“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On the day we, as a republic, set aside to celebrate one of the greatest advocates for peaceful nonviolent protest, was the perfect time to show the world that standing up for our God-given right to self defense is not a form of “hateful extremism” as the media and gun-grabbers would try to portray. Standing up for our right to protect ourselves, our possessions and our loved ones from evil is standing up for our civil rights.
Over 20,000 defenders of the 2nd Amendment gathered today at the Virginia Capitol to protest gun-control legislation pushed by the Democrats in control of the State government. Despite fear-mongering from Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who declared a State of Emergency due to unfounded reports that “violent extremists” would be expected to overtake the event it was a peaceful, jovial and diverse crowd.
The media and the Democrat Party elites will portray the event as a gathering of old, white rednecks… which there is no denying there was a fair share off there. That however is a great misrepresentation of the events attendees.
Gun rights, are not a white right or a black right or a straight right… they are a human right. The diverse crowd today showed this truth.
One of my favorite signs seen at the event proclaimed, “Armed minorities are harder to oppress.” It does not get more true than that.
Image courtesy of Julio Rosas on Twitter.Image courtesy of Julio Rosas on Twitter.Image courtesy of Julio Rosas on Twitter.Image courtesy of Julio Rosas on Twitter.
I have always found it to be somewhat of an odd occurrence, when those who proclaim themselves to be “Patriotic Americans” and conservative or “republican” get completely up in arms at every little thing that they claim shows disrespect to the American Flag, while they themselves display the “rebel flag” or alternate colorizations and depictions of Old Glory.
Many of the same people who claim to be patriots “disrespect” the flag on a daily basis.
The flag of the United States shall be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the flag shall be fifty stars, white in a blue field.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free.
Bunting of blue, white, and red always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker’s desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
…
(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkin or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
By every measure of the United States Flag code, waiving a “thin blue line” flag, wearing a single color patch of the American flag on your leather vest or eating off of red, white & blue plates and then wiping the potato salad and drool from your mouth with a stars & stripes napkin is open disrespect for the flag.
What is even crazier, is the same person who get’s upset when a pro athlete chooses not to stand during the national anthem, is often times wearing a “rebel flag” on his tee shirt while he’s wiping the mustard off his lips with an Old Glory napkin.
The same people who say “America love it or leave it” when it comes to things they perceive as un-American, support a flag of a movement that was trying to leave it because they didn’t love it.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
This past Monday Night, my hometown Cleveland Browns took on the New York Giants in a nationally televised pre-season game. Nine days after the racially charged events of Charlottesville and a year after the Colin Kaepernick anthem controversy began, about a dozen players knelt and prayed during the playing of the national anthem, a handful of teammates stood by in support placing a hand on a teammate’s shoulder.
Of course the reaction of Cleveland’s self proclaimed patriots was fierce, via News 5 Cleveland:
CLEVELAND – Angry fans took to the Cleveland Browns Facebook page overnight and into Tuesday morning to voice their frustration with the players who kneeled during the national anthem Monday night.
…
The Browns Facebook page lit up after the game, with people calling the team “disgraceful.”
“Pray before or pray after. Taking a knee during the National Anthem these days screams disrespect for our Flag, Our Country and our troops. My son and the entire armed forces deserve better than that,” wrote one person.
“Cleveland Browns needed all the fans they can get!” wrote another. “They have one less now! How pathetic! You are not paid to protest! I for one am done with any professional team that act’s this way! Lost any money from me for life! For years I have protested as to why you are so bad and never win any more, now I see it’s your Teams values! Good luck but you lost this fan for life and all my spending$$. This country needs heroes and patriots not millionaire crybaby’s who disrespect this country and our flag!” Read More…
So according to the internet patriots, you can’t kneel and pray to the Lord during the National Anthem because “our soldiers fought for freedom” and “you better stand up an pledge that oath to a piece of cloth or else you ain’t free”.
My own personal view, when attending a sporting event, is that I stand for the national anthem. I too personally am personally offended and believe that it is somewhat disrespectful to refuse to stand for the national anthem. However, I don’t get all raging angry about it and want to shuffle off to my safe space, because I am a grown up who knows that the right to not get offended is not one of my god-given unalienable rights.
Furthermore, while I believe it to be disrespectful to not stand for the anthem, I believe it is infinitely more disrespectful to characterize what that flag stands for.
