Below is my column in USA Today on the panic among political and media figures at the prospect that Elon Musk might return free speech protections to Twitter. I have long advocated what I call the “First Amendment model” for social media to replicate the standards applied to the government. While I am often called a “free speech absolutist,” I recognize that a social media company (like the government) has some ability to curtail speech containing elements like threats. The question is the baseline, which is far lower when modeled on the First Amendment. This admittedly means that some offensive or false claims will be allowed on social media, which will function closer to a common carrier or other means of communications like telephones. Rather than continue the expanding level of censorship and biased “content modification,” free speech can address such bad speech with better speech.
Here is the column:
The news that Elon Musk wants to go forward with the purchase of Twitter has led to a virtual panic among media, political and academic figures worried that free speech could shortly break out on the social media platform. Former Politico magazine editor Garrett Graff summed up the collective vapors succinctly: “Be afraid, be actually afraid.”
I sincerely hope so.
While Musk had in recent months wavered on his purchase, he said last week that he wants to move forward with a $44 billion offer to buy the social media platform. On Thursday, the judge presiding over Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk for backing out of the original deal gave the world’s richest person until Oct. 28 to reach an agreement on the purchase.
Censorship culture threatens to limit free speech
The free speech community hopes that Musk is still committed to his stated commitment to return free speech protections to the social media giant. In the past 10 years, a censorship culture has not only become deeply embedded at Twitter but also on other social media platforms. The need for censored and limited speech has become an article of faith for many on the left.
I have long admitted to being an “internet originalist,” someone who viewed the internet as the greatest development for free speech since the invention of the printing press. However, the rapid erosion of free speech values – from our Congress to our campuses – has been alarming.
Led by President Joe Biden, Democratic leaders and media figures have demanded corporate censorship and even state censorship to curtail opposing views on issues ranging from climate change to election integrity to public health to gender identity. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, for example, declared, “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”
Now these same figures are fearful of the supposed menace that Musk poses – the prospect that a major social media platform could actually restore free speech protections.
It would reverse the anti-free speech policies of Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who has pledged to regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.”
Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”
Agrawal’s policy of “who can be heard” offers a reverse model for how to develop a new culture at Twitter. Indeed, his emphasis on the limits of the First Amendment is precisely where Musk should start.
I have argued for a “First Amendment approach” for social media companies. While the companies are not legally subject to the First Amendment, they can voluntarily adopt for themselves the same limitations the government faces.
The First Amendment was never intended to be the exclusive definition of free speech. It deals with only one source of limiting free speech – the government. Yet, many of us view free speech as a human right worthy of protection by private companies. We hope Musk does as well.
Twitter could adopt First Amendment standards
Musk could flip the script of those who justify corporate censorship by declaring that the company will follow the same limitations and standards applied to the government on free speech. In other words, if the government could not censor a tweet, Twitter would not do so.
Voluntary adoption of First Amendment standards would get Twitter largely out of the censorship business. The company would have a ready-made list of cases on the scope of permissible speech controls, with a heavy preference for free speech over speech regulation.
Musk would need to take other steps to exorcise a censorship culture at Twitter. One priority should be to order employees to preserve all records of communications with political leaders and organizations. There is growing evidence of backchannels between social media companies and the government and certain groups.
Musk also could help answer questions of how political figures have used the company for “censorship by surrogate” in past years. That should include whether the company has retaliated against critics, especially conservatives, by withholding blue check marks that help to validate an account’s worth or by using other methods to depress the profile of certain accounts.
The panic evident among media and political figures reflects the fact that, if Musk is serious about free speech, the system of corporate censorship might collapse. With a free speech option in the market, many users are likely to return to Twitter. They are less likely to remain on sites like Facebook, where censorship is not only rampant but also the subject of a campaign to get people to embrace what the company euphemistically calls “content modification.”
Earlier this year, when Musk first appeared likely to buy Twitter, leading advocates for corporate censorship like Hillary Clinton turned to good old-fashioned state censorship. Clinton called upon Europe to pass laws that could force Musk to censor views or face punitive fines. She pushed countries to act “before it’s too late.”
A committee in the British Parliament seemed to answer Clinton’s call by asking Musk to appear for questioning.
Recently, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern received gushing praise when she spoke to the United Nations and called for a system of global censorship. Ardern is the smiling, cheerful face of modern censorship.
She revealed how sweeping such a system would likely be and defended the need for censorship to combat those who question climate change and to stop “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology.”
She left out that governments would determine what ideas or dissenting views are too dangerous to allow.
Euronews correspondent Shona Murray recently tweeted, “The end of Twitter as we know it is nigh.” If we are lucky, that is precisely what Musk will bring about.
Musk has already earned a place in history for his accomplishments in an array of fields, from transportation to space. However, restoring free speech to social media would rank as his greatest gift to humanity. It would not be “Twitter as we know it,” and that would be a great thing.
Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
Ultimately each and every individual is responsible for their own actions. No one in person or online can make you do something, no matter what they say. That would be akin to saying “The Devil made me do it”. Just as that is not an acceptable defense, neither is “We need to monitor and control what people say online because without our filter heaven knows what people will think or do?” Falsehood, lies, misinformation, dangerous, unhealthy, deadly, don’t care. It’s up to you to research and vet everything you read or hear, no matter what the source, including so called “experts” with a very skeptical eye.
A forum with no moderation can easily get taken over by middle school type bullying, profanity, personal attacks, personal defamation, doxxing, dictators trying to claim another country’s citizens should be killed. It can be taken over by the likes of the Q movement or other conspiratorial cult. It is hard to maintain a high level of discourse when a site is taken over by all of that. But people like Trump don’t like it because they thrive best in an environment where name calling is permitted and false information is treated equally to truthful information.
I think if you look through most of the people who are banned or temporarily restricted by twitter it is things like that. If Musk does away with any moderation standards, that is what will ensue.
BabyTrump still has that receptive aphasia problem. It was the democrats in 2001 and 2017 that screamed “we was robbed”. The past 3 years conservatives were shouting down speakers and demonstrating in front of officials homes, elected and unelected !!!. I need to slide over to that dimension and check it out. Should be entertaining.
I tried to use twitter, but never found value for me. Obviously, millions of others find value. Good for them.
Twitter seems to be a free advertising platform for media. The can throw up links to their content, and others can ‘retweet those posts. Quickly several hundred retweets has spread the article to a million followers.
What we learned, twitter can just a quickly kill a story by not allowing the subject. Or throttling retweets of content, twitter does not like.
I have no idea what Musk can, or will do, in making changes. But if he makes it transparent, allows content from all views, Simple restrictions concerning minors, and violence, are easy and simple to implement. Almost all other content should be allowed. That includes things like racists and nazis. They exist, lets shine light on them.
“ Almost all other content should be allowed. That includes things like racists and nazis. They exist, lets shine light on them.”
It “should be” allowed. The problem is the person who owns the platforms has ultimate authority on what is allowed. What Turley and other critics of twitter’s so called “censorship culture” don’t realize is that they are essentially telling someone else how to run their platform, business or whatever because they don’t like the fact that they CAN do what they want with THEIR creation. There is a very specific reason why every social media entity has Terms and conditions and asks everyone if they agree with them or not before they join. The sad thing is people rarely read these terms and conditions and don’t realize these are legally binding contacts. People literally give away their freedom of speech the moment they agree to THEIR terms. Just like Trump found out that he HAD to go thru court in California to contest his removal from twitter because the terms and conditions he agreed to specifically says all disputes have to be arbitrated in a California court. Obviously he or whoever signed him up never read thru the TOS carefully or just plain ignored it.
What Turley and other critics of twitter’s so called “censorship culture” don’t realize is that they are essentially telling someone else how to run their platform,
This from a troll that tells Turley how to run his site. 100 times per post.
There is not an organism on the planet that lacks approaches the level of self awareness of a leftist
Iowan2, I don’t tell Turley how to run his blog. I’ve criticized his hypocrisy, views, and false claims.
You’re confusing criticism, mockery, or expressing an opposing view with telling him how he should run his site.
Don’t be making stuff up because you don’t like me and other’s posts.
Your problem is your lies and ignorance. You run away from the truth.
So is your own ignorance and lying S. Meyer. You avoid the truth as it were contagious.
I don’t need to avoid the truth. You do because you have no facts, and don’t debate them when brought to the table. Every discussion with you starts from scratch. You are unable to remember what was said before.
Ad hominem is not argument
Svelaz, you would not know hypocrisy if it bit you in the ass.
Look in a mirror. There you will see it plain as day.
Turley is not perfect, but he is certainly not a hypocrit, nor does he make false claims.
To the extent he has a problem is that he has not YET fully grasped the much broader implications of the facts he reports.
John B. Say, Turley is certainly a hypocrite. It’s not hard to miss unless you willfully ignore it like you do.
He also has made quite a lot of false claims even serous journalists have pointed out. Joe Patrice at Above The Law has quite a few examples. It’s painfully obvious. He is not fully grasped the implications of the facts because he’s deliberately making false claims in order to support his disingenuous narratives.
Where’s the meat?
“John B. Say, Turley is certainly a hypocrite. It’s not hard to miss unless you willfully ignore it like you do.”
and yet, just a vague claim – no evidence.
“He also has made quite a lot of false claims even serous journalists have pointed out.”
Again vague allegations are not evidence.
“Joe Patrice at Above The Law has quite a few examples.”
Now vague appeals to poor authorities.
So are we talking claims of fact or claims of law ? As I noted you are vague – typical of the left.
If the issue is the law – I would trust Turley 10,000 times more than anyone at above the law.
“It’s painfully obvious. He is not fully grasped the implications of the facts because he’s deliberately making false claims in order to support his disingenuous narratives.”
Do you know how to write a sentence that actually means anything ?
Is there as single testable fact in your entire post ?
I guess we could confirm that Joe Patrice writes at Above the Law.
Svelaz, you need to brush up on your pedantry. Others, like anonymous, are much better at it. Its still pedantry, but yours is very clunky and stupid sounding.
Iowan2, that’s no way to talk about S. Meyer. Shame on you.
Svelaz, Iowan2 was, of course, talking about you, but you want to shift the blame. Let me repeat John’s comment about you. It’s all true and proven daily.
“Svelaz – you are constantly engaging in ad hominem.
You never engage in honest discussion.
In the rare instances your posts are not endless insults and actually make assertions of fact
those alleged facts are nearly always demoonstrably false.
You make egregious errors all the time.
You defame and malign people all the time.
You are wrong nearly all the time.
You never apologize for errors.
You never correct errors.
You are the epitome of dishonest discussion.
You are useful to me and other sane posters here – because you state such foolish and obviously incorrect remarks,
that provides an opportunity to debunk them.
But frankly – you are not even particularly good at “disinformation”.”
This present remark of yours demonstrates how bad you are at disinformation.
He’s still talking about S. Meyer. He’s describing you to a ‘T’.
” the person who owns the platforms has ultimate authority on what is allowed. “
Lack of knowledge on your part. It is a violation of first amendment rights when Twitter acts as a censor for government.
S. Meyer,
“ Lack of knowledge on your part. It is a violation of first amendment rights when Twitter acts as a censor for government.”
LOL! Nope. Twitter can’t violate the 1st amendment if it tried. They don’t censor for the government. They censor when content violates THEIR rules. Private owners of twitter can run their platform as they see fit.
Absence of knowledge on your part is your problem.
Read news that is not censored. Government has violated the 1st amendment by indirectly censoring through Twitter. That is documented and some documentation was presented on this blog.
The abuses of the rule of law, by this administration are far too numerous to list.
—
Recently a father of 11 was arrested by the FBI drug 60 miles to be charged with conspiracy to violate the FACE act and then dumped on the streets without a phone or wallet in his underwear.
What ACT did he perform ? He coordinated the protests with local law enforcement to assure that the protestors were in as much compliance with laws as possible and that there would be no violence and assure the police that protestors would comply with the directions of law enforcement if they were brought in. This person was NOT personally at the protests.
Aparently according to the Biden administration – if you work with law enforcement to assure a peaceful protest, you are a dangerous criminal that requires sending in an FBI SWAT team to arrest and you need to go to federal prison for 11 years.
—
Joe Biden just publicly threatened to suspend military aide to the Saudis for 1 year – if they did not delay their cutback on oil production until after the mid terms.
Didn’t democrats just impeach Trump for purportedly leveraging military aide for political purposes ? A month of secret testimony in the house – that we STILL have not seen and nobody was willing to testify that Trump had actually sought a quid pro quo, that he had threatened to cut off military aide, Biden does so openly.
So why aren’t house democrats drawing up articles of impeachment right now ?
—-
FBI agent at Danchenko Trial TESTIFIES under oath that the FBI had NOTHING – no other sources or intelligence of any kind, nothing from CIA, nothing from NSA, nothing from the FBI’s own databases besides the steele report which he ALSO confirmed they had been unable to verify, prior to requesting the FISA Warrant – which was renewed 3 more times on the same bogus information.
—–
So why are we supposed to beleive there is an actual basis in the redacted portion of the MAL afadavit to justify the search warrant ?
—
President Biden at a Fundraiser informs donors that we face a risk of nuclear armegedon and there is nothing he can do about it,
And that is the 2ND most important thing he had to say. His lead was that Ultra MAGA was a dire threat to democracy.
Given a choice between Trump defeating Biden in 2024 and nuclear armagedon – is there anyone that would not choose Trump over nuclear anihilation ?
and on and on.
John B. Say, who are you referring to in your vague example? Who was drug 60 miles with conspiracy to violate the FACE act?
You must be referring to Chester Gallagher’s “protest” . The guy coordinated on face book to blockade an abortion clinic in Tennessee. Blocking access to an abortion clinic IS illegal. The man you are talking about seems to be Paul Vaughn. He wasn’t coordinating with law enforcement. He was PART of a protest coordinated by Chester Gallagher. He was coordinating a blockade of an abortion clinic with 6 other people. Blockading access to an abortion clinic, even peacefully, is still a violation of the FACE act. That’s what he participated in. It’s a federal offense. Your claim that he coordinated with law enforcement is BS. You don’t tell law enforcement that you are going to peacefully blockade an abortion clinic on facebook. That’s literally telling them you are going to intentionally violate a federal law.
He wasn’t dumped 60 miles out somewhere with just his phone and underwear. He was charged along with 5 others including the “ringleader” Chester Gallagher. It seems he was the one breaking the law. Not the Biden administration. How stupid do you have to be to coordinate an illegal act on Facebook? Really.
Don’t start lying John.
Svelaz, the FACE act is facially unconstitutional. on Multiple levels.
It would be a violation of several first amendment provisions.
And it would be beyond the powers of the federal government
AGAIN there is no federal general police power.
There is no federal power over healthcare.
And you no longer have the fig leaf that there is a right being protected.
But more than unconstitutional, it is also incredibly hypocritical. Abortion clinics are entitled to more protection than supreme court justices and members of congress ?
And all of this is evidence of your own idiocy and hypocracy – and
I would note your NORMAL abuse of language, paralleling the idiocy from the DOJ.
These people never used the Terms you do.
Coordinating a protest with police is not conspiracy, nor is it “blockading”
Nor is a sit in in front of a clinic.
