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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 February 04, 2015 20 Comments
The Senate confirmation hearings for Loretta Lynch have been in the news for over a week and for good reason. As Eric Holder prepares to exit the Department of Justice, many people want to be sure America doesn't end up with another Eric Holder. Lynch has many positive qualities but as Professor Jacobson recently pointed out, not being Eric Holder is not enough. Yesterday, Holder held a press conference in which he insisted that he hasn't politicized the Department of Justice. Josh Feldman of Mediaite reported:
Holder Fires Back at GOP: ‘There’s Been No Politicization of This Justice Department’ Last week the Senate held confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, but a lot of the questions from Republicans centered around the current occupant of that office, with one even going so far as to ask Lynch if she is Eric Holder. Today, Holder himself held a news conference in which he started out by saying, “For the record, I am Eric Holder.” From there, the attorney general went after Republican critics in possibly one of the last (if not the last) press conferences of his tenure leading the DOJ. He said it’s “a little irresponsible for people on the hill to say that policy differences that we have with them… can be characterized as political.” Holder insisted that “there’s been no politicization of this Justice Department” and said such an accusation is “totally inconsistent with the facts.”
Here's a video of Holder's statement:
World News Videos | ABC World News It's good to know Mr. Holder thinks so highly of his stewardship of American Justice.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 03, 2015 17 Comments
Greece's new prime minister Alexis Tsipras is finding out that his country's massive debt won't go away just because he wants it to. Maybe that's why Germany has a strong economy and Greece doesn't. Jane Wharton of Express UK reported:
Merkel refuses to write off Greece's debt In her first interview since Syriza won the Greek election last weekend, Angela Merkel has made it clear the debt stands but she hopes they stay in the eurozone. The far-left party stormed to victory last weekend with 36 per cent of the vote, promising to ditch austerity and renegotiate the country's £180billion bailout from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - also known as the troika. Their finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has said this troika of global institutions is "rotten" and has refused to work with them to renegotiate bailout terms. Syriza is now beginning to roll back on the austerity measures imposed by the EU on the previous administration in exchange for the loans. However this morning the German Chancellor said that while Europe will continue to show solidarity with Greece and other nations hit by Europe's debt crisis, the debts must be repaid in full. Speaking to Hamburger Abendblatt, she said: "I do not envisage fresh debt cancellation. "There has already been voluntary debt forgiveness by private creditors, banks have already slashed billions from Greece's debt."
It's amazing what can happen when a politician is told he can't spend money he doesn't have. The Tsipras administration, which knows it doesn't have the negotiating power (or money) to defy reality has quickly adopted a new position.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 02, 2015 20 Comments
Obama sure does like to spend money. Back in 2009, his Stimulus bill managed to use up almost a trillion dollars. The budget he's going to release this time around will request just under half a trillion dollars for American roads and bridges. Juliet Eilperin and Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post:
Obama budget: Tax on overseas profits to pay for U.S. roads and bridges President Obama's budget request set for release Monday includes plans for a six-year, $478 billion public works program that would be paid for with a one-time 14 percent tax on overseas corporate profits. Details of Obama's budget plan released in recent days have been widely rejected by congressional Republicans. But finding a way to enact a new federal infrastructure spending plan has been an unattainable goal on Capitol Hill for several years. Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) hoped to pass a new highway bill shortly after the GOP took control of the House in 2011 but has struggled to build support among skeptical conservatives. According to a document shared by administration officials on Sunday, Obama's plan to rebuild the nation's airports, bridges, highways and railroads would be paid for by imposing a 14 percent tax on up to $2 trillion in profits that companies have accumulated overseas over a number of years to avoid paying corporate income taxes. That's far lower than the current top corporate tax rate of 35 percent. The one-time tax on the repatriation of foreign profits differs from other proposals to offer a "tax holiday" for companies that would pay a much lower tax rate voluntarily to help fund new road construction projects. Obama opposes such tax holidays.
