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Posted by Mike LaChance on June 11, 2015 54 Comments
Baltimore is caught in a law enforcement conundrum. People rioted over what they claimed was police brutality and as a result, cops are doing less than they used to. Can you blame them? Public backlash and fear of prosecution have caused them to switch from proactive policing to a reactive mode. This chart from the Baltimore Sun illustrates the gravity of the situation by comparing arrests from 2014 and 2015: Allahpundit of Hot Air points out some grim statistics:
There were 23 homicides and 39 nonfatal shootings in Baltimore in May 2014. Through 29 days of May 2015, there were 42 homicides and 104 nonfatal shootings. Gulp.
Gulp indeed.

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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 10, 2015 9 Comments
Most of us are aware of the maladies racking government entitlement programs like SNAP and Medicaid. But there's another government run program whose implications are arguably the worst of all -- foster care. The statistics are horrifying. According to the Foundation for Government Accountability:
  • 60% of children rescued from sex trafficking report being part of the foster care system
  • 14 out of 21 men who age out of the foster care system (meaning they turn 18 and are no longer eligible for the system) end up incarcerated by the time they're 20-years-old
  • 71% of girls who've been run through the foster care wringer are pregnant by the time they're 21-years-old
safe families foster care failing entitlement reform

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 10, 2015 74 Comments
Earlier today Jane Bishkin, the attorney for Eric Casebolt, gave a brief news conference to provide context around the former police officer’s decision to resign yesterday. Here’s the video in its entirety. In the process, Bishkin very cleverly won for Casebolt everything that could be salvaged, sacrificed nothing that had not already been lost, and cut off the oxygen from a potential Ferguson-style race riot in the otherwise quiet and racially integrated Texas community of McKinney.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 10, 2015 12 Comments
I hate the TSA. Hate, hate, hate. Not just because they reached into my purse while I was waiting to board a plane. And not because they've lectured me about tooth paste on five, yes -- five separate occasions. My hatred of TSA is not even a result of their oft pervy-handed ways. I hate the TSA because they're painfully incompetent. Last week, the acting head of the TSA stepped down after a, "news reports that undercover security agents had penetrated airport security on 67 occasions," according to the Washington Post. That amounts to a 96% failure rate. As if a 4% screening success rate wasn't bad enough, a new audit found the TSA accidentally hired 73 workers who were listed on their own terror watch list. "This is totally unacceptable... we need to revamp the TSA process," said Texas Representative Michael McCaul in an interview with Fox News. "Most importantly, it puts Americans at risk."

Posted by Amy Miller on June 10, 2015 9 Comments
The day Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover was revealed, I made a joke about it. It wasn't anything particularly crude or shocking, and it didn't go any further than the mildest joke you would have seen on Twitter that day, but I still fielded text messages chewing me out for being "insensitive" and "transphobic" by chittering outrage squirrels who don't understand what phobic means. People in general have accepted that for the most part, comedy comes from a dark place. It's the knee-jerk reaction that you repress, but that the comedian packages and splatters on the wall for the world to see. That being said, even the world's most popular creative talents are getting the sense that, when it comes to comedy, the general population would much rather not laugh at the expense of the bubble-wrapped classes that the left so jealously shields from criticism. On last night's Late Night with Seth Meyers, comedian Jerry Seinfeld joined Seth and New Yorker editor David Remnick and unleashed on today's PC culture that can't even handle a lighthearted joke about social media that happens to have the word "gay" in it. Watch:

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Posted by Amy Miller on June 10, 2015 5 Comments
State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke has confirmed that American man and paramilitary fighter Keith Broomfield was killed fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish forces in Syria. More from NBC News:
Idris Nassan, Kurdish co-deputy foreign minister of the Kobani district, also confirmed to NBC News that an American who had joined Kurdish fighters died in a battle with ISIS in his area. It was not immediately clear when Broomfield was killed. Broomfield's mother, Donna, said she had learned from her other son that Keith was dead. "I didn't want him to go but I didn't have a choice in the matter," she tearfully told NBC News over the phone from Westminster, Massachusetts. She said that her son had left to fight around four months ago and that while there was "a little bit of texting" after he first arrived, lately she had heard "nothing." "I'm waiting for his body to come back," she added.
Social media accounts belonging to Kurdish fighters were the first outlets to leak his death, confirming that Broomfield was killed in the Syrian countryside surrounding Kobani.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 10, 2015 5 Comments
American officials are scrambling to contact people exposed to an Indian woman who has been diagnosed with an extremely difficult-to-treat strain of tuberculosis.
A female patient with an extremely hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis is being treated at the National Institutes of Health [NIH] outside Washington, D.C., and federal and state officials are now tracking down hundreds of people who may have been in contact with her. The woman traveled to at least three states before she sought treatment from a U.S. doctor. While TB is not easily caught by casual contact, extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB is so dangerous that health officials will have to make a concerted effort to warn anyone who may be at risk. ... The patient, who isn't being identified in any way, may face months or even years of treatment. Ordinary TB is hard to treat and requires, at a minimum, weeks of antibiotics. XDR-TB resists the effects of almost all the known TB drugs. Sometimes patients have to have pockets of infection surgically removed. Only about a third to half of cases can even be cured.
This quest could prove extremely challenging. The NIH's latest patient traveled through one of the country's busiest airport hubs then onto three separate states.

