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Posted by Mike LaChance on April 18, 2015 21 Comments
Rand Paul has managed to do something no Republican before him has done. In a series of recent comments and media appearances, the Kentucky senator has turned the abortion debate around, calling on Democrats and their media allies to defend their position on late-term abortion. Paul's position is summarized perfectly in this clip from Katie Yoders of News Busters:
Rand Paul: Ask the Other Side ‘When Does Life Begin?’ It’s time for pro-lifers to go on the offense, or so Sen. Rand Paul suggests. On April 16, Sen. Paul (R-Ky.) addressed the pro-life movement at the Susan B. Anthony Campaign for Life Summit in Washington, D.C. Referencing his back-and-forth with DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the 2016 presidential candidate stressed that the pro-life movement must ask the other side, “When does life begin?” That question, he suggested, will keep the media from placing pro-lifers “neatly” in a “box.”
Here's the video: Paul has repeatedly called on DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to respond. Her efforts have been clumsy and evasive at best.

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Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on April 18, 2015 4 Comments
In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to refuse the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion without penalty to other, existing, federal Medicaid funding.  Following is the summary from SCOTUSblog:
The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated.  The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is. [emphasis added]
It is quite surprising, then, that the Obama administration is trying to use federal low-income pool (LIP) funding to, according to Governor Scott, "coerce" Florida into accepting the short-term federal funding of the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion. There are a number of good reasons for refusing the Medicaid expansion: Not only are health outcomes under Medicaid substantially less than those under any other health care or health insurance program, but this federal funding effectively runs out in only three years, leaving states to foot the hugely-expanded Medicaid bill. Governor Scott has said that he is unwilling to pile such crushing debt on the backs of Florida taxpayers:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 18, 2015 11 Comments
Color the rest of the country shocked: Texas is one of the few states in the nation (six, to be exact) that hasn't yet approved the open carry of handguns in some form. That all could change this legislative session, though, if Republicans in the legislature have their way. Yesterday, members of the Texas House of Representatives voted 96-35 to approve House Bill 910 by Republican Larry Phillips. HB 910 would allow anyone holding a concealed carry license to also also openly carry a weapon in a hip or shoulder holster. (In Texas, it's already legal to openly carry a long gun.) According to the Houston Chronicle, lawmakers worked through almost 20 amendments before finally moving the measure on to the Senate, including one that would have allowed for campus carry. (That issue, unfortunately, is another blog post entirely.) The Senate has already passed its own version of the bill, which means that the two chambers will have to reconcile their differences before the bill is sent to Governor Greg Abbott for his signature.

Posted by New Neo on April 18, 2015 35 Comments
This could be added to the list of reasons some conservatives don't want Jeb Bush as the Republican nominee in 2016. But it's a pretty big one, IMHO:
Jeb Bush says that the Senate should confirm the nomination of Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama’s choice for attorney general. A number of Senate Republicans oppose her nomination. “I think presidents have the right to pick their team,” Bush said, according to reports of his stop at the “Politics and Pie” forum in Concord, New Hampshire, on Thursday night. The former Florida governor made sure to get in a few digs at current Attorney General Eric Holder, saying that Republicans should consider that the longer it takes to confirm Lynch, the longer Holder stays.
Now, what's wrong with Bush's statement? Nothing much---that is, if it were the olden (pre-Bork) days. The Bork nomination in 1987 is often considered the beginning of the current hyper-partisan attitude towards nominations, be they Supreme Court or otherwise:
Within 45 minutes of Bork's nomination to the Court, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork in a nationally televised speech, declaring, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."

LEGAL INSURRECTION QUICK TAKES

American U. Law School Chooses Progressive Caucus Member Jamie Raskin as Commencement Speaker

Arizona State U. Faculty Refuse to Vote on Proposal to Ban Land Acknowledgments at Meetings

Kansas Governor Signs Bill Banning the Requirement of DEI-CRT Courses at Public Colleges

Yale College Republicans President Alleges Bias Against Conservatives in Admissions

Ball State U. Settles With Employee Fired for Comments About Charlie Kirk

Texas Tech University Closing All Gender and Sexuality Programs

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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 17, 2015 13 Comments
Tomorrow evening marks 240 years since Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride. Made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Revere's ride has become an iconic piece of American revolutionary history. Longfellow's poem was riddled with inaccuracies, but made for an entertaining rhyme.
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, ‘If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country folk to be up and to arm...’
Revere was a Boston-based artisan, early propaganda artists, and original Tea Partier:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2015 20 Comments
“This is the new America. We had better get used to it.” Those were the words of an Israeli TV analyst upon learning that Obama is open to negotiating an immediate lifting of sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal -- the exact opposite of what he and others in the administration have been saying. https://youtu.be/CqXrW_-pzR4?t=1m17s The Times of Israel reports on the development, Obama says US open to talks with Iran on immediately lifting sanctions:
President Barack Obama on Friday left open the door to “creative negotiations” in response to Iran’s demand that punishing sanctions be immediately lifted as part of a nuclear deal, even though the initial agreement calls for the penalties to be removed over time.... “How sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there’s a violation, there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that,” Obama said. He said part of the job for Secretary of State John Kerry and the representatives of five other nations working to reach a final deal with Iran by June 30 “is to sometimes find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable.”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 17, 2015 12 Comments
America Rising PAC dropped a new video earlier this week and boy does this one sting. This latest addition to the open Hillary oppo file recounts the scandalicious candidate's most memorable lies in all their video-taped glory. Will the truth make a dent in Hillary's plans? Though she's launched her official burrito-filled presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton's email scandal woes are far from over. Rep. Gowdy requested two interviews, a private, transcribed interview before the Select Committee on Benghazi as well as a public hearing. While Mrs. Clinton has said she would testify in a public hearing before the committee, to date, neither she nor her counsel have responded to Gowdy's request.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 17, 2015 3 Comments
Welcome to the cattle call! It's time for "Politics and Pie" in New Hampshire. If Iowa serves as a pageant for social conservatives, then count New Hampshire as the first best chance for more mainstream conservatives to have their time in the spotlight. Romney won the New Hampshire primary during the 2012 cycle, a trend that's reflected in the most recent polls pitting probable 2016 candidates against each other.
Walker is currently leading in New Hampshire polls. A survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling released Wednesday showed him with a double-digit lead, taking 24 percent support, followed by Cruz at 14 percent, Paul at 12 percent, and Bush at 10 percent. But that doesn’t mean anything this early, according to Fergus Cullen, the former state Republican chairman who is writing a book on the history of the New Hampshire primaries. “I don’t think there’s a frontrunner, it’s wide open,” he said. “History has not been kind to the candidate who has the lead in April…you’d much rather have your moment come in December or January.”

Posted by Amy Miller on April 17, 2015 12 Comments
A car bomb exploded today outside the U.S. consulate in Erbil. According to the State Department, all officials are accounted for, but as of now no one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Via NBC News:
There were no immediate reports of injuries to consulate personnel or local guards, the State Department official said. The Associated Press, citing one of its reporters at the scene, said that the blast set nearby cars on fire. Talmadge Payne, an American working as a consultant for a non-government organization in Erbil, told NBC News that he was sitting on the roof of his hotel, about a half-mile from the consulate, and felt the blast. "If I could feel the blast from here it must have been pretty significant," he said. "The room shook, and a few things fell off the shelves." He said there was a firefight, then about 10 minutes of calm, then more gunfire.
Photos posted to Twitter show a sizable explosion that caused extensive damage and may have killed up to 3 people:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 17, 2015 28 Comments
Maybe it's just me talking here, but I think that if you're going to choose a hill to die on, one involving a bill that helps put an end to modern day slavery seems like a pretty good choice. Not so if you're a Democrat, or have a seemingly vested interest in seeing Loretta Lynch become our next Attorney General. Democrats are digging in on the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act over the application of the Hyde Amendment, a decades-old add-on to federal spending legislation that will prevent the use of fee dollars collected via the Act to be used to pay for abortions. Again, Democrats are obstructing the passage of a bill that would protect victims of rape and forced prostitution because of the inclusion of a provision that they have approved in decades of federal spending legislation. You can't tell me this is about being pro-choice; I think this is about being pro-obstruction for the sake of obstruction itself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to delay a vote on the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the new AG until Democrats put an end to their little game, and guess what hasn't happened yet? Dems are still playing games, so Loretta Lynch is still waiting on a confirmation vote.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 17, 2015 18 Comments
As much as the White House might wish it would, the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap scandal simply refuses to die. Last year, the U.S. government released 5 Taliban terrorists in exchange for the life of Bowe Bergdahl, a man who most of the country---and all of his colleagues---believes deserted his post in Afghanistan in 2009. Since then, administration officials have been on offense, defending their actions before Congress, members of the media, and the families of soldiers who kept their posts under fire. The swap was only half the scandal. Soon after the swap went down, Bergdahl and his parents were invited to the White House for a very public visit, and Susan Rice rode the TV circuit to proclaim that Bergdahl had served honorably and had earned his rescue. Not so fast, though. New information coming from some of Bergdahl's platoonmates suggests that then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen knew in 2009 that Bergdahl was at least suspected of desertion---which means that it's likely the White House knew then, too.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 17, 2015 13 Comments
Yesterday Gawker Media's staffers announced their open flirtations with unionization. While union strongholds nationwide are diminishing in favor of greater employee choice and right to work, Gawker is hoping to be the first online publication subject to union demands. Hamilton Nolan explained why he finds unionization appealing because he wanted to get ahead of the gossip. Yes, really. But then what is Gawker if not gossipy?
Every workplace could use a union. A union is the only real mechanism that exists to represent the interests of employees in a company. A union is also the only real mechanism that enables employees to join together to bargain collectively, rather than as a bunch of separate, powerless entities. This is useful in good times (which our company enjoys now), and even more in bad times (which will inevitably come).
Speaking from personal experience, I've never been employed by an entity with unionized employees. But when you live in a great right to work state like Texas, that whole organized labor problem solves itself. Perhaps I've been exceptionally fortunate or maybe it's because I've always understood my roll as an employee is simply to complete the job I was hired to do, but not once in my professional life have I encountered a workplace situation where I thought, "Gee, a hoard of angry people picketing, striking, and demanding the boss capitulate is a GREAT idea! Let's do that!" Nor have I ever felt I needed the assistance of groupies to convey a point. I've never felt 'powerless' because my expectation of work was not to garner power, but to do a job, and then get paid because I did the job I was hired for. I'm also not a pansy. But I digress... back to Nolan's union rationale:

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 17, 2015 21 Comments
By now, you've probably noticed that most of our completely unbiased media is treating Hillary Clinton with the same hard hitting scrutiny they're applying to Republicans candidates. Don't take my word for it. Here's Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: According to Cillizza, it's all in our minds:
Look, I get it. Hillary Clinton is a Democrat. Conservatives have been convinced for a very long time that the media is populated almost exclusively by Democrats who, because they are secretly rooting for that party's candidates, are willing to overlook things that they would never overlook if it was a Republican. And, there is no Democrat this side of Barack Obama that drives Republicans crazier than Hillary Clinton.
Doug Powers responds: You've probably seen the media's mad dash for Hillary's "Scooby" van:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 16, 2015 1 Comment
Anyone who has ever worked for a candidate (or any public figure, really) has had that Oh, God moment. It's the moment that you prepare for, pray will never come, but somehow always manages to sneak up kick the crap out of your best-laid media plans. Democrat almost-candidate for president Lincoln Chafee served his comms shop an Oh, God moment this morning on CNN's New Day when he may or may not have let it slip that his exploratory committee is, at least in his mind, a formality:
After rattling off a list of sins that Hillary Clinton committed as secretary of state, John Berman asked Chafee if he was going hard against her record on purpose. “Yes, that’s why I’m running,” he seemingly confirmed. “Because I feel strong about where we’re going as a country.”
You can watch the spot here.
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