On "discriminatory, inflammatory, lewd, and racial remarks in public"

For the first time ever, the Tarrant County Libertarian Party is going to participate in the Fort Worth Gay Pride Week parade. 
It's going to be a good time at a great event.  Go here to see our Meetup page about building the float, parade details, and the like. 

Last night, my friend Ken Stanford and I went to the gay/lesbian church where they held the organizational meeting.  (I believe that one lady thought we were romantic partners....not that there's anything wrong with that.)  It was a good group of people. 

The organizers spent a lot of time explaining how we should all behave.  There have been some Baptist preacher-types protesting at past events.  One of these Witch Doctors even went so far as to stick a bullhorn in the face of the mayor of Fort Worth.  They try to get a negative reaction from the gays and lesbians so they can post the pics and videos online and show their congregations how they're defending All Things Holy from the gay folks.  A few arrests were made, and some of the protesters did jail time, which they probably see as a badge of honor. 

Joel Burns, one of our City Councilmen, happens to be of the gay persuasion, and Joel usually rides in this parade.  After the bad incidents with the preachers a few years ago, Joel and the mayor (and I'm probably getting a few of the details wrong here) introduced a Zero Tolerance Ordinance that includes "protection from discriminatory, inflammatory, lewd, and racial remarks in public."  Also, "the use of bullhorns will not be permitted in the downtown area".  The Thought Police police department will be enforcing all of these regulations on the day of the parade.  (All of that is from the parade organizer info.) 

Dammit, I've got two bullhorns. 

I was planning on making good use of them to support the Marriage Equality cause.  Now I can't. 

IMHO, this is what usually happens when you try to protect people from opinions.  Dissent gets stifled. 
Yeah, I cannot stand fundamentalist nimrods who try to force everyone to live by the rules in their magic books. 
No, people shouldn't be allowed to stick bullhorns in your face, violate your space, or physically threaten you. 
But asking government to protect you from opposing points of view, like "discriminatory remarks" doesn't help your cause.  Never, ever, ever. 

If you've read this far and disagree, do you think I should have the right to call some people "fundamentalist nimrods", like I did a few sentences ago?  If you think that Barack Obama isn't very smart, should you be allowed to say so?  What about Rick Perry?  Where does it end? 

Anyway, we're going to have a good time at this thing.  Anybody who wants to marry another adult should be allowed to do so, and I really don't care if I've offended you with that statement, or if you think it's inflammatory. 

 Saturday, October 5th.  Hit this link if you want to help out. 

 

P.Z. Myers and Matt Welch on Koran burnings and free speech in a time of war....and it looks like we'll always be at war

From P.Z. Myers, of the Pharyngula blog:

Sometimes, issues demand nuance. This is a complicated world and there are a great many subjects that simply aren't reducible to binaries — we do a disservice to the subtleties when we discard them in favor of absolutes. And often I can agree that we need depth and breadth of understanding if we're to navigate a difficult situation.

But sometimes the issues are black and white. Sometimes the answers are clear and absolute. And in those cases, attempts to bring out the watercolors and soften the story by blurring the edges do a disservice to reality. There are places where there are no ambiguities, and the only appropriate response is flat condemnation. And we witness them every day.

....I know what it is like to lose someone you love, and it's a pain so great that I can't imagine reaching out to cause that pain in anyone else; what killers must do is blind themselves to the enormity of their act and wall themselves off from the empathy that all human beings should have. They also must bury that portion of their mind that can sympathize with their victims in an avalanche of pretexts, these excuses that later apologists will call "nuance", or "shades of gray", or "complications". And they will dredge up the familiar roll call of empty ghosts to water down the evil of what is done. They will call it God. Country. Honor. Justice. Revenge. The priests and the mullahs and the politicians and the generals are experts at softening the contrast and blurring the edges and persuading one person that that other person over there, so much like you in every way that matters, deserves to have everything important extinguished and brutalized and disregarded.

