Even very clever politicians can fall foul of speech rules

Yes. I know about Joe Biden but who ever said he was clever? This is about the head of the British Conservative party, a graduate of Eton and Oxford:

"It was meant to be the ideal low-risk, softball interview before he headed off to France for his holidays. But yesterday David Cameron’s last media appearance before the summer break ended in awkward apologies after he used an inappropriate word during a breakfast radio programme favoured by his wife, Samantha.

The Tory leader used the word “twat” as he explained to Christian O’Connell, a presenter on Absolute Radio, why he did not use the Twitter social networking service. “The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it — too many twits might make a twat,” he said. In the studio his remark was greeted with laughter. Mr O’Connell said: “That’s fantastic.”

However, according to the Collins English Dictionary, the word can refer to female genitals, a girl or woman “considered sexually”, or a foolish or despicable person. Shortly afterwards Mr Cameron risked making the situation worse by saying people were “pissed off” with politicians — although he added hastily: “Sorry, I can’t say that in the morning.” ...

According to Mr O’Connell, the Conservative leader was ticked off by Gabby Bertin, his press secretary, as he left the studio. The presenter described the exchange between Mr Cameron and Ms Bertin in a podcast released shortly after the broadcast. “She leapt out of her skin after the first part of the interview,” the presenter said. “He said [to her] ‘That seemed to go OK’. She said, ‘Yeah, apart from the language’.

“He said ‘Oh, yeah, pissed, sorry about that, I’m really sorry’ . . . She said ‘No, it was the twat’. “He said, ‘That’s not a swearword’. I think he must be posh, where a lot of them don’t think twat is a swearword. His press secretary went, ‘It is’.”

The presenter hailed Cameron as “a good bloke” who had been as relaxed as if he were “down the boozer”. Mr O’Connell joked that the t-word was not viewed too seriously by radio regulators: “In terms of the fines we can get, it is not one of the big ones.”

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A very naughty man

It's just fine to make thousands of references to GWB as a "chimp" but ...

"The race row that has inflamed the US took a bizarre twist last night when a Boston police officer was suspended for abusing Harvard scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates and calling him "a banana eating jungle monkey".

In a furious and at times ungrammatical rant at a reporter on the Boston Globe newspaper, the anonymous email, allegedly written by Officer Barrett said: "If I were the officer he (Professor Gates) verbally assaulted like a banana eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (capsicum spray)."

Later in the email, quoted in full on the Boston Globe's website MyFoxBoston.com. the 36-year-old former English teacher suggested the headline for the newspaper's article on Professor Gates' arrest should read: "Conduct Unbecoming a Jungle Monkey - back to one's roots."

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While it was a comment in breach of current speech rules, it does seem to be a reference to what Gates said and did rather than his race. I imagine that the cop would argue that the excited chattering and screeching which apparently emanated from Gates was reminiscent of monkey behavior -- but I live on the other side of the world so I could well have it all wrong. If the cop had referred to ALL blacks as jungle monkeys, THAT would certainly be a racist utterance.

I think the cop should have called Gates a chimp. We know from how often the Left used it about GWB that it must be an OK term to use. Or am I missing something? Surely Leftists are not saying that GWB really does not look like a chimp but Gates really does? That sounds like racism to me!

Amusing:

Google have yet again blocked any new posts to my GREENIE WATCH blog -- as they say it is a possible spam blog. I wonder how long it will take them to unblock it and let me start posting there again this time? The format and general contents of the blog have been the same for years so one can only wonder at what forces were at work in this action. I imagine that the Warmists have been busily "flagging" it. Censorship of contrary views is a large part of their modus operandi. They can't stand the simple facts that I regularly put up there.

British police must not wear British flag -- but homosexual flags are OK

This shows how far Leftism has gone in Britain. They despise their own country.

"Scores of Scotland Yard officers are in open revolt after being banned from wearing Union Flag badges in support of British troops. Met chiefs have decreed that the tiny emblems – which cost £1 with proceeds going to charity – must be removed after a complaint that they are offensive. But furious junior officers are continuing to wear them in defiance at the politically correct stance.

The row started when 200 officers at Heathrow Airport were barred from wearing the badges last month on the grounds that they were in breach of the Met’s strict dress code.

The order is thought to have followed a complaint from a member of public that the symbol is ‘offensive’. But about 70 officers, many of whom have been in the Services or have relatives fighting in Afghanistan, have ignored the directive despite warnings of disciplinary action.

Mr Smyth, who represents more than 30,000 rank and file officers, said staff in the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Group, CO19 firearms squad and dog units have joined the revolt. In a statement on the Metropolitan Police Federation’s website, he said: ‘As the country mourned the deaths of young soldiers and saluted the heroism of the men and women fighting in Afghanistan, Met officers at the airport were ordered to take off small, one-inch square Union Flag badges because someone had complained they were offensive.’

Officers at Heathrow were also ordered to take down a Union Flag hoisted on June 27 – Armed Forces Day – because it was not an ‘approved ensign’. Strict rules are in place about when the Union Flag can be flown at individual police stations.

In February, Scotland Yard was hit by another row over political correctness after the Union Flag hanging outside a police station was replaced by a gay rights flag to mark Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) history month. This is despite Met rules stating that only the Union Flag and its own flag can fly from force buildings.

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Off limits in Australia: sights and sounds of gambling

We read:

"Clubs, casinos and gambling venues could be required to undertake significant renovations to make sure children are not able to see, or even hear, gambling. Guidelines drawn up by state and federal ministers say children must not only be kept out of gaming venues but also must not be "exposed to gambling areas within venues"...

The independent senator Nick Xenophon said state governments must act immediately to protect children from the sights and sounds of gambling. "The states and the Federal Government finally agree that children are harmed by exposure of adult behaviours like gambling," Senator Xenophon said. Shielding children should include measures such as soundproofing play areas, restaurants and other non-gaming areas inside clubs or casinos...

A spokeswoman for the Minister for Families and Community Services, Jenny Macklin, said all states and territories had agreed to the principles before taking formal action next year. "The principles are about implementing a nationally consistent approach to ensure that minors are not directly exposed to gambling," she said. "A part of this is recognising the need to ensure that the physical layout of gambling venues does not expose them to gambling."

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Pakistan president Asif Zardari bans jokes ridiculing him

Being President of Pakistan is something of a joke so I suppose one cannot entirely blame him

"Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, has been accused of suffering from a sense of humour failure after banning jokes ridiculing him. Pakistanis who send jokes about Asif Zardari by text message, email or blog risk being arrested and given a 14-year prison sentence.

The country's interior minister, Rehman Malik, announced the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been asked to trace electronically transmitted jokes that "slander the political leadership of the country" under the new Cyber Crimes Act. Mr Malik, said the move would punish the authors of "ill motivated and concocted stories through emails and text messages against the civilian leadership".

The step, which was described by human rights groups as "draconian and authoritarian", came after government was particularly riled by a barrage of caustic jokes being sent to the presidency's official email.

Critics have accused the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a party that espouses a liberal agenda, of stooping as low as the former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, who took television broadcasters off air when he faced political opposition.

Mr Zardari, the widower of the assassinated former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, has long courted controversy. During his wife's two tenures he earned the nickname of "Mr 10 per cent" on account of his alleged penchant for demanding kickbacks on government contracts.

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Is there really a most offensive word in the English language?

I think that the following comment by Australian writer Evan Maloney is worth recycling

"That English guy who pontificates on all things auto (and pretty much all things else as well) [Jeremy Clarkson] got in trouble last week for using a word so heinous it can only be described in terms of it’s first letter (the “c” word). It’s been called the most offensive word in the English language and I read this and thought, “according to whom?”

I’m not denying that the word has a lot going for it in terms of offensibility, but is there really one word that can be crowned as the most offensive in any language? Isn’t it purely subjective? I think if I were aboriginal I’d be far more offended by a few other English words besides the “c” word. [He probably has "boong" and "Abo" in mind. "N*gger" is rarely used for blacks in Australia]

People who have lived in or travelled to a foreign country, or studied a foreign language, might have been amused by what arbitrary collections of sounds represent dirty words. In Poland “kurwa” and “pierdola” are two words that would get me sacked from a job writing for any publication here, but on news.com.au they are kind of quaint, I think.

I wonder if the “c” word isn’t so offensive simply because of the phonetics. There are other terms of abuse one can use that relate to female genetalia, like “you pussy”, but the “p” and the “s” are soft consonants while the “c” and the “t” are hard, so the “c” word can be intoned with a cruelty far more palpable than the word “pussy.” But the semantics are considerably different also. The former is used to describe someone who is weak, while the latter is used to describe the worst type of human being in every sense. It is offensive to use a term relating to women’s genetalia to attack someone, but then again, we call people d***heads and c**kheads and these words don’t come across half as bad.

Then again, the whole idea of offensibility is, like that of a good joke, all about the delivery. I’ve been called a “c” word before and known it was meant as nothing more than a laconic and a cheerful greeting. At least I think it was.

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It is true that the context is often what makes a word offensive or not. There was a very irascible guy I knew once who was always quarrelling with people over all sorts of things. He was of Polish descent so I used to call him a "mad Polack" (but with a smile). So I was actually just about the only person he got on well with. I could actually cool him down when he was ranting, which nobody else could.

Outrage over saucy messages on infant clothes



99% of the time it is mothers who dress their babies so if they think the commentaries about themselves are offensive, they wouldn't put them on their kids. And what right have others got to complain about what mothers choose to say about themselves? There are enough restrictions on what we can say about others without adding restrictions on what we can say about ourselves.

"BABY clothes boasting slogans such as "The condom broke", "Pardon my nipple breath" and "I'm living proof my mum is easy" have outraged family groups.

They want the raunchy rompers and tops withdrawn, but unrepentant retailer Cotton On says they are simply meant to be funny.

Kids Free 2B Kids director Julie Gale bought the items at Cotton On Kids in Malvern on Monday.

Others read: "I'm a tits man", "Mummy likes it on top", "Wipe my butt sucker", "So hot right now", "I like big boobs and I cannot lie", "I'm bringing sexy back" and "Practice safe sucks".

Ms Gale said as a comedy writer and performer she had a great sense of humour, but using babies and children as "a vehicle for sexual innuendo" was unacceptable.

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Brits losing in their attack on Michael Savage

His accusation that he was attacked on racial grounds has now been confirmed

"Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has suffered a major setback in her legal battle with American 'shock jock' Michael Savage after her officials were accused of banning him from the country on racial grounds. Emails written by Home Office officials privately acknowledged the ban on Mr Savage would provide 'balance' to a list dominated by Muslims - and linked the decision to Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

The officials admitted their action could look 'duplicitous' and cited his 'homophobia' as a reason the move would receive public support. The Right-wing radio presenter, whose hardline views on Islam, rape and autism have caused outrage in the US but whose show, The Savage Nation, has eight million listeners, was identified in May by Ms Smith as one of 16 people barred due to their political views.

