http://www.cbsnews.com/…

Calling it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country,” John McCain ripped into the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Guantanamo detainees access to civilian trials for the second day in a row. “We’re now going to have the courts flooded with so-called “habeas corpus suits” against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material,” McCain said. “Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.”

The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 yesterday that enemy combatants can challenge their detention at Guantanamo Bay in U.S. courts, instead of military tribunals. It was a decision welcomed by McCain’s rival. “The Court’s decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain,” Barack Obama said. “This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.”

At a town hall meeting here today, McCain sought to use Obama’s embrace of the decision against him. “Sen. Obama applauds this decision and he supports it,” McCain said. “I argue against it and will do what I can to at least narrow down some of the wide open aspects of this Supreme Court decision.”

He shows how much of a warmonger he is yet again. He doesn’t want to give these individuals one of the most fundamental rights in western and common law, habeas corpus. He wants the government to be able to just lock people up indefiently with no charges brought up in front of their peers. Why? Likely because he knows it will show that this war on terror is a farse and that many of these men held have done nothing to harm US subjects. This and the last warmonger info to come out should be more than enough to discredit this man and keep him from being dog catcher let alone president.

http://www.examiner.com/…

Six parents of chronically truant San Francisco schoolchildren - each of whom missed more than 50 days of class - were arraigned Tuesday before a superior court judge on infractions that charged the guardians with failing to make sure their kids receive an education.

The infractions, pursued by District Attorney Kamala Harris, carry a $100 fine. If the truancy continues, the next step would be misdemeanor charges of neglecting a child’s education, charges that could land a parent in county jail for up to a year with a fine up to $2,500, Harris said Tuesday.

The parents - Connie Wilson, Jamelia Kellom, Shanae Seastrunk, Kenneth Reed, Chanell Brown and Joshua Pomar - were the first to be prosecuted under stricter enforcement guidelines announced by Harris at the beginning of the school year.

The number of students skipping school in San Francisco has long been above statewide averages and costs the already cash-strapped district more than $5 million in state funding every year. One absence costs the San Francisco Unified School District about $42, according to district data.

Among the most common reasons for truancies, especially among elementary school children, are child care issues, drug abuse by parents, lack of transportation, family abandonment and the students ditching classes, according to school district Superintendant Carlos Garcia.

“You know, little kids, what rights do they have? I think we as a society need to stand up for their rights, the right to an education,” Garcia said.

1. Education is not a right. You don’t have a right to other people’s labor. Your existence doesn’t create an obligation for others to provide you with anything. Taxation is theft, period. 2. The absence wouldn’t cost anyone anything if there wasn’t compulsory government schooling. This whole “your actions cost us all” “problem” only exists because these power hungry, megalomaniacs who think they know better than everyone one else use guns to force people into participating in things they could be doing voluntarily. If the service was so important as these people like to claim why then wouldn’t the free market be able to provide it? If you look at it historically it could… what has changed? Could it be that religious and socialist idealists wanted to control the populous? Could it be that compulsory education was instituted not for the children but those in power who wish to propagandize their utopian values?

http://www.catholicexchange.com/…

In a decision that foreshadows the possible fate of Fr. Alphonse de Valk, Canada’s leading pro-life voice among Catholic clergy, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal has forbidden evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson from expressing his moral opposition to homosexuality. The tribunal also ordered Boisson to pay $5,000 “damages for pain and suffering” and apologize to the “human rights” activist who filed the complaint.

The complaint stems from Canada’s debate leading up to state legislation recognizing so-called same-sex marriage. In 2002, the pastor wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper in which he denounced the homosexual agenda as “wicked” and stated that: “Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.”

The activist subsequently filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission — a quasi-judicial body that investigates alleged discrimination within the Canadian province. The government tribunal published its decision [http://albertahumanrights.ab.ca/Lund_Darren_Remedy053008.pdf] on May 30.

While agreeing that Boisson’s letter was not a criminal act, the government tribunal nevertheless ordered the Christian pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.” Moreover, the tribunal’s decision “prohibited [Boisson] from making disparaging remarks in the future” about the activist who filed the complaint and witnesses who supported the complaint. Many of Canada’s religious leaders and civil libertarians have expressed concern that the government’s human rights tribunals are interpreting any criticism of homosexual activism as ‘disparaging’.

The tribunal also ordered Boisson to provide the complainant with a written apology for his letter to the editor. This last requirement threatens civil liberties in Canada, said Ezra Levant, a Jewish-Canadian author and lawyer. Levant, himself the target of an Alberta Human Rights Commission investigation, is facing the possibility the state may order him to apologize as well.

What a bunch of horseshit. People like to point to Canada and many of the EU nations as a bastion of civil liberties. With any amount of research you can see that it’s only the liberties of the secular statists who are protected. This is outright censorship and should be condemned. If people want to combat what some could consider hate speech they should work to ostracize those who speak it. Don’t purchase the media publishing it. Don’t use the threat of violence to get people to not speak… use a superior position to make their ideas appear incorrect.

http://abcnews.go.com/…

The order from Judge Barbara Walther - whose decision to hold the children in temporary state custody was rejected by the Texas Supreme Court last week - calls for more than 430 sect children to be returned to their families starting this morning.In order to be reunited with their children, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints parents must agree that the children will stay in the state, must have their fingerprints taken and must take parenting classes.

