MTA v. The First Amendment

Who knew that the only thing standing between our First Amendment rights and the American people was a little pink spray paint! Well that and the threat of violence over...a subway advertisment.

The horror! The madness! Seriously.

In late September, Iranian President Mahmoud Imadinnerjacket [see: Commentarama-nary for definition] before the UN General Assembly calling for destruction of Israel and other such mischief, the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) in New York was brought to its knees. Not by terrorist threats or UN protests, but over the above advertisement bought and paid for by Pamela Geller, writer, blogger, and leader of the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the same person who lead the protest against Park51 - the proposed and now defunct "World Trade Center" mosque.

She decided to run this ad to be display in about dozen subway stations throughout New York City in reaction to the 9/11/12 attacks on our Embassies and the ongoing Iranian threats to Israel. At first the MTA rejected the ad because they thought the language was "demeaning". Geller took it to the Federal courts where a judge upheld her ad on First Amendment grounds and the MTA was ordered to place the posters as contracted. Needless to say the posters received a ton of press even before they went up. You would think that the poster had a cartoon of Mohammed or a photo of an 32oz sugary Big Gulp with the furor it caused. Along with physical threats to Ms. Gellar and to the MTA, many of the posters were damaged, torn down, and one woman took it upon herself to deface each poster with pink spray paint in the company of a NY Daily News photographer. The MTA Board was horrified, not at the threats of violence that were directed at Ms. Gellar, but horrified that this ad should be allowed at all.

So horrified were the MTA Board members that they held an emergency meeting to "update" its rules so that it would be clear that the MTA did not approve. At first it was reported that they would just add this disclaimer to all such ads:

This was to protect the Board much in the same way the Obama Administration added their own disclaimer about a certain film that had nothing to do with...well, you know. But that was their public face. As we all know, the devil is in the details. What they really did was change the rules and added this new clause to the official guidelines of ads that will no longer be displayed if:

...The advertisement, or any information contained in it, is directly adverse to the commercial or administrative interests of the MTA or is harmful to the morale of MTA employees or contains material the display of which the MTA reasonably foresees would incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace, and so harm, disrupt, or interfere with safe, efficient, and orderly transit operations. [emphasis added]

Maybe it is just me, but this new guideline is much more dangerous than Ms. Geller's ad could ever be. Now, all that has to happen is for some overzealous, politically-correct bureaucrat to see potential insult or racism in the word "apartment" to shut down our most fundamental right - to disagree.

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Naked Royal Flush

The biggest story this week, if the British Press is to be believe, is that Italian and French gossip magazines are running naked pictures of Kate Middleton, who is apparently married to some dude with a famous mother. While I’m indifferent to celebrities/royalties, this does raise an interesting question. Should the press be allowed to print naked pictures of famous people?

For those who haven’t heard about this, what happened is that Ms. Middleton and her hubby went to some private estate in France for a little vacation. Then they got naked and got jiggy. This was caught on camera by a French photographer who was about 1,500 yards away with a high-powered lens. The photos were sold to a French magazine and an Italian magazine. Now the royal family has brought civil suit to stop the publication of these photos (that failed) and they’ve asked a French prosecutor to bring criminal charges against the photographer for trespass and invasion of privacy.

That’s the background. What interests me is the question of whether or not this should be legal? Should the press be allowed to publish naked pictures of famous people taken while the target believed they were in private?

My answer is no because it serves no public purpose in this instance.

The First Amendment, which obviously isn’t implicated overseas, was created for the purpose of making sure that the press would be able to keep the public informed of matters of public import without the government censoring what information it wanted the public to know. Key in that point is the issue of the public interest, and what we need to consider when examining freedom of speech/press issues is to weigh the public interest against the violation of privacy rights.

When you start to think this issue in those terms, it becomes pretty obvious that naked pictures taken of celebrities who believe they are in private when the photos are taken are not something where the public interest outweighs the loss of privacy rights. Indeed, there really isn’t even a public interest here. It’s not like they were doing anything illegal or hypocritical. This wasn’t a crime. There was no drug use or anything which would make you question their judgment. So what exactly is the public interest?

I could see a public interest if they had done this at a bar downtown, but then the public interest would be in knowing they had gotten naked in public. In other words, it’s not the naked part that’s the problem, it’s the doing it in public part that’s the problem. I could also perhaps see a public interest if they had foresworn sex or nudity or something, and they were using that to build an image or reputation. But that’s not the case. This was just another married couple having sex.

So I leave you with these questions. Should the press be allowed to publish these images? Should it be criminal to invade privacy in matters like this? And where would you draw the line?

