You know how our good friends on the left always talk about “common sense gun control,” as they attempt to weaken our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms? “Oh, people don’t need an AR-15 to go hunting,” and that it was never meant to protect an individual’s right to own a firearm for self-defense.
Well, today’s left don’t think much our First Amendment rights, either. From Pirate Wires:
Musk: EU Wanted “Illegal Secret Deal” to “Quietly Censor Speech”
We first mentioned Dylan Mulvaney a month ago, when, as Robert Stacy McCain put it, “satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird.” Since then, two well-paid executives accepting his ‘reality’ have managed to get themselves fired “leaves of absence“.
Mr Mulvaney managed to keep his mouth shut for a while, as someone told him he realized that opening it would not help his cause.
Well, he’s talking again, but it isn’t helping his case. According to Mr Mulvaney, I should be in jail!
Dylan Mulvaney calls for the arrest of people who call him a man. Do you still think I’ve been too mean to this guy?
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 28, 2023
What did he say?
The articles written about me using ‘he’ pronouns and calling me a man over and over again, and I feel like that should be illegal, I, I don’t know, that’s just bad journalism.
He may rest assured, while I always referred to him as male and use the masculine pronouns, I have never called him a man. Nevertheless, Mr Mulvaney believes that “should be illegal.” I’m not certain under what existing laws he believes that it “should be illegal,” or whether he believes that a new law should be passed to make it so, but I’m pretty solidly in favor of this one:
The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.
You’ve heard of the First Amendment, right? That pesky part of the Constitution of the United States which states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What Mr Mulvaney doesn’t seem to understand is that the First Amendment protects his right to claim that he’s actually a girl, or to say that he believes it should be illegal for [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me to refer to him in ways which do not accept his claim that he’s really a woman. I absolutely support his right to say what he wishes, but I also have the right to say that I believe anyone who accepts what he has said as somehow truthful is dumb as a box of rocks.
Naturally, the vast majority of the professional media have been using Mr Mulvaney’s preferred terms, and, as we have previously reported, The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to double down with a fluff piece on Will Thomas, the male former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided that he was really a woman, and was calling himself “Lia.” The credentialed media have been quite diligent in their attempts to ‘normalize’ the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.
That wasn’t all Mr Mulvaney had to say. This is from the HuffPost, so naturally it’s all favorable to him!
Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence In Wake Of Bud Light Partnership Backlash
Story by Ben Blanchet • Friday, April 28, 2023
Dylan Mulvaney said she (sic) has struggled to understand “the need to dehumanize and be cruel” following right-wing outrage over her partnership with Bud Light earlier this month. . . . .
Mulvaney, in her (sic) first TikTok in roughly three weeks, said some of what’s “been said” about her (sic) has been far from the truth and revealed that she’s been “having crazy deja vu” after facing criticism.
“I’m an adult, I’m 26 and throughout childhood I was called too feminine and over-the-top and here I am now being called all those same things but this time it’s from other adults,” said Mulvaney, who later quipped that she (sic) should be accused of being a theater person who is camp.
Well, that last is true enough: he is a “theater person who is ‘camp’.” His schtick is over-the-top campiness, and a total parody of how real girls act, yet he doesn’t seem to see how the whole thing makes him wholly unbelievable, and actually hurts people who are ‘transgender’ and are simply trying to fit in to society as they see themselves. Making a spectacle of yourself hardly seems to be trying to fit in.
If that’s all it was, no one would really care. But the left are pushing laws which require other people to go along with a ‘transgendered’ person’s faux name and requested pronouns and honorifics, some of which have passed, subjecting employers to hostile workplace violations if an employee refuses to lie about another employee’s sex, and can even fine businesses if an employee ‘misgenders’ or ‘deadnames’ a customer.
Translation: at least in New York City, the truth will set you free . . . from your job.
As Erick Erickson put it, “You will be made to care.”
We have previously reported how the Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy newspaper, follows the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, and refrains from publishing the photos of black suspects and convicted criminals, and does not refer to race in its criminal reports, though somehow, photos of accused criminals who are white manage to make it into the newspaper.
