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Posted by Amy Miller on April 14, 2015 3 Comments
At the end of March, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stood in front of the corps and dug a hole over the administration's handling of strategic ops in the Middle East. After Yemen's Western-backed Hadi government was forced to flee by Houthi rebels, the White House began fielding questions from the media about how the loss of the Hadi government would affect U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the region. ABC correspondent Jon Karl lashed out after Earnest (accidentally?) revealed that the administration still views Yemen as a model for counterterrorism strategy, in spite of Hadi's fall and the Houthi takeover. Karl's point was valid, and it still stands. The relationship the U.S. has (had) with the Yemeni government was productive to the extent that it allowed us to work with their agencies to control threats to US security in the Arabian peninsula. That capability began to deteriorate last year, even before the Houthi began their full-on assault on Sana'a. The model fell apart, but according to recent reports, we may still have some counterterror capabilities in the region. Earlier today, Yemen's al-Qaeda cell announced that top cleric and Saudi national Ibrahim al-Rubaish was killed by a drone strike. Al-Rubaish had a $5 million bounty on his head, so if this is true, it would provide some excellent optics for struggling US operations on the peninsula.

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Posted by Amy Miller on April 14, 2015 13 Comments
Nigerian President-elect Muhammadu Buhari is already making waves in his divided country. On today's anniversary of the mass abduction of 200 girls in Chibok by members of Boko Haram, Buhari walked back the previous administration's promises to find the girls, and took a tone of remembrance. The "Bring Back our Girls" movement is still alive and well, but many members of the campaign to seek justice---including members of the new administration---have begun pivoting away from Goodluck Jonathan's "Bring Back Our Girls — Now and Alive!" slogan by introducing a new one: "Never to be forgotten." The reaction to the new Administration's position has been less than supportive, especially in areas where Boko Haram is especially active. From the AP:
In Chibok, dozens of family members and supporters marked the anniversary by gathering at the remains of the school, in front of a burned out and roofless classroom. Young girls held handwritten signs demanding "Bring back our girls — Now and Alive." One mother, Mariam Abubakar, told the crowd she was in disbelief that the government had been unable to rescue the girls during a whole year.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2015 7 Comments
We have written several times before about the effort by Jewish Voice for Peace activists in Ithaca, NY, where Cornell is located, to advance a referendum at the GreenStar Food Coop to boycott Israeli products. The Greenstar Council is considering whether, under its bylaws, there are grounds to reject the referendum petition, or whether it is obligated to let the referendum go to a full membership vote in early November 2015. The GreenStar Council takes no position on the merits of the boycott, and seems aware that the referendum process itself, not to mention if it passes, will do serious damage to GreenStar itself. Yet the referendum is being pushed hard by the JVP activists, particularly Ariel Gold (who works as an organizer for the anti-Israel Friends of Sabeel - North America) and Beth Harris (a retired Ithaca College professor long active in the boycott movement). Gold and Harris tried hard to and did manage to get themselves arrested at the 2015 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference as part of a Code Pink-led protest. The boycott push, though just starting, has been marred by incendiary rhetoric from the pro-Boycott side. Last fall, the group promoting the boycott (the Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine - CNYCJP) posted on its Facebook page a horrible photoshop of Nazi concentration camp inmates holding anti-Israel signs. The photoshop was taken down after I called attention to it and people began to complain. CNYCJP claimed it was done by a former member and without group permission, but it refused to identify the person.

Posted by Jay Caruso on April 14, 2015 25 Comments
The Atlanta educators who were convicted on April 1 of racketeering and other charges related to purposely inflating test scores in poorly performing schools were sentenced in the Fulton County Court today:
One by one, they stood, alongside their attorneys, before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter. In this system, a jury decides guilt or innocence, the judge metes out punishment. Throughout the five-month trial, Baxter has been pointed. Until Monday, he said he planned to sentence the educators to prison. When verdicts were reached, he ordered them directly to jail. But on Monday he changed his mind and decided to allow prosecutors to offer them deals that would have allowed them to avoid the possible 20-year sentence that racketeering carries.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 14, 2015 27 Comments
The same monstrous federal agency that brought us food pyramids, plate graphics, and encourages America to eat vegan is after health food bar maker, KIND. Recently, KIND received a love letter from the FDA citing multiple labeling violations. "However, none of your products listed above meet the requirements for use of the nutrient content claim “healthy,”" wrote the self-appointed arbiter of healthy declarations. The FDA letter to KIND is a fantastic example of how the federal bureaucracy is a vacuous waste of money. Tax money is spent paying people to sit in offices (where they're forbidden from watching porn) while they stress over 1.5 g of saturated fat in a nut bar. Four of KIND's health food bars received FDA scrutiny. In order for KIND to properly utilize the healthy designation, their health food bars cannot contain more than 1 g of saturated fat per Reference Amount Customarily Consumed (RACC). The Fruit & Nut Almond & Apricot and Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein bars contain 3.5 g, Fruit & Nut Almond & Coconut clocks in at 5 g, and the Dark Chocolate Cherry Cashew + Antioxidants contains a whopping 2.5 g of saturated fat, said the FDA. KIND's health food bars are made largely without preservatives or other fillers and fake food stuffs found in similar products. They're also exceptionally tasty. But a regulation is a regulation.

