07/21/15
Tag Archives: First Amendment
07/21/15
Michiganders Protest ‘Planned Parenthood Baby Parts Video’
By: Izzy Lyman
Great Lakes state residents and lawmakers are reacting angrily to an undercover video shot by citizen journalists affiliated with the Center for Medical Progress. The 8-minute videotape features Dr. Deborah Nucatola seeming to affirm that Planned Parenthood (Nucatola’s employer), the reproductive rights organization, participates in the illegal trafficking of aborted fetal body parts and tissue for scientific research.
Paul Chatfield, the brother of state representative Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, took to the streets of Petoskey, Michigan in protest this past weekend. About sixty people joined his demonstation, which was held outside the offices of Planned Parenthood of Northern Michigan. Most protestors bore signs, like “Life – the first Inalienable Right.”
Chatfield, who describes himself as a college student with a conscience, said that his initial response to news about the shocking disclosures on the videotape was a flip one.
“I thought it was a joke. We’re not that bad,” he said.
But when Chatfield heard the comments made by Nucatola – who quotes a price of $30-$100 per part to a pair of actors pretending to be representatives of a human biologics company – he realized it wasn’t the stuff of science fiction.
“We’re that bad!” exclaimed Chatfield.
“[The comments on the video] go against everything America stands for,” complained George Horniman of the Emmet County Right to Life organization.
The non-profit, which was the branchild of Margaret Sanger and is controversial for its abortion counseling services, has received federal dollars since 1970. Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report for 2012-2013 reports that the group was awarded over $540 million in government grants for FY 2013.
“It is sad that the government keeps funding Planned Parenthood,” noted Rachel Evans a 22-year-old woman who is pregnant with her first child (whose mother is pregnant with her 11th child), who heard about Chatfield’s protest via local talk radio.
Mitten state lawmakers have also weighed in on the videotape controversy without mincing words. State Senator Phil Pavlov, R-St.Clair issued a press release: “I am calling on the Michigan departments of Health and Human Services and Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to launch formal investigations into Planned Parenthood affiliates across Michigan to determine whether or not any Michigan-based facilities have participated in the horrifying sale of babies’ body parts.”
“We must make sure this is not happening in Michigan, and that if it has, those responsible are brought to justice,” added Pavlov.
Congressman Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, chair of the U.S. House panel on Energy and Commerce, has promised to investigate the claims made by Planned Parenthood’s Nucatola, describing the video as “abhorrent.”
Paul Chatfield injected a spiritual perspective into an already heated debate.
“Government should reflect God’s laws; this is in direct defiance of the Bible,” he said.
Racist, Pro-Nazi Roots of Planned Parenthood Revealed
NEW VIDEO HORROR: Senior Director Suggests ‘Less Crunchy’ Technique
Defector blows whistle on how loophole opens door to fetal sales
07/20/15
America, Stop Allowing the Steamrolling.
By: Lloyd Marcus
The gay population is only 2%. http://bit.ly/1faCE6v Rush said despite their 2% number, they are succeeding in everything they want. He said the majority is just sitting idly by letting it happen. Rush asked his audience of millions, why? “Why is there no uprising against it…why is there no uprising in support of these businesses being shut down?”
An evangelical minister called into Rush’s radio program with an answer. He explained that Christians realize they are engaged in a spiritual battle. He said the reason why Rush is not seeing outward protests is because Christians are fighting back by praying about the Left’s attacks, bullying Christians and forcing its agenda on all Americans.
Folks, timely divine interventions have made me a huge believer in the power of prayer, but I believe God expects us to do our part. The Bible says, “Faith without works is dead.”
Imagine praying for God to give you a job. You do not educate yourself, send out resumes or respond to want ads. You just sit there in your room praying, expecting God to send you a job.
Christian bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein are being persecuted for standing up for their right of the “free exercise of religion.” Oregon state official Brad Avakian threw the Kleins Constitutional rights out the window.
Avakian decreed that the Kleins can publicly speak about the case, but he implemented a gag order preventing the Kleins from publicly expressing their view of marriage.
Can you believe that folks? What country does this guy think we live in? Aaron Klein disobeyed Avakian’s outrageous unconstitutional decree. Aaron said publicly that he believes marriage is between one man and one woman. http://bit.ly/1K9kxZv
Allow me to clarify an important point. It is being spun that the Kleins refuse to serve homosexuals. Not true. The lesbian plaintiff is a longtime customer of the Klein’s bakery. When asked to bake a cake for her wedding to a woman, the Klein’s had to decline to remain true to their religious conscience.
Brad Avakian is Oregon’s Bureau of Labor & Industries Commissioner who has decreed that for not betraying their Christian faith, Aaron and Melisa Klein must pay a lesbian couple $135k in damages. Folks, check out this kangaroo court list of alleged damages – “acute loss of confidence,” “high blood pressure,” “migraine headaches,” “pale and sick at home after work,” “resumption of smoke habit,” “weight gain,” and “worry.” No folks, this is not the script of a SNL or Comedy Central skit. This absurd list of alleged damages is real. http://fxn.ws/1D1r17x
Though the minister reported that Christians are praying about the Left’s bullying rather than outwardly protesting, I suspect another reason for Christians’ silence is intimidation. A tactic of the Left is to brand all opposition hate which sends many running to the tall grass in fear.
