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.

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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.