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April 2014

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 21, 2014 14 Comments
Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine Monday, where he planned to meet with the acting prime minister and president, as well as various members of Parliament and representatives from non-governmental organizations over the next two days.  Biden’s trip comes on the heels of yet additional escalations in the conflict in eastern Ukraine over the weekend. From Reuters:
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will announce a package of technical assistance focused on energy and economic aid distribution during a two-day visit to Ukraine that began on Monday, a senior administration official said. Biden is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the country since the crisis with Russia erupted months ago. His trip is largely symbolic. But during talks with Ukrainian leaders on Tuesday he will announce U.S. assistance, primarily of technical know-how to boost energy efficiency as well as production in Ukrainian natural gas fields and extraction of "unconventional" gas resources, a senior administration official told reporters traveling on board the vice president's plane. A U.S. team was also in Ukraine to help deal with the issue of securing gas flows from EU countries such as Slovakia and Hungary in the event that Russia cuts off Ukraine's supply, the official said. Kiev gets about half of its gas from Moscow and a large proportion of Europe's gas is pumped from Russia via Ukraine. The United States is pushing Ukraine and the European Union to diversify their energy supplies and become less reliant on Russia. Biden arrived in Kiev as an agreement reached last week to avert wider conflict in Ukraine began to falter.
Foreign ministers and officials from the United States, Europe, Russia and Ukraine agreed in Geneva Thursday that separatists would disarm and vacate occupied government buildings in exchange for amnesty as well as guarantees of rights for ethnic Russians in Ukraine, according to NBC News. But Reuters reported Monday that both sides in the conflict soon after accused the other of breaking the agreement, while pro-Russia separatists showed no signs of relinquishing control of government buildings. Tensions also escalated further in eastern Ukraine on Sunday after a shootout at a security checkpoint near Slovyansk, despite what was supposed to have been a truce.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2014 24 Comments
Wendy Davis' campaign has had its problems. The revelation that her life story of personal struggle and triumph as a single mother was embellished was a game changer. Her campaign has had a communications problem as well, playing media favorites and putting Davis on stage with a shotgun in a Dukakis-in-tank moment. The video of Davis' supporters mocking Greg Abbott's disability was cringe-worthy. Her flip-flop then flop-flip on late term abortion alienated her base, as did her endorsement of open carry. All of this led the left-wing site Wonkette to issue a satirical appeal to readers, Let’s Help The Wendy Davis Campaign Stop Sucking So Hard. In that jest there is truth. Perhaps more important, Davis has not been able to expand her appeal to pro-abortion feminists to women in general, much less men. The polling showing she's losing the female vote has to be devastating news. Now there's the whiff of scandal, as reported by The Dallas Morning News, FBI probe of NTTA includes Wendy Davis file, Travis DA’s office says:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2014 22 Comments
With the rise of the internet, and blogs, and Twitter, and Facebook, more people are reading more things. Like Upworthy. But there's "reading" and there's "reading." Short-form reading is up, long-form reading is down. TLDNR. That's my sense of things. There probably is a study out there about it. Would someone do me a favor and summarize the findings in 140 characters, so I don't actually have to read it? You can send it to me at @leginsurrection. Here are ruminations from Yaacov Lozowick, Re-learning to Read:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2014 17 Comments
Via @MarkCuban: Some background, Patent Troll Says It Owns Podcasting; Sues Adam Carolla, HowStuffWorks:
We've written a few times about a patent trolling operation called Personal Audio. Like so many patent trolling companies, who's actually behind it is something of a mystery, but it does have an empty office in East Texas that no one ever goes to. It sued Apple and others claiming that it held patents on the concept of "playlists" and actually scored some victories. Amazingly, it sued Apple multiple times over the same patent, arguing that small changes to its products were new violations. Well, the company is back with a "new" patent, 8,112,504, called a "System for disseminating media content representing episodes in a serialized sequence" and appears to be claiming that podcasting itself violates the patent -- and has sued three podcasters, including Adam Carolla's "ACE Broadcasting," HowStuffWorks and Togi Entertainment.
Carolla's funding site is SAVE OUR PODCASTS LEGAL DEFENSE FUND:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 20, 2014 7 Comments

