In the News Today

TOP STORY - US Soldiers Believed Among Dead in Killings: The shooter was Arik Uka, 21, a citizen of Kosovo. Two dead. Endless media speculation but no hard facts yet.

NEWS YOU MAYBE CAN'T TRUST:   More than 140,000 flee Libya. -- if you can believe the UN that has a credibility problem with most issues. It was only yesterday that they suspended Libya from the Human Rights Council. That still leaves Cuba, Russia, China and Pakistan on the council. [Source: Wikipedia entry.]

WITH WHAT MILITARY?:   British Prime Minister Cameron is backing off establishing a "no fly" zone in Libya to protect protesters from military bombing after the U.S. and France reject the idea. The leftwing, pro-Muslim, unbalanced Guardian calls the idea "a belligerent military stance."

YA THINK?:   Steve Forbes, in an opinion piece for Politico warns: Barack Obama repeating Jimmy Carter's mistakes

INSANE LEGAL PERSECUTION:    Boise County files for bankruptcy: after a federal jury determined it owed a contractor $6.2 million for violating the federal Fair Housing Act in its handling of a developer’s proposal to build a 72-bed residential treatment facility for teens when "they rejected the proposal because of neighborhood opposition." (Attorneys would get $1.4 million alone.) Boise county has an operating budget of about $9.4 million.
-- The entire population of the county is 7,500 (Source: Wikipedia entry.) And largely Republican. (Source: Idaho Secretary of State 2010 Election Results.) Read the comments at this story. The jury was located in the CITY of Boise, the capitol of Idaho where Mayor David H. Bieter(D) was an early supporter of Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

JUST SAY NO:   Delaware voters say no to Joe Biden -- for name of school. At least 40% of the 1300 voting.

OVERHYPED?:   Oprah Winfrey's new TV channel fails to win viewers: Only 135,000 people at any one time watch the channel that is a joint $239 million venture between the Oprah and Discovery. The ratings are 10 per cent lower than for Discovery Health, the cable channel it replaced. Fewer than 45,000 women in the highly desirable age 25 to 54 demographic group watch the channel.

INTENTIONAL HYSTERIA STORY OF THE DAY with mandatory quotes from offended Muslims who distort the truth:   Tennessee bill would make following Shariah a felony: At least 13 states have bills pending that would bar judges from considering Shariah in legal decisions. The bill is SB1028/HB1353.
--- Despite hysterical rhetoric about the law, this is the reality: [bolding mine]

This bill defines "sharia" as the set of rules, precepts, instructions, or edicts which are said to emanate directly or indirectly from the god of Allah or the prophet Mohammed and which include directly or indirectly the encouragement of any person to support the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States or Tennessee Constitutions, or the destruction of the national existence of the United States or the sovereignty of this state, and which includes among other methods to achieve these ends, the likely use of imminent violence. Under this bill, any rule, precept, instruction, or edict arising directly from the extant rulings of any of the authoritative schools of Islamic jurisprudence of Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali, Ja'afariya, or Salafi, as those terms are used by sharia adherents, is prima facie sharia without any further evidentiary showing.

FREE SPEECH UPHELD:    1st Amendment protects military funeral protesters: By a vote of 8 to 1, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1st Amendment for the Westboro Baptist Church.
--The sole dissenting vote was Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Roberts wrote the opinion that he described as "narrow" a possible warning that this is not a blanket opinion. In a separate opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested in other circumstances, governments would not be "powerless to provide private individuals with necessary protection." The Rev. Fred Phelps and his family members make up most of the Westboro Baptist Church.
-- No AP story carried this  from the BBC:

Chief Justice John Roberts said the Constitution could not be thrown out because "picketing was outrageous".

"What Westboro said, in the whole context of how and where it chose to say it, is entitled to 'special protection' under the First Amendment, and that protection cannot be overcome by a jury finding that the picketing was outrageous," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in opinion for the court.

Michael Doyle of McClatchy newspapers wrote:

In a free-speech ruling that challenges popular opinion, the court ruled that the First Amendment protects even deliberately obnoxious funeral protests. The justices stressed that the court's 8-1 ruling was no endorsement of the church's infamous "God hates fags" message.

RULING from court here. (PDF)
-- The group that picketed the funeral consisted of Fred Phelps and two of his daughters and four of his grandchildren. Judge Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here— inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful
speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.

Perspective from Patterico's Pontifications.
GOOD QUESTIONS:   Commentary: Google and the shadowy world of search engine manipulation: asks some good questions. [From the Miami Herald via McClatchy]

FLUFF YOU CAN LIVE WITHOUT WHILE AFRICA ERUPTS INTO REVOLUTION:   Police take away Charlie Sheen's twin boys [and other trash from the Daily Mail (UK)] Boys returned to their mother after she won a temporary restraining order in Los Angeles Superior Court earlier in the day. -- Must have been a hard choice for the court. The ex-wife has been, according to the article, "in and out of rehab on several occasion."

VIOLENCE AND IRRATIONALITY IN WISCONSIN PROTESTS observed by a law professor and friend that will not be reported in the lamesteam media.