Freedom scraps its way past Dieruff to stay unbeaten

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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.

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Freedom scraps its way past Dieruff to stay unbeaten

Religious freedom or a license to discriminate?

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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.

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Religious freedom or a license to discriminate?

Freedom of Entry March | pictures, photos

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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.

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Freedom of Entry March | pictures, photos

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

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

Cliff Owen, Associated Press

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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.

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

Batman-Superman Finds Its Cyborg

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Warner Bros. Pictures

"Man of Steel"

A New York theater actor has nabbed the part of Cyborg in the untitled Batman-Superman movie being made by Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.

Ray Fisher, who is perhaps best known for portraying a young Muhammad Ali in the stage production Fetch Clay, Make Man, is in negotiations to play Victor Stone, the promising football player whose life is derailed and is forced to become the hero known as Cyborg, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

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Batman-Superman is on the surface a sequel to Man of Steel, which starred Henry Cavill as Superman, but it is also acting a building block to a bigger DC film universe.

Already cast in the movie are Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. The movie has several other actors whose parts have not been revealed, as Warners is trying to keep the whole process mysterious and secret.

Stone/Cyborg was for decades a member of the Teen Titans, a group of heroes that included the sidekicks of adult heroes such as Robin, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash. The character became retrofitted to be a member of the Justice League in 2011, when DC Entertainment relaunched its comic book line as the New 52.

Warners quietly added the character to its casting call several months ago, when it began looking for a physically fit black actor. The part at the time called for only one scene but promised more in terms of future movies.

It is unclear if the part is still one scene.

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Batman-Superman Finds Its Cyborg

Ray Fisher will play Cyborg in Batman vs. Superman

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Broadway star Ray Fisher has joined the cast of Batman vs. Superman , with Variety revealing that he will appear in the forthcoming film as Cyborg.

For non-fans of the comic-books, Cyborg is the alter-ego of Victor Stone, the son of a pair of scientists who used him as a guinea pig for their various experiments.

When one of said experiments went badly wrong, Stone was critically wounded, and only revived by being kitted out with a host of bionic prostheses.

Fisher's casting confirms the rumour that Zack Snyder was looking to cast a black superhero for the production, while Henry Cavill had also made noises that he would like to see Cyborg in the forthcoming sequel.

Variety reports that Cyborg will appear in a minor role in Batman vs. Superman , before getting a good deal more screen time in the Justice League movie, whenever that eventually arrives.

Directed by Snyder and co-starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Jesse Eisenberg, Batman vs. Superman will open in the UK on 6 May 2016.

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Ray Fisher will play Cyborg in Batman vs. Superman