Monthly Archives: June 2017

How Carmen Ejogo Helped Build a Personal Apocalypse in It Comes at Night – Den of Geek US

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For an ensemble piece about family and the pains it can endure, Carmen Ejogos Sarah is more than just the mother of an endangered den in It Comes at Night; shes the key that makes these people blood relatives. So she has the most to lose whenever any of it spills.

When the film begins, an unseen apocalypse has been muddled through for an unknown amount of time, but its certainly taken its toll on Ejogo and everyone left that matters in her life. Secluded and surviving in her presumable childhood home, a house deep in the woods, the picture opens on Sarah saying goodbye to her father Bud (David Pendleton), a man suffering from a mysterious plague that has caused blisters to crop up on his face and body. His grandson Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and son-in-law Paul (Joel Edgerton) reluctantly take the former patriarch out into the woods and euthanize him in his grave.

For Sarah, it is all downhill from there as an enigmatic family with young parents (Christopher Abbott and Riley Keough) ends up staying with them. She isnt sure if she can trust them or anyone else who isnt kin these days. But with already one loss in the family, she isnt eager to see another member vanish.

When Den of Geek sat down with Ejogo earlier this week, the foreboding nihilism of this film hung heavy around the conversation. After all, director Trey Edward Shults cited the medieval painting The Triumph of Death as one key inspiration, and the loss of a parent as the other. Ejogo is aware of the interpersonal horror in this epic worldand how unique of an opportunity it was for her and her co-stars to build that world simply through their acting choices.

In our conversation with the Selma actress, we veer from discussing how she, Edgerton, and Harrison had the freedom to conjure this reality and emotion, as well as what it means to her and our seemingly darkening world. But there is light too since we also discuss whether we might see Ejogo again in a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them sequel!

So youve been in horror movies before, but none quite like this. Could you talk about what you mightve expected the script to be and how you reacted upon reading it?

So I got the script, thought it was really interesting, but didnt have a sense of who the director was given he had only made one film. So I went to that film, which is called Krisha. It was immediately obvious to me that this was somebody who had a very clear sense of self as a director and a filmmaker, and whatever he did next would be potentially really powerful. So I guess it was a combination of script and seeing his material that made me sign on, and then it just got better and better. I was like, Who else is probably going to be cast? Hearing about how he was going to approach lighting in the movie and the very unorthodox attempt at bringing on a sound supervisor who was going to be pretty radical in some ways.

So there were so many reasons to be excited. Because the things that are the most hard to come by in this business are original ideas that are then executed the way they are intended, which is what I think was the promise of this from the start.

How much of yourself do you look for in the subject? Because despite being such an apocalyptic setting, the film is dealing with very primordial concerns about mortality and losses within ones family.

Good question. I think often as an actor you read material and you dont even realize fully why youre responding until maybe afterwards, maybe never. That was probably the case for me. I know it was the case for Kelvin. I didnt know until today that he had gone through in some form or another Hurricane Katrina.

So he lost a home. He was only 12-years-old at the time, but thats the kind of memory that I imagine stays with you the rest of your life. So its bound to inform the kind of professional choices you make too. So I dont doubt that there are experiences I had, if I thought about it, that would keep me interested and pull me back to this sort of genre world, and this sort of darker, nihilistic kind of space we inhabit.

Did you call on anything specifically to find Sarah?

I think the one thing I drew about regularly was the relationship with my own son whos 15-years-old, who is at a very close age. I would argue that Kelvin plays it like a 15-year-old a lot of the time, in terms of his innocence, curiosity, his sexual desires for Rileys character, and so on and so forth. Its all just emerging. Its all just beginning to blossom in him.

Trey is apparently heavily influenced by Pieter Breughel paintings, specifically about medieval plagues. Obviously, theres a painting in your characters house in the movie. Did you study the paintings of Brueghel and did you get to talk to Trey about why your characters would keep this painting?

We definitely talked about why we keep the painting for sure. One of the things that became a fixation for all of us was timeline. Even if we didnt know what the backstory was entirely, we did need to have a feel for if this disease is something thats been around for six months or two years. How long does it take to die from it? How long has Bud have it before he gets the blisters? You know, these things kind of things did need to be answered in order to move forward in a way that was consistent.

So in that exploration in putting questions back and forth to Trey, it became clear he had imagined that this had been the house Bud stayed in as the family moved out and grew up, or moved to after he split with his wife or his wife died. But then there are other things he had no intention of letting us know or understand fully. He wanted to keep us in the dark. I think to fester a certain amount of paranoia among ourselves. There are things Riley knew about me that I didnt know about her and all kinds of shady stuff he was encouraging. [Laughs]

Were you, Joel, and Kelvin able to come up with your own backstory for what family life was like before all hell broke loose?

I dont know if we were ever completely on the same page to be honest. I know we all did it as part of our process. I had several dinners with Trey to talk about what I thought might make sense in terms of profession. Is this a rich family or a poor family? You know, where do we land on that stuff? So we definitely got into that. But as I said, some of the things would really live within ourselves. So if it makes sense to us, given the kind of family performance we were hoping for.

Who do you think Sarah was before the plague then?

So I think Sarah was a bit of a daddys girl, but tomboyish and resourceful, and may have learned to use guns by observing her dad, who I think its kind of clear, not really, but hes probably come home from the military or Vietnam and established the house. That maybe there is something a little PTSD about him, which may be why he is so secluded in this forest in this house. And thats also why I have an aptitude for putting together the water system or doing ABC. I can use guns it seems. Its not a big thing for me to get readythere are parts of the movie where Im using guns. So that was certainly something we explored.

But you know, I could know nothing about my character, and there still would have been enough with the paranoia.

Out of curiosity, did you speak with Chris or Riley about their own backstories, or were you as actors kept apart to build that suspicion of each other?

Yeah, I knew and I know nothing about Chris and Rileys characters. Other than what you see on the screen? Nothing else. I remember there was some kind of strange pitting us against each other by Trey, between myself and Riley, so thered be a degree of jealousy festering as well. For me, the mother of my son who clearly has thing for this other girl, and I was also jealous of their marriage, because mine is very stale and a little frigid. So these are things that arent on the page.

Theres nothing in the stage direction or dialogue that suggests thats what were playing, but there are layers and colors that lend themselves to this sort of movie, that make it very much a character-driven piece.

This movie can at times be bleakly nihilist. It goes back to Breughel and The Triumph of Death. What do you think the appeal is in such grimness from our art or even entertainment?

I think theres something a little nihilistic in every one of us. That theres this awful dance with mortality that we have to play every single day of our lives, which means theres a fascination with death and death in all the forms it can take. Whether its self-inflicted, whether its apocalyptic events, whether its pandemics, whatever it might look like. To have a grasp of it in a safe arena like a cinema screen is a kind of experience that most of us are willing to go through, because we will understand that it may only be around the corner in real-life.

On a somewhat lighter topic, I just recently rewatched Fantastic Beasts again. Have you heard whispers yet about Seraphina Picquery returning for another wizarding adventure?

Write all requests to @jk_rowling on Twitter and hopefully shell get the message that Seraphina cannot be done without for number two! [Laughs]

When I last saw it, it was actually the day before the U.S. election in November. JK Rowlings vision of nationalist forces on the rise again seems more timely than ever.

