Tag Archives: #FreedomofAssembly

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Once again, the government is targeting religion during Easter Government has turned attending church into an act of political defiance as well as one or religious faith

St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, where I attend Mass

On March 19, 2020 Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) unconstitutionally ordered all churches closed in the Bluegrass State. That order covered the Easter holiday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. When a couple of churches ignored the Governor’s order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday!

Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

Then, on July 24, 2020, he asked church leaders to suspend services for two Sundays, which most declined to do, and again on November 19th made another request that churches close, for “three or four weeks,” a request that would have taken them through Thanksgiving. Fortunately, that request was denied as well.

Now comes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and as Easter Sunday comes this weekend, the purportedly Catholic President Biden’s CDC wants us to miss Easter again:

Safer Ways to Observe Religious Holidays

Attending gatherings to observe religious and spiritual holidays increases your risk of getting and spreading COVID-19. The safest way to observe religious and spiritual holidays this year is to gather virtually, with people who live with you, or outside and at least 6 feet apart from others.

  • Enjoy traditional meals with those who live with you.
  • Practice religious holiday customs at home.
  • Prepare and deliver a meal to a neighbor.
  • Watch virtual religious and cultural performances.
  • Attend religious ceremonies virtually.

If you plan to celebrate with others, outdoors is safer than indoors.

With COVID-19 cases seeing a slight uptick again, I have to wonder if Governor Beshear will try similar stupidity.

Our country was founded in part on religious freedom; my earliest American ancestor, Richard Warren, risked death on stormy North Atlantic seas, to come to a savage and untamed continent on the Mayflower. The idea that the government can restrict our freedom of religion is wholly repugnant, but Governor Beshear got away with it for almost two months, and while his orders were invalidated, he incurred no punishment or penalty for it.

I was a pretty regular attendee at Mass before the unconstitutional shutdowns, but ever since we were so graciously allowed to return to church, I haven’t missed a single Sunday. Our repugnant Governor has managed to turn attending church into an act of political defiance as well as a religious observance.[1]Sadly, while the Governor’s orders were declared unconstitutional on May 8, the Governor had already issued guidelines for churches to reopen on May 20, 2020, and John Stowe, Bishop of … Continue reading

That should not be a good thing, but it is: we can, and should, and must show our defiance to the Democrats in power by attending church. Not just this coming Sunday, not just Easter, but on every Sunday. Faith in God is the most important thing in life, but the resistance of tyranny is a close second.

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↑1 Sadly, while the Governor’s orders were declared unconstitutional on May 8, the Governor had already issued guidelines for churches to reopen on May 20, 2020, and John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington, went along with the Governor and did not allow the churches of his diocese to resume services until Sunday, May 24.
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LOL! A group calling itself Refuse Fascism actually advocates fascism, in seeking to deny the right of the accused to counsel But the left have always had an authoritarian streak to themselves; leftism and liberty are mutually exclusive

The left, so many of whom want to defund the police and emasculate law enforcement, will tell you that everyone deserves an attorney who will vigorously defend them in court.

Unless, of course, the defendant is Donald Trump. Then there’s Hell to pay! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

From laughs over ‘Philly-delphia’ to vandalism at home, Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen draws backlash

by Jeremy Roebuck | February 13, 2021- 6:53 PM

Philadelphia attorney Michael T. van der Veen has taken a starring role in Donald Trump’s impeachment defense over the last two days — but he’s also incurred backlash.

Vandals smashed windows and spray-painted “TRAITOR” on the driveway of his suburban Philadelphia home Friday night, after he spent hours on the Senate floor hurling partisan invective and testily condemning the former president’s second impeachment trial as “constitutional cancel culture.”

A group of demonstrators with the group Refuse Fascism gathered outside his Center City law office chanting, “When van der Veen lies, what do you do? Convict. Convict.”

There’s more at the original. Another article from the Inquirer noted:

Michael van der Veen hired 24-hour private security for his family after vandals smashed windows and spray-painted “TRAITOR” on the driveway of his suburban Philadelphia home Friday night. He told reporters Saturday he received more than 100 death threats.

And they acknowledged being caught off guard by the level of rancor from Trump’s critics and supporters alike — even given the country’s fiercely divided politics and how other lawyers in his orbit have fared.

“I’ve been representing controversial clients for 30 years, and I’ve never experienced this type of vitriol,” said William J. Brennan, another local member of the team whose past clients include priests accused of sexual abuse and judges facing corruption charges. “We had no political agenda here. We are not partisan warriors. We are criminal defense lawyers who represented a client.”

So far, the Editorial Board has been silent, not condemning the attacks on President Trump’s defense lawyers, but, given the state of the #woke dominating the newsroom and the lack of actual journalism from the Inquirer, I wouldn’t be surprised if the editors remained silent.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees that anyone acused of a crime has the “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”

The hand-written copy of the proposed Bill of Rights, 1789, cropped to show the text that would later be ratified as the Sixth Amendment. Click to enlarge.

But, apparently the oh-so-tolerant left don’t believe in the Sixth Amendment and the right of the accused to defend himself and have the assistance of counsel. members of the laughably named Refuse Fascism group demonstrated outside of Mr van der Veen’s office:

Refuse Fascism has a logo as part of their Twitter biography, telling us that, “In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse To Accept a Fascist America!” But what would be more fascist than not allowing an accused defendant to have an attorney to defend himself?

This was their tweet:

Of course, were one of the members of Refuse Fascism arrested, he’d be screaming, “Lawyer! Lawyer! Lawyer!” at the top of his lungs.

In American history, we are taught that patriot John Adams served as counsel for the defense in the trial of eight British soldiers accused of murder during a riot in Boston on March 5, 1770, what was called the Boston Massacre, and he won acquittals.

Before we had our independence, before we had our Constitution and the Sixth Amendment, Mr Adams, passionate advocate of freedom, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and second President of the United States, took on the unpopular cause of defending those British soldiers, because he believed that every man deserves a defense, every man has a right to a defense.

That lesson seems to have been lost on the members of Refuse Fascism. Rather, in protesting the attorneys representing President Trump, they are protesting the right to counsel. They are not refusing fascism, but advocating it.

Of course, Refuse Fascism has an absolute right to assemble and advocate anything they wish. But I, too, have the freedom of speech, and the right to point out that Refuse Fascism is itself advocating fascist behavior.

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One does not “err” on the side of supporting religious freedom; one errs if he does not support religious freedom! Andy Beshear has made going to church a political as well as religious act

Should I dishonor the courage of my ancestors by blithely accepting the religious restrictions unconstitutionally placed on us by callous state Governors, over a disease from which 98% of people recover?

Richard Warren left his family, his wife and children, in England, as he boarded the Mayflower, to brave a sea voyage to a hostile and unknown continent, due to the religious oppression under King James I. “James was strict in enforcing conformity at first, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans . . . .” The voyage had its hazards, as the Mayflower’s sister-ship, Speedwell were greatly delayed in departure:

Carrying about 65 passengers, the Mayflower left London in mid-July 1620.[13] The ship then proceeded down the Thames to the south coast of England, where it anchored at Southampton, Hampshire. There she waited for the planned rendezvous on July 22 with the Speedwell, coming from Holland with members of the Leiden congregation.[8] Although both ships planned to depart for America by the end of July, a leak was discovered on the Speedwell, which had to be repaired.[14]

The ships set sail for America around August 5, but Speedwell sprang another leak shortly after, which necessitated the ships’ return to Dartmouth for repairs. They made a new start after the repairs, but more than 200 miles (320 km) beyond Land’s End at the southwestern tip of England, the Speedwell sprang a third leak. It was now early September, and they had no choice but to abandon Speedwell and make a determination on her passengers. This was a dire event, as vital funds had been wasted on the ship, which were considered very important to the future success of their settlement in America. Both ships returned to Plymouth, where twenty Speedwell passengers joined the now overcrowded Mayflower, while the others returned to Holland.[15]

They waited for seven more days until the wind picked up. William Bradford was especially worried: “We lie here waiting for as fair a wind as can blow… Our victuals will be half eaten up, I think, before we go from the coast of England; and, if our voyage last long, we shall not have a month’s victuals when we come in the country.”[16]:343 According to Bradford, Speedwell was refitted and seaworthy, having “made many voyages… to the great profit of her owners.” He suggested that Speedwell‘s master may have used “cunning and deceit” to abort the voyage by causing the leaks, fearing starvation and death in America.[17]:

Richard Warren, my first American ancestor, finally sent for his family in 1623, once the colony had become sufficiently safe and self-sustaining. He and his wife Elizabeth, my great(x9)-grandparents, risked their lives, with far, far greater chances of dying — half of the Mayflower settlers died within the first year — than COVID-19 has inflicted upon us, all for the freedom to worship God as they saw fit. Should I, twelve generations later, dishonor their courage, and the sacrifices of their friends and neighbors, by blithely accepting the religious restrictions unconstitutionally placed on us by callous state Governors, over a disease from which 98% of people recover?[1]One of my sisters tested positive for the virus a couple of months ago, but was mostly asymptomatic, and was again negative about ten days later.

I believe that it is wise to take precautions, and it is wise to take the vaccines when they become available.[2]Due to my age, 67, I am in Tier 1C, but while the local health department has me “on the list,” they have no idea when it will actually be available.

But taking precautions should be an individual decision, and the state should have no power, no authority, to suspend our constitutional rights to fight the disease.

I rarely missed Sunday Mass before the virus struck. But Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) unconstitutional suspension of our First Amendment rights, by ordering churches closed, has had the effect of making me much more militant when it comes to our constitutional rights. The Bishop of Lexington, John Stowe, went right along with the Governor, and ordered the priests of the diocese to close their parish churches. When the churches were finally reopened, starting on Sunday, May 24, 2020, I was right there to attend Mass, and I have not missed Sunday Mass since. Governor Beshear has, at least for me, added the political element of resisting authority, to going to church.[3]Actually, the Governor so graciously allowed churches to reopen on May 20th, which was a Wednesday.

From The Hill article cited in my initial tweet:

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is defending the controversial statements he made regarding coronavirus restrictions late last year, saying he “was not surprised by the reaction.”

In a USA Today article published on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Alito said the parts of his speech that drew controversy had been taken from his recent opinions, with some repeated verbatim.

