Image 01 Image 03

December 2017

The government of Guatemala is going to follow the U.S. lead, and move its Embassy to Jerusalem, in recognition that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Ynet News reports:
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced in a Facebook post Sunday night his country will be transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following a conversation he had had with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in the wake of President Donald Trump's recognition of the city as Israel's capital.

There has been a quite a bit of social media debate on Melania Trump's Christmas decor this year. America's glamorous First Lady focused on the magic of the season with her arrangements.
“The White House at Christmas traditionally has been a magical place for children,” The White House Historical Association explains. Since the 1800s, the White House has been home to Christmas trees (except under conservationist Teddy Roosevelt), elaborate decorations, and many Christmas parties and festivities.

Jake Tapper of CNN is one of the few mainstream media stars who is willing to occasionally question his industry's assumption and practice journalism as opposed to simply accepting predetermined narratives. On Thursday he continued this tradition by ripping Wednesday's United Nations General Assembly vote rejecting President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, noting with a good deal of understatement that the critics of the United States had "questionable records or their own."

All of us in the Legal Insurrection family (and it is truly a family) wish you and yours the Happiest of Christmases and a wonderful holiday season. For you: our holiday memories, wishes, reflections, and thoughts.

On Christmas Eve 1944, U.S. troops were in the freezing cold of the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge, waist-high in snow. We have remembered and told that story on recent Christmas Eves: I encourage you not only to read the posts and the comments, but also the comments to our prior Facebook threads [here and here] and our current Facebook thread [here] in which people recounted their family experiences.

Legal Insurrection has posted some awesome Christmas videos over the years, and this is a great time to revisit them . . . and add a few. Music is such an integral part of the human experience, and our memories are so often connected directly to a particular tune or lyric.  A song can whisk us back in time, warm our heart, and boost our spirits.  Christmas songs, it seems to me, are among the more powerful examples of this phenomenon.

Forget UFO's!  On Friday night, SpaceX launched a satellite that lit the evening sky over Southern California, dazzling and amazing spectators in California and Arizona.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:27 p.m., was carrying 10 satellites to low-Earth orbit. The satellites will be part of a constellation operated by Iridium Communications. All 10 satellites successfully deployed, with the last one deploying about 1 hour and 12 minutes after liftoff.

It was hailed as the reunion of friends when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came calling on a historic visit to Israel in July—the first ever by a sitting Indian head of government. Media pundits in both Israel and India talked of genuine bond of friendship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his visiting Indian counterpart. The visit was heralded as the beginning of a new era of trust and friendship between the two counties. But the reality check came earlier this week, when the Indian government threw Israel under the bus at the United Nations by voting in favor of a resolution condemning the US decision to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.

Term-limited Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) cannot run for governor again, and the 2018 Florida governor's race is starting to heat up.  President Trump tweeted his support for Representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL06), saying that DeSantis would make a "GREAT" governor of Florida. While DeSantis hasn't yet entered the race, it's an open secret that he intends to do so.  DeSantis was the early fundraising front-runner in the 2016 Senate race until Senator Marco Rubio (R) announced that he was going to run again after losing the GOP presidential nomination.

The Palestinian leadership has responded furiously to President Trump’s December 6th official recognition of the obvious reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Over the past several weeks, there’ve been heated denunciations, some of which trafficked in ugly antisemitic tropes and canards; the usual Hamas-incited “days of rage”; calls for demonstrations by the Palestinian Authority (which canceled school, so young people could participate in the clashes and rioting); and over a dozen rockets shot from Gaza into Israel.