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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 August 01, 2015 39 Comments
DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews this week and to Matthews' credit, he asked her a tough question. First, the two were discussing Bernie Sanders and the role he should play in the next Democratic National Convention. Then Matthews asked Schultz to explain the difference between a Democrat and a Socialist and things got very interesting. Josh Feldman of Mediate describes the exchange:
Matthews asked Wasserman-Schultz if, even if he loses, Sanders would have a place at the DNC convention, seeing as how he’s really popular with the base and could fire up a Democratic audience before the election. She said he should get to speak, but Matthews kept prodding away to see if he would be allowed to speak in primetime instead of “when nobody’s watching.” Wasserman-Schultz talked up his “progressive populist message” that people like, when Matthews asked her point-blank, “What’s the difference between a Democrat and a socialist? I used to think there was a big difference. What do you think it is?” Wasserman-Schultz ducked the question, but Matthews pressed her and said, “You’re the chairman of the Democratic Party. Tell me what’s the difference between you and a socialist.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 31, 2015 14 Comments
Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore has entered the race for the 2016 Republican nomination. Now before you throw yourself off the nearest building, hear me out. This guy has serious credentials. Gilmore was chairman of the National Commission on Homeland Security for five years, he's an Army Intelligence veteran and he was the governor of Virginia on 9/11. In some ways, Gilmore is more qualified than many of the candidates who are already running. Last night on Special Report, Gilmore had an opportunity to make the case for his candidacy.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 30, 2015 11 Comments
Chaka Fattah, a Democrat who represents Pennsylvania's second district, has been charged with racketeering conspiracy alongside four other people in a case that smacks of influence peddling. The Department of Justice announced the charges yesterday:
Congressman Chaka Fattah and Associates Charged with Participating in Racketeering Conspiracy A member of Congress and four of his associates were indicted today for their roles in a racketeering conspiracy involving several schemes that were intended to further the political and financial interests of the defendants and others by, among other tactics, misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal, charitable and campaign funds. Congressman Chaka Fattah Sr., 58, of Philadelphia; lobbyist Herbert Vederman, 69, of Palm Beach, Florida; Fattah’s Congressional District Director Bonnie Bowser, 59, of Philadelphia; and Robert Brand, 69, of Philadelphia; and Karen Nicholas, 57, of Williamstown, New Jersey, were charged today in a 29-count indictment with participating in a racketeering conspiracy and other crimes, including bribery; conspiracy to commit mail, wire and honest services fraud; and multiple counts of mail fraud, falsification of records, bank fraud, making false statements to a financial institution and money laundering.
Naturally, Fattah denies the charges:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 29, 2015 12 Comments
As Ed Morrissey comments at Hot Air, "Profiles in Courage this ain’t." At a campaign event in New Hampshire yesterday, an attendee asked Hillary if she would approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Her answer, if you can call it one, was that she would answer the question if and when she becomes president. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post wasn't impressed:
Hillary Clinton’s ridiculous hedge on Keystone XL "If it’s undecided when I become president, I will answer your question," Clinton said. "This is President Obama's decision. I'm not going to second-guess him." Er, what? Clinton went on to note that she was in a position unique among the 2016 field due to her time as secretary of state. "I'm in a different position than any other candidate," Clinton said. "I was there. I put this process together. I oversaw it for four years." (Because the pipeline would begin in Canada, its approval -- or not -- is in the hands of the State Department.) Uh huh.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 28, 2015 15 Comments
This might be funny if it wasn't such a serious subject. Earlier this month, as a fashion photo shoot was taking place on Miami Beach, a boat carrying illegal immigrants approached the beach, and the passengers proceeded to run onto and across the beach. The incident was captured on video which you can watch below. Obviously, a border fence wouldn't have prevented this incident. In fact, this is the way immigrants from Haiti, Cuba and other countries came to America for years. This shows that immigration enforcement is not just about a fence or the land border. Joe Saunders reported at BizPac Review:
Caught on video: Gang of brazen illegal aliens swarms Miami beach, interrupt modeling shoot Videographer Ekaterina Juskowski told the News Times Broward-Palm Beach she was shooting video of a model friend about 6 a.m. July 10 when a boat started approaching shore quickly. Thinking it was simply scuba divers, she said, she turned off her camera – but turned it back on when she saw the men pouring off the vessel, out of the surf and onto the sand.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 26, 2015 19 Comments
