Michigan
All posts tagged Michigan
‘Proposition 3, deceptively called “Reproductive Freedom for All,” will appear on Michigan’s ballot this November. This radical proposal certainly is not about reproductive freedom, it is all about abortion and removing all restrictions pertaining to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care. It would amend Michigan’s constitution to create a new, unrestricted right to abortion in our state, removing all of the protections for the unborn that have been placed into Michigan law since Roe vs. Wade. There are no age limits for these new rights, meaning that your minor children can have abortions or make decisions for transitioning to the opposite sex without parental consent.’
‘Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, proved once again Thursday something that everyone who has been paying attention knows by now: you don’t go to an American university to get an education but to be indoctrinated into Leftist dogma and recruited for Antifa. Cole, who has written a hagiographical and whitewashed biography of Muhammad and is a Leftist go-to authority on Islamic issues, published an article in Foreign Policy In Focus entitled “Islam Wasn’t the Threat — Islamophobia Was.” If this sounds like nonsense, that’s only because it is, but that’s what sells on the Left these days.
Concern for Islamic terrorism, in Cole’s view, has been greatly exaggerated, in part for “racist” reasons (of course), while the rampant terror threat of “white supremacy” has been downplayed or ignored outright. Those who have suffered the most from this lack of focus, he insists, have been Muslims in America, who have borne the brunt of “Islamophobia” in America’s misguided quest to protect itself from a largely nonexistent threat of jihad terrorism.
All this is designed to inculcate the hatred and contempt for the United States that the Left is working to instill everywhere these days, and of course, Cole’s chief targets are conservatives. He begins his ridiculous piece by whining that “Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson excused one of the leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers organization implicated in the January 6th insurrection by describing him as ‘a devout Christian.’ It’s safe to surmise that he wouldn’t have offered a similar defense for a Muslim American.” Aside from denigrating Tucker Carlson, Cole’s point here is that the Jan. 6 “insurrection” was a manifestation of “Christian terrorism,” equivalent to the Islamic terrorism we saw on 9/11.
To drive this point home, Cole has to ignore numerous inconvenient facts, including these: that no one has been charged with insurrection in connection with Jan. 6, the protestors were unarmed, the police opened the doors of the Capitol and invited them in, and no one was killed except one of the protestors, by a rogue cop who has faced no punishment, since he is safely anti-Trump.
Cole also has to ignore the fact that nearly 3,000 people were murdered by Islamic jihad terrorists on 9/11 and that those attacks were just one day’s worth, with 40,000 more jihad attacks coming worldwide since then. He sees 9/11 solely as the impetus for the victimization of Muslims in the United States: “Since September 11th, and even before that ominous date, Muslim Americans have suffered bitterly from discrimination and hate crimes in this country, while their religion has been demonized. During the first year of the Trump administration, about half of Muslim Americans polled said that they had personally experienced some type of discrimination.”
That would be a shame if it were true, but it isn’t. In reality, FBI statistics show that hate crimes against Muslims are rare, far more rare than hate crimes against Jews. No hate crime is justified, but the idea that Muslims in the U.S. have been unique victims of discrimination and harassment since 9/11 is simply without foundation.
And then there’s the larger picture.
On June 1, 2009, a Muslim named Abdulhakim Muhammad shot a soldier to death at a Little Rock military recruiting office, explicitly in the name of Allah. On November 5, 2009, in Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered thirteen unarmed soldiers while screaming “Allahu akbar.” On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev exploded two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring many more in the name of Islam. On Sept. 25, 2014, Alton Nolen, a convert to Islam, beheaded a coworker at Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma and had publicly supported jihad violence.
Related: Berkeley Professor of ‘Islamophobia’ Claims ‘the Muslim Is Presumed Guilty’ on U.S. Campuses
On July 16, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn., a Muslim named Mohammad Abdulazeez went on a shooting spree at a military installation, murdering five soldiers. On Nov. 4, 2015, at the University of California, Merced, Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people “in the name of Allah.” On Dec. 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, Calif., a Muslim couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at a Christmas party, murdering fourteen people. On Jan. 7, 2016, a convert to Islam named Edward Archer shot Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett because “police bend laws that are contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an.” On Feb. 11, 2016, a Muslim named Mohammad Barry entered the Nazareth Restaurant & Deli in Columbus, Ohio, and began stabbing patrons because the owner of the restaurant was an Israeli.
On June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Fla., a Muslim named Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injured 58 at a gay bar. He insisted that he was doing this out of loyalty to the Islamic State. On November 28, 2016, at Ohio State University, a Muslim student, Abdul Artan, intentionally rammed a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing people with a butcher knife, injuring 11 people. On Oct. 31, 2017, a Muslim named Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov rented a Home Depot pickup truck and intentionally drove it down a bicycle path, killing eight people and injuring twelve.
On December 6, 2019, at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, a second lieutenant of the Saudi Royal Air Force, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, murdered three U.S. sailors. On May 21, 2020, at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, a Muslim named Adam Alsahi crashed through a gate, got out, and opened fire, shooting a Navy police officer. On Aug. 29, 2021, in Plano, Texas, a Muslim named Imran Ali Rasheed murdered a Lyft driver, stole her car, and drove to Plano police headquarters, where he shot two people. He left a note explaining his Islamic motivations.
Longtime readers of my news site Jihad Watch know that this is only a partial list of jihad terror acts in the U.S. since 9/11. Then there are also all the foiled plots.
Meanwhile, how many people were killed or injured in the U.S. in “Islamophobic” attacks? None. None at all. That in itself should have made Cole too embarrassed to publish his piece, but of course, his objective isn’t accuracy, but propaganda and indoctrination.
