Tag Archives: free speech

Fundamentally Transforming America

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I’ve written elsewhere of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s goal, and of the destructive nature of that goal.

Here is the rank and file of the Progressive-Democratic Party, demonstrating how deep-seated is that desire to destroy our Republic:

  • nearly half of Democrats (47%) support censorship, and think speech should be legal “only under certain ­circumstances”
  • one-third of Democrats (34%) think Americans have “too much freedom”
  • 75% think government has a responsibility to censor “hateful” social media posts
  • a majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the government censoring social media posts “under the rubric of protecting national security”
This is a preview of Fundamentally Transforming America. Read the full post (190 words, estimated 46 secs reading time)

ByteDance and TikTok

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Recall that TikTok, a social medium heavily favored by our children, is wholly owned by ByteDance. Recall further, that ByteDance is domiciled inside the Peoples Republic of China. Finally, recall that the PRC’s 2017 national security law requires every PRC-domiciled company to collect and deliver to that nation’s intelligence community any information that community requests. A bonus memory: TikTok’s executive team has been at pains to insist that, in the United States, they operate independently of all of that.

Against that backdrop, there’s this:

This is a preview of ByteDance and TikTok. Read the full post (553 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

A Bogus Beef

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Some academics object to Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott moving to ban TikTok from Texas government devices and from personal devices used to conduct Texas official business. Texas’ legislature passed the bill creating the ban, and Abbott signed it into law last December. Now a New York State-headquartered organization, ironically named The Knight First Amendment Institute, which is a facility of New York City’s Columbia University, is suing Abbott among other governors, over the ban, claiming free speech violations.

The lawsuit said the state’s decision…is comprising teaching and research. And more specifically, it said it was “seriously impeding” faculty pursuing research into the app—including research that could illuminate or counter concerns about TikTok.

This is a preview of A Bogus Beef. Read the full post (382 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Misguided

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A Federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction (meaning the matter must still go through the courts before anything becomes final) barring the Federal government from communicating with social-media companies with a view to influencing what those companies post or allow to be posted on their sites.

Some on the Left are objecting.

Some legal scholars have been skeptical that…courts could intervene without chilling legitimate government speech about controversial matters of public interest.

This is a preview of Misguided. Read the full post (420 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Free Speech Progressive-Democrat Style

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Progressive-Democratic Party members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its subcommittees—Congressmen Frank Pallone (D, NJ), Jan Schakowsky (D, IL), Doris Matsui (D, CA), and Kathy Castor (D, FL)—are unhappy with the new free speech position of Sundar Pichai’s Google-owned YouTube. They categorically reject YouTube‘s statement that

open debate on political ideas, “even those that are controversial or based on disproven assumptions, is core to a functioning democratic society—especially in the midst of election season.”

They’re perfectly fine, though, with Pichai’s YouTube censoring the speech of President Joe Biden’s (D) presidential primary campaign opponent, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, and leaving Biden an unanswered and unanswerable field for his own speech.

This is a preview of Free Speech Progressive-Democrat Style. Read the full post (248 words, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)

Joe Biden and the Press

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Simon Ateba is a Cameroonian journalist representing Today News Africa in the White House Press Corps. During the daily mid-day-ish press briefings, President Joe Biden’s (D) Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre routinely clashes with him, essentially telling him to shut up and sit down when she’s not ignoring him altogether.

Then came last Monday’s live stream of the day’s presser—and a lively exchange between Ateba and Jeanne-Pierre was excised from the stream. Completely stripped out. Censored.

This is a preview of Joe Biden and the Press. Read the full post (254 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

More Political Censorship

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Alphabet‘s CEO Sundar Pichai strikes again. Alphabet wholly owns Google (of which Pichai also is CEO), and Google wholly owns YouTube.

Pichai has just engaged—again—in political censorship:

Social media giant YouTube took down an interview of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, claiming that chemicals in the water are turning kids transgender.

What makes this especially insidious is that Kennedy is a political candidate for the Progressive-Democratic Party’s nomination for President. Pichai is actively putting his thumb on the scale in an American election by censoring one of the candidates. His excuse for this, through his carefully anonymous Google spokesperson, is this:

This is a preview of More Political Censorship. Read the full post (300 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

Biden Censorship

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Now President Joe Biden (D) is moving to add his censorship requirements to artificial intelligence programming, to go along with his censorship actions vis-à-vis social media.

The Biden administration is pursuing regulations for artificial intelligence systems that would require government audits to ensure they produce trustworthy outputs, which could include assessments of whether AI is promoting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Here is the leader of the Progressive-Democratic Party once again asserting that Government definitions of misinformation and disinformation, and by extension true information, are the only valid definitions, and Government will inflict those definitions on us ordinary Americans.

This is a preview of Biden Censorship. Read the full post (247 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Rogue Judge

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A couple of teachers had the impudence to demur from compulsory “antiracism training” imposed by their Springfield Public Schools district managers.

In response, US District Judge Douglas Harpool, of the Western District of Missouri, not only ruled against the teachers, he ordered them to pay $313,000 in legal costs for bothering the district, and he did this cavalierly disregarding their arguments and issuing his ruling via summary judgment—which means the court—Harpool—never really took the case up, or took it seriously. He wrote in pertinent part, as summarized by Just the News:

This is a preview of Rogue Judge. Read the full post (357 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Data Protections

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A couple of Letter writers in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section had concerns about a potential ban of People’s Republic of China-domiciled ByteDance’s TikTok.

I disagree with their concerns.

A TikTok ban isn’t the solution. It won’t protect our data privacy, it won’t protect children from the dangers of the internet, and it is a blatant violation of First Amendment rights.

No one is masquerading banning TikTok as the solution; that’s a strawman argument. Much more needs to be done to protect our data privacy and our children—and our intellectual and technology property—but banning TikTok is a useful step. Nor is banning it a violation of anyone’s 1st Amendment rights. No one’s speech would be barred, only a tool of the PRC would be barred.

This is a preview of Data Protections. Read the full post (246 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)