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The U.S. Army esports team is streaming its members playing video games on Facebook. After troubles facing down activists and trolls on Twitch, the U.S. Army has largely moved its streaming operation to Facebook. On Tuesday, during a game of Counter: Strike Global Offensive, several gamers found the stream and began to ask the Army about war crimes, much as they did on Twitch. The Army banned them from commenting on the stream, which is a possible violation of the First Amendment according to the Knight First Amendment Institute, a nonprofit that prosecutes First Amendment cases.

The Army is still streaming on Twitch, but its broadcasts are intermittent. It takes long breaks, as many as six days, between streams on Twitch. It streams more frequently on Facebook. On Tuesday, when it started to stream, viewers began asking hard questions.

How ya gonna groom zoomers on Facebook? Did yalls feelings get hurt too much on Twitch? Mark Slatera pseudonymasked.

According to OConnell and Slater, the Army removed both of these comments and prevented them from commenting on the stream, a possible violation of the First Amendment. Later, the comments were reinstated and Slater and OConnell could comment again. When that occurred I couldn't say, Slater told Motherboard on Discord. Once I received the message that the comment was removed I could no longer comment additionally in the livestream. However, I could interact with previous streams. Slater and OConnell provided Motherboard with screenshots showing the moderator removed their comments.

According to the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, a nonprofit that takes on First Amendment cases and successfully sued Donald Trump for blocking people on Twitter, even a temporary ban could be a violation of the First Amendment.

Even if the ban was temporary in nature, the governmentin this case, the Armycannot ban a user from commenting on their esports livestream on Facebook or any other platform based on comments critical of the military, Lyndsey Wajert, a legal fellow at the Knight, told Motherboard in an email. This type of viewpoint discrimination runs afoul of the First Amendment, and we will be looking into this matter further.

The U.S. Army esports team moderates its chat on Facebook and Twitch. The rules on Facebook dont appear until someone attempts to chat during a livestream, at which point the rules pop up. They are be accepting, respect boundaries, no profanity, keep it clean, dont self promote, dont be rude, dont flood chat, dont criticize.

The absurdity of the U.S. Army esports presence on Facebook is that a government entity sincerely puts Dont criticize on their chat rules, Slater told Motherboard on Discord.

For OConnell, asking the military tough questions in a public space is about far more than just trolling. I think its important to question the Armys activities on Facebook because they are preying on young gamers in an attempt to boost their recruitment numbers, he told Motherboard in a Twitter DM. What they are doing is predatory and harmful to young teenagers. They are equating video games with real life combat.

The Pentagon has recently turned to video game streaming as a way to bolster recruitment and build the militarys brand. The U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, and National Guard are all streaming video games, mostly on Twitch but also on Facebook. It hasnt been going well.

The Navy spent $2 million to get into Twitch, but is on a break from streaming right now after a Sailor played on a stream where one of his friends named his character after a veiled reference to a racial slur. A National Guard streamer repeated an anti-semetic phrased on stream. The Army is streaming intermittently and mostly on Facebook. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attempted to pass legislation to prevent the Pentagon from using its budget to stream video games online.

No one has been banned from U.S. Army eSports Team channels on our platforms. There have been cases where individuals have been timed out for excessive spamming or harassment, Lisa M. Ferguson, Deputy Director and Media Relations Chief of U.S. Army Recruiting Command Public Affairs, said. In these cases, individuals have saturated the channel with their content not allowing any others to chat or post. The time out feature allows the team to pause that persons ability to chat or post for limited time. This allows for others to then have their voices heard as well. The posts are not censored or removed, and they are allowed to continue once their time out is up.

Update: This story has been updated with comment from the U.S. Army.

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The U.S. Army Is Now Possibly Violating the First Amendment on Facebook - VICE

Every statewide elected official takes an oath to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. As your elected State Treasurer, I have the added responsibility of watching all state expenditures, billions of dollars every year, and making sure that your taxpayer dollars are not being used in a way that violates the Constitution.

