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Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 24, 2014 17 Comments

Republicans for Who?...

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 23, 2014 35 Comments
Lois Lerner has become the personification of the IRS targeting scandal. Which brings us to her infamous hard drive crash. Recall that the new IRS Commissioner first told Congress that all of Lerner's emails were recoverable and would be provided to investigating committees. Sharyl Attkisson has a nice rundown of this explanation.
Friday’s revelation that the IRS “lost” Lois Lerner’s emails in a computer crash came ten months after Congress first requested them and seven months after they were first subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. But what IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified about the emails at a hearing in March appears to be at odds with his agency’s newer reported claims that the emails are irretrievable. Under questioning by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on the House Oversight Committee, Koskinen said IRS emails “get taken off and stored in servers.” That was part of the reason, he said, it was so difficult to provide them in a timely fashion. As of March, the IRS had reportedly given Congress more than 400,000 pages of documents: just not the ones at issue.
Then last month came the confounding news -- delivered offhandedly by the IRS -- that Lerner's hard drive was crashed, destroyed and recycled... along with six other IRS officials at the center of the targeting scandal. In the wake of two Federal judges putting pressure on the IRS, the tune seems to have changed once again. Lo and behold, the Lerner hard drive may be recoverable after all!

Posted by Andrew Branca on July 23, 2014 38 Comments
This afternoon I was helpfully directed to a live video stream of the Wafer trial, suggesting the streaming of the trial is not explicitly prohibited, as I had been led to believe Unfortunately the feed was of such low quality it was effectively useless. It seems even the provider recognized this, because after about an hour in the afternoon they cut off the feed entirely. We'll see what happens tomorrow, I guess. In summary of the afternoon, the state brought two witnesses:  Carmen Beasley, the woman whose husband's parked car was struck by Renisha McBride in front of Beasley's home several hours before McBride was shot by Wafer.  It was Beasley who first called 911, and who first communicated with the dazed and injured McBride.  This accident took place about a mile from Wafer's home, the site of the shooting. Also appearing was Dearborn police officer Ruben Gonzalez, who was among the first responders on the scene. Gonzalez interacted directly with Wafer, and helped to secure the crime scene. The defense claims that Wafer reasonably used deadly force in the belief that someone was attempting to violently enter his home. The state argues that Wafer unreasonably created the circumstances in which an innocent person was killed.
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Posted by Mandy Nagy on July 23, 2014 47 Comments
It was less than three weeks ago when Cobb County, Georgia police detective Phil Stoddard sat on the witness stand in the probable cause hearing in the case of Justin Ross Harris, the Georgia dad who stands accused of leaving his son to die in a hot car in June. Stoddard provided testimony at the July 3rd hearing that described Harris’ online activities, including details that Harris had viewed information about hot car deaths and visited a Reddit page devoted to child-free living. The detective also indicated that Harris had allegedly sexted with several women during the day as his son died. Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring told the judge during that hearing, “We plan to show he [Harris] wanted to lead a child-free life.” Also considered pertinent testimony from Stoddard during that hearing was the description of surveillance video from the parking lot of the Home Depot office where Harris worked. But an independent review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of that surveillance video and other evidence presented in the case shows some potential discrepancies in what had been described by detective Stoddard.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 22, 2014 11 Comments
Given the cancellation of flights into and out of Ben-Gurion Int'l Airport at the urging of the FAA backed up by the White House, many are predicting it's likely that the next day or two will be decisive -- either militarily or diplomatically. Anshel Pfeffer at Haaretz writes that the airport shutdown may lead to a heavier Israeli military strike:
This may prove to be a game-changer in a conflict which is now entering its third week. It could provide further impetus for the government in seeking a speedy ceasefire with Hamas, but that seems doubtful. Even a partial suspension of operations at Ben-Gurion is a major coup for Hamas, which has been so starved of any real achievements that they are pretending to have captured an IDF soldier who was almost certainly killed on Saturday night, though his remains have yet to be identified. Accepting Hamas' terms for a ceasefire now is unthinkable. It is much more likely that, faced with the prospect of more rockets cutting Israel off from the international air routes, the government will be inclined to order a much more devastating blow, a wider ground operation to occupy the rocket-launching sites or even directed at Hamas' underground headquarters, with dreadful implications for the people of Gaza living above.
Times of Israel analyst Avi Issacharoff argues, in Worse may yet lie ahead, that Hamas, while talking tough, is in trouble:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 22, 2014 13 Comments
Part of the big news today is that multiple airlines have cancelled flights to Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel as a result of a rocket landing in a town nearby. At first it was unclear if this was a unilateral action, or under pressure from governments. It appears that the FAA and European aviation authority issued a temporary order to that effect. El Al continues to fly, as do some other airlines. But one cancellation can have a ripple effect as other airlines are questioned whether they are putting passengers at undo risk in light of other airlines' can The implications are enormous. Whether intended or not, Hamas has made the case as to why it's rocket arsenal and infrastructure must be dismantled no matter the cost. It also has justified why Israel cannot give up security control of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"). Hamas has to fire a long way to scare away air traffic, but from the West Bank it's practically a stone's throw. Alan Dershowitz points out, Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two state solution?(h/t Roger Simon):

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 22, 2014 7 Comments
It has been ten years since the original 9/11 Commission released it's report. The Commission has stayed together informally, but today released a anniversary report entitled “Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of The 9/11 Commission Report.” The panel members warn that though al-Qaeda has been severely weakened since 2001, new and offshoot groups -- like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continue to pose serious threats to the United States national security. From The Washington Post:
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