Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts

Friday, May 29, 2020

Minnesota copbots' algorithm needs tweaking


Let me get this straight: A mob burns down half a Minneapolis city block, including a police station, and . . . nothing. 

But a CNN crew, standing where the cops said it could do a live shot, gets arrested while on the air.


This after the reporter told the state police copbots they'd move wherever the cops wished. Handcuffs. No explanations for the arrests.

PERHAPS THE crew's mistake was that it didn't burn shit down. Then the CNN journalists would be golden.

Welcome to Amerika. Now, why are mobs smashing in storefronts and burning down police precincts again?

Obviously, there are many paths to mindless thugishness. Indiscriminately burning down your city as part of a mob is only one of them.

Friday, February 24, 2017

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Ve haff veys to mach joo zaloot ze banner uff freedom


In case there was any doubt left that the Republican Party has given itself over to the fascist bullying of the right, consider Hal Daub -- a University of Nebraska regent plotting his very own Night of the Long Knives against a trio of college football players.

Were they communists working undercover for Red China, plotting to destroy Husker baseball and make ping pong the national sport?

Were they deep-cover moles for Vladimir Putin, planning to hack the university's computer network and mete out 26,000 incompletes?

Did they not want to Make Football Great Again in Lincoln?

No, it was worse than that . . . at least for Daub, a Donald Trump delegate and onetime congressman who missed the House Un-American Activities Committee by this much.

What the players did was kneel in protest during the national anthem before a Nebraska road game at Northwestern last week. I think it is clear by now why they did. And for that, there must be consequences -- human rights, freedom of conscience and the First Amendment be damned.

Daub (R-Paraguay)
NU Regent Hal Daub of Omaha said he was disappointed in the Husker players because he doesn’t believe a football game is the place to express political or social views. Expressing their views is fine, he said, but not when it’s “disruptive.” 
“You don’t have to put your hand over your heart or sing, but out of respect for other people’s point of view and wishes, the respect they could show would be, at least, stand or not be on the field” when the anthem is played, he said.
Daub also said he was disappointed in the reaction from Husker football coach Mike Riley, who backed the players.
“I was not pleased with his response,” Daub said.
Daub said he believes the matter will be a topic of discussion among the regents at some point. 
“Nobody’s out to censure anybody or limit anybody’s free speech, but speech is limited,” Daub said. “Conduct is limited.” 
Daub, who served in the U.S. Army, said he’s received between 50 and 60 emails about the issue, and the majority disagree with the players’ decision.
The Lincoln Journal Star reported that Daub said the players “had better be kicked off the team.” 
But Daub denied saying that during an interview with The World-Herald.

Asked what kind of punishment, if any, the players should face, Daub said he’s unsure.

“I think that’s a debate that will unfold here,” he said.


NO, I THINK the debate that should unfold here surrounds how Daub (R-Nuremberg) even thinks he has any moral right to speak on the subject, much less condemn Husker linebackers Michael Rose-Ivey and Mohamed Barry or defensive end DaiShon Neal.

Hal Daub was mayor of Omaha from 1995-2001, presiding over this Midwestern city at a time when, thanks in part to Daub's "get tough" policy, residents of predominantly black north Omaha came to see the police department as almost an occupying force . . . in the German sense of the term. Police-community relations, in a word, were awful.

Community leaders talked of certain Omaha cops with a reputation for routinely roughing up African-Americans for no other reason than they could get away with it. The tactics did not lead to any great reduction in -- or great campaign against -- violent crime in the city.

For example, here's something that ran in the Omaha World-Herald in September 2000:
Omaha black leaders said Tuesday that they have no intention of losing the momentum for action demonstrated by people who gathered Monday at a civil-rights protest. 
The Rev. Everett Reynolds, president of the local NAACP branch, said
community leaders and members were planning to gather next Monday at Morning Star Baptist Church, 20th and Burdette Streets, to plan the next move.

"We have a lot of folks that are excited and want to do something," he said. "Our task now is to put that in focus."

More than 1,000 people gathered about noon on the steps and the grassy courtyard of the Douglas County Courthouse, protesting recent police killings.

It was a much bigger turnout than the estimated 300 people published in The World-Herald Monday evening. The lower figure was based on an estimate provided by one of the protest organizers late in the morning while the crowd was still gathering.

Calling it a "funeral for justice," about 400 cars wound their way from 24th and Lake Streets to downtown. Headlights on and horns sounding, they made downtown streets look and sound like midtown Manhattan at rush hour.

Organizers pleaded for an end to past wrongs, including the killing of black men by police officers and a lack of response by the criminal-justice system.

