As many of you know, my pet peeve is the declining comfort and services on U.S. airlines. From endless charges to new “bench seating”, U.S. airlines have shown open contempt for passengers who are treated as virtual cattle. Moreover, despite a long history of going to Congress for favors and subsidies, the airlines have a consistent record of ripping off passengers, including refusing to pass along huge savings from fuel prices in ticket prices. Now an interesting display shows the difference of leg room (another pet peeve) on airlines. The winner for the best treatment of passengers is Jet Blue which offers 34 inches to coach passengers. The worst is not surprisingly Spirit, whose CEO has previously admitted that he virtually prides himself of lousy service and comfort. The airline competing with Spirit as a virtual menace for passengers in terms of leg room is United at 30 inches. So below is the ignoble list of airlines and their ever diminishing space.
Category: Society
In Saudi Arabia, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is a religious police force that has been a constant presence in the Kingdom arresting woman having coffee with colleagues or forcing young girls to burn to death in fire rather than run out without their scarves. Then there was the time that the religious police in Dammam marched into a popular dinosaur exhibit and shut it down without any explanation of why the dinosaurs threatened the virtue of good Muslims. Then there was the flogging of a women who insulted them. Then there are the round ups of religious people for simply praying at home. Then there is the arrest of a man for standing in line with his wife at a grocery store. The list goes on and on. The latest entry is the arrest of young men for simply dancing at a birthday party. Birthday parties have been denounced by Saudi clerics as unIslamic, but this the first such arrest that many can recall that did not involve dancing with women.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
A consortium of one hundred and twenty Islamic Scholars have placed onto the internet an Open Letter to Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi denouncing the organization’s violent and extremist actions in the Middle East. The letter, in the form of an interactive website, provides the world with an opportunity to read a perspective of the Islamic State’s affront to civilization from an academic analysis by scholars. The letter addresses the fundamental and basis in canon for disputing the claims of Al-Baghdadi that his is the only pure and legitimate form of Islam–refuting his claims of divine assent.
The original, in the Arabic, is presently being translated into other languages. The English is presently available.
There has been unfortunately much misconception in the Western World that there lacks true dissent to the terrorist outrages in the Muslim World. This letter can serve a secondary goal to educate those in other cultures having concerns.
Continue reading “Islamic Scholars Present An Open Letter To ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I have to give Governor Bruce Rauner credit for not taking long to show his hand and publicly attack the Higher Education system in Illinois. It has only been a few weeks since he was inaugurated and he recently unveiled his budget. A budget plan that slashes over $200 million just from the University of Illinois alone.
At the very time Gov. Rauner announced he wants to slash the Higher Education budget for all universities in the State of Illinois by almost a third, he claimed that his budget makes education a priority! Continue reading “Gov. Bruce Rauner Declares War on Higher Education and the Poor in Illinois”
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
We previously wrote HERE of Richland, Washington Florist Baronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers, who caused a row when she refused to provide her floral services for a gay wedding. Now, a Benton County Superior Court Judge ruled that she violated the state’s consumer protection act that bars discrimination against a protected class.
The legal action was brought by customer Robert Ingersoll and the Washington Attorney General’s Office.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
In what has become both controversial for several groups and will be likely frustrating for couples who have few options for having children of their own genetics, the Thai government has introduced legislation that bans foreign couples from utilizing the services of its citizens for surrogacy for commercial means and other types based upon demographics of the contracting parents. The government cities that it has concerns that their nation will become “The Womb of the World” where social and economic issues could be distressful to young women and cause issues with society as a whole.
Yet, the law seems to have become more than this. Additional restrictions levied affect specific demographics of married couples and for homosexual couples especially.
Continue reading “Thailand Government Bans Surrogacy For Foreign Parents And Others”
There is an interesting criminal case out of Hawaii where Jay Lowell, a diver who pulled off the breathing apparatus (regulator) of a conservationist, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. The case itself is different in a response to the filming by a coral reef conservation group For the Fishes, but also the specific charge: Terroristic threatening.
