DISQUS

Steve Shulin wrote:

I met a lot of fine folks at the Constitution Party convention, and I urge all God-fearin', liberty-lovin', sovereignty-coservin' Americans to join in the effort to get Alan Keyes on the ballot as a choice for President in as many states as possible.

And I'm urging all sane people to point and laugh at Alan Keyes as often as possible.

Olbermann... Olbermann went off the deep end on this issue in the last few days (though I think the criticism he got from Greenwald did force him to soften his stand in the special comment). He's been defending Obama's decision to vote for this bill based on the absurd argument that there's a "loophole" in the bill allowing for criminal prosecution while granting only civil immunity. The notion that the telecoms are going to be criminally prosecuted by any administration, including Obama's, is absurd. They'd never make the charges stick even if they brought them because there's no criminal intent and because the telecoms acted on the assurance of the DOJ that they were complying with the law. No jury in the world would convict them. But in a civil suit, a Federal judge might well issue an injunction ordering them to comply with the 4th amendment and cooperate with a wiretap request only if it has a judicial warrant with it. Civil immunity is, for all practical purposes, total immunity in this case. This "compromise" is no compromise at all, it is a total cave-in to the Bush administration and the telecom lobbyists.

Closest thing to him... If you're looking for a comedian who treads the same ground at times, look up a guy named Doug Stanhope. He's inconsistent, mostly due to drinking too much and not caring enough sometimes, but at his best he's in Carlin's league when it comes to challenging our assumptions and making us look at ourselves in a new way. He's crude - much cruder than Carlin, even - and very, very cynical. But when he makes contact, he hits a home run.

Incidentally... It's probably worth noting that the new Air Force chief nominated by Gates, Norton Schwartz, is Jewish. One would think he would be particularly sensitive to situations of Christian proselytizing in the Air Force.

At least from the public statements...

The Air Force shakeup wasn't about the religious controversies, though who knows whether that played a part in the decision behind closed doors. We'll see if any changes are made in that regard though. The Air Force Academy is in Colorado Springs, which is like the Vatican City of the religious right, home to Focus on the Family and many similar organizations.

The extent to which fundamentalist groups have infiltrated the military is absolutely staggering. This isn't just a single Marine handing out coins. Fundamentalist groups have shipped tens of thousands of Bibles translated into Arabic for soldiers to hand out to Iraqi Muslims, not to mentioned mountains of religious tracts - even Jack Chick tracts, for crying out loud, which are as much an insult to one's intelligence as one's religious views.

Unfortunately... It is very difficult for a citizen to sue the government for not enforcing the law. Under the courts' standing doctrine, one has to prove an actual harm in order to bring a suit and it would be next to impossible for an American citizen to show that they've been harmed by Haliburton doing business with Iran. Even Congress lacks the standing to sue the executive branch in court, though they could remedy that by passing a law that gives themselves that authority. I have railed against the artificial standing doctrine for many years, but it is the equivalent of cursing at the wind; the doctrine is so entrenched that it is virtually inconceivable that it could change without Congressional action (Congress is empowered in the constitution to define the jurisdiction of the courts, so they could pass a law saying that any citizen has cause to sue if they can show that a government agency is failing to enforce the law). I'm not holding my breath for that either. If anything, Congress wants to restrict the jurisdiction of the courts, not expand it. And the courts themselves have gotten more draconian in recent years over standing doctrine so they're headed in the wrong direction.

