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Posted by David Gerstman on October 24, 2013 20 Comments
Yesterday's New York Times featured an article Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed that is probably one of the most devastating indictments of the President's Syria policy published. I don't think that the reporters set out to critique the President and the tone of the article was always respectful. https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/393101410037821440 Still there are two description that really stuck out. The first was a general critique.
As one former senior White House official put it, “We spent so much damn time navel gazing, and that’s the tragedy of it.”
Over the past two years the article describes the various rationales the administration had for not intervening and that sentence turns out to be a very apt theme for the way the administration acted, or, more precisely, chose not to act. Then there was this:
Even as the debate about arming the rebels took on a new urgency, Mr. Obama rarely voiced strong opinions during senior staff meetings. But current and former officials said his body language was telling: he often appeared impatient or disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.
One would have assumed that a Syria policy was one of the two most important foreign policy issues facing the President. (The other is the question of Iran's nuclear policy.) Being "disengaged" during such momentous discussions is worse than being engaged but making bad decisions. https://twitter.com/tobyharnden/status/393025446348349441  

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 24, 2013 13 Comments
We've written before about the travails of the Canadian Blazing Cat Fur blog against laware utilizing Canadian "hate" laws. Now Ezra Levant, another Canadian blogger and outspoken critic of radical Islamic tactics in Canada, is fighting in court over a lawsuit filed several years ago, as reported in the Globe and Mail:
Controversial television journalist Ezra Levant will find himself in court Oct. 15 to answer for a series of blog posts in which he repeatedly called a Canadian Islamic Rights activist a liar. Mr. Levant, who hosts a daily show on Sun News Network, wrote the posts while covering unsuccessful human rights complaints against Maclean’s magazine for its coverage of the Islamic community over a two-year span. Mr. Levant’s posts were critical of Khurrum Awan, a member of the Canadian Islamic Congress who spoke at the Canadian Human Rights Commission hearings and served as its youth president. In his statement of claim filed to Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Mr. Awan said Mr. Levant suggested he was “a liar, a perjurer, an anti-Semite, a con artist, unfit to be a lawyer and has acted in a conflict of interest.” “The plaintiff has suffered mental distress, humiliation and loss of reputation,” reads the statement of claim filed by lawyer Brian Shiller of Ruby Shiller Chan Hasan Barristers. “The plaintiff has been shunned by former friends, ridiculed in various publications and is the subject of odium and contempt.” In his statement of defence, Mr. Levant suggests any damage to Mr. Awan’s reputation was self-inflicted.
In an October 15, 2013, column at Sun News, Price of freedom is high, Levant explained the history of lawfare against him:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 24, 2013 5 Comments

From Buckeyeminuteman, with the Subject line: How About Spending Control? Here is an SUV I saw in Montgomery, AL. The driver makes a good point about our politician's priorities. Also, I wanted to take this time to tell you thank you for the great work you...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 23, 2013 30 Comments
Legal Insurrection, with the help of Judicial Watch, still is fighting the FOIA litigation to get a full document production from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and D.C. Office of Attorney General Irvin Nathan as to the investigation and non-prosecution of David Gregory and others at NBC News for the clear on-camera violation of the D.C. gun laws. NBC procured, and Gregory flaunted, an illegal 30-round ammunition magazine even though NBC was explicitly warned by the MPD not to do so:

Gregory OAG Email Dec 21 2012 NBC to MPD3

Gregory got special treatment. Not so many other more ordinary citizens. The latest outrageous case of D.C. overreach and bullying of citizens who are not David Gregory is documented by Emily Miller at The Washington Times (via The Patriot Perspective), D.C. businessman faces two years in jail for unregistered ammunition, brass casing:
Mark Witaschek, a successful financial adviser with no criminal record, is facing two years in prison for possession of unregistered ammunition after D.C. police raided his house looking for guns. Mr. Witaschek has never had a firearm in the city, but he is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The trial starts on Nov. 4. The police banged on the front door of Mr. Witaschek’s Georgetown home at 8:20 p.m. on July 7, 2012, to execute a search warrant for “firearms and ammunition … gun cleaning equipment, holsters, bullet holders and ammunition receipts.” Mr. Witaschek’s 14-year-old daughter let inside some 30 armed officers in full tactical gear.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 23, 2013 11 Comments
The House GOP Conference issued the following statement today (received via email) regarding a conversation between a potential customer and an online chat customer service representative for Healthcare.gov:
Earlier today, the House Republican Conference released a video highlighting actual excerpts from an online chat between a potential customer and a customer service representative for Healthcare.gov.  The individual who experienced the chat session was Adrian Smith, 34, of New Jersey.  Smith released the following statement to confirm his story with Healthcare.gov: “Thank you for your inquiry about my experience on October 11, 2013 using the healthcare.gov support chat.  I can confirm that the excerpts used in the YouTube video and the full transcript posted at www.gop.gov/yourstory is authentic and exactly as I experienced on October 11. I am a resident of New Jersey and work for a higher education institution. I am not employed by the Republican Party. “After a recent job transition, my family needed to make an informed decision about healthcare options for the approaching year. After repeated registration problems, I was able to create a healthcare.gov account on October 11 and began the tedious process of entering specific personal information about our family. Each page resulted in a long wait before being able to proceed. At some point in the process it appeared that our family information became corrupted and I was unable to proceed with the family profile.

