#william jacobson

[femmes-et-art]

William Jacobson, 1949.

[eretzyisrael]

On Eve of Sentencing, The Lies of Rasmea Odeh and Her Supporters Exposed, by William Jacobson

Lies about her allegedly torture-induced confession to a supermarket bombing, her terrorist past and her immigration fraud.

As readers know, we have covered the case of Rasmea Odeh more closely than any other website, with almost 100 posts since our October 6, 2014 post, Palestinian activist groups accused of attempting to influence jury.

This coming Thursday, August 17, 2017, Rasmea will be sentenced in federal court in Detroit after a guilty plea to immigration fraud. By her plea agreement, Rasmea will be deported and will lose her U.S. citizenship, but will not serve any further jail time.

Rasmea’s immigration plea resulted from her lies on immigration and naturalization forms in which she concealed a prior conviction and prison term for a 1969 supermarket bombing in Jerusalem that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. Rasmea also concealed her conviction for the attempted bombing of the British Consulate that same year. Rasmea was released in a 1979 prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon.

Rasmea and her supporters have thrown up phony defense after defense to both the underlying bombing and the immigration charges, all designed to portray Rasmea as a victim. A summary of these false claims and the truth rebutting the claims was in my December 2012 Op-Ed in the Detroit News, Rasmea Odeh is no victim.

The following posts at Legal Insurrection, among others, methodically rebut the propaganda put out by Rasmea and her supporters:

Rasmea Odeh rightly convicted of Israeli supermarket bombing and U.S. immigration fraud

Prosecutors seek testimony of Rasmea Odeh bombing co-conspirators

Rasmea Odeh prosecutors: At new trial, we’ll prove Rasmea was a terrorist

New VIDEO surfaces implicating Rasmea Odeh in deadly supermarket bombing

Rasmea Odeh’s victims – then and now

[deltamusings]

Report: Over 230 Universities Have Mandatory CRT Training Programs

Over 230 of America's colleges or universities have mandatory critical race theory training for students and faculty.

Over 230 of America’s colleges or universities have mandatory Critical Race Theory training for students and faculty, according to CriticalRace.org.

The website, which compiles a list of over 500 colleges and universities across the country, has reported at least 236 institutions with trainings focused on “anti-racism,” “equity,” and “implicit bias” — words typically used to surreptitiously refer to the race essentialist ideology — according to Fox News.

Of the 236, the outlet reports, 149 have mandatory training for faculty and staff, while 138 have an institution-wide requirement.

The database, which Cornell University law professor and founder William A. Jacobson said “is a resource for parents and students who no longer can assume they will be left alone,” said with that the data shows “race has become a pervasive focus in higher education with a near universal insistence that racism is systemic in the United States.”

Jacobson’s database, however, has recorded some K-12 schools and institutions of higher education as reinstituting racial segregation, such as at Lewis and Clark College.

“People need to understand that Higher Ed is the source of the problem,” Jacobson told Fox News at the start of his project. “It provides the ideological mothers’ milk for activists, and trains the people who then go onto jobs in government and primary/secondary education, and the ‘journalists’ who push this coverage.”

“Higher ed is focused on what divides people, exacerbating rather than solving problems,” he concluded.

[spiritualdirections]

Jesuit university’s new president is poster child for the cancel culture

Seattle University has just hired the former dean of Cornell Law School, Eduardo Peñalver, to be their next president. In some ways he’s ideal--he’s a local Hispanic boy who heads a prestigious law school. In some ways he’s not--his resume includes clerking for one of the most pro-abortion justices in Supreme Court history, John Paul Stevens. 

I’d be more worried about his recent history. Over the summer, as head of the Law School, he participated in one of the more egregious cases of the cancel culture in any university anywhere. Professor William Jacobson of Cornell’s Law School is one of the most recognized conservative legal voices, the founder of the highly popular blog Legal Insurrection. Since 2015, he’s been blogging about the BlackLivesMatter organization, worrying about the organization’s ties to anti-Israel and Marxist groups. This June, after the George Floyd death, he reminded his readers that President Obama’s Black Attorney General Eric Holder oversaw an investigation into police officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. That investigation concluded that Brown did not say “don’t shoot” while holding up his hands in surrender, but rather that he charged the officer in a threatening way (see pp. 7-8 of the report). The title of Jacobsen’s post was “Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case”. 

