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Author: Kemberlee Kaye

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Kemberlee Kaye

Kemberlee Kaye is the Senior Contributing Editor of Legal Insurrection, where she has worked since 2014 and is the Director of Operations and Editorial Development for the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She also serves as the Managing Editor for CriticalRace.org, a research project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.

She has a background working in immigration law, and as a grassroots organizer, digital media strategist, campaign lackey, and muckraker. Over the years Kemberlee has worked with FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, and US Senate re-election campaigns, among others. 

Kemberlee, her daughter, and her son live a lovely taco-filled life in their native Texas.

You can reach her anytime via email at kk @ legalinsurrection.com.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 04, 2015 2 Comments
British street artist, Banksy, recently visited Gaza. According to Mashable, this was not his first trip:
The Palestinian territory is not a new base for the British graffiti artist; in 2005 he made headlines for his art on Israel's West Bank barrier. There were nine images in total, including one work with a girl attempting to float over the wall holding balloons, one of children playing on the sand with a hole above them showing a beach in the wall, and another of a dove with an olive branch and a bullseye on its chest.
Far from politically conservative, much of Banksy's art rails against corporations and the wealthy, is anti-war, and pretty much diametrically opposed to any political view I have. His Occupy-like sympathies aside, Banksy is incredibly talented. If only he used his talents for good, rather than wasting them on anti-Israel propaganda...

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 03, 2015 28 Comments
After almost two months of funding drama, Congress is no closer to resolving the Department of Homeland Security's funding in a dispute over President Obama's immigration executive action. In a Ground Hog-esque day turn of events, we're right back where we started. Thanks, Democrats. Speculation that Pelosi and company agreed to support a one week bill because Boehner was considering a "clean" funding bill akin to the Senate, found its way into more than one mainstream media write up of the DHS debacle this weekend. Because we'd rather not take someone else's word for it, we inquired independently. This weekend, Speaker Boehner's office assured us House Republicans had no plans to capitulate to the demands of Senate Democrats. As to the speculation that there was some kind of a deal with Pelosi? "There is no such 'deal' or promise," says Boehner Spokesman Michael Steel. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise echoed the sentiments saying, “There is no such deal and there’s no such bill,” Scalise said on “Fox News Sunday." “On Friday, there was a bill on the House floor to pass a clean funding bill. We rejected that because we said we’re fighting the president on what he’s doing illegally on immigration," according to The Hill. "We are not giving in to Senate Democrats’ blackmail," Boehner said, "Will keep fighting Obama’s unilateral action on immigration to protect Constitution."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 02, 2015 12 Comments
Bibi will address Congress Tuesday morning to discuss the dangers of a nuclear Iran. At the time this post was published, 34 members of Congress have confirmed they will not be attending the Israeli Prime Minister's speech. To commemorate the occasion, Secure America released this seriously rad video:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 28, 2015 7 Comments
Which means Congress gets to have this same fight all over again next week. Joy. The Senate passed a clean funding bill late yesterday afternoon, placing efforts to combat President Obama's executive overreach in a separate piece of legislation. Last night it looked as though a DHS shutdown was imminent. Democratic lawmakers in the House were actively whipping votes against the three week stopgap appropriations bill, resulting in the bill's failure---even though the White House indicated President Obama would've signed the bill to prevent an agency shutdown. The Washington Post reported (emphasis added):
The House passed a measure earlier Friday afternoon to go to conference with the Senate to hash out the differences between their long-term bills. No Democrats voted for it. Senate Democrats oppose a conference. Senate Democratic aides acknowledged that the bill would probably have passed their chamber if it had cleared the House.
Just two hours before the shutdown deadline, Democratic hold outs caved and agreed to pass a temporary funding bill that will only fund the agency for one week. According to USA Today:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rallied Democrats to support the one-week extension before funding expired. She said that voting for the seven-day measure would put Democrats on a path toward possible passage next week of a $40 billion spending bill that would fund the agency through the end of September.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 27, 2015 31 Comments
What a mess this has become. Hell bent on pursuing legislation that would allow for the dissolution of Congressional powers (a.k.a. Obama's Executive immigration overreach), House Democrats refused to pass a short term funding bill for DHS. The bill would've funded DHS through March 19 and prevented an agency shut down. Unless a deal is reached and an appropriations bill is passed by midnight tonight, agency shutdown is imminent. Some 200,000 of DHS's 231,000+ are deemed 'essential' and would remain in place in the event of a shut down (as they did in the shut down of 2013), as NRO noted. Weeks ago, the House passed a DHS appropriations bill that sought to curb Obama's immigration overreach. Since the House bill's passage, Senate Democrats have continually filibustered, thus disallowing any Senate debate on the the House bill. Then, a judge in Texas issued a temporary injunction, preventing implementation of Obama's Executive immigration action; the same executive action Democrats insist on implementing. In an attempt to build a bridge across the impasse, the Senate passed a clean funding bill, creating a separate bill to address the president's Constitutional curb stomp.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 26, 2015 17 Comments
It's not everyday llamas make national news. And it's not everyday I have an opportunity to write a headline with about a llama. According to Fox News:
Two escaped llamas sparked a high-speed chase in Sun City, Ariz., this afternoon. Police and residents alike swarmed the black and white llamas in an attempt to capture the two outlaws, who ran through the streets from their attempted captors. The llama drama came to an end after the partners-in-crime were lassoed and caught.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 24, 2015 13 Comments
We knew this day was coming, although we'd hoped that somewhere in his heart, President Obama might find the decency to pass legislation that would create thousands of jobs, reinvigorate communities and small towns, likely decrease the instances of exploding trains, and pump much needed cash into our fledgling economy. Alas... Some have speculated that because the pipeline would've run through red states, President Obama would never be willing to reward those states with economic bounty. But we've been assured that the bipartisan, union-backed bill was vetoed because the President takes his job very seriously. Gregory Korte reports at USA Today:
"The presidential power to veto legislation is one I take seriously," Obama said in his veto message. "But I also take seriously my responsibility to the American people. And because this act of Congress conflicts with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest — including our security, safety, and environment — it has earned my veto."
Suddenly, the President is concerned about "well established executive branch procedures" *cough* executive immigration overreach *cough*. But I digress...

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 23, 2015 20 Comments
You gotta love the Oscars. It's one of the best nights to watch Hollywood revel in its self-importance. As customary, at least one award recipient had to wax poetic about something political. Winning Best Supporting Actress for her role in Boyhood, Patricia Arquette took the opportunity to make a pitch for wage equality. "To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States." Arquette's pitch for equal rights may have been relevant in 1869, but hardly seems to resonate in 2015 -- the age of the stay at home father. Not to mention that when celebrities complain about wage equality, they're squabbling over a discrepancy of millions when most Americans won't see that much cash in a lifetime. At least Arquette got a rise out of Meryl Streep (who looked fabulous, by the way).

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 23, 2015 17 Comments
Today, a decade long court battled ended when two Palestinian organizations were found liable for knowingly supporting terrorist attacks which resulted in the death of American citizens. Benjamin Weiser reports for the New York Times:
The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured. The jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan awarded $218.5 million in damages, a number that is automatically tripled to $655.5 million under the special terrorism law under which the case was brought. The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts. And while the decision was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it also could serve to strengthen the Israeli claim that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces are directly tied to terrorism. The financial implications of the verdict for the defendants were not immediately clear. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, had serious financial troubles even before Israel, as punishment for the Palestinians’ move in December to join the International Criminal Court, began withholding more than $100 million a month in tax revenue it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf. The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial in which the jury had heard emotional testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, in which a total of 33 people were killed and more than 450 were injured.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 22, 2015 30 Comments
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The Washington Post's Robert Costa and Dan Balz interviewed Scott Walker yesterday. Of everything they had opportunity to ask, they chose to ask Walker whether he thought Obama was a Christian. How Walker's opinion on the matter is remotely relevant or newsworthy is unclear to normal people, who expect the press to do that whole "truth to power" thing. Walker, seemingly unamused by the obscure religion question, responded appropriately, saying he "didn't know."
Wisconsin Gov. Scott K. Walker, a prospective Republican presidential contender, said Saturday he does not know whether President Obama is a Christian. “I don’t know,” Walker said in an interview at the JW Marriott hotel in Washington, where he was attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. Told that Obama has frequently spoken publicly about his Christian faith, Walker maintained that he was not aware of the president’s religion. “I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that,” Walker said, his voice calm and firm. “I’ve never asked him that,” he added. “You’ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven’t had a conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I know either of you are a Christian?”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 21, 2015 14 Comments
Brian Williams' tragic exit meant that a right-leaning media behemoth must too, suffer the same fate, according to the leftist code of retribution. Last week, David Corn and Daniel Schulman of Mother Jones set their crosshairs on Fox New's Bill O'Reilly attempting to settle the score. MJ and crew accused O'Reilly of lying about his reporting of The Falklands War in 1982. As we discussed:
Their ‘scoop’ seems to revolve around how Mother Jones is defining, “war action” and other semantics they themselves haven’t yet pieced together. Namely that to cover The Falklands War and reporting directly from The Falklands are not mutually exclusive.
O'Reilly responded callng, David Corn a “despicable guttersnipe” and “a liar.” He denied any discrepancy, and called the entire Mother Jones reprt “a piece of garbage.” Yesterday, O'Reilly directly addressed Corn's accusations. He produced memos and letters from 33 years ago. He also addressed the issues that we pointed out above, as well as the obvious Brian Williams retributive angle.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 21, 2015 40 Comments
O RLY? Wednesday, while speaking at a White House Conference on countering violent extremism, Obama claimed, "Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding." "Generations of Muslim immigrants came here and went to work as farmers and merchants and factory workers, helped to lay railroads and to build up America. The first Islamic center was founded in the 1890s. America's first mosque, this is an interesting fact, was in North Dakota."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 21, 2015 21 Comments
