Posted on 03/21/2023 1:44:30 AM PDT by spirited irish
The Regime is currently trying to put a man behind bars for ten years for making memes. The most important First Amendment case of our lifetimes is taking place, and many have no idea it is even happening.
United States v. Douglass Mackey began this week and is a major part of the Left’s war on free speech in America. Two days after Joe Biden took the oath of office, the Department of Justice charged Douglass Mackey with election interference for posting memes in 2016. Mackey is alleged to be the popular Twitter poster Ricky Vaughn, who shared memes instructing Hillary Clinton supporters to text in their vote rather than wait in line at their polling place.
(Excerpt) Read more at patriotandliberty.com ...
Prayer ping. Pastor Isker is asking for prayer
Prayers up!
The article is worth reading, imho.
The issue here is generating misinformation on the election process. Most of us would recognize this as funny. But if there is a chance someone takes it as true, it’s hard to claim it’s not election interference.
What’s the difference between this and setting up a robocall to inform democrat voters to vote the day after the official election day?
In elections in this country, as in all things, people 18 and over are considered adults. Just like you are expected to know the rules of the road when driving, you are expected to know your polling place and the times available for you to vote. The meme’s obviously a joke, and they fall under satire as a form of comedy. If you could mail in your vote without a change in the law, which could only be done by a state legislature, then why couldn’t you email in your vote. Every campaign ad that distorted the facts could be election interference under the arching over view the prosecution is using in this case. The prosecution bases it’s case on the gullibility of the voter, which is what politicians depend on. Obviously the bar is very low.
The issue here is
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Doing your own darn due diligence..
... Someone can claim anything they want all day long
doesn’t make it interference.
This is a direct attack on the 1st Amendment
” misinformation” is all I need to hear from you.
Spit.
I wonder how many people, if any, the govt is claiming we’re actually harmed by the meme, i.e., didn’t vote “right”?
They Used Robocalls to Suppress Black Votes. Now They Have to Register Voters.
Granted a meme designed to be funny is not the same as contacting voters directly with wrong information.
At some point you can clearly cross the line to "election interference" using speech. The question this case helps define is where is that line.
If someone believed it then it’s more of an indictment of the centralized education system and the confusing political tampering with the election system by changing it from one day inperson balloting.
If we replace "gov't" with control freak then we know that just one 'vote' lost to a harmful meme is one vote too many. This is why control freak and totalitarianism are synonymous.
Actually, I do think they decided that case wrong. Your link is behind a pay wall (I refuse to pay for anything from the NYT) but I vaguely remember it. These were private individuals and they are entitle to say whatever they want. If what they said was wrong, then so what?
But the bigger point is that you are slippery slope when the state determines that speech by private concerns can qualify as voter suppression. The bigger threat to our liberty is the government arbitrarily deciding who to prosecute that the posting of a meme or even a robocall.
Absolutely right! If a STATE says it is ok to mail in your vote in contravention of the STATE CONSTITUTION, then there is no way this gentleman should be accused or convicted.
The regime is fighting a proxy war against Muskovite evil in Ukraine, but at home they’re becoming just like them.
Somebody wrote about that once......
Weird, I wonder how I got to it. I’m not paying the NYT either.
I have to disagree with the tenor of your post. (this is absolutely nothing personal in this, DannyTN-I understand, or think I do, the point you make) I simply think what you reference (robo-calling) is apples, and the case in question (unpleasant memes) is oranges.
There is nothing legitimate about this case, in my opinion, and while you classify this as a war on “misinformation” that misses the larger picture, which is: “If government is going to battle ‘misinformation’, who is to decide what ‘misinformation’ IS?” If you value the 1st Amendment, you cannot value the “war on misinformation”. Incidentally, the robo-call case you reference is in no way “misinformation”. It is “mal-information”, intentionally meant to do harm to someone else’s rights. I don’t believe this case can be compared.
Speech is either free, or it isn’t.
I see in this case this as exactly the same dynamic being exerted by this tyrannical government in the political persecution of the large majority of the January 6th protesters, and for exactly the same reasons.
It is a deliberate effort to discourage not only dissent, but dissent which may uncover illegality. It reeks of facism, leveraging of Big Tech (private industry) to participate in the government suppression.
In my opinion, both cases, as the author of the piece rightly notes, seek to discourage people from behavior they wish not to exist.
They went after Kyle Rittenhouse because he defended himself from people who meant to do him physical harm, and in so doing, wish to make every person hesitant to employ their 2nd Amendment rights.
They went after the January 6th protesters because they wished to exercise their 1st Amendment rights, and in doing so, they wish to make every citizen think twice before they appear on the street to exercise those rights. It has worked brilliantly for them. Look at the vast numbers of people on this very site who shrink from exercising their 1st Amendment rights, and not only discourage others from doing so, but often resort to ad hominem attacks in their efforts, calling them “stupid”, and worse, if they do.
And in this case, they are going after this person, because they don’t believe in the 1st Amendment. They believe government control of speech is both desirable and necessary, especially when they are the ones exercising government control. And satire can often be the sharpest of the knives employed against a tyrannical government.
It has been said that “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
I think the truth of that statement should be self-evident to us all now.
bookmarking first amendment threat
1A
did that article give an e-mail address to send it to; where would they send if they believed it was true?
Here’s something interesting - you’ll have a hard time finding a standardized, transparent, and/or helpful database of “misinformation.”
Sure, I can find a definition, and stories featuring “Authorities” rambling about “the threat of misinformation.”
But, try to get someone on the record to state, that “x is misinformation” and it’s darn near impossible.
Hmmm...
bttt
Probably similar to that old problem of defining “pornography”...
Qui Iudicat?
(Seemed like one of those places where Latin is appropriate! Don’t know if that is correct or not)
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