Free speech is more than just a value

UK: In response to the ‘Trojan horse’ schools scandal, in which academies in Birmingham were caught inculcating in pupils something possibly Islamist, education secretary Michael Gove asserted that everyone in British society must start promoting British values. But given that the lustre of God, Queen and Country has dimmed somewhat since Victoria popped her clogs, defining what exactly British values are has proved rather difficult. Which is why UK pollsters ComRes decided to ask the British public what they thought.

And what did the public say? Warm beer and village cricket? Winding roads and red pillar boxes? Monarchy and a sense of humour? No, the overwhelming winner of this contest was free speech. That’s right: at a time when other voguish but nebulous ideas on ComRes’s list - such as equality, fairness and tolerance - are parroted by a seemingly endless supply of quangocrats and hackademics, 48 per cent of those surveyed still opted for freedom of speech as the most important ‘British value’.

It’s a pity, then, that British politicians are seemingly incapable of heeding such a positive public sentiment. Of course, they say they support free speech; and they never shrink from an opportunity to associate themselves with it. But they don’t really believe in it. Free speech is great, they think, just so long as what is being said or expressed is within certain acceptable boundaries.

But free speech is not a value in the politicians’ sense. It is not quantitatively commensurate with ‘protection’ or ‘tolerance’; it is not capable of being part-exchanged with other so-called values. Properly speaking, free speech is not really a thing to be distributed, calibrated and balanced by the state at all. It is simply not the state’s to divide. Rather, it is a fundamental freedom, a lived liberty, that allows individuals the space to think and speak for themselves, without external compulsion. The point about free speech is that it is speech free from external compulsion; the state’s role in free speech is to guarantee its own absence, not assert its presence as some sort of values accountant, totting up the worth of each idea, and balancing the intellectual books.

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Parents attack 'sexist' shoe ads: 3,000 protest against posters which use blue text to describe tree-climbing boys and pink for girls who 'love comfort and style'

Boys roll in mud and climb trees, while girls prefer sitting quietly and playing with dolls.

Or at least that’s what adverts for Clarks shoes would have you believe – triggering an online backlash from parents who complain the firm is being ‘sexist and offensive’.

The shoe shop has been accused of gender stereotyping on its posters which suggest boys need hard-wearing shoes for running around, while girls are more concerned with looking pretty.

One of the adverts, which are displayed in store, proclaims in blue: ‘Because boys test their shoes to destruction, so do we.’

Another poster, in pink, says: ‘Because girls love comfort and style, we design both into our shoes.’

Last night the firm said it was ‘never our intention to cause offence’ as it faced a barrage of complaints on Twitter.

Emma Dixon, a lawyer from Islington, north London, and mother of two boys and a girl, launched an online petition calling for the removal of the adverts, which last night had been signed by more than 3,000 people.

She said: ‘I was horrified to find gender stereotyped notices above the boys’ and girls’ shoes.  ‘These offensive posters suggest boys are active while girls are passively pretty.

A spokesman for Clarks said: ‘The wording in these in-store marketing displays was chosen to reference qualities that our customers value in children’s shoes. It is never our intention to cause offence.

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The ads would seem to be a pretty fair reference to normal sex differences.  But Leftists are not interested in normality  -- except in attempts to change it.

Jesus, Republicans and NRA banned on school website

Todd Starnes reports:

One of the lessons that Andrew Lampart learned from being on his school’s debate team was to gather facts for both sides of an argument. So last month when his law class was instructed to prepare for a debate on gun control, Andrew went online using the school’s Internet service.

“I knew it was important to get facts for both sides of the case,” said the 18-year-old at Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut.

    Andrew decided to set aside his debate preparation and started researching other conservative websites. He soon discovered that he had unfettered access to liberal websites, but conservative websites were blocked.

When Andrew tried to log onto the National Rifle Association’s website, he realized there was a problem – a big problem.

“Their website was blocked,” he told me. Andrew decided to try the Second Amendment Foundation’s website. That too, was blocked.

His curiosity got the best of him – so Andrew tried logging on to several pro-gun control websites. Imagine his surprise when he discovered the pro-gun control websites were not blocked.

“I became curious as to why one side was blocked and the other side was not,” he said.

Andrew decided to set aside his debate preparation and started researching other conservative websites. He soon discovered that he had unfettered access to liberal websites, but conservative websites were blocked.

Andrew found that even Pope Francis was blocked from the school’s web service. But although he could not access the Vatican website, the school allowed him to access an Islamic website.

Andrew gathered his evidence and requested a meeting with the principal. The principal referred him to the superintendent, which he did. The superintendent promised to look into the matter and fix the problem.  “I gave him a week to fix the problem,” Andrew said. “But nothing had been done.”

So last Monday, Andrew took his mountain of evidence to the school board.

“They seemed surprised,” he said. “They told me they were going to look into the problem.”

Since the school board didn’t resolve the problem, I decided to take a crack at it.

Superintendent Jody Goeler sent me a rather lengthy letter explaining what happened.

He admitted there are “apparent inconsistencies” in the school district’s filtering system “particularly along conservative and liberal lines.”

Without getting into the weeds here, the school district is blaming the blocking on Dell SonicWall, their content filtering service. They said they are waiting for Dell SonicWall to clarify its process for assigning websites to categories.

Dell SonicWall did not return my telephone call so I can’t tell you whether the district’s statement is the gospel truth or baloney. But something smells fishy.

The National Rifle Association, Red State, SarahPac.com, National Right to Life, Second Amendment Foundation, Paul Ryan for Congress, Town Hall, TeaParty.org, ProtectMarriage.com, and Christianity.com are just some of the websites the school blocked.

And they still remain blocked.

Andrew Lampart has done his community and his nation a great public service by exposing the politically correct firewall that was erected at Nonnewaug High School.

And now we must do our part and demand a free exchange of ideas not just in Woodbury, Connecticut, but around the nation.

Mr. Superintendent, tear down this wall!

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US patent office cancels Redskins trademark registration, says name is disparaging

"The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team's name 'disparaging to Native Americans.' The landmark case, which appeared before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, was filed on behalf of five Native Americans. It was the second time such a case was filed. ...

Federal trademark law does not permit registration of trademarks that 'may disparage' individuals or groups or 'bring them into contempt or disrepute.' The ruling pertains to six different trademarks associated with the team, each containing the word 'Redskin.'"

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Skinning the Redskins

by EDWARD CLINE

The recent decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to de-register the name of the Washington Redskins is a serious matter, fraught with dangers not only to trademarks and trademark owners, but to patents and patent holders, in addition to copyrights and copyright owners, as well.

Commercially, what the ruling means is that while the team's owners won't be forced to change the team's name to something more saccharine (or politically correct, e.g., "The Big Hulking Guys Who Chase Obloids"), it has lost the right to control the usage of the team's name in its logos and merchandising endeavors. That is, the name is up for grabs to whoever wants to sell T-shirts, mugs, glasses and apparel under that name.

 The potential or real loss of revenue resulting from the decision is irrelevant. The Patent and Trademark Office's decision, based on a suit filed by five individuals, constituted the theft of property, on the most specious of reasons, that the "name" (and associated symbols) was "disparaging." The Office as much as said: "Your name and symbols are offensive to a certain protected class of citizens, and hurts its feelings, so this agency is delegitimizing said name and symbols as protectable and licensable property. The exclusivity of said name and symbols is hereafter null and void."

Boren's article goes on to report:

As a league official said, "The decision does not mean that the team loses its trademark protection. It loses the benefits of federal registration, but the team will continue to protect its trademarks against third parties using it.  The team has what is called ‘common law rights,' which do not require a trademark registration."

Gabriel Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University, agreed with that interpretation. "This ruling doesn't eliminate the ability of the Washington Redskins to use their trademark or prevent others from using it," Feldman told the Post's Mark Maske. "But it does limit their ability to enforce their rights."

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The ACLU’s latest lawsuit on warrantless cellphone tracking has hit a dead end

This is really a 4th Amendment case but it concerns speech so I think it deserves a place here

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued a local police department over the warrantless use of cellphone tracking devices, demanding that officials in Sarasota, Fla., hand over court documents concerning the practice.

The suit has now been thrown out. On Tuesday, State Circuit Court Judge Charles Williams found that he didn't have the jurisdiction to hear the case.

That's because even though the case concerns a local police department, it was working on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service at the time that it deployed the stingray. Stingrays are used to collect information on nearby cellphones by setting up a fake cell tower; when wireless phones try to connect with the stingray, those contacts get logged by law enforcement.

The ACLU claims this is a violation of privacy. The group said it tried to get Sarasota police to produce the application it filed to a judge for permission to use the stingray, as well as the judge's order. But then, the ACLU said, the U.S. Marshals whisked the documents away to a federal facility, beyond the reach of Florida's public records law. Now the ACLU must either file a federal FOIA request to the U.S. Marshals or continue fighting the court case.

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Hatred of the U.S. flag again

In Texas!  It's what it stands for that they hate

A Webster man says his apartment complex manager told him his American flag was a “threat to the Muslim community,” and that he has to take it down. But he’s not giving up without a fight.

Stepping onto Duy Tran’s balcony in Webster, one thing is clear: “It means a lot to me,” he said.

He’s talking about his American flag that he proudly put up when he moved in just a few days ago. But then an apartment manager at the Lodge on El Dorado told him he had to take it down.

“What really stunned me is that she said it’s a threat towards the Muslim community,” said Tran. “I’m not a threat toward anybody.”

We tried to ask a manager if that’s exactly what was said, but she just handed us a statement, refused to answer any questions, and called an officer to escort us off the property, before we could press any further:

“While the Lodge on El Dorado admires our resident’s patriotism, we must enforce our property rules and guidelines. Such guidelines maintain the aesthetics of our apartment community and provide for the safety of all residents. The apartment community already proudly displays our country’s flag in a safe and appropriate manner at the entrances to our community.”

But we saw other patriotic symbols hanging from other balconies in the complex, and Tran doesn’t plan to budge.

We have not heard of any residents complaining about any flags at the complex, or any of the patriotic items we saw. In fact, we spoke to several neighbors who say they want Tran’s flag to stay.

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Apology

No posts today.  I have just had surgery on my right hand to remove a small cancer.  So I am supposed to give my hand a rest for a couple of days.  But you can't keep a good blogger down for long so I should be back soon.

Top Court to Rule if Threats on Facebook Are Free Speech

The US Supreme Court said on Monday it would rule on whether violent threats posted on social media could merit criminal charges, or whether they are protected as free speech.

The nine justices of the nation's top court said they would take on the case of Anthony Elonis, a Pennsylvania resident sentenced to four years in jail and three years supervised release over threatening messages he posted on Facebook.

The messages, including death threats against his ex-wife, were written in the style of rap lyrics.

In the appeal, which will be taken up in the fall, the court said it will consider whether "conviction of threatening another person ... requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten."

Elonis has said he never seriously intended to make an attempt on his ex-wife's life or carry out any of the other threats, without proof of such an intent, criminalising his Facebook posts violates his First Amendment right to free speech.

In the appeal to the Supreme Court, his lawyers explain that, after his wife suddenly left with their two children, Elonis, then 27, fell into a depression and was fired from the amusement park where he worked.

On December 8, 2010, he was charged with threatening clients and employees of the park, threats against his ex-wife, against police officers and an FBI agent, as well as threats involving a preschool class.

During his trial, Elonis said he was inspired by rapper Eminem in his posts, some of which contained lewd and violent passages.

