CNN Reacts to the Supreme Court's Ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop (VIDEO)

Poppy Harlow does a good job at maintaining objectivity, but it's not until 8:30 minutes into this video where she brings up the issue of the Colorado commission authorities' extreme hostility to religion. I mean, from the case we see intense animus to Christianity:

As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case.

I tweeted:

Leftists like Nina Totenberg are downplaying the Court's ruling, claiming it was decided on the most "narrow grounds," but reading it we see a major statement denouncing the radical left's monstrous religious bigotry and anti-Christian animus. #MasterpieceCakeshop #SCOTUS 🙏 https://t.co/YmJo3xUskj

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 4, 2018

#MasterpieceCakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission: #SCOTUS https://t.co/N53SQ3Mif4

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 4, 2018

But watch, at CNN:

Big Win for Religious Freedom in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

Actually, it's apparently a very narrow ruling touching on the nature of religious bias in Colorado's anti-discrimination legislation, but either way, conservative proponents of freedom of expression and religious belief are going to be jumping for the moon today.

At the Washington Post, "Supreme Court rules in favor of baker who would not make wedding cake for gay couple":

Supreme Court narrowly rules for a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple https://t.co/ovz7BwsqGG

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 4, 2018

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple.

In an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy that leaves many questions unanswered, the court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had not adequately taken into account the religious beliefs of baker Jack Phillips.

In fact, Kennedy said, the commission had been hostile to Baker’s faith, denying him the neutral consideration he deserved. While the justices split in their reasoning, only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Kennedy wrote that the question of when religious beliefs must give way to anti-discrimination laws might be different in future cases. But in this case, he said, Phillips did not get the proper consideration.

“The Court’s precedents make clear that the baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, might have his right to the free exercise of religion limited by generally applicable laws,” he wrote. “Still, the delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a factor in the balance the State sought to reach. That requirement, however, was not met here.”

Phillips contended that dual guarantees in the First Amendment — for free speech and for the free exercise of religion — protect him against Colorado’s public accommodations law, which requires businesses to serve customers equally regardless of “disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry.”

Scattered across the country, florists, bakers, photographers and others have claimed that being forced to offer their wedding services to same-sex couples violates their rights. Courts have routinely turned down the business owners, as the Colorado Court of Appeals did in the Phillips case, saying that state anti-discrimination laws require businesses that are open to the public to treat all potential customers equally.

There’s no dispute about what triggered the court case in 2012, when same-sex marriage was prohibited in Colorado. Charlie Craig and David Mullins decided to get married in Massachusetts, where it was legal. They would return to Denver for a reception, and those helping with the plans suggested they get a cake from Masterpiece bakery...

Also at Memeorandum.

Telling Truth = Race Hate

Some bad things going down in Britain. Evil things.

Truth telling = race hate. The police investigated me for this crime. #TelfordGrooming pic.twitter.com/AH4ajkH0D7

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) March 19, 2018

Labour. The Police. The BBC. More interested in my (truthful) tweets than the rape of our ‘white whore daughters’ by Pakistani men. #TELFORD pic.twitter.com/zeWhwBWOpT

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) March 19, 2018

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BONUS: Bailey Poland, Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online.

James Damore at Portland State University

From Andy Ngo, at Quillette, "Damore, Diversity, and Disruption at PSU."

We invited @JamesADamore to speak about viewpoint diversity & his memo. Some were determined to shut us down. Full video: https://t.co/nmoWgMTmi7 #JamesDamorePSU pic.twitter.com/0BDdKf1K4a

— Andy C. Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) February 26, 2018

Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

At Amazon, Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

He's such a nice, thoughtful man. The more I listen to him the more I like him.

On Fox & Friends the other day:

Yvette Felarca Ordered to Pay $11,000 for Filing Frivolous Civil Harassment Restraining Order

This makes me happy!

At Legal Insurrection, "Antifa Leader Ordered by Judge to Pay $11,000 to College Republicans Leader."

And at Breitbart, "Court Orders Antifa Organizer to Pay $11,000 for Filing Frivolous Restraining Order."

William Jacobson at Vassar College

This is from last month, but there was quite the controversy, naturally.

Here's William, at USA Today, "My pro-free speech views made me the target of a smear campaign at Vassar College."

My lecture against squeezing out free speech from colleges got me smeared. The students who smeared me got a safe space complete with coloring books and markers.

(More at Legal Insurrection.)

'For marginalized communities, the power of expression is impoverished for reasons that have little to do with the First Amendment...'

Terrible. Disgusting. Reprehensible.

I saw folks retweeting this New York Times piece this morning. It's from K-Sue Park, who's a "Critical Race Studies Fellow at UCLA School of Law for 2017-2019," of course.

See, "The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech." (Safe link.)

Althouse comments:

Contextual... creative... holistic... these are the subtleties that grease the way to the end of constitutional rights.

Thanks to the ACLU for standing up for free speech where it counts — when the speaker is hated.

You can donate to the ACLU here.

Click through to hit that donate button at Althouse.