What a bizarre comment Beginning with the tautological "Ed's claim is tantamount to his position" argument. Everyone's claim is tantamount to their position - by definition. Our commenter here seems to be making the rest up. There is nothing at all in the Michigan bill that prohibits anything but "peer reviewable scientific information." The bill does refer to "scientific criticisms" and "scientific strengths and weaknesses," but of course the IDCs claim that all of their criticisms are scientific. This despite the fact that every single ID argument can be traced directly to earlier creationist writings. The fact is that we can easily trace the evolution (ironically) of the anti-evolution strategy from "teach creationism" to "teach intelligent design" (and they define those terms word for word the same way - see the earlier transcripts of Of Pandas and People) to "teach the arguments for and against evolution." But that is exactly what ID is, a set of arguments against evolution. There is no intelligent design theory, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be since they can't come up with any way to test or falsify their central claim. There is nothing but a set of anti-evolution arguments that were debunked long ago. They just keep changing the title of their position in the hope that no one will notice that they're merely pouring old wine into new skins.

Huh? What they're doing is the typical double cheek kiss that is quite common around the world. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with being gay, much less a "homophobic slur."

I will... I'll have a thorough analysis of the ruling up, likely on Monday or Tuesday (more detailed than the brief one I posted to my blog). I agree with you about amending the state constitution, but your argument never occurred to me before. I'd really never given it a thought that the state constitution can be amended by a simple majority. Good point.

A deep divide

There is a very deep split among libertarians. My friend Timothy Sandefur, a libertarian legal scholar, calls the Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell crowd "doughface libertarians" (pro-slavery northerners were called doughfaces during the civil war). The crux of the split is the 14th amendment - the doughfaces absolutely despise it and claim that it instituted a new form of slavery as the Federal government took power over the states. Folks like me argue that the notion of "state's rights" is a misnomer - states are governments and governments have authorities, not rights. And we argue that if individual rights are truly unalienable, as the Declaration of Independence says, then it is unjust for any level of government to violate them and those rights ought to be uniform throughout the country. We agree with Madison that the Bill of Rights should have been applied to the states in the original constitution, but he lacked the votes to get that done.

A lot of the doughfaces are outright southern nationalists and slavery apologists. Many are associated with groups like the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly known as White Citizen Councils). Their online home is lewrockwell.com.

Celeste... I am suggesting that it's unseemly for a strong candidate to attempt to win in an undemocratic manner by convincing the superdelegates to overrule the will of the primary and caucus voters. I'm hardly alone in that. Those superdelegates simply should not exist. They have already had the only vote they are entitled to, the one in their individual state contests. I stand by my opinion: if that happens, if the superdelegates elevate the 2nd place candidate in number of delegates and number of votes and make them the nominee, it's going to be a disaster for the party. It will make the Democrats lose the least losable election since 1976.

For the record... I just want to make clear once again that this isn't "Eartha and Ed's story", it's Eartha's story. I've written some commentary on it and did a few interviews with former associates of Moore's, but that's really it. 95% of the work on this was done by Eartha, who has done an absolutely extraordinary job of investigative journalism on this story. I'm proud to just ride her coattails on this one.

True The sheer volume of the misinformation is staggering. I'm giving a speech on this subject in Grand Rapids in a few weeks and I could literally talk for 12 hours just debunking the most popular myths foisted on us by the David Bartons of the world. In an hour long address I have to pick and choose just a few examples.

How about... if you're going to comment, actually leaving your own thoughts? This is not a forum for you to cut and paste whole articles.

Chetley Zarko wrote:

Was this an intentional link-pull by the editor because it was my site that broke the document you refer to?

No, it was an unintentional oversight that resulted from my having neglected to copy the links over when I copied the article over to this website. I did it with another link to, but someone had caught that earlier. It's been fixed now.

Fifth, which procedures did Lennox not follow in "the procedures for making a FOIA request." There was a time when FOIA proscribed for no "FOIA officer" and actually allowed a requester to submit a request to any public employee. Recent amdemdments, allowing e-mail filing of FOIA requests, etc., have changed that to allow public bodies to designate a FOIA officer, but it is not clear from FOIA law that there is a "procedure", nor is it clear that a public official isn't obligated to accept a request in person. Just because he can file one way, does mean he is barred from filing the other way (who knows, maybe he was reading a 10 year citizen's guide type-of-copy of the FOIA printed by someone else, or an old law book without knowing how to do proper legal diligence). But even if it were required to do it a certain way - it would seem good public officials would know that students and taxpayers might not be versed on the law's nuances and that they would just accept such requests with a smile.

