Television personality Kelly Siegler is under fire this month for what critics are saying is a history of unethical conduct as a prosecutor, including the hiding of evidence in capital punishment cases. After a career as a Harris County prosecutor, Siegler became the star in a reality series on TNT called Cold Justice, now in its third season. Siegler’s allegedly checkered history as a prosecutor is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding Nancy Grace, who was denounced an an unethical prosecutor who violated the rights of accused persons but has been retained by CNN as a show host and legal commentator.
Category: Media
Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark has caused a stir with an interview with MSNBC in which he appeared to call for the establishment of World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” Clark used the infamous American internment camps for Japanese, German, and Italian Americans as a model: “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”
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The extensive move to remove the Confederate Flag from public and some commercial settings has raised serious concerns over both free speech and academic freedom. While the flag has been used as a racist symbol, it is also a historical symbol. According to one author, that distinction appears to have been lost by Amazon, which reportedly took done the book by Michael Dreese, a civil war author with six books on the conflict. Two of those books concern both the Union and Confederate battle flags and their roles in the Civil War. However, “This Flag Never Goes Down” (a book on the Confederate flag) was taken down by Amazon from its listed works.
We have been following the controversy over people declaring “All Lives Matter,” which is now viewed as racially insensitive and a “micro aggression” against the black community. We recently discussed the heartfelt apology given by Kathleen McCartney, the president of prestigious Smith College after she said “all lives matters” rather than ‘Black lives matter.” Now Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley has followed suit with his own apology for saying that “all lives matter” in a speech, which he was interrupted by black audience members booing and protesting.
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We have previously discussed the disconnect in some individuals, particularly ISIS recruits, who live relatively normal lives in the West only to become suddenly radicalized and violent as Islamic extremists. Chattanooga gunman Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez could be such a case, though police are still trying to confirm the motivation for the attacks. The attack has been labeled “domestic terrorism.” Abdulazeez, 24, murdered four Marines and wounded a police officer on Thursday in shootings at two military recruiting and training centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. What is now known is that he posted a couple posts shortly before the attack discussing how Muslims should act in this short life and how they had to resist the corrupting influence of life around them in proving their faith.
I am rather perplexed by a ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman to order not just four more years of community service for filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza but continuation of psychological counseling despite the countervailing findings of two experts in the case. Judge Berman was on solid ground in much of his opinion on the conditions of the prior sentencing order. While tough, the defense was trying to curtail key aspects of the order. However, the counseling component does concern me.
The Chinese government is carrying out another infamous sweep of human rights lawyers and activists with over 100 people arrested nationwide. The authoritarian communist regime has offered preposterous excuses for the arrests but the message is clear: human rights will not be tolerated in the worker’s paradise that is China. Indeed, with pollution and corruption choking the life out of the public, the communist rulers still view human rights lawyers as the priority danger for the country.
Continue reading “China Arrests Over 100 Lawyers and Activists In Latest Crackdown on Human Rights”
We have previously discussed the crackdown on free speech in Russia, including examples of quasi-blasphemy prosecutions by the country. While we often see such prosecutions in Muslim countries, there is a growing trend in the West against free speech, particularly when deemed anti-religious or insulting to particular groups. The unholy alliance of Vladimir Putin with the Russian Orthodox Church has accelerated this trend as shown in the move to shutdown a popular atheist social networking page of “There is no God” on VKontakte. The site’s 26,000 followers woke up to notice that the site was shutdown after a ruling from a count in the Muslim North Caucasus region of Chechnya under the control of strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a key Putin ally.
We have been discussing the intolerance shown by countries in the Middle East for free speech, particularly those Muslim countries applying the medieval Sharia law system. Abu Dhabi has again stepped forward to reaffirm its rejection of fundamental principles of free speech. Our Middle Eastern ally has jailed an Australian woman, Jodi Magi, 39, for merely posting a photo on Facebook of a car parked across two disabled parking spaces. She even blurred out the license plate (which most people would not do) in showing the rude conduct of some driver. The driver called police and Magi was arrested for on the truly moronic charge of “writing bad words on social media.” In bringing the charge, the prosecutors in Abu Dhabi confirmed that they are maintaining a faux legal system that recognizes neither basic rights nor basic logic.
Israeli police have reportedly made arrests in the burning of the Church of the Multiplication, in Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee, is where Jesus multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5,000 of his followers. The church houses the block of limestone that is venerated as the stone on which the meal created by Jesus was laid. The reported arrest of Jewish religious students reminds everyone that such destructive extremism is not confined to Islam. While the world condemns ISIS for destroying ancient churches and sites, these Jewish students have actively sought to put their own religion in the same disgraceful company. The fire was set on June 18 and destroyed much of the interior of the monastery and the roof. The attackers left graffiti scrawled in red Hebrew lettering on a wall outside the Roman Catholic church read, “Idols will have their heads cut off.”
A little discussed report by the United States Sentencing Commission has been released with an astonishing figure: Of the more than 2,200 people who received federal sentences for drug possession in fiscal year 2014, almost three-quarters of them were illegal immigrants. In addition, illegal immigrants reportedly made up more than one-third of all federal sentences for all crimes.
The Redskins lost a major challenge this week to the cancellation of the their trademark protection by the Patent and Trademark Office. I have previously written about my disagreement with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision to rescind federal trademark protections for the Redskins as a racially disparaging name as well as the underlying law used to strip the team of its trademark protection. The law allows for a small administrative office to effectively dictate the outcome of a long simmering societal debate over the team name. More importantly, the standard for determining what names or words are disparaging remains dangerously undefined with striking contradictions as we have previously discussed in permitted and disallowed trademarks.
Continue reading “Federal Court Upholds Decision Stripping Redskins Of Trademark Protection”
There are times when New York seems like a giant set for the next Woody Allen movie. A New York Times reporter recently saw something a tad odd in the protest against the gay pride parade. The Orthodox Jewish protesters appeared to be Mexican laborers wearing ritual fringes, or tzitzit and carrying protest signs. It turns out that the Orthodox group hired Mexican laborers to be surrogate protesters so that young Orthodox boys and men would not see gay people in the parade and corrupt them. I guess the tip off for the reporter was the men saying Hoy Gavalt.
Continue reading “Professor Criticized Over Racist Postings Is Hired By Rhodes College”
There has been rising criticism of YouTube censoring content on its site and today is another example. People posted the video of a mob taunting a man nearly beaten to death at a Fourth of July event. The video has triggered a debate over hate crime investigations as well as the simple lack of humanity found in today’s society. In other words, there is a substantive debate surrounding the videotape. However, YouTube says that it has been taken down for disgusting content. It rekindles the objection that YouTube has become a private censor — rather than a forum that warns of such content but allows people to make their own choices. [UPDATE: The video appears to be going up and coming down on YouTube but appears to be currently available here with a warning. I have not problem as I stated below with the addition of such a warning and wall]
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