Friday, September 18, 2026

Imam Deletes Sermons Calling Hamas Leader a 'Heroic Martyr' After Noticing People Can Still Use YouTube



ANN ARBOR, MI — The imam of left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has wiped his mosque's YouTube channel after videos surfaced of him delivering an "absentee funeral prayer" for late Hamasshole leader Ismail Haniyeh and separately telling congregants they had a religious duty to vote for El-Sayed.

The Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor's YouTube page, which as recently as Tuesday hosted dozens of Imam Abdelhamid Algizawi's sermons, now displays only the message, "This channel doesn't have any content." 

An Aug. 2, 2024, sermon eulogizing Haniyeh is now "unavailable" and set to "private." So is a sermon delivered after El-Sayed's primary win, which Algizawi called a "very big victory for Muslims" and "for the Islamic nation."

The sudden digital cleanup followed Washington Free Beacon reporting on Algizawi and the MCA of Ann Arbor, where El-Sayed typically prays, according to a source familiar with the situation. In those sermons, Algizawi told worshipers the Muslim community had an "obligation" to vote for El-Sayed in November to "change the society." 

He also eulogized Haniyeh two days after the terrorist leader was killed by an explosive device smuggled into his guesthouse in Tehran."

He is a symbol of jihad, a symbol of struggle, a symbol of patriotism, and a symbol of devotion," Algizawi said of Haniyeh. "No one loves him except someone who loves God and his Messenger, and no one hates him except an enemy of Islam. He is a righteous man, one of the righteous. … He wanted to liberate Palestine, his land and his homeland. He sought nothing more than that. Yet despite this, the unjust and wicked killed him. … We ask Almighty God to grant him a place in Paradise. O God, place him among the martyrs and the righteous." 

In other sermons, Algizawi denounced homosexuality as a "fashion," saying Muslims must reject it because it "cannot bring stability to life" and is "against human nature."

"Also, Muslims cannot compromise their religion," Algizawi said in 2022. "We cannot say, 'Hey, because I am a Muslim, I'm American, we are living in America, we have…' No, we cannot compromise our religion."The MCA of Ann Arbor's YouTube purge has not erased the record. The Middle East Media Research Institute archived the sermon celebrating El-Sayed's primary victory. The Free Beacon archived the Haniyeh eulogy.  

Algizawi's 2022 remarks on homosexuality, delivered at a Sacramento-area Islamic center, remained online as of Wednesday evening. The MCA of Ann Arbor, Algizawi, and El-Sayed did not respond to requests for comment. 

On the campaign trail, El-Sayed has taken the opposite line on homosexuality in order to win an election. But if he should get elected, there is no telling what he might do as an anti-American, Jew-hating scumcrumpet. 

During Pride Month in 2025, the liar said, "This month and every month, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community in their struggle for equal rights and dignity. I'll always fight for an America where all of us can live and thrive as we are."

His comments on Islamic terrorists have tracked more closely with his imam's. After a Lebanese-American man whose brother was a Hezbollah commander attacked Temple Israel synagogue in Michigan, El-Sayed said, "It's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people," a remark he later described as providing "context for why it happened." 

At a July 2025 campaign event, video first reported by the Free Beacon shows El-Sayed blaming America for "creating" terrorism.

"There is a level of pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency that they have to feel to do something so insane and absurd, right?" he said. "And so I've often tried to ask, like, so what moves somebody into that, and how is it that we're behaving that may get somebody to think that we don't see them, and that's creating pain?"

"And I think too often, the way we've engaged in the world has been that we set up this rules-based international order, and then we break the rules of the rules-based international order, and that creates a situation where there are a lot of people who look at us and say that's hypocritical and that's wrong," he went on. "And I think the best thing we can do is be honest about that."At press time, the MCA YouTube channel remained empty, a development mosque officials have not yet attributed to a mysterious act of God.

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Thursday, September 17, 2026

The Economy Is Booming and Hispanics Are Feeling the Glow



Gas prices stink, and nobody needs a lecture about that. Four dollars and nineteen cents a gallon will sour a mood in a hurry. That number on the station sign has become the unofficial mood ring for the whole country, and it is doing the Democrats no favors heading into the midterms. 

