Racist Incidents At The Air Force Academy And Kansas State University Prove To Be Hoaxes

images-1download-2Two universities this month were embroiled in alleged racist incidents that led to campus alerts and national controversy.  It turns out however that the “victims” at both the Air Force Academy and Kent State were actually the aggressors in the creation of racist hoaxes.  The incident at the Air Force Academy led to an angry speech by Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, who ordered all 4000 cadets to stand at attention as he railed on the racist or racists in their ranks.

 

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“The Laws All Being Flat”: Clinton Supporters Search For Legal Shelter After Months Of Lowering Standards To Target Trump

Hillary_Clinton_Testimony_to_House_Select_Committee_on_BenghaziBelow is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the allegations against Hillary Clinton and her campaign.  Yesterday, the controversy surrounding the Russian dossier deepened after it was disclosed that the co-founder of Fusion GPS (the company hired by the Clinton campaign to do the dossier) met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya before she met with Donald Trump Jr. Indeed, she met with the Fusion officials shortly before and shortly after she met with Trump Jr. in Trump Tower.  Just hours before on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom.  Simpson and Fusion GPS were hired by BakerHostetler, which represented Russian firm Prevezon through Veselnitskaya.

Here is the column:

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Menendez Case Goes To Jury . . . Jurors Sends Out Question “What Is A Senator?”

220px-The_Jury_by_John_MorganOk, maybe counsel over shot the jury a bit in the trial of Senator Robert Menendez. The Senator is facing allegations of bribes from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen ranging from luxury vacations to luxury flights to campaign contributions.   After presenting a fairly complex case of gifts, influence peddling, and nuanced criminal standards, a question can back from the jury.  The juror asked the judge “what is a senator?”

 

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Company Fires Bicyclist Who Flipped Off Trump

juli-briskman1Juli Briskman is out of a job.  The 50-year-old mother of two became a national hero for anti-Trump advocates when she gave President Donald Trump the middle finger as she bicycled along a road in Sterling, Virginia.  Trump was returning from a golf game when he encountered the middle fingered salute. Now, her employer government contractor Akima LLC has fired her in a move that she says is both political and arbitrary.  Briskman was a marketing and communications employee for Akima and the company clearly decided that flipping off the President was not an optimal marketing strategy for a government contractor.  Brishman only worked for the company for six months.

 

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Tote’n Toddlers: Wisconsin Moves To Lower Age For Hunting To 10 Years

b4557d00df551803b2d431808e822aae--photos-vintage-antique-photosYears ago, we discussed a type of race to the bottom as states outdid each other in lowering the age for hunters. South Dakota lowered the age for hunting licenses to 10.  Now Wisconsin is moving into toddler territory with a bill that would allow any age to hunt.

 

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Fish Tale: Media Misrepresents Trump’s Koi Moment With Japanese Prime Minister Abe

 

Screen Shot 2017-11-06 at 10.12.09 PMMuch of the negative media directed toward President Donald Trump is clearly self-inflicted.  However, as we have previously discussed, there has been a pronounced anti-trump media bias. Indeed, former Jimmy Carter has observed that the media has treated Trump usually harshly.  An example of this bias was evident is the odd fish story that was aired this week by CNN and other outlets about Trump overfeeding the famed Koi pond at Alaska Palace in Tokyo

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Totenberg: Kagan Appears Smarter and Tougher Than Gorsuch

As many on this blog are aware, I testified in favor of the confirmation of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch at his Senate hearing. I believe him to be a jurist with a deep commitment to first principles of constitutional interpretation.  It was for that reason that I was taken aback the the dismissive and careless comments on Gorsuch by National Public Radio Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.   Totenberg used the Supreme Court podcast “First Mondays” to launch into Gorsuch for what Totenberg described as pedantic and annoying conduct in conferences and oral arguments.  Gorsuch’s colleagues on the Tenth Circuit as well as the broader appellate bench uniformly described him as a collegial, civil, and respectful colleague.

