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Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2014 11 Comments
I guess this was a surprise to most people, including me, via Fox News:
Sen. Tom Coburn, one of Washington’s leading and most fiscally conservative lawmakers, announced Thursday he would be stepping down at the end of the year. The Republican from Oklahoma had previously announced he would not seek reelection but his latest comments have him leaving Congress two years sooner than he previously planned. Coburn has been suffering from a recurrence of prostate cancer and hinted about his departure during an interview with reporters last week. “Serving as Oklahoma’s senator has been, and continues to be, one of the great privileges and blessings of my life," said Coburn, 65. "But after much prayer and consideration, I have decided that I will leave my Senate seat at the end of this Congress."
He was best known for his Wastebook releases on absurd federal spending:

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2014 25 Comments
Obama just completed his speech on NSA reforms. Below the key video portion of the speech (full text here). I found this part to be a key dose of reality often lacking from the debate:
First, everyone who has looked at these problems, including skeptics of existing programs, recognizes that we have real enemies and threats, and that intelligence serves a vital role in confronting them. We cannot prevent terrorist attacks or cyber-threats without some capability to penetrate digital communications – whether it's to unravel a terrorist plot; to intercept malware that targets a stock exchange; to make sure air traffic control systems are not compromised; or to ensure that hackers do not empty your bank accounts. Moreover, we cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies. There is a reason why blackberries and I-Phones are not allowed in the White House Situation Room. We know that the intelligence services of other countries – including some who feign surprise over the Snowden disclosures – are constantly probing our government and private sector networks, and accelerating programs to listen to our conversations, intercept our emails, or compromise our systems. Meanwhile, a number of countries, including some who have loudly criticized the NSA, privately acknowledge that America has special responsibilities as the world's only superpower; that our intelligence capabilities are critical to meeting these responsibilities; and that they themselves have relied on the information we obtain to protect their own people.
Whether the "reforms" are meaningful in protecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans is another questions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2014 11 Comments
A total of 134 Members of the House of Representatives have signed a letter, organized by the offices of Reps. Peter Roksam (R) and Ted Deutch (D) condeming the academic boycott of Israel passed by the American Studies Assoction. The effort was truly bipartisan, with 65 Republicans and 69 Democrarts signing.  The full list of signatories is at the bottom of this post. As previously reported, the congressional organizers were hoping for 50 signatures, so the response was better than expected. Gathering signatures on short notice was difficult, one of the staffers explained to me, because of the press of House business before members left today on break. In a Press Release by the Office of Rep. Peter Roksam, the background of the letter was explained:
Today, a bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers condemned the American Studies Association’s (ASA) academic boycott of Israel. 134 Members of Congress, led by Reps. Peter Roskam (R-IL), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Doug Collins (R-GA), and Brad Schneider (D-IL), sent a letter to ASA President Curtis Marez opposing ASA’s boycott as bigoted and an affront to academic freedom. “We come together—Democrats and Republicans alike—to strongly condemn the ASA boycott, which undermines academic freedom and exhibits flagrant prejudice against the Jewish State of Israel,” said the House lawmakers. “This boycott doesn’t advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but only reinforces dangerous stereotypes that limit mutual understanding and cooperation—two things that should be at the very heart of our academic endeavors. We therefore cannot tolerate these ignorant smear campaigns to isolate Israel and deteriorate the historic U.S.-Israel relationship.”
The letter reads, in full:

Posted by David Gerstman on January 17, 2014 2 Comments
I never expected Ariel Sharon to be treated fairly by the mainstream media. I'd like to reiterate one point made by Prof. Jacobson in his post memorializing Sharon: Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was not the cause of the so-called Second Intifada. The New York Times obituary of Ariel Sharon gets it wrong:
Given how he had crushed the Palestinian guerrilla infrastructure in Gaza in the early 1970s, there was logic to his election. But there was a paradox, too. It was Mr. Sharon’s visit, in September 2000, accompanied by hundreds of Israeli police officers, to the holy site in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, that helped set off the riots that became the second Palestinian uprising.
Similarly, the Washington Post's obituary:

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Posted by Mandy Nagy on January 16, 2014 4 Comments

Several cybersecurity experts warned that security issues still persist on healthcare.gov, according to statements made to news outlets and in testimony provided to a Congressional panel on Thursday. From NBC News: Cybersecurity researchers slammed HealthCare.gov's security during a House hearing on Thursday, saying the site is still...

