Dutch populist Geert Wilders acquitted of hate speech

Dutch politician Geert Wilders was acquitted today of hate speech for his criticisms of Islam.

Not surprisingly, the Islamic whiners who never seem to notice the tens of thousands killed by Islamic terrorists were very unhappy about the ruling.

Farid Azarkan of the SMN association of Moroccans in the Netherlands said he feared the acquittal could further split Dutch society and encourage others to repeat Wilders’s comments. “You see that people feel more and more supported in saying that minorities are good for nothing,” Azarkan said. “Wilders has said very extreme things about Muslims and Moroccans, so when will it ever stop? Some will feel this as a sort of support for what they feel and as justification.”

Minorities groups said they would now take the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, arguing the ruling meant the Netherlands had failed to protect ethnic minorities from discrimination. “The acquittal means that the right of minorities to remain free of hate speech has been breached. We are going to claim our rights at the U.N.,” said Mohamed Rabbae of the National Council for Moroccans.

Of course, the murder of innocents by Islamic radicals has nothing to do with the distrust people have of Islam. That’s totally irrelevant, and must be ignored.

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Conservative lawmakers push for pledge cutting spending across the board, capping government spending, and requires a balanced budget amendment.

Conservative lawmakers are coalescing behind a pledge to cut spending across the board while requiring a balanced budget amendment.

This story once again suggests to me that the political winds are definitely favoring big cuts in government spending. Woe to the politician of either party who ignores these winds.

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Police yesterday shut the Jefferson Memorial to clear out a crowd challenging a ban on dancing inside the monument.

Police yesterday shut the Jefferson Memorial to clear out a crowd protesting the arrest of five people last week for dancing inside the monument.

One man took to the microphone to demand that all intrusive government policies be overturned, specifically mentioning the need to repeal β€œObamacare.” Medea Benjamin [of Code Pink] clarified that some participants also wanted a single-payer system, but that all agreed on the right to dance at the memorial.

On some issues we all agree.

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Provincial official in Algeria orders churches to close

Tolerance in the Middle East: A provincial official in Algeria has ordered seven Christian churches to close.

In 2008 the government applied measures in accordance with Ordinance 06-03 to limit the activities of non-Muslim groups, ordering the closure of 26 churches in the Kabylie region because they were not registered. No churches had been closed down since then. [Protestant Church of Algeria] members argue, however, that the law is impossible to implement as officials refuse to register their churches despite efforts to comply. They said the authorities apply the law when they want to harass churches.

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Kennedy’s Moon speech, May 25, 1961

An evening pause: Fifty years ago tomorrow, on May 25, 1961, John Kennedy spoke to Congress about the world situation and the war between freedom and tyranny. “We stand for freedom,” he began, and finished by committing the United States to sending a man to the Moon and bringing him back safely by the end of the decade.

The clip below shows the first five minutes of that speech. It makes it clear that Kennedy’s main point was not to send the United States to the stars, but to stake out our ground in the battle for freedom and democracy. I will write more about this tomorrow.

To see the whole speech, go to the following link at the Miller Center for Public Affairs.

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