Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Say No to Reich-Harris Reich

Kamala Harris, Robert Reich, censorship, X, Twitter, mind control, free speech

Freedom of speech is constantly embattled.

Just one example: government-instigated stomping on social-media speech in recent years, proof of which has been revealed thanks to litigation, freedom of information requests, and the purchase of Twitter by a friend of free speech.

But the embarrassing revelations have not caused our censors to retreat.

They’re not trying to censor people, they suggest, just trying to stop lies, hate, misinformation. And now Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, wants to arrest Elon Musk for resisting censorship as Twitter’s new owner.

Reich says: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”

Reich has also said that we must regulate speech to “direct people’s attention . . . to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.” As Jonathan Turley observes, “the ‘healthy public conversation’ with Robert Reich increasingly appears to be his talking and the rest of us listening.”

Would “regulators around the world” include U.S. regulators? Since the First Amendment has yet to be rescinded, perhaps Reich would prefer other countries to handle imprisoning Elon Musk for letting people speak “too” freely. But I’m guessing Reich would be fine with a U.S. arrest.

Reich would fit right in with a Harris administration, if we get one, led by a woman who calls the First Amendment a “privilege” and has lamented that social media sites are “directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight and regulation.” Which, she declares, “has to stop.”

Something has to stop.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law First Amendment rights

How Deep Is Your Fake?

deep fake, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, lizards

Monday last, a group of Democratic congressfolk “sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), asking the agency to adopt regulations prohibiting the creation of deepfakes of election candidates,” Emma Camp tells us in last Thursday’s Reason article, “These Democrats Want the FEC To Crack Down on Elon Musk’s Grok.”

Current law already “prohibits a candidate for federal office or an employee or agent of a candidate from fraudulently misrepresenting themselves, committee, or organization under their control,” the letter states, but candidates have already been caught using “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in campaign ads to depict themselves or another candidate engaged in an action that did not happen or saying something the depicted candidate did not say.”

OK. Regardless of the merit of current regulation, the apparent fact that some political actors have defied the rule (perhaps out of ignorance) doesn’t necessitate more legislation. Why not just let the wheels of justice, or what passes for it in the FEC realm, go on doing what they’re doing?

Because Elon Musk.

Specifically, his X (“Twitter”) platform recently launched “Grok-2,” an AI for the creation of pictorial representations (not unlike those used here at ThisIsCommonSense.org). And, shock of shocks, there are no rules in place for ordinary people to take artistic license at those politicians they hate and and for those politicians they don’t.

As Ms. Camp notes, but the legislators don’t, most of these efforts have been for comic effect.

The Democrats don’t like this.

They request expeditious consideration for the creation, by the FEC, of new rules to “regulate” (suppress) AI by ordinary users to maintain the ostensible integrity of “our democracy.”

We have, Ms. Camp not unreasonably concludes, been pretty good at detecting “deep fakes” so far.

Besides, the big problem in politics is shallow fakes.

They’re everywhere. They’re called politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Banned in Brazil

Brazil, censorship, authoritarianism, mind control

Twitter is being banned in Brazil by a “Supreme Court justice” who seems to be the de facto ruler of the country. Who is also threatening Brazilians with massive fines, $8,900 USD daily, if they try to reach Twitter through a VPN.

A VPN or virtual private network hides your IP address and encrypts your web traffic. VPNs protect privacy and let you visit sites otherwise inaccessible. Sites that purvey “disinformation,” i.e., criticism of the government, and other verboten content. VPNs combat censorship and surveillance.

The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, issued an edict to ban Twitter after Twitter owner Elon Musk refused to obey censorship orders.

Twitter had told users that it expected to be shut down by Justice de Moraes “because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

Now Musk declares that an “unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying [free speech] for political purposes.”

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino adds that according to Brazil’s own constitution, “censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is forbidden. . . . Until there is change in Brazil, X [Twitter] will be shut down.”

Dictatorships often issue “illegal orders” in the sense that these contradict constitutional provisions whose force has faded . . . or that were never intended to do anything but fool people to begin with. Such political systems are not truly constitutional.

Nor would the situation be any better were the “constitution” more honest, simply announcing that whatever the dictator says goes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights too much government

Deep State in a Corner

deep state, censorship, mind control, PSYOP, CIA

Once upon a time, the CIA and allied agencies pushed free speech as a norm. 

Overseas.

The rationale? Without some free speech and press rights, it was too hard to organize a populace to overthrow their government. Our spooks exported freedom of speech abroad not because they were so gung-ho American; it was all about seeding revolutions.

But not here! 

The CIA couldn’t let others take advantage of American free speech like its agents leveraged free speech abroad. A change in government might mean . . . loss of jobs. Mission. Money.