As I wrote last November after President Trump posted his “there must be consequences…” tweet about people who burn the flag. No man died for a piece of cloth, they died for the idea that that piece of cloth represented. Amongst those ideas, as our founding fathers so eloquently put it is that we “… are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Part of that includes the right to partake in activities that others don’t agree with, as long as in doing so you are not depriving another of their rights. Wanting to force another free person to stand up for a song is the polar opposite of the freedoms that our republic represents.
Go America, Go Browns but most importantly Go Liberty!
Being a law enforcement officer is a difficult and often times thankless job. Police officers are at risk countless times throughout the day while conducting their job duties, a potentially life-threatening situation can arise at any moment with no warning what-so-ever, because of this they have to be prepared for all possible scenarios with every encounter.
They are not highly paid, for a job at any given moment may cause them to pay the ultimate sacrifice while in the line of duty. The men and women who choose to put on the uniform to “serve and protect,” are husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts.
The great Paul Harvey once said, “A policeman must be a minister, social worker, a diplomat, a tough guy and a gentleman. And, of course, he will have to be a genius, for he will have to feed a family on a policeman’s salary.”
However, they are still not infallible and they are most definitely not absolved from criticism, especially when that criticism is warranted. Much like it appears, upon an admittedly quick review, may be the case in two separate police involved shooting deaths this week in Louisiana and Minnesota. In both of those situations, the law enforcement officers were white and the shooting victims were black.
The first of the two incidents that occurred this week was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 37-year-old Alton Sterling, was standing in the parking lot of the Triple S Food Mart, selling CDs, something he had done for years, with permission of the store’s owner.
Alton Sterling
According to a “source with knowledge of the investigation” CNN reports that at some point in the evening on Tuesday, Sterling was approached by a homeless man asking for money.
The man was persistent, and Sterling showed him his gun, the source said.
“I told you to leave me alone,” Sterling told the man, according to the source
The homeless man then used his cell phone to call 911, the source said.
The details about the 911 call shed new light into the Baton Rouge police’s high-profile fatal shooting of Sterling, a 37-year-old black man.
A graphic cell phone video of the shooting was shared widely on social media, quickly sparking local protests and drawing national attention. Federal authorities have taken charge of the investigation. Read More…
In the grainy first video that was released to social media Tuesday evening, Alton Sterling was seen being wrestled to the ground by two officers, someone can be heard shouting, “He’s got a gun! Gun!” One of the officers then holds a gun over Sterling. Soon after, multiple shots are heard.
A second video obtained by The Advocate, emerged Wednesday evening, also captured on a cellphone, but from a different angle.
Before you hit play, be warned, that it is violent and graphic.
After watching both the original video and then the second video posted above, I don’t know if I am ready to say that it was cold-blooded murder, but there is no doubt in my mind that Alton Sterling would be alive if not for the actions of those two police officers.
The second incident this week occurred Wednesday evening in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, where 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed after being pulled over for a busted taillight. Much like the previous shooting in Louisiana, this one two was captured on a cellphone and shared to social media.
Philando Castile
Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, the passenger in the vehicle, live streamed the incident on Facebook, starting from the point after the shooting took place.
What we saw in the video was a remarkably calm & composed woman watching her boyfriend as he bleed out. We saw a police officer, weapon still drawn and pointed at the dying man, shouting and swearing and not keeping his cool.
Stephen Green, aka Vodkapundit, had an interesting breakdown, on his thought of the video, which I tend to agree with.
When you are legally carrying, you refer to your pistol as a “firearm” so as not to alarm the police when you inform them that you are carrying, and to indicate that you have received proper training. The word “firearm” is supposed to help put the officer at ease in a tense situation.
Throughout the video, Reynolds refers to Castile’s pistol as a firearm. That might be a small detail, but it is a compelling one. Reynolds kept her calm and used the proper language in a life and death situation. I’m inclined to believe then that she has had some kind of firearms training. When she says at the start of the video that “He’s licensed to carry, he was trying to get out his ID,” I’m inclined to believe that, too.
What the video doesn’t show is how Castile was pulling out his license. Was he as cool and calm as Reynolds? Was he moving quickly? Had he used the word “gun” or “weapon” when telling the police officer that he was carrying? Was he following instructions? Were those instructions lawful?
We just don’t know, but there are some things we may reasonably conjecture — subject, of course, to whatever new evidence may come out later.
