First Amendment

...they are scheduled Wednesday in the Senate Committee and Thursday in the House Committee....

...Thursday, June 13th 6PM at Kalama Heights Senior Center, 101 Kanani Rd, in Kihei....

...the IRS leaked National Organization for Marriage's confidential financial documents to the rival Human Rights Campaign. Those NOM documents were published on the Huffington Post on March 30, 2012....

Heritage sounded the alarm on the Obama Administration’s hit list nearly a year ago....

Senator Sam Slom talks about the Journalism Shield Law and bill in the latest edition of “A Better Day”. Guests include Gerald Kato of the University of Hawaii School of Communication and Stirling Morita, President of the Society of Professional Journalists ....

It will die a victim of Hee’s visceral disdain for the media and the failure of political will in the state Senate....

...a floor amendment to House Bill 622 extending Hawaii’s existing shield law for two years....

The “Shield Law” bill passed out of Conference Committee yesterday (HB 622)....

...provisions that require any hospital in Hawaii to provide information about, offer and, if accepted or requested, dispense emergency contraception....

... civil litigation involving Enron’s collapse, the Catholic Church’s priest abuse scandals, Bridgestone/Firestone’s allegedly defective tires, tobacco company liability and almost any product liability lawsuit ....

...A wonderful opportunity to build private-public partnerships is quickly becoming a veiled blow to religious freedom in Hawaii.  Very shortly, it seems, some of our preschools and kindergartens may have to choose between funding and the practice of faith.... 

...10 issues, large and small, in which government is intruding more into our lives and our businesses....

Both bills state in the preamble that the emergency contraceptive "is not an abortion pill" and "is not an abortifacient." That seemingly simple, and untrue statement, nullifies any protection that a federal conscience exemption might have provided....

The hearing was full of people who are against religious freedom.  One individual even stated that if Christians have a problem with it, they shouldn’t work in an emergency room....

Uncle Sam and Kanoho have a talk about Sen. Kalani English, his busy schedule and his latest pet cause — the Steven Tyler Act....

“...is likely to have a chilling effect on legitimate reporters. And it would be very unlikely to pass a court test of the First Amendment. Please trash this trashy bill.”

The bill, named after – indeed, written by – the Aerosmith frontman, could punish anyone who takes a photograph of a celebrity in public. That includes a tourist who takes out her iPhone to snap a pic of an aging rocker, or perhaps the Obama family....

...creation of a civil cause of action for “constructive invasion of privacy” is overly broad and vague and imposes greater civil penalties upon otherwise protected forms of speech and expression....

"The preamble to the bill specifically mentions celebrities but nothing is said about limiting the act to celebrities and paparazzi."

Under the agreement, The Garden Island, with a total average circulation of 9,509 daily and 8,413 on Sundays, will continue to be published Monday through Friday and Sunday.

Thank God, this body will once again have daily prayer, because if ever there was a time elected officials should call on a higher authority for guidance, it is now.

“As we observe Religious Freedom Day, let us remember the legacy of faith and independence we have inherited, and let us honor it by forever upholding our right to exercise our beliefs free from prejudice or persecution.” -- President Barack Obama

...

Alexandra Telluselle is a Swedish national and self-described "citizen of the world" who was arrested by HPD for shoplifting from a Honolulu Foodland store August 18, 2011....

The complaint asserts that the Honolulu police arbitrarily moderate the page by deleting comments and banning users who post or make comments unfavorable to the department.

"...the IRS contacted us today regarding your 501(c)4 application and stated that they are withdrawing the additional questions that they sent to your organization...."

Religious freedom, suicide, gambling, LBGT curriculum, and trangender birth certificates ....

In January and February of this year, the Internal Revenue Service began sending out letters to various local Tea Parties across the country. Mailed from the same Cincinnati, Ohio IRS office, these letters have reached Tea Parties in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas....

Hawaii’s small gaggle of atheists have suddenly been put to work by Hawaii’s elites ....

