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Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 11 Comments
A federal judge has ruled that the owners of the Washington Redskins should be allowed to pursue legal action against a group of Native Americans who are attempting to block the team's trademark protection. Back in August, the Redskins sued to reverse a previous ruling siding with the activists who seek to destroy the team's allegedly racist brand, and today, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee denied the activists' request to dismiss the suit. The Washington Post has the background on the case:
The five Native Americans — Blackhorse, Phillip Glover, Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Jillian Pappan and Courtney Tsotigh, members of American Indian tribes in Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, Nebraska, and Florida — are the second group to mount a challenge to the team’s trademark protection. The first group was led by Suzan Shown Harjo, who filed a petition in 1992. The patent office ruled in the group’s favor, but the Redskins appealed in federal court and won on a technicality: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Harjo and the other plaintiffs had waited too long after turning 18 to complain about the Redskins name. But the court did not rule on whether the team name was disparaging. In the new case, Blackhorse and the other defendants filed their petition in 2006 when they were in their late teens and early 20s, ages considered early enough to file their grievances. They argue that federal trademark law bars the patent office from registering trademarks that “may disparage” groups or individuals. The law enables people to petition the office if they’ve been injured by a trademark and feel it was unlawfully awarded.
This is an old battle, but given the level of racial tension in America right now, it's more relevant than ever. Back in June, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the Redskins trademark registration, citing concerns that the branding was disparaging toward Native Americans. (Federal trademark law prohibits registration of trademarks that “may disparage” or bring individuals or groups "into contempt or disrepute.”) In the board's decision, it said that although many Native Americans do not find the trademark to be disparaging, it based its decision on whether or not there was evidence "that a substantial composite of the Native American population found the term ‘Redskins’ to be disparaging when the respective registrations [were] issued.”

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Posted by Andrew Branca on November 25, 2014 91 Comments
As promised, the transcripts of the Ferguson Grand Jury have been released to the public. That's the good news. The bad news is that the transcripts amount to 4,799 pages. That's not a typo: four thousand, seven hundred and ninety-nine pages. So, it's going to take a little time to work through and present in a useful form here. In this post I present the narrative of Police Officer Darren Wilson as he recounts to the Grand Jury his encounter with Mike Brown. I do so in abridged form, meaning that I've stripped out other people's statements to make the narrative more concise and easier to read. All of the text provided is, however, exactly as presented in the official transcript (baring, perhaps, an occasional typo here or there.) To make this more than a mere re-packaging of the official transcript, I suggest it might be a useful exercise as you read through Wilson's narrative to ask yourself whether it meets the required five elements of the law of self-defense. (Strictly speaking, just four of those elements apply, as there is no duty to retreat for a police officer in the performance of his duties.)  These four elements, then, are:
  • Innocence: Wilson must not have been the unlawful physical aggressor.
  • Imminence: Wilson must have been facing a threat that is either about to occur right now, or is in actual progress.
  • Proportionality: To be justified in the use of deadly force in self-defense Wilson must have been facing a threat of death or grave bodily harm.
  • Reasonableness:  Wilson's perceptions, decisions, and actions must have been those of a reasonable and prudent police officer in the same circumstances, with the same capabilities, possessing the same specialized knowledge, and under the same stresses of an existential fight.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 25, 2014 22 Comments
When I was eight years old, my family took a road trip to St. Louis to visit friends and see the sights. Among our touristy stops was a visit to Grant's Farm where we saw the Budweiser Clydesdales. I remember being in awe of the huge beasts with hairy hooves. I still have a little stuffed Clydesdale that sits on a shelf at my parent's house. The Clydesdale commercials are one of the few, if not the only long-running ad I always looked forward to. Sadly, the Clydesdales will no longer be the sole hallmark of Anheuser Busch. Evidently, 44% of 21-27 year old drinkers have never tried the red label Budweiser. According to The Wall Street Journal, it's not just the younger drinkers who've caused a decline in Budweiser sales. Light beer, craft beer, cider, and other malt beverages are the biggest culprits. The WSJ reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 25, 2014 8 Comments
On November 25, 2001, the first American was killed in the Afghan war, during a prisoner uprising in northern Afghanistan. He was a CIA special operations officer.  His name was Johnny "Mike" Spann.  His story is not told often enough. We have written of Mike Spann several times before, each one documenting a different aspect of his life and family he left behind: (Family of Mike Spann at cemetery) Here's a brief description of his story:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 13 Comments
The Obama Administration may think the Benghazi controversy is settled, but for House Republicans, the fight for transparency has just begun. House Speaker John Boehner announced today that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) will continue to chair the Select Committee on the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, during the next session of Congress. From the Speaker's Office:
“On September 11, 2012, four Americans were killed in a brutal terrorist attack in Libya. Two years later, the American people still have far too many questions about what happened that night – and why. That’s why I will reappoint Rep. Trey Gowdy and the Republican members of the House Select Committee to investigate the events in Benghazi in the 114th Congress. I look forward to the definitive report Chairman Gowdy and the Select Committee will present to the American people.”
This move comes in the wake of backlash suffered by the House Intelligence Committee, whose recently declassified report claims that Obama Administration officials were not directly responsible for the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Although Democrats say that the Benghazi committee is redundant given the contents of the report, Republicans in both chambers are convinced there's more to the story:

