Norway Mayor Jim Preacher was not apparently happy about being pulled over by a South Carolina state trooper for speeding. After being given a ticket, Preacher proceeded to put on his own blue lights and pulled over the trooper in his capacity as Norway’s chief constable.
Category: Politics
We have been following the rapid diminishing of free speech in the West in recent years. It is particularly disconcerting to see this trend in our close allies of England and France (For a prior column, click here). Now, the French Senate has added a new speech crime — denying the fact of the Armenian genocide by Turkey. While I commend the motivation, the legislation is blind to the implications to free speech by criminalizing certain subjects for debate. It seeks to force critics to be silent under threat of criminal prosecution — an approach that produces only the appearance of agreement while denying citizens the basic right to be heard on such controversies.
Continue reading “French Senate Makes Denying Armenian Genocide A Crime”
We have followed the rising prosecution of people for blasphemy around the world, including the West. Now, Muslim groups in India are calling for the prosecution of organizers for reading from Salman Rushdie’s banned book “Satanic Verses” at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Abdul Latif, state secretary of All India Milli council refers to the mere reading from the book as “condemnable” and said that the groups are collecting evidence for prosecution.
Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, has apologized after running a column that lists three options for Israel to deal with its current threats that included killing Barack Obama. The column went out of its way to make sure that readers “read ‘three’ correctly” — “U.S. based Mossad agents” should kill the president. The column is just one more example of how religious writers and politicians use faith as a vehicle for hate and violent speech. Given our discussion of Santorum’s honorary campaign chairman (who denounced gays as making God want to vomit), one has to wonder about the intestinal fortitude of the Almighty during periods of sectarian extremism.
Continue reading “Editor of American Jewish Magazine Calls For Israel’s Mossad To Kill Obama”
Remember our plans to introduce a free and democratic nation in Iraq? We have been following the rampant corruption and increasing use of Sharia law in the country. Now, the Human Rights Watch has issued a report that our billions of dollars and many lives were spent to achieve . . . “a budding police state” where torture and abuse is widespread. In the meantime, we have spent ten years cutting back on essential services and programs in the United States to fund this shining example of American intervention.
Continue reading “Human Rights Report: Iraq Now A “Budding Police State””
Rick Santorum has long been ridiculed for his anti-homosexual views, but he appears to have someone who can actually extend the extreme of the spectrum to his right: Rev. O’Neil Dozier. Dozier has told his flock that gay “make God want to vomit.” He appears to know a great deal about things that make God vomit. His website describes him as “a prayer warrior who faithfully spends time in his own prayer closet and teaches his flock to pray.” This is one American who might be better off staying in the closet.
Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
The vote in South Carolina has propelled the lazy paced Republican race for its presidential nomination into high-gear. Gingrich’s convincing win against Romney has made what appeared just a few days ago as a Romney coronation into a two-horse race. Written off for dead last summer when his staff unceremoniously quit and the money dried up, Gingrich supporters are justifiably giddy by winning this ultra-conservative state, which has an undeniable track record of picking the eventual Republican candidate for the nation’s biggest political job. What makes this an even more impressive win is Gingrich’s lack of boots on the ground in these primary races and an almost indifferent attitude toward campaign infra-structure. Gingrich did say he was running a new kind of campaign, but what candidate hasn’t?
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last December, the NAACP released a report titled Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America. The report reveals “direct connections between the trend of increasing, unprecedented African American and Latino voter turnout and an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength among communities of color.”
Benjamin Jealous, NAACP President and CEO, said, “It’s been more than a century since we’ve seen such a tidal wave of assaults on the right to vote. Historically, when voting rights are attacked, it’s done to facilitate attacks on other rights. It is no mistake that the groups who are behind this are simultaneously attacking very basic women’s rights, environmental protections, labor rights, and educational access for working people and minorities.” He added, “Voting rights attacks are the flip side of buying a democracy. First you buy all the leaders you can, and then you suppress as many votes as possible of the people who might object.”