So, imagine my surprise when reporters Taylor Six and Aaron Mudd wrote this line:
Connor Sturgeon, a white male who police said was live-streaming the shooting, was a former employee at Old National Bank, the site of Monday morning’s shooting.
Naturally, I took the screen shot of the sentence, before it vanishes into the ether.
Authorities identify former Old National Bank employee as Louisville shooter
by Taylor Six and Aaron Mudd | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 4:10 PM EDT | Updated: 9:52 PM EDT
Louisville Metro Police have identified a 25-year-old man as the shooter who killed five people and injured several others before he was fatally shot by police at a downtown bank Monday morning.
Connor Sturgeon, a white male who police said was live-streaming the shooting, was a former employee at Old National Bank, the site of Monday morning’s shooting.
The new details emerged during a Monday afternoon press conference attended by city officials and Gov. Andy Beshear, who said he’d lost a close friend in the shooting.
According to police, officers were dispatched to Old National Bank Monday morning for reports of an active shooter. When they arrived, the shooting was ongoing, but the shooter was reported dead soon after.
Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel named him Monday afternoon during a press conference. She said Sturgeon was formerly an employee with Old National Bank and assumed he was a Louisville resident.
According to the police chief, Sturgeon was killed by police gunfire. He was reported to have used a “rifle,” although police did not specifically state what type.
There’s a little more at the original, but nothing that hasn’t been all over the news. The story mentions that the killer was a “former” employee of the bank, but does not state what several other sources have, that he was discharged by the bank.
Naturally, the Herald-Leader’s primary columnist wants gun control:
After Louisville shooting, it’s time to get out our bullhorns. We’re sick of gun deaths. | Opinion
by Linda Blackford | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 12:28 PM EDT
Have we had enough yet?
Exactly two weeks after a deranged shooter killed six people in Nashville, three of them precious, innocent children, a deranged shooter killed four people in Louisville (the shooter also died), and sent eight more to the hospital.
There have been 131 mass shootings — defined as more than four people dead or injured — THIS YEAR alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Almost 10,000 people have died from guns since Jan. 1.Also see: William Teach, “Gun Grabbers Push Gun Grabbing Immediately After Leftist Nutjob Kills People“
Today made 132. The archive updated its numbers as police gave their final reports.
A tsunami of “thoughts and prayers” from politicians will now roll down, hoping to drown us in distraction from the fact that they could stop this if they wanted to.
If we made them.
After several more paragraphs blaming “the guns,” Mrs Blackford comes up with a statement she has made before, and one she knows is a lie:
But once again, gerrymandered political districts do not represent the will of the people, who are sick of seeing people, children, die for nothing but a perverted misunderstanding of our founding fathers.
“Gerrymandered”? In 2020, Republicans dramatically increased their number of seats in the Kentucky General Assembly, from 61-39 in the state House of Representatives to 75-25, and in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8. But those gains happened under the district lines passed following the 2010 Census, when Democrats controlled the state House, and a Democrat was Governor. Republicans did not take over control of teh state House until after the 2016 elections; they did previously control the state Senate, including prior to the reapportionment.
Republicans did increase their seats in the 2022 election, up to 80-20 in the House and 31-7 in the Senate. Interestingly enough, the Democrats never even fielded candidates in 44 of the House districts, so there was no way they could even think about regaining control. In my own district, no serious Democrat ran in the primary, and a perennial kook candidate won the nomination, a candidate so bad that the state Democratic Party disavowed him.
Is there gerrymandering? In 2020, President Trump received 1,326,646 votes from Kentuckians, 62.09% of the total, while Joe Biden got only 772,474, or 36.15%. President Teump carried 118 out of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties, losing only Jefferson (Louisville) and Fayette (Lexington). In the same election, Senator Mitch McConnell won 1,233,315 votes, 57.76%, while his well-funded Democrat opponent, Amy McGrath Henderson received only 816,257, 38.23%. Mrs Henderson carried only three counties, Jefferson, Fayette, and Franklin, which included the state capitol of Frankfort.
