Monthly Archives: April 2017

As if there needed to be any extra motivation for Saturdays battle of Bethlehem, the Freedom and Liberty baseball teams entered the contest as two of the top teams in the area with just three losses between them.

But in a game that had a playoff-like intensity, it didnt last as long as perhaps either team expected.

The Hurricanes rallied for a pair of five-run innings, turned in some defensive gems along the way and Alex Super took care of the rest on the mound in a 10-0, five-inning win over the Patriots at a wet William Sheridan Field.

Im proud of all the kids, Liberty coach Andy Pitsilos said. They stepped it up. It was a huge game, 8-1 (Freedom) and 8-2 (Liberty). My kids came to play today and they did very well.

Now 9-2 on the season, the Hurricanes came into Saturday on the heels of a tough loss Thursday when they were walked off on by Pocono Mountain East. They quickly put that game out of their mind with the rivalry on deck.

Liberty got on the board first in the bottom of the second inning on a controversial play at the plate. With two outs and runners on first and second, Gabe Albino cracked a single to center field. Freedom (8-2) center fielder Alec Huertas came up firing with a strike to the plate, where catcher Teddy Liadis was waiting.

Liadis was unable to corral the throw, though, as Jake Unangst collided with him and the ball went to the backstop. Patriots coach Nick DAmico heatedly argued the call, to no avail.

(The umpire) told me (Unangst) didnt lower his shoulder. He said (Unangst) was diving into home plate, DAmico said. Thats his call, obviously. It was a big call at that moment and it led to a lot of runs. But he saw it one way and I cant complain about it. We did a lot of other things wrong that contributed to that big inning.

Leadoff man Kyle Hlavaty (2-for-3, two runs, two RBI) followed with an RBI infield single and then Jared Burcin belted a two-run double to right field to put his team ahead 4-0.

It felt great, said Burcin, a senior catcher. We played a great game against a great team. We had great pitching. Stuff happened to go our way. We hit the ball well and the breaks came for us, so hey, why not?

Sammy Kraihanzel finished off the scoring in the second with an RBI single to left field, but the Hurricanes were only getting started.

After Super tossed a shutdown 1-2-3 inning that took just nine pitches in the top of the third, Liberty got cooking again on offense.

Unangst (2-for-3, two runs) led off the bottom of the frame with a single, Jake Morgan walked and Jake Wagner hit a sacrifice fly for the 6-0 lead. Albino and Hlavaty came up next with back-to-back bunt singles and both later scored when Burcin crushed another two-run double to the gap, stretching the lead to 9-0.

I dont know what to say about Burcin, Pitsilos said. Every game, its unbelievable. He does a heck of a job behind the plate and hits the heck out of the ball. Hes got a very beautiful swing and hes a very heady kid.

Elias Gross capped off the rally with another sacrifice fly, making sure the game could end after five innings with the 10-0 margin.

Super finished with five strikeouts while scattering three hits and one walk over five innings.

Supes been throwing the ball well all year, Pitsilos said. Hes very consistent. He throws strikes with three pitches and he keeps everybody off balance. He did a hell of a job today.

The Hurricanes, who entered Saturday as the No. 2 team in the lehighvalleylive rankings, handed the No. 1 Patriots their second loss in three games.

Obviously we try not to look at the rankings, but some people do, Burcin said. This one just had a lot of extra motivation.

Freedom couldnt catch a break all day. As it looked to spark a rally in the fifth inning, Thomas Bonilla led off with a fly ball to the gap that looked like extra bases before Unangst got on his horse from right field and made a stellar diving snag for the out.

Unangst is outside his mind, I dont know what else to say, Pitsilos said. Think about where he caught the ball, its unbelievable. Hes just a great kid, hustling, and playing really well right now.

It was that kind of day for the Patriots. Another potential hit was taken away in the third inning when Gross made a barehanded scoop on a dribbler to shortstop and fired to first for the out.

They had that play in right, they had their shortstop make a heck of a play, DAmico said. Thats a good team over there. Give credit to Liberty. They took advantage of things.

Greg Joyce may be reached atgjoyce@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter@GJoyce9.FindLehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.

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Liberty baseball powers past Freedom in short order - lehighvalleylive.com

In Los Angeles, Danny Lederman, the 26-year-old director of digital media for the county's Democratic party, said "We used to look up to intelligence and aspire to learn more and do more with that intellectual curiosity. And we've gone from there to a society where ... our officials and representatives belittle science and they belittle intelligence. And we really need a culture change."

The rallies in more than 600 cities put scientists, who generally shy away from advocacy and whose work depends on objective experimentation, into a more public position.

Scientists said they were anxious about political and public rejection of established science such as climate change and the safety of vaccine immunisations.

