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Before 1985, there was a media concept that attempted to balance the news that was aired to the general public. It was called the Fairness Doctrine, and it was initiated in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission during the earlier days of television newscasting.

There was a concern in 1949 when there were only three major broadcast networks, NBC, ABC and CBS that a tendency to bias might occur in their news presentations. The FCC created a doctrine that required any news program that had a license to broadcast to the public to present both sides of any and all controversial issues important to that general audience and its agenda.

In 1969, the Fairness Doctrine was challenged, and without going into the details (check the Ronald Reagan Library website, which describes the case), it went to the Supreme Court who upheld it in a unanimous decision. It was during the Reagan administration in 1987 that the FCC decided to abolish the doctrine because it was feared that it would hurt the public interest and potentially violate the First Amendment rights of free speech.

Its hard to see how First Amendment concerns would apply (and, back then, the Supreme Court agreed), since both sides would have the opportunity to express their views of events in the news, or other issues presented to the public, and in no way a violation of free speech would be evident. When the doctrine was abolished, it, of course, opened the licensed broadcast doors to the news eventually becoming, to many, a hopelessly one-sided and often deeply biased affair.

The Fairness Doctrine was created with broadcast licensing, and the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, in mind. In its original design, it could not apply to cable news, satellite service providers or the internet. But what if it could? What if the current administration, or any administration for that matter, would direct the FCC to revisit its doctrine of 1949 and explore the potential good that could be accomplished with a modern-day reinstatement of the fairness policy? Suddenly everyone who exclusively tunes into Fox News for their information on current issues of importance would see other reputable newscasters offering the other side of the story. Of course, the same would apply to MSNBC and all broadcast and cable news networks.

Once viewers got a more balanced view of potentially deeply polarizing issues, they would certainly become better informed in their decision making, and perhaps that polarization may be slightly reduced on both sides. Even if that reduction were small, it would be a step in the right direction, a step toward healing the growing schism between differing biases in the news.

Maybe, as an experiment, lets bring back the Fairness Doctrine for one year and see if it can make a difference. I have tried to imagine a serious downside to this experiment and continue to come up short. After all, the Supreme Court supported it and that should be remembered. In a court of law, both sides must be heard by the jury. If they only heard the prosecutors side, I suspect that all would be found guilty or found innocent if they only heard the defenses presentation. Lets be fair!

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Maine Voices: What if the balance demanded by the Fairness Doctrine could exist today? - Press Herald

Imagine an America where you are not permitted to exercise your First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression, where efforts to define and be yourself are policed by or prohibited by a government that is watching your every move an America defined by undemocratic government mandate. In a growing number of states, trans youth are faced with this harrowing scenario simply for being who they are. Florida has taken these efforts to restrict freedom of speech and expression to new extremes, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leading the charge.

Through administrative changes by DeSantis, the state of Florida recently issued a direct attack on transgender youth with the publication of dangerous new guidance designed to restrict the ability of children to define and express themselves. This guidance, which stands in direct opposition to best-practice child development principles, has been issued in the wake of a vague Dont Say Gay law that will result in trans kids being outed in schools, perhaps their one safe space. This is the latest attack by conservatives against marginalized people, and they are laser-focused not only on restricting access to life-saving gender-affirming medical care, but also on controlling how trans and gender-diverse people exist in the world.

Meanwhile, DeSantis prepares his own likely presidential run and is showing the nation what his campaign may look like.

Make no mistake: DeSantis unilateral decree, issued without substantial input from Floridas legislature or residents, is an attack on freedom and liberty. He is attempting to prevent American citizens from being able to use their own names, express their own inner selves and exercise their fundamental right to freedom of speech. While this guidance and the law are cloaked in the language of restricting social transition or speaking about gender identity, they are very much an attempt to bar children from expressing themselves.

