Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

LAND GRAB

LAND GRAB: The disenfranchisement of a people.

“My heart is filled with joy when I see you here, as the brooks fill with water when the snows melt in the spring; and I feel glad, as the ponies do when the fresh grass starts in the beginning of the year. My people have never first drawn a bow or gun against whites. There has been trouble on the line between us, and my young men have danced the war dance. But it was not begun by us. It was you who sent out the first soldier and we who sent out the second. The blue dressed soldiers and the Utes came out from the night when it was dark and still, and for campfires they lit our lodges. Instead of hunting game, they killed my braves, and the warriors of the tribe cut their hair for the dead. So it was in Texas. They made sorrow come in our camps, and we went out like the buffalo bulls when the cows are attacked. When we found them we killed them and their scalps hang in our lodges.

The Comanche are not weak and blind, like pups or a dog when seven sleeps old. They are strong and farsighted, like grown horses. We took their road and we went on it. The white women cried and our women laughed. But there are things which you have said which I do not like. They are not sweet like sugar, but bitter like gourds. You said that you wanted to put us upon a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I lived like my fathers before me, and like them I lived happily.”

These words were spoken in 1867 by the Chief Paruasemena (Young Bear) of the Yamparikas Comanche at the Medicine Lodge Treaty negotiations. There were three treaties signed at Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and all were abysmal failures. [i]

Settlers, the United States military and the tribes all failed to honor a number of articles in the treaties. The agreements were caught up in a bitter dispute between the House of Representatives and the Senate over which body had control of treaty making with the Nations. Then as now, politics was the fly in the ointment. Unresolved acrimony and political posturing spelled an end to treaty attempts after 1870. It also disrupted promised appropriations and rations for reservations. This made a bad situation worse as the rations were wholly inadequate in the first place. The result was famine and sickness for the natives on the reservations. Discontented young men left the reservation with their families, returning to the old way of raiding settlements, both out of anger for the dishonesty of the government’s agents, and to alleviate their starving conditions. It wasn’t long before the wars reached fevered pitch.

The previous brief history describes the beginning of the end of the story. The origin of the story harkens from prehistoric times. Abundant evidence has been unearthed suggesting that primitive human society existed on the American continents for some 12 millennia, but with their origins remaining somewhat a mystery. [ii]

Evidence of these peoples has been found in scattered locations across the North American Great Plains. For several years, we called these natives the Clovis people. The first and most abundant evidence was discovered near that New Mexico city. We have since determined that there were three separate and unrelated DNA lines that appeared on these continents within a few thousand years of each other. They were of different blood lines, but all were foot nomads. It was the Clovis bloodline that was ancestor to the Shoshonean nations, from which the Comanche are descendant.

The early nomads were hunters who ventured onto the plains in search of large game. They hunted mammoth, musk ox, reindeer, elk, bear and primitive horses. After about 3,000 years, the focus shifted to the early bison, predecessor of the buffalo. The people migrated in search of game but returned every year to traditional, high ground locations to prepare for the coming winter. These traditional camps and the artifacts found there produced much of our knowledge about this people.

This lifestyle continued in one form or another for centuries, but then along came the European invasion.

It started with the Spanish, followed soon afterwards with the French, Dutch and English. The western march of settlements brought strangers with strange customs into regular contact with native tribes. Many of the tribes and bands were friendly to the newcomers, receiving the new settlers with good grace and offering trade. Others resisted contact and simply moved further west. The Euro-Christian concept of Manifest Destiny and the Homestead Act of 1862 provided false justification for settlers to push further west, creating more competition for finite lands and game, creating tension between the settlers and the Natives.

Many treaties were signed in futile efforts to assuage conflict, promising land, rations and peace, but the treaties were almost never honored. The Christian concept of manifest destiny manifested only as bigotry in these situations, and the natives were treated as savages. The natives responded in kind.

