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December 2016

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 15, 2016 24 Comments
Despite Merkel government’s all-out effort to prevent the breakdown of law and order in German cites ahead of the New Year’s Eve, wide cracks are appearing in country's police preparedness. What reads much like a dispatch from a lost battlefront, the union of police officers in the eastern German state of Thuringa has penned an open letter describing the dire state of affairs amid an unstoppable migrant crime wave. “[You] are abandoning us to a superior force,” says the desperate note addressed to Interior Minister of Thuringa.
Time and again representatives of the police union have pointed out the dramatic consequences to the politicians and higher authorities, the letter further says, (Quote) “But what changes? Nothing. One instead gets a sense of disinterest.”  [Author's translation]

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 15, 2016 12 Comments
This Insurrectionist has been monitoring Morning Joe since its inception. But perhaps never in the ensuing nine years has there been a segment quite so somber as the one that led Wednesday's show. The subject was Aleppo, the images were horrific, and the accusation laid at the feet of President Obama, the Western allies and the UN was that their inaction has led to the slaughter of countless thousands. The segment opened with a statement at the UN by US Ambassador Samantha Power condemning Assad, Russia and Iran. But as Joe Scarborough observed: "those were damning, damning words. But they were damning words of the Obama administration." Scarborough was referring to the fecklessness of the Unites States in the face of the slaughter. Scarborough chillingly reported that "you actually have mothers going to priests saying will God forgive me if I kill my child so ISIS doesn't torture them when they get them and kill them?"

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2016 9 Comments
I appeared on the Mark Levin radio show on Wednesday night, December 14, 2016, to talk about my post, VIDEO: Activists manipulate third-graders into hating Israel. Video of the event is at the link above, which also has extensive background. The short version is that Ariel Gold from Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace arranged for Bassem Tamimi to appear before the third grade classes at an elementary school in Ithaca, NY. Tamimi is best known for using children, including his own, to confront Israeli soldiers in the hope of creating viral photos and videos. Tamimi urged the children to become activists and "freedom fighters for Palestine."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2016 22 Comments
Things just keep getting worse for Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison in his quest to become Democratic National Committee Chair. Today only brought more bad news for Ellison. Ellison’s past decade-long support for Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, his suggestion of dual loyalty from American Jews when speaking at a fundraiser for Muslim leaders, and his cozy relationship with some of the worst pro-BDS, anti-Israel groups, has disrupted what seemed like a clear trajectory to DNC Chair. And then Obama-Biden sent signals they were encouraging Labor Secretary Tom Perez to seek the position. The accumulation of controversies threatened Ellison's DNC bid with a political death spiral.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 14, 2016 29 Comments
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke as his Secretary of the Interior. The former U.S. Navy SEAL commander has often found himself at odds with environmentalists, which means he could possibly "reverse environmental policies the Obama administration has pursued over the past eight years." The Washington Post reported:
Zinke recently criticized an Interior Department rule aimed at curbing inadvertent releases of methane from oil and gas operations on federal land as “duplicative and unnecessary.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2016 1 Comment
The prosecution of Rasmea Odeh started out quite simply. Rasmea signed a naturalization form that denies she "EVER" (bold and CAPS in original) was convicted or imprisoned. That was a lie. Rasmea was convicted in 1970 in Israel of the 1969 bombing of a supermarket in Jerusalem in which two students were killed, and attempted bombing of the British Consulate. In the first trial, the judge did not allow Rasmea to relitigate the Israeli conviction with good reason -- whether the conviction was correct or not, the conviction and subsequent imprisonment were facts that had to be disclosed in response to the questions. The questions did not ask whether Rasmea "justly" or "rightly" or "fairly" was convicted or imprisoned, so the propriety of the conviction was not legally relevant.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 14, 2016 24 Comments
This little bill flew under the radar, didn't it? While the Democrats deal with infighting and President-elect Donald Trump chooses his Cabinet, the House of Representatives quietly passed H.R. 4919, also known as Kevin and Avonte's Law. This law allows the attorney general to hand over money to local law enforcement agencies to develop human tracking devices:
The programs mission would to find “individuals with forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s Disease, or children with developmental disabilities, such as autism, who have wandered from safe environments.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on December 14, 2016 7 Comments
There are significant updates to the lawsuits against the EPA related to the Gold King Mine spill that released millions of gallons of wastewater into the Animas River. The first development is that the Navajo Nation has filed a claim seeking more than $160 million from the federal government for damages.
Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch said in the release that the spill transformed the river from a "life-giver and protector" to a "threat" to the Navajo people, crops and animals.

Posted by New Neo on December 14, 2016 8 Comments
German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently suggested the banning in Germany of the full-face veil. The idea that a Western country such as Germany might have a right to make such laws, and to do so with motives other than racism, has certainly not been universally accepted. For example, a few days later this editorial about Merkel's statement appeared in BloombergView:
Now, elections are coming up in Germany, and Merkel rightly wants to deny support to the far-right AfD party, whose anti-immigrant thinking is driven not by prudence but by outright racism. In response, Merkel’s newly hardened position is both weak on the merits and plain bad tactics.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2016 54 Comments
The Electoral College meets December 19, and Democrats are increasing their attempt to steal the election by getting Electors to vote contrary to the vote in their states even if bound by state law. Prof. Lawrence Lessig, one of the first to call for the Electors to go rogue, claims 20 Republican Electors are ready to jump ship, about half of the 38 needed. Politico reports:
Larry Lessig, a Harvard University constitutional law professor who made a brief run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, claimed Tuesday that 20 Republican members of the Electoral College are considering voting against Donald Trump, a figure that would put anti-Trump activists more than halfway toward stalling Trump’s election.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 14, 2016 1 Comment
Some feuds die hard. Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann have one going back to at least 2008, with another flare-up in 2012. Scarborough's got the bigger mic now, and he wielded it on today's Morning Joe to mercilessly mock Olbermann as someone suffering from delusions of Nazi tomatoes that talk to him. The context was Mika Brzezinski role-playing Rex Tillerson being questioned during his Senate confirmation hearing. Joe played the committee chairman, but couldn't help himself from launching into an Olby impression, with his trademark "Sirrr!", then riffing "you do know that he calls tomatoes, that he thinks are staring ominously at him, Nazis? You know he does that? . . . Because they keep talking to him in German. The tomatoes in his kitchen. It really disturbs him."
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