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2015 41 Comments
The Hillary Chipotle story is either one of the most amazing unintended earned-media campaign stories ever, or a contrived set up. Regardless, put points in Team Hillary column. Maggie Haberman at The NY Times broke the story about Hillary's supposedly secret trip to Chipotle on her Scooby trip to Iowa. The story goes like this:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is all about “everyday Americans,” she made clear in announcing it on Sunday. On Monday, she showed how unassuming she herself could be. Driving to Iowa for her first campaign swing, Mrs. Clinton’s van — with two aides and Secret Service agents aboard — pulled into a Chipotle restaurant for lunch in Maumee, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. And no one recognized her. Maybe it was the dark sunglasses. Or maybe she had a certain je ne sais — qui? But nobody took notice of the celebrity in front of the counter. Fellow patrons paid her no more attention than a driver would get from a toll taker. Nor did the restaurant’s staff notice Mrs. Clinton, until this reporter, tipped off that she had dined there, telephoned. The Chipotle manager, Charles Wright, insisted at first that the tip must have been false. But he offered to review his security-camera recordings, and quickly reversed himself. There was Mrs. Clinton, in a bright pink shirt, ordering a chicken burrito bowl — and carrying her own tray. “The thing is, she has these dark sunglasses on,” Mr. Wright said. “She just was another lady.”
Haberman explained in a different column:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 14, 2015 31 Comments
Much in the same way President Obama's campaigns featured a reimagined 'O', Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House includes a reconfigured letter 'H'. The internet though? Less than impressed with the embattled former Secretary's branding effort. Interestingly, it's not just the intrepid photo shoppers who are having a jolly good time at the awkward H's expense. Even The New Yorker was... confused:

Posted by Andrew Branca on April 14, 2015 11 Comments
As I type this roughly 79,000 people are still happily recovering from their participation in the NRA Annual Meeting held this past weekend in Nashville, TN—your humble scribe among them. The massive scope of the event—three days of legal seminars, classroom instruction, political speeches, country music concert, and 9 acres (not a typo) of exhibits displaying an incredibly variety of firearms and related stuff and activities—is is obviously too great to cover in a single blog post. Accordingly, I’ll share my own view of the NRAAM 2015 through a series of relatively brief posts, focused largely within my particular area of expertise—the day-long Firearms Law Seminar held on Friday, April 10. (Full disclosure, I was a speaker at last year’s seminar, but merely an attendee at this one.) For those not familiar, the National Firearms Law Seminar is billed as providing “a unique opportunity for attorneys who represent firearms owners and firearms-related businesses to meet and discuss legal issues relevant to this expanding area of the law.” And I must say, they delivered, through a dozen talks on a variety of firearms-law related issues delivered by incredibly well-informed, experienced, and enjoyable speakers. I’ll do this first post on the talk given by Attorney Stephen Halbrook, who has for decades been a leading legal figure in gun rights legal actions, and is perhaps most commonly known for his ground-breaking book “That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 14, 2015 5 Comments
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has reacted to Hillary Clinton's unsurprising announcement of her intention to run for president in 2016 by calling her part of the problem. Millaine Wells of We Are Green Bay News:
Gov. Walker reacts to Clinton announcement The field of Presidential hopefuls is growing. Hillary Clinton joined the race over the weekend and an announcement is expected today from Senator Marco Rubio. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is also expected in the field of GOP candidates. But, he has yet to make it official. That is not keeping his name out of the political spotlight. Governor Walker took to Twitter to criticize Hillary Clinton... Governor Scott Walker responded to the Clinton announcement with a flurry of tweets. One says "@HillaryClinton has the same Washington-knows-best mentality people around the country are looking to move beyond". According to Kelley "We hear politicians, new people getting into politics, they want to change it. Especially DC, which is really hard to change even though you have great ideas and great projects it is really hard to change the system".
Watch the video report:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 14, 2015 43 Comments
I reported that California Governor Jerry Brown unveiled the state's first water restrictions in response to the "mega-drought". As I foresaw, the rules have turned out to be more about revenue generation than resource protection. What I did not predict is that my teen son and his lengthy showers would make him the latest environmental villain.
Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) said Californians will face heavy fines for taking long showers. Brown said, “This executive order is done under emergency power. It has the force of law. Very unusual. It’s requiring action and changes in behavior from the Oregon border all the way to the Mexican border. It affects lawns. It affects people’s — how long they stay in the shower. How businesses use water.” Brown said to enforce his order, “Each water district that actually delivers waters — water to homes and businesses, they carry it out. We have a state water board that overseas the relationships with the districts. Hundreds of them. If they don’t comply, people can be fined $500 a day. Districts can go to court to get a cease and desist order. The enforcement mechanism is powerful. In a drought of this magnitude, you have to change that behavior and you have to change it substantially.”
It looks like I am going to have to work harder to pay for my son than I originally thought.