The Comanche tribe provided one of the main sources of resistance. Famous for their horsemanship and ferocity, the roving Comanche bands became notorious for raids on homesteads and towns, and for kidnapping settler women and children. The most famous of these was Cynthia Parker, mother of Quanah Parker.

This resistance served only to heighten tensions between the settlers and the natives. With the outbreak of the Civil War, some Indian tribes attempted to align themselves with what they believed would be the winning side. In the case of the Comanche, that side was the Confederacy. When the war ended with the Greycoats losers, the Comanche were brought to Fort Smith in Arkansas and made to swear loyalty to the United States Government.

The humiliation did not long last, and soon came a resurgence of the Comanche as rulers of the plain. They spread out over large expanses, taking what they had learned from the white man and expanding their influence both militarily and economically. They battled their enemies with diplomacy and with violence, determined to maintain power in their areas of control. In the Treaty of Little Arkansas in 1865, the tribe was awarded a large piece of land spanning parts of Oklahoma and Texas. Some parts of this region, known as Comancheria, later became part of the reservation system.

The tribe continued their raids, and soon the United States Government took action. The Comanche Campaign is a term used by the Government to describe the organized effort to drive the Comanche off their land. The Comanche redoubled their resistance in a series of violent clashes with the settlers between 1867 and 1875.

The Government was intent on taking the land it had granted by treaty just a few years earlier. In 1871, Col. Ranald “Bad Hand” Mackenzie, was given command of the Fourth Cavalry Regiment and sent to Texas with orders to force the Comanche onto the reservation. Over the next few years, using large bodies of troops, Mackenzie engaged in dozens of skirmishes with the Comanche in the area known as the Llano Estacado. [iii]

In the early morning hours of Monday, September 28, 1874, in a deep Red River canyon in the Texas Panhandle, 400 troops led by Mackenzie attacked a still sleeping camp of Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne. The women and children not killed in the initial attack retreated up the canyon while the men engaged the soldiers allowing their families to escape. The engagement lasted for hours, and by noon the surviving natives had escaped, leaving lodges, horses, and supplies gathered for the coming winter behind. Mackenzie ordered the lodges burned and the supplies destroyed. Next, he slaughtered 1,048 horses leaving the natives afoot. Without horses, shelter, or food, the natives faced a killing winter. [iv] A few at a time the beaten natives straggled into the reservation rather than face certain death.

The Palo Duro Canyon fight was the largest engagement in the Red River Wars. It marked the end of the Southern Plains Indians' military resistance. The once proud Comanche surrendered, their chiefs imprisoned and the people forcibly resettled onto reservation.

A proud people was dispossessed of land that had been their ancestral birthright for over 12,000 years. To this day locals visit the Palo Duro to collect meal from the decomposed bones of the horses and mules, most of them oblivious to the history upon which they stand.

---

[i] Jacki Thompson Rand, “Medicine Lodge Treaty (1867),” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, <http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/M/ME005.html> (Accessed 2014.04.27).

[ii] W. Fitzhugh, I. Goddard, S. Ousley, D. Owsley, D. Stanford. "Paleoamerican Origins." Encyclopedia Smithsonian, Science and Technology. Anthropology Outreach Office, Smithsonian Institution, 1999. <http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/origin.htm> (Accessed 2014.04.27).

[iii]  Ernest Wallace, "MACKENZIE, RANALD SLIDELL," Handbook of Texas Online <http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fma07> (accessed 2014.04.27), Uploaded on 2010.06.15, Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

[iv] T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People”, 1974, LCCN 73-20761. Republished in 2003 as Comanches: The History of a People, ISBN 1-4000-3049-8, LCCN 2003-267713

Crimes against humanity

In the news...

