SIGNS OF LIBERTY IN QUESTION
Why is the University of Mary Washington inhibiting free speech at today's Obama-Biden rally?
NOT ALL COUNTRIES guarantee their citizens the right to virtually unbridled freedom of speech. The United States does. Would someone please tell the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama? And the dozing guardians of liberty at the University of Mary Washington?
Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is scheduled to speak at a rally at the university today. The public is invited to this forum, on property it, the public, owns. However, signs and banners will not be allowed, according to the organizers and compliant campus officials. Suddenly, UMW is a First Amendment-Free, or at least a First Amendment-Crippled, Zone, subject to the self-serving preferences of politicos.
Why does an Obama rally—or a McCain rally or a Nader rally—justify taking a little off the top of Americans' most fundamental rights?
A UMW spokeswoman says that the Obama campaign required the sign-and-banner ban. That campaign tells us that the ban is for "security" reasons. But a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting presidential candidates, says that the service has no objection to signs at rallies, provided that no "part of the sign could be used as a weapon"—e.g., a heavy metal pole or a sharpened stick. Finally, the McCain campaign tells us, "We encourage people to make signs at our events."
Regarding today's event, one would expect better from a campaign bearing the name of a former professor of constitutional law. (See Ambrose Bierce's definition of a lawyer: "one skilled in circumventing the law.") And one would expect much better from a university that, in pursuit of a day of celebrity, a boost in prestige, and profits from its book store's planned commemorative Obama T-shirts (now scotched), shaves away an American liberty purchased by men who turned white snow red and dry dirt wet with their sacrificial blood. This is a lot to swap for a mess of pottage. Remarks the Rutherford Institute's John Whitehead, who has turpentined the Bush administration's civil-rights record, "The Secret Service has a better free-speech viewpoint than the college."
The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, peaceable assembly, petition of the government. Will one who aspires to the title Defender of the Constitution begin inhibiting these First Freedoms even before he is ushered into office—at a public university?
Read it all.
l was disgusted when l read last night that the Obama team are picking up buslaods of homeless in Ohio to register them, and at the same time vote! But don't tarry here, folks. There's much more to uncover in this startling and punitive grasp for absolute power by the Obama camp. Doesn't take a weatherman to know whivch way the wind blows. My prediction is that within one year of an Obama presidency, the same people who elected him will be howling for his impeachment.
The handwriting is on the wall, the internet is also under fire since it's just a little too free for some people. Here’s a frightening page that will interest. Its author accuses the Google’s Blogger folks of shutting down, or freezing anti-Obama blogs it hosts. Read with intelligence. Connect the damn dots. Wake up America!
Wife and I went to another DC event last night sponsored by one of the partners at her office. Several staunch Republicans I have known for years, senior citizens and a couple of thirty-somethings, have all either defected to Obama or declared that they will sit this one out. These people know government. They are Washington lobbyists, and those Republicans who now are voting for Obama claim to be protecting their jobs. I suspect the senior partners who have said they will vote for neither candidate, are doing so less because McCain is too liberal for them, but because they don’t want to go on the record. What in the cheesecake is happening to this country?
I feel like the Big Takeover is upon us. This is simply far too much change way too quickly. Something drastic, some Brave New World Order stealth maneuver seems to be happening…
Here's some friendly advice to our Obama-supporting friends—when your interests are aligned with those of Iran's President and Hitler-wannabe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's time to consider a re-assessment of priorities.
Democrat activists this week gave Ahmadinejad a huge gift that keeps on giving in his circle of despots by sabotaging a major bipartisan anti-Iran rally. More important to these cracked activists than Iran, apparently, was the slick opportunity to marginalize popular Republican vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin.
To recap, the rally was organized by wide coalition of mostly Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the respected non-partisan umbrella group that seems to be the closest thing the American Jewish community has to single and unified voice. They assembled an impressive protest of the presence of Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, to sound the alarm over his nuclear weapons program, and to urge world leaders gathered this week in New York to act strongly—and soon—to prevent a nuclear Iran which seems to be in the sole business of threatening Israel, America, and the world.
The organizers secured a number of high-profile speakers, including Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, recent Democrat presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton and Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. It is not yet clear whether Clinton was coordinating with Democrat strategists, but when she found out Palin was also invited, she bailed out. Too bad-having America's two highest profile female politicians together on the same stage condemning the misogynistic (among its many attributes) Iranian regime would have been a powerful image.
Following Clinton's lead, two of the sponsoring organizations-led by left-wing Democrat activists-demanded that Palin be barred from speaking lest the rally be a "partisan" event. The organizers pleaded with both Joe Biden and Barack Obama to speak, but both declined. Although Congressman Robert Wexler, a prominent Obama surrogate, was available to speak, the Democrats (including members of Congress) relentlessly pushed to have the Palin invitation rescinded.