Because of this post, Cornell’s Law School went full cancel culture on Jacobson, as he recounts to the Daily Signal. In particular, Peñalver, as the dean, threw Jacobson under the bus before the mob, denouncing him for citing the Department of Justice report on his blog. He expressed that he couldn’t fire Jacobson because of the nature of his contract, which outside commentators thought was all that the letter needed to say. Instead, he wrote:

In light of this deep and rich tradition of walking the walk of racial justice, in no uncertain terms, recent blog posts of Professor William Jacobson, casting broad and categorical aspersions on the goals of those protesting for justice for Black Americans, do not reflect the values of Cornell Law School as I have articulated them. I found his recent posts to be both offensive and poorly reasoned.

The key complaint against Jacobson, remember, was that he cited a report by President Obama’s Department of Justice, headed by Eric Holder, which concluded that the #BlackLivesMatter narrative about Michael Brown was not true. That wasn’t “casting broad and categorical aspersions on the goal[...] of justice for Black Americans.” It wasn’t, for example, promoting injustice for Black Americans. It was saying that the tactics of some protesters involved lying in order to simplify a complex issue. And he proved it.

The cancel culture, though, isn’t concerned about whether you’re right, but only about whether you are politically correct. It is speaking power to truth, rather than truth to power. That’s what then-Dean Peñalver did to Jacobson, at the moment when Jacobson was in need of someone to come to his defense. He didn’t need to defend Jacobson’s tone or his general conservatism. He just needed to defend his academic freedom. Instead, he decided that he needed to virtue signal by mischaracterizing Jacobson’s position as being, in effect, that of a racist.

And that’s what the Board of Trustees at Seattle University thought they needed in a President. Not someone advocating such Catholic values as truth, justice, mercy, charity, solidarity, fraternal correction, or bearing with the faults of others. Someone instead advocating the anti-Catholic values of the cancel culture--virtue signaling, political correctness, intolerance, division, and irrational levels of anger at those who disagree with you. 

[newsdock]

Judge orders release of David Gregory affidavit after gun display

A judge has ordered the District of Columbia to release the affidavit stemming from its investigation of David Gregory after the "Meet the Press" host displayed a high-capacity ammunition magazine on the air. http://dlvr.it/80WX0m

[gilliannigro-editorial-blog]

Pit Bulls

William Jacobson, the founder of the conservative blog, Legal Insurrection, spoke to my independent media class yesterday. He had some interesting perspectives on the blogging industry, but his content projected on the screen in front of me was a bit distracting. From thinly-veiled racist caricatures of President Obama, to "White Male Appreciation Week" as the "post of the day," I was biting my tongue so hard I'm shocked it didn't fall off. 

The impetus for the blog was a heated political dinner-table conversation around the time of the 2008 presidential election. His first post, hosted on Google Blogger, went live on Oct. 12, 2008 with the headline "Obama is 'Door No. 2."

"Blog traffic exists on the kindness of strangers," Jacobson said in his talk, and only 11 and a half months after starting the blog, he hit the millionth visit mark. Jacobson soon began to realize that in order to keep eyes on his site, he needed to be uploading fresh content regularly. The 8 to ten posts he averages today on Legal Insurrection are in collaboration with a team of freelance writers and editors. 

The question still remains, is Jacobson a journalist or simply a conservative bloviator? Probably somewhere in between. However, I can classify him with certainty as a pit bull. Like the dogs grab onto prey and shake, Jacobson grabs onto stories and doesn't let go . . . even after they're long dead. Take Elizabeth Warren, for instance. A menu option at the top of the blog entitled "Wiki" will take you directly to a fake Wikipedia page (created by Jacobson) of the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. He has been on her case for years, ever since she first ran against his man, Scott Brown. 

