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Clapping as been banned at a leading universty's students' union "to avoid triggering anxiety". The University of Manchester Students' Union passed the resolution to ban clapping at student union events at the first Senate session of the academic year on September 27, according to student newspaper the Mancunion. "It was argued that the loud noise of traditional clapping and whooping pose an issue to students with anxiety or sensory issues. BSL clapping – or, jazz hands – would be a more inclusive form of expression," the paper said. Jazz hands is the British Sign Language for clapping.

Less than two weeks after the terrorist bombings in New Jersey and New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is launching a new campaign against the “negative rhetoric targeting Muslim communities” that the city says gets worse after “terrorist incidents.” A press release from the city on Monday explained the reasoning for the new anti-anti-Islam efforts: “Across the country, hateful speech has made Muslim residents the target of misguided attacks and threats, especially in the aftermath of terrorist incidents,” states a press release from the city.

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump says the United States has "absolutely no choice" but to close down mosques where "some bad things are happening." "Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it," Trump said on Fox News's "Hannity" on Tuesday. "A lot of people understand it. We're going to have no choice." Trump said on Monday he would "strongly consider" closing mosques if elected in response to the terrorist attacks in France last Friday that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. Pressed to explain...

<p>Seattle this week to discuss their vegan recipes and America’s relationship with food.</p> <p>The cover of the controversial vegan cookbook, “Thug Kitchen.”</p> <p>They packed their suitcases only to learn Monday they were uninvited.</p> <p>Book Larder, a culinary-themed bookstore in Fremont, decided to cancel a book signing scheduled for Wednesday night over concerns that critics would take over the event.</p>

The night of Sept. 1, 2009, Echo Platoon of Navy SEAL Team 10 headed out into the Fallujah night. Their goal: concluding a five-year search for the al Qaeda killer who had been responsible for the shocking 2004 murders of four American military contractors — one of them an ex-SEAL — whose bodies were then burned, dragged through the streets and hanged from a bridge.

We’ve seen this play before haven’t we? Wausau’s school district decides that there is way too much Christmas music during "holiday concerts" and issues a directive "to limit religious music in December." Too much Handel, Bach, Mozart for Wausau, apparently. But this edict seems especially petty and, not surprisingly, there is considerable push back. The district's elite and very popular Master Singers choir decided to temporarily disband rather than comply with the religious cleansing order and a Facebook-based petition campaign to reverse the decision has caught fire. From the Wausau Daily Herald: WAUSAU — A local high school’s elite Master...

Politcal correctness - the idea of subsituting certain words or thoughts with others deemed to be "acceptable" - is destroying America. The phrase came about, according to Bill Lind in an address ten years ago, in a comic strip. We laugh at the idea of political correctness, but as Lind points out, it is deadly serious. He calls it the: ...great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious....

I just saw this on on Hot Air. It’s an old story, with some minor variations. Apple is censoring an iPhone app because of its opposing view of Islam, but they are hunky-dory with a comparable anti-Christian one. Not this again. I don’t understand why these guys keep painting themselves into this same corner. Can’t they find some hippy/geek/Birkenstock/bazillionaire therapy group to help them figure out why they keep embarrassing themselves like this? Don’t ask me. After the Head-of-State cluck-fest at the White House yesterday, I’ve stopped trying to make sense of anything anymore – at least until 2012 if...

Director, Islamic Studies, U. of Delaware Muqtedar Khan Associate professor, political science and international relations; Fellow of the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding. **************** Q: What is the obligation of a Western, democratic government to protect individual freedoms in light of a realistic terrorist threat? Are the producers of South Park right to forfeit their freedom of expression in the interests of protecting their employees? Are the governments of Europe right to ban burqas in the interest of fostering a more open society? It is disingenuous to talk about individual cases of mockery of Islam and Islamic symbols purely...

That would be Ross Douthat of the New York Times, the center-right Op-Ed columnist who looks like Attila the Hun next to his allegedly conservative stablemate, the pathetic accommodationist, David Brooks. Writing about the most recent episode of South Park, which sought to elide post-9/11 proscriptions against joking about Islam by not depicting Mohammed, he writes: These gimmicks then prompted a writer for the New York-based Web site revolutionmuslim.com to predict that Parker and Stone would end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for his scathing critiques of Islam. The writer, an American convert to...

