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November 2015

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 08, 2015 34 Comments
On Friday morning, September 18, 2015, the third grade classes at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, NY, heard a presentation on "human rights" by Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi and local anti-Israel activists, including Ariel Gold of the local chapter of the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace. On Sunday night, September 20, Legal Insurrection broke the story, Anti-Israel activism hits elementary school in Ithaca, NY. Because of Tamimi's notoriety for exploiting children in videotaped confrontations with Israeli soldiers, Tamimi's mere appearance in a third grade class raised suspicions about the event. After our report, a firestorm of controversy erupted, with the Superintendent of the Ithaca City School District (ICSD), Dr. Luvelle Brown, conducting an investigation, after which he issued a statement that the event was "politically skewed, inflammatory, and not endorsed by the Ithaca City School District.” The Superintendent's statement, though, contained few details of his investigation. But now Legal Insurrection exclusively has obtained documents pursuant to a Freedom Of Information Law (FOIL) request that show the event was even worse than we thought.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 08, 2015 12 Comments
One of the primary obstacles to repealing the failure that is ObamaCare has been the extremely successful framing of the debate by progressives on both sides of the aisle.  The question they posit and that derails any and all attempts to rid the American people of the ObamaCare albatross that is disproportionately strangling the poor and the middle class in myriad ways is:  What will you replace it with? This is a false choice.  No one called for a replacement of the 18th Amendment that made Prohibition not just the law of the land but a part of the U. S. Constitution.  ObamaCare is bad law.  You don't "replace" bad law, you get rid of it. Framing the argument as "repeal and replace" implies "if not ObamaCare then what other behemoth federal monstrosity should take its place?" and as such is a clever maneuver by ObamaCare defenders because it effectively posits that there are only two options:  ObamaCare or something just like it, i.e. another federally-mandated and -controlled health insurance system that does everything that is popular about ObamaCare and nothing that is controversial or unpopular about it.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 08, 2015 17 Comments
I watched Saturday Night Live last night for the first time in years and so did a lot of other people. Entertainment Weekly reports that it was a ratings bonanza:
Donald Trump gives SNL its biggest ratings in years Trump is still bringing the bump. With Donald Trump hosting, Saturday Night Live jumped to its biggest overnight rating since 2012. According to NBC, SNL had a whopping 6.6 household rating on Saturday night, easily beating the season’s previous high: the 41st season premiere last month, hosted by Miley Cyrus and with a guest appearance by none other than … Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump’s overnight rating was 47 percent higher than the Miley/Hillary episode.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 08, 2015 17 Comments
We're all familiar with the annual attempts to clamp down on Christmas.  Be it schools banning Christmas songs, Obama's VA banning Christmas carols and cards for veterans, schools removing Christmas from calendars, or outrage and fainting vapors over the mere of sight of a Christmas tree, we expect this barrage of intolerant insanity each year. This year, it seems, will be no different.  A mall in Long Island, worried about offending people with the sight of Santa, decided to set up a glacier display and barricade Santa within it. The New York Post reports:
A Long Island mall swapped Santa’s sleigh for something resembling a spaceship and nixed the Christmas tree because it didn’t want to “offend” anyone, irate shoppers told The Post.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 08, 2015 20 Comments
The Knife Intifada continues, with daily attempted stabbings. Today in Israel an Arab woman was shot dead by an Israeli security guard at Beitar Ilit. The woman was trying to reach a bus stop in the community, where presumably she would have stabbed waiting passengers or entered the bus and conducted a stabbing attack there. That's what the headlines emphasized. But she was shot only after she pulled out a knife from her pocketbook and lunged at the Israeli man: (Video source: Col. Peter Lerner Twitter)