Mr Savage, who had not even applied for entry to Britain, claimed his name had been 'plucked out of a hat' because he was 'controversial and white'. He has since served a £100,000 libel writ on Ms Smith, who announced his ban on television.

Now, correspondence released under Freedom of Information legislation suggests the banning of Mr Savage, whose real name is Michael Weiner, was based on a party political calculation made at the highest level of Government. One message, sent by an unidentified Home Office official on November 27 last year, said that 'with Weiner, I can understand that disclosure of the decision would help provide a balance of types of exclusion cases'.

The documents include a draft recommendation, marked 'Restricted', saying: 'We will want to ensure that the names disclosed reflect the broad range of cases and are not all Islamic extremists.'

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When "believe" is a bad word

We read:

"Watch your language! It’s a common message from Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education, an organization dedicated to promoting and defending the teaching of evolution in public schools. Scott recently spoke with Science News writer Susan Milius.

So you urge scientists not to say that they “believe” in evolution?!

Right. What your audience hears is more important than what you say.… What [people] hear is that evolution is a belief, it’s an opinion, it’s not well-substantiated science. And that is something that scientists need to avoid communicating.

You believe in God. You believe your sports team is going to win. But you don’t believe in cell division. You don’t believe in thermodynamics. Instead, you might say you “accept evolution.”

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I happen to be an atheist but I see nothing misleading in talking about a "belief" in evolution. It's just another theory and one that has its fair share of holes. Its only virtue is that it does not require a belief in supernatural entities or events. I actually think that unreserved acceptance of evolution as the sole explanation for our existence as we are now is nearly as big a leap of faith as belief in God.

I find it easy to say: "I don't know". Apparently many other people do not. I guess I just don't have a talent for dogmatism. The lady above certainly sounds very dogmatic to me -- religious almost.

When "bad" is a bad word

In Britain, of course:

"A teacher faces the sack after complaining about the behaviour of her class on Facebook. Sonya McNally, 35, has been suspended on full pay since calling the 13-year-olds ‘bad’ in a private conversation on the social networking site. In a post on March 20, the supply teacher wrote: ‘By the way, (class) 8G1 are just as bad as 8G2.’

Another teacher involved in the discussion, Kirsten Allenby-Moore, took offence. She complained to the council’s human resources department, writing: ‘I found the comments personally insulting as the 2 classes mentioned where [sic] both mine.’ It is understood she teaches both classes information technology once a week.

Education officials at North East Lincolnshire Council suspended Mrs McNally from Humberston Comprehensive School in Grimsby in April and launched an investigation. In a report to the headteacher, Mrs McNally is accused of ‘bringing the school into disrepute’. The previous headteacher resigned in December after Ofsted inspectors rated the school ‘inadequate’ in 13 key areas. [So it really is bad]

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British motoring guru Clarkson in row over four-letter abuse of Prime Minister

Amazing what you can get away with in Britain if you are popular. The fact that a naughty comment was made off-air did not save Carol Thatcher, one might recall

"Jeremy Clarkson has been given a 'ticking off' by a BBC boss after using the most offensive swear word to describe Gordon Brown in front of a studio audience. The Top Gear presenter made the remark as part of his warm-up act before filming at the Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, where the BBC2 car show is made.

Although some of the audience 'burst out laughing' at his comments, BBC2 controller Janice Hadlow later gave Clarkson a 'dressing down' in front of crew.

The 49-year-old host's remarks come less than six months after he was forced to apologise for calling Mr Brown a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot' during an interview with Australian journalists.

On Wednesday, Clarkson is understood to have told fans: 'I get into trouble talking about Gordon Brown, he is a silly c***.'

Witnesses say Miss Hadlow approached him at the end of the show and that Clarkson reacted angrily to her concerns. One insider said Clarkson was always 'irreverent' and used colourful language during his warm-up. They also pointed out that his comments were made off-air and were part of the usual banter before the show.

Despite this, Miss Hadlow and Clarkson 'had it out' near the programme's green room, where the BBC boss made it clear she had been annoyed by his behaviour and that it was unacceptable. However, a spokesman for the BBC last night denied claims that the pair had had an argument or that the matter had been referred to both the BBC Trust and its director-general.

'Janice Hadlow went to watch a recording of Top Gear as it is BBC2's top-rated programme, and as controller of BBC2, she holds both the programme and Jeremy in high regard,' he added.

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Jewish group sues Amazon over 'Nazi' books

This is yet another example of the fact that Jews can be so smart in many ways yet so dumb politically. I guess that emotion erodes their reasoning and reality-checking faculties.

"The American Jewish Committee said on Friday it was suing the German branch of online retailer Amazon for selling books which it said questioned the Holocaust and "trivialised" the Nazis.

According to AJC research, around 50 works including "Der Auschwitz-Mythos – Legende oder Wirklichkeit ("The Auschwitz Myth – Legend or Reality") by Wilhelm Staglich were on sale on Amazon.de this month. Some of these books, the AJC said, were classified by the German authorities as being unsuitable for under-18s.

"It is unacceptable that books are for sale on Amazon.de that normally are only available under the counter in far-right extremist shops," the AJC said in a statement. "We cannot let the spread of internet sales erode laws that ban Holocaust denial and incitement to hatred of minorities in Germany," it added.

A spokeswoman for Amazon Germany said that "of course" it did not sell any books that were banned or classified as unsuitable for under-18s. She added that in the interests of freedom of speech, it was not keen on stopping selling certain titles. "We think that the best response to questionable literature is not removing them but more discussion," a spokeswoman told AFP.

She added that the company had recently tightened up its rules regarding books that glorify or trivialise the Nazis and that certain books had been withdrawn from sale as a result.

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One understands the motivations above but the main effect of such bans could be to erode confidence in orthodox history. "Why the coverup?" is what many will ask. The already widespread idea that orthodox history is a coverup will only be reinforced if these bans are implemented. And with Arab countries already distributing such ideas on a large scale, what is the point of any attempted ban? The message will still reach those who want to hear it.

GOP Congressmen censored by Dems over chart

We read:

"House Republicans suggested Thursday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is standing in the way of Republicans sending to constituents a chart that is in the official record of the House Ways and Means Committee. The chart, recently submitted for the record during a Ways and Means hearing on the Democrats' health care reform bill, shows the Republican interpretation of the Democrats' proposed legislation.

The Franking Commission, which is responsible for determining which mailings can be paid for with the congressional frank, or stamp, deemed the mailing unacceptable.

Republican members are scratching their heads at the ruling. The chart is "part of the official record and now we're told it can't be communicated," said Republican Rep. Dan Lungren of California.

He suggested that the decision to prevent the publication of the chart came from someone higher than the House mail office, perhaps even as high as the speaker's office.

A spokesman for the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of the House Franking Commission, did not respond to the accusation against Pelosi, but said, "There are ongoing discussions to try and resolve the issue in good faith."

The author of the chart, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, alleged that Democrats are afraid of the purported visual representation of their reform plan. "This is the most outrageous example of censorship I have seen in Congress," he said.

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Leftism NEEDS secrecy -- because their motivations are not what they claim

US town employee fired over porn actress wife



We read:

"The mayor of a small Florida town has defended the town council's decision to fire its city manager after officials learned his wife is an adult film actress. Fort Myers Beach mayor Larry Kiker insisted that Scott Janke's termination had nothing to do with his spouse's job, that the town was merely trying to maintain order. Janke married Anabela Mota Janke, who goes by the stage name Jazella Moore, in October. He began working for the town in March 2008.

Kiker said he learned of Janke's wife's job after receiving a telephone call from a reporter on Tuesday. He said he then spoke to Janke, who agreed "this was going to be a big disruption for the town and he was not going to be able to do his job well". Within a few hours, Kiker had called an emergency town council meeting, and the group voted 5-0 to exercise a "no-cause" clause in Janke's contract, effectively firing him....

Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, said the firing could present legal problems for the town.

Duke said even with a "no-cause" clause in Jenke's contract, as a government employee his rights are still protected. "There may very well be a case here," she said.

Added Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida: "His firing may run up against Florida's law that prohibits discrimination based on marital status."

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British schoolboy is first convicted of racist abuse of classmate

Bullying is very common at school and very little is normally done about it despite a lot of puffed-up talk. Additionally, blacks are often abusive and intimidating to whites (read the second post down here if you doubt it) but I have yet to hear of a black kid going to jail over it

"A schoolboy is facing the threat of a year in a young offenders' institute after he became the first to be convicted of racially harrassing a fellow pupil.

The 15-year-old boy, who cannot be named, caused a 14-year-old classmate to attempt suicide by repeatedly calling her "wog, coon, nigger, gorilla and golliwog" for six months. Lincoln magistrates, who convicted the boy of racially aggravated harassment, heard that the girl took a mixture of pills and wrote a goodbye note to her family. The behaviour of the boy, who had no previous convictions, was condemned as "merciless" last night by anti-racism campaigners.

However, his conviction - the first for the crime over an incident in a school - prompted questions over whether such bullying should be dealt with through criminal law. David Green, the director of Civitas, the right-leaning think-tank, said that while the boy's behaviour should be condemned, "the law does not belong in the schoolyard in these cases".

"We are not talking stabbings or serious assault here," Dr Green said. "This should be a matter for the school and the children's parents." Josie Appleton, the director of the anti-regulation think-tank the Manifesto Club, which will publish a paper on schools' obligations over racist incidents this autumn, added: "This should be dealt with in the school.

"Criminalising it undermines the authority of schools. Teachers have to be able to set a moral example."

The boy, who denied the charge, was convicted after a six-hour trial. He will be sentenced on August 13. He faces a maximum two-year detention and training order, including 12 months in a young offenders' institute.

However, Sunil Khanna, the boy's solicitor, said: "I'm not sure a criminal prosecution was the right way forward. "I know this goes beyond normal bullying, but mistakes that might have been down to youthful ignorance will now stick with him years."

The boy's grandfather said: “It's difficult to know what to believe, they can make more out of court cases sometimes than there is. He has always protested his innocence and we are not a racist family.”

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Ireland’s bizarre war on blasphemy

We read:

"It does seem bizarre that, in 2009, a modern European nation would seek to shield religious belief from criticism – yet that is what is happening in Ireland right now. In repealing the 1961 Defamation Act, the Irish government sought to expunge the worst excesses of Ireland’s draconian laws restricting free speech, but in the process it has ended up making offending religious belief a criminal offence.

Many are asking why on earth blasphemy should be criminalised, particularly at a time when the Catholic Church in Ireland is being investigated for widespread child abuse and its public image has hit rock bottom.

The government has responded to its critics by saying there is a constitutional requirement for a specific blasphemy law in Ireland. Indeed so: freedom of speech is guaranteed by Article 40.6.1 of the Irish constitution. However, it goes on to prohibit the publication of ‘blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter'. One might call the Irish constitution a clear case of the left hand giving and the right hand taking away.

