Right there on the heels of my article last week, Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs experienced a masters course in what free speech really means. In all fairness, he was asked to speak at a Catholic university and he offered his opinions on women’s role in the home, their community, and the business world. So, it wasn’t unsolicited per se, but we can say that it was an unforced error.

You can feel free to watch the speech on its own. It is available on the YouTubes and is slightly over 20 minutes. I’ll pass. He did come out and clarify those remarks after the fact, but his clarified comments were probably worse than the original comments themselves.

Right on cue, those that defend Butker are forgetting my lesson from the last time we talked about free speech. Free speech means that the government cannot throw you in jail for your speech. Even then, there are some caveats there like hate speech, slander, and libel. Butker isn’t inciting a riot, so he should be fine.

Whether he will continue to be employed or not is a different question. Colin Kaepernick would have a lot to say about that. The NFL is an entertainment business. They have made a ton of progress in attracting female fans and they had a huge assist from Taylor Swift. Allowing this kicker to remain an issue might halt the progress they have made there.

Yet, a ton of the NFL fanbase is conservative. These are the same clowns that threatened to boycott the NFL over Kaepernick. They seemingly have no concept of hypocrisy as they stand up to defend Butker while they openly campaigned for Kaepernick to be blackballed. What it comes down to is that free speech only matters when it is something they agree with. Then it is free speech. When they disagree then it is offensive and needs to be suppressed. This is the party that says they are for freedom folks.

I have no problem with Butker saying or thinking what he thinks. I vehemently disagree with it, but he has every right to say it. He also has to put on his big boy panties and accept the blowback. He’s a kicker. There are probably 100 guys that could do what he does at a reasonable level. Would they hit every field goal he hits or be 100 percent on extra points? Probably not. Would they do what he does without all of the headaches? Absolutely.

For the NFL this is not a free speech issue. This is an economic issue. Do they make more money by standing behind someone that openly has these views because a majority of their male fans might have these views or do they make more money by jettisoning this guy and standing behind a growing number of female fans?

The NFL has already made statements saying they disagree with his comments. Hell, the nuns at the university in question made a similar statement. His words may have been inartfully uttered, but the clarifications were worse. As Twain also said, better to be thought an idiot than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. Butker has every right to be an idiot. We all also have the right to call him one. Free speech runs both ways and it also doesn’t prevent private businesses from making a business decision. Let’s not conflate the two.

Here’s a fun thing to do on a Saturday. Google the terms “Nehls for Congress”. Among the results is the one that takes you HERE. That’s Congressman Troy Nehls’s campaign website. From there, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Now click on the “Pre-Order My Book” menu option.

That takes you HERE. From there, scroll down just a tad until you see this (or click the screen capture below to make bigly):

Note his mailing address. That’s 1612 Crabb River Road. The location seemed familiar, so I asked around, and this is the best answer I got:

“Yep. I just remembered it!  The Z Bar.  Lots of bikers and bare boobs.  If you drove by on your way to the donut shop, the odds were pretty good that “innocent bystander” would appear in your obituary.  They got sued enough times for over serving that it became a nonprofit but not by choice.”

“It sat empty for a while and then became the Republican headquarters.  Truth be known, it was hard to tell the difference.”

That’s right, I told myself, the Z Bar. I used to pass by it on my way to visit Brazos Bend State Park (the latter is a must-see if you’re in the area). I recall that it was a rare weekend that didn’t have news coverage of the worst sort out of that address.

So now I know what happened to it. The GOP took over Z Bar and it became Freedom Hall: aka the Nehls Campaign headquarters. What I don’t know is whether they had a shaman shake bones and waft acrid smoke in the various rooms to exorcise the evil spirits before moving in.

Something tells me “No”.

But that’s not the end of it. Nehls’s Pre-Order page is obviously out-of-date. Google Maps says that “Freedom Hall” is

If you go one step further, type in the address “1612 Crabb River Road Richmond” in Google Maps, you get the precise location of where Z Bar and Freedom Hall used to be, but a tap on the street view photo gives you this:
Wait. What?

That looks like Arabic script. It is Arabic script!

Further clicking got me to the new owners of Troy Nehls’s old HQ, aka “Freedom Hall”: Darul-Quran Masjid.

