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Posted by Mike LaChance on April 17, 2015 21 Comments
By now, you've probably noticed that most of our completely unbiased media is treating Hillary Clinton with the same hard hitting scrutiny they're applying to Republicans candidates. Don't take my word for it. Here's Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: According to Cillizza, it's all in our minds:
Look, I get it. Hillary Clinton is a Democrat. Conservatives have been convinced for a very long time that the media is populated almost exclusively by Democrats who, because they are secretly rooting for that party's candidates, are willing to overlook things that they would never overlook if it was a Republican. And, there is no Democrat this side of Barack Obama that drives Republicans crazier than Hillary Clinton.
Doug Powers responds: You've probably seen the media's mad dash for Hillary's "Scooby" van:

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Posted by Amy Miller on April 16, 2015 1 Comment
Anyone who has ever worked for a candidate (or any public figure, really) has had that Oh, God moment. It's the moment that you prepare for, pray will never come, but somehow always manages to sneak up kick the crap out of your best-laid media plans. Democrat almost-candidate for president Lincoln Chafee served his comms shop an Oh, God moment this morning on CNN's New Day when he may or may not have let it slip that his exploratory committee is, at least in his mind, a formality:
After rattling off a list of sins that Hillary Clinton committed as secretary of state, John Berman asked Chafee if he was going hard against her record on purpose. “Yes, that’s why I’m running,” he seemingly confirmed. “Because I feel strong about where we’re going as a country.”
You can watch the spot here.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 16, 2015 1 Comment
The wheels on the bus go thump-thump-thump...right over the guy tasked with fixing an impossible mess. It's official: Jamal Benomar, the UN's special advisor on Yemen has resigned. For the past four years, Benomar has been the person tasked with guiding the various factions in Yemen through a peaceful, post-Arab Spring transition. The UN hasn't provided any information regarding a possible reassignment for Benomar; however, when asked who was slated to replace him, officials said that they would select "someone who can talk to all parties." Because that's what's happening in Yemen right now---talking. But I digress. For a while, it seemed like Benomar was making progress---but then things began to unravel:
U.N. diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks were private, said that ministers from the Sunni-led Gulf Cooperation Council met Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during a trip to Kuwait in late March and told him of their unhappiness with Benomar.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 16, 2015 5 Comments
Etsy has long been my internet happy place. The online market provides craft-makers, artists, photographers, and virtually every creatively-minded individual a place to hawk their wares. And with over one million active sellers scattered across the globe, there's an abundance of fabulously kitschy, and often customizable items to chose from. I've purchased everything from wall hangings, jewelry, vintage clothing, incense, post cards, to hors d'oeuvres plates, and many other unique pieces. Until recently, mass manufactured products were not eligible for Etsy stores. Founded in Brooklyn approximately 10 years ago, Etsy practically re-engineered the virtual marketplace and offered a global platform for the would-be small business owner.  Opening a shop in Etsy's marketplace is free. Etsy charges 20 cents for each item listed and collects a fee of 3.5% once the item sells. Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 2.06.43 PM Reaching a new milestone today, Etsy went public. The IPO's shares are currently hovering around $32 a pop. "Today, as we reach an important milestone for Etsy – our initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange – we would like to thank you, our sellers, for helping us reimagine commerce. Together, we’ve built not only a thriving marketplace, but a unique worldwide community based on creativity, entrepreneurship and helping one another," said the site's announcement.