The fact that this has been the case since the constitution came into effect in 1937 seems to have blinded the government to its usual option: the traditional Irish response to divisive issues is to pretend that they don’t exist. It is not for nothing that Ireland’s acceptance of abortion for those with enough money to travel to Britain is called ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem’.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the constitution, only one case was ever taken under the blasphemy prohibition since the introduction of the constitution in 1937 (a 1999 case against a newspaper, in which the Supreme Court concluded that it was not possible to say ‘of what the offence of blasphemy consists’ and that ‘the state is not placed in the position of an arbiter of religious truth’). So, at the very least, it seems peculiar to bring the issue into the light of day in 2009.

The new blasphemy law is clearly an issue of offence. In an era when robust debate is needed more than ever, the government of Ireland has not only succeeded in assaulting the right to free speech – it has also introduced a law that incentivises outrage by encouraging religious groups to play up hurt feelings when their views are challenged.

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Arab Christian Group Claims First Amendment Rights Denied On Public Property

We read:

"The leader of an Arab Christian evangelical group filed suit against the city of Dearborn, Mich., claiming the city violated his First Amendment right to distribute literature on public property. The incident occurred last month at the city's annual Arab International Festival, an event that attracted 300,000 visitors and has provided a favorite evangelizing venue for the group, Arabic Christian Perspective, whose members have attended for the past five years.

George Saieg, Arabic Christian Perspective's founder, says trouble started when he called the Dearborn police to let them know his group would be returning to the festival. City police told Saieg that, unlike in previous years, his group would not be allowed to distribute material on the sidewalks, and that Arabic Christian Perspective could either rent a stand at the festival or be assigned a specific location at which it could distribute its literature.

With the help of the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian legal group, Saieg sought a temporary injunction to stop the city from preventing his group from distributing materials on the sidewalk. But the petition was denied, and the group was permitted to distribute literature only at one location within the festival.

Saieg says that the spot was a particularly bad one, and that his group was able to distribute only $5,000 worth of literature and Bibles -- a fraction of the $50,000 worth of materials that they had prepared. In past years, he said, when they were allowed to distribute on the sidewalks, they were able to give out most of their literature.

Now Saieg is suing to get the city's action declared unconstitutional and to make sure that it has access to the sidewalks at next year's festival.

But city officials say they acted correctly. "One federal judge has already agreed with us and denied a temporary injunction," Mary Laundroche, Director of the Dearborn Office of Public Information, told FOXNews.com. "The judge agreed with us that what normally would have been public sidewalks were actually part of the festival life during the festival."

She added that members of Arabic Christian Perspective were free to preach on the sidewalks, just not to distribute materials. "They were free to go throughout the crowd and talk with people at any time. They were just prevented from distributing materials, which was a public safety issue -- they could block vehicle and pedestrian traffic." [A SAFETY issue! What BS!]

Whether Saieg is welcome or not, two First Amendment experts said sidewalks are usually considered "traditional public fora" in which distributing materials is considered protected speech, and the city's defense of its action does not appear constitutionally strong.

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Race and religion to be in Australian law review

These are basically anti-Jihadi laws but the focus on "inciting violence against an individual" is narrow enough not to offend against most concepts of free speech. Although I am not myself entirely convinced, it is widely accepted that incitement to violence is not entitled to free speech protection. What constitutes "incitement to violence" is the grey area

"The Rudd government will consider creating a new law making it an offence to incite violence against an individual on the basis of race, religion or nationality, as part of its broad review of Australia's existing counter-terrorism legislation.

In the next few weeks, Attorney-General Robert McClelland will release a wide-ranging discussion paper canvassing options for an overhaul of Australia's counter-terrorism laws introduced in the wake of September 11. Mr McClelland said last night the new offence would expand the opportunity for prosecuting those who attempted to induce others, including vulnerable youths, to commit acts of politically motivated violence. It would supplement the existing commonwealth offence of inciting violence against a group. "We also need to focus on targeted initiatives to identify those exposed to, or at risk of being influenced by, violent extremists," Mr McClelland told the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

The Rudd government had identified four key areas to focus on as part of a national effort to counter extremism, while recognising that any solutions had to be implemented with the support of local communities. These included the identification and disruption of violent extremists as well as supporting at-risk groups and individuals in their communities.

In many instances community members were often more readily able to recognise extremist behaviour and could be more effective in combating those views before they took hold. "I see centres for Islamic studies at tertiary institutions as having a particular responsibility in this area," he said. He said effective communications were also critical with experience having shown that the language used to describe terrorism could cause anxieties among among Australians and create divisions within communities. "It is vital that the messages we send do not in any way glorify terrorism or suggest a war or clash between cultures or religions."

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Google cleared of responsibility for indexing defamatory comments

An out-of-character ruling by Mr Justice Eady. He normally finds defamation at the drop of a hat. He has almost singlehandedly made Britain the libel capital of the world. But apparently even he has his limits.

"A landmark ruling in the [British] High Court has cleared Google of all responsibility for indexing defamatory comments that appear in blogs, news articles and forums.

The search engine giant was brought to court by Metropolitan International Schools, a company which operates learning courses in the development of games under the name Train2Game. It was attempting to sue Google after comments it claimed were defamatory, written in a forum of a website, appeared on Google’s search results page.

However, Mr Justice Eady, a High Court judge who specialises in defamation cases such as the recent Max Mosley trial, ruled on Friday, July 17, that Google was not a publisher of the comments, only a facilitator through automated results and therefore could not be held responsible for them. "When a snippet is thrown up on the user's screen in response to his search, it points him in the direction of an entry somewhere on the web that corresponds, to a greater or lesser extent, to the search terms he has typed in. “It is for him to access or not, as he chooses. [Google] has merely, by the provision of its search service, played the role of a facilitator.”

A Google spokesperson said: “We are pleased with this result, which reinforces the principle that search engines aren't responsible for content that is published on third party websites. Mr Justice Eady made clear if someone feels they have been defamed by material on a website then they should address their complaint to the person who actually wrote and published the material, and not a search engine, which simply provides a searchable index of content on the internet.”

The ruling will bring the UK more in line with the US legislation on this issue. Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act makes it clear that intermediaries are not liable for defamation online. However, until now no such ruling existed in the UK, nor has Google ever had to defend itself against this claim before.

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Online journalist wins victory over 'legal jihad'

We read:

"The full Texas Second Court of Appeals yesterday rejected an attempt by a coalition of seven Islamic organizations to further their defamation lawsuit against an online writer and have him branded as less than a "real" journalist.

As WND reported, after Joe Kaufman wrote an article for the online FrontPage Magazine exposing terrorist connections in two American Muslim groups, he was sued by a swarm of Islamic organizations, none of which he had even mentioned in his article.

The lawsuit technique is called by some "legal jihad" or "Islamist lawfare," and the Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Kaufman in the lawsuit, claims Muslim advocates are using the strategy to bully online journalists into silence.

"The lawsuit against Kaufman was funded by the Muslim Legal Fund for America. The head of that organization, Khalil Meek, admitted on a Muslim radio show that lawsuits were being filed against Kaufman and others to set an example," claims a Thomas More statement on the case. "Indeed, for the last several years, Muslim groups in the U.S. have engaged in the tactic of filing meritless lawsuits to silence any public discussion of Islamic terrorist threats."

And though a three-judge panel of the court had unanimously dismissed the case, the Islamic groups sought an "en banc" opinion, meaning a ruling from the entire court of seven justices. The Texas Second Court of Appeals, however, issued a "per curiam," or entire court, opinion yesterday, upholding the panel's decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

Source

British jeweller in race probe over his ban on gypsies after string of raids on his shop

The global Left just cannot accept that all groups are not the same

"In the past 18 months alone jeweller Michael Plant has repeatedly been targeted by Eastern European thieves. At first he left it to the police to track down those responsible and hoped they would eventually be brought to justice. But with no sign of any arrests and still more raids, he decided to ban them from his shop - only to be threatened with prosecution for racial hatred.

'I'm not racist, but the fact is I have been targeted repeatedly by Eastern European criminals,' said Mr Plant, 62, yesterday. 'I should have a right to say which people come into my shop and not face allegations of racial discrimination. 'Obviously I don't think all of them are bad, but how can I distinguish who is good and who is bad? Some people coming in to this country illegally seem to have more rights than me.'

After each raid he called in the police to investigate but with no arrests and more stock stolen he decided to make a stand and placed a sign in his window which read: 'Sorry, we do not serve Rumanian or East European gypsies.'

After a tip-off from a member of the public, a senior police officer warned him that if it was not removed immediately he could be charged with producing racially offensive material. 'The sign was written in anger after the robbery,' said Mr Plant. 'I feared we would get more in that afternoon. 'I just put it straight in the door. The police took offence at the word "gipsies". 'I've had several robberies and the capture of criminals is very low.

Police said Mr Plant had fallen foul of the Race Relations Act which recognises gipsies and travellers as ethnic groups. A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: 'Police received a report that a shop was displaying a sign which contained writing that was deemed to be offensive. 'Officers have spoken with the owner of the shop. He has been advised that the notice is offensive and he has since removed it.

'We take all complaints of this nature extremely seriously.' [What they DON'T take seriously is theft]

SOURCE

British backdown on list that defamed Michael Savage

We read:

"Home Secretary Alan Johnson is to scrap his predecessor's policy of naming and shaming people banned from Britain for spreading race hate and terrorism. The U-turn follows Jacqui Smith's controversial decision two months ago to announce a list of 16 people branded as 'least wanted' in the UK.

It led to a claim for £100,000 damages by U.S. radio 'shock jock' Michael Savage, who objected to being put in the same category as Islamic hate preachers and terrorists.

The Mail on Sunday has been told that Mr Johnson believes the move was a blunder and does not propose to issue similar lists in the future. But the switch could have major legal consequences for the Government. Mr Savage is suing Ms Smith for libel over the list and abandoning the policy could make it impossible to contest his demand for damages.

Source

Sarah Kennedy 'spoken to' by BBC for praising immigration critic during Radio 2 show

We read:

"Radio 2 presenter Sarah Kennedy has been chastised by the BBC for praising right-wing politician Enoch Powell during her show. During her early-morning show on Wednesday, Kennedy, 59, described Powell as 'the best prime minister this country never had'. Enoch Powell was famously sacked from the shadow cabinet by Ted Heath in 1968 after his 'Rivers of Blood' speech about the dangers of mass immigration.

A spokesman for the BBC said that the corporation had received 25 complaints by Friday and that the presenter had been 'spoken to' about the remark. She said: 'It was inappropriate for Sarah to offer an off-the-cuff political opinion and we have spoken to her and made that clear.'

In his infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech to Conservatives in Birmingham's Midland Hotel in 1968, Enoch Powell spoke out the threats caused by the mass immigration of people from Britain's former colonies.. He also heavily criticised the planned anti-discrimination laws which would make it illegal to refuse service on grounds of race.