According to Reynolds in the video, Castile had “never been in jail, anything. He’s not a gang member, anything.” Add that to the calm, good sense, and tactical knowledge demonstrated by Reynolds, and my inclination is to believe that Castile’s behavior during the initial phase of the traffic stop was also lawful and proper. Read More…
I agree with those sentiments, we don’t know what happened before the video started rolling, however based solely off Reynolds’ actions and demeanor in the video, I tend to believe that Castile would be alive today if not for the actions of that police officer.
In a press conference today Reynolds shed more light on the incident.
“I’m the woman who recorded the video,” said Reynolds, referring to the footage she streamed last night on Facebook Live, in which Castile could be seen bleeding through his shirt while Reynolds’s young daughter looks on from the back of the car and a police officer stands over Castile with his gun drawn.
“We got pulled over for what allegedly was supposed to be a broken taillight,” Reynolds said. “[The police officer] let us know that we had a broken taillight. He asked us, were we aware of it and we said no. As we said no, he tells us to put our hands in the air.”
According to Reynolds, she and Castile complied with the order, at which point the officer at the driver’s side window asked Castile for his license and registration.
“My boyfriend carries all his information in a thick wallet in his right side back pocket,” Reynolds said. “As he’s reaching for his back pocket wallet he lets the officer know, ‘Officer, I have a firearm on me.’ I begin to yell, ‘But he’s licensed to carry.’ ” According to Reynolds, the officer started firing shortly after.
According to Castile’s uncle, Castile died of his wounds around 9:30 p.m. at the hospital where he was taken after the shooting. According to Reynolds, “nobody checked his pulse” in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Instead, Reynolds said, she was placed in the back of a police car as other officers “soothed” the officer who fired on Castile. “They pulled him over to the side and they began to calm him down and tell him that it was OK and he would get through this,” Reynolds said. Read More…
Philando Castile, a law-abiding and legally licensed concealed carry permit holder who was exercising his God-given 2nd Amendment rights is dead because of the petty law enforcement of a busted tail light. I apologize if that sounds like hyperbole, but it is the truth. A busted out tail light is the excuse that the officer had to stop Castile and begin an interaction during which some point something happened that made him uncomfortable or nervous. Was it Castile’s skin color? I don’t know, I’m not going to begin to question what is inside the heart of a man, especially with limited evidence.
I’m not going to go the “Trumpservative” route and say that all cops are great and Alton Sterling & Philando Castile have criminal records. I’m also not going to go all “social justice warrior” and say that cops are evil and are systematically targeting black men.
The truth is somewhere in between.
Shame on anyone who calls themselves a liberty-loving Constitutional Conservative and is not absolutely outraged at the total denial of the civil liberties of these two men. It doesn’t matter what their skin color, gender or sexual orientations were. They are both dead because their Civil Rights were violated and anyone who refuses to see that is blinded by hatred, bigotry or stupidity.
A lot of people are angry, and rightfully so. I don’t know what the answers are, I just hope that we are able to find it.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (U.S. Const. amend. IV)
Until the past few years with the rise of NSA spying and TSA pat downs, the Fourth Amendment has not been talked about as much as the Second or First. That does not make it any less important, as a matter of fact eliminating Fourth Amendment Rights, pretty much eliminates First & Second Amendment rights along with them.
Recently, Democrats in both New York and California have introduced bills that would outright ban the sale of mobile devices with encryption technology. The similar bills introduced in California by State Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) and in New York by Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-Staten Island), if passed, would require all smartphones that are sold to be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider.”
Via endgadget:
Cooper’s reasoning puts a novel spin on the same, tired “The police can’t do their jobs unless tech companies do it for them” argument. This time, he used human trafficking as the boogeyman that needs defeating and which can only be accomplished if the government has unfettered, disk-level access to its citizens’ cell phones.
“If you’re a bad guy [we] can get a search record for your bank, for your house, you can get a search warrant for just about anything,” Cooper told ArsTechnica. “For the industry to say it’s privacy, it really doesn’t hold any water. We’re going after human traffickers and people who are doing bad and evil things. Human trafficking trumps privacy, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.” Apparently human trafficking also trumps the 4th Amendment as well. Read more…
Forcing everyone into using un-encrypted mobile devices and opening up not just the government sector thieves but private sector thieves as well to be able to access your private information is much worse. People use their smart phones today for banking, medical information and a whole host of other legal activities that require privacy.
While I agree that human trafficking is a disgusting and vile criminal activity that has to be stopped, it is not more important than the fundamental right to privacy. If a warrant can be obtained for all those other things it can be obtained to search a smart phone as well.
