On May 15, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on June 3 on amending the U.S. Constitution to limit political speech. The first time in American history that a constitutional amendment rescinded a freedom listed as among the fundamental rights of the American people.

So The New York Times, and the mainstream media would be able to say whatever they want, but citizens and citizen groups such as the National Rifle Association could not.

Reid usually opposes amending the Constitution. In 2011, Reid voted against S.J.R. 10, a proposed constitutional amendment by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee (R-UT) that would require the federal government to balance the federal budget. In 2004 Reid voted against S.J.R. 40 that would have protected marriage as the union of one man and one woman, which would not include same-sex partners or polygamous marriages of three or more people.

DARK DAYS FULL ARTICLE:

Pamela Anderson revealed abuse Friday starting as far back as age 6 – telling a crowd the people who hurt her ranged from a babysitter to a group of teen boys.

The former Baywatch star was at Cannes Film Festival promoting her new animal charity, the Pamela Anderson Foundation, when she opened up to the audience about her childhood abuse.

CNN reports Anderson says she was molested by a female babysitter from ages 6 to 10, raped by a 25-year-old man when she was 12 and gang-raped by her then-boyfriend and six of his friends in ninth grade.

According to a transcript of the speech posted to her website, the 46-year-old said she never told anyone about the assaults, and adds, “I had a hard time trusting humans, I just wanted off this earth. … To me, the world is not a safe place.”

PTV in the zone !

ORIGIONAL ARTICLE:

Three apartment units were damaged and one family was displaced after a transformer exploded and caught fire at an apartment complex in Santa Monica on Thursday evening.

The incident was reported around 10:46 p.m. at the apartment complex at 850 2nd St., according to Deputy Santa Monica Fire Chief Tom Clemo.

When firefighters arrived at the location they saw heavy fire and smoke on the third floor of the building.

Witnesses told firefigthers that they heard a loud explosion before the fire.

Dozens of residents were evacuated from the building. At least one of them suffered mild smoke inhalation, Clemo said.

Fire agencies from Beverly Hills, Culver City and Los Angeles assisted with service calls in Santa Monica while firefighters battled the apartment fire.

Clemo said firefighters knocked out the flames around 11:28 p.m. The estimated damage caused by the blaze was not imediately known. But the fire destroyed one apartment unit, displacing a family, Clemo said. Two other apartments suffered smoke and water damage.

The blaze also took out power lines, Clemo said.

Residents from the damaged units were able to stay with family members in the area for the night, Clemo said, adding that the Red Cross would be assisting the family that was displaced.

The cause of the fire remained under investigation.

——

enter their home Friday morning after a transformer explosion damaged a Santa Monica apartment complex and left one person injured Thursday night, police said.

The apartment building in the 800 block of Ocean Boulevard erupted into flames around 10:45 p.m. after a transformer blew, according to the Santa Monica Police Department. The blaze was knocked down just before 11:30 p.m.

The top floor of the apartment complex was red tagged and residents were not able to enter their home as of 5 a.m. Friday as crews worked to clean up fire, smoke and water damage.

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A witness reported hearing a loud pop and seeing fireballs when the fire broke out.

“I thought a bomb went off,” witness Alicia told NBC4. “The fire plumes were huge. It’s smoking like crazy.”

One woman suffered smoke inhalation. At least four apartments were damaged, police said.

Earlier reports suggested the explosion was at the Oceana Beach Club Hotel, but police later clarified the apartment building was near the hotel.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

A reenactment of satanic rituals known as a “black mass” that had been scheduled for Monday evening on the Harvard campus was abruptly canceled amid a chorus of condemnation from Catholic groups and university officials and students.

However, a scaled-down version of the event, without the original sponsorship of the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, was apparently held late Monday by members of the New York-based Satanic Temple off campus, at the Hong Kong lounge in Harvard Square.