In 2022, Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican, won 913,326 votes, 61.80%, to Democrat Charles Booker’s 564,311 votes, 38.19%.
Those were statewide elections, which means there was no gerrymandering possible. Mrs Blackford might argue gerrymandering at the margins of the 2022 General Assembly races, but a difference of two or three would hardly matter against the GOP’s overwhelming majorities.
Mrs Blackford called the Commonwealth’s gun laws “a perverted misunderstanding of our founding fathers,” but that completely ignores history. When what became the Second Amendment was written, it was by the generation which had just won a revolution against Great Britain. In 1775, the military Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Gage, had ordered gun control himself, ordering the confiscation of firearms and ammunition from the wretched colonials. It was to seize reported storehouses of gunpowder and ammunition that General Gage sent the redcoats to Lexington and Concord, resulting in the shot heard ’round the world, and the first battles in our revolution. Does Mrs Blackford seriously believe that the revolutionaries who began that war fighting against gun control by the British would not have meant for individuals to have the right to keep and bear arms.
In 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, many Americans lived on or very near the frontier. Does Mrs Blackford believe that the “founding fathers” would have thought the government could ban individuals from owning firearms when they had to hunt for game to put meat on the table, and be able to defend themselves from the Indian tribes? Does Mrs Blackford believe that when her home state of Kentucky was settled by white families, that the “founding fathers” would have believed it acceptable for the government to have the authority to ban individual ownership of firearms when the settlers needed to hunt for food and defend themselves from the Cherokee and Shawnee Indians who already lived here?
There were no telephones in the late 18th century, and homesteads could be pretty far apart. There were no police departments on the frontier. The first organized, publicly-funded professional full-time police forces in the United States were established in Boston in 1838, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854. If a bad guy was raiding a homestead, would the “founding fathers” have thought that the government could ban the private ownership of firearms by individuals, leaving them unable to defend themselves?
Mrs Blackford’s biography says that she “writes columns and commentary for the Herald-Leader. She has covered K-12, higher education and other topics for the past 20 years at the Herald-Leader.” Twenty years, huh? That means entirely in the 21st century, on computers and word processors, exercising her freedom of speech and of the press via giant printing presses and an internet which allows distribution of her words widely across the Herald-Leader’s service area, which is central and eastern Kentucky, and even around the world if someone chooses to search. These are certainly things of which the “founding fathers’ had no concept! If we were to accept the columnist’s ideas that the “founding fathers” certainly never meant for the Second Amendment to cover what it covers today, then wouldn’t we also have to say that the First Amendment does not cover more than a megaphone or a hand-set newspaper printed entirely by manual labor?
We have previously documented the newspaper’s endorsement history, and how the voters of the sixth congressional district and the commonwealth as a whole almost always vote the opposite from how what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal want.
When I moved away from the Bluegrass State at the end of 1984, the Herald-Leader was a broadsheet publication, and if not the size of Louisville’s Courier-Journal or The Philadelphia Inquirer, still a reasonable newspaper for central and eastern Kentucky. I used to deliver the old morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, and when I returned to the Bluegrass State in 2017, I could see just how far downhill the newspaper had gone. Just a few pages, no longer a broadsheet, and visibly on its last legs. That, too, is freedom of speech and of the press, as, presented with the other news alternatives of television and radio and the internet, the people of the newspaper’s service area have chosen against it.
Perhaps that is why Mrs Blackford personally, and the newspaper’s editors in general, have lost touch with what used to be their service area. They now reflect only the opinions of the state’s second-largest city, and while it’s a significant voting block, it isn’t the majority of even the sixth congressional district. Mrs Blackford may blame it all on gerrymandering, but it’s the newspaper and her which are out of touch with Kentuckians, not the state legislature.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.
