Johnson & Johnson heiress Jazz Johnson-Merton is unlikely to be on the PETA holiday card list. The 36-year-old heiress shocked onlookers at theHampton Classic Horse Show when she kicked her horse Joe Cool after she was thrown during an exhibition. She is the author of the tongue-in-cheek “Social Climber’s Bible” which will now likely be followed by the “Social Exile’s Bible.”
Ryan Flores, 30, is reportedly planning a tort action against Cregg Jerri, 58, for stabbing him in a California Starbuck. Such a battery lawsuit would make perfect sense after being stabbed 17 times. The problem is that he was stabbed in the course of an armed robbery and Jerri was credited as the hero who ran forward to protect the staff from the gun-touting Flores. The filing would presumably not contest the right to use the privilege of self-defense but argue that Jerri somehow exceeded that authority.
White supremacist Dylann Roof says that he has something of a problem on his hands: he has court-appointed counsel who happen to be Jewish and Indian. He has asked the court to replace Alexandra Yates and Sapna Mirchandani in his appeal of his death sentence for the massacre of nine people in the Emmanuel AME Church during a Bible study in 2015. Roof appears to believe that the right of counsel includes the right to white counsel. It doesn’t. The court should not be a vehicle for racial or religious discrimination to cater to the wishes of a homicidal fanatic. More importantly, that is the view of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Sometimes being a supporter of free speech can be really really really hard. A leading expert of “comparative jurisprudence” and Sunni cleric at al-Azhar University, Dr. Sabri Abdel Raouf, has been placed under review by his university (and ordered by the state media regulator to stay off the air) after dispensing some rather chilling advice on Sharia law and Islamic values. Abdel Raouf had told viewers that it is is permissible under Islamic law for a husband to have sex with his dead wife in what is called “goodbye intercourse.” The action taken by the university and the government highlights the curious line drawn over the discussion of Islam in Egypt. Moreover, it is a rather bizarre example of the debate that we are having in this country over the right of academics to engage in free (and controversial) speech outside of their schools. In this case, both the university and the government have moved to prevent anyone from airing these views as an insult to Islam.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been channeling his best Marie Antoinette this month in responding to widespread and growing hunger in the country. Maduro went on the news to told citizens to eat rabbits. The problem is that Venezuelans have been putting bows on the rabbits and adopting them as pets rather than eating them.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has become an international pariah for his orders to police to murder drug suspects and his bragging about his own killings. Thousands of suspected drug dealers have been killed under Duterte. For that reason, many of us were alarmed by President Donald Trump’s praise of Duterte as “a good man” and praising his crackdown on drugs. Duterte however shows no ability to control himself any more than his son (who has been implicated in drugs and corruption) or his henchman . . . or his mouth. Last week, Duterte was asked by the head of the country’s Commission on Human Rights (CHR) about the killing of teenagers by his police and supporters. Duterte’s response was to ask if CHR head Chito Gascon was a pedophile. It is the type of disgusting and dismissive attitude that Duterte has shown all notions of human rights or human decency.
The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office has put out this picture of a woman accused of a truly despicable crime. After a shooting at the high school, panicked parents rushed to Freeman High School to find their children. Parents parked their cars along a highway and ran to the school. Police believe that this woman then stole items from the cars.
Berkeley geared up for the arrival of a conservative speaker, Ben Shapiro, on campus yesterday with a huge police presence, closed buildings, and . . . counseling. The counseling is for students and employees whose “sense of safety and belonging” becomes compromised by having a conservative speaker like Shapiro speaking somewhere on campus.
Thomas Jefferson called an educated public as “the only safe depositories of their own liberty.” If so, a new poll conducted by the University of Pennsylvania suggests that we have a serious problem. The poll made a truly alarming finding that many Americans cannot name a single first amendment right. Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found 37 percent could not name any of the five rights protected by First Amendment and fewer than half (48 percent) could name freedom of speech.
As a Game of Thrones fan, I was surprised to hear that Hillary Clinton viewed herself as one of the main characters in the series. I assumed that the character would be such tough women as the Dragon Queen and “Breaker of Chains” Daenerys Targaryen or perhaps the fierce warrior Brienne of Tarth. Instead, Clinton picked the one character that every focus group would likely tell her to avoid at any cost: Cersei Lannister, a loathsome and incestuous character who has no qualms in using torture, murder, lies, and betrayal to attain power. Indeed, for Clinton critics, Cersei seemed to sum the the Clinton era with her statement that “Everyone who isn’t us is an enemy.”
Continue reading “Clinton Identifies With Which Game of Thrones Character?”
We have been discussing the rise of groups on campuses that assert the right not to simply protest but to prevent other students from hearing speakers or participating in events. The latest such incident occurred last week at the University of Virginia where members of a social justice group called UVA Students United disrupted a “cops and robbers”-themed party at a campus fraternity. The group would not allow a party that it claimed made “a joke of systems that kill and brutalize marginalized communities.” Ultimately, the party was canceled.
How exactly does this help? Clowns are protesting the movie “It” as magnifying fear of clowns in society. Professional clowns are reporting sharp drops after the release of the blockbuster movie. However, I fail to see how having clowns outside of the movie theater will help . . . beyond being a truly outstanding advertisement and draw for the movie.
Continue reading “Clowns Protest Movie “It” In Effort To Get The Public To Like Them”
The Miyazaki Prefectural Government was the scene of an accident that seems right out of a tort exam. Government officials wanted to show a dead and live blood-sucking tick that is spreading a lethal disease in Japan. The problem is that, after warning about the lethality of tick, the officials put the live tick on a table and it promptly escaped — sending panicked reporters and officials running for the doors. The tick was never found.