Dershowitz mulls UC Berkeley lawsuit over possible 'content-based discrimination'

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said Thursday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that he is considering suing the University of California, Berkeley over a stipulation that would prevent him to speak on campus.

Dershowitz told Tucker Carlson that the school prevented him from speaking on Israel because he did not give the school eight-week advance notice.

He said the school, however, usually waives the stipulation for speakers who are invited by a department, but those speakers tend to be anti-Israel, liberals and radicals.
“If no department invites us, having invited people from the other side, we will sue them arguing that the eight-week rule is a cover for content-based discrimination against moderates, liberals, conservatives and supporters of Israel,” Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz, who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, said he was certain to find that Berkeley has already invited anti-Israel speakers from across the U.S. and that he would not receive an invitation.
“We’re testing Berkeley at this point to see if it happens there,” he said. “I wanted to speak at the school and I wanted to present to students the liberal case for Israel and if Berkeley won’t let me do it, I have a legal recourse in which I intend to take.”
Dershowitz said he hopes Berkeley will allow him to speak, whether it is a department inviting him or the school changing the rule.

NFL Player Cartoons

Stacy Washington: NFL players should hand a folded flag to a dead soldier’s family, then consider kneeling

The NFL has a choice to make and it’s an easy one: political activism or sports.  The American people will only tolerate one of those so they had best choose wisely.  There are two prevailing perspectives here and both of them cannot coexist leaving the NFL unscathed.  On one side the NFL players enjoy a league minimum pay of $465,000 a year while their fans earn a median household income of $56,515.  The players lead rarified lives that don’t appear to leave room for understanding just who their supporters are.

Football devotees utilize their hard earned money to buy $250 jerseys to wear at the expensively priced games, or to purchase a cable subscription to Sunday Ticket or Red Zone to enjoy the game at home with friends and family.  This is can’t-miss activity that some football enthusiasts attend with a regularity resembling church fervor.  But why are fans so devoted to the anthem and flag?  Aren’t they just symbols?

My experience with the flag gives a glimpse into why the majority of Americans will never accept “taking a knee.”  While on Active Duty in the Air Force I had the privilege of serving on the Air Force Honor Guard performing burial services on a team.  The pallbearers would retrieve the casket from the hearse and place it on a stand where we would unfurl a brand new, crisp U.S. flag.  We wore dress blues and white gloves.  As the folding commenced the only sounds were soft sobs, birds chirping and the snapping sound of our gloves making contact with the material of the flag.  With each sweeping motion the sound of mourning would increase a bit in time with the cathartic motions that signified the end of the ritual.

Dishonoring the flag by making it the object of protest, no matter how great the cause, is repugnant and nonsensical.

Sometimes the task of handing over the folded flag would fall to me, and I would cradle the triangle of cloth to my uniformed chest and glide over to the canopy where the family awaited.  On one occasion I handed the flag into the tiny hands of a child of perhaps four or five.  Another time I looked into the red-rimmed eyes of an older woman who thanked me through her tears.  This ceremony takes place countless times around the nation on an almost daily basis as veterans, retirees and active duty service members killed in the line of duty are laid to rest.  These people have a close connection to our flag through the service of themselves or their loved ones.
Dishonoring the flag by making it the object of protest, no matter how great the cause, is repugnant and nonsensical to these people.  Polling shows that 58 percent of NFL supporters lean to the right politically; Americans who revere both veterans and military service members.  These people love America, making the NFL players' insistence on taking a knee during the national anthem a losing proposition. There are ways to sway a community; defiling a national symbol associated with honor, service, sacrifice and bravery isn’t one of them.  If the NFL continues to indulge the players, declining ratings and lower attendance at games will become the norm.  NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the team owners must man up:  choose the fans by ending the protests.
Stacy Washington is host of the "Stacy on the Right Show," broadcast on Urban Family Talk Monday through Friday from 2-3pm in St. Louis, Missouri. Click here for more.

Michelle Obama slams women who voted for Trump

Former first lady Michelle Obama said, “Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice.”  (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst, File)

Former first lady Michelle Obama leveled harsh criticism Wednesday at women who voted for President Trump, suggesting they voted against their own interests. 

