Author Topic: Fascism, liberal and tech fascism, progressivism, socialism, crony capitalism  (Read 316710 times)

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #100 on: April 10, 2010, 07:02:47 AM »
Oh puuleeze. What "in your face tactics and attitude"?

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #101 on: April 10, 2010, 02:26:32 PM »
Amid cuts, Ohio judge tells citizens to carry guns
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN (AP) – 23 hours ago

CLEVELAND — One judge's solution for citizens feeling less secure because of budget cuts in an Ohio county: Carry a gun.

Judge Alfred Mackey of Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court advised residents Friday to be vigilant and arm themselves because the number of deputies has been cut about in half because of a tight budget. He also urged neighbors to organize anti-crime block watch groups.

"They have to be law-abiding, and if they are not familiar with firearms they need to take a safety course so they are not a threat to their family and friends and themselves," Mackey said Friday.

Mackey, whose comments were first broadcast Thursday by WKYC-TV in Cleveland, was expressing concerns with budget cuts that have trimmed the sheriff's department from 112 to 49 deputies in the county, which is Ohio's largest by land area.

Asked by WKYC how people should respond to the cuts and limited patrols, he said, "Arm themselves. Be very careful and just be vigilant because we're going to have to look after each other."

Andrew Pollis, who teaches law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, saw the original TV clip of Mackey and said it was clear the judge wasn't advocating vigilantism.

Still, Pollis said, snippets of the comments could be misunderstood "as a license, if you will, to engage in conduct which we as a society collectively would not want."

In Akron, Summit County Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove, president-elect of the Ohio Common Pleas Judges Association, said she was surprised by Mackey's suggestion.

"That's scary to me," she said. "I don't know what the situation in Ashtabula County is. I personally would never — that's a personal choice in terms of carrying a weapon."

With deputies assigned to transport prisoners and serve warrants, only one radio car is assigned to patrol the county of 720 square miles, excluding municipalities with police departments. The sheriff's patrol area covers most of the county, the judge said Friday.

Mackey said the response to his comments has been positive in the mostly rural county between Cleveland and Erie, Pa.

"People in this county are hunters," said Mackey, who grew up on a farm with rifles and still owns firearms. "People have familiarity with firearms."

Messages seeking comment on the judge's remarks were left for Sheriff William Johnson and county commissioners.

Johnson has threatened to sue the commissioners to have some of his department's funding restored.

The jail in the county of about 100,000 people has held as many as 140 prisoners, but the number has dipped to about 30 because of reductions in the guard staff. About 700 people are on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.

Ohio has had a concealed handgun law for five years, and from October to December the Ashtabula County sheriff issued 54 licenses. Twenty-eight licenses were renewed.

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #102 on: April 12, 2010, 07:35:19 PM »
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/12/AR2010041203044_pf.html

LAPD detectives sidelined by city budget crisis

The Associated Press
Monday, April 12, 2010; 4:27 PM



LOS ANGELES -- The city's budget crisis and cap on overtime is forcing homicide detectives to stop work for days at a time, hurting their ability to solve cases, authorities said.

Some detectives said they had to delay interviewing witnesses to killings after supervisors ordered them to take days off.

"Could this cause us to not solve a case? Sure," said Detective Chris Barling, who oversees the LAPD's South Bureau homicide unit.

The 11 detectives in the Southeast Division's homicide squad had to take off 700 hours in February despite opening five new investigations.

Nine of 14 killings reported in the area this year are unsolved.

"That is horrible compared to our typical rates," said Detective Sal LaBarbera, division supervisor. "A few of them would likely already be solved, if I could just let my guys loose to work."

The worst economic decline since the Depression, a steep drop in tax revenue and burgeoning expenses have led to the city's dire financial situation. The city has a $212 million budget deficit that some have estimated could grow to $1 billion in four years without drastic cuts.

The Police Department typically spends about $100 million a year in overtime but plans to allocate less than $10 million for the upcoming fiscal year.

Homicide detectives are among the first officers to be sent home in significant numbers because they routinely rack up overnight and weekend hours. Typically, a third of detectives' pay comes from overtime.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said the overtime limits were painful.

"It has a serious impact on our ability to respond to some of the large, violent incidents we've been experiencing lately," Beck told the civilian Police Commission last week.

Last year, LAPD officers took off about 17,000 hours a month to compensate for some of the overtime they worked, but the figure jumped to nearly 60,000 hours in March, according to department figures.

That lost work time was the equivalent of removing 290 officers from duty.

In the Foothill Division, a cold-case detective was assigned to help solve five new killings in March. Some detectives said they fill out paperwork or make phone calls on their own time.

"It's really disheartening," said Detective Nate Kouri, who solved more than a dozen cases last year but had to stop working for six weeks beginning in January. "All we want to do is work our cases. That's what we feel we owe to the families of victims."

Body-by-Guinness

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If They Ignore It, Maybe It will Go Away
« Reply #103 on: April 27, 2010, 07:23:46 AM »
Voter Intimidation, New Black Panther Style
The Obama Justice Department wants to ignore what happened at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008.
 
I’ve been to numerous hearings held by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights — but never before to one where there were armed security guards.

But then, it has been decades since the commission held a hearing about the threats and intimidation carried out by an organization that the Anti-Defamation League categorizes as a hate group — in this case, the New Black Panther Party.

On Friday, April 23, the commission finally held its long-delayed hearing on the Justice Department’s now-infamous dismissal of almost all the cases it had already won by default against three members of the NBPP and the party itself for voter intimidation in Philadelphia in the November 2008 election.

In fact, there was good reason for the security. A number of Panthers, including two of the defendants in the lawsuit the DOJ dropped (Jerry Jackson and King Samir Shabazz), marched into the hearing room in their black, fascist-style paramilitary uniforms. The very fact that the NBPP showed up in force refutes the claim made by the DOJ’s leadership that the case was dismissed because there was no evidence of coordination between the national organization and the Philadelphia chapter. Furthermore, the Panthers were handing out a press release from Malik Zulu Shabazz, the national chairman of the NBPP.

That same DOJ leadership apparently doesn’t believe the NBPP was engaging in intimidation when it sent thugs uniformed like Mussolini’s blackshirts, one with a billy club, to stand in front of the entrance to a polling place. In fact, there is nothing the New Black Panthers have ever said or done to suggest that they don’t believe what they did was intimidating to people they hate. They preach intimidation and worse.

Such intimidation continued at the hearing. In the middle of it, King Samir Shabazz, the Panther who swung the billy club on Election Day, got up, moved to the side of the hearing room slightly in front of the witnesses, and photographed the three men seated at the witness table testifying against him. These were the three men who had attempted to protect prospective voters in Philadelphia on Election Day. One later testified that he did notice his picture being taken by Shabazz. It’s hard to see any reason for taking their photographs in such a way other than to try to intimidate them. Or does an advocate of genocide just want to add pictures to his scrapbook?

The hearing started with brief opening statements from the commissioners. Then all the depositions and other evidence gathered by the commission were entered into the record. That formality revealed that when the depositions of the two Panthers who had stood in front of the polling were taken, they both refused to testify, asserting their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.


Now, you cannot assert Fifth Amendment protections merely to stop testimony in a civil action or a commission investigation. Thus, if the two men were lawfully invoking their Fifth Amendment right, that means that they were conceding that their actions not only violated the Voting Rights Act — which is a civil matter — but might also subject them to criminal prosecution.

Chairman Shabazz, who lives in Washington, D.C., never even appeared for his deposition when subpoenaed. The commission has asked the Department of Justice to enforce the subpoena, but so far, that doesn’t seem to be a department priority. What a surprise!

Meanwhile, the opening statements of the commissioners revealed a lot about how interested they were in protecting voting rights. The Democratic commissioners, especially Michael Yaki, a former Pelosi staffer, tried to minimize what happened in Philadelphia; he even said at one point that there may have been no more than a couple of people who were turned away. Yaki was unable to produce any evidence that would support that assertion.

Yaki’s Democratic colleague Arlan Melendez claimed the investigation was a waste of time and resources. According to him, everyone should just take the DOJ’s word that the case was meritless. Most of the other commissioners pointed out that the commission has a special mandate to protect voting rights and that not only was the Justice Department’s dismissal of this case inexplicable, but its refusal to provide information, documents, or witnesses violated the law in general and specifically its responsibility not to engage in selective enforcement.

After the opening statements and the reading of evidence into the record, the hearing continued with three videos: the atwo camera-phone videos shot at the polling place (now on YouTube), and clips from a National Geographic documentary about the NBPP that includes interviews with Chairman Shabazz and with the billy-club-wielding King Samir Shabazz. Mr. Billy Club talks about how much he hates and wants to kill white people, including white babies, and the documentary includes a very ugly scene (among many) in which he confronts an interracial couple in a Philadelphia neighborhood.

The first three live witnesses were Mike Mauro, Chris Hill, and Bartle Bull. Mauro is a lawyer from Connecticut who had gone to Philadelphia as a volunteer. Hill is a former infantry soldier who lives only nine blocks from the polling place. They were part of a roving team that responded on Election Day to a desperate call for help from a black poll watcher. The poll watcher told Hill that the Panthers had called him a “race traitor” and threatened him, saying “there would be hell to pay if he came out.” Hill said the man was visibly scared and had clearly been intimidated. Hill added that the poll watcher was afraid to testify before the commission or in the original voter-intimidation case because “he lives in that neighborhood.”


Hill was called a “white devil” and a “cracker,” and was told he would be ruled by the black man the next day, and he would have to get used to “living under his boot.” Hill saw several voters, including two elderly women, stop abruptly as they were walking up to the polling place when they saw the two Panthers standing right in front of the door. The voters turned around and left; they said they would “come back later” to vote.

Of course, we don’t know if they did. And Hill and Mauro were there for only a short time. There is no telling how many other voters had left without voting that morning before Hill and Mauro showed up at close to noon. This testimony was ignored by a Washington Post reporter at the hearing, who posted a story claiming that “there was no evidence that voters had been prevented from casting ballots in Philadelphia.”

Bartle Bull — a well-known Democratic lawyer (and former publisher of The Village Voice), who worked in the South during the height of the civil-rights campaign — saw the same thing happen. He had also gotten a call about the intimidation and drove to the polling place. One of the Panthers pointed his billy club at Bull and said, “Now you are going to find out what it is to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” This to a man who started off as a volunteer for Adlai Stevenson, who headed Robert Kennedy’s campaign in New York in 1968, and who, in 1971, worked to get civil-rights stalwart Charles Evers elected governor of Mississippi.

Bull saw several voters walk up the long driveway to the polling place, stop, turn around, and leave when they saw the Panthers standing there in their black uniforms and combat boots with one of them slapping a billy club in his hand. It was a pretty dramatic moment in the hearing room when Bull, Hill, and Mauro turned in their chairs, and Bull pointed to one of the Panthers sitting two seats down from me and identified him as the one who wielded the billy club that day and who also said on the National Geograpic documentary that he wanted to kill white people.

A former deputy associate attorney general, Greg Katsas, testified that this was a clear case of voter intimidation, and that there is really no explanation for the DOJ dismissal. Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), who, along with Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), has been tireless in his efforts to get Justice to explain its actions in this case, also testified. He would have been a difficult man for someone like Commissioner Yaki to attack as a partisan or a racist: Wolf was the only member of the Virginia congressional delegation, Republican or Democrat, to vote for the renewal of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 1981, even though he suffered withering criticism in his home state.

In fact, Yaki was almost pathetic in the way he groveled to Wolf, thanking him for the way he worked with Nancy Pelosi when Yaki was still on her staff. Wolf called the Justice Department’s obstruction of congressional oversight into this case “a shameful example of the types of partisan obstruction that undermine our nation’s civil-rights laws.” He also revealed that the DOJ had finally admitted this week that Attorney General Holder “was made aware — on multiple occasions — of the steps being taken to dismiss this case.”


Wolf was referring to the fact that after nine months of stalling, the Justice Department finally answered some of the commission’s queries and sent some of the documents requested, although it still refuses to let the chief of the Voting Section, Chris Coates, and another trial lawyer who worked on the case, Christian Adams, respond to commission subpoenas and testify. Compounding its offenses, when the Justice Department finally did, on the eve of the hearing, send the commission copies of the written statements of the witnesses who were going to testify, it had redacted the names of the witnesses and other information in the statements. There is no justifiable legal or other reason whatsoever for having redacted any portion of the witness statements.

The most amusing part of the hearing was watching Commissioner Yaki try to run interference for the Obama administration. Yaki was clearly unhappy to have the administration’s dirty linen dragged out into the public arena, and he did his best to try to cross up witnesses like Bull and Katsas when he was questioning them. Yaki obviously believes he’s a very smart lawyer, but Bull and Katsas both ran rings around him. Bull, who did an outstanding job of pointing out how outrageously the Panthers had acted in Philadelphia and how wrong the Justice Department was in dismissing this lawsuit. Imagine for a moment if members of a white supremacist group had shown up in paramilitary uniforms with swastikas at a polling place, and yet the Justice Department dropped a voter-intimidation lawsuit it had already won against the group. The hearing room at the commission would have been swarming with news crews, and C-SPAN would surely have covered the hearing live. However, none of that happened. C-SPAN wasn’t there, and neither was a single one of the national cable-news channels.

If a Republican member of the Civil Rights Commission had then claimed during the hearing that the entire case was much ado about nothing because only a couple of people had been turned away from voting, it would have been front-page news in the Washington Post and the New York Times. Editorials in every major newspaper would not only have demanded his resignation, but would also have condemned the Justice Department for its actions. So far, we haven’t seen that happen in this case.

Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, has agreed to testify before the commission on May 14. He is the political appointee in charge of the division — but his testimony will be just another effort by the Justice Department to look as if it’s cooperating when it really isn’t. Perez wasn’t even at the division when the decision was made to drop this case, and his agreeing to testify is just a way of obscuring the fact that the DOJ continues to refuse to allow the trial team who worked on this case to testify. Why? Because the Obama administration knows that their testimony would destroy its claims that it has taken the partisanship out of the Civil Rights Division.

— Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org) and a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice.

http://article.nationalreview.com/432583/voter-intimidation-new-black-panther-style/hans-a-von-spakovsky

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #104 on: April 27, 2010, 07:57:42 AM »
Nice how the media can fill it's days with their "Tea Party, threat or menace" stories but ignore this and the Arizona riots.

Crafty_Dog

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Ron Paul
« Reply #105 on: April 27, 2010, 10:22:42 PM »
What Ron Paul "corporatism" I call "fascism":

===============
Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.

Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.

 
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single-payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges.” Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.

 
Similarly, Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.

To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President’s agenda.

When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term – corporatism – forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.

Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.

See the Ron Paul File

April 27, 2010

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

The Best of Ron Paul

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #106 on: April 28, 2010, 12:52:12 AM »
Dr. Paul, despite the occasional moments of lucidity, is batsh*t crazy.

Body-by-Guinness

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Hutaree Hearing
« Reply #107 on: April 28, 2010, 04:13:32 PM »
Jeepers, where were all the national media when all this hemming and hawing was occurring?

FBI agent short on details on militia inquiry
ASSOCIATED PRESS

DETROIT - An FBI agent who led the investigation of nine Michigan militia members charged with trying to launch war against the federal government couldn't recall many details of the two-year probe yesterday during questioning by defense lawyers.
Even the judge who must decide whether to release the nine until trial was puzzled.
"I share the frustrations of the defense team … that she doesn't know anything," U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said after agent Leslie Larsen confessed she hadn't reviewed her notes recently and couldn't remember specific details of the case.
Judge Roberts is hearing an appeal of another judge's order that has kept members of so-called Hutaree militia in jail since their arrest in late March.
The indictment says the nine planned to kill police officers as a steppingstone to a widespread uprising against the federal government.
Defense lawyers, however, say their clients are being punished for being outspoken.
Prosecutors fought to keep Ms. Larsen off the witness stand, saying the defendants had no legal right to question her.

But the judge said the agent's appearance was appropriate because the burden is on defense lawyers to show their clients won't be a threat to the public if released.
The nine lawyers asked specific questions about each defendant. Ms. Larsen said she had not listened entirely to certain recordings made by an undercover agent who infiltrated the group.
She said that because they were still being examined, she didn't know if weapons seized by investigators last month were illegal.
At other times, Ms. Larsen couldn't answer questions because she said she hadn't reviewed investigative reports.
Defense lawyer William Swor asked if the No. 1 defendant, Hutaree leader David Stone, had ever instructed anyone to make a bomb.
"I can't fully answer that question," the agent replied.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel defended Ms. Larsen, telling the judge it wasn't clear until Monday that she would testify.
Judge Roberts, however, said she told the government to be prepared last week.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet played an audiotape of what he said were several militia members talking freely about killing police.
The participants talked over each other, often laughed and made goofy noises and disparaging remarks about law enforcement.
Prosecutors objected to questions about interpreting the secretly recorded conversations, but the judge said they were fair game.
The judge will resume the court hearing today.
Prosecutors will have a chance to question people who are willing to be responsible for some of the nine if they are released from jail.

http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20100428/NEWS02/4280343/-1/rss

Body-by-Guinness

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Goose Stepping Christian Vanguard Released on Bond
« Reply #108 on: May 03, 2010, 03:35:43 PM »
Oh dear, this dangerous vanguard of violent, right wing, religious zealots has been released on bail because a clearly reactionary judge says nutjobs muttering about violent things is protected speech. I am stunned and amazed the media isn't all over this story as they initially portrayed the Hutarees as Ticking Bombs about to launch Christian Jihad against an unsuspecting populace. Surely commensurate coverage is due here. Or does the story line no longer conform to the talking point of the day and hence needs to be swept under the rug?

Posted: 12:03 p.m. May 3, 2010 | Updated: 1:46 p.
m. today

Judge orders release of 9
Hutaree militia members

BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

A federal judge in Detroit today ordered the
release of nine members of a Lenawee County
Christian militia group freed on bond over the
objections of federal prosecutors.

“The United States is correct that it need not
wait until people are killed before it arrests
conspirators,” U.S. District Judge Victoria
Roberts said in a 36-page decision. “But, the
Defendants are also correct: their right to engage
in hate-filled, venomous speech, is a right that
deserves First Amendment protection.”

She said federal prosecutors failed to persuade
her that the defendants must be jailed until trial.

It is unclear whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office
will appeal the decision.

"We will be reviewing and weighing all of our
options," said spokeswoman Susan Plochinski of
the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Roberts said the defendants could be freed
under house arrest on electronic tethers. They
must surrender their concealed weapons permits, c
annot apply for a license to purchase or carry
 guns and cannot drink alcohol or take drugs.

She said they must continue to work and report
to pretrial services on a weekly basis.

Robert said the defendants also must provide a
list of names, addresses, and phone numbers for
all Hutaree members and members of any other
militia groups they associated with.

Roberts put more than two dozen restrictions on
the group, altogether.

The defendants are David Stone, 45, Tina Stone,
44, and Joshua Stone, 21, all of Clayton; another
son, David Stone Jr., 19, of Adrian; Joshua
Clough, 28, of Blissfield; Michael Meeks, 40, of
Manchester; Kristopher Sickles, 27, of Sandusky,
Ohio, Jacob Ward, 33, of Huron, Ohio; and
Thomas Piatek, 46, of Whiting, Ind.
A federal indictment says the defendants, led by
the elder David Stone, belonged to the Hutaree, a
Christian militia that planned to attack local,
state and federal law enforcement officers,
among other officials.
All nine are charged with seditious conspiracy,
attempting to use weapons of mass destruction
and possession of a firearm in relation to a crime
of violence. David Stone and David Stone Jr. also
are charged with teaching/demonstrating use of
explosive materials.
The weapons of mass destruction charge, the
most serious, carries a maximum penalty of life
in prison.
Absent an appeal and request for a stay from the
judge, authorities said the nine would be brought
to the U.S. Courthouse in Detroit on Tuesday for

Advertisement

 release.
"We're excited but I haven't digested the order
yet," said William Swor of Detroit, who
represents David Stone, the alleged leader of the
group. Another defense attorney, Michael Rataj,
said defense lawyers are waiting to see if the U.S.
Attorney's office decides to appeal Roberts' order
and ask her to delay implementing the decision.
But Rataj said Roberts indicated in the decision
that she wasn't interested in granting a stay.
The defendants are being held in jails in several
counties, including Sanilac, St. Clair and Wayne.
Check back with Freep.com for more details.
Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER: 

http://www.freep.com/article/20100503/NEWS06/100503031/Judge-orders-release-of-9-Hutaree-militia

Crafty_Dog

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Patriot Post: Big Brother to monitor your bank account?
« Reply #109 on: May 07, 2010, 09:06:32 AM »
Hope 'n' Change: Big Brother to Monitor Your Bank Account?
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who didn't see fit to pay his own income taxes, may soon have the authority to watch over your financial transactions, thanks to a new federal agency that would be created in the Democrats' financial overhaul bill. The Office of Financial Research, straight out of a George Orwell novel, would serve as a central repository of transaction records generated at private financial companies. Geithner, along with an unspecified number of bureaucrats that he hires, will have unlimited access for "statistical analysis and research" of the nation's financial institutions -- supposedly for the purpose of spotting systemic problems that will allow them to act before another meltdown.

This agency is the latest in the series of unconstitutional power grabs that Democrats have grown accustomed to since Barack Obama became president. It violates American citizens' Fourth Amendment guarantee of security in their "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" and its imprecise language leaves plenty of room for expanding the agency's activities without congressional approval. The type of information access that Democrats seek would not have enabled them to prevent the financial meltdown of 2008, but it would allow bureaucrats who work for this agency the opportunity to share their privileged information with the private sector one year after leaving the agency. So, ironically, the Office of Financial Research simply presents our bloated government even more opportunity for further corruption and mismanagement of the economy.

Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #110 on: May 08, 2010, 07:54:17 AM »
It makes you...... :evil: oh I won't say it but there are some refelxes riggered Reflexes Triggered.  I think the republican side of this stuff either likes the victorian straight jacket this could allow, or has just given up.........  I think a lot of people are letting stuff like this happen because they know they cannot fix it except in 1 way and it has to get badder before that can happen.

Crafty_Dog

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WU prof loses job for being unPC
« Reply #111 on: May 22, 2010, 01:09:45 PM »
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/education/story/A37EC23F3494702D862577290006CBFD?OpenDocument


Anti-gay view costs WU prof job on oil spill
By Tim Barker
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, May. 20 2010
Just a week after being asked to join an elite team of scientists working on
the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a controversial Washington University professor
has been dismissed from the group.

Physics professor Jonathan Katz's tenure on the team was cut short after Obama
administration officials — under pressure from gay rights groups — decided his
polarizing opinions and writings could get in the way. Katz has not been shy
about expressing his thoughts about a range of topics, including a defense of
homophobia.

His writings — which have appeared on his university website — apparently
escaped the attention of administration officials charged with putting together
the team that also included scientists from Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu
confirmed Katz had been removed.

"Dr. Chu has spoken with dozens of scientists and engineers as part of his work
to help find solutions to stop the oil spill," the spokeswoman said in a
written statement. "Some of Professor Katz's controversial writings have become
a distraction from the critical work of addressing the oil spill. Professor
Katz will no longer be involved in the Department's efforts."

Coincidentally, Chu is scheduled to speak at Washington University's
commencement Friday morning.

Katz, whose academic credentials have not been questioned, has long been known
for his controversial views. They attracted attention as early as 2005, when
several students complained about things he had written on his university
website.

Some of the criticism has centered on Katz's views questioning whether global
warming is really a threat and challenging the value of the diversity movement.
But his stance on homosexuality has brought a firestorm of complaints from
liberal and gay rights groups.

In his 1999 essay, "In Defense of Homophobia," Katz explained why some people —
for both religious and health reasons — support the belief that homosexual
behavior is wrong. He ended the essay, "I am a homophobe, and proud."

Katz could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But late Tuesday, he spoke
with Bloomberg News by phone, confirming the reason for his removal.

"I don't self-censor myself," said Katz, 59. "There's no doubt there are things
on my Web page that've been there for many years that are fairly controversial."

The university issued a statement reiterating its support for academic freedom
for students, staff and faculty.

"The views and opinions expressed by Professor Jonathan Katz on his personal
Web page are his personal statements and do not represent the opinion of
Washington University. Professor Katz clearly states this important distinction
on his page, and he has the right to express opinion in this context and under
these conditions."

Katz's removal has drawn praise from several fronts, including gay rights
organizations who say there's no room for such divisive views.

"These kinds of statements are not acceptable, and they do have repercussions
in today's society," said A.J. Bockelman, executive director of PROMO, a
Missouri gay rights advocacy group.

The move, however, has drawn criticism from some conservatives.

Kerry Messer, of the Missouri Family Network, said the ousting of Katz suggests
that President Barack Obama and his administration place politics ahead of
mobilizing the best scientific experts to address the Gulf oil spill. He said
Katz's qualifications should be based on scientific credentials, not unrelated
personal views.

"This is inexcusable," Messer said, adding that Katz's "lack of political
correctness in one area should not discredit his expertise in another."

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #112 on: May 22, 2010, 01:45:53 PM »
You are free to have any opinion you want, so long as it's leftist.

By the way, don't all the arguments that are used to justify anti-smoking laws work just as well to justify banning gay male sexual behavior?

Body-by-Guinness

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #113 on: May 22, 2010, 02:17:09 PM »
Why would we want a well credentialed professor with critical expertise working on an ongoing environmental catastrophe when his exercise of free expression left some feelings hurt? Allow this and the next thing you know goose stepping Baptists will restore Bush to power or something.


Body-by-Guinness

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Seed Donations = Restoration of Slavery?
« Reply #114 on: June 12, 2010, 09:12:49 AM »
Make sure your arrogant, unscientific, shrill politics always trump feeding starving people and moving them toward self-sufficiency.

The Right to Choose - For Farmers in Haiti
Paul Driessen
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Monsanto Company is learning a valuable lesson in Haiti: no good deed goes unpunished at the hands of radical anti-corporate elements of Western society.

Like so many other concerned citizens, Monsanto responded to the tragic January 12 earthquake that further devastated this impoverished country. It worked for months with Haiti’s Agricultural Ministry to select seeds best suited to local climates, needs and practices, and to handle the donation so as to support, rather than undermine, the country’s agricultural and economic infrastructure.