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Not All Speech Should Be Protected

I love the internet. It’s provided me with hours of entertainment, it’s let me sell a book, and it’s let me meet all of you. That’s pretty darn cool. But the internet does have a downside. Specifically, it lets the most hateful turds do their best to intimidate those they don’t like. We need a law, dammit!! Actually, we don’t.

It really is undeniable that the internet can be a problem, particularly when it comes to “hate speech.” Indeed, some corners of the internet are a seething cauldron of hate and idiocy. But here’s the thing, we don’t need laws to stop hate or idiocy. For one thing, hate and idiocy don’t actually harm us. Sticks and stones, my friends. So why do we need more laws to stop things that don’t really harm us? Isn’t that just using the power of government to force your pet peeves on people?

Not to mention, letting people speak their minds and expose their twisted views is an incredibly useful tool for discovering who you shouldn’t trust. Would you rather know that the normal looking guy in the bowtie thinks Jews are evil creatures, or would you rather only know that he smiles a lot?

Equally problematic is the idea of how we define hate. One person’s hate is another person’s truth. So whose opinion is right, and where will the government draw the line? Moreover, how do you keep the hypersensitive from getting their views imposed through the government? They are the most likely to make such an attempt after all. Do we really trust that the government won’t start declaring things like Christianity “hate speech” merely because it argues that certain acts are immoral? Many liberals already make that argument.

Let’s face it, there are very strong reasons to allow hate speech and there really aren’t any valid ones which justify banning it except that some people don't like it.

But there is another angle to this. Sometimes people hide behind the First Amendment to do more than just spew hate and stupidity. Indeed, they cross over that line and advocate violence. Now that, is a real problem.

And that brings me to Jesse Morton, the founder of a militant Muslim website “Revolution Muslim.” Jesse just got sentenced to 11.5 years for making threats against the creators of South Park because of their episode featuring Mohammed in a bear suit. He also admitted to conspiring to solicit the murder of Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris, who drew Mohammed as part of a protest against the intimidation of Danish cartoonists.

Jesse’s conviction is exactly how “hate” speech needs to be curtailed. Rather than trying to ban people from spewing idiotic opinions, we should only punish those cross the line into advocating illegality. Jesse made threats and conspired to make threats involving the injury or murder of other individuals. That is not some nebulous hateful opinion, it is in fact a crime, and has always has been recognized as such since the foundations of our justice system were laid. When he crossed the line from giving opinion to soliciting crimes, he needed to be punished.

In fact, the same thing needs to be done to the army of idiots who are taking to Twitter to issue their own death threats. If you tweet that you will kill someone or rape them or their children, that is a threat and you should be locked up, whether your target is a public figure or not. If you ask someone to kill someone else, then you have solicited murder. If you suggest that it would please you if someone died or was raped, or you simply hope they are killed or raped, that is solicitation. Those are crimes.

The internet is indeed out of control, but it’s not the handful of lunatics whining about racial purity or how everyone else is evil that are the problem. The problem is this group of supposedly normal people who now think it’s acceptable to make threats or solicit crimes against political opponents they don’t like. It’s time these people got rounded up and sent to jail, just like Jesse Morton, so that people stop doing this. If something isn’t done soon, this will spin out of control, if it hasn’t already.

Thoughts?

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My Advice To Social Conservatives

I said last week that social conservatives have not done a great job winning over the public on social issues. There are some minor advances here and there, but for every advance there is full retreat in some other area. I think a change of strategy is called for on all fronts.

Let me start with three broad principles:

● Principle One: It’s time to get rational about the goals social conservatives want to achieve and how to achieve them. This means putting an end to pie-in-the-sky ideas like constitutional amendments to force change. Not only is that easily lampooned in light of the conservative claim to states’ rights, but it’s pointless because there is simply no way to get any constitutional amendment through the Congress and then passed by enough states. It is impossible, and talking about it wastes time and diverts resources from better causes. Moreover, talking about changing the constitution, scares the public, who will automatically see this as extreme and dangerous. So drop the idea of trying to solve everything with one shot and learn the art of incrementalism, i.e. achieving your goal little by little. This isn’t sexy, but it’s the only effective way to achieve controversial goals under our system.

● Principle Two: Drop the harsh rhetoric. The fiery pulpit speeches may work well in church, but the public sees them differently. To the public, they are evidence that social conservatives are hateful people who can’t deal with the modern world and who want to judge everyone else. This is a self-inflicted wound.