“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,” Obama told the audience during a talk at a marketing conference in Boston, according to Boston.com. 

She went on to suggest female voters for Trump were just going with the pack.
“It doesn’t say much about Hillary, and everybody’s trying to worry about what it means for Hillary and no, no, no what does this mean for us as women?” she asked, as reported by the Washington Times. “That we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said, ‘He’s better for me. His voice is more true to me.’ To me that just says, you don’t like your voice. You just like the thing you’re told to like.”
She was taking a swipe at a large swath of the population -- according to exit polls, 41 percent of women voted for Trump in November.
Obama, who campaigned for Clinton during the 2016 election, was speaking as a part of Inbound, a sales and marketing conference.
When talking directly about Trump, Obama took a different tone.
“We want him to be successful. He was elected,” she said, referring to her and former President Barack Obama’s hopes for the current president. “When you’ve been in that position, you have a different perspective.”
Her former president husband, though, has been stepping up his criticism of Trump lately, including taking to Facebook to blast the decision to roll back his DACA executive action for so-called "dreamers." 

Alleged leaker hid NSA documents in pantyhose, report says

A former National Security Agency contractor has reportedly told federal authorities that she smuggled classified documents out of the NSA office where she worked by stuffing them in her pantyhose.

The documents reportedly contained classified data on Russia’s alleged hacking during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a former Air Force linguist with a top-secret security clearance, was asked by an FBI agent about how she managed to get the documents out of the agency's Augusta, Ga., office.
She responded: “Folded it in half in my pantyhose,” Politico reported, citing a transcript filed by prosecutors Wednesday.
Winner worked as a government contractor in Augusta until June, when she was charged with copying a classified report and mailing it to an online news organization.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps has scheduled a hearing Friday to reconsider releasing Winner on bond. He ordered her jailed in June after prosecutors said Winner may have taken more than a single classified report.
They said Winner had inserted a portable hard drive into a top-secret Air Force computer before she left the military last year.
Winner's defense lawyers argued in a court filing Saturday that prosecutors haven't accused Winner of any additional crimes more than three months later. They noted several other cases in which defendants accused of leaking multiple secret documents were freed on pre-trial bonds.
Jennifer Solari, an assistant U.S. attorney, warned the judge in June that investigators hadn't found the portable hard drive that Winner allegedly plugged into an Air Force computer and didn't know what might be on it.
Winner's lawyers included an email from Solari in their latest court filing in which the prosecutor noted that she was mistaken when she previously told the judge that Winner was recorded in a jailhouse phone conversation saying: "Mom, those documents. I screwed up."
Solari wrote that the recording shows that Winner actually told her mother: "I leaked a document."
Defense attorneys wrote that if Winner is released, her mother in Kingsville, Texas, would move to Georgia to live with her and ensure that she complies with all bond conditions.
Authorities haven't described the classified report Winner is accused of leaking or named the news outlet that received it. But the Justice Department announced Winner's arrest on the same day the Intercept reported it had obtained a classified NSA report suggesting that Russian hackers attacked a U.S. voting software supplier before last year's presidential election.
The NSA report was dated May 5, the same as the document Winner is charged with leaking.

Deep state? 78 Obama appointees 'burrowed' in gov't, report says

By the time Barack Obama's presidency ended in January 2017, 78 of his political appointees had "burrowed" into government jobs over the course of six years, a report says.

The report from the Government Accountability Office was obtained by the Washington Times.

"Burrowing" refers to a process in which political appointees are appointed to career-level jobs to protect them from being ousted once a new administration takes over.
Of the 78 such appointees identified in the GAO report, seven had switched to career jobs without first receiving necessary approval from the Office of Personnel Management, the report says. Four were later denied the positions and three later resigned.
The department with the highest number of conversions was the Department of Homeland Security, with nine appointees burrowing in. The Department of Justice was second with eight conversions.
The process of burrowing is not an uncommon for administrations on the way out. President George W. Bush had at least 26 conversions approved in his final year in office.
Obama was warned in his final year against assigning political appointees to career jobs and was asked by Republicans to implement a hiring freeze to avoid keeping workers who opposed President Donald Trump's policies.
“Not only is ‘burrowing in’ unfair to applicants without an inside connection, it further contributes to the possibility that federal workers may attempt to undermine the policies of the new president,” Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., wrote to Obama, McClatchyDC reported.

