Tag Archives: free speech

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Free Speech

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Not directly, because this Oregon law predates Kennedy’s Obergefell ruling, but this is the inevitable outcome of his ruling on free speech.

Aaron and Melissa Klein, bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, lost in an Oregon court and have been ordered to pay $135,000 in “emotional damages” to the couple for whom they refused the baking. Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who found for the victimhood couple, ordered the fine, but nothing further.

However, Brad Avakian, Oregon’s Labor Commissioner and Политический Руководитель, and for whom this Administrative Judge works, overruled the omission. On hearing that the Kleins had assured Oregonians in an interview with the Family Research Council that they intended to pursue the matter, he ordered them to speak no further. He gagged them.

So much for freedom of speech in Oregon. So much for freedom of religion in Oregon. Look for this sort of thing to accelerate in the wake of Kennedy’s ruling.

Couple Thoughts about Academic Censorship

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The American Association of University Professors has decided to censure the University of Illinois because the school decided to withdraw it offer of employment to a “professor” who went off on an anti-Israel tirade on Twitter.

First thought: U of I Chancellor Phyllis Wise is taking the AAUP’s censorship seriously. Why? The man objected, loudly and vociferously, to Israel’s defending itself against the Palestinian Authority’s terror war that it launched from Gaza.

Second thought: the censure was done by voice vote. It was carefully anonymous. How can any action by a body like this be taken seriously by a body like a university when the voters are so timid or so ashamed of their votes that they avoid being on the record with their vote?

Third thought: Anita Levy, Associate Secretary for the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, & Governance said that U of I’s decision

violated Professor [Steven] Salaita’s [the professor in question] academic freedom and cast a pall of uncertainty over the degree to which academic freedom is understood and respected[.]

This is facially untrue. Salaita’s rants cast a pall over his own ability to respect the academic freedom of his peers and more importantly, of his students, and to teach and to grade in an objective manner. By withdrawing their offer of employment, the U of I was acting to preserve true academic freedom, not the freedom to behave in the manner selected academics deem appropriate.

Russia’s New Gulag

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…is on the verge of becoming the whole nation.

Russia’s media watchdog [Roskomnadzor, a government agency] has written to Google, Twitter and Facebook warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said on Thursday they risk being blocked if they do not comply with the rules.

Carefully crafted rules: the three companies encrypt their transmissions, which means the Russian government can’t tell who’s saying all those nasty things about Putin and his fellows in that government.

To comply with the law, the three firms must hand over data on Russian bloggers with more than 3,000 readers per day, and take down websites that Roskomnadzor sees as containing calls for “unsanctioned protests and unrest[.]”

This is “free” speech and rule by law in action, Russian style.

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.