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June 2015

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 17, 2015 22 Comments
Don't ever change, Internet. Otherwise how else would we be able to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, like this hillbilly banjo band hilariously heckling marathon runners? From a local Fox News affiliate in Franklin, TN:
Marathon runners in Leiper’s Fork were greeted with an unexpected surprise along their route in Franklin Half Marathon a few weeks ago. Runners usually expect to see friends and family as they run, but it’s not often that they see a hillbilly band parked along the side of the path to heckle them.
Serenading runners with "Dueling Banjos", the hillbilly band set up on the back of a truck, under the cover of a patio umbrella. Hollering things like, "where ya going?" "where y'all running from?" "what's your hurry?" and "slow down young man!" one gentleman beat a trash can lid on the side of a water trough and another bare-chested, overall-clad man danced a jig and chased runners around. Yet another man, who was lounging atop a five gallon paint drum in cut off cammo pants, joined his overalled companion in dancing a jig while brandishing an ax. It's a perfect slice of internet heaven:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 17, 2015 19 Comments
Governor Bush joined Jimmy Fallon and The Roots to "Slow Jam The News" Tuesday night. The sketch geared towards newsy, political types, has featured Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, Brian Williams, and even President Obama. Real news, or more accurately -- talking points, are sandwiched between Jimmy Fallon's pun-y innuendo and The Roots' slow jams. Typically, the extra figure in the equation is mostly pedantic, but finds a way to have a little bit of fun with the schtick. When Fallon made a 47% joke, Romney retorted, "that's a low blow, but it's pretty funny." So how did Jeb do?

Posted by Amy Miller on June 17, 2015 38 Comments
Real talk: Uber is a fantastic service. Living in Washington, D.C., I've come to appreciate the availability of drivers who know the city well enough to not get me stuck in a quagmire when I'm making a quick trip across town. It's a rare thing, and 9 times out of 10, a true D.C. cabbie will do the job (at 50 miles an hour through Chinatown in the bike lane, but who's complaining?)---but what if there's no cabbie in sight? Call an Uber, silly. The Uber ride share service has taken America by storm, and for good reason; the unmitigated hassle of calling a cab company, finding an available car, and arranging a ride has been re-privatized using a single app and a network of drivers who are itching to take you where you need to go. It's usually cheaper than a cab (at least in my experience) and less dicey with regards to routes and payment. Everything is handled through the app, and if your driver takes you home via Timbuktu, you can complain and earn yourself a refund. (Try complaining to a cabbie---you're likely to get the cops called.) It's easy! It's wonderful! It's under fire from California bureaucrats! Of course.

Posted by Amy Miller on June 17, 2015 26 Comments
There's a simple explanation for why civil asset forfeiture laws are coming under fire---they ruin lives. Not in the way a hefty speeding ticket or 7 am-on-the-dot tow "ruins lives," but in a real, "my life savings are gone and I don't know how I'm going to pay for my next meal" kind of way. Take Philadelphia, for example. From 2002 to 2012, the City of Philadelphia raked in $64 million in forfeiture funds. Licensed marijuana growers in Michigan have had their homes, property, and assets seized, contributing to a 10 year, $250 million payout to law enforcement. New Mexico took in $4 million in one year based on single sniff tests by drug dogs. The kicker? Much of what is seized by law enforcement is held without any evidence that the property owner has committed a crime. Last year, 24 year-old Charles Clark became just one more victim of a system that benefits law enforcement at the expense of everyday citizens. He lost $11,000 after officials decided that carrying cash in an airport should be treated as a crime---even though there's nothing unlawful about it. The Institute for Justice has the details:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 17, 2015 18 Comments
Hillary might have her work cut out for her after all. A new poll shows Sen. Sanders narrowing Hillary's gap in the sparsely populated Democratic presidential primary field... at least in New Hampshire. According to a poll released by Morning Consult, Hillary's lead in New Hampshire has dwindled to 12 points over the Vermont's socialist hero. The same percentage of respondents indicated they're currently undecided. Bernie Sanders gaining on Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire polling 2016 presidential election

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 17, 2015 67 Comments
If Rachel Dolezal didn't exist, someone would have had to invent her because she so embodies everything that is wrong with race-based politics and theories so prevalent in Higher Ed. Dolezal is white. Elizabeth Warren white. As Mark Steyn once put it with regard to Warren, "the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of Wite-Out." Warren passed herself off as Native American, but mostly in secret so she could get put on a list of Minority Law Teachers in a 1980s directory used for hiring. Dolezal was very public in her adoption of a black identity. And she's standing by it. Because Dolezal feels black, she says she is. It's what is called among the campus activist class "lived experience." It is a well-worn script:

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 17, 2015 22 Comments
We interrupt your regular programming about Jeb Bush and Donald Trump to bring you this report about the Republican nomination for 2016. Scott Walker now leads the field. Jonathan Easley of The Hill:
Walker leads nationally in new poll Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leads a tight field of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, according to a new survey from Public Policy Polling. Walker is alone in first place in the poll with 17 percent, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 15 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) at 13 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 12 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 11 percent. That’s a big jump for Bush, who was at 11 percent support in the same poll last month. However, Bush will begin his quest for the GOP nomination with a negative favorability rating among Republicans, according to the poll. Only 37 percent said they have a positive view of Bush, against 40 percent who have a negative view. Bush is dragged down by those who identify as “very conservative,” with only 32 percent of those saying they have a positive view of Bush. Bush is the top choice among self-described “moderate” Republican primary voters.

Posted by New Neo on June 17, 2015 15 Comments
Who are the escaped murderers in New York, and why oh why were they given the prison privileges they appear to have been given? The answer to the first question is: they are probably among the most psychopathic, cold-blooded killers in the prison population, and that's saying something. Both of them became criminals in their adolescence, and have never looked back. What's more, the report of those who knew them is of relentless exploitation of other people and hardly a glimmer of anything you might call a conscience. Here's Sweat's story. It's not a pretty one. And Matt's is, if anything, worse:
Age: 48 Early life: He grew up in the small city of Tonawanda, New York, near Buffalo. Classmates told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that Matt was often in trouble as a child. "He would terrorise kids on the (school) bus," Randy Szukala told the newspaper. As a teenager, he ran away from home on a stolen horse. Eventually, Tonawanda police Capt Frederic Foels told the Democrat and Chronicle, he became a "small-time thug".

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 17, 2015 1 Comment
The academic boycott of Israel has generated a lot of attention and noise in the past few weeks, even though it has not generated much actual boycotting. No university in the U.S. is considering a boycott, as far as I know, and in many ways ties are expanding. The American Studies Association and a handful of much smaller faculty professional organizations have adopted the boycott, but even ASA had to back down from its key provision excluding most Israeli academics from its annual meeting. There have been, and undoubtedly will be more, attempts to get larger faculty organizations to adopt the boycott, but so far that has not happened. There are complaints from some Israelis also of an undeclared boycott of them personally in the humanities, with some American professors refusing to interact. But beyond the actual results, there is no doubt that the academic boycott movement is a malicious attack not just on Israel, but also on our entire academic system. It is led by some of the most outrageous campus characters, the rhetoric often is abusive, and the environment hostile and threatening. It is no wonder that over 250 university presidents, as well as major academic groups like the American Association of University Professors, condemned the ASA academic boycott. Over 100 members of Congress also signed a letter condemning the ASA. Soon we may be able to add a formal House Resolution to the list.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 16, 2015 30 Comments
It seems like only yesterday we were reporting on Dr. Matt Taylor, the brilliant British scientist who was instrumental in landing a probe on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away, who became the target of social media wrath. His crime: Wearing a shirt that was deemed "anti-woman" by hyper-feminists. More recently, Dr. Tim Hunt, a Nobel-prizing winning physiologist, a British knight, and a leading advocate for science education that is usually promoted by women's rights activists, made a lame joke about single-sex labs.
‘Let me tell you about my trouble with girls” is an opening sentence that, when declared in public, rarely ends well — fair or not. And it certainly didn’t for Nobel Prize winning scientist Tim Hunt, who was talking about the challenges of women in labs recently at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea. He followed up that intro with: “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry!”

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 16, 2015 17 Comments
For anybody who loves their civil rights, the dismantling of unconstitutional gun control schemes across the United States has been a marvel to behold. Today, only a handful of states continue to substantively restrict the ability of law-abiding residents to carry concealed handguns. One of those "states" still aggressively crushing fundamental civil rights is, ironically enough, the nation's capital, the District of Columbia. Pro-gun advocates suffered a modest and rare setback yesterday, according to Hotair.com and other sources, when a federal appeals court re-instated a gun control provision that that is used to effectively deny gun permits to almost all applicants. The District has long operated under some of the most oppressive gun control laws in the country, at one point even requiring the few guns legally owned to be dismantled while within the District. (These rules were upheld in spite of the fact that DC was also one of the "murder capitals" of the country, and practically awash in illegally owned guns used by criminals.) In recent years, however, the District's gun control scheme has come under assault in the form of a pro-2nd Amendment attack led by civil rights attorney Alan Gura. Last July, as part of a suit brought by Gura, Federal Judge Frederick Scullin ordered that the District begin issuing concealed carry permits to qualified persons.

Posted by Amy Miller on June 16, 2015 32 Comments
We've discussed extensively the problems and scandals surrounding the campus sexual assault investigation process. Procedures that favor the accuser, and offer no protection to the accused, have led to lost academic careers, ruined reputations, and high-profile lawsuits brought by the accused against the institutions that allegedly threw them under the bus. One such lawsuit has risen out of sexual assault allegations brought against "John Doe" by another female student at Amherst College. John Doe was expelled after Amherst's kangaroo court decided with 50.01% certainty that he may have raped "AS." After the expulsion, John Doe's attorney dug deeper into the case, and discovered a series of text messages that eviscerated AS's testimony:
In fact, as Doe’s attorneys later would discover, AS had texted two people after the hookup—a friend, and a possible paramour. Even before hooking up with Doe, AS had texted the other male student, telling him, “I mean I happen to have my room to myself this weekend, if you wanted to come over and entertain me.” After she finished with Doe, AS resumed flirtatious texting with the male student, who came to her room and spent the night with her. He found her “friendly, flirtatious, and spirited,” and not “anxious, stressed, depressed, or otherwise in distress.”...

Posted by Amy Miller on June 16, 2015 48 Comments
Cue the confetti cannon... Donald Trump is running for president. Today during a rally at Trump Tower in New York City, Trump became the 2,347th Republican to declare candidiacy in the 2016 primary. Via ABC News:
"We are going to make our country great again," Trump, who turned 69 on Saturday, declared. He added, "I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created." In 2012, Trump launched a Presidential exploratory committee and visited key battleground states before bowing out in May 2011. This time though, Trump says he’s in it for the long haul; he plans to step away from the day to day management of The Trump Organization, and hand the reigns over to his children: Ivanka, Donald Jr, and Eric. He has also chosen to step aside from his hit reality show, “The Apprentice." "They all said, a lot of the pundits on television, well, Donald will never run, and one of the main reasons is he's private and he's probably not as successful as everybody thinks," said Trump, who has never held public office before. "So I said to myself, you know, nobody is ever going to know unless I run because I'm really proud of my success."
Video via TMZ (who I'm assuming is excited for the sheer amount of content they're about to encounter):

Posted by Amy Miller on June 16, 2015 38 Comments
This morning, presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina went were many Republicans fear to go, and even fewer venture in hopes of making strides with new demographics---the set of The View. I think she may have gained ground. Judging from my own experiences and conversations, I'm comfortable with saying that even conservative women like the idea of a woman running for president. It has nothing to do with post-modern feminism, or promoting candidates based on gender, or secret man-hate---it's about not feeling the need to act the contrarian over actual progress. If she did make strides during this interview, she earned them. Out of the gate, the hosts wanted to know about her lack of political experience, and she gave a great answer:
"I understand how the economy works, I understand how the world works, I understand how bureaucracies work, which is what our government's become, I understand technology, which is kind of important now, and I understand leadership. I think this election's gonna be about leadership."
Watch the rest (h/t Tom Szold, National Political Director of Carly for America:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 16, 2015 14 Comments
A new Rassumussen poll released last week suggests Americans prefer living in neighborhoods with where they're allowed to arm themselves over gun-free locals. According to Rasmussen:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Likely U.S. Voters would feel safer living in a neighborhood where nobody was allowed to own a gun over one where they could have a gun for their own protection. Sixty-eight percent (68%) would feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed, while 10% are not sure.
The survey was conducted over a group of 977 likely voters. The results are consistent with other polling conducted by Rasmussen.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 16, 2015 12 Comments
The race for 2016 has shifted the focus of the media and many Americans away from the IRS scandal, but a new development in the story has come to light. Over 6,000 Lois Lerner emails have been found but the IRS is stalling on sharing them. You'll never guess why. Gerri Willis of the FOX Business Network reports:
IRS Finds 6,400 Lois Lerner Emails But Won't Hand Em Over The Internal Revenue Service may have found 6,400 emails from Lois Lerner, who oversaw the tax agency’s Exempt Organizations Unit, but the government agency has no plans to share. Attorneys from the Department of Justice representing the IRS say the emails won’t be shared because the service is making sure that none of them are duplicates. Lerner is at the center of a scandal in which the tax agency denied special tax status to conservative groups. Her emails have been sought by members of Congress and conservative groups alike. One of those groups, Judicial Watch, has been seeking emails as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed two years ago. Originally, the IRS said the email trail was permanently lost because the computer drive that contained it crashed. However, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration or TIGTA, was able to retrieve 6,400 emails which it has subsequently sent to the agency. It is these emails that the IRS wants to check for duplicates.
Watch the video report below.
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