Will Obama be the one who finally removes a memorial cross?

He'd be crazy to do it in the run-up to the election

For decades, there has been a First Amendment battle raging over the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in La Jolla, Calif., where a large cross anchors a tribute to Korean War veterans.

Because it sits on public property, the American Civil Liberties Union has long argued that the cross amounts to an unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion.

In 2011, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, triggering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in June, the high court justices declined to hear the case.

Oddly, the 9th Circuit, while ruling the cross illegal, didn't order it removed. The parties were left to begin negotiations about what to do with it. "We're going to go back and talk to the district court and talk to the government, and we will work at arriving at an appropriate remedy," ACLU attorney David Loy said at the time.

But just days ago, attorneys for the Mount Soledad Memorial Association learned that the ACLU has been negotiating with the Department of Justice without including the group that actually maintains the cross and memorial site. That sparked concern on Capitol Hill.

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Town Forced to Remove Cross From Logo



City leaders in Steubenville, Ohio have decided to change their official logo after the Freedom From Religion Foundation threatened to sue because the emblem included a silhouette of a cross atop the Franciscan University chapel.

Law Director Gary Repella announced the city’s decision after a closed door meeting – deciding to change the logo because they could not afford a potential lawsuit. The city reverted to a previous logo that did not include the offending items.

“I researched current case law and found a lot of case laws that do not allow religious symbols in government symbols,” Repella said in comments reported by the Herald-Star.

But officials at Franciscan University of Steubenville told Fox News the chapel and cross were included in the logo because the school is one of the top employers in the area and one of the most recognized entities in the city.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation said this logo is unconstitional.

“We were included in the city’s logo not because of our faith, but rather our role in the community,” said Michael Hernon, the university’s vice president of advancement. “This out of town and out of touch group decided that they wanted to purge all reference to religion from the public life.”

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Must not mention gun ownership?

Apparently a rather dim American Olympic hurdler named  Lolo Jones tweeted as follows after the American archers lost to Italy:



The tweet has been condemned as "insensitive" but it is plainly true that many Americans do own guns so getting "sensitive" about an everyday reality seems to be the problem of the sensitive person rather than anyone else, it seems to me.

More here

Twitter joke trial conviction quashed in Britain's High Court

Joking has become dangerous in both Britain and America in recent years so it is refreshing that some sanity about it has finally emerged on at least this occasion

The country’s most senior judge has overturned a man’s conviction for joking about blowing up an airport on Twitter.

In an important High Court ruling the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said that the message posted online by Paul Chambers could not be considered “menacing”.

He pointed out that no one who saw the tweet thought it was a genuine bomb threat, and it was not sent to airport staff.

The joke about “blowing the airport sky high” was made in frustration at flights being cancelled because of the snow, and was only spotted five days later by an off-duty security manager.

“We have concluded that, on an objective assessment, the decision of the Crown Court that this ‘tweet’ constituted or included a message of a menacing character was not open to it. On this basis, the appeal against conviction must be allowed,” said the Lord Chief Justice, sitting with Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Griffith Williams.

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Must not criticize multiculturalism and socialism

A bit of a flap in Britain after someone DARED to criticize the Olympic Opening Ceremony

A Conservative MP...  appeared to describe the Olympic Opening Ceremony as 'leftie multi-cultural crap'.

The comments, claiming the ceremony was more left wing than that which opened the 2008 Beijing games in Communist China, appeared in a Twitter account purporting to be that of Aidan Burley, Tory MP for Cannock Chase.

The opening section showcased British history, including the creation of the NHS and the Jarrow march, a 1936 protest against unemployment in the North East.

Two tweets were posted from @AidanBurleyMP, saying: 'The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen - more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?'

A second tweet read: 'Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multi-cultural crap. Bring back red arrows, Shakespeare and the Stones!'

Downing Street distanced itself from the comments, with a senior source saying: 'We do not agree with him.'

The tweets, widely repeated, caused an avalanche of criticism on the social networking site including from a fellow Conservative, Croydon MP Gavin Barwell.

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"Monday" is a racist word

Can "Black Friday" be far behind?

 A Massachusetts mayor on Thursday fired a white police officer accused of using a racial slur to taunt Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford, saying the officer had "brought discredit" on himself and the department.

"You have demonstrated through your racist comments that you cannot continue as a patrol officer," Leominster Mayor Dean Mazzarella wrote in his termination notice to officer John Perrault.

"He was criticizing Crawford for being a bad player, not because he was a black man," Sandulli said.

