The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Rape Culture’ or ‘Libel Culture’? Lawyers for Rolling Stone Blame the Victim

Posted on | July 19, 2015 | 45 Comments

 

Rolling Stone‘s bogus gang rape story, which falsely accused a University of Virginia fraternity of a crime that never happened, led UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo to sue the magazine for $7.5 million. Eramo said the story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely “portrayed [Eramo] as callous and indifferent to allegations of sexual assault on campus and made her the university’s ‘chief villain’ in a now-debunked article.”

The central problem of Rolling Stone‘s story was that it relied on the unverified claims of a UVA student identified as “Jackie” who, upon closer scrutiny, was revealed to be mentally unstable. “Jackie” had perpetrated a “catfishing” scheme, inventing a fake boyfriend she called “Haven Monahan,” in a misguided effort to attract the romantic interest of a male friend by making him jealous. To her friends, Jackie identified this fictional character, “Haven Monahan,” as the instigator of her gang-rape; she told a different version of the story to Erdely, who failed to interview Jackie’s friends; Jackie refused to cooperate with police investigating her claims; and police obtained evidence indicating there was no party at the fraternity house on the night in question, contradicting the story Jackie told Rolling Stone.

 

The startling recklessness of Erdely and her editors at Rolling Stone was the subject of a devastating critique by the Columbia Journalism Review, and it seemed Nicole Eramo’s defamation lawsuit would be a slam-dunk. However, in a motion to dismiss Eramo’s lawsuit, attorneys for Rolling Stone now place the blame on UVA officials who vouched for the veracity of Jackie’s gang-rape claims:

On Thursday, Rolling Stone magazine responded in court to a $7.5 million lawsuit filed by University of Virginia associate dean Nicole Eramo over a now-retracted article titled “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA.” For perhaps the first time, there’s a suggestion that the University may have contributed to the faulty story. …
The plaintiff claims she was cast the “chief villain” of the story, doing nothing to help the victim and presiding over an academic institution that was “indifferent to rape on campus, and more concerned with protecting its reputation than with assisting victims of sexual assault.” . . .
Perhaps most interesting — and a sign of how Rolling Stone will defend itself going forward — is the letter that the publication sent to Eramo’s lawyers in February. This confidential letter has never been made public, but Eramo’s lawsuit briefly referenced it. And so, Rolling Stone decides to detail how it first responded to Eramo “because Plaintiff has chosen to describe such communications in her Complaint, despite their inadmissibility.”
The letter . . . makes the case that Rolling Stone had “good reason” to focus on the University of Virginia because it is “one of only 12 schools selected for a compliance review by the Department of Education’s Office” and “has been the scene of well-known sexual and other violent assaults.” . . .
The letter rejects the premise “that because Jackie’s account of her gang rape is somehow flawed or false, all references concerning Dean Eramo or UVA are likewise false.”
But maybe most provocative is the letter’s discussion of a woman named Emily Renda. . . .

“Ms. Erdely did not stumble on Jackie’s story. She was directed to Jackie by Emily Renda, then working closely with Dean Eramo in the Student Affairs office — the same Emily Renda that included Jackie’s account of being ‘gang-raped’ in her Congressional testimony about campus sexual-assault policies. There is no question that both the author and Rolling Stone had full faith in Jackie’s credibility and the accuracy of its Article at the time of publication. In no small measure, Rolling Stone believed in the credibility of Jackie’s story because it came with the imprimatur of UVA, and of Dean Eramo specifically.”

The boldface is in the letter. The publication is essentially arguing that Eramo vouched for the credibility of its main source. And this is potentially important because the letter states “at bottom, any libel inquiry turns on what Rolling Stone knew and believed at the time of publication” and a footnote in the letter also says that Eramo is “unquestionably a public figure.”

You can read the whole story at the Hollywood Reporter.

This is dynamite, my friends. What Rolling Stone is saying is that officials at UVA — specifically including Emily Renda — were responsible for the “flawed or false” story that Jackie told Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Renda had included an account of Jackie’s claim (identifying her as “Jenna”) in Renda’s June 2014 testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee:

One of the student survivors I worked with, Jenna, was gang-raped by five fraternity men early in her freshman year. Despite the severity of the assault and injuries she sustained, Jenna still experienced a feeling of personal responsibility. Looking for affirmation, she sought out peers and told her story. Sadly, each and every one of the friends she reached out to responded with varying denials of her experience . . . These statements haunted Jenna. She told me that they made her feel crazy, and made her question whether her own understanding of the rape was legitimate. . . .
Survivors who receive disaffirming responses to initial disclosures are more likely to experience negative mental health consequences as well. These negative and victim-blaming responses from her peers reinforced Jenna’s sense of fault, and prevented her from coming forward to the University’s administration or the Police. When she finally sought assistance from the Dean of Students’ office, after struggling and nearly failing out of her classes for two semesters, it was difficult for the university to conduct a meaningful investigation because much of the evidence had been lost, and witnesses were more difficult to locate.

