Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Author: Kemberlee Kaye

Profile photo

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 September 18, 2014 11 Comments
This is a horribly heart-breaking story. Seven young Persians filmed their own rendition of "Happy" by Pharrell Williams, but in totalitarian regimes like Iran's, no good deed goes unpunished. A CNN Reporter tweeted the following: According to the Iran Wire, six of the accused were sentenced to six months in prison and 91 lashes, while the remaining offender was sentenced to a year in prison and 91 lashes:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 16, 2014 20 Comments
For all the times we've been told Obamacare does not fund abortion, a new GAO report proves exactly the opposite. Salon wrote this fantastic piece decrying anti-choice activists who bought into the Obamacare-abortion myth, and last night the Washington Examiner released their findings related to the GAO report and recapped the debate as follows:
Again and again, during the congressional debate, Obamacare defenders promised: Obamacare subsidies won't subsidize abortion; customers will be able to choose insurance plans that don't cover abortion; Obamacare subsidies, if they want to pay for abortion coverage, will be billed separately. A new GAO report shows that Obamacare is failing on these counts. Warning of "bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost," for instance, President Obama told Congress in 2009: "And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place."
The Examiner summarized the GAO report:
Customers in five states have no abortion-free plans available to them, and in many states, customers can't tell which plans cover abortion and which don't. In Washington State, for instance, the state's exchange bills customers on behalf of insurers--and the exchange covers abortion with federal tax dollars. The GAO found: "the exchange’s billing system was not assessing any premium to individuals whose premiums are fully subsidized under the law if these individuals are enrolled in QHPs that cover non-excepted abortion services."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 16, 2014 14 Comments
Our friends over at National Review pulled this little gem. We've officially entered foreign policy bizarro world when the Department of State is absolutely refusing to work with Syria, but is open to working with Iran to fight (however they're defining that) ISIS. Blitzer asked Department of State Spokesperson Marie Harf if Syria was receiving intelligence through a third party, to which she responded, "Not at all. I can categorically reject that. We will not work with the Assad regime, we will not share intelligence with them, we will not coordinate with them. Period. Full stop. I don't want to be any clearer than that."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 15, 2014 31 Comments
If the FDA's overreach into cheese doesn't compel you to grab your pitchfork and take to the streets, nothing will. Last week, we wrote about the FDA's French cheese tyranny. Looks like the situation is only becoming more dire. According to The Gazette, a cheese factory that specializes in cheese curds is shutting down. They're not being shut down for a specific health violation or anything like that -- they make good cheese. They're closing up shot because compliance with new federal regulations will require more cash than they have to spend:

“From advanced food safety and quality assurance requirements to more stringent environmental regulations that would require substantial capital investment,” said Gary Weihs, president of Proliant Dairy Ingredients, in a news release. “As a result of the changing environment, we have decided to close the Kalona facility. This is a difficult decision and we will continue to explore other opportunities for the facility.”

The facility employed 50 people. Impacted employees will receive compensation, severance pay and job placement assistance, the release said.

John Roetlin wouldn’t comment on the factory’s fate.

“It is what it is,” Roetlin said when contacted Thursday. He added the Kalona Cheese House, the factory’s store, will remain open despite the factory’s closure.

A group of Amish and Mennonite farmers established the operation as co-op in 1946, according to the website. The farmers hired Swiss immigrant John Roetlin, Sr. to run the factory, which opened in 1947.

