Tag: free speech

Woman Threatened With Prosecution For Putting Gender Critical Notices On Her OWN FRONT DOOR

A 68-year-old woman in London has been threatened with fines by her local council after she put up posters expressing gender critical opinions on her own property.

The pensioner was served with a Community Protection Notice (CPN) and threatened with a £2,500 fine by Hammersmith and Fulham Council after just eight complaints, including someone claiming the material is ‘transphobic’.

The Daily Mail reports that Una-Jane Winfield, who felt “a duty to speak out,” pinned an A4 sized photograph of a women displaying scars from breast removal surgery, next to an advert for the book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce  of the campaign group Sex Matters.

The report notes that the council ordered Mrs Winfield to remove the material, which she refuses to do. She will go to court next month to challenge the CPN.

She also says “The police came to have a look at my door on two separate occasions.”

“Thankfully they understood that expression of gender-critical views is protected under the law. But the council has ignored the police,” Winfield adds.

She continues, “In a letter I was told my ‘persistent and continuing conduct’ was having a ‘detrimental effect on the public and the LGBT community’.”

The council claims that the image in question is “provocative and graphic,” and features “nudity prominently displayed on a very busy public section of walkway in plain view.”

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‘Hamstringing the Government’: A Viral Narrative Distorts Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Understanding of Free Speech

“My biggest concern,” said Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday, “is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways.”

That comment came during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, the case that asks if President Joe Biden’s administration violated the First Amendment when it sought to pressure social media apps to remove information it deemed harmful. It took almost no time for Jackson’s tidbit to set off the viral narrative that she doesn’t grasp basic constitutional principles, particularly when considering the point of the First Amendment is indeed to hamstring what the government can do in response to speech it may not like.

“Jackson raises eyebrows with comment that First Amendment ‘hamstrings’ government,” wrote Fox News. “Leftists want unlimited government — which is why they hate the Constitution,” lamented The Federalist. It was “literally one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio).

But like so many viral narratives, Jackson’s comments were fairly benign in context, and were actually echoed by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Perhaps most ironically, her remark spoke fundamentally to the crux of the case: The government, of course, does not have the right to punish someone criminally for the vast majority of speech. But does it have the right to persuade?

Jackson may think it does. Her “hamstringing” comment came attached to a hypothetical scenario she posed to Benjamin Aguiñaga, Louisiana’s solicitor general, who argued the Biden administration had overstepped when it contacted social media platforms and attempted to pressure them to remove posts it found objectionable. Suppose a challenge circulated on social media concerning “teens jumping out of windows at increasing elevations,” Jackson said. Could the government try to persuade those platforms to remove that content?

No, Aguiñaga said, because that’s still protected speech, no matter how dangerous.

That might very well be the correct interpretation. But Jackson’s take—that such a view could place too much restraint on the government—is one that’s held by many, including, it appears, some of her more conservative colleagues. Kavanaugh, for example, invoked his experience working with government press staff, who regularly call reporters to criticize them and try to influence their coverage. Would it be illegal for the feds to prosecute those journalists for pieces that cast them in a negative light? Absolutely. Is it beyond the pale for the government to express what it believes to be true in seeking better coverage? Not necessarily, Kavanaugh said.

That doesn’t mean they’re correct. But the great irony of the viral Jackson pile-on is that, based on oral arguments, her view may very well prevail.

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ACLU, Once a Defender of Free Speech, Goes After a Whistleblower

Among the unfortunate changes of recent years has been the transformation of the American Civil Liberties Union from an advocate for free speech and other individual rights into just another progressive political organization. Historically, despite much pushback, the group defended the right of people from across the political spectrum to advocate and protest. But the organization has become unreliable on the issue; most recently in the very 21st century debate over gender identity, which sees the ACLU of Missouri targeting a whistleblower who is critical of medical transitions for minors.

“Strange evening,” journalist Jesse Singal wrote March 7 on X (formerly Twitter). “The ACLU of Missouri subpoenaed Jamie Reed, demanding (among other stuff) all her communications w/me. I emailed them saying (politely) wtf, you’re the ACLU. Got a call from a lawyer there saying it was a mistake – ‘It’s a big team.’ Okay.”

The subpoena Singal attached (supposedly since modified, though a redacted version of the original remains publicly available through the Missouri courts website) demanded of Reed “all communications, including any documents exchanged, between you and Jessie Singal concerning Gender-Affirming Care provided at or through the Center.” It also sought “all communications, including any documents exchanged, concerning Gender-Affirming Care involving media or between you and any media outlet or any member of the media” (journalist Benjamin Ryan says that would include him). The subpoena also demanded Reed’s communications with state officials, legislators, and advocacy organizations.

Jamie Reed, it should be noted, isn’t a party to the case behind the subpoena, which is a challenge to Missouri’s 2023 ban on “gender transition surgery” and “cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs” for minors. But she was a motivator for that legislation as a former staffer at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital who developed significant doubts about what she believed to be a lack of safeguards in place regarding permanent changes to children’s bodies and lives. In a widely read piece for The Free Press, she described such interventions as “medically appalling.”

Whether you agree with Reed or not, she’s a sincere advocate for a position on an issue that commands attention and has serious policy implications. Just this month, New York magazine published a piece arguing that minors have an absolute right to change their bodies, while Britain’s National Health Service stopped prescribing puberty blockers for children in gender identity cases because of doubts about their safety or effectiveness. Reed is engaged in public debate of the sort that civil libertarians defend, so it’s bizarre to see the ACLU of Missouri putting the screws to her over her advocacy. Or it would be if the ACLU wasn’t undergoing a painful and very public transformation.

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Globalists are constructing AI-powered control grid designed to end independent journalism and free speech on the internet

We’ve heard some disturbing reports out of Canada and the U.S. recently that shouldn’t be viewed in a vacuum. A trend is developing.

Last Friday, March 15, Rebel News reporter David Menzies was arrested while trying to interview attendees at a Pro-Hamas rally in Toronto.

According to Rebel News, the arrest came just days after the announcement of David’s lawsuit against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “for a pattern of intimidation and exclusion following shocking displays of police brutality against David.”

Rebel News reports that what transpired was a blatant disregard for civil liberties.

David was in full compliance with the law, Rebel News reported, noting that he presented his identification upon request. All of this was captured on camera.

Yet, he was arrested and detained for exercising his right to document a public event.

In the U.S., we have also seen reporters hauled off to jail recently for simply covering events that the government didn’t want covered. Just two weeks ago the FBI arrested Steve Baker, a reporter for Blaze Media, for his coverage of the J6 event. Last year, the FBI arrested journalist Owen Shroyer of Infowars and he was convicted and sentenced to 60 days in prison for his coverage of J6 (he did not even enter the Capitol that day). NBC News, a key part of the state-run media in America, dutifully reported upon Shroyer’s conviction that he was not a journalist but a “conspiracy theorist.”

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Make Speech Free Again

Winston Churchill said, “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”

What has made America great are our basic tenets of individual rights which cannot be taken away by the state, and foremost among these is freedom of speech. Authoritarian regimes always try to control speech. This was true in the Soviet Union, and it is true today in Russia, China and Venezuela.

Mr. Scott Kalb, an elected Democrat on the BET, the town’s finance board, has been circulating a letter in support of the newly proposed Greenwich Speech Police, known by the rather malaprop name of The Greenwich Antisemitism and Anti-Hate Task Force (GAATF?). Presumably they mean the Greenwich Task Force to Combat Hate and Antisemitism. Of course, to deal with actual hate crime we already have the Greenwich Police Department, the State Police and the FBI, so the GAATF is not about crime, it’s about speech, and in this case, it’s about speech Mr. Kalb, Mr. Camillo and members of GAATF don’t like, sometimes found in these pages.

Speech suppression involves deciding what is hateful, and then banning it either directly or surreptitiously with indirect political pressure, “shadow bans” and online “blocking,” as we see in the case before the Supreme Court.

Mr. Kalb in his letter misleadingly cites the rise in antisemitic acts since the October 7th massacre of Israelis as a reason for instituting what amounts to a Speech Tribunal whose role must be to decide what is hate speech and what is antisemitism. Mr. Kalb and the DTC have been at it before, trying to stifle dissent by claiming that identifying Mr. Kalb as a “globalist” was antisemitic, though even the ADL acknowledges that “In some cases, its use [“globalist”] is more or less mainstream.”

Such accusations are invariably attempts to silence opposition.

GAATF is a continuation of Mr. Kalb and the DTC’s ongoing attempts to cover and deflect the actual hate and antisemitism coming from of the left, the evidence of which is incontrovertible and has led to the resignation of college presidents. But the hate from the left is also palpable, and unlike the occasional, laughable Nazi march, the hate from the left is massive and spreading.

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23 States and District of Columbia File Amicus Briefs in Favor of Joe Biden and Government Censorship and Regulation of Speech in America – via the MO v. Biden Case

Twenty-three Democrat run states and the District of Columbia, the home of our nation’s capital, filed amicus briefs in support of government censorship and banning of free speech in the United States.

These 23 states and the District of Columbia filed amicus briefs in support of the Biden administration in the SCOTUS case is Murthy, et al v. Missouri, et al, 23-411 (Missouri v. Biden) case.

The states essentially argue that they have an interest in collaborating with tech companies to “encourage” the public to behave themselves and “discourage” the public from believing alleged “disinformation” or engaging in online predatory behavior. The clear message is that they believe that the government has the right to shut down and censor speech.

The list of un-American states that support government censorship include:

New York
Colorado
Arizona
California
Connecticut
Vermont,
Washington,
Washington, D.C.
Wisconsin
New Jersey
New Mexico,
Oregon
Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island,
Delaware,
Hawaii,
Illinois,
Maine,
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
Michigan,
Minnesota,
Nevada

HOWEVER, a number of courageous states filed an Amicus Curiae brief in SUPPORT of Gateway Pundit and the Free Speech Respondents. These (16) heroic states include:

Montana,
Alabama,
Alaska,
Florida,
Georgia,
Iowa,
Idaho,
Tennessee,
Kansas,
Nebraska,
Ohio,
South Carolina,
South Dakota,
Utah,
Virginia,
West Virginia,
and the Arizona Legislature

The “most important free speech case in a generation” Missouri v. Biden (Murthy v. Missouri), is set to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, March 18th.

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Trudeau Demands Life In Prison For Speech Crimes

To protect children from sexual exploitation, Canada must pass the Online Harms Act, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. “I am the parent of two young boys,” said Justice Minister Arif Virani. “I will do whatever I can to ensure their digital world is as safe as the neighborhood we live in. Children are vulnerable online. They need to be protected from online sexual exploitation, hate, and cyberbullying.”

But Virani’s bill is totally unnecessary to protect children. Its real goal is to allow judges to sentence adults to prison for life for things they’ve said and for up to a year for crimes they haven’t committed but that the government fears they might commit in the future.

As such, Trudeau and Virani’s Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) is the most shocking of all the totalitarian, illiberal, and anti-Enlightenment pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the Western world in decades.

The Liberal government’s censorship legislation, when considered in the context of Trudeau’s sweeping abuse of governmental powers during and after the Covid pandemic and new subsidies for government propaganda, sets a new watermark in rising totalitarianism in Western societies.

In an unusually long statement in response to a series of questions asked by Public, the Trudeau government’s “Canadian Heritage” department, which regulates the media, tried to ease our concerns.  “Bill C-63 is meant to bolster the rights of Canadians to express their thoughts and opinions,” said the anonymous official, “by creating a safer and more inclusive online space.”

But the government spokesperson went on to confirm the shocking truth about the legislation, which is that it would put people in prison for life for things they’ve said, specifically, “advocating genocide.”

“Bill C-63 would increase the maximum penalty specifically for advocating genocide from 5 years to life imprisonment,” said an unnamed spokesperson for the Canadian government, “and from 2 years to 5 years, on indictment, for the willful promotion of hatred (section 319 of the Criminal Code)” [emphasis added]

This means someone who writes something that a government official decides is “advocating genocide” will face a longer maximum sentence than someone who rapes a child.

And what might count as “advocating genocide”? Today, there are prominent politicians around the world who say that supporters of Israel are advocating the genocide of the Palestinian people and that supporters of Hamas are advocating genocide against Jewish people. Imagine if they were in power. Under Trudeau’s legislation, would they not be able to send their political enemies to prison for life?

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There Is A War On Free Speech, And They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated

The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society.  If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well.  So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before.  Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection.  Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate.  That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely.  That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.

It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want.  People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me.  And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue.

But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want.  So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.

That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming.  A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…

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There Is A War On Free Speech, And They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated

The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society.  If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well.  So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before.  Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection.  Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate.  That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely.  That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.

It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want.  People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me.  And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue.

But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want.  So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.

That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming.  A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…

Senate Bill 5427, after it is signed into law, would allow private individuals (note: this is not limited to American citizens) to report “bias incidents*” (see definition below) to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the possibility of receiving up to $2,000 of taxpayers money for this noncriminal incident. The bill was very clear: this is a non-crime which they will then forward to local law enforcement to investigate. What’s to investigate? No crime, no investigation.

The Progressives & Marxists who sponsored this bill say it is intended to help “victims of hate crimes” before a crime even happens. Say what? In reality, SB 5427 would create a “tattletale hotline,” undermine legitimate criminal investigations, and freeze, not just chill, speech & the press in Washington State. People will stop talking to others and writing to others except very close friends & relatives, for fear a greedy “Karen” will report them to Washington’s version of the Gestapo.

This is crazy.

Do we live in East Germany now?

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MSNBC Legal Analyst Argues for ‘Common Sense’ Speech Restrictions Live on Air

A legal analyst at MSNBC argued earlier this week that there is a need for “common sense” restrictions to the First Amendment to prevent “disinformation” online.

The comments from University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade underscore how many on the far left now view basic American Constitutional rights.

During an interview with network host Rachel Maddow that The New York Post flagged on Thursday, McQuade argued that current restrictions on free speech might not go far enough.

McQuade said previous arguments from the U.S. Supreme Court had set a precedent — that there are some limitations to what people can say if it is intended to create harm — but she added those might not be far-reaching enough.

One such case is 1919’s Schenck v. United States, in which it was ruled that a person could not shout “fire” while in a crowded theater if that person’s rationale for speaking was only to cause public harm.

In the context of American political discourse in the age of social media, McQuade said that the country’s “deep commitment to free speech,” a cornerstone of society, is leaving people vulnerable to being misled.

While hawking a new book she has authored called “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America,” McQuade told MSNBC she hoped to initiate a “national conversation about truth and our commitment to [free speech].”

After Maddow asked if Americans are vulnerable to being misled more than citizens of other countries without First Amendment protections, McQuade agreed.

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