Category: Rights

Making Sense of the Limited Cert Grant in NYS Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett

Why did the Court rewrite the question presented in this Second Amendment case?

One week ago, I lamented about Heller‘s sad bar mitzvah. On April 26, the Court denied review in three Second Amendment cases concerning the rights of non-violent felons. And the Court had twice relisted NYS Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett. At the time, I assumed the Court had denied review, and Justice Thomas was writing yet another dissent from denial of certiorari.

Once again, the shadow docket threw a curveball. This morning the Court granted cert in the case. But the Court only granted review to a limited question presented:

Whether the State’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.

As soon as I saw the grant, I started to scratch my head. Why did the Court rewrite the QP? Here is how Paul Clement framed the issue for the petitioners:

Whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense.

There are at least five major differences between Clement’s QP and the Court’s QP.

First, the Court’s QP focuses on the state’s decision to deny “concealed-carry licenses” to the petitioners. Clement’s QP challenged the law on its face, and as applied. Is the Court’s decision now limited to an as-applied challenge, rather than a facial challenge? Might the Court leave open the possibility that other may-issue regimes are unconstitutional? Are there some unique aspects of the New York law that would distinguish it from other may issue regimes? Is there the possibility the Court will need to remand for further explication of the regime? Is there some evidence that the state improperly denied licenses to these particular plaintiffs? Might there be some Due Process Clause argument? Then again, the QP references the Second Amendment, so a Due Process issue would not be squarely presented. I see this slippery change as a way for the Court to issue a very, very narrow decision that will leave the issue unsettled.

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High court halts Calif. virus rules limiting home worship

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.

The order from the court late Friday is the latest in a recent string of cases in which the high court has barred officials from enforcing some coronavirus-related restrictions applying to religious gatherings.

Five conservative justices agreed that California restrictions that apply to in-home religious gatherings should be lifted for now, while the court’s three liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts would not have done so.

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This is an alternate tactic the gun grabbers have been trying for decades. Getting their econutz shills to sue to ban lead bullets and shot.

Judge Affirms Hunters Can Use Traditional Ammo in NRA Case

On April 1st, a federal judge in Arizona sided with NRA-ILA and Safari Club International and held that hunters’ use of traditional ammo does not violate federal environmental law.

The case dates back to 2012, when a group sued the U.S. Forest Service. The group alleged that by allowing hunters to hunt with traditional lead ammo in the 1.6-million-acre Kaibab National Forest—which is authorized by Arizona state law—the Forest Service was violating the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. That Act was originally passed in 1976, to address the increasing amount of municipal and industrial waste that was being disposed of at the time. But over time, it has been used to attack gun owners and shooting ranges.

On April 1st, the judge held that the Forest Service is not disposing any waste by allowing hunters to hunt in accordance with state laws. But the case had even bigger implications. The Plaintiff was asking the court to order the Forest Service regulate hunting. But the states own the wildlife, even while it is on federal lands. “Each national forest,” the judge said, “is required to cooperate with state wildlife agencies to allow hunting in ‘accordance with the requirements of State laws.”’ A ruling to the contrary would have given the federal government the authority to enter a field of regulation that belongs to the states on lands where hunting takes place. Those implications would be huge because 640-million acres (about twenty-eight percent of the country) is owned and managed by the federal government. Thankfully, the judge sided with NRA-ILA and Safari Club.

NRA-ILA will continue to protect the rights of hunters everywhere to use commonly owned and affordable ammunition to hunt and enjoy public lands.

The case is called Center for Biological Diversity v. United States Forest Service. The National Shooting Sports Foundation also intervened as a defendant in the case.

with apologies to the Bard.
“Sounds? Nay, it is. I know not ‘sounds’. ”

Joe Biden’s ‘Vaccine Passport’ Sounds Like Precursor to China’s Social Credit Score.

Even as the nation begins to round the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden and his Democratic buddies don’t want what’s left of the crisis to go to waste. Enter his “vaccine passports.”

Biden’s White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki says any vaccine passports will be outsourced to Big Tech, but Acting Medicare and Medicaid Services chief, Andy Slavitt, says, “This is going to hit all parts of society, and so naturally, the government is involved.”

Outsourcing Vaccine Passport to Big Tech

The passport sounds like the continuation of ObamaCare, but hitting “all parts of society” to achieve compliance. As I reported in PJ Media, the current goal is to have everyone get a COVID shot, but one could imagine the “existential threat” of global warming or any other scheme Democrats come up with to curb your use of energy or affect the kind of car you drive, for example. If you’re lugging around too many pounds, one could imagine giving brownie points for eating well, which conversely means you’d get docked for eating French fries.

