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Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 07, 2014 5 Comments
I added Legal Insurrection's name to the list of pro-Israel blogs and bloggers supporting Elder of Ziyon's open and unequivocal condemnation of the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. In a follow up post today, Elder makes points I made this morning in Israeli reaction to murder of teen a sign of Israel’s moral strength. Elder notes:
I had no idea how many would agree when I wrote it. Within 12 hours, over a hundred people, including some very prominent writers and bloggers, had added their names to the letter. It was shared hundreds of times on Facebook. Many people wrote to say how appreciative they were that I put into words what they were thinking. Zionist bloggers weren't alone in their condemnation. Major US Jewish and Zionist organizations roundly condemned the murder and expressed horror at the fact that the suspects are Israeli Jews. As I've noted in the past, the anti-Israel crowd suffers from psychological projection. They assume, reflexively, that the hate they have for Israel is mirrored by Israelis and Zionists towards Arabs.

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Posted by Amy Miller on July 07, 2014 27 Comments
Via the New York Times:
...lawyers for seven college students and three voter-registration advocates are making the novel constitutional argument that the law violates the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. The amendment also declares that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.”
The sound you just heard was the collective gasp of thousands of first-year Constitutional Law professors looking for their next great exam question. This case is novel in the way that most of the race-based challenges to voter ID were novel: the lawyers are using a basic concept--in this case, the Constitutional standard governing the voting age--and twisting it into a big progressive knot to use as a political tool against the other side of the aisle. It's despicable, and intellectually dishonest, but it's nothing new and certainly not surprising. The advocates in this case are blasting personal anecdotes from students via the mainstream media in an effort to win the culture battle before they ever see the inside of a courtroom:

Posted by Amy Miller on July 07, 2014 15 Comments
The latest series of polling data suggests that support for school choice in America is on the rise. A 2013 Luntz Global Public Opinion Survey (via National School Choice Week) showed that a majority of Americans fully support having more flexibility and more choice in their child's education:
  • Public support for school choice is growing. 73 percent of Americans support school choice, compared with 67 percent in 2010.
  • Parents want more education options for their children. 64 percent of parents said that, “if given the financial opportunity” they would send one or all of their children to a different school.
  • Parents don’t feel they have enough options. 64 percent of parents agreed with the statement: “when it comes to the options to educate my children the way I want them educated, I have wanted more options for my children’s education.”
The Franklin Center recently released a new video touting their support of school choice and charter schools. Check it out here: If we want to address the problem with public schools in America, we need to get over the idea that there's a one-size fits-all solution to improving our education system.

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Posted by Mike LaChance on July 07, 2014 3 Comments
Tracy Oppenheimer of Reason TV recently interviewed Frank Buckley, an author and law professor at George Mason University. Buckley contends that the power of the presidency has strayed from what the framers intended:
Presidential Power and the Rise of American Monarchy: Q&A with Author Frank Buckley "America is dropping like a stone in rankings of freedom. As power accumulates in one person, expect that to continue," says Frank Buckley, George Mason University law professor and author of the new book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. Buckley sat down with Reason TV's Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss how the U.S. presidency has evolved into what he calls "something like an elective monarch." He says that this is not what the framers of the Constitution had intended, nor did they conceive of the modern version of the separation of powers. "A parliamentary regime was more or less what the framers wanted...as far as the separation of powers is concerned," says Buckley "instead of a device to constrain a president, it's one which immunizes him from criticism by Congress."
Here's the video: With all that in mind, John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist has a recommendation for you and your family this holiday weekend.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 07, 2014 12 Comments
Israel is undergoing intense soul searching, as a nation, for the actions of what are believed to be 6 Israeli Jews in murdering an Israeli Arab teen, Mohammed Abu Khedair, in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel. Much of that criticism is internal. Members of Israel's Knesset unanimously condemned the murder, as has every prominent Israeli leader. The Editor in Chief of The Times of Israel writes that " the killing of Muhammed Abu Khdeir must rid us of the illusion that we enjoy a distinctive moral superiority over our neighbors." An Israeli Jewish group is organizing a visit to the family of the murdered teen. Israeli President Shimon Peres termed the murder a crisis of morality:
President Shimon Peres says Israel is in a deep crisis of morality following the arrest of six people in the killing of Palestinian teen Muhammed Abu Khdeir last week. “We did not believe that such a heinous crime could take place among our people. We mustn’t be such a people,” Peres says. “Today ‘out of Zion shall go forth the shame,’” he says, paraphrasing a famous Bible quote. “There is no justification for death and no crime is more acceptable than another,” the president adds. “My heart aches with the grieving Abu Khdeir family and with the grieving Shaar, Yifrach and Fraenkel families.”