Perrault had been on paid leave since he called Crawford a "Monday" before a July 5 minor league game in Manchester, N.H.

The word can be used as a derogatory term for blacks, and is often associated with Mondays being one of the most-hated days of the week, such as in the common phrase, "I hate Mondays.

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Must not joke about Africans

GREEK triple jumper Voula Papachristou has been kicked out of the Olympics for a racist tweet about Africans.

The 23-year-old Papachristou had written that "with so many Africans in Greece, at least the mosquitoes of West Nile will eat homemade food".

Although she subsequently deleted the message after a huge public backlash, the Hellenic Olympic Committee decided to drop her from the squad for London.

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Must not suggest that homosexuality is unhealthy

One of Britain’s most senior Roman Catholics has sparked fury by suggesting an MP and former minister died because he was gay.

The new Archbishop of Glasgow, Philip Tartaglia, said society had kept ‘very quiet’ about the death of Labour MP and former Scotland Office minister David Cairns.  Mr Cairns, a former Catholic priest himself, died in May last year at the age of 44 from acute pancreatitis.  But Bishop Tartaglia questioned why his body ‘just shut down’.

At a conference on religious freedom held at Oxford University, he said: ‘If what I have heard is true about the relationship between the physical and mental health of gay men, then society is being very quiet about it.

‘Recently in Scotland, there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so, and nobody said anything, and why his body just shut down at that age.

‘Obviously he could have had a disease that would have killed anybody.

‘But you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing, but society won’t address it.’ A source close to David Cameron said the Prime Minister believed the Archbishop’s remarks were ‘totally unacceptable’.

Mr Cairns’s partner of 15 years, Dermot Kehoe, accused him of delivering a ‘hate speech’, and said the comments had added to his grief.

Mr Kehoe said the bishop’s ‘ignorance and prejudice should not go unchallenged’. He wrote on Twitter: ‘Tartaglia’s comments are hate speech. He has position of moral leadership and should not speak from ignorance of the facts... Distressing and painful.’

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Did the Jonesboro Sun Publish Hate Speech?

Sounds a reasonable comment to me.  Homosexuals themselves often refer to themselves as queer these days

LGBT group Wipe Out Homophia posted a photo on Facebook that shows what looks to be a letter to the editor on the Jonesboro Sun, an Arkansas newspaper, that could be interpreted as hate speech.

The short message, under the headline “Correct Decision,” and written by someone named Carl Baxter, reads as follows:

“Congratulations to the Boy Scouts of America for doing the right thing and reaffirming their gay ban. That’s why they are called Boy Scouts and not Queer Scouts of America,” the message says.

According to Alyssa Aldridge, who sent the photo to WOH, it was published last Saturday, on July 21.

No LGBT organizations that we know of have approached the newspaper about the letter so far. However, the Facebook post received close to 500 comments in the last hours, many in repudiation.

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Chick-Fil-A ‘Smeared By Vicious Hate Speech And Intolerant Bigotry’

Regardless of what you think of Huck,  it's a good thing that there's some pushback against the anti-Christian bigots

Mike Huckabee has designated Wednesday, August 1, as National Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day because he is “incensed at the vitriolic assaults on the Chick Fil-A  company.” Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister and failed Republican presidential candidate, created the event and posted it on his Facebook page, claiming the only reason Americans are angered with Chick-Fil-A is “because the CEO, Dan Cathy, made comments recently in which he affirmed his view that the Biblical view of marriage should be upheld.”

Huckabee added that “if Christians affirm traditional values, we’re considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant.”

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Censorship at Blogger News

Blogger News is a small (few articles) and rather quiet (few hits and few comments)  site where the average story seems to get  about 400 hits.  It started out as a libertarian/conservative site but has now dropped that claim, presumably with the intent of broadening its audience.  It does a lot of book and TV reviews also with that intent in mind presumably.

I have been irregular contributor there since before the present management took over.  I have put things up there that I would like  to  get to people who do not read any of my blogs.  And some of my posts there have got over 1,000 hits.

They have however refused to put up one of my articles that I submitted to them recently so I doubt that I will send anything more to them.  You can read the "censored" article here.  There is no doubt that the article was on a generally "forbidden" topic but it is sad to see censorship encroaching where there was none before -- particularly since the article I submitted was solidly based on good scientific research.

They of course have every right not to put up my writings and I  have every right to send them nothing more.

UPDATE

They now say that they withheld my article because it had typos in it!

JR

'Vile and tasteless' toy?: 



Toy guns are common so why not this one?

