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October 2014

Posted by Amy Miller on October 28, 2014 13 Comments
After Russia's March annexation of Crimea, reports surfaced of serious human rights abuses against both Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians who refused Russian citizenship. Now, threats of military action from pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine have eastern Europe on alert, and have motivated Poland to make changes to its military structure that haven't been seen since the Cold War. From the Associated Press:
[Polish Defense Minister] Tomasz Siemoniak said the troops are needed in the east because of the conflict in neighboring Ukraine. "The geopolitical situation has changed, we have the biggest crisis of security since the Cold War and we must draw conclusions from that," Siemoniak said. He said that at least three military bases in the east will see their populations increase from the current 30 percent of capacity to almost 90 percent by 2017, and that more military hardware will be moved to those bases as well. He said it was not some "nervous or radical move" but that because of this "situation of threat we would like those units in the east of Poland to be more efficient."
According to the AP report, current military establishments along the eastern border of Poland are only 30% staffed as part of a long term plan to move troops to those installations only in the event of serious conflict. This troop movement, then, is not insignificant.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 27, 2014 22 Comments
Our friend Jeremy Segal, aka Rebel Pundit, has documented the struggles of blacks who speak out against the Democratic political machine. Jeremy did the viral videos Chicago Resident: Obama Will Go Down as Worst President Ever and 2014 State of the Union Address- A Black Grassroots Response. Jeremy also did the editing for Legal Insurrection's Unaccountable - Elizabeth Warren and the Cherokee. Jeremy was interviewed by Dana Loesch of Blaze TV about his work, and his newest video. Here is the full video, Chicago Activists Unchained, Destroy Black Leadership, from which the title of this post is taken:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 27, 2014 29 Comments
Remember when Hillary, just a few days ago, said that Businesses Don’t Create Jobs, Gubmint does:
“Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs”
http://youtu.be/1nbFYP3xB6k?t=36s That was then. This is now. Via Buzzfeed:
When Hillary Clinton fumbled a line at a rally last Friday — “Don’t let anybody tell you that corporations and businesses create jobs” — the comment caused a minor outrage among political observers. Republicans said she’d been pandering to liberals. Democrats wondered if she’d been trying too hard to channel Elizabeth Warren, the populist senator who also spoke at the event. On Monday, Clinton went out of her way to correct the comment at a rally for Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democrat up for reelection in this Hudson Valley district. Clinton said in her speech that corporations that outsource jobs or move profits overseas should not be granted tax breaks. The clarification made clear that the remark was a botched line — not new messaging from Clinton, who has honed a new stump speech during a series of rallies ahead the election next month.

Posted by Bryan Jacoutot on October 27, 2014 49 Comments
The late September arrival of Ebola-postive Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has caused many Americans to worry about their personal health in the event of an Ebola outbreak. Right on the heels of that worry, however, is a worry of another kind. What about your personal rights? In particular, what about that most fundamental liberty interest: freedom from confinement. As Professor Eugene Kontorovich noted at The Volokh Conspiracy earlier today, this question has caused the (now released) quarantined nurse to threaten a legal challenge to the constitutionality of her recent confinement in New Jersey. So what are your rights when faced with involuntary quarantine? The answer, while simple, is completely unsatisfying and even a bit concerning: It depends. As a result, the true “answer” is a very nuanced and fact intensive inquiry into each particular case of confinement. Books can be written (and have been) about the legality of involuntary confinement in the face of a public health crisis, but this blog post may serve as highly generalized primer for the curious. To begin, quarantining “separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.” [Emphasis Added]. Note that “quarantine” refers to the confinement of those who are not currently sick, but have been exposed to an infectious disease and may ultimately develop symptoms. “Isolation,” on the other hand, refers to confinement of individuals who are sick.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 27, 2014 9 Comments
Pigs flying? Hell freezing over? Yup. Boston Globe endorses Republican Charlie Baker over Democrat Martha Coakley. Boston Globe Endorsement Charlie Baker
Effective activist government isn’t built on good intentions. To provide consistently good results, especially for the state’s most vulnerable and troubled residents, agencies need to focus on outcomes, learn from their errors, and preserve and replicate approaches that succeed. Baker, a former health care executive, has made a career of doing just that. During this campaign, he has focused principally on making state government work better. The emphasis is warranted. And in that spirit, the Globe endorses Charlie Baker for governor.....

Posted by Amy Miller on October 27, 2014 7 Comments
Candidates have been criss-crossing their respective districts for well over a year now, laying out their platforms and making promises about how they'll bring change to the offices they hope to hold. But judging by Gallup's latest poll, Americans aren't necessarily buying what their potential representatives are selling. With just days to go before the election, the Congressional approval rating is still hovering just above its all-time low. Via Gallup:
Congressional job approval in October matches the 14% average found so far in 2014. The current approval figure is the lowest found in October of a midterm election year since Gallup began tracking this measure in 1974. Gallup has found that low congressional approval ratings before midterm elections are linked to higher seat turnover, especially for members of the president's party. For example, congressional job approval in October was 21% in 2010, and 23% in 1994, two years when the president's party lost a large number of seats.

