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November 2014

The anti-Israel movement on campus never sleeps. The latest is that anti-Israel students took over control of the operating council of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) Local 2865, comprised of over 12,000 graduate student employees. They used that control to send to the membership for a vote on December 4 a wide-ranging anti-Israel resolution. What makes this resolution different is that it turns Grad Student union members into activists inside the classroom, calling on them to honor the academic and cultural boycott in their university teaching capacity. This places the union vote far outside any of the other academic boycotts, such as by the American Studies Association, which did not even purport to infringe upon professional responsibilities in the teaching of courses. As in all these efforts, the anti-Israel activists position themselves to control the flow of information to members to filter out contrary viewpoints. Since in the real world few people turn out to vote on such issues other than committed activists, resolutions can pass without a majority of the entire membership agreeing. As reported at Algemeiner:
According to informedgrads.org, a group of union members opposed to the BDS motion, the Joint Council has demonstrated utter contempt for basic democratic procedures. UAW 2865 is, the group says, “already sponsoring BDS and anti-Israel activities without waiting for the vote,” engaging in such activities as attending and endorsing anti-Israel demonstrations, including the violent blockade of Israeli ships docking at the port in Oakland. Additionally, around $50,000 of union money has already been spent on promoting the BDS campaign, prompting informedgrads.org to protest at the  “redirecting of political capital that should be used to push our university administrators to improve our working conditions.” “The UC administration is not required to consider these calls for boycotts and divestment, and they have unequivocally stated that they oppose such actions,” the group adds.
But there are other problems with the resolution. It's almost certainly illegal and violates the UAW's collective bargaining agreement, as announced by the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) on November 24:

With the midterms over, both parties are turning their focus to 2016. Democrats, who were the clear losers on November 4th are struggling over leadership and the direction of their party. It's hard to imagine Elizabeth Warren harshly criticizing the Obama administration just a few years ago. The age of Obama is over. Peter Schroeder of The Hill:
Democrats assail Wall Street ties in Obama administration President Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss to serve as the Treasury Department’s top domestic finance official is drawing fire from an unusual sector: his fellow Democrats. Liberal lawmakers like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have been quick to oppose Weiss, a major investment banker with Lazard. Among their grievances is the fact that Lazard’s work is primarily in international finance and he is nominated for a domestic position. They’re also critical of his role in structuring several tax inversion deals, which have drawn criticism from the president himself. But an underlying thread to the Democratic opposition is a fatigue with filling top-ranking administration spots with officials that have spent significant time working for or on behalf of Wall Street titans. Warren penned an op-ed in The Huffington Post criticizing the administration’s approach under the headline “Enough is Enough.”
The discord isn't limited to the Warren wing of the party. There's plenty of scorn to go around.

A Texas appeals court has struck down a law allowing police officers to conduct warrantless blood tests on suspected drunk drivers. The law borrows concepts from the Texas Transportation Code and other statutes, and has both attorneys and Fourth Amendment advocates up in arms over what it means to conduct an "unreasonable search and seizure." In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Missouri v. McNeely that the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigent circumstance justifying blanket authorization for warrantless searches. Texas' "No Refusal" periods, however, throw a wrench in an easy hypo by injecting statutorily-based "implied consent" into the mix. ("No Refusal" periods are exactly what they sound like.) What happens if you refuse to provide a sample and/or perform sobriety tests in the field? Up until last week, the authorities would haul you into jail and forcibly extract the evidence from the crook of your right arm---without a warrant. The convenience of this level of "implied consent" was too much for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, however, and last week they ruled this type of search unconstitutional. Via the Houston Chronicle:
"We hold that a nonconsensual search of a DWI suspect's blood conducted pursuant to the mandatory-blood-draw and implied-consent provisions in the Transportation Code, when undertaken in the absence of a warrant or any applicable exception to the warrant requirement, violates the Fourth Amendment," Judge Elsa Alcala of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote on behalf of the five majority opinion judges. Four members of the nine-judge court dissented.
Constitution trumps statute, and it feels so right.

Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review, was on Meet the Press this morning, discussing Ferguson. Here's what I tweeted out at the time: Here's the video of what was playing just before I sent that tweet, via NRO:
National Review editor Rich Lowry riled up a panel of establishment media talkers Sunday by advising Americans to obey the law and exercise caution with police. “If you look at the most credible evidence [of Michael Brown's death at the hands of a Ferguson, Mo., police officer], the lessons are really basic,” Lowry said during an appearance on Meet the Press. “Don’t rob a convenience store. Don’t fight with a policeman when he stops you and try to take his gun. And when he yells at you to stop, just stop.” Those comments elicited gasp from a panel that included the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Mitchell exclaimed “Whoa, whoa” during Lowry’s comments, while Robinson said his recitation of the known facts in the case was an attempt to “relitigate” Brown’s death.
Here's Mitchell's reaction in slow-motion:

"Nakba" is the phrase Arabs use to refer to the creation of Arab refugees from the British Mandate of Palestine created during the civil war and then Arab armies invasion after Arabs rejected the U.N. General Assembly 1947 Partition Plan. Had the Arabs accepted that plan, there would have been an Arab state created in 1947.  Since Jordan was created from most of the original Mandate, the Partition Plan would have given Arabs the supermajority of the land.  Instead, the Arabs declared holy war on the Jews, and lost the civil war and 1948 War. In the course of that loss, hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled, then were kept in refugee camps by other Arabs, and have been kept as non-citizens in those Arab countries pending the destruction of Israel. The there was another "Nakba" resulting from the Arab rejection of Israel. The story of 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries has been told here many times, but rarely is discussed in the public debate over the Middle East. The silence on the Jewish Nakba is changing. Ben-Dror Yemini, writing in Ynet, What about the Jewish Nakba? (h/t Israel Matzav) writes:

One of the most recent of the seemingly never-ending succession of Progressive complaints about the Ferguson Grand Jury is that the Grand Jury's decision not to indict is inherently flawed because they were permitted to consider self-defense. Those professing this argument rely for support on one of their favorite variations of the classic "straw man argument":  they quote an authoritative Conservative figure in purported support of their position. In this case, they are calling upon none other than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as in the Think Progress post: Justice Scalia Explains What Was Wrong With The Ferguson Grand Jury. In particular, the Think Progress post states the following:
Justice Antonin Scalia, in the 1992 Supreme Court case of United States v. Williams, explained what the role of a grand jury has been for hundreds of years.

It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor. Respublica v. Shaffer, 1 Dall. 236 (O. T. Phila. 1788); see also F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 360, pp. 248-249 (8th ed. 1880). As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.

This passage was first highlighted by attorney Ian Samuel, a former clerk to Justice Scalia.

It has come to this. The video is by anti-Israel activist Bassem Masri, whose voice narrates as protesters take over parts of the South County Mall someplace, somewhere in America. (Language Warning) Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream Biggest surprise of the evening? There's a Sears store still open. UPDATES:  Sears has been breached, as protesters used the ancient Escalator Maneuver, first used by Hannibal to cross the Alps, flanking the Ladies' Wear staff and leaving the Mens' Footwear attendant fleeing into the Holiday Special Items section:

It's easy to forget how many stupid things Democrats have said over the last year. Fortunately, David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon has put them all together:
Turkeys The Worst of the Democrats in 2014 The Democratic Party had a really bad 2013. Somehow, it got worse. President Obama admitted in August that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in battling the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, just months after dismissing the organization as a mere “JV team.” Vice President Joe Biden, in an impressive feat even for him, managed to offend Jews and Asians in the span of one day, and he also referred to Africa as a “nation.” Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) also offended Asians when he joked he had trouble “keeping my Wongs straight” at the Asian Chamber of Commerce, and he also made headlines this year with his bizarre rants about the philanthropist Koch brothers. Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) stepped in controversy when she remarked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had “given women the back of his hand.” It didn’t work in dissuading voters; Walker won his third election in four years.
Here's the blooper reel:

We have covered the thinly veiled and sometimes not veiled threatening and violent behavior of anti-Israeli activists on campus so many times, it's hardly possible to sum them up in one post anymore. Just scroll through our BDS Tag. If you read our recent posts about Cornell, you'd know that it can happen anywhere, even on campuses that are not as a whole anti-Israel. Non-student agitators and faculty often are the catalyst for what now euphemistically is called "direct action," the new rallying cry for groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. This video sums up some of what is happening (via Caroline Glick): (Footage courtesy of Crossing the Line by JerusalemU. Go to www.stepupforisrael.com/crossingtheline. The full Crossing the Line film will be released in January 2015) From what I've seen, pro-Israel students are choosing to fight back, not to flee.