Heresy Speech

A very perceptive analysis from Jonah Goldberg, at the Commentary symposium, "Is Free Speech Under Threat in the United States?":

Contemporary social justice activism is a quasi religion and dissent is heresy | @JonahNRO https://t.co/iWSwWs1lD2 pic.twitter.com/UtdPBgxYlU

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) June 23, 2017

In the past, threats to free speech have taken many forms—nationalist passion, Comstockery (both good and bad), political suppression, etc.—but the threat to free speech today is different. It is less top-down and more bottom-up. We are cultivating a generation of young people to reject free speech as an important value.

One could mark the beginning of the self-esteem movement with Nathaniel Branden’s 1969 paper, “The Psychology of Self-Esteem,” which claimed that “feelings of self-esteem were the key to success in life.” This understandable idea ran amok in our schools and in our culture. When I was a kid, Saturday-morning cartoons were punctuated with public-service announcements telling kids: “The most important person in the whole wide world is you, and you hardly even know you!”

The self-esteem craze was just part of the cocktail of educational fads. Other ingredients included multiculturalism, the anti-bullying crusade, and, of course, that broad phenomenon known as “political correctness.” Combined, they’ve produced a generation that rejects the old adage “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never harm me” in favor of the notion that “words hurt.” What we call political correctness has been on college campuses for decades. But it lacked a critical mass of young people who were sufficiently receptive to it to make it a fully successful ideology. The campus commissars welcomed the new “snowflakes” with open arms; truly, these are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

“Words hurt” is a fashionable concept in psychology today. (See Psychology Today: “Why Words Can Hurt at Least as Much as Sticks and Stones.”) But it’s actually a much older idea than the “sticks and stones” aphorism. For most of human history, it was a crime to say insulting or “injurious” things about aristocrats, rulers, the Church, etc. That tendency didn’t evaporate with the Divine Right of Kings. Jonathan Haidt has written at book length about our natural capacity to create zones of sanctity, immune from reason.

And that is the threat free speech faces today. Those who inveigh against “hate speech” are in reality fighting “heresy speech”—ideas that do “violence” to sacred notions of self-esteem, racial or gender equality, climate change, and so on. Put whatever label you want on it, contemporary “social justice” progressivism acts as a religion, and it has no patience for blasphemy...

Britain Sends Man to Prison for Posting His Thoughts About Muslims to Facebook

At the Daily Wire, via Memeorandum, "British Police Just Imprisoned a Man for Posting Mean Things About Muslims on Facebook."

This what leftists want here. Coming to America? #Islam #Jihad #RadicalLeft #ClimateOfHate #Facebook https://t.co/dikJsikdKQ

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2017

This man used Facebook to express his hatred for muslims & has gone to prison #WeStandTogether against hate crimes https://t.co/Bo7OCDADKu

— Sussex Police (@sussex_police) June 20, 2017

"Hate crimes" are thought crimes. Leftists can't stand independent thought.

Reader Poll: Should Conservatives Disrupt Leftists?

The poll's at Legal Insurrection, "To disrupt like the Left, or not to disrupt: that is the question (Reader Poll)."

I've already weighed in, here, "Let's Not Parrot the Left, Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec."

I've added this comment at Legal Insurrection, in reply to Ms. EBL (who links this Instapundit post, which links AoSHQ):

Actually, Ace isn’t arguing we should use violence. He’s talking about boycotts and blacklisting. Yeah, let’s do that. He doesn’t say to violently shut down left-wing public performances like a bunch of special snowflakes. So-called conservatives have lost their minds. The vote here is running almost 75 percent in favor of shutting down speech — SPEECH — you don’t like. You want to parrot the left, conservatives? Are you going to start hitting antifa leftists over the head with bike-locks, like anarchist Eric Clanton up in Berkeley? No. Are you going to start throwing bricks through the windows of businesses, like the riots on Telegraph Avenue, simply because people like Milo are scheduled to speak? No. Or at least, I’m not. That way lies much more polarization and violence, which purportedly conservatives don’t want. So what’s it going to be?

We won't have debates in this country if conservatives want to fight violent leftists with more violence. That's not what Ace was arguing.

Let's Not Parrot the Left, Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec

Look, all these so-called conservative Trump supporters are applauding Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec, after the two tried to shut down the Caesar production of Shakespeare in the Park last night.

While I definitely think the right should practice more of the left's Alinsky politics, I don't agree in this case. It's about speech. You can't complain about leftists shutting down conservatives speakers if your response is just to ape them with the exact same bullying and violence. I'm not tweeting a whole lot about this, since I'd prefer not to lose a bunch of followers. But frankly, folks on the right are being stupid and über-tribal. I rarely agree with Ben Shapiro, but I agree with him here:

Stupid snowflake garbage. Pathetic. https://t.co/bBVb99D0mt

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 17, 2017

Mark Steyn, Lights Out

At Amazon, Mark Steyn, Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and the Twilight of the West.

U.C. Berkeley Flip-Flops on Ann Coulter Speech (VIDEO)

There's video of Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks here.