In recent weeks, there have been stories circulating nationwide about the efforts of the Archbishop of San Francisco to overturn the punitive limits imposed on churches by the mayor of San Francisco. The last few days have seen a resurgence in the targeting of Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, as well as other houses of worship, by imposing hard caps of 10 and 25 people per service, regardless of the size of the church or synagogue. As efforts to protect civil liberties in those areas moves forward, we must remember that the targeting of religious exercise by state and local officials is not limited to the coastal blue states.

Kentucky, whose politics will never be confused with New York or California, has itself seen multiple federal courts strike down executive orders issued by Governor Andy Beshear, on the grounds that the orders limiting religious services, travel, or protest, violated the fundamental, constitutional rights of Kentuckians. In any other time in our history, a series of defeats of this magnitude would have been met with much greater attention and demand for accountability.

Due to my role as a watchdog of public spending, I directed my office to review the way taxpayer dollars were being spent to enforce the administrations questionable executive orders relating to First Amendment activities. Protecting our Commonwealth and its great citizens need not be done at the expense of the First Amendment. It is possible to protect the Commonwealth while respecting, and adhering to, a principle upon which this country was founded. My office requested information from a number of health departments around the Commonwealth, and received responses from several departments, as well as the Kentucky State Police.

Our investigation uncovered numerous instances of law enforcement being used to monitor or shut down faith-based services; derogatory or confrontational comments made about religious exercise by those in leadership; and selective, targeted enforcement of mass gathering prohibitions, in violation of the First Amendment. The actions taken at a local level seem to be directly correlated to the decisions made, and the tone set, by the Governors administration in Frankfort, which itself has too often used daily briefings and press releases as opportunities to disparage or threaten any person or institution that questions the legality and appropriateness of the administrations orders.

On October 22, I will be presenting my offices findings to the Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary in Frankfort. This will be an opportunity for legislators to consider what we have uncovered in relation to executive actions during last few months, and for the public to learn more about how taxpayer dollars have been spent to enforce arbitrary government orders.

Kentuckians have established a constitution and laws that demand respect for the First Amendment rights of all citizens, regardless of their religious or political beliefs. During the 1930s, as our nation was trapped within the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression, and facing the rise of dangerous forces around the world, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes reminded the country that [t]he Constitution was adopted in a period of great emergency. He astutely noted that [e]mergency does not create power and that [e]mergency does not increase granted power. The extraordinary challenges presented in 2020 do not provide justification for expanding the Governors powers, or for ignoring the fundamental tenets that separate our democracy from failed and oppressive autocratic states arounds the world.

The First Amendment must be vigorously defended by all elected officials, particularly in times of emergency, when it is the easiest for the government to justify unconstitutional restrictions. I encourage every Kentuckian to continue to demand that our government adhere to the constitution and laws of the Commonwealth, and I look forward to continuing to serve the Commonwealth as your State Treasurer.

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Crisis of conscience: Government suppression of the first amendment during the COVID pandemic - Hopkinsville Kentucky New Era

Who knew, with all of the pressing issues of the moment, that the 229-year-old First Amendment protection of the right to petition would become such a focus in the confirmation hearings for an open U.S. Supreme Court seat?

Whats that saying Everything old is new again?

Our core freedoms might have been plunked down in 1791 as the starter for the Bill of Rights, but those freedoms for most Americans come into play every day.

Far too many of us just take them for granted. That may account for the fact that even for Supreme Court nominee and sitting U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett, petition was the freedom she forgot when she was pressed to name the five in public.

Petition is the one nicknamed by First Amendment scholars as the orphan freedom for its relative obscurity in the nations collective brain.

The 45 words and five freedoms have come up multiple times so far in the Senate judicial committee hearings on Barretts nomination.

Barretts lapse puts her in the company of an average of 96% of her fellow citizens (none of them nominated to the court, to be sure) who have been unable to identify petition as one of the five freedoms in Freedom Forum surveys taken since 1997.

It may be worth noting here that failing to name all five freedoms may well mean you flunk the test that hopeful immigrants must pass to become American citizens.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), started the whole thing by asking Barrett to name the First Five.

Sasse gets a few First Amendment bonus points for trying to help Barrett, when she asked, What am I missing? by saying the forgotten freedom was redress and protest.

In fact, the founders provided that we have the right to petition for redress of grievances. And petition is a lot more than just protest.