Reading that testimony very carefully, we see that “Jenna”/Jackie first contacted university authorities because she was on the verge of flunking out of school. However, subsequent reports have indicated, the reason there was no official investigation of Jackie’s rape claim was that she herself refused to cooperate with an investigation, either by the university or by city police. Given what we know about Jackie’s “Haven Monahan” deception — a lie she told her friends — the common-sense conclusion is that Jackie didn’t want police involved because she feared that she would be exposed as a liar, and that she might be charged with making a false police report. It seems Jackie shrewdly took advantage of the system, exploiting her fictional gang-rape claim to get “support” when her academic failure put her at risk of expulsion.

Jackie told UVA officials a story about how “victim-blaming responses” discouraged her from reporting her claims of gang-rape and, when Renda testified to a Senate committee about this, Renda misrepresented why “it was difficult . . . to conduct a meaningful investigation.” It was “difficult” because (a) Jackie was lying, and (b) Jackie didn’t want an investigation that she knew would prove she was lying. As to the alleged “negative mental health consequences” Renda cited, Jackie’s friends “made her feel crazy” because Jackie was crazy and is crazy, and if UVA officials had urged Jackie to seek psychiatric treatment, I’d bet $20 that any competent shrink would have diagnosed Jackie with borderline personality disorder. Jackie appears to be a textbook BPD case, and the question is why Emily Renda, who was a student activist rather than a psychiatric specialist or an experienced criminal investigator, should have been entrusted with the authority to (a) decide Jackie was telling the truth, (b) present the Jackie/”Jenna” story to a Senate committee, and (c) then act as liaison between Jackie and a Rolling Stone reporter.

It would appear that Emily Renda conspired with Jackie to convince Sabrina Rubin Erdely that Jackie’s story was true and, needing an official scapegoat to blame for UVA’s alleged failure to investigate this gang-rape, they blamed Nicole Eramo. Now, attempting to exculpate themselves for falsely demonizing Eramo, Rolling Stone points the finger at Emily Renda, saying that because Renda was “working closely with Dean Eramo in the Student Affairs office . . . the credibility of Jackie’s story . . . came with the imprimatur of UVA.” In other words, Rolling Stone blames the victim (Eramo) for the wrongdoing of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s dishonest sources, Jackie and Emily Renda.

Whether or not Rolling Stone succeeds in getting Nicole Eramo’s suit dismissed, we see how their lawyers are pointing the finger of blame at the system of “support” for sexual-assault victims over which Eramo presided as a UVA dean. The irony, of course, is that this system was established as a result of federal laws, and Obama administration policies, which had targeted UVA for investigation because the university had allegedly failed to properly investigate sexual assaults on campus. What happened when UVA was presented with Jackie’s false accusation shows how the feminist “campus rape epidemic” witch hunt puts university officials into a Catch-22 dilemma. Who do we blame for this?

Left to right: Sabrina Rubin Erdley, Emily Renda, Catherine Lhamon

Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has been identified (by independent journalist Richard Bradley, among others) as heavily implicated in Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape hoax. Erdely quoted Lhamon calling UVA Dean of Students Allen Groves “irresponsible.” Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller reported how closely Lhamon and Renda are connected:

[Lhamon] has served as the Education Department’s designee to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault which Obama created on Jan. 22, 2014. Renda served on the same task force.
Besides that link, both spoke at a February 2014 University of Virginia event entitled “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.”
Lhamon has been invited to the White House nearly 60 times, according to visitor’s logs. Renda has been invited six times. Both were invited to the same White House meeting on three occasions. One, held on Feb. 21, 2014, was conducted by Lynn Rosenthal, then the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. Twenty-one people, mostly activists, were invited to that meeting. Lhamon and Renda were invited to two other larger gatherings [in 2014] — one on April 29 and the other on Sept. 19. . . .
Renda and Lhamon also testified at a June 26, 2014, Senate hearing on campus sexual assault.. . .
Groves wrote that he was “one of the professionals vilified by name” in Erdely’s article.
He claimed that Erdely completely mischaracterized remarks he made at a Sept. 2014 meeting with university trustees about sexual assault and that Lhamon disparaged him with comments she made to Erdely. . . .

