Tag Archives: #FreedomOfSpeech

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The truth shall set you free, but some people want to hide the truth

One of the things that I do at The First Street Journal is to use primarily — though certainly not exclusively — liberal sites as sources, because it stifles complaints that I’m using only evil reich wing sources, which our good friends on the left will not trust. Thus, when I use LGBTQ Nation, no one can throw a hissy fit that the source is opposed to homosexuals and the ‘transgendered.

Volleyball players sue their coach for accepting a trans teammate

The player hasn’t caused any unfair advantage or injuries, but the lawsuit claims she has stifled women’s “free speech.”

Continue reading →

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Yet another liberal blames Democrats’ loss on Freedom of Speech

I saw Michael Tomasky’s whining article in The New Republic on Friday, and mused about commenting on it, but Robert Stacy McCain beat me to it. It’s a good article, and I recommend it.

Mr Tomasky blames Kamala Harris Emhoff’s defeat on those poor, ignorant, unedumacated saps who don’t get their information exclusively from the mostly liberal credentialed media, The New York Times, The Washington Post — which lost over 250,000 subscribers when owner Jeff Bezos cancelled the upcoming endorsement of Mrs Emhoff — ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and the other approved credentialed media outlets. I’m guessing that he wouldn’t have included the much more conservative New York Post!

I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. Continue reading →

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Freedom of Speech even for those who hold repugnant views. Today's election is a referendum on conservatives who protect Freedom of Speech, and liberals who would like to shut you up

It will be no surprise to either of my two regular readers that I do not thing particularly highly of Bill Kristol. The scion of a well-to-do family, now with an estimated net worth of $10 million, was born on December 23, 1952, which had him turning 18 in late 1970. If he really believed that war was a great idea, he was of age to have enlisted in the United States Army to help fight in Vietnam .  .  . but he didn’t. His draft lotter number was 171, so he was kind of on the cusp of being called up to serve, but in any event, never served a single day in uniform. Being Jewish, Mr Kristol could also have volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defence Force, which could have used his service in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but he didn’t do that, either.

Mr Kristol just loves him some American involvement in wars, advocating American involvement in just about any war, anywhere, but let’s tell the truth here: he supports having other people fight in those wars, not himself and not his children. He has been advocating a position, immediate Ukrainian membership in NATO, in which even his fellow traveler, Max Boot, has said would probably involve the United States directly in a war with Russia, with nuclear-armed Russia.

We get it: Mr Kristol hates Donald Trump. I’m not sure why, because our 45th President was the greatest friend to Israel that there could have been, moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and getting the negotiations which resulted in the Abraham Accords, but #TrumpDerangementSyndrome knows few bounds.

But, to me, this tweet by Mr Kristol, saying, “We’ve all had the privilege of being allowed to fight a good and worthwhile fight,” in which he meant fighting against Mr Trump, and he was doing so on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — which demonstrates owner Elon Musk’s dedication to the Freedom of Speech! Mr Musk vocally supports President Trump, but my Twitter feed is full of posts from those supporting the crackpot from California, the war in Ukraine, and the anti-Semitic babble of those who support Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and who hate Israel.

That’s important, because we cannot forget that today’s liberals are the ones who want to ‘regulate’ speech, to prevent the dissemination of Wrongthink.

Remember, how the Biden Administration tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and that very liberal hater of free speech, Nina Jankowicz.

This is part of what is at stake in today’s election: whether we will have people who are dedicated to freedom of speech and our constitutional rights in office, or those who believe that our individual rights must be curtailed, for some cockamamie concept of what they see as a ‘greater good.’ We’re already seeing that in Europe, where governments are arresting and imprisoning people for praying outside of abortuaries, or protesting against Israel’s conduct of the war, two radically different things from two diametrically opposite parts of the political spectrum. Don’t think that there are not a whole Americans who would do the same thing.

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The losses at The Washington Post * Updated! *

My subscription to The Washington Post is very reasonable, and far less than subscriptions to The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other newspapers. Both the Times and the Inquirer endorsed Kamala Harris Emhoff, whom I regard as a crackpot, socialist, and unChristian supporter of prenatal infanticide, but I didn’t cancel my subscriptions to them over their endorsements.

I doubt that anyone would have cared had the Post endorsed Mrs Emhoff, and I also doubt that newspaper endorsements mean much, especially now that their circulation continues to decline. Newspapers are, as I have previously called them, 18th century technology.

We have previously noted how the butthurt left were cancelling subscriptions to the Post, but have apparently misunderestimated just how butthurt they have been! From National Public Radio:

Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement

Continue reading →

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Once again, the left want opponents to just to just shut the heck up!

It all seems so familiar. We reported, in December of 2021, how the female members of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team were told to keep their mouths shut about Will ‘Lia’ Thomas, the mentally ill man male who claimed he was female on the team:

‘It’s bringing people to tears’: SECOND UPenn swimmer speaks out against trans Lia Thomas competing for the women’s team and says the crowd was silent when she won most recent meet

  • An second anonymous female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has spoken out to say she and her teammates are upset by transgender teammate
  • Lia Thomas, 22, smashed three US swimming records at an Akron, Ohio contest last weekend 
  • Thomas also gave an interview to SwimSwam touting the fairness of inclusive but controversial IOC guidelines allowing transgender athletes to compete 
  • Thomas previously competed for the school’s men’s team for three years before joining the women’s team with her last men’s competition in November 2019 

By James Gordon | Published: 18:29 EST, 10 December 2021 | Updated: 21:33 EST, 10 December 2021

A second female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has aired her frustrations and fury as her transgender teammate Lia Thomas continues to smash records.

The entire team has been ‘strongly advised’ not to speak to the media and the second swimmer has been granted anonymity.

Nevertheless, the teammate stepped forward to tell how UPenn swimmers are ‘angry’ over what has been perceived as a ‘lack of fairness’ as Thomas smashes record after record in the pool.

The officials at the University of Pennsylvania told the women basically to shut their mouths and swim. Another female team member said that “she feared for her ability to find employment after graduating from college for sharing her honest opinion about a transgender teammate,” a fear that the university’s officials pushed. In a letter that sixteen of Mr Thomas’ teammates anonymously released, they stated that they “have been told that if we spoke out against her inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.”

Well, it’s happening again, this time in Nevada: Continue reading →

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Journolism: When the credentialed media fail in their duties They want to "speak truth to power," but only when it doesn't interfere with their political preferences

When I was a teenager in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, I delivered the morning Lexington Herald and the afternoon Lexington Leader, back in those quill pen and inkwell days when the Lexington newspapers were actually delivered throughout central and eastern Kentucky. Now the print editions of the combined Lexington Herald-Leader, published only thrice a week on Wednesdays, Fridays and (ostensibly) Sundays but actually delivered on Saturdays, are delivered via the United States Postal Service in the mail; no more paperboys! The Herald was “moderately liberal” while the Leader was “conservative” in their editorial stances, but by the mid-1980s, after the two dailies merged to form the Herald-Leader, my now late best friend started calling them the Herald-Liberal.

Nevertheless, my recollections of the newspaper back then never had it as blatantly partisan as what I see in the newspapers of today.

We learned in journalism classes — though I was a staffer for the Kentucky Kernel, the university’s student newspaper, in the early 1980s, I was not a journalism major — that journalists were supposed to be independent, even-handed, and impartial in their work. The term “yellow journalism” was often misapplied, but we were supposed to eschew:

In journalism, yellow journalism and the yellow press are American newspapers that use eye-catching headlines and sensationalized exaggerations for increased sales. The English term is chiefly used in the US. In the United Kingdom, a similar term is tabloid journalism. Other languages, e.g. Russian (Жёлтая пресса zhyoltaya pressa), sometimes have terms derived from the American term. Yellow journalism emerged in the intense battle for readers by two newspapers in New York City in 1890s. It was not common in other cities.

Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883 and told his editors to use sensationalism, crusades against corruption, and lavish use of illustrations to boost circulation. William Randolph Hearst then purchased the rival New York Journal in 1895. They engaged in an intense circulation war, at a time when most men bought one copy every day from rival street vendors shouting their paper’s headlines. The term “yellow journalism” originated from the innovative popular “Yellow Kid” comic strip that was published first in the World and later in the Journal.

This type of reporting was characterized by exaggerated headlines, unverified claims, partisan agendas, and a focus on topics like crime, scandal, sports, and violence. Historians have debated whether Yellow journalism played a large role in inflaming public opinion about Spain’s atrocities in Cuba at the time, and perhaps pushing the U.S. into the Spanish-American War of 1898. Most historians say it did not do so. The two papers reached a working class Democratic audience, and the nation’s upscale Republican decision makers (such as President William McKinley and leaders in Congress) seldom read the Yellow press.

The use of partisan newspapers had a long history in the 20th century, with the Soviet Communists publishing Правда (Pravda, which means ‘truth’ in Russian) and Известия (Izvestia, which means ‘news’ in Russian), to spread their propaganda. Beginning in 1920, the Nazi party in Germany began publishing the Völkischer Beobachter (literally ‘People’s Observer,’ but by ‘Völkisch‘, the people to which it refers are not everyone, but ethnic German nationalists, a term which excluded Jews) to spread, eventually successfully, their political arguments.

During the post-World War II era, newspapers strove to keep their editorial and reportorial functions separate. Among the most notable newspapers in the country, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and several others, the editorial slant was obviously to the liberal side, though rarely wild-eyed, far-out leftism. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, was more conservative in its editorial department. But in none of those great newspapers were there serious questions about the accuracy of their reporting. Their biases did inevitably creep in, but that was primarily evident in what they chose to cover, rather than the accuracy of what was reported.

Today? As this site reported on Friday evening, the readers and subscribers of The Washington Post have waxed wroth because the newspaper, under the instructions of owner Jeff Bezos, declined to endorse anyone for President, the left being absotively, posilutely incensed that they didn’t endorse Kamala Harris Emhoff. Teeth have been gnashed, garments have been rent, and subscriptions have been cancelled.

Cancelled subscriptions? That’s what really gets to the reporters. CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted:

Canceling a newspaper subscription helps politicians who don’t want oversight, does nothing to hurt the billionaires who own the newspapers and make decisions with which you may disagree, and will result in fewer journalists trying to hold the powerful to account.

Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah tweeted:

I didn’t sign up to be a journalist to be silent on what matters most.

I didn’t come here to be a coward. Some of us really, truly believe in speaking truth to power.

We were betrayed today.

Herein lays the problem: the mission of a true journalist shouldn’t be “speaking truth to power,” but to report the news impartially. How are we to have confidence that you are reporting the truth impartially when you blatantly support one position over another? Miss Attiah apparently aspires to the status of journolist, not journalist.

The members of the credentialed media mostly knew of President Joe Biden’s continuing mental decline, but, rather than “hold(ing) the powerful to account” and “speaking truth to power,” they kept their mouths, and keyboards, quiet. The stories of Mr Biden’s slow descent into dementia were many and obvious, but only in independent blogs and on social media; of the credentialed media, the New York Post is the only one I can recall which ever mentioned it. Fox News probably did as well, but as I don’t watch television news — my hearing is so poor that I have to rely on reading the news — and the left-leaning media said virtually nothing.

Remember: they covered up for Hillary Clinton as well, her several falls and then her brief lapse into catatonia, minimizing what they couldn’t completely hide.

If you only paid attention to CNN and the major newspapers, you would never have known that President Biden was zombifying, and it’s all because the media were so consumed with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome that they didn’t want to say anything which might hurt his prospects for re-election, right up until the time of his infamous debate performance, when it was exposed to the American public.

“Speaking truth to power” means telling us all of the truth, including truths which do not fit with your political preferences. That’s what Mr Tapper and Miss Attiah and the vast majority of the journolists who were aware of his conditions failed to do.

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When the Jew haters tell you who they are, believe them! "Students for Justice in Palestine" could have protested at Israeli consulate, but chose to protest at Jewish center

This poor site, along with literally hundreds of others, has covered the pro-‘Palestinian, really pro-Hamas ‘demonstrations’ on our college campuses last spring. I did note, with some pleasure, that at least at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky, the protests were carried out the way the First Amendment, which guarantees to all of us both the freedom of speech and the right of peaceable assembly, contemplated, peaceably.

Sadly, many of the pro-savages demonstrations at other schools were not entirely peaceable. But I did gloat report on those demonstrations fading away when school was out for the summer.

Well, it’s a new school year — though October seems like this article is a bit late — and the Usual Suspects have been up to their old tricks. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Temple suspends pro-Palestinian student group; Muslim advocates call to investigate police over alleged hijab removal during campus protest

CAIR is calling for an investigation after Temple University’s handling of a protest, where they say a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab.

by Max Marin and Robert Moran | Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | 2:02 PM EDT | Updated: 6:37 PM EDT

Temple University has temporarily banned Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on campus, the latest in a wave of suspensions against pro-Palestinian student groups amid sustained protests against the war in Gaza.

The move comes after police detained four SJP members, including a Temple student, during a demonstration that interrupted an on-campus career fair last week.

So, the “Students for Justice in Palestine” demonstration was not peaceable in nature, but interrupted a meeting to help more sensible students at Temple who were looking to begin their professional careers after graduation. You know, the sensible thing to do after spending a boatload of money for a university education.

Muslim community leaders are calling for an investigation into the university’s handling of that protest after a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab and detained the woman without access to her religious head covering.

If that happened, and I will never believe claims by “Muslim community leaders” without outside corroboration, it would have been because the woman was resisting arrest.

While Temple did not cite that specific incident, a university spokesperson said in a statement that the interim suspension stemmed from “recent conduct,” and the student activist group is now forbidden from holding on-campus activities, including “meetings, social and philanthropic events.” The suspension was first reported by the Temple News.

The spokesperson pointed to the university’s on-campus demonstration guidelines that are “in place to ensure the safety and well-being of community members while also encouraging and preserving freedom of expression.” . . . .

This is not the group’s first brush with university leaders. Temple president Richard Englert denounced an SJP-led demonstration in August after protesters chanted outside a Jewish student center on campus.

In a statement, Englert threatened disciplinary action against students who participated in the rally, which he described as a form of “intimidation and harassment.” The pro-Palestinian student group pushed back against Englert’s comments, arguing in a post on social media that the president “distorted our message to serve the false narrative that Temple SJP is a threat to Temple.”

No, I suppose that the pro-barbarian students wouldn’t see accosting Jewish students outside of a known Jewish student gathering place as “intimidation and harassment,” but the Jews on campus certainly would have, and did:

Temple University says it is investigating a student pro-Palestinian demonstration held outside a Jewish center on campus

“Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated,” Temple’s president said.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, August 29, 2024 | 10:40 PM EDT

Temple University said it is investigating for possible disciplinary action a pro-Palestinian march by students and nonstudents who demonstrated outside a Jewish center on campus Thursday.

The protest march began at the Charles Library, said Temple University president Richard Englert in a statement, then some demonstrators went to the Rosen Center, which is the home at Temple of Hillel, an international organization for Jewish students.

“While there, the demonstrators used megaphones to chant directly at the occupants within the building,” Englert said.

Emphasis mine. Using megaphones to chant directly at the people in the Hillel Center, the majority of who could be assumed to be Jewish, would constitute targeted ethnic and religious harassment.

“We are deeply saddened and concerned by these events,” Englert said. “Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated.”

This was clearly a protest against Jews in general, not just Israeli policy, as the “Students for Justice in Palestine” have conflated the two. Not all Jews are Israelis, and at an American college 5,774 miles away from Israel, it’s virtually certain that most of the Jews on campus at Temple are not from Israel.

There is an Israeli consulate in Philadelphia, at 1880 John F. Kennedy Blvd, which is just 2.6 miles away from the Hillel Center, at 1441 West Norris Street, pretty much of a straight march down Broad Street, though, admittedly, marching that way takes you partly into the Philadelphia Badlands. If the SJP wanted to protest Israeli government policies specifically, they could have been protesting outside the consulate; instead they were harassing people they knew to be Jooooos.

Temple’s actions won’t stop the SJP from existing; all it does is ban them as a student organization and deny them use of Temple’s facilities.

Our First Amendment was written by civilized men, with civilized behavior in mind; they cited “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. It does not protect some right to harass others, or gather in mobs, or riot.

But the pro-‘Palestinian’ people in this country, and around the world, are not truly civilized men. They might think that they are, but they are supporting the barbarism of Hamas, they are supporting the antithesis of the Western civilization, the benefits of which they enjoy.  The “Students for Justice in Palestine” have a right to exist, and to protest peacefully; it’s only when the break the code of civilization that they become subject to arrest.

The one thing they do not have is any right to the respect of decent people, and for them, I have none. When the anti-Semites tell you who they really are, you should believe them!

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Karma comes to Taylor Lorenz!

The First Street Journal has previously reported on the very lovely Taylor Lorenz, who covers technology and online culture for The Washington Post. Miss Lorenz was most famous for her doxing of Chaya Raichik as the creator and proprietor of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok, along with her continual fretting about people not wearing face masks for all eternity.

But, I used the wrong tense above. Miss Lorenz does not cover anything for the Post, but covered her subjects, as in past tense.

Taylor Lorenz leaves Washington Post following her Biden ‘war criminal’ post controversy

Columnist had gone weeks without anything published by the paper, suggesting she was benched over the Instagram post</h4
By Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News | Tuesday, October 1, 2024 | 12:18 PM EDT

Reporter Taylor Lorenz announced she left The Washington Post on Tuesday after being absent for weeks following a viral controversy involving her calling President Biden a “war criminal.”

Lorenz went viral in August after a screenshot obtained by the New York Post’s Jon Levine appeared to show her calling President Biden a “war criminal” in an Instagram post while attending a White House event. Lorenz initially implied the caption was edited by someone else before admitting that she shared the post herself.

Translation: Miss Lorenz knew that she had f(ornicated) up badly, and lied to try to save her job. She knew that the newspaper was supporting Democrats editorially, and she had just posted something which hurt the Democrats chances in the November election. We don’t know that was the concern of the editors, but the credentialed media cannot go around calling the President of the United States a “war criminal” unless it’s in a specific opinion column, or he’s a Republican.

As part of the launch of her User Magazine Substack, she explained “why I’m leaving legacy media,” saying her type of reporting “has become increasingly difficult to do in corporate media.”

Yup!

Further down:

In the viral image shared by Levine, a masked Lorenz was seen taking a selfie with Biden speaking in the background. Included was a caption that read “War criminal” with a frowny face.

Fox News Digital learned the post was made in an Instagram story specifically using the “close friends” feature as indicated by the green star icon, meaning it was not posted publicly and could only have been seen by a select group of Instagram users of her choosing.

Perhaps Miss Lorenz wasn’t quite as good an “online culture” reporter as she believed. Anyone even a quarter-way internet savvy knows that anything you post on the internet has left your control, and can be ferreted out and used by someone else. That she sent it out only to “close friends” tells us that she knew it could be problematic for her, but wasn’t quite smart enough to not send it in the first place.

Miss Lorenz was trying to get Miss Raichik fired from her previous job with her doxing article. I don’t think she’s still doing real estate, but her net worth is now estimated to be $10 million, so being doxed doesn’t seem to have hurt her.

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John Kerry lets us know that the Democrats have not given up on the idea of regulating speech

My daily diary informed me that September 30th is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and my immediate thought was: whose truth?

John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee, Secretary of State during the last half of the Obama Administration, and recently President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, said:

“But, look, if people go to only one source, and the source they go to is sick and has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer it out of existence,” Kerry said.

“What we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change,” he added, while acknowledging that different people have other visions for change.

It was 2004, and CBS News, certainly one of our traditional media sources, tried to torpedo the younger President Bush’s re-election campaign, and if it weren’t for two blogs, Powerline and Little Green Footballs — the latter of which has gone off the deep end whacko — spotting that the documents used to buttress the story were forged, and were able to publish that on the internet, it is at least possible that Mr Bush would have lost the election.

Thus, you can see why Mr Kerry doesn’t really like Freedom of Speech, at least not the kind of speech which doesn’t support Democrats.

It’s not just the 80-year-old Mr Kerry. President Biden wanted to set up a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, to be run by the highly partisan Nina Jankowicz, but that effort was first paused and then dropped due to the fiery reaction it received. Naturally, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz waxed wroth!

Jankowicz’s experience is a prime example of how the right-wing Internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them. It also shows what happens when institutions, when confronted with these attacks, don’t respond effectively.

Those familiar with the board’s inner workings, including DHS employees and Capitol Hill staffers, along with experts on disinformation, say Jankowicz was set up to fail by an administration that was unsure of its messaging and unprepared to counteract a coordinated online campaign against her.

The lovely Miss Lorenz told us everything we needed to know about how Miss Jankowicz was expected to run her Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board: she expected it to block “far-right influencers” and “the “right-wing Internet apparatus.” The left were aghast when the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, bought Twitter — sorry, I absolutely refuse to call it 𝕏 — because Mr Musk wants it to be a free speech site, not one which censors some — mostly conservative — arguments.

Mr Kerry’s comments at the World Economic Forum, that private jet set gathering of the hoitiest and the toitiest in Davos, Switzerland to talk about Other People not being able to use fossil fuels, tell us one thing: today’s Democrats have not given up on the idea that they can somehow circumvent the First Amendment and regulate people’s speech. They are so invested in telling people what they want them to hear, and not wanting them to hear anything else, that they actually do thing that regulation of speech, to control ‘disinformation,’ of course, is actually the freedom of speech. And if Kamala Harris Emhoff wins in November, we’ll simply see further efforts to regulate speech.