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 10, 2015 47 Comments
Once again information emerges that Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby is an integral actor in the circumstances surrounding Freddie Gray's arrest and death, rather than an objective prosecutor simply addressing a criminal case. Roughly three weeks before Baltimore police officers arrested Gray for possession of an illegal knife Mosby herself was strongly advocating for substantially increased policing in the very neighborhood where Gray would be taken into custody, according to a report by the Baltimore Sun. Lt. Kenneth Butler, a shift commander for more than a decade, and a representative for an advocacy group for women and minority officers, is quoted in the Sun report as saying that he had never before seen such orders come from the state's attorney's office.  Further, he expressed no uncertainty about what the consequences would be: "Once you're given an order, you have to carry it out. It's just that simple."  And in terms of the tactics that would necessarily be involved?
They want increased productivity, whether it be car stops, field interviews, arrests — that's what they mean by measurables. You have to use whatever tools you have — whether it be bike officers, cameras, foot officers, whatever you have — to abate that problem. So you're going to have to be aggressive. (emphasis added)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 10, 2015 7 Comments
On a windswept hillside terrace in the massive Har HaMenuchot Cemetery on the western edge of Jerusalem, 1969 terror victims Edward Joffe and Leon ("Arie") Kanner are buried together, next to Edward's parents Roslyn and Hyman Joffe. The cemetery itself reflects the history of the conflict. Har HaMenuchot was opened in 1951, after Jordanian troops seized "East" Jerusalem after Israel declared Independence in 1948. Jordan's conquest included not only the Jewish Quarter of the Old City but also the Mount of Olives Cemetery, the traditional Jewish burial ground. The Jewish Quarter was ethnically cleansed of Jews and its Jewish landmarks, while Mount of Olives Cemetery was ransacked, its tombstones used for building projects and many of its graves paved over for roads. Har HaMenuchot was built in response. [caption id="attachment_130311" align="alignnone" width="600"]Har HaMenuchot Cemetery Jerusalem [Har HaMenuchot Cemetery, Jerusalem][/caption]  My wife and I visited the Joffe and Kanner graves at Har HaMenuchot on June 1, 2015. [Featured Image] The cemetery is so huge, so seemingly discombobulated, so logistically impenetrable even when armed with plot and section numbers, that it took us almost an hour to find the graves.  We were accompanied by a local Rabbi who helped us say prayers. We placed small stones on the graves, in the Jewish tradition. And we were overcome with emotion. The inscriptions on the graves are simple, and nearly identical. Edward's brother Harold provided the translation: [caption id="attachment_130324" align="alignnone" width="600"][Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner Headstones] [Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner Headstones][/caption]

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 10, 2015 7 Comments
I was a guest Tuesday morning on The Tony Katz Show on WICB Indianapolis. The topic was the Zivotofsky case discussed earlier this week, Supreme Court Overturns Congress on Jerusalem Passport Law. I made the point that while the majority decision purported to make the decision very narrow, it's likely that the decision would be used to try to limit Congressional legislation more broadly as relates to foreign policy: Professor Eugene Kontorovich expresses a similar view, writing at ScotusBlog (via Volokh Conspiracy):

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 10, 2015 8 Comments
You might think that the fact that four Americans died in the 2012 attack on our embassy in Libya (on Hillary Clinton's watch) was bad enough, but you'd be wrong. Stephen Collinson of CNN:
Hillary Clinton's real Libya problem Hillary Clinton has another Libya problem. She's already grappling with the political headaches from deleted emails and from the terror attack that left four Americans dead in Benghazi. But she'll face a broader challenge in what's become of the North African country since, as secretary of state in 2011, she was the public face of the U.S. intervention to push out its longtime strongman, Moammar Gadhafi. Libya's lapse into the chaos of failed statehood has provided a breeding ground for terror and a haven for groups such as ISIS. Its plight is also creating an opening for Republican presidential candidates to question Clinton's strategic acumen and to undermine her diplomatic credentials, which will be at the center of her pitch that only she has the global experience needed to be president in a turbulent time.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 09, 2015 25 Comments
I must've missed the "everyone make stuff up" memo circulating through media channels this week. Thankfully, I'm just a blogger. Tuesday, the Huffington Post published a post with the headline, Jeb Bush In 1995: Unwed Mothers Should Be Publicly Shamed. There's just one problem though -- that's not what Jeb Bush said. Not in 1995 or otherwise. The post focuses on a book Bush wrote called Profiles in Character. The book was published in 1995. Gawker, Wonkette, Raw Story and others then reblogged using the same, incorrect headline. No, Jeb Bush did not say unwed mothers should be publicly shamed

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 09, 2015 135 Comments
Not many details on this yet but it appears that McKinney police officer Eric Casebolt has resigned from the police department, as reported by ABC news and others sources.
Casebolt's resignation was confirmed Tuesday by attorney Jane Bishkin, who told WFAA that the decision was made after a meeting with the department's internal affairs unit to review possible charges he could face.
Officer Casebolt came to public attention, of course, through his efforts to lawfully control a violent mob that invaded the quiet Texas community of McKinney this past Friday.  While controlling a non-compliant suspect Casebolt was charged by two males, at which point he drew his service pistol.  His assaulters fled upon seeing the drawn weapon and no shots were fired. For a detailed analysis of those events, see "Video Analysis: McKinney Brawl Another Rush to Misjudgment?" The same ABC news source also reports that:
Casebolt has not made any public statements since Friday's incident. His lawyer said he has been in hiding with his wife and family at an undisclosed location after they allegedly received death threats. (emphasis added)

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 09, 2015 45 Comments
Last week, the New York Times dropped the lamest "hit" piece in the history of hit pieces. Pretending a few traffic tickets from the 90s made Sen. Rubio and his wife unfit for public service, the NYT ended up the butt of the joke. On social media, #rubiocrimespree trending nationally for hours with submissions like, "drank milk after it expired," and "Didn't read Apple End User Licence [sic] Agreement but still clicked "I Agree"." Rubio's campaign got in on the fun, and celebrities publicly declared the NYT story dumb. Apparently that wasn't enough embarrassment for the NYT. Tuesday, the NYT released yet another 'scoop' on the good Senator from Florida. This time, the NYT suggested that Rubio had financial problems which have tainted his career. Those "financial problems"? "Student debt, mortgages and an extra loan against the value of his home totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Posted by Amy Miller on June 09, 2015 10 Comments
Last week, an Inspector General report revealed that the TSA failed to flag over 70 airport workers with ties to terrorism. Auditors found that, although the TSA employs procedures to check employees for potential red flags, the agency was not using the complete terror watch list in its screenings. Another study revealed last week showed that screeners missed a staggering 95% of fake bombs and other banned items that undercover federal agents attempted to smuggle through security. Today, a Senate committee played host to TSA whistleblowers who offered testimony that should make any traveler's skin crawl:
Earlier, Rebecca Roering, an assistant TSA federal security director at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the agency suffers from low morale. She said this is in part the result of agency leadership, composed of too many former commercial airline executives “placing more emphasis on customer service and passenger wait times than on security and detection rates.”

Posted by Amy Miller on June 09, 2015 27 Comments
Somewhere in America, Jon Stewart's brain is dribbling out of his ears. Today, fast food chain McDonald's announced that former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs will be joining the company as its global chief communications officer. He'll be managing the department that manages government and public affairs. More from the official press release:
In his new role, Gibbs will lead McDonald's corporate relations group, which manages internal and external communications and government and public affairs. He will lead McDonald's in communicating clear, coordinated messages to internal and external constituencies, enhancing the brand and supporting corporate strategies. Gibbs joins McDonald's from The Incite Agency, a strategic communications advisory firm he co-founded in 2013. Prior to that he held several senior advisory roles in the White House, serving as President Barack Obama's press secretary during his first term, then as senior campaign advisor during his re-election campaign. He will replace Bridget Coffing who announced her retirement earlier this year after 30 years with the company.
There's something delicious about this, no?

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 09, 2015 72 Comments
Once again, Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby seems to be having difficulty grasping fundamentals of the practice of law. Indeed, she's now reduced to making exactly the same errors she only recently accused opposing counsel of making. In this most current instance, Mosby's motion for a gag order on the Freddie Gray case has been rejected, reports the Baltimore Sun (h/t Conservative Treehouse). The reason?  She filed her motion in Circuit Court on May 14, but while the matter was still jurisdictionally in the lower District Court.  The matter was not moved into Circuit Court until May 21, a week later. Ironically, in Mosby's motion opposing defense counsel's efforts to have her recuse herself from the case the Prosecutor argued that it was improper of the defense to make that argument in District Court, where the matter then rested, knowing as they did that the case would end up in District Circuit Court.
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