Image 01 Image 03

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

/var/www/vhosts/legalinsurrection.com/httpdocs/wp-content/themes/bridge-child/readFeeds.incFALSE

Lately it seems as though there's a story a day reporting some new Trump administration scandal based on a leak from an anonymous government "official." We are asked to take the facts in those stories on trust, without a chance to evaluate the veracity or motives of the source of the remarks. This over-reliance on the anonymous source gives both the journalist and his/her informant an overwhelming power. The most famous anonymous source of them all, of course, was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. He was not only a seminal figure in Nixon's denouement (and thus a hero to liberals everywhere), but he was so renowned that he had his own nickname, taken from a popular porn flick. The reporters involved in the story became famous too; Bob Woodward was played by movie star Robert Redford and Carl Bernstein by Dustin Hoffman in the film "All the Presidents Men."

LATEST NEWS

The Turkish government has summoned the U.S. ambassador over a brawl that Turkish bodyguards instigated in front of the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., last week. From USA Today:
In a statement Monday, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the ambassador was summoned and “a written and verbal protest was delivered due to the aggressive and unprofessional actions taken, contrary to diplomatic rules and practices, by U.S. security personnel toward the close protection team of H.E Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.”

The Supreme court has ruled that Republicans in North Carolina used race and not politics when they drew congressional districts in 2011. A lower court ruled the same, which "forced legislators to create new maps last year." The News & Observer continued:
The 5-3 ruling, written by Justice Elena Kagan, is among a series by the justices against the excessive use of race in redistricting that state lawmakers across the country take up every 10 years after the release of new Census data. Justice Clarence Thomas joined the majority, taking a stand with more liberal justices with whom he often disagrees.

Between 2010-2012, the Chinese government murdered or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA agents after it demolished America's spying operations within the country. The CIA has been investigating how this happened, whether a mole leaked information to Beijing or the Chinese managed to break our codes. The New York Times reported:
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

Lou Reed passed away in 2013. At least he's not here to witness one of his best songs become the newest thing campus snowflakes have deemed problematic. Students at the University of Guelph in Canada played "Walk on the Wild Side" at a campus event and were ultimately forced to apologize. Dave Huber reports at The College Fix:
Student group issues apology after playing Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ This is where we are: A student group at the University of Guelph in Canada has apologized for including the Lou Reed song “Walk on the Wild Side” on a playlist at a campus event. Because, don’t you know, the tune contains “transphobic lyrics.”

The MSM is hating President Trump's foreign trip. Why? Because it takes the spotlight off what they'd much rather be covering: the investigations back home into Russian involvement in the election. Yesterday, we witnessed a CNN host fretting that President Trump's successful speech in Saudi Arabia might be "normalizing" him. Now it's Mika Brzezinski's turn to insist that she won't let Morning Joe be distracted by the foreign trip. On today's show, when HuffPo's Sam Stein said that despite the investigations, people are "going about our business," Mika jumped on him.

President Donald Trump has arrived in Israel, which he will visit for two days. In fact, his flight to Israel from Saudi Arabia is the first non-stop flight between the two countries that have no diplomatic ties. We will publish updates on Trump's visit, a truly historic one since Israel remains our most important ally in the Middle East. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and his wife Nechama and Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife Sara greeted Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as the two descended from Air Force One.

Donald Trump will be leaving Saudi Arabia overnight (Eastern time) and flying directly to Israel. That direct flight itself is historic, since the Saudis do not allow flights directly to or from Israel. One of his first stops in Israel will be the Western Wall, the holiest place at which Jews are permitted to pray. The holiest place is the Temple Mount. As Prof. Miriam Elman has explained, Jews are not permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, where conquest mosques and monuments have been built on top of the ancient Jewish Temples. That prohibition is both theological and geo-political.

Back when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) still claimed to be a Republican, she came up with the idea of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). That idea, however, morphed into a partisan Democrat operation under Obama, with a structure that sought to exclude itself from Executive or Congressional oversight.  The constitutionality of the CFPB will be decided, yet again, on Wednesday by the D. C. Circuit Court.

Bob Schieffer is an old-school newsman. There's no doubt that the former Face the Nation host leans left, but he is still capable of reporting, you know, the news. That is too much for denizens of the modern MSM to tolerate. On today's Reliable Sources on CNN, Schieffer reported the glaringly obvious truth: that President Trump gave a good speech in Saudi Arabia today. Guest host John Berman had to push back: "you know, Bob, though, that there will be people who look at that last comment you made and say you're normalizing the president." Schieffer gave the perfect response: he wasn't trying to normalize Trump, he was trying to do what reporters [are supposed to] do: report.

We recently reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to target the nation's law enforcement efforts on the barbaric and brutal El Salvadoran gang, MS13. While the elite media has been attempting to stage a coup-d'-press, it has nearly ignored significant developments that highlight exactly how effective President Donald Trump's administration has been.  For example, Sessions' plans were initiated during an early morning sweep of MS13 gangsters that hit its leadership.

In Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip as president, President Trump delivered a speech on Islamic extremism and the need for the world to unite against and eradicate it.  Trump urged the Muslim-majority countries to "take the lead in combating radicalization" and to expel Islamist extremists from their places of worship, communities, holy lands, and the planet. Some highlights from the full text of President Trump's speech.
"I stand before you as a representative of the American People, to deliver a message of friendship and hope. That is why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic Faith." "Our vision is one of peace, security, and prosperity—in this region, and in the world. Our goal is a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God."

As we've been discussing a lot lately, the media is in the middle of an attempt to bring down the Trump presidency. Call it a coup, a slow-motion coup, or whatever you want. False stories and conspiracy theories are invented and rolled out daily based almost entirely on anonymous sources for the obvious purpose of freezing the administration, enabling corrupting leaks from the bureaucracy, and making it impossible to govern.

Jean-Michel Basquiat passed away in 1988 at the age of 27 but enjoyed a fast rise to prominence in the New York art world at an early age. He started out as a graffiti artist but his work matured rapidly as he met the right people to nurture his talent. One of his paintings sold at auction this week for $110.5 million dollars, a record for an American artist.

In 2013 an Israeli friend drove us through northern Samaria (the "West Bank"), including the settlement of Itamar, as I wrote in my post To Samaria and back:
Today we reunited with a family I was close to while a student in Moscow in 1980, and had not seen since 1984 in Moscow.  It was great, and very satisfying.  The parents, now in their early 80’s, have a life story about which history books should be written.  To see their son (my age) and his beautiful family in Israel was beyond anything I could have expected in those horrible days in which they were subjected to retribution and imprisonment.