When it comes to Muslims our Justice Dept. ignores the Supreme Court ruling on First Amendment Freedom of Speech.

Two stories here to place the subject in contrast. First off is a commentary on the DOJ working with the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding trial unindicted co-conspirator Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the pro-communist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to threaten First Amendment Freedom of Speech Rights against anyone who writes uncomplimentary stories about Muslims. The second story is a recap of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Westboro Baptist Church lawsuit who ruled that even hateful speech is a protected right. As Robert Barnes wrote in the Washington Post on March 3, 2011,

 The First Amendment protects a fringe church's anti-gay protests at military funerals, a nearly unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a powerful opinion that spoke to the nation's tolerance for even hateful public speech.

    The court's most liberal and most conservative justices joined in a decision likely to define the term. It writes a new chapter in the court's findings that freedom of speech is so central to the nation that it protects cruel and unpopular protests - even, in this case, at the moment of a family's most profound grief.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that Westboro Baptist Church's picketing at fallen soldiers' funerals "is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible." But he said the reaction may not be "punishing the speaker."

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People Power Against the Department of Justice

Submitted by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton on June 8, 2013 – 6:53 pm EST

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and its allies, the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Southern Poverty Law Center, are on the defensive after thousands of people turned out in Tennessee on Tuesday night to protest a scheme to censor criticism of Islam.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a key component of a network of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the U.S., called the turnout a “mob” and praised the Obama/Holder Justice Department for standing up to local residents.

CAIR said “a large group of protesters heckled and interrupted speeches by Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Tennessee, and by Kenneth Moore, FBI special agent in charge of the Eastern Tennessee District.”

In fact, the DOJ had provoked the reaction by announcing beforehand that people using the Internet to criticize Muslims might be prosecuted for civil rights violations and that the meeting on “public discourse in a free society” in Tennessee would examine this alleged problem.

Killian had announced in advance that he would address “how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media.”

In order to explain how the censorship campaign would work, Killian and the local FBI agent, Kenneth Moore, had worked with the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) to schedule the event at the Manchester-Coffee County Conference Center in Manchester, Tennessee, on the night of June 4.

The center was completely filled, however, and hundreds more had to rally outside, where Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who co-founded Stop Islamization of Nations (SION), spoke to the crowd. Videos show Geller and Spencer rallying the people on behalf of freedom of expression.

“I talked with many of the people who had driven hours to get to the rally—a farmer and his son, an orthodox Jewish family, World War II veterans and many more,” said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force (VAST), who was on the scene. “They all said the same thing—the Justice Department is trying to curtail free speech by promising increased scrutiny of any Internet posts which mention Islam.”

He said the angry reactions inside the conference center followed “a heavy dose of jihadist propaganda by the AMAC folks.”

He explained, “A long video about Islam in Shelbyville, Tennessee, followed the usual B movie story line—Muslims come to town, ignorant locals react badly. Muslims demonstrate that they are honorable and just, ignorant locals and Muslims are now the best of friends and there is a lesson here for anyone else who doubts Islam’s noble intentions.”

He said the film footage of a few angry people at the June 4 event “gave the stereotypical ‘angry mob’ scenario for the hostile media,” but that Killian’s presentation was itself “very condescending and provocative” because of the implication that local residents had no right to complain about the spread of radical Islam in their state.

An Islamic Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee features “Strong Islamic studies,” a term that implies Sharia, or Islamic law.

Lafferty said it was entirely predictable that when Killian mentioned the name of the Attorney General, Eric Holder, who is neck-deep in several scandals, people in the audience booed. “Every mention of Holder had the same effect,” he noted.

Killian’s speech, Lafferty said, was that “Muslims are misunderstood and they are no different than you or me” and any criticism of Islam is “hate-mongering and bigotry.”

“The biggest story of the event was the crowd,” Lafferty said. While some people were angry and animated in their reactions to Killian’s lecture on “hate crimes,” he said there was intimate knowledge of Islamic practices and that when Muslim speakers at the podium with Killian talked about Islam as a peaceful religion which valued good citizenship, people interrupted with the word “takiya,” a reference to the Islamic concept of deception.

However, CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) insisted that local residents, as well as Geller and Spencer, were at fault for reacting to the DOJ campaign against the First Amendment. This became the story line of much of the coverage of the event.

The SPLC works hand-in-glove with the Obama/Holder Justice Department, smearing opponents of radical Islam as “Islamophobes.”

But Lafferty of VAST said the focus was “that a special meeting was being conducted to talk about the Department of Justice’s commitment to protect the rights of one religious group—Islam.”

Lafferty and others question why the Justice Department has singled out Muslims for special protection and that such a practice reflects adherence to Sharia, or Islamic law, over and above American law and the Constitution.

He noted that the DOJ based this meeting on the fact that a local Tennessee politician had posted a stupid gag on Facebook about targeting Muslims, and that the incident was “being used as the pushing off point for Justice to scrutinize every statement about Islam on the Internet.”

“Both Pamela Geller and the incomparable Robert Spencer spoke brilliantly about free speech and the threat posed to it by government suppression,” Lafferty said.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

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Westboro Baptist Church Wins Supreme Court Appeal Over Funeral Protests

MARK SHERMAN   03/02/11 09:34 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a grieving father's pain over mocking protests at his Marine son's funeral must yield to First Amendment protections for free speech. All but one justice sided with a fundamentalist church that has stirred outrage with raucous demonstrations contending God is punishing the military for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

The 8-1 decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., was the latest in a line of court rulings that, as Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court, protects "even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate."

The decision ended a lawsuit by Albert Snyder, who sued church members for the emotional pain they caused by showing up at his son Matthew's funeral. As they have at hundreds of other funerals, the Westboro members held signs with provocative messages, including "Thank God for dead soldiers," `'You're Going to Hell," `'God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," and one that combined the U.S. Marine Corps motto, Semper Fi, with a slur against gay men.

Read more here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/westboro-baptist-church-w_n_830209.html

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The first story above mentions the showing of a pro-Muslim propaganda film about Shelbyville, Tennessee as some lame attempt to cover the issue with white-wash, but it gives no details about why this particular town was of any consequence. Well, maybe I should remind my readers about this story that I posted 2 1/2 years ago. Now wouldn't it be of some concern to everyone who either lived in Shelbyville or was a consumer of Tyson Chicken products if some Muslim workers wrote "All Americans must die." on a factory wall? So why would public discussion about this be inflammatory? 

The second story shows the extent of importance given to our First Amendment Free Speech Rights by the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled that even hateful speech is a protected right.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Something bad is cooking in Shelbyville, Tennessee. "All Americans Must Die" written on wall of Tyson Chicken plant that adopted Muslim holiday in 2008

Every piece of good journalism is supposed to begin with an opening paragraph that identifies the important elements related to the story: Who, what, where, when and why. Without these details it is impossible to fully understand or grasp the entire picture. Case in point, the Tyson Chicken plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee. In the past few years the Tyson Chicken plant has hired a large number of Somali immigrants and these workers are predominantly Muslim. The workers began to demand accommodations for their Muslim religion and Tyson agreed to allow them time off to celebrate the Muslim holidays. Tyson Chicken in Shelbyville went out of its way to be accommodating to its Muslim employees in 2008, when it adopted Eid al-Fitr as an official plant holiday.

The NBC affiliate station, WSMV-TV Channel 4 News reported this story today. 10:49am | December 25, 2010

'All Americans Must Die' Written On Plant Wall
Threatening Graffiti Provokes Extra Tyson Security
Reported By Deanna Lambert

The Shelbyville chief of police and a former Tyson employee confirmed that threatening messages surfaced this week, leading to extra security at the plant.

"A couple days ago, they had a terrorist threat that was written on the bathroom walls that said 'all Americans must die,'" said a woman, who said she wanted to remain anonymous to protect her relative, who works inside the plant.

"They've complained for years, as to why these people are being hired in our food department when we are worried about our safety as Americans, you know, and that's something we all need to think about," she said.

Of course, in our age of political correctness, this story did not mention anything specific about the workers nationality or religion so the point about a terrorist message seems a little confusing. A careful search of the Internet reveals there have been other stories warning about terrorist activity in food related areas and all of them have left out some missing critical pieces of information.