From Monsanto’s extensive inventory, they jointly chose conventionally bred hybrid (not biotech / genetically modified / GM) varieties of field corn and seven vegetables: cabbage, carrots, eggplants, onions, tomatoes, spinach and melons. Instead of giving the seeds to farmers, the company worked with the USAID-funded WINNER program, to donate the seeds to stores owned and managed by Haitian farmer associations. The 475 tons of hybrid seeds will then be sold to many thousands of farmers at steep discounts, and all revenues will be reinvested in local agriculture.

Other companies and donors are providing fertilizers, insecticide and herbicides that will likewise be sold at a discount. The companies, Agricultural Ministry, farmers associations and other experts will also provide technical advice and assistance – much as the USDA’s Cooperative Extension System does – on how, when and whether to use the various hybrids, fertilizers, and weed and insect-control chemicals.

The goal is simple. Help get the country and its farmers back on their feet, improve farming practices, crop yields and nutrition levels, and increase incomes and living standards.

The reaction of anti-corporate activists was instantaneous, intense, perverse, patronizing and hypocritical. Monsanto wants to turn Haiti back into “a slave colony,” ranted Organic Consumers Association founder Ronnie Cummins. Hybrid and GM seeds will destroy our diversity, small-farmer agriculture and “what is left of our environment,” raged Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Peasant Movement of Papaye.

Other self-anointed “peasant representatives” waded in. The seeds are genetically modified and “will exterminate our people.” Farmers won’t be able to afford the seeds or feed their children. The fertilizers are carcinogenic. Fungicides on the seeds are toxic poisons. “Seeds are the patrimony of humanity.” We support “food and seed sovereignty.” Traditional seeds and farming practices “provide stable employment” for the 70% of Haitians who are small farmers. And of course, “Down with Monsanto.”

Various U.S. churches and foundations chimbed in. “Spontaneous” protests were organized in several Haitian and American cities. At one, hundreds of marchers wore identical shirts and hats, which even at a combined value of just $5 represented two weeks’ income for average Haitian farmers: 40 cents a day. One wonders how many would have shown up without these inducements.

Indeed, this abysmal income underscores the terrible reality of life in this island nation, even before the earthquake, and the perversity of this campaign against “corporate control of the food system.” Instead of “seed sovereignty,” the activists are ensuring eco-imperialism and poverty sovereignty.

Forty years ago, Haiti was largely self-sufficient in food production and actually exported coffee, sugar and mangoes. Today, the country imports 80% of its rice and 97% of the 31 million eggs it consumes monthly. Two-thirds of Haiti’s people are farmers (roughly equivalent to the United States just after the Civil War), but their crop yields are among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere.

Few of Haiti’s rural families have running water or electricity, and women spend hours a day cooking over open fires. Many contract serious lung diseases as a result, and life expectancy is twelve years lower than for people on the Dominican Republic side of the island.

Google satellite images reveal a lush green eastern DR two-thirds of Hispaniola – in stark contrast to the deforested, rutted, brown, impoverished Haitian side, from which enormous quantities of soil are washed into the ocean every year. Roads are so rutted and awful that Peace Corps workers report traveling four hours by truck to go 60 miles. Many rural people cannot afford to feed their children, leaving hundreds of kids in poor highland areas literally starving to death.

Hybrid seeds can help Haitians climb out of this morass. They’re no silver bullet, but they are one of the cheapest, easiest and best investments a farmer can make. By simply planting different seeds and adding fertilizer, farmers can dramatically increase crop yields. A similar Monsanto donation of hybrid maize (corn) seeds and fertilizer to Malawi farmers in 2006 generated a 500% increase in yields and helped feed a million people for a year.

In the United States, organic and conventional farmers alike plant numerous hybrids. They cost more than traditional, open-pollinated seeds, but the payoff in yield, revenue, and uniformity of size, quality and ripening time makes the investment decision easy. Between 1933 and 2000, U.S. corn yields likewise expanded fivefold – thanks to hybrids, fertilizer, irrigation and innovative crop management practices – and today, hybrid or GM hybrid crops are planted on virtually every American field.

Some of the Haitian corn donation will be used to improve chicken farming and egg production. Most will likely be used in staples like sauce pois – corn mush topped with black or red beans combined with coconut milk, hot peppers, onions, garlic and oil. The thickness of the bean sauce reflects a family’s income, and “wealthy” families often accompany the sauce with rice, instead of corn mush. The veggie seeds will add variety to family diets, and provide a source of income via sales at local markets.

The hybrids will also help Haiti adopt truly sustainable farming practices: higher crop yields, greater revenues and better nutrition for more people, at lower cost, from less land, using less water and fewer pesticides, requiring less time in fields, and enabling more farmers to specialize in other trades and send their children to school. In short, greater opportunity and prosperity for millions.

And yet, activists continue to spew forth invective, preposterous claims and disinformation – primarily through the Huffington Post and several other websites. Hybrid seeds don’t regenerate, they assert; wrong – they do and can be replanted, though they will not pass all their best traits down to subsequent generations, which is one reason farmers typically buy new seeds. The seeds are poisonous, they fume; false – the seeds are treated with fungicides that are used safely all over the USA, Western Europe and Latin America, to keep seeds from being destroyed by fungus before they germinate.

(For additional information and discussions, see plant geneticist Anastasia Bodnar’s Biofortified website.)

Monsanto will not force farmers to plant hybrid seeds – or say they can’t replant what they collect from previous harvests. Indeed, hybrids were widely just 30 years ago by Haitian farmers, who know what they are looking for in a crop, how to assess what they have planted and harvested, and whether they want to invest in specific seeds. They should be allowed to make their own decisions – just as others should be permitted to plant whatever traditional, heirloom or open-pollinated seeds they wish.

“We reject Monsanto seeds,” say anti-hybrid activists. They might, and that’s fine. But thousands of other Haitian farmers want to plant Monsanto seeds. Their right to choose must also be respected – not denied by intolerant protesters, who are largely funded and guided by well-fed First World campaigners.

After years of vicious assaults by agro and eco purists, Monsanto’s corporate skin is probably thick enough to survive these lies and often highly personal attacks. Other companies, however, might lack the fortitude to provide their expertise and technology after future disasters, in the face of such attacks.

That is almost certainly an objective for many of these anti-technology, anti-corporate groups. Monsanto has no maize financial interests in Haiti and only a tiny vegetable operation, and I have no financial interest in Monsanto. But for the world’s most destitute people, it would be a tragedy of epic proportions.

http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulDriessen/2010/06/12/the_right_to_choose_-_for_farmers_in_haiti?page=full&comments=true

Body-by-Guinness

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Progressive Politics in Action
« Reply #115 on: June 14, 2010, 06:50:49 AM »
Imagine if this were a Republican:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60oNUoHBYM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

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Body-by-Guinness

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Lame Duck VAT?
« Reply #117 on: June 22, 2010, 09:40:51 AM »
Running on Empty

The wheels come off the liberal juggernaut, but it’s still dangerous.

BY Fred Barnes

June 28, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 39
The Obama presidency is nearly out of gas. So are the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Yet the White House and congressional Democrats aren’t surrendering. They’re still intoxicated with their “historic majorities” and bent on enacting more landmark liberal legislation this year, including cap and trade, a value-added tax (VAT), and who knows what else.

Are they fantasizing? Not entirely. The odds—and the political climate—are against them. But their ideological ambitions are undiminished and they have a sense of urgency. They know their majorities will be crippled (if not eliminated) in the midterm elections on November 2, which means they must enact the remaining parts of the agenda in 2010 or put them back in the cupboard of liberal dreams, maybe for decades. So it’s now or never.

There are two time slots for passing these bills, both difficult. The first is between now and whenever Congress recesses in the fall. Prospects look bleak in this time frame for approving anything except the final version of the financial reform bill. The second is when a lame duck Congress, filled with defeated and retired senators and House members, convenes in December.

Lame duck sessions don’t ordinarily enact major policy changes, but this one could be an exception. It is likely to meet after the president’s commission on reducing the deficit announces its recommendations, which may include a VAT. Democrats insist they’re not scheming to pass what is in effect a national sales tax. But a Republican official in the Senate told me a White House aide, in a recent chat, had raised the possibility of enacting one in the December session. A VAT has obviously crossed the president’s mind.

One can imagine the pressure that might be exerted to pass a VAT in a fiscal “emergency” in December: the deficit and the national debt exploding, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner reporting purchasers of government debt are suddenly backing off because of America’s fiscal mess, the president and his commission vowing to match the tax hike with spending cuts. The result: a VAT becomes law, most of the cuts don’t. President Reagan experienced a similar squeeze in the 1980s when he agreed to a tax increase in exchange for two times that amount of spending cuts. Taxes went up, the spending cuts went away.

What encourages Obama and Democrats is Obamacare. After the victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race in January, the health care bill was regarded as dead. His election was interpreted as a mandate to discard it. But the corpse of Obamacare rose from the grave.

It didn’t matter that the legislation was unpopular and that the president had been breathtakingly unsuccessful in selling it to the American public. With their big majorities in the Senate and House, Democrats could pass Obamacare. And they did.

“Cap and trade” climate-change legislation is even more unpopular than Obamacare. But that’s hardly an impediment to pushing for its passage—especially if you’re thrilled with the idea of being a martyr for liberalism. Besides, it passed the House a year ago. So there’s only the Senate to go and probably no more than ten Democrats who must be cajoled into voting for it (the others are already on board).

Obama, however, didn’t help with his dreary Oval Office speech last week, a third of which was devoted to promoting cap and trade. He invoked a string of clichés about “the consequences of our inaction” and the “new future that will benefit all of us .  .  . only if we seize the moment.” And he told us he “will not settle for .  .  . the idea that this challenge is somehow too big and too difficult to meet.” That’s an empty pledge if there ever was one. And who said the challenge was too big anyway?

Once again, Obama declined to deal with the discredited science on global warming which was the impetus for the bill. Cap and trade would set an arbitrary ceiling on carbon emissions in America, imposing higher energy costs on consumers and businesses while having little or no effect on reducing temperatures. The president dismissed cost concerns in a couple of sentences.

The speech bombed on Capitol Hill, where the Democrats’ majorities are fraying. Senate Democrats did defeat a bid to bar the Environmental Protection Agency, run by global warmists, from imposing a carbon cap on its own. “The White House spun it as a victory,” a Republican aide said. “The problem is they didn’t get to 60.” To pass cap and trade, Democrats would need 60 votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster.

Another blow to Obama was the rude response to his letter to congressional leaders last week asking for another $50 billion so states can avert “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters.” Charles Lane of the Washington Post demolished Obama’s pitch as inaccurate and exaggerated. At best, the president may get a portion of his request, funded (against his wishes) by unused stimulus money.

A final question: Why in the world would a Democrat facing a tough reelection challenge in November vote for cap and trade or any other such legislation? Here’s the essence of the reasoning: Republicans are bound to attack you no matter how you vote, so why not play a role in making history? It won’t kill your reelection chances.

That’s not all. There’s a story line for wavering Democrats. You’ll have more money than your Republican opponent. The tea party people will make life difficult for Republican candidates. And look what happened in May in the special House election in Pennsylvania. The Democrat won by sounding like a conservative and stressing local issues. You can do the same.

If you sense there’s something faintly familiar about this advice, you’re right. In 2006, Republican leaders assured worried incumbents they’d be loaded with campaign money, plus earmarks for their districts or states and scads of local issues to latch onto. Many Republicans were comforted by this advice and then lost their seats. A similar fate awaits Democrats in 2010.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/running-empty

Crafty_Dog

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L etat, cest moi
« Reply #118 on: June 26, 2010, 12:04:50 AM »
 Will Obama listen to anybody?


Examiner Editorial
June 24, 2010

       

 

There is a disturbing passage in federal Judge Martin Feldman's Tuesday decision
overturning President Obama's six-month moratorium on oil and natural gas drilling
in all waters more than 500 feet deep. "The [Interior] Secretary's determination
that a six-month moratorium on issuance of new permits and on drilling by the 33
rigs is necessary does not seem to be fact-specific and refuses to take into measure
the safety records of those others in the Gulf. There is no evidence presented
indicating that the Secretary balanced the concern for environmental safety with the
policy of making leases available for development. There is no suggestion that the
Secretary considered any alternatives. ..." Feldman wrote.

Even more disturbing is Obama's response to Feldman, which was to promise both an
appeal in court and issuance of a new drilling moratorium from Interior. In other
words, Obama is forging ahead with the very policy the judge just ruled
unconstitutional. And the chief executive is challenging the thousands of Gulf Coast
oil industry employees to try and stop him in the appeals court. This response is
the latest evidence of a disconcerting pattern with this president and his cronies
in the executive branch and Congress: Their "progressive" ideological agenda comes
first; everything else, including the will of the people and the letter of the law,
is at most an obstacle on the road to "change we can believe in."

Think about it: Large and growing majorities opposed Obamacare in public opinion
survey after survey, yet Obama and his congressional allies wrote the bill behind
closed doors, made multiple corrupt bargains to gain votes, and passed it anyway.
When General Motors bondholders opposed Obama's takeover, he flouted age-old
bankruptcy law while effectively nationalizing the automaker and handing it over to
the United Auto Workers union. When auto executives expressed concern about Obama's
costly increase in fuel economy standards, his chief environmental adviser warned
them not to "write anything down" about their discussion.

The list goes on: When public worries about excessive federal spending began being
heard on Capitol Hill, Obama appointed a rubber-stamping fiscal commission and
nodded approval as congressional Democrats set aside the law that since 1974 has
required Congress to approve an annual budget. When the Senate refused to vote on
Obama's cap-and-trade energy bill, his Environmental Protection Agency administrator
issued a threat: Either pass the bill or the agency will unilaterally impose
draconian carbon emission limits on America.

Years ago, Alexander Hamilton told the New York convention considering adoption of
the Constitution that "here, sir, the people govern." We wonder what he would say
today after witnessing Obama in action.


Read more at the Washington Examiner:
<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Will-Obama-listen-to-anybody_-96985499.html#ixzz0rv5x85uT>
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Will-Obama-listen-to-anybody_-96985499.html#ixzz0rv5x85uT


Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #119 on: June 26, 2010, 01:33:00 AM »
Back in the day Alexander Hamilton would have used the standard left right glove slap to the face and pistols at dawn challenge.  We are more civilized about it now..........aren't we? :evil:

Yeah Obama clearly does not understand anything about the constitution or his role in government anymore that most left and extreme right congressmen/senators.

The mentality inside the beltway seems to be the equivalent of a dysfuntional father.  "you do not know what you want, you do not have the EXPERIENCE to even have a clue!  You will do it MY way or move out of the house!"  The arcjie bunker mentality is alive and well running rampant in the progressives all across the spectrum.

Body-by-Guinness

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DOJ Attorney Speaks
« Reply #120 on: June 27, 2010, 10:26:07 AM »
ADAMS: Inside the Black Panther case Anger, ignorance and lies
By ByJ. Christian Adams 6:58 p.m., Friday, June 25, 2010Illustration: Black Panther justice by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times


On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers. After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case.

The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.

The federal voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen dam.

Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered us to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptable legal limbo.

The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal.

Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina.

Mr. Perez also inaccurately testified to the House Judiciary Committee that federal "Rule 11" required the dismissal of the lawsuit. Lawyers know that Rule 11 is an ethical obligation to bring only meritorious claims, and such a charge by Mr. Perez effectively challenges the ethics and professionalism of the five attorneys who commenced the case. Yet the attorneys who brought the case were voting rights experts and would never pursue a frivolous matter. Their experience in election law far surpassed the experience of the officials who ordered the dismissal.

Some have called the actions in Philadelphia an isolated incident, not worthy of federal attention. To the contrary, the Black Panthers in October 2008 announced a nationwide deployment for the election. We had indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere, not only in November 2008, but also during the Democratic primaries, where they targeted white Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. In any event, the law clearly prohibits even isolated incidents of voter intimidation.

Others have falsely claimed that no voters were affected. Not only did the evidence rebut this claim, but the law does not require a successful effort to intimidate; it punishes even the attempt.

Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.

Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.

Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.

J. Christian Adams is a lawyer based in Virginia who served as a voting rights attorney at the Justice Department until this month. He blogs at electionlawcenter.com.

http://www.examiner.com/x-35976-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m6d26-DOJ-official-resigns-over-Obamas-racism?cid=examiner-email

Body-by-Guinness

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"American Taliban" Fail
« Reply #121 on: June 29, 2010, 12:15:19 PM »
Hmm, maybe the polling that lead some to hyperventilate about goose stepping Baptists wasn't all it was cracked up to be. . . .

The Fall of the "American Taliban"

Michael C. Moynihan | June 29, 2010

Back in February, I wrote the following about this DailyKos/Research 2000 poll, which suggested that every conservative in America thought Obama was a Kenyan communist:

Last week Daily Kos editor Markos Moulitsas told readers that he was "putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic  world." But the liberal Dinesh D'Souza (whose sinister claims about the left's "responsibility" for 9/11 are summarized and rebutted here by George Mason law professor Peter Berkowitz) found himself "making certain claims about Republicans that I didn't know if they could be backed up." Working backwards, Moulitsas set out to prove, via a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, that self-identified Republicans have much in common with the makeup-wearing, women-beating acolytes of Mullah Omar.

The poll's results obviously do not confirm Moulitsas's rather extreme judgment of rank-and-file Republicans, but are nevertheless alarming. After a quick read of the questions and methodology (areas in which I possess no expertise), I was skeptical.

Now, DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas is admitting that the study was, in his words, “bunk”:

I have just published a report by three statistics wizards showing, quite convincingly, that the weekly Research 2000 State of the Nation poll we ran the past year and a half was likely bunk.

Since the moment Mark Grebner, Michael Weissman, and Jonathan Weissman approached me, I took their concerns seriously and cooperated fully with their investigation. I also offered to run the results on Daily Kos provided that they 1) fully documented each claim in detail, 2) got that documentation peer reviewed by disinterested third parties, and 3) gave Research 2000 an opportunity to respond. By the end of last week, they had accomplished the first two items on that list. I held publication of the report until today, because I didn't want to partake in a cliche Friday Bad News Dump. This is serious business, and I wasn't going to bury it over a weekend.

We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it's clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it.


Good for Moulitsas for both allowing an investigation and coming clean when the results were unfavorable to Kos and Research 2000.

http://reason.com/blog/2010/06/29/undermining-the-american-talib?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reason%2FHitandRun+%28Reason+Online+-+Hit+%26+Run+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Body-by-Guinness

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Free Press Free Zones
« Reply #122 on: July 06, 2010, 06:59:21 AM »
As transparent as crude oil.

Aaron Gee
The Federal Government and the Coast Guard have issued new restrictions on press access to the Gulf oil spill and clean up.  Reporters are not allowed within 65 feet of any cleanup vessel, or booms on land or in water.  Failure to obey these directives is a class D Felony, with fines up to $40,000. This comes on the heals of a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report that found that the Obama administration had repeatedly provided false information on what assets were being used in the clean up, when officials knew about the leak, and the depth of Federal involvement in the operations. 

President Obama has been remarkably thin skinned and it's clear from my perspective that Obama is trying desperately to control the negative images that come from the gulf oil disaster.  The Press restrictions are so egregious that even CNN's Anderson Cooper is upset.  In his broadcast (embedded video) he repeatedly says "we are not the enemy here", referring to the press. The recent actions by the Coast Guard , in direct contradiction to their earlier statements, have more and more reporters hopping mad. The clear implication of these actions is that Administrations is trying to cover up government incompetence and failure. 

The new restrictions on press access aren't the only issue, another problem is that the media is still reluctant to place blame for government incompetence at the feet of Obama. Instead of looking to the Obama Administration in light of the new regulations, the media is blaming Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. It would seem that the press still doesn't understand what the term "Commander-in-Chief" actually means.  The US Military has always been a favorite press target and the recent criticisms continue the trend.

Sadly, the media still doesn't "get it".  They are being played just as eloquently now as they were during the 2008 campaign.  Our "watchdog" press has been fawning over President Obama in spite of his unkept promises, cover ups, and incompetence.  The masters of spin and distraction at the White House know this and are hard at work  on a new story line for the media to swallow.  In the fairy tale version of events Obama will have done nothing wrong but the bad Coast Guard (Military types) and evil BP (Corporate types) will be obstructing the President's attempt to be transparent and clean up the gulf.  Expect the White House to push this storyline and expect the media to go along despite all evidence to the contrary.  Expect the American people to not be so easily fooled.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/as_transparent_as_crude_oil.html at July 06, 2010 - 08:56:59 AM CDT

Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #123 on: July 06, 2010, 07:24:32 AM »
<kid chant/taunt> The MSM is gonna do the prez!  The MSM is gonna do the prez! </imitation>  Like I said Obama has not a single CLUE how he is supposed to be running the country.  Instead of  trying to manage the media like some Commissar, he should roll up his sleeves and deal with reality.   Oh yeah, he is pretty dissociated from that too.  The Progressive political agenda is going to take a major hit, and a lot of the liberal side of politics is gonna get impacted.  I would love for some media type to "out" all the politicos who passed or supported Obamas media restrictions.  The Media is a PITA, but they are as necessary as living with traffic on the daily commute to work..........


Crafty_Dog

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The Left Fascist Axis
« Reply #124 on: July 06, 2010, 01:54:55 PM »
July 06, 2010
The Left-Fascist Axis. Again
By James Lewis

We are seeing another Left-fascist axis in our time, recapitulating Stalin's (and worldwide communism's) embrace of Hitler's Germany. The Gaza flotilla crisis was set up by the radical Left (Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jodie Evans and other Obama buds), in collusion with Hamas, which is about as fascist as they get. If you doubt it, watch Hamas TV on the MEMRI website. They are the worst. They teach toddlers about the glories of dying for Allah.  Even Fatah thinks Hamas is a throwback to the Dark Ages.


In the Gaza flotilla, the Turks who yelled out "Khaibar! Khaibar!" as they were trying to kill Israeli soldiers, were members of the Turkish branch of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood. They yelled out "Khaibar!" because that massacre of Jews was Mohammed's own Auschwitz. That doesn't leave any doubt about who they are. Martyrdom is just a means to an end, and that end is "Khaibar." The media always forget to tell us that part.


Words matter, which is why the Left is always making up new words for themselves, to disguise who they really are.  The Left isn't  Communist any more, they are "progressive" -- which leaves the rest of us  back in 1776. "Progressives" always know which way to find "progress," and it always comes down to stomping on the rest of us. Because if you're not "progressive" you must be an enemy of  "progress."   


The radical Left  hasn't changed one smidgen since Stalin. The Left still believes in global totalitarianism. Stalin is dead, but Stalinism is on the march. Listen to the stomping of their boots.


The Left is a throwback to all the ancient utopian cults, the Mayans, Genghis Khan and the Yellow Emperor of China, Idi Amin Dada and Robert Mugabe. It's the ancient Egyptian priesthood, which was also a cult run by a totalitarian clique. In ancient Egypt you had to die to get to utopia, but the psychology is always the same.  Utopian cults always appeal to suckers. They are a very nasty part of the human condition. But there's nothing new there, and they are certainly not "progressive." They are a throwback.


Obama doesn't look like a normal American because he is a High Priest. Harry Truman wouldn't recognize him, but King Tut would. Obama has all the arrogance and ignorance of a Pharaoh.


So here are two ways to simplify the daily media circus. First, the media are the cult of the Left, trying to twist your mind. The "Left" equals global totalitarianism, which is Stalinism, which is Leninism, which is radical feminism, which is the hateful racism of the Reverend Wright and Louis Farrakhan.  Same story, different labels. Keep it simple.


Whatever mask they try on, radical leftists are internationalists -- meaning that they are against America as a sovereign nation. That's Obama's real beef against us, and it's why he will never enforce our borders. Sure, leftists are all "patriots" in their own minds, because they worship the prairie flowers and the pretty mountains.  And they all despise MacDonald's hamburgers and eat arugula, because at bottom they are the most amazing snobs.  America is just one little piece of Planet Gaia, where everybody will live in peace and harmony because Obama or Algore will rule us with an iron fist. It's all for our own good.


So, the Left hasn't changed since ancient times. That's why Harvard has a "speech code," courtesy of the likes of Elena Kagan and the PC Commissars. People can't be trusted to say what's on their minds.  They might hurt somebody's feelings. Speech codes are ancient ways to control people.  All the prehistoric little Hitlers had speech taboos.


The second useful word is "fascist." Academics spend their lives trying to define that word. But if  you believe in killing people until they surrender to your totalitarian hokum; if you want to enslave women, kids, Jews, Christians, nonconformist Muslims (like the Bahai'is), gays, Africans in the Sudan, Marxists (yes), Trotskyites, liberals, and anybody who thinks the US Constitution is a good idea, you're a fascist. Simple, reasonable definition.


So we are seeing the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Take 2. The motivation is identical. These people  hate the modern world, just like the Nazis and Lenin did.  Hitler wanted to go back to the Nordic gods. His utopia was in a fantasy past. Lenin placed his utopia in the distant future. If you're a coercive utopian you have to dream of  a long-ago  past or a misty future, as long as it's impossible to see what it's really like.


Today the Saudis want to go back to Mohammed in the 7th century, and the Twelvers in Iran want to go back to the Hidden Mahdi in the 11th century. They all want to make utopia by force and terror. 


The Left-fascists are intolerant of individualism, liberty, free speech and electoral legitimacy, which is why they always try to sabotage constitutional government. Kagan on the Supreme Court. Obama as Pharaoh in the Oval. Why bow down to the King of Saudi and the Emperor of Japan? They are both medieval reactionaries. Obama bowed down to them, but he was really giving the high sign to America. That's Obama's schtick.


We are seeing a re-run of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1938. That Left-Fascist alliance fell apart when Hitler flipped and decided to send tanks into Poland and Russia instead.


It is what Freud called a "repetition compulsion." It happens over and over again, because these people don't live in reality. That's why they are dangerous. They can never figure out what went wrong last time, so they keep trying it again.  They live in egomaniacal fantasies, and real people keep getting in their way. Off with their heads!


The last time a Left-Fascist Axis rose to power it led to World War Two and the Cold War. Maybe the only way to win is to make them fight each other. That's how we came out of it before.


I don't know how decent people will prevail this time. I think we will, because we have done so over the centuries. But we are in another Long War with some real bad hot spots. The enemy today is both the Left and the fascists.


Read the news and you'll see it every day.


They're baaaaack!