You know, Ive made a few filmsthis is very interesting, because I came up earlier with the theory about Trey, who wrote [It Comes at Night] three years ago about something completely different. It wasnt an attempt at being political or socially relevant. It was a personal film about his father dying of cancer. And yet, somehow, his feelers were out enough to tap into the zeitgeist. Ive had that experience, when I think about it, three times. So maybe its as much to do with me as it is to do with Trey in how I found myself in repeated pieces of material that really resonate in the here and now.

Certainly, which you just mentioned Selma and also this. I dont think Trey had any intention when he wrote this to tap into whats happening right now. But if youre following the newsreal newsyou saw this coming. Its not that it happened yesterday and suddenly a movie happened to coincide [with it]. It feels like its in-tune or attuned. This has been cyclical for as long as I can remember. It wouldnt surprise me around the time that Trey was writing the piece three years ago that he was just getting a feel in the air for something that was coming. Interesting that as an audience, we get to watch it right smack back in the middle of that time that he may have been sensitive to three years ago.

It feels like art will be reacting quite a bit now.

Yeah, for sure.

Thank you for doing this.

Thank you, it was great to see you.

It Comes at Night is in theaters now.

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How Carmen Ejogo Helped Build a Personal Apocalypse in It Comes at Night - Den of Geek US

China’s Latest Book Ban: An Award-Winning Novel About the Deadly Consequences of Land Reform – The News Lens International (press release)

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The Chinese government has recently banned the saleof an award-winning novel about land reform in the Cultural Revolution era. However, a digital copy was circulated online and won readers applause.

The Chinese government has recently banned the sale of an award-winning novel, Soft Burial, written by Fang Fang about Chinas land reform in the 1950s.

The novel tells the story of an old woman who suffered from amnesia after she witnessed her husbands entire family driven to take their own lives during the Chinese Communist Party's nationwide land reform, which aimed to eliminate the landlord class not long after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. The buried memories haunt the woman throughout her life, and her son decides to investigate her past.

The suicides tied to the land reform are not an invention of the novel. In addition to public executions, the class struggle resulted in tens of thousands of landlords and better-off peasants killing themselves. There are no official records of exactly how many were killed during the land reform, but estimates by Chinese and U.S. scholars have ranged between 1 and 5 million.

Soft Burial, originally published in 2016, won the 2016 Luyao Literature Award, a tribute to its historical realism. Fang Fang explained the title of the novel in her postscript:

When people die and their bodies are buried under the earth without the protection of coffins, this burial is called a soft burial; as for the living, when they seal off their past, cut off their roots, reject their memories, either consciously or subconsciously, their lives are soft buried in time. Once they are in a soft burial, their lives will be disconnected in amnesia.

Ahead of the announcement of the Luyao award on April 23, a literature criticism seminar organized by the Worker, Peasant and Soldier reading group in the city of Wuhan concluded that the novel is a poisonous plant:

An attack on the land reform aimed at resurrecting the spirits of the landlord class and hence a poisonous plant against communism.

Similar gatherings that are critical of the novel have also taken place in other cities, including Zhengzhou.

Former Chinese Communist Party leaders have also published their rebukes of the novel. A former head of the Central Organization Department Zhang Quanjing wrote a political struggle-style piece denouncing it, titled Soft Burial is a reflection of ideological class struggle in the current terrain:

Fang Fangs novel ignores the essence of land reform and pours dirty water onto the campaign. This is a distortion of history, a typical expression of historical nihilism in the literature and art fields, a concrete example of the struggle between peaceful transformation and anti peaceful transformation [of the political system].

Lieutenant General of the Peoples Liberation Army Zhao Keming extended the criticism to a number of contemporary novels:

Though historical nihilism has been criticized by the party and the people, it has been spreading in different forms. In addition to the poisonous historical research, university lectures and public forums, it has been very rampant in the field of literature. Soft Burial is just the latest published novel to explicitly attempt to vindicate the landlord class and criticize the land reform. Before its publication, novels such as To Live, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, White Deer Plain, The Ancient Ship, etc., have not been criticized in mainstream media. The writers have not been denounced by their leaders in their work or party unit. Some of them have even reached high positions, received praise from fans and followers. Objectively, this has given birth to a trend that sees subverting history in writing is the ticket to success and a bright future.

The wave of criticism culminated in the novel's ban.

However, a digital copy was circulated online and won readers applause. Many found the novel inspiring and wrote their commentaries on social media. Quite a number complained that their comments were reported, deleted and soft buried. Below are a number of comments still circulating on the popular platform Weibo.

A reader from Chengdu said:

The story is well toldunrelated characters come together in the end. But I really don't like the ending, why not dig into the truth, why let his parents history remain buried? Such a coward and lack of filial piety. Maybe this is the writer's intention, to let the readers feel the sense of soft burial because it is a reality that we are facing in our lives.

A reader from Shandong reflected:

No incident has absolute truth. What matters is not the truth, but our attitude towards truth. Perhaps we can never evaluate the past in a fair manner, but we have the right to question it. A country should be open to confronting its history, or the historical baggage would become too heavy to bear.

And Fang Fangs novel inspired one Anhui reader to write about his family history:

My great-grandfather was a servant working for a landlord. Because he was smart and diligent, he opened his own woodwork and dyeing workshops, bought land and became rich. He was a rich peasant but not a landlord. But he was labelled as a landlord during the land reform because he was at odds with those who led the reform. When they calculated his property, they included the land owned by my great-grandmother's family. Her family was a landlord but the land was owned by her brothers and had nothing to do with him. It was an excuse for revenge. I don't know how my great-grandfather died, but my great-grandmother was starved to death in her own bed.

The father of my great-grandfather was a literati in the late Qing Dynasty. He was a teacher his whole life and left behind loads of books. They were all burned into ashes during the land reform.

My grandfather was studying medicine and agriculture in high school in town. He was getting ready to go to Fudan University. But he was labelled as the son of landlord and had to return to the village and became a farmer. He taught briefly in the 1960s but because of that, he was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

My family background is that of peasants and literati. Because of the land reform, all the books were burned, land confiscated. There was no other exit for them. They had suffered for many decades and shed tears and blood and they could not even cry and tell their stories aloud!

The News Lens has been authorized to publish this article from Global Voices, a border-less, largely volunteer community of more than 1400 writers, analysts, online media experts, and translators.

TNL Editor: Edward White

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China's Latest Book Ban: An Award-Winning Novel About the Deadly Consequences of Land Reform - The News Lens International (press release)

Simply affirming someone’s presence a great gift – Times Record News

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The Rev. Father Peter Kavanaugh, St. Benedict Orthodox Church, Wichita Falls 12:02 a.m. CT June 10, 2017

Father Peter Kavanaugh is the priest at St. Benedict Orthodox Church in Wichita Falls.(Photo: Times Record News file)Buy Photo

I will never forget Susan. She was sitting in her wheelchair when I first met her. Her hair was disheveled. The expression on her face was confused. She looked into the distance with a vacant stare and waved her hand to and fro, senselessly. She did not recognize her family when they came to visit her. She did not remember the parents that raised her, the meal on which she dined that morning, nor the words spoken to her by the nurse only minutes before. Here, in the assisted living home, Susan spent the last several years of her life a frail, quiet, and for the most part, forgotten person.

