Image 01 Image 03

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

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

As if the election season isn't scary enough, the start of October a few days away and Halloween-themed everything can be seen everywhere. In Southern California, Knotts Berry Farm pulls out all the stops in making its amusement park the scariest place on earth. However, according to some mental health advocates, the newest attraction was too much.
A popular Halloween attraction at Knott's Berry Farm and California's Great America was shutting down, officials announced Wednesday, after some took to social media calling the display "offensive" to those suffering from mental illness.

LATEST NEWS

We followed the Washington Redskins name controversy rather closely, including legal action taken against them.  Now the Supreme Court is taking up a case that, while not directly related to the Redskins, may impact the team and its name. The Washington Post reports:
The Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law that bars the registration of disparaging trademarks violates free speech, a case with direct implications for the Washington Redskins in their fight to defend their famous team name. The justices on Thursday announced that they will consider whether part of the 1946 Lanham Trademark Act that prohibits registration of a trademark that “may disparage” persons violates the First Amendment, as an appeals court has ruled.
The Court didn't take the Redskin case, but instead took another with similar implications that was further along in the legal process.

As much as I enjoyed former French president Nicholas Sarkozy's colorful assessment of Obama and heartily disliked his open mike remarks about Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, it wasn't a huge surprise when Sarkozy lost his reelection bid. Last month, however, Sarkozy announced he's running for president again, and it seems that he has landed on Brexit as among the key issues of his campaign.  Indeed, Sarkozy has pledged to help the UK reverse its decision to leave the EU. The International Business Times reports:
Sarkozy claims he would reform the EU with German counterpart Angela Merkel, thus making it possible for the UK to organise another vote on whether to remain.

Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, has had an abysmal few years when it comes to anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic activity. You can scroll through our Vassar Tag for dozens of posts. Here are a few of those posts that provide an overview: When I appeared on campus in 2014 to challenge pro-BDS faculty to a debate, one of those faculty tried to organize a boycott of me!

Now that the demonstrations have subsided in Charlotte, North Carolina, a San Diego neighborhood is facing potential unrest in the wake of a police shooting involving a black man.
A black man was shot in an encounter with El Cajon Police Tuesday, multiple witnesses said, while a woman wailed nearby, demanding to know why police shot her brother. Hours later, police officers told NBC 7 San Diego the man, now identified as Alfred Olango, was acting erratically and failed to comply, although they did not release details on the specific threat he presented to officers. Dozens of officers swarmed a public shopping center in the heart of El Cajon at 1 p.m. The community is approximately 30 miles east of downtown San Diego.

According to a recent Gallup poll, D. C. gridlock and "do nothing Congress" accusations seem to have taken its toll on Americans' preference for divided government.  Just 20% of Americans now prefer the presidency and Congress to be controlled by different parties...the lowest it's been in 15 years. Gallup reports:
One in five Americans believe it is best for the president to be from one political party and for Congress to be controlled by another, the lowest level of public support for divided government in Gallup's 15-year trend. The remainder are evenly divided between those who favor one party controlling both the presidency and Congress (36%) and those saying it makes no difference how political power is allocated (36%). Americans' current preference for one party controlling both the presidency and Congress is near the record high of 38% from four years ago. That fits with a pattern of heightened support for single-party control seen in the past two presidential election years. In 2004, the preferences were more evenly divided. These results are based on Gallup's annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 7-11.

Prominent and ordinary Indians took to social media expressing their grief following the death of Israeli statesman and Nobel laureate at the age of 93:
“It was during his service as the minister of foreign affairs in the 1990’s that Peres also began his special relationship with India. He was the first minister of foreign affairs to visit India following the establishment of diplomatic relations,” wrote Ambassador Daniel Carmon, Israel's envoy to India, in an article published yesterday in India newspaper Hindustan Times. “He visited India several times in various capacities, visits to be remembered and cherished by all those who met him here.”

For months now, "smart" people on the left and the right have claimed that Donald Trump would destroy the Republican Party's chances of holding onto the Senate. It's now looking as though those predictions were premature. Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post:
Democratic hopes of winning Senate fade as Trump proves less toxic for Republicans Democrats are now facing a tougher road to capturing the Senate majority as the presidential race tightens and Donald Trump is not proving to be the dramatic drag on down-ballot candidates that Republicans once feared.