Scott Lively gets his day in court

By Vince Warren

A man looks on December 11, 2012 at an advertising by campaign group Avaaz in the state-owned Ugandan newspaper The New Vision, protesting against an anti-homosexuality bill. Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but the new bill proposes to introduce the death sentence for anyone caught engaging in homosexual acts for a second time, as well as for gay sex where one partner is a minor or has HIV. It would also criminalize the public promotion of homosexuality -- including discussions by rights groups -- with a sentence of up to seven years in prison for anyone convicted. (MICHELE SIBILONI - AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Is there anything extremist right-wing preachers won’t blame on LGBT people? After the Newtown shooting, James Dobson listed tolerance of gay marriage as one of the reasons God’s punishment was directed at a bunch of first graders. And who can forget the classic Jerry Falwell moment, blaming 9/11 on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle….”

It’s easy to laugh at wingnuts, but they have millions of followers and their hate, in the name of some perverted concept of God, gives moral cover to the queer bashers and bullies everywhere.

On Monday, we’re going to be face to face with one of them, Scott Lively, in a courtroom in Springfield, MA. If that name isn’t familiar to you like Falwell’s or Dobson’s, that’s because Lively’s unique contribution to this anti-gay agenda is his persecution consulting in other countries, most notably Uganda, where he brags he is known as the “father” of the anti-gay movements.

Many Americans have heard of the infamous “Kill the Gays” bill inUganda, which has been introduced in several parliamentary sessions since it arose out of an anti-gay conference that Scott Lively headlined in 2009. But the day-to-day reality for LGBT Ugandans is already violence, death threats, severe discrimination and oppression. Meetings of LGBT activists are raided and shut down, and advocates have been arrested for exercising their rights to speech, assembly and association. LGBT Ugandans’ advocacy, indeed their existence, is already criminalized.

No one has done more to orchestrate this situation than Scott Lively. Since 2002, he has worked systematically to strip away human rights protections from LGBT people in Uganda and elsewhere around the world, to silence them and make it impossible for them to organize and defend their rights. While he peddles the usual, age-old lie that LGBT people are pedophiles in order to deliberately provoke the rage that feeds the growing repression and violence, he combines that myth with a new twist, that gays were also responsible for the Holocaust and that Hitler’s Germany is what can happen when a gay movement grows unchecked.

But this case isn’t simply about Lively’s “hate preach.” He long ago moved beyond “mere” hatemongering when he became a kind of persecution consultant, strategizing with influential leaders and cohorts in other countries about ways to further silence and remove LGBT people from basic protections of the law, in particular by criminalizing their advocacy. Persecution, defined as the “severe deprivation of fundamental rights” on the basis of identity, is a crime under international law; to be exact, it’s a “crime against humanity.” This deprivation of fundamental rights of LGBT communities is exactly what Lively aims to bring about. Under U.S. law, foreign citizens who are the victims of crimes against humanity can sue American perpetrators of such crimes. And so Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG) is suing Scott Lively for persecuting them. Staff from SMUG and other LGBT advocates who have suffered persecution --arrests, raids, and other severe deprivations of basic rights --will be there on Monday, when the Center for Constitutional Rights will have the honor of representing them in court.

If you happen to be in the Springfield area on Monday, join us in court that day and at a press conference outside afterwards. Wherever you are, though, you can follow the day’s events on Twitter - @theCCR will be live tweeting the event using the hashtag #StoptheHate. Every queer person in America can help expose what Scott Lively is doing by retweeting the news from court and by letting their friends know about this case.

The theology of hate, which blames LGBT people for disasters, natural and man-made, for the destruction of the family and everything in between, has to stop. And it won’t stop if LGBT advocates continue to be denied their fundamental rights to express themselves, to associate and assemble, to defend and assert their basic human rights. It won’t stop if plans like Lively’s are allowed to proceed. Religion has often been misused as a justification for maintaining inequality and denying the humanity and dignity of others. Persecution by political forces using the Christian religion is not a new tactic, from the Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials, but in the 21st Century we have laws against it and it’s time to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Vince Warren is the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

By Vince Warren  |  01:55 PM ET, 01/04/2013 

What Did Jesus Do?

Answering Religious Conservatives Who Oppose Bullying Prevention Legislation

Daniel B. Weddle and student Kathryn E. New, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
 New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement, Vol. 37, p. 325, 2011

Abstract:

Conservative Christian organizations assert that anti-bullying programs are a stealth effort by gay activists to introduce into American schools an aggressive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda. They contend that legislation and bullying prevention programs that mention gays are an attempt to indoctrinate children to embrace homosexual lifestyles; tolerate homosexual behavior; and celebrate homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender identity.

These voices are having an impact on state legislatures and the damage is immense. Educational research has made clear the devastating effects of bullying upon children, and LGBT students are among the most often targeted and least protected students. Given that schools are already failing to address bullying effectively, efforts to thwart protection of any group of students -- especially one that is routinely targeted -- is unconscionable.

Yet these devoted Christians zealously interfere with protection of LGBT students from abuse by their peers and believe wholeheartedly that they are doing children and Christ a great service.

We believe they fundamentally misunderstand three things: the dynamics of bullying, the law pertaining to student-on-student abuse, and the example and teachings of Christ. This Article addresses these misunderstandings. We propose a response to the distortions that are used to promote what is an anti-gay agenda that represents neither the teachings of the Bible nor the position of most Christians and evangelicals, whom these organizations purport to represent.

Our hope is that, once the distortions are debunked, thinking Christians will reject the misguided efforts of a relatively few but influential individuals and organizations. If new voices can confront the misleading claims of anti-gay zealots with informed educational, legal, and Biblical responses, perhaps the distortions will be seen for what they are by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Full article available at SSRN,

###

Contest

How many lies, distortions of the truth and points of outright hypocrisy can you count in this article?

WARNING: You'll need to take your shoes off... and then some.

###

Blasphemy is a victimless crime

In a March 24, 2011 story in their online Religion, Faith and Ethics feature, Reuters reports on the ongoing efforts of the UN’s Islamic bloc to pass what they euphemistically called a Religious Anti-defamation Resolution. This effort, led by the Saudis, began in 1998. I mentioned it rather critically in my first post on this blog.

The Reuters headline gives great hope that the World Body may now be ready to move beyond the 12-year effort by Islamic member countries, which was actually just a thinly veiled attempt to criminalize blasphemy, specifically of Islam, on a world scale.

Western nations in alliance with Latin American allies have consistently opposed the defamation concept, and on Thursday, joined by Muslim and African states, the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva approved a plan to promote religious tolerance. The new approach would switch the focus from protecting beliefs to protecting people.

Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, is quoted in the article as saying, “What is needed now is for countries, such as Pakistan, that have blasphemy laws to eliminate them.”

Pakistan is far from the only offender. Canada, Brazil, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Sudan and the UAE could be added to the list. Australia and New Zealand have laws on their books that are not enforced, and Britain had a Christian-specific blasphemy law until just three years ago.

A full version[PDF] of the resolution may be found HERE.

H/T Hemant

###

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.

###

Res ipsa loquitur

There is a lesson here

The speaker, Joel Burns, is a city councilman in Fort Worth. There is much that can be said about this tremendously brave speech, but I’ll leave that to others. For me, Joel’s words speak more than enough.

That something like this could be uttered in the Cowtown city council chamber, and that the speaker could receive a unanimous standing ovation is all but astounding. Only a few years ago such a speech very likely would have resulted in a far different response.

Perhaps there is hope.

###

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.

~~

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.
Forward this e-mail to friends and post this clip to your Facebook page.

Texas Freedom Network advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right.

Make a donation to support the work of TFN.

Tell a friend to subscribe to TFN News Clips, Alerts or Rapid Response Teams. Subscribers may choose the issue areas that interest them.

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.

~~

The Week in Funnies

There be witches

In a copyrighted broadcast on December 21st, NPR reported on a death sentence handed by down by a Saudi court. The criminal was the Lebanese host of a popular television advice program in which he would sometime offer predictions of future events. The Arabic language program was broadcast from Beirut by satellite. Ali Hussain Sibat was apprehended as he traveled to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

So what was his crime? What unspeakable, heinous sin did Sibat commit that would justify capital punishment?

Sorcery

Sibat’s attorney says, "They took him to prison, and after that they took him to the court many times, asking him, you have to say that you have done something against religion, and after that we will release you and take you to your country." He admitted his sins, and was promptly sentenced to beheading.

A reasonable person would think that this must be an isolated case, and that such extremes would be rare. But as NPR reports, Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch says that such cases are on the rise in Saudi Arabia, and the religious police have arrested many Saudis and non-Saudis, Muslims and non-Muslims on sorcery charges.

Mr. Sibat, in following the advice of his captors, confessed that he consulted spirits to predict the future. Instead of releasing him they marched him in front of live television cameras and told him to confess again. He was then tried, his confession used against him, and sentenced to die. The Saudis did not respond to several requests for comments from NPR and other news organizations.

Whitson says that "You will never know on any given day whether the book you are reading or the words you are saying are going to be interpreted or used against you deliberately as a form of witchcraft".

Saudi Arabia has no penal code and the “crime” of witchcraft is not specifically defined. In each case the judge is left to decide if the charge is a crime. Most Saudi judges view people who believe in the supernatural as heretics and often sentence them according to their personal Sharia training.

The religious police headquarters in the Saudi capital of Riyadh has an entire department devoted to combating sorcery and witchcraft and regularly distributes pamphlets and DVDs. In one DVD, which is set to religious music, police are shown searching homes for signs of witchcraft.

Mr. Sibat’s case is by no means a unique example of the Saudi’s purposeful march into medieval times. Other cases include a Saudi man who was arrested for smuggling a book about witchcraft into the country, an Asian man accused of using “powers” to solve marital disputes, and a man of unknown nationality given a death sentence for “trying to learn magic.” An Egyptian pharmacist was executed in 2007 on a charge of sorcery.

In yet another case, a Eritrean national was convicted and sentenced to 20 month and 300 lashes on a charge of "charlatanry." The evidence was a leather-bound phone booklet with handwriting in the Tigrinya alphabet commonly used in his home country. The religious police called the phone book a "talisman.” The man was imprisoned for over double his sentenced time, then deported.

We should try to remember… these people are our allies.

~~

What is it about Individual Rights that is so difficult to understand?

Osama bin Adams is again trying to put his thumb on women. He tried this last year too.

An Ohio lawmaker has introduced a bill that would prevent a woman from having an abortion unless she gets written consent from the biological father.

Assaulted from the right... assaulted from the left.. The rights of Man have little respite.

Read the whole story...

~~

Do you think you could?

The quote from Jesse Ventura is now Internet legend.

"You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

Many of the conservative bloggers and pundits have rushed to Dick's rescue, all saying the same thing Dick & Company have said all along; that waterboarding isn't all that bad.

Judging by the fact that this country has executed some folks who practiced that particular little "enhanced interrogation" technique on Americans, I'd have to say that Cheney's interpretation is rather novel.

Now comes this little ditty, from Playboy of all places.

This is not something I would attempt, but I would challenge those defending Cheney & Company to give it a run. Any takers?

HT Across the Great Divide
~~

The Life… and Potential Demise of the Exclusionary Rule

Fourth Amendment not faring well in the Roberts Court

In the past I’ve shared thoughts regarding the Savana Redding Fourth Amendment case [HERE] and [HERE], and more recently [HERE]. Six long years after young Redding was strip-searched and humiliated by Safford, Arizona school officials, the Roberts Court finally heard arguments in her case.

Questions raised by this case are many

Is a minor child, a student in a public school, protected by the 4A?

