Last Call For Diaper Dave's Downfall

Louisiana Democrat John Bel Edwards is going for the jugular against GOP Sen. David Vitter for the governor's runoff on the 21st to replace term-limited (and reality-limited) Bobby Jindal.

“The choice for governor couldn’t be more clear,” the ad states. “John Bel Edwards, who answered his country’s call and served as a ranger in the 82nd Airborne Division, or David Vitter, who answered a prostitute’s call minutes after he skipped a vote honoring 28 soldiers who gave their lives in defense of our freedom. David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriots. Now, the choice is yours.”

According to the Monroe Daily Star, the commercial references a February 2001 vote the senator missed honoring US troops killed during Operation Desert Storm in February 1991. Vitter has admitted to being a patron of the “D.C. madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey in 2007.

Edwards’ campaign also released a list of phone calls allegedly made by Palfrey, including one to Vitter on the day of the vote — though not during the vote.

The ad is slated to debut around the state on Saturday.

That is a hell of a broadside, and even Republicans in Louisiana are endorsing Edwards here.  The polls also show Edwards with a hefty lead.

Of course, the same was true in Kentucky earlier this week too, wasn't it?

And Yes, This Boy's Life Mattered Too

Maybe the notion of police being held responsible for unwarranted deadly violence isn't so insane a theory after all.

Two Louisiana police officers were arrested on Friday on charges of killing a 6-year-old boy and critically wounding his father during a car chase that ended in a volley of bullets, state police said.

The officers were attempting to serve an arrest warrant on the boy’s father in the central Louisiana community of Marksville, authorities said.

State police were still piecing together what led to Tuesday’s shooting and had reviewed footage captured on the officers’ body cameras, Colonel Michael Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said during a Friday press conference announcing the arrests.

“As I told you, we took some of the body camera’s footage,” Edmonson said. “I’m not going to talk about it, but I’m going to tell you this: It is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen. And I’ll leave it at that.”

The officers, Lieutenant Derrick Stafford and Officer Norris Greenhouse, were facing charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder, he said.

They were working for the Marksville City Marshal when they tried to serve an arrest warrant on a man identified as Chris Few, authorities have said. Few fled in his vehicle, with his young son, Jeremy Mardis, in the car, authorities said.

A preliminary investigation showed the marshals chased the vehicle and fired at it multiple times when the pursuit ended.

It was unclear if the arrested officers had obtained attorneys or how they would plead to the charges.

Two other officers were also under investigation in connection with the shooting, local media reported.

And you know what?  Jeremy Few, the young boy murdered, was white.  The two deputies in this case?  Black.  These men were arrested and charged with murder within 72 hours of the incident, and this incident seems to be completely blatant.

The race of the people involved in this absolute travesty shouldn't matter, but it does, because there's no doubt in my mind if they were reversed, if it was two white cops killing a black boy, well...we know how that turns out, don't we?

Ohio prosecutor Timothy McGinty accused the family of 12-year-old police shooting victim Tamir Rice of being “economically motivated” in their pursuit to bring the officer responsible to trial.

“They waited until they didn’t like the reports they received. They’re very interesting people… let me just leave it at that… and they have their own economic motives,” McGinty said during a community meeting Thursday, Cleveland’s WKYC reported.

McGinty’s remarks Thursday were his first public comments on the grand jury process regarding Rice’s death, raising questions about his objectivity in the case and its ongoing investigation.

The prosecutor’s office uncustomarily released expert reports in October, ahead of convening a grand jury, stating that Cleveland police officer Timothy Lehmann was justified in fatally shooting Rice only seconds after pulling up beside him in a public park in November 2014.

I'm so tired of this.  I'm tired of cops killing kids, people, Americans.  But I'm also tired of finding out just how little those deaths matter when the victims are of color, and I'm tired of prosecutors deciding that mothers of dead kids are the problem.

A Supreme Loss Brewing

I'm still not a professional lawyer, but I have to admit I don't see how the Obama Administration wins this Obamacare contraception mandate case heading for SCOTUS next spring.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would take up a challenge from religious non-profit groups -- including the Little Sisters of the Poor-- to the Affordable Care Act and the requirement that group health plans provide a full range of contraceptive coverage to women at no cost.

It will be the fourth time the Supreme Court has heard a challenge to the signature legislative achievement of the Obama administration, and the second case challenging the contraception mandate. In 2014, the court ruled in favor of closely held for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby that objected to providing certain contraceptives.

Arguments are expected to occur during the March sitting. A decision would likely come in June of next year, right in the middle of the presidential campaign.

The groups argue that the contraceptive mandate forces them to either violate their religious beliefs by providing "abortifacients and contraceptives" or pay ruinous fines. They say that a so-called "accommodation" offered by the Obama administration meant to respect their religious objections is not good enough because it still makes them complicit in providing the coverage.

It's the Kim Davis "but my name is still on the marriage certificate" argument, and given the ridiculous logic of Hobby Lobby last year, not only do I think Little Sisters will win a complete exemption, but it's entirely possible that five men on the Supreme Court will rule that the contraception mandate itself is a violation of employer rights, and has to be struck down for everyone.

I just don't have anything close to a good feeling about this case.  I'm not a law professor, but I know people, and people will find a way to do whatever they want to with laws.  This case was never about the law anyway, it's about people imposing their will on other people.

Pipe Down Up There

Despite constant warnings ranging from snide eyerolling to outright panic attacks from the usual suspects on the Manic Progressive Left, the Keystone XL pipeline is officially dead.

President Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.

Mr. Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Mr. Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.”

The move was made ahead of a major United Nations summit meeting on climate change to be held in Paris in December, when Mr. Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming. While the rejection of the pipeline is largely symbolic, Mr. Obama has sought to telegraph to other world leaders that the United States is serious about acting on climate change. 

And yeah, it was always symbolic, because Canada was always going to build another pipeline across to the Maritimes anyway if this didn't happen. Besides, the left will just take credit for it, and panic again when they think Obama's betrayed them.  It's only been seven years now, guys.

It's getting kind of old.