All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
The Islamic State group has beheaded two women in Syria on accusations of "sorcery," the first such executions of female civilians in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday.
"The Islamic State group executed two women by beheading them in Deir Ezzor province, and this is the first time the Observatory has documented women being killed by the group in this manner," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The Britain-based monitor said the executions took place on Monday and Sunday and involved two couples.
In both cases, the women were executed with their husbands, with each pair accused of "witchcraft and sorcery".
The Observatory said IS has previously decapitated the corpses of Kurdish female fighters during battles, and the jihadist group is reported to have stoned civilian women to death on allegations of adultery.
But the Observatory said this was the first time it had documented the group beheading civilian women, noting that the executions were done publicly.
The Islamic State group has become infamous for gruesome executions and other brutality.
According to the Observatory, IS has executed more than 3,000 people in Syria in the year since it declared its Islamic "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq.
Nearly 1,800 of them were civilians, including 74 children.
The Observatory also said Tuesday that IS has punished at least eight people in recent days for allegedly failing to fast during the Muslim month of Ramadan by hanging them from makeshift crosses.
The eight were all strung up alive on crucifixes with placards attached to them accusing them of breaking the Ramadan fast "with no religious justification."
Among the eight were two minors, the Observatory said, adding that while it had documented eight cases, there might be others that have not been reported.
Observatory chief Abdel Rahman said the eight were hung from the crucifixes for a day and taken down afterwards still alive.
(CNSNews.com) – Amazon.com joined other American companies like eBay and Wal-Mart last week in banning the sale of the Confederate flag, but the online retail giant has apparently not banned items associated with foreign terrorist groups.
Flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, and armed “Taliban” action figures are among the offerings available with a few clicks of a mouse.
Amazon’s decision to remove merchandise featuring the Confederate flag, reported by Reuters and others last week, came in the wake of the shooting of nine people in a church in Charleston, S.C. by a white gunman who photographed himself draped in the flag.
Communist Philosophy may have been a broken clock, but it struck right on the dot when it said, "When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."
I’ve supported same-sex marriage ever since I first heard the idea. And when I became a political columnist in the early 2000s—despite being the “conservative” at a good-sized newspaper—I was the only one at the paper (as far as I can recall) who unequivocally backed gay marriage publicly.
Though I wasn’t gullible enough to believe I’d be persuading many readers, I was gullible enough to believe that my allies in the cause were merely concerned with “equality.”
As we dig out from the avalanche of half-baked platitudes about “love being love” and watch alleged news organizations and the White House adorn themselves in cheerful rainbows, we can look forward to the self-righteous mobs that will be defaming anyone who is reluctant to embrace the state’s new definition of marriage. Love is love, except when a person loves their God and follows the principles of their faith, evidently.
Do a majority of Americans who support gay marriage believe these traditionalists deserve to be treated like unrepentant Klan boosters? Of course, there will always be the obnoxious Puritan, as the quote goes, who loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbor with all his heart. But, as any honest observer would tell you, there are also many profoundly decent religious people who aren’t filled with enmity, aren’t bigoted, aren’t hateful, but do still hold long-established notions about what marriage should look like.
Yet, here’s how Ben Smith put it when asked about his site’s politicizing:
For Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, same-sex marriage is an issue which does not have sides. On Friday, he told the On Media blog that BuzzFeed’s Twitter avatar was in keeping with its standards guide: “We firmly believe that for a number of issues, including civil rights, women’s rights, anti-racism, and LGBT equality, there are not two sides.”
Tell that to the numerous denominations of Protestantism, or the Orthodox Jews, the Catholic Church, the Mormons, the Muslims, to name just a few, whose religious conception of marriage is antithetical to this secular iteration of marriage. I imagine they have a “side.”
The question is, do a majority of Americans who support gay marriage believe likening these people to racists and misogynists is reasonable? Do they believe that all people must surrender their convictions and endorse the state’s definition?
Take the aggressively confused Amanda Marcotte, who argues that “Rand Paul Would Rather End Marriage Than Share It With Gay People.” Marcotte is referring to Paul’s idea, one that’s common among libertarians—also, famously advocated for by Michael Kinsley—that marriage should no longer be a concern of the state. People would be able to form their own relationships and marry (or not) in whatever church (or not) they desired. They would be able to call their relationships whatever they wanted. They would sign contracts to define the legal parameters of their association.
This solution is probably impractical when we consider the legal complexities of civil marriage. For pundits like Marcotte, though, taking the state out of marriage makes it indistinguishable from eliminating it.
Love is only love after a person takes a blood test and is issued a license by a bureaucrat.
One of the hallmarks of being able to govern ourselves is that we can protect ourselves sufficiently.
In 1942 we sent the Navy to war with this:
At
the battle of Midway 41 TBD torpedo planes launched from the Yorktown,
Hornet and Enterprise. They recorded no hits, and only 6 returned after
dropping torpedoes in attack at ~80-100 mph. The USA recovered because
we had the time.
Now, this kind of failure would result in the war liable to be over before a DESIGN OF A BETTER CRAFT COULD BE SAVED TO DISK.