Social transition is a process where transgender and gender-diverse individuals adopt the name, pronouns and gender expression of their identified gender. This process is not clinical in nature but a choice that someone makes in a community with others. When this transition begins, it allows individuals to begin to express themselves publicly and be embraced for who they are by those around them. This can be lifesaving for many trans kids, as it allows them to express their inner self better and grow and develop as the person they know themselves to be.

Conservatives claim that social transition is part of some liberal agenda or fad, when in reality it is simply part of the process of normal human growth and development something the GOP is in clear opposition to.

As a health care provider, I have seen many kids grow up healthy and happy after society got their names, pronouns and clothes right. They knew, while others had to catch up. I recall one little transgender girl who just had to go to Disneyland as a princess after this, she went to school as the girl she always was and flourished. I remember a little transgender boy who knew he was a boy since age 4 and after being accepted for who he was, he lived a life that would have been expected of any other boy his age.

Preventing social transition interferes with the healthy process of trans and gender-diverse kids growing up as their whole authentic selves. It is not a fad. Social transition has positive outcomes for kids, families and communities meanwhile denying children this opportunity is not only cruel, harmful and discriminatory, but it directly contradicts the position of every major medical, nursing or health care society in the United States.

A driving force behind the anti-trans legislation, policies and guidance being proposed by social conservatives is the misguided belief that there are too many LGBTQ+ kids. Instead of accepting that the world has changed and ideas around gender have expanded as more people have felt comfortable coming out and identifying as LGBTQ, social conservatives have responded by championing a dangerous agenda that censors ideas, cracks down on social expression and puts vulnerable children in the crosshairs of grotesque political attacks.

Whats happening in Florida is an example of government overreach at its most dangerous, as it exploits its authority in an unscientific and malicious way to dictate what is considered appropriate medical care and even further, what is an appropriate way for individuals to speak, dress, act and express themselves.

These recent moves by the state of Florida and DeSantis should be concerning to all Americans who believe in freedom of speech and expression. DeSantis will likely be a presidential contender, and this unilateral executive action clearly shows what type of future he and his campaign appear to want for America: one that is destructive to individual liberty and freedom of expression and one which harms those at the margins.

We must speak up and fight back.

Dallas Ducar, NP, is the chief executive officer of Transhealth Northampton. Follow Ducar on Twitter and Instagram: @DallasDucar

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How Gov. Ron DeSantis is attacking the freedom and liberty of all Americans - The Hill

WASHINGTON

A civil rights lawsuit filed by a University of Washington computer science professor has called attention to a largely academic debate over land acknowledgments formal statements that recognize Indigenous custodianship of geographic areas on which institutions stand or events take place.

Evolving out of the work of Canadas Truth and Reconciliation Commission, land acknowledgments are becoming increasingly common at U.S. universities and sporting events.

Yale University, for example, developed this statement:

Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

Native American students at Stanford University in Stanford, California, put together a video statement acknowledging the institution's location on the the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe (below):

In 2020, the University of Washington acknowledged its location on the traditional land and waterways of the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot Nations and encouraged faculty to include land acknowledgments on individual course syllabuses.

But Stuart Reges, a computer science professor at the University's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, opposes land acknowledgements and posted a dissenting statement on his course outline which read, I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.

He now faces disciplinary action by the university for that statement. In his lawsuit, Reges alleged his First Amendment right to free speech had been violated.

The labor theory he cites was proposed by English philosopher John Locke in 1690, who suggested that by laboring and making the land more productive than it was in its original state of nature, an individual assumes the right to own that land.

Locke said that in the case of land, if you grew corn on an acre of land, then by mixing your labor with the land, you come to own the land, Reges told VOA. So, if you believe in the Locke idea, then it wasn't Native tribes that made productive use of this land. It was the people who founded the university.

What is the Locke Theory of Property?

For help in understanding this little-known theory, VOA reached out to Kyle Swan, a professor of philosophy at California State University, Sacramento, who has written about Lockean property rights.