Anthony Weiner Cartoons ( Democrat )

Marc Thiessen: Want to protest Trump? Disrespecting the flag is a disgraceful way to do it

This weekend, the more than 100 NFL players who refused to stand during the national anthem were met with boos from crowds in stadiums across America — and deservedly so.

Playing in London, Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars players wouldn’t stand for the U.S. national anthem but did for “God Save the Queen” in the very country we fought to win our independence.
Worse, the players held their disgraceful protest on National Gold Star Mother’s Day, the day our country honors mothers who have lost children in war. A Gold Star mother whose son died in Afghanistan told CNN last year that when she first saw players taking a knee, “my heart kind of stopped and I lost my breath because the flag that I see is the flag that draped my son’s casket.” Imagine what she and other Gold Star mothers felt seeing 100 players do the same on the very day our country set aside to thank them.
Way to go, NFL.
In Pittsburgh, only one player — Alejandro Villanueva — a former Army Ranger who lost brothers in arms fighting under that flag — came out of the locker room to stand for the anthem. He was criticized for doing so by his coach. The fans’ response? Sales of Villanueva jerseys skyrocketed.
What these players don’t seem to understand is that Americans gave their lives so that they could have the freedom to play a kids’ game for a living. When players disrespect the flag, they disrespect that sacrifice. And it would not matter if they had done so to protest Donald Trump or Barack Obama — their actions would be equally offensive. If NFL players want to protest the president, they have plenty of other ways. Attend a rally. Speak out on Twitter. Tell the media after the game, “I stood up for America but I stand against Donald Trump.” But don’t show contempt for the flag.
Were President Trump’s comments urging owners to fire players who refused to stand incendiary? Sure. Were they politically calculated? No doubt. But that does not change the fact that he is right. And he did not start this fight. Colin Kaepernick and a handful of players did. Moreover, Trump is not the first president to speak out against disrespect for the flag. In 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush excoriated his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, for vetoing a bill requiring Massachusetts teachers to lead their students in the Pledge of Allegiance. As president he proposed a constitutional amendment to outlaw desecration of the flag.
Yes, athletes do have a constitutional right to engage in speech that is offensive to millions of Americans. But the First Amendment does not protect them from the consequences of their offensive speech. There is no constitutional right to play professional football. If an NFL player stood on the sidelines and hurled racial epithets, his speech would be protected by the First Amendment. He would also be fired.
The NFL’s game operations manual says that “all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem” and must “stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking” or face discipline “such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s).” The league regularly penalizes players for dancing in the end zone, but it allows players to violate the rules regarding the national anthem with impunity.
The NFL is also selective when it comes to the kind of speech it protects. Last September, the Dallas Cowboys asked for permission to wear helmet stickers in honor of police officers massacred in Dallas earlier last year. The league refused. So the NFL will not allow players to express their support for police with a tiny helmet decal, but it lets them disrespect the flag while distorting the work of police officers across the country?
The players’ behavior is hurting the league. NFL viewership is at its lowest point since 1998, and ESPN reports that “national anthem protests were the top reason that NFL fans watched fewer games last season, according to a new survey released by J.D. Power.” Indeed, “Sunday Night Football” had its worst ratings of the season this weekend, as millions of Americans turned off their sets in disgust.
If the NFL won’t stop its players from disrespecting the flag, then maybe Congress should take a second look at some of the federal benefits the NFL enjoys. For example, the NFL gets a special antitrust exemption in U.S. law. Democrats in Congress have already been debating whether the league should be stripped of this exemption because of its weak response to domestic violence allegations against players. Perhaps Republicans angry over anthem protests will now be willing to join them? And this might also be a good time for some public hearings into the NFL’s efforts to interfere with concussion research at the National Institutes of Health.
Last year, National Hockey League coach John Tortorella declared, “If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game.”
Hey, NFL, take a cue from the NHL. Every coach and owner should tell his players the same.
Marc Thiessen is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Thiessen served as chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush and to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.