It caused deep divisions in public opinion with Powell accused of inflaming racial hatred by many, but applauded by others for saying the unsayable. He was quickly sacked from Edward Heath's shadow cabinet but he also received 120,000 letters of support.

Source

Given the troubles with Muslims and the high crime-rate among blacks, there are many Britons today who believe that Powell has been proved right in giving the warnings he did. "Enoch was right", they say 40 years later -- though only in private conversations.

Powell never in fact mentioned "rivers of blood". He was a distinguished classical scholar and alluded to something written by the Roman poet Virgil: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. He certainly foresaw deaths but not on quite the scale his critics have alleged.

The whole speech is here. It was a rather leisurely and academic speech, certainly not rabble rousing, but it referred to realities that were already widely recognized and reading it today does tend to show Powell as remarkably prescient. The article above describes Powell as "Right-wing" but he in fact got a lot of support from unionists, including strikes in support of him. That is why the political class to this day demonizes him only in a cautious way. The lady above was simply "spoken to", for instance. Having wharf labourers going on strike in support of one of the most distinguished Professors of Classical Greek must be one of the more amazing events in social history!

Powell was a brilliant scholar and a devout Christian and foresaw that his speech would be controversial but he felt that someone had to say in public what many were saying in private so he is an exemplar to those who believe in free speech.

MADD angry at Flying Fish brewery for naming beers after NJ freeway exits



You would think that something more impressive than a freeway exit might be dreamed up as a name for a beer but what the heck?

"It is acceptable to name your alcoholic beverage after a moving vehicle so long as a car isn't the vehicle in question; e.g. Night Train Express wine and Warbird beer. In fact, it's frowned upon to give alcohol a name that can even be associated with cars. New Jersey craft brewer Flying Fish has attracted the attention of MADD, the NJ Turnpike Authority (NJTA), and the press for breaking the taboo with its line of beers named after exits on the New Jersey Turnpike.

The Exit 4 American Trippel was the first in the "big beer" series -- they come in 750-ml bottles -- part of "a multi-year brewing experiment to brew a series of beers as diverse as the great state of New Jersey." Exit 11, a Hoppy American Wheat Ale, will be coming later this month and is "a tribute to Woodbridge's exit, where the Turnpike meets the Garden State Parkway." Which must taste delicious...

MADD feels that "The combination of a roadway and advertising for any kind of a beer doesn't make any kind of sense." The NJTA wants to make sure no one thinks it's turned into a brewer. To address both issues each bottle of flying fish includes a disclaimer, "The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has no affiliation with the Exit Series. Both the Turnpike Authority and Flying Fish agree that you should never drink and drive." That hasn't quite quelled the controversy, but it does tell people two things they should already know.

Source

I think it's the objection by MADD that doesn't make any sense. Odd labels are just an attention-getting gimmick that sells stuff.

More ethnic silliness

The most recent roundup from Taranto has a lot about speech silliness in it so I am just going to reproduce that below. Taranto can be a brain-strainer at times with points that are often a bit subtle and hard to follow but I think the comments below are generally pretty straightforward (by his standards, anyway). I have put in my own subheadings

Hispanic correctness

The Sonia Sotomayor hearings were something of a snooze, so we suppose we can't blame the Associated Press for trying to come up with something--anything--to write about. Even so, this is a bit much. Yesterday the AP tried to transform some humorous banter into an outrage:

One of Sonia Sotomayor's Senate interrogators had a joking response Wednesday when she talked hypothetically--and humorously--about getting a gun to shoot him in self-defense.

"You'll have lots of 'splainin' to do," replied GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, evoking the 1950s TV show "I Love Lucy" to laughter from the crowd and the judge.

"I'd be in a lot of trouble, then," Sotomayor quipped back.

What Coburn said--and how he said it--was a riff on a Hispanic television character, Ricky Ricardo, whose accent is now widely considered a broad parody

Ricky Ricardo, played by Cuban-born Desi Arnaz, would often use this line with his fictional wife, Lucy, played by real-life wife Lucille Ball. The AP successfully sought out a denunciation of Coburn's bon mot:

The National Council of La Raza [Spanish for "the race"] responded to an e-mail inquiring about Coburn's remark, saying it was unclear whether it was a badly told joke "or he's just clueless."

"While quoting Ricky Ricardo isn't in and of itself a slur, in this context, it seems wildly inappropriate to say the least," said the group's spokeswoman, Lisa Navarrete.

A comparison

Meanwhile, the AP reports from Chicago that the Sears Tower "was renamed the Willis Tower on Thursday in a downtown ceremony":

Mayor Richard Daley and Joseph Plumeri, who heads Willis Group Holdings, the London-based insurance broker that secured the naming rights as part of its agreement to lease 140,000 square feet of space in the tower, unveiled a sign with the new name in the tower's lobby.

"Willis is investing in Chicago. Willis is investing in Chicago. That's positive," Plumeri said during Thursday's ceremony.

We doubt we'll ever call it Willis Tower. To this day we refuse to refer to the skyscrapers in our own backyard as the MetLife Building and the Fiat Building.
But we digress. What caught our attention about this AP story was the headline: "What You Talkin' Bout, Willis? Sears Tower Renamed." What the AP said--and how it said it--was a riff on a black television character, Arnold Jackson, whose accent is now widely considered a broad parody.

Child actor Gary Coleman played Arnold in "Diff'rent Strokes," which debuted on NBC in 1978. Arnold and elder brother Willis (Todd Bridges) were the adopted children of a wealthy, WASPy widower, Philip Drummond (Conrad Bain). Whenever Arnold was incredulous at something his brother had said, he would employ the catchphrase the AP referenced in the headline (though the Internet Movie Database spells it "whatchoo" rather than "what you").

The AP dispatch with the ethnic sitcom reference in the headline ran yesterday--the same day as the AP dispatch about Coburn's ethnic sitcom reference. We don't find the AP headline "wildly inappropriate," but the AP's search for someone to describe Coburn's comment that way is wildly silly.

Black correctness

On a somewhat less silly note, the Hill reports on an unpleasant encounter in another Senate committee hearing:

The President and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) tore into Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Thursday for what he said were "condescending" and "God awful" racial statements at a hearing.

NBCC head Harry C. Alford took strong exception to Boxer having referenced an NAACP report favoring climate change legislation during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of which Boxer is the chairwoman.

"Madam chair, that is condescending to me," Alford said. "I'm the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and you're trying to put up some other black group to pit against me."

We watched the video, and we can see Alford's point. Boxer does come across as condescending, and, weirdly, she doesn't even seem to understand why he would find it offensive for her to rebut his argument not on the merits but via a racially specific appeal to authority.

Yet Alford, by speaking on behalf the National Black Chamber of Commerce, is himself relying on just such a racially specific appeal to authority. We tend to agree with Alford and disagree with Boxer on the subject they were discussing, but the rule of etiquette he invoked--blacks may claim authority on account of their race, but whites may not seek to undermine that authority--put her at an unfair disadvantage, one that was particularly unwarranted given that the topic at hand had nothing to do with race.

Obama seems to think it is enough just to think and talk about the evils of the world

On his trip to Ghana last weekend, President Obama delivered a well-received speech. He also gave an interview to CNN, in which he discussed slavery and its legacy, as the network is reporting today:

On his trip in Ghana, Obama said the nation and the world should never forget the scourge of slavery because it's still relevant in today's world.

"I think that the experience of slavery is like the experience of the Holocaust. I think it's one of those things you don't forget about. I think it is important that the way we think about it and the way it's taught is not one in which there's simply a victim and a victimizer, and that's the end of the story," he said.

"I think the way it has to be thought about, the reason it's relevant is because whether it's what's happening in Darfur or what's happening in the Congo or what's happening in too many places around the world--you know, the capacity for cruelty still exists."

"So trying to use these kinds of extraordinary moments to widen the lens and make sure that we're all reflecting on how we are treating each other, I think, is something I want my kids to think about and I want every child to think about."

This whole comment underscores one of the things that bothers us most about Obama. He says that slavery is "relevant" to today's humanitarian crises in places like Darfur and Congo. For the sake of argument, let's accept that this is true. What are we supposed to do?

Well, we're supposed to "never forget" slavery, to "think about it," to improve "the way it's taught," to "widen the lens," to "make sure we're all reflecting." Oh, and he wants "every child to think about" it.
By Obama's lights, then, it would seem that understanding slavery is important because it yields an endless supply of endless abstractions with which to respond ineffectually to contemporary humanitarian crises. While every child is thinking about this stuff, is the president of the United States doing anything?

Source

Must not put up posters urging people how to vote?

"Proposition 8" forbad homosexual "marriage". If you are allowed to argue for only one side in a democratic election, there's not much democracy about it and certainly no free speech. But that's what happened at Stanford. But Leftists often tear down GOP posters before Federal elections so I don't suppose we should be surprised. I myself have had conservative stickers torn off my car.

"When a group of students put up “Yes on Prop. 8” flyers in my dorm this past year, there was soon a debate about them on the chat list and they vanished after a day or two. The “Yes on Prop. 8” campaigners’ speech was cut short–perhaps a violation of their speech rights–but students who found the flyers hateful, especially gay students who felt that they amounted to an attack on their identity, were also spared having to suffer such speech while brushing their teeth in the bathroom or walking down the halls of their home....

The arguments on both sides are powerful, perhaps some explanation for why the debate continues and reasonable people disagree. But when judged in the context of a university setting, the European arguments for restriction outweigh the American arguments against. Students are in their formative years. They are more easily intimidated and vilifications of them based on characteristics unrelated to their ideas can cause tremendous anguish and impede their ability to engage and develop. They too need to learn to develop a thick skin and be ready for the real world, where a government will not always come to the rescue....

Source

The author above does not seem to be able to make up her mind. She says students need to develop a thicker skin but also says that the poor darlings are too fragile to be exposed to speech which might help develop that.

"Hitler" garden gnome sparks police inquiry

How trivial can you get? Criminal garden gnomes??

"German prosecutors say they have launched an inquiry into whether a garden gnome with its right arm raised in a Hitler salute in a Nuremberg art gallery is against the law. "The investigation is ongoing and people are being interviewed," Wolfgang Traeg, a spokesman for the public prosecutors office in the southern city, said.

Hitler salutes and Nazi symbols have been illegal in Germany since World War II, but Traeg said that investigators may establish that the garden gnome is in fact ridiculing the Third Reich.

"It is also a question of art a bit .. and a garden gnome," he said. "It will also depend on what the artist and the owners of the gallery have to say for themselves about the whole thing."

According to media reports, the artist in question is German-born Ottmar Hoerl, who has designed numerous exhibitions and projects in public spaces - and since 2005 has been president of the Academy for Fine Arts in Nuremberg.

Source

"Eurabia" is hate speech (?)

