9th Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules “Under God” Constitutional. Wait, What?

Remember, the 9th is the most liberal Circuit court in the country, and has previously ruled against the use of “Under God” vis a vis the Pledge of Allegiance in schools (reversed by SCOTUS) in Newdow v. U.S. Congress. Among other activist and crazy decisions. So, how the heck did they come up with this?

A federal appeals court upheld the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who said the references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

Dude!

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Terrorists at Fla. Atlantic U Are O.K., Young Americans for Freedom VERBOTEN

-By Warner Todd Huston

We send our young adults to university to be educated in the ways of the world, we all know. Following that well-worn path, young James Schackleford decided on the publicly funded Florida Atlantic University for his edification and boy did he learn a lesson about modern education last week. Mr. Schackleford learned that the FAU administration prefers on its campus Islamic terrorist supporters over representatives of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization. He also learned that it’s open season on all conservatives at our American universities.

At the Boca Raton campus Mr. Schackleford determined that his school needed a chapter of YAF, a 40-year-old conservative student organization, and so gathered a few like-minded students to meet with YAF State Director Daniel P. Diaz to discuss how they should proceed on organizing a chapter in the school.

As the few gathered were meeting, university administrator *David Blank burst into the room and demanded that they cease their meeting and vacate the room. According to the YAF press release, Mr. Schackleford asked for an additional 15 minutes to finish and Blank acquiesced to the request. But the 15-minute grant was short lived.

Upon hearing Diaz address the liberal bias on the FAU campus, Blank stopped the meeting again and boorishly ordered the students to vacate the meeting room. Blank then shut off the room lights, tore down the group’s promotional posters, and called the campus police.

It didn’t end there. According to YAF, the campus police arrived and began to harass the students and Mr. Diaz outside as they were in the process of leaving the campus. The police demanded to see student IDs and then menacingly followed YAF rep. Diaz to his car.

Police told Diaz that they were investigating a “possible trespassing charge,” and then loudly joked that Diaz “probably had tea bags hanging out the back of his car” as Diaz prepared to leave.

Diaz says that the whole incident is proof positive of why a conservative group is needed at Florida Atlantic University.

“If we were a Marxist, Socialist or Liberal group they would have let us finish our meeting, but the university officials and police harassed us because we are conservatives. This was the exact liberal bias on campus that I was discussing in the meeting that these future YAFers experienced firsthand. The university is no longer a place of open discussion and freedom of expression, but a breeding ground of intolerance for conservative beliefs.”

One question immediately comes to mind over this incident: did student organizer Schackleford and YAF representative Diaz officially reserve a room at FAU for their informal meeting? I asked Diaz this very question.

Diaz told me that since it was an informal meeting that should have been over rather quickly, Mr. Schackleford did not think that he needed to officially reserve a room through the university staff. In fact, according to Diaz, himself a former FAU student, such unscheduled meetings occur all the time.

No we did not reserve a room. When I was a student at the university when a room wasn’t being occupied one could go in and meet or study, and as long they left before the next scheduled group arrived they would be ok. After asking around that is how it still is.

In retrospect it was an obvious lapse in judgment not to officially reserve a room. Or perhaps they should have met off campus.

However, that small lapse in judgment does not absolve this oppressive, over-the-top reaction that university administrator David Blank exhibited. After all, not long ago Florida Atlantic University hosted a whole slew of Islamic terror supporters on campus. In 2006, for instance, the Muslim students group at FAU hosted an event at which appeared Hamas and Hezbollah supporter, Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan; alleged Neo-Nazi, William Baker; and potential co-conspirator of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Siraj Wahhaj.

Apparently it’s perfectly O.K., as far as the FAU administration is concerned, to have Islamofascist terror given full-throated support on its campus but it is a serious no-no to talk about organizing a patriotic American conservative student’s organization there.

Perhaps Mr. Diaz is right in his contention that a YAF chapter is sorely needed at Florida Atlantic University?

*David Blank appears to be the Event Planning Specialist for the Student Union at FAU. He can be reached at dblank@fau.edu.

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Dangerous Anti-Government Gun Nut Rightwinger Suspended From Kindergarten

Good thing the Nanny State jumped on this quickly!

To the little boy’s mother, it was just a 6-year-old boy playing around.

But when Mason Jammer, a kindergarten student at Jefferson Elementary in Ionia, curled his fist into the shape of a gun Wednesday and pointed it at another student, school officials said it was no laughing matter.

They suspended Mason until Friday, saying the behavior made other students uncomfortable, said Erin Jammer, Mason’s mother.

Whew! That made everyone safe, eh? Just because “He’s only six and he doesn’t understand any of this” is no reason to take action against this violent child, who is probably anti-IRS, too. And this wasn’t the first time he displayed this behavior! I bet he makes crayon posters comparing Obama to the Joker, as well!