"I've got enough explosives to take care of the state police and the sheriff's department," he posted in November 2010, as cited in his appeal.

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Are lies free speech?

SCOTUS seems to think so

The Supreme Court delivered a major victory on Monday to an anti-abortion group that sought to challenge an Ohio law that bans campaign statements deemed to be false.

The justices, in a unanimous decision, ruled that the Susan B. Anthony List can go ahead with a lawsuit challenging the law as a violation of free-speech rights.

Both liberal and conservative groups have criticized the law, saying it has a chilling effect on political speech. Even Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine declined to defend the law in court, sending his deputies to argue for the state.

The Susan B. Anthony List was accused of violating the law during the 2010 election, when it accused then-Ohio Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus of supporting taxpayer-funded abortion because he backed the new health care law.

Driehaus threatened to take them before the Ohio commission that reviews the accuracy of political ads.

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas cited concerns about the chilling effect on groups wishing to run political ads.

Thomas said the existence of the law already has a chilling effect on political speech because people and interest groups have reason to believe their statements may be censured. The court warned that the law could impose "burdens" on "electoral speech."

The case began during the 2010 election when the Susan B. Anthony List planned to put up billboards ads attacking Driehaus. The ads accused Driehaus of supporting taxpayer-funded abortion because he supported President Obama's new health care law. Driehaus, a Democrat who opposes abortion, claimed the ads misrepresented the true facts and therefore violated the false speech law.

After Driehaus filed a formal complaint, the billboard owner feared legal action and declined to post the ads. The Ohio Elections Commission found probable cause that the ads violated the law, but Driehaus later dropped the case after losing his re-election bid. 

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"White babies are best" seems to be the message here



We know who the real racists are

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Attack on George Will gets an erudite reply

In case you missed the origins of this story earlier in the week, George Will took to his usual platform at the Washington Post with some words of caution regarding federal government intervention regarding sexual assaults on the nation’s college campuses. In it, he attempted to inject corrective remedies into some of the hyperbole currently engulfing the topic. Of course, in his usual fashion, Will led off with a paragraph which seemed designed to poke a stick in a few wasp nests:

"Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle."

A careful reading of Will’s full editorial would show that he was essentially making two points. First, the “math” being cited to define the number of sexual assaults taking place was unfit for a 3rd grade Common Core tutorial. Second, Will noted that expanding and inflating the definition of sexual assaults to include micro-agressions – such as a boy staring for too long at a young coed with a low cut blouse – would tend to dilute the pool of actual assaults and diminish the seriousness of the real problem.

Such a stance brought the usual list of suspects up on their hind legs and into an immediate attack posture. This culminated in a coalition of Democratic Senators (Feinstein, Blumenthal, Tammy Baldwin and Robert Casey) penning a letter to the WaPo, chastising them for allowing Will to breathe the same air as the rest of us.

After running their letter and litany of complaints, this weekend the Post ran a rare response from George Will. Here’s a key sample.

"The administration asserts that only 12 percent of college sexual assaults are reported. Note well: I did not question this statistic. Rather, I used it.

I cited one of the calculations based on it that Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute has performed {link}. So, I think your complaint is with the conclusion that arithmetic dictates, based on the administration’s statistic. The inescapable conclusion is that another administration statistic that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college is insupportable and might call for tempering your rhetoric about “the scourge of sexual assault.”

The Senators were likely faced with the difficult task of flipping back and forth to dictionary.com to translate Will’s writing, so we should probably have some sympathy.

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Free speech in Peoria?

YOU should think twice before setting up a Twitter account impersonating someone else.

Jonathan Daniel, 29, from Illinois found that out the hard way after police raided his house and arrested him over the account @peoriamayor which spoofed the town’s Mayor.

Twitter hosts thousands of accounts parodying athletes, actors and politicians. Daniel thought his account would be a good way to entertain friends.  “It was created to be a joke,” said Daniel, a father of two boys.  “I thought my friends would find it funny.”

