Judge halts Texas probe into Media Matters' reporting on X
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Even free speech absolutists.
For example, downvoting is often equated with censorship. But when I call free speech absolutists nazis, I get downvoted! So, I persist, to highlight the hypocrisy if nothing else.
So many issues can be broken down along the freedom vs liberty axis and this is one of them. One group wants the fewest restrictions to be imposed, freedom from, and one group believes that freedom of speech is best protected when the people who want to speak are able, freedom to, and that necessarily implies some rules. If you're someone who has argued for the principle of free speech that exists beyond 1A you're likely a freedom to kind of person.
So the question is whether speech is in issue like chess or driving where rules make the experience better for everyone or whether it's like free association or movement where it's better for everyone if the government has no say in the matter. I'm of the belief that it's the former but I recognize that the opposing view is also reasonable and has strong arguments supporting it.
The latter is freedom of assembly. If Twitter were banned from taking down my tweets, it isn't infringing on their freedom of speech. (Nor is it compelling their speech.) It's forcing them to associate with me.
Free-speech absolutists tend to ignore the inherent conflict between the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. (There also tends to be nitpicking over what counts as speech, as most simply exemplified by the question of bots and spam.)
Technically, yes. They’re used interchangeably in American English, with freedom of association having a labour connotation [1].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHY5cFXqQk
Watch the whole thing -- it's worth it! ;)
Not uncoincidentally, X (a Nevada corporation whose HQ is in California, and whose ToS and presumably all other contracts generally say CA is the proper jurisdiction) filed its lawsuit against Media Matters (a Delaware corporation whose HQ is in DC) in, uh, Texas.
The good thing is that this law exists, and provides civil and criminal remedies for state officials engaged in deprivation of Constitutional rights under color of law.
The bad thing is that abusive extensions of the Qualified Immunity doctrine has rendered the civil provisions basically a dead letter, and it is very difficult to convince federal prosecutors to enforce the criminal provisions for any but the most egregious violations (by which I mean ones that end up with death of grievous bodily injury resulting from the violation of rights, not something based on how fundamental the rights are.)
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slapp_suit#:~:text=Strategic....
Someone else can pick up where Paxton is blocked and have a look at how Media Matters reports on, well, anything. Preferably someone who is neither 'progressive' like Media Matters nor 'conservative' like Paxton is supposed to be - no idea if he really is but that is besides the point. Having looked into Media Matters' reporting myself I know that they have made an art out of taking lines out of context to drive a 'progressive' narrative so I have a suspicion what such a report would look like but it would be best if this information is available to all from an 'unbiased' source (as far as such a thing exists). This goes for all 'fact checkers' and 'media watchdogs' and, really, all organisations which act in the public space as 'defenders' and 'watchdogs' since many of these have shown to be nothing more than re-badged propaganda outlets.
This is (intentionally or unintentionally) comedy. (If intentional, the subtlety is magnificent.)
> Paxton rose to power as an ally of the Tea Party movement[3] and has been described as an ultraconservative[2][3][4][5] or far-right[6][7][8][9] politician. As attorney general, Paxton has appointed prominent opponents of LGBT rights to leading positions within his department. In June 2022, Paxton said he would defend state laws prohibiting consensual same-sex relationships if the Supreme Court precedent invalidating such laws, the Lawrence v. Texas decision, was overturned.[10] He has sued president Joe Biden's administration nearly 50 times.[6][9]
There's just no way to know!
conservatism, political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices.
Conservatism is a preference for the historically inherited rather than the abstract and ideal. This preference has traditionally rested on an organic conception of society—that is, on the belief that society is not merely a loose collection of individuals but a living organism comprising closely connected, interdependent members. Conservatives thus favour institutions and practices that have evolved gradually and are manifestations of continuity and stability. Government’s responsibility is to be the servant, not the master, of existing ways of life, and politicians must therefore resist the temptation to transform society and politics.
In a society where 'LGBT rights' have evolved gradually - e.g. the Netherlands (where I'm from, originally) - there is no friction between supporting such and being 'conservative'. I guess the same is true for parts of the USA - California comes to mind - but less so for others - Texas being an example of such.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240415235814/https://news.ycom...
Alanis Morissette Recognizes It's Not Ironic
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2016/05/alanis-m...
>Pour one out for Alanis Morissette.
>For more than 20 years now, since the release of her hit “Ironic,” she’s had to hear every pedant, every SNOOT, and every 10th-grade English teacher crow that none of the situations in her song are actually ironic. The eternal question of rain-on-your-wedding-day has spawned two decades of thinkpieces (here’s the Times in 2008, Salon in 2014). “Ironic” even has a section on its Wikipedia page entitled “Linguistic usage disputes.” It’s hard to even talk about the literary device now without hearing someone lament the song. Irony, apparently, was described by Socrates, animated by Shakespeare and O. Henry, and killed by a 1995 radio hit. RIP.
>Thankfully now Morissette may be free. Last night November*, she went on James Corden’s Late Late Show to reveal a new version of “Ironic” updated for modern situations. (“It’s a traffic jam… when you tried to use Waze.”) And, most importantly, it included this admission:
It’s singing “Ironic”
When there are no ironies
When it comes to First Amendment protected speech?
Not the various Attorneys General.
Something like this should be picked up by a university as a research project but current academia being what it is this is not possible in the USA because it will be impossible to abide by the 'unbiased' criterium. It might be possible for e.g. a Swedish, Dutch or German university to do this [1] but even if they did the results would be written off due to 'foreign actors' 'meddling' in 'American affairs'.
[1] not that academia in Europe is free from the type of 'hyper-progressive' bias seen in the USA, far from it. The rot has not sunk as deep here, that's all.
Also, yes, I have a whole skeleton to pick with the current incarnation of 'progressivism', in large part because in the countries I've lived in that is what's left of most of the institutions once 'progressives' had their way with them. Many scattered bones make for rich pickings.
[1] Kent Asp at the university of Göteborg (Sweden) keeps track of the political bias of the news media in Sweden which shows their move to the left: On the political scale, Swedish journalists can be placed to the left of the Swedish public and their elected politicians. And the distance between the two sides has increased significantly in recent decades, although this is more due to the public and politicians having moved to the right than to journalists having moved to the left. (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/852943)