Australia:  Warren Ryan has a point about racism and classics

Ryan was a football commentator for Australia's ABC

If nothing else, Warren Ryan's use of the term "darky" during a football call draws attention to the remarkable power of words.

Ryan's defence that the word appeared in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone With The Wind might seem a tad lame at first blush – after all, the sensitivities involved in dealing with racism, especially in sport, would not exactly be news to someone in his position.

But is Ryan a dinosaur that time has left behind? Or are we so worried about even appearing to hold a racist view that we find ourselves "investigating" people for being in the same room as someone who drops a howler?

This is certainly the situation Ryan's co-commentator David Morrow finds himself in.

Ryan has a point, in as much as being vilified for referring to a work of literature takes us into troubling territory.

Such controversies have always been with us – it's the context that changes.

When the Gone With The Wind film appeared in 1939, no one batted an eyelid at words like "darky". The firestorm was over Clark Gable's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn".

In 2014, you wouldn't be arrested for tearing pictures of golliwogs out of Enid Blyton books in Martin Place, screaming "This book is a f---ing disgrace!"

You can't buy golliwog books any more, and it's not just kids' books. Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus was on high school reading lists in the '70s. You would be hard-pressed to find a copy in a school library anywhere today.

Our caution about hurting the feelings of others is admirable, and a vast improvement on the self-serving assumptions of the past.

But we must not rewrite history.

Cruel racism is easy to spot and we do give a damn, but by the same token we don't want The Merchant of Venice going the way of The Nigger of the Narcissus.

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UN rights chief warns of xenophobic politics in EU

Ms Pillay is an Indian and it always amuses me when Indians accuse others of racism.  India is the home of the most fierce racism.  Indian castes are essentially races and higher castes will kill lower castes who get too uppity.  Physician heal thyself?

The recent rise in xenophobic rethoric from EU oliticians could pave the way for human rights violations, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Tuesday in Geneva.

At the opening of the UN Human Rights Council‘s summer session, Pillay said that the xenophobic, racist and religiously intolerant discourse could undermine the fight against discrimination in Europe.

"There is a road to perpetration of human rights violations. And hate speech - particularly by political leaders - is on that road," she said.

Pillay added that the recent deadly attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels was connected to this climate of extremism.

The UN rights chief pointed out that the newly elected European Parliament will include several extremists, including the former chief of the German National Democratic Party, Udo Voigt, who has said that "Europe is the continent of white people and it should remain that way."

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U. Chicago Students Go Ballistic After Dan Savage Says 'Tranny'

Well known gay author and advice columnist Dan Savage recently spoke at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics seminar. Some students who attended the event denounced him for repeatedly using the word "tranny," which made one transgender person in the audience feel uncomfortable and "unsafe." According to The Chicago Maroon:

The incident occurred when, according to several sources, Savage and [IOP fellow Ana Marie Cox] began discussing his personal history as a gay man. According to a first-year student and member of the LGBTQ community who asked to be identified as Hex, Savage used the slur t—– as an example in an anecdote about reclaiming words. Cox then added, "I used to make jokes about t—-ies," audience members recounted.

In a statement, the IOP said, "A guest used language that provoked a spirited debate. The speaker was discussing how hurtful words can be repurposed and used to empower; at no point did he direct any slurs at anyone."

Nevertheless, an activist started a Change.org petition to pressure IOP to issue some sort of condemnation of Savage. The petition also demanded that the University of Chicago vigorously police usage of "hate speech" in the future.

Ironically, Savage's entire purpose for bringing up the word was to discuss strategies for overcoming its negative and hurtful associations.

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Some Warmist hate speech

See below. No argument, no facts, just assertion and abuse.  Received June 4 by Marc Morano.  The sender was given as  "Respect Science" [respect_science@mail.com] and the email was headed: "game over for you and yours"

I have waited many years to see what I am seeing now -- the long overdue awakening of intelligent life and political leadership on this planet, realizing that we cannot go on with greenhouse gas emissions at the rate we have without paying a terrible price.

You have been a terrible enemy of this awareness and intelligence, Mr. Morano. I have been among those who have watched your "work," always so sorry to see your lies, character assassinations, gleeful pursuit of wrong-headed goals. Nasty work by a nasty person. But your time of influence over now. I rejoice in this moment! wow! finally!

