Mideast Media Sampler 12/20/2103 - Iran continues enriching...
From frequent photographer Ulises: The sticker on top say “You can give peace a chance, we’ll cover you if it doesn’t work out”. For some reason this sticker does not come out really well in pictures, but here it goes. Now, the one on the bottom is...
Just a word of thanks to Legal Insurrection readers. The pushback against the anti-Israel academic boycott is gaining momentum. An increasing number of universities and University Presidents are stating their positions against the boycott. Not a single university or major academic group has come out for...
Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Gantt told his wife to remarry if he didn’t come back from the war. She told him no. He had a hard enough time getting her to say yes. He was it. For 63 years, the World War II and Korean War veteran was missing in action and presumed dead, but Clara Gantt, 94, held out hope and never remarried. On a cold, dark Friday morning on the Los Angeles International Airport tarmac, the widow stood from her wheelchair and cried as her husband’s flag-draped casket arrived home. “I am very, very proud of him. He was a wonderful husband, an understanding man,” she told TV reporters at the airport. “I always did love my husband, we was two of one kind, we loved each other. And that made our marriage complete.” Joseph Gantt joined the Army in 1942 and served in the South Pacific during WWII. He met his wife on a train from Texas to Los Angeles in 1946 and they married two years later. They had no children.
Thanks for your email to President Eisgruber about the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israel. In correspondence with Princeton alumni who have asked about the boycott, President Eisgruber has said,I share your dismay at the American Studies Association's misguided boycott. Academic boycotts are almost always bad policy--scholarly engagement helps to sustain and build liberal democratic values. For that reason, among others, I believe that Princeton should continue to work constructively with scholars and institutions throughout the world, whether one admires or dislikes the government under which they operate. And, whatever one thinks of boycotts in general, to single out Israel alone is indefensible.
Institutional members help to insure the continuity, development, and enhanced usefulness of a dynamic, professional, scholarly organization dedicated to broadening and intensifying the study of American life and civilization. They help to promote interdisciplinary activity and programs, working toward the lowering of rigid barriers of approach and technique, and the cooperation of scholars in various disciplines in a vital, international field of study. Institutional members also help to stimulate intellectual and professional activity among their own faculty. We depend on institutional dues to carry on many of our current activities and to develop new programs and services.Willamette University is listed as one of the Insitutional Members of ASA in the ASA Quartely and Annual Meeting materials. Stephen Thorsett, President of Willamette University, communicating with a Legal Insurrection reader, rejected the boycott and indicated that Willamette was unaware of its Institutional Membership. Here is the exchange, in part (emphasis added):
Executive Committee Statement signed by Presidents of UT-Austin, U. Penn, Tulane, Duke, UC-Irvine, U. Kansas, U. Pittsburgh, Northwestern, Michigan State, and Cornell....
That's the take away from today's press conference, which still is in progress as of this writing. So Democrats should run on it in 2014. https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/414123765698945024 https://twitter.com/AceofSpadesHQ/status/414127598596149248 https://twitter.com/charliespiering/status/414127354651213824 https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/414127417658470401...
Thank you for your email expressing your concern about the recent vote of the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli universities. Please see below my formal statement about this unfortunate action by the ASA.I am disappointed and concerned that the American Studies Association, invoking the principle of academic freedom, would vote to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Research, teaching, and scholarship flourish through robust exchange of ideas, across borders and among institutions in different parts of the world. Universities and their faculties can often transcend even profound political differences. It is ill-advised to make academic institutions the instrument with which to promote a political agenda by attempting to isolate students and scholars. Boston University cannot support this boycott.I hope that there will be a serious discussion within our American and New England Studies Program which has an institutional membership in the ASA which, obviously, is funded by the University. This institutional membership does not come with a vote that is exercised by either the program or the University. The poll taken by the ASA represents the votes of individual members of the organization. We are not prepared to suggest (implicitly or explicitly) to faculty members who hold individual memberships (some of which are funded out of professional funds allocated to individual faculty members) how they should vote. That would lead us onto a slippery slope. I do hope the faculty in the American and New England Studies Program will consider whether or not continuing membership in the ASA will create the opportunity for a temperate and thoughtful reconsideration of the wisdom of the boycott.
