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Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 10, 2015 1 Comment
In what only can be described as a serious setback for anti-Israel academic boycott activists, the Modern Language Association just voted at its Annual Conference to postpone a boycott resolution vote until 2017. https://twitter.com/roopikarisam/status/554035899953315841 At the 2014 annual meeting a resolution critical of Israel's alleged breach of Palestinian academic freedom barely passed the House of Delegates, but then failed when the resolution was sent to the full membership. There was no boycott resolution to be voted on this year.  Given that even a condemnation of Israel failed last year, hopes to advance the anti-Israel, anti-academic freedom agenda will have to wait for two years. The vote to confirm this delayed timetable was not a surprise. According to one person in the room during discussion of the delay, the boycotters came "off as silly. Especially after events like this weekend." [referring to attacks on Jews in Paris by Islamic terrorists] But pro-boycott faculty formed a working group, led by Stanford Professor David Palumbo-Liu (recently elected to the MLA Executive Board), David Lloyd of UC-Riverside (one of the co-founders of the U.S. boycott movement) and Rebecca Comay of the University of Toronto, who will be organizing for the next two years to push the boycott resolution in 2017.

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Posted by Mike LaChance on January 10, 2015 16 Comments
As the world mourns the victims of the Paris attack, we should also recognize two acts of bravery by Muslims in the course of the week's events at the Charlie Hebdo offices and Hyper Casher Kosher supermarket. The first is Ahmed Merabet, a French policeman who was killed at Charlie Hebdo. Anne Penketh of The Guardian recognized him in a recent report:
Policeman Ahmed Merabet mourned after death in Charlie Hebdo attack It was a Muslim policeman from a local police station who was “slaughtered like a dog” after heroically trying to stop two heavily armed killers from fleeing the Charlie Hebdo offices following the massacre. Tributes to Ahmed Merabet poured in on Thursday after images of his murder at point blank range by a Kalashnikov-wielding masked terrorist circulated around the world. Merabet, who according to officials was 40, was called to the scene while on patrol with a female colleague in the neighbourhood, just in time to see the black Citroën used by the two killers heading towards the boulevard from Charlie Hebdo.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 10, 2015 28 Comments
Hillary is the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. She has a large double-digit lead over other potential contenders. The one thing Hillary doesn't have, however, is grassroots enthusiasm. Her support as the presumptive nominee is a mile wide and an inch deep. She's popular because of name recognition and organizational power. No one wants to be on Bill and Hillary's enemies list. But Hillary has an image problem, as reflected in this Jay Leno appearance, via The Daily Caller:
Comedian Jay Leno says he likes presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but she just seems so old. Speaking of Clinton on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday, Leno commented, “I don’t see the fire.” “Her and Elizabeth Warren are almost the same age,” Leno said, comparing Hillary to the Massachusetts senator beloved by the left wing of the Democratic Party. “And I see Elizabeth Warren come out — ‘boom’ — throwing punches. ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom.’” “And I like her,” Leno continued, speaking of Hillary. “But she seems to be sort of, she seems very slow and very — I don’t see that fire, you know, that fire that I used to see, that I see in Elizabeth Warren. Because I say to people, ‘how much younger is Elizabeth Warren than Hillary?’ And people go, ‘oh, 15 years.’ No! 18 months.”
Elizabeth Warren, by contrast? She's intriguing:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 10, 2015 13 Comments
Yesterday, the House Appropriation's Committee released their plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security, making it the last federal agency to receive funding for this fiscal year. The appropriation bill provides additional funding and reallocates resources to strengthen border security and significantly enhance immigration enforcement. The House will debate the appropriation bill next week. Several amendments to the House appropriation bill have already been submitted. In order to prevent implementation of President Obama's immigration overreach, amendments to the appropriation bill further restrict where and how DHS funds will be spent. This was by design. As we've reported, at the center of this debate lies United States Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS); the department responsible for processing immigration petitions. USCIS does not receive federal funding from appropriations as it sustains itself on fees collected from petitions. The vast majority of petitions filed with USCIS are filed by immigrants in the United States legally. Whether they are applying for an extension of their green card, changing their visa type, extending lawful status, or applying for naturalization, these petitions (and many, many others) are all processed by USCIS.

