The Washington State Supreme Court Surprisingly Rules in Favor of Free Speech

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Surprisingly enough, Washington State's Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that would have made a radio host's on-air commentaries for or against a political issue reportable as in kind campaign contributions.

This has to be one of the most important court rulings on campaign finance laws to date.

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OLYMPIA — Talk-radio host John Carlson can talk all he wants on the air about political causes — even ones he's involved with — without worrying whether his broadcasts must be reported as campaign donations.

That's the upshot of a unanimous ruling Thursday by the state Supreme Court in a case stemming from an unsuccessful effort two years ago to revoke a state gas-tax increase.

"It's a great day for freedom of speech in Washington and great day for freedom of speech in America," said Carlson, one of two hosts at the center of the legal dispute.

The court's 9-0 ruling was a sharp rebuke of several local governments — including Seattle — that brought the original case. In a concurrence opinion, Justices Jim Johnson and Richard Sanders called it an "abusive" attempt by the municipalities to silence political opponents.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=talkradio27m&date=20070427

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Mike Vaska, the lead attorney representing the local governments, argued the case was never an issue of free speech. He said that Carlson and Wilbur crossed the line of free speech by running a campaign from behind a microphone.

"They were the campaign," he said. "Had they not been running the campaign and had no connection, you don't have any disclosure requirement. They were doing more than talking about the issue, they were asking for money."

Wilbur, Carlson and the station argued their role with the initiative was within the normal bounds of radio fare.

The high court agreed.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_scow_talk_radio_disclosure.html

The NRO has an MP3 podcast with Kirby Wilbur that is worth listening to, even if the quality of the recording leaves much to be desired.

The State Supreme Court Rulings can be read here in Html (1) (2), and in PDF formats (1) (2). They are worth the read, especially the concurring opinion.

(Hat tip to the NRO's The Corner)

The New French Revolution

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Revolutions do not require majorities. They require will.

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“If Sarkozy wins this place is going to explode again,” said the 28-year-old immigrant from Mali as he recalled the violence that rocked La Grande Borne in 2005 and again last year. “There’ll be riots here and in the suburbs all over France.”

Mr Jaoussou’s views are shared widely among the 11,000 people who live on the bleak 1970s estate in Grigny, outside Paris, the home to 52 different nationalities.

Many say that the youths, who have come to see Mr Sarkozy as a figure of hate, would greet his election with a fresh round of firebomb attacks on cars, buses and the police.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1695446.ece

Islam's Objectifying Of Woman

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Imams are making the argument that ALL woman, Muslim or whatever, should wear the veil.

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Earlier he had already succeeded to draw attention to himself by saying, on International Women's Day, to Jyllands-Posten (that's right: the newspaper with the cartoons) that not only Muslim women, but all other women too, should wear a veil. Of course, this resulted in a lot of reactions, and as a matter of fact his remarks in Jyllands-Posten were the direct reason for the interview with Weekendavisen, where he repeated them once more and commented on them. He said for example that wearing the veil is a woman's duty to God, because that is what the Koran says. However, that doesn't mean that he thinks that a woman with a veil is a better person than a woman without a veil.

According to him the veil also serves as a signal: women with a veil are «not for sale». Moreover, the veil protects against rapes, he says: in the US for example, every half minute a woman is raped, and according to him that is because women continuously tempt men by going onto the streets without a veil. Maybe not all men have a problem to control themselves when they see a woman without a veil, and perhaps there is only a problem with five to ten per cent of the men, but he says that is nevertheless enough for all women to wear the veil.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2053

How rich is that?

The veil prevents rape?

Bullshit.

The plain truth of the matter is that the veil makes it easier for the Muslim male to objectify women to little more then objects of sexual gratification.

The veiled woman has no face. the faceless woman is nothing but an object created solely to satisfy the Muslim mans gonadal urges. The veil makes the woman wearing it little more than a sex toy.

The Star Chambers Of Islam

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In Iran, vigilantes may kill you if they can persuade somebody after the fact that you were engaged in immoral behavior.

Never mind your right to defend yourself against their claim. You would already be dead. Besides, after the both the accusation and your burial, who would bother too or even have the balls to defend you and your dead honor?

