Specifically, Judge John Bush said that judges should discern the original understanding of free speech in “linguistical meaning” and “evidence of how Americans ordered their lives” in the 1790s.

The Second Amendment case to which the authors referred was New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the Supreme Court ruled that, among other considerations, gun control laws must be consistent with the “historical” standard of restrictions on firearms.

The primary argument the authors made is that relying solely, or mostly, on historical interpretations of the law to define the scope of free speech is problematic. They contend that taking such an approach could lead to inconsistent, regressive, and ultimately tyrannical rulings that would roll back protections on speech.

“If rules from the 1790s were enforced today, citizens could be jailed for criticizing politicians, public figures could freely use defamation law to punish critics, and schoolchildren would have few if any free speech rights,” the authors stated.

The authors also noted court cases that expanded the right to free speech, specifically a 1943 case where a court “held that the government could not compel students to salute the flag because ‘no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.’”

They also brought up a 1971 case that “held that the government could not ban vulgar or offensive speech.”

Yet, in the 17th and 19th centuries, the government had no problem with restricting speech in a way that seems foreign to us today:

Historically, the wrong kind of speech could land you in jail. Laws criminalizing blasphemy, government criticism, tepid sexual content, and other speech viewed to be bad or harmful were commonplace at the country’s founding.

Another historical example the authors offer is the prohibition of abolitionist speech in Southern states, showing how restrictions on speech were used to uphold oppressive institutions such as slavery. //

any court decision should be made through the lens of liberty, seeking to ensure the state does not infringe on any of our rights without an exceedingly good reason. The Framers sought to create a system of governance that would make it difficult for the state to impose laws or policies that make it more intrusive in our lives. The goal was to cultivate a society free from oppressive and unnecessary restrictions imposed with the threat of government violence.

The north star for any court should be liberty, regardless of whether it is in line with historical precedent. Otherwise, those seeking to violate our rights will find it far easier to do so.

🚨BREAKING: Hillary Clinton went to CNN to announce that they are losing control and that Social Media companies should increase their censorship on Conservative misinformation.

Hillary Clinton: "we lose total control." pic.twitter.com/k9VEhegFP7

— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) October 5, 2024 //

This is what the government politicians say, right before they are about to impinge on your rights. The phrase about yelling fire in a crowded theater is often used by people trying to curb speech without really understanding the context in which it was used. It was in non-binding dicta in a case that was then later overturned so it was never a binding thought on anything. So when people use it, it reveals they’re not aware of the law. //

CyberChick @warriors_mom
·
Can you smell the sulphur from here? 😈

Tom Elliott @tomselliott
Hillary: “We should be in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave platforms on the internet immunity … Whether it‘s Facebook or Twitter or X or Instagram, or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don‘t moderate & monitor the content we lose total control”
Embedded video
8:21 PM · Oct 5, 2024

California’s “deepfake” law shows, once again, that progressive authoritarians seek to ruin everything fun.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s legislature recently went full Karen and passed a law banning political deepfakes and placing restrictions on satire. Now, one of the nation’s leading satirical outlets is fighting back.

The Babylon Bee and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Monday, challenging new laws that the satire site claims target political parody and free speech, according to a Daily Wire exclusive.

The fake Newsom asks, "If I don't ban Mr Reagan's parody AI videos, how would we ever know that":

• Trump will be a dictator on day one
• If he doesn't win, he's promised a bloodbath
• Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation
• Inflation is transitory and the border is secure
• COVID came from bat soup
• Trump told everyone to inject bleach
• Boys can be girls and girls can be boys and there's no such thing as gender
• Trump is controlled by Vladimir Putin
• January 6 was an armed insurrection where many police officers lost their lives
• COVID vaccines had zero side effects and masks were 100 percent effective
• Trump staged both of his assassination attempts
  And the list goes on. The fake Newsom adds, "And how would we know that Trump is literally Hitler? Reincarnation is definitely a thing. Hitler died in 1945. Trump was born in 1946. Coincidence? I think not."

American Deplorable ™
10 hours ago
A deep fake outlawing deep fakes.

The irony is almost as thick as the hair gel.

Retired Professor
10 hours ago
Fascinating. Defamation was one of the subjects I used to teach in Law School, and as you know, the general rule is that attorneys have immunity for extra-judicial remarks made in connection with cases they are involved in, but this can be overcome by a showing of malice (in the technical Defamation sense of "reckless disregard"). But, win or lose, it is fun to see the liberals get a taste of the "lawfare" that they so love to use themselves.

metalheaddoc Retired Professor
10 hours ago
Can you explain why attorneys have immunity for extra-judicial remarks? and immunity from what specifically?

Retired Professor metalheaddoc
9 hours ago
Very good question. The immunity is from civil liability for money damages for such things as defamation of character, invasion of privacy, or intentional infliction of emotional distress. (I can assure you, if you've ever been cross-examined by a good lawyer, that'll be some of the worst "emotional distress" you'll ever suffer). What are the policy justifications for this?

First, it arises out of the free speech we all enjoy.

Second, out of the right to counsel, which of course is a Constitutional right in criminal cases, and in most states is part of your constitutional "right of access to the courts," even in civil cases (although of course the state doesn't pay for it).

Third, society has an interest in attorneys being able to zealously represent their clients, and not have attorneys being dragged into court personally because of their advocacy, which obviously would be a tactic open to a lot of abuse, as well as inviting invasion of the attorney-client privilege.

Fourth, attorneys are subject to professional discipline for false or misleading statements, so the system polices itself in that respect.

Fifth, an attorney who makes a statement that he/she knows to be false or is made with reckless disregard for truth or falsity IS subject to liability, just like any public figure would be, so it is by no means an absolute immunity.

There are other considerations, as well, but those are the most common.

Please remember that 98% of the attorneys give the other 2% of us a bad name....

stickdude90 Retired Professor
9 hours ago
Sixth, attorneys wrote the rules.

Retired Professor anon-ho3e
10 hours ago
Kinda interesting having sympathy for an IRS agent, isn't it?

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.

Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
·
Follow
Harris often speaks of free speech as it if it is privilege bestowed by the government like a license and that you can be taken off the road if you are viewed as a reckless driver...
jonathanturley.org
“That Has to Stop”: Harris Denounces Unfettered Free Speech in 2019 CNN Interview
6:04 AM · Sep 4, 2024 //

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how the Biden-Harris Administration has proven to be the most anti-free speech administration since John Adams. That includes a massive censorship system described by one federal judge as perfectly “Orwellian.”

In the CNN interview, Harris displays many of the anti-free speech inclinations discussed earlier. She strongly suggests that X should be shut down if it does not yield to demands for speech regulation.

What is most chilling is how censorship and closure are Harris’s default positions when faced with unfettered speech. She declares to CNN that such unregulated free speech “has to stop” and that there is a danger to the country when people are allowed to “directly speak to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight and regulation.” //

The “joy” being sold by Harris includes the promise of the removal of viewpoints that many on the left feel are intolerable or triggering on social media. Where Biden was viewed as an opportunist in embracing censorship, Harris is a true believer. Like Walz, she has long espoused a shockingly narrow view of free speech that is reflective of the wider anti-free speech movement in higher education. //

Elon Musk

@elonmusk
·
Follow
This is what she actually believes.

Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and the Democratic Party (Kamala is just a puppet) wants to destroy it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr

@RobertKennedyJr
Kamala Harris: "He [Musk] has lost his privileges."
Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a "privilege"?

Kamala Harris: "There has to be a responsibility placed on these social media sites to understand their power."
Translation: "If they…
12:37 AM · Sep 3, 2024

David Asman @DavidAsmanfox
·
Fascism, unfiltered:

"Musk’s free-speech rights under the first amendment don’t take precedence over the public interest."
—Robert Reich
Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley
Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary, is calling for the arrest of Elon Musk for his refusal to censor speech. https://foxnews.com/media/ex-labor-secretary-robert-reich-claims-elon-musk-out-control-says-regulators-should-threaten-arrest Reich has long been a staunch ally of the anti-free speech movement...
7:47 PM · Sep 1, 2024 //

Gad Saad @GadSaad
·
Let me translate for you what @RBReich has said: "I loved it when I was part of a party that controlled EVERYTHING. This annoying wealthy guy @elonmusk who does not support my political vision is exercising his freedoms. This cannot be tolerated, as such Musk must be destroyed for community cohesion.
i/o @eyeslasho
Robert Reich thinks Elon Musk has become too rich and powerful. He recommends these options be put on the table: Arresting Musk, FTC oversight of X, ending government contracts with SpaceX, boycotting Tesla, and an advertiser boycott of X.

https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/30/elon-musk-wealth-power?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
10:15 AM · Sep 1, 2024

As referenced above, there are some constitutional problems with the CAADCA, which is being challenged in court by industry group NetChoice. In her order granting the injunction, US District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman said the law is “not only unlikely to materially alleviate the harm of insufficient data and privacy protections for children, but actually likely to exacerbate the problem by inducing covered businesses to require consumers, including children, to divulge additional personal information.” //

In a press release announcing the decision, NetChoice noted that the law would impact all ages, not just children:

The court noted that the AADC’s Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) requirement likely violates the First Amendment by compelling speech and commandeering private companies to act as roving censors. This would have forced online services to restrict access to protected speech and information for all ages.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver stated:

[Idaho] Gov. Brad Little must ensure that the Idaho Army National Guard upholds federal and state law and protects the free speech of enlisted personnel. This discrimination against an officer based on a frivolous complaint must be addressed and his record cleared and career restored.

To provide further detail, Liberty Counsel’s Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs Daniel Schmid joined Wednesday’s episode of “Washington Watch.” According to Schmid, “[I]mmediately upon receiving the complaint, some of the superiors in [the officer’s] chain of command brought him in and said, ‘You will resign, or we’ll make this ugly.’ Those were the words to him. They forced him to resign without counsel, without the presence of counsel, and without advice of counsel.”

Schmid went on to explain how “the complaint was not based on anything he did as a commanding officer.” It was about “a speech that he made outside of the military context, in the context of a political campaign. … He was making statements on various issues in the culture today, from a religious perspective, [and] the First Amendment affords him that right.” And yet, his statements are now “the subject of an investigation that’s ongoing even to this day.”

According to Schmid, this case is about making “sure that the individuals who sign up to defend our liberties, our constitutional rights, are [also] entitled to those same rights”—specifically, he clarified, the First Amendment. “You don’t surrender your constitutional rights or your statutory rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and others just because you sign up for military service.”

In the case of this officer, Schmid contended that he “was entitled to political speech.”

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty, who previously penned a Fourth of July masterpiece of a decision in the Murthy v. Missouri (f/k/a Missouri v. Biden) First Amendment case, issued a ruling declaring that Kennedy and his charity had standing to pursue a claim against the government for violating their First Amendment rights.

If exposing money behind Arabella-aligned organizations is the price for outing conservative donors, that’s a trade Democrat operatives would gladly make. //

All of this raises a question: If “dark money” is so beneficial to Democrats, why do the party’s leaders consistently push for new and expansive donor disclosure laws?

The answer may be simple: Even when the left outspends the right, the value of silencing conservatives far exceeds the value of spending by left-leaning nonprofits. //

By establishing nonprofit donor databases, the DISCLOSE Act would open the door for Democrats to potentially create target lists of conservative donors and businesses to harass and bully into silence. As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer infamously put it years ago, the “deterrent effect” of disclosure “should not be underestimated.” //

Even if some left-leaning donors are exposed, leftist ideas would still receive enormous platforms in the media, entertainment industry, academia, and government bodies. Conservatives, despite being outspent by the left in recent election cycles, are uniquely dependent on their donors and nonprofits to support their intellectuals and promote their ideas; disclosure mandates would be akin to declaring open season on these conservative institutions.

Istandforfreedom
2 hours ago
“What Tim Walz says in that clip and the ignorance he shows…”
Tim Walz is NOT ignorant; he knows exactly what he saying. “Hate speech” and “misinformation” is ANYTHING that displeases Walz, Harrisand their Marxists regime and spells the END of Free Speech and Freedom asa whole.

The idea that a reporter would think that the White House has any legal means to interfere with any American, particularly a candidate for the presidency in an election year, saying any damn thing they want to demonstrates how thoroughly corrupt and fascist-adjacent the mainstream press has become. The fact that a reporter from a newspaper that shared a Pulitzer prize for pushing a totally discredited hoax thinks he has any moral ground to protest "misinformation" is the official death knell of irony.

To the extent that 'misinformation' is a problem, Ground Zero of that problem is the mainstream press. They are the ones who insisted that an obviously demented and sometimes drugged Joe Biden was completely in control of his faculties. //

Giving the yahoos in the press corps a license to police misinformation is like giving a three-year-old a can of gasoline and a lighter. //

RiverRev
29 minutes ago
I think I trust the three year old more.

The lawsuit, which video streaming company Rumble also joined, comes on the heels of a House Judiciary Committee report alleging GARM likely violated federal antitrust laws by colluding with giant ad buyer GroupM to coordinate the demonization of news websites, platforms, and podcasts it deemed guilty of wrongthink. //

Correspondence obtained by the committee shows GARM Co-Founder Rob Rakowitz bragged about and even “took credit for Twitter’s revenue decline,” according to the committee report. //

According to Yaccarino, X’s legal action is “about more than damages.”

“[W]e have to fix a broken ecosystem that allows this illegal activity to occur,” she continued.

On Saturday, legal scholar and writer Jonathan Turley laid out the details of a House Judiciary report detailing the efforts of several shadowy organizations to censor right-leaning content on various social media platforms, and those efforts are an affront to anyone who understands the concept of free speech.

Few Americans have ever heard of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, let alone understand how it shapes what they read and hear in news and commentary. That may soon change.

An alarming new report of the House Judiciary Committee details this organization’s work to censor conservative and opposing viewpoints in the media by targeting figures such as Joe Rogan and entire social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter).

It is part of a massive censorship system that a federal court recently described as “Orwellian.” The sophistication of this system makes authoritarian regimes like China’s and Iran’s look like mere amateurs in censorship and blacklisting. //

One of the most insidious efforts has been to strangle the financial life out of conservative or libertarian sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.

This is dangerous. This is using the weight of government to suppress free speech. This isn't about policies made in a vacuum by these social media companies. This is about government actors, as Mr. Turley notes, including the president down to unnamed members of his administration and, we feel certain, members of Congress in effect using these organizations to lean on the social media companies. They are targeting the platform's income streams - advertising - and they are succeeding at it. //

Dutch Letter
3 hours ago
“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness, without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical (imaginary) idea.” - James Madison

We are no longer a virtuous people and we no longer elect virtuous representatives. We vote for who is the lesser of two evils in every contest, and we do not protest but on assigned days when voting is allowed. We have become complicit actors in our own doom.
Of course, we commiserate, and complain to each other, yet closer to the abyss we creep.

Further proof that all the talk about ‘our democracy’ is nothing more than a sham.

Daniel Greenfield writes at the Gatestone Institute:

The Government Spent 5 Years Trying to Shut Down the Freedom Center

What Are They So Afraid Of?

Since its confused retreat from Afghanistan, the Biden administration has spent more time trying to shut down the David Horowitz Freedom Center than fighting Al Qaeda.

While Freedom Center Investigates has documented multiple cases of terrorists benefiting from nonprofit status, the IRS ignores and continues to pursue the Freedom Center’s nonprofit status.

Five years should have been more than enough to decide the issue one way or another, but instead we have been left suspended in a state of permanent investigation because while there’s no basis for shutting us down, bleeding us from a thousand cuts makes it harder for the Freedom Center to do our work, to raise money and to keep holding the Left accountable.

Five years is a long time. It’s the statute of limitations for most federal crimes. But the only thing we were ever accused of was providing a forum for political opinions the government didn’t like.

And that’s not a crime. Unless the government succeeds in making it one.

NetChoice often argued out of both sides of their mouth when Section 230 protections were in play. During back and forth with NetChoice counsel, Justice Gorsuch observed that NetChoice’s argument was, conveniently, both sides of the coin:

“So it’s speech for the purposes of the First Amendment, your speech, your editorial control, but when we get to Section 230, your submission is that that isn’t your speech?

So now, the cases head back to the lower courts, who've been tasked with doing their homework and using the proper framework to analyze the issues. //

anon-7lqi anon-tf71
4 hours ago
i think administratively you can declare any platform with more that 25% market share as a "public square".
Public squares are obliged to allow speech that smaller venues do not have to.
keeps 230 intact. focuses the law on the companies large enough to impact the public in any meaningful way

JustCause_for_Liberty anon-7lqi
3 hours ago edited
I do not even think its that hard. They get to declare if they are publishers or platforms. If you are a publisher you get no protections from 230 and are subject to liability claims for all content. If you are a platform you get liability protections from 230 but lose all rights to moderate content from users or their speech and posts. If laws are broken from users then refer those to law enforcement. Otherwise its not their job.

Just FYI their self identification of publisher or platform is for the entirety of that service. You either have to sell the Company or completely shut down the service and deploy a completely separate service afterwards to redeclare.

The unanimous court in Vullo held that the National Rifle Association (NRA) had sufficiently alleged a First Amendment claim against the New York superintendent of financial services. While the vindication of free speech rights is the top-line takeaway from Thursday’s 9-0 decision, there is much more to glean from the 20-page opinion and two concurrences. Here are five key points.

1. The Decision Focused Solely on Government Coercion //

2. Some Great Language for Lovers of Free Speech //

“The Constitution does not distinguish between ‘comply or I’ll prosecute’ and ‘comply and I’ll look the other way,’” the Supreme Court explained, stressing whether something is “analyzed as a threat or as an inducement,” is irrelevant—“the conclusion is the same,” namely the communications are “coercive” and thus violate the First Amendment.

This judicial gloss to “coercion” provides a fulsome protection of free speech rights by allowing “coercion” to be established by either “a threat” or “an inducement.” The court’s unanimous opinion includes additional broad language further protecting American rights to freedom of speech. //

3. The Disinformation Industry Are The Baddies at Protecting Democracy

In ruling in favor of the NRA, the Supreme Court stressed that “at the heart of the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause is the recognition that viewpoint discrimination is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.” That passage provides an important reminder to Americans of the value of diverse viewpoints in the marketplace of ideas and a warning that suppressing disfavored speech is inherently destructive to a sustained democracy.