The final season in life is full of profound changes. In some instances, this is a time of joy, forgiveness, revelation, and wisdom. When given the opportunity to reflect and share ones legacy with younger generations, some discover new perspectives on life, and may, for the first time, become concerned with the eternal and lasting. Unfortunately, old age can also be full of losses. Many suffer terribly when their bodies and minds slowly stop working. Old age may involve a loss of autonomy, self-respect, or even purpose. Susans situation is in no way unusual. Alzheimers and memory-loss often give rise to the most challenging situations in aging. In the light of these losses and changes, the Church cant be silent. We Christians have to look deep within our scriptures and traditions to find ways to reach out to our parents and family who are struggling with late old age.

One afternoon, I decided to spend a few minutes with Susan. She said hello and then became silent. I chatted about nothing in particular at first, and soon felt awkward and uncomfortable. So, not knowing what to do, I arose to exit. Immediately, Susan turned to me, and with words steeped in emotion and loneliness, asked me: Where are you going? I was taken aback thoroughly and sat down once again. This time I merely took her hand into mine and gazed into her eyes.

From there on, whenever I entered a room with Susan in it, her face lit up with joy and eagerness. She could not remember me on a cognitive level, but she certainly did on an entirely different level. I learned an invaluable lesson: how to be comfortable with silence, and to simply be present. In this way, we shared conversations through mere eye contact, and formed one of the most profound relationships I have known. I will never forget the brightness, transparency, and life of her eyes. There is no room for doubt, that underneath the disease, underneath the quiet, vacant, and wrinkled face, there was a living person needing love.

What does it mean to be a person? The world has all kinds of answers to this. Today, we tend to define ourselves by our accomplishments, possessions, or our social status, and on and on. But old age forces us to reexamine. A gerontologist named Glen Weaver writes, The cruelest irony of contemporary culture may be that many who thought they had found their identities in the individualism, rationalism, romanticism, and materialism of western modernity now find these foundations crumbling beneath them. While I worked as a chaplain in a memory-care center, I often heard family saying, She is no longer the same person, The spouse I married has disappeared, or We lost him years before he died. What do we say?

Perhaps the churchs greatest gift to us when faced with these trials is its affirmation of personhood. We are not, in fact, defined by our accomplishments or even our memories. Each and every one of us is a unique person made in the image of God, with a body and a soul. Paul writes, Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). In Christ, we trust that no matter how much the body fades and no matter what we lose in this life, the core of who we are is eternal and infinitely valuable.

What does happen to a person when they seem swallowed up by a disease? Christians have asked this for hundreds of years. In fact, in the sixth century, a church leader in Jerusalem, known as John the Solitary, also faced the question. He suggested that we can think of the soul as a musician, and the body as the musicians instrument. When a cord in a zither, or a pipe in an organ is damaged, it is not the finger that plays upon them that is at fault, but rather it is the artistic activity of the finger that is impeded from sounding forth by the zithers cords or the organs pipe because the defects are in the instrument. In other words, when the body stops working correctly, the soul remains alive and present, but is unable to communicate effectively.

No matter what happens to a person, the person is still alive and still with us. We can all help our parents, or siblings, or loved ones by simply loving them as they are. This is what Susan taught me. We didnt need to talk. We didnt need to do anything. All she yearned for was to be seen and loved as a person. All I needed to do was to slow down and be present with her. Ill never forget Susan, and I look forward to getting to know her better in the life to come.

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Simply affirming someone's presence a great gift - Times Record News

Leeds United footballer and model’s humanist wedding ruling to be appealed – Yorkshire Evening Post

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Model Laura Lacole and Leeds United's Eunan O'Kane outside the High Court in Belfast. PIC: PA

09:04 Saturday 10 June 2017

A court ruling granting a Leeds United footballer and his model fiancee legal recognition of their looming humanist wedding is set to be appealed.

Laura Lacole and Whites midfielder Eunan OKane mounted a successful challenge against the authorities in Northern Ireland for refusing to recognise their June 22 ceremony in law.

But Fridays decision in Belfast High Court is now to be appealed by Northern Irelands Attorney General John Larkin QC.

Ms Lacole and Mr OKane launched the legal bid after learning their planned humanist wedding in Ballymenas luxury Galgorm Resort would not be recognised in law. For such recognition, they were told, they would need to have a separate civil ceremony.

The couple took the case against the General Register Office for Northern Ireland and Stormonts Department of Finance.

Mr Larkin also participated in the hearing because it touched on devolved Stormont legislation.

On Friday, Judge Mr Justice Colton quashed the GROs refusal to grant legal recognition, finding such a position breached the couples rights under the European Convention.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, which is supporting the couples case, said his was disappointed by the appeal.

This is a very disappointing development given the comprehensive nature of the judgment and is deeply upsetting for both Laura and Eunan, who were so happy to have had certainty in relation to their wedding later this month, he said.

Humanism is a non-religious belief system that rejects the concepts of a higher deity or afterlife.

Humanists adhere to a scientific view of the world and believe humans steer their own destiny.

Humanist marriages are already legally recognised in Scotland, but not in England and Wales. They are also recognised in the Republic of Ireland.

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Leeds United footballer and model's humanist wedding ruling to be appealed - Yorkshire Evening Post

Are Far Right ‘Free Speech’ Rallies Breeding Terrorism? – The National Memo (blog)

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Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

The disturbing ramblings uttered by Jeremy Joseph Christian as he entered thecourtroomMay 27 drew on a horrifying trend in America: Rallying behind the right to so-called free speech, both figuratively and literally, to justify white supremacy and its violent acts.

Get out if you dont like free speech, Christian said. You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism. You hear me? Die.

Christian, 35, was arraigned on charges of aggravated murderof Ricky John Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23. Both men were stabbed and killed by Christian on a Portland light-rail train when they tried todefendtwo young women Christian was harrasing with anti-Muslim slurs. Christian was charged with the attempted murder of athird stabbing victim, Micah Fletcher, 21, who survived and was present in the courtroom.

If there is a central theme to Christians ravings leading up to the attack, its his tendency to articulate a volatile synthesis of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and white supremacy,Jack Jenkins, a senior religion reporter at ThinkProgress, reportedthe day after Christians first court appearance.

In addition to calling for violence against Muslims on his Facebook page, Jenkins added, Christian reportedly attended a free speech rally in April, where he shouted the n-word at protesters and offered up Nazi salutes.

According to Willamette Week, Christian arrived at an April 29 free speech march in Southeast Portland wearing a Revolutionary War flag as a cape. He carried a baseball bat. He threw Nazi salutes and shouted racial slurs in a Burger King parking lot. Twice, left-wing demonstrators grew so infuriated with his antics that Portland police officers formed a barrier to shield him.

Even the alt-right marchers were divided on Christians behavior.

Some of them, leather-clad bikers, told him to shut up and tried to kick him out of the rally, added Willamette Week reporterCorey Pein. Others seemed fine with him expressing himself: Unpopular speech was the point of the event.

Eight days after the Portland murders, another free speech rally took place in the City of Roses, where14 were arrested. Similar right-wing free speech rallies have been popping up in other blue-state cities fromBerkeleyto Boston, while aWashington D.C.version is planned for late June.

In addressing President Trumps overwhelmingprioritization of fightingIslamic extremism, Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, announced at a Senate Intelligencehearing on May 11, Homegrown violent extremists remain the most frequent and unpredictable terrorist threat to the United States.

