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Posted by Amy Miller on August 26, 2015 18 Comments
This morning, Virginia reporter Alison Parker and her cameraman Adam Ward lost their lives after a former co-worker ambushed their live shot with his own camera and a handgun. The attack was aired on live TV, horrifying both their colleagues, and viewers of the WDBJ's early morning show. Ward managed to capture footage of the shooting before falling to the ground; things went dark on the broadcast, but his camera caught a shot of the gunman: A several-hour pursuit ended when authorities finally apprehended the suspect; he had shot himself in the head on Interstate 6 in Faquier County and later died in a Washington, DC-area trauma center.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 26, 2015 6 Comments
Today marks the 19th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote. In the years leading up to the vote, women enjoyed only sporadic access to the vote, depending on where they lived; the 19th Amendment, then, created a blanket standard for all states, ensuring that no one in America would ever again be denied the vote based on their sex. The piece of paper that made it official looks pretty inconsequential... 19th amendment full

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 26, 2015 46 Comments
One of the key disputes in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit commenced by Judicial Watch seeking records as to Huma Abedin's outside employment is whether emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton through her personal email account on her personal server are "federal records" covered by FOIA. The Court, however, has not ruled on the issue of which of Hillary's emails were covered by FOIA. The issue is particularly pressing because the personal email account was the only account used by Hillary. "Federal records" and truly personal emails (e.g., Hillary's yoga lessons) were intermingled in a single email account in a private server outside of government monitoring (at least outside the U.S. government's monitoring, whether foreign governments hacked the account or server has not yet been determined. Hillary's shadow electronic government deprived the State Department of its own ability to determine what needs to be produced under FOIA.  That takes this case outside the normal course. Hillary or her attorneys admit that not all emails were produced, and that over 30,000 Hillary determined were personal were deleted and the server wiped clean. In so doing, Hillary has deprived Judicial Watch and the public of the ability -- through keyword searches, for example -- to test whether the "personal" emails were only about Yoga and Chelsea's wedding.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 26, 2015 54 Comments
Marco Rubio made a campaign stop in New Hampshire today and dismissed Donald Trump's current front-runner status, saying that Trump will not be the Republican nominee for 2016. Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg reported:
Rubio Dismisses Trump in N.H.: He Won't Be 'Our Nominee' "Ultimately the Republican Party will reach out to all voters based on who our nominee is. And I don't believe Donald Trump will be our nominee," the Florida senator said after speaking to a small crowd outside a car service center in this town of Orford. "I think our nominee is going to be someone that embraces the future, that understands the opportunities before us, that's optimistic but realistic about the challenges before us." He acknowledged that "people are angry" and "they have a right to be," but insisted that "we should allow that anger to motivate us, but we shouldn't allow that anger to define us. We're not an angry nation. We are an optimistic nation who has every reason to be optimistic about the future."...

LEGAL INSURRECTION QUICK TAKES

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Occidental College Hosts Transgender Event That Mocks Trump

Franklin & Marshall College Drops Plan to Adopt 'Gender Neutral' Mascot

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Posted by Amy Miller on August 26, 2015 17 Comments
James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has released the first in what they say is a series of videos exposing lawlessness within Hillary Clinton's campaign. O'Keefe has targeted leftist groups in the past over voter registration practices---and now, he has taken that fight directly to Clinton's grassroots operation. He claims that his undercover journalists have found Clinton operatives employing a cherry-picking method of registering new voters. Watch: From Time Magazine:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 26, 2015 48 Comments
This morning, Virginia reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward were shot and killed during a live broadcast near Moneta, Virginia. The shooter, Vester Lee Flanagan, shot himself approximately five hours after the murders. Flanagan was previously employed by WDBJ as a reporter, but was dismissed after anger management issues boiled over between himself and the other members of the news team. WDBJ is currently using their live broadcast to talk about Flanagan's time with the station, and why he was fired.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 26, 2015 3 Comments
This is the 6th in our look back at the summer 2014 Gaza conflict. On August 26, 2014, the active Gaza fighting stopped with agreement on a ceasefire. How long that lasts is anyone's guess. Hamas is bragging that it has rebuilt tunnels leading into Israel and its rocket stockpiles and production. Hamas had a deliberate strategy of firing from crowded civilian areas both to use civilians as shields and also to run up civilian casualties as part of a media campaign. The international media was bullied on the ground by Hamas operatives, a fact that slowly has leaked out. The latest report from Polish reporter Wojciech Cegielski, I Saw Hamas' Cruel and Selfish Game in Gaza, who describes two specific incidents he witnesses while in Gaza during the fighting:
The first incident happened late in the evening. I was in the bathroom when I’ve heard a loud rocket noise and my Spanish colleague, a journalist who was renting a flat with me near the Gaza beach, started to scream. He wanted to light a cigarette and came to one of the open windows. The moment he was using his lighter, he saw a fireball in front of his eyes and lost his hearing. From what our neighbors told us later, a man drove up in a pickup to our tiny street. He placed a rocket launcher outside and fired. But the rocket failed to go upwards and flew along the street at ground level for a long time before destroying a building. It was a miracle that nobody was hurt or killed.

