Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have agreed to represent a high school senior whose microphone was unplugged by school officials after she began to speak about her Christian beliefs during her valedictory address. When Foothill High School valedictorian Brittany McComb began reading a speech that contained Bible verses and references to God and her faith in Jesus Christ during her commencement speech on June 15, 2006, officials with the Clark County School District unplugged the microphone. Institute attorneys plan to file a First Amendment lawsuit against the school district for having violated Brittany's constitutional right to free speech and equal protection under the law.
"This is yet another example of a politically correct culture silencing Christians in order to not offend those of other beliefs," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "Brittany McComb worked hard to earn the right to address her classmates as valedictorian and she has a constitutional right-like any other student-to freely speak about the factors that contributed to her success, whether they be a supportive family, friends or her faith in Jesus Christ."
Isn't it ironic that it was probably the fear of a lawsuit that prompted the school to censor Brittany's speech in the first place? It is sad that our culture, including many Christians, have bought into the politically correct culture and allow this censorship to go on. It has gotten to the point that our First Amendment has been turned on its head by activist lawyers like the ACLU. This should be a clear cut case of violating the First Amendment, yet our culture has accepted the insane secularist theories that the First Amendment means the opposite of what it was intended to mean. The old cliche that it is "freedom OF religion not freedom FROM religion" are appropiate words of wisdom in our day and age.
Rutherford Institute attorneys plan to file suit in federal district court in defense of Brittany's First Amendment right to free speech and Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.
We wish Brittany and the Rutherford Institute the best of luck with this case.
Yesterday evening the City Attorney in San Diego along with Mayor Jerry Sanders decided to take the Mt. Soledad case to the Supreme Court of the United States. I have already assembled one of our Supreme Court teams to file briefs on behalf of the Members of Congress that we represent, as well as ACLJ Members across the country in this important case. It appears at this time that the City will be asking for both a stay of the Ninth Circuit decision as well as a petition for writ of certiorari. The stay of the decision will allow the monument to remain while the litigation is pending at the Supreme Court. The petition for certiorari will ask the Court to grant plenary review of the Ninth Circuit decision.
Generally, under Supreme Court practice, the Circuit Justice in charge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has the authority to grant the stay. In this case, the Circuit Justice is Anthony Kennedy. Justice Kennedy can either grant the stay, deny the stay, or refer the stay to the entire Supreme Court for determination. It takes five votes to obtain a stay. In order for the case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court on the merits, it only takes four votes.
The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge to stop the Miami-Dade County school district from removing a series of children's books from its libraries, including a volume about Cuba which depicts smiling kids in communist uniforms.
The ACLU and the Miami-Dade County Student Government Association argued in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday that the school board should add materials with alternate viewpoints rather than remove books that could be offensive.
Last week, the board voted 6-3 to remove "Vamos a Cuba" and its English-language version, "A Visit to Cuba" from 33 schools, stating the books were inappropriate for young readers because of inaccuracies and omissions about life in the communist nation.
The book, by Alta Schreier, targets students ages 5 to 7 and contains images of smiling children wearing uniforms of Cuba's communist youth group and a carnival celebrating the 1959 Cuban revolution. The district owns 49 copies of the book in Spanish and English.
To the ACLU it doesn't seem to matter that the books are misleading, inaccurate, and inappropriate for this age group. It doesn't matter to the ACLU that the book is pure propaganda. To the ACLU it is a book ban. It just so happens that the message portrayed in the book seems to go along with their founder's beliefs.
"I have been to Europe several times, mostly in connection with international radical activities…and have traveled in the United States to areas of conflict over workers rights to strike and organize. My chief aversion is the system of greed, private profit, privilege and violence which makes up the control of the world today, and which has brought it to the tragic crisis of unprecedented hunger and unemployment…Therefore, I am for Socialism, disarmament and ultimately, for the abolishing of the State itself…I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal."
~ Roger Baldwin-founder of the ACLU~
Here is another one from Mr. Baldwin.
"Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise…We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions."-Baldwin's advice in 1917 to Louis Lochner of the socialist People's Council in Minnesota.
I'm sure the ACLU's founder would be proud of the ACLU's move to protect the propaganda of his ideology. The ACLU's main point of argument is that banning one point of view is the wrong way to deal with the situation is lost when it is five year olds potentially being exposed to this crap. To the ACLU this is nothing more than a book ban, and they are asking the school to include more alternative views instead of banning unpopular ones. No one has to ask if they would fight this hard to keep a Bible in the school library, or whether their strength would be focused on getting rid of it. Take this however you want, but the ACLU has never strayed very far from its founding principles.
According to Time who gets the info from a book excerpt.
Al-Qaeda terrorists came within 45 days of attacking the New York subway system with a lethal gas similar to that used in Nazi death camps. They were stopped not by any intelligence breakthrough, but by an order from Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri. And the U.S. learned of the plot from a CIA mole inside al-Qaeda. These are some of the more startling revelations by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, whose new book The One Percent Doctrine is excerpted in the forthcoming issue of TIME. It will appear on Time.com early Sunday morning.