If so and school officials are shown to have violated her 4A protection, are they individually or collectively liable?

Would any evidence produced from such a search be admissible, or would it be excluded?

Under the precedent afforded by the Exclusionary Rule, would the case be reversed?

The Exclusionary Rule was established in the 1914 case of Weeks v. United States, where evidence used to convict was thrown out because a federal agent failed to obtain a warrant prior to entering the home of Freemont Weeks in a search for an illegal gambling operation. Six years later, in Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, SCOTUS established a precedent known as the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, the logic of which says that if the source of the evidence (an illegal search) is tainted, then anything gained is tainted as well.

Therefore, if the Court rules that Redding was protected under the 4A, then any evidence they might have found in her clothing (they found none) could be excluded.

... or maybe not.

The Exclusionary Rule has been under attack since its inception. Neither the Weeks nor Silverthorne decisions were unanimous, and in Silverthorne Chief Justice Edward Douglass White strongly dissented. The rule has endured numerous tests since, but since 1980, the assault has gained momentum.

Reagan Revolution and a Test of our Constitution

The first sustained assaults came following the 1980 inauguration of Ronald Reagan, with Attorney General Edwin Meese leading the charge. Two current Justices, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, both served under Meese, and both worked to overturn the rule. Roberts authored a 1983 memo, titled “The Campaign to Amend or Abolish the Exclusionary Rule.” Justice Alito, on his application to work under Meese, wrote that his interest in law had been motivated by his disagreement with some criminal procedure decisions by the Warren Court.

We must ask, just what is the argument against the rule? Certainly not that it lacks effectiveness in securing 4A rights, for it has done an admirable job of that. Those who would abolish the rule say that when evidence is excluded, criminals go free. While this may be true to some extent, case reviews indicate it is not the problem Roberts and Alito would have us believe. Furthermore, if 4A rights had been considered prior to the illegal search, no evidence would have been found. The rule has survived thus far because it has proved essential in securing constitutional rights, protecting the amendment more than the criminal.

Momentum Building

Roberts and Alito are undeterred, and they are joined by Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in the effort to abolish the rule. All that is required is one more vote. Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer have historically supported the rule. Anthony Kennedy walks the line and could go either way on most cases, but on a question of precedent he is more likely to let it stand.

So how does poor Savana fare with all this? Not well, it seems. Savana got her day in court and tested the validity of policies allowing the school district to humiliate her on scant evidence, but when her case came before SCOTUS, the tone of questioning did not sound favorable. Even Souter and Breyer sounded like doubting Thomas. If this had happened to an adult, the decision would be a resounding thumbs down, but we won’t know if minor children will be extended the same rights until late in June when the Court hands down a decision.

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You Make the Call

There is a rather interesting video released today by the King County Washington Sheriff Department. It shows a 15-year old girl being placed in a holding cell at the Seattle-Tacoma jail following arrest for suspected auto theft. According to the arresting deputy, the girl was “real lippy.”

Upon being placed in the cell she was instructed to remove her shoes. In the video it appears that she kicks one shoe toward the deputies. I’ll let you make the judgment if the deputy's reaction is warranted.

Did you notice the two punches while the girl was face down on the concrete? How about the means by which the deputy lifted the girl from the floor?

A news story about the event is located HERE.

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Gun Control Debate Redux

The previous post regarding gun control stirred some interesting debate, and exposed some of the passions and fallacies from both sides of the issue. What I would like to see as the product of this exercise is some expansion of understanding of the roots inherent to both sides. In an effort to justify the support of 2nd amendment guaranteed rights, someone took a real story and twisted it. The attempt was to create fear. Both sides of this debate are guilty of the same error.

This is about the 5th or 6th time I’ve seen this little internet ditty, and each time it gets enhanced a little more. The 2A choirboys pass it around and around amongst themselves, so in effect, all it achieves is to reinforce currently held beliefs. When I received this from my friend, I replied with a link to the Guardian story from which the internet version originated. Reading it provides a little different perspective.

