Tag: first amendment

A Canadian man faces jail time for merely disagreeing with two feminists on Twitter.

10:16 am

Fascism: A Canadian man is now threatened with six months in jail because he dared to post on Twitter his disagreement with two feminist activists.

Read the article. These feminists fit the description of fascists so closely we could put their pictures in the dictionary next to the word.

Note also that this is in Canada, which does not have a first amendment comparable to what we have here in the U.S. Then again, the first amendment here in the U.S. is increasingly being ignored by those in power, so I’m not sure what advantage it gives us at the moment.

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Court rules Obamacare requires nuns to buy contraceptives

11:54 am

You must comply! A federal appeals court has ruled that Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic chartable organization run entirely by celibate nuns, must provide contraceptives, under the Obamacare mandate, to their employees or face IRS fines.

The court’s ruling ends the temporary injunction that prevented the Little Sisters from being fined while awaiting a final court decision. They either must get that injunction reinstate by a higher court or abandon their work. As they stated today,

As Little Sisters of the Poor, we offer the neediest elderly of every race and religion a home where they will be welcomed as Christ, cared for as family and accompanied with dignity until God calls them to Himself.  We have done this for over 175 years because of our faith in God and our vocation as Little Sisters of the Poor.

But now the government demands we choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith.  We cannot do that and we should not have to.  It is a choice that violates our nation’s historic commitment to ensure that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God’s calling in their lives. But the government forces us to either violate our conscience or take millions of dollars that we raise by begging for the care of the elderly poor and instead pay fines to the IRS.

We are not seeking special privileges.  The government exempts huge corporations, small businesses, and other religious ministries from what they are imposing on us–we are simply asking to carry on our mission to serve the elderly poor as we have always done for 175 years.

Once again, the Obama administration, through its use of Obamacare, demonstrates its totalitarian nature. You must do as they demand, regardless of your religious beliefs.

Rather than abandon their work, the Little Sisters should continue doing it while also defying the law and the courts. Let the Obama administration and the IRS put some nuns in prison while bankrupting their organization. Only by doing that will there be any chance of continuing their work by getting this monstrous law changed, or repealed.

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The future roadmap of religious persecution in America

10:13 am

The article describes the inevitable legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. Some key quotes:

The first attacks will be on small churches that don’t have the wherewithal to mount a legal defense against the IRS and against civil lawsuits. They will be confronted with a loss of their tax exempt status and the personal bankruptcy of their corporate officers if they do not allow homosexual weddings. The effect this will have on small congregations will be profound. Some will become “house churches”, much like what you see in Communist China. Many, however, will fall in line. The larger Protestant denominations will toe the line. Some, like the Episcopalians, are only nominally Christian as is. The Lutherans (ELCA variety) have had actively homosexual clergy for some time as have the Methodists. The two big targets for the government will be the Southern Baptist Convention — which is a voluntary association of independent churches — and the Roman Catholic Church. The pressure will ratchet up on them until they are confronted with confiscation of property or “discovering” hidden meanings in Scripture that reveal homosexual marriage has always been allowed.

Churches won’t disappear but the churches that you will see on Main Street will be peddling a warmed over and watered down version of Christianity that is a combination soup kitchen and twelve step program sans belief in a higher power. Real Christian churches will go underground but it will be a rearguard action. Christianity that chooses to ignore the very Word of God is not a religion, it is a cultural artifact.

The real price will be paid by those of us who are not actually employed by our churches. Organizing to resist homosexual marriage will bring down the FBI upon you as surely as if you were organizing a KKK chapter and with more alacrity than if you were an al Qaeda cell or blocking a polling station in Philadelphia. If you work for a large corporation or are in the military you can look forward to having your affirmatively support of homosexual marriage becoming an item on your performance appraisal. [emphasis mine]

And then there’s this:

Rather consistently local judges and others have said that religious liberty does not prevail for individuals who own businesses or engage in commerce. In effect, you can have religious liberty, so long as you don’t own a business. Here too there are legal nuances, but the fundamental trajectory is clear: Anyone who opposes the celebration of same-sex unions and lifestyle are going to be increasingly entangled in the courts and face more and more charges. [emphasis mine]

Read it all. If you don’t believe it will happen you are living in a fool’s paradise. Either Americans stand up now and defy the tyrannical strain that is beginning to dominate our society, or we will find all of our remaining but shrinking freedoms gone.