In particular, leaders decried Officer Jerad Kruse's shooting of George
Bibins after a high-speed police chase. Bibins, who was unarmed, had been fleeing from police in a stolen Jeep.

Kruse was charged with manslaughter, but those charges were dropped before the case went to a grand jury. The grand jury declined to file charges.

In a peaceful demonstration, speakers called for authorities to release
information about the Bibins shooting and bring charges against the officer.

"What I hope happens is they take notice that the community has had enough and that the Bibins family wants answers and the community wants answers," Eric Bibins, the brother of George Bibins, said after the protest ended.
 
Reynolds joined him - hoping that the protest put a dent in community denial and put some pressure on local authorities.

"I'm hoping they'll understand the dissatisfaction and do what is right," Reynolds said.

At the start of the protest, pallbearers carried a metallic gray coffin
through the crowd and set it at the top of the courthouse steps. Looking to the coffin, the Rev. Larry Menyweather-Woods said: "Justice, Omaha-way, is inside."

"We want to bury this justice," said Menyweather-Woods, whose Mount Moriah Baptist Church was the starting point of the procession and rally. "We want a new justice to rise up."

In words and signs, the residents unleashed a flurry of frustration about race relations in Omaha. On the one hand, they said, they're harassed by police. On the other hand, they're ignored by city policy-makers.

One sign said: "There is no justice in north Omaha. There's just us."

THE PROTESTING football players in Lincoln, I am sure, have never heard of what happened when Hal Daub was mayor of this city 50 miles northeast on Interstate 80. Michael Rose-Ivey is from Kansas City, Mo. Mohamed Barry is from Georgia. DaiShon Neal is from Omaha, but when this story appeared in the World-Herald, I don't think he read it -- he was not yet 3.

Regent Daub, on the other hand, probably would like to forget some of these inconvenient truths of the Omaha he led as mayor. More accurately, Daub probably would like us to forget what happened then.

Like another incident from deep in the Daub days, the October 1997 shooting of Marvin Ammons on a north Omaha street during an early, freak snowstorm. Ofc. Todd Sears told investigators he thought the Gulf War veteran, who was African-American, had a gun in his waistband. It was a cellphone.

A grand jury indicted Sears in 1998, but a district judge dismissed the indictment due to alleged misconduct by an alternate grand juror. The cop never faced charges -- a second grand jury declined to indict but harshly criticized Omaha police in the case.


Now, Hal Daub, NU regent, is concerned that the Husker players' actions are "disruptive." That's rich.

The man could teach a seminar on disruption. The out-of-control police department and the "get tough" political dogwhistles of Hal Daub's Omaha created a racial tinderbox that was truly "disruptive" -- not to a football game in Evanston, Ill., but to civil society and domestic tranquility right here in Omaha, Neb.


How dare Daub, with his blood-stained record, wrap himself in Old Glory to lead a self-righteous, constitutionally challenged pogrom against black football players who did nothing but take a damn knee.

A First Amendment-approved knee.

But what's free speech -- or trying to ruin the lives of three college kids -- when there's political hay to be made in Donald Trump's Amerika. Only a man so small could talk so big about a transgression so non-existent.


Only a man without shame in a country with no memory.



UPDATE: I don't know that I've ever seen the president of a university bitch-slap one of his bosses, but it just happened at the University of Nebraska. I think we have a keeper here.

God, I love this state.


Thursday, September 22, 2016

Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee


Above is a thing that actually ran Wednesday in the college newspaper for which I wrote and edited more than three decades ago.

The headline: Free speech argument should not be used to justify hate speech. The headline soft-sold the column, actually.


Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. Obviously, The Daily Reveille at Louisiana State University ain't what it used to be.

Let me put it this way: I read Anjana Nair's column in the Reveille, but I'm having a hard time believing that a piece arguing against freedom of speech and the First Amendment -- and let's be clear, if you're against free speech, no matter how distasteful, you are against the First Amendment -- appeared in a newspaper that would not exist but for the linchpin of our Bill of Rights.

(Trust me. This is Louisiana we're talking about . . . and LSU. Without some serious constitutional badassery covering its 6, the Reveille likely wouldn't have made it past 1934. Actually, the Reveille almost didn't make it past 1934. Interesting story. Anjana Nair probably never heard about it.)

Milo Yiannopoulos
This . . . this because of Donald Trump, Republicans behaving badly and . . . and . . . Milo Yiannopoulos was coming to town! (Cue the panicked population of Tokyo fleeing from Godzilla.)

Apparently, Milo Whocaresopoulos is some sort of ragingly gay, alt-right media whore who specializes in Internet misbehavior and pissing progressives off. And he likes Trump.

And Trumpkins like him because all the right people really, really hate him. The latter group includes Anjana Nair.


