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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 05, 2015 8 Comments
Speaking from a plane hanger in a Dallas suburb Thursday afternoon, Governor Perry officially launched his second bid for the White House. Flanked by Navy SEALs, Perry was introduced by his wife, Anita. Meet the former first lady of Texas, Anita Perry. Over the years, I've often heard Governor Perry refer to Anita as, "his rock" and it's easy to see why. Perry's Coaxer in Chief as CNN called her, addressed one of the most crucial issues of Perry's 2016 campaign -- his glasses. "He's got these new glasses that have gotten a lot of attention," observes CNN, "What do you think? Did he need a new image?" "No, he needed the glasses to see! I mean, this really just tickles me, it makes me laugh. He needed those glasses from a childhood injury when he was 16 or 17-years-old and the vision in one eye deteriorated such that he had to have the glasses. So I picked them out. Really, I like him without the glasses, but he had to have them to see."

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 05, 2015 24 Comments
What is the line between political hyperbole and utter fantasy? Whatever it is, President Obama has completely crossed that particular Rubicon. I recently noted that his assertions that America has become more respected internationally under his watch were not quite based in reality. Now, it appears he has delusions regarding his faith:
Speaking to JPUpdates.com, top Obama confidant David Axelrod described a moment where the president expressed exasperation to him over being derided as anti-Israel by some. “You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office,” the president claimed, according to Axelrod. “For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse, anti-Semitic, it hurts.”
Given President Obama's treatment of Bibi Netanyahu over the years, and the troubling deal with Iran that my colleague David Gerstman reviews, I must admit to being a bit perplexed.

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 05, 2015 38 Comments
We're all familiar with the proverb, rats flee a sinking ship. To see this in action on a human scale we need look no further than the offices of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. In a story that's gotten remarkably little news coverage, the Baltimore Sun Times reports that four of the Mayor's highest ranking staff have quit since six Baltimore police officers were charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Among those who have resigned:

LeVar Michael, Head of the mayor's Office of Nonviolent Programs, resigned on Wednesday, May 20.

Angela Johnese, Director of the Criminal Justice Office, resigned on Friday, May 22.

Heather Brantner, Coordinator of the Mayor's Sexual Assault Response Team, also resigned on Friday, May 22. (Coincidence?)

Perhaps most shocking however, was the next resignation the following week:

Shannon Cosgrove, the Mayor's own Deputy Director, resigned Tuesday, May 26 (the day after Memorial Day.)

For those without a calendar in front of them, that's four high-level departures in a period of four business days.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 05, 2015 4 Comments
On June 12, 2014, a terror cell affiliated with Hamas kidnapped Naftali Fraenkel (16), Gilad Shaer (16), and Eyal Yifrah (19) in the West Bank. After an intensive hunt and crackdown on Hamas throughout the West Bank, they were found dead. The murderers months later were located and killed by Israeli forces. Contrary to popular mythology, the kidnapping did not cause Israel to attack Gaza weeks later. Rather, the cause of the Gaza conflict was when Hamas started firing rockets from Gaza at Israel without stop. While driving on the way back from Hebron, I saw a sign (Featured Image), designating a forest in the memory of the three teens. It is at the Gush Etzion junction in an area of settlements near where the teens were abducted. The visit to Hebron was quite interesting. Hebron had the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world -- dating back several hundred years -- until Arab riots in 1929 killed 67 Hebron Jews and ethnically cleansed Jews from the city.

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Posted by Amy Miller on June 04, 2015 14 Comments
US officials suspect hackers in China are responsible for a cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) computer systems that left the personal information of almost four million current and former federal government employees exposed. The breach, which was detected back in April, is now being described as one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen. DHS concluded back in May that the information had indeed been compromised and stolen, but so far neither OPM of the FBI have indicated exactly whose records have been exposed. More from WaPo:
“Certainly, OPM is a high value target,” said OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour, in an interview. “We have a lot of information about people, and that is something that our adversaries want.” With that understanding, she said, within the last year “OPM has undertaken an aggressive effort to update our cybersecurity posture, adding numerous tools and capabilities to our networks. As a result of adding these tools, we were able to detect this intrusion into our networks.” “Protecting our federal employee data from malicious cyber incidents is of the highest priority at OPM,” said the agency’s director, Katherine Archuleta, in a statement.

