There is a rather bizarre controversy out of New York where people appear outraged by a minor municipal ceremony to swear in Brooklyn Civil Court judge Carolyn Walker-Diallo. It turns out the Walker-Diallo is a Muslim so she naturally took her oath on a Quran (Koran). One would think that the public would want the oath of office to taken over the book that the jurist considers a binding moral code or through affirmation without a religious book. Yet, many were horrified.
Walker-Diallo has joined Brooklyn’s 7th Municipal District and the photo from the swearing in ceremony was posted after she was sworn into office.
On her campaign page, she makes reference to her faith.
“All is praise (sic) is indeed due to the Most High! I am humbled that my community has entrusted me with the immense responsibility of ensuring that EVERYONE has notice and a FAIR opportunity to be heard in the halls of justice.”
The oath is perfectly valid for a candidate to “swear or affirm” an oath. There are certainly many who would prefer to require a neutral affirmation for everyone. Yet, that has not been our tradition. I find the backlash to this photo to be highly disturbing.
What do you think?
Source: NY Daily
Aridog,
Mea culpa.
I stand profoundly corrected. I experienced the very epiphany you reference, at the moment of publication, and erroneously, nay, egregiously decided that the odds were that the point would be taken.
Please allow me to offer my eminently sincere apologies for offending your irrefutably correct sensitivities.
I applaud and truly appreciate your acumen. Sadly, it is rare.
Thank you.
John … since you mentioned it, the “Confederate Battle Flag” … most frequently cited is the “Stars & Bars” and that was only the battle flag of the Army of northern Virginia under Gen Robert E Lee, long before any civil rights movement. How it became the universal confederate symbol baffles me. A simple Google search of secessionist and “confederate” flags will illustrate my point.
Not a “big point” I admit, but one that amuses me none the less. I always notice it when cited. It was no more symbolic in Montgomery AL or New Orleans, LA, et al., than any other colorful flag or rag. I guess we like to consolidate our “symbols” and in a way that makes sense.
Funny thing.
Everything from Lincoln forward, including the denial of secession of the Confederate States and the “Reconstruction Amendments,” is unconstitutional – Obama’s candidacy, affirmative action, welfare, forced busing, “Fair Housing,” “Non-Discrimination” law, quotas, social services, HAMP, HARP, HUD, HHS. WIC, Obamacare, Medicare, etc.
Constitutional Scholars should spend their lives conducting protests against the comprehensive “Lincoln Effect” at the Lincoln Memorial. The protesters should be demanding that the memorial be torn down with the fervor of those anti-constitutionalists who railed against the display of the Confederate Battle Flag.
Lincoln, in the land of liberty, brutally denied liberty.
The southern states of the U.S. conducted free enterprise in the free open markets of the private sector, according to 200 year-old British law and tradition. In line with the law and the Constitution, tools of free enterprise should have been vigorously employed to peacefully end slavery.
Lincoln had absolutely no legal or constitutional basis for action against secession. The Constitution limited military action to that deployed against insurrection. The U.S. Constitution does not deny secession. The act committed by the Confederate States was constitutional secession.
Lincoln was the greatest traitor to the Constitution in the history of the United States.
Lincoln controverted and nullified the Constitution of the United States.
Lincoln began the process of the destruction of the Constitution, making it irrelevant to this day.
America is a corrupt sham due to the unconstitutional acts of Abraham Lincoln.
Constitutional Scholars. What Constitutional Scholars?
I see that the American Taliban are alive and well reading these posts……
Whoa! stevegroen, phillyT, and Po… For some reason your comments on the Oathkeepers has me envisioning the three of you holding hands and skipping down the street.
Hildegard, at least when we do we don’t build a website and advertise it 🙂
lol stevegroen
I like it that they associate. Makes it easier to see them and sort them out.
PhillyT writes, “I like it that they [Oathkeepers] associate. Makes it easier to see them and sort them out.”