So, allow me to throw some quotes at you from this opinion piece that I have a hard time believing actually ran in a newspaper at an institution allegedly devoted to unfettered inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge.

QUOTE:
"I once thought I loved free speech. As someone involved in media, the First Amendment was my best friend. That is, until I faced the reality that people, like they do to all good things in the world, abuse it and use it as justification for reckless and hateful behavior."

QUOTE:

"Walters says it is unreasonable to limit free speech just because someone is afraid of getting their feelings hurt. In the real world, he says, there are no safe spaces or trigger warnings. 
"Walters is partly right: To stop a message because it might offend someone is not a justification for censorship. What is justification, though, is the fact that the free expression of hateful ideas has led to an environment of tension between the groups who are perpetuating such speech and the groups who are targeted by it. This in turn leads to an atmosphere in which only the ones inflicting the harmful speech feel comfortable.
"Let’s be real: The only people who feel the need to defend their freedom of expression behind the First Amendment are those who are clearly misusing it as a platform to attack censorship in its entirety.
"Even Walters admits that there are limits to free speech, such as not being able to yell 'Fire!' in a movie theatre when there isn’t one. Why does that exception exist? Because it causes a sense of panic and fear when there’s no justified reason for it — just like hate speech."
QUOTE:
"When the First Amendment was written, it couldn’t have accounted for Twitter battles and social media showdowns influencing human opinion and behavior. It couldn’t have foreseen the existence of people like Yiannopoulos and Trump, who force us to define what abusive speech is." 

END QUOTE. (Thank God.)

Oh, mercy me. Pass the smelling salts; Generation Y has the vapors.

Really? Loutishness is a modern construct unknown to our forefathers?

REALLY???

Come now. Public reprobates, demagogic invective and "hate speech" hardly were unknown in 1789.

In fact, by Miss Nair's standards, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams should have been locked up for being mean in public, what with all the "hate speech" flying around during the campaign of 1800:
Negative campaigning in the United States can be traced back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his VP.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."


AND THEN Adams' people got around to l'affaire Sally Hemmings.

It may be a novel concept to those who cannot remember a time when "social media" didn't exist, but hateful people always have been quite effective at hounding the "vulnerable." Perhaps a bit more slowly than today, but effectively nonetheless.

The only difference today is that there seems to be a market for professional cranks like Milo Whateveropoulos to get onstage somewhere and say out loud what my generation's halfwits used to scribble in men's room stalls. Yet that so threatens our precious snowflakes on college campuses that they're willing to upend our entire constitutional order to stamp out societal angst.

Yeah, that should work out really well in reducing tension on campus.

The only conclusion I can draw from this column being published in an actual newspaper on an actual college campus is that today's morally preening hand-wringers stand as complete reprobates next to yesteryear's utter libertines. I think the following Oscar Wilde quotation is apt when considering the Trumpkins and Milo Whositsopoulos:
"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”

COME TO think of it, it applies pretty well to this Reveille column, too.

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

To Title IX or not to Title IX, that is the #^#%!@& question

Click on the top-left speaker icon for audio, which is NSFW


At Louisiana State University, this will not get you arrested:
LSU students hurled obscenities, ice and objects during and immediately after the Tigers’ 77-75 loss in men’s basketball Saturday against No. 1-ranked Oklahoma.

Obscene chants directed at Oklahoma star shooting guard Buddy Hield rose from the packed student section on two or three occasions during the game. After the game, students booed and threw ice and towels as the Sooners left the court on a corner of the court at the end where the student section is located.

The actions drew denouncements from national media as well as LSU athletic director Joe Alleva.

“I am very disappointed with the language used by our students,” Alleva said Monday. “They should act with class and respect our opponents. Their language is embarrassing and motivates our opponent.”

A request for comment Monday morning from LSU President F. King Alexander did not immediately draw a response.

According to LSU police, there were no arrests or charges filed associated with behavior at Saturday's game.


AT LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, exercising one's First Amendment right as a holy roller preacher to tell college students they're going to the lake of fire for their fornicatin', whoremongerin' ways sure as H-E-double-toothpicks will get you busted by campus cops -- or at least threatened with arrest. This at the now-ironically titled Free Speech Alley in front of the LSU Student Union.

The PC scofflaw here was an "intern" of Brother Jed Smock, who is no stranger to LSU -- or many other U.S. campuses. Jed and his wife, Sister Cindy Lassiter Smock, have been damning American college students to hell since I was an LSU student in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At least.

Back then, there was no question that Brother Jed and Sister Cindy had an absolute right to call us whores, whoremongers, fornicators, blasphemers or any other sort of wretch offensive to the Almighty's sensibilities.

