Monday, August 31, 2015

American Flag Banned

Society

American Flag Banned From Tennessee Schools

By Alexander Rubinstein, Mon, August 24, 2015

American flags have been banned from the campuses of a Tennessee school district out of fear they may offend some. Students who violate the ban will get kicked out of school, students told WHBQ-TV.
The Dickson County School District made the decision after a controversial debate over the Confederate flag and its removal from the property of the South Carolina Statehouse.
The American flag will continue to fly outside of the school district’s school buildings. It was first reported that students are prohibited from bringing the flag into the school themselves, according to TheBlaze.
“I just think that’s a right. It’s freedom of expression and I don’t think you should be able to take that away from us,” Arianna Heisler, a student, said. “If you want to fly a Confederate flag and if you want to fly a rainbow flag, fly a rainbow flag. Whatever you want.”

Officials at the school say they haven’t had any problems with the new policy yet.
Steve Sorrells, director of student services in Dickson County, said, “While this was not necessarily an attack on the American flag, there were some other issues we’re trying to address. It’s not an unpatriotic act by any means because we have a number of ways in which students do learn how to be patriotic and express American pride.”
Officials did not immediately respond to TheBlaze for further comment.
The school did not just ban the Confederate and American flags. All flags and banners were prohibited from school property if brought I by students, reported Fox News.
News sources reported the ban was on bringing the flag into the school, and students said that they were told they would have to leave for the day if they do so.The school clarified the policy in an email to Fox 13 Memphis, writing that the ban was only on “flags flying on the back of pick-up trucks on school property,” reports National Sun-Times.

What Were They Thinking

'I'm Just Disgusted': Volunteer Cheerleading Coach Banned After Complaining About Pro-KKK T-Shirt

By Jonathan Constante, Wed, August 26, 2015

An Alabama woman says she was let go from her position as a volunteer cheerleading coach after complaining about racist shirts worn by the team’s assistant vice president.
Kayleigh Tipton said she showed up to Boaz youth cheerleader practice one day and saw Brian McCracken and his friend, Brian McDowell, wearing some questionable apparel, WAFF reported.
McCracken, who is the assistant vice president of the cheerleading squad, was wearing a shirt that featured a robed member of the Ku Klux Klan in front of a burning cross, accompanied by the words, “The Original Boys In The Hood.”
Meanwhile, McDowell was wearing a shirt that simply read, “White Pride.”

Tipton told the news station she contacted Commissioner Kenny Jones, who said he told the parents “they are no longer allowed to wear that type of shirt at any NAYF function.”
“We have zero tolerance for any kind of discriminatory apparel or anything,” Jones told WAFF.
But when Tipton showed up for the following practice, Vice President for Boaz Cheerleading Melynnda McCracken told her she was no longer needed as a volunteer.
“I’m just disgusted because I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong besides make a complaint, (one) that should have been kept private to begin with,” Tipton said. “I asked why and (McCracken) could not give me any reason.”
Jones said Tipton’s complaint was unrelated to the request.
“There was some parent concerns (about) some drama that was going on, so we had to go in, evaluate, do our diligence and see what actions were necessary,” he said.
Both Brian and Melynnda McCracken have since quit. They insisted the controversial shirts were worn as a joke, but Tipton and her husband, Cody, did not find it humorous.
“It’s hard for a biracial child that is 4 and 5 to understand what racism is,” Cody told WAFF. “It just outrages me and a lot of other parents but no one will stand up to it because of the consequences their children will get.”

Pigs In A Blanket

'Pigs In A Blanket': Black Lives Matter Protesters Chant While Being Escorted By Police (Video)

By Brendan Kelly, Mon, August 31, 2015

A Black Lives Matter protest and march took place on Saturday at the Minnesota State Fair.
Protesters chanted anti-police phrases, with just one problem -- they were being escorted by police (video below).
While Minnesota police helped guide the protesters through the streets safely, the crowd chanted, "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," a reference to killing police officers.
There have been no reports of arrests or violence during the protest.

Stand Back 100 Feet From My Voice

U.S.

Ruling Limits Protests Outside Supreme Court

By JACKIE CALMESAUG. 28, 2015

Demonstrators near the Supreme Court in June. An appeals panel held that the plaza at the court amounted to a “nonpublic forum.”Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld 65-year-old limits on protesters’ First Amendment rights to gather and wave signs on the grand plaza in front of the Supreme Court, reversing a district court ruling that had found the restrictions “plainly unconstitutional.”

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that restricting demonstrators to the wide sidewalks alongside the plaza was a reasonable limit to preserve the court’s decorum.

The ruling came in a case involving a man who was arrested in 2011 for protesting violence against minority groups on the court’s marble plaza. The appeals panel held that the plaza, with its tiered staircases leading to the pillared building’s formidable bronze doors, amounts to a “nonpublic forum” like the courthouse itself, a place not open to “expressive activity by the public.”

“The government retains substantially greater leeway to limit expressive conduct in such an area and to preserve the property for its intended purposes: here, as the actual and symbolic entryway to the nation’s highest court and the judicial business conducted within it,” the court wrote.

