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Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 03, 2014 12 Comments
Martha Robertson's fundraising cloud just won't go away in her challenge to Republican Tom Reed in NY-23. Robertson raised funds based on the claim that GOP operatives were caught trying to take down her website during a critical fundraising period. She never has come forward with any proof, and broke her promise to hire a forensic computing investigator to find the evidence. The local media is becoming increasingly frustrated with Robertson's dodging the issue, as we mentioned yesterday. Today Robertson was named to the prestigious "Red to Blue" list by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as reported in the Buffalo News:
Martha Robertson, the Democrat who's challenging Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, this fall, got a big boost Monday when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee named her to its "Red to Blue" program -- signaling that she's one of the top Democratic House challengers in the country. The Democratic campaign committee selects challengers for the Red to Blue program when they've shown strong ability to raise funds, build a campaign and present a credible alternative to voters.
Martha Robertson Red To Blue Tweet 3-3-2014

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Posted by Bryan Jacoutot on March 03, 2014 3 Comments
You may have heard about the upcoming Supreme Court case of Sebellius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
On November 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., a case arising out of commitment of the Green family, the sole owners of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., to live out their deeply held religious convictions by “operating their company in a manner consistent with biblical principles.” These principles were put to the test when the federal government mandated that the Greens and their family businesses provide four specific potentially life-terminating drugs and devices through their employee health plan in conflict with their deeply held religious convictions. While the Green family has no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved drugs and devices that are part of the federal mandate, providing drugs or devices that have the potential to terminate a life conflicts with their faith. Accordingly, the Greens and their family businesses filed suit in September 2012 to defend their right to religious freedom under the Constitution and federal law. Throughout, the Greens have been assisted and represented in the legal case by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit, public-interest legal and educational institute with a mission to protect the free expression of all faiths.
The case is scheduled to be decided by the Supreme Court by the end of the June term. Apart from the legal work being done on Hobby Lobby’s behalf, the company has also engaged in a fairly strong public relations campaign. They’ve created a number a videos, featured on YouTube and their website, including this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4pL32qQ_3k Hobby Lobby also appears to be engaging in a very active Twitter campaign to help control the narrative — to the extent possible — about their impending case.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on March 03, 2014 31 Comments
President Obama has been meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. From the Washington Post:
Seeking to salvage an elusive Middle East peace plan, President Barack Obama pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday to make the “tough decisions” needed to move forward on talks with the Palestinians.But facing a U.S.-imposed April deadline, the Israeli leader declared pessimistically that, “Israel has been doing its part and, I regret to say, the Palestinians have not.” Obama and Netanyahu spoke before an Oval Office meeting on a snowy Monday in Washington. The meeting marked a more direct foray by Obama into the peace negotiations, which he has so far largely ceded to Secretary of State John Kerry.
Barak Ravid, a correspondent with Haaretz Newspaper, posted tweets from the event - a handful are included below.  (Video added -- Transcript here)