Posted by Andrew Branca on January 10, 2015 72 Comments
Well, look who's back in the news with girlfriend trouble, as reported by the Orlando Sentinel. And, consistent with similar past events, that girlfriend trouble has lead directly to jail, do not pass "GO," do not collect $200. George Zimmerman's girlfriend, pulled over yesterday by police for a routine traffic stop, volunteered to them that he had thrown a wine bottle at her the prior Monday while she was visiting Zimmerman's Lake Mary residence.  Nobody called the police at that time, nor at any time prior to the girlfriend being pulled over by police last night.

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Posted by Mike LaChance on January 10, 2015 16 Comments
The terror attack on Charlie Hebdo this week was a stark reminder that Europe and the rest of western civilization has a serious problem. As people seek explanations for how this happened and what should be done about it, one voice speaks bravely and deserves attention. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the writer and activist who has drawn the ire of many in the Muslim community as well as American feminists for her defense of women, has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which she addressed the attack:
How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam. This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an “un-Islamic” attack by a bunch of thugs—the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked. The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised. If there is a lesson to be drawn from such a grisly episode, it is that what we believe about Islam truly doesn’t matter. This type of violence, jihad, is what they, the Islamists, believe. There are numerous calls to violent jihad in the Quran. But the Quran is hardly alone. In too much of Islam, jihad is a thoroughly modern concept. The 20th-century jihad “bible,” and an animating work for many Islamist groups today, is “The Quranic Concept of War,” a book written in the mid-1970s by Pakistani Gen. S.K. Malik. He argues that because God, Allah, himself authored every word of the Quran, the rules of war contained in the Quran are of a higher caliber than the rules developed by mere mortals.
You can read the whole thing here. Ms. Ali appeared on Megyn Kelly's show this week after the attacks.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 09, 2015 24 Comments
During a meeting in New York this week, Mitt Romney told a group of key donors that he is "seriously considering" a third run at the Presidency. According to a source at the meeting, Romney confirmed, "I’ve run twice. Yeah, I want to be president,” and indicated that if he were to jump into the race, he'd do it sooner rather than later. From the Washington Post:
“I believe Mitt Romney is too much of a patriot to sit on the sidelines and concede the presidency to Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren when he knows that he can fix the country,” [Romney’s former national finance co-chairman Spencer] Zwick said. “He traveled the country in 2014, met with voters, met with citizens, and I think at the end of the day he believes he could actually make a difference.” Zwick added, “He won’t make a decision to run for president based on who else is in the race. He will make a decision based on his own desire and his own abilities. He has to decide on his own.” Romney’s move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as former Florida governor Jeb Bush is swiftly snatching up major party donors and operatives as he prepares for an all-but-certain presidential campaign.
Reactions are...mixed? We'll go with mixed:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 09, 2015 6 Comments
In last year's budget battle, Rep. Tom Price, incoming House Budget Committee Chairman, proposed funding the Department of Homeland Security through the end of February. (DHS oversees immigration by way of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).) The idea was that if funding for DHS and subsequent entities were held until the Republicans had a majority in both houses, Republicans would be in a strategically advantageous position to enact substantive reforms and direct more resources to our national borders. Today, the House Appropriations Committee released the DHS appropriations bill. Next week, the bill will be considered on the House floor, making it the last of the annual appropriations bills for this fiscal year. Overall, DHS is slated to receive an increase of $400 million from last fiscal year, giving the agency a budget of $39.7 billion. As the bill currently reads, the surge in funding and substantial reallocations will be poured into enforcement agencies like Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) who are responsible for border protection and confiscating contraband, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who are the "round 'em up and detain 'em while they await trial" folks. CBP will receive an extra $118 million with the aim of providing more support than the agency has ever received since it's creation in 2003. Almost $400 million is allocated to border security fencing, infrastructure, and technology. Funding has been allocated to add more than 2,000 additional CBP officers to it's current force of 21,370. CBP's total budget in this bill clocks in at $10.7 billion.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 09, 2015 20 Comments
There's no eloquent way to introduce a story about a group of elected officials who want to ban wearing hoods in public---so let's just jump in. Oklahoma lawmakers are considering a bill that could make it a fineable offense to wear any kind of identity-concealing garment in a public place. Don't believe me? I didn't when I first heard it, but here's the text of the bill (in part):
It shall be unlawful for any person in this state to: A. To wear a mask, hood or covering, which conceals the identity of the wearer during the commission of a crime or for the purpose of coercion, intimidation or harassment; or B. To intentionally conceal his or her identity in a public place by means of a robe, mask, or other disguise.
These two points are followed by a long list of times when wearing a hood or mask will be allowed, including on Halloween, during parades or demonstrations, or during periods of inclement weather. Basically what this does is (in part) create an included offense to the larger offense of actually committing crime; a similar provision has been on the books since the heydays of the KKK. The larger problem is part (B), which would prevent people from "concealing their identity" in public. It doesn't explicitly ban hooded sweatshirts, but the law of unintended consequences is lurking just around the corner in Chuck Taylors and a Dave Matthews Band summer tour hoodie, just waiting for an opportunity to pop out and menace the perpetually comfortable. As always, lawmakers have good intentions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 09, 2015 8 Comments
The attack by radical Islamists at the Paris Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket left four hostages dead, plus one of the gunmen. The Hyper Cacher supermarket attack appears to have been coordinated with the two men who killed 12 at Charlie Hebdo. The specter of widespread anti-Semitism on the streets of Paris is nothing new. It has been fueled not only by centuries-old hatreds, but by the more modern Islamist, "anti-Zionist" and BDS movements whose hatred of Israel is obsessive and dehumanizing. Below are a couple of videos from the assaults on Jewish sections of Paris and a Synagogue during "pro-Palestinian" riots last summer over the Gaza conflict. See also several of my posts (some of the videos in the posts have gone bad):

