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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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 23, 2017 6 Comments
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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 21, 2017 23 Comments
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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 20, 2017 3 Comments
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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 17, 2017 9 Comments
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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 17, 2017 13 Comments
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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 16, 2017 3 Comments
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.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 13, 2017 29 Comments
I just developed a profound new respect for our judicial system. The last time we checked on former pharmaceutical titan Martin Shkreli, he had been arrested by the FBI, accused of orchestrating a “trifecta of lies, deceit and greed" related to his hedge fund and pharma business dealings. The move occurred after Shkreli gained notoriety for jacking the prices of life-essential medicines by over 5000% while he was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Shkreli was convicted of defrauding hedge fund investors in last month, and may eventually get a sentence of up to 20 years when sentenced. While awaiting sentencing, he made an usual request of his Facebook followers:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 10, 2017 7 Comments
(Updates added to end of post) The nation's eyes are on Florida this weekend, as Hurricane Irma storms through the Sunshine State. Once rated as a Category 5 tempest, Irma has expended enough energy buffeting the coast that it now "merely" meets Category 3 criteria.
Hurricane Irma bludgeoned Florida on Sunday, snapping trees like matchsticks and turning Miami streets into rivers. And there's plenty more damage to come. Naples and Marco Island will endure some of the strongest winds in the next few hours, the National Hurricane Center said.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 09, 2017 60 Comments
Earlier this week, Professor Jacobson reported that 14 states were suing the Trump administration for the phasing out of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (aka, DACA). Legal Insurrection fans may have been a bit surprised that California was not listed among those states. It appears that our state's officials were simply holding out to file one of their own, which is in keeping with the war they have apparently declared on President Trump.
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