If our legislators no longer pray inside the state capitol, then we citizens need to pray in their stead every day that they are in session, preferably on the steps of that building. When election time comes around again, let us all remember who among them thinks we no longer need God in our government. 

The Hawaii session convenes this coming Wednesday, January 19th, 2011.  The change of policy is part of a new rules package the Senate will consider for the opening session. 

Senate President Shan Tsutsui (D, Kahului) will recommend that the Senate end the tradition of invocations based on the ACLU complaint.

The effort is very similar to the smear campaign run in 1998 and 2002 against then-candidate Linda Lingle.  Progressive activists then claimed that the Jewish Lingle would abolish the Christmas Holiday for government employees and insinuated she was a lesbian—a smear which can be heard to this day. 

Whether it is Judaism or Christianity, it seems that attacking the Religion of GOP gubernatorial candidates is stock-in-trade for Hawaii Democrats. 

Because Hawaii’s pay-to-play law does not limit itself, as many such state laws do, to prohibition against contribution politicians with authority to determine who receives government contracts, Jim Bopp argues that the law unreasonably impairs speech in pursuit of regulation....

Allen was responsible for organizing the volunteers at the 2010 iVote rally at the Capitol as well as organizing the neighbor island pastors and churches in the HB444 campaign.  He is a leader in our community and we are extremely blessed to have him take this key position.

...the meeting was disrupted by many Hawaiian Sovereignty proponents who dominated the session with loud and acrimonious statements....

Thursday July 29 and Friday July 30 -- four events on three islands.

The SPEECH Act will guard American authors and publishers from frivolous foreign libel suits, filed in countries that do not have our strong free speech protections....

When California voters approved Prop 8 outlawing gay marriage, gay activists exploded in a display of blind racial hatred directed at blacks.  Is Hawaii’s smug gaggle of “conscious, enlightened, progressives” now taking a page from the same hateful playbook?  

After years of pretending to be concerned about Hawaii's worst-in-the-nation voter participation, today the Honolulu Star-Bulletin has shown its true colors.

In an editorial titled "Religion risky for GOP", SB editors condemn a church-based statewide voter registration drive.  They complain bitterly that, "...the goal is to convince 80 percent of Christian churchgoers to register to vote and then persuade 80 percent of those who register to vote...."

This contrasts sharply with the Star-Bulletin July 21, 2009 which cried, "Hawaii dead last in voter turnout." 

The Honolulu Community Media Council (HCMC) is working with Georgetown University attorneys from the so-called "Institute for Public Representation" to challenge the Raycom Media deal linking the news operations of KGMB, KHNL and KFVE.

According the the HCMC, the Raycom deal is "nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to avoid regulatory scrutiny by the FCC and that Raycom will exercise control over all three stations in defiance of the FCC ownership rules."

But the Honolulu Community Media Council has its own decades-long history of "thinly veiled attempt(s)" to "exercise control" over the media....

Gramscian ideas are far advanced in America. You see them in "hate crimes" laws, in gender equity legislation, in forced corporate "sensitivity" training, in the menace of coerced "right thinking" in the universities. You feel the nuances of it in casual conversation. It's an attitude at a cocktail party.

The Auchi-Rezko-Obama connection came to public attention with federal marshals pounding on the door of Tony Rezko’s Wilmette Chicago mansion in the early morning of January 28, 2008. They hauled Rezko to jail after his bail was revoked for concealing a $3.5 million Auchi loan from the court. The Times outlines the story in two sentences. It should be of tremendous interest to the American public and the world.

But there is more to this story than run-of-the mill political corruption. Nadhmi Auchi is alleged to have a long affiliation with Iraqi Baathism and Saddam Hussein—which his attorneys deny. How close were they? According to a 1960 US Embassy report, Auchi was convicted along with Saddam by an Iraqi court for his part in a failed 1959 assassination attempt against then-Iraqi Prime Minister Qassim. For his crime, Auchi earned a sentence of “three years rigorous imprisonment.”