1. Freedom

Category Archives: Freedom

Freedom scraps its way past Dieruff to stay unbeaten

Posted on by

Sometimes you can win by sheer talent.

Two seasons ago, Freedom did just that when a squad led by Derike Chiclana and Nyreef Jackson went 17-10 and reached the District 11 4A final.

This Patriots squad may not feature a player with the star power of Chiclana or Jackson, but it does offer a scrappy unit that works hard on the defensive end and on the boards.

It was those little things that led to a big Freedom win over host Dieruff on Friday night.

The Pates came up with 11 steals on defense and 14 offensive rebounds in hustling past the Huskies 48-42 to win their third game without a defeat in a surprising early-season run.

Jeff Toronto scored 13 points and had six rebounds all at the offensive end to help Freedom rally from a 37-32 deficit over the last five minutes.

Toronto came up with the ball after Demond Farley missed the second of two free throws with 22 seconds left.

Farley had made his first attempt to make it 45-42, but Toronto was able to put the game away with two foul shots when he was fouled on his follow attempt.

"[Dieruff's Isaiah Johnson] sunk inside a little bit and I was able to jump up and get it," Toronto said of the key rebound. "Coach always talks about next man up and we're all contributing to these wins."

Patriots sophomore Nick King had 13 points and six rebounds, but it was the overall defensive pressure that caused problems for Dieruff.

Read more:

Freedom scraps its way past Dieruff to stay unbeaten

Religious freedom or a license to discriminate?

Posted on by

WASHINGTON In the coming days, the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate is expected to vote on a controversial religious freedom measure.

Critics have dubbed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) a license to discriminate. They say the measure would open the door to discrimination, claiming that it would, for example, permit a medical professional who objects to homosexuality for religious reasons to refuse treatment to a gay patient.

The bills proponents argue that such scenarios are hypothetical scare tactics. After all, they say, the bill was modeled after an existing federal law that has been on the books for more than 20 years.

Michigan is the latest in a slew of states to propose RFRA legislation. In February, amidst rancorous debate and threats of corporate boycotts, Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a similar measure, warning that the bill is broadly worded and can result in unintended and negative consequences. (The bill was actually an amendment to a previous RFRA law the state passed.)

Two months later, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, also a Republican, signed a similar bill into law. Kansas and Kentucky passed their own RFRA laws last year. In all, 19 states have RFRA laws on the books. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 10 states have contemplated similar legislation over the past two years.

This is definitely something that is starting to get some steam, said Michigan Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, a Democrat. When a state like Michigan passes something like this, it opens the door in terms of the Midwestern bloc of Great Lakes states.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. Introduced by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Orin B. Hatch, R-Utah, the bill states that the federal government shall not substantially burden a persons exercise of religion. The legislation enjoyed broad bipartisan support as well as the endorsement of the ACLU, which has used RFRA in lawsuits over the years.

At the time, the law was intended to bypass a Supreme Court ruling, Employment Division Oregon v. Smith, which held that the state of Oregon was free to include religiously inspired peyote use within the reach of its general criminal prohibition for use of that drug, and thus permitted the State to deny unemployment benefits to persons dismissed from their jobs because of such religiously inspired use.

Peyote is used in some American Indian religious rites. The ruling meant that religious practices were not protected from government regulation, according to Doug Laycock, a University of Virginia legal scholar who wrote a letter to the Michigan legislature supporting the RFRA bill.

In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the federal RFRA, ruling that the law did not apply to states. Originally, RFRA did apply to both federal government and the states, Laycock said. By 2000, nine states had passed their own RFRA laws, largely in response to the Supreme Court ruling.

See the original post here:

Religious freedom or a license to discriminate?

Freedom of Entry March | pictures, photos

Posted on by

The crew of HMAS Stuart marched through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

The crew of HMAS Stuart march through Devonport as part of the Freedom of Entry ceremony on Saturday.

Read the original here:

Freedom of Entry March | pictures, photos

Time to reset U.S. policy on international religious freedom

Posted on by

Secretary of State John Kerry, with Rabbi David Saperstein at the State Department.

Cliff Owen, Associated Press

Enlarge photo

Recent scholarship indicates that religious freedom is an important contributing factor for much of what the world yearns for peace and economic prosperity. As described in Brian Grim and Roger Finkes book, The Price of Freedom Denied, religious freedom is not only strongly correlated with other freedoms and civil liberties, but it is also an important factor in other universally desirable goods such as lower levels of armed conflict and poverty, along with higher levels of income and better lives for women.

Conversely, the lack of religious freedom leads to increased hostilities and constrained liberties sometimes shocking to the human conscience. For example, a Sudanese woman was recently forced to give birth while shackled in chains in prison for refusing to renounce her Christian beliefs. In Pakistan, a woman was recently sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the prophet Muhammad during an altercation after her co-laborers refused to receive water from a Christian. In Burma, Muslims are being mercilessly run out of their country even as the majority Buddhist population emerges from years of repression. And in Nigeria, the group Boko Haram holds a nation hostage by kidnapping children and bombing schools as it attempts to enforce its religiously intolerant vision.