Posted by Amy Miller on January 09, 2015 11 Comments
Terrorists murdered 10 members of Charlie Hebdo's team on Wednesday; six of them were cartoonists, and all of them believed passionately in the right to express themselves via satire no matter who was likely to be offended by it. The remaining members of the editorial team have chosen to release an issue next week, and the cover photo, recently shared on Twitter, will serve as a perfect memorial to the spirit and memory of those who fell victim to the brutal attack: Translation? Urgent: hiring 6 new cartoonists. Deep breath.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 09, 2015 39 Comments
When I helped co-found a San Diego Tea Party group in 2009, one of our biggest action items was battling against Obamacare. Our members dialed Congress relentlessly, believing our representatives might weigh the will of the people.  What ever delusions I had about that concept utterly vanished when then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi paraded through a Tea Party rally by the Capitol with her big gavel. As for Obamacare passage, that's history, courtesy of congressional Democrats -- and reports on the new law's progress show that it is an even larger failure than we originally projected. So, imagine our opinion of of the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner when he gave Pelosi a big kiss and a warm hug---especially since he holds that position courtesy of the hard work of Tea Party members across the country.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 09, 2015 12 Comments
Overnight Eastern time a Kosher supermarket in Paris was attacked. Reports indicate two people killed and multiple people being held hostage. Meanwhile, the murderers of the the staff of Charlie Hebdo apparently are cornered and also have one or more hostages. UPDATES: France Hostage Takers Attackers Charlie Kosher Supermarket Sky News Four Hostages Dead Sky News Hostages Freed Jewish Grocery

Posted by Amy Miller on January 09, 2015 7 Comments
Yesterday, Senate Republicans attempted a procedural fast-track on the bipartisan Keystone XL jobs and infrastructure bill. The goal, according to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), was to immediately begin processing amendments to the controversial bill with the end goal of getting it to the President as soon as possible. McConnell asked for unanimous consent to proceed with consideration of the bill, noting that amendments would be accepted from both sides of the aisle. The problem? Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) objected. Instead of being able to move forward immediately, Leader McConnell was forced to file cloture on the motion to proceed with the bill; this means that unless Senator Whitehouse drops his objection, the next vote on the bill will have to wait until 5:30 on Monday. What a petty start to the 114th Congress. In prepared remarks from earlier this week, Harry Reid insisted that, “[t]he mistakes of the past, the gratuitous obstruction and wanton filibustering will not be a hallmark of the Democratic minority in the 114th Congress.” (Apparently, we're meant to have forgotten the hundreds of bills and amendments that suffered and died in the hands of then-Majority Leader Reid.)
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