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/the_leftfascist_axis_again.html at July 06, 2010 - 02:57:38 PM CDT

Body-by-Guinness

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We Abandoned the Law Abiding
« Reply #125 on: July 13, 2010, 02:19:42 PM »
Unequal Justice
Team Obama lets the Black Panthers get away with voter intimidation.
 
Voters at a precinct on Philadelphia’s Fairmount Street witnessed unusual sights and sounds on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008. Two members of the New Black Panther party, King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson, stood within 15 feet of this polling station dressed in military-style black jackets, black berets, and black combat boots. Shabazz wielded a two-foot-long night stick.

“Cracker, you are about to be ruled by a black man,” one of the New Black Panthers told a white voter. They taunted others as “white devils.” Angela and Larry Counts, a black couple who served as GOP poll watchers, told authorities they felt endangered when the Panthers called them “race traitors.”

At an April 23, 2010, U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing, Chris Hill, an eyewitness and roving poll watcher, explained under oath that he spoke with Larry Counts inside the precinct. “When I found him, he was not quite cowering, but he was definitely shook up,” Hill testified. “And he told me that he was called a race traitor by Mr. Shabazz . . . and that he was threatened if he stepped outside of the building, there would be hell to pay.”

A Dec. 22, 2008, Justice Department memorandum states that Mr. and Mrs. Counts “confirmed that they were afraid to leave the polling place until the Black Panthers had departed.” The memo adds that Angela Counts “wondered what might occur next and if someone might ‘bomb the place.’”

Legendary civil-rights attorney and liberal-Democrat activist Bartle Bull was at the Fairmount Street precinct. Bull’s left-wing credentials are not sterling. They are platinum. The former publisher of the Village Voice served as New York State campaign manager for Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presidential bid. He did the same for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. As early as 1966, he watched polls and served Democratic candidates in such places as Midnight, Miss. “I saw nooses hung over the branches of trees,” he told the Civil Rights Commission.

Bull recalled that on the day Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, “the gentleman with the club,” King Samir Shabazz, “pointed the billy club at me and said, ‘Now you will see what it means to be ruled by the black man, Cracker.’ And the reason I recall that very well is because it struck me as ironic that having worked as a civil-rights lawyer and being threatened in Mississippi, I was now being threatened in this way here, and being called a cracker, frankly.”

So, the Panthers behaved menacingly, used some nasty language, and terrified at least two poll watchers. But did they actually intimidate voters? Eyewitnesses say they did.

• The DOJ memo states: “Attorney poll watcher Harry Lewis told us he saw voters appear apprehensive about approaching the polling location entrance behind the Black Panthers.”

• Chris Hill told that Civil Rights Commission: “As I was standing on the corner, I had two older ladies and an older gentleman stop right next to me, ask what was going on. I said, ‘Truthfully, we don’t really know. All we know is there’s [sic] two Black Panthers here.’ And the lady said, ‘Well, we’ll just come back.’ And so, they walked away.” Referring to the Panthers, Hill added: “I saw these guys. They attempted to intimidate me. I’m Army Infantry. I don’t intimidate, but they did stop those three people from voting at that second.”

Surely the Obama administration prosecuted Shabazz and Jackson for voter intimidation?

Wrong!

When they ignored late-term Bush-administration charges of Voting Rights Act violations, federal district judge Stewart Dalzell issued a default ruling against Shabazz, Jackson, the New Black Panther party, and its chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz (no relation to the other Shabazz). Although career federal prosecutors won this case (arguing, among other things, that “there is never a good reason to bring a billy club to a polling station”), they were overruled by political appointees in Pres. Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department, who ordered them to dismiss the complaints against all parties except King Samir Shabazz. He was ordered not to exhibit a weapon within 100 feet of a Philadelphia precinct through Nov. 15, 2012. Shabazz presumably would abide by this injunction if he brandished his baton at voters 105 feet from a polling place or did so in Philadelphia in 2013. Pittsburgh seems fair game.

The May 15, 2009, case dismissal was timed perfectly for Jerry Jackson. During the Election Day 2008 incident, he was an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee and a credentialed poll watcher for the Democratic party and the Obama campaign. With the federal case safely behind him, Jackson watched the polls again for the Democrats in municipal elections on May 19, 2009.

This situation is even more outrageous given the unvarnished bigotry of those involved.

• “You want freedom, you gonna have to kill some crackers,” King Samir Shabazz says on a National Geographic/YouTube video. “You gonna have to kill some of they [sic] babies.”

“I’m about the total destruction of white people,” Shabazz told the Philadelphia Daily News’s Dana DiFilippo. “I’m about the total liberation of black people. I hate white people. I hate my enemy.” Shabazz likes to relax by putting on his headphones and listening to “revolutionary, cracker-killing hip-hop.”

• “F*** Whitey’s Christmas,” read a message on Jerry Jackson’s MySpace page, until it was whitewashed once Kerry Picket uncovered it in the July 30, 2009, Washington Times. “BLACK POWER, BLACK LOVE, BLACK UNITY, BLACK MINDS, KILLIN CRAKKKAS,” stated Jackson’s webpage.

• The leftist Southern Poverty Law Center calls NBPP “a hate group based on the anti-white, anti-gay, and anti-Semitic views its leaders have repeatedly expressed.” The NBPP is so bigoted, it has been repudiated even by the original Black Panthers.

• “Let’s talk about this brother,” NBPP president Malik Zulu Shabazz says at a public gathering while someone holds up a large photo of al-Qaeda chief “Sheik Osama bin Laden,” as Shabazz calls him. As crowd members shout “Allahu akbar,” Shabazz continues: “He’s standing up. He’s bringing reform to this world.” Speaking on March 22, 2002 — more than six months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — Shabazz says: “Here’s a Muslim that’s [sic] standing up. . . .  Let’s give him a hand, man.” The audience bursts into applause and cheers. “If the enemy hates him,” Shabazz concludes about bin Laden, “tangentially, logically, mathematically, he’s your friend.”

Why would the supposedly ethnically transcendent Obama administration distribute free passes to the black equivalent of Klansmen with a soft spot for al-Qaeda? Blame power-lust and unequal justice under law.

J. Christian Adams, until recently a career attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Division, testified under oath July 6 before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He offered an insider’s view of the politicized, radical atmosphere within Obama’s Justice Department.

• According to Adams, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes last November instructed prosecutors on the “Motor Voter” law that governs voter registration. Regarding that statute’s Section 8 — which requires that local officials purge their rolls of relocated, ineligible, and dead voters — Adams recalls hearing Fernandes, an Obama political appointee, say: “We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.” Such lawlessness, of course, invites ACORN-style vote fraud.

• As a July 6 Washington Times editorial (one of at least 31 that have advanced this story) noted, Adams also testified that “There is an open hostility to race-neutral enforcement of the voting-rights laws.” He added: “I was told by Voting Section management that cases are not going to be brought against black defendants on the benefit of white victims.”

Adams, who resigned from Justice in protest on June 1, encapsulated the Obama administration’s moral bankruptcy in this case: “We abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens.”

— Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

http://article.nationalreview.com/438019/unequal-justice/deroy-murdock

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #126 on: July 13, 2010, 04:39:19 PM »
Notice only the eeeeeeevil Fox News is covering the above story. If the Bush Administration's DOJ was not prosecuting the KKK for intimidating black voters in identical circumstances, would the media be silent?

Crafty_Dog

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Student ordered to change religious views
« Reply #127 on: July 27, 2010, 08:00:45 PM »
Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on
Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed
By Joshua Rhett Miller

Published July 27, 2010
| FoxNews.com



Jennifer Keeton, 24, has been pursuing a master's degree in school
counseling at Augusta State University since last year, but school officials
have informed her that she'll be dismissed from the program unless she
alters her "central religious beliefs on human nature and conduct,"
according to a civil complaint filed last week.

A graduate student in Georgia is suing her university after she was told she
must undergo a remediation program due to her beliefs on homosexuality and
transgendered persons.

The student, Jennifer Keeton, 24, has been pursuing a master's degree in
school counseling at Augusta State University since 2009, but school
officials have informed her that she'll be dismissed from the program unless
she alters her "central religious beliefs on human nature and conduct,"
according to a civil complaint filed last week.

"[Augusta State University] faculty have promised to expel Miss Keeton from
the graduate Counselor Education Program not because of poor academic
showing or demonstrated deficiencies in clinical performance, but simply
because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she
holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and
gender identity," the 43-page lawsuit reads.

Keeton, according to the lawsuit, was informed by school officials in late
May that she would be asked to take part in a remediation plan due to
faculty concerns regarding her beliefs pertaining to gay, lesbian, bisexual
and transgender issues.

"The faculty identifies Miss Keeton's views as indicative of her improper
professional disposition to persons of such populations," the lawsuit reads.

The remediation plan, according to the lawsuit, noted Keeton's "disagreement
in several class discussions and in written assignments with the gay and
lesbian 'lifestyle,'" as well as Keeton's belief that those "lifestyles" are
cases of identity confusion.

If Keeton fails to complete the plan, including additional reading and the
writing of papers describing the impact on her beliefs, she will be expelled
from the Counselor Education Program, the lawsuit claims.

Keeton has stated that she believes sexual behavior is the "result of
accountable personal choice rather than an inevitability deriving from
deterministic forces," according to the suit.

"She also has affirmed binary male-female gender, with one or the other
being fixed in each person at their creation, and not a social construct or
individual choice subject to alteration by the person so created," the
lawsuit reads. "Further, she has expressed her view that homosexuality is a
'lifestyle,' not a 'state of being.'"

In a statement to FoxNews.com, Augusta State University officials declined
to comment specifically on the litigation, but said the university does not
discriminate on the basis of students' moral, religious, political or
personal views or beliefs.

"The Counselor Education Program is grounded in the core principles of the
American Counseling Association and the American School Counselor
Association, which defines the roles and responsibilities of professional
counselors in its code of ethics," the statement read. "The code is included
in the curriculum of the counseling education program, which states that
counselors in training have the same responsibility as professional
counselors to understand and follow the ACA Code of Ethics."

David French, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed the
lawsuit against Augusta State University on Keeton's behalf, said no
university has the right to force a citizen to change their beliefs on any
topic.

"The university has told Jennifer Keeton that if she doesn't change her
beliefs, she can't stay in the program," he told FoxNews.com. "She won't
even have a chance to counsel any students; she won't have a chance to get a
counseling degree; she'll be expelled."

Keeton, who is not available for interviews according to French, believes
that people have "moral choices" regarding their sexuality, he said.

"A student has a right to express their point of view in and out of class
without fear or censorship or expulsion," French said.


Thank you
Jeff Hussey
Phone. 705.879.2870   Fax. 705.438.5893
Email. hussey.jeff@northeasternaerospace.com
Web. www.northeasternaerospace.com

Crafty_Dog

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Peek-a-boo, we don't get to see you: SEC exempt
« Reply #128 on: July 28, 2010, 10:28:41 AM »
 :x :x :x
SEC Says New FinReg Law Exempts It From Public Disclosure
By Dunstan Prial

Published July 28, 2010

Reuters



So much for transparency.

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings."

The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as “the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the  SEC’s failures secret. The only losers here are the American public.”

If the SEC’s interpretation stands, Mintz, who represents FOX Business Network, predicted “the next time there is a Bernie Madoff failure the American public will not be able to obtain the SEC documents that describe the failure,” referring to the shamed broker whose Ponzi scheme cost investors billions.

The SEC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Criticism of the provision has been swift. “It allows the SEC to block the public’s access to virtually all SEC records,” said Gary Aguirre, a former SEC staff attorney-turned-whistleblower who had accused the agency of thwarting an investigation into hedge fund Pequot Asset Management in 2005. “It permits the SEC to promulgate its own rules and regulations regarding the disclosure of records without getting the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which typically applies to all federal agencies.”

Aguirre used FOIA requests in his own lawsuit against the SEC, which the SEC settled this year by paying him $755,000. Aguirre, who was fired in September 2005, argued that supervisors at the SEC stymied an investigation of Pequot – a charge that prompted an investigation by the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees.

The SEC closed the case in 2006, but would re-open it three years later. This year, Pequot and its founder, Arthur Samberg, were forced to pay $28 million to settle insider-trading charges related to shares of Microsoft (MSFT: 25.86 ,-0.30 ,-1.15%). The settlement with Aguirre came shortly later.

“From November 2008 through January 2009, I relied heavily on records obtained from the SEC through FOIA in communications to the FBI, Senate investigators, and the SEC in arguing the SEC had botched its initial investigation of Pequot’s trading in Microsoft securities and thus the SEC should reopen it, which it did,” Aguirre said. “The new legislation closes access to such records, even when the investigation is closed.

“It is hard to imagine how the bill could be more counterproductive,” Aguirre added.

FOX Business Network sued the SEC in March 2009 over its failure to produce documents related to its failed investigations into alleged investment frauds being perpetrated by Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Following the Madoff and Stanford arrests it, was revealed that the SEC conducted investigations into both men prior to their arrests but failed to uncover their alleged frauds.

FOX Business made its initial request to the SEC in February 2009 seeking any information related to the agency’s response to complaints, tips and inquiries or any potential violations of the securities law or wrongdoing by Stanford.

FOX Business has also filed lawsuits against the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve over their failure to respond to FOIA requests regarding use of the bailout funds and the Fed’s extended loan facilities. In February, the Federal Court in New York sided with FOX Business and ordered the Treasury to comply with its requests.

Last year, the network won a legal victory to force the release of documents related to New York University’s lawsuit against Madoff feeder Ezra Merkin.

FOX Business’ FOIA requests have so far led the SEC to release several important and damaging documents:

•FOX Business used the FOIA to obtain a 2005 survey that the SEC in Fort Worth was sending to Stanford investors. The survey showed that the SEC had suspicions about Stanford several years prior to the collapse of his $7 billion empire.

•FOX Business used the FOIA to obtain copies of emails between Federal Reserve lawyers, AIG and staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in which it was revealed the Fed staffers knew that bailing out AIG would result in bonuses being paid.

Recently, TARP Congressional Oversight Panel chair Elizabeth Warren told FOX Business that the network’s Freedom of Information Act efforts played a “very important part” of the panel’s investigation into AIG.

Warren told the network the government “crossed a line” with the AIG bailout.

“FOX News and the congressional oversight panel has pushed, pushed, pushed, for transparency, give us the documents, let us look at everything. Your Freedom of Information Act suit, which ultimately produced 250,000 pages of documentation, was a very important part of our report. We were able to rely on the documents that you pried out for a significant part of our being able to put this report together,” Warren said.

The SEC first made its intention to block further FOIA requests known on Tuesday. FOX Business was preparing for another round of “skirmishes” with the SEC, according to Mintz, when the agency called and said it intended to use Section 929I of the 2000-page legislation to refuse FBN’s ongoing requests for information.

Mintz said the network will challenge the SEC’s interpretation of the law.

“I believe this is subject to challenge,” he said. “The contours will have to be figured out by a court.”

SEC Financial Regulatory Law H.R. 4173

Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #129 on: July 29, 2010, 07:25:54 AM »
PC is finally starting to bear the newspeak fruits from its planting.  The secrecy mafia of another prsidency is also bearing fruit.  Obviously most of our politicians have the elitist/noble attitude that a lot of the Europeon Nobility had before the industrial revolution and social revolution fixed it.   I think we may see a compressed version of the Depression/French revolution take place.   It will have world wide effects because of the USA's position in the center of things.   The only question I have is how many are gonna die on the various idealogical altars before things take on a direction, and whether that direction is a good one or not.

The one I see right now is very scary for the america I knew even in the 80's-90's much less the one I grew up in.

Body-by-Guinness

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Que Sherrod, Sherrod
« Reply #130 on: July 30, 2010, 11:07:48 AM »
Real Sherrod Story Still Untold

By Jack Cashill
Had Andrew Breitbart dutifully written a column detailing how an obscure USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, and her husband, Charles Sherrod, had scammed the government out of millions, the story would have had the range and lifespan of a fruit fly.

Instead, as the world knows, Breitbart released an edited version of Shirley Sherrod's speech before the NAACP that provoked national headlines and caused the NAACP to denounce her and a panicky Obama administration to fire her from her position as the Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA.

Then, of course, when the full version of the speech emerged -- which showed Sherrod as a recovering racist, not as a practicing one -- the Obama White House fell all over itself apologizing, and the media turned their guns on Breitbart.

Breitbart, however, had put a potentially huge story into play the only way he could -- through sheer provocation. As he knew, and as we are learning, the story goes well beyond Sherrod's long-ago racist mischief-making with a poor white farmer.

This past Sunday, in his weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle, "Willie's World," veteran black politico Willie Brown confirmed that "there is more to the story than just [Sherrod's] remarks."

"As an old pro," Brown acknowledged, "I know that you don't fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place." Brown observed that Sherrod had been a thorn in the USDA's side for years, that many had objected to her hiring, and that she had been "operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN." Although Brown does not go into detail, he alludes to a class action lawsuit against the USDA in which she participated some years ago.

In the way of background, in 1997, a black farmer named Timothy Pigford, joined by four hundred other black farmers, filed a lawsuit against Bill Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, claiming that the USDA treated black farmers unfairly in all manner of ways, from price support loans to disaster payments to operating loans. Worse, they charged that the USDA had failed to process any complaints about racial discrimination.

The notion that the Clinton Ag Department had spent four years consciously denying black farmers their due defies everything we know about Clinton's use of race and should have made the media suspicious about Pigford's claims dating back to 1983.

Flush with revenue in 1999 and eager to appease this bedrock constituency, the administration settled with the farmers -- more realistically, their attorneys -- for fifty grand apiece, plus various other perks like tax offsets and loan forgiveness.  If any of the presumably racist USDA offenders were punished, that news escaped the media.

After the consent decree was announced, the USDA opened the door to other claimants who had been similarly discriminated against. They expected 2,000 additional claims. They got 22,000 more, roughly 60 percent of whom were approved for this taxpayer-funded Lotto.

Despite having a year and a half to apply, some 70,000 more alleged claimants argued that they not only had been discriminated against, but also had been denied notice of the likely windfall that awaited them.

In 2008, for reasons unknown, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa lobbied to give the alleged 70,000 "another bite at the apple." Co-sponsoring the bill was none other than U.S. Senator Barack Obama. In February of 2010, the Obama administration settled with the aggrieved 70,000 for $1.25 billion that the government did not have to give. This money, by the way, was finessed out of a defense appropriation bill.

At the time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the agreement would close a "sordid chapter" in the department's history, a chapter in which no one seems to have been so much as reprimanded.

The major media reported the settlement as though it were the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For the last forty years, as the civil rights industry has manufactured more and more absurd grievances -- most notably the Tea Party smear that incited Breitbart's reprisal -- the media have reported on them with increasingly wide-eyed innocence.

In the various stories on the settlement, not one reporter that I could identify stopped to do the math. Pajamas Media did in a detailed article by "Zombie" titled appropriately, "Pigford v. Glickman: 86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?"

Although 86,000 black farmers are alleged to have received payments, at no time in the last three decades have there been more than 40,000 black farmers. Nor is there much turnover in the farming business. No entrepreneurial activity involves more long-term investment. 

Realistically, of the 40,000 or 86,000, how many could have applied for a USDA loan and been rejected while white farmers in comparable circumstances were getting loans? If there were hundreds, let alone thousands, the heads of loan officers should have been rolling around the USDA floors, but I know of no such purge.

More to the point, out of about $1 billion paid out so far in settlements, the largest amount has gone to the Sherrods' New Communities Incorporated, which received some $13 million. As Time Magazine approvingly reported this week, $330,000 was "awarded to Shirley and Charles Sherrod for mental suffering alone."

Unwittingly, Charles Sherrod shed light on the how and why of the settlement in a speech he gave in January 2010. As he explained, New Communities farmed its 6,000 acres successfully for seventeen years before running into five straight years of drought. Then, according to Sherrod, New Communities engaged in a three-year fight with the USDA to get the appropriate loans to deal with drought.

Said Sherrod, "They were saying that since we're a corporation, we're not an individual, we're not a farmer." Nevertheless, the Sherrods prevailed, but the late payments "caused us to lose this land." In other words, the bureaucratic delay over taxpayer-funded corporate welfare payments cost them their business.

Then, thanks to their "good lawyers," said a gleeful Sherrod, who seems to have fully recovered from his mental suffering, the Sherrods successfully sued the government for "a large sum of money -- a large sum of money." While saying this, he made hand gestures suggesting $15 million. The land itself was admittedly worth no more than $9 million.

Sherrod gave this talk to announce that the FCC had awarded New Communities a radio station in Albany, Georgia, still another race-based corporate welfare boondoggle. Before the award of this station, he added, the Sherrods "had no means of communicating with our people."

The "our people" in question, of course, are black people. With this new voice, the Sherrods will help "stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections. We must not be afraid to vote black."

Yes, indeed -- these are just the people we want spending the money we don't have.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/real_sherrod_story_still_untol.html at July 30, 2010 - 01:06:27 PM CDT

Body-by-Guinness

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Is there a Despot the Left hasn't Liked?
« Reply #131 on: August 05, 2010, 05:20:54 PM »
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/05/a-webb-of-lies
Reason Magazine


A Webb of Lies

Michael C. Moynihan | August 5, 2010

A terrific documentary from the BBC World Service (episode one available for download here; episode two airs next week) asking the age old question, “why are smart people so consistently fooled by evil regimes?” The first program, predictably titled “Useful Idiots,” recounts the Sovietophilia of some very clever people, including Malcolm Muggeridge, Doris Lessing, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Claude Cockburn, HG Wells, and Walter Duranty.

For those familiar with the invaluable academic work of Paul Hollander, the cast of characters will be familiar and the zeal with which so many American intellectuals embraced totalitarianism will be unsurprising. But the mention of the Webbs and their book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization sent me to the academic database JSTOR to gauge the general reaction to the book, an almost comic hagiography of Stalin, amongst the intelligentsia. Here are samples from just the first page of results:

“The Webbs - the name by which the authors will ever be remembered - have produced, on the threshold of their ninth decade, an astonishing book. The volumes are a most helpful survey of a vast body of literature, the sifting of which has been done with a care that makes the process more than merely one of scissors and paste. While confessing to a bias, the authors strive conscientiously to achieve objectivity.” - The Quarterly Journal of Economics (MIT Press), Vol. 51, No. 1 (Nov., 1936)

“This is a remarkable book, a fitting continuation of the documentary research and tract-writing with which the Webbs have enriched the social sciences during their long and fruitful collaboration. It is comprehensive, detailed and fully documented—an amazing piece of work, even granted the interest of the subject and the authors' mastery of technique.” - International Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1936)

“The indeed must be congratulated on the achievement of a stupendous task… The goal of Soviet medicine is to create the positive health of the population, and, so far as can be judged from this book, it seems to have made remarkable progress.” The British Medical Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3917 (Feb. 1, 1936)

“The result is a most complete analysis, in the first volume, of the complicated Soviet organizational structure and, in the second volume, of the social institutions of the Soviet system in action. While practically all aspects of the revolutionary struggle and of its institutional product are touched upon, the great value of the study, in the opinion of the reviewer, is the weighting by the authors of the various facts and factors.” The Social Service Review (University of Chicago), Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jun., 1936)

“In this, their latest work, a monument of industry, written with extraordinary clarity and vivid with the ardour of perennial youth, [the Webbs] win once again our enthusiastic gratitude.” The Economic Journal, Vol. 46, No. 181 (Mar., 1936)

 “The comprehensive survey that the authors here provide will go far to correct many prevailing errors in regard to different aspects of Russian life, and they are on safe ground when they stress the necessity of the picture being all-embracing…It is free from the crudeness which characterises so much of this type of literature. As a sustained effort to present the Bolshevik experiment in the most attractive colours, this work of 1,200 pages is a remarkable achievement. There is a studied moderation of tone that renders the book all the more effective for its purpose.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 25, No. 97 (Mar., 1936)

“Faced with the magnitude of the task the authors have undertaken and the breadth of vision and depth of understanding with which they have accomplished it, to cavil at minor inaccuracies and to deplore the lack of a subject index seem acts of Lilliputian dimension…These criticisms are however of little importance; the two volumes composing this work constitute a synthesis of what has taken place in the Soviet Union for which the Western world cannot but be grateful.” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Jun., 1936)

“Soviet Communism is the most balanced, scholarly and comprehensive book on Russia yet written in the English language. It has deprived all who can read English of their last excuse for prejudice born of ignorance. It should enable public opinion on Sovietism to move on to a new stage.” The Australian Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 30 (Jun., 1936)


I found no critical reviews from 1936, the year Soviet Communism was released.

And apologies to the BBC for being pedantic, but while New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty was a repulsive Stalinist stooge, it isn’t true that he “responded [to claims of famine] with an article in the New York Times headed ‘Story of the famine is bunk.’” Duranty was more subtle than that, though only slightly. It was in private correspondence that Duranty called the stories “mostly bunk”; in print, he wrote that claims of widespread starvation were “scare stories,” “exaggerated stories,” and that previous accounts of Soviet brutality were “all bunk, of course.”

Boyo

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #132 on: August 14, 2010, 05:53:31 AM »
Couldn't find a good spot for this but I think it fits under liberal Facism. Free spech is good on college campuses as long as it is approved otherwise they call out the thought police and you go to jail. That is why the rule for conservitives and libertarians in college is go along get along and get out !

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gr1BIDi97M[/youtube]

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G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #133 on: August 14, 2010, 11:00:47 PM »
I'm guessing this "John Bush" had no student status on the campus and had been asked to leave, refused to do so and was then arrested as a result. A press pass is not some sort of "get out of jail free" card.

DougMacG

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism: Free speech on campus?
« Reply #134 on: August 15, 2010, 10:28:52 AM »
Quoting GM: I'm guessing this "John Bush" had no student status on the campus and had been asked to leave, refused to do so and was then arrested as a result. A press pass is not some sort of "get out of jail free" card.