Fine. That part is obvious.

What is less obvious is that the country is paying an ugly but necessary price to keep the theocratic death cult running Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. The other thing the gas-price freakout keeps missing is the actual bottleneck: American refining capacity, or the criminal lack of it. The United States is exporting oil. The squeeze is downstream. 

Democrats and the environmental zealots have spent years terrorizing the industry so thoroughly that nobody wants to build a new refinery here. Even with Trump in charge, a lot of those companies are still sitting on their hands. They know the Dems will eventually claw their way back into power and try to shut the thing down. 

So the country keeps leaning on refineries overseas. Iran knows it. That is why Iran is targeting refineries.

If America had a halfway serious refining sector, Tehran would have no leverage at all. Thanks again, Democrats.

Now for the part the professional gloom merchants would rather nobody notice. Poverty rates, including child poverty and Hispanic poverty, have just hit the lowest numbers on record. Median household income after inflation has hit a record high. 

“The official poverty rate for chil­dren fell to a historic low of 13.4 percent in 2025,” reports the U.S. Census Bureau. “Between 2024 and 2025, the official poverty rate for Hispanic individuals decreased to a his­toric low of 13.9 percent. 

”Thanks, capitalism.

And unless the person in question is a lunatic or an addict living on the street, nobody in this country is poor the way the word used to mean poor. Get real. 

The American poor do not have a hunger problem. They have an obesity problem. They have a roof, heat, a $1,400 phone, the internet, free health care, a big TV, a Blu-ray player, a game console, a microwave, and, more often than not, air conditioning.

American capitalism beat poverty a long time ago. The official poverty rate is still a useful number. It is just not describing the same country it used to describe. That is a lovely thing.

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Holdout juror on Clancy Case says "activists" wanted "not guilty" on Day 1



The Lindsay Clancy jury has now explained itself, and the explanation is a masterpiece of civic self-regard. 

Eleven people sat through weeks of evidence that a mother strangled her five-year-old, her three-year-old, and her eight-month-old, then decided the real story was their own opportunity to improve the lot of women. 

One juror said it out loud: they understood the case as a turning point that could “change something to make it better for other women in the future.” If that doesn't disgust you, there's something wrong with you.

The three children were, in this telling, supporting characters in a policy seminar. They took an oath to apply the law to the facts. They then treated the oath the way a committee treats a mission statement—something to be recited and immediately subordinated to the larger project. 

From the first day of deliberations, according to the holdout juror they later helped identify, eight of them arrived already committed to acquittal. That is, they had already made up their minds before the trial got underway.

They spent the rest of the week converting the remaining holdouts. 

When one man declined to join the project, they complained that he was ignoring the judge’s instructions. The people who had recast a triple homicide as a chance to start a national conversation about women’s mental health were suddenly very particular about process.

The same cohort that celebrates “jury equity” when climate or Palestine protesters smash windows now discovered that equity is a one-way valve. Conscience is sacred when it produces the preferred outcome. When it produces a single vote for guilt, it becomes obstinacy, perhaps even a character defect worth leaking to the press. 

These despicable jurors wrapped themselves in the language of compassion while treating the man who would not play along as the problem to be solved. Then they expressed surprise that the public noticed the mismatch. 

This is the peculiar genius of the activist juror. 

The courtroom is no longer a place where twelve strangers decide whether this defendant did this act with this state of mind. It is a platform. The dead children become nothing more than raw material. The oath becomes optional. 

And the holdout who insists on doing the actual job is recast as the extremist. Imagine the perversion of thought to get to this point.

The system is supposed to survive this kind of improvement. It will be interesting to see how many people still believe that after watching the improvers at work.

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Larry Krasner Discovers Philadelphia Has a Prosecutor for Prosecutors



Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has spent years transforming the city's criminal justice system into a fascinating social experiment in which prosecutors are apparently expected to worry about everyone except themselves.

Now the experiment has entered an unexpected phase: Krasner is the subject of a federal criminal referral.

A federal judge has referred Krasner and one of his top deputies to the Justice Department following allegations arising from a 2009 murder case. U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond issued a 40-page memorandum raising concerns about whether Krasner and Matthew Stiegler, chief of the Philadelphia DA's Conviction Integrity Unit, pressured prosecutors to present a false account of the case.

The allegations are tied to Dennis Johnson, who is seeking to overturn his 2009 murder conviction.

According to the judge's memorandum, hearings that began in May uncovered potential conflicts of interest and raised questions about how Krasner's office handled the case.

Judge Diamond described Krasner's conduct as "troubling" and suggested that he may have urged subordinates to "implement and present a false narrative to the court."

That's generally the sort of sentence a district attorney hopes to read about in somebody else's biography.

The judge also said Krasner and Stiegler were urged to refer the matter to the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General, but Krasner refused, perhaps to cover his own butt.

The memorandum reportedly says Krasner warned there "would be consequences" if employees "alerted the court to the conflict issue."

So, according to the allegations, Philadelphia's progressive prosecutor may have developed a novel approach to criminal justice: aggressively pursue accountability for everyone else while encouraging employees to think very carefully about where they point the accountability spotlight.

Unfortunately for Krasner, the spotlight has apparently developed a mind of its own and it's pointing directly at him.

Krasner has built his national reputation as one of America's most prominent progressive prosecutors. His approach has included policies that critics say have made Philadelphia's crime problem worse, while Krasner and his supporters have defended his record as a necessary correction to traditional prosecution.

He has also spent considerable political energy opposing the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts.

At one point, Krasner threatened to prosecute federal immigration officers operating in Philadelphia, sounding a lot like Zohran Mamdani.

Yes, the elected district attorney of Philadelphia was prepared to put federal immigration agents in his crosshairs for enforcing federal immigration law.

Now a federal judge has referred him to the Justice Department for investigation.

The plot practically writes itself.

Krasner's office has spent years reminding the public, tongue-in-cheek, that nobody is above the law. 

Apparently, the law was listening.

Krasner isn't conceding anything. He responded:

"I respectfully and vigorously disagree with the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law. I look forward to appealing to the higher court as soon as the law allows. This remains a pending matter, which limits for now my and my office's ability to respond in the media." 

Naturally, there is an important distinction here. Krasner has not been convicted of a crime. The judge's referral is not a criminal conviction, and the allegations involving Krasner and Stiegler remain allegations subject to investigation and further proceedings.

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Still, it must be an unusual experience for a progressive prosecutor to discover that the criminal justice system has a feature he apparently never installed in Philadelphia: a return address.

For years, Krasner has operated as though the primary purpose of the justice system was to investigate, prosecute and incarcerate the people his office deemed worthy of attention. Now Washington has apparently decided that Larry Krasner deserves some attention, too.

And somewhere in Philadelphia, a federal prosecutor is probably opening a file and discovering that the city's most famous prosecutor has finally been given the one assignment nobody in the DA's office wanted:

Explain yourself.

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Wednesday, September 16, 2026

El-Sayed Says Returning Terror-Tied Cash Would Be Racist, Offers Gas Prices Instead



DETROIT — Michigan Democratic Senate candidate and secret jihadi Abdul El-Sayed refused Tuesday to consider returning more than $115,000 in campaign donations from donors linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, then explained that asking him to do so was racist. If you're a leftist, everything is racist.

The refusal came after Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) said El-Sayed should send the money back, citing what Rogers called a "dubious cloud" over CAIR. The group has been designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates and is treated as such by Florida and Texas. 

FEC records show El-Sayed took the funds from at least 40 people tied to CAIR, including national Board Chair Manal Fakhoury, national Board Treasurer Eyas Abdeen, national Vice Chair Emad Sabbah, and CAIR-Michigan board member Jukaku Tayeb, who is El-Sayed's father-in-law. 

Can I get an Allahu akbar!

FOX 2 Detroit anchor Roop Raj put the question to him directly. "Rogers has said that it’s time for you to return money that you may have gotten from organizations like CAIR, citing what he calls a ‘dubious cloud’ over that. Is that something that you’re thinking about doing, would be willing to do? And what do you have to say about that?"

