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Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2014 4 Comments
As mentioned last night, and as expected, there was a protest by student groups seeking divestment from companies doing business in Israel in reaction to last week's 15-8-1 decision of the Cornell Student Assembly to table indefinitely the proposed divestment resolution. About 75 protestors attended the Student Assembly meeting. I heard one of them refer to hundreds, but it was not that many, and many drifted out after a while. Here's a video of the pro-divestment students walking from their gathering area to Willard Straight Hall, where the Assembly meets. You can see there just weren't that many, certainly not hundreds. A disappointing turnout considering the priority the anti-Israel groups place on the protest. The Assembly then voted to suspend the rules and its session, in what appeared to be a preplanned maneuver, according to multiple people who were in the room at the start. I arrived later, because I had class. Effectively, the Assembly went out of session, and then let the anti-Israel students spend almost two hours giving speeches, in what the protesters termed an alternative assembly. There also were other unrelated topics, such as free bus passes, that consumed some of the protest discussion. Here's the Alternative Agenda: Cornell Alternative Assembly Agenda 4-17-2014 The only interesting part was that David Skorton, President of Cornell, previously was scheduled to appear before the Assembly, and kept that appointment. So the President was present during part of this alternative assembly, but not because of the protest. There were some minor theatrics as protestors vented a little, but nothing major. Skorton gave a short speech about improving the process, and left:

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Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 17, 2014 14 Comments
Earlier Thursday, reports surfaced that leaflets were distributed earlier in the week in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk demanding Jews register with a government office. We waited to report the information here at Legal Insurrection because of conflicting reports on the story and questions about the authenticity of the leaflets. And then of course, there is the question of whether this is part of a propaganda campaign from one or both sides in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Let’s start with the earlier reports. Here is an earlier article from USA Today:
Jews in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk where pro-Russian militants have taken over government buildings were told they have to "register" with the Ukrainians who are trying to make the city become part of Russia, according to Ukrainian and Israeli media. Jews emerging from a synagogue say they were handed leaflets that ordered the city's Jews to provide a list of property they own and pay a registration fee "or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportation and see their assets confiscated," reported Ynet News, Israel's largest news website. Donetsk is the site of an "anti-terrorist" operation by the Ukraine government, which has moved military columns into the region to force out militants who are demanding a referendum be held on joining Russia. The news was carried first by the Ukraine's Donbass news agency. The leaflets bore the name of Denis Pushilin, who identified himself as chairman of "Donetsk's temporary government," and were distributed near the Donetsk synagogue and other areas, according to the reports.
Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the leaflets, regardless of where they came from.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2014 11 Comments

New York State municipalities are suffocating under the weight of local pensions. The solution? Defer and delay, rather than deal with the problem now. From The Ithaca Journal, Borrowing for pension costs soar in N.Y.: Local governments and the state increased borrowing off the state pension fund to...

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2014 5 Comments
From Mark Steyn, The slow death of free speech - Must we celebrate diversity by enforcing conformity?
What all the above stories have in common, whether nominally about Israel, gay marriage, climate change, Islam, or even freedom of the press, is that one side has cheerfully swapped that apocryphal Voltaire quote about disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it for the pithier Ring Lardner line: ‘“Shut up,” he explained.’ A generation ago, progressive opinion at least felt obliged to pay lip service to the Voltaire shtick. These days, nobody’s asking you to defend yourself to the death: a mildly supportive retweet would do. But even that’s further than most of those in the academy, the arts, the media are prepared to go. As Erin Ching, a student at 60-grand-a-year Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, put it in her college newspaper the other day: ‘What really bothered me is the whole idea that at a liberal arts college we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion.’ Yeah, who needs that? There speaks the voice of a generation: celebrate diversity by enforcing conformity.... In the internal contradictions of multiculturalism, Islam trumps all: race, gender, secularism, everything. So, in the interests of multiculti sensitivity, pampered upper-middle-class trusty-fundy children of entitlement are pronouncing a Somali refugee beyond the pale and signing up to Islamic strictures on the role of women.... I’m opposed to the notion of official ideology — not just fascism, Communism and Baathism, but the fluffier ones, too, like ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘climate change’ and ‘marriage equality’. Because the more topics you rule out of discussion — immigration, Islam, ‘gender fluidity’ — the more you delegitimise the political system....

