Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights general freedom

Reason Requires Freedom

Reason and Freedom

For two weeks, Reason magazine was stopped by court order from talking about two government actions.

It started with online comments.

Everyone who samples the Internet knows that although some un-​moderated remarks are judicious and thoughtful, others are intemperate and un-​thoughtful. Freedom of speech subsumes the latter just as much as the former — unless and until a published comment can be honestly construed as a genuine threat of violence, as opposed to mere venting.

Reason was first hit with a subpoena that “demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.”

The subpoena is itself debatable, the Supreme Court having recently noted that context is relevant to determining whether an online “threat” is a genuine one.

Not debatable? The gag order that soon followed, prohibiting discussion of both the subpoena and the gag order after Reason notified the affected commenters so that they would have a chance to defend their right to anonymity.

Reporting at the magazine’s “Hit and Run” blog, Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch explain why the prior restraint represented by the order is unconstitutional and a bad idea.

For Reason, the situation was unprecedented; but similarly wrongful gag orders have become commonplace.

If we lose freedom of speech in this country, it won’t be all at once but bit by ugly bit.

This episode? One of the ugly bits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Reason and Freedom

 

Categories
Accountability Common Sense crime and punishment First Amendment rights

Wisconsin Raids Speak Volumes

Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin, police abuse, harassment, militarization, democracy, intimidation, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, violence

Where’s the outcry among campaign finance “reformers”?

Silence.

In Wisconsin, laws regulating political speech, along with the clamor for stepped-​up “enforcement,” have facilitated an awesomely powerful prosecutor to launch dawn SWAT raids, dragging men, women and children out of their beds, stealing their computers and cell phones and ransacking their homes.

For what crime?

Supporting an act passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor.

And for having the bravery, or naïveté, to think we live in a free republic where organizing with others to promote ideas about public policy is a noble pursuit.

Not a one-​way ticket to Room 101.

Here at Common Sense we’ve been following these dystopian John Doe raids since 2013, when my friend and hero, Eric O’Keefe, refused to be bullied into silence: he violated a gag order to tell the Wall Street Journal and other media about secret investigations tying up 29 conservative groups.

O’Keefe’s courage inspired several suffering the dawn raids to finally speak out. An article by David French in the May issue of National Review tells their stories, which sparked attention last week from Rush Limbaugh and on Fox News’s The Kelly File.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm “correctly identified some of the most important communicators of political messages in Wisconsin,” O’Keefe told Meghan Kelly, “and they raided their family homes, with kids at home .… They came in the dark.”

“Put aside whether people should have filed different campaign finance reports, is this an appropriate tactic for any kind of campaign finance question?” he asked.

O’Keefe has fought back, suing Chisholm in federal court. Today, we may discover whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in his case and determine whether a federal district court judge’s injunction against Chisholm’s witch-​hunt will stand.

We all know what this is really about. Chisholm was retaliating against individuals and groups that supported Governor Scott Walker’s ultimately successful moves to curb Wisconsin’s public employee unions. It’s a grand example of our age’s real class warfare: between insiders with power and outsiders trying to curb that power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin

 

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Common Sense First Amendment rights tax policy too much government

Feinstein No Einstein

Anarchy and Chaos

Government’s job is to protect our lives and liberties. But how best to accomplish this? Should books be banned? Websites blocked?

Diane Feinstein thinks so.

Sen. Feinstein (D‑California) wants to ban The Anarchist Cookbook from the Internet. The book, which came out in 1971 with lots of radical ideas, including notoriously unreliable instructions for making bombs, is now a website. Perhaps the quality of  the “cookbook” has helped us survive against the anarchist threat these last five decades.

Today, the threat is not anarchist but Islamist terrorism. So of course Sen. Feinstein also wants the Al Qaida magazine Inspire “off the Internet.”

Government censorship, anyone? Free speech, Senator?

Now, I don’t approve of the bombing and murdering of innocents for any cause. So I am not at one with deadly anarchists or deadly jihadists. Count me as among their enemies.

But, at the risk of being called a “liberal,” I don’t think we should defend ourselves against anarchists or jihadists or other terrorists just any old way. For both moral and strategic reasons, we ought not be killing innocents by drone strike, along with those simply declared guilty, without any lawful process at all.

Likewise, we ought not abridge our own cherished principles and the rule of law.

Including the First Amendment.

After all, that’s what government is supposed to be protecting in the first place.

The fact that Feinstein seems so comfortable with simply “banning” books and magazines and websites suggests an illiberal, unAmerican attitude. An attitude that threatens to do more damage to the homeland than any “cookbook” or pro-​terrorist magazine or website ever will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Anarchy and Chaos

 

Categories
Accountability ballot access Common Sense First Amendment rights general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Really Protecting Our Rights

Incentives matter. Which is why Ohioans have much to celebrate
this week.

Federal District Judge Michael Watson turned his previous temporary injunction against enforcement of Senate Bill 47 into a permanent injunction. That statue outlawed non-​residents from helping Buckeye State residents by gathering petition signatures for an initiative or referendum.

The case is Citizens in Charge v. Husted. Citizens in Charge — where I work — protects initiative rights. Jon Husted is the Ohio Secretary of State.

But Judge Watson went further, declaring Sec. Husted’s office liable for damages to one of our co-​plaintiffs, Cincinnati for Pension Reform. The judge found that “a reasonable official would have understood that enforcement of the residency requirement would violate plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to engage in political speech.”

Public officials have what’s known as “qualified immunity,” which protects them from liability when acting in good faith. A spokesman for Husted offered a defense: they were acting “on the assumption that the law is constitutional.”

“Some qualified-​immunity cases are difficult,” countered election-​law expert Daniel Tokaji. “Not this one.”

Ohio’s residency law was ruled unconstitutional in 2008, after Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign sued. In 2009, the previous secretary of state officially acknowledged the law unenforceable regarding all petitions. Yet, seeking to block citizen petitions, legislators passed it again, and Husted was quick to enforce.

Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, our attorney, cheered the “deterrence” this decision provides.

“If public officials from the governor down through the police know that they will be liable for enforcing an unconstitutional law,” he explained, “they are far more likely to take Ohioans’ constitutional rights seriously.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Thought

Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom Second Amendment rights

Wanted: Armed Satirists

I have a suggestion. Bear arms.

Commenting on the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, a Reason​.com reader points to a profile of Henry Jarvis Raymond (1820 – 1869) at the website of Green-​Wood cemetery.

At the moment, the most urgently relevant detail of Green-Wood’s profile is not Raymond’s co-​founding of The New York Times, his politics or his friendship with Abraham Lincoln, but how he defended his paper against threat of assault.

“During the ‘high tide’ of the Confederacy . . . Raymond fought to rally public opinion in favor of the Union. When draft rioting mobs approached the offices of The New York Times in July 1863, Henry Raymond held them off with three Gatling guns he had obtained from the army.”

Charlie Hebdo has been attacked by Islamo-​terrorists before. In 2011, its Paris office was badly damaged by a firebomb unleashed in reply to a “Charia Hebdo” issue of the satirical magazine.

At least since that attack, then, the risk to Charlie Hebdo staff for ridiculing Islam, Islamism and/​or Muhammad* has not been merely theoretical. I applaud the fact that they have fearlessly persisted in their satiric mission despite what happened — and are fearlessly persisting now despite a much steeper cost.

But if you’re in that situation, please don’t just brave the odds. Even the odds. Ensure that personnel are well-​trained in the use of firearms, and that these weapons are easily accessible at all times.

And if you’re a government, make bearing arms easy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It may be worthwhile pointing out — as many have — that the satirists were not narrowly ridiculing one culture, that of Muslims; they have been and are across-​the-​board satirists, mocking politicians, clerics and partisans of most (if not all) stripes. Further, though widely considered a left-​wing magazine, its editorial policy has never fallen into the lefty rut of blaming only the West and bending backward to defend foreign criminals and tyrants.