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her@alexpreditor.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

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Are Far Right 'Free Speech' Rallies Breeding Terrorism? - The National Memo (blog)

Hate speech is the cost of free speech – Baltimore Sun

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As students of the University of Maryland College Park, we were saddened to hear of Lt. Richard W. Collins III's death. A 23-year-old student at Bowie State University, Lt. Collins was visiting a friend in College Park when Sean Urbanski, a UMD student, allegedly stabbed him at a bus stop. An investigation into Mr. Urbanski's online presence reportedly revealed he was a member of a white supremacist Facebook group, casting the stabbing in a racist light; Lt. Collins was black, and Mr. Urbanski is white. Authorities are investigating the death as a potential hate crime, and the university has taken a few unsettling steps in the interim.

Wallace Loh, president of the University of Maryland College Park, commissioned a bias-response team to address instances of hateful speech and actions. He also pumped $100,000 into the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and promised a task force for review of university policies related to hate speech and hate crimes. Mr. Loh said he hopes to "engage the campus on issues at the intersection of free speech and hate speech," which is cause for worry.

Driven in part by their restive student bodies, many college administrations around the country have introduced speech codes to their universities. While UMD and Mr. Loh have long refused them, Mr. Loh's solutions could nevertheless end up restricting free speech on campus.

The constitution doesn't distinguish between hate speech and free speech. And while we would hope that students would self-censor their comments for decency's sake, to mandate it at the administrative level endangers freedom of expression. Hate speech is broadly defined as an attack on a person based on their innate characteristics, which could be interpreted to include speech that merely offends. Where do we draw the line? Once one strain of speech loses its protection, other types will follow. Hate speech is the cost of free speech, and that cost is unavoidable.

Yet many student bodies fail to grasp this, demanding swift and bold action from their respective administrations following examples of hate speech. Ithaca College Pesident Tom Rochon and Yale University lecturer Erika Christakis were both forced to resign amid protests from students who determined the educators' approach to hate and bias did not adequately conform to their own. College administrators, when faced with accusations of being lax in standards of equality, are effectively held at gunpoint in the court of public opinion, which could explain Mr. Loh's response to this putative hate crime.

Mr. Loh's plan for the bias response team is worrisome. Similar teams at a number of U.S. universities (there are more than 100) investigate offenses that run an absurdly broad gamut. (In February of last year, for example, a University of Michigan hall director reported to that school's bias team the existence of a snow penis on the grounds.) These bias response teams largely operate in the shadows with little accountability for silencing expression, and they encourage every student around them to become an individual arbiter of justice. There is little legal standard for hate speech, and in that vacuum, students will themselves decide what does and does not offend, and report their findings. In practice, this leads to a misuse of campus resources on bogus, internecine hate-speech investigations and fosters a culture of mistrust.

Distinguishing between words that are truly threatening such as fighting words, which can directly lead to violence and are not protected by the First Amendment and constitutionally-protected free speech is vital. But creating new administrative bodies to regulate self-expression, however odious, endangers those who contribute productively to what Mr. Loh called a "marketplace of ideas."

Banning so-called hate speech would only suppress public expression of hateful views. Doing so at UMD, while likely to draw support from the student body, would do nothing to address the root of the problem. Instead of stifling those views, they should be debated. Given the opportunity to stand on their own false merits, they will collapse no prohibition required.

Hate speech and hate crimes are a pertinent issue to college students and the country, but our reaction to hate crimes and bias shows our strength of character as we combat these problems with compassion and reason. Knee-jerk reactions and forced self-censoring systems are no way to address hate. Civil discussion is.

James Whitlow (jwhitlow1994@gmail.com) and Tom Hart (tom.c.hart95@gmail.com) are students at the University of Maryland.

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Hate speech is the cost of free speech - Baltimore Sun

The Right Way to Protect Free Speech on Campus – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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The Right Way to Protect Free Speech on Campus
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
In my inaugural address as the new president of Middlebury College a year and a half ago, I spoke of my hope to create a robust public square on campus. I said that I wanted Middlebury to be a community whose members engage in reasoned, thoughtful ...

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The Right Way to Protect Free Speech on Campus - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Editorial: Free speech vs. decency in Portland – Jackson Newspapers – Jackson County Newspapers

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"Our city is in mourning, our community's anger is real, and the timing and subject of these events can only exacerbate an already difficult situation." So said Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler in explaining why - in the aftermath of the deaths of two good Samaritans - controversial rallies planned for this month shouldn't be held. Wheeler's concern for the raw feelings of his community is understandable, but he is completely off-base in trying to block the planned rallies and dangerously wrong in his reading of the U.S. Constitution.

Wheeler unsuccessfully appealed to federal officials to revoke a permit granted to a group to hold a pro-Trump, free-speech rally Sunday at a downtown federal government plaza. His request that a permit not be granted for a June 10 anti-Muslim rally was made moot when organizers opted Wednesday to cancel the rally and encourage participants to attend a similar event in Seattle instead. The mayor characterized the rallies as "alt-right" and said "hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment."

Actually, as was pointed out by legal scholars and free-speech advocates, Wheeler is wrong about how constitutional protections of free speech have been interpreted by the courts. Speech, no matter how vile or distasteful, is protected in the United States. It can be banned only if it meets the legal threshold of threat or harassment.

It would have been far better for Wheeler to have followed the advice of the Oregon ACLU and reached out to rally organizers to explain why it might be in the community's best interest to postpone the events. Not only are public passions still aroused about the deaths of two men who tried to protect two young women from anti-Muslim insults, but Portland has become the scene of rising tensions and clashes between extremists from both ends of the political spectrum.

Perhaps it is naive to think that organizers of Sunday's rally might have actually listened to the mayor and allowed Portland to mourn the loss of those two fine men without further upset. Sadly, though, decency these days seems to be in short supply in America's political debate. The most recent example was the stunt by comedian Kathy Griffin, who evidently thought it was humorous to portray the beheading of an American president. It was somewhat comforting that Griffin was widely condemned (including by some of the most ardent critics of President Donald Trump) and that she responded with an abject apology. If only the provocateurs in Portland could be so moved.

-The Washington Post

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Editorial: Free speech vs. decency in Portland - Jackson Newspapers - Jackson County Newspapers

Balance Between Free Speech, Respect in Workplace Tricky but Possible – Utah Business

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Salt Lake CityAt times, the workplace can feel like a battleground between free speech and preventing harassment or discrimination. Navigating the laws concerning both can be a tricky dance for employers and managers, but it can be done, said Ryan D. Nelson, president of the Utah Employment Association.

Just as you can express yourself, your employees can and will, inside and out of the workplace, and sometimes that cause conflict, he said.

Part of the conflict comes from the fundamental basis of expression in opinionbecause its an opinion, its holder cant be right or wrong, he said, and people express it usually with a certain expectation of being right. There are a number of laws, some of which supersede others, that have to be considered when balancing maintaining a safe workplace and allowing employees to have freedom of speech, he said.

The Constitutional First Amendment right to free speech is one such consideration, but so is the National Labor Relations Act, which protects free speech and political expressions as far as they touch on wages, hours or working conditions; Title VII, which applies to public and private employers with at least 15 employees and protects against harassment or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin; and Utahs own free speech law, which protects persons speaking as citizens on a matter of public concern as long as it doesnt disrupt business.

Those laws can sometimes trump each other, and in some instances, speech can be protected under some but not others. Nelson pointed to an op-ed from earlier this year from then-Wasatch County Republican Party Vice Chair James Green, who argued that eliminating the wage gap between men and women would be harmful for businesses and threaten mens abilities to provide for their families. The opinion piece received explosive backlash, prompting Green to resign from his position days later.