From Foxtrot Alpha
The F-35 Can’t Beat The Plane It’s Replacing In A Dogfight: Report
We’ve
heard of significant shortcomings before with the fighter jet that’s
supposed to be America’s future, but this is just as bad as it gets. The
F-35 performed so dismally in a dogfight, that the test pilot remarked
that the it had pretty much no place fighting other aircraft within
visual range.
And
it’s even worse than a mere maneuverability issue. At one point, the
pilot’s helmet was so big he couldn’t even turn his head inside the
cockpit.
That’s according to a scathing report obtained by our
friends over at War Is Boring that details the results of visual range
air-to-air engagement tests between an F-35A and an F-16C. The F-35,
which the US Air Force, Navy, and Marines are expected to rely upon, in
addition to the air arms of militaries across the world for at least the
next few decades, was supposed to be better than its F-16 predecessor
in all respects.
The F-35’s ability to compete against other
fighter aircraft in a close-in dogfight, even against the decades old
designs it looks to replace, has always been a contentious issue. Long
ago, the F-35’s maneuverability was planned to far exceed that of fourth
generation fighters. Over time, those claims eroded to the point where
the troubled stealth jet is described as being “about as maneuverable as
an F-16.”
The fact that the F-35 can carry its weapons and fuel
internally was of course the major deciding factor in being able to make
such a claim.
Keep in mind, all of this is anecdotal, but testing
reports over almost the last decade have supported the fact that the
F-35 was not nearly as nimble as many would like it to be. Still, all
claims regarding its performance against other fighters in a dogfight
remained largely academic, with only bits of data to compare in a
vacuum.
Which is why the candid report described in the War Is
Boring article finally gives us a good first hand account as to how
capable – or incapable as it may be – the F-35 is in the
within-visual-range fight.
The test pilot flying the F-35 makes it
very clear that the new jet, even in its ideal configuration without
any external stores, was no match against a Block-40 F-16C in a
less-than-ideal configuration with a pair of under-wing fuel tanks:
Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement.
In
dogfighting, energy is everything, and if your enemy has more kinetic
and potential energy for maneuvers than you do, then you’re toast.
The
report even goes into what is akin to a fairly desperate move usually
only used in one-on-one air combat maneuvers, known as a rudder
reversal, that the F-35 is apparently decent at performing at slow
speeds. The fact that this was even detailed in the report as a useful
tactic is telling. In reality, using such maneuvers means you are
probably going to die if any other bad guys are in the area as it
rapidly depletes the aircraft’s energy state, leaving it vulnerable to
attack.
All of this also reminds us of the fact that we cannot believe the
information coming from the program itself, which is troubling. Only as
the aircraft continues to enter the fleet (which is a whole other
ridiculous story) will we begin to hear more honest reviews of its
performance, as in the past we have had to rely on unclassified
congressional watch dog reports and other unbiased sources to identify
trends and key data points.
Another area that the test pilot highlights on is the F-35’s abysmal rearward visibility. David Axe from War Is Boring writes:
And
to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn’t even
comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet’s cramped
cockpit. “The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to
adequately see behind the aircraft.” That allowed the F-16 to sneak up
on him.
The report goes on to make other telling remarks about the
F-35’s air combat maneuvering
performance. It should be noted that the
aircraft’s flight software can probably still be tweaked to offer a
little wider envelope for pilots to traverse during a hard turning
dogfight, but seeing as this test occurred this year (almost a decade
after the first F-35 flew), the amount of extra agility that can be
squeezed out of the F-35 is most likely marginal at this point. Also,
the aircraft flown in the test, an F-35A, is the most maneuverable F-35
variant of the lot, being capable of pulling 9g, while the carrier
capable F-35C is capable of pulling 7.5g and the short takeoff and
vertical landing variant, the F-35B, is only capable of pulling 7g.
Eisenhower,
and others to some degree, did warn us gravely to beware of the
military-industrial complex, I supposed of which the F-35 is the poster
child.
The fact that the F-35 is maybe not really a good
fighter at all is reminiscent of the question that we’ve been asking for
years — if you don’t really need competitive maneuverability, than why
do we need a fighter at all?
“FBI tells Fox News it is building command centers around US to monitor terror threats over July 4 holiday”
Fox affiliate WTTG-TV in Washington reported federal agencies have sent out warnings to police departments around the country:
“The FBI, Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center are all warning local law enforcement about a heightened concern involving possible terror attacks targeting the July 4th holiday.”
”National security analysts say the warning is different and serious this year because of ISIS. They point to U.S.-based extremists who just this year launched attacks in Boston and Dallas and an arrest of a Virginia teenager for helping a friend join ISIS.”
ABC News recently reported the FBI has investigations in all fifty states to track and disrupt ISIS-inspired terror attacks:
“The FBI is in the midst of a broad campaign to disrupt potential terrorists inspired by ISIS, with several arrests expected before July 4th, law enforcement officials told ABC News.
“The latest arrest that is part of this campaign came Saturday in New York, where a college student thought al Qaeda was getting soft and “making efforts to prepare an explosive device for detonation,” according to the FBI.
“Hundreds of investigations are underway in all 50 states. Many involve suspected ISIS supporters, authorities said.”
In the matter of the so-called Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court ruled that the law must not say what it in fact does say because it would be better if it were not to say what it says and were to say something else instead.
In the matter of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court rules that the law must say what it does not say because it would be better if it were to say what it does not say instead of what it says.
Which is to say, the Supreme Court has firmly established that it does not matter what the law says or does not say — what matters is what they want.
That texts may be imaginatively interpreted to any end is not news — “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” as William Shakespeare observed in The Merchant of Venice.
The legendary constitutional scholar Barack Obama failed to notice, until the day before yesterday, that the Constitution mandates the legalization of homosexual marriage from sea to shining sea, but, to be fair, that is an easy provision to overlook, even for a mind as keen as Barack Obama’s, since the Constitution does not say one word about marriage, much less about the state-level codification of homosexual couplings being a fundamental federal right.
Outlaws
11/10/78 - Capitol Theatre
Full Concert
Setlist: 0:00:00 - Hurry Sundown 0:04:12 - Lover Boy 0:08:37 - Dirty City 0:14:36 - You Can Have It 0:22:49 - Falling Rain 0:27:27 - A Real Good Feelin' 0:32:19 - Freeborn Man 0:38:53 - Take It Any Way You Want It 0:45:46 - There Goes Another Love Song 0:50:00 - You Are The Show 0:55:36 - Green Grass And High Tides
So the rainbow flag has now replaced the Stars and Stripes.
The Confederate Battle Flag is pariah but images of Che Guevara iconic.
Words no longer mean anything but what a few judges want them to mean.
And the image below absolutely infuriates me. EPA SEZ: As symbolic as the Confederate flag, and as damaging to a new minority of religious conscience (whether they are right or wrong) wrong in whose eyes? asks this ignorant bitter clinger
All within the last seven days. Wish I had time to sit here and rant all day -- cuz I could -- but I have to get to the paying gig. You know, the one where I'm getting rich in this booming economic wreckovery tossing boxes around the stockroom of a big box retailer. But please, you hear us rant so much here and I know there are so many more of you out there reading this so go ahead and rant away in comments.
so when do you reckon they will officially replace the bald eagle with the unicorn?
Politico:
The Supreme Court dealt President Barack Obama’s
environmental agenda a major setback on Monday, ruling that the
Environmental Protection Agency had erred in writing its 2012 limits on
mercury pollution from power plants.
Here is the BUT:
The 5-4 decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said EPA had erred
in not considering costs earlier before deciding whether to write the
rule.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/supreme-court-epa-mercury-emissions-obama-environment-119541.html#ixzz3eT92LHTi
They did not rule on the subject of the executive branch SELF EXTENDING THEIR AUTHORITY
“It
is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of
dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or
environmental benefits,” Scalia wrote.
A Labour parliamentary candidate has sparked outrage by posing for a selfie at the exact spot where a crazed gunman massacred 38 holidaymakers including up to 30 Britons just 48 hours earlier.
Amran Hussain, 29, an Army reservist who stood for North East Hampshire in the recent election, was pictured holding his selfie stick aloft as he stood in front of a pile of flowers and tributes.
With the sun loungers where dozens of tourists were slaughtered by ISIS militant Seifeddine Rezgui clearly visible in the background, the national delivery officer for NHS England looked directly at the camera in aviator-style sunglasses surrounded by four friends.
The politician, who has been pictured with Ed Miliband, has now defended his actions saying he visited Marhaba beach in Sousse to pay his ‘respects’ and pointing out selfies are not ‘banned’.
‘It has been taken completely out of context. It was all very upsetting and we just wanted to have a reminder of what happened. I just happened to be using a selfie stick as that is what I always use.’
Hundreds have taken to Twitter to condemn the ‘disgusting’ picture, saying it sums up the ‘selfie or selfish generation’.
Alice Simmonds said: ‘Absolutely shameless for a Labour candidate. He should know better.’
Michael Wilton tweeted: ‘This is a disgrace. The families haven’t event started grieving.’
Chief Justice J Roberts plain old does not believe it is his job to
OVERRULE the will of the majority as expressed in the elections of 08
and 12 and brought into reality in Obamacare.
He literally said as much in the first Obamacare decision labeling the mandate, a tax.
Whether
or not he is concerned for his domain (SCOTUS) and it’s reputation he
has attempted to align the result of passed law with the will of a
majority of (voting) citizens. Majority rule this way is a mob. A nicer
mob, but a mob all the same.
The opposite and CORRECT style of
rulings of SCOTUS should IMHO always be, ‘may the heavens fall but let
justice be done’ and what is justice?
1789 as amended.
If
justice discomfits the people, WE WILL FIGURE OUT THE WAY AROUND and or
through, just as we did in 1954. If governing ourselves was easy,
trained dogs would have a nation.
Prospective justices should
always be held to a result of questioning during confirmation as to
their rulings having FIDELITY to the constitution as opposed to their
personal and or PREVAILING political opinions and conscience of the day.
Prospective
justices who admit during Congressional questioning to feeling a moral
imperative to the creation of Constitutional changes according to their
personal conscience as opposed to strict interpretation of the written
Constitution should be rejected, and those who LIE about this, or change
their mind in order to get on SCOTUS and effect change, or just CHANGE,
should feel the weight of redress by Constitutional methods.
Whatever this process requires should be undertaken right up to amending the founding document. This is SERIOUS business.