This past March, Esmeralda Rossi, of Chandler, AZ, was in the shower when two police officer’s came knocking on her door.
“I was in the shower,” Rossi said. “My daughter came to the shower and said there are two officers at the door. So I just grabbed a towel.”
Rossi has not committed any crime, the police who arrived had not had any sort of warrant, yet the actions that occurred that night were the type of police tactics you would thing would be reserved for a violent criminal brandishing a weapon.
The police were there because they were responding to a call about an earlier argument between Rossi and her estranged husband.
Rossi, after answering the door, felt that the manor in which one of the officers approached, from the front door of her home, was very aggressive. She asked for them to wait for a moment so she could put on some clothes and get a cellphone to record their conversation.
“It made me very uncomfortable,” Rossi said. “So I closed the door. I turn to go into my living room, and I probably get about five steps in; and all of a sudden, I just hear boots running in after me, telling me stop or I’ll arrest you.”
Doug Rose, Chandler, AZ, Police officer who falsely arrested woman. Now retired and free to receive tax-payer funded pension.
It was at this point in which Rossi’s daughter began filming the encounter.
Without any provocation, or probably cause, the two officers stormed into the her home and proceeded to assault a woman, who was wearing nothing but a towel, doing so in front of her daughter.
As the sex-offender in a badge begins to assault the victim, under the threats of an illegal arrest, her towel drops completely exposing her now naked body. That didn’t stop the bastard from attempting to assault I mean “arrest” Rossi.
Rossi was handcuffed and subdued by her attacker, but was never charged with any crime.
Because she committed no crime.
Via KNXV-TV:
After reviewing the incident, Chandler Police internal investigators determined Rose entered the home illegally and without probable cause. The investigation also determined that Rose didn’t document arresting or un-arresting the woman or the fact that she was naked.
There was also no video from his body camera for the call, records show.
After the incident, the other officer involved immediately contacted his supervisor to raise questions about Rose’s actions. The second officer was cleared of wrongdoing.
Chandler Police declined to comment, citing the potential lawsuit. Rose also didn’t respond to requests for comment. Read More…
It’s assholes like this piece of trash, that give the vast majority of good police officers a bad name. He should be charged with breaking and entering, false arrest, kidnapping and sexual assault.
However, the kicker is that the bastard retired from the force and is eligible to receive a full tax-payer funded pension.
In an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with law enforcement in a case arising from a police officer’s misunderstanding of the law. In their decision in the case of Heien v. North Carolina, the Supreme court held that a person’s 4th amendment right against an unreasonable search are not necessarily violated even if the arresting office is unaware of the law.
In an 8-1 decision, writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” no 4th amendment rights were violated.
In 2009 Nicholas Heien was driving with a broken taillight in North Carolina when he was pulled over by police for a single broken brake light. At the time of the incident and arrest the police had mistakenly believed that state law required vehicles to have two working taillights — which was not in fact the case.
Upon receiving consent to search the vehicle, police found cocaine and charged Heien with drug trafficking. At trial, Heien’s lawyer tried to suppress the evidence arising out of the search by arguing that the officer never had the reasonable suspicion needed to the defendant over, because having one broken taillight was not illegal.
The trial court ruled against him, but later on the appellate court found that Heien’s 4th Amendment rights were violated and reversed the decision. Later, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the decision again, holding that an officer’s understanding of the state’s taillight requirements could form the basis for reasonable suspicion because that understanding, while incorrect, was reasonable
Which led to the case being heard in the US Supreme Court. Writing for the majority, Cheif Justice Roberts claimed, “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable, the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayer criticized her colleagues for granting so much leeway to police. She wrote:
To my mind, the more administrable approach—and the one more consistent with our precedents and principles— would be to hold that an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
I can’t believe I am agreeing with Sonia Sotomayor, but she is exactly right. This rulingf by her colleagues on the Supreme Court, opens up citizens to the possibility of searches based on all kinds of lawful conduct, as long as the police office making the search has a “reasonable” misunderstanding of the law.
Basically to avoid being searched by the police, citizens will not only have to avoid appearing to be participating in an illegal activity, but avoid appearing to be involved in a legal activity that a police office may possible misconstrue as criminal.
So now, “ignorance of the law” is still no excuse for citizens facing a conviction, but it is now perfectly acceptable for law enforcement to be ignorant of the same laws they are supposed to be enforcing.
