Noncompetes

I've never heard of this before, although they're banned in California except for limited circumstances. Interesting too. I can see the merits on both sides of the arguments.

At the New York Times, "Noncompete Clauses Increasingly Pop Up in Array of Jobs."

Hillary Clinton Walks Back 'Dead Broke' Comments in Diane Sawyer Interview

At the New York Post, "Hillary Clinton backpedals on ‘dead broke’ comments."

And at Legal Insurrection, "2001 was Hillary’s Year of Great Fortune, not of being “dead broke”."

The "first campaign gaffe of 2016"? Not sure, but she's sure walking it back, at the clip:



PREVIOUSLY: "Hillary Clinton Takes to the Road."

'Chaos in the Marble Halls...' — #VA07

At Twitchy, "‘Chaos in the marble halls’: In wake of Eric Cantor loss, Congress goes into full freak-out mode."

LIGHTS ARE ON ALL OVER CAP, leadership aides/members in the building, chaos in the marble halls....
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 11, 2014

READ: Cantor loss throws Congress into disarray http://t.co/oJVqPlbyUz

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 11, 2014

The Endless Invasion of America

From Patrick Buchanan, at VDare:

For 10 days, Americans have argued over the wisdom of trading five Taliban senior commanders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

President Obama handed the Taliban a victory, critics contend, and imperiled U.S. troops in Afghanistan when the five return to the battlefield. Moreover, he has inspired the Haqqani network and other Islamists to capture more Americans to trade.

But which represents the greater long-term threat to the safety and security of our people and nation: sending those five Taliban leaders to Doha, and perhaps back to Afghanistan, or releasing into the U.S. population last year 36,000 criminal illegal aliens with 88,000 convictions among them?

According to a May report of the Center for Immigration Studies, of the 36,000 criminal aliens who, while awaiting deportation, were set free by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 193 had been convicted of homicide, 426 of sexual assault, 303 of kidnaping, 1,075 of aggravated assault, 1,160 for stolen vehicles, 9,187 for possession or use of dangerous drugs, and 16,070 for driving drunk or drugged.

Those 36,000 criminal aliens are roughly equivalent to three-and-a-half divisions of felons and social misfits released into our midst. [ICE Document Details 36,000 Criminal Alien Releases in 2013, by Jessica Vaughan, CIS, May 2014.]

And this does not include the 68,000 illegal aliens against whom ICE declined to press criminal charges last year, but turned loose.  How goes the Third World invasion of the United States?

More.

Eric Cantor Defeat by Tea Party Shakes Republican Politics to Its Core

Heh, perhaps the major dailies should have a contest for most dramatic headline.

I nominate this piece at the Los Angeles Times.

Rachel Stevens Crowned FHM's Sexiest Woman of All Time

Well, sexiest of all time's a pretty high bar, so I'll let readers judge for themselves.

See, "Rachel Stevens is officially the sexiest woman of all time."



Also at London's Daily Mail, "Rachel Stevens strips off for sizzling photoshoot to celebrate being crowned FHM's Sexiest Woman of All Time (PHOTOS)."

Kate Upton Exclusive Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Outtakes 2014

Via Theo Spark:

Dana Bash on #VA07: 'You Can See I'm Speechless. It's Not Often That I'm Speechless. And I'm Not Alone In This Town...'

Dana Bash is CNN's chief congressional correspondent. She earned a lot of creds with conservatives for her honest and dogged reporting on the Anthony Weiner scandal a few years back. She's definitely a journalistic insider on Capitol Hill, and she's genuine here in admitting she was completely flabbergasted yesterday at Majority Leader Eric Cantor's epic defeat.

What Happened to Muslim Immigrant Marine Deserter Wassef Ali Hassoun?

What a piece, from Michelle Malkin:

Islamist sympathizers inside our military walk away, and the Obama White House turns a blind eye. The Fort Hood jihad attack by Nidal Hasan, who invoked Hassoun in PowerPoint presentations to his military supervisors, is “workplace violence.” Gitmo recidivist Abu Sufian bin Qumu, lead suspect in the Benghazi attack, roams free despite the president’s promise to make “justice” his “biggest priority.”

Our commander in chief empties Gitmo of the worst of the worst jihadists and shrugs at the recidivists targeting American soldiers and civilians. And in a desperate attempt to deflect from the rising death toll of the Veterans Affairs book-cooking scandal, Obama gave Bob Bergdahl a Rose Garden stage to invoke Allah in Arabic.

If you're not “whipped up” into Category 5 disgust, you're not paying attention.

