Tag Archives: first amendment

Feds suggest anti-Muslim speech can be punished

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Islam BeheadsFrom Josh Gerstein in Politico:

A U.S. attorney in Tennessee is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive and inflammatory speech about Islam.

Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was quoted by the Tullahoma News this week suggesting that some inflammatory material on Islam might run afoul of federal civil rights laws.

“We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected,” Killian told the newspaper.

While threats directed at individuals or small groups can lead to punishment, First Amendment experts expressed doubt that the government has any power to stop offensive material about Islam from circulating.

“He’s just wrong,” said Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s most respected First Amendment attorneys. “The government may, indeed, play a useful and entirely constitutional role in urging people not to engage in speech that amounts to religious discrimination. But it may not, under the First Amendment, prevent or punish speech even if it may be viewed as hostile to a religion.”

“And what it most clearly may not do is to stifle political or social debate, however rambunctious or offensive some may think it is,” Abrams said.

A conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, accused the Obama administration of using federal law to specifically protect Muslims from criticism.

So I suppose Mr Killian wouldn’t much care for my blog.

Killian said Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal jurisdiction.

“That’s what everybody needs to understand,” he said.

But be careful, sir, about that precious First Amendment.  Because when you lose the Second, you naturally lose the First.  And you, Mr Killian, are doing your best to hasten, concomitantly, the demise of the First.

Cut down from within.

Just as history has seen for many powerful nations, over the span of time.

Be very, very careful.

And you, ladies and gentlemen, be extremely protective of your First and Second.

BZ

P.S.
Because, after all, those people pictured above need to be protected more than you.

 

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Michael Savage wins landmark radio contractual civil case in federal court

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Michael SavageI’ve listened to Michael Savage (born in 1942, true name: Michael Alan Weiner, now 71) on and off for a number of years.  I used to listen to him broadcast on a local Sacramento station (KSTE) from his San Francisco-based studio at KSFO during PM drive.

I agreed wholeheartedly with his basic premise, which supported Borders, Language and Culture in the United States.

I believed he had a great  Message.  I also believed he was predominantly the wrong Messenger.

I thought that, as a Messenger, he mostly sucked.  I tired quickly of his forced laughs, his abuse of callers for sometimes little reason and, mostly — because I was in radio myself — his abuse of his local radio staff to include his producer, his interns, the board operators.  He had no relationship with his producers and support staff whatsoever.  They were nothing to him.  He denigrated them whenever they couldn’t yield whatever effect or cut or sound he demanded in seconds.  He would call for music then demand it to be shut down. His producers and staff had no names.  They were there to serve and serve only.

Limbaugh has a a relationship with Snerdley.  Hewitt has a relationship with Generalissimo.  Savage, like cats, simply had Staff.  And apparently poor ones at that.  Would I have worked for Savage, had I the current skills (as opposed to the remarkable skills I did possess in the analog age of the Production Room early 70s)?  Hell no.  I likely would have told him to go to Hell or given him a throat punch.  I would have taken his shit once and then left.  My guess: he went through producers like toilet paper.  Which is the reason, I’m guessing, that his producers were faceless.

He was a small man — physically — in a position of power and it showed.

There was little in him that was spontaneous.  His laughs were false, his umbrage was false, but his abuse of those immediately around him was true.

Some people liked him.  Frankly, I tired of him quickly, and the callers who did their level best to suck up to him.  In an absolutely unprecedented and naked way.  Because if you didn’t defer to him, you were toast.  He brooked little adversity.

That said, he didn’t acquire what he did via simpering and sniveling “consensus.”  He took the radio format by its neck and thrashed it to the point where he was the Number 3 broadcaster in the nation by 2006.

Since 2009, Savage has been barred from entering the United Kingdom, for allegedly “seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred“.[11][12][13][14]  Frankly, a bullshit claim by a weak nation immersed in politically correct pablum.

He left the general syndicated air in September of 2012 whilst in the throes of a lawsuit against his then-syndicator.

On May 2nd, he won his court case.

From WND.com:

In a ruling that is being compared to the case that led to free agency in baseball, a federal judge in California upheld an arbitration panel’s decision to release talk-radio host Michael Savage from a contract with his former syndicator, Talk Radio Network.

Savage’s lawyer, Dan Horowitz, called it a landmark case for talk radio.

“Michael is to talk radio what Curt Flood was to Major League Baseball,” Horowitz told WND, referring to the player who challenged baseball’s reserve clause, which kept a player bound to his team even after fulfillment of his contract.

Savage told WND the ruling “should free talent from the threats and extortionist behavior of ruthless Old-Hollywood types who can still be found in the corners of the radio industry.”

“For me, personally, it finalizes a struggle to perform for my audience in an atmosphere of freedom, not working on a ‘radio plantation,’” he said.

The federal court order is here.

WND writes:

Radio hosts, he (Dan Horowitz, attorney for Savage) explained, have been bound by restrictive clauses in their contracts that treat them like businesses instead of regular employees. The law, therefore, has allowed the networks to enforce non-compete agreements with radio hosts that would be illegal if applied to individual employees.

I say to Michael Savage: good for you.  Frankly, I’m glad you won your suit.  I won’t be listening to you any more, should you re-acquire terrestrial radio, because I immensely dislike you personally.  But, as an adherent of the First Amendment, I will always support your ability to say what you will.  And, as a cop, I will fight to the death for your ability to do so in my country, because I am an Oathkeeper.

I don’t have to like the Messenger.  But, Michael Savage, I will absolutely support your Message.

BZ

P.S.
In the meantime, HD radio continues to fail:

HD Radio Fails

 

 

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Danny Glover: “2nd Amendment was created to protect slavery”

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Actor Danny Glover, who clearly needs to acquire some kind of actual formal education, spoke on Thursday of this week to a group of Texas A&M students.

He said:

“I don’t know if you know the genesis of the right to bear arms.  The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans.  A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that’s what the genesis of the second amendment is.”

This ridiculous statement, by a man who sees his entire world framed only in terms of melanin, is immured below:

I can only conclude two things from the facts in evidence:

1. Mr Glover is an uneducated dolt, and
2. Mr Glover is nothing more than a well-paid racist

Of course, Mr Glover has every right to say what he wishes.  As I have every right to point out said verbal idiocies.

BZ

 

 

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Welcome to Tuesday: “U.N. to Seek Control of the Internet.”

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From the WeeklyStandard.com:

Next week the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to figure out how to control the Internet. Representatives from 193 nations will attend the nearly two week long meeting, according to news reports.

“Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

“Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.

The internet IS and WAS a major “game changer” on the planet.

Bill O’Reilly hates it.  I happen to love it: the Libertarian in me —

— for any number of reasons, not the least of which is its freedom.  It’s — as yet — total and rampant freedom, within purpose.

It’s the absolute Wild West and an amazing gift — all at once — in a tumultuous rumble of staggering mayhem.

Just like human beings, it’s as good or as bad as we are.

But it’s also The Great Equalizer.

If I knew the HTML, I could have a website every bit as gorgeous, intuitive, extensive, professional, graphically intense or beautiful as that of Rolls-Royce or Exxon-Mobil or Hyundai or Fuji Heavy Industries.  Sometimes the most powerful companies have the worst-looking websites.

There is, truly, great equilibrium in the internet.

It is terribly bad.  Yet it is terribly good.

It deserves — it must — have its freedom protected.

BZ

 

 

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