Category: general freedom

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

The FBI Is Misinformed

disinformation, FBI, free speech, 1st Amendment

The FBI is misinformed if it thinks that prosecuting persons who misinform solely for misinforming is consistent with freedom of speech.

The utterance of false statements, whether unknowingly or willfully, is nothing new in human history. And such utterances are impossible to avoid in any kind of discourse — for example, political debates — in which people disagree with each other about facts as well as values.

Indeed, one often hears both true things and false things. We must evaluate claims as best we can, using observation, logic, common sense and so forth.

But, somehow, the FBI has decided that “misinformation” and “disinformation,” chronic in campaign ads, political pronouncements, and domestic quarrels, are a crime when communicated in the context of an election.

An FBI document leaked to Project Veritas wants to explain “What Are Election Crimes.” This document lumps misleading speech with such actual crimes as electoral fraud and intimidation of voters.

Robert Spencer has questions about this assumption for the FBI’s, ahem, Election Crimes Coordinator, Lindsay Capodilupo. For example, how does the FBI determine what is and is not misinformation? Will there be an appeals process given the fact that certain notorious so-called “misinformation” — like the once-upon-a-time contested claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop is indeed Hunter Biden’s laptop — has turned out to be true information?

And — most important — how can wrongspeak as such be classified as any kind of crime in light of the First Amendment?

Stay tuned for the FBI’s answers. But not with bated breath, okay?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom Second Amendment rights too much government

The Gun-Toting Ruling Class

elites

How to tell if you are part of the favored ruling class? If it is easy for you, but not most others, to obtain a concealed carry permit in your gun-controlling state.

It’s extremely difficult to carry firearms for protection in states like Illinois, California, New Jersey and New York — except for certain Very Special Persons — rich enough or connected enough for special treatment.

Thankfully, the judicial system — which has the benefit of various guiding principles from a long-gone time when the rulers wore red coats — is disallowing some of the nonsense.

Still, it’s a struggle to “de-class-ify” Second Amendment rights — that is, take gun rights from being a class issue favoring the rich and famous and allowing all peaceful citizens legal access to firearms.

“Two weeks ago, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against many of the restrictions on public possession of guns that New York imposed after the Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms last June,” writes Jacob Sullum in Reason. “Unfazed by that warning, New Jersey legislators this week advanced a strikingly similar bill that includes a subjective standard for issuing carry permits and sweeping, location-specific restrictions that make it legally perilous even for permit holders to leave home with guns.”

Politicians in these blue states remain resolute: they aim to unconstitutionally restrict access to guns. They strongly resist the current individualistic (as opposed to class-based) trend in judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment. 

Their idea seems to be: guns for us, but not for them.

And we’re the Them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Doctor Dead End

Anthony Fauci, covid, vaccines, masks

Dr. Anthony Fauci not only holds a smoking gun, he’s standing over the corpse and sniffing the barrel, grinning like a cartoon villain.

Last week we considered the gross indecency of this director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force funding Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab to do more research on bat coronaviruses — to the tune of “Six Million Dimes.”

And now that a Boston group has publicized its gain-of-function research, we should ask ourselves: is Fauci involved in this, too? The answer is: YES — to the tune of $2.5 million!

This group of researchers, jiggering with a bat virus and the Omicron variant’s version of the infamous spiked protein, made a new iteration that killed 80 percent of infected mice. Success? What?!? 

We had been told that gain-of-function was against policy.

But that wise policy is no match for Fauci’s mania.

Wait, you cry, at least they developed the vaccines! 

Well, to what purpose?

A few weeks ago, in a European Parliament hearing, a Pfizer bigwig admitted that when the multinational introduced its anti-COVID mRNA “vaccine,” it had not even researched the ability of the jab to reduce transmissibility of the virus. 

“We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what was taking place in the market,” Pfizer senior executive Janine Small explained. “And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk.” 

Clear? As mud?

This is a scandal . . . except . . . not according to FactCheck.org, which states that “nobody claimed the vaccines — Pfizer’s nor Moderna’s — were tested for transmission prevention before they hit the market.”

But even the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s fact checkers admit that “some officials have overstated the transmission protection provided by the vaccines.”

Chiefest of these is Fauci, who said last year that by getting vaccinated we “contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. In other words, you become a dead end to the virus.”

Fauci, at the top of the Big Gov/Big Pharma dung heap, is himself a dead end — to responsible medicine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs media and media people

Tyranny Without Limits

Hu Jintao, President Xi Jinping, China

This weekend, at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a unanimous vote of elite communist party officials gave President Xi Jinping his third five-year term.

But the story that made the headlines focused on the physical removal from the main chamber of Hu Jintao, the previous Chinese leader (2003–2013), on the final day. No one is sure what it means, but we cannot unsee the pattern.

“In 10 years of ruling China, Xi Jinping has expunged political rivals, replacing them with allies,” notes The New York Times. “He has wiped out civil society, giving citizens no recourse for help but his government. He has muzzled dissent, saturating public conversation with propaganda about his greatness.”

The Times forgot to mention the genocide against Uyghurs or the full extent of CCP censorship or repression or the stepped-up harassment and threats to invade democratic Taiwan, but the article does convey that Xi is a thug of totalitarian proportions. 

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political scientist at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, argued back when the limit was repealed, “because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show.” 

Those “mistakes” cost millions of Chinese their lives. One-man totalitarian rule is bad news for everybody everywhere. Xi’s personal power makes China more repressive at home as well as more dangerous and aggressive abroad. 

“For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law,” Lam added. “There are no longer any checks and balances.”

Lam meant internally, but, for better or worse, we are likely to see what checks and balances and defenses there are outside of communist-run China. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom too much government

Ian and the Scurvy Knave

Florida, Texas, roofer, licensing, hurricane

Don’t help people after a hurricane! 

Not if you live in another state and there’s no time to lose but . . . you’re licensed only in that other state.

Now, before you declare Houston-based Terence Duque an innocent victim because he was arrested for not being Florida-licensed, let’s take a cold hard look at the facts. Duque is licensed in Texas, has operated a successful roofing business since 2008, is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau, is called a “preferred contractor” by Owens Corning.

Sounds okay, right?

But hold on. After Hurricane Ian smashed Florida a few weeks ago, what did this scurvy knave do?

Shamelessly and with constructive purposes aforethought, Duque offered his services to residents of hard-hit Charlotte County, Florida!!!! No, seriously. Simply because homeowners had had their roofs ripped up, Duque offered to repair them!!!!! Yet this man calls himself a roofer!!!!!!!!!

Arrested by the Charlotte County sheriff, who says “I will not allow unlicensed contractors to further victimize [sic]” hurricane victims, Duque is charged with “conducting business in Charlotte County without a Florida license.” He faces one to five years in jail.

He says he thought he’d been allowed to help Floridians because licensing regulations had been loosened due to the emergency. 

No.

Justin Pearson, an attorney with Institute for Justice, says Duque was punished for “doing the right thing.”

The right thing??? The man was honestly trying to help people recover from a terrible personal setback and fully qualified to do so!!!!!!! Look at the facts!!!!!!!!!

Throw away the key?

This is, er, Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom

Partisan Police State Tactics

FBI

We must take the initiative to change things if we don’t like the way things are. If you’re a congressman, this means — sometimes, at least — investigating horrific conduct.

The September 23rd raid of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck’s home should evoke bipartisan dismay. But only Republicans seem to be looking into the FBI’s recent arrest of Houck and the ludicrously heavy-handed tactics used to apprehend him.

In 2021, Houck had pushed a pro-abortion activist away from his son, whom the activist had been harassing, in front of a clinic. Houck’s action was allegedly a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The alleged victim sued.

Last summer, the case was dismissed on a local level. But that determination was blithely ignored by our ideologically compromised FBI, which sent dozens of agents to swoop down on Houck and terrorize his family.

U.S. Representatives Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson, both Republicans, sent a letter asking for documents related to the raid and arrest.

According to the letter: “Several recent actions by the department reinforce the conclusion that the Justice Department is using its federal law-enforcement authority as a weapon against the administration’s political opponents….

“We write to conduct oversight of your authorization of a dawn raid of the home of a pro-life leader, in front of his wife and seven children, when he had offered to voluntarily cooperate with authorities.”

Such a letter requesting accountability is only a bare beginning, however. If we want to prevent a partisan police state, there is much more to be done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Fully Baked Defense

Legal Insurrection, donuts

Having your say can have an important impact even if you don’t know about it. Sometimes the people on the front lines are paying surprisingly close attention to what you say.

William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog has learned how important his posts and the comments of readers have been to the legal team fighting for Gibson’s Bakery.

Gibson’s, you may remember, is the shop in Oberlin, Ohio, that Oberlin College tried to clobber because an employee of the bakery confronted shoplifters. Because the thieves were black, race-conscious student activists erupted in outrage — at the bakery, not against the shoplifters — and college officials echoed the students’ irrational hostility and smears.

Long story short, Gibson’s sued for damages and spent years in court to first win a substantial judgment, then to fight Oberlin’s appeals.

In a recent interview with Professor Jacobson, Lee Plakas, lead trial attorney for the bakery, told him how important Jacobson’s blog has been to the legal team.

They clicked in daily.

“Your readers gave the family the support and the courage that they needed to persevere,” Plakas said. “We had a billion-dollar bully doing everything they possibly could to destroy this iconic bakery. . . . And we wanted to make sure that in this battle that we didn’t miss any nuance that one of your readers or Professor Jacobson may have identified. So we could incorporate it into our presentation.”

The result? Oberlin College finally agreed to pay the damages: $36.59 million.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Middle of the Beginning of the End

Presidential powers, pardons, marijuana

President Biden’s decision to pardon everyone federally convicted for a simple marijuana possession is not the true beginning of the end of the federal war on drug-taking people.

In 2018, the federal government legalized certain products with cannabinoids derived from hemp. That’s something, even if the feds still ban buying and selling marijuana.

On the other hand, for years many states have been legalizing pot, inspiring the federal government to somewhat slacken enforcement of its own pot ban — sometimes.

These developments constitute the beginning of the end for the federal war on drug-taking people.

Call Biden’s gesture the middle of the beginning. That it won’t be rapidly followed by full federal legalization of unapproved drugs or even marijuana is shown by the objections of other politicians.

Senator Tom Cotton laments that Biden is “giving blanket pardons to pot heads — many of whom pled down from more serious charges.”*

The argument would be equally valid if it were illegal to blow soap bubbles and some people had pled down from a charge of smashing windows to a charge of blowing soap bubbles. Granted, plea deals are often horrible, wrongly abetting the guilty and hurting the innocent. So reform the plea-deal regime. 

But don’t criminalize non-crimes.

The real impact? The White House admits that “while no-one is currently in prison for ‘simple possession,’ a pardon for those who have convictions could allow better access to housing or employment.”

Call it a half-start at the middle of the beginning of the end.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another lament is that Biden’s pardon is just cynical election-eve politics. Well . . . let’s have more such pandering to the people; it seems the only way to get good policy from bad politicians. 

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general freedom insider corruption international affairs

Musk Gone Mad?

China, Taiwan, authoritarianism

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has often been lauded in this commentary — regarding SpaceX and the growth of private space travel, and recently for providing crucial internet access through his company’s Starlink satellites first to Ukraine and now for Iranian protesters.

I like that.

But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t like it at all. As Musk acknowledged last week in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), explaining that Chinese rulers wanted “assurances” he would not provide Starlink internet to the 1.4 billion people they actively repress.

With a Tesla plant in Shanghai, Musk is much more vulnerable to the dictates of Xi Jinping and the CCP than he is to Vladimir Putin or Iran’s Ayatollah. 

“Tesla, though headquartered in the U.S.,” Forbes notes, “made about half of its cars last year in mainland China, the world’s largest auto market.” 

Which amounts to an awful lot of leverage.

In that same FT interview, Musk floated a “solution” to the tensions between China, which threatens a military attack that might kill millions, and its target Taiwan, which overwhelmingly favors a war of resistance to CCP takeover and threatened re-education.

“My recommendation,” the usually innovative businessman told FT, “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan [under China’s authority] that is reasonably palatable,” adding, “it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

While the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. thanked Elon Musk for his idea, a senior Taiwanese official reminded, “The world has seen clearly what happened to Hong Kong.”

Does this brilliant businessman really think that the promise of a more “lenient” totalitarianism is any kind of solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Armageddon, Anyone?

war, Russia, nuclear bomb

Ah, the things one hears at high-dollar Democratic Party fundraisers!

Like declaring Russia’s threat to unleash nuclear weapons against Ukraine as the most serious “prospect of Armageddon in 60 years.”

Last week, Sleepy Joe “startled many Americans” with those remarks at a closed-door meeting of big donors.

Backpedaling on Friday, “U.S. officials stressed . . . that the United States has no reason to change its nuclear posture.” No reason? We’re backing one side in a war in which nukes are on the table!

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, didn’t defend Biden’s “Armageddon” terminology but offered that it was “useful for the president and the administration to be having a conversation with the public about the risk.”

Of course, the president gave this frank evaluation to his party’s top check-writers, not the public. And that’s the second biggest problem with U.S. foreign policy: it’s totally divorced from the people. 

The biggest? Headin’ towards Armageddon. If Mr. Biden is serious about slouching towards the End Times, he should do more than make it the subject of political locker-room talk. 

Like what? How about:

  1. Seek to reduce tensions, wherever possible, and help Mr. Putin find an off ramp from his war in Ukraine; 
  2. Double- and triple-down on technologically defending the American people from the threat posed by nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction; and  
  3. Speak to the people about these threats and the U.S. response.

While security concerns may dictate that information not be shared publicly, if it’s good enough to share on the rubber-chicken circuit, it good enough for ‘We the People.’

We pay the highest prices; we deserve to hear the sales pitch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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