2020 Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders had a big weekend out on the left coast where he riled up Disneyland […]
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New York Times Prints Gossipy Tales of Nixon Wife-Beating, LBJ Anger-Pooping
The New York Times has run advertisement underlining how “the truth is more important now more than ever.” But they are still publishing accusations without evidence. Take media reporter Michael Grynbaum’s story on left-wing media hero Seymour Hersh’s life of “Making the Mighty Sweat.” Hersh came to fame for reporting the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American forces at My Lai. He has a new memoir out:
As with any Hersh production, Reporter has news. He recalls hearing a tip that Richard Nixon’s wife, Pat, went to the emergency room in 1974, shortly after the Nixons had left the White House, saying her husband had hit her. (Mr. Hersh writes that he made a mistake by not reporting this at the time; the Nixon family denied similar allegations of domestic abuse when they surfaced in years past.) He describes Lyndon Johnson expressing his displeasure over an article by meeting a reporter at his Texas ranch and — there is no pleasant way to put this — defecating on the ground in front of him.
Does Hersh need any real proof of these alleged events? These presidents aren’t alive to defend themselves. I tweeted at CNN’s Brian Stelter that his old newspaper wasn’t really beyond pushing unsupported gossip. He promoted the story in his newsletter with just a quote, and not this.
(In the same vein, Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith asserted without any evidence on Twitter that Melania Trump’s post-surgery privacy “could be about concealing abuse. I wish that it was a ludicrous prospect. I wish that the @POTUS wasn’t a man with a history of abusing women, including those to whom he is married.” Insert joke here: “Rolling Stone never gets abuse stories wrong.” David Frum also imagined that scenario out loud on Twitter.)
At least when Hersh asserts he shared marijuana with presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and future governor of California Jerry Brown, someone’s alive to deny it: “A spokesman for Mr. Brown, contacted for this article, called the anecdote ‘a complete and total fabrication.'”
At least Grynbaum eventually noted Hersh is controversial for his insistence that Pakistani government officials knew in advance the Americans were coming into their country to take down Osama bin Laden:
“It’s pretty clear now; nobody disputes it anymore,” he said, in an asked-and-answered tone, when I brought up the Bin Laden piece. (In fact, many reporters and former White House officials still dismiss his version of events as fantasy.)
But the piece also contains gushy praise from New Yorker editor (and former newspaper reporter) David Remnick. Perhaps the Times would suggest they were fair and balanced by publishing Hersh’s dismissal of the Russia probe:
“Do you have any evidence that these 13 guys really were trolls and changed the election?” he asked, referring to the 13 Russians indicted by the Justice Department in February on charges they tried to subvert the election and support Mr. Trump.
“There have been social science studies of the impact of any particular thing on Facebook, and it’s, like, zippo!” Mr. Hersh went on. “We have a divided America, a really bitterly divided America. Do we really need the Russians to tell us we’re a troubled country?”
But Hersh is also old and cranky enough to suggest that — despite the killing and maiming people thing — the Unabomber was right that technology is taking over our lives.
via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias
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Navy SEAL Vet Takes Apart David Hogg’s School Safety Plan Piece by Piece
Former Navy SEAL turned entrepreneur and pundit Eli Crane has dismantled anti-gun activist David Hogg’s recently tweeted school safety plan in a lengthy email that took Hogg’s proposals apart, piece by piece.
Hogg, the student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who turned the February mass shooting at the schoool into his personal vehicle to celebrity, tweeted out his five-point plan last month.
And he’s seen it roundly criticized on social media.
Hogg called for CDC research into gun violence, universal background checks, the digitization of ATF records, and the ever popular (among liberals) bans on so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines.
Comment why you do or don’t support our 5 point platform below I want to try responding to as many people as I can.
1. CDC funding for research into gun violance
2. Universal Background checks
3. Digitization of ATF records
4. High-Capacity magazine ban
5. Assault weapons ban— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) May 11, 2018
TRENDING: Kathy Griffin Goes Off the Rails in Latest Controversy, Claims Samantha Bee Is the Real Victim
Some familiar faces have already weighed in, including Kyle Kashuv, a fellow student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas who has emerged as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights.
1) Scientific research is already permitted and that was clarified in he April Omnibus signed by POTUS. Partisan research isn’t funded.
2) Background checks exist. No UBCs because NO gun registry.
4) won’t change anything (Cruz proved that)
5) tried, didn’t work. https://t.co/1NQlHMjt0b
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) May 11, 2018
However, Crane’s exploration of the logical flaws in Hogg’s tweet was arguably one of the most compelling.
“Recently, gun control activist and Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg tweeted a plan to curb violence with an emphasis on gun control,” Crane wrote in his email, published Tuesday by Independent Journal Review.
Do you agree with Eli Crane?
“Though I feel for David and every other victim of this senseless violence, I am once again very disappointed to see another young American with zero respect and understanding for our Constitution and common sense.”
This wasn’t just because of the fact that Crane is a “U.S. veteran and member of the Navy SEAL teams,” who “swore (an) oath to uphold and defend the very rights that David and other Americans are working so hard to abolish.”
