OK Gov't Counters Court's Ten Commandments Ruling

Activist judges don’t have the last word in the forum of public debate. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to silence one side. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled last week that the Ten Commandments monument sitting on the grounds of the state capitol is unconstitutional.

But a decree from the Pathological Narcissistic Ruling Class, doesn’t necessarily put the matter to rest, at least in the Sooner State. “Oklahoma is a state where we respect the Rule of Law, and we will not ignore the state courts or their decisions,” Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said.

“However, we are also a state with three co-equal branches of government.” The executive branch is petitioning the court to reconsider the case, and the legislature will consider amending the state’s constitution over the matter.

Indeed, the debate over the display of the Ten Commandments has had a complicated history of late. The 7-2 ruling handed down by highest court in Oklahoma is the most recent round of a debate that has gone twice to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it ruled two different ways on the matter. Fallin’s response is also reminiscent of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s brave stand several years ago.

The “despotic branch” of which Jefferson warned may indeed have spoken, but the debate over the Decalogue — just like the debate over the definition of marriage — is far from over.

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Federal Judge Orders Cancellation of Washington Redskins’ Trademarks

A federal judge in Virginia has ordered the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to cancel six of the Washington Redskins’ registered trademarks because their depiction of an Indian brave is considered offensive to Native Americans.

“The evidence before the Court supports the legal conclusion that between 1967 [when the first Redskins’ trademark was registered] and 1990, the Redskins Marks consisted of matter that ‘may disparage’ a substantial composite of Native Americans,” U.S. District Judge Gerald Lee wrote in his July 8 ruling in Pro-Football Inc. v. Blackhorse.

In his 70-page decision, Lee rejected the Redskins’ argument that the trademark cancellation was an infringement of the teams’ First and Fifth Amendment rights.

“The federal trademark registration program is government speech and is therefore exempt from First Amendment scrutiny,” he ruled, adding that “a trademark registration is not considered property under the Fifth Amendment.”

The order does not prevent the pro football team from continuing to use the logo. However, the loss of federal trademark protection could jeopardize some of its commercial and licensing activities.

Redskins owner Dan Snyder has repeatedly vowed not to change the team’s name, so the Redskins will likely appeal the decision.

Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act says that PTO should reject trademark registrations that “consists of or comprises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter, or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt or disrepute…”

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Just how is a heroic use of a Redskin logo bringing anybody into "contempt or disrepute"?

SC to take down Confederate flag

THE House of Representatives in South Carolina has voted overwhelmingly to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds.

THE bill achieved its required two-thirds majority after a 13-hour debate, media reports said.

The votes followed the bill's passage by the Senate this week, three weeks after a shooting at an African American church killed nine people in Charleston, South Carolina.

Photographs surfaced after the slayings of the white 21-year-old charged with the killings, Dylann Roof, showing him posing with the Confederate flag and prompting a drive to take it down from the state Capitol grounds.

Many consider it to be a racist symbol, but many white Southerners see it as a symbol of their heritage and a way to honour their ancestors' sacrifices in the war.

The legislation must now be signed by Governor Nikki Haley to become law.  Haley said removing the flag would create a more inclusive state government.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court Bans Ten Commandments From Statehouse Grounds

The Oklahoma Supreme Court declared that it is unconstitutional to display a statue of the Ten Commandments approved by the state legislature on the grounds of the state Capitol building in Oklahoma City.

In a 7-2 ruling on June 30, the court stated that the state Constitution “specifically banned any uses ‘indirectly’ benefitting religion,” adding that “the Ten Commandments are obviously religious in nature, and are an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths.”

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said she “is disappointed with the court’s opinion that a privately funded monument acknowledging the historical importance of the Ten Commandments is not allowed on Capitol grounds,” according to a spokesman for the governor. “She will consult with the attorney general to evaluate the state’s legal options moving forward.”

State Attorney General Scott Pruitt said that he will file a petition with the court to rehear the case “in light of the broader implications of this ruling on other areas of state law.”

“Quite simply, the Oklahoma Supreme Court got it wrong. The court completely ignored the profound historical impact of the Ten Commandments on the foundation of Western law,” Pruitt said.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “on behalf of a local Baptist minister and several other citizens” who claimed that the statue of the Ten Commandments violated the Oklahoma State Constitution.

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Australian bureaucrat wears Confederate-themed shirt -- gets prize

Australia is not America

THE decision of a senior Northern Territory bureaucrat to wear a Confederate flag to a recent dinner was totally inappropriate, Senator Nova Peris says.

MARK Coffey, the NT manager in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, won best dressed man at the annual Central Australian Beef Breeders dinner on Saturday in a shirt emblazoned with the Confederate flag, the American Civil War emblem linked to white supremacy and racism.

"We're trying to move on from those days, we're trying to build a more inclusive country.... I think wearing that - I call it a costume - you have to think you're going to draw criticism, and rightly so," Ms Peris said.

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Nova Peris is black

IT company forced to apologise and pull its advertising campaign after its wombat logo was mistaken for a PIG by Muslims



An adorable wombat mascot has been mistaken for a pig by offended Malaysian locals whose protests have led an Australian company to abandon their advertisement.

Servcorp, a company that sells serviced office spaces and provides IT services, was forced to apologise and explain what a wombat was on its Facebook page after Muslims participating in Ramadan complained about the imagery.

'Servcorp would like to extend its sincerest apologies for any confusion caused due to the use of a Wombat in a recent digital advertisement in Kuala Lumpur,' the company's post read.

'Servcorp is an Australian company and uses the Wombat as its company mascot - the wombat itself is a small furry bear like animal that belongs to the Koala Bear family and is native to Australia - It would seem that some people mistook the wombat for a pig and during the holy month of Ramadan this might lead to some sensitivities.

'As an international business it is not Servcorp's intention to offend any race nor religion and indeed, there have been no prior issues globally with the use of our mascot inclusive of Servcorp's many Middle Eastern and Saudi Arabian offices.

'Despite the advertisement depicting a wombat and having the prior approval of DBKL (Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur) the advertisement has now been removed.'

Ramadan, when strict fasting occurs between dawn and sunset, is practiced during the ninth month of the Muslim year.

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GOP Indecisive On Confederate Flag

 House Republicans are struggling with the question of whether to remove the Confederate image from around the Capitol complex — and they seem in no hurry to commit themselves one way or another.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, the sole African-American member of the Mississippi delegation, introduced a resolution late last month that would authorize removal of any state flag on the House side of the Capitol containing a portion of the Confederate symbol. Such a flag would then be donated to the Library of Congress.

The flag of Thompson’s state would be taken down under those guidelines, since it is the only state flag which includes the X-shaped symbol of the Confederacy.

Thompson introduced his resolution last week under a “privileged” process that obligated the House to act on it within two days. But rather than immediately pass or reject the resolution, the House instead punted, voting to refer the measure to the House Administration Committee for review.

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Australia: Must not suggest that bad sportsman is Greek

OLYMPIC legend Dawn Fraser has launched a tirade on polarising Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios after his Wimbledon loss.

Fraser, a four-time gold medallist and one of the country’s most celebrated athletes, was questioned about Kyrgios’ performance in his fourth-round defeat against Frenchman Richard Gasquet.

Kyrgios was accused of tanking after clearly making no effort to return serve in the third game of the second set during his 7-5 6-1 6-7 (7-9) 7-6 (8-6) loss.

“It’s absolutely disgusting. I am so shocked to think that he went out there to play and he tanked … that’s terrible,” Fraser told Channel 9’s The Today Show.

But Fraser did not stop there, going on to suggest both Kyrgios and his fellow Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic should “go back where there parents came from”.

Born in Canberra, Kyrgios is the son of a Greek-born father and Malaysian-born mother. Tomic is German-born with a Croatian father and Bosnian mother.

Fraser was immediately criticised on Twitter over the outburst.

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An Australian car with "inappropriate" number identification



A CAR with licence plates spruiking an inappropriate internet slang term has been spotted driving through northeast Melbourne, despite VicRoads staff checking every custom plate for inappropriate language.

The blue Holden with the custom plate “FAP2IT” was seen on Manningham Rd, Bulleen, on Wednesday night. The term “fap” is common internet slang for masturbating, popularised when the mass leaking of nude celebrity photos last year was dubbed “The Fappening”.

Car owner Daniel Van Der Horst said he had had the plates for a few months and VicRoads had approved his application without issue.  “Who is it offensive to?” he said.

Mr Van Der Horst said he had dozens of people taking photos of the car every day and no one had ever expressed any offence.

He said VicRoads’ pledge to potentially recall his plates was “a bit far-fetched”.

VicRoads commercial enterprises and business development executive director Adrian Tofful said they would review the “FAP2IT” combination and recall the plate if necessary.

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Christian Fire Chief Fired For ‘Anti-Gay’ Views ‘Absolutely’ Wants His Job Back

After being fired for writing what’s been described as an “anti-gay” book, former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran says he “absolutely” wants his job back.