It's okay to sing along...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 19, 2014 64 Comments
I don't think we've written here yet about the Bundy Ranch standoff, mostly because we didn't have enough information about the situation to make a judgment about what really was going on. And I didn't have enough time to figure it all out. Was it, as some portrayed, a heroic struggle against an overbearing and overly aggressive federal government (in which case we might have taken the side of the underdog) or, as Harry Reid has portrayed it, a bunch of domestic terrorists looking for a shoot up? Or somewhere in between? Which gets me to the title of this post, "What if Bundy Ranch Were Owned by a Bunch of Black People?," which is the question posed by Jamelle Bouie at Slate.com:
A few things. First, this entire incident speaks to the continued power of right-wing mythology. For many of the protesters, this isn’t about a rogue rancher as much as it’s a stand against “tyranny” personified in Barack Obama and his administration. Second, it won’t happen, but right-wing media ought to be condemned for their role in fanning the flames of this standoff. After years of decrying Obama’s “lawlessness” and hyperventilating over faux scandals, it’s galling to watch conservatives applaud actual lawbreaking and violent threats to federal officials.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 19, 2014 12 Comments
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) had a close call with a train on Friday while at a news conference with Milford Mayor Ben Blake about railway safety. From WGGB/ABC40:
It was a close call at a Friday event for U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut. Ironically, he was holding a press conference about increasing railway safety across the state. That’s when a passing train sped by, just inches away from Blumenthal’s back. [...] The event was aimed at decreasing safety violations on the railways. Blumenthal says there were 139 violations since 2004. He says per 100 miles of track, Metro-North had five times the number of safety defects than any other commuter railroad in the country.
It was just as Mayor Blake said, "Safety, as you know, is paramount," when the train whipped by and temporarily disrupted the news conference. As news reports and other sites reporting on this story have pointed out, that yellow safety line is there for a reason.  It's a good idea to stand behind it. Video report from WTNH/News8, via BizPacReview below:

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 19, 2014 6 Comments
If there's one person in America who wants people to stop talking about Obamacare, it's Obama. In recent appearances, the president has gone out of his way to declare that the debate is over and the law is here to stay. Obama is obviously trying to cement that notion in the minds of Americans so they'll be less receptive to changes should the Republicans win the senate in 2014. What Obama doesn't seem to know or be willing to acknowledge is that the debate is continuing in spite of his wishes. George E. Condon Jr. recently wrote in National Journal...
The Debate Over Obamacare Is Hardly Over President Obama opened his press conference Thursday with a bold proclamation that "the repeal debate is and should be over." But his declaration of victory in the long-running war over his health care overhaul did not last long. Only five questions later, he was forced to offer a softer, almost wistful acknowledgement of the reality that there are many more battles to wage and the debate could go on for years.

Posted by Bryan Jacoutot on April 19, 2014 9 Comments
Last week, a bill led by Ted Cruz unanimously passed the House and Senate, and recently came to the President’s desk for signature.
Cruz quickly and quietly worked to unveil a proposal in recent days that would ban Iran's recently appointed ambassador to the United Nations from entering the United States. He spent last weekend negotiating with New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, the third-ranking Senate Democrat and a vocal critic of the Iranian government. Over the course of those conversations, the senators agreed to tweak Cruz's bill to make it amenable to Democrats, who on Monday night passed the bill unanimously and without debate. These days, getting a bill passed by either chamber is enough of an accomplishment for most lawmakers. But Cruz quickly identified a House sponsor, Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who took up the cause and convinced House GOP leaders to bypass the committee process and allow for a quick vote. The measure passed unanimously on Thursday without debate as House lawmakers left town for a two-week recess.
President Obama, who felt the bill was outside the constitutional authority of Congress to enact, has signed the bill into law but signaled in a “signing statement” he will not enforce it in situations he deems improper.
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