Censorship, blasphemy and hate speech

Lately my time has been spent far more in reading blogs than writing for this one. There is a piece I've been working on that is a rewrite of a four-part series I did a couple years ago, but that work has been slow. Recently the work was put aside altogether as I started following the news on the Muslim front reporting the insanity transpiring over a really poorly produced movie trailer. This is a pot and kettle scenario illustrating well the stupidity of religious fanaticism. 

It prompted me to get started writing a tirade condemning the overreaction and the resulting call to ban speech that is "hurtful" to one religion or another. They call it blasphemy, or hate speech... whatever... I just call it stupid and was going to write a piece on the futility of such laws... but then something else caught my attention... a brewing First Amendment separation controversy in my own home state. 

In the small East Texas town of Kountze they love them some high-school football... and they love them some Jesus too. All of this is well and fine, at least until you start mixing those two up, which in Kountze they've been doing for a very long time. Nothing really unusual in this. Similar stuff happens daily in small towns across the South. For the most part the Christians get away with it simply due to strength in numbers. 

But even in the heavily religious South every now and then someone takes offense at having Jesus served up on the taxpayer's tab... but only recently has anyone done anything about it. Non-Christians in areas where they are outnumbered 12 or 15 to one historically have held their tongue. Saying anything inevitably led to shunning by family and friends alike. But in this day, there are organizations offering to step in and keep the complainant anonymous. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is making their presence known in Texas.

This past Christmas a couple of local non-believers decided they wanted to not have their county government endorse Christianity by allowing only Christian displays on the courthouse lawn. That fight continues today with the FFRF in one corner and the Liberty Institute in the other. 

In Kountze the fight got started when an anonymous young atheist wrote a letter to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. One thing led to another and now the Texas Attorney General is sticking his nose into it... vowing to vacate the Separation Clause by any means possible. So now we have not just the Christians flailing their arms in the air claiming that their freedom to cram their beliefs down throats is being violated, but we have every taxpayer in the state being forced to foot the bill for an elected official to tilt at the same windmill.

I was going to write about all of this, but the muse, it seems, is out to lunch... and everyone else has beaten me to it anyway... so instead I've been reading what everyone else is writing. 

All of the above babbling is leading up to something... I promise. This post has a purpose... it is an endorsement of one of my favorite law blogs... Popehat... and for a fellow by the name of Ken White. Ken writes some really fine prose, but on Popehat he is relatively anonymous. He got outed some time back so I'm not actually revealing a big secret, and I was happy to learn something about the real person who has authored some really fine ass-chappings. 

Where my muse has been on strike, Ken's most certainly has not. Today he pens a doozy that eloquently and succinctly surmises the state of affairs when we attempt to use the power of government to outlaw speech. Ken accomplishes this by using such poignant, technical legalese and jargon as "censorious twatwafflery" and some other fine zingers.

Please read Ken's piece. You won't regret it.

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Taking a page right out of the George W. Bush playbook

Indiana University Southeast, which is just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, has thrust itself into the middle of an anti-constitutional free speech controversy as they become the latest of several public colleges to enact codes limiting students wishing to express opinions to designated free speech zones. For a student to express an opinion on campus requires a permit which may or may not be granted. Not surprisingly, the rule that has been in effect since 2004 is now being challenged.

The purpose of the zones, supposedly… is to ensure the safety alternately of the gathered attendees, and the protesters themselves. We find that the technique is used mainly for political gatherings, although such zones are increasingly being found enshrined in the rules of conduct for university campuses.

The history of the Free Speech Zone is long and checkered. This is a similar tact as was taken by the Secret Service during the George W. Bush administration to limit access to the President and his staff as they travelled to, around and from Crawford, TX and Bush’s Western White House, and the implementation of these exclusionary zones was greatly expanded during the Bush presidency, with these actions frequently meeting with court challenge.

But to be fair, the experimentation with the Orwellian concept of limiting free speech to designated zones is a tactic employed often and by diverse groups from every wing of the political spectrum. Colleges first started implementing rules establishing free speech zones to control the war protesters of the Viet Nam era. At the 1988 Democratic National Convention, the City of Atlanta established a single designated protest zone and enforced it with police actions. Similar zones were erected at the 1992 and 1996 conventions. The exclusion zone at the 2004 convention was likened to a prison camp, with concrete barriers and barbed wire fences.

The existence of such exclusionary zones is based on previous court decisions which stipulate that the government can regulate the time, place, and manner of free expression, but not the content. This selective application of a constitutionally guaranteed right is at the heart of the disagreement at Indiana University Southeast and is the basis for new litigation.

Where we get into the constitutionally vague area is when the restrictions result in censorship more so than just a safe environment. Placing an FSZ in a location far away from the activities, out of sight of the public and the media, serves only a single purpose – the squelching of free speech. Though authorities have in the past denied specifically targeting protesters, on a number of occasions in subsequent court testimony these denials have been contradicted.

With this latest action we have strange bedfellows uniting, with FOX News all up in arms, the ACLU once again involved, and the rather liberal advocacy organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), defending the free speech and due process rights of the college kids. If the case passes muster on the district level, it will be interesting to see if SCOTUS will be willing to stick its paw into another sticky constitutional mess.