There's a line between journalism and political campaigning, and also between reporting and activism. For Jacobson, and many other political bloggers like him, that line is blurred. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The right-wingers have been in full-on gloat mode since the capture of the Boston Marathon bombers -- not because it turned out that they were right about the nature of the perpetrators (they weren't), but because speculation that they might be right-wing extremists was wrong. Only wingnuts can convert a sigh of relief into an attack on their opponents.

The problem is that all they're really doing is attempting, yet again, to whitewash away the very real existence of violent extremists on their own side.

Leading the charge is William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, who published a post over the weekend titled"Add Boston Marathon Bombing to pile of Failed Eliminationist Narratives":

Yet there was a theory behind the madness, the Eliminationist Narrative created by Dave Neiwart of Crooks and Liars about an “eliminationist” radical right seeking to dehumanize and eliminate political opposition. It was a play on the over-used narrative of Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” in American politics.

The Eliminationist Narrative was aided and abetted by an abuse of the term “right-wing” to include groups who are the opposite of conservatism and the Tea Party movement.

In the case of Sparkman, the accusations were just Another Failed Eliminationist Narrative. And the Eliminationist Narrative would fail time and time again:

James Holmes Jared Loughner The Cabby Stabber The “killer” of Bill Sparkman Amy Bishop The Fort Hood Shooter The IRS Plane Crasher The Pentagon Shooter

We can now add the Boston Marathon Bombing to the pile. The wild speculation that there was a Tea Party or “right-wing” connection proved false.

Of course, it would always help if people like Jacobson managed to review the posts of the people he's attacking -- since neither I nor anyone at Crooks and Liars ever speculated in print that the perps were white right-wing extremists. Others did, however -- and frankly, we discussed it among ourselves. But we knew that it was irresponsible to speculate publicly until we knew more, and so we waited -- unlike a few progressives, and even many, many more conservatives. (More about that in a moment.)

The fact, however, is that the speculation about right-wing extremism's potential role was entirely rational, considering that in the past four years, there have been nearly 70 acts of domestic terrorism committed by right-wing extremists in the United States, compared to just over 30 such acts committed by Islamist extremists here. (I have prepared a report on this that Mother Jones will be publishing soon.)

Trust me on this, Mr. Jacobson, as a person who has attended their gatherings and spent time observing their ideology up close and personally: There is nothing remotely left-wing, or anything other than right wing, about the ideology promoted by people like the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan and American Renaissance and a whole bevy of other hate groups out there operating in America today. The notion that they are not from the political right is simply risible.

It just depends where on the very real spectrum of right-wing thought each happens to fall. You see, the reason they call these people right wing extremists is that they begin with simple, perhaps even mainstream, conservative positions and extend them to their most outrageous and illogical extreme.

Conservatives are, for instance, skeptical of the power of the federal government to intervene in civil-rights matters; right-wing extremists believe it has no such power whatsoever, but it has been usurped by a Jewish conspiracy that is imposing its will on white people.

Conservatives are skeptical of internationalism and entities like the United Nations. Right-wing extremists believe the U.N. represents a diabolical plot to overthrow American sovereignty and impose totalitarian rule.

Conservatives believe that abortion is murder of a living being and oppose its use on demand. Right-wing extremists believe that this justifies committing murder and various violent crimes in order to prevent it.

Conservatives believe affirmative action is a form of reverse discrimination. Right-wing extremists believe it is part of a plot to oppress white people.

Conservatives oppose taxation, and tax increases in particular, on principle. Right-wing extremists believe that the IRS is an illegitimate institution imposed on the body politic by the aforementioned Jewish conspiracy.

Conservatives oppose increased immigration on principle and illegal immigration as a matter of law enforcement, and believe the borders should be secure. Right-wing extremists believe that Mexicans are coming here as part of an "Aztlan" conspiracy to retake the Southwest for Mexico, and that we should start shooting border crossers on sight.

You get the idea.

Moreover, the claim that right-wing extremists have nothing to do with the Tea Party is just flatly risible. I have two simple words regarding that claim: Oath Keepers.

