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Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 23, 2016 15 Comments
Having campaigned on closing Gitmo and on his first day in office signing an executive order to close it within the year, Obama has been steadily emptying the detention center, often in dubious deals and scandalous, logic-defying swaps.  This is something that he has been determined to accomplish while in office, and with time running out, he has today proposed a new plan to close Gitmo for good. Speaking somewhat uncomfortably about American values (as he always does), Obama laid out his reasoning behind and plan for closing Gitmo within the year. CNN reports:
Obama outlined a blueprint that involves transferring the bulk of remaining detainees to other countries and moving the rest -- who can't be transferred abroad because they're deemed too dangerous -- to an as-yet-undetermined detention facility in the United States.

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Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 23, 2016 17 Comments
One prediction I can now comfortably make after years of observation is that there is a direct, linear relationship between how much government funding a scientist gets and the inaccuracy of the theories generated. The more politically connected the researcher, the more erroneous the "consensus" will be. I have a new data point to add to the collection. There are reports that a large colony of penguins died of climate changed induced starvation.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 23, 2016 83 Comments
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Republican side of the 2016 election has been the sharp divide among conservatives over Donald Trump. People tend to fall into one of three camps; love him, hate him or will support him if he's the nominee. On one side, you've got multiple conservative writers and thinkers who insist Trump isn't a conservative at all, as we saw with the special edition of National Review. On the other side, you have people like Sean Hannity of FOX News, Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit and John Nolte of Breitbart, all conservatives who appear enthusiastic about Trump's rise.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 23, 2016 4 Comments
As Britain heads for the June referendum, the question of country's membership in the European Union is pitting the political establishment and the mainstream media against a rising tide of public sentiment against the Brussels, deepened by recent Eurozone debt crisis and EU’s inability to regulate mass migration. The present policy paralysis within the EU on migrant crisis has once again revealed the vulnerabilities of the European project -- geared towards expansionism and bureaucratic centralization. Conservative EU parliamentarian and prominent ‘Eurosceptic’, Daniel Hannan said, “the alternative to remaining in a structurally unsafe building is, of course, walking out.” The call for referendum, announced last week, has also exposed the rifts within Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling Conservative Party, with six cabinet ministers and other leading conservatives coming out in support of Britain’s exit from the European Union, Brexit. However, the biggest blow to Prime Minister Cameron’s pro-EU camp came from London Mayor Boris Johnson’s surprise announcement to back the Brexit campaign.

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 23, 2016 30 Comments
The Baltimore Sun reports today that city officials will finalize approval of a contract this week to install video cameras inside the Police Department's 23 transport vans, at a cost of $187,000. The impetus for this effort is found in numerous cases of suspects suffering injuries while being transported in the vans. The best known case of this type is, of course, that of Freddie Gray, who suffered a severe spinal injury last April while being transported in a police van. Gray would die some days afterwards. Riots wracked the city following Gray's death, leading to Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby's precipitous criminal charging of six officers involved in Gray's arrest and transport.

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 23, 2016 39 Comments
I'll never forget my one and only visit to a heroin shooting gallery. It was my first summer of law school, and I was working at the Manhattan (New York County) District Attorney's Office. It didn't pay much; we were paid $100 a week, in crisp $100 bills handed out at the cashier's window every Friday. Seriously. The extra-curricular part of the job was the most interesting. We took a tour of the Medical Examiner's Museum, not open to the public. Use your imagination as to what we saw there. We viewed an autopsy; the one I attended was of a guy found burned in a dumpster. I walked out on it. But by far the most exciting part was my police ride-along. My law school friend and I randomly were assigned to the same patrol, West Harlem on a Friday night. The cops we rode with thought it was really funny to have two young Harvard Law School students with them that night, so they decided to show us a good time.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 23, 2016 10 Comments
Because yesterday was mostly a travel day for me, I missed the 36th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, the 1980 U.S. defeat of the Soviet Union in Olympic ice hockey. Most people think it was the finals, but it actually was the semi-finals. The U.S. went on to defeat Finland for the gold. For me it holds a very special memory, even though I didn't watch the game live. I was a student in Moscow at the time, living in a large dorm just inside the city limits, on the last Metro stop before the ring road. I studied at the Pushkin Russian Language Institute, which trained foreigners to become Russian language teachers, the theory being that the adoption of English as the international language was harmful to Soviet interests. I had no intention of becoming a Russian language teacher, but the experience was unique.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 22, 2016 8 Comments
Being a big fan of Game of Thrones, I am really looking forward to the season 6 premier of the hit HBO series. Saturday night, I couldn't help but compare the end of Governor Jeb Bush's campaign to the unexpected loss of key characters that regularly occurs during episodes of the show. Apparently, I am not the only fan following Election 2016 closely. It seems some clever video creator merged current primary leader Donald Trump's statements into carefully selected scenes. The result is pure comedy gold. We get a review in Trumps's own words about the importance of building the wall, protecting citizens from Muslim terrorists, the art of the deal, the usefulness of waterboarding, and the recent exchange with Pope Francis.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 22, 2016 11 Comments
The Democratic Party's acceptance of socialism isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, we've documented it on this blog many times. Now Politico is reporting a new poll which confirms that most Democrats are fine with this:
Poll: Majority of Democrats say socialism has 'positive impact' The term ‘socialist’ once was used as an epithet in American politics. Perhaps no more. In a year in which Bernie Sanders, a self-described ‘Democratic Socialist,’ is running a competitive primary campaign for the White House, a new survey finds that a healthy portion of Democratic primary voters are favorably inclined toward socialism.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 22, 2016 43 Comments
On Saturday morning we posted a brief compilation of recent events suggesting Twitter might be targeting conservatives, Is Twitter Silencing Conservatives? The impetus Saturday was the suspension of Robert Stacy McCain's account (@rsmccain).  McCain blogs at TheOtherMcCain.com and last February published a book, Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature.  That followed de-verification of Milo Yiannopoulos's account (@Nero).  Like McCain, Yiannopoulos is a prominent critic of modern feminism and the Gordian Knot of accusations and recriminations known as "Gamergate."  Oversimplified, Gamergate involves issues about the poor treatment of women in the gaming community.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 22, 2016 47 Comments
I'm so old I remember when conservative blogs and websites used to communicate with each other on email lists and by frequent linking to each other. When Legal Insurrection started in October 2008, that was how we let the world know we existed and what we were writing. So-called "blog whoring," whereby smaller blogs clogged the inboxes of people at larger websites hoping for a link, was how it was done. This website would not have thrived without the appreciated links from Instapundit, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, and dozens of other blogs. Our Twitter page says we joined in December 2008, but I think it was another year or so before Twitter became a central communication focus for conservatives. In those "early" days I remember conservatives dominating Twitter -- the common wisdom was that liberals ruled on Facebook and conservatives ruled on Twitter. That has changed over time, and liberals are just as if not more influential on Twitter.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 22, 2016 7 Comments
There is no positive way to spin this one. Speaking at a town hall event, Ohio's Governor and Republican Presidential contender, John Kasich said, "How did I get elected? I didn't have anybody for me, we just got an army of people who uh, and many women who left the kitchens to go out and go door to door and to put yards signs up for me."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on February 22, 2016 8 Comments
The drama that ensued over Pope Francis' remarks about wall-building, Donald Trump, and Christianity last week overshadowed another intriguing papal statement about contraception. Catholic doctrine bans the use of artificial contraception. In remarks to the press, Pope Francis suggested that some forms of birth control may be used to prevent the spread of the Zika virus.
Pope Francis indicates that women exposed to the Zika virus may be permitted to use contraception to avoid pregnancy. Speaking to reporters on the papal plane on Thursday, Francis says: ‘Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil’ and in certain circumstances it may be permitted - he referred to the exceptional dispensation issued by Pope Paul VI, who allowed Catholic nuns in Africa to take birth control pills in the face of the risk of being raped."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 22, 2016 12 Comments
One of the last of the Buffalo soldiers was laid to rest on Friday; Private Tomie Louis Gaines was 93 years old. The last of South Carolina's Buffalo soldiers, Gaines was a remarkable man. Greenville online reports:
Private Tomie Louis Gaines, 93, one of the last of the Buffalo Soldiers, the black Army men who helped settle the West on horseback and fought in two world wars, was laid to rest Friday at M.J. Dolly Cooper Cemetery in Anderson.

Posted by David Gerstman on February 22, 2016 7 Comments
If you receive Morning Insurrection, you would have seen Prof. Miriam Elman's recommendation to read Jonah Goldberg's piece on the importance of foreign policy in the upcoming election. (If you don't currently read Morning Insurrection see the signup box in the upper right-hand corner of Legal Insurrection.) Goldberg wrote:
We can debate how much blame Obama deserves for Syria’s civil war, but almost no one outside his paid staff disputes that he’s only made things worse. The conflict there has set off the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since the end of World War II — that’s John Kerry’s own assessment — which may yet tear the European Union asunder. The instability closer to the fighting is even more dangerous. Russia and Turkey may soon go to war with one another, as Russia mercilessly and indiscriminately massacres anyone standing in the way of its pet, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The Jordanian monarchy may crumble, in part for a lack of assistance from the United States.
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