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Author: Mike LaChance

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Mike LaChance

Mike LaChance has been covering higher education and politics for Legal Insurrection since 2012. He has also written for American Lookout, Townhall, and Twitchy.

Since 2008 he has contributed work to the Daily Caller, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, the Center for Security Policy, the Washington Free Beacon, and Ricochet.

Mike is a Generation X, New England lifer who describes his political views as conservative and libertarian.

You can find him on Twitter @MikeLaChance33

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 12, 2014 22 Comments
Even though conservative commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza has admitted wrongdoing in a case where he violated campaign finance law, many of his supporters believe he's being harshly prosecuted for political reasons. A new development in his case reported by Jonathan Stempel of Reuters seems to confirm their suspicions:
U.S. seeks up to 16 months in prison for Dinesh D'Souza The U.S. government wants conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza to be sentenced to as much as 16 months in prison, following his guilty plea to a campaign finance law violation. In a Wednesday court filing, federal prosecutors rejected defense arguments that D'Souza was "ashamed and contrite" about his crime, had "unequivocally accepted responsibility," and deserved a sentence of probation with community service. D'Souza, 53, admitted in May to illegally reimbursing two "straw donors" who donated $10,000 each to the unsuccessful 2012 U.S. Senate campaign in New York of Wendy Long, a Republican he had known since attending Dartmouth College in the early 1980s. The government said a 10- to 16-month prison sentence was appropriate for D'Souza, and necessary to deter others from abusing the election process, including "well-heeled individuals who are tempted to use their money to help other candidates."
Perhaps D'Souza should seek counsel from the disgraced 2008 Democratic Party candidate John Edwards.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 07, 2014 17 Comments
Today was Chuck Todd's first day hosting Meet the Press and he scored a sit down with Obama. When asked about his decision to play golf right after his statement on James Foley, Obama suggested he didn't anticipate the optics. Carrie Dan of NBC News reported:
Not A Natural? Obama Says Political Theater Not His Strength President Barack Obama, once mocked by his political opponents as “the biggest celebrity in the world,” told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the theater of the presidency is “not something that always comes naturally to me.” Pressed by Todd about his decision to play golf shortly after a Martha’s Vineyard press conference addressing the beheading of journalist James Foley, Obama said he “should have anticipated the optics” of hitting the links. “Part of this job is also the theater of it,” he said in the exclusive interview for NBC’s Meet the Press. “Well, it's not something that always comes naturally to me. But it matters. And I'm mindful of that.”
The president's words are inspiring mockery on Twitter.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 07, 2014 43 Comments
When you consider the disturbing number of Americans allegedly working with ISIS already, this sounds like a solid idea. Senator Cruz is going to introduce legislation next week. Mario Trujillo of The Hill reported:
Cruz: Strip citizenship from Americans in ISIS Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is slated to introduce legislation next week that would revoke the U.S. citizenship of anyone fighting or providing support to terrorist groups working to attack the United States. Cruz said he is filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act in reaction to the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It would provide another level of protection to prevent foreign fighters from re-entering the United States, he said. “Americans who choose to go to Syria or Iraq to fight with vicious ISIS terrorists are party to a terrorist organization committing horrific acts of violence, including beheading innocent American journalists who they have captured,” Cruz said in a statement. “There can be no clearer renunciation of their citizenship in the United States, and we need to do everything we can to preempt any attempt on their part to re-enter our country and carry out further attacks on American civilians.”
This is a very interesting development considering what's happening in the UK.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 06, 2014 31 Comments
Despite the high number of still unanswered questions about what happened in Benghazi, most of the media has been all too willing to ignore the story. Last night on FOX News, Bret Baier presented a special investigation called 13 Hours: The Inside Story. The title is taken from a book about what happened that night which was written by men who were there. Bret provided a preview on his blog this week:
Behind the Scenes: 13 Hours--The Inside Story I  wanted to share a few photos from my 4.5 hour interview with the men behind our special--13 Hours: The Inside Story. For the documentary, Fox News was granted exclusive access to the yet to be published book "13 HOURS: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi"  by New York Times bestselling author Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team. The book is available September 9th-- It was a pleasure getting to know these men and to hear their story--this is a firsthand account of what the annex security team witnessed and experienced in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. Their story is one you won't want to miss--they have been through a lot and say they are now as close as brothers.
Here's a promo video:

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 02, 2014 7 Comments
It's amazing what you can miss if you don't attend fundraisers for the Democratic Party. Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard tells a fascinating story about Obama at such an event in Rhode Island this weekend:
Obama: Bush-Cheney 'Security Apparatus' Makes Us 'Pretty Safe' President Barack Obama said last night at a Democratic fundraiser in Rhode Island that the terrorism from ISIS "doesn’t immediately threaten the homeland." The reason? The security measures taken by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Obama. First the president said the situation in the Middle East is "scary," according to a transcript of the event released by the White House. "I don’t have to tell you, anybody who has been watching TV this summer, it seems like it is just wave after wave ofupheaval, most of it surrounding the Middle East. You’re seeing a change in the order in the Middle East. But the old order is having a tough time holding together and the new order has yet to be born, and in the interim, it’s scary."

