Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily reporter Bob Unruh -- who loves stories about alleged persecution of Christians and right-wingers so much that he can't be bothered to report the other side of the story lest it undermine the whatever biased story the right-wing legal group is trying to get out -- writes in a Dec. 17 article:
Police officers who are accused of shutting down a woman’s prayer in her own home, and joking about it, have defended their actions to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, saying it did not “burden” her constitutional rights.
But that defense claim is gaining little ground with advocates for Mary Anne Sause, a Louisberg, Kansas, resident who has brought the charges against the officers.
WND reported in October when a lower court rejected Sause’s claim and the case moved up to the appeals court.
The case is being handled now by lawyers with First Liberty Institute after Mary Anne Sause, a retired Catholic nurse on disability, handled the initial claim on her own.[...]
“When Sause came to the door, the officers asked why she didn’t answer the door the first time. Ms. Sause saw a pocket Constitution, given to her by her congressman, lying on a nearby table and showed it to the officers, who still had not explained the reason for their appearance. One officer laughed and said, ‘That’s just a piece of paper’ that ‘doesn’t work here.'”
Once inside, they “harassed” her, she said, at one point telling her to get ready to go to jail.
“When Sause asked why, he said, ‘I don’t know yet,'” First Liberty reported.
She was frightened and asked permission to pray, and one officer agreed. The other then came back into the room and ordered her to “stop praying,” the complaint explains.
They then “flipped through the codebook to see how they could charge her,” finally choosing “interference” and “disorderly conduct.”
At the end of their visit, they finally explained they were there because someone thought her radio was too loud.
As usual, Unruh once again fails to tell the other side of the story, sticking only with the propaganda supplied by the First Liberty Institute. The Christian Examiner reported after Sause's case was first dismissed that Sause has a history of making dubious claims:
This is not, however, the first time Sause has launched a claim the court deemed implausible.
In 2011, she filed assault charges against Mark Pederson, the manager of a Kansas City abortion clinic, for reportedly body slamming her during a scuffle outside of the clinic. Sause was reportedly protesting abortion at the time.
Pederson was found not guilty because numerous eyewitness accounts didn't support her version of the story.
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She also filed another pro se case (a case filed without a lawyer) over the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services' placement of her child in the state's foster care system. She claims the state's court case reflected "inaccuracies in her parenting history" and the child was taken "into custody" by the state in violation of federal law.
The court dismissed that case, as well.
The federal court that dismissed Sause's claim -- which Unruh could have quoted from to provide balance to his article, but didn't -- explained further that Sause offered no proof whatsoever to back up her allegations:
While Officer Stevans’s instruction to Plaintiff [Sause] to stop praying may have offended her, it does not constitute a burden on her ability to exercise her religion. Plaintiff fails to provide any allegations that would suggest Officer Stevans’s actions coerced her into conduct contrary to her religious beliefs, or that he otherwise prevented her from practicing her religion. Rather, he merely instructed her to stop praying while the officers were in the middle of talking to her about a noise complaint they had received. The Court thus finds that Plaintiff has not made a plausible claim that her First Amendment rights were violated.
In other words, it's more journalistic malpractice from a reporter who, to be blunt, is getting paid to be a unfair and highly biased reporter -- making his boss Joseph Farah's laughable insistence that "WND uses the same standards and practices I cherished during my 20 years in the 'mainstream media'" even more laughable.
