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February 2016

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 26, 2016 37 Comments
Today the South Florida Times posted on their web site a piece entitled "FILM USES VIRTUAL REALITY TO REENACT TRAYVON’S MURDER." In that piece they describe a piece of fabricated ("virtual reality") cinema that purports to tell the "true story" about the interaction between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin that resulted in Martin's death. The article notes that:
The promotional material for One Dark Night indicates, “By anchoring the piece in accurate and unassailable elements, the user becomes transported inside a reliable, albeit virtual, version of the story as an eyewitness. One Dark Night breaks new ground on multiple levels, including through audio carefully cleaned by forensic specialists Sourcesound and Primeau Productions, with the latter asserting that the reconstructed audio indicates George Zimmerman cocked his gun just before he gave chase.”
(emphasis added) Except there's one little problem with that narrative:

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 26, 2016 38 Comments
We reported earlier this week that conservative author Ben Shapiro was banned from speaking at California State University LA by the school's president. The school then relented and said Shapiro could come after all. Then things got crazy. Students who wanted to hear Shapiro speak had to be ushered quietly into the lecture hall through a back door while unhinged student activists and faculty members screamed and tried to force their way through a police barricade protecting the front door.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 25, 2016 101 Comments
The biggest take away from the CNN Republican Debate is that contrary to prior promises, Donald Trump says he will not release his income tax returns because he is being audited. There is no law, that I'm aware of, prohibiting such release. It sounded like a massive dodge, since IRS audits can go on for years. Trump even said his last 4-5 years of returns are being audited. Trump was his usual, petty self, gratuitously insulting Hugh Hewitt for supposedly having low ratings, even when Hewitt hadn't asked hostile question at the time, but reminded Trump of the prior promise to release the returns. I guess Trump supporters will see such conduct as "tough" and being a "fighter," but it was childish. Perhaps more important, Marco Rubio was the first person in any of the debates to successfully take on Trump on a range of issues.  Rubio mocked and belittled Trump in the humorous, mocking and highly effective manner that Trump used to make Jeb look small.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 25, 2016 19 Comments
Welcome to our live coverage of tonight's Republican debate. Held at the University of Houston, the CNN/Google debate will begin at 8:30 PM EST. I'm reporting live from the spin room tonight. For those updates, see my feed beneath. For the best way to watch the debate, we defer to CNN:
Where can I watch it? CNN will broadcast the debate live on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Espanol, and it will be translated live on Telemundo. The network will also provide a live stream of the debate on CNN.com's home page and across mobile platforms, available to all users without having to log in. How will it work? CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer will moderate the debate once again. Telemundo News anchor Maria Celeste Arras, Salem talk radio host Hugh Hewitt and CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash will join Blitzer in questioning the candidates.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 25, 2016 3 Comments
As documented before, Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, has faced a waive of anti-Israel, and in some cases anti-Semitic, activity on campus for the past two years centered around the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The latest spark is a combined effort by Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine and Vassar Jewish Voice for Peace, to pass an anti-Israel divestment resolution targeting companies, including Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, that supposedly contribute to the oppression of Palestinians. The controversy has put a lot of pressure not just on the Vassar administration, but also the Vassar Student Association, which is considering the BDS resolution for a March 6 vote. The Miscellany News, the student newspaper, reports that the students on VSA just voted to take the BDS vote in secret:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 25, 2016 14 Comments
The University of Missouri canned the professor captured on video confronting student journalists during a protest last year, the Washington Post reported. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune:
Assistant Professor Melissa Click, captured on video calling for “some muscle” to remove reporters from a campus protest site, was fired Wednesday by the University of Missouri Board of Curators, Chairwoman Pam Henrickson said in a prepared statement. The board voted 4-2 in favor of termination during a closed session in Kansas City, with Henrickson and curator John Phillips opposing the move, UM System spokesman John Fougere wrote in an email Thursday. Curators David Steelman, Donald Cupps, Maurice Graham and Phil Snowden voted in favor of firing Click.

Posted by Taryn O'Neill on February 25, 2016 10 Comments
On Fox News Tuesday, U.S. officials announced China has deployed a series of fighter jets to a contested island in the South China Sea known as Woody Island. The news comes little more than a week after surface to air missiles were spotted via satellite on the same island. Officials said U.S. intelligence has seen both Chinese Shenyang J-11 and Xian JH-7 jets on Woody Island for the past few days. One official estimated that there were as many as nine of these jets deployed to the island.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 25, 2016 18 Comments
About 2 years ago, I featured a legal saga involving a California state senator from the Bay area who was a leading advocate for gun control. His alleged crime reeked of irony: Gun trafficking.
In exchange for campaign contributions, according to the affidavit, Yee would “facilitate a meeting with the arms dealer” so that the donor could buy a large number of weapons. The firearms would be imported through a port in Newark, N.J. At one meeting, the affidavit said, Yee and the prospective donor discussed “details of the specific types of weapons.”
The deals were facilitated by a Chinese gangland figure nicknamed "Shrimp Boy." The wheels of justice have been slow to grind, but grind they did. Leland Yee was charged and convicted of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for providing political favors and conspiring to import weapons and ammunition into the country. He has just received a 5-year sentence, after throwing himself on the mercy of the court.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 25, 2016 12 Comments
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, threw another spanner in the EU’s push to settle migrants across the member states. Prime Minister Orban announced to hold a referendum on whether Hungary should be forced to take in more migrants, dealing another blow to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plans to ease pressure off German in the wake of unchecked mass migration. In September 2015, Prime Minister Orban became the first European leader to seriously challenge Brussel’s open border policy when he ordered to build a fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia to stop the migrant influx. Many European leaders and mainstream media slammed Hungary for taking--what they called-- “egoist” measures. At that time, Martin Schulz, German politician and President of the EU Parliament, called the step taken by Hungarian government “irrational” and driven by “national egoism.” Since then other EU members such as Austria, Macedonian and Slovenian have started working on their border fences.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 25, 2016 10 Comments
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an Opinion released today (full embed at bottom of post), remanded the immigration fraud case of Rasmea Odeh to the District Court on the issue of whether Rasmea should have been permitted to present expert testimony. The Appeals court did not rule such evidence admissible, and did not order a new trial. Rather, the Appeals Court ruled the trial court should have at least held a hearing on the issue of expert testimony. It is possible the trial court rejects such evidence after hearing under the strict requirements for expert evidence in federal court, in which case the conviction stands. Or after hearing rules the evidence should be admitted, in which case there will be a new trial. Rasmea was convicted of immigration fraud in federal court in Detroit in November 2014 for failing to disclose her 1970 conviction in Israel for the 1969 bombing of a supermarket, which killed two university students (Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner), and attempted bombing of the British Consulate. Rasmea contends that she was convicted in Israel solely because of a false confession extracted from her after 25 days of sexual torture. In fact, as we have proven, she confessed just one day after arrest, there was substantial other evidence of her guilt, and even her co-conspirator decades later explained on video that Rasmea was the mastermind. She also received a trial in Israel that an observer from the International Red Cross termed fair.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 25, 2016 23 Comments
Not too long ago, climate alarmists were predicting "bee-pocalyse". A spate of reports about American bee colonies being wiped-out for no apparent reason had people worried about the total loss of one of nature's most important species. There were numerous theories bandied about for bee colony collapse (e.g., GMO's, climate change, pesticides). But usually it was mankind that was the root cause of another impending global crisis. The experts predicted that the consequences to global food production would be unimaginable. We were all going to starve to death!

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 25, 2016 5 Comments
Democrats are pushing hard for the senate to lay down and approve an Obama nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court even after Chuck Schumer was caught on video urging Dems to block Bush nominees to the court in 2007. Now a video of Joe Biden has surfaced in which the VP, then a senator, said that SCOTUS nominations shouldn't happen during an election season. A group called the Judicial Crisis Network has spliced together the Biden footage with Hillary and other Democrats talking about the issue recently.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 24, 2016 111 Comments
In an interview with Fox News today, Mitt Romney suggested there was reason to believe there is a bombshell in the tax returns Donald Trump has not yet released:
There might be a “bombshell” revelation to be discovered in Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s tax returns, 2012 party nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday. He also called on the entire GOP field to release their tax returns. “I think there’s something there," Romney said of Trump's returns, "Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is, or he hasn’t been paying the kind of taxes we would expect him to pay,” Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on “Your World.”

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 24, 2016 14 Comments
John Kasich was the latest of ten governors to ban or limit funding for abortion mills in their states, and the change in taxpayer funding for abortion "services" is resulting in record closures. Bloomberg reports:
Abortion access in the U.S. has been vanishing at the fastest annual pace on record, propelled by Republican state lawmakers’ push to legislate the industry out of existence. Since 2011, at least 162 abortion providers have shut or stopped offering the procedure, while just 21 opened. At no time since before 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, has a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy been more dependent on her zip code or financial resources to travel. The drop-off in providers—more than one every two weeks—occurred in 35 states, in both small towns and big cities that are home to more than 30 million women of reproductive age.
Interestingly, however, the closures aren't just taking place in conservative states; California, for example, has also seen a decrease in abortion clinics.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 24, 2016 3 Comments
The annual tour of lies and hate known as Israel Apartheid Week kicked off Monday in England, with stops coming around the world.  The U.S. edition is set for March 27-April 3. Monday morning, Londoners taking the underground were greeted by a series of new advertisements targeting companies with business in Israel.  They accuse Israel of the same tired litany of apartheid, cruelty and crimes that has been debunked so many times already. The first event at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies last Monday night included the usual accusations of prisoner abuse, organ harvesting and, of course, apartheid.

Recent Developments On UK Campuses

Israel Apartheid Week comes to England at an opportune moment, as rampant anti-Semitism comes to light at the vaunted Oxford University.  Last week, the student co-chairman of Oxford University's Labor Club (OULC) - Alex Chalmers - resigned out of protest at the group's anti-Semitism.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 24, 2016 51 Comments
Hillary Clinton is not the only presidential contender muddling through legal battles this election season. An upcoming trial scheduled for May 6 could pull Donald Trump off the campaign trail. Listed as a witness by both sides of the bench, Trump will likely be required to testify in a trial over the now defunct Trump University which has been accused of fraud. Yahoo News reported:
Here’s a part of the political calendar that nobody in the Republican Party seems to have noticed: This spring, just as the GOP nomination battle enters its final phase, frontrunner Donald Trump could be forced to take time out for some unwanted personal business: He’s due to take the witness stand in a federal courtroom in San Diego, where he is being accused of running a financial fraud.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 24, 2016 7 Comments
The last time we checked on the bureaucracy-caused disaster of the Flint Water Crisis, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder offered to testify before Congress about events leading to the lead-contaminated residential water. Of course, since he is a Republican, Snyder has been a convenient target of Democratic Party kabuki theater.
U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote in a letter to Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, that Snyder has "completely ignored" Cummings' and U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence's request for documents related to the Flint sent Jan. 29. "As I have stated many times, I believe the committee must obtain information from all levels of government — local, state and federal — in order to conduct a responsible and complete investigation," wrote Cummings, who is part of a delegation of congressional Democrats visiting Flint on Monday with U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township.
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