Sister Cindy at LSU, early 1980s
Or at least those of Brother Jed and Sister Cindy's seriously fundamentalist brand of Christianity.

And that's OK. There was little doubt that many of us, in fact, were whores, whoremongers, fornicators, blasphemers and general offenders against right judgment and God's Word.

There also was little doubt that LSU students of my era gave as good as we got. In fact, Sister Cindy once whacked yours truly upside the head with her Bible for offending her as grievously as she offended me. Thirty-something years on, I can say with great confidence that I royally deserved it.

I did not, however, call the cops. Some precious little LSU snowflake, on the other hand, did just that the other week after a mean Mini Jed -- Brother Joshua -- offended her delicate sensibilities. Because he apparently said the most dangerous place in America today was in a black woman's womb, referencing the proportionally high incidence of abortion in the African-American community.

Judging by the response of campus police, the second most dangerous place in America today is Louisiana State University -- at least if you intend to loudly say impolite things while not in Tiger Stadium or the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Within the safe confines of athletic venues, however, chant "F*** YOU, SABAN!" or "F*** YOU, BUDDY!" as loudly and as often as you like.

But for the LSU po-po, apparently, it's just gender- or race-referencing Bible-thumping in a "free speech" zone that's a no-no. Because of Title IX which, according to these constitutional lawyers in blue, trumps the First Amendment.


FRANKLY,  if I were in the preacher's shoes and the cop had told me something as ridiculous as that, I would have been tempted to reply with the Assembly Center version of what passes for "protected speech" at LSU. Which, of course, would have gotten me handcuffed as surely as Louisiana's state budget turns a bright red every spring.

To be clear, I don't much care for Brother Jed's brand of Christianity or his not-so-merry band's evangelistic tactics. I think they do more to retard than advance the Kingdom of God. I think they're obnoxious, self-righteous and theologically messed up in many ways.

I know that my opinion means less than nothing to them because, for one thing, I'm Catholic. And the more faithful of a Catholic I become, the more Jed, Cindy and Joshua would be convinced that I will burn in the LAKE . . . OF . . .  FIIIRRRRRRRE! 

But, again, that's OK. It's a free country -- well, at least if you're not at LSU or many other American universities. The First Amendment, which last I heard has not been trumped by a mere act of Congress, exists for those times when people really, really don't want to hear what you have to say.

Like this: The LSU administration is a bunch of f***ing hypocrites. (I trust the F-word makes this protected speech in the eyes of the Ol' War Skule.) You know, the kind who tolerate loutish students hurling vulgar abuse upon a black Oklahoma basketball star but want to lock up a street preacher for saying the womb has become a dangerous place for black babies.

And for non-vulgarly accusing students of being what they regularly present themselves as on national TV.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Iowa don't know my rights!


A guest post by Molly the Dog

They have neber been a mor biger threat to our charish Amerikan ideels then thiss.

It am not souprizeing thet it's comms from Iowa, where peeples is commerniss. And meen.

I wil not go to Iowa no more, bekuz the commerniss thayr wil put me in jayl for being all abowt free x-presshun and thee rite to re-dres greevances kommitd aginst you. I do not like the Iowa kops, bekuz thay are agunts of a repressiv regeeme.


THEE PRUFE of Iowas commernisum is hear in this artikl from thee Asocciated Paws. Uh, Press:
A man accused of urinating on the office chairs of fellow office workers in West Des Moines has surrendered to police.

Raymond Foley, 59, turned himself in Saturday to face a charge of second-degree criminal mischief.

Foley declined to comment Tuesday, other than to acknowledge that he no longer works at the Farm Bureau office in West Des Moines.

Police say some co-workers had complained about stains on their chairs. A security system was installed, and police say it caught Foley in the act.
ME HOPE the Iowas free x-pressur gets a gud lawyer whoo don't like cats. I rekommenn Sadie. She forgets stuf sumtimez, but she can still bite gud.

Tell her the Iowas commerniss kops is skwrruls. Totaliterryun oppressurs is whut thay reely is.


In othur wurds -- skwrruls. Maybe cats, to.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Take this party and shove it


I used to be a Democrat.

More precisely, as soon as my change-of-registration form reaches the Douglas County Election Commission, I will be a former Democrat. Since there's no provision to register as "Catholic and the Lot of You Can Go to Hell," I will have to make do with being "non-partisan," which is what they call independent in Nebraska.

And what was my last straw, the one that drove me from disaffected Democrat to political independent and all the electoral exile that implies? Oh, just the outrage of the day from my former political party.


IT'S ALL on the ABC News website:
President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

Following President Obama’s speech at the retreat, a small group of Senate Democrats, mostly women, left the retreat early in order to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to counter the Republicans’ news conference today at which they called for the mandate to be overturned.

Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.

“It is our clear understanding from the administration that the president believes as we do, and the vast majority of the American women should have access to birth control,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said pointing out that 15 percent of women use birth control for medical issues. “It’s medicine, and women deserve their medicine.”

Democrats today called on Republicans to stop using women as a “political football,” and stop defining this debate, as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., did earlier in the day, as a religious issue.

“It’s time to tell Republicans ‘mind your own business,’” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. ”Ideology should never be used to block women from getting the care they need to lead healthier lives.

“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”
I CAN THINK of one thing. And the Democrats are doing it right now.

And I want to be in the same party as such people about as much as I would have wanted to be in the National Socialist party in 1933 Germany.

Monday, February 06, 2012

Arrogance that surpasseth all understanding


In her latest Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan clearly sees that which Barack Obama couldn't due to the arrogance that blinds.

The president will pay for his lack of vision, as well as his particularly tricky blend of pride and political incompetence. The White House is the wrong place to get a bad case of Big Head, take two stupid pills and expect to get re-elected in the morning.

What am I talking about? Let Ms. Noonan explain:

But the big political news of the week isn't Mr. Romney's gaffe, or even his victory in Florida. The big story took place in Washington. That's where a bomb went off that not many in the political class heard, or understood.

But President Obama just may have lost the election.

The president signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that says that under ObamaCare, Catholic institutions—including charities, hospitals and schools—will be required by law, for the first time ever, to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. If they do not, they will face ruinous fines in the millions of dollars. Or they can always go out of business.

In other words, the Catholic Church was told this week that its institutions can't be Catholic anymore.

I invite you to imagine the moment we are living in without the church's charities, hospitals and schools. And if you know anything about those organizations, you know it is a fantasy that they can afford millions in fines.

There was no reason to make this ruling—none. Except ideology.

The conscience clause, which keeps the church itself from having to bow to such decisions, has always been assumed to cover the church's institutions.

Now the church is fighting back. Priests in an estimated 70% of parishes last Sunday came forward to read strongly worded protests from the church's bishops. The ruling asks the church to abandon Catholic principles and beliefs; it is an abridgment of the First Amendment; it is not acceptable. They say they will not bow to it. They should never bow to it, not only because they are Catholic and cannot be told to take actions that deny their faith, but because they are citizens of the United States.

If they stay strong and fight, they will win. This is in fact a potentially unifying moment for American Catholics, long split left, right and center. Catholic conservatives will immediately and fully oppose the administration's decision. But Catholic liberals, who feel embarrassed and undercut, have also come out in opposition.

The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don't want that. They will unite against that.

The smallest part of this story is political. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the United States. In 2008 they made up 27% of the electorate, about 35 million people. Mr. Obama carried the Catholic vote, 54% to 45%. They helped him win.

They won't this year. And guess where a lot of Catholics live? In the battleground states.
RULE NO. 1 of politics: Don't push people too far on issues they're willing to go to jail over. Or die for. That's a fight you cannot win, because you can't jail or kill enough of your opponents, assuming even that the law allowed it and your country had the stomach for it.

If a Catholic is even halfway serious about what he or she professes to believe, this is that issue -- freedom of conscience and the sacred obligation to do what one believes God demands of him . . . or die trying.

A lot of us didn't agree with the president's social agenda, and we didn't vote for him, either. (Then again, neither did I vote for John McCain.) But we were supportive where conscience allowed, respected the office and respected the democratic process. And we didn't automatically assume ill will on his part while avoiding it on ours.

Obama and his administration mistook civility for passivity and a lack of non-negotiable principles and loyalties. That's the kind of arrogance born of pride that always goeth before a fall.

IT'S A PITY the Republican presidential candidates suck so. But, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

Continued national decline, I guess we can live with. Freedom to worship God and live as He requires, that's the kind of freedom of conscience we can't live without.

Monday, January 23, 2012

The road to hell passes through D.C.


So . . . the Obama Administration is trying to force every Catholic institution outside the clerical structure itself to insure contraceptive practices Catholic doctrine regards as intrinsically evil -- as mortal sin.

Well, that clarifies what contemporary Democrats regard as inalienable human rights -- as of this moment, I think the list has been whittled to "consequence-free f***ing"
(of which the right to kill one's unborn child is a subset) and . . . no, that's about it.

The latest proclamation by the odious secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, pretty much declares the First Amendment -- particularly the Establishment Clause -- null and void. That this moral cypher calls herself a Catholic makes her action all the more disgusting, and that she technically still is one is a matter that ought to be addressed immediately by her bishop.

That said, there's nothing more I can add that possibly could top what Michael Sean Winters wrote in the National Catholic Reporter. So I'll merely say "What he said."


