Tag: first amendment

Student senate condemns student for daring to criticize the Black Lives Matter organization

9:58 am

They’re coming for you next: Because one student had the nerve to criticize the Black Lives Matter organization, based on what it itself claims are its goals, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate Student senate passed a resolution condemning that specific student and demanding that everyone at the university fall into lockstep support for that Marxist, racist movement.

This is what the future holds. Note that it isn’t the teachers or college administrators calling for this student’s silencing (though I am sure they applaud it), but the students themselves. The modern generation requires oppression and intolerance of dissenting opinions. It does not believe in free speech. It believes instead in tyranny.

This quote from the article sums up the situation, at least at Georgetown University:

Jacob Adams, secretary of Georgetown Republicans, also told Campus Reform that “students are routinely harassed online by their peers for contrarian opinions at Georgetown. It is not a good college environment for conservatives or simply people who disagree with whatever is the prevailing political push. As it stands right now, I would not recommend Georgetown to any prospective student, and I would strongly discourage alumni from donating to the university until they clearly demonstrate Republicans and conservatives are welcome on campus.”

There is one ray of hope, though one that is incredibly depressing in many ways. Too many American colleges have become havens for this kind of intolerance. They are also finding survival difficult if not impossible under the oppressive rules imposed due to the Wuhan virus panic. The result might be that these havens of intolerance might go out of business.

It couldn’t happen fast enough. The problem is that it will be a trade of one form of oppression for another.

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Oklahoma Supreme Court gives Trump permission to hold political rally

12:43 pm

O thank you my Lords! The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Friday that it will allow Trump to hold a political rally in that state today.

[T]he state’s Supreme Court ruled against the request to force everyone attending to wear a mask and stay at least six feet apart from one another — a policy that would have complicated the massive event with thousands of people. The court ruled that the two local residents among those filing the suit couldn’t establish that they have a clear legal right to the relief they sought. In a concurring opinion, two justices wrote that the state’s reopening plan is “permissive, suggestive and discretionary.”

“Therefore, for lack of any mandatory language in the (plan), we are compelled to deny the relief requested,” that opinion said.

The legalities aside, can you imagine any time in our past history where a sitting president and presidential candidate had to get a court’s approval to hold a political rally? I can’t. The idea would have been inconceivable to past American generations. But the precedent is now clearly set. The courts apparently do have the power to allow or block political rallies. All Trump’s opponents need do to shut down future events is to go to court. Sooner or later a court will go along and forbid the event from occurring, and based on Trump’s behavior up to now, he will bow to that court’s will.

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Persecution is now cool!

2:04 pm

We are in a time of oppression. Make no mistake. If you publicly express an opinion that the left does not like, it is now considered perfectly reasonable among our smart set to destroy your business, dox your family, threaten your children, and have your very existence cancelled.

It is happening repeatedly now every moment of every day in communities across America. Dare to speak out against the accepted leftist mantras of the moment and you will be crushed.

Consider for example the orthodox Jewish community in New York. That city’s leftist Democratic mayor, Bill De Blasio, has forbidden them to gather at funerals, has shut down their schools, and has now locked nearby playgrounds so that Jewish children cannot play safely, all in the name of supposedly saving them from the Wuhan flu.

At the exact same moment however that same leftist Democratic mayor had no objection to a gathering of tens of thousands in packed street demonstrations in favor of “Black Trans Lives Matters,” a gay racist group that wants to impose its sexual and racist agenda on everyone. For some reason, De Blasio has decided that the Wuhan flu is no threat to that political movement.

Only Jews can get COVID-19, and must be protected from it, even if that protection is against their will.

The Orthodox Jews in New York have been fighting back. They have repeatedly cut the locks that De Blasio’s police thugs have put on the parks, only to have De Blasio order the park gates welded shut.

Now they have gone to court to force this clear double standard to cease.
» Read more

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A Catholic archbishop chooses sides, and picks Trump

9:44 am

This might be a first: A Catholic archbishop, Carlo Maria Viganò, has written a public letter condemning very forcefully the “deep state” and those supporting the riots, the looting, the lockdowns, and the race-baiting of the last few months, and telling Trump he is fighting on the side of the angels.

In society, Mr. President, these two opposing realities co-exist as eternal enemies, just as God and Satan are eternal enemies. And it appears that the children of darkness – whom we may easily identify with the deep state which you wisely oppose and which is fiercely waging war against you in these days – have decided to show their cards, so to speak, by now revealing their plans. They seem to be so certain of already having everything under control that they have laid aside that circumspection that until now had at least partially concealed their true intentions. The investigations already under way will reveal the true responsibility of those who managed the Covid emergency not only in the area of health care but also in politics, the economy, and the media. We will probably find that in this colossal operation of social engineering there are people who have decided the fate of humanity, arrogating to themselves the right to act against the will of citizens and their representatives in the governments of nations.

