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August 2014

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 29, 2014 22 Comments
Watching the press conference that President Obama gave yesterday in which he revealed that his foreign policy has devolved from "don't do stupid stuff" to "no strategy," I was perplexed that the media was complaining more about the color of the suit instead of its emptiness. Mulling over the subsequent coverage, I couldn't help but wonder what the upcoming September 11th would bring for our country, because our enemies are clearly inspired by weakness. Now Judicial Watch has revealed that Islamic terrorist groups are operating Mexico and plan to attack the United States along our southern border.
Specifically, Judicial Watch sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 29, 2014 20 Comments
Now I come to praise Elizabeth Warren. Warren long has made sense when it comes to the Middle East, in her strong support of Israel and her understanding of the neighborhood in which Israel lives. Whatever her other positions, we should at least acknowledge when she is right. And she did so again the other day:
But when the man in the green Hawaiian shirt stood up, Warren went from voicing her support for those local causes to defending her vote to send $225 million to Israel in its ongoing conflict with Hamas. "We are disagreeing with Israel using their guns against innocents. It's true in Ferguson, Missouri, and it's true in Israel," said Harwich resident John Bangert, who identified himself as a Warren supporter but said the $225 million could have been spent on infrastructure or helping immigrants fleeing Central America. "The vote was wrong, I believe," he added, drawing applause from several in the crowd. Warren told Bangert she appreciated his comments, but "we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one." "I think the vote was right, and I'll tell you why I think the vote was right," she said. "America has a very special relationship with Israel. Israel lives in a very dangerous part of the world, and a part of the world where there aren't many liberal democracies and democracies that are controlled by the rule of law. And we very much need an ally in that part of the world." Warren said Hamas has attacked Israel "indiscriminately," but with the Iron Dome defense system, the missiles have "not had the terrorist effect Hamas hoped for." When pressed by another member of the crowd about civilian casualties from Israel's attacks, Warren said she believes those casualties are the "last thing Israel wants." "But when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they're using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself," Warren said, drawing applause. Noreen Thompsen, of Eastham, proposed that Israel should be prevented from building any more settlements as a condition of future U.S. funding, but Warren said, "I think there's a question of whether we should go that far."
For that perfectly logical and appropriate statement, Warren incurred the wrath of Glenn Greenwald.  

