Governor Abbott Announces Plan to Take Over Austin Police Department
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is proposing that the state take control of the Austin Police Department after the city council cut $21 million from the budget.
Can Abbott really do that? He previously suggested freezing property taxes of cities that defund their police departments. Taking over the management of a city police force by folding it into the Texas Department of Public Safety is a novel approach to preventing the inmates from running the asylum.
The Austin American Statesmen writes that the “Texas Constitution grants the state authority over local matters in the capital city when a statewide importance is determined.” That would seem to make Abbott’s proposal constitutional.
KXAN:
The tweet from Gov. Abbott was not a surprise. Just days earlier, he had promised to pass the legislation in the upcoming session.
“The state will fix this,” Abbott wrote on Twitter. “Texas will pass a law this session supporting law enforcement and defunding cities that defund the police.”
Back in September, Abbott expressed his displeasure with Austin City Council’s decision to cut $20 million from APD’s budget, in addition to transitioning $130 million out over a year. The council’s decision came after harsh criticism of the way APD handled protesters over the summer.
“Harsh criticism” from whom? Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters may not have liked being prevented from destroying the city, but they’re hardly neutral observers.
Back in September, Abbott expressed his displeasure with Austin City Council’s decision to cut $20 million from APD’s budget, in addition to transitioning $130 million out over a year. The council’s decision came after harsh criticism of the way APD handled protesters over the summer.
The move was condemned by Abbott, who called it “disrespect for law enforcement” that would invite chaos and endanger the public.
Abbott received a legislation proposal in September that would allow cities with over 1 million residents and fewer than two police officers per 1,000 to have its police force consolidated with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Back in September when Abbott said he was looking at taking over the Austin PD, one member of the city council referred to the idea as a “distraction.” “We’ve gotten used to threats by tweet and authoritarian threats by tweet whether it’s out of the Governor’s Office or the White House,” council member Greg Casar told KXAN.
This may not be the best time to talk about defunding the police. Murders are up 55 percent in Austin over the same period last year, as are other violent crimes. Abbott is absolutely right in not allowing BLM and antifa to dictate public policy — especially when those policies were formulated in the midst of a heated national election.
As it is, defunding the police cost Democrats dearly at the polls, as did their other kooky ideas. Perhaps the city council should take a second look at the funding cuts and grow a spine to stand up to the BLM bullies.
Professional Suspension, Cancel Culture, Censorship, and the Case of Midwifery Student Julia Rynkiewicz
Can you be censored, canceled, or even professionally suspended for standing up for the right to life? A groundbreaking United Kingdom settlement involving the University of Nottingham and midwifery student Julia Rynkiewicz has made clear that academic institutions should not sanction students who hold pro-life views.
Ms. Rynkiewicz, as a consequence of her pro-life beliefs, faced a suspension and four-month fitness-to-practice investigation, which threatened not only her education, but also her future career as a midwife. Now, having received a settlement from the University, she hopes her experience will pave the way for greater respect for fundamental rights on university campuses. As she states, “The settlement demonstrates that the university’s treatment of me was wrong, and while I’m happy to move on, I hope this means that no other student will have to experience what I have.”
If American universities are to retain their academic integrity, they should look to the Nottingham case as a cautionary tale. In the United Kingdom, a recent poll released by ADF International (UK) found that 44 percent of students self-censor in class for fear that they would be “treated differently” if they expressed their real opinions. More than a third agreed that the number of student events canceled because of the views of speakers has increased. Despite the profound American emphasis on freedom of speech, many U.S. college campuses evince the same trend with students increasingly suffering the silencing effects of a culture of censorship.
Standing up for life should carry no cost, and it is fortunate that in Ms. Rynkiewicz’s case, justice prevailed. However, the human toll of university-led “investigations” into matters that fall squarely within the ambit of rights to conscience and expression must not be minimized. Such efforts undoubtedly have the potential to permanently tarnish the professional ambitions of students who have done nothing other than express views that are not only well within their rights, but also shared by millions across the world. Moreover, it unleashes a devastating chilling effect in the very places of higher learning that require utmost respect for free expression in order to fulfill their academic missions.
As stated by Ms. Rynkiewicz: “What happened to me risks creating a fear among students to discuss their values and beliefs, but university should be the place where you are invited to do just that.” With academic freedom under assault, renewed attention to robust protections for students is needed now more than ever. A true culture of free expression requires protections that kick in before students face the arduous burden of having to defend against sanctions and suspensions, as occurred in this case. That is why at least fourteen states have passed campus free speech laws. Ohio is set to become the latest state to do so, as the governor is imminently expected to sign the FORUM Act—a bill designed to protect the First Amendment freedoms of students attending colleges or universities that receive state funding. This is an essential step in protecting students from facing the perils of academic censorship.