For example, I proposed patriots coming to Oregon for a rally expressing massive support of the Kleins. Numerous “smart people” cautioned me not to do such a rally because the Left will call it a hate rally.
Okay, so we should allow Christians/Americans to be bullied because the evil bias mainstream media, Democrats and other Leftists will gang up on us and call us names?
Folks, in case you have not noticed, this Leftist invasive army marching across our country occupying everything in sight has gotten out of hand. For crying out loud, the Left wants to ban the term, “husband and wife”. http://bit.ly/1I5PEYg
Lincoln Nebraska schools will no longer refer to the kids as boys and girls because it is not gender inclusive. They must be called “purple penguins.” http://fxn.ws/1HiJ9LS
Leftist media are publishing articles claiming that homosexual marriage is superior to heterosexual. http://politi.co/1dQS1Ql
A Leftist article says homosexuals are superior parents. http://bit.ly/1JUNcnG
A shocking video exposed that Planned Parenthood is harvesting and selling aborted baby body parts. While sipping red wine and eating a salad, an abortion doctor was caught cavalierly explaining how they are careful not to crush the most prized body parts. She, disrespectful of human life, mentioned recently doing a “17 week-er” (aborted a 17 week old baby). Disturbed by her callousness, Dr Ben Carson said at 17 weeks a baby is responsive to its environment. Shamefully, the Left rallied to defend the stone-cold abortionist while demonizing the people who exposed the evil scandal. http://bit.ly/1HybJeu Dr Carson said it is tragic that opposition to a woman killing her baby is deemed (by Leftists) hate for women.
We are fast approaching the day when Christian ministers who preach the Bible will be arrested. http://bit.ly/1gDP9s5
Pushing back against the Left’s tyrannical evil is not easy and could cost you everything.
For the past week or so, this little chorus keeps popping up in my brain. “I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.”
Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee
07/20/15
Wesley Clark Calls for Internment Camps for “Radicalized” Americans
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
This is a horrific idea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for hunting down and dispatching terrorists and bad guys on our turf. But internment camps? Let’s just stop for a minute and wonder why Wesley Clark has done an about face so suddenly. Anything they can use in the name of national defense like internment camps can also be used against everyday Americans at their discretion. The internment camps in WWII were shameful and wrong. The same would be true here. If you have to deport people or prosecute them, that is one thing. But to round up everyone you deem ‘radicalized’ is quite another. What does that even mean to Clark? Color me highly suspicious of this and shocked that it is being floated out there.
From The Intercept:
Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” In an interview with MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts in the wake of the mass shooting in Chatanooga, Tennessee, Clark said that during World War II, “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”
He called for a revival of internment camps to help combat Muslim extremism, saying, “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
The comments were shockingly out of character for Clark, who after serving as supreme allied commander of NATO made a name for himself in progressive political circles. In 2004, his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was highly critical of the Bush administration’s excessive response to the 9/11 terror attacks. Since then, he has been a critic of policies that violate the Geneva Convention, saying in 2006 that policies such as torture violate “the very values that [we] espouse.”
In a memoir written the following year, he also famously alleged that the White House under Bush had developed a massively imperialistic plan for the Middle East, which would see the administration attempt to “take out seven countries in five years,” beginning with the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Earlier this year I spoke with Clark at the annual Lewis and Clark University Symposium on International Affairs in Portland, Oregon. The subject of our discussion was how to deal with the potential threat of foreign fighters returning from armed conflicts abroad. At the time, Clark spoke out strongly against “the politics of fear” and eroding democratic institutions and norms, while reiterating his criticism of the excesses committed by Bush-era neoconservatives under the banner of fighting terrorism.
But on Friday, he was advocating the revival of a policy widely considered to be among the most shameful chapters in American history: World War II domestic internment camps. Aside from the inherent problems in criminalizing people for their beliefs, Clark’s proposal (which his MSNBC interlocutor did not challenge him on) also appears to be based on the concept of targeting people for government scrutiny who are not even “radicalized,” but who the government decides may be subject to radicalization in the future. That radicalization itself is a highly amorphous and politically malleable concept only makes this proposal more troubling.
“We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning,” Clark said. “I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists.” And he added that “not only the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.”
Despite an outcry about his comments on social media, Clark has not responded publicly. As of Monday morning, his latest tweet was from Friday, encouraging his followers to watch his interview.
Wesley Clark is a political hack. His suggestion here should chill every American right to the bone. He’s not just suggesting it for America either… he’s suggesting it be done globally. Listen to the video closely. He’s suggesting people who are likely to be radicalized should be imprisoned. This is unconstitutional and barbaric. He’s suggesting here that we suspend the Constitution (even more than they already have) and build and populate gulags. I can’t believe what I’m hearing and seeing. Things are hurtling out of control in America. Americans better stand up and stop this or we are going to see a fascist tyranny take hold here and fast. Internment camps? What scares me the most is that people on both sides of the political sphere are cheering this on. Unfreaking believable.
07/19/15
Obama’s Diversity Police State and Government Mandated Racism
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Getty Images
Obama has brought racism to a whole new level in our government. It’s breathtaking in scope and breadth. He is solidifying his legacy before leaving office with the unprecedented gathering of information on all of us and how we live to be used in racial databases. Not only does the government already have such databases on police departments, they have created monster ones for almost every area of our lives to be used to forward “racial and economic justice” as we have never seen before as a nation. Enforced diversity is racism. Obama is already using the databases against institutions to penalize them and it will get much worse.
