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February 2016

Posted by David Gerstman on February 24, 2016 10 Comments
One the best commentaries I've seen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was published last week in Haaretz.  The article by Israeli author, Gadi Taub asked, Does Abbas Really Want Israel to Withdraw From the West Bank? Unsurprisingly the answer Taub suggests is "no." Taub's column can be reduced to 5 main points as to why Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does not want peace with Israel.
  1. After spending years agitating for the "right of return" there is no way he would abandon it and lose whatever little credibility he still has with the Palestinians in order to make peace.
  2. He might complain about the human rights abuses of Israel, but the Palestinian security services will be worse.
  3. Right now Abbas doesn't have to fight Hamas directly, Israel is doing most of the work. As an added bonus Israel's presence in the West Bank allows him to complain about occupation. If he gets a state by compromise he will lose the Israeli protection and he will look like he gave in to Israel.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 24, 2016 14 Comments
While Obama and the progressive left continue their gun-grabbing attempts to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of random shooters and terrorists, one business owner in Georgia has instituted a new policy that requires all of his employees to obtain a concealed carry permit so they can be armed in the workplace. WSB-TV reports:
A local business owner with several offices in Georgia is now requiring all of his employees to get a concealed carry license and be armed. After each employee at Lance Toland Associates gets their license, Toland presents them with a gun known as the judge. He says it is one of the most effective self-defense weapons and all his aviation insurance agencies carry them openly in the office. “Everybody has one of these in their drawer or on their person. I would not want to come into one of my facilities,” Toland said. “It's a 5 shot .410, just like a shotgun and you call it hand cannon.
Apparently his employees were eager to meet this new requirement and earn their own 4/10 judge pistol.

Posted by Sarah Rumpf on February 24, 2016 21 Comments
Wednesday morning, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, dismissed the remaining charge against former Gov. Rick Perry. Perry had been indicted in 2014 by a Travis County grand jury for abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant, stemming from his threat and then veto of funding for the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney's Office. Perry had said he was vetoing the funds after then-Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, was arrested for drunken driving and caught on video being abusive and disrespectful to the law enforcement officers. Because of Lehmberg's conduct, said Perry, she had lost the public's confidence and was unfit to be running an "integrity" unit. She served a short jail sentence but refused to resign, and Perry carried out his veto threat. The coercion charge had been tossed out by the Third Court of Appeals in Austin last year on First Amendment grounds, and this dismissal now puts the rest of the case to an end.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 24, 2016 8 Comments
British banking giant HSBC shut down accounts held by Islamic Relief Worldwide ("IRW") last month.  IRW has long been suspected of funneling money to terrorist organizations. According to the Center for Security Policy:
[IRW is] the largest international Islamic charity in the world, with a $240 million operating budget, nearly 300 employees, chapters in more than 12 countries with their own multi-billion dollar budgets, and operations in over 30 countries, all based in Birmingham, England.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 24, 2016 17 Comments
Conservative author and speaker Ben Shapiro has been banned from making an appearance at California State University Los Angeles by the school's president. Shapiro would apparently present too great a threat to the safe spaces of CSULA's sensitive snowflake students. Christine Rousselle reported at Townhall:
Conservative Writer Ben Shapiro Banned from CSULA Early Tuesday morning, conservative writer Ben Shapiro revealed on Twitter that his planned speech on February 25 at California State University-Los Angeles had been canceled by the university's president.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 24, 2016 28 Comments

Fight Twitter management behavior, but don't leave the arena....

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 23, 2016 68 Comments
Welcome to our Nevada Republican Caucus live feed. Caucuses end by midnight EST. We'll report results as we have them. Depending on your time zone, you might want to crank up the coffee pot, we'll be here awhile. Up for grabs, 30 delegates. The caucus is closed, so only those who registered as a Republican thirty days prior to tonight are able to cast votes. The current delegate allocation: Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 7.26.39 PM A total of 1,237 delegates are required to win the Republican nomination.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 23, 2016 7 Comments
In a ruling sure to keep the Hillary Clinton email scandal alive through the summer, if not longer,  a federal just has granted Judicial Watch the right to take discovery as to whether Hillary's home server was part of an effort to evade the Freedom of Information (FOIA) law by shifting federal records off-site and into the sole control of Hillary, her attorney's and consultants. We have been following Judicial Watch's federal lawsuit seeking State Department records regarding Huma Abedin's outside employment. The FOIA request giving rise to the suit also has given rise to much obfuscation by State, which even resulted in the Court ordering Hillary Clinton to provide a declaration under oath as to records. Given the difficulty of obtaining records, particularly in light of the destruction of at least some records maintained on Hillary's home server, let Judicial Watch to seek discovery, including depositions of key officials. Such discovery is not routine in FOIA cases, and good cause needs to be shown to obtain discovery. In a Motion for Discovery (full embed at bottom of post), Judicial Watch laid out the case how Hillary may have conspired to evade FOIA:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 23, 2016 69 Comments
Earlier this month, Donald Trump called for a boycott of Apple products if Apple didn't unlock a terrorist phone for the feds, even though the case is in the courts. I made this comment at the time:
What, me worry about him in control of the IRS, FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA, EPA, and Park Police?
Senator Ben Sasse made a similar comment on Twitter yesterday, after Trump threatened the owners of the Chicago Cubs for spending money against him in the campaign: https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/701902499289161729

