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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 18, 2016 53 Comments
Tuesday night, a tearful Senator Rubio quoted Proverbs 16:9 and then announced he would be ending his presidential campaign. In the days that followed, Sen. Rubio revealed he wouldn't pursue another government post.

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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 18, 2016 3 Comments
The House's Select Committee on Benghazi was created with bipartisan support to investigate the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time. A former committee staffer alleged he was wrongfully terminated for refusing, "to conduct a partisan probe of the former secretary of state," reports Politico. Now, Bradley Podliska is changing his tune. From Politico:
Last October, an ex-GOP Benghazi Committee staffer filed a lawsuit against the panel, claiming he was wrongly fired for refusing to center his investigation on Hillary Clinton — an accusation Clinton’s defenders held up as proof that the panel had devolved into a political witch hunt.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2016 7 Comments
There are many reasons and ways to oppose Donald Trump. Policy, temperament, qualifications are all in play. But leftists have come up with some very left-wing ways to protest. One of the left-wing ways is to shout-down and disrupt his rallies:

Posted by Jonathan Levin on March 18, 2016 8 Comments
The subtext in Secretary of State Kerry's agonizing over whether to label ISIS's systematic, premeditated rape and slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and Shi'ites in Syria is what it means for the million-and-a-half skeletons in Turkey's closet.  There is little objective doubt that during World War I, Turkey murdered around 1.5 million Armenians, but Turkey cannot abide the least suggestion that it engaged in genocide, and the US has thus far deferred to Turkish sensibilities. The US's failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide and Turkey's culpability, and to induce Turkey to learn from that dark period in its history undermines the US's ability to identify and condemn genocide elsewhere.  This is the undercurrent in Secretary of State Kerry's bizarre inability to call a spade a spade in Northern Syria. In brief, the 2015 omnibus spending bill included a requirement that the State Department make a determination of whether ISIS was engaged in genocide.  Anticipating and perhaps hoping to guide the results of that State Department review, on Monday the House of Representatives passed an unanimous resolution declaring that ISIS's actions are genocide.  That resolution has no legal effect.

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Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 18, 2016 29 Comments
It turns out that our 2012 Tea Party event was, indeed, crashed by a D-list Hollywood celebrity wannabe! The meeting, which focused on how citizen activists could counter false charges of racism, was crashed by a group of disruptors waving Confederate flags and holding White Power signs. One of our astute readers, Wolverbear, asked if it was Adult Swim comedian Eric André. Why, yes it was! Our savvy research team has uncovered this Youtube chestnut.

Posted by Sarah Rumpf on March 18, 2016 32 Comments
In the latest round of legal battles between Apple and the FBI over accessing data in an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, Apple has fired back at the FBI with a scathing brief accusing the government of massive overreach in their efforts to get Apple's assistance in unlocking the phone. As Legal Insurrection reported last month, the iPhone 5C belonging to one of the shooters was seized as evidence by the FBI. The FBI obtained a warrant to search the contents of the iPhone, but ran into trouble with its passcode. The government wanted Apple to help them bypass the iPhone's security measures, but Apple refused, arguing that doing so would unacceptably put the privacy of other customers' iPhones at risk. The District Court of Central California issued an order for Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone, and Apple objected. This set of several rounds of jousting, both in court and in the arena of public opinion. How a law from more than two centuries ago is governing a case about iPhone security