But I will end with an argument out of your book – the organizers are not responsible for where the protesters choose to sit.
Regardless, this is more idiotic political nonsense from the Biden DOJ.
You have DOJ/Biden/FBI ranting about the massive threat of ultra MAGA violence,
And instead of going after these mythical ultra MAGA fascists,
you are SWATTING non-violent protestors sitting in at abortion clinics,
and parents whose kids have been raped in school
Not making a good case that there is some huge threat to democracy out there.
Meanwhile you are ignoring arson at over 100 pro-life clinics – also violations of the same FACE act.
Making you look even stupider and more political.
SWAT a handful of non-violent protestors, but you can not even the perpitrators of over 100 attacks on prolife clinics ?
God forbid these mythical Ultra MAGA fascists should appear, it is quite obvious DOJ/FBI could not find them.
John B, Say,
“ Joe Biden just publicly threatened to suspend military aide to the Saudis for 1 year – if they did not delay their cutback on oil production until after the mid terms.
Didn’t democrats just impeach Trump for purportedly leveraging military aide for political purposes ?”
More BS? Really. It wasn’t Biden doing this. This is LEGISLATION being considered by democratic lawmakers proposing suspension of military aide to Saudi Arabia for cuts in OPEC. Since congress DOES control the money they CAN do that.
“ Two top US lawmakers have introduced legislation that would issue a one-year halt to all arms sales and military aid to Saudi Arabia, building on a growing congressional backlash against Riyadh after Opec+ decided on a major oil production cut last week.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-lawmakers-urge-year-long-halt-saudi-military-aid
Here’s the legislation,
https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/101122saudiarabiaarmshaltbilltext.pdf
John, it seems your examples are hogwash. This isn’t even close to what Trump tried to do. He UNILTATERALLY made the choice to uphold military aide to Ukraine without the approval of congress. Here Biden is relaying the messege FROM congress to the Saudis. It’s part of his job description. So no this is not a good example either.
Biden spoke about it first.
Regardless, so instead of impeaching the president we should impeach all democrats in congress ? That is your defense ?
Biden spoke about it first because he’s the one who speaks for the nation. Obviously he knew Democratic lawmakers crafted legislation to suspend aid. Why would that be an impeachable offense? It’s how the process actually works. That still doesn’t equate to what Trump did. Not even close. Hence your claim is false.
“Biden spoke about it first because he’s the one who speaks for the nation. Obviously he knew Democratic lawmakers crafted legislation to suspend aid. Why would that be an impeachable offense? It’s how the process actually works. That still doesn’t equate to what Trump did. Not even close. Hence your claim is false.”
The more I learn the worse this gets.
Biden approached the Saudi’s secretly FIRST and Begged them to hold off until after midterms. The Saudi’s evaluated the request, and for reasons having to do with the interests of other OPEC nations said NO. Then Biden threatened them SECRETLY. Then the Saudi’s announced the cutbacks AND went public with Biden’s Threat, THEN congress stepped in.
BTW – no this is not how the process works. There is not a magic clause in the “this is an impeachable offense” game that says after you have done the dirty deed, it is no longer impeachable If congressmen from your party cover for you.
No this does not equate to what Trump did – as is typical of the left – it is much worse.
There is nothing in Trump’s communication including the published transcript of the phone call that ties military aide to investigating the Biden’s
It is self evident that the foundation for investigating the Biden’s exists. Unknown to Trump DOJ was already investigating Hunter.
Zelensky explicitly and publicly stated there was no quid pro quo, that aide was never tied by anyone to investigations.
No one including career left wing nuts in the State Department has testified that Military aide was linked to investigations.
In fact for the most part Trump was not involved in anything going on in the state department regarding Ukraine.
When asked by the US ambassador directly Trump refused to tie aide to investigating Bidens.
There was no delay in aide tied to Trump or investigations of the Biden’s. There were several normal delays because the US government does nothing quickly, and ultimately aide was delivered on schedule – which NEVER happens.
Contrast that with, Biden specifically asked for a delay in the production cut. He explicitly asked for a delay for openly political reasons.
He was not looking for a 1 year delay or a 3 month delay. He explicitly and openly sought a short delay to get past the midterms.
There is no purpose served by this request that is not political. While all delay is obviously beneficial to americans. The primary beneficiary here was obviously the democratic party. Eventually the delay was explicitly tied to military aide. There is an EXPLICIT quid pro quo, No one denies this. The Saudis made this public. The Saudis told us that military aide for a whole year was explicitly tied to delaying a production cut for a few week. This is also blatantly stupid. Biden is playing hardball partisan politics with an Allie that we want and need. Biden’s Iran deal is predictably coming apart – because Iran today is NOT a country we want a relationship with or to have any power in the Mideast. Whatever the problems with the Saudi’s – the Iranians are far worse. Iran is in the midst of a an open war with iranian women – and Biden is silent about this.
I thought Trump was whimpy regarding Hong-Kong – but compared to Biden Trump was stellar – once again Trump is the best president in the 21st century – and that is NOT a compliment. The Saudi’s want to sign on to the abraham accords – which would be a huge deal and a big win for Biden. Kushner would have this deal in a heart beat. The Biden admin can not seem to manage to say yes.
And after all this nonsense – democrats instead of going – whoops we just impeached Trump for much less than this, there response is – if we try to convert Biden’s allegedly impeachable acts as president into a bill passed by congress – that is a fig leaf.
Of course the Threat has been made, the QPQ demanded, all without Congress. So it is self evident this fig leaf is AFTER the fact.
If you want to pretend that it is legal for the president to blackmail foreign countries for political benefit – if congress has joined in that blackmail through law – then you had better pass the law FIRST. Otherwise it is hypocracy.
Finally – exactly why is it that democrats in congress JOINING the president in blackmailing a forieign country and allie for purely political purposes not make this WORSE ?
Obviously democrats are not going to impeach themselves – but when they impeached Trump for NOT actually doing this – they did set the standard.
It is not however impeachable – nor was anything Trump did.
A constitutionally legitimate excercise of presidential power is not impeachable merely because it is politically beneficial.
All presidential actions are intended to be politically beneficial.
President Biden claimed that he CAN spend 1/2 Trillion to pay off student loans.
Biden has sent Billions in weapons and aide to Ukraine – seeking authorization from congress for more LATER.
Absolutely I agree with you that control of the purse SHOULD belong to the house – but that tripe died long ago.
I will be happy to limited President Trump in 2025 to spending only what Congress allocates – if you will do the same to Biden now.
But you wont.
Regardless, if it was “high crimes and misdemeanors” for Trump – you are actually claiming it is NOT for members of congress ?
The core question – which you MISS entirely is whether an elected official can use the power of their office to blackmail or bribe foreign governments for actions that are both politically beneficial and otherwise constitutional.
You are correct that either Biden or congress can do this. You are incorrect that it is different from what you impeached Trump for.
You fail the shoe on the other foot test.
“ President Biden claimed that he CAN spend 1/2 Trillion to pay off student loans.
Biden has sent Billions in weapons and aide to Ukraine – seeking authorization from congress for more LATER.”
Biden is not spending money to pay off student loans. His forgiving the loans. He’s not spending anything. He’s just adding to the debt.
CONGRESS is sending billions to Ukraine, both republicans and democrats support the spending. Biden can send weapons to Ukraine since they are mostly surplus and authorized by congress.
“ Regardless, if it was “high crimes and misdemeanors” for Trump – you are actually claiming it is NOT for members of congress ?”
It’s not for congress, because they voted on it AND congress has the power to do so. As you acknowledged, they do control the money.
Forgiving debt is spending money. This is ludicrously stupid.
the debt is not going to disappear magically – money must be paid.
Separately – the constitution does not give the president to power to increase the debt unilaterally any more than it gives him the power to spend money unilaterally.
All spending and all debt must be approved by congress.
The actions is blatantly unconstitutional.
Not to mention incredibly stupid. It is a blatant wealth transfer from poorer people to more afluent ones.
It has pissed off more people than it benefits.
It creates and incredible moral hazzard.
It is blatant political pandering.
it subsidizes and encourages failure.
And it increases the cost of education.
Unconstitutional and moronic – should be the motto of the Biden administration.
“John, it seems your examples are hogwash.”
Nope,
“This isn’t even close to what Trump tried to do.”
Correct, because todate there is no actual evidence Trump tried to do this.
The aide to Ukraine went through normal channels experiencing normal delays.
Trump was asked by US ambassadors if he wanted to hold up the aide.He never directed them to do so.
Ultimately the aide was actually expidited. It was delivered on time – which never happens.
The aide never came up with Zelensky.
Trump never raised the aide with anyone.
And only one person raised the issue with trump who refused to tell them to hold the aide up.
If fact the first time the Ukrainians knew there was any problem was from US news reports.
It is really hard to be blackmailed when you do not know you are being blackmailed.
And all the FACTS above – are from DEMOCRATS impeachment hearings testimony.
“He UNILTATERALLY made the choice to uphold military aide to Ukraine without the approval of congress.”
Nope – see above.
“Here Biden is relaying the messege FROM congress to the Saudis. It’s part of his job description.”
Not correct, and not relevant.
This is typical of left wing nuts – Trump is a criminal because even though he did not actually do what we accuse him of, more importantly when he did not do it. He did not jump on one foot, and sing old sussana.
If it is a high crime and misdemeanor to blackmail a foreign country over military aide for political benefit in an election – in this case openly admitted. Then it is a crime when Biden does it. It is a crime when Congress does it. It is a crime when they conspire to do it.
What is true, is that it was not a crime 2 years ago, and it is not today.
And democrats as always are hypocrites, and you are a hypocrite and an apologist.
“ The aide to Ukraine went through normal channels experiencing normal delays.”
There were no “normal delays”. Trump is the one who delayed the money until Zelensky provided the information he wanted. That’s extortion.
“ He never directed them to do so.”. Yes he did. That’s why he got impeached.
“ The aide never came up with Zelensky.”. Yes it did. Remember the infamous phone call. We still don’t have the full transcript and it was at MAL until the FBI took it back.
“ If it is a high crime and misdemeanor to blackmail a foreign country over military aide for political benefit in an election – in this case openly admitted. Then it is a crime when Biden does it. It is a crime when Congress does it. It is a crime when they conspire to do it.”
No. Your understanding of how congress wields its power is atrocious. When congress and the president coordinate a strategy and create legislation to make or official it’s not a crime or a misdemeanor. It wasn’t for political benefit it was for national interests. Trump was extorting a foreign leader by holding up military aid for dirt on a political opponent. That was NOT supported by congress, especially when he did act unilaterally.
He DID do what he was accused of. That’s why he was impeached.
“There were no “normal delays”. Trump is the one who delayed the money until Zelensky provided the information he wanted. That’s extortion.”
Quite litterally wrong on all accounts – do you not read the testimony from your own impeachment farce ?
“Yes it did. Remember the infamous phone call.”
Nope. you can read it.
” We still don’t have the full transcript and it was at MAL until the FBI took it back.”
You have the only transcript there is, the same transcript that is always produced by the ordinary means for all presidential calls.
There were 5 interpreters listening to the call charged with producing a transcript.
After the call they used their own notes to produce a transcript.
That is how this always works.
And why Can’t Trump have a copy of the transcript ? The damn thing has been published in the New York Times, it is in the congressional record, it has been entered into evidence under oath. There are copies all over creation – you think because Trump kept a copy printing at the WH that is some crime ? What kind of an idiot are you ?
“No. Your understanding of how congress wields its power is atrocious. When congress and the president coordinate a strategy and create legislation to make or official it’s not a crime or a misdemeanor.”
This is lunacy. It is both factually false – i.e. not what happened. And constitutionally false.
Congress joining in the extortion of a foreign power for political purposes does not make it smell any less bad.
If an act is corrupt – getting your entire party to join does not cleans the stench.
Regardless foreign policy is the domain of the president, as is military policy – not congress.
There is no clause in the constitution that say policial extortion of foriegn powers is a high crime or misdemeanor – unless done with the assistance of congress.
“It wasn’t for political benefit it was for national interests.”
Right. The President explicitly tells the Saudis hold off until after the election – and that is national interest ?
“Trump was extorting a foreign leader by holding up military aid for dirt on a political opponent.”
Accurately phrased – Trump asked a foreign leader to investigate several things – one of which was the corrupt and possibly criminal conduct or anericans in that country. There was no mention of military aide int he call, much less tying the aide to investigations.
Democrats subpeoned and got every single warm body associated with this to testify – in the process producing all kinds of unwanted testimony about the concerns the State Department had with Hunter Biden who was litterally promising access to his father. And never getting anyone to testify that Trump had anything to do with what were NORMAL handling of the military Aide.
It is True that the investigation by congress resulted in the aide being delivered on schedule. Which would not have happened otherwise – not because Trump was holding it, but because the federal government is slow and innefficient and NEVER does anything on time.
So there is really not a single important FACT you have right regarding EITHER incident.
Which is typical for you.
Do you tire of being wrong ?
Please – read the transcript, read the testimony. And wherever you are getting your information from – you should not trust them.
“That was NOT supported by congress, especially when he did act unilaterally.”
As did Biden which is perfectly legal.
You are free to dislike what Trump did, though you will be deservedly called a huge hypocrite for pretending that Biden’s more egreious acts are somehow OK when Trump’s are not.
“He DID do what he was accused of. That’s why he was impeached.”
Nope, which is why he was not removed. The evidence did not exist, AND what was being alleged – which was essentially what Biden is actually doing. Is fully within the powers of the president according to the Constitution.
I would note that on issue after issue where many on the Right claim criminal conduct by those on the left.
I have repeatedly argued – NO, just massive hypocracy on the left.
I am NOT a fan of a powerful executive. I would impeach Biden for failure to follow INS law.
I am sure there is something similar I could impeach Trump over.
I would void the entire US CFR as unconstitional – laws must be passed by congress, and no branch of government can delegate its responsibilites.
But as narrow as the constitution makes the powers of government, using the power of the presidency to seek investigations of the actions of US citizens in foreign countries is constitutional. And as long as their is reasonable suspicion to investigate – doing so is perfectly legitimate.
The fact that there may be a political benefit is an issue for the electorate – not congress or the judiciary.
The excercise of whatever leverage the president has on foreign countries to secure economic benefits – however short in duration, and regardless of the fact that the prime motive was political is also constitutional – and judgement on that belongs to the electorate.
But I will absolutely trash you for your blatant and obvious hypocracy.
As well as that of Biden and house democrats who obviously have zero morals.
My view of most republicans is poor. But most democrats are a waste of oxygen.
It was not always that way. But it is today.
Completely separate from the hypocracy issue. Is the fact that this is a disaster of Biden’s own making.
Piss poor energy policy and an absolute total unwillingness to confront the political, economic, national and global security consequences of an abysmally bad decision and reverse course. Leave the US president bagging and blatantly politically threatening foreign leaders – you know the people who were going to respect us with Trump gone – how is that going for you ?
What does it take before you realize that your entire ideology is one giant f#$king cascade failure ?
Almost every single thing that is going wrong in the US and the world today is the consequence of idiotic democratic policies and governance.