I think he [Reges] is making some mistakes in the way he applies Lockes theory, he said. Locke was talking about the commons, earth in its original state, when nobody owned anything yet.

In a later chapter of his Second Treatise of Government titled On Conquest, Locke said property could only be legitimately acquired when it was not already owned by someone else.

Why were they making contracts to acquire land from the natives if the natives didn't already own the land? Swan asked. They wouldn't do that if they believed that the lands were unused, unoccupied and unowned.

The second thing is that the person appropriating something from the commons, they have to do that in a way that improves it through their productive activity gathering berries, hunting, fishing, Swan said. And finally, in acquiring the land, they have to leave enough and as good [land] for others.

Locke also posed a condition in cases of conquest, said Swan, reading directly from Lockes essay: The inhabitants of any country, who are descended and derive a title to their estates from those who are subdued and had a government forced upon them against their free consents, retain a right to the possession of their ancestors.

In other words, Swan said, if what you have is a conquest rather than a legitimate transfer of territorial rights, then Locke says that the original inhabitants retain their claims to it.

Their different interpretations of Locke notwithstanding, Swan said he believed Reges had the right to exercise free speech.

Ties to current politics

Reges said he believes land acknowledgments support a particular view of American history that has no place in the classroom.

You could call it the Howard Zinn view of history that the United States is evil, and we stole the land, we are guilty, and so forth, he said.

Zinn was a controversial historian and author of A Peoples History of the United States, which re-examined history through the experiences of those normally neglected in textbooks African and Native Americans, immigrants and the working classes.

Critics condemn Zinn as a Marxist trying to turn Americans against their country. His name often comes up in discussions about critical race theory (CRT).

Reges isnt alone in his views. In a July 18 article in Newsweek magazine University of Chicago Law School professor M. Todd Henderson called land acknowledgments ahistorical nonsense, and like Reges, invokes Lockes theory of property rights.

No one has a claim on land except if they put it to productive use and are capable of defending it. Nearly every plot of land on Earth is inhabited today by groups of people that displaced other people who lived there before, Henderson said.

Graeme Wood, a writer for the Atlantic and a lecturer at Yale, criticizes land acknowledgments as superficial and showy.

The acknowledgments never include any actual material redress the return of land, meaningful corrections of wrongs against Indigenous communities or sophisticated moral reckoning, he wrote.

A Native American perspective

Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), president of the Morning Star Institute and former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, scoffs at these criticisms.

People who enjoy their privilege are like sea anemones. At the slightest ripple in the water, they withdraw and turn into something that looks like a very carefully protected stone, she said. Every time Native peoples began to own something or control something or aspire to or even just be in a certain place, theres always a backlash against any sort of exercise of our treaties, our sovereignty, our inherent rights, our original rights that pre-date everyone else's here in this hemisphere.

She pointed out that opponents of land acknowledgments and CRT say they want to save their children from feeling guilt.

What we're doing different people of color is trying to stop our kids from thinking badly of themselves. Thats what happens if you're treated badly, if you're treated like second-class citizens, even though you have treaties, even though you have absolute rights and you're constantly denied them. Pretty soon, their kids start thinking it's them, that they are the bad persons.

So, yeah, she added. We are trying to save our kids.

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Examining the Debate Over Native American Land Acknowledgments - Voice of America - VOA News

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Floyd County to consider 'First Amendment auditor' training Tuesday; SPLOST work also on the agenda - Northwest Georgia News

The Jan. 6 Committee is abusing its power by asking inappropriate questions about their fellow Americans beliefs and associates, and publicly portraying witnesses who exercise their Fifth Amendment rights as guilty all to put on a show trial.

Later on Tuesday, the Jan. 6 Committee will hold yet another public hearing, this one purportedly to focus on the role of extremists in the attack on the Capitol. While the precise script for the afternoons proceedings remains unknown, last week Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin previewed the committees plans, telling The New York Times that when public hearings resumed in July, he intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack. According to the Times, Mr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trumps orbit.