Speaking of actual crazies, the NY Times has their story about the Pentagon shooting, and just can’t be bothered to make the connections

A gunman described by police officials as well-dressed, well-educated and well-armed for his minute-long shootout with police on Thursday just outside the Pentagon has died from his wounds.

Law enforcement officials said they still had not determined a specific motive for the gunman, identified as John Patrick Bedell, 36, but officials said he “had issues” and that there were records of previous brushes he had had with law enforcement officials.

Seeking clues for what prompted the suspect to open fire at a Pentagon entrance, police and F.B.I. investigators were examining a series of Internet postings thought to have been his work.

Still looking, eh?

Messages posted on the Web under the username JPatrickBedell seemed to share some biographical details with the shooter and pointed to a distrust of the military and the government at large. “I am determined to see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow, as a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions,” the user wrote, referring to the suicide of an Army officer in 1991.

So, a Truther. Kudos to Charles Johnson for finding more about Bedell’s Trutherism, bad boy for going the normal route and attempting to insinuate that Bedell was a right winger by writing “Another anti-government loon?”, as well as writing that Bedell is “a devotee of libertarian icon Ludwig Von Mises.” His brain washed followers took the hint, and ran with it.

The Times provides more

A 2006 arrest report for a man identified as John Patrick Bedell, then 33 years old, appeared to connect to the user JPatrickBedell, who wrote: “My desire for justice led me to violate what I think is one of the most unjust laws, cannabis prohibition, by growing 16 cannabis plants on my balcony in Irvine, CA from March 2006 to June 2006.”

And a pot user. He was also an anti-Bush nutter (via Patterico). I wonder, how will the media attempt the LGF spin to paint him as someone on the right?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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Teacher Wins Against Ban of His Patriotic Banners in Classroom

-By Warner Todd Huston

Back in January of 2007 math teacher Brad Johnson of Westview High in San Diego County, California was told by his school administrators he had to take down the patriotic banner he had put up in his classroom because the word “God” appeared on it.

Johnson, of course, was quite upset about being told to take down his banner and took the school to court. In 2008 Judge Roger T. Benitez sided with the patriotic-minded teacher saying that the school was “brash” in its effort to force the teacher to take down the banner.

Well, after so long we have some news to report on this story and it is good news, indeed. The very same judge that sided with Mr. Johnson two years ago has officially ruled in favor of the teacher’s right to free speech.

Judge Benitez’s 32-page opinion was strongly worded and critical of the Poway school districts aversion to mentioning God: “[The school district officials] apparently fear their students are incapable of dealing with diverse viewpoints that include God’s place in American history and culture. . . . That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.”

The Thomas Moore Law Center represented the repressed teacher to good effect. Likely this isn’t over as left-wingers are not apt to being told “no” very often, especially by a judge.

We will have to await to see what further comes of this. but as of right now, we have a victory for free speech to celebrate.

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Leftist Australian Prime Minister silences critic

A typical Leftist “modus operandi”. Stalin would understand

It was the night a young Lion roared but was seemingly silenced by the might of the public relations machine. A 19-year-old Lions service club volunteer who suggested the PM was “too stingy to buy a $2 scratchie ticket”, was gagged within two hours of The Sunday Mail attempts to investigate her claims.

It all began with an email from the teenage fundraiser who was selling $2 footy doubles in the corporate dining area of last weekend’s Indigenous All Stars game at Skilled Stadium. “We were going around the tables in the function room with most people buying tickets gladly to support the Lions Club,” she said. “I then approached the table where the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was sitting. Not only was he too stingy to buy a ticket, he wouldn’t even look me in the eye and completely ignored me. His was the only table that didn’t buy any tickets. I am upset that he would treat a volunteer this way and was disinterested in supporting the Lions club.”

Two hours later, after the intervention of the PM’s office, the NRL PR machine and the Lions club, the teen changed her mind, saying she’d been reprimanded for speaking out.

In public office, Mr Rudd and his fellow politicians constantly get fundraiser requests to buy tickets in raffles, lotteries and auctions.

In response to this email, The Sunday Mail contacted the volunteer, conducted an interview and, satisfied she was genuine, contacted the Prime Minister’s press secretary Fiona Sugden for comment. One hour later it came with one line amounting to Mr Rudd fully supporting the Lions club. Then, 20 minutes later, the NRL’s director of media and communications, John Brady, rang The Sunday Mail, wanting to know where it was going. “How can you believe this girl? Why would the PM ignore her? This is just muckraking,” he said. Mr Brady then provided contact details for a Lions club representative who would confirm the story was rubbish.

When contacted, Lions spokesman John Clarke said nobody in his group would have made such a statement. An hour later, the volunteer changed her mind, sending a second email that retracted her earlier comments. She said: “I’ve been reprimanded by the Lions club for speaking on their behalf without authorisation. The Lions club is apolitical and must be seen that way. “I’m sure that you are aware that the Lions club works hard for the benefit of all in the community and that the fundraiser at the Titans game is a significant event for the club. I am not available for further comment.”

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

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