Daily Archives: June 21, 2017

Theres been asurge in recent months of violence andthreats on university campuses from left-wing activistswhointend to silence opposing viewpoints.

It happened when conservative commentator Ann Coulter was scheduled to speak at the University of Californiaat Berkeley. Activiststhreatened violence and school officials closed down the scheduled event.

So on Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, held a hearing to take testimony about how school officialscan protect freedom of speech as well as their students.

The committee took comments from Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Thats thegroup cited by Floyd Corkins as his source of informationwhen he attempted to commit mass murder at the evangelicalFamily Research Council office in Washington, D.C.

Get the Whistleblower Magazines revelations about SPLC in its The Hate Racket issue, which shows how the group fools government into equating Christians and conservatives with Klansmen and Nazis and rakes in millions in the process.

Its also the group that was liked on social media by James Hodgkinson, the man who tried to kill Republican members of Congress last week at a baseball practice.

Hodgkinson was merely swimming in the pond created by the SPLC and other groups like it, said Lt. Gen. William Boykin, FRCs executive vice president.

Boykinwrote a letter to the committee on the occasion of the SPLC testimony, warning members of the groups true agenda.

I have provided this background information in order to disabuse the committee of any notion it may have that the SPLC cares about the preservation of free speech rights on college campuses for those with whom they disagree on key issues, he explained.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The hearing, titled Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses, took testimony from students, college officials and others.

It is extremely ironic that one of your witnesses is actually an enemy of free speech, wrote Boykin. I write here of Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The retired officertold senators SPLC has refined a method of defaming its political opponents that is extremely effective when combined with the massive war chest it can rely upon an amount that totals over $319 million as of late 2016.

He said the organization targets victims with hate and extremist labels.

The SPLC bullies and dehumanizes many ordinary Americans by calling them names and portraying them grotesquely in terrible photographs and sketches, he wrote.

The group does not want open debate,said Boykin.

One of the targets of SPLCs hate label in 2016 was then-presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson.

Boykin pointed out that in2007, SPLCs Mark Potok gave an address in which he made this observation about SPLCs modus operandi: Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on . I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.

Boykinsaid SPLC has no interest in an exchange of ideas, even with peaceful, mainstream groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM), the Family Research Council (FRC), and the Pacific Justice Institute whose views may differ greatly from theirs.

He cited the Corkins case that linked SPLC to domestic terror.

Corkins came to the FRC building with the intention of using a semi-automatic pistol to kill everyone there and then place Chick-fil-A sandwiches by 15 of those bodies. In a chilling interrogation video released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and played in court, Corkins said he picked his targets by relying on the SPLC websites Hate Map.

Boykin said it was not surprising then that Hodgkinson had liked SPLC on Facebook.

Boykin chargedthe depth to which the SPLC will sink knows almost no bottom, citing an SPLC attack on human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who opposes a darker, violent side of Islam.

Ali suffered female genital mutilation as a child and wrote about it in her book Infidel.

SPLCs characterization was that she says she sufferedFGM.

Boykin said: It is mind-boggling that a progressive organization like the SPLC would cast doubt on her claims in a personal matter like this.

In his comments, Cohen claimed presidential politics and growing white nationalist activity are making campuses increasingly polarized.

WND reportedHodgkinson, who was killed by police when he shot at members of Congress, apparently was a fan of SPLC.

Hodgkinson also liked many anti-Republican, far-left Facebook pages, including Dump Trump, Liar, Liar, Republican campaign on fire, Republicans ARE the problem, Berniecrats United to Resist Trump and Fire the Republican Government.

Overtly anti-Republican groups were not the only things he liked on Facebook. His liked TV shows favored by the left-wing such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO, The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central.

Get the Whistleblower Magazines revelations about the SPLC, in its March 2015 edition of The Hate Racket, the complete story of how one group fools government into equating Christians and conservatives with Klansmen and Nazis and rakes in millions doing it.

The legal team at Liberty Counsel, criticizing SPLC for falsely and recklessly labeling Christian ministries as hate groups,' noted SPLC is responsible for the first conviction of a man who intended to commit mass murder targeted against a policy organization in Washington, D.C.

On August 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins went to the Family Research Council with a gun and a bag filled with ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His stated purpose was to kill as many employees of the Family Research Council as possible and then to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces (because the founder of the food chain said he believed in marriage as a man and a woman). Fortunately, Mr. Corkins was stopped by the security guard, who was shot in the process. Corkins is now serving time in prison. Mr. Corkins admitted to the court that he learned of the Family Research Council by reading the SPLCs hate map.

WND reported a video showed Corkins entering the FRC offices and confronting Leo Johnson.

Corkins later was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism. It was during an interview with FBI officers that Corkins named SPLC as his source of information.

Central to the case, according to the governments document, was that Corkins had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.

FRC officials repeatedly have explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality but are not anti-gay.

SPLC also exhibited behavior so egregious that it was reprimanded by the far-left administration of Barack Obama.

Judicial Watch, citing a letter to Michael M. Hethmon, senior counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, and others, said the DOJ reprimand came in 2016 but was kept quiet at the agencys request.

[It] involves the SPLCs atrocious behavior during immigration court proceedings. Two groups that oppose illegal immigration, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), were the target of personal, baseless and below-the-belt attacks from SPLC attorneys during official immigration court proceedings. The SPLC filed a motion attacking and defaming the two respected nonprofits by describing them as white supremacist, eugenicist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic. In its reprimand the DOJ says it is troubled by the conduct of SPLC lawyer Christopher Strawn and that his conduct overstepped the bounds of zealous advocacy and was unprofessional. Furthermore, SPLC made uncivil comments that disparaged FAIR and its staff, the rebuke states, adding that the language constitutes frivolous behavior and doesnt aid in the administration of justice, Judicial Watch explained.

The Obama administration kept the reprimand confidential and asked FAIR and IRLI to keep it under wraps. In the meantime, SPLC continues to publicly trash the groups and escalate attacks against them by putting them on the official hate list. The executive director and general counsel of IRLI, Dale Wilcox, says his nonprofit and FAIR will keep fighting for immigration policies that put America first. The SPLCs latest tactic in its never-ending witch-hunt and the federal governments resulting reprimand should send the following message to the mainstream media, Wilcox said: Stop using the SPLC as a legitimate hate-watch source in your news coverage. That a cabal of biased list-keepers can play such an important role in distorting the immigration debate in this country is testament to the utter failure of much of the mainstream media which frequently publishes their inflammatory commentary and refuses to question their baseless methods or financial motivations,' Judicial Watch said.

The letter explained the DOJ stopped short of formal disciplinary proceeding[s], instead opting for the rebuke in the letter.

We take this opportunity to remind the attorney practitioners involved in this misconduct that practitioners before EOIR should be striving to be civil and professional in their interactions with each other, the public, the board and immigration courts. Attorneys owe a duty of professionalism to their clients, opposing parties and their counsel, the courts, and the public as a whole.

To really understand the war zone America is becoming, read the June issue of WNDs acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, RAGE AND VIOLENCE: Why the Left has gone insane in the Age of Trump.

Here is the original post:
Left-wing smear group scorched as 'enemy of free speech' - WND.com

As a July 11 trial start date gets closer, the stakes in a legal battle over a proposed Lynyrd Skynyrd biopic are headed toward double trouble and the heart of American democracy, the films producer said today.

This law suit proves that Freedom of Speech in the United States of America is officially under attack by an increasingly litigious culture that breeds utter contempt for art and that should indeed worry everyone attempting to make a living in the entertainment industry today, Cleopatra Films boss Brian Perera said Tuesday of the court clash over Street Survivors: The True Story of theLynyrd SkynyrdPlane Crash.

With a flurry of filings being made public in the past few days after District Court Judge Robert Sweet tossed an attempt by remaining members of the iconic Southern rock band and the estates of Ronnie Van Zant and others for a preliminary injunction, Perera and Cleopatra want to put the suit in the spotlight before the two-day trial starts next month.

Filed on May 5 by Ronnie Van Zant Inc, Gary Rossington, Johnny Van Zant, the representatives of the Allen Collins Trust and the estate of Steven Gaines, the complaint essentially argues that Cleopatra and ex-Skynyrd drummer and crash survivor Artimus Pyle cannot make Street Survivors because it violates a 1988 consent order over use of the bands name and the tragic plane crash of October 20, 1977.

Cleopatras response has been to claim that Pyle, who is a signatory to the consent order, is no longer directly involved with the writing of the Jared Cohn helmed project. The division of Cleopatra Records that distributed A Street Cat Named Bob this year also says Pyles story and the story of the crash has been well known for years, the movie wont have any Skynyrd music in it and the consent order doesnt actually affect them.

Plaintiffs bring only a single claim against Cleopatra: they allege that the film violates a settlement agreement in a 1988 civil action to which Cleopatra was not a Party, noted Cleopatra attorney Evan Mandel in a May 11 opposition to the preliminary injunction (read it here). The settlement agreement was memorialized in a Consent Decree, the NYC based Mandel Bhandari LLP lawyer adds. Plaintiffs sole claim is as meritless as its request for a preliminary injunction.

Deadline first reported exclusivelyon casting for the film back in April, just a few weeks before shooting on the $1.3 million0budgeted Street Survivors was set to start.

Pauline McTernan and Richard Haddad of NYCs Otterboug P.C. and Sandor Frankel of Frankel & Adams represent the plaintiffs.

Continued here:
Lynyrd Skynyrd Biopic Producer Slams Band Suit As Attacking Freedom Of Speech - Deadline

Thomas Gallatin Jun. 20, 2017

The Supreme Court ruled in an unanimous 8-0 decision Monday to strike down the Patent and Trademark Offices denial of trademark for an offensive band name. The case in question was brought by the Asian-American band The Slants, who had been denied a trademark on the basis that their name was deemed disparaging and offensive. The government argued that trademarks did not fall under First Amendment protections of free speech because they werent private speech in fact, that a trademark is government sanctioned speech. Therefore, the government argued, when the government reviews trademark applications it is free to deny granting them based on what it deems offensive or disparaging.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court correctly saw the governments contorted rationale for what it was a justification to deny freedom of speech. Justice Samuel Alito stated, We have said time and again that the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers. He continued, We now hold that this provision violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.

Not only is the Supreme Courts ruling good news for The Slants, but it holds positive implications for the National Football Leagues Washington Redskins. In 2014, the Patent and Trademark Office canceled the trademark on the teams name because it deemed Redskins to be disparaging to Native Americans. Lost on the social justice warrior yahoos is that no one names their team something they find disparaging. The Redskins appeal is currently stuck in the Fourth Circuit Court, but this ruling should inform the lower courts decision.

Americans should rejoice over the fact that freedom of speech has been protected from those who would seek to prevent it, no matter how noble their cause may have been. And this should be a reminder that there will always be those who will seek through the power of government to silence the speech of those with whom they find offense or disagreement.

Link:
SCOTUS Rules in Favor of Free Speech - Patriot Post