We read:

"One of the pet projects of the Islamophobe industry is to issue dire warnings about how the tide of muslims in Europe is rising and threatening to wipe out European culture. There have been numerous factual rebuttals to this propaganda, but few have gotten wide exposure beyond the blogsphere. That is why i am glad to see this piece in Newsweek, which points out the hypocrisy of Eurabia being a call to defend "western values" when the idea itself is hostile to everything the West nominally stands for....

The terrible thing about Eurabia however is not that it's simply wrong, but that it's as insidious as the blood libel against the Jews, in that it fosters and amplifies ethnic and religious hatred against all Muslims by lumping them together with single, diabolical intent. Eurabia shares much with the hoary old canard about "Jew York City", in that it hinges on a fundamental racism at its core.

Source

With continued Muslim immigration into Europe (mostly illegal) and higher Muslim birthrates due to Muslim restrictions on women, it is simply logical that Muslims will one day outnumber the native people of Europe in their own countries. It may not happen as soon as some say but the result will be the same unless European politics take an as yet unforeseeable turn towards expelling those who fail to assimilate or some such.

And no-one can doubt the hostility of Muslims towards the West, with those who live in the West sometimes being the most radical -- most of the 9/11 bombers, for instance.

So the concept of a coming "Eurabia" is simply logic, and if that is hate speech then we are all in deep trouble.

And the comparison with Jews is absurd. Jews may excite envy of their success but they don't go around bombing and killing people in Western cities. It is plain sense to be wary of hostile people and even though most Muslims are not likely to bomb anyone, how can we know which of them are the ones who WILL translate their hostility into action? Mind-reading is as yet an undeveloped science. And just a few nuts can do a lot of damage, as New Yorkers know.

Group Seeks to Block 'In God We Trust' Engraving‏

We read:

"The nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block an architect from engraving "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington. The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in western Wisconsin, claims the taxpayer-funded engravings would be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

The House and Senate passed identical resolutions this month directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave "In God We Trust" and the pledge in prominent places at the entrance for 3 million tourists who visit the Capitol each year.

The resolution came in response to critics who complained Congress spent $621 million on the new three-story underground center without paying respect to the nation's religious heritage. The center opened in December after years of construction....

"This lawsuit is another attempt by liberal activists to rewrite history and deny that America's Judeo-Christian heritage is an essential foundation stone of our great nation," said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

Source

Airline censors anti-censorship ad

Australia:

"Qantas has put the kybosh on online activist group GetUp's latest anti-censorship campaign, refusing to run the "Censordyne" ad on its flights.

Simon Sheikh, chief executive of GetUp, said the group had planned to run the parody ad on all Qantas domestic flights into Canberra next month to ensure it was seen by politicians and their staff members around the first sitting week of Parliament.

But Qantas refused to run the ad, which lampoons the Government's forthcoming internet filtering scheme, saying it had a long-standing policy not to run "political advertising".

Source

Indian govt. gets uptight about naughty toon



We read:

"With her ample bosom, skimpy sari and mischievous grin, Savita Bhabhi, India’s first and only online cartoon porn star, might not look like a threat to national security. But the country’s Government has made the fictional housewife seductress the first target of new laws, passed after last year’s terror attacks on Mumbai, that allow the authorities to block dangerous websites.

The Savita Bhabhi site, which features a series of daily cartoon strips based on the “sexual adventures of a hot Indian bhabhi” (sister-in-law), was created by Puneet Agarwal, 38, a British entrepreneur of Indian descent. Before being blocked in India it was attracting 60 million visitors a month, about 70 per cent of them from India.

The decision to block the site has bemused many onlookers. Despite featuring the adventures of a “regular Indian woman who just can’t get enough sex” and being managed by an outfit that calls itself the Indian Porn Empire, the venture appeared to owe as much to Benny Hill as to Hustler. One typically titillating storyline involved a travelling lingerie salesman ringing Savita’s doorbell and the escapades that followed. (“Can you help me please . . . The hook is stuck.”) Some pundits argued that Savita’s adventures drew on a rich tradition of Indian erotica, from the Kama Sutra, which dates back perhaps two millennia, to a long-established tradition in Indian popular culture of flirtation between a man and his elder brother’s wife. But above all, as Tehelka, a news weekly, observed, the strip appeared to “poke fun at the coy Indian attitude towards sexuality”.

For those in the corridors of power, however, Savita’s promiscuity was no laughing matter. Last month the Government ordered internet service providers to block the site... India’s decision to blacklist Savita while continuing to allow unfettered access to traditional hardcore pornography sites has drawn ridicule from experts in cyberspace law.

Source

Google blocks blog exposing homosexual agenda

We read:

"Google's blog hosting service, Blogger.com, admits that in the name of "free speech" some of its blogs are "offensive, harmful, inaccurate," but when one of its clients blogged in opposition to a transgender rights bill, Google drew the line.

A day before the Massachusetts Legislature plans to review a controversial gender identity bill, Blogger.com blocked the blog of MassResistance, an organization that exposes the increasingly open agenda of the homosexual movement in Massachusetts, with a warning that some of the content may be "objectionable," requiring readers to confirm their intent to visit.

"Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog's content is objectionable," the warning reads. "In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog. For more information about our content policies, please visit the Blogger Terms of Service."

MassResistance blogger Amy Contrada, however, writes that the only potentially "objectionable" items on the blog are photos taken in public settings and her group's politically incorrect viewpoints. "We publish only facts, 'uncomfortable truths,' not rumors or personal attacks," Contrada writes on her blog. "And obviously, our photos reveal the ugly truth. Then, we identify those public figures who are twisting the law to enable public perversion and subversion of our youth and culture.".... "Nothing on our site could be construed as 'hate,'" Camenker said.

Source

British antisemites go to jail

They would have been protected by the 1st Amendment in the USA. The BBC story below covers up the shallow grounds for the prosecution but I myself saw a lot of their material at the time it went up and it certainly denied the holocaust in no uncertain terms and was certainly extremely derogatory but it did not call for attacks on Jews. I saw no incitement to violence and none is quoted in the article below. What they said was very similar to what Muslims routinely say, except that Muslims DO sometimes incite to violence. They were convicted because they were white working class and because what they said was abusive and insulting, nothing else. White working class non-Muslims are entitled "to hold racist and extreme views" in Britain only if they tell nobody about it, apparently. It is a sad day for free speech and justice in biased Britain.

"Jurors at Leeds Crown Court decided neo-Nazis Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle were not just harmless oddballs, but dangerous propagandists dedicated to whipping up racism. On Friday, Sheppard was jailed for four years, 10 months and Whittle for two years, four months.

In a landmark case, they have become the first Britons to be convicted of inciting racial hatred via a foreign website, having printed leaflets and controlled websites in the US featuring racist material.

The court heard the investigation into the pair began when a complaint about an anti-Semitic comic book called Tales of the Holohoax was made to the police in 2004 after it was pushed through the door of a synagogue in Blackpool, Lancashire.

It was traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard, 51, a former BNP organiser kicked out of the far-right party after he was jailed in 2000 for distributing a racially inflammatory election leaflet.

Although their vitriol was variously directed at black, Asian and other non-white people, most of the material shown to the jury was virulently anti-Semitic. The language and racial slurs used by the pair cannot be repeated here, but some of the excerpts presented to the court offered a flavour of their discourse.

Jonathan Sandiford, prosecuting, told the jury that it held up survivors of the Holocaust to "ridicule and contempt", accusing them of lying about the genocide of six million Jews. Another story was illustrated with photographs of dead Jews. Sheppard also wrote that Holocaust victim Anne Frank's diary was "evil".

Reviewing lawyer Mari Reid, of the Crown Prosecution Service's counter-terrorism division, said members of the public were entitled under the law to hold racist and extreme views. But she added: "What they are not entitled to do is to publish or distribute those opinions to the public in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner either intending to stir up racial hatred or in circumstances where it is likely racial hatred will be stirred up."

Source

Note that the case does NOT indicate rejection of antisemitism in Britain. Antisemitism is in fact rife among the British intelligentsia (See here and here) but they express it so much more nicely in those circles. Had the men referred to above been upper middle class and used a more educated vocabulary and accent, their views could have been expressed at most good dinner parties and been regarded as a little extreme but understandable. And that antisemitism is now beginning to show officially. Britain has just blocked the export of gun parts to Israel

Note again that British police are "advised to turn a blind eye on crimes such as incitement to religious hatred" when Muslims do it. No equality before the law in Leftist Britain. It's not what you say but who says it that counts.

Hate speech against business and businessmen

We read:

"Envied, despised and defamed everywhere, found guilty for all and each of the problems that trouble the world, maligned by the general population as ‘rich men’ and ‘robber barons’ and used as scapegoats whenever governments or any political, ideological or intellectual group needs to get rid of the expected disastrous results of its countless feats of irrationality, and feeling a strong sensation of guilt from subconsciously knowing that they are not living in line nor conforming to what the existing ‘moral’ system demands, businessmen constitute that new racial minority which serves as the useful victim for that ‘modern’ witch hunt that intellectuals and politicians incite to lead the population’s wrath away from themselves.”

Source

Vancouver Sun 'Journalist' Whines About 'Hate Speech' on Rightwing Site but he probably planted it there himself

This is just one more episode in a long Leftist tradition of "planting" evidence of hate or hate speech. See here and here. There is so little of it among conservatives that the Left have to make it up.

"This is hilarious. A far left Vancouver "journalist" thinks he's got the goods on the Free Republic for alleged "hate speech" against Malia Obama the other day. Yet as it turns out, this member of the mainstream media turns out to also be a poster at the far left nuthouse, the Daily Kos.

You can make this stuff up.

It gets worse, though. Chris Parry, it appears, has advocated on his Daily Kos blog any number of egregious offenses, among them: posting hate speech on sites like Free Republic and blaming it on conservatives. Parry posted under the name "hollywoodoz" on Daily Kos, where his signature was "Fool me once, I'll punch you in the fucking head." Parry outed himself as hollywoodoz here, where he discloses the company he helped start. In essence: Parry, the journalist, found his story right where he'd been circling it for a very long time, and reported it as news. Sigh.

Naturally, the Freepers are tearing this guy a new one. Good for them.

Freepers, get the word out loud and wide. The Vancouver Sun "jounalist" Chris Parry that defamed Jim Robinson and FreeRepublic is none other than radical left blogger "Hollywoodoz" at the Daily Kos. In addition to writing for the Vancouver Sun, Chris is a frustrated and failed internet entrepreneur having launched many websites and blogs, all of which have virtually no traffic, following, or success. Chris also writes movie reviews, though these are pretty lame.....

Chris Parry to state it again, has advocated attacking blacks and blaming Republicans. This explains his article attacking FreeRepublic about post about the Obama girls. Amazing. Looks like Chris has done what he advocated back in his Daily Kos post.

I wonder what his employers at the Vancouver Sun have to say about this?

Source (See the original for links)

'Choose Life' plates sent to motorists in Va.

