Category Archives: rights

Government Censorship

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Readers know that I’m no fan of the NLMSM.  However, now we hear of a naked attempt to turn the press—that erstwhile bastion of freedom—into an arm of the Federal government, all at the behest of President Obama’s Labor Department.

Labor officials have put forward a plan to require reporters who analyze and write about economic data which Labor provides in its “lock up” room to use government—Labor—computers, software(!?), and Internet accesses so the government, they claim, can protect itself against potential security hacks.

I have some beachfront property in central New Mexico on offer for those who believe this claim.

This is nothing but the government’s attempt to dictate to the press what they will be permitted to see and what they will be permitted to say about what they will see.  Bloomberg News Executive Editor, Dan Moss, testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has the right of it:

This proposal threatens the First Amendment.  The government would literally open the reporters’ notebooks.

(As an aside, it’s interesting to note that the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee isn’t conducting any hearings on the matter.)

Carl Fillichio, a Labor communications specialist, told committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R, CA) after Wednesday’s hearing that he, Fillichio, would provide “some flexibility” on a June 15 deadline for the plan’s implementation.  Notice that: a communications specialist, not a Labor official with actual authority, claims to be in a position to commit the Department.  Fillichio did then send an email to Bloomberg, The Washington Examiner, and others, saying in part

Per my commitment to Chairman Issa’s request, we are going to move the effective date on changes to the lock up[.]

Notice this, too: there’s no commitment by this underling—or by anyone in authority at Labor, or by anyone in Obama’s White House—to eliminate this plan; there’s only a “commitment” to move its effective date.

Fox News‘ headline in the linked article is naïve.  This isn’t a backing off.  This is just cynical delay and a weasel-wording of a pseudo-change made by a junior functionary.  This obfuscation is of a piece with the HHS contraceptive, sterilization, and abortifacients insurance coverage “compromise.”  The plan will go into effect essentially unchanged, unless there’s more outcry and more pressure put on our Congressmen to withdraw by legislation this plan’s attack on our freedom (which also will force Obama’s explicit veto).

How is this Not a Firing Offense?

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The principal of Brooklyn’s Coney Island PS 90–the Edna Cohen School–Greta Hawkins, has cancelled her kindergarten’s scheduled performance of Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” at their moving-up ceremony.

Her excuses?

We don’t want to offend other cultures

and the lyrics are “too grown up” for five year olds.  The opening lines, the “too grown up” lines, are these:

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life,
And I had to start again,
With just my children and my wife,
I’d thank my lucky stars,
To be livin’ here today.

But  a Justin Bieber song was “age appropriate” for these same five year olds, and they were allowed to sing this song in the their ceremony.  This song opens with

Are we an item?
Girl, quit playing.

And the President Obama approves of this.  His Department of Education agrees with Hawkins.

The lyrics are not age-appropriate.

I’d like to hear his definition of “age-appropriate,” since he thinks patriotic lines are not, but Bieber’s lines are, for these children.

And those offended cultures?  The school has a significant immigrant student population, and so the neighborhood has a significant immigrant parent population.  Those parents, many of whom are immigrants from Pakistan, Mexico, and Ecuador, to name a few, “love” the song, which used to be performed annually by the kindergartners.  When last year’s fifth graders—who seem to be old enough to handle both patriotism and Bieber on the same day—sang “Proud to be an American” at their year-end ceremony, the parents of those fifth-graders gave it a standing ovation.

Yet, even though the school does have its students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing a stanza or two of “God Bless America” each morning, kindergartners aren’t allowed to be patriotic at their year-end ceremony.

Because patriotism is an “age-appropriate” topic.  And American patriotism might offend other cultures.

Update:  Now Hawkins has decided to can the Bieber song, too.  She’s not reinstating “Proud to be an American,” though; patriotism remains offensive at her school.  Congressman Michael G. Grimm (R, NY), whose district includes Brooklyn and this school, had some thoughts on the matter.

I am outraged that NYC’s Department of Education is standing by the decision of PS 90’s principal to pull the song “Proud to be an American” from the upcoming kindergarten ceremony, for fear of offending other cultures.   The only thing offensive about any of this is the anti-American message being engrained in our youth.  We all should be proud to be American and we should never ever apologize for it!

And Lee Greenwald had this about Hawkins’ banning of his song:

I think [Hawkins is] confused between allegiance and worship.  I don’t think it’s a religious issue to salute the flag.  You always respect the flag.  That’s just simple for me.  A religion that says you can’t do that is out of place

Give Him a Speedy Trial and a Fast Impeachment

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Convicted serial bomber, drug trafficker, and perjuror, Brett Kimberlin, is continuing his assault on any and all who are rude enough to write about him in any way less than completely fawning of his wonderfulness.  In one such assault, done under the guise of his lawfare war, he had the rude blogger Aaron Walker arrested while in court responding to a prior Peace Order Kimberlin had managed to obtain.

But of interest here is not so much Kimberlin’s behavior, but the behavior of Maryland Judge C.J. Vaughey in that matter.  The Peace Order Kimberlin had obtained, and under which Walker was arrested in Vaughey’s court, centered on this:

Mr. Walker has tweeted on Twitter about me in alarming and annoying ways over hundreds of times in the past week and urged others to attack me.  He has generated hundreds of blog posts directly and indirectly based on false allegations that I framed him for an assault.

Mr. Walker has had many people threaten me directly with death, and told me to stop talking to the police, and not show up in court or I would die.