“In the United States of America, Americans should not have to choose between keeping your job and living out your faith,” Cochran told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. “And that’s the position the city of Atlanta actually has taken—that I have to have a choice to live out my faith or to keep my job.”

Cochran was fired in January 2015 for publishing a men’s devotional book for a Baptist church group. In the book, “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” Cochran addressed issues of homosexuality, gay marriage and premarital sex from a biblical perspective.

Cochran has been a firefighter since 1981 and was appointed Atlanta’s fire chief in 2008. In 2009, President Obama appointed him as U.S. fire administrator for the United States Fire Administration in Washington, D.C. In 2010, he returned to serve as Atlanta’s fire chief.

In his 34 years of service, Cochran had never been accused of discrimination.

The controversy with his book began in late 2014, when gay activist groups caught wind of the literature and demanded that Cochran be dismissed.

In January, the mayor fired him.

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'Star Trek' actor calls Supreme Court Justice Thomas a 'clown in blackface'

So is he a clown in chinkyface?  It follows



"Star Trek" actor George Takei called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a "clown in blackface" for dissenting from the high court's ruling on gay marriage last Friday, a local Fox affiliate in Phoenix reported.

"He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry," Takei said.

He also said that Thomas "does not belong in the Supreme Court."   "He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America. I'll say it on camera," Takei said.

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Takei is the embarrassment

Naughty Pebbles points out the obvious



Gossip columnist and Kiwi socialite, Pebbles Hooper, has tastelessly labelled the death of a young family as 'natural selection.'

The 25-year-old - daughter of New Zealand fashion designers Denise L Estrange-Corbet and Francis Hooper-  made the shocking and tasteless statement via her Twitter account on Saturday after the bodies of Cindy George and her three children Pio, Teuruaa and Telyzshaun were found in their Ashburton home.

According to the New Zealand Herald, the mother and her children, aged between five and two-years-old, died when the family car was left running in their garage, sending deadly gases into the home through a connecting door.

'I'll get major slack for this, but leaving a car running inside a closed garage while you're (sic) kids are in the house is natural selection,' the opinionated media identity wrote to her 6,800-strong Twitter following.

The tweet was quickly deleted when she started receiving backlash, but not before she tried to defend her words.

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BBC gets it right:  The Islamic state is Islamic

The head of the BBC sparked fury today after rejecting a demand by MPs to stop using the name Islamic State to refer to the terror group - because it would 'give the impression of support' for its opponents.

Tony Hall, the corporation's director general, rejected the call from a cross-party group of 120 MPs to use the name 'Daesh' instead, saying it would 'bias their coverage'.

The decision was widely criticised in Parliament today. Commons leader Chris Grayling said it was like being 'impartial' to Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Muslim Tory MP Rehman Chisti, who started the petition to stop using 'Islamic State', said the BBC's response was 'not worth the paper it's written on'.

Mr Chishti, the Tory MP for Gillingham and Rainham, said Muslims are offended by the use of the word 'Islamic', as they do not consider the bloodthirsty group representative of their faith.

Mr Chishti added that the name also served to legitimise the fanatics by including the word 'state'.

Mr Chishti said Lord Hall's decision was 'very surprising' and unacceptable, as it has been adopted across the Middle East and by the French and Turkish governments.

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Poll Says That Americans See Confederate Flag As Symbol Of Pride, Not Racism

A majority of Americans see the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride, not as a symbol of racism.

However, there is a clear racial divide on how the rebel flag is perceived and what should be done about it and other references to the Confederacy.

According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 57 percent of all sampled adults say the Confederate flag is a symbol of Southern pride. Thirty-three percent called it more a symbol of racism and five percent said it is both equally. Nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of blacks view the Confederate flag as more of a symbol of racism, while two-thirds (66 percent) of whites view it as a symbol of pride.

Public opinion about the flag now is about where it was 15 years ago. In May 2009, 59 percent of Americans viewed the Confederate flag as symbol of Southern pride. Sixty-nine percent said the same in December 1992 — both according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

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'No Gays Allowed': Hardware store owner posts sign refusing service to homosexuals

A hardware store owner is refusing to serve gays after the supreme court legalized same-sex marriage last week. Jeff Amyx, the proprietor of Amyx Hardware in Washburn, Tennessee posted a sign outside his business that said 'No Gays Allowed' earlier this week.

He is banning homosexuals he says because he hates their sin, and he claims that is his religious right.

Amyx revealed that the response to this decision has been mixed, though he continues to stand by his ban.  'A lot of people have called me and congratulated me,' he told ABC 6.

'People calling and threatening me. Telling me I would regret this. No I’ll never regret this.'