Posted by A.F. Branco on January 16, 2014 6 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 16, 2014 12 Comments
For those of you who have been reading Legal Insurrection since the early days, the name Bill Owens may be familiar. Owens won the 2009 special election in what then was the NY-23 District (since reconfigured and now NY-21) against the insurgent conservative candidate Doug Hoffman.  In a precursor to the Tea Party uprising, Hoffman ran as a third party candidate and was surging ahead of liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava in a traditionally Republican District. Robert Stacy McCain did extensive on-the-ground reporting on the race, and has a special emnity for mainstream Republican endorsements of Scozaffava from Newt Gingrich and others: Twitter RS McCain Hoffman The Hoffman surge also was a chance for Democrats to test the Tea Party Demonization strategy that continues to this day. Rather than allow the conservative to win, Scozzafava dropped out of the race and backed Democrat Owens.  The influential Watertown Times also switched its endorsement based on Owens' promise to keep bringing home federal port to the district, something Hoffman opposed as a fiscal conservative. Here are some posts from way back:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 16, 2014 23 Comments
There has been a mostly quiet refusal of county and local officials to implement and enforce the onerous provisions of the NY State gun law rushed through the state legislature in almost comical fashion after the Newtown, CT, school shooting. In the rush to legislate, the text of the law failed to exempt police and other law enforcement from limits on the number of rounds in a magazine, and imposed a ludicrous 7-round magazine limit that even the State agreed was unworkable.  That 7-round limit has been declared unconstitutional by a federal court, although the rest of the law was upheld. But what has slowed the law the most was an upstate insurrection, where almost every county legislature declared its opposition, and many clerks and local police simply ignored the law. Local Sheriff groups have come out against the law as have police unions. The Ithaca Journal reports on the result:
When a gunman killed 26 people in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, New York’s top elected leaders rushed to toughen state gun laws in a month’s time. Propelled by the flash of emotions following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the state Legislature approved the NY Safe Act on Jan. 15, 2013, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it hours later. Now, a year later, the new gun law has yet to be effectively implemented. Officially called the NY Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, the law regulates weapons ownership, sales, permits and ammunition. In dozens of interviews with The Ithaca Journal, county sheriffs, county clerks, a retailer, a target shooter and a hunting guide described the law’s shortcomings, administrative delays and a maze of gun permit paperwork that some local public officials predict will take years to sort out. Those delays and flaws have weakened the enforcement of the SAFE Act — designed to protect New Yorkers from the national horror of mass shootings in schools, shopping centers and theaters.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on January 15, 2014 15 Comments
A report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that the attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya in September, 2012 could have been prevented. I'm still reading through the full report myself, but some of the primary highlights so far are included below. From the Washington Post:
A long-delayed Senate intelligence committee report released Wednesday spreads blame among the State Department and intelligence agencies for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The bipartisan report lays out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012, on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the Libyan city of Benghazi. It says the State Department failed to increase security at its diplomatic mission despite warnings and faults intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2014 28 Comments
On Monday I wrote how the Village of Cayuga Heights, bordering the Cornell University campus and the City of Ithaca, has spent $2,984 per deer in  a sterilization program which had no hope of reducing the deer population to an environmentally safe level. A reader just emailed me with a press release issued this morning by the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation declaring war on deer in the central Tompkins County area in and around Ithaca:
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation sent this bulletin on 01/15/2014 12:59 PM EST DEC Press Release Hello, The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has issued the following press release:

Special Deer Hunting Season in Central Tompkins County to Help Control Local Deer Population

