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Man Arrested After Joking With Security, “I’m Not Muslim, Am I?”

By Selwyn Duke

While many consider singling people out for Ebola quarantine a rights violation, singling them out for punishment for alluding to Islamic terrorism is a different story — at least in Great Britain. And 75-year-old retired hairdresser Paul Griffith learned this the hard way at that nation’s Stansted airport while traveling to Malaga, Spain, for a weeklong vacation earlier this year.

Griffith’s problems began after he set off an airport scanner and upon being asked to remove his shoes quipped, “I’m not Muslim, am I?” The Mirror reports on what happened next:

One of the security guards accused Mr Griffith of racism and called police, arguing he was "shocked and unhappy" at the pensioner's remark.

 

Mr Griffith, of Colchester, Essex, said: "One minute I am queuing up to get on a plane and the next I am confronted by two armed policemen. They said I had used racist language and took me to an office in the terminal.

I was quizzed for an hour and told I was free to catch my flight but had to report back to police as soon as I returned to the UK.”

Upon returning, Griffith learned he’d been criminally charged with causing “racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.”

Read the rest here.

“No God but Allah”? Father Protests “Pro-Muslim” Curriculum at Son’s School

By Selwyn Duke

“Allah is the greatest. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah. I bear witness that Muhammad is his Prophet.” So reads a handout in Anthony Giannino’s son’s middle school in a passage relating the Muslim call to prayer. It’s part of a world-civilizations curriculum in the Revere, Massachusetts, school district that the father characterizes as pro-Muslim. And he’s quite upset about it — so upset that he has pulled his son out of the class in question. Writes WHDH.com:

"No religion should be taught at school. In their paper it says Allah is their only God. That's insulting to me as a Christian who believes in just Jesus only," said Anthony Giannino.

… "We don't believe in Allah. I don't believe in my son learning about this here," he said. "If my son was from another country and came here, he would have been catered to. But where he's not being catered to, they give him an F."

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Are Women Finally Trading Uncle Sam for Big Daddy?

By Selwyn Duke

The Drudge headline the other day read, “Poll Shock: Women Want Republicans!” The story is that for the first time in I don’t know how long, likely women voters want the GOP to control Congress, albeit by the slim margin of 44 to 42 percent. Last month the numbers were 47-40 in the Democrats’ favor.

Yes, this is just one poll. And, yes, smart money might still pick the Democrats to carry women in November. Nonetheless, this unique result does reflect something: the unique time in which we live.

Before getting to that, let’s place the poll in further perspective. Women have long been so solid a liberal constituency that the dichotomy between their and men’s voting habits even has a name: the “gender gap” (in non-Leftspeak language, the “sex gap”). How significant is this political difference? As pundit Ann Coulter pointed out during the G.W. Bush years, “In every presidential election since 1950 — except Goldwater in '64 — the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.” Even the GOP’s banner election year of 2010, where they assumed control of the House in grand style, did not buck this trend; contrary to popular myth, women still went Democrat that year, 49 to 48 percent. Add to this that the recent poll showing the Republican shift is not from a conservative organization but is Associated Press-GfK handiwork, and you have something worthy of pause for thought. And what does it really mean?

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Vote Fraud? Video Shows Man Stuffing Hundreds of Ballots Into Ballot Box

By Selwyn Duke

Defenders of lax election laws say it rarely happens — but apparently it’s happening again. In what critics describe as a shocking example of likely vote fraud, a surveillance video (see below) from a Maricopa County, Arizona, polling place shows a man stuffing hundreds of ballots into a ballot box.

The act was observed by A.J. LaFaro, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, on August 25 while he was stationed at the MCTEC facility at 510 S. Third Avenue in Phoenix during the primary election cycle. Writes the Arizona Daily Independent:

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London Calling: Unannounced Police Visits to Legal U.K. Gun Owners Begin

By Selwyn Duke

There’s a knock on your door. Upon responding, you see two police officers who inform you, “We’ve come to inspect your firearms and look over your place, sir.” In a land known for onerous gun control and even proposals for knife control, this has become a reality for lawful gun owners in a move critics decry as excessive government control.

 

That land would be Britain, where, writes The Register’s Gareth Corfield:

 

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has announced a legal tweak intended to allow police officers to turn up at the homes of gun owners, without warning, and demand to inspect guns stored on the premises. A new Crimestoppers hotline is also in operation to encourage people to dob in gun owners they suspect of wrongdoing. However, as even the police themselves admit, gun crime is falling.

 

 

Coming in the form of an amendment to the Home Office Guidance on Firearms Law, as spotted by the Shooting Times, the change explicitly authorises police forces to turn up and conduct unannounced spot checks on law-abiding gun owners.

