The man driving the car was David Be’eri, who according to the Jerusalem Post, heads a group that advocates for Jewish families to live in predominantly Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem. A spokesman for the driver told the Jerusalem Post that “[h]is car was surrounded with tens of people with rocks. When they started throwing them, and he hit them when he tried to flee from the area. It seems that they were lying in wait and the ambush was planned with rocks, it may have even been a lynch situation. He felt his life was in danger.” The fact of the matter is that this is not an irrational thing to have assumed at the time, and his first goal should have been to escape the situation, even at the cost of hitting one of the Arabs. If any Jew living in Israel were confronted by a group of stone throwing Arabs the assumption would be that the Jew is in grave danger, perhaps even to life. As a man from a group advocating for increased Jewish presence throughout all of Jerusalem he has the right to believe he is indeed a greater target of Arab extremists. These youths began throwing rocks and his goal should have been to get out of there before they attacked him. He did not target them with his car, they targeted his car with their stones. Obviously nobody should run over anyone with their car, but just because one is in a car does not mean the right of self-defense disappears. This is an unfortunate situation to have occurred, but the anti-Israel left has no right to cling to it to paint Israelis in a bad light. If anything it is proof of the terrible terror a Jew doing nothing more than driving on the streets of Jerusalem could have to confront from Arab extremists. In fact, if one watches the video carefully one can see that the initial reaction of the driver was to attempt to swerve out of the way of the rock throwers, but one of the rock throwers actually ran toward the car as it was swerving seemingly under the assumption the car would stop. Clearly, that was a poor assumption.
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Friday, October 8, 2010
Israeli Hits Rock-Throwing Palestinian With Car
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Does The First Amendment Right To Free Speech Protect Obscene Westboro Baptist Church Protests At The Funerals Of Fallen Soldiers?
Visit http://www.therightscoop.com/glenn-beck-we-must-protect-the-rights-of-westboro-baptist-church-protesters?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=glenn-beck-we-must-protect-the-rights-of-westboro-baptist-church-protesters to see the radio discussion for yourself. I am personally torn on this issue. There is indeed Supreme Court precedent to support the offensive speech of the Westboro Baptist "Church" wackos, but that itself might be a commentary on the state of the Supreme Court's First Amendment's jurisprudence. I eagerly await the Supreme Court ruling on this case so that I can read the opinion and deliver all my readers an analysis based on my knowledge of the First Amendment and the Supreme Court precedent that derives therefrom. Tweet
Federal Judge Finds ObamaCare Mandate Constitutional
“The trouble, if you think about it, is if Congress has authority to regulate nonactivity then it has the ability to regulate anything,” Rob Muise of the Thomas More Center said, also promising the case he just lost will be repealed. Congress can “tell you to exercise three times a week, to take certain vitamins, to refrain from eating certain foods because, at some point, costs are going to be incurred to the health care market. I find that very troubling when we have a federal government that’s supposed to be of limited, enumerated powers,” he said.
Rob Muise is a lawyer for the Thomas More Center that just lost a case in a Michigan federal court against the Obamacare individual mandate, the first federal court opinion to be issued on the Obamacare mandate issue and the Commerce Clause. A federal court in Michigan just ruled perhaps unsurprisingly, though wrongly, that the Obamacare mandate was in line with the Commerce Clause jurisprudence. The Court repeatedly cited the “substantial economic affects" test. Relying on the wrongheaded "substantial economic affects" test, and actually showing the ever more absurd results it can lead to, the Court ruled that the Obamacare mandate that forces individuals to purchase the product of health insurance under penalty of facing a fine is Constitutional by saying the following: "While plaintiffs describe the Commerce Clause power as reaching economic activity, the government’s characterization of the Commerce Clause reaching economic decisions is more accurate." The Commerce Clause deals with "decisions" over "activity"? How can that possibly be? The judge reasoned that Article I Section 8 Clause 3 of the Constitution, which it should be noted is one of the enumerated powers, allows the federal government to regulate that which has substantial economic affects on interstate commerce and therefore reasoned that "[t]he costs of caring for the uninsured who prove unable to pay are shifted to health care providers, to the insured population in the form of higher premiums, to governments, and to taxpayers. The decision whether to purchase insurance or to attempt to pay for health care out of pocket, is plainly economic. These decisions, viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers, and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance." But Rob Muise, who is a lawyer from the Thomas More Center representing the losing side in this first lower federal court dreadful opinion on the issue, has correctly pointed out why this is nonsensical reasoning even in light of Supreme Court precedent. Now according to one American lower court decision, so long as a federal law can be linked to some economic affect, it can apparently now be Constitutionality regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause even if that link revolves around a personal economic "decision." This federal judge's argument should not be taken seriously because in essence the reasoning of this Court makes a mockery of the idea of a limited enumeration of powers.
But the problem does in fact lay in wrongly decided Supreme Court precedent itself that was unsurprisingly now used to extend Congress’s power to this new unprecedented level by this judge. As this Court itself wrote as it declared that personal economic decisions can be regulated under the Commerce Clause, the “Supreme Court has consistently rejected claims that individuals who choose not to engage in commerce thereby place themselves beyond the reach of the Commerce Clause. See, e.g., Raich, 545 U.S. at 30 (rejecting the argument that plaintiffs’ homegrown marijuana was ‘entirely separated from the market’); Wickard, 317 U.S. at 127, 128 (home-grown wheat ‘competes with wheat in commerce’ and ‘may forestall resort to the market’); Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964) (Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate decisions not to engage in transactions with persons with whom plaintiff did not wish to deal). Similarly, plaintiffs in this case are participants in the health care services market. They are not outside the market. While plaintiffs describe the Commerce Clause power as reaching economic activity, the government’s characterization of the Commerce Clause reaching economic decisions is more accurate.” That being said, it is the immediate previous sentence that is unlimited in its scope. Are all “economic decisions” now to be considered the legitimate venue of the federal government under the Commerce Clause? If that is the case, is the Commerce Clause a limit on federal government power at all? It is a mockery of Constitutional government, let alone the Constitution's original meaning, to pretend that the federal government has a blank check to legislate on every issue, even if ever so tenuously or indirectly tied to the economy. As Justice Clarence Thomas actually wrote in his 1995 concurrence in US v. Lopez, and this is certainly correct generally and in the case now being discussed applicable, “Such a formulation of federal power is no test at all: it is a blank check.
Let us all hope other federal courts known to be addressing the same issue, judges bound to read this opinion, are not overly influenced by it, that the appellate courts are not only uninfluenced either but see other lower federal court options ruling rightly, and that the Supreme Court eventually rules correctly over all. That being said, it is clear how the liberal side of the Court will rule, just see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea5Zgrn5hsI, and so once again it will come down to America awaiting the whims of Anthony Kennedy.
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Food Stamp Recipients At Record 41.8 Million Americans In July, U.S. Says
Bloomberg reports that the "number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.8 million in July as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government said. Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 18 percent from a year earlier and increased 1.4 percent from June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a statement on its website. Participation has set records for 20 straight months." Tweet
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Mark Levin vs. Gloria Allred On Meg Whtiman's Fomer Illegal Maid
Listen to Mark Levin absolutely destroy Gloria Allred:
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CNN's Rick Sanchez Fired After Anti-Semitic Comments About Jon Stewart And Jews
The AP reports that "CNN fired news anchor Rick Sanchez on Friday, a day after he called Jon Stewart a bigot in a radio show interview where he also questioned whether Jews should be considered a minority. Sanchez, who was born in Cuba and had worked at CNN since 2004, was host of the two-hour 'Rick's List' on CNN's afternoon lineup. He did a prime-time version of that show in recent months, but that ended this week because the time slot is being filled by a new show featuring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and columnist Kathleen Parker... Sanchez said that Stewart is bigoted toward 'everybody else that's not like him.' He said Stewart 'can't relate to what I grew up with,' saying his family had been poor and he had seen prejudice directed at his father. Sanchez dismisses it when Dominick points out that Stewart, who is Jewish, is also a minority. 'I'm telling you that everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?' Sanchez said, adding a sarcastic 'yeah.' 'I can't see someone not getting a job these days because they're Jewish,' he said. CNN issued a statement late Friday that said Sanchez 'is no longer with the company.' In it, the network also thanked Sanchez "for his years of service" and wished him well."
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