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 29, 2014 19 Comments
Britain, home to many of the Jihadists fighting for ISIS, including the likely beheader of James Foley, has just raised its terror threat level. The Telegraph reports, Terror attack on UK 'highly likely' as threat level raised:
The UK terror threat level has been raised to its second highest meaning an attack on the country is “highly likely”. It is the first time the threat level has been at “severe” since 2011 when it was reduced to “substantial”. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said the decision was taken in light of the increasing dangers posed by British fanatics and other foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria.... Police and security services have long been concerned over the large numbers of British jihadists travelling to Syria and Iraq. It is feared more than 500 have gone and around half of those are now back in the UK, with some possibly planning attacks here. At least one plot is known to have already been foiled.
Is Britain finally will to address the Jihadis among it? Prime Minister David Cameron says Britain is, but that's far from clear, particularly in light of the disgusting disclosure recently that fear of being called "racist" led British authorities to ignore for over a decade Pakistani-community rape gangs targeting over 1400 white teenagers based on race and religion. Here is Cameron's address today:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 29, 2014 42 Comments
Last March we covered how California Seeks to Redefine Consensual Campus Sex as Rape, and we asked the question: "How does classifying most consensual sex as rape help rape victims?" It doesn't, of course. The California affirmative consent legislation was not about preventing rapes or other sexual assaults, which already are crimes, but about redefining inter-personal relationships in accordance with radical feminist demands which always view the female as victim of the male patriarchy. The affirmative consent obligation now is on the verge of becoming law (emphasis added):
To address the problem of rape on campuses, California colleges and universities would have to adopt a standard of unambiguous consent among students engaging in sexual activity under a proposal passed by state lawmakers Thursday. If signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, such policies would be required at all public colleges and other institutions that receive state funds for student aid. They would have to include a detailed protocol for assisting victims of sexual assault, stalking, domestic violence and date violence.... Students engaging in sexual activity would first need "affirmative consent" from both parties — a clear threshold that specifically could not include a person's silence, a lack of resistance or consent given while intoxicated.
Campus relationship regulation now is about the predominance of "rape culture" theory which ensnares men into kangaroo campus courts, and even opposes objective preventative measures, like "Undercover Colors" nail polish that reacts to date-rape drugs. The normal sequence of romantic interaction now is a violation of law unless there is something more than objectively willing conduct. It's no longer "against our will," but rather, a matter of procedural steps imposed on willing, consensual participants in order to avoid creating a crime where none exists:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 29, 2014 32 Comments
I was in class yesterday during Obama's press conference, in which he announced the obvious: We have no strategy as to ISIS. So I didn't get to watch it live and see the instant reaction. There was Bad, Good and Worse news. The bad news: We have no strategy as to ISIS, or anything else in the Middle East other than reducing American influence. The good news: Obama is telling the truth. The worse news: The truth Obama is telling is a monumental and deliberate failure that will take a decade or more to reverse, if it even can be reversed. Mark Levin summed it up nicely on Hannity the other night, not just as to ISIS but the entire thrust of the administration:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 29, 2014 8 Comments
Surprising absolutely no one, a new Rasmussen report released today reveals that the majority of Americans believe that the Department of Justice is motivated by a political agenda, as opposed to upholding justice:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 38% of Likely U.S. Voters have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of the Justice Department, while 53% view it unfavorably. This includes only nine percent (9%) with a Very Favorable view and 26% with a Very Unfavorable one. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Just 35% think the Justice Department is more concerned with making sure justice is done when it decides to investigate a local crime independent of local police. But 54% think instead that the Justice Department is more concerned with politics when it makes those decisions. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided. ... This distrust of the feds carries over into views of a planned new federal database to track “misinformation” and hate speech on the social media site Twitter. Thirty-five percent (35%) believe the federal government will use the database to go after real criminals, but 53% believe it will be used to monitor law-abiding citizens instead. Twelve percent (12%) are not sure.
Attorney General Eric Holder's recent intervention in Ferguson, Missouri has shone a light on problems with the way the DoJ approaches its duty. Problems within the DoJ---especially those involving racial issues--- are nothing new, but the increased news coverage on the scandals surrounding the DoJ appears to be doing its job. For example, the Rasmussen poll reflects the general sentiment exhibited by conservative pundits commenting on the suggestion that Obama appoint a "Police Czar". Only 20% of voters approve of federal control over local police departments, and the lack of evidence that a federal civil rights crime occurred on the night Michael Brown died has people like Andrew McCarthy on the alert:

Posted by Casey Breznick on August 28, 2014 4 Comments
Carlos Curbelo, a 34-year old Miami-Dade School Board member, decisively won the FL26 Republican primary election last Tuesday and is now directly challenging incumbent Democrat Joe Garcia. Curbelo, with the endorsement of former Gov. Jeb Bush, current House reps like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and state GOP leaders, took 47% of the vote in the highly diverse 26th district, which includes all of the Florida Keys, Homestead, and southwest Miami-Dade. Coming in second was Cutler Bay mayor and Vietnam veteran Douglas MacDougall with 25% of the vote. MacDougall actually took the majority vote in Monroe County (the Florida Keys), but Curbelo came out on top with strong support in Miami-Dade where there are more voters. Perhaps Curbelo’s most notable backer was Mitt Romney, who made appearances in Miami at campaign rallies and fundraisers for Curbelo. CurbeloRomney Back in June I covered this race with the prediction that Curbelo would win. Readers can consult that article for more information on the backgrounds of Curbelo and Garcia, who notably made a bizarre statement in a Google Hangout that could be interpreted as an endorsement of communism. (Garcia later claimed it was a joke.) Garcia also had the embarrassing earwax picking incident:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 28, 2014 35 Comments

Earlier this month, we wrote about McDonald's and what appears to be a technological experiment that would replace cashiers:

McDonald’s employees who picketed for a better living wage (whatever that means) may come to regret that decision. According to a Redditor, a McDonald’s in Illinois replaced their cashiers with machines.  The machines appear to be the cousins of the ones found in grocery stores, big box stores, and CVS that allow customers to complete transactions. How cost effective is replacing an organic employee with a mechanized one? According to an economic blog, and unsurprisingly, the machines likely come out on top in terms of pricing.
mcdonalds When labor costs increase, employers are required to offset those increases elsewhere in order to remain profitable while still providing a product the market will want. So when workers demand to be paid $15 an hour to push buttons on a cash register, they can and should be expected to be replaced with cheaper, more efficient labor. When an employer can only afford three employees for what they once paid for five, that's two jobs that have been eliminated. Undeterred by facts and economics, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles reportedly plans to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 an hour, what would be one of the highest minimum wages in the country.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2014 40 Comments
We reported last December on how a Utah federal judge strikes down key part of anti-polygamy law:
Yes, this all was predicted long ago, and led to charges of fear mongering and false slippery slopes. The legalization of polygamy followed logically from the legal arguments against one man-one woman, as was predicted not just by me, but also by Professor Martha Nussbaum, one of the leading legal advocates for gay marriage, “Polygamy would have to be permitted.” And it’s coming true in a small step, as a federal court in Utah, while not holding that polygamists were entitled to state-sanctioned civil marriage, nonetheless struck portions of Utah’s anti-polygamy laws banning polygamous “cohabitation” and polygamous “purported” marriages.
Now the court has finalized it's decision, as reported by The Salt Lake Tribune (h/t Instapundit):
In the final portion of his ruling Wednesday, Waddoups found the Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman violated the Browns’ constitutional rights when he oversaw a 2010 investigation into whether the Brown family was committing bigamy. At the time the Browns lived in Lehi. They have since moved to Nevada. Buhman eventually decided not to file criminal charges, but Waddoups said the investigation stifled the Browns’ rights to free speech, religion and equal protection. Waddoups ordered Utah to pay the Browns’ attorney fees as a result of that finding. In court filings and oral arguments before Waddoups, attorneys for Utah have argued polygamy is inherently harmful to woman and children and the state had an interest in deterring it.
But why stop at polygamy? As long as consenting adults are involved, and they love each other, is it really a leap to incestuous marriages?

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 28, 2014 11 Comments
As I was enjoying the history and the beauty of Virginia on the last day of our family vacation, a significant earthquake struck Northern California. The aftershocks are continuing from the magnitude 6.0 shaker that caused over 200 injuries, mainly lacerations and bruises from falling debris. Most tragically, because of where the epicenter was located, a lot of fine wine was destroyed. You would think Californians recognize that our state has had a long history of major earthquakes, including the famous 1906 catastrophe and the destructive Loma Prieta quake in 1989, and that this is a reasonably anticipated hazard associated with life in the tectonically active Pacific Rim. And you would be wrong. It seems that global warming is at the center of every natural disaster. Here is the current theory being offered: Global warming has caused the drought (ignoring California's long history of drought cycles). The evaporation of water as a result of higher temperatures has made the crust lighter. So our state's surface rose, which caused the earthquake. Sadly, some California citizens believe this inanity.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 28, 2014 32 Comments
Democrats are still smiling over the recent felony indictment of Rick Perry, even as the Governor's legal team is taking steps in court to reveal the spurious nature of the charges. One consequence of the indictment, however, has thrown conservatives in Texas for a loop. Texas media began reporting last week that because of the charges against him, Governor Perry's concealed carry license has been suspended by operation of law. §411.187 of the Texas Government Code states that the Department of Public Safety shall suspend (not revoke, as it has been reported) a concealed carry license if the license holder is charged with the commission of a felony under an information or indictment. The same section of the statute states in part that if the suspension is due to a felony indictment, that the Department shall suspend the license until dismissal of the charges.

Posted by Andrew Branca on August 28, 2014 22 Comments
It's become so commonplace for "journalists" to be blind to obvious cause-and-effect relationships that fall outside the acceptable Progressive narrative that James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has long used the tag-line "Fox Butterfield, Is That You?" as he notes these occurrences in his daily (and excellent) "Best of the Web" blog posts. Perhaps the quintessential such observation is "Prison populations continue to increase, even as crime rates decline,"  the implication being that this represents some kind of counter-intuitive conundrum along the lines of:  how can we be locking up more criminals if there are fewer criminals to lock up? It takes an exceptional type of intellectual obtuseness not to recognize the distinct possibility that these two events may be not only correlated but causative--put more criminals in jail, and there are fewer criminals on the street to commit crime.

Self-defense killings rise in New Orleans even as murders fall

Although always humorous, one such observation he noted yesterday particularly caught my eye as it touched upon a subject near and dear to my heart, the use of force in lawful self-defense.  Specifically, the New Orleans newspaper Times-Picayune ran a story entitled "Self-defense killings rise in New Orleans even as murders fall." It is axiomatic that if you raise the price of something, you get less of it. In New Orleans it has become increasingly likely that the price for attempting to unlawfully use deadly force against another person is the lose of the aggressor's own life--a higher cost is hard to imagine. It only makes common sense, then, that higher levels of self-defense, particularly self-defense that results in the death of the attacker, would be accompanied by a decreased incidence of unlawful killings.  For one thing, a deadly force attacker has been killed, thus substantially limiting his ability to contribute to the murder rate in the future. Second, other criminals wishing to stay alive begin to re-direct their criminal activities away from those that might involve themselves being killed. These observations are, of course, nothing new.  Dr. John Lott wrote a seminal text--"More Guns, Less Crime"--on this topic as long ago as 1998 (coincidentally, the same year I published the first edition of "The Law of Self Defense.")  Just a few weeks ago his Crime Prevention Research Center published the most recent of many such reports noting that on a national level between 1999 and 2013 (a 14-year period) murder rates have declined even as the percentage of adult Americans permitted to carry concealed handguns has sky rocketed.  (The entirety of this report is embedded at the bottom of this post.)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 27, 2014 28 Comments
It never ceases to amaze me how some politicians insist on digging when they are in a hole, rather than simply saying "Sorry". Democratic challenger Martha Robertson in my home district of NY-23 showed that quality last fall through the spring, when she refused to apologize for sending a fundraising email falsely claiming that GOP operatives tried to take down her website.  Legal Insurrection broke that story. First, she insisted it was true and even promised to hire a forensic computer firm to prove it, then went silent on the issue and became evasive when questioned, then admitted she never hired the forensic firm. It would have been so much easier, and would have put the issue to rest, if she just said it was a mistake, she's sorry, and offered to return any funds raised based on that false solicitation. Instead, the fundraising scandal still festers. We're seeing it again as to a series of fat shaming ads run by Robertson's campaign, using old photos of Republican incumbent Tom Reed before he had gastric bypass surgery. In some cases, Robertson seems to have gone out of her way to find photos that make Reed look as fat as possible: Martha Robertson Video Tom Reed Come Clean 3 (Here's what Tom Reed actually looks like, if you are interested.) Legal Insurrection first called attention to the use of these old photos, and demonstrated that it was not a one-off problem, but part of a bizarre fixation on Reed's weight throughout Robertson's media campaign. The story was picked up by a variety of media, including Buzzfeed, national Fox News, local WETM TV, and local print news. This is not the type of press any candidate wants. Robertson's reaction? To laugh at it. Now she's laughing at the fat shaming again.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 27, 2014 30 Comments
The world's third-largest fast food chain is just a signature away from reality. Burger King Worldwide, Inc. announced on Tuesday that it has made a deal to buy popular Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons for a cool $11 billion. The decision to move the combined corporate headquarters to Canada, however, has left some questioning whether or not this is simply a tax-dodge masquerading as a corporate merger. Predictably, the left is having a complete meltdown over the move, forcing Burger King to go on offense to defend their business decisions. Via USA Today:
Burger King CEO Daniel Schwartz, who will become group CEO of the new company and handle day-to-day management, said that "the company is going to continue to be managed out of our Miami office." "We are going to continue to pay U.S. taxes as we have been doing," he said in a conference call with media after the deal's announcement. The deal was not about taxes, Schwartz said, noting that the corporate tax rate paid by Tim Hortons in Canada is in the mid-20s percentage-wise and Burger King's "blended" tax rate it pays globally, including U.S. taxes, is also in the mid-20s. "So when we look at the combined company we don't expect there to be meaningful lower or higher tax rates than we had before," he said. Instead, he said, "What is going to add value and drive growth for the long run is ... more restaurants around the world and growing sales and profits."
Twitter exploded this week with a resurgence of the "#BoycottBurgerKing" hashtag, prompting some scathing (and in some cases downright amusing) posts from the left:
Good to know.
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