[OPINION] Obama pressed to reverse legal opinion on religious freedom

(Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — More than a dozen Jewish organizations signed on to a letter urging President Barack Obama to instruct the Justice Department to reverse a legal opinion that allows religious organizations to avoid religious nondiscrimination laws in hiring.

The Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, Hadassah and B’nai B’rith International were among the 130 signatories of the letter sent Aug. 20 by civil rights, education and secular advocacy groups.

In the letter, the groups ask the president to instruct the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to “review and reconsider” a 2007 memorandum that has been used to promote “taxpayer-funded discrimination plain and simple,” as the American Civil Liberties Union put it.

The memorandum concludes that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, religious organizations seeking federal grants could not be compelled to follow religious nondiscrimination laws pertaining to hiring.

“The OLC Memo reaches the erroneous and dangerous conclusion that the religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) provides a blanket override of a statutory non-discrimination provision,” the letter reads in its opening.

Under the RFRA, which was introduced in the House by now-Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and in the Senate by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the government cannot “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” except when the government can demonstrate that the burden is a “furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

The signatories contend that the Office of Legal Counsel memo has been applied without any regard for the “government’s compelling interest in prohibiting [hiring] discrimination.”

Other Jewish groups that signed the letter are Bend the Arc, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Keshet, Jewish Women International, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism, Women of Reform Judaism and Nehirim.

Reminding Obama that he had pledged to end federally funded hiring discrimination, the signers warned that leaving the opinion in place would tarnish his legacy.

Via: Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Thousands of California convicts to regain right to vote in ACLU-state settlement

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California restored voting rights Tuesday to tens of thousands of criminals serving sentences under community supervision, reversing a decision by a state official that they could not participate in elections.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced the settlement between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union of California, which sued on behalf of nearly 60,000 convicts who became ineligible to vote when then Secretary of State Debra Bowen determined in 2014 that community supervision was equivalent to parole.

Her decision stemmed from a 2011 realignment of the state's criminal justice law that aims to reduce overcrowding in state prisons by sending people convicted of less serious crimes to county jails or alternative treatment programs.

A judge later overturned Bowen's policy, stating that community supervision and parole are different.

Bowen's office appealed the decision, but Padilla, a fellow Democrat, decided to let the court ruling stand.

The secretary of state's office found the lower court's opinion thorough and convincing, said Padilla spokesman Steve Reyes. He added it is Padilla's position to err on the side of maintaining voting rights in contentious cases.

"When there are questions, we're in favor of keeping the right to vote intact," Reyes said.

Tuesday's announcement was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

"Secretary of State Padilla is bucking a national trend in which voting rights are under attack," Lori Shellenberger, director of the ACLU of California's Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. "We are thrilled that this administration has effectively said 'no' to Jim Crow in California."

Still, California's ruling is a narrow one and unlikely to establish precedent, said Michael Risher, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

Earlier this summer, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have extended the right to vote to roughly 40,000 convicts on probation or parole.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Via: US News and World Report

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STICK A RAINBOW FLAG IN THE BOY SCOUTS – THEY’RE DONE!

The governing body of the Boy Scouts of America has voted to allow gay leaders into their ranks. Many see that decision as wise as letting Michael Moore guard your Oreos.

Former Secretary of Defense and current Boy Scout President Robert Gates said:

“For far too long this issue has divided and distracted us. Now it’s time to unite behind our shared belief in the extraordinary power of Scouting to be a force for good in a community and in the lives of its youth members.”

Yes, let’s all join hands in the big circle of unity! Who wants to hold hands with our new leader, Lance? Isn’t this Gates guy the one who got rid of the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell military policy? It seems getting gay people into organizations that functioned perfectly without them is his only raison d’etre.

AWD estimates the decision affects approximately ten homosexuals who, for what reasons we can only imagine, want to camp out with young boys. What could go wrong? Well, it will and the Boy Scouts will die a quick death once the lawsuits from boys molested by leaders start rolling in. And they will.

The decision to allow gay leaders is not being forced on religious organizations with BSA organizations who have moral issues with homosexuality. So just wait until the First Baptist Church of Lizard Lick with 50 parishioners is hit with a lawsuit from the ACLU for not letting the town girly-man take their boys on an overnighter to see how fast scouting folds. Church scouting groups will immediately end their relationship with the Boy Scouts of America forever.

Why do gays force their way into an organization where they are not wanted or welcome? If gay people want to be Scouts, why don’t they start their own Gay Scouting organization? That way they could do whatever they want without restraint. The reason? Because they can. The second reason is they would have nearly zero boy scouts. Who would let their kid participate in scouting with a gay leader?

Starting their own scouting organization is exactly what the Mormon Church is about to do! The LDS Church is the largest supporter of the Boy Scouts of America and pays a large percentage of Boy Scouts of America’s costs. Mormons will not allow gays to be involved in scouting as they see homosexuality as a moral sin. Scouting will crumble in a few short years after the Mormons go their own way.

I’m sad but not surprised that this venerable organization folded to the Gay Gestapo. It’s the way this country is devolving into a nation of cowards where it’s rare to find anyone who will defend tradition and beliefs. The 97% of of heterosexuals in America does not seem capable of standing up to the 3% who are homosexuals.

Again, nobody is stopping gays from being scouts. Let them form their own Gay Scouts of America the way the Mormons will soon form their Mormon Scouts of America. Who cares? But that’s not the way fascists work.

Via: Angry White Dude

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Traitor Cities

The “sanctuary city” movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans is the product of decades of concerted collusion by radical groups like the ACLU to get cities to pledge to violate laws that protect U.S. national security.

Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities frustrate immigration enforcement efforts and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy.

The Obama administration is fine with that. President Obama has made America a sanctuary country, rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens, especially those from Mexico, to come to the U.S. and depress labor markets while they suck the nation’s welfare state dry.

What these traitor cities do is itself unlawful, Hans von Spakovsky notes, but they get away with it because President Obama is determined to dismantle America’s immigration system in order to flood the country with desperately poor, illiterate peasants from the Third World.

Obama wants to do this in order to wash away the rule of law tainted as it is by Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, along with whatever stubborn residue of American Revolutionary enlightenment that remains deeply embedded within the tissues of our culture and free institutions.

Americans are being attacked and killed by illegal aliens in perhaps more than 200 so-called sanctuary cities across the country because subversive left-wing advocates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been working to undermine the nation’s borders and immigration laws. Throughout this long leftist campaign those who demand that federal immigration laws be enforced have been smeared as racist and lacking in compassion. It’s not fair that illegal aliens aren’t given the same rights as U.S. citizens, they whine, mindlessly repeating vapid slogans like “no one is illegal.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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Documents show execessive use of Massachusetts SWAT teams

I reported last year that many of Massachusetts’s SWAT teams were claiming to be private corporations that were immune from public records requests. Last month, the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), the corporation that overseas that region’s SWAT teams, settled with the Massachusetts ACLU and released records related to how SWAT teams are used. A number of publications have since been sifting through the documents.

The results are similar to what we found in other situations in which these records have been made public — the widespread use of the kind of militarized tactics, weapons, and gear that was once reserved only for emergency situations, when lives were at immediate risk. Most notable: Of the 21 times a NEMLEC SWAT team was deployed to serve a search warrant for drugs, the SWAT team reported finding drugs just five times.

From The Intercept:

Just one of the 79 SWAT deployments in 2012-14 — assistance with the search for the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing — involved terrorism. Other SWAT actions during that period show no hostage situations, no active shooters and only 10 non-suicidal barricaded subjects.

About half of the remaining cases involved everyday and often mundane police activity, including executing warrants, dealing with expected rioting after a 2013 Red Sox World Series game, and providing security for a Dalai Lama lecture. In one mission, 15 SWAT team members roved through Salem’s Halloween celebrations looking out for unspecified “gang-related activity,” but were warned by their commanders to maintain a “professional demeanor” given that “everyone has a camera phone and you don’t want to be on YouTube or the news later.”

The remaining 37 SWAT actions were either proactive drug operations, initiated by local police, or suicide response operations . . .

More than half of the SWAT teams’ drug operations were initiated at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. Furthermore, of the 22 narcotics operations detailed in the documents over the two years, 14 included warrants authorizing SWAT teams to conduct “no knock” raids and four authorizing “knock and announce” raids — both of which are forceful entry options that have made national headlines for the accidental killings, injuries, and trauma they can produce.

Via: Washington Post

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Eric Holder, IRS officials coached tax-exempt black ministers on how to engage in political activity

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status.

Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event.

“We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS,” said then-CBC chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri. “In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there. We’re going to have Attorney General Eric Holder there…the ACLU.”

Cleaver’s session advised black ministers on “draconian laws” including voter ID laws. Cleaver was a sharp critic during the 2012 campaign of Republican Mitt Romney’s policies.

As The Daily Caller has extensively reported, the IRS harassed conservative and tea party groups during the 2012 election cycle with improper reviews of their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt applications.

“[The CBC] had the IRS members there specifically to advise them on how far to go campaigning without violating their tax-exempt status,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told The Daily Caller.

“I viewed the meeting as highly problematic. Eric Holder heads the agency that prosecutes organizations who give false information to the government. The Justice Department coordinates with the IRS on actions taken against not-for-profits. These ministries are given not-for-profit status on the basis that they are not engaging in any political activities. Here, the Obama administration was clearly encouraging them to maximize their efforts by showing them where the lines were drawn in federal case law,” Turley said.

“It is a fundamental precept that cabinet members should not engage in political activities. The most important of those cabinet members would be the attorney general of the United States. To have the attorney general actively advising political allies of the president showed remarkably poor judgment on his part,” Turley told TheDC.

Via: Daily Caller

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NRA supports ACLU lawsuit against NSA’s phone records program

The National Rifle Association filed an amicus brief on Wednesday supporting the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s phone records collection program.

The NRA filed a brief of amicus curiae in U.S. District Court in support of the plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit against key Obama administration officials, including director of national intelligence James Clapper, NSA director Keith Alexander, defense secretary Chuck Hagel, Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller.

The gun-rights group — often associated in the public consciousness with conservative politics — and the progressive-leaning civil rights advocacy organization might appear to be strange bedfellows, but the NRA claims that the two groups have common interests.

“The mass surveillance program threatens the First Amendment rights of the NRA and its members,” according to the NRA counsel’s argument in the amicus brief. “The mass surveillance program could allow identification of NRA members, supporters, potential members, and other persons with whom the NRA communicates, potentially chilling their willingness to communicate with the NRA.”

“If programs like those currently justified by the government’s interpretation are allowed to continue and grow unchecked, they could also contrary to clear congressional intent undo decades of legal protection for the privacy of Americans in general, and of gun owners in particular,” according to the NRA counsel’s conclusion.

The ACLU filed its lawsuit in June, following public revelations regarding what it called “the NSA’s unprecedented mass surve

Via: Daily Caller

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COMPLETE LIST OF WHERE U.N. POLL WATCHERS WILL BE STATIONED

COMPLETE LIST OF WHERE U.N. POLL WATCHERS WILL BE STATIONED

Oct 25, 2012 169 Comments Pat Dollard

Excerpted from THE HILL: United Nations election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers around the county on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places.

United Nations Election Observer Deployment 2012

Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

The request for foreign monitoring of election sites drew a strong rebuke from Catherine Engelbrecht, founder and president of True the Vote, a conservative-leaning group seeking to crack down on election fraud.

Via: Pat Dollard

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ACLU: Phone Tracking, Wiretaps Spike Under Obama

The instances of the Justice Department monitoring electronic communications such as phone calls, emails and even social network updates without a warrant has increased by as much as 60 percent in recent years, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The surveillance tools – known as either a “pen register” or a “trap and trace” – record such information as phone numbers and the time and length of calls, but not the content.

Orders to track phone calls increased 60 percent -- from 23,535 in 2009 to 37,616 in 2011 -- according to Justice Department documents, including ones recently acquired by the ACLU.

Orders to track emails and computer network data increased by 361 percent over the same period, though the number of orders was less compared to those for phone calls.

The ACLU argues the legal standard to use the devices is lower because they don’t capture content -- unlike wiretaps, which require a judge’s permission. And the government needs submit only to a court a certification stating that it seeks information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

However, the Justice Department said that in “every instance cited” in the documents a federal judge authorized the law enforcement activity.

“As criminals increasingly use new and more sophisticated technologies, the use of orders issued by a judge and explicitly authorized by Congress to obtain non-content information is essential for federal law enforcement officials to carry out their duty to protect the public and investigate violations of federal laws," the agency said in a statement.

Still, Naomi Gilens, writing in a blog for the ACLU, says the information in the documents “underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power.”

She also calls both devices “powerfully invasive surveillance tools” and points out that nowadays no special equipment is needed to record such information because it is part of phone companies’ call-routing hardware, unlike 20 years ago.

Via: Fox News

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Report: Obama To Release 55 Prisoners From Gitmo

President Barack Obama is about to release or transfer 55 Gitmo prisoners, despite reports that the Libyan believed to be behind the killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was a former Guantanamo inmate transferred to Libyan custody.

The large percentage of those scheduled to be released are Yemeni, according to a list made public by the Obama administration.

Obama stopped the release or transfer of Yemeni inmates in 2010, because the conditions in the country were viewed as too "unsettled" at the time. 

A release or transfer of 55 inmates means Obama is moving out one third of the prisoners at Guantanamo. And while it doesn't represent a shutdown of the facility, it's certainly indicative of a move toward that end. 

Could it be that Obama is trying to set himself up to campaign as the man who is taking steps to finally close Gitmo, just as he recently reversed the Afghanistan surge in order to campaign as the man who's winding down the war in the Afghanistan? 

The ACLU has praised the releases as "a partial victory for transparency."

Via: Breitbart

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Illegal Aliens CAN Vote, Military CAN’T?

Why is the Obama Campaign trying to disenfranchise military votes and at the same time, trying to make sure that illegal aliens remain on state voter rolls? Why are both political parties pandering for the Latino vote? Can illegal aliens vote now? The answer is yes, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

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As Obama’s so-called Department of Justice sues numerous states to block military votesfrom being counted in the upcoming November election, they are also suing states to keep them frompurging known illegal voters from voter registration files.

Just in case you needed iron-clad proof that Obama’s Democrat Party is as anti-American as Stalin’s Russia, this should do it for you. Directing the DOJ to use all of its power to block the vote of men and women who pay with their blood for every right to vote, while at the same time demanding that people not even in the U.S.A. legally, have their votes counted. That should cover any questions you might still have about Obama’s anti-American agenda for change.

And as usual, the good ole ACLU is engaged in protecting the illegal alien vote, but they are nowhere to be found in the fight to protect the military vote. There’s no link for the ACLU defense of the military vote, sorry.

Via: Right Side News

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