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Basketball Player Sues New Mexico State For Allegedly Rescinding A Job Offer After Learning She Was No Longer A Lesbian

download-5According to a newly filed complaint, the New Mexico State University preferred Camille LeVieux to Camille LeNoir.  The “new” LeNoir turned out to be a straight, Christian women’s basketball coach.  The university appears to have had the older LeNoir in mind when they hired her.  LeNoir once as star at the University of Southern California who was drafted by the Washington Mystics and played professionally overseas.  She was also an open lesbian.  LeNoir would seem an ideal choice except that she spoke openly about being heterosexual and now opposing homosexuality as a sin.  Her offer was later rescinded by the New Mexico State University and the hiring coach allegedly told her it was about the video and her defense of heterosexuality.

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Laying Hands Upon The Messiah: Police Search For Jesus After Attack On Jedi

Sacred-Heart-of-Jesus561623It may seem like the nightmare for some over the secularization of England, but police are hunting down Jesus this week.  It appears that a man dressed as Jesus for Halloween and attacked another man dressed as a “Jedi Knight” — leaving the second man with a broken ankle.

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Breaking Big Scones Into Little Scones: Saudi Arabia Arrests Dozens of Princes and Officials For Corruption . . . Confines Them To The Ritz-Carlton

A stretch in confinement is never fun. Whether it is a chain gang or breaking “big stones into little stones,” time in jail can be endless. . . . unless you are a Saudi prince or official.  After a surprising crackdown on corruption and the arrest of princes and senior officials, the accused were ordered to be held in home confinement at the ultra-luxury Ritz Carlton in Riyadh.  The accused will be guaranteed “three squares a day” on a prison menu at various top restaurants that includes “Squid ink, mixed pan-seared seafood” and “Ossobuco alla Milanese, saffron risotto, and pecorino foam” at hundreds of dollars a pop.  While there is no prison yard with a weight set, there is the spa with the “Royal Groom of Arabia treatment.”

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Turley To Speak At Yale Conference

200px-Yale_University_Shield_1.svgI will be speaking today at a conference at Yale as part of the annual William F. Buckley Jr. Program.  The conference is on “The Constitution and the Courts: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Future of Freedom.”  My specific panel addresses “Judicial Confirmations and Interpreting the Constitution: Borking, Activism, and Originalism.”

Speakers at the conference will include former U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, Randy Barnett, Carlos Eire, E. Donald Elliott, David French, Mollie Hemingway, Michael McConnell, Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., Nicholas Rosenkranz, Peter Schuck, Ilya Shapiro, Jonathan Turley, Ed Whelan, and Adam White.

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A Question of Privilege: How Mueller Used Manafort’s Own Lawyer As A Witness Against Him

download-3Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the highly controversial move of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to use Paul Manafort’s own lawyer as a witness against him.  What is most striking about this move is that it was entirely unnecessary given the other evidence of alleged violations of federal law governing foreign agents.  The case against Manafort is strong but the denial of attorney-client protections in the case should be a matter of great concern for all citizens — regardless of your view of the underlying merits of the Russian investigation.

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“It Sure Looked Unethical”: Brazile Discloses Deal That Gave Hillary Clinton Control Over DNC Before Primary

Hillary_Clinton_Testimony_to_House_Select_Committee_on_Benghazi220px-donna_brazile_1The DNC and Clinton emails released by Wikileaks ultimately exposed a pattern of false statements by Democratic leaders particularly Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  Schultz insisted that they were completely neutral in the primary despite every indication to the contrary.  It was later revealed that Donna Brazile, who replaced Schultz, had first leaked questions for the debate with Sanders to Clinton and then lied about the incriminating emails later to the media (she suggested that they were fake).  Now Brazile is making a come back and has been put back into a position of power at the DNC and ironically on the Rules Committee.  She is also shopping a book. In the book, Brazile confirms that Hillary Clinton essentially bought the DNC by assuming responsibility for its crippling debt in exchange for control over the organization before the primary.  In other words, as shown by the earlier emails and now by Brazile’s own account, the primary was indeed rigged against Bernie Sanders and anyone running against Clinton.

 

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Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks