Tag: 1st amendment

Rabid Democrats Call on Justice Thomas to Recuse Himself From Jan. 6 Cases Because His Wife Exercised Her First Amendment Rights on 2020 Election

Rabid Democrats are now calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from any cases related to January 6 because his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas exercised her First Amendment rights to friends in private texts regarding the 2020 election.

Recall, the January 6 Committee on Thursday leaked Ginni Thomas’ text exchanges with Mark Meadows to the Washington Post as her husband was hospitalized with an infection.

The text messages exchanged between Ginni Thomas and Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are uneventful.

The media however is having a feeding frenzy over Ginni Thomas’ benign text messages that are completely covered by the First Amendment.

Many Democrat lawmakers are now calling on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from January 6 cases because his wife sent text messages to Mark Meadows encouraging him to fight for Trump and expose the election fraud.

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Elizabeth Warren may face consequences for practicing censorship

Elizabeth Warren, a mediocre law professor who parlayed a fake Native American identity into a gig at Harvard and a seat in the United States Senate, thought that, once in government, she’d try her hand at censorship. When Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins wrote a book about COVID with which Warren disagreed, she used her position as a Senator to try to get Amazon to censor the book. Although Chelsea Green Publishing filed suit in November, people are finally becoming aware of the suit.

I’m always amazed when someone who ought to know the law doesn’t—or feels entitled to ignore it. As a lawyer and a law professor, one would expect Warren to be familiar with the First Amendment. That’s the one that says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” As government has grown, that principle has been extended to the federal government as a whole, whether it’s an executive agency, Congress, or a politician acting under the color of his or her role in the government. (And of course, to state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment.)

Nevertheless, on September 7, 2021, writing in her capacity as a United States Senator, on official Senate letterhead, Warren sent a very long letter to Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, expressing her concern that Amazon itself was publishing misinformation by allowing Mercola’s and Cummins’s book, The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal, to appear on its bestseller list and daring to give it a favorable ranking. After waffling on for pages several pages, and mendaciously claiming the book was “potentially unlawful,” Warren “asked” Amazon to modify the algorithms to destroy the book’s ranking.

Chelsea Green responded in November by suing Warren for violating the First Amendment, although news of that filing only reached the media recently. The lawsuit relies upon Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1962). Bantam Books involved a newly-created Rhode Island Commission which had the task of educating the public about any written material that could harm the morality of or otherwise corrupt Rhode Island’s young people.

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Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal previously rejected free speech in favor of “healthy public conversation”

In a far-reaching November 2020 interview, Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal, who was the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the time, rejected free speech protections that are enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, wished the company had censored QAnon sooner, and touted the company’s approach of censoring content based on “potential for harm.”

“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation,” Agrawal said in response to a question about protecting free speech as a core value and the role of the First Amendment.

He added that the company now focuses “less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.” In this context, Agrawal said the role of Twitter is increasingly moving toward recommendations and “how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

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Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the Inability to Think in Terms of Principles

On Monday night, we produced an in-depth video report examining the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and Project Veritas and the dangers it presents (as we do for all of our Rumble videos, the transcript will soon be made available to subscribers here; for now, you can watch the video at the Rumble link or on the player below). One of the primary topics of our report was the authoritarian tactic that is typically used to justify governmental attacks on those who report news and disseminate information: namely, to decree that the target is not a real journalist and therefore has no entitlement to claim the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

This not-a-real-journalist tactic was and remains the primary theory used by those who justify the ongoing attempt to imprison Julian Assange. In demanding Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions.” Yet the five-term Senator insisted: “but he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt.”

This not-a-real-journalist slogan was also the one used by both the CIA and the corporate media against myself and my colleagues in both the Snowden reporting we did in 2013, as well as the failed attempt to criminally prosecute me in 2020 for the year-long Brazil exposés we did: punishing them is not an attack on press freedom because they are not journalists and what they did is not journalism.

What is most striking about this weapon is that — like the campaign to agitate for more censorship — it is led by journalists. It is the corporate media that most aggressively insists that those who are independent, those who are outsiders, those who do not submit to their institutional structures are not real journalists the way they are, and thus are not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment. In order to create a framework to deny Project Veritas’s status as journalists, The New York Times claimed last week that anyone who uses undercover investigations (as Veritas does) is automatically a non-journalist because that entails lying — even though, just two years earlier, the same paper heralded numerous news outlets such as Al Jazeera and Mother Jones for using undercover investigations to accomplish what they called “compelling” reporting.

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Colorado Web Designer Petitions Supreme Court After Being Compelled To Celebrate What She Believes Is Wrong

Lawyers representing a Colorado web designer who was slapped with a gag order in July that forced her to celebrate causes she believes are wrong filed a petition to appeal the case in the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday.

Lorie Smith, the founder of 303 Creative, lost a 2-1 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit which mandated that she create custom graphics and websites for LGBT customers despite messages that contradict her religious convictions.

“This case involves quintessential free speech and artistic freedom, which the 10th Circuit astonishingly and dangerously cast aside here,” Kristen Waggoner, the general counsel for the First Amendment legal foundation Alliance Defending Freedom, which has taken on Smith’s case, said in a press call with reporters. “The government shouldn’t weaponize the law to force a web designer to speak messages that violate her beliefs.”

The initial case was launched as a pre-enforcement challenge to Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), the same law weaponized to go after a Denver-area cake artist for refusal to design a custom cake for a same-sex wedding and, more recently, a gender transition. The law prohibits any business that offers public services from discrimination based on race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Smith challenged the law after she received an inquiry for a website for a same-sex wedding but did not respond to the order to avoid violating CADA.

The 10th Circuit rejected Smith’s case against CADA, writing that the law “permissibly compels [Lorie Smith’s] speech,” and concluded, “a faith that enriches society in one way might also damage society in [an]other.” Smith was also reprimanded with a gag order that keeps her from placing a note on her page about what sites would be consistent with her convictions.

“I have clients ranging from individuals to small business owners to nonprofit agencies. I have served and continue to serve all people, including those who identify LGBT,” Smith explained to reporters on Friday. “I simply object to being forced to pour my heart, my imagination, and talents into messages that violate my conscience.”

Waggoner said the legal team was optimistic that the Supreme Court would take up Smith’s case, arguing that the 10th Circuit’s decision was broad.

“I would be surprised if not all nine justice are deeply concerned about it,” said Waggoner, who went on to highlight the court’s prior rulings in defense of Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips.

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‘Action could be taken’ against students using wrong pronouns at PPU

On September 13, the Office of Equity and Inclusion notified the student body of Point Park University (PPU) that “action could be taken” against individuals who do not use their classmates’ preferred pronouns. 

Campus Reform obtained a copy of the email.

The university’s Misgendering, Pronoun Misuse, and Deadnaming Policy states that “any individual who has been informed of another person’s gender identity, pronouns, or chosen name is expected to respect that individual.” If a complaint is filed regarding this policy, “action could be taken,” the email reads. 

“While the University recognizes the aspect of intent versus impact, we must recognize that regardless of the intent, if an individual is impacted in a harmful way, action could be taken if a complaint is filed,” the email states.

The email served to notify students on the university’s anti-discrimination policy for the 2021-2022 academic year. 

“The Office of Equity and Inclusion would like to welcome in the 2021-2022 academic year with information on current policies that exist through our office and information regarding the Preferred Name Policy, instances of misgendering, pronoun misuse, and deadnaming (the use of a person’s legal “dead” name instead of using the person’s chosen or preferred name), as well as resources on microaggressions and additional training,” the opening of the email reads. 

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State retaliates against private investigator for criticizing police shooting

A state has retaliated against a private investigator for criticizing a police shooting that left two people dead by denying him a license, and now he’s taking his protest to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Institute for Justice explained it is Joshua Gray, of Massachusetts, whose comments about a fatal police action drew the reaction from state officials in the Maine Department of Public Safety, who admitted the rejected his application for a license because of his criticism of the department’s employees.

“When the government retaliates against people because of their speech, it violates the First Amendment. That’s true whether the government is imposing a fine, withholding a parade permit, or denying an occupational license,” explained IJ Senior Attorney Paul Sherman.

The IJ explained, “Gray’s problems with the department began after he criticized the conduct of Maine police in the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Kadhar Bailey and 18-year-old Amber Fagre in February of 2017. Believing that the shooting could have been avoided had it not been for police recklessness, Gray expressed his criticisms on his Facebook page. But when Gray later applied for a license as a professional investigator in Maine, the Department denied Gray’s application on the ground that his online criticism contained factual errors, and therefore he lacked the ‘good moral character’ required for licensure.”

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