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Posted by Amy Miller on November 27, 2014 19 Comments
The Ferguson protesters have proven themselves to be destructive, violent, and completely uninterested in anything having to do with "justice." Not only are they okay with this assessment---they're completely proud of it. In fact, they're beginning to look an awful lot like another "justice movement" we got to know quite well a few years back. Back in August, an enterprising writer over at Buzzfeed engaged in some solid journalism and noticed that the Ferguson protests---namely, the evolving encampments were beginning to look a little like the Occupy Wall Street protests:
As the marches in Ferguson grow smaller, this apparently semi-permanent encampment has echoes of Occupy Wall Street and other radical encampments who sought to claim and hold territory in 2011 and 2012. “Why do we need a leader?” Alexander asked. “I’m saying everybody can be leaders.” The camp even has a few Occupy veterans who drifted in during the last week and are giving them pointers on how to deal with things like tear gas — a threat Alexander said is still present, especially as their numbers grow. A couple of miles away in downtown Ferguson, across the street from the still-under-construction police station, another group is also digging in. Unlike the protesters on W Florissant, the gathering downtown is older and includes more women than men. Many of the demonstrators leave by the middle of the night, though someone is always out and always will be until they “get some answers,” according to organizer Angela Whitman. “We come out when it’s storming and raining,” she said. “We don’t play around. We don’t care what the weather is. We’ll be out here as long as it takes.” The atmosphere downtown is almost familial, with chairs and tables spread out across the street corner. Friday night, the group had prayers and competing chants between men and women, among other things.
In fact, Occupy is more interconnected with Ferguson than was immediately apparent when people started to organize.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 27, 2014 19 Comments
Thanks to many for making this Thanksgiving so meaningful. This is not an exhaustive list, but it's a good start:
  • The Wife. We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary earlier this year.
  • The Kids. Three great ones.
  • Health, and Mandy's recovery.
  • The U.S. of A. Still the place to be.
  • The Constitution and Bill of Rights. Beats any alternative I've seen.
  • Those who defend us against enemies, foreign and domestic.
  • Israel. The canary in freedom's coal mine.
  • The Readers. Seriously. Not joking.
  • The Authors, past and present. You helped build that.
  • The blogs and websites that link to us. The continued kindness of strangers is appreciated.
  • Fellow Ithaca conservatives, all ten of you.
  • The hope that the part of the human spirit that yearns to be free can prevail over evil, in Iran and elsewhere. (video h/t Caroline Glick)(original here)

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 27, 2014 13 Comments
While Ebola continues to rage in West Africa, an outbreak of another deadly disease is occurring in the African island nation of Madagascar.
An outbreak of bubonic plague in Madagascar has now claimed almost 50 victims and is spreading to the island's capital, officials warned today. There have been 138 suspected cases of the disease - similar to the Black Death in medieval Europe - since the start of the year, with the death toll of 47 expected to rise in the coming months. Two people have been infected in the capital of Antananarivo, one of them dying, and health workers have mounted a pest control campaign through slum areas around the city. The health ministry said 200 households had been ‘disinfected’ this month, adding that those who had contact with the infected had been given antibiotics in a bid to arrest the spread the disease.
A video glimpse of the situation comes via the UK Daily Mail:

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 27, 2014 47 Comments
Back in the good old days, the left loved to lecture us about civility. That time is over. In the course of the last few days, at least two writers from liberal outlets have tried to justify and even advocate for the violent rioting in Ferguson. First, we have Darlena Cunha of Time:
Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting When a police officer shoots a young, unarmed black man in the streets, then does not face indictment, anger in the community is inevitable. It’s what we do with that anger that counts. In such a case, is rioting so wrong? Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society. Unfortunately, we do not live in a universal utopia where people have the basic human rights they deserve simply for existing, and until we get there, the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets. As “normal” citizens watch the events of Ferguson unfurl on their television screens and Twitter feeds, there is a lot of head shaking, finger pointing, and privileged explanation going on. We wish to seclude the incident and the people involved. To separate it from our history as a nation, to dehumanize the change agents because of their bad and sometimes violent decisions—because if we can separate the underlying racial tensions that clearly exist in our country from the looting and rioting of select individuals, we can continue to ignore the problem.
Next up is Matt Bruenig of Gawker:

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Posted by Amy Miller on November 26, 2014 13 Comments
The violence that gripped Ferguson, MO in the wake of the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson has spread to multiple cities across the US. Minneapolis Portland