Their argument was part naked pretext and part veiled threat: that maintaining the invitation just might prompt the IRS to investigate all sponsoring organizations' non-partisan tax-exempt status-an interesting understanding of "partisan" considering the invitations to Clinton, Obama, Biden and Wexler. (Perhaps this gives a clue how an IRS run by Obama lieutenants might treat political opponents). In an effort to maintain an appearance of Jewish unity against the evil of Iran, the organizers were forced to cave; Palin was given the boot. Game over. The Democrats won.
And so did Ahmadinejad. This had the makings of rally with impact. Besides being a tremendous show of bipartisan unity opposing Iranian aggression, the massive media attention paid to Palin's appearances would have brought the Iranian danger to the forefront of American consciousness. The rally was also attended by Iranian dissidents, human rights activists, gays, Christians, Jews and Iraqis, all of whom suffer at the hands of the mullahs' regime. Their under-reported causes could have used the publicity boost. Deflating the event by removing its star power did all these groups a huge disservice. We're sure Ahmadinejad cannot believe his good fortune. Thank you, Democrats!
Don't the Democrats vainly claim to be the party of the powerless and the voice of the voiceless? Fighters for human rights and protectors of liberty? They shouldn't flatter themselves. How did they help those causes this week? By strong-arm tactics, stifling dissent and sacrificing their "principles" for some perceived marginal political gain? Aren't those the sorts of things they're supposed to be protesting against? Perhaps they should tell us which principles they won't trample in order to gain fleeting political advantage.
Read it all. And now because of his own draconian positions, wavering back and forth as he tends to do, Obama wants all NRA ads banned from the airwaves. The Obama camp has been threatening television and radio stations to keep them from airing anti-Obama ads. The latest target is the NRA and stations in Pennsylvania.
Earlier this week, the National Rifle Association's Political Victory Fund released a series of radio and television spots to educate gun owners and sportsmen about Barack Obama's longstanding anti-gun record. In response to the NRA-PVF ads, a clearly panicked Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are doing everything they can to hide Obama's real record by mounting a coordinated assault on the First Amendment.
This camapign has gone to desperate and outrageous lengths to try to silence the NRA by bullying media outlets with threats of lawsuits if they run NRA-PVF's ads. Here is Obama's letter to station managers.
Obama cannot and should not be trusted. Let me remind you of what our Founding President had to say on this critical topic:
“If the Freedom of Speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
—George Washington
NOT ALL COUNTRIES guarantee their citizens the right to virtually unbridled freedom of speech. The United States does. Would someone please tell the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama? And the dozing guardians of liberty at the University of Mary Washington?
Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is scheduled to speak at a rally at the university today. The public is invited to this forum, on property it, the public, owns. However, signs and banners will not be allowed, according to the organizers and compliant campus officials. Suddenly, UMW is a First Amendment-Free, or at least a First Amendment-Crippled, Zone, subject to the self-serving preferences of politicos.
Why does an Obama rally—or a McCain rally or a Nader rally—justify taking a little off the top of Americans' most fundamental rights?
A UMW spokeswoman says that the Obama campaign required the sign-and-banner ban. That campaign tells us that the ban is for "security" reasons. But a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting presidential candidates, says that the service has no objection to signs at rallies, provided that no "part of the sign could be used as a weapon"—e.g., a heavy metal pole or a sharpened stick. Finally, the McCain campaign tells us, "We encourage people to make signs at our events."
Regarding today's event, one would expect better from a campaign bearing the name of a former professor of constitutional law. (See Ambrose Bierce's definition of a lawyer: "one skilled in circumventing the law.") And one would expect much better from a university that, in pursuit of a day of celebrity, a boost in prestige, and profits from its book store's planned commemorative Obama T-shirts (now scotched), shaves away an American liberty purchased by men who turned white snow red and dry dirt wet with their sacrificial blood. This is a lot to swap for a mess of pottage. Remarks the Rutherford Institute's John Whitehead, who has turpentined the Bush administration's civil-rights record, "The Secret Service has a better free-speech viewpoint than the college."
The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, peaceable assembly, petition of the government. Will one who aspires to the title Defender of the Constitution begin inhibiting these First Freedoms even before he is ushered into office—at a public university?
Read it all.
l was disgusted when l read last night that the Obama team are picking up buslaods of homeless in Ohio to register them, and at the same time vote! But don't tarry here, folks. There's much more to uncover in this startling and punitive grasp for absolute power by the Obama camp. Doesn't take a weatherman to know whivch way the wind blows. My prediction is that within one year of an Obama presidency, the same people who elected him will be howling for his impeachment.
The handwriting is on the wall, the internet is also under fire since it's just a little too free for some people. Here’s a frightening page that will interest. Its author accuses the Google’s Blogger folks of shutting down, or freezing anti-Obama blogs it hosts. Read with intelligence. Connect the damn dots. Wake up America!
