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October 2015

Posted by Amy Miller on October 12, 2015 18 Comments
Last Friday, the Pentagon announced its intention to discontinue efforts to create a new, moderate rebel fighting force in Syria as part of the effort to “degrade and defeat” the Islamic State. Instead, officials say that the US will provide equipment and weapons to "vetted Syrian units" so that "over time they can make a concerted push into territory still controlled by ISIL." Has the training program been abandoned? Officials speaking under the condition of anonymity insist that it has not, but today the military airdropped 50 tons of ammunition and grenades into Al-Hasakah province in northern Syria, which tells me that the US has officially moved away from "train and equip" to just "equip." From Fox News:
Coming just two days after the Defense Department announced it was effectively ending its current training program, the airdrop delivery was made Sunday by four C-17 transport aircraft. The 112 pallets contained ammunition for M-16s and AK-47s.

Posted by New Neo on October 12, 2015 7 Comments
The Wapo announces that a verdict appears to have been rendered in the case of one of its journalists who has been imprisoned in Iran:
Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, imprisoned in Tehran for more than 14 months, has been convicted in an espionage trial that ended in August, Iranian state television reported. News of a verdict in Tehran's Revolutionary Court initially came early Sunday, but court spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei did not specify the judgment. In a state TV report late Sunday, Mohseni-Ejei said definitively that Rezaian, The Post’s correspondent in Tehran since 2012, was found guilty. But many details remained unknown. Rezaian faced four charges — the most serious of which was espionage — and it was not immediately clear whether he was convicted of all charges. Rezaian and The Post have strongly denied the accusations, and his case has drawn wide-ranging denunciations including statements from the White House and media freedom groups.
Statements from the White House. That'll do the trick.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 12, 2015 12 Comments
The bloodshed continues in Israel today, with additional stabbings by Palestinians, including by a 13-year old of an Israeli teenager in Jerusalem. This is a very personal bloodletting inspired by incitement at home and abroad, and it even is tearing at the fabric of Israeli Arab society. The Muslim mayor of Nazareth lambasted Arab Knesset (parliament) members for inciting riots and ruining chances of peaceful coexistence. But the story to emerge today will be how a terrorist stabbed a soldier and tried to steal his weapon. The terrorist was stopped by Yair Ben-Shabat, an Israeli Seniors martial arts expert ... with his nunchucks. https://twitter.com/Roi_Yanovsky/status/653647617654661121

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on October 12, 2015 43 Comments
Longhorn alumna Jessica Jin plans to protest campus carry in a somewhat unconventional way -- by organizing a "Campus (Dildo) Carry" protest at the University's Austin campus. Jin graduated from the University of Texas last year with a degree in violin performance. Campus carry, a law that extends concealed carry privileges to license holders on university campuses, was signed into law by Texas Governor Abbott this year. Using the social media hashtag, #CocksNotGlocks, participants are encouraged to wield dildos to demonstrate the absurdity of campus carry. Yeah, we don't get it either. Organizer Jin wrote on the event's official Facebook page:
The State of Texas has decided that it is not at all obnoxious to allow deadly concealed weapons in classrooms, however it DOES have strict rules about free sexual expression, to protect your innocence. You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class. Heaven forbid the penis. ...Starting on the first day of Long Session classes on August 24, 2016, we are strapping gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks in protest of campus carry. ANYBODY can participate in solidarity: alum, non-UT students, people outside of Texas. Come one dildo, come all dildos. "You're carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I'm carrying a HUGE DILDO." Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play. #CocksNotGlocks

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on October 12, 2015 2 Comments
According to a Rasmussen poll released Monday morning, more voters than ever believe terrorists have an advantage over the United States and her allies. who is winning the war on terror rasmussen Conducted from October 4-5, the poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters, asking two questions: 1) Who is winning the War on Terrorism—the United States and its allies or the terrorists? 2) Is the United States too involved in the Middle East, not involved enough, or is the involvement about right?

Posted by Sarah Rumpf on October 12, 2015 47 Comments
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there was a right under the Fourteenth Amendment to gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, this meant that the marriage laws in each of the states had to be interpreted without discriminating against same-sex couples. As I wrote here last month, "[f]or gay couples living in a state that allows common-law marriage, especially those states that did not allow gay marriage prior to the Obergefell decision, they may find themselves meeting their state’s definition of a common-law marriage." Now, this has become a reality. A judge in Texas has issued a ruling recognizing a same-sex common-law marriage.  