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 08, 2015 22 Comments
Citizens of the Centennial State are poised to make a historic vote that could impact the next 100 years:
Colorado voters could be asked to weigh in on a far-reaching, first-in-the-nation plan to scrap ObamaCare and replace it with a single-payer-style health care system. A single-payer system is one where a single agency administers health care fees and costs, while medical care itself is handled by the private sector. Vermont leaders backed off a similar plan a year ago, but activists in Colorado are pushing their own version in the form of a November 2016 ballot question. Supporters appear poised to get that question on the ballot. According to The Denver Post, supporters turned in more than 156,000 signatures for the measure, well over the 98,492 needed. As a last step, the signatures will still need to be verified.
The program would be called "ColoradoCare" and would cost billions to run.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 08, 2015 14 Comments
Obama has been trying to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay since being sworn in as president and now he's running out of time. Would it be surprising for him to just go around congress? The Wall Street Journal reports:
Obama’s Gitmo Workaround President Obama is about to send Congress a doomed plan to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, so he can then shut down Gitmo the way he does nearly anything—by executive order. White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeated the familiar drill Wednesday. They “work with Congress where we can,” Mr. Earnest said. “But if Congress continues to refuse, I wouldn’t rule out the President using every element of his authority to make progress.”

Posted by Amy Miller on November 08, 2015 26 Comments
The Senate is known for its well-prepared speeches and high-profile filibusters; what it's not known for is for those speeches to have any real or lasting effect on long-term policymaking in Washington. A freshman senator may have changed all that this week (okay, this is bluster, but bear with me) with his "maiden" floor speech, in which he spent a great deal of time offering the perspective he gained from over a year's worth of observation. Ben Sasse (R-NE) waited until this week to address his colleagues in the Senate chamber---and boy did he make the most of it. He used his time at the mic to criticize the partisanship, grandstanding, and public bickering that defines the culture of "the greatest deliberative body in the world." Watch:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 07, 2015 25 Comments
The Knife Intifada has demonstrated, once again, that the core conflict between Israel and Palestinians is not over final borders or "the occupation" of Judea and Samaria by Israel. As Prof. Miriam Elman has pointed out at Legal Insurrection, What Do Palestinians Really Want? New Study Reveals Disturbing Answers, Palestinians hold deeply anti-Jewish views and do not accept the legitimacy of any Jewish national entity. Those findings are consistent with some inconvenient history: The Grand Mufti, Hitler and the “Knife Intifada.” [caption id="attachment_146826" align="alignnone" width="600"][Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941)] Der Führer empfing in Gegenwart des Reichsministers des Auswärtigen von Ribbentrop den Grossmufti von Palästina, Sayid Amin al Husseini, zu einer herzlichen und für die Zukunft der arabischen Länder bedeutungsvollen Unterredung. 9.12.41 Presse Hoffmann [Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941)][/caption]So it was of great interest for me to read An interview with Benny Morris by Prof. Gabriel Noah Brahm at Fathom Journal.  Morris is the "controversial" Israeli historian who first pissed off the "right wing" by questioning some of the foundational beliefs as to how Israel came into being, and then equally pissing off the left by focusing on the role of anti-Jewish hate in the Arab opposition to the creation of Israel. Morris' views were explaind in the Middle East Forum in this interview in 2010 Benny Morris: "The 1948 War Was an Islamic Holy War" (emphasis added):

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 07, 2015 6 Comments
When the walloping of liberal policies and their enforcers extends to California, I suspect the effects will reverberate for quite some time. For those of you who enjoy the sweet taste of schadenfreude, there is more to savor. Many will recall the sad death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, who was shot by an illegal alien released by the sheriff's department under the city's "Sanctuary City" policies. Ross Mirkarmi is now the former sheriff, courtesy of San Francisco's voters:
The San Francisco sheriff who over the summer became embroiled in a national debate over "sanctuary city" policies on Tuesday lost his bid for re-election amid a host of local controversies. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, 54, was defeated by Vicki Hennessy, a former sheriff's official who had the endorsement of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and the sheriff deputies association. As of early Wednesday morning, Hennessy had received 62 percent of the vote to just 31 percent for Mirkarimi.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 07, 2015 34 Comments
Just when you thought the "safe spaces" PC-plagued college campuses couldn't get more ridiculous, Yale students step up to prove you wrong. Yale's Intercultural Affairs Council (yes, they have such a thing) sent out an email prior to Halloween asking that students be thoughtful in their costume selection so as not to offend others.  They listed specific examples of costumes deemed offensive,  "such as feathered headdresses, turbans, 'war paint,' and blackface as examples of inappropriate 'cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation'.”

