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April 2016

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 25, 2016 18 Comments
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is facing a corruption scandal that has Michael Goodwin at the New York Post announcing that the mayor is "going down." Goodwin writes:
Less than a week ago, Mayor de Blasio was offering aid to Ecuadorians after the earthquake there. Now a political earthquake is rocking City Hall and the mayor is the one who needs help. The report from the state Board of Elections that accuses him and his team of “willful and flagrant” violations of campaign-finance laws immediately changes everything. The veneer of business as usual is shredded. Never again can de Blasio wave off questions about the mushrooming investigations of his administration. As revelations pile up day after day, allies will desert him and the Putz will find himself a very lonely man.
The litany of scandals facing de Blasio is captured in the cover that ran with Goodwin's article:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2016 14 Comments
Marc Lamont Hill is a professor at Morehouse College and a frequent TV Commentator. He also is coming out with a new book soon on social justice in the U.S. Lamont Hill also is a big supporter of the "Ferguson to Palestine" movement which uses the doctrine of intersectionality to connect Israel to inner city and racial problem in the U.S.  The only majority Jewish state in the world is held out as the connecting force of evil in the world. We wrote about his support in January 2015, when he was part of a Dream Defenders delegation to Israel and theWest Bank, Wow, Marc Lamont Hill drank the anti-Israel Kool-Aid. For that visit, Hill included this statement in a video about the trip:
We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sisters We come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hate

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 24, 2016 13 Comments
In an appearance on FOX News Sunday today, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz dismissed Hillary Clinton's email scandal and the ongoing FBI investigation as a non-issue. Host Chris Wallace called her out for innacurate comparisons to other officials. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Schultz: Clinton Used Private Email The Same Way as Previous Secretaries of State … ‘Other Than the Private Server’ Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) stumbled while trying to defend Hillary Clinton’s private email troubles on Fox News Sunday, claiming Clinton used a private email the same way as previous secretaries of state “other than the private server.”

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 24, 2016 8 Comments
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot take criticism and will not tolerate dissent in Turkey . . . or, it seems, in Germany and the Netherlands. In 2014, Erdogan made international news when he ordered sweeping arrests of opposition "journalists, producers, scriptwriters, and even police chiefs" suspected of being aligned with his one of his enemies. The Clarion Project reported at the time:
Two days after Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted at a crackdown against the “evil forces” of his rival Fethullah Gulen, Turkish police embarked on a comprehensive operation to arrest prominent journalists, producers, scriptwriters and even police chiefs allegedly aligned with Gulen.
The arrests of at least 27 people—for the crime of being, as described by Erdogan, "terrorist forces" attempting to "seize control of the state"—were roundly condemned by the EU.  So much so that Erdogan felt compelled to respond, telling the EU to "mind its own business." With this background, it's not surprising that Erdogan has now had a Dutch journalist arrested for an anti-Erdogan tweet (or series of tweets).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2016 21 Comments
She's not redheaded, and she didn't demand some "muscle" to help her out. But this American University official (not clear if administrator or Prof., or both) decided to play the role of Melissa Click, threatening to call the police on Washington Examiner reporter Ashe Schow and others who were covering the progressive outrage over the appearance of Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos. Reason reports, At Milo Yiannopoulos Protest, Prof's Hassling of Journalists Backfires After She Calls Cops:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 24, 2016 24 Comments
Apparently, Pope Francis shares Obama's view of Middle Eastern Christian refugees.  Despite the State Department's reluctant statement that ISIS is committing genocide on Christians and on other Muslims throughout the Middle East, the Obama admin has been deporting and denying refuge to Middle Eastern refugees . . .  those who are Christian, that is. Pope Francis has also decided to open the Vatican exclusively to Muslim refugees. The Daily Mail reports:

A Christian brother and sister from Syria say they have been 'let down' by the Pope after he left them behind in a Lesbos refugee camp despite promises they would be given a new life in Italy.

Roula and Malek Abo say they were two of the lucky 'chosen 12' refugees selected by the Vatican to be taken from the desperate camp and housed in Rome.

