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April 2016

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 15, 2016 26 Comments
Student protesters at Ohio State University recently learned a valuable lesson. Mainly because the administration drew a line in the sand and told them calmly that if they persisted, they would be arrested and possibly expelled. The way it was handled was brilliant. An administrator explained to the students that the people who work in the building they were occupying deserve to feel safe too, a concept which blew their minds. The Atlantic reported:
Ohio State Turns the Concept of 'Safe Space' Against Student Protesters At Ohio State last week, a sit-in and protest inside a university building was cut short when students were warned that they would be forcibly removed by police, arrested, and possibly expelled if they did not vacate the premises within a few hours, by 5 a.m.

Posted by Miriam Elman on April 14, 2016 6 Comments
Twelve years ago President George W. Bush delivered a two-page letter to the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The exchange took place at a White House press conference on April 14, 2004. [caption id="attachment_168208" align="alignnone" width="595"]President George W. Bush and PM Ariel Sharon, Cross Hall, White House press conference, April 14, 2004 | credit: White House archives President George W. Bush and PM Ariel Sharon, Cross Hall, White House press conference, April 14, 2004 | credit: White House archives[/caption]

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 14, 2016 136 Comments
As Professor Jacobson blogged yesterday, reports suggested the Florida prosecutor would not be filing charges against Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, for the alleged assault of former Breitbart News reporter, Michelle Fields. The backstory on that dramatic saga here.

Posted by Sarah Rumpf on April 14, 2016 20 Comments
When the Texas Legislature passed a campus carry bill during the 2015 legislative session, part of the law allowed the state's universities to create rules designating certain areas of campus to remain gun-free, as long as those rules were not thwarting the law's goals and making it impossible to carry a gun on campus. Texas A&M University (TAMU)  announced its proposed rules for carrying guns on the campuses within the TAMU system on Wednesday, providing very few restrictions other than honoring existing private contracts and specifically identified safety issues. The sharp contrast with how the issue has been handled at TAMU and at the University of Texas at Austin illustrates many of the divisions in the gun control debate.

What Texas' campus carry law actually does

Posted by Taryn O'Neill on April 14, 2016 20 Comments
A career U.S. naval officer with an extensive background in signals intelligence has been accused of mishandling and passing on sensitive information to the Chinese and Taiwanese governments. A charge sheet released Friday revealed that Lt. Cmdr. Edward C. Lin, 39, faces several counts of espionage and attempted espionage "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign nation." A native of Taiwan, Lin moved to the United States with his parents at age 14. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1999 after being naturalized as a citizen that same year.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 14, 2016 21 Comments
Energy company and fossil-fuel provider Exxon Mobil is the Jupiter of American business. It's so large, it's gravitational pull attracts Obama Administration strikes to promote wealth-distributing "climate change" policies and otherwise undermine the American economy. Earlier this week, I noted that one of Exxon Mobil's allies in the quest for sensible science regulation (the Competitive Enterprise Institute) was subpoenaed by the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands for correspondence related to its two decades worth of work on climate change and energy policy...including private donor information. Attorney General Claude E. Walker is one of the 17 "AGs for Clean Power" who have colluded to punish "climate change deniers" using civil racketeering statutes.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on April 14, 2016 7 Comments
Infiltration of German Army by Islamic State (ISIS) and other Jihadists has reached an alarming level, German media reports suggest. Some 29 former German Army soldiers have joined the ranks of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, reveals a newly surfaced German military intelligence report. Additionally, the military is investigating 65 suspected jihadist serving as active duty German soldiers. According to German newspaper Handelsblatt, since 2007 German Military Counter-Intelligence Agency (MAD) has investigated 320 active duty soldiers for having suspected links to Jihadist circles. The newspaper also confirmed that until recently no backgrounds checks were done on soldiers handling sensitive combat equipment. The screening was only limited to soldiers accessing classified material. German government is trying to downplay the level of Islamist infiltration of country’s defense establishment. According to Parliament's commissioner for the military, Hans-Peter Bartels, there is no clear evidence of ‘Islamist organisation attempting to systematically infiltrate’ the German military.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2016 10 Comments
Steven Salaita, you may recall, was the controversial anti-Israel professor whose hate-tweeting caused the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to decline to hire him for a tenured position. The University asserted that Salaita only had a contingent offer subject to Board approval, and that approval never happened. Salaita is active in the Boycott Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement and literally wrote a handbook for faculty to use to spread BDS within universities. There was rich irony in the person who sought a worldwide boycott of Israeli academics complaining when he allegedly was boycotted for his noxious views which played upon historical anti-Semitic stereotypes: https://twitter.com/stevesalaita/status/486703517751869440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Even a faculty supporter of Salaita, Prof. Feisal Mohamed, wrote (emphasis added):

