THE DAILY BLADE: Thankful For The First Amendment


The recent Reporters Without Borders report claiming that America’s press freedoms are eroding notwithstanding, columnist Michelle Malkin gives thanks that we don’t live in:

† Bangladesh where you can be put on trial for writing columns supporting Israel and condemning Muslim violence.  

 

† Egypt, where bloggers have been detained by the government for criticizing Islam and exposing the apathy of Cairo police to sexual harassment of women.

 

† Sudan, where editors can lose their heads for not kowtowing to the government line.  ...  

 

† China, the world's leading jailer of journalists and Internet critics.

 

† Lebanon, where outspoken writers pay with their lives.

 

† Russia, where investigative journalists routinely wind up dead.

 

† Denmark, where the cartoonists who dared to caricature Mohammed and challenge creeping sharia are still in hiding, in fear for their lives.

 

† Italy, where a spineless judge bowed to jihadists and put famed war journalist Oriana Fallaci on trial for her sharp-tongued critiques of Islam.

 

The Stiletto has one addition to Malkin’s list to make it complete: Be thankful we don’t live in Turkey, where journalists (notably, Hrant Dink) and novelists (Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, for one) are routinely tried on charges of “insulting Turkishness” for writing about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and Turkey’s ongoing denial of its culpability (“Should Some Speech Be Criminalized or Censored?, The Daily Blade, October 18, 2006, second item).

 

 

All The News That’s Fit To Shout

 

While The Stiletto is on the topic of freedom of the press she would like to applaud Tamas Derce, the mayor of Ujpest, Hungary, for his creativity – and gumption. After the Socialist-dominated town council shut down operations of the local newspaper and TV station, the mayor vowed to protest the squelching of free speech by bringing back the medieval tradition of having town criers spread the news. Derce tells Reuters: “I will hire someone who will stand with a drum at busy junctions of the district, and another one with a loudspeaker. The town criers will keep working until the councilors reverse their decision.”

 

 

Heather Doesn’t Want Two Mommies

 

Two successive Baltimore County judges have delayed ruling on a child custody case involving a 7-year old girl who does not want to continue court-ordered visitations with the lesbian lover with whom her adoptive mother broke up after a live-in relationship that lasted from 1987 to 2004.

 

In February, a court found that the mother’s former lover is also the child’s de facto parent, and required visitation with the child every Wednesday and every other weekend – a ruling that was upheld this month.

 

Court records indicate that a court-appointed social worker reported that the forced overnight visits were causing the girl “acute underlying turmoil” and that they were triggering “separation threats and anxiety … at this time.”  The social worker, Cheryl Taylor, also notes that “the girl told everybody involved in the case -- including her mother, her mother's former partner and the family pediatrician -- that she does not want the visits to continue,” according to The Washington Times.

 

Despite the child’s express wishes – according to testimony, she wrote a note to her mother last Christmas asking for “a dad and a dog”  - homosexual rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union are championing the former lover’s cause.

 

A hearing in the case is scheduled for January 28, 2007. Whatever the outcome, the social worker assigned to the case has recommended ongoing psychotherapy for the little girl.

Posted by The Stiletto at November 22, 2006
Categories: The Daily Blade
 

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