"Scientists find it appalling that evidence has been crowded out by ideological assertions," said Rush Holt, a former physicist and Democratic congressman who runs the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "It is not just about Donald Trump, but there is also no question that marchers are saying 'when the shoe fits.'"

Despite saying the march was not partisan, Holt acknowledged it was only dreamed up at the Women's March on Washington, a day after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

But the rallies were also about what science does for the world.

"Most people don't know how much funding for the sciences supports them in their lives every day. Every medical breakthrough, their food, clothing, our cellphones, our computers, all that is science-based," said Pati Vitt, a plant scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. "So if we stop funding scientific discoveries now, in 10 years, whatever we might have had won't be; we just won't have it."

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Scientists across the world take to the streets to demand freedom from political interference - Telegraph.co.uk

If you ask around the country, or around the world for that matter, what one word exemplifies the essence of America? What word best describes what America represents? What single concept is etched in our constitutional DNA? It would be freedom!

It was the quest for freedom that inspired a group of colonists to fight for and create a new nation. It is the idea of freedom that was pervasive in every word written into our founding documents. It was the desire to perpetuate freedom that lead to the creation of our unique system of government with its singular responsibility to defend our freedom from enemies both foreign and domestic. There cannot be a reference to America that doesnt contain the underlying principle of freedom.

Why then have we strayed so far from that most fundamental founding principle? We are no longer free to conduct our lives as we see fit. There are at least 5,000 federal criminal laws. There are so many regulations that can be enforced criminally. They cannot even be counted but the number is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. And that doesnt account for all the state and local laws. Each of these laws and regulations is a little bit of our freedom stolen from us.

Now I am not an anarchist who believes there should be no law. I believe that we should be free to go about our lives as long as we do not harm or violate the rights of someone else. John Stuart Mill, author of the classic treatise On Liberty wrote: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized society, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. In other words, the legitimate role of government in a free society should be restricted to ensuring that only those offenses that injure another person should be purview of government force.

At one time, freedom was defined as the absence of coercion. The Progressive Era brought about an expanded definition as it applies to government, the freedom from want. If you believe that the federal government exists as originally intended, for the explicit purpose protecting your rights, then the pursuit of freedom from want has no place in governments role in our free society.

The Framers knew if they were to provide something to someone, that benefit could be used as an excuse, no matter how illegitimate, to impose the governments will upon not only the recipient but the population en masse, which is exactly what has happened. That is why the Framers where adamant that the central government be given no power or responsibility to provide goods and services beyond safety, defense, and a few to promote the economy and trade. The Framers went even further to explicitly limit the power of the federal government to eighteen enumerated powers. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution defines the governmental guardrails meant to keep the federal government from veering into areas they have no authority to venture.

It is the application of the freedom from want that has provided pseudo-justification for the government inserting itself into every aspect of our daily lives. If someone or something provides you with a good or service, is it not reasonable to expect that the provider would want you to behave in a manner that would not exacerbate your want or need for that good or service? And if the service provider is government, they can impose that behavior modification with force.

This completely changes the relationship between citizen and government. The citizen becomes a subject of government as opposed to the government acting with the consent of the citizen. Let us take a look at one easily understood example, the motorcycle helmet laws.

I doubt there is one case where the absence of a helmet made the rider more of a danger to their fellow citizens. So what is the justification for forcing a person to wear a helmet? Medicaid and Social Security. Should a person become disabled because they were not wearing a helmet they might become a lifelong liability on the social welfare system.

Thus the government has an interest in mitigating the injuries that can be sustained by someone operating a motorcycle. This is done at the expense of everyones freedom. Now all motorcyclists have lost the freedom to feel the wind in their hair in an effort to reduce the probability that some might become wards of the state.

The freedom from want or the redistribution of wealth, has been used for the past eighty years as rationalization to implement a plethora of unconstitutional, freedom squelching laws and programs. They use taxation and regulation to nudge people in a direction that is more advantageous to government and less conducive to individual freedom.

As usual the government acts like a bull in a china shop. Instead of holding the individual responsible they punish the entire community. It would be easy to pass a law that states if you are injured or disabled because you choose to ride a motorcycle, you relinquish all claims to government social welfare benefits. But no, that would connect voluntary actions to accepting responsibility for the outcome of those actions and the government works overtime to sever that connection.

We now have in Washington D.C. a group of a little over thirty Republican Representatives who are members of what is known as the Freedom Caucus. Now give that some thought for a moment. Only thirty or so members of the House of Representatives want to be affiliated with a group dedicated to getting government out of the way of our individual freedom. If you go back to the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the entire Congress was the Freedom Caucus.

Today, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Lincoln would be considered alt-right radicals. Even Democrat John F. Kennedy with his ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country and his tax cutting policies would be considered by the liberals and media as completely out of the mainstream.