You should be ashamed of the role you have played, but I doubt you will allow yourself this realization. You should(but likely will not) suffer in fair measure equal to the suffering and damage you have set in motion, by relentless even gleeful assault on awareness and political will that is -- against all your efforts -- finally building now to unstoppable momentum. This momentum is looking, finally,  equal to physical forces now unleashed on this planet.   I take comfort knowing you have failed. Unfortunately a lot of suffering will yet ensue that you could have helped to prevent.

Awareness and truth are making your work more of a cartoon than it already was.  I am so glad about this, have waited for it.  2014 is sadly very late for this to be happening, but we have a chance now that action, policy changes, energy advances will yet take place in time to spare people of coming centuries from the worst that can happen, due to the ignorance and idiocy of people like you. Actually YOU,  not just people "like" you, others, sure, but YOU.  Wow, how you can live with this I don't understand.  May God have mercy on your soul. If it were up to me? no mercy at all. I'd castyou in the scene in Jurassic Park reboot,  where T Rex gobbles you up with your pants down in the porta potty. Henceforth I dedicate that scene in the original Jurassic Park to you!  cathartic!

Do us all a favor and shut up now. Please. The rest of us have work to do.

Via email

NY Cyber-Bullying Law may end up bullying free speech

In 2010,  some cruel remarks on Facebook led to the arrest of Marquan Mackey-Meggs who attended Cohoes High School in New York state’s Albany County. His arrest resulted from a new cyber-bullying law. Now, in the year 2014, civil libertarians are concerned that application of this  law could eventually lead to other kinds of arrests that go far beyond bullying.

Back in  December 2010, Mackey-Meggs put together a Facebook page called the “Cohoes Flame.” Writing anonymously, he mentioned certain students by name and described their sexual exploits including insinuations that some were engaged in homosexual activity. In one case, he talked about a female student having 14 sexual partners. He even went on and mentioned the name of each partner. The students were between the ages of 13 and 16.

Mackey-Meggs was arrested and charged with eight counts of Internet bullying. He originally attempted to have his case dismissed on grounds of First Amendment protection, but  the law was upheld, first by Cohoes City Court, and later by Albany County Judge Stephen Herrick. Herrick, however, added a new wrinkle by insisting the law should not apply to adult victims, but minors only.

This week, Mackey-Meggs’ case went before the New York’s Court of Appeals.

Corey Stoughton of the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation is representing Mackey-Meggs. She has asked the court to overturn his conviction, claiming it violates not only the First Amendment but also the 14th Amendment and its guarantee of equal protection under the law.

“Because Albany County has made no effort to demonstrate that this broad criminalization of speech is necessary to protect minors from harm, the court should strike the cyber-bullying law down on its face,” she said.

Albany County’s law includes in its examples of cyber-bullying,”sending hate mail, with no legitimate private, personal, or public purpose, with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate, or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm on another person.”

Stoughton is concerned about the wide range of speech that can now be interpreted as having criminal intent:

“These terms encompass countless emails, text messages, and postings on social networking and other websites, putting thousands of people in Albany County in jeopardy of criminal prosecution for expressing anger, criticism, intimacy, parody, gossip, and opinion.”

Defending the law, Albany County Attorney Thomas Marcelle attempted to assure the public that this new law does not endanger free speech.

“Freedom of speech is not the issue…It was his desire to inflict harm on his victims that got him convicted of a crime, not his desire to enter into the marketplace of ideas….The Cyber-Bullying Law is precisely targeted at speech in the narrow circumstances where the communication has no purpose other than to inflict emotional harm upon a child — that is, in situations where the speaker has no intent to communicate ideas and is without the protections offered by the First Amendment.”

In point of fact, free speech is the issue and that does not suddenly become untrue simply because an attorney says so.

Our wise forefathers understood that speech would sometimes be offensive. Otherwise, there would have been no need to protect it. What would have been the purpose of a First Amendment if every spoken word was going to sound agreeable and kind?

Human beings are easily affected by bad sounding practices or emotions and it is easy for attorneys to point out such unpleasantness to inspire new laws.

