Should voters be required to produce IDs in order to vote? Why or why not?
Should voters be required to produce IDs in order to vote? Why or why not?
Is this an abuse of power by police in a free society? Or, should social media be used in any way law enforcement deems necessary? What is your reaction?
Is the appellate court decision treading into forbidden territory of deciding spiritual doctrine? Or, is it just upholding the law when a parent is accused of flagrantly violating a court order? Which is the more convincing position and why do you think so?
NIALL FERGUSON: THE U.S. HAS LOST ITS COMPETITIVE EDGE AND THERE’S ONLY ONE PLACE TO PUT THE BLAME.
Figures 9 and 10
Bloomberg Video
HBS Study of U.S. Competitiveness
http://www.hbs.edu/competitiveness/survey/
Following are excerpts from an address by Algerian cleric Ali Belhadj, former vice-president of the Islamic Salvation Front, in the course of which a Muslim with dual nationality demonstratively tears up his French passport. The footage was posted on the Internet on March 30, 2012.
Ali Belhadj : Yesterday, I saw that despicable man, Sarkozy of France. Forgive me. I brought important things to talk about, but sometimes, there are things that make one go off on a tangent.
I saw the father of [Toulouse terrorist] Merah, Allah's mercy upon him...
Crowd : Allah's mercy upon him...
Ali Belhadj : He asked for his son to be buried in Algeria. True, he was a French citizen and was supposed to be buried in France, but if his father writes a letter to the president, asking that his son be buried in Algeria - why refuse?
Did his act warrant his excommunication? Is he a heretic? He should be buried in a Muslim graveyard, and prayers should be said for him.
[...]
French Muslim : Sheik, I would like to say something.
Ali Belhadj : Go ahead.
French Muslim : Sheik, this is my way of supporting... I would have like to have done it in front of Allah's enemies in France 24 TV, and in front of all the infidels. I want Allah's enemy Sarkozy to see this.
I have dual nationality. Sarkozy, Allah's curses upon you...
Tears up his French passport
Crowd : Allah Akbar... Allah Akbar...
French Muslim : I love you as a brother in Islam, Sheik... I am doing this in support of my brother in Islam, the mujahid Muhammad Merah.
Crowd : Allah Akbar... Allah Akbar...
French Muslim : By Allah, he was a lion, my brothers. Let me tell you, Sheik, he is not a kharijite. By Allah, he is a Sunni Salafi.
Sheik, I would like to tell you something.
Ali Belhadj : Go ahead.
French Muslim : I am not in a position of authority in matters of jurisprudence. You are a sheik, and I love you as a brother in Islam. By Allah, [Merah] was not in the wrong, because there are fatwas by great scholars who said: If they kill our women, kill their women, and if they kill our children, kill their children.
Sheik, he was not in the wrong. Sheik Ibn Al-Uthaymeen said this, and he was a great scholar, and Ibn Taymiyya and many others said it before. [Merah] was a God-fearing man, and I don't mind if they denounce me.
Sheik, let me say to that Sarkozy: Allah's curses upon you, you pig! You are a Jew. We know you all too well. I lived among you in France, you enemies of Allah. I was a lawyer, defending our brothers in Islam. Let me tell you something. I pray that Allah place [Merah] in Paradise. Sarkozy, you pig, may Allah freeze the blood in your veins.
Crowd : Amen.
French Muslim : Allah, bring a black day upon them.
Crowd : Amen.
French Muslim : I would also like to say to our brothers in the Forsane Alizza organization, headed by my brother Abu Hamza, who were taken to prison. Sheik, they sent 19 of them to prison, although they had nothing to do with it. They had nothing to do with those brothers. [the Forsane Alizza] are preachers, religious people, who wanted to defend women wearing the niqab.
Sheik, I'm not in a position to...
Ali Belhadj : May Allah bless you...
French Muslim : Sheik, may that lion [Merah] vouch for me on Judgment Day.
Reuters investigative correspondent Mark Hosenball reports that the intelligence community believes the Islamic militant group Hezbollah stands ready to hit civilian targets in the United States if Iran is attacked. (April 5, 2012)
The Senate Budget Office notes that during Obama’s first term, the nation has run four consecutive trillion-dollar deficits, and under his budget, we would see another trillion-dollar deficit for FY 2013. The SBC writes in a statement:
The U.S.’ per-person government debt is now worse than that of Greece. Using the Administration’s own numbers:
In just four years, President Obama’s policies will have added $6.4 trillion in new gross debt, for a total debt of $16.4 trillion by the end of this year.
Per-household debt will have risen from $85,500 at the end of 2008 to $135,100 by the end of 2012.
Average spending under the Obama Administration will be 33 percent higher than the four years preceding his term.
Spending in 2012 will be $800 billion higher than 2008.
Per-household spending in 2012 will be $7,000 greater than 2008—a 23 percent increase.
Per-household spending in 2022 under the president’s budget will be $44,000, nearly $20,000 higher than in 2008.
Per-household debt in 2022 under the president’s budget will be $195,000, more than double what it was in 2008.
In critiquing Republican Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, Obama characterized the House Budget Committee Chairman’s cost-cutting measures as “thinly veiled social Darwinism” that is “antithetical to our entire history.”
Should schools violate intellectual property rights by removing "God" from a commercially released song? Should references to God be removed from songs at all?
School changes lyrics from 'God Bless the USA' to 'We love the USA' : MyFoxBOSTON.com
Greenwood went on to say that “we can’t take God out of the song, we can’t take God out of The Pledge of Allegiance, we can’t take God off of the American currency.”
School changes lyrics from 'God Bless the USA' to 'We love the USA' : MyFoxBOSTON.com
A six-man, six-woman jury found members of the Muslim Brotherhood group, the Muslim Student Union, guilty on all counts of misdemeanor disturbing a public meeting and conspiracy in connection with the Feb. 8, 2010.
They deliberately broke the law. They deliberately disrupted and shut down Ambassador to Israel Michael Oren's, speech, knowing full well that they risked arrest. The stealth jihadists use freedom of speech to shut down freedom of speech. There is no freedom of speech under the sharia. Today American law triumphed over the sharia.
Atlas readers and others are to be applauded for urging the DA to prosecute the Muslim Brotherhood supremacist group. The Irvine 11 are the MSU students at UC Irvine who are accused of disrupting Ambassador Oren's speech. This was an orchestrated attack on free speech. Please take a minute to email Tony Rackauckas, the Orange County DA, letting him know you support his decision to prosecute these MSU students. Muslim Brotherhood-tied CAIR pushed for an aggressive plan to stop this prosecution. Both groups were named as Brotherhood proxies and unindicted co-conspirators in the largest Hamas funding trial in American history.
No modern phenomenon has impacted college campuses today more than the Muslim Student Association/Union. Founded in 1963 by the Muslim Brotherhood — the same radical Sunni organization that spawned the terror group Hamas — the MSU has since made headlines around the country due to its militant and controversial rhetoric. The MSU, especially that of University of California at Irvine, is infamous for attracting charges of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, as well as for sparking the 2007 investigation of UCI for anti-Semitism. The MSU is no stranger to the First Amendment. Come May every year, the organizations hides behind it so its members can spout anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic remarks on college campuses. And just last February, MSU members at UCI attempted to use their right to free speech in order to deny Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren his own free speech. (more here.)
The Brotherhood thugs:
Atlas Shrugs, Feb 2010: Oren was interrupted 10 times while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where there was heavy security. Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.
After the 10th interruption, several dozens students who opposed Oren’s talk got up and walked out and staged a protest outside. It is not clear whether they were members of the UCI Muslim Student Union, which issued an email earlier in the day condemning Oren’s appearance on campus.
They invoke freedom of speech to to kill freedom of speech. There is no free speech under the sharia. Today American law triumphed over the sharia.
UC Muslim students guilty of disturbing speech (hat tip Laurie R)
SANTA ANA – A jury Thursday found 10 Muslim university students guilty of disrupting a speech by an Israeli diplomat at UC Irvine last year, in a case that focused on free speech.
The six-man, six-woman jury found the students guilty on all counts of misdemeanor disturbing a public meeting and conspiracy in connection with the Feb. 8, 2010, talk by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
We're delighted the jury saw this the same way we saw it," said Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner.
The prosecution said the defendants used a "heckler's veto" to thwart the free speech rights of the speaker and others in the audience, while the defense countered what the protesters did was a lawful expression of their free speech.
Defense attorney Dan Stormer said he was honored to represent the students, but disappointed in the verdict.
The jurors left the courtroom without comment immediately after the verdict was announced.
Court will reconvene at 1:30 this afternoon for a possible sentencing.
After months of pretrial motion, the trial lasted eight days, including about two days spent on closing arguments by one prosecutor and six defense attorneys earlier this week.
Wagner told jurors the protesters actions amounted to censorship when they planned to disrupt Oren and tried to cover it up.
The right to free speech is not absolute, he said, and it does not include canceling out the speech of others.
"If heckler's veto was allowed, then no one would have the right to free speech," he said. "Freedom does not mean that no one can tell me what I can do. That's not freedom; that's anarchy."
The prosecutor urged jurors not to buy into the "alternate reality" created by the defense, saying the defendants "convicted themselves."
Defense attorneys for the students – seven from UC Irvine and three from UC Riverside – said their clients intentionally disrupted the speech, but they believed they were conducting a peaceful protest that did not break any laws.
University officials' zero tolerance for protest kept students from exercising their rights to free speech, defense attorneys argued.
And, it they told jurors in Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson's court officials were prohibiting the content of the protesters' statements at a controversial political speech and not simply their conduct.
One of the elements the prosecution needed to prove for the jury to find the students guilty was the students' conduct and not the content of their message disrupted the speaker.
"It was the message that was being targeted by administrators," defense attorney Lisa Holder said, "The university was prohibiting (the students') unpopular pro-Palestinian message."
[...]
The "intent of the conspiracy was to rob the speaker of his free speech rights," Wagner told jurors, adding that a planned Q&A would have given students ample opportunity to have their say, not yelling out "something non-responsive that violates the rules we all live with."
When in an emailed "game plan" before the event students expressed willingness to disrupt regardless of what the university officials and police would do, that Wagner said was proof of conspiracy and the unlawfulness of the plan.
We have just released a new and very shocking video, made in Paris last Friday, September 16th, in the islamized district of Barbès (18th district of Paris).
Days before this Friday, the French Interior Minister (Claude Guéant) had said publicly, on TV, that all the public Muslim prayers are for now on forbidden in France.
So, we sent a special reporter in the streets where, each Friday, for 15 years, the Muslims had been praying illegally on the ground. Our reporter videotaped a salafist preacher calling for war against France, in front of the Polonceau mosque (in the 18th district of Paris), and calling for the death of the French police and the French people "pigs".
Then, he videotaped pro-Hamas extremists marching in the streets of Paris with a big Hamas flag, and screaming "Death to the Jews!" And, then, he videotaped the Muslims praying on the ground in front of a barracks that had been renovated by the French authorities for them (of course, this renovation was illegal, since it is forbidden to give public funds to a religion).
The guy with the long hair and keffiyeh is basically warning of an uprising in at least 5 boroughs.
He clearly states "It will explode" a number of times.
Usual threat of violence... what else is new...
He accuses France of supporting Israel and alleges that the Le Pen led FN (far right party) is the most pro Israel in France (totally false, Jean Marie Le Pen minimized the holocaust and was known as a fascist racist)
The man then attacks France claims that prayer is their right as citizens and that because they pay taxes, they have the right to pray in public (I guess he never went to school in France because no other country makes the faith-state separation more clear than France).
Then the Hamas marchers come and chant the usual, Kill the Jews and Allah Akbar ....
The film maker notices that there are no women in the Muslim crowds and that this was the "first day without street prayers in Paris" sarcastically.
As from Friday, September 16, 2011, the collective prayers and illegal street is prohibited in France. This large first (which is illegal ban ...) was it acted upon? The two mosques of the 18th arrondissement of Paris were closed to the "faithful", and signs the new place of worship, located at Inside the barracks of the Rue de la Porte des Poissonniers, offered to the Muslims of the Republic "secular." front of the mosque from the street Polonceau, we filmed the imprecations of a hateful and racist Salafi, prompting until armed revolt against France, punctuated the roar repeated that "Allah is great", followed by applause. Then we went to the barracks, surrounded by groups of Muslims shouting hate speech, such as "Death to the Jews "certainly objects of future lawsuits ruthless SOS-Racism and other leagues usual ... Minor clashes, fortunately not serious, occurred between the security service, consisting of relatively older workers, and some Salafist colors Hamas, calling the scandal and inciting violence. The calm restored, and prayer in the open (and therefore illegal) of several hundred participants completed, all things have passed away without further violence and spoken. According to testimonies, prayer and banned illegal street took place at the same time outside the mosque closed the street Myrha. There was, at least, no visible police presence wherever we went. wait for the next Friday for the rest of the experience.
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.