Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives under a death mark. She needs security 24/7 and likely will for the rest of her life. She made a film with Theo van Gogh about the status of women is Islamic countries. Van Gogh was killed out in the open during the day and the knife driven through his chest had a note addressed to Ali essentially saying that she was next. Radicalized Muslim communities that function as a state within a state are popping up around Europe and the Western Europeans do not have the will to stand up to it.
Ali escaped a life of forced marriage and virtual slavery from her Islamic family. She escaped, got educated, and became a Member of the Dutch Parliament. When it became clear that her security needs could not be met she came to the United States.
She writes about her experiences and how the West should stand up to preserve our freedom and our culture. Reflexively the progressive secular left in the elite media, which has been taught in American Universities that Western Culture is “the oppressor” and that Christianity is evil, often attacks her and throws the most outrageous false premises at her in an effort to embarrass her. They end up just embarrassing themselves. Watch the following exchange between PBS Tavis Smiley and Ali.
How can anyone be this deranged, this foolish, this plain stupid? It is not uncommon among the far left folks. I saw this level of idiocy frequently among the campus left. By the way, 162 Muslims have been arrested in the United States in the last two years for plotting against America. How many Christians have been? It happens every day according to Tavis so how about he produce just 100? Anyone care to take that challenge?
With that said, nothing he said is true and anyone with access to a search engine can find that out in pretty short order. Post offices are not blown up every day. In fact, using Google to search only two threats of blowing up post offices in the US appear; one from a homeless man who wanted money and another from a man who was likely mentally disturbed as he false reported about an alleged bomb threat to a post office.
No one was called the N word in front of the Capitol Building. The event was being recorded from many angles by a sea of new media recording devices that captured every moment of the event which demonstrated that nothing of the kind happened. A $100,000 reward for evidence of it happening was offered by Andrew Breitbart with no takers. Of the two Democrat politicians who made the false claim, one back-pedaled and the other is the same politician who compared John McCain to Democrat Governor George Wallace in October 2008.
The only known acts of violence at Tea Party events have been carried out by far left extremists and paid union thugs who showed up to physically attack the participants. All of this has been reported in detail on this site (see our violence category).
So what do you think? Is Smiley mentally challenged, delusional, as ignorant as the day is long, or just a liar? In any case he has won the coveted title of “Pinhead of the Year”.
“It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it” – Christopher Hitchens writing about how the elite media, in its reflexive defense of Islamic extremism, uses the most outrageously bogus moral equivalences to try to discredit Ayann Hirsi Ali.
Once again this is a great example why administrators who violate students rights and established case-law should be held personally liable. FIRE has cracked open the door in court to get administrators held personally accountable, but in the mean time these school administrators are wasting the tax payers money to go to court in a lawsuit that they have no chance of winning. A mountain of case-law since Tinker v Des Moines makes it crystal clear that students can wear armbands, bracelets and other messages as a protest, or to make a political or cultural statement.
So this goes to court, if the district court abandons all case-law and rules how it wants and goes against the students the ACLU will still appeal and win. When they do, not only will the school district pay damages to the students, but they will have to pay the ACLU attorney’s huge money for their legal fees. In constitutional civil rights cases if the violator loses the violator pays up. Why should the taxpayer be fleeced because these administrators are so foolish?
Mini Update - now if the school districts lawyers have some ethics they would tell the school district that the odds of winning in the long term are next to nothing, so just apologize and settle. But no, since the taxpayers have deep pockets said attorney’s are more than happy to drag it out and lose because the school district will have to pay them no matter what.
U.S. District Court saw some awkward moments today as a judge heard arguments about whether boobies is a vulgar word and therefore can be banned by school administrators.
The case came to court in Philadelphia after the Easton School District forbade the wearing of the “I (Heart) Boobies” bracelets, and suspended two eighth-grade girls who refused to remove them.
The students said the word wasn’t offensive to anyone and that a ban on the bracelets violated their right to free speech.
The school district said other students might consider the word vulgar. In addition, girls wearing the bracelet might inadvertently encourage bad behavior by their male classmates. Administrators said that since the school code does not allow vulgarities they have the right to ban the wrist bands.
But how to define vulgarity?
Two girls took the witness stand to talk aboutboobies and whether the word might encourage a 13-year-old boy to reflect on something other than cancer awareness.
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The bracelets are part of an advertising campaign by the Keep a Breast Foundation, a small, Los Angeles-based nonprofit. The foundation teaches girls how to prevent and detect breast cancer. Sales of the bracelets fund its mission.
Hawk and Martinez said they had permission from their parents to wear the bracelets, even after they learned the school had banned them.