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Supreme Court voids local sign ordiance

1:59 pm

Some good news: In a 9-0 ruling the Supreme Court struck down a local Arizona town’s ordiance that restricted a church’s right to post signs about its upcoming events.

What is most encouraging about this ruling is that all nine justices agreed to it. This suggests that there is a strong majority on the court that supports freedom of speech, and will not look kindly at the Obama administration’s effort to impose its will on the speech and activity of religious and conservative organizations.

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Judge rules the arrest of a citizen during a local meeting illegal

10:26 am

The first amendment is such an inconvenient thing: A judge has dismissed criminal charges filed against a man who was arrested 40 seconds into his five minute allotted speaking period during a local council meeting when he asked the selectmen to resign.

“The arrest of (Clay) is found by the court to be a violation of (Clay’s) First Amendment right of free speech,” [the judge] Carroll wrote. The arrest amounted to “content-based censorship as the defendant was acting within the very rules promulgated by the (selectmen) as well within his constitutional rights under the U.S. and N.H. Constitutions,” Carroll wrote. Clay “complied with the board’s own protocol, established by the board for public input.”

I have embedded the video of the incident below the fold. Watch it. Essentially, the council didn’t like what Clay was saying and decided to shut him up. Granted, he was being very harsh, but tough, that is what free speech is all about. Note also that though they tell him they have ended the public input session, after he is arrested they then resume public input.

Everyone of these elected officials should be out of office. They have no understanding that their role as elected officials is to be the servant of the people, not their overlords. When a citizen is unhappy, you listen to them, and address their concerns as quickly as possible. As the least, you let the citizen air his or her complaints fully, and loudly, and then if you find they do not have merit, move on.

These thugs clearly do not understand these basic aspects of American culture.
» Read more

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State Department proposes fines for writing about guns without permission

11:31 am

New regulations being proposed by the Obama administration would require anyone writing on the web about guns to get approval first from the State Department or face serious fines.

In their current form, the ITAR do not (as a rule) regulate technical data that are in what the regulations call the ‘public domain.’ Essentially, this means data ‘which is published and which is generally accessible or available to the public’ through a variety of specified means. These include ‘at libraries open to the public or from which the public can obtain documents.’ Many have read this provision to include material that is posted on publicly available websites, since most public libraries these days make Internet access available to their patrons.

The ITAR, however, were originally promulgated in the days before the Internet. Some State Department officials now insist that anything published online in a generally-accessible location has essentially been ‘exported,’ as it would be accessible to foreign nationals both in the U.S. and overseas.

With the new proposal published on June 3, the State Department claims to be ‘clarifying’ the rules concerning ‘technical data’ posted online or otherwise ‘released’ into the ‘public domain.’ To the contrary, however, the proposal would institute a massive new prior restraint on free speech. This is because all such releases would require the ‘authorization’ of the government before they occurred. The cumbersome and time-consuming process of obtaining such authorizations, moreover, would make online communication about certain technical aspects of firearms and ammunition essentially impossible. [emphasis mine]

In your wildest dreams did you ever think we’d come to a time in the U.S. where the federal government thought it acceptable to require citizens to get their permission before they could publish something?

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A teacher’s Title IX inquisition

10:30 am

Link here. She was attacked and subjected to significant legal harassment, merely because she wrote an op-ed on sexual politics on campus, and some people didn’t like her opinion. They then used the badly written Title IX law, passed in 1972 by Congress to “deal with gender discrimination in public education”, to get her, and her supporters, charged and interrogated repeatedly by lawyers.

Her accusers were allowed to remain anonymous. She was denied the right to use a lawyer. The specific charges against her were never provided in writing. And they were apparently based merely on the fact that her op-ed offended her accusers.

Read it all. Since the attacks against her were instigated by the students, who represent our future, this story will give you a good sense of where our society is heading. And it ain’t paradise.

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“These are the brownshirts of our time.”

7:45 pm

Link here.

Read it. Though the author describes an event that happened in 2003, it shows us ugly circumstances that have now become quite common, because as she says, “the ‘good’ people did nothing to disperse the hostility.” And unless we do something about it now — stand up to these fascist thugs who hide behind nice-sounding ideologies — what is happening today in the worst places in the Middle East is only showing us what things will be like here in another dozen years.

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Speak free or die

3:29 pm

The rage builds:

Oh, you came so close. For so long, we wrongly imagined that your lies about racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and all the rest were just part of some big misunderstanding. Sure, we knew you were wrong, that we were being falsely accused, but we thought you were at least sincere, if misguided. Except now the mask is off.

Racism? You don’t care. Ask Clarence Thomas about your love of minorities who don’t toe your line.

Sexism? You don’t care. Ask any of Bill Clinton’s victims, who you eagerly sacrificed to save your progressive knight.

Homophobia? Poverty? Corporate abuses? Civil rights? You care nothing about any of them. You leftists just want control. You trash gays who get between you and power, and ignore the gays being murdered in the Middle East because that oppression isn’t useful to you. You keep the poor poor and addicted to your paltry handouts so you can maintain a docile voting bloc. Corporate abuses are terrible right up until the big companies start paying off your candidates. And civil rights? Gimme a break. The First Amendment stopped being useful back in January 2009, so now you’re eager to drown it like Mary Jo Kopechne.

We’re done. You fascists, whether Islamo- or liberal, want to shut us up? Then you better be ready to rumble, because submission isn’t one of the options. We will speak free or die.

Read it all. It illustrates how alike the Islamic fanatics and the liberal fascists have become. There really is no difference, and if freedom-loving Americans bow to either or both they will then turn on themselves in a new war of hate.

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Students vote to ban Chick-fil-A from Johns Hopkins campus

10:24 am

Fascists: In an 18-8 vote, the Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins has voted to ban Chick-fil-A from opening a franchise on campus because of the conservative opinion of its CEO towards same-sex marriage.

Most of the news reports on this story have focused on the reasons the students voted for the ban. Having such a restaurant on campus will cause students to experience “microaggressions” that will make them feel uncomfortable. We can’t have that!

I want to focus on the vote itself. That such a large majority of the student government body supports the idea that it is okay to squelch someone’s business merely because of a political disagreement speaks volumes about our future, and it is not good. These are the people that will be running society in a few years, and it is clear that they believe oppression and the use of force against their opponents is appropriate. The cultural norm for them is not to debate their opponents but to smash a boot into their face.

Based on this, if you think modern American culture is getting oppressive now, just wait. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

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Another global warming advocate demands the arrest of skeptics

10:32 am

Fascist: Continuing in what is becoming a pattern for the left, another global warming advocate has called for the arrest of anyone who dares question the existence of human-caused global warming.

You can read his entire rant here. This quote is especially telling:

Those denialists should face jail. They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics.

Let’s make a clear distinction here: I’m not talking about the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right, and climate change is a socialist United Nations conspiracy foisted by a Muslim U.S. president on an unwitting public to erode its civil liberties.

You all know that man. That man is an idiot. He is too stupid to do anything other than choke the earth’s atmosphere a little more with his Mr. Pibb burps and his F-150’s gassy exhaust. Few of us believers in climate change can do much more—or less—than he can.

This is why, at this time especially, I refuse to cede any further power to government and its allies. A significant percentage of our population is in favor of using that power to oppress their opponents. Give them any more power and they will do it.

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Americans rally to support persecuted Christians

10:27 pm

In less than two days, an independent fund was set up and raised almost $850,000 for the owners of the Christian pizza parlor in Indiana that was forced to close because of death threats from the left wing community.

Friends of the Washington state florist whose entire life savings might be confiscated by the state for refusing to participate in a homosexual wedding have also now created another site to raise money to help her. They have already raised over $50,000.

Both funds are important for many reasons, the most important of which is each fund makes it clear that Christians of good conscience are not alone, that they can stand for their beliefs and not be abandoned and destroyed. There are thousands of people who will rally to help you.

Let me add, as a Jew, this thought on this first night of Passover. Each year on Passover, Jews gather for their Passover Seder to retell the story of their enslavement in Egypt and their escape to freedom. In doing so, you are supposed to imagine yourself as a slave who is freed. As the Haggadah, the book that outlines the Seder ceremony, states, “In every single generation, each individual is obligated to think of himself as one of those who came out of Egypt.”

The Jewish faith also emphasizes that we must thank God each time for bringing us to freedom. I say that God only helps those who help themselves. It appears that in America today, in the 21st century, we are obliged to do the same again.

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