Posts Tagged ‘freedom of speech’

The Respect for Marriage Act violates four clauses of the First Amendment

Posted: December 1, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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On Tuesday the Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act.  Twelve traitorous Republicans joined with the Democrats to pass this Bill, which will trample on the Religious Liberty of every American, particularly those who believe in traditional marriage. 

Freedom of Religion is one of our most important God-given natural rights.  It is enshrined in the First Amendment.  Thanks to this clause, the federal government is barred from trampling on the religious freedom of every single individual. 

This letter from Republican Senator Mike Lee chronicles just how the Respect for Marriage Act violates the Free Exercise of Religion clause.

As you are aware, we are one step closer to passing into law the Respect for Marriage Act. In the Obergefell oral arguments, there was a now infamous exchange between Justice Alito and then–Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. In response to Justice Alito asking whether, should states be required to recognize same-sex marriages, religious universities opposed to same-sex marriage would lose their tax-exempt status, General Verrilli replied, “ . . . it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito, –it is going to be an issue.”

And it is an issue. Obergefell did not make a private right of action for aggrieved individuals to sue those who oppose same-sex marriage. It did not create a mandate for the Department of Justice to sue where it perceived an institution opposed same-sex marriage, but the Respect for Marriage Act will. What we can expect should this bill become law is more litigation against those institutions and individuals trying to live according to their sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions.

Should Congress decide to codify Obergefell and protect same-sex marriages, we must do so in a way that also resolves the question posed by Justice Alito. Instead of subjecting churches, religious non-profits, and persons of conscience to undue scrutiny or punishment by the federal government because of their views on marriage, we should make explicitly clear that this legislation does not constitute a national policy endorsing a particular view of marriage that threatens the tax exempt status of faith-based non-profits. As we move forward, let us be sure to keep churches, religious charities, and religious universities out of litigation in the first instance. No American should face legal harassment or retaliation from the federal government for holding sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.

According to this Fox News article, Republicans were able to incorporate a very modest religious liberty amendment, while failing to pass true religious liberty amendments. 

An amendment by Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., was adopted Monday evening aimed at making sure the bill does not undermine religious liberty and states that nonprofit religious organizations “shall not be required to provide services” to a marriage it opposes.

On Tuesday the senate also considered three additional amendments to the bill by Senators Marco Rubio, R-Florida, Mike Lee, R-Utah, and James Lankford, R-Okla., that would have purportedly added stronger religious liberty protections to the measure, but all failed to reach a threshold vote for final adoption. 

The First Amendment consists of the following six clauses. 

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.

The Respect for Marriage act violates four of them.  Firstly, this act establishes progressive orthodoxy as the official religion of the United States, in direct violation of the establishment clause.  After this act is passed, Americans who hold and espouse views contradictory to progressive orthodoxy will be punished, violating the free exercise of religion clause and the free speech clause.  The freedom to assemble includes the freedom to not assemble.  The Respect for Marriage Act forces private venues to assemble for marriage ceremonies that violate their religious beliefs.

Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter has demonstrated just how much the political left abhors free speech

Posted: April 21, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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For the past week I’ve been watching the drama unfold online, stirred up by Elon Musk and his attempt to purchase Twitter.  The drama has been entertaining and repulsive, watching progressives melt down over the fear that Elon Musk will bring free speech to Twitter.

This editorial, Opinion | Let’s hope Elon Musk doesn’t win his bid for Twitter – The Washington Post, is one of the more nauseating, although subtle, examples.

Mr. Musk has promised to make Twitter a “platform for free speech around the globe.” This vision is more or less the same one now-departed CEO Jack Dorsey championed throughout his tenure, and especially in the platform’s early days. But like its industry peers, Twitter has moved over time toward stricter rules. That isn’t because executives have changed their views, but rather because they have learned some lessons after observing how their products can be abused to manipulate elections, or spread health misinformation, or harass people en masse.

Certainly, moderators sometimes make mistakes, and more transparency surrounding enforcement decisions is in order. But a broader backtracking would be an error. To protect speech at all costs and keep Twitter free of bots and spam, as Mr. Musk has said he would like to do, is almost impossible.

This quote is right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  The Marxist Oligarchs who control social media, and the vast majority of news organizations, are the individuals who manipulated the 2020 election so successfully it was stolen from President Trump..  Also they are the real cluprits guilty of spreading nonstop health misinformation, while censoring the actual truth.

The left has often channeled George Orwell and his Newspeak.   No better example is this Tweet.

The Left Wing Oligarchs have almost held a total monopoly over online political speech.   It has all been part of a master plan.  The author of this article, Media Is Hating On Musk’s Twitter Bid Because They Hate Free Thought (thefederalist.com), does a fantastic job outlining the grand scheme.