Absolutely. Let freedom ring!
Sure, I agree 100% with Jonathan Turley and see absolutely nothing wrong with a judge taking an oath on a book based on the commands of a pedophile and mass murderer. Sounds like an excellent basis for making sound legal “judgments.” I’d also like to see some judges even broaden this “progressive” concept by having them be sworn in on a volume of Mein Kampf. Why just destroy civilization in incremental steps? Let’s do it in a big way and just get on with it. Civilization is vastly overrated and outdated concept anyway.
Another place where bored men with guns and no life scare one another silly…
I completely trust anything oafkeepers would have on their website. They are at least as reliable as brietbart and stormfront.
“Oafkeepers” is a keeper, PhillyT.
If that’s not the dumbest (men’s) association I’ve ever heard of: a much-desired group therapy for homophobes who need to hold each others’ hands to restrain their sexual appetite and to reassess their wives.
But then again, freedom of association is as fundamental as the right to marry.
I wonder if they know that if they’d just place the bill on their baseball caps forward again they’d gain 10 IQ points?
It’s not like they’re holding a sword over our heads.
https://www.oathkeepers.org/9073-2/
Nick … that was back in the day when Nikon F2’s were heavy and nearly all manual, which is how I learned photography. I had 3 F2’s and usually carried 2 or 3 depending upon location, to avoid a lot of lens changing. The lenses were also huge and heavy so I guess I looked like I “belonged” …. like who else who else would lug all that stuff? I did for years, up skyscrapers and mountains, and around city streets, anywhere just looking a good shot and rather mindless of the settings.
Aridog, One of the most important things I learned as far as undercover work is concerned, if you act like you belong there, very good chance no one will challenge you. Like you and your Nikon, it’s been me and my Sony video cameras. I have used the entire genesis of video cameras; from bulky, shoulder VHS cameras w/ a power and recording pack on your hip, to cameras in a key chain or pen.
You’re correct about so many Americans not appreciating their citizenship. New citizens are much better than the “Hate America” crowd born here.
Nick – I used to tell my students the way to tell the difference between naturalized citizens and home-grown citizens was, only one knows the words to the Star-Spangled Banner.
Thanks John
You are a perfect example of that RWNJ unstable mentality I was talking about.
Please keep talking and posting. It’s important that people see the full extent of your delusions.
From HARPERS MAGAZINE today. READ IT!!!
A Special Relationship: The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda, again
http://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/a-special-relationship/?single=1
An excerpt:
“McWilliams took pictures of the devastation, headed back to the embassy, and sent a report to Washington. It was very badly received — not because someone had launched a terrorist attack against Afghan civilians, but because McWilliams had reported it. The bomb, it turned out, had been the work of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the mujahedeen commander who received more CIA money and support than any other leader of the Afghan rebellion. The attack, the first of many, was part of a CIA-blessed scheme to “put pressure” on the Soviet presence in Kabul. Informing the Washington bureaucracy that Hekmatyar’s explosives were being deployed to kill civilians was therefore entirely unwelcome.”
SillyT,
There you go again; making me giggle. You communists have some nebulous, inherent right to completely ignore the founding documents like a driver, ignoring the rules, heading down to wrong side of the freeway.
“Random quotes taken out of context that have nothing to do with anything but their own internal logic.”
Random quotes from the “fringers” such as those depicted at the top of this page who wrote the only “context” or “anythings” that matter – the Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights. If you ever have the chance, get somebody to read you the clear words of the English language in those documents that preclude your entire minority rule, welfare state.
Sorry, you may like it, but you can’t do:
NO CENTRAL PLANNING
NO CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
NO SOCIAL ENGINEERING
NO REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
NO WHATSOEVER IN ANY FORM
If you peel all of the unconstitutional mumbo jumbo communism away, you’re not left with much, huh?
Nothing but Freedom and Self-Reliance.
Wow! Look at the freeloaders and parasites running for cover.