A [British] luxury department store has apologised for selling wooden toy versions of Soviet-era rocket launchers.  London store Liberty was forced to pull the £23.50 toy from is shelves following a number of complaints, with some describing it as 'vile' and 'tasteless'.

Available in baby pink, yellow or natural wood, the design appeared to be marketed at younger children.  The toy was based on Katyusha rocket launchers which were first used in the Second World War by the Soviet Union.  Recently, they have been used by Hezbollah militants to fire rockets into Israel and during the Libyan conflict last year." 

More here

United Nations Bans Song for Criticizing Tyrants

The United Nations will tolerate many things (child rape, corruption, socialist thuggery, scientific fraud, Islamofascism, over the top demagoguery, etc.), but criticizing tyrants goes over the line:

    The dreams of dozens of Norwegian girls ended in disenchantment on Saturday when organizers axed part of their show at the UN General Assembly in New York, citing concerns over lyrics listing some of history’s worst tyrants.

    The 46 members of the Norwegian Girls Choir had long looked forward to performing their song about war and peace at the General Assembly Hall, newspaper Aftenposten reports.

    But the girls, aged 12 to 19, never got to realize their ambition after the organizers of the Rhythms of One World Festival took fright on hearing the choir sound-check.

    As conductor Anne Karin Sundal-Ask worked out some of the details for the stage show with a lighting technician, the choir shrieked out the names of infamous tyrants from Hitler and Mussolini to Quisling, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Tito, Maria Antoinette and Papa Doc.

    “The mood changed quickly at that point and they wanted a list of all the names,” Sundal Ask told the newspaper.

    The choir leader said she was willing to compromise and remove some of the names but the organizers at the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation eventually told her the girls were not going to be allowed to perform the piece.

The award-winning song has been performed all over the world. Gasps composer Maja Ratkje,      “As far as I’m aware, this is the first time my art has been censored.”

If you want your music to be performed at the UN, be sure to limit criticisms to rhetorical rotten tomatoes hurled at the USA and Israel.

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Thought crime in Britain

Peter Saunders

Last week, Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London staged a five-day trial (cost to the taxpayer: unknown, but doubtless staggering) at which Chelsea and England soccer star John Terry successfully defended himself against the charge that he had racially abused an opposing player, Anton Ferdinand, during a Premier League game last season.

Ferdinand told the court that during the game, Terry had called him a ‘c---,’ so he called back him a ‘c---’ back and accused Terry of ‘shagging his team mate’s missus.’ Terry responded with the words: ‘F------ black c---,’ although Ferdinand did not hear him say it. The incident was later posted on YouTube, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) started a criminal investigation, resulting in Terry’s arrest and trial.

It was not the foul language that landed Terry in trouble. The word that put him in the dock was the only part of his utterance fit to print without asterisks (and the only bit that was descriptively accurate). It was the adjective, black.

Ever since 1965, incitement of racial hatred has been a criminal offence in Britain. This was incorporated into the 1986 Public Order Act, under which Terry was charged. This Act has subsequently been extended to prohibit incitement of hatred of religious and sexual minorities as well, so if Terry had referred to Ferdinand as, say, a ‘f------ Muslim c---’ or a ‘f------ gay c---,’ he could have found himself in the same sort of trouble (calling someone a ‘f------ bald c---’ or a f------ old c---’ is, however, not currently illegal, so bald old Brits like me have no statutory protection).

This case has given middle Britain a ghastly insight into the depraved culture of England’s sporting elite. Foul-mouthed men like Terry earn around £150,000 per week and are revered as role models by youngsters up and down the country. They are gross, yet they are treated as heroes.

What is more disturbing, though, is that Terry was brought to trial simply for the language he used. The case shows how Britain’s race relations laws attempt to control, not just what we do, but the way we think. Words betraying negative emotions about racial (or religious or sexual) minorities are illegal, regardless of whether they have any influence on behaviour.

It obviously makes sense to prohibit language intended to stir up violence, but that was never the case here. Terry and Ferdinand exchanged gross and abusive insults, nothing more. Yet Terry was arrested – not for anything he had done, but because he added that Ferdinand was black. That was enough to get him charged with what Orwell would recognise as ‘thought crime.’ It showed (in the eyes of the prosecution) that Terry was a ‘racist.’

In the end, Terry got off because the prosecution failed to prove that he had intended to abuse Ferdinand when he mouthed the words he used. But this case is only the tip of a monstrous iceberg, and others have not been so lucky.

