Tag: free speech

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First Amendment rights government transparency ideological culture social media

Google Confesses All

Google, Youtube, censorship, free speech, Covid, 2020 election, fraud

Google is no longer silent about whether the Biden administration pushed Google to censor customers for their viewpoints. 

Under Biden, Google censored YouTube content creators under federal pressure, specifically about COVID-19. But Google did muzzle discourse on other matters, such as disputes about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as a result of its own policies that it now says are “sunsetted” along with policies resulting from its submission to a rogue administration.

Its own role is important because we know that a tech giant can effectively resist federal pressure to censor on the basis of the principles of the company’s leaders.

The proof is how Twitter changed course while Biden or his autopen was still the president. Twitter revamped its policies after Elon Musk ascended to the helm, starting to welcome back those who had been censored under the previous owners.

Yes, Elon Musk found himself under assault from every direction from a variety of federal agencies; which, it seemed, were acting as if in concert with and at the behest of a foiled Biden administration. Musk’s opposition to censorship and documentation of administration pressure to censor was not risk-free.

Now Google is following suit. When restoring freedom of speech is lots less risky.

Let’s hope Google’s words now decrying censorship, and its still-in-progress efforts to make things right — inviting the return of former YouTubers whose channels it had censored, for example — will render the company less eager to cooperate when the next pro-censorship administration takes power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

Free Jimmy

Donald Trump, Jimmy Kimmel, free speech, censorship, comedy and tragedy

Last Friday (and Saturday), we supported the right of ABC’s corporate leaders to ignore bullying comments by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr and produce the late-night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Love!” to their heart’s content.  

I’m happy to hear that ABC will bring Kimmel back tonight.

Not glad because I like him or will watch his show. I don’t. I won’t. I’d cancel him were it up to me. But freedom’s tops, so I get especially jazzed when people stand up to demand it. 

And concerned when those in power attempt to take it away.

The very potent public backlash against the idea that ABC was muscled by the Trump administration into suspending Kimmel’s show is why it has returned. That’s a healthy sign of our political culture. Plus, take note that this pushback against the FCC chairman and President Trump hasn’t come just from the Left but also, as The Wrap reports, from many prominent conservatives including “Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz.”

What Kimmel alleged — that the murderer of Charlie Kirk was somehow MAGA — was not only “without evidence” but clearly contradicted by the evidence. As well as being asinine on its face. And more than a bit callous.

Still, freedom of speech means the freedom to say what you think, no matter how boneheaded, whether those in power like it or not. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of the largest chain of ABC affiliates, has already announced that its stations will not be airing Kimmel’s program. As is their right.

Stick with freedom of speech, Mr. President. For all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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First Amendment rights social media

Apology Request Denied

U.K. UK, free speech, censorship, surveillance

The UK police picked the wrong elderly cancer patient to badger for exercising her right to freedom of speech.

Whatever Deborah Anderson said on social media, it wasn’t harsh enough to justify clapping on the irons and hauling her away. Just a knock on the door and a polite request to Do the Right Thing. But polite in the way a mailed fist in a marshmallow glove is polite.

Anderson: “I’m a member of the Free Speech Union and I’m an American citizen. . . . I’ll have Elon Musk on you so quick your feet won’t touch. . . . You’re here because somebody got upset? Is it against the law? Am I being arrested?”

Officer: “You’re not being arrested.”

Anderson: “Then what are you doing here?”

“My plan was, if you were admitting that it was you who wrote the comment, you could just make an apology to the person.”

“I’m not apologizing to anybody. I can tell you that.”

“The alternative would be that I have to call you in for an interview. . . .”

Somebody complained to the police, and somehow that’s enough all by itself, regardless of the nature of the complaint, for the police of the United Kingdom to leap into nonsensical action.

Anderson then asked whether there are “no houses that have been burgled recently? No rapes, no murders?” Good question, but ineffectual. Not his task at the moment, the officer said.

At least we can be proud of one of these two interlocutors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

A Finn Reviled, and Worse

Päivi Räsänen cited the Bible’s characterization of homosexuality, about men inflamed by “shameful lusts” (Romans 1:24-27). That’s why Finland is prosecuting her.

The effort continues even though the former minister of interior has been acquitted, twice, by lower courts.

Originally, Räsänen’s prosecutors cited three proofs of heresy. A post that she published in 2019, comments made during a radio interview, and her 2004 pamphlet “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.” The radio “evidence” has been dropped from the case.

You may wonder why Finland’s prosecutors are dredging up religious expression from 2004 in order to pursue its bogus prosecution for a 2019 speech-“crime.” The pamphlet’s publisher, also being prosecuted, probably also wonders. I’m not sure, but my theory is that the prosecutors are jackasses. (The preceding sentence isn’t hate speech, just reasonable-postulate speech.)

The U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, part of the State Department, has taken up her cause, saying that “no one should face trial for peacefully sharing their beliefs” and that the case against Räsänen “for simply posting a Bible verse is baseless.” Then the Bureau also quotes the Bible, Matthew 5:11: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

Räsänen has expressed her gratitude and the hope that “justice will prevail not only for me, but for the wider principle of free speech in Finland.”

Americans should be looking in alarm at governmental attacks on freedom across the globe. As well as here at home.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law

Over-Regulated or Regulations Over?

Critiques of campaign finance regulations (CFR) often focus on particularly egregious applications or expansions of the regulations.

That’s fine. When somebody who is hammering us on the head starts hammering even harder, it’s okay to object. 

We should make clear, though, that we object to being head-bashed at all, not just the latest intensification.

In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Institute for Free Speech and the Manhattan Institute are tackling CFR-rationalized repression of speech (CFRRS) as such.

“By conflating election campaign speech with the mechanics of running elections,” IFS says, “the Supreme Court has allowed the government to trample the First Amendment through campaign finance laws.”

This has been going on at least since the Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo.

The current case, NRSC v. FEC, pertains to federal limits on coordinated spending by political parties, which is allowed in many states. IFS punches holes in the excuses for this instance of CFRRS but also stresses the bottom line.

“The brief argues that the federal government lacks the power to regulate this type of speech in the first place. . . . The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate the times, places, and manner of electing federal officials. But . . . speech about candidates is not the same thing as the election itself, and the Elections Clause does not give Congress authority to regulate core political speech.”

Obviously. May at least five out of nine justices grasp this also.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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litigation

A Million from Michael Mann

Michael Mann, climate, free speech, censorship, courts

Things aren’t working out for Michael Mann. The infamous “climate scientist” has been pursuing a years-long vendetta against critics of his methods and conclusions, and it’s been a bumpy ride.

Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg accused him of manipulating data “in the service of politicized science.” Instead of answering the criticism, Mann treated it as actionably defamatory.

In 2012, Mann launched a lawsuit against Simberg (of the Competitive Enterprise) and Steyn (then writing for National Review).

National Review observes that the criticism which offended Mann “was obviously protected by the First Amendment,” so that his suit should have been scuttled immediately.

Instead, judges antagonistic to free speech when they find the speech uncongenial enabled Mann’s litigation to trundle on for years.

The story gets complicated, as touched upon a few months ago. In 2021, the tide seemed to be turning in favor of Steyn and Simberg, with a court issuing a favorable summary judgment. But in January 2024, a jury found Steyn and Simberg liable for defamation. The awards? Steyn was ordered to pay $1 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages, Simberg to pay $1 in compensatory damages and $1,000 in punitive damages.

That insane $1 million amount was later reduced to $5,000.

Now it is Mann taking the hit, with rulings that he must pay about a million bucks in legal fees to CEI and Rand Simberg ($477,350) and National Review ($530,820).

National Review urges Michael Mann to finally relinquish his authoritarian quest lest he lose even more. 

Will he? It would be irrational to continue, but it was irrational at the start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights insider corruption

The Biden’s Four Ways

Joe Biden, censorship, mind control, obey, obedience, free speech

In response to controversies about pandemics, elections, and whatnot, Congress did not quite pass — nor President Biden quite sign — a new law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. (As far as I know.)

Biden’s government did act, regardless, with the force of law to shut people up. According to the Media Research Center’s new report on Biden censorship — ready to be shared with all who contend that his administration perfectly respected our freedom of speech — the cabal I call The Biden censored Americans using four approaches:

Direct action. For example, ordering a big tech firm or a judge to censor somebody. White house advisors, agency bureaucrats, and others exerted this kind of pressure.

Policy or rulemaking. Examples include the State Department’s agreement with foreign nations “to pressure Tech platforms to censor more” and Homeland Security’s attempt to create a Disinformation Governance Board to police speech.

Partnerships with state and private actors to censor speech. Biden’s National Security Council collaborated with the UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit to impose UK censorship on Americans.

Grants to organizations to attack and flag utterance of incorrect speech, which the government could then censor.

These were effectuated, by MRC’s count, with 57 initiatives.

