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Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 06, 2014 32 Comments
From Vanity Fair, Monica Exclusive: Monica Lewinsky Writes About Her Affair with President Clinton:
After 10 years of virtual silence (“So silent, in fact,” she writes, “that the buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out? I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth”), Lewinsky, 40, says it is time to stop “tiptoeing around my past—and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)” ..., “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. . . . The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.”
Which brings to mind this Branco cartoon:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on May 06, 2014 2 Comments
After months of technical problems, the state of Massachusetts will abandon much of its health insurance exchange website and replace it with new software, while simultaneously preparing to shift its exchange to the federal healthcare.gov system as part of a “dual track strategy.” From the NY Times:
Massachusetts will stop trying to fix its deeply flawed health insurance website and instead buy new software to help its residents enroll in coverage, officials there said Monday. But the state will also prepare to join the federal insurance marketplace by the next enrollment period, which starts in November, in case the new system is not working in time.

The decision follows months of problems with enrollment through the state website, which Massachusetts set up in 2006 under its landmark health insurance law. The site worked well until it was revamped last year to comply with the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health care law. The state had put CGI, the company that also helped design the initially problem-plagued federal exchange, in charge of the overhaul.

Massachusetts announced in March that it was dropping CGI, but it is still negotiating the terms of ending its $69 million contract, of which the state has paid $17 million. The state received $174 million from the federal government to overhaul its health insurance website and has spent about $57 million so far, including the amount paid to CGI, according to Glen Shor, the state’s secretary of administration and finance.

Sarah Iselin, a health insurance executive whom Gov. Deval Patrick appointed to oversee fixes to the website, said the new “dual-track” plan would cost a little more than $100 million through 2015. But she said it was too soon to know whether the state would seek more federal money; that will depend partly on whether the state ends up owing CGI more money.

It must be a difficult pill to swallow for the state, given that it had a functioning system prior to revamping its site to comply with the new federal law.  And that’s spurred some sharp criticism.

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Posted by New Neo on May 05, 2014 37 Comments

This should have been big news from the moment the girls were kidnapped: Fears for the fate of more than 200 Nigerian girls [kidnapped from school on April 14, almost 3 weeks ago] turned even more nightmarish Monday when the leader of the Islamist militant [sic:...

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 05, 2014 11 Comments

Conservative dynamo Tammy Bruce recently took a look at the how the federal government is masking the realities of our very questionable economic "recovery,"  disguising  the fact that 20 percent of American families do not have a single person in the household who is employed. That...

Posted by Bryan Jacoutot on May 05, 2014 9 Comments
It seems North Korea has been spending a lot of time monitoring American news channels. After being singled out by a scathing United Nations report, which declared the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea to have committed human rights violations "without any parallel in the contemporary world," North Korea decided it needed to make its own Human Rights report. The report revealed an elementary understanding of hot topics in American news, and ultimately concluded, "[t]he U.S. is the world's worst human right abuser and tundra of a human being's rights to existence." Coming out of the nation whose leader (allegedly) recently executed an alleged counterrevolutionary conspirator by FLAMETHROWER, the North Korean human rights report was somehow deemed to be less than credible. Still, it is interesting to see a dictator use American events in an effort to bolster his credibility as a man of the people. In traditional dictatorial fashion, the report was critical of the second amendment:

Posted by Rusty Weiss on May 05, 2014 5 Comments
As the clock was winding down on 2013, pundits were openly wondering if the newly elected mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, would actually be worse in championing nanny-statism than his predecessor.  He's off to a pretty good start. De Blasio has partaken in a very public feud with actor Liam Neeson regarding a ban on horse-drawn carriages.  He has fought to classify e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, banning them in any area where regular cigarettes are already prohibited.  New wood fireplaces are not safe ... from being banned. And when it comes to Big Gulps in the city it seems, he will carry on Bloomberg's fight. Via Watchdog:
Hide your Big Gulps, again, New York. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week his administration will pick up where former mayor Michael Bloomberg left off and will continue the battle to ban sodas larger than 16 ounces. The city will appeal a state court ruling that axed the ban last year. City lawyers will argue the case at the Court of Appeals on June 4, the New York Daily News reported this week. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg got lots of headlines in 2012 when he declared war on Big Gulps and other large sugary drinks.
Bloomberg's administration was excitedly awaiting implementation of his ban on large sodas to take place last March.  A state judge intervened a day prior however, and "permanently restrained" the city "from implementing or enforcing the new regulations."