A jury on Thursday convicted two men who called themselves "soldiers of Allah" of murdering a British soldier who was run down with a car, stabbed to death and nearly decapitated in a brutal attack on a London street. The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for just 90 minutes before finding Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale guilty of murdering Fusilier Lee Rigby. They were acquitted of attempting to murder a police officer. Both men had pleaded not guilty to murder, though neither denied taking part in the May 22 attack. Neither defendant reacted as the jury foreman announced the verdicts. Adebolajo smiled and kissed a copy of the Quran as he was led down to the cells.
Here is a video timeline of what happened that murderous day:
The Obama administration said Thursday it would allow millions of Americans whose insurance policies had been canceled to purchase bare-bones plans next year, in another 11th-hour tweak to the law likely to cause consternation among health insurers. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a group of six senators in a letter that people whose policies had been canceled because of new requirements under the Affordable Care Act would be allowed to purchase "catastrophic" plans. Those plans previously had been restricted under the new law to people under the age of 30 or those who qualified for a set of specific hardship exemptions.Basically, this means they've expanded the definition of "hardship" to include "screwed by the Obamacare regulations." Come to think of it, that makes sense. In fact, though, it's even later than the eleventh hour. Many insurers are saying this move would amplify the chaos in an already chaotic situation. The Washington Post also reports:
The Obama administration on Thursday night significantly relaxed the rules of the federal health-care law for millions of consumers whose individual insurance policies have been canceled, saying they can buy bare-bones plans or entirely avoid a requirement that most Americans have health coverage. The surprise announcement, days before the Dec. 23 deadline for people to choose plans that will begin Jan. 1, triggered an immediate backlash from the health insurance industry and raised fairness questions about a law intended to promote affordable and comprehensive coverage on a widespread basisI have a question for Obama, Sebelius, and the rest: if the individual policies cancelled were such terrible "junk," why are you allowing those who originally had them to purchase a type of policy you defined as "junk" in the first place? Might it be because catastrophic insurance can sometimes be a valid choice for people, and not "junk" at all?
The Palestinians won't make peace unless they have something to lose....
A new documentary by a Rutgers University student focuses on the social media response to Superstorm Sandy. Elizabeth Herlihy, a senior journalism major, recently released "Sandy: A Social Media Storm," chronicling how individuals, media, elected officials, and small organizations leveraged social media to assist storm-ravaged shore communities. Herlihy, whose family lives at the shore, produced the documentary as part of the final requirement for her minor, "Digital Communication, Information and Media." "Through this minor, I have been able to explore various forms of new media and study its expanding role in our digital society," she said.
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 ...
Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. The prior high for big government was 65% in 1999 and 2000....
Out here in these woods, without any cameras around, Phil is free to say what he wants. Maybe a little too free. He’s got lots of thoughts on modern immorality, and there’s no stopping them from rushing out. Like this one: “It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.” ... What does repentance entail? Well, in Robertson’s worldview, America was a country founded upon Christian values (Thou shalt not kill, etc.), and he believes that the gradual removal of Christian symbolism from public spaces has diluted those founding principles. (He and Si take turns going on about why the Ten Commandments ought to be displayed outside courthouses.) He sees the popularity of Duck Dynasty as a small corrective to all that we have lost. “Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says. “Sin becomes fine.” What, in your mind, is sinful? “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”The attacks on him are focused on the claims that he compared homosexuality to beastiality. Professor Althouse argues that that is not true:
To: Christopher L. Eisgruber [[email protected]] CC: Martin A. Mbugna, Communications [[email protected]] Mary DeLorenzo, Asst. to the President [[email protected]] Dear President Eisgruber: Princeton University is an Institutional Member of the American Studies Association (ASA), contributing its good name and dues to the ASA, and also funding ASA indirectly through covering the cost of attending the ASA annual meeting. The ASA just adopted an academic boycott of Israel. The American Association of University Professors has rejected academic boycotts of Israel in general, and has rejected the ASA boycott specifically, on grounds of violation of academic freedom. The anti-Israel academic boycott also amounts to discrimination on the basis of national origin as Israeli academics will be subjected to verification procedures not applicable to academics from any other nation. The ASA boycott is pernicious because it includes boycott of programs run by Israeli academic institutions and encourages American academics to police compliance with the boycott. You can find an explantion in my prior post about the boycott.