It's been a battle but persistence pays

"Neon-yellow "Choose Life" Virginia license plates will appear on roadways as early as this week, making Virginia the 24th state to allow motorists to feature the slogan on state-issued tags.

The state has begun shipping the plates, after Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, signed a bill in March authorizing their production. As of Friday, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles had received 538 applications for the plates, which became available July 1. Officials said 481 motorists submitted paid applications for the plates in advance of their availability.

That figure is well above the 350 applications required for the state to process a specialty license plate but about "comparable" to the number of applications received for other specialty plates, DMV officials said.

Those who lobbied for the "Choose Life" license plates said they expect the number of applications to increase. "I've been sending out e-mails, and I think the number will jump by leaps and bounds shortly," said Shawn Doran, outreach coordinator of the Richmond Coalition for Life, a nonprofit organization that sponsored the "Choose Life" license plate campaign.

After the first 1,000 plates are sold, $15 of every $25 raised from the purchase of "Choose Life" plates will fund Heartbeat International, a nonprofit Christian association of pregnancy resource centers, which will distribute the money to approximately 40 centers in Virginia that meet the group's standards.

Source

Official British police policy: Incitement to violence is OK if Muslims do it

We read:

"In a bid to stop Muslim extremists from becoming more militant, the UK Government is set to issue a guideline for police, directing them not to charge them in many hate crime cases, a move that has created outrage amongst critics.

Guidelines will tell forces to press for conviction only in cases of clear-cut criminal acts, and refrain from proceeding when evidence of lawbreaking is “borderline.”

Officers will be advised to turn a blind eye on crimes such as incitement to religious hatred or viewing extremist material on the Internet.

“For instance, where there has been incitement or someone has been on the internet there can be a grey area where there is some discretion and it would be more sensible to avoid going down the criminal route,” the Daily Express quoted a White Hall source, as saying.

Critics, however, saw the move as a politically correct attempt to appease extremists who hate Britain, and warned that the move could mean Islamic radicals being give the freedom to encourage violence.

Source

Abject surrender. No equality before the law. How far can the Leftist destruction of British society go? Britain has been run by the Left for 12 years. What would 12 years of Democrat government do to America? Just the first 7 months have seen ominous changes. Fortunately, Americans get to vote every two years. The Brits have to wait five years.

Dispute over flag protest erupts in Wisc. village

We read:

"An American flag flown upside down as a protest in a northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade and the businessman who flew it — an Iraq war veteran — claims the officers trespassed and stole his property. A day after the parade, police returned the flag and the man's protest — over a liquor license — continued.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin is considering legal action against the village of Crivitz for violating Vito Congine Jr.'s' First Amendment rights, Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said. "It is not often that you see something this blatant," Ahmuty said.

In mid-June, Congine, 46, began flying the flag upside down — an accepted way to signal distress — outside the restaurant he wants to open in Crivitz, a village of about 1,000 people some 65 miles north of Green Bay. He said his distress is likely bankruptcy because the village board refused to grant him a liquor license after he spent nearly $200,000 to buy and remodel a downtown building for an Italian supper club.

Congine's upside-down-flag represents distress to him; to others in town, it represents disrespect of the flag.... Congine, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq in 2004, said he intends to keep flying the flag upside down. "It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else," Congine said, "and then I come home to find it right here at my front door."

Source

Little people ask FCC to ban the word 'midget' on TV

Once again, reality must not be mentioned:

"Little People of America, at its annual conference in Brooklyn this week, has called for the Federal Communications Commission to ban the use of the word "midget" on broadcast TV.

"The word 'midget' objectifies you," said Clinton Brown, 27, of Hicksville, who co-chaired this year's conference at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott in Downtown Brooklyn. "Growing up as a little person, because you're different, you experience the ups and downs of some cruelties and prejudices. How many times have people I don't know come up to me and wanted to pick me up?"

Brown said the group filed an official complaint with the FCC.

In April, Little People of America protested an episode of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice," in which contestants created a detergent ad called "Jesse James and the Midgets." The contestants, including Joan Rivers, suggested bathing little people in the detergent and hanging them to dry.

Source

But "Little people" is the Irish word for fairies and fairy is a derogatory word for homosexuals so this could go on and on.

Marijuana advocate sentenced to shut up

First Amendment be damned:

"A longtime South Dakota supporter of legalized marijuana has been sentenced to serve 45 days in jail for possessing the illegal drug.

Authorities say Bob Newland of Hermosa was found with four bags of marijuana, a scale and $385 in cash when he was stopped for speeding in March.

He pleaded guilty in May to a possession charge under a plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to drop a more serious charge of possession with intent to distribute.

Newland will be on probation for the rest of the year following his jail term. During his probation, he is barred from publicly advocating the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Source

Better than going back to jail I guess. He could challenge it but the time would be up before it got to court

Leftists who don't know much about political terminology

A Firedoglake writer says: "Jim DeMint is Latest Republican to Compare Obama to Hitler" and they quote DeMint's following statement in support of that:

"Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like Chavez is running down in Venezuela. People become more dependent on the government so that they’re easy to manipulate. And they keep voting for more government because that’s where their security is. When our immigrants get here, they’re worried, because they see it happening here.

Source

The Firedoglake writer completely misses the point of what DeMint specifically said: That he was referring to the social democratic (Weimar) era in Germany. He did NOT refer to Hitler. He was comparing the Obama regime to the democratic Leftists who PRECEDED Hitler, not to Hitler himself.

That democratic socialism tends to pave the way for dictatorship is however true -- as DeMint points out. Democratic socialism and Fascism differ only in the degree to which people are dependant on the government. Dependancy is pervasive under socialism and all-pervasive under Fascism.

Hate speech is not hate speech when blacks say it

We read:

"Akron police say they aren't ready to call it a hate crime or a gang initiation. But to Marty Marshall, his wife and two kids, it seems pretty clear. It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend's home in South Akron. Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ''This is our world'' and ''This is a black world'' as they confronted Marshall and his family.

The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black. ''This was almost like being a terrorist act,'' Marshall said. ''And we allow this to go on in our neighborhoods?'' ...

Akron police are investigating. Right now, the case is not being classified as a racial hate crime. There were no other reports of victims assaulted by the group that night.

Source

Islamic hate speech rolls on in the USA right under the noses of the Left yet the Left stands silent

We read:

"A top aide to President Barack Obama provided a keynote address at last weekend's 46th Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) national convention, a gathering that attracted thousands of people and also featured anti-Semitic, homophobic rhetoric and defense of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

In her remarks, Senior Advisor for Public Engagement and International Affairs Valerie Jarrett noted she was the first White House official to address ISNA. She spoke in general terms about interfaith dialogue and cooperation. She praised her hosts for "the diversity of American organizations, and ideas that are represented and will be debated" at the convention....

While many panels featured criticism of U.S. policy and law enforcement, one stood out for its hate-filled rhetoric, and ISNA officials should have seen it coming a mile away. During a "meet the authors" session, Imam Warith Deen Umar, former head of the New York state prison chaplain program managed to:

* Argue that key Obama aides are "Israeli," proving Jews "have control of the world."

* Malign the motives of Jews active in the Civil Rights movement.

* Portray the Holocaust as punishment of Jews for being "serially disobedient to Allah."

* Insinuate that Hurricane Katrina was a result of tolerance for homosexuality.

Umar's radicalism is no secret. He previously hailed the 9/11 hijackers as martyrs who were secretly admired by Muslims. He has called for violent jihad.

Source

No mention of Ms Jarrett objecting or any response from the Obama administration at all. Muslims have free speech, you see. It's only Christians and conservatives who get howled down for things that they say.

I went to the ADL site and did a search for "ISNA". No mention of the above event. But if Christians had said any of those things about Jews the ADL would have gone ballistic. Depite its alleged aims, the ADL is clearly just Leftist and only incidentally Jewish. They are paradigmatic hypocrites.

This might not be such a bad idea

Hispanic and other groups ask the FCC to track media hate speech

"The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), one of the country’s foremost Latino media advocacy and civil rights organizations, announced today that thirty-three organizations have signed on to a letter urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to grant NHMC’s Petition for Inquiry into hate speech in media.

The Petition requests that the FCC initiate an inquiry into the extent, nature and effects of hate speech, and explore ways to counteract or reduce its negative impacts. These signatory organizations represent a variety of diverse communities and include the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC); Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good; the National Organization for Women (NOW); Reclaim the Media; and the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ. (see letter below for full list).

The diversity of signatories to this letter show that the problem of hate speech is not limited to the Latino community. Women, African Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities, and even Caucasian Americans have all suffered harms as a result of hate speech. Hate speech is pernicious in its effect; it can cause psychological harm to its recipients, especially youth, as well as creating an environment that encourages the commission of hate crimes.

Source

Hate speech against Christians and hate speech from Muslims would certainly show up big if such a survey were honestly conducted -- though the chances of that would be small, of course.

Must not mention that a lot of Hispanics work in landscaping?



The two Hispanics mentioned below thought it was funny but it was still "incorrect"

"Ozzie Guillen might not like coming to Wrigley Field, but the White Sox manager seemed to be having a good time there Wednesday. Before the Sox' 4-1 victory over the Cubs, he greeted Cubs manager Lou Piniella on the field and lifted up his black warmup jacket to reveal a Cubbie-blue T-shirt that read, ''Ozzie Mows Wrigley.'' The two shared a hearty laugh about Guillen's new purchase...

''If I made a shirt like that, they would have me back on the couch for my sensitivity training,'' Guillen joked.

The stereotypical nature of the grass-cutting theme came under criticism last month after a sports blog posted a picture of a St. Louis Cardinals fan wearing a shirt that said ''Zambrano mows my lawn" -- a reference to Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano -- and a picture of a man cutting grass while wearing a sombrero.

Source

It's all a bit deep for me but I guess that the shirt could mean that Guillen's team would win easily, which they apparently did.

Christianity suddenly incorrect

We read:

"An Idaho community had secured an Air Force flyover for its local festival every year for more than 40 years, organizers say, but this year, the Air Force turned the request down over the festival's religious focus.

The "God and Country Family Festival" in Nampa, Idaho, applied to the Pentagon for the flyover but was denied in an e-mail, board member Patti Syme told KTBV. Syme said the e-mail from a defense official informed her the Pentagon prohibited support of special interest groups.

"I called him immediately and just said, you know hey we've been doing this for 42 years, we've had flyovers, what is the problem?" Syme told KTBV. "And he said, well we have looked up your Web site and everything on your Web site seemed to focus on Christianity, ministry booths. And he said, in fact, ma'am it sounds like it focuses on Christianity. And he said, in fact, it would be great to go to, in fact, if I personally, could come I would, but we can't endorse such an endeavor, so they couldn't do the flyover."

Capt. Tom Wenz from Air Force public affairs told FOX News that past participation was due to the fact that the event was described only as a "patriotic tribute," and the Air Force wasn't aware until now of the apparent focus on Christianity, despite the festival's name.