● Principle Three: You can’t win with religion-based arguments. Those simply don’t work with the modern public because the vast majority of the public doesn’t see the Bible as the thing which runs their day-to-day lives. Indeed, while 90% of the public claims to believe in God, only 40% claim to go to church “regularly” (there is reason to believe the real number is closer to 20%). And even of those who go, there is a disconnect between what the churches teach and how people live their lives -- the classic example of this are Catholics, who love the Pope, but ignore his rules. And even then, different denominations and different religions have different views about what their religion tells them, e.g. some accept gay marriage, some don’t. So premising arguments on religion is a bad start because you lose most of your audience. Moreover, in making these arguments, social conservatives end up bypassing the stronger arguments they should be making.

Ok, now let’s look at specific policies.

● Abortion: Abortion is an area where social conservatives are largely doing it right because they’ve adopted incrementalism. In the 1980s and early 1990s, abortion opponents kept looking for the home run, and it never came. It wasn’t until they learned to take the issue step by step that they began to make progress. The goal right now should be to entirely eliminate public funding, which is what keeps the abortion lobby alive, and to impose restrictions which the public will find reasonable.

One thing that needs to be dropped is this ridiculous idea of extending 14th Amendment rights to fetuses. Not only does this scare people, and thus is counterproductive, but it cannot pass, and it is almost the classic example of unintended consequences. Give fetuses rights and they can sue pregnant women if they don’t stop smoking or drinking or otherwise fail to follow doctor’s orders. This is a Pandora’s box of legal insanity which liberal interest groups will gleefully use to invade families. Think twice people.

● Gays: The gay marriage battle is lost. Yes, it won’t gain any more support in conservative states for the moment, but this issue is inevitable because the younger public really doesn’t see gays as a threat. Indeed, gays have pretty much proven there is nothing to fear from gay marriage. So so-cons better find proof fast to refute this.

A better strategy would be to switch over to a religious freedom argument. Right now, social conservatives have let themselves by placed on the wrong side of the gay marriage debate because gays have argued they are the ones seeking “freedom.” The reality is they have freedom and they are really seeking to use government power to impose their beliefs on others. But so-cons aren’t arguing that. Instead, they talk about “morality,” which is a loser. What they need to do is argue the religious freedom aspect, i.e. that gays are seeking to take away freedom by forcing others to accept them. Americans always vote for whoever is offering the greater freedom, so-cons need to learn to explain this better.

I also recommend giving serious thought to getting the government out of the marriage business entirely, as I discussed HERE.

● Drugs: Social conservatives are losing the drug war, particularly marijuana, because they’ve adopted the wrong argument. They’re arguing that drugs are bad for you/society. But that’s a nanny state argument. And indeed, the pro-pot people have merely had to argue that pot isn’t that bad to slowly win over a near-majority. The better argument involves civil freedoms. If we allow people to take drugs, then we either need to change negligence laws dramatically (in ways people really won’t like), or we will end up imposing huge costs on employers, employees and the economy because of the need for widespread drug testing. Why? Because any company that makes any product or provides any service which can injury someone (i.e. any company) will need to take steps to ensure that their workers are not high when they are working. That means widespread drug testing of everyone with a job. Right now the argument is “should the government be allowed to stop Person X from smoking pot at home.” But the argument should be, “are YOU willing to undergo constant drug testing to protect your employer from lawsuits just because the government decides to legalize drugs for the few who want it?” That’s a very different matter. I’ve discussed this HERE.

● Religious Freedom: This one’s a can of worms. A lot of social conservatives are going down a very dangerous path with the idea of religious freedom laws. Specifically, they are pushing bills which prohibit employers from stopping employees from engaging in religious practices or wearing religious items, e.g. crucifixes. This should send up huge red flags for conservatives. For one thing, conservatives have opposed employment-discrimination-based lawsuits almost across the board when it comes to gays, blacks, women and disability. Why make an exception for religion? Shouldn’t a private employer be entitled to impose whatever restrictions they want on the people they pay to be their employees? Can’t the employees just go elsewhere if they don’t like it?

Further, there is an obvious flaw here which social conservatives are overlooking because they tend to equate the word “religion” with their brand of Christianity: our Constitution doesn’t allow discrimination amongst religions. Thus, if you give people absolute power to act out their religious beliefs at work, that would include things like the wearing of the Islamic veil or separation of men and women, the handling of snakes, the smoking of peyote and whatever other crazy ideas these fringe religions can dream up.

This also applies to things like prayer in schools. If you seek legislation to allow that nice Protestant Principal to say a prayer each morning, except that your kids may also find themselves forced to sit through an Islamic prayer or Buddhist ritual or even an atheist’s speech. Unless you want other religions forced upon you and your children, it is best to always keep in mind that any new power you give yourself can be used by others as well.