New York Magazine reports the passport would be wide in scope.

[P]roof of vaccination “may be a critical driver for restoring baseline population health and promoting safe return to social, commercial, and leisure activities.” There is also some focus-group evidence that vaccine passports could help convince Americans who do not want to get inoculated to sign up for a shot. [emphasis added]

As I wrote at PJ Media, liberal author and feminist Naomi Wolf notes that the government and its buddies in Big Tech could put anything on the existing platform in the future and it would be the “end of human liberty in the West.” Not to mention destroying constitutional protections and breaking several laws.

A government interagency committee has been convened to consider how Big Tech might implement vaccine passports to determine if you may travel or go to large events.

Somewhere left behind is the question of constitutionality or ethics.

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Want a preview of ‘Vaccine Passports’ in the U.S.?

5,000 Foreigners Flagged by China in Advanced Surveillance Sweep: Another Data Leak

Over 5,000 foreigners were tracked during visits to mainland China between 2017 to 2018, according to the latest data leak from a Chinese institution. Some individuals on the list say they were only in China for a day or were transiting through Shanghai.

One cybersecurity expert says the latest data leak is unique in its increased sophistication, including the use of facial recognition and the collection of passport IDs.

The information was compiled by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, a local level branch of Beijing’s main surveillance body, the Ministry of Public Security.

The data leak contains over 1.1 million surveillance records and includes information on 25,000 “persons of interest” in China, and 5,000 foreigners, including government officials and employees of Mitsubishi and U.S. manufacturing giant 3M.

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BLUF:
With anti-gun state attorneys general trying to impose their will outside the confines of their own state on the firearms industry, I think this ruling will be helpful in fighting back against them.

SCOTUS Tells NJ Attorney General No

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal tried to avoid the jurisdiction of Texas courts over his attempt to punish free speech. Grewal had sent a cease and desist letter to Defense Distributed warning them not to violate New Jersey law. Defense Distributed and the Second Amendment Foundation sued Grewal in US District Court for the Western District of Texas asserting he violated DD’s First and Second Amendment rights and asked for an injunction. While the US District Court agreed with Grewal in dismissing the lawsuit, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals did not and said he was subject to the jurisdiction of the Texas court.

Today, the US Supreme Court denied Grewal’s writ of certiorari and essentially agreed with the 5th Circuit that he was subject to the jurisdiction of the Texas court for his actions.

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The Growing Desperation (And Dangerousness) Of The Gun Control Movement

Gun control activists are growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that even with Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, their agenda is still in doubt on Capitol Hill. A new piece at POLITICO highlights the palpable sense of desperation starting to emanate from anti-gun organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety and its affiliate Moms Demand Action, where activists know that their window of opportunity to put new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms is closing. The razor-thin Democratic majority in the House and Senate could very well disappear after the 2022 midterms, and activists

For the gun reform movement — a centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s agenda for at least a quarter century — the question this week has become, if not now, when?

… It’s a pivotal moment for gun politics. The history of midterm elections suggests Democrats are at risk of losing the House next year, shrinking their window for legislative victories.

“The time is definitely now,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of the gun-control group Giffords. “We can’t wait.”

There’s a muddled message coming from the anti-gun advocates. On the one hand, they say that now is the time, knowing that they’re likely to lose ground in next year’s elections, but they’re still trying to spin their movement as one that’s growing in popularity across the country.

Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker who sought elected office after his son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, said the climate surrounding gun legislation has “obviously” shifted — as evidenced by his own election and those of other survivors of victims of gun violence, including Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, whose teenage son was shot to death in 2012. Gun control was a winning issue for Democrats in some congressional swing districts nationally in the midterm elections in 2018.

“We can run on this issue, and we can win elections on this issue,” Sullivan said. “Quite obviously, the tone has changed.”

At the federal level, Democrats and gun control activists lost ground in the House, and were it not for the absolute sh*tshow in the Georgia Senate runoffs, Republicans would still be in control of the U.S. Senate. The gun control movement didn’t receive a mandate in the 2020 elections, but they have to act like they did because they know that they’re likely to be in an even worse position after the midterms.

In that sense, the gun control groups are right that this is the best position for the movement in decades, but that doesn’t mean that they’re still in a great position to get what they want. As long as it still takes 60 votes to pass most legislation through the Senate, the prospects for new gun control laws is murky at best. That’s why you’ll be seeing more calls from gun control groups to nuke the filibuster in the coming days and weeks.

