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Posted by Andrew Branca on August 31, 2014 140 Comments
One of the most common laments to come out of Ferguson these last days has been that surely it was outrageous for Office Darren Wilson to use his service pistol to shoot an "unarmed" Mike Brown.  (Earlier iterations of this narrative went further in their misinformation, describing the 18-year-old 6'4" 292 pound Brown as a "kid" or "child," as well as falsely claiming that Wilson shot Brown in the back, but such misinformation falls outside the scope of this post.)  Similar arguments were made in the context of the shooting by George Zimmerman of the "unarmed" Trayvon Martin. The notion that a defender may use a firearm in self-defense only if they themselves are faced with a firearm is entertainingly naive, but has no basis in actual law, nor in common sense. In the eyes of the law a gun is not some magical talisman of power, it is merely one of perhaps an infinite number of means of exerting force.  Legally speaking the law tends to divide force into two broad buckets:  non-deadly force and deadly force.  There is some stratification in the context of non-deadly force--a poke to the chest is not the same degree of non-deadly force as a punch to the face--but really none whatever in the context of deadly force.  Deadly force is simply deadly force. For purposes of conciseness, I limit this discussion to cases in which deadly force is involved, as was the case in both Ferguson and Zimmerman.

Deadly Force: Force Likely to Cause Death or Grave Bodily Harm

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Posted by Mike LaChance on August 31, 2014 9 Comments
It's fun to think about how the media would drive itself crazy trying to choose sides between Joe and Hillary. On one hand, Hillary is a woman and the media's expected inheritor of the presidency. On the other hand, Biden is part of the Obama administration. Justin Sink of The Hill recently reported:
Biden fuels '16 talk with New Hampshire visit Vice President Biden will head to New Hampshire next week for an event on the economy that is certain to intensify speculation that he is readying a bid for the presidential nomination in 2016. Biden will be joined at the Wednesday event in Portsmouth by members of Congress, the White House said in a statement. The attendees at the event could include Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is locked in a tough reelection fight against former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Shaheen did not meet with Biden during his last trip to the state, a fact that was highlighted by the state's GOP.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 31, 2014 13 Comments
At least they know how to have fun? According to the Washington Times:

Islamists who gained control of a U.S. Embassy residential compound in Libya last week posted a video online of the men throwing a spring break-like pool party at the property.

A commander for the umbrella Islamist militia group, the Dawn of Libya, told The Associated Press that his fighters had been in control of the compound since last week. The group granted access to the compound to an AP reporter, who said some windows had been broken, but most of the equipment there appeared to remain untouched. The journalist saw treadmills, food, televisions and computers still inside.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones tweeted that the video appeared to have been shot in at the embassy’s residential annex, AP reported.

The video (which nauseatingly spins from side to side) shows a group men diving off a balcony into the pool below:

Posted by Nathaniel on August 31, 2014 7 Comments
Since late 2013, California has been experiencing one of the largest, most intense droughts in the state's history. As of August 26, the U.S. Drought Monitor rates the drought in most of California 'D4 - Exceptional Drought', the highest rating on its scale. It spread from south-central California, and has since hit even some of California's usually water rich areas, including Sacramento County. Water management and the drought have been major talking points across the state for the past year, so logically they have also become huge issues for the coming congressional elections. This is especially true in California's highly contested 7th District elections, where former Republican Representative Doug Ose challenges Democratic Incumbent Ami Bera. In the last few months, Ose has begun to focus even more heavily on the district's water issues, though the drought has been a key part of his campaign since its beginnings: he released a fairly comprehensive water plan in mid-February 2014. Ose's plan focuses primarily on improvements to California's water infrastructure, increasing water retention, creating new storage locations, and accessing new water resources. 'Immediate Action Items' listed by the plan include:

Posted by David Gerstman on August 31, 2014 16 Comments
A 39 year old man was arrested for beating up notorious anti-Israel MP George Galloway yesterday. The Guardian reports:
The Bradford West MP was released from hospital on Saturday morning having suffered a suspected broken jaw and rib as well as facial bruising. Neil Masterson, 39, has been accused of shouting about the Holocaust and attacking him. The attack, it is claimed, was related to comments Galloway recently made about the conflict in Gaza. The MP was posing for pictures in Notting Hill in west London when the attack took place. He was treated overnight at St Mary's hospital. Police said he was charged with the assault an Galloway and another man. A spokesman said Masterson was due to appear at Hammersmith magistrates court on Monday.
The suspect is not Jewish. A few weeks ago Galloway declared Bradford to be an "Israel-free zone."
Earlier this month the left-wing Respect MP said that goods, academics, and tourists from the “illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel” were not welcome in Bradford because of the country’s actions in Gaza. ”We don’t want any Israeli goods, we don’t want any Israeli services, we don’t want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college,” he added. Galloway’s comments have already attracted attention from the police, and on Monday, in response to the MP’s statement, Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub made a special trip to the Yorkshire town.

