Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts

Friday, August 19, 2016

Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause (2011)


The U.S. government condemns burning the Qur'an. Yet the U.S. government burns Bibles. This is a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Friday, January 08, 2016

Pat Condell: Goodbye to the First Amendment


Its days are numbered. 41% of Americans want to criminalise “hate speech”

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Texas Attack Shows How US Protects Free Speech – No Matter How Offensive


THE GUARDIAN: Critics say Pamela Geller’s event was provocative and arguably crossed the line into hate speech – but protections afforded by the first amendment are unique

The fatal shootings in Garland, Texas, of two extremist gunmen as they attacked an anti-Islamist meeting was a vivid reminder of the virtually unique protections afforded by the US constitution to free speech, no matter how hate-filled or provocative, according to prominent first amendment experts.

In many countries across Europe and around the world, Pamela Geller and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, who organized the event in Garland, might have fallen foul of hate speech laws such as the UK’s 1986 public order act or article 266(b) of Denmark’s criminal code. » | Ed Pilkington in New York | Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Monday, February 10, 2014

Utah's Mormons Celebrate as Polygamy Restrictions Are Struck Down

THE INDEPENDENT: Part of law was ruled in violation of First Amendment

A US federal judge has struck down a key part of Utah’s law banning polygamy – providing welcome relief to one practising Mormon family.

Joe Darger, who described himself as an “independent Mormon fundamentalist”, has 25 children with three wives.

US District Judge Clark Waddoups threw out part of a bill which allows the state to use cohabitation as a basis for prosecution, although Utah does still prohibit bigamy.

Cousins Elena and Vicki married Joe in 1990 and in 1992 Vicki’s twin sister Valerie joined them.

The unusual family have always worried Joe could face arrest, but the latest ruling means the state cannot use cohabitation as a basis for prosecution as it goes against the individuals’ right to freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment. » | Rose Troup Buchanan | Monday, February 10, 2014

Sunday, June 16, 2013


Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause

The U.S. government condemns burning the Qur'an. Yet the U.S. government burns Bibles. This is a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Sixth Circuit: Michigan Can Ban Anti-Islam Ads from Buses

WSJ BLOG: Does First Amendment protect our right to say what we want in advertisements on the side of a city bus?

Yes and no.

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a Michigan transit authority could bar from the side of its buses an advertisement that read: “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got Questions? Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com”[.]

The group behind the ads is the [the] American Freedom Defense Initiative, which describes its mission as acting “against the treason being committed by national, state, and local government officials, the mainstream media, and others in their capitulation to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism.”

The group had sought in 2010 to place the ads on the buses in Michigan’s four southeastern-most counties, but the authority refused, on the grounds that the ads violated a policy against political advertisements and offensive speech. Read on and comment » | Joe Palazzolo | Thursday, October 25, 2012

Friday, September 21, 2012

New Dark Age Alert! Free Speech at Risk as U.S. Synchronizes With Islam

TOWNHALL.COM: What's wrong with the following Associated Press headline? "Charlie Hebdo cartoon spurs French gov't to order embassies, schools to close."

Cartoons of Muhammad in the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo didn't send France into lockdown. Their publication this week was a simple exercise in free speech on Islam, which Muslims in France and everywhere else in the world oppose as a violation of Islamic law (Shariah). It is Islamic rage over the fact that Islamic law is not dominant everywhere, all the time -- Muslims' signal weapon against a timid West -- that drove French authorities to take security precautions, not the publication of cartoons.

What's wrong with the following headline? "Cinemaniac: Feds question loon who set Muslim world on fire." Again, this headline in the New York Post leaves the actual pyromaniacs out of the picture, instead demonizing an individual who made a film about Muhammad -- his lawful right. Muslims set "the world" (American embassies) on fire in one more fit of jihad to punish a violation of Islamic law. Like other cycles of Islamic rage before it -- whether the pretext is a Miss World pageant in Nigeria or cartoons in a Danish newspaper -- this one, too, will temporarily abate, ready to flare up next time the point must be driven home: Criticism of Islam and its prophet is verboten.

