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Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 08, 2014 9 Comments
Recently the Cook Political Report moved my home district NY-23 from Lean Republican to Likely Republican, leading us to ask, Is “Red-to-Blue” Dem challenger Martha Robertson knocked out? More evidence of Robertson's problems comes from The Washington Post's Election Lab / Monkey Cage blog, which gives Robertson just a 2% chance of winning: NY-23 WaPo Election lab ao 8-7-2014 I know, I know, it ain't over until it's over. But the question remains, for how long will national money keep pouring in to help a Democratic challenger in a Republican-majority district who has so little chance of winning based on the evaluation of every single independent election analyst?. (Hover over the district in the link to see all analyst ratings.) NY 23 Election Rating Map Capital ao Aug 6 2014 Also, there's a wider national significance.

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 08, 2014 12 Comments
For background on the controversy surrounding Steven Salaita, who was denied a job offer at U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign allegedly due to his tweets, see my prior posts: No one knows for a fact why his job offer was denied at U. Illinois, but the presumption is that it concerned his bizarre, vulgar and unhinged tweets. His defenders try to portray this as viewpoint discrimination, as if he lost out just because he criticized Israel; at this point that is entirely speculative as to the basis for the university's actions. For more background see arguments for the denial of a job offer, and against the denial of a job offer. [See video discussion here, couldn't be embedded due to formatting problems][new embed code added - thanks to commenter] The whole thing may come down to contract law.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 08, 2014 15 Comments
Voter advocacy organization True the Vote hit a roadblock Thursday when a federal judge denied its request to have an independent forensic expert search for Lois Lerner's "missing" e-mails. Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court in Washington ruled that True the Vote's attorneys failed to provide evidence showing that the IRS had either already intentionally destroyed e-mails, or would do so in the future. Judge Walton also cited privacy concerns, saying that taxpayer data, as well as the ongoing investigation by an inspector general, could be compromised. Judge Walton also denied True the Vote's request for an injunction forcing the IRS to preserve all documents related to the lawsuit. He said that True the Vote failed to show “irreparable harm” in its request, and that “the public interest weighs strongly against the type of injunctive relief the plaintiff seeks.” From the court memorandum:
Accordingly, despite the general distrust of the defendants expressed by the plaintiff, the Court has no factual basis to concur with that distrust, not only as to the defendants but seemingly every component of the Department of the Treasury (and presumably of every component of the Executive Branch of the federal government), and therefore concludes that the issuance of an injunction will not further aid in the recovery of the emails, if such recovery is possible, but will rather only duplicate and potentially interfere with ongoing investigative activities.
True the Vote attorney Cleta Mitchell has downplayed the ruling, saying that the judge merely denied their request for expedited assistance. True the Vote filed suit against the IRS last year after the agency denied True the Vote's application for tax-exempt status. True the Vote is seeking immediate recognition as a 501(c)(3), and more than $85,000 in damages; they claim that they IRS targeted their organization because of their openly conservative agenda:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 08, 2014 8 Comments
While many Legal Insurrection fans may disagree with my assessment of the limited risk that the two American Ebola patients are to our country, my basic point is sound:  The uncontrolled entry of people infected with much easier to transmit and more common pathogens should be the main focus of concern. As my compatriot Bruce Carroll brilliantly noted, the "CDC’s selective information dumps mirrors how the rest of the Obama Administration has been less than transparent." Furthermore, the only consistent policy approach of the White House is: ""You never let a serious crisis go to waste." With this in mind, what better way to create fear in order to hide policy disasters and to distract people from the news of worldwide chaos then to focus on a devastating disease that is nearly 100% fatal? Cue Tom Frieden, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ebola's spread to the United States is "inevitable" due to the nature of global airline travel, but any outbreak is not likely to be large, US health authorities said Thursday. Already one man with dual US-Liberian citizenship has died from Ebola, after becoming sick on a plane from Monrovia to Lagos and exposing as many as seven other people in Nigeria.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 08, 2014 19 Comments
God bless Cheerios for their latest ad campaign. Forgoing the tired and insulting schtick of the 'dumb dad' who is too inept to tie his kid's shoes, General Mills decided to highlight the awesomeness of dadhood to promote Peanut Butter Cheerios. The longform web ad begins with a man waking up to find his kid sitting on top of him wearing a horse head mask. The man's response? "Is that a new mask? I like it. It's really creepy. Good stuff." And it just gets better. Getting right to the point, "Hey, let me introduce myself. My name is Dad and proud of it and all dads should be." Take a look: Far too many companies choose to portray fathers as bumbling morons or inconsiderate burdens. Take this cringeworthy Kraft commercial for example, "here we go again, Dad always messes up everything! Thank goodness Kraft Mac N Cheese is here to save the day, otherwise Dad would really be an intolerable oaf." Not an exact quote, but that's the gist:

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 08, 2014 45 Comments
I remember the dread of exiting the Queens-Midtown tunnel into Manhattan from Long Island before I left for Rhode Island in the early 1990s. Would we make the first traffic light, or get stuck at a red light and be subjected to the squeegee men? The squeegee men would either spray something on your windshield then demand payment to clean it off, or just start cleaning the windshield figuring you'd pay them rather than risk a confrontation. It set the tone for the city, along with graffiti and other petty hooliganism. It was one of the realities of life in NYC until Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor and cleaned it all up. It was the broken window theory:
Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.
The squeegee men and similar public displays of lawlessness were held in check even after Rudy left office -- until now. The election of uber-liberal Bill DeBlasio ushered in a new era of the bad old days, as The NY Post reports: NY Post Squeegee Men
They were the ultimate symbol of the lawlessness and blight of the 1980s and early 1990s — and now they’re making a comeback. Squeegee men are menacing motorists across New York City, including spots near the Holland, Lincoln and Queens-Midtown tunnels, as well as the Queensboro Bridge, The Post has learned.

Posted by New Neo on August 08, 2014 23 Comments
Post-9/11, I read a quip that went something like this: "I just realized what the problem is with the 21st century. We got the numbers mixed up. It's not 2001, it's 1200." In the ensuing years, barbarism and religious wars have made a strong comeback---not that they'd ever really disappeared. But with the rise of ISIS, we now have a group giving itself over to their purest expression. Beheadings and crucifixions are part of their m.o., as well as forced conversions with the threat of death or exile looming, and now the imminent extermination of a minority religious group, the Yazidi, at ISIS's bloody hands. The Yazidi have one representative in Iraq's parliament. Her name is Vian Dakhil and her recent raw cri de coeur to save her people has made her famous. The world loves a show and a dramatic story, but it no longer loves actually taking on risky rescues, and has become accustomed to relying on the Americans to do so. Nature---and geopolitics---abhors a vacuum. The deposing of bad guy Saddam Hussein left a hole that other bad guys would inevitably try to rush to fill. Anyone who would cause the toppling of Saddam had to know it might be necessary for them to stick around at some level for at least a generation if they wanted a chance of ensuring that a new group of leaders of a different and better ilk would be substituting instead. But quite early on it became clear that, due to the efforts of the left in this country and changes in Americans' attitude towards war, occupation, and sacrifice, we lacked the requisite commitment.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 07, 2014 9 Comments
Live Video and Twitter feed at bottom of post Official reports from Israel indicate that at least two rockets were fired into Israel hours before the truce ended at 8 a.m. (Israel time) Friday. Updates: Heavy rocket fire erupted from Gaza shortly after the official end time of the truce. The New York Times reports:
After three days of quiet, the Israeli military said, at least 18 rockets were fired at 8 a.m. and in the hour afterward. Two were intercepted by Israel’s antimissile defense system over Ashkelon, the military said, while 14 others fell in open ground, causing no injury or damage, and two landed short in the Gaza Strip. The military also reported two launchings of rockets or mortar shells from Gaza before dawn. ... Just at 8 a.m., as television correspondents stood on the beachside road in Gaza City to do their live reports, the first rocket was fired. The signature white plume of the Israeli interception was visible in the air for miles. A few more booms were heard in the next 15 minutes, but they hardly disrupted the trickle of donkey carts on the street.
Ynet reports:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 07, 2014 9 Comments
We've previously reported on the uneven playing field upon which campus sexual assault cases are tried. In the world of faux-egalitarian bureaucracy that is the university system, there seems to be little concern for the due process rights of the accused; but one new group is aiming to change that. Families Advocating for Campus Equality, or "FACE," is spearheaded by the mothers of several male students who were falsely accused of sexual assault while at their universities. They're working to change the standards by which students accused of sexual assault are "tried" by universities, and for good reason:
On the basis of a mere accusation, students have been suspended or expelled from school, have been denied their right to attorney representation and have been prohibited from confronting or questioning their accusers. Investigations conducted by college administrators are often faulty, relying on hear-say, rumor, and teenage gossip, while the “burden of proof” -- the amount of evidence necessary to render a finding of guilt -- has been expressly reduced from the more exacting “clear and convincing” to a mere “preponderance” of the evidence. In practice, what this all means is that a student, accused of, say, pilfering another student’s computer in a dormitory, would be entitled to a full and fair hearing with legal representation, a right to confront his accuser, and would be judged by the more exacting “clear and convincing” standard. So, too, for that matter, would someone standing accused of murder in a court of law, where the standard of proof would be “beyond a reasonable doubt.”. But when the accusation is of some variation of sexual misconduct on a college campus -- a charge that itself carries enormous life-altering consequences for the accused -- no such safeguards are afforded.
FACE has, of course, been accused of being "anti-woman" for having the audacity to demand equal justice, but the founders of the group vehemently deny this accusation:

Posted by Bruce Carroll on August 07, 2014 17 Comments
Never mind the turmoil in Iraq, Syria, Israel/Gaza, Western Africa and the imminent threat to Ukraine that Russia poses... there seems to be another war brewing. Earlier today, the President of Azerbaijan published a serious of very threatening tweets relative to neighboring Armenia.

