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April 2018

“The Call of Freedom”: Free Speech and Censorship Should we trust government agencies to have all the people’s best interests at heart? Bruce Thornton

In these contentious times, various forms of censorship or discouragement of free speech are continually being fiercely debated.

National Review Online writer Kevin Williamson, hired by the Atlantic for his scorched-earth attacks on Donald Trump, was fired after one column because of his scorched-earth attacks on women who’ve had abortions. Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham’s show has been boycotted by nearly 20 corporate advertisers because of her tweet mildly tweaking David Hogg about his failure to get into some universities. Hogg, of course, is the 17-year-old survivor of the recent mass shooting at a Florida high school who has become a petulant catspaw for the antigun lobby. Meanwhile, revelations of private data being sold or left vulnerable by Facebook, and the continuing censorship of political views by that platform along with YouTube and Google, have heated up calls for subjecting social media to government regulations.

Seems like dangerous times for our first inalienable right, the one protecting free and open speech. But before we endorse policies that end up making matters worse, we should be clear about why the Founders gave us a right that few other nations, including the E.U. states, allow their citizens.

What our Constitution recognizes is that free political speech is indispensable for exercising political freedom, the ability to openly participate in political deliberations. From its beginning in ancient Athens, the constitutional government that made the people sovereign also created the idea of free speech. If people are free to deliberate about and vote for the policies the state pursues, then citizens have to be free to speak publicly without fear of legal restraints or retribution. Unlike elsewhere in antiquity, in ancient Athens there were two words for “free speech,” one of which was also the name of a warship, bespeaking the importance of that right for citizens. And each meeting of the Assembly of citizens opened with the question, “What man has good advice to give the city?” which Euripides praised as “the call of freedom.”

Nor could subjective standards of decorum or “proper” speech be allowed to silence the citizens. In Fifth Century Athens, the rules governing speaking in the Assembly focused mainly on keeping inept, abusive, or repetitive speakers from wasting the citizens’ time. Outside the Assembly, there were no rules. The tragic and comic stages were one of the most important venues of political debate. The policies of Athens, particularly its brutalities during the Peloponnesian War, were criticized in front of 15,000 citizens in the Theater of Dionysus the Liberator, the cult name of the god linking theater to political freedom. Comedy was particularly brutal, depicting politicians by name on the stage and accusing them of every sexual depravity, along with being the spawn of foreign prostitutes and betraying the city for money. So important was this freedom of expression that Aristophanes’ favorite target, the demagogue Cleon, failed to persuade the government to silence the poet.

Watergate Every Week: Using the FBI to Suppress a Political Revolution From Steele to Mueller, the cost of overturning the 2016 election. Daniel Greenfield

In the early seventies, political operatives disguised as delivery men broke into a Washington D.C. office. These efforts to spy on the political opposition would culminate in what we know as Watergate.

In the late teens, political operatives disguised as FBI agents, NSA personnel and other employees of the Federal government eavesdropped, harassed and raided the offices of the political opposition.

The raids of Michael Cohen’s hotel room, home and office are just this week’s Watergate.

Political operatives have now seized privileged communications between the President of the United States and his lawyer. Despite fairy tales about a clean process, these communications will be harvested by the counterparts of Peter Strzok, who unlike him are still on the case at the FBI, some of it will appear in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and some will be passed along to other political allies.

That’s what happened at every juncture of Watergate 2.0. And it only follows that it will happen again.

Just like the eavesdropping, the process will be compartmentalized for maximum plausible deniability. The leakers will be protected by their superiors. The media will shrilly focus the public’s attention on the revelations in the documents rather than on the more serious crimes committed in obtaining them.

Nixon couldn’t have even dreamed of doing this in his wildest fantasies. But Obama could and did. Now his operatives throughout the government are continuing the work that they began during his regime.

Palestinians: License to Kill Americans by Bassam Tawil

The ruthless rhetoric the Palestinians are using against the US suggests that they have decided to put the Americans on an equal footing with Israel. They miss the days when the State Department sometimes seemed to be more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves.

We are talking about the same Palestinian Authority (PA) that continues to receive millions of dollars in US aid annually. The same PA whose security forces are trained and equipped by Americans and Europeans. The same PA that has a “diplomatic mission” in Washington that is actively taking part in the campaign of incitement against the US and its leader.

The anti-US campaign paves the way for terrorists to kill Americans. It feeds into the ideology of the Islamic State terror group, Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, which considers the US the “Great Satan.”

Hate speech and incitement make up the core of the Palestinian narrative.

For several decades now, the Palestinians have been waging a massive and vicious campaign of incitement against Israel. This campaign has made it impossible for any Arab to even think about the prospects of peace with Israel. Notably, the Palestinian hatred of Israel is not linked to anything Israel does or does not do. Rather, the Palestinian hatred of Israel is based on Israel’s existence. Palestinians hate Israel because they believe that Jews have no right to a sovereign country of their own in the Middle East.

Palestinian hate speech against Israel is part of the global landscape: by now, no one even expects anything else from them. A Palestinian mosque preacher calling Jews “descendants of monkeys and pigs” is no story at all — just more of the same. Similarly, a Palestinian maiming or murdering a Jew has become the norm.

The day will come — and it is not far away — when reports of Palestinians not inciting against Israel and Jews will be a remarkable one. The day will come when the only story worth reporting is when a Palestinian did not carry out a terrorist attack against a Jew that day.

University of the Swamp By Ken Masugi

Is this just a gratifying dream or a frightful, dangerous fancy: to have a government agency that cracks down on the sources of intellectual and spiritual pollution the way the Environmental Protection Agency treats manufacturers that produce toxic pollutants?

The dream is reality, at least in part, as evidenced by the recent intervention and inquiry of the Department of Justice in lawsuits against Harvard and other elite colleges and universities. The real monster here is not expanded powers of government that might endanger free minds in higher education but rather the administrative state itself that, of course, gets its brains from these institutions.

The administrative state, which the Trump Administration intends to “deconstruct,” is a hulking monstrosity of bold bureaucracy and supine elected officials that has replaced constitutional government in the United States.

Harvard and other elite colleges have recently attracted the attention of the Trump Department of Justice. The issues include long-suspected discrimination against Asian-Americans in admissions at Harvard and collusion (that is, a conspiracy!) on early decisions in admissions. To prove this in court, the accusers would need access to admissions committees’ data and decision-making. The universities plead privacy and protection of trade secrets about their admissions decisions and financial-aid calculations.

Might colleges violate “antitrust laws by exchanging information about prospective students who make early decision commitments”?

Early decision (narrower than early application) requires students who are accepted to commit to that institution—and no other. This practice requires an applicant to take an offer without being able to compare financial aid packages. “Early decision programs have afforded some colleges nearly half of their freshman classes”—Duke University, for example. One education consultant observed, “only about 200 schools of the more than 4,000 in the country use early decision. ‘Given that this doesn’t affect many schools, or many students, it’s the ultimate first-world problem.’”

New Pro-Mueller Ad Overlooks His Sketchy History By Julie Kelly

Following the FBI’s shocking raid Monday at the home, office, and hotel room of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, Republican lawmakers are rallying behind the still-unjustified investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. (Like just about everything else the probe has produced so far, the Cohen matter appears unrelated to anything Russian.)

Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will partner with Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to introduce legislation that would protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller if Trump fires him. The bill would give Mueller a 10-day window to “seek expedited judicial review of a firing.”

GOP leaders offered their verbal support: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)—whose committee is investigating possible misconduct into how the Obama Justice Department obtained a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign—said it would be “suicide for the president to want, to talk about firing Mueller.” Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned “the consequences of [firing Mueller] are some that not even the president can anticipate. And I think it would be a mistake.”

NeverTrumpers, who fantasize about Mueller hauling the president out of the White House in handcuffs, have formed yet another group to solidify congressional support for the special counsel. On Wednesday, “Republicans for the Rule of Law” aired an ad during “Fox and Friends”—Trump’s must-watch morning program—that touted Mueller’s credentials and urged viewers to call their representatives to demand they “protect the Mueller investigation.” (The ad conspicuously did not mention Trump-Russia election collusion, the crime Mueller was hired to investigate in May 2017.)

Republicans for the Rule of Law is led by Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, and NeverTrump’s de facto leader. Kristol has the opposite of the political Midas Touch: Everything and everyone he promotes—from the Iraq War to Sarah Palin to Evan McMullin—are losers. So it’s unsurprising that Kristol’s latest effort again misses the mark.

Mueller at the Crossroads By Victor Davis Hanson

Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 in reaction to a media still gripped by near hysteria over the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

For nearly a year before Mueller’s appointment, leaks had spread about collusion between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign that supposedly cost Clinton a sure victory.

Most of these collusion stories, as we now know, originated with Christopher Steele and his now-discredited anti-Trump opposition file.

After almost a year, Mueller has offered no evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians. Aside from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a few minor and transitory campaign officials have been indicted or have pleaded guilty to a variety of transgressions other than collusion.

Ironically, the United States has often interfered in foreign elections to massage the result. Recently, Bill Clinton joked about his own efforts as president to collude in the 1996 Israeli election to ensure the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu. “I tried to do it in a way that didn’t overtly involve me,” Clinton said.

The Obama Administration did the same in 2015, when it used State Department funds to support an anti-Netanyahu political action group.

Since Mueller’s investigation began, a number of top FBI and Department of Justice officials have either retired, or were reassigned or fired.

