CA: The Orange County Human Relations Commission

We read: "OC Human Relations is a non-profit agency whose mission is to foster mutual understanding among residents and eliminate prejudice, intolerance and discrimination in order to make Orange County a better place for ALL people to live, work and do business."

That sure sounds reasonable but they have a funny way of going about it. Because they have no power other than making statements, they behave in a very non-judicial way and are in fact very bigoted themselves. As you might expect, Muslims can do no wrong and criticism of Muslims is hate speech.

Attorney Karen Lugo takes up the story:

Most stunning is the commission’s ability to hear complaints, consider a sanction, and indict a speaker without even notifying the subject that there is a complaint; one that may result in a public condemnation of his actions. Our Constitution provides protection from governmental deprivation of life, liberty, and property without something called due process.

Reputation is legally considered to be one’s property. One of the important requirements of legal due process is notice that an official decision is being considered that may result in an adverse ruling. Another important constitutional provision is the Fifth Amendment right to face one’s accuser. But these busybody organizations operate outside these constitutional parameters and have the power to sanction and condemn without notice, process, or diligent inquiry. Left unchecked these governmental, but unaccountable, bodies represent a grave threat to protected American freedoms and individual rights.

The latest caper of the OCHRC is to glad-hand a rally of Muslim extremists and decry protests against Muslim extremism. I referred to the rally previously on this blog. And it is that which has fired up Karen Lugo (above). Her full post has more details and there are other comments here and here

The lack of impartiality on the part of the OCHRC is a threat to free speech, even though making misleading statements to the media is all they can do. The media, of course, tend to lap such statements up, tending to give the impression that the OCHRC is an impartial body.