Harms in Public Spaces

The Brits are working out a new way to intervene in private lives and in private businesses, this time in an attempt to control “harms” done via (not by, mind you) “online platforms”—social media.

Under the [British] government’s proposal, a new regulator would have the power to require companies to protect users from a number of identified online harms—such as pornography, extremist content, and cyber bullying.

And

[T]he pair talked through the different terms that had been used to describe social media in a legal context, looking for the right analogy. They tried “platform,” “pipe” and “intermediary.” Nothing seemed to fit. Then “we thought of a ‘public space,'” says Ms Woods. “People do different things online. It was just like ‘how do we regulate spaces?'”

“Identified” online harms? We can’t even define the harms—such as pornography, extremist content, and cyber bullying.  Even Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart ultimately walked back his foolish I know it when I see it nonsense, recognizing that such a nebulous “definition” had no place in law.

We have not—we cannot—define any of these harms, much less what constitutes a “public space;” there is no basis for Government regulating these things.

Nor have we succeeded in recognizing who actually is responsible for these harms, whether public or private.  See the disconnect, at a high level, between the Left’s Big Government is responsible on the one hand and the Right’s focus on individual responsibility on the other.

The British government may want to create a whole new, intrusive bureaucratic agency for controlling one more aspect of British citizens’ lives. When we wrote our Constitution and ratified it those two and a quarter centuries ago, we explicitly walked away from the British system of governance for a number of reasons; central among them being the illegitimacy of Government intrusions into private lives.

This is one more example.

Is Buttigieg For Sale?

In Thursday’s Progressive-Democratic Party debate, in the context of ridiculing competing Party Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg’s fund raiser with rich folks in a “wine cave,”  Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) said,

Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.

Sure sounds like she’s accusing Buttigieg of raffling himself off to the highest bidder. Wine sellers, though, seem to be jake with Warren, including, if not $900 bottles of wine, at least $1,000/donation bottles of wine.

Her accusation, too, stands in sharp contrast with her decision not to call out two billionaires who are trying to buy their own way, first, into the nomination and then into the White House: Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.

Data Transfer and Privacy

The European Union’s Court of Justice had recommended to it by an adviser to the court in a particular case involving Facebook that

Companies, including US tech giants, should be blocked from transferring European users’ data in some cases if they can’t guarantee it will be handled in compliance with European Union privacy laws….

That would seem to include a large number of international companies besides ours. Yet several EU member nations are moving apace to bring Huawei into their communications networks….

Hmm….

Foolishness

Russia and Ukraine have agreed a new natural gas transit arrangement to facilitate Russian natural gas through Ukraine to Europe.  The EU was in on the negotiations, and it’s pleased.  Maros Sefcovic, who was Vice-President of the European Commission for the Energy Union until last January and who then transitioned to Vice-President of the European Commission for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, led the EU’s part of the negotiations.  He now says,

Russia remains a reliable supplier to European markets and Ukraine maintains its role as a strategic transit country.

Never mind that this reliable supplier has already used Ukrainian transit pipelines to blackmail both Ukraine (over unpaid bills) and the EU (over Russia’s demand that the EU do what Russia wants).  The same Russian government personnel who led those blackmails remain in place in the Russian government.

Judgment and Impeachment

Congressman Jerry Nadler (D, NY) had some interesting things to say 21 years ago regarding an impeachment proceeding [emphasis added].

The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters as expressed in a national election. We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our very system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat. And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people and of their representatives in Congress of the absolute necessity.
There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other.

We have no right to overturn the considered judgment of the American people.

One difference between then and now, though, is that today Nadler and his fellow Progressive-Democrats don’t think that us ordinary Americans have any considered judgment—after all, we disagree with him and his.  We must be ill-informed, or stupid. We have, since 1998, sunk to bitter religion- and gun-clinging and to the sorry state of irredeemability and deplorability.

And, because so many millions of us support the wrong politician’s policies, we’re racist to our core.

As such, we’re simply to be ignored by our Betters.