This isn't just about cheese, it's about a community who will now be forced to find other ways to make memories.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 15, 2014 30 Comments
We've covered the recent push for Scottish independence here, here, and here. With the referendum vote coming up Thursday, the 'No' votes have abandoned polite dissuasion in favor of a more direct approach. The 'Yes' camp has also become a little less shy. First, John Oliver. If you're not familiar with the former Daily Show personality, know that he's a bit colorful. He did a fantastic job of hilariously summing up the relatively complicated independence situation in a segment on his HBO show (slightly NSFW):

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 14, 2014 6 Comments
UPDATE: The final count is in, at the bottom of the post. If you've been following, Mandy Nagy, our beloved editor was recently hospitalized following a stroke. Mandy is invaluable not only to Legal Insurrection, but to the movement. Our good friends at FTR Radio have organized a Thunderclap set to go off at 3:00 PM EST tomorrow. You must sign up at the link before that time to participate: This is a pretty spiffy social media campaign. By joining the Thunderclap page for Mandy, you are essentially prescheduling a Facebook or Twitter post to be sent at 3:00 EST tomorrow along with everyone else participating. Hence, the "thunderclap" is when all these messages go off at once. It's very easy and takes about 90 seconds. Currently, the "Get Well Mandy" campaign is trending in the top 5 Thunderclap campaigns. The more, the merrier!

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 11, 2014 14 Comments
Last month we started writing about the mounting support for Scottish independence. Depending on which poll you read and who you listen to, an independent Scotland is either imminent or a pipe dream. Saturday, YouGov released a poll showing the pro-independence movement with a lead over the British loyalists. Although the "yes" votes only had a two point lead over the "no"s, this marked the first time the independence movement had polled above their competition. And there was much rejoicing. YouGov Scottish Independence Poll Just last night, another poll was released with the opposite results. According to the Daily Record:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 09, 2014 35 Comments
Is there anything the government doesn't ruin? I had the pleasure of living in France for some time. While there, I gained an appreciation for their amazing array of cheeses. So vast is their cheese spread that Charles de Gaulle is famously quoted as saying, "Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?" ("How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?"). But I digress. According to The Week, the FDA is out to regulate away our freedom to partake in French cheese:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 06, 2014 71 Comments
This is a thing that's actually happening at Columbia University in New York City. Rather than taking her allegations of rape to local law enforcement, Emma Sulkowicz has decided to carry around her mattress as long as her alleged rapist remains on campus. Sulkowicz didn't report the rape immediately after it happened, but was convinced to report the alleged incident months later. The case was ultimately dismissed by university authorities. According to the Columbia Spectator:

As long as her alleged rapist goes to Columbia, Emma Sulkowicz, CC ’15, plans on carrying a navy blue, extra-long twin-sized mattress wherever she goes.

Entitled “Carry That Weight,” the mattress is both the visual art major’s senior thesis and a step in her journey to come to terms with her experience. Over the past year, Sulkowicz has become a prominent critic of the University’s sexual assault adjudication policies, retelling her story to various administrators and media organizations to raise awareness.

“The past year of my life has been really marked by telling people what happened in that most intimate and private space,” Sulkowicz said, referring to the dorm bed where she was allegedly raped on the second night of her sophomore year.

“I was raped in my own dorm bed and since then, that space has become fraught for me. I feel like I’ve carried the weight of what happened there since then,” she added.

Months after her alleged rape, Emma reported the incident to the school. Her case, one of three individual complaints filed against the same student, was closed, and her rapist found “not responsible.” She appealed, but it was denied and the decision was upheld.

Sulkowicz has turned what she says was a horrible tragedy into performance art.

Performance art that will suffice as her senior thesis. A fact I'll just leave there without commenting on further:

Sulkowicz plead her case to the university. But why didn't she go to the police?

