That time the terrorists won...
“When toy guns are mistaken for real guns, there can be tragic consequences,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said today in a statement. “Retailers cannot put children and law enforcement at risk by selling toy guns that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.” Schneiderman said his office found that toy guns banned in the state have been widely available online and accessible to New Yorkers. Some were advertised as “realistic looking” and “full size,” including imitation assault rifles, shotguns and pistols, he said. Since 1997, four people have been killed in New York when law enforcement mistook toy guns for real ones, he said.In a recent article in New York Times Magazine, Jay Kang makes a great point (albeit floating in a sea of progressive order victimology) about these types of laws, and putting the burden on manufacturers and retailers to "keep us safe." The problem? Kids will be kids. Boys will be boys. If the draw of realistic weaponry overpowers the draw toward "safety first," you can kiss those orange warning stripes goodbye:
Six weeks after she lost her own bid for the U-S Senate, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-Kentucky) tells WHAS11 if U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) tries to appear on the same ballot for both Senate and President in 2016, she will challenge him in court. "The law is clear," Grimes said. "You can't be on the ballot twice for two offices." Kentucky Democrats are not cooperating as Paul considers mounting simultaneous campaigns for Senate and President. Democrats maintained control of the Kentucky House in last month's election, a roadblock to legislation favored by the Republican Senate to remove the prohibition. House Speaker Greg Stumbo (D-Prestonsburg) declined to consider a Senate bill to that effect earlier this year. Paul may challenge the law in court as the Republican Party of Kentucky also discusses whether to hold a presidential caucus rather than a primary, which would allow Paul to follow the letter of the law by not appearing on the primary ballot, twice.Now, I understand, Grimes is just standing up for principles. Like when she wouldn't reveal, ahem, whether she voted for Obama:
Riding Al Sharpton and Company to the top as MSNBC sinks to the bottom....
The administration’s decision to restore full diplomatic relations, take steps to remove Cuba from the State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism and roll back restrictions on travel and trade is a change in direction that has been strongly supported by this page. The Obama administration is ushering in a transformational era for millions of Cubans who have suffered as a result of more than 50 years of hostility between the two nations.
Mr. Obama could have taken modest, gradual steps toward a thaw. Instead, he has courageously gone as far as he can, within the constraints of an outmoded 1996 law that imposes stiff sanctions on Cuba in the pursuit of regime change.
Social Justice Program at Vanderbilt U. Invites Planned Parenthood Lawyers to Discuss Racial Justice
Rubio: Obama's New Cuba Policy 'Puts a Price on Every American Abroad' Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he's glad that American "hostage" Alan Gross has been released from a Cuban prison after five years, but he opposes the process by which his release was secured -- "because it puts a price on every American abroad." "Governments now know that if they can take an American hostage, they can get very significant concessions from the United States." As part of the deal to free Gross, the United States will release three Cuban spies: "They're not just benign Cuban spies," Rubio -- the son of Cuban exiles -- told Fox News on Wednesday. "These Cuban spies were involved in providing information to the Cuban government that led to the murder of U.S. citizens in the infamous shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft back in 1996. "These were airplanes that used to patrol the Straits of Cuba to find people on rafts and save their lives. The Cuban government shot them down over international waters and they did so largely based on information that at least one of these spies provided them.This video shows an appearance Rubio made on Fox yesterday morning:
Fracking changed all that for the Pennsylvania flyover country.
As in many other places around the country, fracking turned around what James Carville once referred to as the Alabama part of Pennsylvania.
There were high hopes along the Southern Tier. The prospect that the years-long fracking moratorium would be lifted resulted in large cash payments for mineral rights to farmers and others in this region.
Those hopes are dead. As a doorknob.
Cuomo to Ban Fracking in New York State, Citing Health Risks:
Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University Kenneth Button shares the story of how air cargo deregulation in the 1970s paved the way for low-cost, reliable overnight shipping, which in turn allowed for groundbreaking new e-commerce businesses like Amazon and eBay. These innovations enable everyone to get their presents on time for the holidays – almost as fast as delivery by Santa himself!There's no soporific like a good rundown of mid-70s regulatory reform (literally, nothing compares) but throw in a a few elves and some reindeer and you get something cute, relatable, and most importantly, shareable.
Investigators asked for the public’s help Monday to identify two men seen on surveillance video taken the day of the massive apartment fire in downtown L.A. last week. Two men authorities say are potential witnesses are seen in surveillance video walking in the area of the fire, which caused tens of millions of dollars in damage Dec. 8 to the seven-story Da Vinci Complex, 906 N. Fremont Ave.. The two individuals are not considered suspects or persons of interest, and investigators would like to interview them because they were in the area of the fire, officials said. One edited video apparently shows a man in a black jacket, black pants and a black and white baseball cap grabbing at the fence around the apartment complex as it burned before firefighters pull him away from the fence, KNX 1070’s Claudia Peschiutta reports. ...A second video shows a different man, wearing a football jersey with the number 21, a backpack and a baseball cap walking by the area.A CBS Local video reviews the details as they are known:
The United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century after the release of an American contractor held in prison for five years, American officials said Wednesday. In a deal negotiated during 18 months of secret talks hosted largely by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis, who hosted a final meeting at the Vatican, President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba agreed in a telephone call to put aside decades of hostility to find a new relationship between the United States and the island nation just 90 minutes off the American coast. The contractor, Alan Gross, boarded an American government plane bound for the United States on Wednesday morning, and the United States sent back three Cuban spies who have been in an American prison since 1981. American officials said the Cuban spies were swapped for a United States intelligence agent who has been in a Cuban prison for nearly 20 years and said Mr. Gross was not technically part of the swap but released separately on “humanitarian grounds.”
From the White House release on Cuba news: "We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result" pic.twitter.com/OKWn40tLeh
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) December 17, 2014
Even if there was a subpar investigation, that does not give the defendant free range to execute an unarmed child. Was [Dede] considering taking something that didn't belong to him? Probably. Did he deserve to die for his transgressions? No. Diren was violently and senselessly executed. Please tell the defendant that while we live in a state with a strong gun culture, it is not one of lawlessness, or vigilante justice. Please tell the defendant and Mr. and Mrs. Dede that Diren's life meant more than a couple of cans of beer.
“I hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments, but there will be no effort to micromanage the amendment process,” McConnell told reporters. “And we’ll move forward and hopefully be able to pass a very important job-creating bill early in the session.” Among potential energy amendments that senators could seek to attach to the Keystone bill are proposals to slow or stop EPA’s emissions rules for power plants and plans to fast-track liquefied natural gas exports. McConnell added: “The notion that building another pipeline is somehow threatening to the environment is belied by the fact that we already have 19 pipelines, I’m told by Lisa Murkowski, that either cross the Mexican border or the Canadian border. Multiple studies showing over and over again no measurable harm to the environment. People want jobs, and this project will create high-wage jobs for our people and it certainly does enjoy a lot of bipartisan support. You saw that on the vote that was held a couple weeks ago.”An open amendment debate? This is new territory for the Senate, which under Reid's control served as little more than a killing field for even bipartisan amendments.
Project Veritas is releasing a video interview of the man who recently brought videos of MIT economist and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber to public attention. Award-winning journalist and best-selling author James O’Keefe conducted the interview, which is being distributed on YouTube. During the interview, “Rich” stated that there was intentional mislabeling in the Affordable Care Act in order to hide a secret agenda in the bill: A two-hundred-and-fifty billion dollar per year tax grab. “President Obama promised us the most transparent administration in history,” said Project Veritas President James O’Keefe. “Rich has opened a new debate about an effect of the Affordable Care Act which will impact over one hundred and fifty million Americans. We deserve to know if part of the Obamacare plan was intended to eliminate the two hundred and fifty billion dollar yearly tax break. If this is the case, we also deserve to why this information was kept from the public by the White House.”Watch the interview below: All is not lost for Gruber. In fact, one person thinks he deserves an award.
Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say. Officials say the attack in the north-western city is over, with all the attackers killed. Seven militants took part in all, according to the army.Gunman methodically went from room to room and shot most of the victims in the head. The terrorists are reported to have been wearing suicide vests, and this article indicates that some of those vests were set off after Pakistani security forces came to the scene. The school appears to have had its own security, but:
The gunmen, who several students said communicated with each other in a foreign language, possibly Arabic, managed to slip past the school's tight security because at least some of them were wearing Pakistani military uniforms, some witnesses said.When I wrote the introductory sentence to this post, I was careful to say that this attack involved the targeting of children. It is important to state that the killing of children was completely intentional and the main goal of the operation, rather than children being accidental collateral damage in an attack on other people. This is an important distinction, a line the terrorists (and the left) purposely blur in statements such as this:
"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females," said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. "We want them to feel the pain."
