IN THE MAIL: The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users.
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Archive for 2015
January 16, 2015
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 617.
MORE ON THOSE INTERSTATE-BLOCKING PROTESTS IN BOSTON: Daughter is ‘livid’ after dad’s ambulance delayed. We know who the protesters are. She should sue them, and the organizations that sponsored them. She’ll get a sympathetic jury.
Plus, from Howie Carr: This was a terrorist attack — on the working people of Boston, by non-working blow-in drifters, losers and knuckleheads.
JEFF JACOBY: The Anti-Semitic Delusion:
An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left. For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 French Jews to arrive in 2015.
That would mean more than 22,000 Jews fleeing France for Israel in the space of just four years, nearly 4.5 percent of the country’s Jewish population. The departure of 100,000 French Jews might once have been inconceivable. No longer. In a survey last spring of France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe, three out of four respondents said they were considering emigrating.
These are staggering numbers — all the more so in a “Jewish community that has been in place for centuries and feels itself deeply attached to being French,” as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has written. But what is driving so many Jews to leave “is not Israel’s pull…. It is France’s push.”
Over the past 15 years, that “push” — violent eruptions of French antisemitism — has grown relentless.
Yes, I was blogging about that problem in 2001. The French government should have been reading InstaPundit.
THE JOYLESSNESS OF AIR TRAVEL.
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SMART DIPLOMACYTM: That time John Kerry got James Taylor to sing ‘You’ve got a friend’ to France. Who comes up with this stuff?
Ah, well, at least it wasn’t an iPod full of his speeches.
UPDATE: From the comments: “I think something is wrong with the blog. I keep clicking a link to go to an Onion article, and it sends me to the Washington Post instead.”
Plus: “Barney wasn’t available?”
ELIANA JOHNSON: Rick Perry Rides Again: And it looks like he’s ready.
Perry likes to say that America loves second chances, and he is doing everything to ensure that his encore on the national stage bears little resemblance to his debut, which was marked by missteps and a lack of careful planning from beginning to end. He wasn’t prepared to talk about national issues; his team missed a deadline to qualify for the Virginia primary; and he was hopped up on medication from recent back surgery.
Where there was once chaos, now there is order. In Austin on Wednesday, in the nondescript offices serving as his nascent campaign headquarters, Perry was all focus, sequestered in a conference room, headphones in place, to practice his farewell speech. . . .
Thursday’s speech will offer a preview of the Perry presidential platform. The gun-slinging wild guy who once raised the specter of secession now sounds more like a sober and experienced old hand, though the tea-party sensibilities that excite the party’s base are still there. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history and has one of the strongest records in the country. Greg Abbott, the state’s newly elected Republican governor, will be handed “as dynamic an economy as any state in the nation,” Perry tells me.
Not lost on the audience, on Thursday or in the future, will be the fact that Texas’s economic success has occurred as the American economy remained sluggish for much of the Obama era.
Indeed it has. Plus:
Over a thousand people a day have been moving to Texas, where the unemployment rate is under 5 percent. His economic reforms were “controversial among those who wrote opinion columns and hired swarms of lobbyists,” Perry will say. “But it wasn’t controversial for the trucker or the waitress, the farmer or the nurse, the quiet majority that feels over-billed and taxed to death.”
Stay tuned.
ROLL CALL: House Sergeant-at-Arms: Congress Is a Top Terrorist Target.
As the Capitol Hill community digests news of a foiled ISIS-inspired plot to bomb and shoot the complex, law enforcement officials are reminding congressional offices the Capitol is a top target for terrorists. . . .
According to the Sergeant-at-Arms, Capitol Police continue to coordinate with the FBI, and law enforcement officials are monitoring the situation. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint in Ohio court against Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, who was allegedly plotting to travel to D.C. and detonate pipe bombs at and near the Capitol, then shoot employees and officials.
Smarter terrorists would leave Congress alone. So far, it’s done more to hurt America than they have. . . .
THE HILL: Democrat condemns ‘shocking’ comments about Muslim lawmaker.
A top House Democrat on Thursday condemned suggestions from conservative websites that Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), a Muslim, should not have been appointed to the House Intelligence Committee.
It has “come to my attention that there have been a shocking amount of comments made in conservative publications and on social media to the effect that Rep. Carson’s integrity is somehow in question as a result of his religion,” Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), vice chairman of the Democratic caucus, said in a letter to members.
“These comments deeply offend me, as I’m sure they offend all of you, which is why I hope all of us will take every opportunity to renounce these kinds of comments and discourage this kind of harmful talk,” he added.
On Wednesday House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi named Carson, along with a handful of other Democrats, to serve on the Intelligence panel, which is privy to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. . . .
Carson is the first-ever Muslim lawmaker to sit on the panel.
Conservative publications online have suggested that Carson, who sat on the House Armed Services Committee in the 113th Congress, should not have been chosen for the committee because he has ties to Islamist groups that have been investigated for supporting terrorism.
Some commentators also noted a speech in 2012 where Carson said American schools should emulate Madrasses and make the Koran the “foundation” of education. After the speech, Carson issued a statement saying he does not believe public schools should be based on any particular faith.
