Tag Archives: #FreedomofAssembly

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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.

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↑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.

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↑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.

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“You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.” — Kathy Shaidle

Robert Stacey Stacy McCain said that he once “dubbed Kathy Shaidle the Only Good Canadian.”

My general hatred of Canada is so well-known I’m surprised the SPLC hasn’t taken notice, but that’s the thing about hating Canadians — it’s so commonplace that even liberals don’t object to it. Anyway, some of my readers objected that Kathy was not the only good Canadian, and I’m willing to stipulate that there may be a few others like her, but none of them could possibly be as good as she is. Her blog Five Feet of Fury was a regular read back in the day, and she’s been a columnist at various outlets — including a stint at PJMedia, another at Taki’s, and most recently doing film reviews at Mark Steyn’s place. Her most famous aphorism is, “You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.”

Well, Kathy developed ovarian cancer, which is now in a very advanced stage, and her husband who blogs at Blazing Cat Fur has got an online fundraiser to which everyone should contribute.

Unlike the esteemed Mr McCain, I have no animosity toward Canucks. They’re mostly good people, and, other than British Columbia, eastern Ontario and Quebec, mostly conservative. President Trump was wrong: it wasn’t Greenland we should have taken, but the English speaking parts of Canada. We could have a 62-star flag, and still leave Puerto Rico out!

They play very good hockey, and I’d much rather see a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup than an American team from someplace like Tampa or Las Vegas or Anaheim. Should anyplace where kids can’t play hockey outdoors on a frozen pond ever be considered for an NHL franchise?

But, I digress. With so many good conservative voices, I completely missed 5 Feet of Fury, which is, to be honest, a still active but mostly abandoned site, and thus I missed what Mr McCain called her most famous aphorism, “You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.”

I tend to use the lines from Jonathan Edwards’ Sunshine, “He can’t even run his own life, I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine!”

The left are so stupid that they think this is a chick. More, they think they can somehow compel me to go along with their idiocy.

That’s the problem with today’s left: they think that they are smarter than the common people, and that they should be able to tell other people how to live. They’re so stupid that they can’t even tell the differences between males and females anymore, but they still think they are smarter than you. Democratic, and, sadly, a couple of Republican, Governors across the nation think that they can tell you who and how many people you can have visit you in your own home, because it’s for your own good. Democratic, and, sadly, a couple of Republican, Governors across this nation think that they can tell you when and how and even if you can exercise your constitutional right to assemble, peaceably or how and when and even if you can freely exercise your religious faith.

And before Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to her eternal reward, and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court even went along with that, in Calvary Chapel, Dayton Valley v Sisolak and South Bay Pentecostal Church v Newsom.

I will concede, albeit grudgingly, that there are some people smarter than me. But I will not concede that just because someone else might be smarter than me, that he would have some right, some authority, to not only tell me how to live my life, but compel me to follow his orders. After all, if that were the case, then I would have the right to compel everyone not as intelligent as me to live their lives according to my dictates.

There is, of course, our constitutional right to the freedom of speech. I do have the right to tell other people how I think they should run their lives. And I concede that even government leaders have their own free speech rights to tell other people how they think they should run their lives. But I absolutely deny that any state Governor, any President, any Mayor, anyone at all, has the authority to compel me to live my life according to their dictates rather than my own agency.

Those lines from Jonathan Edwards would have, not so long ago, gotten a high five from the left. Today, the left appear to believe in the freedom of choice on exactly one thing; everything else should be according to their dictates.

Well, not just no, but Hell no!

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Democratic Governors see 1984 not as a cautionary tale, but a blueprint for fighting COVID-19

The fat filmmaker, Michael Moore, said of Americans resisting the dictates of the oh-so-nobly-intended Democratic Governors imposing draconian COVID-19 rules on our country:

“Why do you want to die? Why — to take a stand against us liberals, to show us a thing or two?”

Americans don’t want to die, yet many Americans have willingly risked death to protect our constitutional rights as Americans. Patrick Henry said it best: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

The ‘defense’ the left claim we must undertake to save ourselves from the scourge of the virus, is to lose our freedom of peaceable assembly, to lose our right to freely practice our faith, and, of course, lose our right to keep and bear arms. We must lose our livelihoods, we must lose our careers, and, for some, that means losing their homes. We must forget seeing our families and our friends, we must eschew our holidays and our traditions, we must lock ourselves in our homes, venturing out only for milk and bread, and forget being the social beings that humans are. To save our human lives, we must stop being human beings. Not just no, but Hell no!

Orwellian society, as envisioned in 1984, was a regimented place, where friendships were discouraged, in which the public were encouraged to spy and snitch on others, where romance was forbidden and sex restricted to procreation. How much different is that from what Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo would force upon us today?

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Democrisy: It seems that Democrats in government don’t believe the rules they set for others apply to themselves

It was mostly an internet meme, circulating through the evil reich-wing communities, but, eventually, the credentialed media had to take notice; the election being over, it wasn’t as harmful to their causes anyway.

Politicians across U.S. eat own words after dining out, taking trips

by Juliet Williams, Associated Press | December 3, 2020 | 7:00 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Their messaging has been clear: wear a mask; stay 6 feet apart; and, most importantly, stay home!

But their actions aren’t living up to the rhetoric, creating a real political problem for some of the most vocal leaders in California’s fight to contain the coronavirus.

First came Gov. Gavin Newsom, who won plaudits for issuing the first statewide stay-at-home order in the U.S. back in March. He broke the state rules when he and his wife were caught dining with 10 others at the posh French Laundry restaurant in Napa in early November with lobbyists and others from numerous different households, sitting close together, mask-less.

San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, was at the same $350-a-plate restaurant a day later, dining with a San Francisco socialite and six others. Breed has also won accolades for imposing some of the strictest rules in California, keeping coronavirus rates relatively low. Her spokespeople haven’t responded to queries about how many households were there — state rules cap those at three. Her spokesman rubbed salt in the wound by saying she has been trying to support local restaurants. The French Laundry is 60 miles out of town.

The Associated Press article makes it sound like Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) was the first, but he wasn’t. Newsweek posted an article listing some of the others:

  • Mayor Steve Adler (D-Austin)
  • Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK)
  • Mayor Michael Hancock (D-Denver)
  • Mayor Muriel Bowser (D-Washington DC)
  • Mayor Sam Liccardo (D-San José)
  • Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D-Chicago)

The article also noted that Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) was preparing to break his own rules, but when it became public in advance, he cancelled his plans due to the political backlash.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was caught on tape going to a private hair salon, for which the lovely Mrs Pelosi did not apologize, but simply claimed that she’d been set up by an evil reich-wing activist.

Of course, the people on the list are all over very large areas. I’m guessing that a lot of smaller city mayors and city councilmen, etc, have also violated the rules, but they aren’t important enough to have made the national news.

There is one Republican on the list, but Newsweek also stated that:

Republican governors have faced fewer accusations, largely because they have not implemented as many of the restrictions that public health experts have called for.

Translation: they have had more respect for our constitutional rights.

In his concurring opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote:

Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that Amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worse than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest and using the least restrictive means available. Yet recently, during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles. . . . .

What could justify so radical a departure from the First Amendment’s terms and long-settled rules about its application? Our colleagues offer two possible answers. Initially, some point to a solo concurrence in South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, in which the Chief Justice expressed willingness to defer to executive orders in the pandemic’s early stages based on the newness of the emergency and how little was then known about the disease. At that time, COVID had been with us, in earnest, for just three months. Now, as we round out 2020 and face the prospect of entering a second calendar year living in the pandemic’s shadow, that rationale has expired according to its own terms. Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical. Rather than apply a nonbinding and expired concurrence from South Bay, courts must resume applying the Free Exercise Clause. . . . .

In the end, I can only surmise that much of the answer lies in a particular judicial impulse to stay out of the way in times of crisis. But if that impulse may be understandable or even admirable in other circumstances, we may not shelter in place when the Constitution is under attack. Things never go well when we do.

COVID-19 is serious, a highly contagious disease that can be, and is, fatal, though in only about 1% of the cases. Hospitalization rates are much higher than that.

But the damage being done to our constitutional rights is far, far greater. The precedent being set, that government can set down rules which would otherwise be unconstitutional because of some ’emergency’ simply leaves it to elected officials to decide just what emergencies outweigh our constitutional rights. Many are already wanting to abridge our constitutional rights under the Second Amendment because some bad people are wrongly using firearms. The New York Times published an OpEd by Parker Malloy, himself a male who thinks he is female, claiming that “Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.” There will always be such very good reasons to suspend or restrict our constitutional rights, when those rights are left for other people to decide. If the left can somehow ban ‘hate speech,’ what other speech can they ban? The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act actually sought to ban political speech in favor of one candidate or another prior to an election, because, well just because.

Brave men fought, and died, for our rights. At least six of my known ancestors fought in our Revolution, for the rights they were denied by King George and his Parliament. At least twenty-one of my known ancestors came to these shores, risking their lives on the open ocean in small wooden ships, for the right to worship God as they chose, and not be oppressed by King James and King Charles for not being Anglicans. Can I really support governors restricting our freedom of religion over a disease far less deadly than an ocean voyage to an untamed continent in the 1620s and 1630s?[1]Fifty-one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower either died at sea or in that first New England winter and spring.

Our great country was founded in danger, by people fleeing tyranny in England, and by brave men and women who risked their lives on the frontier, and in war, yet our political leaders today, primarily but not exclusively Democrats, would have us quaking in fear and trashing the freedoms and liberties for which our ancestors fought and died. We dishonor our ancestors when we allow their sacrifices to be wasted.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Fifty-one of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower either died at sea or in that first New England winter and spring.
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Andy Beshear continues to try to restrict Freedom of Religion * Updated! * Sadly, he is succeeding

As we previously noted, federal Judge Gregory van Tatenhove ruled, in Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, that Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) executive order closing all Kindergarten through grade 12 schools in the Commonwealth cannot be applied to private religious schools.[1]The Catholic bishops in Kentucky were not part of that lawsuit, and have decided to go along with the Governor’s order. The parochial schools had opened on time this year, ignoring Mr … Continue reading

But Governor Beshear, in his determination that his Führerbefehle not be denied, has done what he said he would do, and appealed the decision to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals:

Lexington Christian Academy plans to open Monday. Beshear appeals judge’s ruling.

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Jack Brammer | November 27, 2020 | 4:37 PM EST | Updated: November 28, 2020 | 12:06 AM EST

Lexington Christian Academy will open on Monday as a result of a federal court ruling allowing in-person instruction at Kentucky faith-based schools despite an order to close from Gov. Andy Beshear.

But Beshear is fighting to keep the Lexington school and others in the state closed to keep COVID-19 from spreading.

The Democratic governor has filed an emergency 45-page appeal with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati of U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove’s decision Wednesday to grant a preliminary injunction to 17 private Christian schools that had filed against a lawsuit against Beshear’s restriction to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to that, several other religious schools that filed another federal lawsuit against the Governor, filing an amicus on behalf of the schools that initially sued Mr Beshear. That suit is also attempting to overturn the Governor’s order restricting indoor gatherings to no more than eight people, from two different households. I am happy to inform you that while our Thanksgiving dinner did have fewer than eight people, the two household limit was exceeded. No Governor, no President, no one at all has any authority to say that I cannot associate with whomever I choose, in whatever numbers we decide.

The Herald-Leader story stated that the responses to the Governor’s appeal must have been filed by 10:00 AM EST.

Churches have won in part and lost in part in their challenges to the Governor’s orders at the Sixth Circuit. Facially, unlike the recent Supreme Court decision in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo, the Governor is not treating private or religious schools any differently than public schools; he ordered them all to close. Due to this, it is quite possible that Governor Beshear will win his appeal. The Sixth Circuit, in partially rejecting the Governor’s orders last May, did not go as far as the appellants had requested, to allow in-person church services rather than drive-in only services, saying:

The breadth of the ban on religious services, together with a haven for numerous secular exceptions, should give pause to anyone who prizes religious freedom. But it’s not always easy to decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s — and that’s assuredly true in the context of a pandemic.

However, it should be noted that the Governor’s great concern for K-12 students isn’t quite as extensive as it appears. On Friday night, the state high school football playoffs continued. If you are an offensive guard, you will have a defensive lineman lined up across from you, his face and yours, both unmasked, just inches apart. When the ball is snapped, you will get really up close and personal, exerting yourselves, exhaling through your mouth. Social distancing is not a part of football.

If you are a quarterback or running back or receiver, the defense will be doing everything it can to hit you, to get right up into your face, to break up the blocking or tackle the runner.

If it is so very, very vital that physical contact be limited, face masks be worn, and social distancing be observed, to reduce the spread of COVID-19, why would Mr Beshear have allowed the playoffs to continue? Apparently the Governor’s concerns about the spread of the virus do not go so far as to cancel football.

Pre-kindergarten instruction has been allowed to continue, even though children that young cannot be anywhere close to as responsible as older ones to observe COVID-19 restrictions. And the state’s colleges and universities have been allowed to remain open, despite most students living away from home and parental guidance. I have previously noted, the ‘authorities’ have been very, very surprised that college students returning to college campuses have had college parties. 🙂

I would not speculate on how the Sixth Circuit might rule, but I hope that they will rule for the free exercise of religion and the right of the people peacefully to assemble.
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Updated: Sunday, November 29, 2020 | 10:30 AM EST

Sadly, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Governor Beshear:

Federal appellate court agrees with Beshear’s order to close all Kentucky schools

By Jack Brammer and Valarie Honeycutt Spears | November 29, 2020 | 10:14 AM EST

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was successful Sunday in getting a federal appellate court to side with him in his order to close religious schools and others in the state during a surge in the coronavirus pandemic.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati granted the Democratic governor’s request to shelve temporarily a judge’s ruling that would have allowed 17 private Christian schools to reopen. Those schools filed a lawsuit over Beshear’s restrictions and won a preliminary injunction Wednesday from U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove. . . . .

But the three-member appellate court said Sunday that Van Tatenholve’s preliminary injunction should not have been entered because the schools are unlikely to succeed.

The appellate court said it is likely to rule that Beshear’s order was “neutral and of general applicability” in that all schools were affected.

Given that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo was largely based on the disparate and harsher treatment of churches, there was room for the Sixth Circuit to rule as it did. This might be appealed to the Supreme Court, but with an appellate court ruling that the treatment of religious schools was no different than the treatment of secular ones, the Court would have to decide the case on the constitutional grounds of a restriction on the free exercise of religion and the right of peaceable assembly. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion was heavily based on the disparate treatment of churches, not freedom of religion, so his vote could be lost. Justice Samuel Alito’s recent statements indicate that he would vote in favor of a constitutional argument, but this is a case in which freedom of religion and assembly could lose to the statists.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 The Catholic bishops in Kentucky were not part of that lawsuit, and have decided to go along with the Governor’s order. The parochial schools had opened on time this year, ignoring Mr Beshear’s request that in-person instruction in schools be delayed until September 28th. The bishops had earlier declined the Governor’s request — not order — that churches close down for three weeks.
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Things for which I am thankful

I am thankful for the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects my rights to say what I want and publish what I want. I am thankful for our First Amendment protection of our right to freely practice our faith. And I am thankful for Federal Judge Gregory van Tatenhove, appointed by the younger President George Bush, who understands that the First Amendment actually means what it says.

On May 8, 2020, Judge van Tatenhove ruled that Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order closing churches due to concerns about spreading COVID-19 was unconstitutional, a ruling which came too late in the process, as the Governor had successfully closed the churches for eight weeks.

Well, this time he wasn’t late. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Judge rules Beshear cannot halt in-person classes at religious schools due to COVID-19

By Jack Brammer and Valarie Honeycutt Spears | November 25, 2020 | 8:01 PM EST

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear cannot close religious schools to help curb the coronavirus pandemic, a federal judge ruled Wednesday night.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove said in a 22-page order that he was granting a preliminary injunction to 17 private Christian schools that had filed a lawsuit against Beshear’s emergency restriction. He said his order would apply statewide.

He said the schools were “likely to succeed on the merits of the case.”

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron joined the plaintiffs in the suit against Beshear and Kentucky Treasurer Allison Ball filed an amicus brief supporting the suit.

Beshear spokeswoman Crystal Staley said in an email the governor has appealed the decision to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Well, of course he has!

There’s a lot more at the link, including not only the Governor’s protest of the decision, but the comments of the schools, and First Liberty Institute‘s Chris Freund, the firm which represented the Christian schools.

“We are disappointed but not surprised that Judge Van Tatenhove, for the second time, has refused to acknowledge the U.S. Supreme Court decision that found an action like this is both legal and constitutional,” said Staley.

“We have already appealed to the Sixth Circuit and will request an emergency stay of the judge’s order, and, if necessary, will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s be clear: lives are on the line and everyone must do their part to defeat the virus.”

Judge van Tatenhove noted that the Governor’s order closed all K-12 schools, even though it allowed colleges in the Commonwealth to remain open. The suing schools noted that they had spent considerable sums in reconfiguring classes and providing safety equipment to meet the PPE and social distancing requirements the Commonwealth has specified for other places to continue to meet and do business.

“The Governor has every right to impose some restrictions on all schools, religious and secular alike,” said Van Tatenhove. “Social distancing, face masks, limits on class size, reporting requirements and other protocols may cost money and may be inconvenient for parents and students, but we give executives increased discretion in time of crisis.

“But in an effort to do the right thing to fight the virus, the Governor cannot do the wrong thing by infringing protected values.”

That is the part that so many public officials have forgotten. Nothing in American law supersedes the Constitution, and our constitutionally protected rights.

I am thankful that I was born an American citizen, that we have a strict Constitution which recognizes our rights, not just as Americans, but as human beings. Citizens of other countries mostly do not have such protections.

And I am thankful for our Freedom of Peaceable Assembly, which allows my family to gather for this Thanksgiving Day, in a setting which will violate the Governor’s orders.
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Cross-posted on RedState.