First Amendment

“Hate Speech” Fails Again

Featured image The liberals’ crusade against free speech consists largely of trying to except “hate speech” from First Amendment protection, followed by characterizing pretty much anything they don’t like as “hate speech.” This effort has made considerable headway in the thinking of ill-educated people, especially recent college graduates. But it has encountered a stone wall in the courts. The most recent instance is yesterday’s decision by Judge Andrew Carter of the Southern »

Democrats Try to Criminalize Free Speech

Featured image Representative Sheila Jackson Lee has introduced legislation that would make advocates of “white supremacy” guilty of conspiracy if someone commits a “hate crime” that supposedly is inspired by them. The legislation, H.R.61 “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023,” introduced last Monday by Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, seeks to “prevent and prosecute white supremacy inspired hate crime and conspiracy to commit white supremacy inspired hate crime.” The »

Safe From the Sign of the Cross

Featured image It is easy for Americans to forget how rare, and how precious, our guarantee of free speech is. Even the United Kingdom, the country from which we inherited most of our historic freedoms, does not recognize anything like our First Amendment. This fact was brought home by the recent declaration of a “safe zone” in Bournemouth, England. Rod Dreher has the story. It has to do with the sacrament of »

Bravo, Judge Silberman

Featured image Yesterday I briefly noted Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho’s keynote remarks at the Federalist Society’s sixth annual Kentucky chapters conference. With a little work I was able to obtain a copy of Judge Ho’s remarks. I hope to revisit them with a few quotes from the text in the next day or two or three. In my comments I referred to Senior D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman as »

A Huge Win for Free Speech [Updated]

Featured image This is seismic: a panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Texas’s new law banning viewpoint discrimination by the major social media platforms. The case is NetChoice v. Paxton, and the opinion is by Judge Andrew Oldham. Oldham is a brilliant guy with a gilt-edged pedigree. He also was once the General Counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The Texas law is similar to the one I »

The O’Keefe Project: Footsteps getting closer

Featured image It has been evident that the Biden Justice Department is out to get James O’Keefe and Project Veritas since O’Keefe et al. were raided last year under federal search warrants procured by the FBI. Although O’Keefe was instructed to remain mum, the authorities promptly leaked news of the raid to the New York Times. All this in the matter of Ashley Biden’s diary. We have followed the story in more »

Biden Administration Calls For Censorship On Energy

Featured image This is shocking, or would be in a sane world: Gina McCarthy, the Biden administration’s National Climate Advisor, is openly calling on tech companies like Facebook and Twitter to censor any dissent from the administration’s “green” fantasies. McCarthy says the tech companies “have to stop allowing” people to disagree with Biden. No doubt the people she wants to censor include Steve Hayward and me, among many others: Biden's National Climate »

Potentially, A Big Win for the 1st Amendment

Featured image It has been widely reported that the Biden administration has leaned on tech companies, including social media companies, to censor content with which the administration disagrees. This is not a secret. On the contrary, the administration’s spokespeople have bragged about it, and Congressional Democrats have publicly applied pressure to tech employees, in committee hearings, to censor in accordance with the administration’s preferences. The social media companies tirelessly tell us that »

The O’Keefe Project: Unseal me here

Featured image I’ve followed the government’s investigation of James O’Keefe and Ashley Biden’s diary since the New York Times broke the story with a little help from its friends in the national security establishment. What did O’Keefe do wrong? What makes it a federal case? This much is clear to me: the Biden Justice Department is out to get James O’Keefe. Pending before the court that signed off on the search warrants »

Banner Day for the 1st Amendment

Featured image Aside from Leakgate, the other big legal news from the Supreme Court yesterday was its unanimous ruling that the City of Boston exercised impermissible discrimination against religious freedom with its refusal to fly a Christian flag over city hall while allowing flags from some 200 other organizations. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the opinion, saying “When the government encourages diverse expression — say, by creating a forum for debate — the First »

Are you a QCJO?

Featured image I take it that certain tax benefits accrue to entities deemed a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization under Canadian law. Are you now or have you ever been a QCJO? National Post columnist Rex Murphy reports that Ezra Levant’s Rebel News has been weighed in the balance and found wanting, according to the recent decision of the Independent Advisory Board on the Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures. After mulling it over »

Down memory lane with the Times

Featured image The New York Times supports the efforts of the government to get James O’Keefe and Project Veritas in the case of Ashley Biden’s diary. Reporters including Michael Schmidt and Adam Goldman are working as the public relations arm of the Biden administration and the national security establishment to nail them. It turns out that the FBI and SDNY prosecutors have been working the case for a long time. They have »

Wokeism: It’s Not the Law

Featured image In a number of cases across the country, academics who have been fired or otherwise penalized for failing to go along with the “woke” fad have successfully sought legal redress. It is remarkable how little understanding the academics who run our colleges and universities have, apparently, of the basics of constitutional law. They generally seem to think that they have free rein to impose wokeism on all those within their »

Shareholders Want Answers From Tech Platforms

Featured image Shareholders in Alphabet, the parent of Google and YouTube, have introduced a resolution calling for disclosure of any collusion between Alphabet’s companies and the Biden administration in suppressing information that is critical of administration policies: The National Legal and Policy Center, an ethics watchdog group that holds a voting stake in Google and YouTube’s parent corporation Alphabet, submitted the shareholder proposal to the company this week, following a string of »

The O’Keefe Project: The Times restrained (3)

Featured image The New York Times somehow obtained privileged legal memoranda rendering advice to Project Veritas on how to stay within the lines in the course of its journalistic work. The Times published the misappropriated memoranda and reported on them in a long story by Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti — two perpetrators of the Russia hoax with deep connections to the FBI/national security establishment. Their November 11 story is posted online »

The O’Keefe Project: The Times restrained (2)

Featured image The New York Times devoted an overlong editorial to a condemnation of the court order requiring it to disgorge privileged attorney-client memos advising Project Veritas on how to conduct its work lawfully. The Times published the memos online in connection with a story it ran on the memos. I posted the court opinion and order here. The Times editorial puts me in mind of the adage that no man is »

The O’Keefe Project: The Times restrained

Featured image James O’Keefe and Project Veritas are suing the New York Times for defamation. O’Keefe and former Project Veritas associates were recently raided by the FBI in connection with the loss of Ashley Biden’s diary. FBI/national security reporters from the team that brought us the Russia hoax seem to have a pipeline into the investigation. They have reported on it with pornographic glee. I have covered it in a series of »