From Z Bar to the GOP Freedom Hall to a Mosque. How’s that for progress in Texas?

(Hat tip to Alfredo at the Dairy Queen)

“Get up get up get down. 911’s a joke in your town.” — Public Enemy

The political, social, and sports world collided on Friday morning when Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was arrested and charged with second degree assault of a police officer. This came about because he didn’t follow instructions when they asked him not to pull into the parking lot at Valhalla (where the PGA Championship is taking place). Scheffler says it was blown out of proportion. The detective says he was dragged and had his 80 dollar pants ruined.

Thus we have the conundrum of the modern age. Are police generally good guys with tough jobs that have been trodden upon by an unappreciative public or are they dangerous to certain communities and abusive of their own power? I know where I cast my lot, but that is based on personal experience.

About three or four years ago I was picking up my daughter at the skating rink. The officer on duty politely asked me if I noticed anyone in the parking lot looking inside cars. I said no and went inside to look for my daughter. A couple of minutes later he confronted me and asked me why I was looking inside of cars.

I explained that I was just there to pick up my daughter and go home. He yanked me by the arm and drug me out of the premises. This happened in front of my daughter. He obviously discovered that I was there to pick her up and not vandalize cars, but he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He decided I must be drunk.

I offered to take a breathalyzer test, but he said none was unavailable. Instead I went through a field sobriety test. I am diabetic and have horrible balance. I couldn’t pass one under any circumstances. He refused to let my daughter come home with me. So, I called my wife (who had been drinking) to come and drive her. He finally admitted that he could not hold me, so he let me drive on my own “if I felt safe to do so.”

A half hour ordeal could have gone much worse under a few circumstances. He could have tried to bust me for driving under the influence on absolutely zero evidence outside of a field sobriety test. I had not had anything to drink that day, but that didn’t seem to matter. I suppose he could have put handcuffs on me on suspicion of vandalism on zero evidence.

We had a teacher this year that resigned following a DUI arrest. It boggles the mind how close I could have come to career ruin based on the actions of an overzealous cop. I did complain to his department, but I didn’t keep up with the case. I’m guessing he and his supervisors laughed it off as just one of those things to happen on the job. They certainly didn’t think about what it must of have been like for my daughter to see her father yanked out of a skating rink like some criminal.

Those who defend police will say they have a difficult job. They absolutely have a difficult job. They will say there are just a few bad apples. I think there is more to it than that. There are some systemic issues we see everywhere and that is particularly true when dealing with minority communities.

Do we back the blue or are we one of those communists that want to defund the police? Progressives don’t do themselves any favors with these labels, but policing does need to be revamped. There are just too many personal and national stories for it to be a few bad apples. It is a training issue. It is an issue of how they seem themselves within the community. It is an issue of how they view disparate communities. It also is a case of a job that attracts people with certain personalities that lend itself to this sort of thing. Scheffler might have done something wrong, but I seriously doubt that all of this needed to happen. Now, imagine if he were black, Hispanic, or obviously lower class.

We’ve got new and improved data on the relationship between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and diagnoses of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability in offspring. Have we been right or wrong to recommend it during pregnancy?

Today, the governor of the state of Texas, Gregg Abbott, pardoned Daniel S. Perry, who was convicted of shooting a man five times at a Black Lives Matter protest in the state capital, Austin, in 2020.  Perry was serving a 25-year term for murder in the state penitentiary.  At a court hearing last year, evidence was presented attesting to Perry’s racism and his desire to shoot or run over protesters a few days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “The blacks … gathering up in a group I think something is about to happen,” Perry texted a friend after bars were closed in an area of Dallas due to the protests against Floyd’s killing.  He added, “I wonder if they will let me cut the ears off of people who’s decided to commit suicide by me.”

In April of 2020, Perry posted a meme on social media showing a woman holding a child’s head under water in a bathtub with the comment, “WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY.” 

Abbott pardoned Perry immediately after the state pardon board had recommended a pardon.  Conservatives, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, had been after Abbott to pardon Perry for months. 

When after the killing of George Floyd the Texas Pardon Board made a recommendation to pardon Floyd posthumously for a minor drug offense he had committed some years before while living in Houston, Governor Abbott rejected the board’s recommendation and did not pardon Floyd.