Posted by A.F. Branco on July 07, 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 Bruce Carroll on July 06, 2014 11 Comments
After an extraordinary four-month data-crunching investigation of material leaked by Edward Snowden, the Washington Post let off some fireworks this Fourth of July weekend. Their investigation proves that the National Security Agency (NSA) has monitored many more ordinary Americans' internet usage than non-American foreigners under suspicion of terrorist activities.
Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else. Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents. The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages — and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 06, 2014 7 Comments
Wendy Davis supporters are pretty excited about her campaign for governor of Texas but when pressed to name one of her legislative accomplishments, they're surprisingly silent. Yehuda Remer of Truth Revolt sees a pattern:
Just as Hillary Clinton supporters were unable to name a single accomplishment of the former Secretary of State, Wendy Davis’ supporters are in the same boat. A new video by Texans for Greg Abbott features an interviewer asking supporters of Davis at the 2014 Texas Democratic Convention what her greatest legislative achievements were.
Here's the video: Liberals are already preparing themselves for Wendy Davis to lose.

Posted by David Gerstman on July 06, 2014 10 Comments
While the media has been focused on the arrests of up to six Jews in the killing of Mohammed Abu Kheidr, Arab violence against Israel has been continuing. The Jerusalem Post reports:
The Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council area was battered with ten rockets from Gaza. Residents of the communities in the Sha'ar Hanegev area were instructed to remain in fortified shelters. Three rockets hit the Eshkol Regional Council area , one of which started a brush fire, and an additional two rockets landed in open territory in the Ashkelon Coast Council region.
In addition for the first time since 2012, a rocket hit Be'ersheva. 2014-07-06_094248_IDF_Tweet Elder of Ziyon notes a number of attacks in and near Jerusalem and elsewhere over the weekend; including the torching of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem)...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on July 06, 2014 0 Comments

Research into social media's impact on relationships, Twitter drama, Open Carry Guitar rally and more....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 06, 2014 10 Comments
Reports this morning from Israel indicate that six Israeli Jews have been arrested in the murder of Mohammed Abu Kheidr, apparently as retaliation for the murder of three Israeli teens, Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel. The Times of Israel reports:
Six suspects have been arrested and interrogated in connection with the murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khdeir, whose burned body was found in the Jerusalem forest on Wednesday morning Police on Sunday said only that a “dramatic development” in the investigation has led them to believe that the act was most likely carried out by Jewish extremists in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teenagers earlier in June. “Apparently the people arrested in relation to the case belong to an extremist Jewish group,” an unnamed official was quoted by AFP as saying.... Police initially said they were investigating various avenues in the teen’s death, including criminal or personal motives, while Israeli social media abounded with rumors that he had been killed because he was gay or as part of an ongoing family feud. On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority attorney-general, Dr. Muhammed Abed al-Ghani al-Aweiwi, said that Abu Khdeir was burned alive, according to the preliminary findings of the autopsy.
We will update when additional details are released by the police. In the meantime, the murder needs to be condemned unconditionally, and not celebrated or excused the way many Palestinians and BDS supporters immediately excused the killing of the three Israeli teens as a reaction to supposed Israeli crimes. These sentiments below are true, but in no way excuse what happened to Khdeir: Kidnapped Israeli Teens (added) This case of an Israeli teenager, Shelly Dadon, on way to job interview who was stabbed to death has received almost no international media attention:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 06, 2014 3 Comments

Texas-sized...

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