According to the report we read on your site, he had already put in several FOIA requests prior to the one in question and had been specifically told that they didn't have to be served on the person they were about. The fact that he went there with a camera in his hand and said the things he did makes it very clear to me that he did so solely to provoke the very confrontation he had. You can disagree if you want, but I think my conclusion is perfectly sound.

I agree with you - Lennox is an attention-seeker and a confrontational prick. So what. Does that divest him of his First Amendment rights? No. That's where the First Amendment needs its most protection - nice guys that everyone likes need no First Amendment. On that note, I highly disagree with your assertion - "Legally, this is a fairly gray area. ..." Not gray at all. CMU has grossly and boldly crushed the First Amendment in several ways. It's not murky. It's not defendable.

You misunderstand my point. As I said, the unconstitutionality of the blanket rule that CMU tried to implement banning anyone from videotaping without their permission is clear. The ACLU is right to condemn that blanket rule. But that doesn't mean that every person has the right in every situation to follow someone around with a video camera and harass them. That is what I said was a gray area, and so it is. I spoke to two constitutional law professors about it while researching this article and both said that the courts have rarely taken up such cases and that the dividing line between what is allowed in that regard and what may constitute harassment is a very gray area in the law. Can someone who just doesn't like you decide that they're going to follow you around all day long with a video camera and tape everything you do all day? I would certainly hope not. At some point it must cross the line into harassment. Where that line is drawn is not at all clear and that is what I was referring to. But I also said that CMU's blanket ban on all videotaping was clearly unconstitutional. I'll happily stand up for Lennox's first amendment rights, and I did so in this article. But your word still fits him quite well.

Addendum I just had a conversation with the owner of Team Golf, who informs me that Full Start Ltd., as far as he has been told, does not own this particular factory, but that the factory is owned by a subcontractor. He also told me that there is an ongoing audit of Full Start's facilities being done by the University of Southern California that should be finished in the next couple of weeks. I am contacting USC to get a copy of that report when it comes out.

What I found most interesting... was that while their statement said there was no "conclusive evidence", they didn't even attempt to dispute or even engage the evidence presented in the report. The same is true of the ACR's statement, which claims there are "numerous inaccuracies" in the report but did not bother to state any of them. I'm really quite baffled by the response of both organizations. Leaving aside the ethical considerations, you would think that just from a strategic perspective the best way to handle the situation would be to say something like, "We take these allegations very seriously and we will do a thorough investigation to verify them. If they are confirmed, we will take any steps necessary to rectify the situation. We will not continue to do business with sweatshops under any circumstances." From a purely strategic viewpoint, the posture they're taking is one that can only cause more problems down the line.

A few important points

1. I don't think it's accurate to say that MSU having to pay for the additional security necessary to protect controversial speakers is due to "threats" by FIRE toward the university. MSU, like any other government agency, is forbidden to pass on the cost of that security to the group needing protection by the law; FIRE merely reminded the university that they could not do so. And this law is good law, necessary for the first amendment to have meaning. The reason that governments cannot pass on the costs of protection of controversial speakers and events is because the government has historically used that to squash the free speech rights of Americans.

When governments in the South wanted to deny civil rights groups the right to march, they often did so by requiring them to pay for police protection or requiring them to buy hugely expensive insurance policies or bonds that would pay for that protection if there was any violence. This gave those who opposed such marches a simple way to make sure they never took place - show up and cause trouble and the cost of police protection goes up and up and up so they can no longer afford to march. This isn't hypothetical, it happened all over the country until the courts stepped in and said that it couldn't happen anymore. So this was not the result of some empty or unjustified threat by FIRE; it is necessitated by the Constitution itself. Allowing the government to charge people for the protection of their right to free speech effectively eliminates free speech (except, of course, for the wealthy, who can afford to pay the cost). This is not something progressives should be complaining about, no matter how heinous we may find the content of the speech in this particular case.

