Free Republic

From today's decision in Melton v. City of Forrest City, written by Judge David Stras, joined by Judges Lavenski Smith and Ralph Erickson: Steven Melton is a pro-life, evangelical Christian. In June 2020, he reposted a black-and-white image on Facebook that depicted a silhouette of a baby in the womb with a rope around its neck. His intent was to convey that he was "anti-abortion." Others did not view the image the same way. Two weeks after he posted it, a retired fire-department supervisor complained to Melton that he thought it looked like a noose around the neck of a...

Ursula's new "European Media Freedom Act" permits the arrest of journalists if it is in the "public interest." ... The act also allows surveillance software to be deployed on devices used by media service providers, editorial staff, or related persons in the “public interest. Who decides the “public interest?” Sophie ... The new law also contains numerous provisions that call for action against alleged "disinformation." Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission President ... "national lists" are to be created listing the owners and addresses of media outlets, as stipulated in Article 6. Despite its intent to strengthen media freedom, critics...

JD Vance has said he does not want the UK to go down a "very dark path" of losing free speech during a meeting with the foreign secretary at his country estate. The US vice president has previously raised concerns that free speech is being eroded in the UK. However, during a two-day visit to David Lammy's grace and favour 115-room mansion, Chevening House in Kent, Mr Vance kept his criticism a bit more low key. Asked about free speech in the UK during a televised meeting of the two men, Mr Vance said he has "raised concerns" about free...

If you report unfavorably about homelessness, open drug use, criminal illegal gangs terrorizing apartment complexes, etc., the Denver Post (a HORRIBLE newspaper that does no good reporting on these issues) will use your public records request to try to get you fired and shut up. ... Censorship, when you can't debate the facts. ... There’s more. Wait ... AG Weiser of CO put Tina Peters in jail, is going after deputies who work with ICE, but refuses to charge criminals until they steal their 3rd or 4th car in 3 months. ... The good news is that the Denver Post...

Fifteen people have been arrested after protests across England outside hotels used to house asylum seekers. Anti-migrant groups and counter demonstrators clashed in London and Newcastle, and before a march in Manchester city centre. Nine people were arrested in the capital, seven for breaching Public Order Act conditions, the Metropolitan Police said. A series of protests outside the migrant hotels have been taking place in recent weeks. The Home Office has said the number of hotels being used for asylum seekers has decreased from more than 400 in summer 2023, to less than 210. It also announced plans to end...

A church in Montreal, Quebec, has been slapped with a $2,500 fine for hosting a church service featuring activist missionary and worship leader Sean Feucht, whose views on sexuality, gender and President Donald Trump have drawn the ire of authorities in multiple Canadian cities. Ministerios Restauración Church, a Spanish-speaking congregation in Montreal's Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, was fined because they allowed Feucht to conduct a worship service last Friday without a permit, according to the National Post. The stop in Montreal was part of the "Revive in 25" tour being led by Feucht, an outspoken Trump supporter who has denounced abortion, transgender...

The British government has reportedly tasked a specialist police unit to surveil social media for anti-mass migration opinions as it braces for another potential summer of unrest. Rather than address the concerns of the public, such as removing the mostly young male illegal migrants from the taxpayer-funded hotel accommodations in communities across the country, the UK Home Office has formed the National Internet Intelligence Investigations to “maximise social media intelligence” about anti-mass migration sentiment on social media, according to The Telegraph. The team will work out of the Covid lockdown-enforcing National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in London. It comes amid...

~An official message from the French government via its mission to the United Nations:That's a definition of free speech we can all get behind! You have the right to say whatever you want as long as the government has graciously agreed to permit it.What's somewhat dispiriting about the brazen authoritarianism of the above is that, after my hard-fought battle in Canada, I am well aware that, wherever you live, half your neighbours will accept that this definition sounds eminently reasonable. What does that boil down to in practice? Well, in order to prevent you noticing that a significant proportion of...

America First Legal obtained new documents proving what we knew to be true all along: Merrick Garland’s infamous memo labeling concerned parents at school board meetings “domestic terrorists” was politically orchestrated and driven by the Biden White House.

“We’re aware; the challenge here is finding a federal hook. But WH has been in touch about whether we can assist in some form or fashion.”America First Legal shared documents with Fox News showing communication between the Biden White House and the DOJ over the memo that demonized protesting parents at school board meetings. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memo weaponized the FBI against these parents after the National School Boards Association begged former President Joe Biden’s administration to intervene. The NSBA described the protests as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The memo came out on October 4,...