The consequences from such abuses of religious freedom do not stop at our borders. For example, over the past few months we have watched in horror as the so-called Islamic State enslaves women, decimates minorities and beheads nonbelievers in Syria and Iraq while dragging the U.S. into a military contest with enormous potential costs in lives and money. Thus, religious freedom is both a moral and national security imperative from which our country cannot escape.

To address this crisis, we must immediately renew our resolve to promote international religious freedom. The U.S. Senate should give expeditious consideration to President Obamas nomination of Rabbi David Saperstein to fill the long vacant post of Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Longer term, we must reset our U.S. religious freedom policy by implementing the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) as originally intended. In addition to sticks, we must use carrots to encourage international religious freedom.

IRFA mandates the use of sticks by requiring the State Department to annually identify the worst offenders of religious freedom countries of particular concern and sanctions on those countries to encourage change. Yet new countries of particular concern have only been identified sporadically over the past 16 years and only rarely have unique sanctions been imposed. Such a limited use of sticks suggests that, aside from calling out religious freedom abuses in its annual reports, there are few practical consequences to limiting religious freedom. In response, many have called for a renewed, consistent use of sanctions to impose real costs on the most egregious perpetrators of religious intolerance.

But even if sticks are more consistently imposed, they are meant primarily for the nine countries currently designated as countries of particular concern. That still leaves nearly 190 countries unaffected. To make a meaningful difference in the 95 percent of countries that are not the worst offenders, we must also use carrots. We must focus on countries of particular opportunity and incentivize them to take the sometimes difficult steps necessary to improve religious freedom.

Fortunately, this positive approach is already envisioned by IRFA. IRFA already requires the government to identify foreign countries making significant improvement in the protection and promotion of religious freedom and it already allows positive incentives. These incentives include public commendation, cultural and scientific exchanges, diplomatic invitations for cooperation and the incentivizing use of assistance funds. The U.S. already gives away nearly $50 billion annually in assistance funds as humanitarian, developmental and military aid. If we linked that aid to improvements or good records in religious freedom, we could greatly incentivize religious freedom with little or no additional costs.

Read more:

Time to reset U.S. policy on international religious freedom

Freedom High outreach to black parents appears to be paying off

Posted on by

OAKLEY -- Concerned about black students' academic performance, Freedom High School officials have been reaching out to their parents in hopes of closing the gap between them and their white counterparts.

And initial results suggest that the Oakley school's efforts to encourage black families to become more involved in their child's education is making a difference.

"It's a decades-old issue," said Assistant Principal Mike Wood of the increasing disparities in achievement between racial minorities and white students that have prompted many schools -- particularly those in urban areas -- to take action.

Freedom High, which has nearly a 12 percent black student population, noted the problem in 2011 during a routine self-evaluation that's part of the accreditation process. The school made it a goal to focus on black students. A couple of Wood's colleagues talked with school districts around the state that were tackling the problem effectively and a theme emerged: Eliminate the barriers that discourage parents from participating in their child's education.

"We want to make sure that parents don't feel they are excluded from having a voice in the educational system and oftentimes they do," Wood said.

One of those could be the isolation that a black parent might experience if he or she is the only minority at a parents' meeting or other school function, Wood said, explaining that people are less likely to think their contribution matters if they don't feel they belong.

Other obstacles transcend all racial groups.

Some parents aren't apt to contact their child's teacher or guidance counselor because their perception of school is tainted by a negative experience they had as a student, Wood said.

And too often they adopt a more hands-off approach once their children enter high school, mistakenly believing that they are now mature enough to set academic goals and work toward them on their own, he said.

Joselyn Reed, who has a junior at Freedom High, thinks the school also is coming up against a certain amount of indifference toward higher education based on comments she heard at its first meeting with parents in fall 2013.

Read the original:

Freedom High outreach to black parents appears to be paying off

Cops drop charges for Freedom Riders

Posted on by

All aboard for the Freedom Ride to Huddersfield at Sheffield train station (Pic: Guy Smallman)

Freedom Riders and their supporters celebrated the latest victory in their campaign in Sheffield on Monday of this week.

George Arthur and Tony Nuttall were due in court that day to face charges of fare evasion and obstructing the police.

They were arrested during a Freedom Ride protest on 23 June.

But days before the hearing, they heard all charges had been dropped.

Tony told Socialist Worker, Their case would never look very good in court. Their evidence was full of holes. It seems they didnt want the bad publicity and decided to draw a line.

Tony was held by two cops with his head pushed down between his knees during his arrest. Footage of the incident caused widespread anger.

George added, They mustve been worried about the video evidence. It would have shown the brutality of the police.

Freedom Riders have been fighting South Yorkshire councils decision to scrap free train travel for older and disabled people for over eight months.

Their Freedom Rides have seen them board trains to travel for free.

Here is the original post:

Cops drop charges for Freedom Riders


  1. Freedom