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January 2016

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 18, 2016 21 Comments
Remember the debacle at the CNBC Republican debate in October, where the moderators were horrendous in their treatment of the candidates? I suggested at the time GOP needs to make an example of NBC News:
The GOP has a long history of subjecting its candidates to abuse by debate moderators. From George Stephanopolous to Candy Crowley, debates are a time for network journalists to earn their battle badges by damaging Republicans. And the GOP just sucks it up and takes it....

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 18, 2016 23 Comments
After being relegated to the Republican presidential primary undercard debate last week, presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul decided not to attend. Mind you, debate stage rankings are based on national polling, but whatever. Childish? Perhaps. But nowhere near as cringe-worthy as this ad released not by an unaffiliated PAC, but by Paul's campaign. "Audit the Ted" takes aim at fellow Republican contender, Sen. Ted Cruz for his close ties to big banks. As evidence of this, the ad cites Cruz's Goldman Sachs loans. Two crudely animated characters with British accents (?) chat with one another about Cruz's "inside connections" and Paul's standing as the only liberty-oriented, good-haired candidate. Meanwhile, the voices are from a rudimentary talk and play program. The whole ordeal is terrible from beginning to end. Without further ado, "Audit the Ted."

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 18, 2016 20 Comments
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers' Association last Monday, and the union had a tough day.  Legal Insurrection previewed the case, here.

Background

In brief, public school teachers in California seek to invalidate state law requiring that non-union members must nevertheless pay the public teachers union fees for collective bargaining and related expenses.  Those related expenses are fairly broad and include public relations campaigns on issues to be collectively bargained. Before this case, controlling law from Abood v. Detroit Board of Education allowed such compelled payments on the reasoning that collective bargaining is not political speech, so compelled contributions to collective bargaining expenses does not run afoul of the First Amendment's implied freedom of (and from) association.  However, Abood was internally inconsistent to the extent that it acknowledged that everything a public union does is political in the sense that it has an impact on the public and public policy.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 18, 2016 7 Comments
The Democratic Party's decision to limit presidential primary debates to a paltry six drew the ire of non-Hillary candidates and delegates alike. O'Malley and Sanders vocally opposed the meager debate schedule, delegates in New Hampshire shouted "we want debates" at DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and candidates considering extra-DNC sanctioned debates were told they'd be ineligible for future DNC debates should they go rogue. As if that wasn't bad enough, three of the last four debates were scheduled on the weekend. Last night's NBC/YouTube debate was scheduled up against two NFL playoff games and Downton Abbey (a PBS favorite). It's almost like the DNC is trying to tuck their presidential debates away in plain sight. CNN’s Brian Stelter prodded DNC Chairwoman Wasserman Shultz on the limited weekend-only debate schedule. Wasserman Shultz claimed other candidate forums, like the one held on Fusion last week, are meant to draw national exposure in lieu of more debates. Stelter expressed his frustration with incredibly low ratings in other candidate forums saying, "I feel like your all's [sic] voices aren't getting heard the way the could be if there were more of these events."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 18, 2016 13 Comments
Last year, George Stephanopoulos had a particularly antagonistic interview with the author of Clinton Cash, and shortly thereafter, it was revealed that he had donated a substantial sum of money to the Clinton Foundation.  ABC stood by their man, though he did have to apologize on-air. The Washington Free Beacon is now reporting that Stephanopoulos has simply stopped disclosing his donations to the Clinton Foundation.
ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos has stopped disclosing his donations to the Clinton Foundation prior to his interviews with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Stephanopoulos interviewed Clinton twice over the past week, once Thursday morning on Good Morning America and again on Sunday’s This Week.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 18, 2016 35 Comments
The Environmental Protection Agency has found itself at the center of another environmental crisis. The epicenter of this particular disaster is Flint, Michigan. It's drinking water has been contaminated with elevated levels of lead, a fact known to several regulatory agencies for many months. Tragically, instead of protecting people, these officials opted to wring their hands and kick the can down the bureaucratic road.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 18, 2016 10 Comments
Despite his and his team's efforts, Rand Paul's presidential campaign has simply not taken off.  The global unrest and Islamic terrorist threat work against him in this cycle, and he's clearly shaken by how little support he has managed to acquire.  In addition to refusing to appear in the undercard debate, Rand is now taking a stand against Donald Trump. In an interview on The Alan Colmes Show, he vowed to spend his "every waking hour" to "try to stop Donald Trump." The Hill reports:
Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul on Thursday pleged to spend "every waking hour" trying to keep rival Donald Trump from winning the GOP nomination. "Donald Trump takes us in the wrong direction. He would be a disaster. We’ll be slaughtered in a landslide," Paul said in an interview on the Alan Colmes radio show, as first reported by BuzzFeed. "That’s why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee." "I think we, the Republican Party, becomes the party of angry people that insinuate that most immigrants are drug dealers or rapists, that’s a terrible direction for our party," he said.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2016 11 Comments

