Supreme Court Docket Review

OAN Newsroom

The Supreme Court begins a new term next week, and will be hearing some cases impacting worker’s rights, voter’s rights, and religious freedoms.
With a Conservative majority firmly in place, the Supreme Court begins a new term with a docket full of contentious cases.
One of the biggest cases the justices will hear involves labor union fees out of Illinois.
Across the U.S. labor unions currently force state and municipal employees to pay fees whether they want to join the union or not.
The employee plaintiff in the case says requiring him to pay fees to a union he doesn’t support violates his right to freedom of speech.
Attorneys for the plaintiff say workers are being forced to subsidize a union as a condition of employment.
The case could deal a financial blow to the Democrat-leaning unions whose political clout would be weakened by the reduction in cash flow.
The court will also take on another high profile case involving gerrymandering in Wisconsin, which has been brought on by Democrats who say the way the lines are currently drawn ensures they can’t win.
Next on the list, a voter roll purge case out of Ohio where opponents are calling the state’s removal of non-participating voters from the rolls a violation of federal law.
Then out of Colorado, the court will decide if a same-sex couple’s right to civil marriage outweighs the right of a cake-baker to refuse service based on religious beliefs.
This will be the first full term for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
While Justice Anthony Kennedy remains the swing vote, the decisions that come out of the court may prove the importance of the appointment of Gorsuch to the bench.

Chelsea Handler's vulgar Melania Trump tweet sparks outrage

Chelsea Handler is in trouble again for a vulgar tweet she wrote about first lady Melania Trump.

"Melania to host a discussion on opioid abuse. She says unless you have to have sex with Donald Trump, you have no excuse to be on drugs," Handler tweeted Friday.

Fans immediately slammed the comedian on Twitter calling her joke not funny and in poor taste.
A rep for Handler did not return Fox News' request for comment.
This is hardly the first time Handler has gotten into trouble for her tweets.
The "Netflix" talk show host tweeted in August that there should be laws against "people who think racism is funny."
"2 Chinese guys were arrested in Berlin for making nazi salutes," Handler tweeted. "Wouldn't it be nice 2 have laws here for people who think racism is funny?"
Many took to Twitter to slam the comedian for her tweet, calling her hypocritical as she has advocated for free speech. Some Twitter users pointed out Handler has made racist jokes in the past.
In March, Handler faced backlash for a tweet she made in response to Eric and Lara Trump's announcement that they are expecting their first child in March.
Handler tweeted, "I guess one of @realDonaldTrump's sons is expecting a new baby. Just what we need. Another person with those jeans [sic]. Let's hope for a girl."
Donald Trump Jr. blasted the comedian's tweet in a lengthy post prefacing it on Twitter calling it a "sick tweet targeted at our family."

'Will & Grace' anti-Trump premiere alienates some viewers

The premiere episode of NBC’s reincarnated “Will & Grace” was essentially a 30-minute anti-Trump infomercial on Thursday night and conservatives have taken notice.

The first episode of “Will & Grace” in 11 years referred to First Lady Melania Trump as a “hostage,” portrayed Midwesterners as people who didn’t eat vegetables until Michelle Obama  came along and featured Debra Messing’s character, Grace, complaining about the results of last year’s presidential election.

