Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? People have the right to speak and practice their beliefs, assemble, and seeing redress from the government.
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. There is no such thing as an “absolute right,” and that includes rights enumerated within the First Amendment. For example, you don’t have the right to interrupt by shouting and protesting during public meetings. That will get you arrested. As part of your religion, you don’t have the right to practice virgin sacrifices. In short, in protecting the rights of all, some rights can be restricted. There is lots of case law on this, but the gist of the matter is in restricting a right, the restriction must serve a governmental interest of protecting the rights of others.
Which brings us to two or three people involved in the football world.
The first is Colin Kapernick. the former NFL quarterback who started kneeling in protest before the start of NFL games. Kapernick was eventually released by the San Francisco 49er’s and is now suing the NFL for collusion in some other team not hiring him.
People have defended Kapernick’s (and other players) protest on First Amendment grounds which is totally misplaced.
The First Amendment protects people from actions of the government, and not private businesses like the NFL. In short, Kapernick’s speech is not protected by the First Amendment.
But that brings us to high school assistant football coach Joe Kennedy, formerly of Bremerton High School. (more…)
We’ve seen these types of videos before which not only show how clueless people are when it comes to economics and running a business, but how when their ideas are challenged, there seems to be either a moment of the light bulb comes on, or they stamp their feet and say “because I say so!”
There is a really good, snarky comment made below the video on YouTube which reads:
From now on instead of sending poor countries money, we’ll just tell them to raise their minimum wage.
Strangely, although it doesn’t make sense on some levels, it makes sense on other levels. (more…)
You may have heard of the so called “Deep State” within the government whose purpose and practice is to actively resist official government policy and act contrary to law. In some ways, the idea of the “Deep State” has always been a right side of the aisle contention. To many on the left, there is no such thing as the “Deep State.” There’s a corollary there that the left also believes that it is the moral thing to do to resist and subvert the policies your job requires you to do. In other words, instead of doing the noble and truly moral thing by leaving a job where you don’t want to do the tasks you are required to do, it is better to stay in the position, suck up taxpayer dollars for your salary all the while trying to screw up the country.
The reason that this can happen is that unlike in the private sector, it is almost impossible for a federal employee to get fired. Whether it is incompetence or insubordination, it is very difficult for a federal employee to be shown the door and be told, “good luck in your new career elsewhere.”
Project Veritas has started to release videos that show the corruption and lack of moral depth the members of the Deep State have.
Project Veritas has released the first installment in an undercover video series unmasking the deep state. The video features a State Department employee, Stuart Karaffa, engaged in radical socialist political activity on the taxpayer’s dime, while advocating for government resistance. Stuart Karaffa is also a ranking member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (Metro DC DSA.)
In their latest installment, Veritas met Stuart Karaffa – a State Department employee who is also a ranking member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America who is “engaged in radical socialist political activity on the taxpayer’s dime,” while actively advocating for “resistance to official government policies,” according to Project Veritas.
Mr. Karaffa’s loyalties seem to be with DSA, not with his employer.
Karaffa told an undercover Project Veritas journalist that he performs DSA activism while at work for the State Department. He explained that he drafts DSA communications while on the job at State Department: -Project Veritas
“… I’m careful about it. I don’t leave a paper trail, like I leave emails, and like any press s**t that comes up I leave that until after 5:30. But as soon as 5:31 hits, got my like draft messages ready to send out,” says Karaffa, who doesn’t believe he’ll get caught for pursuing his own agenda within the Department of State.
“Maybe someday I’ll go to board of elections jail, probably not,” he said, adding: “I have nothing to lose. It’s impossible to fire federal employees.” Karaffa says “nobody knows” about his activism – and that it’s easy to circumvent State Department ethics disclosures because “… somebody just rubber stamps [the form] and it goes forward… I don’t know if [the ethics officer is] all there. He’s so checked out…”
In case you have been living under a rock, the Democrats are trying a last minute “Hail Mary” to try and derail eminently qualified and well respected Judge Brett Kavanaugh from being confirmed by the Senate to sit on the Supreme Court. The Democrats are hoping to ride the story of one Christine Blasey Ford, who claims Kavanaugh and a friend sexually assaulted her sometime in the past.
The reason we say “sometime in her past” is that even she is confused of the date. At first Ford claimed that the assault occurred in her “late teens.” Kavanaugh is two years older than Ford, and if the attack occurred when she first said it did, Kananaugh would have already been off attending Yale. Ford has since changed her story to say that she thinks the attack happened when she was fifteen. No matter how you slice it “fifteen years” of age is not “late teens.” Right off the bat there are problems with Ford’s account.
The second issue is that she says she first told someone of the assault while in couples’ therapy with her husband. She has said “she didn’t realize that the attack had affected her so deeply.” There’s a problem with that as well. By definition, her recollection is what is called a “repressed memory.” Repressed memories are unreliable and sadly, take on what the person believes to have happened, rather than what did happen. Ford may not be lying because at this point in time, even with her confusion on the timing of the incident, she truly believes the incident happened. For the most part, repressed memories are so unreliable that courts generally reject them as evidence.
However, the notes from the therapist says that she initially said there were four assailants, not two as she now claims. Ford says that the therapist made a mistake in his notes, which would be somewhat odd as therapists generally take good notes for their files.
What is curious about the notes is that Ford has only allowed portions of the notes. She then turns that around and says “the notes aren’t accurate.” So what are we to believe?
When listing the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations, why is it that Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram so quickly spring to mind, while Hezbollah is frequently forgotten? In this video, Tony Badran, Research Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explains how the backing of Iran has served to legitimize Hezbollah on the world stage, while simultaneously making the group all the more dangerous.
Former high school teacher Dori Meyers, 29, was convicted of having sex with a 14 year old student. Meyers, who is married to a deputy sheriff, taught social studies at The New School for Leadership and the Arts in the Bronx, New York.
Meyers admitted to performing oral sex on the kid multiple times. The trysts came to light after the 14 year old bragged about the encounters to another friend who told authorities. He was also, shall we say, “less than discrete” when it came to the affair with Meyers:
The victim had also posted at least one pic on Snapchat cuddling with Myers under the heading “Me and my sexy asssss wife,” according to sources.
So we have another case where background checks failed to predict how a teacher would act but that is surprisingly not the real headline here.
Under a plea agreement, Meyers was given a sentence of 10 years probation, must register as a level one sex offender and gets to keep her teaching license.
Over the next month and a half or so, you are going to see lots of ads and “information” about candidates running for office. The ads will often time be attacking, often distorting the truth, and often taking things out of context.
Yeech.
You will also see so called “forums” with candidates.
In these forums, the candidates are asked questions that are either prepared by the forum moderator or generated by the public themselves. In some ways, a forum is a good basic way of getting candidates’ messages out there. However, the problem is that after the second or third forum, the candidates have refined their answers to where the public does not get new information. The same answers from the first forum are asked and the same answers from the first forum are given.
We’d like to see something different.
We’d like to see a return to a debate – a real honest to goodness debate.
The debate is effective in that it allows not only an answer to a question, but a rebuttal from the other candidate and further rebuttals on what is said. A candidate is given “x” amount of minutes to make a statement and or rebut what the opposition has said.
This does two things, both of which are important and both of which are more enlightening than simple “ask a question forums.” (more…)
There is a candidate in a local election who has written on their web page the following:
[My] vote is your vote. [I] will not hesitate to set my personal bias aside and cast a vote that is aligned with a majority of the Citizen’s.
Our intent here is not to call out the particular candidate who wrote this, because most candidates will tell you the same thing – that they will vote in accordance with the wishes of the people.
The problem is that saying you’ll vote with the “majority of the citizens” is not only silly, it is dangerous.
First, let’s look at the practical aspect of this idea. The candidate themselves just went through an election where only 26.8% of the registered voters voted. That means that 73.2% of the people in the election chose not to vote for the particular candidate or any candidate for that matter. The majority of the citizens either did not want or did not care to have the candidate elected to office. The practical aspect is “how does one represent the majority of people who didn’t even vote or vote for you?”
The second part of that is there is no way for an elected official to know whether they are hearing from a majority of people, or only those who are vocal and in fact be a minority of the voters. Our form is a representational republic. It is not a direct democracy. If we wanted a direct democracy we’d have elections every month on issues but we don’t do that. We elect people to make votes and decide policy and direction of the country, state, county, cities and towns.
The third part of the problem is that people will act in a manner that benefits themselves. If we were to say “we are going to vote the way the people want,” people could come together and demand that more money be taken from your wallet if you are over a certain income level. If you have worked hard, bought a house, have savings etc, and there are more people out there who have not done that, they can demand a vote where the elected official in keeping with their promise, would have to vote to take your hard earned dollars.
We have seen that in other areas as well. Elected officials, in response to a vocal group of citizens, have voted to take away the rights of speech and religion of people. Even though those rights are supposedly protected by the Constitution and other laws, elected officials can and do listen to either the mob or the vocal mob and restrict your rights.