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Iran's Supreme Court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in 2002, according to lawyers for the victims' families.

The vigilantes were not guilty because their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities, the court found.

The killers said they believed Islam let them spill the blood of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6557679.stm

This is what life is like in a Sharia state.

Would you dare oppose it in your home town?

Blowing The Pressure Release Valves In Iran

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Great things are afoot, even if the intelligentsia of the West are more occupied with hyping up the myth of anthropogenic triggered global warming than with concerning themselves about what is happening in the lands of Islam.

The BBC reports that Iranian youth are leaving the land of their birth in droves because of the lack of work in Iran. There is a large cohort of youths in Iran who have no hope of achieving standing and wealth if they do not emigrate.

~~~

Everyone in the class wants to go abroad.

"The main point for going out of Iran is we have no job security here and there is economic tension," says 32-year-old travel agent, Nazaneen.

The number of educated young Iranians trying to leave the country appears to have increased in the last year since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office judging by the numbers sitting the IELTS exam.

The figures have increased two-and-a-half times this year over the same period last year, according to the Australian administrators of the test.

Student dreams

A year ago, the International Monetary Fund said Iran had the highest rate of brain drain of 90 countries it measured.

"We work from morning till night and still we cannot live off the money we make but over there we can have a better life with less hours of work," said Shabanzade, a hairdresser in Tehran who wants to emigrate.

"There are economic problems and no job security and no freedom," says another student who hopes to go to Australia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6240287.stm

This is significant. Iran is under tremendous demographic and economic duress and while the more intelligent and forward thinking Iranians are fleeing their country, the dimmer and more backward thinking Iranians are remaining behind.

There is no hope for youth in Iran for a better life without violence helping them achieve it. All of the money that the west pours in to Iran's coffers for its oil do not go to creating new industries or jobs, it is spent on global Jihad and grossly expensive programs to develop nuclear weapons.

Islam abhors innovation and modernization. (Except when it comes to weapons like Kalashnikov's, bomb-vests, rockets, IEDSs and nukes.) If you doubt that, go ask the falafel vendors in Iraq.

The violence will come.

On what real or perceived ill will it focus?

If the Mullahs can harness the youth by persuasively laying the blame for the discomfort that the youth feel on the decadent West, then woe betide the West. On the other hand, if the youth decide that it is the Mullahocracy and Islam that has impoverished them, then woe betide the Mullahs.

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Mr Heinsohn's point is not that the West is "outnumbered". Nor is it that a Malthusian battle for scarce resources is under way. In El Salvador, for instance, the explosion of political killing in the 1970s and 1980s was preceded by a 27 per cent rise in per capita income. The problem, rather, is that in a youth-bulge society there are not enough positions to provide all these young men with prestige and standing. Envy against older, inheriting brothers is unleashed. So is ambition. Military heroism presents itself as a time-honoured way for a second or third son to wrest a position of respectability from an otherwise indifferent society. Societies with a glut of young men become temperamentally different from "singleton societies" such as Europe's, where the prospect of sending an only child to war is almost unthinkable. Europe's pacifism since 1945, in Mr Heinsohn's view, reflects an inability to wage war, not a disinclination.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/652fa2f6-9d2a-11db-8ec6-0000779e2340.html

Will the Mullahs of Iran be able to persuade their youth to invest their pent-up rage and energy to their own ends?

Will the Mullahs of Iran be able to persuade their youth that the poverty and desperation that they suffer is the fault of the decadent West.

Will the Mullahs of Iran be able to persuade their youth that their best hope for a better life is through Jihad and confrontation with America and the Zionist entity?

The next decade will tell the tale.

Islam Versus Innovation.

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(This references an old news story. I post this here to illustrate a point and to support some of what I will discuss in my next post.)

Kalashnikov wielding representatives of Islamic virtue have banned the Falafel in Iraq.

I don't know what they ate in Muhammad the false prophet's time. Dates, camels, goats, sheep and other simple fare that desert clime of Arabia could sustain.

It is illustrative of why Islamic countries are stagnate shit-holes. Every user of a innovation new since the days of Muhammad must fear for his life least some zealot decides that its use is worthy of death.

As for the Kalashnikov, well, we can only surmise that the only innovations that are acceptable are the ones that can be used for the specific purpose of killing people.

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The ultimatum seemed so bizarre that, at first, most laughed it off -- until two of them were fatally shot as they plied their trade.

"They came telling us, 'You have 14 days to end this job,' and I asked them what was the problem," said Abu Zeinab, 32, who was packing up his stall for good yesterday in the suburb of al Dora, a hard-line Sunni neighborhood.

"I said I was just feeding the people, but they said there were no falafels in Muhammad the prophet's time, so we shouldn't have them either.

"I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Muhammad's time either, but I wanted to keep my life."
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20060603-101334-8512r.htm

A Civil War Brewing In Turkey

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Turkey is nominally a secular state. The ascendency of Islam around the world is putting a tremendous strain on Atatürk's secular legacy.

It is very likely that within our life time, if not within just a couple of years, we will see Turkey return to Islamic Theocratic rule.

Greece will once again have a hostile alien neighbor bent on the destruction of their way of life and the consumption of all that they possess.

Are their any heroes left in Greece? They will need them. And soon.

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Turkey’s staunchly pro-secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said Friday that the threat Islamic fundamentalism posed to the country was higher than ever — a warning clearly directed at Erdogan.

“For the first time, the pillars of the secular republic are being openly questioned,” Sezer said in an address to military officers.

