After Harrison Butker’s speech, the left is targeting Latin Mass Catholics. But it will never stop until all Christian morality is banished from the public square. //

Butker’s statements in his commencement speech were no more foreign or extreme than the medieval garb that he and millions of others donned on graduation stages all over the West this spring. Indeed, the left isn’t terrified of the Latin Mass because of its medieval optics. They could not care less about the theological debates that truly divide us in our liturgical practices.

Rather, they want to destroy the family values that undergird the Judeo-Christian West in all its forms. These are not the preserve of Latin Mass Catholics or even Catholics generally. They belong to us all as decent human beings.

Portraying Latin Mass Catholics as a tiny minority diverging from the majority of Catholics glosses over the fact that we are talking about basic biblical principles here. Thou shall not kill. Male and female, He created them. Husbands, honor your wives and, wives, submit to your husbands. Comfort the dying and the sick. Walk in the light of truth.

Sometimes it's baffling why a given government agency does what it does. In one such, the National Park Service - which, as part of the Executive branch, falls under the control of the Biden administration - has denied, for the second year, a permit for the Knights of Columbus to celebrate a Memorial Day mass in Virginia's Poplar Grove National Cemetery: //

This is the second year in a row the religious group has been denied a permit at the Virginia national park where they had been holding the Memorial Day mass for the past 60 years. //

Religious services and vigils have been classified as "demonstrations" since at least 1986, according to the park website, and are prohibited in national cemeteries.

The NPS may have had an argument if they had stopped issuing the Knights of Columbus (or any other group affiliated with any religion) permits when that classification changed in 1986, but the Knights were still issued such permits until 2023. //

Someone decided to end this decades-long practice, and it wasn't for First Amendment reasons; the First Amendment is fine with allowing a Catholic mass in this space, so long as the issuance of such permits is available to all denominations, meaning that if a Bokononist group wished to hold a ceremonial boko-maru on the grounds, they should also be free to receive such a permit.

Parents cannot effectively remove technology from their children day to day, so we must target the source of the danger itself. //

In the digital age, shielding our children from the pervasive threat of explicit online content has become an urgent concern demanding innovative and effective solutions. //

The singular dependency on individual filters stems from Supreme Court rulings in the late ’90s and early 2000s that ultimately determined that the internet was not so pervasive as TV and radio and therefore not subject to the same regulations. Adults’ rights to pornography outweighed the need to implement protections because the burden of government involvement was too restrictive and a disproportionate response to the problem at hand. The idea was that parents should simply protect their kids on their own dime rather than potentially threaten First Amendment rights.

Here’s the thing: First Amendment rights have never applied to obscenity. And while we might forgive the court for not predicting the future of broadband internet, the fact is it is now much more pervasive than TV and radio. The safety of our children demands action. //

The SCREEN Act, with its requirement for robust age-verification technologies, reflects a pragmatic and narrowly tailored solution to a complex problem. //

The only thing this bill does is ensure that pornography platforms perform the same age-verification checks that are already done by alcohol, tobacco, and gambling websites. This should be a slam dunk.

Democrats pushing the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment” failed to follow the required procedure for advancing a constitutional amendment. Equal Protection Project had opposed the attempt to embed CRT and DEI in the state constitution.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the famous TV commercials where entrepreneur Victor Kiam would come on the screen and say, “I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company [Remington].” Elon Musk took a similar approach; he values free speech so highly that he shelled out $44 billion in 2022 to buy social media platform Twitter (now X), in part to fight rampant big-tech censorship. //

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
Given the relentless attacks on free speech, I am going to fund a national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment
12:49 PM · Apr 18, 2024

Ben Kew @ben_kew
·
NPR’s far-left CEO Katherine Maher: "Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done."
0:18 / 2:11
7:46 AM · Apr 17, 2024

Look, it is a staggeringly ignorant thing for anyone to come out and declare that the facts and the truth can become distaff items in the servicing of the narrative. For this to be a set of principles held by someone overseeing a news outlet is downright disturbing. This is — quite literally — Orwellian “Big Brother” (Sister) statism thought-policing taking place. And as we have come to learn, this is hardly Maher slipping up and having the veil slide on her views; she not only holds to these principles of lording over the facts, she brags about it. //

She goes on to say the First Amendment makes it “a little bit tricky” to censor content. She is not holding the 1-A as sacred; she is declaring it an inconvenience to her goals. Controlling speech and driving the approved narrative — with the partnership and coordination of government — is kind of, sort of, a little bit, maybe the polar opposite of what journalism is charged with as its mission statement. This is who NPR chose to lead its news dissemination outfit. Maher is vastly inexperienced and displays all of the traits that run counter to journalistic principles, yet NPR selected her to run its entire operation.

It is not a question of who thought this was a good idea, but “why?” //

The reason why she was hired might be seen in the reaction to all of these revelations in the broader journalism sphere. That is to say – there is no reaction. Uri Berliner’s column has mostly been covered in the press by the reactions it has generated. The actual revelations he delivered and the effects it has been having on the press industry have gone wholly unaddressed. Now we have a CEO of a major news outlet found to have a history of avowed hostility towards facts and the truth in order to drive the news narratives, and nobody in journalism circles seems at all bothered by these revelations.

There is abject silence because so many news divisions operate in this very fashion. //

Katherine Maher is not an anomaly in the industry; she is the very product that is sought out. A generation ago, the idea of trampling on the First Amendment would have generated immediate howls from proper journalists. Today, a news division CEO can boldly tout the need to silence free expression, and she is welcomed with open arms. The only reason this is a possible problem today is that the voices pointing out her disturbing views had not been properly silenced.

Last year, Democrats split up the terms “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” in the Minnesota Human Rights Act, and that meant religious organizations still had an exemption for not hiring on the basis of “sexual orientation,” but that exemption no longer applies to “gender identity.”

When these two terms were split in the Minnesota Human Rights Act, we thought the ramifications on religious exemptions were accidental. //

Throughout this year’s committee process, it became very clear that the folks who pushed this change had no intention of extending the exemptions to “gender identity.”

Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard the bill during an evening hearing but waited until 12:30 a.m. to bring the bill up for discussion. Issues of this significance should never be discussed under the cover of darkness. Republicans offered an amendment that would have extended the religious exemption to include to the new “gender identity” term, but Democrats did not support that change. This bill will now be considered for inclusion in the Omnibus Judiciary bill.

This is alarming because in this bill S. F. 4292, it means that religious organizations can now be held legally accountable if they choose to not hire someone of a certain “gender identity,” regardless of their religious beliefs. This is a blatant infringement on constitutional rights. The government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion according to the 1st Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmed this throughout our history. That means we are dealing with an unconstitutional law.

Earlier this year a Democrat senator went on record stating that constitutionality shouldn’t matter when legislators are writing their bills. I disagree – it is our duty to know the potential constitutional ramifications that our laws may have. The government cannot compel churches and religious organizations to abandon their deeply held religious beliefs.

The chaplains say the Department of Defense continues to defy a 2023 law rescinding its Covid vaccine mandate. //

“The Department of Defense is hostile to religion,” said the chaplains’ lawyer, Art Schulcz, who is also a veteran. He said the way the DOD handled the vaccine mandate has contributed to the military’s recruiting crisis by repelling recruits and current soldiers with serious faith convictions. In response to ongoing shortfalls, U.S. military branches are lowering enlistment standards and issuing waivers of risk factors such as marijuana use.

The U.S. military’s chaplains “recruiting deficit is extreme,” wrote Rear Adm. Gregory Todd, the Navy’s chief of chaplains, last year.

Schools would benefit from an injection of morality and responsibility. Christianity and guns can teach those two things. Let people have these clubs.

Irrespective of how it comes down in this case, the federal government’s position combined with the clear-cut support from the court’s three left-most judges speaks to the extent to which free speech is in deep trouble in this country.

What follows are some of the most critical, and often disturbing, takeaways from oral arguments.

1. Feds Are Appalled at the Probing of Their Speech Policing

2. Feds Believe Their Censorship Is Legitimate So Long as it Doesn’t Strong-Arm Anyone

3. Feds Framed Their Censorship as a Right to Speak

4. The Feds Want SCOTUS to Bless Their Speech Policing During the Election

5. Public Health Emergencies Justify Censorship, Feds Argue

6. Justice Jackson Revealed Her Radical Anti-Speech Position

7. Justice Kavanaugh Seems Likely to Cave

8. The Plaintiffs Backed Down Under Duress, and That’s Concerning for All of Us

If this view prevails, we will face an extinction-level event for the First Amendment, or at least what’s left of it.

The justices seemed convinced that Texas was infringing on tech companies’ First Amendment ‘right’ to exercise editorial judgment. //

That reflects another missed opportunity for Texas: Clement’s repeated argument that the Texas law would interfere with tech companies’ editorial function and therefore, by definition, chill speech. Tech companies often cite these editorial functions. But as I have written elsewhere in these pages, before 2014, tech companies did not engage in any such editorial decisions. They screened for obscene content but nothing else. And, until 2018, they did little substantive content moderation after the fact, focusing instead on removing violent content like videos of beheadings (which I think we all agree can and should be banned).

In fact, it is the tech companies, not states like Texas, that are chilling speech. We see that plainly in cases like the one I am litigating for presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Google has removed video of Kennedy’s political speeches from YouTube — including his pre-announcement speech at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire — because they contain “misinformation.” But what is “misinformation”? According to Google, it is speech that either Google or the federal government does not like. In other words, it is dissent. But, of course, America has a proud history of promoting dissent. Silencing dissent is inconsistent with American values. //

Clement may have focused on terrorists and sexual predators in his discussion of the “bad stuff” that tech companies want to block from their platforms. But that is not what drove Texas and Florida to pass their laws. Those laws were driven by the censoring of people like Kennedy, government dissidents whom the corporate media regularly ignore and who must use social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to reach people.

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

This entire ordeal is dumb. The statue never should have been allowed in the first place. Further, the leniency applied to those tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson can't be ignored. Are we really a country that lets people off for destroying works of art but charges people with hate crimes for damaging a statue of satan? I guess we are.

Reagan Airport @Reagan_Airport
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🔺TRAFFIC ALERT: Expect delays around the airport due to a group in vehicles exercising first amendment rights in roadway. Use caution and expect slow moving vehicles. Recommend @Wmata to access airport.

Readers added context
There is no first amendment right to block traffic

aclu-il.org/en/news/when-e… https://t.co/7PWvBDRP5u
Context is written by people who use X, and appears when rated helpful by others. Find out more.
2:53 PM · Jan 20, 2024

(((tedfrank))) @tedfrank
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You do not have a first amendment right to block the roadway. In fact, drivers inconvenienced by such illegal action have a civil cause of action for public nuisance against the people and organizations conspiring to block the roadway. If you were trapped in your car, you have a false imprisonment tort claim, too. You may wish to consult an attorney.

Regardless of its form, Big Tech’s prolonged addiction to censorship reveals a market failure. In other industries, the remedy would be competition. If barred from one road on the way to work, why not take another? Due to network effects and myriad anti-competitive practices, a small number of successful social media companies today function as oligopolies, able to work together to throttle your access to all viable roads at their discretion. Twitter bypassed the censorship problem because an eccentric billionaire mortgaged himself for his beliefs. We should not expect more calvary like Elon Musk in the Silicon Valley. //

Perhaps the most important assumption in these questions that could decide this case is, whose speech is whose on social media? When Grandma posts on Facebook, does the statement belong to her as the author or to the website as a publisher whose algorithm inserted it into your feed? NetChoice argues that Grandma’s story belongs to Facebook and, therefore, Facebook receives First Amendment rights for choosing to feature or censor her comments through its editorial discretion. //

However, even if the vast majority of Americans are incorrect and social media websites can claim your speech as their own to protect their right to censor, these companies are hypocrites every time they invoke what is called Section 230 to protect themselves. This is a 1996 statute meant to shield nascent online platforms from the liabilities of being a publisher. For example, if something illegal was posted on Myspace, the website was protected because it was not Myspace’s speech.

Yet today, Big Tech is telling us that they deserve to have it both ways—that posts on social media are simultaneously the platforms’ (to benefit from First Amendment protections) and not the platforms’ (to benefit from Section 230 protections).

If no other institution, logic, or physical law of the universe has this sort of bold inconsistency, I am skeptical of Big Tech’s entitlement to it. Only last year, Google was in the Supreme Court arguing that YouTube’s targeted recommendations to users were not editorial speech and, therefore, merited Section 230 protections, contradicting this year’s NetChoice legal arguments.

Massie pointed out that the tweet referenced a study from Israel showing that immunity to the COVID-19 virus “due to prior infection is the same as for the Pfizer vaccine.”

Troye doubled down, claiming that Massie’s tweet “was flagged for a reason,” to which the lawmaker retorted:

What's the reason? Is there ever a good reason to censor a member of Congress? This is my official account. This is not a personal account. This is not a campaign account. This is my communication with my constituents. By the way, I bring this up not to claim that members of Congress have more right to free speech than the general public. In fact, I don't even think the press or the media has more rights to the First Amendment than the general public. The general public has the same rights that we have. I bring this up to show, number one, that your testimony is false. But number two, if they can do this to a member of Congress's official account, they can do it to anybody.

And therein lies the crux of the matter. Stanford Internet Observatory, along with a slew of other organizations, is being funded with taxpayer dollars to help social media companies censor content that contradicts the government’s line on the coronavirus and other issues. This problem came to light in full force when Elon Musk decided to release inside information showing how the company operated before he took over. //

frylock234
4 hours ago
If it was a study, as in real science, done in Israel and peer reviewed, why would it be censored as "disinformation" no matter how much it contradicted what TPTB would prefer us to believe? Science isn't always on the same page with itself and with political necessity. Sometimes, results show things we'd rather they didn't, but that's how we eventually arrive at the truth. //

RedStater In a Blue Apocalypse
3 hours ago
Not all that long ago, we held that we live in the Age of Information. And for a brief period, there was a universal belief this was a good thing. It was probably more accurate to describe it as the Age of Decentralization of Information, and we were all relatively pleased with it. Even the elite were dancing in celebration.

But, this really upset the apple cart for those that hold truth subordinate to power.

These times of attempting to re-centralize information by these psychopathic control freaks will eventually be labeled the Age of Absurdity.

etba_ss
10 hours ago
I do not understand all the pearl clutching over hateful speech, "misinformation", etc. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not less. Regulating, stifling and controlling speech is always a bad idea. Expose the bad ideas and expose the lies.

If you try to ban them, whoever has the power to ban them gets to be the one who tells you what is true and what is not. I don't trust anyone or any organization to do that. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Yes the result of free speech will be people saying really bad, nasty things and lying. That has always been true and is the price paid for liberty. If something is really egregious and violates actual laws, there are methods that can be employed to track and trace the origin. Platforms can suspend accounts, etc. There are some controls already in place and frankly, many of us have been arguing the controls are already too restrictive with social media companies censoring what they don't want to be heard and viewpoints they don't like. If anonymity is removed, this will only get worse, not better. Do we want the government controlling the algorithms? Is that better than big tech doing it? I don't like either, but the government has a lot more power over my life than big tech.

Weminuche45 etba_ss
9 hours ago edited
Theae people control the populace and overthrow foreign governments by way of speech, so they are acutely aware of its power. Not surprisingly, they assume other are trying to do the same thing they do, so they want to make sure they are they only ones who can win at that game.

They do it for your own good and they know what's best for everyone else.

etba_ss Weminuche45
7 hours ago
I was making this argument earlier in a discussion about just how bad her instinct is. The government controlling speech, which is what her proposal does, is just as bad as the government controlling who has and doesn't have firearms. In order to keep a government in check or correct a tyrannical one you have to have the ability to organize in secret, speak out anonymously and have weapons to fight back. Free speech and the right to bear arms are equally important in keeping the government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Speech without guns makes you of little threat because you can be killed and beaten down. Guns without speech prevents your ability to join with like minded individuals, thus also making you of little threat more than a nuisance.

Having the government know who every social media account belongs to is the equivalent of having the government register every firearm in this country. We've argued for years how bad that it because it allows the government to take them one day. The same is true for speech. If they know who everyone is, silencing them becomes much easier. //

anon-csn0
10 hours ago edited
Big Mommy government is likely worse than Big Daddy government.

etba_ss anon-csn0
7 hours ago
Steve Deace often says the only thing worse than the patriarchy is a matriarchy.

Tyranny is tyranny, but it is also a scientific fact that on the average women think and react more emotionally and relationally and men think and act more rationally and instinctively. Therefore, there is a lot of truth to that statement.

Nikki Haley made a huge unforced error Tuesday in the 2024 Republican presidential primary when she said that one of the first things she'd do as President of the United States is require that social media companies ban anonymous accounts and that they verify all of their users by name. Haley was roundly criticized over this likely unconstitutional plan, which is so tone-deaf that one could easily believe that she just spoke without thinking and would surely issue a statement walking it back a bit.

Nope. Apparently this is a plan she'd been thinking about and developing talking points about for awhile, because in addition to her initial comments on Fox News Channel, Haley said basically the same thing on the Ruthless podcast - only worse. //

Any time there's an attempted paradigm shift in the public discourse, those leading the way are generally vilified by those who benefit from the current system. It's not easy and can be personally and professionally dangerous to express views that aren't politically correct, or to expose corruption or malfeasance. That's why three of our founding fathers wrote the Federalist Papers under the pen name "Publius." It's why Benjamin Franklin wrote letters to the editor under the name "Silence Dogood." During the Constitutional debates, dozens of people on both sides of the issue (Federalists and Anti-Federalists) used pen names to publish tracts aimed at persuading the public. Sure, it's easier these days for foreign governments to employ this type of information warfare, but it's ignorant to think it didn't happen before. We know that foreign saboteurs have plied their trade here for centuries, and we've done the same.

That Haley either doesn't know all of this, or that she pushes for such government overreach despite that knowledge, is, in my opinion, disqualifying in a Republican candidate for President of the United States.

“Canceling” people who disagree with you over ordinary political issues is bad for civil society. Ruining someone’s life because he wore a MAGA cap or tweeted something stupid or supported the wrong initiative creates an oppressive environment for open discourse.

“Canceling” people who sign petitions and hold up signs that openly celebrate or justify the targeted, brutal murders of women and babies, on the other hand, is good for civil society. Stopping malevolent ideas from being normalized is good. Exercising your First Amendment right to free speech and free association to shun and call out people who spread odious ideas in public life is a moral imperative. //

When I say I’m a free-speech absolutist, I mean it. The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions. Free speech isn’t contingent on your position. Hate speech is free speech. The government has no business prodding or even suggesting limitations on our rhetorical interactions. Even outside state intervention, we should be upholding the values that promote free expression. We can peacefully coexist with colleagues, neighbors and friends who hold contradictory opinions within the normal parameters of political debate.

Likewise, Americans have a right to use their freedom to call out and disassociate themselves from people who take the side with nihilistic murder cults.

Flannel Man got treated like the hero he is on Twitter, with several pointing to how he gave them hope for America.

"This is the way," one Twitter user responded.

"A robust, colorful, New York style defence of free speech I can get behind: Say whatever you want to say in your corner, just don't tell me what I can or can't say in my corner," another observed.

"Whats so moving about this clip to me is that it seems like a resurrection of a sort of the old liberal coalition: an inner borough tough, a black man, and another worker defending Jewish Americans," wrote another.

"Some days people don't suck," someone who goes by the handle SweetChefLife1 noted. "And good on my dude for totally explaining the #1stAmendment in the most NYC way possible!"

I agree, and this is exactly what we need to see more of in America. Not physical fights but just no-nonsense people being willing to call out the evil standing before us for exactly what it is. Because if not now, when?