France Hates Free Speech But Loves "Migrants"

Front National Politicians Face Hate Speech Trial for Discussing Alleged Migrant Attack at Hospital

Truth and Free Speech are not part of the judgement criteria for speaking out in France in a manner not approved by the government.

The three politicians were charged with “provocation to racial hatred” this week after the case was brought to court by the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (Licra), Franceinfo reports.

The article, which was signed by the three politicians, came in response to an alleged assault of hospital staff at the Hospital Centre University de Limoges, which some claimed had been carried out by a migrant.

In their article, the three politicians described the perpetrator of the alleged assault saying they were “one of our new inhabitants, invited by our governments, housed, fed, helped, cared for, all for free, with a little bit of pocket money”.

The public prosecutor justified the case calling aspects of the article “xenophobic and racist literature” and the lawyer for LICRA added: “These are not bearable statements by elected officials of the Republic.”

Also,

Hate speech cases have been directed against Front National, or allies of the party, in the recent past. Mayor of Beziers Robert Ménard who was fined 2,000 euros for noting demographic changes in local schools by saying: “In a class in the city centre of my town, 91 per cent of the children are Muslims. Obviously, this is a problem. There are limits to tolerance.”

And,

Conservative MP Nicholas Dupont-Aignan, a former presidential candidate who supported FN leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential elections, was also been convicted of hate speech earlier this month.

Dupont-Aignan was sentenced to a 5,000 euro suspended fine for using the phrase “migrant invasion” after the case was brought before a court by Licra.

Marine Le Pen faces an even larger penalty of up to 75,000 euros and potential prison time for a post she made on social media in 2015 when she, along with FN MP Gilbert Collard, posted images of Islamic State brutality in the Middle East which she said she highlighted in order to condemn.

Ulrich Baer Justifies Stifling Absolutely Free Speech

From the NYT "The Stone", back in April:

What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech
Ulrich Baer

What is under severe attack, in the name of an absolute notion of free speech, are the rights, both legal and cultural, of minorities to participate in public discourse. The snowflakes sensed, a good year before the election of President Trump, that insults and direct threats could once again become sanctioned by the most powerful office in the land. They grasped that racial and sexual equality is not so deep in the DNA of the American public that even some of its legal safeguards could not be undone.
The issues to which the students are so sensitive might be benign when they occur within the ivory tower. Coming from the campaign trail and now the White House, the threats are not meant to merely offend. Like President Trump’s attacks on the liberal media as the “enemies of the American people,” his insults are meant to discredit and delegitimize whole groups as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.

As a college professor and university administrator with over two decades of direct experience of campus politics, I am not overly worried that even the shrillest heckler’s vetoes will end free speech in America. As a scholar of literature, history and politics, I am especially attuned to the next generation’s demands to revise existing definitions of free speech to accommodate previously delegitimized experiences. Freedom of expression is not an unchanging absolute. When its proponents forget that it requires the vigilant and continuing examination of its parameters, and instead invoke a pure model of free speech that has never existed, the dangers to our democracy are clear and present.
We should thank the student protestors, the activists in Black Lives Matter and other “overly sensitive” souls for keeping watch over the soul of our republic.

Free Speech might well include speech that attacks the characteristics of minorities which are self-disabling and counterproductive to their own best interests. That is the type of speech which Baer wants to kill. Minorities are necessary to the egos of the Messianic savior class of the Left. It the minorities found that they could excel without the oppressive "help" of the Progressives, the Left would have no case against the Oppressor Class. That would be terminal to the Leftist elitist Messianic Class.

What Baer leaves out, is the elephant in the room: who gets to decide? Baer obviously believes that the students and their Leftist agitators get to decide, since that is what has happened, and who he thanks for their "vigilance". So, Leftist mob rule is the arbiter of who is morally qualified to speak to people.

Let’s think about the results of Leftist mob moral adjudication of Free Speech.

First, the student mobs and antifa are the functional and moral equivalent of the Robespierrean “Reign of Terror” in the French Revolution, where justice is an opinion, not a principle.

Second, they are violent and blood thirsty in the manner of the Democrat Ku Kux Klan and the Leftist "Society for Public Safety" under Robespierre and the Jacobins.

Third, their putative “morals” are purely class-oriented in the fashion of Marxism. Their tactics are those of Leftist Satan worshipper, Saul Alinsky, who declared all tactics to be equally moral in pursuit of a “moral” objective. Thus terror, mayhem, murder – all in the pursuit of some objective declared “moral” – are all moral tactics, having been sanctified by the morality of their objective.

Fourth, their wards for protection - minorities supposedly without a voice - are viciously at war with each other. Muslims kill Gays, oppress and abuse women, allow pedophilia (in the image of their pedophilic Prophet), refuse to participate as part of the Left’s multi-culti assimilation, except to stab, shoot, run over and throw acid on, their benefactors. Feminists (anathema to Muslims) oppress both black feminists and transwomen feminists. Blacks are their own worst enemies, killing their own class as well as other classes far beyond their demographic ratio. This all is the result of the Leftist insistence upon valuing people according to their class rather than the content of their character.

Fifth, all internal cross-Victimhood-Class aggressions and name-calling are excused. The minorities have the right to speak, and they cannot be racist, cannot be sexist, cannot be misogynist, cannot be homophobic, no matter what vile epithets, denigrations, identity marginalization and silencing of sister minorities erupts during their internecine wars.

Sixth, in Left world there is no internal contradiction which is not and cannot be embraced at a moment’s notice. Hate Comey/Love Comey; Love Russia/Hate Russia; Love Gays/Feed them to the Muslims; women's rights only for feminists. It’s all part of the “rational” and “moral” basis upon which Progressivism is built.

Seventh, under "absolute" freedom of speech, the minorities have the identical rights to speech as anyone else. So Baer's point is not to elevate the Rights of the minorities. The point is to eradicate the Rights of those who Baer and ilk wish to silence. The Left cannot stand up to any attack from the point of view of freedom, which is classless and universal. They cannot succeed in a free society, they must stamp out voices which endanger their "Progress".

So it is with Baer. It is not moral, according to Baer, to allow “absolute” free speech (which might well demonstrate the immorality of the totalitarian lock down on thought and speech), but it is moral to decide who can speak, vs. who cannot speak. And Baer chooses himself to be The One Who Decides. When he silences a class of people (morally, under his own morality of course) it is done for class justice… according to himself. So he is the “Justice Adjudicator”, "The One Who Decides".

So it becomes absolute, anyway: It is absolutely determined by The One Who Decides.

Given that, then what is the punishment for speaking if one hasn’t the permission of The One Who Decides? Well it is obvious: that would be decided by The One Who Decides.

And it is also obvious that this system is now very popular with Fat Boy Kim “The One Who Decides” Jong Un in North Korea. His punishment includes a few rounds to the torso from an anti-aircraft battery.

Eliminationism also was popular with Robespierre, who was The One Who Decided(1) who kept their heads attached and who did not. Perhaps Baer sees himself as the new Robespierre; he can’t be the new Kim, since Kim still has that title wrapped up. Baer should beware, though, because Robespierre was guillotined within a year by the rebels generated in the chaos he had unleashed himself. Intolerance seems to breed intolerance. Relativity in freedoms turns fatal and Robespierre is poster boy for that.

Note 1: Robespierre and his committee:
Encyclopedia Britannica: Committee of Public Safety, French Comité De Salut Public, political body of the French Revolution that gained virtual dictatorial control over France during the Reign of Terror

Finally.

Free Inquiry on Campus: A Statement of Principles by over One Hundred Middlebury College Professors

On March 2, 2017, roughly 100 of our 2500 students prevented a controversial visiting speaker, Dr. Charles Murray, from communicating with his audience on the campus of Middlebury College. Afterwards, a group of unidentified assailants mobbed the speaker, and one of our faculty members was seriously injured. In view of these unacceptable acts, we have produced and affixed our signatures to this document stating core principles that seem to us unassailable in the context of higher education within a free society.

Our statement of principles first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 7, 2017.

The principles are as follows:

Genuine higher learning is possible only where free, reasoned, and civil speech and discussion are respected.

Only through the contest of clashing viewpoints do we have any hope of replacing mere opinion with knowledge.

The incivility and coarseness that characterize so much of American politics and culture cannot justify a response of incivility and coarseness on the college campus.

The impossibility of attaining a perfectly egalitarian sphere of free discourse can never justify efforts to silence speech and debate.

Exposure to controversial points of view does not constitute violence.

Students have the right to challenge and to protest non-disruptively the views of their professors and guest speakers.

A protest that prevents campus speakers from communicating with their audience is a coercive act.

No group of professors or students has the right to act as final arbiter of the opinions that students may entertain.

No group of professors or students has the right to determine for the entire community that a question is closed for discussion.

The purpose of college is not to make faculty or students comfortable in their opinions and prejudices.

The purpose of education is not the promotion of any particular political or social agenda.

The primary purpose of higher education is the cultivation of the mind, thus allowing for intelligence to do the hard work of assimilating and sorting information and drawing rational conclusions.

A good education produces modesty with respect to our own intellectual powers and opinions as well as openness to considering contrary views.

All our students possess the strength, in head and in heart, to consider and evaluate challenging opinions from every quarter.

We are steadfast in our purpose to provide all current and future students an education on this model, and we encourage our colleagues at colleges across the country to do the same.

Signed,

For the signatures, see the SITE. The only possible statement better than this would contain language regarding punishment for the abridgment of the First Amendment Rights of abused speakers.

Your Brain on Leftism

From Instapundit:

LEFTISM MAKES YOU STUPID: Student union bans Conservative society from speaking out – because they challenged its position on free speech.

A student union has banned a university Conservative society from using its social media accounts – because they challenged its position on free speech.

Lincoln University’s Conservative Society has been censored by its student union after it posted an image online showing that the university had been ranked “very intolerant” on free speech in a recent survey.

In response, the Students’ Union swiftly suspended the society’s social media accounts, on the grounds that highlighting the university’s ranking had brought it into disrepute.

However, the decision has been met with widespread derision from social media users and Lincoln MP Karl McCartney, who said that union officials should be “ashamed”.

“This intolerant, illiberal and totalitarian response is akin to something out of the Soviet Union or North Korea rather than a place for learning and debate,” he said.

Like I said, leftism makes you stupid. Or maybe stupid people become leftists. Chicken, egg.

In the all new Post Truth culture, there is no truth so nothing can be either true or false. It's all just mush. And mushy thinkers can't be wrong, right?

Freedom to Burn, Break, and Batter

VOX Predictions From Too Damned Late

VOX:
"Opposition to “offensive” speech on campuses will ultimately burn dissidents"

The head-spinning realization that the impregnable Left is actually the dissendents now comes far too late to rectify the damage to free speech on campus and in many other forums that they accomplished when they thought that they, the superior Left, were untouchable in their march through the institutions. Now that the defenders of free speech have been re-validated and encouraged, the tools of suppression can be wielded against the Left, until the Left caves in to the necessity of free speech... for everyone, not just themselves.

Or will they come to that conclusion? Given their history of obstinate obdurance, it will take a lot of forcing their own medicine onto them, and perhaps that won't even work. The nature of narcissistic moral and intellectual supremacy is to never give in. Never.

They will be severely tested in the next few years.

Nat Hentoff and the US Constitution

At the bottom of the Drudge Page is a long list of pundits, authors and commentators. I rarely use that list but today I scanned down the list to see if there might be anyone whose opinion I actually care to read. I passed many of the old names who I have lost respect for. Then I came to Nat Hentoff.

Nat Hentoff's reverence for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights has been the career-long flavoring of his writings. Freedom of speech seems, from my scant readings and knowledge, to be a major focus of Hentoff. If I remember correctly, he defended the Left's freedom of dissent clear back in the 70s, and perhaps earlier.

Now Hentoff still defends free speech as the Left tries to choke off all dissent through the tactic of shaming and Political Correctness as policy.

Americans are uneducated in the constitution. I think this is purposeful, and evil. Hentoff points to a survey:

"The results of the 2015 “State of the First Amendment” survey, produced annually by the Newseum Institute, reflect that too many Americans know too little about the Constitution and its relevance to their everyday lives. The survey asked 1,002 adult Americans the following question: “As you may know, the First Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution. Can you name any of the specific rights that are guaranteed by the First Amendment?”

The First Amendment to the Constitution – “The First Freedom,” as the title to my 1988 book describes it – is part of the basic civics and history curriculum we expect every student to be taught in every school in the United States. It says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Yet the Newseum Institute’s survey – which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points – found that only 10 percent of respondents knew the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of the press. Only l9 percent knew that it guarantees freedom of religion, while only 2 percent were able to say it guarantees the right to petition. And 33 percent of the respondents – representing a third of the American public – were unable to name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Think of that: one out of three Americans don't know what the First Amendment means to American rights.

I have copies of the Declaration of Independence/Constitution/Bill of Rights on my desk, within my reach. I know that is likely radical and atypical. Especially when "typical" equates to ignorance. Hentoff goes on to recommend a book:

"The arrival in August of an updated, expanded edition of Linda Monk’s book, “The Words We Live By” (Hachette Books), reminded me of my initial rush of enthusiasm when I first wrote about it in the Washington Post column I had at the time.

Monk subtitled her book “Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution,” but it is actually a swinging adventure story of how Americans came to define themselves as a nation through the struggle to keep the Constitution functioning as the guarantor of our most fundamental liberties.

Without exaggeration, I am convinced that this book should be taught in every classroom and be on every citizen’s reading list as an essential reference manual for evaluating candidates in the upcoming 2016 elections."

And this:

"“The Words We Live By” makes even the most complex Supreme Court cases understandable to the average reader by integrating expert legal analysis with compelling storytelling and popular culture references. Monk has updated the revised edition with almost 100 new cases that tackle topical issues such as the legal battles over Obamacare, same sex-marriage, campaign finance reform, gun rights, NSA surveillance, abortion and affirmative action. The legal cases are made relevant to the reader through stories about people at the forefront of these issues, among them NSA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, George Takei (Mr. Sulu of “Star Trek”) and the families of the Newtown shooting victims.

The revised edition of “The Words We Live By” comes not a moment too soon.

My copy will be here Thursday.

"The Crooked Media’s Selective Orgasms of Privileged Outrage"

Glenn Reynolds:

2016 Tabloid Simplicity: Public and Private Positions vs Private Parts
Self-proclaimed media of record try their best to ignore wrongdoing by powerful liberals

"Despite the apology, The Donald faces a relentless media tsunami of unproven allegations—allegations of pinching and groping and unwanted squeezes and lecherous looks.

Media tsunamis are a type of public accountability. However, we live an in era where the self-proclaimed media of record try their best to ignore wrongdoing by powerful liberals or, that tactic failing, attempt to justify them. As a result, liberals enjoy a comparatively unrestrained presumption of Media Privilege. American media tsunamis are thus a highly selective form of public accountability. They overwhelmingly slam Republicans and they slam with calculated political malice and mud.

Hillary’s public face, the one she presents American voters, is a lie.

A media outrage tsunami struck poor Mitt Romney—because the Romney family dog rode in a carrier on the roof of the family car. Why, Clintonite Lanny Davis declared this canine travesty proved Romney unfit to serve as president.

Unfit, Lanny? Romney was the man who called Vladimir Putin’s Russia America’s “number one geo-political foe” and Barack Obama mocked him for it. As the linked article notes, in 2012 Obama told Russia’s then-president Dmitry Medvedev to tell ole Vlad that after the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign he (Obama) would have more flexibility in addressing the Kremlin’s concerns. Who was right about the Kremlin, Lanny? Mitt or Barack?

Whether or not they support Trump, many conservatives are fed up with the crooked media’s selective orgasms of privileged outrage. As a result, a media tsunami’s power to inflict permanent damage has waned."

The media began morphing into Marxist scum the minute that television went national via the networks. If I recall correctly, NBC tumbled last but when it went over, it went hard. The power of the unelected elites in the daily home invasions was too obvious and too effective to leave to the cultural norms of actual morality. That power was one of the first to be usurped in the Left's long march through the institutions.

But unlike the political structure, the media is being starved due to an unintended consequence of technology. The internet, a free zone so far, has provided alternate sources of media. Which is why the Left wants to "regulate" that free zone, and why Obama gave the control of that free zone away. When the internet is lost to the patrols of thought police, well, who knows where we will wind up.

Quote of the Decade

"Well, just like Big Brother in 1984, people don’t suppress opponents’ ideas because they are confident in their own. They suppress opponents’ ideas because they have more confidence in the argument of force than in the force of their arguments.

And that leads to a general rule: The people who are trying to silence their political enemies aren’t doing it because they’re right. They’re doing it because they’re afraid that otherwise, people will realize they’re running a scam. Bear that in mind, this election season, and beyond."
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, aka Instapundit

Jews, and Black Female AntiSemite: Guess Which One Is Not A Protected Class?

'Free speech should flourish': Jewish head of Oberlin college defends his decision not to sack female professor who claimed Jews were behind 9/11 attacks

Joy Karega is a professor of 'rhetoric and composition' at Oberlin College

She allegedly said Jews are responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre

The president of Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov is defending Karega's free speech despite being Jewish and offended by her comments

Karega called ISIS a 'CIA and Mossad' operation, referring to Israel's national intelligence agency

However, the college said Karega has a right to express 'personal views'

Suddenly free speech emerges from the intellectual darkness, into the even intellectually darker darkness.

Thought Police: Twitter Suspends Stacy McCain

Stacy McCain has been diligently recording the actions of Feminists. That is likely the reason: the Left doesn't like the light of day shone upon them - witness Melissa Click's attack on a student journalist. Free speech exists only for the "correct" viewpoint. All other viewpoints are Hate Speech and must be silenced.

Twitter is rapidly becoming a Left-only propaganda app. Like most things Leftist, it will eat itself into oblivion as users go elsewhere.
[Image stolen from Vox Day; dunno where he got it]

Our War

A Kickstarter Project:

Silenced. Our War On Free Speech
A chance to be a part of the war on us.

The Profession of Squelching Speech

Entitled Professor Tries to Stifle Free Speech

Not-So-Free Speech: Big [Twitter] Brother and Shadowbanning

EXCLUSIVE: Twitter Shadowbanning ‘Real and Happening Every Day’ Says Inside Source

Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.

According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.

Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.

Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.

For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.

However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.

Among the users complaining of shadowbans are sci-fi author and alt-right figurehead Vox Day, geek culture blogger “Daddy Warpig,” and the popular pro-Trump account Ricky Vaughn. League of Gamers founder and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, as well as adult actress and anti-censorship activist Mercedes Carrera, have also reported that their tweets are not appearing on the timelines of their followers.

The pattern of shadowban reports, which skews towards the alt-right, the populist right, and cultural libertarians, follows close on the heels of Twitter’s establishment of a “Trust and Safety Council” packed with left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Islamic research centre the Wahid Institute.

It also follows my prediction that Twitter would use its influence to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by muffling conservative voices on the platform.

Absolute Power always corrupts. Especially when Messiahist Class War Narrative is involved.

The War on Free Speech Continues at U-MO

This quote from one of the 150 professors who supported Melissa Click's strong arming the media says it all:

“Overall, I’m OK with actual violence, like actual political violence,” Rob Rasmussen, who unsuccessfully ran for the city council in Columbia, Mo. (the university’s home), last April, explained to National Review after we contacted him for clarification on his November e-mail of support for Click, in which he wrote that she was “100% in the right.”

Rasmussen continued: “I’m OK — I’d be fine if we brought back the guillotine and cut off the Koch brothers’ heads. That would be OK with me. I think that would be OK.” He added that protesters occupying public spaces should have the right to shut out the media because “with Occupy Wall Street, a lot of us lefties learned that if you give open access to the media, some people with an agenda will try to find people in your camp who will say ridiculous things and make it look like your whole group [supports those stances].”

The Chronicle makes no mention of one racist support email praising Click for “stopping that nasty Asian dude” — student reporter Timothy Tai — “from disrupting your event.” It also neglects to mention a supporter who called Click’s actions “a disservice to both you and to the University” — that is, “of course assuming here that there aren’t circumstances of which I’m [un]aware (e.g., the reporter is from a conservative student newspaper with a history of distortion that rivals Fox News.)”

The Chronicle did, however, quote in detail some of the “threats and horrorcore” sent to Click. “I plan to belly-laugh when someone shanks you or sets you on fire in the next week,” the article excerpts. “I hope you’re gang-raped by some of the very animals with whom you’re so enamored,” another e-mail quoted by the Chronicle said. Click’s critics also frequently engaged in “impertinent axe-grinding” and “meta-outrage,” the Chronicle describes dismissively.

But such emails were few and far between, National Review’s review of more than 1,100 pages of emails, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows. Most of the correspondence condemned Click’s actions in a tone that was outraged but fairly civil.

Current students, parents of students, alumni, journalists, and at least one donor appropriately expressed their disapproval, calling Click’s behavior “shameful,” “not in the best interest of the university,” “embarrassing,” and “a blatant violation of [students’] First Amendment rights.”
[Emphasis added]

Legislated Sanity?

As Glenn Reynolds says, adult supervision is coming to campuses:

Student and Faculty Rights Bill Coming in Washington State

2016 is right around the corner, and it promises to bring good news to college students and faculty members in Washington state. When the Washington State Legislature reconvenes in January, State Representative Matthew Manweller plans to introduce HB 3055, a bill that includes items on FIRE’s wish list.

Included in the bill’s meritorious provisions is the Campus Free Expression Act (CAFE Act), similar to a new law in Missouri, which would prevent public institutions of higher education from limiting expressive activity in the open outdoor areas of campus to tiny, misleadingly labeled “free speech zones.”

Another important part of Representative Manweller’s legislation is a provision aimed at ensuring faculty at the state’s public colleges have the freedom to speak out on institutional policy and matters of public concern without fear of reprisal. The bill is crucial to preserve academic freedom and the ability of faculty members to blow the whistle when they observe wrongdoing.

The bill’s wide-ranging scope includes a provision that would prevent campus administrators from forcing faculty members to affix “trigger warnings” on class syllabi that caution students that certain topics might be unsettling. Under the legislation, individual faculty members would decide if and when they want to include such warnings. The legislation also forbids institutions from punishing students or faculty for so-called “microaggressions”—defined by proponents as “everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”

Due process protections are also front and center in Representative Manweller’s comprehensive bill. Like legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support earlier this year in North Dakota, the bill would provide students accused of non-academic offenses that could result in lengthy suspensions or expulsions with the right to hire lawyers to represent them and fully participate in the campus process. Importantly, this same right would extend to the accusers in cases that are based on allegations by one student against another.

FIRE is pleased to have such important measures on the horizon in Washington state. We look forward to providing updates on the bill’s progress next year.