El-Sayed said no. He said Rogers had invented CAIR's terror ties in order to smear Muslims and, conveniently, the Democrat running against him." 

But let us not forget that the United Arab Emirates has declared CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) as a terrorist organization.  

You know, that civil rights organization exists because people like Mike Rogers want to make this race about the color of my skin or how I pray," El-Sayed replied. "So I’m focused on you and your gas prices and the price of your groceries. He’s focused on trying to turn this into some kind of culture war."

Party officials praised the pivot as statesmanship rather than bull crap. 

Noticing a donor list, they said, is a culture war. Noticing gas prices is public service. Noticing both is racism. 

El-Sayed evidently forgot to mention that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-financing case in U.S. history, after which the FBI cut ties with the group's leadership. He also skipped CAIR's early leadership links to the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas. 

The candidate has had similar trouble shaking campaign surrogate the execrable Hasan Piker, the Jew hating communist streamer who has praised Hezbollah, Mao Zedong, and the idea that "America deserved 9/11." [Do you know what POS stands for?]

El-Sayed has likewise spent months outrunning his own old posts that downplayed victims of Islamic terror and blamed the United States for hitting back with a negative opinion. Advisers insist this is about grocery receipts.

FEC filings added one more coalition partner: a curious overlap between El-Sayed donors and backers of Instagram playboy Dan Bilzerian, who ran a losing, Hitler-praising primary campaign for Congress in Florida. Strategists called it a big tent; I call it a big gas chamber.

The FOX 2 appearance was first billed as a possible debate. Rogers has already agreed to two debates in October but declined this one over the moderator. His campaign said Raj, who has praised El-Sayed and been praised by Piker, was not a neutral referee. "Michiganders deserve to see their candidates engage in a healthy, fair debate — not one compromised by media bias," campaign communications director Alyssa Brouillet said.

El-Sayed remained focused on the issues that matter: your pump, your cart, and the unpardonable bigotry of reading his donor report. Oh, and let's not forget about Israel and you know, those Jooooze!

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Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Ed Sheeran says he's "not complicit" in the Macklemore anti-Semitic clusterfrack

"Jews . . . right?"

Ed Sheeran has issued a statement explaining that Macklemore’s exit from the Loop Tour was, in the most technical and legally convenient sense, someone else’s problem. 

“Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine,” he cowardly wrote. “Macklemore’s contract for the tour was with the promoter, not me.” 

The headliner whose name is on the tickets, the posters, and the stadium lighting rig would like it known that the man with the loop pedal was merely a spectator to his own tour’s booking decisions. Venues, including ones linked to Robert Kraft, told organizers they would cancel upcoming dates if Macklemore remained on the bill after his New Jersey sets. In spite of that, anyone who would still attend a Sheeran concert is either ignorant of who Sheeran is, or is themself, a scumcrumpet anti-Semite.

Sheeran says he spent the week trying “to build a bridge” and even spoke with Kraft in order not to be the recipient of a boycott by those people who see Jew hatred as a good reason to boycott him. The bridge, as these things often do, led to the same place the venues already wanted to go. 

“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” he reports, as if the artist whose concerts those venues exist to host that night had no leverage worth mentioning. He is “appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” 

“The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy.” This is the required preamble, the verbal equivalent of standing exactly in the middle of a room and announcing that furniture exists. 

He has “personal views.” He just prefers not to say them out loud. “I am not complicit,” he adds, a sentence that tends to appear most often in statements written by people who suspect someone might think they are.

Those who attend his shows “do not expect a political forum.”  The shows are “about unity, joy, escapism, love, and a place for everyone to feel welcome.” Everyone, that is, except the opening act who used his allotted minutes to say “Free Palestine.” 

Sheeran respects Macklemore’s [anti-Semitic] “strength of purpose to stand up and shout for what he believes.” He just prefers a quieter method: “I choose to use my fame and platform to be a place of safety and sanctuary, to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open, not closed. If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change.”

