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Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2014 4 Comments
This is night two of the ground invasion of Gaza. It does not appear to have moved into the large Gaza City, yet. The focus has been on uncovering tunnels, of which many have been found. You can follow the video and Twitter feed below for live updates. We also will post updates at the bottom of the post. (added) Overnight there was another tunnel attack where Hamas terrorists emerged on the Israeli side of the border and were confronted. Two Israeli soldiers were killed. Also, Hamas sent a donkey loaded with explosives towards Israeli soldiers -- the animal exploded without causing Israeli casualties. More details on all of these below. More Live Video Feeds and Live Twitter Feed below

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2014 3 Comments

Two of my radio appearances regarding Obama and the Rule of Law...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on July 18, 2014 6 Comments
The mother of the toddler who died last month after being left in a hot car by his father says she is mourning the death of her child and asks that she be allowed to grieve privately, away from the eye of reporters. A statement earlier this week from the attorney representing Leanna Harris said the mother of 22-month old Cooper Harris “is living every parent's nightmare,” and also criticized the media for fostering a “poisonous atmosphere in which Leanna's every word, action and emotion - or failure to cry in front of a crowd -- is scrutinized for some supposed hidden meaning.” Harris hired Cobb County, Georgia defense attorney Lawrence Zimmerman last week, though she has not been charged in the case and has not been named as a suspect. Zimmerman compared Leanna Harris’ situation to that of Richard Jewell, the man who was working as a temporary security guard during the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing and was wrongly implicated as a suspect then later cleared. It was Jewell who had spotted the bag that contained the bomb, then moved visitors away from the area and alerted authorities. But Jewell had become the subject of intense media focus throughout the ordeal. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on Thursday that Harris and her attorney have also asked to meet with Lin Wood, the attorney who represented Jewell in his subsequent libel cases against several media outlets.

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2014 9 Comments
[Council meeting now over] The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting at the request of Jordan. The live tweets are below. The main outcome is that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will leave Saturday for the Middle East to try to mediate a ceasefire. Security Council Emergency Meeting Gaza undersecretary of the UN Jeff Feltman

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 18, 2014 9 Comments
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) has asked the Wisconsin Legislature to pass a bill next year to repeal the controversial Common Core educational standards. Walker issued a one-line statement late Thursday that also said the Common Core curriculum should be replaced by standards “set by people in Wisconsin.”
Walker’s one-sentence statement was issued late Thursday, hours after Sens. Leah Vukmir, R- Wauwatosa, and Paul Farrow, R-Pewaukee, issued a joint statement calling for a delay in using new standardized tests aligned to ​Common Core. Later Thursday, Walker spokesman Jocelyn Webster elaborated on the governor’s comments: “Following the vote by the Cedarburg School Board yesterday and given the ongoing issues local school districts face with Common Core, Gov. Walker felt it was important to make his position clear. Gov. Walker will work with the Legislature to repeal Common Core and replace it with strong Wisconsin-specific standards developed by Wisconsin teachers, administrators, and parents.” The standards have become increasingly controversial in Wisconsin, with conservatives repeatedly calling for their repeal. In Cedarburg, the school board voted Wednesday to ask lawmakers to delay testing linked to the standards.
Common Core was a prominent punching bag during last week's Republican Governors Association meeting. In fact, Walker hinted at his intentions during the meeting.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2014 14 Comments
There has been a lot of vile anti-Israel propaganda in social media, going along with open anti-Semitism in social media and the streets. It's part of a pervasive dehumanization of Israeli Jews to justify Hamas' deliberate rocket fire into the middle of cities and perpetual war to destroy Israel. This tweet caught my eye because it distills how deviant the propaganda has become comparing not just Israelis, but Zionism itself, to Nazism.  The tweet shows the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, giving birth to Hitler: Twitter - @bound0479 - giving birth hitler Zionism As if that's not bad enough, note the reaction from Max Blumenthal, one of the leading anti-Israel and pro-BDS campus speakers and authors:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2014 21 Comments
John Dickerson at Slate makes the case that Elizabeth Warren Should Run for President:
If Warren joined the race, she would not win [waj - I disagree], but she would till the ground, putting grit and the smell of earth in the contest. She would energize the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which would then stir up other Democrats who seek to moderate or contain that group. Warren would challenge the Democratic Party on issues like corporate power, income inequality, and entitlements. She would be a long shot and she would have nothing to lose—which means she could keep talking about those ideas out loud. Because Clinton is close to Wall Street and finance executives and Warren is gunning for them, she has the potential to put campaign pressure on Clinton that other candidates can’t. Clinton and other candidates would be forced to explain where they stood more than if Warren weren’t in the race.
The concern, according to Dickerson:
The reason a Warren candidacy should have broad ideological appeal is that if you’re a conservative there’s something in her campaign for you, too. It will either expose Democrats for the socialist one-worlders that they are or bruise Clinton for the coming general election fight.
I think Warren should run and challenge Hillary. But that's just me. Meanwhile, if Warren does run, she's going to have to do a much better job at being responsive to reporters and speaking off the cuff rather than in pre-programmed contexts (like Senate hearings where she gets to ask but not answer the questions), via Capitol City Project: Reminds me of this:

Posted by David Gerstman on July 18, 2014 10 Comments
Overnight, the New York Times reports that one Israeli soldier and 20 Palestinians were killed. (A report at The Times of Israel puts the number at 22 Palestinians, at least 14 of whom were members of Hamas.)
An Israeli soldier was killed early Friday along with at least 20 Palestinians in the first hours of Israel’s ground offensive in the Gaza Strip as the violent conflict there entered its 11th day. ... Sirens signaling rockets sounded all night and into the morning across Israel’s south; the army counted more than 50 rockets from the 10 p.m. start of its ground invasion until 7 a.m. Friday.
https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/490029893204180993 Israel has made it clear that Hamas' network of tunnels is its target. Mitch Ginsburg of The Times of Israel explains what Israel hopes to accomplish with the ground invasion.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 17, 2014 18 Comments
While eyes are turned to Gaza and the Ukraine today, I wanted to offer some information about attempts to deal with a man-caused disaster on our own soil. Citizens across the country are organizing a series of protests addressing the immigration surge of supposed "refugees" swamping our border control resources. Over 250 events are being organized over the next new days, which include 41 locations in California, 34 in Texas, and 20 in Florida.
The purpose of the protest is to raise awareness of the impacts of illegal immigration and to show opposition to the administration's handling of the recent border surge of illegal alien youth. The events will take place in various cities around the country on the July 18th and 19th. Deemed the "National Days of Protest against Immigration Reform Amnesty & the Illegal Immigration Surge," the more than 300 protests currently scheduled nationwide will target state capitals and the offices of policy makers in support of amnesty programs and increasing levels of legal immigration. Political activist Paul Arnold is the organizer of this movement, and has received help in launching these protests from numerous grassroots organizations across the country.
In my home state, the 41 events include many small cities and Central Valley communities impacted by the surge directly. The ones in the Golden State's bigger locales are are follows:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 17, 2014 25 Comments
There are numerous reports that after heavy artillery shelling along the border, Israeli troops have entered on the ground in Gaza. Israel i24 News reports that the Prime Minister's office has authorized a ground incursion to destroy tunnels. It's not known if it is a limited incursion or something larger. It comes the same day that Hamas launched an unsuccessful attack through a tunnel near an Israeli Kibbutz. Israelii24 News has live coverage in English: More Live Video Feeds and Live Twitter Feed below As it's obviously a fluid situation subject to misinformation, we've embedded numerous news and local sources on the Twitter Feed below, so you can keep track as events develop.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 17, 2014 50 Comments
A flurry of media reports are reporting that a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet has been shot down over Ukrainian airspace. The Boeing 777 carried 295 people and was "at altitude" (30,000 feet) according to the Interfax agency. All on board are said to have perished, according to Ukrainian sources. The media reports and video of a fiery crash have exploded on the internet after this initial tweet came from Malaysian Airlines. On FOX News Channel's breaking news coverage -- Jennifer Griffin, FOX News Pentagon correspondent, says the Ukrainian interior minister reports a Russian surface-to-air missile system brought down the flight. Griffin says Ukrainian civilians and government officials had reported seeing the advanced Russian BOOK missile system move into the country from Russia in recent days. From BBC News:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 17, 2014 4 Comments
It's been a little while since we reported on Wendy Davis, and how her campaign was not going well: I had not expected national Dems to keep pouring money into the race, but apparently the small donors around the country still are forking over small donations, perhaps on the misperception that Davis has a strong chance. The Austin American-Statesman reports that Davis is matching Greg Abbott in current fundraising , but trails badly in the polls and only has 1/3 the cash on hand:
Gubernatorial rivals Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott have each raised just over $11 million since late February, but the Republican attorney general retains a huge $36 million to $13 million cash advantage over the Democratic senator from Fort Worth less than four months before the election. The fundraising reports, due with the Texas Ethics Commission by midnight Tuesday, gave each of the campaigns something to crow about. For Abbott, who raised $11.1 million between Feb. 23 and June 30, it is that his $36 million campaign funds constitutes, the campaign said, “the highest cash on hand amount ever reported by a Texas candidate.” They also touted the fact that, “Greg Abbott’s fund raising is coming from Texas: 95 percent of Abbott’s contributions came from within the state.” For the underdog Davis, the numbers also represented good news. Despite not budging in the polls so far — Abbott maintains a double-digit advantage — she continues to draw from a very large fundraising base, with many times as many givers as Abbott, which the Davis campaign likes to portray as the domain of fat-cat “insiders” who see Abbott as an investment more than a cause. The Fort Worth senator’s campaign said that in this last reporting period, Davis had had raised $11.2 million from more than 72,000 contributors; that 75 percent of the contributions were for less than $50, and the average contribution was 105.25.
Davis does have some well-heeled backers, though, as The Dallas Morning News reports, Wendy Davis draws from trial lawyers, labor and Hollywood to boost her campaign:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 17, 2014 14 Comments
The killing of four boys on a Gaza beach has generated enormous criticism of Israel. Israel itself has expressed sorrow at the killing (see Featured Image Tweet). But one fact not reported anywhere except WaPo is that the area was known to be used for rocket launching: This clip is from British news. Note how the interviewer doesn't even attempt to hide his bias. Welcome to British media, and increasingly, U.S. left-wing media. Mark Regev, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister's office, held his own and handled it well:

Posted by David Gerstman on July 17, 2014 19 Comments
In the early morning hours today, prior the implementation of the humanitarian ceasefire, the IDF spotted a terror cell infiltrating from Gaza. Aircraft targeted the terrorists in a dramatic video. The New York Times reports:
The Israeli military said it foiled an attempt by Gaza militants to infiltrate a kibbutz through a tunnel early Thursday, hours before the two sides briefly halted fire for a humanitarian lull in which Gaza residents tentatively stepped into the streets, hoping to find one of the handful of cash machines that opened for the first time since the conflict escalated July 8. ... An Israeli military spokesman said it was not immediately clear if all the militants from the tunnel had been killed. Residents of the Israeli border community nearest the exit of the tunnel, Kibbutz Sufa, were told to stay in their homes for several hours after the initial confrontation, which began around 4.30 a.m.
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