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Comics fans are alarmed by the case, (.pdf), saying that jailing someone over manga does nothing to protect children from sexual abuse.
“This art that this man possessed as part of a larger collection of manga … is now the basis for [a sentence] designed to protect children from abuse,” says Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. “The drawings are not obscene and are not tantamount to pornography. They are lines on paper.”
Sentencing may extend to 15 years in prison.
In addition, the resolution “rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and educational resources” and justifies the need to keep “under God” in the pledge.
Last year, when a similar measure was introduced, 93 members of the House of Representatives co-sponsored this legislation.
Our elected officials need to know that these "Christian nation" resolutions distort America's history and exclude the history of atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheists who have made significant contributions to our nation.
Their denial of the secular nature of our government means that these members of Congress are not only disagreeing with Americans who know that we are not a Christian nation (and never have been), but they are also disputing our President who recently promoted America’s secular heritage abroad during a trip to Turkey.
In this new era of promoting science and evidence, no representative should feel compelled to support the agenda of the Congressional Prayer Caucus and their attempts to infuse personal religious values into public policy.
A federal judge has ruled that a history teacher at a Southern California public high school violated the First Amendment when he called creationism "superstitious nonsense" during a classroom lecture.
U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan and his former teacher, James Corbett.
Farnan's lawsuit alleged that Corbett made more than 20 statements that were disparaging to Christians and their beliefs.
The judge found that Corbett's reference to creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" violated the First Amendment's establishment clause. Courts have interpreted the clause as prohibiting government employees from displaying religious hostility.
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Was the Judge right? Should a teacher be prohibited from saying creationism is "religious superstitious nonsense"?
This was just a day after 13 were gunned down in Binghamton, New York by a murderer who reportedly ‘hated America and talked about assassinating the President’ while his former co-workers felt that someday he might ‘come in mad one day and shoot people.’ These shootings were preceded by a month of shootings including eight shot dead in a North Carolina nursing home, five in a Santa Clara, California shooting, four police officers in Oakland and ten in Alabama. The gun lobby’s rhetoric has consequences. Today, we have seen how profound those consequences can be.
In Pittsburgh on Saturday, three police officers were murdered, reportedly by an assault-weapon wielding man shooting ‘hundreds of shots’ who apparently believed the gun lobby propaganda that an ‘Obama gun ban’ would lead to his ‘rights being infringed upon.’
After each horrific shooting, some leaders in Washington have said the solution is to do nothing, simply continue to enforce the existing laws, just as we have been doing. The gun lobby, meanwhile, calls for weakening our already paltry laws to get more guns to more people in more places. It is time for the gun lobby to stop stoking fear among gun owners with false claims about the government. It is time for the gun industry to stop capitalizing on those ginned-up fears to spread weapons of war among the public.
“We have a gun crisis in America. As important as the economic crisis is, the right to be safe at home and work and play needs at least as much attention from our policymakers as the right to economic security. It is time for leaders in Washington to drop empty platitudes after each horrific shooting, and instead do what they're paid to do: show backbone, and enact reasonable laws to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. At the very least, require Brady background checks for all gun sales; restrict military-style assault weapons to the military and law enforcement and help law enforcement crack down on corrupt gun sellers. What we’re doing now is not working.