His friends may have been amused but Peoria’s Mayor, Jim Ardis, was upset that the account suggested he was a drug addict and associated with prostitutes.

Mayor Ardis complained to the police prompting the April 15 raid on Daniel’s house to unmask him as the fake account owner.

Daniel’s house was searched and he was arrested with misdemeanour for impersonating a public official.

Lucky for Daniel, the State’s Attorney of Peoria County decided not to charge him.  Had he been charged he faced one year in prison and a $US2500 fine.

But it doesn’t end there. Daniel, a short-order cook at a local bar, is now suing the mayor and six other city officials for violating his constitutional rights.

“Political parody is a great tradition in the United States — from Thomas Nast to Jon Stewart,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and Daniel’s lead attorney.

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Australia:  Leftists think defamation is free speech

It never has been  -- in any jurisdiction

Treasurer Joe Hockey’s decision to sue Fairfax Media for defamation over the now-notorious front-page story “Treasurer for sale” raises interesting questions about politicians suing to protect their reputation, allied with the protection of freedom of speech in Australia.

Hockey claims the newspapers in question – The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times – alleged that he accepted, or was prepared to accept, bribes; that he corruptly solicited payments in order to influence his decision; and that he corruptly sold privileged access to businesspeople and lobbyists in return for donations to the Liberal Party.

A debate is underway about the balance between freedom of speech and protection against racially offensive conduct. There similarly needs to be a debate in Australia about defamation law.

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Leftists only call for a debate over something when their view is a minority one.  Otherwise they try to shut you up.

French police black-up, eat bananas and scratch themselves like monkeys at party



Many people are clearly amused by what they see as a facial resemblance between Africans and higher African primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas.  It is proving hard for the Left to eradicate that amusement.  But it's OK to portray GW Bush as a chimpanzee, of course

Police in a Paris suburb are facing the sack after blackening up their faces with boot polish and eating bananas during a fancy dress party.

The officers, from Kremlin-Bicetre, thought pictures of the party would remain private, however the images which show them smiling with their blacked up faces and afro wigs appeared on social media, where they quickly spread.

One of the photos even shows one officer with a bunch of bananas, scratching himself if he were a monkey, with a bucket of nuts on the ground in front of him.

The officers in the pictures have now been suspended.

It is thought they could be sacked or fined for insulting behaviour.

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VA doctors silenced by bureaucrats

The primary complaint of health care providers employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is retaliation by management - including “sham peer reviews” and even dismissal - for speaking up about serious deficiencies in the VA’s medical system, several VA doctors said during a two-day meeting in Washington on how to improve veterans’ health care.

Dr. Rafael Montecino, a surgeon with the VA in eastern Kansas, complained that “when you try to make things more efficient, the system is working against you. They say that you are creating a hostile environment.”

And “when you complain, or you say like ‘You know, this is not the right thing,’ then you become a target and they gang together to get you out of there,” Dr. Montecino added.

“You have to be willing to put your career on the line, frankly,” Benishek told them, recounting that he had been fired by the VA himself for voicing his concerns, but that he was eventually re-hired because of the scarcity of surgeons in his rural area.

The majority of the doctors who testified complained of “sham peer reviews” - a name given to the abuse of a medical peer review process to attack a doctor for personal or other non-medical reasons.

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Must not be happy about Walmart

Pharrell Williams has courted controversy after performing his chart-topping hit Happy at Walmart's annual shareholders meeting.

The infectiously upbeat song, which has generated hundreds of copycat covers on YouTube, has been criticised as a jarring choice given the sustained attacks against Walmart over the low-wage conditions of some of its employees.

At the end of his performance, in front of 14,000 Walmart workers and shareholders in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Williams invited attendees to "put your hands together for Walmart guys, for making the world a happier place".

According to Business Insider, neither Pharrell or any of the celebrities who performed - including Robin Thicke, Sarah McLaughlan and Harry Connick jr - were paid, because they want to curry favour with the retail giant which is visited by 35 million shoppers every day. Hugh Jackman performed at the same event last year.