Right now, the corporate media and Big Tech are on a thought control team running interference for the left. The outlets set the narrative with biased, misleading, and fluffy coverage of Democrats. The media constantly tells Americans that Donald Trump worked with the Russians to steal the 2016 election, Kavanaugh is a rapist, Republicans are racists and domestic terrorists, and the summer of rage riots were “mostly peaceful.”

The media expect you to believe all of those lies because they said it was so. If you question them, they smear you for spreading “misinformation.” Big Tech reinforces that deliberately faulty coverage by editorializing and spinning news for its “trending topic” section on the site.

For years, Silicon Valley giants have done the control regime’s bidding. When the left felt threatened by Trump, conversations about Covid-19 origins and treatments, election integrity, Hunter Biden’s laptop, or the truth about biological sex, Big Tech companies such as Twitter gladly banned, censored, and “fact-checked” any content it deemed “misinformation.”

The only thing that disrupts this cycle is when the uncensored, unmanipulated truth about the media’s depravity is exposed. As it stands right now, any narratives that contradict the thought control regime’s wishes are obliterated from the internet.

The mask has completely slipped off the political left thanks to Elon Musk’s battle to purchase Twitter.  As Michelle Malkin so famously said “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

The answer to Durbin’s favorite question for SCOTUS nominees is in: Merrick Garland favors restricting personal freedoms

Posted: October 10, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, education, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger with Durbin in Chicago in 2019

By John Ruberry

When Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland in the final year of his presidency to replace Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court he was hailed by some as a moderate. 

Well “Moderate Merrick,” if he ever existed, is gone. 

Garland’s nomination was never acted upon by the US Senate, which was then in Republican control, and President Trump nominated Neal Gorsuch for the Scalia seat–and the Senate went on to confirm Gorsuch.

Had Garland faced the Senate he might have been asked this question from Sen. Dick Durbin, who is from Garland’s home state of Illinois, “Will you restrict the personal freedoms we enjoy as Americans or will you expand them?” Durbin posed that query to John Roberts during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings sixteen years ago and he has asked the same question, as did his predecessor, Paul Simon, during confirmation hearings for other SCOTUS nominees. 

Well we have the answer to the question that Durbin never asked Garland. Joe Biden’s attorney general favors restricting personal freedoms.

Last week, citing unnamed threats against unnamed school board members, Garland in a memorandum declared, “I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.”

In short, Garland is unleashing the FBI against parents who have spoken out against hateful and bigoted Critical Race Theory offal that is being rammed down the throats of their children. Do you want someone like Agent Petty from Ozark showing up at your front door? Clearly Garland is plotting to separate parents from their children. After all, leftists from Karl Marx on have viewed parents as an obstacle to pursuing their goal of a perfect society, which of course is a totalitarian state where the elites, who of course are so much wiser than everyone else, guide the rabble. Yes the rabble. You know, people like me and you, part of a multi-million member conglomeration similar to Ozark’s redneck Langmore clan. That’s how our leftist “betters” see us.

Last month at a Virginia gubernatorial candidate debate, the Democrat nominee, longtime Clintonista Terry McAuliffe, let loose this surprising bit of candidness, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

I believe parents should have the defining voice in school curricula—as do undoubtedly most Americans. 

In his farewell address in 1989 Ronald Reagan said, “And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” And that is as it always should be.

But in his first inauguration speech as California governor the Gipper warned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

We now have an attorney general–and a White House administration–that favors restricting freedom.

Don’t look for Durbin to call them out on it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Black Lives Matter has become O’Brian & Madred I refuse to submit

Posted: June 4, 2020 by datechguy in culture, News/opinion, personal
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“You pay me tribute, by which you become my slaves. I have, therefore, a right to order you as think proper.”

The Dey of Algiers to Capt William Bainbridge USS George Washington 1800

We have reached the point where people are being fired for stating that all lives matter (which is true) vs “black lives matter” (which is true because they are a subset of all lives)

We have also reached a point where business’ that I go to have found the need to state very emphatically that “black lives matter” out of fear that their will be looted or vandalized while not daring to state publicly “all lives matter” for fear that they will be punished for it.

To be unable to express the point that all lives matter, which is a central theme of Christianity, because of either financial property or physical retribution is oppression and to submit this is to become a slave to fear.

Furthermore more once you give in on this there will be a new demand and then a new one and then a new one, or as the Dey of Algiers told William Bainbridge when he balked at running an errand with his warship for him after delivering American tribute , a payoff to keep US ships from being attacked he said: “You pay me tribute, by which you become my slaves. I have, therefore, a right to order you as think proper.”

We are told by the left, by the media but the democrat that if we only submit we will not be hounded or fired or have our business looted or smashed.

This is unacceptable to me. What would my father who fought in world war 2. Who defended his business when thugs and/or officials demanded tribute from him over the years so I could have the life I do, and suffered for it, say if I agreed to this demand? What example will I be giving my sons to pass on to their children if I gave in?

So knowing the cost and the risks let me say this on this public platform:

I refuse to submit.

There are four fingers, there are four lights

All Lives Matter

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