The gun control debate has put more pressure on Democrats to abandon the legislative filibuster in the Senate, broadening the range of constituencies lobbying for the change. Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora and who now advocates on behalf of survivors of gun violence, said, “The best thing that can happen right now — the one thing I would give everything up for — is get rid of the filibuster so we can pass some laws.”

If the filibuster goes away, the least of our worries will be the passage of gun control bills like H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446. At that point, Democrats would try to ram through Biden’s gun ban and a host of new infringements on our Second Amendment rights, while also passing legislation like H.R. 1 that’s designed to ensure a permanent Democratic majority in Congress. One party rule is completely antithetical to the very idea of the United States, and it would be nothing less than a legislative coup. I’m not worried about my Second Amendment rights if the filibuster were to disappear. I’m worried about the future of the nation itself.

So 3 television networks, a couple of national news magazines, and a handful of newspapers per big city? amirite?

A Biden Appointee’s Troubling Views On The First Amendment.

When Columbia law professor Timothy Wu was appointed by Joe Biden to the National Economic Council a few weeks back, the press hailed it as great news for progressives. The author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age is known as a staunch advocate of antitrust enforcement, and Biden’s choice of him, along with the appointment of Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, was widely seen as a signal that the new administration was assembling what Wired called an “antitrust all-star team.”

“Big Tech critic Tim Wu joins Biden administration to work on competition policy,” boomed CNBC, while Marketwatch added, “Anti-Big Tech crusader reportedly poised to join Biden White House.” Chicago law professor Eric Posner’s piece for Project Syndicate was titled “Antitrust is Back in America.” Posner noted Wu’s appointment comes as Senator Amy Klobuchar has introduced regulatory legislation that ostensibly targets companies like Facebook and Google, which a House committee last year concluded have accrued “monopoly power.”

Wu’s appointment may presage tougher enforcement of tech firms. However, he has other passions that got less ink. Specifically, Wu — who introduced the concept of “net neutrality” and once explained it to Stephen Colbert on a roller coaster — is among the intellectual leaders of a growing movement in Democratic circles to scale back the First Amendment. He wrote an influential September, 2017 article called “Is the First Amendment Obsolete?” that argues traditional speech freedoms need to be rethought in the Internet/Trump era. He outlined the same ideas in a 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival speech:

Listening to Wu, who has not responded to requests for an interview, is confusing. He calls himself a “devotee” of the great Louis Brandeis, speaking with reverence about his ideas and those of other famed judicial speech champions like Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. In the Aspen speech above, he went so far as to say about First Amendment protections that “these old opinions are so great, it’s like watching The Godfather, you can’t imagine anything could be better.”

If you hear a “but…” coming in his rhetoric, you guessed right. He does imagine something better. The Cliff’s Notes version of Wu’s thesis:

— The framers wrote the Bill of Rights in an atmosphere where speech was expensive and rare. The Internet made speech cheap, and human attention rare. Speech-hostile societies like Russia and China have already shown how to capitalize on this “cheap speech” era, eschewing censorship and bans in favor of “flooding” the Internet with pro-government propaganda.

— As a result, those who place faith in the First Amendment to solve speech dilemmas should “admit defeat” and imagine new solutions for repelling foreign propaganda, fake news, and other problems. “In some cases,” Wu writes, “this could mean that the First Amendment must broaden its own reach to encompass new techniques of speech control.” What might that look like? He writes, without irony: “I think the elected branches should be allowed, within reasonable limits, to try returning the country to the kind of media environment that prevailed in the 1950s.”

— More ominously, Wu suggests that in modern times, the government may be more of a bystander to a problem in which private platforms play the largest roles. Therefore, a potential solution (emphasis mine) “boils down to asking whether these platforms should adopt (or be forced to adopt) norms and policies traditionally associated with twentieth-century journalism.”

That last line is what should make speech advocates worry.

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The author seems to have come to the same viewpoint as I have.
The advisory of  ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ is:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Just like me, it appears that Mr. ben-Tekoa considers ‘Never‘ too broad of a word to use and thinks one should not immediately exclude malice.

Democracy’s Achilles Heel

In the summer of 1787, close by the steamy Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, fifty-five perspiring men, unpaid volunteers representing themselves, their families, and communities, worked in a room with the windows closed so they could speak freely. They were laboring to write a constitution for the now united, no longer rebellious colonies, that were independent states with their own stamps and virtually worthless paper money. They wanted a “more perfect union” than that which the defective Articles of Confederation had produced. They were gentlemen farmers, merchants, lawyers, some highly educated. These men could pick up a text in classical Greek and sight-translate it into Latin.