Magical thinking does not work.
“ So why are we supposed to beleive there is an actual basis in the redacted portion of the MAL afadavit to justify the search warrant ?”
Because the MAL search warrant had nothing to do with the Steele dossier warrant. They are two completely different cases by two different judges.
The MAL warrant was issued because the FBI HAD evidence, video evidence that Trump still had more documents AFTER he declared to the FBI that he gave them everything they sought. Furthermore, there IS evidence that he MOVED boxes of documents from the “secure” storage room to AFTER the subpoena was issued. They had a LOT more AND they DID find more documents AND highly classified top secret defense information that was never supposed to be at MAL. The evidence for the MAL search warrant was indisputable. The Steele dossier was not as solid. The FBI can make mistakes, as you say, nobody is perfect.
““ So why are we supposed to beleive there is an actual basis in the redacted portion of the MAL afadavit to justify the search warrant ?”
Because the MAL search warrant had nothing to do with the Steele dossier warrant. They are two completely different cases by two different judges.”
Nearly the Same DOJ/FBI – right down to individual agents. Same target, same political biases, same lawless conduct.
What do you think the DOJ/FBI get one free massive lie, and we still should beleive them ?
“The MAL warrant was issued because the FBI HAD evidence”
Not in the unredacted portion of the affadavit.
“video evidence that Trump still had more documents AFTER he declared to the FBI that he gave them everything they sought. Furthermore, there IS evidence that he MOVED boxes of documents from the “secure” storage room to AFTER the subpoena was issued.”
False, we have a leaked story to that effect, No video has been provided, no further portion of the affadavit has been unredacted to show that.
Nor does the leak if True confirm what you claim. Trump did not declare anything to the FBI, He responded to a GJ subpeona. Not the same.
We are still fighting over whether there is anything at MAL that is actually classified. Nor does this alleged source know whether anything was classified. Regardless, there are enormous assumptions in your claim – which is still a free floating media claim – how many of those have been true so far, and why do you beleive a leak is true, and if true is accurate, and if accurate is a crime ?
“They had a LOT more AND they DID find more documents AND highly classified top secret defense information that was never supposed to be at MAL.”
Nope. again wrong on all points. What we know is they found documents marked classified. That does not mean they are classified. That does not mean they are defense related – more nonsense like the nuke claim earlier. Nor is there a “never supposed to be there”.
Unless you have evidence that Trump removed them the WH after Jan 20,2021. Then atleast at one point – they were supposed to be there.
Crimes are acts. Your beleif that at one point they were allowed to be at MAL and magically a few seconds later they are a crime, does not change that Crimes are ACTS. It is almost never the case that doing nothing is a crime.
“The evidence for the MAL search warrant was indisputable.”
Sorry, todate we have ZERO evidence for the MAL search warrant. Maybe if more of the Affadavit is redacted you will do better.
But the ONLY evidence that matters is what is in the search warrant.
I would note that like all the previous trump leaks – if they were true, the leak would be a crime.
That means they are not likely true.
“The Steele dossier was not as solid.”
No, the Steele Dossier was a hoax, that is far from “not as solid” – that is worse that garbage, it is a deliberate effort to decive.
The FBI – many of the same agents KNEW that when they submitted it to the FISA court – BTW this was not the first time the FISA court was fed Garbage, it is just the most well document.
Durham has FBI agents tesifying right now that The Steele dossier was garbage and the FBI knew that and sought to cover up that fact and then STILL provided it to the FISA court.
It is hard to imagine something more dis trustworthy that the FBI could do.
With few exceptions the Same people in the DOJ/FBI were part of the Collusion delusion, the SC investigation, and the MAL warrant. Some of them are even part of burrying the Hunter Biden criminality.
These people are criminals.
WaterGate was not a tiny part this bad.
I have no idea if Durham will convict Danchenko – I doubt it. Durham is doing a good job of deliberately undermining his own case.
Most of us though there was little more damning information that could come out of Durham.
But now we know that not only was the Whole mess a collection of Hoaxes paid for by Clinton – but that the DOJ/FBI knew that from the start.
That they still sold it to the FISA court. That they hired Danchenko as a CI – for the purposes of hiding him from Congress, and that they directed him to destroy evidence connecting him to Steele.
There is absolutely nothing in all of this that Mueller did not know shortly after being appointed.
Which means Mueller and his attorney’s are also complicit in this.
Can you name any occasion in which a SC investigated allegations against a president that he KNEW for certain were false for years ?
“The FBI can make mistakes, as you say, nobody is perfect.”
A fraud on the court, lying under oath are not mistakes, they are crimes.
the FBI’s lies to the FISA court are crimes – that we do not need any more evidence for.
And these are mostly the same people producing the MAL warrant.
So now you favor digging up dirt on political opponents.
John B. Say says,
“ President Biden at a Fundraiser informs donors that we face a risk of nuclear armegedon and there is nothing he can do about it,
And that is the 2ND most important thing he had to say. His lead was that Ultra MAGA was a dire threat to democracy.”
Well was he wrong? Clearly he was being a big hyperbolic given that Putin’s government has insinuated multiple times using tactical nuclear weapons. How is that different than Reagan calling the USSR an evil empire? Like Trump exaggerates so can Biden.
Seriously your examples are crappy.
“Well was he wrong?”
Yes,
there is no Massive MAGA threat.
The DOJ/FBI are spinning their wheels going after non-violent parents and prolifers.
“Clearly he was being a big hyperbolic given that Putin’s government has insinuated multiple times using tactical nuclear weapons. How is that different than Reagan calling the USSR an evil empire? Like Trump exaggerates so can Biden.
Seriously your examples are crappy.”
Durring the entire cold war – I do not recall a single time in which the USSR threatened to use nuclear weapons first, in fact they taunted the US in the UN constantly offering to agree to NEVER use nuclear weapons first. It was US policy for decades to use tactical nukes if Russia tried to invade Europe. It was US policy to use strategic nuclear weapons – if Russia was wining in Europe.
From the fall of the USSR until this year neither Russia nor Putin have threatened to use Nukes first.
Not under Clinton, not under Bush, not under Obama, not under Trump.
We face for the first time since the end of the cold war a small but real threat of nuclear Armageddon
and the factor that has changed is Biden is president. This is not the first time Putin has invaded a neighbor.
Nor is it any secret why he invades when he does so. Again the Trigger for Russian aggression is stupid western foreign policy gambits.
Reagan did not say – Tipp oneal and democrats are an existential threat to democracy and oh by the way Russian is an evil empire start digging your fallout shelter.
FBI agent at Danchenko Trial TESTIFIES under oath that the FBI had NOTHING – no other sources or intelligence of any kind, nothing from CIA, nothing from NSA, nothing from the FBI’s own databases besides the steele report which he ALSO confirmed they had been unable to verify, prior to requesting the FISA Warrant – which was renewed 3 more times on the same bogus information.
AND then….The FBI handed ALL of that evidence to Mueller. Most of DoJ and FBI managment need to be behind bars.
What is this “documentation” you’re referring to? When the government points out to twitter or Facebook that someone is violating THEIR policy is not a violation of the 1st amendment. The constitution doesn’t forbid the government from pointing out things to others. Show me where it says in the constitution that the government can’t do that.
“The constitution doesn’t forbid the government from pointing out things to others.”
Mayorkas could stand on a tank demanding that Twitter ban Turley. And your Apologist response would be: Show me where the Constitution prohibits a government agent from standing on a tank.
Sam, nothing in the constitution says anybody in government can demand something. A demand is not a prohibition. If he actually told Twitter to ban Turley THEN he would have been in violation of the 1st amendment. There is a distinction. He can demand that he be censored, BUT he can’t TELL twitter to actually do it. The law is quite picky about how you say things that matters.
Using your example, a government agent can stand on a tank and demand the driver move it, but he can’t command the driver to move it. He can demand he move it, BUT that doesn’t mean the driver is being COMMANDED to move it. See the distinction? The law makes that distinction important because those two actions are NOT the same.
*can’t
You are demonstrating your lack of comprehension. I am talking about the government indirectly censoring speech through Twitter.
Anonymous (S. Meyer),
The government is NOT indirectly censoring speech thru twitter. As I explained to Sam. You don’t understand the distinction between a demand and a command. They are not the same.
A demand does not mean you HAVE to do something. A command, as in TELLING twitter it HAS to censor something. The constitution prohibits government TELLING twitter to censor something. It doesn’t prohibit government to DEMAND twitter do something because Twitter CAN ignore government. The choice is ultimately twitter’s NOT the government.
Whether demand or command, it is a violation of the 1st amendment.
SM
So no objections to a government official demanding that country clubs exclude Black people from membership, because it is ultimately the country club’s decision?
If David Dukes shows up at an ER in LA with a gunshot wound – can the doctor refuse to treat him because Dukes is a racist ?
Can the power company refuse to provide electricity to people who are transphobic ?
Can the gas utility refuse to provide heating gas to people who are sexist ?
Can the gas station refuse to provide fuel to people who are homophobic ?
Can the grocery store refuse to provide food to people who think the 2020 election was lawless and fraudulent ?
Can your doctor refuse to give you a physical if you did not get a Covid Booster ?
Can your car insurance refuse to provide coverage if you say Masks do not work ?
Can your landlord evict you because you voted for Biden ?
Can a bank refuse to give you a loan because you are trans ?
Can a restaurant refuse service because you are wearing a mask ?
Can employer refuse to hire you because you think Covid came from bats in a wet market ?
There are a few forms of private discrimination that are legally barred.
Most are not. For centuries these have not been a problem – because very few people discriminate in business against their own interests.
Jim Crow laws came about because many private businesses in the south refused to discriminate.
People do not refuse to discriminate because they endorse the values they are refusing to censor.
They do so because it is both in their own interests. It is also in the best interests of society.
The woke left “cancel culture” whether legal or not, ultimately ends badly.
John B. Say, obviously you have a very poor understanding of how the law works.
An ER can’t refuse treatment to ANYONE because of federal law. The constitution doesn’t day you have a right to be treated regardless of who you are.
A power company can’t refuse to provide power if you PAY them for the service. The constitution doesn’t say you have a right to power.
The gas utility can’t refuse to provide you with gas when you PAY them, just like the power company. Your are BUYING their services.
“ Can your landlord evict you because you voted for Biden ?”
Yes. There are no laws prohibiting a landlord from evicting a tenant because of who you voted for PROVIDED he follows the law on eviction, such as timely notice and following local laws. They can’t evict you because you are black, homosexual, religious, or nationality. Party affiliation? Yes you can. But then again that is dependent on KNOWING the tenants party affiliation. Most don’t care.
“ Can a bank refuse to give you a loan because you are trans ?”
Possibly. There are coherently no federal anti-discrimination laws that cover transgender individuals that I’m aware of.
“ Can a restaurant refuse service because you are wearing a mask ?”
No. But they can if you don’t.
“ Can employer refuse to hire you because you think Covid came from bats in a wet market ?”
Yes. Because it is not an issue covered by anti-discrimination statutes. If they believe you may be nuts then they are not obligated to hire you.
Twitter and Facebook can censor content or political views because the constitution does NOT forbid them to do so. People are not paying to be able to post on twitter. They are volunteering to joint upon agreeing to THEIR terms and conditions. Power companies just provide power. Telephone companies provide infrastructure to communicate PRIVATELY buy SELLING access to their infrastructure.
SM is not a utility It’s a private forum managed by private companies that you joint voluntarily by agreeing to THEIR terms and conditions. This isn’t difficult. It shouldn’t be.
You miss the point entirely.
Whether you can or can not legally do something, the FACT that these things are rare to non existent
means that we have come to recognize they are very bad ideas that do not work.
—————————
You seem to think that your right to speak is not a right, but some arbitrary collection of policies or randomly enacted laws.
EMTLA only applies to hospitals that accept medicare.
I agree that if a Power or other company contracts with you to provide a service – they are obligated to do so.
But they are not obligated to contract with you, and even if they are already doing so, they are not obligated to continue.
They can notify you that they will not provide you further services after a given date.
All private actors can do that.
That literally echo’s your claims regarding Twitter, that it can change its TOS anytime.
Anyone in a contract with you can change the terms of service on expiration of the contract.
I find it interesting that you run through idiocy that somethings are prevented by federal law while others are not.
While correct – federal law must itself be constitutional.
Further you correctly note that lots of discrimination is legal but unwise. And then promptly forget.
In fact it is more than unwise. Society will literally disintegrate if those forms of discrimination become widespread.
My wife frequently represents sex offenders who are found living where they are not legally allowed.
She has a map in her office of where int he country sex offenders are allowed to live – it is almost nowhere.
They often can only live like trolls under bridges – and that is not legal – because no one can live like trolls under bridges.
The left is actively seeking to extend the lunacy that was mostly propagated by the right regarding sex offenders to all people they do not like.
How well do you think that will work ?
BTW federal discrimination laws are stupid. I am barred from discriminating against tenants on the basis of race, but only if I am stupid enough to say that is what I am doing.
You get several of the examples wrong – obviously a restaurant can discriminate against you for wearing a mask.
In fact Eric Clapton scheduled a Tour where no one with masks or who were vaccinated would be allowed to attend.
He did this when the covid vaccine caused him to lose significant use of one of his hands and made playing difficult.
BTW People are “paying” to be on Twitter and FB just as they pay for FM radio.
They pay by being the product, they pay by being sold to advertisers.
You do not understand telephone at all.
You want to pretend that you can pick and choose based on arbitrary criteria when you have free speech and when you do not.
That is not how it works.
SM censoring in the way that it currently does FAILS. It fails whether they is legal or not.
We see a form of that failure with the 2020 election and the suppression of stories about Hunter Biden.
By suppressing Truth – SM degrades its value.
We have seen the same with Covid.
Virtually nothing governments have told us was true.
Overtime more and more of that is being revealed.
Recently all of SM booted Legal Vlogger Nick Rekkata for including a clip of Biden talking about Covid policy,
Because the policy Biden discussed was in violation of the CDC guidelines. BTW for once Biden was actually correct.
SM would be wise to avoid holy wars with well off legal vloggers – Rekkata was quickly restored, because he was going to sue their asses off for damages and the damages were quite high and Rekkata had plenty of evidence they were violating their OWN TOS – which BTW they nearly always are. But most people booted by the SM fascists do not have the resources to defend themselves. Rekkata did.
This is another reason to err heavily towards free speech.
Despite idiots like you – there is no harm letting idiots like you speak freely.
There is a great deal of harm to censoring you.
My own confidence in my own remarks – as well as that of others is a reflection of the strength or weakness of the criticism I receive.
Covid appears to be coming endemic – if that is the case that is with near certainty BECAUSE of the policies we followed.
It is rare that a pandemic becomes endemic. And the last thing we should want is to cause a virus that is incredibly deadly to older people to become endemic. 4M deaths in 18 months is a small price to pay to avoid 500K/year forever.
One of the reasons that you do not understand the massive harm you are likely to have done – is those voices that you have censored were absent for several years.
The mere fact that you can now say almost anything about Covid on SM with little likelyhood of being censored should make an intelligent person understand the error of censorship.
You seem to sometimes grasp that became MAYBE you can do something, probably you shouldn’t.
And then a few lines later you don’t.
“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Twitter violates free speech when they censor
Twitter violates the 1st amendment when they censor at the suggestion of government.
The government violates the 1st amendment when it advocates for censorship in ANY way.
Shortly it is likely that Elon Musk will run twitter.
I expect to be reminding you daily that he can run twitter as he sees fit.
“ Twitter violates free speech when they censor
Twitter violates the 1st amendment when they censor at the suggestion of government.”
Nope, you’re wrong. Government is not constitutionally prohibited from suggesting anything. A suggestion is NOT a command. Twitter it is THE entity that makes the choice which the constitution does NOT apply to. It’s impossible for twitter to violate the 1st amendment. It’s literally not possible, even if they tried.
“ The government violates the 1st amendment when it advocates for censorship in ANY way.”
The government CAN advocate censorship. Because government has free speech rights too. It can say whatever it wants. What they CAN’T do is CENSOR speech. This a distinction made in court.
“ Under the government speech doctrine, the government has its own rights as speaker, immune from free speech challenges. It can assert its own ideas and messages without being subject to First Amendment claims of viewpoint discrimination.”
…” The Supreme Court has employed the doctrine to reject First Amendment based challenges to government programs. For example, the high court ruled in Rust v. Sullivan (1991) that the government could prohibit doctors who receive federal funds for federal health family planning services from discussing abortion with their patients. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist concluded that “The Government can . . . selectively fund a program to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the public interest, without at the same time funding an alternate program which seeks to deal with the problem in another way.”
Several years later, the Court ruled, in Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association (2005), that the government could require beef producers to contribute monies to support a generic advertising program for beef because “the government sets the overall message to be communicated and approves every word that is disseminated.”
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/962/government-speech-doctrine
““ Twitter violates free speech when they censor
Twitter violates the 1st amendment when they censor at the suggestion of government.”
Nope, you’re wrong. Government is not constitutionally prohibited from suggesting anything. A suggestion is NOT a command.”
Both false and irrelevant.
Pointedly Government does not suggest – it commands. PERIOD.
If a police offices asks you to please remove your car – and you refuse – you will likely be cited.
You do not seem to understand the nature of govenrment.
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
Nowhere in the constitution is a government power to suggest.
Nowhere in the constitution is a government right to speek.
Contra you link government has absolutely no constitutional rights at all. NONE. It has constitutional powers – only those delegated to it.
“Twitter it is THE entity that makes the choice which the constitution does NOT apply to. It’s impossible for twitter to violate the 1st amendment. It’s literally not possible, even if they tried.”
This is a incredibly stupid argument.
You claimed about government suggested, rather than commanded – there is no government power to suggest. There is no govenrment power to speak.
Regardless, if Government commanded Twitter to censor – Twitter would be a government agent and would be violating the first amendment.
This is close to the CU decision – the core of the CU decision is that government may not regulate political speech.
It may not do so directly – by saying – you can not say this, it may not regulate it indirectly – by saying – you can say whatever you want, but government can limit your ability to be heard, by regulating political money. or time and place.
““ The government violates the 1st amendment when it advocates for censorship in ANY way.”
The government CAN advocate censorship.”
Nope
“Because government has free speech rights too. It can say whatever it wants. What they CAN’T do is CENSOR speech.”
Nope
“This a distinction made in court.”
““ Under the government speech doctrine, the government has its own rights as speaker, immune from free speech challenges. It can assert its own ideas and messages without being subject to First Amendment claims of viewpoint discrimination.””
Unconstitutional.
“…” The Supreme Court has employed the doctrine to reject First Amendment based challenges to government programs. For example, the high court ruled in Rust v. Sullivan (1991) that the government could prohibit doctors who receive federal funds for federal health family planning services from discussing abortion with their patients. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist concluded that “The Government can . . . selectively fund a program to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the public interest, without at the same time funding an alternate program which seeks to deal with the problem in another way.””
There is a separate problem with this decision – There is no constitutional power allowing government to give funds to doctors for family planning. The decision rests on a foundation of an unconstittional act.
As is typical allegedly difficult constitutional questions involving conflicts of alleged rights always or nearly always involve acts of government that are nearly always unconstitutional.
We would not be debating teaching children to be gender fluid or racist if government had no involvement in education.
I would note that you mischaracterize Rust. Which litterally decided that Government funds could not be used to counsel for abortion.
Doctors were free to discuss abortion with their patients, but they had to maintain separate services and billing. So if a Doctor discussed family planning with a patient for an hour and spent 15min discussing abortion – he could not use government funds to do so.
I do not agree with Rust – because no form of health services is a constitutional power of the federal government.
“Several years later, the Court ruled, in Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association (2005), that the government could require beef producers to contribute monies to support a generic advertising program for beef”
Again you misrepresent the case.
And again You also start with a program that is outside the power of the federal government.
Just to be clear – the fact that the govenrment has no right to speak does not mean that the government is mute.
National defense is a legitimate power of government – and Government has some power to speak as is necescary to execute is constitutional power of national defense. But there is no federal power to advocate for beef, and no federal power with respect to any form of healthcare.
There is therefore no federal power to speak in those domains.
The decisions that you cite are efforts to reconcile constitutional problems caused by unconstitutional acts. The right answer is to cease the unconstitutional acts.
But even without doing so, they do not reach the idiocy you are claiming. Government has no right to speak.
It has the power to speak only as necessary to perform its other constitutional powers. And almost never to even suggest curbing the free speech rights of others.
Regardless, I am not going to defend the decisions you cite – they are obviously wrong.
But you can not even get the actual facts about them right, nor do you understand them, as erroneous as they are – they do not reach to the power you are claiming.
Political speech enjoys pretty much absolute constitutional protection.
I would suggest reviewing the hatch act,
“Nope” is not an argument.
You fail to differentiate between government using funds to censor speech and government not being able to censor speech without it.
The court made an important distinction that doesn’t comport with your failed logic. Trying to put a square in round hole seems to be your argument.
““Nope” is not an argument.”
It is, a quite simple one. You are wrong, you offered a false premise.
It is your job to prove the facts you assert.
“nope” means you failed.
“You fail to differentiate between government using funds to censor speech and government not being able to censor speech without it.”
I did not fail at anything – YOU failed to suport your argument, indepent of the fact that there are other constitutional problems with the cases you cite. They simply do not mean what you claim.
I am not going to pretend that the court was right when it was clearly not.
But I am also not trying as you are to say they said something they clearly did not.
You have badly misread the court twice.
You are making the common left wing nut error of reading the law too broadly.
Your the one trying to force a square peg.
Or just more simply – NOPE.
Would you prefer
Non-sequitur
“They don’t censor for the government.”
Yes they do. Twitter *censored* Alex Berenson at the behest of the Biden amdinistration. That is textbook fascism and a violation of 1A.
Sam,
Nope. Twitter banned Berenson because he violated THEIR policy on COVID disinformation.
He sued twitter and got reinstated. It wasn’t because Twitter violated his 1st amendment rights. His censorship wasn’t wrong. Here’s what happened,
“ Berenson’s victory was not based on his argument that his ban was a violation of the First Amendment; the judge rejected this claim. Instead, his success seems to have hinged on promises made to him by a high-level Twitter employee. “The points you’re raising should not be an issue at all,” the company’s then–vice president of global communications assured Berenson at one point, according to the complaint. The lawsuit says the same executive later told Berenson that his name had “never come up in the discussions” about Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies. Goldman believes that the court’s decision to allow a claim based on that correspondence prompted Twitter to settle. Internet-service executives have always been instructed by lawyers not to talk with people about their individual accounts and not to make any promises about what might happen, Goldman said, “for reasons that should now be obvious.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-berenson-twitter-ban-lawsuit-covid-misinformation/671219/
The “First Amendment Model” was adopted by Texas in its law against censorship by large internet platforms. The 5th Circuit recently upheld the law.
Republicans should introduce a similar law at the Federal level when they take the House.
Daniel, that Texas “model” actually violates the 1st amendment rights of social media companies. The government can’t force private companies to carry someone else’s speech that violates their policies. It’s literally unconstitutional. Introducing that at the federal level would be just as bad.
The 5th Circuit says otherwise. Censorship is not speech.
Claiming that it is, is a logical absurdity. But typical of the left.
Daniel, being forced to carry someone else’s speech IS a violation of THEIR free speech rights. Censorship by private entities is NOT a violation of the 1st amending. The constitutions prohibitions and limitations are for government NOT private entities. The 5th circuit is wrong on this one.
Because the 1st amendment doesn’t apply to private entities they can’t violate the rights of others due to the fact that the limitation is on government entities only. The text of the clause and the history make that pretty clear.
So common carrier laws violate the First Amendment?
enforcing contracts violate the First Amendment?
This is off-topic, but I hope she sees it.
@Karen: I stated the other day more or less that Common Core was being phased out, and after discussion with my wife I realize that is an incomplete statement – the standards remain. What is different is the implementation, as states have been given more free-reign to implement them as they see fit (and indeed, many states are bringing back phonics. Additionally, what I said about my wife leading Common Core educated, younger teachers through PD efforts, absolutely is accurate. These younger teachers are very much lost). That is more of a circumvention than an abolishment, and I felt the need to correct my statements. Sorry for the distraction, folks, I do not have a WordPress account and could not simply address it directly. Thanks for the understanding. I believe it is of the utmost importance that we make our best effort to represent situations as accurately as possible in these conversations.
Since Svelaz and Anonymous comment about 200 times a day EACH, why don’t they just start their own site and leave the rest of us alone.
Svelaz and Anonymous, screaming hecklers, little girls, contrarian losers, lefty apologists and all around boring and possibly paid trolls.
Hullbobby, are you still keeping count? Is it accurate?
You know your whining is exactly what Twitter does when it censors people they don’t like. Oh the irony.
This is a free speech forum and there NO, NONE, ZERO limits on how many times one can post or how annoying they may be. There ARE plenty of conservative posters here who are just as prolific and obnoxious yet you don’t complain. Why? Because you ignore them. GASP!! I’m shocked!! You can do that?!! No Way!
We “lefties” are here to present an opposing view, offer our $.02, refute claims, or yes…even whine about Turley. Freedom of speech is not just the ability to say what’s on your mind. It’s also about accepting the responsibility that comes with AND the consequences. It also brings us things that annoy us, offends us, disgusts, us, etc, etc,etc. You’re welcome leave if you don’t like these posts. Nobody is forcing you to read them or respond to them. That’s the beauty of the 1st amendment it gives you the right to speak your mind. It also gives you the right to ignore, walk away, or whine.
If it weren’t for us “lefties” this blog would be a boring echo chamber full of people preaching to the choir. I like to think that we make things interesting and offer different points of view, even if they end up triggering a few folks because of thin skin.
So feel free to ignore or stare at our posts and fume to your heart’s discontent.
Actually, I like it when Svelaz posts – when I read one, I know immediately the opposite is true…
In the nether world in which you dwell.
I live in the real world. I assume you live in the delusional alternate universe of the neocommunist progressive Left, where Antifa and BLM are non-violent heroes, men can be women, women can be men, no cash bail laws help reduce the crime rate, and drag queens at elementary school is a good idea…
Your assumption is wrong.
not an argument.
Allen makes a valid point.
There are several left wing nut posters here who are so bad on facts that you can be almost certain that the Truth is the opposite of what they say.
Svelaz is one of those.
I would note that Trait goes beyond this blog. It is not an absolute rule for those on the left. But it is close.
Biden recently claimed that inflation would be worse under Republicans.
I am hard pressed to think of anytime in US history when inflation could be attributed to republicans.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena.
Milton Friedman.
Not just in the US – but throughout history, Inflation is always the result of increasing money supply faster than GDP increases.
For Republicans to cause inflation – they would have to drive a large increase in money supply.
The actual process that resulted in todays inflation started with Obama – as the Fed monitized US debt – with economists like Krugman and MMT’ers egging them on. That did not immediately result in massive inflation as some classical economists predicted. But over the next 12 years it quietly erodded the buffer between the US economiy and inflation. Trump’s covid spending (and the Fed monetizing it) is probably responsible for 1/3 of current inflation. That was bad, inflation is one of the most regressive taxes. 1% inflation is far better than 3%.
But we are fighting to keep below double digits. Redardless the Biden massive Covid spending and the Fed monetizing that put us over a tipping point. Just as it took a long time to get here. going back is going to be painful.
We have a magic bullet for inflation – it is a deliberate recession. The faster and deeper, the quicker and less painful.
But it will be painful regardless.
Biden keeps ranting that we are not in recession. That is stupid. Not only are we in recession, but the Fed WANTS a recession.
When Biden rants that we are not in a recession and may avoid one, what he is saying is he wants the US economy to remain sick, he does not want to take the bitter medicine that will make things better – eventually.
Regardless, unless republicans spend a couple of trillion extra dollars AND the Fed monetizes the debt – Republicans will not cause more inflation.
One thing Republicans can be counter on, is to thwart spending by democrats. Republicans are generally opposed to all democrat spending.
Unfortunately they tend to be spendthrift themselves with power – just not as spendthrift as democrats.
John B. Say, you’re not immune to that fact either. Especially when you can’t differentiate between “capital” and “captiol”. That was really bad
I would be happy to discuss FACTS.
I provide them.
You don’t.
Still not interested in nonsense about spelling.
In fact I periodically deliberately spell things wrong – just to annoy you.
It is irrelevant, and your decisions to rant makes you look bad.
It was quite relevant because the spelling changes the meaning of the word. Fact. By misspelling Capital for Capitol your argument was not a fact.
I provide facts just as much as you do.
Nope.
You clearly understood what was being communicated or you would not be claiming a spelling error.
So long as you understood what I wrote – meaning was communicated.
The purpose of words is to communicate. To the extent spelling matters it is to assure communication.
Like typical left wing nuts you have all this backwards. You seek to exert control over communications and thought by controlling words.
This is why the question “what is a woman” is so important.
No one can provide a universal defintion of a woman. But everyone – except possibly some left wing nuts knows what is meant.
When I say Woman – 99% of people know what I mean.
Communication has occured.
There is no need to consult a dictionary, or check spelling.
You understood exactly what I meant with respect to the capital. Your attacks make that clear.
You are engaged in a stupid effort to find the tiniest thing you can claim victory over. Which is fine – if you need a fig leaf I do not care.
But you obviously can not find anything that matters slightly.
You can not even find a miscommunication.
Regardless, I am not going to censor my spelling for you.
I do not attack others for spelling and grammar errors, except when they are unclear or when they have attacked me or others hypocritically.
I recommend being very self conscious about your spelling and grammar from now on.
Someday I will expose your hypocrisy – or maybe not.
“I provide facts just as much as you do.”
Nope.
Svelaz, everyone who has read what you write and the follow-up responses realize that you know nothing and are wrong on almost everything. You make yourself look more foolish every time you reply. Keep it up. We all need to laugh, and you are the perfect opportunity.
LOL
Can you name a single consequential debate in which you have been PROVEN correct ?
Were you right about the collusion delusion – ANY of it ?
Were you right about Hunter Biden’s laptop ?
Is there anything you have been provably right about ?
