West Allis, Wis., police had a bit of a surprise when they responded to a call about a mysterious man in the neighborhood near Milwaukee in July 2013 and found Dwayne S. Powell, a private detective, with two laptop computers, binoculars, a GPS tracking device, a stun gun, two rifles, four handguns, 2,000 rounds of ammunition and a homemade silencer in a rented SUV. While first resisting to give his name, Powell reportedly admitted that he was hired to keep continual watch on the father of David Miscavige, the leader of the Church of Scientology, who had separated from the church. Powell further stated that, after seeing what he believed was a possible heart attack, he contacted David Miscavige, who allegedly told him to let his father Ronald Miscavige Sr. die and not intervene or call help. The case has not led to litigation but it could.
Police are searching for Bobbi Ann House, 39, dubbed the “Military Mistress” for what they allege is a pattern of fraudulent conduct, including marriages to 14 U.S. servicemen to steal their money. She is reportedly on the run with Zackerie House, 27, her new husband. They are reportedly driving a bright blue 2005 Cadillac Escalade purchased with a fraudulent down payment.
Continue reading “Meet Bobbi Ann House: The “Military Mistress” On The Run”
Michael Slager, an officer with the North Charleston Police Department, has been charged with murder after a highly disturbing video surfaced that shows him shooting an unarmed man who was running away. He could face the death penalty for the alleged crime.
Just when you think that the federal government could not be more moronic in the spending of money, you read a story like this. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has been approving disability benefits for hundreds of Puerto Ricans because they do not speak English. However, these “disabled” individuals are living in a predominantly Spanish-speaking territory. Having worked for the Puerto Rico House of Representatives years ago, the story seemed to me a belated April Fool’s joke but it appears to be true.
There is an remarkable sanction imposed recently by the Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board which suspended lawyer Wayne Hartke of Reston for intoxication and disruptive behavior. What makes it notable is that the conduct did not occur with clients or in court or even in a firm. It occurred as a continuing legal education seminar. Hartke will be suspended for six months and have to enroll in a two-year treatment program.
The U.S. Postal Service not only has issues with a new limited edition “Forever” stamp honoring Maya Angelou with a quote written by another author but it doesn’t appear particularly disturbed about it. The stamp above features the quote “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” However, that is a quote from child book author Joan Walsh Anglund.
There is an interesting ruling out of Manhattan where Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper has allowed nurse Ellanora Baidoo to serve her elusive husband, Victor Sena Blood-Dzraku (left), with divorce papers via a Facebook message due to her husband’s lack of a current address. Cooper noted in his opinion: “The past decade has also seen the advent and ascendency of social media, with websites such as Facebook and Twitter occupying a central place in the lives of so many
people. Thus, it would appear that the next frontier in the developing law of the service of process over the internet is the use of social media sites as forums through which a summons can be delivered.”
There is an interesting study out in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that has concluded that the majority of people taking antidepressants may not actually have depression. The study found that more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of people taking antidepressants did not meet the criteria for major depressive disorder, or clinical depression.
Russia’s culture minister Vladimir Medinsky on Sunday fired the director of a Siberian theater. Boris Mezdrich as director of the Novosibirsk State Opera and Ballet Theater had committed the sin of staging Wagner’s opera “Tannhauser” which offended the powerful Russian Orthodox Church. It is the latest example of the rollback on free speech under the Putin regime.
The Rolling Stone magazine has retracted the University of Virginia rape story that we have previously discussed. While agreeing with a Columbia Journalism School review of major flaws in reporting and editing, the publication has refused to fire anyone. The writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, will continue to write for the publication despite quotations from an editor that she was repeatedly asked to confirm the story with key witnesses who were never interviewed. The review concluded that the failure “may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations.”
Continue reading “Rolling Stone Retracts Rape Story But Refuses To Fire Anyone For The Story”
We have yet another disgusting video of Islamic fighters systematically destroying their own history and culture in the name of Islam. The latest images are from Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which is in an area controlled by the Islamic State. We have previously discussed videos of these fanatics destroying museums and ancient cities as offensive to their Islamic values.
Continue reading “Video Shows Islamic Fighters Destroying The Ancient Hatra Site”
Below is my Sunday column in the Washington Post on Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Within minutes of the signing of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a chorus of condemnation arose across the country that threw Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his colleagues back on their heels. The response was understandable, though somewhat belated. After all, both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama supported similar language that is found not only in federal law but the laws of 19 other states. While broader than most of these laws, the premise of the Indiana law was the same: citizens could raise religious beliefs as a defense to governmental obligations or prohibitions.
For those of us who have been warning for years about the collision of anti-discrimination laws and religious beliefs, the current controversy was a welcomed opportunity to have this long-avoided debate. Yet, we are still not having that debate. Instead, there is a collective agreement that discrimination is wrong without addressing the difficult questions of where to draw the line between the ban on discrimination and the right to free speech and free exercise. That includes the question of why only religious speech should be protected in such conflicts, as noted in the column. Yet, there is a reluctance of acknowledge good faith concerns among religious people in fear of being viewed as bigoted.
There has been a great deal of heated rhetoric in this discussion that avoids many of the more difficult questions. For example there is the common criticism that these bakers cannot assert their religious beliefs when it is really their business that is being required to take certain actions. However, last year, the Supreme Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. expressly found that such businesses do have religious rights (as they do speech rights, as recognized in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission). In 2014, the Court ruled that “no conceivable definition of the term includes natural persons and nonprofit corporations, but not for-profit corporations.” Likewise, despite arguments that the federal RFRA is narrower because it references only conflicts with the government (and not other private parties in the Indiana law), some courts have ruled that it can be used in civil litigation.
