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January 2015

Posted by Amy Miller on January 08, 2015 8 Comments
Thousands of French police officers are going door-to-door in search of two suspects wanted for the terrorist killings at Charlie Hebdo. Said Kouachi, 34, and Chérif Kouachi, 32, are still at large, and the manhunt has spread past the outskirts of Paris and into surrounding areas. From USA Today:
Prime Minister Manuel Valls put the Picardy region, which stretches to the English Channel, on the highest alert level, on par with the alert in effect for the entire Ile-de-France region that includes Paris. France's Interior Ministry said 88,000 people have been deployed in the massive manhunt for Said Kouachi, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 32, who are suspected of killing 12 people in the assault on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. ... "There are lots of policemen. I can see a huge police car," he tells Sky News. "They are asking people 'have you seen anybody?' They have big guns with them. The forest is bigger than Paris — it is very big and very wide."
ABC News is maintaining a live blog of down-to-the-minute updates from the investigation and manhunt. Things in the village of Longpont have heated up in the past hour:
Some residents in the village of Longpont have heard that police believe that the gunmen have abandoned the car they stole in Paris and are on foot, potentially in the forest next to Longpont, which is the area of focus this evening. Residents in the village were not evacuated but word got around pretty quickly that they should batten down the hatches. The local mayor's brother put the word out to the local publican and he shut up shop.
Earlier, pundits speculated about how effective a ramped-up police presence is when there are so many potential targets for terrorists to hit. It's still early in the game, but there are already calls for more intelligence and preparedness.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 08, 2015 50 Comments
Gendered restroom spaces have endured intense public scrutiny lately, but usually from the "stop with your fascist gender labels and let me pick my preferred pronoun!" crowd. So this piece in TIME is slightly outside of the "ban public restroom gender divisions" norm. Soraya Chemaly, the author, describes herself as a, "media critic and activist whose work focuses on the role of gender in politics, religion and popular culture." Context is important. The story begins with her visit to the the loo at The British Museum:
Despite years of “potty parity” laws, women are still forced to stand in lines at malls, schools, stadiums, concerts, fair grounds, theme parks, and other crowded public spaces. This is frustrating, uncomfortable, and, in some circumstances, humiliating. It’s also a form of discrimination, as it disproportionately affects women.
Some say "discrimination", others say "biology", but let's continue:
After counting the women, I tweeted, “Dear @britishmuseum there are FIFTY women and girls standing in line for the loo while the men’s room has zero line #everydaysexism.” Immediately, people responded with the suggestion that women use the men’s room. But even more responses were defensive, along the lines of “How on god’s green earth did you arrive at the conclusion that this was sexist?” Let me count the ways.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 08, 2015 21 Comments
Barbara Boxer will be best remembered for dressing down a General during a hearing when he called her "Ma'am": Boxer just announced, via an almost unwatchable video interview with her grandson, that she is retiring at the end of her term in 2016:

Posted by Hans Bader on January 08, 2015 3 Comments
Can federal officials declare you in violation of the law, not for actions that flout the text of a statute, but for failing to parrot the agency’s controversial views about how the statute should be applied in hypothetical situations? Recently, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) did just that to Harvard Law School. OCR, where I used to work, found Harvard Law School in violation of Title IX for its failure to recite at length OCR officials’ views about the optimal handling of Title IX sexual harassment claims. Ironically, these views were expressed in “guidance” from agency officials that had expressly claimed to “not add requirements to applicable law.” As I explain at this link, this is a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Although the new procedures were adopted precisely to appease the Education Department, OCR nevertheless found them in violation of Title IX, not for what they did, but what they failed to say: For failing to make assertions about sexual harassment made in OCR’s own sexual harassment guidance which are seldom found in any real-world sexual harassment policy, including about obscure procedural or jurisdictional matters that seemingly had nothing to do with any specific harassment case that actually occurred at Harvard Law School. (Title IX is much shorter and less complex than other civil rights laws, like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, but employers routinely win sexual harassment lawsuits under Title VII despite having a sexual harassment policy that runs only a few sentences, and recites none of the assertions that OCR faulted Harvard for not reciting)....