The over-vilification of the Democrats' favorite boogeymen may have cost them the Senate last year. Turns out that crying "Koch" is not what voters want to hear. Who knew? Oh that's right, everyone who was not Harry Reid. Who can forget Harry Reid's exceptional case of Koch Derangement Syndrome? Among the many missteps in Democratic strategy, the perpetual whining about the Koch brothers was listed as a contributing factor to the Democrats' subpar performance in last year's midterm elections.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 19, 2015 35 Comments
Knocking off a seminal left-leaning media figure was bound to incur backlash. And so it seems we have our response; Mother Jones is out to off Bill O'Reilly. Late this afternoon, David Corn and Daniel Schulman of Mother Jones released a report suggesting Bill O'Reilly has a, "Brian Williams Problem." They then accuse O'Reilly of saying, "he was in a "war zone" that apparently no American correspondent reached." The intrepid reporting duo began their damning tale by explaining (in a roundabout way, anyway) why they targeted O'Reilly:
After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn't "half as responsible as the men who forged the nation." He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other "distortions" by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O'Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don't withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in. O'Reilly has repeatedly told his audience that he was a war correspondent during the Falklands war and that he experienced combat during that 1982 conflict between England and Argentina. He has often invoked this experience to emphasize that he understands war as only someone who has witnessed it could. As he once put it, "I've been there. That's really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I've seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven't."
Of course they neglect the various other discrepancies between Brian Williams' claims and reality. Then they go on to make their case.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 19, 2015 31 Comments
Joe Biden made headlines Tuesday when he publicly canoodled the wife of newly appointed Secretary of Defense Carter. Our friends over at the Washington Free Beacon compiled this epic super cut of Biden's handsy habit: Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post wrote, "Some tipping point has been reached with Biden, it seems. While it used to be chalked up to Biden being "Uncle Joe," it's increasingly being described as "creepy."" On this point, I wholly agree because it is creepy.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 18, 2015 16 Comments
You gotta love The Imperial City -- everyone is an obstructionist and no one is ever responsible. In this particular tale of drama and woe, the previous Congress passed appropriations bills lasting one fiscal year for every major government entity save the Department of Homeland Security. The idea being that once the newly elected Republican majorities took their seats in January, they'd have a strategic advantage in pushing reforms and curbing President Obama's executive immigration overreach as conditions for continued agency funding. Currently, DHS is only funded through the end of February. The House passed an appropriations bill that was heavy on the enforcement (well done, House Republicans). Senate Democrats keep filibustering the House Bill so the Senate hasn't even had a chance to duke it out. Back at the House, Speaker Boehner told Senate Democrats to "get off their asses" and stop obstructing (there's that magic word again) the bill the House passed. All the while, Senate Democrats continue to cry "unfair!" Meanwhile, down in Texas, a judge was all, "yeah, no Obama." Meaning that the fit the Senate Democrats are pitching is over an Executive Order that cannot be legally implemented. Or as Senator Sessions put it, "Congress cannot fund the very action which dissolves its own powers." And DHS is tweeting on their own behalf: Which brings us to now.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 18, 2015 42 Comments
On Monday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf insisted that the only way we'll be able to defeat ISIS is by ensuring the terrorists have jobs and opportunities---a statement that would be hilarious if it were on SNL and not an actual thing that Administration officials believe in real life. Contrary to civilization upon civilization's worth of wisdom, Harf also said, "we cannot win this war by killing" ISIS. The internet, having seen the idiocy in action, responded accordingly. Ms. Harf responded by grabbing the biggest shovel she could find and dug with the fury of 1,000 waffling diplomats. She went so far as to quote... George W. Bush? First, she blasted a link that touts the UN sanctions against ISIL---and we all know how effective sanctions are... Right, Iran? Then, she tweeted where she lifted her talking points; a CNN article from 2008.
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