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April 2015

Posted by Jay Caruso on April 07, 2015 47 Comments
Rand Paul became the second in a long line of GOP hopefuls to make an official presidential candidacy announcement. Paul brings a much different dynamic to the Republican Party. One that challenges the status quo and makes many Republicans very nervous (and some very angry). The question of whether Rand Paul can win the nomination remains to be seen. Whatever happens, he will bring a dynamic to the GOP primary that forces other candidates to discuss issues they may not be comfortable with. Paul meanwhile, is going to have to be ready for a bevy of blistering attacks from some quarters of the GOP, particularly on issues related to national defense. Still, Rand Paul is going to shake up the race to see who will face off against the Democratic challenger in 2016. Here are 5 ways he will do that: 1. Paul will make civil liberties a priority - It's not something that has been heard in previous campaigns. But Paul's filibuster over drone strikes and his harsh criticism of NSA spying programs is sure to be an issue that will be front and center. 2. Criminal justice reform is being discussed - 20 years ago, politicians were all about getting "tough on crime." Now, Rand Paul is talking about doing away with mandatory minimum sentences and changing drug laws to do away with jail sentences for minor offenses. He has also introduced legislation to reform civil asset forfeiture laws.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 07, 2015 13 Comments
Kentucky Senator, Rand Paul officially announced his presidential candidacy this afternoon (if you missed his speech, you can watch it here). And that's when Planned Parenthood's Twitter account went berserk. It would appear whomever runs the official Planned Parenthood Twitter account seems to harbor some severe animosity for Sen. Paul:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2015 7 Comments
Just the other day we noted how Bosnian soccer fans in Vienna joined a "pro-Palestinian" protest, and waived Palestinian flags as the chant "Free, Free Palestine" turned into "Kill, kill the Jews." On the streets of Europe, and in the minds of open anti-Semites, there is no practical difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As similar event just happened at a Dutch soccer match, where chants of "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas" were mixed in with chants praising Nazi burning of Jews. The Jewish Forward reports:
A Dutch soccer club is working to identify fans who chanted anti-Semitic slogans about the Holocaust during a match with a rival team from Amsterdam. The chants were documented on Sunday at Galgenwaard Stadium in Utrecht, a city situated 40 miles southeast of the Dutch capital Amsterdam, during an honor division match between Amsterdam’s Ajax team and FC Utrecht, the De Telegraaf daily reported. Utrecht supporters chanted the slogans to insult rival fans, whom they often call “Jews” because of the historical Jewish presence in Amsterdam, which is sometimes colloquially called “Mokum” after the Yiddish word for “place.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2015 24 Comments
There is no Iran nuke "deal," but whatever there is to the framework, even Obama now admits it paves Iran's path to the bomb, albeit on a delayed fuse, as AP reports, Obama says Iran could cut nuke time to near zero in 13 years:
Defending an emerging nuclear deal, President Barack Obama said Iran would be kept a year away from obtaining a nuclear weapon for more than a decade, but conceded Tuesday that the buffer period could shrink to almost nothing after 13 or more years. Obama, whose top priority at the moment is to sell the framework deal to critics, was pushing back on the charge that the deal fails to eliminate the risk because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium. He told NPR News that Iran will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms — not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material. "What is a more relevant fear would be that in Year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero," Obama said.
It's not at all clear that 13 years is the correct number, as opposed to 10. But regardless, the point is that at the end of this process Iran is ready to produce a bomb. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Netanyahu: Nuke Deal 'Paves Iran's Path to the Bomb':

Posted by Amy Miller on April 07, 2015 31 Comments
The Rolling Stone rape story debacle keeps getting worse. We now have a ton of information about how Sabrina Erdely and her team lashed together their potentially libelous tome about a victim named Jackie, and those who sought to silence her. We know that Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity targeted by the story, is exploring its legal options, and we know that nobody involved on Rolling Stone's end is going to suffer any real consequences. What we've been missing---at least until now---are faces for the names of those who have been harmed by Rolling Stone's negligent reporting. Ryan Duffin, identified as "Randall" in the article, and Alex Stock, identified as "Andrew," both played significant roles in the story Jackie spun for Erdely and that Erdely in turn published. In her statements to Erdely, Jackie said that she made contact with three friends the night of the alleged rape. Jackie called Ryan late that night, and when he met up with her he says that he saw no physical evidence on Jackie's person to suggest that she had been attacked. Jackie told Erdely a completely different story, and said that Ryan had indicated that he wouldn't speak to Rolling Stone about what happened because he "didn't want to be part of [Jackie's] shitshow."

