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June 2017

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 19, 2017 2 Comments
We at Legal Insurrection have covered the atrocities in Turkey, which include crackdowns by those whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan deem a threat to his authority. Last July, Erdogan blamed a failed "coup" on his nemesis Fethullah Gülen. He went on a rampage and arrested anyone he considered an ally of Gülen, including numerous journalists. A year later, 17 of these journalists will stand trial on Monday.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 19, 2017 12 Comments
Jon Ossoff has some things going for him in tomorrow's special congressional election in Georgia. He's raised a ton more money than his Republican opponent, and the race does appear to have become a referendum on President Trump in a district Trump carried by only 1% in November. But one thing Ossoff has going against him: his persona doesn't fit this Southern, suburban district. That was the consensus of today's Morning Joe panel. Even former Obama spokesman Josh Earnest [now an MSNBC analyst] conceded that, for this district, Ossoff is not a candidate "from Central Casting."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 19, 2017 16 Comments
President Trump has faced many opponents during his quest for the White House and the early days of his administration. However, no group seems to be as powerful as the judiciary when it comes to gutting his policies. Legal Insurrection readers will recall that one of Trump's first acts as President was signing the executive order to move forward with the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines. The good news is that the Dakota Access Pipeline began shipping oil on June 1.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 18, 2017 14 Comments
(This post will be "sticky" for a while.) It's that time of year when we ask readers to help keep us doing what we do. For those of you who are relatively new here, our 7th Anniversary post has a pretty good history of Legal Insurrection. In our 8th Anniversary post, a month before the 2016 election, I got all philosophical about the potential threats to our liberty regardless of who won.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 18, 2017 18 Comments
If you're wondering why President Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos needs millions of dollars in security, this is one of the reasons. DeVos is trying to make improvements in her department but is being predictably cast as someone who doesn't care about civil rights. Erica L. Green writes at the New York Times:
Education Dept. Says It Will Scale Back Civil Rights Investigations The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation’s public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 18, 2017 53 Comments
A U. S. Navy fighter jet shot down a Syrian Su-22 fighter-bomber following an attack on U. S.-led coalition forces in Syria. This story is just breaking, so we will have more as it becomes known. Fox News reports:
U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down a Syrian government warplane after it attacked Washington-backed fighters near ISIS' de facto capital of Raqqa, the U.S.-led coalition said Sunday. In a statement, the coalition said its aircraft "conducted a show of force" to turn back an attack by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's forces on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the town of Ja'Din, south of Tabqah.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 18, 2017 14 Comments
As we approach the 150 day mark for President Donald Trump's first term, I thought in might be useful to have a retrospective post about how the American press has presented his record, outside of Twitter, Russia and Comey hearings...and highlight some of his underreported victories. Professor Jacobson so noted, the news cycle is essentially over for the assassination attempt on the Republican congressional baseball team. To be sure, if the Democratic congressional representatives had been targeted (and the assassin found with a list of Democratic targets in his pocket), this would have been "top of the fold" for many more weeks to come.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 18, 2017 82 Comments
In the wake of the Scalise shooting, Fareed Zakaria hosted a segment on his CNN show this morning devoted to addressing how Republicans and Democrats can stop their "internecine struggle" and "reconcile." Two of the guests bought into the premise, discussing the challenges involved and possible approaches to reconciliation. But the third guest, Jill Abramson, who was fired in 2014 as executive editor of the New York Times, was having none of the kumbaya. To the contrary, she decried a supposed "false equivalency" between Democrats and Republicans. Abramson put the blame on Republicans for the divisive political climate and accused them of "benefiting from a kind of rage machine that operates in this country."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 18, 2017 2 Comments
Public outrage has forced the leading German broadcaster ARD to air the Antisemitism documentary that had previously been censored. The 90-minute documentary, commissioned by the French-German TV network ARTE and Germany’s WDR -- both funded by the German government, had previously been shelved. The film highlights the prevailing Antisemitism in Europe’s growing Muslim population and exposes European and Germany government's financing of antisemitic and anti-Israel groups posing as charities and NGOs.
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