“Virtually every substantive point in the Federalist Society speech was taken from one of my published opinions or an opinion I joined,” the justice, nominated by President George W. Bush, said in a statement to the newspaper.

During a speech to the Federalist Society in November, Alito said: “We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020.”

Alito at the time argued coronavirus restrictions had become a “constitutional stress test.” In particular, the justice bemoaned the effect that restrictions have had on religious events.

“I’m a judge, not a policymaker,” Alito told USA Today, adding that he was not criticizing policies, but pointing to the questions they raised.

It’s good to see a Supreme Court Justice who values the First Amendment, who at least partially understands that our freedom of religion is paramount. Sadly, the Justice seems to have gone along with some of the restrictions, as long as they have not been more onerous than those placed on other public events.

Governor Beshear had lifted his church closure order after a federal judge invalidated it, graciously ‘allowing’ churches to open again immediately, when he had planned to allow that starting on May 20, 2020. Sadly, Bishop Stowe did not allow his diocesan priests to open their parish churches until the date the Governor had previously selected. I have no doubt that the Governor would have ordered churches closed absent the previous ruling, in that he ‘asked’ all churches to to suspend all in-person gatherings at their churches for four Sundays, November 22nd through December 13th, a period which would have included Thanksgiving.

To me, the freedom of religion and the First Amendment in general are our most important liberties, the things which make the United States different from all other countries. Too many people, too many people! just blithely ignore our liberties, sheepishly nodding their heads when government tries to restrict our rights, because their reasons are oh-so-noble, oh-so-reasonable.

Well, I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as a ‘reasonable’ restriction on our rights. If they can be ‘reasonably’ restricted, then they aren’t rights anymore.

References

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↑1 One of my sisters tested positive for the virus a couple of months ago, but was mostly asymptomatic, and was again negative about ten days later.
↑2 Due to my age, 67, I am in Tier 1C, but while the local health department has me “on the list,” they have no idea when it will actually be available.
↑3 Actually, the Governor so graciously allowed churches to reopen on May 20th, which was a Wednesday.
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Guilt by Association Trumps Freedom of Speech and the Right of Peaceable Assembly Kentucky State Police Captain "reassigned" after attending Capitol Kerfuffle, even though he broke no laws himself

It’s not just those who stormed and entered the Capitol building itself who are being punished; some of those who attended the rally but broke no laws are being hammered as well.

Kentucky State Police’s Top Recruiter Reassigned For Attending D.C. Trump Rally

By Eleanor Klibanoff | February 5, 2021

Kentucky State Police Captain Michael Webb, from the KSP website.

The Kentucky State Police trooper who was reassigned after attending the Jan. 6 Trump rally in Washington, D.C., was the agency’s top recruiter.Capt. Michael Webb was reassigned on Jan. 8 from his position in the recruitment branch to the Inspections and Evaluations Branch, his personnel file shows.

A week after the rally, KSP issued a statement saying one trooper, who was not named, had been temporarily reassigned after attending on personal time with his family. When asked about Capt. Michael Webb’s assignment status, an agency spokesperson pointed back to that statement.

“KSP is reviewing the employee’s participation. It is the right thing to do to protect our nation, democracy, agency and all KSP employees,” said acting KSP commissioner Phillip Burnett Jr. in the statement. “This is the same review process our agency follows any time there is questionable activity involving any law enforcement personnel within our agency.”

Several people with ties to the agency who declined to be named confirmed Webb was reassigned for his attendance at the rally.

KSP’s statement said the trooper attended the rally but did not enter the U.S. Capitol, where rioters stormed the building while a joint session of Congress met to certify the election of President Joe Biden. Five people died, including a woman shot and killed by Capitol police and a Capitol police officer beaten by the mob. Documents and lecterns were stolen and dozens have been charged, including at least nine from Kentucky. Former President Donald Trump was impeached, for a second time, over his role in inciting the riot.

Note that: Captain Webb attended the rally, but even the Kentucky State Police say he did not enter the Capitol. He was, therefore, exercising his freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, but he’s being punished anyway.

Further down:

Brian Higgins, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former police chief of Bergen County, New Jersey, said law enforcement agencies are grappling with how to proceed.

He said officers have a right to participate in the political process, but any actions an officer takes, even off-duty, reflects on the agency.

“Law enforcement has really been under the microscope,” he said. “So if there was ever a time for a police officer to be cautious in his or her actions, now’s the time, because everybody’s watching.”

Let’s tell the truth here: had he been attending a #BlackLivesMatter rally while off-duty, one which turned violent and destructive but he was not a participant in the vandalism, nothing would have happened to him.

But Professor Higgins told the truth in one regard: “everybody’s watching.” The left are using every means at their disposal to find out who has political positions with which they disagree, and try to get back at them. As we noted yesterday, the left get upset even when Trump supporters do something nice for them.

Vida Johnson, a professor at Georgetown Law School and expert on white supremacy in policing, said it would be a mistake for law enforcement agencies to dismiss the rally at the Capitol as routine political activism. Even before the rally turned violent, she said, the goal was to challenge the validity of legally cast ballots and stop Congress from certifying the election. Many attendees wore white supremacist or Nazi regalia and carried Confederate flags.