Instead, he said it was based on his experience.
“The irony of David’s proposed plan is shortsighted, incomplete and pretty much worthless. I just did a threat assessment of a school three weeks ago in my home state of (Arizona) with an emphasis on active shooter,” Crane wrote.
“My main focus was on first figuring out the multiple ways I could commit the crime myself and then working backward from there — exposing weaknesses and suggesting improvements to keep out those who wish to do harm.
“I can tell you that not one thing David proposed would stop me or anyone else from a whole lot of carnage on that campus or any other for that matter,” he noted.
“David is proposing that we allocate more taxpayer dollars for gun violence research along with mandatory universal background checks and digitized ATF records. He is also calling for a complete ban on high-capacity magazines and ‘assault weapons.’
“I’m not sure if David and other liberals are able to comprehend that EVERY single one of these mass shootings, murders, and gun-related crimes that are so prevalent and concerning to all Americans showcase the complete disregard for any of our existing laws.
“It is illegal to murder one or more innocent people for any reason. It is illegal to bring a firearm to a school. It is illegal to discharge a firearm in a school or within city limits.
“These are a few of the major laws broken at every single school shooting. Yet Hogg and others ironically believe that the laws that they are proposing will be the ones mass (murderers) actually follow,” he wrote.
As for the first point, Crane noted that he’d filled out extensive paperwork for every gun he’s ever purchased.
“The gun show loophole (the sale of a firearm from one private citizen to another without a background check) seems to be the main issue Hogg and others have with our current system, which is one of the few suggestions I would be willing to take a hard look at,” Crane said. “This still would not be effective in stopping the evil epidemic plaguing our schools and our children.
“As far as allocating funding for research, this is one area I agree with David. It is what I believe we should be researching that we differ on,” he continued. “David believes that we should be funding the research of gun violence. I think that would be a waste of time and money.
“If we are going to research anything it needs to be something that will save the most lives NOW. We should be researching the most effective and affordable ways to harden these schools that are unfortunately very soft targets.”
As for ATF record digitization, Crane said that issues like that came down to distrusting power wielded by a federal government that’s often dismissive of Second Amendment concerns:
“Quite simply, most Americans do not trust the federal government,” he wrote.
Crane also noted the possibility of a second revolution against tyranny — something that the country’s founders had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.
“Most Americans have grown up in such a protective bubble provided by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans along with the protective framework provided by our founders,” Crane wrote. “Quite simply, if Mr. Hogg and others are successful and abolish our Second Amendment as we know it, those of us that are currently able to protect him and others (won’t be able to) should the day (come when the) overreach of our government becomes so great that a second revolution is necessary.”
Crane ended with a lesson all Americans need to remember.
“Academics and activists may yell the loudest and throw the biggest tantrums, but just as Hogg has again illustrated with this proposal, being a victim does not qualify you to champion any kind positive reform,” he wrote.
And that says it all.
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Miss America Ditches Swimsuit Competition, Won’t Judge On Looks
The annual Miss America beauty pageant will get rid of the swimsuit competition and will no longer judge contestants on their appearance.
Although the pageant began 100 years ago as a “beauty contest” to draw people to Atlantic City, top pageant officials say the swimsuit portion is no longer appropriate — especially in the days of #MeToo.
“We’re not going to judge you on your appearance because we are interested in what makes you you,” said Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America who is now the head of the organization’s board of trustees.
“”We’ve heard from a lot of young women who say, ‘We’d love to be a part of your program but we don’t want to be out there in high heels and a swimsuit,’ so guess what, you don’t have to do that anymore,” Carlson said in making the announcement Tuesday morning on “Good Morning America.”
“Who doesn’t want to be empowered, learn leadership skills and pay for college and be able to show the world who you are as a person from the inside of your soul?”
Carlson added: “We are no longer a pageant. We are a competition.”
In place of the swimsuit portion of the competition, contestants will now “take part in a live interactive session with the judges, according to the organization,” ABC News reported.
“The organization is also getting rid of the evening gown portion of the competition and instead asking contestants to wear attire that makes them feel confident, expresses their personal style and shows how they hope to advance the role of Miss America,” ABC said.
The pageant was embroiled in controversy last year when emails emerged showing former Miss America officials belittling the intelligence of some contestants, as well as the appearance and sex lives of former title winners. Top officials were replaced and the pageant’s top three positions are now all held by women.
Carlson, who won the pageant in 1989, also said the new Miss America competition will include more women of “all shapes and sizes.”
The official Miss America Twitter account on Tuesday posted a video of a white bikini disappearing in a puff of white smoke with the hashtag #byebyebikini.
Carlson became a passionate advocate for victims of sexual harassment after she settled a lawsuit in 2016 against former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes.
“I could have never expected what would happen when I sued my former employer at Fox News for sexual harassment 22 months ago, but look what has happened,” she said. “Thousands of women have been inspired to know that they can stand up and speak up and their voices will be heard.”
“If I’ve been a beacon of hope to any woman in that process, it has been worth it,” Carlson said.
via Daily Wire
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Popular Children’s Video Game Angry Birds Goes Gay For Pride Month
With the month of June being Gay Pride Month, the entertainment industry and a galaxy of virtue signalers will take […]
via Downtrend.com
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Too brown to win? That’s what Democrats actually told one of their own candidates
It’s make or break time for the Democrats in California’s crowded “jungle primary,” with only the top two candidates in June’s primary today making it to the ballot in November.
By all accounts, Democrats are running scared.
In the Orange County race to challenge Rep. Dana Rohrabacher for his seat, they’ve got too many candidates running, and with too much money, so the likely result will be a split of leftists’ votes, leaving Democrats with the prospect of two Republicans on the ballot for the November midterms. That’s panic time, all right, at least for them.
Democrats are famous for muscling their own candidates into a single party line. But who would have guessed they have actually sought to pare down that crowded plate by telling one of their candidates he’s too brown to win?
Seriously, that happened. It’s what Democrats reportedly told one of their own candidates, a moderate Reaganite Democrat named Omar Siddiqui, to get him out of there.
Too brown to win? Omar Siddiqui addresses the locals in the O.C.
According to a buried lede in the Washington Examiner:
Stem cell scientist Hans Keirstead was the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate before he wasn’t. Businessman Harley Rouda was a Republican, 20 years ago, before he was a Democrat. And FBI adviser Omar Siddiqui says party officials told him he was too brown to win in Orange County.
As if they can even do that at this late date, with the ballots printed.
They told him he was too brown! In a county they have hailed for its Asian-American immigrants, placing their bets that these Asian-Americans (of which Siddiqui is likely one) will put Democrats over the top.
If news of this gets out, it should do wonders for their popularity with this increasingly alienated base of voters, already disgusted by Democrat policies promoting university admission discrimination, sanctuary cities, and dumping the homeless on their doorsteps, as I wrote here yesterday.
Obviously, in their by-any-means-necessary Alinskyite philosophy, Democrats are showing they’ll use even racism on their own to do it. Seriously, too brown? This isn’t the first instance of their using actual appeals to racists to get their way in this race. According to the accompanying video to the Examiner piece, they’ve also painted Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as “China Mitch” based on his wife’s Chinese ancestry.
These are repulsive people.
It shows again that Democrats are the party that views color as more important than content of character – and when it’s convenient for them, they’ll use that in a racist way, telling people to beat it in congressional races because they aren’t the right skin color. Siddiqui was probably an easy target, given his moderate Democratic stances, an unpopular thing among the left-wing crazies in control of that party. (If he can just bend a few of his ideas on global warming, he’d likely be a fine Republican, actually. One hopes this experience with his own party, with its Klansman past, as Dinesh D’Souza has so helpfully pointed out in his films, brings him over to the Republicans.)
Democrats are showing some big-time bad-character bigotry in their desperate quest for power.
Republicans should be making a big deal of this as the November midterms approach.
Images from YouTube.
It’s make or break time for the Democrats in California’s crowded “jungle primary,” with only the top two candidates in June’s primary today making it to the ballot in November.
By all accounts, Democrats are running scared.
In the Orange County race to challenge Rep. Dana Rohrabacher for his seat, they’ve got too many candidates running, and with too much money, so the likely result will be a split of leftists’ votes, leaving Democrats with the prospect of two Republicans on the ballot for the November midterms. That’s panic time, all right, at least for them.
Democrats are famous for muscling their own candidates into a single party line. But who would have guessed they have actually sought to pare down that crowded plate by telling one of their candidates he’s too brown to win?
Seriously, that happened. It’s what Democrats reportedly told one of their own candidates, a moderate Reaganite Democrat named Omar Siddiqui, to get him out of there.
Too brown to win? Omar Siddiqui addresses the locals in the O.C.
According to a buried lede in the Washington Examiner:
Stem cell scientist Hans Keirstead was the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate before he wasn’t. Businessman Harley Rouda was a Republican, 20 years ago, before he was a Democrat. And FBI adviser Omar Siddiqui says party officials told him he was too brown to win in Orange County.
As if they can even do that at this late date, with the ballots printed.
They told him he was too brown! In a county they have hailed for its Asian-American immigrants, placing their bets that these Asian-Americans (of which Siddiqui is likely one) will put Democrats over the top.
If news of this gets out, it should do wonders for their popularity with this increasingly alienated base of voters, already disgusted by Democrat policies promoting university admission discrimination, sanctuary cities, and dumping the homeless on their doorsteps, as I wrote here yesterday.
Obviously, in their by-any-means-necessary Alinskyite philosophy, Democrats are showing they’ll use even racism on their own to do it. Seriously, too brown? This isn’t the first instance of their using actual appeals to racists to get their way in this race. According to the accompanying video to the Examiner piece, they’ve also painted Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as “China Mitch” based on his wife’s Chinese ancestry.
These are repulsive people.
It shows again that Democrats are the party that views color as more important than content of character – and when it’s convenient for them, they’ll use that in a racist way, telling people to beat it in congressional races because they aren’t the right skin color. Siddiqui was probably an easy target, given his moderate Democratic stances, an unpopular thing among the left-wing crazies in control of that party. (If he can just bend a few of his ideas on global warming, he’d likely be a fine Republican, actually. One hopes this experience with his own party, with its Klansman past, as Dinesh D’Souza has so helpfully pointed out in his films, brings him over to the Republicans.)