DO GO READ the entire thing on Winters' NCR blog:
I accuse you, Mr. President, of betraying philosophic liberalism, which began, lest we forget, as a defense of the rights of conscience. As Catholics, we need to be honest and admit that, three hundred years ago, the defense of conscience was not high on the agenda of Holy Mother Church. But, we Catholics learned to embrace the idea that the coercion of conscience is a violation of human dignity. This is a lesson, Mr. President, that you and too many of your fellow liberals have apparently unlearned.

I accuse you, Mr. President, who argued that your experience as a constitutional scholar commended you for the high office you hold, of ignoring the Constitution. Perhaps you were busy last week, but the Supreme Court, on a 9-0 vote, said that the First Amendment still means something and that it trumps even desirable governmental objectives when the two come into conflict. Did you miss the concurring opinion, joined by your own most recent appointment to the court, Justice Kagan, which stated:

“Throughout our Nation's history, religious bodies have been the preeminent example of private associations that have ‘act[ed] as critical buffers between the individual and the power of the State.’ Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 619 (1984). In a case like the one now before us—where the goal of the civil law in question, the elimination of discrimination against persons with disabilities, is so worthy—it is easy to forget that the autonomy of religious groups, both here in the United States and abroad, has often served as a shield against oppressive civil laws. To safeguard this crucial autonomy, we have long recognized that the Religion Clauses protect a private sphere within which religious bodies are free to govern themselves in accordance with their own beliefs. The Constitution guarantees religious bodies ‘independence from secular control or manipulation—in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.’ Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America, 344 U.S. 94, 116 (1952).”

Pray, do tell, Mr. President, what part of that paragraph did you consider when making this decision? Or, do you like having your Justice Department having its hat handed to it at the Supreme Court?

I accuse you, Mr. President, as leader of the Democratic Party, the primary vehicle for historic political liberalism in this country, of risking all the many achievements of political liberalism, from environmental protection to Social Security to Medicare and Medicaid, by committing a politically stupid act. Do you really think your friends at Planned Parenthood and NARAL were going to support the candidacy of Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich? How does this decision affect the prospects of Democrats winning back the House in districts like Pennsylvania’s Third or Ohio’s First or Virginia’s Fifth districts? How do your chances look today among Catholic swing voters in Scranton and the suburbs of Cincinnati and along the I-4 corridor in Florida? I suppose that there are campaign contributions to consider, but really, sacrificing one’s conscience, or the conscience rights of others, was not worth Wales, was it worth a few extra dollars in your campaign coffers?

I accuse you, Mr. President, of failing to know your history. In 1978, the IRS proposed a rule change affecting the tax exempt status of private Christian schools. The rule would change the way school verified their desegregation policies, putting the burden of proof on the school, not the IRS. By 1978, many of those schools were already desegregated, even though they had first been founded as a means to avoid desegregation of the public schools. But evangelical Christians did not look kindly on the government’s interference in schools they had built themselves and, even though the IRS rescinded the rule change, the original decision was the straw the broke the camel’s back for those who wished to separate themselves from mainstream culture. They formed the Moral Majority, entered that mainstream culture, and helped the Republican Party win the next three presidential elections. You, Mr. President, have struck that same nerve. Catholics built their colleges and universities and hospitals. They did so out of religious conviction and, as often as not, because mainstream institutions did not welcome Catholics. It is one thing to support a policy with which the Catholic Church disagrees but it is quite another to start telling Catholics how to run their own institutions.

CATHOLICS in this country -- and Catholic institutions in this country -- should have but two words for any civil authority, left-wing or right, that seeks to compel them to violate their consciences or the teaching of their church: "Non servium."

"I will not serve."

If America is hell-bent on going to the devil, the only thing we can do anymore is not to tag along.



HAT TIP: Rod Dreher

Monday, November 28, 2011

Weaponizing the law for fun and profit


Do you want to know what can happen when America has the best government Big Money can buy (and you can't)?

This. And it's about to happen.

Of course, not being communist China, the U.S. government will not throw a monkey wrench into the Internet because it does not like the politics of any particular website. That would be illiberal.

But if some website might be the slightest threat to big contributors making maximum money, well, that's another thing. That's capitalism, and if you say some things are more important than money . . .
we know where you live.

WHAT AM I talking about? This, as explained in Forbes by Larry Downes:
When Congress introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th, its sponsors hardly expected a tidal wave of opposition from Silicon Valley. After all, SOPA was billed as a corrected version of the Senate’s Protect IP Act, passed out of committee earlier this year.

