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November 2014

Posted by Amy Miller on November 26, 2014 9 Comments
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) might just be the worst Democratic Policy and Communications Center head of all time. Or, the best, depending on how invested you are to Congressional Dems' current messaging strategy. Yesterday, Schumer stood up at the National Press Club and unequivocally threw President Obama and his coalition under the bus for pressing forward with health care reform at the expense of more "middle class"-oriented programs. Fusion has his remarks:
The “mandate” voters had provided Democrats with their 2008 victories, Schumer said, was put on the wrong problem. “After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem – health care reform,” Schumer said. “The plight of uninsured Americans and the hardships caused by unfair insurance company practices certainly needed to be addressed,” he added. “But it wasn’t the change we were hired to make. Americans were crying out for an end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs — not for changes in their health care.”
Sure, Schumer was one of Obamacare's biggest cheerleaders, but that was then and this is now, people!

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2014 19 Comments
Darren Wilson, the Ferguson Police Officer whom a Grand Jury declined to indict over the shooting death of Micheal Brown, gave a lengthy in-person interview to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News last night. That interview is embedded at the bottom of this post. But this post is not really about Darren Wilson, at least not directly. It's about Johnson City, NY (near Binghamton), Police Officer David Smith, who was involved in a similar incident on March 31, 2014. A reader from this area (Johnson City is about 45 minutes from Ithaca) forwarded me the link, writing: "I had forgotten about this event very close to home but it seems to me that it is relevant to current events." http://www.localsyr.com/story/d/story/officer-shot-and-killed-near-binghamton-area-hospi/21718/364J-3q63EqZs8BkWb6lSw In that incident, a seemingly crazed and aggressive perpetrator managed to take Officer Smith's weapon from him, and then use it to murder Officer Smith:
Police say a suspect shot and killed a Johnson City police officer with the officer’s own weapon on Monday morning. Officer David Smith was an 18-year veteran of the force, police said at an afternoon news conference. The suspect, 43-year-old James Clark of Greene, pulled away Smith’s weapon and shot the officer three times, according to police. Clark fired at another officer, who then shot the suspect several times. Clark was taken to a hospital and later died.
As recounted in this video, the circumstances were remarkably similar to the initial assault on Darren Wilson by Michael Brown: Sucker punches to an officer seated in his patrol car, with the perpetrator then leaning in to try to steal the weapon:

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 26, 2014 41 Comments
This post focuses on the second-half of Police Officer's testimony before the Grand Jury, during which he is responding to direct questions from both the Prosecutors present (Whirley and Alizadeh) as well as from individual Grand Jury members. This portion of the testimony also covers the relevant post-shooting events. The first half of Wilson's testimony before the Grand Jury consisted of his narrative of events, and was covered in yesterday's post here: #Ferguson Grand Jury evidence: Police Officer’s Account of Shooting. It bears mentioning again that Officer Wilson was not compelled to testify before the Grand Jury, but rather volunteered to do so.  He did so knowing he would not be permitted to be accompanied by legal counsel during his testimony. As was done in yesterday's post, below is an abridged version of the testimony, to ease reading through the material. The full-text of the testimony is embedded at the bottom of this post in the form of a PDF of the official Grand Jury transcript. One observation comes immediately to mind as I've had the opportunity to both carefully review Wilson's September 26 testimony before the Grand Jury as well as watch him recount events in his November 25 ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, and that is the utter consistently between the two accounts. This stands in sharp contrast to the very often wildly varying testimony of "pro-Brown" witnesses before the Grand Jury.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 26, 2014 2 Comments
Some good news from the frontlines related to our battle with Ebola: The outbreak is now "stable" in Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.
There were still some flare ups in the south-east, but things were improving in other prefectures, WHO co-ordinator Dr Guenael Rodier told the BBC. More than 5,400 people have died in the latest outbreak, with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia the worst hit. The outbreak can be ended by mid-2015 if the world speeds up its response, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said.
Although the rate of new cases shows signs of decreasing in parts of West Africa, Mali - where six people have died and a seventh case has been reported - is now of concern. Additionally, the United Nations Ebola Emergency Response Mission has formally announced that it will not meet its self-imposed December 1st deadline of containment.
The mission set the goal in September, seeking to have 70 percent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 percent of Ebola victims safely buried. That target will be achieved in some areas, head of UNMEER Anthony Banbury told Reuters news agency, citing progress in Liberia. "We are going to exceed the December 1 targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground," he said in an interview.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 26, 2014 19 Comments
One of my most haunting memories from childhood involves a group of teens from a local Michigan high school; they pounded on our front door and begged my mom to call the police. This was during the 1967 Detroit Riots, when several groups of hostile students decided to take the conflict into our small suburb. My father was away, working as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, and his team's coverage of this event lead to a Pulitzer Prize. My mom took the students in, made the call, and comforted everyone until parents arrived to pick up the group who fled to our doorstep. A short summary of this event via PBS shows seems similar to what unfolded yesterday:
For five days in July, Detroit, Michigan descends into chaos. An economic boom has created jobs, and urban renewal projects have built new infrastructure, but blacks have been left behind. New expressways destroy black neighborhoods, and economic opportunities are scarce for black residents. The 95% white police force, notorious for brutal and arbitrary treatment of black citizens, raids an illegal after hours club and draws an angry, frustrated crowd that quickly turns hostile. As Sunday July 23rd dawns, the growing crowd is looting and burning the city. Twelve hours into the frenzy, Governor George Romney calls in the Michigan National Guard; unprepared troops make mistakes like shooting out the street lights. Nearly 4000 people will be arrested in the first two days, and over 7000 by the third. Most are young and black. Police and guardsmen shoot at will, with some later insisting that all of their victims were armed.
Some footage from the station, WXYZ, and covered by two of the areas best-known reporters of that era:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2014 7 Comments
We previously posted video of anti-Israel protesters getting in the face (literally) of pro-Israel students at Cornell who were holding counter-protest signs, Cornell Pro-Israel students taunted: “F**k You Zionist scums”. The incident depicted in the prior video actually was the second incident of the day, I have learned. Prior to that confrontation, Ilan Kaplan, a Cornell student on leave but who is still active in the Cornell Jewish community, alleges he was accosted as he held a sign, had his sign torn out of his hands, had water thrown on him, and was threatened. Here is my interview with Kaplan: Language Warning

Posted by Amy Miller on November 26, 2014 11 Comments
Ferguson is on fire, and small businesses are suffering. Our coverage of the violence in Ferguson has included tweets and photos showing rampant vandalism and destruction of locally owned businesses; from pizza joints to beauty shops to liquor stores, proprietors have been punished for the grand jury verdict, and many shop owners are now weighing the benefits of rebuilding vs. boarding up. One of those shop owners, Natalie DuBose, has decided to pick up the pieces and keep fighting. After the grand jury verdict was read and protesters took to the streets, the front windows of Natalie's shop were smashed, and the bakery portion vandalized. Encouraged by friends and family, she created a GoFundMe donation page, and asked for help:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 40 Comments
After last night's protests in Ferguson boiled over, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has tripled the National Guard presence in Ferguson in an attempt to quell the violence. From the New York Times:
At an afternoon news conference, Mr. Nixon said that he had ordered the deployment of 2,200 National Guard soldiers to Ferguson. “Last night, criminals intent on lawlessness and destruction terrorized this community,” he said. “What they’ve gone through is unacceptable.” Earlier, Mayor James W. Knowles III of Ferguson criticized the governor for not deploying the Guard quick enough to save some of the businesses that burned. “The delay in deploying the National Guard is deeply concerning,” said Mr. Knowles, adding that he had not spoken directly to the governor since late August, despite almost nightly protests in Ferguson since. Police officers were overwhelmed by the wave of violence Monday night after the grand jury’s decision was announced. Jon Belmar, the St. Louis County police chief, said demonstrators had set fire to at least a dozen buildings in and around Ferguson, and he estimated that he had heard about 150 gunshots. None of the shots, he said, were fired by the police.
Last night's Ustream livestream from the ground in Ferguson is still up and running:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 11 Comments
A federal judge has ruled that the owners of the Washington Redskins should be allowed to pursue legal action against a group of Native Americans who are attempting to block the team's trademark protection. Back in August, the Redskins sued to reverse a previous ruling siding with the activists who seek to destroy the team's allegedly racist brand, and today, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee denied the activists' request to dismiss the suit. The Washington Post has the background on the case:
The five Native Americans — Blackhorse, Phillip Glover, Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Jillian Pappan and Courtney Tsotigh, members of American Indian tribes in Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, Nebraska, and Florida — are the second group to mount a challenge to the team’s trademark protection. The first group was led by Suzan Shown Harjo, who filed a petition in 1992. The patent office ruled in the group’s favor, but the Redskins appealed in federal court and won on a technicality: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Harjo and the other plaintiffs had waited too long after turning 18 to complain about the Redskins name. But the court did not rule on whether the team name was disparaging. In the new case, Blackhorse and the other defendants filed their petition in 2006 when they were in their late teens and early 20s, ages considered early enough to file their grievances. They argue that federal trademark law bars the patent office from registering trademarks that “may disparage” groups or individuals. The law enables people to petition the office if they’ve been injured by a trademark and feel it was unlawfully awarded.
This is an old battle, but given the level of racial tension in America right now, it's more relevant than ever. Back in June, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the Redskins trademark registration, citing concerns that the branding was disparaging toward Native Americans. (Federal trademark law prohibits registration of trademarks that “may disparage” or bring individuals or groups "into contempt or disrepute.”) In the board's decision, it said that although many Native Americans do not find the trademark to be disparaging, it based its decision on whether or not there was evidence "that a substantial composite of the Native American population found the term ‘Redskins’ to be disparaging when the respective registrations [were] issued.”