One has to wonder if there are more "shovel ready" jobs available this time.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 31, 2015 4 Comments
Do you enjoy long wait times at the Department of Motor Vehicles? If you live in California, you're in luck. So many illegal immigrants are now applying for driver's licences that wait times are absurd. CBS News in Los Angeles reported (h/t Weasel Zippers):
Some Motorists Wait Months For DMV Appointments After Immigrants Law Goes Into Effect The Department of Motor Vehicles is so overwhelmed with requests for new driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations that it can take up to three months to get an appointment or a half-day wait in the lobby. A DMV spokesman told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan there has been a crush of applications for new licenses for undocumented immigrants, a program that began earlier this month. The spokesman said the DMV is working to address the problems, but some people are having to take a day off of work to handle a 15-minute transaction. At the Hollywood DMV office, where they handle drivers license issues, the long lines outside and packed waiting areas inside are testimony to the long, grueling process that California drivers have to endure before getting service. For example, Jose Quiroz’s DMV ordeal spanned two days of waiting patiently with his family to have his license renewed. “Yesterday, I was here for four hours standing outside, and when I got to the front line they said that they were not taking us in no more,” Quiroz told Bryan. “And now I am back here again, because I am here to fix my license, and I have been here five or six hours.”
Here's the video report:

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 31, 2015 2 Comments
The FBI is seeking a man named Ghazi Nasr Al-Din for connections to Hezbollah. He is believed to be in Florida. WPTV News reported:
The FBI is looking for Ghazi Nasr Al-Din and believes he could be in South Florida He was just added to the bureau’s seeking information terrorism list. The agency wants to talk to him about his fundraising efforts with Hezbollah contributors. Hezbollah is an Islamic militant group. Nasr Al-Din is 5 foot 7 and weighs about 175 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion. He speaks Arabic and Spanish and he has dual citizenship in Lebanon and Venezuela. If you see him call the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800- 225-5324) or contact your local FBI office.
Here is the the official FBI wanted poster:

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 30, 2015 23 Comments
Every once in a while, John McCain does the exact right thing. This was one of those times. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday, leftist Code Pink activists disrupted the session to verbally assault Henry Kissinger who was there to testify on national security issues. John McCain was having none of it and even received applause for shutting the protesters down. Alexander Mallin of ABC News:
Senator John McCain Calls Out Protesters Who Swarmed Henry Kissinger Sen. John McCain earned some applause inside a Senate Armed Services hearing this morning after he erupted at protesters of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, calling them “low-life scum.” “I've been a member of this committee for many years, and I have never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous and despicable as the last demonstration that just took place,” said McCain, R-AZ. Protesters from the group CodePink swarmed behind Kissinger as he arrived alongside two other former Secretaries of State, Madeleine Albright and George Shultz, for a hearing on U.S. national security strategy. They held up signs calling Kissinger a criminal and chanted “arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes” -- citing some of his more controversial decisions during the Nixon and Ford administrations. “You know, you're going to have to shut up, or I'm going to have you arrested,” McCain said as Capitol Hill Police tried to remove the protesters. “Get out of here you low-life scum.”
CSPAN captured the entire exchange on video:

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 29, 2015 15 Comments
Remember when Harry Reid and other Democrats thought they could retain control of the Senate by demonizing the Koch brothers? In November of 2014 that strategy proved to be a loser---but Democrats learned nothing. Sean Sullivan and Anne Gearan of the Washington Post reported yesterday:
Democrats see new chance to attack Kochs after $1 billion spending announcement Forget Jeb, Rand and Ted. For Democrats, it’s all about Charles and David. The announcement this week that the vast political network backed by the wealthy industrialist Koch brothers aims to spend nearly $1 billion on the 2016 elections has reignited Democratic hopes of casting the brothers as electoral villains and linking them closely to Republican candidates. It’s a campaign strategy that yielded little success for the party in 2014, a banner year for the GOP. But Democratic officials and operatives say they are hopeful that their anti-Koch message will have more potency in a presidential election year.