In the same weeks, Thomas Jefferson, the principal author eleven years earlier of their Declaration of Independence was in Paris as the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of King Louis XVI. He spent his workdays corresponding with other diplomats and men of business, and his evenings dining with some of Europe’s most respected thinkers.

This was the Paris of Voltaire, who had died just seventeen years earlier, on the cusp of the American Revolution. When Jefferson’s European dinner companions learned what was going happening in Philadelphia — the attempt to create a democratic republic, meaning a republic in which the demos, the common man, would have a say in the affairs of the state — they guffawed at the foolishness of the effort. They told Jefferson it was settled wisdom that monarchy was the best system for the simple-minded and uneducated common man. For the European scene, they had a point. So many were indeed unlettered peasants and serfs.

But Jefferson countered that they did not know Americans. They were not like that at all. One historian reckoned that 93% of Americans in this period were yeoman farmers. Land was breathtakingly vast and available in America. All a young couple needed when starting out was an ax for the man to chop down trees and build their home; and a rifle for self-defense from the “aboriginals,” as they sometimes called the Indians, and for meat, which was plentiful and cheap. America’s forests teemed with deer.

They also needed some seed to start growing their own food; a mule and a plow that dragged him along, as she put up preserves and sewed their clothes. And if they had only one book in their cabin, it was the Bible that they could and did read. When other families came into the area to build their homes, they raised one another’s barns and eventually a church with no help from any government.

These growing communities built schools for their children and hired teachers. Jefferson told Europe’s deep thinkers that in America, his people were not illiterate peasants and serfs. While he agreed that a democratic republic cannot succeed with a population of uneducated people, he argued that Americans were not like that at all.

But that was then, and it’s possible that America has grown closer to that European model for the elites have nothing but disdain for the demos. Take, for example, the judicial ruling last week that Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, representing the party founded by Jefferson, had broken several state laws, including an order, made all by her lonesome, to send out absentee ballots to all registered voters in the state.

I judge that at the moment when she violated the law, this woman was either a conscious, conscienceless criminal or an idiot for not caring about the potential for voter fraud. And, I fear, this is more evidence that the United States has become what the great Jefferson, father of American Liberalism, knew to be a mortal threat to the republic – an uneducated mass ruled by an uneducated, conscienceless elite class.

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This is what you get in a nation that has no guarantee of rights.

LGBT activists sue Canadian pastor for preaching biblical sexuality
‘Our services are our services,’ the pastor said in response. ‘You don’t go into a bake shop and ask them to fix your car. Then you can’t come into a Christian church and expect us to convey messages that we don’t agree with.’

Back in 2019, I noted that the LGBT movement would methodically begin going after clergy for sermons. Most sermons and homilies are posted online; with laws that increasingly expand the definition of hate speech and sustained campaigns to portray Christian organizations at hate groups, it was only a matter of time before activists set to work trawling the hours of content hunting for any expression of heresy against LGBT orthodoxy. Any expression of the biblical view of sexuality and gender makes clergy a target.

The media is happy to help. In 2019, when a Catholic priest from Calgary was targeted for a homily in which he condemned the rainbow flag, the Toronto Star’s headline unabashedly sided with the activists: “Calgary priest under fire for homophobic remarks.”

Now, Pastor Terry Murphy of Victory Church in Regina, Saskatchewan, is under fire by LGBT activists for a March 6 online sermon defending biblical sexuality, in which he noted that today’s trans movement and the promotion of gender fluidity can be a form of child abuse.

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San Diego Case Shows How CA Gun Laws Fuel Corruption

There are a lot of things to complain about when it comes to California’s screwy gun control laws, but a criminal case out of San Diego is highlighting the two-tiered system for gun ownership in the state. Marco Garmo, a now-former captain with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, just received a two-year prison sentence for running a gun trafficking operation out of a sheriff’s department substation he supervised. Garmo specifically bought firearms that are only available to police in California, before turning around and selling them for both profit and to curry favor.

In addition to receiving cash for the firearms, federal prosecutors say that over the course of nearly six years, Garmo conducted the gun sales to create goodwill among potential donors for his planned campaign to run for San Diego County sheriff.