2. I don't think it's accurate to call FIRE a "conservative" group. FIRE was founded by one conservative and one liberal and its boards of directors and advisers are likewise a mixture. Their leadership includes people like Nat Hentoff, Wendy Kaminer, Nadine Strossen and Harvey Silvergate (who co-founded FIRE). All are longtime ACLU activists and board members. They defend the free speech rights of left and right equally. The fact that they have often defended the free speech rights of conservatives does not make the group conservative, any more than the ACLU's defense of the KKK makes them white supremacists. What they are defending is the liberal principle of freedom of speech regardless of the content of that speech.

3. It really needs to be said that no matter what the cost was for MSU to provide that protection, they are legally required to pay it and legally forbidden to pass it on to those who needed the protection. The real fault here, I would argue, lies with those who have attempted to disrupt such events, pulling fire alarms, trying to drown out speakers and even physically harassing speakers and event organizers - in at least one case reported here, chasing them into a parking garage. That's why the heightened protection is necessary. If everyone would recognize that these people have precisely the same right to speak that they themselves do and respect that, there would be no need for such costly law enforcement measures. But that clearly is not the case. And again, historically this has far more often been used to shut down the free speech rights of the left, not the right. It is no less an affront to liberty, however, when it is used to shut down speech by conservatives rather than liberals. Free speech is one of the core ideas of liberal democracy. If we do not protect that principle even when it is used to broadcast ideas we find vile, we put our own freedom at enormous peril.

Yes, I did And I think it is a bad thing, for the reasons I stated. Did you plan on making a substantive comment that actually engages a factual claim in the article, or is this just a drive-by snarking?

The argumentum ad labelum again You're using the same logical fallacy that McCotter did. Merely labeling the group liberal or Democratic does not defeat their position, nor does it place them on the fringe of the Catholic Church. Their position is, in fact, identical to the position taken by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and is entirely in line with Catholic doctrine on social policy. You can disagree with them, of course, but you can't seriously argue that their position is not in line with the church's position. Labeling an argument is not synonymous with defeating the argument.

I find this amusing

This notion that opposition to Ron Paul due to his ties to neo-confederate and Christian reconstructionist groups is only due to people receiving "talking points" from AIPAC (love the "Jews are behind it all" conspiracy mongering). This is a means of dismissing such arguments without ever bothering to engage them and they simply do not apply to me or any of the critics of Paul that I know.

I'm a classical liberal myself with close ties to libertarians all around the country and there is a big split over Paul. I've been having this argument with my friends for weeks now, including spending two hours on the phone with the head of a major libertarian organization that I strongly support this afternoon. But I personally started wanting very much to support him. I still find many of the things he advocates extremely compelling. When he takes a bold stand against violations of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretapping and the various other violations of the Constitution by the Bush administration, I stand up and cheer for him. Nonetheless, I still can't support his candidacy, and this article hits on some of the reasons why.

Now, I don't know whether Ron Paul is himself a racist; I don't know him. But I do know that he has ties to a lot of groups that scare me a lot, and it's not just guilt by association. It's not just that groups like the CCC and the League of the South support him, it's that he has gone out of his way to speak to those groups and cultivate their support. It isn't just that he's getting support from Christian reconstructionists like Gary North, he actually put North - as frightening and totalitarian a thinker as exists in this country - on his Congressional staff. I find that quite bothersome. I'll still cheer him on when he takes the right stands on constitutional issues, but I cannot support him. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with AIPAC or anything else, nor have I ever gotten any talking points from anyone. It's a genuine conclusion from someone who wishes he could support Paul's candidacy.