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Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 23, 2013 40 Comments
In a Facebook posting over the weekend, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois alleged that a top House Republican leader told President Obama, "I cannot even stand to look at you," during a negotiation meeting over the government shutdown, according to a report last night in The Hill.  The claim drew sharp denials from Republican leadership and the White House.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a Facebook post that the alleged confrontation happened during a meeting between Republicans and the president. "Many Republicans searching for something to say in defense of the disastrous shutdown strategy will say President Obama just doesn't try hard enough to communicate with Republicans," Durbin said. "But in a 'negotiation' meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: 'I cannot even stand to look at you.'" "What are the chances of an honest conversation with someone who has just said something so disrespectful?" the Illinois Democrat added. An aide to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he had "no idea what [Durbin's] talking about."
Durbin did not name the individual to whom he referred in his Facebook post and offered no further specifics as to when the alleged exchange supposedly took place. Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel denied the claim, saying, “The speaker certainly didn’t say that, and does not recall anyone else doing so,” according to National Review’s The Corner.  A spokesman for Eric Cantor also said the House Majority Leader does not remember anyone saying that. In today’s press briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney flat out denied the exchange occurred, saying “it did not happen.” https://twitter.com/samsteinhp/status/393078474791206912

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 23, 2013 36 Comments
Joan Walsh of Salon.com threw a classic Salon.com race-card fit the other day because Ted Cruz referred to healthcare.gov as being run by Nigerial scam artists:
Hey, did you hear the one about the disappearing “Nigerian email scammers”? They’ve “become a lot less active lately” because they’ve “all been hired to run the Obamacare website.” That’s Sen. Ted Cruz, folks, on his Reactionary Real America Victory Tour Monday night, and he’ll be here all week, maybe all decade. Tip your waiter! Declaring that our first black president’s signature policy achievement is being run by “Nigerian email scammers” is GOP dog-whistle politics at its finest. Of course, Cruz wasn’t just going for cheap laughs at the expense of the Affordable Care Act. He knows it’s a short hop from Nigeria to Kenya for his Obama-hating Houston audience.

Twitter - @Salon - Nigerian scammer dog whistle

It's actually not a short hop from Nigeria to Kenya, over 2000 miles, but whatever. I think the Nigerian scam artist analogy fits, although there is no single perfect analogy for the redistribution of wealth scheme that is Obamacare. The American people were promised one thing, and are receiving another.  The thing they were promised -- you can keep your doctor and your insurance, and pay less through easy to use exchanges -- never existed, any more than "Mohammed Abacha,the son of the late Nigerian Head of State." But since we have to be absurdly sensitive to "short hops" from Nigeria to Kenya so as to stay off of Salon.com's radar, perhaps we can refer to healthcare.gov, and Obamacare more generally, as BernieMadoff.healthcare.gov.  Again, not a perfect analogy, but it demonstrates a point.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 23, 2013 9 Comments
It turns out the disappearance in recent days of a noted snarky national security tweeter was no Halloween prank after all.  The anonymous personality known to Twitter as @natsecwonk has not only been outed, but is out of a job. From Politico:
A senior National Security Council staffer who was a key member of the White House team negotiating on Iran’s nuclear weapons program told POLITICO he deeply regrets tweeting hundreds of anti-administration messages under the pseudonym @natsecwonk. Jofi Joseph, 40, was fired from his job on the NSC nuclear non-proliferation team a week ago after a months-long probe into a barrage of tweets that included caustic criticisms of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and top NSC officials, especially Ben Rhodes – whom he accused of dodging questions about Benghazi. “It has been a privilege to serve in this Administration and I deeply regret violating the trust and confidence placed in me,” Joseph told POLITICO in an email. “What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments.  I bear complete responsibility for this affair and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted.”
Joseph's @natsecwonk bio was an apt description, "Unapologetically says what everyone else only thinks. A keen observer of the foreign policy and national security scene. I'm abrasive and bring the snark." The Daily Beast, which first broke the story, collected many of the account’s tweets before it was shut down, and offered this sampling in its post:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 23, 2013 36 Comments
Kathleen Sebelius is insistent that no one told Obama prior to October 1 that testing and evaluation had indicated healthcare.gov likely would fail. Not even as a government "shutdown" was looming over the issue of delaying the individual mandate for a year?  Even though an inoperable healthcare.gov website would justify the Republican position?  Even though a failure of the website would be a major embarrassment? HHS chief: President didn't know of Obamacare website woes beforehand
President Barack Obama didn't know of problems with the Affordable Care Act's website -- despite insurance companies' complaints and the site's crashing during a test run -- until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation's health chief told CNN on Tuesday. In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was in "the first couple of days" after the site went live October 1. "But not before that?" Gupta followed up. To which Sebelius replied, "No, sir."
This all sounds eerily familiar:

WaPo IRS Scandal No One Told Obama

Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, learned last month about a review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general into whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, but they did not inform President Obama, the White House said Monday.