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 08, 2015 37 Comments
When Islamic radicals opened fire at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo yesterday, a small group of French police officers rushed to the scene and then immediately fled---because they weren't armed. Awr Hawkins of Breitbart reported:
Unarmed Paris Police Officers Forced to Flee as Armed Terrorists Attack During the January 7 terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, several Paris police officers fled, unable to disarm the threat, because they themselves were unarmed and outgunned. Breitbart News previously reported that “black-hooded-men” with Kalashnikovs entered the Charlie Hedbo headquarters and opened fire, killing 12 people–including those who were killed outside the building as the gunmen headed back to their car. CBS News relayed reports from Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that the first two officers to arrive “were apparently unarmed” and “fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher.”
This isn't meant to be a jab at French police officers. They were simply operating within the confines of France's law enforcement policies. In fact, two of them lost their lives in the attack. Noah Rothman of Hot Air notes:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 08, 2015 11 Comments
Working in the political sphere has provided a sort of quasi-emotional inoculation. For the most part, I'm able to read and write about all kind of stories, tragedies, atrocities, and hypocrisies without having much more reaction than, "Seriously? You've got to be kidding me!" before moving on the next le sigh-worthy moment. I imagine doctors have a similar arrangement. It's not that they don't care, but as a matter of practicality they cannot become emotionally entangled with every single patient without risking professional burnout. But then there are stories, tragedies, atrocities, and hypocrisies too powerful for the inoculation. The destruction of Charlie Hebdo is one of those. I'm not yet able to comprehend that a group of Muslim terrorists exterminated an entire newspaper. In the most literal sense, the terrorists won. The goal was to destroy Charlie Hebdo for printing "offensive" images of Muhammad; and that's exactly what they did. Mission accomplished.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 07, 2015 42 Comments
The wake of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo is littered with a confusing mix of blame, counter blame, politically correct waffling, and outrage from every possible race and creed. Financial Times columnist Tony Barber went down the familiar road of blaming freedom of expression by way of a call for "common sense":
Charlie Hebdo is a bastion of the French tradition of hard-hitting satire. It has a long record of mocking, baiting and needling Muslims. Two years ago the magazine published a 65-page strip cartoon book portraying the Prophet’s life. And this week it gave special coverage to Soumission (“Submission”), a new novel by Michel Houellebecq, the idiosyncratic author, which depicts France in the grip of an Islamic regime led by a Muslim president. This is not in the slightest to condone the murderers, who must be caught and punished, or to suggest that freedom of expression should not extend to satirical portrayals of religion. It is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo, and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims.
But that's just one columnist's opinion, right? (To be fair, the Financial Times editorial board went in a completely different direction.) In an op-ed from today's New York Times one Nick Kristof is ready to string up the attackers, but doesn't want to put a label on what motivated them:
One of things I’ve learned in journalism is to beware of perceiving the world through simple narratives, because then new information is mindlessly plugged into those story lines. In my travels from Mauritania to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan to Indonesia, extremist Muslims have shared with me their own deeply held false narratives of America as an oppressive state controlled by Zionists and determined to crush Islam. That’s an absurd caricature, and we should be wary ourselves of caricaturing a religion as diverse as Islam. So let’s avoid religious profiling. The average Christian had nothing to apologize for when Christian fanatics in the former Yugoslavia engaged in genocide against Muslims. Critics of Islam are not to blame because an anti-Muslim fanatic murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011. ... The great divide is not between faiths. Rather it is between terrorists and moderates, between those who are tolerant and those who “otherize.”
Who's really responsible? Maybe the Jews. Or the West. Or people who assume "freedom of expression" means freedom to insult Muhammad without getting blown away. At least that's what's swirling around on Twitter right now:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 07, 2015 5 Comments
In late December, the faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign issued a Report and recommendations on the refusal of the Board of Trustees to grant tenure to former Virginia Tech Professor Steven Salaita. We covered the CAFT Report in detail, U. Illinois Faculty Committee fails to call for Steven Salaita position restoration, including responses by Salaita supporters upset that CAFT failed to demand that Salaita be "restored" to his position (he only had a contingent offer subject to Board of Trustees approval, but his supporters consider him to have been hired). The Report also found that "legitimate questions" were raised as to Salaita's fitness based on his tweets, and recommended a "panel of experts" be appointed.  That standard of "fitness" came under stinging criticism from Salaita supporters, as detailed in the updates to my prior post. Now five past Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the UI-UC Faculty Senate Executive Committee have issued a "Response" to the CAFT Report, forwarded today to the President of the University of Illinois Robert Easter, incoming (in July) President Tim Killeen, and the Board of Trustees. The full Response is embedded below. Response from Faculty to CAFT Report Steven Salaita The Response rejects reopening the decision of the Board to reject the hire, finds that concerns were more than about "civility," finds legitimate questions as to fitness based on the tweets, and urges Salaita to find work elsewhere.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 07, 2015 5 Comments
In The Dream Palace of the Arab, an excellent column about Palestinians' inability to place their fantasies about the destruction of Israel over the reality of Israel, Bret Stephens focuses on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' latest attempts to avoid negotiating with Israel. Stephens observes: "Mr. Abbas consistently refuses a Palestinian state because such a state is infinitely more trivial than a Palestinian struggle." For the past ten years Abbas has been indispensable. Portrayed as a moderate alternative and successor to unrepentant terrorist Yasser Arafat, Abbas was hailed as a moderate who could make peace with Israel. But like his predecessor who rejected an offer of peace in 2000, Abbas rejected peace proposals in 2008 and again in 2014 (as Dennis Ross recently observed.) Because he's viewed as essential, he can get away with anything. He's fabulously corrupt; he hasn't bothered standing for re-election, having just started the 11th year of a 4 year term; he allows little freedom; and he keeps saying "no" to peace. But since everyone believes that the alternatives are worse, he's tolerated if not celebrated. Stephen has a great observation:
Over a beachfront lunch yesterday in Tel Aviv, an astute Israeli friend had the following counter-fantasy: What if Western leaders refused to take Mahmoud Abbas’s calls? What if they pointed out that, in the broad spectrum of global interests, from Eastern Europe to the South China Sea, the question of Palestinian statehood ranked very low—on a par with, say, the prospect of independence for the Walloons? What if these leaders observed that, in the scale of human tragedy, the supposed plight of the Palestinians is of small account next to the human suffering in Syria or South Sudan? In that event, the Palestinian dream palace might shrink to its proper size, and bring the attractions of practical statecraft into sharper focus. Genuine peace might become possible.