With the exception of former FBI Director James Comey, all left their jobs due to investigations of improper conduct that took place during the 2016 election cycle. Most were under a cloud of suspicion for lying, having conflicts of interest or misleading investigators.

Mueller is reaching the crossroads of his investigation and faces at least four critical decisions.

Cornell Law Professors Join Strengthening Push For Due Process On Campus Cornell University is getting sued for denying male students accused of sexual assault due process, and a third of its law professors are backing the suit. by Ashe Schow

Cornell University is so bad at conducting sex assault and harassment investigations that 23 professors from its law school have filed a brief in court to require the school to follow its own policies.

Cornell, apparently in its zeal to appease the media and culture created by the Obama administration, is denying male students accused of sexual assault proper due process procedures, according to multiple lawsuits against the university. Now, a third of its law school professors are defending one of those students who filed a suit.

Colleges and universities typically fall back on the defense that at least they followed their own policies when denying a male student due process rights. But Cornell isn’t even doing that. Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson, who filed the brief, asserts that Cornell didn’t provide an accused student the right “to test his accuser’s account of events and credibility by having a disciplinary hearing panel ask his accuser proper questions that he proposes,” which is granted to students in Cornell policy.

Although the brief specifically addresses this policy in one case, the professors note they are “concerned more generally with whether Cornell respects this and other procedural protections in its Title IX policy going forward and whether courts properly interpret the policy.”

The specific case included in the brief involves the pseudonymous John Doe and his accuser, referred to as Sally Roe. Sally made inconsistent statements throughout the investigation and hearing, and even though John submitted questions to the hearing panel to be asked of her, none of his questions were asked.

Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)Blasts Zuckerberg for Glossing Over Obama Campaign Data Exploitation

Senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) criticized Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday for omitting information related to the Obama reelection campaign’s exploitation of user data in a statement the Facebook CEO prepared prior to his Congressional testimony.

The two-day hearing was prompted by reports that the Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained 87 million Facebook users’ data. As a result, Zuckerberg’s prepared statement, which doesn’t include any information about data breaches between 2007 and 2013, focused primarily on that recent breach, as did the questions he faced in Congress.

Breaking from the pack, Tillis recommended that Zuckerberg “expand” his “timeline” while addressing the issue of data protection to include the 2012 Obama campaign’s similar data-exploitation scheme, which officials openly bragged about to widespread adulation in the press.

“When you do your research on Cambridge Analytica, I would appreciate it if you would start back from the first high-profile national campaign that exploited Facebook data,” Tillis said.

The North Carolina lawmaker then cited a former Obama campaign staffer’s tweet, which was sent after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, and recounted how Facebook employees were surprised by the breadth of user data the campaign was able to scrape, but let them continue to do so because of their shared political leanings.

“I also believe that that person who may have looked the other way when the whole social graph was extracted for the Obama campaign, if they are still working for you, they probably should not,” Tillis scolded. “At least there should be a business code of conduct that says that you do not play favorites. You are trying to create a fair place for people to share ideas.”

The Student Data-Mining Scandal Under Our Noses By Michelle Malkin

While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook’s intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley–Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren.

It doesn’t take undercover investigative journalists to unmask the massive privacy invasion enabled by educational technology and federal mandates. The kiddie data heist is happening out in the open — with Washington politicians and bureaucrats as brazen co-conspirators.

Facebook is just one of the tech giants partnering with the U.S. Department of Education and schools nationwide in pursuit of student data for meddling and profit. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Pearson, Knewton, and many more are cashing in on the Big Data boondoggle. State and federal educational databases provide countless opportunities for private companies exploiting public schoolchildren subjected to annual assessments, which exploded after adoption of the tech-industry-supported Common Core “standards,” tests, and aligned texts and curricula.

The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information — including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions — and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

Report: FBI Sought Docs Related to Access Hollywood Tape in Cohen Raid By Jack Crowe

The FBI agents who carried out the raid on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office were seeking records related to the infamous Access Hollywood tape, among other information, three people briefed on the contents of the federal search warrant told the New York Times.

The warrant specifically sought evidence that Cohen suppressed damaging information about then-candidate Donald Trump, though it remains unclear what Cohen’s role was in containing the fallout from the tape, which showed Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals years earlier.The raid on Cohen’s office, which was reportedly approved by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, occurred after Special Counsel Robert Mueller came across evidence of wrongdoing that fell outside the purview of his probe and passed that information along to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

A Tuesday Times report revealed that the authorities were also seeking evidence related to Cohen’s payment of $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have engaged in an affair with Trump shortly after his marriage to wife Melania.

The payment raised questions about a possible election-law violation, as Daniels’s attorney and others have alleged the payment constitutes an illegal in-kind contribution from Cohen to Trump’s campaign.