On May 7, a committee of the Republican-controlled Louisiana House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have added exceptions for rape and incest to the state’s total ban on abortions.  A bill last year that would have added the same exceptions to Louisiana’s abortion law failed in the same committee. 

“We have cases here in Louisiana with children being raped and then subjected to carrying a child to term,” said Democratic state Rep. Delisha Boyd, who had added an amendment intended to address the problem of underage girls being raped and forced to give birth to their rapists’ children by limiting the exceptions to persons under the age of 17.  That amendment was rejected also.

Of 14 states that passed laws completely banning abortion after the Dobbs case overturned Roe v. Wade, eight have no exceptions for rape or incest.  A ninth state has an exception for incest.

Today, the New York Times reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision ending the right of all women to abortion, including underage girls, had an upside down flag on a pole outside his home in Northern Virginia on January 17, 2021, shown in the photo above.  Neighbors interviewed by the Times said the flag had been displayed for several days that week, just days after pro-Trump insurrectionists had assaulted the United States Capitol, many of them carrying the same upside-down American flag as a symbol of “stop the steal,” the Trump motto during his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In an email to the Times, Alito claimed his wife had hung the flag upside-down because she was engaged in a dispute with a neighbor on their block over a yard sign Mrs. Alito found objectionable.

At the time Alito was displaying the “stop the steal” flag in front of his house, the Supreme Court was considering whether to accept one of the cases filed by the Trump campaign to overturn election results in a battleground state.  Alito voted to accept the case, but the Supreme Court ended up not taking the case.

The Supreme Court has rules that forbid its employees from engaging in partisan political activities, including “displaying signs or bumper stickers, or stating positions on social media.”  The Supreme Court refused to answer a question from the Times about whether the rules for its employees apply to the justices themselves.  A judicial code of ethics that applies to every judge in the Federal Judiciary has similar rules against engaging in partisan political activities.  That Federal code of judicial ethics does not apply to Supreme Court justices. 

Between now and the end of the Supreme Court term in late June, the court will issue rulings on two cases involving the Jan. 6 insurrection, including the case filed by Donald Trump asserting that he has absolute immunity from prosecution for his actions while he was president.  Alito has participated in arguments on both Jan. 6 cases and made statements and asked questions indicating he looked favorably on the claims of Trump in the immunity case.  He did not recuse himself from either case, even though he knew that the “stop the steal” symbol flag had been flown in front of his house shortly after Jan. 6. 

This is the country they want us to live in.  It is a country in which the power of the pardon, by either the president of the United States or governors of states, has been made a mockery of by Donald Trump and Gregg Abbott.  The “founders” in writing the Constitution to include the power of the pardon, which they acknowledged was one of the few trappings of the Monarchy they fought a revolution to throw off, obviously had no intention for that power to be misused by presidents for political purposes, as Trump did when he pardoned several political allies for crimes they committed to aid his election in 2016.  Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists convicted of crimes on Jan. 6 that include assaulting police officers and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct the United States government.  He has promised to “go after” the “Biden crime family” if he is elected, and there is no doubt whatsoever that he will continue to wield the pardon power as a political weapon.

The Supreme Court that stripped women of the right to control their own reproductive health has been transformed by political operatives and a criminally indicted president into yet another political weapon in the war of so-called “conservatives” to “take back” the country from political opponents the Republican Party has called “enemies” for nearly 50 years. 

States freed by the Supreme Court to do what they want about abortion, voting rights, civil rights, and the right to an education are rushing to turn back the clock to a time they consider closer to the America they want.  Justices Alito and Thomas have both made repeated references to the 1700’s and 1800’s as a time when the laws were more favorable to the kind of country they want America to be.  Donald Trump and the Republican Party are engaged in a full-on political war to make that happen, using the slogan “make America great again.” 

The “great” America they desire is already here, where racist murderers are pardoned, where women are denied full rights of citizenship, and where wealthy billionaires are allowed to use their money to buy a Congress and a president and a Supreme Court that will work their will. 

This is the country they want us to live in.  Vote as if your life depended on it because it does.

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