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The anti-constitutionalists

Voter suppression can either be direct or indirect. Direct suppression is action by one individual or a group that directly prevents another individual or group from voting or having their votes counted. Indirect suppression is more prevalent in this 15^th amendment age.

Gerrymandering has always been the favorite tactic of the ruling party to ensure reelection and expansion of influence. The practice continues today, with both major political parties guilty. Stuffing the ballot box is another technique, but one that is no longer easy to accomplish.

Traditionally most voter suppression in this country has occurred in southern states… the “old south.” Not much has changed so far as that is concerned, although the area did jump political parties in the mid-60’s right after LBJ signed the voting rights act. Today those states are solid Republican, but for more than 100 years prior they were consistently Democratic.

Then and now those states of the old Confederacy devised creative techniques to keep minorities (blacks in the old days… add Hispanics today) and poor whites away from the ballot box. In the latter third of the 19th century (prior to 15A) violence and outright fraud were the tools of choice. Crude, but it worked. Until the Feds stepped in, old south Democrats used violence as the primary means of direct voter suppression, but federal law enforcement was at odds with the Supreme Court.

In 1877 a white militia group in Colfax, Louisiana attacked a group of blacks attempting to defend Republican officeholders. The militia group was attempting to take control of the courthouse by force, and killed over 100 of the black defenders.

The Feds indicted three of the militia members under the Enforcement Act of 1870. In U.S. v. Cruikshank, SCOTUS dismissed the indictments by faulting the prosecutors for failure to identify a Constitutionally guaranteed right that had been violated. With this decision the Waite court ushered in the era of Jim Crow.

Another major tactic used by the Democrats in those days was to win elections by fraud… by tossing out non-Democratic votes or counting them as if Democrat… this was common in the Southern states prior to the age of legal disenfranchisement. Again the federal government took action and again SCOTUS defeated the efforts.

From 1880 to 1901 Congress brought 26 cases of direct ballot box fraud, again using the Enforcement Act of 1870. One such case was U.S. v. Reese, in which the Feds brought charges against Kentucky election inspectors for refusing to accept and count ballots for a black Republican candidate. SCOTUS dismissed the indictments and the case was the death knell for the Enforcement Act… gutting any provision for punishment of election officials that arbitrarily denied citizens the right to vote.

Reese gave license to the Democrats to openly discriminate without fear of federal prosecution, but it also brought a ton of unfavorable publicity. To avoid the spotlight the southern states started moving toward more subtle forms of disenfranchisement… indirect vote suppression.

Georgia started the ball rolling in 1877 by being the first state to enact a poll tax. This was challenged, but SCOTUS hadn’t matured enough yet and such laws were consistently upheld right up to the middle of the 20^th century. Over the next 25 or so years each of the former confederate states (including Texas) followed suit enacting a variety of poll tax schemes. In some states these taxes cut black voter turnout by as much as half.

40 years later, in Breedlove v. Suttles, a white man challenged Georgia's poll tax by alleging it to be a violation of the 14th (because women not registered to vote were exempt but blacks were not) and the 19th Amendment. SCOTUS struck again, rejecting the arguments by claiming that poll taxes were unrelated to attempts at voter suppression, and that the taxes were legitimate attempts to generate revenue. This was hogwash on its face as none of the states had attempted to collected past due taxes before.

Right up until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act SCOTUS remained eaten up with discrimination. Finally in Harman v. Forssenius the Warren court quashed Virginia’s poll tax and started an era of fairness. Then the next year, in Harper v. Virginia, SCOTUS ended the concept by declaring all poll taxes unconstitutional under the 14^th amendment’s equal protection clause. It also ushered in an era of states rights arguments and ground roots efforts to impeach Earl Warren.

When Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 it is reported that he said that by signing that bill the Democrats had lost the south for a generation. LBJ had no idea how prophetic that statement was, nor how badly he had underestimated the bigotry of the region. Whites fled the Democratic party in droves… never to return, and it has been three generations since President Johnson inked his signature. If anything the attempts at vote suppression are worse now than in 1964... only they are perpetrated by the Republicans instead of the Democrats. 

Race and nationality based voter disenfranchisement is endemic. Where once we had poll taxes and literacy tests denying Republican voters, and now we have the same people doing the same thing for the same reason, just for the opposite party. The newest indirect means of voter suppression is the photo identification requirement, and the sole purpose is to deny prospective Democratic voters access to the ballot box.

So why do we need a photo ID to exercise a Constitutionally guaranteed right? Proponents claim widespread voter fraud, but even the most vitriolic point to only a few score of alleged incidents, most of which turn out to be false. Voter fraud is already a crime and in each of these alleged incidents the violator could have been prosecuted, yet to date there have been only a very few cases where a photo identification would have prevented the crime.

The Bush Justice Department spent years trying to prove that fraud was a problem and found a rate of about 0.00002 percent. In 2006 right here in Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued one of his frequent, shrill press releases with the titillating title, “Let's StampOut Voter Fraud in Texas.” In this press release he was unable to name a single case of fraud that would have been stopped by voter ID, but his language made it sound as if hoards of illegals were violating ballot boxes across the state... going so far as to cite the infamous 1948 case of "Ballot Box 13."