Wife and I went to another DC event last night sponsored by one of the partners at her office. Several staunch Republicans I have known for years, senior citizens and a couple of thirty-somethings, have all either defected to Obama or declared that they will sit this one out. These people know government. They are Washington lobbyists, and those Republicans who now are voting for Obama claim to be protecting their jobs. I suspect the senior partners who have said they will vote for neither candidate, are doing so less because McCain is too liberal for them, but because they don’t want to go on the record. What in the cheesecake is happening to this country?
I feel like the Big Takeover is upon us. This is simply far too much change way too quickly. Something drastic, some Brave New World Order stealth maneuver seems to be happening…
Here's some friendly advice to our Obama-supporting friends—when your interests are aligned with those of Iran's President and Hitler-wannabe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's time to consider a re-assessment of priorities.
Democrat activists this week gave Ahmadinejad a huge gift that keeps on giving in his circle of despots by sabotaging a major bipartisan anti-Iran rally. More important to these cracked activists than Iran, apparently, was the slick opportunity to marginalize popular Republican vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin.
To recap, the rally was organized by wide coalition of mostly Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the respected non-partisan umbrella group that seems to be the closest thing the American Jewish community has to single and unified voice. They assembled an impressive protest of the presence of Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, to sound the alarm over his nuclear weapons program, and to urge world leaders gathered this week in New York to act strongly—and soon—to prevent a nuclear Iran which seems to be in the sole business of threatening Israel, America, and the world.
The organizers secured a number of high-profile speakers, including Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, recent Democrat presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton and Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. It is not yet clear whether Clinton was coordinating with Democrat strategists, but when she found out Palin was also invited, she bailed out. Too bad-having America's two highest profile female politicians together on the same stage condemning the misogynistic (among its many attributes) Iranian regime would have been a powerful image.
Following Clinton's lead, two of the sponsoring organizations-led by left-wing Democrat activists-demanded that Palin be barred from speaking lest the rally be a "partisan" event. The organizers pleaded with both Joe Biden and Barack Obama to speak, but both declined. Although Congressman Robert Wexler, a prominent Obama surrogate, was available to speak, the Democrats (including members of Congress) relentlessly pushed to have the Palin invitation rescinded.
Their argument was part naked pretext and part veiled threat: that maintaining the invitation just might prompt the IRS to investigate all sponsoring organizations' non-partisan tax-exempt status-an interesting understanding of "partisan" considering the invitations to Clinton, Obama, Biden and Wexler. (Perhaps this gives a clue how an IRS run by Obama lieutenants might treat political opponents). In an effort to maintain an appearance of Jewish unity against the evil of Iran, the organizers were forced to cave; Palin was given the boot. Game over. The Democrats won.
And so did Ahmadinejad. This had the makings of rally with impact. Besides being a tremendous show of bipartisan unity opposing Iranian aggression, the massive media attention paid to Palin's appearances would have brought the Iranian danger to the forefront of American consciousness. The rally was also attended by Iranian dissidents, human rights activists, gays, Christians, Jews and Iraqis, all of whom suffer at the hands of the mullahs' regime. Their under-reported causes could have used the publicity boost. Deflating the event by removing its star power did all these groups a huge disservice. We're sure Ahmadinejad cannot believe his good fortune. Thank you, Democrats!
Don't the Democrats vainly claim to be the party of the powerless and the voice of the voiceless? Fighters for human rights and protectors of liberty? They shouldn't flatter themselves. How did they help those causes this week? By strong-arm tactics, stifling dissent and sacrificing their "principles" for some perceived marginal political gain? Aren't those the sorts of things they're supposed to be protesting against? Perhaps they should tell us which principles they won't trample in order to gain fleeting political advantage.
Read it all. And now because of his own draconian positions, wavering back and forth as he tends to do, Obama wants all NRA ads banned from the airwaves. The Obama camp has been threatening television and radio stations to keep them from airing anti-Obama ads. The latest target is the NRA and stations in Pennsylvania.
Earlier this week, the National Rifle Association's Political Victory Fund released a series of radio and television spots to educate gun owners and sportsmen about Barack Obama's longstanding anti-gun record. In response to the NRA-PVF ads, a clearly panicked Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are doing everything they can to hide Obama's real record by mounting a coordinated assault on the First Amendment.
This camapign has gone to desperate and outrageous lengths to try to silence the NRA by bullying media outlets with threats of lawsuits if they run NRA-PVF's ads. Here is Obama's letter to station managers.
Obama cannot and should not be trusted. Let me remind you of what our Founding President had to say on this critical topic:
“If the Freedom of Speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
—George Washington
Labels: Ahmadinejad, Barack Obama, liberty, Mary Washington, Sarah Palin
posted by Gabriel Thy at 8:03 AM
1 Comments:
Since you posted an article citing constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead's efforts to safeguard our freedoms, I thought you'd be interested in reading his new book, The Change Manifesto. More info on the book is available at www.changemanifesto.org
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