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"Emergency Regulations": NY's Latest Attempt to Suppress Free Speech

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Remember when President Obama touted the Affordable Care Act by claiming if you “liked your plan you could keep it”? He earned Politifact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” for that whopper. Amazingly, several other Democrats made the same false promise. Knowing what we know now, wouldn’t you want to expose any politician who stood behind that misleading statement? Well, if someone uttered those words in the state of New York, you may now be forced to let it slide. A new law in the Empire State, which some are calling the ‘shut up rule,’ could allow such lofty claims to go unchallenged.

The New York Board of Elections, in an attempt to regulate political spending by special interest groups during campaigns, has enacted “emergency regulations” that would make it much more difficult to challenge political speech:

The new regulations require individuals and groups spending on races — independently of candidates and political parties — to register with the state as a political committee and file financial reports that list so-called “independent expenditures.”

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Syracuse NY Embraces its New Mosque; Wants More Refugees

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Photo Credit: Belal Khan / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Belal Khan / Creative Commons

Since my original article discussing how an abandoned Catholic church was being converted to a mosque in Syracuse, NY, that city has embraced the Mosque of Jesus, Son of Mary with open arms. In April, a local publication, the Syracuse New Times, published an interview with Dr. Yusuf Soule, the executive director of the Northside Learning Center, who bought the church and rented it to a still unidentified group of Muslims. In no news report has the group who transformed the church into a mosque been identified as anything other than a “new Islamic society.” When asked how the plan to buy the property came about, Soule answered:

More than 150 people contributed to finance this. A lot of business owners, refugees and business people, people from Utica (NY) helped. Some people literally gave us a dollar. Some people gave us $15,000. Some people gave us interest-free loans.

Asked why that particular location was picked, Soule said:

Location, location, location. The North Side is the magnet for refugees. The two agencies that work with refugees (InterFaith Works and Catholic Charities) are here. I wish people could see beyond CNN and see Muslims as individual people.

When questioned about who may be behind opposition to the mosque, Soule evaded the answer, but made it clear who was welcome to attend…

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71 Arrested For Internet Child Porn In New York

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Photo Credit: Jason DeCrow / AP
Officials in New York say they have arrested 71 people for possessing and trading child pornography via the Internet in what’s being described as the largest-ever such operation in the city.

Member station WNYC’s Annemarie Fertoli reports that the five-week investigation, called Operation Caireen, was led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and yielded some 600 computers, tablets and smartphones containing thousands of images of children exchanged via peer-to-peer networks.

Special Agent James Hayes called the images depraved and shocking and said that the perpetrators weren’t just stereotypical drifters. “They worked as nurses, paramedics, caretakers for mentally ill adults, computer programmers and architects,” Hayes said. “One was an airline pilot, and one was a police officer.”

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WATCH: Here’s What Defiant New York Gun Owners Decided to Do on the Day of State’s Gun Registration Deadline

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The state of New York gave gun owners who owned so-called “assault weapons” before the passage of the SAFE Act, a hastily-passed gun control law, until April 15, 2014, to register them with the state government.

On Tuesday, the deadline, New York gun owners and Second Amendment rights advocates gathered in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., and shredded gun registration forms in an act of protest.

New York lawmakers have “shredded” their constitutional rights, so it’s only fitting the gun registration forms get the same treatment, protesters reportedly said.

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NY Dishes Out Punishments for Opting Out of Common Core

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Photo Credit: FOXNEWS.COM / AP

Photo Credit: FOXNEWS.COM / AP

Angry parents, at least one student suspended and — in one school district — children denied ice cream.

Such has been the roll-out of Common Core testing in New York, the first state to implement the test component of the controversial nationalized educational standard.

Seirra Olivero, a 13-year-old student at Orange-Ulster BOCES, claims she was suspended from school last week after telling classmates they could opt out of taking the Common Core English test — a decision few students and parents in the area knew was possible, according to the girl’s mother.

The eighth-grader was suspended for two days for “insubordination,” following the April 1 incident, in which she informed her friends they had a choice whether or not to take the exam on the day of the test. According to Seirra, she had just stepped off the school bus when she encountered a fellow classmate who was “anxious” about taking the test.

