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August 2016

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 29, 2016 12 Comments
Wild-haired comedic genius, Gene Wilder, passed away Sunday night at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. Wilder was known for his leading roles in classics like "Young Frankenstein", "Blazing Saddles", "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and many more. From the New York Times:
Eric Weissmann, who was Mr. Wilder’s lawyer for many years, confirmed the death. A nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said that the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Wilder’s rule for comedy was simple: Don’t try to make it funny; try to make it real. “I’m an actor, not a clown,” he said more than once.

Posted by Taryn O'Neill on August 29, 2016 103 Comments
State legislators from across the country will meet in for a simulated Article V convention of the states for the purpose of proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The gathering, hosted by Citizens for Self-Governance, will take place next month in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia and will be the first-ever test run of an actual Article V convention. As explained earlier, Article V details two processes for amending the U.S. Constitution. The first requires congress write and propose an amendment that is then sent to the states for a ratification vote. The second process requires two-thirds of the state legislatures submit applications for a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments. The applications must specify an amendment subject matter or matters. Should two-thirds of the states submit applications pertaining to the same subject matter, an Article V convention of the states is called.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 29, 2016 17 Comments
Huma Abedin, the top aide to Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has announced she's leaving her husband Anthony Weiner after The New York Post revealed he's still sexting other women. https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/770279919263907840

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 29, 2016 13 Comments
Mylan received massive backlash after it hiked the price of their EpiPen, a life saving allergy shot. At first the company said it would offer the medicine at a discount price, but now it has taken it a step further by offering a generic version. But is it enough? The name brand costs $600, but Mylan only cut the price of the generic to $300, which is still a lot for a two pack.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 29, 2016 2 Comments
On Tuesday, voters will decide if former DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is worthy enough to advance to the election in November after a summer filled with controversy. She came under fire this summer when "leaked emails showed that staffers at her organization appeared to be plotting ways to undermine the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)." She resigned as chairwoman on the eve of the DNC.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on August 29, 2016 17 Comments
One of my favorite articles not published at LI this year is the New York Times piece flummoxed by and bemoaning the fact that Obama's calls for gun control go nowhere and serve only to increase gun sales. Here's an excerpt:
More guns were sold in December [2015] than almost any other month in nearly two decades, continuing a pattern of spikes in sales after terrorist attacks and calls for stricter gun-buying laws, according to federal data released in January. The heaviest sales last month, driven primarily by handgun sales, followed a call from President Obama to make it harder to buy assault weapons after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 29, 2016 31 Comments
One week ago, a Twitter war erupted between Donald Trump and the hosts of Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Whereas the pair had been among the first in the media to take Trump's chances seriously, in recent times they had become very critical of the Republican candidate. On August 22nd, Trump tweeted that Mika was a "neurotic and not very bright mess!" He also threatened to some day tell the "real story" of Joe and Mika, whom he described as Scarborough's "long-time girlfriend." Scarborough responded with tweets telling Trump to "look in the mirror" if looking for someone who's "neurotic and not very bright." Scarborough added that the show was enjoying its best ratings ever "thanks to obsessed fans like you!"