U.S. intelligence got its first inkling of the plot from the contents of a laptop computer belonging to a Bahraini jihadist captured in Saudi Arabia early in 2003. It contained plans for a gas-dispersal system dubbed "the mubtakkar" (Arabic for inventive). Fearing that al-Qaeda's engineers had achieved the holy grail of terror R&D — a device to effectively distribute hydrogen-cyanide gas, which is deadly when inhaled — the CIA immediately set about building a prototype based on the captured design, which comprised two separate chambers for sodium cyanide and a stable source of hydrogen, such as hydrochloric acid. A seal between the two could be broken by a remote trigger, producing the gas for dispersal. The prototype confirmed their worst fears: "In the world of terrorist weaponry," writes Suskind, "this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot – and then kill everyone in the store."
The device was shown to President Bush and Vice President Cheney the following morning, prompting the President to order that alerts be sent through all levels of the U.S. government. Easily constructed and concealed, mass casualties were inevitable if it could be triggered in any enclosed public space.
Having discovered the device, exposing the plot in which it might be used became a matter of extreme urgency. Although the Saudis were cooperating more than ever before in efforts to track down al-Qaeda operatives in the kingdom, the interrogations of suspects connected with the Bahraini on whose computer the Mubtakkar was discovered were going nowhere. The U.S. would have to look elsewhere.
Conventional wisdom has long held that the U.S. has no human intelligence assets inside al Qaeda. "That is not true," writes Suskind. Over the previous six months, U.S. agents had been receiving accurate tips from a man the writer identifies simply as "Ali," a management-level al-Qaeda operative who believed his leaders had erred in attacking the U.S. directly. "The group was now dispersed," writes Suskind. "A few of its leaders and many foot soldiers were captured or dead. As with any organization, time passed and second-guessing began."
And when asked about the Mubtakkar and the names of the men arrested in Saudi Arabia, Ali was aware of the plot. He identified the key man as Bin Laden's top operative on the Arabian Peninsula, Yusuf al Ayeri, a.k.a. "Swift Sword," who had been released days earlier by Saudi authorities, unaware that al-Ayeri was bin Laden's point man in the kingdom.
Ali revealed that Ayeri had visited Ayman Zawahiri in January 2003, to inform him of a plot to attack the New York City subway system using cyanide gas. Several mubtakkars were to be placed in subway cars and other strategic locations. This was not simply a proposal; the plot was well under way. In fact, zero-hour was only 45 days away. But then, for reasons still debated by U.S. intelligence officials, Zawahiri called off the attack. "Ali did not know the precise explanation why. He just knew that Zawahiri had called them off."
The news left administration officials gathered in the White House with more questions than answers. Why was Ali cooperating? Why had Zawahiri called off the strike? Were the operatives planning to carry out the attack still in New York? "The CIA analysts attempted answers. Many of the questions were simply unanswerable."
I wonder if this will change the ACLU's mind about random searches in the NY Subway. Time says they will have more tomorrow, but the main question will remain: Why was it called off?
My preliminary thoughts are these: whatever you happen to feel about George Bush, one thing is clear: When it comes to defending the homeland against al Qaeda, he has not hesitated to act in the decisive way he and his advisors see fit. To that end, he has proven himself unafraid to use substantive military force, and largely immune to the opinions of both the western media and international elites. Whether or not this factored into al Qaeda’s thinking is dubious. But I have long believed that one of the reasons we haven’t seen the kind of attacks here that we see in, say, Israel, is that the US, should it ever decide to go on the full offensive, cannot be restrained—particularly if public opinion shifts toward a desire to see the enemy eradicated, even if doing so requires a shift in the collective moral calculus of the nation.
Back in 2004, Powerline caught Suskind perpetrating a hoax with his hit book on Bush, using proven liar Ex Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil as a witness.
Justin of Right on the Right has joined The WideAwakes in their online radio debut July 4th 2006.
Justin says; "I’m not going to be silenced and I’m not going to let the Left destroy my hopes of fixing America. The following is an ad I made for my show." Check it out:
As you can see, Justin is talented and has talented help.
The Real War Room will be heard on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 7-9PM Eastern time. It’ll also be on the air on Saturday mornings from 10AM to 1 PM Eastern. I hope you’ll listen in. We’re taking back America.
BAGHDAD, Iraq Jun 8, 2006 (AP)— Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked militant who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings in Iraq, has been killed in a U.S. air raid north of Baghdad, Iraq's prime minister said Thursday.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said al-Zarqawi was killed Wednesday evening along with seven aides.
The Jordanian-born militant, who was believed to have personally beheaded at least two American hostages, became Iraq's most wanted militant, as notorious as Osama bin Laden, to whom he swore allegiance in 2004. The United States had put a $25 million bounty on al-Zarqawi, the same as bin Laden.
In the past year, he moved his campaign beyond Iraq's borders, claiming to have carried out a Nov. 9, 2005, triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60 people, as well as other attacks in Jordan and even a rocket attack from Lebanon into northern Israel.
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