The New York Daily News has a controversial front page this morning blasting politicians and others who are offering prayers while opposing to take steps to curtail gun access in this country in the wake of the latest massacre in California. It is the same message sent by President Barack Obama who appears ready to use executive authority to restrict gun sales at gun shows. The problem with calls for such action is that Congress has declined to order such changes — raising yet another potential conflict over executive overreach in our system. Moreover, the right to own firearms is now recognized as an individual right under the Second Amendment, limiting the extent to which gun ownership can be meaningfully curtailed. Absent a constitutional amendment, many of the calls for banning gun ownership would fail as unconstitutional.
Category: Society
This month, Israel will honor Roddie Edmonds, the first U.S. soldier to be recognized among those called Righteous Among The Nations. The recognition is for an extraordinary act of courage in January 1945 in a German POW camp, an act where Edmonds stood face to face with pure evil and refused to yield.
Continue reading ““We Are All Jews”: In Memory of Roddie Edmonds, A True American Hero”
Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox has made a rather ignoble entry into national news with a clearly unconstitutional order to the Palm Beach Post to unpublish material from its website. The act of prior restraint violates core first amendment protections and will achieve nothing since the information was part of a public filing. The utter lack of legal judgment (and knowledge) shown by Cox in this order is deeply troubling.
Continue reading “Florida Judge Issues Shocking Order For Newspaper To “Unpublish” News Story”
The massacre in San Bernadino, California is as baffling as it is chilling. I am very familiar with the Redlands and San Bernadino areas since I would spend summers in the area growing up and still have relatives there (including one of the officers responding to this shooting). What is so chilling is the lack of any indication of such an act from a couple that seemed to be living the American dream with a good income and new baby . . . and highly supportive colleagues who they proceeded to slaughter.
This evening, the United States House of Representatives filed its motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit against the unilateral actions taken by the Administration under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Three months ago, Judge Rosemary Collyer rejected a motion to dismiss the case by the Administration. The motion below seeks a final ruling on the merits of the lawsuit.
Continue reading “The House Of Representatives Files Motion For Summary Judgment In ACA Challenge”
There is a highly disturbing criminal case out of Mecosta, Michigan where Keith Wood, 39, has been charged with a felony for obstruction of justice and misdemeanor of tampering with a jury. His felonious conduct? Passing out fliers about jury nullification rights on the sidewalk of the Mecosta County courthouse. The fliers from the Fully Informed Jury Association describe juror rights that some complain are omitted by judges and prosecutors in explaining jury service before trial.
The University of Missouri has been battered by protests over racial relations on the campus for weeks, including the recent resignation of a faculty member who tried to silence a student reporter. Now, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri is under arrest on suspicion of child abuse after Benghazi native Youssif Z. Omar reportedly attacked a female 14-year-old relative for not wearing a hijab to Hickman High School. The University says that Omar has not worked at the university for months. Students were reportedly not fond of Omar and some noted his explosive temper, yelling at students, and poor English.
We often spend so much time on this blog detailing the crimes and abuses by truly horrible people. It often leaves one depressed and pessimistic about humanity and the direction that it is now going. Then someone like Matthew Jackson comes along and we remember that the essence of being human is found in simple acts of kindness. In Matthew’s case, it proved to be one of the last things that he did on this Earth.
Chicago police believe that they have arrested the man who they believe executed a 9-year-old boy, Tyshawn Lee. Police believe that Corey Morgan, 27, lured Tyshawn into an alley in retaliation for the murder of his brother. Police have been struggling to solve the case due to what they say has been a refusal of Tyshawn’s father (reportedly also a gang member) to cooperate with police. Police believed that Pierre Stokes had critical information on the murderers of his son but refused to share it.
Continue reading “Chicago Police Arrest Alleged Killer Of Nine-Year-Old Tyshawn Lee”
We recently discussed the bizarre report that the Saudi Arabian government was going to sue a Twitter user for a tweet where he compared the death sentence given poet Ashraf Fayadh to ISIS executions. It appears that decapitations of non-believers ordered under Sharia are materially different from decapitations of nonbelievers ordered by ISIS under Sharia law. Now, as if struggling to bring home the absurd distinction, another Saudi Sharia court has sentenced a Saudi Arabian woman to death by stoning for adultery. The man? He gets 100 lashes.
This week, China has once again shown the world that there is nothing quite so ugly as its ongoing struggle to bar basic rights and freedoms to its people. The authoritarian government’s effort took a particularly bizarre turn when it reportedly stopped Canada’s China-born Miss World, Anastasia Lin, 25, from boarding a flight to the beauty pageant finals in China. Lin is a member of the repressed Falun Gong movement and just testified in Congress on Chinese repression in July.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
This month we revealed the artwork of Leonard Pelteir, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1975 murder of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams, was being displayed at the Washington Department of Labor and industries during a Native American art and culture event. After the article, KING-5 News broadcast a news segment concerning the controversy which led to the immediate removal of the art.
The artwork in question has found a new home for its display and promotion.
Continue reading “Controversial Leonard Peltier Art Now Displayed In Grocery Store”
I recently raised concerns on PBS Newshour about a lawsuit by Israelis who are suing in the United States to force Facebook to take down violent, anti-Jewish sites. While I believe Facebook can and should take down the sites, the use of the government to close such sites raise serious free speech questions in where to draw the line on such censorship or regulation of speech. I noted that such lawsuits like the recent successful action against Twitter by Jewish students are part of a comprehensive attack on free speech that uses such civil actions as a form of speech regulation or retaliation. Saudi Arabia has again stepped forward to make this point more powerfully that I could ever hope to. The Saudi justice ministry has announced that it will sue a Twitter user who compared the death sentence handed down on Friday to a Palestinian poet to the punishments meted out by Islamic State. I have drawn the same obvious comparison in the case of Ashraf Fayadh as have readers on this site and other sites. Rather than stop acting like ISIS (which would require a greater recognition of due process and human rights in the Kingdom), Saudi Arabia is seeking to threaten people to stop them from making the analogy. However, the beheadings of nonbelievers will continue. For many, the Saudi Foreign Ministry sounds like it is putting out the word “if you say we are like ISIS again, we will behead you.”
The Russians appear to be moving in the aftermath of Turkey shooting down one of its fighters: it has targeted Turkish history in a new and abusive criminal law. Russian lawmaker Sergei Mironov said that his Just Russia party has proposed a bill that criminalizes the denial that the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces was a “genocide.” I previously wrote about a similar law passed in France as not just a denial of free speech but academic freedom. The law was later struck down. The Russians are moving just weeks after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland also violation freedom of speech for its criminalization of the denial of the killings of Armenians as genocide.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We are in Durham, North Carolina with my in-laws to celebrate my favorite holiday. We will begin the day as the Turleys have for over 40 years with our Turkey bowl football game, though this will be a smaller affair since we will not be in McLean this year. We will then get to watch the Chicago Bears play the Packers! What else could one wish for? Turkey, family, football. The pilgrims never had it so good.