Frankly, the best bet here is to vote with your feet and your wallets. Don’t support businesses which are hostile to your religious beliefs. Do support friendly ones. Stop seeing movies, watching television shows, or buy videogames with bad messages in them. Use the power of boycott. Send your kids to religious schools and volunteer to make sure those schools are the best (a shining example). In this regard, support legislation which lets federal money follow the students to whatever schools they choose -- trust people to make the right choices rather than trying to use the government to force the right choices upon them. Remember, you have to win people over, you can’t force them to believe what you want them to believe.

The big takeaway here is that social conservatives need to learn to speak to people who don’t share their religious beliefs -- framing things in religious terms simply will not work for anyone who doesn’t agree with your religious beliefs. They need to learn that a thousand small victories are better than the false hopes of complete victory in fell swoop. And they need to think more about the unintended consequences of the policies they propose and they need to realize that others will get to use the same powers they create in the law.

Thoughts?


P.S. Don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site.
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Video Game Violence: What About The Parents?!

Being a huge proponent of freedom of speech AND a believer that videogames, television, advertising and films can negatively distort people’s perceptions of reality, you would think I would be torn about yesterday’s 7-2 decision by the Supreme Court striking down a law that prevents minors from buying violent videogames. But I’m not. The court got it wrong, pure and simple.

The issue before the Supreme Court was a California law that makes it illegal for retailers to sell violent videogames to minors. The law defines “violent” as games that depict the “killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.” It carried fines up to a $1,000.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia struck down the law, saying that the First Amendment applies to “entertainment,” and thus, videogames are afforded the same degree of protection as books and movies. He conceded that states do have a legitimate interested in protecting children, but he held that “does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” And since “disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression,” the law had to be struck down. Indeed, by way of comparison, he noted that television and children’s books throughout history have depicted violence:

“Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore. Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed.”

If we were talking about adults, then I would agree with the court. Free speech is one of our most vital freedoms. It is the way we determine which ideas have value and which don’t. It is how we test our beliefs. And our society is more than strong enough to allow idiots to present stupid, disgusting or wrong ideas without fear that our country will collapse.

But we’re not talking about adults, and that’s where the court went wrong.

The court should have upheld the law for one simple reason: children do not have freedom of speech rights. If they did, then public education would be virtually impossible as children would have a right to decide which ideas they wanted to be exposed to and which they didn’t. Similarly, parenting would become impossible whenever the state got involved, for example at a child custody hearing, as children would have all the rights of adults.

Justice Thomas made this point in his dissent where he noted that the First Amendment does not “include a right to speak to minors without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.” In other words, children's rights get exercised through their guardians, and the state is well within its rights to say that children may not engage in free speech, or commerce, or gun ownership or anything else without the approval of those guardians.

Putting this another way, the court’s question of whether disgust is a significant enough basis to restrict the child’s freedom of speech rights is a false premise because the child has no such rights in the first place. Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer (the other dissenter) backed this point when he noted that the state was not trying to bar the minor having such material, it only required the approval of a guardian:

“The statute prevents no one from playing a video game, it prevents no adult from buying a video game, and it prevents no child or adolescent from obtaining a game provided a parent is willing to help.”

Breyer also made the less principled, but quite logical point that since the court still forbids children from buying pornography, the court has created an incredible hypocrisy here:

“What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?”

The dissent is correct. This was a mistake.

And let me be clear, I’m not siding with the “what about the children” crowd. That’s sophist nonsense used to hide true motivations and is usually advanced by busybodies who want to rule over others lives. What I’m talking about here is respecting the right of parents/guardians to make decisions regarding their children. If this law had tried to ban children from being given such material, then I would have supported the court’s decision. But it didn’t. All it did instead was try to prevent retailers from circumventing the rights of guardians/parents to make decisions for their children. That is well within the constitution and no rights are violated by such a statute.

How can we legitimately tell parents that raising kids is their responsibility when we take away the state’s power to help parents enforce those decisions.

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Osama Bin Laden Round Up Post

Osama bin Laden continues to dominate the news cycle, though the enthusiasm for discussing the goat-molester seems to be fading quickly. Hence, we are now in the end game where political theater and side-issues dominate the discussion. So let’s round up all the remaining issues related to Osama and be done with him.

1. Obama the (In)Action Hero: The Democrats are trying VERY hard to turn this Osama death into the moment that saved Obama’s sinking presidency. In fact, they are calling it Obama’s “Defining Moment.” This is pretty funny since he’s already had “Defining Moments” (1) when he spoke in Denver, (2) when he signed the doomed stimulus, (3) when he passed the disastrous ObamaCare, (4) when he failed at Copenhagen, (5) when he made his decision in Afghanistan to announce that we would fight until we would quit, (6) when he finally got around to asking whose ass to kick in the BP incident, (8) when he passed financial (non)regulation, (9) when he wiped out don’t ask don’t tell, (9) when he gave his meandering and pointless State of the Union speech . . . the trains! the trains!, (9) when he signed the new START missile treaty (yawn), and (10) when he let the British and French invade Libya without even mentioning the fact to Congress. Are you seeing a pattern?

To make this one stick, the Democrats are hailing his bravery for giving an order that was suggested to him by the military (seriously, find the leader in the photo above). In fact, if you think about it, this is a pretty silly “defining moment” as all he did was step out of the way and let the professionals do their job.

In any event, this is a futile effort. Depending on the poll, the bounce he’s gotten from this event is around 0% because all the bounces have been within the margin of error. That’s pretty sad, but it’s not unexpected. How exactly does Obama deserve the credit for this? He did nothing more than say, "duh, ok." And in truth, what credit is there anyway? It’s nice that bin Laden is dead, but it really doesn’t change anything as he hasn’t been relevant to Islamic terrorism for a long time now. That's hardly an event to define a presidency.

2. Afghanistan Is Won? Really?: Several articles appeared yesterday where liberal journalists claimed that the death of Osama meant the end of the road in Afghanistan. Apparently, al Qaeda will now be demoralized and quit. Really? And what planet are you idiots from? The Taliban are not al Qaeda, and as anyone who has read the history of the region knows, the Taliban and al Qaeda barely even get along. Why should the death of the bankrupt Osama bin Laden, who had becoming nothing more than a figurehead, lead them to surrender their own country. . . a country they still largely control despite the best efforts of NATO over the past eleven years? Moreover, al Qaeda isn’t the problem in the rest of the Middle East either. Libya = Qaddafi. . . Egypt = the Muslim Brotherhood. . . Saudi Arabia = Wahhabism. . . Palestine = Hamas. . . Iraq = civil war. . . Syria = the Baathist. . . and everywhere equals Iran. The death of bin Laden is viscerally nice, but changes nothing.

3. Twitter For Dummies: Twitter is fast becoming the tool of choice for idiots to expose themselves. The latest is Pittsburgh Steeler Rashard Mendenhall, who exposed himself as a Truther and condemned the people who were celebrating Osama’s death. He specifically claimed that we are acting prematurely because we only know one side of the whole 9/11 story. . . he apparently forget that bin Laden claimed credit for it.

People are now calling for the Steelers to cut Mendenhall. Others are whining that this would violate both his rights of free speech and his (and Osama’s) right of the presumption of innocence. Sigh. Don’t they teach the basics of the constitution anymore? The right to free speech and right to a presumption of innocence are rights you possess vis-à-vis the government. . . not the public. We have every right to fire you, demand your termination, ridicule you and conclude that you are guilty as heck. So please stop complaining that the backlash against your stupidity is somehow a violation of your rights.

4. There’s No Moral Equivalence: Many leftists, like Slate magazine are whining about people celebrating bin Laden’s death and they are equating that with Arabs dancing through the streets when the Twin Towers went down. Give me a break. Anyone equating these two is an idiot, and there is no nicer way to say it. To equate a brief outpouring of joy at the death of a tyrant and murderer with a mass (violent) rally reveling in the murder of 3,000 innocent civilians shows that these commentators simply have no moral compass that lets them judge events with any level of reason. What makes this worse is that these idiots actually think they are morally superior, when the truth is they are morally vacant, bereft of the careful debate of thousands of years of human thinking on morality and ethics.

5. No, There’s Nothing Wrong With Killing Osama: Many leftists, especially pacifists like the Germans, are now worrying that the killing of Osama might not have been legal. On the one hand, I love this because the same monster the Democrats have been feeding for a generation is now eating them. On the other hand, I feel like flying to Germany and slapping these purse-carrying Eurotrash effeteists. Again, what makes this all the more annoying is that they think they’re the ones being morally superior. Yet, their sicko views result in tyranny because they argue against good men and women standing up to tyrants. And their views result in all out war because you can’t kill the handful of tyrants at the top who are calling the shots. So how moral is it to advocate policies that lead to the deaths of millions of people to avoid the shooting of a handful of monsters?

6. Stop Worrying About Inflaming Muslims: Finally, stop worrying about angering Muslims. Muslims respect one principle: might makes right. It’s everywhere in their culture. By kowtowing to their feelings, you are simply showing yourselves to be weak. Secondly, Islamic terror groups will lie no matter what you do, so this idea of being cautious to avoid inflaming the Arab street is pointless. This is like refusing to say anything nasty about Hitler for fear of angering other Nazis. It’s stupid. And finally, stop denying yourself the best weapons in the arsenal -- the ability to exploit their superstitions to terrify them if they choose to take up arms. So you'd rather kill them on the battlefield than scare them away from fighting. How does that make sense?

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Ban Free Speech, Are You Kidding?

There have been many proposed responses to the Giffords shooting. Some of them are dumber than others, but all are stupid, especially the idea that we should be limiting freedom of speech. That's a horrible idea.

Here are few of the proposed responses to the Giffords shooting:

• Encase the entire House and Senate floor with Plexiglass to stop tourists from throwing something at the Congress (and presumably keep Congress from throwing poop back). ~Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.

How does a shooting at a grocery store lead to the idea that we need to protect the Congress floor from tourists. . . the same tourists who are already searched before they enter the building? There is no logic here. And if this sounds like the Cone of Silence to you or the Ape House at the San Diego Zoo, then you’re smarter than Dan Burton.

• Ban the carrying of a firearm within 1,000 feet of any “high-profile” public officials. ~Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

For starters, these “high-profile public officials” move around. Are you seriously going to arrest people who have a right to carry a gun the moment a Congresscritter hops on a bus with them? Secondly, if someone wants to kill a Congresscritter, they aren’t going to care about a 1,000 feet gun-ban zone. By definition, laws do not deter these people. All this will do is disarm those who might save the Congresscritter.

• The federal government should impose tougher drug laws because the Tucson shooter smoked pot. ~David Frum, Hack

Let me repeat, people who want to assassinate politicians do not care about the law. Moreover, pot hardly inspires people to violence. To the contrary, it inspires laziness and the munchies. Poor thinking Dave. Dave’s not home man.

• Use the Federal Communication Commission to force Rush Limbaugh off the air. ~Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.

Right, because political oppression and silencing the opposition keeps paranoids from deciding to kill people, and if we can just force people to stop disagreeing it would be a wonderful world.

• Make it illegal to say things that might be considered ‘threatening’ about lawmakers. ~Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa.

Down with free speech! Ok, let's hit this issue of curtailing free speech straight up:

First, the Constitution forbids it, thank God. End of argument.

Secondly, what gives anyone the right to decide what another may say or think? And if we’re going to play that game, what makes you think you’re going to get to decide what it is that everyone else says or thinks?

Third, how does it make any sense to limit free speech when there’s no evidence that any speech incited this guy to do the shooting? He’s a nut. He shot her because he didn’t like the answer she gave to a nonsense question he asked in 2007.

Fourth, where do we draw the line? The New York Times drew a target on Peyton Manning. Was that hate speech? Should we just ban the symbol or also the word “target” or both? Or should we only ban it when it’s used against a person, as in “he’s the target of this investigation”? Do we only ban words that involve shooting? What about words that involve blowing things up? What about words that imply stabbings? Or beatings? Or do we ban beating words only when they include a hint of death? Do we ban “beat him within an inch of his life” or just “beat him to death”? What about words that have become euphemisms? “Take out” usually refers to Chinese food, but we should probably ban that in case it gets used to mean a person. What about “I hate”? That’s dehumanizing and it implies feelings of violence and aggression, should we ban that?

What about “f*ck the cops?” That clearly implies a threat of violence against the police. So do we ban rap music? What about films that inspire violence? A film about an assassination or a bombing could set the unstable off. So could a Discovery Channel show about assassinations, now that I think about it. And if we are going to ban movie violence, how do we decide which kind of movie violence will inspire violence? How about a slap in a romantic comedy? What about cartoon violence? What if the next killer kills because a non-violent cartoon dog told him too? Do we ban cartoon dogs? What about cartoon cats? John Hinckley wanted to get Jodi Foster’s attention, should we ban anyone who can get the attention of a crazy person? Maybe Letterman should be taken off the air, he has a stalker, so there must be something about him that inspires crazy people -- that could cause the unstable to kill someone.

Where do we stop?

Fifth and finally, why are we even drawing lines at all? There are 308 million Americans who did nothing wrong this last weekend, so why are we going to punish them by forcing them to change the way they think and speak and act, by neutering their culture and language, by talking away their entertainment and their rights, just because of the actions of one insane person? I’m sure someone drove drunk too, should be ban cars or alcohol?

If we go down that road, aren't we eventually going to ban everything?