You know that, when you cite someone as an “expert on white supremacy in policing,” you are telling us that she is hugely biased against the police. She stated that “many attendees” wore or carried symbols the left find offensive, but there is no indication, anywhere in the article, that Captain Webb “wore white supremacist or Nazi regalia” or “carried (a) Confederate flag.” There are no claims that he wore his KSP uniform or identified himself as a KSP officer. Apparently guilt by association trumps freedom of speech and the right of peaceable assembly.

The left claimed that President Trump was a horrible, horrible fascist, but it is the left who are censoring people and stomping on their rights.

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Are there no mirrors in the Biden Administration?

The much nicer, and better-looking, Dana commented, on Patterico’s Pontifications:

Boom:

The United States strongly condemns the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists this weekend in cities throughout Russia. Prior to today’s events, the Russian government sought to suppress the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression by harassing protest organizers, threatening social media platforms, and pre-emptively arresting potential participants. This follows years of tightening restrictions on and repressive actions against civil society, independent media, and the political opposition.

Continued efforts to suppress Russians’ rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, the arrest of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny, and the crackdown on protests that followed are troubling indications of further restrictions on civil society and fundamental freedoms. Russians’ rights to peaceful assembly and to participate in free and fair elections are enshrined not only in the country’s constitution, but also in Russia’s OSCE commitments, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in its international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We call on Russian authorities to release all those detained for exercising their universal rights and for the immediate and unconditional release of Aleksey Navalny. We urge Russia to fully cooperate with the international community’s investigation into the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny and credibly explain the use of a chemical weapon on its soil.

Putin now: Damn Navalny for surviving that poison!

Of course, in the good and noble United States, we would never try “to suppress the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression by harassing protest organizers, threatening social media platforms, and pre-emptively arresting potential participants.”

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Selling our birthrights for a mess of pottage

Don’t think that the American left don’t believe this! From Breitbart:

UK Police Chief: ‘Now Is Really Not the Time’ for Freedom of Speech, Right to Assembly

by Jack Montgomery | January 15, 2021

The chief constable of Dorset Police has urged lockdown protesters to accept that “now is really not the time” for freedom of speech and the right to assembly.

Chief Constable James Vaughan was speaking after the controversial arrest of two women for, seemingly, being recorded leaving home more than once and “sitting on a bench”, in an incident the police now allege was “stage-managed” by lockdown protesters, as one of the women is a Covid sceptic — although she denies any pre-planning.

“We appealed to them [the protesters] last weekend to say: ‘Look guys, we respect your right to freedom of speech and right to assembly but now is really not the time, it is too dangerous. Please don’t come, we have got other things we need to do,’” said the chief constable in comments to The Telegraph.

“Instead of giving us a break this weekend they decided to change their tactics and it just smacks of civil disobedience, really,” he complained, saying that he was “a bit angry and frustrated with these protesters on Saturday” and claiming that his officers “were acting with utter courtesy and restraint”.

Chief Constable Vaughan’s zero-tolerance attitude towards protesters differs markedly from that shown by British police leaders towards Black Lives Matter activists, who have been allowed to break lockdown rules largely unmolested throughout the pandemic — in part, London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted in June, because officers are afraid to enforce the law against them.

There’s more at the original. The Breitbart article is not behind a paywall, but their internal references to the UK Telegraph are.

The sad thing is that I’m seeing the same arguments from good American citizens, some of whom at least used to be conservatives. Several state Governors, including Andy Beshear (D-KY), Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Tom Wolf (D-PA) suspended our First Amendment right to peaceable assembly — except when it came to the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations last spring, summer and fall, with Governor Wolf actually joining one such demonstration, despite it breaking his own gathering rules — and our right to the free exercise of religion.

When Chief Constable Vaughan said, “we respect your right to freedom of speech and right to assembly but now is really not the time, it is too dangerous,” he was telling people that he did not respect their “right to freedom of speech and right to assembly,” not as much as he respected his own police power.

Her Majesty’s subjects do not, of course, have as strongly guaranteed rights as we have in the United States, but many, many Americans seem to have forgotten that we are free of the British Crown specifically because our ancestors came to these shores because their own rights, their own freedom of religion, was being stifled by the British Crown and the official Church of England, because our ancestors risked their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to fight for our freedom.

Esau Sells His Birthright for Pottage of Lentils, a 1728 engraving by Gerard Hoet.

Genesis 25:29 When Jacob had cooked a stew one day, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted; 30 and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a mouthful of that red stuff there, for I am exhausted.” Therefore he was called Edom by name. 31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” 33 And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore an oath to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and got up and went on his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

So many of our citizens are willing to sell their birthrights, as Americans, for their mess of pottage.

The Germans, free Germans, in free elections, sold their birthrights to Adolf Hitler, because times were tough. Free Venezuelans, even when times were not too tough, sold their freedoms to Hugo Chavez for the false promises of socialism, and now look where they are.

Freedom surrendered, rights given away, can be lost easily, but one must fight to get them back. It is better to bear the risks that come with retaining your rights than the death which can fall upon you in the struggle to regain them once lost.

