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Apparently, Pope Francis shares Obama's view of Middle Eastern Christian refugees.  Despite the State Department's reluctant statement that ISIS is committing genocide on Christians and on other Muslims throughout the Middle East, the Obama admin has been deporting and denying refuge to Middle Eastern refugees . . .  those who are Christian, that is. Pope Francis has also decided to open the Vatican exclusively to Muslim refugees. The Daily Mail reports:

A Christian brother and sister from Syria say they have been 'let down' by the Pope after he left them behind in a Lesbos refugee camp despite promises they would be given a new life in Italy.

Roula and Malek Abo say they were two of the lucky 'chosen 12' refugees selected by the Vatican to be taken from the desperate camp and housed in Rome.

But what seemed like the chance of a lifetime was cruelly snatched away when they were told the following day they couldn't go. Instead three Muslim families were taken.

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One of the perks of being a Legal Insurrection author is that sometimes someone will buy you a beer because they like the work we do here. I had a Belgian Ale yesterday afternoon with Jim Ash, a local entrepreneur and computer tech professional who is challenging a long-term Congresswoman for her seat in U.S. Congressional District 53. Jim Ash is running alongside 2 other hopefuls (Democrat Nicholas Walpert and Republican James Veltmeyer) and the currently serving representative, Susan Davis, in the June 7th primary. Because of the quirkiness of the California voting system, the two top vote-getters will go onto the November election. [caption id="attachment_169237" align="alignnone" width="452"]Congressional candidate Jim Ash and his wife, Carrie. Congressional candidate Jim Ash and his wife, Carrie.[/caption] Ash is intending to follow a citizen-oriented route to Washington D.C., which includes a lot of social media and neighborhood events to get his name and ideas before the public.

By now, it is common for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses to interrupt speeches and chant "Long Live the Intifada." At UT-Austin, the chant was shouted by a group from the Palestine Solidarity Committee as they interrupted an event put on by the Israeli Studies Department. The group was led by law student Mohammed Nabulsi, who will be interning at "Palestine Legal," which serves as the lawfare division of the BDS movement: Similar chants we have covered at Legal Insurrection include Northeastern University, San Francisco State, City University of NY, and UC-Davis. The Intifada is the bloody campaign of terror launched by Palestinians mostly against Jewish civilians.

A new report from the Associated Press says that a significant number of companies which paid Hillary Clinton for speeches had interests in government business. This may explain why she has been so reluctant to release her speech transcripts. Here's an excerpt from the report:
Firms that paid for Clinton speeches have US gov't interests WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.

Donald Trump has a "favorability" problem. Poll after poll shows Trump doing poorly against Hillary Clinton head-to-head, perhaps reflecting Trump's historically low levels of favorability (and high levels of unfavorability) for a leading major party candidate. In response, a meme was created and spread far and wide earlier this month that Trump's favorability is no worse than Ronald Reagan at a similar point in time in his challege to Jimmy Carter. The conclusion being that if Reagan could overcome that obstacle, so can Trump. So, the theory goes, those of you Republican national convention delegates who worry about Trump being a general election disaster who could cost Republicans the presidency, House and Senate have nothing to worry about. A post by Gallup (discussed below) explains why that is not accurate, and why Trump's favorability is much worse than Reagan's. But equally important is to examine how it came about that Gallup even is discussing the issue.

Kemberlee just reported that country’s largest health insurer will stop participating in some Obamacare markets and that 12 of 23 state exchanges have closed. Covered California, touted as the most successful state exchange, is now experiencing a significant technical glitch that is jeopardizing the health of pregnant women and their unborn children. Due to a computer error, pregnant women are dropped from their Covered California coverage when they report their condition, and are transferred automatically to Medi-Cal (which is not taken by many doctors).

Here at LI, we've been following with great interest the work that Judicial Watch is doing regarding Hillary Clinton's involvement in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four men—an American ambassador (Christopher Stevens), two former Navy SEALS (Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty), and one embassy aide (Sean Smith)—brutally murdered. In one such report from Judicial Watch we learned that Hillary had slept through a security meeting following the Benghazi attack, and now Judicial Watch reveals that on September 12, 2012, Hillary spoke with then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil and informed him that the terror attacks had nothing to do with the film; within days, everyone from Obama to then-U. S. ambassador the U. N. Susan Rice to Hillary herself publicly blamed the film. Judicial Watch reports:
Another piece of the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton and Benghazi fell into place this week when the State Department released to us new documents containing telephone transcripts from the evening of September 12, 2012. The documents reveal that the then-Secretary of State informed then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil that the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound the day before “had nothing to do with the film.”

Virginia's Democrat governor Terry McAuliffe just gave his party and Hillary Clinton a huge gift for the 2016 election by granting felons the right to vote. He did it by executive order to circumvent the state's Republican led legislature and claimed it was all about righting wrongs of the past. The New York Times reported:
Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Felons WASHINGTON — Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia used his executive power on Friday to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons, circumventing the Republican-run legislature. The action effectively overturns a Civil War-era provision in the state’s Constitution aimed, he said, at disenfranchising African-Americans.

The long-running underground Hollywood conservative group, Friends of Abe, is no more. FOA announced yesterday that with the group's growth came an unsustainable infrastructure; one too cumbersome to continue without a substantive overhaul. The Guardian reported:
But on Thursday the organisation – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.

Tonight is the First Night of Passover, in which we celebrate the Exodus from Egypt. My favorite passage from the traditional Passover Haggadah is one that is evergreen:
"For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!"
If you have been reading Legal Insurrection the past years, you understand that this passage remains as true today as ever before. Fourteen years ago, during the 2nd Intifada, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in the seaside town of Netanya, Israel:
The suicide bomber, Abd El-Basset Oudeh (resident of Tulkarm, born in 1977), arrived at the hotel disguised as a woman after shaving off his beard and moustache, putting on makeup, and wearing a straight hair wig. He wore women's shoes, blue feminine-cut jeans, a brown shirt, and a brown leather jacket with a leopard-print collar. A fake Israeli ID card in a woman's name completed the disguise. The explosive belt worn by the suicide bomber was designed as a vest with pockets that hid approximately 10kg of explosives.

At least Ira Einhorn was consistent? My favorite inconvenient Earth Day truth (aside from the many horrendously wrong apocalyptic predictions) is the story of Earth Day co-founder Ira Einhorn. Not that I like tragic tales of death and compost, but it's hard not to enjoy the fact the day created to glorify bad science was propagated by well, a murderer. Several years after the first Earth Day in 1970, police raided Einhorn's home where they found his dead girlfriend "composting" in a trunk. What a guy, that Einhorn. When his girlfriend broke up with him in 1977, Einhorn insisted she return home to collect her belongings or he would pitch them out. She returned and was never seen again. Einhorn told police she'd gone to the co-op for tofu and vanished. 18 months later, her body was found.

The anti-Cruz hype is that nobody likes him, everybody hates him, he has no friends. The anti-Republican hype is that they're racist bigots. Here's a story that could kill (or at least slightly injure) those two birds with one stone: the tale of Ted Cruz's best friend in college, law school, and beyond, David Panton.

In a world in which universities apologize for serving Mexican food because doing so smacks of cultural appropriation and is deemed culturally insensitive, the student-organized "Wear a Hijab Day" at a Paris university was bound to cause controversy. Although February 1st is the "official" World Hijab Day, these students were apparently not interested in waiting until early next year to express their "solidarity" with women who "choose" to wear the hijab; unfortunately for them, their gesture backfired. The Telegraph reports:
Students at an elite Paris university sparked fierce debate on Wednesday by inviting classmates to wear the Muslim veil for a day in a bid to "demystify" a practice that is highly divisive in France. Students at Sciences Po urged women to take part in Hijab Day "if you too think all women should have the right to dress as they wish and have their choice respected". A dozen students handed out flyers at the university by a table covered in colourful headscarves with a sign reading: "France got 99 problems but Hijab ain't one", adapted from a hit by US rapper Jay Z.