Free Republic

Last spring, I co-led a working group at the University of Wyoming tasked with articulating the principles of freedom of expression, intellectual freedom, and constructive dialogue. In addition to describing these principles, we were charged with making recommendations for operationalizing, communicating, and practicing them on campus. This essay explains how we accomplished the task and the opportunities UW (or any university) has to implement some of our recommendations. The president of the university, Ed Seidel,ast spring, I co-led a working group at the University of Wyoming tasked with articulating the principles of freedom of expression, intellectual freedom, and constructive dialogue....

Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag and Matt Taibbi produced a blockbuster report on November 28 that I neglected to cover at the time. My bad. The report exposes a genuine conspiracy — i.e., the Censorship Industrial Complex aka CIC. It is not a theory. It is a fact. This blog posting carries the title of their piece. Here is the introductory paragraph: A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twiter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the actvities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League,...

David Menzies, a reporter for Canada’s conservative Rebel News Network, was arrested Monday for asking Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland a question after a police officer accused him of assault in what appears to be a fabricated charge. Video of the event, posted by Rebel News chief Ezra Levant, went viral on Monday. It shows Menzies asking Freeland about Canada’s refusal to label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) as a terrorist organization — an ordinary question.

Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia on Monday as the government responds to a rise in antisemitic incidents following the Israel-Gaza war. The law makes it an offense punishable by up to 12 months in prison to publicly perform the Nazi salute or display the Nazi swastika or the double-sig rune associated with the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary group. The sale and trade of these symbols is similarly prohibited. Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said in a statement the legislation sent a clear message there was no...

A Washington state agency has dismissed a complaint filed against a Tri-City political action committee over some controversial campaign signs. The complaint centered on allegations that false and intentionally misleading signs were placed next to a Kennewick School Board candidate’s signs. The We Want Accountability PAC posted signs pointed at school board President Michael Connors’ signs, with messages like: “Voted With Liberals 100%,” “Kept Our Kids In Masks,” and “Supports CRT (critical race theory) in Schools.” State campaign finance laws prohibit sponsorship of statements with malice that constitute libel or defamation. But staff with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission...

CNN — New York City has banned the term “illegal alien” when used “with intent to demean, humiliate or harass a person,” the city said. The city’s new guidelines, announced last week, also ban discrimination against someone based on their English proficiency and threats to call immigration authorities on someone “based on a discriminatory motive.” These violations can result in fines up to $250,000. The guidance is for all public accommodations, employment and housing, the city’s Commission on Human Rights said.

Faculty said they felt trapped in an ‘alternate reality’ when trying to navigate the college’s ‘toxic’ DEI environment.. College students attending universities with restrictive speech codes are used to walking on eggshells and keeping their heads down on campus out of fear of committing social suicide or experiencing violence. In the disordered world of contemporary higher education, Jewish students receive limited, if any, support from school administrators amid explicit calls for violence against them, while other students face punishment for banal infractions like rolling a “free speech ball” around campus. But if you are shocked at how students are subject...

Facebook has banned Libs of TikTok from the platform for breaking 'community standards' as the popular right-wing account has warned of 'extreme censorship' ahead of the 2024 election. The owner behind Libs of TikTok, Chaya Raichik, took to X (formerly known as Twitter) on Saturday as she posted the message she received about the account being deactivated on Facebook. 'The Page Libs of Tik Tok has been disabled for going against our Community Standards. You cannot visit the Page and you won't be able to add new people to the Page,' 'It's a shame that Mark Zuckerberg cares more about...

Colleges and universities keep telling us that they teach “critical thinking” skills, but in reality they are deeply complicit in the destruction of the ability to think at all. They’re the source of a kind of mental contagion called “cancel culture,” an anti-intellectual phenomenon that encourages people to silence and punish those who disagree with them. Rather than teaching students how to rationally argue, our schools (and not just colleges) are teaching that dissenters can and should be silenced. That is the big, frightening point of a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, The Canceling of the American...

President Trump on Wednesday afternoon responded to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s latest court filing and attempt to take away his First Amendment right. Jack Smith wants to prevent President Trump from blaming provocateurs and undercover agents for the January 6 Capitol riot. “Through public statements, filings and argument in hearings before the court, the defense has attempted to inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial,” Jack Smith’s 20-page filing said. ...... Snip...... “Evidence about undercover actors holds no probative value here,” Smith wrote. Trump’s trial date for...

