On April Fools’ Day, 1957, the BBC offered for viewers of the current affairs program “Panorama” the infamous spaghetti harvest report hoax.
By sheer coincidence (?), one definition of “noodle” is “fool.”
“Her only known activism,” the Associated Press relates her friends saying, “was co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that called on Tufts University to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel.”
A federal judge is now preventing her deportation.
Citing those who “want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus,” is how Rubio explained the rationale for the ousting. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist, to tear up our university campuses.”
But there’s the rub, isn’t it?
Obviously, those who “tear up” by committing acts of violence and intimidation, breaking our laws, should be deported.
Yet, what about those merely speaking or writing words — whether you like them or loathe them, or their speaker — that tear up the university’s status quo in the minds of listeners? Or might, if allowed voice?
Any “alien” in our country legally has a First Amendment right to speak. Even our Highest Court has so ruled.
The Trump administration appears to have vast legal authority to remove aliens from U.S. soil . . . except perhaps the way they’re doing it. Deportation cannot be a selective punishment for speech, which is protected.
“America was built on free speech, so if we don’t have that, then what?” said Carina Kurban, a Lebanese American, at a recent rally in defense of Ozturk. “Then where do we go?”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
DOGE is a threat to the bureaucracy. It’s the first threat to the bureaucracy. Normally the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast. This is the first time that they’re not, that the revolution might might actually succeed, that we could restore power to the people instead of power to the bureaucracy.
Elon Musk, Joe Rogan Experience (#2281, 2025).
On March 31, 1717, a sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ,” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
The sermon’s text was John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and from that Hoadly deduced — supposedly at the request of King George I himself, who was present in the assembly — that there was no Biblical justification for any church government. Hoadly identified the church with the kingdom of Heaven, noting that Christ had not delegated His authority to any representative.
King George’s preference for the Whig Party, and for latitudinarianism in ecclesiastical policy, is widely thought to have been a strategic maneuver to degrade church power in political government.
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, the very American cause of free speech made a comeback. “Elon Musk’s sunlight on Twitter’s backroom censorship dealings,” wrote Paul Jacob on December 22 of that year, “has cast a black shadow upon the U.S. Government.” But that sunlight offered enlightenment, as well.
We learned just how bad it had gotten under Biden’s first two years in office. “In sum, the federal government made Twitter its b … uh … disinformation agent.”
The triumph of freer speech had ramifications, from the amusing — leftists leaving Twitter (now X.com) for alternatives such as BlueSky, where they did not have to interact with those whom they disagree — to the momentous — the return of Donald Trump to the presidency.
Elon and Twitter/X get much of the credit.
Now the latest news: “Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence firm has acquired his social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, for $33 billion (€30.5 billion),” writes Srinivas Mazumdaru. “Musk announced the transaction in a post on X, saying: ‘The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt).’
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” he wrote. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Much of the deal’s specifics remained unclear. Both companies are privately held, so they are not required to disclose their finances to the public.
It’s also not clear if the move will change anything for X users.
“Elon Musk sells X to his AI company xAI,” DW, March 28, 2025.
Let’s hope speech on X — and on the Internet generally — becomes even freer.
One of the principal objects of theoretical research is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in the greatest simplicity.
Josiah Willard Gibbs, letter accepting the Rumford Medal (1881). Quoted in A. L. Mackay, Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (London, 1994).
“The whole point of taxes and government spending is to promote the general welfare, or so the standard theory runs,” Paul Jacob wrote two years ago. “But there’s nothing ‘general’ about the extreme sectarianism of ‘public radio and TV,’ with less well-to-do taxpayers subsidizing the far wealthier public media audience.”
That “extreme sectarianism” was on display this week in the hilarious questioning of Katherine Maher, Chief Executive Officer and President, National Public Radio, and Paula Kerger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Public Broadcasting Service.
This was part of the House Subcommittee on “Delivering Efficiency in Government,” which — like Elon Musk’s band of waste-cutters — initials down to DOGE:
A lot of this is hilarious. Must-see TV. Representative Jasmine Crockett was especially clueless in her comments, which have to be heard to be . . . believed?
Just remember what Paul’s said, though:
One shouldn’t need the latest ratcheting-up of the culture wars to oppose what we call, in America, “public radio and TV.” Taxpayer-subsidized broadcast media is a bad idea. Period. Full stop.
Defund NPR. Defund PBS. No more state-run or ‑subsidized media.
Paul Jacob, “Public TV Vetoed” (Common Sense, May 9, 2023).
On March 29, 1990, the Czechoslovak parliament proved unable to reach an agreement on what to call the country after the “Velvet Revolution” — in which the Communist Party was booted from power. This sparked the “Hyphen War,” a tongue-in-cheek moniker for the dispute between Czechs and Slovaks about official recognition of the two nations’ equal status. (The Slovak representatives wanted to insert a hyphen into the name, to make the Slovak part stand out.) Eventually, the dispute was resolved with the “Velvet Divorce,” in which the two countries split up, on New Year’s Day, 1993, the two countries now being named:
Czech Republic, also known as Czechia;
Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Slovenská republika).
There is actually more debt in the world than there is money. So yes, probably, it’s gonna get paid — as soon as we borrow something from another planet.
Ismo Leikola, from a stand-up bit shown on a Facebook “reel.”