Grace has somehow landed a job redecorating the Oval Office because Trump “has been pouting that his office is a real dump.”
After a subtle jab that Melania wouldn’t hire anyone for the job who is pretty enough to attract the president, Grace and her assistant headed to the White House, where the show mocked Kellyanne Conway’s infamous couch photo and President Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's disease.
Grace is told Trump wants his the Oval Office “to look like he’s there from time to time,” another obvious shot.
People magazine even published a list of all the times the show ripped Trump.
The premiere episode did well in the ratings department, with 10.2 million viewers tuning in, making it the most-watched scripted show on television Thursday night. TheWrap’s Senior TV Reporter Tony Maglio believes future ratings could depend on viewers who side with the show politically.
“Post-premiere, ‘Will & Grace’ ratings should come back down to Earth, and will soon settle into a pretty predictable range. The return was an event [that] had the nostalgia factor going for it, plenty of promotion and generally favorable reviews,” Maglio told Fox News. ”The show does have a few things working against it though: The younger half of the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic don't know or care at all about these characters, and a series that takes such a political stance is, by its very nature, divisive.”
Fox News’ Senior Vice President of Marketing and entertainment contributor Michael Tammero was “very excited” for the return of “Will & Grace” but didn’t stick with the episode for the entire 30 minutes.
“It was a very important show, as someone who is gay and married… it was a show that initially played a huge role in changing hearts and minds in this country and advancing LGBTQ issues,” Tammero said. “I expected some anti-Republican, anti-Trump lines, but I did not expect every single line to be some sort of jab.”
Tammero said the show “is on broadcast for a reason, ‘broad’ being they key word,” as networks typically try to to reach the largest possible audience. He can't predict if the show’s political views will hurt viewership.
“I think it could… I think it will probably hurt the show,” he said. “In Hollywood, we’re seeing a lot of people center-right are turning off and tuning out.”
Conservatives viewers took to Twitter to react, with many noting that they wouldn’t tune in again because they were offended by the show’s politics. One viewer asked, “Why alienate a large part of America?”
Another viewer tweeted that “Will & Grace” used to be a good show but is now simply a “tool for hate,” and dubbed it “Will & Disgrace.”
The Media Research Center’s TV reporter Amelia Hamilton blasted the episode, calling the storyline “a lazy way to take shots at the president for the entire length of the show” and said it was embarrassing.
“Hollywood still hasn't realized that shows like this do nothing but help Donald Trump,” Hamilton wrote. “When will Hollywood learn that they're basically running his reelection campaign by doing this?”
Ironically, “Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick told The Hollywood Reporter they only agreed to a reunion because former NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker isn’t involved anymore, since he is now the president of the liberal network CNN Worldwide.
“Zucker was the only reason we had a problem at NBC,” Mutchnick said.

North Korea rocket man Cartoons

China Orders N. Korean Businesses Within Borders to Close, U.S. to Boost Military in S. Korea

China is ordering all North Korean businesses operating within its borders to close in accordance with recently approved U.N. sanctions.
The country’s commerce ministry said ventures within Chinese territory will have until the end of the year to shutdown.
Overseas joint ventures between Chinese and North Korean companies will also be dissolved, but specific deadlines for those businesses remain unclear.
The move comes as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson begins his second official trip to China amid rising tensions in the region.
Meanwhile, the president of South Korea urges Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
President Moon Jae-in made the comments during his speech at the 69th Armed Forces Day in south Korea.
He stressed his government’s efforts to help contain the rogue state’s nuclear aspirations, adding he does not want to see North Korea collapse.
He also emphasized the importance of South Korea’s cooperation with the international community to tackle the issue.
Moon also vowed to strengthen his country’s military alliance with the U.S.
On Thursday, South Korean security officials said American assets would be stationed in the region on a rotating basis before January.
This comes after the Pentagon confirmed the deployment as agreed to by Moon and President Trump at the U.N. last week.
Details on the type of assets to be sent to the region have not been confirmed but may include B-52 bombers, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers.

Rush Limbaugh on NFL anthem controversy: 'The left has hijacked this game'

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh weighed in Thursday on the ongoing furor over NFL players kneeling during "The Star-Spangled Banner," telling Fox News' "Hannity" that "the left has hijacked this game."

Previously a devoted pro football fan, Limbaugh told Sean Hannity that he did not watch Sunday's slate of games after hearing of the planned protests by players and vowed "I'm going to be playing golf on Sundays now."

The act of taking a knee during the pregame playing of the national anthem was started by then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick last year. Kaepernick said his action was a protest of racial inequality and police brutality.
President Trump brought the protests back into the national spotlight Friday when he asked the crowd at an Alabama rally, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say 'get that son of a b---- off the field right now, out, he's fired?'"
Those comments were condemned by NFL owners and dozens of players took a knee prior to the weekend's games, which in turn brought a backlash from some fans.
On Thursday night, Limbaugh told Hannity that the league's owners "have to be scared to death" by the protests and their fallout.
"I don’t think they understand what’s happening to them. I don’t think they understand what’s going on," the veteran radio host said. "They think they’re relating to the majority of their fan base, they’re not! They’re driving them away.
"And I hate it," Limbaugh continued. "I don’t want the NFL to get smaller, I don’t want it to become insignificant, I don’t want it to be taken over by a bunch of wusses. I don’t want it to be taken over by left-wing social justice causes.
Addressing the player protesters, Limbaugh concluded, "Use something besides the NFL sideline, use something besides the flag, use something besides something that people use to escape."

John Stossel: The incredible threat to free speech that no one is talking about

FILE -- In this photo, people walk through Sproul Plaza near the Sather Gate on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif. The university suspended a class on Sept. 13, 2016, amid complaints that it shared anti-Semitic viewpoints and was designed to indoctrinate students against Israel.  (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

A third threat to free speech at University of California, Berkeley has led to more censorship than political rioters or college administrators.

