We have yet another fake story that has been picked up by various sites and run as an actual news story. The latest story by the Daily Currant claimed Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann was irate in finding falafel on a menu for school lunches and called for it to be banned as an example of “jihadi food.” The story went viral and I had a number of people send it to me to be posted. It is entirely untrue but many followed the old adage that this was “a fact too good to check.” The wide circulation of the story comes after the “stench” barely cleared after a Politico story last week targeting another Republican, Mitt Romney.
Category: Media
While it has attracted little media attention, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has quietly changed its policy on the posting of ads deemed controversial after the outcry over an ad campaign by American Freedom Defense Initiative executive director and blogger Pamela Geller. Muslims and others objected to the ads and at least one columnist was arrested for destroying the posters. The ads read “In any war between civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Now MTA has announced that it will reserve the right to refuse any ads deemed likely to “incite” violence or “other breach of peace.” It is another measure rolling on free speech and forcing speakers to adhere to the anticipated reaction of third parties.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
It seems that trouble is brewing again in the State of Florida since election officials have discovered suspicious voter registration forms in at least 10 Florida counties. “Florida elections officials said Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida, which has filed an election fraud complaint with the state Division of Elections against its one-time consultant.” LA Times Continue reading “Deja Vue in Florida?”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
We are so kind to ourselves. John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, repeats the Obama narrative that touts the “surgical” precision and minimization of collateral damage of “targeted killing” using drones. Minimal collateral damage would be zero, however, a study by NYU School of Law and Stanford Law School puts the number of civilians killed between 474 and 881, including 176 children.
The study calls Obama’s narrative “false.”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
I’m a fan of professional football and I’ve followed it for almost 60 years. Many of those who come to this site, especially our Proprietor, are football fans as well. The game is exciting to watch lending itself perfectly to television viewing, as compared to the other professional sports. However, this is not a post about the sport, the players, its violence or its merits. This is a critical look with the overarching corporate structure of the National Football League. The NFL has become the most lucrative sports business organization in the United States, receiving approximately $8 or $9 Billion a year from TV networks and its revenue from all other sources, including licensing, radio and satellite TV. On average each of the NFL’s 32 teams earns an average of $175 million per year which includes ticket sales. Under the collective bargaining agreement, won after a threatened “player lockout” in 2011, each team has what is known as a “hard salary cap”, which means that the total each team pays to its players is capped at a fixed amount which cannot be exceeded. Currently the cap per each team is about $130 Million per year. Therefore the average NFL team probably makes a profit of at least $30 Million per year after other expenses. Given the state of business, any corporation of medium size that would receive a guaranteed net profit of $30 Million yearly must be considered very fortunate.
The NFL has a rule barring corporations from team ownership:
“Ownership groups must contain twenty-four or fewer individuals, and at least one partner must hold a thirty percent or greater share of the team. The Green Bay Packers are an exemption to the current policy, since they have been a publicly owned stock corporation since before the rule was in place.”
At first glance this may seem a salutary policy, but in operation the League’s ownership consists mainly of billionaires, who are either football fans, publicity seekers and/or both. In fairness I must admit that some of the current owners are descendants of their teams’ founders, such as the Rooney’s in Pittsburgh, the Mara’s in New York and the Halas family owners of Professor Turley’s beloved Bears. Mainly the teams are run by people who made their money in other professions and decided that a football team would make a great hobby. The problem is that the “hobbyists” have and are exhibiting the type of business philosophy that seems to have taken hold in America, which is a ruthless model, in which their employees and even their customers, the fans, are merely pawns to be run over roughshod as they satisfy their egos and their greed. After the break I’ll explain my thinking on this and show why I see the NFL as a metaphor of what’s wrong with our country. Continue reading ““The NFL and what’s wrong with America””
The filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Mohammad video that sparked the recent protests and deaths around the world, has been arrested by federal authorities for allegedly violating the condition for his probation on a 2010 conviction for bank fraud — violations that could land him in jail for three years. Given the calls for his arrest and even execution by Muslim allies, the arrest raises obvious concerns that the Administration is again defending free speech while quietly moving to punish those who cause religious strife.
Continue reading “Controversial Filmmaker Nakoula Arrested For Alleged Probation Violations”
The video below has attracted considerable interest in the latest confrontation over an anti-Muslim ad campaign in the New York subway system. Many people have objected to the campaign by the American Freedom Defense Initiative which has put up signs reading “In any war between civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” However, columnist Mona Eltahawy who appears regularly on CNN and MSNBC took that opposition to a new level in this confrontation with a woman who tried to stop her from spray painting over one of the signs — an act that led to Eltahawy’s arrest. The incident involved a sharp difference of opinion on what constitutes protected freedom of speech.
For many years, I have been writing about the threat of an international blasphemy standard and the continuing rollback on free speech in the West. Much of this writing has focused on the effort of the Obama Administration to reach an accommodation with allies like Egypt to develop a standard for criminalizing anti-religious speech. We have been following the rise of anti-blasphemy laws around the world, including the increase in prosecutions in the West and the support of the Obama Administration for the prosecution of some anti-religious speech under the controversial Brandenburg standard. Now that effort has come to a head with the new President of Egypt President Mohamed Mursi calling for enactment of an anti-blasphemy law at the United Nations. Mursi is also demanding legal action against the filmmaker by the United States despite the fact that the film is clearly protected by the first amendment.
Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour has put a $100,000 bounty on the head of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims.” The offer to pay anyone who kills the filmmaker is reminscent of the Fatwa placed on the head of Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses. However, this is not just a government official but an official in the government of a U.S. ally calling for the murder of a U.S. citizen. Yet, Bilour insisted “I am a Muslim first, then a government representative.”
We have long discussed the serious rollback on free speech in the West as countries like France and England profess support for free speech and the free press while prosecuting or investigating people for anti-religious speech. That conflicted message was evident today after French magazine Charlie Hebdo ran cartoons featuring Mohammad in its coverage over the deadly protests following the release of an anti-Muslim film in the United States. Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, described the cartoons as a “new Islamophobic act” while French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (left) warned “[t]here must be freedom of speech, but I am absolutely opposed to any provocation.”
We have received a lot of requests for the briefing just filed in the Sister Wives case in Salt Lake City. As lead counsel, I am limited in what I can say about the case publicly. However, here is the final brief on the merits of the case, which is limited to 25 pages of argument under the local rules.
Continue reading “Brown Family Files Final Brief On Summary Judgment”
We have spent years following the absurd series of photo ops featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin from shooting tigers to fishing bare chested in the wild to leading wild cranes in migration to Asia to riding leather-clad through Moscow. The ridiculous claim that Putin found the ancient vases on his very first stint as a scuba diver proved too much for even the most gullible Russians. After aides admitted it was staged following international ridicule, Putin has now shrugged off all of the students as staged events.
Continue reading “Russian Circus: Putin Admits His Exploits Have Been Staged”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Our memories not only serve the purpose of learning to avoid danger from past experience, they serve as the glue that holds our sense of our fleeting lives together into a linear personal narrative. For all of us most memories are specific to our direct life experiences. There are some memories though transcending personal encounters and that directly affect us as well as society as a whole. The murder of John F. Kennedy is one such experience from my life that profoundly affected me and my generation, even though all I knew of the man was third hand at best. Closer in time but equally, if not more indelible is the image of the destruction wrought on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. I would guess that almost all Americans who were alive on that day know where they were and what they were doing. This past week we passed the eleventh anniversary of this horror and innumerable solemn observances occurred throughout the nation.
I can remember one phrase that began to be used over and over from that day onward and my rising anger at the implications of that phrase. “This Changes Everything”. I’ve not been able to determine what news-person or pundit first uttered those words, but afterwards the phrase reverberated incessantly. As that fateful day passed, what took shape in the meme those words created, was that the United States had undergone an experience that changed all the rules we had purportedly lived by in dealing with the world around us. In effect it was like saying “No more Mr. Nice Guy”. Whether or not our country ever lived by the ideals it purported to live by is another question entirely. My anger rose at the overuse of this meme because I’ve spent my life wanting my country to live by a higher standard in both national and international relations. I correctly saw this meme as an attempted usurpation of this tragedy towards turning our country away from our national ideals, such as they were. As the years passed since 9/11/2001, we have watched the erosion of these America Ideals. Two murderous wars have been waged. Hundreds of thousands have died, or been maimed. Our “national treasure” depleted, torture has become legalized and with the passage of the “Patriot Act” we have watched the demolition of our personal freedom. With this anniversary, two articles appeared nationally that call into question what was really behind 9/11 and also why there was a possibility of deterring it, which was ignored by the G.W. Bush Administration. I want to discuss both of these articles and then add my own thoughts on their real context. Continue reading ““This Changes Everything””
The Obama Administration has formally asked YouTube “to review” the anti-Muslim film “Innocence of Muslims.” In a perfectly incoherent position, White House press secretary Jay Carney stressed that the White House was not asking for it to be removed . . . only “reviewed.” I have been discussing this controversy on NPR and CNN. The latest White House move appears to be an effort to get YouTube to remove the video without taking responsibility for expressly asking for the removal. For civil libertarians, the announcement leaves an uneasy — and all-too-familiar — feeling with this Administration. The White House has repeated compromised on civil liberties in favor of political advantage in areas like torture, immunity, and surveillance policies.
Continue reading “White House Asks YouTube To Review “Innocence of Muslims” Film”
After facing press accounts depicting its product as “pink slime,” Beef Products Inc. has brought a defamation action in South Dakota against ABC News Inc.and ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer for damages from the coverage. Notably, the lawsuit also includes Gerald Zirnstein, a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist, as a defendant. It was Zirnstein who reportedly coined the catchy phrase “pink slime” for the beef product. The company is seeking $400 million in claimed actual and consequential damages, treble damages, punitive damages and attorney’s fees and costs.
Continue reading “Coming To A Court Near You: The Revenge of the Pink Slime”