My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her, but people can become good friends over Twitter these days — Christine Flowers says, in her Twitter biography, that she has an “open carry permit for (her) assault rosary.” That was a mocking reference to an article by Daniel Panneton in The Atlantic, originally entitled “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol“, about which I have previously written.
The Atlantic got plenty of pushback about it, and twice changed the article headline and subheading — the title “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary: The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement” isn’t shown in the screen captures tweeted by Taylor Marshall — imaged to the left, but the internet is forever.
And now we find out that some in the federal government, specifically the FBI, see Catholics, at least some Catholics, as evil subversives. From National Review:
FBI Internal Memo Warns against ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’
by Brittany Bernstein | Wednesday, February 8, 2023 | 5:14 PM EST
The FBI’s Richmond field office released an internal memo last month warning against “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology,” and claiming it “almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities,” according to a document shared by an FBI whistleblower on Wednesday.
Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com. Continue reading
My copy of Mein Kampf.
Have you ever read Mein Kampf? I have, and I even own a copy. I also own copies of The Communist Manifesto, several of Vladlimr Il’ich Lenin’s pre-revolutionary works, the Q’ran, the Book of Mormon, and the old Lancer Books twelve paperback volume set of Conan stories. The fact that I own and have read some wildly contradictory books does not mean that I accept any or some of them as gospel; it means that I have read books.
My copy of Mein Kampf is an English translation by Ralph Manheim, copyrighted in 1943 by the Houghton Mifflin Company.
Adolf Hitler did not actually write the book. Rather, he paced around his cell in Landsberg am Lech prison, more making speeches, as oratory was his particular skill, than dictating it, to Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice. As a result of this, Herr Hitler’s relatively uneducated German, and the difficulties in really translating German into English, it’s a hard slog of a read.
Nevertheless, it was a work of dynamic historical importance. But, history or not, it appears that some on the left are highly, highly! offended that someone would read it.
Report: Stanford student may need to ‘take accountability,’ ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’
It looks to be a case study in how bias reporting systems chill speech. We’re seeking information and accountability from Stanford.
by Graham Piro and Alex Morey Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Reading a book on a college campus should not prompt formal administrative intervention. But that’s what’s reportedly happening at Stanford University this week, after a photo of a student reading Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” circulated on campus last Friday.
The Stanford Daily said over the weekend that administrators were working “swiftly” with the students involved to “address” the incident. Two campus rabbis emailed Jewish students saying administrators “are in ongoing conversation with the individuals involved, who are committed to and actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair.”
Stanford was reportedly alerted to the book-reading via its Protected Identity Harm reporting system. Effectively a bias response system, Stanford says PIH reports help the university “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.”
In other words, a Special Snowflake™ say another student reading a copy of Mein Kampf and reported it to the University! His precious little feelings were hurted.
The PIH is “not a judicial or investigative process,” the Office of Student Affairs carefully notes in bold, before (properly) carving out exceptions for hate crimes and unlawful discrimination or harassment. “We hope to provide a path to resolution for the affected individuals or communities who need to heal” by having the students participate in one of a “menu” of exercises like “mediated conversations, restorative justice sessions, or Indigenous circle practices,” to “help move towards resolution.”
Because college students should not have to report to university authorities for merely reading a book — one, by the way, that has been required reading in at least one recent Stanford humanities class and is available to borrow from the university library — FIRE asked Stanford today to provide additional clarity about the way it handles these kinds of “harm” reports on campus.
Stanford defines a PIH Incident as “conduct or an incident that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group” on the basis of actual or perceived characteristics like race, religion, or marital status. Yet, it acknowledges such conduct does not necessarily violate its harassment or discrimination policies that, quite rightly, already prohibit such unlawful conduct. What purpose does this separate process serve, then?
There’s more at the original.
There is at least a possibility that this was some sort of set-up, to expose the idiocy of Stanford’s system. That two “campus rabbis” were participating in this seems suspect to me, because such a system, if it can punish or intimidate students from reading Mein Kampf, could also be used, on a campus where so many students support the Palestinians, to report a student reading Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State.