Excerpt from linked Article by Egbe Ogu"In a surprising move, T-Mobile, one of the leading phone service providers in the United States, has recently updated its Terms of Service (TOS) to include fines for content that they deem objectionable. This development has sparked concerns among users and raised questions about the extent of control that phone companies now have over the content we consume. Beginning on January 1, 2024, T-Mobile will start imposing fines on users who commit perceived violations on their bandwidth. This article aims to explore the implications of this policy change and its potential impact on users’...

A right-wing group specializing in hidden-camera investigations will not be able to use the First Amendment to stop the federal government from accessing documents and communications related to the group’s apparent acquisition of a stolen diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter.As Law&Crime previously reported, the FBI executed a search warrant in 2021 at the property of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, as well as from Project Veritas staffers Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran. The search warrants were granted in connection with the theft and sale of the personal journal belonging to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. Two people, Aimee...

It was less than three weeks ago, December 5, when the name of Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, suddenly burst into the news. That was the day that she, along with the Presidents of Penn and MIT, testified before Congress — and could not give a clear answer as to whether it was against the policy at their schools to call for the genocide of Jews. All three women attempted to use the occasion to paint themselves as defenders of free speech, particularly important in such extreme cases. Manhattan Contrarian readers already knew that Ms. Gay was the opposite...

'To our clients' horror, each was told by armed guards to take off their religious apparel or leave'... It's a victory for students who were ejected by the National Archives and Records Administration from a Washington, D.C., museum for wearing T-shirts with pro-life messages. A report from the American Center for Law and Justice confirms the organization was assured such a situation would not be allowed to develop again. The ACLJ reported, "As we told you, at the start of mediation, our clients’ objective was to find out who was responsible for the targeting, how and why it happened, and...

has opened a probe into comments made by John Schneider, a former star of the television show ‘Dukes of Hazzard,’ after he suggested on platform X that Joe Biden is “guilty of treason” and “should be publicly hung.” Schneider also targeted Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in his statement. On Wednesday, White House resident Joe Biden wrote on X attacking former President Trump. “Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy. If we lose that, we lose everything,”...

Two issues of Quadrant ago I wrote about the dire legal straits of former President Donald Trump under the assault of Democrat federal and state prosecutors who seemed to be weaponising US law to ensure the conviction of Tom Wolfe’s ultimate Great White Defendant by any technicalities necessary. It’s a process well-described as early as 1940 in a law journal article on “The Federal Prosecutor” by Justice Robert H. Jackson who was in turn FDR’s Attorney-General, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of war crimes: It is in this realm—in which...

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on November 1, 2023, at the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., campus, as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series. The Covid cover-up began in China. But in a way we make too big a deal of that. No one should be surprised that a totalitarian government run by the Chinese Communist Party would seek to cover up its responsibility for a worldwide pandemic. What was mind-jarring—and what we should focus our attention on—is the cover-up in our own country spearheaded by...

A federal judge ordered the city of East Lansing to pay $825,000 for violating an apple farmer’s right to free speech and freedom of religion because of his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Police also wrongly cited him for "improper hand signal" after the man flipped them off.Last year, Delaware police prevented 54-year-old Jonathan Guessford from holding a sign warning drivers about a speed trap and wrongfully cited him for "improper hand signal" after he flipped off the officers who seized and tore up his sign. Police have now agreed to pay Guessford $50,000 as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights. Following several run-ins with the police, Guessford decided to "stage protests whenever he saw police officers stopping unsuspected vehicles using a radar gun,"...

It isn't often a Federal Judge calls politicians morons, but that's the message here: A federal judge permanently blocked an Illinois law on Dec. 14 that he previously called “stupid” that targets maternal health care centers and sidewalk counselors for expressing their pro-life message. And in news for taxpayers: The defendant, Mr. Raoul, was sued in his official capacity. [...] The judge dismissed the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning the case cannot be litigated again. The court “shall retain jurisdiction over this action to enforce the final judgment,” the order states. The order also states that NILFA “may file a motion...