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 04, 2015 42 Comments
Last November Cleveland Officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a city park.  The investigation by law enforcement has now been completed, and the case is being handed over to prosecutors and a Grand Jury, reports CNN and other sources. The Cleveland police officers had been dispatched to the scene by 911 because of calls received that someone--ultimately determined to be Tamir Rice--was walking around the park pointing a gun at people. At least one call to 911 reported "a guy with a pistol" walking around the park. The same caller purportedly also told 911 that the gun was "probably" fake, but according to dispatch recordings released by law enforcement this additional information was not communicated to the responding officers.  Even if it had, no police officer could reasonably be expected to risk his life on the firearm identification skills of an anonymous caller to 911. Indeed, the surveillance video (below the fold, and annotated by the author) clearly shows Rice openly handling an apparent pistol (seemingly spinning it on his finger cowboy-style at the 1:20 mark), placing and removing it from his waistband (e.g., at 2:00 mark), and even apparently pointing the gun-like object at passersby. There are at least 10 occasions captured by the grainy footage of the surveillance video in which Rice is openly displaying the apparent gun in some fashion.  To an actual observer at the scene, the handling of the gun would have been far more apparent.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 04, 2015 22 Comments
Earlier this year, Alabama became a focal point in the ongoing resistance in some states to legalizing gay "marriage" (read about it here and here).  Watch a PBSNewshour clip that summarizes the issue (and the professor interviewed try to downplay the unpopularity of gay "marriage" in Alabama): Much of the debate centered on the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was and is adamantly opposed to federal government intervention in states' rights regarding gay "marriage," but Chief Justice Moore is not the only Alabamian who is taking actual steps to address their objections. The Alabama state legislature has drafted a bill that moves to replace marriage licenses with contracts. Hot Air reports:
Assuming a pending bill in Alabama makes it all the way into law, we’re about to see an unusual test case in the marriage wars. Rather than arguing over the definition of marriage for the purposes of issuing licenses, the Heart of Dixie is moving to do away with marriage licenses entirely and replace them with contracts.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 04, 2015 8 Comments
After being maligned by the press for "inviting" violence by taking a stand for free speech at her Garland, Texas "Draw Mohammad" event, Pamela Gellar was target of a beheading plot. Usaamah Rahim, who was being investigated by the FBI, was shot and killed by Boston police Tuesday. Rahim and an alleged co-conspirator, planned to behead Pamela Gellar.

Posted by New Neo on June 04, 2015 21 Comments
Republicans are in a pickle, and have been since the moment Obamacare was passed. You might think they're in a good position, because the Supreme Court is considering overturning the state Obamacare exchanges and subsidies because of wording in the statute, and this would throw the entire Obamacare system into turmoil. The case in question is King v. Burwell, and it could be decided any day now. But there's one catch, and it's a biggee: if the ruling goes against Obamacare, the press and the left will rail at the Republicans for being the big bad meanies who took away a lot of people's subsidies. That was part of the beauty of Obamacare for the left, and one of the many many reasons they were so extraordinarily eager to pass it and pass it as quickly as possible: they wanted to create a dependence and an expectation, otherwise known as an entitlement, that would be tremendously hard to reverse. But what do the American people actually want if SCOTUS throws out the state exchanges and therefore the state subsidies? A substantial majority appear to want Congress to fix Obamacare rather than re-establish the state exchanges, according to this poll. But what would that actually look like?

