Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

April 2014

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2014 4 Comments

Spotted a few weeks ago at a Gas Station on Long Island, NY....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 11, 2014 25 Comments
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is among the most aggressive groups in seeking to limit, if not eliminate, the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear Arms. CSGV also attacks so-called Stand Your Ground laws through misleading accounts of what happened in the Trayvon Martin shooting by George Zimmerman.  This CSGV video released about a month after the Not Guilty verdict, received a lot of attention: The video was highly misleading as it related to the actual facts of the case.  One of the harshest critics was Andrew Branca, a contributor at Legal Insurrection and author of The Law of Self Defense. Branca, whose extensive coverage of the Zimmerman trial received national attention, wrote a blistering critique of the video, Deceptive Trayvon Martin Shooting Reenactment Video Released (emphasis added):
The video is highly deceptive, and nothing more than a continuation of the propaganda campaign about the case. Had they felt any affinity for the truth, they might have mentioned Martin’s emerging from the darkness to fell Zimmerman with a blow the neighborhood watch volunteer never saw coming, a blow that hit with such force that it broke Zimmerman’s nose, and which he described to police that same night as feeling as if he had been hit by a brick. Had they felt any affinity for the truth, they might have mentioned Zimmerman’s many and numerous injuries about the head and face, especially those caused by Martin striking Zimmerman’s head on a cement sidewalk, with any single blow capable of being the one that turned Zimmerman into a drooling vegetable or simply taking his life. Had they felt any affinity for the truth, they might have mentioned Martin’s long record of school violence, his engagement in street fighting, his apparent drug use, his apparent gun dealing, and his self-expressed desire to beat his victims until they had suffered “enough”. Had they felt any affinity for the truth, they might have mentioned Zimmerman’s long history of affectionate and communal relationship with black neighbors throughout his life, from his childhood to the present day, or indeed Zimmerman’s own mixed-race background. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence tried for decades, under various guises and name changes, to seize the guns of law-abiding citizens. They failed. They tried to limit the right of the citizenry to carry arms for personal protection, they failed. By demanding a legal duty to retreat from a felonious attacker they weaken the position of the law-abiding armed citizen who sought no fight and strengthen the hand of the felony criminal who possessed all the power to choose when, where, and how to launch his vicious attack, robbery, or rape of his intended victim.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 10, 2014 39 Comments

Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning. From the NY Times, Health Secretary Resigns After Woes of HealthCare.gov: Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, is resigning, ending a stormy five-year tenure marred by the disastrous rollout of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 10, 2014 9 Comments
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia apparently isn't hopping on the Koch Obsession bandwagon with some of his colleagues. When asked in a FOX News interview whether he thinks it helps or hurts the cause for the country and for Congress when Harry Reid continually brings up the Koch brothers, Manchin was critical of the recent rhetoric and didn't seem to think it did anything to help in moving the country forward.
If you're trying to rally the base, the bases have already been rallied, the right and the left base has been rallied. It's us in the middle that have to start making something happen here in Washington to move this country forward. People want jobs. You don’t beat up people. I mean, I don’t agree with their [the Kochs'] politics or philosophically, but, you know, they’re Americans, they're doing...paying their taxes, they’re not breaking the law. They’re providing jobs. Right, wrong or indifferent, whether you like their politics or not, there's people who don't like the extreme Democrat politics or extreme Republican politics. We've got to start being Americans again.