And see Bloomberg, "U.C. Berkeley Flip-Flops on Ann Coulter, Proposes May Date."

Coulter appeared on Tucker Carlson's yesterday:

Professor Eugene Volokh Discusses Freedon Speech on Campus (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Eugene Volokh on the Individual Right to Bear Arms (VIDEO)."

He's an interesting guy.

Here's the video of his recent talk at the Reason Weekend, the annual shindig sponsored by the Reason Foundation:

Motion 103 (VIDEO)

At PuffHo Canada, "M-103: Anti-Islamophobia Motion Easily Passes House of Commons."

Also, from Rex Murphy, at Toronto's National Post, "The anti-Islamophobia motion has passed. And what today has changed for the better?"

And let Faith Goldy tell us all about it:

'The fact that two different speeches triggered violence at two different campuses within the space of a month suggests that we may be entering into a new and more dangerous phase of the anti-free-speech movement...'

Well, you think?

It's Megan McArdle, via Instapundit, "MEGAN MCARDLE OFFERS ADVICE TO STUDENT PROTESTERS: Use Your Words."

Robert Stacy McCain, 'From John Lennon to Charles Murray'

At the American Spectator, "From John Lennon to Charles Murray: We All Want to Change the World."

"But when you talk about destruction. Don't you know that you can count me out..."

Berkeley's Descent to Victimology Hothouse

From the awesome Heather Mac Donald, at the Los Angeles Times, "U.C. Berkeley’s descent from place of learning to victimology hothouse":

UC Berkeley’s descent from place of learning to victimology hothouse https://t.co/sWdeo1CVG3 pic.twitter.com/pPulRc1FtK

— L.A. Times Opinion (@latimesopinion) February 6, 2017

Even before its students rioted in the streets, distressed that right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos would dare to open his mouth in their presence, UC Berkeley presented a visual illustration of the academy’s decline from a place of learning to a victimology hothouse. Within walking distance on the Berkeley campus are emblems of both a vanished academic world and the diversity-industrial complex that ousted it.

Emblem 1: In Bauhaus-era typography, a quotation from Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo adorns the law school’s otherwise brutalist facade.

“You will study the wisdom of the past, for in a wilderness of conflicting counsels, a trail has there been blazed. You will study the life of mankind, for this is the life you must order, and, to order with wisdom, must know. You will study the precepts of justice, for these are the truths that through you shall come to their hour of triumph. Here is the high emprise, the fine endeavor, the splendid possibility of achievement, to which I summon you and bid you welcome.”

No law school today, if erecting itself from scratch, would think of parading such sentiments, first uttered in 1925, on its exterior. Cardozo’s invocation of “mankind” is alone cause for removal, but equally transgressive is his belief that there is wisdom in the past and not just discrimination. He presents learning as a heroic enterprise focused not on the self but on the vast world beyond, both past and present. Education is the search for objective knowledge that takes the learner into a grander universe of thought and achievement.

Stylistically, Cardozo’s elevated tone is as old-fashioned as his complicated syntactical cadences; his exhortation to intellectual mastery is too “masculinist” and triumphal for today’s identity-obsessed university.

His celebration of the law overlooks the teachings of critical race theory, which purports to expose the racial subtext of seemingly benign legal concepts. And he fatally omits any mention of “inclusion” and “diversity.”

There’s not a trace of the heroic on the Berkeley law school’s website today; the closest it comes to any ennobling inspiration is the statement: “We believe that a Berkeley Law degree is a tool for change, both locally and globally.”

But this bland expression of progressive ideology is positively Miltonic compared with the bromides on display just meters away from the law school .

Emblem 2: UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion has placed vertical banners across the main campus reminding students of the contemporary university’s paramount mission: assigning guilt and innocence within the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood. Each banner shows a photo of a student or a member of the student-services bureaucracy, beside a purported quotation from that student or bureaucrat. No rolling cadences here, no exhortations to intellectual conquest. Instead, just whining or penitential snippets from the academic lexicon of identity politics.

“I will acknowledge how power and privilege intersect in our daily lives,” vows an Asian female member of the class of 2017. Just how crippling is that intersection? The answer comes in a banner showing a black female student in a backward baseball cap and a male Latino student, who together urge the Berkeley community to “create an environment where people other than yourself can exist.”

A naive observer of the Berkeley campus would think that lots of people “other than yourself” exist there, and would even think that Berkeley welcomes those “other” people with overflowing intellectual and material riches. Such a misperception, however, is precisely why Berkeley funds the Division of Equity and Inclusion with a cool $20 million annually and staffs it with 150 full-time functionaries: It takes that much money and personnel to drum into students’ heads how horribly Berkeley treats its “othered” students.

A member of the student-services bureaucracy reinforces the message of continual oppression on her banner. “I will be a brave and sympathetic ally,” announces Bene Gatzert of University Health Services. Cardozo saw grandeur in the mastery of the common law; today’s campus functionary sees herself in a heroic struggle against the ubiquitous forces of white-male heterosexual oppression...

Still more.