Not quitting when no one was ahead, Sasse then asked the nominee if she could explain why principal author of the First Amendment James Madison bundled those freedoms into one amendment. Her response: I dont know what youre getting at on that one. You mean like what is the common denominator? I dont know why, actually.

Sasse again attempted to help, and again gets mixed points for his response: You dont really have freedom of religion if you dont also have freedom

Well, that assembly freedom does apply to faiths that have congregations and a need to pass the plate to support themselves. But what about faiths that focus on the individuals right of conscience to determine their own values independent of others with no need to gather in one spot at the same time?

And of course, atheists also benefit from the First Amendments protection, in its first 16 words, of the right to freely exercise your beliefs without government interference. It would seem they rarely see a reason to assemble solely for the purpose of not worshiping.

More Sasse: You really dont have freedom of speech if you cannot publish your beliefs and advocate for them. Well, publish would implicate the amendments provision for a free press and advocate goes back to petition with a touch of assembly. But this far into the back-and-forth, hopefully we get the drift.

Finally, Sasse closes out this part of the hearing by repeating his imprecise identification of petition, saying you really dont have any of those freedoms if you cant protest at times and seek to redress grievances in times when the government oversteps and tries to curtail any of those freedoms.

The nations founders likely would applaud that analysis. In fact, many of them would put petition atop the other four freedoms, as having the ability to speak truth to power would protect the others.

Where Sasses use of protest and even redress falls short is clear when considering the range of activities covered by petition.

As detailed in a permanent Newseum exhibit in Washington D.C., beginning in 2008, the freedom also covers the work of lobbyists: Some petitioners often are paid lobbyists representing corporations or special interest groups. They try to shape policy and legislation.

But others among us also use the power of petition. The exhibit noted that in 1980, Candace Lightner, enraged that a drunken driver killed her daughter, founded the organization now known as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The groups grassroots activism resulted in the passage of many federal and state anti-drunken driving laws.

From activists today in the streets for Black Lives Matter to those calling for an end to COVID-19 restrictions on mass gatherings and sports events or orders to wear masks in public places, as a group were petitioning the government all over the place and have been.

In this year marking the 100th anniversary of the ratification of womens right to vote, we should recall that in 1848, 32-year-old Elizabeth Cady Stanton urged a convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., to organize and petition for that right leading to the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Supporters of a popular movement called Prohibition used petition to prod Congress and the nation in 1919 to adopt the 18th Amendment and opponents used it to gain repeal of the amendment in 1933. Each year across the nation, advocates fan out to ask us to sign actual petitions favoring or opposing this or that all free from government interference, thanks to the First Amendment.

The historic examples of petition and the thousands more examples each year when we go to every level of government to directly ask for change makes it all the more disappointing that in those annual State of the First Amendment surveys by the Freedom Forum, in some years only 1% of people could identify petition.

Should you want to figuratively adopt this orphan freedom and be prepared to perhaps humble a future U.S. Supreme Court nominee, or just educate friends and family you can find information about petition and its four brethren on the Freedom Forum website.

Our nonpartisan foundation believes that encouraging the broad understanding and vigorous use of these fundamental freedoms by the people is the best way to preserve and protect the First Amendment for future generations.

We could argue that we have been a nation of petitioners even prior to the First Amendment and the nation itself.

Colonial leaders sent requests around multiple grievances before issuing the Declaration of Independence telling England and King George III in 1776 that In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Now that is speaking truth to power!

Gene Policinski is a senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

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We need to get a petition going to learn more about 'petition' - Hopkinsville Kentucky New Era

By MICHAEL J. BROOKS / Guest Columnist

I asked a nurse if she ever grew accustomed to the gorgeous view of Birmingham from St. Vincents Hospital South Tower. She said no. I stood there for several minutes taking in the sights and remembering events of my boyhood. I grew up in the city but left after college and never moved back.

My dad was a steelworker. I remember driving over the Ensley viaduct at all hours of the day and night and seeing the blast furnaces light up the sky. And I remember the smokey haze that enveloped the western part of town, not visible now from the hospital windows. Birmingham isnt known much for steel anymore.

The steel company had a slogan in those days: Were involved. They posted a banner proclaiming this on the I-59 overpass nearest Birmingham Southern College. One morning as I drove to Samford I passed under the banner. Someone had added graffiti the night before, so it read, Were involved in polluting your environment.

One of many acts of protest in the 70s. Young people protested pollution. They talked about chemical dumping and water supply. Karen Silkwood became an icon to our generation when she publicized unsafe practices in nuclear facilities. (She was later portrayed by Meryl Streep in a 1983 film.)

The major protests I remember had to do with Vietnam. Young people took to the streets to scream at Presidents Johnson and Nixon about their roles as Commanders-in-Chief. Regrettably,numbers of our Vietnam veterans were disrespected.

I thought of all this while looking at the skyline and remembering. And I thought our country mustve survived these turbulent years. Maybe like the flag Johnny Cash used to sing about, battered but proud.

A commentator said one of the lasting images from a recent political convention was a young lady of 18, strumming a guitar and telling the nation why we were in peril if we didnt listen to her.

And she had green hair, he said, with a smile.

I dont remember green hair in the 70s, though I do remember the spirit of protest.

Our nation is strong in part because weve had the Constitutional framework of the First Amendment granting rights we didnt believe we had as British colonists. The First Amendment allows Americans to dissent, but prescribes we dissent in peace: the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Apostle Paul lived in a time of social unrest. Christians began to be targeted as enemies of the republic. He counseled that we live in peace with everyone, insofar as possible (Romans 12:18). As Dr. King envisioned, all men should sit together at the table of brotherhood.

Reflections is a weekly devotional column, evangelical but non-sectarian, written by Michael J. Brooks, pastor of the Siluria Baptist Church in Alabaster. The churchs website isSiluriabaptist.com.

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On protesting and peace - Shelby County Reporter - Shelby County Reporter

Policy requires state employees to opt in to union dues deductions annually to ensure dues are collected with voluntary waiver of First Amendment rights

Lansing, MI (October 15, 2020) A Michigan Civil Service Commission (MiCSC) policy which helps safeguard the First Amendment rights of the states workers under the landmark 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision survives after United Auto Workers (UAW) union bosses abandoned their lawsuit seeking to overturn the rule in federal court.

The rule, which was adopted by MiCSC in October following detailed comments from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, requires Michigan state agencies to annually obtain the consent of state employees before deducting any union dues from their wages. The rule reminds state employees of their constitutional right to refuse such payments and ensures that the state deducts no union dues unless workers first waive their right not to pay.

National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix commented on the development:

The Civil Service Commission rules endurance is a victory for Michigan state employees, who will now have their First Amendment right to refuse to subsidize union activities respected and safeguarded. That union officials so quickly dropped their attempts to scuttle the rule speaks to the strength of the legal case for it, namely that the Supreme Court clearly delineated in Janus v. AFSCME that union dues can only be taken from public employees paychecks with their affirmative and knowing consent.

Given this example, public officials in other states should enact similar measures to protect their workers, because union bosses across the country continue to manipulate state laws and internal union policies to keep workers trapped in union payments against their will in violation of their First Amendment rights.

UAW officials abandonment of their lawsuit comes after the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan rejected their request for a preliminary injunction against the rule earlier this month. Judge George Caram Steeh ruled that union lawyers not only failed to show that the rule was causing irreparable harm but that a recent Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals suit foreclosed union bosses ability to file one of the two claims in their suit in the first place.

The District Courts decision denying the injunction cited arguments first presented in an amicus brief from National Right to Work Foundation and Mackinac Center Legal Foundation staff attorneys, which the judge said was timely and helpful.

Other states that are taking steps to shore up their public employees Janus rights include Alaska, where Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed an executive order creating similar protections for state employees in September 2019. Also, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill both issued legal opinions earlier this year urging public employers to notify employees that they have a First Amendment right to refuse to fund a union unless they opt-in to such payments.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in more than 250 cases nationwide per year.

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UAW Bosses Abandon Case Seeking to Overturn Civil Service Commission Rule Protecting Workers' First Amendment Janus Rights - National Right to Work...