There is an investigation in Fredericksburg, Virginia after the posting of a YouTube clip show police tasering, Lantz Day, 36, for what appears to be 42 consecutive seconds. On the video below, you can hear what sounds like the taser and Day screaming for them to stop. There is no reason that I can see why the tasering continued after Day was down and surrounding by officers, which leads to the concern that officers were punishing him for attempting to run. He was unarmed and under suspicion of property damage.
Category: Constitutional Law
Continue reading “Pilots File With Supreme Court In Age Discrimination Case”
There is growing tension in Israel between Orthodox Jews and the country’s gay community. As gays and lesbians have fought for the recognition of same-sex unions, Orthodox Jews have become equally vocal in fighting against such recognition. Into this volatile environment walked an Orthodox mayor who showed little evidence of intellect and even less judgment. Moshe Abutbul, the Haredi mayor of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, stated categorically in an interview that there are no gay people in his city and that such people should be left to health officials and the police. The comments by Abutbul, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, resulted in the filing of a criminal charge for incitement. While Abutbul appears a perfect moron, I do not believe that people should face criminal charges for expressing their views — even the absurd thoughts of a hateful religious bigot.
Continue reading “Israeli Mayor Facing Criminal Complaint For Anti-Homosexual Comments”
I know how you expect that sentence to end. We have covered endless stories of Christian schools abusing teachers or students due to their perceived lack of faith or morals. However on this occasion, the line ends something like this: “Student Class President Comes Out As Atheist And Christian College By Supporing Him.” That’s right, when Eric Fromm, 21, announced in an article that he is an atheist, he said the school and fellow students at Northwest Christian University went out of their way to assure him that he was valued and appreciated as part of their community. It is a good thing. A happy story. Such places do exist where religious people are both tolerant and pluralistic.
Continue reading “Student Class President Comes Out As Atheist And His Christian College Responds By . . .”
A Florida appellate court has ordered a new sentencing for Percy Edgardo Torres, 44, of Jacksonville in light of a tongue-lashing that he received from Judge Russell Healey who used his sentencing to lecture him on his violation of Catholic principles.
We have previously discussed the inspiring story of Malala Yousafzai, who has captivated the world in her struggle after being shot in the head by Muslim extremists for her advocacy of female education. It is a story that appears destined to be read around the world but not in Pakistan where various organizations have banned it from private schools. One educator objected that she referred to the Prophet Muhammad without using the abbreviation PBUH — “peace be upon him.” For that, she is viewed as a dangerous heretic not a heroine.
Continue reading “PBUH or Perish: Educators in Pakistan Ban Malala Yousafzai’s Book As Anti-Islamic”
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
As a former public school educator, I have been following what has been going on with school reform in this country. I have written posts about some of the groups and individuals involved in the current reform movement (here), the push to privatize public schools (here), school vouchers (here and here), and charter schools (here and here). Despite all the research that I’ve done on the subject, I hadn’t been aware until recently that there are many publicly funded charter schools across this country that have religious affiliations.
In December 2011, Tiffany Gee Lewis (Deseret News) wrote that there had been a “veritable explosion of charter schools over the past two decades.” She noted that a number of the schools that were riding this charter trend were “founded or authorized” by religious and cultural organizations. As she said, the subject of religion in public schools “has always been a hot-button topic.” She added that “the rise of charter schools that tie themselves to a certain ethnic or religious group introduces a new shade of complication to public schooling.”
According to Jessica Meyers of The Dallas Morning News, “Church-charter partnerships are springing up across the country as private institutions lose funding and nontraditional education models grow in popularity. Their emergence prompts questions about the role religious groups should play in the development of publicly funded schools.” She added, “Critics fear the fuzzy division means taxpayers are footing the bill for religious instruction.”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
I’m going to use what has become a cliché to open up this piece. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing that has failed over and over again.” Often clichés are expressions of reality that nevertheless express problems faced by generation generations and generations of human beings. In my opinion “The War on Drugs” is not only an abysmal failure, but has gone a long way towards destroying the social fabric of this country and corrupting the efforts of law enforcement, by manufacturing a “problem” that they are pressured to solve. The idea for writing this came to mind this week at my local drug store. My wife had sent me for a decongestant that contains pseudo-ephedrine to treat a persistent cold. These medications which were formerly as matter of course located in the Cold and flu section are by law now kept behind the prescription counter. To make my purchase I had to produce a driver’s license, whose number was duly entered into a computer and sign an affirmation form digitally. Now since I was a loyal viewer of “Breaking Bad” I understood why this was seen to be necessary by the government. Pseudo-Ephedrine is used in one common formula to “cook” Chrystal Methedrine, or “Speed”. The idea that I, a 69 year old greybeard, should be recorded as a potential cooker of “meth”, is so ludicrous that it caused me to think about the whole process of drug interdiction that is the result of the War on Drugs.
