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"The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants," an interior ministry official told the Agence France Presse news agency, saying soldiers had fled after removing their uniforms. Several residents told the Associated Press that the militants were now touring the city with loudspeakers, announcing that they had "come to liberate Mosul and would fight only those who attack them."Reports from Mosul detail mass beheadings of residents by the ISIS terrorists and a flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees out of the city. The al-Qaeda aligned ISIS organization now effectively controls a region from the eastern Syrian city of Raqaa, over the through the western Iraqi desert up to northern Iraq and less than 100 miles from Baghdad.
As the opportunity to obtain Sergeant Bergdahl’s release became clearer, we grew increasingly concerned that any delay, or any leaks, could derail the deal and further endanger Sergeant Bergdahl. We were told by the Qataris that a leak would end the negotiations for Bergdahl’s release. We also knew that he would be extremely vulnerable during any movement, and our military personnel conducting the hand-off would be exposed to a possible ambush or other deadly scenarios in very dangerous territory. And we had been given no information on where the hand-off would occur.This sparked criticism from both sides of the political aisle. From the Wall Street Journal:
Joni Ernst and Chris McDaniel had no chance of winning, until she won outright and he won but is in a runoff. Both came out of nowhere because voters rallied around a Tea Party backed candidate. In the case of Mississippi, the battle was against a legacy entitled incumbent. The lesson is not to forget Kansas, where Dr. Milton Wolf is challenging legacy entitled incumbent Pat Roberts in the August 5 primary. Roberts has tons of money and the Republican establishment behind him. And a house in Virginia which is his real home. It can happen again. Don’t settle for less.There is a certain irony that so many people are saying Eric Cantor's loss in Virginia may be harbinger of things to come in Kansas, since Pat Roberts spend almost all his time in Virginia, and that has become a huge campaign issue. NBC News reports:
Amnesty supporters "stormed the ballroom" just after @ericcantor left and created chaos http://t.co/hjuABCo2A8 >> perfect metaphor
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) June 11, 2014
"Concerned Vassar students gathered in the Chapel on a rainy Nov. 12 to protest the U.N. resolution condemning Zionism as racism. Chaplain George Williamson, Jewish Chaplain Derry Baker, Professor Benruy Kraut and two prominent Jewish community leaders, Rabbis Arnold and Zimmet spoke at the student organized rally."It took thirty years, but what if I told you today that this same college community now views Zionism as the most insidious form of racism. Would it seem Orwellian? Two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and JStreetU, were formed last fall. Both liberal, SJP rallies against a two state solution while JStreetU claims to endorse one. At a glance they might seem different, but they share a lot in common when it comes to condemning attempts by me and my group to counter anti-Israel propaganda on campus. In December 2013, the American Studies Association released a resolution boycotting Israel. Reminiscent of students in 1975, the Vassar administration swiftly rejected this resolution right after New Years 2014. Soon-after the Vassar Jewish Union (VJU) became an Open Hillel, which means they welcome anti-Israel speakers. Thirty-nine Vassar faculty then wrote a letter condemning Vassar College's decision. Students for Justice in Palestine proceeded to swoop down on pro-Israel and neutral students. They protested a class taking a trip to Israel inside an academic building and intimidated the professors. At a Vassar Open forum I attended in May 2014 shortly before graduation, Vassar College President Catharine Hill made clear that she never has condemned the picketing of the class, and any impressions otherwise are wrong: Following complaints about the picketing of the classroom, the Vassar Committee on Inclusion and Excellence organized an open forum led by Professor Kiese Laymon that de facto established any criticism of SJP was motivated by racism, civility was a "cardboard notion," and taking a trip to Israel was the equivalent of organizing an outing to Jim Crow Mississippi. Not surprisingly, the only acceptable thing to say on campus became the lie that Israel is a racist, apartheid state. In order to show the humanity of the perceived Israeli monster, I began innocuously posting images from the Facebook page “Humans of Tel Aviv” in a Vassar student group Facebook page, to show that Israeli cities are cosmopolitan, socially liberal places that resemble Vassar in some ways. This provoked a leader of SJP to tell me “the devil has enough advocates.” Weeds often grow in abandoned fields. Looking back, the first sign of weeds was an "Apartheid Wall" that sprang up in the College Center. This is a common BDS tactic which all follow a similar formula in demonizing the Israeli state. [caption id="attachment_82985" align="alignnone" width="640"]
(Mock "Apartheid Wall" at Vassar College 2014)[/caption]
I walked up to SJP and told them that I was raised in a Muslim family. They loosened up immediately and seemed eager to welcome me into their hate. There are not a lot of Arab and Middle Eastern students on campus.
I remembered that a friend had told me about the Wall of Truth, pro-Israel murals that sometimes counters the apartheid walls.
