Tag: first amendment

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

It’s His Party

censorship, First Amendment, free speech

If you’re a fan of freedom of speech, you’re probably also a fan of the First Amendment of the United States’ Constitution.

Unfortunately, governments keep trying to evade it.

When their censorship can’t itself be evaded, often the only thing to do is go to court. 

Merely showing a copy of the Constitution to the offending officials rarely suffices.

That’s why Kells Hetherington teamed up with the Institute for Free Speech to overturn a Florida statute requiring that “a candidate running for nonpartisan office may not state the candidate’s political party affiliation.” In a 2018 campaign for Escambia County School Board, Kells had been fined for calling himself a “lifelong Republican” as part of his candidate statement on the county’s website. In a later campaign, he kept silent to avoid another fine.

The Institute points out that in violating the First Amendment rights of candidates, Florida’s don’t‑say-party law has especially hurt challengers. It has deprived them of a valuable shorthand way of indicating the tenor of their political views, a shorthand that incumbents have many more ways of communicating to voters outside the context of campaign statements.

Kells and IFS have won. Late last year, a district judge in Florida ruled that the First Amendment does indeed protect his right, as a candidate, to mention his political party.

Kells says that “hopefully, this will never happen again to any other candidates.” 

In any case, it’s clear that the Institute for Free Speech will never be out of a job. That First Amendment won’t enforce itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Commission by Omission?

censorship, free speech, First Amendment

Debra Paul, publisher of the weekly Londonderry Times, should not be facing jail time for publishing political ads.

In a land where a First Amendment explicitly if imperfectly protects freedom of speech, does anyone believe she should be?

Well, the New Hampshire attorney general, for one. 

For two, whoever called his attention to the trivial oversight that led to Ms. Paul’s arrest last August. 

Her venial sin, if it’s even that, was to publish political ads that failed to include the legend “Political Advertisement” as required by New Hampshire law. 

The violation is punishable by up to a year of incarceration and a fine up to $2,000.

As Paul noted in August, “This is clearly a case of a small business needing to defend itself against overreaching government. To threaten a small business owner with jail time over something this insignificant is very heavy-handed.”

Insignificant, why? 

Not labeling a political message “Political Advertisement” is only controversial in the slightest when the message imitates normal editorial or news content. The arrest warrant reports that the ads in question were on the order of “VOTE YES ARTICLE 2.” 

Obvious political advertising.

Months later, Paul still awaits her fate. An arraignment is scheduled for later this month. On the advice of her lawyer, she had little to say when we asked her for an update about the case. But she hinted that a political adversary may have filed the complaint against her.

The net of multitudinous picayune laws that snagged Paul can snag anybody who does anything more culturally and socially ambitious than sitting at home staring at the wall all day. Such regulations can be exploited by anyone eager to harass someone for reasons quite apart from an alleged infraction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights individual achievement social media

A Failure of Trust

Elon Musk, Twitter, free speech

Why is the Federal Trade Communication threatening to investigate Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter?

The FTC is reportedly reviewing the Tesla CEO’s takeover of the forum and will soon decide whether to conduct an anti-​trust probe of the transaction.

Musk hasn’t been entirely clear about his plans for Twitter now that he is on the verge of acquiring it. But we can expect that this avowed free speech absolutist will do his best to ensure that tweet-​speech is much more open than it has been. He won’t label every statement he dislikes as “hate speech” or “misinformation” and forthwith expunge it.

And this, I’m pretty sure, is the problem.

Certainly, no new “monopoly” is in the offing. It’s not as if we lack social-​media alternatives to Twitter — or that Musk already owns the alternatives. His other gigs pertain to electric cars, tunnels, and space flight.

The problem must be that government officials, too, expect that Musk will be a much better friend of unfettered speech than the previous Twitter insiders.

Officials expect — but also fear — that his Twitter won’t routinely terminate the speech of persons who dispute “official” doctrines about COVID-​19, elections, or what have you.

To fear the prospect of a Musk-​run Twitter is to fear open debate — debates that are unavoidable and should be welcome if we value citizen control of government.

But of course, those who seek to control us worry: if the people do not agree with them about what is and is not a fact, what is and is not the highest moral and political value, they might not stay in power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets

Elon Musk Is Serious

Elon Musk, Twitter

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk is showing the world how capitalism reforms wayward companies — like Twitter. 

It is done from within the system.

By stock ownership.

Becoming Twitter’s top stockholder — right after Musk told the Babylon Bee he just might have to buy Twitter to reform it — surely demonstrates serious intent.

But Twitter honchos have stressed that the mere advent of Elon Musk portends no major changes, a hint of things not to come. 

Moreover, a restriction on how many shares board members may purchase meant that had Musk joined Twitter’s board, he’d have been unable to ramp up the pressure for reform by becoming an even bigger stockholder.

So Musk chucked his original plan to join the board and decided, what the heck: If I do need to buy Twitter to fix its anti-​speech policies, I better outright buy it. He has reportedly offered $43 billion.

He says: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” But he now realizes that the company in its current form will never be that platform. 

“Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

A week ago we asked, “Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?”

We’re still asking. Maybe the current owners love banning disagreement with themselves too much to give it up. 

Someone should tell them that are worse things to sell out for than open discourse and freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

You Kill Me!

Biden, Covid, Facebook, censorship

“Facebook isn’t killing people,” President Joe Biden informed us yesterday. 

At least, “That’s what I meant,” he clarified ever-so-confusingly. 

Meant last Friday, after a reporter mentioned “COVID misinformation” and asked Joe: “What’s your message to social media platforms like Facebook?”

“They’re killing people,” replied the president. “I mean, it really, look — the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

CNBC noted that Facebook “reacted defensively” to Biden’s friendly murder accusations, failing to hit LIKE on the administration’s characterization of its pandemic performance. 

“The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives,” a company spokesperson countered. 

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people,” Mr. Biden chided the social media giant, “that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine.” 

After all, the Biden Administration has certainly rolled up its sleeves, as White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it: “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Yes, behind the scenes, this administration works with these behemoth social media corporations to help determine what hundreds millions of Americans will be permitted to say and share and discuss — on matters such as medicine, theories of disease origins, etc. 

Didn’t we just ride this pony? Remember the supposedly baseless, debunked, conspiracy-​nut-​fueled Wuhan lab-​leak theory? 

That idea was blocked from us by Facebook (and Google and YouTube) at the behest of Big Government Science … until just weeks ago.

It’s hard to keep up. 

Perhaps we are not supposed to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Initiative-​Crippling Law Clobbered

constitution, voting, speech, initiative, freedom

The right of citizen initiative is the right of voters to petition to get a measure on the ballot; then, if that happens, to vote on it and pass it. 

Many politicians hate this right and work to weaken it.

A few years ago, Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission considered sending a measure to the state ballot to treat voters who abstain from voting on a ballot question as having voted No. The proposal died on the vine, thankfully. But this is the kind of encroachment politicians fantasize about.

The latest attack on Floridians’ right of citizen initiative — a law to cap donations to such campaigns at $3,000 during the signature-​gathering phase — has just suffered a less definitive setback.

Federal Judge Allen Winsor in the Northern District of Florida halted the new law from going into effect on the very day it was scheduled to do so. (Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, judge?) He ruled that contributions to an initiative campaign are obviously a form of political expression and that the law would inflict irreparable harm if even briefly in force.

True. 

If petition organizers can’t raise the funds needed to collect the required 891,589 signatures, it becomes enormously harder to get a measure on the ballot and let voters have their say. A say that foes of citizen initiative rights certainly do not want voters to have.

The ruling blocks the law only until the court reaches a final resolution on its constitutionality, so this legal battle isn’t over yet. 

What is most certainly determined, however, is that Florida legislators don’t care about the Constitution. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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speech

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