Even though we're not in Kansas anymore....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2016 8 Comments
Oberlin College is an institution in turmoil over the past several years, and anti-Israel activism is part of the problem. Now, over 200 alumni are claiming the anti-Israel activism has created a hostile environment for Jews, and the alumni are demanding the college take action to address the problem. The issue of when anti-Israelism crosses into anti-Semitism is a hot topic on campuses recently because of the very aggressive tactics of anti-Israel campus groups, and the intense demonization of Israel. "Intersectionality" analysis is used by anti-Israel activists to try to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement and other similar movements:
Every real or perceived problem is either blamed on or connected to Israel. The concerted effort to turn the Black Lives Matter movement into an anti-Israel movement has at its core the claim that Israel is the root of problems of non-whites in the United States. Thus, if a police chief somewhere attended a one-week anti-terrorism seminar in Israel years ago, every act of brutality by a cop on the beat is blamed on Israel.
When City University of New York Students for Justice in Palestine, for example, tried to turn the Million Student March into an anti-Israel event and blamed high tuition on Zionists, the CUNY Vice Chancellor called it “thinly-veiled bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism.” At Vassar College, SJP circulated a Nazi cartoon after weeks of anti-Israel activism that included picketing a course which involved travel to Israel. Prof. Miriam Elman laid out the history and analysis in Fighting The Hate: When Does Anti-Israel Become Anti-Semitic? As described below, it appears Oberlin may need to go through a similar self-evaluation.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 17, 2016 30 Comments
Marco Rubio has taken a lot of heat for his work with Chuck Schumer and the Gang of Eight, so it's a bit surprising that only this morning he's arguing that illegal aliens can stay in the U.S. as long as they are not felons, specifically excluding the violation of our immigration laws. Politico reports:
Sen. Marco Rubio says people who immigrated to the U.S. illegally but haven’t committed any major crimes could be allowed to stay. In an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Florida contender for the Republican presidential nomination said felons shouldn’t be allowed to stay, but those who commit lesser crimes could still qualify. In this interview, he didn’t specify whether those allowed to stay would ever be able to become citizens. “If you’re a criminal alien, no, you can’t stay. If you’re someone that hasn’t been here for a very long time, you can’t stay,” he said. “I don’t think you’re gonna round up and deport 12 million people.”
The DC Caller has more:
Todd then asked Rubio, “Let me ask you on the 11 million [illegal immigrants already in America], are you still for finding a way for them to legally stay in the United States?”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2016 1 Comment
This has eerie resemblance to the stabbing to death of the Fogel family in 2011, including 6 month old Hadas as she slept in her crib. Reports indicated that a Palestinian man entered a home in a settlement near Hebron, and stabbed to death a mother in front of her three children. One of the children, 15 years old, gave a description of the man to the police, and he was caught on security cameras leaving the the settlement heading towards an Arab village. The Times of Israel reports:
Police officers and IDF soldiers set up roadblocks in the area surrounding the West Bank settlement of Otniel Sunday night as they searched for a Palestinian man who stabbed an Israeli woman to death in her home and then fled. Just after 5:00 p.m., the terrorist broke into Dafna Meir’s home and after a struggle in the doorway, killed the 38-year-old mother while three of her four children were reportedly in the home. The three children helped their mother fight off the attacker, Channel 2 news reported. One of the three, a 15-year-old girl, gave security authorities a description of the terrorist.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 17, 2016 18 Comments
During his State of the Union address, Obama asserted that anyone portraying the American economy as bad was "peddling fiction". Perhaps he can explain why our stock market was outperforming expectations . . . in terms of how much it dropped?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 400 points Friday, falling below 16,000, as oil prices sank below $30 a barrel. The index fell to 15,988 at the closing bell, down more than 390, or 2.39%. "Oil is the root cause of today," said Dan Farley, regional investment strategist at the Private Client Reserve at U.S. Bank. "People are uncertain, and when they're uncertain they're scared."
Because our economy is tied to the global market, it is worth noting that the Royal Bank of Scotland just issued a dire warning to its investors that can be summed up in two words: "Sell everything".
RBS urged investors to sell everything amid warnings that oil prices could fall to the lowest level in 17 years which may spark a meltdown as severe as the 2008 financial crisis.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 17, 2016 8 Comments
Former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell was indicted back in January of 2014 for accepting gifts in exchange for political influence, and now the Supreme Court will be reviewing his case. The Washington Post reports:
The McDonnells, who were convicted in 2014, were accused of intervening with state officials on Williams’s behalf in exchange for $177,000 in loans, vacations and luxury goods. The former governor was sentenced to two years in prison; Maureen McDonnell received a year and a day. . . . . The Supreme Court will decide whether former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell was rightly convicted of corruption for his efforts on behalf of a businessman who bestowed money and gifts on the governor and his family. The court announced Friday that it would intervene in the long-running saga of McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, and the case provides the justices a fresh opportunity to define what kind of political conduct crosses the line into criminal behavior.
McDonnell issued a statement in response to the Supreme Court's announcement.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 17, 2016 18 Comments
Hillary Clinton advocate David Brock of Media Matters thinks he's found a clever way to take Bernie Sanders down a notch. He wants Bernie to release his medical records. Hillary's official campaign has already distanced themselves from Brock's demand. Annie Karni reports at Politico:
Clinton surrogate to demand Sanders release medical records A top surrogate for Hillary Clinton is prepping a new attack in an intensifying and increasingly personal war against rival Bernie Sanders — calling on the 74-year-old to release his medical records before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. Clinton defender David Brock — founder of the Correct the Record PAC, which coordinates directly with Clinton’s campaign — is expected to hit the airwaves this weekend from Charleston, the scene of the third Democratic debate on Sunday night, and challenge Sanders to cough up a clean bill of health and doctor’s note in the next 16 days, according to a Democrat familiar with his thinking who was not authorized to preview any strategy.
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