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 05, 2014 12 Comments
Yesterday, we wrote about Senator Paul's apparent departure from isolationism.  Last night, the Kentucky Senator chatted with Sean Hannity about his foreign policy stance:
"I've been trying to say that for the last four years of public life that I'm I'm neither an isolationist nor an interventionist. I'm someone who believes in the Constitution and believes America should have a strong national defense and believes that we should defend ourselves. But when we do it, we should do it the way the Constitution intended. That's the President should come before Congress and make the case for war." "There's a big difference between that and between doing it unilaterally. And I think the example of Libya, with both Hillary's support and President Obama's support shows all the unintended consequences when they around the Constitution."
I don't disagree we should respect Constitutional channels, but objectively speaking, this is just political posturing and an attempt to define his position as diametrically opposed to that of both Mrs. Clinton and the administration. Which is smart. But his argument seems to hinge on the fact that we would not be in this nightmare of a foreign policy situation had President Obama gone to Congress. Perhaps he's right. He continued:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 03, 2014 12 Comments
Advocating for foreign intervention is not something you usually hear from libertarian poster children like Senator Paul. And yet, that seems to be what he's preaching. From WaPo:
"If I were president, I would call a joint session of Congress," Paul told the AP. "I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily."
Good. Someone should have a plan to deal with those monsters. But as WaPo points out, Paul is supposed to be the only non-interventionist in the bunch of potential 2016 contenders. Compare Paul's statement to the rest of the pack of GOP potential candidates, as compiled by WaPo:
Chris Christie: ""The ISIS situation is one that deserves a really detailed answer, which I'm not going to give you while walking down the boardwalk and taking selfies." Marco Rubio: "If we do not act now to assist our Iraqi partners and moderate Syrians who oppose ISIL, as well as utilize our own forces to directly target ISIL’s leadership, the result will be more suffering and tragedy for our people.”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 01, 2014 17 Comments
A few days ago, President Obama made what is probably one of his silliest remarks yet when he insinuated we're only now realizing the world is a "messy" place because of the advent of social media. Really? No one noticed the underbelly of humanity before Twitter? We beg to differ.

That time that jerk Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton.

Screen Shot 2014-09-01 at 11.58.26 AM  

Archduke Ferdinand gets capped and a little thing called "World War I" happens

Screen Shot 2014-09-01 at 11.53.26 AM

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 31, 2014 13 Comments
At least they know how to have fun? According to the Washington Times:

Islamists who gained control of a U.S. Embassy residential compound in Libya last week posted a video online of the men throwing a spring break-like pool party at the property.

A commander for the umbrella Islamist militia group, the Dawn of Libya, told The Associated Press that his fighters had been in control of the compound since last week. The group granted access to the compound to an AP reporter, who said some windows had been broken, but most of the equipment there appeared to remain untouched. The journalist saw treadmills, food, televisions and computers still inside.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones tweeted that the video appeared to have been shot in at the embassy’s residential annex, AP reported.

The video (which nauseatingly spins from side to side) shows a group men diving off a balcony into the pool below:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 28, 2014 35 Comments

Earlier this month, we wrote about McDonald's and what appears to be a technological experiment that would replace cashiers:

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.
mcdonalds When labor costs increase, employers are required to offset those increases elsewhere in order to remain profitable while still providing a product the market will want. So when workers demand to be paid $15 an hour to push buttons on a cash register, they can and should be expected to be replaced with cheaper, more efficient labor. When an employer can only afford three employees for what they once paid for five, that's two jobs that have been eliminated. Undeterred by facts and economics, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles reportedly plans to raise the minimum wage to $13.25 an hour, what would be one of the highest minimum wages in the country.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 26, 2014 20 Comments
Could Scotland once again be an independent nation? They will if the Scottish National Party has their way. Just a few years ago, Scottish independence was a long shot, now, the argument appears to be in a dead heat. According to The Guardian:
Last October, the yes/no split was 37% to 63%, suggesting that the traditional two-to-one balance against independence was holding in the referendum context. But then the nationalists began to narrow the gap. In February, Westminster's three unionist parties made a heavy-handed intervention on the question of the currency, warning that an independent Scotland could not count on keeping the pound. This backfired, and by April, the poll of polls was running at 45%-55%. The race was looking increasingly competitive, before opinion congealed and then froze. Glasgow's Commonwealth Games and the first debate, which a Guardian/ICM poll established Alistair Darling had won for the no camp, came and went without materially affecting the picture.
The last debate between the Scottish National Party and the British Labour Party produced a strong win for the SNP. A Guardian/ICM poll taken immediately after the debate showed 71% of respondents handing victory to Alex Salmond, the SNP's pro-independence spokesman. Whether a debate win translates to actual votes is another issue though.
Accessibility by WAH