Posted by Mandy Nagy on May 05, 2014 22 Comments

Decision this morning from the U.S. Supreme Court: From Reuters: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld the right of government entities across the United States to allow sectarian prayers prior to public meetings. The court said on a 5-4 vote that the town of Greece in New...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 05, 2014 25 Comments
It wasn't planned this way. It's just a coincidence. Really. By the time you read this, I'll probably be in the car driving to Poughkeepsie, NY, where I will appear tonight at 7 p.m. to give a speech in support of Israel and academic freedom. And against the Open Letter signed by 39 Vassar faculty members -- none of whom took up my debate challenge -- who support the American Studies Association boycott of Israel. Maybe I'll play this recording of David Ben-Gurion reading the Israeli Declaration of Independence: Things have been tense lately at Vassar when it comes to Israel. While I'm not expecting "trouble," I thought you might like to see what trouble for pro-Israel speakers on campuses looks like, in the video below taken at UC Davis in February 2012:

Posted by New Neo on May 05, 2014 63 Comments

When MSNBC host Krystal Ball opined on what she considered the true meaning of George Orwell's Animal Farm, her comments met with a storm of derision from the right. Here's what Ball said, and at first glance it seems preposterous: Animal Farm, hmmm — isn’t that Orwell’s...

Posted by A.F. Branco on May 05, 2014 3 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 Mike LaChance on May 04, 2014 17 Comments
Obama adviser David Plouffe appeared on ABC's This Week today and in a classic case of liberal projection, he tried to blame the GOP for politicizing the attack in Benghazi. Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham was also on the panel and took Plouffe to task. Transcript via ABC News...
David Plouffe, you're actually on that email that caused so much trouble this week. It was an email to you and several others from Ben Rhodes. And everybody keying on this line in the -- in the -- in the email, to underscore -- this is the goals of the Sunday morning appearance -- "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, not a broader failure of policy." A lot of Republicans saying this is the smoking gun. I know you dismiss that, but was it a mistake not to release this email earlier? DAVID PLOUFFE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No, I think, you know, lawyers have spoken to this and it's out now. I think, listen, what Benghazi was was a tragedy. What we need to do is figure out how to prevent it from happening again and to try and hold those accountable, as we did bin Laden. Took a while, but after 11 years, we did. I think what you see wasn't the U.S.S. Cole bombing, 17 of our sailors died. The weeks before the 2000 election. What did then-Governor Bush say? It's time for our nation to speak as one voice. Now you couldn't handle that in this party. This has been politicized like we've never seen before.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 04, 2014 5 Comments
The senate race between Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen and Republican challenger Scott Brown is going to be a pricey one. Some are even speculating that it could set records. Chris Cassidy of the Boston Herald reports...
Scott Brown-Jeanne Shaheen N.H. race costs may set record The heavyweight U.S. Senate showdown between Jeanne Shaheen and Scott Brown — already off to a fast and snippy start with both sides accusing each other of breaking federal elections laws — could shatter records for campaign spending and even top the amount racked up by GOP presidential primary hopefuls in the Granite State two years ago. “It wouldn’t shock me if it topped $50 million,” said Dante Scala, a campaign finance expert at the University of New Hampshire. “I suspect the spending on the Senate race will dwarf the New Hampshire Republican primary spending in the 2012 presidential primary. ... In all likelihood this would set a record.” Spending during Shaheen’s last U.S. Senate race against John Sununu in 2008 hit about $37 million, Scala said. Even by his most conservative estimate, Scala expects to see $45 million in spending — $20 million combined by both campaigns and $25 million by super PACs and other outside groups. All this in a state with just 1.3 million people and less than 800,000 registered voters.
The stakes are high and both sides know it. In addition to hitting her support for Obamacare, Brown is taking Shaheen to task for the Keystone pipeline. Brown published the following letter in the New Hampshire Union Leader...
Will Jeanne Shaheen join me in supporting the Keystone pipeline?
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