But when a law is stated broadly, words such as “bullying” or “hate” turn the law into a Trojan Horse. Once inside those walls that once protected our freedom, the true implications of a law can end up forbidding all kinds of speech including sincere words from people who did not intend to either bully or hate.

As for hate, that too is a bad sounding word; that too can be a difficult motive to decipher.  On the other hand, not all hate is wrong. Aren’t we supposed to hate things such as racism and injustice?

Yes, it would be better to have constructive dialogues rather than heated expression and name calling. But since designations such as “hate speech” and motives such as “bulling” seem to be in the eye of the beholder, the safest road is to simply protect all expression.

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Jewish Lawyer plays the antisemitism card

Deplorable -- and unfaithful to Jewry.  By using the term for his own convenience he devalues the plight of all those who have suffered from real antisemitism

Attorney Jacob Hafter was miffed this week after District Court Judge Valorie Vega refused to allow him to “go dark” for a couple days during a long-scheduled trial to observe a religious holiday. (Hafter is an Orthodox Jew, and the holiday was Shavout, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the nation of Israel.)

Naturally, Hafter called Vega a racist anti-Semite. No, really, he did: “Thirty years of legal experience means nothing if you are anti-Semitic or racist,” Hafter wrote on Facebook. “We need to make sure that, especially in light of the concept of absolute judicial immunity, we have judges in office that [sic] will not purposefully trample on our constitutional rights just because they are intolerant of others.”

(Full disclosure: Vega is married to my Review-Journal colleague Howard Stutz, who happens to be Jewish. Oh, also it’s important to note that there is no evidence whatsoever that Vega’s decision was motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice.)

Vega asked Hafter to remove to take down the offending post, so as not to taint the jury in the case that he’s trying in her court, but he refused. “I don’t see anything offensive to this court or to the plaintiffs in it. I just see a recitation of what happened in a factual manner,” Hafter said.

Hafter is apparently so bad, even his mom says she will not vote for him in an upcoming race for District Court judge. Mother and son apparently had a falling out over money a few years ago, and he’s called her “a terrorist,” and “insane.”

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His Orthodox community should disown him

Famous hat man chooses the wrong hat



Pharrell Williams isn't used to making people this unhappy.

The singer has apologized for his appearance on the cover of Elle UK's July 2014 issue, which shows him wearing an indigenous headdress, CBC News reported.

The cover photo drew widespread condemnation on Twitter Tuesday and Wednesday, with a number of First Nations people expressing their offense at what they called an instance of "cultural appropriation."

"I respect and honour every kind of race, background and culture," Williams said. "I am genuinely sorry."

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Must not say ANYTHING negative about women

One of Australia's pin-up technology successes, Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, has been forced to apologise for an employee's presentation gone wrong.

According to engineer Jonathan Doklovic, software is like a "demanding, complaining and interrupting" girlfriend. He made the remarks at the company's two-day developer conference in Berlin on Wednesday.

He was refering to Maven - a program to simplify and standardise projects built using the software language Java - as his girlfriend.

The presentation provoked a social media backlash and prompted Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of the $3.5 billion software maker who has found much success in the US, to invoke Mahatma Gandhi in a bid to quell the ensuing social media storm.

He apologised for the actions but didn't say whether the engineer-in-question - who he originally hired - would lose his job.

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Now blackface must not even be mentioned

A middle school history teacher in small-town southeastern Michigan has been placed on paid administrative leave because he informed students that white entertainers used to paint their faces black to imitate black people and showed kids a video about it.

The teacher is Alan Barron, reports the Monroe News. The 59-year-old teacher has taught in the local school district for well over three decades and is retiring in just two weeks.

The suspension occurred after an assistant principal observed Barron teaching an eighth-grade class. Barron’s topic for the day was racial segregation laws during the Jim Crow era. The lesson included a video which showed how white actors commonly used theatrical makeup known as blackface — a practice which began in the nineteenth century and lasted over 100 years.

The unidentified assistant principal concluded that Barron’s lesson about how entertainers used to be racist was itself racist, according to the local paper. The assistant principal also apparently ordered that Barron stop the video as it was being played.

Parents with kids at the school have overwhelmingly opposed the suspension.

As a result of the suspension, Barron cannot attend any school functions including an annual banquet during which he and other retiring teachers will be honored.