Democrats are showing some big-time bad-character bigotry in their desperate quest for power.
Republicans should be making a big deal of this as the November midterms approach.
Images from YouTube.
via American Thinker Blog
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Liberals Ruin Miss America Pageant: Swimsuit Competition Scrapped, Replaced by Interview Session
Liberals Ruin Miss America Pageant: Swimsuit Competition Scrapped, Replaced by Interview Session
June 5, 2018
What a sad day for another American tradition.
Liberals destroy everything — even beauty pageants.
Miss America announced it will scrap the swimsuit portion of the competition.
The pageant will interview contestants instead.
Nothing is sacred when there is a liberal in the room.
They even want to redefine beauty.
ABC News reported:
Miss America is scrapping its swimsuit competition and will no longer judge contestants based on physical appearance, the organization announced Tuesday.
“We are no longer a pageant,” Gretchen Carlson, the first former Miss America to be named chair of the Board of Trustees of the Miss America Organization, said on “GMA.” “We are a competition.”
In place of the swimsuit portion of the competition, Miss America contestants will now take part in a live interactive session with the judges, according to the organization.
The contestants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia will be asked to demonstrate their passion, intelligence and overall understanding of the job of Miss America.
via The Gateway Pundit
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Slam dunk video exposes CNN/MSNBC idiocy on Trump
Cable news Trump-haters, besotted with outrage, don’t bother to sweat the details when it comes to venting their spleen on President Trump. Finding something – anything – on which to express outrage is their daily challenge.
Last Friday, when President Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to the jobs report, about to be released, they went into high dudgeon.
Amusing though that sort of indignation can be, it gets hilarious when they make up an imaginary contrast with their fantasies about the wonderfulness of ex-President Obama. Add in a dare to find an example of Obama doing the horrible, terrible, probably illegal and impeachable thing that President Trump did, and they set themselves up for serious embarrassment and humiliation,
Watch the one minute video from the GOP below and be rewarded with a dose of exquisite schadenfreude.
Cable news Trump-haters, besotted with outrage, don’t bother to sweat the details when it comes to venting their spleen on President Trump. Finding something – anything – on which to express outrage is their daily challenge.
Last Friday, when President Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to the jobs report, about to be released, they went into high dudgeon.
Amusing though that sort of indignation can be, it gets hilarious when they make up an imaginary contrast with their fantasies about the wonderfulness of ex-President Obama. Add in a dare to find an example of Obama doing the horrible, terrible, probably illegal and impeachable thing that President Trump did, and they set themselves up for serious embarrassment and humiliation,
Watch the one minute video from the GOP below and be rewarded with a dose of exquisite schadenfreude.
via American Thinker Blog
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Religious Liberty Takes the Cake
“The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression,” the majority opinion said.
“While it is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other member of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.”
Creative expression in any form is free speech which, along with freedom of religion, is supposedly protected in the First Amendment. People should not be compelled to write or say things they do not believe or agree with, whether it be in the form of ink on paper or frosting on wedding cakes.
In Masterpiece Cake Shop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the shop refused to make a cake for a gay couple to celebrate their same-sex marriage, lawyers representing owner Jack Phillips argued it would be an endorsement of gay marriage that would violate their religious beliefs. The Colorado courts thought otherwise:
It started over five years ago with a simple request for a wedding cake. And now, after wending its way through the system, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is finally having its day before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many legal experts believe it will be the most significant case of the term. It involves a clash of our rights as citizens, as well as our ideals.
Two of the most precious rights Americans possess are freedom of expression and freedom to practice their religion as they see fit. Both are enshrined in the First Amendment…
It began in July 2012, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins asked Jack Phillips, who owned the Masterpiece Cakeshop, to create a custom wedding cake to celebrate their same-sex marriage. Phillips refused, saying he didn’t wish to promote a same-sex wedding due to his religious beliefs.
Craig and Mullins filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The commission decided against Phillips, declaring he had discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.
The commission ordered Masterpiece Cakeshop to change its policies, give its staff training on discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for two years on steps taken to comply with the order.
The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the decision and the Colorado Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Last year, Phillips petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the Colorado ruling violates the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
In this case, as Jordan Lawrence writes in National Review, the line between providing a service and expressing a view are being deliberately blurred by liberals to destroy both free speech and religious liberty:
The government must not force creative businesses to create messages that they oppose. During the Masterpiece Cakeshop oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the two attorneys opposing cake artist Jack Phillips argued that the justices should not protect Phillips’s freedom to abstain from creating expression he disagrees with. Their primary argument was that, in their opinion, it is too difficult to draw lines protecting people’s First Amendment right against compelled speech, so the high court should not protect Jack’s rights…
David Cole of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the Supreme Court should conclude that anything Phillips would create under some circumstances, he must create in all contexts…
(But) a cake artist who agrees to design a rainbow cake for a Noah’s Ark–themed Sunday-school party should not be forced against his will to make the same cake for a same-sex wedding (like the one that the same-sex couple who visited Masterpiece Cakeshop eventually got for their wedding reception). Neither should a cake artist who would craft an elephant-shaped cake for a party at the zoo be forced to create the same cake for a Republican-party celebration. Nor should a cake artist who is willing to design a cake saying “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” for a Christmas party be required to make that cake for a party hosted by Aryan Nations.
The Masterpiece Cakeshop case is different than saying a hotel or restaurant cannot refuse service to people based on their 
sexual orientation. Baking a wedding cake is a creative process and you cannot force a baker to create something that violates his religious beliefs anymore than you can force a writer to put on paper opinions he or she vehemently disagrees with,
That gay marriage is a looming threat to religious liberty as observed here, and may lead to an era of religious persecution not seen in since the days of the Roman Empire, are seen in the chilling redefinition of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, and the Senate’s only lesbian.
Baldwin made her remarks on the June 27, 2015 broadcast of Up With Steve Kornacki on MSNBC. In a transcript of her remarks posted on Newsbusters, Baldwin ignored the fact that it was religious persecution in Europe that led to people fleeing here seeking religious freedom on an individual as well as institutional level:
Certainly the first amendment says that in institutions of faith that there is absolute power to, you know, to observe deeply held religious beliefs. But I don’t think it extends far beyond that. We’ve seen the set of arguments play out in issues such as access to contraception. Should it be the individual pharmacist whose religious beliefs guides whether a prescription is filled, or in this context, they’re talking about expanding this far beyond our churches and synagogues to businesses and individuals across this country. I think there are clear limits that have been set in other contexts and we ought to abide by those in this new context across America.”
Baldwin, in arguing that there is no individual right to religious liberty and expression, misreads the Constitution with its mandate stating Congress shall pass no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It is a key phrase in the First Amendment, leading off the Bill of Rights. These are individual rights fought for in the American revolution. These rights are not limited to institutions but apply to all individuals, just as the Supreme Court has decided the Second Amendment applies to individuals and not just to state-ordained militias.
Baldwin had been asked the question, “Should the bakery have to bake the cake for the gay couple getting married? Where do you come down on that?” She came down on the side of government coercion and the proposition that church is something you do on Sunday for an hour and otherwise shouldn’t act on your religious beliefs in your daily life.
In Iran, gay wedding cake and pizza requests are handled a bit more harshly and with more finality than a simple statement from a business owner that his or her faith won’t allow them to cater the affair. If two gays contemplating marriage had walked into a Tehran pizza shop like Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, the pizza shop that refused to cater a gay wedding, hanging in the public square and not a simple refusal would have been a likely outcome.
The Hobby Lobby case also revolved around the belief of the owners that people should be free to act on their faith in their daily lives which includes their business life. It is a belief shared by many, including the Founding Fathers.
So do scores of Catholic and non-Catholic institutions and businesses who argue either that the way they run their private businesses is an extension of their faith or that a church, something the federal government seeks to redefine, is not something that happens one hour a week on a Sunday but 24/7 through the hospitals, schools, soup kitchens and charities they may operate. They argue that acting out their faith through their works should not be illegal.
To gay advocates, acting on your sincerely held religious beliefs is bigotry. They ask that their lifestyles be respected as well as their newly discovered right to marriage, found in the “penumbras and emanations” of the Constitution that also gave us the right to abortion. Neither abortion nor marriage is mentioned specifically in the Constitution, but religious liberty and those who saying acting on your faith is bigotry are physicians sorely in need of healing themselves.
Liberals’ definition of religious liberty is not that much different than Lenin’s and Stalin’s. Investor’s Business Daily once quoted Cardinal George regarding ObamaCare and its imposition of the contraceptive mandate on religious institutions:
“Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union,” Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George recently wrote.
“You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship — no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. We fought a long Cold War to defeat that vision of society.”
One wonders what would happen, or should happen in Sen. Baldwin’s view, if a gay couple walked into a bakery owned by African-Americans and asked for a Confederate flag on their wedding cake. The irony here is that those who profess to be the most tolerance exhibit the most intolerance. If you demand tolerance of your lifestyle, you should exhibit tolerance of other people’s religious beliefs. Otherwise it is you who are the hypocrite and the bigot.
Justice Anthony Kennedy may have tipped his hand early in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, noting in comments during oral arguments:
Did Anthony Kennedy tip his hand during oral arguments in a key religious liberty/free speech case today? All eyes were fixed on the perennial swing Supreme Court jurist as attorneys argued in Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and conservatives had to like Kennedy’s brushback to Colorado’s lawyers early in the hearing. According to the Wall Street Journal’s live blog, Kennedy wanted to know how the state tried to accommodate the baker’s rights to speech and religious expression, and he expressed his dissatisfaction with the response:
Justice Anthony Kennedy told a lawyer for the state that tolerance is essential in a free society, but it’s important for tolerance to work in both directions. “It seems to me the state has been neither tolerant or respectful” of the baker’s views, he said.
Well said. Indeed, the road to oppression and the end of liberty is paved with political correctness. Tolerance should be a two-way street.
