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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 August 14, 2014 96 Comments
What a nightmare Ferguson has become. Five days after the fatal shooting of unarmed teen, Michael Brown, and there's still no consensus as to what actually happened. If you're just jumping into this story, check out previous posts here and here.

Dorin Johnson's Attorney

Yesterday I mentioned that the St. Louis Police who are handling the Ferguson cluster, have not yet interviewed Dorin Johnson, who claims he was with Michael Brown when Brown was gunned down by law enforcement Saturday. Johnson appeared on MSNBC in an interview with Chris Hayes, accompanied by his lawyer, Freeman Bosley, Jr. Bosley is an interesting character himself. The former St. Louis mayer seems to have a checkered past, with "ethics violations" being a reoccurring theme. Last year, Bosley sent fundraising letters soliciting donations to cover his daughter's college tuition. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, "Bosley said his daughter worked hard to finish in the top two percent of her graduating class at St. Elizabeth Academy. He said she deserves to go to a private school." When the odd fundraising request was brought to light, Bosley vowed to return any donations received. Earlier this year, the board governing Missouri lawyers moved to suspend Bosley's law license for two years. The list is a pretty great read. Misuse of client funds and malpractice make appearances more than once.

St. Louis Police Department Hacked by Anonymous 

Originally, the St. Louis Police Department planned to release the name of the law enforcement officer who shot and killed Brown. As violence escalated, SLPD opted not to release the identity of the officer in order to protect him. So Anonymous, the infamous hacking conglom got involved and called for a "Day of Rage," because that's helpful. According to CNN, Anonymous has the name of the officer, but CNN refused to announce the officer's name on air.

Should The Public be Privy to the Officer's Name?

Kevin Williamson at National Review has an interesting take on this question:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 13, 2014 155 Comments
The situation in Ferguson, Missouri has gone from bad to worse following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen Saturday afternoon. Protests and riots persist, cops dressed in full riot gear are working to curb the violence, community leaders are encouraging peaceful protests, and there's still no clear picture of what actually transpired Saturday when Michael Brown was shot and killed. There appear to be conflicting reports from law enforcement and supposed eye witnesses regarding what actually happened. Law enforcement claim Brown assaulted the cop that took his life. Dorin Johnson who claims he was with Brown at the time he was shot has a very different story. Johnson says he and Brown were minding their own business when a cop rolled up, told them to get on the sidewalk, then proceeded to assault Brown and eventually kill him. Johnson's story seems to corroborate with another supposed eye witness, Piaget Crenshaw. Even more curious is that Johnson claims he, by way of his attorney, has reached out to local law enforcement to provide his account of the story, and Ferguson police are refusing to interview him. Chris Hayes interviewed Johnson and has a great summation of the various accounts:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 12, 2014 8 Comments
Lois Lowry's well-loved classic, The Giver, hits the silver screen Friday, August 15. Well produced, beautifully filmed, and featuring big name celebrities like Meryl Streep, Jeff Bridges, Taylor Swift, and Katie Holmes, the cinematic adaptation of The Giver has created a buzz in the conservative community, but does it live up to the hype? I cringed when I heard the conservative community touting The Giver as a great film. I read the book in grade school, loved it, and naturally assumed the desperation for an ideologically friendly film would've produced the epic suckage we've come to see in releases like Atlas Shrugged. I figured rather than making a movie that subtly blended favorable ideological tones with great story telling, we were getting yet another awful conservative film; one so hell bent on brow beating conservatism, it sucked the joy right off the screen. I was very wrong. Set in a community genetically and physically designed to achieve absolute equality, the film opens with three teenagers preparing for their assignment day. "From great suffering came a solution, communities," Meryl Streep's character explains. Everyone in the community is assigned family units, clothes, jobs, and pretty much everything else that could possibly be assigned. Designed to be devoid of almost all emotion, the entire community merely exists. There is no love, no human connection, no pain, no living. Sameness was meant to protect humanity from pain, jealousy, envy, greed, the unexpected, and everything that ails the human condition. As events unfold, it's evident that despite their best intentions, the desire for sameness comes with calamitous consequences.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 11, 2014 154 Comments
All hell broke loose in Ferguson, Missouri after a police officer killed an unarmed teen. Michael Brown got into an altercation with local law enforcement, and was shot and killed by one of the police officers. According to ABC News:
The struggle began when the officer encountered two men, one of whom was Brown, in the street outside of an apartment complex, and one of the men pushed the office [sic] back toward his squad car, according to police. A shot was fired inside the squad car and then multiple shots were fired at Brown outside the car, killing him, authorities said.
The identification of the officer responsible for the shooting will be released tomorrow at 2:00 in a press conference, ABC News reports. A vigil held Sunday night in Brown's memory turned violent as attendees began looting and destroying local businesses:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 09, 2014 76 Comments
McDonald's employees who picketed for a better living wage (whatever that means) may come to regret that decision. According to a Redditor, a McDonald's in Illinois replaced their cashiers with machines.  The machines appear to be the cousins of the ones found in grocery stores, big box stores, and CVS that allow customers to complete transactions. How cost effective is replacing an organic employee with a mechanized one? According to an economic blog, and unsurprisingly, the machines likely come out on top in terms of pricing:
  • For a location open 24 hours: The cost of human cashiers, not counting benefits, $15/hour * 24 hours * 365 days/year = $131,400
  • For a location open 6AM to Midnight:  $15/hour * 18 hours * 365 = $98,550.
  • For the machine to be cost effective, all it needs to do is cost less than $100,000 a year to buy and maintain.
Who could've possibly seen this coming? Forbes. They predicted this exact scenario last July.
A recent article at the Huffington Post makes the claim that if McDonald's MCD +0.26% doubled its employees salaries it would only cause the price of a Big Mac to go up by 68 cents. The implication here is that 68 cents isn’t much money, so they should do it. There’s a few things missing from this. One is that the article itself alleges that doubling wages would lead to a 17% increase in costs. And I guess this is obviously supposed to seem like a small amount? It doesn’t look that way to me. What do people expect will happen when prices go up 17%? If McDonald’s could raise its prices by that much without lowering demand they would. No, what would happen is people would shop at those stores less, there would be less profit and less McDonald’s stores to hire workers. Doubling of labor costs will simply increase a fast food restaurant’s incentives to adopt technology like this. And if fast food wages doubled everywhere it would spur the development of these technologies even faster.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 08, 2014 19 Comments
God bless Cheerios for their latest ad campaign. Forgoing the tired and insulting schtick of the 'dumb dad' who is too inept to tie his kid's shoes, General Mills decided to highlight the awesomeness of dadhood to promote Peanut Butter Cheerios. The longform web ad begins with a man waking up to find his kid sitting on top of him wearing a horse head mask. The man's response? "Is that a new mask? I like it. It's really creepy. Good stuff." And it just gets better. Getting right to the point, "Hey, let me introduce myself. My name is Dad and proud of it and all dads should be." Take a look: Far too many companies choose to portray fathers as bumbling morons or inconsiderate burdens. Take this cringeworthy Kraft commercial for example, "here we go again, Dad always messes up everything! Thank goodness Kraft Mac N Cheese is here to save the day, otherwise Dad would really be an intolerable oaf." Not an exact quote, but that's the gist:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 06, 2014 15 Comments
Democratic operative Kathy Groob tweeted a handful of racist tweets about Senator McConnell's wife. Outrage ensued and Groob apologized and then deleted her Twitter account. Fox News reports:

A Democratic operative deleted her Twitter account Monday following a series of what some called racist remarks about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao.

Chao, former U.S. Labor Secretary under President George W. Bush, is Asian.

Kathy Groob, who describes herself as an “advocate for women in politics,” sent a series of tweets related to Chao at a political event Saturday.

According to WKMS, Groob sent the tweets in response to comments McConnell made at the event, in which he referred to his wife as "the only Kentucky woman who served in a president’s cabinet."

Following widespread criticism from her own party, Groob later apologized for her “poor choice of words” and deleted her Twitter account.

The tweets that started it all:

Kathy Groob Tweets Elaine Chao Asian not KY

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 05, 2014 35 Comments
Last week, Congress expedited a bill that gave $225 million to Israel for their missile defense system known as the Iron Dome. The bill passed through the House with a vote of 395-8 and was quickly passed through the Senate. According to CBS News:
The money will go to restocking Israel's Iron Dome, which has been credited with shooting down dozens of incoming rockets fired by Palestinian militants over three and a half weeks of war. The vote came two days after the Pentagon announced ammunition deliveries to the Jewish state and as a planned 72-hour cease-fire between Israel and Hamas unraveled almost as quickly as it began. Efforts in the Senate to approve the money stalled Thursday night after Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma sought cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for the aid. Earlier, senators attempted to lump the Israel money into a broader spending bill that included border security and wildfire assistance money. That bill failed to get the necessary 60 votes on Thursday, and the House had little interest in it, anyway. Friday's separate Israel bill passed by voice vote.
Yet not everyone voted for the bill to provide funding to Israel's missile defense system. Eight members of Congress voted against the bill, four Republicans and four Democrats.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 30, 2014 21 Comments
Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner indicated the House Republicans will push back against any attempt to hijack their border bill. The bill would allocate $659 million to border authorities, far less than the almost $4 billion President Obama requested. Boehner released the following statement (emphasis added):
“Senator Reid, embarrassed that he cannot strong-arm the Senate into passing the blank check President Obama demanded, is making a deceitful and cynical attempt to derail the House’s common-sense solution. So let me be as clear as I can be with Senator Reid: the House of Representatives will not take up the Senate immigration reform bill or accept it back from the Senate in any fashion. Nor will we accept any attempt to add any other comprehensive immigration reform bill or anything like it, including the DREAM Act, to the House’s targeted legislation, which is meant to fix the actual problems causing the border crisis. Such measures have no place in the effort to solve this crisis, and any attempt to exploit this crisis by adding such measures will run into a brick wall in the People’s House.

“While the White House has abandoned all pretense of governing and the Senate is doing almost nothing to address our struggling economy, Republicans remain committed to addressing the American people’s priorities, and that includes passing a responsible bill this week to help secure our border and return these children safely to their home countries.” 
Boehner's statement was in direct response to Senator Reid's statement indicating the the GOP's border bill could be used as an opportunity to push the ever-ambiguous "immigration reform." The Hill reports:
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