Sarasota Signage: Defeat Obama in 2012

This sign--"Defeat Obama in 2012"--at a major intersection in downtown Sarasota, Florida, has stirred up some controversy, but the city attorney says that it is protected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment. Local businessman Michael Fox is responsible for installing the sign.

Lawyer Sues Ex For Online Posting Claiming He Cheated

Remember that old joke about the fictional law firm by the name of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe?

Well, a prominent Connecticut lawyer is suing two jilted ex-girlfriends for posting negative feedback (is there any other kind?) about his alleged cheating on liarscheatersrus.com--a website that bills itself as "simply a source of support and discussion regarding the topic of infidelity and betrayal of trust."

The attorney's civil lawsuit alleges tortuous interference with prospective business relations.

Regardless of who did what to whom in terms of unfaithfulness, perhaps the most sordid aspect of this dispute is that the women are being representative by publicity seeking ambulance chaser Gloria Allred, who seemingly specializes in press conferences rather than actual appearances in court.

New Year's Resolution: Stop SOPA

The attempt by government bureaucrats to get their regulatory hooks into your vitamin supplements is bad enough--now they want to come after the Internet.

Bipartisan opposition does, however, seem to be mounting against the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)--which could lead to censorship on the web--that is pending in Congress.

Here's what the Electronic Frontier Foundation had to say about this onerous bill:

The "Stop Online Piracy Act"/"E-PARASITE Act" (SOPA) and "The PROTECT IP Act" (PIPA) are the latest in a series of bills which would create a procedure for creating (and censoring) a blacklist of websites. These bills are updated versions of the “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act" (COICA), which was previously blocked in the Senate. Although the bills are ostensibly aimed at reaching foreign websites dedicated to providing illegal content, their provisions would allow for removal of enormous amounts of non-infringing content including political and other speech from the Web.

...Had these bills been passed five or ten years ago, even YouTube might not exist today — in other words, the collateral damage from this legislation would be enormous.

 Important Internet pioneers have also registered their strong opposition according to PCWorld:

What happens when you combine an overzealous drive to fight Internet piracy, with elected representatives who don’t know the difference between DNS, IM, and MP3? You get SOPA--draconian legislation that far exceeds its intended scope, and threatens the Constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. And it may just pass.

An open letter to Congress written by luminaries of the Internet, such as Vint Cerf--co-designer of TCP/IP, and Robert W. Taylor--founder of ARPAnet among others, implores Congress to back off and squash both SOPA, and its sibling PIPA legislation. The letter states, “If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.”

The letter goes on to ominously caution Congress. “If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive."

...If the bill passes, it could have devastating, cascading consequences that ripple across the Internet and affect the freedom and civil liberties of every citizen of the United States. It seems our current elected representatives may just be dumb and/or crazy enough to pass it, though—so speak up and let your representative and senators know what you think of SOPA.

Members of Congress such as Darrell Issa and Jason Chafetz (see videos below) are leading the the effort to keep the Internet open and free. Have you contacted your congressional representative to stop SOPA?

Appeals Court Reinstates Political Discrimination Lawsuit

As we mentioned in a prior post about James Franco, adjunct or part-time college faculty (i.e., without tenure or job security) usually have to navigate a public relations minefield in terms of student evaluations to make sure their contracts get renewed.

Getting a college teaching job (and especially qualifing for a full-time or tenured positon) often requires a strong publishing track record, but there's a Catch-22 in relation to political ideology: Try getting hired or promoted in academia if you have right-of-center publications or activity. In general, fuggedaboutit.

So anyone who supports the First Amendment should applaud the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit for reinstating a political discrimination case for trial in federal district court.

As a result of the appellate panel's ruling, Teresa Wagner "who alleges she was denied a job at the University of Iowa College of Law because of her conservative politics can proceed with a discrimination lawsuit against the school’s former dean," The Wall Street Journal reports.

Wagner, a registered Republican and known social conservative, was a part-time instructor at the college's Writing Resource Center who was turned down for a full-time gig despite apparently having the appropriate credentials and recommendations. A lower court judge had dismissed the case but the appeals court determined that there was enough of a dispute over whether then law school dean Carolyn Jones “would have made the same hiring decisions in the absence of Wagner’s political affiliations and beliefs” to put the case back on the trial docket.

According to the On Brief blog, there is only one registered Republican among the 50 faculty members at Iowa's law school.

