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June 2014

Posted by Bruce Carroll on June 13, 2014 24 Comments
Media and civilian reports throughout northern and central Iraq on Friday suggest that the situation on the ground has become increasingly violent and unstable to the point that the Iraqi government is crumbling:
Heavily armed Islamist militants flush with $450 million in stolen cash pushed toward Baghdad on Friday, sending thousands fleeing in fear from the Iraqi capital. Al Qaeda-linked insurgents who overran large parts of the north of the country earlier this week also seized about $450 million during a bank heist, Mosul Mayor Athier Nujaifi told NBC News. That makes the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) the world's richest terrorist group.
The ISIS troops are led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (or Abu Dua) was once held by the US in Camp Bucca Iraq. al-Baghdadi was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, but released by the Obama Administration in 2009. On his way to a visit to North Dakota, President Barack Obama held a brief statement and exchange with reporters on The White House lawn. Unfortunately for the President, events are deteriorating so fast around Baghdad, it may be too late for the United States to do anything before the ISIS/Sunni insurgents take the Iraqi capital. Reporters didn't ask specific questions about the failure of Obama to leave U.S. combat troops in Iraq after 2011 or his failure to complete a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on June 13, 2014 78 Comments
The IRS is unable to produce some of the emails of former agency official Lois Lerner due to a computer crash, according to a statement from the House Ways and Means Committee.
Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of January 2009 – April 2011.  Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame.  The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices. “The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries.  There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General. “Just a short time ago, Commissioner Koskinen promised to produce all Lerner documents.  It appears now that was an empty promise.  Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies.  Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone.  This failure of the IRS requires the White House, which promised to get to the bottom of this, to do an Administration-wide search and production of any emails to or from Lois Lerner.  The Administration has repeatedly referred us back to the IRS for production of materials.  It is clear that is wholly insufficient when it comes to determining the full scope of the violation of taxpayer rights.”
Last month, the Ways and Means Committee indicated that the IRS had finally agreed to turn over all Lois Lerner emails to the Committee.  But according to Friday's statement, it appears there had not been any mention until now that some of the emails would not be able to be produced because of the supposed computer crash. Apparently, Lerner tried to have technicians reconstruct her hard drive at the time of the crash, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 13, 2014 7 Comments
The Wendy Davis ship has been sinking ever since her personal narrative was revealed to be, at best, inventive. The water level appears to have reached the deck, because her Campaign Manager has abandoned ship, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Wednesday:
State Sen. Wendy Davis’ campaign for governor abruptly switched gears Wednesday as it struggles to meet the high expectations that supporters have for the Fort Worth Democrat. As nationally known strategist Karin Johanson revealed that she is leaving the campaign, Davis announced that state Rep. Chris Turner — the No. 2 member of the House Democratic leadership — will lead her campaign in the final five months until Election Day. “Chris has spent nearly 20 years in Texas politics and has fought, and won, tough races in this state,” Davis said in a statement. “His commitment to the people of Texas is unparalleled and demonstrated in his service in the state Legislature.”