Since 2000, UK schools have been required by law to report ‘racist incidents’ to the authorities: 30,000 incidents were reported in 2008–09, more than half of them from primary schools. Even though 95% involved only verbal abuse or name-calling, the CPS launched almost 3,000 prosecutions against children aged between 10 and 17 for ‘hate crimes.’

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to the country that gave birth to John Stuart Mill.

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Intolerant advocate of tolerance

Calls for inclusiveness but refuses to be inclusive of Christians

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston — possibly to a popular tourist spot just steps from the Freedom Trail — after the family-owned firm’s president suggested gay marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

“That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

Chick-fil-A has been swept up in a growing national controversy over company president Dan Cathy’s remarks questioning gay marriage and lauding the traditional family.

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Australia:  Refugees must not be seen as sexy

Zoo Weekly magazine will issue a public apology in its next edition after its controversial call to find the "hottest asylum seeker".  The magazine's editor, Tim Keen, has confirmed in an email to an opponent of the two-page spread, Matt Darvas, that the magazine would apologise.

"We will explain that the reason for the apology is that we regret any offence caused to any of our readers, and to any asylum seeker or refugee who was offended, along with their families and supporters," Mr Keen wrote this afternoon.

Over a two-page spread, the magazine's July 16 edition read: "We're looking for Oz's hottest asylum seeker, so if you've swapped persecution for sexiness, we want to shoot you (with a camera - relax!)".

A petition on Change.org, set up by Mr Darvas, has called for Zoo Weekly to apologise for "exploiting asylum seekers", attracting more than 5000 signatures since yesterday morning.

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Leftists desperately scrabbling to find racism in Romney and his supporters

The unexpected problem for the plug-uglies on the left is that neither Romney nor Republicans and other conservatives are acting like Republicans and conservatives are "supposed to act." They're not following their assigned roles in the script with harsh language and unyielding prejudices, reflecting what has happened everywhere. The n-word, for example, has been long banished from the conversation, at least in public, by nearly everyone.

Sometimes the "racism" ascribed to conservatives is so subtle that no one but the accuser could recognize it. Recent observations that the president looks '"skinny" is supposed to be racist code for a type who is "good at basketball." Mocking the former law professor is said to be code for "uppity." Any criticism or observation from certain quarters is code for racist.

The fact is that it's the Republicans who have blazed the way for greater acceptance of blacks in high office. George W. Bush appointed Colin Powell as his first secretary of state -- the first black to hold such high office in America -- and when he departed he was replaced by Condoleezza Rice. In the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year, Herman Cain, a relatively obscure black businessman, unexpectedly prospered and briefly led in the polls.

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Free speech against Islam very shaky in Germany

A recent Legal Project article authored by me concerned a German court's fining (pending appeal) of Michael Mannheimer for his condemnation of Islam as an authoritarian and aggressive belief system.  However, on a more positive note, as reported again by the conservative German website Politically Incorrect (PI), another German court, on June 26, 2012, in the city of Darmstadt, rejected a call to prohibit a book decried by a German Muslim in a civil complaint as an assault upon his freedom of religion. 

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Since most of the relevant documents are in German, I guess I should sum up.  Basically, two rather nutty people issued declarations denouncing Islam.  The real nutcase got off but the only slightly nutty guy was convicted.

So that does not really tell us much about how a scholarly comment about Islam in the context of political debate would fare but it seems  possible that it would be the most heavily fined of all.

Ominous prelude to the Colorado shooting

Just yesterday I posted about the strong feelings apparently held about Hollywood's "Batman".  People appear to connect with the Batman myth in a strongly emotional way.

It certainly did not hit me at the time but the Batman scenario does of course have TWO major figures, Batman himself and the Joker.  And it looks like the Joker was an attractive figure too in our amoral times

There was a hint there of what was to come but nobody foresaw it.

Has the Leftist press started blaming the massacre on conservatives yet?  No doubt they will.  That is a kneejerk reflex for them despite past failures in that department.

If anyone is to blame aside from the inadequate shooter himself, I think the obvious pick is amoral and Leftist Hollywood.

When free speech collides with occupational licensing

"Can the government throw you in jail for offering advice on the Internet about what food people should buy at the grocery store? That is exactly the claim made by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition.

In response, a major free speech lawsuit was filed in federal court on May 30. It seeks to answer one of the most important unresolved questions in First Amendment law: When does the government’s power to license occupations trump free speech?

The case could have a profound impact on the Internet freedom of millions of Americans who share advice on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere online."

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