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November 2015

Posted by Amy Miller on November 04, 2015 12 Comments
Last Saturday, a Russian jet carrying 217 passengers crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The Metrojet flight was making its way to St. Petersburg from a popular Red Sea resort when it went down in a remote, mountainous region of the Sinai. Almost immediately, two European airlines suspended all travel over the region where the jet crashed---and for good reason. According to the Associated Press, the Hassana area where the wreckage was found has played host to clashes between Egyptian forces and a group of Islamic militants who recently pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State. A local ISIS affiliate declared responsibility for the crash (now, attack), but the claim was quickly scuttled by both Egyptian and Russian officials. Now, however, US intelligence reports have revealed that it is likely ISIS or one of its affiliates planted a bomb on the plane. Via CNN:
"There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane," the official said, stressing that no formal conclusion had been reached by the U.S. intelligence community.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 04, 2015 3 Comments
Today the State Department informed TransCanada Corp. that the agency review of the Keystone XL pipeline and its associated permits will continue in spite of the corporation's request that the process be paused. TransCanada is currently in both a legal and logistical battle regarding the future pipeline’s route through Nebraska; the corporation submitted its original request for a pause to the State Department "out of respect for the process" of policy negotiations with lawmakers, activists, and property owners in Nebraska. More from the WSJ:
“We have communicated to them our intention to continue the review,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “We’re not required to pause it based on an applicant’s request, there’s no legal basis to do that.” Mr. Kirby added that a lot of interagency work has gone into reviewing the project.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 04, 2015 35 Comments
"For the children" unless using children as profane props helps your cause, in which case, eff it. Or at least that seems to be the case with a presumably anti-Trump PAC, Deport Racism. Promoting their contest which offers a cash prize to any audience member who successfully disrupts Trump's upcoming Saturday Night Live appearance by shouting "deport racism" or calling Trump a racist, Deport Racism used children to share, a "few words of their own" with The Donald. Mainly, "f*ck you, racist F*ck!" WARNING: Language, obvs.

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 04, 2015 26 Comments
Last week here I wrote a post about a “scientific” study of Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground (SYG) law. That paper was published in the Elsevier journal “Social Science & Medicine.” The paper: “Race, law, and health: Examination of ‘Stand Your Ground’ (SYG) and defendant convictions in Florida” (Social Science & Medicine, Volume 142, October 2015, pages 194-201; pay-walled ) My post: “New “Scientific” Stand-Your-Ground Study Is Ignorant of the Law” In that paper the authors applied a Public Health Critical Theory Methodology to the question of whether Florida’s SYG law has a quantifiable racial bias. The key finding of the paper is that a “defendant is two times … more likely to be convicted in a case that involves White victims compared to those involving non-White victims” in the context of Florida’s SYG law. This finding was the result of statistical analysis conducted on a set of 204 purported SYG cases drawn from a total collection of 237 purported SYG cases collected by the Tampa Bay Times, a regional Florida newspaper.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 04, 2015 5 Comments
The city of Houston is no longer threatening to seize two decades-old fifth ward churches via eminent domain. From our August report:
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. The fifth ward is located just outside of downtown. Property values in the area have skyrocketed and continue to climb. The City of Houston offered to purchase the churches. When the churches refused, the city came back with threats of using eminent domain to acquire the property as part of an urban development plan.
That "urban development plan" called for using the land to build a library and 63 units of public housing.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 04, 2015 10 Comments
Former President Bill Clinton's said last week in Israel in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, that peace is up to Israel. As the Associated Press reported:
"He refused to give up his dream of peace in the face of violence," Clinton, who formed a close bond with Rabin when both were in office, said to roars of applause. "The next step will be determined by whether you decide that Yitzhak Rabin was right, that you have to share the future with your neighbors ... that the risks for peace are not as severe as the risk of walking away from it. Those of us who loved him and love your country are praying that you will make the right decision."
Even last year, Clinton indicated that he didn't believe that Netanyahu could make peace. But this is false history, as Jonathan Tobin at Commentary pointed out, "if there is anything that the last 22 years have taught us it is that it clearly not up to the Israeli people."