Chetly wrote:

Mr. Heywood's entire body of work provides the evidence of my assertion (and in another thread the editor of this site has quibbled with me because I've asked that previous works be linked where relevant). Follow his own links. But I'll provide them, and additional link, shortly in response to his entry.

This is quite a lame copout, chetly. You did not, in fact, provide any links to anything Todd has said that supported the assertion that he has advocated or participated in "melees" to prevent someone from speaking at MSU, either in this message or in your response to Todd's comments. Now I've only known Todd for a couple of months so I certainly don't know his whole history, but I do know that the burden of proof is on the one making the assertion and that nothing he has said in the time I've known him has advocated any such thing. You might want to take a look at his post condemning those who tried to disrupt Griffin's speech at YAFwatch, posted soon after the event. You've made the claim without even attempting to provide evidence for it. You need to either back it up or retract it.

Nonetheless, SPLC didn't use Bristow's speaker's list as its evidence. It used a 13 point memo as it's sole evidence (in addition to the "Google Bristow" statement) - a memo that had points that were mutually contradictory (eliminate women's groups and create men's groups, etc.) and appeared to be satirical in some ways. Neither "Creating men's groups" (or white cultural associations) nor eliminating women's groups could, in themselves, be argued as discriminatory, but together, if taken literally, could. Clearly Bristow was being reactionary to the current state of "multi-culturalism" at universities, which endorses all-black separate graduations and black-only support groups, or the same for other "protected categories," but discourages such groups for non-protected categories. His memo, taken non-literally, points out the insanity of that by suggesting a "whites-only" group. When Bristow was asked at the time by a State News reporter on a different YouTube video to articulate his views about the memo, he supported the ending of all the programs and made it clear he didn't want the whites-only programs, and that he was trying to make a point. I offered that State News link to SPLC before they made their final decision - they ignored it and refused to consider anything new. Their entire case for "hate group" status was based on that.

This after-the-fact adding to their case may be fun, and is certainly necessary, but it doesn't make SPLC's decision or process justified. You're right - they have a tendency to throw around that label "casually."

The fact still remains that everything YAF has done since being called a hate group has only supported that label. I was skeptical at first, but I'm not anymore. The evidence is in, it's time to admit it.

Is the Democratic Party a "hate group" because its leader, Mark Brewer, chose to defend a grand wizard of the KKK in a case? Of course not.

This is an exceedingly weak argument. Civil rights attorneys often must represent vile clients but they are not defending the validity of their views, they are defending the principles that defend all of us and our freedom to express our views. David Goldberger clearly found the views of the American Nazi Party repulsive, but he defended the principle of freedom of speech regardless. But that is not in any way analogous to what YAF did here. Their invitation was not about defending principle, it was about agreeing with their position.

Bristow may not even have known before he invited these speakers of their ties to white supremacy (Brewer knew, and had a choice to not to represent). He may have known too, which makes the action very questionable. But nothing to do with SPLC's inquiry last year.

Of course Bristow knew. He knew about Wiginton's views because his association with Wiginton has long been used as evidence of his ties to white supremacists. His defense was that he didn't really know Wiginton and that the fact that he was co-admin of a Facebook group was irrelevant because anyone can add anyone else as a co-admin. But lo and behold, who shows up on campus to emcee this event and sit and chat cozily with Bristow? Preston Wiginton. The man who advocates violence against "muds" - you know, dark people. And as for Griffin, if you really think that Bristow didn't know about his infamous racist views, you're living in a fantasy land. At the very least, he knew the day after he sent out a press release announcing the speech because a whole bunch of sources informed him of it.

