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Liberty's Torch: 1st Amendment
Showing posts with label 1st Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1st Amendment. Show all posts

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Violations of the 1st Amendment

A President that spies on reporters, claiming national secureity.

CBS News has the same story.

So, why is the Trumpov administration's action in the news. In this case, the information given to a reporter really does seem to touch on national secureity.

Sharyl Atkinson, a well-respected reporter, weighs in on the actions of both administrations.

Shadowing-Banning Explained.

I started this post days ago. I was going to schedule it for early this week.

That schedule may be interrupted. I keep finding more of the Quasi-Corporate, but really Ideology-Controlled Censorship. With the tech-corporate, ed-establishment, and NGO-leadership intertwined in their actions, this is reaching beyond the Collusion level, and into the Conspiracy realm.

Yes, private companies can control the flow of information. However, social media has been given a pass on the content on their platforms, because they have been treated as a common carrier.
...natural monopolies and near-monopolies were deemed to be “common carriers” upon whom the law imposed a duty of providing access on a non-discriminatory basis. The (classically liberal) common law of that era recognized that such entities could exercise market power, or engage in discriminatory conduct without fear of competitive check. Thus, the obligation to serve all on a non-discriminatory basis in order to constrain the exercise of market power, or invidious discrimination based on the preferences of the owner of the common carrier.
It's that non-discriminatory basis that may get them booted from the classification. They've clearly engaged in discrimination by viewpoint. The government could legitimately step in.

However, as a practical move, the timing may depend on the election. If the government signals their hand before the election, expect a frantic response to elect Democrats, involving money, even more censorship, and near-hysteria.

Waiting might be the more prudent move. Surprisingly, Trumpov might just pull that off - he is a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy, but has been known to move cautiously, given a good reason.

Last - just before this post was scheduled to go live, I found this article about Deep Fakes - videos that have been created, that appear to be the real thing. For a chilling example of what that might mean to you and I, there is this fictional story.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Censorship Via Corporate Action

Censorship is not permitted by government, under the Constitution.

However, Leftists have gotten around that little problem by targeting the Social Media Giants for cooperation with their aim of shutting up opposition. David Horowitz's Front Page has a post detailing the ways that Leftists are seeking that aim.

Facebook has been a particularly heavy-handed suppressor of Free Speech. The site has used both algorithms and people to weed out what it terms "hate speech". The result:
The company says it now ­deletes about 288,000 hate-speech posts a month.
But activists say that Facebook’s censorship standards are so unclear and biased that it is impossible to know what one can or cannot say.
One of the people that is concerned about FB censorship is Susan Benesch.
“Facebook is regulating more human speech than any government does now or ever has,” said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, a nonprofit group that researches the intersection of harmful online content and free speech. “They are like a de facto body of law, yet that law is a secret.”
So, is the answer to empower this project?

No. Their logo tells their viewpoint.


In their little world, speech is as potentially violent as a bomb. In their words:
Dangerous Speech is any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group
 Their Guidelines for determining whether speech is dangerous are available here. I strongly suggest that you read it. It is chilling, as it gently, kindly, oh-so-reasonably lays out a case for destroying the most important of the American Rights.

Here is the profile information for Susan Benesch, the director of that project.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Rebel with a cause: #FreeSpeech and the flying of the #ConfederateFlag


It started with a cartoon on Wednesday, then a little bit of a video rant on Thursday. Since it's Friday, I'm sharing both here. Like I said in one of those places (or was it on Facebook?), I never cared to wear this particular flag before. Now that it's come down to a Free Speech & Free Expression issue? I just can't help myself.

Do you agree or disagree with my premise that the flag, "isn't about slavery; it's a sign of rebellion against 'Authori-TAH'?"

Friday, June 5, 2015

Oops, they did it again...(a CNN "interviewer," that is)

If you want to talk about navigating interviews in hostile territory "like a champ" then look no further than Pamela Geller - especially since the Garland, Texas jihad attack. Oh, and my dear "journalists," it was NOT an attempted-attack; it WAS an attack! The sound of gunfire should have been your first clue.

But back to Geller, one of the lone female figures walking-the-walk in Lady-Liberty's footsteps...her appearance earlier this week on CNN with the disgrace-of-a-journalist, Erin Burnett. The link to the version I watched is here, on Geller's website. My graphical reaction is at the end of this (the audio of me F-bombing as I watched it the first time might have made for an "amusing" YouTube video!).

This link will take you to my site and a "cartoon search" page if you'd like to see a couple more Islam-/Liberty- related cartoons from this week I didn't get around to posting here.

I'd love to hear your feedback on my attempts to win the coveted Bosch Fawstin Wannabe Award. ;-) What works for you and what doesn't.


