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
Some of the critics need to look in the mirror....
Your weekly report from the world of higher education....
The Megyn Kelly Moment Kelly, who is now 44, grew up in Ailes’s America, in a middle-class suburb of Albany called Delmar. She was the youngest of three children, worked as a fitness instructor and went to Mass most Sundays. Her father was an education professor at the State University of New York at Albany, and her mother ran the behavioral-health department at a Veterans Administration hospital. As a teenager in the late 1980s, she lived in a mall rat’s bubble of tall hair, leg warmers and Bon Jovi; one of the popular kids, she was the type who also had friends among the other groups at Bethlehem Central High School, with names like the Dirties (hackeysack-playing stoners) and the Creamies (choir geeks). Reality intruded early. Ten days before Christmas, when Kelly was 15, her father died of a heart attack. He had canceled some of his life-insurance coverage just two months earlier. Money had been tight, and Kelly’s mother had to worry about the mortgage and other expenses. In her senior yearbook, Megyn listed her future hopes in three words: “College, government, wealth.” Kelly took a high-school aptitude test that, in a perhaps rare moment of accuracy for such tests, suggested that her ideal career was news. She applied to Syracuse in hopes of attending its well-regarded communications program; she was accepted to the school but rejected from the program, so she majored in political science instead.It's a very long piece but worth reading in full. Of course, not everyone on the left is happy about Kelly's success.
Krauthammer’s Take: Obama ‘Wants to Punish the Rich Regardless of Effect on Economy’ The president’s proposal to raise the capital gains tax has nothing to do with America’s economic vitality, and everything to do with ideology, says Charles Krauthammer. “Obama was asked about whether raising the capital gains tax is something he would support even — this was a famous question asked by Charlie Gibson in the run-up to the 2008 campaign — even if it lowered revenues, which it does, which is of course totally illogical; you raise taxes to bring in revenue. Obama’s answer, a famous answer, was, yes, in the name of ‘fairness.’” “This is a man who wants to punish the rich regardless of its effect on the economy,” said Krauthammer.Watch the exchange: Obama seems set on denying the reality of the new Republican-controlled Senate.
Your weekly dispatch from the world of higher education...
Obama to Senate Dems: ‘I’m going to play offense’ President Barack Obama made clear Thursday in a closed-door session with Senate Democrats that he’s prepared to veto hostile legislation from the GOP-controlled Congress, including an Iran sanctions package on the front-burner of Capitol Hill. According to several sources at the Thursday summit in Baltimore, Obama vowed to defend his agenda against Republicans in Congress, promised to stand firm against GOP efforts to dismantle his agenda and called on his Democratic colleagues to help sustain his expected vetoes. The president also was explicit over his administration’s opposition to an Iran sanctions bill, promising to veto legislation with his administration in the midst of multilateral nuclear negotiations with the Middle Eastern regime. Even though Obama’s position on Iran sanctions differs from a number of powerful Democrats, the session, several sources said, was more of a pep rally than confrontation. Despite his lame-duck status, the president promised that he would not sit on the sidelines in the next two years. He vowed more executive actions to implement his agenda, something bound to prompt anger from Republicans who have called the president’s unilateral moves, particularly on immigration, an unconstitutional power grab.Noah Rothman outlined Obama's current political stance in a new article for Townhall:
Audio Tapes Reveal How Federal Regulators Shut Down Gun Store Owner’s Bank Accounts Conversations recorded by a Wisconsin gun store owner provide perhaps the clearest glimpse yet into how the federal government uses regulators to target legal firearm and ammunition sellers. “Our hands are tied by it,” a regional manager with Heritage Credit Union told Hawkins Guns owner Mike Shuetz of federal regulations which forced the institution to close Shuetz’s bank accounts in November. Recordings of Shuetz’s conversations with the manager and a bank teller, which were published online by the U.S. Consumer Coalition, make it clear that the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) examined the credit union’s books and forced it to close Shuetz’s account — a move he blames on a Department of Justice initiative called Operation Choke Point. Schuetz’s saga began on Nov. 13, when he says Heritage Credit Union informed him that it would have to close his bank accounts.