If freedom is to prevail, we must eliminate the incentive for government to infringe on our liberty. We must demand that the government return to its Constitutional limits. James Madison, father of the Constitution, stated; Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. Ronald Reagan once said, Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didnt pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

The question we must ask ourselves, do we want to go down in history as the generation that allowed the flame of freedom to be extinguished or do we rise up and force our government to again respect its Constitutional boundaries?

Area resident Jack Loesch is a longtime teacher at the University of Akron. Read his website at http://www.TorchnFork.info. He may be reached at: TorchNFork@frontier.com

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Freedom I: The essence of America - SalemNews.net

Sen. Susan CollinsSusan CollinsCollins: I'm not working with Freedom Caucus chairman on healthcare Mexico: Recent deportations 'a violation' of US immigration rules White House denies misleading public in aircraft carrier mix-up MORE (R-Maine) on Friday reportedly denied that she has been working with the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on a healthcare bill.

CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow claimed Thursday that the moderate senator was negotiating the details of the GOP healthcare bill with Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). But that news came as a surprise to Collins, who said she "choked on [her]cereal" when she saw the report, according to theMaine Sun Journal.

Collins, who has been pushing her own healthcare measure in the Senate, said she couldn't remember meeting Meadows or discussing substantive policy issues with him, the Sun Journal reported.

Kudlow also said that Collins could help push a healthcare bill through the Senate next week if the House passes one. Collins rejected that notion outright, and said that she doesn't"believe in jamming legislation through."

The White House is holding out hope that a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act could come to a vote in Congress as early as next week, but many Republican lawmakers though have expressed deep skepticism that a vote could come that quickly, noting that the text of such a bill hasn't even been written yet.

GOP lawmakers are eager to pass a healthcare bill after their first attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare failed last month due to a dearth of support among Republicans, especially members of the Freedom Caucus.

While Collins also opposed that bill, she said it is unlikely that Meadows would be willing to work with her on a new bill, calling their rumored negotiations"a very improbable pairing" while saying she'd be "happy to talk" wth Meadows, according to the Sun Journal.

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Collins: I'm not working with Freedom Caucus chairman on healthcare - The Hill

Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. Thats our problem people are obedient, all these herdlike people. Howard Zinn

If truth be known, Americans are no more free than were Germans under Gestapo Germany. Freedom and Democracy America is the greatest lie in the world.

Countries sink into tyranny easily. Those born today dont know the freedom of the past and are unaware of what has been taken away. Some American blacks might think that finally after a long civil rights struggle they have gained freedom. But the civil rights that they gained have been taken away from all of us by the war on terror. Today black Americans are gratuitously shot down in the streets by police in ways that are worse than in Jim Crow days.

American women might think that finally they have gained equality, and they havethe equality to be abused by police just like men. As John Whitehead reports,

women are forced by police to strip naked, often in public, and have their vaginas explored as part of a drug search. When I was a young man, society would not have tolerated any such intrusion on a woman. The officer and police chief would have been fired and if not prosecuted for rape, would have been beat into bloody pulps by the enraged men.

Tyranny was brought to Americans intentionally by their government. Perhaps it began in 1992 with the unaccountable use of police power against an American family at Ruby Ridge. Randy Weavers 12 or 13 year old son was shot in the back and murdered by federal marshals. Then his wife was murdered with a shot through her throat while she stood at the door of her home holding a baby in her arms. There was no justification for this gratuitous violence against a peaceful American family, and the federal marshals who murdered were not held accountable. The Congress, the peoples representatives held a hearing, and those responsible for murdering a family told the representatives that they had to trust the police.

A year later, 1993, the Clinton regime murdered, using poison gas as well as gun fire, more than 100 members of the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas.

Women and children comprised most of the victims of freedom and democracy America. The Branch Davidians had done nothing except be different. They were a threat to no one. But the Clinton criminal government knew that it could portray the Branch Davidians, as they were different, in unfavorable lights. They were said to be in possession of, and perhaps manufacturing, illegal machine guns. They were said to be having sex with underage girls in their collective.

When the Branch Davidian compound was attacked by a tank spewing chemical warfare and then burnt to the ground, insouciant Americans were told that justice had been done to child abusers. No one objected that the same justice had also been done to the allegedly abused children.

Again the representatives of the people held a hearing. The result was that the Clinton criminal regime and Janet Reno got approval for dealing effectively with those who violate gun laws.

Ruby Ridge and Waco established the precedents that the US government could murder large numbers of Americans, and at Waco some foreigners, without consequence. The representatives of the people accepted the executive branchs lies in order to avoid having to hold the executive branch accountable for what were clearly without any doubt capital crimes against American citizens for which the federal perpetrators of these crimes should have been tried and executed.

