I keep meaning to write something profound about what happened to our country yesterday, only to discover that other, much better writers and thinkers already got there before I did. I’ll just summarize by saying that Obama behaved illegally, unconstitutionally, and undemocratically. Having said that, of course, the really important question becomes: What next?
Let’s see if I can start this round-up by passing on some ideas.
I’ve been reading on Facebook what my Leftist friends, and their Leftist friends, have to say about Obama’s imperial pronouncement on amnesty. One comment struck me especially strongly, because I have no doubt that Obama already has something prepared on his desk. I’ve changed the wording slightly to protect the Facebook author’s privacy, but the substance is unchanged:
I found this in my inbox:
I’m not in love with it, but I think it’s a good, smart start: It uses Obama’s own words against him and suggests that he comes back to the Constitutional fold. As I said earlier, conservatives and Republicans have two years in which to educate Americans, or else the imperial presidency will be the new status quo.
(Is that whirring noise I hear the sound of George Washington spinning in his grave?)
Predictably, those of my Progressive friends on Facebook who are at all politically aware, are kvelling about Obama’s executive order on amnesty. “Best president ever!” “I totally agree with what he did.” “He did the right thing.” My Facebook page is filling up with those statements. To those Progressive friends, I have the following, initially sarcastic, response:
I have to admit that I’m impressed with what President Obama did, mostly because he’s bucking a famed constitutional scholar’s take on precisely this issue:
Let the information download begin:
Alleged New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief lambastes Obama administration
If a Reddit user really is Tim Arango, Baghdad Bureau Chief for The New York Times, it’s very impressive to read his scathing indictment of the administration’s Iraq policy and conduct:
it’s not my job to rate the obama administrations actions in iraq. but i will tell you that after 2011 the administration basically ignored the country. and when officials spoke about what was happening there they were often ignorant of the reality. they did not want to see what was really happening because it conflicted with their narrative that they left iraq in reasonably good shape. In 2012 as violence was escalating i wrote a story, citing UN statistics, that showed how civilian deaths from attacks were rising. Tony Blinken, who was then Biden’s national security guy and a top iraq official, pushed back, even wrote a letter to the editor, saying that violence was near historic lows. that was not true. even after falluja fell to ISIS at the end of last year, the administration would push back on stories about maliki’s sectarian tendencies, saying they didn’t see it that way. so there was a concerted effort by the administration to not acknowledge the obvious until it became so apparent — with the fall of mosul — that iraq was collapsing.
Given the poor grammar, though . . . well, I don’t know. You decide. Maybe he was typing away on a small android keyboard. Or maybe that’s how Times’ writers really write before the editor gets hold of their stuff.
9/11 from outer space
Learn a little more about 9/11’s first hero and first fatality
Danny Lewin, an American-born Israeli, was a tech giant in Israel — and 9/11’s first hero and first fatality.
Why do Muslims rape women?
Short answer: Because Mohamed. The Prophet practiced what he preached, and his followers have done so too since Islam’s inception.
The War Against Women
The pressing issues at NOW (the National Organization for Women):
An issue that is not discussed at NOW:
Thousands of Iraqi women are being forced into sex slavery in brothels run by a ‘police force’ of British women jihadis, it has been reported.
As many as 3,000 women and girls have been taken captive from the Yazidi tribe in Iraq as Isis militants continue their reign of terror across the region.
Sources now say that British female jihadis operating a religious police force called the al-Khanssaa brigade, that punishes women for ‘un-Islamic’ behaviour, have set up brothels to for the use of Isis fighters.
ISIS goes full socialist
An ISIS supporter put up a Facebook post lauding ISIS’s incredible largess once it’s in power:
Ten Facts from the #Islamic_State that everyone should know.
1. We don’t pay rent here. Houses are given for free.
2. We pay neither electric nor water bills.
3. We are given monthly grocery supplies. Spagetti, pasta, can foods, rice, eggs and etc.
4. Monthly allowance are given not only to husband and wife (wives) but also for each child.
5. Medical check up and medication are free – The Islamic State pays on behalf of you.
6. You can still survive even if you don’t speak Arabic. You can find almost every race and nationality here.
7. For every newly married couples are given 700usd as a gift. (Only for Mujahid and I’m not sure if it’s still available now).
***
9. No one is conducting business during prayer time. You can see people left their shops opened and pray either in the masjid or near by their shops.
