Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

Censored Under Pressure

censorship, Twitter, Covid, free speech, freedom of the press

Journalist Alex Berenson is suing members of the Biden administration — and others, inluding Pfizer officers — for pressuring Twitter to ban him for what he wrote about the COVID-19 vaccines.

The best-known of his heretical tweets says, “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”

In the months since August 2021, when Twitter expelled him “for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” such hardly intemperate observations have become less controversial. Vaccine proponents have retreated, typically claiming, at most, that the putative vaccines reduce the risk of severe illness and death.

Berenson first sued Twitter to challenge its ban. The suit succeeded; eleven months after Twitter banned him, it reinstated his account.

But Twitter had not been acting independently; it had succumbed to a lengthy campaign by the Biden administration to censor Berenson. Any such actions by government officials are, of course, unconstitutional.

The defendants in Berenson’s new lawsuit include President Biden, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, and former White House official Andrew Slavitt (“at the center of the conspiracy”). Two Pfizer officers are also named: board member Scott Gottlieb and CEO Albert Bourla.

Berenson’s detailed complaint alleges that “after months of public and secret pressure, Defendants succeeded” in getting Twitter to ban him.

The private pressure is attested by internal documents released by Twitter and government documents produced during the course of Missouri and Louisiana’s lawsuit against censorship by the Biden administration.

In defending his rights, Alex Berenson is helping us all retrieve freedoms we lost in the pandemic panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment education and schooling First Amendment rights

Trans-Violent

Riley Gaines, protestors, trans, censorship, free speech

“I applaud the students, staff and faculty who rallied quickly to host alternative inclusive events, protest peacefully and provide one another with support at a difficult moment,” declared San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney on Monday.

The “difficult moment” she refers to? A talk on campus by All-American swimmer Riley Gaines, sponsored by Turning Point USA. Gaines was speaking out against “transgender women” (biological men) competing in women’s sports.

President Mahoney did finally acknowledge that the event was followed by “a disturbance,” which “unfortunately” “delayed the speaker’s departure.”

In fact, Gaines wasn’t able to leave for hours, until nearly midnight . . . when, as CNN reported, “the San Francisco Police Department sent officers to disperse the crowd.” Gaines says she was “physically assaulted,” “struck twice,” with video confirming a very threatening situation.

“We are reviewing the incident,” Mahoney assured, “and, as always, will learn from the experience.”

No arrests have been made. They should be. That’s the teachable moment we need.  

SFSU’s president did acknowledge that what occurred last week was “deeply traumatic.” But she meant the event itself, which she claimed “advocated for the exclusion of trans people in athletics.” 

That isn’t true. Gaines and many (if not most) folks involved in the controversy simply want collegiate sports separated by biological sex and not by gender identity.

Let’s realize that these Antifa-esque “trans activists,” the ones who threaten to beat up women, do not speak for all transgendered people — certainly not those I know and love. Their goal is clearly not harmony but the very opposite. 

The solution is simple: Love for trans folks, common sense public policies, and jail for the thug attackers of free speech.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies social media

A Package Deal

Tik Tok, app, China, censorship

Suppose suggested legislation outlaws both murder and walking. How could you oppose it? Are you, a dedicated perambulator-peripatetic, also a murder-supporter?

Obviously, this would be an attempt to foist a package deal consisting of unrelated or mutually contradictory elements.

Consider a more true-to-life example.

In the Wall Street Journal, Philip Hamburger argues that a congressional bill targeting TikTok would do much more than counter Chinazi spying on Americans (“The TikTok Bill Is a Sneak Attack on Free Speech”).

If curbing or even outlawing TikTok were the sole focus, one could argue the merits of the legislation given what is known about the company’s collecting of data and its relationship with the Chinese government. There’s no free-speech protection of foreign espionage.

However, as Hamburger points out, the bill gives the federal government “sweeping power over communications” and could be used to stifle speech protected by the Constitution.

The proposed statute would allow the Department of Commerce to undertake open-ended mitigation of “undue or unacceptable” risk regarded as arising from use of communications technology in which any entity subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary “has any interest.”

This is very vague and very all-encompassing. The legislation thus confers power over domestic communication companies “that could be used to extort their cooperation in censorship.”

Attempts to resist such “mitigation” or censorship would risk administrative fines of $250,000, criminal penalties of $1 million, two decades in prison. For supporting freedom of speech?

Please walk away from this, Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights ideological culture

No Mystery, Just Confusion

woke, pc, woke culture

This week, two examples of “woke” political correctness shot across my visual field.

First, there was another classic 20th century writer bowdlerized by publishers and copyright holders so as not to offend the easily offended: Dame Agatha Christie.

As Robby Soave wrote in Reason, the great mystery writer has had her texts altered before, in the form of the title to her 1939 novel, And Then There Were None, which was originally published as Ten Little Indians. No, that’s not right. It was something far more offensive in America — but in U.S., one edition did use the less-offensive Ten Little Indians.

But now interior content of a much more innocuous sort has been changed. “A character in The Mysterious Affair at Styles who was referred to as a Jew — because, well, he is a Jew — is now just a person,” Soave explains. “And a servant identified as black no longer has a race at all.”

Nicety-mongering went much further in the second case, however, after the shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The young woman who murdered three students and three adults at the school, and was then herself shot dead, sported, online, the pronouns “he/him.” In between blaming Republicans and the talking heads of The Daily Wire for this trans-gendered person’s suicide-by-cop murder spree, some journalists couldn’t help but scold others for mis-gendering . . . him?

At least one report referred to the perpetrator (whose name I see no reason to publicize) as a “trans-woman,” though, in current lingo, she (“he”) was a “trans-man.”

It does get confusing — but as sad as it can get, there’s no mystery here. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights media and media people

License for Leftists

censorship, education, schools, Marxism

Libertarians should avoid taking sides in left-right antagonisms when promoting a principled third position would make more sense.

Regrettably, in “Christopher Rufo Wants To Shut Down ‘Activist’ Academic Departments. Here’s Why He’s Wrong,” libertarian magazine Reason fails to offer that alternative.

“In an essay published this week in City Journal,” author Emma Camp begins, “conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that universities — or rather, the state legislatures governing these universities — should shut down ‘activist’ academic departments. But rather than protecting higher education, forcibly shutting down left-wing academic departments would be nothing more than routine censorship.”

Tellingly, she never defines “routine” censorship.

Let me help: routine censorship is the governmental policy of preventing or punishing private speech on private property. 

State colleges and universities are public institutions, politically established and subsidized by taxpayers. With few exceptions, “private colleges” are also routinely tax-funded at the demand end, and are further supported with research contracts.

Getting rid of Marxist professors preaching political revolution is no more anti-free speech than preventing the CDC and Anthony Fauci from conducting gain-of-function virus research within some college laboratory.

Ms. Camp quotes the Supreme Court about the importance of “safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.” Freedom sounds great, but as usual, the Supremes forget that taxpayers have an interest, and that constraints on public schools was once routine.

So how not to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom”? 

Offer a third position: de-subsidize and dis-establish government “education” by empowering higher education’s customers. Let Marxist professors find payers in the private sector.

Instead, Emma Camp effectively tells conservatives they have no choice but to fund every leftist program that politics and the bureaucracy allow. She could have recognized that “Academic freedom” in the context of tax-subsidized schooling is merely ideological license.

Which is itself a sad alternative to real liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies partisanship

Invitation to a Beheading

Twitter, Taibbi, hearings, Congressional Committee, stupidity

I don’t gawk at car crashes. I did not watch the ISIS beheadings. Bloody slasher movies aren’t my thing. 

And neither was the recent hearing held by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It was so hard to watch I could hardly take more than a few minutes at a time.

Before the committee appeared two of the three heroes of Twitter Files fame: Michael Shellenberger, listed as “Author, Co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition”; and Matt Taibbi, Journalist.

Or, as Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) referred to them, “so-called journalists” — before she asked her first question.

Mr. Schellenberger testified about “The Censorship Industrial Complex” and Mr. Taibbi’s testimony was a less elaborate narrative about how he got involved in the Twitter censorship issue, and what he discovered in working through the files. But Del. Plaskett and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl) were far more interested in discrediting what they said by attacking their qualifications and methods, not dealing with the facts they found.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tx) was the worst. I hand it to you if you can stomach her full interrogation — I came away wondering mostly about her IQ.

My negative reactions? Hardly an outlier. 

“Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were a credit to their profession and to all Americans who genuinely care about a free press and the First Amendment,” wrote Maud Maron in an op-ed for The New York Post explaining why she was walking away from the Democratic Party: the party has fully endorsed censorship. The Democrats at the hearing “questioned, mocked, belittled and scolded [Taibbi and Schellenberger] for not meekly accepting government knows best” — proving themselves “an embarrassment.”

It might be good for our side when our enemies make fools of themselves. But it’s hard to watch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

Register the Critics!

Florida, censorship, blogging, license

Joy Reid cited it as just another example of “right-wing fantasy,” and Newt Gingrich had, if anything, worse things to say about it.

What is it?

A proposed Florida law advanced by State Senator Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary).

Senate Bill 1316 “would require bloggers to register with the state within five days of any post mentioning a state official, according to Florida Politics,” a Newsweek article explains. “It would then require bloggers to file monthly reports listing posts that mention officials, as well as any compensation for those posts.”

The legislation, which has not advanced far — and probably won’t — has received mostly negative responses. Former Speaker of the House Gingrich’s is typical: “The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane. [I]t is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately.”

Promoters of the law defended it mainly by saying that Ginrich’s criticism mischaracterized the law. Not all political bloggers would have to register, only those paid to write would be. Only!