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Posted by Mike LaChance on August 31, 2014 18 Comments
Here's another item for the growing list of things we weren't told about Obamacare before it was passed. It seems the Affordable Care Act presents a direct threat to employer provided health insurance plans and could force up to 150 million people out of their current plans. Jim Angle of FOX News did a recent in-depth report on the subject:
Will ObamaCare mean the end of employer-provided insurance? President Obama's famous promise that “you can keep your plan and your doctor, no matter what” was not the only misleading argument he made for his health care plan. There is yet another controversy, with even bigger consequences, brewing for Americans who already have health care. Analysts predict that as ObamaCare takes hold, it will mean the end of employer-provided insurance, with former Obama adviser Zeke Emanuel predicting that80 percent of such plans will disappear within ten years.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 31, 2014 37 Comments
The riots in Ferguson may have subsided, but the legal battle brewing between protesters and city officials may rekindle racial tensions and bring the St. Louis area back into the spotlight. From the ABA Journal:
Five protesters are suing the city of Ferguson and St. Louis County, Missouri, as well as their police chiefs, based on allegations that they were subject to excessive force and false arrest, among other things. ... Two plaintiffs, a woman and her son, 17, claim that they were wrongfully arrested for failure to disperse at a Ferguson McDonald’s restaurant, which they visited after attending an AME Church “Peace and Love rally.” Another plaintiff arrested for failure to disperse stated that after riding the bus to visit his mother, police shot him with rubber bullets as he attempted to avoid a blocked street. ... Justin Cosma, a Ferguson police officer, is also named as defendant in the case.
Specifically, the Ferguson protesters are suing for false arrest, negligent supervision (of the police departments by the City of Ferguson and St. Louis,) intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and battery, and two separate civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: deprivation of civil rights, and failure of the police department to train, supervise, and discipline its officers. The suit seeks over $40 million in damages, and plaintiffs' attorneys say that new defendants may be added at any time. This won't be the first time that police officers in Ferguson have come under fire after alleged civil rights violations. Several officers associated with the department have a history of trouble with allegations of excessive force.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 30, 2014 3 Comments
As Hot Air's Ed Morrissey once put it, "there is no jackass exception to the First Amendment." Many bloggers toe the line between defamation and free expression, and enjoy their constitutional protections to the fullest; every once in a while, though, what started as an internet flame war ends up in the courts. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Google does not have to release the identity of the anonymous blogger "Trooper" who used the internet to criticize Reynolds & Reynolds. The Ohio-based software company is attempting to discover Trooper's identity "in anticipation of a suit." Via the ABA Journal:
The petition was brought by Reynolds & Reynolds, the Austin American-Statesman reports. The company argued that a disgruntled employee, writing under the pseudonym “Trooper,” posted confidential and defamatory statements about it on a blog site hosted by Google. “Trooper” submitted a sworn affidavit to the court that stated he did not live in Texas. The decision overturns a trial court order that held Google must disclose the author’s identity. Reynolds & Reynolds ["Reynolds"] is seeking the information so it can sue the author for defamation and business disparagement, according to the article.
The problem with Reynolds & Reynolds' petition was that they could not provide evidence to show that a court in Texas could exercise jurisdiction over "Trooper." Rule 202 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure allows a "proper court" to authorize a deposition to investigate a potential claim before a suit is filed. Reynolds, which has offices in Texas, is attempting to execute a Rule 202 petition under the jurisdiction of a district court in Harris County, Texas; their goal is to force Google during a deposition to disclose the true identity of Trooper so that they can prove that a Texas court can exercise personal jurisdiction. Trooper, however, asserted though counsel during a special appearance that his only contact with Texas occurs when people in Texas read his blog. He argued that he does not have the minimum contacts required with Texas sufficient for a Texas court to exercise personal jurisdiction over him.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 30, 2014 23 Comments
A new editorial from the Washington Post takes an unusually sober look at President Obama's foreign policy chops and his non-reaction to the world that's burning around him:
President Obama needs to focus on how the United States can meet global challenges PRESIDENT OBAMA’S acknowledgment that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with reporters Thursday. But his restatement of the obvious was not the most dismaying aspect of his remarks. The president’s goal, to the extent he had one, seemed to be to tamp down all the assessments of gathering dangers that his own team had been issuing over the previous days. This argument with his own administration is alarming on three levels. The first has to do with simple competence. One can only imagine the whiplash that foreign leaders must be suffering. They heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power denounce Russia as “today . . . they open a new front . . . Russia’s force along the border is the largest it has been . . . the mask is coming off.” An hour later, Mr. Obama implicitly contradicted her: “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now . . . it’s not really a shift.”
If you read on from there, you'll notice that the editors use the word "disturbing" twice to describe Obama's response to the situation in Ukraine and the rise of ISIS. This is quite a departure from the Post's endorsement of Obama in 2012.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 30, 2014 4 Comments
In July, in the early part of the Gaza conflict, Pew Research came out with a survey indicating that support among Americans for Israel's actions in Gaza was strong overall and consistent with past similar surveys. The July Pew study, however, indicated partisan gaps with much stronger support among Republicans than Democrats, with young Democrats the least supportive among all such categories. Support also was lower among minorities. That July Pew study set off much angst and hand-wringing among Israel supporters, and unconcealed glee among Israel haters who convinced themselves that their anti-Israel view was just a generation away from becoming predominant American opinion. But that earlier Pew study didn't really measure support for Israel, as opposed to the conduct of the Gaza conflict. It would be entirely consistent to be a strong supporter of Israel yet not support Israel's actions -- either because you thought it did too much or not enough. Prior Pew studies, as well as Gallup, conducted using the same methodology and questions over long periods of time, show support for Israel growing in the U.S. in recent years, although it is true there is something of a partisan and age gap. A couple of days ago Pew released a new study, taken August 20-24, as to which side Americans sympthized with. True to my thesis, favorable views of Israel predominate and the gap is wide when compared to that Palestinians. This is significant considering how one-sided the media was in portraying Palestinians as victims. Here are the summary findings of Pew's report, More Express Sympathy for Israel than the Palestinians:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 30, 2014 10 Comments
In case you missed it, I went off on a bit of a rant about comedy in the age of Obama at my site American Glob this week. Frankly, I'm sick to death of the left's inability to find anything funny about Obama while continuing to target the same tired subjects of Bush, FOX News and Republicans in general. Jon Stewart is a classic example of this and the left loves to point out how Stewart "destroys" his subjects. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon points out that Stewart can often induce laughter from his audience by simply staring at them after showcasing his chosen target, who is almost always someone on the right:
Comedy of Stares You know the drill if you watch The Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart plays a smashcut of television news clips, to help him destroy, eviscerate, demolish, devastate, torch, obliterate and disembowel a generally conservative straw man opinion, movement or Fox News host.