FIRE is an important source of constitutional rationality.

No. Banks are not Evil.... Ummm. Wait...

Not to mention Twitter:

Bank of America Asked Twitter To Delete A Journalist’s Tweet, and Twitter Said Yes

ACLU Abandons Free Speech

ACLU Silence Enables Campus Anti-Free Speech Movement
Nat Hentoff

The Radio Television Digital News Association recently presented its new First Amendment Defenders Award to Tim Tai, a student journalist who was hired by ESPN to cover the anti-racism protests at the University of Missouri.

"Tai was confronted by University students, faculty and staff, threatening him with violence if he did not abandon his efforts," the award citation reads. "Instead, he stood his ground and patiently asserted his First Amendment Rights to stand in a public place and report on the events around him."

One would hope that the ACLU of Missouri issued a statement of support for Tim Tai at the time the video of this highly publicized event went viral on the Internet. But the ACLU of Missouri didn't even acknowledge that the incident occurred. Instead, they issued a statement that "the ACLU of Missouri honors the University of Missouri students and faculty who displayed courageous and creative leadership ..."

The next day, when MU's student body vice president suggested on national television that the exercise of First Amendment rights creates a hostile and unsafe learning environment, the ACLU of Missouri remained silent. Two days later, when a Christian street preacher was physically assaulted by anti-racism protesters while speaking inside MU's designated "Free Speech Circle," the ACLU of Missouri remained silent.
[Emphasis Added]

Several decades back, the ACLU supported Free Speech when the New Left was rioting, bombing and burning. That, as they say, was then. Hentoff was there, then, too. He seems to have abandoned the Left, as the Left has moved away from freedoms for anyone other than the Left.

Free Speech, a la the DOJ

Better not say any of the things which the Islamics are saying, or Loretta Lynch will nail you. She has her own army, ya know.

Loretta Lynch Vows to Prosecute Those Who Use 'Anti-Muslim' Speech That 'Edges Toward Violence'

"After touting the numbers of "investigations into acts of anti-Muslim hatred" and "bigoted actions" against Muslims launched by her DOJ, Lynch suggested the Constitution does not protect "actions predicated on violent talk" and pledged to prosecute those responsible for such actions.

“I think it’s important that as we again talk about the importance of free speech we make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not America," said Lynch. "They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted.""

Except for Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, and any Black Panther, of course.

"It is painfully clear that, like her predecessor Eric Holder, Lynch is far more concerned with promoting the social justice agenda than protecting the Constitutional rights of American citizens. What exactly is speech that "edges toward violence"? What exactly are "actions predicated on violent talk"? In the end, it is whatever she decides it to mean.

UPDATE: Loretta Lynch, at a press conference yesterday, termed the San Bernardino shootings a "wonderful opportunity" to change the nature of police work:

We’re at the point where these issues have come together really like never before in law enforcement thought and in our nation’s history and it gives us a wonderful opportunity and a wonderful moment to really make significant change."

Giving Him His Due

Obama, on Free Speech:

“I don’t want you to think that a display of your strength is simply shutting other people up, and that part of your ability to bring about change is going to be by engagement and understanding the viewpoints and the arguments of the other side,” Obama said.

This is the second time Obama has publicly defended free speech on college campuses. At a town hall event on Sept. 14, the president told an audience that speakers should be allowed to give speeches on college campuses, even if students don’t like what they’ll say.

“I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal toward women,” Obama said. “I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that, either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”

Obama made similar comments to Stephanopoulos, but left out the part about students needing to be coddled. He suggested students argue with those they disagree with rather than try to keep them from speaking. . . .

“You don’t have to be fearful of somebody spouting bad ideas,” Obama said. “Just out-argue them. Beat them. Make the case as to why they’re wrong.”

Obama said he was “worried” that young people were becoming “trained” to think that if they disagree with someone, that if their feelings get hurt, their “only recourse is to shut them up.”"

Good for him, and totally unexpected.