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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 December 23, 2014 2 Comments
Tis the season for giving. Retailer JC Penny has an ad campaign this season called #JustGotJingled. To kick off the event, they asked shoppers whether it was better to give or receive. Not only are the responses heart warming, they're a great reminder of what this season is all about.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 22, 2014 10 Comments
I'm an avid online shopper, particularly during this time of year. I also think Amazon Prime is one of God's greatest modern gifts to mankind. A few weeks ago I was perusing through the endless Amazon offerings when I stumbled upon an option to view the best selling items by category. Both horrifying and delightful, I've compiled a list of what are some of the most, shall we say "interesting", Amazon best sellers.

Home and Kitchen

While a nice little wine bottle vacuum sealer is Amazon's top seller in this department, enough people are buying Obama toilet paper for the item to be listed as the 17th best seller in the entirety of home and kitchen wares. Interestingly enough, this same item is the 13th best seller in the Bedding and Bath department. In sum, people like Obama toilet paper. Obama Toilet Paper

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 19, 2014 9 Comments
There are plenty of deep and meaningful reasons to enjoy the holiday season. And then there are the small holiday hallmarks like Christmas lights, which happen to be one of my favorite parts of this time of year. christmas lights blinking Interestingly enough, NASA says you can actually see Christmas lights from space. According to their study, light intensifies 20% - 50% in large metropolitan areas this time of year. Which makes perfect sense when you watch the light displays on these awesome houses.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 17, 2014 15 Comments
There are many, many reasons I adore Governor Perry, the least of which is his penchant for engaging in cultural activities. This little gem dates back all the way to the turn of the decade when Governor Perry met with a delegation of Texas Jewish leaders on the first full day of Hanukkah. It's one of those moments that deserves a yearly refresher because it's just that good. And this is my Hanukkah gift to you, that you may always enjoy dancing around a desk like Governor Good Hair: But once simply isn't good enough. Friday, the good Governor was spotted outside of the Texas State Capitol celebrating. Again:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 16, 2014 244 Comments
The incident occurred in Victoria, Texas, a suburb of Houston. A dash camera captured officer Nathaniel Robinson tasering 76-year-old Pete Vasquez. Vasquez was driving a vehicle owned by the car dealership where he works. Officer Robinson pulled him over when he noticed the vehicle's inspection sticker had expired. When Vasquez exited the car and attempted to show Robinson the dealer plates---which would've exempted the necessity for up to date inspection tags---that's when the altercation happened. "I don't know what his deal is," Vasquez told an officer that arrived on the scene later. Vasquez went on, "he came over here and got nasty with me and I'm not going to put up with it, I don't care who it is. Then he grabbed me and threw me on the pavement there and I almost knocked my head on that damn poll and then he start [sic] Tasing."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 12, 2014 6 Comments
Even the Free-Market Jesus Paradise has regulatory issues once in a while. Wednesday, three Texan craft breweries joined with the Institute for Justice to file suit against the state of Texas and specifically, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. Passed in 2013, Senate Bill 639 faces a Constitutional challenge because it, "strips breweries of their traditional right to sell their distribution rights and instead forces them to surrender those rights to distributors without compensation," according to the Institute for Justice. “It is unconstitutional for Texas to force brewers to give distributors property that they never earned and don’t deserve,” said Matt Miller, managing attorney for the Institute for Justice's Texas office. More specifically, the plaintiffs claim:
Texas cannot force them to give away their territorial rights—a part of their business—for free to distributors. They bring two claims: a takings claim under Article I, Section 17 of the Texas Constitution,[xii] which protects private property rights; and a substantive due process claim under Article I, Section 19 of the Texas Constitution, which protects economic liberty—the right to earn an honest living free from unreasonable government interference.
“For the last 18 years, I’ve poured my life into this business,” said Chip McElroy, president of Live Oak Brewing. “I’m proud to have been part of the Texas craft beer Renaissance. When Texas passed this law, not only did it give away part of what my employees and I built—it took my beer off the shelves in Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and other parts of Texas where Live Oak beer would otherwise be available.”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 10, 2014 46 Comments
Yeah, they went there. "The killings of Michael Brown and Treyvon Martin clearly shows that we don't live in a post-racial society as many expected when you were elected," Ramos says. Obama chuckled, "Well, I didn't expect that. You probably didn't either." "But many people expected you to do more on race relations, dealing with white privilege. Do you get angry with this? Is it your responsibility?" Then President Obama claimed Americans experience more equality now than before he took office, and also that Eric Holder was awesome. When Ramos pressed on saying, "but there's not really been a lot of improvement," Obama retorted, "The folks who say there's not a lot of improvement, I don't think were living in the 50's and remembering what it was like to be black or Hispanic and interacting with the police then." Take a look:

Fact Check:

Flashback to November 2, 2008. The Washington Post had this to say:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 10, 2014 74 Comments
Had I not known Tomasky's piece in The Daily Beast was not in fact, parody, I'd have thought I was reading something straight from the annals of The Onion. Bereaved over Mary Landrieu's Louisiana Senate loss to Senator-elect Cassidy, Tomasky made the case (and I use that term loosely), that the Democrats should ditch Dixie (emphasis added to highlight adventitious hilarity):
I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I don’t intend it that way. She did what she could and had, as far as I know, an honorable career. I do, however, intend it to sound mean about the reactionary, prejudice-infested place she comes from. A toothless dog is a figure of sympathy. A vet who takes pleasure in gassing it is not. And that is what Louisiana, and almost the entire South, has become. The victims of the particular form of euthanasia it enforces with such glee are tolerance, compassion, civic decency, trans-racial community, the crucial secular values on which this country was founded… I could keep this list going. But I think you get the idea. Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment. A fact made even sadder because on the whole they’re such nice people! (I truly mean that.) With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.
Gee, what electoral use could Democrats possible have for Florida, or Texas, or Virginia?

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 09, 2014 8 Comments
God bless Texas. Last year, the Lone Star State passed a bill that allows schools to say things like, "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Hanukah" without retribution. Co-authored by Dwayne Bohac (R-Houston) and Richard Raymond (D-Laredo), the bill, "allows students, parents, teachers and administrators the freedom to acknowledge these traditional winter holidays without fear of litigation or punishment and restores common sense by placing Supreme Court precedent into state law," according to the law's official website.
More ABC US news | ABC World News

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 09, 2014 45 Comments

Jonathan Gruber testifies before an unimpressed Congressional Oversight Committee...

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 08, 2014 6 Comments
The Military Times released what will be the first installment of several on the state of our military. Presidential indecision over whether to deploy to or withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan has fostered an aura of uncertainty. An entire federal agency devoted to our veterans embroiled in scandal and negligence certainly doesn't send the signal that Washington cares about the fate of the brave. Morale is dwindling and unsurprisingly so:
Today, however, that gratitude seems to be dwindling. The services have weathered several years of deep cuts in funding and tens of thousands of troops have been unceremoniously given the boot. Many still in uniform and seeking to retire from the military fear the same fate, as those cuts are not yet complete. A Military Times survey of 2,300 active-duty troops found morale indicators on the decline in nearly every aspect of military life. Troops report significantly lower overall job satisfaction, diminished respect for their superiors, and a declining interest in re-enlistment now compared to just five years ago. Today's service members say they feel underpaid, under-equipped and under-appreciated, the survey data show. After 13 years of war, the all-volunteer military is entering an era fraught with uncertainty and a growing sense that the force has been left adrift. One trend to emerge from the annual Military Times survey is "that the mission mattered more to the military than to the civilian," said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who studies the military. "For the civilian world, it might have been easier to psychologically move on and say, 'Well, we are cutting our losses.' But the military feels very differently. Those losses have names and faces attached to [them]."
Look at how dramatically morale has shifted in the last five years:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 07, 2014 5 Comments
"To the Memory of the Gallant Men Here Entombed and their shipmates who gave their lives in action on 7 December 1941, on the U.S.S. Arizona." Those are the words etched in marble at the U.S.S. Arizona memorial. 73 years ago today, at 7:55 am (12:55 EST), the Imperial Japanese Navy unleashed what would be one of the deadliest attacks on American soil. More than 2,500 died and over 1,000 were wounded. The next day, America declared war on Japan. Fast forward to 1945 and the Japanese surrender. A Legal Insurrection reader sent a link to this video a few years ago:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 06, 2014 51 Comments
Congress is under another tight funding deadline. Currently, the federal government is only funded until December 11. A spending bill must be passed by Thursday to avoid a government shutdown. Thursday, John Boehner held a vote that passed legislation rebuking President Obama's executive overreach on immigration. H.R. 5759 would've refused President Obama the authority to intervene in the deportation of illegal immigrants. Harry Reid indicated he will not bring the measure to the Senate floor for a vote in his last remaining days as Majority Leader. Republicans are in a precarious situation. Obama has said, through his spokesman, that he will not sign any bill that defunds his quasi-amnesty. But Government shutdowns are ripe with contention and not the way most congressional Republicans want to wrap up 2014, after what happened in October 2013. Boehner has said he'll do everything in his power to avoid a shutdown. Currently, Boenher's plan (or at least the plan made public) is to pass a bill that would fund the federal government for a year with the exception of one agency: The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration. DHS would only be funded until March when Republicans have control of the Senate and are able to pass substantive reform.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 05, 2014 26 Comments
We've been skeptical of Rolling Stone's recent and controversial story about a coed simply referred to as 'Jackie' who claimed to have been brutally gang raped at a University of Virginia frat party in 2012. Sabrina Ruben Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter covering the UVA gang rape story, failed to contact the alleged attackers and corroborate Jackie's story. Any 'new information' Rolling Stone is referring to is simply the product of basic journalistic due diligence. In a reactionary response, and without first conducting an investigation of their own, UVA suspended all campus fraternities until January as a result of the Rolling Stone expose. Today, Rolling Stone posted the following note to readers (emphasis added):
To Our Readers: Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled "A Rape on Campus" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university's failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school's troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations. Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence. In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story. Will Dana Managing Editor
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