Who's really in charge?...
Political cover from Republican war hero....
In the governor’s race, Abbott would beat Davis 47 percent to 36 percent in a general election held today, with 17 percent of registered voters saying they have not made up their minds about which candidate to support, according to the poll. “We’ve been talking since the beginning of this race about whether anything would be different, and we’re not seeing anything that’s different,” said Jim Henson, co-director of the poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “There was some talk about how Davis had done better in our last poll, and that was partially an artifact of her rise in the fall, and we’re seeing something of a reassertion of the normal pattern.” In the October survey, Davis’ announcement and sudden political celebrity cut the Republican's lead over her to 6 percentage points. Now, the distance between the two has widened a bit. “The story of the last four months is, Davis loses a couple points, Abbott gains a couple of points,” said Daron Shaw, co-director of the poll and a professor of government at UT-Austin. “He had a pretty good couple of months. She had a pretty bad couple of months, all without many people paying attention.”The details are even more disheartening for Davis, as her unfavorables have grown from 31 to 35%, with a whopping 28% very unfavorable. By contrast, Abbott's unfavorables are at 25% with only 16% very unfavorable:
Moreover, when viewed in the light of the core values of the Left—and, indeed, much of the contemporary Right—Israel actually comes off remarkably well; often much better than its most violent critics. These values are summed up by the great slogan of the French Revolution: “liberté, egalité, fraternité,” “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Israel’s record with respect to these core values ranks among the best in the world, while that of its principal enemies, the Arab nations, is dismal. Indeed, Israel’s record is in some cases better even than its European and other Western critics. Because this record is often obscured in the angry polemics against Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, it is worth examining it in depth.One thing Muravchik mentions is the record of Israel's Arab enemies. It's indeed something worth looking into. However there's also the record of Iran, Israel's major non-Arab enemy that's worth examining. The liberal (or leftist) world has made a cause of reaching out to Iran. In doing so the Left ignores the way Iran violates many of its cherished values. I'd like to look at a few of these issues.
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...
A clear majority of Americans, 59%, still view Hillary Clinton favorably a year after she left her post as secretary of state. Clinton's current rating is noticeably lower than the 64% she averaged while serving in President Barack Obama's cabinet. The last time she had a higher unfavorable than favorable rating in the U.S. was in February 2008, when she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Obama. The latest findings come from a Gallup poll conducted Feb. 6-9.At the time Clinton signed on as Secretary of State under Obama, it was hard to understand. Those of us who thought it was a bad decision (in the political sense) on her part seem to have been wrong. She is a very smart political animal, and apparently she rightly ascertained that it was only her temporary opposition to the Great Obama that had made her look bad, and that if she joined him it would burnish her image. And so it has, no matter what she actually did while in his Cabinet, because what she did was every bit as awful as what Obama did, and she did it as his underling. Somehow, though, that seems to have helped her in the minds of the American public. Her favorability rating is a great deal higher than his right now. Here's her favorability chart over time:
The shooter was black and the victim white, but there's a big legal difference from Zimmerman and Dunn: In Maryland there is a legal duty to retreat....
After voting Saturday to remove President Viktor Yanukovich from office, Ukraine’s Parliament on Sunday named its speaker to serve as acting President. From Reuters: The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, the closest confidante of freed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, was temporarily handed the role of president on...
[I]t is Katrina’s incredible story that should make her so valuable and inspiring to a Republican Party seeking to reach more Americans. Born into poverty, Pierson’s mother was only 15-years-old and her upbringing was certainly less than ideal. When she got into trouble as a young adult after a friend encouraged her to shoplift, she was caught and didn’t have much hope. But instead of giving in, she saw a fork in the road. She had a choice of taking the easy flat road or climbing the hill, taking a more winding and challenging road. She could have taken the flat road that led to the cyclical dependency on government, but instead she gave it her all. She wanted to give her child a life better than what she had. She put herself through college and earned a degree in biology. Most recently, she worked as a healthcare administrator at a level I trauma hospital. Soon, she will be sending her son, who is now 17 years old, off to college. Katrina did what we would all hope to do when faced with adversity. She overcame.Pierson has already received some high profile endorsements from the Tea Party movement, including Sarah Palin, who called Pierson a “feisty fighter for freedom.”
The Apartheid accusation is false at every level, and was a deliberate propaganda strategy devised at the anti-Semitic Durban NGO conference in 2001.
Here's what the late Congressman Tom Lantos observed at that Durban conference (emphasis added):
Another ring in the Durban circus was the NGO forum, taking place just outside the conference center. Although the NGO proceedings were intended to provide a platform for the wide range of civil society groups interested in the conference’s conciliatory mission, the forum quickly became stacked with Palestinian and fundamentalist Arab groups. Each day, these groups organized anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rallies around the meetings, attracting thousands. One flyer which was widely distributed showed a photograph of Hitler and the question “What if I had won?” The answer: “There would be NO Israel…” At a press conference held by Jewish NGO’s to discuss their concerns with the direction the conference was taking, an accredited NGO, the Arab Lawyers Union, distributed a booklet filled with anti-Semitic caricatures frighteningly like those seen in the Nazi hate literature printed in the 1930s. Jewish leaders and I who were in Durban were shocked at this blatant display of anti-Semitism. For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the official NGO document that was later adopted by a majority of the 3,000 NGOs in the forum branded Israel a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide” and called for an end to its “racist crimes” against Palestinians…."Israel Apartheid Week" as part of the BDS movement is the direct by-product of the Durban anti-Jewish hatred -- a history few of its participants probably realize. In reality, Israel is nothing like South Africa under Apartheid.
McGill student speaks out against Microaggression Mania...
Venezuelans on both sides of the nation's political divide took to the streets on Saturday after nearly two weeks of mass protests that have President Nicolas Maduro scrambling to reassert his leadership of this economically stricken country.Maduro meanwhile has been highly critical of the United States and media organizations over the course of the crisis. From AFP via Yahoo News:In Caracas, tens of thousands of opponents of President Nicolas Maduro filled several city blocks in their biggest rally to date against Maduro's 10-month-old government. Across town, a mostly female crowd of government backers gathered in T-shirts and baseball caps, forming a sea of red — the color of Maduro's Socialist party.
The dueling protests capped a violent week in which a government crackdown jailed hard-line opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and dozens of other activists. The violence also left at least nine people dead on both sides and injured at least 100 others.
Venezuelans woke up Saturday to smoldering barricades of trash and other debris in the streets of some major cities, but there were no reports of major violence. Protesters have called on Maduro to either resolve problems such as rising crime and galloping inflation or step aside.
Try getting the image out of your head....
Another week of college antics, political correctness and general lunacy in the place we call “Higher Education”...
The President of Ukraine has fled Kiev but it is unclear if he has resigned. (UPDATE: Refuses to resign, calls protests a facsist coup d'etat.)
BREAKING: Ukraine's president says he won't resign and likens country's political crisis to Nazis' rise.
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 22, 2014BREAKING: Ukraine’s Parliament has voted unanimously Saturday to remove President Viktor Yanukovych from office.
http://t.co/dQAIz7kc95
— CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2014FIRST PHOTO: Yulia #Tymoshenko after release from prison http://t.co/urSnW60PHK pic.twitter.com/ZFv11ase7q
— RT (@RT_com) February 22, 2014Ukraine security chiefs signal allegiance to protesters The heads of four Ukrainian security bodies, including the police's Berkut anti-riot units, appeared in parliament on Saturday and declared they would not take part in any conflict with the people. They represented the paratroop unit of the military, the Berkut anti-riot police, Alfa special operations unit and military intelligence. The Interior Ministry had already signalled its allegiance to anti-government protests under a new minister from the ranks of the opposition.The former Prime Minister and key opposition leader (background here) is to be freed from prison, via Sky News:
Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is set for release as part of political decisions taken at an emergency session of parliament in Kiev. Initial reports claimed she had already been freed, but these were later clarified by aide Natasha Lysova who said the parliamentary decision meant she must be freed immediately. AFP news agency, quoting opposition MP Mykola Katerynchuk, reported President Viktor Yanukovich had promised to resign over the conflict.In an ominous sign, reflecting that there are anti-Semitic elements in the opposition (as we previously noted), the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine has urged Jews to flee, as reported by Haaretz:
