the West, the system always suffered from shortages, and the social status of a provincial general practitioner was akin to a schoolteacher's, respectable, but modest... But under Communism, doctors at least lived no worse than anybody else -- and maybe a bit better. That has changed. Caught between an impoverished government that cannot afford universal medical care and a deep-rooted Soviet scorn for medicine-for-profit, many of Russia's doctors, especially here in the provinces, seem worn thin, out of canteen water but still marching ahead. ''When everything else took the capitalist road of development, and medicine was left on the socialist road, we got an imbalance that is killing medicine,'' said Dr. Aleksei Golland, one of a handful of private doctors in Kostroma.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 05, 2013 12 Comments
I don't use the word "evil" very often here, but it certainly would be justified as to the Boycott Divestment Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel and BDS supporters in academia. See the BDS Tag for my prior writings on the BDS movement for background. Now that the National Council of the American Studies Association has endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, the ASA has joined the Jihad against Israel. The ASA National Council's justifications are flimsy and historically incorrect and biased. They cite the separation "wall" (actually mostly a fence, only a wall in certain places) as a justification without noting that the "wall" was build only after a year of unrelenting Palestinian suicide bombings at cafes, reception halls, buses, and even at Hebrew University. Several hundred Israelis civilians died in these suicide bombings. The "wall" put an end to that. So too did checkpoints, where even to this day sophisticated weapons for use against Israel are stopped.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 04, 2013 1 Comment
Protests in Ukraine continued on Wednesday as protesters persisted in their efforts to block access to public buildings after several days of unrest in Kiev. From the NY Times:
The demonstrators who have laid siege to public buildings in this rattled capital expanded their protest overnight, blockading the central bank on Wednesday and setting up tents and lighting bonfires on the sidewalk outside. Protest leaders had vowed to surround additional government buildings after the Ukrainian Parliament on Tuesday defeated a measure calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and his government.

The failure of the no-confidence vote pushed the battle for the future of Ukraine back onto the streets, where protests began over the weekend. Demonstrators allied with opposition leaders said they would not relent until they succeed in removing the government, including President Viktor F. Yanukovich.

But the protesters’ overnight goal of blockading the presidential administration building had not been accomplished by Wednesday morning. They did advance their sphere of control about 500 yards up a side street leading to Independence Square, which they have occupied, and erected a barricade near one entrance to the administration building.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2013 25 Comments
I thought she would consider it. I hoped she would run. We needed it as a country, though not for the reasons her supporters think. Via Boston Herald:
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledged today she will not run for president in 2016 and will finish her term. The Bay State senior senator has been mentioned in the preliminary talk about the presidential race, but Hillary Clinton has generated the most buzz. "I'm not running for president and I plan to serve out my term," she said at a press conference in Boston with Mayor-elect Marty Walsh. When further pressed, she added: "I pledge to serve out my term. "I am not running for president. I am working as hard as I can to be the best possible senator I can be."
Her putative presidential campaign may be dead, but her story lives on. And oh, what a story it was. Some might call it a Great American Fairy Tale.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2013 8 Comments

The reason there is no peace in the Middle East is that Palestinians believe this, teach it and put it on their television, via Palestinian Media Watch (h/t @haivri): Sheikh Muhammad Al-Tawil teacher in Al-Aqsa Mosque school: "What's happening at the Al-Aqsa Mosque (i.e., Temple Mount...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2013 38 Comments
Martin Bashir infamously suggested that someone shit and piss in Sarah Palin's mouth because she used the (quite common) analogy of national debt to slavery. Bashir made his suggestion by way of analogy to a slave torture, stating that Palin would be a good candidate for it. Bashir apologized, then was put on vacation, and today resigned. Tommy Christopher at Mediaite has the news:
Just over two weeks ago, MSNBC host Martin Bashir delivered a harsh piece of commentary that culminated in the suggestion that someone should “s-h-i-t” in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin‘s (R-AK) mouth. Bashir offered an abject apology on his next broadcast, but a chorus of critics continued to demand action against the host. After a reported “vacation” for the host earlier this week, Bashir announced, Wednesday afternoon, that MSNBC and Martin Bashir are parting ways. Here’s the statement from Martin Bashir, via email:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2013 26 Comments
Amnesty for illegal aliens never seems to be really, truly dead, despite frequent pronouncements. The news that John Boehner has hired a former John McCain staffer involved in McCain's push for immigration reform has rekindled speculation that Boehner will go soft on the issue. Steve Dinan in The Washington Times write, Hola: Boehner prepares to push amnesty bill through House:
House Speaker John A. Boehner announced Tuesday that he has hired a longtime advocate of legalizing illegal immigrants to be an adviser, signaling that the Republican is still intent on trying to pass an immigration bill during this congressional session. Immigrant rights advocates cheered the move as a sign of Mr. Boehner’s dedication to action. Those who want a crackdown on illegal immigration said the top Republican in the House has moved closer to embracing amnesty by hiring Rebecca Tallent, a former staffer for Sen. John McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe. Tallent’s hiring suggests he really does still want to push an amnesty through the House, which to me suggests that the immigration hawks still have their work cut out for them,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “She is a professional amnesty advocate.” Ms. Tallent is leaving a job as immigration policy director for the Bipartisan Policy Center and will join Mr. Boehner’s staff Wednesday, putting her in the center of one of the thorniest issues in Congress.
Roll Call reports, Boehner’s New Immigration Policy Director Has Deep Experience on Overhaul Efforts:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 04, 2013 16 Comments
Havard's Institute of Politics just released a devastating study showing a massive drop in support among Millennials for Obama and Obamacare. Bottom line is that Millennials don't like Republicans, but for the first time they don't like Obama and Democrats almost as much. Here is the key finding in the Executive Summary (at pp. 5-6):
Additionally, we found that a majority (52%) of 18- to 29- year olds would choose to recall all members of Congress if it were possible, 45 percent would recall their member of Congress (45% would not) and approximately the same number indicate that they would recall President Obama (47% recall, 46% not recall).

Harvard Survey Fall 2013 Millenial Support Recalls

The trends lines are horrible for Democrats particularly among college age students, where the gap between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed significantly:
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