Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

March 2017

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 19, 2017 5 Comments
A series of high profile attacks on conservative speakers on campus has created great controversy, even among many academics on the left. The scenes of physical assaults, incendiary projectiles fired at the student center, and bonfires lit at UC-Berkeley to stop an appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos’ gained media attention and raised questions about free speech on campuses. When a mob shouted down Charles Murray at Middlebury, physically assaulted his faculty host, and then jumped on and blockaded their getaway car, there was a howl of condemnation. The Middlebury incident in particular sparked much soul-searching in academia. The scenes at UC-Berkeley and Middlebury may have been shocking to many people, but not to those of us who support Israel. We have seen this movie many times before.

Posted by David Gerstman on March 19, 2017 14 Comments
Last week the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a group comprised entirely of Arab countries, issued a report accusing Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. Having a U.N. group make such an accusation was considered a major propaganda win for the anti-Israel movement. As discussed below, the report was authored by people with longstanding anti-Israel records. The report was so disgraceful in content and so obviously political in motive that by Friday the Secretary General of the UN had first disassociated himself from the report and then asked that it removed from the ESCWA's website. Also on Friday, Rima Khalaf, the Jordanian head of ESCWA resigned. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., is credited by many as working to negate this anti-Israel move. This may be a sign of a new U.S. assertiveness at the U.N.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 19, 2017 20 Comments
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is set to begin four days of confirmation hearings on Monday. The hearings will be led by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) for the majority, and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) for the minority. In other words, Republicans are in control of the process and there is little Democrats can do except bluster and try to stall. The Democratic Party left-wing base, however, doesn't appear to understand this reality. Progressives are whipping themselves into a lather on social media, convinced that Democrats can stop Gorsuch from being confirmed to replace Justice Scalia. Who knows by what mechanism they believe this possible, but they do seem to believe it.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 19, 2017 27 Comments
California has moved one step closer to becoming a sanctuary state, one in which its law enforcement agencies are prevented from cooperating with increasingly busy federal immigration agents.
With minor changes to win over moderates, a polarizing California bill to keep California’s law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal immigration agents cleared a key hurdle Monday and will head to the full Senate for a vote.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 19, 2017 12 Comments
While some of the elite Hollywood types complain about President Donald Trump's victory, others have come to embrace it and let it humble them a little. I reported about how it opened actress Jennifer Garner's eyes, but it also opened designer Tom Ford's eyes:
“Oddly, it made me want to come back even more,” Ford told Women’s Wear Daily, which reported that the designer recently bought a house in Los Angeles. “We have a tremendous number of people in this country who feel disenfranchised and clearly we are not relating to or speaking to them. I am at my core American, and it made me want to come back. It didn’t make me want to run away.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 19, 2017 17 Comments
A few, short weeks ago, I reported that President Trump's Secretary of Transportation halted the transfer of millions of dollars in funding for the California bullet train, our governor's legacy project. However, those monies were not the sole source of funding. The main source of ongoing support for the train is the income from the cap-and-trade auctions that California sponsors. It appears as if the all the air (carbon dioxide included) has gone out of the cap-and-trade market:

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 19, 2017 11 Comments
The 2020 election is still way off but Trump has already made it clear that he'd love for the Democratic Party to nominate Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Hill reports:
Trump: Elizabeth Warren running against me would be 'a dream' President Trump said in an interview broadcast Saturday night that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) launching a presidential bid against him would be "a dream come true."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 19, 2017 16 Comments
Obama, dubbed "the food stamp president," presided over an alarming increase in the number of people on food stamps:  as of 2013, there was a 70% increase from 2008 in the number of people on food stamps. Now it appears that illegal aliens, as well as legal aliens and those illegals who head households that include legal aliens, are cancelling their SNAP benefits because of their perception that being on food stamps will either draw the attention of ICE or impair their chance of becoming U. S. citizens. The Washington Post reports:
In the two months since President Trump’s inauguration, food banks and hunger advocates around the country have noted a decline in the number of eligible immigrants applying for SNAP — and an uptick in immigrants seeking to withdraw from the program.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2017 52 Comments
After the 9th Circuit refused to vacate a TRO issued by a federal judge in Washington State as to Donald Trump's first executive order, I suggested that those judicial decisions not only were legally unjustified, they presented a threat to Trump's lawful executive powers and that dropping and reworking the executive order would be a mistake:
To accept the 9th Circuit ruling is to accept that the President does not have the powers vested in him by the Constitution and Congress.
And so it came to pass, with a narrowed and reworked second executive order being enjoined by district court judges in Hawaii and Maryland. There's an interesting article at the LawFare blog, written by Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, The Revolt of the Judges: What Happens When the Judiciary Doesn’t Trust the President’s Oath. The central thesis of the post is that judicial aggressiveness towards the executive orders may reflect distrust of Trump by many in the federal judiciary. That distrust, in turn, may be leading judges to cast aside the legally required deference to the political branches that the Constitution, legislation, and Supreme Court precedent require.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2017 8 Comments
Sad news. The great Chuck Berry has died at the age of 90. I remember as a teenager listening to his records over and over and over. I think it's fair to say he was my first rock idol, even though by the time I started listening to him in the 1970s I was listening to a lot of his music from the 1950s.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 18, 2017 9 Comments
The internet exploded this week with the "news" that President Trump's budget proposal included cutting and/or completely eliminating the Meals on Wheels program.  The headlines were outrageous clickbait that had little to do with the actual budget proposal. For example, New York Magazine has an article entitled, "White House Says Cutting Meals on Wheels is 'Compassionate'," Rolling Stone has one entitled "Meals on Wheels Seniors Respond to Trump: Cut Something Else," the BBC writes that "Meals on Wheels cut back prompts backlash," and Slate declares that "Trump's budget director says Meals on Wheels sounds great but doesn't work." The problem with these and the many other such headlines is that Trump is not cutting, and is certainly not eliminating, Meals on Wheels.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 18, 2017 9 Comments
Big Bang Star Mayim Bialik has a strong response to Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour's claims that a Zionist cannot be a feminist. Sarsour's attack on Zionist feminists took place in a column in the far-left The Nation magazine, Can You Be a Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour Says No. Sarsour has generated much controversy because while she claims to be a progressive, she endorses Sharia law and has viciously attacked people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Sarsour tweeted that Ali should not even be allowed to have a vagina; that was a particularly malicious accusation given that Ali underwent female genital mutilation as a child.
MORE POSTS
Accessibility by WAH