Mary Chastain | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 448
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Author: Mary Chastain

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Mary Chastain

Mary is the resident libertarian. She covers stories in every vertical, but her favorite thing to do is take on the media. She saw its bias against the right when she was a socialist.

Mary loves the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Blackhawks, tennis, cats, Oxford comma, Diet Coke, and needlework.

Has WWIII started? I thought I'd wake up to a desolate United States after the way the media treated President-elect Donald Trump's call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, which is the "first time a president or president-elect has spoken with the leader of Taiwan since Washington established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979." Of course China threw a hissy fit and lodged a protest with Washington:
“It must be pointed out that there is only one China in the world,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, adding that it had lodged “solemn representations with the US”.
But as far as I know the world has not ended or China has not severed ties. The dependence on America (yes, China needs America) has shown that China will not retaliate against America except with a few strong words.

Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government holds a forum with the presidential campaign teams every four years after the election. This year provided more entertainment than usual as Hillary Clinton's team once again melted down and blamed everyone for her loss...everyone except her. The prime suspects in Hillary's team's eyes? FBI Director James Comey, unfair media coverage (go ahead and laugh at that one...I did), an unfair "double standard" because Hillary's a female (SEXISM!), and the Russians.

The Accomack County Public Schools in Virginia has suspended the classics To Kill A Mockingbird and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn over racial slurs after a parent filed a complaint:
"I keep hearing, 'This is a classic, This is a classic,' ... I understand this is a literature classic. But at some point, I feel that children will not -- or do not -- truly get the classic part -- the literature part, which I'm not disputing," she said at a Nov. 15 school board meeting. "This is great literature. But there (are so many) racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can't get past that."

With President-elect Donald Trump a month away from taking the White House, President Barack Obama's administration has put pressure on Cuba's regime to make deals with GE and Google for the companies to operate on the island:
White House officials are unsure how Mr. Trump, the president-elect, will approach Mr. Obama’s Cuba policy. He has said he would reverse the effort to build relations, and this week wrote on Twitter that “if Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal.”

Cosmopolitan writer Helin Jung wrote that Victoria's Secret has developed racist lingerie for its annual fashion show. Yes, apparently lingerie can be racist:
None of that even sounds nice, but if it does, don't let yourself be hoodwinked by Victoria's Secret's brazen attempt to re-label what is clearly cultural appropriation by turning it into a celebration of "culture." The brand and its creative leads shamelessly cherry-picked imagery, breaking apart aesthetic references from wherever they wanted and stitching them back together again. They're telling us it's worldliness. It's not, it's a hack job.
As Emily Zanotti at Heat Street points out, when anyone tries to celebrate culture, people will greet it "with charges of bigotry."

The VA in Tomah, Wisconsin, has become entangled in a scandal after a dentist may have infected veterans with hepatitis or HIV:
Nearly 600 veterans who received care at the Tomah VA may have been infected with several types of disease due to violations in infection control procedures. VA administrators made the announcement Tuesday afternoon at a press conference. The Tomah VA says it's in the process of notifying 592 veterans that they may be infected with Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, or HIV after they received care from one particular dental provider. Acting Medical Center Director Victoria Brahm said the dentist was using his own equipment, then cleaning it and reusing it, which violates the VA's regulations.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received praise when they said neither one would attend the funeral of Cuba's oppressive dictator Fidel Castro. It was too good to be true. It seems Obama used a loophole to avoid sending a U.S. delegation to the funeral...by sending two U.S. officials. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stated that Obama will send Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and acting U.S. Ambassador to Cuba Jeffrey DeLaurentis. Despite them being U.S. officials, it is not considered an official U.S. delegation "because the president did not abide by the formal process for naming a delegation." Oh, but it's totally okay because Rhodes planned on traveling to Cuba this week anyway.

Right before I left Breitbart I covered the news about HVAC company Carrier planning on moving its Indianapolis plant to Mexico, cutting over 1,000 jobs. During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump talked about pushing Carrier to keep the jobs in America. It looks like its a promise he kept because Trump and Carrier announced a deal to keep those jobs in America.

On Monday, Ohio State University student Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, plowed his car into a crowd of people. He exited the car and stabbed bystanders, injuring eleven people, before a cop shot and killed him. Authorities have not found a specific motive, but they have started an investigation into Artan's social media posts. It appears he considered American-born Anwar al-Awlaki a hero:
"America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that," Abdul Razak Ali Artan reportedly wrote on Facebook, using the Arabic term for the world's Muslim community.