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August 2015

Posted by Amy Miller on August 05, 2015 29 Comments
"I say this not to be provocative, but to state a fact." That was the theme of President Obama's speech today at American University, in which he offered a spirited, low-blown defense of the Iran nuke deal. The address, however, was indeed provocative, and more often than not devoid of the very facts that have turned what the Administration desperately wanted to be a legacy moment into a full-blown battle on Capitol Hill. It was evident that Obama fully recognizes that the battle has taken a turn. At one point in his speech, he compared his Republican detractors in Congress with hardliners who chant "Death to America":
"Just because Iranian hard-liners chant 'death to America' does not mean that that's what all Iranians believe," Obama said to strong applause from the audience. "In fact, it's those hard-liners who are most comfortable with the status quo," Obama said Wednesday afternoon. "It's those hard-liners chanting "death to America" who have been most opposed to the deal." "They're making common cause with the Republican caucus," Obama said to laughter and wild applause.
Watch:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 05, 2015 14 Comments
The US State Department has problems. Whether we're talking about major, deadly problems like the Benghazi scandal, or their mere inability to keep it together for a press conference, you can always count on State to show time and again what it means to achieve mediocrity at the highest levels. There's mediocrity, though, and then there's plain disregard for the welfare of the human race. Every year, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) puts out a report publicly shaming the worst offenders in human trafficking. The results are no small deal; it may flow from a US agency, but the report is used worldwide as other governments and organizations attempt to balance their interests with the overall goal of improving human rights and putting an end to human trafficking. Correction---we say we have that goal. An independent investigation by Reuters has revealed that this year's J/TIP report was willfully manipulated by diplomatic officials to better address the current geopolitical climate.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 05, 2015 21 Comments
Are you ridin' with Biden? If you're reading articles on Legal Insurrection, probably not; but I'd be willing to wager anyone spending as much time as we have analyzing the Republican field isn't planning on voting for Biden, Hillary Clinton, or any other candidate with a "D" after her name. When news started sprinkling down about the very real possibility of a Joe Biden presidential run, I saw a lot of conservatives expressing serious tongue-in-cheek (or not? Time will tell) excitement about what that campaign would look like. That excitement wasn't political---not by any means; it was purely the type of anticipation you feel before the lights go down in the movie theatre. But if even conservatives are ready for a Democratic palette cleanser to wash away the bitterness that has been Hillary Clinton's campaign thus far, how must Democrats be feeling? RNC Chairman Reince Priebus talked to the Today Show's Savannah Guthrie about the one quality that could put Joe Biden over the top in the Dem primary---likability. Watch, via Mediaite:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 05, 2015 30 Comments
There John Kerry goes again. Jeffrey Goldberg, the go-to person when the Obama administration wants to get its position out because Goldberg is pro-Israel, landed an interview with John Kerry. The topline storyline is that Kerry is warning the U.S. Congress not to screw (with?) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:
“The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them,” Kerry said. “This”—a congressional rejection—“will be the ultimate screwing.” He went on to argue that “the United States Congress will prove the ayatollah’s suspicion, and there’s no way he’s ever coming back. He will not come back to negotiate. Out of dignity, out of a suspicion that you can’t trust America. America is not going to negotiate in good faith. It didn’t negotiate in good faith now, would be his point.”
Seriously, we are afraid of ruining the expectations of an Ayatollah who defends calling for the death of America and Israel;

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 05, 2015 31 Comments
Today's edition of Why local governments can be the absolute worst takes place in my home breaks. If you haven't had your coffee yet, this story is enough to get your blood pumping. Two churches nestled in what used to be one of Houston's roughest neighborhoods are fighting back against the city. The Latter Day Deliverance Revival Center was established in the fifth ward in 1965 by Bishop Roy Lee Kossie. A few years later, Pastor Quinton Smith began pastoring at the Christian Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, also in the fifth ward. Both churches have grown and have had a positive impact on their community in each year since their establishment. Building a youth ministry center, a church-run food bank, and creating outreach programs for gang members, drug addicts, and alcoholics, the churches continue their work to transform the fifth ward. “When we moved in to this area, it was considered the highest crime rate area in the city of Houston. People shot first and asked questions later. But we loved these people. We loved this community. We knew this was exactly where we needed to be,” said Kossie.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 05, 2015 11 Comments
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted a webcast with American Jewish participants urging them to oppose the Iran nuke deal. His message reached an estimated 10,000 people, and served as a counter to propaganda spread by pro-deal activists plying the media with misinformation about the motive behind Israel's opposition. From the Washington Examiner:
"The deal that was supposed to end nuclear proliferation, will actually trigger nuclear proliferation. It will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East," contended Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister, who spoke Tuesday afternoon on a video conference organized by the Jewish Federation of North America, pled with the nearly 10,000 participants to actively speak out against the deal. "The days when the Jewish people could not or would not speak up for themselves, those days are over," he said. "Today we can speak out. Today we must speak out. And we must do so together." Netanyahu, who has been an ardent critic of the deal argued that the agreement would bring Tehran closer to producing a nuclear weapon. "The nuclear deal with Iran doesn't block Iran's path to the bomb," he charged. "It actually paves Iran's path to the bomb." In the prime minister's estimation, if Iran upholds the agreement it could obtain a nuclear weapon within 15 years.