In fact, I wouldn’t put it past Obama to have other databases floating around out there having to do with demographics on gun ownership, religion and political affiliations. But what has just come to light as fact is that he’s got people tallying everything to do with race and mining data on American’s health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods and how children are disciplined in public schools. All of this is to show how ‘hateful’ and ‘racist’ we are as a nation. It creates racism out of thin air and shows it where it never existed. It takes all responsibility from those of color and places it on institutions. It blames repression on an evil white national structure. It’s meant to show how discriminated against minorities are in comparison to whites in every sector of American society.
Not only will this discriminate against whites, it will be a bonanza for attorneys who will make billions off of petty law suits using these skewed statistics as testimony against individuals and businesses in court. As the New York Post points out, these databases will be weaponized against banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.
The data collected will be posted online or hidden away as ammo against those perceived to be in violation of the rules and definitions of The Ministry of Truth. The information and data will never stop being collected. It will be passed onto fellow travelers and will become its own division of the federal government. It will even be used for intelligence purposes against the American people by a brand-spanking new form of the Stasi. “Racial disparities” and “segregation” will be seen everywhere and those who run afoul of the new guidelines will be punished legally and financially.
The magic of these databases is in the skewing of the “analysis” of the data, combined with a shiny new concept, that if you can plausibly “discover” a “pattern” in the data, you can “plausibly” assert that there must exist the intention to create that pattern. And, of course, you can assign any motive you want to that, and the preferred motive du jour is racism. Doesn’t matter whether that’s true, only matters that dot-gov can allege it is. The real cause is, of course, irrelevant. Have a ghetto full of thugs, resulting from bureaucratic meddling and condition-free handouts? Find that a high percentage of the free-ride yo-yos do a lot of misbehaving and wind up in jail? No problem: just “discover a pattern” of disproportionately high incarceration of the thug demographic, assert RACISM! and punish the non-thug population.
Housing Database
One of the most ridiculously titled databases I have ever heard of is the prized invention of HUD – the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database which was debuted this month with the intent of racially balancing the nation (I kid you not) by zip code. Every neighborhood from coast to coast will be mapped according to four racial groups: white, Asian, black and Hispanic. The “geospatial data” will be published pinpointing racial imbalances. Data is subjective by the way… it is malleable and can pretty much mean whatever you want it to for whatever purpose you intend it for. And guess what? If you live in an area that is more than half white, you are going to get classified and ordered to rectify it or have your funding pulled. That’s called racial extortion.
Cities and towns who take money from the government are about to be told whether they are overly segregated or not. If the government decides they are, then they will be strong armed into constructing more subsidized housing in the midst of established neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that people chose to live in for varying reasons. They hold mortgages there and as the government drives property values down, these people will find themselves trapped and unable to sell their homes. Crime will rise exponentially and as Obama strips more and more Americans of their guns, the murder and death rates will rocket as well. Poverty and chaos will start to be the norm and America will begin devolving into a third world nation. This directly violates freedom of assembly by the way, which by definition is the right to hold public meetings and form associations without interference by the government. The association of those you choose to be your neighbors will be forever constrained by what Obama is doing. Inner-city minorities will be moved into predominantly white areas courtesy of HUD’s maps. The only places exempt from this demographic reconfiguration will be places like, oh… Galt’s Gulch.
All aspects of towns and cities will come under review by HUD using these databases. Transportation sites, schools, parks and even supermarkets will be dictated to on the basis of proximity to minorities. If the agency’s social engineers rule the distance between blacks and these suburban “amenities” is too far, municipalities must find ways to close the gap or forfeit federal grant money and face possible lawsuits for housing discrimination. These same towns and cities will now allow civil rights activists to have access to these databases and maps and they will be part of city planning to re-engineer neighborhoods under new community outreach requirements.
By now it has probably not escaped your notice that this demographic manipulation will have the same electoral impact as gerrymandering, but using the clever device of salting regions with enough demographic mass to tip the scales instead of redrawing the voting district lines. The eventual objective is that it won’t matter where you live, your vote will have been severely diluted. And to see how that’s mechanically implemented, let’s have a look at mortgages.
Mortgage Database
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is headed by Mel Watt, who has had solid Socialist/Progressive/Marxist ties throughout his political career. Watt was the Congressional Black Caucus leader as well. So, I’m not surprised at all that he’s heading the construction of a database for racially balancing home loans. The National Mortgage Database Project will compile 16 years of lending data, broken down by race and will be organized with everything from individual credit scores to employment records.
In this data dump, all lines of credit will be included for an individual. Student loans, credit cards, loans, mortgages… anything reported to a credit bureau will find its way into the database. When this is done, it will make the IRS databanks look amateurish in scope. The database will include other items of personal interest such as what assets you hold, what debts you have paid and haven’t and that payment history, whether you have ever had a bankruptcy or default, your interest rates and even how big your home is. This info will be shared with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They are notorious for going after lenders who are not seen as lending easily enough to minorities. No real justification is given for all of this other than it is for research purposes and policy making. CFPB Director Richard Cordray explained in a recent talk to the radical California-based Greenlining Institute: “We will be better able to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns.” In America these days, everyone and everything is racist and open to attack by the Marxists.