This follows on the heels of the Davis' Communications Director leaving in early May. Even more bad news today for those still hoping Davis can mount a comeback. A new poll shows Greg Abbott maintaining a double-digit lead:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 13, 2014 14 Comments
The Mississippi Republican Senate primary is just one bizarre event after another. The nursing home photo shoot, the late night courthouse lock-in, and now two really, really bizarre statements by Thad Cochran. First, he joked (or was it a joke?) about doing indecent acts to animals as a kid.  Mark Levin questioned whether Cochran was "all there": Second, Cochran was interviewed and was unaware that Eric Cantor lost. The interview was published today but apparently took place Thursday:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 12, 2014 12 Comments
If you have not heard of Marisa DeFranco before, you probably think from the title that this post is about what Massachusetts liberals like to refer to as a Right Wing Extremist. But no, Legal Insurrection readers have known for years that Marisa DeFranco is a true blue collar, real thing liberal from Massachusetts.  I prefer that any day to the sniveling snots. The Democratic machine hates DeFranco because she was not afraid to call out Elizabeth Warren's ethnic chicanery in 2012.  So at the party convention they kicked DeFranco off the primary ballot even though she had enough signatures to qualify, in order to clear the path for Warren. In 2014, the Democratic machine is pretending that DeFranco doesn't exist. Even though she was, at the time, the only candidate to submit all the signatures needed in the primary to challenge incumbent Democrat John Tierney, the DCCC left her out of polling to make it seem like Tierney was a lock.  But they left in a male challenger. The Democrat machine did it again when Nancy Pelosi came to town recently for a tour promoting women in Congress.  They gave Tierney the stage, but would not even acknowledge DeFranco's presence to the audience. Now a third dig, this time from The Boston Globe.  In a story about Pelosi's women's rights tour, the Globe left someone off the list of challengers to Tierney.  That would be ... (drum roll) ... Marisa DeFranco.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on June 12, 2014 11 Comments
FBI Director James Comey confirmed Wednesday that the agency's Phoenix office has opened a criminal investigation into the VA. From CNN:
The FBI says it has opened a criminal investigation of the Veterans Affairs Department, which is grappling with a scandal over long waiting lists to provide care and allegations that paperwork was faked to make delays appear shorter. FBI Director James Comey told a House hearing on Wednesday the bureau's Phoenix office has joined an ongoing review by the VA inspector general. The move at least partly satisfies requests from key members of Congress from both parties who have pressed for a full probe by the Justice Department as the scandal accelerated in recent weeks and led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in May. Officials have said the inspector general is sharing findings with federal prosecutors, and the Justice Department could launch a full-blown criminal probe if any of the information meets the standard for doing so.
An audit released earlier this week revealed that 57,000 veterans have been waiting 90 days or longer for their first VA appointment, while another 64,000 never even got appointments.  Other recent reviews exposed the practice of employees manipulating appointment schedules to hide wait times.  A report from the Veterans Affairs inspector general indicated that inappropriate scheduling practices are a systemic issue. Many of these problems first gained intense media attention after reports at the Phoenix VA center, and this is where the FBI is expected to begin its investigation. From AZCentral:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 12, 2014 18 Comments
We've been writing about the lack of a free and independent Kurdistan for years, It’s time for a free and independent Kurdistan. While the Palestinian agenda has dominated every international forum, the much more populous and ethnically distinct Kurds have been mostly ignored.  In part, this is because the Kurds span several nation states created by colonial powers after the implosion of the Ottomon Empire.  Turkey particularly has threatened war if a Kurdish nation emerges. In part it is because creating an independent Kurdistan does do not serve a political purpose of snuffing out the only Jewish state in the region. Developments are moving fast that could change everything. Syria lost control of its Kurd territory during the ongoing civil war, and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan has operated independently for years. With Iraq losing control of vast territory, and the U.S. not anxious to do anything to help, the Kurds have claimed Kirkuk for their own, as the BBC reports, Iraqi Kurds 'fully control Kirkuk' as army flees:
Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk as the army flees before an Islamist offensive nearby. "The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga," Kurdish spokesman Jabbar Yawar told Reuters. "No Iraq army remains in Kirkuk now." Kurdish fighters are seen as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 12, 2014 15 Comments
The Kentucky Senate race is essentially tied in the polling. A poll released today by a Republican pollster shows Alison Lundergan Grimes up by 3 points, within the margin of error. Elizabeth Warren is about to inject herself into the race in a big way. Warren's student loan bill, which even an author at liberal Slate.com called "a glorified talking point," failed to pass an early procedural vote on Wednesday. In response, Warren declared war on Mitch McConnell, vowing to campaign and raise money for Grimes. The notion of taking political retribution is in keeping with Warren's vow to have "plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor" of those who oppose her. HuffPo reports, Elizabeth Warren To Hit Back At Mitch McConnell By Campaigning For Alison Lundergan Grimes:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) railed against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday for failing to support her student loan refinancing proposal, which the Senate killed in a 56-38 vote earlier in the day.... When MSNBC's Chris Hayes asked Warren how she planned to fight back, the senator gave a response that could shake things up in Kentucky, where McConnell faces a tough race for reelection against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. "One way I'm going to start fighting back is I'm going to go down to Kentucky and I'm going to campaign for Alison Lundergan Grimes," Warren said. "She's tough, she's feisty, she endorsed the student loan bill, said she wanted to bring down interest rates for Kentuckians. ... So my view is I'm going to get out there and try to make this happen for her."