Wisconsin Teacher Threatened for Speaking Out

A Wisconsin teacher who exercised her First Amendment rights to support Scott Walker and oppose the attempt to unseat him in the recall effort is being harassed and threatened by union operatives using "Saul Alinsky" tactics:




BigGovernment.com notes the irony: "We could have sworn we recently read something about teachers unions in various states working to curb school bullying. Apparently they don’t practice what they preach."

The sky actually didn't fall after Walker's modest collective bargaining reforms went into effect:

Court Rejects Free-Speech Challenge To Anti-Terror Law

Guess which recently appointed "moderate" was on of the dissenting justices in this case?

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a law that makes it a crime to provide "material support" to designated foreign terrorist groups, even when the support involves training or advice on humanitarian activities.

The 6-3 decision marked the first time the high court had looked at restrictions on free speech in U.S. anti-terrorism policy since the 9/11 attacks. Monday's decision strengthens the hand of government to block any form of support, no matter how peaceful or seemingly benign, to foreign terrorist groups.

The majority emphasized that it was endorsing restrictions on coordinated work with foreign terrorist groups but not on any independent work a humanitarian organization might do on its own.

It is a federal crime to knowingly provide material support or resources to an entity designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. Real-world question: What kind of rational, responsible group or individual would render "peaceful or seemingly benign" help to a terrorist group in the first place?

In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority (which included retiring Justice Stevens) explained that...

Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups—legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds—all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks...Providing foreign terrorist groups with material support in any form also furthers terrorism by straining theUnited States’ relationships with its allies and undermining cooperative efforts between nations to prevent terrorist attacks...

The Preamble to the Constitution proclaims that the people of the United States ordained and established that charter of government in part to “provide for the common defence.” As Madison explained, “[s]ecurity against foreign danger is . . . an avowed and essential object of the American Union...” We hold that, in regulating the particular forms of support that plaintiffs seek to provide to foreign terrorist organizations, Congress has pursued that objective consistent with the limitations of the First and Fifth Amendments.

Why Is The FCC Trying To Regulate The Internet?

Even well-meaning people sometimes put too much faith in government oversight. While the private sector can be corrupt, government bureaucracy combines corruption with incompetence. In an attempt to circumvent the courts, the Federal Communications Commission launched a rulemaking that would ultimately allow it to regulate Internet service providers as if they were public utilities. Despite all the high-minded political rhetoric from the supporters of so-called "Net neutrality," the end game, unfortunately, is control over content, a clear violation of the First Amendment. As noted on HotAir.com, "Only a government that fears open-source communication would see the Internet as a failing enterprise in need of top-down government control."

The American Spectator sums up this latest power grab as follows:

Under the Obama Administration's plan, the FCC would be able to enforce so-called "net neutrality" rules, allowing the federal government to set how broadband and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) manage the networks. By bringing broadband and the Internet under FCC regulatory oversight, the FCC would also be able to impose policies related to speech or online business models.

Reason.tv released this video in opposition to the FCC's initiative:



And Americans for Prosperity came out with this video:

Patriotic, Concerned Americans Exercise Their Constitutional Rights

Whether you supported or opposed the Bush administration (and many of us on the right disagreed with a number of his policies as well as his curious inability not to respond to irresponsible accusations), the left spent eight years vilifying and caricaturing President Bush and his appointees and officials in the most offensive way. But the "Democrat-Media complex" barely said a word.

In fact, the media celebrated this so-called exercise of free speech and dissent as patriotism. Now apparently it is a horrible, disgusting hate crime if you in good faith oppose the policies of the Obama administration and its legislative water-carriers on Capitol Hill, especially the loathesome effort that rammed through the healthcare bill against the wishes of the majority of the American people. If you peacefully assemble--e.g., everyday, often non-ideological Americans participating in the Tea Party movement--you are demonized and marginalized. You are part of a mob engaging in "hate speech." Any criticism of the administration's march towards socialism apparently also means you are also a racist, sexist, and homophobe. C'mon; in the year 2010, isn't this lame propaganda getting a little tedious? Ironically, about the only people that still pay attention to it, unfortunately, are those in the mainstream (i.e., lamestream) media who feel comfortable in their own parallel universe.

