Tag Archives: rights

On Catalonia’s Drive for Independence

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The Wall Street Journal argued against it Wednesday.  I disagree ( a surprise, I know).

Nor is such a referendum permitted by international law….

This is a domestic Spanish affair; dragging international law into the matter is just cynical.

…they [Catalonians] fail to acknowledge the price all Spain pays for the national defense and diplomacy that keep Catalonia secure.

This is a cost that Spain no longer would have to bear if Catalonia succeeds in secession. As the Spanish, Catalonians, and Tunku Varadarajan, who wrote the piece at the link, well know.

The separatists also do not mention that they would have to assume around 20% of Spain’s national debt were they ever to secede, and surmount a Spanish veto to be readmitted to the EU.

The one isn’t demonstrated; it’s only a claim by Spain. The other assumes they would want to join the EU; this is not a foregone conclusion, either.

Those who oppose Catalan independence are not going to show up to vote on Sunday.

That would be their choice in a democracy.

The only real argument against the referendum is its illegality under the Spanish constitution and a top Spanish court’s ruling. But, then, so was our own gunpoint revolution against the Crown illegal at the time.

Good for Her

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Danish Immigration, Integration and Housing Minister Inger Stojberg has posted on her Facebook page a repeat of an image widely posted several years ago by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten.  What occasioned her post is the timidity of the Skovgaard Museum in Viborg, Denmark.

The museum is running an exhibition about blasphemy since the Reformation, but it has chosen to omit a classic example of blasphemy: images of Islam’s prophet Muhammed.  As Stojberg noted, it’s the museum’s right to do this under Danish free speech law, but it’s excessively timid of the museum, and it’s the right of other Dames—including Stojberg—to decry the museum for its decision.

The image is this; the icons are present because this rendition is the wallpaper of her iPad.

The image also can be seen on her Facebook page here.

Discrimination

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Now FEMA is doing it, and it’s religious discrimination.  Churches, bastions of succor in times of disaster—like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma—suffer their own damages in those disasters, as they did in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  However, unlike other charitable organizations in similar straits, churches are being denied FEMA assistance to recover.

Law on this is not clear because separation of church and state, New York University Law Professor Burt Neuborne is claiming.

The difficulty is that the Constitution has two provisions in it. It has a freedom of religion, but it also has kind of a freedom from religion which prevents government money from being used for religious purposes, worship purposes.

No, it doesn’t.  This is, at best, mistaken.  The two relevant 1st Amendment clauses are the Free Exercise Clause—Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise thereof [of religion]—and the Establishment Clause—Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.  There’s nothing in there about freedom from religion; that’s just the distortionate drivel used by crowds like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the like.

The Federal government cannot favor one religion over another or favor religion over atheism; there’s nothing in there that prohibits the Feds from providing disaster recovery help to religious organizations along with the same sort of help for secular non-profit organizations.  In fact, refusing to do so violates the Establishment Clause by actively disfavoring religion rather than acting neutrally toward it—as the Clause requires.

Neuborne wasn’t finished.

The question is: can they get the money and rebuild their worship facilities? Because then the money would be going towards worship, not to help people from not getting skinned knees on the playground, or being able to get food at the food bank.

This is just disingenuous.  No, the money would not be going toward worship, it would be going toward restoring a building.  A building that comes in critically handy for sheltering those displaced by disasters, natural or otherwise.  Regardless of the religions (or lack) of the sheltered or the shelter.

The attacks on religion from continues.

Hypocrisy

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Planned Parenthood has it.  On the matter of DACA and President Donald Trump giving Congress six months to fix the thing—including codifying its current structure in law, but do the law, not Executive Order—Planned Parenthood, through its CEO Cecile Richards had this to say:

Here at Planned Parenthood, we firmly believe that every person has the right to live, work, and raise a family freely and without the threat of deportation or separation[.]

Every person but babies, apparently.  Far too often, they’re just inconveniences to be aborted and either thrown away or their body parts peddled to…researchers.  These inconvenient babies are not to be permitted to live, work, and raise a family freely.

The Left and the Left’s Police

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And the misrepresentation of the NLMSM.

A hundred members of Left-wing hate groups, including Antifa—hooded, no less, and armed with clubs—”broke through” police lines in Berkeley Sunday to attack the leader of a Conservative group, Patriot Prayer, which the NLMSM claims is “right-wing” rather than Conservative, and a separate group of four.

Notice that.  The Left’s hate groups are hooded and carrying weapons; their targets are unarmed with faces bare, not looking for trouble and unafraid of being identified.

There’s more:

The protesters who wore hoods to conceal their identities chased Patriot Prayer group leader Joey Gibson from Sunday’s rally in a Berkeley park. As Gibson backed away with his hands in the air, the protesters pepper sprayed him.
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Separately, the anarchist group beat, kicked and punched four other people at the rally.

How did these thugs “break through” the police lines?  They didn’t.  The police deliberately let them through.

Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood says police made a strategic decision to let a group of more than 100 black-clad anarchists enter the park Sunday once it became clear there would not be dueling protests between right and left.

He said “the potential use of force became very problematic” because thousands of mostly peaceful left-wing protesters were already inside the park.

Greenwood said he decided to let the black-clad protesters demonstrate in the park because there was “no need for a confrontation over a grass patch.”

Of course, Greenwood knew there would be violence; that’s what  hooded Antifa, et al., were there for.  The confrontation over a grass patch that Greenwood wanted to avoid was between his police and the Left’s hate groups.

Equal protection under law only applies to the Left.  Other Americans don’t deserve it.