Obama/Holder Justice Department Threatens First Amendment

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

obamathreat

Reacting to reports that the Obama Department of Justice may prosecute those who write and post articles offensive to Muslims, Pamela Geller of the American Freedom Defense Initiative has vowed, “We will fight you on this every step of the way. We will drag your dhimmi asses all the way to the Supreme Court. This is Sharia enforcement, and we are not going to stand for it.”

The term “dhimmi” refers to submission to or enforcement of Islamic law, also called Sharia.

Geller, who also co-founded Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) with Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, has endorsed a rally for free speech on June 4 in Manchester, Tennessee, to protest anti-free speech comments by Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

Killian has generated outrage by vowing to use federal civil rights laws to punish those making critical comments about Islam.

A local paper reports that Killian and Kenneth Moore, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee, Division, are speaking at a public event and “will provide input on how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media.”

A U.S. Attorney usually prosecutes offenses such as foreign terrorism, child pornography, violent crimes and drug trafficking. But Killian told the local paper that civil rights laws can have certain “consequences” for the First Amendment right of free speech. The paper said, “Killian said Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal jurisdiction.”

Killian is apparently basing this campaign against free speech on a Facebook post from a local politician showing a picture of a man pointing a shotgun at the camera with the phrase, “How to wink at a Muslim.” The local politician is a Democrat who says he intended it to be humorous.

The American Muslim Advisory Council, which denounced the “hate-filled post,” advertises the June 4 event as being about “public discourse in a free society.” It is scheduled for 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Manchester-Coffee County Conference Center, 147 Hospitality Boulevard in Manchester, Tennessee.

The demonstration for free speech is scheduled for 5:30 pm at the same location. “Change your plans, get off from work—go,” Geller says. “Tweet it, Facebook share, get the word out.”

The Killian address is apparently part of an “Arab American and Muslim Outreach Program” conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the local office of the FBI, and mandated by President Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

Killian’s official website also highlights a keynote address he delivered on August 25, 2012, when the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Islamic Center hosted a grand opening celebration. The center features “Strong Islamic studies,” a term that implies Sharia.

But radical Islam does not appear to be a potential problem for Killian. Instead, his office officially represents the United States in civil litigation and declares “we sue individuals or entities who have violated federal civil laws,” according to Killian’s official newsletter.

In the context of his warnings about posting comments critical of Muslims, this statement takes on ominous implications and must be treated seriously.

A wealthy former adjunct professor in trial advocacy at the University of Tennessee School of Law, he is clearly a showboat who wants to please his bosses in Washington, D.C. He is featured in eight photos in his official 12-page newsletter and has been described by a local paper as “a longtime Democrat.”

In an article about Killian’s anti-free speech efforts, the conservative legal group Judicial Watch comments, “In its latest effort to protect followers of Islam in the U.S., the Obama Justice Department warns against using social media to spread information considered inflammatory against Muslims, threatening that it could constitute a violation of civil rights.”

Exercising her own First Amendment rights, Geller, the founder, editor and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com, is strongly urging “every Atlas reader, twitter and Facebook friend who can be in Tennessee to join us” for the demonstration for free speech.

“Don’t think that this is just going to go away,” she warns. “They have declared war on our very freedoms. While we still have freedom of speech, we must use it.” She urges the public to bring free speech signs to the event.

In a story on the controversy, Politico quotes Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s most respected First Amendment attorneys, as saying about Killian: “He’s just wrong. The government may, indeed, play a useful and entirely constitutional role in urging people not to engage in speech that amounts to religious discrimination. But it may not, under the First Amendment, prevent or punish speech even if it may be viewed as hostile to a religion. And what it most clearly may not do is to stifle political or social debate, however rambunctious or offensive some may think it is.”

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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2 thoughts on “Obama/Holder Justice Department Threatens First Amendment

  1. …. Killian and Kenneth Moore… “will provide input on how civil rights can (sic) be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media …..”

    So I guess the shot will be to avoid posting inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media?

    And to maybe post them to Muslims on … say … their sisters or their goats and/or on their neighbors’ little boys? And/or on one another?

  2. In America, when people get arrested or charged, they are given a Miranda warning. With Obama and Holder, if they try to push this Muslim sensitivity garbage, here’s a warning which the Supreme Court said in the very same case that should be used back on them immediately.

    Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) @ 491

    http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/384/436/case.html

    “Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rulemaking or legislation which would abrogate them.”

    In a Supreme Court Case dealing with the over-reach of Executive Orders, the United States Supreme Court also said in Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640 (1948) @653

    http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/333/640/

    “The burden of establishing a delegation of power to the United States, or the prohibition of power to the States, is upon those making the claim.”

    By prosecuting any of us on the freedom of speech issue, we are given the Article III “concrete injury” status that the Court requires to give us “standing” to sue Obama Constitutional ineligibility status, and I have the winning argument that will not only defeat Obama in Court, but require that the Supreme Court void out his putative Presidency as well because he fails to meet and cannot prove in a Court of Law he is a natural born citizen of the United States without a U.S. Citizen Father, and with no birth records, which Neal Palafox (Governor Abercrombie’s first Director of Health in January 2011 for all of 3 weeks because of this very issue) declared missing and non-existent, which is why they manufactured a Long Form Fraud and have always refused to introduce that manufactured document into Court Evidence anywhere, despite being challenged to do so and dare attest that it is genuine by any measure under penalty of perjury.

    Again, it is upon Obama and/or his lawyers to produce Court admissible documents establishing his United States birth identity with a U.S. location and witnesses to the birth (cf. Nguyen v. INS 533 US 53 (2001) @ 54,62), – –

    Nguyen v. INS 533 US 53 (2001) @ 54,62 http://supreme.justia.com/us/533/53/
    @ 54 : “The mother’s relation is verifiable from the birth itself and is documented by the birth certificate or hospital records and the witnesses to the birth.”
    @62:” In the case of the mother, the relation is verifiable from the birth itself. The mother’s status is documented in most instances by the birth certificate or hospital records and the witnesses who attest to her having given birth.”

    – – as well as having a US Citizen father age 21 or above at the time of birth in order to lay a claim of being a “natural born citizen of the United States” as required for his office under the U.S. Constitution. Obama pushes it on this issue, and the above will not only win, but under Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)@180
    http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/5/137/case.html
    “a law repugnant to the constitution IS VOID. . . .” and “in declaring what shall be the SUPREME law of the land, the CONSTITUTION itself is first mentioned;and not the laws of the United States generally,but those only which shall be made in PURSUANCE of the constitution,have that rank.”

    The Court has ruled that Congress cannot authorize anti-constitutionalism,

    Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266 (1973) @ 272

    http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/266/

    “It is clear, of course, that no Act of Congress can authorize a violation of the Constitution.”

    and hence, by law, must void out Obama’s entire Presidency, if only he is dumb enough to give us standing and specific injury such as on this anti-First Amendment issue.

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