The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and Sundeep Iyer, Director of the Division on Civil Rights, have issued the statement below as students across the state in K-12 schools and on college and university campuses return to school:
March 4,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Scottsdale Arizona , the Satanic Temple (TST) has filed a lawsuit against the City of Scottsdale, Arizona alleging religious discrimination following the city’s refusal to allow TST to deliver an invocation prior to a City Council meeting. Both Scottsdale policy and Constitutional law require that if religious invocations are permitted, then any religious denomination that wants to deliver an invocation must be given an opportunity. Over the past eight years, every invocation given before the Scottsdale Council has been exclusively from Judeo-Christian faiths.
Evidence of willful and intentional discrimination was provided by communications from the council members. Public records of the council members’ emails reveal a flagrant bias against TST with Councilwoman Kathy Littlefield openly stating that she did ‘NOT want the Satanists’ to speak, and that the notion that a member of TST had the right to do so was an example of “taking equality too far.”
Attorney Stu de Haan, representing TST, states, “By the City Council’s own statements, it’s clear that their refusal to allow The Satanic Temple to speak was motivated by their intent to discriminate against a minority religion.”
After approving TST member Michelle Shortt to deliver a City Council invocation, the Council rescinded its offer and replaced Shortt with a Pastor from a local Baptist Church. During his Mayoral re-election campaign, Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane listed the silencing of Shortt as an “accomplishment” achieved during his time in office explaining on his website, “In Scottsdale we’ve decided to keep our traditional invocations and we’ve decided to send this Satanist sideshow elsewhere.”
According to TST spokesperson and co-founder, Lucien Greaves, “It’s disheartening when public officials can display such a flagrant disregard for the most foundational bedrock principles of Constitutional Law while acting upon their personal biases at the expense of their taxpayer base, who are ultimately left to pay the legal costs for the ignorance of their Mayor and City Council.”
While the invocation policy is supposed to allow for voices of any religious denomination, Mayor Lane has also stated that, “These invocations celebrate our diversity, as we have heard respectful and thoughtful messages from Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and countless other faiths.”
However, TST’s lawsuit notes, “At no time have members of the Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu faith given an invocation before the Scottsdale City Council.”
The Satanic Temple is a non-theistic religious organization dedicated to Satanic practice and the promotion of Satanic rights. The Temple understands the Satanic figure as a symbol of man’s inherent nature, representative of the eternal rebel, enlightened inquiry and personal freedom rather than a supernatural deity or being. The mission of The Satanic Temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will.
September 23,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, readers seems to fall into two major groups when it comes to terrorism ; either they are just losers with no friends or the more malevolent view that they are true believers in the fundamentalist cause .
“Dude failed in life, tried to find a purpose in religious extremism, and failed at that too. In a weird way, I pity him (that must be the latent Christian in me). Having said that, it would have been better for him to have died during his arrest. He’s obviously too stupid to have been trusted with any valuable information, and that’s assuming he’s ever been in contact with someone who would have such information. Highly doubtful. Right now he is spending a lot of time with people who know how to get answers, but they’ve probably already discovered they’re dealing with a bottom rank idiot.”
or….
“He was not radicalized. He was merely activated. Active or passive, they are all on the same page. Islam is a religion of peace only in regions or countries of the world where they have achieved utter political dominance. Every other place on earth is a war zone. Motivation? To terrorize and kill infidels, and die a martyr for Allah. Why must we feign ignorance when these thugs are so clearly telling us why they do what they do?”
Deep-seated sympathetic leanings towards people and places outside the U.S. can compromise a man’s judgment and make complicated for him decisions and issues that are a snap to resolve for one whose love for and fidelity to this country is undiluted. One or both parents of foreign citizenship as of the moment of one’s birth (e.g. Ted Cruz (Cuban father), Barack Obama (Kenyan father), Nicky Hailey (Indian (i.e., the subcontinent) parents), Marco Rubio (Cuban parents), Bobby Jindal (Indian (again, the subcontinent) parents)), or birthplace OUTSIDE every U.S. state at a place where NEITHER of one’s parents is (a) the ambassador or equivalent top diplomat or (b) a member of HOSTILE occupying army (e.g., Ted Cruz (born in Canada), John McCain (born in Colon, Panama), George Romney (born in Mexico City), Barry Goldwater (born in Arizona before its statehood), are primary sources of such conflicted feelings. This is why the U.S. Constitution requires that the office of President of the United States not be occupied by, nor devolve upon, anyone but a natural-born citizen. We simply can’t afford divided loyalties in our primary governmental leader.
Published July 07, 2016
FoxNews.com
Newly unearthed photos of President Obama in Muslim garb underscore his deep ties to the faith — and possibly help explain his reluctance to call out radical Islam, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said Wednesday.
The photos, aired on “The O’Reilly Factor,” were taken at the wedding of Obama’s half-brother, Malik Obama, in Maryland sometime in the early 1990s, O’Reilly said. They were not offered as evidence that Obama is Muslim, as some of his critics insist, but to show his “deep emotional ties” to the religion of his father and stepfather, O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly said the photos, taken in the 1990s, underscore Obama’s deep ties to Islam. (Fox News Channel)
“There is no question the Obama administration’s greatest failure is allowing the Islamic terror group ISIS to run wild, murdering thousands of innocent people all over the world, including many Muslims,” said O’Reilly. “Mr. Obama has never, never acknowledged that mistake, nor does he define the ISIS threat accurately.
By PAMELA GELLER on June 12, 2016
The jihadi who slaughtered at least 50 at a gay nightclub in Florida last night was known to law enforcement. More of their “Muslim outreach,” I’m sure.
“Omar Mateen, Terrorist Who Attacked Orlando Gay Club, Had Been Investigated by FBI,” Daily Beast:
Mateen was a ‘known quantity’ to federal law enforcement before he killed 53 people in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
Mateen came to the attention of federal authorities twice prior to being identified as the gunman in the Orlando nightclub mass shooting, a senior law enforcement source told The Daily Beast.
The source reports that Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation of him, but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.
“He’s a known quantity,” the source said. “He’s been on the radar before.”
The gunman is said by the source to have been born in New York and to have been married for a time to a woman from New Jersey. His father, Seddique Mateen, appears to reside in Florida, but is said to be presently running for office in Afghanistan.
Seddique told NBC News that the sight of two men kissing angered his son.
“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident. We weren’t aware of any action he is taking,” Seddique said. “We are in shock like the whole country.” Seddique added that the attack “has nothing to do with religion.”
His father’s first response is, the massacre “had nothing to do with religion.” The bodies are still warm and the first response of the father of a mass murderer is protect Islam.
And if this has nothing to do with Islam, why is there an imam at the press conference?