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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 16, 2015 7 Comments
Thus far, the GOP presidential field officially includes three of the Senate's best. We're still waiting on the Governors to join the party. It's still early, but how are the current candidates fairing on the fundraising front? Ted Cruz The first to hop in the race, Cruz raised $ 4.3 million in his first 9 days of campaigning. A respectable start. If Governor Perry jumps in the race as anticipated, Cruz might lose some of his early fundraising steam. Governor Perry has a well established donor base in the Lone Star State that could suck funds away from Cruz. According to the Dallas Morning News, although Cruz has the early lead, he's in for stiff competition as the field continues to expand. By all accounts Governor Bush will be the moneyed man to beat.
Still, Cruz is expected to trail other major candidates in the fund-raising battle. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush reportedly had a $100 million fund-raising goal for the quarter that ended March 31, while Cruz would be happy to get $50 million for the entire campaign.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 16, 2015 42 Comments
Since we "celebrated" Tax Day with an analysis on the difficulties of cutting down the tax code, now seems like a good time to review the topic that is the only other certainty in life -- death. California's politicians, not content with messing around with our water flow, are looking to OK physician-assisted suicide rules.
A controversial bill to bring physician-assisted death to California passed its first hurdle Wednesday after hundreds of people lined up to voice support and opposition to the legislation. Senators approved the legislation in a packed committee hearing in the state Capitol. “We are pleased to see it pass,” said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, one of the authors of SB128, which would allow a mentally competent terminally ill adult to receive a lethal prescription to hasten death. The Senate Health Committee voted 6-2 along party lines to pass the legislation, with Sen. Richard Pan, a Democrat from Sacramento who is also a doctor, abstaining from the vote. “This vote reflects the changing sentiment in California,” Monning said.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2015 38 Comments
Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed reports that Hillary's often-told story about all her grandparents being immigrants is 3/4 false. Only one was.
Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that conflicts with public census and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents. The story of her grandmother specifically immigrating is one Clinton has told before. Clinton’s sole foreign-born grandparent, Hugh Rodham Sr., immigrated as a child."
Extensive public records support Kaczynski's findings. Here's a Buzzfeed video file of Hillary recently telling the story. [video width="600" height="338" mp4="https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/HillaryinIowacomments-624x350.mp4"][/video] There's also a Youtube video linked by Buzzfeed.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 16, 2015 18 Comments
MSNBC's Chris Matthews has never had much love for conservatives, but he's been on a roll lately. Here's what Matthews had to say about the current GOP field on his show yesterday. Ken Shepherd of News Busters:
Chris Matthews's 'Snake-Charmer' Dog Whistle?; Will Leftists Complain About Racist 'Microaggression'? MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews loves to slander Republicans as often speaking in code or blowing racial "dog-whistles." Of course, doing that should open him up to charges of the same when he speaks carelessly. Before I continue, I must add that I don't in any way think Matthews was making a veiled reference here to Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's Indian ethnic heritage, but even so, given his network's political correctness, it seems pretty odd that Matthews feels comfortable comparing the GOP primary field to a Middle Eastern bazaar that's just missing its "snake charmer." Here's the relevant transcript:

Posted by Andrew Branca on April 15, 2015 7 Comments
As I continue my homeward travels from the NRA Annual Meeting--yesterday was seven hours of riding in hard rain from wester North Carolina to northern Virginia, and I'm still drying out--here's another post looking back at the Annual Firearms Law Seminar. A particularly interesting Seminar talk was entitled "Gun Rights Restoration: The Nuts & Bolts and Present Day Military Issues," presented by Attorney Derek A. DeBrosse, who specializes in this area. We all agree, of course, that to the extent it's feasible to do so society should deny bad people access to firearms. (As a practical matter, of course, the feasibility of enforcing such constraints is zero, at least against any bad actor who seriously wishes to obtain possession of a gun, but that's fodder for another day.) In the United States there are certain classes of individuals who the law requires be stripped of their gun rights for some period of time, and sometimes for the remainder of their lives.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2015 19 Comments
Via Drudge, The Daily Mail reports to the surprise of no one who has followed the Clintons, that Hillary's coffee shop talk in Iowa was staged:
Hillary Clinton's astroturf candidacy is in full swing in Iowa. Her Tuesday morning visit to a coffee shop in LeClaire, Iowa was staged from beginning to end, according to Austin Bird, one of the men pictured sitting at the table with Mrs. Clinton. Bird told Daily Mail Online that campaign staffer Troy Price called and asked him and two other young people to meet him Tuesday morning at a restaurant in Davenport, a nearby city. Price then drove them to the coffee house to meet Clinton after vetting them for about a half-hour. The three got the lion's share of Mrs. Clinton's time and participated in what breathless news reports described as a 'roundtable'– the first of many in her brief Iowa campaign swing.

