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Andrew P. Napolitano| Special to the USA TODAY Network

Biden COVID task force urges vaccine requirements

The White House Coronavirus task force is urging public and private sector vaccine requirements to boost vaccination rates and make headway against COVID-19. (Aug. 31)

AP

I have been writing for years asking if we still have the U.S. Constitution. That issue has come into sharper focus in the past 18 months as mayors and governors have created dictatorial powers and exercised those powers to interfere with personal autonomy in America. They have done this in utter disregard for the freedoms protected by the Constitution they have sworn to uphold by asserting that public health trumps personal liberty.

Here is the backstory.

Government is essentially the negation of freedom. If the values underlying the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights maximum personal liberty and minimal government are to be taken seriously, then we all know that government has gone so far astray as to make it unrecognizable to the revolutionaries who fought the British and the founders and framers who wrote and ratified the Constitution and its first 10 amendments.

Those underlying values are generally articulated in the first eight amendments, which restrain the government from interfering in personal liberty. The Ninth Amendment codifies that our rights are too numerous to list, and thus it requires the government to respect the natural unenumerated rights of all persons, in addition to those rights specifically enumerated.

The 10th Amendment reflects the ratifiers' public understanding that the Constitution is a compact, voluntarily entered into by sovereign states; and when they entered, they only surrendered to the federal government those powers enumerated in the Constitution, and thus they retained the powers not surrendered.

All of this was the theoretical basis and public understanding of the American experiment in the 1780s and 1790s. Of course, not all agreed with all this. Many classical liberals opposed the ratification of the Constitution for fear that a new central government would control economic activities with its own bank, fight needless wars, invalidate state sovereignty and curtail civil liberties. Their fears are now reality.

The first serious federal attack on personal liberty came in the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which criminalized criticisms of the federal government and the administration of President John Adams. The same generation in some cases, the same human beings that had written in the First Amendment "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" did just that a mere seven years later.

In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the two most prominent thinkers in America Thomas Jefferson, who had written the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, who was the scrivener of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights secretly authored the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. These manifestations of the compact theory of the Constitution were enacted into law by the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures. They declared the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional in their states.

These resolutions reflected the views of many ratifiers of the Constitution that the states that formed the federal government retained the power to correct it. Stated differently, these state statutes declared the Alien and Sedition Acts which were blatant violations of the freedom of speech to be null and void in Virginia and Kentucky. The underlying value here is that because the Constitution is a voluntary compact, those states that formed it and joined it voluntarily have the sovereign power to leave it.

Nullification and secession as ideas were cast aside by the Supreme Court and by the outcome of the War Between the States. But the defeat of an idea politically, legally or even militarily cannot always bury the idea permanently. When an idea's time has come, nothing can stop it.

Jefferson and Madison believed that the Constitution protects the right to leave the government whenever it interferes with or fails to protect fundamental liberties. The very idea of secession terrifies government, whether it be the feds or the states, because if successful it diminishes government power and income.

Has the Constitution failed us?

There are two approaches to this question: A formal and a functional approach. Formally, the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land and enjoys vitality. Formally, the government the Constitution established persists in America. But functionally, as an instrument of restraint, the Constitution is an abysmal failure. The feds regulate, tax, coerce, steal and kill, and they bully the states as they see fit. Every day, some government official who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution violates it with impunity.

None of these violations short of the War Between the States has been more public, affected more people and produced more harm than the executive orders issued by mayors and governors in the name of public health. Even the states caved, as very few tried to protect the liberties that the Constitution guarantees.

It will soon get worse.

As the Biden administration grows more fearful of its inability to control the latest strains of COVID-19, it will begin to use coercive means to compel mask-wearing and vaccine administration. These so-called health measures are essentially experiments that, when administered coercively by the government, violate the letter, values and lessons of Nuremberg.

If vaccines work, why do we need masks? If masks work, why do we need vaccines? If I am a free person, why do I need the government telling me how to be healthy? If only the legislative branch of government can write laws, why do we allow mayors and governors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do so? If the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, how can government attack the rights the Constitution protects? If freedom is our birthright, what has become of it?

The time has come to nullify government interferences with personal autonomy by disregarding them, and to threaten seriously to leave and ignore the governments that hate our freedoms. If we don't do this, make way for voluntary servitude.

