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April 2014

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2014 7 Comments
Stanley Cohen is an activist lawyer most identified with Hamas and other anti-Israeli causes and groups. Late last month The Jewish Daily Forward had an extensive article about Cohen's political journey to anti-Zionism, including representation of Hamas and Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, who was convicted last month. It appears from the timing that Cohen's plea deal was timed to allow him to finish the al-Qaeda trial: Cohen was indicted in August 2012 in the Northern District of New York on a variety of tax-related charges.  The Indictment is embedded at the bottom of this post, but the gist of the claims is that he ran his law practice off the books, including receiving and paying for services in cash without reporting, and failing to make tax filings and reporting for many years. When indicted, Cohen was defiant, claiming it was a political prosecution:
.... I am an advocate for many people the government would like to silence or put in jail: Palestinian freedom fighters, Muslim preachers, North American natives living on Indian reservations, marijuana dealers, anti-war protestors, radical squatters, the homeless, "hacktivists", anti-Zionists and everyone in between. I live my ideology in the job I do, and I try to be aggressive in vindicating the rights of clients. I have challenged the state at every opportunity. I'll keep doing this in the Lower East Side, in Washington, DC, in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza. It is my passion....
Yesterday Cohen released a statement via Twitter to supporters that he would be pleading guilty today.   Once again, Cohen maintained the prosecution was political.  The statement reads in part:

Posted by A.F. Branco on April 14, 2014 3 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 William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2014 13 Comments

TaxProf has released the rankings of blogs run by law professors, for the 12 months ending December 31, 2013. Go to Law Prof Blog Traffic Rankings for the full list, including percentage changes from the prior year.  The Top 15 are in the featured image. Plus College Insurrection comes...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 13, 2014 6 Comments
Amid escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists have seized buildings over the weekend, Ukraine’s acting president said the government would deploy troops to launch a “full-scale anti-terrorist operation.” From Reuters:
Ukraine has given pro-Russian separatists a Monday morning deadline to disarm or face a "full-scale anti-terrorist operation" by its armed forces, raising the risk of a military confrontation with Moscow. Angered by the death of a state security officer and the wounding of two comrades near the flashpoint eastern city of Slaviansk, acting president Oleksander Turchinov gave rebels occupying state buildings until 0600 GMT to lay down their weapons. "The National Security and Defense Council has decided to launch a full-scale anti-terrorist operation involving the armed forces of Ukraine," Turchinov said in an address to the nation. He blamed Russia, which annexed Ukraine's Crimea region when Moscow-backed former president Viktor Yanukovich fled after months of pro-Western protests, for being behind the rash of rebellions across Russian-speaking towns in eastern Ukraine. "We will not allow Russia to repeat the Crimean scenario in the eastern regions of Ukraine," Turchinov said. Russia's foreign ministry called the planned military operation a "criminal order" and said the West should bring its allies in Ukraine's government under control. "It is now the West's responsibility to prevent civil war in Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement.
In the eastern Ukraine town of Mariupol, there were also reports that separatist protesters had seized control of city hall earlier Sunday, according to another Reuters report. Sunday’s developments follow the seizures of several buildings by pro-Russia forces in other eastern Ukrainian cities Saturday.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2014 6 Comments
When these types of shootings take place, initial news reports often are inaccurate, so caution is urged. . Kansas City News41 identifies the following person as having been taken into custody, and says at least 3 people dead:
Three people are dead following multiple shootings reported at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park and Village Shalom. Overland Park Police confirm multiple shots were fired at the center, which is located at 5801 W 115th St. and Village Shalom, a retirement home located at 5500 W. 123rd. Both areas are currently on lockdown. Police took one man into custody at the Valley Park Elementary at 123rd and Nall. The man was heard yelling "heil Hitler" as he was taken into custody. A 41 Action News photographer on the scene spoke with a man who says another man pointed a gun at him and shot the windows out of his car. That person was not injured.
Alleged Shooter Overland Park KS Jewish Center