Credit Database
Next comes a database that will track credit card transactions. Up to 900 million accounts will be snagged, designated and sorted by race. That’s about 85% of the credit card market and is intended to show discrimination on interest rates, charge-offs and collections. I bet it will also track and eventually determine who gets what credit lines, etc. Preferential treatment will be given to minorities almost certainly.
You might find yourself applying for a loan, a card, or some other line of credit, and be turned down for being too white.
Employment Database
A rule was also just issued that now requires all regulated banks to report on the hiring of minorities to the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. That name just makes me cringe. It will collect reams of employment data, broken down by race, to police diversity on Wall Street as part of yet another attempt to scream racism and ensure preference towards minorities.
School Database
This one just burns me. The mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection project is dictating that the Education Department gather information on student suspensions and expulsions by race, from every public school district in the country. Districts that show disparities in discipline will be targeted for reform. In other words, if they don’t conform, their funding and licensing will be yanked. Punishment for not obeying will become the norm especially in the schools. It’s already occurring in the schools with disastrous and violent results. As I have said many, many times… get your kids out of the public school system no matter what it takes and do it now.
The edu-Nazis are demanding to know how many blacks versus whites are enrolled in gifted-and-talented and advanced placement classes. Because, you know, it just isn’t fair. If these classes are shown to not have enough blacks and Latinos, they will be investigated and perhaps sued by the government. The only people doing well off all this nonsense are the lawyers who will sue from both sides of the fence and collect money all around. Racism is profitable after all. And racism will be claimed and proven regardless of whether it exists or not. Numbers are funny like that, they can say whatever you need them to.
Social Security
Stay with me here, it looks like I’m mixing topics, but I’m really not. Social Security is a huge database. One that touches every person in the US. Obama is now instituting a new gun ban that will affect everyone connected to Social Security. This is obscene, unethical and unconstitutional in the extreme. This is definitely one of the most evil and despicable moves I have seen to date. Basically, it comes down to this, either you can have your Social Security, which you have paid into your whole life, or you can have your guns. The day after a massacre in Chattanooga, Tennessee is committed by a radical Islamist, where four Marines and a Navy officer are gunned down, Obama made this move. The timing is not a coincidence. This will effect 4.2 million Americans. If they deem you of “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease,” they will come after your weapons. And this is an issue that the NRA bought into years ago and I warned about. Allowing a carve out for mental illness has allowed the eradication of our Constitutional rights. Those are very, very vague definitions and will be used as fodder against us, trust me. The ban also covers anyone who has their finances handled by other members of their family if they are on Social Security. Have you had enough yet? Because, I know I have.
Obama is going after the largest segment of the population – retiring baby boomers. He’s using a tactic that was used by Hitler in Nazi Germany and by communists in the Soviet Union. It’s the use of psychiatry as a soft enforcement arm of the federal government. The Nazis began a huge propaganda campaign against mentally and physically disabled Germans. They did not fit into the Nazi stereotype of the pure Aryan, that is physically fit with an obedient mind to serve the Reich. In addition, they were viewed as a burden on society, as they were unable to work and drained resources from the state. Sound familiar? Now, Obama is making similar moves against the retired and elderly. You can either starve or be a casualty of crime in Obama’s new and improved regime. Either way, the feds win. Either you die off saving them money and resources or you are disarmed and stand a good chance of being eliminated by criminals sanctioned by the State. This is massive extortion against Americans, attempting to force them into relinquishing their Second Amendment rights and into giving up their guns. To this I say,“Aw, nuts!” Social Security is being used as one more database to ensure that everyone is equally helpless and the funds therein, that you and I have paid for, will be meted out depending on compliance and perceived need.
Never in the history of the United States have these types of intrusive databases existed. I would not be surprised if these are being housed in those NSA facilities in Utah. This much data is just staggering. Obama has instituted a diversity police state, complete with race cops and a legion of civil rights lawyers. He has mandated racism from the White House. Anything touched by federal funding will come under the sway of what amounts to a race mafia. The data will be used to justify reparations and wealth redistribution as we have never seen before. It will also be used to keep Marxists in office indefinitely. These databases will be used to crush our Constitutional rights in every way imaginable. Data is power – the power to rule ruthlessly.
“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
– Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution
07/9/15
We Must Rally Behind the Kleins
By: Lloyd Marcus
Sorry folks, I just can not let this go. Every fiber of my being screams out in outrage. I don’t know what to do, but We the People must do something! Our side is composed of Conservatives, Christians and true patriots with brilliant minds. Surely, we can come up with a solution to defeat a handful of evil Leftist arrogant tyrannical bullying Oregon government officials.
In case you were abducted by aliens and just returned to earth (I watched the movie Close Encounters yesterday), Christian bakery owners, Melissa and Aaron Klein, were fined $135K and state ordered not to speak publicly about it. http://fxn.ws/1D1r17x The Kleins’ crime is refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding.
Now get this folks, the Kleins served their lesbian client on numerous occasions. But, the Kleins’ religious faith forced them to decline from doing anything in support of a behavior that is contrary to the Word of God. That is the Kleins and our first Amendment Right. http://bit.ly/1HN6nPV
Leftists have masterfully entrenched the absurd claim that not supporting a behavior is the same as “discrimination” against a person. Oregon officials figuratively told the Kleins screw your rights; comply or suffer economic death.
Who are these Oregon officials who think they can give the Constitution and 40 million Christians the finger and get away with it? Brother and sister patriots, we can not let this go unabated; literally stand by and watch Christians slaughtered right before our very eyes.
Donald Trump said his rising presidential poll numbers confirm America’s “silent majority”. Rush Limbaugh asked why are we not seeing proof of their existence; push back against SCOTUS redefining the thousands of years old definition of marriage, the bullying of the Kleins and so on?
Explaining his point, Rush cited when Obama sent bus loads of illegals to Murrieta, California. Local residents rose up in protest and would not allow the buses to unload. http://bit.ly/1Hgcskr Why are we not seeing that kind of resistance against the Left’s government minion’s full court press, no-holds-barred assault on our freedom?
I will not give the ministers’ names because I think it is unproductive to beat up on people on our side. Focus on defeating our Nemesis, not each other. In response to SCOTUS unlawfully and outrageously cramming same sex marriage down America’s throats, I heard a few TV preachers say let’s not over react. It is just the world acting like the world.
It felt like the preachers were conceding the point, advising us to speak gently about the topic. Let’s just keep our beliefs safe and warm within the walls of our churches. Well guys, the Left “ain’t” gonna allow Christians to do that.
When a reporter asked a homosexual activist attorney will there be a “ceasefire” now that they have been given the right to marry, the attorney said absolutely not. She said that while they respect religious rights, they will continue to fight for gays to have the cakes and flowers they want. Do you see the insidious crafty way the attorney solidified the Left’s determination to force Christians to act against their faith? Who in the world is stopping gays from having the cakes and flowers they want? Nobody. The Totalitarian attorney is really saying they will not rest until every Christian is government mandated to fully embrace homosexual behavior.
Rush quoted this famous chilling poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller.
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – Because I am not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – Because I am not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – Because I am not a Jew.
They they came for me –and there was no one left to speak for me.”
What am I saying? I am saying if we passively allow the Left to destroy the Kleins, we are next!
I thought another “Dan’s Bake Sale” http://bit.ly/1goxlBl style rally in Oregon might be in order for the Kleins. Imagine, multiple thousands showing up in support of the Kleins and protesting the Left’s unconstitutional tyranny. We would need someone with a big platform like Rush to pull it off.
As I stated earlier folks, I prayerfully covet your ideas and solutions. All I know is We the People can not simply stand idly by and allow what is happening to the Kleins go unabated. Quoting heroic Todd Beamer, “Let’s Roll!”
Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee
06/6/15
Goodbye to the First Amendment
Hat Tip: BB
06/5/15
The Global Warming Jihadists Seek to Silence the Dissenters
By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze
“The world must not belong to those who slander the prophets of Global Warming, Climate Change, or Climate Disruption.”
So said Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in a fatwa issued in the Washington Post.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivers a speech on the Senate floor on May 18, 2015. (Image Source: YouTube screengrab)
OK — perhaps that was not what he said verbatim, but it might as well have been.
Whitehouse intimated that racketeering charges be considered regarding Big Oil’s support of research challenging the supposed climate change consensus.
Without a hint of irony given the nature and activities of the climate change movement, Whitehouse compared the oil industry – which after the American people will be most harmed by regulations putatively relating to climate — to the RICO-violating tobacco business:
The Big Tobacco playbook looked something like this: (1) pay scientists to produce studies defending your product; (2) develop an intricate web of PR experts and front groups to spread doubt about the real science; (3) relentlessly attack your opponents.
In a point almost beyond parody, Whitehouse relies on a report by a Drexel University professor whose “environmental justice” work has been funded by federal grants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. A nakedly partisan voice, the “Culture and Communication” department professor lists as areas of research and teaching “Critical Theory,” “Social Movements” and “Social Change,” to go along with the more relevant “Environmental Sociology.”
The professor writes that the “climate denial network”
span[s] a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts that aim at undermining climate science.
None of these activities are illegal, or even unethical – though if Whitehouse gets his way the thought crime of challenging global warming may soon be.
All of these activities one can ascribe to the very environmentalist cause to which the professor is a part, except that academics like himself and other global warming proponents are also again showered with government support to the tune of $2.5 billion in research funding annually.
Is government money in the hands of policy advocates any more or less corrupting than private money? Should not private enterprise be allowed to dispense with its funds as it wishes?
One wonders whether Whitehouse has considered the conflict of interest or free enterprise considerations at hand.
Moreover, while Whitehouse questions Big Oil’s motives and actions, he ignores the dubious track record of those on his side of the climate debate.
Specifically, Whitehouse’s recent diatribe was silent with respect to Climategate, the inaccurate models on which the global warming crowd relies and the significant flaws in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Is the senator aware that the science is decidedly not settled — even according to President Barack Obama’s former undersecretary of science in the Department of Energy?
More broadly, Whitehouse’s irresponsible op-ed — which raises the prospect of civil discovery — represents a chilling threat to those who dissent from the orthodoxy of the political elite.
Coincidentally, this chill has already crossed the pond, sending a shiver down the spine of European oil companies.
Just last week, the heads of BP, Royal Dutch Shell and several other executives issued a public letter in which they effectively raised the white flag in the face of governments hell-bent on further regulating their activities in the name of global warming.
