Category Archives: rights

Banning on a Maybe

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Dr Drew Montez Clark, a black Republican Conservative running to flip Florida’s Congressional District 20 from Progressive-Democrat to Republican, saw his Twitter account banned the night before the originally scheduled Republican Primary election for the district was scheduled to occur.

Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, let it happen, probably not directly, but through the corporate culture he inherited from Jack Dorsey, and which he has actively cultivated since becoming CEO.

Clark’s account was restored “hours later,” but the move had already been made, and the night had already passed into that election day.

Agrawal’s excuse—Twitter’s statement—for the cancelation is instructive.

Twitter uses proactive, automated systems to detect content that might violate our rules, part of our work to improve the health of conversations on the service. In the case referenced, our automated system detected a false positive. The account has since been reinstated.

Might violate. Sometime in the future. Our rules. But we’re not saying which one or ones.

Mind you, Clark’s Twitter commentary hadn’t actually violated any of Twitter’s rules; Agrawal’s excuse statement makes that clear. But it might, later, violate some as yet carefully unnamed rule(s), so Agrawal let it be taken down preemptively by one of his bots. Or by one of his humans, and he’s hiding behind that bot. Thinking we’re too stupid to understand that his bots are programmed by his human employees.

Fortunately, in this specific case, Agrawal’s Twitter…misbehavior…had no effect, as Clark was running unopposed, and his primary wound up being canceled.

But wait until the November election, when Clark is actively facing the Progressive-Democratic Party incumbent. Agrawal already is on record as saying his Twitter will interfere with Twitter accounts of those of whom he disapproves.

Turley is Right

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He’s also wrong. Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at George Washington University, in his op-ed regarding AG Merrick Garland’s dishonest (my term) leaks about the DoJ/FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago wrote, in part,

Someone is clearly lying. The Trump Team said that it was cooperating and would have given access to the government if it raised further objections. The Justice Department has clearly indicated that time was of the essence to justify this unprecedented raid on the home of a former president. Yet, Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly waited for weeks to sign off on the application for a warrant and the FBI then waited a weekend to execute that warrant. It is difficult to understand why such communications could not be released in a redacted affidavit while protecting more sensitive sections.

Someone clearly is lying. One of the someones is empirically demonstrated to be Merrick Garland. Time plainly was not of the essence with those blatant, carefully considered delays in getting the warrant and then in actually executing it.

Whether Trump is also lying—both could be; press pontifications notwithstanding, this is not an either/or situation—could be just as empirically demonstrated: release the affidavit, wholly unredacted. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart surely has a copy in the court records that he could release should Garland continue to be intractable. That Trump is calling for the affidavit’s unredacted release is indicative of whether he’s lying. That Garland is resisting the affidavit’s release, even in redacted form, also is indicative of whether Trump is lying.

But Turley also is wrong.  [R]elease[]…a redacted affidavit while protecting more sensitive sections.

There are no “more sensitive” sections in the affidavit. There are no serious investigations that could be compromised by release of the unredacted affidavit. None in progress by an FBI that routinely lied to the FISA courts to get secret warrants. None by an FBI that falsifies evidence in pursuit of warrants. None by an FBI that colluded in the manufacture of a Russia collusion hoax by trading on a fake dossier. None by an FBI that attempted entrapment by faking a kidnap-the-Governor case.

It’s Not Just the Moms

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First, the President Joe Biden/Attorney General Merrick Garland (each Progressive-Democrats) Department of Justice designated angry and enthusiastic mothers at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and Garland had his FBI begin investigating them as such.

Now the Biden administration are hinting around that average Americans who are angry over the FBI raid in former President Donald Trump’s (R) Mar-a-Lago home and the exploding security failure at our southern border might be terrorists, also.

Americans angry about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and insecurity at the southern border pose an increased risk of domestic terrorism, the Biden administration warned in a series of bulletins sent to federal and local law enforcement over the weekend.

And

“Last night, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin, accessible via the Homeland Security Information Network, providing information on the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks on federal, state, and local law enforcement and government personnel or facilities,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus wrote in a memo to 60,000 employees.

This is a general warning about all of us Americans, not just the tiny few who are prone to violence. A tinier few than the antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al., arsonists, rioters, terrorists toward whom Garland and his FBI have chosen to turn a blind eye.

Magnus, again:

Since the search, the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.

Yet, the FBI has chosen, repeatedly, to not “observe” the violent threats posted on social media by individuals who engaged in mass shootings or those posted by antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al.

We’re all terrorists, those 10s of millions of us average Americans who won’t kowtow, according to this Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled government.

Duplicity

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The American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center are at it, this time.

‘Way back in 2019 the Tennessee legislature created Education Savings Account pilot programs for Davidson and Shelby Counties. The ESAs grant money to students accepted into the programs; the funds facilitate students’ departure from poorly performing schools in favor of better schools.

The two county governments promptly sued to block the ESAs from taking effect, and the Tennessee Supreme Court ultimately ruled, last May, that the ESAs were jake, and in June that court denied the counties’ petition to reconsider.

Now the ACLU and SPLC are suing on the legally frivolous (IMNSHO) premise that that delay, manufactured by the county governments, is sufficient reason to further delay implementation of the ESA pilot program.

That’s how desperate the Left is to keep poor and minority kids—especially in Shelby County, although Davidson has a significant poor and minority population—trapped in bad schools instead of letting them transfer and actually get an education.

Nor am I sympathetic to the county school districts’ imagined plight. Those school districts really did have all that time since 2019 to prepare their budgets: they had no reason to ignore the possibility that the ESAs would be upheld and to prepare accordingly. It’s also not at all beyond the districts’ capabilities to have prepared two budgets, with one being centered on no ESA impact and one centered on an ESA impact.

Bias and Gun Trafficking

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Dan Frosch and Zusha Elinson had a piece on illegal gun trafficking in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal in which they decried the degree of illegal trafficking, especially across State borders. In the graph below, they particularly called out five States as being particularly egregious sources of this interstate trafficking.

Sadly, their article exposes more about the press’ bias in reporting on guns and (by their implication from their trafficking emphasis) on gun control.

No doubt gun-trafficking is a serious problem.

However, some context is informative, also; it took me about 10 grueling seconds to conduct the Bing search that turned up this context from the year following Frosch and Elinson’s graph.

  • 5,000 guns trafficked out of Texas against 1.6 million guns sold in Texas in 2021.
  • 6,000 guns trafficked out of Georgia against 496 thousand guns sold in Georgia in 2021.
  • 4,800 guns trafficked out of Arizona against 480 thousand guns sold in Arizona in 2021.
  • 4,700 guns trafficked out of Virginia against 620 thousand guns sold in Virginia in 2021.
  • 4,300 guns trafficked out of Florida against 1.4 million guns sold in Florida in 2021.

It’s interesting that Frosch and Elinson chose to elide this context-providing information.