Mika Brzezinski went on an epic feminist rant on today's Morning Joe, condemning not just Donald Trump for his comments about a former Miss Universe, but raging against the entire beauty pageant culture in which women are judged on their . . beauty. Mika summed up her intellectual argument this way: "you stupid men." Brzezinski considers it unfair that beauty pageant contestants are expected to be trim, whereas men like Trump and Newt Gingrich "can walk around as rotund as all get out." But if those guys had entered the Mr. Universe contest, every inch of their oiled bodies would come under the microscope. But they haven't. Thank God. And if a woman in exercise of her free will enters a beauty contest, that's her choice.

FBI Director James Comey has continued to face criticism over his bureau's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email, including the numerous immunity deals given to her aides. Well, it turns out, the FBI didn't give immunity to Cheryl Mills, a longtime aide:
"Who authorized granting Cheryl Mills immunity?" Rep. John Sensenbrenner asked. "It's a decision made by the Department of Justice, I don't know at what level inside," Comey responded. "In our investigations, any kind of immunity comes from the prosecutors, not the investigators."

Perhaps John Warner's biggest claim to fame is a distinction he shares with a good-sized chunk of the older male demographic: having once been married to Elizabeth Taylor. But the former Republican senator from Virginia found another way to get himself some attention today: by endorsing Hillary for president. Interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on her MSNBC show this afternoon, Warner managed to make his endorsement mainly about himself. In the course of their brief conversation, Warner let it be known: that he had been on the lawn for the famous handshake between Rabin and Araft; that he had served in both the Navy and the Marines; that he devoted much of his life "I say with a sense of humility" to national security; that he had been a leader on the Armed Services committee for 30 years; that he had been Hillary's "boss" as the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee; and that the voters in Virginia had "supported me so strongly."

Rasmea Odeh is the terrorist member of the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was convicted in Israel in 1970 of the 1969 bombing the SuperSol supermarket in Jerusalem that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. Rasmea also was convicted of the attempted bombing of the British Consulate. [caption id="attachment_130203" align="alignnone" width="600"][Edward Joffe, overlooking Jerusalem] [Edward Joffe, overlooking Jerusalem. Photo provided by family.][/caption]

Yesterday, I wrote about today's Senate vote expected to override Obama's veto and today they voted overwhelmingly to do just that. Fox News reports:
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to overturn President Obama’s veto of a bill letting families of Sept. 11 victims sue the Saudi Arabian government, bringing Congress within reach of completing the first successful veto override of Obama’s presidency. The Senate voted 97-1 to reject the veto. The measure heads next to the House, where lawmakers will need to muster a two-thirds majority, as in the Senate, to override.

International prosecutors have concluded that a Buk missile from Russia shot down Malaysia Airlines MH17 over east Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 people on board. Russia has constantly denied any involvement in the incident, which came months after Ukraine spiraled into a civil war after parliament ousted Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. East Ukraine split from the pro-Europe west and pledged allegiance to Russia.

The migrant crisis that began almost a year ago is threatening to take a violent turn after this week’s bombings in the eastern German city on Dresden. On Monday evening, two bombs exploded near a mosque and city's main convention centre. Early next week, the convention centre would be hosting an event expected to be attended by high-profile guests including Germany's President Joachim Gauck. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also going to visit the former East German city of Dresden on the same day to mark the German Unification Day. According to German media, no one was injured in the explosions. Local police suspects a Far-Right group to be behind the incident. "[Dresden Police] have reason to suspect a xenophobic motive," City's police chief Horst Kretzschmar told the press.

It's been seven years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the White House is still having trouble selling it to Americans, especially Millennials. The problem is that Obamacare needs the money of healthy young people to survive, so the White House is trying a new push. The Business Insider reports:
The White House is kicking off a big push to fix Obamacare's largest problem Obamacare needs millennials, so the White House is going after them. The White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, the secretary of education, and private groups convened in Washington on Tuesday for the Affordable Care Act Millennial Outreach and Engagement Summit.