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
Although it might have been interesting to see Muslim bakers being forced to bake Mohammed cartoon cakes for Christian clients, we should all celebrate the not-even-close Supreme Court ruling establishing that Colorado bakers cannot be forced to violate their First Amendment religious liberty rights by baking a gay wedding cake:
In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated the free exercise clause of the Constitution when it forced Jack Phillips to make a cake for a same-sex wedding he morally opposed under the state’s public accommodations law.
“The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression,” the majority opinion said.
“While it is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other member of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.”
Creative expression in any form is free speech which, along with freedom of religion, is supposedly protected in the First Amendment. People should not be compelled to write or say things they do not believe or agree with, whether it be in the form of ink on paper or frosting on wedding cakes.
In Masterpiece Cake Shop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the shop refused to make a cake for a gay couple to celebrate their same-sex marriage, lawyers representing owner Jack Phillips argued it would be an endorsement of gay marriage that would violate their religious beliefs. The Colorado courts thought otherwise:
It started over five years ago with a simple request for a wedding cake. And now, after wending its way through the system, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is finally having its day before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many legal experts believe it will be the most significant case of the term. It involves a clash of our rights as citizens, as well as our ideals.
Two of the most precious rights Americans possess are freedom of expression and freedom to practice their religion as they see fit. Both are enshrined in the First Amendment…
It began in July 2012, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins asked Jack Phillips, who owned the Masterpiece Cakeshop, to create a custom wedding cake to celebrate their same-sex marriage. Phillips refused, saying he didn’t wish to promote a same-sex wedding due to his religious beliefs.
Craig and Mullins filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The commission decided against Phillips, declaring he had discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.
The commission ordered Masterpiece Cakeshop to change its policies, give its staff training on discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for two years on steps taken to comply with the order.
The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the decision and the Colorado Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Last year, Phillips petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the Colorado ruling violates the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
In this case, as Jordan Lawrence writes in National Review, the line between providing a service and expressing a view are being deliberately blurred by liberals to destroy both free speech and religious liberty:
The government must not force creative businesses to create messages that they oppose. During the Masterpiece Cakeshop oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the two attorneys opposing cake artist Jack Phillips argued that the justices should not protect Phillips’s freedom to abstain from creating expression he disagrees with. Their primary argument was that, in their opinion, it is too difficult to draw lines protecting people’s First Amendment right against compelled speech, so the high court should not protect Jack’s rights…
David Cole of the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the Supreme Court should conclude that anything Phillips would create under some circumstances, he must create in all contexts…
(But) a cake artist who agrees to design a rainbow cake for a Noah’s Ark–themed Sunday-school party should not be forced against his will to make the same cake for a same-sex wedding (like the one that the same-sex couple who visited Masterpiece Cakeshop eventually got for their wedding reception). Neither should a cake artist who would craft an elephant-shaped cake for a party at the zoo be forced to create the same cake for a Republican-party celebration. Nor should a cake artist who is willing to design a cake saying “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” for a Christmas party be required to make that cake for a party hosted by Aryan Nations.
The Masterpiece Cakeshop case is different than saying a hotel or restaurant cannot refuse service to people based on their sexual orientation. Baking a wedding cake is a creative process and you cannot force a baker to create something that violates his religious beliefs anymore than you can force a writer to put on paper opinions he or she vehemently disagrees with,
That gay marriage is a looming threat to religious liberty as observed here, and may lead to an era of religious persecution not seen in since the days of the Roman Empire, are seen in the chilling redefinition of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, and the Senate’s only lesbian.
Baldwin made her remarks on the June 27, 2015 broadcast of Up With Steve Kornacki on MSNBC. In a transcript of her remarks posted on Newsbusters, Baldwin ignored the fact that it was religious persecution in Europe that led to people fleeing here seeking religious freedom on an individual as well as institutional level:
Certainly the first amendment says that in institutions of faith that there is absolute power to, you know, to observe deeply held religious beliefs. But I don’t think it extends far beyond that. We’ve seen the set of arguments play out in issues such as access to contraception. Should it be the individual pharmacist whose religious beliefs guides whether a prescription is filled, or in this context, they’re talking about expanding this far beyond our churches and synagogues to businesses and individuals across this country. I think there are clear limits that have been set in other contexts and we ought to abide by those in this new context across America.”
Baldwin, in arguing that there is no individual right to religious liberty and expression, misreads the Constitution with its mandate stating Congress shall pass no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It is a key phrase in the First Amendment, leading off the Bill of Rights. These are individual rights fought for in the American revolution. These rights are not limited to institutions but apply to all individuals, just as the Supreme Court has decided the Second Amendment applies to individuals and not just to state-ordained militias.
Baldwin had been asked the question, “Should the bakery have to bake the cake for the gay couple getting married? Where do you come down on that?” She came down on the side of government coercion and the proposition that church is something you do on Sunday for an hour and otherwise shouldn’t act on your religious beliefs in your daily life.