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 04, 2015 30 Comments
Jeb Bush may be a decent man, but when it comes to fundraising, conservative donors are putting their eggs in another candidate's basket. Matea Gold and Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post:
With some donors doubting Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio seizes an opening Marco Rubio is benefiting from pockets of discontent in Jeb Bush’s sprawling money network, winning over donors who believe the 44-year-old freshman senator from Florida offers a more compelling persona and sharper generational contrast against Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rubio is working to seize the moment by making an all-out push to lock down financial backers in the coming month, hopscotching the country in a nonstop series of fundraisers that are limiting his presence on the campaign trail. While he faces stiff competition in the money race from Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in particular, Rubio’s in-person courting sessions are starting to pay off. Longtime Bush loyalists and other big-money players on the right have emerged from the meetings raving about his abilities, according to people familiar with private gatherings he has had across the country.

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 04, 2015 127 Comments
State Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who raised eyebrows (understatement maximus) when she abruptly charged six Baltimore police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, has now sought to seal Gray's autopsy report from the public. This is based on reporting by the Baltimore Sun, as brought to my attention by Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller. As reported in the Daily Caller piece, Ivan Bates, the attorney for the only female officer charged by Mosby's office in the case, is quoted as saying:
[Th]ere is something in that autopsy report that they are trying to hide. . . . It’s as if she wants to do everything to make sure our clients do not get a fair trial. . . . Nobody would know anything but the state and the defense, so they would totally hide it from the public. . . .  If your case is as good as you said it was, why don’t you just show the evidence? . . . You can’t holler and say, ‘I’m about accountability for the citizens,’ and then run around filing for a protective order.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 04, 2015 2 Comments
Problems between the Bedouins in the Negev desert area in the south of Israel and the government over redevelopment plans have received a lot of media attention, including at Legal Insurrection: As with every problem in Israel, there are dozens of Israeli and international "human rights" groups seeking to exploit the issue for a greater purpose unrelated to actually helping the Bedouin. So the media narrative is spun as the bad Jews trying to steal land. The Israeli side of the story rarely is told in the media. In part that reflects media bias, in part that Israel is not very good at getting its story out. So during our trip to the south of the country, we met with and toured the area with a local official from the Israeli government ministry which is handling Bedouin redevelopment issues. The official spoke Arabic fluently and was intimately familiar with the Bedouin tribes and culture. (We also were accompanied by our Negev guide, Danny Kella, who also guided us along the Gaza border.) Negev Bedouin Rahat Regional Satellite Map The official was frank in his assessments.  He acknowledged that there are real problems and that the situation has not been handled as well as it should have been. But he also felt that a lot of the problems had causes on each side of the equation and was misrepresented in the media.

Posted by Amy Miller on June 03, 2015 15 Comments
Democrats are playing politics with defense funding, and today, the game turned ugly. Since Republicans seized the majority in 2014, Democratic leadership has engaged in a revolt not against specific policies, but against productivity in general. Today, they put the NDAA on their chopping block. Defense funding is chum in the water for Democrats, who whose minority status has forced a tactical shift from all-out bullying via the calendar, to simply threatening to hold good legislation hostage. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said today that, although he hasn't forced the issue yet, Dems may still filibuster defense spending unless Republicans agree to pad the already-passed House version of the bill with cash for other federal agencies. Oh, and if Reid and his caucus don't like that bill? Well, it's clearly a waste of time to even begin a discussion. Watch, via America Rising:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 03, 2015 8 Comments
When he withdrew troops from Iraq, Obama himself proclaimed, "we are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq."  That was in 2011.  Flash forward to now, and Iraq is none of those things; indeed, Iraq is now an ISIS strong-hold, part of their declared caliphate. Throughout Obama's presidency, we've heard him blame President Bush for everything from the still-flailing economy to the rise of ISIS.  His supporters within the media have ensured that this message is the one that Americans hear most often, and for (too many) years, (far too many) Americans have believed what they were told. No longer. A CNN poll found that, for the first time, more Americans blame Obama than President Bush for the instability in Iraq:

[N]early the same percent of people blame President Barack Obama's policies for the current situation in Iraq as those who hold President George W. Bush responsible, the survey showed.

Overall, 44% say they blame Obama's policies for the problems in Iraq and 43% blame Bush; 11% say both are equally responsible.

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