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 07, 2015 10 Comments
General Michael Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, appeared on Megyn Kelly's program last night. When asked what the odds are that China, Russia or another country hacked into Hillary Clinton's private email system, he responded "very high." Watch the segment below. The further down this rabbit hole we go, the worse it looks.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 06, 2015 20 Comments
When Rolling Stone inflicted its UVA "gang rape" fantasy on the American people, it didn't just damage its own reputation; it took down members of the targeted fraternity and university communities down with it. As I reported on yesterday, there will be no consequences for the RS staff members who contributed to the now-redacted article. No one has resigned in disgrace, or been given 15 minutes to clear out their office. It's business as usual at Rolling Stone---at least for now. Spokesmen representing Phi Kappa Psi fraternity have made a statement indicating that the organization will "pursue all available legal action" against Rolling Stone. From CNN Money:
"After 130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone magazine, today the Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi announced plans to pursue all available legal action against the magazine," the fraternity said in a statement.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 06, 2015 33 Comments
Heads up, people. Late Last month, Project Veritas released undercover footage from an investigation into the student org registration process at Barry University. A Barry student and PV plant named Laura secretly recorded several Barry staff members as they gave her advice on how to create a student group sympathetic to the Islamic State. The reaction to the video was predictable, and Barry fielded considerable bad press because of it. About a week after the video was released, Laura was suspended. Project Veritas set out a press release explaining what happened, and why they believe Laura is being punished for her work with PV:
The vague language used by Barry University in issuing the suspension, coupled with the timing, suggest that Barry does not have an actionable claim against Laura. Rather, it appears that they object to the negative publicity the school has received due to the statements of their administrative and academic staff.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 06, 2015 7 Comments
Democrats in the Senate are playing politics with a bill that would take major steps to protect the victims of human trafficking. The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Texas Senator and Majority Whip John Cornyn, would would crack down on traffickers themselves, while providing more resources to the victims of modern day slavery. Democrats are blocking the bill because of language that would use the Hyde Amendment to prevent fee revenue from being used to pay for abortions. They're posturing on the issue in an effort to look strong on women's issues, but the mainstream media is turning on the minority caucus. Some of the nation's most widely-read publications have come out in favor of the bill, in spite of its invocation of the Hyde Amendment. The Washington Post ed board has their quibbles with the bill, but they still want Dems to do it...for the children:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 06, 2015 24 Comments
Last week's "nuke deal" with Iran has drawn criticism both at home and overseas as being less of a "deal" and more of a capitulation to a belligerent enemy of freedom. (I wouldn't argue with those criticisms one bit.) It has caused many to call into question President Obama's motives for making such a deal, and forced discussions about what a nuclear Iran would mean for the future of the Middle East as we know it. Of course, the elephant in the room is Israel, a country whose future depends on the efforts of more powerful allies to block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon. Not only have we have failed to do so, we have also set Benjamin Netanyahu up as the chief fall guy in the event of a breakdown in negotiations. CNN's Jim Acosta interviewed Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday, and spent a lot of time focusing on the breakdown of the relationship between Israel and the United States.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2015 25 Comments
During the 2012 Massachusetts Senate race, liberals dismissed as irrelevant Elizabeth Warren's false claim that she was Native American, because they liked her progressive politics. Most people don't understand, however, what Warren did. Warren didn't just once check a box on a meaningless form from which she stood no gain. As detailed at ElizabethWarrenWiki.org, for years Warren listed herself as Native American on questionnaires for a law professor directory used for hiring during the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, as she was climbing the law school ladder from U. Texas to U. Penn. to Harvard Law School. Warren then stopped that ethnic claim when she received a tenured position at Harvard in 1995. While Warren claims that the law schools were not aware of her claim and it had no impact on her hiring, Warren has never authorized or directed Harvard to release its entire hiring file. Somehow, this supposed secret that never was disclosed to Harvard prior to hiring was known to the Harvard Women's Law Journal when Warren was a visiting professor in 1993, which listed Warren as a Woman of Color in Legal Academia. And after hiring, Harvard promptly promoted Warren as a Native American hire.  When the Boston Herald broke the story, Warren initially claimed not to know why Harvard touted her that way. Warren excused this conduct by claiming that she either was Native American or at least thought so because of family lore.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2015 12 Comments