But what seemed like the chance of a lifetime was cruelly snatched away when they were told the following day they couldn't go. Instead three Muslim families were taken.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 24, 2016 4 Comments
One of the perks of being a Legal Insurrection author is that sometimes someone will buy you a beer because they like the work we do here. I had a Belgian Ale yesterday afternoon with Jim Ash, a local entrepreneur and computer tech professional who is challenging a long-term Congresswoman for her seat in U.S. Congressional District 53. Jim Ash is running alongside 2 other hopefuls (Democrat Nicholas Walpert and Republican James Veltmeyer) and the currently serving representative, Susan Davis, in the June 7th primary. Because of the quirkiness of the California voting system, the two top vote-getters will go onto the November election. [caption id="attachment_169237" align="alignnone" width="452"]Congressional candidate Jim Ash and his wife, Carrie. Congressional candidate Jim Ash and his wife, Carrie.[/caption] Ash is intending to follow a citizen-oriented route to Washington D.C., which includes a lot of social media and neighborhood events to get his name and ideas before the public.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2016 8 Comments
By now, it is common for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses to interrupt speeches and chant "Long Live the Intifada." At UT-Austin, the chant was shouted by a group from the Palestine Solidarity Committee as they interrupted an event put on by the Israeli Studies Department. The group was led by law student Mohammed Nabulsi, who will be interning at "Palestine Legal," which serves as the lawfare division of the BDS movement: Similar chants we have covered at Legal Insurrection include Northeastern University, San Francisco State, City University of NY, and UC-Davis. The Intifada is the bloody campaign of terror launched by Palestinians mostly against Jewish civilians.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 23, 2016 9 Comments
A new report from the Associated Press says that a significant number of companies which paid Hillary Clinton for speeches had interests in government business. This may explain why she has been so reluctant to release her speech transcripts. Here's an excerpt from the report:
Firms that paid for Clinton speeches have US gov't interests WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2016 145 Comments
Donald Trump has a "favorability" problem. Poll after poll shows Trump doing poorly against Hillary Clinton head-to-head, perhaps reflecting Trump's historically low levels of favorability (and high levels of unfavorability) for a leading major party candidate. In response, a meme was created and spread far and wide earlier this month that Trump's favorability is no worse than Ronald Reagan at a similar point in time in his challege to Jimmy Carter. The conclusion being that if Reagan could overcome that obstacle, so can Trump. So, the theory goes, those of you Republican national convention delegates who worry about Trump being a general election disaster who could cost Republicans the presidency, House and Senate have nothing to worry about. A post by Gallup (discussed below) explains why that is not accurate, and why Trump's favorability is much worse than Reagan's. But equally important is to examine how it came about that Gallup even is discussing the issue.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 23, 2016 8 Comments
Kemberlee just reported that country’s largest health insurer will stop participating in some Obamacare markets and that 12 of 23 state exchanges have closed. Covered California, touted as the most successful state exchange, is now experiencing a significant technical glitch that is jeopardizing the health of pregnant women and their unborn children. Due to a computer error, pregnant women are dropped from their Covered California coverage when they report their condition, and are transferred automatically to Medi-Cal (which is not taken by many doctors).

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 23, 2016 11 Comments
Here at LI, we've been following with great interest the work that Judicial Watch is doing regarding Hillary Clinton's involvement in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four men—an American ambassador (Christopher Stevens), two former Navy SEALS (Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty), and one embassy aide (Sean Smith)—brutally murdered. In one such report from Judicial Watch we learned that Hillary had slept through a security meeting following the Benghazi attack, and now Judicial Watch reveals that on September 12, 2012, Hillary spoke with then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil and informed him that the terror attacks had nothing to do with the film; within days, everyone from Obama to then-U. S. ambassador the U. N. Susan Rice to Hillary herself publicly blamed the film. Judicial Watch reports:
Another piece of the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton and Benghazi fell into place this week when the State Department released to us new documents containing telephone transcripts from the evening of September 12, 2012. The documents reveal that the then-Secretary of State informed then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil that the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound the day before “had nothing to do with the film.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 23, 2016 24 Comments
Virginia's Democrat governor Terry McAuliffe just gave his party and Hillary Clinton a huge gift for the 2016 election by granting felons the right to vote. He did it by executive order to circumvent the state's Republican led legislature and claimed it was all about righting wrongs of the past. The New York Times reported:
Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Felons WASHINGTON — Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia used his executive power on Friday to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons, circumventing the Republican-run legislature. The action effectively overturns a Civil War-era provision in the state’s Constitution aimed, he said, at disenfranchising African-Americans.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 23, 2016 12 Comments
The long-running underground Hollywood conservative group, Friends of Abe, is no more. FOA announced yesterday that with the group's growth came an unsustainable infrastructure; one too cumbersome to continue without a substantive overhaul. The Guardian reported:
But on Thursday the organisation – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.
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