Republican disenfranchisement proponents claim that almost everyone has some form of photo identification, which is mostly true. The Brennan Center for Justice says that 89 percent of Americans could produce an acceptable photo ID, leaving only about 11 percent, or about 23 million eligible voters, without the identification required to cast a ballot. Only 23 million?

To cover this rather dramatic problem, the Republicans offer to provide free or low cost identification cards. All that is required is for the citizen to make a trip down to the DMV and stand in line for perhaps a few hours. The ID card will be provided free of charge for those capable of withstanding that gauntlet. But in order to qualify for this card the prospective voter must produce a birth certificate. If this requirement were in place in earlier years my grandmother would have effectively been denied the right to vote.

My grandmother was American Indian (1/2 Comanche and ¼ Kiowa), arguably making her more a citizen of this land than those who would deny her the right to vote. She was not born in a hospital so there was no official record of birth. When she was born in 1881 her family did not “register” their children. She also never in her life drove a car, and thus never had any form of identification that would have qualified her under these new laws.

She could have applied for and obtained a birth certificate, I suppose, but there goes the “free” ID. Here in Texas the Vital Statistics Office charges $22 plus postage for a birth certificate, and she would have had to produce documentation that does not exist. Seems difficult to justify all of this with a 14^th Amendment guarantee of a right to vote, or the 24th Amendment's ban on charging anyone to vote.

It may be different in other states, but the largest population of Texans without photo identification live many miles away from any drivers license office. If these people don’t already have a drivers license it is unlikely they have a car, so how are they going to get to the DMV to apply for the free photo ID card? The DMV office is open regular business hours, so if the ID’less individual has a job they will have to take time off, and if they don’t drive someone else will have to take time off as well. This “free” ID is getting mighty expensive.

The problem is exacerbated for senior citizens or people who work multiple jobs jobs, yet according to the Brennan Center, the elderly, the disabled and the poor are the populations most likely to be affected by these photo ID laws. These are also the people more inclined to vote for a Democrat. Does the intent become a little more clear?

Proponents also say that we must present photo ID to buy alcohol, drive a car or board a plane. Perhaps, but there are no constitutional guarantees for these things while five out of 27 amendments to our Constitution have language guaranteeing the right to vote. This argument is the classic red herring.

Voter ID offers no positive effect. These are laws in search of a crime. If they pass in each of the states in which they are proposed, Millions of Americans could be denied a right that the framers of our Constitution considered basic. Citizens who have voted for decades could now be denied a right that is enshrined in our Constitution.

The advertisements for right wing politicians argue for this disenfranchisement. They contain language like “Restore America!” and “Protect the Constitution,” yet they would promote laws to deny Americans the right to vote for the candidate of their choice.

Tell me what is patriotic about that.

UPDATE: Efforts by Florida Governor Rick Scott and his band of merry men to suppress the non-Republican vote have been denied by the federal courts. Florida bigots Republicans used the same, tired voter fraud song and dance, and the judge saw right thru it. Florida was quite active in the dominionistic efforts to deny American citizens their right to vote. Scott ordered a purge of voter registration rolls (of people who might not vote for him), the Florida legislature passed a voter ID bill and some really onerous laws restricting voter registration drives. These have all been struck down.

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I grill the bad ones

Now I'll give kudos for the good ones...



Two thumbs up.

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Arizona legislature endorses controversial contraceptive bill

For my conservative friends saying that the government should stay out of the contraception issue, this story ought to make your day.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

So it is the Soviet Union that would impose upon a "mom and pop" if the government insists that insurance must cover all people equally, but it isn't when the government passes a law authorizing said "mom and pop" to pry into an employee's medical records? ...and Senator Lesco thinks the First Amendment allows this?

Really?

The Republicans keep on telling us they are the party of liberty, small governemnt and freedom. So why do they keep on trying to pass laws that allows the governemnt (and now my employer) to poke noses into my library and my bedroom?

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Eye of the beholder

According to Conservapedia, Judicial activism is when

“…courts do not confine themselves to reasonable interpretations of laws, but instead create law. Alternatively, judicial activism is when courts do not limit their ruling to the dispute before them, but instead establish a new rule to apply broadly to issues not presented in the specific action. "Judicial activism" is when judges substitute their own political opinions for the applicable law, or when judges act like a legislature (legislating from the bench) rather than like a traditional court. In so doing, the court takes for itself the powers of Congress, rather than limiting itself to the powers traditionally given to the judiciary”

Black’s Dictionary of Law offers a somewhat simpler definition, describing judicial activism as a…

"…philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other factors, to guide their decisions"

The actual term is relatively new in the American Political lexicon, having first appeared in a January, 1947 Forbes Magazine piece penned by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.  Not unsurprisingly, Schlesinger was describing decisions by the Court of Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, and specifically those by Associate Justices Hugo Black, William Orville Douglas, Frank Murphy, and Wiley Blount Rutledge… all appointed to the Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Chief Justice Stone was himself rather moderate but sided with the liberal majority quite often.

The odd thing about the term is just how vagrant the definition has become over the ensuing years. Judicial appointees have always been chosen to reflect the politics of the current White House occupant, and the tilt of any decision would naturally lean with the majority. Depending upon that majority, the Court’s decisions over the three quarters of a century since Schlesinger coined that term have reflected left leaning philosophy alternately with right producing decisions to almost equivalent degrees.