From a legal standpoint, Nelson said, Greens op-ed was protected speech under Utah Codeit expressed his opinion as a private citizen about a matter of public concernbut was not protected under Title VII or the NLRA. If Green had been fired, rather than resigned, that action would have been appropriate under Title VII and the NLRA, but would have broken Utah law.

Likewise, if an employee wants to display a religious picture or symbol in their personal workspace, although that action is not specifically covered by NLRA or Utah law, Title VII permits itas long as non-religious personal items, including photos, are allowed in others private workspaces and the religious item is not offensive to any other protected groups.

The balance can also depend on whether a company is a public or private employer, said Nelson, and extends beyond words and actions. A 2016 case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission centered on a Dont Tread on Me shirt worn by an employee that another employee, who was black, found offensive. The supervisor, familiar with the symbols history in the Revolutionary War, dismissed the black employees concerns that the symbol was racist. The EEOC found that while the supervisor was still within his rights to dismiss the concerns, he was negligent in researching the full history of the symbolin some areas, the familiar coiled snake is used by racist groups.

Nelson said the conflicting rules and analyses can make compliance difficult, but employers must exercise due diligence to not only be in compliance with the law but make sure their workplaces are conducive for employees. Employers might be tempted to either allow all forms of expression, or curtail personal expression altogether, but Nelson said there are problems with both of those approaches, as there is with a middle-of-the-road approach.

When youre doing this analysis running through the facts, you should have a very, very solid grasp on the facts, but also, with symbols, understand what they mean and what meaning they can have, he said. What we want to be aware of is where that line is drawn.

Nelson said employers should reiterate Equal Employment Opportunity policies and compliance, talk with managers to ensure they report issues, take inter-office employee relations into account, and be consistent with the policy across the board. By distilling a culture of co-existence, not just to managers but from bottom to top, employers can foster a welcoming workplace, he said.

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Balance Between Free Speech, Respect in Workplace Tricky but Possible - Utah Business

Respect their freedom of speech, and they should respect yours: Letters – The San Gabriel Valley Tribune

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Holding our peace

Re Thousands drawn to free speech rally and protests (June 5): Students learn in U.S. Government 101 that no matter how odious they may find another persons opinions, that persons speech is protected by our Constitution under the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.

Students must be prepared to become educated (not indoctrinated) to a particular point of view. If they disagree, they should engage their opponents in civil discourse rather than in violent confrontations. No, we dont have to respect those who voice opinions we find repugnant, but lets hold our peace while they present them. Then, when its our turn to voice our opinion, lets ask them to render the same courtesy to us we gave to them.

David Quintero, Monrovia

Feeling the heat

We are appreciative of Larry Wilsons column (June 7) on his day with Pasadena Fire Department training, called Fire Ops 101, at Station 33. Our department offers this opportunity so residents can see what their public safety professionals do in our jobs while protecting everyone in Pasadena.

Fire Ops 101 allows community leaders to step into the boots of local firefighters to feel the heat and to have a hands-on experience as a firefighter to get an up-close view of what its like to do our dangerous jobs.

We encourage everybody to take advantage of these and other events to interact with public safety employees and get, as Mr. Wilson aptly wrote, the chance to understand what it is to be put in harms way every day for your job.

Scott Austin, president, Pasadena Firefighters Local 809

Donations or bribes?

Though Gary Cliffords of Athens Services wrote in defense of his company (June 7), I believe what reporter Christopher Yee was referring to in his article on the state controllers audit of South El Monte, and what your editorial (June 1) is referring to, is the continued practice of Athens contributing to the campaign of candidates running for city council in cities where they have trash-hauling contracts.

This is not just a South El Monte issue but a problem for other cities as well.

Dont tell me a politician will not be influenced on contracts when money (bribes) is being put in their pockets.

Please take five minutes out of your time and google Athens Services and city trash-hauling contracts and see for yourselves!

Ken Mikkelson, West Covina

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Respect their freedom of speech, and they should respect yours: Letters - The San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Trump Evangelicals face a growing number of hidden Atheists – Salon

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This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Religion was a major backdrop in the 2016 election. Donald Trump campaigned hard in white Christian America, promising voters that he would essentially turn back the clock to an America when religion and Christians overall were more influential in the country.

This strategy paid off, asthe Washington Postreported: Exit polls show white evangelical voters voted in high numbers for Donald Trump,80-16 percent. Thats the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.

White evangelicals are the religious group that most identifies with the Republican Party, and 76 percent of them say they are or lean Republican, according to a 2014survey. As a group, white evangelicalsmake upone-fifth of all registered voters and about one-third of all voters who identify with or lean toward the GOP.

So it is no surprise that Trump has quickly moved with anexecutive orderto relax restrictions on thepolitical activitiesof tax-exempt churches in an effort to strengthen the role of religion, in essence working to strengthen the political hand of churches in political campaigns.

Trump playing the conservative religious card is in stark contrast to the role nonbelievers play in American society. Atheists, those who disbelieve in the existence of god, comprise a growing sector of American society. Their numbers are often hidden in polls and generally undercounted because some fear reporting their identity and facing social stigmatization.

There have been various reports showing a marked increase in nonbelievers, including atheists, agnostics and others who do not identify with a religion or say that religion is not important to them. Between 2007 and 2014, the portion of Americans who do not believe in a god grew by over 10 percent, according to astudydone by thePew Research Center. The growing numbers of nonreligious people in the United States are propelled by generational change, asyoung people, who are more likely to be unaffiliated with a religion, reach adulthood and slowly replace their older and more religious counterparts.

A recentstudyby psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle at the University of Kentucky concluded that the number of atheists in the United States exceeds 20 percent with a roughly 0.8 probability. This estimate is more than double the conclusion of the study collected over the telephone by Pew Research Center, which found that approximately 10 percent of Americans dont believe in god and only 3 percent of Americans identify asatheists. This disparity toward what is essentially the same question suggests that people are hesitant to identify themselves as atheists.Furthermore, a study byPRRIin 2016 revealed that more than 30 percent of atheists hide their disbelief from friends and family for fear of disapproval, suggesting that many might find an admission over the telephone similarly difficult.

To obtain accurate results, Gervais and Najle constructed a very subtle test that would remove the stigma around atheism.Using a sample population of 2,000 Americans, they asked respondents to answer true or false to seemingly banal statements such as I am a vegetarian or I own a dog.The control group responded to nine statements while the test group responded to the same nine statements plus an additional one I do not believe in God.

Participants only had to acknowledge the number of statements that applied to them. They never had to deny believing in god or identifying as an atheist, which omitted any social stigma from the test.

By comparing the responses of the two groups, Gervais and Najle came to their conclusion approximately 26 percent of Americans are atheists. Assuming the number of vegetarians and dog owners is the same between the two groups, any increase in the test group compared to the control group indicates the number of atheists.

The two psychologists admit that their study is not free of error, but they have undoubtedly proven that previous polls conducted over the telephone or in person have yielded deceptively small numbers.

In fact, another study performed by the Pew Research Center found evidence supporting the existence of social stigma around being openly atheist. Pew found that only a third of Americans feelwarmly toward atheists. Daniel Cox of PRRI wrote in FiveThirtyEight that a third of Americans believe that atheists should be banned frombecoming president, and a similar percent thinks that they should be prohibited from teaching in public schools. With pressure to conform to the dominant religious beliefs, some American atheists choose to hide their beliefs.

