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November 2014

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 28, 2014 6 Comments
If you're a Star Wars fan, you'll want to see this. Disney released an 88 second teaser trailer for their first  Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. Disney purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 from George Lucas who was the sole owner. According to USA Today, Lucas will remain a creative consultant.
"For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next," said Lucas, chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm, in a statement. "It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers."
J.J. Abrams is both a writer and director for the latest Star Wars installment with an assist from George Lucas and Lawrence Kasden on the screenplay. Kasden was a co-writer for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Carie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill make appearances in The Force Awakens (although they're not show in this trailer).

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 28, 2014 18 Comments
According to a new report from FOX News, illegal immigrants who fit certain criteria set forth by Obama last week will be eligible for taxpayer funded programs:
Illegal immigrants to be eligible for Social Security, Medicare Illegal immigrants who apply for work permits in the U.S. under President Obama’s new executive actions will be eligible for Social Security and Medicare, the White House says. Under the sweeping actions, immigrants who are spared deportation could obtain work permits and a Social Security number, which would allow them to pay into the Social Security system through payroll taxes. No such "lawfully present" immigrant, however, would be immediately entitled to the benefits because like all Social Security and Medicare recipients they would have to work 10 years to become eligible for retirement payments and health care. To remain qualified, either Congress or future administrations would have to extend Obama's actions so that those immigrants would still be considered lawfully present in the country.
As Instapundit says, who could have seen this coming?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 28, 2014 17 Comments
Casey Breznick is the Editor in Chief of The Cornell Review, the conservative Cornell undergraduate journal and its blog, The Cornell Insider. Casey also writes for Legal Insurrection and previously College Insurrection. Casey has done a lot of great reporting for the Review on political events, such as the Martha Robertson campaign, "Rape Culture" protests, and also on the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine protest at Ho Plaza on Cornell's campus on November 19, 2014. That Ho Plaza incident also has been reported at Legal Insurrection, based in part on Casey's work for the Review blog: On Tuesday night, November 25, Casey covered for the Review the Ithaca community vigil regarding the Michael Brown case. The vigil quickly turned into a street protest in which roads were blocked in downtown Ithaca and cars were trapped, leading to police intervention. In the Cornell Insider post about the protest, Casey recounts how two of the non-students involved in the SJP Cornell protest spotted him and tried to get him to stop filming.  One of them, kat yang-stevens, pushed her sign into Casey. Here is Casey's video: (language warning)

Posted by New Neo on November 28, 2014 9 Comments
Let's take a look at the classic depiction of Justice: justice She wears a blindfold. And not because it's Halloween. It's because:
Lady Justice (Latin: Iustitia, the Roman goddess of Justice, who is equivalent to the Greek goddesses Themis and Dike) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. ...Lady Justice is most often depicted with a set of scales typically suspended from her right hand, upon which she measures the strengths of a case's support and opposition. She is also often seen carrying a double-edged sword in her left hand, symbolizing the power of Reason and Justice, which may be wielded either for or against any party. ...Since the 15th century, Lady Justice has often been depicted wearing a blindfold. The blindfold represents objectivity, in that justice is or should be meted out objectively, without fear or favour, regardless of identity, personal wealth, power, or weakness; blind justice and impartiality. The earliest Roman coins depicted Justitia with the sword in one hand and the scale in the other, but with her eyes uncovered. Justitia was only commonly represented as "blind" since about the end of the 15th century.
Reason. Justice. Objectivity. Laudable and important goals.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 28, 2014 14 Comments
We are dealing with some really sick minds when it comes to the proponents of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement propaganda machine. The latest is from a group with over 91,000 Facebook fans, called "I Acknowledge Apartheid Exists." That phrase is an integral part of the BDS movement, which falsely seeks to portray Israel as the equivalent of apartheid South Africa. That claim of Apartheid status was the founding propaganda principle of the BDS movement, which was started at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban conference. The group has posted a photoshop of Nazi concentration camp inmates holding anti-Israel signs, on its Facebook page. It's unclear if the group created it, or is just promoting it. https://www.facebook.com/IAcknowledgeApartheidExists/photos/a.116419295219428.1073741828.116415985219759/321047701423252/?type=1 The image is being spread by others as well, such as the Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine: [Note 11-28-2014 10:15 p.m. - sometime tonight CNYCJP removed the image after complaints were posted in its comments in response to Legal Insurrection's coverage, and after the image was CNYCJP's Facebook page for about two days the cache version of the post is here]

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 28, 2014 22 Comments
The official transcript of the Ferguson Grand Jury continues to be fascinating as I chug my way past the 20% reading mark. A portion of the current eye witness testimony before me, that of Interview #4 taken on September 17 , was particularly engaging however. The reason? It shows in visceral detail some of the explicit and coordinated efforts to physically intimidate eye witnesses from speaking with law enforcement, and how genuinely frightened these efforts made those witnesses. I've reproduced the relevant section of Interview #4 below, and the entire length of that interview is embedded at the bottom of this post. (This interview did not take place before the Grand Jury itself, but rather the audio recording of the interview conducted at an earlier date was played for the Grand Jury.) There are three interviewers, whom I have labelled (as best I was able to discern from the transcript) as "Unknown," "Mr.," and "Ms.," at least one of whom is an FBI Special Agent and another of which is an attorney with the prosecutor's office.  (It is possible the "unknown" category should be assigned to some combination of "Mr." and "Ms.")  The witness is labelled as "I4."  All identities and identifying information has been redacted in the official transcript. The interview has been going on for some time when one of the persons leading the questioning interrupts the substantive discussion:

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 27, 2014 8 Comments
You may not be aware that Dana Loesch of The Blaze makes videos. This new Thanksgiving related spot is pretty funny. In what should come as a surprise to no one, Loesch isn't a fan of fake turkey. I couldn't agree more. Would you believe Tofurky has been around for 20 years?