***

Previous coverage of Wassef Ali Hassoun.

VIDEO: Dave Brat Victory Speech — #VA07

Previous Eric Cantor earthquake blogging here and here.



More at WTVR CBS 6, "WATCH: David Brat victory speech."

Mark Levin on #VA07 Earthquake: 'People Are Tired of Centralized Government...'

A great interview, with Sean Hannity earlier:



Lots more at Memeorandum.

"Brat has accused the House majority leader of being a top cheerleader for 'amnesty' for immigrants in the U.S. illegally..."

Heh, that's the juicy quote from a WaPo piece last Friday, "Tea partier takes aim at Cantor in Va. primary."

And see Michael Patrick Leahy, at Big Government, "Cantor Primary Challenger David Brat: Anti-Amnesty Mailer 'Act of a Desperate Campaign'":

Eric Cantor's primary challenger David Brat ripped the Majority Leader as “the number one Republican supporter of amnesty” in a dramatic press conference steps away from a rival event by a liberal Democrat intended to paint Cantor as the face of GOP intransigence on immigration.

The day after Cantor portrayed himself as an anti-amnesty warrior in campaign literature, Brat accused Cantor of coordinating with Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), the Democrat holding the rival press conference, to provide him political cover in his moment of greatest need.

Cantor, Brat noted, had previously visited sites with Gutierrez in a pro-immigration reform tour. "You would have to be pretty gullible not to see a link there," Brat said.

The long-shot challenge from Brat has improbably gained national attention after Cantor was booed and heckled by a crowd of Tea Party activists at a recent Republican party event. Cantor has had to go on air with attack ads fact-checkers have criticized as misleading and adopt the language of anti-amnesty hawks in his mailers, clashing with his “making life work” rebranding effort.

Typically, party leaders are able to win reelection easily, especially in primaries, so the concerted efforts by Cantor are seen as deeply embarrassing for the Virginia Republican considered Speaker John Boehner's heir apparent.

"This is the act of a desperate campaign," Brat said about the mailer.

More.

BONUS: You gotta love it, at the leftist New Republic, "Immigration Reform Died With Eric Cantor's Shocking Loss to a Tea Party Challenger."

And at BuzzFeed, "Only President Obama Can Help Undocumented Immigrants Now, Advocates Say."

Eric Cantor's Concession Speech

Oh boy, Brat crushed Cantor nearly 56 to 44 percent.

Megyn Kelly is on right now with an early repeat Kelly File, where we'd normally be watching O'Reilly reruns.

I'll have more.

Here's Cantor at the clip, "Obviously, we came up short."

And at Politico, "CANTOR LOSES":

LIVE FROM CANTOR HQ: The Cantor team appears to have shut off the projector screen showing the primary tally.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 10, 2014

RICHMOND, Va. — It wasn’t enough that Eric Cantor spent $1 million in the weeks leading up to the election, when his primary opponent hardly had $100,000 in his campaign coffers.

It didn’t matter that the House majority leader, 51, branded Dave Brat a liberal hack, and himself as the guardian of the Republican creed. On Tuesday night, Cantor, who was swept into the majority leader’s suite in a tea party wave, was swept out by the same movement.

Cantor conceded the race around 8:25 p.m. — shortly after the Associated Press pronounced Cantor’s 13-year political career at least temporarily over. With nearly 98 percent of precincts reporting, Brat had 55 percent of the vote, while Cantor had 44 percent. People close to Cantor said internal polls showed him hovering near 60 percent in the runup to the race.

It’s one of the most stunning losses in modern House politics, and completely upends the GOP hierarchy in both Virginia and Washington. Cantor enjoyed a meteoric rise that took him from chief deputy whip, to minority whip to majority leader in the span of 13 years.  Cantor was seen by many as the next speaker of the House, biding his time until Ohio Rep. John Boehner wanted to retire.

But now, Cantor has just six months left in Congress. He is the second incumbent to lose this primary season: 91-year-old Texas Rep. Ralph Hall was the first.  The loss will ripple across Washington, too: from political consultants who worked for Cantor to his aides who decamped for K Street, there will be reverberations...

More.

Tea Party Challenger Takes Out House Majority Leader Eric Cantor

Wow.

I had no clue Cantor's seat was in jeopardy.

From Guy Benson, at Town Hall, "EARTHQUAKE: Eric Cantor Loses Primary to Unheralded, Under-funded Tea Party Challenger."