As soon as he began his second term, President Trump issued executive orders to combat such muzzling of debate. Congress must do its part too.

No matter what defenses are put in place, though, we will see further attempts by government goons to gag us. We must be vigilant.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

A Free Speech Order

“Will President Trump be a free speech president?”

On January 21, David Keating, president of Institute for Free Speech, asked this question. And he refers the reader to his Wall Street Journal op-ed published last month in which he offered suggestions about how to stop the federal government from censoring people via social media or in other ways.

The new president sure seemed to get off to a good start restoring the First Amendment. One of his thirty or so executive orders signed on the 20th, his first work day, is entitled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

Section 2 says that it is U.S. policy to “secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech,” ensure that no federal employee or agent “engages in or facilitates” unconstitutional abridgement of speech, and “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

Section 3 says no federal employee or department may act in a manner inconsistent with Section 2.

Maybe this broad order needs to be supplemented with many more specific orders that say: Really. Don’t engage in censorship here or there or anywhere.

This is where specific suggestions like Mr. Keating’s come in handy, such as preventing the IRS from penalizing taxpayers for criticizing political candidates, repealing SEC limits on political donations, and instituting specific regulations to “force disclosure of most government contacts with social-media organizations asking to take down third-party posts,” thereby scuttling most future such contacts.

It’s a start. Let’s keep going.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

The Defi(l)ers of the First Amendment

free speech, censorship, corporations

Early on, we carefully phrased our objections to the suppressions of dissident opinion on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. 

We knew (because we had been making the distinction for years) that when companies and private parties engaged in discrimination on the basis of opinion, including “de-platforming” of opinion-mongers, these weren’t, at least on the face of it, First Amendment violations. The First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech apply to the federal government and, by the stretch of the 14th Amendment, to state and local governments.

These were corporations.

Sure, corporations thriving under government liability rules, and with sometimes-cushy contracts with government.

And social media companies’ actions were clearly partisan, obviously opposing Donald Trump. The dreaded Orange Man had used social media to get elected in 2016, running rings around the gatekeepers of Accepted Opinion; the ultra-partisan censorship a reaction.

Only with the release of the Twitter Files, after Elon Musk bought Twitter, did we get the crucial facts in the case: Agents of the U.S. government (many of them eerily in the Deep State nexus) pushed the censorship.

Now, with Mark Zuckerberg’s very recent and very public pulling back from the excesses of DEI as well as government-coerced content moderation, we’ve learned more of the manner of the duress in which his companies caved to censorship demands. Government agents called up Facebook managers and content moderators and screamed at them to suppress certain stories and “memes.”

The sharing of visual memes really, really bugged the Deep State, which was hell bent on delivering to everybody a jab in the muscle with gene therapeutics allegedly to “vaccinate” us against a disease that . . . well, their buddies in the Deep State helped China, it just so happened, create. 

Worldwide, millions died in a pandemic whose origin was actively covered up through violations of the First Amendment in America. 

Defend free speech to defend life itself. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Censors Slapped at Start

Kamala Harris, satire, free speech, censorship

Californians may now be allowed to see and laugh at “falsehoods” after all.

The Golden State legislature and Governor Newsom will probably fail in their attempt, made in open violation of the First Amendment, to ban certain parody and satire that communicates what they call “falsehoods.” (California hasn’t yet outlawed political novels.)

The battle isn’t over yet. But a court has issued a preliminary injunction against recently passed legislation, declaring that it “does not pass constitutional scrutiny.”

Cited in the ruling is this excellent insight: “‘Especially as to political speech, counter speech is the tried and true buffer and elixir,’ not speech restriction.”

Further, by “singling out and censoring political speech, California hasn’t saved democracy — it has undermined it. The First Amendment does not brook appeals to ‘enhancing the ability of . . . citizenry to make wise decisions by restricting the flow of information to them.’” Though the judge determined that California has “a valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,” the current legislation “lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.”

What could such “narrow tailoring” have consisted of? The repudiated legislation has everything to do with speech that should be unhindered and nothing to do with protecting the electoral process. 

AB2839 and a related law, AB2655, were the rapid response of California’s kingpins to an effective parody video of a “Kamala Harris” “ad.” In it, “Harris” explains that she is a vacuous “deep-state puppet.”

The First Amendment protects the right to utter truth, falsehoods, and the kinds of satirical fictions and parodic exaggerations that everybody but opponents of free speech understand to be fictions and exaggerations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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