Via Instapundit: Republican lawmakers in at least 18 states have proposed a spate of bills, including ones to make blocking streets a felony in North Carolina, to allow businesses to sue people protesting them in Michigan, and to force Minnesota protesters pay the costs of policing.
After watching protests erupt around the country against police shootings, tougher immigration laws, and the Trump administration, Arizona state Sen. John Kavanagh reportedly came to a conclusion: “This stuff is all planned” by “ideologues” and “anarchists,” he told the Arizona Capitol Times.
In response, Senator Kavanagh sponsored a bill patterned on the kind of racketeering laws usually reserved for the Mafia: Anyone involved in a protest could be guilty of a felony if things get out of control, “whether or not such person knows [the] identity” of the person actually breaking a law.
Senate Republicans in Arizona voted in favor of Kavanagh’s proposal, joining conservative lawmakers in some 18 states in moving forward tough new bills intended to curb what they see as lawlessness during a new age of demonstrations and street mobilization.
For their part, opponents of those bills don’t see efforts to keep the peace – they see police state tactics. Civil rights activists say such bills violate the First Amendment and have more to do with chilling free expression than law and order, given that several of the proposals could open up peaceful protesters to serious criminal liability.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are seeing [antiprotest bills] filed at a time when more and more Americans are taking to the streets to practice their constitutional right,” says Mike Meno, an American Civil Liberties Union staffer in Raleigh, N.C.
After watching protests erupt around the country against police shootings, tougher immigration laws, and the Trump administration, Arizona state Sen. John Kavanagh reportedly came to a conclusion: “This stuff is all planned” by “ideologues” and “anarchists,” he told the Arizona Capitol Times.
In response, Senator Kavanagh sponsored a bill patterned on the kind of racketeering laws usually reserved for the Mafia: Anyone involved in a protest could be guilty of a felony if things get out of control, “whether or not such person knows [the] identity” of the person actually breaking a law.
Senate Republicans in Arizona voted in favor of Kavanagh’s proposal, joining conservative lawmakers in some 18 states in moving forward tough new bills intended to curb what they see as lawlessness during a new age of demonstrations and street mobilization.
For their part, opponents of those bills don’t see efforts to keep the peace – they see police state tactics. Civil rights activists say such bills violate the First Amendment and have more to do with chilling free expression than law and order, given that several of the proposals could open up peaceful protesters to serious criminal liability.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are seeing [antiprotest bills] filed at a time when more and more Americans are taking to the streets to practice their constitutional right,” says Mike Meno, an American Civil Liberties Union staffer in Raleigh, N.C.
(Link to the whole thing)
5 comments:
The ACLU hides behind the First Amendment to push the Lefty agenda, part of which is the economic terrorism of things like not wanting to bake a same sex wedding cake.
The First Amendment only works one way for the ACLU.
"For their part, opponents of those bills don’t see efforts to keep the peace – they see police state tactics"
No, that's just the talking point. They're the ones using police state tactics.
BTW The money quote from the piece:
"Under that mantle of distrust, many of the so-called “economic terrorism” bills are built around a similar idea: That much of the dissent at protests and town halls is not only fake, but paid – intended not to debate but disrupt."
Exactly what it is and it can be proven. Just look for Dr Evil's filthy finger.
Stamping out? Or running over. I never want to be put in that position.
Worldwide tribulation would end tomorrow if George Soros and his China-based doppelgänger, Jim Rodgers, would croak tomorrow. They are the driving force behind puts -- bets placed based on failure. Soros and Rodgers want America to fail because they will become even more fabulously wealthy.
Not criminal penalties, but civil suit seems perfectly fine with me. One citizen unnecessarily causes another citizen harm, then they should pay for the damages if found liable in court.
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