Resigned to this fate, the companies called for a rational, clear and consistent set of rules governing carbon credits, and asked for a spot at the table in discussions with the U.N. and other political bodies in order to protect themselves.
It is unclear whether U.S. companies will go the way of their European counterparts. But what Whitehouse’s comments indicate is that our government is at least willing to explore using legal coercion if American enterprises do not submit to the environmentalist party line.
We have seen this “process as punishment” in the private sector, through actions such as climate scientist Michael Mann’s targeting of conservative commentator Mark Steyn and others, but the federal government’s threat to Big Oil would be of an entirely different size, scope and character.
Lost in all this is the fact that the global warming crusade against so-called “denialists” represents another area in which liberal illiberality threatens critical areas of speech.
Recent challenges to free speech whether as a means of enforcing de facto or de jure Shariah slander and blasphemy laws, stifling political messages or now crushing scientific dissent reveal a totalitarian impulse to end debate.
It is particularly galling in this instance because scientific discovery requires constantly questioning assumptions and testing hypotheses. Especially when science is being used as a basis for determining public policy that affects the lives of billions of people and concerns trillions of dollars worth of resources, the burden of proof must be immense.
Proponents of climate change should be providing an unprecedented amount of transparency and welcoming all scrutiny – indeed encouraging competition in the marketplace of ideas — if they really care about getting the science right.
While we can never know the true motivations of a politician, it stands to reason that Whitehouse and many of his colleagues may view environmentalism as as good a justification as any for seizing wealth from one of America’s few remaining booming industries.
If that is the case, all advocates of truth should prefer that he show the same candor as Rep. Maxine Waters, who called for “socializ—,” sorry, “taking over … [with] government running all … [of Shell’s] oil companies.”
While Waters may support violating the Fifth Amendment, it appears Whitehouse would rather challenge the First.
The consequences of the latter would be far more dire than the former.
For if the First Amendment falls, all of the rest shall soon follow.
05/20/15
Hillary Clinton’s Hypocritical and Totalitarian War on Free Speech
By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has suggested that a key litmus test in evaluating prospective Supreme Court appointees would be their willingness to challenge “the right of billionaires to buy elections.”
Presumably, a suitable judge would indicate a desire to overturn the Citizens United decision that struck down a ban on political expenditures by corporations and unions ruled to violate the First Amendment protection of free speech – a case coincidentally centered on Citizen United’s attempt to advertise for and air a film critical of none other than Clinton.
Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters,
Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In light of recent allegations swirling around the presidential favorite, Clinton’s support of such a position is highly ironic.
For while the former secretary of State may oppose the rights of the wealthy to spend money on politics, she seems to have no such concern with the wealthy spending money on the Clinton Foundation and her husband Bill – all while Hillary served in the Obama administration.
Would Clinton seek a Supreme Court justice who would protect the rights of the likes of Carlos Slim and James Murdoch to contribute to the favored cause of a politician and shower the politician’s spouse with millions for speaking engagements?
If so, this apparent hypocrisy can be read in one of two ways:
- Clinton believes that money does not have a corrupting influence so long as it is funneled through “indirect” channels
- Clinton believes that the wealthy and powerful ought to bypass funding elections and simply pay politicians outright.
Appearances of impropriety aside, there are a few substantive questions around political speech that Clinton should be required to address.
Why does Clinton believe that the government has a compelling interest in stifling the political speech of any American, rich or poor?
How does Clinton square her supposed advocacy of human rights with her belief in inhibiting the right to free speech — which facilitates the robust and vigorous debate essential to a liberal society?
More generally, given a system in which millions of dollars are spent on losing causes each election cycle on both the left and right, what have Americans to fear about spending so long as laws are enforced equally and impartially regarding “pay-to-play” schemes and other politically corrupt activity?
Spending is a symptom of our system, and an all-intrusive government its proximate cause.
This is well known to Clinton, who seeks to raise a record $2.5 billion for her own campaign.
She is aware that people spend money on politics because there is the perception that there is something to be bought.
This perception becomes a reality when government creeps into every aspect of our lives, creating an unfortunate two-way street: Individuals and businesses spend money in order to maintain competitive advantages. Politicians in effect extort individuals and businesses by threatening to take away said competitive advantages, or threatening to mitigate them.
If we want money out of politics, the answer is not to stifle speech, but to shrink government.
***
While Hillary Clinton’s aversion to political speech is well-documented, less scrutinized is her support of limitations on speech of an entirely different kind: Religious speech.
During her time as secretary of State, Clinton championed the Organization of Islamic Conference-backed United Nations Human Rights Commission Resolution 16/18, which calls for “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”
Retired Maj. Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon’s leading adviser on Islamic law as it relates to national security, makes a compelling case in his book “Catastrophic Failure” that the resolution is actually a Shariah-based Trojan Horse meant to stifle all criticism of Islam.
Coughlin writes that the Islamic Conference, through the resolution, seeks to criminalize incitement to violence by imposing a “legal standard designed to facilitate the “shut up before I hit you again” standard associated with the battered wife syndrome.”
He convincingly argues that the Islamic Conference desires that…
the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and all other non-Muslim countries pass laws criminalizing Islamophobia. This is a direct extraterritorial demand that non-Muslim jurisdictions submit to Islamic law and implement shariah-based punishment over time. In other words, the OIC is set on making it an enforceable crime for non-Muslim people anywhere in the world—including the United States—to say anything about Islam that Islam does not permit.