10. The number of mix-marriages and mixed-race children are so high. It’s beautiful to witness brotherhood with no racism.From a muhajir sister,also spouse of a Mujahid brother at #Islamic_State
Diary Of A Muhajirah
People have noticed that these promises are pretty much in line with what every socialist state promises. Nevertheless, there’s one profound difference: Socialist states are predicated on the notion that everyone works cheerily together for the public good, while in a caliphate, the producers and the consumers are two different groups.
In socialist nations, the difference between reality and rhetoric has within it the seeds of socialism’s downfall. Despite the rhetoric, the reality is that people will only work for the public good, as opposed to their own good, at the point of a gun. Moreover, even with that gun pointing at them, the socialist workers inevitably produce less well as time goes by. The result is that the free houses are poorly-built, overly-populated apartment blocks; the water and electric bills don’t exist because people have no running water or electricity; the food is poor quality and limited in quantity, and the medicine is primitive. These realities inevitably kill the enthusiasm for socialism amongst everyone but the very small inner circle.
In the caliphate, as I said, things are different, very, very different. The consumers are one perpetual class, always enjoying luxury, while the producers are another perpetual class, always suffering servitude. A case in point is the fact that, as you probably noticed, I left out Item No. 8 in the above list. That’s the one that talked about paying for this socialist Islamic paradise:
8. You don’t have to pay tax (If you’re a Muslim).
Coerced payment from the non-Muslims is always at the point of a gun or the tip of a sword. And when one batch of non-Muslims, because they’re dead or worn out (think: Qatar), stops producing, the answer isn’t to convert your economy to a more capitalist one. After all, large segments of the population (the armed ones) are doing just fine with this Islamic socialist system. Rather than changing the system, they just go out and conquer another nation. A vigorous, blood-thirsty, rape-rich attack (think: ISIS) usually brings into the caliphate’s fold a fresh batch of cowed producers to support the takers. As Islam’s rise showed, this system can work effectively for centuries before it finally hits a wall.
Is the media preparing to turn on Obama?
It’s becoming impossible for the base to ignore that Obama has failed to fulfill his promises. Obamacare didn’t socialize medicine; it propped up insurance companies. The economy has been a boon for cronies and no one else. And around the world, countries hate America, even as the anti-war president is poised to launch yet another war. What to do, what to do? It appears that one of the things the media’s doing, before it even gets around to explicit attacks, is some subliminal undermining — how else to explain Thomas Lifson’s discovery about the media’s changing visuals for Obama. Remember, those whom the media Gods would destroy, they first dehumanize.
Will Obama learn his lessons?
When it comes to foreign policy, Obama has repeatedly been proven to be decisively wrong in both his reading and his handling of situations around the world. Daniel Henninger asks the right question: Will Obama realized that he’s been humbled?
My answer: No. His Leftist, insular, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing world-view leaves no room for humility, regret, or repentance.
Democrats may be getting snitty about Obama’s constitutional overrides
The Democrats were fine when Obama ignored the Constitution to re-write Obamacare so as to help them out in elections and spare cronies from its worst effects. They’re encouraging Obama to override the Constitution when it comes to immigration. But when it comes to starting yet another war, the same Democrats who were supine when he bombed Libya now complain that Obama needs to get Congressional permission this time around. Amazingly enough, the Republicans who were cowed, rather than supine, about Libya are also making noise about limitations on Obama’s war-time powers.
Turkey’s flying the coop (along with everyone else)
It doesn’t help Obama’s war presidency that the coalition of the willing in the fight against ISIS won’t include Turkey. That’s gotta hurt.
Turkey is not the only nation that casts a wary eye on Obama’s call-out to the world to help fight ISIS. A lot of non-Muslim (or, more accurately, not-yet-Muslim) nations have already announced that they’re going to be part of the coalition of the un-willing.
When it comes to Obama’s insistence that America won’t have to fight this war alone, Michael Ramirez hones in perfectly on the flaws in his argument.
Why should anyone pay attention to Barack Obama on ISIS?
Obama’s speech yesterday (which I hope to discuss more in a later post) is getting booed from all quarters. The peaceniks don’t like the war cries, and anybody of any intelligence doesn’t like the apologetics for Islam, the lunatic strategy of promising no boots on the ground (and we know how much Obama’s promises are worth), and the assurance that Middle Eastern and Muslim countries will rush to America’s aid, providing their troops to face down ISIS’s rampage.