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Posted by David Gerstman on November 25, 2014 2 Comments
It's interesting to see headlines that the P5+1 talks in Vienna about Iran's nuclear program were called a failure. On one very important level they were a success. No there was no agreement on a long term deal to roll back Iran's nuclear program. But there was an agreement to extend the Joint Plan of Action allowing Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure in place and receive up to seven more months of sanctions relief. In other words for Iran, the negotiations were a tremendous success. Here's the Wall Street Journal (Google link):

Posted by Mike LaChance on November 25, 2014 54 Comments
The Ferguson verdict is in: No indictment. The people who deserve the most sympathy in Ferguson are the parents of Michael Brown who lost their son. That makes them the biggest losers and I mean that in a sympathetic way. The second biggest loser in Ferguson is the liberal media which flocked to the scene and stoked racial bias. Now that the facts are in, they look like complete fools. I mean that in a non-sympathetic way. The third biggest loser in Ferguson is President Obama who made a hasty statement on the situation which opened with these words:
First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.
We are? Really? Watch Obama's statement below:

Posted by Amy Miller on November 25, 2014 39 Comments
Last night's grand jury verdict vindicating officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown sent the people of Ferguson, Missouri into a tailspin. Even as the verdict was being read, reports began to trickle in of vandalism, looting, and violence against police officers attempting to keep the peace.
The racially charged case in Ferguson has inflamed tensions and reignited debates over police-community relations even in cities hundreds of miles from the predominantly black St. Louis suburb. For many staging protests Monday, the shooting was personal, calling to mind other galvanizing encounters with local law enforcement. Police departments in several major cities said they were bracing for large demonstrations with the potential for the kind of violence that marred nightly protests in Ferguson after Brown's killing. Demonstrators there vandalized police cars, hugged barricades and taunted officers with expletives Monday night while police fired smoke canisters and pepper spray. Gunshots were heard on the streets.
(added) Mark Levin notes how the lawlessness is a symptom, not the cause:
Ferguson burns and violence has been unleashed thanks to the reckless liberal media, the lawless administration (especially Eric Holder) exploiting the shooting to smear police departments across the nation, phony civil rights demagogues, race-baiting politicians, and radical hate groups.

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 24, 2014 29 Comments
As has been widely anticipated for weeks, the Ferguson MO Grand Jury has DECLINED to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of black adult Michael Brown. This result has not been unexpected, as the overwhelming weight of both the eye witness and forensic evidence has been entirely consistent with Officer Wilson's narrative of self-defense, including:
  • Wilson being attacked by Brown and his accomplice Dorian Johnson in his patrol vehicle
  • a struggle over Wilson's service pistol
  • shots fired inside the vehicle (which forensic examination confirmed caused a contact gun shot wound to Brown's right hand)
  • the temporary flight of Brown upon those initial gunshots
  • the return of the 292 pound Brown re-engage the much smaller officer
  • the firing of additional defensive rounds as necessary to halt Brown's violence
In contrast, the narratives put forward that might have favored an indictment were serially changed as each was proven inconsistent with the evidence:
  • Brown was shot in the back (there are no gun shot wounds to Brown's back, and contrary to bulk of eye witness testimony)
  • Brown had his hands raised in surrender (inconsistent with forensics and bulk of eye witness testimony)
  • Brown was on his knees when Wilson simply executed him (inconsistent with forensics and bulk of eye witness testimony)