Posted by A.F. Branco on April 17, 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 Mandy Nagy on April 16, 2014 33 Comments
The efforts of Ukraine’s government to crack down on pro-Russia separatists who have recently seized various government and security buildings in the east appeared to suffer setbacks Wednesday. From CNN:
Pro-Russian militants appeared to tighten their grip on Ukraine's eastern town of Slaviansk on Wednesday as Ukrainian military forces massed nearby in an uneasy standoff. On a day of fast-moving events in the restive region, officials in Transnistria, a separatist region in Moldova on Kiev's other border, turned to Moscow for recognition -- taking example from Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine last month. In Donetsk, six armored vehicles sent into the nearby city of Kramatorsk in the morning later showed up carrying Russian flags in Slaviansk. Ukraine's Defense Ministry said the vehicles had been seized by militants after they were "blocked by local residents, including representatives of Russian labeled subversive and terrorist groups." As of mid-afternoon local time, the vehicles were located "near an administrative building in the center of Slaviansk, surrounded by men in armed uniform not related to the Armed Forces of Ukraine," it said. It was not immediately clear what had happened to the personnel in the cars. State-run Russian news agency RIA Novosti said the crew of the vehicles had switched sides to join the protesters, while other reports said they had been seized by militants.
An earlier report from Reuters news agency also confirmed that the vehicles were later seen under control of pro-Russia separatists.  The article indicates there were reports that Ukrainians gave up the vehicles to the separatists but notes that it was unclear whether there was any threat of force. And the Wall Street Journal reports that in Donetsk, separatists took over the city council building with little effort and apparently without intervention.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2014 23 Comments
Elizabeth Warren's autobiography is out, and it looks like she is sticking precisely to her campaign script on her false claim to be Cherokee. The title is "A Fighting Chance." The Boston Globe, which has an advance copy (perhaps as a courtesy since it gave Warren so much help in the campaign), summarizes:
She spends several pages describing the family connections that have led her to assert a partial Native American heritage, for which she was criticized by Republicans in her 2012 Senate campaign.... “As a kid, I had learned about my Native American background the same way every kid learns about who they are: from family,” she writes. “I never questioned my family’s stories or asked my parents for proof or documentation. What kid would?” Her ancestry became a major issue during the campaign, and Warren says she was stunned by the attacks – and that she couldn’t provide documentation because her family hadn’t registered any tribal affiliation. “In Oklahoma, that was pretty common,” she writes. “But knowing who you are is one thing, and proving who you are is another.” She reiterated that she did not use her background to gain special treatment. “I never asked for special treatment when I applied to college, to law school, or for jobs,” she writes.
This family dodge has been exposed so many times, detailed at Elizabeth Warren Wiki. The short version is that she never lived as a Native American, but did use the claim to her advantage to get listed as a "Minority Law Teacher" in a directory used as a hiring device in the 1980s. Somehow the editors of The Harvard Women's Law Journal knew about it when Warren was a visiting professor because they listed her as a Woman of Color in Legal Academia. Warren and Harvard never have released her hiring records.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2014 16 Comments

1. Auschwitz trip: ‘I have no regrets,’ says Palestinian professor Professor Mohammed Dajani took 27 Palestinian college students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland a few weeks ago as part of a project designed to teach empathy and tolerance to both Palestinians and...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2014 16 Comments
China Housing Market Bubble Start to Pop as Economy Faces Hard-Landing:
China's property bubble has already started to burst as the country struggles to avoid a hard-landing after the housing market became overheated with soaring prices. China's commercial and residential property sectors are not doing well, especially in the city of Hangzho, which has "become the symbol of a market in distress", according to Forbes. The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, is closing its Zhaohui store in Hangzhou on April 23 as a part of its overall plan to dump unprofitable locations. The sale of the large store comes as the city has too much supply of commercial properties, according to Forbes. Hangzhou's Grade A office buildings at the end of 2013 had an average occupancy rate of 30%, according to real estate broker Jones Lang LaSalle. In Hangzhou's residential sector, occupancy is weak and prices are declining due to massive overbuilding.
All of this was predicted here, back in 2012 when Elizabeth Warren insisted that we needed to be more like China. And I said, Elizabeth Warren apparently never heard of the Chinese bubble and Stimulus:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 16, 2014 8 Comments

From Phil: My wife got this picture yesterday just outside the Independence Mall in Kingston, Ma. ...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on April 15, 2014 3 Comments
Ukraine’s government says it has secured a small airport in eastern Ukraine after reported clashes with pro-Russia separatists, though some of the details remain unclear. From the Associated Press (via Boston Herald):
In the first Ukrainian military action against a pro-Russian uprising in the east, government forces said they repelled an attack Tuesday by about 30 gunmen at a small airport. The clash came hours after Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, had announced an "anti-terrorist operation" against the armed, pro-Russian insurgents who had seized control of numerous buildings in at least nine cities in Ukraine's restive east. The central government has so far been unable to rein in the insurgents, who it says are being stirred up by paid operatives from Russia. The insurgents are demanding broader autonomy and closer ties with Russia, and, complicating the political landscape, many local security forces have switched to their side. The clashes Tuesday came at Kramatorsk airport, just south of the city of Slovyansk, which is 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the Russian border. The city has come under the increasing control of the gunmen who seized it last weekend. The precise sequence of events in Kramatorsk was mired in confusion amid contradictory official claims.
The BBC, which had a reporter in Kramatorsk, indicated that an angry crowd had gathered outside the airbase, while a group still remained later and chanted slogans in favor of referendum. Reports of casualties were still unclear at the time of this writing, as the AP noted.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2014 20 Comments

Journalist market bubble already showing signs of bursting?...

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