Key issue: Did the couple hold themselves out to the public as married?

  In most cases where the court is attempting to determine if a common-law marriage exists, the key legal inquiry is whether the couple had held themselves out to the public as married. With many gay couples having wedding celebrations even before their states legally recognized them, and calling each other "husband and husband" or "wife and wife," that certainly seems likely to meet the standard to establish a common-law marriage. That was the reasoning used by Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman earlier this week, finding that two Austin women were in a common-law marriage. As the Austin American-Statesman reported, Stella Powell and Sonemaly Phrasavath began dating in 2006. In 2008, they had a wedding ceremony performed by a Zen Buddhist priest even though Texas did not recognize gay marriage at that time. Powell and Phrasavath also "lived openly as spouses in a Northwest Austin home," according to the Statesman, until Powell passed away from cancer in 2014.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 12, 2015 24 Comments
Earlier this year, we covered the charges that Bowe Bergdahl faced; these included desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.  He was facing a possible dishonorable discharge and life in prison.  Amy wrote at the time:
Last year, the United States released 5 high-profile al Qaeda commandos from the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities in exchange for the release Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Bergdahl was captured by militants after he allegedly deserted his base in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan. The exchange embroiled the Obama Administration in scandal—why did we trade dangerous prisoners for the freedom of a deserter?—and the public quickly began to demand answers about what consequences should and would rain down on Bergdahl’s head.
You may recall the outrageous pomp and circumstance with which Obama shared the news of this swap with the American people (despite knowing at the time, as General McChrystal later revealed, that Bergdahl was a deserter): Even after it was revealed that Bergdahl was a deserter (at best), Obama continued to defend his decision to trade five top Taliban leaders for him, saying "we leave no soldier behind."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 11, 2015 40 Comments
That's my reading of this interview on 60 Minutes (emphasis added).
Steve Kroft: Did you know about Hillary Clinton's use of private email server-- President Barack Obama: No. Steve Kroft: --while she was Secretary of State? President Barack Obama: No. Steve Kroft: Do you think it posed a national security problem? President Barack Obama: I don't think it posed a national security problem. I think that it was a mistake that she has acknowledged and-- you know, as a general proposition, when we're in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data. And, you know, she made a mistake. She has acknowledged it. I do think that the way it's been ginned-up is in part because of-- in part-- because of politics. And I think she'd be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly. But--

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 11, 2015 8 Comments
The meme we've been hearing for years is that radical right-wing "hard liners" are hijacking the Republican party and forcing it to the right; however, an interesting new study argues that Democrats are moving more quickly to the left than Republicans are moving to the right.  It also indicates that the Democrats' move leftward has had the unintended consequence of moving state legislatures to the right. The study--conducted by social scientists from the University of Oregon, Princeton, and Georgetown--was funded by a grant from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth (John Podesta's think tank) and focuses on income inequality and the redistributive goals of the current Democrat party.  The authors come to the conclusion that political polarization is the result of income inequality and that income inequality is the result of political polarization. American Interest provides a helpful summary of the authors' argument:
The study’s overall argument is that income inequality has increased political polarization at the state level since the 1990s. But the authors find that that this happens more by moving state Democratic parties to the left than by moving state Republican parties to the right. As the Democratic Party lost power at the state level over the past 15 years, it also effectively shed its moderate wing. Centrist Democrats have increasingly lost seats to Republicans, “resulting in a more liberal Democratic party” overall. The authors find that the ideological median of Republican legislators has shifted much less.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 11, 2015 11 Comments
We have dealt many times with the issue of promoting children to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers. It was one of the reasons there was such an uproar when Bassem Tamimi appeared before third graders in Ithaca, NY, and advocated the children become "freedom fighters for Palestine." It's also one of the dramatic aspects of the current violence -- whether called an "Intifada" or not. Young children and teens are pushed to the front or take it on themselves to attack. Like the 16 year old who stabbed two elderly Jews in Jerusalem and went after police before he was shot dead: https://twitter.com/IdoDaniel/status/652775896143806464 Then I saw this tweet.

