Before November 2020, when the hate speech clause was adopted, the code of ethics all related to how real estate agents and affiliates worked with clients, Fauber said. Now that has changed.

“The NAR has now given themselves permission to police real estate agents 24/7,” Fauber said. “It’s deeply troubling that an organization like the NAR can police my life, and complaints can be filed against me for reading a passage of scripture, even in church; that a person wouldn’t even have to be present to file a complaint about me. That’s far reaching.” //

In Virginia, phone calls of cases like Fauber’s come pouring in daily, Cobb said, regarding someone who has lost a job or suffered significant harm due to their faith. //

Christian realtor Hadassah Carter recently won her case against the Virginia Real Estate Board, citing harassment and discrimination for her beliefs. Carter included Bible verses and Christian phrases on her website and was subjected to monitoring and accused of violating Virginia’s fair housing statutes by the board due to her religious speech.

Over time, I've found myself agreeing with Taibbi and his co-host Walter Kirn more often than not. We may not share the exact same politics, but we share a whole lot of the same values. I've also come to appreciate Taibbi's earnest belief in America's foundational principles and his almost endearing disbelief at the current state of his chosen profession. //

Because “freedom of speech” is now frequently described as a stalking horse for hate and discrimination — the UN High Commissioner Volker Türk scolded Elon Musk that “free speech is not a free pass” — it’s becoming one of those soon-to-be-extinct terms. Speech is mentioned in “reputable” media only as a possible vector for the informational disease known as misinformation.

The end game is not controlling speech. They’re already doing that. The endgame is getting us to forget we ever had anything to say.
....

Let's be clear about our language. Madison famously eschewed the word toleration or tolerance when it came to religion and insisted on the words freedom or liberty instead. This became the basis for the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which in turn became the basis for the Bill of Rights. That's why we don't have “toleration of religion” or “toleration of speech.” We have freedom of speech. The right word for the right time.

To the people who are suggesting that there are voices who should be ignored because they're encouraging mistrust or skepticism of authority, or obstructing consensus: I'm not encouraging you to be skeptical of authority. I'm encouraging you to DEFY authority. That is the right word for the this time. //

In this speech, Taibbi hit all the right notes, with a nod to our history, the history of free speech, the Gospel of John and the power of words — and the Word. He captured the spirit of what it means to be quintessentially American — to be free. //

Enzo D Bakr
16 hours ago
Matt Taibbi personifies the difference between a liberal and a Leftist. It is important to our Republic that we all know the difference. Behold...

The critical element in thinking about Elon Musk is that, like any American, he has a right to his own opinion, and he has a right to express his opinion.

However, that right is not unlimited. He is under some special limitations that would not apply to normal people because his company, specifically Starlink and SpaceX are government contractors and, as such, he has obligations to the government that would, for any normal person, and should for him, require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.

You have somebody who runs really strategic defense and aerospace projects for the federal government who's actively undermining the government that's paying him. And somewhere in that is a legal case that needs to be prosecuted. //

Jonathan Turley:

McNamee’s rationale for criminalizing speech is chillingly shallow and irrational. He declared that somehow Musk’s political views made him a danger as the head of companies of major importance to the United States. It does not bother him when CEOs adopt far left views, just Musk opposing some of those views.

McNamee is using the government contracts with SpaceX as a reason to censor his political and social views. So, according to McNamee, if your company makes something that the government wants (including rescuing the currently stranded astronauts in space), he must give up his right to express political views, including against censorship.

McNamee embraces the power of the government to dictate viewpoints or at least silencing certain views as a matter of national security. It is no accident that the overriding objective is to “get Musk.” Musk has proven the single greatest barrier to the global anti-free speech movement. //

For global elite like McNamee, free speech is not just dispensable but distracting. Only fools would listen to these voices in trading away our indispensable right.

JY
18 hours ago
The purpose of the first amendment is to undermine the government. //

anon-mfdk
19 hours ago
So under his logic, every person in Congress would need to limit their speech because they are paid by the federal government.

As if that weren't twisted enough, now we learn that the TSA whistleblowers who came forward with their concerns about this development are facing retaliatory investigations of their own. //

As Leavitt also notes on Twitter/X, the Quiet Skies program has not even been shown to be effective at its purported aim. //

The whole Quiet Skies program seems like a civil liberties nightmare anyway.

Over four years the OIG examined, the found Quiet Skies confirmed precisely zero passengers as aviation security threats. I can think of far better uses for the hundreds of thousands of dollars DHS puts into this.

Argentina's Javier Milei is setting a great example for all world leaders. It's too bad most of them aren't paying attention. //

Times have been hard in Argentina, and the economically-minded libertarian Javier Milei ran for president of that South American nation on a platform of reducing regulations, reducing taxation, and shrinking government to make things better. And it's starting to work.

There are many reasons. I love the principles upon which it was founded. I love the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — the words themselves and the ideas enshrined in them.

I love that the men who authored those documents valued liberty and recognized the perils of concentrated power enough to attempt to guard against them in a way that, while imperfect, has enabled millions of people to thrive and prosper, while enjoying a degree of freedom previously unknown.

I love that we elect our leaders — as imperfect (and frustrating) a process as that often is.

I love that millions of people have made a point to come HERE because of the opportunities this country holds.

I love that we have a beautiful country full of wonders both natural and man-made and we can travel about it freely.

I love that American ingenuity has led to a wide array of discoveries, inventions and innovations.

I love that you and I can see things totally differently and express that freely.

I’m well aware that our country is far from perfect. I don’t agree with everything we’ve ever done as a nation. I know there’s more than ample room for improvement. But — I guess I see it sort of like many of us regard a family member — imperfect, flawed, but beautiful and beloved. //

JSobieski
5 hours ago
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth"
Abraham Lincoln, 1862

These words have reasonated in America throughout its history, and they remain true today.

AugWest24
2 hours ago
Liberty is the essence of the United States and our Constitution. The Biden administration began to ignore the Constitution and existing law about ten minutes after he was sworn into office. Liberty is antithetical to the beliefs and goals of the coalition that runs the modern Democratic party. //

anon-gs8t
an hour ago
It's time to pull the scab off this open wound and expose it for what it is. If these people, beginning with his wife and family, will abuse this old, senile, completely compromised physically and mentally 81-year-old man to hold on to their power, what will they do to you? There is no limit to which they won't go to get what they want. They have no conscious; they don't care about this country; they certainly don't care about you; they only care about themselves. Yes, they are evil.

Bottom line: Congress can amend §666 to make it clear that acts like what Snyder did are illegal. What will come of this is bad faith actors pointing at the court and claiming that Snyder is another example of the high court defending corruption. Rather, it is SCOTUS defending liberty and requiring Congress to define criminal statutes with clarity and specificity.

 One of the participants suggested recategorizing “concerning” behavior as a public health matter to make people more comfortable with coming forward.

In another press release, AFL discussed how the group labeled supporters of former President Donald Trump as “domestic terrorists.” In one instance, a participant described “indicators of extremists and terrorism” to be members of the military or “religious.”

The group asserted that there exists a “political backdrop” to supposed threats of domestic terrorism. It said that most of this threat “comes from supporters of the former president” and that “people have attacked the government and its institutions for the last six years.” //

anon-bjep
2 hours ago
If the answer was "military and religious", the question must have been "Who will be least willing to bend the knee to our rule"

I don't hate LGBT people in the least, but I do get a kick out of seeing pride flag murals defaced when painted on roads, and that's because what that flag actually represents isn't love, or unity, or equality. What it represents in tyranny. It's the flag of the LGBT activist community, which has, on many occasions, declared itself to be my enemy.

The Pride flag is usually accompanied by hate and division from the LGBT activist community. Pride Month, for instance, isn't the celebration of people who identify themselves as "queer," but it's an opportunity for corporations and politicians to display their willing submission and obedience to a political cause so that they get their ESG money and don't get canceled by the elite or have business-to-business opportunities taken away.

While corporations might bend the knee, everyone else has to sit and watch as a cause that only applies to a very small fraction of our civilization takes over everything and forces us to take notice in some way, shape, or form. You can't escape it, and that's going to generate a pretty hefty amount of spite. //

The pride flag represents a kind of social dictatorship in our society. //

And if you speak out against any of it, you run the risk of being painted as a social pariah. You could lose your job. You could be harassed by strangers. You could even face a lawsuit or two.

This isn't "love," it's tyranny.

And that's why when a pride flag is vandalized, people cheer or laugh. It's not born out of hate for gays and lesbians, many of whom are lovely people, but out of a disgust for a controlling activist cabal that most reject. They force themselves on society.

I wish I could say that these political prosecutions won’t increase. But they likely will. Authoritarians on the left are becoming even more brazen in their efforts to use the criminal justice system against political opponents.

The objective is clear: They seek to cow the public into abiding by their political views. With the threat of government force, they want to compel people to either embrace their political philosophy, or at least shut up about it. Dissent will increasingly become less tolerated if these officials are allowed to continue weaponizing the government.

GBenton
15 hours ago edited
Vote like your life depends on it for Trump in November.

Dems are 1 or 2 moves from checkmate.

1) Vote to end the filibuster
2) Pack the Supreme Court and unleash every unconstitutional idea they have, including legalizing 30m migrants who could then turn Texas and or Florida blue.

We would still have elections to keep up appearances, but it would be like CA now where you just find out which Democrat won.

If it were not for illegals given Amnesty by Reagan, CA might still be a red state. It's only gotten worse since. We cannot risk repeating that mistake.

Illegals pad their House seats and EC votes. And that's just CA. How many states are blue now just because of the impact of illegals?

Raskin and Sheldon are telling you this is what they want to do. Believe them.

Vote Trump. He's the only one besides the Dem nominee who could win.

Anyone who stays home or votes 3rd party better feel super confident that the rest of us are gonna save the country for you.

Saying you hate both candidates is childish. One of them is going to win.

Biden (or any Democrat) WILL support finishing what Joe Biden and Obama started.

Trump will fight to restore the republic. You may not like him or believe he can succeeed, but you best believe a fresh Democrat administration would believe they have a mandate to tell us all to sit down and shut up.

They've worked 100+ years to get here. This may be our last peaceful chance to reverse course.

I hope I'm wrong. But do you want to bet on it?

It’s unthinkable that an emergency legal challenge had to be mounted to gather in peace in the political heart of Europe. 

Edward Snowden @Snowden
·
This is a textbook case of Congressional capture. With a single briefing, the intelligence agencies routinely transform their most strident critics into the tamest of cheerleaders. //

Scott Adams:

If I correctly understand our system of government, when a president or leader in the Congress gets into office, someone in the CIA pulls them aside for “the talk” and completely changes their priorities.

The public is then told the leaders now have secret knowledge the public can never know.

But the leader has no way of knowing the “secret” information is true and in context.

That puts the secret-keepers in firm control of the government’s big decisions. If the secret-keepers agree with a government policy, they stay out of it. If they disagree with a policy, they say the UFOs will attack — or some other unverifiable thing — and by the way, we have recordings of every phone call you ever made, and scare the leaders into compliance.

Right in front of us. None of this is secret. //

Justin Truedope
2 days ago edited

I will splinter the CIA into ab thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. -- JFK

JFK had sworn to get rid of the CIA and the Deep State but unfortunately, they got rid of him first. Remember that Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that President Donald Trump was “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community over its fake Russia narrative. He's probably repeated that same sentiment to Mike Johnson, who rightly interpreted it as a credible threat.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer had told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. What Chucky really meant was that he knows that the Deep State controls everything, including the Fake News narrative, but unlike President Trump, he's far too cowardly to ever try to do anything about it. #Trump2024 #VOTE

This isn’t just any old dead white guy who is bleeding out at the center of this piece, however. This is Cato the Younger or, as his contemporaries knew him, Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, a Stoic, scion of the late Roman Republic, a famously incorruptible statesman, and an advocate for liberty (or at least what passed for it in those days.) He set a standard for statesmanship that is no longer seen; I can think of no one practicing politics today who is fit to stand in Cato’s shadow. //

houdini1984
7 hours ago
We need a Cato. We need a Cicero as well, an orator and philosopher who can lend eloquent words to the cause of saving our republic, but Cicero’s is a story for another day. From where will come our incorruptible Stoic? From where will come the statesman who will confront those who will drag our republic to ruin and tell them, “No, no further; this ends now”?

I’m concerned by the apparent fact that men like him no longer exist.

Sigh. No one is coming to save you. Hell, Cato couldn't even save Rome. By the time he was at his peak, the rot had already grown too deep and the people had largely given up on the idea of liberty. Eventually, that happens to all "free" societies. And why? Well, part of it has to do with the very idea that we need a Cato to save us.

That's one of the main weaknesses of the American experiment in self-rule. Too many people are looking for a superman to save them, rather than rallying behind the mortal men who are already in the field. DeSantis is a great advocate for liberty and sound government. So is Rand Paul. Ted Cruz. My own governor here in Iowa, whose response to Covid involved little more than confirming that she trusted us to make the best decisions about our health.

Unfortunately, that superman myth has overtaken our national psyche -- at least on the Republican side of the political aisle. That's the whole appeal of Trump. It's not that anyone believes that he understands the constitution, the idea of God-given rights, or the true burden that government places on liberty and individualism. Instead, it's that he's made himself larger than life, through decades of forcing himself into the spotlight and building a reputation as a winner. It's myth, but myth is an easy sell to the average person.

Forget Cato. We need tens of millions of normal Americans to commit to saying no to the ongoing Marxist revolution. We need a counter-revolution that restores our national identity. We need to get aggressive in our opposition to the would-be authoritarians and their statist agenda. Because that is the only thing that can possibly reverse our slide toward tyranny.

While the Biden administration cracks down on the Christians Democrats and the press smear as extremists, church attacks are up 800 percent in the last six years, according to a new report from the Family Research Council (FRC). //

Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla, who co-authored the magazine’s article on “Christian nationalism,” followed up with an appearance on MSNBC.

“The one thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians by the way, because Christian nationalists is very different — is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority; they don’t come from Congress; they don’t come from the Supreme Court — they come from God,” Przybyla said.

Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi, an atheist, wrote about her remarks in a column last week. “If This Is ‘Christian Nationalism,’ Sign Me Up!” Harsanyi headlined his article.

As numerous critics have already pointed out, ‘Christian nationalism’ sounds identical to the case for American liberty offered in the Declaration of Independence. Then again, the idea that man has inalienable, universal rights goes back to ancient Greece, at least. The entire American project is contingent on accepting the notion that the state can’t give or take our God-given freedoms. It is the best kind of ‘extremism.’

Cops have alternative means to access encrypted messages, court says.

Aaron Slodov @aphysicist
·
Jan 18
Milei's 2024 Davos talk, directly translated to English by AI (by heygen), in his own accent. Better than the dubbed version imo.

Rafael Fontana @RafaelFontana
WELCOME TO DAVOS

The place where:

1. Men who hire prostitutes deliver speeches on gender equality.

2. Tycoons arrive in private jets to persuade you to ride a bicycle.

3. Billionaires assure you that you can be happy without having anything.

#Davos
1:51 PM · Jan 18, 2024

Secretary Pete Buttigieg @SecretaryPete
·
Extreme weather is expected to be the top factor in supply chain disruptions next year. It reminds us how urgently we must work to set up our infrastructure for climate resiliency.
foxweather.com
Extreme weather expected to be top logistics disruptor for supply chains in 2024
3:20 PM · Jan 7, 2024 //

After the lies we were told in 2020 and 2021, I've become a skeptic/cynic whenever the government warns me about something.

In theory, the supply chain disruption in 2020 and 2021 was caused by COVID. But was it? The disruption was caused by the government's regulatory response to a crisis they created and amplified. //

In short, I see this as the leading edge of a gaslighting campaign to increase government control over our lives, and that will peak in time for Joe Biden to blame a major disruption of US supply chains that they see coming on anything but his policies. //

Wilsonreagan
4 hours ago
They are setting us up for climate lock downs. Covid was the test.

“Hungarians told me over and over, ‘the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminds us of our Soviet era,’” Bradley-Farrell recalled. “And the more I dug into that, the more that I realized that the things that we’re dealing with here and the so-called progressive agenda, the woke agenda, the Biden administration, they’re directly out of the playbook of communism,” she says.

As a deeply religious and freedom-loving nation, Hungary—which came out from under Soviet oppression in 1991—has long looked to America as a “light on a … hill,” Bradley-Farrell says. But Hungary is not a model for America because “America and our Constitution, our founding, is the model for the world,” she says.

However, “our Hungarian friends, the people that care about us, are saying, ‘Hey, your rhetoric is communist. You guys need to wake up, because you’re about to lose what we loved about you.’”

In her new book, “Last Warning to the West: Hungary’s Triumph Over Communism and the Woke Agenda,” Bradley-Farrell outlines a road map for how America can change course and learn from our friends in Hungary at this moment in history.