Watch:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 05, 2015 42 Comments
On Monday, Elizabeth Warren took to the senate floor and made a series of bizarre accusations about the awful series of Planned Parenthood videos. Senator Warren apparently believes this is all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to take away women's rights. Maybe progressives should find a different politician to clone. MSNBC's Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough called Warren out for hypocrisy and for suggesting that anyone who objects to the horror contained in the Planned Parenthood videos is against women's rights. Even the left-leaning Huffington Post took notice:
Morning Joe To Elizabeth Warren: 'Stop Insulting Our Intelligence' MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Tuesday slammed Sen. Elizabeth Warren, accusing the Massachusetts Democrat of conflating support for women's rights with support for Planned Parenthood. "You can be against the funding of Planned Parenthood without being against the support of women's health," Scarborough said. "Nice try, Elizabeth Warren."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 04, 2015 5 Comments
On August 2, 2014, in the middle of the Gaza conflict, we ran the A.F. Branco cartoon that is the featured image to this post. It's a fitting occasion to revisit the media bias that frames the international view of the 2014 Gaza conflict, as the fourth in our series looking back at our coverage. Our first three posts were: As before, we are focusing on revisiting our contemporaneous coverage. The international media is extremely sensitive to discussions of its bias, so much so that when, in June of 2015, the Israeli Foreign Ministry produced a comical short cartoon video poking fun at international media bias, the international media blew a gasket. The Foreign Ministry took down the video, though it was captured by others: Was this unfair to the international media? No, it was very fair, though overly simplified (just like the media's coverage of Gaza). Our posts from the summer of 2014 reflected the media bias. In that conflict, the media played a key role in covering up Hamas use of civilians as shields:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 04, 2015 34 Comments
PREPARE YOURSELVES, READERS---for debate season is nigh, and Fox News has just released the names of the ten lucky men who will be participating in the first Republican primary debate of the 2016 cycle. My use of the word "men" is justifiable here---Carly Fiorina didn't make the cut. Here's the field:
  • Donald Trump
  • Jeb Bush
  • Scott Walker
  • Mike Huckabee
  • Ben Carson
  • Ted Cruz
  • Marco Rubio
  • Rand Paul
  • John Kasich
  • Chris Christie
Questions? Concerns? Let loose in the comments! This is going to be one barn burner of a debate.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 04, 2015 15 Comments
In June of last year, Ali Mohammad Brown shot 19 year-old Brendan Tevlin 10 times while Brendan was stopped at a traffic light in Essex County, New Jersey. The murder itself was underreported, and media watchdogs and activists took to social media to demand an explanation for the lack of coverage of such a violent, inexplicable crime. (You can read Legal Insurrection's coverage HERE.) They were right to do so. After Brown was caught and arrested, he told police that the murder was a “just kill” and said it was an act of “vengeance” to compensate for U.S. military killings in the Middle East. He was vocal in his opposition to American intervention overseas, emphasized multiple times the vengeful nature of the act---and yet the media did nothing to expose what could have been the next act of violent jihad come to America. The media's malpractice in this case has been well documented, yet outlets for the most part have only just begun to scratch the surface of what happened. True justice for Brendan, however, is in reach. Last Thursday, Brown was indicted on charges of terrorism, murder, felony murder, carjacking, and robbery, as well as multiple weapons offenses.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 04, 2015 30 Comments
Under Democratic Mayor de Blasio's tutelage, a crime wave has settled over Manhattan's iconic green space. Beleaguered by muggers and other hoodlums, Central Parks is no longer the safe haven in the middle of Manhattan that it once was. With no substantive ideas or plans to curb the sudden onset of violence, Central Park's degeneration seems be an indefinite, yet completely preventable misfortune. The New York Post has chronicled the increase of criminal activity in NYC's beloved park where muggings have doubled from this time last year.
Though felony assaults are down in the park this year, misdemeanor assaults are up. There were 15 misdemeanor assaults between Jan. 1 and July 26 of this year, as opposed to 11 for the same period last year. And narcotics arrests in the park have more than doubled this year. There were 23 drug busts between Jan. 1 and July 26 of this year, as opposed to 10 for the same period last year. Still, the number of criminal summonses has taken a nose dive, Perhaps pointing to more lax enforcement if such quality of life offenses as loitering, disorderly conduct, or public drinking and urinating. Between Jan. 1 and July 26, parks cops wrote 2,100 summonses. But during the same months of last year, they wrote 3,026 summonses.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 04, 2015 20 Comments
The Democratic Party side of the 2016 Presidential race got a bit more intriguing this week, after Vice President Joe Biden released a zeppelin-sized trial balloon:
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his associates have begun to actively explore a possible presidential campaign, which would upend the Democratic field and deliver a direct threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton, several people who have spoken to Mr. Biden or his closest advisers say. Mr. Biden’s advisers have started to reach out to Democratic leaders and donors who have not yet committed to Mrs. Clinton or who have grown concerned about what they see as her increasingly visible vulnerabilities as a candidate. ...On Saturday, the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported that Mr. Biden had been holding meetings at his residence, “talking to friends, family and donors about jumping in” to challenge Mrs. Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states.
