Anti-Bullying Bill Could Jail People Who Criticize Politicians

Reason.com   "School’s out for summer and Nanny of the Month is taking the opportunity to salute the zealots within the otherwise laudable anti-bullying movement. They take a real problem--few things are more loathsome than picking on the vulnerable--and bungle the response, as has been done with most every “get tough!” effort from D.A.R.E., the failed anti-drug program, to all the idiotic iterations of the “zero tolerance” fad."



Hat tip to Thomas Anderson, formerly of the 82nd Airborne Division

"Not only did this month’s top nanny introduce a bill that would criminalize speech deemed to be bullying--up to a year in the clink!--she introduced a bill that, according to UCLA First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh, is not limited to speech about children (despite it being touted with the typical “for the children!” justifications). Volokh notes that the bill, if passed, could punish harsh speech directed at journalists, academics, celebrities, politicians, and the like, if the speech results in “substantial emotional distress.”

 

"Presenting the Nanny of the Month for June 2013: New Mexico State Rep. Mary Helen Garcia!"

 

The Slow Death of Free Speech

A small language advisory here.

Mark Steyn   "These days, pretty much every story is really the same story:

• In Galway, at the National University of Ireland, a speaker who attempts to argue against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) programme against Israel is shouted down with cries of ‘Fucking Zionist, fucking pricks… Get the fuck off our campus.’
• In California, Mozilla’s chief executive is forced to resign because he once made a political donation in support of the pre-revisionist definition of marriage.
• At Westminster, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee declares that the BBC should seek ‘special clearance’ before it interviews climate sceptics, such as fringe wacko extremists like former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
• In Massachusetts, Brandeis University withdraws its offer of an honorary degree to a black feminist atheist human rights campaigner from Somalia.
• In London, a multitude of liberal journalists and artists responsible for everything from Monty Python to Downton Abbey sign an open letter in favour of the first state restraints on the British press in three and a quarter centuries. 
• 

Universities are no longer institutions of inquiry but ‘safe spaces’ where delicate flowers of diversity of race, sex, orientation, ‘gender fluidity’ and everything else except diversity of thought have to be protected from exposure to any unsafe ideas.

"As it happens, the biggest ‘safe space’ on the planet is the Muslim world." ...

Megyn Kelly exposes Obama’s embarrassing hypocrisy on something he did today…

The Right Scoop
"Today Obama signed Ted Cruz’s bill that banned Iran’s terrorist UN Ambassador from coming into the United States, a bill that passed the Senate and the House without a single nay vote. But Obama apparently also issued a signing statement to the new law that said he would take the legislation as guidance, suggesting he may not enforce it.

"She talks to J. Christopher Adams about it and plays some footage of Obama that Adams called ‘embarrassingly hypocritical’."

Kelley then showed this video: Obama on Presidential Signing Statements

Sen. Ted Cruz: A bipartisan message to Iran 

...This bill is a first step toward making it equally clear to Iran’s leaders that if they wish to enter into better relations with us, they should at the very least stop doing things like nominating one of the 1979 hostage takers to be their representative at the U.N...

Good Friday and Easter: Walk Jesus's Steps Through Via Dolorosa From Your PC

Yahoo Business

 

"As Christians around the world prepare themselves for Easter, here's an opportunity for people to retrace the steps of Jesus as he walked through Via Dolorosa. It happens to be a street in the Old City of Jerusalem, through which Jesus walked, carrying his cross, on the way to his crucifixion.

"The route from the Antonia Fortress west of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which happens to be a distance of about 600 metres, has been a famous and celebrated place of Christian pilgrimage for a long time now.

"How to Explore Via Dolorosa Via PC

"Thanks to Google's Street View technology, this most painful path, also called the 'Way of Sorrows' or 'Way of Suffering,' can be explored fully. Click here to explore the path from your PC.

"After you're done walking along the Via Dolorosa, Google's technology also allows you to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, visit the Western Wall and the Mount of Olives.

"Apart from all this, Google also says that users "can explore the narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City and each of its four quarters, walk along the Via Dolorosa and see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, visit the Western Wall and the Mount of Olives. You can stop by the Biblical Zoo, then visit the Israel Museum and the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum — and explore more with the Art Project and the Yad Vashem photo archive. Or you can stroll through Tel Aviv's bohemian Neve Tzedek neighbourhood and the ancient port of Jaffa, and take a virtual trip to some of Tel Aviv's scenic beaches or to Haifa's Baha'i Gardens."

This cartoonist thinks Putin doesn't look so bad by comparison