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2016 26 Comments
The NY Times has a story on how Breitbart News has become a center of political attention this year, and how its traffic and influence is at an all time high. That was the focus of the article, but there was one paragraph that jumped out at me (emphasis added):
Before Mr. Breitbart died, the site had gained notoriety by championing the Tea Party movement and publicizing an undercover video that led to the closing of Acorn, the community organizing group. It also posted misleading footage of Shirley Sherrod, a black Department of Agriculture official, who was fired for seeming to express resentment toward a white farmer; the White House later apologized.
This is not the first time the NY Times has made this accusation. In a 2014 article about Breitbart News, the Times wrote;
At times Breitbart’s attack-the-enemy approach to journalism has landed the news operations in hot water. In 2010, for example, it was criticized for editing a video to make Shirley Sherrod, a former Agriculture Department official, appear to be making racist remarks about white people. The full video showed that she did not.
Wrong. False. Either ignorant or malicious.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 28, 2016 16 Comments
Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe appeared on Meet the Press and while commenting on Donald Trump, described him as a psychopath. Even Chuck Todd, who's not known as a right leaning pundit felt that was a little much. Politico reports:
Plouffe: 'We have a psychopath running for president' President Barack Obama's former campaign manager on Sunday called Donald Trump "a psychopath."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2016 9 Comments
We have written numerous times about the suicide bombing of the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001, which killed 15 people, including two Americans and several children. Most recently Miriam Elman documented the bombing and the mastermind, Ahlam Tamimi, Never forget: Sbarro Pizzeria Massacre, Jerusalem, Aug. 9, 2001. Ahlam not only masterminded the bombing, she announced it on Palestinian television as a student news show host. [caption id="attachment_182024" align="alignnone" width="600"][Ahlam Tamimi announcing Sbarro Pizzeria bombing 2001, via Hot House film] [Ahlam Tamimi announcing Sbarro Pizzeria bombing 2001, via Hot House film][/caption]Ahlam is from the Tamimi Clan of Nabi Saleh, whose best known member is Bassem Tamimi, controversial for his use of children for try to provoke confrontations with the Israeli police for the purpose of obtaining viral video and images. The Tamimi Clan is treated as heroes by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and by anti-Zionist leftists (including some Jews).  Ahlam, who was released from prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange and now resides in Jordan, remains a "much-loved" figure in Nabi Saleh.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on August 28, 2016 24 Comments
Back in May, I wrote about Harry Reid being "fairly certain" that Democrats can retake the Senate this year.  He has reason to be fairly certain in part because Republicans are defending far more Senate seats than Democrats: "Democrats need five Senate seats to retake the Senate, and while it’s not a lock, things don’t look good for Republicans who are defending 24 seats to the Democrats’ 10." Watch Bret Baier's overview: With the Senate hanging by a thread this November and the high stakes involved in losing it to the Democrats, we've been paying close attention to the Senate races across the country. The Florida primaries are on Tuesday, and judging by the way Marco Rubio (R) and Patrick Murphy (D) are running their campaigns, they are each confident they will win their respective races.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 28, 2016 10 Comments
The Terminator is an iconic film that helped propel former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stardom. The movie is also a basis for discussion about the future of military weaponry, as Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, uses the film as reference in describing autonomous weaponry systems that could be developed in the next decade.
The nation’s second-highest ranking military officer believes that our adversaries may try to build completely autonomous “Terminator”-like systems that can conduct lethal operations on the battlefield. “I don’t think it’s impossible that somebody will try to build a completely autonomous system, and I’m not talking about something like a cruise missile … or a mine that requires a human to target it and release it and it goes and finds its target,” Selva told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. when asked about such capabilities. “I’m talking about a wholly robotic system that decides whether or not, at the point of decision, it’s going to do lethal ops.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 28, 2016 7 Comments
In the last Zika update I filed for Legal Insurrection, I noted 4 Floridians were determined to have been infected with Zika locally (most probably by mosquito bites). Now it anticipated that there will be up to 400 non-travel Zika cases in Florida by mid-September.
Locally transmitted Zika cases in Florida could reach 400 by summer’s end, projections released Tuesday by a team of American biostatisticians suggests. Researchers project the virus will also spread to other Southern states, including Texas, South Carolina and Oklahoma. “It wasn’t clear at first whether mosquito densities were high enough to sustain an outbreak in the U.S.,” Dr. Ira Longini, a biostatistics professor at the University of Florida and a senior researcher at UF’s Emerging Pathogen Institute, said in a news release. That all changed when Zika began being transmitted in Miami, where officials had reported 37 non-travel-related Zika cases as of Monday. On Tuesday, that number rose to 41, consisting of four new cases in South Florida and one in the Tampa, Florida, area.
The rate of spread of Zika through the Sunshine State could be increased by storms projected to hit its shores through hurricane season.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 28, 2016 50 Comments
A Harvard psychiatrist who works at Mass General Hospital is claiming that half of all college students have some sort of mental disorder. While this goes a long way towards explaining some of the campus behavior we've documented over the last few years, it also serves as just another excuse to treat college students like victims. CBS News in Boston reports:
New Concerns Arise About Mental Health Of College Students New concerns arise about the mental health of students on college campuses all across the country. Dr. Gene Beresin, a psychiatrist and Executive Director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital, says 50% to 60% of college students have a psychiatric disorder.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 27, 2016 19 Comments
Marc Lamont Hill is a professor at Morehouse College, frequent cable news commentator, and host of his own shows on BET and VH1. Lamont Hill has voiced support for "revolutionary struggle" against Israel, which he recorded on a video for a Dream Defenders trip to express solidarity with Palestinians against Israel: Lamont Hill also is a supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, specifically the academic boycott of Israel. This spring Lamont Hill announced that he was voting in favor of a resolution at the American Anthropological Association to boycott Israeli academia under the expansive guidelines of the BDS movement. The boycott failed to pass by a very slim margin.
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