They are so damned good at it that they can stir up the killing frenzy over anything at all. A gang of fanatics, driven by superstition and ethnic bigotry, kill thousands in a terrorist attack in one country. So zealots stir up their own froth of superstition and ethnic bigotry, and convince the targeted country to attack and kill people of yet another country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. What a waste of lives, yet everyone on both sides is smug and confident that the deaths on the other side were warranted.

Or even more ridiculously remote: one side takes such extreme offense at the lack of reverence shown by a few people on the other side towards some copy of a sacred object, that they then slaughter unrelated targets.

Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters on Friday overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.


Unable to find Americans on whom to vent their anger, the mob turned instead on the next-best symbol of Western intrusion — the nearby United Nations headquarters. "Some of our colleagues were just hunted down," said a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, in confirming the attack.

These twelve people were human beings, reduced to a statistic in a newspaper article, and dehumanized and exterminated by a mindless mob, inflamed by religious fanatics. Similarly, the hundred thousand or more killed in Iraq, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, all of these are also genuine, thinking, feeling human beings, wiped out in a cold-hearted calculus of delusion and greed. There is no justification sufficient for these acts.

Yet somehow we get lost in the wrong questions. Do we have the right to burn the Koran? Is it unreasonable to think that Afghans might have cause to be angry? Should we not defend the right of fascist politicians to live, and perhaps it is OK to grant a limited license to murder to certain people if they are of the correct political stripe or the appropriate faith? Shall we weigh the sins of a Florida preacher against those of three Afghan clerics, and come up with a number that will tell us which is the greater offender, and by how much?

I'm an extremist in this debate, I will freely confess. I hold an absolute view that no killing is ever justified, that individuals have the necessity to defend themselves against assailants, but that even that does not grant moral approval to snuffing out the life of another. Don't even try to pull out a scale and toss a copy of the Koran on one side and the life of a single human being on the other — the comparison is obscene. Do not try to tell me that some people are 'moderates' when they tolerate or even support and applaud war and death and murder for any cause, whether it is oil, or getting even, or defending the honor of wood pulp and ink.

The bone is bleached white. The flesh is burnt black. The blood splashes scarlet. You can't render it in grays and pastels without losing sight of the truth.

Hit the link to read the whole thing.  One of the best he's ever written. 

And now for something completely different....Here's the ultra libertarian Reason magazine's Matt Welch, hammering away at the same subject, but from a totally different worldview. 

Here's what Sen. Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) said today about Florida pastor Terry Jones' burning of a
Koran, which has been used an excuse by Afghanis to murder 22 people, including seven United Nations workers:

I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

More politician condemnations of Jones here.
You know what? We're always going to be in a war, thanks in no small part to the Lindsey Grahams of the world. Which means if we truly value our free speech, we're gonna have to bounce out every politician who subjects American expression to a wartime litmus test. Better yet, maybe start electing some who at least
occasionally refrain from supporting new wars against majority-Muslim countries that have yet to make it through a Reformation.
Because when we have a political class as routinely venal as Lindsey Graham—or Time's Joe Klein, who really did write that "Jones's act was murderous as any suicide bomber's"—that means that war-inspired censorship is always just a shout away.

It is treason to call Wikileaks treason

Some employers want to know what they are paying their employees to accomplish. 
Others don't, and they tend to go bankrupt. 

Bearing that in mind, my friend John Jay Myers has released the definitive statement on Wikileaks. 

"It Is Treason To Call Wikileaks Treason" by John Jay Myers 

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; Now get over it.

You might believe some speech might give away national secrets for instance how we prop up puppet dictators in foreign countries, or how we have been training troops who are now turning against us in droves, how we are supplying billions of dollars to countries who supply millions to those who want to attack us, how we back companies that supply men with young boys for sex slaves in Afghanistan. How the leaders of the countries we manipulate are now scared that we aren’t bombing Iran. Surely no one should become privy to this.