Sally Kohn, who somehow has a job writing for CNN, jumped right on the bandwagon:
A better way for the Kochs to spend their millions Here comes spendageddon! To influence the 2016 elections, oil barons Charles and David Koch have pledged that their political network will spend $889 million, media reports say. Basically -- wrap your head around this if you can -- the ultra-conservative Koch brothers want to keep their business and personal taxes as low as possible and keep regulations on the energy industry as low as possible. And if they get their way, that $889 million in money donated by the Kochs and others to the groups they founded, will turn out to be just a drop in the bucket, a small investment for which they stand to gain much more in tax breaks and free pollution.
I fail to see how the libertarian Kochs, who favor gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana, qualify as "ultra-conservative"; but I'm clearly not as smart as Ms. Kohn.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 28, 2015 26 Comments
Charles Krauthammer was on the O'Reilly Factor last night to discuss the Republican contenders for 2016. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker got some kind words from Dr. K, who said that his speech in Iowa last weekend changed things. Watch: You'll notice in the video that O'Reilly and Krauthammer both reference compliments Scott Walker recently received from Rush Limbaugh. Here's a sample from Limbaugh's site:
Scott Walker Wows 'Em in Iowa Scott Walker wowed them in Iowa at whatever this thing was, this Republican, slash, conservative, just wowed them. And you know me, folks, if you have spent any time listening to this program in the last two years, you know that I believe Scott Walker is the blueprint for the Republican Party if they are serious about beating the left. Scott Walker has shown how to do it. And apparently he showed up and he made a speech on Saturday that had people telling them it reminded them of the speech I gave at CPAC... Scott Walker has shown the Republican Party how to beat the left. Scott Walker has the blueprint for winning and winning consistently and winning big in a blue state with conservative principles that are offered with absolutely no excuses. The left, the Democrat Party, threw everything at Scott Walker trying to destroy him. They did everything they could. He not only withstood it all, he survived and triumphed over all of it. They broke rules. They got close to breaking laws. They were threatening his family personally, and he remained undeterred.
Some bloggers are pretty excited about Walker. @rdbrewer from Ace of Spades HQ is already making campaign posters:

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 27, 2015 32 Comments
The economy of Greece has been a disaster for years due to massive entitlement and pension programs. Decades of overspending finally caught up with the Greek government in 2010, when their financial system nearly collapsed. Other countries in the European Union, notably Germany, loaned Greece billions on the condition that Greece would impose austerity measures; those measures eventually produced small results at a slower rate than expected. Frustrated with austerity and cuts to benefits, the people of Greece recently elected a new prime minister from the far left Syriza party named Alexis Tsipras. Tsipras won by promising to end the pain of austerity and to renegotiate Greece's debt, which means that the people of Greece have forgotten what caused their problem in the first place. Nicholas Paphitis of the Associated Press via ABC News writes:
Greece's First Radical Left Prime Minister Sworn In Tieless and eschewing the traditional religious swearing-in ceremony, but with a surprise coalition deal in the bag and a sanguine international reception, radical left leader Alexis Tsipras took over Monday as austerity-wracked Greece's new prime minister. Hours earlier, the 40-year-old's Syriza party trounced the outgoing, conservative government in Sunday's national elections, on a platform of easing social pain and securing massive debt forgiveness. Although Syriza fell tantalizingly short of a governing majority in the 300-seat parliament, Tsipras moved quickly Monday to secure the support of 13 lawmakers from the small, right-wing populist Independent Greeks party, raising his total to 162. "''We have the required majority," Tsipras told Greek President Karolos Papoulias, shortly before being sworn in as prime minister, the youngest Greece has seen in 150 years and the first incumbent to take a secular oath rather than the religious one customarily administered by a Greek Orthodox official.