In response to the settlement announcement, Director of ADF International (UK), Ryan Christopher, noted that, “a culture of vibrant discussion and free debate should be restored to universities. Today’s censorial culture on campus could easily become cancel culture in the public square.” Let this serve as fair warning to opponents of our first freedom in the United States.
Academic censorship is not restricted to the walls of the lecture hall. What happens in our colleges and universities permeates the whole of our national discourse, and it is imperative that all students be allowed to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms for the safeguarding of our democracy.
UK: The Law Commission’s hate-crime proposals must be rejected
If implemented, they would hand the state frightening new powers to police speech.
The right to free speech, curtailed by so many different acts of parliament, has long existed more in myth than in reality in Britain. Today, it’s not just on university campuses where the limits on what we can say are determined by the sensitivities of others.
Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’. This can include verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault and bullying directed at individuals or groups on account of their race, religion, sexuality, disability or transgender identity. The police recorded over 100,000 hate crimes in the year ending March 2020, an apparent increase of eight per cent on the previous year.
However, police officers don’t just chase after perpetrators of hate crime – they also track down those accused of ‘hate incidents.’ A hate incident is any speech or action that is perceived to be hostile but is not, in itself, criminal or associated with a criminal offence. In this way, speech alone requires police investigation.
In the UK today, speech is proscribed according to a morass of different pieces of legislation, some stretching back over decades. Certain groups are offered more legal protections than others, and whether or not a crime, or non-crime incident, has been committed is based largely on perception. Rather than free speech we have speech that is legally restricted in selective and highly subjective ways.
The Law Commission, an independent body designed to review the law and make recommendations to the government, has now stepped into this mess. It has produced a consultation document that proposes changes to the law on hate crime and hate speech. But rather than narrowing the focus of the law, preventing police overreach and protecting free speech, the Law Commission wants to the definition of hate crime to be expanded and the number of protected groups increased further. Its illiberal and censorious proposals would hand power to those who most loudly proclaim offence and allow the state to police our every utterance, including conversations that take place in the privacy of our own homes.
In a new report, Policing Hate, published by Civitas, I examine the Law Commission’s proposals. Here are five reasons why I think it is vital they are rejected:
1) There is no evidence that hate crime is increasing
The Home Office acknowledges that year-on-year statistical increases in police-recorded hate crime have been driven by improvements in recording and identifying what constitutes a hate crime. In contrast, the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows a long-term decline in hate crime, with a 38 per cent fall during the decade from 2008 to 2018.
2) They are an attack on free speech
Under the Law Commission’s proposals, the legal definition of hate speech would be amended so that any utterance perceived to be hostile to a protected group, regardless of the actual words or images used, or the intention of the speaker, will be assumed to be hate speech. This means that cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, such as those used in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, would be outlawed in the UK. We need to repeal all elements of existing law that conflict with freedom of speech, rather than seeking new ways to regulate what we can and cannot say.
3) They would erode equality before the law
It is already the case that some identity groups receive more legal protections than others. The Law Commission now proposes expanding those considered to have victim status to include sex workers, the elderly, women, Travellers and members of ‘alternative subcultures’. Under plans to outlaw misogyny, women will be treated differently to men. This seems premised on a belief that women are one homogenous group, all equally as oppressed and victimised, all in need of police officers to guard them from abusive men. A previous generation of activists fought hard to achieve equality before the law. These proposals undermine that principle.
4) They would fuel hate-crime entrepreneurs
Under the Law Commission’s proposals, campaigning organisations such as Stonewall would be incentivised to present the groups they advocate on behalf of as victims in order to secure the power that comes with enhanced legal status. In this way, such campaigners become hate-crime entrepreneurs; they encourage their members to perceive offence and facilitate them in reporting hate incidents to the police. The Law Commission’s uncritical use of testimony from hate-crime entrepreneurs means that legal changes are being proposed not on the basis of objective evidence, but on the subjective demands of activists for recognition and affirmation of suffering.
5) They would destroy women-only spaces
The Law Commission proposes a definition of transgender in line with that favoured by Stonewall. This would rely on self-identification, rather than a need to acquire a gender-recognition certificate. This means that for all the legal protections being offered to women, anyone who defends female-only spaces or insists on defining ‘woman’ as an adult human female could be criminalised.
Respond to the consultation
The Law Commission represents the legal establishment, and its members clearly view British citizens with contempt. We are either victims in need of protection or perpetrators of hate and abuse. In either case, it thinks we need the state to step up the policing of our speech and behaviour. At present, the Law Commission’s proposals have not yet been debated in parliament or passed into law. We have a chance to make sure they never make it that far.