This is no media flap. This is war. Islam is attempting to dominate the West by attacking the basis of the West -- freedom of speech. Our leaders won't tell us that because too many of them have already surrendered. They deplore the violence against our people and our sovereign territory, yes, but their priority is not to defend free speech but to see that Islamic speech codes are enforced. They have already decided to discard liberty for Shariah. The U.S. government and the Islamic bloc known as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) couldn't be more in sync on this vital issue.

How to get around the First Amendment? Through "some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last year. She was speaking about the so-called Istanbul Process, the international effort she and the OIC are spearheading to see Islamic anti-"blasphemy" laws enforced around the world. » | Diana West | Friday, September 21, 2012

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Pastor Terry Jones to Appeal Ruling in Dearborn

DETROIT FREE PRESS: The Rev. Terry Jones is to file an appeal today in Wayne County Circuit Court over a Dearborn court's decision against him last week that thwarted his plans to protest outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, an attorney said Monday.

"It was a clear violation of the First Amendment's right to free speech," said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel for the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center, which is representing Jones.

Jones, the Florida pastor who ordered the burning of a Quran last month, was to protest Friday outside the mosque in Dearborn, but Wayne County prosecutors filed an unusual complaint against him, saying he would breach the peace if he rallied. » | Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press Staff Writer | Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Robert Spencer: Obama Declares War on Free Speech

HUMAN EVENTS: The Obama Administration has now actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council last Friday, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

What could be wrong with that? Plenty.

First of all, there’s that little matter of the First Amendment, which preserves Americans’ right to free speech and freedom of the press, which are obviously mutually inclusive. Any law that infringed on speech at all -- far less in such vague and sweeping terms -- would be unconstitutional.

“Incitement” and “hatred” are in the eye of the beholder -- or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as “hate speech.” The Founding Fathers knew that the freedom of speech was an essential safeguard against tyranny: the ability to dissent, freely and publicly and without fear of imprisonment or other reprisal, is a cornerstone of any genuine republic. If some ideas cannot be heard and are proscribed from above, the ones in control are tyrants, however benevolent they may be.

Now no less distinguished a personage than the President of the United States has given his imprimatur to this tyranny; the implications are grave. The resolution also condemns “negative stereotyping of religions and racial groups,” which is of course an oblique reference to accurate reporting about the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism -- for that, not actual negative stereotyping or hateful language, is always the focus of whining by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and allied groups. They never say anything when people like Osama bin Laden and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed issue detailed Koranic expositions justifying violence and hatred; but when people like Geert Wilders and others report about such expositions, that’s “negative stereotyping.” >>> Robert Spencer | October 08, 2009

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Goodbye, First Amendment?

JIHAD WATCH: As Islamic nations pressure the UN to outlaw "defamation of Islam" -- by which they mean any honest examination of the motives and goals of jihad terrorists -- Obama's pick for Attorney General sends a disquieting signal. >>> Robert Spencer | November 21, 2008


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Saturday, June 21, 2008

The End of Free Speech

DAILYNEWSRECORDOnline: A frightening “hate crimes” trial in Canada offers Americans a look at the future of the First Amendment if Muslim immigration to this country continues unabated. Conservative writer Mark Steyn, it seems, “offended” the Muslims in British Columbia, and now not only the Muslims but also the Canadian diversity police want their pound of flesh.

Steyn’s ongoing legal battle began in 2006, when Macleans magazine published an excerpt of his book, “America Alone.” The excerpt, “The Future Belongs To Islam” said nothing that anyone who reads the newspapers doesn’t know: Islam is conquering Europe. But it was “offensive” because it stated exactly that.

Europe, Mr. Steyn wrote, is dying. The Christian faith is waning. Birth rates have collapsed. His reasonable conclusion is that the growing and angry Islamic horde in Europe is preparing the ground for violence, and, indeed, jihad: Aging Europeans, he wrote, are “being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. … [A]t the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in.” The End of Free Speech: Canadian Case an Omen for America >>> Editorial | June 21, 2008

SABERPOINT:
A World Gone Mad: Multicural Fascism in Full Bloom >>> | June 20, 2008

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The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (US)