The reach of the War on Drugs goes far beyond the control of formerly non-controlled substances and has affected and limited the way Doctors prescribe for their patients. This prescription oversight ever expands the categories of controlled substances and puts every physician under undue government surveillance. To illustrate the silliness of this, from my own experience, let me relate that in 2010 I underwent 3 major, life-threatening operations within a 4 month period. After each operation which involved cutting my chest open (the middle one was a heart transplant) in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit I was being given unlimited dosages of morphine to deal with my pain. In each instance after an operation, after two days, I would refuse the morphine because it was affecting my thinking and the pain without it was tolerable. In each instance after practically having to forcefully deny the proffered morphine in the morning, my request for Xanax that evening to help me sleep was denied, even though my Surgeon had prescribed it. This required a late hour call to the Doctor on call to prescribe it. The nurse was only following procedure, but the scrupulousness of the procedure is the result of the War on Drugs. Physicians now treating people for various pain symptoms are now under very close scrutiny regarding the medications they prescribe. To me this is nonsensical, given that addicts always find ways to get their drugs no matter what strictures are put into place. What follows is my examination of the premises behind the War on Drugs, its affect on all of us and my solution to this “problem”. Continue reading “Our Insane War on Drugs”
There is a highly disturbing case out of New Mexico where David Eckert has filed a federal case against the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office, police officers with the City of Deming and medical professionals at the Gila Regional Medical Center. Eckert was stopped on a minor traffic violation and accused by an officer of holding his buttocks. What followed was a nightmare where officers and doctors subjected Eckert to outrageous abuse as they searched for drugs or contraband in his body.
This may be the most ironic story of the year. We often discuss two outstanding characteristics of modern China: expanding pollution and shrinking civil liberties. Now, the two have collided where Chinese officials are struggling with the loss of surveillance from its thousands of surveillance cameras spying on citizens. Pollution is now making it difficult to maintain such surveillance due to the permanent shroud of particulates and pollutants. Thus, while Chinese lives are being shortened, their government may have given them a slight respite from monitoring. Of course, it is hard to use free speech when you are gasping for breath. A recent report details how pollution in one Chinese city is being attributed as the cause of lung cancer in an eight-year-old boy.
On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Saudi King Abdullah to deal with increasing tensions with the Kingdom. What I thought was the most interesting moment came when a female reporter asked Kerry about the continued bar on women driving in the Kingdom. We just discussed how a Kuwaiti woman was arrested for driving her father to a hospital during a diabetic seizure. Kerry’s response was remarkably muted on an issue of human rights.
Continue reading “What’s Driving Mr. Kerry? Clearly It Is Not Human Rights”
We recently discussed the crackdown on sorcerers in Muslim countries. Mystics are finding themselves targeted in the United States as well in recent weeks. In New York and Florida, clairvoyants have been prosecuted for fraud and some cities and states are moving to ban soothsaying.
We have previously discussed how, after Sept. 11th, officials have simply begun to classify acts to be terrorism to use ramped up surveillance and sentencing laws. It was inevitable that with Western countries giving official unprecedented anti-terror powers, they would start to move as many crimes as possible under the expanding category. That is evident after it was disclosed this week that British authorities framed the case against David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, as a case of terrorism “terrorism” for carrying documents from Edward Snowden.
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
On an August afternoon in 2008, Hickman County, TN resident Robert Andrews was working on a trailer in his yard when two deputy sheriffs pulled up in front of his house, along with three caseworkers from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. They approached Mr. Andrews and asked permission to go inside his home. They did not have any kind of warrant or court order, so Andrews told them they did not have permission to enter his home.
Despite his refusal, all three caseworkers and one of the deputies entered the home and searched the place. They also took each of his four children aside for interviews out of his earshot. Then the officials left. Neither Andrews nor his wife, Patti, was ever accused of a crime in connection with the visit. They were not afforded the opportunity to contact a lawyer or have a lawyer present for the interrogations of the children. At no time before or since that incident was any member of the Andrews family ever accused of any crime in connection with that visit.
In March 2002, a police officer in Cuyahoga County, Ohio kicked in Nancy Kovacic’s door, allowing caseworkers to enter her home and seize her two children. The children were placed in foster care, where they stayed 10 months. There were no criminal charges of any kind against Nancy Kovacic. Her attorney, Jay Crook, told reporters, “Caseworkers can’t just make a judgment call and say, ‘Well, I don’t like this, and with the power of the state, I’m taking these children,’ ”
The children are now grown and were part of the lawsuit. They report being abused while in foster care. They have been in therapy for several years due to the trauma of being removed from their mother. Mr. Crook added, “Without that neutral arbiter, that magistrate, that judge; even over the phone, you have lost all your due process safeguards.”
Those events at the Andrews home led to a lawsuit against the caseworkers. There was also a similar lawsuit from another family in Ohio. Both cases ended up in front of the Sixth Circuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit used the cases to specify that caseworkers, like police, are agents of the State, and therefore controlled by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. This is the first time a Federal appeals court has specified that caseworkers from children’s services departments must abide by the Constitution.
More over the flip, including the full text of both Sixth Circuit decisions.
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Well, the guy who ushered in the recent government shutdown with a 21 hour filibuster sure gets it honest. Texas senator Ted Cruz, that darling of the Tea Baggers, is no longer the Harvard educated political mystery man who chides the administration at every turn and who rabble rouses what is loosely referred to as the Republican base. Seems he learned the techniques of fact-free demagoguery at daddy’s knee and not amid the ivy in Cambridge (or at Princeton as Elaine M reminds me). That’s right, the Right (as in far) Reverend Rafael Cruz has embarked on his own freewheeling magical mystery tour armed only with the credential that he sired that darling of the Rebel flag wavers. Cashing in on sonny boy’s status among some on the right, Rafael Cruz is now touring the country demanding Obama “go back to Kenya” and turning the Treaty of Tripoli* on its head claiming divine sanction in decreeing that the land of the free and home of the brave is also the exclusive dominion of the Christian. And if that isn’t a big enough stain on his vestments, the representative of the Savior commands all Tea Baggers to shinny on up to the latest polling place to vote Republican.
IRS are you listening?