Bill Whittle: This is the greatest threat to our country...

is he right?

Sean Hannity, Free Speech, and Due Diligence...

free speech is under assault.

(This is a post I started yesterday before we lost power.  We did what any right thinking people would do in the case of a power outage by visiting our favorite Mexican restaurant and chowing down until power was restored.)

Sean Hannity (emphasis mine)

“In all seriousness, we are at a turning point,” Hannity began, “a huge turning point when it comes to freedom of speech in the United States of America. I, for one, I refuse to sit back and let conservatives be silenced by these liberal fascists, it’s time to take a stand 

[...]“Now on Friday, just two days after Bill O’Reilly parted ways with the Fox News channel,” Hannity added, “an individual with serious and glaring credibility issues fabricated completely untrue, ridiculous claims about me, I think going back to 2003, ’04 and ’05, which this person quickly recanted. 

“Now instead of doing their job and fact-checking the accusations by this individual,” he said angrily, “by the way, easily proven to be false, liberal fascist journalists, lazy as they are, they saw an opportunity. ‘Oh, let’s get Hannity next, let’s silence his voice.’

It always grieves me when a blog or news site that holds forth to the community as being conservative posts stuff that could have been fact-checked by doing a bit of due diligence.  It brings into question everything they post. Often the misinformation becomes part of the echo chamber, and soon it's viewed as truth. 

Yesterday Wednesday I posted about the cancellation of the 82nd Avenue of the Roses Parade in Portland, OR due to threats of violence.  I saw the story first on Gateway Pundit. What followed was at least an hour, if not more, of due diligence on my part.  Why?  Because I have come to not trust Gateway Pundit. I read local Oregon news sites, looked at maps, read comments on many different news stories, and visited many websites to better get a feel for what actually happened.

Today, a conservative blogger (who shall remain unnamed) posted a story using a link from Powerline that started off by describing the parade as:

One of the staples of Portland, Oregon —”Portlandia” to TV viewers— is the annual Rose Festival and it has for several years now featured a kickoff parade akin to the Rose Parade in Pasadena on January 1 every year.

Powerline got their information from OregonLive who also said:

A threatening email has derailed one of the Portland Rose Festival’s signature events, and spurred new debate about the ongoing political protests in Portland. 

The 82nd Ave Rose Parade is a far cry from the Rose Parade in Pasadena and is in no way a signature event.  It's a neighborhood parade organized by the businesses along 82nd Ave. to boost their visibility and counter the perception that 82nd Ave is not too nice (it isn't.)

Many would consider this a small problem.  It's just a parade. No biggee.  But, it is a biggee, because if I can't trust you on the little stuff, why in hell would I trust you on the big stuff.

Part of free speech is getting stuff right.  That takes time.  It takes due diligence.

Sean Hannity is very powerful.  Worth a watch.





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I find these two events chilling...

and you should, too.

Presented without comment:


Miami principal loses job over unremarkable online comment on McKinney pool party
  
Justice Department Orders Website To Turn Over Names of Commenters…

Bill Whittle: I Support Free Speech, But...

this is a very important presentation.




More:

The “Offended” People, Facebook, and Narcissists...

Free speech for thee, but not for me...

coming to a street corner near you - soon!

Don't you dare say anything nasty about homosexuals.  Uh uh!  


 Let Me Be The 1st To Violate The SC's Whatcott Ruling: I Personally Harbour Hate Detestation For The Vile Sodmites Pushin Filthy Radical Gay Propaganda At The TDSB




 

Homosexuals Attack Free Speech. University of Illinois Instructor Fired After Being Accused of Anti-Gay Hate Speech...

It seems the university thinks Professor Howell was not "inclusive" enough.  Be sure and read the rest of the article and weep for your country.  This is insane! 

(Fox News) — URBANA, Ill. — The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying he agrees with the church’s teaching that homosexual sex is immoral.

The professor, Ken Howell of Champaign, said his firing violates his academic freedom. He also lost his job at an on-campus Catholic center.

Howell, who taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, says he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining some Catholic beliefs to his students preparing for an exam.

“Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY,” he wrote in the e-mail. “In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same.”

An unidentified student sent an e-mail to religion department head Robert McKim on May 13, calling Howell’s e-mail “hate speech.”

The student claimed to be a friend of the offended student.  The writer said in the e-mail that his friend wanted to remain anonymous.

“Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing,” the student wrote. “Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another.”

Howell said he was teaching his students about the Catholic understanding of natural moral law.

“My responsibility on teaching a class on Catholicism is to teach what the Catholic Church teaches,” Howell said in an interview with The News-Gazette in Champaign. “I have always made it very, very clear to my students they are never required to believe what I’m teaching and they’ll never be judged on that.”
Howell also said he makes clear to his students that he’s Catholic and that he believes the church views that he teaches. read the rest

H/T Weasel Zippers

Where do we get our rights?

The article below from Big Government, points to a pervasive problem in this county - namely sloppy speech. Even people who may know what they are saying, produce words that do not convey the truth of what they are trying to articulate. The result of sloppy speech is sloppy thinking. I am as guilty of this as anyone, and try very hard to choose the right words.

Words make a difference. In the novel "1984" by George Orwell, changing language was one of the primary ways used to control the populace. By changing the meaning of words, or even eliminating them, subtle shifts of understanding can happen without the person affected even realizing a change has taken place.

Our current culture prides itself on the odious idea of "political correctness." Even though we make jokes about the movement, we still are led down it's insidious path, and soon we are incorporating the new language in our day-to-day speech.

You Don’t Have a Constitutional Right to Free Speech
by Derek Hunter

You’ve undoubtedly heard someone, maybe even yourself, say that you have a Constitutional right to free speech, right? While that seems to make sense, it’s not true, or at least wasn’t before the government got so big that it started intruding into areas of our lives in which it has no business; and it is part of a modern mentality that has the potential to harm our individual liberty. read the rest

How Long Before They Start Coming for the Bloggers

This is something that is discussed quite often at our dining room table. How long will the powers that be allow us to continue?

I know lots of people who rely on the main stream media for their news and the results are a disaster.
Atlas Shrugged addresses this very issue:

The Last Frontier of Free Speech: Gagging, Surveilling the Internet

AN OBAMA OFFICIAL'S FRIGHTENING BOOK ABOUT CURBING FREE SPEECH ONLINE

When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling. read the rest

I've been informed the link doesn't work. Hopefully all fixed....

My Hot Day

My hubby is enjoying 60 degree weather in Minnesota while our temps are reaching into the high 90's. So what do I do? Why paint the bathroom of course. THREE times.

First color is too light, second color better, third color - perfect!

And poor Elle hates hot weather and is very insecure since her surgery on Wednesday. Here's how that works. I make sure she's resting comfortably in her little bed and commence to paint. In approximately 10 to 15 minutes she realizes she can't see me and starts to cry. I return to her bedside where she immediately falls back to sleep. I paint. In 15 minutes we repeat with the pats and reassurances. And on and on.