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 25, 2014 91 Comments
As promised, the transcripts of the Ferguson Grand Jury have been released to the public. That's the good news. The bad news is that the transcripts amount to 4,799 pages. That's not a typo: four thousand, seven hundred and ninety-nine pages. So, it's going to take a little time to work through and present in a useful form here. In this post I present the narrative of Police Officer Darren Wilson as he recounts to the Grand Jury his encounter with Mike Brown. I do so in abridged form, meaning that I've stripped out other people's statements to make the narrative more concise and easier to read. All of the text provided is, however, exactly as presented in the official transcript (baring, perhaps, an occasional typo here or there.) To make this more than a mere re-packaging of the official transcript, I suggest it might be a useful exercise as you read through Wilson's narrative to ask yourself whether it meets the required five elements of the law of self-defense. (Strictly speaking, just four of those elements apply, as there is no duty to retreat for a police officer in the performance of his duties.)  These four elements, then, are:
  • Innocence: Wilson must not have been the unlawful physical aggressor.
  • Imminence: Wilson must have been facing a threat that is either about to occur right now, or is in actual progress.
  • Proportionality: To be justified in the use of deadly force in self-defense Wilson must have been facing a threat of death or grave bodily harm.
  • Reasonableness:  Wilson's perceptions, decisions, and actions must have been those of a reasonable and prudent police officer in the same circumstances, with the same capabilities, possessing the same specialized knowledge, and under the same stresses of an existential fight.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 25, 2014 22 Comments
When I was eight years old, my family took a road trip to St. Louis to visit friends and see the sights. Among our touristy stops was a visit to Grant's Farm where we saw the Budweiser Clydesdales. I remember being in awe of the huge beasts with hairy hooves. I still have a little stuffed Clydesdale that sits on a shelf at my parent's house. The Clydesdale commercials are one of the few, if not the only long-running ad I always looked forward to. Sadly, the Clydesdales will no longer be the sole hallmark of Anheuser Busch. Evidently, 44% of 21-27 year old drinkers have never tried the red label Budweiser. According to The Wall Street Journal, it's not just the younger drinkers who've caused a decline in Budweiser sales. Light beer, craft beer, cider, and other malt beverages are the biggest culprits. The WSJ reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 25, 2014 8 Comments
On November 25, 2001, the first American was killed in the Afghan war, during a prisoner uprising in northern Afghanistan. He was a CIA special operations officer.  His name was Johnny "Mike" Spann.  His story is not told often enough. We have written of Mike Spann several times before, each one documenting a different aspect of his life and family he left behind: (Family of Mike Spann at cemetery) Here's a brief description of his story:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 13 Comments
The Obama Administration may think the Benghazi controversy is settled, but for House Republicans, the fight for transparency has just begun. House Speaker John Boehner announced today that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) will continue to chair the Select Committee on the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, during the next session of Congress. From the Speaker's Office:
“On September 11, 2012, four Americans were killed in a brutal terrorist attack in Libya. Two years later, the American people still have far too many questions about what happened that night – and why. That’s why I will reappoint Rep. Trey Gowdy and the Republican members of the House Select Committee to investigate the events in Benghazi in the 114th Congress. I look forward to the definitive report Chairman Gowdy and the Select Committee will present to the American people.”
This move comes in the wake of backlash suffered by the House Intelligence Committee, whose recently declassified report claims that Obama Administration officials were not directly responsible for the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Although Democrats say that the Benghazi committee is redundant given the contents of the report, Republicans in both chambers are convinced there's more to the story:

Posted by David Gerstman on November 25, 2014 2 Comments
It's interesting to see headlines that the P5+1 talks in Vienna about Iran's nuclear program were called a failure. On one very important level they were a success. No there was no agreement on a long term deal to roll back Iran's nuclear program. But there was an agreement to extend the Joint Plan of Action allowing Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure in place and receive up to seven more months of sanctions relief. In other words for Iran, the negotiations were a tremendous success. Here's the Wall Street Journal (Google link):

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 25, 2014 54 Comments
The Ferguson verdict is in: No indictment. The people who deserve the most sympathy in Ferguson are the parents of Michael Brown who lost their son. That makes them the biggest losers and I mean that in a sympathetic way. The second biggest loser in Ferguson is the liberal media which flocked to the scene and stoked racial bias. Now that the facts are in, they look like complete fools. I mean that in a non-sympathetic way. The third biggest loser in Ferguson is President Obama who made a hasty statement on the situation which opened with these words:
First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.
We are? Really? Watch Obama's statement below:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 39 Comments
Last night's grand jury verdict vindicating officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown sent the people of Ferguson, Missouri into a tailspin. Even as the verdict was being read, reports began to trickle in of vandalism, looting, and violence against police officers attempting to keep the peace.
The racially charged case in Ferguson has inflamed tensions and reignited debates over police-community relations even in cities hundreds of miles from the predominantly black St. Louis suburb. For many staging protests Monday, the shooting was personal, calling to mind other galvanizing encounters with local law enforcement. Police departments in several major cities said they were bracing for large demonstrations with the potential for the kind of violence that marred nightly protests in Ferguson after Brown's killing. Demonstrators there vandalized police cars, hugged barricades and taunted officers with expletives Monday night while police fired smoke canisters and pepper spray. Gunshots were heard on the streets.
(added) Mark Levin notes how the lawlessness is a symptom, not the cause:
Ferguson burns and violence has been unleashed thanks to the reckless liberal media, the lawless administration (especially Eric Holder) exploiting the shooting to smear police departments across the nation, phony civil rights demagogues, race-baiting politicians, and radical hate groups.

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 24, 2014 29 Comments
As has been widely anticipated for weeks, the Ferguson MO Grand Jury has DECLINED to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of black adult Michael Brown. This result has not been unexpected, as the overwhelming weight of both the eye witness and forensic evidence has been entirely consistent with Officer Wilson's narrative of self-defense, including:
  • Wilson being attacked by Brown and his accomplice Dorian Johnson in his patrol vehicle
  • a struggle over Wilson's service pistol
  • shots fired inside the vehicle (which forensic examination confirmed caused a contact gun shot wound to Brown's right hand)
  • the temporary flight of Brown upon those initial gunshots
  • the return of the 292 pound Brown re-engage the much smaller officer
  • the firing of additional defensive rounds as necessary to halt Brown's violence
In contrast, the narratives put forward that might have favored an indictment were serially changed as each was proven inconsistent with the evidence:
  • Brown was shot in the back (there are no gun shot wounds to Brown's back, and contrary to bulk of eye witness testimony)
  • Brown had his hands raised in surrender (inconsistent with forensics and bulk of eye witness testimony)
  • Brown was on his knees when Wilson simply executed him (inconsistent with forensics and bulk of eye witness testimony)
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