Bad Precedent Set By Seattle Mayor And Washington Governor Issuing Orders Prohibiting Government Employees Travelling On Business To Indiana

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

Mayor Ed Murray
Mayor Ed Murray

In the wake of the State of Indiana passing into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—a law crafted to allow businesses to curtail services to customers based upon religious objections—Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and later Governor Jay Inslee issued executive orders prohibiting government funded travel of employees to Indiana in protest.

The proffered reasons of these executives is to voice protest in that Indiana’s statute is incompatible with either state anti-discrimination laws or is in alignment with the political values of these local governments.

Orders of this type are actually counter to the idea of sovereignty of each state and interfere with the judicial, executive, and legislative processes that are inherently reserved to the voters and citizens of, in this case, the state of Indiana.

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Some Canadian Restaurants’ Skimpy Dress Codes Could Be Discriminatory If Not Equally Applied To Men

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

Andrea Mottu
Andrea Mottu

A legal analysis in Canada of their anti-discrimination laws indicates that discrimination might occur if women are to wear revealing clothing and men are not similarly attired.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal held that a dress code requiring a waitress to wear a bikini top during a nightclub’s Hawai’ian themed event was discriminatory because men were not required to wear a male specific analog of her clothing.

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Malaysia Charges Cartoonist With Sedition For Criticizing Its Courts

125px-Flag_of_Malaysia.svgPrisonCellWe have yet another attack on free speech and the free press from one of our allies. Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque, better known as Zunar, has been hit with nine counts of sedition for tweets critical of the country’s judiciary. It is an outrageous prosecution brought under a law that defines sedition as any comment that promotes hatred toward the government. Zunar previously defended his art against claims that it is defamatory. Zunar faces up to 43 years in jail if found guilty on all nine charges.

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Survivors of Paris Attack Sue Media For Revealing Their Hiding Place In Live Coverage

"A Revolutionary Committee during the Terror." An engraving of 1798 with a negative portrayal of policing functions during the Terror carried out by radicalized sans-culottes in Paris.There is an interesting lawsuit in France by six survivors of the January attack by Islamic extremist Amedy Coulibaly at the Hyper Casher Jewish supermarket in Paris. The six people were mortified after learning that French media broadcasted their hiding location in a refrigerator while Coulibaly was looking for hostages and threatening to kill them all.

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Study: Global Deaths Due To Air Pollution Are Substantially Higher Than Previously Estimated

220px-AlfedPalmersmokestacksA new study has raised the disturbing question of whether we are substantially under-estiminating the annual death toll from air pollution, which currently stands at around 3.4 million a year. The reason is the failure to measure the lethality of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), emitted during fossil fuel burning.

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Georgia Teen Who Received Heart Transplant Goes On Crime Spree Before Dying In High-Speed Chase

anthony-stokes_c0-17-640-390_s561x327Anthony Stokes became a cause célèbre in 2013 when he was turned down for a heart transplant because of his “history of non-compliance” from juvenile delinquency to low grades to other bad habits. A public campaign led to a reversal of the decision and he received the heart transplant recently. He is now dead after going on a crime spree, including the attempted shooting of an elderly woman and running over a pedestrian.

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New York Detective Will Not Be Fired Over Tirade Captured on YouTube

Screen Shot 2015-04-02 at 8.18.30 AMDetective Patrick Cherry, a member of the elite Joint Terrorism Task Force, will not be fired over his notorious scene with a New York cabbie who honked at him for attempting to park on the West Side Highway without signaling. The tirade was captured by a sympathetic passenger of the Uber driver and posted on YouTube. The video is below. The police has said that the use of the car’s lights and sirens — and the abusive yelling at the cabbie — is not a firing offense.

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Good Grief: Indiana Woman Drives Less Than Mile To Lit Parking Lot When Pulled Over By Police . . . Officer Charges Her With Felony Resisting Arrest For Not Stopping Immediately

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIndiana resident DelRea Good probably thought she was doing what police often recommend. When she saw the lights of Porter County Sheriff’s Department Patrolman William Marshall, she opted not to stop on a dark country road at night but drove to a lit area less than a mile away. For that decision, Marshall charged her with a felony of resisting arrest.

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Tennessee Students Suspended After Posting Mug Shot Of Teacher on Instagram

TiffanyJacksonThree Tennessee middle school students have been suspended from Highland Oaks Middle School in Memphis in the latest example of schools policing social media, a trend that I have criticized in the past. In this case, the students posted a mug shot of teacher Tiffany Jackson after she was arrested for driving on a suspended license. This is a publicly available photo and it is obvious why students would send it to each other on Instagram. Yet, the school suspended the students anyway.

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Florida Parole Officer Charged After Parolee Films Alleged Rapes In Home

7259483_GThere is an interesting case out of Coral Springs, Florida where a woman on probation allegedly videotaped her rape by former parole officer Zachary Thomas Bailey, 50. The brazen criminal conduct alleged in the case has led police to search for more victims. It may also raise collateral civil litigation over whether the state officials knew or should have known of the actions of this man.

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Word on the Street: Obama Advisor David Axelrod Sued By Fellow Political Advisor Over Claim In Book

9k=220px-David_AxelrodThere is a bizarre legal tiff between political operatives in Philadelphia over who came up with an attack strategy to save the career of Democratic Mayor John Street in 2003. Street was implicated in a “pay-to-play” scandal. While he was not charged, a slew of his associates and fundraisers were. Now, Philadelphia campaign consultant Frank Keel has sued Obama presidential campaign adviser David Axelrod over Axelrod’s claim that he came up with the attack strategy that saved Street. Keel insists that Axelrod is taking credit for the idea of attacking the George W. Bush Administration to spin the scandal. While that strikes me as a pretty obvious strategy, it appears a defining moment that both men want to claim. Keel also sued Penguin Random House.

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Cake Wars: Is the Indiana RFRA Coverage Skirting The Difficult Questions Of Conflict Between Anti-Discrimination Law and Free Exercise?

Wedding_cake_with_pillar_supports,_2009This week, I appeared on the CNN special addressing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana. While I have been a long-standing supporter of same-sex marriage, I raised concerns over the dismissive treatment of religious concerns over the scope of anti-discrimination laws and how they may curtail free exercise of religion. I have previously written both columns and academic work on this collision between the two areas of law. In the program, I raised an example of the growing conflicts that we discussed earlier on this blog of a bakery that refused to make a cake deemed insulting to homosexuals while other bakers are objecting to symbols that they view as insulting to their religious views. This issue also came up with an advocate for LGBT rights on the show:

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Washington Post: President Obama’s Pledge of “Unprecedented Openness” Violated By Closed, Secretive Administration

220px-Washington_Post_buildingPresident_Barack_ObamaWe have previously discussed the criticism of reporters, newspapers like the New York Times, and international groups that President Obama has run one of the most hostile Administrations in history to press freedom and public openness. Now that Democratic stalwart, the Washington Post, has joined in the chorus of critics, detailing the secretive, almost Nixonian culture of the Obama Administration in a new article.

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Pennsylvania Partner and Former County Bar Association Charged With Forgery and Unauthorized Practice of Law

Scales of JusticeThere is an interesting case out of Pennsylvania where a former partner at a Pennsylvania law firm and former county bar association president has been revealed as never having attended law school. Kimberly Kitchen, 45, allegedly forged her law license as well as her bar examination results and her attendance at Duquesne University. Kitchen is now facing criminal charges, though some have objected that she is being let off lightly.

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