Yet Conservapedia continues their very interesting definition from the above to say…

“…judicial activism is a way for liberals to avoid the regular legislative means of enacting laws in order to ignore public opinion and dodge public debate”

Since when does public opinion rise above the level of law? Is it not the role of the Court to make decisions based upon constitutional values rather than bow to majority rule and in spite of majority opinion? Our Constitution was written with the intent of protecting the rights of the minority from the will of the majority.

One of the decisions the right loves to defame as “activist” came not long after Schlesinger penned his Forbes piece. In Brown v. Board of Education the left-leaning Earl Warren Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which for 60 years had lent a judicial stamp of approval to racial segregation. This "activist" ruling started our country on a long road toward racial equality.

Some 20 years later the Burger Court applied 14^th amendment privacy protections to current state laws that criminalize abortions. Both the 1949 Brown decision and Roe v. Wade in 1973 are decried by conservatives and cited as evidence of an overreaching Court. The prohibitions and limitations voided by each of these cases find root not in fiscal conservatism, but in a conservative Christian mentality. Look around today and see who it is shouting "activism" the loudest.

Slowly, starting in the 60's, the liberal mood began to ebb. Prompted by the incessant fear mongering of the newly empowered "Christian Conservatives," the electorate began to swing to the right. In 1971 Richard Nixon appointed the very fiscally conservative William Rehnquist to replace the liberal Hugo Black, and then 1986 Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to replace moderate Warren Burger as Chief Justice. To fill the remaining vacancy, Reagan next tapped neoconservative Antonin Scalia.

Liberals could see what was happening and a year later, fed up with what they perceived as the appointment of too far right leaning activist judges, Democrats in the Senate staged an almost unprecedented revolt over the appointment of Robert Bork. Following a long and bloody battle Bork withdrew his name and a more moderate Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in his stead, but the religious right has never forgiven this action.

Conservatism has ceased to be about political considerations and instead has taken on the "social conservative" (read Christian) mantle. Where the court had previously been stacked to favor reasonable, moderate interpretations of the law with an emphasis on protecting the rights of the individual, we soon saw an abrupt turn to this rigid, authoritarian "new" right and an implementation of decisions favoring "family values."

George H.W. Bush appointed the inscrutable Clarence Thomas to replace the moderately progressive Thurgood Marshall, and although Democrats in the Senate worked hard to “Bork” him, Thomas was confirmed in 1991. 

Over his eight years in the White House Bill Clinton was able to hold the line with appointments of progressives Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to replace the equally liberal Byron White and Harry Blackmun. Yet in 2000 it was this somewhat moderate Court that gave us Bush V. Gore. Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, reluctantly joined by moderates Kennedy and O’Connor effectively negated a popular vote and elected a President.

The real turn in the Court came in 2005 when George W. Bush nominated John Roberts first to replace the retiring associate Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, and then as Chief Justice replacing the retiring William Rehnquist. O'Connor was a somewhat left leaning moderate, and Roberts' political views made even Rehnquist look middle-of-the-road.

Bush immediately followed these actions with the nomination of Samuel Alito, Jr., arguably the most reactionary Justice ever to hold the position. The Court was now stacked with four hard right justices, four others to the left, and Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote.

In the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision Kennedy joined conservatives Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas to grant “personhood” to corporations. Both this decision and Bush v. Gore raised a hue and cry from the left, yet it remains common for the right to accuse the Court of left-leaning judicial activism.

This obviously is an unfair characterization. The term could more accurately be defined as any decision made by any judge that does not agree with the particular view of one of the parties in the case. It swings both ways.

It is politicians who speak in terms of majority. Constitutionalists couch arguments in terms of reason and fairness. Judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder.

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Suit Claims Philosophy Course Was Unconstitutional Instruction In Christian Apologetics

In an unusual case, a student at Arizona's Paradise Valley Community College last week filed a lawsuit charging that the instructor in a Philosophy course (Introduction to Ethics) "failed to teach the Philosophy Class according to the Course Description and instead taught her own Christian worldview."  

The complaint (full text) in Smith v. State of Arizona, (D AZ, filed 7/20/2011), claims that the course instructor, Adjunct Professor Kelly Burton, assigned for the course a portion of a book written by another instructor at the community college: Surrendra Gangadean, Philosophical Foundation: A Critical Analysis of Basic Beliefs. It is alleged that the assigned chapters were theological and present the author's view of Moral Law rather than the theories of philosophers promised by the course description. 

The suit claims that the course is in fact  one in Christian Apologetics, and that  teaching it violates the Establishment Clause as well as Art. 2, Sec. 12 of the Arizona Constitution banning use of public funds for religious instruction. The complaint also alleges breach of an implied contract.

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H/T Howard Friedman

Slow learner

Just a few years ago it was D.C. with the Heller case, but more recently Chicago has been at the epicenter of disputes over gun rights. The decision in McDonald v. Chicago reversed the obviously wrong-headed city ordinance denying law abiding citizens the right to possess firearms for self protection. Although I’m far less fond (and in great disagreement) with other recent decisions, especially Citizens United (effectively granting Personhood to corporations) and the more recent Wal-Mart v. Dukes (effectively denying Personhood to women) rulings, SCOTUS got it right with McDonald.