I have made a few mistakes – not many, small ones, and I have owned them.
You have not owned anything, and yet is there anything you have been right about ?
You can not even get what I have written correct – even when it is right in front of you.
” That did not immediately result in massive inflation as some classical economists predicted.”
Perhaps Say’s Law had something to do with it, as Trump was increasing productive capacity.
My thesis – which is born out by history is that the economics – particularly money supply and inflation has a great deal of inertia.
Inflation in the 70’s started with massive spending for Vietnam, that slowly built, but did not truly become painful until more than a decade later with Carter.
Obama started the snowball rolling, By the time Trump was president all the buffer int he economy was gone – absent deliberate efforts to reduce money supply. Inflation would appear soon enough. Trump’s covid spending lit the match. But Biden’s dumped gasoline on the fire.
There is an interesting article in Zero Hedge right now that suggests we are over reacting and actually headed for serious deflation.
ZH is arguing that we have had past inflationary spikes like this and that they actually are transitory. And it provides alot of historical evidence to support that. ZH claims this is NOT like 1980.
It is an interesting argument and one worth paying careful attention to.
But ultimately I think ZH is wrong. I think current circumstances match the 80’s not other short inflationary blips.
I hope ZH is right. but I do not beleive that
I agree with the idea we spent too much on Covid. I said so at the time. Trump based his foreign policy on a strong military. For that to happen, he had to compromise on the budget. His A rating from you in foreign policy is due to that strong military.
Trump was in trouble the second he descended the escalator. No one can doubt that today. All they have to do is look at what the FBI did. In my mind, their actions were fraudulent and criminal. It was as close to treason as I can think of. Many Republicans were without backbones and had to slither around because they couldn’t stand on their own two feet. They were worse than worthless. They did nothing criminal, but it had the same effect.
Trump deregulated and was trying to put our business affairs in order. It’s hard to do that with no support and continuous attempts at impeachment. He was without much aid from members of his own side.
What he accomplished for the economy was a present and future expansion of production which dampened inflationary trends caused by so much money in the system.
The scale of US military spending is import for one and only one thing – reducing the number of casualties we are prepared to endure in a conflict.
We can spend half what we do now and still have by far the strongest military in the world, and still be able to fight every conflict that we are likely to get into in the future.
I am not overall sure that reduction in losses is wise – not just from the straight cost benefit analysis, but because we are more willing to use our military the lower the cost is.
Russia has already lost more soldiers in Ukraine than the US has lost since Korea, and in comparison to many military conflicts of the past – losses are low.
I nearly ended up at anapolis, I have worked for defense contractors, I am fascinated by all things military.
But that does not mean I do not complete Agree with Eisenhower – and Gabbard, that we spend too much on our military, andwe are far too willing to commit US soldiers to things not in the US interest.
But for the small but very real risk of nuclear anhilation, I would be willing to “fight russia down to the very last ukrainian”
At the same time I grasp this whole war is a gargantuan failure of US foreign policy – while there are many to blame the largest and most immediate failure is that of the left.
There is absolutely no person with any reasonable interest in world affairs that would conclude the US should have spent the years after the collapse of the USSR looking for conflict with Russia – yet we have.
Even Obama – despite idiotic games played by both Clinton and Biden was seeking to bring Russia and Putin closer to the west.
Atleast until Hillary Clinton sold the total Garbage that Putin colluded with Trump – this resulting in 6 years of essentially open hostility to Russia over something that never happened. Do not get me wrong – Putin is not a “good guy” – nor is MBS or Erodigan or myriads of other repugnant leaders we have to deal with. But there is no sane reason that the US should have an openly hostile relationship with a country with 1/2 the worlds nuclear warheads. A country that has far more cultural and other links to the west than the rest of the world.
Trump had very little political room to deal with Russia. His polices were wisely and inherently at odds with Russian interests, and the slightest outreach to Russia was viewed as proof that he had colluded with Russia to win the election – a patently absurd claim from the start.
I think Trump did a good job of dealing with Russia despite that handicap, but US relations with Russia did not improve.
With respect to the Current Ukraine war. Russia is the aggressor, and morally should lose. That is NOT to say the West did not F#$k this up by the numbers. I highly doubt that but for Biden’s weakness, stupid eastern european policies and abysmal energy policies, that there would be a war in Ukraine right now – those on the left should seriously think about that probably 200,000 Ukrainians and about half that russians have died because of Bad US foreign policy – not to mention probably $150B in various national treasures.
And what have we managed ? I beleive we have Putin cornered. It is my understanding that his prewar efforts to sanction proof his economy – hoarding Rubbles, will hit its limits in 12-18 months. After that the Russian economy likely collapses – really badly. And Who the F#$K wants chaos and anarchy in a country with half the worlds nukes ? The current mobilization is going badly. But assuming that Russia can somehow avoid economic collapse, it can otherwise continue this war indefinitely. Regardless of mobilization problems Russia has vastly more people.
Sustaining the Ukraine war will require taking significant casualties – just maintaining a stalemate will likely require Russia to take twice the casualties Ukraine is – that primarily because the west is supplying Ukraine increasingly sophisticated weapons and Ukraine has over the past decade developed a military that knows how to make use of technological advantage. Russia has not, and will pay in blood.
I would note that is much the same as what I argued above with respect to the US – the scale of defense spending is purely a function of the casualties you are prepared to take.
There are other very weird factors in this war. We are probably at the end of the era of the Tank. There were indications of that in GWII,
Tanks are too vulnerable, too expensive and have too large a logistical requirements.
But lots of tactical and strategic lessons of this conflict are difficult to process – because there is effectively no air war.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia have the ability to even protect the airspace over their own troops. There is literally no air war at all.
This is just not how any modern conflict has gone. Russia has planes and pilots but is making no effort to use them. It appears that the Russian airforce is not capable of dealing with the Russian airdefense systems that Ukraine has. Regardless, this makes trying to evaluate how to apply anything learned here to the future. It also begs questions regarding China. Again weirdly. China is actually mostly ahead of Russia in airpower.
Sort of. All Chinese aircraft are russian derivatives, often clones, or litterally licensed copies of Russian aircraft. China still does not have the ability on its own to manufacture a jet engine with the power and efficiency of a Russian jet – as a result all of the chinese clones are significantly underpowered. Russia still has some of the best military designers in the world. But the best of their products exist in tiny numbers, and they are not selling so their ability to maintain that lead – atleast compared non western countries will slowly die.
China has lots of technically inferior versions of Russian aircraft. But they have lots of them. Further unlike Russia they pay to train their pilots.
They have in the past decade adopted the equivalent of the US Top Gun program. It is likely inferior at this time, but it does mean that in a conflict with China a western power their will be a real contest for control of the skies.
Returning to Russia/Ukraine. ignoring emotion – this must end. It is far too dangerous for the world. No matter how low the risk of WWIII is, that risk is greater the longer this lasts.
I am aghast at the reports that Turkey had very nearly brokered a deal months ago, but the US told Ukraine not to accept.
It should be absolutely self evident to the entire world right now that Russia is a fading power. Whatever gains Russia has from this war are transient. The Ukrainians can take back the Donbas and Crimea at some future time when it is far less dangerous to do so.
Further the world economy is unstable. For all US problems at home – much of the world is in much worse shape.
“We can spend half what we do now and still have by far the strongest military in the world.”
John, your comment has nothing to do with the need for the President to bring the military back to speed. That was what the President required to obtain the A rating for his foreign policy. He had to spend what he had to, but if we look at things where he had more control over spending, anyone can see the President understands how to limit spending. The Jerusalem embassy is an example.
“I think Trump did a good job of dealing with Russia despite that handicap, but US relations with Russia did not improve.”
The left’s political use of Russia in their attempt to destroy Trump failed against Trump but succeeded in bringing our enemies closer together. It also succeeded in destabilizing the area and led to the Ukraine war. Trump improved western defense and strength, improving stability in the region.
Trump did a fantastic job based on what he had. It was a loss that the election went to Biden though there is significant evidence of lawlessness and the possibility that fraud turned the election.
You mentioned Tulsi Gabbard. At present, she is more of a single-issue potential candidate. I admire her, but the leftist policies she promoted make her the candidate for the JFK Democrat. She may be in the process of change. We will have to wait and see.
Gabbard is excellent on many issues – just not all issues. We have yet to see if she has tempered her position of more controversial issues.
Regardless, if I can live with the fact that Lindsey Graham and McConnel exist I can welcome Gabbard.
She has been showing up all over – I saw her on Chris Cuomo who grilled her relentlessly on J6 and I thought she did excellent.
She held her ground. She picked a defenseable position that was inline with the anti-elite theme she is pushing today.
Gabbard has to show proof that her views have changed. She is a spender until proven differently. She supported Medicare-for-all and tax the richest 5% to pay for it, climate change, and free higher education. If you are looking to get the government out of our lives, she is not the one unless she makes a radical shift as I discussed earlier.
The panic should be self-explanatory, and it is only there because our laws still carry some weight, so have heart. If it were just much ado about nothing, and if the Dem/globalist regime had a leg to stand on were they being honest, this would not even have been necessary to write about. I am very grateful the Professor has. For such a ‘superior’ party and ideology, our modern Democrats sure are paranoid.
I don’t think there is a “panic”. Thats just Turley’s rhetorical flourishes and adding melodramatic exaggeration. He is after all trying to get people’s attention and using these exaggerations and overly dramatic proclamations are not what it’s really happening.
The concerns are not about freedom of speech. They are mostly about the dangers of what these false claims, and political messages and deliberate misinformation can really do. We saw this when Trump was spreading his lie about vote fraud and during the pandemic how easily you can influence large numbers of people to believe a lie. Everybody knows what the phrase “drinking the kool-aide” means and it’s a sobering example of what can happen when too many people are lied to by an authoritative figure that overwhelms opposing views or even reason. When the lying overwhelms the “good speech” Turley champions as a remedy to “bad speech” you get things like what happened in Jonestown and the unnecessary prolonging of a pandemic. Eventually some form of censorship will crop up.
This country is not ready for the kind of free speech philosophy he envisions when you have so much ignorance and poor education. When the majority of people can’t discern the facts from opinion or understands complex issues by recognizing nuance and subtlety. The need to have simple and “easy” to understand black and white reasons for things don’t always work and when there are complex issues that have varying degrees of nuance and subtlety those wanting the simple are scared or loath to think deeper because many are afraid of being seen as stupid, dumb, or weak for not being able to understand. These issues exist and I believe that is the cause of all these us vs. them arguments.
” Trump was spreading his lie about vote fraud and during the pandemic “
Fraud has been proven. Svelaz is lying.
“Jonestown”
An authoritarian, much like many on the left lead to murder and suicide.
“because many are afraid of being seen as stupid, dumb, or weak for not being able to understand.”
You are one who doesn’t understand and, ” seen as stupid, dumb, or weak”
“ Fraud has been proven. Svelaz is lying.”
Not the kind Trump has been lying about S. Meyer. He’s got 60 court cases proving he was. Even in Arizona.
You accept that fraud has been proven – but seem to think that Trump was offering some completely different fraud ?
Can you cite specifically what fraud it is that Trump claimed that has been proven false ?
Court cases were dismissed for standing. latches, mootness, being too early or too late.
Some judges engaged in irrelevant comentary on evidence that was never subject to testing in court.
There was no discovery. No witnesses, no direct examination, no cross examination.
These are the indicia of prrof or lack thereof in court procedings – and they did not happen.
All the court cases prove is that Trump was barred by 60 courts using on legal doctrine or another from presenting an actual case.
That was a serious mistake. That undermined the credibility of the courts.
I would note that 43,000 votes are the difference between Biden winning and Trump winning
Less than 100,000 votes nationwide were the difference between Democrats controlling the presidency, the senate and the house, and republicans controlling all 3.
If Republicans had won all three by 100,000 votes – do you think there would not have been very serious scrutiny ?
The RCP average on election day Had Trump behind Biden by 7.2%, the actual vote – if accurate was 4.5% – almost a 3pt error.
4 major polls had Biden winning by 10pts on election day. A 5.5pt error.
If there is a 3pt error in favor of democrats in current polls – which is highly likely, there will be a red Tsunami. Republicans will win every single tossup in the house and senate. If there is a 5.5pt error Republicans will have 56 seats in the senate, pick up close to 70 in the house and pick up all but a handful of governorship.
Biden actually underperformed Clinton in the vast majority of the country in 2020. With 6 specific exceptions. In 6 cities in the 6 swing states – the places where Zuckerberg helicoptered in 400M and took over the elections from local election officials. Biden did far better than expected.
These are also the places that TTV using ballot box video and geotraking data established very large scale campaigns of ballot harvesting.
There is a video of a woman – I believe in Michigan putting over 100 ballots into a ballot box. There is lots of video of people in 5 of the six places – PA mysteriously deleted all their ballot box video, dropping 5-10 ballots at one time, and then going to another drop box to deposit more.
In most videos those depositing ballots are taking a selfie showing themselves putting the ballots in the dropbox. The geotraking data uniquely identifies a specific phone, but private actors can not get the identity of the person with the phone. The bar, AG’s and DOJ have threatened prosecutors with disbarment and investigation if they issue warrants to get the identities of these “2000 mules” but a small number have been identified and interviewed and they have confirmed that they were being paid $10 per ballot they dropped.
In a few instances in a few places accross the country Sherrifs or prosecutors who were not easily blackmailed have investigated and prosecuted. There are many many successful cases. Just not a fraction of the number there could be.
In several instances people have confessed to mailin voting fraud involving hundreds of ballots. Though typically these plead to small numbers or single counts. Because that is how our justice system works.
You specifically cited AZ – in AZ we KNOW that 13,000 people cast almost 50,000 ballots. In a state Trump lost by just under 11,000 votes.
So there is 37,000 fraudulent ballots cast in AZ were Trump lost by 11,000. We do not know who those 50K ballots were for – because once a ballot is separated from its envelope there is no way to trace the ballot.
Further those fraudulent duplicates in AZ MIGHT be 13,000 individuals who personally engaged in fraud.
But it is also possible that they are the evidence of the large scale ballot harvesting fraud TTV found.
If 250,000 fraudlent mailin ballots were submitted in 2020, Ballots manufactured by reviewing AZ’s voter registration rolls and looking for people who had not voted in recent elections and submitting a fake ballot for them. It is near certain that some percent of those voters that had not voted recently would choose to vote in 2020 – and that would result in duplicates. If that is the case – AZ did not have 50K fraudulent ballots but more like 250K.
That is speculation – but it is fully consistent with all known evidence. Regardless the alternative is still atleast 50K fraudulent ballots in AZ.
Either way you have a bogus election.
In PA there were hundreds of thousands of ballots where the signatures did not match – BTW “signature match” does not just mean the signature, it means the ballot was not dated, or did not contain DL or SS#’s, or did not contain a signature at all. PA law says these ballots must be rejected.
But he PA supreme court – in 2020 and 2022 has ruled that election officials must accept the ballots that are illegal.
In PA you are required to have voter ID to vote in person, and your signature must match in person or you can not vote.
But if you mailin your ballot – no signature is required, your ballot need not be dated, you need provide no ID at all, and the ballot will be accepted.