Source

Climate change laws to "de-energize" poor Australians

We read:

"Politically correct zealots penning new national energy laws have pulled the plug on the word "disconnection". The word is being replaced with the bizarre term "de-energisation". Angry consumer groups have accused the boffins behind the draft of making it easier for power companies to hide harsh treatment of customers struggling to pay their bills.

Consumer Action Law Centre policy director Nicole Rich said the bureaucrats were out of touch and should go back to the drawing board. "This is more than political correctness gone mad," she said. "It's worse, because it could have the effect of keeping the community in the dark about hardship problems by lumping in records of these disconnections with power being cut for maintenance and safety reasons."

The warning comes as households and businesses brace for higher electricity bills because of policies to combat climate change.

A team of state and territory bureaucrats wrote the draft of the National Energy Customer Framework, which notes: "De-energisation of premises means the deactivating or closing of a connection in order to prevent the flow of energy from a distribution system at the supply point".

Ms Rich said there was a distinct difference between power shutdowns for maintenance, or when customers moved house, and supply cuts to those battling with bills. Critics fear the national laws will also strip Victorians of protections such as bans on late payment fees, security deposit restrictions and compensation of $250 a day for wrongful disconnections. But the Herald Sun believes Victoria will not sign the laws unless key consumer protections are retained.

Ms Rich said the number of Victorians disconnected for not paying had dropped to the nation's lowest rate, about 6500 a year, since a renewed focus on repayment plans and hardship policies from 2004. Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson's office said the document was an early draft, and more consultations would be held.

Source

Canadian speech police in big retreat

"Take this cup from me", they are saying:

"The Canadian Human Rights Commission says it still has a role to play in fighting hatred on the Internet, but wants Parliament to curb its powers. It says it should no longer be able to levy fines of up to $10,000 against hatemongers and wants lawmakers to provide a clear, legal definition of what constitutes prohibited hatred.

In a special report to Parliament, the commission also wants legal changes that would allow it to award costs in cases where accusers abuse the process and to quickly dismiss complaints that don't meet the definition of hate.

But the commission insists that the Internet remains a potentially dangerous realm where hatred can spread insidiously. The tribunal says it has to stick around to help rein in such hatred and help strike a balance between free expression and the right of people to live free from discrimination.

Source

Good to hear them saying much of what their critics have been saying

Voight rebuts 'hate speech' tag

Dissent, he says, isn't 'hate' -- news though that will be to the Left:

"Free speech got a loud boost from Hollywood on Wednesday. Jon Voight has responded to accusations from a critic sympathetic to the American Communist Party, who said the actor had used hate speech and threatened the well-being of President Obama during a recent appearance before Republicans in Washington.

Mr. Voight denied both charges, saying that those who speak out against the Obama administration are "demonized" and "attacked," often with hate speech. The Academy Award winner's speech before the National Republican Congressional Committee on June 7 was both a political and cultural moment. As a paragon of a new Hollywood conservatism, Mr. Voight spoke bluntly of Republican strategies for 2012 and what he sees as the shortcomings of the Obama administration.

Yet the actor also ignited a public discussion about bitter partisan rivalries and what constitutes threatening language. Toward the end of his speech, Mr. Voight lauded a list of 23 high-profile Republicans, saying "Let's give thanks to them for staying on course to bring an end to this false prophet, Obama."

The phrase "bring an end" was quickly caught in the echo chamber of news reports and Op-Eds in the aftermath, framed out of context. Mr. Voight's words brought criticisms from the New York Times, activists and bloggers. But they particularly troubled Teresa Albano, editor of the People's Weekly World -- a Chicago-based publication sympathetic to the Communist Party. "I don't want to equate what Jon Voight said as expressing a conservative opinion on politics. It went way beyond that. He made a threat against the president of the United States to a crowd at a GOP fundraiser and got a good response from the Senate minority leader and other powerful people. And that is scary," Ms. Albano, editor of the publication, said at the time.

"America is a country of freedom -- which means we, as American citizens, can voice our disagreements, if necessary, against a regime that seems to be destroying our great nation," Mr. Voight told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

"But everyone who speaks out against Obama's policies is immediately demonized and attacked in a way that becomes dangerous to them. Teresa Albano had targeted me with vicious, harmful lies. She is igniting hate against me. I never did, nor would I ever, threaten the president of the United States. I did say President Obama's policies must fail because they are creating a socialist America," he said.

Source

How NOT to remember Matthew Shepard

HotCock gets another thing right. He is an unusual Leftist:

"The Matthew Shepard Act is a ham-handed attempt to right injustice by establishing different legal treatment for some classes of crime victims. The proposed statute classifies as ‘hate crimes’ attacks based on a victim’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

America is well on its way to making it illegal to say anything nasty about gays, Jews, blacks and women. ‘Hate speech,’ far short of any direct incitement to violence, is on the edge of being criminalized, with the First Amendment gone the way of the dodo.”

Source

Flag Burning and Free Speech: The Founding Fathers agreed that the First Amendment protected 'symbolic expression.'

Excerpt from EUGENE VOLOKH

"Congress is once again considering a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag. The proposal, introduced this spring in the Senate by David Vitter (R., La.), and cosponsored by 20 other Republicans and Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, probably won't get enough votes. Yet even if it doesn't, one longstanding misunderstanding about the First Amendment is likely to live on.

Advocates for flag amendments argue that activist Supreme Court Justices have twisted the original meaning of the First Amendment to protect symbolic acts such as flag burning. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) said in supporting the Vitter proposal, "if you read the debate in 1790 -- the First Amendment was not written to protect nonverbal speech . . . . [W]e want to make sure we get the Constitution back to its original intent before the Supreme Court screwed it up." Or, as Judge Robert Bork argued in his book "Slouching Towards Gomorrah," flag burning "is not speech," and the court shouldn't have held "that an amendment protecting only the freedom of 'speech' somehow protects conduct if it is 'expressive.'"

Yet the best historical evidence suggests Messrs. Bork and Grassley are mistaken. The Framers fully understood "freedom of speech, or of the press" to include symbolic expression as well as verbal expression.

The Framers were working within a late 18th century common-law legal system that generally treated symbolic expression and verbal expression the same. Speech restrictions -- such as libel, slander, sedition, obscenity and blasphemy -- covered symbolic expression on the same terms as verbal expression.

Source

Kentucky: Raising funds for Blacks only is not racist, apparently

But raising funds for whites only would be, of course

"Unless there is something more to the story, a former elementary school teacher who was reprimanded for refusing to serve as a fund-raising director in a United Negro College Fund campaign has a legitimate complaint.

According to a suit filed by Gary Sanders, he was reprimanded by Stopher Elementary principal Brigitte Owens over questioning public support for a "racially based organization." The suit also says Mr. Sanders refused a request to serve as a leader in a Fund for the Arts money-raising drive. The official reprimand says Mr. Owens was punished for failing to respond appropriately to questions regarding whether he would serve as a Fund for the Arts fund drive official. Apparently he replied that he (1) wouldn't answer in public and (2) felt uncomfortable answering with other folks around. Instead, he sent the principal an e-mail.

Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Meredith said he could have answered yes or no, and was being disciplined for "disrespectful behavior."

Putting employees on the spot in front of other people is just wrong. Jeopardizing a teacher's license over something like this is even worse. How did all of this rise to the level of a court case? Why didn't somebody resolve it before the stakes were raised this high?

Source

Church of England bishop Nazir-Ali tells homosexuals to 'change and repent'



He could be prosecuted for this under British law but that would make the law look the ass that it is so it won't happen.

"A Church of England Bishop has called for homosexuals to 'repent and be changed' at the annual Gay Pride London march yesterday. The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, made the controversial comments at the event, attended by Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister's wife.

Dr Nazir-Ali told The Sunday Telegraph: 'We want to uphold the traditional teaching of the Bible. We believe that God has revealed his purpose about how we are made. 'People who depart from this don't share the same faith. They are acting in way that is not normative according to what God revealed in the Bible. 'The Bible's teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature.

'We welcome homosexuals, we don't want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed.'

SOURCE

Sad when it takes a bishop of Pakistani origin to preach the Gospel within the Church of England. The church as a whole just dithers on the issue and their American branch (Episcopalians) thinks the Bible is just a quaint old book.

Surprising tolerance in Australia

Immigration critic was only "reprimanded", not fired. Pressure for her firing might grow, however

"A presenter for a NSW community radio station that specialises in multicultural programming has been reprimanded after she was revealed to be an administrator of several racist, anti-immigration groups on Facebook.

Terrie-Anne Verney, a presenter and sales representative for Griffith FM radio station 2MIA, was the administrator of the group "F--- Off, We're Full" and had also joined several Facebook groups including "Stop the Islamisation of Australia while we still can", "Australian Conservative United Party", the "Australian Protectionist Party" and "Australians against Multiculturalism".

In posts on the site she ridiculed foreigners who did not have a good grasp of English, claimed the Islamic faith was destroying the Australian way of life and said that attacked Indian students should go back home to study.

She also wrote that groups of immigrants tended to develop a "mob mentality", claimed KKK members she knew were "intelligent" and that she did not want immigrants who did not speak English or assimilate into "the Australian life" to be allowed into the country.

"If we allow the Islamic faith to continue to grow, sooner or later the Australian way of life will be destroyed," Ms Verney wrote in one post. "I can't even imagine where we start to fix the problems caused by the introduction of this *cough cough* religion and its invasion of our society, but something needs to be done. Before its (sic) too late."...

Edna Wakley, president of the Griffith Community FM Association and station manager at 2MIA, said in a statement that she was "horrified" by Ms Verney's affiliations, and that she was unaware of until yesterday. She said the station did "not condone in any way sites such as these" and would "take appropriate disciplinary action where necessary".

2MIA prides itself on "multicultural programming" and has several presenters from diverse backgrounds. Ms Verney works there as a sales representative and also presents a music show on Saturday afternoons....

When Ms Verney was approached for comment over her Facebook posts, she said it was "unfortunate" patriotism was now regarded as racism. "As a proud Aussie, I welcome new Australians in the hope and belief that they too, become proud Aussies," she said. "This country is beautiful the way it is, and like most average citizens, [I] do not want our society to change to suit others' needs."

Source

Using speech to cover up meaning

This is from Britain: A paper, signed by Sir Ken Jones, the former Chief Constable of Sussex and president of the Police Association. Do YOU understand what he is saying?

"The promise of reform which the Green Paper heralds holds much for the public and Service alike; local policing, customized to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through reforms to police authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through redesign of processes and cultures, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities.”

Source

When the incomprehensible gobbldegook was criticized, the police responded: "That’s how civil servants speak”. I don't doubt that for one minute.