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 14, 2016 15 Comments
Vladimir Putin is acting out aggressively again. On Tuesday, Russian military jets flew extraordinarily close to a U.S. Navy ship in the Baltic Sea. This wasn't an isolated incident, either. According to various reports, the Russians carried out this maneuver multiple times over two days and American defense experts are stunned. This report from the Military Times puts the incident in perspective:
Russian attack aircraft just flew within 30 feet of a U.S. Navy ship In one of the most aggressive actions in recent memory, Russian warplanes conducted “simulated attacks” on the a U.S. Navy vessel in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, repeatedly flying within 30 feet of the ship, according to a defense official.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 101 Comments
Back to the Corey Lewandowski saga and his grab of Michelle Fields. Politico reports that the local prosecutor will not pursue the case despite a finding of probable cause by the police:
A Florida prosecutor has decided not to prosecute Donald Trump’s campaign manager for battery after a March run-in with former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, sources with knowledge of the situation told POLITICO. The decision not to press charges against Corey Lewandowski is scheduled to be announced on Thursday afternoon by Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 77 Comments
Donald Trump inexplicably waited until YESTERDAY to name a State Political Director in California. The California primary on June 7 could determine whether Trump reaches the magic 1237 majority delegate number prior to the July convention. By all reports, Cruz is far ahead in the ground game in California, which awards delegates not only on the statewide vote but also by congressional district. Even if Trump wins the state, he may underperform in enough congressional districts due to Cruz's superior campaign preparation that Trump is stopped short. Or he may fail to file delegate slates in all districts. Erick Erickson reports:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 13, 2016 5 Comments
Last week, General Electric's CEO swatted back at Bernie Sanders' suggestion that his company was, “destroying the moral fabric” of America. “We’ve never been a big hit with socialists," wrote CEO Jeffrey Immelt. Sanders' accusations were made during a disastrous interview with the New York Daily News. Wednesday, Verizon's CEO also responded to Sanders. On LinkedIn, Lowell McAdam wrote, "Verizon is in Sanders’s bull’s-eye, as well. The senator’s uninformed views are, in a word, contemptible. Here’s why."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 16 Comments
In December 2013, we reported on how a Utah federal judge strikes down key part of anti-polygamy law in a challenge by the  Brown family of "Sister Wives" TV fame:
The legalization of polygamy followed logically from the legal arguments against one man-one woman, as was predicted not just by me, but also by Professor Martha Nussbaum, one of the leading legal advocates for gay marriage, “Polygamy would have to be permitted.” And it’s coming true in a small step, as a federal court in Utah, while not holding that polygamists were entitled to state-sanctioned civil marriage, nonetheless struck portions of Utah’s anti-polygamy laws banning polygamous “cohabitation” and polygamous “purported” marriages. The full decision is embedded at the bottom of the post....

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 13, 2016 24 Comments
Last month, we interviewed children's authoress, Amelia Hamilton. Her reimagined renditions of well-loved fairy tales, published by the National Rifle Association, have raised more than a few eyebrows. In Hamilton's versions, the characters, like Red Riding Hood, are armed. The result? Granny doesn't get eaten, and everyone lives happily ever after. With outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Daily Show picking up her stories, Hamilton received more than her fair share of hate. All too obvious is that the haters never read the fairy tales in their newly armed glory before responding to them.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2016 4 Comments
A day ago I started seeing some incoming traffic from the website of Samantha Bee, former Daily Show member who now has her own show, Full Frontal. The links were coming to this post by Anne from 2012, Occupy Chicago activist claims to be person taunting homeless man at Chick-fil-A protest:
Yesterday, I posted a video of a group of Chick-fil-A “Kiss-In” protesters mocking an elderly homeless street preacher in Chicago on Friday evening. Many commenters have asked for additional information about the man and the scene....
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