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British Facebook troll who wrote disgusting messages after teacher  was killed is jailed

A Facebook troll who posted sickening messages about the classroom killing of teacher Ann Maguire has been jailed for six weeks.

Jake Newsome, 21, wrote that a 15-year-old boy accused of murdering the school teacher  Maguire should have 'p***** on her too'.

He took to the social networking site three days after Mrs Maguire died was stabbed at Corpus Christi college in Leeds, West Yorkshire, on April 28.

He later admitted posting the messages to police, claiming he empathised with the 15-year-old charged with her murder because he identified with him.

Prosecutor Sandra White told Leeds Magistrates Court today: 'This message was posted to the Facebook social network on May 1 from Mr Newsome's phone.

'He wrote: "Personally, I'm glad that teacher got stabbed up. Feel sorry for the kid, he should've p***** on her too".

'Four minutes later a comment was posted saying,"That's not very nice", to which the defendant replied, "I think it is".'

Angry web users later began posting comments in response and Newsome was arrested. He told police he 'didn't think [the messages] were offensive', the court heard.

After Newsome admitted sending an offensive message at a previous hearing he was sentenced by District Judge David Kitson today.

Judge Kitson added: 'You clearly came from a troubled background. But this is so serious that nothing more than custodial sentence can suffice.'

Newsome, wearing a dark hoodie and blue jeans, looked shocked at the decision and some of his friends sobbed in the public gallery as he was led away.

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As it was a mere expression of opinion it is unlikely that the kid would have been prosecuted in the USA

Australia: Apology finally squeezed out of public broadcaster that broadcast Leftist hate speech

NINE months after broadcasting an offensive skit featuring The Australian’s columnist Chris Kenny by The Chaser team, the ABC will tonight issue a comprehensive on-air apology as part of a formal defamation settlement that includes paying all legal costs and some damages.

Despite the ABC and The Chaser team vowing to contest the matter in court, backed by an internal review that found the skit met editorial standards for satire, the apology will tonight be broadcast on ABC1 at about 9pm, before the Jonah From Tonga show.

The Chaser team will not be permitted to republish the mat­erial or make public statements that detract from the settlement, to prevent a repeat of the way presenter Julian Morrow undermined managing director Mark Scott’s personal apology to Kenny in April.

Hours after that apology, Morrow tweeted a picture of Mr Scott in a compromising position and rejected his public statements, stating: “We are not taking any steps to settle the legal action. If the ABC wants to then that’s a matter for it.”

Mr Scott’s failure to act decisively in the Kenny matter has cast doubt on his tenure as the ABC’s boss and editor-in-chief.

The action stems from a skit on the Chaser’s election campaign show, Hamster Decides, that ­depicted Kenny in a carnal act and called him a “dog f. .ker”.

Kenny said it was clear if he had not commenced legal proceedings, he would not have won an on-air apology and said it had been “worthwhile” to pursue the case. The details and costs of the settlement will remain confidential.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to get the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster to behave decently, but at least it’s finally happened,” Kenny said.

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Not Left enough to be allowed to speak

Last week, former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau joined a growing group of prominent public figures who have declined invitations to speak at college commencement ceremonies because of protests. Birgeneau — and the students who might have been edified by his remarks — are victims of a shortsighted censoriousness that is becoming a familiar feature of graduation season.

A university ought to be an environment in which students, far from being protected from opposing views, are challenged to engage with them.

Birgeneau withdrew as a commencement speaker at Haverford College in Pennsylvania after some students there sent him a letter threatening to oppose his appearance unless he apologized (again) for the use of force against Occupy movement protesters at UC Berkeley in November 2011, and unless he complied with a long list of other demands.

One was that he write an open letter to Haverford students "explaining your position on the events of Nov. 9, what you learned from them, how you have put what you learned into practice and how your actions have or have not been in line with the values of peace, nonviolence and political participation." As a grace note, the students conceded that Birgeneau had done admirable work on behalf of "LGBT rights, affordable education and the plight of undocumented students."

Not surprisingly, Birgeneau sent his regrets.

