Category Archives: First Amendment

Imagine a progressive elite boot on the neck of journalists forever (Photo by Eko Siswono Toyudho/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

First, let me quote to you something from The Captive Mind, Polish dissident writer Czeslaw Miloszs 1951 classic exploring the mentality of intellectuals who submitted to Communism:

It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy. Their bread, their work, their private lives began to depend on this or that decision in disputes on principles to which, until then, they had never paid any attention. In their eyes, the philosopher had always been a sort of dreamer whose divigations had no effect on reality. The average human being, even if he had once been exposed to it, wrote philosophy off as utterly impractical and useless. therefore the great intellectual work of the Marxists could easily pass as just one more variation on a sterile pastime. Only a few individuals understood the causes and probably consequences of this general indifference.

The more general point here is that ordinary people had better pay attention to what intellectual elites say and do. It is very, very unwise to laugh them off as living in an ivory tower. The lightning-fast movement of what was once ultra-fringe discussions about gender and sexuality from graduate student seminars to the center of American culture is a clear and unmistakable sign and a warning. What happens at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and other elite universities does not stay there. The people those universities educate become the American elites, and move into leadership positions throughout US society.

I mentioned this summer being in Poland, and talking with Poles who work for the Polish branches of US and Western Europe-based multinationals. Those companies are bringing LGBT Pride policies and initiatives into their Polish workplaces. The Poles with whom I spoke are Catholics whose religious convictions rebel against having to affirm LGBT especially the T in the workplace. But they badly need those jobs, so theyre torn. In this way, US and Western European corporate elites are compelling a cultural revolution. If they succeed in changing the views of Eastern European elites, then they will change those countries. What started in American universities will have made its way down to everyday life in Poland and countries like it. It never would have occurred to Polish workers that the abstruse theories of, say, Judith Butler would have anything to do with their jobs, but thats exactly what is happening, right now, all over the world.

Similarly, in a fantastic history Im reading now, Yuri Slezkines The House Of Government, it is clear that the ideas that led to the Bolshevik Revolution, and ultimately the deaths of 20 million, began in fervent reading groups of messianic young Marxist intellectuals. People who do not pay attention to what intellectual and cultural elites say, or who dismiss it as eggheaded nonsense, are fools.

I say that as background to the latest insanity from Harvard, as reported by The Harvard Crimson:

Harvards Undergraduate Council voted to pass a statement at its meeting Sunday in support of immigration advocacy group Act on a Dreams concerns about The Harvard Crimsons news policies and made recommendations to make reporting policies more transparent.

The statement, passed 15-13-4, comes after The CrimsoncoveredAct on a Dreams Abolish ICE protest in September. After the protest, Crimson reporters contacted a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson for comment. More than 900 people and several student groups have since signed an Act on a Dream petitioncondemningThe Crimsons decision to reach out for comment.

The councils vote approved its own statement regarding the issue to be sent out to students in its weekly email.

The Undergraduate Council stands in solidarity with the concerns of Act on a Dream, undocumented students, and other marginalized individuals on campus, the statement reads. It is necessary for the Undergraduate Council to acknowledge the concerns raised by numerous groups and students on campus over the past few weeks and to recognize the validity of their expressed fear and feelings of unsafety.

Members of several campus groups including Act on a Dream and the Harvard College Democrats have instructed their members not to speak to The Crimson unless it changes its policies.

You see whats happening here? These Harvard students, and part of the Harvard student government, do not want the campus newspaper to practice basic journalism. It condemns the newspaper simply for seeking comment from people the students dislike. The agents of ICE are non-persons people so horrible that they do not deserve to be heard, because they cause members of favored groups to experience feelings of unsafety.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. It is perhaps understandable (though not defensible) that elite Harvard students would oppose freedom of religion. But freedom of the press? If theyre against basic journalistic standards, this is a terrible sign for the future, and for all the First Amendment freedoms. A couple of weeks ago, a poll came out showing that 60 percent of young Americans want the First Amendment rewritten to restrict free speech and freedom of the press. (And yes, I am aware that Donald Trumps appalling populist rhetoric about the press is adding to this hatred of the First Amendment.)

The book Im writing now talks about the cult of Social Justice, and the messianic, militant utopianism of this new generation of progressives, who are marching through the institutions of American life. Im thinking hard right now of this other line from Miloszs book, about the insufficiency of making better arguments than the enemies of liberty. The Messiah he mentions here is Communism:

One does not defeat a Messiah with common-sense arguments.

UPDATE: At Northwestern University, home of one of the countrys leading journalism schools, the campus newspapers leadership has capitulated to the SJWs. In this editorial, they apologize to the campus for reporting on a public event (a speech given on campus by former AG Jeff Sessions). Excerpt:

We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night along with how we plan to move forward.

One area of our reporting that harmed many students was our photo coverage of the event. Some protesters found photos posted to reporters Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive. Those photos have since been taken down. On one hand, as the paper of record for Northwestern, we want to ensure students, administrators and alumni understand the gravity of the events that took place Tuesday night. However, we decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students who were photographed. We feel that covering traumatic events requires a different response than many other stories. While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe [emphasis mine RD] and in situations like this, that they are benefitting from our coverage rather than being actively harmed by it. We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry.