That means I can fill out ballots in my bedroom for other people and drop them into a ballot drop box and they will be counted.
Why those like you can not understand that if they did not result in massive fraud in 2020, it is absolutely certain to soon enough.
Further – eventually this WILL blow up in your face. Eventually that Fraud WILL be caught.
When it is all elections from 2020 forward will be discredited.
“ You accept that fraud has been proven – but seem to think that Trump was offering some completely different fraud ?
Can you cite specifically what fraud it is that Trump claimed that has been proven false ?”
I have never said that there has been zero fraud. Trump has made multiple claims that there has been massive systemic voter fraud, that millions of illegals voted, and the the election was “stolen” as a result. His claims HAVE been debunked multiple times. Even by his own commission looking into his illegals-voting-by-the-millions claim. Which never found anything. The Arizona Cyber Ninjas audit confirmed there was no massive voter fraud and confirmed Biden won Arizona. No, there were no 50k fraudulent ballots in Arizona. Every audit, hand count and legislative investigation found none of that. It is speculation because it is BS. In Georgia after multiple hand recounts and audits by the republicans legislature also found no evidence of massive voter fraud or enough fraud to change the outcome of the election.
All Trump did was deliberately undermine the integrity of the election and claim that the integrity of the election couldn’t be trusted because HE was the one undermining it with these false claims.
The entire premise for your claims that fraud on a massive scale occurred rest on the stupid idea that the lack of evidence IS evidence that there was. That’s it. No evidence means it is evidence that there was fraud. You are essentially arguing that there is water in the bathtub because there is no water.
You seem to be under the impression that government has no duty to conduct trustworthy elections.
Many many claims were made regarding the 2020 election – Just as Hillary did in 2016.
I do not know which specific claims Trump made. Nor honestly do I care.
Though you can listen to his speech on J6 where he spends an hour outlining the claims he beleives to be true.
Most if not all of them remain untested or proven true.
Some of those claims were absurd on their face. The benthams law claim was on its face valid and damning, but did not hold up because the number of votes at each precinct is not random.
The claim that DVS voting machines skewed the election would have been treated more skeptically, had anyone but Powell made it.
Frankly the absolutely criminal obstruction she faced – even from the courts in establishing Flynn’s innocence and government malfeasance in going after him made it possible for her to beleive that those on the left would do anything to win – given the ludicrous lengths they had gone to, to “get Flynn”.
Despite that todate the DVS claim has NOT been broadly disproven.
What we know is there were DVS errors in Windham NH that almost tipped a house race to democrats – but did not , and were specific to a single race and mailin ballots. But wer a known problem with the equipment – error but not malfeasance and they did not effect the presidential race.
We also know that within a very small margin of error in AZ that DVS equipment counted ballots correctly.
We also know that the rejection rate – kicking ballots to human adjudication (without observers) was 1000times what regulations required.
We do not know the actual effect of that.
We know that voter registration databases accross the country were hacked. But that they were not modified.
That is NOT to say that illegally obtaining dumps of voter Registration databases could not be used to conduct large scale mailin fraud.
We do not know who hacked them, whether they took anything, only that they did no change anything.
We have been unable to establish whether voting systems themselves were hacked. But we have established that they were trivially hackable.
And that is a huge problem for future elections that is completely unaddressed.
We did prove that in AZ while DVS systems were trivially hackable, that they had not been hacked.
We have established in GA that large numbers of ballots – atleast hundreds were scanned multiple times. But that inquiry was stopped again on ludicrous standing grounds before it was able to demonstrate the total scale of the fraud.
And more recently we have proven a massive illegal ballot harvesting operation in all 6 cities that tipped the election.
In the few places where actual investigations occured – arrests have been made, people prosecuted, and plead guilty to a fraction of the fraud they engaged in. We also know that operatives were paid to engage in ballot harvesting.
And I can go on and one.
And you do not seem to grasp the standard.
You seem to think that if Trump makes one mistaken claim about Election fraud that you then automatically get away with any other fraud – so long as Trump is wrong about a single claim.
You keep making this stupid claim that this is about Trump.
It is not. It is about whether government has earned citizens trust in the election.
Since the election we have had to fight YOU tooth and nail to get a tiny part of what is necessary to restore trust in elections.
It is not all that hard to conduct elections that can be trusted.
Do not have mailin voting.
Do not have early voting.
Actually impliment secret voting properly.
Recognize that close elections are going to occur and that those are the occasions where consequential fraud will occur.
If there were 500K fraudulent ballots cast in the Newsome recall election – no one cares,
Newsome survived the Recall by 3M+ votes.
Further you will not get 4% fraudulent votes in an election that is won by 30% of the vote. Few will risk getting caught for Fraud if it will not make a difference. And the larger the fraud required the more likely you are to get caught.
The massive polling error in 2020 was a necessity for the election fraud in 2020. It would have been far less likely for citizens to beleive Biden had won without fraud, if Polls did not falsely show a 10pt lead on election day.
The outcome of an election must be reconcilable with our expectations. The closer the race the easier it is to commit fraud and for voters to accept the results anyway.
And this is an easy problem to solve – Require that the winner of an election must win 51% of the vote.
That means any sucessful election fraud must be atleast 2% of the vote. That is hard to attain without throwing up red flags.
Regardless, the left is completely uninterested in trying to build trust in election results.
“ You keep making this stupid claim that this is about Trump.”
That is because it is. He’s the one who started the whole thing about voter fraud and not trusting government,. He’s the one who stoked the idea to his gullible hoards of followers. By constantly claiming that the election was “rigged” before the elections he primed his followers and the gullible into believing that democrats were going to cheat. He was the one spewing the doubt that you are now using to justify his claims. YOU are one of those who have been taken for a ride by Trump’s constant lying. That’s what he uses against those who are really seeing what he is doing. He made claims tha the elections was rigged when he was running against Hillary. Prepping his supporters to believe he was right the moment he lost. Once he won his claims vanished or lost importance and only came back when he was running against Biden.
Trump did try to overturn the election when he realized he lost. He was depending on his gullible hordes of MAGA nutties and loyal republican congressmen who were clearly enabling his lying for the purpose of regaining power. That was the only goal.
Because Trump is incompetent and a sloppy liar due to his narcissism and massive ego he tried to overthrow a fair election. Trump was ready to declare himself president if the Proud boys and the Oath keepers succeeded in stopping the election count. He was the one who undermined trust in government. He was the one who kept sowing distrust and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
“” You keep making this stupid claim that this is about Trump.”
That is because it is. ”
Only in your head.
“He’s the one who started the whole thing about voter fraud and not trusting government,.”
Nope.
Do I really need to cite 20 years of democrats ranting about stolen elections and election fraud ?
Can you name a single time a Republican was elected president in your lifetime that a democrat in the house did not challenge the election ?
“He’s the one who stoked the idea to his gullible hoards of followers.”
More of the stupid Trump followers idiocy.
Who was right about the collusion delusion ?
Who was right about the Biden’s global corruption ?
and on an on.
To paraphrase William Buckley “I would trust the government of this country to any of 10,000 Trump supporters elected at random, than left wing nuts like you”
Who has been deceiving Who ? What is it that you have been right about in the past 6, 12, … years ?
Why should you be trusted, why should the media be trusted, why should social media be trusted, why shoudl the press be trusted ?
Trump and Trump supporters can be trusted – because unlike you they did not FAIL multiple guilibilty tests.
“By constantly claiming that the election was “rigged””
So who is claiming the election was not rigged who can also claim to have been correct on any of the significant issues of the past 6 years.
Who am I to beleive about the election, that was right about the collusion delusion, Covid, the Hunter Biden Laptop, Inflation, …. ?
Why are you right only this once ?
“before the elections he primed his followers and the gullible into believing that democrats were going to cheat.”
As did democrats.
“He was the one spewing the doubt that you are now using to justify his claims.”
The doubt is there – you seem to think that anyone not on the far level is incapable of seeing the world as it is without Trump.
But AGAIN the evidence is that it is YOU – and all those YOU trust that have been wrong over and over.
“YOU are one of those who have been taken for a ride by Trump’s constant lying.”
I have never voted for Trump, I am clearly not taken in by him.
I have been fighting for election integrity since 2000, I have been fighting against the black box voting terminals introduced by republicans – and we have almost eliminated them. I have been fighting for Voter ID. I have been fighting against mailin voting – since 2000, but until 2020 few states were stupid enough to do it. I have been fighting for voting in person, hand counts, paper ballots, and against top down voting processes, and for bottom up ones. All voting at small precincts, all counting within the precinct, all results made public within hours of poll closing.
Runoffs rather than court battles – as quickly as possible. the elimination of voter registration.
All this was long before Trump.
It is incredibly stupid to claim that Trump influenced me regarding elections. But then you are not that smart.
Do I need to post, Jimmy Carter, Obama, Pelosi, Biden …. commenting on the fraud problems with mailin voting ?
Do you think a system that nearly everyone knows is highly prone to fraud – suddenly works in 2020 because of Covid ?
“That’s what he uses against those who are really seeing what he is doing.”
Does this sentence make sense to you ?
“He made claims tha the elections was rigged when he was running against Hillary.”
And Hillary claimed and still does that 2016 was rigged.
“Prepping his supporters to believe he was right the moment he lost.”
As were democrats, Lost of people right and left were warning of problems until the election was over – then suddenly one side thinks the problems all magically disappeared.
“Once he won his claims vanished or lost importance and only came back when he was running against Biden.”
Again do you live in the real world ? In 2017 Trump setup a blue ribbon panel on election integrity.
It fell apart when democrat members refused to show up.
“Trump did try to overturn the election when he realized he lost.”
As did Hillary, not a crime.
“He was depending on his gullible hordes of MAGA nutties and loyal republican congressmen who were clearly enabling his lying for the purpose of regaining power. That was the only goal.”
As is typical – disagree with you – someone who AGAIN has been wrong about everything – and you are a nuttie ?
Do you have an argument that is not ad hominem ?
“Because Trump is incompetent and a sloppy liar due to his narcissism and massive ego he tried to overthrow a fair election.”
so much to unpack.
If Trump is an incompetent president – “Please sir give me some more”
No matter what the result in 2020 – Trump is currently ahead of Biden by 2pts – with the poll adjustments for errors in 2020 that would be 5-7pts.
we are seeing the disaster that you get from an actually incompetent sloppy liar.
All politicians are narcissists – what is new.
Massive ego – redundant with narcissist.
You overthrow governments. you challenge lawless and fraudulent elections.
Claiming 2020 was fair is lunacy. it is unlikely we will ever be able to prove who won 2020.
But we are far beyond any doubt that it was the most lawless error prone election in over 100 years, that it is likely the most fraudlent over the same time period.
“Trump was ready to declare himself president if the Proud boys and the Oath keepers succeeded in stopping the election count.”
That is not how it works. Unless congress declares a Winner – Pelosi ends up as president. Trump knows that.
Beleive it or not the proud boys and oath keepers do to. You don’t.
The Trump plan is well outlined by Eastman – and it is nealry identical to a plan devised by Lawrence Tribe for Hillary in 2016 and nearly identical to what occured in 1876.
“He was the one who undermined trust in government. He was the one who kept sowing distrust and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
What nonsense. Americans currently distrust ALL institutions. They distrust social media, the press, the left, the right, government, biden, doj, fbi, the courts.
This distrust is because those institutions have been untrustworthy.
What you accuse Trump of is litterally impossible – you can not fool all the people all the time.
But you can fool some of the people all of the time.
So again – what consequential national matter have you been right about, that you should be trusted ?
I do not know of any.
GA did not have multiple hand recounts.
They had a recanvas, which is not a recount.
And I beleive they had a couple of hand recounts in Counties Trump won.
There was no statewide recount, there was no recount of any kind of Fulton county.
If you can not keep the facts straight why should you be trusted ?
You do not undermine the integrity of anything by challenging it. This is an idiotic claim by the left.
Institutions are NOT entitled to our trust. They are required to earn it.
Claims of failure – stupid or legitimate MUST be disproven by government to earn trust.
I do not dent your credibility by calling you a liar.
Your credibility is destroyed by your own lies and errors.
No one believes Biden about most anything today.
Whether you believe he is a liar or just a demented old fool who no longer knows the truth
he lost his credibility long ago.
Republican attacks did not burn his credibility,
his own words and actions did.
“Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. [n4] Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution. It is therefore always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it. Moreover, even imminent danger cannot justify resort to prohibition of these functions essential to effective democracy unless the evil apprehended is relativelyserious. Prohibition of free speech and assembly is a measure so stringent that it would be inappropriate as the means for averting a relatively trivial harm to society. A police measure may be unconstitutional merely because the remedy, although effective as means of protection, is unduly harsh or oppressive. Thus, a State might, in the exercise of its police power, make any trespass upon the land of another a crime, regardless of the results or of the intent or purpose of the trespasser. It might, also, punish an attempt, a conspiracy, or an incitement to commit the trespass. But it is hardly conceivable that this Court would hold constitutional a statute which punished as a felony the mere voluntary assembly with a society formed to teach that pedestrians had the moral right to cross unenclosed, unposted, wastelands and to advocate their doing so, even if there was imminent danger that advocacy would lead to a trespass. The fact that speech is likely to result in some violence or in destruction of property is not enough to justify its suppression. There must be the probability of serious injury to the State. Among free men, the deterrents ordinarily to be applied to prevent crime are education and punishment for violations of the law, not abridgment of the rights of free speech and assembly.”
Justice Brandeis Whitney V California.
“The Arizona Cyber Ninjas audit confirmed there was no massive voter fraud and confirmed Biden won Arizona.”
False, the cyber ninja’s audit – that the left faught tooth and nail ONLY confirmed that DVS machines counted the ballots to a very high degree of accuracy.
“there were no 50k fraudulent ballots in Arizona.”
The 50K duplicate ballots in AZ is LITTERALLY a finding of the Cyber Ninja’s.
Please actually read their report.
Contra your idiocy Cyber Ninja’s found MASSIVE problems in AZ – nearly half of all ballots were flawed in one way or another.
Most were not “fraud”, but that massive error rate destroy fraud prevention measures.
“Every audit, hand count and legislative investigation found none of that”
False. Please familiarize yourself with the results of the actual audits.
You keep posting nonsense – like that GA conducted a full hand recount.
There is no state in the US that conducted a full hand recount. There are very few counties that conducted a full hand recount.
The single largest full hand recount was the AZ hand recount of Maricpoa county.
And while that did disprove the claim that DVS systems fraudulently counted the ballots, that is the ONLY fraud claim the AZ audit disproved.
The 50K duplicate ballots is LITTERALLY a finding of the AZ audit.
You keep spewing garbage that has long ago been debunked.
You do not know what you are talking about.
The idiocy that you are arguing is as bad or worse than Powell’s claim that DVS was fractionally counting votes.
“It is speculation because it is BS.”
Svelaz, as you should know by now. I do not make assertions that are not backed up by facts.
The AZ audit report is publicly available – you can read it.
“In Georgia after multiple hand recounts and audits by the republicans legislature also found no evidence of massive voter fraud or enough fraud to change the outcome of the election.”