But set-up or not, the fact that it has worked to expose the idiocy of the University’s system demonstrates that idiocy.
University spokesperson Dee Mostofi confirmed that the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORL) became aware of this incident on Saturday. Mostofi added that the two offices, along with Stanford’s Hillel chapter, are working with the leaders of the residence that the students belong to address the social media post and its impact on the community.
“Swift action was taken by the leadership in the residential community where both the individuals who posted and the one pictured are members,” (Rabbi Jessica) Kirschner and (Rabbi Laurie) Hahn Tapper wrote. Student Affairs and ORL are actively working with students involved to address the issue and mend relationships in the community.
“It can be upsetting to hear about incidents like this,” Kirschner and Hahn Tapper wrote. “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.”
At some point, the students who got their precious little feelings hurt are going to have to leave the University and enter the working world, and won’t that be a shock for them!
Yeah, this still has the hallmarks of a set-up, but if it is, it’s a set-up that revealed real problems.
While Abteilung für Vaterländische Sicherheit is a more literal translation of Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, perhaps Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Reich Main Security Office, would be a more accurate one. And Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, frequently shortened to Propagandaministerium, was at least more honest than the ‘official’ name for Herr Biden’s Ministry of Truth, the ‘Disinformation Governance Board.’ As we hear about the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security and its new Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board, now we get this story, from The Wall Street Journal:
FBI Conducted Potentially Millions of Searches of Americans’ Data Last Year, Report Says
Searches in national-security investigations came without warrants, could stoke privacy concerns in Congress
by Dustin Volz | Friday, April 29, 2022 | 6:22 PM EDT
WASHINGTON—The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed potentially millions of searches of American electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, a revelation likely to stoke longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy.Also see: William Teach: FBI Conducted Almost 3.4 Million Warrantless “Wiretaps” In 2021, Media Mostly Silent
An annual report published Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed that the FBI conducted as many as 3.4 million searches of U.S. data that had been previously collected by the National Security Agency.
Senior Biden administration officials said the actual number of searches is likely far lower, citing complexities in counting and sorting foreign data from U.S. data. It couldn’t be learned from the report how many Americans’ data was examined by the FBI under the program, though officials said it was also almost certainly a much smaller number.
The report doesn’t allege the FBI was routinely searching American data improperly or illegally.
Well, no, but then again, it wouldn’t.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Various Supreme Court decisions, including Mapp v Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964), and Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963), have ‘incorporated,’ or applied the Fourth Amendment to state action as well. We take our constitutional rights seriously, but in its ever-expanding attempts to protect the United States, federal law has been gradually chipping away at those rights. And while the disclosure noted by the Journal occurred entirely under the Biden Administration, it has to be admitted that it has happened under Republican presidents as well. Remember: the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security was created under the younger President Bush following the September 11 attacks.
It was when the creation of that cabinet department was proposed that a very liberal friend of mine was calling it the Department of Fatherland Security. I gave it some credence, despite the fact he was pretty much a nutcase when it came to blaming the Bush family for everything bad under the sun.[1]The first World Trade Center bombing, she said, was aimed at the elder President Bush, even though he had already been defeated for re-election and left office, while the second was aimed at the … Continue reading
The disclosure of the searches marks the first time a U.S. intelligence agency has published an accounting, however imprecise, of the FBI’s grabs of American data through a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that governs some foreign intelligence gathering. The section of FISA that authorizes the FBI’s activity, known as Section 702, is due to expire next year.
While the ODNI report doesn’t suggest systemic problems with the searches, judges have previously reprimanded the bureau for failing to comply with privacy rules. Officials said the FBI’s searches were vital to its mission to protect the U.S. from national-security threats. The frequency of other forms of national-security surveillance detailed in the annual report generally fell year over year, in some cases continuing a multiyear trend.
The 3.4 million figure “is certainly a large number,” a senior FBI official said in a press briefing Friday on the report. “I am not going to pretend that it isn’t.” . . . .