Obama also gave House Minority Whip Eric Cantor a stern talking-to when he noticed that the Virginia Republican had stacked the more than 2,000-page bill in front of him while he griped that patients would not be able to maintain the same level of coverage under the Democrats' plan. Obama briefly addressed the coverage point and then turned to the stacked health care bill. "You know, when we do props like this, you stack it up and you repeat 2,400 pages, et cetera -- the truth of the matter is that health care is very complicated. And we can try to pretend that it's not, but it is," Obama said. "These are the kind of political things we do that prevent us from actually having a conversation."Note also Cantor pointing out that people will not be able to keep their doctors and coverage: Cantor proudly earned the ire of Obama and the Democrats, and was targeted for his efforts, as this Politico headline from March 10, 2009 declared:
United and eager to respond to a national uproar, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday to make it easier for patients enduring long waits for care at Veterans Affairs facilities to get VA-paid treatment from local doctors. The 421-0 vote was Congress' strongest response yet to the outcry over backlogs and falsified data at the beleaguered agency. Senate leaders plan debate soon on a similar, broader package that has also drawn bipartisan support, underscoring how politically toxic it could be for lawmakers to be seen as ignoring the problem. […] The House bill would let veterans facing long delays for appointments or living more than 40 miles from a VA facility to choose to get care from non-agency providers for the next two years. A relative few vets already have that option for outside care, and this would expand the offer. The bill also would ban bonuses for all VA employees through 2016 and require an independent audit of agency health care. An earlier House-passed bill would make it easier to fire top VA officials. [House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman] Miller said VA would save $400 million annually by eliminating bonuses, money the agency could use for expanded care at its centers.The legislation comes after weeks of reports of various issues surrounding the Department of Veterans affairs. The latest details to emerge came from an audit released Monday which revealed, among other things, that 57,000 veterans have been waiting 90 days or longer for their first VA appointment, and another 64,000 never even got appointments. Some have urged for prosecution of some of the wrong-doing at the VA. At a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing Monday evening, this again became a topic of discussion. From the National Journal:
Tim Scott is easily winning his primary getting vote margins above 90% at this point. In fact, Scott is over performing Graham by 60,000 votes statewide.
Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists to Iraq’s teetering stability. Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants... The collapse of government forces in Mosul echoed the takeover earlier this year of the town of Fallujah in western Anbar province, where U.S. troops fought some of their fiercest battles of the Iraq war...The Iraqi government is asking for international and/or US help, "by virtue of the Joint Cooperation agreement between the two countries." But that horse left the barn a long time ago. As a result of Obama's decisions regarding the Iraq pullout, there are not even any residual US forces left in the country, as remain in so many other places where Americans have fought and died:
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that tenure, seniority and other job protections for teachers have created unequal conditions in public schools and deprive poor children of the best teachers. In a case that could have national implications for the future of teacher tenure, Judge Rolf Treu sided with a Silicon Valley mogul against some of the most powerful labor unions in the country. In a 16-page ruling, in the case of Vergara v. California, Treu struck down three state laws as unconstitutional. The laws grant tenure to teachers after two years, require layoffs by seniority, and call for a complex and lengthy process before a teacher can be fired. David F. Welch, founder of an optical telecommunications manufacturing firm, charged that job protections allow the state’s worst educators to continue teaching and that those ineffective teachers are concentrated in high-poverty, minority schools, amounting to a civil rights violation.The full decision is embedded below. The court stayed its injunction pending appeal, so no changes will take place immediately. The sound of the teachers' union screaming and crying is ringing in my ears and I can't focus:
As U.S. lawsuits seeking gay-marriage rights move toward a likely showdown at the Supreme Court next year, major law firms are rushing to get involved — but only on the side of the proponents. A Reuters review of more than 100 court filings during the past year shows that at least 30 of the country's largest firms are representing challengers to state laws banning same-sex marriage. Not a single member of the Am Law 200, a commonly used ranking of the largest U.S. firms by revenue, is defending gay marriage prohibitions. These numbers and interviews with lawyers on both sides suggest that the legal industry has reached its Mozilla moment. The software company's CEO, Brendan Eich, resigned in April after being denounced by gay marriage supporters for a donation he had made in support of California's since-overturned gay marriage ban. Now in a similar vein, attorneys at major law firms are getting the message that if they want to litigate against gay marriage they should do so elsewhere.None of this will come as a surprise to Legal Insurrection readers. We wrote in April 2011, how the large law firm of King & Spalding withdrew its representation of the House of Representatives on the DOMA litigation after the Human Rights Campaign started contacting King & Spalding clients unrelated to the litigation, and threats were made to hold protests at clients' offices. King & Spalding did not, however, simultaneously drop its representation of radical Islamic Gitmo detainees who promote societies that treat women and gays as subhuman. I wrote at the time that there was A Hostile Environment For Pro-Traditional Marriage Views At King & Spalding, such that the expression of any contrary view was a potential career ender. We now know how true that can be, as the Brendan Eich case demonstrated.
Just over a week after U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was freed by the Taliban, a CBS News Poll shows 45 percent of Americans disapprove of the deal that saw him released in exchange for five Taliban militants, while 37 percent approve of it. About one in five do not have an opinion. Views differ by political party: most Republicans disapprove of the deal, while just over half of Democrats approve. Among those who have served in the military, 55 percent disapprove of the prisoner swap. Most Americans -- 56 percent -- say the U.S. paid too high a price to secure Bergdahl's release. Among veterans, that figure rises to 65 percent. Republicans and independents say the deal cost the U.S. too much, while Democrats are more divided: 42 percent think the terms of the agreement were reasonable, but almost as many -- 39 percent -- say the U.S. paid too high a price.Pew Research further finds:
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