Cashiers aren't the only workers who might be forced to look for other employment thanks to robots. To help alleviate the current labor shortage, one Singaporean restaurant plans to employ a fleet of robots to deliver food to customers. Meet the flying robot waiter: flying robot waiter According to Channel News Asia:
Restaurant-goers in Singapore can expect to be served by autonomous flying robots – the world’s first commercial attempt – by the end of next year. Infinium-Serve, the autonomous flying robotic waiters, will be first launched at one of Timbre Group’s five outlets in Singapore. Infinium Robotics CEO Woon Junyang estimated the project to cost a “low seven-figure sum” for the five outlets, subject to final negotiations and certain variables of the actual deployment of the robots. Infinium Robotics signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Timbre Group on Oct 31. Both companies are seeking productivity-related government grants to help offset deployment costs. Mr Woon said he is confident that such robotic solutions will help alleviate the Singapore’s labour crunch. Introducing this technology into restaurants would take away mundane tasks of serving food and drinks, and allow human waiters to focus on higher-value tasks such as getting feedback from customers, he said. “This will result in an enhanced dining experience which will eventually lead to increased sales and revenue for the restaurants,” he added. A prototype of Infinium-Serve was showcased to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the inaugural launch of the National Productivity Month in early October.

One of my favorite Christmas moments is when I watch "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" with my son. This year, I didn't have to pull out the DVD to review the story. Ferguson protesters captured its essence by surrounding  some children caroling for a Christmas tree lighting in Seattle and making them cry.
Demonstrators marched through holiday traffic, blocked intersections and shut down light rail service to Westlake station. Some protesters moved the demonstration to the edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where they clashed with police officers. Both officers and demonstrators used pepper spray, police said. Some protesters wore gas masks. Later, the city's traditional Christmas lighting ceremony at Westlake started early after protesters surrounded the area and began rallying. Police turned out in force, arresting five people and prompting the mall to close several hours early.

As a follow-up to our post yesterday, de-bunking Lawrence O'Donnell's claim that a purported error on the part of prosecutors led the Ferguson Grand Jury into error, I thought it might be informative to progress that de-bunking to an even more comprehensive level. As noted yesterday in No, Prosecution did not Mislead #Ferguson Grand Jury into Erroneous Decision, Officer Wilson had several potential legal justifications for his use of deadly force against Michael Brown.  Among these were the justification to use deadly force in making an arrest under MO statute §563.046. Law enforcement officer’s use of force in making an arrest and, alternatively, the justification to use deadly force in self defense under MO statute §563.031. Use of force in defense of persons, the state’s self-defense statute.  Both of these statutes were presented to the Grand Jury. Either one of these statutes alone is more than sufficient to justify Wilson's use of deadly force against Brown.  He did not, however, attempt to avail himself of both statutes. Wilson himself testified for more than four hours to the Grand Jury, in person and without legal counsel present.  during the entirety of that testimony he never--not once--argued that his use of deadly force against Brown was based on an effort to arrest Brown in general, nor based on his arrest powers under §563.046 in particular. To the contrary, Wilson relied explicitly and entirely on his right to use deadly force in self-defense, as allowed for by §563.031.

There have been many false factual narratives of the Michael Brown killing, such as "hands up, don't shoot." Now there's a new false legal narrative spreading, that a prosecutorial mistake misled the Grand Jury into erroneously failing to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson. The source of the claim appears to be MSNBC's Lawrence O’Donnell. O'Donnell, who was magnificently misleading in the Trayvon Martin case, expounds on this claim in the Ferguson case with absolute moral and intellectual certainty, as he always does. The heart of O'Donnell's claim is that a legal error in presenting the law on use of force in making an arrest early in the Grand Jury proceedings somehow led the Grand Jury astray.  O'Donnell maintains that this error could have led the Grand Jury to think it was okay to shoot Michael Brown in the back as he was running away, even though the corrected law was given to the Grand Jury prior to deliberations. There are at least two major flaws in O'Donnell's argument. First, and most important, even if O'Donnell is correct that prosecutors misstated one justification for Wilson's use of deadly force (arrest powers), these same prosecutors correctly stated an alternative and independent justification for that same use of force (self-defense). Thus, even if Wilson's arrest powers were insufficient justification for his use of deadly force, his right of self-defense was more than sufficient justification for that use of deadly force. And even O'Donnell claims no error in that instruction to the Grand Jury. Second, the justification that O'Donnell claims was read to the jury in error is entirely irrelevant, as it applies only if the suspect is shot while fleeing arrest. Here, Michael Brown suffered not a single gunshot wound to the back, nor did Wilson ever claim to have shot Brown while he was fleeing in order to affect an arrest.  Instead, Wilson claims consistently that he shot Brown in self-defense, and numerous witnesses testified and the forensic evidence supports that Wilson fired only when Brown was actively advancing towards, and not while Brown was fleeing from, Wilson. As a result the legal justification that O'Donnell claims to be in error, that of arrest powers, simply has no application to this case. Now to the video: O’Donnell’s diatribe is an almost perfect example of what is commonly referred to as a “straw man” argument.