Congress last renewed Section 702 in 2018, and then-President Donald Trump signed the renewal into law after openly questioning the measure over unsubstantiated concerns that it was used to spy on his presidential campaign. It is set to expire again at the end of next year, and current and former intelligence officials have said they anticipate a bruising political battle.
At some point, a point I think has not only been reached, but passed, we need to start realizing that yes, there could be increased danger to our national security, but that the endangerment of our constitutional rights is a far, far, far greater threat to Americans than attacks from foreign governments or terrorist organizations. President Clinton was overly concerned about going after Osama bin Laden might somehow violate international law without the proper gathering of evidence first, to the point at which then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright insisted that Pakistan, the government of which was rife with Taliban sympathizers, had to be notified about a cruise missile overflight in the attempt to destroy Mr bin Laden and his associated in a campground in Afghanistan. The attack went ahead, but the al Qaeda leaders had left the scene hours before.
Yet since that time, we’ve created federal bureaucracies which trample upon our constitutional rights in attempts to protect our nation against outsiders. Is it really worth it to protect America if we have to cease being America to do so?
Section 702 should not be renewed, and we have to find some other way, even if it risks being less efficient, to protect the United States. Mr Biden’s Ministry of Truth should not be allowed, or funded.
References
| ↑1 | The first World Trade Center bombing, she said, was aimed at the elder President Bush, even though he had already been defeated for re-election and left office, while the second was aimed at the younger President Bush, even though the planning and preparation for it had begun while Bill Clinton was President, and Al Gore was favored to win the 2000 election. |
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While the famous Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), is more famously associated with the Times, The Washington Post was heavily involved as well. The petitioners argued that the government trying to prohibit “publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country” was wholly wrong and a violation of the First Amendment, a position with which the Supreme Court agreed.
But now it seems that the very same Washington Post doesn’t like it when another privately owned company might choose to publish things with which the Post disagrees:
By Ellen K. Pao[1]Ellen K. Pao is a tech investor and advocate, the former CEO of reddit, and a cofounder and CEO of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include. | Friday, April 8, 2022 | 11:42 AM EDT
Ellen K Pao, screen capture from her website.
Musk has been open about his preference that Twitter do less to restrict speech that many see as hateful, abusive or dangerous. Given his new influence, the way he himself has used the platform bodes ill for its future. Musk paid $20 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and stepped down as Tesla’s chairman, after tweeting what the SEC said was misleading information about a potential transaction to take the company private; the settlement also required that any Musk tweets about the company’s finance be reviewed by lawyers. (He continues to flout SEC rules, failing to notify the agency immediately last month when he passed the threshold of owning 5 percent of Twitter’s shares. The 11-day delay in that declaration may have netted him $156 million, experts say — since shares shot up after investors learned of his purchases.)
On nonfinancial subjects, Musk, who has nearly 81 million followers, often punches down in his tweets, displaying very little empathy. He called a British caver who helped to rescue trapped young Thai divers “a pedo guy” (beating a defamation suit over the slur but adding to his reputation as a bully). In February, he tweeted, then deleted, a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
Let’s be truthful here: a lot of Twitter users compared Mr Trudeau to der Führer! The Prime Minister’s use of arbitrary and dictatorial orders to fight COVID-19 and to stifle protest aren’t exactly the actions one would normally attribute to a free and democratic government.
After a couple more paragraphs in which the author tells us what a scumbag Mr Musk is – and I am not a fan of Mr Musk myself – we get to this:
No one sees everything on Twitter; people see the tweets of those they follow, or tweets to which one of their followers responds or likes or retweets. But it’s simple: if Miss Pao thinks that “the loudest, most extreme and hateful voices win, (and are) driving others off the platforms,” then Twitter might lose users and the company lose value; Mr Musk has bet against that, and it is his money!
Of course, Twitter has, itself, driven off users, through its censorship of conservative views.
The Post itself did not say what Miss Pao wrote; the editors simply provided space for her to express her view independently. But one has to wonder: just how closely do the views of the editors of the Post adhere to Miss Pao’s opinion?