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2014 8 Comments
We have featured Tulane University student Chloé Simone Valdary before. We highlighted a great video Valdary produced for a pro-Israel event to be held at Tulane. For that effort, Valdary was attacked by the usual suspects like Max Blumenthal, as being an Israel Lobby paid stooge. As Lori Lowenthal Marcus reports, the event Valdaray promoted took place with great success in late March, attended by over 400 pro-Israel students. But there has been a more sinister angle to the attacks on Valdary, as we highlighted in out post about The ugly, repugnant attack on a pro-Israel black American student, including a series of nasty racialized tweets by Richard Silverstein, like this one: https://twitter.com/richards1052/status/437086594546536448 Is race behind the attacks on Valdary? Yes, says an op-ed column in The NY Post by Anthony Hardy Williams, the Democratic whip in the Pennsylvania state Senate, whose father worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and broke the color barrier at Penn State, The racism of the Israel-bashers:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 13, 2014 3 Comments
The crisis in Ukraine again further escalated this weekend after a group of armed men seized the police station and a security services headquarters in an eastern Ukrainian city. From Reuters:
Armed men seized official buildings in a city in eastern Ukraine on Saturday and hoisted the Russian flag, deepening a stand-off with Moscow which, Kiev warned, was dragging Europe into a "gas war" that could disrupt supplies across the continent. At least 20 men armed with pistols and rifles took over the police station and a security services headquarters in Slaviansk, about 150 km (90 miles) from the border with Russia. Officials said the men had seized hundreds of pistols from arsenals in the buildings. The militants replaced the Ukrainian flag on one of the buildings with the red, white and blue Russian flag. On a road leading into Slaviansk, other members of the group, armed with automatic rifles, set up a roadblock and checked vehicles entering the city, a Reuters reporter said.
Ukraine is in the process of recapturing the buildings as of this writing, according to reports. The Associated Press offered some additional details about the individuals involved in the incident.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2014 17 Comments

From Andrew: This guy built himself a chimney exhaust to make the point. I took it in Charleston, South Carolina at some point the week of March 3rd. ...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2014 9 Comments
Oh, they thought they had Fox News right where they wanted it.  The proof they'd been waiting for that Fox News was racist. Heather Childers on Fox & Friends First mistakenly referred to U. Conn. as the NAACP champs rather than NCAA champs. There was pure joy in Mudville.  As of this writing, this TPM video has over 800,000 views: The Raw Story headlined it as "A Freudian Slip?" (emphasis in original):
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — or NAACP — is a civil rights organization focusing on equality for African-Americans and other minorities. At least 10 of the 15 players on the winning UConn team were African-Americans.
The never subtle Gawker proclaimed it outright racism:

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 12, 2014 22 Comments

The debt in question wasn't incurred by the woman, it was another member of her family and it was the result of an overpayment. The blame lays with the Social Security administration. Marc Fisher of the Washington Post reported this week...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2014 27 Comments
Below is an excerpt of the speech Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have delivered at Brandeis had her invitation to receive an honorary degree not been revoked.  Our prior coverage: Here's What I Would Have Said at Brandeis:
.... Two decades ago, not even the bleakest pessimist would have anticipated all that has gone wrong in the part of world where I grew up. After so many victories for feminism in the West, no one would have predicted that women's basic human rights would actually be reduced in so many countries as the 20th century gave way to the 21st. Today, however, I am going to predict a better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung almost as far as it possibly can in the wrong direction. When I see millions of women in Afghanistan defying threats from the Taliban and lining up to vote; when I see women in Saudi Arabia defying an absurd ban on female driving; and when I see Tunisian women celebrating the conviction of a group of policemen for a heinous gang rape, I feel more optimistic than I did a few years ago. The misnamed Arab Spring has been a revolution full of disappointments. But I believe it has created an opportunity for traditional forms of authority—including patriarchal authority—to be challenged, and even for the religious justifications for the oppression of women to be questioned. Yet for that opportunity to be fulfilled, we in the West must provide the right kind of encouragement. Just as the city of Boston was once the cradle of a new ideal of liberty, we need to return to our roots by becoming once again a beacon of free thought and civility for the 21st century. When there is injustice, we need to speak out, not simply with condemnation, but with concrete actions.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 12, 2014 2 Comments

Always look for the union label. Violence Breaks out during Grad Student Protests at UC Santa Cruz UCLA Student Reports from the Frontlines of Student-Workers Union Strike Don't count on everyone to be on board though. Not All College Athletes Are for Unionization Northwestern Scholarship Football Players May Say “No”...

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