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March 2017

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 12, 2017 44 Comments
Elizabeth Warren knows that both Obama and Bill Clinton dismissed U.S. attorneys after taking office. Yet she's preparing to go to war over Trump doing it. Warren is just doing what she always does best. Playing to the far left base of her party. Alan Yuhas reports at The Guardian:
Elizabeth Warren says Trump pushed out prosecutors to install 'cronies' The progressive senator Elizabeth Warren accused Donald Trump of firing a prominent prosecutor to install “cronies” , warning on Sunday of “a massive fight” in the Senate over his picks for new US attorneys.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 12, 2017 41 Comments
"Repeal and replace" has been the GOP mantra since the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, was signed into law in 2010. Riding the wave of horror and outrage that inspired millions of Americans to rise up and rally, attend town halls, and become involved in the election process, the GOP has enjoyed enormous gains not only at the federal but at the state and local level across the nation.  They all understand how important this moment is to the Republican party, and they all comprehend that they have one chance to get this right. What is not clear is how much they get about the need for substantive changes to those parts of ObamaCare they can tackle with only a simple majority in the Senate.  As the prof noted, they are somewhat restricted in what they can do unilaterally; without a supermajority in the Senate, there are parts of ObamaCare that cannot be "fixed" via budget reconciliation.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 12, 2017 12 Comments
The 2016 presidential election was, by almost any measure, unconventional and unique.  The Democrats' unfathomable decision to run Hillary Clinton, a woman whose deep and abiding unpopularity among many Americans goes back to the 1990's and HillaryCare—an antipathy that resurfaced when ObamaCare became the focus of the Obama administration, will go down in history as a world-class blunder. A new study of the usefulness and effectiveness of advertising in presidential campaigns addresses the unique nature of the 2016 presidential election and offers insight into the catastrophic failure of the Democrats generally and of Hillary in particular.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 12, 2017 33 Comments
Looks like Rachel Maddow's feminist solidarity doesn't extend to Melania Trump . . . Appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this morning, did Maddow express outrage over a newspaper report on the possibility that Melania Trump had in the past worked as an "escort?" Not at all. To the contrary, Maddow described Melania's lawsuit against the newspaper involved as part of an "attack" and "assault" on the media. Maddow fretted that the media lacked the resources to "fight back."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 12, 2017 14 Comments
A diplomatic dispute between the Netherlands and Turkey has led to rioting by Turks in Rotterdam and a diplomatic crisis that could influence the Dutch elections that are just a few days away.

Thousands of Turkish immigrants rioted in the streets of Rotterdam early Sunday following the Dutch government's decision to bar two Turkish ministers from entering the country.

The Mayor of Rotterdam issued emergency orders late Saturday in an attempt to contain a demonstration supporting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan outside the Turkish consulate in the city which has turned into a rallying point for Turkish immigrants.

Today morning, pro-Erdogan rioters vandalised the consulate of the Netherlands in the Turkish city of Istanbul and took down the Dutch flag replacing it with a Turkish flag, French news agency AFP reports.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 11, 2017 5 Comments
I don't know Dr. Tom Taylor. But I understand his situation when he decided to attend Republican Congressman Tom Reed's town hall this morning in Ithaca, NY, where I work at Cornell Law School. In case you were unaware, Ithaca is like Berkeley, California, only smaller. Ithaca is in the NY-23 District. Reed has won in landslides the last two elections against Democratic challengers backed by national money. While no one is a sure thing, he is in a very strong position in this mostly conservative district. Ithaca is an anomaly in the District. In fact, Reed twice ran campaigns lambasting "Extreme Ithaca Liberals." This ad against Martha Robertson in 2014 irked many Ithaca progressives:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 11, 2017 5 Comments
You probably have heard the term "suicide by cop." It refers to attacks on police that are intended by the assailant to be met with deadly force. A 2014 FBI study provided this description:
Suicide by cop (SBC) is a situation where individuals deliberately place themselves or others at grave risk in a manner that compels the use of deadly force by police officers. There are many known SBC-specific risk factors, warning signs, and triggers.[1] Individuals who feel trapped, ashamed, hopeless, desperate, revengeful, or enraged and those who are seeking notoriety, assuring lethality, saving face, sending a message, or evading moral responsibility often attempt SBC.[2] In the field of suicide prevention, SBC has received little attention.
The FBI report also explained the psychological dynamic, and how it usually is not a spontaneous occurrance:

Posted by Anne Segal on March 11, 2017 42 Comments
What allegedly happened at a routine White House briefing yesterday may be the latest skirmish in the larger conflict between the D.C. insider class and outsider challengers. Tensions between legacy Washington, D.C., media and new-entrant reporters who have been granted access under the Trump Administration came to a head Friday in an alleged attack leveled at Gateway Pundit's Lucian Wintrich by Fox News Radio reporter Jon Decker. As reporters entered Friday's White House press briefing, witnesses reported that Decker loudly, and allegedly physically, accosted Wintrich personally, calling him a "Nazi," and saying of the site, "they hate blacks, Jews, and Hispanics."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 11, 2017 21 Comments
Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked all remaining Obama-appointed U. S. Attorneys to resign.  This is standard procedure when a new president enters the White House, and despite some hand-wringing from the left, is rather unremarkable.  What is raising some questions is Preet Bharara, U. S. Attorney for the southern district of New York, who met with President Trump and subsequently announced he would remain in place, has been fired in the wake of his refusal to resign as requested. The National Review explains:
In March 1993, Janet Reno began her tenure as President Bill Clinton’s attorney general by summarily firing United States attorneys for 93 of the 94 federal districts (one, Michael Chertoff, was retained in New Jersey, at the request of Democratic Senator Bill Bradley). That is more than twice as many as Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions fired on Friday.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 11, 2017 12 Comments
The Environmental Protection Agency's new chief is now on-the-record as declaring that the life-sustaining gas, carbon dioxide, is not responsible for "global warming".
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming. "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
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