The New York Times, that paragon of freedom of speech and of the press, published OpEds celebrating Twitter’s banning of “misgendering” and “deadnaming” of transgender individuals, and even an OpEd entitled “Free Speech Is Killing Us. ”
The revolution which began with Rush Limbaugh and continued with the internet, and the ability of anyone to express his views more widely, ended the gatekeeping functions of the editors, and that’s something they just cannot stand. Now, anyone can say anything, without an editor to censor him. Twitter is, of course, the largest self publishing medium in the world, and now we have a part owner and board member who wants to issue less editorial restraint on users, and the credentialed media really, really, really don’t like that. Heaven forfend! Donald Trump might be allowed back on Twitter!
Freedom of speech and of the press is harmful, Miss Pao has just said. That she used her freedom of speech, and the Post’s freedom of the press to disseminate her view on the subject seems not to have occurred to her, or, if it did, she thought that what she said ought to be acceptable, and not deserving of censorship, or criticism.
Miss Pao, a child of privilege — her mother a researcher, her father a math professor, who was able to matriculate at Princeton, and, following that, go straight to Harvard Law School — is very, very concerned about “women and members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups,” sued — and lost! — a sex discrimination lawsuit against her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, yet, in an article attacking “incels,” or the “involuntarily celibate,” The Perverse Incentives That Help Incels Thrive in Tech, which she has linked on the main page of her website, she wrote, “We cannot allow employees to mobilize identity-based intolerance, much less against their own coworkers,” and yet she just attacked “the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries,” certainly identity-based intolerance on her part.
I get it: Miss Pao, specifically, and much of the left in general, do not like freedom of speech and freedom of the press when people of whom they do not approve use their First Amendment rights to express views to which the left are opposed.
References
| ↑1 | Ellen K. Pao is a tech investor and advocate, the former CEO of reddit, and a cofounder and CEO of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include. |
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We recently noted the Most Reverend John Stowe, OFM Conv., and his move which banned unvaccinated priests of the Diocese of Lexington from making visits to home or hospital-bound parishioners. The Bishop, has just said that such priests cannot visit the sick and the homebound, which, in effect, denies the sacraments to some ill or elderly parishioners who might want and need them. While, technically, a vaccinated priest from another parish could fill in, the Diocese is very large, and has relatively few priests to cover the area.
But at least Bishop Stowe did not ban actually ban people from receiving the sacraments, even if he did make it more difficult for some ill and elderly parishioners.
By Kevin J. Jones | Denver Newsroom | September 18, 2021 | 10:48 PM MDT
Anyone age 12 or over attending a gathering at Catholic churches, rectories or community centers under the responsibility of the Archdiocese of Moncton must present proof that they are fully vaccinated, the archdiocese announced Friday.
The new policy applies to all religious celebrations, Sunday and weekday Masses, baptisms, wedding and funerals, parish and pastoral meetings, catechesis, and social meetings.
The archdiocese’s announcement comes in the wake of new provincial government rules set to take effect Tuesday requiring proof of vaccination to access certain events, services, and businesses. Fewer than 50 people have died from COVID-19 in the province of New Brunswick since the pandemic began, out of a total population of more than 780,000, according to government statistics. But provincial officials say they are concerned about a recent uptick in cases and hospitalizations.
The New Brunswick rules apply to those 12 and older seeking to attend “indoor organized gatherings,” including weddings, funerals, conferences, workshops and parties, excepting parties at a private dwelling.
There’s more at the original, but this shows why our First Amendment is so necessary: in New Brunswick, a province of Canada, freedom of religion is not protected from government interference, and the provincial Minister of Health ordered the Archbishop of Moncton to deny the sacraments to all Canadians in the archdiocese if those Canadians have not been vaccinated. Not only that, the Church has to be the policeman for these orders, and the Archbishop indicated that, after compiling lists of those who provide proof of vaccination, that “list may eventually be requested by the government.”