Recently, Walmart has been the subject of a renewed wave of criticism centred on revelations that many of its employees are forced to rely on food stamps and other government subsidies to supplement their income. According to one highly publicised report Walmart employees receive $6.2 billion in government subsidies annually - a claim which has been emphatically disputed by the company.

Williams has sinced faced a storm of social media backlash.

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Suburban NY lawmaker under fire for racial remarks

Democrat unwisely spoke the truth. She probably thought she was among friends.  But Leftists are great back-stabbers so that was unwise too

A Long Island county legislator is rejecting calls from her fellow Democrats to resign after making comments about a predominantly black neighborhood that critics say were racially derogatory.

Critics took issue with comments Birnbaum made last month during a meeting to discuss a community center in the predominantly black neighborhood of New Cassel.

“She said, ‘Why would anyone want to go there?’ Then … she added, ‘It’s a bad neighborhood,’ and ‘It’s a ghetto’ and … ‘It’s full of those black people,’” Troiano said.

He added: “She then … whispered, ‘Come on, who from the rest of the town is going to go there? After all, mostly black people live there.’”

“She later added, ‘All they want to do is play basketball.’”

Birnbaum disputed the account of her remarks, saying, “Those are not my words” and then clarifying, “I did not use ‘ghetto.’”

She said Monday in a statement read to The Associated Press that she was “heartsick” about the pain her insensitive remarks had caused but would not resign.

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Birnbaum is Yiddish for "pear tree" so she would appear to be Jewish.

Two can play the name-calling game

In America, we still have the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion to speak our minds, defend our Church and, most importantly, abide by and share the timeless truth of our Lord Jesus Christ without having some socially engineered, radical, and extremist social agenda label us as "haters" or "racists."

My not supporting the sin and aberration of homosexuality does not make me a hater or a homophobe. It makes me a Christian who recognizes sin, and I will not enable a selfish desire to wallow in it. Sin hurts God and it hurts us all.

It is because I recognize each person's full humanity and potential as a child of God that I do not support this so-called lifestyle. It is with love, not hate, that I refuse to enable people. God made us for much better things than the depravity of sexual sin, especially homosexual sin which defies natural law as well.

Two can easily play the name game where each calls the other a name and where labels are thrown around, and this would then create a mob mentality of hurt against each other; but where will that get us?

I could easily label homosexual advocates and activists as intolerant, hateful, anti-Christian heterophobes. I could go so far as to say that they are flat-out Christophobes, afraid and hateful of anything that is Christian. But does that sound fair? Sometimes it sounds pretty darn accurate to me.

Furthermore, just because I am not a supporter of Obamacare or the president it does not make me a racist; it makes me a person who still cares about the sanctity of human life and refuses to support a presidency and an administration that advocates for the killing of innocent human life.

Am I a racist because I do not support President Obama who loves, funds, and supports death merchant organizations like Planned Parenthood that have obliterated one-third of America's black population in the last 100 years? Am I a racist because I try to teach people about the eugenicist plans that target minorities?

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Thought Police are Recruiting

Joe Messina

I love receiving emails from people responding to issues posted on my website, both positive and negative. Some pieces are written by fellow hosts, bloggers and other writers, but all are issues worth discussing.

I recently posted one about the “birther” issue. There are still investigations as to President Obama’s birthplace. The only people who accept 100 percent that Obama is hiding nothing about his birth, his school years, and his true love for this country are the ones who think right-wing, Bible-believing, conservatives like me should not have the right to freedom of speech simply because we don’t think like them.

Yup. The “thought police” are out in force. One of these thought police actually posted on Facebook that I was racist, and the single, simple proof was that I questioned this president’s birthplace.

The logic of the left always astounds me. Would that same conclusion hold true if the president were white? The educated left doesn’t need dictionaries or thesauruses because words mean only what they want them to mean. Period.

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