Posted by Amy Miller on October 26, 2014 16 Comments
With just 9 days to go until Election Day, consultants and pollsters are busy running the numbers and developing eleventh hour strategies for candidates running for Senate in key swing states. In competitive states like Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, and North Carolina, Republican momentum has pushed those Senate races to well within the margin of error, and even the New York Times has Republicans well ahead of Democrats and on track to take back the Senate. From MSNBC:
“Senate contests are coming down to the wire,” says pollster Barbara Carvalho of Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion. “ In a reversal from 2012, when there were multiple paths for [President] Obama, now the Democrats are struggling to protect their firewall in Iowa, North Carolina and Colorado.” All five of these races are within the polls’ margins of error. The lone exception is the NBC/Marist poll of South Dakota, where Republican Mike Rounds enjoys a 14-point lead over Democrat Rick Weiland, 43 percent to 29 percent, while independent Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator, gets 16 percent. To win control of the Senate, Republicans must gain a net of six seats. Two pick-up opportunities – in Montana and West Virginia – appear to be slam dunks for the GOP. And South Dakota, per the NBC/Marist poll, looks to be a safe bet for a third. That means Republicans need to win three out of these seven other Democrat-held seats to get to a majority: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina. But if Democrats win a GOP-held seat – say Georgia – or if Orman decides to caucus with Democrats, that means Republicans must win an additional seat (or two) to net six Senate seats.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 26, 2014 10 Comments
The video of Martha Robertson, the Democratic challenger being laughed at when she lobbed a contrived "War Against Woman" accusation at incumbent Congressman Tom Reed (NY-23), has gone viral. It has been picked up far and wide, and as of this writing has over 92,000 views on YouTube, up from 15,000 when I wrote a post about it on Friday, Martha Robertson “not ready for prime time” after War Against Women debate attack:
The line was laughable not just for the contrived way in which it was delivered, but also because it made no sense to anyone with local knowledge of Tom Reed. He is the epitome of someone who does not wage a war against women. He is known to be respectful and thoughtful both in his demeanor and consideration of legislation. Robertson, once again, obviously was just reading from a playbook, but using it against the wrong person. The “War Against Women” attack was a major blunder according the post-debate this analysis on the TV station that ran the debate: ...
“That shows me that Martha Robertson is not ready for primetime.”
The crowd reaction is being held up as part of a broader national narrative of the Democrats "War on Women" being a laugh line that does not reflect the reality that more and more women are siding with Republicans:

Posted by Amy Miller on October 26, 2014 9 Comments
Working in the Texas campaign world over the past few years has given me a good idea about how conservatives across the political spectrum feel about GOP candidates wading into the complicated world of multicultural outreach. Much of the work I’ve done since last September has been working toward the goal of making this sort of outreach mainstream---and it hasn’t always been easy. But a recent radio interview given by President Obama may have made my job just a little bit easier: Via The Hill:
Controversial voter identification laws are not the primary reason minority voters are failing to cast their ballots, President Obama said in a radio interview airing Tuesday. "Most of these laws are not preventing the overwhelming majority of folks who don't vote from voting," Obama said during an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton. "Most people do have an ID. Most people do have a driver's license. Most people can get to the polls. It may not be as convenient' it may be a little more difficult." … "The bottom line is, if less than half of our folks vote, these laws aren't preventing the other half from not voting," Obama said. "The reason we don't vote is because people have been fed this notion that somehow it's not going to make a difference. And it makes a huge difference."
There are two takeaways from this interview, and neither of them bodes well for Democrats. The first is that President Obama has gone completely off the rails when it comes to maintaining unity in messaging within the party. A major part of liberal messaging this cycle has focused on voter suppression; President Obama has undermined years of effort with one interview.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 26, 2014 20 Comments
This is just another case of Democrats doing something they would be outraged about if Republicans tried it. In this instance, they want to use the power of government to silence opposition. Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner reports:
Dems on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news media like the Drudge Report. Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said. The power play followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote on whether an Ohio anti-President Obama Internet campaign featuring two videos violated FEC rules when it did not report its finances or offer a disclosure on the ads. The ads were placed for free on YouTube and were not paid advertising.
This is all about the accumulation and retention of power. As John Hinderaker of Powerline recently noted, that's just how the left rolls:

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 26, 2014 80 Comments
Non-citizens, who should not be voting, wield significant influence in American elections according to a new report from the Washington Post. Can you guess which party they typically vote for? Jesse Richman and David Earnest reported, here are some highlights:
Could non-citizens decide the November election? In a forthcoming article in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races... Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.
That's kind of a big deal, isn't it? Oh, and then there's this:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 25, 2014 14 Comments
We made the Students for Justice in Palestine Zionist enemies list. I really can't imagine why. Maybe it's because we exposed in great, fully-documented detail, what SJP on campus actually represents. How SJP at Northeastern University engaged in "dorm storming" and marched to the chant of "Long Live Intifada" (the bloody suicide bombing campaign directed at Israeli civilians). And the dorm storming at New York University, in violation of university rules.
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