Garmo made a series of “straw purchases,” in which he told gun dealers he was purchasing guns for himself, when in reality he was buying them for people who could not directly buy the firearms under state law. He acquired around 144 firearms during that time and transferred 98 of them to others, all while lacking the required license to do so, according to prosecutors.

Garmo pleaded guilty last year to a federal charge of engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license. He retired shortly before he and four others — including another San Diego County sheriff’s deputy — were indicted.

Garmo, to the best of my knowledge, isn’t accused of selling any of the guns to prohibited persons. Rather, he broke California law by selling prohibited guns to people who, according to the state, possessed their full Second Amendment rights but were forbidden from owning these guns. What type of guns are we talking about? In most cases, handguns that are in common use in other states.

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Feinstein’s biannual regurgitation:

To regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.

 

When the name of your bill directly contradicts the wording of the constitution you’ve probably made a mistake somewhere.

Let’s use this same description for any other bill dealing with any right, especially an enumerated right.

“To regulate raids, to ensure that the right against unreasonable search and seizure is not unlimited, and for other purposes.”

“To regulate detentions, to ensure the right against cruel and unusual punishment is not unlimited, and for other purposes.”

Plug in any other right and it sounds insane but there are people that view the description of this bill as a positive. That should be hair raising to anyone that knows history and appreciates their rights.

In the Declaration of Independence, it is written that it is a self evident truth that the creator endowed mankind with – among others – the right to life. Abortion can be argued therefore as a secular civil rights, as well as a religious issue, and as I believe that life begins at conception, that life has human rights that mere inconvenience can not supersede.

Arkansas Governor Signs Additional Restrictions on Abortion Into Law

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) signed a bill restricting abortions, SB6, into law on Tuesday. The law prohibits women from obtaining abortions in Arkansas, with one exception for the life of the mother.

Exceptions for rape or incest are not written into the bill, which Hutchinson said that he would have preferred in the final version of the legislation. He hopes the law will compel the Supreme Court to review the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion on the federal level.

“SB6 is a pro-life bill that prohibits abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency. It does not include exceptions for rape and incest,” Hutchinson said on Tuesday “I will sign SB6 because of overwhelming legislative support and my sincere and long-held pro-life convictions. SB6 is in contradiction of binding precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law. I would have preferred the legislation to include the exceptions for rape and incest, which has been my consistent view, and such exceptions would increase the chances for a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

 The new law will go into effect by the upcoming summer, upon the legislature adjourning. Other states have implemented similar abortion restrictions in hopes of the Supreme Court taking up an abortion case and reconsidering the landmark Roe decision.

Another Anti-Gun Extremist Promoted for Biden’s Cabinet

President Biden’s nominee to serve as United States Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM), is yet another cog Biden hopes to fit into his administration’s anti-gun machine. Perhaps it would be more newsworthy if we only reported on Biden nominees that don’t support gutting the Second Amendment, but then we might have nothing to say.

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Isn’t it interesting how no 2nd amendment advocate claims this about the 1st amendment?

BLUF:
The Second Amendment is not in conflict with the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, or any of our other rights protected by the Constitution, and our rights don’t have to be exercised one at a time. We don’t give up our Fourth Amendment rights when we peaceably assemble, so why should we lose our Second Amendment rights when we gather in support or opposition to a piece of legislation or governmental action?

Well, the obvious answer is that we shouldn’t have to give up our Second Amendment rights in order to exercise our right of free speech, public assembly, and private worship. Unfortunately, that’s the world that gun control activists want, and it’s one reason why you’re seeing the rise of Second Amendment sanctuaries around the country; a grassroots response to the creeping authoritarianism of gun control.

New Anti-Gun Argument: 2A Getting In The Way Of Other Rights

The Second Amendment has long been treated as a second-class right by gun control activists and even some unarmed Americans who simply aren’t as concerned about protecting a right that they’re not currently exercising. Unfortunately for those opposed to the right to keep and bear arms, 2020 was a banner year for new gun owners with an estimated 8.5-million Americans purchasing a firearm for the very first time.

As you can imagine, gun control activists are not happy about these developments, and their opposition to exercise of our Second Amendment rights is leading some down a dangerous road; arguing that we must restrict the right to keep and bear arms in order to protect other civil rights.

Law professors Joseph Blocher of Duke and Reva Seigel of Yale make that case in a new piece at The Atlantic, proclaiming that we need more gun control laws to protect “citizens’ equal freedoms to speak, assemble, worship, and vote without fear.”