These two instances established the precedent that the US government could murder US citizens at will.

The next step was to take away the constitutional and legal protections of citizens that are in the Bill of Rights, the amendments to the US Constitution, and are, or were, institutionalized in legal practices.

The false flag attack of September 11, 2001, was the instrument for deep-sixing the bill of rights. The George W. Bush regime made us safe by taking away our civil liberties. Habeas corpus, the foundation of liberty, was destroyed by the executive branchs assertion that the President on his sole authority, the US Constitution notwithstanding, can detain US citizens indefinitely without evidence, without going before a court, without any accountability to law whatsoever.

The Obama regime not only endorsed this murder of the US Constitution, Americans First Black President even went further. Obama declared that he had the power to sit in his office and write down names of US citizens whom he could murder at his will without accountability.

Congress did not object. The Supreme Court did not object. The American media did not object. The law schools and bar associations did not object. The Republican Party did not object. The Democratic Party did not object. The American people did not object. Washingtons allies in Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada did not object. The Christian churches did not object.

I objected, and a few others like me, such as John Whitehead.

9/11 clearly, without any doubt, destroyed American liberty. Even if you are so brainwashed as to believe an obviously false story of the event, even if you believe that a few Saudi Arabians without government or intelligence service support outwitted all 16 US intelligence agencies, the National Security Council, all intelligence agencies of Washingtons vassals abroad, outwitted Israels Mossad, US Air Traffic Control, caused US Airport Security to fail four times in one hour on the same day, and prevented for the first time in history the US Air Force from sending fighters to intercept off course airliners, the fact remains the same: the US government used 9/11 to destroy the constitutional protections of US liberty.

The raw, ugly, but true fact that our government has destroyed American liberty is the reason that everyone of us is subject to experiencing the abuses that John Whitehead describes.

Who will be next? You? Me? Your Wife? Your Son? Your daughter? Your aged and infirm parents?

When it happens, it was the American people who permitted it.

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If This is Freedom and Democracy, What is Tyranny? - Center for Research on Globalization

To the editor: A disturbing belief has taken hold recently: that university students have a right to an intellectual safe space and not to be offended by speech with which they disagree. (Conservative group threatens UC Berkeley over Ann Coulter appearance, April 21)

There are in fact no such rights. Students can choose not to attend a lecture or walk out if they choose, but they do not have the right to stifle the free speech rights of a speaker and of those who issued the invitation. Administrators and public officials have the responsibility to clearly explain this to the student populace, but they are not doing a very good job of it.

At UC Berkeley which rescheduled conservative commentator Ann Coulter's lecture after its previous cancellation of the event caused a backlash university officials have shown they are willing to surrender to the domestic terrorists who light fires, overturn cars and smash windows. If they will not provide safety for those exercising their 1st Amendment rights, then it behooves the president to act. There are precedents from Arkansas and Alabama during the civil rights movement, when past administrations stepped up to ensure the rights of black students to attend public schools and colleges.

This is an opportunity for UC Berkeley students and administrators to learn an important lesson regarding the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.

Silas Mariano, Oceanside

..

To the editor: Coulter is scarcely the embodiment of a deep conservative thinker. Nobody would confuse her with Leo Strauss or Edmund Burke, for instance. And the right loves any chance to portray the left as stomping on the 1st Amendment.

UC Berkeley, in initially denying Coulter a platform, played into the right-wing agenda.

Joan Walston, Santa Monica

..

To the editor: Oh, the nugget of radioactive hypocrisy buried in the larger article covering conservative grievances over the short-lived cancellation of a hate-speech mavens appearance at UC Berkeley: the insistence by Coulter and her right-wing sponsor that campus police expel any students engaging in heckling.

Translation: Coulters free speech rights take precedence over those of opposing viewpoint. To paraphrase Truman, what is Coulter doing in the kitchen if she cannot stand the heat?

Blaise Jackson, Escondido

..

To the editor: It seems to me that the most effective nonviolent protest of a speaker is to stay home. Violence is childish and counterproductive.

The purpose of a university is to expose students to other ways of thinking. I resent my tax dollars going toward an institution that would deny the right of anyone to give a speech, regardless of how offensive it is.

Jefferson C. Romney, Westlake Village

::

To the editor: No one believes that fomenting violent protests serves to advance the interests of the right or the left, just as no one thinks conservatives have a white supremacy dream for America. All of these thugs just muddy the waters of our democratic discourse.

I for one would appreciate mindful media coverage of the real issues as opposed to the sensational marketing of a divisive narrative. The Times should strive to uphold the highest standards for our fourth estate to achieve that end.

Pam Brennan, Newport Beach

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

Originally posted here:

How Trump can send a message to UC Berkeley about freedom of speech - Los Angeles Times