But Chicago seems to not get the message. It was just last summer when SCOTUS struck down the Chicago ordinance that effectively banned handguns in the city. SCOTUS, in no uncertain terms, told the city that the Second Amendment applies to states… and therefore to municipalities.

So what did the city do? In the wake of that ruling, Chicago enacted yet another ordinance… this time requiring gun owners to get firearms training, which required practicing at a firing range, but then banned firing ranges within the city limits. Classic fail! Guess what? They found themselves back in court yet again.

Litigation ensued once again claiming that the Chicago ordinance violates the Second Amendment. The 7th Circuit, taking a cue from Heller and McDonald, enjoined the ordinance, ruling Wednesday that those objecting to the ordinance have “a strong likelihood of success on the merits.” The 7th Circuit opinion described the ordinance as “too cute by half” and that it amounted to “a thumbing of the municipal nose at the Supreme Court.”

You lose again, Chicago. When are you going to figure out that the American people will not be denied their rights?

Didn’t take long to answer that question. Chicago is a slow learner. In the wake of this most recent ruling the City Council quickly leapt into action, crafting a new ordinance allowing gun ranges in Chicago under strict permitting guidelines… banning ranges within 1,000 feet of a school, park, place of worship, day care center, liquor store, library, museum, hospital, residential district or another gun range.

The Sun-Times reports on the latest Chicago gun ordinance. The NRA told the Sun-Times that the ordinance is so restrictive it could invite another lawsuit. It will and it should. Citizens need to keep pounding on SCOTUS’ door each and every time our government oversteps it's bounds. This our right… and it is our duty. We won’t always prevail, but losing should never dampen the effort.

Now it is time to revisit Citizens United and Wal-Mart....

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Reflections on laws limiting the WBC

Slightly conflicting comments to my previous post caused me to stop and think. By the way I wrote the post the reader likely gets the idea that I am in favor of the State of Arizona’s move to enact laws limiting 1A rights for the pathetic fools of the Westboro Baptist Church. To a large degree that is correct, but from another, very libertarian perspective, perhaps not.

In her comment, MiniKat states:

”I find the idea of states enacting legislation to limit WBC's protesting both good and disturbing.

Good on the hand that they're a bunch of ignominious clods that really need a reality check. Also good that it's an example of state's rights. Disturbing on the other hand that worries about First Amendment rights."

Kat is correct that the state enacting laws limiting enumerated rights is an endeavor fraught with peril. However, individual rights do not, and should never trump the common good.

Although there is no discernable difference today, three of the original 13 colonies were chartered as commonwealths. The term ”Commonwealth”, or ”Commonweal” literally means common good.

John Adams, writing in the preamble to the Constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, provided that the body politic (the state) should provide for the citizens ”the power of enjoying, in safety and tranquility, their natural rights and the blessings of life.” Adams further describes the body politic as a "social compact" in which the people agree to be governed by laws designed for the "common good."

The Massachusetts Constitution was the first document of its sort ever written, and was used as the basis for the U.S. Constitution. Our founders recognized that there would be instances where the State must enact laws placing limits on individual rights with the intent of providing for the common good. As Adams wrote, "the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity, and happiness."

Shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theatre is a violation of law; so should be the taunting and tormenting of grieving families.

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Ignorance makes the best mind control

The British computer news and tech site TechEye.net is reporting on a recent move by the Saudis to clamp down on publishers of Internet news sites, weblogs, forums, and even personal websites originating from within the country.  Site publishers are required, among other things, to be of good conduct and behavior and hold an appropriate license. The Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information, of course, would issue the license.

TechEye previously reported that China had banned VoIP providers not controlled by the Chinese government, including Skype; the largest and most popular of  the providers.

Keeping the flock in the dark has always been a popular authoritarian tool utilized to maintain order. Where once they burned books, censors around the world have now focused attention on the Internet. Free access to the truth tends to make controlling the flock sometimes very difficult .

Saudi Arabia and China are far from the first to employ censorship as a means of maintaining ignornace. Book burners in this country have been trying it for years, but a little thing called Freedom of Speech has sidetracked them.

Citizens of other countries are not always so fortunate.

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Majority rule

We’ve had several discussions in this space regarding the Christian majority in our country, and of the efforts expended by activists asserting that majority into the public realm. These efforts range from religious displays in public buildings; religious slogans on our currency and modifications to our Pledge of Allegiance; a fabricated “War on Christmas” leading to boycotts of businesses for the "sin" of inclusiveness; to the attempts at mind control by school textbook review committees.

It is the protections our Founders wrote into our Constitution that prevent the activists within the Christian majority, or any majority, from running roughshod over the rest of us.

There is a very strong reason that our Founders placed such importance on protecting the minority from the will of the majority. They had personal experience with religious persecution and were determined that it would never happen in the United States. Other countries are not so fortunate, and the minority is paying the price. We should learn a lesson from this.

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The real reason Bob was smiling

Remember Bob with the ear-to-ear grin, and his rather plain looking, goofy-grinned wife? The TV commercials would make you think the reason for both grins was a product called Enzyte.  

Smiling Bob’s real name is Steven Warshak, and he is (or was) the owner of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, Inc. and TCI Media, Inc. Goofy wife is Bob’s goofy mother, the coowner of Berkley and TCI. Her name is Harriet.

