07-08-09 Hate Speech Bill in Congress is 'Thought Crimes Legislation.'

[Lookout]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1YjEP2i1D8&NR=1]YouTube - Glenn Beck Clips 07-08-09 Hate Speech Bill in Congress is 'Thought Crimes Legislation.'[/ame]

 

[Darkwind]

Oh good. I can prosecute progressives if they offend Me over the internet.

 

[Nik]

So we should prosecute people the same whether they mistakenly hit someone with their car or whether they purposefully assassinate someone?

Ok then. Any other stupid ideas you want to push for while your at it?

 

[WillowTree]

A Hate Speech Bill? That's gonna put most Democwats outta business isn't it?

 

[Meister]

So we should prosecute people the same whether they mistakenly hit someone with their car or whether they purposefully assassinate someone?

Ok then. Any other stupid ideas you want to push for while your at it?

So you equate manslaughter with murder? Coming from someone who studies law, I could see it. Hell, I believe in anything after the "Twinkie" defense.

 

[RodISHI]

A Hate Speech Bill? That's gonna put most Democwats outta business isn't it?

Long term after people get fully fed up with the latest agenda push by so called "progressives", YOU BET!

 

[Missourian]

I hope to see all the folks from the "Palin bans books" thread blasting this infringement on free speech....won't hold my breath tho.

 

[strollingbones]

i am for free speech....i can remember when this whole country was a free speech zone.

 

[William Joyce]

Obviously, Congress is very concerned about the hateful statements of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. I hope they do some time!

 

[Annie]

Pretty close to what Canada and UK have already set up, just a matter of time:

Idiot’s Guide to Completely Idiotic Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Tribunals by Mark Hemingway on National Review Online

June 05, 2008, 6:00 a.m.

Idiot’s Guide to Completely Idiotic Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Tribunals
Steyn on trial.

By Mark Hemingway

‘Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” —Canadian “Human Rights” Investigator Dean Steacy, responding to the question “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?”

This is the way free speech ends, not with a bang but as the result of an administrative hearing in a windowless basement in Vancouver, Canada.

At least that’s where a “Human Rights Tribunal” is taking place this week that will further solidify the Canadian legal position that the right not to be offended by something you read is more sacred than the freedom of the press.

At issue is a cover story National Review’s own Mark Steyn wrote for the Canadian newsweekly Maclean’s, titled “The Future Belongs to Islam.” An excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone, the article highlighted the fact that demographic trends suggest that Muslims may well become a majority in much of Europe and that this obviously represents a threat to Europe as we know it. A few Muslim law students objected to the article and filed multiple complaints with Canada’s national and provincial “human rights” tribunals and presto! Steyn’s opinion and Maclean’s right to print it have now been effectively criminalized.

The fact that a few fringe Muslims have reacted to Steyn’s article by invoking a once-obscure Canadian bureaucratic process to hold hostage the rights of all Canadians only goes to prove that Steyn needs to be heard, more than ever.

So with all due respect to our friendly neighbors to the north, what the hell is wrong with Canada and how did this happen?

In 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) was founded “to investigate and try to settle complaints of discrimination in employment and in the provision of services within federal jurisdiction.” While their mandate was suspiciously vague from the get-go, even those involved with the founding of the CHRC admit that it was never intended to do anything as abhorrent as regulate speech. At the outset, the commission’s responsibilities were fairly straightforward, e.g. investigating cases of discriminatory hiring practices within the government, discriminatory housing practices, and other cases in which someone might be subject to prejudice in an area under the purview of the federal government.

But with almost Newtonian certainty, bureaucratic power tends to expand over time, and so it was with the CHRC. In 1979, the commission set its sights on John Ross Taylor, leader of the Western Guard Party, an unsavory white-supremacist group. The commission found Taylor guilty of violating Canada’s human-rights legislation for distributing a phone number that provided anti-Semitic recorded messages.

Now whatever you think of Taylor, he wasn’t broadcasting hate speech: One had to make the specific effort to call the number to hear his nasty messages. So Taylor filed an appeal on the grounds that the Human Rights Commission had denied him his right to free speech. ....

Censorship and Double Standards: The United Kingdom's selective intolerance of free speech - Reason Magazine

The United Kingdom's selective intolerance of free speech

Michael C. Moynihan | February 18, 2009

Last month, the Dutch government commenced legal proceedings against a sitting member of parliament, Geert Wilders, for engaging in "hate speech." Wilders’ primary offense was producing the short film Fitna, which juxtaposed sanguinary passages from the Koran with grisly scenes of Islamist violence.
A three-judge panel in Amsterdam ruled that the film—and some of Wilders' more intemperate public statements, like his comparison of the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf—warranted criminal prosecution, for he was making “one-sided generalizations” about Islam and was, therefore, “insulting Muslim worshippers” in Holland.

If it was Wilders desire to provoke liberal governments into revealing a veiled intolerance of freedom of speech—while mollycoddling religious extremists—his mission has proved a gargantuan success.

Last week, after being invited by a group of parliamentarians to screen Fitna at Westminster, Britain’s Home Minister Jacqui Smith dispatched a letter to Wilders, declaring that he was persona non grata in London and would be prevented from entering the country.

But Wilders, sensing an opportunity to further highlight the British government’s illiberalism, travelled to London anyway, where he was swiftly detained and sent back to the Netherlands.

It is hard to overstate the corrosive effect such rulings have on free speech—a point which seems so obvious as to barely merit further comment—but it is just as important to note that, in Britain, there exists an organized campaign to criminalize views critical of Islam.

It began with the furor surrounding Salman Rushdie’s “sacrilegious” and “anti-Islam” book The Satanic Verses. Indeed, the campaign’s success is demonstrated by the uneven application of government crackdowns on offensive speech.

The drive to prevent Wilders entry into the United Kingdom began with Lord Nazir Ahmed, the first Muslim member of the House of Lords. But Ahmed has had few problems with welcoming extremists of a different stripe into the country.

In 2005, he invited the extreme anti-Semite Jöran Jermas—a man whose views are so noxious that Palestinian rights campaigners have specifically warned followers from mislabeling his racism as “anti-Zionism”—to hold a book release party from his offices in Westminster. In 2006, he invited Mahmoud Abu Rideh, an accused al-Qaeda funder previously imprisoned by British authorities, to Westminster to “hear the detainees complaints.”

The former Mayor of London, left-wing firebrand Ken Livingstone, admitted to a BBC interviewer last week that he hadn’t seen Wilders' film, but had it on good authority that it was propaganda of the vilest sort. Because of this, Livingston agreed with Ahmed and the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown that Wilders should be denied entry into the United Kingdom...