In
this case, while Roberts may have found a tortuous path to a tax in the
1st Obamacare decision, this latest, is a complete distortion of BOTH
the purposeful wording of the law (meant to blackmail states into
exchanges and medicaid expansion), and the IDEA OF SCOTUS DOING JUSTICE
by the word of the law, since the majority opinion among other
weaknesses in the ruling, made reference to the lack of congressional
readiness in the event they ruled exchanges by the federal govt,
ILLEGAL. SCOTUS decided what was ‘really intended’ (to compel everyone)
as opposed to the real word of the law (which substituted political
coercion for frank compulsion and ultimately FORCE).
Maybe our
daily state would have been different with a different KIND of
president. For instance, if it had been Harold Ford. Or maybe this is a
stage of the republic in which the people themselves must, in learning
how to govern themselves, amid all the news sources, THEMSELVES
POLITICIZED, must lead those concerned with the preeminence of
reelection (self interest, and their position afterwards …Eric Cantor
anyone?) as opposed to the national interest, and the people‘s well
being.
Every single aspect of the executive, legislature and now SCOTUS in this USA is completely politicized, and thus CORRUPTED.
And
THAT is why we, nearly ALL americans have lost confidence in every
institution which supposedly represents us, and now instead represents
those who are supposed to represent our will.
I am beginning to fear we are like a cube of sugar in the bottom of the clear glass of tea.
Our shape is completely distinct, but with a good solid rap, just a bunch of individual crystals laying at the bottom.
We are hearing rather intense warnings of the likelihood of a terrorist attack this week.
This article, dated June 28, 2015, points out the following:
...In Britain, the ISIS targeted the annual Armed Forces Day parade on Saturday, but intelligence officials foiled the plot, which was discovered by an undercover British agent who was recruited by the terrorist group.
The ISIS had told the investigator, according to the London Sun, “It will be big. We will hit the kuffar (unbelievers) hard InshAllah. Hit their soldiers in their own land. InshAllah. Soldiers that served in Iraq and Afghanistan will be present. Jump in the crowd and detonate the bomb.
“They think they can kill Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan then come back to the UK and be safe. We’ll hit them hard InshAllah.”
The multiple attacks on Friday indicate, whether coordinated or not, are clear signs that the Islamic State’s declared war on the world is more than rhetoric....
This morning on CBS This Morning, Michael Morell, who served as the CIA deputy director until his retirement in 2013 and now is CBS News's Senior Security Correspondent, said (my best recollection of his exact words): "I wouldn't be at all surprised if we weren't sitting here in one week to discuss a major terrorist attack that had happened over the coming weekend."
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex “marriage” is a constitutional right, in a long-awaited decision that will have sweeping and unpredictable consequences for U.S. jurisprudence, cultural norms and religious freedom.
Catholic leaders, legal scholars and marriage experts reacted with dismay to the landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and three related cases.
But they also expressed resolve that the decision would not discourage their efforts to preach and teach the truth about marriage and to advance respect for the institution as a union of one man and one woman committed to the care and education of children.
“The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision on marriage is not a surprise. The surprise will come as ordinary people begin to experience, firsthand and painfully, the impact of today’s action on everything they thought they knew about marriage, family life, our laws and our social institutions,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, in a statement marking the decision.
“The mistakes of the court change nothing about the nature of men and women and the truth of God’s word. The task now for believers is to form our own families even more deeply in the love of God and to rebuild a healthy marriage culture, one marriage at a time, from the debris of today’s decision.”
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, equated today’s decision with the court’s controversial Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion on demand. And he vowed that Church leaders would not abandon the truth about marriage.
“Jesus Christ, with great love, taught unambiguously that, from the beginning, marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman,” said Archbishop Kurtz, in a statement.
“As Catholic bishops, we follow Our Lord and will continue to teach and to act according to this truth.”
He said it was “profoundly immoral and unjust for the government to declare that two people of the same sex can constitute a marriage.”
Statements issued by Catholic leaders underscored a deepening anxiety that changes in the civil code will sow confusion about the meaning and purpose of marriage, the gift of masculinity and femininity and the rights of natural parents and their children.
Thus, the Archdiocese of Washington drew a bright line between religious/moral truths and civil law.
“Men and women are not interchangeable. Marriage is not ours to define. History, nature and revelation all profess these truths,” read the archdiocese’s statement, which emphasized that the “court deals with civil law, not revealed truth or religious faith.”
The Fry Street Quartet
Beethoven: String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130, Cavatina
Welcome to the exciting new world of the slippery slope. With the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this Friday legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states, social liberalism has achieved one of its central goals.
A right seemingly unthinkable two decades ago has now been broadly applied to a whole new class of citizens. Following on the rejection of interracial marriage bans in the 20th Century, the Supreme Court decision clearly shows that marriage should be a broadly applicable right—one that forces the government to recognize, as Friday’s decision said, a private couple’s “love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family
…
And ped*philes believe they deserve their own civil rights.
The Northern Colorado Gazette reported, via Allen West:
Using the same tactics used by “gay” rights activists, pedophiles have begun to seek similar status arguing their desire for children is a sexual orientation no different than heterosexual or homosexuals.
Critics of the homosexual lifestyle have long claimed that once it became acceptable to identify homosexuality as simply an “alternative lifestyle” or sexual orientation, logically nothing would be off limits.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A fire on a music stage spread into a crowd of spectators at a party Saturday night at a Taiwan water park, injuring nearly 500 people, including 141 in serious condition, authorities said.
The fire was sparked by an accidental explosion of an unknown powder near the stage in front of about 1,000 people, said Wang Wei-sheng, a liaison with the New Taipei City fire department command center.
Taiwan's Central News Agency on Sunday reported 474 have been injured, including 141 in serious condition. It quoted the New Taipei City health bureau. The injured included four mainland Chinese and two foreigners.
The fire erupted at the Formosa Water Park in New Taipei City near the island's capital and was quickly brought under control.
Video showed rescue workers and bystanders carrying burned and injured people on their backs, in inflatable boats and on stretchers to get medical treatment.
CNA reported witnesses as saying the fire spread quickly after the colored powder was blown into the air.
It wasn't clear if the colored powder was part of a performance. The cause of the fire is being investigated.
Chilling, up-close footage of the deadly terror attack at a Tunisian hotel emerged online hours after the shooting, which left at least 39 people dead and has now been claimed by ISIS.
Most of the shaky cellphone footage was filmed within earshot of the gunfire, which erupted on the beach of a Sousse hotel popular with tourists.
The gunfire is raucous and rampant in parts of the three-minute video showing a series of scenes from the hotel grounds.
Other parts of the video show terrified tourists fleeing from the beach, and some beachgoers sprawled on the sand, either shot or in hiding, after the massacre ended.
The video was posted on the website for the Tunisian radio station Mosaique FM.
It’s unclear who filmed the footage, which is edited together from several vantage points.
The gunman, who disguised himself as a beachgoer and hid his AK-47 rifle in an umbrella, was shot dead by police.
His attack is the deadliest in the country’s history, and most of his victims were British tourists. Besides the fatalities, 36 people were wounded.
By Saturday, tourists were lining up at Tunisia’s Hammamet airport to cut their vacations short.
FUCK ISLAM.
Dickey Betts and Great Southern
03/18/78 - Capitol Theatre
Full Concert
Setlist: 0:00:00 - Greeting 0:01:13 - Introduction by John Scher / Run Gypsy Run / You Can Have Her (I Don't Want Her) 0:12:36 - Leaving Me Again 0:19:10 - Back On the Road Again 0:23:31 - In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed 0:36:40 - Dealing With The Devil 0:41:19 - Good Time Feeling 0:53:06 - Jessica 1:08:07 - High Falls 1:42:23 - Blue Sky 1:50:36 - Atlanta's Burning Down 1:55:12 - Jam / High Falls continued 2:00:09 - Ramblin' Man
Personnel: Dickey Betts - guitar, vocals, Topper Price - harmonica David Goldflies - bass Donnie Sharbono - drums, vocals Dan Toler - guitar, vocals Michael Workman - keyboards, vocals
Saw the movie ‘Judgment
at Nuremberg’ this morning and it brought to mind the recent SCOTUS decision
on Obamacare and gay marriage. It isn't what was decided. It's where it can - and probably will - lead to.
The
Nazis developed a ‘progressive’ theory of law in which ‘law’ was interpreted as
a result of force and social struggle. According to the Nazi legal theory, the legal system should not contain fixed
rules of law but evolve in continuous flow as a ‘living law’.
Today’s Liberals argue that the Constitution
– and all that it contains – is a living document – subject to change.But U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia said, "The
Constitution is not a living organism. It's a legal document, and it says what
it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say."
Germany thought they had a Constitution too. The Reichstadt eventually handed power over to Hitler - executive branch - and the judiciary, whose responsibility was to place a check on the laws being rubber-stamped by the Reichstadt disregarded their Constitution and it was all over for Germany.
Most German judges and lawyers were legal positivists who
rejected the concept of God-given rights as defined by the Holy Scriptures and
classical natural-law theory.
As a result, a ‘master morality’ was developed, and it became meaningless to
appeal to any higher law above the interpretations of the Nazi State.
I fear we are beginning to see a
pattern here with SCOTUS.
The testimony of Ernst Janning is significant here.
"There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of
hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within.
Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our
neighbors, and fear of ourselves........ Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our
country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose
their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities
lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are
going through. It will be discarded sooner or later."
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Tunisian attack.
“Our brother, the soldier of the Caliphate, Abu Yahya al Qayrawani, reached his target the Imperial hotel despite the security measures,” the statement said.
It said he had attacked a “bordel” and killed 40 “infidels”.
The UK Prime Minister Cameron said, today’s jihad attacks are “not in the name of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace.”
Please watch this short video before reading my commentary:
For a moment, let's think about all this in different terms. Because I'm most comfortable discussing this matter in educational terms, allow me to do so for just a moment.
First, note these two examples of dangling participial phrases:
Hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.
Wishing I could sing, the high notes seemed to taunt me.
Grammatically correct revisions of the two above examples:
Wishing I could sing, I feel taunted by the high notes.
Hiking the trail, Squiggly and Aardvark heard birds chirping loudly.
You can learn more about dangling participles at Grammar Girl.
Now let's look at an example from the classroom:
A student turns in a composition to me. I find all sorts of errors in logic, dangling participles, and the like. I point out to the student what he has actually said in the essay.
He replies: "That's not what I meant."
I respond: "But that's what you said."
Then we laugh because the errors actually conveyed absurd images: in the first example, the birds were hiking the trail; in the second example, the notes were singing the high notes.
From that point on, the student is more careful to write exactly what he means. And he proofreads, too.
Words matter — or used to matter. United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was spot on when he stated in his dissent to the SCOTUS ObamaCare decision of June 25, 2015: "Words [now] have no meaning..."
According to the Roberts Doctrine, which overthrows the United States Constitution, my students no longer have to revise. They can be a sloppy as they like with their words. HOORAY! [sarcasm]
Furthermore, the words in all contracts to which you have penned your name mean nothing. Sound farfetched to you? Think again! A few short years ago could you have imagined that America would be in the sorry state which she is in today? And so rapidly?
Congress, packed with lawyers who should know how to write legislation correctly, drafted sloppy legislation and, worse, did not read the final gargantuan piece of ObamaCare legislation. Of course, President Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, also didn't read the law. In my view, all of them committed political malpractice.
Pop quiz America:
If the majority of Americans believe
something, and that something is law, but your conscience, and or your
religion forbids that behavior, is your objection a protected minority
right?
What is it you think I might be talking about?
Gay Marriage?
Remember her? Yeah she faced a majority approved law.
Now,
personally, I don’t CARE, and I mean I DON’T FRICKIN’ CARE, about
color, and I don’t care who you marry. I DON’T CARE. I’m not for it or
against it, I just DON’T CARE. Not my business.
But you know,
there are a minority of folks out there, who for religious reasons
believe to their souls that gay marriage is a religious abomination.
Now,
I am not FIT to tell them what to think or believe. It’s also NOT MY
PLACE to do so, any more than I would accept someone telling me about
what God is or is not.
But now, as we have seen the just objection
to the Confederate flag as a symbol of slavery morph into the
Gettysburg battlefield getting rid of Confederate flags, and the NY Post
call for the end of showing of Gone with the Wind, we have seen equal
protection under the law taken from disgusting PERSECUTION of gay folks
to a moment of compulsion of those who believe being gay is a great,
great sin to take part in gay marriage by baking a cake for the
celebration.
And now comes the Supreme Court yesterday. I am not
sure that MARRIAGE belongs in SCOTUS. I HATE the idea that love,
marriage and all that flows from it must even be CONSIDERED any part of
equal protection under the law.
But surely there will be those who
DO believe they are now being compelled by the state to take part in
sin by being part of this process and do not have the resources to quit,
or resist. Is it the state’s place to compel this?
How much majority dictation of private belief and behavior is right?
If
you are a justice of the peace and you believe gay marriage a sin,
should you be compelled to perform the ceremony of marriage and commit
sin in your own mind and heart?
Is that who we are? While I do NOT
support PREVENTION of gay marriage AT ALL, I cannot support the state
compelling this behavior on individuals.
Today, JUST AS THE PURITANS FOUND, it is these people who are being put upon by the state.
Now
my own preference is that the state grant only a civil contract TO ALL
AMERICANS at the state level who wish to get married, and that each
community decide church by church, synagogue by synagogue, temple by
temple and mosque by mosque, what it is they wish to call marriage.
Every
community, and every congregation is DIFFERENT. Full disclosure - as
member of our board, I voted to SUPPORT gay marriage in our
congregation.
The minority of people who wish to be Rosa Parks
for their own civil disobedience in favor of their own belief and
conscience, should be respected and a protected minority. There MUST be a
SIMPLE, easily executed legal religious exemption.
LEGALLY.
And
they should not have to jump through thousands of dollars of legal
expenses to do so as a disincentive, and as the American way of
repression of conscience.
For those whose response is this is now settled law, consider this:
Roger Taney
Dredd Scott
Plessy v Ferguson
It ALWAYS goes on.
KUWAIT CITY (AP) -- A suicide bomber purportedly from an Islamic State affiliate unleashed the first terrorist attack in Kuwait in more than two decades on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding scores more in a bombing that targeted Shiite worshippers after midday prayers.
The bombing struck the Imam Sadiq Mosque in the residential neighborhood of al-Sawabir in Kuwait's capital, Kuwait City. It is one of the oldest Shiite mosques in Kuwait, a predominantly Sunni Arab nation where at least at third of the population is believed to be Shiite Muslims.
It was the third attack in five weeks to be claimed by a purported IS affiliate calling itself the Najd Province, a reference to the central region of Saudi Arabia where the ultraconservative Sunni ideology of Wahhabism originated.
The upstart IS branch had claimed two prior bombing attacks on Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia that killed 26 people in late May. The group was unheard of until the first Saudi bombing.
The attack took place as worshippers were standing shoulder to shoulder in group prayer, according to one of the witnesses at the mosque, Hassan al-Haddad.
The explosion ripped through the back of the mosque, near the door, he said, adding that other worshippers behind him said they saw a man walk in, stand in the back with other congregants and detonate his device.
Another witness, Ahmed al-Shawaf, said he heard a man interrupt prayer by shouting "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great" in Arabic, several times. The man then he yelled out something about joining the Prophet Muhammad for iftar, the dusk meal with which Muslims break their daytime fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, which started last week. Then, the blast came, al-Shawaf said.
The explosion took place near the end of a second prayer, which is traditional to Shiites and follows the main midday Friday prayer.
The Ministry of Interior said 25 people were killed and 202 wounded. Police formed a cordon around the mosque's complex immediately after the explosion, banning people from entering or gathering near the area. Ambulances could be seen ferrying the wounded from the site.
"We couldn't see anything, so we went straight to the wounded and tried to carry them out. We left the dead," said witness Hassan al-Haddad, 21, who said he saw several lifeless bodies.
A posting on a Twitter account known to belong to the Islamic State group claimed the explosion was work of a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt. It said the attack was carried out by the Najd Province, which also claimed the Saudi bombings.
The Islamic State group regards Shiite Muslims as heretics, and refers to them derogatively as "rafideen" or "rejectionists." The IS Twitter statement said the bomber had targeted a "temple of the apostates."
Immediately after the attack, Kuwait's ruler, Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who is in his mid-80s, visited the site of the attack. The Cabinet convened an emergency session later in the afternoon. Kuwaiti Justice and Islamic Affairs Minister Yaacoub al-Sanea condemned the attack in a statement carried by the official Kuwait News Agency.
But the attack also drew accusations from some Kuwaiti Shiites, who said that Kuwait's leaders should have been more pro-active in protecting Shiites, and that their response to the attack is too little too late.
Former Sunni lawmaker, Abdullah al-Neybari, said the Kuwaiti government "is not doing what it should be doing to fight extremism in the country. "
This is a wakeup call to fight harder," he said.
The last massive attack to take place in Kuwait was in 1983, when Iranian-backed Shiite militants from Iraq carried out bombings that killed at least five and wounded nearly 90.
TUNIS, June 26 (Reuters) - The death toll from the shooting attack on a Tunisian seaside resort hotel on Friday has risen to 37, the health ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency TAP.
Previous:
A gunman disguised as a tourist opened fire at a Tunisian hotel on Friday with a weapon he had hidden in an umbrella, killing 28 people, including British, German and Belgian tourists, as they lounged at the beach and pool in a popular resort town.
Terrified tourists ran for cover after the gunfire and an explosion erupted the Imperial Marhaba in Sousse resort town, 140 km south of the capital Tunis, before police shot the gunman dead, witnesses and security officials said.
The attack took place during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, on a day in which a decapitated body daubed with Arabic writing was found in France, a suicide bomber killed two dozen people at a mosque in Kuwait and at least 145 civilians were reported killed by Islamic State militants in northern Syria.
It was the second major attack on Tunisia this year following the Islamist militant assault on Tunis Bardo museum when gunmen killed 21 foreign visitors.
The body of the attacker lay with a Kalashnikov assault rifle where he was shot. Local radio said police captured a second gunman, but officials did not immediately confirm the arrest or his role in the attack."One attacker opened fire with a Kalashnikov on tourists and Tunisians on the beach of the hotel," said a hotel worker at the site. "It was just one attacker. He was a young guy dressed in shorts like he was a tourist himself."
The man, dressed in shorts, pulled out a weapon he had hidden inside an umbrella he was carrying before opening fire at the beach and pool and tossing an explosive, witnesses said. A security source said another bomb was found on his body.
A health ministry statement said British, German and Belgian nationals were among the 28 dead. Six other people were wounded in the shooting, officials said.
Tunisia, which has been hailed as a model of democratic transition since its 2011 'Arab Spring' uprising, is one of the most secular countries in the Arab world. Its beach resorts and nightclubs on the Mediterranean are popular with foreigners.
No one immediately claimed the attack. But Islamist jihadists have attacked North African tourist sites before, seeing them as legitimate targets because of their open Western lifestyles and tolerance of alcohol.
Irishwoman Elizabeth O'Brien, who was staying at a neighboring hotel with her two sons, said there was panic on the beach when gunfire erupted.
"I honestly thought it was fireworks and then when I saw people running... I thought, my God, it is shooting," she told Irish radio station RTE. "The waiters and the security on the beach started to say 'Run, run, run!'"
CATASTROPHE
Sousse, alongside nearby Hammamet and the island of Djerba, is the heartland of Tunisia's most popular beach resorts, drawing visitors from Europe and neighboring North African countries like Algeria.
Six million tourists, mostly Europeans, visited Tunisia's beaches, desert treks and medina souks last year, providing seven percent of its gross domestic product, most of its foreign currency revenues and more jobs than anything but farming.
"This is a catastrophe, but we have to stay strong," Tourism Minister Salma Loumi said.
Since its 2011 uprising to oust autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has been praised for its peaceful democratic transition bringing free elections and a new constitution seen as a model for the region.
But the country has also struggled with the rise of Islamist movements as ultra-conservative preachers took advantage of the upheaval and young democracy to take over mosques and spread their hardline message.
Several thousand Tunisian jihadists have left the country to fight in Syria, Iraq and neighboring Libya, where some have set up jihadist training camps and promised to return to attack their homeland.
Islamic State made some claim to the Bardo museum attack, but authorities blamed possible splinter fighters from the Okba Ibn Nafaa, a brigade of al Qaeda-affiliated fighters, operating in the Chaambi mountains along the Algerian border.