Lucien Greaves, a temple spokesman, said in an e-mail at 10:35 p.m. that the mass was “happening now” at the Hong Kong. He did not say how many people were participating or provide specifics on what was happening.A lounge employee, who would only identify himself as Fred, said in a phone interview that temple members were drinking at the bar, but he did not believe they were performing any rituals.

“I haven’t heard any complaining,” he said.

Earlier in the evening, Greaves told the Globe that the mass was canceled because organizers no longer had a venue.

“Everyone involved, outside of the Satanic Temple, got really scared,” Greaves said. “And I don’t necessarily blame them, because I understand that they were getting a lot of vitriolic hate mail, and I don’t think they expected it.”

Earlier Monday, the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club had decided to move the mass off campus.

“The Harvard Extension School is grateful the student group has recognized the strong concerns expressed by members of the Harvard community and beyond,” Robert Neugeboren, dean of students and alumni affairs at the extension school, said after the decision was ade to find a new location.

In a statement later Monday evening, the cultural studies club said it was no longer sponsoring the mass after plans to hold it at the Middle East club in Central Square in Cambridge fell through.

The cultural studies club did not respond to an inquiry asking why it had decided to move the mass.

“The Satanic Temple has informed us that they will stage their own black mass ceremony at an undisclosed private location to ‘reaffirm their respect for the Satanic faith and to demonstrate that the most powerful response to offensive speech is to shame those who marginalize others by letting their own words and actions speak for themselves,’ ” the studies club said.

The initial plan to hold a black mass on the Harvard campus prompted widespread outrage.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston held a eucharistic procession that began at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology chapel in Cambridge Monday evening, followed by a holy hour at St. Paul Church in Harvard Square.

Jon Swedberg, 64, of Taunton and a marcher in the procession, said he was strongly opposed to the black mass and that he wanted to “pray to the Blessed Father on behalf of what’s happening.”

“I find [the black mass] offensive as a Catholic,” he said. “I find it goes directly against the faith of my church, the faith of the church of my choice.”

Hundreds of marchers proceeded from MIT to St. Paul Church for the holy hour, clutching rosary beads, crosses, and pictures of Jesus.

More than 1,500 people packed the church for the holy hour, including Drew Faust, Harvard president.

“Tonight, my friends, we gather in this moment of prayer, as a parish, a university community, to celebrate the greatest gift that God has ever extended to us, His son Jesus Christ,” said the Rev. Michael E. Drea, who led the holy hour prayers.

He said people of faith “all recognize the message of the Satanic black mass, they recognize it for what it is: an act of hatred . . . for the Catholic church.”

Dani Mellen, 25, of Jamaica Plain, sat across the street from the church and said that she had wanted to attend the black mass. She said that she is not a satanist, but was curious to see how the black mass worked.

“I understand it was supposed to be a reenactment of what a satanic mass would have been,” she said. “I’m not totally sure, because I’ve never attended one, but I was excited to because I have a thirst for knowledge.”

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley and Faust had been at odds over the university’s initial decision to allow the reenactment on campus.

O’Malley said the event was disturbing. The satanic ritual is believed by critics to mock the Roman Catholic religion.

“Why people would want to do something that is so offensive to so many people in the community, whether they’re Catholic or not, it’s very repugnant,” O’Malley said in an interview with the Globe.

In a statement released earlier Monday, Faust said the performance would be allowed on campus.

She called the student group’s sponsorship of the black mass “abhorrent,” but said she must protect the group’s right to free speech.

“Vigorous and open discussion and debate are essential to the pursuit of knowledge, and we must uphold these values even in the face of controversy,” Faust said.

Nearly 60,000 students, alumni, and faculty members signed a petition against holding the services on campus, according to a statement released by Harvard Rhodes scholar Aurora Griffin.

“I am ashamed that my university is allowing such a hateful event to happen under the auspices of ‘education,’ ” said Griffin, a former president of the Harvard Catholic Student Association.