Or should they? I am shocked to realize that the American people don’t stand up and say, “Why are we putting in these puppet dictators? Why are we arming and training troops to fight us? Why are we giving billions to those who want to do us harm? Why are we pimping young boys? Why would we want to bomb Iran in the name of Saudi Arabia?

Seems to me we have an Ostrich mentality in America, Americans can choose to have information, or they can go lock step with their favorite news channel and fight for the right to keep their heads buried in the sand.

They say knowledge is power, would we rather cede that power to those who 87% of us are completely dissatisfied with. Do you really believe that in matters of foreign policy this corrupt group of ninnies somehow becomes more competent?

We have to make a choice, do we want to know these things that could save countless lives and restore America as the shining light on the hill, or should we sacrifice our greatness for what may harm a few?

I think all government correspondence that does not involve missile codes, or troop locations should be public, and any government correspondence that isn’t made public should be labeled as treason.

Wikileaks needs to be permanent, I think we should just make all government wires transparent, starting now. Tell all federal employees, “oh... by the way all of your correspondence is public, any correspondence you engage in that is "government business" not made public will be labeled as treason”.

Wikileaks would be the full body scanner for the United States government.

Were you aware that Iran was offering to help in the stabilization of Iraq and the war on terror if we would remove their name as a sponsor of terror? I was not, but thanks to Wikileaks I am .

Maybe we would consider diplomatic above board solutions rather than espionage and corporate sabotage. Maybe we would stop doing backroom deals with mega corporations like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and BP and start dealing with other countries, their people, and let those people stand up for their own freedom, instead of being inspired to hate us, by our foreign policy of corporatism.

I imagine there is quite a bit of “small stuff”s in the 248,000 yet to be released documents that the media has not sifted through to protect the innocent, which I might add is a procedure that has happened to all 1200 of the pages released so far.

But I don’t sweat the “small stuff”, what concerns mean is the big stuff, the obvious information that reveals our government is lying in regards to how our trillion dollar foreign policy is working out. They are lying to us in regards to the actions we are taking in other countries and even lying to us in regards to whether we are violating the constitution.

If the government is involved with illegal activities than they need to exposed, no matter the cost. Wrong is wrong, and the safety of the people is no excuse for hiding illegal secrets. The more these acts are disclosed, the less likely they will occur in future.

The most disturbing factor about wikileaks is the nature of the attacks from the political class and the media, it should be startling to all of us the lengths those who are supposed to protect us will go in order to maintain a web of lies.

It could be that the most enlightening thing about wikileaks is just how anti-constitutional our leaders have become.

John Jay Myers is a small business owner from Dallas Texas, Vice-Chair of the Dallas County Libertarian Party, and member of the Executive Committee for the Libertarian Party of Texas.

Criticize Obamacare and get hauled in front of Congress

From Ace Of Spades:

This past week several big companies, including Caterpillar, Verizon, and AT&T, announced that ObamaCare would cost them millions of dollars this year. To pay for it they variously suggested layoffs and benefits reductions. Analysts suggest that the total first-quarter hit to S&P 500 firms will be $4.5 billion.

Well, Democrats can't stand to have their precious economy-destroying healthcare program criticized in its very first week, so they've announced an "investigation" into the claims. Late yesterday, the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation sent letters to the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co, and Verizon asking them to appear for a hearing on their claims. In the letters, Waxman and Stupak ask for company documents including accounting analyses and the internal emails of all "senior company officials" related to the projected costs of ObamaCare. How serious are they? The letter actually defines "senior company officials."

More from Ace:

This will be as much of an "investigation" as the Democrats' demonization of oil company CEOs last summer or Toyota execs more recently.

The Powerline Blog has copies of one of the letters.  You have to read this thing.  God have mercy on us all.  Go here for page one and here for page two. 
And look on page two at who is chairman of the House Committe On Oversight And Investigation, helping preside over these show trials. 
Bart "Hold Out For More Earmarks" Stupak.   

To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, they told me that if I didn't vote for Barack Obama, there would be a government crackdown on free speech.  Well, they were right.