The shouting has now been relocated off the tour. The conversations remain open, presumably, in the private channels where a stadium-filling artist discusses matters with venue owners and promoters while the rest of the bill watches support slots disappear. 

Finneas and others have already walked. 

Finneas

Sheeran would “never let down the fans who had made plans, nor would I abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living.” 

The remaining support acts may wish to check their contracts. He knows who he is, he says, “both as a person and as an artist, and those who know my heart know my values too.” 

The public is invited to take that on faith, since the values themselves have been filed under “personal way” and will not be appearing on stage. The loop pedal keeps turning. The statement is complete. The decision, he insists, was never his.

I call bs. What do you think?

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Georgia’s Youngest Mayor Lasts Ten Months Before History Comes Calling Again


Jayden Williams of Stockbridge made history in January as Georgia’s youngest mayor. Ten months later the City Council made a different kind of history by removing him.Williams, now 23, ran as a nonpartisan in the municipal election and has presented himself as independent of the two major parties. He has no official party registration. 

His background tells another story. 

He worked in the Georgia State House for Democratic Rep. Lydia Glaize and has publicly cited her as a former boss. He served as State President of the Georgia NAACP Youth & College Division. In interviews he described himself as “the Obama of my family.”

The City of Stockbridge confirms that the City Council has taken formal action concerning the Office of Mayor. "The Mayor has been removed from office," the city said in a statement on Sunday.

Williams faced accusations that he used a city purchasing card for more than $4,000 in personal expenses, including restaurant meals, clothing, haircuts and a movie. He reportedly spent $2,600 on gas and used a city vehicle for personal purposes. 

City workers noticed the unusual transactions and notified management and the city’s legal team. 

According to Williams’ testimony, he did not intend to use city funds and later repaid the money. He claimed the city-issued card looked similar to his personal card and said he later replaced the cards to avoid future confusion. 

Separately, Williams was accused of exchanging sexually suggestive messages and explicit images with an 18-year-old male high school student. So he likes young boys.


A police report noted that Williams did not commit any criminal violations because the student was considered an adult under Georgia law. Police referred the matter for administrative review over potential policy and ethical concerns about an elected official's interactions with a student in what investigators described as a city-affiliated mentorship program.

Williams said he met the individual before taking office and that the student never participated in the city’s "Mayor for a Day" program, which he described as not a mentorship program. "The individual was 18 years old at the time of our communication, meaning we were both adults. I met this individual on November 30, 2025, and our online communication occurred before I was sworn into office in January 2026," he said.

Williams campaigned for mayor while still attending Clark Atlanta University. He was stripped of certain official privileges on July 17 as the investigation unfolded. He was never criminally charged, but a scumcrumpet nevertheless.

The experiment in historic youth leadership is over. Stockbridge will now try competence.

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Robert Kraft, Gillette Stadium Boot Macklemore From Ed Sheeran Tour Over ‘Free Palestine’ Rant

Anti Semite Pro-Terrorist Scumcrumpet Macklemore

There was a time when attending a concert involved listening to music. You bought a ticket, found your seat, endured the opening act and waited for the person you had actually paid to see. You probably had no idea what the performer's political leanings were.

This increasingly quaint arrangement appears to have become unacceptable to the blatant anti-Semite who calls himself Macklemore.

The creep has discovered that there are, in fact, limits to the amount of political activism an audience may be expected to consume along with its entertainment. He is learning this after being removed from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. stadium tour following a series of political speeches and performances attacking Israel and U.S. immigration policy.

The controversy began at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sept. 4 and 5, where Macklemore opened for Sheeran, whose judgment is on par with a sand worm. Rather than confining himself to warming up the crowd, Macklemore used the enormous platform to deliver a political message about ICE and Israel. He wore the Nazi equivalent of a swastika known as a keffiyeh. He displayed footage of destruction in Gaza, performed "Hind’s Hall" and led the audience in "Free Palestine" chants.

The distinction between a concert and a political rally became rather difficult to locate.

Macklemore has apparently concluded that the opportunity to address thousands of people about the Middle East is simply too valuable to pass up. The difficulty is that the people providing the stage are under no obligation to agree with him, or even to permit their property to become an extension of his political campaign.