Continue reading “Hawaii Diver Pleads Guilty In Controversial Scuba Attack On Conservationist”
We have previously discussed the sometimes curious notion of an intellectual in Saudi Arabia. The fact is that I have met many brilliant Saudi academics and that fact is that every country has their wing nuts. However, Saudi has had a litany of these respected clerics or academics spouting nonsense. The latest is Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari who corrected a student and told him that it is a myth that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Al-Khaibari’s defense of the Ptolemaic system would seem a few hundred years out of date but he appears to view geocentrism as commanded by Allah.
Continue reading “Saudi Cleric: Earth Does Not Move And Sits At Center Of The Universe”
Oklahoma State Rep. Dan Fisher presumably has an array of tough issues to tackle for his state from unemployment to the environment to crime. However, Fisher has decided to take on the ignoble task of banning Advanced Placement history classes in the state because he objects to the inclusion of negative aspects of American history and the omission of material embracing “American exceptionalism.” As an academic, I have previously criticized politicians (here and here and here and here) intervening in our school system to impose their own values or priorities on educators. This however ranks as one of the worst such intrusions that we have seen.
Continue reading “Oklahoma Legislator Introduces Bill To Ban Advanced Placement History Classes”
Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger of Madison County has been indicted on a charge of simple assault involving a confrontation that he allegedly had with a mentally disabled man in which the judge was accused of striking Eric Rivers, a 20-year-old African American, and yelling “Run, ni**er, run.” The alleged assault occurred at the Canton Flea Market on May 8 of last year where Weisenberger was working as either a security guard or a traffic monitor (accounts differ).
We have been following the expanding scandal over criminal charges brought against leading national Orthodox rabbi , Barry Freundel, who is now accused of filming over 150 women engaged in the ritual bath known as a Mikva. As if not to be outdone, leading Islamic scholar and Imam Mohammed Abdullah Saleem, 75, has been charged outside of Chicago with sexually abusing a 23-year-old employee last year in Elgin’s Institute of Islamic Education. He is also accused of abusing three other women. The four women have filed civil actions against him and the Islamic school in what could be a messy tort action that proceeds in tandem with the criminal charges. We have discussed the same criminal/civil tracks in the case of Rabbi Freudel.
Continue reading “Leading Chicago Imam Arrested In Abuse Scandal”
Terrence Lavaron Thomas, 39, is a curious representative of the Muslim faith. First, he already stabbed to people at random because they were not Muslims. Second, when arrested, the alleged faithful felon had drugs in his possession. Violent and a drug user. I wonder what Sharia law would do with Mr. Thomas in a place like Saudi Arabia.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama’s unilateral executive action on immigration with a preliminary injunction in Brownsville, Texas. The case involves a challenge by 26 states and, to succeed, the states had to meet a high standard that they were likely to prevail on the merits in the case. Hanen found that, absent an order, the states will “suffer irreparable harm in this case.” The ruling sets up an appeal that could move the case more rapidly through the system in yet another challenge to the President’s unilateral actions. [For the purposes of full disclosure, I have previously testified against the President’s unilateral actions and I am currently serving as lead counsel to the House of Representatives in its challenge to such actions taken with regard to the Affordable Care Act.]
Continue reading “Federal Judge Halts Obama’s Executive Action On Illegal Immigration”
Below is a very disturbing video of the responses that Zvika Klein, a reporter for Jewish news outlet NRG, received when he walked through streets of Paris wearing a yarmulke and a tzitzit (knotted ritual tassels). The video shows the level of anti-Semitism even in our capital cities around the world.
Sedef Kabas, a leading Turkish journalist, has been arrested in another example of the rollback on civil liberties under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As part of his attack on secularism and his introduction of Islamic laws into Turkey’s government, Erdogan has been cracking down critics and journalists over the outcry of the international community. In the case of Kabas, a single tweet on Twitter was enough. The journalist had just sent her five-year-old to school when police came knocking to ask if she authored a tweet about how the government quashed a corruption investigation into his family and close associates of Erdogan. Erdogan previously promised to “eradicate” Twitter in Turkey and he appears to be now doing it one journalist and poster at a time.