Posted by Laurel Conrad on October 23, 2013 21 Comments
With less than two weeks to go before the Virginia gubernatorial election, candidates Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli (aka Sauron and SpongeBob Squarepants) are each receiving campaign support from some pretty well-known political figures. On Saturday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a “rousing endorsement” to an audience in Falls Church, Virginia for Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe. (Whom some in Virginia have branded “Terry McAwful”) This week, former President Bill Clinton is set to join McAuliffe at five different campaign events in Virginia. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is on team Cuccinelli. His PAC,  Patriot Voices, is calling for volunteers to “Join our Strikeforce and help Ken Cuccinelli become the next Governor of Virginia!”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 33 Comments

We've seen years of offensive name calling and antics from Alan Grayson. He called a Federal reserve lobbyist a whore, and most famously claimed that Republicans want people to die quickly. Grayson's latest, however, is his worst yet, via NRO, Dem Rep. Uses Burning KKK Cross to...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on October 22, 2013 25 Comments
The fallout of the launch of the Obamacare website continues, and as the administration spins and deflects questions, media outlets are digging deeper for answers that are sure to bring new concerns to light.  And that's aside from all the other general concerns about the impact of the law itself. The Washington Post came out with a report yesterday that contained a few key pieces of information that reaffirms what many have already suspected.
Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health ­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously. Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead. When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step, according to two people familiar with the project.
Later in the report, it indicates that "U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park has said that the government expected HealthCare.gov to draw 50,000 to 60,000 simultaneous users but that the site was overwhelmed by up to five times as many users in the first week."  CGI, which worked on the shopping and enrollment applications, reportedly built it to accommodate 60,000 concurrent users, according to the Post.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 19 Comments
At first I thought this was a joke, a parody.  But it's real. As part of it "ingenius" marketing, a coalition of progressive groups has started a Thanks Obamacare website and Twitter account. The Colorado affiliate has produced the ads imaged above. This is Obamacare on drugs. They should tax the keg as a medical device, and then see how much the Bros love their Obamacare. Here's the full set of ads, most of which encourage dangerous behavior because, hell, they've got Obamacare:

Thanks Obamacare Ads

Here are some of the individual ads, with my commentary:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 26 Comments
Greg Pollowitz at National Review asked, Which Is Worse: ‘High Cheekbones’ or ‘Redskins’?
A few things are bothering me about Bob Costas calling the term “Redskins” a slur on Sunday night. One, Democrats had absolutely no issue when then senate candidate Elizabeth Warren justified her Native American heritage with her “high cheekbones.” That’s the same as me saying, “Can’t you see I’m half-Jewish from the size of my nose?” If it was anybody but liberal-darling Warren, there would be outrage at her saying such a thing. But since Democrats have tacitly endorsed “high cheekbones” as politically acceptable, I vote to rename the Redskins “The High Cheekbones.” The song even works, “Hail to the Cheekbones! Hail Victory!”
For those of you who don't remember, Elizabeth Warren supposedly (doubtfully) relied on "family lore" to justify checking the Native American box in order to get herself put on a short list of "Minority Law Teachers" and "Women of Color in Legal Academia" as she was climbing the law school ladder towards Harvard Law School.  Among those stories (now cast in doubt) was about her Aunt Bea and high cheekboned ancestors:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 26 Comments

It's not just 5 million lines of code, folks. It's not just having to call Verizon to the rescue. It's not just that it doesn't work now. The Healthcare.debacle website is a harbinger of doom because it reflects the fundamental inability of government to run such a sweeping...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 13 Comments
Dick Cheney appeared on Hannity, and stated what all thinking people know to be true, Obama is the radical in Washington, D.C., not the Tea Party: FMR VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: I'm not unsympathetic to the frustration, I think, that's led many Americans to sign on for or become part of the tea party. I'm as frustrated as anybody else can be, but I think we have a situation where the circumstances in Washington, the inability and the unwillingness of the this administration to come to grips with our basic long-term debt problem, for example. The frustration out there is very, very high. And so when I see people talking about the tea party, I don't think of the tea party as extremists the way some of the folks in Washington want to describe them. The extremist in Washington is Barack Obama. He's the guy that wants to fundamentally transform our health care system. He's the guy who has done enormous damage to America's standing in the world. To the extent there is an extremist or radical political view in Washington these days, I believe it is the president of the United States.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 22, 2013 12 Comments

It's the dawn of a new era in TaxProf's quarterly law professor blog rankings, as he explains, Law Prof Blog Traffic Rankings: Below are the updated quarterly traffic rankings by page views of the Top 50 blogs edited by law professors for the most recent 12-month...

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