In response to Comedy Central’s recent decision to censor potentially offensive images of Mohammed from a “South Park” episode — which followed thinly veiled threats against the shows’ creators’ lives — the Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor have declared May 20 ‘Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.'

Army officials plan to prevent media from covering Sarah Palin's appearance at Fort Bragg on Monday, saying they fear the event will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama. Fort Bragg spokesman Tom McCollum told The Associated Press on Thursday that Army officials had decided to keep media away from Palin's book promotion at the North Carolina base. SNIP McCollum said the Army did not want the event to become a platform for Palin supporters to express political opinions "directed against the commander in chief."

Perhaps you've heard the tragic story of David Reimer.. . David was the victim of a botched circumcision that left his penis charred beyond surgical repair. His parents..., no doubt beside themselves, were confused about the best way to proceed. Then, one day, they saw a man named Dr. John Money on television. Money was talking about his theory of "gender neutrality," which states that "gender identity" is learned rather than innate. The idea was that the sexes were the same except for the superficial physical differences; this implies that if a child were altered so as to superficially resemble...

Back in the late 1960s, in the heyday of the civil rights movement, I remember a black activist complaining that movies and TV programs treated blacks too respectfully, as if they all resembled Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll -- soft-spoken, noble and almost angelic. We would know things had really changed for the better, he said, when we saw blacks in deodorant commercials, an admission that they could smell bad just like anyone else. In the political world, that day arrived some time ago. African-American and Latino politicians are subject to the same vicious, slimy, partisan mauling as other candidates,...

BOSTON -- Ellen Frankel stands just 4-foot-8 inches tall, a size that allowed larger co-workers to playfully scoop her up at the office and make remarks about her height. Some even patted her on the head.

God bless the victims and of 9/11 and their families. God bless the emergency workers who ran headlong into that twisted burning mess to rescue who they could without fear for their own lives or comfort. MHL to every person who lost someone on 9/11. May God condemn and bring his justice to the terrorist organizations who plotted and carried out this unthinkable act, and also the politicians and politcal correctness people who stand in the way of America ridding the world of this fanatical threat to peace and freedom. Finally, much Hookah love and respect for the service men...

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe told administrators this week that schools will have to drop the word “American” from their official names. Also, any schools named after a person will have to be called by a moniker more reflective of its location. That means Ramstein American High School will simply be known as Ramstein High School. And David Glasgow Farragut High School in Rota, Spain, will take on the shorter name of Rota High School. The school in southern Spain is named for the U.S. Navy’s first admiral. School administrators were notified of the changes in a...

Gubernatorial candidate Mark Green says it's "just plain stupid" that the Knights of Columbus is no longer a recognized student group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The university told the group this summer that it cannot be a recognized student organization because it does not allow all students to participate, the group told The Associated Press. Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's fraternal benefit society, has been a recognized student organization for 30 years. But this summer, the university said that because the group only allows Catholic males as members, it violates university policy. The group has been told it...

Many believe political correctness is good. It keeps us in line. It reminds us that almost all segments of society should be treated with dignity and respect. A joke at the expense of someone’s gender, race or ethnic background has no place in movies today. Of course, there are those who disagree, who believe political correctness is wrong, who feel that it only creates resentment toward the offended parties. A PC world is a world of oppression, they say, where freedom of speech is allowed in theory, but not in practice. Personally, I’m not sure how I feel. Ideally, I’d...

District ordered to pay legal fees Student sued over T-shirt ban. Warren Hills district facing payment of nearly $600,000. Wednesday, June 21, 206 BY LYNN OLANOFFThe Express-Times WASHINGTON TWP. | Warren Hills Regional School District was ordered to pay nearly $600,000 in legal fees incurred by a former student who sued after school officials banned him from wearing a "redneck" T-shirt. The plaintiff says the federal magistrate's ruling proves school officials were in the wrong when they suspended him for three days in March 2001 for wearing a Jeff Foxworthy T-shirt. "I'm glad they had to answer for what they...