California Detective says that "open carry" supporters should be shot

A couple of readers sent me this after my recent post about Starbucks being safer than Fort Hood.....
Ever notice how much some government entities hate competitors?  Like, the U.S. Post Office is about to go broke, but won't allow anyone else to carry 1st class mail?  Remember when FDR wouldn't allow citizens to own gold, because they would've abandoned the dollar?  Or, in the case of guns.....

Gun rights advocates have a California police detective in their crosshairs after he apparently posted comments on Facebook advocating that "open carry" supporters should be shot.

I understand why Detective Tuason would be threatened by "open carry" advocates.  After all, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. 


East Palo Alto Police Det. Rod Tuason apparently posted the remarks on his Facebook page in response to a friend's status update, which suggested that gun advocates who carry unloaded weapons openly — which is legal in California — should do so in places like "Oakland, Richmond and East Palo Alto" and not just in "hoity toity" cities.

"Haha we had one guy last week try to do it!" Tuason replied. "He got proned out [laid face-down on the ground] and reminded where he was at and that turds will jack him for his gun in a heartbeat!"

That's a picture of a suspect in a not-quite-prone position. 
Let's get one thing straight here.  Which would you rather have with you if you had to live in Oakland, Richmond, or East Palo Alto?  A pistol, or Detective Tuason's cell phone number? 

Several comments later, the detective suggested shooting the gun rights advocates, some of whom have carried firearms openly in recent weeks in California's Bay Area, particularly at Starbucks locations.

"Sounds like you had someone practicing their 2nd amendment rights last night!" Tuason wrote. "Should've pulled the AR out and prone them all out! And if one of them makes a furtive movement … 2 weeks off!!!" -- referring to the modified duty, commonly known as desk duty, that typically follows any instance in which an officer is investigated for firing his weapon.

Sigh.....These are our employees.  How much time off would this clown get if we started acting like employers?  I suspect it would be more than two weeks. 

Those comments caught the attention of a California attorney and blogger, as well as a Virginia man who started a Facebook group calling for Tuason's termination.

John Taylor, whose Facebook group had 54 members as of midday Friday, said the Facebook thread confirmed gun owners' worst fears.

As of Sunday afternoon, it has 1,900 members.  Hit the link.  But that's nothing to quibble over. 

"Any sworn officer who suggests shooting law-abiding citizens for exercising their most basic constitutional rights deserves the full wrath of America's gun owners," Taylor told FoxNews.com. "It's an affront."

What we have here is a free speech vs 2nd Amendment vs freedom of contract issue.  Detective Tuason should have the right to say what he wants to say about shooting citizens.  I say, let him say whatever he wants.  The 2nd Amendment states that we can keep and bear arms without having to worry about Det. Tuason shooting us.  And "freedom of contract" implies that the unfortunate citizens of whichever city Tuason works for should be able to fire his butt back into the private sector whenever they please. 
I see no reason why this can't be resolved quickly. 
 
Go here for a screen shot of the conversation.  The picture of the Glock in a not-quite open carry situation came from Free Market Fairy Tales. 

Nick Gillespie debates Lawrence Lessig

My friend Dr. Ralph, of The Journal Of Post-Ralphaelite Thought, has long been the agent provocateur of this site, and he does his job well. Especially for someone whose job it is to be WRONG WRONG WRONG on almost all economic issues.
Dr. Ralph admires Harvard University's Lawrence Lessig.

I'm a huge fan of Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie. I have a black leather jacket that's almost identical to the one Gillespie wears to all his video and TV appearances, and my political opinions are almost identical to Gillespie's, but I have much less hair.

Lessig and Gillespie debate The Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling here. Bill Moyers is the moderator.

Enjoy.

Danish Cartoons, Irish Blasphemy Laws, Christ In Urine, and Obama As A Lawn Jockey

Last Friday night, a 28-year old Somali man armed with a knife and an axe entered the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
Because of having drawn this particular cartoon....

.....and death threats against the artist, Westergaard's home was equipped with a safe room, or "panic room", for those who've seen the Jodie Foster movie.

From the D.C. Examiner: Westergaard was at home with his visiting 5-year-old granddaughter when he heard the suspect trying to break in. "I locked myself in our safe room and alerted the police.”

Unable to smash the front door with his ax, the suspect was shot once in the knee and once in the hand by police. The wounds are not life-threatening.

What's to be done about this situation, where Muslims those adhering to certain belief system want to destroy airliners, cartoonists, themselves, and others?

Ireland has responded by tightening up their Blasphemy laws. These regulations went into effect on January 1st. Here's The Guardian:

The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).

It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".

The justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said that the law was necessary because while immigration had brought a growing diversity of religious faiths, the 1936 constitution extended the protection of belief only to Christians.

In other words, the current version of the Irish Blasphemy statues are no less silly, but a lot more fair. If you want to watch the virus spread, and if you have a strong stomach, you can go here for a USA Today editorial about the U.N. and the Obama Administration supporting an International Law Against Blasphemy.

A group of Irish Freethinkers instantly responded by posting a list of quotations from Jesus, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer (hello Shuey !), Randy Newman, Salman Rushdie, George Carlin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict, and a few Irish politicians. Any of these quotations would be fair game for anyone wanting to earn some money or notoriety through a blasphemy complaint. Organized sensitivity is becoming more and more profitable.

Speaking of Blasphemy, let's change gears and continents for a moment. This is Andres Serrano's masterpiece, "Piss Christ". It's a photograph of a crucifix submerged in Serrano's urine. It was a big deal back in the late 1980's.

I can take it or leave it. If Andres Serrano wants photograph The Last Supper in purple pelican poop, it doesn't harm me in the least. It wouldn't harm you, either, unless you were forced to pay for it. (In the case of Piss Christ, you may have paid for it, but that's another story. Go here for more than you'll ever want to know about the incident.)

Speaking of Transgressive Art.... Here's a work that I might commission, if I ever get the proper Photoshop skills.

I want to do a multimedia installation showing Barack Obama dressed as a lawn jockey, parking cars at a Goldman Sachs Christmas party. It would be controversial, but it would illustrate the power relationship between Goldman Sachs and our government, and depict the level at which Obama truly is their little bitch.

I want to photograph a sterotypical Welfare Queen in her Cadillac, the stereotype so often derided during the Reagan era. I want to paste (juxtapose, in artspeak) the face of the Archer Daniels Midland CEO onto the body of the Welfare Queen, and call the piece "Welfare Brood Sow", and challenge preconceptions of government dependency.

The final work will be something called "U O Me", and I intend to hire a troupe of performance artists to infest the maternity ward of Arlington Memorial Hospital. The artists will give each infant a bill for $375,000.00, representing each child's share of the unfunded government liabilities voted into place by their grandparents. The artists will threaten to withold milk until all debts are paid.

If you're wanting to help fund any of these projects, don't bother. I'm going to apply for an NEA grant.

Let's review the topics covered so far:

1) Danish cartoons portraying Muhammed.
2) Quotes from Jesus, Twain, and Pope Benedict.
3) Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ".
4) Some proposed artwork of my own, designed to illustrate the corrupt nature of our government.

A few questions on each:

1) Have any of these caused you, or anyone else, physical harm?
2) Would you censor, or prosecute the producers of any of these forms of speech?
3) All of them, or just some of them? Why?
4) Do you think any of these are actually beneficial to society and represent a valid point of view?
5) And finally, do you think it's possible for a government to prohibit one category without endangering all the others?

Just wondering.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. (Especially if you're a god.)

Stop the "Art Critique Law" ! ! ! ! ! !

Procrustes and Company over at State Of Protest are rallying voters to stop the "Art Critique" law before it passes.

Email the White House ASAP, and urge President Obama not to sign this legislation ! !

Then read the comments.