For believers in the sanctity of the First Amendment, Clinton’s support of this policy as secretary of State should be disqualifying.
This is made crystal clear when we consider that Clinton has shown her support for the resolution in practice.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, then-Secretary of State Clinton and President Barack Obama felt compelled to film an address for the Muslim world. In the video, Clinton and Obama disavowed any link between the U.S. government and the “Innocence of Muslims” movie that critically depicted Muhammad, which the Obama administration infamously argued prompted the jihadist attack.
Hillary Clinton delivers a message to the Arab world disavowing any ties between the U.S. government
and the “Innocence of Muslims” video following the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack.
(Image Source: YouTube screengrab)
That address we may chalk up to political correctness.
But a related fact we cannot.
In spite of Judicial Watch’s bombshell report indicating that the Obama administration knew about the Benghazi attack 10 days in advance – and knew that it had nothing to do with “Innocence of Muslims” — as revealed in an October 2012 interview with Glenn Beck, Charles Woods, father of slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, told Beck that Clinton had personally vowed to “make sure that the person who made that film [“Innocence of Muslims”] is arrested and prosecuted.”
The “Innocence of Muslims” filmmaker and former bank fraudster Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was later arrested and charged with violating the terms of his probation, spending one year in prison.
Consequently, the U.S. government — as promised by Clinton — in effect enforced Shariah compliance concerning blasphemy consistent with the Islamic Conference-backed resolution, and did so knowing that the film had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack.
Of course, even if a jihadist declared explicitly that he killed Americans because of a film, or a Muhammad cartoon or a burned Koran, it is the jihadist and the jihadist alone responsible for such actions. This point is apparently lost on the U.N.’s policy advocates, who in their victomology fail to realize that they are exhibiting the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to Muslims.
Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be an ardent opponent of free speech, notably with respect to politics and religion.
Her positions are anathema to an America founded on the basis of protecting political and religious dissent, which requires free expression.
Absent such protections, an America under Clinton will look increasingly like the totalitarian Islamic world that she seeks to protect, rather than the Liberal Judeo-Christian America with which we have been so blessed.
Feature Image: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
05/18/15
Did Hillary Clinton support UN policy that would have criminalized Pamela Geller’s ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest?
By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze
Presumed Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was recently asked about the “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, TX that was attacked by two jihadists, and what Mr. Bush thought of event organizer and ardent counterjihadist Pamela Geller.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was not, but a new book gives insight into how she might think about the issue given her support as Secretary of State of a policy put forth by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at the UN that comes into direct conflict with the First Amendment.
NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 26: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C), talks with Laurent Fabius (R), Minister for Foreign Affairs of France, before a United Nations Security Council meeting on peace and security in Middle East on September 26, 2012 in New York City. (Credit: Getty Images)
As Maj. Stephen Coughlin (Ret.) writes in his “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad,” which we discussed at length here, the OIC put forth a “Ten-Year Programme of Action to Meet Challenges Facing the Muslim Ummah in the 21st Century” approved in December 2005, one section of which dealt with “Combatting Islamophobia.”
In this area, the goal of the OIC — which some argue serves as something of a caliphate representing 56 Islamic states and the Palestinian Authority — specifically was to:
Emphasize the responsibility of the international community, including all governments, to ensure respect for all religions and combat their defamation.
Endeavor to have the United Nations adopt an international resolution to counter Islamophobia and to call upon all states to enact laws to counter it, including deterrent punishment. [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
This goal was codified in UN Human Rights Commission (HRC) Resolution 16/18. The resolution entails
Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief…
According to Coughlin — who in addition to being a leading advisor to the Pentagon on Islamic law is a practicing lawyer specializing in international jurisprudence — key to HRC Resolution 16/18 in the eyes of the OIC is the notion of criminalizing “incitement to violence,” as a means of “deterrent punishment.” The OIC desires that:
the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and all other non-Muslim countries pass laws criminalizing Islamophobia. This is a direct extraterritorial demand that non-Muslim jurisdictions submit to Islamic law and implement shariah-based punishment over time. In other words, the OIC is set on making it an enforceable crime for non-Muslim people anywhere in the world—including the United States—to say anything about Islam that Islam does not permit.
The crux of Coughlin’s argument is the language contained in an interlocking web of documents including the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
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Three particular portions of the ICCPR are critical:
- Article 18: (1) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. (2) No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. (3) Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. (4) The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.
- Article 19(2/3): (2) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice. (3) The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
- Article 20(2): Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Coughlin notes that the UN’s “Rabat Plan of Action on the Prohibition of Advocacy of National, Racial or Religious Hatred that Constitutes Incitement to Discrimination, Hostility or Violence: Conclusions and Recommendations Emanating from the Four Regional Expert Workshops Organised [sic] by OHCHR, in 2011, and adopted by experts in Rabat, Morocco on 5 October 2012” incorporates Article 20(2) explicitly by way of a footnote on the very title of the plan of action itself.
In other words, the UN Human Rights Council defines incitement according to ICCPR standards.
The action plan further states that HRC Resolution 16/18 “requires implementation and constant follow-up by States at the national level, including through the “Rabat Plan of Action” which contributes to its fulfilment [sic].”