One person was decapitated and two others wounded in an apparent terror attack on a U.S.-owned factory in France, President Francois Hollande said Friday.
A car crashed through the gates of the Air Products plant in Saint-Quentin Fallavier. southeastern France, shortly after 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET). It was followed by an explosion.
Hollande said a suspect had been arrested and there was "no doubt" that the attacker — possibly acting with an accomplice — intended to blow up the entire plant.
The president — who told reporters that the decapitated body was found with "inscriptions" on it — said the attack bore the hallmarks of terrorism, adding that security has been stepped up at sensitive sites in France.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters at the scene that the suspect was known to authorities and had previously been investigated for radicalization but surveillance ended in 2008.
An interior ministry official earlier told NBC News that an explosion occurred after a car drove onto the scene.
Man decapitated in terror attack in France 2:18
One person was decapitated and two others wounded in an apparent terror attack on a U.S.-owned factory in France, President Francois Hollande said Friday.
A car crashed through the gates of the Air Products plant in Saint-Quentin Fallavier. southeastern France, shortly after 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET). It was followed by an explosion.
Hollande said a suspect had been arrested and there was "no doubt" that the attacker — possibly acting with an accomplice — intended to blow up the entire plant.
The president — who told reporters that the decapitated body was found with "inscriptions" on it — said the attack bore the hallmarks of terrorism, adding that security has been stepped up at sensitive sites in France.
French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters at the scene that the suspect was known to authorities and had previously been investigated for radicalization but surveillance ended in 2008.
An interior ministry official earlier told NBC News that an explosion occurred after a car drove onto the scene.
The severed head was found hanging on a fence along a nearby road, according to local newspaper La Dauphine Libere, which said that an Islamist flag also was found nearby.
Air Products said the situation at the site had been "contained" and that all its employees had been evacuated from the site and accounted for.
"The site is secure," the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based company said in a statement. "Our crisis and emergency response teams have been activated and are working closely with all relevant authorities."
The beheaded person was not a worker at the factory, Le Monde reported, citing prosecutors.
Investigators
are blaming mistakes by IRS employees — not a criminal conspiracy — for
the loss of thousands of emails related to the tax agency’s tea party
scandal. IRS workers erased 422 computer backup tapes that “most
likely” contained as many as 24,000 emails to and from former IRS
official Lois Lerner, who has emerged as a central figure in
congressional investigations, according to IRS’s inspector general. The
workers erased the tapes a month after IRS officials discovered that an
untold number of Lerner’s emails were lost. The IG says the workers
were unaware of a year-old directive not to destroy email backup tapes ANY FRICKIN QUESTIONS?
The jihadist who set off a bomb at the Boston marathon last year has received the death sentence. Before that, he allegedly apologized, but the Boston Herald's explained with the help of several victims how his babble is all phony:
Terrorism survivors limping on prosthetic legs, tethered to service dogs and battling through sobbing fits for one brief chance to express their pain to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were left cold and confused by his attempt at apologizing.
Even U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. attacked the young jihadist’s “monstrous self-deception” yesterday, ignoring the last-minute remorse.
Tsarnaev, in his first words to the court, said, “I’m sorry for the lives I’ve taken,” and “I prayed for Allah to bestow his mercy upon the deceased, those affected in the bombings and their families.”
Transit police Sgt. Richard “Dic” Donohue, who bled out and was nearly pronounced dead when a stray bullet pierced a major artery during a shootout with Tsarnaev and his late brother, Tamerlan, said he was “surprised” to hear the native Chechen speak.
“It was hard to tell how genuine and true his words are,” Donohue said. “It’s tough to tell how truly remorseful he is, if at all.”
Bill Richard, speaking in court, said Tsarnaev “chose hate. He chose destruction. He chose death.”
Lynn Julian, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing loss in the twin blasts, called Tsarnaev’s “Oscar-type” speech “shocking.”
“I regret ever having wanted to hear him speak,” Julian said. “A simple, believable apology would have been nice, but there’s nothing simple in what he said ... it seemed insincere.”
They're absolutely right, it wasn't real. The Dallas Morning News has more explaining how his vile mentality after being incarcerated also weighs against him:
The apology that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev offered today before he was sentenced to death for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings almost sounds sincere. But no one should forget the middle-finger salute he offered to a security camera shortly after his arrest for the bombing murder of three and injuries of 264 others.
If he were truly sorry, if he truly had remorse after standing in the crowd and surveying the faces of all the people, including children, he was about to maim with his pressure-cooker bomb, then it certainly wasn’t evident when he was arrested. It certainly wasn’t evident when he sat through day after day of his trial, straight-faced and appearing almost bored with the tedium of the judicial process.
It certainly wasn’t evident when the parade of victims spoke about the horrors they went through and the lives that were robbed from them because of this young man’s actions. So it’s hard for the outside world to feel remorse at the idea that he could face the death penalty for his crimes.
And they shouldn't feel any. Tsarnaev should have his brains blown out with a shotgun at close range for all the savagery he committed. Any so-called "apology" he offers at this point is nothing more than an insult to the intellect, and sounds more like an attempt to dodge punishment than an admittal to guilt. Especially if he won't condemn his upbringing through the Religion of Peace.
