By Clarice Feldman, AM THINKER 23.7.23<
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Democrats in Congress and their legacy media enablers dropped their veils this week, revealing how dear they hold their desire and capacity to censor truth. The drop came during Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s testimony about vaccines and shows how frightened they are that he may out-primary their demented puppet Joe Biden and his cackling numbskull veep.
The New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg tweeted:
“Despite the theater, the hearing raised thorny questions about free speech in a democratic society: Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment. When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?”
Her comment was apparently inspired by Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz, who sought to hide his testimony from the public by moving it to executive session. When that failed, she and other Democrats on the committee peppered him with questions and denied him an opportunity to respond. Ranking Democrat Stacey Plaskett, in the context of an investigation of the censorship by the FBI and other agencies, said in her opening statement “I hope that [all members] recognize that there is speech that is not constitutionally protected,” referencing “hate speech.” Her views, wrong as they are, echo similar censorship fan Senator Ben Cardin.
Professor Jonathan Turley took strong issue with this distortion of the First Amendment. Surveys show that college students are especially indoctrinated to believe the Schultz-Plaskett-Stolberg fallacy about the limits on free speech. (Students surveyed indicate it should be a criminal offense to misgender someone.) You might want to read his very sound rebuttal. Misinformation is protected, “simply stating something that others view as misleading or wrong [ed: or offensive to the listener] is protected under the First Amendment.”
That Amendment makes no distinction between different types of speech:
“Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech.”
“[I]t is unconstitutional to criminalize lies.”
The idea that you can permit the government to decide true from false statements will always be selectively enforced to protect the interests of the officeholders.
“What is so troubling,” he concludes, “is how the ‘legacy media’ has jettisoned the most noble aspects of its legacy and has become the enabler of censors.”
Censorship, whether it is direct or indirect through threats to social media (enjoined by Judge Terry A. Doughty in Missouri v. Biden a few weeks ago) is a danger to us. We saw how the serious concerns about the COVID vaccine by reputable scientists were blocked from public view; how bad medical treatment (use of ventilators for COVID victims) and denial of alternative therapies cost lives; how exaggeration of COVID mortality locked down schools, businesses, and place of worship, magnifying terror in those who misunderstood the degree of risk. Indeed, the overblown coverage paved the way for overriding sensible election integrity laws and surely enabled fraud.
For almost three years the extensive videotapes of the J6 Capitol riot were kept hidden from the public. Now they are released and people are closely examining them. What they show in clear relief is that the crowd of thousands peacefully assembled for thirty minutes on the Capitol’s West Plaza, and were brutally and deliberately attacked for exercising their right to freely assemble.
Here is the timeline of the beginning of events there, and it is matched by videoframes of the event.
- It begins at 1:13 when Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Thau arrives and requests “blast munitions.”
- Four minutes later he orders the police snipers to continue firing into the crowd.
- Eleven minutes later he tased a random protestor.
- At 1:25 blast and incendiary munitions arrive and for about one hour “Capitol and DC police incite the crowd with an unrelenting barrage of grenades and mortars.”
- Three minutes into the attack, Kevin Greeson, part of the crowd, drops dead, witnesses alleging he was killed by one of the grenades.
- Without giving the three warnings required by D.C. protocol, the police use their long-range acoustic device to clear the crowd. This conduct, which incited the peaceful crowd, violated the law. “DC police Sgt. Edwards admits to his Commander that they are inciting ten protestors for every person they hit.”
- At 2:25 more 40 mm munitions arrive and Thau orders “Officer ‘Rich’ to shoot a CS mortar ‘over the scaffolding. Rich “misfires and gases the entire DC police line, causing them to retreat.”
It looks like something out of the Three Stooges. If you think this was not deliberate, but understandable because these officers were ill-trained, remember that outgoing President Trump asked the mayor for permission to call up the National Guard, which has better training for such things, and she refused. So did “security officials at the House and Senate” when the then-chief of the Capitol Police six times requested it.
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