Officer Sean Harrington has been charged with stealing and distributing private images from the phones of women he had arrested.
A now former California Highway Patrol Officer was charged with two felonies last Friday. His crime? Stealing and then distributing nude images that he lifted off the phones of female suspects.
He got caught when shortly after being pulled over for a DUI last August, the first victim noticed from her iPad, thanks to Apple’s iCloud service, that someone had sent nude images of her from her phone to another phone. After investigating the phone that received the nude pics was that of Officer Sean Harrington of the California Highway Patrol in Dublin, Calif., who in turn passed the photos around to his fellow Officers of the law.
Via The San Jose Mercury News:
MARTINEZ — A Dublin-based CHP officer has resigned from the agency and was charged Friday with two felonies for allegedly secretly forwarding himself explicit photos from female arrestees’ phones and then sharing the images with colleagues.
Officer Sean Harrington, 35, of Martinez, faces up to three years and eight months in prison under the two counts of computer theft filed against him Friday afternoon in Contra Costa County Superior Court. Harrington submitted his resignation to the CHP on Wednesday, according to a statement released by his attorney Friday afternoon.
Contra Costa deputy district attorney Barry Grove said his office is declining to file charges at this time against CHP Officers Robert Hazelwood and Dion Simmons who, according to court documents, each received stolen photos from Harrington.
Grove called the conversation between the officers about the women and their stolen photos in text messages “unethical, unappealling, and maybe immoral,” but not in violation of the penal code.
In a statement from his attorney, Michael Rains, Harrington offered “his deepest apologies to the women whose cellular telephones were accessed or reviewed,” and apologized to law enforcement colleagues, saying he was ” embarrassed to have tarnished the reputation of the California Highway Patrol and law enforcement generally.”
An attorney for two of the women arrested welcomed the charges. Read More…
Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, sentenced to one year in an Iranian jail for ‘propaganda against the state.’
Here in the U.S. so called “feminist’s” like comedian Chelsea Handler are fighting for the right to post topless pictures of themselves on social media, meanwhile in Iran a woman gets a jail sentence for attending a sporting event.
Via The UK Daily Mail:
A British woman arrested in Iran after attending a men’s volleyball match has been jailed for a year.
Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, was accused of ‘propaganda against the regime’. The London graduate was detained as she and women’s rights campaigners tried to enter the Azadi Stadium in Tehran to watch a volleyball game.
Under Iran’s strict Islamic laws, women are forbidden from mixing with male spectators at sporting events.
She was thrown into solitary confinement in Iran’s notorious Evin political prison and was held for more than 100 days, including 41 days in solitary.
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: ‘This is an appalling verdict.
‘It’s an outrage that a young woman is being locked up simply for peacefully having her say about how women are discriminated against in Iran.
‘Ghoncheh is a prisoner of conscience and the Iranian authorities should quash the sentence and release her immediately and unconditionally. Read More…
I hope that one day the youth of Iran can break free from the evil that controls their country.
Recent polling of Americans shows that public concern over Ebola has grown since the first cases arrived in the United States and since the death of the first Ebola patient — with 4 in 10 Americans saying that they are worried about family members contracting Ebola. The symptoms associated with Ebola, such as bleeding and weakness, are frightening, and the death rate in this current outbreak is very high, reaching 70 percent in certain places. Ebola anxiety, while potentially misplaced and harmful, is likely to have an affect on whom Americans trust to handle the disease and what kinds of policies they will support to fight it.
Based on work that we have done on other public health anxieties, such as smallpox and the H1N1 flu, we expect that Ebola anxiety will lead people to seek protection from diseases that may cause harm to them or their family. In seeking protection, we expect that Americans will, at least initially, put their trust in medical experts like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to tell them how to stay safe and will support state powers that may lead to quarantine or other civil liberties restrictions for those suspected of exposure. Read More…
Smells of Cloward–Piven, statists never let an opportunity go to waste…
Donald and Evelyn Knapp, ordained Christian ministers and owners of the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
As I wrote last year in my post about the Supreme Court decision striking down a part of the Defense of Marriage Act, I tend to lean (socially) to the left on certain issues. The right of free-people to make life long commitments to each other, no matter what the genders of the parties involved is one of them. The government should have no say in the matter what-so-ever.
As a small-government loving Conservative, I want Uncle Sam out of my life. If you need the strong arm of the government signing off on your union for it to be valid in your heart & mind, are you truly living in a free country?