The girls were suspended for a day-and-a-half for “defiance, disruption and disrespect,” after refusing to remove the bracelets and then giving each other a “low five” as they were escorted to the administrator’s office.
Their parents approved the American Civil Liberties Union stepping in to handle the suit.
Actually the courts have handled vulgarity and indecency issues before. The school district have to meet a pretty stringent legal test before the court will allow pre-emptive censorship (prior restraint) and this context of “boobies” doesn’t even come close, as students will hear worse in sex ed class and in the hallways. If a girl says “he touched my boob” is the girl suspended for using a vulgarity? Give me a break.
The school district waisting the citizens money and for what, because a few administrators behaved foolishly and can’t admit that they made an error.
This leaves the United States with the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
Of course the little truth about the corporate tax rate is this, corporations never pay this, you do in the form of higher prices. All expenses of goods and services are passed on to the consumer which is you. Corporate taxes are just a way for government to raise your taxes and hide it in the form of higher prices. Of course some companies cannot raise their prices and stay competitive so they leave the country and go to China, Canada, Ireland, Mexico or Brazil.
President Obama’s own deficit commission said that we need lower rates and a leaner tax code to bring business here and to help spur compliance. Indeed, they said that the tax rates should be made lower so the government could collect more revenue to lower the debt. John Kerry even advocated lowering the corporate tax rate when he ran for president. The high tax rate combined with a 16,000 page tax code allows for government to pick winners and losers which generates corruption and paybacks. This is a no brainer folks, it needs to get done.
Will the Democrats do the right thing and lower the rate to bring jobs here? Or will they insist that the best way to grow the middle class is by waging a war of taxes, regulation, and uncertainty on their employers? And by trashing the currency with policy and monetizing the debt (printing money out of thin air). [See Cloward-Piven Strategy LINK1 and LINK2 - Editor]
UPDATE - Steve Forbes on why business is not hiring:
The cops pull everyone over at a checkpoint and demand that you take a breathalyser. Breathalyzers are unreliable so a citizen can demand to be taken to a hospital and get a more accurate blood test. Many take that option. To get around this police are setting up a checkpoint and they have a judge right there who signs a warrant to have medics give you the blood test on the spot.
Talk about taking the Constitution and the 4th and 5th Amendments and turning them on their head. The due process right is blown because the judge is acting as an agent for the police. He is not impartial at all. This also brings up a big fat Separation of Powers argument. The constitution is clear that the state cannot take the guarantee of refusal of consent of an illegal search as probable cause.
The stats that 50% of accident related deaths involve alcohol is misleading as that number also includes sober people who hit legally intoxicated drivers. Some say that texting, lack of sleep, and arguing with your spouse make a driver more impaired than a driver who has had .08 BAC.
….including a newborn child who’s mother gave birth while trapped in the show.
10% of union workers didn’t show up for work…
New York Post –
FBN –
FNC –
Fiscally responsible states usually ran by Republicans and Conservative Democrats gained 10 House seats according to Census data.
People are voting with their feet. Over 150 businesses left California to move to Texas in just the last year.
Union over reach in the public sector (government unions) is causing some states to go bankrupt. The states cannot afford the corruption and sweetheart deals that result from abusive public sector unions.
Fiscally responsible states usually ran by Republicans and Conservative Democrats gained 10 House seats according to Census data.
People are voting with their feet. Over 150 businesses left California to move to Texas in just the last year. Missouri may now be changing to a “right to work state”. Union over reach and greed has sent jobs overseas. Ford Motor Company has a new high tech plant that can make five cars on a single line at once. Union rules do not permit the advanced technology Ford needs so they have built these plants in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Union over reach in the public sector (government unions) is causing some states to go bankrupt. The states cannot afford the corruption and sweetheart deals that result from abusive public sector unions.
Dr. Sowell describes the critical differences between interests and visions. Interests, he says, are articulated by people who know what their interests are and what they want to do about them. Visions, however, are the implicit assumptions by which people operate. In politics, visions are either constrained or unconstrained. A closer look at the statements of both McCain and Obama reveals which vision motivates their policy positions, particularly as they pertain to the war, the law, and economics.
This is also a great exploration of the difference between constrained realists and unconstrained visionaries, traditionalists vs. central planners, the empirical world vs. the normative.
You think you know what happened? Odds are you don’t. Amity Schleas is likely the greatest living economic historian. She is brilliant, funny, and also happens to be just darn adorable. I had a short conversion with her once and she is very pleasant.
You will not regret watching this interview as you will come away far better informed.