Though the children will be allowed to live with their parents, the order does not end Texas Child Protective Services’ investigation into allegations of sexual abuse on the sect’s Yearning for Zion ranch.

The state claims that the sect forces underage girls to marry older men and breeds young men to become sexual abusers.

Walther’s order requires sect families to cooperate with the ongoing investigation, including allowing CPS to interview the children at unannounced times and to give the children medical and psychiatric evaluations.

I guess I was a bit too optimistic prior but this is not surprising. Even though the original call is absolutely known to be fake they continue this infringement on their community. These people are being prosecuted because they have a different culture. No one has come forward to claim they were being held against their will. This is little different from the government taking every single child in a town because someone made a crank call to CPS claiming one of the children in the town was molested.

How is it that a court can rule this an illegitimate raid and yet put these requirements on the parents? When these types of rulings are made aren’t it supposed to negate the governments actions?

The people that support this kind of thing need to watch out. At some point your beliefs will be in the minority and these same busy bodies with guns will come to your home.

Viewers respond to KOB photographer arrest

Eyewitness News 4 has received hundreds of comments since airing footage Thursday of a KOB photographer getting arrested while covering a story.

The photographer was handcuffed and cited for disobeying a police officer. He was released about 90 minutes later.

He was videotaping an early morning crime scene where a driver had exchanged gunfire with police officers in Albuquerque.

The photographer says he was asked to leave the scene and go to a media staging area. However, he says officers did not tell him where that area was located.

More than 600 comments from around the country were posted on the KOB.com forum in response to the arrest footage.

One viewer wrote, “Cops just got shot at and this reporter wants to argue for this officer’s name and badge number?”

Another viewer had a different view, saying “This is a no-brainer. What the cop did was against the law, period. APD needs to take responsibility.”

Albuquerque police spokesman John Walsh says an independent review officer will look at footage of the incident.

And I’m sure they will… and chuckle.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that Child Protective Services (CPS) abused its discretion by seizing 468 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints ranch in Eldorado. Eugene Volokh has a roundup of the legal analysis.

CPS invited some mental health workers to the various shelters to help care for the hundreds of children. The mental health workers were disturbed by what they saw of CPS’s treatment of the women and children, and their written reports corroborate the bitter complaints of the FLDS mothers. I don’t think the news media has given this aspect of the story the attention it deserves — so here are some excerpts from the various reports that have been made public:

• “Women were constantly lied to about where their children [were] and when they could see their lawyers and about when they would be reunited with their children.”
• “Constant reminders that the adult women were only guests and that they were not in charge of the children and what CPS did to them. [The children] belonged to CPS now and they could talk, interrogate, separate and treat them any way [CPS] wanted. This included physical exams and x-rays without [parental] supervision.”
• “I sat with Audrey while three of her children were removed for six hours of questioning.”
• “The children arrived healthy and happy and left sick and crying.”
• “The door to the room was almost constantly open. Even when the women closed the door to reduce noise during naptime or to dress themselves or the children, it was almost immediately opened again [by a CPS worker].”
• “The women were lied to and denied access to their attorneys.”
• “At least 5 mothers reported that at night CPS [workers] circled their beds, held flashlight in their faces & then would sit inches away from them as they tried to sleep. Mothers reported that they were scared CPS would take their children during the night.”
• “The CPS workers were openly rude to the mothers and the children, yelled at them for trying to wave to friends and family members in surrounding shelters, threatened them with arrest if they did not stop waving to others, continually reminded them that the women were guests only and could be made to leave if they did not cooperate, threatened the mothers with never seeing their children again if they did not cooperate, and ignored requests for anything.”
• “The children were amazingly clean, happy, healthy, energetic, inquisitive, well behaved, and self-confident; while the mothers were consistently calm, patient, and loving with their children.”
• “Living conditions in the coliseum were not conducive to good health for anyone, and the presence of hostile CPS workers who spied on them constantly, kept them awake at night by shining lights in their faces and talking and laughing created enormous stress for the mothers and children. None of them slept well or enough.”
• “Try to imagine all these children from age 1 to 12 years, left in that coliseum [separated from their mothers] with only CPS and [police officers] to care for them. The only others were mothers whom CPS decided were under 18 and kept in their custody along with their children. The floor was literally slick with tears in places. A baby was left in a stroller without food and water for 24 hours and ended up in the hospital. A 4 year old boy was so terrified that he snuck away and hid and was only found after the coliseum had been emptied the next day.”
• “I witnessed a young mother named Rosinith be required by CPS to board the bus back to the ranch, though her young child was in the hospital with 104 degree fever and even though the child’s physician had personally requested the mother’s presence at the hospital. This event haunts me still, and I cannot imagine such a heartless act.”
• “By the second day, I was ready to run in front of the CNN cameras to shout that there was a travesty happening inside those walls…. Of course I was cautioned not to interfere in a ‘crime scene investigation.’”
• “I have always been proud to be an American and a Texan but this incident is not what America or Texas stands for and something must be done to undo the horrible injustice that has been done.”

CPS denies the allegations of mistreatment. But the excerpts above are eyewitness reports from objective/disinterested social workers that CPS invited into the shelters.

Justice is still not served. Not until restitution is paid and those who brought this about are punished directly. Now we need the state to return the children kidnapped from Strong City. Jeff Bent, Wayne Bent aka Michael Travesser son, was on Free Talk Live yesterday for those interested.