AndrewP.Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge,haspublished nine books on the U.S. Constitution.

Go here to read the rest:
When the Constitution fails us | Napolitano - New Jersey Herald

Bad Texas regulations could be at odds with each other. The new Texas abortion ban may contradict the mandates of social media regulation passed by the Texas Legislature. Under the mandates of the two statutes, social media platforms could be required to both take down and leave up information about abortion, Techdirt's Mike Masnick points out.

The social media lawHouse Bill 20was passed by the Texas Senate on Wednesday (the same day Texas' new abortion law took effect).

Similar to a law that was passedand blockedin Florida, H.B. 20 is designed to treat social media platforms like common carriers (such as phone and cable companies).

A "blatantly unconstitutional bill," H.B. 20 "tries to prevent social media websites from moderating content," writes Masnick. "While the bill does include some language to suggest that some content can be moderated, it puts a ton of hurdles up to block that process."

Meanwhile, the new Texas abortion law (Senate Bill 8) prohibits "knowingly engag[ing] in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise."And it allows civil lawsuits against those suspected of helping someone get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

The aiding and abetting provision could be construed to prohibit providing information about where to get an abortion, abortion pills, how to get funding to travel out of state for an abortion, etc.

While S.B. 8 does say "that the aiding and abetting rule should not apply to 1st Amendment protected speech," Masnick doesn't see that "making much of a difference in the long run because (1) the 1st Amendment already protects such speech so you don't need a law to say that and (2) it's unlikely to stop people from suing over speech that they claim is aiding and abetting"

The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also has concerns that the Texas abortion law could target speech about abortion. "In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a woman's reproductive and medical care rights, the new Texas abortion law, SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech," warns EFF:

The law creates a cadre of bounty hunters who can use the courts to punish and silence anyone whose online advocacy, education, and other speech about abortion draws their ire. It will undoubtedly lead to a torrent of private lawsuits against online speakers who publish information about abortion rights and access in Texas, with little regard for the merits of those lawsuits or the First Amendment protections accorded to the speech. Individuals and organizations providing basic educational resources, sharing information, identifying locations of clinics, arranging rides and escorts, fundraising to support reproductive rights, or simply encouraging women to consider all their optionsnow have to consider the risk that they might be sued for merely speaking. The result will be a chilling effect on speech and a litigation cudgel that will be used to silence those who seek to give women truthful information about their reproductive options.

So what happens if someone posts to a Texas Facebook group about how or where to get an abortion after six weeks?

"Until the courts actually rule on this, we don't just have a mess, we have a contradictory mess thanks to a Texas legislature (and governor) that is so focused on waging a pointless culture war against 'the libs' that they don't even realize how their own bills conflict with one another," Masnick writes. As it stands,

Under Texas's social media lawremember "each person in this state has a fundamental interest in the free exchange of ideas and information"Facebook is expected to keep that information up. However, under Texas' anti-choice lawremember, anyone can sue anyone for "inducing" an abortionFacebook theoretically faces liability for leaving that information up.

So who wins out? Well, it should be that both bills are found to be unconstitutional, so it doesn't matter. But we'll see whether or not the courts recognize that. Section 230 should also protect Facebook here, since it pre-empts any state law that tries to make the company liable for user posts, which in theory the abortion law does. The 1st Amendment should also backstop both of these, noting that (1) Texas' social media law clearly violates Facebook's 1st Amendment rights, and (2) the broad language saying anyone can file civil suit against anyone for somehow convincing someone to get an abortion also pretty clearly violates the 1st Amendment.

In other news related to the Texas abortion ban

"An activist has made a script to flood a Texas website used to solicit information on people seeking abortions with fabricated data, according to a TikTok video from the developer and Motherboard's test of the tool," Vice reports.

The Cato Institute's Walter Olson riffs on some of the elements of the Texas abortion ban and how few of "these ways of turbocharging litigationare new techniques." Twitter thread starts here:

Dating apps Bumble and Match "are creating relief funds for people affected by a Texas law that bans abortion from as early as six weeks into pregnancy," reports TheTexas Tribune.

"The Texas abortion ban could force tech to snitch on users," warns Protocol.

Amazon's web hosting wing may start cracking down on the kinds of content it hosts. The company "plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies, such as rules against promoting violence, and enforce its removal," Reuters reports.

Over the coming months, Amazon will hire a small group of people in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said.