Posted by Jay Caruso on April 15, 2015 15 Comments
It's interesting that Hillary Clinton started off her 2016 presidential campaign with a video that showed what appeared to be middle class Americans at a transitional point in their lives. Hillary talked about being a "champion" for them and punctuated her kick-off by going on a road trip to Iowa, stopping at gas stations and eating at Chipotle, like "every day" Americans. While people have been enjoying themselves at Hillary's expense with her road trip and her burrito bowl adventures, the Republican Party is looking to do what Democrats did to Mitt Romney in 2012 and what the GOP did to John Kerry in 2004: Portray Hillary Clinton as an out of touch plutocrat who says all the right things about "the middle class" but cannot possibly relate to their situation. From Politico:
While Hillary Clinton’s residences in New York and Washington may not have car elevators, there’s still a lengthy trail of paid speeches, tone-deaf statements about the family finances and questions about Clinton family foundation fundraising practices that will serve as cornerstones of the anti-Clinton messaging effort. “She’s admitted she hasn’t driven a car for decades; she probably doesn’t ever go into a coffee shop and talk to regular people unless it’s for a staged photo-op,” said American Crossroads CEO Steven Law, alluding to Clinton’s portrayal in her campaign’s launch video on Sunday. “She really has lived the life of a 1-percenter these last several years, and it shows.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 15, 2015 4 Comments
Get ready for some more mixed messaging on the US role in the Middle East, because we could be in for a doozy---even when it comes to ISIS. We've talked a lot here about the mixed messages the administration is sending regarding our mission in the Middle East. We have "boots on the ground"---but we don't. We're in it to win it---but we need to hold back and not commit to a real offensive. Officials overseas have gone so far as to publicly question whether or not Obama knows exactly what we're doing over there. It seems like Congress feels the same way. House Speaker John Boehner is now saying that it will be "virtually impossible" for Congress to pass Obama's proposed authorization for the use of military force against ISIS in the Middle East. Why? Because it makes no sense.

Posted by David Gerstman on April 15, 2015 10 Comments
There have been a number of reactions to the Corker-Menendez bill, which provides for Congressional oversight of whatever nuclear deal the administration makes with Iran. It passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday with a 19-0 vote. J. E. Dyer at Liberty Unyielding looks at the numbers and sees the bill as a loss.
If Congress rejects the Iran deal, and the president vetoes its legislation, Congress will have the balance of a 52-day period to override the veto. If the Senate finds itself unable to act, at some point in this process, Obama’s deal can be implemented without assent from the Senate. To override a veto, of course, opponents will need 67 votes. To uphold a veto, Obama just has to make sure there are 34 votes for his deal. He doesn’t have to have even 51 votes to implement it. With 34, he’s got a major win. The beauty of this for Obama is that he still gets a win if the Senate at any point can’t bring a floor vote. His deal just gets implemented because the Senate failed to act. So it won’t matter if the president has 34 votes for the Iran deal, but not enough to bring the deal to a vote. The win for Obama is merely less photogenic in that case. The effect is the same.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 15, 2015 17 Comments
Today, the RNC sent out their annual "isn't this terrible" tax day press release decrying big government excesses and calling for reform. Take a look:
“Today is Tax Day, our annual reminder of how much of our hard-earned money is sent to Washington, DC, and spent recklessly by a bloated federal government. And now, ObamaCare has made Tax Day even more complicated for American families,” said Chairman Priebus. "With Hillary Clinton running for president, Americans should realize that future Tax Days will be even more painful if she’s elected. Clinton and her party want to grow government and spend more, and that means they want to tax you more. "If you want to keep less of what you earn, then Hillary Clinton is your candidate. But if you want the government to spend your money more carefully and let you keep more of what you earn, then the Republican Party is on your side. Even if we don't agree on everything, you can agree with the Republican Party on this principle: government should use our money more responsibly and respectfully."
There's also this:

Posted by Amy Miller on April 15, 2015 48 Comments
I think it's time to finally say it: Senate Democrats don't care about the victims of human trafficking. They don't care about helping the victims of kidnapping and forced prostitution. They don't care about prosecuting rapists and child molesters. They don't care about putting an end to modern day slavery. If they did, they would stop talking and start casting their votes in favor of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) currently awaiting approval in the Senate. I've written a lot about this bill; it's important. Most people don't realize that human trafficking still exists outside the context of horror stories out of southeast Asia or Central America. It's not just an illegal immigration problem, and it affects human beings in all 50 states. Hence the once-bipartisan bill that Democrats now refuse to support because the Hyde Amendment applies to its fee structure. Don't be fooled, though; this obstructionism has nothing to do with Hyde itself. The Amendment has been included in bipartisan spending bills for decades. JVTA author and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) recently offered changes to the language in the bill that would have addressed Dems' purported concerns, and still they refuse to relent.
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