Social media

A life and death issue

Featured image Professor Jonathan Turley has concerns about the fate of the First Amendment based in part on the oral argument in Murthy v. Missouri. He writes: In Murthy v. Missouri, the court is considering a massive censorship system coordinated by federal agencies and social media companies. This effort was ramped up under President Joe Biden, who is arguably the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. Biden has accused companies of »

The right to shout “BS” during a pandemic

Featured image I found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri this past Monday to be utterly demoralizing. As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration. My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument. The argument seemed to me to reflect a fantasy world. »

A bloodbath in the Supreme Court

Featured image This morning the Supreme Court held oral argument in the case that is now styled Murthy v. Missouri. C-SPAN has posted audio of the oral argument here. The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the »

The ordeal of Martin Kulldorff

Featured image According to his Martin Kulldorff bio, Ph.D., Dr.h.c., is an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, and a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom. He was a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University for thirteen years. Dr. Kulldorff’s research centers on developing and applying new disease surveillance methods for post-market drug and vaccine safety surveillance and for the early detection and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. In October 2020, »

The Evolution of Electoral Fraud

Featured image In 1962, there was a Senate race in South Dakota between Republican Joseph Bottum and Democrat George McGovern. The seat was open due to the death of Republican Francis Case. I was just a kid, but I remember that election well. Bottum was the favorite, but in the closing days of the race the Democrats spread a rumor that he was an alcoholic. That ploy may have been crude, but »

13 ways of looking at disinformation

Featured image In March 2023 Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem.) Siegel’s magnum opus runs to some 13,000 words. I meant to include Siegel’s column in my take on “The year in columns.” Indeed, I had devoted a separate post »

Dan Goldman’s clown show

Featured image Matt Taibbi appeared as a witness to testify at the recent congressional hearing in which Rep. Dan Goldman made a fool of himself again. Taibbi chronicled the doings in his Racket News column “Dan Goldman, Democrats, Make a Clown Show of Censorship Hearing,” behind the Racket News paywall. However, Taibbi has posted a narrated version of the column in the video below. I thought some readers would find this of »

Government Censorship: A Conspiracy Theory?

Featured image Lately Democrats have fallen into the habit of labeling all facts they would rather not talk about as “conspiracy theories.” They must think it works. Yesterday, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Matt recorded the experience, which he describes as “surreal,” at Racket News. Representative Dan Goldman is the Democrats’ attack dog on the subcommittee. Goldman hasn’t given »

That old Twitter feeling

Featured image Virginia Democratic House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson is mired in a scandal of her own making. If she survives it, she deserves to be the “face” (broadly understood) of the Democratic Party. Like us, the Washington Free Beacon is giving the Gibson scandal the kind of attention it would get if she were a Republican. Joe Simonson’s Free Beacon story is headlined “Cocksure Virginia Democrat Slams Media for Reporting »

The Censorship Continues

Featured image We now know that the federal government, led by the FBI, has engaged in a prolonged program of censorship that focused on social media. It began, as far as we know, during the Trump administration, and at that time was directed largely against the President. It has flourished during the Biden administration, in which the FBI and other agencies have acted as enforcers, suppressing dissent from the Biden administration’s line, »

The right to laugh at Biden

Featured image Matt Taibbi published his powerful July 28 Racket News column “The New ‘Facebook Files’ Show Everything the First Amendment Was Designed to Prevent” for subscribers only. Racket New has now posted the column as narrated by Jared Moore on YouTube and on podcast platforms. I have embedded the video below. Toward the end of his column Taibbi warns: “In hindsight it could equally be argued Biden was killing people [as »

“This elaborate censorship conspiracy”

Featured image Former New York Post editor Emma-Jo Morris testified last week to the House Weaponization of Government Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan. The committee has posted the text of her statement here. I have posted video below. Morris was the deputy politics editor leading national coverage at the Post, where she also reported the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” series. Her work for the Post is collected here. She has »

Where have all the left-wing flowers gone?

Featured image Matt Taibbi has made a valuable contribution to the documentation of the government’s suppression of heterodox and nonconforming speech on Twitter. He is an honest and dogged journalist. I have therefore sought to draw attention to his work in face of such denials and evasions as those to which FBI Director Christopher Wray testified under oath on July 12 before an occasionally showboating congressional committee last week. Taibbi wrote in »

Wrinkles of Wray

Featured image FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday. Republican representatives did not distinguish themselves in their ability to wring the truth from Wray in their allotted five minutes. Indeed, they were more or less pitiful. Had they been allotted more time, however, they would still have found themselves up against a hard case. Wray is incorrigible. We know that the FBI was instrumental to the »

Take that, Big Brother

Featured image Matt Taibbi posted “Take that, Internet censors!” last week to comment for his paid subscribers on Judge Doughty’s ruling in Missouri v. Biden. As we have reported, Judge Doughty’s ruling preliminarily enjoins the federal government’s censorship regime and is on appeal to the Fifth Circuit as of yesterday. Big Brother is not happy. Taibbi has now made his “Take that” post available in video and podcast form with narration by »

Censorship emergency declared

Featured image In “Walk away, Joe,” I tried to provide legal background on likely next steps in Missouri v. Biden — the most important free speech case to come down the pike since I don’t know when. Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty has entered a preliminary injunction limiting the communications of the federal censorship regime — President Biden and designated officials/agencies — with social media companies. Judge Doughty’s preliminary injunction »

Walk away, Joe

Featured image President Biden is not going to walk away from the extensive censorship regime he has implemented in the executive branch. The censorship was preliminarily enjoined on Independence Day by Chief Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana in Missouri v. Biden. Judge Doughty’s injunction order is posted online here. It is supported by Judge Doughty’s 155-page memorandum here. I commented briefly on the injunction in “Enjoining Mr. Joe” »