St. Louis CofCC Blog

Time:

Is Brigitte Bardot Bashing Islam?

She may be better remembered as the revolutionary sex kitten of 1960s French cinema, but these days Brigitte Bardot is better known as a standard-bearer of the anti-immigrant wing of France’s political spectrum. Bardot went on trial Tuesday charged with “inciting racial hatred,” and in view of her four previous convictions on similar charges, prosecutors sought exceptionally stiff penalties of $22,000 and a two month suspended sentence.

“I’m a bit tired of trying Madame Bardot,” admitted assistant prosecutor Anne de Fonette, as she urged the court to impose “the most striking and remarkable” punishment in the case. A verdict is expected on June 3.

Then stop.

Harrisburg Patriot-News:

Ron Paul campaigns in Gettysburg

Republican presidential candidate and Gettysburg College graduate Ron Paul toured his alma mater and spoke to supporters at the Majestic Theater today.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul hasn’t fared well in the polls, but he demonstrated that he still has plenty of passionate supporters at a visit to Gettysburg today.

Paul drew a crowd of 800 vocal supporters at the Majestic Theater. He again made a pitch for limited government, more responsible government spending and an end to the war in Iraq.

And he chose the right spot. After all, Gettysburg, Penn. was the place where limited government in the American experience died on November 19, 1863, the American head of state on that day officially jettisoning limited government for unlimited and unchecked Federal power to enforce racial equality, and an imperialist war as a prologue. It’s the perfect place to bring back limited government and end another imperialist war in earnest.

KSDK-NBC-5:

Testimony Shows Spitzer Ordered Travel-Records Release On GOP Leader

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor said Friday that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer may have lied when he told investigators he wasn’t deeply involved in a plot that used a Republican rival’s travel records in an effort to embarrass him. He added that Spitzer could have been indicted had he not resigned in disgrace in a prostitution scandal.

Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said in a report that Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, recounted conversations and e-mails that indicated Spitzer directly ordered him in a profanity-laced exchange to give a reporter records regarding Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft on days he attended Republican fundraisers.

We learned from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that perjury isn’t really a crime when the underlying subject matter is trivial.  And since this deal with Spitzer was only about airplanes, a censure is definitely in order.

Stamford (Conn.) Advocate:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A New Haven middle school honors student, suspended for buying candy from a classmate, will have the discipline expunged from his record, the superintendent of schools said Wednesday night.

Michael Sheridan also was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles last month from a classmate.

(snip)

Michael Sheridan said he didn’t realize his candy purchase was against the rules, but he noticed the student selling the Skittles on Feb. 26 was being secretive.

An administrator busted Michael with the candy in his pocket. His mother says the student who sold him the Skittles out of a lunch box also was suspended. School officials say his suspension also will be expunged.

The suspensions and demotions were eventually reversed.

My bet?  The diversity industry is always complaining that school districts are picking on black and Hispanic students by suspending them more often (not that the students’ severe behavior has anything to do with it), and that Mr. Sheridan and his “pusher” are white, and that the New Haven District has a sizable non-white student body, and the two of them were suspended for a minor infraction just to even up the district’s suspension stats.

They’re called Human Rights Commissions.  Equality and liberty are diametrically opposing concepts.

Washington Times:

Artist hit for refusal on beliefs

An evangelical Christian photographer was brought before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission after she declined for religious reasons to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.

When Elaine Huguenin of Albuquerque, N.M., declined in September 2006 an e-mail request from a lesbian couple to photograph their ceremony, one of the lesbians responded by lodging a human rights complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Division, the state agency charged with enforcing state anti-discrimination laws and sending cases to the commission to be adjudicated.

Vanessa Willock sought an injunction to prohibit Mrs. Huguenin and her business, Elane Photography, from declining any future request to photograph a same-sex ceremony. The agency agreed to hear Miss Willock’s complaint, the latest case brought before tribunals in the U.S. and Canada that free-speech advocates say threaten expression across North America.

In the absence of Miss Huguenin, I can think of one photographer in New Mexico who might gladly take that job.  Set your GPS to Ruidoso.

UK Daily Mail:

Police ‘persecute the middle classes’ to hit Government crime targets

The middle classes are being persecuted so police can chase Government crime targets, the head of the Police Federation says today.

Jan Berry says targets imposed by Whitehall have distorted police priorities, encouraging officers to arrest people for minor offences instead of investigating serious crime.

‘There has been a sense of persecuting middle England in order to make the statistics look good’, she said.

(snip)

Mrs Berry says police are concentrating minor offences speeding offences and public order offences when they should take into account the quality as well as quantity of crimes.

(snip)

Sir Ronnie Flanagan found that police were too busy chasing children accused of playground fights to do their job properly and did not always act in the ‘public interest’.

His report was scathing about the way police forces are obliged to chase targets for catching a fixed number of offenders each year, regardless of their crime

Government rules mean punishing a child involved in a schoolyard scuffle carries the same weight as arresting a burglar, rapist or killer.

Ridiculous examples given by rank-and-file police include the case of a Cheshire man who was cautioned for being ‘found in possession of an egg with intent to throw’.

In Kent, a child was arrested for throwing a slice of cucumber from a tuna sandwich at another youngster.

It’s “anarchy” because the cops are too scared or neutered to go after the real thugs, and “tyranny” because they do harass people holding cucumbers and eggs, and our leviathan punishes someone who sawed off a shotgun 0.25-inch too far and didn’t pay the $5 transfer tax thereof by assassinating his wife, infant child and dog.

One acquitted, the other six got hung juries.  Not one conviction.

This is defined as a “defeat” for the Bush administration and the “War on Terror.”  What it really is is a defeat for the insane agent provocateur way the FBI pretends to conduct the domestic fight against AQ terrorism, a defeat for the notion that seven Haitian dope-dealing gang-bangers somehow have the intellect, foresight, relationships and means to blow up a large building in a city some 1,300 miles away, when none of them have probably ever left Florida in the time they have been in America.

While the real Edward Moore Kennedy didn’t become President in 1980, the only year he ran, and he lost badly to Jimmy Carter in the race for delegates in his own party’s primaries and caucuses that season, it seems as if he is running the current White House in too many ways.

Remember that the No Child Can Get Ahead (NCLB) Education Act was mostly written by Kennedy’s staff, and now it looks like President Bush has leaned on Teddy to find him the next head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).

And predictably, Kennedy found a real anti-gun goose.

With Michael Sullivan perhaps becoming an anti-gun head of the ATF, perhaps he and Julie Myers, the open-borders nominee to head ICE, will become best of friends.

The cops and the drug gangs are one and the same, and most of your cities and your people are living in squalor and in slums?  That’s Brazil today, and America in a few decades.

Boston Globe:

Senator Hillary Clinton said yesterday that if she is elected president, she intends to roll back President Bush’s expansion of executive authority, including his use of presidential signing statements to put his own interpretation on bills passed by Congress or to claim authority to disobey them entirely.

“I think you have to restore the checks and balances and the separation of powers, which means reining in the presidency,” Clinton told the Boston Globe’s editorial board.

This coming from the wife of a man who issued executive orders to implement legislation that Congress wanted no part of.   Then again, HRC probably thinks that if she becomes President, she will have a Democratic Congress, so she thinks that Congress would poodle along with anything she wants, making executive abuses unnecessary.

This is defined as a “victory” in the Federal government’s effort to combat terrorism.

Miami Herald:

Narseal Batiste and six followers intended to destroy Chicago’s Sears Tower and bomb FBI buildings to ignite a chaotic guerrilla war that would overthrow the U.S. government and pave the way for an Islamic regime, federal prosecutors said Tuesday as trial opened for the seven men.

FBI audio and video recordings show that the so-called “Liberty City Seven” hoped to use street gangs as soldiers who would stage attacks, ranging from large-scale bombings of major buildings to poisoning salt shakers in restaurants, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie said in an opening statement.

On one of the 15,000 FBI recordings, Batiste is even overheard saying he would make sure no one survived destruction of the 110-story Sears Tower because his soldiers would be ready to shoot down anyone who escaped.