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WikiWrap-Up On WikiLeaks

Over the past couple of months, WikiLeaks has been dripping out classified US government documents by the hundreds of thousands. Now that we have a good idea of what they reveal, let’s address the issues.

Point 1: What the heck was the government thinking?

Lost in this whole affair is the first question we should all be asking: how did a nobody Army Specialist, Bradley Manning, download several hundred thousand sensitive documents about two separate wars and 250,000 diplomatic cables (11,000 of which were marked secret or “nofo” meaning they could not be shared with foreign government) to a personal computer so he could hand them over to WikiLeaks? Who designs a system for storing classified documents that allows such wide-ranging access? Moreover, they apparently only caught Manning because he went online and bragged about being the source. How can that be?

This is the real issue that needs to be solved and the total focus on WikiLeaks' founder is a distraction from the real scandal.

Point 2: What revelations?

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this affair has been the utter lack of revelations. The media claims to have found some, but not a single piece of information produced wasn’t already widely known. Consider these:

● Many governments are run by sexual predators, incompetents or criminals.

● Putin and Berlusconi like to party, as does Gaddafi, who also likes to pout.

● Medvedev is a puppet of Putin, and Russia’s bureaucracy really runs the country.

● Yemen let US troops kill al Qaeda terrorists within their border and tried to pass this sophisticated attack off as having been done by its own primitive security forces with a few US advisors involved.

● Obama used promises and threats to win support for his Copenhagen non-deal deal.

● Mexico’s drug war is not well-focused and is not going well.

● Various Arab states hate and fear Iran, and a couple pleaded with the US to bomb Iran to keep it from getting an atomic bomb.

● Venezuela is not well-liked in the region.

● Iran heavily supported the insurgency in Iraq.

● China is slowly turning against North Korea.

● China authorized cyber attacks against American companies, including Google, and the US Embassy.

● The British royals are inbred idiots who say stupid things.

● Karzai is an erratic jerk who believes in conspiracies and plots but knows little about governing, and his brother is a drug lord.

Anything shocking there? Anything you didn’t already know? I thought not. In fact, the only real revelation of which I am aware is that North Korea managed to send a number of sophisticated missiles to Iran, missiles that are capable of carrying a nuclear payload.

So why is the lack of revelations so interesting? Because it shows us that our government actually is very good at being open and honest with us. And since that is a necessary cornerstone of democracy, this bodes well for our system.

Point 3: Is this disclosure good for democracy?

WikiLeaks founder Julia Assange claims that he leaked this information because secrecy is anathema to good government. To a degree, I agree with that. I am a firm believer in requiring “full disclosure” by government because our government acts in our names and we can only judge our government if we know what it is doing. But the key word there is “doing.”

“Doing” does not include advice given to leaders by their advisors. When you make such advice public, the advisors stop providing complete and honest advice and instead become concerned with how they will appear to the public when their advice is disclosed. That cripples the government because it can no longer get a full picture of its options or the likely consequences of its actions.

“Doing” also does not include information that was provided to the government in a confidential manner. Whether this is corporations sharing trade secrets with the government or individuals turning in neighbors who may be terrorists, allowing the disclosure of such information will prevent people from coming forward with similar information in the future. That prevents the government from getting the information it needs to do its job.

WikiLeaks failed to protect either of these types of information. By turning over private assessments of foreign leaders, WikiLeaks makes it harder for future diplomats to share their private opinions about foreign leaders, which makes it that much harder to spot the potential Hitlers or Ahmadinejads -- which means the US is more likely to work with budding dictators in the future. Likewise, soldiers will now censor their reports, which means the likelihood of casualties (civilian and military) goes up.

WikiLeaks also turned over information that has endangered individual informants. Said a former British military intelligence officer: “Assange has seriously endangered the lives of Afghan civilians. . . the logs contain detailed personal information regarding Afghan civilians who have approached NATO soldiers with information.” This release will prevent future informants from coming forward, and will thereby help terrorists and dictators suppress their people.

Even some of the leading opponents of government censorship have strongly denounced WikiLeaks. Steven Aftergood, editor of Secrecy News, says: “WikiLeaks routinely tramples on the privacy of non-governmental, non-corporate groups for no valid public policy reason. . . this is not whistleblowing and it is not journalism. It is a kind of information vandalism.” Aftergood notes, for example, that WikiLeaks has also published the “secret rituals” of a women’s sorority, “the private rites of Masons, Mormons and other groups that cultivate confidential relations among their members.”

So how can it be good for democracy to have a group of information peeping Toms releasing information that (1) prevents government advisors, diplomats and soldiers from being honest with their bosses, (2) prevents non-government people from sharing information with the government, (3) gets people killed for getting involved with the government, and (4) will make the government much more obsessed with hiding information in the future? If WikiLeaks’ purpose was to open government and make it more responsive, then this is called a “backfire.”

