CNN reports that "former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who came under fire from some conservatives for endorsing Dede Scozzafava in next week's special Congressional election in New York, is now backing Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Gingrich made the announcement via Twitter shortly after the Republican Party nominee Scozzafava announced she was releasing supporters from their commitment to back her. 'Scozzafava dropping out leaves hoffman as only anti-tax anti-pelosi vote in ny 23 Every voter opposed to tax increases support doug hoffman,' Gingrich wrote on Twitter." Tweet
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Liberal Maternity Leave Laws Backfiring On Women In Britian
According to the London Telegraph the laws in Britain, meant to protect female employees, say "that women can take a year of maternity leave after having a baby, receiving 90 per cent of their average pay for six weeks then a further 33 weeks on the Statutory Maternity Pay of £117.18 a week, under legislation brought in by Tony Blair in 2003." Nichola Pease, deputy chairman and former chief executive of JO Hambro Capital Ltd, part of Credit Suisse Group, said international companies were put off hiring women because Britain offers new mothers a year off work compared with 12 weeks in the US.
"We have got to be realistic and make sure the protection around women doesn't end up backfiring," Pease told a parliamentary hearing into sexism in the financial sector. "That is actually one of my greatest worries."
"A year is too long and sex discrimination cases that run into the tens of millions are ridiculous," Pease said.
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French Court Convicts Scientology And Its French Leader Of Fraud
The AFP reports that "French judges fined the Church of Scientology almost a million dollars on Tuesday for fleecing vulnerable followers but stopped short of banning the group from operating in France. Scientology's Celebrity Centre and its bookshop in Paris, the two branches of its French operations, were ordered to pay 600,000 euros (900,000 dollars) in fines for preying financially on several followers in the 1990s. Alain Rosenberg, the French leader of a movement best known for its Hollywood followers Tom Cruise and John Travolta, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros on the same charge of fraud." Tweet
Two Chicago Muslims Arrested For Planning To Attack Danish Paper That Published Mohammed Cartoons
The Chicago Tribune reports that two Chicago men were arrested for their role in a conspiracy to attack the offices of Jyllands-Posten, the first newspaper to publish the Mohammed cartoons in 2005 that elicited the barbaric response from the Islamic world. Tweet
ADF Petitions Supreme Court To Hear New Ten Comandments Case
A petition for certiorari was filed Wednesday with the U.S. Supreme Court to appeal the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Haskell County Board of Commissioners v. Green. In the case, the Court of Appeals held that a display of a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn of the county courthouse in Stigler, Oklahoma, violated the Establishment Clause. The Alliance Defense Fund filed the petition to have the case heard by the Supreme Court. “Americans shouldn’t be forced to abandon their religious heritage simply to appease someone’s political agenda,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “There is no wall of separation between our religious heritage and the public square. Thomas Jefferson’s ‘wall’ protected the church from government control, not the public square from references to America’s religious heritage. Such public acknowledgments do not create a constitutional crisis. If they did, we’d have to sandblast many walls and monuments in Washington, D.C., including the walls of the Supreme Court.”
The ADF explains "that In March 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of one offended individual, filed suit to remove a Ten Commandments monument located on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn. The lawn includes memorials to the Choctaw Indian Tribe, World War II veterans, Vietnam War veterans, Korean War veterans, and settlers buried in unmarked graves, among others. In August 2006, a federal district court judge ruled that the presence of the monument was constitutional. The ACLU appealed that decision to the 10th Circuit, which reversed the lower court ruling. In the petition for review filed in Haskell County Board of Commissioners v. Green, ADF attorneys wrote, 'Circuit courts need this Court’s guidance on the proper analysis to apply to monuments passively acknowledging religion’s historical significance that are part of historical displays on government grounds. Otherwise, these cases will continue to be decided on irrelevant facts like those that led to the finding of unconstitutionality in this case: age of the monument, how quickly it was challenged, whether it is displayed by a small or large town, and the personal religious views of the government officials who allowed it.'"
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President Signs New Federal Hate Crimes Law As Part Of Defense Authorization Bill That Is Controversial For Its Inclusion Of Sexual Orientation
President Obama has made the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act the law of the land. It was signed as part of the the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. President Obama said in a statement that "through this law, we will strengthen the protections against crimes based on the color of your skin, the faith in your heart, or the place of your birth. We will finally add federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation... And prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes. Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability."
Some Christian leaders took issue with the new law. American Family Association President Tim Wildmon warned that the new law "creates a kind of caste system in law enforcement, where the perverse thing is that people who engage in non-normative sexual behavior will have more legal protection than heterosexuals. This kind of inequality before the law is simply un-American." The Alliance Defense Fund blasted the "hate-crimes" bill, calling it "another nail in the coffin of the First Amendment." ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley said that "ADF has clearly seen the evidence of where 'hate crimes' legislation leads when it has been tried around the world: It paves the way for the criminalization of speech that is not deemed 'politically correct.'"
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Larry David Urinates On Jesus In "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
I certainly understand why Christians would be offended by this. On the other hand, I also recognize that it is meant as a parody of the news stories we sometimes hear of people seeing the face of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in an old grilled cheese sandwich. In the course of the episode the family that owns the photo believes that his urine that splashed right under the eye of Jesus is a tear and that a miracle has occured.
However, I find this to be cowardly. Larry David knows that many in the Christian community will respond with nothing more than private disgust. They will not burn down buildings in wild and violent riots, they will not go on murderous rampages. If Larry David wants to be more than a just a comedian coward picking an easy target that he knows he can get away with offending, he should have an episode that somehow works in the image of Islam's Prophet Mohammed. That is the way he should go about showing that he is an equal opportunity offender, willing to attack the religious icon even of the Islamic community for comedic purposes knowing the response they had to the Danish cartoons.
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Iran Rejects Nuclear Deal With West
The L.A. Times reports that "Iran's response Thursday to a proposed deal to transform its controversial nuclear material into fuel for a medical reactor is 'inadequate,' a senior Western diplomat said, adding that it failed to address key United States and European concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions. Iran answered the proposal to temporarily move most of its enriched uranium to Russia and France to be further refined and shaped for use in a medical reactor after a delay of nearly a week and a flurry of contradictory signals. The proposal would have depleted Iran's stockpile of nuclear fuel below the threshold necessary for making a single nuclear bomb, possibly creating diplomatic breathing room for a broader agreement between Tehran and those worried about its atomic research program. But according to the diplomat, Iran wants to send its uranium abroad in smaller batches over an undetermined stretch of time rather than the lump transfer by year's end outlined under the proposal offered by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei. Such a change would allow Iran to quickly replenish its stock. Further disappointing the West, Iran did not submit a formal written response as expected, the diplomat said. Instead, Iran's envoy to the atomic energy agency, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, described the offer to ElBaradei." Tweet
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