Can someone please tell New York things have changed? New Yorkers are stuck in the Biden era or earlier. Some are still pushing BLM-catch-and-release policing; some are still hoping that defunding the cops might somehow be a way to make the streets safer. Meanwhile, they just nominated Zohran Mamdani, a wacky radical socialist, as their Democratic candidate for city mayor, a guy who makes AOC look like she could be an editor for The American Conservative. But the biggest policy throwback of recent memory is a new law to force social media censorship on a state-wide level to cut off...

NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of a social media influencer who used Twitter posts that resembled Hillary Clinton ads to spread false information about the 2016 presidential election and help Donald Trump win. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said no rational jury could have found that Douglass Mackey knowingly agreed to join a conspiracy to deprive people of their constitutional right to vote. It overturned Mackey's March 2023 conviction in Brooklyn and seven-month prison sentence, opens new tab, and ordered an acquittal. A spokesman for U.S....

Britain's largest misinformation monitor and "fact-checker" went into bankruptcy, according to a report in the Times of London last week. In the U.S., left-wing groups like NewsGuard and GDI have come under fierce criticism as de facto tools for censorship. Logically, founded in 2016 by Cambridge engineering graduate Lyric Jain, aimed to combat "harmful and manipulative content" following high-profile events like the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election. A pivotal misstep was its decision to work with India's Karnataka state government's fact-checking unit, a move criticized by the Editors Guild of India and others for potentially enabling state censorship...

The Washington State Office of the Attorney General has launched a taxpayer-funded hotline in three counties that would allow residents, including foreign nationals and illegal immigrants, to report U.S. citizens for engaging in legally protected speech and activity, in addition to hate crimes. The launch of the hate crimes and bias incidents hotline in King, Clark and Spokane counties occurred almost exactly a year after The Center Square reported that Oregon’s hate crime and bias incident hotline mostly tracks legal activities. Referring to both legal crimes and protected speech, the hotline’s website says “these incidents have a devastating and long-lasting...

Dr. Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya appeared this week at Aspen Ideas: Health, addressing his previously controversial stance on COVID-19, as well as his plans as the new National Institutes of Health director. Bhattacharya was sworn in as the 18th director of the NIH on April 1. President Trump nominated him for the position in late November, and the U.S. Senate confirmed his position on March 25. The NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with Bhattacharya referring to it as “the crown jewel of American biomedical sciences.” In his conversation Tuesday evening with Stefanie Ilgenfritz, coverage chief for...

House raids over speech violations are becoming commonplace across Germany, even as violent crime explodes... On Wednesday morning at 6 a.m., a large-scale police operation was launched across Germany, targeting hundreds of individuals suspected of insulting politicians or spreading “hate and incitement” online. The massive crackdown saw police launch morning raids against 170 individuals, which saw police seize computers, cell phones, and tablets, and conduct searches in multiple locations across the country. The action, which was conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), uses the new Criminal Code Paragraph 188 to target individuals accused of racism and hate speech....

At around 6 a.m. this morning, hundreds of people across Germany awoke to police officers at their door. Their only ‘crime’ is to have openly made critical or offensive comments on the internet, many about specific politicians. German police raiding right-wing Compact Magazine’s editor-in-chief’s home, Twitter This is not a scene from the Third Reich or the German Democratic Republic, but from the Federal Republic in the 21st Century. Officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) intend to make approximately 170 house visits today, to investigate ‘hateful’ or insulting comments made online. Suspects have had their tablets, laptops, and...

Police in Germany have executed more than 170 operations targeting people they referred to as “digital arsonists”. Starting early on the morning of June 25, officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the homes of people suspected of running “criminal posts” online. The police move was not the first such in Germany, where it is flagged a “day of action”, targeting alleged authors of “online hate and hate messages”. This was the 12th time that the police took such nationwide action against so-called politically motivated crime (PMK). Two-thirds of those people whom officers hit had reportedly made right-wing radical...

Obama’s embrace of censorship speaks to the desperation of a party that can’t survive without uniform control of the information space.. The modern Democrat Party is many things. But an ardent defender of Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech is not one of them. This theme was front and center during a sit-down interview former President Barack Obama participated in at The Connecticut Forum earlier this week. At one point in his conversation with historian and author Heather Cox Richardson, America’s 44th commander-in-chief broached the subject of “propaganda” and how “[t]hose in power, those with money, exploit [the information]...

Even as other banks are backing down, the bank that debanked us doubles down. Last spring, 15 state attorney generals wrote to Bank of America warning that its politically motivated debanking targeting conservatives and religious people was under the looking glass. After taking office, President Trump directly challenged Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to stop discriminating against conservatives. “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank. What you’re doing is wrong.” But instead of ending its political discrimination, BOA launched a...