In Iran, gay wedding cake and pizza requests are handled a bit more harshly and with more finality than a simple statement from a business owner that his or her faith won’t allow them to cater the affair. If two gays contemplating marriage had walked into a Tehran pizza shop like Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, the pizza shop that refused to cater a gay wedding, hanging in the public square and not a simple refusal would have been a likely outcome.
The Hobby Lobby case also revolved around the belief of the owners that people should be free to act on their faith in their daily lives which includes their business life. It is a belief shared by many, including the Founding Fathers.
So do scores of Catholic and non-Catholic institutions and businesses who argue either that the way they run their private businesses is an extension of their faith or that a church, something the federal government seeks to redefine, is not something that happens one hour a week on a Sunday but 24/7 through the hospitals, schools, soup kitchens and charities they may operate. They argue that acting out their faith through their works should not be illegal.
To gay advocates, acting on your sincerely held religious beliefs is bigotry. They ask that their lifestyles be respected as well as their newly discovered right to marriage, found in the “penumbras and emanations” of the Constitution that also gave us the right to abortion. Neither abortion nor marriage is mentioned specifically in the Constitution, but religious liberty and those who saying acting on your faith is bigotry are physicians sorely in need of healing themselves.
Liberals’ definition of religious liberty is not that much different than Lenin’s and Stalin’s. Investor’s Business Daily once quoted Cardinal George regarding ObamaCare and its imposition of the contraceptive mandate on religious institutions:
“Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union,” Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George recently wrote.
“You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship — no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. We fought a long Cold War to defeat that vision of society.”
One wonders what would happen, or should happen in Sen. Baldwin’s view, if a gay couple walked into a bakery owned by African-Americans and asked for a Confederate flag on their wedding cake. The irony here is that those who profess to be the most tolerance exhibit the most intolerance. If you demand tolerance of your lifestyle, you should exhibit tolerance of other people’s religious beliefs. Otherwise it is you who are the hypocrite and the bigot.
Justice Anthony Kennedy may have tipped his hand early in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, noting in comments during oral arguments:
Did Anthony Kennedy tip his hand during oral arguments in a key religious liberty/free speech case today? All eyes were fixed on the perennial swing Supreme Court jurist as attorneys argued in Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and conservatives had to like Kennedy’s brushback to Colorado’s lawyers early in the hearing. According to the Wall Street Journal’s live blog, Kennedy wanted to know how the state tried to accommodate the baker’s rights to speech and religious expression, and he expressed his dissatisfaction with the response:
Justice Anthony Kennedy told a lawyer for the state that tolerance is essential in a free society, but it’s important for tolerance to work in both directions. “It seems to me the state has been neither tolerant or respectful” of the baker’s views, he said.
Well said. Indeed, the road to oppression and the end of liberty is paved with political correctness. Tolerance should be a two-way street.
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
via American Thinker
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Bill Clinton is now staring at the underside of the Democrats’ bus
Karma finally has caught up with Bill Clinton. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, in his mind, and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault (as is everything wrong with the world, if you are a national Democrat). Had Hillary brought him back to the White House as the historic “first gentleman,” none of the humiliation that he now is enduring would be his lot. Harvey Weinstein would still be raising megabucks for Democrats, Charlie Rose would still be interviewing bien pensant politicians, actors and writers, and the thriller novel purportedly “co-written” by James Patterson and Bill Clinton would be receiving nothing but adoring reviews and softball questions on the publicity tour.
Instead, the explosion of the #MeToo movement, aimed at hyping the gravity of sexual improprieties by powerful men with powerless women (this means you, Donald “you can grab ’em by the pus*y” Trump!) has unleashed the furies long bottled up by the political utility of Bill Clinton.
Thus, Craig Melvin of NBC News dared to ask Bill Clinton and his “co-author” James Patterson about Monica Lewinski, and whether she was owed an apology.
As American Thinker readers already know, all hell has broken loose over the awkward, self-serving, disingenuous answers offered by Clinton, especially the suggestion that he is the victim here, because he left office $16 million in debt, and that, “This was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me.”
But that was then, this is now. Female voters are the single biggest demographic slice of the nation that favors Democrats in national elections, more specifically, unmarried female voters, the kind of females most likely to endure unwelcome attentions and worse. The genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste has exited the tube, and tens of millions of women are very angry.
Back when he was in office and his wife had prospects for the presidency, it was worthwhile covering up Bill’s offenses. But Hillary’s defeat means that there is no upside at all and considerable downside for Democrats in defending him.
Thus we have the spectacle of Democrats discovering their indignation twenty years after the fact. Mika Brzezinski was one of the first highly visible media figures to call out Bill:
“It has been for decades an unbelievable double standard that the Clintons have used and abused, where nobody is allowed to go there on this issue,” Brzezinski said. “And in the age of #MeToo, women are supposed to go there, and men, by the way.”
“We’re supposed to be able to say what the difference is between right and wrong, and when you have done something wrong, you are supposed to own it and not talk about facts, distorted facts and obstructed facts.”
Her MSNBC colleague Katy Tur wondered why Clinton couldn’t just apologize:
“Why was he so combative in that interview? Why didn’t he just say ‘hey, listen, it’s a different time, I feel badly for the way things went down, I feel badly for how Monica Lewinsky was treated, I’m sorry’?”
