WARNING: Believing that the First Amendment gives you the legal right to express your opinion may be hazardous to your career.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The First Amendment
Of course, that refers only to Congress.
It says nothing about employers–and and especially those self-appointed pseudo-gods who set themselves up as judges of virtue and infallibility.
If you doubt it, just ask Scott Lees, who until March had worked for four years as boys head lacrosse coach at Fryeburg Academy.
Scott Lees
His crime? Posting to his personal Facebook page an open letter to President Barack Obama that one of his friends had emailed him.
Lees posted the letter on March 17. Two days later, he was ordered to resign from his four-year position as the academy’s lacrosse coach.
The letter had been written in response to a speech Obama gave in Cairo in 2009. In this, Obama said, “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s history.”
Among the issues the letter raised:
“Were those Muslims that were in America when the Pilgrims first landed? Funny, I thought they were Native American Indians.”
“Were those Muslims that celebrated the first Thanksgiving day? Sorry again, those were Pilgrims and Native American Indians.
“Can you show me one Muslim signature on the United States Constitution? Declaration of Independence? Bill of Rights? Didn’t think so.
“Did Muslims fight for this country’s freedom from England? No. Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves of America. No, they did not, in fact, Muslims to this day are still the largest traffickers in human slavery.
“Your own half-brother, a devout Muslim, still advocates slavery himself, even though Muslims of Arabic descent refer to black Muslims as ‘pug nosed slaves.’ Says a lot of what the Muslim world really thinks of your family’s “rich Islamic heritage,” doesn’t it Mr. Obama?
“Where were Muslims during the Civil Rights era of this country? No present. There are no pictures or media accounts of Muslims walking side by side with Martin Luther King, Jr., or helping to advance the cause of Civil Rights.”
(The most prominent Muslim group in America at the time of the civil rights movement was the Nation of Islam. Its onetime spokesman, Malcom X, preached a gospel of separation of the races–and condemned whites as “blue-eyed devils.”)
“Where were Muslims during this country’s Woman’s Suffrage era? Again, not present. In fact, devout Muslims demand that women are subservient to men in the Islamic culture.
“So much so, that often they are beaten for not wearing the ‘hajib’ or for talking to a man who is not a direct family member or their husband. Yep, the Muslims are all for women’s rights, aren’t they?
Click here: Women’s Rights Under Sharia
“Where were Muslims during World War II? They were aligned with Adolf Hitler. The Muslim grand mufti himself met with Adolf Hitler, reviewed the troops and accepted support from the Nazis in killing Jews.”
“Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept. 11th, 2001? If they weren’t flying planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing in the Middle East….
“And THAT, Mr. Obama, is the ‘rich heritage’ Muslims have here in America….”
Interviewed by Top Right News, Lees, 48, said he had never before been fired and had been coaching since 1992.
Fryeburg Academy is a private school in Fryeburg, Maine.
Fryeburg Academy
Lees said that he was supposed to meet with Head of Schools Erin Mayo and Dean Charlie Tryder on March 19. But Athletic Director Sue Thurston told him a decision to fire him had already been made.
Mayo told Top Right News that “Scott Lees did post a message on Facebook regarding Muslim people last week that was negative and, of course, public in nature.”
Mayo was right on two counts about the Facebook post: It was negative and public.
What she didn’t say was: It was also entirely historically accurate. It did not urge its readers to violate the law. It did not defame anyone (unless telling the truth about a group’s documented activities counts as defamation).
This is similar to the policies–and atmosphere–of the Joseph McCarthy “smear and fear” era of the 1950s. You didn’t have to actually be proven an actual Communist, or even a Communist sympathizer.
All that was needed to condemn you to permanent unemployment was to become “controversial.” That way, the employer didn’t have to actually prove the employee’s unfitness.
An employee’s right to out-of-work speech should be fully protected unless it crosses the legal line–such as committing libel or urging others to violate the law.
And employers who fire him for embracing his First Amendment right should be criminally prosecuted.
Until this happens, the workplace will continue to resemble George Orwell’s vision of 1984–a world where anyone can become a “non-person” for the most trivial of reasons.
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ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR PRESIDENT: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 13, 2017 at 2:33 amFifty-six years after John F. Kennedy gave his first and only Inaugural Address, these words remain its single most-quoted sentence: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
John F. Kennedy Inaugural
So millions of Americans who were alive that day–January 20, 1961–were probably shocked when they learned that Melania Trump had a very different view of government service.
On August 20, 2016, The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published a story accusing her of having once worked as a prostitute.
The newspaper cited a Slovenian magazine’s report that a modeling agency that she worked with in New York in the 1990s also served as an escort business, linking wealthy clients with women for sexual services.
On September 1, Melania sued The Daily Mail in a state court in Montgomery County, Maryland. In early 2017, the Maryland court dismissed the case, saying it did not have jurisdiction.
On February 6, 2017, Melania filed another libel suit against The Daily Mail in the Manhattan Supreme Court.
Required to prove that she had been harmed in some way, Melania did not cite undeserved shame or how much her family and friends had been hurt.
Instead, she argued that the article had ruined her “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to cash in on the Presidency.
Melania Trump
According to the complaint that her attorney filed:
”Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person…to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world,” the Manhattan suit says.
“These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance.
“The [statements] also constitute defamation per se because they impugned on her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States,” the suit alleges.
Melania is alleging $150 million in damages.
Enter the Emoluments Clause.
This is a United States government law that specifically forbids any leader from using government services to “enrich” the President and his family.
Among the greatest dangers facing the newly-created American government, feared the Founding Fathers, was foreign interference. And this could be obtained through the use of bribes–money or gifts.
The Founding Fathers of the United States
To prevent this, the Founders inserted the Emoluments Clause into Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution:
“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
This illustrates one of the dangers of bringing a libel or slander suit.
(NOTE: Libel is a written defamation; slander is a spoken one)
Whoever brings the suit must open himself to unprecedented privacy-invading questions. And, in answering them, he may unintentionally give away revelations that can prove highly damaging.
Such as the revelation–in Melania Trump’s case–that, from the outset, she intended to use her position as First Lady to enrich herself.
Another Trump seeking to find out “what the country can do for you” is the President’s daughter, Ivanka.
Starting in 2016, Shannon Coulter, a brand and digital strategist, started the Grab Your Wallet boycott aimed at more than 30 retailers who carry Ivanka’s line of fashion apparel.
Among the retailers targeted:
During the first week of February, Nordstrom told The Seattle Times that it would no longer carry Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing and accessories.
Nordstrom said the decision to drop Ivanka Trump’s line was based on poor sales performance.
“We’ve got thousands of brands,” said a Nordstrom spokesman. “Each year we cut about 10 percent and refresh our assortment with about the same amount. In this case, based on the brand’s performance we’ve decided not to buy it for this season.”
President Trump had often boasted that he would defend the free enterprise system against an intrusive Federal government.
But for a major department store to drop his daughter’s clothing line was too much.
Turning to Twitter, his favorite weapon of insult, the President tweeted: “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Trump drafted other members of his administration to attack Nordstrom.
One of these was White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Spicer said that the store’s decision to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories line was nothing less than an attack on the president’s policies and his daughter.
“”I think this is less about his family’s business and an attack on his daughter. He ran for President, he won, he’s leading this country.
“I think for people to take out their concern about his actions or his executive orders on members of his family, he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success.”
But even more was to come.
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