The plan therefore would appear to serve the ends sought by the OIC in its “Ten-Year Programme of Action.”
Perhaps not surprisingly then, Coughlin reveals that during a 2012 interview, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu argued that the strictures of the ICCPR could be applied via HRC Resolution 16/18:
At this moment we have the Resolution 16/18 which was issued last year at the UN which forms a legal groundwork for criminalizing such actions that could lead to violence … there is in the International Agreement for Civil and Political Rights (Year 1966 Paragraph 18), a provision that would allow us to put limits on the misuse of the freedom of speech including misuse of freedom of press, freedom of thought, the misuse of these freedoms towards others, in a sense that it would encourage to violence and to hatred based on religious belief. [Bold emphasis Coughlin’s, italics ours]
But while the UN in general and OIC in particular make clear their intent to apply the ICCPR as a means of criminalizing acts of “incitement” in context of Islamophobia, the parallelism of ICCPR Articles 19 and 20 to the OIC’s Cairo Declaration is perhaps most telling.
Article 22 of the Cairo Declaration — which defines human rights according to Shariah law — reads:
(a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah. (1) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah. … (c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical Values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith. (d) It is not permitted to excite nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form or racial discrimination.
Coughlin argues that this language is fully consistent with the ICCPR, again leading to the repurposing of the word “incitement” as a means to enforce Shariah compliance. He states:
It is in this context that the OIC’s “test of consequences” narrative is used to turn the meaning of incitement in Article 20 Section 2 [of the ICCPR] on its head by converting it to a legal standard designed to facilitate the “shut up before I hit you again” standard associated with the battered wife syndrome. The OIC’s Fourth Observatory Report on Islamophobia [link ours], released in June 2011, calls for:
d. Ensuring swift and effective implementation of the new approach signified by the consensual adoption of HRC Resolution 16/18, entitled “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief,” by, inter alia, removing the gaps in implementation and interpretation of international legal instruments and criminalizing acts of incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds with a view to curbing the double standards and racial profiling that continue to feed religious strife detrimental to peace, security and stability.
e. Constructively engaging to bridge divergent views on the limits to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, in a structured multilateral framework, and in the light of events like the burning of Quran geared towards filling the ‘interpretation void’ with regard to the interface between articles 19 (3) and 20 of the ICCPR based on emerging approaches like applying the ‘test of consequences.’ [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
Under the OIC’s redefinition of incitement, the “test of consequences” allows a third party to use an utterance as a provocation to violence, which then becomes sanctioned precisely because the third party acted out violently. Moreover, what criminalizes the utterance is the third party’s decision to respond violently. The “test of consequences” institutionalizes the calculated suppression of protected speech by naked use of force. This is institutionalized terrorism comfortably nested in facially neutral language.
What does a UN HRC resolution and the OIC’s interpretation of said resolution have to do with Hillary Clinton?
On July 15, 2011, then-Secretary of State Clinton offered America’s backing to OIC Secretary General İhsanoğlu to garner support for the implementation and ratification of HRC Resolution 16/18. Secretary Clinton stated:
I want to applaud the Organization of Islamic Conference and the European Union for helping pass Resolution 16/18 at the Human Rights Council. I was complimenting the Secretary General on the OIC team in Geneva. I had a great team there as well. So many of you were part of that effort. And together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs. Under this resolution, the international community is taking a strong stand for freedom of expression and worship, and against discrimination and violence based upon religion or belief. [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
Clinton continued:
The resolution calls upon states to protect freedom of religion, to counter offensive expression through education, interfaith dialogue, and public debate, and to prohibit discrimination, profiling, and hate crimes, but not to criminalize speech unless there is an incitement to imminent violence. We will be looking to all countries to hold themselves accountable and to join us in reporting to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on their progress in taking these steps.
America apparently would be subject to this resolution, as Clinton noted that she had asked:
Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, Suzan Johnson Cook, to spearhead our implementation efforts. And to build on the momentum from today’s meeting, later this year the United States intends to invite relevant experts from around the world to the first of what we hope will be a series of meetings to discuss best practices, exchange ideas, and keep us moving forward beyond the polarizing debates of the past; to build those muscles of respect and empathy and tolerance that the secretary general referenced. It is essential that we advance this new consensus and strengthen it, both at the United Nations and beyond, in order to avoid a return to the old patterns of division.
To be fair to Secretary of State Clinton, Coughlin asserts that “it is not clear that the Secretary knows OIC concepts of tolerance and human rights are based on shariah.”
But, Coughlin continues, “she nonetheless committed to the underlying logic of Resolution 16/18.”
Moreover, Coughlin believes that Clinton tacitly recognizes the conflict between the policy she supported at the UN and Constitutionally protected free speech, with Clinton continuing in her 2011 statement:
In the United States, I will admit, there are people who still feel vulnerable or marginalized as a result of their religious beliefs. And we have seen how the incendiary actions of just a very few people, a handful in a country of nearly 300 million, can create wide ripples of intolerance. We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor. [Emphasis Coughlin’s]
These sentiments might help to explain why Secretary of State Clinton along with President Obama felt compelled to send a message to the Muslim world in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi disavowing any link between the U.S. government and the infamous “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube video.
Given what we know, one wonders what Secretary of State Clinton might say about Pamela Geller’s “Draw Muhammad” event.
Note: The links to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.
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