But the conspiracist Oath Keepers are hardly the only extremist element that has been absorbed within the ranks of the Tea Party. The list is long, but it's headed up by the Minutemen who have become Tea Party leaders. Moreover, as I explored in an investigative piece for AlterNet, the movement became a functional extension of the Patriot/militia movement in many precincts, especially in rural areas, away from the television crews.

Jacobson's limitations on what constitutes "right wing" are not only ahistorical, afactual, and fully at odds with reality, they're also predictably self-serving. So it's not surprising that, given his criteria, even his list of "failed eliminationist narratives" is fatally flawed.

Most of the examples he provides, notably the Bill Sparkman episode, were never discussed by me or by anyone at C&L as instances of right-wing violence, because we never considered them such. However, there are three cases here that we did indeed describe as involving right-wing extremists. And you know what? We still do.

We realize, for instance, that the post-shooting narrative favored pretending that Jared Lee Loughner was somehow not a terrorist because he was mentally ill (a claim they for some reason do not make when it comes to Nidal Hasan, the mentally ill gunman in the Fort Hood shooting rampage). They also found other mitigating factors, such as Loughner's youthful liberalism, to claim that he was not a right-wing extremist, despite the obvious liberal-ness of his targets. However, none of that can overcome the reality that at the time he acted, Loughner was carrying out what he saw as a mission on behalf of his now-adopted right-wing beliefs involving a global monetary conspiracy. He was indeed a right-wing extremist, and other experts on the subject who have examined the record have reached the same conclusion.

Similarly, we found that the IRS plane bomber was indeed a terrorist, and that he was acting on behalf of the very same extremist anti-tax ideology we described above. And the Pentagon shooter, John Patrick Bedell, was acting out on his beliefs derived from Alex Jones's conspiracy theories -- and Jones, despite many efforts to pretend otherwise, is clearly a classic right-wing conspiracy theorist and extremist from the old John Birch mold.

Yes, we recognize very much that there is a significant difference between mainstream conservatives and right-wing extremists, as we've outlined above -- but those differences, frankly, keep diminishing, and the ideological distances keep shrinking.

We would love nothing more than to report that conservatives were bravely standing up against extremists on the right and doing their part as citizens to bring an end to their toxic contributions to our society. Believe me, as a onetime moderate Republican from a conservative state, I would love nothing more than to see mainstream conservatives stand up against right-wing extremism, as they once did in the 1980s when Idaho became one of the first states to pass a hate-crimes law.

But those days are long gone. There are still a handful of thoughtful and decent conservatives remaining who will stand up to confront this problem, but they are tiny in number and nil in influence. Instead, conservatism is dominated by the likes of Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Beck and William Jacobson (not to mention nearly everyone at Fox News), who instead of taking the problem of right-wing extremism seriously, dismiss its presence, downplay its influence and spread, and otherwise look the other way while viciously attacking anyone with the nerve to point it out.

Conservatives have instead made a cottage industry out of whitewashing away their extremists, most notably when decrying any efforts by law enforcement to confront the issue, and this latest effort in the wake of the Boston bombing is just the latest chapter.

In the meantime, of course, the tide is rising as the number of extremist groups in America reaches record proportions. And mainstream conservatives are aiding and abetting them -- first by pretending that they don't exist while attacking anyone who points out that they do, and second by silently giving them a warm embrace into the ranks of the Tea Party. It bodes ill for us all.

H/T: David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars

[cadylangindy]

In class, we had a visitor; William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell University, also runs an extremely successful conservative blog, Legal Insurrection. Jacobson shared that he began the blog knowing little about the world of weblogs, but now blogs daily. 

One of the most interesting points of discussion that Jacobson touched upon during his visit to our class was the experimentation with revenue models; while he has found his blog to be economically successful through advertising sales, he stressed that we must account for the fact that content online has been generally free for the past two decades, which presents problems when trying to create content behind "locked gardens." The survival of the journalism industry and its future should be found elsewhere.

His advice for blogging included establishing relationships with other blogs, which can be helpful in increasing viewership and linking. Jacobson also noted that even though the blog is independent news, having mainstream media site link to you can not only boost readership, but can also reinforce credibility. He also suggested daily postings for new content, to keep readers tuning in for more.