And at WaPo, "Eric Cantor succumbs to tea party challenger Tuesday":

In a stunning upset propelled by tea party activists, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was defeated in Tuesday’s congressional primary, with insurgent David Brat delivering an unpredicted and devastating loss to the second most powerful Republican in the House who has widely been touted as a future speaker.

The race called shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern by the Associated Press.

Brat’s victory gives the GOP a volatile outlook for the rest of the campaign season, with the party establishment struggling late Tuesday to grapple with the news and tea party conservatives relishing a surprising win.

“This is an earthquake,” said former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, a friend of Cantor’s. “No one thought he’d lose.” But Brat, tapping into conservative anger over Cantor’s role in supporting efforts to reform federal immigration laws, found a way to combat Cantor’s significant financial edge.

Brat, an economics professor, simply failed to show up to D.C. meetings with powerful conservative agitators last month, citing upcoming finals. He only had $40,000 in the bank at the end of March, according to first quarter filings. Cantor had $2 million.

Despite those shortcomings, Brat has exposed discontent with Cantor in the solidly Republican, suburban Richmond 7th Congressional District by attacking the lawmaker on his votes to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown, as well as his support for some immigration reforms. At a May meeting of Republican activists in the district, Cantor was booed, and an ally he campaigned for was ousted as the local party chairman in favor of a tea party favorite.

Expect updates.

ADDED: At Twitchy, "‘Truly stunned’: Eric Cantor getting clobbered in Virginia; Dave Brat shows early lead; Update: Brat takes it."

Valerija Kelava for Lui Magazine June 2014

Oh là là!

At Egotastic!, "Valerija Kelava Shoot for Lui Magazine Looks and Smells Ever So Sextastic."

More at Fashion Copious, "'Essences' Valerija Kelava by Liz Collins for Lui June 2014."

And Lui Magazine makes you want to bone up on your French, heh.

Obama Paid Too High a Price for #Bergdahl Release, Poll Finds

Yesterday, the ghoulish idiot Steve M. at No More Mister scoffed at polling data finding a plurality of 43 percent saying the Bergdahl trade was the "wrong thing to do." As with any survey, the real juice is in the questions and question wording. And when Americans have been asked to rank the prisoner swap in terms of threats to American forces in the field, the results have been devastating for the White House. Recall the Fox News poll from last week, for example, "Poll: 84 Percent Say #Bergdahl Deal Will Encourage Terrorist Groups to Seize More Soldiers."

And notice how No More Mister conveniently ignores the Pew poll findings he's blogging, on the responses from military families, which I wrote about last night, "Poll: Veteran Households Slam #Bergdahl Swap as 'Wrong Thing to Do...'" Veteran households, to say nothing of active duty military personnel, are increasingly unhappy with this commander-in-chief; and recent polls have shown that most Americans have family members who once served or are currently serving in the military, and the gap among young and old in this demographic is more likely to hurt the Democrat Party in upcoming elections, not least of which in November, where some analysts expect the Bergdahl debacle to disadvantage leftist candidates at the margins.

In any case, No More Mister just happens to be one more loony manifestations of the far-left regressive disconnect from the American mainstream on the disastrous Bergdahl treason-terror exchange.

And now we have more evidence of this out today, at CBS News, "How do Americans view the Bergdahl swap?":

Views differ by political party: most Republicans disapprove of the deal, while just over half of Democrats approve. Among those who have served in the military, 55 percent disapprove of the prisoner swap.

Most Americans -- 56 percent -- say the U.S. paid too high a price to secure Bergdahl's release. Among veterans, that figure rises to 65 percent.

At the video clip Major Garrett stresses the 56 percent finding of too high a price paid by the president.

And the Obama White House sure isn't dismissing the numbers as if the controversy is a faux scandal a la Fox News. Indeed, Obama's thrown Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel under the bus. See Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "New WH spin on Taliban 5 swap: Hey, it was Hagel’s call":

Old and busted: The Taliban 5 swap was a demonstration of authority by a Commander in Chief who isn't afraid to act and make the final decision. New hotness: Hey, Chuck Hagel had the final call on the swap! As criticism mounts on Barack Obama over the decision to release five high-ranking and dangerous Taliban commanders in exchange for an American soldier, the White House shifted gears last night in its first briefing to the House — and attempted to shift blame as well...

Also at Legal Insurrection, "Taliban-Bergdahl swap unpopular, so … blame Hagel." (Via Memeorandum.)

Poll Shows Support for Illegal Alien Amnesty

At NYT, "Poll Shows Path to Citizenship Is Favored."