Berkeley is expensive. Out of state students must pay $60,000 a year. But for five years, Berkeley generously posted 20,000 of its professors' lectures online. Anyone could watch them for free.
Then government regulators stepped in.
The Americans with Disabilities Act stipulates, "No qualified individual with a disability shall ... be denied the benefits of ... services."
As with most laws, people can spend years debating what terms like "denied," "benefits" and "services" mean.
President Obama's eager regulators, in response to a complaint from activists, decided that Berkeley's videos violated the ADA. The Justice Department sent the school a threatening letter: "Berkeley is in violation of title II ... (T)he Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit."
What Berkeley had done wrong, said the government, was failing to caption the videos for the hearing impaired. The ADA makes it illegal to "deny" deaf people services available to others.
Equality is a noble goal, but closed captioning is expensive.
Computers are learning to turn speech into text, but so far they're not good at it. A speech-to-text program transcribed a Harvard lecturer's comment "on our campus" as "hot Kampen good."
Captions that meet government's standards must be typed out by a person who listens to each word. Captioning Berkley's 20,000 lectures would cost millions. The school decided that, to be safe, it would just stop offering its videos. The administration even removed the existing videos from its website.
So now, instead of some deaf people struggling to understand university lectures, no one gets to hear them.
Politicians mean well when they pass rules like the ADA, but every regulation has unintended consequences. Most are bad.
In this case, fortunately, an angry entrepreneur came to the rescue. Jeremy Kauffman hates to see valuable things disappear, so right before Berkeley deleted its website, Kauffman copied the videos and posted them on his website, called LBRY (as in Library).
He says the Berkeley videos are just the start of what LBRY has planned. He wants the site to be YouTube -- but without the content restrictions.
LBRY uses a new technology that operates like Bitcoin. It's "decentralized," meaning videos posted are stored on thousands of computers around the world. That makes it nearly impossible for governments -- or even Kauffman himself -- to remove them.
"LBRY is designed to be much more decentralized, much more controlled by users" and "absolutely freer," Kauffman explains in a video I posted this week.
He acknowledges that with no censorship, his invention may end up hosting videos of bad things -- beheadings, child porn, who knows what else. But he argues that if he creates a system with censorship, "it allows us to keep the bad stuff out, which is great, but it also allows dictatorial regimes to keep content off. Do we want to make videos available to the people in Turkey, Iran and China? We say yes."
LBRY will let users flag videos depicting illegal actions. Those videos may no longer be shown on LBRY. However, other websites can show the illegal content using LBRY's technology, and Kauffman can't stop that.
Kauffman says he won't remove the Berkeley videos from his site even if he's sued because there aren't captions for deaf people.
"Is that a reason that content shouldn't be available to everyone?" asks Kauffman.
Government is force whether it is deliberately doing something cruel or just trying to solve one group's problems by imposing restrictions on others. "Do you want to put a gun to someone's face and say 'Caption those videos'? It's absurd."
It is absurd. What government does is often absurd.
Thank goodness for the internet and for people like Kauffman, someone willing to spend his own money to keep information free.
John Stossel is the author of "No They Can't! Why Government Fails -- But Individuals Succeed." Click here for more information on John Stossel.

Dershowitz mulls UC Berkeley lawsuit over possible 'content-based discrimination'

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said Thursday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that he is considering suing the University of California, Berkeley over a stipulation that would prevent him to speak on campus.

Dershowitz told Tucker Carlson that the school prevented him from speaking on Israel because he did not give the school eight-week advance notice.

He said the school, however, usually waives the stipulation for speakers who are invited by a department, but those speakers tend to be anti-Israel, liberals and radicals.
“If no department invites us, having invited people from the other side, we will sue them arguing that the eight-week rule is a cover for content-based discrimination against moderates, liberals, conservatives and supporters of Israel,” Dershowitz said.
Dershowitz, who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, said he was certain to find that Berkeley has already invited anti-Israel speakers from across the U.S. and that he would not receive an invitation.
“We’re testing Berkeley at this point to see if it happens there,” he said. “I wanted to speak at the school and I wanted to present to students the liberal case for Israel and if Berkeley won’t let me do it, I have a legal recourse in which I intend to take.”
Dershowitz said he hopes Berkeley will allow him to speak, whether it is a department inviting him or the school changing the rule.