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 04, 2015 82 Comments
Liberals have declared the death of the Tea Party countless times---but apparently, no one told Republican Matt Bevin, who won the gubernatorial election in Kentucky last night with strong support from the Tea Party. Bevin is a successful businessman who is pro-life and a veteran. News of his win is sending shockwaves through political media as the Democrat incumbent Conway was strongly favored to win, according to polls. The election was highly contested, as Kevin Robillard of Politico reports:
Republican Bevin wins Kentucky governor's race GOP businessman Matt Bevin easily won Kentucky’s governorship on Tuesday night and will become just the second Republican to inhabit the governor’s mansion in Frankfort in more than four decades.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 04, 2015 20 Comments
[Featured Image via Fight Back News] Moshe Halbertal is a law professor at New York University, and Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Hebrew University in Israel. He lectures widely on the ethics of war, particularly asymetric war of the type Israel faces. Prof. Halbertal was scheduled to deliver a lecture on November 3 at the University of Minnesota Law School, Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 03, 2015 10 Comments
The news of the week is that Sweden faces "collapse" from the unrestricted flow of migrants, as the Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström recently acknowledged in an interview:
“I have to admit that there have been moments recently of very great disappointment. I have heard statements from member states that have been completely astonishing and very discouraging,” Wallström said in the interview which was published on Friday morning. An unprecedented number of people are expected to seek asylum in the Nordic nation in 2015 and while Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has widely praised his country's response to the crisis he has said that Sweden is "approaching the limit" of its reception capacity. “I think most people feel that we cannot maintain a system where perhaps 190,000 people will arrive every year – in the long run, our system will collapse. And that welcome is not going to receive popular support,” said Wallström, echoing her Social Democrat colleague's comments.
In Malmö, Sweden's third largest city, that migrant crisis resulted in a Roma shanty town that was just torn down by police. For the Jews of Sweden, and Malmö in particular, the collapse came many years ago, long before the current migration crisis.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 03, 2015 43 Comments
In this particular tale of media hit job turned embarrassment, we have what might be one of the best public displays of gun ignorance presented as fact I've ever seen. The only things missing are a barrel shroud and a couple rounds of rubber bullets. Gizmodo reporter Wes Siler thought he'd pegged Republican Presidential Candidate Senator Ted Cruz as a gun safety hypocrite. Last weekend, the Junior Senator from the Lone Star State went pheasant hunting. Note the unloaded, break-action shotgun resting on Cruz's shoulder.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 03, 2015 18 Comments
Back in October, I covered a Gallup poll that showed the majority of Americans don't support a handgun ban. At the time, only 27% of Americans said they would support such a ban. Two studies covered by Legal Insurrection later that month revealed that the Obama Administration's renewed push for stricter controls and limited carry actually runs contrary to the social science of controlling violence and keeping people safe. The thing is, you'd never know it with the way the mainstream media covers issues like gun control, urban violence, and the Second Amendment. The scope and tragedy of deaths due to gun violence aren't just fodder for "very special episodes" of shows like Dateline---they're chum in the water for an opportunistic media determined to forward the interests of anti-gun, pro-regulation activists. Case in point: in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Rosebud, Oregon, the New York Times unleashed an apparent expose on Sheriff John Hanlin, drawing out his past, pro-gun thought crimes and using them to turn the conversation away from mental illness and toward the Brady Campaign's push for Hanlin's firing---and a strict, anti-gun agenda. We saw it coming from a mile away, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. We as conservatives have learned not to trust the media when it comes to reporting on guns---which is what makes this next video so refreshing. Atlanta-area journalist Ben Swann has committed a cardinal sin: he looked directly into the camera and defended the Second Amendment. Watch:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 03, 2015 23 Comments
I officially feel sorry for Jeb Bush. In the wake of the CNBC debate, I said without hesitation (for about the 55th time) that he simply doesn't want to be president. I've seen nothing out of him that convinces me he really wants this. (This is one of those "feature/bug" scenarios. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that he doesn't want the White House---I wouldn't---other than the fact that he's wasting his and our time with a multimillion dollar campaign.) The Bush campaign has gone from lukewarm, to tragedy, and finally to farce---but they're not done yet. We have a new slogan: "Jeb Can Fix It." Read this report from the AP while I rub my temples and quietly pray for 2017:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 03, 2015 5 Comments
TransCanada, the Calgary-based company behind the push to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, has asked Secretary of State John Kerry to pause the State Department's review of the project until state-level negotiations on the actual construction of the pipeline are resolved. TransCanada is currently in the middle of both a legal and logistical battle regarding the future pipeline's route through Nebraska. The company has found itself in a months-long dispute, and is now asking "out of respect for that process" to suspend consideration and a decision on the pipeline's fate until negotiations over the route through Nebraska are settled. (Note that TransCanada has not withdrawn its application; if granted, the suspension would constitute a pause on a final decision for 7 to 12 months while the Nebraska question is resolved.) More from CTV:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 03, 2015 20 Comments
China has been a global hub for manufacturing counterfeit electronics and consumer goods, but as the Asian giant asserts its dominance in the Asian Pacific and beyond, its defense establishment is using the same approach to modernise its vast armed forces.  Despite its large standing and reserve army, Chinese Armed Forces technologically lags behind US, Russian and NATO forces. China has decided to manufacture ‘counterfeit’ high-end defense technology on a large scale to overcome its existing strategic weakness. According to a recent report published by the US Naval Institute, China is using military espionage and reverse engineering to build a modern army with “cloned weapons.” Using cyber espionage and by making secret deals with US arms buyers, China has managed to obtain advance US weapons technology. China is reportedly also targeting Russia in its quest for high-end military technology. The Chinese often buy single units of Russian advanced military systems on a “trial” basis and reverse-engineer the weaponry to produce a large-scale Chinese version:
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