It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40% market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the world's most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.

"I would not at all be surprised that the adequate, full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses," top COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said at a White House briefing yesterday.

A lawsuit accusing Twitter of sex trafficking can move forward, says a federal court. The case could portend a dangerous expansion of how courts define "sex trafficking."

The South Carolina Supreme Court says Columbia city schools and daycares can't make students and staff wear masks.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has made feeding peacocks a crime punishable by up to six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.

An NBC News poll conducted August 1417 finds 54 percent of respondents think abortion should be legal always or most of the time. Thirty-four percent say it should be illegal with exceptions, and 8 percent say it should be illegal without any exceptions.

The World Health Organization is monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, dubbed the "mu" variant.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood, and Oklahoma abortion providers are challenging five new abortion restrictions passed by the state this year.

Originally posted here:
Texas Abortion and Social Media Laws Are a 'Contradictory Mess' - Reason

Trump sues Facebook, Twitter over 'blacklisting and canceling'

Claims that tech companies are biased against conservatives have emerged as a top issue to rally the GOP base ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Associated Press, USA TODAY

Texas is on the verge of passing a new law that would crack down on social media companies Republicans say are censoring conservative speech.

The legislaturepassed the bill. It now heads to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has publicly backed it and is expected to sign it.

The new law, passed in the final days of the second special session called by Abbott,would allow any Texas resident banned from Facebook, Twitter or Google's YouTube for their political views to sue the companies. The state attorney general also wouldbe able to sue on behalf of a user or a group of users.

It is similar to a Florida law that was blocked by a federal judge one day before it was set to take effect.

Trade groups representing the technology industry have pledged to challenge it as unconstitutional.

By ignoring the First Amendment, the Texas Legislature has chosen to abandon its own conservative and constitutional values in order to put the government in control of speech online," saidCarl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice.

Dozens of states are considering legislation that targets how social media platforms regulate speech, though few have gotten this far.

Such bills resonatewith conservatives who believe their First Amendment rights are violated when posts are labeled or removed or when they are banned for violating the policies of social media platforms. Former President Donald Trump's suspensions from the major platforms spurred the new bills.

The First Amendment protects people from censorship by the federal government, not from content moderation decisions by private companies.

Social media companies say they don't target conservatives, only harmful speech that violates their rules.

Texas House Democrats warned during a hearing last week that the new law would stop social media companies from taking down harmful content.

They offered amendments that would have allowed the removal of posts promoting Holocaust denial, terrorism and vaccine disinformation, but were defeated.

"When you force social media platforms to pull their referees, the bad guys are going to throw more fouls on the court, said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition that includes Facebook and Google. Unfortunately this law is only going to put more hate speech, scamsand misinformation online, when most people want a safer, healthier Internet."

Florida was the first state to push through legislation whenGov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump ally, signed a bill in May that penalizes social media companies for removing or barring the speech of politicians.

However, afederal judge temporarily blocked the new law after NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association lobbying groups that represent Facebook, Google and other tech giants sued. DeSantis is appealing.

Both Abbott and DeSantis are widely seen as possible GOP 2024 presidential contenders coming from big states with large electoral votes. Abbott is facing his first challenging Republican primary to be re-elected governor.

Big Techs efforts to silence conservative viewpoints is un-American, un-Texan and unacceptable and pretty soon its going to be against the law in the state of Texas, Abbott said at a news conference announcing similar legislationin March.

Conservative think tank The Heartland Institute recently estimated that 70 bills in 30 states are challenging big tech censorship.

The Republican claim that powerful tech companies are biased against and "cancel" conservatives is emerging as a top issue to rally the base in the 2022 midterm elections.

The GOP is betting it will boost voter registration, turnout and fundraising as it tries to retake the U.S. House and Senate, political observers say. It also could help Republicans at the state level.

"It's an issue that Republican state legislators know will energize and agitate their base,"Ari Cohn, free speech counsel for tech think tank TechFreedom, told USA TODAY.

Trump, who was suspended from the major social media platforms after the Jan. 6 insurrection, escalated his war with Big Tech in July when he filed suit against Facebook, Google and Twitter and their CEOs, claiming the companies violated his First Amendment rights.

Trump and Republicans fundraised off the lawsuit, though legal experts say it has virtually no chance of success.