Inching toward religious rule?
Erdogan’s government denies it has an Islamic agenda, but critics say the government is inching the country toward increased religious rule.

The prime minister has stoked secularist concerns by speaking out against restrictions on wearing Islamic-style head scarves in government offices and schools and taking steps to bolster religious institutions. He also tried to criminalize adultery before being forced to back down under intense EU pressure, and some party-run municipalities have taken steps to ban alcohol consumption.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18106513/

Microsoft's New Internet Explorer Still Sucks

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I bought a laptop the other day. It's a pretty decent little machine.

I thought I would give Microsoft's Internet Explorer a try.

I had migrated over to Mozilla and Sea-Monkey on my other Win-boxes over the last couple of years.

IE still sucks.

It's now worse than it has ever been. What a piece of shit. Where Mozilla, Sea-Monkey and Fire-Fox are intuitive, IE is just a pain in the ass. I don't have time for it.

Fire-Fox is now the default browser on this laptop.

I am not sure what I think of Windows Vista. My first impression is that it makes my Linux systems seem less complicated by comparison. Windows is ding-ware, which is annoying as all hell, but I will try to give it a fair evaluation over the next couple months.

This Is A Race With No Winners

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Nukes for everyone!

One day soon, one of these Islamic nations will use a nuke.

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“One danger of Iran going nuclear has always been that it might provoke others,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London. “So when you see the development of nuclear power elsewhere in the region, it’s a cause for some concern.”

Some analysts ask why Arab states in the Persian Gulf, which hold nearly half the world’s oil reserves, would want to shoulder the high costs and obligations of a temperamental form of energy. They reply that they must invest in the future, for the day when the flow of oil dries up.

But with Shiite Iran increasingly ascendant in the region, Sunni countries have alluded to other motives. Officials from 21 governments in and around the Middle East warned at a meeting of Arab leaders in March that Iran’s drive for atomic technology could result in the beginning of “a grave and destructive nuclear arms race in the region.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/world/middleeast/15sunnis.html

A Disturbing Quid Pro Quo

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The Iranian release of the British hostages seemed too easy.

Well now the truth is out.

Even though Blair stated that he wanted to secure the release of the hostages without "rewarding" Iran in the process, it looks like he did just that, with Bush's help.

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Ahmadinejad announced that he was setting his British hostages free on
Wednesday. On Tuesday, the US released Jalal Shirafi, who until his capture some
months ago served as a terror master for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
Baghdad while doubling as the second secretary at the Iranian embassy. Also
Tuesday, the British announced that the US would allow Iranian officials to
visit five other Revolutionary Guards terrorists that the US arrested in Irbil,
Kurdistan, in recent months.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/iran_doesnt_mix_signals.html

The Gaia hypothesis and the Ice Ages

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The Earth's climate is not static. It never has been. It never will be.

somehow the sun gets a complete pass on its role in global climate change from the environmentalist. I wonder at times if they really understand that the earth has had a whole series Ice Ages and Warm Periods without any humans around at all to influence the climate one way or the other. Their science can no more account for the last Ice Age then it can account for the Holocene Thermal Maximum.

It isn't about the science anyway. It's about shaping people's thinking and behavior. The Global Warming hysteria is just a means for Watermelon Socialist (green on the outside, red on the inside) to gain the moral and political authority to be able to both tell you and to compel you to think and live according to their view of what is best for mankind.

Its not about themselves getting the facts straights on climate change, its about them getting their hands on the power to control what you think and what you do.

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I wonder if Sheryl Crow would liken an Ice Age to something akin to the Earth catching a cold?

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"Mother Earth is a living organism and when she gets sick we get sick," Crow
told a crowd at Southern Methodist University in Dallas during her kick-off
performance Monday.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Entertainment/2007/04/10/sheryl_crow_tours_to_fight_global_warming

We have an alternative Democratic foreign policy

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Like a house divided, we can not long stand. Our enemies without have allies here within.

Lantos and Pelosi's trip to Syria is indeed an example of just how different Republican and Democrat Foreign Policy is.

To Republicans, Syria is a nation that we may have to go to war with. To Democrats, Syria is a nation that we can have a "dialog" with.

What advantage can the US gain by having a dialog with Iran's lackey?

Do the Democrats really think that their sweet words and toothy smiles can win the heart of Bashar Assad?

Are the Democrats really so concerned about what esteem we are held in by a thuggish dictator?

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Rep. Tom Lantos, a San Mateo Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign
Relations Committee who is accompanying Pelosi and several other Democrats and
one Republican lawmaker, said during the group's visit to Israel on Sunday, "We
have an alternative Democratic foreign policy. I view my job as beginning with
restoring overseas credibility and respect for the United States."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/03/MNGTFP0JOK1.DTL&type=politics

Iran paid no price.

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The repercussions from Iran's Hostage taking and the U K's pathetic response will have long term consequences to the West's detriment.

Iran is the strong horse. They have run circles around England.

England denies having sent the Iranians a letter of apology over this event. Whether or not an actual letter of apology was sent is unimportant. What is important is that England's actions were apologetic.

Iran paid no price.

Britain even stopped its boarding operations in the gulf in response to the affair.

Iran paid no price.

Iran is not done.

Having made the once mighty UK look weak and pathetic in response to what would have once been taken as a clear and unequivocal act of war on Iran's part, Iran is pressing forward, demanding that England submit even further.

Why the hell not?

Iran paid no price.