Bureaucrats lose. Free expression wins

Kudos to the ACLU (For once):

"Dressed in a low-cut pink shirt, tight black booty pants, and thick, plastic platform stilettos, Stephanie Babines doesn’t look the part of a political rabble-rouser. Yet an activist is exactly what Babines became when her efforts to help women shape up through fully clothed, decidedly G-rated stripper-inspired aerobics ran afoul of overzealous officials in the small western Pennsylvania town of Mars. This unyieldingly perky 31-year-old entrepreneur, standing in the small forest of steel poles that shoot up from the floor of her mirrored dance and fitness studio, has taught dance-phobic authorities an expensive lesson in federal court.

Babines sank thousands into renovating her studio. The town inspector made mostly small requests light the exit sign, replace the furnace valve, and so on. But then she was blindsided by a subsequent letter declaring that the studio, which was christened Oh My You’re Gorgeous, was an “adult business” ineligible for an occupancy permit. This was a perplexing pronouncement on a facility that forbade spectators and catered solely to fully clothed women.

Appeals to the zoning board went nowhere... Babines’ two allotted appeals were denied... Legal bills piled up. Babines contemplated selling her house to continue the fight in state court. Desperate, she took a day off from work and drove to the Pittsburgh offices of the American Civil Liberties Union...

“We don’t usually take on zoning cases, but look more closely and this really is a classic ACLU case,” ACLU attorney Sarah Rose says. “Government officials were using the zoning code to crack down on the First Amendment–protected teaching of an expressive art they found controversial.” Last August the ACLU filed a scathing complaint in federal court, comparing authorities in Adams Township, of which Mars is a borough, unfavorably to communists (“while a repressive country like China allows dance studios to teach pole dancing, the defendants in this small Butler County town have misapplied their zoning code to deny Ms. Babines her right to teach this new combination of art and sport to interested adult women”) and requesting relief from “the pall of orthodoxy imposed by defendants on the people in their town who wish to communicate unconventional ideas.”

The township folded. Babines had her occupancy permit by October. In February she was awarded $75,000 in damages and attorney’s fees.

Source

Must not use "rape" metaphorically

Australia:

"Ben Cousins is back in hot water after sharing a joke on radio about rape. The Tigers star told Nova FM his team had been 'absolutely raped' in Sunday night's 56-point loss to St Kilda....

Women's Forum Australia spokeswoman Melinda Tankard-Riest said Cousins and the Nova team should have known better than to make fun of rape. "Losing a game of football cannot be compared to the violation of rape," she said.

Source

It's that pursed-lipped Tankard woman again. She needs a few tankards to loosen her up.

OK. I'm not sorry they censored this one

One wonders where Steve Ballmer's brains have gone to approve this in the first place. Is ANYONE steering the ship at Microsoft these days? Microsoft once used to be so prim and proper.

"Microsoft has bowed to public outcry and pulled from the web an ad rapidly gaining fame as "the worst technology commercial ever".

The ad, which plugs Microsoft's Internet 8 browser, features a couple eating breakfast while the husband's browsing on his laptop. He leaves the table and hands it to his wife, who inadvertantly finds a site in the history file so disturbing, she vomits on the floor. The insinuation is it's hardcore pornography.

Hubbie returns, slips in the vomit and is consequently thrown up on several more times by his wife.

The catchcry for Internet Explorer 8 "OMGIGP" – “Oh My God I'm Going To Puke". The ad is Microsoft’s attempt to sell Internet Explorer 8's ability to cover any users' browsing tracks.

Source (Video at link)

As a matter of fact IE8 makes me puke. I use a combination of Google Chrome and Firefox these days, mostly Chrome.

School forbids anti-abortion t-shirt



The McSwain junior public high school in Merced, California, has forbidden one of its students from wearing an anti-abortion t-shirt -- citing a violation of its school dress code banning any "suggestion of tobacco, drug or alcohol use, sexual promiscuity, profanity, vulgarity, or other inappropriate subject matter." The "inappropriate subject matter" phrase is enormously vague and arbitrary but that seems to be what they think catches the t-shirt. It is too vague to be constitutional. What if criticism of Obama is seen by the school as "inappropriate" (which it probably is)? The young lady, Anna Amador, who wore the shirt is now suing the school. Eugene Volokh has the legal arguments:

"That strikes me as a clear First Amendment violation under the Supreme Court's decision Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist. (1969). If junior high school students have a constitutional right to wear a black armband to protest the Vietnam War, at least until there's some serious evidence that the armband is likely to cause substantial disruption, they must have an equal right to wear a T-shirt to protest abortions.

And nothing in the school district's motion suggests that the student was ordered to change shirts because of a risk of disruption; the school district apparently thinks that it can just categorically ban any T-shirts that deal with this "inappropriate" "subject matter." One might argue, as Justice Thomas has (and as Justice Black before him had), that Tinker should be overruled; but it's the law, and school districts should comply with it.

Source

Note: The picture above illustrates the shirt, not the plaintiff.

Icecream advertisement banned in Britain



We read:

"Regulators have banned an advertisement that showed a priest and nun looking as though they were about to kiss. The image was thought “likely to cause serious offence”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received ten complaints about the advert for Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano ice cream after it appeared in Delicious magazine and Sainsbury’s Magazine. In the picture, the priest was wearing rosary beads and holding a pot of ice cream above the slogan “Kiss temptation”.

The authority said the advert breached decency rules. “We considered that the portrayal of the priest and nun in a sexualised manner and the implication that they were considering whether or not to give in to temptation, was likely to cause serious offence to some readers,” the ruling states.

Antonio Federici said that it was a “tongue-in-cheek portrayal celebrating forbidden Italian temptations”. He added that it was significant that the image did not show the nun and priest touching, or kissing"

Source

The Leftist bias of the ADL shows yet again

Leftists would like to see free speech for themselves only. They never stop attacking the speech of others.

"Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Asserts That "Freedom of Speech Does Not Extend to Racist Groups": That's the view of Alan Potash, the ADL's regional director for Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. Pretty appalling, it seems to me -- simply false as a statement of current free speech law (which it sounds like it is), and deeply misguided as a matter of what the law should be.

And in the wake of attempts to condemn Israeli policies as racist, it should be pretty clear to American Jews that such a position could easily be turned around them. After all, any university administration that takes the view that Israeli actions towards the Palestinians are racist could easily conclude that defenders of those actions are racist as well, and therefore suspended or driven off campus. Or how about Orthodox Jews (and perhaps quite a few other Jews as well) who believe that homosexuality is against God's will? Once "racist groups" lose their free speech rights, it's hard to see why "homophobic groups" wouldn't equally lose them.

What about groups that express deep religious hostility, as I've heard many Jews do with regard to the Jews for Jesus? Perhaps such hostility is justified, or perhaps not, but after "racist groups" lose their First Amendment rights, "religiously bigoted groups" might come close behind. I think free speech protection even for the "ideas we hate" is the right approach in general; but even if the ADL is narrowly focused on its own community's concerns (as some groups well might), it should still, I think, reach the same result.

Note that the director isn't even making the ostensibly narrow arguments in favor of banning speech that advocates violence, or that uses epithets, or some such. So long as you are a "racist group[]," "freedom of speech does not extend" to you. I hope the national ADL promptly condemns Mr. Potash's statements.

Source

The ADL was set up to defend Jews. They do Jews no favours by behaving like Nazis themselves. Political censorship was integral to Nazism. The ADL is a disgraceful organization. They frequently find opportunities to attack Christians too. They are mentally still in the shtetl. Potash is a fertilizer. Mr Potash's brain certainly needs some fertilizing.

Note: The critic of Potash whom I quote above is Eugene Volokh (born as Yevgeniy Vladimirovich Volokh), of Soviet Jewish origins. So don't tar all Jews with the slimy attitudes of the ADL.

VA: Gun rights advocates say Coliseum staff challenged free speech rights

We read:

"The Virginia Citizens Defense League is used to fighting for the right to carry guns. But now it’s having to defend the right to wear stickers about carrying guns. The group says officials at the Richmond Coliseum recently attempted to stop members from handing out blaze-orange ‘Guns Save Lives’ stickers before an appearance by radio and television talk-show host Glenn Beck. ‘It’s bad enough they’re trying to trample the Second Amendment. Then you come and attack the First,’ President Philip Van Cleave said, referring to the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of the right to bear arms and to free speech.”

Source

It's an enormous battle for Americans to retain their constitutional rights in the face of ceaseless Leftist atttacks on those rights.

Hate speech from a Princeton economist

Warmism supporter Paul Krugman says in the NYT:

"So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

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The usual punishment for treason is death so this runs very close to incitement to violence.

Maine Fines Group for ‘Inflammatory Anti-Muslim Message’

The Christian Action Network runs afoul of bureaucratic political correctness:

"An organization in the national spotlight recently for producing a documentary identifying several dozen potential terrorist training compounds in the U.S. has offended the sensibilities of Maine bureaucrats, who have fined the organization $4,000, alleging among other things that the group sent out mailings containing an “inflammatory anti-Muslim message.”

The group in question, the Christian Action Network (CAN), received notice of the fines and the fundraising ban in a May 6 letter from Elaine Thibodeau of the State of Maine’s Department of Professional and Financial Regulation. Enclosed in the letter was a prepared consent agreement for CAN to sign agreeing to all of the state’s allegations, waiving all rights to appeal, and agreeing to pay the $4,000 fine. As part of the consent agreement, CAN is required to agree to all of the state’s allegations, including their assertion that their mailing amounted to hate speech.

“These bogus charges and fines the State of Maine has imposed are nothing but an attempt to stifle our free speech and silence our organization from speaking out about the steady creep of radical Islam in America,” CAN president Martin Mawyer told Pajamas Media. “We fully intend to appeal the state’s penalties because if they successfully silence us here, we will quickly find that we won’t be able to speak out anywhere.”

But what has Maine bureaucrats roiling is a fundraising mailing sent by CAN (a copy of which was provided to Pajamas Media) regarding a public school curriculum used in California requiring students to pray to Allah, dress up as Muslims, adopt Muslim names, and learn the five pillars of Islam. Since Christians and Jews are not given similar accommodations, CAN encouraged their supporters to send a petition to Maine Gov. John Baldacci asking him to prevent such instruction in Maine public schools...

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If you read further in the link provided you will see that the Maine bureaucrats are now resorting to lies to defend their unconstitutional actions.

Protecting the Hollywood dream: Must not hint that Tom Cruise is a dud in bed?



Hollywood actress Katies Holmes (above) is married to Hollywood actor Tom Cruise. "Bruno" is in Australia at the moment, getting a lot of TV coverage.

"Channel 10 censored a gag by Sacha Baron Cohen's character Bruno on Rove on Sunday night that mentioned US actor Katie Holmes. During his chat with McManus, Bruno called PM Kevin Rudd "hot" and looked down McManus's pants, but Ten hit the censor button when Holmes' name was mentioned.

In reference to his alter-ego Cohen, Bruno said: "I hear his wife gets less sex than Katie Holmes." But Holmes's name was beeped out when the interview went to air.

A spokeswoman for Roving Enterprises refused to comment on why the censorship took place. She said censorship was a joint decision between Roving Enterprises and the network.

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