Starvin Larry

Via The Aging Rebel here

This afternoon, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 15 additional organizations devoted to professional journalism filed an Amici Curiae, or Friends of the Court, brief  with the Court of Appeals for the Tenth District of Texas n behalf of a motion to lift the gag order imposed June 30 by Judge Matt Johnson on Scimitars Motorcycle Club member Matt Clendennen, his lawyer Clint Broden and others in the case.

The Reporters Committee provides free legal resources, support, and advocacy to protect the First Amendment and freedom of information rights of journalists working in areas where United States law applies. The other friends of the court are The Center for Investigative Reporting, Courthouse News Service, Cox Media Group, Inc., First Look Media, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc., Hearst Corporation, Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, National Newspaper Association, The National Press Club, National Press Photographers Association, The New York Times Company, Newspaper Association of America, Radio Television Digital News Association and The Seattle Times Company.

The Brief

The brief argues:

“ The gag order imposed in this case places unconstitutional restrictions on speech and prevents members of the media from gathering the news and reporting on matters of significant public interest. The trial court failed to apply the correct legal standard for determining whether and to what extent the constitutional rights of the press and the public under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and Article I, Section 8 of the Texas Constitution must yield to preserve (Clendennen’s) ability to receive a fair trial by an impartial jury. The record in this case does not include any findings of inflammatory or prejudicial media coverage that would support a determination that (Clendennen’s)  fair trial rights would be threatened in any way by public access to information about his case – let alone findings of prejudice to the extent required to justify curtailing the exercise of state and federal constitutional rights. For that reason alone, the trial court’s gag order must be vacated.

“Moreover, the gag order is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. Not only does it purport to restrain the speech of too many individuals, including witnesses and law enforcement officers who do not possess information that could jeopardize (Clendennen’s) fair trial rights, but the order also restricts too much speech and is of unlimited duration. The order prevents any gagged individual from making any comment whatsoever to the media, without regard to whether the information is innocuous, purely factual, or already a matter of public record. Unlike gag orders that have passed constitutional muster, the gag order’s ‘no comment’ rule does not preserve for (Clendennen’s)  or his counsel the right to assert his innocence, the right to generally discuss legal claims and defenses, or the right to communicate with the media about the status of the proceedings against him. The trial court made no attempt to narrowly tailor the gag order to prevent dissemination only of prejudicial material, or even to limit the order’s duration. It is unclear from the language of the gag order what speech – if any – concerning (Clendennen’s) case or the underlying incident falls safely outside its ambit.

“In addition, the trial court failed to give proper consideration to alternatives designed to safeguard the integrity and impartiality of a jury, including voir dire, which is normally sufficient to root out prejudice, even in the most high-profile
and publicized of criminal trials.”

The ruling upholds the idea that police officers can profile and detain people who aren’t actually committing any crimes.

Kingsville, TX — Last Thursday, the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled that it is suspicious for a vehicle to have air fresheners, rosaries, or pro-police bumper stickers.

The ruling stems from a 2011 Texas court case in which a couple was pulled over for having rosaries hanging from the rearview mirror, as well as a few air fresheners, and a DARE sticker on the back of the vehicle.

Nohemi Pena-Gonzalez was pulled over by Police Officer Mike Tamez when she was driving just 2 MPH over the speed limit. The officer did not pull her over because she was speeding, but because he suspected that she was trafficking drugs, and found the contents of her vehicle and the sticker to be suspicious.

Eventually, the officer questioned her husband, Ruben Pena-Gonzalez, who agreed to allow the officer search to their vehicle. The officer did not find any drugs, but did find a large sum of cash that he confiscated, and then sent Ruben Pena-Gonzalez to jail.

Recently, the case was taken to the Court of Appeals, where it was decided that Officer Tamez had reasonable suspicion to detain the family and ask to search their vehicle.

The court wrote in its decision that

“We do have concerns that classifying pro-law enforcement and anti-drug stickers or certain religious imagery as indicators of criminal activity risks putting drivers in a classic ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ position. But we need not decide whether these items alone, or in combination with one another, amount to reasonable suspicion because we find the more suspicious evidence to be the array of air fresheners and inconsistencies in the driver’s responses to the officer’s basic questions. We have long recognized that the presence of air fresheners, let alone four of them placed throughout an SUV, suggests a desire to mask the odor of contraband.”

This ruling upholds the idea that police officers can profile and detain people who aren’t actually committing any crimes. Police already profile people according to a number of different factors, and now they have confirmation that their tactics are legally acceptable.

Source for this bullshit

Due to the foot or so of rain NE Ohio got in June,and a bunch more in early July,I’m  playing catch-up on jobs.

One of my biggest jobs of the year is almost done,it’s been damn near impossible to get a lot of it done due to weather-the weather this week’s been great,just a couple thunderstorms here and there.

I only stopped now because it’s dark outside-will be back at it at 7 am,and working ’till dark,wash,rinse,repeat until Sun. or Mon.

I’ll try to get a few posts up during early mornings and after dark Ohio time until job is done.

Via Sultan Knish

Before Mohammad Youssduf Adulazeer shot up a military recruiting center in Chattanooga from a car and then sped away, another Mohammed, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad did much the same thing in 2009.

Both struck military recruiting centers in the South, but the 2009 Mohammed had a message for Americans that we unfortunately failed to heed.

“This is not the first attack, and won’t be the last,” Muhammad warned. “I’m just one Muhammad. There are millions of Muhammads out there. And I hope and pray the next one be more deadlier than Muhammad Atta!”

There are millions of Mohammeds out there. It took exactly six years for one of them to finish what his predecessor started. In a world with lots of Mohammeds, we really need to consider whether we want Mohammed becoming the most common name for a boy in America, as it already has in countries like the UK.

The murderous Mohammeds embody the values of the original Mohammed, the founder of their brutal ideology. They kill like him. They kill in his name.

A country with more Mohammeds, is a country with more Muslim terrorism. And if the first Mohammed doesn’t kill enough people, the next one will. We have to be lucky every time. The Mohammeds only have to be lucky once for there to be a bloody scene, handfuls of wilted flowers at makeshift memorials on concrete and Americans crying because a Mohammed has struck again.
Americans that unfortunately went unheeded.

The family that names a son Mohammed believes that the warlord who raped and murdered his way across Arabia in a manner that ISIS copied was a model for human behavior. Is it any surprise that the model Mohammed eventually imitates his bloody namesake’s crimes?

When a Mohammed rapes young girls in the UK, as quite a few of them have, he is only doing what his prophet did. When a Mohammed opens fire on American soldiers, he is following the teachings of his namesake and prophet. Why blame a Mohammed for acting like Mohammed?

During WW2, we would not have allowed millions of Germans named after the Fuhrer, who admired him and worshiped him, into the country. And if we had done something that stupid, we would have had only ourselves to blame when the darling Adolfs shot and bombed their way across America.

A country with more Mohammeds is a more dangerous place. If a million mothers named their offspring after Charles Manson and raised them to embody Manson Family values, America would be a much scarier place. An America with a million Mohammeds will be even worse.

Read all of it here