As I wrote in April:

Lhamon, Renda and Erdely are part of a coven of liars who have conspired to fabricate a crime that never happened in order to justify this ongoing “rape epidemic” hysteria. This dishonest campaign of purposeful falsehood is being orchestrated directly from the White House as part of a systematic effort to create regulations that deprive college students of their due-process rights.

This is the real bottom line: Under pressure from feminists, the Obama administration has promoted policies that put male students at risk of false accusations, which are adjudicated in campus tribunals where the accused have none of the basic civil rights accorded to any common criminal in a court of law. Simply by setting foot on a university campus, under new policies imposed by federal authorites, a male student forfeits his due-process rights. He may be branded a rapist on the mere say-so of his accuser, and subject to immediate disciplinary action — including expulsion — without a police investigation, without a right to have a lawyer present during question, and without ever having an opportunity to confront his accuser in court.

Rolling Stone was complicit in this White House-orchestrated scheme to deny the constitutional rights of male students. The false narrative that Erdely told required a villain, and Nicole Eramo was blamed.

“Haven Monahan” could not be reached for comment.




 

Category: Uncategorized

FMJRA 2.0: Balls To The Wall

Posted on | July 18, 2015 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Are We Hiring Someone So Challenged As To Require A “Business Suit Onesie”?
First Street Journal

FMJRA 2.0: Wait, What?
BlurBrain
The Pirate’s Cove

Jay Laze Gets a Lesson in Rhetoric (Or, How NOT to Debate a Feminist)
Regular Right Guy
Living In Anglo-America

Rule 5 Sunday: The Persistence of the Bunny
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach

In The Mailbox: 07.13.15
Proof Positive

Communist Professor’s Daughter Is a ‘Lesbian Feminist Witch’ on Tumblr
Regular Right Guy

What Feminism Is
Regular Right Guy
Living In Anglo-America
Maggie’s Farm

The Gruesome Ghouls of ‘Choice’
H2O Positivo
Regular Right Guy

In The Mailbox, 07.15.15
Regular Right Guy
Proof Positive

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez: Islamic Terrorist Kills 4 Marines in Tennessee
The Daley Gator
Regular Right Guy

In The Mailbox, 07.16.15
Regular Right Guy

In The Mailbox: 07.17.15
Proof Positive

Daily Pundit Is Just Insufficiently Cynical Regarding Donald Trump
Regular Right Guy
Rotten Chestnuts

Top linker this week:

  1.  Regular Right Guy (8)

We’re still missing a bunch of pingbacks from people we’re used to seeing in the standings. To make sure you get credit, please e-mail your links to me before noon (Pacific time) on Saturday, July 25, since WordPress is being arbitrary in its hate lately.


Category: FMJRA Award

The #GamerGate vs. Gawker War

Posted on | July 18, 2015 | 88 Comments

Gawker’s irresponsibly cruel “outing” of a Conde Nast executive — a laughable farce, and yet also an exercise in horrendous sadism — prompted Vox Day to remind his readers of #GamerGate’s “anti-Gawker action, Operation Disrespectful Nod, which has already cost Gawker more than $1 million in advertising dollars.” This would appear to be the kind of activity that the #StopRush mob used against Rush Limbaugh and I am therefore ambivalent. Is turnabout fair play? Do we degrade ourselves by using the Left’s tactics against the Left? Or, if we refuse to fight fire with fire, are we engaged in a self-defeating unilateral disarmament? Knowing what damage the Left so gleefully inflicts on its chosen targets (because I have been such a target), I hesitate to condemn retaliatory counter-offenses, but I also have qualms about advocating such measures, however necessary they may sometimes be.

Guerrilla warfare tends to bring out the worst in people, but when the gamers found themselves in the cross-hairs of the Social Justice Warriors, did anyone expect them to just roll over for the likes of Anita Sarkeesian? Oh, hell, no. “War to the knife and knife to the hilt” — the targets of cultural aggression vowed to destroy the aggressors.

So, why did #GamerGate go to war against Gawker? It’s a long and complicated story, but a major focus of #GamerGate rage has been the Gawker-owned game journalism site Kotaku:

If anyone from Gawker or Kotaku had bothered to interview someone like Sargon of Akkad, Christina Hoff Sommers, Mundane Matt, Ashton Liu, Adam Baldwin, LeoPirate, Allison Prime, Jennifer Medina, Daddy Warpig or any of the moderators from Kotaku in Action, it would have been made abundantly clear that it wasn’t that Kotaku avoided talking about journalism ethics, it’s that Kotaku avoided doing anything about their failure at upholding even the most basic of ethics principles in the world of video game journalism.

This involves a controversy at the heart of #GamerGate, the affair between “Depression Quest” developer Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson, who wrote for (Gawker-owned) Rock Paper Shotgun before joining Kotaku. You can read more about this scandal at “A People’s History of GamerGate,” but the essence of it is this: Quinn was accused of gaining favorable coverage of her work — which is allegedly useless and awful — by providing Grayson and others access to her nasty poontang. And when these allegations of quid pro quo were published by one of Quinn’s embittered ex-lovers, Quinn’s defenders accused her critics of misogyny.

Let us stipulate that two things can be simultaneously true:

  1. The field of game development attracts a lot of Alpha Nerd males who may have bad attitudes about women;
    and
  2. Zoe Quinn is an opportunistic hustler who realized she could use sex as bait to garner lucrative advantages, including “free” publicity from unprincipled journalists who would accept graft in the form of occasional access to her nasty poontang.

Both of these things could be true, but because of the leftward bias in media, Misogynist Alpha Nerds is an important story, whereas in contrast, Zoe Quinn’s (Alleged) Opportunistic Poontang Hustle is something that no bien-pensant can acknowledge.

While I know nearly nothing about the videogame industry, I’ve spent the past two decades covering politics and therefore know a lot about corruption and opportunistic hustlers. And I also know that there are journalists whose stock in trade is not their skill as writers, but rather their slavish loyalty to the Democrat Party and the Politics of Social Justice. Many writers of limited ability have learned that they can attract unmerited praise — indeed, as in the notorious case of Stalin’s journalistic henchman Walter Duranty, they can win Pulitzer Prizes — if they are willing to tell lies that benefit the Left.

Speaking of writers of limited ability, Adam Weinstein got fired by Gawker last month and offered these comments in a blog post about the tawdry mess made by Gawker’s gay “outing” story:

Relatedly, none of this vindicates any of the psychotic, hateful, performatively sanctimonious self-marketing of Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yianawhatever, “gamergaters,” and the bevy of cold, craven, retrograde pre-fab apartment-dwelling souls who are waging an inane jihad against Gawker Media, feminism, and cultural justice. They are wrong. They are twisted. They are abusive. And I could give three hot farts about their crocodile tears for David Geithner and his family. What pisses me off the most about this lapse in editorial judgment is that it’s (again) enabled this barely coherent rabble of internet bullies to signal boost their dumb assertions about Gawker en masse, and to get them taken seriously for a dumb nanosecond. Gawker is not that bad, and those critics are not that smart.

This gratuitous smear of Dr. Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos and #GamerGate — “psychotic, hateful . . . retrograde pre-fab apartment-dwelling souls . . . barely coherent rabble of internet bullies” — tells us more about Adam Weinstein than it tells us about his enemies, and it may also tell us a lot about the underlying problem at Gawker. Whether or not publisher Nick Denton is a leftist ideologue, he has apparently employed leftist ideologues who in turn have made Gawker into a hive of leftist ideology. Like so many other modern media enterprises, Gawker is like one of those Stalin-era “progressive” organizations that, having failed to exclude Communist Party members, were taken over by Communist Party members. By the time Ronald Reagan realized that Communists were trying to take over Hollywood unions, Reagan himself had already unwittingly joined two Communist “front” organizations.

As anyone who has studied the Cold War knows, the Communists relentlessly smeared their enemies. Character assassination was elevated into an art and science by Soviet propagandists, and Reagan himself was among the many enemies of Communism who learned what vicious methods the Left employs against those who tell the truth about the Left. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not cure the Left of its habitual dishonesty, and hired liars like Adam Weinstein continue to practice the deceptive arts that were pioneered by the Bolsheviks and their stooges many decades ago. You may think it is unfair to compare 21st-century leftists to Comintern agents and their “progressive” dupes of the 1930s and ’40s, but to whom is it unfair? At least Walter Duranty could imagine that the socialist utopia was a viable possibility, whereas the Left in the post-Cold War era can have no excuse for their dishonest promotion of “social justice” delusions. They are not leading us toward a Progressive Proletarian Future, because they know that no such secular Heaven on Earth can ever exist. Rather than Building a Better Tomorrow, the Left is now inspired by nothing but abject nihilism, destroying society because they hate society and, also, because they enjoy destruction.