Bristow made a conscious choice to invite these racist cretins to speak here. He claims that he just wanted to hear their views on the danger posed by Islam to America. And I'm all for that (as long as a distinction is made between Islamic radicalism and the more moderate forms of Islam). Bring in Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Ibn Warraq or Azar Nafisi to speak on that subject and I'll be in the front row. I think Islamic radicalism is an immense threat to freedom all over the world and the single most reactionary and malevolent ideology in the world - violent, misogynistic, virulently anti-gay, and the enemy of all aspects of human liberty. But if you want to have a talk about that, you bring in someone who actually cares about those threats, not someone who embodies them himself, who holds all those same totalitarian views but just doesn't happen to like brown people. There's a difference between defending the grand wizard of the KKK in court in order to preserve liberty for all of us and inviting him to speak on campus and declaring how "honored" you are to do so.

Chetly wrote:

I don't think the government should be in the business of "officially endorsing" or "condemning" speech. Think "viewpoint neutrality" here.

Viewpoint neutrality only governs what government can do, not what they can say. Government must treat the expression of all ideas as equal under the law; that does not mean they have to treat all ideas as equally true or valid. The government makes factual statements and judgments a near-infinite number of times every single day. Can a history teacher in a public school not "endorse" the reality of the holocaust? Can a science teacher not "condemn" geocentrism as false?

Now if the MSU administration would just come around to the proper role of government and administration and end the entire "recognition of student groups" process, and cut its subsidy for student groups, we wouldn't have to worry about it having to finance them equally and with content neutrality, and issues like "taxpayer's footing the bill for the speech location and any security necessary" would all be moot, wouldn't it? Todd, Ed, I think we can find a bi-partisan consensus on de-recognizing YAF as a student group --- along with de-recognizing and de-funding every single other group. Let students CHOOSE who to give or not give their money to through member dues, donations, and participation. Let student groups pay for the "real cost" (without a profit) of hosting speakers, along with anyone else (obviously universities are in a business of allowing groups to host speakers, but they need not fund or subsidize every request).

As a legal matter, this was settled a long time ago. Yes, the university could choose not to fund any student groups at all, but good luck finding a university who doesn't. If they are going to fund student groups, however, they cannot pick and choose which ones to fund. By recognizing any group they are establishing a designated public forum and cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination. The university cannot defund or derecognize YAF, as some of the folks who oppose them want the university to do; that does not, however, prevent either us or the university from condemning and exposing their actions and words to the world.

chetly wrote

Mr. Heywood however, before he became your associate here, does appear to have advocated for and participated in the melees to stop YAF speakers. I understand why the issue is personal to him - but he's not impartial on this issue and too involved personally to meet Michigan Messengers' ethical standards of reporting it.

You've made an assertion here without evidence. Regardless of whether it's true or not, my position remains exactly the same: any attempts to disrupt the speech, intimidate or commit violence toward the speaker should be met treated as a violation of MSU student rules (if they are a student) or a violation of the law, or both. Griffin is a vile human being whose barbaric views should be protested and denounced, but the expression of those views is clearly constitutionally protected.

On that note, Griffin and Wigington do appear to be repugnant (Griffin statements are certainly that), and Bristow's judgment in bringing them to campus is questionable. Does it, by itself, make YAF a hate group? No. But they could do far better (and they have - their underbilled speech a couple days ago by Akindele Akinyemi was a superb choice of speaker and they completely wasted his breath by drowning it out with these dunces).

When I first saw the SPLC's denunciation of MSU YAF as a hate group, I was skeptical. I do think they have a tendency to throw around that label a bit to casually at times. But they're right. If you bring in openly white supremacist speakers and declare how honored you are to have them even after you've been accused of being a hate group, you've lost all right to complain about the label. I don't believe that bringing in anti-immigration or anti-Islam speakers is evidence of hate. But this isn't even a close call. Nick Griffin and Preston Wiginton are just plain white supremacists. This is no different than bringing in the grand wizard of the KKK, putting out a press release about how honored you are to have him here and then feigning outrage when you get called a hate group. If it waddles and quacks, it's a duck.

This is appropriate... This is a good way to handle such things. The university can express their disapproval of the message without preventing the message from being delivered. I hope they do vote to condemn what was said.