It seems that Amyx, while not changing his mind, did decide to change his approach however and take down his sign early Tuesday, replacing it with a new one.

That sign reads; 'We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.'

He said of the sign change; 'People told me I ought to do it a little bit more, make it a little nicer because I’m a very blunt person.'

The sign he said will now stay, at least until he is forced to remove it from the window.  'Until they tell me it is illegal to have my freedom of speech and to my freedom of religion, the sign will stay,' said Amyx.

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Google apologizes after Photos app classifies black couple as gorillas

Mustn't laugh



Google has been forced to apologise after its image recognition software mislabelled photographs of black people as gorillas.

The internet giant's new Google Photos application uses an auto-tagging feature to help organise images uploaded to the service and make searching easier.

However the software has outraged users after it mislabelled images of a computer programmer and his friend as the great apes.

Google said it was 'appalled' and 'genuinely sorry' for the mistake.

Google launched its standalone Photos app in May, announcing a number of features such as automatically creating collections of people and objects like food or landscapes.

However on Monday, Jacky Alcine, from Brooklyn, New York, spotted photos of him and a female friend posing for the camera had been grouped into a collection tagged 'gorilla'.

In a series of Tweets to Google he said: 'Google Photos, y'all f***** up. My friend's not a gorilla.  'The only thing under this tag is my friend and I being tagged as a gorilla.

However, even after a fix had been issued Mr Alcine reported two photos were still showing up under the terms gorilla and gorillas.

Mr Zunger later said that Google had turned off the ability for photographs to be grouped under that label to stop the problem.

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British PM to Broadcaster: Don’t Call Islamic State ‘Islamic State’

Pandering: There are a lot of Muslim voters in England

 British Prime Minister David Cameron took issue Monday with Britain’s public broadcaster’s use of the term “Islamic State” in reference to the terrorist group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

During a BBC Radio 4 interview days after an ISIS-claimed terror attack on a Tunisian beach hotel cost the lives of at least 38 people, most of them British tourists, Cameron was asked whether he regarded “Islamic State” as an existential threat.

“I wish the BBC would stop calling it ‘Islamic State’ because it is not an Islamic state,” he said.

“What it is is an appalling, barbarous regime. It is a perversion of the religion of Islam and, you know, many Muslims listening to this program will recoil every time they hear the words ‘Islamic State’ –”

Radio 4 presenter John Humphrys pointed out that that is the name used by the group itself, but said he supposed the BBC could use the term “so-called” in front of the name.

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Titty becomes Tatty as BBC rewrites classic children's novel

It has entertained generations of youngsters for more than 80 years with its tales of outdoor adventures and childhood friendships.

But Arthur Ransome's Swallows And Amazons is too risqué for modern audiences, say BBC bosses who have decided they might be offended at the name Titty. The character has been renamed Tatty for a new adaptation.

BBC Films has stressed the upcoming version would otherwise be true to the 1930 classic, with the names of the other Walker siblings, John, Susan and Roger, remaining the same.

Ransome based the characters on a real family, the Altounyans, one of whom, Mavis, had the nickname Titty after the children's story Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse.

Sophie Neville, who played Titty in a 1974 film version of the book, told The Telegraph this week: 'I've been Titty for the past 42 years. I didn't get any stick at all over the name in those days.

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An interesting dilemma

Is it permissible to display this?



H/t Fintan Barrett

Must not joke about drugs

Just four days after Russell Brand was told to ‘F*** off back to Miliband’ as he prepared to address Left-wing protesters on an anti-austerity march, the self-styled revolutionary has upset Bob Geldof’s daughter Fifi.

Fifi, whose sister Peaches died of a heroin overdose last year at the age of 25, was a guest at a fundraising event this week for a charity that specialises in treatment for alcohol and drug addiction.

But Fifi was horrified when former addict Brand gave a speech in which he made jokes about drug abuse.

‘From what I’ve experienced, a lot of people here tonight are on drugs right now,’ Brand told guests, who included recently knighted singer Sir Van Morrison, actress Sadie Frost and Madness frontman Suggs. 

Referring to the charity Focus 12’s founder Chip Somers, he told guests at the event at London’s Porchester Hall: ‘Chip said, “If you don’t stop taking drugs in the next six months you’ll be dead, in a lunatic asylum or in prison”. So I thought: “Well, I’ve got five months, three weeks and six days before I have to do anything, f*** that.”’

Fifi — whose mother, TV presenter Paula Yates, died of a heroin overdose aged 41 — was disgusted by the comments from the so-called ‘comedian’, saying: ‘Less of a Russell Brand fan than ever after his offensive and highly inappropriate speech at the addiction charity event.’

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