Tag: 1st amendment

Woman Charged With ‘Hate Crime’, Facing Prison Time, for Stomping a ‘Back the Blue’ Sign

In 2015, in an outburst of pure insanity, the National Fraternal Order of Police, a union representing over 300,000 officers, called for cops to be included under Congress’s hate crimes statute. This demand has since materialized into multiple acts of “Blue Lives Matter” laws, and TFTP has reported on their use multiple times. Never, however, have we seen hate crime legislation used to prosecute the free speech of an innocent person — until now.

A 19-year-old woman in Utah has been charged with a hate crime after she allegedly stomped on a “back the blue” sign at a gas station. There was no victim and no one had been harmed, yet a Garfield County police officer claimed the young woman’s actions made him fear for his life and therefore pushed to have her charged with a hate crime.

According to the arrest affidavit, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Garfield County police officer was conducting a traffic stop for speeding at a gas station when the officer saw a woman “stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign next to where the traffic stop was conducted, crumble it up in a destructive manner and throw it into a trash can all while smirking in an intimidating manner towards me.”

The “smirking” caused the cop to fear for his safety and he moved to detain and subsequently arrest the woman for her completely legal act.

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Florida Man Files Lawsuit Against CDC’s Mask Mandate in Supreme Court

A Florida man who frequently files on planes asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) mask requirements for public transportation, decrying the regulation as unconstitutional.

Lucas Wall appealed to the court on Tuesday and named the CDC, President Joe Biden, and other federal agencies as defendants in the case. Previously, he filed a lawsuit against seven airlines and alleged they engaged in discrimination against fliers who cannot wear face masks due to medical reasons.

“This Court has issued at least five emergency injunctive orders in the past seven months unequivocally holding that governments may not restrict First Amendment rights even in the name of fighting a pandemic,” Wall wrote in his Tuesday petition. Now, he wants the court to rule on whether other constitutional rights “can’t be suspended by the federal defendants because of COVID-19.”

Wall was ejected from the Orlando International Airport last month because he wasn’t wearing a mask, according to reports and video footage he posted online. In his previous lawsuit, Wall said he has a generalized anxiety disorder that makes it not possible to follow what he called an “improper, illegal, and unconstitutional” mandate on mask-wearing.

When he was ejected from the airport, Wall told Transportation Security Administration agents: “I refuse to comply with that,” reported the Washington Examiner, citing his video.

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‘Violation of First Amendment’ – Judicial Watch YouTube Video Censored at Request of California Government Officials

The California Secretary of State’s office pressured YouTube to remove Judicial Watch’s videos on election integrity.Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch received 165 pages of new documents showing the California Secretary of State directly emailing YouTube to remove Tom Fitton’s videos on election integrity.

The video titled “ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS — Dirty Voter Rolls, Ballot Harvesting & Mail-in-Voting Risks!” was removed three days after California government officials made the request.

Judicial Watch had previously sued California over its dirty voter rolls and Los Angeles County agreed to remove 1.6 million inactive voters.

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Democrats now demand all “hate speech” be banned from the internet… but THEY get to define hate speech, of course

Former Congressman Denver Riggleman and American Jewish Congress president Jack Rosen both want online free speech to come to an end, all in the name of stopping “hate.”

In a recent op-ed they co-wrote for Newsweek, Riggleman and Rosen condemned the social media platform Gab for allowing conservative voices like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to post “questionable” content.

Because Greene compared forced mask-wearing to the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, she has quickly become the scapegoat for trying to shut down all digital platforms that are not left-wing echo chambers.

According to Riggleman and Rosen, saying things that deviate from the official script is “hateful” and should not be allowed. Further, any platform where “hate” might have occurred, such as Gab, must be immediately shut down to promote “love.”

“There are two options for dealing with online platforms that promote hate – and potential violence – in our political system,” the op-ed reads.

“The first is to ban them. There are precedents in law where exceptions to the First Amendment regarding hate speech exist. These standards could be applied to political campaigns as well, making it clear that hate speech in support of political candidates will not be tolerated and that, by extension, funds raised by politicians on hate-based platforms like Gab will not be permitted.”

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Judge says state can force Christian to violate religious beliefs

A Colorado judge has stunningly ruled that an artist’s creations are not speech at all and the state is allowed to force a baker to violate his own religious beliefs in order to submit to the demands of a transgender activist.

The ruling from A. Bruce Jones, a judge in the state’s Second Judicial District, came in a lawsuit brought by Autumn Scardina, a lawyer who was born a man and now lives as a woman.

He demanded a cake from Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in the Denver suburban area. He wanted it pink and blue to mark his “transition” to a woman.

Phillips is the baker who earlier was attacked under Colorado’s anti-discrimination law for declining to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex duo. A state commission publicly excoriated him for his faith and likened him to Nazis, an act that ultimately brought a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court for being hostile to faith. The court decided that case in Phillips’ favor. 7-2.

Critical to that decision was the fact that evidence revealed that when homosexual bakers in Colorado were asked to create a cake condemning homosexuality, they refused on the grounds it was a message they couldn’t support. The state supported their refusal yet required Phillips to undergo re-indoctrination because he wanted the same control over his messages.

Jones’ opinion was that the Colorado law – and its demands on an artist’s speech – “does not infringe on defendants’ religious exercise.”

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Pentagon launches program to surveil military personnel’s social media

The Pentagon is planning on launching a program that would screen military personnel’s social media for “extremist material” — looking to retain a private firm to do the digging in order to circumvent First Amendment protections, according to a report.

Internal Defense Department documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that Bishop Garrison, a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tasked with addressing “extremism” in the armed forces, is currently in the process of designing a social media screening program which will “continuously” monitor for “concerning behaviors.”

In the past, the Pentagon has shied away from surveilling members due to First Amendment protections, as well as other privacy concerns.

This program, according to the outlet, citing a senior Pentagon official, will rely on a private firm in order to avoid being accused of circumventing First Amendment restrictions through government.

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The “Bonkers” Interview Of Bonny Prince Harry: Why The Attack On The First Amendment Should Concern All Americans

The media went into a frenzy this weekend when the bonny Prince Harry gave a huge Hurrumpf to the First Amendment. On a show appropriately called “the Armchair Expert,” Harry declared the First Amendment “bonkers” and expressed frustration of how it protects the media in its “feeding frenzy” over his life. Harry’s criticism of the First Amendment can be dismissed as the unfamiliarity of a royal refugee. However, it is actually far more serious than that. Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle have attacked media rights in England and succeeded under the laws of the United Kingdom. They are now joining a growing anti-free speech and free press movement in the United States.

It was not a surprise for many to hear Harry lash out at the First Amendment. After all, Harry and Meghan are so woke, they are virtual insomniacs.

However, that is the point. The First Amendment no longer holds the inviolate position it once did with the left.

Indeed, the First Amendment is now often treated as a danger than a guarantee to a fair and just society. Experts have explained how to evade its limitations to silence others. They have found precisely what Harry discussed in the interview when he noted “you can find a loophole in anything.”

Democratic leaders now openly call for corporate censorship and banning of books and authors. Academics now join in the cancelling of colleagues who express dissenting views of subjects ranging from climate change to gender identification to racial justice. Thus, it is not as risky for the Harry to declare “I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it, but it is bonkers.” Rather, millions are likely to wait in rapt anticipation to hear more of what Prince Harry will say about correcting our Constitution.

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‘Fuck This Court’: We Obtained Larry Flynt’s FBI File and It’s Pretty Wild

When Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt died on Feb. 10 at the age of 78, it signaled the end of an era where a misogynistic smut peddler could be viewed as a kind of antihero.

It’s hard to laud someone who built his empire by unabashedly treating women like pieces of meat, but as a First Amendment warrior, Flynt won important legal victories while sticking his thumb in the eye of the powers that be.

Over the decades, Flynt took on America’s morality police or anyone he felt to be hypocritical on matters of sex, engaging in what the Washington Post once referred to as “Dirt Bag Journalism.” This involved offering millions to anyone who could prove an extramarital affair with a high-ranking government official, such as in 1998, when he took down then-House speaker designate and staunch Clinton impeachment backer Bob Livingston. In 2017, Flynt offered $10 million for information leading to Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. 

Many know Flynt best from the Oscar-winning 1996 Milos Forman film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” in which he was portrayed as a rakish rogue by Woody Harrelson. The movie went a long way toward softening Flynt’s image as a tawdry yet charismatic freedom fighter, while sanding off the more grotesque aspects of his personality.  

To the FBI, he was a person of interest. His 322-page FBI file, obtained by VICE News through a Freedom of Information Act request, contains a wild litany of events involving the Hustler honcho—from John DeLorean’s cocaine bust and an alleged plot to hire a mercenary to kill Hugh Hefner and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, to an alleged effort by Flynt to blow himself up in the Supreme Court, as well as threats to Sandra Day O’Connor and President Ronald Reagan.

His FBI file focuses mainly on his activities in the 1980s, when his behavior was at its most erratic, but also when many of his important First Amendment battles came to a head. 

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Court orders woman to remove rock with Confederate flag – or lose child

An intermediate appellate court in New York state has ordered a woman to get rid of a rock in her garden because it has a Confederate flag painted on it – or possibly lose her child.

The extreme order came from Judges Stan Pritzker, John Egan Jr., Sharon Aarons, Molly Reynolds Fitzgerald and John Colangelo and was in a custody ruling.

The parents are unmarried and have a daughter born in 2014 that is of mixed race. The ruling was an update in the custody arrangements, which provide for joint legal and physical custody.

Both parents had asked for primary custody, but the judges made only a minor adjustment, that the mother’s home shall be considered the child’s resident for purposes of schooling.

But then they addressed that image that has been targeted by social agenda warriors across the nation already, having been eliminated from college campuses, social media and more.

“Although not addressed by family court or the attorney for the child, the mother’s testimony at the hearing, as well as an exhibit admitted into evidence, reveal that she has a small confederate flag painted on a rock near her driveway,” the judges noted.

“Given that the child is of mixed race, it would seem apparent that the presence of the flag is not in the child’s best interests, as the mother must encourage and teach the child to embrace her mixed race identity, rather than thrust her into a world that only makes sense through the tortured lens of cognitive dissonance,” they said.

“Further, and viewed pragmatically, the presence of the confederate flag is a symbol inflaming the already strained relationship between the parties. As such, while recognizing that the First Amendment protects the mother’s right to display the flag, if it is not removed by June 1, 2021, its continued presence shall constitute a change in circumstances and family court shall factor this into any future best interests analysis.”

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