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Posted by Mike LaChance on May 09, 2014 32 Comments

If you've ever read my blog, you may know that I'm a big fan of Bill Whittle and his series of Afterburner videos from PJ Media. In his newest video, titled Time to Go, Bill looks at Mitch McConnell and John Boehner with an eye to...

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 09, 2014 15 Comments
Hey, remember Journo-list? The Ezra Klein organized brigade of lefty bloggers and "journalists" who coordinated messaging in the 2008 campaign for Obama. Many of whom later were rewarded with perks such as meetings at the White House? They have received promotions, and now are embedded in the mainstream and well-funded new media. But Journo-lists don't change their spots (or is it stripes?). They are bigger than ever, are more numerous, and still are running interference for Obama, as detailed at National Journal by James Oliphant, Progressive Bloggers Are Doing the White House's Job:
When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary's finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down. But Carney needn't have worried. He had plenty of backup. He had The New Republic's Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as "nonsense." He had Slate's David Weigel, along with The Washington Post's Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a "smoking gun." Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a "hoax." Salon wrote that the GOP had a "demented Benghazi disease." Daily Kos featured the headline: "Here's Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here's Why They're Wrong." The Huffington Post offered "Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP."

Posted by David Gerstman on May 09, 2014 14 Comments
Why is it so hard to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Look at the final scorecard of the latest round of Middle East peace talks. Israel allowed three groups of prisoners - a total of 78 - to go free in exchange for talks. These prisoners were murderers. When they went to their homes their actions were celebrated. Put aside why Israel didn't release the final group of prisoners. Put aside the spectacle of a society that honors killers and what that implies for peaceful coexistence. Israel paid a price for negotiations that led nowhere. This isn't the first time either. In 2010, the administration pressured Israel to agree to a "settlement" freeze in order to coax Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate. Abbas dragged his heels and in the last few weeks of the freeze. When the Palestinians finally started to negotiate the freeze was set to expire. The United States tried to encourage Israel to extend the freeze but Israel refused and the Palestinians walked away from the negotiations at the end of the freeze. Earlier too, Israel paid a price just to get the Palestinians to negotiate. A commenter on an earlier post of mine made a great point:

Posted by A.F. Branco on May 09, 2014 9 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...

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Posted by Rusty Weiss on May 09, 2014 11 Comments
Republican lawmakers created quite a stir earlier this week, when they complained to the New York Post that the recently passed budget contained secret funding for the SAFE Act. Two senators who wished to remain anonymous, told the Post that funds tagged for certain aspects of the SAFE Act were 'hidden' in the budget, and that they never would have voted in favor had they known. Meanwhile, several unnamed Assembly GOP lawmakers claimed that they had only found out about the funding at a state budget briefing. Nonsense. There's only three options here - they're either lying, flat-out admitting that they didn't review the budget prior to voting, or are trying to cover their 'yes' vote by alleging they didn't know what was in the budget. Numerous Republicans who had actually put their name on it, were openly debating SAFE Act funding in this year's budget.  Even a normally obedient media was pointing it out well in advance of budget debates. Via LoHud on February 7th, nearly two months before the budget passed:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's $137.2 billion budget proposal includes an additional $3.2 million for personnel costs related to the SAFE Act, according to the head of the state police. Superintendent Joseph D'Amico told lawmakers at a budget hearing this week that the money will go toward hiring civilian employees to help with administrative duties related to the gun laws, including the processing of assault-weapon registrations and maintaining records.
On March 14th, Republican Assemblyman Steve Hawley issued a statement that read in part:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 09, 2014 36 Comments
Complaints about privilege are growing tiresome. It's the shallow call of those who can't win an argument on the merits. It's a cop-out. It's an epidemic on campuses, and in the "white privilege" industrial complex where careers and incomes depend on getting universities and donors to pony up big $$$ to support conferences and academic slots. We saw it last night on Twitter as an anti-Israel divestment resolution at UC-Davis ended in a tie, which meant it did not pass: Ramesh Ponnuru writes about this phenomenon at Bloomberg, 'Check Your Privilege' Means 'Shut Your Mouth':

Posted by Mandy Nagy on May 09, 2014 6 Comments
I don’t always find the segments on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart all that funny, but every so often he hits on something that gives me a chuckle. And Thursday night I found myself nodding my head at the TV and laughing aloud at one of those moments. Stewart poked fun at the silly spectacle of a debate over whether or not to designate yogurt as the official state snack of New York, after lawmakers took to the floor to consider the bill in the state Senate earlier this week. It seemed a fitting representation of the state of politics and the political process today. The idea for the bill was suggested by a local fourth-grade class, according to Republican State Senator Michael H. Ranzenhofer, who sponsored the bill.
Ranzenhofer said the idea for yogurt as the state snack came from teacher Craig Schroth's class at Byron-Bergen. Earlier this year, the fourth-grade class had been learning about state government, when the Russian government blocked a shipment of Chobani yogurt during the Winter Olympics, Ranzenhofer said.
The ensuing debate over that bill was described by the New York Times, Animated Debate in New York State Capital? It’s About Yogurt:
The New York State Senate sometimes considers weighty matters like taxes and budgets.

On Tuesday, it focused its attention on yogurt.

Specifically, it took up a proposal to designate yogurt as the official state snack. Yogurt production happens to be a booming industry upstate.

But in Albany, no matter is too small to provoke disagreement. And honoring yogurt, it turned out, was too much for some lawmakers to stomach.