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 18, 2016 13 Comments
In a move symbolic of the nation's rejection of Communism and the Soviet era, Ukraine has removed one of the last large statues of Vladimir Lenin from public view. The Guardian reported:
Ukraine topples biggest remaining Lenin statue It took two days and a giant crane, but Ukraine has finally managed to lift its biggest remaining statue of the Soviet founder Lenin off its pedestal and consign it to the dustbin of history.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 17, 2016 8 Comments
A few days ago we posted a preview of a video by Rebel Pundit about the anti-Trump protests and deliberate disruption of a campaign rally in Chicago. The protests and near-riots were not caused by Trump. This is the same radical, institutionalized left which populated the Occupy protests. If you think this is about Trump, you haven't been paying attention to what is going on at campuses:
Shout-downs and disruptions of non-leftist speech have become common on campuses. Remember, Chicago is one of the places where they tried to ban Chick-fil-A because it allegedly spread hate. So it doesn’t take much for leftists to shout about “hate” and to use that as an excuse to suppress the rights of others. Disruption of opposing speech is THE preferred tactic among campus leftists. If you think the disruption of Trump’s event was about Trump, then you haven’t paid attention to what is going on on campuses.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 17, 2016 18 Comments
To all the Trump supporters out there, and to The Donald, don't get your hopes up about Trump defeating Hillary in New York State in a general election. It's delusion. Trump does have a strong base of support in Upstate NY, the vast area north and west of New York City. Upstate NY Map But the downstate Democrat vote will swamp him, which is exactly what a Sienna College polling institute poll shows:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 17, 2016 76 Comments
This old campaign ad from the 1964 election hits a little too close to home. Made by LBJ's campaign, a remorseful Republican wishes he would've attended and fought at the national convention. The anonymous confessor lights a cigarette, leans back and says:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 17, 2016 50 Comments
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) serves as a de facto authority on academic freedom, having published the guidelines by which most higher education institutions agree to abide, at least in principle if not legally. AAUP, however, has no legal power to enforce its guidelines. The most it can do is put an institution on a "Censure List," which supposedly impacts the ability to recruit top faculty. I don't know whether it actually has that impact, but that's what's claimed. The University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign (UIUC) was put on AAUP's Censure List after it refused to give a tenured position to controversial hate-tweeting Prof. Seven Salaita. There was a lawsuit by Salaita that was settled for less than the cost of defense without any job. AAUP now is considering whether to remove UIUC from its Censure List. AAUP is jumping to the defense of Melissa Click, the world-famous "muscle prof" who recently was terminated by the University of Missouri after she was caught on video bullying a student journalist and calling for some "muscle" from the crowd to deal with him.

Posted by Miriam Elman on March 17, 2016 7 Comments
At a 9:00am press conference this morning, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the Islamic State’s actions perpetrated against ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, are “genocidal” and constitute crimes against humanity. In the brief (10 minute) statement, Kerry refers throughout to the Islamic State (ISIS) as Daesh, its Arabic acronym. https://twitter.com/Malinowski/status/710456022247280640

Posted by Taryn O'Neill on March 17, 2016 5 Comments
As the nation watches the FBI battle Apple in court over access to a terrorist's iPhone data, a conflict with another Silicon Valley company simmers in the background. With over a billion users, the Facebook-owned mobile app WhatsApp is one of the world's largest messaging platforms and allows users to send text messages and make phone calls abroad without incurring the international data costs associated with traditional text and voice communication. Similar to Telegram, an app popular with ISIS members, WhatsApp offers end-to-end encrypted text messaging and, according to the Guardian, will in the coming weeks be offering encrypted voice and group messaging. At present, the Department of Justice is unsure how to proceed in an ongoing criminal investigation in which a federal judge ordered a wiretap, as the department is unable to get access the ordered data thanks to WhatsApp's encryption.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 17, 2016 6 Comments
On Wednesday, French Police arrested four suspected Islamists for planning yet another terrorist attack in Central Paris. French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, confirmed that at least one of the attested suspect was about to “undertake violent actions in France.” According French government more than 8,ooo French citizens have been identified as “radicalised.” The arrests in France come on the same day as the police in Belgium arrested two suspected ISIS terrorists in connection with the November Paris attacks that killed 130 people. British newspaper The Express reports:
The suspects are said to include two French brothers of Turkish origin, referred to as ‘Aytac and Ercan B.’ as well as ‘Youssef E.’, who TF1 reports is an Islamist well known to counter-terrorist services. Police arrested Youssef two years ago with two accomplices as they were preparing to leave to wage jihad in Syria, TF1 said. He was released from the prison in October 2015 and kept under house arrest since February 29, 2016 under France’s new state of emergency, which was brought in in the wake of the November 13 massacre.
Belgian Police also shot dead a gunman during its ongoing anti-terrorism raids. The gunman was identified as an illegal Algerian immigrant, Mohamed Belkaïd. Investigators found a Kalashnikov rifle, a book on Radical Islam (Salafism) and a flag of the Islamic State next to Belkaïd's body.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 17, 2016 7 Comments
Last week I wrote about the fact that Navy SEALs are forced to share combat rifles, are short on live ammo for training, and are purchasing their own gear.  This week, assistant commandant of the United States Marine Corps, General John Paxton, told Congress that he does not believe the Marines are ready for another war. The Stars and Stripes reports:
If the Marines were called today to respond to an unexpected crisis, they might not be ready, a top Marine general told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Gen. John Paxton, assistant commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, testified to lawmakers that the Marines could face more casualties in a war and might not be able to deter a potential enemy.

“I worry about the capability and the capacity to win in a major fight somewhere else right now,” he said, citing a lack of training and equipment.

Paxton, along with the vice chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force, spoke to the Senate committee on the readiness challenges facing each service after 15 years of war and recent budget cuts.

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