Posted by A.F. Branco on April 10, 2014 11 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 10, 2014 9 Comments
From Adam Kredo at The Free Beacon, Top [U.S.] diplomats planted anti-Israel reports in lead up to peace talk collapse:
The Obama administration has been waging a secret media war in capitals across two continents blaming Israel for the recent collapse of peace talks with the Palestinians, according to former Israeli diplomats and Washington, D.C. insiders familiar with the peace process. Multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon that top Obama administration officials have worked for the past several days to manufacture a crisis over the reissuing of housing permits in a Jerusalem neighborhood widely acknowledged as Israeli territory. Senior State Department officials based in Israel have sought to lay the groundwork for Israel to take the blame for talks collapsing by peddling a narrative to the Israeli press claiming that the Palestinians were outraged over Israeli settlements, the Free Beacon has learned. These administration officials have planted several stories in Israeli and U.S. newspapers blaming Israel for the collapse of peace talks and have additionally provided reporters with anonymous quotes slamming the Israeli government. The primary source of these multiple reports has been identified as Middle East envoy Martin Indyk and his staff, according to these insiders, who said that the secret media campaign against Israel paved the way for Secretary of State John Kerry to go before Congress on Tuesday and publicly blame Israel for tanking the talks.
It makes sense. The John Kerry clown show has so mangled things, talking out both sides of the clown car, that the end result of Israel taking the blame was a foregone conclusion. John Podhoretz writes, Contemptible John Kerry blames Israel for his own mess:

Posted by New Neo on April 10, 2014 13 Comments
The fact that Brandeis has bowed to pressure and canceled its plans to award Hirsi Ali an honorary degree at commencement should not be a surprise. It is merely a continuation of a decades-long trend in academia towards placating the left, and in favor of cowardice. It's an especially interesting incident, though, because it highlights the fact that, in a choice between protecting women's rights and protecting Islam---two causes beloved of the left---the latter apparently trumps the former in importance. Ali is a champion of women's rights, and that's one of the reasons she is so against Islam: because of its attitude towards women. She should know; she was brought up as a devout Muslim, born in Somalia and raised in Kenya, and subjected to genital mutilation surgery at the age of 5. This is no casual and uninformed critic of Islam:
By the time she reached her teens, Saudi-funded religious education was becoming more influential among Muslims in other countries, and a charismatic religious teacher who had been trained under this aegis joined Hirsi Ali's school. She inspired the teenaged Ayaan, as well as some fellow students, to adopt the more rigorous Saudi Arabian interpretations of Islam, as opposed to the more relaxed versions then current in Somalia and Kenya. Hirsi Ali had been impressed by the Qur'an before she could even read, and had lived "by the Book, for the Book" throughout her childhood. She sympathised with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and wore a hijab together with her school uniform, which was unusual at the time but gradually became more common. She agreed with the fatwa against British writer Salman Rushdie that was declared in reaction to the publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses.
There is no question whatsoever that Ali is a brave person.

Posted by 0387erp on April 10, 2014 4 Comments
Despite the torrential downpour that unleashed itself over downtown Manhattan Monday evening, nearly 100 students and members of the general public gathered at New York University for an inspiring event that brought together business experts, disruptive artists, media revolutionaries, journalists and jazz musicians. Innovation Israel, a project spearheaded by TorchPAC at NYU and the Stern Political Economy Exchange (SPEX), proved to be a tremendous opportunity for those in attendance unfamiliar with Israel to experience the incredible spirit and passion of a tiny country in the Middle East, but was also a chance for pro-Israel activists to engage in conversation face-to-face about the challenges facing the pro-Israel community today. The Innovation Israel showcase was one of the more visible efforts of NYU’s Pro-Israel community this year, but readily visible relationship building and showcasing of Israeli innovation is only one small, small part of the important work being done to defend Israel on US campuses. Far too often in recent times, extreme voices have made a presence for themselves in the intellectual (or often, pseudo-intellectual) arena; earlier this year, NYU faced strongly anti-semitic activities from NYU professor Lisa Duggan culminating in the form of an Anti-Israel Conference. Much has been written, most notably by Forbes Contributing Editor of Investigations Richard Behar, that more than adequately elucidates the troubling event and hijacking of the American Studies Association by Duggan and her extreme colleagues in painstaking detail. Notable Israel detractors Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah also spoke at NYU earlier this year, at an event brimming with hatred and rife with factual inaccuracy, including repulsive allusions to the Holocaust.
MORE POSTS
Accessibility by WAH