In an interview withSlate, Renee Johnson, a single lesbian mother in Point, Texas, said that she would rather have a big L or lesbian written across [her] shirt than a big A or atheist, because people are going to handle it better. Johnson is just one of many who feel uncertain about revealing their nonbelief in a country where religion and spirituality seem like national imperatives.

As the discrepancy between the poll performed by Gervais and Najle compared with previous polls indicates, the role of religion in the daily lives of Americans is becoming increasingly complex. Many polls require respondents to select a single religious identification from a list, which does not allow people to choose multiple answers. By this method, someone cant be Jewish and an atheist or Catholic and atheist. Although its possible to follow a religion for cultural, heritage or spiritual reasonsseparate from a belief in godin previous polls, religion and atheism have been considered mutually exclusive. This method of polling fails to recognize the possibility that religion may be determined by heritage and cultural background, rather than belief; it also presumes one concept of god.

However, ideas of god or spiritual forces are entirely subjective, as indicated in a study byGallup, which found that 89 percent of Americans believe in god, but only about half believe in an anthropomorphic god. The various studies about religion, belief and god exemplify how the United States necessitates having a society that can accept a full range of religious belief and spiritual ambiguity.

While feelings toward atheism are certainly changing60 percent of Americans reportknowingan atheist, which is significantly more than 10 years agothe stigma surrounding people who do not believe in god is continuing to stifle freedom of belief in America. As with his other attempts to turn back the clock in America, President Trumps remark inhis inaugural address about joining all Americans together with thesamealmighty Creator, threatens the intricate and varying histories, beliefs and ways of being that are present in this country.

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Trump Evangelicals face a growing number of hidden Atheists - Salon

Trump says US is committed to mutual support of NATO allies – ABC News

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President Donald Trump says the United States is committed to the mutual defense of NATO members, casting aside concerns that his failure to mention the commitment last month weakened the alliance.

Trump said Friday that he was "committing the United States to Article 5." That article in the NATO treaty says an attack on one member is an attack on all members and binds the allies to come to that country's defense.

European countries and others expressed concern last month when Trump did not mention the clause in a speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In that speech, Trump demanded that allies live up to a pledge to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense by 2024. He did not specifically mention Article 5, which has only been invoked once, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"I'm committing the United States to Article 5," Trump told reporters at a news conference Friday with visiting Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. "Certainly we are there to protect, and that's one of the reasons that I want people to make sure we have a very, very strong force by paying the kind of money necessary to have that force. But yes, absolutely, I'd be committed to Article 5."

The White House later reaffirmed the commitment in a statement announcing that Trump will visit Poland next month as part of his second foreign trip. It said that in addition to showing America's support of Poland, the trip will also emphasize the president's commitment to strengthening NATO's "collective defense."

Trump's omission in Brussels raised concerns on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. White House aides said the president's support was implied even though he deliberately did not utter the words.

Still, allies had questions about Trump's belief in the value of NATO, which he had termed "obsolete" during the presidential campaign.

On Friday, Trump noted that only a handful of NATO's 29 members Montenegro joined just this week were meeting the 2 percent pledge. But he said the U.S. would abide by its treaty obligations.

"We're going to make NATO very strong," he said. "You need the money to make it strong. You can't just do what we've been doing in the past."

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Trump says US is committed to mutual support of NATO allies - ABC News

Trump Commits United States to Defending NATO Nations – New York Times

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New York Times
Trump Commits United States to Defending NATO Nations
New York Times
WASHINGTON President Trump on Friday reaffirmed the longstanding United States commitment to come to the defense of any NATO members that are attacked, more than two weeks after his refusal to do so during a trip to Europe stirred resentment ...
Trump commits to NATO's Article 5WGNO
Trump finally commits to defend NATO alliesUSA TODAY
Trump confirms commitment to NATO's Article 5Fox News
The Hill
all 208 news articles »

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Trump Commits United States to Defending NATO Nations - New York Times

President Trump Confirms His Commitment to NATO’s Article 5 Mutual Defense Pact – TIME

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U.S. President Donald Trump stands outside the West Wing of the White House as Klaus Iohannis, Romania's president, not pictured, arrives at the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, June 9, 2017. Pete MarovichBloomberg/Getty Images

President Donald Trump is at last publicly confirming his commitment to NATO's mutual defense pact .

When Trump spoke at the alliance's gathering in Belgium last month , he did not make reference to the agreement, which is known as Article 5.

But on Friday during a press conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Trump said was "committing the United States to Article 5."

Trump's omission in Brussels raised concerns on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. White House aides said that the president's support was implied even though he deliberately did not utter the words.

The only time that Article 5 was invoked was after the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001. Trump was asked if he would move the U.S. to defend NATO if Russia attacked; he did not answer that part of the question.

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President Trump Confirms His Commitment to NATO's Article 5 Mutual Defense Pact - TIME

Trump must endorse NATO mutual-aid clause, HASC Dems say – DefenseNews.com

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WASHINGTON Seven Democrats on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee are calling on the president to explicitly endorse NATOs mutual-defense clause after he reportedly dropped it from a speech to allies in Brussels last month.

While other administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have reiterated the commitment, the absence of an endorsement by our commander in chief has meaning, the letter reads. The lawmakerswarned of Article 5's importance to deter Russian aggression.

Thursdays letter was signed by Smith and Seapower ranking memberJoe Courtney, D-Conn.;Tactical AirLand Forces ranking memberNiki Tsongas, D-Mass.;Oversight and Investigation ranking memberSeth Moulton, D-Mass., and Reps. Beto ORourke, D-Tex.; Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier this week thatquestioning Trump's commitment to Article 5 is "a bit of a silly discussion" and "the president remains entirely committed to NATO and all of the articles, not just Article 5.

Email: jgould@defensenews.com

Twitter: @reporterjoe

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Trump must endorse NATO mutual-aid clause, HASC Dems say - DefenseNews.com

NSA Backtracks on Sharing Number of Americans Caught In Warrantless Spying – Fortune

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The National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, as seen from the air, January 29, 2010. Saul LoebAFP/Getty Images

For more than a year, U.S. intelligence officials reassured lawmakers they were working to calculate and reveal roughly how many Americans have their digital communications vacuumed up under a warrant-less surveillance law intended to target foreigners overseas.

This week, the Trump administration backtracked, catching lawmakers off guard and alarming civil liberties advocates who say it is critical to know as Congress weighs changes to a law expiring at the end of the year that permits some of the National Security Agency's most sweeping espionage.

"The NSA has made Herculean, extensive efforts to devise a counting strategy that would be accurate," Dan Coats, a career Republican politician appointed by Republican President Donald Trump as the top U.S. intelligence official, testified to a Senate panel on Wednesday.

Coats said "it remains infeasible to generate an exact, accurate, meaningful, and responsive methodology that can count how often a U.S. person's communications may be collected" under the law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

He told the Senate Intelligence Committee that even if he dedicated more resources the NSA would not be able to calculate an estimate, which privacy experts have said could be in the millions.

The statement ran counter to what senior intelligence officials had previously promised both publicly and in private briefings during the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, lawmakers and congressional staffers working on drafting reforms to Section 702 said.

Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, said that for many months intelligence agencies "expressly promised" members of both parties to deliver the estimated number to them.

Senior intelligence officials had also previously said an estimate could be delivered. In March, then NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett, said "yes" when asked by a Reuters reporter if an estimate would be provided this year.

"Were working on that with the Congress and we'll come to a satisfactory resolution, because we have to," said Ledgett, who has since retired from public service.