Posted by Amy Miller on October 11, 2015 15 Comments
Has anyone noticed that our candidates are a little...sassier...this time around? Maybe we have Donald Trump to thank for this; perhaps it's the advent of social media and the unfiltered nature of digital campaigns. Either way, it's something to be thankful for, if only for its entertainment value. Last week, Hillary Clinton sent copies of her book, Hard Choices, to all of the Republican candidates: Her campaign attempted to play this off as a big PR clown on the GOP---but it didn't work out as well as she thought it would. Ben Carson responded to Hillary's generosity in kind:
Thanks Hillary. Posted by Dr. Ben Carson on Friday, October 9, 2015
Coaster? Door stop? Step stool? Sounds about right. I can't think of a better use for it, at any rate.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 11, 2015 1 Comment
The winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize has been announced, and if you haven't heard of the recipient you're not alone. The winner is the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, a consortium of groups which has worked to improve life in Tunisia following political unrest. Christopher B. Nelson of Forbes explains:
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Is A Refreshing Surprise It was announced on Friday that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.” The world’s first immediate reaction seemed to be, “Who?” Historians and bookies alike were placing their bets on big names like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Pope Francis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. privacy activist Edward Snowden. A peace-making coalition in Tunisia certainly didn’t appear to cross many minds...

Posted by Andrew Branca on October 11, 2015 43 Comments
Two independent reviews of the 2014 shooting of Tamir Rice have concluded that the officers responsible acted appropriately under the circumstances--a conclusion we shared with Legal Insurrection readers four months ago.

The Narrative:

Back in November 2014 Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann (who is white) shot and killed Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old, in a city park. [caption id="attachment_145642" align="alignnone" width="640"]tamir-rice-326e772c09b920c4 Tamir Rice: 12 years old, 5' 7" tall, 195 lbs[/caption] Sounds pretty bad, right?

The Reality:

Loehmann confronted Rice--who stood 5' 7" tall and whose 195 pounds is the weight of an average adult male--because of 911 calls reporting that Rice was walking around the park pointing a gun at pedestrians. When police pulled up to Rice in their patrol vehicle, Rice reached for the gun--later determined to be a non-deadly pellet gun with its orange "non-gun" markings removed--in his waistband.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 11, 2015 57 Comments
Did inmates stop liking bacon, or something? Did pork products spike in price so much that the pork-laden government had to cut back. Why in the world would the federal prison system eliminate all pork products? Lisa Rein of the Washington Post reports:
Finally, the government has decided to eliminate pork — from the menu in federal prisons The nation’s pork producers are in an uproar after the federal government abruptly removed bacon, pork chops, pork links, ham and all other pig products from the national menu for 206,000 federal inmates. The ban started with the new fiscal year last week. The Bureau of Prisons, which is responsible for running 122 federal penitentiaries and feeding their inmates three meals a day, said the decision was based on a survey of prisoners’ food preferences: They just don’t like the taste of pork.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 11, 2015 6 Comments
Hillary Clinton struggles to get her campaign on track, lurching to the left on a variety of issues near and dear to the hearts of the progressive base and facing the fallout from her decisions as Secretary of State as her poll numbers tank. Here's a chart via Hot Air that shows the trend of her and other Democrat candidates' polling (Real Clear Politics has an interactive version, if you're interested): rcp-dems According to Fox News' Special Report, the coming few weeks will be key to determining the success of these attempts.  Watch:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 10, 2015 42 Comments
There is not a single campus where the failure to ban lawfully-possessed concealed guns caused a mass shooting. In fact, almost all places where mass shootings have taken place are "gun-free zones." The results are predictable, as I explained in my viral column at USA Today, Time to talk about gun free zones:
In almost all mass shooting situations, particularly at schools, the common theme is a gun-free zone, with the shooter being the only one armed person in the building for minutes or longer. And in each case, the shooter couldn’t care less about the gun-free nature of the building, and if anything, was drawn to such a location. Gun-free zones presume the good intentions of those entering the zone. And the overwhelming majority have such good intentions. But for those who have bad intentions, gun-free zones turn schools and other locations into shooting galleries. The good people are unarmed, the evil person is armed.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 10, 2015 17 Comments
Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam organized an event in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March (which didn't have anywhere near a million men). Reportedly, "thousands" turned out today. Farrakhan, of course, in an unapologetic and proud anti-White racist and anti-Semite. https://twitter.com/ADL_National/status/651862264425771009 It's not surprising that Wright joined the fashionable movement to link Ferguson to Palestine, and to demonize Israel. It's a pretty astounding speech, which included the mindless and historically inaccurate claim that "Jesus was a Palestinian." The Hill reports:
The controversial religious leader Jeremiah Wright compared Native Americans to Palestinians at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March on the National Mall on Saturday, going so far as to assert that “Jesus was a Palestinian."...
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