Posted by Miriam Elman on April 13, 2015 4 Comments
It’s getting tougher to be a Jew in Britain. According to a report by the UK’s Community Security Trust, anti-Semitic incidents have skyrocketed in 2014, reaching the highest levels ever recorded. The Simon Wiesenthal Center reports that British Jews are increasingly afraid to visit Jewish-owned stores. A recent UK study finds that almost half of those surveyed believe at least one negative stereotype about Jews is true, including such statements as “Jews chase money more than other British people” and “Jews have too much power in the media”. In March, an angry mob attacked a London synagogue. And earlier this month, the deputy director of a London-based interfaith organization told The Guardian that:
In the last few months, the tone on my Facebook feed has changed. There’s more fear being expressed, and some friends won’t go to events at a synagogue or Jewish community centre now because of the security aspect…Three Faiths Forum works with about 10,000 young people a year. Over the past few months, their questions have become more pertinent and can lead to very challenging discussions. Questions we’ve had to Jewish speakers include: ‘You said Jews believe in charity—do you also believe in killing Palestinian babies?’ and ‘Why do Jews keep money under their hats?’ We had to explain that the man the student had seen was probably just adjusting his kippah under his hat, and that Jews keep money in pockets just like everyone else.”
It’s a lot of awful. Which is why for many British Jews the recent cancellation of a blatantly anti-Zionist and BDS-promoted conference at the University of Southampton has been cause for celebration.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 13, 2015 1 Comment
How's the war on ISIS going? Perhaps not as badly---or as well---as you might think. New numbers released by the Pentagon show that ISIS has lost control of almost 7000 square miles of territory in Iraq since August of last year. This is a good sign---any front line withdrawal means that we're dealing with an enemy on defense. However, ISIS still controls some key territories in the region, including a still-contested oil refinery. (Why is it dangerous for ISIS to maintain control of oil lands? Read my piece on the subject here: ISIS: Funded by Sex, Oil, and Crime.) The AP explains the change in territory:
A new map released by the Pentagon shows that U.S. and coalition forces regained key territory near Tikrit, Sinjar Mountain and Mosul Dam.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 13, 2015 9 Comments
I'm firmly on Team Hillary Parody 2016. Meaning, I'm definitely a fan of the insultingly hilarious "Candidate Hillary" skits that Saturday Night Live is churning out. This weekend, SNL's Kate McKinnon donned the pantsuit once more to riff on Hillary's Big Presidential Announcement©, and it was pretty great. Watch: Any day I get a bonus reprise of Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton is a great day, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. But let's not see these skits for anything other than what they are---skits. Why? Because they're not really a sincere attack on Clinton.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 13, 2015 9 Comments
Surprise? There are no surprises in presidential politics. Tonight, Marco Rubio will stand before a Miami crowd and announce his run for the White House. The cat flew out of the bag this morning during a conference call, when the Florida senator told a group of donors that he's "in" for 2016. Yesterday, Rubio released a short cell phone video message via his Facebook page, encouraging everyone to tune in for tonight's announcement:

I recorded this quick video on my phone earlier today. I hope you will watch my announcement at 6pm est tomorrow. Visit http://tinyurl.com/lk9kvgp

Posted by Marco Rubio on Sunday, April 12, 2015
It's rough, and simple, yet still not something you do if you're preparing to tell a room full of donors that you're making another run for Congress.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2015 41 Comments
Yesterday we featured Carly Fiorina's instantaneous reaction to Hillary Clinton's announcement. Or should we say John Podesta's announcement followed up by Hillary. Fiorina exhibited what is becoming her trademark: Taking the fight right to Hillary Clinton's supposed strength, the gender card. Fiorina, as the only woman likely to become a Republican candidate for President, is uniquely able to make the argument that Hillary is abusing the gender card to cover up lack of actual accomplishment. It was only a matter of time before Fiorina's audaciousness would make her a target. So when I read Jazz Shaw's tweet that Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe went after Fiorina, it didn't surprise me one bit. What's most important is not that she was attacked, but that she responded well: Here is the video:
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