Berkeley was an incredibly profitable company. All that green flowing in was the real reason for both the Warshak’s grins. Berkley distributed Enzyte, an herbal supplement the commercials claimed enhanced Bob’s sexual performance. Those ads, while entertaining, were apparently misleading. Enzyte didn’t work as claimed (surprise!), and wanna-be Bobs complained.

Bob and Harriet got sued and charged with criminal fraud… they lost on all counts… lost all of that money that kept them smiling on TV and got them chunked in the pokey to boot.

No more smiling Bob. TVland mourned.

But wait! Bob and goofy mother struck back with an appeal, which they won based on 4^th Amendment arguments. Both are smiling again.

If this ruling makes it to SCOTUS, I wonder if Clarence Thomas will be smiling…

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Vote Teabagger - - Support thuggery

By now you've all heard of the thuggery by Rand Paul supporters claiming to be protecting their candidate from the threat of violence by a petit 23-year-old woman, or you've seen the videos... but just in case... here is the video.

The man seen stomping on MoveOn activist Lauren Valle's head in none other than Tim Profitt, the Rand Paul campaign manager for Bourbon County, KY. Profitt says he is sorry if the actions taken by him and his mob of thugs seemed a bit forceful, but he was only protecting candidate Paul.

The Paul campaign has reacted decisively, removing Profitt from his position and banning him from future rallies. The police in Lexington have also moved decisively... delivering a summons for thug #1 to appear before a judge and argue why he should not face assault charges.

Paul is supposed to represent the Libertarian segment of society - where the authority of government is minimal and personal rights are supreme. These folks champion our Constitution and Bill of Rights. But that is not what we see here. What this incident tells us is that a vote for a teabag candidate represents a vote for freedom of expression... but only as long as what you say agrees with what they want to hear.

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What kind of speech needs protection?

This is the question asked by Hemant. He goes on to say...

"The Center for Inquiry recently held a video contest for their Campaign for Free Expression. Today, on International Blasphemy Rights Day, they announced their winner — and it’s a great pick"

Hemant then quotes CFT...

"Center for Inquiry (CFI) is pleased to announce that Gregory Walsh and John Schmid of Maryland are the Grand Prize winners of its Campaign for Free Expression Video Contest, which asked contestants to submit short videos in the form of a public service announcement that addresses the importance of free expression. The Grand Prize provides Messrs. Walsh and Schmid with a cash award of $2000"

A tiny, little award for a very simple yet dynamic work. Hemant is correct; it is a great video. My heartfelt contrats to Walsh and Schmid.

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The politics of fear and loathing

Religionistas: Islamophobia and Christophobia

On August 24, 2010, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released the results of a recent opinion survey. 35% of Americans believe Islam encourages violence to a greater degree than other religions. Eight years ago, only months after the attacks of September 11, 2001 that figure stood at 25%.

45% offer the opposing opinion, saying that Islam does not encourage more violence than other religions, while 24% have no opinion.  The survey also revealed that 38% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Islam, compared to just 30% with a favorable view and 32% with no opinion. Recent events, small and large, have put this fear and the reaction to it on front-page display.

A taxi driver in Manhattan was savagely attacked merely because the assailant believed him to be Muslim. A proposed expansion of an Islamic center located a couple blocks away from the World Trade Center site causes volcanic levels of hysteria in the right-wing media and blogosphere. A nut-job minister in Gainesville, FL and about 50 of his followers grabs center stage by threatening to burn copies of the Quran. In Tennessee, federal investigators believe arsonists torched construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Murfreesboro. In New York State, a Muslim community in Waterport has been targeted and harassed by teenagers.

Politicians, pundits and preachers are fanning the flames of Islamophobia, repeatedly insisting that all of Islam be responsible for the actions of a handful of extremists. Inversely, across the pond, Christians are feeling the brunt of similar fear and loathing, stoked mostly by radical Islamic clerics, religious extremists and leftist politicians.

In Muslim countries practicing Sharia law, discrimination against Christians and Jews is not just practiced, it is codified into law.  Egypt is one of the more secular and moderate of the Muslim countries with a sizable religious minority of Coptic Christians, yet Egyptian law stipulates that a "Muslim man may marry a Christian woman but the opposite is forbidden; and if a Muslim woman does marry a Christian man, both the husband and the wife would be considered adulterers". 

However, it is not only the Muslim countries where we find anti-Christian sentiment. Christophobia is rampant across Northern Europe and England, and in Israel the sentiment is strong.

In May of 2007 a Baptist church in Brighton, England, was invaded by anti-Christian squatters who promptly wrecked the place with garbage and graffiti. In May of 2008, the mayor of a small city near Tel Aviv ordered hundreds of New Testaments confiscated from his citizens. These were later burned. Since the early 90’s, nine Christian churches have been burned in Norway.

In 2009 a Vienna, Austria based security organization issued a report confirming that Christophobia has become not only wide-spread, but perfectly acceptable in Asia, Africa and Europe, much as Islamophobia has become perfectly acceptable in America, Germany, the Netherlands and Great Brittan.  