For one thing, Mr. Martin was not in legal possession of the shotgun. Under the laws of the land, he was a criminal. We can argue the righteousness of the law, but regardless… it was the law.

Mr. Martin formerly had a permit for the weapon, but that was rescinded because he shot at a car he thought contained criminals. Again we can argue the righteousness of a law that would prohibit a man shooting at home invaders, so at this point I’m still not entirely on the cop’s side. I can’t imagine a reasonable scenario which might foment laws requiring shotgun registration and I can certainly imagine myself shooting at someone I had just chased out of my house after finding the door kicked in. So far we have good 2nd amendment fodder.

But there were other aspects of the case that make the internet myth a problem. Probably the most telling is that the crowbar threat was forensically debunked. Mr. Martin apparently lied to justify his actions as both burglars were determined to be in the process of exiting through a window when they were shot. Furthermore, as it turns out, Mr. Martin was a bit of a local kook and was well known to local police for a variety of offenses over an extended period of time.

In other words, Mr. Martin may fall into a realm where I feel reasonable restrictions are in order… or he may not. Since I do not know the full story I am not able to make a reasonable judgment. If Mr. Martin was somewhat on the unbalanced side, perhaps he is one with whom we should not entrust the right to possess firearms. This is not gun control; it is criminal control.

On the other hand, it is conceivable that Mr. Martin was justified in his anger. Perhaps he was driven to this point by an ineffective police force. Perhaps the local Bobbies had indeed failed in their obligation to protect and serve. Perhaps Mr. Martin had been violated one time more than his mind could stand, and he was simply taking responsibility for himself as any good citizen should have the right.

Perhaps. But none of this justifies the fear mongering which was the intent of the internet missive. Those who have tweaked that story did so in an effort to justify their wingnut ends. This is the problem. Let me repeat; THIS IS THE PROBLEM. If we are to win battles that would preserve our natural rights, we MUST do so righteously, without lies or fairytales. Anything less makes us no better than our oppressors.

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Rights Debate

While the gun control debate rages on below, I’d like to point to another blog I’ve enjoyed reading. Jim Rongstad over at Preserving Freedom often has reasonable things to say regarding our liberties. His header contains a quote I feel relates to our debate.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

-- C. S. Lewis

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Gun Control Debate

I’m a shooter and owner of firearms. I’m also a defender of an originalist theory of the 2nd amendment. It takes little for me to enter a debate on gun control, as I am certainly not in favor of most of what I see. That being said, I must also state that I’m not totally opposed to gun control legislation. Some, I feel, is reasonable and necessary.

There are wing nuts on both ends of the gun issue, who make it difficult to conduct a reasonable debate on the subject; but I would like to try. I’ll start by posting the following. A friend sent this little ditty this morning by email, and I wanted to see if anyone is interested in commenting.

It is now closer to reality than you think. You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door. Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows.

One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble.

In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few That are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered.

Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask.

"Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing. "Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested
numerous times. But the next day's headline says it all:

"Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die."

The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.

Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win. The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man. It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.

The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.

How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed Man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.

The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control", demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)

Nine years later, at Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.

For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, Sealed the fate of the few sidearm still owned by private citizens.

During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.

Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We cannot have people take the law into their own hands."

All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply. Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.

How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kinda like cars.

Sound familiar?

WAKE UP AMERICA; THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

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Enemies

Rep. Bill Young (R - FL) speaking in objection to Pres. Obama's closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility:

"[O]nce they become present in the United States, what is their legal status? What is their constitutional status? I worry about that, because I don't want them to have the same constitutional rights that you and I have. They're our enemy"

Thomas Paine:

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself"

Sri Chinmoy:

"Who is man's enemy? How many enemies are there? Only one, and that enemy is man's own unlit lower self"

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