Perhaps anticipating that the case could ultimately come before the Supreme Court, the appeals court drew heavily from past Supreme Court writings and a 1983 ruling in particular, which generally upheld a 1949 law banning demonstrations on the court’s grounds but said protesters could use the sidewalks.

The opinion was written by Judge Sri Srinivasan, who was named to the appeals court by President Obama.

The appeals panel noted that the restrictions do not target specific viewpoints, but apply to all. And, it added, they “reasonably relate to the government’s long-recognized interests in preserving decorum in the area of a courthouse and in assuring the appearance (and actuality) of a judiciary uninfluenced by public opinion and pressure.”

The legal story has been different across the street at the Capitol, reflecting the sense that members of Congress should be sensitive to public pressure as the people’s representatives. In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down limits on protests on the Capitol grounds similar to those protecting the justices’ own turf.

Under the 1949 law, the limits on public expression on the court’s blockwide property originally extended to all four street curbs. In the early 1980s, the District of Columbia appeals court found the law unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court upheld it in 1983 with one change: The 50-foot-wide sidewalks are like those in any other city, it said, and “should be treated as such for First Amendment purposes.”

The current case was brought by Harold H. Hodge Jr. He was arrested in January 2011 after standing about 100 feet from the court’s doors and wearing a sign that read, “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police to Illegally Murder and Brutalize African-Americans and Hispanic People.” The charge against him was dismissed after Mr. Hodge agreed to stay away from the court grounds for six months.

He filed a lawsuit a year after his arrest, seeking to return to the plaza “and engage in peaceful, nondisruptive political speech.”

Friday, August 28, 2015

Where Are Those Darn Commie Subs

FoxNews.com

World

Off the grid: North Korean sub fleet's mystery mission

Published August 26, 2015

FoxNews.com

Now PlayingTense talks between the Koreas continue

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Two-thirds of North Korea’s submarine fleet was reportedly on the move and off of Seoul’s sonar this week despite an announcement by the two Koreas that they were ratcheting down the saber rattling that followed a land mine explosion in the demilitarized zone earlier this month.
More than 50 North Korean subs, believed to represent about 70 percent of Pyongyang’s fleet — were still unaccounted for Wednesday in a potentially ominous development that a spokesman for South Korea's Defense Ministry called "unprecedented." Seoul and the U.S., which maintains a strong presence in South Korea, responded by increasing military surveillance.

"The number is nearly 10 times the normal level … we take the situation very seriously," Kim Min-seok, the defense ministry spokesman, said Tuesday.

"No one knows whether the North will attack our warships or commercial vessels."
- Kim Min-seok, South Korea defense ministry spokesman

South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted a military official as saying the country was "mobilizing all our surveillance resources" to find the missing subs. Yonhap also reported that the submarines, which slipped away from their bases on Friday, likely had returned to naval bases in North Korea. But until they are accounted for, officials say their is concern on the seas surrounding the peninsula.
“We’ve said before the disappearance [of North Korean submarines] is a source of concern, and the fact is they are not easy to detect when they are submerged under water,” Kim said. "No one knows whether the North will attack our warships or commercial vessels," the defense ministry official said.

Pyongyang has also used amphibious landing craft to move special forces near the two nation's maritime border on the Yellow Sea, Yonhap reported Monday.
Tensions between the two nations flare up from time to time, often due to North Korean aggression. In 2010, North Korea’s navy was accused of torpedoing a South Korean warship in an attack that killed 46 people. Pyongyang denied responsibility.
Monday’s announcement that the two nations would dial down tensions came after several days of talks in the border village of Panmunjom, in which South Korea agreed to stop blasting propaganda from loudspeakers at the militarized border. Pyongyang said it regretted the land-mine blast earlier this month that injured two South Korean soldiers.
It also followed an exchange of artillery fire at the border last week, which South Korea said was started by the North.
The two countries have technically been at war since the 1950s, often coming to the apparent brink of all-out hostilities only to step back. Jonathan Pollack, a Korea expert at the Brookings Institute, said the weekend talks that appeared to have calmed the waters included a rare admission from North Korea that its land mines had detonated. Pollack said his sources say the submarines had headed back to port and were no longer accounted for, and that their temporary disappearance was part of the latest round of tensions.
"For its own reasons, North Korea built this up, and then for its own reasons ratcheted it down," he said. "I don't discount their threats, but they express them regularly, sometimes against the U.S. and often for things they don't have the capability to do."
The submarines initially left their ports at the height of the crisis, and the motive behind their deployment was not known, said Scott Snyder, of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"It is not clear whether this is a defensive or offensive move; thus it requires continued watchfulness," Snyder said.
On Monday, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said there has been an increase in military operations by North Korea, but that it “has not been at a level that is high enough to cause alarm.”
South Korean President Park Geun-hye had ordered the propaganda blasted from loudspeakers at the border until the regime led by third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un took responsibility for the three land mines planted there. In a statement released by her office, she said: "We need a clear apology and measures to prevent a recurrence of these provocations and tense situations.
"There will be no retreat in the face of North Korean threats," she added.
Pollack said North Korea's statement expressing "regret" over the land mine incident was as close to an apology as Pyongyang ever gives.

Buddy's Satirical Ramblings

Monday, August 31, 2015