Tag: oppression
A 10-year-old is suspended for pointing a “level 2 lookalike firearm,” which happened to be his finger.
Why I would never send my kids to public school: A 10-year-old is suspended for pointing “a level 2 lookalike firearm,” which happened to be his finger.
I don’t know which is stupider, suspending him for going “bang-bang” with his hand, or the school calling his hand “a level 2 lookalike firearm.”
The inspirational life of the oldest Holocaust survivor whose genius for the piano enabled her AND her son to survive a Nazi death camp.
The inspirational life of the oldest Holocaust survivor whose genius for the piano enabled her and her son to survive a Nazi death camp.
It can happen here. We must remember, it can happen here.
After six months of trying and failing to cancel an unwanted Obamacare health insurance plan, a Florida man is now considering shutting his bank account to prevent the plan from automatically withdrawing money from his account.
Finding out what’s in it: After six months of trying and failing to cancel an unwanted Obamacare health insurance plan, a Florida man is now considering shutting his bank account to prevent the plan from automatically withdrawing money from his account.
Remember, the Democrats in Congress and President Obama refused to negotiate any changes to Obamacare in October, thereby forcing the government shutdown. They also were the only ones to vote for Obamacare. These facts must not be forgotten come November.
Just hours before she was scheduled to testify about IRS harassment of conservatives, the head of a conservative organization was called by an IRS official, telling her that her organization’s tax exempt status had finally been approved, after waiting more than 3 years.
Working for the Democratic Party: Just hours before she was scheduled to testify about IRS harassment of conservatives at a House hearing, the head of a conservative organization was called by an IRS official, telling her that her organization’s tax exempt status had finally been approved, after waiting more than 3 years.
As she noted, “And this is not political?”
The spoiled rotten kids of DC’s elite.
The spoiled rotten kids of DC’s elite.
The article documents in great detail how elected officials use their power to get great jobs for their kids. Not surprisingly, since this article is written by a modern journalist who favors this corrupt elitism, it starts out by describing the corruption involved with this favoritism, then shifts into finding excuses for it.
A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.
Bad news for free speech: A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.
The court’s ruling: School administrators can force you to remove your American-flag tee if the alternative is a classmate punching you in the face. That’s because, per the Supreme Court, students don’t have the same free speech rights at school that adults do on other public grounds. At school, the name of the game is order and instruction; you’re entitled to free expression to the extent you don’t interfere with those goals, but once you do, the school’s entitled to limit your expression accordingly.
In other words, a bully can get the principal’s office to silence you by promising to beat your ass if they don’t.
This is, as Eugene Volokh notes, a classic “heckler’s veto” in that it rewards a violent actor by suppressing the speech that’s irritated him instead of punishing him for being violent.
So, according to this ruling, the only people who will have free speech will be those willing to threaten, and even use violence. A foolish and mindless ruling, if I ever saw one.
Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.
Working for the Democratic Party: Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.
And what about the new official policy?
The tax agency has floated an outline of new rules that would limit those groups’ ability to host candidates, distribute voter guides or conduct voter registration or get-out-the-vote drives. A three-month period for public comments closed on Thursday, and the IRS had posted more than 115,000 comments. They were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposed rules, with both conservative and liberal-leaning groups saying the rules would stifle their ability to participate in important public debates.
One joint comment, filed by a dozen groups ranging from the immigration advocacy America’s Voice and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to the right-leaning American Conservative Union and tea party-aligned FreedomWorks, asked the Obama administration go back and start over on the rules.
The Obama administration’s Interior Department has decided let the people in a remote Aleut community die rather than risk the lives of the birds in a wildlife refuge.
The Obama administration’s Interior Department has decided to let the people in a remote Aleut community die rather than risk the lives of the birds in a wildlife refuge.
The Aleuts have tried for three decades to get permission to build a 11 mile long gravel road to connect their village with the nearest hospital. The federal government has repeatedly denied them permission because part of that road would go through a wildlife refuge. During that time 19 people have died because they couldn’t get to adequate medical facilities due to the lack of transportation. The quote below from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is quite amazing, revealing starkly how little she (and the rest of the Obama administration) cares about the lives of others.
During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital. But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge. “She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” Democratic state Rep. Bob Herron told a local television station. “You could have heard a pin drop in that gymnasium.” [emphasis mine]
The comments about this story on this webpage are right on the money. The Aleuts should build that road anyway, and dare the federal government to do something about it.
But I like this comment the best: “I’ve been saying for years that progressives LOVE humanity–they just hate actual people.”
The harassment of conservatives by the IRS was instigated by Democratic elected officials in plain sight for all to see.
Working for the Democratic Party: The harassment of conservatives by the IRS was instigated by Democratic elected officials in Congress and the White House, in plain sight for all to see.