 

As you likely guessed, “dob in” is U.K. lingo for “snitch.”

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CNN Spreads Lies About Radio Giant on Ebola

Selwyn Duke

“It’s so unhinged we should probably not bother dignifying it with fact-checking.” So said CNN’s Jake Tapper, reporting on comments radio giant Michael Savage made about the Ebola crisis. But if Tapper had done some fact-checking, fewer people would now believe as fact that he checked his credibility at the newsroom door.

On a Tuesday CNN segment titled “Dangers of Ebola: Myths and misconceptions,” Tapper claimed that Savage was broadcasting “wild conspiracy theories,” accusing the host of alleging that Barack Obama was purposely trying to spread the disease among Americans.

“[C]onservative talk-radio host Michael Savage, who has one of the biggest radio audiences in the country, has even been suggesting that this is all some Obama plot to purposely infect the nation,” said Tapper. He then played audio of the host saying on the Savage Nation radio program, “There’s not a sane reason to take 4,000 troops and send them into a hot Ebola zone without expecting at least one of them to come back with Ebola, unless you want to infect the nation with Ebola.” This is when the newsman concluded with, “It’s hard to even know where to start with that one, the idea that the president wants to infect soldiers and then Americans? It’s so unhinged, we should probably not bother dignifying it with fact-checking.”

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Ebola Researcher: Disease Could Go Airborne at Any Moment

By Selwyn Duke

Ebola transmitted as easily as the common flu, in an airborne fashion? This could become a reality as the Ebola epidemic continues, says a Purdue University researcher who has been studying the disease for 15 years.

In a pair of Fox News interviews, professor of biological science Dr. David Sanders pointed out that while there’s no evidence of true “airborne Ebola” at this time, it conceivably is just one viral mutation away. On the Monday edition of The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Sanders “explained that a very closely related virus is known to spread among animals via the air,” writes Fox News Insider blog. The site continues:

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Christian Businessman Told to Leave Faith at Home and Take Diversity Training

By Selwyn Duke

Whatever rights the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission is safeguarding, the right to engage in commerce doesn’t seem to be among them — not if you’re a believing Christian, anyway.

In a shocking decision, a commission examiner made a recommended ruling last Monday that a Christian businessman violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination by refusing to print T-shirts with a pro-homosexual message. As Fox News’ Todd Starnes reported, “The examiner concluded that Blaine Adamson of Hands On Originals broke the law in 2012 by declining to print shirts promoting the Lexington Pride Festival. The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization subsequently filed a complaint.”

The examiner, Greg Munson, also demands that Hands On Originals go in for “diversity training” — conducted by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission (LFUCHRC) itself — within the next 12 months.

Read the rest here.

Patient Number Two: Obama Fiddles While Ebola Spreads

By Selwyn Duke

No one as yet knows how the United States' second Ebola patient — the first believed to have contracted the disease on American soil — became infected. We know that the person, a female nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, picked up the disease from recently deceased Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, with whom she had extensive contact. We know she got sick despite wearing protective gear. We know that authorities say there was a breach of protocol, but can’t yet identify what it might have been. Of course, this means other healthcare workers could have contracted the illness in like fashion, but perhaps are not yet exhibiting symptoms.

That can take up to 21 days.

Meanwhile, Centers for Disease Control chief Dr. Tom Frieden said that it is “deeply concerning that this infection occurred.” Some would label this understatement, given how affected individuals can come into contact with numerous others before being isolated. As The Guardian’s Tom Dart wrote, referring to the Dallas nurse:

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Pot Use Is Devastatingly Dangerous: Analysis of 20 Years of Studies

By Selwyn Duke

“I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from ... cigarettes.” This sentiment, expressed by Barack Obama in January and shared by millions, has once again been challenged — this time by an academic review of 20-years worth of research.

The handiwork of Dr. Wayne Hall, a professor of addiction policy at King's College London and drug advisor for the World Health Organization, the review implicates cannabis in a whole host of health problems, but, in particular, in mental-health issues and addiction among habitual users — especially teenagers. Writes the Daily Mail:

           Professor Hall found:

 

• One in six teenagers who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it

• Cannabis doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia

• Cannabis users do worse at school. Heavy use in adolescence appears to impair intellectual development

• One in ten adults who regularly smoke the drug become dependent on it and those who use it are more likely to go on to use harder drugs

• Driving after smoking cannabis doubles the risk of a car crash, a risk which increases substantially if the driver has also had a drink

• Smoking it while pregnant reduces the baby's birth weight

... ‘There is no doubt that heavy users experience a withdrawal syndrome as with alcohol and heroin,’ [Hall said].

‘Rates of recovery from cannabis dependence among those seeking treatment are similar to those for alcohol.’

Read the rest here.