An attorney for 1st Amendment Praetorian, or 1AP, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting free speech, spoke exclusively with The Federalist about the committees questioning of 1AP, the groups founder, and another member of the nonprofit, all of whom she represents. From the framing of the questions posed to her clients, Leslie McAdoo Gordon was left with the firm impression that the Jan. 6 Committee merely wanted video capturing her clients declining to answer the questions for the purpose of impugning their character during the televised hearings.

The committee knew before the depositions that my clients would be asserting their First and Fifth Amendment rights, and also would not answer any questions because the depositions were being held in violation of the rules established by the House, McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist. So, shortly after the hearing began and the 1AP witnesses made clear they would not answer any questions, the staffers moved to general topic areas and would ask a few prepared questions, then the committee representative would note that he had more questions on the topic and inquire whether if he asked those questions, the witnesses intended to assert the same objections.

My clients would respond yes to that question, so then the committee would move forward with the next topic, McAdoo Gordon said. But after covering various topics, the committee staffer at the end volleyed a litany of individual questions to my clients, forcing them to respond to each question with Rules, First, and Fifth, the shorthand we had agreed to with the committee to convey their objections to questions posed.

Given that the committee had broadcast video of Michael Flynn asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in an earlier hearing, McAdoo Gordon said she wouldnt be surprised if Tuesdays hearings include clips of her clients refusing to answer the committees questions.

In fact, she said as much to the committee in a letter last week. After calling the lawmakers out for implying to the public that Flynn was guilty of some crime because he asserted his Fifth Amendment rights, McAdoo Gordon wrote that implying guilt based on a witness asserting his rights, is a McCarthy-esque tactic that offends the Constitution and is unworthy of the United States Congress. The attorney added that she is forced to anticipate that the Committee will use the same totalitarian tactic to improperly smear 1AP.

The irony is that McAdoo Gordon was working with the committee to arrange for her clients to testify voluntarily, within the bounds of the First Amendment, until the committee concocted what she has called a cockamamie criminal conspiracy theory. The committee argued in litigation with former Trump attorney John Eastman that President Trump, Dr. Eastman, and others conspired to defraud the United States by disrupting the electoral count, supposedly in violation of Section 371 of the federal criminal code, which makes it a crime to conspire to defraud the United States. The committees pushing of what she called a preposterous legal theory left McAdoo Gordon with no option but to recommend that my clients assert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist that during her clients depositions, the committee asked a series of questions that she likely would have allowed her clients to answer if the meeting had been on a voluntary basis. Putting aside the question of whether the committee was properly constituted, the 1APs attorney noted Congress had a legitimate interest in investigating the riots and violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

What 1AP did, or more accurately put, didnt do, on Jan. 6 was relevant to the committees investigation into the riot and the violence at the Capitol, and I was working to arrange for my clients to voluntarily provide the committee with that information, McAdoo Gordon said. Likewise, the committee had questions about a couple tweets my clients sent on the sixth, and again, such questions were relevant to the Jan. 6 investigation.

But once the committee advanced the absurd Section 371 criminal conspiracy theory, I could no longer recommend my clients speak with the committee, the attorney explained. McAdoo Gordon did respond to the committee on behalf of her clients, however, after Raskin falsely described 1AP as a far right group with a role in the Capitol attack in his interview with the Times. All of those points are false and defamatory, she told the committee. 1AP is a mainstream, non-partisan group with no role whatsoever in the attack on the Capitol.

It isnt just the Fifth Amendment the committee has been shredding, however. Even if my clients did not assert the Fifth Amendment, I would have still objected to several questions on First Amendment grounds, McAdoo Gordon added. While some questions related to Jan. 6 were relevant, the majority of the questions posed to 1AP representatives were none of Congresss business, McAdoo Gordon stressed. And even the process reveals the warped authoritarianism of the committee, the attorney added.