The law allows U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on and collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside of the United States, but often incidentally scoops up communications of Americans.

The decision to scrap the estimate is likely to complicate a debate in Congress over whether to curtail certain aspects of the surveillance law, congressional aides said. Congress must vote to renew Section 702 to avoid its expiration on Dec. 31.

Privacy issues often scramble traditional party lines, but there are signs that Section 702's renewal will be even more politically unpredictable.

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Some Republicans who usually support surveillance programs have expressed concerns about Section 702, in part because they are worried about leaks of intercepts of conversations between Trump associates and Russian officials amid investigations of possible collusion.

U.S. intelligence agencies last year accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election campaign, allegations Moscow denies. Trump denies there was collusion. Intelligence officials have said Section 702 was not directly connected to surveillance related to those leaks.

For more about the NSA, watch :

"As big a fan as I am of collection, incidental collection, I'm not going to reauthorize a program that could be politically manipulated," Senator Lindsey Graham, usually a defender of U.S. surveillance activities, told reporters this week.

Graham was among 14 Republican senators, including every Republican member of the intelligence panel, who on Tuesday introduced a bill supported by the White House and top intelligence chiefs, that would renew Section 702 without changes and make it permanent.

Critics have called the process under which the FBI and other agencies can query the pool of data collected for U.S. information a "backdoor search loophole" that evades traditional warrant requirements.

"How can we accept the government's reassurance that our privacy is being protected when the government itself has no idea how many Americans' communications are being swept up and stored?" said Liza Goitein, a privacy expert at the Brennan Center for Justice.

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NSA Backtracks on Sharing Number of Americans Caught In Warrantless Spying - Fortune

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WikiLeaks founder supporting NSA leak suspect in Georgia – Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Augusta

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called on his supporters to rally to the side of the 25-year-old suspect in the National Security Agency leak investigation here.

Assange, who has drawn a mixture of praise and scorn for his role in the disclosure of highly classified U.S. intelligence information, tweeted this week: Alleged NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner must be supported. She is a young women [sic] accused of courage in trying to help us know. He also tweeted that Winner, a U.S. Air Force veteran, is against the wall for talking to the press.

It doesn't matter why she did it or the quality (of) the report, said Assange, who jumped his bail and sought asylum in Ecuador to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape accusations. Swedish prosecutors have since announced they were dropping the rape inquiry and no longer seeking to extradite him. Assange has denied the allegations. Acts of non-elite sources communicating knowledge should be strongly encouraged.

Assistant U.S. attorney Jennifer Solari highlighted Assanges support for Winner while pushing Thursday to keep her in jail until her trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps ultimately denied Winners release on bond, citing the nature of the crime, the weight of the evidence, her history and the potential danger to the community.

A federal grand jury has indicted Winner on a single count of "willful retention and transmission of national defense information. Winner faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines, plus up to three years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment. Winner pleaded not guilty to the charge Thursday.

Filed this week, the six-page federal indictment says Winner worked as a federal contractor at a U.S. government agency in Georgia between February and June and had a top-secret security clearance. On about May 9, the indictment says, Winner printed and removed a May 5 report on intelligence activities by a foreign government directed at targets within the United States. Two days later, she sent a copy of the report to an online news outlet.

The U.S. Justice Department announced Winners arrest Monday, about an hour after The Intercept reported that it had obtained a top-secret NSA report about Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election. The report says Russian military intelligence officials tried to hack into the U.S. voting system just before last Novembers election.

Reality Leigh Winner is the first person to be charged with leaking confidential information during the Trump administration.

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WikiLeaks founder supporting NSA leak suspect in Georgia - Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Highland case a Fourth Amendment victory: Guest commentary – San Bernardino County Sun

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The doorbell to the home you are renting rings. You open it to find a city code enforcement officer asking to do an interior inspection. The officer unveils a list of 80 items to check. There will be snooping through cupboards and drawers, bathrooms, bedrooms and closets.

You feel extremely uncomfortable with the idea of a stranger rummaging through your home, and you wonder why the city feels its needed. After all, if theres a problem with the property, all you need to do is call the owner. It you dont get satisfaction, you could contact code enforcement at that point.

So, you politely tell the officer, I do not want you to inspect the inside of my home.

The officer responds that the inspection is required by city law, and the owner will get in trouble if you dont let me in.

You reply, Im sorry, but without a warrant you cannot come in.

This is a true story, showing how the tenants in a Highland rental home that I own became caught up in the citys systematic assault on privacy rights.

Highland developed a plan to inspect all 4,800 residenti al rentals, whether or not there were any issues with the properties. Officials also decided to cut corners and not seek judicial approval to enter dwellings. Instead, they would pressure owners and renters to allow inspectors in.

My tenants certainly had no complaints about their rental home; it is well-maintained, as with all my properties. They had no reason to want officials intruding on their privacy, so they refused to agree to the inspection, as did I.

The city responded by issuing me a fine, and withholding my rental license in order to force me to comply.

Some property owners might have given in at that point, unwilling to fight city hall. But I have a strong reverence for the Constitution and Americas heritage of liberty, and I was determined not to let the citys coercion go unchallenged. Along with my tenants, I filed a lawsuit in federal court, represented free of charge by Pacific Legal Foundation, a watchdog organization for property rights and individual liberty.

Our case rested on the Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches. This is a core liberty, part of the Bill of Rights. It reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

You dont need to be a legal scholar to interpret these words. In order for a government agent to enter a private home without permission, a warrant must be obtained.

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The good news is that, in the wake of our lawsuit, the city has now repealed its invasive inspection scheme, replacing it with an owners self-inspection program. Highland can now focus enforcement resources on the small number of real problem cases, instead of unnecessarily disturbing the privacy of rental-home residents.

Tenants are customers. Like any business, if you dont take care of your customers they will give their business to someone else. Rental owners want happy, long-term tenants. That is why the vast majority of owners do a good job taking care of their customers.

Whether you own or rent, the Fourth Amendment protects you from warrantless searches of your personal effects, in your private home. It is a precious liberty that we should all cherish.

Unfortunately, Highland is far from alone in imposing oppressive, unjustified search and inspection schemes for rental homes. But the victory that my tenants and I have achieved in Highland should send a message to cities throughout California: They need to bring their code enforcement into conformity with the Constitution.

Karl J. Trautwein, a resident of San Juan Capistrano, owns rental homes in Highland and other Southern California communities.

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Highland case a Fourth Amendment victory: Guest commentary - San Bernardino County Sun

The Second Amendment protects some bladed weapons, and not just firearms – Washington Post

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The New Jersey machete decision is important because it rejects a spontaneity requirement for arming yourself at home (the states theory that you could pick up a weapon against an imminent attack, but you cant come to the door with the weapon just in case). But its also important because it reaffirms that the Second Amendment protects not just guns but other weapons as well.

This should be obvious, I think: The Second Amendment protects arms, and the D.C. v. Heller opinion discusses bows and knives as examples of such arms; opinions in the 1800s and 1900s dealing with state constitutional rights to bear arms also mention bladed weapons; and post-Heller opinions, such as from courts in Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin agree. But some have disagreed the Massachusetts government in the Caetano stun gun case before the Massachusetts high court, for instance, argued that Heller was limited to firearms. The New Jersey decision should be a helpful precedent, then, for other non-gun cases (though of course it doesnt dispose of the question of exactly what weapons are protected, and where they can be possessed).