The perception that tech companies and the billionaire CEOs who run them are biased against conservatives has been around for a long time, but intensified as Trump made social media abuses a major plank of his administration and reelection campaign.

After he lost the presidency, Trump vilified tech companies for labeling or removing posts that spread falsehoods about the outcome of the presidential election.

Complaints of ideological bias come from across the political spectrum, but its difficult to prove social media platforms are targeting any one group. Tech companies disclose little about how they decide what content is allowed and what is not.

Researchers say theyve found no evidence to support GOP grievances that social media companies stifle conservative voices.

If anything, they say, social media platforms amplify the voices of conservatives, shaping the worldviews of millions of voters.

But for some conservatives, the 2020 election proved Big Tech's ideological bias. They point to tech companies throttling the spread of a New York Post article which made uncorroborated claims about Hunter Bidens business dealings, the Trump social media bans and the takedown of Parler, a social media platform popular with the political right.

Nine in 10 Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party say its at least somewhat likely that social media platforms censor political viewpoints they find objectionable, up slightly from 85% in 2018, according to an August report from the Pew Research Center.

Originally posted here:
Texas is about to pass a new law Republicans say will stop censorship of conservatives on Facebook, Twitter - USA TODAY

AMBRIDGE The father of a 14-year-old Ambridge Area High School student is suing the district for removing his son from the football team after a heated exchange with a teammate.

Antonio Fultzfiled the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on Aug. 6, claiming the Ambridge Area School District booted his special needs son from the high school football team after the boy engaged in a Snapchat argument with an alleged bully.

Fultz said his son, a freshman, played starting defensive tackle for the team beginning in April of this year. In June, he was chatting with weightlifting coaches on Snapchat when a sophomore teammate competing for the starting defensive tackle position sent the student a profanity-laced voice message calling him lazy.

The students had a history, according to the suit, with Fultzs son being bullied both emotionally and physically by the other student for years.

At one point, according to Fultz, the sophomore messaged his son You want to fight? I will kill you, to which his son responded with similar warnings. His son then sent an old photo of him holding a BB gun with the barrel pointed away and over his shoulder with no message attached. The back-and-forth altercation stopped there and was later seen by coaches.

A police investigation and school meetings were held following the exchange and, although no criminal charges were filed against either student, Fultzs son was kicked off the football team for the 2021-22school year. The other student would not be disciplined, he said.

Because Fultzs son is Black and the teammate is white, the man believes Ambridge Areas decision is discriminatory and punishes thestudent for out-of-school speech.

He also pointed to other instances where the sophomore threatened his son on Snapchat, at one point writing Anyone else have the urge to kill someone u hate at night.

The plaintiff is seeking damages in an amount to be decided at trial, and relief for the district's violations of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments, including declaring the districts actions unconstitutional, reinstating his son to the team and expunging all references to the incident from the students records.

U.S. District Judge William Stickman last week denied the plaintiffs motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, arguing the students words were threats and fighting words outside the scope of the First Amendment and within the right of a school to regulate.

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Father suing Ambridge Area for sons removal from football team - The Times

Supporters of President Donald Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. House Democrats are asking for legislation to make sure that military personnel and recruits are not participating in extremist activities as was seen at the Capitol insurrection. (Yuri Gripas, Abaca Press/TNS)

WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service) House Democrats want the new National Defense Authorization Act to make plain that armed services personnel and recruits are not allowed to advocate or take part in extremist activities or belong to extremist groups.

But the debate over what extremism means and how such a prohibition would be enforced is expected to be fierce starting at Wednesdays House Armed Services Committee markup of the fiscal 2022 bill.

Maryland Democrat Anthony G. Brown plans to file an amendment at the markup that would make explicit a military commanders authority to bar or expel people who espouse or act on extremist beliefs or are members of such groups. The amendment also says that the military can use social media posts as evidence of extremist views that could lead to so-called separation from service.

An individual who engages in extremist activities or is a member of an extremist organization may not serve as a member of the armed forces, states a draft of the amendment.

Brown would leave it to the secretary of defense to define extremist activities. A Pentagon Countering Extremism Working Group is reportedly already at work on that question.

Brown told CQ Roll Call in a statement that he recognizes that extremists form a tiny fraction of the U.S. military, but he believes it is a growing peril.

Racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, discrimination, and other extremist beliefs are not in line with the values of our armed services and have no place in our ranks, Brown said.

Browns amendment would set up a Pentagon Office of Countering Extremism to track reports of such behavior across the Defense Departments uniformed and civilian ranks. The office would share data on the problem with other federal agencies and would produce an annual report to Congress. The amendment would empower the military services to train personnel and recruiters in identifying and avoiding extremism.

The amendment is a response to recent data indicating that extremists ranging from white supremacists to criminal gangs represent a small but seemingly growing and increasingly dangerous portion of the U.S. military. The fact that some 20% of the rioters in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol reportedly had ties to the military has catalyzed these concerns.

But Republicans have regularly pushed back against most attempts to crush extremism in the ranks and are expected to do so again. The GOP critics generally say Democrats are exaggerating the extent of the problem. Republicans say they are concerned too that what constitutes extremist activity is not clearly defined. And they worry that service members privacy and their rights to due process could be threatened.

Browns extremism amendment is not the only NDAA proposal that will stir a racially charged, partisan debate.

One of the highest-temperature debates could come when Republicans offer one or more amendments seeking to restrict the Pentagon from teaching so-called critical race theory, an academic approach to reexamining how racial bias is encoded in social institutions.

Brown, a retired Army aviator and judge advocate general, believes U.S. military commanders already have inherent authority to ban extremism to the degree that it is, by its nature, a threat to military order and discipline. His measure is intended to clarify the terms of that authority, aides said.

The amendment does not create a new crime in the Uniform Code of Military Justice but would alter the law to explicitly authorize commanders to root out be it in recruits or those currently serving anyone who advocates hatred based on bigotry or puts it into violent practice.

The measure would not mandate monitoring of social media but would authorize the services to use an online post advocating supremacist views as cause for discharge.

Brown also argues that nothing in the bill would shortchange due process protections for service members.

Even beyond the attack on the Capitol, troubling signs have appeared recently of a small but festering problem in the ranks.

The director of national intelligence said in March that violent extremists pose a heightened threat to the homeland.

Moreover, the Army Criminal Investigation Command, in a report last year, found a 66% increase in gang or domestic extremist activity from the previous year, Brown said.

A 2019 survey found more than one third of all active-duty servicemembers had witnessed instances of white nationalism or ideologically driven racism in their units.

The Pentagon has been working on this issue for many months.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III required in February that all military commanders take time over a two-month period to discuss extremism. And he set up the Countering Extremism Working Group to study the issue.

In April, Austin ordered the review of how best to define extremism. He also mandated updating security questionnaires to more accurately determine recruits backgrounds on the issue. And he required new training for retiring personnel who may face recruitment efforts from extremist groups.

In 2020, after protests over the killing of George Floyd, the department convened a task force to take a closer look at military efforts to become more racially diverse. One of the groups recommendations, buried in its voluminous report, was to make extremist violence punishable under the militarys code of justice.

The Houses fiscal 2021 NDAA included language by California Democrat Jackie Speier that would have done just that. But senators, fearing a veto by President Donald Trump over the issue, diluted that mandate in the final measure, Speier said earlier this year.

The fiscal 2021 NDAA instead created a new deputy inspector general to oversee diversity and anti-extremism efforts. Browns bill would require the director of the proposed Office of Countering Extremism to coordinate with the deputy inspector general.

The Senates fiscal 2022 NDAA would again defer definitive action on the matter. It would merely require the Defense secretary to report to Congress on whether and how to potentially make violent extremism a crime under the military code.

The House Appropriations Committees report accompanying its Defense Department spending bill would require a series of Pentagon reports on its efforts to address extremism.

During the markup of that bill, Republicans gave voice to arguments that may come up again during Wednesdays House Armed Services markup.

The Republican appropriators said they were worried the campaign against extremists could target unpopular views or become an unfair witch hunt, or target only white supremacists and not other violent extremists.

The Appropriations Committee defeated an amendment by Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., that aimed to block funding for the Pentagons Countering Extremism Working Group until 30 days after the Defense secretary performs three tasks: gives Congress a definition of extremism; briefs lawmakers on due process protections for those accused of extremism; and certifies that their First Amendment rights are not violated by that process.

The 24-33 vote to defeat the amendment fell along party lines.

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Originally posted here:
House panel to debate amendment to defense budget banning extremism in the military - Stars and Stripes