~~~

Iran has called on the U.K. to enact goodwill gestures in response to
Iran's release of 15 British servicemen on Thursday.

In an interview with the British newspaper "Financial Times" on
Saturday, Iranian Ambassador to the U.K. Rasul Muvhadian stated that "we did our
part and showed our good will. It is now the British government's turn to
continue on this positive path."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=846349&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1

Nancy Pelosi and Bashar al-Assad

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to meet with Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria. Syria, like Iran, is on the short list of countries that the US might have to go to war with.

The White House has suggested to her that she rethink her meeting with Bashar al-Assad in light of the message that it sends to Syria and to all of the other nations of the world. An administration official described Assad’s Syria as "a county that is a state sponsor of terror, one that is trying to disrupt the Senora government in Lebanon and one that is allowing foreign fighters to flow into Iraq from its borders".

Nancy Pelosi has given the White House the finger in response.

The Democrats are not behaving as if they take the threat from Islam seriously. I doubt that they really believe Islam represents much of a threat at all. They prefer blaming the current administration for antagonizing Muslims who they think would otherwise prefer to sit around in a circle with us and sing Kumbuyah in happy peaceful harmony and love.

They don’t get it.

They won’t get it.

Even when all of Europe erupts in flames with mobs of "yoots" running around disrupting trains, burning buses, torching cars, tossing Molotov cocktails at buildings, cops and cars while ululating and shouting Allah’hu Ackbar at the top of the lungs, the American left will not accept the fundamentals of what it is all about.

They can not.

They dare not.

To do so would require them to consider and accept that all of that multicultural bullshit that they have been shoving down our throats for the last sixty years was all a load of fetid dung.