I will give the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement credit for one thing: It is highly adaptive. The run-of-the mill anti-Israel divestment pushes on college campuses have had only mild success. Most often the attempt to get student government to endorse a boycott of companies doing business in Israel has failed, but there have been some successes, particularly in the U. California system. There have been some high profile losses for BDS on campus, most recently at U. Michigan, where even a watered-down resolution to create a committee to study divesting from Israel was voted down (after last year's divestment resolution failed). The divestment motions are mostly for theater, since student governments have zero power to divest university funds, and no university in the U.S. has gone along with any student anti-Israel resolution. The purpose of these divestment motions is to raise the profile of the anti-Israel movement, and to occupy everyone's time arguing over how bad Israel is. By contrast, divestment from fossil fuels is gaining some traction even at the administrative level, because there is more of a student and campus consensus. It was only a matter of time that BDS tried to co-opt a larger issue to use against Israel. Some anti-Israel groups at the University of Pennsylvania seem to think they have found a broader theme: Divestment from companies causing "displacement" of people. The Daily Pennsylvanian reports, Controversy sparks over Penn Divest from Displacement (h/t a reader):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 06, 2015 27 Comments
When discussing Hillary Clinton's email and server scandal, I dismissed arguments that the scandal in and of itself would sink Hillary's impending campaign. There are far too many powerful people invested in Hillary for President to let mere paranoid and obsessive control coupled with destruction of evidence stop Hillary. In fact, to Hillary's core supporters, paranoid and obsessive control coupled with destruction of evidence is a feature, not a bug. Rather, I argued that the damage from Emailgate (or is it Servergate or Deletegate?) was in shaping Hillary's image for voters who never knew the Hillary older voters know:
While it’s way too early to assess the overall damage to Hillary Incorporated from the email, now document destruction, scandal, is does appear to be hurting Team Billary in ways that are hard to change: Public perception of a politician. While Billary is dreadfully tiresome and transparently faux in its lack of transparency, to much of the electorate Billary is simply a nice old lady with a grandchild. Well, she does have a grandchild, but that’s about where the nice ends. And that unhappy end product of a secretive, controlling, fear-mongering, basically incompetent presidential candidate is coming into public view and that view may be hard to change.
And there seems to be dramatic movement in that direction, as Hillary's favorability numbers have been dropping steadily.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 06, 2015 12 Comments
Love him or hate him, you're about to see a lot more of Rand Paul. Tomorrow, the Kentucky senator is set to make The Announcement, and he has released a hype video in anticipation of the event. The ad is sponsored by his joint fundraising committee, the website of which already includes presidential campaign finance disclosures. I guess that's one way to upstage a hype tweet. No beating around the bush (speaking of Bush...) with this one. Watch:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 06, 2015 27 Comments
Last July, Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Erdely went looking for a hot take on campus sexual assault. She reached out to a staff member at the University of Virginia for help, and after a series of conversations, found "Jackie." At first blush, "Jackie's" sexual assault story was horrifying on every level, from the setting at a well-respected fraternity to the alleged do-nothing attitude of university officials. She had details, a vivid memory, and friends to back up her account. Take level: scorching. Interviews were conducted. A story was written---but not long after publication, outlets like Slate and the Washington Post crashed the party with doubt, publishing stories highlighting inconsistencies in Jackie's story. They questioned Erdely's diligence in chasing down her leads, and things began to unravel.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 05, 2015 12 Comments
On this Easter Sunday, I wanted to share some thoughts I had during these past days about the most recent butchery of my fellow Christians in Kenya. Following the news as closely as I do, I thought I had become accustomed to graphic images of terror that ISIS has spawned. Then, I saw this tweet: I was punched in the gut. Perhaps it is because I recall my step-daughter, whose graduation I attended just a few short years ago? She was so vibrant, and fulled with life and prospects for a happy, healthy and successful future.
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