Deer Management Focus Area Open Until January 31, 2014

A special deer hunting season to help control the deer population in and around the city of Ithaca, Tompkins County, will be open until January 31, 2014, State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Regional Director Ken Lynch announced today. The Deer Management Focus Area (DMFA) program was initiated in 2012 in the Ithaca area to expand the use of hunting to assist local communities burdened with overabundant deer populations. The DMFA encompasses 60,000 acres of land in and around the city of Ithaca, including the city and town of Ithaca, the villages of Cayuga Heights and Lansing, and parts of the towns of Danby, Caroline, Dryden, Lansing, Enfield, Newfield and Ulysses.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 15, 2014 10 Comments
The columnist Michael Kinsley is reputed to have said that "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." Earlier this week  an Israeli newspaper leaked private comments that Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon made critical of Secretary of State John Kerry and expressing skepticism towards security guarantees proposed by Kerry:
"The American security plan presented to us is not worth the paper it's written on," Ya'alon said. "It contains no peace and no security. Only our continued presence in Judea and Samaria and the River Jordan will endure that Ben-Gurion Airport and Netanya don't become targets for rockets from every direction."
The description of Kerry by Ya'alon as "... determined and acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor..." has caused a diplomatic row, even though the comments were made privately. The State Department expressed offense at Ya'alon's reputed remarks:
The remarks of the Defense Minister if accurate are offensive and inappropriate especially given all that the United States is doing to support Israel's security needs," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
Given the heat he was taking, Ya'alon issued an apology asserting that he intended no offense. (My Right Word reminds us that President Obama, a few years ago, affirmed an ad hominem attack on Prime Minister Netanyahu made by then French-President Nicholas Sarkozy.)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2014 13 Comments
We previously wrote in detail about the “John Doe” investigation in Wisconsin targeting a wide range of conservative groups and Scott Walker supporters relating to the failed Democratic attempt to recall Walker.  See Secret probe of conservatives makes Wisconsin ground zero in First Amendment war for the details. We also noted the Big defeat for anti-conservative Wisconsin “John Doe” probe, when a judge recently quashed subpoenas. In a new development, Eric O'Keefe, one of the targets of the investigation, is demanding that the prosecutors end the probe or face a federal lawsuit (full media release embedded at bottom of post):
Eric O’Keefe, who has been identified in media reports as a target of a secret “John Doe” investigation in Wisconsin, today demanded that state prosecutors end their action against him or face a federal civil rights action. O’Keefe is director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which was also targeted for alleged unlawful “coordination” with Governor Scott Walker’s campaign for fiscal reforms. “This investigation is political payback by elected prosecutors against conservative activists for their political successes in Wisconsin,” stated O’Keefe. “They are violating the constitutional rights of private citizens and must be held accountable.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2014 10 Comments
For background, see my prior posts: The letter will be finalized tomorrow morning as the House goes into recess Friday and many members leave tomorrow afternoon.  The letter is being coordinated through the offices of Representatives Peter Roksam (R) and Ted Deutch (D). With the crush of business before the recess, it's hard to get the attention of Representatives. Is your House Representative on the list of signatories? If not, now is the time to reach out to their offices and find out why not TODAY. You can find your Representative and office contact information here: Find Your Representative. Here is the current list: UPDATE, list closes 9 a.m. Eastern, Thursday, so if your Rep has not signed by then, too late.

Posted by New Neo on January 15, 2014 16 Comments
We've finally gotten some data on who has actually signed up for Obamacare on the exchanges. At first glance, it would look bad for the insurance companies. There are way fewer young people (only 24% are between the ages of 18 and 34) than the original stated goal. But it doesn't matter for the first year or two because the government has guaranteed to insurance companies that they'll be protected against loss. So the fact that enrollees may be older than expected---and therefore much more likely to make claims and reduce insurance companies' profit margins---is okay because government will take up the slack. And by "government" we mean, of course, the taxpayer. And by "taxpayer" we mean the wealthy taxpayer, although the middle class taxpayer also will pay more in many circumstances. Here's a list of the taxes that are supposed to fund Obamacare. Will they be adequate to cover the fact that nearly 80% of the exchanges' enrollees are getting subsidies so far? It depends on whether this was approximately the number anticipated, and also on whether the tax revenues actually collected will be as great as had been projected. The Byzantine nature of Obamacare is reflected in the fact that one of the largest items in the list of Obamacare funding tax sources is the following:
$60.1 Billion [projected amount of revenue]: Tax on Health Insurers: Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. Phases in gradually until 2018. Fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits.
So Obamacare giveth to the insurance companies and then it taketh away. And then it giveth back again, in a sort of shell game.
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