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Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 03, 2016 3 Comments
In response to a year bookended by Islamist terror attacks in Paris, France has seen a rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks.  If the French/Islamist conflict continues to victimize Jews, as appears increasingly likely, it will further accelerate French Jewry's demise. In January the BBC wrote, "France is emerging from one of its worst security crises in decades."  That was in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack:
after three days of attacks by gunmen brought bloodshed to the capital Paris and its surrounding areas. It began with a massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday 7 January and ended with a huge police operation and two sieges two days later.
Nobody knew at the time that Charlie Hebdo was but the prelude.  Ten months later, on Friday, November 13, an Islamic State cell killed 130 people at the Bataclan Theatre, the State de France and targets of opportunity in a popular nightlife spot.  The terrorists appear to have been assisted before and in real-time during the attacks by another cell or cells in Belgium.

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Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 03, 2016 9 Comments
The EPA has been hit with a veritable flood of scandals recently. We covered the Animas River spill, caused by the EPA's rush to solve a non-problem involving a mine's wastewater, which impacted the water quality for several Western states. In 2013, one climate change expert who posed as a CIA operative was jailed for conning the agency out of nearly $1 Million.
The Environmental Protection Agency's top climate change expert and highest paid employee was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison today for defrauding the government. John C. Beale, who lives with his wife in Virginia, claimed he was a CIA agent working in Pakistan so he didn't have to show up for work for months at a time and defrauded the government out of more than $900,000....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 02, 2016 17 Comments
I'm surprised I had not heard the phrase in the title of this post before today. Though I'm certainly familiar with the concept, it's one we've explored here many times when discussing (i) that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the inability of Muslims to accept any non-Muslim entity in the Middle East, but particularly not a Jewish national entity; (b) the plight of Christians in the Middle East who are on the receiving end of what would happen to the Jews in Israel if Israel ever lost a war; and (c) the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition, in which useful Western leftists are oblivous (at best, giving them the benefit of the doubt) to the threat they would be under if forced to live under the rule of their coalition partners as they demand of Israeli Jews. I got to the phrase in a round-about way. First, I saw Martin Kramer's Tweet linking to his Facebook post:
Exactly 40 years ago, Commentary published Bernard Lewis’s landmark article, “The Return of Islam.” Remember, in January 1976, the Shah was still firmly on his throne, the Muslim Brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there was no Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. So how did Lewis discern the “return”? He saw that regimes, including secular ones, were beginning to invoke Islam. This, he surmised, must be a reaction to a more profound trend. Perhaps the most prescient article ever written about the Middle East.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 02, 2016 15 Comments
This is one of those incidents which both cannot be understood in isolation and has the real possibility of escalating. Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, including a prominent Shia cleric:
The Middle East braced for sectarian violence Saturday after Saudi Arabia said it had executed 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite cleric responsible for anti-government protests. There were warnings of a backlash against the ruling Al Saud family after Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was named on list of prisoners carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Al-Nimr was a central figure in protests that erupted in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, and his execution may spark new unrest among the oil powerhouse's Shiite minority.
This was not just typical Saudi brutality, it also was a reaction to Iran's relentless use of local Shia communities throughout the Gulf States and indeed throughout the Middle East to foment trouble for local Sunnis. So the executions don't stand in isolation. The Iranian reaction was, typically, to set the mobs loose in Tehran:

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Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 02, 2016 25 Comments
There has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Jeb Bush wants to be president.  He doesn't seem to have that "fire in his belly" that his brother so often demonstrated on the campaign trail, and he didn't seem to be very interested in his campaign at the outset beyond the massive fundraising efforts and trying to win support from the traditional GOPe "king makers."  This, actually, is what convinces me that Jeb does want to be president; he's just doing it the old, tired way, a way that simply doesn't work as traditional venues for political campaigns simply don't have the same audience share (and thus power) they once did.  It also doesn't help that the Republican primary voters are fed up with—and actively rebelling against—the traditional "it's your turn now" approach to GOP candidates for president. Jeb and his campaign have a tried a number of strategies to help salvage his campaign, but from cutting staff to clumsy and awkward attacks on Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, his campaign quickly moved from tragedy to farce.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 02, 2016 12 Comments
Everyone knows Donald Trump is very active on Twitter but now it's official. Out of everyone running for president, Trump pretty much killed it on social media. Hadas Gold reported at Politico:
Trump dominated rivals on social media in 2015 In 2015, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump dominated his rivals on social media, causing news cycles to pivot on the click of a Tweet button — or even a Retweet button. That’s the consensus of nearly every social-media analytics firm and expert. What it may mean as the campaign unfolds into 2016 is less of a unanimous vote. One reason Trump seemed to run the board on social media: Unlike other candidates, whose feeds were carefully curated and run by staff, Trump tweeted, Facebooked and Instagrammed directly to followers, often seemingly off the top of his head.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 02, 2016 11 Comments
One 2016 prediction is very easy to make: Obamacare will continue its trajectory of failure. For example, Covered California has been heralded as one of the greatest state exchange successes for the "Affordable Care Act". The reality is that one-third of California's residents are now using a system that was initially intended for the low income families.
The state's health plan for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, now covers 12.7 million people, 1 of every 3 Californians. If Medi-Cal were a state of its own, it would be the nation's seventh-biggest by population; its $91-billion budget would be the country's fourth-largest, trailing only those of California, New York and Texas. "When the final numbers started coming out, where a third of the population was on Medi-Cal, it went way past anyone's expectations," said state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), who chairs the Senate Health Committee.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 02, 2016 37 Comments
Now that the holidays are over it's back to business as usual. In Obama's case that means pushing a pet issue with no authorization from congress. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Obama Ready to Act Alone on Gun Control President Barack Obama, who has bypassed a reluctant Congress on issues ranging from immigration to climate change, is preparing to take executive action on gun control, including expanding background checks on buyers. But even as he gets set to act, Mr. Obama has only limited levers he can pull without Congress, and any unilateral action will face hurdles similar to those it has encountered during earlier attempts to tighten access to guns.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 02, 2016 7 Comments
The marijuana legalization brigade has made great strides in their efforts to legalize medical marijuana in a large number of states, and they only seem to fail (for the time being, anyway) when they go too far and push for too much as they did this year in Florida. While seeing great success across this country, the progressive push for legal pot is having unintended consequences for Mexican pot farmers who are seeing their profits diminish as more states pass pot-friendly laws and the Obama administration refuses to close the border or enforce our nation's existing laws regarding the growth and sale of marijuana when such laws "clash" with the new states' laws. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 01, 2016 6 Comments
A somewhat unlikely story, via The Washington Post, These singing sisters are wildly popular in Yemen. And they’re Israeli Jews:
With their ebony hair and Yemeni accented Arabic, singing sisters Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim would probably not seem out of place on the streets of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. But the sisters, collectively known as A-Wa, or “yes” in Arabic slang, are actually descendants of Yemeni Jews who immigrated to Israel decades ago. Today, they live in Tel Aviv. While siblings singing sweet harmonies together might not be big news, these Jewish sisters — who mix near extinct Yemenite poetry with fast-paced hip-hop and electronic beats — just might be.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 01, 2016 4 Comments
When Professor Jacobson suggested I put together a "Top 5" post, I thought it would be easy peasy. I was wrong. 2015 was a wild year and I wrote a lot of things. Picking a few favorites our of 40-some-odd pages of posts though? That was no easy task. And what posts should be included in the list? Posts I enjoyed writing? Subjects I found compelling? Stories I just liked? Posts y'all liked? Featured images I found humorous? So.many.questions. Questions that became a bit more difficult to answer after a few mimosas. I settled on a few that I liked for any number of the above-listed reasons. I'm sure I could've included a few more, but I reiterate -- mimosas. And maybe a bloody mary or three. Without further ado, My Top 5 Posts of 2015 in no particular order:

1. That time President Obama forgot all about that whole Barbary Corsairs War thing

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 01, 2016 8 Comments
Back in April, the Ted Cruz campaign had a fundraiser in which one could win an afternoon "shooting with Ted," so on the one hand, it's not surprising that when a "Netflix and chill" fundraiser went out people believed it. In other ways, however, because of the meaning of that phrase; it is surprising . . . simply because the Cruz campaign has been pretty savvy thus far about not making such cultural and social media faux pas. https://twitter.com/A_Garcia1990/status/681595388718133248/photo/1 And they didn't this time--the entire thing turned out to be a Photoshopped hoax.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 01, 2016 14 Comments
A new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails was released last night on New Year's Eve. One particularly entertaining exchange revealed that the progressive billionaire George Soros had some regrets over the 2008 election. Kristina Wong reports at The Hill:
Clinton emails: Billionaire Soros said he regretted backing Obama George Soros, a billionaire Democratic donor, told a close Hillary Clinton ally that he regretted supporting President Obama over her in the 2008 Democratic primary, according to an email released Thursday by the State Department. Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden said in a May 2012 email to Clinton that Soros made the admission to her during a dinner. "I told him I worked for you in the primaries and he said he's been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn't met with the President ever (though I thought he had)," Tanden wrote.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 01, 2016 4 Comments
At least two people were killed in a terror attack on cafes in the heart of Tel Aviv. The gunman purchased goods at a store then pulled out what is described as a submachine gun and started firing, before escaping. Details on the gunman are still developing, but the latest reports indicate he was an Israeli Arab from northern Israel. Police are not clear on the motive for the attack, and whether it was what Israelis term "nationalistic" in motive. This video appears to show the gunman as he shopped then pulled out his weapon and began shooting on the street:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 01, 2016 10 Comments
In the wake of news that only one person showed up at a Martin O'Malley event in Iowa, news that he has failed to make the ballot in Ohio is probably unwelcome for the floundering campaign. The Hill reports:
Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley failed to qualify for the ballot in Ohio. A spokesman for the Ohio secretary of state confirmed to The Hill on Thursday that O'Malley did not get the necessary 1,000 signatures to appear on the March 15 ballot. O'Malley's campaign submitted 1,175 signatures, but only 772 were found to be valid, according to the secretary's office. "While this news is disappointing, we are exploring all of our options," Haley Morris, a spokeswoman for O'Malley, said in a statement. Morris said that O'Malley will "campaign vigorously" in the Buckeye State and noted that he is on the ballot in 18 other states. O'Malley, a former Maryland governor, has failed to gain traction for his 2016 Democratic bid, placing well behind former secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in recent polls.
For his part, however, O'Malley is not giving up on his campaign just yet and has opened a new campaign HQ in Waterloo [insert obvious one-liners here].
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