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Author: Leslie Eastman

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Leslie Eastman

I am an Environmental Health and Safety Professional, as well as a science/technical writer for a variety of news and professional publications. I have been a citizen activist since 2009, and am one of the co-founders of the San Diego-based group, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

According to the most recent updates, 59 people were killed and 527 were injured after Stephen Paddock opened fire at a packed country music festival opposite the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Details on the victims have begun to emerge, as officials begin the daunting task of identifying victims and notifying the next of kin.

Long-time Legal Insurrection readers know I have a long-time fascination with ancient Egypt. Specifically, my area of study has been mummification and Egyptian burial rituals. This interest has led me to discover a wonderful website, Confessions of a Funeral Direction - Working the Crossroads and Life and Death, which is authored by Caleb Wilde. I thought to kick-off the month of October and the season of Halloween, it would be great to review Wilde's first book, Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life, which takes a look at the American way of death through insightful articles that run the gamut from hilarious to profound. This book is the next, natural phase in the "life cycle" of this gifted writer.

Californians certainly voted as if they were intoxicated last November. Not only did they pull the lever for Hillary Clinton and banning plastic bags, the Californians also approved the use of recreational marijuana. Now, officials are gearing up for the start of 2018, when the unintended consequences of the new rules begin to kick in.
...[T]he California Department of Public Health has created a website to educate Californians about the drug and its impacts, including how to purchase and safely store cannabis.

It seems the only law California follows is the one related to unintended consequences. In addition to voting overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, our state also approved a ban of single-use plastic bags being offered by stores to contain purchased items. This move may have been one of the factors that has contributed to San Diego's Hepatitis A outbreak. The virus is spread via human feces in San Diego, as those bags were a readily available sanitation article for the homeless.
“The reason the outbreak has spread so rapidly is because homeless are living in more concentrated areas,” said Dr. Jeffrey Norris, the St. Vincent De Paul medical director who has been managing the charity’s response to the public health threat. “They often have to defecate in their tent, or next to their tent, and that exposes their neighbors on the street. Hygiene becomes incredibly difficulty.”

Professor Jacobson is not the only one who is "tuning out" sports and entertainment venues because of social justice warrior activism. It turns out millions of American are joining him. Sunday Night Football ratings plummeted the night of the #TakeAKnee protests.
In metered market numbers, the primetime matchup that saw the Washington Redskins beat the Oakland Raiders 27-10 snared an 11.6/20, the worst SNF has performed this season so far. It’s an 8% dip from the early numbers of last week’s game, Atlanta’s 34-23 win over Green Bay. Amid cheers and boos from fans at FedEx Field in Maryland last night, the third week of the SNF season declined 10% from early numbers of the comparable game of last year on September 25, 2016.

I recently noted that San Diego has officially declared a Hepatitis A emergency. Hepatitis A is an illness that is spread by contact with an infected person’s feces. Since that initial report, a 16th person has succumbed to the disease and it has been revealed that the city had been warned repeatedly that a disease outbreak was likely to occur unless shortages in sanitation accommodations were addressed.

When Pope Francis became head of the Catholic church, many were hopeful that the dynamic and humble priest would blossom into a great leader. It appears now that the Pope's social justice agenda is not appealing to a good portion of the Catholic faithful. Several dozen Catholic clergy members and lay scholars have presented Pope Francis with a document known as a "formal filial correction", accusing him of propagating heresies concerning marriage, the moral life, and reception of the sacraments.

Regular readers of Morning Insurrection will recall that I recently attended my son's high school open house. I am blessed to be able to send my son to a really superb institution: Junipero Serra High School, Home of the Conquistadors. Not only is the facility wonderfully counter-cultural, but the teachers I met during open house were outstanding.

California's lawfare targeting President Trump's border security policies has escalated, hitting the centerpiece of the White House's proposals: The Wall. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a lawsuit alleging that President Trump’s proposal to expedite construction of a wall at the southern border violates environmental laws.
Becerra announced the legal challenge standing in front of the existing border fencing at Border Field State Park near San Diego, saying the federal government failed to comply with federal environmental laws and relied on federal statutes that don’t authorize border wall projects in San Diego and Imperial counties.

The Caribbean is bracing for another, potentially catastrophic hurricane, and the US territory of Puerto Rico appears to be in its projected path.
Category 5 Hurricane Maria's maximum sustained winds have increased to 175 mph. The National Hurricane Center in Miami says an Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter plane took the reading Tuesday evening as the storm was about 60 miles (115 kilometers) southeast of St. Croix.

NASA scientists and fans of space science said their goodbyes to the Cassini spacecraft Friday, as it plunged into Saturn and concluded a successful 20-year mission to Earth's spectacular sister planet.
...One of the last pieces of data captured by Cassini was an infrared image of the place into which it took its final plunge. The image, taken 15 hours before the spacecraft's demise, reveals a spot on Saturn's dark side just north of the planet's equator where the spacecraft disintegrated shortly after losing contact with Earth.

In August, we covered a report that a statue of Father Junipero Serra in a park across from Mission San Fernando had been vandalized, as it was spray-painted red and the word “murder” written on the Serra in white. Now, Old Mission Santa Barbara's Serra statue has been beheaded and coated in red paint:
The towering statue of St. Junipero Serra had stood at the foot of a staircase leading into the Old Mission Santa Barbara for years.

Israel's mission to New York reopened after being closed following an evacuation Friday in response to the discovery of a package containing white powder and a letter threatening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli Consulate was closed off due to the suspicious nature of the powder in the package, and the staff has been ordered to remain inside while the material was inspected. The source told the Post that the building has been on lockdown and no one was allowed to enter or leave the premises. New York State Department Police have been called to the scene after the contents of the package were discovered and screened in the consulate's screening room. The [Jerusalem] Post has also learned that the threatening letter in question was written in English and addressed directly to the premier.