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October 2016

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 04, 2016 41 Comments
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Federal agents have persuaded police officers to scan license plates to gather information about gun-show customers, government emails show, raising questions about how officials monitor constitutionally protected activity." The activity revealed in the emails suggests that the known incidents are limited to border control and occurred in California in 2010. The WSJ continues:
Emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crafted a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers—devices that record the plate numbers of all passing cars—at gun shows in Southern California, including one in Del Mar, not far from the Mexican border. Agents then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation. The investigative tactic concerns privacy and guns-rights advocates, who call it an invasion of privacy. The law-enforcement officials say it is an important and legal tool for pursuing dangerous, hard-to-track illegal activity.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 04, 2016 9 Comments
Reuters has reported that Yahoo! secretly scanned customers' emails on behalf of the NSA and the FBI. The company even "built a custom software program" to monitor the emails for specific information:
Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time. It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 04, 2016 5 Comments
In September, we noted that Avengers writer Joss Whedon gathered a few of his celebrity friends and produced "Save the Day” as a way to encourage people to show up at the polls come Election Day. While it was not hard to see the production as pro-Clinton, a group of talented deplorable citizens gathered together to make the best political ad to date in response the glitterati's pleas.

Posted by Miriam Elman on October 04, 2016 3 Comments
Last month, Syracuse University (SU) made headlines when a faculty member in the Religious Studies Department dis-invited an award-winning Israeli NYU Professor and filmmaker from a campus event out of fear of offending the political sensibilities of her BDS-supporting colleagues (see our prior posts covering the story). At the time, pro-BDS faculty signed a petition (subsequently posted onto Facebook) denying that any pressure to disinvite the filmmaker had existed and expressing their commitment to free speech and academic freedom. But now many of these same professors, keen on moving the campus in a BDS direction, are making demands that call into question this articulated devotion to a campus community open to free expression.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 04, 2016 16 Comments
A male student at Brown University was accused of sexual misconduct and some students led a pressure campaign on the judge to find him guilty. Luckily, the judge resisted and drew his conclusions based on the facts. The Washington Post reported:
Judge reinstates Brown Univ. student accused of sexual misconduct, blasts ‘organized’ pressure to get him not to A federal judge has reinstated a Brown University student after finding that the Ivy League school in Providence, R.I., improperly judged him responsible for sexual misconduct.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 04, 2016 20 Comments
Republicans have fought against Obamacare from the beginning, but now Democrats have started to pile on. President Bill Clinton recently lashed out at the system at a rally in Michigan:
“You’ve got this crazy system where all the sudden 25 million more people have healthcare and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” Clinton said. “It’s the craziest thing in the world,” he said.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 04, 2016 23 Comments
The Republican National Committee has filed a complaint with the D.C. Bar against Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills due to her connections to Hillary's email scandal:
Ms. Mills – an attorney admitted to the D.C. Bar on October 30, 1991 – has been serving as Secretary Clinton’s attorney in connection to the email investigation. In this capacity, Ms. Mills was present during Secretary Clinton’s interview by F.B.I. agents in July 2016. The District of Columbia’s Rules of Professional Conduct strictly prohibit a lawyer from accepting employment in connection with a matter the lawyer “participated personally and substantially as a public officer or employee.” This is an “absolute disqualification” that “carries forward a policy of avoiding both actual impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.”

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on October 04, 2016 10 Comments
Before the Obamas could even move out of the White House at the end of the term, the president's legacy is unveiling itself across the Muslim World. From Mediterranean Sea to Persian Gulf, the forces of Radical Islam continue to score one triumph after another. Once reduced to hunted fugitives by President George W. Bush's military campaign of 2001, the emboldened Taliban fighters have once again raised the Islamist battle cry of 'Allahu Akbar' as they embark on a nationwide offensive to wrestle back control of Afghanistan. Taliban fighters have captured most of central Kunduz city, a strategically important city some 200 miles north-west of Afghan capital of Kabul, claims French news agency AFP. French television channel France24 showed footage of Taliban fighters in the centre of the city after having run over the city's defences -- before one could say Afghan National Army. Government forces still control the city's airport and started preparations to repel the Taliban out of Kunduz, French report claims.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 04, 2016 5 Comments
Joe Scarborough was probably just trying to make the point that Donald Trump is very unpopular with black voters, but he wound up saying something that some might view as insulting to African-Americans. Interviewing Al Sharpton on today's Morning Joe, he asked about the Rev's view that Hillary has not been doing enough to appeal to black voters. As Sharpton prefaced his remarks by observing that Hillary is way ahead of Trump among black voters, Scarborough interjected "my dog's way ahead of Trump among black voters." It's amusing to watch the video: as Joe gets to the end of his statement, it seems to dawn on him that he's wandered down a dangerous path, but by then it's too late so he plows ahead!

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 04, 2016 11 Comments
It looks like putting the left wing Syriza Party in control of Greece hasn't changed much. The country is still broke, still struggling to make cuts and there is still unrest. In fact, recent pension cuts nearly led to rioting. The Telegraph UK reports:
Greek police pepper spray protesting pensioners Greek police on Monday fired pepper spray at pensioners protesting against cuts in their state income. Thousands of pensioners responded to a protest call by the communist opposition and tensions increased as their protest march approached the prime minister's residence.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 03, 2016 23 Comments
Who's the horror movie figure that keeps on popping up just when you think you've killed him? That's pretty much the nature of the anti-conservative witch hunt carried out under Wisconsin's so-called John Doe law. Every time the investigation seemed to be beat, the investigating prosecutors would rear their ugly heads. There was John Doe No. 1, investigating Scott Walker's time as Milwaukee County Executive. They never came up with any wrongdoing by him. Then there was John Doe No. 2, regarding Walker's alleged unlawful collusion with conservative groups during the recall election. It is John Doe No. 2 that has generated litigation over the past three years. In the end, every court that ruled on the issue found that the entire prosecution legal theory was legally unfounded -- that even if these conservative groups did what they were alleged to have done, it was constitutionally protected speech and not illegal. Lives were ruined over an attempt to punish constitutionally protected speech by conservatives. We have several dozen posts about the history of John Doe No. 2 . Scroll through our John Doe (WI) tag. The investigation was revealed in The Wall Street Journal on November 18, 2013, Wisconsin Political Speech Raid - Subpoenas hit allies of Scott Walker as his re-election campaign looms:
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