Most importantly, there’s no reason to believe either Obama’s diagnosis or prescription regarding ISIS. As the Washington Free Beacon shows, when it comes to radical Islam, Obama has been wrong every time:
There are a few possible causes for a 100% failure rate when it comes to analyzing a political situation: incredible stupidity, incredible denial, or incredible evil. Take your pick. It really doesn’t matter which reason you choose, because the results are the same regardless, and we’re still stuck with him for another 2.5 years.
DOJ covertly attempts to influence House IRS hearing
You’ve probably already heard about assistant to Eric Holder who dialed a wrong number and revealed to Rep. Darryl Issa’s office that the DOJ intended to use covert methods to come to the IRS’s aid in hearings before the House. If you haven’t heard, though, or if you want more details, the good news is that the story has broken out of conservative circles and hit the big time at The Hill, where you can read more about it.
For Ted Cruz, getting booed is a good thing
Ted Cruz continues to prove that he’s the smartest man in the room. When he went to a gathering of Middle Eastern Christians and was booed off the stage for defending America and Israel, the guys and gals exercising the thug veto probably thought that Cruz had lost that round. They would have done better to remember that as America finds itself staring down ISIS, many Americans aren’t feeling the love for the usual Middle Eastern rabble-rousers, whether Muslim or Christian. Moreover, many of them may be getting the sinking feeling that Israel is the canary in the coal mine and that America is next in line to be wrapped in Islam’s suffocating embrace.
Smart Ted, however, knew exactly how that booing would play, and he’s publishing his speech and the room’s response far and wide:
“Tonight, in Washington, should have been a night of unity as we came together for the inaugural event for a group that calls itself ‘In Defense of Christians.’ Instead, it unfortunately deteriorated into a shameful display of bigotry and hatred,” Cruz said in a statement provided to Breitbart News. “When I spoke in strong support of Israel and the Jewish people, who are being persecuted and murdered by the same vicious terrorists who are also slaughtering Christians, many Christians in the audience applauded. But, sadly, a vocal and angry minority of attendees at the conference tried to shout down my expression of solidarity with Israel.”
As America gears up for yet another war against radical Islamists, it’s useful to know who our real friends are. Score one for Ted!
Jeff Dunetz continues his efforts to call out anti-American, antisemitic radio hosts in New York
Jeff Dunetz (Yid With Lid), continues his annual effort to call out and get an apology from Mike Francesa and Chris Mad Dog Russo, the popular hosts of a New York sports radio show. Dunetz notes that the show was enjoyable in part because the two men disagreed with each other all the time, making for some interesting fire works. On September 12, 2001, though, the two were unanimous in blaming . . . Jews and America for the attack that killed almost 3,000 people, and demanding that American Jews be forced to take an oath of loyalty.
The Scientific method, as explained by Richard Feynman
One of the more delightful books I’ve read in the past many decades is Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)
I also recommend Feynman’s explanation about the scientific method. I especially recommend it to the climate “scientists” whose theories have been proven wrong at every turn. In real science, failure vitiates the theory. In climate “science,” failure reinforces the theory.
Pictures
Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., is claiming that, for 238 years, everyone has been misreading the Declaration of Independence. According to her, a floating period, missing from some drafts but not from others, establishes that the Founding Fathers believed that it was the government’s, not the individual’s, responsibility to make sure we get our self-evident rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., concerns a period that appears right after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the transcript, but almost certainly not, she maintains, on the badly faded parchment original.
That errant spot of ink, she believes, makes a difference, contributing to what she calls a “routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document.
The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says. But as intended by Thomas Jefferson, she argues, what comes next is just as important: the essential role of governments — “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — in securing those rights.
“The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said. “You lose that connection when the period gets added.”
So, according to Allen, the Founders weren’t committed to individual liberties. Instead, they were statists who wanted to vest power in the government, not the individual.
Let me just say as a predicate that the Founder’s own behavior when the established the Constitution and the Bill of Rights puts the lie to Allen’s contention. Had they been the statists she believes, they never would have established a limited government in the first place, one made even more limited when the Bill of Rights vested in the people specific powers that should have made the government, at all times, subordinate to the people.
But if Allen wants to play little games, by all means, let’s play little games.
The best way, of course, to determine the author’s intent, is to ask the author. Thomas Jefferson may have been dead 189 years, but he’s left us a document in which he compares his original draft of the Declaration (his preferred version), with the one that Congress eventually enacted. This document is Jefferson’s 1821 autobiography, in which he carefully spells out how the Declaration came into being.