Posted by Jay Caruso on August 26, 2015 20 Comments
Speculation abounds as to whether or not Joe Biden will run for President. Amy wrote earlier about a possible endorsement from the President, and now there is word that Barack Obama has given Biden his official 'blessing' to run:
Vice President Joe Biden received President Barack Obama's "blessing" to make a 2016 bid for the White House, according to a senior Democrat. But that's if Biden chooses to run -- the decision is his. While he doesn't need the President's permission, of course, a potential presidential candidacy was among the topics of their lunch Monday at the White House. The President made clear he would not stand in his way or counsel him against a run, the senior Democrat said.
While Biden is trying to downplay things, he's scheduled to meet with some important people this week:
The Vice President was expected to huddle at his home Monday night with Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer, the husband-and-wife team who have been at Obama's side for much of the last decade, two people familiar with the meeting told CNN. Steve Ricchetti, the Vice President's chief of staff, was also expected to attend.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 26, 2015 10 Comments
Martin O'Malley is angry at his own party for the lack of Democratic debates, and who could blame him? He's so starved for media attention that he's taken to bashing Donald Trump. O'Malley makes a valid point---what's the DNC so afraid of? David Sherfinski of the Washington Times reported:
Martin O’Malley rips DNC presidential debate schedule Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley on Tuesday ripped the Democratic National Committee over its presidential debate schedule, saying Democrats aren’t going to stand for the “meddling” and “limiting of debate” the DNC is trying to pull. “There are people throughout Iowa and New Hampshire who are outraged that the Democratic party is trying to act in such an un-Democratic way,” Mr. O'Malley said on MSNBC’s “The Rundown with José Díaz-Balart.” “So I think you will see more debates. I plan to go to as many debates as I possible can.” Earlier this month, the DNC released a schedule of six presidential primary debates. The first, an Oct. 13 debate in Nevada, is followed by debates in the other early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 25, 2015 88 Comments
Today, Donald Trump renewed his public feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over comments made during the first GOP primary debate:
Trump repeated a claim on Twitter Monday night that Kelly is a 'bimbo,' and Fox chief Roger Ailes demanded an apology on Tuesday after the billionaire leveled a new series of attacks on Kelly during her first show following a lengthy break. 'I liked The Kelly File much better without @megynkelly,' Trump tweeted while she as on the air. 'Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!'
Fox News big wig Roger Ailes came out today with a statement demanding Trump apologize to Kelly:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 25, 2015 14 Comments
Missouri woman Peggy Hubbard has had enough. Following an incident in St. Louis involving a young black man and the police, she made a video message for #BlackLivesMatter and it has gone viral. Dave Urbanski of The Blaze:
Black mother Peggy Hubbard notes on her Facebook page that she’s from St. Louis. And even though she now lives north of the area’s racial turmoil, watching and listening to Hubbard’s profane-but-precise video takedown of Black Lives Matter protesters is to witness a woman who loves her hometown and hates the choices some people are making there. First Hubbard contrasted how the Black Lives Matter contingent reacted when a 9-year-old girl was fatally shot doing homework on her mother’s bed and the next night when an 18-year-old was fatally shot by police who said he pointed a gun at them. Then she asked, “Last night, who do you think they protested for? The thug. The criminal.” Then Hubbard let loose.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 25, 2015 12 Comments
Twitter has effectively shut down a popular and controversial Twitter-scraping service that allowed activists and journalists alike to keep tabs on their favorite (or not so) politicians' and diplomats' online activities. Politwoops and Diplotwoops existed as a way to archive deleted tweets from politicians and diplomats. Twitter cut off their API access (in a nutshell, API access is what allows developers to create programs integrable with services like Twitter) after ruling that preserving and posting deleted tweets violated the site's terms of service. The OpenState Foundation immediately retaliated, claiming that the move constitutes a blow to transparency:
Arjan El Fassed (director of Open State Foundation): ‘What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record. Even when tweets are deleted, it’s part of parliamentary history. These tweets were once posted and later deleted. What politicians say in public should be available to anyone. This is not about typos but it is a unique insight on how messages from elected politicians can change without notice.’

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 25, 2015 8 Comments
Earlier this year, I reported that a Washington D.C. attorney discovered ingrained collusion amongst top level staff in the office of former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber to “spread climate coordination and collaboration to a larger group of governors across the U.S." Investigators have continued to follow the email trail, which has uncovered connections between the EPA regulatory drive and a billionaire, "green jobs" activist:
The White House, statehouses, and nonprofits backed by the billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer worked behind the scenes to create a state-level advocacy network to support controversial new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, newly released emails reveal. Involved in the strategy was a top aide to John Kitzhaber, the former Democratic governor of Oregon, according to emails obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. Kitzhaber resigned this year in the midst of a scandal involving his fiancée.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 25, 2015 5 Comments
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has declared that American Jewish musician Matisyahu must be banned from public concerts because he is too pro-Israel. In a report at the anti-Zionist Mondoweiss website,  Benjamin Norton (who criticized the ban at his own website before the post was taken down), lays out the position of Omar Barghouti, leader of the BDS movement, that Matisyahu's support for Israel makes him a bigot who must be banned. Among Matisyahu's alleged sins was supporting the Israel Defense Forces. At the anti-Zionist Electronic Intifada, American BDS leader Ali Abunimah makes the same argument. When Matisyahu finally was permitted to appear on stage at the Rototom Sunsplash Reggae festival in Spain, over the objections of BDS, he was faced with Palestinian flags protesting his appearance.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 25, 2015 43 Comments
Last week, the Center for Medical Progress released a "teaser" of their 8th video implicating Planned Parenthood and StemExpress officials in the trafficking of fetal body parts. Until last week, the video's publication had been banned under a temporary restraining order sought by StemExpress; CMP, however, overcame that TRO on free speech grounds, and seized the opportunity to release more footage before StemExpress' attorneys could launch an appeal. Today, CMP released the full video, throwing into full relief the legal situation groups like Planned Parenthood and StemExpress could find themselves in if activists keep digging. In the video, StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer talks with "buyers" about how abortion providers' actions affect how much money the products of abortion---or, as decent human beings like to say, the baby's body---can raise for procurement firms. Watch:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 25, 2015 50 Comments
Late last night the IRS filed a Status Report (full embed at bottom of post) disclosing that Lois Lerner used a secret email account for some official business, under the name "Toby Miles." The Washington Times reports:
Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal. The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.
The Status Report (embed below) discloses, in relevant part:
On August 24, 2015, the Internal Revenue Service (“Service”) released to Judicial Watch, Inc., a CD containing documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request for Lois Lerner communications regarding the review and approval process for 501(c)(4) applications.... In the process of preparing this status report and for the August 24, 2015, release of Lerner communications, the undersigned attorneys learned that, in addition to emails to or from an email account denominated “Lois G. Lerner” or “Lois Home,” some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated “Toby Miles.” The undersigned attorneys contacted the Office of IRS Chief Counsel, and IRS Chief Counsel attorneys informed the undersigned attorneys that these denominations refer to a personal email account used by Lerner. (See Pl.’s Mot. for Status Conf., 15 n.8 (Docket No. 20-2) (noting that the Congressional database includes documents that Lerner’s attorneys provided from Lerner’s “personal home computer and email on her personal email” account(s)).)
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