Free Republic

IRVINE – Campus officials at UCI have banned the Muslim Student Union for one year and placed the organization on disciplinary probation for an additional year, according to a statement released by the Jewish Federation Monday morning.

ANN ARBOR, MI – California Federal District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez ruled late this past Friday that the Poway Unified School District in San Diego, CA, violated math teacher Bradley Johnson’s constitutional rights when it ordered him to remove two patriotic banners from the walls of his classroom because they “over-emphasized” God. [Decision attached] The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed the federal lawsuit on Johnson’s behalf, after the school district ordered him to take down his banners in January 2007.

UC Irvine Police arrested 11 people Monday evening on suspicion of disrupting a speech that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was giving on U.S.-Israel relations. (Original story about the protest.) The protesters — 8 UCI students and 3 UC Riverside students — were cited for disrupting a public event. (UCI said last night that 12 people had been arrested.)

One sign that Washington, D.C., had been home to Obama Mania was the number of independent retailers selling all sorts of Obama merchandise. Every street corner, it seemed, had Obama wares (or Obama wear) for sale. Now, however, most of the winter caps for sale are not emblazoned with the Obama logo. T-shirts depicting our president as a dunking Michael Jordan, a victorious Muhammad Ali, or saber-baring Luke Skywalker (yes, these shirts all existed) are nowhere to be found. Link to article: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/doug-heye/2010/02/04/forget-polls-heres-tangible-proof-the-obama-honeymoon-is-over.html

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center, a national, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, responded yesterday to a motion to dismiss its federal lawsuit challenging the AIG bailout. The request to dismiss was filed by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice on behalf of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board.

Investor's Business Daily Speaks About TMLC's Case Against the Treasury Dept and AIG Friday, January, 2, 2009 The Investor's Business Daily, an influential national business newspaper, shared it's view on AIG's Shariah-compliant business practices and the federal government's financial support of it in Tuesday's editorial section. Citing TMLC's lawsuit and recent press release, the editorial calls on AIG to "divest itself... Shariah business practices if it wants to keep its public bailout money." Further, the Investor's Business Daily states: "Financial crisis or not, it's hardly in the economic interest of taxpayers or the U.S. to own part of a business...