Fox News has re-signed Juan Williams to an expanded role with the network in a multi-year deal, Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive officer of Fox News, announced Thursday after National Public Radio fired Williams for his comments on the O’Reilly Factor Monday night, when he said it makes him nervous to fly on airplanes with devout Muslims.
Williams, who will guest host The O’Reilly Factor on Friday night, appeared with O’Reilly on the show Thursday night.
“They take something totally out of context,” Williams said Thursday night, adding that his point was that Americans must come to grips with their prejudices.
“I have always thought of journalism, in a way, as a priesthood. you honor it you protect it,” he said, before criticizing his former employer. “These people don’t have ay sense of righteousness, of what’s right here. They’re self righteous.”
Federal Court Judge Issues Injunction Sought by Goldwater Institute Protecting Voters’ Constitutional Rights
Goldwater Institute News Release
PHOENIX – In a major victory for free speech, Coconino County Recorder Candace D. Owens has decided not to fight a court injunction that lets Diane Wickberg wear her Flagstaff Tea Party T-shirt when she votes on Nov. 2.
“Diane Wickberg can proudly cast her ballot in the upcoming election without fear that she will be harassed by county poll workers for wearing a T-shirt with the U.S. Constitution on it,” said Diane Cohen, the Goldwater Institute’s lead attorney in this case.
U.S. District Judge James Teilborg signed an order late Wednesday that directs Coconino County election officials to not stop anyone from wearing the Flagstaff Tea Party T-shirt when they vote at the polls on election day.
Today, the Goldwater Institute filed a constitutional rights lawsuit against Coconino County to defend a Flagstaff woman’s freedom to wear her T-shirt for a local tea party group when she votes.
When Diane Wickberg went to vote in the special statewide election on May 18, 2010, she was wearing the same T-shirt she wears every Tuesday. The white shirt includes the logos “We the People” and “Flagstaff Tea Party – Reclaiming our Constitution Now.”
The Flagstaff Tea Party meets on Tuesday each week, and Mrs. Wickberg wears this T-shirt as an active member. She was shocked when a poll worker told her to remove the shirt or turn it inside out before voting. The election worker claimed the T-shirt might influence or threaten other voters. Under state law, electioneering inside a polling place is a misdemeanor crime.
The owner of Antietam Gallery is fighting back after the management of Francis Scott Key Mall asked him to stop selling “Maryland stands with Arizona” T-shirts, he said.
The shirts have been on sale at James Kehoe’s custom framing gallery for about three weeks in support of a new law in Arizona aimed at enforcing federal immigration law. Below the slogan, an illustration shows the Maryland and Arizona state flags crossing.
In a letter dated Sept. 2, mall management asked Kehoe to immediately remove the T-shirts from the shopping center, saying they constitute a nuisance or project an unwholesome image on the shopping center.
“The fact they had considered this patriotic T-shirt to be inflammatory and racist, it hit me the wrong way,” Kehoe said.
He is not removing the T-shirts. Instead, he sent a letter of reply to the mall’s management, copying The Frederick News-Post, several local officials and two national conservative commentators.
The letter from the management states that the tenant’s actions violate specific terms of the lease, including sections limited his store to the retail sale of prints, framing and directly related items, and another saying he was operating in a manner inconsistent with the general standards of merchandising in the shopping center.
“Sale and display of said goods with derogatory or offensive political messages also violates Section 5.01(c) in which Tenant agrees to operate in a respectable manner,” the letter states.
Contact info:
Antietam Gallery
5500 Buckeystown Pike # 880
Frederick, MD 21703-9441
(301) 698-9654
(caution for VERY strong language)
Story …
Here’s a lighter story for fans of McDonald and Heller, and perhaps a reminder of just how much gun rights have become mainstream. A week ago, a federal judge in Iowa ordered Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber to take an in-depth course on the US Constitution after overturning his decision to deny Paul Dorr a concealed-carry permit. Weber had rejected Dorr’s application because of his political activism:
A federal judge has lambasted an Iowa sheriff for denying a gun permit to an outspoken government watchdog and anti-abortion advocate whom some in the area considered “weird.”
It was wrong for Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber to deny Paul Dorr of Ocheyedan a permit to carry a concealed weapon three years ago, according to a court ruling issued Wednesday.
Four California high school students are fighting for their right to show their patriotism any day of the year, after they were forced to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
While other students at the school wore clothing depicting the colors of the Mexican flag and other attire related to the holiday, the four students and one other were told by a school administrator that they could wear the shirts any other day but May 5, which celebrates the Mexican army’s victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla.
They filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Morgan Hill Unified School District.
Schumer was very clear that DISCLOSE was carefully crafted to “embarrass companies [inclined to get involved in the fall elections] out of exercising those rights,” according to Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal. “The bill will make companies ‘think twice’, [Schumer] rejoiced. ‘The deterrent effect should not be underestimated.’ ” Even though the bill is considered by many to be unconstitutional, the Democrats’ “goal here isn’t lasting legislation. The goal is to have this [law] in place for this election, when Democrats are at a low point, and when an empowered union base and a silenced corporate presence could make the difference between keeping the House and losing it.”
The bill immediately met resistance from numerous conservative groups, including the National Rifle Association. The bill would require organizations to disclose their top donors if they sponsor political television commercials or pay for mass mailings in the months leading to an election. The NRA initially said the bill “creates a series of byzantine disclosure requirements that have the obvious effect of intimidating speech…[and] attacks nearly all of the NRA’s political speech by creating an arbitrary patchwork of unprecedented reporting and disclosure requirements.”
Such resistance weakened support for the bill by numerous Democrats running for re-election this fall, and so a remedy was applied: exclude the NRA from those troublesome reporting requirements in exchange for which the NRA would drop all resistance to the bill. After NRA lobbyist Chris Cox met with Van Hollen, the NRA was “carved out” of the bill.
The outcry reached ear-shattering levels. “The NRA sells out to Democrats on the First Amendment,” castigated the Wall Street Journal. “Conservatives take on the NRA over [the] deal on [the] disclosure bill,” cried the Washington Post. RedState.org chimed in: “The National Rifle Association’s Excuse Holds No Water.” A member of the NRA’s Board of Directors, Cleta Mitchell, wrote in the Washington Post, that:
