"A Beating in Berkeley"

Via Instapundit tweet: As white supremacists go, Joey Gibson makes for a lousy one. For starters, he’s half Japanese. “I don’t feel like I’m Caucasian at all,” he says. Not to be a stickler for the rules, but this kind of talk could get you sent to Master Race remedial school.

And it gets worse. The founder of Patriot Prayer—a Vancouver, Wash.-based operation that sponsors rallies and marches promoting freedom and First Amendment rights along with all-purpose unity—also spews hippie-dippie rhetoric like “moderates have to come together” and “love and peace [are] the only way to heal this country.” Joey tends to sound less like an alt-right bully boy than a conflict-resolution facilitator or a Unitarian Sunday school teacher.

For his late August “Liberty Weekend” in the Bay Area, which was to include a free speech rally in San Francisco followed by a “No to Marxism” rally in Berkeley (headed by a local “transsexual patriot”), Joey advertised that “no extremists will be allowed in. No Nazis, Communists, KKK, Antifa, white supremacists .  .  . or white nationalists.” (So much for free speech.) Likewise, the advertised docket of speakers was to include “three blacks, two Hispanics, one Asian, one Samoan, one Muslim, two women, and one white male.” If becoming a liberty movement fixture doesn’t work out for Gibson, he has a promising future as a UC Berkeley admissions officer.

Despite all this, you’d have thought from the avalanche of alarmist walk-up stories that Gibson and friends would be dancing in a “Springtime for Hitler” kick line. Donald Trump, of course, who draws frequent Hitler comparisons in some quarters, has already set nerves on edge with his nativist rhetoric, perpetually divisive style, and what’s widely perceived as his winks ’n’ nods to white nationalists. But in the wake of the recent white supremacist hoedown in Charlottesville—a cesspool of racial hatred that resulted in the death of anti-racism activist Heather Heyer when a Nazi fanboy drove his Dodge Challenger into her and 19 others—opportunistic leftists/Democrats have been on the prowl to paint everyone to the right of Angela Davis as a dangerous racist lunatic.

(Link to more)

"UC Berkeley chancellor’s message on free speech"

Via Instapundit: This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense. The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The United States has the strongest free speech protections of any liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the courts have consistently upheld these protections.

But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of legal constraint — that we’re required to allow it — but of value. The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book, On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it. . . .

We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to expect the university to keep you physically safe. But we would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous. We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner resilience, which is the surest form of safe space.

(link to source)

"Colin Kaepernick: I'm not anti-American, will donate $1 million"

"After hearing loud and sustained boos directed at him during the San Francisco 49ers’ preseason game against the San Diego Chargers on Thursday night, Colin Kaepernick called the crowd’s negative reaction a “misunderstanding.”"

Kaepernick, the 49ers quarterback, said the reason he refuses to stand for the national anthem has been distorted. He also said he will donate $1 million to groups that help people affected by the issues he is trying to spotlight — such as racial inequality and police brutality — with his continued protest.

“The media painted this as I’m anti-American, anti-men-and-women of the military and that’s not the case at all,’’ Kaepernick said after playing the first half of the 49ers’ 31-21 victory over the Chargers. “I realize that men and women of the military go out and sacrifice their lives and put themselves in harm’s way for my freedom of speech and my freedoms in this country and my freedom to take a seat or take a knee so I have the utmost respect for them.

“I think what I did was taken out of context and spun a different way.’’

After the game...

Abdisahman Bool of San Diego squeezed his way to the front of the pack, close enough to tell Kaepernick, “You’re the voice for all of us.’’

Yet moments later, as a 49ers team official pulled Kaepernick away from the fans and into the tunnel, a man snidely insinuated Thursday night’s game would be Kaepernick’s last. He suggested the 49ers will cut Kaepernick and free up the quarterback to focus all his attention on drawing attention to himself.

Kaepernick frowned.

“It’s not for me,’’ he said before ducking into the tunnel and heading to the locker room.

Should this protest continue and perhaps even grow, will the NFL consider dropping the anthem all together?

I didn't think the goverment could do this

"Obama prosecutor 'silencing Americans with threats of arrest'"

WND:  Reaction to threatening comments from President Obama’s U.S. attorney in Idaho following the release of two Muslim boys accused of sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl have been swift and severe.

Wendy J. Olson, the U.S. attorney for Idaho, indicated in a statement Friday that Idahoans who spread “false or inflammatory information” about the alleged Muslim perpetrators may be subject to prosecution. The boys accused are ages 14, 10 and 7, and their families have been evicted from the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls, where the assault allegedly took place.

The two older boys are immigrants from Sudan and the youngest is from Iraq. They are believed to be refugees but the government has yet to say exactly how they entered the country, only that they have come “within the last two years.”

The Olson statement that is drawing fire from First Amendment advocates is as follows:

“The spread of false information or inflammatory or threatening statements about the perpetrators or the crime itself reduces public safety and may violate federal law.”

She made the comment after some websites published erroneous information that the girl was “gang raped” at “knifepoint” by “Syrian refugees.”

Social Justice Warriors Get Owned In Epic Rant By Comedian (Steven Crowder)

Do not miss the close-up footage of the audience attendee who was heckling Crowder: “UMass Amherst students throw temper tantrum at free speech event...When one demonstrator complained about being treated like a child, Hoff Sommers told her to ‘stop acting like a child.’”

"Mizzou Assistant Professor Click Charged with Third-Degree Assault"

Via PJ Media

The University of Missouri assistant professor who angrily confronted and shoved a student videographer last fall during a campus protest is now facing third-degree assault charges. According to local media reports this morning, Steve Richey, Columbia's city prosecutor, is charging Melissa Click with the misdemeanor offense.

Click won national notoriety last November when she attempted to forcibly remove videographer Mark Schierbecker from the media-free "safe space" that was created by student activists and faculty for a #ConcernedStudent1950 protest. Possible penalties include a fine and jail time.

Volokh: "No, a public university may not expel students for racist speech" (UPDATED)

"Some Oklahoma University students in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity were videorecorded singing (as best I and others can tell),"

"There will never be a nigger at SAE
There will never be a nigger at SAE
You can hang him from a tree
But he’ll never sign with me
There will never be a nigger at SAE

Oklahoma University president David Boren said, “If I’m allowed to, these students will face suspension or expulsion.” But he is not, I think, allowed to do that.

1. First, racist speech is constitutionally protected, just as is expression of other contemptible ideas; and universities may not discipline students based on their speech.

For the other reasons espoused by the professor go to this Link.

[UPDATED in light of the students' expulsion]

Before...

After...

"Do Western Muslims face a free speech double standard?"

"Today’s events in France, from the arrests to the rush to buy the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo, raise a number of questions about the limits of speech."

"We at the NewsHour have made the decision not to show the cartoon on the new cover of the satirical magazine depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The reason? We believe the offense it could cause outweighs the news value."

Sony Backtracks, Will Now Release The Interview

"The plan is to release the film simultaneously in participating theaters and via video on demand. The Plaza Theater in Atlanta, the MX Theaters in St. Louis and the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin have now said they will distribute the film. The MX said it would be selling tickets as of 2 p.m Tuesday."

“We have never given up on releasing ‘The Interview’ and we’re excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on Christmas Day,” said Michael Lynton, chairman and CEO of Sony Entertainment. “At the same time, we are continuing our efforts to secure more platforms and more theaters so that this movie reaches the largest possible audience.

“I want to thank our talent on ‘The Interview’ and our employees, who have worked tirelessly through the many challenges we have all faced over the last month. While we hope this is only the first step of the film’s release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech.”

James Franco & Seth Rogen

"Sharia law or gay marriage critics would be branded ‘extremists’ under Tory plans"

“Anyone who expresses an opinion that isn’t regarded as totally compliant with the Equality Act could find themselves ranked alongside Anjem Choudary, Islamic state or Boko Haram,” he (Simon Calvert, Deputy Director of the Christian Institute) said.

He added: “How many times a day do intellectually lazy political activists accuse their opponents of ‘spreading hatred’?

“The left does it, the right does it, liberals do it, conservatives do it, it is routine.

“Hand a judge a file of a thousand Twitter postings accusing this atheist or that evangelical of ‘spreading hatred’ and they could easily rule that an EDO (Extremism Disruption Order) is needed.

“It’s a crazy idea – the Conservatives need to drop this like a hot brick.”

Why would anybody want to hold a hot brick without a proper glove?


Never mind... smart-alecky internet.

The Guardian: Is it right to jail someone for being offensive on Facebook or Twitter?

What follows is offensive. The facts are unattractive and there is no hero in this story. On 30 April, two days after teacher Ann Maguire was stabbed to death by a pupil in Leeds, Jake Newsome, a 21-year-old man who had himself attended a secondary school on the other side of the city, posted on his Facebook page: "Personally im glad that teacher got stabbed up, feel sorry for the kid… he shoulda pissed on her too".

"Thats not very nice" reads the first of 37 comments on his post. Others soon chipped in, addressing him by his nickname: "Greeny come on! You're better than that" wrote one. "Greeny seriously that's harsh" wrote another. "Greeny, not sure you should be saying this stuff on facebook man – people get in trouble for this kind of stuff".

A few days later, after his post had been shared more than 2,000 times, West Yorkshire police arrested and charged Newsome under the 2003 Communications Act with having sent "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature". Last week Newsome was jailed for six weeks, after pleading guilty, with the judge quoting his post back to him and saying: "I can think of little that could be more upsetting or offensive." (link to the rest of the story)

"Ban on drone photos harms free speech, say media outlets in challenge to FAA"

"The New York Times and other major media outlets have accused the Federal Aviation Administration of “chilling” journalism and violating their First Amendment rights by banning the use of unmanned aircraft for news photography."

"The media outlets made the claims in a “friend of the court” brief (see below) filed Tuesday in support of Raphael Pirker, a drone hobbyist who was fined $10,000 by the FAA for using a five-pound drone to make a promotional video over the University of Virginia."

"A judge dismissed the fine, agreeing that the FAA did not have the authority to impose it, but now the agency is appealing the decision and, at the same time, has been warning media outlets and others not to use unmanned aircraft for photography." (read more)

Volokh: "Choosing What to Photograph Is a Form of Speech"

"The past year has been good to advocates of marriage equality. The Supreme Court struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that denied federal benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples. Six more states extended marriage rights to same-sex couples—Illinois will join them June 1, becoming the 17th state overall—and federal courts struck down same-sex marriage bans in four more states (now on appeal)."

We support the extension of marriage to same-sex couples. Yet too many who agree with us on that issue think little of subverting the liberties of those who oppose gay marriage. Increasingly, legislative and judicial actions sacrifice individual rights at the altar of antidiscrimination law. READ MORE (bold mine, for emphasis)

The article concluded...

The Supreme Court's ruling in Wooley guarantees the right of photographers, writers, actors, painters, actors, and singers to decide which commissions, roles or gigs they take, and which they reject. But the ruling does not necessarily apply to others who do not engage in constitutionally protected speech. The U.S. Supreme Court can rule in favor of Elane Photography on freedom-of-speech grounds without affecting how antidiscrimination law covers caterers, hotels, limousine drivers, and the like. That's a separate issue that mostly implicates state religious-freedom laws in the more than two-dozen states that have them.

The First Amendment secures an important right to which all speakers are entitled—whether religious or secular, liberal or conservative, pro- or anti-gay-marriage. A commitment to legal equality can't justify the restriction of that right.