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 23, 2016 15 Comments
Having campaigned on closing Gitmo and on his first day in office signing an executive order to close it within the year, Obama has been steadily emptying the detention center, often in dubious deals and scandalous, logic-defying swaps.  This is something that he has been determined to accomplish while in office, and with time running out, he has today proposed a new plan to close Gitmo for good. Speaking somewhat uncomfortably about American values (as he always does), Obama laid out his reasoning behind and plan for closing Gitmo within the year. CNN reports:
Obama outlined a blueprint that involves transferring the bulk of remaining detainees to other countries and moving the rest -- who can't be transferred abroad because they're deemed too dangerous -- to an as-yet-undetermined detention facility in the United States.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 23, 2016 17 Comments
One prediction I can now comfortably make after years of observation is that there is a direct, linear relationship between how much government funding a scientist gets and the inaccuracy of the theories generated. The more politically connected the researcher, the more erroneous the "consensus" will be. I have a new data point to add to the collection. There are reports that a large colony of penguins died of climate changed induced starvation.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 23, 2016 83 Comments
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Republican side of the 2016 election has been the sharp divide among conservatives over Donald Trump. People tend to fall into one of three camps; love him, hate him or will support him if he's the nominee. On one side, you've got multiple conservative writers and thinkers who insist Trump isn't a conservative at all, as we saw with the special edition of National Review. On the other side, you have people like Sean Hannity of FOX News, Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit and John Nolte of Breitbart, all conservatives who appear enthusiastic about Trump's rise.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 23, 2016 4 Comments
As Britain heads for the June referendum, the question of country's membership in the European Union is pitting the political establishment and the mainstream media against a rising tide of public sentiment against the Brussels, deepened by recent Eurozone debt crisis and EU’s inability to regulate mass migration. The present policy paralysis within the EU on migrant crisis has once again revealed the vulnerabilities of the European project -- geared towards expansionism and bureaucratic centralization. Conservative EU parliamentarian and prominent ‘Eurosceptic’, Daniel Hannan said, “the alternative to remaining in a structurally unsafe building is, of course, walking out.” The call for referendum, announced last week, has also exposed the rifts within Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling Conservative Party, with six cabinet ministers and other leading conservatives coming out in support of Britain’s exit from the European Union, Brexit. However, the biggest blow to Prime Minister Cameron’s pro-EU camp came from London Mayor Boris Johnson’s surprise announcement to back the Brexit campaign.

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 23, 2016 30 Comments
The Baltimore Sun reports today that city officials will finalize approval of a contract this week to install video cameras inside the Police Department's 23 transport vans, at a cost of $187,000. The impetus for this effort is found in numerous cases of suspects suffering injuries while being transported in the vans. The best known case of this type is, of course, that of Freddie Gray, who suffered a severe spinal injury last April while being transported in a police van. Gray would die some days afterwards. Riots wracked the city following Gray's death, leading to Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby's precipitous criminal charging of six officers involved in Gray's arrest and transport.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 23, 2016 39 Comments
I'll never forget my one and only visit to a heroin shooting gallery. It was my first summer of law school, and I was working at the Manhattan (New York County) District Attorney's Office. It didn't pay much; we were paid $100 a week, in crisp $100 bills handed out at the cashier's window every Friday. Seriously. The extra-curricular part of the job was the most interesting. We took a tour of the Medical Examiner's Museum, not open to the public. Use your imagination as to what we saw there. We viewed an autopsy; the one I attended was of a guy found burned in a dumpster. I walked out on it. But by far the most exciting part was my police ride-along. My law school friend and I randomly were assigned to the same patrol, West Harlem on a Friday night. The cops we rode with thought it was really funny to have two young Harvard Law School students with them that night, so they decided to show us a good time.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 23, 2016 10 Comments
Because yesterday was mostly a travel day for me, I missed the 36th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, the 1980 U.S. defeat of the Soviet Union in Olympic ice hockey. Most people think it was the finals, but it actually was the semi-finals. The U.S. went on to defeat Finland for the gold. For me it holds a very special memory, even though I didn't watch the game live. I was a student in Moscow at the time, living in a large dorm just inside the city limits, on the last Metro stop before the ring road. I studied at the Pushkin Russian Language Institute, which trained foreigners to become Russian language teachers, the theory being that the adoption of English as the international language was harmful to Soviet interests. I had no intention of becoming a Russian language teacher, but the experience was unique.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 22, 2016 8 Comments
Being a big fan of Game of Thrones, I am really looking forward to the season 6 premier of the hit HBO series. Saturday night, I couldn't help but compare the end of Governor Jeb Bush's campaign to the unexpected loss of key characters that regularly occurs during episodes of the show. Apparently, I am not the only fan following Election 2016 closely. It seems some clever video creator merged current primary leader Donald Trump's statements into carefully selected scenes. The result is pure comedy gold. We get a review in Trumps's own words about the importance of building the wall, protecting citizens from Muslim terrorists, the art of the deal, the usefulness of waterboarding, and the recent exchange with Pope Francis.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 22, 2016 11 Comments
The Democratic Party's acceptance of socialism isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, we've documented it on this blog many times. Now Politico is reporting a new poll which confirms that most Democrats are fine with this:
Poll: Majority of Democrats say socialism has 'positive impact' The term ‘socialist’ once was used as an epithet in American politics. Perhaps no more. In a year in which Bernie Sanders, a self-described ‘Democratic Socialist,’ is running a competitive primary campaign for the White House, a new survey finds that a healthy portion of Democratic primary voters are favorably inclined toward socialism.
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