There can be no doubt that the Democratic Party is rethinking its coronation strategy. Legal Insurrection has chronicled Hillary Clinton's problem-riddled campaign. The "highlights" from last month alone include these chestnuts.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 04, 2015 44 Comments
As promised by the Center for Medical Progress, each undercover Planned Parenthood video released is more damning than the last. The latest and most horrifying video yet, the fifth installment shows Planned Parenthood officials in Houston selling fully intact aborted babies. Be forewarned, the following footage is incredibly graphic and disturbing. Proceed accordingly.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 04, 2015 4 Comments
Yesterday, we posted about Iran's latest---and blatant---two-fold attempt to undermine the United States' moral authority and intimidate Jews living in Israel. The content of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's 400-page screed on the inviability of both western hegemony and the state of Israel wasn't particularly shocking, but it should serve as yet another wake up call for those who think it's within the realm of possibility for Iran to play by the rules when it comes to human rights, international relations, or even a budding nuclear program. For their part, Iranian officials are determined not only to flaunt the rules, but to make sure that those violations never make it onto the record. They've launched a smear campaign against Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. The Guardian reports:
In a concerted effort aimed at discrediting Ahmed Shaheed in the eyes of the general public, Iranian state-run agencies and semi-official websites simultaneously carried articles claiming that the Saudi embassy in Kuwait had paid the UN envoy $1m to take an anti-Iran position. It dominated many Iranian front pages on Tuesday and an Iranian official later used the false information to question Shaheed’s credibility.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 04, 2015 16 Comments
If you thought the faith progressives have in Elizabeth Warren was over the top, you ain't seen nothing yet. So strong is the left's love of all things Warren, they're now trying to create an army of political candidates just like her to run for public office. Sam Frizell reports at Time:
The Left’s Quest to Create Hundreds of Elizabeth Warrens “Elizabeth—she’s here?” The thumbs up came from the back of the meeting room, and two hundred future Sen. Elizabeth Warrens stood up and waited for their prototype to enter. Spindly and with a bouncy step, the Massachusetts senator strode rapidly into the room and was waylaid by a friendly sea of imperfect facsimiles calling for selfies. “What a way to start the morning!” Warren said at last, breathless at the podium.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 04, 2015 23 Comments
Ever wondered how to make bacon without a frying pan or oven? Well wonder no more. Ted Cruz demonstrates how easy it is to cook bacon with a machine gun. "Few things I enjoy more than on weekends, cooking breakfast with the family," said Cruz. "Of course in Texas, we cook bacon a little differently than most folks."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 03, 2015 30 Comments
On August 6 Fox News will host the first Republican debate. The top ten in an aggregation of polls will make it on stage, with the seven who don't make the cut relogated to a panel earlier in the evening. The names who appear certain to make it on stage are Trump, Bush, Walker, Carson, Huckabee, Cruz, Rubio and Paul, with Kasich and Christie just above the cut, though that could change (via NY Times): http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/upshot/2016-presidential-election-who-gets-into-the-republican-debate-rounding-could-decide.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1 Just below the cut is Perry, with Jindal, Santorum, Fiorina, Pataki and Graham clearly not making it onto the stage. : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/upshot/2016-presidential-election-who-gets-into-the-republican-debate-rounding-could-decide.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1 But let's face it, it's all about The Donald. As I predicted when he first announced, Trump announcement like “throwing a hand grenade into the room”:
“Donald Trump entering the race is pretty much like somebody throwing a hand grenade into the room. He is going to get attention, he’s probably going to cause some casualties, and he is going to absorb a lot of the oxygen in the room.”
Granted, that was an easy call a prophetic and brilliant call, but I should have seen The Donald phenomenon coming long before his official announcement.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 03, 2015 11 Comments
No one will ever accuse Mark Levin of not getting to the point. The top-tier national radio host has several best selling books, including The Liberty Amendments, which I reviewed in 2013. Levin described his project as follows:
"I undertook this project not because I believe the Constitution, as originally structured, is outdated and outmoded, thereby requiring modernization through amendments, but because of the opposite — that is, the necessity and urgency of restoring constitutional republicanism and preserving the civil society from the growing authoritarianism of a federal Leviathon. This is not doomsaying or fearmongering but an acknowledgment of facgt. The Statists have been successful in their century-long march to disfigure and mangle the constitutional order and undo the social compact."
If The Liberty Amendments framed one answer, Plunder and Deceit clarifies and documents the problem. The problem is a problem Levin has been focused on for years -- Progressive Plunder. In this audio addressing teachers' unions opposition to Scott Walker's public sector union reforms, Levin is blunt: "It's plunder! Plunder! That's what progressivism is." Like I said, Levin doesn't waste time. The very first sentence of Plunder and Deceit asks:
Can we simultaneously love our children but betray their generation and generations yet born?
Mark Levin Plunder and Deceit opening sentence In that seemingly simple question, Levin hits on the essence of what is happening to our country.
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