Posted by Amy Miller on November 24, 2014 21 Comments
The tech community is rallying in an effort to convince the Supreme Court to review a federal court decision granting copyright protection to APIs (application programming interfaces.) A few years ago, tech giant Oracle sued Google when Google's engineers used Java APIs to build the Android operating system. Although Google designed its own original programs, it based those programs off of the original Java APIs so that independent developers could create apps and programs for use on Android phones. Pause button. If everything I just said sounded like Greek, the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained in their press release about their request to SCOTUS how APIs work:
Generally speaking, APIs are specifications that allow programs to communicate with each other. So when you type a letter in a word processor, and hit the print command, you are using an API that lets the word processor talk to the printer driver, even though they were written by different people. The brief explains that the freedom to re-implement and extend existing APIs has been the key to competition and progress in both hardware and software development. It made possible the emergence and success of many robust industries we now take for granted—for example, mainframes, PCs, and workstations/servers—by ensuring that competitors could challenge established players and advance the state of the art.
After Google released its Android OS, Oracle sued Google for patent and copyright infringement. A California judge rejected the claim, saying that an API is essentially a "process or method" that allows different computer programs to talk to one another. (Source code, on the other hand, is treated like a literary work and is covered under copyright laws.) A federal circuit appeals court disagreed with the analysis and overturned the decision, instead holding that APIs are copyrightable, upending years of industry practice and sending the tech community into a frenzy. Is this a niche issue? Yes. Is it an important niche issue? Absolutely. From the perspective of a computer scientist or developer, this decision threatens their very ability to create anything new:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 24, 2014 107 Comments
Today may be the day you and the rioters have been waiting for. The Grand Jury reportedly has reached a decision whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown. But the decision has not yet been announced yet. That is expected to come sometime today. You can follow the Twitter stream at the bottom of the post. We will embed a live video feed when available. The announcement could come at any time.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 24, 2014 5 Comments
I already have demonstrated in great detail how the narrative being peddled by supporters of Rasmea Odeh is demonstrably false and distorted, Rasmea Odeh rightly convicted of Israeli supermarket bombing and U.S. immigration fraud. For those of you who are not familiar, Odeh was recently convicted of immigration fraud in Detroit federal court for failing to disclose on her visa and naturalization papers her conviction and imprisonment in Israel for planting a bomb in 1969 in a Jerusalem supermarket killing two students, and related offenses, including an attempted bombing of the British consulate. The immigration case was open and shut. The conviction and imprisonment were indisputable facts, and Odeh falsely answered "No" to clear questions asking if she had "EVER" (caps in original) been convicted or imprisoned. Instead of defending the claims, Odeh's defense team and supporters tried to turn the case into a verdict on the Middle East dispute. The Judge did not allow it. Once of the most egregious, yet typical, descriptions about the background of the case was published on November 22 in Truthout, by Dahr Jamail, Rasmea Odeh: Victim of Institutional Oppression, From Israel to the US. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27590-tortured-and-raped-by-israel-persecuted-and-imprisoned-by-the-united-states# While most of the article is just conspiracy and oppression theories, the factual introduction is demonstrably inaccurate [my responses based on the documents in my prior post are bold and in brackets]:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 24, 2014 29 Comments
It's not like this was unexpected. Chuck Hagel long has become the fall guy for Obama administration international failures, as we first noted in connection with the Taliban-Bergdahl swap, Taliban-Bergdahl swap unpopular, so … blame Hagel. The lone Republican in the cabinet, Hagel was supposed to lend credibility to Obama's downsizing of the military and retreat from international engagement. Hagel recently announced a realignment and refocus of the military, including some expanded capabilities. Now Hagel is resigning under pressure, according to numerous media reports. Via NBC News:
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down amid criticism of the president’s national security team on a series of global issues, including the threat posed by the militant group known as ISIS. Senior defense officials confirmed to NBC News Monday that Hagel was forced to resign. The officials say the White House has lost confidence in Hagel to carry out his role at the Pentagon. According to one senior official, “He wasn’t up to the job.” Another senior administration official said that Hagel has been discussing a departure from the White House "for several weeks."
More to follow.

Posted by Amy Miller on November 24, 2014 38 Comments
In the 2003 barnburner Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a statute that in part stated that the act of burning a cross constituted prima facie evidence of an intent to intimidate a person or group. Writing for the majority, Justice O'Connor said that "just as a State may regulate only that obscenity which is the most obscene due to its prurient content, so too may a State choose to prohibit only those forms of intimidation that are most likely to inspire fear of bodily harm." Next week, the Supreme Court will be asked to apply this standard to speech in a new and controversial venue: a man's Facebook timeline. Anthony D. Elonis was sentenced to four years in federal prison after a court determined that violent rants posted to his personal Facebook page constituted a "true threat" to his estranged wife, former coworkers, and even a federal agent. The Washington Post has the background:
About a week after Tara Elonis convinced a judge to issue a protective order against her estranged husband, Anthony, her soon-to-be ex had this to say:
“Fold up your PFA [protection-from-abuse order] and put it in your pocket Is it thick enough to stop a bullet?”
... He was fired after co-workers interpreted one of his Facebook postings as a threat to them. He responded: ““Someone once told me that I was a firecracker. Nah, I’m a nuclear bomb and Dorney Park just f----- with the timer.” ... In other postings, Elonis suggested that his son dress as “Matricide” for Halloween, with his wife’s “head on a stick” as a prop. He pondered making a name for himself by shooting up an elementary school and noted that there were so many nearby to choose from — “hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a kindergarten class.”
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