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Posted by Amy Miller on July 06, 2015 9 Comments
On Saturday, the internet exploded after Hillary Clinton's campaign lasso'd reporters covering an Independence Day parade into an actual, mobile pen. It was a terrible visual for the Clinton machine, and as Aleister pointed out yesterday, revealed yet another crack in the facade hiding an operation that is barely holding itself together. Yesterday's State of the Union panel roundly lampooned the entire disaster, but it was S.E. Cupp who stood up and pointed out what many of our commenters have been saying for some time now---this is the media's fault. Watch:

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Posted by Amy Miller on July 06, 2015 17 Comments
If you've been away from all technology (and nestled comfortably under a rock) since Sunday afternoon, you should know that the US women's soccer team dominated Japan in the final match of the World Cup 5-2. It was a big deal: Soon after the end of the match, a Nike ad released back in early June began to circulate on social media amongst my conservative lady friends. When I clicked on the video and saw that it was, in fact, an official Nike Soccer promotion, I immediately flashed back to this past March's feminist freakout over Nike sports apparel that was a little too pretty for those friendly social justice warriors to handle. Would this latest spot lick the wound, or diverge from the comfortable PC path? Neither, really. Watch:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 05, 2015 10 Comments
In the spring of 2014, a series of ugly incidents rocked the campus of Vassar College, a small liberal arts college just north of New York City. It started with a boycott protest against a course that involved travel to Israel and the West Bank, including forcing a professor and students to walk a gauntlet of people ululating (audio example here). It culminated in the posting on social media of a Nazi cartoon portraying Jewish control of the U.S. The group mounting the protest and posting the plainly anti-Semitic cartoon was Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine. The series of events was ignited by passage of an academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association, a rejection of the boycott by Vassar's president (along with 250 other university presidents), and a counter-reaction by 39 Vassar professors who defended the boycott.  SJP took it from there. It's all detailed in my post Anti-Israel academic boycott turns ugly at Vassar and a series of follow up posts, including about my debate challenge to the 39 professors (which was not accepted): With everything happening on the anti-Israel boycott front, both good and bad, Vassar had faded a little from memory, until I saw a July 3, 2015 Op-Ed in The Washington Post by Jill Schneiderman, one of the two Vassar professors teaching the boycotted course. For Schneiderman, the memories obviously haven't faded, and remain raw. The Op-Ed is How academic efforts to boycott Israel harm our students. Read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 05, 2015 10 Comments
Back in March, Ted Cruz raised $2 million in three days but the haul his campaign and supporter groups has brought in over the last three months makes that look like small potatoes. According to a new report from Reuters, Cruz has entered impressive territory:
Cruz presidential campaign says supporters donated $51 million Republican Senator Ted Cruz and the outside groups supporting his presidential bid have raised more than $51 million in the three months since he launched his campaign for president, according to a statement from his campaign on Sunday. Cruz, who announced his candidacy on March 23 in a speech at the conservative school Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, has raised far less in donations directly to his campaign than his supporters have collected for the four outside spending groups supporting him. The statement said there were 175,000 individual donations to the campaign with an average contribution of $81. About $10 million came in during the second quarter of the year.

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Posted by Mike LaChance on July 05, 2015 28 Comments
South Carolina governor Nikki Haley's political capital is rising. Her leadership in the wake of the shooting in Charleston has some wondering if she's now a contender for vice president on the GOP's 2016 ticket. Joseph Weber of FOX News:
Haley’s Charleston response, Confederate flag stand spark VP talk South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley’s response to the Charleston massacre, highlighted by her call to remove the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds, has thrust her back into the national spotlight and re-ignited talk about what role she might play in the 2016 race. Not only is Haley poised to be a powerful surrogate, there's already chatter that she could make a solid Republican vice presidential candidate. "She’d be on anybody’s list,” Mike Huckabee, one 14 GOP presidential candidates and a former Arkansas governor, told Fox News on Tuesday. “She’s done a terrific job in South Carolina.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 05, 2015 41 Comments
After California became the epicenter of a measles outbreak earlier this year, the state's legislature proposed a tough, new bill making vaccinations for children attending public school mandatory (with few exceptions.) Governor Jerry Brown just signed that bill into law.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law one of the nation’s strictest childhood vaccination requirements, approving a bill that generated multiple protests and controversy as it moved through the Legislature. Senate Bill 277, authored by Sacramento pediatrician state Sen. Richard Pan and former Santa Monica-Malibu school board president state Sen. Ben Allen, eliminates parents’ ability to claim “personal belief” exemptions to schoolchildren’s vaccine requirements at both private and public schools in California. Only medical exemptions, approved by a doctor, will be allowed under the law. A licensed physician will have to write a letter explaining the child’s medical circumstances that make immunization unsafe for that child.
Opponents are so unhappy with the new rule that they began preparing a lawsuit before the ink had dried.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 05, 2015 32 Comments
Live Video and Twitter feeds at bottom of post. The initial results from the referendum on Greece whether to agree to an austerity plan are pointing to a huge "No" vote. The Wall Street Journal reports:
A first official projection of Greece’s referendum outcome, based on early counting, said that at least 61% of Greeks voted “no” to creditors’ demands on Sunday, an outcome that—if confirmed—would set the country on a collision course with the rest of the eurozone. The projection, announced by the company Singular Logic, the official partner of Greece’s interior ministry in carrying out the referendum, was announced after some 20% of the vote had been counted. “The estimate from Singular Logic is that the result in favor of ‘no’ will exceed 61%,” a spokesman for the organizing company said.
Official results are posted here. .

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 05, 2015 12 Comments
If there's one thing the Democratic Party could use right now, it's another aging white politician to run for the 2016 presidential nomination. Vice President Joe Biden seems ready to answer the call. Linda Feldmann of the Christian Science Monitor:
Will Joe Biden run for president? Drumbeat picks up. WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden has long harbored dreams of being president. He’s run twice before, clearly relishes political life, and has yet to rule out a third try – even as Hillary Clinton dominates in fundraising and in polls of Democrats. After the death on May 30 of Mr. Biden’s beloved elder son, Beau, such talk was put on hold. But in recent days, speculation has begun to soar. New York businessman Jon Cooper, a former Obama fundraising bundler now working on a draft effort to get Biden into the race, told the Monitor Thursday that he puts the probability of Biden running at 80 percent.

Posted by Jay Caruso on July 05, 2015 16 Comments
A professional campaign operative I know believes optics are extremely important when it comes to political candidates. Therefore, the optics of Hillary Clinton having her staff herd reporters behind a rope during a parade in New Hampshire certainly didn't look all that great. For the reporters who were there, the story became about being held behind ropes as Hillary walked the parade route:
At the Fourth of July parade Hillary Clinton marched in today in Gorham, New Hampshire, reporters following the candidate were kept -- and at moments, dragged -- behind an actual moving rope line. The rope, which two Clinton staffers held on to on either side, was meant to give Clinton space as she walked down the parade route, but photos of reporters being dragged behind the rope as she marched have gone viral on Twitter.
They certainly did. Here are a couple of them:

Posted by Amy Miller on July 05, 2015 9 Comments
2016 will be the year of the flooded field...and the foreign policy debates...and campaign propaganda that doesn't look like campaign propaganda. This week Rick Perry released a new campaign cartoon that tells the story of a frustrated little stick man who flees Obama country for the promised land of Texas. Our protagonist finds prosperity in the Lone Star State, under the watchful guidance of one Governor Rick Perry, and ends the spot by sending in a modern, slick, mobile donation to the campaign. Easy peasy! Watch:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 05, 2015 14 Comments
Remember when Scott Brown was chastised for questioning another type of Indian candidate? He was uniformly raked over the coals by the media. When the candidate is a Republican however, their ethnicity and race are considered worthy of attack. Case in point, Annie Gowen of the Washington Post:
From Piyush to Bobby: How does Jindal feel about his family’s past? Jindal’s status as a conservative of color helped propel his meteoric rise in the Republican Party — from an early post in the George W. Bush administration to two terms in Congress and now a second term as Louisiana governor — and donors from Indian American groups fueled his first forays into politics. Yet many see him as a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots. As a child, he announced he wanted to go by the name Bobby, after a character in “The Brady Bunch.” He converted from Hinduism to Christianity as a teen and was later baptized a Catholic as a student at Brown University — making his devotion to Christianity a centerpiece of his public life. He and his wife were quick to say in a “60 Minutes” interview in 2009 that they do not observe many Indian traditions — although they had two wedding ceremonies, one Hindu and one Catholic. He said recently that he wants to be known simply as an American, not an Indian American. “There’s not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal,” said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who is writing a book on the governor.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 04, 2015 5 Comments
From all of us at Legal Insurrection, we want to wish you and your loved ones a very Happy Independence Day. To celebrate, I've compiled some of THE most American things on the internet.

This weenie dog trying to save people from a roman candle

Captain America punching Hitler

captain america hitler

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 04, 2015 9 Comments
The White House released a memo for all Americans on Thursday. They want us to be sure to defend Obamacare from any disparaging family members. Sarah Ferris of The Hill:
White House: Have you talked to your family about ObamaCare lately? The Obama administration wants you to bring a side of healthcare politics to your family picnic this weekend. After ObamaCare’s big win at the Supreme Court last week, federal health officials are serving up some tips about talking to family members who may be less-than-enthused that ObamaCare is here to stay. “You should be prepared when Aunt Janine says something like, ‘Obamacare hasn’t helped anyone!’” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a blog post on Thursday. For instance, if your Uncle Ted starts calling Obamacare a train wreck, you should calmly explain that he’s “gotten ahold of some old talking points," the spokesman recommends.

Posted by New Neo on July 04, 2015 5 Comments
I saw the film "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on TV close to 30 times when I was a child. Loved it, and in particular loved the idea that James Cagney (whom I already knew as a tough old gangster from other movies) could dance. His dancing fascinated me because it was so non-balletic and idiosyncratic---the strutting, graceful/ungraceful, artful/artless uniqueness of his movement: Cagney wasn't just an actor and hoofer, although he certainly was both. He was also a political conservative and changer. Here are some excerpts from his Wiki page:
He was sickly as a young child—so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized. He later attributed his sickness to the poverty his family had to endure... Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, "It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 04, 2015 20 Comments
Obama's USDA is urging Americans to grill fruit this July Fourth instead of the traditional hamburgers, hotdogs, and other assorted meats.  It is estimated that Americans consume about 150 million hotdogs, 700 million pounds of chicken, and 190 million pounds of red meat and pork on the Fourth of July; your government would like to change that. From The Washington Examiner:
Forget hamburgers and hotdogs — the U.S. Department of Agriculture is pushing people to grill up pineapple slices, peaches, nectarines and other fruit for their big July 4th feast. . . .  If pineapples aren't your thing, you can try other fruit. "For something sweet, toss halved peaches or nectarines on the grill and sprinkle with cinnamon," USDA suggested. If you don't want to mess with big, sloppy pieces of fruit, you can cut them into smaller pieces. "Try grilled fruit kabobs!" USDA ventured. USDA hosted a "Twitter party" this week to talk about creative, healthy ways to use their grills. "Have you tried grilled romaine, avocado, or pineapple?" USDA asked.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 04, 2015 5 Comments
Today marks not only United States' independence but also the anniversary of the 1976 Israeli special forces raid that freed more than 100 Israeli hostages held by the PLO in Entebbe, Uganda. As Professor Jacobson noted in 2010, it was in this raid that Prime Minister Netanyhu, then a graduate student studying in the US, lost his brother Yonatan who had led the raid and secured the safety of all but three of the hostages and all of the Israeli operatives under his command.  A truly astonishing accomplishment.  Be sure to check out the video of the heroes of Entebbe 35 years later included in the prof's 2011 post. Following is the Military Channel's documentary on the Entebbe raid and is well worth watching all the way through:
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