As expected, the response of some commentators was to condemn even raising these question of free speech by saying that it saying that it equates gay couples to the KKK or Nazi sympathizers. Even when admitting that they do not have an answer for the free speech question, the attack is on the raising of such questions. There are legitimate concerns over allowing businesses to refuse to prepare products deemed offensive due to symbols or language, but we cannot really address these issues if people are denounced for just raising the conflicts and discussing conflicts. It results in a circular position that we can discuss the question of the protection of offensive speech but not if the question is offensive to discuss. This is an unfortunate trend where difficult questions are avoided by attacking those raising them as presumptive racists or homophobes etc for even raising different types of speech or views. It is a rather odd position to be placed in given my writings for decades supporting gay rights and same sex marriage. More importantly, when discussing the limits of free speech, one necessarily discusses the broad spectrum of free speech examples, including offensive speech. There is not an effort to equate gay marriage symbols or language with anti-Semitimic symbols or language. Obviously, as a supporter of same-sex marriage, I reject that notion. However, the point is that some people hold opposing views from my own. Some of those views I find deeply offensive. If we want to discuss the growing limitations on speech, we need to explore the spectrum of different forms of speech. That is what CNN did in the interview when raising the “KKK cake.” CNN was not saying that such a view is equally valid on the merits. It is ridiculous to say that, by discussing what different people consider offensive, we are saying that all of those views are valid or correct. It is not enough to say that such people are simply wrong or there is clearly a difference in the “real” offensiveness of the messages. Indeed, in some ways, such critics are answering the question by saying that some views are simply not viable because they are wrong. That is saying that society will draw the line on what speech can be the basis for refusing services and what cannot be such a basis.
The column below raises the question of line drawing and states that I would prefer an absolute rule requiring all services. However, I could not support such a rule if we are going to strip protection from “wrong” views while allowing others to refuse on the ground that other symbols or language are clearly offensive. One variation on the “No Cake For You” approach below was suggested by a colleague who said that we could allow bakers and others to refuse any offensive language — religious or non-religious — unless the government could show that the baker would have sold the cake but for the status of the prospective buyer (e.g., gay or straight, Jewish or not, etc.). Thus, as long as the basis of the refusal was the actual language or symbols, it would be protected as an expressive act.
As I say in the column, I continue to struggle with drawing this line. None of the options are particularly satisfying. However, I do think that we have to have a real dialogue on this issue free of low-grade efforts to those on the other side as bigoted for wanting to discuss the range of free speech conflicts. The point is that, when dealing with the question of the right to refuse to create offensive symbols or language, one must address the fact that there are a wide array of such conflicts that can arise among different religious, cultural, or political groups. One does not have to agree with their speech to raise the question of their right to engage in such speech. Indeed, the first amendment is designed to protect unpopular speech. We do not need it to protect popular speech. Some may ultimately decided that no business can refuse any message under the “Let Them Eat Cake” approach despite rulings like Hobby Lobby and Citizens United. However, the first step is to have the debate, preferably free of personal attacks or attempts to silence those who would raise the speech of other unpopular or offensive groups.
By Mike Appleton, Weekend Contributor
“Property does become clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it of public consequence and affect the community at large. When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good, to the extent of the interest he has thus created. He may withdraw his grant by discontinuing the use, but, so long as he maintains the use, he must submit to the control.”
-Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113, 126 (1876)
The events in Indiana and Arkansas during the past week contain at least two lessons. The first is that hypocrisy is like teeth; most of us have some and exposure usually produces a nasty bite. Second, interminable debates on the topic of comparative victimology are, well, interminable. Neither lesson is useful. So perhaps it is time to take a deep breath and engage in a bit of dispassionate reflection on the scope and application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Let us begin with the oft repeated claim that a person operating a business ought to have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason (or no reason at all). Whatever merits this claim may have as a philosophical position, it has never found approval as a principle of law. The reason is that historically the common law has recognized that there are categories of commercial enterprise of sufficient importance to the general welfare to mandate their availability to all members of the public on equal terms. Continue reading “What RFRA Hath Wrought”
By Cara L. Gallagher, weekend contributor
On Monday, the Supreme Court nixed a request from three teenagers to hear their case against Morgan Hill School District. The court’s denial to hear Dariano v. Morgan Hill ended an effort to overturn a lower court decision that supported the school’s right to prohibit the boys’ from wearing t-shirts displaying the American flag on Cinco de Mayo. This case reflects a consistency in the Court’s history of showing great deference to school administrators and districts since the landmark student speech case Tinker v. Des Moines (1969). Mary Beth Tinker and her brother won the right to wear anti-Vietnam armbands in school in that case. Tinker would be the high point for young people, the last celebrated Supreme Court victory for youth free speech advocacy. Since then, federal court decisions, or the lack of intervention by refusing to hear cases like Dariano, have resulted in significant restrictions on student speech in public schools. Forty-six years later, expressions of speech are more nuanced, savvier, and the topics just as controversial. If there was ever an audience of people hungry to see a contemporary free speech case at the Supreme Court, it’s high school students.
One came close to a Supreme Court appearance last year.
Continue reading “Free speech in public schools misses another shot at the SCOTUS”
Happy Easter to all of our bloggers and readers that are celebrating today. The bunny came to the Turley house and left baskets overflowing with chocolates and candies. He even left a basket for Luna overflowing with dog treats.