Seems to me that making Warren an issue in the race is risky for Grimes.

Posted by David Gerstman on June 12, 2014 17 Comments
As Bryan Jacoutot documented here three months ago, Maryland's health exchange was a complete failure. In private industry or nearly any other field of endeavor, an employee who is responsible for such a visible failure would be subject to demotion or firing. But this is politics. And this is Maryland. So the Washington Post recommended that the employee responsible for this fiasco ... should be promoted. In its endorsement ahead of the June 24 primary the paper with the largest circulation in Maryland endorsed (Lieutenant Governor) Anthony Brown for Maryland governor. The key paragraph in the endorsement is here:
No doubt, Mr. Brown, who is Gov. Martin O’Malley’s anointed successor, is a mainstay of the Democratic establishment and a paragon of the status quo. That status quo includes the state’s blatant failure to build a functioning online market for private health insurance — a failure over which Mr. Brown presided, or was supposed to preside. It also includes substantive accomplishments, including making the state more welcoming to gays and immigrants and replenishing the transportation fund in support of public transit.
So let's see if I get this. Despite the fact that Brown messed up his most significant assignment as Lieutenant Governor - concrete failure - that should be balance out by the fact that he made Maryland more welcoming - an ephemeral accomplishment at the best? As far as the transportation fund, taxing people is what government does best. Had he (and his boss, Governor O'Malley) replenished the fund while limiting the growth of government, that would have a real accomplishment. But taxing and spending is hardly a defining skill for an executive. Then there's the previous paragraph that's also kind of baffling.

Posted by Nathaniel on June 12, 2014 6 Comments
Last week, Doug Ose (R) won the second spot in the blanket primary for California's 7th Congressional District. Incumbent Ami Bera (D) took the first spot, winning 47% of the votes. Of course, Igor Birman (or Elizabeth Emken) would have made a better candidate, at least in the sense that each is a stronger, more reliable conservative -- a case I made in an earlier article. Ose does make a good candidate, but in the sense that it'll be fairly easy to get him elected. This is the point in the election where one has to begin to make sacrifices: a candidate true to our ideology is no longer a possibility, so we must settle. It is now time to rein our beliefs back a notch, and play the game of politics. Maybe a strong conservative was just too much to ask for in California. A moderate Republican candidate may not be. In all cases but Ose's, the polls preceding the primaries were dead on in predicting results. Ami Bera polled at 47% and took 47% of the vote, Birman at 17% and took 16.9% of the vote, and Emken maintained her 7%. However, Ose saw a marked jump from a predicted 22% to 26.8% of the popular vote.

Posted by New Neo on June 12, 2014 19 Comments
If Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, her Republican opponent had better show part of this clip. I'm surprised it isn't being talked about more, because it is positively Obaman in its offensiveness and duplicity, and its contempt for the listener. It also comes across as insincere and unconvincing, but that never stopped Obama either: Let's contemplate that in print:
These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.
Hillary must think the American people have forgotten why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Maybe they have; after all, what difference does it make? It happened so long ago---twelve and a half years, and even longer ago by the time the 2016 election rolls around---that a great many of the voters to whom Hillary expects to appeal would have been little children back then.