“These defendants wanted to wage jihad against the United States, and they tell us so in unequivocal detail,” Gregorie told jurors. “They say ‘the war has to be fought here. And it can’t be just a bombing. It’s got to be chaos.’”

Batiste attorney Ana M. Jhones countered that the purported plot was driven mainly by two paid FBI informants, including one known as Mohammed who posed as a representative of al-Qaida. She said Batiste’s group was coerced into going along with the violent plan by “this great con man,” who was paid about $80,000 by the FBI.

So, this Afro-Haitian street drug gang, which couldn’t topple a wet mop to save their lives, and one whose members better belong in state prison or in Haiti, had intentions of doing all these dastardly deeds, and they mouthed off about doing so to an FBI informant. I have intentions of becoming a multi-billionaire and being elected President of the United States, and I might get myself drunk and say these things to someone who is an FBI informant. Get the picture?

Meanwhile, both southern and northern borders remain virtually wide open.

Anything that makes Bob Lowery look bad can be nothing but good.  It looks like the people of Florissant is finally beginning to recognize what a creep and cretin he is — We knew that all long.

For those of you “Friends of Florissant” who are going to collect signatures to have the state audit the city within the city limits of Florissant, be careful:  You’re dealing with a two-faced, megalomaniac who once promised that nobody would be allowed to carry concealed guns in his town in spite of state law, even as he prodded his wife to do the same.  Don’t be surprised if Lowery sends his goons cops to torture you.

The staff of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, has been using the New York State Police as their personal voyeurs against the State Senate Majority Leader, Republican Joseph Bruno.

Who said this? A conservative blogger? Rush Limbaugh? Someone in President Bush’s U.S. Justice Department? Surely it has to be one of those nasty Republicans out to bash in Spitzer’s knees.

Answer: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.

And as the New York Times implies, if the staff did it, it probably means the Governor knew about it and did countenance it.

If the title of this post and the subject matter gives you a sense of deja vu, you’re correct.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) criticized U.S. Attorney Johnny Suttonfong during yesterday’s Senate hearings of his miscarriage of justice, and wants their sentences to be commuted.

Schlafly:

P-16 is a rather new term meaning that Big Brother government is now supervising the next generation from pre-school through the 16th year of education (i.e., college graduation). We used to think K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) was the scope of government schools.

It appears that a major purpose of this audacious legislation is the establishment of a “P-16 education longitudinal data system.” The plan is to enter all children into the government’s database while they are in pre-school and then track them all the way through college.

States will be induced (bribed) to cooperate in this expansion of federal power by grants from a $100,000,000 pot of federal money in only the first year.

The P-16 data system will have a “unique identifier” for each child that will be retained from pre-school through college. The database will include, among other things, “information about the points at which students exit, transfer in, transfer out, drop out, or complete P-16 programs,” “test records,” “information on courses completed and grades earned,” and how students “transitioned” from high school to college.

If the typical four years of undergraduate school is now a de facto Federal educational responsibility that future college students should be tracked to an individual, then it should be free of charge, and graduates shouldn’t leave school and start a career with a six-figure debt load. Do you think that’s part of this bill? I doubt it.

Agence France Presse:

More than 1,300 shop owners and business managers have been arrested in Zimbabwe as part of a crackdown on firms accused of flouting government-imposed price controls, police said Monday.

Most of the 1,328 bosses had been fined but the number also includes 33 company executives arrested since Friday who will now appear in court, said police spokesman Chief Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka.

(snip)

“We will continue to arrest anyone who will defy the government imposed controls on basic food comodities. We will not stop until there is order in the business community,” he said.

On Saturday opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called the price controls and subsequent crackdown “crooked economics” and “an election gimmick” ahead of parliamentary and presidential polls due to be held next year.

That’s what they are.  But if they don’t work for the purpose, Mugabe can resort to what he has done in the past to steal elections — murder and terrorize his political opposition, and do the same to likely voters for the opposition.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is trying to redefine ammunition as such an unsafe hazard, that it would impose new regulation on its sale, storage and transport that would virtually make it impossible to buy legal ammunition.

This painted mural is on the south-facing side of the four-family flat on 1806-8 South 13th Street, in the Soulard Neighborhood. It faces the I-44/I-55 junction, and can be seen easily by the many vehicles per day that uses that interchange, and by cars on Gravois and Tucker, which are heavily traveled city boulevards in the area.

Today, a planning and zoning committee attached to St. Louis City Hall, the Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority, ordered to mural removed. Lawyers for MEDAC (Missouri Eminent Domain Abuse Coalition) promise to take the matter to court to keep the mural up.

It is very likely the the case that this is the same LCRA that allowed homeowners on Loughborough Avenue and South Grand Avenue south of Carondelet Park to be run out of their houses in order to create the Loughborough Commons Strip Mall. Therefore, this commission might not like this mural for its message, not for its size.

Cybercast News Service:

Also on Monday, the Justices overturned a lower-court ruling that found a public school in Juneau violated Joe Frederick’s First Amendment rights by forcing him to remove the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” sign - even though he was not standing on school property.

The school suspended Frederick for the prank.

The Justices decided that schools have leeway to fight anything deemed to be a pro-drug message, since that is part of their mission.

Breitbart/AP:

The case drew heavy hitters on Frederick’s side including the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Center for Law and Justice.

Some religious groups also backed Frederick, putting President George W. Bush’s conservative base at odds with the administration, which sided with the school.

Previous coverage of the “Bong Hits for Jesus” case by this blogmeister on another medium may be found here and here.

This ruling is potentially dangerous because now, public school districts can suspend their students for any political activity outside of school if the activity does not square with the “mission” of the school. The Court’s ruling was based around the “mission of the school” edict, not the “improper time, place and manner” edict; if the Court would have used the latter as legal reasoning in a decision for the Juneau district and against Mr. Frederick, it would not have these far-reaching consequences.

Because nearly all public schools have a “mission” of racial diversity and equality, high school students who become involved publicly in decidedly anti-egalitarian political organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens, could be suspended for violating the school’s “mission.” That this would have a chilling effect on the First Amendment, something which the U.S. Supreme Court usually tries to prevent studiously.

The ACLJ, considered a conservative analogue to the ACLU, and various conservative Christian (”religious right”) groups, joined Mr. Frederick’s side, because they know that public schools will use their “mission” of religious “tolerance” and non-establishment to punish Christian students, even if their Christianity is only expressed outside of school.

World Net Daily:

The city of Atlanta has created a Constitution-free zone on public property for this weekend’s 2007 Atlanta Pride festival, according to pastors and lawyers who have been trying to secure an assurance that Christians’ free-speech rights will be protected.

“The Constitution does not apply in Piedmont Park this weekend,” attorney Joel Thornton, of the International Human Rights Group told WND.

“The city of Atlanta, whose attorneys I have been negotiating with for the past six months, has just sent me a letter saying that they ‘will not be able to offer you or your client[s] any assistance in this matter,’” he said.

The rest of the article details the abuse that Christian protesters at last year’s Atlanta Pride festival took at the hands of the milieu of tolerance-obsessed pridesters and the Atlanta police.

When the Federal judiciary will intervene and force Atlanta and other cities to accommodate protesters to homosexual pride events and ensure their safety, as the same judiciary did with the Selma-to-Montomgery voting rights march in 1965, is unknown.

WRAL-TV Raleigh via Michelle Malkin:

Defense attorneys for three Duke lacrosse players are expected to file a motion Friday asking a judge to enter criminal sanctions against disbarred Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong.

Nifong was disbarred June 16 by a State Bar disciplinary committee for his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. The committee unanimously agreed with the Bar on 27 of 32 charges, including the most serious allegations — that Nifong’s actions involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.”

Three men — Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty — were charged with rape, sexual assault and kidnapping in connection to an off-campus party in March 2006. All charges against the three were dropped in April 2007 after the state Attorney General Roy Cooper declared them innocent.

If the motion is granted, Nifong could face a possible fine and/or jail time.

In the absence of criminal charges against Mr. Nifong, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he could parlay his lingering popularity with Durham’s black community and political base, and exploit the good will they have for him, into winning public office of some sort. A record that includes criminal contempt of court might legally preclude that.