These are carefully, cynically, vague and unsubstantiated claims, yet Vaughey took them at face value, not even inquiring into evidence to support the claims.  Then we get this from Walker’s hearing before Vaughey [emphasis mine]:

VAUGHEY: –You’ve decided to battle, and he comes back.  And see, you’re—you—you’re the kind of guy, you don’t want to get into this to settle this, mano y mano.  You want to get all these friends who got nothing else to do with their time, in this judge’s opinion, because—my God, I’m a little bit older than you are, and I haven’t got enough time in the day to do all the things I want to do.  And I thought by retirement, I would have less to do.  I got more!  Because everybody knows I’m free!  So they all come to me.  But you, you are starting a—a conflagration, for lack of a better word, and you’re just letting the thing go recklessly no matter where it goes.  I mean, you get some—and I’m going to use word I (ph)—freak somewhere up Oklahoma, got nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things in the world he can do to this poor gentleman.  What right has that guy got to do it?

WALKER: He has no right to do that, Your Honor.

VAUGHEY: Well, he’s—you incited him.

WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though.

VAUGHEY: Forget Bradenburg [sic].  Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world.  But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly.

WALKER: I’m not sure what that means, your honor.

VAUGHEY: –Very quickly. And I’m not going to talk about those ways, but boy, it ended fast.  I even can tell you, when I grew up in my community, you wanted to date an Italian girl, you had to get the Italian boy’s permission.  But that was the old neighborhoods back in the city.  And it was really fair.  When someone did something up there to you, your sister, your girlfriend, you got some friends to take them for a ride in the back of the truck.

WALKER: Well, Your Honor, what–

VAUGHEY: –That ended it.  You guys have got this new mechanical stuff out here, the electronic stuff, that you can just ruin somebody without doing anything. But you started it.

As Popehat points out, the Brandenburg standard is from a Supreme Court ruling that held that speech may be banned on the theory that it is incitement only when it is intended to create, and is likely to create, a clear and present danger of imminent lawless action.

What do we have in this…judge’s…actions, then?

First we have his statement that the law is what he says it is, not what is actually written by our legislators, not what has been ruled by his superiors, the Supreme Court.

We also have this judge’s implicit recommendation that if someone offends Walker, then Walker should simply take that offender for a ride in a truck and “settle” the matter.  And by extension, he’s given that ex-con Kimberlin permission to do exactly that.

And he’s accused the victim of Kimberlin’s assault of having started the ex-con’s assault.

Vaughey is unfit to be a judge; he should be removed from the bench he’s sullying as soon as possible.

 

h/t to Grim’s Hall.

Some Thoughts on Government Surveillance

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Here’s the nose of the camel, courtesy of (here’s a surprise) the EPA, as reported by Fox News.  The EPA is flying drones over private property in order to “inspect” that property for government averred purposes.  Apparently, the EPA has been doing this for nearly 10 years over, among other regions, an area the EPA calls Section 7 (an area containing Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri).

A large concern has to do with jurisdiction.  Nebraska, for instance, has the responsibility for environment questions in its part of Section 7 through its Department of Environmental Quality; the EPA has only an oversight role.  Nevertheless, the EPA insists on conducting this surveillance with its own airborne resources—ostensibly as a cost-efficient way for it and state governments to reduce the number of on-site inspections and focus on “areas of the greatest concerns.”  Hmm….

Nebraska Congressmen Adrian Smith, Jeff Fortenberry, and Lee Terry (all Republicans) and Nebraska Senators Ben Nelson (D) and Mike Johanns (R) sent a letter expressing concerns about this hidden searchsurveillance to the EPA by that said, in part

Farmers and ranchers in Nebraska pride themselves in the stewardship of our state’s natural resources.  As you might imagine, this practice has resulted in privacy concerns among our constituents and raises several questions[.]

There’s another concern, also, though.  It’s better for us to have the on-site inspectors.  At least then the property owners/lessors know when the government’s surveillance is occurring and can accompany the government’s men.  And they can make sure, at least on the particular trip, that the government’s inspection is limited to the claimed purpose.

The convenience of the government can never be an excuse for abridging our individual liberties.

Right to Vote and DoJ

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The Federal Department of Justice has written a letter to letter to Florida’s Secretary of State, Ken Detzner, ordering him to stop trying to purge the Florida voter rolls of ineligible “voters.”  Interestingly, the order is predicated on technical, procedural grounds: five counties in Florida still are subject to the National Voting Rights Act of 1964, and Detzner didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” to DoJ before attempting the purge.

Never mind that an early inspection of the state’s rolls turned up as many as 182,000 folks registered to vote who may not be US citizens.  Never mind that, as the spokesman for the Florida Department of State, Chris Cate, said,

Bottom line is we are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot[.]

Never mind that the state has had in place for months a request to the Department of Homeland Security to match the state’s driver’s license records with the DHS’ databases to facilitate the assessment of citizenship and thereby of voting eligibility.  The DHS has been unresponsive.

This move comes on the heels of Attorney General Eric Holder’s racist speech which he gave to the Council of Black Churches last Wednesday concerning voter eligibility.  The Wall Street Journal had some choice words concerning those racist words from our AG; I won’t go into that here.

But such attacks, together with Advancement Project Co-director, Penda Hair’s ironic remark, which included this

We commend the attorney general of the United States Eric Holder for ensuring that the right to vote, the fundamental pillar of our democracy is protected for all American citizens

make the larger point here.  In the name of protecting the sanctity of an American voter’s ballot, Progressives are actively attacking it.  They pretend not to see that if ineligibles aren’t prevented from voting, the votes of honest Americans are diluted or outright cancelled by ineligible, false, votes.

Al Franken (D, MN), for instance, was elected to the US Senate in 2008 by 312 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast.  In 2004, President George Bush carried Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.  Identifying ineligible voters and getting them off the rolls matters.

I have to ask: what’s the Progressives’ real objection to an honest voter roll?