SOPA and Protect IP are the latest proposals for combating so-called “rogue” websites–criminal enterprises operating outside the U.S. that traffic in counterfeit goods and unlicensed entertainment. Many pretend to be legitimate outlets for movies, music, prescription drugs, and luxury goods, often selling dangerous or defective products to U.S. consumers.

Unfortunately, SOPA, also known colorfully as the E-PARASITE Act, was no corrective. SOPA is a sweeping new law, effecting a radical change to how governments and private parties could police Internet content and business innovation in the name of protecting copyrights and trademarks.
While SOPA did correct a few technical errors in Protect IP, it also introduced new definitions, new standards of liability for third parties, a deeply flawed system of private enforcement, and a provision that makes a felony of posting YouTube videos with copyrighted music—even playing in the background. The House version was nearly twice as long as its Senate counterpart.

(snip)

No one but the criminals, of course, would defend the brazen rip-off of copyright and trademark holders. Unfortunately, legislation touted as targeting only the “worst of the worst” has morphed into something far broader. If passed in their current forms, Protect IP and even more so SOPA would effect a dramatic redesign of the Internet, making it a much smaller and decidedly less innovative place for entrepreneurs and consumers. Neither bill should become law.

For example, SOPA would allow the U.S. government to condemn “foreign infringing sites” by forcing Internet service providers to misdirect requests from consumers attempting to access them. Leading Internet engineers rightly note this provision won’t actually stop users from finding infringing content. It will, however, wreak havoc on crucial international efforts to make the global domain name system more secure, as former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart Baker recently pointed out.

But that’s nothing compared to the most unsettling provision of both bills, which creates a new private right of action for rightsholders to force ad networks and payment processors to shut down websites “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” While that sounds simple enough, SOPA’s version of this “market based mechanism” is over 30 pages long. Read carefully, it gives copyright and trademark owners sweeping new powers to cut off websites—foreign and domestic—whose business models they dislike.

For example, based on nothing more than a good faith belief that infringement is taking place on even “a portion of” a website and a failure by the operator to confirm “a high probability of the use of the site” to commit infringement, SOPA allows private parties can order payment processors and ad networks to cut all ties to the site simply by sending a letter.
WHAT WE HAVE today is a nation of perpetual conflict where brute force is the only possible resolution when disputes arise -- be it in the ghetto where gangbangers settle beefs with bullets, on American streets and college campuses where police shut down peaceful protests with billy clubs and pepper spray . . . or in Congress where moneyed interests pay lawmakers to weaponize the U.S. Code on their behalf.

What could go wrong?

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Terror by proxy, fulfilled


When moronic "Christian" asshats in the bowels of central Florida do senseless things like this . . .


. . . moronic "Muslim" asshats in the bowels of another failed state -- this one, Afghanistan -- do senseless things like this.

To be clear, the enraged mob in Afghanistan is a terrorist one. People whose descent into madness comes amid the wreckage of a country that long ago descended into madness.

But what we also have to realize is that the terrorist mob in southwestern Asia is nothing more than the proxy of a lunatic pastor in Florida. The unwitting tool of a little band of lunatic, Bible-believin' bumpkins who think unleashing the fires of hell is a fine idea just so long as it's done in the name of Jesus Christ.


THE LUNATIC PASTOR, the Rev. Terry Jones, knew exactly what would happen in parts of the Muslim world when word got out that he torched a Koran. He especially knew what would happen in Afghanistan -- where 100,000 American troops are already in the line of fire -- when word got out that he and his Bible-thumpin', Jesus-jumpin' gaggle of grotesque humanity had torched an Islamic holy book March 20.

And Friday, it happened. In Masar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan's Islamic answer to America's lunatic fringe of evangelicalism killed seven United Nations workers in the name of Allah.

They were the business end of the metaphorical, geopolitical gun. Thousands of miles away, in a crappy little church full of crappy little people, Terry Jones pulled the trigger.

The tragedy of Islam is that too many of its adherents believe God is so small that He needs an enraged mob to defend His honor. The tragedy of America is that the constitutional guarantees that safeguard Americans' freedom of conscience render the republic largely defenseless against those whose consciences have been freely deformed into grotesque spectacles demanding mayhem much as a vampire demands blood.

Jones hates Islam because he is convinced it's of the devil. You have to give the devil his due for using such a committed "enemy of Satan" to ensure there will be hell to pay.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

I couldn't have said it better myself


Do you think the National Organization for Marriage just might have been reading this blog?

Reading this MSNBC story and watching the above video, I would have thought that I couldn't have said it better myself . . . if I hadn't remembered that I already did.

I don't care what you think on the gay-marriage issue (obviously, as an observant Catholic, I'm against it), and I don't care what you think about "big government." But I do think that before people get all paranoid about the power of big government and its potential to sow tyranny, they need to realize that big business is just as capable of reducing us to serfdom . . . and perhaps far more likely to try.