Again false so many ways.
GA conducted a recanvas – twice. that is not a recount.
A few Trump counties conducted hand recounts and Trump picked up alot of votes in those – significantly closing the gap, but those recount results are not part of the certified results. Regardless there was no hand recount in most of the state. Ther was no recount in most of the state.
Raffensburger agreed to a full signature audit in Fulton county. He conducted a random signature audit in Cobb county.
The GBI pulled 5000 mailin ballot enveolopes at random. They found that about 300 of those 5000 – did not meet the GA law signature reeuirements. They found that 30 were likely fraud. That is a 6% rate of mailin ballots that should have been rejected but were not.
and a 0.6% rate of fraud that were accepted. Trump lost GA by 0.25%.
The Cobb county signature audit is not enough to draw statewide conclusions. But it was more than enough to require a much broader Audit.
That never occured.
A private lawsuit against the election in 2021 after the inauguration was given access to Fulton county ballot scans. Hundreds of duplicate scans were found – corroborating the claim that ballots were being scanned over and over. But before more than 10% of the scans had been examined outside democrats challenged the audit and the Judge reversed his prior decision that the challengers had standing and the immage audit was never completed.
As I noted before – one of the problems with rejecting an election challenge on standing grounds is that some party ALWAYS must have standing.
You can argue individual voters do not have standing,. that other states do not have standing. that political candidates do not have standing.
But you can not claim that no one has standing – otherwise you are claiming that once the election is over fraud can not be challenged.
Whether you like it or not – I am not offering premises.
I am providing facts.
I am not seeking to prove Trump won the election – it was highly unlikely after election day that would be possible.
Only that the election was lawless, full of error, and full of fraud of indeterminate magnitude.
You doubt the TTV claims of large scale ballot harvesting ? Fine, subpeona the identities of the geotracked phones and interview those dumping ballots. A few have been found and interviewed – those confirmed they were being paid to deposit ballots in drop boxes. That is a crime – even in California. That is election fraud.
You doubt the geotracking data ? Well police throughout the country are using it, and it is far better than the cell tower location data that police have been using for decades.
Regardless, Ballot Box video confirms that when we have video that the geotracking data is correct.
Further the ballot box video confirms ballot harvesting – it just does not tell us the scale.
Regardless, the video exists, it shows fraud – investigate and prosecute.
Do you have a source that claims there was no consequential fraud in 2020 that is not a source that bought the collusion delusion story ?
That bough the hunter Biden russian disinformation story ?
Do you have someone claiming no election fraud in 2020 that we should trust ? That has not lied to us repeatedly ?
More and more – we have proof of serious misconduct by the left, democrats, our institutions.
The clinton campaign concocted the alpha bank hoax and the Steele dossier – are these people you offer as trustworthy ?
Are these people who would not engage in election fraud if they could get away with it ?
Are these people who have any reason to fear being caught – by the FBI ? By the media ?
Trump did not destroy trust in our institutions – they did that too themselves.
Whether it is democrats running Clinton’s campaign, the media, the FBI the “deep state”, Social media.
These people have been caught in lie after lie, misconduct after misconduct.
These – like you are the liars that are claiming Trump is lying.
If you want people to believe you the minimal requirement is to stop lying, and to do that you need to stop believing people who have been lying to you.
Before trying to tell me again what the Cyber Ninja’s audit report says – READ IT.
“The entire premise for your claims that fraud on a massive scale occurred rest on the stupid idea that the lack of evidence IS evidence that there was.”
Nope. I have provided you lots of evidence. Some of it is much more reliable than others.
But contra your claims none of it has actually been discredited.
There is plenty of evidence of indesputable actual fraud,
there is more evidence of probable fraud of larger scale.
There is some evidence of possible fraud on a very large scale.
Very little of that has been critically examined – you keep pretending it does not exist.
Using your bathtub analogy.
I am arguing that the bathtub is wet on the bottom, there is a soap ring 3″ from the top, there is water on the floor and wet towels.
From that what is the likelyhood that the bathtub had water in it recently and how much water did it likely have ?
And you are claiming – there never was water in the tub.
John B. Say says,
“ Court cases were dismissed for standing. latches, mootness, being too early or too late.
Some judges engaged in irrelevant comentary on evidence that was never subject to testing in court.
There was no discovery. No witnesses, no direct examination, no cross examination.”
Because the law requires a process to be followed and lack of standing is one of them. You may not agree with the concept of standing when it doesn’t benefit your argument but you do when it does. This seems to be a theme among conservatives and republicans wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
Some judges engaged in relevant commentary on evidence that was not presented because they plaintiffs had none to present. In order to show harm they had to have evidence. That’s how all court’s work. There was no discovery because most cases didn’t make it past the preliminary hearings which REQUIRED evidence or needed to show they had standing to proceed. Some claims were filed too late because of incompetent trump lawyers others involved using affidavits that were either withdrawn because “witnesses” realized they could be prosecuted for perjury or didn’t have standing or were mostly hearsay. This just encapsulates the whole thing as one bad attempt at pushing a lie and false narratives.
It’s already been reported in the J6 committee that Trump KNEW he lost, he privately conceded that the lost but kept pushing the BS about the election being stolen to his gullible followers who stupidly and blindly believed his own lie.
“Because the law requires a process to be followed and lack of standing is one of them. You may not agree with the concept of standing when it doesn’t benefit your argument but you do when it does. This seems to be a theme among conservatives and republicans wanting to have their cake and eat it too.”
Standing, laches, mootness etc are judge made law. I have problems with that, but they do have an important basis.
The problem with Standing is that someone MUST always have standing. Standing is a means to assure that a case is brought by the party harmed and best suited to argue the case. It is not ever a means thwart remedy for bad conduct.
Laches bars claims that are too late. That is supposed to be years too late, not days.
Mootness is similar to laches – it bars claims because some other factor has made them unremediable.
What is relevant to 2020 is that each of these was used to Bar any examination of the actual evidence.
One of the core problems with all these court decisions is that these cases were not really about Trump.
They were about trust in the election.
When the court used these legal doctrines to thwart ANY real inquiry and investigation – they undermined public trust.
We are still living the legacy of that.
This country is less ordered, more anarchical in part because the courts did NOT address the claims of election fraud.
To flip the election – the burden of proof was on Trump – and it is very high. The courts are right about that.
But they missed something far more important.
Public Trust in elections is something that GOVERNMENT must earn, and it is Government that must prove the election was lawful and trustworthy. It failed, and the courts both before and after the election contributed significantly to that.
“Some judges engaged in relevant commentary on evidence that was not presented because they plaintiffs had none to present.”
False there were plenty of witnesses, and thousands of depositions. This is an idiotic claim. Further the standard of proof to get to a hearing is extremely low and had easily been met.
“In order to show harm they had to have evidence.”
The harm is self evident. You are making the ludicrously stupid argument – which is why the courts burned their own credibility, that to get to court you must prove at the door that you will win.
“That’s how all court’s work.”
Nope.
“There was no discovery because most cases didn’t make it past the preliminary hearings which REQUIRED evidence or needed to show they had standing to proceed.”
So much error.
There is very little evidence required to get to discovery. A credible allegation of a claim is sufficient.
Trump had far more than needed for that.
Next, laches, standing, mootness have NOTHING to do with evidence.
Standing is simply, you are the wrong party to bring the claim – fine who is the right party ? The courts were literally saying that no one can challenge actual fraud. I would note that not only did courts use standing to stop Trump, but to stop voter lawsuits, and to stop the states.
If no one has standing – there is no possible way to address election fraud in court.
Laches is simply that you are too late.
Mootness is essentially that there is no remedy.
Standing. laches, and mootness have no connection to evidence at all.
With all 3 there can be a mountain of evidence or none at all. Evidence has nothing to do with these decisions.
“Some claims were filed too late because of incompetent trump lawyers others involved using affidavits that were either withdrawn because “witnesses” realized they could be prosecuted for perjury or didn’t have standing or were mostly hearsay.”
There were thousands of affadavits – a handful were withdrawn. This is a ludicrously stupid claim. Further there is plenty of evidence that does not rely on witnesses or affadavits. It is well documented by the media that counting continued in all 6 cities after observers had been sent home, in some cases in violation of court orders. That alone is more than enough to get to an evidentiary hearing.
Your Trump’s lawyers are inccompetent claim is absolutely stupid.
You are litterally claiming – that a Fraudulent election is acceptable – if your opponents lawyers are not any good.
Trump’s lawyers were excellent. There were also facing arbitrary deadlines that were fundamentally impossible.
The fact that courts were resorting to mootness and laches to dismiss cases proves my point.
I have been in many lawsuits in my life. They typically take years. The time between filing a motion and the courts acting on it is longer than the time from the election to the inauguration.
Regardless, in the end this is not about Trump. Government must earn the trust of the citizenry. Lawful and fraud free elections are the means of doing so. Courts owed Trump very little. They owed the american people proof that the results could be trusted.
The burden of Proof that Trump actually won the election rested with Trump.
The burden of proof that the election was lawful and fraud free rests with those conducting the election and is owed to the american people.
A plurality of people beleive the 2020 election smells like rotten fish – still.
That is because YOU, democrats and the government FAILED to instill trust.
“This just encapsulates the whole thing as one bad attempt at pushing a lie and false narratives.”
And yet we KNOW of enormous problems.
We know that in GA 6% of mailin ballots failed to meet the legal standards to be accepted – and yet they were.
That 0.6% of the mailin ballots were actually fraudulent – these are the results of the Cobb County random signature audit.
Because the results undermined the Election Raffensberger refused to do a full signature audit – Fulton county would have been far worse than Cobb country.
In GA 0.25% of the electorate – just over 1/3 of the fraudulent ballots, or 1/30th of the invalid ballots determined the outcome.
In AZ there were 50K of ballots from 13K of people – in an election that was decided by 10K ballots.
And all this and many many more problems are from BEFORE TTV proved that there was a massive ballot harvesting operation in each of 6 cities that flipped the election.
“It’s already been reported in the J6 committee that Trump KNEW he lost, he privately conceded that the lost but kept pushing the BS about the election being stolen to his gullible followers who stupidly and blindly believed his own lie.”
Both false and irrelevant.
Trump and all of us were well aware that Trump faced an uphill battle.
I have no idea what “Knew he lost” even means.
Today we still do not know with the required certainty owed the public who won 2020. How exactly is it that Trump “knows” he legitimately lost, when YOU can not establish that Biden legitimately won ?
The Hunter Biden censorship alone according to polls would likely have resulted in Biden losing the popular vote.
If the effect was only 1/10 – 1/100th of that – Trump likely would have won the electoral college.
Further we now know that the FBI participated in supressing that story.
And now through Durham we know that the FBI was suppressing the flaws in the Steele Dossier, the FBI testified that after they knew the Steele dossier was bogus they paid Danchenko 200K – essentially to make him a CI so they could redact information regarding him and prevent congress and the public from knowing about him. And that the FBI told Danchenko to delete texts and emails to steele and others.
This is called CRIMINAL obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence.
It is also the FBI engaging in politics.
It is self evident at this point that the machinery of govenrment – regardless of who is in actual power, is owned and acting to serve ONE political party.
This is banana republic nonsense. This is Putin’s russia.
This undermines trust in our institutions and that is incredibly dangerous.
Fraud was proven and John outlines some of it in this thread.
I won’t comment further about what you are. Instead I will copy what John said since I agree with it and he is quite detailed.
“You never engage in honest discussion.
In the rare instances your posts are not endless insults and actually make assertions of fact
those alleged facts are nearly always demoonstrably false.
You make egregious errors all the time.
You defame and malign people all the time.
You are wrong nearly all the time.
You never apologize for errors.
You never correct errors.
You are the epitome of dishonest discussion.
You are useful to me and other sane posters here – because you state such foolish and obviously incorrect remarks,
that provides an opportunity to debunk them.
But frankly – you are not even particularly good at “disinformation”.
“Not the kind Trump has been lying about S. Meyer. He’s got 60 court cases proving he was.”
18 out of the 25 that were decided on the merits were decided in favor of Trump or the GOP. This was provided before, but you are dishonest. I also provided cases for another who didn’t know Trump won any cases. He was smart and backed off. You are not.
” Even in Arizona.”
In the one case based on the merits in Arizona, likely the case you are talking about Trump and the GOP prevailed in the court of appeals, 9th Circuit.
Mi Familia Vota v. Hobbs,
Svelaz, you have made a fool of yourself once again.
Like claims of Russian Collusion®™?
Or claims that the Secret Service tear-gassed peaceful FJB supporters in late May of 2020, despite previous published articles belying the claim that the protests were peaceful?
Those kinds of deliberate misinformation?
If Musk does buy twitter it is most likely he will eventually change the TOS to fit his views of how the company should function. I have no problem with that. Just as the current owners can run it as they see fit.
However I see a problem that might, MIGHT crop up. Twitter subscriptions may drop significantly and might start a long term downward spiral like Truth Social.
Turley sure seems intent on forcing his free speech views on others because he can’t stand the thought of another private entity CAN censor content because they don’t agree with it and it’s legal. It seems he can’t stand the idea that it is legal for a private company to censor or block content they disagree with or think it is not appropriate for THEIR platform. Turley has his own blog and he can run it any way he pleases including censoring others because they are being racist or profane. BUT, those two categories shouldn’t be censored on his blog at all based on his stated views. Sure they ARE offensive but they shouldn’t be censored at all. Yet he does.
Darren Smiths once explained it as being in Turley’s house. You come in his house you abide by HIS rules. Fair enough. But he goes into Agrawal’s house like everyone else he has to abide and respect HIS rules. If he censors content that violate HIS rules he has a right to. Just like in Turley’s house. Everyone who wants to go in Agrawal’’s house has to sign an agreement that they will abide by HIS rules. If his rules include censoring content and removing information he deems dangers or false you have the choice of not going into HIS house. It’s really that simple.
One of the points often neglected about the 1st amendment is that it gives everyone the liberty to control their creations as they see fit free from government interference. Now that is NOT saying it should be a free for all. There are obvious limitations such as threats and inciting violence. But everything else should be at the discretion of the person or company running a platform they offer others to use according to THEIR rules.
If you had no problem with that, an entire two-thirds of your comment would have been unnecessary. if you don’t like Jonathan Turley, stop reading and commenting on his blog. He does not control your destiny, and his opinions have no bearing on your day to day life, neither do ours. You are either paid, or just a world-class pedant and contrarian with way, way too much time on their hands. We get it. You don’t like the Professor, you are a dyed in the wool modern Progressive who is either paid or will never consider another point of view, and you take up a lot of space here with a whole lot of words that in the end say nothing of import whatsoever. Most of us scroll through you at this point. I don’t say that to be a ****, it’s just true. If you would ever like to actually engage in an exchange of ideas, people would welcome that. I’m beginning to think the trolls get paid by the number of links to MSNBC or CNN they post. Sheesh. Have an original thought, if it wouldn’t make your head explode.
James, I never said I didn’t like the professor. Obviously you’re missing the point. I post here because I can. I read his columns because I can and if I don’t agree or choose to offer a different point of view it’s because I can. There’s really no mystery here.