Here is the pertinent material from Jefferson’s autobiography:
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the declaration of Independance [sic] which had been reported & lain on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a commee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates having taken up the greater parts of the 2d 3d & 4th days of July were, in the evening of the last, closed the declaration was reported by the commee, agreed to by the house and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson. As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as originally reported. The parts struck out by Congress shall be distinguished by a black line drawn under them; & those inserted by them shall be placed in the margin or in a concurrent column.
[Editors note: text in boldface was removed for the final version of the Declaration, and text in italics was added].
A Declaration by the Representatives of the
United States of America, in General
Congress Assembled.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate & equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and [certain] inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles, & organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses & usurpations begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, & to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge [alter] their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of unremitting [repeated] injuries & usurpations, among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest but all have [all having] in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
So, parsing the sentence, what does the colon mean?
Traditionally, aside from following the salutation in a business letter, colons have four primary usages. Wikipedia has as good a summary as any:
Syntactical-deductive
The colon introduces the logical consequence, or effect, of a fact stated before.
- There was only one possible explanation: the train had never arrived.
Syntactical-descriptive
In this sense the colon introduces a description; in particular, it makes explicit the elements of a set.
- I have three sisters: Daphne, Rose, and Suzanne.
[snip]
Appositive
The colon introduces an appositive independent clause. In other words, the sentence after the colon is in apposition (grammatically parallel) to the one before the colon. Please note that this could also be simply considered an explanation of why Bob could not speak, and written without the capital He after the colon. Both would be technically correct.
- Bob could not speak: He was drunk.[6]
- Bob could not speak: he was drunk.
[snip]
Segmental
Like a dash or quotation mark, a segmental colon introduces speech. The segmental function was once a common means of indicating an unmarked quotation on the same line. The following example is from the grammar bookThe King’s English:
- Benjamin Franklin proclaimed the virtue of frugality: A penny saved is a penny earned.
This form is still used in written dialogues, such as in a play. The colon indicates that the words following an individual’s name are spoken by that individual.
- Slut: Doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains.
- Doctor: Because you’re always open!
So let’s break down that all important clause as Thomas Jefferson himself wanted it to be, with a colon.
The colon could mean a syntactical-deductive, meaning that the words following “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” are the logical consequences of that phrase:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The logical consequence of these unalienable rights is that, in order to ensure that they are given proper deference is the men create governments, the sole authority of which comes from men willingly subordinating themselves to a government entrusted to ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means that, if the government ceases to serve this function, it is a failed government, which the people can abolish.
The colon could mean a syntactical-descriptive, meaning that the words following “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” expand upon and explicitly define the preceding clause. This grammatical usage, however, which is most closely aligned to Allen’s interpretation, actually reduces the sentence to nonsense:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness: What we mean by “unalienable rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is that creating and destroying governments is the essence of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, or perhaps we mean that governments are the essence of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
The colon could be introducing an appositive, independent clause, which an artsy way of tying somewhat independent thoughts together using grammatical parallelism. This makes for hideous, awkward writing, but again makes clear that government is subordinate to man, meant to sustain him, not control him:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness: Self-evident too is that government’s are endowed by man to ensure those unalienable rights and that government’s are destroyed by man when they fail to ensure those unalienable rights.
What the colon cannot do is serve as a segmental purpose, with the material following the colon being a quotation voiced by the material preceding the colon — unless we want to pretend that Jefferson was quoting the Creator:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness: [The Creator said] “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….”
The one thing that’s clear to me is that, no matter how one parses it, one can never escape the fact that the material following the period, dash, or colon is manifestly subordinate to the material preceding that period, dash, or colon. The best way to understand that is through one of my beloved outlines:
I. SELF-EVIDENT TRUTHS
A. All men are created equal
B. The Creator endows all men with certain unalienable Rights, which include, but are not limited to:
1. Life,
2. Liberty,
3. The pursuit of Happiness
II. ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
A. Men create governments
B. Limitations on these man-created governments:
1. They exist to preserve self-evident truths
2. They have no power independent of that which men vest in them.
3. If they fail to protect self-evident truths (and presumably, if they seek to destroy those truths), men can
a. Alter the government
b. Abolish the existing government and create a new one that exists to serve man
Again, the above is just grammatical game-playing. The Constitution, which establishes a very limited representative government, with power doled out amongst three branches, so as to prevent the tyranny of any single branch; and the Bill of Rights, which establishes vast zones of human behavior that government cannot touch, establish unequivocally that Jefferson’s “colon” was intended to protect individuals, not to make them subordinate to the government.