What to do? Disinform at home. By corrupting journalism.

The Operation Mockingbird efforts in the 1960s helped intel insiders control information and manage “the consent of the governed,” and these early efforts grew into the close ties between the Deep State and credentialed journalists today. 

The connections, I’m told are many: it’s not just Anderson Cooper’s internship at the CIA. 

During the Cold War, the disinformation element found a plausible justification. Then, the Soviets had us at a disadvantage: we had trouble extracting reliable information from within the Iron Curtain, but they could grab all sorts of useful information from our open, comparatively free speech realm.

Disinformation: a strategic necessity. But the consequences?

 “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete,” William Casey explained to President Ronald Reagan, “when everything the American public believes is false.”

In the early days of the Internet, the Deep State pushed online speech platforms, the better to allow for foreign coups. Is there a social media space that hasn’t received surreptitious government subsidy? It’s hard to be sure. We’re supposed to assume our government protects us rather than controls us. 

But, increasingly, Internet-connected Americans see government officials chiefly as manipulators.

Which is why the Deep State’s most ardent partisans (neocons; Democrats; plutocrats) now routinely attack free speech here, and why allies overseas are so thoroughly cracking down on “de-stabilizing” opinions. It’s why Rumble is no longer available in Brazil and why Musk is pulling out Twitter personnel . . . and why France has arrested the CEO of Telegram.

Us catching on to the psy-op game places the Deep State in a corner. All the disinformation agents have left is censorship and repression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Give Mr. Bean Another Hearing

Mr. Bean, UK, Great Britain, censorship, mind control, authoritarianism

Twelve years ago, Rowan Atkinson of “Mr. Bean” fame took a stand against a law that criminalizes “insulting” speech. He was participating in a campaign to reform Section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986.

In his remarks launching the campaign, recently resurrected on Twitter, Atkinson said that his concern was less for himself as a person with a high public profile than “for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.”

And what about the thousands of cases that “weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention? Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released. . . . That is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind. . . .”

And he said more than this. Luckily it’s recorded.

This effectively delivered argument, forceful and often funny, by a well-known personality, had its effect. The Reform Section 5 campaign succeeded. The law was amended.

But the victory, though important, was narrow. And, since that win, sweeping assaults on speech that offends somebody or other continue in Britain, the United States, and other Western countries where people should know better than to emulate the censorship of authoritarian governments to which we aspire to provide an alternative. We’re going to need a lot more funny speeches.

Because this threat to freedom is so serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture international affairs

EU to Axe X?

Elon Musk, EU, European Union, censorship

Sandro Gozi, European Union parliament member, wants Elon Musk’s Twitter operation gone. Out of the European Union.

Not no matter what. Only if Twitter — “X” — keeps flouting the EU’s censorship rules.

Gozi says: “If Elon Musk does not comply with the European rules on digital services, the EU Commission will ask the continental operators to block X or, in the most extreme case, force them to completely dismantle the platform in the territory of the Union.”

Oh dear.

This threat comes right after EU official Thierry Breton’s threatening letter to Musk about his impending Twitter interview with Donald Trump. Musk told Breton to “[obscenity deleted]” and proceeded with the interview. Other EU arbiters of speech quickly dissociated themselves from Breton’s threat.

So maybe Gozi’s confidence about what fellow EU commissars will do if Musk does not play ball is misplaced. Perhaps the others will think about how Twitter users throughout Europe would react if their X accounts became “ex-” accounts.

Various Italian officials, Gozi’s countrymen, roundly repudiated his gabble.

“Silencing the voice of millions of people in order to strike out at those who think differently from them?” challenged Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. “Unacceptable and disturbing.”

The political party of Giorgia Meloni issued a statement saying that the “contemporary left [are] allergic to opinions that are not aligned with their mainstream, and inquisitors of anyone who does not submit to their suffocating cloak of conformism.”

Elon Musk likely sees the truth: this fight is winnable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Harvard, Hamas and Harassment

student protests, Harvard, Gaza, Palestine, antisemitism, Jews

Let’s assume that most Harvard University officials harbor no special animus against Jews.

Let’s also assume that the school’s willingness to ignore its own policies while Jewish students were the focus last year of what Judge Richard Stearn agrees was “‘severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive’. . . harassment” by Hamas supporters was motivated, rather, only by lack of courage.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that Harvard officials were motivated only by craven unwillingness to go against one of the latest left-wing ideological fads, that of letting anti-Israel agitators run wild.

But a policy that protects students from harassment and assault only when this is easy or fashionable to do — while insisting on “freedom of speech” for persons pushing past obnoxious speech into criminal assault and battery — is not much of a policy.

Stearns’s ruling is not a binding decision on the merits of the plaintiffs’ lawsuit. He simply allowed it to proceed.

His refusal to dismiss means that he finds the plaintiffs’ argument plausible — the argument that Harvard has violated its contractual obligations by observing what pro-Hamas students were doing to other students with supreme institutional indifference.

Indeed, he finds that the protests “were, at times, confrontational and physically violent, and plaintiffs legitimately fear their repetition. The harassment also impacted plaintiffs’ life experience at Harvard; they dreaded walking through the campus, missed classes, and stopped participating in extracurricular events.”

Peaceful protest ends when riot, assault, and intimidation begin. Institutions of both law and higher learning should always make that dividing line as clear as possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture international affairs

Elon Musk’s Right Answer

Elon Musk, censorship, EU, free speech, democracy

“By the rules of the complicated pretense which all those people played for one another’s benefit, they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly; there should have been rustles of astonishment and derision; there were none; they sat still; they understood.”

These words are from a scene in Atlas Shrugged in which beleaguered industrialist Hank Rearden rejects “this court’s right to try me” and refuses to put on a defense. Thereby giving the best defense of all.

Elon Musk didn’t give a speech.

Instead, when an EU muck-a-muck, Thierry Breton, sent him a letter on the eve of Musk’s Twitter interview with presidential candidate Donald Trump, a letter babbling about dire consequences for Twitter if it were to “amplify potentially harmful content [i.e., any deviation from current government dogma] in connection with events with major audience around the world,” Musk responded with a quote and a clip from the movie Tropic Thunder.

Other EU officials are now rushing to disavow Breton’s letter, widely castigated as an attempt to interfere with the U.S. election.

I can’t repeat the line Musk quoted, because we don’t use cuss words here. If you don’t like to hear such words, don’t click into the video clip. Just don’t go there.

Mega-magnate Elon Musk is often badly wrong about China. But when he’s right, he’s right. Even super right. 

And we need a million more CEOs to be thus willing to stand up to regulators foreign and domestic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

The Racial Land Mine of First Grade

BLM, Black Lives Matter, all lives matter, education, schools

You can’t let kids get away with anything.

Schools must apply some discipline. Otherwise, chaos would ensue. Talking out of turn, pulling pigtails, passing notes . . . and, not least, an epidemic of expressing benign thoughts inconsistent with the poisonous race-conscious ideology that some schools seek to inculcate.

In March 2021, a little girl known as “B.B.” in court documents got into trouble for drawing a group of classmates of different races. She added the words “Black Lives Matter” and, below that, “any life.” She gave the drawing to a black classmate to try to comfort him, as she later explained.

Had B.B. been more attuned to the racial controversies of the day — does she not follow The New York Times and CNN? — she might have realized what treacherous waters she had dived into. 

As it was, she was surprised when the school forced her to apologize to her classmate and forbade her from drawing any more pictures while in school and from attending recess for two weeks.

The parents sued. A district court ruled in favor of the school, but the parents, helped by Pacific Legal Foundation, are appealing.

The district judge says that whether First Amendment protections of free speech apply here depends on whether such speech, however innocent, would “significantly interfere with the discipline needed for the school to function.”

The drawing could hardly have thus interfered unless part of the school’s “function” is to impose race-conscious orthodoxy. 

And suppress even the slightest peep of unwary dissent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

Campaign Finance Folly Foiled

campaign finance law speech first ammendment free speech

The Institute for Free Speech and its clients, Connecticut State Senator Rob Sampson and former Connecticut State Senator Joe Markley, have won a long-awaited judicial victory.

The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed that it was okay for the senators to criticize the state’s governor at the time, Dannel Malloy, in a campaign mailer. The State Election Enforcement Commission had contended otherwise.

In 2014, Markley and Sampson had collaborated on a mailer to defend their anti-big-spending, anti-big-taxing views against those of the governor. According to the Commission, the mailer thereby violated the state’s campaign finance law. The reason: it benefited the governor’s political opponent. 

That opponent supposedly should have paid a third of the cost of the mailer.

By the agency’s anti-speech reasoning, any statements in any campaign mailer that might somehow benefit some political candidate in the state — even a citation of the Declaration of Independence or a logic- (as opposed to fact-) check — would violate campaign finance law. 

Certainly, were the principles of logic widely disseminated in the state, this would pose a grave danger to a huge majority of candidates.

The SEEC fined Sampson and Markley. 

Now the state supreme court has ruled that doing so violated the First Amendment; “candidates must be able to communicate where they stand on issues in relation to other candidates and public officials. . . .”

Good. But couldn’t the judgment have come quicker? The same court issued an interim ruling back in 2021. The justices could have clobbered the SEEC’s lunatic presumption back then.

Freedom of speech delayed is freedom of speech denied. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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