Vermont's "independent" "Socialist" Senator Bernie Sanders may have a lock on the left-wing vote but Hillary Clinton is doing everything she can to stop his rise. In so doing, the ultimate crony capitalist is demonstrating, once again, that she has no core set of beliefs other than in obtaining power. Hillary is adopting Sanders' platform attacking capitalism not because she believes it, but because she hears Bernie's footsteps gaining on her in the polls. In a recent speech at NYU, Hillary Clinton claimed that capitalism needs a reset and proposed changes to capital gains taxes. Tory Newmyer of Fortune reports:
Hillary Clinton: Capitalism is out of balance, needs a reset Hillary Clinton wants to hike capital gains taxes as part of her plan to discourage short-term thinking among corporate executives and investors. The Democratic presidential front-runner laid out her plan to retool the tax treatment of investment earnings on Friday as part of an ongoing series of speeches fleshing out her economic program. She proposed extending from one to two years the period that top earners would need to hang on to an investment before seeing the 39.6% tax rate applied to it start to fall. And she would lower the rate slowly, over a six year period, down to the 24% rate for longer-term investments — a tweak that she said would help refigure a system that’s bent itself out of shape over the last few decades. Capitalism itself, she said, “needs to be reinvented, it needs to be put back into balance.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 26, 2015 41 Comments
When it comes to the 2016 Republican nomination, one man is currently sucking all the media oxygen out of the room. Erick Erickson of RedState blames Donald Trump's rise on a failure of leadership in the Republican Party. Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon has a similar take. When it comes to assessing Trump's politics however, one of the right's happiest and most dearly missed warriors once told us everything we need to know. Matt Vespa of Townhall takes us on a trip down memory lane:
Flashback: When Andrew Breitbart Said Trump Is Definitely Not A Conservative In 2011, Juan Williams was filling in for Bill O’Reilly and there was an area where liberal talk show host Leslie Marshall and the late Andrew Breitbart found agreement: a Trump candidacy isn’t a good thing for America. Moreover, the late conservative blogger said the business magnate is certainly not a conservative:
“…Of course, he’s not a conservative. He was for Nancy Pelosi, before he was against Nancy Pelosi…celebrity is everything in this country if these guys don’t learn how to play the media the way Barack Obama played the media last election cycle and the way that Donald Trump is playing the election cycle–we’re going to probably get a celebrity candidate.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 25, 2015 14 Comments
Jon Stewart isn't a Social Justice Warrior for the left, he's a four-star general. In his many years as the host of the Daily Show, he's never backed away from an opportunity to make conservatives look like backwards, racist hicks. Now one of his former staff writers named Wyatt Cenac, who is black, has come forward with allegations which make Stewart look rather hypocritical in hindsight. Cenac claims that when Stewart used a stereotypical black voice to lampoon Republican Herman Cain, he objected and was screamed at in front of other writers. Deadline Hollywood reports:
When Jon Stewart’s Black Impersonation Crossed The Line For ‘Daily Show’ Scribe Wyatt Cenac On a recent episode of WTF With Marc Maron, former Daily Show writer Wyatt Cenac recalled a moment when host Jon Stewart exploded at him in front of the entire late night show’s staff. It all pertained to Stewart’s imitation of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain; an impersonation that just went too far for Cenac. At the time prior to the 2012 presidential election, Cenac was the only black writer and found Stewart’s knock on Cain coming from “kind of an ignorant place.”...

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 25, 2015 35 Comments
If you listen to Hillary Clinton and the mainstream media, you might think Planned Parenthood is a victim and not the unborn babies whose organs were harvested and bargained over like a bunch of spare parts. Our watchdog media hasn't thrust a microphone into Mrs. Clinton's face asking for comment like they would do with Republicans, they've just allowed her to address the scandal on her own terms, and in Hillary's world, it's Planned Parenthood which needs defending. Here's a recent report from Alex Seitz-Wald at NBC News:
Hillary Clinton Defends Embattled Planned Parenthood Hillary Clinton strongly defended Planned Parenthood Thursday as the women's health organization reels from the fallout over a sting video released by anti-abortion activists earlier this month.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 24, 2015 10 Comments
John Kerry testified before a senate panel about the awful Iran deal Thursday and was met by skepticism and derision from lawmakers in both parties. In a classic Democrat defense move, Kerry again tried to spin the issue and suggest it's his critics who are being unrealistic. CNN reported:
Kerry to senators: No 'fantasy' alternative to Iran deal Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there is no "unicorn" or "fantasy" alternative if the U.S. rejects the deal, which the administration maintains will keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon but which many Republicans see as providing Iran a path to a bomb. But Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Tennesse Republican, said that the U.S. had been "fleeced" and that Kerry had "turned Iran from being a pariah, to now Congress being a pariah" in the course of making the agreement. And Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, repeatedly warned that the next president could overturn the deal, which isn't a binding treaty.
