Tag Archives: free speech

Wrong Answer

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The nation’s largest mass transit system is preparing to ban all political advertising on its subways and buses after a judge ruled that a pro-Israel group was allowed to display an advertisement containing the phrase “Hamas Killing Jews” on New York City buses.

New York City’s MTA is afraid that some such advertising would incite violence. Its answer, then, is to do its part to stifle free speech completely.

No. The right answer is to work toward the goal that violence isn’t the answer to unpleasant, or even incendiary, speech. Stifling speech just does even more violence. Words don’t force people into violence; they do that, as they do anything, of their own volition.

Loud disagreement, zealously put, is the noisiness of democracy. It’s the inherent noisiness of free speech. It’s the noisiness of a free people. What’s to be afraid of in that?

The Arrogance of Democrat Power

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CIA Director John Brennan had this to say at the Harvard Institute of Politics regarding the nuclear weapons deal “negotiated” with Iran:

I must tell you the individuals who say this deal provides a pathway for Iran to a bomb are being wholly disingenuous, in my view, if they know the facts, understand what’s required for a program[.]

How dare you criticize your Betters!?

Sit down, and shut up.

As The Wall Street Journal put it,

Mr Brennan’s naked public partisanship harms the CIA by making whatever it now says about Iran simply unbelievable.

But remember this in 2016.

A Problem with Censorship

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[Ukraine’s] Parliament voted Thursday to ban Soviet as well as Nazi symbols here….

Lawmakers voted 254-0 in favor of the bill, which outlawed any “public rejection of the criminal nature” of the Soviet or Nazi regimes in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that was overrun by the Germans in World War II.

Their heart is in the right place.

Yuriy Lutsenko, a senior Member of Parliament with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, added this about the legislation:

Symbols including five-pointed stars and hammers and sickles will disappear from the streets of Ukrainian cities[.]

But the USSR’s flag isn’t the only thing that uses the symbology of a five-pointed star. So do the United States flag and the European Union flag—the latter which Ukraine would like to join.

This illustrates a problem with government censorship. Leaving aside the fundamental inappropriateness of censorship by governments, it’s tough for government to censor narrowly enough to block the target without also blocking the friends.

“Missing” IRS Emails

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Investigators said Thursday they have recovered 32,000 emails in backup tapes related to the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative organizations.

But they don’t know how many of them are new, and told a congressional oversight committee that IRS employees had not asked computer technicians for the tapes, as directed by a subpoena from House oversight and other investigating committees.

That admission was in direct contradiction to earlier testimony of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

Of particular interest, other than Koskinen’s apparent lie, is that

The emails were to and from Lois Lerner, who used to head the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.

IRS Deputy Inspector General Timothy Camus said, according to Fox News‘ paraphrase at the above link, that

investigators recovered thousands of emails from old computer tapes used to back up the agency’s email system, though he said he believed some tapes had been erased.

It’s early in this batch’s status, though; Camus also said

We recovered quite a number of emails, but until we compare those to what’s already been produced we don’t know if they’re new emails[.]

But it’s not a scandal in any event. This is simply the sort of behavior guys like David Axelrod and Barack Obama think is entirely appropriate.