text: President Uhuru Kenyatta with his deputy William Ruto at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on October 14, 2016 before he departed for Togo to attend the African Union Extraordinary Summit on Maritime Security. PHOTO | PSCU
  The plane carrying President Kenyatta touched down at Gnassingbé Eyadema International Airport shortly before 6.00 pm, Kenyan time.
  President Kenyatta is in the West African State to attend the African Union Extraordinary Summit on Maritime Security and Safety and Development in Africa.
  President Uhuru Kenyatta arrived in Togo on Friday evening for the first time since he was elected in March 2013.
  On arrival, President Kenyatta also inspected a guard of honour mounted by a detachment of the Togolese military.
  Thereafter, the two leaders held talks which focused on areas of cooperation for the benefit of the people of their two countries.
  The continental meet to start on Saturday will bring together heads of states and governments who will engage with together marine experts and business leaders to establish a roadmap on maritime security in Africa.
  The Togo Maritime summit is important to Kenya as it supports efforts to streamline the blue economy for the benefit of the people.
  It is expected to adopt a binding charter on maritime security that will make African maritime space the key driver for sustainable economic development.
  Jack Phillips at work at the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., in 2017.	 (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
  Forgive me for starting a piece with the oldest cliché in the practice of law. As the saying goes, “If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If neither are on your side, pound on the table.” In the run-up to the oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on December 5, we’re seeing a lot of table-pounding from the Left. In fact, I’ve never seen a case more mischaracterized in my entire legal career.
  The actual facts of the case are crystal clear. Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, refused to custom-design a cake to help celebrate a gay wedding. As a Christian, he finds same-sex unions to be unbiblical and immoral, and he wasn’t willing to use his artistic talents to advance a message he holds to be wrong. In fact, he’d frequently declined to design cakes that advanced messages he found to be offensive. But he never, ever — not once — discriminated against any customers on the basis of their identity. He baked cakes for people of all races, creeds, colors, and sexual orientations.
  So why do so many on the left compare him to segregationists? Why do they use hypotheticals that have nothing to do with the facts of this case? Today the New York Times published a perfect example of pound-on-the-table misrepresentations. It’s by Barnard College professor and Times contributor Jennifer Finney Boylan. How does she distort the case? Let us count the ways.
  She begins of course by comparing Phillips to the owner of a restaurant who claimed a religious justification for denying service to African Americans. Then she compares him to a doctor who wouldn’t care for a lesbian couple’s baby. She talks about landlords, clinics, and other businesses — all of which could deny services to people “because of who they are.”
  She quotes a law professor (because of course law professors aren’t above misrepresenting cases) as saying, “We’ve never allowed a commercial business to justify discrimination against a protected class based on the First Amendment. We shouldn’t start now.”
  Here’s the thing — if the court rules for Phillips, it wouldn’t be starting now. Phillips isn’t discriminating against a protected class. I’ll repeat this until I’m blue in the face. He serves gay customers.
  If a police officer’s wife refuses a black customer’s request to design a cake celebrating Assata Shakur, a convicted cop-killer and one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists, she’s not discriminating on the basis of race. She’s refusing to advance a message.
  I could go on all day. If progressive designers refuse to design dresses for the Trump women, they’re not discriminating on the basis of sex. They’re refusing to elevate and help honor a political family they dislike.
  To the extent that Boylan engages with Phillips’s actual argument, she waves it away with a paragraph so specious that one has to read it to believe it:
  In this case, the complaining gay couple ultimately decided on a rainbow cake. Can Boylan not see that the cake clearly and unmistakably sent a specific message? There is a substantial difference between a rainbow symbol at an event celebrating a same-sex wedding and a corned-beef sandwich. Phillips isn’t comparing himself to Joyce, he’s making the painfully obvious point that there’s a viewpoint inherent in the expression his customers asked him to create — a viewpoint that a well-manicured lawn lacks.
  It’s worth noting that Boylan is at odds with Justice Kennedy, the likely swing vote in the case. Two years ago, in the Obergefell opinion, he wrote this:
  If Justice Kennedy holds to this view, then not only does the First Amendment win, nondiscrimination laws won’t lose. Phillips isn’t discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. If Kennedy changes his mind, then he’ll erode vital American constitutional traditions and doctrines. The sexual revolution, not the Constitution, will be the supreme law of the land.
  The Naturalists of The Iroquois Confederacy is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its pith helmet sales, ban on automobiles, and smutty television. The compassionate, democratic population of 1.462 billion Iroquois love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.
  The large, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Healthcare, and Environment. The average income tax rate is 63.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.
  The strong Iroquois economy, worth 97.8 trillion Cred¡ts a year, is quite specialized and led by the Tourism industry, with significant contributions from Trout Farming, Book Publishing, and Arms Manufacturing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 66,866 Cred¡ts, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.
  A niche industry catering to S&M enthusiasts has sprung up, criminals rejoice in the streets as the entire police force is sent away on a training retreat, the nation's reputation for treachery has left it sidelined on the international stage, and grade school teachers mark homework with red "CITATION NEEDED" stamps. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. The Iroquois Confederacy's national animal is the Wolf, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Great Spirit.
  The Iroquois Confederacy is ranked 52,996th in the world and 12th in Zombie Research Institute for Most Cultured, scoring 68 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.
  1 day 15 hours ago : Following new legislation in The Iroquois Confederacy, grade school teachers mark homework with red "CITATION NEEDED" stamps.
  1 day 15 hours ago : Following new legislation in The Iroquois Confederacy, the nation's reputation for treachery has left it sidelined on the international stage.
  1 day 15 hours ago : Following new legislation in The Iroquois Confederacy, criminals rejoice in the streets as the entire police force is sent away on a training retreat.
  1 day 15 hours ago : Following new legislation in The Iroquois Confederacy, a niche industry catering to S&M enthusiasts has sprung up.
  2 days 12 hours ago : The Iroquois Confederacy was ranked in the Top 10% of the world for Highest Foreign Aid Spending.
  Tyler concentrates his practice in the area of civil litigation, including: professional liability, tort litigation, Professional Regulation/Licensure, and truck and commercial transportation litigation.
  Tyler joined Heyl Royster's Peoria office as an associate in the fall of 2012. Prior to joining Heyl Royster, he spent nearly two years in general practice with another Peoria law firm. During law school, Tyler was a member of Valparaiso University's Law Review and worked as an extern for Federal Judge Rudolph T. Randa in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Hammond, Indiana, and the City of South Bend. He also served as a teaching assistant for Valparaiso University's Legal Writing Department and a research assistant to Professor Michael Murray.
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  Everyone loves a retail rebate program. Certainly all retail rebate programs are good, right? Certainly they generate more profit for my organization. Or, are they much like fuel programs that you sign up for that are supposed to generate more fuel gallons for your location via a reduced cost to the customer when in the end all they do is generate less profit on customer gallons you already have? Hence, you discount gallons that you are already servicing and the few new gallons generated do not offset the loss profit of the old gallons.
  Ask anyone how to create a seasonal promotional program and I am certain you will get a different answer from each person. Hopefully the basic tactics would all be about the same and where they would differ would be in the details of the individual and how they would execute the program.
  That being said, I thought I would layout the basics that I shared from the Good To Great Session from NATSO Connect 2018.	
  Competition is increasing, and we have to do everything we can to create a pleasant in-store experience for customers, particularly in our industry where our shoppers demand speed and convenience. One bad experience is all it takes to break a customer’s loyalty, and a single moment of customer frustration could cost you both customers and profits.
  I am a fan of holiday and seasonal programs. I’d like to challenge all NATSO members to create memorable seasonal and holiday programs for the entire year. Holiday and seasonal shopping continues to be big retail success, and it is not just Christmas and winter that are successful. Whether it is tax-free days, singles day, Easter, summer drive, etc., many are becoming really, really big retail days.	
  I know there is still frost on the ground in some parts of the country and thoughts of summer may be tucked into the back of your mind, but in retail it is never too early to start thinking about upcoming sales opportunities. So many retailers found themselves unprepared when the cold snap hit the East Coast and missed valuable sales opportunities. Don’t let the same thing happen with summer sales!	
  Use of electronic shelf tags is on the rise. During a NATSO Study Tour in Europe, we saw electronic shelf tags in action. They have become much, much more common in Europe and are headed this way. Electronic shelf tags have several benefits, and the main idea is that you can change the pricing multiple times each day in a matter of seconds.