Tag Archives: law

Crimethink?

A couple weeks ago I heard about 11 Christians who were arrested while peacefully
protesting Outfest in Philadelphia. I waited for a few MSM outlets to report it,
but they didn’t. Here are two WorldNetDaily articles about it. I wish I had some
less obviously conservative sources. Any suggestions?

11 Christians arrested at homosexual event
Demonstrators spend 21 hours in jail, charged with felonies

Homosexuals planned Christian harassment
‘OutFest’ organizers announced efforts to block protesters now facing prison

More about crimethink:

Criminalized thoughts?
By Amy Doolittle, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Jokes about political correctness have been around for more than a decade, and many Americans now take for granted conflicts over manger scenes on public property and Christmas carols in public schools. Hostility toward religious expression is no joke, however, to advocates concerned that “hate crimes” laws could be used to rob Americans of religious freedom, which they say is already the case in some parts of Europe.

The Natural Function of Marriage

Natural functions and marriage

Over at MarriageDebate.com Maggie Gallagher has been dealing with one of the standard arguments for "gay marriage", that there can't be an essential connection between marriage and procreation because after all 70-year-old women are allowed to marry even though they can't have babies. Miss Gallagher handles the question very well, but there's a lurking point worth bringing out.

This was a hot topic in a previous debate in my comments. Jim Kalb at Turnabout answers this common argument.

Oil For Food Means Investigation for Money

I’m glad some effort
is being made to keep the U.N. accountable.

Congress May Block UN Budget Over Oil-for-Food Probe

More than 100 members of Congress will try to block some United States funding of the United Nations unless U.S. officials are allowed to begin an open and complete investigation into a U.N. humanitarian program in pre-war Iraq — sooner rather than later.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) noted Monday that it has been more than a year since the public first learned of fraud and abuse allegations directed at the U.N.’s oil-for-food program in Iraq. Flake and his colleagues are unhappy with the U.N.’s apparent lack of progress in its investigation of those charges. Now they are actively promoting existing legislation that would punish what they see as willful inaction.

What Ever Happened to Fair Use?

This really bugs me. Once I have recorded material in my posession, I should be permitted to do whatever I please with it, provided I don’t violate any copyrights or harm someone (Other reasonable restraints of 1st amendment rights might also apply.).

From Public
Knowledge
:

H.R. 4586 The Family Movie Act

The provisions were included in H.R. 4077 as passed by the House. The original House version of this bill provided an affirmative right for those who used technology to skip objectionable material, such as profanity, violence, or other adult material, in the audio / video works that they legally purchased. This is a right that most believe manufacturers of technology and consumers already have�regardless of H.R. 4077. The entertainment community has hijacked this provision and turned it against consumers and the tech community. Now, the affirmative right to watch and skip parts of the content that a consumer has legally obtained only exists if certain conditions are met: no commercial or promotional ads may be skipped. Additionally, technology manufacturers must provide a notice at the beginning each showing stating that �the motion picture is altered from the performance intended by the director or copyright holder of the motion picture.� This sets the functionality of the everyday VCR and TiVo on its head.

(Thanks, Jollyblogger)

Strange Bedfellows

People are going to think my life (or at least my blog) revolves around Theomorph,
but I just can’t wait to hear what he has to say about this.

Atheist supports
Ratzinger crusade against secularism

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has
enlisted in his defence of Christianity against secular Europe, the German philosopher
Jürgen Habermas [a self-described “methodical atheist”], who said
in an essay published this month that “Christianity, and nothing else, is the
ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks
of Western civilisation”.