Posted by Andrew Branca on January 07, 2015 21 Comments
Two Bridgeton NJ police officers shot and killed 36-year-old Jerame Reid during a traffic stop last night, reports NBC 10 News our of Philadelphia (see embedded video, below).  The officers, Braheme Days and Roger Worley, are on paid leave as the killing remains under investigation.  Prosecutors have released little information, but a gun was recovered at the scene.  An autopsy is scheduled for today, although there seems little question as to the cause of death. The witness circus, so familiar from the Michael Brown shooting, seems to have already begun.  It remains to be seen whether the witnesses in this instance have any greater credibility than those in Ferguson who claimed that Brown was shot in the back while fleeing, that Brown was shot while on his knees, that Brown had never advanced on Officer Darren Wilson, and other such creativities.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 07, 2015 28 Comments
When it was confirmed that the Republicans would be taking over the US Senate after November's historic election many of us, fueled by a potent combination of conservative activism and Obama administration incompetence, were expecting big things. One of the items on the "Wish List" was tax reform. As the old adage goes: Be careful what you wish for... you just might get it. Even before formally taking charge of the US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Senator John Thune (R-SD) weighed the option of solving our infrastructure problems with...a tax hike!  When FNC's Chris Wallace queried Thune about raising gas taxes, his response was astonishing.
The incoming Republican leader of the Senate Transportation Committee said Sunday an increase is up for consideration, as “we have to look at all the options.” “I don’t think we take anything off the table at this point,” John Thune said on “Fox News Sunday.” Prices at the pump are at the lowest point in years — the nationwide average has tumbled more than a dollar in the last year, reaching $2.20 on Monday. That’s given drivers significant relief at the same time as the federal highway fund continues to face huge shortages. Thune said the fund is looking at “about a $100 billion shortfall.”
The full segment is here, and the pertinent exchange starts at 9:50. Translation for those who don't speak politicoese: He would "prefer" not to do it does not mean he "absolutely won't" do it.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 07, 2015 37 Comments
There was an attack on a French satirical publication, Charlie Hebdo, using automatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade, killing 12. The killers are at large as of this writing. The NY Times reports:
Masked gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire in the offices of a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday in Paris, the police said, killing 12 people and then escaping in a car. President François Hollande said the attack on the weekly, Charlie Hebdo, was “without a doubt” an act of terrorism and raised the nationwide terror alert to its highest status. He said that several terrorist attacks had been thwarted in recent weeks.... A senior French prosecutor said the victims included two police officers, including one assigned to guard the newspaper’s offices and its top editor. The second officer was shot and killed as he lay on the ground, the police said.... [A] United States official noted that, according to social media reports, the attackers did refer to the Prophet Muhammad, saying he was “avenged.”
(More video and Twitter updates later in post)

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 07, 2015 14 Comments
The new Republican congress was sworn in yesterday, and one of their first orders of business is an attempt to advance plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Unfortunately, obstructionist Democrats in the Obama administration are standing in the way of progress. Timothy Gardner and Richard Cowan of Reuters reported:
Republicans push Keystone bill, White House threatens veto Republican senators kicked off the new U.S. Congress with legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada, but the White House promptly threatened a veto. With Republicans assuming full control of Congress on Tuesday after victories in the November elections, they have put Keystone at the center of their agenda and plan weeks of debate. They believe that the public spotlight on Keystone will pressure President Barack Obama to eventually approve the project. The White House was adamant that Obama would not sign the Keystone bill. "There is already a well-established process in place to consider whether or not infrastructure projects like this are in the best interest of the country," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
A vote is set for Thursday.

Posted by New Neo on January 07, 2015 7 Comments
Promises, shmomises:
An air of secrecy surrounds the fate of 53 political prisoners whom Cuba agreed to free in its historic deal with the United States last month, as Washington and Havana’s refusal to publicly identify the dissidents is fueling suspicion over Cuba’s intentions... ...[O]fficials said a prisoner release was not a precondition for renewing diplomatic ties. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that not everyone on the list has been set free yet, but it was always understood that they would be released “in stages.”... The lack of transparency is contributing to a growing sense of concern that Havana will not follow through on its promises.
If there's "a growing sense of concern," it's certainly not on the part of Obama administration officials, for whom this quid pro quo was almost certainly for show. As in many of its "negotiations" with countries hostile to the US, the appearance of getting something in exchange for what we were giving up was only a thin veneer, because the administration was determined to capitulate.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 07, 2015 2 Comments
Yesterday afternoon, a man walked into the El Paso VA Health Care System clinic and shot a doctor before turning the gun on himself. Via Fox 14 El Paso:
At a press conference Tuesday evening, Maj. Gen. Stephen Twitty confirmed the shooter was killed along with one victim. Fort Bliss did not confirm the identity of the victim. As previously reported, El Paso police were assisting Fort Bliss with reports of an active shooter at the VA clinic adjacent to William Beaumont Army Medical Center. The incident was reported at 3:10 p.m., Twitty said. Fort Bliss Military Police, the El Paso Police Department and federal law enforcement officers immediately responded as the VA carried out its response plan.
One blogger with the Dana Loesch Radio Show caught the anti-gun left trying to make the most of things:
Much like the scene of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, both WBAMC and the adjacent VA clinic are gun free zones. But that didn't stop the anti-gun crowd from diving in immediately to capitalize on the tragedy: Screen Shot 2015-01-07 at 2.36.06 AM

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 06, 2015 15 Comments
Texas State Representative Marsha Farney filed a bill yesterday that would make the cowboy hat the official hat of Texas. Dr. Farney is an Aggie and former educator from Georgetown, Texas (a smallish town north of Austin). According to the Houston Chronicle:
The proposed resolution cites the significance of the cowboy headgear in Texas' history as one reason for naming it the State Hat, as well as its prevalence in modern Texas culture. "The cowboy hat symbolizes both the state's iconic western culture and the uniqueness of its residents, and it is indeed appropriate that this stylish and dignified apparel receive special legislative recognition," the resolution reads. This is not the first time the cowboy hat will be discussed in the Texas State Legislature. In 2013, the House voted unanimously to make Garland the Cowboy Hat Capital of Texas due to the city's "hat-making talent."
Garland, Texas is home to Stetson, one of the most iconic cowboy hat-makers in existence. No word yet on whether or not proper cowboy hat-wearing etiquette will also be codified. During the last legislative session, Dr. Farney introduced HCR 53, which designated Pecan Pie as the State Pie of Texas. The measure was greeted with some...interesting...debate:
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