We will also discover that the riots in these days were provoked by those who, seeing that the virus is inevitably fading and that the social alarm of the pandemic is waning, necessarily have had to provoke civil disturbances, because they would be followed by repression which, although legitimate, could be condemned as an unjustified aggression against the population. The same thing is also happening in Europe, in perfect synchrony. It is quite clear that the use of street protests is instrumental to the purposes of those who would like to see someone elected in the upcoming presidential elections who embodies the goals of the deep state and who expresses those goals faithfully and with conviction. It will not be surprising if, in a few months, we learn once again that hidden behind these acts of vandalism and violence there are those who hope to profit from the dissolution of the social order so as to build a world without freedom: Solve et Coagula, as the Masonic adage teaches. [emphasis in original]

This statement by Viganò is significant in that during the past few elections the Catholic church remained disgustingly neutral, even after it was quite clear that the party of Obama was aggressively working to restrict the freedom of religious people, especially in the context of the homosexual agenda. It was as if the order had gone out from on high that they were not to take any sides politically, either out of fear of losing their tax-free status, or (more likely) because too many powerful church leaders cared not a whit for the principles as outlined in the Bible and were in fact in favor of the left’s agenda.

I wonder if the recent madness related to the Wuhan flu and George Floyd has finally caused the scales to fall from their eyes.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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California: where politicians consider criminals their base and ordinary citizens their enemy

1:11 pm

Three stories (two from today and one from two days ago) illustrate starkly the fascist mentality of California Democrats, clearly more interested in giving criminals as much freedom as possible while restricting the freedoms of ordinary law-abiding citizens.

The first story is especially grotesque. Senator Harris (D-California) wants to release criminals into the general population, even though these individuals cannot generally be relied upon to follow any quarantine restrictions. In prison however they are in the perfect quarantine, easily isolated from others.

Harris however is horrified by this. As she writes,

[The Federal Bureau of Prisons] is responding to the threat of coronavirus with extreme measures that both maintain current levels of incarceration and penalize the incarcerated community— including by suspending social and legal visitation, suspending inmate facility transfers, and potentially locking down institutions.

O the horror! We must release these individuals immediately, since restricting their freedom is so against what America stands for!

Meanwhile, the second story illustrates how California politicians have no problem imposing these same restrictions on innocent citizens. While Harris wants to release criminals, San Francisco politicians have imprisoned every citizen in these counties, while shutting down numerous businesses at great cost to their owners.

And the third story reveals the hidden fascist reasons for these actions in California. Because a flu-like virus might someday infect a lot of people, San Jose officials decide they have to shut down a gun shop.

Makes sense to me. We can’t have those evil Wuhan viruses buying guns, can we?

The goal of Democratic politicians in California (and elsewhere) isn’t to stop the virus. Their goal is to establish a totalitarian state, with them in power. This epidemic is only making this fascist desire more obvious.

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More “Free Hong Kong” protesters at NBA-Chinese exhibition games

9:30 am

Maybe we aren’t sheep: A group of protesters showed up at a Washington Wizards exhibition game yesterday against a Chinese basketball team with more “Free Hong Kong” signs, chanting the same throughout the game.

NBA officials however continue to kowtow to China’s demand to squelch these American protests, in America:

During the pregame singing of the Chinese national anthem, there were additional protests, with activists holding up signs and yelling, “Free Hong Kong.” One couple displaying a Tibetan flag left after being confronted by security. Yells of “Free Hong Kong” continued to ring out over the course of the game, as protesters migrated to different sections of the arena.

Security confiscated a “Free Hong Kong” sign from a group of protesters sporting the t-shirts. Later in the first quarter, the protesters displayed a smaller sign reading “Google Uyghurs,”—referring to Chinese Muslims incarcerated in state prison camps—which was also confiscated. [emphasis mine]

Meanwhile, the satirical website, the Babylon Bee, captures the stupidity and anti-Americanism of the NBA perfectly: NBA Now Requiring All Players To Stand For Chinese National Anthem, adding that “Anyone who doesn’t comply will be shot, a beloved Chinese custom that should further smooth things over with the authoritarian regime.”

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Two fans removed from NBA game for holding “Free Hong Kong” signs

12:44 pm

They’re coming for you next: Two fans were removed from an NBA exhibition game in Philadelphia (home to the Liberty Bell) yesterday for holding up “Free Hong Kong” signs.

This is a continuation of the recent story which started when the general manager of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, had tweeted support for the Hong Kong protesters. Because the NBA has many financial ties with China (including a training camp in a region in China where they also have their death camps), the NBA demanded and got an apology from that general manager, and has since been taking whatever action it can to squelch any criticism of China within or linked to the league. The removal of these two fans is part of that oppressive campaign, all aligned with this demand by China:

“We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose [any] claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC.

What disturbs me most about this story is that it could not have happened if only the NBA had demanded it. It required the willing cooperation of the Philadelphia 76ers management, the security detail at the stadium, and the crowd surrounding these fans.

In the past all Americans would have told the Chinese to go jump in a lake. We would have laughed at these demands, even those businesses whose financial dealings with China that might be lost by taking such a stand.

If anything, Americans in the past would have suddenly started showing up at every NBA game, carrying hundreds of “Free Hong Kong” signs. At this moment I see no evidence of this happening. Americans apparently are now the sheep that dictatorships like China can nonchalantly rule, at their whim.

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Democrats once again push to repeal 1st amendment

2:40 pm

A party of fascists: A group of Democratic Senators today re-introduced their 2014 constitutional amendment that would repeal the first amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The language from 2014:

To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

Essentially, this amendment eliminates the ban set by the first amendment that states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”

If you have always been a registered Democratic, you need to reassess that position. This party has nothing to do with that political organization from the past. It has morphed into a fascist and oppressive bunch of totalitarians who pose a serious threat to everyone’s freedom.

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CNN reporter advocates censorship by the FBI

1:45 pm

Words fail me: In an interview of former FBI head James Comey, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour actually had to have the first amendment explained to her by Comey after she suggested that the FBI should act to censor speech it considers “hate speech.”.

“Of course, ‘lock her up’ was a feature of the 2016 Trump campaign,” Amanpour said. “Do you in retrospect wish that people like yourself, the FBI, I mean, the people in charge of law and order, had shut down that language — that it was dangerous potentially, that it could’ve created violence, that it’s kind of hate speech. Should that have been allowed?”

Comey explained the First Amendment to Amanpour, replying, “That’s not the role for government to play. The beauty of this country is people can say what they want, even if it’s misleading and it’s demagoguery.” [emphasis mine]

I am no fan of Comey, as I think he was a willing participant in the effort at the FBI to illegally overturn the 2016 election of Trump. However, he at least has a basic understanding of the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land. For a reporter at a national cable network to not understand this is horrifying.

The video of Amanpour’s comments is posted below the fold. The clip begins with Amanpour giving Comey a platform to condemn any possible investigation into the FBI’s abuse of power. Not surprising, as he and others remain very vulnerable in this matter.

Amanpour then wonders why that the FBI didn’t shut down free speech she and Comey didn’t like. Also not surprising, coming from an employee of a network whose sole purpose these past two years has been to overthrow the legal election of Trump, in league with that corrupt FBI.

And CNN wonders why Trump calls them “fake news”.
» Read more

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Professor fired for challenging new fad of letting children pick their sex

9:40 am

They’re coming for you next: A University of Louisville (Kentucky) professor, fired for saying it is a bad idea to allow children to pick their sex, is suing the university.

The guy was chief of the university’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology. and merely said that it is a mistake to pump drugs into little kids just because they express confusion about sex.

Young children have nowhere near the life experience necessary to ‘decide’ they want to be a different sex. “When you think of it, children don’t know much about anything — and I say this with respect — I’ve raised three…but they don’t know anything at the age of 7, 8, or 9. Why should we listen to a 9-year-old about what time they’re going to bed?” Josephson said. “We don’t let them vote, we don’t let them drive, and so are we going to let them at the age of 8 or 9 decide they are no longer male or female? Unbelievable!”

…Instead of just putting young children on meds that block puberty development and cross-sex hormones, Josephson recommends a ‘go-slow’ approach (to, you know, let the kid grow up a little and get some more life experience). “In actuality, Dr. Josephson never refuted the existence of gender dysphoria; he simply advocated a different method for treating individuals experiencing it,” says the lawsuit.

Josephson, according to the lawsuit, has warned that trying to change one’s sex “often involves permanent social, medical, psychiatric, and other consequences that cannot be fully appreciated until adulthood (e.g., psychopathology, suicidal behavior, peer rejection, and permanent sterility).” He also noted that some kids and even teens who go through gender dysphoria will cease to experience it by late adolescence.

It appears the gay studies community at the university, upon hearing this professor’s opinions, then rallied to get him removed, with the full cooperation of university’s management.

Note that they aimed to get him fired because he expressed an opinion dissenting from the current gay agenda. How dare he! Such things are not allowed in today’s America. Doesn’t he know that the first amendment was designed to provide free speech only to some people, who have the right opinions. All others must shut up.

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Scientists horrified that Trump wants to require universities to honor free speech

12:33 pm

This is not a Babylon Bee story. An article today in the science journal Nature actually expressed outrage and concern about President Trump’s executive order last week tying the grants a university gets to its willingness to protect the free speech of all its students and teachers.

What evil thing did Trump’s order require of these universities? To quote the Nature article itself,

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on 21 March that requires universities to certify that they protect free speech, or risk losing federal research funds.

Public institutions will have to certify that they are following free-speech protections laid out in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and private institutions must promise to follow their stated policies on free speech, a White House official told reporters on 21 March.

The order applies to 12 research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and NASA. It affects only money for research, not financial aid for students.

O the horror! The universities will have to show that they support free speech! What a travesty!

The Nature article then proceeded to find quotes from a number of scientists and organizations who oppose Trump’s action. One even claimed that Trump was not trying to protect free speech, “but the enhancement of conservative voices.”

In other words, to these scientists, there is plenty of free speech in academia. Liberals and leftists are all free to say whatever they want. However, any attempt to allow conservatives the right to speak is clearly a biased threat to freedom and must be stopped at all costs. And to threaten their funding because of this? The nerve of that bad orange man!

The intellectual dishonesty exhibited here is mind-boggling. And for it to come from scientists, whose entire field is built on the need for brutal intellectual honesty at all times, is quite appalling.

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Illinois joins NY in demanding social media histories of gun owners

10:12 am

They’re coming for you next: Illinois has joined New York with a new proposed law that would demand the social media histories from anyone wishing to own a gun.

State Rep. Daniel Didech, D-Buffalo Grove, has filed HB 888 which would require those who apply for a state-issued Firearm Owners Identification Card– mandatory for legal gun owners– turn over a list of their social media accounts to authorities under threat of a Class 2 felony. The State Police would use the information to determine if the accounts have any “information that would disqualify the person from obtaining or require revocation” of a FOID card.

Democratic legislators in New York had proposed a similar proposed law last year.

The right to bear arms is guaranteed in the Constitution. These proposed laws are designed to circumvent this, by allowing the government to do fishing expeditions looking for any reason it can to deny a citizen this right.

Freedom of speech is also guaranteed in the Constitution. These proposed laws are designed to circumvent this also, by allowing the government to delve through your speech looking for any reason it can find to hurt you because of it.

Either way, what we have here is a 1984-like government intrusion into the privacy of citizens, with no restrictions. And it increasingly appears to be future Americans face, mostly due to their own choices at the ballot box.

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Google considered burying conservative outlets in search results

10:08 pm

Evil: After Trump’s 2016 election victory, Google management seriously considered rigging search results so that conservative news outlets would not show up.

They never did it, but instead created a short-lived fact check feature that was clearly aimed at discrediting conservative sites.

“We’re working on providing users with context around stories so that they can know the bigger picture,” chimed in David Besbris, vice president of engineering at Google. “We can play a role in providing the full story and educate them about all sides. This doesn’t have to be filtering and can be useful to everyone,” he wrote. Other employees similarly advocated providing contextual information about media sources in search results, and the company later did so with a short-lived fact check at the end of 2017.

Not only did the fact-check feature target conservative outlets almost exclusively, it was also blatantly wrong. Google’s fact check repeatedly attributed false claims to those outlets, even though they demonstrably never made those claims.

Google pulled the faulty fact-check program in January, crediting TheDCNF’s investigation for the decision.

Forgive me if I remain suspicious about how they rig search results these days. There are too many indications that the culture at this company is tyrannically liberal and willing to destroy anyone who dissents from that political position.

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3D gun files still available to public despite judge’s ruling

4:36 pm

Pushback: Despite a judge’s apparently unconstitutional ruling that banned the free give-away of the plans for printing 3D guns, the company that is producing them has instead made them available for purchase, at any price the buyer designates.

The ruling was intensely shaky and a jab to both the First and Second Amendment, so naturally Democrats were aroused.

But their celebration was premature.

Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson crushed their short-lived happiness during a Tuesday press conference where he revealed that he actually won’t be stopped from sharing technical data; he will simply sell the files via his website, defcad.com. (Yes, he can do this.) “This judge’s order, stopping us from simply giving things away, was only an authorization that we could sell it, that we could mail it, that we could email it, that we could provide it by secure transfer. I will be doing all of those things, now,” announced Wilson.

“A lot of this to me was about principle,” he continued. “For many years, I just chose not to sell these files, because I’m an open-source activist. I believed in demonstrating that there was a right to commit this information to the public domain.”

“But, this is my opportunity to correct the media all in one place. To read headline after headline about how you can no longer 3D-print a gun, you can no longer have these files, this is not true. This has never been true. I now have to demonstrate this to you, forcefully, to deliver the point.”

There is no set price for the material; patrons are asked to give whatever they’d like in exchange. Wilson said the money would be used for further legal fees.

The judge’s ruling was completely bogus, especially since the Trump Justice Department had already settled the suit that the Obama Justice Department had brought. Moreover, since when can a judge ban the publication of any information the U.S.? His ruling appears to violate the First Amendment, and possibly the Second Amendment as well.

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Inventor of 3D gun wins lawsuit against Justice

5:14 pm

The inventor of a 3D gun has won a free speech lawsuit against the Justice Department for its order blocking the publication of his 3D gun designs.

Cody Wilson’s Defense Distributed and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) reached a settlement with the Department of Justice allowing unfettered publication of 3D gun files and other information in a case centered on free speech. Breitbart News reported that SAF filed a suit on behalf of Defense Distributed on May 6, 2015, seeking to free Wilson from a federal mandate that he not post blueprints for The Liberator pistol online.

Over three years later, the announcement comes that Wilson and SAF won. SAF sent a press release to Breitbart News, explaining details of settlement, saying, “The government has agreed to waive its prior restraint against the plaintiffs, allowing them to freely publish the 3-D files and other information at issue. The government has also agreed to pay a significant portion of the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees, and to return $10,000 in State Department registration dues paid by Defense Distributed as a result of the prior restraint.”

In other words, the Justice Department had no authority under the Constitution to block the publication of these 3D gun plans, and in its effort to try it has lost badly.

What this really means is that it is now literally impossible for any government to impose gun control. If you want a gun, all you will need is the right kind of 3D printer (getting better all the time) and the right plans, soon to be available on the web. While this might make guns more available for bad guys, I guarantee that they will quickly be outnumbered by the good guys.

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Innocent Red Hen businesses threatened nationwide

11:02 am

Ignorant fascists on the right: Numerous businesses nationwide with the name Red Hen are being attacked, including receiving death threats, merely because they happen to have the same business name as the restaurant in Virginia that refused to serve Trump press secretary Sarah Sanders.

Restaurants that share the name — but not any business ties — with the Lexington, Va., eatery that refused service to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders last weekend have received death threats, been deluged with harassment and had their businesses ripped on Yelp.

The harassment even extended to a book imprint: Red Hen Press in Pasadena, Calif., had to explain on Twitter that “‘Red Hen’ is not a restaurant franchise, it is a name incidentally shared by many independent and unaffiliated companies” and that Red Hen Press is “a book publishing company, not a well-named panini shop.”

The Red Hen restaurant in D.C. was egged and has had to post a sign in their window stating “#NOT THAT RED HEN.” The staff have been inundated with emails and calls to their personal phones threatening, among other messages, to burn the restaurants down and simply “Dead Hen.” Death threats began coming in on Saturday evening, when Sanders reported that she had been kicked out of the unaffiliated Lexington restaurant, and a police officer was posted outside the D.C. eatery; after the cop left for the night, the restaurant was egged.

Even a Washington restaurant affiliated with the Red Hen D.C. — All-Purpose — is being harassed.

Just because leftists have recently decided it is okay to use violence to attack their opponents does not give the right permission to do the same. Peacefully boycotting the correct restaurant is reasonable. Making death threats, and doing so against innocent people, is vile and unforgiveable. Two wrongs do not make a right.

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Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban

10:26 am

In a 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court today upheld President Trump’s constitutional powers to enforce immigration law by upholding his travel ban.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, made it clear that the court viewed the ability to regulate immigration as squarely within a president’s powers and he rejected critics’ claims of anti-Muslim bias. “We express no view on the soundness of the policy,” Roberts wrote.

Moreover, the court also ruled today that fascist California cannot force pro-life centers to advertise pro-abortion announcements.

“The unlicensed notice imposes a government-scripted, speaker-based disclosure requirement that is wholly disconnected from California’s informational interest,” wrote Justice Thomas. “California has offered no justification that the notice plausibly furthers. It targets speakers, not speech, and imposes an unduly burdensome disclosure requirement that will chill their protected speech.”

Thomas also wrote that the law not only forced pro-life centers to promote abortion, but to do so while diminishing their own message on pregnancy care. “As California conceded at oral argument, a billboard for an unlicensed facility that says ‘Choose Life’ would have to surround that two-word statement with a 29-word statement from the government, in as many as 13 different languages,” continued Thomas.

“In this way, the unlicensed notice drowns out the facility’s own message. More likely, the ‘detail required’ by the unlicensed notice ‘effectively rules out’ the possibility of having such a billboard in the first place.”

The left is on a bad losing streak at the Supreme Court so far this year. And with the strong possibility that at least one of its liberal judges might soon be replaced by Trump, the left’s ability to impose its will through the courts should be further diminished.

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1984 at the University of Michigan

1:03 pm

Fascist academia: The University of Michigan has been sued by a free speech organization for its 1984-like rules that threaten students with punishment, even re-education camps, if they dare express any opinion that might offend its organized thought police.

As the lawsuit says, the university has created an “elaborate investigatory and disciplinary apparatus to suppress and punish speech other students deem ‘demeaning,’ ‘bothersome,’ or ‘hurtful’.” Yes, really: The student disciplinary code defines “harassment” as any “unwanted negative attention perceived as intimidating, demeaning, or bothersome to an individual”

…The university has its version of the Stasi and Orwell’s Thought Police — a “Bias Response Team” that investigates supposed “bias” complaints from offended students — students who can file their complaints anonymously. So if you are accused of wrongdoing, you don’t even have a right to confront your accuser — just like the former citizens of East Germany where the Stasi had literally hundreds of thousands of informers who could be your next-door neighbor or even a member of your own family. Or in this case, a student down the hall or from one of your classes.

If you think this Star Chamber process is limited to verbal speech, think again. Just like the electronic surveillance in Oceania, the “Bias Incident Report Log” posted by Michigan on its website shows that the Bias Response Team may come after you for what you do and say in “On-line/Social Media” communications including texts, emails, and Twitter.

The log also shows that the campus secret police — sorry, the Bias Response Team — also goes after “Off Campus” speech. So students aren’t safe anywhere. Their First Amendment rights are severely restricted, no matter what they are doing or where they are.

So a student may literally receive a knock on his door “from a team of University officials threatening to refer the student to formal disciplinary authorities” for something some unknown, anonymous informant alleges that he said, something the informant doesn’t like, or doesn’t agree with, or is uncomfortable with. Unless, of course, as the complaint says, the student agrees to submit “to ‘restorative justice,’ ‘individual education,’ or ‘unconscious bias training’.”

In other words, the only way a student may be able to avoid formal charges against meritless claims is by agreeing to submit to the academic equivalent of a communist-style “re-education” camp or brainwashing about the latest liberal fad like “unconscious bias.”

Read it all. It is pretty horrible, and makes me wonder why the state government is providing any funds to this fascist-run university. Time to shut it down.

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California bans free speech, forces gay sex ed on little kids

11:52 pm

Fascist California: Two stories today illustrate forcefully the fascist political atmosphere in the state of California. And both are in support of the totalitarian homosexual agenda.

In the first story, the California Assembly has passed a bill that would ban any book, publication, or activity that is aimed at helping someone who wishes to stop their attraction to the same sex. As noted in the article,

“The State of California has no right to deny its residents the resources to help them find happiness or to shut down counselors, schools, and religious organizations that provide those services,” California Family Council president Jonathan Keller said of the vote. “Every person experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria must be allowed to pursue help in achieving their desired goals and outcomes.”

The bill is unprecedented for another reason, too: by classifying the subject under prohibited “goods,” which critics say means it would go so far as to ban the sale of books endorsing the practice, as well as other forms of constitutionally-protected speech. “At its core, AB 2943 outlaws speech,” Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) legal analysis of the bill reads. It says that licensed counseling, religious conferences, book sales, and paid speaking engagements could all potentially face legal penalties for promoting ways to reverse unwanted attractions or for expressing traditional Christian teachings on sexuality.

In the second story, the Orange County school district is telling parents that they have no right to opt their children out of its pro-gay sex education classes, even though the law that established these homosexual-friendly classes expressly states that “parents [have] the ability to opt-out of this education and … that the “pupil” shall not be punished academically in any way if they don’t participate.”

To those in power in California, the concept of freedom is essentially dead. They are going to make you do as they demand, no matter what. And you will have no right to dissent.

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Arizona legislature about to pass law voiding 1st amendment at colleges

5:08 pm

We’re here to help you! An effort at the Arizona state legislature to protect student free speech rights has produced a bill that expressly voids the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The original bill language read:

“A university or community college shall not restrict a student’s right to speak, including verbal speech, holding a sign or distributing fliers or other materials, in a public forum.”

Combined with subsequent language in the bill describing the way universities can implement reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, the original provision was perfectly appropriate. However, after emerging from conference committee, that language now reads:

“A university or community college may restrict a student’s right to speak, including verbal speech, holding a sign or distributing fliers or other materials, in a public forum.” [Emphasis in original]

You really can’t make this stuff up. The article at the link notes that, based on the Arizona legislature’s track record, the change is likely the result of a “drafting error.” Bah. Either this group of lawyers and politicians in Arizona are complete fools, don’t know how to read or write, or they really do intend to shut down free speech.

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This week in fascist academia

3:24 pm

This week’s collection of stories illustrating the fascist culture that permeates today’s academic community actually includes some good news. (My last fascist academia post can be seen here.)

First the bad:

The first story illustrates that this intolerance is not limited to the left. In this case a conservative university kicked out a speaker with more moderate views.

Nonetheless, the majority of these attacks on freedom of speech continue to come from the left or from left-leaning organizations. The last story indicates the trends, which include a significant shift towards violence and a disrespect for property rights.

Now for the good news.

In the first story we see a rare example of someone experiencing bad consequences for their bad fascist behavior. If only this would happen more often. In the second story the theatrical community, including the normally very leftwing partisan Dramatists Guild of America (!), has actually come out against censorship, even if that censorship involves opinions that attack modern liberal sacred cows, such as the racist Black Lives Matter movement. This action is so out of the norm that I am somewhat speechless.

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Today in fascist academia

11:26 am

Time for another update on the growing movement on American campuses to squelch freedom of speech. The stories below highlight some of the more egregious examples since my last update.

Note also that I am making a point to identify the university in every headline I link to. If you have children who are about to pick a college, a quick search here at Behind the Black will tell you where a college stands on the first amendment and free speech.

No one should be surprised that three of these stories come out of California, which in recent years has become increasingly hostile to the concept of dissent.

All is not bad news, however. The Board of Regents that runs the University of Wisconsin two weeks ago approved a new policy that would suspend and expel students who disrupt speeches and presentations on campus.

This tidbit from the story reveals once again which political party today believes in free speech, and which political party does not.

The new Wisconsin policy mirrors Republican legislation the state Assembly passed in June, though the Senate has yet to act on the bill. Regents President John Robert Behling told the board before Friday’s vote that adopting the policy ahead of the legislation shows “a responsiveness to what’s going on in the Capitol, which helps build relationships.”

Republican Gov. Scott Walker appointed all but two of the board’s 18 members. State public schools Superintendent Tony Evers and Wisconsin Technical College System Board President Mark Tyler are automatically regents by virtue of their offices.

Evers, a Democrat running against Walker in next year’s gubernatorial election, cast the only dissenting vote. He accused the regents of sacrificing free speech to curry favor with Republican lawmakers.

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Pro-Trump hecklers shout down California attorney general

10:53 pm

Fascism: A Q&A at Whittier College with California’s attorney general was shouted down and cut off prematurely by pro-Trump demonstrators.

The event ended early after pro-Trump hecklers, upset about Becerra’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over DACA, continuously shouted slogans and insults at Becerra and Calderon. A group affiliated with the hecklers later boasted that the speakers were “SHOUTED DOWN BY FED-UP CALIFORNIANS” and that the “meeting became so raucous that it ended about a half hour early.”

The event, held in Whittier College’s Shannon Center theater, was free and open to members of the community, and featured introductions from both Whittier’s president and student body president. Becerra and Calderon were to have an hour-long question-and-answer session using audience questions randomly selected from a basket. As soon as they began the discussion, however, hecklers decked in “Make America Great Again” hats began a continuous and persistent chorus of boos, slogans, and insults.

I am not surprised that we are now seeing people on the right doing this sort of thing, having seen leftists do it repeatedly during the past year and getting away with it, every single time. They are angry and frustrated, and want to return the favor.

Having said that, however, I also firmly consider this terribly wrong and an example of fascist behavior. If the only way we are going to behave is screaming at each other, we will soon see that screaming descend into utter violence, a process that will do no one any good, and solve nothing.

These hecklers should have been escorted out of the room, and arrested if they resisted in the slightest. That they weren’t speaks poorly of the security at Whittier College.

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Today in facist academia

10:03 am

Fascist academia: There are so many of these stories each day that I find it somewhat repetitive to post them over and over again. Here are today’s sampling of college protesters and academic administrators shutting down speech they don’t like.

Note that these stories cover five different universities. In several cases the university administration participated in shutting down dissenting views. In all cases it appears the administrations are complacent in supporting the heckler’s veto by not doing anything to stop it.

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Hate from the left

12:11 am

The last few days have been a horror show of hate. While most decent people were appalled by the murderous attack in Las Vegas and horrified by the evil of the man who did it, it appears the thing that offended the left most of all was not the murderer, but the guns he used and the nerve of conservatives and Republicans to defend the 2nd amendment of the Constitution in defying their non-stop efforts to repeal it. That outrage against conservatives often bordered on insane and outright hate, completely divorced from facts or reality.

This list of stories is only a small sampling. The hateful attacks the past few days on conservatives and anyone connected with Trump and the Republican Party by Democrats and leftists have been non-stop and repeatedly vicious.

The last story above however reveals clearly where these attacks are going. The left, and the Democratic Party that supports the left’s ideology, wants to end freedom and obtain unrivaled and unopposed power. Anything that stands in their way must be destroyed, including the Bill of Rights. Moore’s proposal to repeal the 2nd amendment is not the only proposal put forth by Democrats in recent years trying to repeal parts of the Bill of Rights. For example, in June Democratic Congressmen held a sit-in in the House, protesting the due process clause in the 5th amendment. Then, in 2014 the Democrats proposed repealing the 1st amendment. We already know that the left has worked tirelessly for the past century to make the 9th and 10th amendments moot so the federal government will rule over areas of law that were reserved to the states, or the people.

That’s 5 of the Bill of Right’s 10 amendments that leftists and the Democratic Party oppose. If I was dig a bit deeper I am sure I can find examples where they have worked to repeal the other five as well.

I want make it clear where this Democratic Party and its supporters in academia and Hollywood now stands. They hate all opposition, and want to repeal the constitutional protections created to protect ordinary people from tyranny. If you stand for freedom, you cannot stand with them.

And if you don’t believe me, watch this video and the hate coming from this woman against someone who was merely wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. She steals it, then says his free speech and property rights should be suspended, merely because she hates him. Others might say it is because she disagrees with him, but what I see is unbridled hate, pure and vicious.

We need to recognize this hate for what it is. It is what caused so many liberals in the past two days to attack conservatives, not the murderer who killed dozens in Las Vegas. And it is this kind of hate that always leads to oppression, mass murder, and tyranny.

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UC-Berkeley’s chancellor orders removal of posters, starts investigation

8:24 am

Fascist Berkeley: Following the cancellation of “Free Speech Week” at the University of Berkeley, the university’s chancellor ordered the removal of posters detailing the terrorist connections of certain students and teachers, calling them “hate speech” and starting an investigation into the conservative organization that posted them.

The posters in question name Kumars Salehi, Judith Butler, and Hatem Bazian and nine other individuals as supporters of terrorism on the consciousness-raising posters that UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ ordered torn down.

According to the Canary Mission website, Salehi is a graduate student in German literature and culture at Berkeley. Salehi supports the dissolution of the State of Israel and is a member of the terrorist front group Students for Justice in Palestine and the BDS movement. He agrees with the absurd claim of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad that “Zionism and white nationalist anti-Semitism have historically been allies.”

Butler is the Maxine Elliott Professor of Comparative Literature at Berkeley, a BDS movement leader, and a member of the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) advisory committee. Butler has charactered Muslim terrorist groups as legitimate political players, saying she sees “Hamas [and] Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left [that are] very important.”

Bazian co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine to wage a campus war against Israel on behalf of Hamas. Bazian is chairman of the board of the Hamas organization “American Muslims for Palestine,” and is on record calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and its Jews in so many words. The founding charter of Hamas, by the way, speaks of “the Nazism of the Jews” and asserts that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” It claims that peace initiatives “are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement”; that “there is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad”; and that “war for the sake of Allah” is a noble enterprise that requires the faithful to “assault and kill” on a massive scale. [emphasis mine]

You can’t support freedom of speech if you tear down posters and investigate the people who post them. Such actions are that of tyrants, and we now know that Chancellor Christ’s claims that she supported free speech were lies.

Note that the posters were put up as part of the “Free Speech Week” event that Milo Yiannopoulos attempt to put on there, which ended up getting cancelled. Note also that they were written and posted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative organization focused on supporting freedom and opposing oppression.

Update: Leftist protesters at Berkeley this week also acted to block reporters from reporting on their protest.

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UC-Berkeley student group backs out of free speech event

9:42 pm

Academic fascism: The student group at the University of California-Berkeley that was sponsoring the “Free Speech Week” event that was scheduled to begin this coming week has withdrawn their sponsorship.

The student organizers of the “Free Speech Week” at the University of California, Berkeley have announced that they will no longer be hosting the event due to pressure from school administrators. Milo Yiannopoulos, however, insisted during a Saturday press conference that the event would begin as planned on Sunday, though he said Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon would have to be rescheduled.

It is presently unclear exactly what happened. The university denies that it was pressuring the student group to cancel the event, and is instead claiming that they were doing all that they could to make the event happen. Meanwhile, this story paints a bad picture of Milo Yiannopoulos’s methods for organizing the event.

My inclination now is to believe the student organizers, based on Berkeley’s recent track record supporting censorship and violence against conservatives. However, it is also possible the organizers were not very organized, as suggested by the university and the last link above. Either way, the real source of the problem here is the fascist intolerant culture of Berkeley itself, which encourages violence against conservatives or anyone else who happens to dissent from leftwing orthodoxy. That thuggish culture has made it very difficult to schedule any conservative speaker, since everyone knows that these speakers will require a fortune in security to protect them.

Yiannopoulos meanwhile says he still plans on speaking there, regardless. We shall see.

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Middlebury College endorses heckler’s veto

10:12 pm

Another college no one should attend: Middlebury College, which saw violent protests when author Charles Murray gave a speech there, has established a new policy that will have them cancel any speaker “in cases of imminent and credible threat to the community that cannot be mitigated by revisions to the event plan.”

In other words, threaten violence against a speaker you disagree with, and you will successfully silence that speaker.

If this college believed in free speech, it would instead announce that it will immediately expel any student that threatens violence against anyone, and that it will do whatever is necessary to defend all speakers from violence. But the administration here doesn’t believe in free speech, so instead it invites violence against any unpopular speaker.

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Berkeley creates police state in anticipation of conservative speaker

6:55 pm

Free speech in fascist California: In order to prevent violence against a conservative speaker, the town of Berkeley is imposing very strict security controls for tomorrow’s event.

The key security measure that I think will make the most difference are these:

UC Berkeley’s Provost Paul Alivisatos sent a recent campus-wide message detailing security plans, saying no one wearing masks or carrying weapons of any sort will be allowed on campus.

Police will block off the building where Shapiro is scheduled to speak and several other buildings hours before the event starts. Anyone entering the secure zone to pick up tickets must present a photo I.D. Nearby parking lots will be closed.

Berkeley police chief Andrew Greenwood said police will make “very strong, rapid arrests” Thursday night if any protesters have weapons or wear masks.

You want to commit violence, you won’t be able to do it anonymously, as was allowed previously.

Though it is tragic that so much of the population of California hates dissent so much that they are willing to commit violence to squelch opposing points of view, it is progress that the local government and university administration are finally acting to defend the people’s right to speak freely.

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