Posted by A.F. Branco on March 03, 2014 4 Comments

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 03, 2014 5 Comments

Hi Professor, My husband and I spotted this pickup truck in Kingsland, Camden County, Georgia today. Thought you'd enjoy the bumper stickers. I don't know who he is, but he's a man after my own heart! We both enjoy your blog tremendously. Thank you for all you do. God...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 02, 2014 5 Comments
In early October, 2013, Legal Insurrection broke the story of a claim by Martha Robertson, the Emily's List-backed Democratic challenger in NY-23, that GOP operatives were caught trying to take down her website during a crucial fundraising period last fall. The District is a key priority for both parties, and money is pouring in from around the country. The District leans Republican, but Democrats are hopeful they can pull a rabbit out of a hat here because of the large liberal vote in the Ithaca area. It's a Wendy Davis strategy -- get out the base in the liberal areas, and hope others stay home. Robertson never has provided any evidence of such hacking, but promised to hire a forensic computer expert to provide the proof. Then Robertson broke that promise, and said she would not be hiring an expert. Jazz Shaw at Hot Air had a write up on Robertson's fundraising problem,Could NY-23 Dem candiate have (gasp) lied about GOP cyberattack? The claim of GOP hacking appears to have been false. The type of disruption her campaign described was the type of routine server issue almost every website experiences, and there is no evidence of any actual disruption. Rather than come clean, admit the error, and offer to refund donations to people who received the false solicitation, the Robertson campaign is in shutdown mode on the issue. They have not returned my inquiries for months, and now are dodging the major local media outlets. When the local Republican Party filed an election complaint recently, the Robertson campaign still refused media inquiries.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 02, 2014 21 Comments
Jeffrey Goldberg has carved out what for a journalist covering the Middle East is an enviable niche -- vigorously pro-Israel yet not anti-Obama. When Bibi Netanyahu lectured Obama on the Middle East in a White House press conference in 2011, Goldberg leapt to Obama's defense with the following declaration:
Dear Mr. Netanyahu, Please Don’t Speak to My President That Way
That niche is why Goldberg landed an interview with Obama on the eve of Netanyahu's visit to the White House, detailed in Goldberg's column today, Obama to Israel -- Time Is Running Out. The interview is best described as preparing the public for what is to come: The Obama administration twisting Bibi's arm off as to John Kerry's "framework" under the threat of the U.S. stepping aside from defending Israel against the worldwide, decades-long lawfare and boycott movement. It's the same threat John Kerry made several weeks ago, but now it's coming from Obama's own lips, as Goldberg noted (emphasis added):
On the subject of Middle East peace, Obama told me that the U.S.'s friendship with Israel is undying, but he also issued what I took to be a veiled threat: The U.S., though willing to defend an isolated Israel at the United Nations and in other international bodies, might soon be unable to do so effectively. “If you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction -- and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time,” Obama said. “If Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.”
For Goldberg to characterize Obama's statement as a "veiled threat" is pretty significant. To me, it wasn't a veiled threat, it was just a threat.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on March 02, 2014 16 Comments

An attorney for Lois Lerner says the former Internal Revenue Service official still intends to continue to assert her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Oversight committee, despite earlier claims from a top GOP lawmaker Sunday that she would testify this week. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.),...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 02, 2014 10 Comments
Friday and Saturday was the super-secret, closed-door BDS organizing conference held by NYU's American Studies Department under the direction of Lisa Duggan, an NYU Prof. and incoming President of the American Studies Association. Duggan, a big supporter of the anti-Israel academic boycott, apparently did not want dissenting voices present: duggan The agenda was stacked with anti-Israel professors. The lunchtime program explicitly was oriented toward organizing anti-Israeli groups on campus, including an appearance by someone from Students for Justice in Palestine. NYU American Studies Conference February 28 2014 part poster The conference was controversial not just because of the topic, but the one-sided stacking of the deck by an academic department and the exclusion of non-approved attendees. The event was not even open to all NYU students. A group of NYU students wrote a letter of protest to NYU's President, which reads in part:
From the beginning, this event has been shrouded in secrecy; Professor Lisa Duggan, the event’s sponsor (in a post that has now been removed) cautioned, “PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer. We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention.”

Posted by Bryan Jacoutot on March 02, 2014 22 Comments
Deep blue Maryland was quick to accept the federal dollars offered for Medicaid expansion as a result of the passage of Obamacare. It has become a common theme among Democrats to blame the failures of Obamacare on Republican unwillingness to accept the law. It seems, however, that even the most ardent supporters of Obamacare can’t save the law from its inherent flaws. Indeed, apart from the federal healthcare rollout debacle, we’ve seen blue states that wholeheartedly embraced Obamacare share in a litany of procedural and substantive follies of their own. HotAir recently reported on one such case in Maryland.
The situation is bad enough that this essentially one-party state has devolved into a fight over whether they should abandon their $100 million dysfunctional site for the federal site, and Democrats running for governor are whacking each other with its failure.
The Washington Post also reported on the clear failure,
Maryland was one of 14 states that chose to build their own health-insurance marketplaces to implement President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which politicians and residents in the state strongly support. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) boasted that the marketplace and the Web site Marylanders would use to access it would be among the best in the country. But the site failed within minutes of its Oct. 1 launch, blocking residents who were trying to get health insurance. The system has limped along since then. Ultimately, state officials say, they may have to rely at least partially on the federal health-care Web site or on sites operated by other states.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 02, 2014 5 Comments
Laurel will have more later on how Israeli Apartheid Week on U.S. campuses appears to have withered this year. This nasty hate fest, that in past years has generated a lot of energy and publicity, has passed largely unnoticed in the U.S. There have been some events, but mostly the wind seems to be out of the sail. I don't know whether this is a sign of weakness in the BDS movement overall, or if they just are too busy planning other stunts. I could not wait, however, to bring you this video from the Sussex (England) Friends of Israel about the failure of a BDS march. There are many more videos at this link.
Post by Sussex Friends Of Israel.
Meet one of the protesters:

Posted by David Gerstman on March 02, 2014 56 Comments
Please see Mandy for more coverage of the crisis here. As Brian and Neo have previously posted, during the 2012 campaign Mitt Romney was mocked by President Obama and his cheerleaders for highlighting the Russian threat to American interests. Romney wasn't the first Republican mocked for suggesting that Obama wasn't ready or willing to stand up to Russia's leader. In 2008, vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin warned of Russian troops invading the Ukraine.
In October 2008, after Russia's invasion of neighboring Georgia emerged as a foreign policy flashpoint in the homestretch of a heated campaign, Palin told an audience in Nevada, "After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next." Her prediction was derided by Foreign Policy magazine  as "strange" and "extremely far-fetched," but Palin, frequent media antagonist that she is, couldn't resist crowing about how events have played out.
Twitchy, it seems, never forgets. (In this case aided by Jammie Wearing Fool.) Gov. Palin is enjoying the vindication on Facebook.
Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I'm usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as “an extremely far-fetched scenario” by the “high-brow” Foreign Policy magazine.
Twitchy (again) notes that the editor in question is digging deeper.

Hounshell_Palin_2014-03-02_064752

Earning himself an appropriate rebuke.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on March 02, 2014 18 Comments
At least 29 people were killed Saturday after assailants wielding knives stormed a train station in southwestern China, in what has been described as "an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack." From the Associated Press via ABC News:

More than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives at a train station in southern China in what state media said Sunday was a terrorist assault by ethnic separatists from the far west. Twenty-nine slash victims and four attackers were killed and 143 people wounded.

Police fatally shot four of the assailants, captured one and were searching for the others following the attack late Saturday at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. State broadcaster CCTV said two of the attackers were women — one of the slain and the one who was captured and later brought to a hospital for treatment.

Witnesses described assailants dressed in black storming the train station and slashing people indiscriminately with large knives and machetes.

Student Qiao Yunao, 16, was waiting to catch a train at the station when people starting crying out and running, and then saw a man cut another man's neck, drawing blood.

"I was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were running in there to take refuge," she told The Associated Press via Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog. "I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could."

"It was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities," reported China's official Xinhua news agency.  The identities of the attackers reportedly killed had not yet been confirmed.   Additional reports described the scene at the time of the attack, based on witness accounts.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 01, 2014 11 Comments
On this second anniversary of Andrew Breitbart's death, Legal Insurrection and others are remembering Andrew. Some of Andrew's enemies in life, however, continue their efforts in his death. I seriously thought about not calling attention to such people, but that would be a cop out. At the Breitbart Awards in Providence in 2012, the only blogger conference I've attended so far, numerous people spoke to how Andrew thought of himself as the point man in the movement, the person who drew the fire so that others didn't have to. It's important to remember what and who Andrew faced. When I scrolled through a Twitter search for Andrew Breitbart's name, I saw a tweet by Max Blumenthal referring to Andrew reaching his "tweet limit" and linking to an article by Blumenthal from May 2013 mocking how "it was convenient that Breitbart's heart exploded when it did...." I didn't remember what the beef was between Andrew and Blumenthal. So I did a search and found this video by Lee Doren (via an Erick Erickson post) explaining the whole incident and confrontation at CPAC 2010:

Posted by New Neo on March 01, 2014 38 Comments
NOTE: for previous coverage of the situation in Ukraine/Crimea, you can follow this live coverage post. Putin is no doubt quaking in his boots at this warning issued by President Obama:
"We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine," Obama said in a hastily arranged public statement from the White House briefing room. "Just days after the world came to Russia for the Olympic games, it would invite the condemnation of nations around the world. And indeed, the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine," the president warned.
Costs...costs...what could they be? Here are some possibilities:
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