“Islam wasn’t the threat — Islamophobia was,” says the pseudo-academic Juan Cole. Alas for his students at the University of Michigan! His article is a neat summation of the sorry state of American academia today.’https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/07/university-of-michigan-professor-claims-islamophobia-bigger-threat-than-islamic-terrorism-n1557098
How can this occur in the Land of the Free?
This isn’t real is it? Yes, it is. ‘For decades, Detroit police, sheriff’s deputies, and Wayne County prosecutors have systematically abused the constitutional rights of drivers by using a controversial tactic called civil forfeiture to seize and sell thousands of cars—oftentimes from completely innocent owners. Now, the Institute for Justice (IJ)—a nonprofit, public interest law firm—has partnered with a group of Detroit drivers to fight back and file a class action lawsuit in federal court seeking to end the controversial practice once and for all.
Melisa Ingram, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, knows the many abuses of Detroit’s system firsthand. Last summer her car was seized by Wayne County sheriff’s deputies after she lent it to her then-boyfriend so he could drive to a friend’s barbeque. Later that day, police pulled him over for slowing down in an area known for prostitution. Although he was never charged with a crime, police nevertheless seized Melisa’s 2017 Ford Fusion.
The following day, she went down to the courthouse to sort things out. There, she explained that the car wasn’t his and that she’d obviously would have never given him permission to pick up a prostitute, as the police alleged. But her pleas fell on deaf ears, because under Michigan’s forfeiture statute, an owner’s innocence is not a defense. The clerk explained that Melisa’s only option was to pay the city $1,800—$1,800 she did not have—plus the cost of towing and storage. Without the money to pay the city, she was forced to give up her car and declare personal bankruptcy. Now, seven months later, she’s broken up with her boyfriend and is forced to ride the bus to work for the first time in her life.
“In many ways, Melisa was victimized twice: First by her partner and a second time by Detroit’s outrageous vehicle forfeiture program, which turns a blind-eye to the innocence of owners,” said Wesley Hottot, a senior attorney at IJ. “Innocent until proven guilty is a bedrock American value, and yet, under Detroit’s civil forfeiture program innocence is irrelevant. It is clearly unconstitutional to force one person to pay for another person’s crime.”
Unlike criminal forfeiture, civil forfeiture does not require the property owner to have committed a crime. Anyone’s vehicle can be seized based on a police officer’s mere suspicion that it was, in some way, connected to a crime. Even being near an alleged crime is enough, which Detroit resident Robert Reeves, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, found out the hard way.
Robert works as a construction worker. Last summer, a contractor hired Robert to help clear out debris from an empty lot. On Robert’s way home, police arrested him and alleged that the tractor he’d driven at the job site was stolen. But he had no idea what was going on; the contractor had provided the equipment and Robert had no idea where it came from. Robert assured the officers that he knew nothing about the alleged theft, and had no reason to believe that the contractor was connected to criminal activity, but it didn’t matter. Police released him, but seized his car and money. No one was charged with a crime, and yet, five months later, Robert’s car remains in a city impound lot.
“Detroit’s forfeiture program is less like a justice system and more like having your car stolen and paying a ransom to get it back,” said Hottot. “Once police seize a car, there is no judge or jury. Instead, prosecutors give owners a choice. They can either pay the city’s ransom or hire an attorney and enter a byzantine process that is confusing, time-consuming, and expensive. The process is designed to ensure that owners fail nearly every time. I’ve watched this happen time and time again, and never once have I seen an owner successfully make it to court and get his or her car back.”
“My car was very important to me and now my life has been turned upside down,” said Ingram. “Everything suffers when you don’t have a car, especially in a city like Detroit. I’ve been late to work and missed doctor’s appointments because I don’t have a way to get there. No one should have to go through what I’ve gone through.”
Detroit’s forfeiture program has been controversial since its inception. More than 25 years ago, Wayne County sheriff’s deputies seized a car co-owned by a woman named Tina Bennis and her husband. Tina’s husband had been convicted of gross indecency for an encounter with a prostitute that took place in their family car. Like Melisa, Tina obviously had not consented to, and was not even aware of, her husband’s illicit activities, but unlike Melisa, the Bennis’ car was jointly-owned. Despite Tina’s obvious innocence, the county took the car anyway.
Tina contested the forfeiture, and her case eventually made it to the United States Supreme Court. There, she argued that punishment of innocent people violates the due process guarantee of the U.S. Constitution. Citing the complex history of civil forfeiture, a divided Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect innocent property owners like Mrs. Bennis against forfeiture.
“To this day, the Bennis decision remains one of the worst property rights decisions that the Supreme Court has ever handed down,” said IJ Attorney Kirby West. “It has enabled cities, states and the federal government to deprive innocent property owners of their cars, cash, or other property without even a modicum of due process. Thankfully, courts across the country have begun to see the injustice of civil forfeiture and the Supreme Court will eventually have to correct this grievous decision.”
In response to lawsuits by IJ, federal judges in Albuquerque and Philadelphia have shutdown municipal forfeiture programs similar to Detroit’s. And last year IJ secured a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment limits how far the government can go in using civil forfeiture to take property from people for minor crimes.
“Detroit drivers have suffered for decades under the Bennis decision,” said IJ President Scott Bullock. “We’ve filed this lawsuit to right that wrong and restore justice to a system devoid of it for too long.”’ https://ij.org/press-release/class-action-lawsuit-seeks-to-shutdown-detroits-unconstitutional-civil-forfeiture-program/