Last year, the city of Coeur d’Alene, Idahao, passed an ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The ordinance applies to employment, housing, public accommodation and was supposed to protect religious entities. However because the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel, which sits across the street from the County Clerk’s office is a “for profit” entity, city officials claim they are not exempt from the ordinance.
This past Friday, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the city from forcing the Chapel’s owners, both ordained Christian ministers to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.
City officials told Donald Knapp that he and his wife Evelyn, both ordained ministers who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city claims its “non-discrimination” ordinance requires the Knapps to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies now that the courts have overridden Idaho’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
From The Spokesman-Review:
Owners Donald and Evelyn Knapp say in the lawsuit that they believe marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman.
“Performing same-sex wedding ceremonies would thus force the Knapps to condone, promote and even consecrate something forbidden by their religious beliefs and ordination vows,” the suit reads.
…
According to the lawsuit, a man called the business Friday to ask about a same-sex wedding ceremony and was turned down. The Knapps are now asking for a temporary restraining order against the city to stop it from enforcing the ordinance. Violation of the ordinance is a misdemeanor punishable by fines and jail time.
“The Knapps are thus under a constant, coercive and substantial threat to violate their religious beliefs due to the risk that they will incur the penalties of jail time and criminal fines for declining to speak a message and perform a wedding service that contradicts their religious beliefs and ministerial vows,” the suit reads. Read More…
First, I would like to ask “Why would a couple that wants to express their life-time commitment to each other, want their special day tainted by having the person officiating the ceremony forced to do so under orders from the government?”
The First Amendment clearly prohibits the government from interfering in the free expression of religious beliefs, or to use the term that progressives always misuse the first amendment establishes a “Separation of Church & State.”
Protecting religious liberty and the rights of conscience does not infringe on anyone’s sexual freedoms. No one has the right to use government force to make anyone be it an ordained minister or a lay person go against their religious beliefs and take part in a same-sex ceremony. It is downright totalitarian to force someone to have to choose between their strongly held religious beliefs and their livelihood.
I do believe that same-sex couples who choose to make a lifetime commitment to each other should have the right to do so, I just don’t believe that the rights of religious people should be trampled on to make that happen.
James Evans, jailed 8 days for posting heavy metal lyrics on Facebook.
Common sense and the ability to reason is all but a lost cause in our nation’s schools and law-enforcement agencies. More then likely, the ability not to have a ridiculous over-reaction to every little thing that you don’t understand is gone in the country as a whole as well. The latest example is of a Kentucky man who has spent 8 days locked in jail for a post he made on Facebook.
James Evans, 31, of Muhlenberg Co., KY, is a heavy metal fan. Often times Evans likes to post YouTube videos of songs or various song lyrics on his Facebook wall, something that I do myself and countless numbers of other people on Facebook do all the time.
Most people don’t get arrested for doing so, James Evans did.
On August 24th, Evans posted the lyrics to “Class Dismissed (A Hate Primer)” a song off of Exhibit B: The Human Condition, the 2010 album from legendary thrash metal band Exodus. Law enforcement officials were notified of the posting and two-days later James Evans was arrested.
Via WFIE/14 News:
Mike Drake, the Muhlenberg County school resource officer, says multiple agencies received calls concerned about the post.
So Evans was arrested for terroristic threatening.
The warrant says Evans was arrested because, “he threatened to kill students and or staff at school.” Read more…
Below is the posting, the snippet of song lyrics that got Evans in trouble with the law.
Now I will fully admit, those are some pretty violent lyrics, but I fail to see where a “threat” was made. Nowhere in that post did Evans say that he was going to a school to shoot teachers and staff.
“It’s nonsense. I feel like my civil rights have been violated. You know first amendment freedom of speech out the window. Even all the guys I was in the cell with they thought it was nonsense themselves. I had several officials tell me it was nonsense that there was no reason why I should have even been here.”
His civil rights absolutely have been violated. To add insult to injury, Evans states that his case will be pushed back 6 months and he will have to undergo a mental evaluation.
Gary Holt, founder/guitarist/songwriter of Exodus issued the following statement in regards to this ridiculous arrest:
“The idea that an individual in this great country of ours could be arrested for simply posting lyrics to a song is something I never believed could happen in a free society,” states EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt. “James Evans was simply posting lyrics to a band he likes on Facebook, and he was locked up for it. The song ‘Class Dismissed (A Hate Primer)’ was written as a view through the eyes of a madman and in no way endorses that kind of fucked up behavior. It was the Virginia Tech massacre perpetrated by Seung-Hui Cho that was the subject and inspiration to write the song, one in which we put the brakes on playing it live after the Sandy Hook shooting, as we did not want to seem insensitive.”