Some students also voiced concern about the methods that Daily staffers used to reach out to them. Some of our staff members who were covering the event used Northwesterns directory to obtain phone numbers for students beforehand and texted them to ask if theyd be willing to be interviewed. We recognize being contacted like this is an invasion of privacy, and weve spoken with those reporters along with our entire staff about the correct way to reach out to students for stories.

It goes on. Its a signed editorial, which I suppose gives future employers a heads-up about these young fraidy-cats complete lack of moral courage and journalistic professionalism.

UPDATE.2: A young journalist quotes the signatories of the editorial and warns about whats coming when this generation (his own) takes institutional power:

See original here:
The 'Evil' First Amendment - The American Conservative

The Division of Student Affairs is launching a new constitution-based website this month focusing on FAQs surrounding freedom of speech and the First Amendment.

According to Vice President of Student Affairs Joanne Smith, the website is meant to educate and inform students on their rights and what free speech entails.

Sometimes there can be confusion about what the First Amendment protects and what it does not protect; (the website is) an education tool, Smith said.

The site is currently in the works and expected to launch by Thanksgiving break, but no day has been set, according to Smith.

The target audience is primarily students but will be public and accessible to anyone. Smith said she believes the website is beneficial to anyone who visitsparticularly organizations and groups affiliated with the school.

Part of this is making sure people understand what the guidelines (for free speech and student protest) are as a university through Texas law, Smith said. Our goal as a university is to educate people about what is free speech and what is not free speech.

According to Smith, the First Amendment site will outline and define terms like hate speech. President of College Democrats at Texas State Trevor Newman thinks the implementation of a free speech and First Amendment information site will educate people on their rights and keep improving discourse and relationships among student activists and political groups on campus.

I think this site will help with political tension on campus if people go to that site and understand what people are (protesting), Newman said.

Newman believes the new site will aid the organizations members in understanding what they do as activists. Newman sees the website as having the potential to increase both positive and negative interactions when students are informed about how to use their First Amendment right on campus.

I think when you give students an open door to the First Amendment, and say, hey you can say whatever you want to on a college campus, it gives the possibility for positive and negative communication, Newman said.

Cameron Davis, accounting freshman, said he believes it is important for the university to introduce a website about free speech because of the factual and constitutional answers it can provide students. Davis said he sees the website being used for double-checking whether or not organizations are in line with what is featured on the site.

This site would create more discussion among students and as long as the information is constitutional, I see this as being an effective improvement to the school, Davis said.

While the site is not yet finished, it should be finalized near the end of November 2019 and accessible through the Student Affairs webpage at https://www.vpsa.txstate.edu/.

Viewed 163 times, 44 visits today

More:
First Amendment website launching by end of November - University Star

Editors Note:All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board. Letters to the Editor reflect the view of a member of the campus community and are submitted to the publication for approval.

To the Editor,

Last week, Katrina Leibee, a Collegian columnist, wrote an article discussing the inappropriateness of protesting/having Mass outside of Planned Parenthoods around the country. The article asserts that because of the many other services Planned Parenthood provides, protesting outside in opposition to abortion is liable to drive away people who have no intention of getting one and making innocent people feel guilty.

Leibee then asserts that it would be equally inappropriate to do STD testing and breast exams outside of a church, but we can envision a situation where some form of mobile clinic near a church on public property, as long as privacy of the patients was maintained, would be a perfectly acceptable public service. In addition, the nature of medical procedures is a private one, but the nature of protest is inherently public.

On Oct. 22, CSU hosted Charlie Kirk on campus for an event at the University Center for the Arts. Present were hundreds of protesters and thousands of hopeful attendees. From the eye of an onlooker, the beauty of American free speech as it relates to the First Amendment was made manifest.

Most would agree that the protesters were doing nothing wrong. Sure, the people attending the event found their plight contrived but nonetheless were glad to see active participation in the American political sphere. Although contention was present, many valuable conversations were had, and the perspectives of the other side were challenged.

To limit the exercise of religious liberty in any way, regardless of ones own opinion of its veracity, is to ignore a major part about what makes Americas cultural dialogue and rights to such so unique and valuable.

Many attendees were not even supporters of Kirk but were simply interested in participating in the dialogue. The rhetoric of Charlie Kirk was opposed by some and supported by others, but all had the right to either attend or protest his presence at CSU.

This is exactly what was intended by our founding fathers when they opened the doors for personal liberty, and it ought to stay that way. Also included within the scope of the First Amendment is the right to freedom of religion. To limit the exercise of religious liberty in any way, regardless of ones own opinion of its veracity, is to ignore a major part about what makes Americas cultural dialogue and rights to such so unique and valuable.

At the end of the day, even though making up only about 3% of Planned Parenthood services, 332,757 abortions were performed by Planned Parenthood in the 2017-18 fiscal year. With approximately 600 clinics nationwide, that averages out to around 1.5 abortions per day, per clinic.

As a community organization that remains a topic of consistent contention, the Planned Parenthood at Shields and Elizabeth provides a valuable space to engage in conversation about a topic that is extremely important to have, regardless of whether or not you support abortion.

Sincerely,

Matt Weis, CSU junior, agricultural business

Lauren Flores CSU sophomore, history

The Collegians opinion desk can be reached atletters@collegian.com. To submit a letter to the editor, pleasefollow the guidelines at collegian.com.

Follow this link:
LTTE: We all have business exercising our First Amendment rights - Rocky Mountain Collegian

WASHINGTON President Trump on Friday attacked Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine he summarily removed this year, even as she testified in the impeachment inquiry about how she felt threatened by Mr. Trump.

Did his behavior amount to witness tampering?

If the question is what could be charged in court, the answer is probably not. But impeachment is not limited to ordinary crimes. As House Democrats weigh bringing articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump including one potentially based on his obstruction of congressional investigations the presidents Twitter onslaught may well have handed them more fodder.

As Ms. Yovanovitch was telling the House Intelligence Committee about the devastation and fear she felt this year when she was targeted first by Mr. Trumps allies and later by the president himself during a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Mr. Trump fired off a tweet denigrating her anew.

Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Mr. Trump wrote, assailing her on Twitter to his 66 million followers.

Early in her career, Ms. Yovanovitch was a low-level diplomatic officer stationed in Somalia as that country was starting to slide toward the civil war that would leave it a failed state.

A few minutes after the presidents tweet, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, interrupted Ms. Yovanovitchs testimony to read it and ask her what the effect the presidents attack on her would have on other witnesses willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing.

She appeared momentarily uncertain how to respond.

Its very intimidating, she said. She then paused, searching for words. I cant speak to what the president is trying to do, but the effect is to be intimidating.

Mr. Schiff responded in a stern tone: Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.

In a statement, Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, denied that Mr. Trumps denigration of Ms. Yovanovitch rose to that level.

The tweet was not witness intimidation, Ms. Grisham said. It was simply the presidents opinion, which he is entitled to. This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate, charade stacked against the president.

Mr. Trump has a history of using his platform to excoriate people who are in a position to serve as witnesses to his own potential wrongdoing, using Twitter and statements at his political rallies to criticize less well-known people by name, in humiliating and sometimes threatening ways.

The targets of his verbal assaults have included Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer and fixer, who testified that Mr. Trump violated campaign-finance laws and fraudulently manipulated the value of his assets in financial forms; Donald F. McGahn II, his former White House lawyer, a key witness to several obstruction episodes in the special counsels report; and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who testified that Mr. Trump privately pushed him to shut down a criminal investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

The tactic functions not just as an attempt to discredit his critics, but as a warning to deter others from coming forward.

At a minimum, it can unleash a cascade of abuse online and harassing messages from Mr. Trumps supporters, which can be especially unsettling for people who are not accustomed to being in the public eye.

But it can also raise fears that some unhinged person may go further: This year, a fervent Trump supporter, Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., was sentenced to 20 years in prison for mailing bombs to people and organizations that Mr. Trump had criticized, including prominent Democrats and journalists.

Federal witness tampering law, which is part of a broader obstruction of justice statute, makes it a felony, under some circumstances, to try to dissuade or hinder witnesses from attending or testifying in an official proceeding.

The presidents tweet on Friday did not threaten Ms. Yovanovitch. But the law covers not just threats and intimidation, which are punishable by 20 years in prison, but mere harassment as well, a lesser but still serious offense punishable by three years in prison.

Still, even viewed as mere harassment, Mr. Trumps attacks on Ms. Yovanovitch on Friday would be challenging to prosecute under the witness tampering statute. Prosecutors would be hard pressed to convince a jury that he was trying to dissuade her, at least, from attending the hearing and testifying because he waited to lash out until after she was already in the hearing room and in the midst of testifying.

A hypothetical prosecution under that law would face severe constitutional challenges, as well. The Justice Department has taken the view that the Constitution makes sitting presidents temporarily immune from prosecution, and Mr. Trumps lawyers could argue that he had a First Amendment right to criticize her.

In fact, the president himself raised the issue at the White House on Friday afternoon when asked if he was guilty of witness intimidation, denying the charge and saying, I want freedom of speech.

To the extent that Mr. Trumps targeting of Ms. Yovanovitch was less about shutting her up and more about making other government officials watching what she is going through think twice about defying the White Houses direction not to cooperate with Congress, the witness tampering statute was not clearly written to cover that situation.

But when deciding what amounts to an impeachable offense, Congress is not limited to violations of ordinary criminal statutes. Lawmakers may also impeach a president for actions that are lawful, yet still constitute abuses of power.

House Democrats are already considering articles of impeachment focused on obstruction of Congress, including for Mr. Trumps efforts to push witnesses to defy subpoenas, and obstruction of justice, including for attempting to tamper with witnesses in the Russia investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

For example, Mr. Muellers report recounted how Mr. Trump bullied Mr. McGahn in an attempt to get him to write a memo falsely denying that Mr. Trump had earlier sought to have Mr. Mueller fired. Mr. McGahn had already given a deposition about that earlier episode, so writing such a memo which he refused to do would have contradicted his account an and discredited him as a witness.

The Mueller report also recounted how Mr. Trump and his proxies had dangled the prospect of pardons in front of several potential witnesses in the special counsel investigation, while urging them not to flip on him and cooperate with prosecutors.

Against that backdrop, Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that Mr. Trumps attacks on Ms. Yovanovitch amounted to clear witness tampering that could be cited in a forthcoming article of impeachment.

The president chose to respond to a patriotic and superb public servant with lies and intimidation. Vintage Donald Trump, Mr. Himes said in a text. Her boss disparaged and intimidated her not after, but during her testimony.

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.

See original here:
Trump Attack on Envoy During Testimony Raises Charges of Witness Intimidation - The New York Times

It might have surprised you when you heard that 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., WAS working on legislation that would increase taxes on every American family and eventually force 30 percent of those families to file for bankruptcy. You may also have read social media comments by people calling her a dangerous socialist.

The problem is, none of this is true. Warren is not working on legislation that would raise taxes on all Americans and there is no evidence her proposals would lead to such an increase in bankruptcy filings. But politicians can and do post lies on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. And those companies do not have to delete those lies.

Politicians (and anyone, really) can post lies on social media like Facebook and Twitter. And those companies do not have to delete those lies.

In the abstract, it feels like such lies should be easy to disprove. People will simply point out the lie, and the truth will come out. In the abstract, people will not base their opinions and votes on false information they read on social media.

But we dont live in the abstract. We live in reality. And in reality, what you read on social media can affect your views and votes. That is exactly why candidates, who tend not to like to throw money away, are increasingly spending money on advertisements on social media. Some of these candidate-funded ads are filled with truths, others with lies.

These political lies poison and erode our democracy. But we have two main options to combat them. First, we can exert enormous pressure on social media platforms to prevent or delete false campaign statements. This would be the cleanest way to implement change, but this is extremely unlikely to happen. Second, the government can step in and force social media companies to set up some basic protocols to guard against the posting of campaign lies. This would be a whole new frontier for the government, and regulation of online speech is tricky to say the least.

Get the think newsletter.

And that is why Warren posted an admittedly false Facebook ad earlier in October. In the fake ad, Warren alleged that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, had endorsed Trumps re-election campaign. She then quickly admitted that allegation was false. Her point was to argue that politicians can lie on Facebook, and spend money on ads that are patently false.

The impetus behind the ad, at least in part, was a Trump campaign ad which falsely claims that former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden offered to pay people in the Ukraine $1 billion to help his son. Some, but not all, television stations refused to air the spot.

Not everyone gets to blatantly lie in Facebook ads. That is a special privilege largely reserved for politicians. Facebook treats ads from politicians as different from other ads largely because there are other considerations when it comes to political speech, which is often deemed newsworthy. If these ads were not posted by politicians, they would be subject to a review by Facebooks independent fact-checkers and content rules.

Twitter, similarly, has an exemption for accounts run by military or government entities. Those accounts are not subject to Twitters prohibitions against things like specific threats of violence. In addition, Twitter will typically let stand any posts it views as newsworthy, even if false or misleading. And it is easy to see why anything posted by the president of the United States is newsworthy.

To be fair, social media corporations are in a difficult position. If they start policing lies, it means a person or group of people will have to act as the truth police. It means social media corporations will be subject to claims of censorship and political bias. It is much easier for these corporations to just take a step back and let politicians post whatever they want. This may be why, in the face of Warrens attacks on Facebook and its policies, Zuckerberg has stated in no uncertain terms that Facebook has no plans to police ads that constitute political speech.

Here is the next problem democracy is difficult and messy. And social media corporations have provided a platform that dirties up already dirty campaigns.

Social media platforms like Facebook are the new town squares. The days of politicians and voters meeting in the center of town to debate candidates and issues are mostly gone. But the days of politicians posting, liking and sharing their views on social media are here to stay, at least until the next big technological invention.

It is time to clean up the town square. Lets pick up the false flyers and the patently deceitful pamphlets.

Because media corporations appear to have no appetite to regulate this political speech, it may be up to the government to ensure that our marketplace of ideas is not corrupted by lies and deceit.

We do have a loose blueprint to follow. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent government agency, regulates television and radio. The general rule is that the FCC cannot regulate the content that is aired on television and radio stations because that would be censorship and would run afoul of the First Amendment. But there are significant exceptions to that rule. For instance, the FCC can regulate obscene and indecent programming in order to protect children. In addition, the FCC has a prohibition against broadcasting false information that causes substantial public harm. But this prohibition applies to comments about crimes or catastrophes. Not all false campaign statements fall within that bucket.

Even if this prohibition against false speech was applied more broadly, the big hurdle is that the FCC can only regulate content over television and radio because the government grants individual radio and television stations licenses in order to broadcast. The broadcast spectrum is viewed as owned by the people, and so the government can regulate it.

A professor at Duke University, Philip M. Napoli, has tried to find a way over that hurdle. He has argued that we should view user data as a public resource. And therefore, because social media is using a public resource, the FCC could regulate that resource, as it regulates individual television and radio stations. This is a smart and novel argument, and one that would allow the FCC to regulate some speech without trampling on the First Amendment.

But another word for novel is untested. In our current political climate, it seems unlikely that we would agree to vastly expand the purview of the FCC and charge it with regulating even the most egregious campaign lies. This option also presents practical problems, as social media corporations like Facebook do not currently control the content of the ads that politicians post.

In the long run, either social media corporations must start self-policing or the government must find a way to do it for them. In the short term, the best Band-Aid we have against lies is ourselves. We owe it to ourselves to be vigilant about what we see posted on social media. As voters, we owe it to our democracy to question campaign speech, even when it comes from the campaign itself. Our government is relying on us to be fact-checkers. We must try.

Jessica Levinson is a professor and the director of the Public Service Institute at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on election law and governance issues.She is the former president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission.

See the article here:
Facebook has a political fake news problem. Can we fix it without eroding the First Amendment? - NBC News

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) -- If you've driven through Gainesville in the past three years, you've seen the problem multiply - panhandlers, dangerously close to cars, sitting in intersections, and walking through traffic.

The domino effect started with Supreme Court ruling Reed v. Town of Gilbert in 2015. A city's sign-restriction ordinance went up against First Amendment, and the First Amendment won.

Cities across the country started having their panhandling ordinances struck down.

In North Central Florida, Gainesville Police and Alachua County Sheriffs Deputies were told they can no longer enforce their respective rules soon after.

The countys solution was not to regulate people or what they are saying, but instead to regulate the place.

You can solicit or panhandle from the sidewalk. You can't do it in the median, said ASO's Lt. of Patrol Operations Jayson Levy.

Alachua County's Public Safety Ordinance" went into effect in Feb. 2018.

Panhandling is perfectly legal in the unincorporated areas of the county, but standing in medians or stepping into traffic, no matter what you're doing it for, is not.

So far, deputies have only given one citation in year and a half they have been enforcing it.

"Its like writing somebody a ticket that has a suspended license, Levy said. How am I going to pay my ticket for a suspended license if I can't pay for my license in the first place?"

County leaders say the problem areas are all within city limits. Gainesville city leaders say theyre working on a solution, too.

They also say it wont be a quick fix.

Very preliminary, in discussion stages, said Gainesvilles City Communications Director Shelby Taylor. (Were) examining what has worked in other communities."

They say they have been working on an answer following a crash that killed a panhandler in April of 2019.

Commissioner Harvey Ward is one of the people working to draw up a new city ordinance. He said mimicking the countys approach isnt an option.

We need a better way of thinking about this, Ward said. "A different way of thinking about this. The county has an ordinance, but to my understanding is that it isn't necessarily legally defendable."

The ACLU and Southern Legal Council sent a letter to county officials just over a year ago, saying the same thing, but Alachua County has not backed down.

Our attorney's office did a great deal of research, looked at ordinances from other communities and was convinced this one would stand the constitutional test, said Alachua Countys Communications Director Mark Sexton.

SLC members now say the way the county has enforced the ordinance has not been problematic, and they are not pursuing a lawsuit

Still, Gainesville leaders aren't convinced, and are looking for their own unique solution.

As a part of that process, public works has been very careful to go out and measure intersections and think, maybe this median is one that's unsafe, but maybe other medians are safer for that sort of thing, Ward said.

But as to what will be done, or when, there's no clear answer yet.

I'd like to think we're maybe getting close, but I can't give you a date on when that might come around, Ward said.

Stay with TV20 as we continue to follow this story in Gainesville, Alachua County, and North Central Florida.

Originally posted here:
The Panhandling Problem: When public safety clashes with the 1st Amendment - WCJB

The Madison School District in Wisconsin fired school guard Marlon Anderson for quoting the n-word back to a Madison West High School student in explaining why the student shouldnt have used that word.

The district has a zero tolerance policy for use of the word by any student or employee. But the issue is more complex than one might think; the courts have ruled on both sides.

When I appeared on a panel before the Inns of Court in Houston, Texas, on the topic Free Speech on Campus, the matter of hate and racist speech came up and whether the Constitution protects it.

It does and does not. One panelist, a lawyer and regent at a flagship university in Texas, said that if an African-American student offended someone with racist language, he or she would be history, expelled before the end of the day.

But if public schools take government money, they must comply with the First Amendment.

The second panelist, an African-American law student, said, I know the n______ word is protected. She said the word.

I had to deal with this issue as a trustee at a college in Texas. Two African-American employees got into a heated argument, with one losing her temper and referring to the other with a racist epithet. The target asked the administration to fire the offender, and it did.

When I asked the administration whether the First Amendment protected the offenders epithet, the response was that another ruling by the Supreme Court supported the firing. In 2006 the court ruled inGarcetti v. Ceballosthat the administration can to some extent control the speech of employees to maintain an effective public workplace.

Suppose, as an illustration, a professor is hired to teach freshman composition but decides instead to teach, say, poetry, arguing that the Constitution protects his academic freedom and right to free speech in the classroom.

The school can fire him for this free speech. TheGarcetti ruling states, We hold that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline. Anderson was on an on-the-job public employee when he spoke the offensive word.

Still, I think firing the guard for accurately quoting a student does not pass the smell test. Court history generally argues for freedom of even hate and racist speech. Said the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, If you stop speech that hurts other peoples feelings, the First Amendment will become a dead letter. And when Justice Samuel AlitoSamuel AlitoCan a black high school guard be fired for quoting the n-word? Supreme Court abortion case poses major test for Trump picks Supreme Court to hear Louisiana abortion case MORE was an appellate judge, heopined, There is no categorical harassment exception in the First Amendments free speech.

Many in the scholarly world have also argued for constitutional protection of hate speech. For example, John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington University Law School,observed, There is no hate speech exception of the U.S. Constitution. And Eugene Volokh, who teaches free-speech law at UCLA School of Law,asserts, There is no First Amendment exception for racist speech, or exclusionary speech, or ... for speech by university students that created a hostile educational environment for others.

If the KKK can march down streets in Jewish neighborhoods in Skokie, Ill., security guard Marlon Anderson can quote a kid for using a racial slur and tell him not to use it again in the school.

RonaldL.Trowbridgeis a policy fellow at the Oakland, California-basedIndependent Instituteand a former director of the Fulbright Scholars Program. He later served as chief of staff for former U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger.

See original here:
Can a black high school guard be fired for quoting the n-word? | TheHill - The Hill

P.E. MOSKOWITZBOLD TYPE BOOKS, 2019272 PP.; $28.00

Words like controversial and provocative are overused. When you read or hear that so-and-sos stand-up comedy is controversial, thats usually the culture-war commentariat wishing that reaction into being rather than actually describing a pre-existing reaction. Which is why for every one person who finds it controversial, there are a thousand people whove been convinced that many people find it controversial and that such a reaction is something to be angry about. Of course, the politics of controversy is a means of distraction. If youre thinking and talking about whether so-and-sos stand-up is controversial, you arent thinking and talking about (say) healthcare or food regulation or employee-employer relations. Likewise, when you read or hear that such-and-such speaker is provocative, that often means they say things like feminists are ugly, blacks are naturally stupid, and the poor deserve their misery. These things have been said for decades and centuries. I suppose they do provoke reactions, especially among young people who havent heard such things yet, and so in a narrow sense are provocative. But the word is mostly a media euphemism; a way of seeming objective and even-handed. In other words, a way of obscuring.

P.E. Moskowitzs new book, The Case Against Free Speech, has what many would call a provocative (even controversial) title, although, like the controversial stand-ups and provocative speakers, upon investigation its actual substance is rather tame. On page one Moskowitzclarifies that his book isnt anti-free speech but only anti-the-concept-of-free-speech (meaning he doesnt think free speech exists or ever has) and that he doesnt favor censorship laws that prohibit fascist and racist speech.

Moskowitz gives two reasons for why he thinks free speech as a concept [is] meaningless. First, because with inequalities of power and wealth, the notion that all of usrich, poor, and in-betweenshare and enjoy a common individual liberty like free speech is political mumbo-jumbo. The rich spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year so their political desires are heard; the rest of us can be fired for speaking out of line at work. Those without power are harassed and surveilled by the police, and this harassment and surveillance has its effects on peoples willingness to speak freely.

Moskowitz points to his talks with Black Lives Matter activists who were harassed and surveilled by the police for months before a judge ordered the police to stop (or, more precisely, to stop being so obvious), as well as Standing Rock protesters who, while encamped, were surrounded by police, spied on overhead by drones, tracked by private security companies, and had their camp infiltrated by informants. The Standing Rock protest was most notable not for its size or duration but for the scale of the states response. Protesting the construction of a single pipeline, the state responded with extreme force and total surveillance.

In truth, more harm is done in a single executives meeting (and a hell of a lot more at a single meeting of some dark money political foundation) than was done by those protesters. And yet those meetings dont have drones buzzing overhead. No FBI infiltrators. The powerful speak freely and the rest of us suffer in silence (or will be made to). While the company CEO golfs with the attorney general and talks about easing up on enforcement of labor laws, the entire workforce is fired off for talking amongst themselves about unionizing or just joking about how much of a hellhole working there is.

A concrete instance of this occurred recently when Koch Foods settled a class-action lawsuit brought against the company by some of their food-processing workers in Mississippi; a few months later, ICE raided the companys food-processing plants and arrested almost 240 workers. The obvious lesson for migrant workers being: speak up and you run the risk of getting deported.

The second reason Moskowitz gives for thinking free speech is conceptually meaningless is that we already censor speech in favor of other values, such as privacy, property rights, and even economic efficiency. A bank lying to you about the interest rate on a loan, a company using a celebrity look-a-like to sell products, a tapped phone conversation, an emergency medical responder filming the person theyve saved, starting a company called Facebookthese are all forms of speech (or at least attorneys have tried to argue they are), but the Supreme Court has ruled that none of them are protected by the First Amendment.

The criminalization and/or prevention of all these things is effectively censorship; the state is telling you that you arent allowed to speak in certain places or say certain things. (In cases of professional speech, such as equal protection laws for home ownership, the state literally mandates that you say certain things, otherwise you cant conduct business in that industry). But these laws arent seen as censoriousor as attacks on our culture of free speechbecause theyre generally recognized as protecting other fundamental values. As Moskowitz mockingly puts it, everyone would look sideways at the person who breaks into his or her neighbors houses to berate them, then defends their actions by saying, No interest of home ownership outweighs the rights of someone to come into your house and yell at you. The value of dominion over your own home is weighted above your neighbors right to be heard. The issue clearly isnt between free speech and censorship, then, but between free speech and other values. Which raises the question: How should we decide which value wins over the others?

Moskowitz uses the case of Nazi Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (1977) to illustrate how the false pretense of free speech as an absolute value is used by bigots and fascists. In 1976, the Nazi Socialist Party of America wanted a permit to march in the majority Jewish neighborhood of Skokie, Illinois. The village tried blocking the rally by passing ordinances forbidding events where participants planned to wear military-style outfits and by requiring all rallies to provide $350,000 in insurance money beforehand. Famously, the ACLU defended the fascists in courtin response the ACLUs Illinois chapter lost a quarter of its membershipand eventually won them the right to march through Skokie. The rally never happened. Frank Collin, the leader of the Nazi Socialist Party, said he was just fighting for free speech for white Americans (yes, fascists were already using this shtick in the 1970s), and with the Supreme Court victory there was no need to actually go through with the rally. Of course, many suspected the rally never happening had less to do with that and more to do with the Jewish Defense League telling Collin that if he came into Skokie theyd make sure he left in a body bag.

Like fascist rallies today, when the Nazi Socialist Party did march around Chicago they got a police escort. Why exactly? As a Chicago columnist wrote at the time:

If I wanted to stand outside Wallys Polish Pump Room this Saturday and shout that everybody who eats Polish sausage is a pig, I suppose that would be my constitutional right. At least the ACLU would probably think so. However, I dont think I should expect the city to give me a police escort when I go there.

I suspect that if I and few of my friends walked around rich neighborhoods with a fake guillotine chanting The capitalists will not divide us, the only police escort wed be getting is one to the station (handled with as much care as the Jewish Defense League wouldve given Collin and his fascist stooges).

Radical protests get police violence; fascist protests get police escorts. Some of the reasons for this are probably sinister, but one that isnt has to do with the different tactics of the two protest groups. Radical protests are usually in sympathetic places; theyre done in order to rally mass support for something. Fascist protests, on the other hand, are usually in hostile places; theyre there to invoke a response so they can play the victim later. I agree with those who say anti-fascists should hold rallies of their own rather than counter-protest fascist ones. But I also cant blame communities like Skokie and groups like the Jewish Defense League for pronouncing that if you come to provoke a reaction you will absolutely get one. The least the rest of us can do is not fall for the fascists playing the victim afterward or pretend that their rallies have anything to do with free speech.

The Case Against Free Speech isnt very deep in analysis or original in thought. Anyone whos read literary theorist Stanley Fish will already be familiar with most of the books anti-the-concept-of-free-speech premises. The Case Against Free Speech is, however, a much-needed, easy-to-read primer on a subject that seems to be given unlimited attention but zero thought. Establishment press outlets run hundreds of op-eds a year on the crisis of free speech just because their columnists are the laughing stock of Twitter. When right-wing media isnt reporting on a migrant worker getting pulled over for drunk driving or a black man in Chicago caught stealing a refrigerator, theyre covering some college scandal like Alice Walkers books being taught in a class outside the African-American Studies department. Koch-coordinated political foundations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last thirty years making it seem as if free speech in academia is the defining political issue of our time, creating a network of organizations and websites like College Fix and Campus Reform that encourage college students to spy and snitch on one another for being too politically correct, then trickling these stories (and sometimes just directly paying for them to be published) into the media.

At one point, Moskowitz asks, Whats the return on investment for billionaires spending so much money on free speech and political correctness? His answer is that its their way of controlling universities. Similar to fascists using free speech as a smokescreen for their politics, billionaires use political correctness as a smokescreen for their interests. While theres definitely some truth to this, the rich already effectively control universities through donations and by sitting on college boards. The board of higher education in most states is a whos who of owners and executives. At George Mason, the Koch Brothers had a say in the hiring and firing of professors.

As I wrote at the beginning of this review, I think most of the debate on free speechpolitical correctness, cancel culture, trigger warnings, etc.is just a distraction. A way of controlling how and what people think about when they think theyre thinking about politics. A sort of anti-politics that distracts people so nothing happens. Thats why the PC hysteria is identical to what it was thirty years ago. We argue amongst ourselves about college speakers and stand-up comedians while the rich do whatever they want on everything else. Moskowitz is right that in an unequal society, free speech is an impossible ideal. Which is just another reason to fight for a society more equal in wealth and power.

Read the rest here:
The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent - The Humanist

House Democrats passed H.R. 4617 on Wednesday. The "Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy Act, or the SHIELD Act, amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require "implementation of compliance and reporting systems by Federal campaigns to detect and report such acts, and for other purposes," the text reads.

The legislation provides a specific timeline for notification.

COMMITTEE OBLIGATION TO NOTIFY.Not later than 1 week after a reportable foreign contact, each political committee shall notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Commission of the reportable foreign contact and provide a summary of the circumstances with respect to such reportable foreign contact.

(2) INDIVIDUAL OBLIGATION TO NOTIFY.Not later than 3 days after a reportable foreign contact

Democrats gave themselves a pat on the back for passing a bill that they say will "protect our democracy."

Lawmakers introduced the bill a few weeks after a whistleblower complaint accused President Trump of trying to threaten Ukrainian President Zelensky into investigating his political rival Joe Biden. The whistleblower could only provide a secondhand account of the phone call, but Democrats used the complaint to launch an impeachment inquiry against Trump last month.

The office of Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney called the SHIELD Act House Democrats attempt to "circumvent the First Amendment."

Securing Americas elections is crucial to the functioning of our democratic process," Cheney said in a statement on Wednesday. "Instead of working to achieve this fundamental priority, the legislation that Democrats brought to the floor this evening is a thinly veiled attempt to control political speech in the name of national security. By giving the federal government the authority to define what constitutes legitimate news and forcing Americans who wish to engage in political speech to navigate burdensome bureaucratic obstacles, this bill is a clear violation of our First Amendment right to free speech.

"I hope our Democrat colleagues will realize the damage their partisanship and political games are doing. We must work together to pass meaningful legislation that secures our elections.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) shared his similar concerns with the SHIELD Act, likening it to a "Trojan Horse."

"This Trojan Horse legislation presents some seemingly reasonable protections but will have substantial consequences for American journalists because while it identifies legitimate journalistic activities as protected from requirements in this legislation, it fails to define it, he said. So, who will define legitimate journalistic activities? The government?

He worries that SHIELD could prompt the Federal Elections Commission "to make laws that abridge the freedom of the press."

Bacon supports a Republican-led alternative called the Honest Elections Act, which he says takes steps to prevent foreign meddling in our elections without infringing on our constitutional freedoms.

See the article here:
Liz Cheney Calls Out Dems' New House Bill Intended to 'Circumvent the First Amendment' - Townhall

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday slammed a bill that would require political candidates and campaigns to report to the government any illicit foreign offers of assistance.

Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, spoke from the Senate floor in opposition to the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, ahead of the proposal being considered across the Capitol building in the House of Representatives.

Introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, California Democrat, the SHIELD Act would create a duty for candidates and campaigns to notify the FBI and Federal Election Commission about any illicit offers of assistance made directly from or on the behalf of foreign governments, among other provisions.The House passed it later Wednesday by a vote of 227 to 181.

Its a textbook example of policy designed to reduce the amount of free speech in our country, Mr. McConnell argued, calling it a transparent attack on the First Amendment.

This proposal will not do anything to stop malign foreign actors, something that every member of this body cares deeply about, said Mr. McConnell.

In addition to requiring candidates and campaigns to notify the government about illicit foreign offers of assistance, Ms. Lofgren said passage of the SHIELD Act would address several other factors that have allowed the U.S. electoral process to be disrupted from abroad.

The SHIELD Act closes gaps in the law that allow foreign nationals and foreign governments to launder money into our elections, Ms. Lofgren said previously. It promotes full transparency of the sources behind online advertising campaigns, and it codifies a basic norm that political committees should report offers of illicit campaign assistance from foreign governments to the FBI and to the FEC, rather than welcome interference from foreign governments.

Foreigners interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential race and are poised to meddle in next years election as well, according to top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials.

An investigation conducted by the Department of Justice into the 2016 election found that the Russian government targeted the contest in a sweeping and systematic fashion to disrupt the electoral process and denigrate former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons campaign.

Federal investigators examining the 2016 race uncovered dozens of suspicious interactions between Russians and members of President Trumps election team, but their probe did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

Mr. Trump subsequently said in June that he would be willing to accept damaging information about his political opponents from foreign governments. The following month, he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a phone call to investigate former vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden, triggering the impeachment inquiry currently underway on Capitol Hill.

Eighty-seven percent of voters, including 80 percent of Republicans, believe political campaigns should alert the FBI about information offered by foreign governments, according to the results of a Quinnipiac University poll released in July.

A bill similar to the SHIELD Act, the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act, was introduced earlier this month in the Senate by Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat.

Mr. McConnell has previously opposed election security bills offered in Congress, prompting Democratic critics to mockingly refer to him in recent months as Moscow Mitch.

See the original post:
Mitch McConnell slams election-security bill as 'transparent attack on the First Amendment' - The Washington TImes