One senator, Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, suggested the designation might be inconsiderate to people who are lactose intolerant. Another, Gustavo Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, wondered if yogurt could count as a snack if it were consumed at breakfast time.

Alternative snack ideas were raised. The distinction between Greek yogurt and regular yogurt was clarified.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 09, 2014 39 Comments
In (speaks for itself) I presented the video of Emily Lett promoting her abortion. The video is embedded again at the bottom of this post. I used this screen cap to reflect what I saw as the flippant attitude. http://youtu.be/OxPUKV-WlKw But there was another aspect I thought about but didn't write about. It's reflected in the featured image. And it is captured by Elizabeth Scalia at The Anchoress, sent to me by reader Mike:
If you let yourself become distracted by what is coming from her mouth, you miss all that is revealed in her face, which tells the whole, and very different story. A month after the abortion — with the dramatic change in hairstyle that so many women effect when emotions are high and they need to feel in control of something — watch Emily, then. The light is gone from her eyes. The seeming disconnect between pc-fed head and instinctive heart is laid out in breathtaking and stark incongruity, even down to the shadows, the blue note, the lack of energy. Devastating. Cognizant of it or not, she is a mother in grief.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on May 08, 2014 19 Comments

The IRS has agreed to turn over all Lois Lerner emails to the House Committee on Ways and Means, according to a statement posted on the committee's website Thursday. From the Ways and Means committee website: Today, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced that one...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 08, 2014 15 Comments
In a post last night on the continuing legal saga of the Wisconsin anti-conervative "John Doe" probe, we noted that Appeals Ct stays injunction against Wisconsin “John Doe” anti-conservative probe
Last night we noted Fed District Court enjoins Wisconsin “John Doe” anti-conservative investigation. Late this afternoon the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued a stay of the injunction, on procedural grounds which leave the District Court the opportunity to reinstate the injunction. The issue for the appeal was that a “Notice of Appeal” of certain court rulings had been filed prior to the injunction being issued.  Once a Notice of Appeal is filed, it moves the case automatically to the Court of Appeals and the District Court no longer has jurisdiction, unless certain exceptions are met. So the Court of Appeal basically said the District Court Judge didn’t have the case before him anymore, and couldn’t issue the injunction.
That key exception would be if the District Court found the appeal to be frivolous. It just did, and reinstated the injunction in an Order issued today, which reads in part (full embed at bottom of post):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 08, 2014 22 Comments
Soon after the defeat of anti-Israel divestment resolutions at U. Michigan and UCLA, I began to see anti-Israel advocates single out pro-Israel students who had gone on trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israel groups, or had received advocacy training from pro-Israel groups. These trips and advocacy training are critical because some campuses have become openly hostile to pro-Israel students as a result of "direct action" and other intimidation by relatively small but highly coordinated anti-Israel groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. Professors actively participate in demonizing pro-Israel students.     So I was not completely surprised when I learned from reader emails over the past several days that there is an attempt at UCLA to disqualify any student who received pro-Israel training or trips from being on the Student Council. Because of my trip to Vassar and follow up, I didn't have time to write it up. So I'm glad that two others have done so. Jonathan Tobin at Commentary writes, The Next Step in the Campus War on Jews:

Posted by New Neo on May 08, 2014 35 Comments
What happened in North Carolina Tuesday night? I think that blogger CAC at Ace's hits the nail on the head in this post, and points out a problem that GOP conservatives had better figure out a solution to or they'll be griping even more about the vast-RINO-conspiracy against them:
I've seen a lot of hemming and hawing about how the villainous Karl Rove and his band of toads flooded the zone and dragged "their guy" Tillis across the finish line in yesterday's North Carolina primary... ...[But] over 54% of Republican primary voters did not vote for Tillis. Had these other voters consolidated behind a single candidate, as the establishment always does even if they have to switch gears to do so (see the maneuvering to push Christie out and test Bush), Brannon or Harris would be the one facing Senator Hagan. Conservatives jump from candidate to candidate in a lot of these races, and the more who throw their hat into the ring, the further it dilutes their voice in the primary.
CAC calls it the Baskin-Robbins problem. But whatever you want to call it, it consists of the fact that the Tea Party, a group of individualists, must somehow coalesce behind the best conservative candidate in each race if it is going to both maximize its power and choose an individual who actually has a chance of winning in the general, although it's not at all clear that either Brannon or Harris would have been that person in this particular race.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 07, 2014 10 Comments
Last night we noted Fed District Court enjoins Wisconsin “John Doe” anti-conservative investigation. Late this afternoon the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued a stay of the injunction, on procedural grounds which leave the District Court the opportunity to reinstate the injunction. The issue for the appeal was that a "Notice of Appeal" of certain court rulings had been filed prior to the injunction being issued.  Once a Notice of Appeal is filed, it moves the case automatically to the Court of Appeals and the District Court no longer has jurisdiction, unless certain exceptions are met. So the Court of Appeal basically said the District Court Judge didn't have the case before him anymore, and couldn't issue the injunction. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
After 24 hours of legal maneuvering in a politically charged investigation of Gov. Scott Walker and his allies, an appeals court late Wednesday handed prosecutors a victory, preventing for now the destruction of evidence from the case. The three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago stayed U.S. District Court Rudolph Randa's preliminary injunction from Tuesday stopping the John Doe investigation, saying he had overstepped his authority. The appeals court ruling also said Randa cannot order prosecutors to destroy evidence they have collected in the five-county probe.
Here's the key part of the Appeals Court ruling:
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