The entrenched DC Republican establishment is obsessed with “electability” – good and Constitutional governance be damned. They insist that the only road to electoral victory is through big government glad-handing.
Reagan 180: Spending And Bureacracy
It’s what I call “DC solutionism,” an irrational belief that all real answers and solutions naturally begin and usually also end in the cavernous halls of Washington bureaucracy and legalese. We used to call them liberals and, sometimes, less-specific identified as just Democrats. Now we call them simply “incumbents” without the silly archaic need for specific party reference. The centralized DC mentality has indeed infected the Republican club as well.
The Republican establishment [aka "The Club," (TM)] is in fact more liberal than many of the milquetoast candidates they parade your way every four years. Their livelihoods are in elections, and they churn their own elections by pedaling “DC solutions.” (Read: Someone else’s money.) The longer they are in DC, the more unmoored they become from both localized economic reality and the ideas of Constitutional governance that they maybe, just maybe, might have arrived in DC with originally.
And this drift towards centralized government “solutions” and the necessary accompanying centralized government control has blurred the lines between once distinct political parties.
So when the RNC, its anointed and preferred candidates, their supporters and donor bandwagons cry out about “electability,” what they mean without saying forthrightly is that the key to winning an election is being likable and handing out stuff from the big DC trunk.
How’s that working for “The Club”? For you? For Constitutional governance? Well, let’s see… Aside from two nail-biter wins by George W. Bush, we will have had 16 years of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama in four asswhippings. “The Club” keeps giving us their old guard liberal Republican Senators in Bush 41, Bob Dole and John McCain. Breaking the mold, we end up with a non-Senatorial member of “The Club” in Governor Romney, the inventor of Obamacare. (Yeah, whatever. Save your breath, defenders. You people bore me with your distinctions that don’t resonate with anyone who isn’t a political junkie – the 97% of the country too busy working.)
The last time a Republican really won an election with a confident mandate was also the last time a true Conservative ran. And the blueprint is so simple it inspires disbelief. Yet there it is: Believe in (and understand) The Constitution and its limits on government overtly designed to preserve Liberty, believe in the American people and our uniquely American sense of individualism, and be able to speak in complete sentences.
In this second edition of Reagan 180, a three minute excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s 1979 announcement of his candidacy for president is a short sample of what proved to be the blueprint for two massive electoral landslides. He didn’t promise to give this program or that program. He promised to get Washington the hell out of the way. He wanted to go to Washington to affect it’s doing less, not more.
It seems counter-intuitive to today’s DC Republicans. No way anyone can campaign and win on doing and giving away less. But landslides don’t lie. They’re not close enough to be debatable.
How many are in DC today to reign it in and have it do less, returning many functions to the states to decide and carry out as constructed and instructed by the Constitution? How many “believe in (and understand) The Constitution and its limits on government overtly designed to preserve Liberty, believe in the American people and our uniquely American sense of individualism”? And how many of those left standing can communicate in complete sentences, all by themselves like big boys and girls? Talk about culling the herd.
Well, that’s all it takes to get the American public behind a candidate and his or her administration that moves inside the beltway from somewhere comfortably outside it before the election. The blueprint is right there. But if you don’t share the beliefs, you’ll resist and ridicule the example. And there you have it. In less than 3 minutes of audio.
Earlier today, I put together a post saying that the Bill of Rights trumps the Civil Rights Act. It is so because the Rights are inherent in individuals, meaning that Congress has no power to pass a law abrogating those rights (at least not without a very good reason). I even prepared a nice little chart to walk people through my thinking in this regard. As part of the chart, I noted that, in theory, Muslims can use the Bill of Rights to justify subordinating women. Just a few hours later, a friend sent me a link to this news story out of Canada (which does not have a First Amendment):
Barbers in Toronto who refused to cut a woman’s hair have become the target of a human rights complaint, in a case that pits religious freedom against gender equality.
When Faith McGregor went into the Terminal Barber Shop requesting a short haircut, she was told the shop only grooms men.
The reason, co-owner Omar Mahrouk said, was that as a Muslim he could not cut the hair of a woman who was not related to him.
But for McGregor, the rejection of her patronage amounted to sexism.
“Fundamentally, my hair is the same as their male clients, so why would they have a problem with that,” she told CTV News.
“I felt like a second class citizen, like it was hard to hear that they refused and there was no discussion.”
So the 35-year-old filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
Read the rest here.
One can make a very good argument that the reason the First Amendment had such a good run for a couple of hundred years was because, while Americans might have had doctrinal differences, they shared the same values about core issues: marriage, sexual orientation, self-reliance, etc. Now, though, with Leftism ascendent and an increasingly large Muslim population, the tensions being placed upon the Bill of Rights have become unsustainable. Something’s got to give — and the Left is well-situated to make sure that it’s the Judeo-Christian tradition that cries “Uncle” first.
I am watching a lot of television lately. A lot. Even I, a truly prodigious reader, find it hard to read every minute of the time I’m hooked up to my continuous passive motion machine. When I finally tire of reading, I have limited mobility, especially by nightfall, when my balance on crutches seems to take a dive off the cliff. This means that, when the rest of the family wants to watch TV in the evening, I’m something of a captive audience.
I’m not complaining. Instead, I’m explaining why it is that I’ve been watching Jon Stewart’s Daily Show these past few days. Usually I leave the room when he starts, because I find his mixture of genuine and faux stupidity irritating. It’s not a witty show, which I would be able to watch even though I disagree with the politics. It’s a witless show, and dishonest to boot.
Few things highlight these abysmal qualities more than a segment Jon Stewart did about Boehner’s announcement that Republicans would not go forward with any immigration reform because they couldn’t trust Obama to enforce it. For anyone paying attention to the Constitution and the facts on the ground Republican fears are reasonable. Obama, despite his job description as chief executive officer, tasked with enforcing the laws that Congress passes, has a history of refusing to enforce laws he doesn’t like, especially when it comes to immigration.
More recently, with Obamacare, despite the Lefts’ strident screams in October that Obamacare is the “law of the land” and cannot ever be touched — even by the Congress that passed it — Obama has changed the law almost 30 times. Indeed, he’s changed the law so often, he’s even riled his supporters. Boehner may also find it a little difficult to trust Obama since Obama lied knowingly, intentionally, and repeatedly in connection with Obamacare’s passage and implementation. It was the biggest fraud ever committed by a government official against the American people.
So how does Stewart defend Obama’s lawless actions? He doesn’t bother to defend Obama. Instead, he attacks Republicans as hypocrites because they have also tried to change the law. In other words, how dare Republicans complain about Obama’s changes to Obamacare when they also wanted to change it?
Is it really possible that Stewart is so stupid that he believes that Congress should not change, or attempt to change, a law if the president is not allowed to do so himself? I find it hard to believe that Stewart is quite that dumb. And if he’s smart, he and his team are writing shticks deliberately intended to mislead an audience that Stewart presumably knows is dumb enough not to understand that, while the president is constitutionally barred from unilaterally changing or refusing to enforce laws, Congress’s sole function is to pass, edit, and revoke laws.
Anyway, see for yourself the type of fraud Stewart commits against an audience so ignorant and ideological that it elected Barack Obama, not just once but twice:
According to Power Line, when a Fox News Poll asked people point blank whether our system supports a president circumventing Congress, 74% of respondents said “no” and only 23% said “yes.” That answer was only marginally different when the question was re-framed to ask people to ignore the way things should be under our Constitution and, instead, to answer whether they thought it was okay for Barack Obama to circumvent Congress. In that case, 60% of respondents thought that it still wasn’t okay and only 37% of them approved of Obama acting as a dictator.
My very first thought when I read about that 37% was that I think I know every one of them on my real-me Facebook. In that Facebook account, with the exception of conservative friends I’ve made in the last few years, and a handful of apolitical people, everyone else in my world — the world made up of school friends, work friends, and neighborhood people — is rabidly Progressive.
These Progressives have been silent since October, when it became clear that Obamacare was going to be an even more dismal, dysfunctional failure than Republicans predicted. Now, however, with Obama promising to enact his agenda unilaterally, they’re happy again. When they’re not celebrating gay rights (and I’d so that, gay or straight, 75% of their political Facebook posts are about gay rights), they’re starting to put up MoveOn.org style posters encouraging what most Americans recognize as Obama’s lawlessness.
If one were to ask my highly educated, well compensated friends to support their position, I’m sure that all would reply that (a) whatever is wrong now is the fault of Republicans in Congress and (b) that the ends justify the means. That phrase, incidentally, is one of the scariest in the English language.
Nor would any of them be fazed if they were shown Obama’s blatant hypocrisy:
These Progressives would only say, again, that it’s not hypocrisy at all. The problem wasn’t executive overreach, they’d say, it was Bush’s executive overreach. When Obama does the same thing, it’s different.