Posted by A.F. Branco on August 07, 2014 3 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 Andrew Branca on August 07, 2014 144 Comments
The jury has returned a verdict of guilty of second degree murder/voluntary manslaughter and weapons charges in the trial of Detroit homeowner Theodore Wafer for the front porch shooting death of Renisha McBride in the early morning hours of November 2, 2013.  Trial Judge Hathaway has ordered Wafer imprisoned immediately, pending sentencing. UPDATE: Sentencing scheduled for Aug. 21 to Aug. 25 time frame. Wafer's legal defense against the charge was self-defense.  The guilty verdict necessarily means that the jury unanimously agreed that the prosecution had disproved Wafer's claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.  The two strongest arguments counter to self-defense were:

"Accident" and "I didn't know the gun was loaded"

(1) Wafer's early and repeated references to the shooting as an "accident," including his claims that he was unaware the shotgun was loaded, only to later claim the shooting was an act of "self-defense." "Accident" and "self-defense" are logically inconsistent arguments.  "Self-defense" is an inherently intentionally act--I see a threat, I respond to the threat.  "Accident" is by definition something we do not intend.  When a defendant argues one, they generally lose the other--sometimes as a matter of law, often just in terms of the credibility of their narrative of innocence with the jury. The prosecution in this trial also requested and received a jury instruction on prior false exculpatory statements as consciousness of guilt evidence, and that certainly could not have helped the jury lean towards self-defense if they believed Wafer's early claims of "accident" were an effort to escape legal jeopardy.

Unlocking and Opening the Steel Front Door

(2) Wafer's decision to unlock and open the steel front door of his home. McBride never, in FACT, threatened entry--whatever she might have done to the screen door, there remained the steel door to get through. Had that steel door been substantively damaged or had there been any evidence to suggest an actual entry was imminent, I think Wafer would have been fine. Absent that, however, the jury likely expected him to hunker down and wait until entry was imminent before using deadly force--and certainly not to unlock and open that very steel door that was keeping the "intruders" outside.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 07, 2014 3 Comments
One of the enduring claims related to the Gaza war is that pushed by New York Magazine author Katie Zavadski in a viral article originally titled: "It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill 3 Israeli Teens After All (link goes to updated version, not original)(screenshot via Seth Frantzman): https://twitter.com/sfrantzman/status/494216021016723457/photo/1 That claim gave rise to the meme that Israel had concocted a Hamas connection to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in order to start the Gaza war.  At most, the story went, the kidnapping was carried out by a "lone cell" and thus could not be blamed on Hamas. The claim, however, is falling apart both because it wasn't backed up by facts and because Israel recently revealed that it had arrested the Hamas mastermind, and that there was a definite connection to Hamas.  For background, read these two posts: Today more information was released which further undermines the NY Magazine story, Hamas West Bank head arrested, indicted for planning wave of terror attacks:

Posted by David Gerstman on August 07, 2014 19 Comments
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told the U.S. Ambassador to Israel "not to ever second guess me again" when it comes to Hamas, after Hamas' refusal and eventual breach of ceasefire agreements. Did he have a point? The international community in its zeal to solve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians makes plenty of suggestions about what needs to be done. One would think that with the number of suggestions it's made that have backfired, it would learn a little humility and perhaps listen a little bit more to Israel when it comes to Hamas. For example, in a recent column, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen called the Israel-Palestinian conflict an "obscenity." At the end of the column he made a suggestion as to how to go about ending the conflict.
Real reconciliation can only come on the basis of an ironclad commitment to nonviolence and to holding of free and fair elections, the first since 2006. Good Palestinian governance, unity and nonviolence constitute the path to making a free state of Palestine irrefutable. The longer Hamas fights this, the greater its betrayal of its people.
What happened in those "free and fair elections" in 2006? Hamas won and established its political legitimacy among Palestinians. A year and a half later it violently forced Fatah out of Gaza and established a stranglehold on the territory. With its newly found freedom to operate it launched thousands of rockets into Israel forcing three wars. But how and why did Hamas, a terrorist organization with a genocidal charter come to participate in those elections? International pressure, including pressure from the Bush administration, forced Israel to drop its objections to Hamas' participation. In retrospect that pressure doesn't look so good. After Fatah and Hamas announced their unity deal earlier this year, Elliott Abrams, who was a member of the administration, recalled:
The last parliamentary elections were held in 2006, and there was a major dispute about whether Hamas should be allowed to run. Abbas then argued strongly and successfully (in that he persuaded Washington to back off) that an election without Hamas would be illegitimate: He would be barring his only real opponent, in the manner of all Arab dictators. We in the Bush administration made the wrong call and sided with Abbas, over Israeli objections. As Condoleezza Rice wrote in her memoirs, “In retrospect, we should have insisted that every party disarm as a condition for participating in the vote.” She was right, for several reasons.
Subsequent developments have shown Israel's objections to having Hamas run in those election to be valid.
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