Michelle Malkin just wrote an excellent column addressing the left's "faking the hate":

...the Left never takes a break from falsely accusing the Right of fomenting hatred and violence through political speech. The MSM never takes a break from whitewashing leftist intolerance, death threats, and extremism — and engaging in selective reporting (or rather, non-reporting) of the long history of leftists’ manufacturing of hatred for political gain...Then, as now, being a Democrat Party official means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.

So, some of these recent allegations of threats against Democrats reported in the media appear to be a hoax. But that aside, any kind of violence or threatening behavior is complete unacceptable. It's disgusting. Among fringe elements on the left and right, there are some isolated violent tendencies, but did the media give headline coverage to the African-American man at a Tea Party who was beaten by SEIU thugs in St. Louis last year, or the Republican headquarters in Milwaukee that was vandalized during the November 2008 election cycle?

And by the way, some very vile things were said by the left/liberals about Secretary of State Condi Rice, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, or GOP Chair Michael Steele when he ran for the U.S. Senate, and many others. Again, the media hardly made a peep.

People who engage in these tactics are the enemies of our constitution, and that hardly describes in any way, shape, or form the Tea Party movement or other concerned citizens.

Andrew Breitbart has offered a $10,000 reward for proof that racial epithets were shouted during the March 20 Tea Party protest in Washington. So far, no one has claimed it.

And here's Kevin Jackson schooling a clueless MSNBC "reporter" about these phony, race-baiting accusations:


George Orwell said this about left-wing "journalists" and intellectuals of his day:

Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Don't imagine for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet regime, and suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore.

More on the Tea Party movement and the media here.

Net Neutrality: Government-Run Internet

America does not want government-run healthcare. With the same gusto, most online users--once they get wind of it--reject a proposed government plan to takeover the Internet. BigGovernment.com has an excellent piece on this latest form of federal overreach:

Net neutrality rules enforced by the Federal Communications Commission would allow government bureaucrats to micromanage the Internet — thus sucking out the lifeblood of the digital economy and threatening the dynamism and freedom we’ve come to take for granted online...

The digital economy is currently so dynamic and cutthroat that free-market forces work quickly to correct any undesirable hiccups that arise — all without any micro-managing of the tech industry by government.

Net neutrality advocates insist we need government to preserve an “open” and “free” Internet and claim the market has failed. But they cannot point to any market failures that make the Internet less open or free. In short, the Internet isn’t broken. And it doesn’t need a government fix

The Heartland Institute created an excellent video (which was embeded the BigGovernment article) on net neutrality:

Illegal Foreign Political Contributions? Look In the Mirror

Justice Samuel Alito may have been channeling in a more genteel way his inner Joe Wilson, but President Obama seems to have set up a straw-man argument in railing against the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case.

Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection says that if the Obama has real concerns about illegal foreign contributions to political campaigns, he should appoint a special prosecutor--to investigate his own 2008 presidential run:

And the place the special counsel can start is with Obama's 2008 campaign, which disabled security features in its credit card web portal so as to allow donors to evade restrictions on numerous aspects of the federal campaign laws, including the prohibition on foreign contributions

Given that Obama was wrong that the decision allows foreign campaign contributions, Jacobson suggests that this grandstanding is an attempt to grease the skids for the nomination of an ultra-leftist judicial activist to the Court in the event that Justice Stevens retires at the end of this term.

By the way, campaign commercials get very tedious, but why shouldn't U.S. corporations be placed on the same level playing field as unions when it comes to political speech under the First Amendment?

U.S. Surrenders Internet Control: ICANN Goes International

In general, this policy giveaway seems initially benign--until you consider that many foreign governments run by oppressive, totalitarian dictators lack a fundamental appreciation, shall we say, for freedom of speech. And when you consider how the dysfunctional, corrupt United Nations operates, do we really want a "virtual U.N." playing any role in Internet connectivity?

After complaints about American dominance of the internet and growing disquiet in some parts of the world, Washington has said it will relinquish some control over the way the network is run and allow foreign governments more of a say in the future of the system.

Icann – the official body that ultimately controls the development of the internet thanks to its oversight of web addresses such as .com, .net and .org – said today that it was ending its agreement with the US government.

The deal, part of a contract negotiated with the US department of commerce, effectively pushes California-based Icann towards a new status as an international body with greater representation from companies and governments around the globe.

The Obama administration's foreign policy has run the gamut from inept to devious (and let's remember it has also has put forth its own potentially unconstitutional initiatives to try to control the Internet), so once again we are left with the the fundamental question: how does this policy change make American safer and more secure?