Wall Street Journal

Remembering Erwin Knoll

Erwin Knoll (1931-1994)

"Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge" ~Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy

A few days ago, I linked to a video I made from a 1988 radio broadcast by the late Erwin Knoll. If you listened to that recording through conservative eardrums, you probably bristled a bit at Knoll's take on the topic. Knoll personified the sort of Madison liberal I knew well growing up Wisconsin. But in fact, I once met Erwin Knoll, and we probably nodded heads over something at the time.

Knoll used to come into the tiny grocery store where I worked during college. The store was just around the corner from the former offices of The Progressive on W. Gorham St.  He used to come in to buy snacks and whatnot.  I remember his colleague Howard Morland better -- I used to sell him his smokes -- he was the guy who wrote the piece "The H-Bomb Secret, How We Got It -- Why We're Telling It" -- a story which landed them both in a 1st Amendment lawsuit in which they prevailed. They didn't tell me what they were up to at the time, even though this was 1979.

Why the praise for Knoll? He stood adamantly opposed to squelching anti-abortion views of contrarian progressives. This enraged some of his readers. Said one: "I'm always intrigued at how few people understand that free speech encompasses a little more than the speech you like." link

[added: Young Hegelian links to The Progressive article about abortion which Knoll published in 1980]

“Bottom line, he got his feelings hurt.”

"A Chico Police officer is under investigation by his own department after a city councilman accused him of putting racially insensitive material on his Facebook page."

City Councilman Randall Stone called for an internal review after discovering the posts on Officer Todd Boothe’s public Facebook page.

One featured a skull painted like the confederate flag, another shows the president’s face painted like the Joker. There’s another featuring the president dressed in tribal garb, while another post has a homophobic slur.

To read the rest of the story click here. (CBS 13 Sacramento)

A Facebook 'Like' is Protected Free Speech

"In November of 2009, B.J. Roberts, the sheriff of Hampton, Virginia, ran for re-election. A group of workers in Roberts' office, however, among them one Bobby Bland, weren't enthused about the prospects of their boss's continuation in his role. So they took to their Facebook accounts to protest the run: They Liked the campaign of Roberts's opponent, Jim Adams. Despite the minuscule mutiny, however, Roberts won the election. He then chose not to retain Bland and the others as his employees. The dismissals, Roberts said at the time, were the result not only of  budgeting concerns, but also of the workers' hindrance of "the harmony and efficiency of the office." The sheriff had not liked his workers' Likes."

Bland and his colleagues took Roberts to court, arguing that, in the dismissals, Roberts had violated their First Amendment rights. In April of 2012, however, the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia dismissed the case on the grounds that a Like didn't involve an "actual statement," and therefore was “insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection.”

Simple clicks of a button are now enshrined as constitutionally protected conduits of self-expression.

Yesterday, however, that decision was overturned. A federal appeals court ruled that a Facebook Like is, indeed, a form of expression that is covered by the First Amendment. Clicking a button is, per the decision, a protected form of speech.

The Atlantic

“[A] state of full or partial undress in any area ...

"... in which the person being photographed or recorded has a reasonable expectation of privacy.” is covered under a measure being considered in California to deal with something called ‘revenge porn’.

On a recent episode of “The Newsroom,” on HBO, the character Sloan Sabbith, a financial reporter, was mortified when an ex-boyfriend posted compromising pictures of her online, which then went viral. Her recourse – on the show at least – was to track down the offending creep and punch him.

If Ms. Sabbith were living in California, she would be closely following the deliberations of the state Legislature here this week. A proposal, to be debated Tuesday in the Assembly, could let victims of so-called revenge porn see their vindictive ex-lovers go to jail for up to a year.

The bill passed the state Senate earlier this summer. It would make it a criminal misdemeanor to post nude or revealing pictures that may have once been taken with a subject’s consent. The practice has become increasingly common, victims’ advocates say. And it poses a vexing legal question, pitting the rights of victims against the principles of free expression. Making matters more complicated is the fact that sites that host these user-generated images are usually immune from civil liability under federal law.

More after the jump.