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A three-decades-old partnership between the city's black ministers and the Houston Police Department has ended after pastors refused to agree to new guidelines issued by Chief Charles McClelland that prohibits them from criticizing the police or city administration.

The ACLU and longtime civil rights activists blasted the prohibition against criticism by clergy who volunteer with the department.

McClelland changed the organization of HPD's religious volunteers by forming a group called the Police and Clergy Alliance (PACA). He issued guidelines governing the new alliance that took effect April 26.

Last week, an estimated 100 to 150 black ministers who are members of the Houston Ministers Against Crime turned in their HPD-issued credentials, saying they would no longer work with police, the pastor's group director confirmed.

The ministers against crime organization was founded in 1976, and Houston leaders have since heralded the group's accomplishments at improving relations between police and minorities at national mayor's conferences and other forums.

"It's hurting that in 2012 preachers cannot say in the United States what they want to say about what's going on that's not righteous," said the Rev. Robert Jefferson. "If anybody stands for righteousness, it ought to be a preacher. But if you got to obey a piece of paper saying you can't associate with people who are against the police department, you can't say nothing against the mayor or say nothing against the police chief, I quit because I'm going to be free to say what God tells me to do."

No individual limits

In a statement, McClelland said the prohibition against criticizing HPD is in force only while the clergy members are wearing an HPD-issued badge. The badge is essentially a photo identification card with the city's seal and motto and under the words "Houston Police Department."

McClelland said the police department has had multiple ministerial groups with various missions and whose activities were difficult to coordinate.

"With the formation of PACA this is a good way that we refocus, make sure we're all on the same page and committed to the same goals," McClelland said. "It is unfortunate some ministers feel they are being silenced by myself or HPD. As I have stated from the outset, they are free to do or say whatever they want as individuals. Any guidelines apply only when they are speaking in their official capacity as representatives of the alliance with an HPD badge."

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Pastors end partnership with HPD, accusing chief of censorship

The cheesy sex novel has long been a staple of literature, and its always a problem when staples are taken away.

But public libraries in several states are pulling the racy romance trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey from shelves or deciding not to order the best-seller at all, saying its too steamy or too poorly written.

Like there are no poorly written books in libraries.

When a book is removed from the shelf, folks who cant afford a Nook or a Kindle, the book is no longer available to them, said Deborah Caldwell Stone, of the American Library Associations office for intellectual freedom.

Fifty Shades of Grey, this generations 9?1/2 Weeks, has been called mommy porn because of its popularity among middle-age women.

This week, the trilogy holds the top three spots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Libraries in Wisconsin, Georgia and, of course, crazy Florida, all have had issues with the book.

Its semi-pornographic, said Don Walker, a spokesman for Brevard County, Fla., where the library put 19 copies of the book on the shelves and then pulled them after reading reviews. About 200 notices had to go out to people on the books waiting list.

It doesnt suit our community standards, said Cay Hohmeister, director of libraries for Leon County, home of Floridas capital.

Even though hundreds of people in the community want to read it.

View post:
‘50 Shades’ of censorship

After government criticism and a temporary shutdown of Web comments, China's biggest microblogging site plans to introduce a "user contract" that could impede the free flow of information.

Just a couple of weeks after Chinese censors lambasted the social network Sina Weibo for "rumor" mongering, the Twitter-like service announced plans to establish a "user contract" by the end of this month. This comes shortly after the uberpopular site also promised to fight against rumors on the Internet.

According to tech news site The Next Web, which got its hands on the contract and translated it, there are several points that look like they could impede the free flow of information.

It seems as if, for Sina Weibo, the point of the contract is to have greater transparency and be able to better control information on the site. However, there's a danger that this move could be precedent setting for more Web sites in China.

This is The Next Web's translated version of Article 13, which it found to be of particular concern:

China is a blogging and microblogging powerhouse with hundreds of millions of people using microblogging Web sites daily. Sina Weibo has more than 300 million users, which is three-fold Twitter's more than 100 million active users. The growth of blogging sites has resulted in a rapid expansion of places where Chinese people can express themselves -- something the government has long viewed as a threat.

See more here:
China's Sina Weibo creates 'user contract,' increasing censorship

Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy last week reminded us that internet filtering is still very much an item on the governments agenda. Thats a worrying prospect, but it could be worse: the UK is contemplating a plan where access to all adult content would be opt in, with adult material blocked by internet service providers (ISPs) unless customers specifically ask for it to be switched on.

The plan, being pushed by UK prime minister David Cameron, hasnt yet been formally presented to ISPs, and is likely to meet significant resistance when it is. Whatever the good intentions, it doesnt take a genius to spot the many obvious flaws in this plan. Who maintains a list of adult content? What happens if content ends up on that list by default? Where does the line get drawn? Will the Suns infamous page 3 girls be banned? And does any of it matter when setting up a VPN or using other privacy technologies to dodge the whole shebang is relatively straightforward?

Ultimately, opt-in seems just as bad as existing filtering proposals, with the added nastiness of creating a much larger blacklist (itself open to manipulation and abuse). Heres hoping the plan doesnt surface in the UK, and that it doesnt give Mr Conroy any ideas.

Pornography online: David Cameron to consider opt in plan [The Guardian]

Read the original:
Opt-In Censorship: An Equally Dodgy Online Alternative

ByLawrence Sellin

AP photo

You will not see an article like this appear in any American mainstream media outlet.

Barack Hussein Obama is an illegal President. He is not now nor has he ever been eligible to be a candidate for or hold that office because his father was a British subject at the time of his birth.

Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires that all candidates for the Presidency be "natural born citizens." As defined in the binding Supreme Court precedent of Minor v. Happersett (1875) and confirmed in the subsequent ruling of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and others, all candidates for the offices of President and Vice President must be second generation Americans, that is, US citizens of citizen parents at the time of birth.

President and Vice President are the only U.S. political offices with that requirement. It was the intent of the American Founding Fathers that the chief executive and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces would not have dual allegiance or loyalty to a foreign power.

There is no ambiguity, although the Democrat and Republican parties and the media are and have been deliberately trying to confuse the American public as to the true meaning of natural born citizenship.

Case in point.

On May 1, 2012, Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier posted an explanation of the term natural born citizen that was so factually incorrect that it must be considered propaganda.

It is well beyond the scope of this or perhaps any single article to document the full extent of the censorship conducted and the amount of disinformation disseminated, which has continued non-stop since the onset of the 2008 election cycle.

Continue reading here:
Censorship and Disinformation in America