At the beginning of the depositions, the congressional staff sought confirmation that we were not recording the proceedings in any way, while they proceeded to video record the questioning, McAdoo Gordon said. She then noted that while witnesses called before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., can obtain a transcript of their testimony, the Jan. 6 Committee refuses to allow those they target to obtain transcripts of their subpoenaed testimony.

The committees hiding of the transcripts serves to cover their lies and to control the narrative of the show trial, but it also allows the Jan. 6 Committee to hide the wildly inappropriate questions it posed to the witnesses.

Do you believe in QAnon? Do you believe that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States? Whats your understanding of what happened on 1/6?

A Committee of the United States Congress actually asked my clients those questions, McAdoo Gordon told The Federalist in an exclusive weekend interview.

Before the deposition, I assured my clients that their political and personal beliefs would not be probed, the D.C. attorney explained. While I knew from the subpoenas the Jan. 6 Committee intended to seek constitutionally protected information concerning other 1AP members, my jaw just kept dropping further when they started to question my clients on what they thought and believed.

The committee also asked Robert Lewis, who is a retired United States Army Green Beret and recipient of the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and Philip Luelsdorff, a former U.S. Army Ranger, to describe 1AP activities. For whom and for what purpose did they provide volunteer services? Did they provide security? Surveillance? Assistance with legal activities? What training did they provide? And how were they able to afford to provide the training and volunteer services? Where did the money come from? Who made donations? What bank accounts were used? Did the organization accept cryptocurrency?

Again, none of those questions concerned the events of Jan. 6. Rather, the committee focused on events long before the Jan. 6 events at the Capitol. For instance, it asked whether 1AP provided security for polling places. Other questions concerned 1APs security work at a Nov. 14 rally and a Dec. 12 rally.

In essence, the committee is seeking information about 1APs members, financial status, donors, and activities. None of that is relevant to the Jan. 6 riots, and all of it is off-limits to the government, the lawyer said. The Committee had no business asking those questions, so my clients werent about to answer them in violation of their First Amendment rights.

The Committee had cited as evidence against my clients that they obtained a permit for a demonstration the day before the riot. How is obtaining a permit to hold a peaceful protest evidence of a role in a riot the next day? It isnt, McAdoo Gordon said. The committee also sought to quiz Lewis and Luelsdorff on their relationship with the Trump family, the White House, the campaign, and numerous specific individuals such as Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn. The staff further asked whether they had been in contact with any of the defense attorneys representing any of the Jan. 6 defendants.

The government should not be asking a civic organization, which is what 1AP is, about its relationships, in general, with other people, much less about the organizations donors or lawyers with whom they spoke, McAdoo Gordon stressed.

Beyond asking inappropriate questions that implicated 1APs First Amendment rights, the committee framed several questions in the do you still beat your wife format. Before the election, did they provide security in order to overturn the election? Have you engaged in any activities to overturn the certified election results? Have you engaged in any activities to reinstall Donald Trump as president of the United States since Jan. 20, 2021? These questions all presuppose that the election results were sought to be overturned, as opposed to challenged.

But of course, the Jan. 6 Committees focus on the few unfounded claims of election fraud, as opposed to the numerous violations of state election law and evidence of illegal voting issues Trump and his legal team pursued aids in the narrative that the protesters wanted to install Trump or overturn the election, as opposed to protest election irregularities. And by using a guilt-by-association strategy, the committee paints not just 1AP and its volunteers as complicit in the violence at the Capitol, but every American who attended the rallies and peacefully protested the disastrous 2020 election.

The committee might be using nicer language, but its questioning is Stalinist in nature nonetheless, McAdoo Gordon said.

The 1AP lawyer is correct. But because the corrupt media is effectively serving as a state-run press for its preferred politicians, most of America will be oblivious to that fact when the hearings resume later today.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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J6 Committee Is Using Americans' Assertion Of Rights As Proof Of Guilt - The Federalist