The Law Commission has launched a consultation on its proposals. You can take part by completing an online response form. There is no need to reply to every question, but you do need to be quick – the consultation closes on 24 December.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/15/the-law-commissions-hate-crime-proposals-must-be-rejected/
Human Rights Campaign Wants Christian Schools to Abandon Beliefs or Lose AccreditationThe Human Rights Campaign—a large, influential LGBTQ advocacy group— recently released a policy brief with recommendations for a Biden administration, and the suggestions are alarming.
The organization’s “Blueprint for Positive Change 2020” describes itself as “a comprehensive list of 85 individual policy recommendations aimed at improving the lives of LGBTQ people.”
But the Human Rights Campaign fails to mention just how much these suggestions for former Vice President Joe Biden, if implemented, would infringe on the rights of religious believers, conservatives, and Americans in general, all under the guise of helping a community that they claim is still marginalized.
One of the more alarming suggestions from the organization’s proposal concerns accreditation for religious schools and universities, stating:
Language regarding accreditation of religious institutions of higher education in the Higher Education Opportunity Act could be interpreted to require accrediting bodies to accredit religious institutions that discriminate or do not meet science-based curricula standards.
The Department of Education should issue a regulation clarifying that this provision, which requires accreditation agencies to ‘respect the stated mission’ of religious institutions, does not require the accreditation of religious institutions that do not meet neutral accreditation standards including nondiscrimination policies and scientific curriculum requirements.
From the sound of it, the Human Rights Campaign essentially is calling for faith-based education—from K-12 schools to colleges and universities—to adopt the campaign’s positions on gender identity, same-sex marriage, transgender transitioning, and more, or fail to be accredited.
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says it’s clear that faith-based education facilities are “to be coerced into the sexual revolution or stripped of accreditation.”
The blueprint calls this “science-based curricula,” but we’ve seen this movie before: What leftist activists call science, conservatives call a distortion of biology. It’s just a way for the activists to claim credibility for identity politics.
It sounds like the Human Rights Campaign is co-opting this moment—with a liberal likely becoming president—essentially to push faith-based education facilities out of the marketplace by forcing them either to abandon their beliefs or lose their ability to legally “compete.”
Mohler again summarizes this aptly on his website: “This would mean abandoning biblical standards for teaching, hiring, admissions, housing, and student life. It would mean that Christian schools are no longer Christian.”
Let’s hope that if a Biden administration even attempted to follow this policy suggestion, enough faith-based institutions would fight back and it would fail.
Still, the effort would be costly, and the attempt to force religious schools out of the marketplace should never happen, given the authoritative protections of the First Amendment.
The Human Rights Campaign’s blueprint makes other suggestions that are equally frustrating because, like the one about accreditation, they stem from a worldview that not only favors identity politics over ideology or beliefs, but acts as if their LGBTQ beliefs should trump everyone else’s.
Policy in this country should reflect core American values of equality and freedom, not entitlement for select groups.
The blueprint suggests that a Biden administration “appoint openly-LGBTQ justices, judges, executive officials and ambassadors.” For starters, some judges and executive employees already are openly LGBTQ.
The proposal also flips the supposed aim of the movement, which is to accept people for who they are—regardless of faith, sex, gender, race, creed, or sexual orientation—to giving preference to people specifically because of their sexual orientation.
The blueprint also suggests that Biden establish “an interagency working group to protect and support LGBTQ rights globally.” This sounds nice, but there’s only one problem: It’s already illegal to discriminate in the United States based on a person’s sexual orientation, so there’s no need to pluck out this group and give it special protections.
These policy suggestions are ignorant, shortsighted, and just plain false. By suggesting LGBTQ individuals need extra care, they undermine cases such as Bostock v. Clayton County that already made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.
By suggesting LGBTQ rights need to be protected more, the blueprint perpetuates the myth that somehow in the freest country in the world, with more sexual parity than almost anywhere else, LGBTQ individuals remain marginalized and disenfranchised. There’s little evidence to show that’s the case.
The Human Rights Campaign has enormous influence. It’s one thing to stand up for equality in a giant policy brief. But it’s quite another to use that brief as a guise to push religious bigotry, such as by suggesting that faith-based schools lose accreditation if they don’t fall lockstep in line with the newest LGBTQ orthodoxy.
The Human Rights Campaign’s “Blueprint for Positive Change” does its community members no favors by gaslighting them into believing that it’s legal to discriminate against them and suggesting that all will be well when they receive entitlement, not just equality.
Few groups have pushed—and received—more recognition for equality, and then some, than the LGBTQ community. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous and blatant identity politics.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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