“I told my friend he didn’t have to take the test and then a teacher who overheard me told me to shut my mouth and keep walking,” Seirra told FoxNews.com. Once inside the school, Seirra told another friend the test was not mandatory, she says, prompting that same teacher to usher her into the principal’s office. After walking out of the principal’s office following an argument and then threatening to sue an administrator over his handling of the matter, Seirra was given a two-day suspension.

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Lawsuit: New York’s SAFE Act Allows Police to Seize Firearms Without a Warrant

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New York’s hastily-passed gun control law “mandates that law enforcement personnel seize, without a warrant, probable cause or hearing” some firearms, a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York’s Eastern District alleges.

The lawsuit was filed in March by the La Reddola, Lester & Associates law firm on behalf of Gabriel Razzano. As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the lawsuit claims the registry process is “essentially secret and results in a mandatory, warrantless Penal Law 400 gun removal visit from police.”

A memorandum of law requesting preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order in regards to the law outlines five key points:

Photo Credit: La Reddola, Lester & Associates

Photo Credit: La Reddola, Lester & Associates

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Why is New York City Bullying Christians?

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A federal appeals panel has ruled that New York City has a right to ban churches from holding worship services in school buildings. In essence, it means Christians have officially become second-class citizens in the nation’s largest city.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District is just the latest twist in a legal saga pitting the Bronx Household of Faith against the NYC Board of Education. The court found that New York City’s ban on renting schools to churches for weekend worship services did not violate the First Amendment right to free expression.

“The opinion uses the establishment clause as an excuse to treat people of faith worse than everybody else,” said the Bronx Household of Faith’s attorney, Jordan Lorence of Alliance Defending Freedom.

Circuit Judge John Walker was the lone dissenter in the 2 to 1 ruling on Thursday. He said the board of education “plainly discriminates against religious belief and cannot be justified by a compelling government interest.”

“Shutting the door to religious worship services in such a setting where every other activity is permitted strikes at the clause’s core,” he wrote in the dissent. “Of the 50 largest school districts in the United States, New York city alone entirely excludes religious worship from its facilities.”

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Islamic Group Gets Go-Ahead to Cut Crosses Off NY Church

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A city board on Thursday gave a Muslim group the go-ahead to remove six crosses from the roof and spires of a century-old former Catholic church so the now-vacant Gothic structure can be used as a mosque.

More than 200 people had signed an online petition calling on the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board to deny an application by North Side Learning Center, the church’s new owner, to remove the crosses and build a six-foot chain-link fence.

Before the vote to allow the church alterations, Chairman Don Radke said the board cannot interfere with a decision that involves religious freedom.

About a dozen people who spoke at the meeting were evenly divided for and against the church conversion, The Post-Standard reported.

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Keep Calm and Refuse the NYS Tests

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

While her son’s fourth-grade classmates were taking the nation’s first round of tests under the controversial Common Core program, Heidi Indelecato decided to teach her son a lesson in civil disobedience.

“We respectfully refuse to participate in the test,” said Indelecato, whose son Benjamin attends school in Lancaster, N.Y., which on Tuesday became the first state to administer testing under the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

So while other kids sat poised with their No. 2 pencils above Scantron sheets, Benjamin studied with his mother, who documented the occasion with a picture of the pair wearing T-shirts that read: “Keep calm and and refuse the NYS tests.”

Common Core was adopted by 45 states, although Indiana withdrew last month. The set of standards, devised by the nation’s school superintendents at the behest of the National Governors Association, seeks to set a uniform standard for grades K-12, to ensure kids all over the nation reach the same minimum level of learning.

The program involves testing of students in grades 3-8 and high school testing is scheduled to begin next year.New York implemented the standards a year early.

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Republican Running for Governor of NY Plans to Take a Stand for His Kids With ’Symbolic’ Protest of Common Core

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Photo Credit: The Blaze

Photo Credit: The Blaze

A Republican candidate for governor of New York said he and his wife plan to pull their children from Common Core testing in a “symbolic” protest on Tuesday.

In a short campaign video, Rob Astorino says his “family’s protest tomorrow is a symbolic one.”

“But as parents, we think it’s important to take a stand. Our children aren’t guinea pigs, Governor Cuomo, and we want them educated by teachers — not faceless bureaucrats in Washington,” he added.

He claims hundreds of thousands of New York children from third to eighth grade will be subjected to Common Core testing on Tuesday. Astorino said his kids will remain in school but opt out of the test.

New York News

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