“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office. . . .”

Former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith challenged the notion itself: “Would you apply this to journalists? Citizen who write letters to their representatives? People who talk to their neighbors? Why not? No, you don’t have a right to know who is paying them. You have a right to ignore them if that matters to you.”

Since the world began, politicians have had a very difficult time ignoring their critics. Instead, like this Florida Senator, they want to shut them up. By force. By intimidation. By regulatory harassment.

The First Amendment says NO.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Roald’s Revenge

Roald Dahl, censorship

Two centuries after the heady days of Elizabethan drama, Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler produced The Family Shakespeare. 

In it they infamously “bowdlerized” the Bard. 

History has accelerated. Roald Dahl, the beloved author of arch children’s books (and more adult fare, too), had been dead only 33 years when it came out that his publisher is sanitizing his books. 

For the children.

For wokeness.

It’s not nice, you know, to call someone fat. Or to suggest that witches wore wigs because they were bald. 

So snip-snip and a trip to the thesaurus later, and British kids can now read the word “enormous” instead of “fat.” And learn, via addition (something the Bowdlers didn’t dare: they only made careful cuts), that “there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

Salman Rushdie called this “absurd censorship” and said that the culprits, Puffin Books and the Roald Dahl estate, “should be ashamed.”

The backlash has been huge, but the umbrella publishing house, Penguin, insists the unexpurgated Dahl will still be available, in a “Roald Dahl Classic Collection.”

Shades of New Coke versus Classic Coke!

In America, Penguin won’t even try to publish its sanitized editions.

There are several footnotes to the story. 

One: a four-decades old conversation “has come to light, revealing that [Dahl] was so appalled by the idea that publishers might one day censor his work that he threatened to send the crocodile ‘to gobble them up.’” 

Two: Ian Fleming’s James Bond is getting a similar treatment.

I’m reminded of the all-too-hungry crocs in Live and Let Die.

And where Dahl’s gobble-uppers should be when publishers place their toes in censorious waters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom

Sneaky Censorship

disinformation, disagreement, censorship

If our government tried to march all dissenters to jail — or hang them all — it probably couldn’t get away with it. Too many Americans still have enough sense of fair play and concern for individual rights to make such ugly expedients untenable.

Also, the First Amendment hasn’t been repealed yet. Oh, no! So the non-crime of uttering “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech” — that is, uttering disagreement — can only be thwarted indirectly.

One way is for government officials to get chummy with compliant social media companies and point them to utterances (posted comments, videos) to censor.

Another is to fund organizations with missions of defunding wrongthinkers.

The Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky reports on the taxpayer-bankrolled conspiracy.

Congress funds the State Department and “two State Department-backed entities,” including National Endowment for Democracy; which has in turn been funding a British organization called the Global Disinformation; which has a group called the AN Foundation that is also called Disinformation Index Foundation; which is sending blacklists of websites that supposedly purvey disinformation to American ad companies like Microsoft-owned Xandr.

The State Department, not constitutionally authorized to censor our speech, gave over $300 million (three tenths of a billion) to the Endowment in 2021.

Websites to be deprived — and that probably have already been deprived — of advertising dollars as ad distributors seek to avoid “risks that arise from funding disinformation” include the New York Post, Reason, Newsmax, The Federalist, American Spectator. 

No commie egalitarians; no woke websites.

All very roundabout and mostly under the radar. As intended.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights judiciary partisanship

Disbar the Disbarrers?

Texas State Bar, politics, censorship, corruption

After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton legally challenged how several states conducted the 2020 election, dozens of lawyers submitted complaints. 

To the state bar. 

Their idea: disbar the Republican officeholder for daring to oppose the current Democratic narrative about “election denialism.” 

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed those initial complaints as “not demonstrat[ing] Professional Misconduct,” but several attorneys appealed the decision, including a friend of Paxton’s Democratic opponent in the 2022 election for attorney general. The Texas State Board reversed the dismissal. Now a judge has allowed the case against Paxton to go forward.

The threat of disbarment is increasingly being wielded as an ideological weapon and without regard to whether targeted individuals have committed any wrongdoing worthy of disbarment. It’s the lawyers’ version of cancel culture.

This is demonstrated in a lengthy report by Margot Cleveland in The Federalist, who details many other instances as well as Paxton’s. 

These include the DC Bar’s pursuit of former Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark and the California Bar’s pursuit of John Eastman, among a “barrage of politicized bar complaints pursued against Republican lawyers who provided legal advice or litigated various issues in the aftermath of the November 2020 general election.”

The purpose, then, is not to combat corruption but to corruptly intimidate any lawyers inclined to represent Republicans in challenges of dubious election results. One malefactor is a group called 65 Project, targeting more than a hundred Republican-aligned attorneys but no Democrat-aligned attorneys. Seems partisan.

Should lawyers who seek to disbar lawyers solely because of political disagreements be disbarred themselves?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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