Crowley compared the criticism to questions about President Obama’s citizenship and said “far too many” of such comments “go without response.”
Wasn’t it Hillary who first brought up the birther stuff?
SAY WHAT YOU WILL, BUT I SAW TWO BEN CARSON STICKERS YESTERDAY. I HAVEN’T SEEN ANY FOR JEB, OR ROMNEY, OR HUCKABEE. Ben Carson to the GOP Establishment: I’m Not ‘Crazy.’
ASHE SCHOW: Joni Ernst could emerge as a Republican star after her State of the Union response.
Ernst said she was “truly honored” to be selected to deliver the Republican address and added that she will work to grow the economy and protect the military.
This could mean big things for Ernst in the future. Many of the past GOP responders have been speculated as presidential nominees, including Sen. Marco Rubio (2013 responder), former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (2012), Rep. Paul Ryan (2011) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (2009).
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who gave the response in 2014, is in the no. 4 leadership position in the House of Representatives as chair of the House Republican Conference.
Well, Luke “Nepotism” Russert was already dissing her as a former pig farmer yesterday, so the Dems are clearly worried.
Well, at least you can sue for defamation the two lawyers and the woman who made the false charges. No, you can’t, your lawyer tells you. They leveled the accusation in a court document, which protects them against the defamation lawsuit as a result of the so-called litigation privilege.
How did the accusation get from a court filing in an obscure courthouse in Florida to the first page of many newspapers and the first item on many television broadcasts? Obviously, it was leaked; who is going to be checking court filings the day before New Year’s Eve? But the mere leak of a publicly filed court document cannot lead to a legal claim, your lawyer tells you.
You can’t just let the false story spread without responding. Moreover, you have documentary proof that you could not have been in the places and at the time Jane Doe #3 said she had sex with you. Can you at least respond in the media? Not without some risk of being sued for defamation, your lawyer tells you.
You have no choice but to take that risk, so you make your denials and counteraccusations on live television. You challenge the two lawyers who filed the court document to repeat the false charges in the media, so you can sue them. They remain silent. You challenge the woman, now 31-years-old, to bring rape charges against you and you offer to waive any statute of limitations, because the filing of a false rape charge is itself a serious crime—though it is rarely prosecuted. She doesn’t accept your challenge.
And then, sure enough, the lawyers who made the false accusation— Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell —sue you for defaming them—though they claim you can’t sue them for falsely accusing you of a crime.
Welcome to the Kafkaesque world of American justice. But Kafka was writing fiction when he described the ordeal faced by Josef K in his famous novel, “The Trial.” What I have described is real. It is happening to me right now. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
I now stand accused of crimes I did not commit, by an unnamed woman who I don’t know and never met. I am also being sued for defaming my accusers. I still have no opportunity to respond in court to the false charges, though I am now seeking to intervene in the lawsuit in which the accusation was filed. I have submitted a sworn statement denying the accusations with great specificity. The court has not yet decided whether to accept my motion.
This will not end well.
January 15, 2015
AL SHARPTON, MARCH ON HOLLYWOOD: Latest Problem: Too Many White Men Nominated For Oscars. #blackactorscareersmatter.
EXPECT TO HEAR MORE STORIES LIKE THIS ONE FROM STANFORD: In October 2013, I was sexually assaulted by a female student on campus. And note the hypocritical response from a campus sexual assault “counselor.”
I continued and began speaking of how I felt my gender could have played a role in the incident and how it was beginning to color our conversation. In response to this she began explicitly insisting that the woman in my case might not even know what happened that night and could accuse me of sexual assault. I had gone from possible victim to possible attacker in this woman’s eyes. Not having received the counseling I sought, I quickly ended the conversation. I understand that I didn’t handle things perfectly that night, but not once did this YWCA representative give any ounce of support. She didn’t refer me to any further resources. She never once validated that this was indeed sexual assault. As a man calling into the Young Women’s Christian Association, it’s tough to think that my gender did not play a role in this woman’s response.
If you can’t attack and shame men, why get involved in the sexual asasult biz at all?
IT’S COME TO THIS: Women’s College Cancels ‘Vagina Monologues’ Because It Excludes Women Without Vaginas. “At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman … Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive.”
Plus, “we can’t present a show that is blatantly transphobic.”
UPDATE: Feminism’s Big Lie. “Because of societal changes, young women in 2015 have new problems that are not the same as the problems that were the original grievances of feminists circa 1968. And many of the problems experienced by young women today are arguably caused by feminism’s ‘success.’ If feminism is the cause of your problems, the solution is not more feminism. . . . If she is merely talking about her own personal problems, or the personal problems of women in general — ‘our f–king lives’ — without any political purpose, is this really feminism at all? Or is it just unhappy women complaining because they are unhappy? . . . Feminism is a formula for unhappiness, an ideology conceived by unhappy women who were unwilling to take responsibility for their own unhappiness.”
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AMBULANCES ARE ONLY AN ISSUE IF WE CAN PIN THEM ON CHRIS CHRISTIE: Officials: 2 ambulances diverted thanks to I-93 protesters.
WELL, THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: Sister of Paris deli killer Coulibaly is a ‘Booty Therapy’ dancer who aims to end racism through the medium of upside-down twerking.