Gary continues, “As some of us in EXODUS are parents, of course these things hit close to home, it’s every parent’s worst fear. These moments are the stuff of nightmares, and life, as well as music, isn’t always pretty. But when we start to overreact to things like lyrics by any band, including EXODUS, and start arresting people, we are caving in to paranoia and are well on our way to becoming an Orwellian society.”
Exodus, who recently reunited with vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza are set to release their 10th studio album, Blood In, Blood Out, on Oct. 14. The band will also begin a string of U.S. tour dates with Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies on Nov. 11.
That is of course unless they get jailed by the thought police.
KXM is a power-trio rock supergroup comprised of Dug Pinnick of the tragically underrated King’s X on vocals & bass, Dokken guitarist George Lynch and great session and current Korn drummer Ray Luzier. They released their self-titled debut record earlier this year and have just released the video for the latest track off of that album, “Gunfight.”
Fuck I love this video. Seriously, it is like a big FUCK YOU to the Obama administration, the Federal Government and those who would trample on our liberties.
Arizona’s State Legislature has recently passed SB 1062, a bill that has been deemed “controversial” by most in the media. The bill, passed by a 33-27 vote in the state House of Representatives, allows private business owners, as long as they assert their religious beliefs, to deny service to gay and lesbian customers.
My personal beliefs, as a former small business owner, is that discrimination is stupid and downright wrong. Not only is choosing not to deal with a certain segment of customers whose lifestyle you may disagree with wrong, but its bad business. You are taking cash out of your bottom line.
That being said, my belief as a proponent of liberty, is that in a free society, much like private citizens should be allowed to live their lives as they choose, business owners should have the right to run their businesses as they see fit.
If choosing to discriminate (choose not to sell products to or provide services to) gays and lesbians is made to be illegal, then should it not also be unlawful to give senior citizen discounts or free meals to children? After all that is age discrimination. Or how about discounts to law enforcement or members of the military? Is that not discriminating against civilians?
In a truly free society, it is not just business owners that should have the right to refuse service, but customers have the right to not spend their money with those discriminatory businesses. Furthermore, in a free society people have the right to boycott any business establishment whose actions they disagree with.
Discrimination is a two way street. In the free market it should be an option for both parties involved, the business and the consumer.
Look, if you have a private business, whether that is a restaurant, bakery, or an apartment complex or rental home or any other business that you privately own (meaning you have no government subsidies and no shareholders to keep happy) you can, or should, be allowed to discriminate at will.
Now if you decide to discriminate against people (you won’t serve Jews, rent to gays, or hire black people) you may take a blow to your business. This is because of the free market, the same reason why I believe in your right to discriminate. The free market means that you are undoubtedly not the only restaurant, bakery, apartment complex, or landlord within a reasonable distance and if you turn away customers, who then go talk to their friends and family and tell them not the shop there for whatever reason (even if they aren’t Jewish, gay, or black. I’m white and still wouldn’t to a KKK restaurant) that is not good publicity and chances are your local news will catch wind of it and you will end up with loss of business.
I support your right to discriminate. I don’t have to like you for discriminating.
A good businessman usually cares more about their bottom line than they do about the sexuality, race, or religion of their customer. Despite the fact that, if I owned a business, I might be tempted to charge every moron wearing a Che Guevara shirt or driving around with an Obama sticker on their car a 10% increase on services just for dealing with their stupidity, but I highly doubt I would actually do that because it would be really bad for my company’s business.
But I should be able to do that if I want too.
I personally believe that it is a downright heinous act for a business owner to discriminate against a whole segment of the population because they simply disagree with their lifestyle choices. However, it is not mine nor the governments place to impose that judgment of mine on a private business owner.
As the late great Barry Goldwater wrote:
Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.
By every measure of the United States Flag code, waiving a “thin blue line” flag, wearing a single color patch of the American flag on your leather vest or eating off of red, white & blue plates and then wiping the potato salad and drool from your mouth with a stars & stripes napkin is open disrespect for the flag.
First, I would like to ask “Why would a couple that wants to express their life-time commitment to each other, want their special day tainted by having the person officiating the ceremony forced to do so under orders from the government?”