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that a demand for nominal damages can save a lawsuit from becoming moot……
“For purposes of this appeal, it is undisputed that Uzuegbunam experienced a completed violation of his constitutional rights when respondents enforced their speech policies against him. Because ‘every violation [of a right] imports damage,’ nominal damages can redress Uzuegbunam’s injury even if he cannot or chooses not to quantify that harm in economic terms,”

‘This is the way’ to proceed with future RKBA lawsuits so that SCOTUS will be less able to simply avoid an issue like they did with New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. City Of New York back last April.

Supreme Court Won’t Let a College off the Hook for Suppressing Free Speech

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled, 8-1, that a college cannot escape liability for quashing a student’s First Amendment rights to free speech and religious freedom by merely reversing its restrictions. Even if the school drops its free speech restrictions, students can still sue for damages, even if the damages are only nominal to make a point.

Chike Uzuegbunam, a Christian student at Georgia Gwinnett College, had sued his school after the college prevented him from preaching the gospel and handing out religious tracts due to its excessive speech codes, which limited free speech to 0.0015 percent of campus. Uzuegbunam sued, demanding an injunction and nominal damages. At first, the school defended its policy and claimed that Uzuegbunam’s preaching “arguably rose to the level of ‘fighting words.’” Then the college reversed, dropping the challenged policies.

Both the district court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that since the college had dropped its restrictions, the case was moot. Yet Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that a demand for nominal damages can save a lawsuit from becoming moot.

“For purposes of this appeal, it is undisputed that Uzuegbunam experienced a completed violation of his constitutional rights when respondents enforced their speech policies against him. Because ‘every violation [of a right] imports damage,’ nominal damages can redress Uzuegbunam’s injury even if he cannot or chooses not to quantify that harm in economic terms,” Thomas wrote in the majority opinion for Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski (2021).

Justices Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined in Thomas’ ruling. Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion. Only Chief Justice John Roberts dissented.

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The Government Censors Are Here.

Congressional Democrats are demanding to know what communications giants such as Comcast and AT&T are going to do about “the spread of dangerous misinformation.” How quickly this country is descending into an authoritarian regime where the government controls speech and the flow of information.

Ahead of a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, California Democratic Reps. Anna G. Eshoo and Jerry McNerney wrote a letter to Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox, Altice, Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Hulu. According to the New York Times, which says it has reviewed the correspondence, the pair is not pleased that “the cable, satellite and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets” – likely referring to Fox News, One America News Network, and Newsmax – “have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets.”

The hearing was called to focus on “disinformation and extremism in the media.” In practice it’s a stage for peacock strutting, spin, and projection (a diversionary tactic Democrats are well-practiced in) with the ultimate goal of gaining full control of the flow of information.

The Democrats telegraphed their intentions when Eshoo and McNerney assumed the role of prosecutors to ask the companies what steps they took “prior to, on and following the Nov. 3, 2020, elections and the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks to monitor, respond to and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?”

Eshoo and McNerney further exposed their repressive intentions when they asked the companies if they are “planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN and Newsmax” on their platforms “both now and beyond the renewal date?” and “if so, why?”

Is this not chilling? The Democrats care nothing about misinformation and disinformation, nor freedom of speech. Their objective is to use the Jan. 6 Capitol trespass-and-vandalize ruckus, as well as legitimate questions about the 2020 election, to shut down the speech of their political opponents. They lust for raw political and social power, to rule, not govern under constitutional limits, forever. It is that simple.

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Quote O’ The Day:
People misunderstand, this is a very powerful and clear ruling:
The Supreme Court just ruled that anyone who seeks to uphold the Constitution, or seeks justice and fair elections (or even just a fair hearing) must seek it extrajudicially. It may be the most clarifying ruling in a decade.
–Dr. Lance Pearson

The U.S. was founded on the premise that it would be a nation under the ‘Rule of Law’ defined as: “whereby all members of a society (including those in government) are considered equally subject to publicly disclosed legal codes and processes.” —The Oxford English Dictionary

Well, when – at least – 3 justices on the Supreme Court pretty much lit into to rest of the court for

1 Deciding not to hear a case due to the plaintiff purportedly not having ‘standing’ before the election was certified and then-
2 Deciding that since the election had been certified that the case was moot

what we now have confirmed is that the U.S. court system, and thus our whole system of justice, and our civil rights, is actually under the ‘Rule of Man’ now; arbitrary and subject to the whims of the powerful.

Don’t bet on the court ruling that whatever the goobermint really likes, like any of the latest batch of gun control laws – if passed – is unconstitutional.

Betty put it this way: