Tag: speech

A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.

11:40 pm

Bad news for free speech: A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.

The court’s ruling: School administrators can force you to remove your American-flag tee if the alternative is a classmate punching you in the face. That’s because, per the Supreme Court, students don’t have the same free speech rights at school that adults do on other public grounds. At school, the name of the game is order and instruction; you’re entitled to free expression to the extent you don’t interfere with those goals, but once you do, the school’s entitled to limit your expression accordingly.

In other words, a bully can get the principal’s office to silence you by promising to beat your ass if they don’t.

This is, as Eugene Volokh notes, a classic “heckler’s veto” in that it rewards a violent actor by suppressing the speech that’s irritated him instead of punishing him for being violent.

So, according to this ruling, the only people who will have free speech will be those willing to threaten, and even use violence. A foolish and mindless ruling, if I ever saw one.

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Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.

11:32 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.

And what about the new official policy?

The tax agency has floated an outline of new rules that would limit those groups’ ability to host candidates, distribute voter guides or conduct voter registration or get-out-the-vote drives. A three-month period for public comments closed on Thursday, and the IRS had posted more than 115,000 comments. They were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposed rules, with both conservative and liberal-leaning groups saying the rules would stifle their ability to participate in important public debates.

One joint comment, filed by a dozen groups ranging from the immigration advocacy America’s Voice and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to the right-leaning American Conservative Union and tea party-aligned FreedomWorks, asked the Obama administration go back and start over on the rules.

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Contempt for the law

6:57 am

As I am taking a break from sightseeing and visiting relatives here in Israel, I thought I’d answer a question raised by one of my regular readers, Patrick Ritchie, in a comment a few weeks ago.

Patrick had noticed what seemed a contradiction in my posts and asked me about it. First, he noted my disgust at university officials in South Carolina who were refusing to follow a law requiring them to teach students about the Constitution because they thought it “inconvenient.”

Patrick wrote, “In the post above you state, ‘It might inconvenient, and the law itself might be foolish, but it isn’t up the administrators to decide this. They should be fired.'”

He then cited an earlier post in which I celebrated the Connecticut gun owners who were refusing to register their weapons under that state’s new very oppressive and senseless gun control law. There I had written that “When the law has contempt for freedom, then the only answer is contempt for the law.”

Patrick then asked, “I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on how, in your mind, these two situations are different. More specifically: when (if ever) do you think it is OK for citizens to disregard or break the law?”
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The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a settlement from the college that tried to stop him.

2:08 pm

The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a $50,000 settlement from the college that tried to stop him.

At the first link I had posted the video the student had taken of the event. It is worth watching again because it is so egregious. That he won so handily is a wonderful outcome.

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Global warming activists organize a petition to ban a column by Charles Krauthammer that criticized global warming activists of trying to silence opposing points of view.

10:33 am

You can’t make this stuff up: Global warming activists organize a petition to ban a column by Charles Krauthammer that criticized global warming science and the activists who try to stuff it down our throats.

These activists don’t seem capable of addressing any of the actual facts that Krauthammer mentions in his column, facts that readers of this webpage already know in great detail. No, the debate tactic of today’s global warming fascists is simply to tell their opponents to “Shut up!” Who needs facts when you can silence your opponents?

In related news, CNN and at least one of its anchors have declared that the debate over global warming is over and that they no longer consider the skeptical view worth covering.

Debate is such an inconvenient thing.

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“I don’t think we should be tolerating conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.”

8:27 am

The open-mindedness of a modern ivy league college student: “I don’t think we should be tolerating conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.”

Nor is this one student alone. She is typical of the bigoted, hateful leftwing mindset in the academic community, where tolerance is defined by how much you can censor and silence any opposing points of view.

Posted from Garden City, New York. I now shutting down and heading to the airport to fly to Israel. I expect that I will be out of touch with the internet until Sunday, at the soonest.

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The Obama administration is moving ahead with a FCC project to send government agents into newsrooms to make sure journalists cover certain topics the Obama administration considers important.

8:58 am

The first amendment is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration is moving ahead with a FCC project to send government agents into newsrooms to make sure journalists cover certain topics the Obama administration considers important.

I had read about this proposed project last week but had then seen reports that the FCC was backing down. Now it appears they are not.

What I can’t figure out is this: What news organization is going to agree to this? The FCC has no legal power over print journalism. If those researchers wanted to enter my newsroom or question my reporting, I’d simply tell them to go to hell, after I recorded the conversation. I would then report on that conversation, making it as embarrassing as I could for that researcher and the Obama administration.

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“I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I will not be intimidated, and I will not ask for permission to exercise my constitutional rights.”

2:28 pm

“I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I will not be intimidated, and I will not ask for permission to exercise my constitutional rights.”

The words of one conservative who was harassed by the IRS and the Obama administration merely because she opposed them politically. Her most recent action? She is filing a formal complaint against Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummings for joining in on that harassment.

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Will Piers Morgan apologize for spreading a racist hoax?

10:08 am

Will Piers Morgan apologize for spreading a racist hoax?

I doubt it, but even if he does apologize (as has happened a lot at NBC recently), he won’t really mean it. When you are a hate-filled bigot, working at a hate-filled television network, apologizes don’t mean you’ve mended your ways, only that you are looking for cover so you can spread more hate.

Note also that Deval Patrick, Democratic governor of Massachusetts, also joined Morgan in spreading this lie.

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A newspaper chain plans to assemble a state-by-state database of every person permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

3:34 pm

Freedom under attack: A newspaper chain plans to assemble a state-by-state database of every person permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

The CEO of the chain has released a statement saying that

[Civitas Media] never had any plans or intentions of publishing in print or online lists of holders of “conceal and carry” permits. Nor will Civitas Media develop databases of permit holders. A poorly crafted internal memo meant to highlight editorial discussions and planning incorrectly indicated that such a database was being planned; it has been considered and rejected.

Maybe so, but that such an idea was even considered by some of the company’s editors tells you a great deal about what those editors believe in, and it surely isn’t privacy, the second amendment, or personal rights.

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Advice for Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty.

10:23 pm

I posted this Andrew Klavan commentary back in January 2011, shortly after the Tucson shooting when the left was accusing the right of causing the shooting because of the so-called “incivility” of their speech. It was all lies, merely intended to stifle the speech of anyone who dissented from liberal orthodoxy.

I think it bears viewing again, as it provides good advice and council to Phil Robertson and the entire Duck Dynasty family. It also once again outlines quite starkly how oppressive and fascist the American left has become.

As Klavan concludes, “Whatever you do, don’t shut up.”

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The star of cable television’s highest rated show in history has been sacked because he dared criticize the homosexual lifestyle

10:23 pm

The end of free speech: The star of cable television’s highest rated show in history has been sacked because he dared criticize the homosexual lifestyle.

It does not matter whether one disagrees with him or not. He has the right to express these opinions, and should not be punished merely because they are not politically correct in today’s society.

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Reddit bans any skepticism of global warming.

2:57 pm

The certainty of the global warming crowd: Reddit bans everyone from expressing skepticism of global warming.

In a move that has been described by one British academic as “positive censorship”, a Reddit moderator has announced that Reddit is becoming “increasingly stringent with deniers”. The Reddit moderator says climate “contrarians” were too often expressing “uninformed and outspoken opinions”, and so the site decided to adopt a much more “proactive moderation”. Now, whenever a user makes a “potentially controversial submission” on climate change, the moderators issue that user with a “warning”. If the user persists in posting “potentially controversial submissions”, he’s “banned from the forum”.

The worst part of this is the reaction of Reddit’s moderators:

Reddit’s moderators are really happy with the results of their war against the expressers of “outspoken opinions” on climate change. They found that by “negating the ability of this misguided group to post to the forum” (a long-winded way of saying “banning them”), there has been a “change in the culture within the comments”. “Where once there were personal insults and bitter accusations, there is now discussion of the relevant aspects of [scientific] research”, we are told. In short, having expelled outspoken, controversial “deniers” from its forums, Reddit now finds that its discussions of climate change are more measured – that is, on-message, conformist, uncontroversial.

How convenient. You don’t like the opinions of those who disagree with you, so you ban them. Sure solves the problem of winning debates, doesn’t it?

I wouldn’t object if the moderators just banned insulting and offensive comments. I do that here at Behind the Black. What they’ve apparently done instead is to ban all opposing opinions, which is far different.

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It is time to start applying the Broken Windows Theory to liberal intolerance.

8:45 pm

Right on! It is time to start applying the Broken Windows Theory to liberal intolerance.

Compare the rude, vicious terms from Obama and his spokespeople, and Senior Democrats such as Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi and others, with the gentlemanly behavior of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. There is plenty of push back and name-calling on both sides at lower levels and on the blogosphere, but it’s qualitatively different when it comes from The White House and the Democratic Party House and Senate leadership. When the leadership of the Republican Party does not push back against the leadership of the Democratic Party for the name-calling and taunts, it’s an invitation to more attacks, and it sets a national tone.

We’ve become punching bags. At dinner and at the highest political levels.

We need to do what Rudy Giuliani did to graffiti artists and squeegee guys, apply broken windows theory. “Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.”

In other words, push back hard every time a liberal spits out an insult or rude comment about conservatives. Don’t back down. Don’t let them get away with it easily.

Well, I agree, but be forewarned. Liberals are all self-righteous about you being polite, but never think such rules should apply to them. (Which isn’t surprising considering how much they like to tell others what do to.) You will lose friends, as I have. I don’t think any of those lost friendships was ever much of a loss, but you should be forewarned.

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The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant.”

10:47 am

Modern American freedom: The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant.”

And what happens if someone ignores this ban? Will they send them to a concentration camp?

Considering the overwhelming support for the ban (with only one abstention), I wouldn’t be surprised if that is exactly what these students would like to do. And I expect them to try in the coming years as they move into positions of power.

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A college that bans any guns on campus has also decided to ban any speech that mentions guns.

8:43 am

Liberal free speech: A college that bans any guns on campus has also decided to ban any speech that mentions guns.

Officials at the private university–which prohibits guns on campus–told The College Fix that literature promoting guns in any way, shape or form is strictly forbidden. “Gun promotion is contradictory of the university’s policy to carry on campus,” wrote Lisa Albert, director of communications for TCU, in an email to The College Fix.

The fascist nature of the left reveals itself more and more. They start out banning behavior that might be construed — if you are naive — as contributing to violence. Then they move to banning speech. Next, they will follow by banning anything they disagree with.

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A Iowan Mennonite couple that owns an art gallery has filed suit against the state’s Civil Rights Commission after being threatened with punishment for refusing to host a same-sex wedding on their property.

10:14 am

Jack-boot thugs: A Iowan Mennonite couple that owns an art gallery has filed suit against the state’s Civil Rights Commission after being threatened with punishment for refusing to host a same-sex wedding on their property.

Posted from Tennessee.

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The National Park Service is permitting a leftwing rally for illegal immigrants to take place on the National Mall, supposedly closed because of the government shutdown.

12:03 pm

Working for the left and the Democratic Party: The National Park Service is permitting a leftwing rally for illegal immigrants to take place on the National Mall, supposedly closed because of the government shutdown.

Much like the favoritism exhibited by the IRS, the park service is now clearly favoring leftwing protest. Want to gather at the World War II monument to celebrate the courage of Americans to free the world from Nazism and fascism? No! Want to gather on the National Mall to celebrate illegal immigrants? Yes!

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A seventh grade student faces expulsion from his school because he was playing with an air pistol — in his own yard.

9:18 am

Madness: A seventh grade student faces expulsion from his school because he was playing with an air pistol — in his own yard.

Khalid Caraballo, 12, and his friend, Aidan, were suspended for “possession, handling and use of a firearm” because they “shot two other friends who were with them while playing” with the airsoft guns, WAVY-TV reported. Caraballo answered “no, sir,” when asked if he took the toy gun to the bus stop or to school. “We were in our yard. This had nothing to do with school,” the student said.

So, government schools now have the right to tell students what they can and cannot do, wherever they are?

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