Pardon our language. Ordinarily I wouldn’t post something like this but I have made an exception. After viewing the video, where do you think this violence too place? California? Europe? Chechnya? Old Miss? Bad flash back from an acid trip in the 60s?
Nope. It happened here in DC and the toad behind the confederate flag is the white supremacist dude from Towson State University. Lots of things happen during DC protests. However, given the age and the student status of some of these protesters, it stands to reason that it is only a matter of time before these kinds of tensions end up on college campuses.
The toad reports that someone threw urine on him. Ewwwww. That is also unacceptable. As offensive as the toad is, he has the right to free speech like anyone else. throwing anything on him was a breach of something, not sure what. It certainly pushed free speech over the line. From my vantage point, it was an assault and battery.
I don’t think there are any good guys in this mix but there might be a few innocent by-standers. There was supposedly only 1 arrest. You have to be kidding me. That came close to becoming a melee.
The notice in the Fairfax Station Patch on Tuesday was brief, but to Laurie Jaghlit it felt like a punch in the gut.
At the next meeting of Republican Women of Clifton, a guest speaker would discuss “the treatment of women in Islamic society and how she believes the Hijab is a catalyst for Islamic terrorism.” The Feb. 20 meeting would take place at Fairview Elementary School, five miles from Jaghlit’s house.
Jaghlit, a 52-year-old grandmother who raised nine children in Fairfax Station and Herndon, wears the hijab, or Islamic head covering. She had heard about talks like this in other parts of the country but had never confronted the issue so close to home.
Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the White House’s latest attempt at compromise on contraception, saying it did not adequately accommodate religious organizations that object to covering free contraception in employee health plans.
“Throughout the past year, we have been assured by the administration that we will not have to refer, pay for, or negotiate for the mandated coverage,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement. “We remain eager for the administration to fulfill that pledge.”
Piers Morgan’s outspokenness about gun control has brought about a petition seeking to deport him from the United States.
The petition, which has been submitted on a White House website, has received over 12,000 signatures. (It takes 25,000 before the White House is obligated to address the petition.) The petition was launched by writer Kurt Nimmo. The text reads:
British Citizen and CNN television host Piers Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment. We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.
Morgan has made several forceful attacks on pro-gun advocates in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary.
Most of us aren’t ready to stop talking about the mass murders of Newtown, Connecticut. I have tried to stop and I can’t. I keep thinking guns and mental illness and their life-threatening intersection. Guns and mental illness become the common denominator for all of our mass murders. However, there is a sub layer to all this violence that we also need to talk about.
Video games, movies and music are also a vital part society that is feeding the violence. God only knows what kind of violence is on video games. I won’t look. I pop bubbles and have frogs spit balls in my video games. No one over the age of three likes my games. However, I know they are out there. Video games are very life-like. The people look pretty much like people. How many video kills do we have to do before we are just desensitized and indifferent? At what point can we not come out of our game mode? Where do we draw the line?
Maybe Mike Huckabee needs his back end kicked a time or two. What an outrageous thing to say. To suggest that school prayer would have prevented this carnage is insensitive and obnoxious. Huckabee certainly doesn’t have the corner on God any more than the rest of us.
As parents, siblings and friends struggle to make meaning out of that which makes no sense, someone coming along with a “prayer in schools” political message is just cruel. He is moving along into Westboro Baptist territory on this one.
Speaking of those agents of Satan, I hear that Westboro plans on putting in an appearance at some of the children’s funerals. If the crowd turns on them and beats them I simply would not care. I guess we need to have Veterans motor cycle groups out in full force. What a shame.
Meanwhile, shame on Mike Huckabee. I expect better from him. He is an educated man. He knows all children aren’t of the same faith. I am so disappointed in Huckabee.
Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have targeted the Westboro Baptist Church after the hate-mongering, quasi-religious group announced plans to protest a Sunday night vigil in remembrance of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, 20 of whom were just 6 and 7 years old.
On Saturday, Westboro Baptist Church spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper tweeted that the group would be protesting the vigil in Newtown, Conn., to “sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment.”
ARLINGTON, Texas — NBC broadcaster Bob Costas used his halftime segment on “Sunday Night Football” to advocate for gun control following this weekend’s murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, causing an immediate debate on social media.
In a segment about 90 seconds long, Costas paraphrased and quoted extensively from a piece by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock.
After praising the column, Costas said: “In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? But here, wrote Jason Whitlock, is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Belcher shot and killed Perkins, the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, on Saturday morning, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and committed suicide in the parking lot of the team’s practice facility.
It seems that far too many people are now calling for Costas’ ouster. Apparently some feel that that their 2nd amendment rights are more important than Bob Costas’ 1st amendment rights. Predictably, Fox News was alive with the glimmer of hope that Costas would be fired as they baited their viewers to react. Host after host examined and discussed Costa and Jason Whitlock, who was heavily quoted by Costas, from every angle.
A federal judge has ordered Metro to begin displaying controversial advertisements on Monday, even though the transit agency has worried the ads might incite violence.
The decision came Friday in a one-page order granting an injunction to a pro-Israel group that sought to force Metro to display provocative posters in four stations. The posters, purchased by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), will say: “In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”
Westboro Baptist Church protesters will soon be severely limited in their ability to disrupt military funerals, after Congress passed a sweeping veterans bill this week that includes restrictions on such demonstrations.
According to “The Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012,” which is now headed to President Barack Obama’s desk, demonstrators will no longer be allowed to picket military funerals two hours before or after a service. The bill also requires protestors to be at least 300 feet away from grieving family members.