I would call Adam Weinstein a terrible human being, but that would not be accurate. He is an inhuman being, an amoral monster who delights in perverse cruelty against honest people. Firing him was one of the few good things Gawker has ever done, but I suspect that the editors who fired Adam Weinstein are actually worse than he is. He is like Trotsky, an evil man who was assassinated by an agent of the evil he helped create.

Ramon Mercader could not be reached for comment.





 

Category: Journalism, Media Bias

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | July 17, 2015 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

God’s purposes could be mysterious, he thought, gazing at the photo of his hand in his mother’s as she passed from the trauma of bringing him into the world.
When old enough to understand, he sardonically thought it a reverse abortion.
He’d fallen in love rapidly with his darkly beautiful wife, Zorha. Their passion was intense, but mirrored by her rejection of him. In a weeping phone call, she’d confessed soul-deep guilt over an old, dark deed.
He realized the symmetry with his birth situation. He offered her forgiveness, if she could forgive him.
Elsewhere, mother’s fingers curled.

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

Web Site Everybody Hates Reminds Everybody Why We Hate Them

Posted on | July 17, 2015 | 42 Comments

Gawker is to journalism what Pol Pot was to Cambodia:

Last night, a writer at Gawker outed and gay-shamed someone at the behest of an unnamed (for his safety!) source. It was a story steeped in sex, fame, cash, and blackmail, which made it a perfect target for today’s salacious clickbait culture.
Today, Gawker’s managing partners voted 5-1 (with the lone dissenter being the editor who approved the story) to take the story down—but the damage has already been done.
Sorry, Nick Denton—you don’t get to take this one back. . . .
Long story short, Gawker allegedly received a series of text messages and photos showing a planned liaison between Condé Nast CFO David Geithner (his name sounds familiar because he’s Tim Geithner’s brother) and a gay porn star and escort. Gawker claims that the escort, whose story is told under the pseudonym “Ryan,” sent them the photos and text messages after Geithner (who is married to a woman) was unable to meet him as planned during a Chicago business trip. Major money was involved: $2500 plus airfare for “Ryan’s” plane ticket from Texas to Chicago. Geithner forwarded a chunk of the cash to “Ryan” in advance, and sent his photo and lodging plans to “Ryan” via text . . .

You can read the whole thing by Amy Miller at Legal Insurrection, and let me be the first to say how shocking it is to learn that a male Conde Nast executive is married to a woman. A white heterosexual man working in the magazine industry? Is that even legal in 2015?

It’s not surprising that David Geithner turns out to be a closet homo, allegedly. What’s surprising is that he’d be paying $2,500 for a night with a rentboy. Couldn’t he find a gay “executive editor” to satisfy his occasional cravings for manmeat?

Everybody’s angry at Gawker for doing, in a particularly egregious fashion, what Gawker always does, i.e., publish crap stories. Are we surprised by Gawker’s lack of moral integrity? No, of course not.

He probably just hires them as “executive editors.”

Tommy Craggs could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! In case you didn’t realize it, #GamerGate has been at war with Gawker for months.

 

Category: Journalism

In The Mailbox: 07.17.15

Posted on | July 17, 2015 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Louder With Crowder: “Microaggression: A Beginner’s Guide”
EBL: Tell It To The Marines
Doug Powers: It Depends On What Your Definition Of “Historic And Successful Nuclear Agreement” Is
Twitchy: “Whopper Lies” – WH Spin On Why The Iran Deal Didn’t Include Hostage Release Is Laughable


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Facebook Blocking Posts On Planned Parenthood Fetal Harvesting?
American Thinker: Will Nuclear Panic Trigger Political Backlash?
BLACKFIVE: Chattanooga
Conservatives4Palin: Mexican Elites Secretly Agree With Donald Trump
Don Surber: Scott Walker – I Defunded Planned Parenthood When Defunding Wasn’t Cool
Jammie Wearing Fools: Dem Rep Luis Gutierrez Calls Murder Of Kate Steinle “A Little Thing” On Telemundo
Joe For America: Obama Celebrates Muslim Holiday With Death Of Four Marines
Pamela Geller: Chattanooga Jihadi Murderer’s Sister Complained Of “Anti-Muslim Sentiments”
Protein Wisdom: Evolution Of A Scandal – Planned Parenthood Apologizes For “Tone”
Shot In The Dark: Disproportionate
STUMP: Deal Or No Deal – Wrangling In Chicago
The Gateway Pundit: Guns Pulled On Confederate Flag Waving Families In Georgia, Florida
The Jawa Report: France Arrests Four Muslims Plotting Beheading
The Lonely Conservative: Why Are Military Bases Still Gun-Free Zones?
This Ain’t Hell: VA Inspector General Finds Your Claims In The Shredder Bin
Weasel Zippers: Disgraced Planned Parenthood Official Caught Selling Body Parts Works On White House Staff
Megan McArdle: Beware Of Evidence You Really, Really Wanted To Find
Mark Steyn: The Enemy Within


Shop Amazon Fashion – Men’s Classic Clothing

Category: Linkagery

Daily Pundit Is Just Insufficiently Cynical Regarding Donald Trump

Posted on | July 16, 2015 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Bill Quick’s analysis is true as far as it goes:

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Trump rode the White Horse of conservative hatred for open borders and scamnesty to the top of the polls, and in the process, spread terror and loathing throughout the GOP establishment.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that the strategy of the Gentry GOP uses to co-opt the votes of the Republican conservative base (even though they despise almost everything that base so desperately wants) is to make sure that, in the end, that base has only three choices – vote for an establishment crap sandwich GOP candidate the base can barely stomach, vote for a Democrat, or don’t vote at all. And they combat that last option by trumpeting at every opportunity that refusing to vote is a vote for the Democrat, knowing that voting for a Democrat is anathema to most members of the base.

Read the whole thing. Bill posits that the GOP is going to fold like the Whigs it supplanted in antebellum America.

I don’t think that this captures the evil of the GOP in its fullness. My take is:

  • there is a single, Progressive party in the United States that has carved up the electorate along various fault lines, then assigned the chunks to the Demmican and Republocrat parties;
  • the conservative urge for reform is threatening the starboard, Republocrat shock absorber, due to Tea Party fanatics;
  • the Donald and his ridiculous hairstyle will have some glorious meltdown around the time the JEBbage is anointed the clear GOP leader by the Codpiece Media;
  • the Trump card of going Independent will be played with flair and panache;
  • the #NoMasBush crowd cheerfully votes for Donald;
  • Her Majesty cackles maniacally all the way to the coronation;
  • Bush, Clinton and Trump (privately, so as not to give up the game) #PartyLikeIts1992 and laugh all the way to the bank, since they are all hedged to win financially, irrespective of the symbolic electoral results.

I’m all for Scott Walker, but my faith in the GOP is relatively cratered. I have the gnarly suspicion, for example, the IRS emails are taking so long to drag out because the Vichy GOP would stand revealed as having certain strange familiarities with the details of what Lois Lerner was up to.

Or not. I have not idea what the ground truth is. Just sayin’.

Category: Bill Quick

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez: Islamic Terrorist Kills 4 Marines in Tennessee

Posted on | July 16, 2015 | 43 Comments

Just the quick facts:

A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire at two military facilities Thursday in Chattanooga, killing four Marines, officials told CBS News. The suspect also was killed.

He was a 24-year-old immigrant:

NBC News reports that Abdulazeez is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Kuwait. . . .
The Associated Press says he lived in Hixson, Tennessee, which is a few miles from Chattanooga. . . .
He was arrested on April 21, 2015 for driving under the influence in Hamilton County, Tennessee, according to the Chattanoogan.com. . . .
The case is being investigated as possible “domestic terrorism” and the FBI is leading the probe.


UPDATE: Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit reports that ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts are celebrating the Chattanooga attack and promising more, including one threat aimed at Berlin.

UPDATE II: Donald Douglas at American Power:

Islamic State Tweeted Warning Ahead of
#Chattanooga Terror Attack: ‘O American Dogs!’

The FBI official statement:

The FBI’s Knoxville Field Office, along with the Chattanooga Police Department and other law enforcement partners, are working jointly to investigate today’s shootings at a military recruitment center and a reserve center in Chattanooga, Tennessee in which four individuals were killed and three injured. The shooter, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, is also deceased. While it would be premature to speculate on the motives of the shooter at this time, we will conduct a thorough investigation of this tragedy and provide updates as they are available.

And via Memorandum, more blogging at Legal Insurrection, National Review, American Spectator, Patterico, The Jawa Report and Jihad Watch.
 

Category: Terrorism
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