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Sign Regulations and the Threat to Free Speech

In 2006, auto shop owner Wayne Weatherbee decided to expand his business by purchasing a vacant lot that had once held another auto shop dating back to the 1940s. But zoning officials in the city of Clermont, Florida, determined that Weatherbee's plans for the lot clashed with the city's aesthetic agenda and zoning regulations, so they asked him to first obtain a special permit before doing what he wanted with his own property.

Rather than apply for said permit, Weatherbee posted a dozen signs on his lot criticizing city officials, including the city manager and chief of police. One sign proclaimed:

"Intimidation/Harassment—Selective Law Enforcement—False Arrests—False Documents—What's Next? At Least They Haven't Taken My Freedom Of Speech YET!"

Predictably, the city’s next move was to take away Weatherbee's freedom of speech.

Since the 1950s, the United States Supreme Court has unfortunately held that basic constitutional liberties should yield to the government's self-proclaimed interest in tailoring local aesthetics. Writing for a unanimous Court in 1954, Justin William O. Douglas upheld Congress' decision to eliminate a supposedly blighted African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

"The concept of public welfare is broad and inclusive," wrote Douglas, and it includes "aesthetic as well as monetary values." It was the government's prerogative to "determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled," according to Douglas.

In December 2009, Clermont cited Weatherbee for violating city ordinances governing the display of signs on commercial property. All signs required permits unless they fell into an exempt category. There was an exemption for "temporary political signs," but that only applied to "a sign or poster advertising either a candidate for public office or a political cause subject to election." It did not cover Weatherbee's signs, which attacked public officials outside of the electoral process.

The Clermont Code Enforcement Board decided to fine Weatherbee $75 for every day he refused to take down the sign. His response was to file suit, and in March of this year, he finally prevailed. U.S. Senior District Judge William Terrell Hodges ruled in Weatherbee's favor, finding that Clermont's sign code was unconstitutional. Hodges chided city officials for arbitrarily distinguishing between purportedly political messages and other types of signs.

Unfortunately, Weatherbee's victory is the exception rather than the norm

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Who's Racist?

No day passes without a Democratic politician, a left-wing commentator, or, if I may be excused a redundancy, a left-wing academic labeling Republicans and conservatives racist.

Given the power of repetition, one consequence is that many Americans, especially young ones, believe that one side of the political spectrum -- the right -- is racist.

But while I've never associated conservatives with racism, I also never used to associate liberals with racism. But I was naive in this matter. While there are liberals and leftists who are not racist, I have come to understand that many are -- considerably more than conservatives.

Here are some proofs:

First, white liberals repeatedly state that America is a racist a country, and that all whites are racist. The latter doctrine is taught at virtually every American university. The only difference among whites, liberal professors teach their students, is not that some are racist and some are not; it is that some acknowledge their racism and some do not.

But isn't that an admission that liberals are racist? When a person says, "We are all racists," isn't he saying that he is a racist?

A second proof that racism has a home on the left is the left's primary argument against requiring all citizens to show identification when they vote. The liberal-left-Democrat argument, repeated by almost every editorial page, columnist and news outlet, and by every Democrat, is that such a requirement would greatly suppress the black vote. Thus, voter ID is racist. This is said so often and with such conviction that few people ask whether it is true: Will requiring ID really suppress the black vote?

The answer, shown in study after study, is no. Therefore, people who assume that voter ID would suppress the black vote have to believe that millions of blacks are uniquely incompetent citizens. Few things in civic life are simpler than obtaining an ID, and identification is needed almost everywhere in society. One has to believe in widespread black incompetence in order to believe that obtaining an ID is too difficult for a vast number of blacks.

And is virtually every democracy in the world racist for requiring voter ID? Again, the answer is no. The idea is absurd.

So there are only two possibilities here. Either Democrats and the left make this argument for political gain -- to reinforce their hold on black voters by scaring them into believing that Republicans are racist -- or the left really believes that blacks are less competent than other groups.

It is probable that both reasons -- political opportunism and liberals' belief in black inferiority -- are at work here. Most liberals, after all, do not believe that whites -- even those who didn't graduate high school -- have any difficulty obtaining an ID, but are certain that millions of blacks find this too onerous. This insult to black intelligence is as obvious as it is ignored.