This aspect of the legislation was introduced by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who, at the urging of a teenage constituent, proposed new limitations on military funeral demonstrations as a response to a 2011 Supreme Court case that ruled such actions were protected under the First Amendment.
Let’s hope the work of this Congress puts some teeth in the law and that Westboro will not longer be able to manipulate and bastardize the First Amendment to dispense their hate, often at a military family’s most vulnerable time. Westboro will continue to act inappropriately, for sure, but at least our military families will be insulated by a layer of protection. There are just some lines people shouldn’t cross and this is one of them, in my opinion.
Its good to see that Congress can finally get something done.
Penn State University global warming researcher Michael Mann is lawyering up to counter attacks by conservatives who have referred to him as the “Jerry Sandusky of climate science.”
Mann’s lawyer wrote Friday to National Review Executive Publisher Scott Budd demanding a retraction and apology for a July 15 blog post that compares Penn State’s mishandling of years of child sexual abuse to the university’s investigation of “Climategate.”
The charged reference to Sandusky, the convicted child molester and former assistant coach, originated with a July 13 post on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s blog, OpenMarket.org. The National Review Online post quoted from a now-deleted line by CEI’s Rand Simberg, who wrote: “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia announced Monday that its executive director, Kent Willis, will be leaving his position when a replacement is found.
In a statement, the ACLU said Willis announced his intent to leave last fall and that the organization began a nationwide search for his successor. Willis was hired as associate director in October 1987 and promoted to executive director in March 1989.
“I could not have had a more rewarding job,” said Willis in the statement, “and I am proud to have been part of the ACLU’s many accomplishments and enormous organizational growth over the last 25 years. But something told me it was time to move on.”
Willis really has been there a long time. The Times Dispatch has a list of his major accomplishments. People seem to think that the ACLU picks up every liberal gig it can. That isn’t always the case. Several of Willis’ accomplishments caught my eye:
Defended the right of Jehovah’s Witnesses to avoid government loyalty oaths, the right of ministers to use public parks for baptisms, the right of Wiccans to perform marriage ceremonies, and the right of churches to feed the homeless.
Launched a successful challenge to the widespread practice of local governments opening their meetings with sectarian prayers (Currently litigating such a case in Pittsylvania County.).
I sure didn’t know all that happened under bullet #1. Who would grouse about churches feeding the homeless? What loyalty oaths must we take? I can’t think of any. I also didn’t realize Wiccans can perform marriage ceremonies although it makes perfect sense that they can.
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Ken Webber still proudly flies his Confederate battle flag with the word “Redneck” emblazed across it from the CB antenna on his pickup truck. He hopes that his lawsuit in federal court will get his job back driving a school bus.
“What Mr. Webber is encapsulating is a Jeffersonian agrarianism, where you stand up for your rights,” attorney Thomas Boardman argued Thursday in U.S. District Court. “If we are going to say someone cannot identify as a redneck, what else can we not identify ourselves as?”
Attorneys for bus company First Student Inc. and the Phoenix-Talent School District countered that Webber himself said that the flag, a gift from his father, represented his “redneck” lifestyle, where family comes first, and people enjoy hunting, fishing and driving four-wheel-drive trucks through the mud. They said the flag did not represent any kind of political speech that would be protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The arguments came on a motion filed by the bus company and the school district asking the judge to decide the case based on legal arguments without going to a trial before a jury. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke took the matter under advisement. No trial date has been set.
Sometimes people have a representative but its in name only. Perhaps this blog can get the attention of Rep. Connolly. There is nothing like a little embarrassment to bring everyone front and center.
Colonel Morris Davis, better known to all of us at Moonhowlings as Moe Davis, once again attempts to get hold of his Congressman for some assistance with his on-going problem–that problem being he was denied his first amendment rights by his government. You don’t have to agree with Moe, but damn he does have a right to his opinion.
Here is his correspondence, again, to his congressman, Gerry Connolly, who is pretending Moe does not exist.
Dear Rep. Connolly,
I have tried several times over the past two years to contact you by email and regular mail to request your assistance. To date, I have not received so much as a form letter reply. [Although I did get an out-of-office email response once in Dec. 2009 from Mr. Fields.] Copied below is an article published earlier today on CBSNews.com that explains why I have tried to contact you repeatedly the past two years. As one of your constituents, I again ask for your assistance.
Here’s the First Amendment, in full: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Those beautiful words, almost haiku-like, are the sparse poetry of the American democratic experiment. The Founders purposely wrote the First Amendment to read broadly, and not like a snippet of tax code, in order to emphasize that it should encompass everything from shouted religious rantings to eloquent political criticism. Go ahead, reread it aloud at this moment when the government seems to be carving out an exception to it large enough to drive a tank through.
Yesterday Hank Williams Jr. appeared on The View, sporting a Mickey Mantle baseball shirt. He made an even bigger fool of himself and showed little class. He did explain that he didn’t think of Obama as Hitler, he was making an analogy. He has another analogy about ‘kicking cow turds.”
He now is blaming ESPN and Fox News for his troubles and feels he was set up. He is calling for a boycot of ESPN and Fox News in his new song that came out at 3 pm 10/10/11,” Keep The Change.”
You know, I never ever thought I would be in the position of defending Fox News. I guess this is just one of those times. Williams might as well be saying the Devil Made Me Do It.
I am also getting over the gross out of Williams wearing the shirt of St. Mickey Mantle. Some things are sacred! The Mick wouldn’t like this.