Posted by New Neo on August 30, 2014 45 Comments
It's really just common sense: "Americans" who leave this country to fight for ISIS, or any other country or entity or group who is our enemy, should no longer be referred to as "Americans" by the press. I know; fat chance. Also, the laws governing the involuntary revocation of citizenship should be scrutinized to see whether they apply. If not, they could be expanded by the legislature to explicitly include fighting for designated foreign terrorist entities such as ISIS. And this isn't just true of Somali-Americans or whatever hyphenated-Americans might be guilty of this behavior. It's true of people like John Walker Lindh, one of the first "American" jihadis. Remember him? Four years ago, Joe Lieberman proposed an expansion of the current law in order to make sure it included those who fight as jihadis abroad. Back then Lieberman said, "I'm now putting together legislation [so that] any individual American citizen who is found to be involved in a foreign terrorist organization, as defined by the Department of State, would be deprived of their citizenship rights." The case has only grown stronger in the intervening years. Lieberman didn't succeed back then, but the relevant statute is here. These portions seem especially apropos:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 29, 2014 52 Comments
U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel ruled today that portions of Texas' 2013 abortion law are unconstitutional. "HB 2," which passed during the last legislative session in spite of the efforts of now-gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis (D-10), drew the ire of women's rights activists and abortion providers for its imposition of higher standards on clinics who provide abortion services. The Opinion is embedded at the bottom of this post. Via the Houston Chronicle:
"The ambulatory-surgical-center requirement is unconstitutional because it imposes an undue burden on the right of women throughout Texas to seek a previability abortion," Yeakel ruled, blocking enforcement of the requirement scheduled to take effect Monday. Yeakel also ordered the McAllen and El Paso areas to be exempted from a separate provision of the law requiring abortion doctors to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. He described the law, called House Bill 2, as "a brutally effective system of abortion regulation that reduces access to abortion clinics, thereby creating a statewide burden for substantial numbers of Texas women." Already, a couple dozen clinics have closed since its enactment.
From the opinion:
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