There were some updates here: http://www.dailypaul.com/node/142018
"John was officially booked and charged with Criminal Trespassing. He is at the Austin jail located at 500 W 10th St."  Also a reply from the Univ.Texas President: "In order to mitigate any public disruption to the teaching and research mission of the institution, the University temporarily created a limited area for public protest on the East side of the Perry-Castaneda Library on August 9"

Bush did not claim to be a student, only that campuses are traditionally the center of free speech, particularly protest speech.  Missing in the video is the Presidential visit.  Areas are often secured for events like these, but that was not the issue here.  I find a few things peculiar.  As the video begins, the police are already on the scene.  If he is already guilty of the criminal trespass, a serious charge, why is he offered the freedom to leave without arrest?  I agree that one's free speech rights don't spill over onto my property, but is a public university really private property?  I assume yes, but even the public streets and sidewalks that run through it?  The video shows quite a large group of onlookers in the same "criminal trespass" location, the videographer and the chanters and so on, why are they not handcuffed and hauled off?  Are protesters of other causes on other days given the same or comparable treatment? (I doubt it.) Was there really any classes in session on UTA or research being conducted within earshot of the spirited discussion on Aug. 9?  Were students and staff really disrupted by the spirited discussion or was the President's security breached by the protesters?  Accuweather says it was 99 degrees, and the August classroom windows would be open?

I recall the Republican convention in St. Paul MN 2008.  Really the 50,000 conventioneers were the trespassers in that totally liberal, Democrat city and the civil servants enforcing the protest area designations were mostly Dems and protest sympathizers charged with doing their jobs. Public streets around the convention center and public grounds were off-limits to protesters.  Real violence occurred and serious terrorist threats existed. Arrests were made and very angry protesters posted their youtubes.  Everyone in this age of blogging has a press pass, but not one issued or cleared by the event.  [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjnIJO2-fIE[/youtube]

The question it all centers on IMO is whether the security or threat of disruption justified the location and free speech restrictions.  In the St. Paul example, I think all the people arrested but not tied to violence or threats were released and not charged.  The UTA example is different I think because people were allowed in those areas, with or without student/staff status, as long as they DID NOT SPEAK.   :-(   His arrest was about conduct not location or status from all that I can see.


G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #135 on: August 15, 2010, 11:03:52 AM »
**I think this article does a good job explaining things.**

http://www.policeone.com/columnists/Charles-Remsberg/articles/1242034-Handling-Protesters-Part-2/

IMPORTANT NOTE: As with any legal advice, be sure to check with your local advisors to be certain that the principles and precedents explained here currently apply in your jurisdiction.

1. Authorities can limit public speech, and the correlative right to protest and demonstrate, to a reasonable time, a reasonable place and a reasonable manner. You'll often see this 3-part terminology in court decisions dealing with 1st Amendment freedoms. These restrictions apply to speech (and protests) in public areas like roads, sidewalks, parks or other sites that are traditionally open for citizens to gather, talk and demonstrate.

Protest can also always be restricted because of its relationship to illegal conduct. Demonstrators do not have the right to trespass onto somebody's private property to protest or to engage in assault or disorderly conduct or any other behavior that violates the law. When free expression becomes illegal conduct, it can always be restricted.

2. Any limitation has to meet these criteria:

a) It must be content neutral, meaning that you don't restrict only those groups whose message you disagree with. In enforcing a quiet zone around a hospital, for example, you are not trying to control the message put forth by demonstrators, you're trying to control the noise that interferes with people getting well. Content neutrality is THE most important factor in keeping restrictions legal.

b) Any limitation must be narrowly tailored to serve an important interest. To continue the quiet zone analogy, the zone must not extend out farther than it has to to accomplish its purpose. It can't be clear across town where it has no reasonable relation to the hospital it supposedly protects. In other words, imposition of a restriction has to closely match the reason for it.

c) Limitations must ALLOW FOR ALTERNATIVES. If a person or group is restricted from protesting 1 place, they should have ample opportunity to demonstrate some other place in town.

3. If some group wants to protest across an interstate highway because they think that will have the biggest impact, you can easily deny that. In a recent federal case, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals supported a city in Alabama that completely banned tables set up on city sidewalks to distribute literature because they were considered too disruptive to pedestrians. You can deny the right to protest during RUSH HOUR. Many cities have statutes that prohibit demonstrations within a certain distance of a CHURCH during hours of service or shortly before or after because of anticipated traffic problems.

You can also sometimes limit the SIZE of a protest group. If a group of 500 wants to demonstrate in a park that can legitimately accommodate only 100 persons, you can stop that.

Court cases suggest that you CAN'T have a complete ban on protesting in a residential neighborhood. But you can prohibit a group from focusing on a particular resident (called "focused residential picketing"). And you can stop groups from marching through residential neighborhoods in the middle of the night when the noise would disrupt privacy.

In imposing restrictions, just remember the criteria itemized in #2. You must apply objective, content-neutral limitations based on some important consideration.

4. YES, but to do so you have to meet a VERY HIGH STANDARD.

Say you want to deny the Ku Klux Klan the right to march in your town because you're worried that you won't be able to protect against a real bloodbath. Courts have said that the police (or government in combination with the police) must prove that maintaining public safety and order is beyond the reasonable ability of your officers and administrators.

The courts will ask why you couldn't get help from neighboring jurisdictions or other sources. They will ask specific reasons why your doubt of maintaining public order is accurate. They will take a very close look because obviously a lot of jurisdictions would like to say, "Hey, we just can't be safe, so you can't come here."

It is very rare that a jurisdiction is able to place a complete ban on a group's ability to protest. You might be able to move the protest, or limit the size or delay it until you have time to recruit extra help, but a complete ban will very rarely be upheld.

5. If you are faced with a problem group, like the Ku Klux Klan or Operation Rescue, wanting to demonstrate in your community and you are concerned about your ability to maintain order because the group is known for not demonstrating peacefully and legally in other communities, you can probably obtain an INJUNCTION from a local judge that will allow you to impose specific, advance limitations on the group's right to protest/demonstrate. For example, an injunction might specify that protesters can't carry weapons, even if they have permits that ordinarily enable them to do so.

This legal tactic became a very useful arrow in law enforcement's quiver with the U.S. Supreme Court's sanction in the case of Madsen v. Women's Health Center [114 S.Ct. 2516 (1994).] In this important case, the Court upheld for the first time the use of injunctions in regards to demonstrations.

A local judge will likely be sympathetic with your position because he is not going to want his own community ripped apart by the group you're concerned about. Even if it turns out later that the judge shouldn't have issued the injunction, you and your department are fully protected from liability so long as you are acting pursuant to his order.

6. Your LOCAL PROSECUTOR. If the prosecutor doesn't agree with you on the arrests you make, he is going to abandon you when you get ready to go to trial. Be sure he participates in the planning and helps you evaluate the statutes that you may want to use as foundations for your arrests. Your department legal advisor or city attorney can guide you regarding civil liability issues, but a prosecutor's input is important where possible criminal charges against demonstrators or counter-demonstrators are concerned.

Particularly if you haven't had cause to use them for awhile, take a close and critical look at your statutes on disorderly conduct, public assembly and noise (noise can be an especially useful ground for arrest in protest situations, if the statute is specific enough). In some cases, these statutes are old, confusing and vague. The language would no longer pass court scrutiny. With sufficient notice, it may even be possible to get weak statutes updated before the protest goes down.

Once a prosecution strategy is agreed upon, officers must be informed as to what's permissible arrest-wise. When Winston-Salem PD anticipates an event with potentially troublesome protesters, officers are given a booklet clearly delineating elements of the non-routine offenses they might be called upon to arrest for. They are then trained on what they will need to show in order to get a conviction for each offense.

Take full advantage of what your laws will let you do. Your prosecutor should be oriented to telling you what you can do legally, not just hammering at what you can't do.

You also want to review physical control tactics that may be appropriate in handling demonstrators. In many departments, the command staff was trained in the '70s, while line officers were trained in the '90s. You don't want commanders encouraging an obsolete "stomp-and-drag" approach--and then later using inflammatory terminology like that in court--when more currently trained officers may know of more effective, lower profile options.

7. INSULTS, YES; SPITTING, NO.

Where exchanges between civilians are concerned, courts generally have ruled that when 1 person is right up in the face of another, close enough so that fighting could occur, and that person speaks directly to the other in an insulting, threatening, provoking manner, such speech can be considered "fighting words" and can be cause for arrest. [For an explanation of "fighting words", see Newsline No. 68.]

However, law enforcement officers, unlike ordinary citizens, are generally expected because of their professional training to restrain themselves in the face of insulting language. So if you're policing a demonstration and 1 of the protesters gives you obscene gestures and nasty talk, you're expected to have a thicker skin and not punch him in the mouth.

Spitting's a different matter. A protester even preparing to spit is committing assault and can be arrested. In 1 instance, a handcuffed subject was being walked to a police vehicle when he made a gurgling sound as if getting ready to spit. An officer immediately delivered when he later called "a straight-arm stun technique designed to redirect the head," injuring the subject but preventing officers from being spit on. A federal Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit against the officer, reasoning that no police officer should be left defenseless against someone preparing to spit on him and that objectively reasonable force to prevent the spitting does not violate any legal standard imposed by the constitution.

8. One of your highest liability risks--a very, very high risk--is FALSE IMPRISONMENT or FALSE ARREST, stemming from an arrest made without probable cause. This can happen easily in a confusing demonstration situation, where you have many people engaged in various types of behavior and quite likely struggling with you. Adequately documenting who in the crowd actually did what and that you had a specific reason for everyone you took in becomes difficult, especially in mass-arrest situations.

EXCESSIVE FORCE also remains a concern. While courts are becoming more and more cognizant of law enforcement realities, they still hold officers to a fairly high standard. If you're accused of excessive force, you will need to be able to articulate why you felt the level of force you used was required.

There may also be claims that you deprived would-be demonstrators of their CIVIL RIGHTS by imposing unreasonable limitations that made the protest ineffective. Your actions will then be tested against the criteria of objectivity itemized in #2. Courts will give great latitude for your regulation of free speech in public places but they do not look favorably on totally eliminating it just because it is inconvenient, unpopular or expensive, all of which it often is. If you effectively eliminate a person's chance for public expression, you need a very strong reason for doing so.

In some state courts, the accusation of FAILURE TO PROTECT is beginning to be raised. Here the court will look for evidence of a "special relationship" between you and the protesters that gives you an exceptional need to protect. Be careful not to make promises, such as: "Yes, you can demonstrate safely because we'll certainly have enough police officers there" or "We'll be fully equipped and fully prepared to protect you, you don't have to worry about a thing."

Another liability area for administrators that has started to emerge in some states is FAILURE TO PROTECT YOUR EMPLOYEE. An officer who gets injured wants to collect beyond workmen's compensation and argues, "You [the administrator] knew perfectly well you were expecting 2,000 Klansmen and you put me out there with 3 other officers and said, 'Here, guys, hold the line'--without adequate training, proper support, proper communications or proper equipment to handle the job, knowing full well that there was potential for harm to me."

9. Videotape can help you prepare tactically for managing a protest and help you defend yourself afterwards against charges of excessive force.

If you know a particular group is coming to town, contact other jurisdictions where these protesters have been previously and ask to borrow videotapes of their demonstration. Some groups try deliberately to provoke inappropriate responses from officers so they can sue or at least so they can get more publicity for their cause. Seeing some of their tactics ahead of time can help you plan your actions better. You may also be able to go on the Internet and find out what other agencies have learned when dealing with the group you're facing.

It's a good idea, incidentally, to practice and videotape crowd control tactics in role-playing exercises, just as you practice DT moves. Make and critique your mistakes with each other so you don't make them in public. Field-test your equipment beforehand, too.

If you use pain compliance or leverage techniques (like some we demonstrate in the Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar) to move people who are blocking an area, you are likely to get allegations of improper force afterwards. If the event has been taped, you can show in court that you used only an amount of force reasonably necessary to get the job done.

Departments and officers win almost all these force cases, unless the force used was clearly outrageous. More and more judges recognize that the way to evaluate an officer's use of force is to put themselves in that officer's shoes. They recognize the officer is in a tense, rapidly evolving, often dangerous situation and that he has to make split-second decisions. Even the Supreme Court has said that not every push or shove that an officer engages in that turns out to be unnecessary violates the law. There has to be room for understanding the dynamics of force confrontations...and videotape can help make the circumstances clearer.

Videotapes you make can be used for future training, too.

10. Generally, NO. Privately owned shopping malls are not considered to be public forum areas (like streets, sidewalks and public parks are) for purposes of 1st Amendment activity. People may have the right to protest outside the mall on public property, but you can keep demonstrators out of privately owned parking areas and the mall interior completely, if owners of the mall don't want people protesting there.

The same can be true regarding private universities. If it's private property it's not public-forum property. Even public buildings, like schools and police stations, are not normally open for demonstrations.

In July, 1997, a MN judge ruled that demonstrations must be permitted inside the Mall of America, the nation's largest, near Minneapolis. But that was because government funds were used in its construction. However, the judge said that the mall has the right to determine the time, place and manner of demonstrations and ruled that some animal-rights protesters must face trespassing charges because they failed to get permission from the mall before demonstrating inside last spring.

11. NO. From a legal standpoint, the media does not have any right of access to any area of public property or to your briefings or planning sessions that the public in general doesn't have. If you set up a no-person zone, with access barred by a police line, for example, the media has no legal right to say, "We're the media, we can come in there." You may decide to let them in, to give them extra access, but that's absolutely your choice.

Sometimes to cover big events, news helicopters will fly over areas where police don't want them for safety reasons. In LA this has been dealt with on occasion by a call to the FAA. The FAA, in turn, has declared the area in question a restricted zone, and news pilots who don't get out of there are subject to losing their licenses.

12. Not really. You can charge the group, but only for the cost their activities directly create. Say you have 50 Klanspeople who want to march down the middle of Main St., crossing 4 intersections. You can charge the Klan for traffic control officers at each intersection (including extra help you bring in from other jurisdictions), provided that you likewise charge other groups comparably for the same service. You can charge the cost of clean-up, but only for the clean-up activities you can actually tie to the activities of the protesting group, not those required because 2,000 onlookers trashed the area. That all has to be absorbed by your community as a cost of doing business in a democracy.

Likewise, you cannot charge protesters for the possible reaction of those observing their protest. In the case of 50 Klanspeople and 2,000 onlookers, if most of your extra resources are to keep the onlookers from bashing in the heads of the marchers, you can't charge for that protection.

Of course you can charge an administrative processing fee for a parade permit before a march-type demonstration is held, provided the fee is set and administered in a non-discriminatory, content-neutral manner. In other words, you must charge the Girl Scouts who want to stage a parade across town the same permit fee as you do the KKK. You don't favor 1 group over another because you like 1 group and don't like the other.

You can have a provision for indigent groups if you wish, but they must meet an objective test for indigence before the fee can be waived.

Boyo

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #136 on: August 17, 2010, 05:20:55 PM »
So what  seems to be true, based on the above posts ,free speech is a myth unless approved by the state ,  in an approved location and at an approved time. On every odd thursday of every even month in every odd year...that is agian if it is  approved by the state. :evil:

Boyo

Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #137 on: August 18, 2010, 02:50:17 AM »
Like that Metallica song.........been that way for YEARS.   PC-ness ya' know.

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #138 on: August 18, 2010, 07:45:03 PM »
The state's job is to balance everyone's rights, not just the protesters.

DougMacG

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #139 on: August 18, 2010, 09:20:08 PM »
Looks to me like the Univ. of Texas administrators were trying to balance these rights, the students, the security of a Presidential visit, accommodate but contain the protest, etc. and just got it wrong in the sense of overly restricting the protest.  The police were determined to enforce the rule but seemed like they were trying very hard not to further cause the situation to escalate.

OTOH, these campus restrictions and protest restrictions are not wholly the same thing as losing your right to free speech.  In both the example of the GOP convention that I gave and with the Obama visit, the protesters are piggybacking off of the popularity of the main event.  Yet they still have the same right to book the same convention center, bring 50,000 of their own people in, speak to their hearts' content, sell the networks on the idea of coverage or broadcast their own message out, even form a party, endorse a ticket and get their names on the ballot.  At Univ. Texas, same thing.  I assume John Bush could rent an auditorium on campus, host an event, get a park permit for an event somewhere in town, draw his own crowd and speak all day on anything short of inciting violence.  To some extent the protesters are trying to take something away from the scheduled event - the easy way out - instead of throwing their own event and taking on the burden of drawing their own crowd and putting out their own message.

Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #140 on: August 19, 2010, 02:51:40 AM »
The obama vist to UNLV here in vegas had a density of police presence I have not seen before.  In 1 block there was a Moto or Cruiser in every driveway into a parking lot in the campus area.  Leading out to the airport, there was at least 1 on every corner...........   There were some protesters and there seemed to be a 1:1 match up of cops to protesters...........  The police were not actually DOING anything aside from standing around playing with sticks..........

Crafty_Dog

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Pelosi, in line behind Biden
« Reply #141 on: August 19, 2010, 06:05:56 AM »
Is this country becoming a banana republic right before our eyes or what?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/...wtc-mosque-op/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, called for an investigation of those who are protesting the building of the Ground Zero Mosque on Tuesday. She told San Francisco's KCBS radio:
AUDIO
"There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded," she said. "How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we've been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City." (h/t Kristinn)

Calls to investigate the funding for those proposing the $100 million "Cordoba House" have fallen on deaf ears, though, as New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg has described such an investigation as "un-American."

Ms. Pelosi called the Ground Zero mosque an "urban development decision" for New Yorkers to work through. Her remarks happened on the heels of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, parting ways with President Barack Obama on the issue. Mr. Reid suggested the mosque should be built somewhere else.

Boyo

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #142 on: August 19, 2010, 12:29:09 PM »
Then explain to me the lack of security or caring ,on the balance of protestors vs speakers ,when say it is Ann Coultre speaking or David Horowitz speaking on a campus. Not only are they shouted down in the auditorium but are often physically attacked and the people who pay money to listen often do not get refiunds and the "protestors" are ignored unless there is an attack.. The Bush incident was heated but to my knowledge not physical....Agian freedom of speech if it is the right kind of speech and approved by the state or its appointed reps .

Check out the documentary from 2007 called Indoctrinate U it is quit eye opening about the treatment of dissent on campus.

Boyo

Boyo

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #143 on: August 19, 2010, 12:31:19 PM »
Here ia the Trailer for Indoctrinate U

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-zz1HwxIjg[/youtube]

Boyo

DougMacG

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #144 on: August 19, 2010, 01:27:58 PM »
Boyo,  I agree that an Ann Coulter event deserves the same type of protections.  Shouting her down is not any kind of free speech, just a violation of someone else's rights.  Even the John Bush affair wasn't about what he could say, it was about where.  A campus that hires 95% liberals needs to understand that outside speakers will be required to offer any kind of balance.  I frankly despise having to frequent conservative-bias sites to get the even the facts of most stories much less a conservative take, while liberals seem comfortable to build and maintain a bubble of protection around them from other views, seldom curious about why half (or more) of our society might think differently than they do. 

Private Universities can rise and fall on their own reputation.  There is no excuse for supporting the use of public funds in these public universities (or K-12) that won't end the indoctrination described in the documentary.
---
Update on John Bush from his own site: "Bush was held on a criminal trespass charge, a class B misdemeanor, in the Travis County jail Monday evening. He was subsequently released, and made several media appearances on Tuesday."  http://tagtexas.org/
---
The pie thrower who hit Sen Carl Levin D-Mich. was arrested and charged with a felony.  http://womc.radio.com/2010/08/18/accused-levin-pie-thrower-jailed/
---
To the protesters on both sides, the idea isn't to persuade or confront your opponents; the point is to organize and defeat them politically.

G M

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #145 on: August 19, 2010, 03:07:25 PM »
Boyo,

State schools normally have campus police that have police powers, while private schools normally have security forces that do not hold any law enforcement authority. Campus police normally answer to the college/university administration, which might explain why Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin might not get the level of protection needed to be allowed to speak uninterrupted.

Rarick

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #146 on: August 20, 2010, 03:32:25 AM »
Ron Paul is doing a fundraiser event in Pelosi country, I await developments.  I think that the Conservatives are the more tolerant as long as talk remains talk- once things get physical they get physical.  The Liberals are way more likely to consider talk as "actions" and start acting in my opinion.

ccp

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All who disagree categorized as having a mental disorder
« Reply #147 on: August 30, 2010, 12:55:02 PM »
 I caught the tailend of a caller speaking of "Ameraphobia" while listening to one of the great talk show hosts - Bob Grant.  The left's propensity to attempt to label all opposition as a phobia - some sort of mental disorder.  You know "homphobia", "Islamaphobia".  So they should be called Ameriphobics because of their hatred for this country.

****The last refuge of a liberal

By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" -- this part is less remembered -- "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and S.B. 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays -- particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" -- blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims -- a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.****

Body-by-Guinness

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DOJ IG to look at Black Panther Case?
« Reply #148 on: September 14, 2010, 06:54:19 AM »
Justice IG probing Black Panther case

By Jerry Seper-The Washington Times9:28 p.m., Monday, September 13, 2010
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The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division — in the wake of the New Black Panther Party case — is being investigated by the department's office of inspector general to determine whether voting section employees have been harassed for participating in specific investigations or prosecutions.

In an end run around policy barring IG investigations of Justice Department litigators, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said his office will review what types of cases are being investigated, whether there have been changes in enforcement policies and procedures, and whether the civil rights laws are being enforced in a non-discriminatory manner.

Christopher Coates, the veteran Justice Department voting section chief who recommended going forward on the civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party, was removed from his post and transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina. New Black Panther Party members had disrupted a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 elections, one of whom intimidated would-be voters with a nightstick.

J. Christian Adams, the lead attorney in the case, resigned, citing what he called concerns about the Justice Department's refusal to prosecute the New Black Panther Party case after a federal judge in Philadelphia had ruled in favor of the government's case.

Mr. Adams accused Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. of dropping the charges for racially motivated reasons, saying that he and other Justice Department lawyers working on the case were ordered to dismiss it.

In a letter Monday to Republican Reps. Lamar Smith of Texas and Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, Mr. Fine said he has stated publicly "on many occasions that I believe the provision of the Inspector General's Act that removes the OIG's jurisdiction investigation of department attorneys' handling of litigation should be changed." The Washington Times obtained a copy of the letter.

"But unless and until the law is changed, I have an obligation to follow it," he said. "However, we believe we do have the authority to conduct the broader program review … regarding the Civil Rights Division's enforcement of voting rights law, and we intend to conduct such a review."

Mr. Fine noted that while the review will include information about such cases as the New Black Panther Party matter and others, it will be focused "more broadly on the overall enforcement of civil rights laws by the Voting Section rather than on a single case."

Mr. Smith and Mr. Wolf had raised concerns in July and August regarding the dismissal by the Justice Department of a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party, in addition to broader allegations regarding the civil rights division's enforcement of federal voting rights laws.

The two lawmakers focused on "potential improprieties" in the department's dismissal of the complaint brought against the New Black Panther Party after its members disrupted the Philadelphia polling place.

Mr. Fine responded at the time in a terse letter, saying that while he should be able to conduct the inquiry, he was powerless to do so because Congress had stripped him of that authority — giving it, instead, to the office of professional responsibility (OPR). He said that, unlike all other inspectors general who have unlimited jurisdiction to investigate all claims of wrongdoing inside their agencies, his office did not.

And while Mr. Fine had advocated expanding his jurisdiction to allow him to investigate all suspected wrongdoing within the department, Congress has not seen fit to do so.

"Unfortunately, unlike all other OIGs which have unlimited jurisdiction to investigate all allegations of waste, fraud or abuse within their agencies, the Department of Justice OIG does not," he wrote. "For several years, I have expressed my position that Congress should change this jurisdiction.

"I have raised various arguments for this change including … the independence issues that arise because OPR reports to the attorney general," he said.

Mr. Wolf has noted that OPR reports directly to the attorney general, saying he did not think the office was "capable of conducting an unbiased and independent review of this case, given that it reports to a political appointee."

Mr. Smith said he was "pleased" to hear that Mr. Fine's office was looking into the matter. He said recent allegations of politicization within the Justice Department had raised "serious concerns."

"In order to preserve equality under the law, we must ensure that the Justice Department enforces the law without prejudice. I look forward to seeing the results of Inspector General Fine's review of this matter," he said in a statement.

The OPR probe of the New Black Panther Party case began in August 2009 and has never been made public.

The order giving jurisdiction to OPR to investigate the actions of attorneys in the exercise of their legal authority — up to and including the attorney general — was first issued by Attorney General Janet Reno during the Bill Clinton administration. The order was reissued by Attorney General John Ashcroft during President George W. Bush's administration.

Because the order was later codified by Congress, it requires congressional action to change.

The civil complaint was filed in January accusing the New Black Panther Party and two of its members of intimidating voters with racial insults, slurs and a nightstick. A third party member was accused of directing and endorsing their behavior. The incident was captured on videotape and gained national attention after it was shown on YouTube.com.

The charges were dismissed against the party, its chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz, and Jerry Jackson, a Philadelphia party member. Justice later sought an injunction against Minister King Samir Shabazz, who carried the nightstick, barring him from displaying weapons at polling places until 2012.

"OPR is investigating the department's handling of the New Black Panther Party case and has been doing so for more than a year," Mr. Fine said in his most recent letter. "In response to my most recent request, OPR officials have informed us that they are near the end of their investigation and are beginning to draft their report of investigation."

Mr. Fine noted that his reluctance to investigate the New Black Panther Party case was not motivated by any hesitancy to investigate the department's senior political leadership. He said the long record of his office demonstrates its willingness to pursue investigations, audits, inspections and reviews throughout the department regardless of the potential reaction by or impact on the department's leadership.

He said he thinks his office has the authority to conduct what he described as "the broader program review" regarding the civil rights division's enforcement of voting rights laws — concerns raised by Mr. Lamar and Mr. Wolf.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has noted that as a general policy, the department does not comment on personnel matters, but she said she could confirm that Mr. Coates had begun an 18-month detail with the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina, beginning in January.

Ms. Schmaler also said the decision to move Mr. Coates to a new position within the department had nothing to do with the New Black Panther Party case but was the result of conversations Mr. Coates initiated with officials within the civil rights division earlier this year.

She also dismissed Mr. Adams' accusations as a "good faith disagreement" with ulterior motives.

"It is not uncommon for attorneys within the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda," she said in a statement.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/13/justice-ig-probing-black-panther-case/print/

prentice crawford

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Re: Fascism, liberal fascism, progressivism:
« Reply #149 on: September 14, 2010, 06:18:21 PM »
Woof,
 Coercion of companies by these petty tyrants is just outrageous:

  www.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100910/bs_nm/us_ftse_social_1

                                  P.C.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2010, 06:21:17 PM by prentice crawford »