The Harvard Extension club has continuously urged critics to widen their understanding of satanic worship. In an interview via e-mail Friday, an unidentified spokesperson said the event was meant to be educational, not offensive.

The spokesperson asserted that many satanists are animal rights activists, vegetarians, and artists with a strong sense of community.

via Controversial ‘black mass’ slated for Harvard is called off – Metro – The Boston Globe.

Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston

They’re playing Devil’s advocate.

The New York-based Satanic Temple will be staging a black mass on Harvard University’s main campus next Monday — and the thought of calling demons into being has the Church all riled up.

Perhaps that’s the point.

The black mass is an inversion of the traditional Catholic Mass that medieval people associated with witches. The witches were accused of stealing a consecrated piece of Communion bread for the mass and worshipping the Devil.

However, there’s little evidence that the specter of black masses was anything more than myth that was used by people in power to justify witch hunts and trials.

Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves says his group contacted the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club to organize a re-enactment of a black mass based on the imaginings of French writer Joris-Karl Huysman in the novel “La-bas.” Huysman wrote the novel during the French Occult Revival of the 1800s.

Greaves says next week’s black mass at Harvard’s Queen’s Head Pub is meant to be educational. Members of the Satanic Temple don’t have anything diabolical planned — the group is not planning to use a consecrated host or provoke the spirit world. In fact, Greaves says he is an atheist.
“This is not a supernatural ritual,” Greaves told the Daily News. “We don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don’t think belief in the supernatural should give you any privilege, since any deeply held belief should be protected.”
This makes The Satanic Temple’s activities more of a political statement than a cohesive religious ritual — in other words, closer in theology to the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster than the Church of Satan.
Still, the Devil is essential.
“There’s no stronger cultural symbol for the revolt against the general idea of arbitrary authority and revolt against ultimate tyranny,” Greaves said of Satan. “There’s no better a construct that can act as a narrative for our works and goals.”
All this talk about Satan has spooked the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement blasting the Satanists’ scheduled demonstration and announced plans to conduct a “Holy Hour” during the same time at a nearby church.
“For the good of the Catholic faithful and all people, the Church provides clear teaching concerning Satanic worship,” the statement read. “This activity separates people from God and the human community, it is contrary to charity and goodness, and it places participants dangerously close to destructive works of evil.”
But the show will go on. Harvard University emphasized that they do not endorse the view of the Cultural Studies Club. Still, the school said in a statement that they supported the rights of the students to assemble freely.
As part of a series exploring different cultures, the Cultural Studies Club is also hosting a Shinto tea ceremony, a Shaker exhibition and a Buddhist presentation on meditation.
The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, has been actively involved in the church-state debate in the past. Currently, the group is trying to plant a monument to Satan at the Oklahoma Capitol as an alternative to a Ten Commandments monument that has been there since 2012.

via Satanists slated to perform ‘black mass’ at Harvard University claim they don’t believe in the supernatural – NY Daily News.

Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media’s exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight.

“I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman in an interview.

“The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added.

Noting the success of sites like the Drudge Report, Goodman said that protecting conservative media, especially those on the internet, “matters to me because I see the future going to the democratization of media largely through the internet. They can compete with the big boys now, and I have seen storm clouds that the second you start to regulate them, there is at least the possibility or indeed proclivity for selective enforcement, so we need to keep the media free and the internet free.”

All media has long benefited from an exemption from FEC rules, thereby allowing outlets to pick favorites in elections and promote them without any limits or disclosure requirements like political action committees.

But Goodman cited several examples where the FEC has considered regulating conservative media, including Sean Hannity’s radio show and Citizens United’s movie division. Those efforts to lift the media exemption died in split votes at the politically evenly divided board, often with Democrats seeking regulation.

Liberals over the years have also pushed for a change in the Federal Communications Commission’s “fairness doctrine” to cut of conservative voices, and retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has delighted Democrats recently with a proposed Constitutional amendment that some say could force the media to stop endorsing candidates or promoting issues.

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