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The Second Amendment protects some bladed weapons, and not just firearms - Washington Post

Second Amendment right to meet people at the door with a machete by your side? – Washington Post

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Yes, says the New Jersey (!) Supreme Court in yesterdays unanimous State v. Montalvo opinion; here are the facts, from the courts syllabus:

This appeal concerns whether an individual may lawfully possess and hold a weapon for self-defense in his home while answering the front door.

Defendant Crisoforo Montalvo and his wife lived directly above Arturs Daleckis and his wife. On the night of March 24, 2012, Daleckis grew agitated by noise emanating from Montalvos unit; he stood on his bed and knocked on the ceiling three or four times. Montalvo then proceeded downstairs and knocked on Daleckiss door. Montalvo picked up a small table belonging to Daleckis and threw it off the front porch, breaking it.

After Montalvo returned to his unit, Daleckis knocked on the door. Montalvo and his wife testified that they heard knocking, kicking, and [*2] slamming on the door. Montalvo testified that he became scared for himself, his wife, and their unborn child. As a precautionary measure, Montalvo retrieved a machete from a closet as he moved to answer the door. Daleckis testified that Montalvo pointed the machete at him. Montalvo testified that he kept the machete in his hand, behind his leg, and below his waist while speaking with Daleckis.

Montalvo was acquitted of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose (Count One, in the discussion below) but convicted of unlawful possession of a weapon (Count Two). At trial, the judge included a self-defense instruction as to the unlawful-purpose charge but didnt give it as to the unlawful-possession charge.

During deliberations, the jury sent the trial judge a note asking, Second charge, unlawful possession of a weapon, is self[-]defense considered a lawful use?.' The judge responded thus:

I remind you that it is necessary for the State to prove that it, meaning the object[,] was possessed under such circumstances that a reasonable person would recognize that it was likely to be used as a weapon. In other words, under circumstances where it posed a likely threat of harm to others and/or a likely threat of damage to property, you may consider factors such as the surrounding circumstances as well as the size, shape, and condition of the object; the nature of its concealment; the time, place and actions of the defendant; when it was found in his possession to determine whether or not the object was manifestly appropriate for its lawful uses.

This statute is 2C:39-5(d). Section 5(d) prohibits the possession of implements as weapons even if possessed for precautionary purposes, except in situations of immediate and imminent danger.

Although self[-]defense involves a lawful use of a weapon, it does not justify the unlawful possession [*20] of the weapon under Section 5(d) except when a person uses a weapon after arming himself or herself spontaneously to repel an immediate danger.

Obviously, there may be circumstances in which a weapon is seized in response to an immediate danger, but ensuing circumstances render its use unnecessary. Under such conditions, the individual may take immediate possession of the weapon out of necessity rather than self[-]defense. However, it would appear that the availability of necessity as a justification for the immediate possession of a weapon, as with self[-]defense, is limited only to cases of spontaneous and compelling danger. Please resume your deliberations.

But the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the judge should have instructed the jury as to self-defense:

[The unlawful-possession statute] prohibits the possession of any weapon, other than certain firearms, when an actor has not yet formed an intent to use [the] object as a weapon [but] possesses it under circumstances in which it is likely to be so used. [This] class of possessory weapons offenses is codified by N.J.S.A. 2C:39-5(d), which states that [a]ny person who knowingly has in his possession any other weapon under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses as it may have is guilty of a crime of the fourth degree. The purpose of Section 5(d) is to protect[] citizens from the threat of harm while permitting the use of objects such as knives in a manner consistent with a free and civilized society. The statute applies to circumstances resulting in a threat of harm to persons or property.

A machete constitutes a weapon within this statutory scheme. See N.J.S.A. 2C:39-1(r) (defining weapon as anything readily capable of lethal use or inflicting serious bodily injury); State v. Irizarry (N.J. App. Div. 1994) (observing N.J.S.A. 2C:39-5(d) concerns weapons such as knives and machetes[] that have both lawful and unlawful uses).

Self-defense is a potential defense to a possessory weapons offense. The Second Amendment guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation, D.C. v. Heller (2008) . It extends to all instruments that constitute bearable arms.

In Heller, the Supreme Court recognized that the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. New Jerseys statutes protect the right of self-defense. Generally, the use of force against another person is justifiable when the actor reasonably believes that such force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of unlawful force by another.

The use of deadly force for self-defense is justifiable only when the actor reasonably believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against death or serious bodily injury, unless the actor provoked the use of force or knows he can safely retreat. Thus, the defensive conduct must be based on a reasonable belief of potential harm, and the defensive force must be proportional to the offensive force.

Montalvo legally possessed a machete in his home. It is of no matter whether his possession was for roofing or for self-defense because either would qualify as a lawful purpose. [T]he Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to possess weapons, including machetes, in the home for self-defense purposes. Thus, Montalvo had a constitutional right to possess the machete in his home for his own defense and that of his pregnant wife. Because the courts instructions did not convey this principle, the instructions were erroneous.

The State asserts that answering an angry knock at the door with a weapon in hand constitutes possession under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses as it may have. That position is untenable.

The right to possess a weapon in ones own home for self-defense would be of little effect if one were required to keep the weapon out-of-hand, picking it up only spontaneously. Such a rule would negate the purpose of possessing a weapon for defense of the home.

The court sent the case back for a possible retrial, so the jury could decide whether Montalvo indeed just used the machete for defensive purposes. (The state argued, for instance, that he also took it outside and chopped at the porch that he shared with Daleckis; if those were the facts, the court said, that would be an unlawful purpose, but if the facts were as Montalvo claimed they were, his conduct would be lawful self-defense.)

Finally, the court tried to avoid this problem in the future, by directing its Committee on Model Criminal Jury Charges to review and revise the model jury instruction for the unlawful possession offense:

We suggest the following language for the Committees consideration in refashioning the charge: Determining whether the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant possessed a weapon in his home under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for a lawful use requires special considerations. Persons may lawfully possess weapons in their homes, even though possession of those same weapons may not be manifestly appropriate outside the home. Using a twelve-inch steak knife in a kitchen to prepare dinner is lawful and possessing it as means of defense in case of a home invasion is lawful as well; carrying the same knife on the street on the way to pick up groceries may not be manifestly appropriate.

Individuals may possess in their homes objects that serve multiple lawful purposes, including the purpose of anticipatory self-defense. In this case, Montalvo possessed at home a machete he used in his roofing job. He was lawfully entitled to possess that machete as a weapon in his home as a means of defending himself and his family from attack as well. The right to possess that weapon, however, does not mean that it can be used without justification.

An individual who responds to the door of his home with a concealed weapon that threatens no one acts within the bounds of the law. He need give no justification for what he is lawfully allowed to do.

On the other hand, an individual may not threaten another with a weapon, even within the confines of his home, without lawful justification. Thus, Montalvo could not answer the door threatening the use of a machete merely for the purpose of inciting fear in another. He could threaten the use of the machete, however, if he had a sincere or reasonable belief that the show of such force was necessary to protect himself or his wife from an imminent attack.

The burden always remains on the State to prove that defendant did not lawfully possess the weapon in his home or, if the weapon was threatened against another, that possession of the weapon was not manifestly appropriate for the purpose of self-defense.

Sounds right to me, at least as to home possession. (What is the proper scope of the Second Amendment outside the home is a hotly contested matter, on which courts have split, and which the Supreme Court is currently being asked to consider, in the Peruta petition.)

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Second Amendment right to meet people at the door with a machete by your side? - Washington Post