I should add that African American and Latino voters aren’t the only people who are being targeted by the “block the vote” effort. Young people and the elderly in some states may also face hurdles if they hope to exercise their right to vote in the November elections.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
This week I’m presenting something a little different as a blog. I’ve just read an incredibly interesting book that I was turned onto by either or both, Dredd and Anon Nurse. This book has added scientific clarity to a phenomenon that I’ve noticed for many years, with dismay. Why is it that some people, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, doggedly hold onto beliefs that they can’t logically defend? We can all agree that there are some issues that simply do not lend themselves to being categorized into absolutes of right and wrong. However, I will let the reader catalog those issues mentally, since there will be some who would no doubt take umbrage from any examples I would personally present. Yet I assert that there are some issues where despite probable protests, are not open to rational dispute. One of these is the age of the Earth and the Universe. The Earth is far older than Creationists/Intelligent Design advocates would set at six or seven thousand years. This is proven fact. I note that there are many religious people who accept this scientific fact and yet still believe in a creator and while not by any means a fundamentalist, I do believe that there is a creative force that informs the Universe. Whatever that force may be, it did its thing multiple billions of years ago.
I presented the above to illustrate the difference between a proven fact and an as yet, if ever, provable belief. The book “The Authoritarians” was written by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Professor Altemeyer has spent more than forty years doing research as a Social Psychologist into the parameters and root causes of authoritarian behavior in human beings. John Dean, of Watergate renown, made Bob semi-famous by using Bob’s work as a framework for his book “Conservatives Without Conscience”. I call Professor Altemeyer “Bob”, not out of personal familiarity, but because one of the joys of this book is that though it is a serious socio-psychological work, it is written by a man who doesn’t take himself too seriously, while presenting a very serious subject. My original intent in writing this piece was to present my conclusions, using the book as backup. However, the book, though well-documented, is only 262 pages and at the end of this piece will be a link that allows you to download it for free and read it. Bob presents this important topic far better than I could ever condense it. I’ll just give you a taste, hopefully whetting your appetite and then let you read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Continue reading ““The Authoritarians”, A Book Review and Book””
Those crazy guys in Hamas are at it again. After banning women from riding motorcycles and men working as hairdressers and other “immodest acts,” Hamas has shutdown the Palestinian version of “American Idol” as “indecent” under Islamic laws and values. However, it appears kid shows featuring dismemberment and camps for kids to learn kidnapping are perfectly decent.
Continue reading “Just Say No To Idolatry: Hamas Shuts Down Program As “Indecent” Under Islamic Law”
We have been following the increasing abuse of the legal system in Indonesia, including the application of Sharia law. Now, an atheist (identified only as Alexander) has been arrested and faced five years in jail for questioning the existence of God on his Facebook page. It is the latest blasphemy arrest, discussed earlier in a column.
After pledging to kill our enemies, Newt Gingrich returned to one of his favorite themes: violating the United States Constitution. In Greenville, South Carolina, Gingrich again said that he would ignore Supreme Court decisions that he disagreed with. We have previously discussed the flaws in Gingrich’s legal and historical views, but my concern is that pledging to violate the Constitution would make Gingrich an enemy of our constitutional system. Does this mean that his first act would be to add his own name to the presidential hit list?
In North Carolina, students at the North Windy Ridge Intermediate School were told that they could pick up a free Bible, donated by the Gideons. When Ginger Strivelli’s son came home with a new Bible, she decided to offer her own free copies of sacred books. She is a pagan and brought pagan spell books to the office. She was turned away (though I expect spell books in the age of Harry Potter would be snatched up like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans). The Buncombe County Board of Education now says that it will reexamine its policies. However, this only came after a non-Christian religion asked for the same access to schools.
Sites like Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, and Reddit have gone black this morning in protest of The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which threatens Internet independence and free speech as well as a host of other rights. We have long discussed the ever-widening array of criminal and civil penalties pushed through Congress by the powerful radio and television lobby as well as other industry groups. The Obama Administration has been particularly willing to carry the water for these groups over objections from public interest groups. SOPA reflects the power of this lobby and its hold over members of Congress and the Obama Administration. While the Obama Administration has now responded to the outcry by insisting that it will tweak the bill, such promises ring hallow given its past efforts to appease this industry and its dishonest statements recently in other areas like the indefinite detention controversy. Notably, the recent admission from the White House that it has some concerns over the bill did not come until the public rallied against the bill — another indication of the control of an industry group in the drafting of legislation. This lobby is not going to go quietly into the night. It is more likely that it will work with the White House and Congress to achieve the same purposes with an incremental series of laws — if it does not simply win outright.
I have previously questioned the historical and legal views of Newt Gingrich. However, we may agree on one recent historical claim: that Andrew Jackson tended to address enemies by killing them. As shown in the video below, Gingrich embraced this approach as a campaign pledge — eclipsing prior campaign pledges in the primary to bomb countries or torture detainees.
Continue reading “Gingrich Pledges To Kill Enemies Of The United States”