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 01, 2014 57 Comments
During an appearance on FOX News Sunday, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan was asked how many Americans have joined ISIS. His answer was nothing short of stunning. Ian Tuttle of National Review has the details:
House Intel Chair: ‘Hundreds’ of Americans Have Fought with ISIS; Some Have Returned to U.S How many Americans are fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria? “It’s in the hundreds,” says Representative Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. There are “hundreds” of Americans “that have at least one time traveled, participated, and trained with them. Some of them have drifted back [to the U.S.], some of them have gone to Europe,” Rogers says.
Here's the video:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 31, 2014 9 Comments
It's fun to think about how the media would drive itself crazy trying to choose sides between Joe and Hillary. On one hand, Hillary is a woman and the media's expected inheritor of the presidency. On the other hand, Biden is part of the Obama administration. Justin Sink of The Hill recently reported:
Biden fuels '16 talk with New Hampshire visit Vice President Biden will head to New Hampshire next week for an event on the economy that is certain to intensify speculation that he is readying a bid for the presidential nomination in 2016. Biden will be joined at the Wednesday event in Portsmouth by members of Congress, the White House said in a statement. The attendees at the event could include Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is locked in a tough reelection fight against former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Shaheen did not meet with Biden during his last trip to the state, a fact that was highlighted by the state's GOP.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 31, 2014 18 Comments
Here's another item for the growing list of things we weren't told about Obamacare before it was passed. It seems the Affordable Care Act presents a direct threat to employer provided health insurance plans and could force up to 150 million people out of their current plans. Jim Angle of FOX News did a recent in-depth report on the subject:
Will ObamaCare mean the end of employer-provided insurance? President Obama's famous promise that “you can keep your plan and your doctor, no matter what” was not the only misleading argument he made for his health care plan. There is yet another controversy, with even bigger consequences, brewing for Americans who already have health care. Analysts predict that as ObamaCare takes hold, it will mean the end of employer-provided insurance, with former Obama adviser Zeke Emanuel predicting that80 percent of such plans will disappear within ten years.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 30, 2014 23 Comments
A new editorial from the Washington Post takes an unusually sober look at President Obama's foreign policy chops and his non-reaction to the world that's burning around him:
President Obama needs to focus on how the United States can meet global challenges PRESIDENT OBAMA’S acknowledgment that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with reporters Thursday. But his restatement of the obvious was not the most dismaying aspect of his remarks. The president’s goal, to the extent he had one, seemed to be to tamp down all the assessments of gathering dangers that his own team had been issuing over the previous days. This argument with his own administration is alarming on three levels. The first has to do with simple competence. One can only imagine the whiplash that foreign leaders must be suffering. They heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power denounce Russia as “today . . . they open a new front . . . Russia’s force along the border is the largest it has been . . . the mask is coming off.” An hour later, Mr. Obama implicitly contradicted her: “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now . . . it’s not really a shift.”
If you read on from there, you'll notice that the editors use the word "disturbing" twice to describe Obama's response to the situation in Ukraine and the rise of ISIS. This is quite a departure from the Post's endorsement of Obama in 2012.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 30, 2014 10 Comments
In case you missed it, I went off on a bit of a rant about comedy in the age of Obama at my site American Glob this week. Frankly, I'm sick to death of the left's inability to find anything funny about Obama while continuing to target the same tired subjects of Bush, FOX News and Republicans in general. Jon Stewart is a classic example of this and the left loves to point out how Stewart "destroys" his subjects. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon points out that Stewart can often induce laughter from his audience by simply staring at them after showcasing his chosen target, who is almost always someone on the right:
Comedy of Stares You know the drill if you watch The Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart plays a smashcut of television news clips, to help him destroy, eviscerate, demolish, devastate, torch, obliterate and disembowel a generally conservative straw man opinion, movement or Fox News host.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 24, 2014 5 Comments
According to a new poll from WMUR in New Hampshire on the race for US senate, Republican Scott Brown has gained a tremendous amount of ground on incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Joshua Miller of the Boston Globe recently reported:
Scott Brown, Jeanne Shaheen in dead heat The US Senate race in New Hampshire has narrowed, and Republican Scott Brown is now in a dead heat with incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, according to a new poll. The Granite State Poll, released Thursday evening, found Brown trailing Shaheen, 44 percent to 46 percent among likely voters, with 9 percent not knowing or undecided in a hypothetical general election matchup. The narrow gap between the two contenders was within the margin of error of the poll, which was sponsored by WMUR-TV and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. A WMUR survey released early last month and reporting similar numbers to other polls during that period, found Shaheen leading Brown, 50 percent to 38 percent. Pollster Andrew E. Smith, a political science professor at UNH, said he thought the shift was a result of national trends and had little to do with the candidates’ campaigns. “I think it’s an Obama drag,” he said. The new WMUR poll found only 38 percent of New Hampshire adults approve of the way President Obama was handling his job, a 7 percentage point drop from about a month earlier, while 55 percent disapprove.
Guy Benson of Hot Air notes that other recent polls weren't as kind to Brown, so it's difficult to tell if this is a trend:
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