It's 62 percent in favor of a "path to citizenship," with 51 percent of Republicans as well. The poll was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, supposedly "nonpartisan" research organizations, but in the case Brookings for sure, reliably leftist.

Here's the survey, "What Americans Want From Immigration Reform in 2014."

The poll completely ignores border security.

So, whatever happens in Congress, they'll keep coming, like an invasion force:

Back From the Colonoscopy

I mentioned my procedure this morning.

The test itself is a cakewalk. It's the bowel-cleansing preparations that were a pain. But I'm clean, no polyps, and I won't have to have it done again for ten years.

I'm reading Instapundit, who's blogged about his colonoscopies quite a bit. Here's the search link, but see especially, "I'M HOME FROM HAVING A COLONOSCOPY":

A colonoscopy isn't just a diagnostic test — if they find polyps, they can remove them, making it virtually certain that you won't get colon cancer. If you skip that because of squeamishness, well, you're just an idiot. Luckily, I was clean and don't have to go back for five years. By then, they may have replaced them with swallowable cameras, with actual scoping only when there’s something that needs fixing. At any rate, though, there aren't many simple safe procedures that can absolutely prevent cancer, and this is one. Don't forego it because you're squeamish.

I'm not sure why folks would be squeamish with the procedure; it was easy. After I was taken into the pre-op area, the nurses had me sign the final forms, hooked up my blood pressure monitor and chest nodes, and inserted the IV. The test itself took 10 minutes at most. The nurses gave me mild drug which was like a relaxant. I had no side effects and went out for a nice breakfast with my wife immediately after.

As noted, the preparation is unpleasant, and from reading around yesterday, avoiding the prep is one of the reasons people have skipped this screening. Perhaps the newer procedures will be coming available soon, like the miniature camera pill that takes images while traveling through your bowel. Until then, I'd do this again tomorrow if I needed to screen against colon cancer.

ISIS Takes Mosul as Iraq Security Forces Flee

At the Other McCain, "Al-Qaeda on the Offensive in Iraq."

And at WSJ, "Militants Overrun Iraq's Second-Largest City as Government Forces Flee: Mosul Strike Is Serious Blow to Baghdad's Efforts to Control Widening Insurgency":

BAGHDAD—Al Qaeda-inspired militants seized control of Iraq's second-largest city on Tuesday in a brazen military operation that underscored the weakness of the Baghdad government across vast swaths of the country.

Hours after government forces fled Mosul in disarray following four days of fighting, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a nationwide "state of maximum preparedness" but didn't indicate whether government forces were mobilizing to retake the Iraqi city, 220 miles north of the capital Baghdad.

The capture of Mosul by rebels linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, is the latest evidence of the weakness and disorganization that have beset Iraq's security forces since the U.S. forces withdrew from the country in December 2011.  It also underlines the group's determination to establish an Islamic emirate encompassing the Iraqi-Syrian frontier, weaken the already fragile Iraqi state and expand the theater of the three-year-old civil war in neighboring Syria.

Residents of Mosul said they were shocked at the ease of the rebel takeover of government buildings, television stations and military installations where U.S.-supplied fighter airplanes, helicopters and other heavy weaponry are based.

"The whole of Mosul collapsed today. We've fled our homes and neighborhoods, and we're looking for God's mercy," said Mahmoud Al Taie, a dentist. "We are waiting to die."

Videos showed victorious insurgents waving black flags emblazoned with an Islamic script—the standard brandished by al Qaeda militants world-wide.

The Obama administration, responding to the fall of Mosul, said ISIS "is not only a threat to the stability of Iraq but a threat to the entire region."

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the group has drawn strength from the Syrian civil war, where it can acquire recruits, weapons and other resources for its fight in Iraq.

Jessica Lewis, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, said ISIS fighters won a notable victory in Mosul.

"ISIS is designing its campaign around the state that it believes it has already created," said Ms. Lewis, currently research director for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.

"I think that means that Iraq is going to start to look more like Syria. It's a gauge of the severity of the conflict and the trajectory that it's on. That's a very bad sign."

More.

RELATED: From Bruce Thornton, at FrontPage Magazine, "The Fruit of Obama’s Abandonment of Iraq,"  and David Webb, at Breitbart, "Precipitous Withdrawal Without a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) Has Consequences."

Activists Hijacking Feminism to Attack Israel at Women's Studies Association Meeting

Well, what else is new?

Still, astonishing leftist hatred. It continues to shock time after time.

From Phyllis Chesler, at Big Peace.