Point 4: What if this had been Bush?

Finally, it is amazing to see the difference between how these leaks are being treated now that they are affecting Obama, rather than Bush. Under Bush, the left was demanding that Bush release the very type of information just released -- they even sued him to get some of it. And they poo-poo’d the Bush Administration’s claims that the release of this type of information would be dangerous.

So they should be happy that this information is finally coming out, right? Wrong. They are treating Assange like a war criminal. They want him hunted down, they don’t even object when people talk about putting him on the terrorist “kill on sight” list. They are happy to believe the rather ridiculous rape charges as true and include that in every mention of his name. They raise no complaints about various governments (possibly including our own) using cyber attacks to keep WikiLeaks offline, nor do they complain when the government leans on and threatens ISPs that host him. It’s amazing how right and wrong changes for the left depending on who is getting hurt.

And let me add another interesting piece to this puzzle. Remember how Obama promised to run the most open government in history and how the left relentlessly pounded Bush for his supposed secrecy? Well get this: last year, the Obama administration marked 54.7 million documents as secret, that’s 10 times the number marked “secret” in 1996 and more than double the maximum amount marked “secret” in any year under Bush. Yet the left says nothing.

I guess “open government” only matter when it’s a Republican president?

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Freedom of Approved Speech

Liberals are nothing if not strong advocates for free speech. Now, admittedly, sometimes they do accept a few restrictions on speech. . . such as speech codes on college campuses, hate crimes laws based on speech they don’t like, banning groups they don’t like from college campuses, banning people with opinions they don’t like from entering their countries, banning books with words they don’t like, blocking websites with “controversial opinions,” censoring radio broadcasts, outlawing blasphemy against Islam, censoring the internet, demanding that their opinions be given equal time on conservative shows, stopping corporations and people they don’t like from giving to politicians, blacklisting people with views they don’t like from certain professions, shouting down speakers they don’t like, disrupting meetings of people they don’t like, conspiring to keep opposing views out of “scientific” journals, taxing conservative websites to support liberal newspapers, firing people who espouse conservative views, removing religious symbols and words from courthouses, statehouses, and schoolhouses, regulating commercial speech, and a few others. But other than those very few instances, Liberals are staunch defenders of free speech.

That’s why it was so very, very strange to hear about the problem they’re having at various liberal websites like the Democratic Underground. Apparently, a few disloyalists are not enamored with the Democrats and our Kenyan overlord. And these dirty secret-fascists apparently have had the poor taste to actually express their views. Shocking!

Well, that’s not good for free speech or the Democratic cause. So the good people at the Democratic Underground have come up with a solution. From now on, you may continue to post all the free speech your bleeding heart desires, with the following exceptions:

• You may no longer post “over-the-top assertions of bad faith” by Obama or the Democrats

• You may not “advocate voting against Democrats, or in favor of third-party or GOP candidates.”

• You may not make “broad-brush smears against Democrats generally [or] broad expressions of contempt toward Democrats generally.”

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention, there are 59 more rules on what speech will be verboten.

Now I debated whether or not I should even mention this, seeing as how this is obviously tangential to the issue of freedom of speech. Indeed, except for a few fringe Hitler-lovers, I can’t imagine anyone would see this as limiting freedom of speech in any way, right? And I’m sure you feel the same way. . . after all, you don’t like Hitler. . .do you?

In any event, this whole thing has given me some ideas. I think it’s time we too expanded the freedom of speech at our stuffy website. So in the hopes of encouraging true free speech, I announce the new posting rules. From now on:

• You may not criticize Republicans in any way that uses words shorter than seven letters, or longer than six letters.

• You may no longer mention Pelosi’s Botox treatments. Humans need oxygen, vampires need blood, Big Bird needs meth, and Pelosi needs Botox. . . that’s how nature made us, and it’s just not right to turn that into a criticism.

• You may no longer mention Barack’s real middle name -- Trevor. Because that makes his initials BTO, which was not a very good band.

• Speaking of bands, no more threats against Lady Gaga. She is third in line for the British throne after all and we could use the support with a Commentarama Tax Bill we’re trying to get through Parliament.

• And no more poking fun at Joe Biden. I can’t prove it, but I know you’re all making up those quotes you keep attributing to him. . . no one can be that stupid.

If you live by these simple rules, then you won’t be jailed. If you don’t, then I’m going to write to the fishysnitch e-mail address about you and you’ll learn how much liberals love secret police departments.


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