Here's a short highlight reel:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 23, 2015 17 Comments
President Obama appeared on the Daily Show this week and claimed that the IRS never targeted the Tea Party. Yet according to an explosive new report from Judicial Watch, the IRS used donor lists from certain organizations to target specific people for audits:
Judicial Watch: New Documents Show IRS Used Donor Lists to Target Audits (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that confirm that the IRS used donor lists to tax-exempt organizations to target those donors for audits.  The documents also show IRS officials specifically highlighted how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may come under “high scrutiny” from the IRS.  The IRS produced the records in a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents about selection of individuals for audit-based application information on donor lists submitted by Tea Party and other 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:15-cv-00220)). A letter dated September 28, 2010, then-Democrat Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) informs then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman: “   I request that you and your agency survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations …”  In reply, in a letter dated February 17, 2011, Shulman writes: “In the work plan of the Exempt Organizations Division, we announced that beginning in FY2011, we are increasing our focus on section 501(c)(4), (5) and (6) organizations.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 22, 2015 30 Comments
Mark Halperin of Bloomberg Politics recently interviewed 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate Martin O'Malley. Their discussion covered a wide range of topics, but when talk turned to foreign policy, O'Malley suggested that climate change was behind the rise of ISIS. Transcript and video via Real Clear Politics:
Martin O'Malley: Climate Change Created ISIS MARTIN O'MALLEY: One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation state of Syria and the rise of ISIS, was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that nation, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis that created the symptoms — or rather, the conditions — of extreme poverty that has now led to the rise of ISIS and this extreme violence.
The interview is approximately six minutes long. To hear the segment on ISIS and climate change, skip to the 3:40 mark:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 21, 2015 13 Comments
The people of North Korea care very deeply about their civic duty to vote...if they know what's good for them. The dictator-ruled country had an election this weekend and 99.97% of the people voted; but choice had little to do with it. Not only did people have no choice in whether or not to vote, they didn't even get a choice on the ballot. CNN reports:
Citizens forced to vote in North Korea's version of democracy It's called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But any real notions of democracy end with the name. North Koreans headed to the polls at the weekend to cast their ballots in elections for local representatives on provincial, city, and county People's Assemblies. Citizens were not asked to make a choice -- the results had already been decided by Kim Jong Un's central government. Voters were handed ballot papers but didn't mark them. They would have instead deposited them in a ballot box, signifying their support for the pre-approved candidates.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 21, 2015 14 Comments
John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz appeared on FOX News Sunday this past weekend and answered questions from Chris Wallace on the terms of the Iran Deal. Wallace focused on the 24 day lead Iran will be given for inspections, which Kerry suggested is perfectly acceptable. Moniz also clarified his earlier remarks on the subject. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon reported:
Kerry: I Never Sought ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ Inspections in Iran Nuclear Negotiations Secretary of State John Kerry, in a talking point similar to White House official Ben Rhodes earlier this week, claimed on Fox News Sunday he never seen discussed the idea of “anywhere, anytime” inspections in the Iran nuclear deal. Host Chris Wallace mentioned the 24-day period Iran can stave off inspections as part of the agreement and how that hardly constituted meeting those standards before Kerry rebuked him. “Well, that’s not accurate,” Kerry said. “I never, in four years, had a discussion about anywhere, anytime.” Like Rhodes’ statement, this contradicts earlier statements made by the Obama administration, and it also makes it painfully clear the White House never thought this extremely important verification measure was ever realistic. President Obama, in April, said that the world would know if Iran cheated on the deal, and Wallace pointed out he said nothing about 24 days.
Watch the video:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 19, 2015 6 Comments
Despite being shot multiple times, Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford survived the 2009 attack at Fort Hood. He was recently interviewed by Charles Payne of the FOX Business Network and offered some sober commentary on the shooting in Tennessee. Tom Tillison of BizPac Review has more:
‘War is here on US soil': Ft. Hood victim says Obama WH needs to get head out of a** The White House has its head where it doesn’t belong. Saying the “war is here on U.S. soil,” a victim of the 2009 Fort Hood attack by Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan described the killing of four U.S. Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Thursday as “an act of terror.” He said the threat won’t go away until it is eliminated... “They need to get their heads out of the fourth point of contact and call it what it is,” Lunsford said of the Obama administration. The “fourth point of contact” is Airborne military jargon for the derriere, which is a somewhat more polite way of telling Obama to get his head out of his **s.
Watch the video below:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 18, 2015 13 Comments
Yesterday in Iowa, the Hillary Clinton campaign told their young supporters they couldn't speak to the press. This clumsy and seemingly paranoid move earned Hillary Clinton mockery even on MSNBC. Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard has the details:
"Here's what struck me," said Susan Page of USA Today, "when I read the coverage in the Des Moines Register this morning. Jennifer Jacobs, who's been on your show, was covering this last night. Big demonstrations outside of young people for O'Malley and Hillary Clinton. She went up to the Clinton supporters -- these are protesters for Clinton -- and they were told they were not allowed to [speak to] a reporter." Page continued, "Now, why in the world would the campaign tell their own supporters who came out to campaign in favor Hillary Clinton ... these are the young people, college kids, for Hillary, and they've been told they can't talk to reporters. Why in the world would you do that?
Enjoy the video:
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