Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that a text message from a former aide to Chris Christie said that the New Jersey governor “flat out lied” during a news conference about the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal. The text message is part of a court filing reviewed by Fox.
Category: Politics
England has seen the rise of calls for speech prosecutions, including calls from powerful politicians for crackdowns on insulting or offensive comments. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). The rapid decline of free speech in England has been both chilling and frightening for civil libertarians as the country appears to have abandoned this once defining right of Western Civilization. Now, a Manchester man reportedly has been arrested and sentenced for making “grossly offensive” comments about Muslims on Facebook. Stephen Bennett, 39, (who has a Muslim mother-in-law and sister-in-law) has been sentenced to 180 hours of unpaid work and a 12-month community order for expressing his views.
My friend Professor Eugene Volokh raised an interesting case out of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) where the commission reinstated what many would consider a facially invalid harassment lawsuit over a worker wearing a simple “Don’t Tread on Me” cap. The cap was claimed cited as “racially offensive to African Americans” because “the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden, a ‘slave trader & owner of slaves.’” It is a bizarre case but the concern over the fluid standard for such cases was magnified by a response to Gene from Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman who added that a worker “Saying at work that ‘Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be president because women shouldn’t work full-time’” could also be a legitimate basis for sanctions.
A new video is circulating on the Internet showing Sheikh Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric in Syria affiliated with al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, sending out young Muslims to die in the battle for Aleppo with the promise of 72 virgins who are so beautiful that they can simply spit in the sea and turn it sweet. They also apparently release perfume when you hug them. There are many Muslims who insist that the 72 virgin claim is a myth started by anti-Islamic forces.
Iran has given the world another outrage in its enforcement of the medieval Islamic Sharia law. The victim was Hassan Afshar, 19, who was hanged for what the Sharia court called “forced male-to-male anal intercourse.” Afshar insisted that that the sex was consensual, though in Iran you can also be executed for simply being homosexual — as we have previously discussed.
Continue reading “Iran Executes Gay Teenager Under Islamic Sharia Law”
Below is my recent column in USA Today on the anger of voters with the two mainstream presidential nominees and my recent trip to Alaska. Below are some pictures from the visit to Mike Carpenter’s trading post on the way to Denali National Park.
Continue reading “American Politics And The Search For Authenticity In A Trip To Alaska”
There were two interesting polls this week that present together a humorous, if chilling, picture of the state of the American democratic process. According to the New York Times, only nine percent chose Clinton and Trump as nominees. That is unfortunately no surprise. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the least popular candidates ever to secure nominations of the two parties. Then the Public Policy Polling found that in a general election matchup, five percent of Americans would vote for Harambe, the endangered gorilla that was shot and killed in May after carrying a 4-year-old around inside his habitat at the Cincinnati Zoo. Indeed, not only did five percent prefer Harambe (which seems quite sensible given the choices) but another four percent was undecided. So, those who want Trump and Clinton represent the same percentage as those who either prefer or might consider voting for a gorilla.
Donald Trump has been widely criticized for what is seen as a shaky knowledge or fealty to the Constitution. Recently, however, he seemed to pledge support not just the Constitution but beyond — pleading to defend “Article XII” which is two articles too many for the Constitution.
Afghan cleric, Mohammad Karim, is in his sixties but he decided to marry a younger bride. For most people (including all non-pedophiles), this might mean a woman half his age in her thirties. For Karim it meant a six-year-old girl. After being arrested, Karim insisted that the girl was given to him in wedlock as a “religious offering.” The little girl could only say “I am afraid of this man.”
Continue reading “Afghan Cleric Defends Marriage To Six-Year-Old Girl As A “Religious Offering””
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor.
In a significant judgment against the City of SeaTac, Washington in a property rights case a King County Superior Court judge awarded Gerry and Kathy Kingen $18.3 million after what the court described as “a pattern of deception that lasted years.”
The trouble for the couple began in 2003 when they purchased land in the vicinity of Sea-Tac Airport with the intent to develop the land into a Park-and-Fly garage. Immediately after bringing notice to the city of their plans the city council declared a moratorium on the construction of these garages and engaged in tactics to hinder the couple’s investment until, according to court documents, they were forced under duress to sell the property to a “phantom buyer” who was later determined to be a surrogate for the city.
Continue reading “Court Awards Couple $18,000,000 For City’s Land Grab. Largest In State History”
Few of us are happy with the poisonous and dysfunctional politics today. With the two most disliked candidates in history securing the two main nominations, tensions are rising as each party seeks to make voters hate the other candidate more than their own candidate. One particularly low moment came with an attack from the North Carolina GOP which accused Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) of inexplicably wearing a flag of Honduras on his lapel rather than an American flag. Not only did the pin share little with the Honduras flag, it was a Blue Star Service pin for Kaine’s son who is serving as a marine.
There is an interesting controversy out of Youngstown, Ohio where attorney Andrea Burton have been jailed for five days for contempt in refusing to take off her Black Lives Matter pin. Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich ruled that such pins are a distraction and inappropriate for the courtroom, but Burton refused to yield.
With states and cities struggling to support schools, infrastructure and other basic necessities, our government continues to spend wildly and wastefully with little political accountability. The latest such example is the $1.4 billion dollars spent on abstinence-only education as an effort to reduce the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa from 2004-2013. A new study shows that the program never showed any success and yet the government continued to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Africa because the program was politically attractive.
Continue reading “Report: United States Wasted $1.4 Billion on Abstinence Education in Africa”
We have followed the rapid destruction of the secular traditions of Turkey by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has succeeded in creating a new Islamic authoritarian regime. With the support of Islamic parties, Erdogan used the recent failed coup to complete his work in arresting his critics, forcing the resignation of thousands of secular academics, and suspending all civil liberties in a proclaimed state of emergency. The United States helped create the tyranny rising in Turkey in its support of Erdogan as he systemically dismantled the only secular, free country in the Arab world. Recently, Erdogan threatened the United States that he wants his greatest critic, US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, delivered to him and that a failure to yield to his demands would be a “big mistake.” Now, one of Erdogan’s extremist followers, Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek, has suggested that U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen uses genies to “enslave” people. That’s right, genies.
Continue reading “Ankara Mayor Accuses Erdogan Critic Of Using Genies To Control the Masses”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
As many of us expected, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz fell on the sword after leaked e-mail revealed she and other DNC officials rigged the system to hurt Candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign as a competitor to Hillary Clinton. Wasserman Schultz’ self “sacrifice”, if you can call it that, along with unwavering loyalty was quickly rewarded by Clinton appointing Wasserman Schultz to serve as her “Honorary” Chair of Clinton’s 50 State Program to help elect Democrats throughout the United States.
Really? The very person who was implicated in a plan to rig a primary election to favor a particular candidate is now placed in a leadership role to help elect other politicians. And, adding to this, the appointment came as a personal reward for deflecting the blame away from the presidential Candidate that received the benefit of such rigging.
It is just another example of the cronyism and corruption that is becoming increasingly self-evident with the practices of Hillary Clinton.