Erika Christakis, Associate Master of Silliman College, responded to the email and defended students' right to wear Halloween costumes of their choosing, even if said costumes might be considered outrageous, inappropriate, provocative, or even offensive.

Christakis further urged students "not to take offense at insensitive Halloween costumes," and she told students, "'If you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended.  'Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society'."

Posted by Amy Miller on November 07, 2015 9 Comments
Back in October, the ladies of "The View" decided to take out their political frustrations on Carly Fiorina's...appearance. The height of discourse, this show is not. At any rate, their comments ignited a firestorm of intense politicking that culminated with a second appearance for Fiorina---and a panel in high dudgeon. Whoopi Goldberg kicked things off by bringing up View-gate, and Fiorina took the ball and ran with it. Via Fox News:
“You know what, look I’ve been called all kinds of things, Whoopi… I’ve been called a bimbo from the time I was a secretary to the time I was a CEO. I think we need to be able to have civil conversations in this country about our differences… so I'd just like to have a conversation about where we agree and where we disagree,” Fiorina said.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 07, 2015 3 Comments
On this day in 1984, President Ronald Reagan won 49 of 50 states and 525 of 538 electoral votes, winning reelection in an historic landslide.  His Democrat challenger Walter Mondale carried Minnesota, Mondale's home state, and Washington DC for a total of 13 electoral votes. http://electoralmap.net/PastElections/past_elections.php?year=1984 [Image via ElectoralMap.net] Watch Reagan's January 1984 announcement of his candidacy for a second term:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 07, 2015 13 Comments
Wednesday, Faisal Mohammad embarked on a stabbing spree leaving four injured at the University of California UCMerced. Mohammad reportedly targeted members of a study group that kicked him out. A handwritten manifesto found in Mohammad's backpack indicated his plans were more sinister than mere hospitalization, he vowed to "cut someone's head off," according to Fox News.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 07, 2015 28 Comments
A new report suggests the United States power grid is vulnerable to an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack and that should scare the hell out of you. When it comes to the cost of American lives, an attack like this would make 9/11 look small. If a large portion of the United States was deprived of electricity for a significant amount of time, millions would die of starvation, a lack of access to modern medical care and the collapse of law and order. Daniel Wiser reports at the Washington Free Beacon:
Report: United States Increasingly Vulnerable to Potentially Catastrophic EMP Attack The threat of a devastating electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States is increasing just as American infrastructure has become more vulnerable, according to a new report.

Posted by Anne Segal on November 07, 2015 14 Comments
Odious Obamacare is about more than crippling families with massive cost increases and destroying the market for innovation that has created so many lifesaving drugs and treatments. The small-business regulatory compliance costs for restaurants and grocery stores to report calorie counts for each and every menu offering, which would go into effect in December 2016, are threatening to add yet another burden to ma-and-pa outfits across the country. Wednesday, the bipartisan"Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act" was approved by voice vote to move to the full House committee and means some relief from the insanity of Big Government may be on the way. The bill seeks to ease the requirements of restaurants and grocery stores to disclose the calorie counts for their foodstuffs, regulations that add up to nearly 400 pages of national disclosure requirements from the FDA. The compliance required is overwhelming enough for some Democrats to part from their Dear Leader and join Republicans seeking to amend the process. But what's more awkward for the Obama nutrition-gestapo is that a study from NYU reported on in the Wall Street Journal this week shows that there is virtually no difference in menu-ordering when consumers are provided with calorie counts.
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