Posted by Amy Miller on November 27, 2014 19 Comments
The Ferguson protesters have proven themselves to be destructive, violent, and completely uninterested in anything having to do with "justice." Not only are they okay with this assessment---they're completely proud of it. In fact, they're beginning to look an awful lot like another "justice movement" we got to know quite well a few years back. Back in August, an enterprising writer over at Buzzfeed engaged in some solid journalism and noticed that the Ferguson protests---namely, the evolving encampments were beginning to look a little like the Occupy Wall Street protests:
As the marches in Ferguson grow smaller, this apparently semi-permanent encampment has echoes of Occupy Wall Street and other radical encampments who sought to claim and hold territory in 2011 and 2012. “Why do we need a leader?” Alexander asked. “I’m saying everybody can be leaders.” The camp even has a few Occupy veterans who drifted in during the last week and are giving them pointers on how to deal with things like tear gas — a threat Alexander said is still present, especially as their numbers grow. A couple of miles away in downtown Ferguson, across the street from the still-under-construction police station, another group is also digging in. Unlike the protesters on W Florissant, the gathering downtown is older and includes more women than men. Many of the demonstrators leave by the middle of the night, though someone is always out and always will be until they “get some answers,” according to organizer Angela Whitman. “We come out when it’s storming and raining,” she said. “We don’t play around. We don’t care what the weather is. We’ll be out here as long as it takes.” The atmosphere downtown is almost familial, with chairs and tables spread out across the street corner. Friday night, the group had prayers and competing chants between men and women, among other things.
In fact, Occupy is more interconnected with Ferguson than was immediately apparent when people started to organize.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 27, 2014 19 Comments
Thanks to many for making this Thanksgiving so meaningful. This is not an exhaustive list, but it's a good start:
  • The Wife. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary earlier this year.
  • The Kids. Three great ones.
  • Health, and Mandy's recovery.
  • The U.S. of A. Still the place to be.
  • The Constitution and Bill of Rights. Beats any alternative I've seen.
  • Those who defend us against enemies, foreign and domestic.
  • Israel. The canary in freedom's coal mine.
  • The Readers. Seriously. Not joking.
  • The Authors, past and present. You helped build that.
  • The blogs and websites that link to us. The continued kindness of strangers is appreciated.
  • Fellow Ithaca conservatives, all ten of you.
  • The hope that the part of the human spirit that yearns to be free can prevail over evil, in Iran and elsewhere. (video h/t Caroline Glick)(original here)

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 27, 2014 13 Comments
While Ebola continues to rage in West Africa, an outbreak of another deadly disease is occurring in the African island nation of Madagascar.
An outbreak of bubonic plague in Madagascar has now claimed almost 50 victims and is spreading to the island's capital, officials warned today. There have been 138 suspected cases of the disease - similar to the Black Death in medieval Europe - since the start of the year, with the death toll of 47 expected to rise in the coming months. Two people have been infected in the capital of Antananarivo, one of them dying, and health workers have mounted a pest control campaign through slum areas around the city. The health ministry said 200 households had been ‘disinfected’ this month, adding that those who had contact with the infected had been given antibiotics in a bid to arrest the spread the disease.
A video glimpse of the situation comes via the UK Daily Mail:

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 27, 2014 47 Comments
Back in the good old days, the left loved to lecture us about civility. That time is over. In the course of the last few days, at least two writers from liberal outlets have tried to justify and even advocate for the violent rioting in Ferguson. First, we have Darlena Cunha of Time:
Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting When a police officer shoots a young, unarmed black man in the streets, then does not face indictment, anger in the community is inevitable. It’s what we do with that anger that counts. In such a case, is rioting so wrong? Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society. Unfortunately, we do not live in a universal utopia where people have the basic human rights they deserve simply for existing, and until we get there, the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets. As “normal” citizens watch the events of Ferguson unfurl on their television screens and Twitter feeds, there is a lot of head shaking, finger pointing, and privileged explanation going on. We wish to seclude the incident and the people involved. To separate it from our history as a nation, to dehumanize the change agents because of their bad and sometimes violent decisions—because if we can separate the underlying racial tensions that clearly exist in our country from the looting and rioting of select individuals, we can continue to ignore the problem.
Next up is Matt Bruenig of Gawker:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 26, 2014 13 Comments
The violence that gripped Ferguson, MO in the wake of the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson has spread to multiple cities across the US. Minneapolis Portland

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 26, 2014 53 Comments
A lot of San Diegans were caught in gridlock when a group of student protesters from my alma mater, University of California - San Diego, blocked Interstate 5 just in time for morning rush hour.
Dozens of UCSD students brought traffic to a halt on northbound Interstate 5 Wednesday morning to protest the decision of a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., not to indict a white policeman for killing an unarmed black teenager. A crowd of an estimated 50 to 70 protesters marched onto the freeway at Nobel Drive at about 6:49 a.m., blocking the northbound lanes. They remained in the roadway for about 40 minutes until San Diego police arrived and removed them. The protesters left the freeway peacefully and began marching on surface streets. There were no immediate reports of arrests. The demonstrators, led by an unidentified man with a bullhorn, held signs objecting to the Missouri grand jury’s decision not to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed but allegedly came at the officer and, at one point, tried to take his service weapon from him.
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