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 26, 2014 53 Comments
A lot of San Diegans were caught in gridlock when a group of student protesters from my alma mater, University of California - San Diego, blocked Interstate 5 just in time for morning rush hour.
Dozens of UCSD students brought traffic to a halt on northbound Interstate 5 Wednesday morning to protest the decision of a grand jury in Ferguson, Mo., not to indict a white policeman for killing an unarmed black teenager. A crowd of an estimated 50 to 70 protesters marched onto the freeway at Nobel Drive at about 6:49 a.m., blocking the northbound lanes. They remained in the roadway for about 40 minutes until San Diego police arrived and removed them. The protesters left the freeway peacefully and began marching on surface streets. There were no immediate reports of arrests. The demonstrators, led by an unidentified man with a bullhorn, held signs objecting to the Missouri grand jury’s decision not to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed but allegedly came at the officer and, at one point, tried to take his service weapon from him.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 26, 2014 9 Comments
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) might just be the worst Democratic Policy and Communications Center head of all time. Or, the best, depending on how invested you are to Congressional Dems' current messaging strategy. Yesterday, Schumer stood up at the National Press Club and unequivocally threw President Obama and his coalition under the bus for pressing forward with health care reform at the expense of more "middle class"-oriented programs. Fusion has his remarks:
The “mandate” voters had provided Democrats with their 2008 victories, Schumer said, was put on the wrong problem. “After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem – health care reform,” Schumer said. “The plight of uninsured Americans and the hardships caused by unfair insurance company practices certainly needed to be addressed,” he added. “But it wasn’t the change we were hired to make. Americans were crying out for an end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs — not for changes in their health care.”
Sure, Schumer was one of Obamacare's biggest cheerleaders, but that was then and this is now, people!

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2014 19 Comments
Darren Wilson, the Ferguson Police Officer whom a Grand Jury declined to indict over the shooting death of Micheal Brown, gave a lengthy in-person interview to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News last night. That interview is embedded at the bottom of this post. But this post is not really about Darren Wilson, at least not directly. It's about Johnson City, NY (near Binghamton), Police Officer David Smith, who was involved in a similar incident on March 31, 2014. A reader from this area (Johnson City is about 45 minutes from Ithaca) forwarded me the link, writing: "I had forgotten about this event very close to home but it seems to me that it is relevant to current events." http://www.localsyr.com/story/d/story/officer-shot-and-killed-near-binghamton-area-hospi/21718/364J-3q63EqZs8BkWb6lSw In that incident, a seemingly crazed and aggressive perpetrator managed to take Officer Smith's weapon from him, and then use it to murder Officer Smith:
Police say a suspect shot and killed a Johnson City police officer with the officer’s own weapon on Monday morning. Officer David Smith was an 18-year veteran of the force, police said at an afternoon news conference. The suspect, 43-year-old James Clark of Greene, pulled away Smith’s weapon and shot the officer three times, according to police. Clark fired at another officer, who then shot the suspect several times. Clark was taken to a hospital and later died.
As recounted in this video, the circumstances were remarkably similar to the initial assault on Darren Wilson by Michael Brown: Sucker punches to an officer seated in his patrol car, with the perpetrator then leaning in to try to steal the weapon:

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 26, 2014 41 Comments
This post focuses on the second-half of Police Officer's testimony before the Grand Jury, during which he is responding to direct questions from both the Prosecutors present (Whirley and Alizadeh) as well as from individual Grand Jury members. This portion of the testimony also covers the relevant post-shooting events. The first half of Wilson's testimony before the Grand Jury consisted of his narrative of events, and was covered in yesterday's post here: #Ferguson Grand Jury evidence: Police Officer’s Account of Shooting. It bears mentioning again that Officer Wilson was not compelled to testify before the Grand Jury, but rather volunteered to do so.  He did so knowing he would not be permitted to be accompanied by legal counsel during his testimony. As was done in yesterday's post, below is an abridged version of the testimony, to ease reading through the material. The full-text of the testimony is embedded at the bottom of this post in the form of a PDF of the official Grand Jury transcript. One observation comes immediately to mind as I've had the opportunity to both carefully review Wilson's September 26 testimony before the Grand Jury as well as watch him recount events in his November 25 ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, and that is the utter consistently between the two accounts. This stands in sharp contrast to the very often wildly varying testimony of "pro-Brown" witnesses before the Grand Jury.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 26, 2014 2 Comments
Some good news from the frontlines related to our battle with Ebola: The outbreak is now "stable" in Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.
There were still some flare ups in the south-east, but things were improving in other prefectures, WHO co-ordinator Dr Guenael Rodier told the BBC. More than 5,400 people have died in the latest outbreak, with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia the worst hit. The outbreak can be ended by mid-2015 if the world speeds up its response, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said.
Although the rate of new cases shows signs of decreasing in parts of West Africa, Mali - where six people have died and a seventh case has been reported - is now of concern. Additionally, the United Nations Ebola Emergency Response Mission has formally announced that it will not meet its self-imposed December 1st deadline of containment.
The mission set the goal in September, seeking to have 70 percent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 percent of Ebola victims safely buried. That target will be achieved in some areas, head of UNMEER Anthony Banbury told Reuters news agency, citing progress in Liberia. "We are going to exceed the December 1 targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground," he said in an interview.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 26, 2014 19 Comments
One of my most haunting memories from childhood involves a group of teens from a local Michigan high school; they pounded on our front door and begged my mom to call the police. This was during the 1967 Detroit Riots, when several groups of hostile students decided to take the conflict into our small suburb. My father was away, working as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, and his team's coverage of this event lead to a Pulitzer Prize. My mom took the students in, made the call, and comforted everyone until parents arrived to pick up the group who fled to our doorstep. A short summary of this event via PBS shows seems similar to what unfolded yesterday:
For five days in July, Detroit, Michigan descends into chaos. An economic boom has created jobs, and urban renewal projects have built new infrastructure, but blacks have been left behind. New expressways destroy black neighborhoods, and economic opportunities are scarce for black residents. The 95% white police force, notorious for brutal and arbitrary treatment of black citizens, raids an illegal after hours club and draws an angry, frustrated crowd that quickly turns hostile. As Sunday July 23rd dawns, the growing crowd is looting and burning the city. Twelve hours into the frenzy, Governor George Romney calls in the Michigan National Guard; unprepared troops make mistakes like shooting out the street lights. Nearly 4000 people will be arrested in the first two days, and over 7000 by the third. Most are young and black. Police and guardsmen shoot at will, with some later insisting that all of their victims were armed.
Some footage from the station, WXYZ, and covered by two of the areas best-known reporters of that era:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2014 7 Comments
We previously posted video of anti-Israel protesters getting in the face (literally) of pro-Israel students at Cornell who were holding counter-protest signs, Cornell Pro-Israel students taunted: “F**k You Zionist scums”. The incident depicted in the prior video actually was the second incident of the day, I have learned. Prior to that confrontation, Ilan Kaplan, a Cornell student on leave but who is still active in the Cornell Jewish community, alleges he was accosted as he held a sign, had his sign torn out of his hands, had water thrown on him, and was threatened. Here is my interview with Kaplan: Language Warning

Posted by Amy Miller on November 26, 2014 11 Comments
Ferguson is on fire, and small businesses are suffering. Our coverage of the violence in Ferguson has included tweets and photos showing rampant vandalism and destruction of locally owned businesses; from pizza joints to beauty shops to liquor stores, proprietors have been punished for the grand jury verdict, and many shop owners are now weighing the benefits of rebuilding vs. boarding up. One of those shop owners, Natalie DuBose, has decided to pick up the pieces and keep fighting. After the grand jury verdict was read and protesters took to the streets, the front windows of Natalie's shop were smashed, and the bakery portion vandalized. Encouraged by friends and family, she created a GoFundMe donation page, and asked for help:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 40 Comments
After last night's protests in Ferguson boiled over, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has tripled the National Guard presence in Ferguson in an attempt to quell the violence. From the New York Times:
At an afternoon news conference, Mr. Nixon said that he had ordered the deployment of 2,200 National Guard soldiers to Ferguson. “Last night, criminals intent on lawlessness and destruction terrorized this community,” he said. “What they’ve gone through is unacceptable.” Earlier, Mayor James W. Knowles III of Ferguson criticized the governor for not deploying the Guard quick enough to save some of the businesses that burned. “The delay in deploying the National Guard is deeply concerning,” said Mr. Knowles, adding that he had not spoken directly to the governor since late August, despite almost nightly protests in Ferguson since. Police officers were overwhelmed by the wave of violence Monday night after the grand jury’s decision was announced. Jon Belmar, the St. Louis County police chief, said demonstrators had set fire to at least a dozen buildings in and around Ferguson, and he estimated that he had heard about 150 gunshots. None of the shots, he said, were fired by the police.
Last night's Ustream livestream from the ground in Ferguson is still up and running:
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