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Fire Fight
One of the most puzzling issues that confront those of us who care about civil liberties is the debate surrounding flag burning. Burning the American flag is offensive to many but done by almost no one. And yet every few years it is brought up as a wedge issue to separate those who love freedom from those who hate America, puppies and apple pies cooling on the windowsill of Grandma's house. See the latest Civil Discourse comic on the issue. If politicians were as passionate about ending torture and wiretapping as they are about fantasy fabric burners, I think this nation would be doing alright. Flag burning isn't on the front burner today (sorry, I like cheesy puns) but rest assured it will be back. As long as there are politicians that need to gin up votes and nationalistic fervor, there will be a fight to ban the rarely-performed act. I guess it's a lot easier for them to talk about protecting the flag than to actually protect the freedoms it represents.
Tags: Civil Liberties News
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Sep 9th, 2008 at 1:58pm
Nothing like a good red herring to get the masses all fired up.
Sep 12th, 2008 at 3:44am
Whatever happened to ... the anti-Zionists who sued WERE?
Posted by Plain Dealer staff September 07, 2008 22:50PM
How did anti-Zionists Brahim "Abe" Ayad and Michael Troy Watson fare in their lawsuit accusing WERE AM/1300 of wrongfully canceling their weeknight radio program, "Politically Damned"?
C.H Pete Copeland/The Plain Dealer file
Mike Watson, left, and Abe Ayad, right, both former hosts of the Politically Dammed radio show. The pair are taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.They're still trying. Ayad and Watson have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to do what no other court has done: Find some merit in their claims.
The two -- a Palestinian merchant and an arch-conservative black Republican -- also hope the justices will endorse their assertion that they are victims of a vast Jewish conspiracy that has corrupted Ohio courts.
Jurists from Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals, the Ohio Supreme Court and U.S. District Court have uniformly dumped a $30 million lawsuit against WERE parent company Radio One Inc. and several employees.
Ayad became locally famous, or infamous, over the last decade for inflammatory murals on an East 55th Street store he once owned that depicted Jews as monkeys, money-grubbers and murderers. Watson's claims to notoriety include getting in a courthouse fistfight with another lawyer, then being disbarred for a host of ethical violations.
For a year beginning in September 2003, the two bought air time on WERE for their radio program, on which they routinely disparaged liberals and Jews -- especially Zionists who conspire, they contend, to control the United States and its news media.
WERE refused to renew its one-year contract with the two and took the program off the air on Sept. 5, 2004. Ayad and Watson claimed they had worked out extensions, which the station violated by canceling the show. They accused management of breach of contract, First Amendment violations, tortious interference, libel and slander, conspiracy and other wrongs.
The claims have never made it to trial: Every judge threw them out for lack of merit, jurisdiction or both.
That, Watson said recently, is only because courts in Ohio are "subject to the influences of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, and also to Jewish influences in the bar [associations], particularly the influence of the [Anti-Defamation League]."
He and Ayad asked the U.S. high court at the end of June to hear the case.
Said radio-station attorney Joel Hlavity: "Anybody with a filing fee can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a case. Of course, we expect the court to not consider it."
-- Jim Nichols
Sep 12th, 2008 at 8:23am
Why are you people so set against prayer? You try to take our freedom of speech away from us Christians. Don't say you don't because you people do it all the time.