Everyone reads everything here. Including George who is the most prolific poster here S. Meyer comes in a close second with his alternating “S. Meyer” and “anonymous” handles.
“ If you would ever like to actually engage in an exchange of ideas, people would welcome that.”
I do, when people actually engage in honest discussion instead of hurling insults and ad hominems.
Plenty of people have original thought here including me. The problem is others dismiss them and ridicule them thru insults like S. Meyer and a few others. Don’t get all bent out of shape because my views or opposing ideas are annoying or wrong to you. Just the fact that others are annoyed or frustrated because “lefties” are posting opposing views means there’s a discussion to be had. It’s freedom of speech in all its chaotic glory, no?
“I do, when people actually engage in honest discussion instead of hurling insults and ad hominems.”
You do not offer honest discussion. Occasionally when you do I reply with my alias. Then you delve into nonsense. It is not a matter that opinions differ. It is that your facts are often wrong and you don’t correct them.
Can’t correct what’s not wrong. You go off on a ranting and insults whenever you can’t discuss details or obfuscate on definitions. That’s not honest discussion.
Svelaz – you are constantly engaging in ad hominem.
You never engage in honest discussion.
In the rare instances your posts are not endless insults and actually make assertions of fact
those alleged facts are nearly always demoonstrably false.
You make egregious errors all the time.
You defame and malign people all the time.
You are wrong nearly all the time.
You never apologize for errors.
You never correct errors.
You are the epitome of dishonest discussion.
You are useful to me and other sane posters here – because you state such foolish and obviously incorrect remarks,
that provides an opportunity to debunk them.
But frankly – you are not even particularly good at “disinformation”.
I would welcome an “honest discussion” from someone on the left – and they do exist, even if they are rare.
But that is not possible with you.
Your usefulness on this blog is as an example of the incredibly poor grasp of facts, logic, and reason of most of those on the left.
John B. Say, you’re confusing me with S. Meyer, aka “anonymous”.
He’s the one constantly insulting others and engaging in ad hominem arguments. He never admits mistakes, never admits errors, etc, etc, etc..
S. Meyer fits your descriptions to a “T”. You’re not as bad as S. Meyer thankfully. At least you make coherent sentences and arguments.
No confusion at all.
I wrote specifically about you.
Absolutely there are others here with varying degrees of the same problem.
I resort to ad hominem all too much myself. But usually AFTER eviscerating claims with facts, logic and reason.
Regardless, my comment was specifically too YOU.
And I stand by it.
It is accurate.
The fact that none of us are perfect, nor that there are a few others equally egregious to you is not a defense.
“But he goes into Agrawal’s house”
That is not true.
Agrawal is current owner of twitter. Turley tweets constantly. He’s in HIS house. So yes, it is true.
Agrawal is current owner of twitter.
One can only laugh at such ignorance.
Prove me wrong. Is he or isn’t he?
He isn’t, and you are proving how little you know about business and corporations. With such ignorance you are not fit to comment.
You still didn’t prove he is, Just saying he is isn’t proof. Try again.
Show me evidence a webpage, article, anything that says he is or isn’t the owner of twitter.
Musk is currently the largest or 2nd largest shareholder in Twitter.
I do not know Agrawal’s exact ownership, but of the current board members the largest shareholder is Dorsey with 2% and Argrawal is a board member – so he owns less than 2% – much less, because I do not think the entire board owns 3%.
Twitter is a public company, it is owned by its shareholders.
Musk is offering to buy every single share for $44B and take the company private.
That private company will likely be primarily owned by Musk. But we will not know that for sure – that is what a private company means.
The ownership is PRIVATE. Musk can sell all or part to whoever he pleases. As a private company the SEC will not have oversight.
Agrawal is the CEO of twitter then. He’s not just a board member. He runs the show.
Vanguard group is the biggest shareholder as of current data. The biggest share holders appear to be big hedge funds right now.
Is it so hard to say Parag Agrawal does not own twitter (or even come close).
He does not run the show. He manages the company at the pleasure of the board
The board does not own the company – in fact board members have less than 3% of the stock total.
The board chooses the management.
The shareholders chose the board. THEY own the company – for a few more days.
The current ownership is likely hedge funds since Musk’s announcement that he was buying twitter, and especially since he tried to cancel the deal. Hedge funds are going to be placing bets on the difference between the stock price at the time they buy, and what they belive Musk will have to pay.
Regardless, you were wrong.
Even if you can not admit that – can you at least quit spraying us with red herrings ?
The CEO does not own the company, the board does not on the company.
They each have a degree of control – delegated to them by the actual owners – the shareholders, that control can be rescinded at any time.
All are effectively employees.
As Musk buys twitter they will all go away. As a private Company Musk can be the owner, board and CEO concurrently, or structure the management and direction of the company as he pleases.
John, why did you tell Svelaz? I preferred thinking of him as a flounder who flounder’s around without making any sense. He doesn’t know the difference between management and ownership. The shareholders own Twitter. Agrawal is in charge not based on ownership but the votes from board members or shareholders. When Musk takes control, I hope he makes the board members bored.
Parag Agrawal’s net worth is 50M. Twitters market capitalization is 44B
If 100% of Agrawal’s net worth is in Twitter Stock he would own barely 1/1000th of the company.
Parag Agrawal is the CEO – an EMPLOYEE, the highest paid one. Though not likely for long.
The Feds are going after their political enemies like never before. Be afraid, very afraid.
“Rules for thee, but not for me”
“Treasury Department IG probing DeSantis’ migrant flights”
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/12/desantis-migrant-flights-markey-00061370
Turley is obviously focusing on Twitter because it is the biggest platform for people to express their opinions. He “wants” social media to follow the 1st amendment model without acknowledging the glaring fact that it involves these private companies giving up THEIR 1st amendment rights. Oh yes, they too have 1st amendment rights and that includes the right NOT to carry someone else’s messages, political messages or points of view. Turley wants this to be “voluntary” because he knows that forcing private companies to carry someone else’s messages that violate their policies is a direct violation of the 1st amendment.
Turley clearly wants everyone on social media to follow his 1st amendment model, but clearly even he doesn’t follow it on his blog which is why his position is quite hypocritical. Before you know it there will be more and more exemptions to his “model” when social media platforms become chaotic cesspools like Truth Social.
Truth Social has been censoring people who post criticisms of Trump and posts contradicting false claims. It has been going on since it came on line yet Turley the staunch supporter of free speech has never made any criticism of it’s policies. If Musk does “restore free speech” on twitter will he go after Truth social, Parler, and the rest of the more conservative social media platforms? I seriously doubt it.
Wrong, Turley does not censor political speech.
He’s been known to censor other speech. Not just one category. He’s censored people for racist comments. Based on his personal opinion even those comments shouldn’t be censored.
I can’t think of any open blog with significant traffic that doesn’t censor. Turley’s blog has to censor, but he has limited the censorship and doesn’t censor one side of the argument. That is what is important, though I don’t think you have the capacity to understand that.
I have seen innumerable racist comments here – what is your evidence Turley censors racism ?
Is there anyone advocating that Turley should allow people to post Hustler Centerfolds ?
re: Baby Trump
I understand your very good points but it’s the wrong solution. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice could criminally prosecute the “followers/listeners” of Alex Jones that broke laws and violated rights under criminal statutes like Title 18 US Code 241, 18 USC 242 and 18 USC 245. Merrick Garland could do that today.
Turley’s First Amendment model for social media companies is not an unlimited free for all. He is only proposing to use the the legal boundaries already drawn by centuries of U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
Some speech is indeed illegal, not all speech would even meet First Amendment legal requirements. Social media companies could simply follow centuries of free speech law.
If we had had social media in 1960, it’s quite certain those social media companies would consider Christian minister Martin Luther King, Jr as “obscene” banned from social media. King advocated non-violence and the U.S. Constitution along with the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Federal executive branch agencies largely police political-speech “covertly”, since they know they are operating illegally. When mission-creep ultimately happens, they don’t arrest you (since you did nothing wrong) they destroy you covertly.
Neither Congress nor the courts have been able to protect First Amendment crimes, perpetrated by government censors, in over 70 years. Censorship is almost always bad for any citizen and should be avoided at all costs. The innocent Americans blacklisted after 9/11 have never even been given an official apology for these government abuses and are still being harassed in 2022 (more than 20 years later).
For absolutists such as the prog/left, there is only “their” truth and they need shutter anything that contradicts that. How will Twitter/Musk, or anyone else, for that matter, convince these blinkered autobots that heir main problem is their ignorance of their own ignorance. When you can open the eyes of these drones and, also, stifle the moderators that feed these drone their versin of “the truth”, then you can hope to let free speech reign. A rendering of a verdict of “unconstitutional” by SCOTUS, for that awful hate speech legislation would be a good start.
Memo to Putin: drop the Nukes on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok users since these are mostly the Woke Police. Bonus if you strike NYT and Wahputz HQs
Baby Trump is confusing Progressives with Republicans. It wasn’t Republicans threatening Supreme Court Judges in front of their homes. It wasn’t Republicans who burned down cities after George Floyd. How did that Mueller trial go??? No evidence against Trump but plenty against Clinton who paid for the hoax. Grow up little Trumpy baby. You are still quite ignorant of the facts.
baby trump is wrong on almost everything.
Elon does take over the first thing he will do is get rid of current MGMT/Censors/ and those who say they are going to quit, BYE BYE. Then Musk brings in his own team and thoughts and values opens up Twitter, The Dem’s, Media control freaks, censors and etc will all PANIC. Can’t wait to see the Left, Control Freaks, Media. Censors, DEM’s and etc. in Panic
The problem with Musk is that the main thing he will likely do is allow Trump back on Twitter but not hold him to the same Twitter rules as everyone else. Indeed, that was the situation before 1/6 when Trump’s tweets when done by anyone else would have gotten them banned.
I fear Musk will put the interests of Trump and dictators around the world he does business with above that of the ordinary user of twitter.
It always saddens me when I read about individuals, prominent or common, who do not understand that the 1st Amendment is what makes America different from anywhere else. The elitists who want to give our country a European makeover don’t understand that while these may be free countries in the typical sense of the word, they are not free speech countries. That honor belongs to us. The talking heads, progressives and media owners gush over what they perceive is a better society overseas due to their “content moderation,” but the truth is that they love that little zing of pleasure they get from knowing that they have a say over what we can see, read and hear.
BabyTrump-A full blown case of TDS if I ever saw one. We’re talking Twitter and free speech and he is in another conversation entirely. BabyTrump may have the opposite affliction of candidate Fetterman in that he can understand the spoken word but cannot understand what he reads. Similar to a receptive aphasia. They do have counseling and therapy for such afflictions
Free speech should have consequences. If you say something that is provably false, and someone does what you advocate, and suffers harm, you should be held responsible. This includes taking ivermectin to prevent COVID, not taking a vaccine that reduces the spread and severity of COVID. So all those that said the vaccine is deadly, should be held accountable for every death where someone did not take the vaccine and ultimately died from COVID. Likewise taking ivermectin. If you followed such advice (provably wrong) and died from covid, hold the person that gave the advice responsible for the death.
You want free speech but not held accountable for the harm it can cause when the statements are provably wrong.
In 1 year twitter will be shell of what it currently is if people can say anything they want with no accountability. Just look how popular “truth social” is.
And did you notice how JT put out the false narrative about Conservatives being targeted more? This has been proven to be wrong. But hey, JT can say anything he wants right? Free speech with no consequences. Sad, so sad.
“Was the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market? Did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market?”
Pfizer’s Janine Small, president of international developed markets, said in response:
“No … You know, we had to … really move at the speed of science to know what is taking place in the market.”
Watch as Pfizer executive Janine Small admits to EU parliament that Pfizer did not test the vaccine for preventing transmission of Covid prior to it being made available to the public.
Small says, “We had to really move at the speed of science..we had to do everything at risk.” pic.twitter.com/FvTn01zv3J
— True North (@TrueNorthCentre) October 11, 2022
” not taking a vaccine that reduces the spread of COVID”
Baby Trump must be all in favor of dumping on Brix who stated in 2020, the Covid shot world likely not prevent spread. But she was right and you are wrong.
Pay up!
Okay.
Suppose the Speaker of the House tweeted, “Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti.:, and as a result, violent rioters and arsonists continue to attack a federal courthouse and the protecting them.
What should be the consequences?
Turley’s “First Amendment model” for private social media companies is a great idea for the owners/shareholders of those private companies to emulate and will save those companies lots of money.
If private companies follow the First Amendment model, they entirely eliminate future financial lawsuits and attorneys fees. The U.S. Supreme Court has already decided the legal argument with centuries of past precedent justifying those legal arguments.
Private social media companies essentially don’t need to invest millions to reinvent the wheel, the U.S. Supreme Court has already done that.
As far as people (customers) that may be offended by other people’s speech. Social media companies could follow Hollywood with a “self-ratings” system (PG, R, Mature Audiences, Violent graphics, Nudity, Opinion, etc). The only way a user gets in trouble is not self-labeling their own posts (showing graphic violence and not saying so). Parents could have “viewing-filters” to not view what they don’t want their kids to see).
Remember at one time, the federal government along with local governments considered inter-racial relationships and LGBT relationships “obscene” – government agencies punished anyone exercising these freedoms. Prior to 1930, government agencies considered “topless-men” on beaches as “obscene”.
Turley’s model would save each company millions of dollars in legal fees. Why wouldn’t shareholders support it?
Ahh if the world were only so simple as Mr JT wishes. Does free speech include yelling in front of elected officials homes? How about shouting down people in meetings? All things the right has been active in for the past 3 years. Has the left done this? Oh sure, but those on the right have taken this to a whole new level. Peddling lies about a stolen election, even while serving in an elected office and saying the only way you would loose is if the election is stolen? Free speech has consequences, as Alex J just found out. Oh yea, he’s mad, and will likely try to get his judgment thrown aside. About time someone had to pay for the free speech where they advocate people do atrocious things. If you incite people to do bad things with your speech, you should be held accountable for every crime committed due to your mis information. How about holding people accountable for convincing people not to get a life saving vaccine? Or taking snake oil rather than tested medicine. Sure, dig up your obscure non peer reviewed articles about how the vaccine killed people. So sad that with correct information so easy to find, people flock to mis information and lies. So sad.
Remember when JT insinuated that a witness was committing perjury about Trump lunging at the wheel of his SUV on Jan 6? Turns out there has been much collaborative evidence since then. Has JT admitted that perhaps he was incorrect in his snap judgement? Something he is so quick to blame on others yet does it all the time himself.
And how’s that Durham prosecution going? 3 years, one minor conviction no worth of jail, one acquittal by a jury. I’m waiting.
Just in case you do read responses to your posts (specifically 10:16am). Please note that a Pfizer executive admitted that the vaccine was not tested to se if it ‘stopped the spread” but people where censored if they did say so in the past.
Oh, BTW, maybe John Durham won’t get another conviction, but please read the below article and let me know if you think what he did find out about the actions of the FBI because the so-called mainstream media is not/won’t cover it.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/durham-witness-drops-trial-bombshell-fbi-offered-steele-1m-to-prove-dossier-claims/