Imagine. Where would you be without affirmative action?
Speaking of good Nikons, I sold most of my stash when digital came of age and made things so much simpler (and lighter) than all manual. That said, I’d like to use a couple for the fantastic lenses I still have and only one Nikon today will handle it (the D7000 and D7100…both with “AI” interface”). The price of that body has so far stopped me, but I’m inching closer to buying one just to use the very best “vari-focal” lens I ever had…with extension tubes it can produce spectacular micro and macro images due to the variable focus not “zoom” feature (no need for rails) ….and still take great “normal” photos between 35 & 85 mm ranges. For those who wish to know, it is the Vivitar Series II 35-85mm Varifocal…the best of them all even with the off brand maker. I will never sell it of toss it. Only way to use it is to cough up the bucks for the D7000 Nikon series…dang it. Just about the time I thought I’d beaten the photog bug (it is a “disease” like golf, etc…never can have enough stuff), it drags me back in 🙂
I used to walk around with an entry level Nikon slr and a zoom around my neck.
I stopped, in part, when I realized I could carry a digital with near macro to short telephoto capability in my shirt pocket – and my shirt wouldn’t even sag.
As long as you don’t enlarge the image too much, the image is the same and your viewers will never know what made the photo.
Besides I would rather work with a photo editor than in the dark room any day.
Sure there are many situations that require a sophisticated tool. And pocket cameras just are not enough. But for many photos what matters is the ability to get the camera up and in operation right then. In those cases, small digital cameras are the right tool for the situation.
Nick … I’ve not seen “books”used in any US Citizenship swearing ins either. Been to a few. My best friend’s swearing in was his proudest day and mine too, for him. I wore a photographer’s vest (I’ve worn one for almost everything casual for decades & still do…I like the many pockets/hands free bit……long before the Secret Service took it up) and carried a pair of high end Nikons to photograph with…that attire apparently made me a “reporter” and I spent the entire ceremony on stage with Senators and Congress persons and other real “reporter/photographers”. Great shots of all the new citizens resulted…each with huge smiles on their faces. Made me realize how much I have to be grateful for due to my birth in the USA. Didn’t realize I was accepted as a “reporter” until half way through and no one called me out when I realized I was the “oddball” there amongst the newspapermen and the television media that I recognized. That was many years ago and I’d not chance it today given our unrest, but even way back then it was not intentional. Just simple dumb luck….just looking for the best place to photograph from to get full faces. I can be careless like that….today I’d likely have been lead away in handcuffs.
Hopefully ending this on a positive note, folks here should see out the new citizen swearing in ceremonies in your community. My son is adopted from Colombia and I fell in love w/ swearing in ceremonies. They remind me of him, and also my grandfather. A naturalized citizen from Italy. No prouder US citizen has ever walked this earth. No books are used in the new citizen swearing in ceremony, at least the ones I’ve seen.
Richard, My experience is mostly the Midwest, from the border bible belt state of Missouri, to the frozen tundra of Wisconsin. Over my almost 40 years of being sworn to testify[always sans bible], I have seen the words change. It was always, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.” But, if someone was an atheist they would object and the judge, clerk, or bailiff would change the “swear” to “affirm.” Now, you often hear the oath being, “Do you swear or affirm..yada yada.” That is particularly true in Godless Madison where I live, the home of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. This is just anecdotal, but when I started being sworn to testify as a juvenile probation officer in 1976 in KC, it was always the judge who would swear you in. Now, it’s mostly the clerk.
Regarding swearing in, I have been to a few judges swearing in ceremonies over the years, clients and friends who became judge. None had a bible. I’ve watched more on TV, again no bible or book. Maybe it’s a Brooklyn thing, he said, tongue firmly planted in cheek. This low level judge was looking for a reaction; and she got it here, and elsewhere.
Nick S. I don’t know where you are, but where I am judges and elected officials routinely take their oath on a bible or other significant document. Generally other public employees don’t.