Friday, December 03, 2010

Christianity gets Jobs-ed

Forget Julian Assange.

The most dangerous man in the world just might be Steve Jobs.


Why? Because knowledge is power, communications is the conduit, and Jobs is trying to position Apple -- via the iPhone, iPad and ITunes marketplace -- to be the premier gatekeeper in what he envisions as a "walled garden" of information technology, one micromanaged by himself (Himself?) and his techno-nerd corporate minions.


AND APPARENTLY, Apple just has declared mainstream, orthodox Christianity offensive and banished it from the iTunes app store. From the Catholic News Agency:
After Apple Inc. removed the Manhattan Declaration application from iTunes over complaints that it had offensive material, signers are urging the corporation to make it available again.

The Manhattan Declaration application for iPhones and iPads was dropped last month when the activist group Change.org gathered 7,000 signatures for a petition claiming that the application promoted “bigotry” and “homophobia.”

The Declaration – a Christian statement drafted in 2009 that supports religious liberty, traditional marriage and right to life issues – has nearly 500,000 supporters.

The iPhone application, which was previously available for purchase on iTunes, was removed around Thanksgiving.

CNA contacted Apple Dec. 2 for the reason behind the pull. Spokesperson Trudy Muller said via phone that the company “removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

When asked if Apple plans to release additional statements on the matter, Muller said she had no further comment.

CHRISTIANITY has its truth. Apple, and all the mau-mauers yelling "Hate!" in a crowded app store have theirs. And in a world where truth is relative, and often mutually exclusive, the only currency we have left is power and the ability to subjugate the competition.

It seems I was talking about that
just yesterday.

In this kind of an environment, that makes Jobs a really cool Big Brother. It pains me to say this, but "Give me Windows, or give me death!"

Friday, September 10, 2010

Götterdämmerung, reconsidered

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Oops.

Looks like the "Ground Zero Muslims" can't be threatened, extorted or mau-maued.

And now it seems that Nuts for Jesus down in Florida may be reverting to Plan A in their "terror by proxy" scheme -- provoke overseas Islamic radicals into full-blown Götterdämmerung.
What a no-lose scheme this constitutionally protected terror by proxy be!

HERE IS the latest, from MSNBC:
The Florida pastor whose plan to burn Qurans on Sept. 11 generated worldwide outrage among Muslims and pressure by the U.S. government to relent said late Thursday that he might not call off the protest after all.

Pastor Terry Jones told NBC News that "we are a little back to square one" after a supposed deal involving a proposed Islamic cultural center in New York evaporated.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Jones had said he was canceling the Quran burning because a Muslim imam had assured him that the proposed Islamic center could be moved away from the World Trade Center site in return.

But the imam proposing to build the Islamic center near the World Trade Center denied that a deal had been struck to move the project.

"I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said in a statement. "However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri (of Florida). I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony."

After that statement, Jones said the Quran burning had only been suspended.

"Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision," Jones said. "So as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it."

Jones wouldn't say if the church would burn Qurans but said "I'm praying" to decide what to do next.

At Jones' first press conference, he appeared with Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida and said that Musri had told him that the mosque would be moved.

MARK MY WORDS, the whole world -- particularly nuts all across these formerly-United States -- are watching this play out . . . and many of them are way smarter than a bunch of self-important, hateful bumpkins down in the swamps of Florida.

When they take the concept of terror by proxy and run with it, it will end with concrete strictures placed on our rights as Americans if, of course, by that time there are any Americans left to crack down upon.

As I said before, John Adams was right:
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
WHAT THE late president didn't see coming was it being the "religious" who'd help so much in bringing the whole thing down. The 9/11 hijackers were "religious." Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" cultists from Kansas are "religious," as are the asshats in Gainesville.

The world is filled with "religious" people. Everybody thinks God is on his side.

What's in much shorter supply are those who humbly seek to be on
God's side. There's a difference, one that John Adams seemingly didn't take into account.

And that's what's going to be the end of us all.


UPDATE: Nuts of a feather burn sacred texts together.

Yes, the "God Hates Fags" contingent has weighed in.
And they're stocking up on matches, reports the Ocala Star-Banner:
Westboro Baptist Church, the small Topeka, Kan., church that pickets funerals of American soldiers to spread its message that God is punishing the country for being tolerant of homosexuals, has vowed to hold a Quran burning if Gainesville's Dove World Outreach Center calls its off."

WBC burned the Koran once – and if you sissy brats of Doomed america bully Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center until they change their plans to burn that blasphemous tripe called the Koran, then WBC will burn it (again), to clearly show you some things," the church announced in a news
release this week.