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No, no attack on #FreedomOfSpeech at all! It isn't just 'insurrection' speech the left are trying to stifle

As we noted a few days earlier, Twitter hates Freedom of Speech. Parler is a Twitter-like message sharing board, created specifically because Twitter and Facebook had been censoring messages, primarily from conservatives. Oh, both services claimed that they were just keeping threats and violence off their services, but, as one might expect when the ‘judges’ of such things are almost entirely from the political left, messages from conservatives, and the banning of certain users, was heavily tilted against patriotic Americans. They deleted President Trump’s accounts, but the Twitter account of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is still active:

From The New York Times:

How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

The app has renewed a debate about who holds power over online speech after the tech giants yanked their support for it and left it fighting for survival. Parler went dark early on Monday.

By Jack Nicas and Davey Alba | Published January 10, 2021 | Updated January 11, 2021 | 3:21 AM EST

John Matze, chief executive of the alternative social networking app Parler, has said the app welcomes free speech. Credit…Fox News, via YouTube

From the start, John Matze had positioned Parler as a “free speech” social network where people could mostly say whatever they wanted. It was a bet that had recently paid off big as millions of President Trump’s supporters, fed up with what they deemed censorship on Facebook and Twitter, flocked to Parler instead.

On the app, which had become a top download on Apple’s App Store, discussions over politics had ramped up. But so had conspiracy theories that falsely said the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump, with users urging aggressive demonstrations last week when Congress met to certify the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Those calls for violence soon came back to haunt Mr. Matze, 27, a software engineer from Las Vegas and Parler’s chief executive. By Saturday night, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon said it would no longer host the site on its computing services, saying it had not sufficiently policed posts that incited violence and crime.

Early on Monday morning, just after midnight on the West Coast, Parler appeared to have gone offline.

Translation: Freedom of Speech, the raison d’être for Parler’s existence, was not to be allowed. Mr Matze parlayed:

That’s a screenshot, because Mr Matze’s parlay is not visible on the site, because the site is down.

I’ve said in the past that Parler has some serious issues with its presentation, as you can see in the screenshot; it just isn’t as good as Twitter, and Mr Matze’s efforts to update it haven’t been particularly successful. But that does not mean it should be shut down.

From Wikipedia:

Many jurisdictions have laws under which denial-of-service attacks are illegal.

  • In the US, denial-of-service attacks may be considered a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with penalties that include years of imprisonment.[109] The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the US Department of Justice handles cases of DoS and DDoS. In one example, in July 2019, Austin Thompson, aka DerpTrolling, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and $95,000 restitution by a federal court for conducting multiple DDoS attacks on major video gaming companies, disrupting their systems from hours to days.[110][111]
  • In European countries, committing criminal denial-of-service attacks may, as a minimum, lead to arrest.[112] The United Kingdom is unusual in that it specifically outlawed denial-of-service attacks and set a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison with the Police and Justice Act 2006, which amended Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.[113]
  • In January 2019, Europol announced that “actions are currently underway worldwide to track down the users” of Webstresser.org, a former DDoS marketplace that was shut down in April 2018 as part of Operation Power Off.[114] Europol said UK police were conducting a number of “live operations” targeting over 250 users of Webstresser and other DDoS services.[115]

On January 7, 2013, Anonymous posted a petition on the whitehouse.gov site asking that DDoS be recognized as a legal form of protest similar to the Occupy protests, the claim being that the similarity in purpose of both are same.

What the big boys have done to Parler is different in method, by the same in kind.

The Times again:

Parler’s plight immediately drew condemnation from those on the right, who compared the big tech companies to authoritarian overlords. Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, told Fox News on Sunday that “Republicans have no way to communicate” and asked his followers to text him to stay in touch. Lou Dobbs, the right-wing commentator, wrote on Parler that the app had a strong antitrust case against the tech companies amid such “perilous times.”

Parler has now become a test case in a renewed national debate over free speech on the internet and whether tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon have too much power. That debate has intensified since Mr. Trump was barred from posting on Twitter and Facebook last week after a violent mob, urged on by the president and his social media posts, stormed the Capitol.

The tech companies’ actions last week to limit such toxic content with Mr. Trump and Parler have been applauded by liberals and others. But the moves also focused attention on the power of these private enterprises to decide who stays online and who doesn’t. And the timing struck some as politically convenient, with Mr. Biden set to take office on Jan. 20 and Democrats gaining control of Congress.

The tech companies’ newly proactive approach also provides grist for Mr. Trump in the waning days of his administration. Even as he faces another potential impeachment, Mr. Trump is expected to try stoking anger at Twitter, Facebook and others this week, potentially as a launchpad for competing with Silicon Valley head on when he leaves the White House. After he was barred from Twitter, Mr. Trump said in a statement that he would “look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”

Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was understandable that no company wanted to be associated with the “repellent speech” that encouraged the breaching of the Capitol. But he said Parler’s situation was troubling.

Troubling, huh? How odd that an organization dedicated to defending Freedom of Speech, such as the march by neo-Nazis through the heavily Jewish village of Skokie, Illinois, only finds this “troubling,” and not outrageous.

Skokie authorities contended that the activities planned by the Nazi party were so offensive to its residents that they would become violent and disrupt the Nazi assembly, initially planned to take place on the steps of city hall on May 1, 1977. Therefore, they sought an injunction against any assembly at which military-style uniforms, swastikas or Nazi literature were present. Frank Collin appealed to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to represent the marchers’ right to free speech and assemblage. The President of the Chicago ACLU chapter said: “We have no choice but to take the case.” In its brief, ACLU attorneys claimed that so long as the demonstrators were peaceable, no injunction could be issued against their activities; furthermore, that such an injunction would constitute a prior restraint forbidden by the First Amendment. The ACLU relied upon First Amendment doctrines articulated consistently over the past fifty years by the Supreme Court, and recently by Chief Justice Warren Burger, who said: “The thread running through all of these cases is that prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”

The Times article with which I began was a straight news piece, but this was on their OpEd pages last week:

Have Trump’s Lies Wrecked Free Speech?

A debate has broken out over whether the once-sacrosanct constitutional protection of the First Amendment has become a threat to democracy.

By Thomas B. Edsall | January 6, 2021

In the closing days of his presidency, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he can make innumerable false claims and assertions that millions of Republican voters will believe and more than 150 Republican members of the House and Senate will embrace.

“The formation of public opinion is out of control because of the way the internet is forming groups and dispersing information freely,” Robert C. Post, a Yale law professor and former dean, said in an interview.

Before the advent of the internet, Post noted,

People were always crazy, but they couldn’t find each other, they couldn’t talk and disperse their craziness. Now we are confronting a new phenomenon and we have to think about how we regulate that in a way which is compatible with people’s freedom to form public opinion.

Trump has brought into sharp relief the vulnerability of democracy in the midst of a communication upheaval more pervasive in its impact, both destructive and beneficial, than the invention of radio and television in the 20th Century.

The left like to claim that the Capitol demonstration was some sort of coup d’etat attempt, but if it was planned at all, it was planned even worse than the Beer Hall Putsch. Yet, using that as an excise, they would stifle our Freedom of Speech.

There’s a lot more at the original, but it’s amusing. The New York Times was a staunch defender of the First Amendment, fighting against prior restraint in New York Times Co v United States, 403 US 713 (1971), the so-called Pentagon Papers case. But that was then, before the internet, when the Times was the biggest voice among the gatekeepers, the ones who got to decide what got published, and what did not. The credentialed media have long despised that they no longer have that control, that anybody can now publish, and anyone who wants to read what someone has to say can access it, normally for free.[1]The Times allows people without subscriptions ten ‘free’ articles per month before things go behind the paywall. I am not a Times subscriber, and I opened the Times’ articles cited … Continue reading Freedom of speech and of the press are things the Times supports, when it comes to the speech of which the editors approve. For others, not so much.

Mr Edsall quoted Jack Balkin, a law professor at Yale:

The problem of propaganda that Tim Wu has identified is not new to the digital age, nor is the problem of speech that exacerbates polarization. In the United States, at least, both problems were created and fostered by predigital media.

The central problem we face today is not too much protection for free speech but the lack of new trustworthy and trusted intermediate institutions for knowledge production and dissemination. Without these institutions, the digital public sphere does not serve democracy very well.

Ahhh, yes, those “trustworthy and trusted intermediate institutions for knowledge production and dissemination,” meaning, for The New York Times, the Times itself and its long-lost gatekeeping functions.

A strong and vigorous political system, in Mr Balkin’s view,

has always required more than mere formal freedoms of speech. It has required institutions like journalism, educational institutions, scientific institutions, libraries, and archives. Law can help foster a healthy public sphere by giving the right incentives for these kinds of institutions to develop. Right now, journalism in the United States is dying a slow death, and many parts of the United States are news deserts — they lack reliable sources of local news. The First Amendment is not to blame for these developments, and cutting back on First Amendment protections will not save journalism. Nevertheless, when key institutions of knowledge production and dissemination are decimated, demagogues and propagandists thrive.

We do not need an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth,” the pundits tell us, but they are arguing for almost that, that the dissemination of thoughts and information be somehow regulated by the elites, private company elites to be sure, so that “demagogues and propagandists” do not thrive, that the ideas which are so very, very appalling to the political left die of loneliness.

Yet we are a nation created by “demagogues and propagandists,” by Thomas Paine and his Common Sense, by Patrick Henry and his great statement, “Give me liberty or give me death.” We had a great Civil War, egged on by “demagogues and propagandists” such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by John Brown’s rebellion, and slavery was ended due to this.

The left are appalled that Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, that he used media like Twitter to talk above the credentialed media, that WikiLeaks was able to publish Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails over the internet, and that, horrors! President Trump still has millions of supporters. But, despite Mr Trump’s supporters, he was still defeated, and handily, for re-election. The ugly demonstration at the Capitol on January 6th was just that, an ugly demonstration, one far less destructive and deadly than the Summer of fire and Hate led by the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations. The left like to claim that the Capitol demonstration was some sort of coup d’etat attempt, but if it was planned at all, it was planned even worse than the Beer Hall Putsch. Yet, using that as an excise, they would stifle our Freedom of Speech.

Of course, it isn’t just insurrection from which the Times believes we ought to be protected. On October 4, 2019, they published an OpEd by staffer Andrew J Marantz, entitled Free Speech Is Killing Us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence. What can we do about it?

Having spent the past few years embedding as a reporter with the trolls and bigots and propagandists who are experts at converting fanatical memes into national policy, I no longer have any doubt that the brutality that germinates on the internet can leap into the world of flesh and blood.

Then there was the Times publishing an OpEd by Parker Malloy, claiming that Twitter’s restrictions on ‘misgendering’ and ‘deadnaming’ transsexuals actually promoted freedom of Speech:

How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech

Trans people are less likely to speak up if they know they’re going to be constantly told they don’t exist.

By Parker Molloy | November 29, 2018

In September, Twitter announced changes to its “hateful conduct” policy, violations of which can get users temporarily or permanently barred from the site. The updates, an entry on Twitter’s blog explained, would expand its existing rules “to include content that dehumanizes others based on their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target.” A little more than a month later, the company quietly rolled out the update, expanding the conduct page from 374 to 1,226 words, which went largely unnoticed until this past week.

While much of the basic framework stayed the same, the latest version leaves much less up for interpretation. Its ban on “repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone” was expanded to read: “We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”

The final sentence, paired with the fact that the site appeared poised to actually enforce its rules, sent a rumble through certain vocal corners of the internet. To trans people, it represented a recognition that our identity is an accepted fact and that to suggest otherwise is a slur. But to many on the right, it reeked of censorship and “political correctness.”

Twitter is already putting the policy into effect. Last week, it booted Meghan Murphy, a Canadian feminist who runs the website Feminist Current. Ms. Murphy hasn’t exactly supported trans people — especially trans women. She regularly calls trans women “he” and “him,” as she did referring to the journalist and trans woman Shon Faye in a 2017 article. In the run-up to her suspension, Ms. Murphy tweeted that “men aren’t women.” While this is a seeming innocuous phrase when considered without context, the “men” she was referring to were trans women.

As a transgender woman, I find it degrading to be constantly reminded that I am trans and that large segments of the population will forever see me as a delusional freak. Things like deadnaming, or purposely referring to a trans person by their former name, and misgendering — calling someone by a pronoun they don’t use — are used to express disagreement with the legitimacy of trans lives and identities.

Defenders of these practices claim that they’re doing this not out of malice but out of honesty and, perhaps, even a twisted sort of love. They surely see themselves as truth-tellers fighting against political correctness run amok. But sometimes, voicing one’s personal “truth” does just one thing: It shuts down conversation.

It shuts down the conversation? And just what does compelling those who do not believe that someone can simply change his sex to acquiesce in the claims of a ‘transgendered’ person by agreeing with his changed name and the use of his preferred pronouns do? If I am compelled to refer to Mr Malloy as “Miss Malloy” or “Parker Malloy,” am I not conceding in the debate his claim that he is a woman?[2]The Times identifies the author as “Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) is a Chicago-based writer and editor at large at Media Matters for America.” Mr Malloy identified himself as “a … Continue reading

Let’s cut through the bovine feces here: the left are simply opposed to the Freedom of Speech and of the Press when what is said or printed is opposed to what they want people to be able to hear or read. It isn’t just they are trying to save the country from a rebellion, but they are concerned that someone might say that Bruce Jenner isn’t a woman.

If you can control the input, the conversation, then you control the output, the decision, and that’s what the heavily leftist controlled media and social media sites are trying to do. If saying things of which they disapproved is censored, then the beliefs of people will eventually be pushed into the things in which the left believe. Or, more bluntly, garbage in, garbage out.

References

References
↑1 The Times allows people without subscriptions ten ‘free’ articles per month before things go behind the paywall. I am not a Times subscriber, and I opened the Times’ articles cited in this post without paying a cent.
↑2 The Times identifies the author as “Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) is a Chicago-based writer and editor at large at Media Matters for America.” Mr Malloy identified himself as “a trandgender woman” in his article. I do not use “Ms” as an honorific; it is an abomination. Women are referred to as Miss, Mrs or, when appropriate, Dr. Parker Malloy is not his birth name; I found a reference which implied, but did not directly state, that his birth name was Chad Malloy.
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Using the Freedom of Speech and of the Press to condemn other people’s Freedom of Speech

My good friend William Tech’s website, The Pirate’s Cove, has as it’s blog tagline, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” That’s the important part of the First Amendment, “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 part of “no law” is so difficult to understand?

Well, some very good people in Minnesota are very upset that the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech and religion of people they despise. From The Washington Post:

Facing a First Amendment fight, a small Minnesota town allows a White supremacist church

By Kim Bellware | December 14, 2020 | 6:00 AM EST

The nation’s ascendant White supremacy movement and small-town bureaucracy collided in rural Minnesota last week when a city council vote over a zoning permit made the 273-person city of Murdock the latest First Amendment battleground.

The Murdock City Council voted 3-1 during a virtual meeting Wednesday to allow the Asatru Folk Assembly to turn the run-down church it purchased in July into its first “hof,” or gathering place, in the Midwest. The looming presence of the obscure Nordic folk religion, widely classified as a White supremacist hate group by extremism and religious experts, promoted months of pushback from concerned residents.

The group purchased a building, and were planning to use it for a legal purpose. The Mayor and City Council didn’t like it, but them not liking it did not mean the city government had any right to block a legal assembly.

Some, naturally, argue that the First Amendment should not cover such a group:

Murdock’s issue underscores the deficiencies with the First Amendment and exposes a lack of neutrality in who it really protects, argued Laura Beth Nielsen, who chairs the Sociology Department at Northwestern University and wrote the 2004 book “License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy and Offensive Public Speech.”

“Right now, every local government is broke trying to deal with coronavirus. The idea that you would arguably subject yourself to a costly lawsuit — what town would want to do that?” Nielsen said. “But letting these organizations flourish and take root is scary, especially if you’re the Black or the Jewish family in town.”

She said Murdock’s individual battle is taking place in a broader legal and social environment where, “in the universe of the First Amendment, White people tend to win.”

White people tend to win? Surely there was little more offensive speech than that of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a “gutter religion.” He was condemned for that, but not fined or imprisoned, because his speech, no matter how vile, is protected by the First Amendment. The Reverend Al Sharpton has uttered plenty of anti-white and anti-Semitic bovine feces, but his statements, too, have, and deserve to have, the protection of the First Amendment. I do not have to like Messrs Farrakhan and Sharpton to believe that they have freedom of speech just as much as I do.

There’s a bit of irony in all of this, because Professor Neilsen is exercising her freedom of speech and freedom of the press to complain that other people’s freedom of speech and of peaceable assembly is “scary.”

The city council in Murdock, Minn., voted December 9 to grant a permit that allows the Asatru Folk Assembly, which has been identified as a white supremacist group, to gather at an abandoned church it bought. (Renee Jones Schneider/AP)

There’s much more at the Post original, with statements by other people, but I want to point out the final two paragraphs:

Nielsen, the Northwestern sociologist, noted that cities routinely restrict the First Amendment over issues it prioritizes, such as anti-pandhandling ordinances or obscenity laws.

“Even though the First Amendment is supposed to operate in this neutral way, when you dig in, hate speech against racial minorities is protected; harassment of women is protected,” Nielsen said. “In the big picture, the First Amendment is reinforcing who already has power.”

span style=”font-family: Georgia;”>To be fair, there is no quotation from the good professor that she believes the First Amendment should somehow be restricted; whether she says anything like that in any of her books, I do not know. But I do know that restrictions on speech, were they allowed, could condemn my website, given that our published Stylebook is not supportive of homosexuality and does not accept ‘transgenderism.’ With the incoming Administration of Joe Biden, RedState, where I frequently cross-post, could be shut down by the government for the many articles there which claim that the Democrats engaged in massive fraud and stole a presidential election they did not legitimately win.[1]I would note here that none of my articles make that claim.

When freedom of speech or the press is limited, the ox which gets gored depends on just who has the power to gore it.

The First Amendment has been used to protect many things I do not like: the American Nazi Party’s march in heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois, the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests at the funerals of American soldiers, in Snyder v Phelps (2011), or the flag burning case, Texas v Johnson (1989), but it was right to protect those offensive actions. The First Amendment protects The Washington Post’s right to print Professor Neilsen’s objections. There are many things I’d rather not see voiced or printed, but it would be far, far worse for the government to have the power to ban them.
__________________________________
Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 I would note here that none of my articles make that claim.
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Rights delayed are rights denied

We have thrice previously noted Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing all public and private Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, and Danville Christian Academy’s legal actions to enjoin enforcement of that order against private religious schools. While the private religious initially won, the Governor appealed to the Sixth Circuit, and the appellate court agreed with him, leaving the religious schools closed.

That was two weeks ago. An application for a stay was filed with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday, December 1st, and several subsequent motions have been filed, but today is Monday, December 14th, and the private religious schools’ constitutional rights have been held in abeyance for two full weeks now.

Two weeks, during Advent, a highly important time of the year for Christians. Being December 14th, there’s only a week of school left this year before closure for the Christmas holidays. If the Supreme Court does not act, immediately, there will be no operative decision from the Court on whether the Governor’s orders have violated our First Amendment rights to freedom of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, because the Governor’s order expires before school would normally resume in January. However, there is nothing currently preventing Mr Beshear from extending his executive order past January 4th.

The Governor claimed that his order was “a time-limited executive order that is set to expire in just four weeks,” as though it is somehow permissible to suspend our constitutional rights for a limited period, though he continues just two sentences later to say that he could, “if necessary,” extend the order beyond the current January 4, 2021, expiration of the executive order. The appellants responded that, even now, Mr Beshear is attempting “to lift the injunction prohibiting him from closing Kentucky’s houses of worship,” so that he can order churches closed as well. We have previously noted that the Governor wants all churches to be closed down, but the four Catholic bishops in Kentucky have decided to continue public worship.

Our authoritarian Governor just hates to be defied, and he’s trying to get the injunction in Maryville Baptist Church, Inc. v Beshear lifted so that he can order churches closed, as he did last spring.

COVID-19 is serious, and has been fatal in a small percentage of cases, but the threat to our Constitution and our rights is far, far greater, and the Supreme Court needs to slap down such attempts.

As we have previously noted, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, and GOP leaders have stated that they intend to rein in the Governor’s emergency powers under KRS 39A, but, while that would be welcome, and should happen to prevent future abuse, the Supreme Court needs to say, and set the precedent, that our explicitly stated constitutional rights cannot be simply set aside because the government, any government claims to have a good reason to do so.