White House: Obama Will Fight Media To Stop Anti-Jihad Articles President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing. The unprecedented reversal of Americans’ civil-military relations, and of the president’s duty to protect the First Amendment, was pushed by Earnest as he tried to excuse the administration’s opposition in 2012 to the publication of anti-jihadi cartoons by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.Here's a video report:
White House to Convene Summit on Violent Extremism The White House will convene a summit next month on ways the U.S. and other governments can counter violent extremism and domestic radicalization, the Obama administration said Sunday. The Feb. 18 event will highlight efforts at home and abroad aimed at stopping extremists from “radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a written statement.State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf appeared on the Megyn Kelly show last night and was asked by guest host Martha MacCallum to name the extremists. Like everyone else in the White House, she had a hard time putting it into words.
For Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, a history of ambition fuels a possible 2016 collision Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney have much in common. Both were pragmatic as governors, mild-mannered as candidates and more comfortable balancing budgets at their desks than clinking glasses at a political dinner. The two Republican leaders’ personal rapport is cordial. But they are hardly chummy — and at moments their relationship has been strained, with each man’s intertwined political network carrying some grievances with the other’s. As Bush, 61, and Romney, 67, explore presidential campaigns in 2016, they are like boxers warming up for what could become a brutal bout, sizing each other up and mulling whether or when to step into the ring. Their early maneuvering reveals a level of competitiveness and snippiness that stems from a long history following similar career paths in business and politics prescribed by their dynastic families. “We’re seeing the first shots of the war between clan Romney and clan Bush,” said Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist who has worked for both men. “Both bring to the battle incredibly powerful fan clubs as well as wounds they have to heal. How ugly could it get? You’re only competing to lead the free world.”This is a fight for money as much as politics and the hunt for big donors is already on.
Police ID 29 arrested at Statehouse protest The Vermont State Police have identified the 29 protesters arrested on suspicion of unlawful trespass for ignoring orders to leave the Statehouse following a sit-in Thursday in Montpelier. James Haslam, executive director of the Vermont Workers' Center and the organizer of the sit-in protest over single-payer health care on the day of Gov. Peter Shumlin's inauguration, was not among them. "I had some commitments in the morning to deliver two little kids to school. Family comes first," Haslam told the Burlington Free Press. Haslam, who kept his distance, said others were prepared to be arrested. For his part, Shumlin said he was disappointed some protesters tried to interrupt his inaugural address, but was bothered more that the demonstrators disrupted the final benediction by the Rev. Robert Potter of the Peacham Congregational Church. "I found it heartbreaking," he said.The incident was caught on video, watch it below.
Policeman Ahmed Merabet mourned after death in Charlie Hebdo attack It was a Muslim policeman from a local police station who was “slaughtered like a dog” after heroically trying to stop two heavily armed killers from fleeing the Charlie Hebdo offices following the massacre. Tributes to Ahmed Merabet poured in on Thursday after images of his murder at point blank range by a Kalashnikov-wielding masked terrorist circulated around the world. Merabet, who according to officials was 40, was called to the scene while on patrol with a female colleague in the neighbourhood, just in time to see the black Citroën used by the two killers heading towards the boulevard from Charlie Hebdo.
How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam. This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an “un-Islamic” attack by a bunch of thugs—the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked. The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised. If there is a lesson to be drawn from such a grisly episode, it is that what we believe about Islam truly doesn’t matter. This type of violence, jihad, is what they, the Islamists, believe. There are numerous calls to violent jihad in the Quran. But the Quran is hardly alone. In too much of Islam, jihad is a thoroughly modern concept. The 20th-century jihad “bible,” and an animating work for many Islamist groups today, is “The Quranic Concept of War,” a book written in the mid-1970s by Pakistani Gen. S.K. Malik. He argues that because God, Allah, himself authored every word of the Quran, the rules of war contained in the Quran are of a higher caliber than the rules developed by mere mortals.You can read the whole thing here. Ms. Ali appeared on Megyn Kelly's show this week after the attacks.