The struggle isn’t new. Along with Judaism, these philosophies have been doing battle on one front or another for thousands of years, locked in an ongoing struggle for control of the Western World. The holy books of each of these commands adherents to engage the infidels, and to establish nations under Islamic law/Biblical law/The Law of Moses… whatever.

It is all nonsense.

Some 235 years ago a group of wise men recognized the futility of these millennial struggles and, seeking to create a more perfect union, devised a political system outside of any religious law. The framers of our Constitution and the Founders of our republic crafted a constitution that specifically excluded religion of any stripe. The only language in our Constitution that even mentions religion is exclusionary.

Article VI Paragraph 3 of our Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Then there are the two First Amendment clauses commonly known as the "religion clauses" are the Establishment Clause, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," and the Free Exercise Clause "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Now, after all these years, we find Christian extremists twisting the words of our Founders in an attempt to circumvent the Establishment Clause, promoting the myth that America was created as a Christian nation, while viral political rhetoric has created a de facto religious test for public office. In the process they are attempting to backdoor Biblical law and, with the help of FOX News and the right wingnut blogosphere, establish the accepted discrimination of Muslims and others who are not “like us.”

The 6,000 year-old struggle progresses unabated while fear and loathing stokes the flames of hatred and violence. One of these days we may discover, perhaps too late, that religion in any form is corrosive to peace and individual freedom.

Thomas Jefferson was a visionary.

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Common Sense 0, First Amendment 1

Fred Phelps is a disgusting individual. He, his family and the congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS represent the lowest underbelly of America… but regardless of that, they remain Americans and therefore the beneficiaries of the same Constitutional rights as the rest of us.

These despicable abusers of the Rights of Man have been mentioned in this space before [HERE] [HERE] and [HERE]. In that last link a court case was mentioned in which the Phelps crew had beaten a lawsuit [Snyder v. Phelps, et al] brought by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq after the Phelps family protested the funeral. 

The judge in the case ruled that in the United States of America, people have the right to believe anything they want, say anything they want, and in general to behave like ignorant idiots, so long as no physical harm is done.

Next came the 2006 law passed by the Missouri legislature, specifically targeting the Kansas church group, and severely restricting protests near funerals. Phelps sued, and won [Phelps-Roper v. Koster].

Yesterday a U.S. District Judge ruled the Missouri law violates the church’s right of free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Fernando Gaitan, although sympathetic to the argument that people attending a funeral deserve some protection, ruled that Missouri officials did not demonstrate that the protest restrictions served any significant government interest, nor had it been narrowly tailored to prevent the harm of interruptions of funeral services.

Several other states have enacted similar laws, and those too will likely fall upon appeal. Judge Gaitan had little option, considering the earlier federal appeals court decision that there was no compelling government interest in protecting people from unwanted speech outside their homes.

Court documents reveal that the Kansas church has held more than 42,000 pickets, including more than 500 at funerals. This fall SCOTUS is supposed to consider the appeal in Snyder v. Phelps, et al. I predict this too will fail. The fact that these idiots behave in this manner is disturbing, but fits the category of protected speech. The fact that they have the right to be idiots is written in our Constitution. 

Now, briefly consider the parallel of this case to the ongoing debate over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque… We may not like it, and it may seem a really insensitive thing to do... but there is no legal basis for denying it.

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Will it hold up to a SCOTUS review?

This just in from the Texas Freedom Network:

‘Christian Land Governed by Christian Principles’

Even before the Texas State Board of Education took up its expected debate today over what students will learn about separation about church and state in their social studies classrooms, board member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, made her position clear. She offered the board’s opening prayer this morning and removed any doubt about what she and other far-right board members want students to learn: America’s laws and government should be based on the Christian Bible.

Stop what you are doing and watch this video now -- you have to see it to believe it.

Laying out in blunt language the “Christian nation” vision of American history that the board’s powerful bloc of social conservatives espouses, Dunbar threw down the gauntlet:

“I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses.”

“Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England…the same objective is present — a Christian land governed by Christian principles.”

“I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.”

You will recall that Dunbar, in her 2008 book, One Nation Under God, argued that the Founders created “an emphatically Christian government” (page 18 of her book) and that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test” (page 47). Even more damning, this State Board of Education member wrote that public education is a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion,” tyrannical and unconstitutional.

And today she will help decide what the next generation of Texas students will learn about separation of church and state in their public school classrooms.

You can follow the conclusion to this embarrassing saga on our liveblog at TFNInsider.org. And look for an e-mail later today with the final decision of the board -- and what we can do now to restore sanity and respectability to Texas education.

It's important that all Texans see how bad things have gotten at the state board.
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If I haven’t made it clear enough in previous blogs, this is the kind of fanatical religionism we are fighting here in Texas, but Texas is just the latest battlefront in this war. Religious fanatics worldwide are and have been intent upon installing their own vision of theocratic rule since the dawn of recorded history. It is a war that will go on regardless of how many battles the rational people fight and win.

Listen to Ms. Dunbar’s words. Over and over you hear, “I believe.” The religionist totalitarians all “believe” they know the answer; know what god wants. Mohammed Atta “believed” he was doing god’s will when he participated in the slaughter of 2,976 innocent lives on September 11, 2001.

The five creationist extremists on the SBOE are of the same mindset as Mohammed Atta; just a different theology.