Read it. The author documents numerous examples of Democrats from 2010 to 2013 demanding the IRS do exactly what it ended up doing, harass and shut down the activities of their opponents. And they did it publicly, with pride. And they are still doing it.
Modern cop to person filming him: “You just lost your free speech rights!”
Modern cop to person filming him: “You just lost your free speech rights!”
Watch the video at the link. Quite offensive.
Just in case Harry Reid might actually be listening, here is another round of Obamacare train wrecks.
Just in case Harry Reid might actually be listening, here is another round of Obamacare train wrecks.
The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.
The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from a 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.
This article also explains why the couple has remained anonymous, as they fear the federal government is now going to step in and steal their find from them.
An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.
An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.
As is typical for today’s leftwing political correct journalism, this reality is attributed not to communism but to vague generalities. North Korea is a “rogue state” or “North Korea stands alone as an unusually isolated nation, where residents live under a familial dictatorship,” statements that embarrassingly avoid the truth. The rulers of North Korea, like Cuba, refused to reject communist when the Soviet bloc fell in 1991 and have thus left their countries and the people trapped within them poor and bankrupt.
Aren’t you glad that today’s Democratic Party here in the United States considers leftwing dogma the height of progress and a goal worthy of emulation?
“So we do live in a jackboot society.”
“So we do live in a jackboot society.”
The video, also below the fold, is long but worth watching to the end. It will send chills up your spine. You will also never want to visit Electra, Texas.
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Two publishers of scientific journals have withdrawn 120 papers which they have discovered were nothing more than computer-generated gibberish.
Layers and layers of peer-review: Two publishers of scientific journals have withdrawn 120 papers which they have discovered were nothing more than computer-generated gibberish.
Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers. …
Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement” (see ‘Computer conference welcomes gobbledegook paper’). A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv. SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes. SCIgen’s output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.
The real story here is that many of these gibberish papers were peer-reviewed by actual scientists who are supposedly experts in their fields and should have spotted the fakery immediately. That they didn’t suggests another level of corruption. Either they don’t really bother to peer review the papers they are asked to peer review, or they knew what was going on and were part of the game.
That this kind of stuff happens repeatedly in many fields of science should make us all very skeptical of any controversial scientific claim that carries with it any political component. This doesn’t mean that all published material is fake, only that we must not take anything on faith. Controversial results had better be bomb-proof before we accept them willingly.
Harry Reid insists that “all” of the Obamacare horror stories “are untrue.”
Modern American intellectualism: Harry Reid insists in a speech on the Senate floor that the Obamacare horror stories being reported daily “are all untrue.”
He then attacks the sick patients themselves for telling these stories, calling them liars.
I call this modern American intellectualism because it jibs with the typical level of open-mindedness seen in modern intellectuals when it comes to climate science and any data that throws doubt on the theory of global warming.
Contempt for the law
As I am taking a break from sightseeing and visiting relatives here in Israel, I thought I’d answer a question raised by one of my regular readers, Patrick Ritchie, in a comment a few weeks ago.
Patrick had noticed what seemed a contradiction in my posts and asked me about it. First, he noted my disgust at university officials in South Carolina who were refusing to follow a law requiring them to teach students about the Constitution because they thought it “inconvenient.”
Patrick wrote, “In the post above you state, ‘It might inconvenient, and the law itself might be foolish, but it isn’t up the administrators to decide this. They should be fired.'”
He then cited an earlier post in which I celebrated the Connecticut gun owners who were refusing to register their weapons under that state’s new very oppressive and senseless gun control law. There I had written that “When the law has contempt for freedom, then the only answer is contempt for the law.”
Patrick then asked, “I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on how, in your mind, these two situations are different. More specifically: when (if ever) do you think it is OK for citizens to disregard or break the law?”
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Former IRS official Lois Lerner has been recalled to testify again before a House committee in regards to the IRS’s harassment of conservatives.
Former IRS official Lois Lerner has been recalled to testify again before a House committee in regards to the IRS’s harassment of conservatives.
She took the fifth in her first appearance, while also making a statement announcing her innocence. According to numerous experts, this statement voided her ability to take the fifth. There might or might not be fireworks on March 5, when she has been called to return, as she will likely do nothing but cite the fifth amendment in her answers. How the congressmen respond to her non-answers will be interesting.
A scientific study has found that name-calling and trolling on websites polarizes thought and blocks the ability of reasonable people to focus on the actual facts.
A scientific study has found that name-calling and trolling on websites polarizes thought and blocks the ability of reasonable people to focus on the actual facts.
This confirms my reasoning for banning such uncivil behavior here on Behind the Black. If we want to understand the issues the first thing we need to do is to make sure we are discussing the issues, reasonably, sanely, and politely. Strong words are okay, but they better be backed up with facts and solid reasoning.
Posted from Alon Shvut, West Bank, Israel, local time 1 pm.