Third is the liberal and left-wing advocacy of lowering standards for blacks -- what is known as affirmative action. How is it not plain as daylight that whites (and other non-blacks) who argue for the continued lowering of standards for blacks have a low view of blacks? White liberals never advocate lowering professional or academic standards for, let us say, Asian immigrants who recently arrived in America, often without money or any knowledge of English.

Why not? Because white liberals think that Asians are bright.

Finally, there is the Democratic and liberal opposition to school vouchers that would enable many blacks parents to send their children to schools superior to the awful ones that the (liberal-run) educational establishment has provided blacks children.

Most blacks want school vouchers, but most liberals vehemently oppose them. Why? Because what is good for teachers unions is of more importance to the left than what is good for blacks.

Who, then, is racist? By their own admission, and by the policies they pursue, the answer is the people who call themselves progressive.

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Stop arresting children for stupid tweets, and make our laws suitable for the internet age

Criminal law is such a blunt instrument online. What we already have is a poor fit, and analogies don’t seem to work. Downloading a film is not the same as stealing a car. Threatening someone on social media is not the same as threatening them in the street. And enforcing what laws you have is really difficult – when you do, you come off like an overzealous idiot.

Which brings me to today’s news. Police have investigated 2,000 children over the last three years for stupid things they have said on social media. And more than 1,300 of them have been charged or cautioned. Some of them were as young as nine.

Neither have adults got off lightly: over the same period almost 20,000 were investigated under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003: “sending grossly offensive or indecent messages”.

That is quite a lot of police time. Indeed, according to our story today “investigating online abuse is creating a headache for police forces, who have complained it is taking up so much time that they are unable to devote resources to more serious crimes”.

But social media offences aren’t just absorbing police resources, they seem to be absorbing all the heaviest punishments too.

In 2012 a British student called Glenn Maugham hacked into Facebook “just to see if he could”. He didn’t use the information he found, but still got eight months in jail.

Then, in the same week that Justin Lee-Collins got 140 hours of community service for harassing his girlfriend, Matthew Woods was jailed for 12 weeks over Facebook comments about April Jones.

But most tragic of all is the case of Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer who downloaded a large number of JSTOR articles (with no profit in mind). For this he was handed a 30 year jail sentence – using the same laws set up for bank robbers and organised criminals. He later committed suicide.

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Leftist, Greenie and Muslim Censorship Rampant

Censorship is making quite a comeback in the U.S. of A. these days, and it may well represent the left wing’s greatest act of hypocrisy.

The list of recent examples is long. Condoleezza Rice was chased away from delivering the commencement address to the 2014 graduating class of Rutgers University. Brandeis University also disinvited Somali feminist Ayaan Hirsi from their 2014 graduation ceremony. Hirsi is known for being an irritant of Islam, especially in her criticisms of female genital mutilation.

In February, Charles Krauthammer contributed an article about global warming to the Washington Post entitled, The myth of settled science. One point he makes is that the propaganda-style use of the media by climate change evangelists “mocks the very notion of settled science, which is nothing but a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.” Ironically, climate-change zealots collected over 100,000 signatures petitioning the Post to refuse publishing Krauthammer’s article. Krauthammer responded that, “they don’t even hide it anymore. Now they proudly want certain arguments banished from discourse. The next step is book burning… Is there anything more anti-scientific than scientific truths being determined by petition and demonstration?”

Everyone who enjoyed Ben Stein’s engaging 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is well aware of the shunning that takes place in academia for professors who venture outside of the Darwinian Evolution paddock. For a 2014 update, University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne “was pivotal in stampeding Ball State University president Jo Ann Gora to issue a campus-wide gag order on teaching about intelligent design in science classrooms,” earning him the title 2014 Censor of the Year.

Then there is the parade of dismissals for getting caught conflicting with the rules of political correctness, a more subtle form of censorship. Mozilla fired their CEO on discovering that he had personally contributed to the campaign supporting traditional marriage in California – six years earlier. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to ban Chic-Fil-A franchises from the city for supporting “the biblical definition of the family unit.” And on a lighthearted note, A&E famously suspended the family patriarch of its hit show Duck Dynasty to muzzle his gauche comments on these social matters.

This brings up intriguing questions about truth, faith, and liberty. When competing thoughts are silenced, is there complete intellectual conviction by those holding the prevailing belief? Or is censorship merely an elixir used to quell a nagging doubt?