Fans of Tsipras are celebrating, but his victory presents a whole new set of problems.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 25, 2015 11 Comments
A man named Ahmad Rashidi was interviewed on Meet the Press today and provided an alarming look into the goals of ISIS. He claims they want to be "better" than al-Qaeda and orchestrate an attack "more brutal" than the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Andrew Johnson of National Review has more:
Man Who Escaped ISIS: They Want to Plan an Attack ‘More Brutal’ than 9/11 The Islamic State is “happy” about the air strikes by the United States because it validates their efforts in emerging as a global threat, says a man who escaped after a month with the group. Ahmad Rashidi was captured by the Islamic State when he went to Syria from London to retrieve the two daughters of a family friend; the teenage girls had fled England to marry Islamic State fighters. When Rashidi found one of the girls, her husband accused him of being a spy and he was taken prisoner and tortured. He later won the favor of his capturers by telling them he was a doctor; Rashidi is, in fact, a first-year medical student. While embedded with the Islamic State for a month, Rashidi gained access to their computers and communications. He told NBC News’s Richard Engel that the group communicates with its contacts “every day” and is not worried about the West’s response to its attacks. In fact, the Islamic State was “happy” about the American military’s response of air strikes because it proved to the group’s leaders that they were considered as important a threat as al-Qaeda. “They want to be more . . . better than al-Qaeda,” he told Engel. “This is why they need to do something more brutal than the World Trade Center.”
Here's the video: Speaking of Syria, there are new developments in American policy.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 25, 2015 12 Comments
As the race for 2016 shifts into gear, old conflicts are reemerging between Hillary Clinton supporters and Team Obama; this time, it's over access to Obama's massive email lists. Amie Parnes and Niall Stanage of The Hill reported:
Obama, Clinton tensions build over email lists ahead of 2016 New tensions are emerging in the relationship between allies of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. At issue is the fate of the political equivalent of gold dust — the enormous email list, comprised of many millions of supporters and donors, that the Obama team has compiled over the course of his two presidential campaigns. The Clinton camp would dearly love to get its hands on the list, but there is no promise as yet that the president’s aides will comply. There are “large concerns” about the lists among Clinton supporters, one Hillary ally told The Hill. To the Clintons and their friends, it’s near unthinkable that a Democratic president — who has plenty of reasons to want a member of his party to succeed him — would withhold such a valuable commodity. But Team Obama has long believed that the president’s support is built upon the bedrock of his personal qualities rather than mere party identification. His people are loath to be seen as treating the passion of his supporters in a cavalier fashion. “There’s a lot of data — voter data, massive email lists — that Obama built and there are a lot of people who want to make sure that he spreads that wealth,” the Clinton ally said. “They want to make sure he doesn’t take it in a suitcase back to Chicago and move on. No one wants to see it disappear or have it used just to build a library.”
Democrats are probably hoping everyone has forgotten how ugly the conflict between Hillary and Obama became during the 2008 Democratic primary. There's plenty of evidence that the rift never healed.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 23, 2015 25 Comments
A newly released video shows a mob of Ferguson protesters breaking into and looting a small grocery store in the nearby town of Dellwood. The store has been looted multiple times and in December, the owner said he might close his business. As you watch this, you might find yourself wondering: What does this have to do with justice for Michael Brown? The answer is nothing. This is just a mob urged on, at least indirectly, by liberal political rhetoric of class and race warfare. No audio is needed but if you get bored watching them try to break in through the door, just skip to the 2:20 mark to see them break the wall down instead. What a classy way to honor Michael Brown's memory. As I mentioned, this is a new video and police are asking for help from the public in identifying the criminals.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 22, 2015 15 Comments
Did you think it was impossible for the Times to say something nice about anyone at FOX News? I did too, until I read this column by Jim Rutenberg:
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.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 21, 2015 7 Comments
Congressman Paul Ryan appeared on FOX News after the state of the union and spoke to Bret Baier. His reaction? "A liberal speech by a liberal president." Senator Rand Paul was on the Megyn Kelly show a little later. His reaction? "I heard about a lot of free stuff but I didn't hear how he was going to pay for it."

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 20, 2015 29 Comments
Last night on Special Report with Bret Baier, Bret asked Charles Krauthammer for his thoughts on Obama's proposal to raise the capital gains tax. Krauthammer pointed out that like all things Obama says and does, this is about left wing political ideology. Via National Review:
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.
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