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November 2016

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 25, 2016 6 Comments
Last summer, Dylann Roof opened fire at the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, murdering nine black people during a meeting. The court started jury selection this month, but U.S. Distric Judge Richard Mark Gergel stopped the process when Roof and his defense team filed a motion "concerning the young man's competency to stand trial." A psychiatrist examined Roof and presented the findings to Judge Gergel, who released his decision today:
After carefully considering the record before the Court, the relevant legal standards, and the arguments of counsel, the Court now finds and concludes that the Defendant is competent to stand trial.

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 25, 2016 21 Comments
The Democratic Party is about to engage in a battle for its soul. Whoever wins will decide what direction the party takes over the next four to eight years. There are at least three factions fighting for control. The far left activist base which wants to become the party of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The establishment, which backed Hillary and made sure she was the 2016 nominee. And finally, people like Tim Ryan who are rightly worried about becoming a small party made up of rich coastal elites and the poor.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 25, 2016 4 Comments
The first time we wrote about Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann was in early May 2011, in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden:
Hearing the news of Osama bin Laden’s death brought forward many emotions and memories. One of those memories for me was the story of Johnny “Mike” Spann, from Winfield, Alabama, the first American killed in ... Afghanistan..., on November 25, 2001. Spann was a CIA operative, one of a small number of Americans who landed in Afghanistan, helped coordinate local forces hostile to the Taliban, and directed bombing and other military action. The story of this small band of men has been told, but not told enough.

Posted by New Neo on November 25, 2016 43 Comments
By now you probably have read the stories about how Trump called a meeting with the press, only to give them a dressing down. If you don't care all that much---well, the press certainly does. Just as an example, read this from David Remnick of the New Yorker:
The fantasy of the normalization of Donald Trump—the idea that a demagogic candidate would somehow be transformed into a statesman of poise and deliberation after his Election Day victory—should now be a distant memory, an illusion shattered. First came the obsessive Twitter rants directed at “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live.” Then came Monday’s astonishing aria of invective and resentment aimed at the media, delivered in a conference room on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower...

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 24, 2016 17 Comments
Amid the flurry of pay-to-play allegations against the Clinton Foundation, donations to the "charity" dried up over the past couple of years, and along with those, the Clintons' speaking fees also took a nosedive. The New York Post reports:
Donations to the Clinton Foundation nose-dived last year amid Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, pay-to-play allegations, internal strife and a black mark from a charity watchdog. Contributions fell by 37 percent to $108 million, down from $172 million in 2014, according to the group’s latest tax filings.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 24, 2016 22 Comments
It's as predictable as the sun rising in the east: A Democratic candidate loses the presidential election and progressives begin complaining about how the unfair Electoral College. This Thanksgiving Week, I would like to discuss how Americans everywhere should be thankful our Founding Fathers established this system by using California as an example of what would happen if the presidency rested on popular vote totals.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 24, 2016 4 Comments
Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, November 27, 2003, Giving thanks for the 'invisible hand':
Isn’t there something wondrous — something almost inexplicable — in the way your Thanksgiving weekend is made possible by the skill and labor of vast numbers of total strangers? To bring that turkey to the dining room table required the efforts of thousands of people — the poultry farmers who raised the birds, of course, but also the feed distributors who supplied their nourishment and the truckers who brought it to the farm, not to mention the architect who designed the hatchery, the workmen who built it, and the technicians who keep it running. The bird had to be slaughtered and defeathered and inspected and transported and unloaded and wrapped and priced and displayed. The people who accomplished those tasks were supported in turn by armies of other people accomplishing other tasks — from refining the gasoline that fueled the trucks to manufacturing the plastic in which the meat was packaged.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 24, 2016 0 Comments
The Arab world has taken to social media to celebrate a massive brush fire that continues to destroy northern and central Israel. The Times of Israel notes they use #israelisburning to express their joy, moving it to the third most popular hashtag in the world. https://twitter.com/semmi993/status/801847393616613376

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 24, 2016 19 Comments
At this time of year, we're bombarded with articles about "How to talk to your family about politics at Thanksgiving" and this year it seems like there have been more than usual. I guess we can chalk that up to it being such a hard fought election. Most of these articles focus on ways to diffuse tense situations and get along but Helen Ubiñas of the Philadelphia Inquirer has a different suggestion. She wants people to fight with their Trump supporting relatives. From her column:
This Thanksgiving, don't play nice with the racist, sexist, misogynist Trump voters It's been a little over a week since President-Elect Donald Trump's victory, and I'm going to ask us to stop doing something that we are hardwired to do, to reject what is arguably the human race's best trait. Adapt. We shouldn't.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on November 24, 2016 4 Comments
Something to give—surprised—thanks for this morning: an MSNBC anchor staunchly defending school choice and Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Education . . . while ably and aggressively arguing the issues with the head of America's biggest teachers' union! Stephanie Ruhle is the MSNBC anchor in question, and she took on Randi Weingarten, head of the AFT teachers' union. The topic at hand was Donald Trump's naming of school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Weingarten, acknowledging that the union is "so opposed" to DeVos, repeatedly accused Trump's pick of wanting to take a "sledgehammer" to public schools in an effort to "destabilize"them.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on November 24, 2016 11 Comments
The end is nigh for the European Union, predicts the chief architect of Brexit, Nigel Farage. Talking to an Italian TV station, the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) said, "In a few years time the European Union won’t exist.” Farage was asked about President-elect Donald Trump’s views on the E.U., Farage replied, "It doesn’t really matter," as the E.U. won't be around for long. Farage is the only European politician to have meet Trump since his election victory. The 52 year old British politician has been a lone voice calling for his country to opt-out of the Brussels Bureaucracy for most parts of the last 20 years. Once scorned and ridiculed by conservative and liberal elites alike, Farage has become a hero for various nationalist movements gaining strengthen within the E.U. member states.
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