The most disturbing violence is employed by Islamic nations to silence religious dissent among their own, believing citizens. While the global quality of life rapidly advances all around them, the natural path to Islamic enlightenment is trammeled. It is as if the Imams themselves hold the least confidence in the ability of their practices to withstand the corrosive effects of reason.

In the new world 1776, bold faith came through deliberate vulnerability. Imagine the Christians who signed the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The founding fathers avoided the temptation to compel Protestantism. Instead, they confidently participated in creating a culture where their faith would flourish on its own merits, or become displaced by competitive philosophies. They trusted in the resilience of truth.

A virtuous faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it is mere religion when people invest their credence in a utopia of human imaginations. Charles Krauthammer called out the global warming militants with, “All of this is driven by this ideology which, in and of itself, is a matter of almost theology.”

We entrust our government with weapons to fulfill their primary objective of ensuring our rights. We entrust churches with theology to fulfill their primary objective of advancing eternal truth. The situation becomes volatile when a well-armed government assumes the authority of theology. It's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.

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Must not speak ill of politicians?

The BBC was last night accused of turning Question Time into a ‘joke’ after footballer Joey Barton compared voting for Ukip to picking up ugly girls in a nightclub on the flagship political programme.

In a heated exchange described as a ‘new low’ for the show, the Queens Park Rangers midfielder told a newly elected female Ukip MEP her party was just the least unattractive option.

To gasps from the audience, he told her: ‘You won the election? You won seats in the European Parliament that nobody really cares about.

‘All you represent to me as Ukip is the best of a bad bunch. If I’m somewhere and there are four really ugly girls and I’m thinking she is not the worst, that is all you represent to us.’

Louise Bours, an MEP for north west England, angrily responded, saying: ‘What an offensive thing to say. The ignorance that you spout it illustrates that footballers’ brains are in their feet.’

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Supermarket defends wearable England flag likened to Ku Klux Klan outfit



Supermarket Asda has defended a "wearable England flag" it has launched for the World Cup after claims it resembles a Ku Klux Klan outfit.

The £3 St George's Cross, with the word "England" on the red cross, features a hood which Asda said was to allow fans to wear it and stay dry despite the unpredictable British weather.

But some fans took to Twitter to point out what they believe were similarities with the hoods worn by the racist US organisation, also known by its initials "KKK".

One user called Kieran posted a picture of himself at his @KieranCPhoto account, writing: "Asda are selling wearable England flags, they look dodgy to say the least ..."

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Charlize Theron causes outrage comparing press intrusion to rape

Rape is quite commonly used as a metaphor for various unpleasant things but I guess the critics below would not even know what a metaphor is

Charlize Theron doesn’t Google herself. Which is just as well, given what’s being said about her today.

The Oscar-winning actress caused an online furore after comparing press coverage of her private life to rape. The comment came during a Sky News interview in the UK, where she was promoting her new film A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Theron’s interviewer mentioned he had typed her name into Google and was surprised to see so much gossip about her boyfriends, appearance and children. Her reaction was adamant.

“I don’t do that. When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start, I guess, feeling raped,” she said.

“When it comes to your son and your private life…some people might relish in all of that stuff…but there are certain things in my life that I think of as very sacred and I’m very protective over them.”

But online communities seized on Theron’s “rape” analogy, accusing her of being insensitive and trivialising sexual assault. Some users commented that while a life in the public eye is a choice, rape is not.

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"Darky" is a bad word

It's certainly a rather old-fashioned word.  And they were old guys who used it

TWO veteran radio commentators for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation have been suspended while management investigates an allegedly racist remark that went to air during a recent rugby league match.

Warren Ryan, a former premiership-winning coach, was heard saying: “There’s a line in a movie where the old darkey says, someone says, ‘quittin’ time.”

David Morrow was being investigated for finding it humorous.

Morrow was also suspended by ABC management last year after a joke described as racist unintentionally went to air.

The ABC announced the suspensions in a statement Friday, after complaints made by listeners following the May 23 match between the Sydney Roosters and Canterbury.

The statement said “both have been asked to submit a formal response regarding the matter ... until the investigation is complete, no further comment will be made”.

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