So will the Texas State Board of Education be the vanguard of some long awaited nationalistic movement to return our country to Sharia biblical law?

Hell no. Not so long as reasonable people speak their mind.

The kind of theocracy building being attempted by the SBOE, with the blessing of Gov. Goodhair, won’t survive SCOTUS review. But the extremists won’t let that stop them. It may take a few years to clean up their mess, but the rule of law will eventually prevail.

Either that or we can just burn our Constitutions right now and be done with it.

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Ashcroft liable for rights violation

The Courthouse New Network has an article on the most recent chapter in the trial of former Bush administration Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who was sued on 4A grounds by one of several individuals who were detained, without charge and without benefit of legal representation, under Ashcroft's extraordinary interpretations of the material witness statutes. The Ninth Circuit found the arguments of Ashcroft’s attorney unpersuasive and refused to rehear the case.

In the decision, Judge Milan A. Smith wrote, "The facts alleged in al-Kidd's complaint are chilling and serve as a cautionary tale to law-abiding citizens of the United States who fear the excesses of a powerful national government."

There was strong dissent by some other judges on the court, with Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain stating, "One shudders at the thought that this decision may deter the incumbent and future Attorney Generals from exercising the full range of their lawful authority to protect the security of the United States."

In response to O'scannlain's criticism, the majority offered the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, in his famous dissent in Olmsted v. United States (1928):

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

Read the whole article HERE.

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Another Brick in the Wall

The valedictorian at an Indianapolis High School does not wish to participate in a student-led Christian prayer at his graduation ceremony, and has filed suit challenging the school’s policy of allowing seniors to vote on the practice.

18 year-old Eric Workman says the school’s prayer policy violates the first amendment, and with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, he is asking a federal judge to intervene. Workman’s senior class approved the prayer by majority vote, a practice that he believes subjects religious practice to majority rule.

Workman complains that graduates and the audience should not be forced into a "religious exercise" during graduation ceremonies, and that Greenwood Community High School cannot override our Constitution's separation of church and state.

Workman says the prayer question was among several issues contained on a ballot passed out by school staff at a September, 2009 mandatory assembly. He learned from an unnamed school employee that a majority of seniors had voted in favor of the prayer, but that several had voted against it.

In spite of minority dissent, according to Workman's complaint, "a majority of the seniors voted to have the prayer and therefore it would be occurring at the graduation."

The complaint further states that the public high school and its principal have "established a forum, in the school itself, for religious debate and have subjected religious practice to a majority vote."

David Edds, Greenwood Superintendent of Schools, said a student-approved prayer has been a long-standing feature at graduation, but attorney Ken Falk of the ACLU says, customary or not, allowing the prayer, or even allowing the vote, violates previous SCOTUS rulings finding religion in public school-sponsored events to be a violation of the First Amendment.

The lawsuit names the school district and the Greenwood’s principal as defendants.

Local preacher Shan Rutherford fails to understand the unique protections offered by our Constitution, and disagrees that such a prayer violates student rights.

“If I lived in a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation or anything else, I would expect to go along with the majority,” said Rutherford. “He’s [Workman] trying to go with minority rule. To me, that’s wrong in a democracy, one that was founded on Christian principles.”

Pastor Rutherford has it wrong on all counts. If born in a Muslim or Hindu nation, Rev. Rutherford, having apparently fallen for the Myth of Jesus, would likely have fallen for whatever religious myths to which he was exposed, so I can see why he might defend the majority rule misconception.

Young Workman, however, learned the reason for, and the meaning of, the separation clause in high school civics… a class apparently skipped by the Rev. Rutherford.

If majority rule was the intent of the founders, slavery would likely still be the law of the land, and the burning of witches might be accepted religious practice. The separation clause exists for the same reason as all other sections of our Constitution… because our founders, understanding that human rights are not subject to vote, wished to protect the minority from the majority.

SCOTUS has historically recognized this to be true. Opinions prohibiting schools allowing or promoting prayer include McCollum v. Board of Education, (1948), in which the court found religious instruction in public schools a violation of the establishment clause and therefore unconstitutional.

In the landmark Warren court decision, Engel v. Vitale, (1962), several New York families complained that their children were forced to participate in the recital of a prayer composed by school officials. Praying to "Almighty God," they claimed, contradicted their non-Christian religious beliefs. SCOTUS agreed.

In Murray v. Curlett, (1963) and the related Abington School District v. Schempp, (1963) SCOTUS ruled against compulsory bible reading as part of public school curriculum.

More recently, in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2002) SCOTUS ruled that a Texas high school could not allow students to deliver Christian prayers over the public address system at football games.

These decisions leave little doubt but that the high court believes that religion does not belong in, and should not be sponsored by, public schools.

Still, school boards keep testing the limits. One must wonder how many more slap-downs will be required before America’s public schools get out of the religion business.

Thankfully, or so it seems, young Workman has a grasp of the true value of our Constitution… that it was crafted to protect the minority from majority rule. Regardless of the Circuit Court's ruling the case will make its way to the high court, the durability of our Constitution will prevail, and SCOTUS will undoubtedly rule in Workman's favor.

As to the Rev. Rutherford’s Christian Nation myth, well that has been thoroughly debunked as well.

Will they ever learn?

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