Posted by A.F. Branco on June 12, 2014 0 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 Bruce Carroll on June 11, 2014 35 Comments
Al-Qaeda aligned terror groups have made major land gains from the Syrian civil war into the heartland of Iraq over the last several days. Despite the herculean efforts of the United States military with the Multi-National Force in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, Iraq appears to be sliding into violent chaos across much of its territory between Baghdad and the border with Syria. Fueled by training in the Syrian civil war and allowed by the vacuum of no major U.S. forces in Iraq, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), is poised to take control of the most land mass since al-Qaeda formed in the late 1980s. According to videos posted by ISIS on social media, the militants also captured U.S. Humvees and Blackhawk helicopters from the Iraqi forces. So far this week, ISIS forces have captured Tikrit -- the former home of Saddam Hussein and his political movement -- and Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.  As ISIS forces converged on Mosul on Tuesday, U.S.-trained Iraqi forces collapsed and fled the city.  Tikrit is less than 100 miles from Iraq's capital of Baghdad, while Mosul is just 225 miles to the northwest from Baghdad.
"The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants," an interior ministry official told the Agence France Presse news agency, saying soldiers had fled after removing their uniforms. Several residents told the Associated Press that the militants were now touring the city with loudspeakers, announcing that they had "come to liberate Mosul and would fight only those who attack them."
Reports from Mosul detail mass beheadings of residents by the ISIS terrorists and a flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees out of the city. The al-Qaeda aligned ISIS organization now effectively controls a region from the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa, over the through the western Iraqi desert up to northern Iraq and less than 100 miles from Baghdad.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on June 11, 2014 13 Comments
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, along with Defense Department General Counsel Stephen Preston, appeared Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee for a hearing to address The May 31, 2014 Transfer of Five Senior Taliban Detainees. The agreement to release those five detainees when the U.S. arranged to recover Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from captivity has sparked controversy since those details became known. Another point of contention has been the Obama administration’s decision not to notify Congress of the exchange in advance.  Both of these were areas of focus that received much attention in Wednesday’s hearing. Hagel provided some insight into the negotiation process of the exchange at the start of the hearing in his prepared opening remarks, explaining that the opportunity came about quickly and many of the details had not been clarified until merely days before the exchange took place. This, he indicated, influenced the decision not to notify Congress in advance.  In addition, Hagel explained, there were concerns about potential leaks that could derail the process.
As the opportunity to obtain Sergeant Bergdahl’s release became clearer, we grew increasingly concerned that any delay, or any leaks, could derail the deal and further endanger Sergeant Bergdahl. We were told by the Qataris that a leak would end the negotiations for Bergdahl’s release. We also knew that he would be extremely vulnerable during any movement, and our military personnel conducting the hand-off would be exposed to a possible ambush or other deadly scenarios in very dangerous territory. And we had been given no information on where the hand-off would occur.
This sparked criticism from both sides of the political aisle. From the Wall Street Journal:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 11, 2014 7 Comments
Last night's upset of Eric Cantor shocked everyone. I said it after the Missouri Senate Primary, and it holds even more true now, The Lesson of Iowa and Mississippi primaries: Don’t give up on Kansas:
Joni Ernst and Chris McDaniel had no chance of winning, until she won outright and he won but is in a runoff. Both came out of nowhere because voters rallied around a Tea Party backed candidate. In the case of Mississippi, the battle was against a legacy entitled incumbent. The lesson is not to forget Kansas, where Dr. Milton Wolf is challenging legacy entitled incumbent Pat Roberts in the August 5 primary. Roberts has tons of money and the Republican establishment behind him.  And a house in Virginia which is his real home. It can happen again.  Don’t settle for less.
There is a certain irony that so many people are saying Eric Cantor's loss in Virginia may be harbinger of things to come in Kansas, since Pat Roberts spend almost all his time in Virginia, and that has become a huge campaign issue. NBC News reports:
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