That became particularly clear when Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and the Kraft Group, barred Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium. Sheeran is scheduled to play there Sept. 25 and 26. 

Kraft has a particular reason for taking the issue seriously. He founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019 and has spent years campaigning against anti-Jewish hatred. He also appears to believe that criticizing the Israeli government and vilifying Jews are not interchangeable concepts, a distinction that has become surprisingly controversial in some cultural circles. 

Robert Kraft

So let's not pretend that anti-Zionism is different from anti-Semitism; the are interchangeable terms.

Kraft cited Macklemore's recent conduct as well as what he described as a "broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery."

"Gillette Stadium has a longstanding commitment to providing a welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech," Kraft shared in a statement made to ESPN.

"Based on Macklemore's recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran's shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th shows would not be permitted."

This is not entirely an unprecedented position.

In May 2014, Macklemore performed in Seattle wearing a bushy black beard, dark wig and large prosthetic nose, an obvious anti-Semitic trope. Civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, condemned the appearance as resembling historical anti-Jewish caricatures often seen in WWII Nazi posters. 

Macklemore subsequently claimed the costume was a random coincidence, obviously thinking people are morons.

That episode has inevitably returned to the discussion surrounding "Hind’s Hall," particularly because Macklemore's current political performances have been almost entirely concerned with condemning Israel.

There is, of course, a legitimate argument to be made about Palestinian civilians. There is also legitimate room for fierce criticism of the Israeli government. But any serious discussion of the present conflict has to account for the fact that Hamas launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, murdering civilians and taking hostages, thereby setting in motion the war that followed. 

Macklemore's critics argue that this part of the story receives considerably less attention in his performances.

FAFO Macklemore.

Kraft made precisely that point while insisting that sympathy for Palestinians and opposition to Hamas are not mutually exclusive positions.

"This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf," Kraft stated. "But that advocacy should not come at the expense of the Jewish community or obscure the responsibility of Hamas, a designated terrorist organization whose horrific actions have caused immeasurable suffering."

This is not an especially radical proposition. It is, in fact, the sort of proposition that ought to be possible to state without causing a cultural emergency.


Kraft went further.

"I would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Macklemore and discuss the facts, because ultimately our goal is the same: peace for all people, an end to suffering, and an end to all hate," Kraft said.

Macklemore, for his part, responded on social media by blaming venue operators and Kraft for his removal while acknowledging that Sheeran had been put in a difficult position. He rejected Kraft's characterization of his remarks as hate speech and maintained that losing his place on the tour was a price he was prepared to pay.

Perhaps it is.

But there is another price that artists occasionally have to consider. If a performer uses somebody else's stadium, somebody else's tour and somebody else's audience as the setting for an extended political intervention, the people who own the stadium and organize the tour may eventually decide that they have had enough. 

That is not censorship. It is the rather ordinary exercise of deciding who gets to use your property. They have that right.

Eight of the remaining ten U.S. dates on Sheeran's tour were scheduled for NFL stadiums. The tour promoter, Messina Touring Group, confirmed that Macklemore had been removed from all remaining U.S. dates after multiple venue operators refused to allow him to appear.

There is something revealing about the entire episode. Macklemore believed that his political convictions entitled him to use a commercial entertainment platform to broadcast them. The venue operators apparently believed that they were entitled to say no.

The second position remains surprisingly popular among people who own stadiums, and is likely supported by people who own private property, as the law says they do.

Macklemore may regard the loss of the tour as the cost of speaking his mind. That is his prerogative. But the ability to speak does not create an obligation on everyone else to provide you with a microphone, a stadium and thousands of captive listeners.

Even rock stars, it seems, occasionally encounter the boundaries of someone else's property.

Oh, and let's not forget how much Ed Sheeran sucks too.


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Imam Deletes Sermons Calling Hamas Leader a 'Heroic Martyr' After Noticing People Can Still Use YouTube

ANN ARBOR, MI — The imam of left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has wiped his mosque's YouTube channel after videos surfa...