Maybe it’s a start. Regarding the terrorist attack on the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in Paris that was carried out by Islamic terrorists, President Barack Obama issued this statement:
Maybe
Reply
Category Archives: morality
Terrorists in the Courtroom
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said late Tuesday that the state of Palestine will join the International Criminal Court on April 1, a high-stakes move that will enable the Palestinians to pursue war-crimes charges against Israel.
That’s what the AP is reporting (I’ll elide the AP’s cynicism in referring to this organization as a “state”).
Keep in mind, which Ban seems to have chosen not to do, that the terrorist gang based in Gaza, Hamas, merged with the Palestinian Authority into a Unity Government to “govern” both Gaza and areas of the West Bank under the PA flag. Shortly after that merger, the PA last summer launched its 50-day terror war against Israel.
Student Free Speech
Sohrab Ahmari had an op-ed in a recent Wall Street Journal describing the travails of a Brandeis University (of their cowardice and Ayaan Hirsi Ali infamy) student because he committed the horrible crime of speaking his piece regarding Israel and a fellow…student’s…attitude to that country.
RTWT; it’s an excellent piece in its own right.
My takeaway, and Ahmari’s, is that, in order for a student to protect his own free speech rights—much less to recover any school to its duty of fostering open inquiry and debate, no matter where that debate might lead or how uncomfortable the outcome might be for students, faculty, or administration—it’s necessary to engage a lawyer and pursue the matter in open court (or in the Brandeis student’s case, convince the school that that’s where the rest of the free speech discussion will occur).
Perjury?
This is the oath that witnesses before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requires of its witnesses, when those witnesses are sworn (and if one witness is required to be sworn, they all must be) (scroll to Rule 9, para (g)). It’s not the same oath for all committees, but it’s typical.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
I mention this because it turns out
Sony’s Fold
Sony made a movie about two journalists scoring an interview with northern Korea’s Bébé Doc, Kim Jong-un, the CIA convincing the journalists to assassinate Kim, and the comedic aspects of such a thing.
This offended Baby Kim and his sycophants, and they threatened mayhem against Sony’s executives and those US movie theaters with the temerity to show the movie.
Rather than letting us Americans make up our own minds about whether to go see the movie, rather than letting movie theater managers determine for themselves whether to show the movie (some had), those threatened Sony executives collapsed like yesterday’s tissue and made the executive decision to not release the movie at all.
Why Would Anyone Want To Do Business with the Illinois Government?
A bit less polemic (but only a bit); however, the Illinois government is being openly dishonest in its business dealings.
The Land of Lincoln has accrued a $111 billion unfunded liability for government workers’ pensions—up 75% from five years ago. There is an additional $56 billion of unfunded debt to cover health benefits for the state’s retirees. Illinois today is already spending more of its general fund on pensions than on K-12 education. One in four tax dollars pays for its retired workers’ benefits. Last year the state had to defer paying $7 billion owed to contractors. All this after Democrats in 2011 raised income taxes and corporate taxes by 67% and 30%, respectively.
Do We Want To Do Business with Racist Europe?
That’s a bit polemic, but this is an important matter.
Leicester City Council in England last month voted to boycott goods made in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. All services run by the council will be free of any product or technology made in any of the settlements. The motion “condemns the Government of Israel for its continuing illegal occupation of Palestine’s East Jerusalem and the West Bank” and resolves “to boycott any produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements.”
And more “Zionistfrei:”
Who’s the Rape Victim in the “Jackie” Story?
University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan suspended until January the entire fraternity system at UVA. She did it on the basis of a newspaper story whose author—Sabrina Rubin Erdely—and which paper’s editor—Will Dana—consciously and openly stated that they had done nothing to fact check the claims made by this “Jackie” person and which Erdely published.
On the heels of that, we get Zerlina Maxwell writing in another newspaper article headlined
we should generally believe rape claims
That headline, incidentally, originally appeared in the online edition as automatically rather than generally, but apparently The Washington Post thought it better to weasel-word things a tad. What Maxwell said in the body of her article, though, remains unaltered:
YGTBSM
In the aftermath of “Jackie’s” claim of being a gang-rape victim at the University of Virginia (has the school reinstated the fraternities, by the way?) falling apart under the weight of her lies, we get this from Zerlina Maxwell, of The Washington Post, a woman who represents herself as an actual lawyer, as well as a writer of newspaper articles.
This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.
Obama’s Lawless Immigration
President [Barack] Obama’s temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare’s health exchanges.
Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won’t have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage—making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.
Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX) is unimpressed.