Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

/var/www/vhosts/legalinsurrection.com/httpdocs/wp-content/themes/bridge-child/readFeeds.incFALSE

Posted by Casey Breznick on July 01, 2014 32 Comments
During the past two weeks Argentina’s soccer team has rolled over its competition to advance to the World Cup Quarterfinals. Meanwhile, the team’s country has, yet again, collapsed into default. For 12 years, Argentina has been engaged in a financial and legal row with private creditors in the US over payments on its government bonds—either long overdue or unwarranted, depending on which side you ask. The country failed to make court-ordered payments yesterday to holders of its restructured and original—or “holdout”—debt. It is now in technical default, having missed the payment, and has a 30-day grace period to negotiate with creditors before entering true default. Argentina’s path to financial insolvency began in the last week of 2001 when Argentina announced it was defaulting on $132 billion of its debt, which was then one-seventh of all the money borrowed by the Third World. The announcement came in the midst of the 1998-2002 Argentine depression, itself a result of poor government policy and external economic crises. Despite the default, some US investors scooped up these seemingly worthless bonds at enormous discounts in hopes of some future payment. In 2005 and in 2010 Argentina restructured its debts and offered these bondholders swaps to replace their original bonds for new ones at downgraded terms, and 93% of investors did take up the offer. The country also passed a law forbidding payment on the original bonds. However, a small contingent of investors opted out and insisted on payment on the original bonds. The Argentine government and many elements in the international press have since called these investors “vultures.”

LATEST NEWS

Posted by David Gerstman on July 01, 2014 8 Comments
In the wake of yesterday's awful discovery that Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Frankel had been murdered by the abductors, it's now clearer what happened. The Times of Israel reported What happened on the night of the kidnapping:
The prevailing assessment within the defense establishment is that the kidnappers, at least at first, only saw one of the hitchhikers, perhaps Yifrach, who did not know Shaar and Fraenkel. Only once the kidnappers’ Hyundai i35 came to a stop did the kidnappers realize that they would be outnumbered by their hostages within the small confines of the car. This may be what changed the nature of the crime from kidnapping to murder, security sources suggested. ... Recognizing, too late, that the car was not an innocent Israeli vehicle, one of the teens called the police at 10:25 p.m. and whispered, “We’ve been kidnapped.” The call was transferred immediately to a senior officer, who continued to ask questions but received no reply. The call lasted for 2:09 minutes and was then cut off. The officer called the number eight more times, but received three busy signals and reached voicemail five times.
It is likely that shortly afterward the three boys were murdered and taken to the field where they were found buried. The reactions to the abductions have highlighted certain fault lines between Israeli and Palestinian societies.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 01, 2014 5 Comments
This seems like a broken record, but the last 24 hours have turned the standoff in Eastern Ukraine from a "ceasefire" to a hot war that doesn't appear to be cooling down soon. On Friday, June 20, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko announced a unilateral one-week cease-fire by his government as a way to deescalate the crisis with pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko announced to ceasefire with an ultimatum for the rebels: disarm or leave Ukraine.
Poroshenko called the 7-day cease-fire, which was to begin later on Friday, a first-step in a larger agreement, not only giving separatists a chance to disarm, but also for pro-Russia rebels to leave the country, the Kiev Post reports. He called on separatists to lay down their weapons, or else be "destroyed," the President said. "The forces of the anti-terrorist operation will halt military action starting today and through June 27," Poroshenko was cited as saying by the Interior Ministry on its website.
Probably to no one's surprise, the ceasefire was violated several times in the last 10 days mainly by the pro-Russian forces. So as July dawned in Ukraine, the ceasefire was over and heavy fighting broke out in the separatist eastern regions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 01, 2014 4 Comments
Martha Robertson is the Emily's List-backed, DCCC "Red to Blue" Democratic challenger in NY-23, my home district. We have been following the race closely, and have exposed a number of issues that have helped frame the narrative of the race, including Robertson's false fundraising claim that GOP operatives hacked her website during a critical fundraising period, her support for Obamacare as a pathway to single payer, and her misunderstanding of the Veteran's administrative crisis. Last night I saw an ad run by Congressman Tom Reed attacking Robertson as "out of this world" -- focusing on her being an Ithaca liberal, with the subtext that she's out of touch with the Republican-leaning, mostly rural district. I have not been able to get the video of the ad itself (if I do I'll post it), but a local television fact check contains excerpts. (Update - here is the ad - Featured Image updated) The fact check terms the ad overall to be "mostly true." I agree with that, except that I believe some of the individual items that are rated "half-true" should have received a higher rating. Here's the fact check video:

LEGAL INSURRECTION QUICK TAKES

Glossary at Boston U. Teaching Hospital Says ‘Biology’ Doesn’t Define Sex

Women’s and Gender Studies Programs are Part of Trump's DEI Purge in Higher Ed

Ohio State U. Professor Faces Charges for Allegedly Assaulting Filmmaker

Students at UT-Austin Protest Consolidation of Departments

Former Student President at UC-Santa Barbara Sues School, Alleging Antisemitic Harassment

Drake University Mandates Coursework in Equity and Inclusion

SEE MORE

Posted by Mandy Nagy on July 01, 2014 15 Comments
By now you've seen Monday's Supreme Court decisions here and here, which - quite predictably - set off a nuclear reaction on Twitter. Some of that outrage was misguidedly directed at SCOTUSblog by angry tweeters who thought they were surely tweeting the actual Supreme Court Justices. But as many of us know, and others have also pointed out, SCOTUSblog Is Not the Supreme Court. I never realized that the serious minds at SCOTUSblog had such a sense of humor, which was on full display in how they handled the barrage of hate wrongly dumped into their timeline. You must go visit SCOTUSblog's Twitter timeline to see all of their responses, but a handful of them are featured below. Well played SCOTUSblog, well played. scotusblog-tweet6 scotusblog-tweet5

Posted by Bruce Carroll on June 30, 2014 85 Comments
The vitriol from the political left didn't take too long to manifest following the 5-4 Supreme Court decision this morning in the Hobby Lobby case. Many eyes were on the reaction of Sandra Fluke -- free contraception's PR maven - following the SCOTUS ruling.

Posted by RedDawn on June 30, 2014 34 Comments
In what appeared to be an attempt to divert the news cycle from another round of SCOTUS smackdowns, President Obama announced this afternoon that he will bypass Congress to enact "comprehensive immigration reform." However, at no point did he discuss what his plan would entail. Citing an attempt to work with Congress a year and a half ago, President Obama declared Congress' inaction and political posturing to be the reason he must take executive action. "I would sign an immigration bill into law today and Washington would solve a problem in a bipartisan way," President Obama said.  "For more than a year, Republicans in the house have refused to allow an up or down vote to fix our broken immigration system."  "I take executive action only when we have a serious problem and Congress chooses to do nothing," the President assured. The most chilling portion of his announcement was when he suggested,  "American cannot wait forever for them to act. That's why today, I'm beginning a new effort to fix our immigration system... on my own, without congress."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 30, 2014 17 Comments
The bodies of the three Israeli teenagers kidnapped two weeks -- Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel -- have been located by the IDF near Hebron. Details as to how and when they were killed have not been made public yet. News reports and rumors circulated for hours, but we waited until official confirmation, this tweet being from the Prime Minister's Arab Media spokesman: [Note - the original of Ofir Gendelman's tweet above has been deleted, not sure why] The Times of Israel reports:
Israeli troops on Monday discovered the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, who were kidnapped on June 12, north of Hebron in the West Bank. The bodies were found in an area between Halhul and Karmei Tzur on Monday afternoon. Israeli security forces, which had been conducting extensive searches in the area, sealed off the area and declared it a closed military zone.
Buzzfeed reports that the teens likely were shot during the kidnapping:
BuzzFeed spoke to an Israeli official involved in the case, who confirmed that during the police call a gunshot can clearly be heard. The car, he added, had clear evidence of foul play. Over the last week. Israeli soldiers could be seen digging through rocks and dredging wells in Hebron in the search for the teens. “We have been operating, for some time now, with evidence that these boys were killed,” he said. “It is with a heavy heart that we realized we were looking for bodies.” An Israeli army officer, who spoke to BuzzFeed by phone from the Hebron area, said that an autopsy had not yet been conducted. He said that the bodies of three teens had been found shot, likely very close to the time of their abduction.
This post will be updated as additional details are released. There are plenty of alleged facts and photos circulating on Twitter and Facebook -- we're going to stick with official and/or confirmed news reports. UPDATES:

Posted by Andrew Branca on June 30, 2014 61 Comments
How can we miss her, when she won't go away? Judge Debra Nelson, who presided over the murder trial of George Zimmerman, today issued a ruling dismissing his libel suit against NBC (a copy of that ruling can be found at the bottom of this post). Those of us who followed the Zimmerman murder trial closely will recall Judge Nelson as ruling so consistently in favor of the Prosecution, fairly bending over backwards in her deference to prosecution arguments. Judge-Debra-Nelson-trayvon-martin-case In contrast, her rulings in favor of the defense were few and far between.  It was surely a similar perception by the defense that inhibited them from ever seeking self-defense immunity for Zimmerman, as provided for under Florida statute 776.032 "Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force." That the same judge who so consistently ruled against Zimmerman at his murder trial would be the one chosen to also preside over his libel suit against NBC is eye brow raising, to say the least. Zimmerman's libel suit against NBC was based on NBC's admitted doctoring of the audio of his 911 call to police, apparently done with the intent of making Zimmerman appear to be racist. Purported evidence of racism on the part of Zimmerman was, at the time, extremely important to the prosecution of the case, for two reasons.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 30, 2014 36 Comments
The Supreme Court just handed down its decision in Harris v. Quinn, where the issues were (via ScotusBlog):
(1) Whether a state may, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs; and (2) whether the lower court erred in holding that the claims of providers in the Home Based Support Services Program are not ripe for judicial review.
The ruling was 5-4, with the majority authored by Justice Alito, as tweeted by ScotusBlog: TPM elaborated on the fear from the left, Unions Fear This SCOTUS Case Could Bring Their 'Final Destruction' From the Majority Opinion:
This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support. We hold that it does not, and we therefore reverse the judg­ment of the Court of Appeals.

Posted by Prudence Paine on June 30, 2014 29 Comments
Many people hearing talk of America's campus “rape culture” might be tempted to dismiss the overheated rhetoric as harmless. Despite little evidence "rape culture" exists, though, three recent roundtable discussions on campus sexual assault hosted by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) showed that not only do some people absolutely believe a rape culture exists on college campuses, but the federal government is involved in policing the issue on campuses. The Department of Education mandates colleges to handle every single student sexual assault through internal quasi-legal proceedings, in which the school performs all the roles of investigator, prosecutor, judge, executioner and statistics compiler. From the perspective of accusers in campus sexual assault cases, they may very well prefer a quasi-legal adjudication of their complaints because it provides a much broader definition of sexual assault, a much lower burden of proof and an environment in which “student's rights” tend to be accuser's rights, with little emphasis on rights for the accused. For the accuser, it makes the alleged post-assault experience that much less stressful. From the accused's perspective, though, he's not gonna know what hit him.

Schools Play Law and Order: SVU

MSUMikeJunger-CSPAN-SexAssault Speaking amongst friendly colleagues last Monday at the third roundtable, Mike Jungers, the dean of students at Missouri State University, made the surprising statement that new investigation procedures of campus sexual assault were resulting in the alleged perpetrators agreeing to be interrogated without obtaining an attorney. He considered this to be a good thing.

Posted by A.F. Branco on June 30, 2014 4 Comments

Note: You may reprint this cartoon provided you link back to this source.  To see more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here. Branco’s page is Cartoonist A.F.Branco...

Posted by RedDawn on June 29, 2014 8 Comments
The Mississippi Senate Runoff election was viewed by the media as the last, best chance for a Tea Party inspired Republican primary challenger to unseat a Republican incumbent in a primary. But there remains the Kansas primary in which Dr. Milton Wolf is challenging Pat Roberts on August 5. Legal Insurrection supports Dr. Wolf as the type of inspirational next generation of conservative Republican we need to lead us, not merely go along to get along. Can Dr. Wolf pull off the upset? The two races, several weeks out from the primary, appear to have similarities: An incumbent Senator who's been in Washington, D.C., for over forty years, a seemingly unbreachable power machine with money to burn and years of experience winning, and all the makings of yet another Tea Party vs. Establishment showdown. On the surface, Dr. Wolf would seem to have a difficult climb. A Survey USA poll released last week shows Wolf with 23% to Roberts 56% among likely GOP voters. Unlike Mississippi though, Kansas has closed primaries, and Dr. Wolf's main problem is lack of name recognition. According to his internal polling, among people who know of both candidates, the gap is much, much closer, with Dr. Wolf actually leading. In Mississippi, early April polling showed Thad Cochran with at 17% lead for the June 3 original primary, but that gap closed quickly in the final weeks to a virtual dead heat on June 3.  Could the gap close in Kansas if national attention focused on the race? We sat down with Dr. Wolf to get his side of the story. Here's what he had to say:
MORE POSTS
Accessibility by WAH