But this morning, with time to reflect, the media are getting even more aggressive. Will Rahn, Managing editor for politics at CBS News, is calling on Clinton to “go away.” He is, to borrow a term that his veep made famous, an ”inconvenient” ex-president, a reminder not only that the Democrats were willing to sacrifice powerless women for political gain, but that a good economy can excuse presidential lying under oath when it comes to impeachment.
Honestly, Bill Clinton does not look like a healthy man to me, and for that matter, there is good reason to doubt the health of his wife, Hillary. I wish neither of them ill health, both on humanitarian grounds and on the delight I take in seeing the consequences of their actions coming due in the months and years ahead.
As for James Patterson, I have to wonder if he regrets his little adventure in “co-writing.” It couldn’t have been money that motivated him, for he is reputed to be the best-selling living author. I speculate that it was entrée to better dinner parties and public events that persuaded him to adapt his winning best-seller formula. And now his reputation is not enhanced but harmed by his linking of his reputation to Bill Clinton’s.
Screen grab, NBC
The late Jim McDougall, a business partner of the Clintons in their Arkansas days who went to prison, fanously said, “I think the Clintons are really sort of like tornadoes moving through people’s lives,” he once said. “I’m just one of the people left in the wake of their passing by.”
There is more karma yet to unfold. Count on it.
Karma finally has caught up with Bill Clinton. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, in his mind, and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault (as is everything wrong with the world, if you are a national Democrat). Had Hillary brought him back to the White House as the historic “first gentleman,” none of the humiliation that he now is enduring would be his lot. Harvey Weinstein would still be raising megabucks for Democrats, Charlie Rose would still be interviewing bien pensant politicians, actors and writers, and the thriller novel purportedly “co-written” by James Patterson and Bill Clinton would be receiving nothing but adoring reviews and softball questions on the publicity tour.
Instead, the explosion of the #MeToo movement, aimed at hyping the gravity of sexual improprieties by powerful men with powerless women (this means you, Donald “you can grab ’em by the pus*y” Trump!) has unleashed the furies long bottled up by the political utility of Bill Clinton.
Thus, Craig Melvin of NBC News dared to ask Bill Clinton and his “co-author” James Patterson about Monica Lewinski, and whether she was owed an apology.
As American Thinker readers already know, all hell has broken loose over the awkward, self-serving, disingenuous answers offered by Clinton, especially the suggestion that he is the victim here, because he left office $16 million in debt, and that, “This was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me.”
But that was then, this is now. Female voters are the single biggest demographic slice of the nation that favors Democrats in national elections, more specifically, unmarried female voters, the kind of females most likely to endure unwelcome attentions and worse. The genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste has exited the tube, and tens of millions of women are very angry.
Back when he was in office and his wife had prospects for the presidency, it was worthwhile covering up Bill’s offenses. But Hillary’s defeat means that there is no upside at all and considerable downside for Democrats in defending him.
Thus we have the spectacle of Democrats discovering their indignation twenty years after the fact. Mika Brzezinski was one of the first highly visible media figures to call out Bill:
“It has been for decades an unbelievable double standard that the Clintons have used and abused, where nobody is allowed to go there on this issue,” Brzezinski said. “And in the age of #MeToo, women are supposed to go there, and men, by the way.”
“We’re supposed to be able to say what the difference is between right and wrong, and when you have done something wrong, you are supposed to own it and not talk about facts, distorted facts and obstructed facts.”
Her MSNBC colleague Katy Tur wondered why Clinton couldn’t just apologize:
“Why was he so combative in that interview? Why didn’t he just say ‘hey, listen, it’s a different time, I feel badly for the way things went down, I feel badly for how Monica Lewinsky was treated, I’m sorry’?”
But this morning, with time to reflect, the media are getting even more aggressive. Will Rahn, Managing editor for politics at CBS News, is calling on Clinton to “go away.” He is, to borrow a term that his veep made famous, an ”inconvenient” ex-president, a reminder not only that the Democrats were willing to sacrifice powerless women for political gain, but that a good economy can excuse presidential lying under oath when it comes to impeachment.
Honestly, Bill Clinton does not look like a healthy man to me, and for that matter, there is good reason to doubt the health of his wife, Hillary. I wish neither of them ill health, both on humanitarian grounds and on the delight I take in seeing the consequences of their actions coming due in the months and years ahead.
As for James Patterson, I have to wonder if he regrets his little adventure in “co-writing.” It couldn’t have been money that motivated him, for he is reputed to be the best-selling living author. I speculate that it was entrée to better dinner parties and public events that persuaded him to adapt his winning best-seller formula. And now his reputation is not enhanced but harmed by his linking of his reputation to Bill Clinton’s.
Screen grab, NBC
The late Jim McDougall, a business partner of the Clintons in their Arkansas days who went to prison, fanously said, “I think the Clintons are really sort of like tornadoes moving through people’s lives,” he once said. “I’m just one of the people left in the wake of their passing by.”
There is more karma yet to unfold. Count on it.
via American Thinker Blog
Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/
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