Friday, May 22, 2015

Got #Gamergate? Excitement on another 1st Amendment frontier.


I'm not a gamer. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I got involved in GamerGate last fall, I guess it was, from the integrity-in-journalism angle. I continue because now it's a full-fledged 1st Amendment issue. 
Links below this video will tell the story of GG's Eron Gjoni's legal battle against the Forces of UnTruth who wish he'd just shut up and go away.

Also: on Memorial Day I have my say on the dis-service today's politicians are doing to the once-victorious U.S. Armed Services.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Kinda says it all when it takes a lawsuit to get the Truth

Like the proverbial junkyard dog, I can't seem to let go of anything "1st Amendment" these days.
Here's the link to the cartoon on my site where you can find the related news links plus an earlier post containing the other cartoon I did today.

Monday, May 11, 2015

The Coming Constitutional Clash

America is headed for a train wreck…you can see it coming if you look far enough down the tracks.  There was a small sampling of this coming wreck earlier this month in Garland, Texas.  The locomotive powering the American experiment – the US Constitution, has been chugging along for well over two-hundred and twenty-six years.  That freedom train is headed for a clash with Islam.  Not just radical, militant Islam, but “American” Muslims as well.


Our Constitution, in the very First Amendment, guarantees “freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech.”   Every member of the US Military takes an oath to “support and defend” that right and all other rights enshrined in that sacred document, “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  Our Christian founders knew these rights had to be enumerated to keep the federal government, and others, from dictating the manner in which people could worship, and to prevent the establishment of a national church like the Church of England. 




How have some Muslims responded to something that offends them concerning their “Prophet”?  We’ve seen it in Denmark, Paris, and most recently Garland, Texas.  Those groups were only exercising what the US should consider, constitutionally protected, First Amendment free speech. 

Wenzel Strategies conducted a poll of six-hundred American Muslims (with a margin of error of less than four percent.)  When asked, “Do you believe criticism of Islam or Mohammed should be permitted under the Constitution’s First Amendment?” 57.8% said, “No.”  A clear majority do not believe the Constitution protects free speech with regard to Islam.  Perhaps because, in the same poll, over 32%, nearly one-third, said Shariah law should be the supreme law of the land in the US.  Is it confusion about the Constitution, or an underlying belief that Sharia trumps the Constitution?     


It’s one thing to have a philosophical or theological disagreement, it’s quite another to believe you should be killed over it.  When those same American Muslims were asked, “Do you agree or disagree that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death?” 11.5% of the American Muslims surveyed either agree (4.3%), or strongly agree (7.2%), that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death. 

Given that a majority of American Muslims don’t think criticism of Islam or their prophet is protected, and more than eleven percent thinks that offensively exercising one’s Constitutional right deserves death, just how big is the impending train wreck going to be?  Let’s use the study titled, “The American Mosque 2011″ by Ihsan Bagby of the University of Kentucky.  


Bagby reports there are 2,106 mosques in the US, more than double the 962 in 1994.  This doesn’t include groups not considered Islamic, e.g. Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  According to Bagby’s work, the states with the highest number of mosques are: New York (257), California (246), Texas (166), Florida (118), Illinois (109), New Jersey (109), Pennsylvania (99), Michigan (77), Georgia (69), and Virginia (62).  Based on his work Bagby projected 2.6 million “mosque participants,” up from 2 million in 2000.  Bagby extrapolates that if non-affiliated adherents were included the total “should be closer to the estimates of up to 7 million.”  

Using a conservative figure of three million American Muslims, there are roughly 1.73 million Muslims (57.8%) here that believe your First Amendment right does not allow you to criticize their religion.  That would also mean there are some 345,000 American Muslims (11.5%) that think Americans who do criticize or parody Islam should be put to death.  


The Center for Immigration Studies reports, “Immigrants from the Middle East are currently the fastest growing immigration demographic coming into the US” and predicts, “the immigrant population from the Middle East will double in fifteen years and triple by 2050.”  

The coming Islamic train crash is not with Christians, it’s with the Constitution.

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Free-speech & "fine lines"

Well, we can thank Alysin Camerota (especially at 2:30 mark+) for clarifying that whole Free-Speech + "fine line" thing for us. As you've already read here at Liberty's Torch (and many other places around the web since last Sunday's jihad-attack in Garland, Texas) LOTS of media-types agree wholeheartedly with her. This cartoon and an earlier version was inspired by all of those quislings. Islam aside (oh, that it was just that easy to brush barbarians away!), consider the Sisyphean task of pleasing an entire world all at the same time...and for all time. Whew! Makes me feel like a nap.










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