There’s a lot of internet talk blaming the Archbishop, but we don’t know how hard he fought against this. His letter to parishioners is long, so I’ve copied it as a footnote.[1]Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus, The provincial Minister of Health, Ms. Shephard, met with religious leaders in the province following the announcement of new measures regarding the … Continue reading Quite frankly, if this happened in Kentucky, I would not be at all surprised if Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) “requested” such lists as well. Fascists just love to keep tabs on the people.
In my home state, Governor Beshear ordered all churches closed in March of 2020. It took too long, but at least a federal judge overturned his order, and the Governor did not appeal it. In New Brunswick, the provincial government apparently has the authority to dictate to a Roman Catholic Archbishop how he can conduct his religion, ordering him, and the priests of his archdiocese, not to administer the sacraments to anyone who isn’t vaccinated. That means: no marriages, no Reconciliation, no Eucharist, no Anointing of the Sick, nothing, unless those parishioners have knuckled under and taken the jab.
The left, of course, want to weaken our First Amendment, want to restrict speech because some people’s precious little feelings have gotten hurt. Governor Beshear wasn’t the only Democrat state Governor who tried to restrict religion; restrictions were placed on church services in California and New York, among other places.
Today’s left believe that the state trumps religion, and for them, I’m sure it does, but for normal people, it does not and should not.
These are things we have to fight! Given an inch, the left will take miles and miles and miles.
References
| ↑1 | Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus,
The provincial Minister of Health, Ms. Shephard, met with religious leaders in the province following the announcement of new measures regarding the pandemic. While explaining new guidelines, she indicated that they had only one goal: to increase the rate of people fully vaccinated in the province (two doses). Vaccination remains the best way to counter the spread of the Delta virus and protect the population (especially the unvaccinated). The government is looking for a vaccination rate of around 90%. The minister made it clear to us that she does not require masks, sanitizing, or social distancing at our gatherings. These measures remain at the discretion of individuals. Instead, she wishes to have gatherings of fully vaccinated people to keep people safe and to act as an incentive for the unvaccinated. That is why going back to past health measures (mask, sanitizing, and social distancing) as a way to include unvaccinated people at our gatherings is not the measure promoted by the government. Therefore, beginning Wednesday Sep 22nd, at any gathering inside our churches, rectories or community centres under our supervision, those present must be doubly vaccinated.
How can these measures be put in place?
Questions: Can we still accept a person who is not vaccinated or has a single dose inside our facilities for a celebration or a meeting? Even with a mask and social distancing? We ask you to implement these new measures in each of your Christian communities not only to respect the government’s request but above all to help stop the spread of the virus among our population. We would not want one of our places of worship to be the location of a COVID exposure due to our negligence. The Minister of Health is counting on our cooperation. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us so that we can help you implement these new measures. I thank you in advance for all the efforts it requires to put in place this new protocol.May the Lord bless us and continue to watch over us. Mgr Valery Vienneau. |
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We have noted, over and over and over again, that the various actions of state Governors and big city Mayors have been violations of our First Amendment rights of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion.
Well, now Oberbürgermeister Bill de Blasio (NSDAP-New York City) has decided that that isn’t enough, and now he’s going to violate your Fourth Amendment rights as well:
DE BLASIO: "We're going to have sheriff's deputies go to the home or the hotel of every single traveler coming in from the UK."
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 23, 2020
The Fourth Amendment provides that:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Under Katz v United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment protected anyplace in which a subject had a reasonable expectation of privacy. If the Oberbürgermeister sends the sheriff’s deputies to anyplace the subject of the visit has a reasonable expectation of privacy, which would seem to include “the home or the hotel of every single traveler coming in from the UK,” those deputies are all going to need warrants.
Note that some people traveling to the New York City from the United Kingdom will be American citizens.
Does travel from one country to another constitute probable cause? Can a city or state impose regulations against free travel from another country, or is that solely a federal power?
Remember how the left were complaining that President Trump was an authoritarian fascist? Well, it isn’t President Trump threatening to send in the gendarmerie to everyone’s home.
