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Sen. Bernie Sanders was playing the sleazy salesman, inflating his original price to offer a discount. This took the form of noting that his $3.5 trillion figure was a markdown from the $6 trillion he previously wanted.

New York Rep. Mondaire Jones, meanwhile, says he has a problem with people applying the term "moderate" to Democrats not on board with the left's social spending goals. He apparently thinks that progressives threatening to torpedo the wildly popular infrastructure bill if their demands aren't met should henceforth be called "the moderates."

What is it about the left that constantly wants to police language? It would seem part of an unconvincing charm offensive in a party whose majority increasingly resents the left's serial extortion demands often delivered in words that hurt the very Democrats who have given them the ability to influence anything.

That ability shrunk in the 2020 election, as an electorate that preferred President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes also punished several House Democrats who held hard-won seats in purple districts.

Much of the blame goes to the far left's incontinent radical talk about "defunding the police." Jayapal, for one, said she would "redirect law enforcement funding to other community programs." Translation: Take money from police. This was propitiously timed during a spike in crime rates. Public safety had become a concern among Americans of all races, but the left-wing gentry had posturing to do.

All this created a politically stupid diversion from calls to reform law enforcement practices, a response to serious incidents of abusive policing. Democrat Max Rose from Staten Island had voted for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, as did other swing-district Democrats, such as Abby Finkenauer of northeast Iowa and Anthony Brindisi from upstate New York. Rose, Finkenauer and Brindisi all lost in November. (Finkenauer is now running in Iowa for the Senate.)

A few months before the 2020 presidential election, while the Democratic primaries were still going on, "60 Minutes" did a feature in which Sanders renewed past praise of Fidel Castro for his literacy program and for expanding health care. The former Cuban dictator also tortured and murdered dissidents, it was pointed out.

Pressed on the matter, Sanders said he didn't approve of the torture part, but that wasn't enough to save Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. She lost her Miami-area district, home to many Cuban Americans.

The left can complain all it wants about West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and his insistence that the price for the social spending come down. But he and (the incomprehensible) Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema have so much power, as Biden has noted, because the Senate is evenly divided. Democrats might have held more Senate seats were it not for the left's habit of scaring moderate voters.

Manchin did offer to accept $1.5 trillion in increased social spending. That is not a small sum, and perhaps he'd go higher. The left indicates it may go lower, but it's already weakened the Democrats' reputation as the party that can govern. It doesn't understand -- or care -- that the future of the country is also at stake as leaders of the opposite party work to destabilize democratic institutions.

The left is a minority within the Democratic Party. Its champions lost recent primaries in New York, Virginia, Louisiana and Ohio. The radical fringe seems larger than it is because it gets media attention, especially when it flames other Democrats. Only Democratic voters can exact a price for sabotaging the team.

Froma Harrop is a nationally syndicated columnist whose work regularly appears in the Grand Forks Herald.

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Froma Harrop: So-called progressives vs. the Democratic Party - Grand Forks Herald

A dozen U.S. Senators wrote a letter Thursday to Google, urging the big tech company to end its ban on life-saving pro-life advertisements.

Earlier this week, Live Action and Heartbeat International saidGoogle removed their ads about the abortion pill reversal protocol and a video about fetal developmentcalled Baby Olivia. The ban came as abortion activists pressure Google, Facebook and other big tech companies to censor pro-life information and tell mothers that it is dangerous to save their babies lives.

Live Action and Heartbeat International are appealing the ban, and 11 Republican U.S. Senators supported their request in a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday.

Googles pro-life censorship is out of step with the science and reflects an unacceptable bias against pro-life views,they wrote. We insist that you immediately reverse this decision.

The Republican senators slammed the internet giant for its double standards, noting that it still allows abortion groups to advertise deadly, mail-order abortion drugs.

LifeNews is now on GETTR. Please follow us for the latest pro-life news

While banning pro-life [abortion pill reversal] ads, Google continues to allow ads for purveyors of the deadly abortion pill mifepristone by mail, despite the fact this drug has resulted in at least 24 mothers tragic deaths and at least 1,042 mothers being sent to the hospital,the lawmakers wrote.Googles double standard on abortion is disingenuous and an egregious abuse of its enormous market power to protect the billion-dollar abortion industry.

Signing the letter were Republican U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, of Mississippi; Steve Daines, of Montana; Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee; Mike Braun, of Indiana; Marco Rubio, of Florida; Mike Lee, of Utah; Ted Cruz, of Texas; Tom Cotton, of Arkansas; and James Lankford and Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, of Missouri,also wrote a letter urging Google to stop the censorship of pro-life adsearlier this week.

Censorship by Google means a near blackout of that information online. Google, which owns YouTube and other companies, is one of the most powerful entities in the world, and political leaders in the United States and Europe have been investigating whether Google is violating anti-trust laws.

Pro-life and conservative groups have been feeling thebruntof its censorship powers for years.

Why they fight so hard to silence us, I struggle to understand. But they do. And they fight dirty, Cindi Boston-Bilotta, vice president of Heartbeat International,which runs the abortion pill reversal hotline, wrote Tuesday in an email to supporters.

She said Google removed all Abortion Pill Reversal ads at the prompting of abortion activists, and they are pressuring Facebook to do the same.

Studies and medical experts confirm the abortion pill reversal protocol is safe and effective. It works very similarly to a hormonal treatment that has been used for years to help prevent miscarriages.

The censorship comes at a critical time when abortion activists are pushing to expand abortion pills. The Biden administration recently stopped enforcing safety regulations on abortion drugs, meaning abortion groups now can sell them through the mail without ever seeing the woman in person.

Live Action president and founder Lila Rose said Google claims the ads included misleading content, restricted drug terms and restricted medical content.

But Kaylee McGhee White, an opinion writer at the Washington Examiner, said there is no evidence to back these claims.

She wrote:

in criticism of the treatment by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which Google is citing to justify its crackdown on Live Action, ACOG does not once mention a single case in which the treatment has had negative effects. And thats because the evidence that it is harmful is flimsy at best and outright dishonest at worst.

Researchandmedical experts confirmthat the abortion pill reversal treatment is safe and effective for both mother and baby. Thousands of mothers and babies stories are proof as well. One mother, Rebekah Buell, saidher son Zechariah is alive today because of the abortion pill reversal procedure.

Anyone who has taken the first abortion pill and wishes to stop the abortion is urged to immediately visit http://www.abortionpillreversal.com or call the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline at 877-558-0333.

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Senators Blast Google for Banning Pro-Life Ads: This is ...

BIGELOW, Ark. (AP) Officials at an Arkansas high school physically tore out pages from the schools published yearbook that included references to the U.S. Capitol riot, George Floyd and COVID-19, claiming community backlash, an action the Student Press Law Center condemned as censorship.

The SPLC, a nonprofit that defends the First Amendment rights of student journalists and their advisers at high school and college levels, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette both requested documentation regarding the community backlash.

Hadar Harris, executive director of SPLC, said when asked for documentation regarding the community backlash, Heidi Wilson, the superintendent at East End School District, could not produce any.

I have done an extensive search and I dont have anything responsive, Wilson replied in an email to the newspaper on Aug. 10.

It is painfully clear that you did not remove these pages from the yearbook for any legally justifiable reason, wrote Harris in an email Friday to Wilson. In fact, even the legally dubious reason you gave about the so-called community backlash failed to hold up under closer scrutiny. A public records request served on your office seeking any records reflecting any community backlash against the yearbook turned up nothing.

According to the Democrat-Gazette, it appeared the two-page timeline depicting news events from 2020 and 2021, including the U.S. Capitol riot and the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright, were ripped out by hand.

The spread outlined important world events that took place during the 2020-2021 academic year, including the 2020 election, the impact of COVID-19, the death of George Floyd, and more. The reason cited for the removal of the already-published content was that school officials were at the receiving end of community backlash over the yearbook spread, wrote Harris.

The yearbook adviser, Meghan Clarke Walton, resigned over the censorship issue. She also taught English and journalism at the school.

I did not authorize the removal of these pages, nor do I support it in any way, she said. Deciding to resign was the most difficult decision I have ever made. However, I needed to stand up for myself and for the students who created that yearbook spread.

Walton said more than 100 distributed yearbooks had the pages removed. About 15 yearbooks that were sold during the first day of distribution are the only ones that have all the pages.

In the letter, Harris also demands administrators to reprint the censored pages of the yearbook along with a written apology, strongly suggesting the reprint and apology be distributed by Sept. 15.

Wilson could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

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Officials tear out yearbook pages, prompt censorship claims

Published: 10/11/2021 4:47:39 PM

A friend once told me that Northampton was too politically correct and in turn excluded people. I dont know if I agree with her, but after reading about the Art Councils decision to cancel its Biennial arts exhibit, I can see her point.

As a white woman who grew up in Philadelphia, lived in Brooklyn and New Mexico, I consider myself a person with a diverse lifestyle and values; as an art teacher, I look at things with an open mind and aesthetic value; as an older woman, I chose to reside in Northampton, my hope was that censorship of art would not be tolerated.

This article became a teachable moment for me as an art teacher. When studying art history, each era can began with controversial or reactionary art. Look at Cubism and Picasso and what he did with abstraction and rejecting a single viewpoint in paintings, breaking up facial features into shapes was considered radical and controversial. Did this stop his work from being shown?

There were many artists whose subjects chronicled what went before them, Kathe Kollwitz depicting the poverty and war happening around World War II. The question is, do you have to be part of a group to be able to make art about it? I see the painting 400 Years After no. 4 about a place and time from an artists perspective.

When we censor an artwork because of an artists interpretation of an event that they or their ancestry lived through, then we take away the artists voice or truth. Who I mainly see at fault here is the committee that canceled the show of 60 artists. It makes me think back to when I was an art student in the 1980s. The N.E.A awarded grants to exhibitions which included artists Robert Maplethorpe and Andres Serrano, their works were the highlights of a controversy surrounding the New York City mayor (who vowed to cut subsidy over art deemed offensive), religious leaders and politicians.

Art will always be the center of societal tensions. As art history shows, some of the best art portrays just that!

Bonnie Cooper

Florence

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Bonnie Cooper: Art censorship in the commonwealth - GazetteNET

Caution: Free Speech May Be Hazardous to Your Health. Such a rewording of theoriginal 1965 warningon tobacco products could soon appear on social media platforms, if a Senate hearing this week is any indicator. Listening toformer Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.

But before we embrace a new ministry of information model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.

Warnings over the addiction and unhealthy content of the internet have been building into a movement for years.In July,President BidenJoe BidenGruden out as Raiders coach after further emails reveal homophobic, sexist comments Abbott bans vaccine mandates from any 'entity in Texas' Jill Biden to campaign with McAuliffe on Friday MORE slammed Big Tech companies for killing people by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic.On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugens testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship. It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech. However, it continued to expand even further as the regulation of speech became an insatiable appetite for silencing opposing views.

In recent hearings with social media giants, members like Sen. Chris CoonsChris Andrew CoonsDemocratic lawmakers, Yellen defend Biden on the economy Sunday shows - Scalise won't say if election was stolen under questioning from Fox's Chris Wallace Democrat on controversial Schumer speech: Timing 'may not have been the best' MORE (D-Del.) were critical of limiting censorship to areas like election fraud and insteaddemanded censorship of disinformation on climate changeand other subjects. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has repeatedly called for robust content modification to remove untrue or misleading information.

Haugen lashed out at what she said was the knowing harm committed against people, particularly children, byexposing them todisinformation or unhealthy views. Haugen wants the company to remove toxic content and change algorithms to make such sites less visible. She complained that sites with a high engagement rate are more likely to be favored in searches. However, the problem is that sites deemed false or harmful are too popular. Haugen said that artificially removing likes is not enough because the popularity or interest in some sites will still push them to the top of searches.

It was a familiar objection. Just the week before,Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenHow Democrats can rebuild their 'blue wall' in the Midwest Building back better by investing in workers and communities Throttling free speech is not the way to fix Facebook and other social media MORE (D-Mass.) called for Amazon to steer readers to true books on climate change.Her objection was that the popularity of misleading books was pushing them to the top of searches, and she wants the algorithms changed to help readers pick what she considers to be healthier choices meaning, more in line with her views.

Similarly, Haugens solution seems to be well, her:Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what is happening inside there needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty afterworking at a place like [Facebook],and have a place to work on things like regulation. Censorship programs always begin with politicians and bureaucrats who in their own minds have the benefit of knowing what is true and the ability to protect the rest of us from our harmful thoughts.

Ironically, I have long been a critic of social media companies for their rapid expansion of censorship, including the silencing ofpolitical critics,public health expertsandpro-democracy movementsat the behest of foreign governments like China and Russia. I am unabashedly aninternet originalistwho favors an open, free forum for people to exchange ideas and viewpoints allowing free speech to be its own disinfectant of bad speech.

Facebook has been running a slick campaignto persuade people to embrace corporate censorship.Yet, now, even the Facebook censors are being denounced as too passive in the face of runaway free speech. The focus is on the algorithms used to remove content or, as with Haugen and Warren, used to flag or promote popular sites.

Haugen describes her approach as a non-content-based solution but it is clearly not that.She objects to algorithms like downstream MSI which tracks traffic and pushes postings based on past likes or comments. Asexplained by one site, it is based on their ability to engage users, not necessarily its usefulness or truthfulness.Of course, the objection to those un-useful sites is their content and claimed harm.

Like Warren, Haugen is calling for what I have criticized as enlightened algorithms to protect us from our own bad choices.Our digital sentinels are non-content-based but will magically remove bad content to prevent unhealthy choices.

There is no question that the internet is fueling an epidemic of eating disorders and other great social problems. The solution, however, is not to create regulatory boards or to reduce free speech. Europe has long deployed such oversight boards inremoving what it considers harmful stereotypesfrom advertising andbarring images of honey or chips but the results have been underwhelming at best.

It is no accident that authoritarian countries have long wanted such regulation, since free speech is a threat to their power. Now, we also have U.S. academics writing that China was right all along about censorship, and public officials demanding more power to censor further. We have lost faith in free speech, and we are being told to put our faith into algorithmic guardians.

We can confront our problems more effectively by using good speech to overcome bad speech. When it comes to minors, we can use parents to protect their children by increasing parental controls over internet access; we can help parents with more or better programs and resources for mental illnesses. Of course, it is hard to advocate for restraint when the image of an anorexic child is juxtaposed against the abstract concept of free speech. However, that is the sirens call of censorship: Protecting that child by reducing her free-speech rights is no solution for her but it is a solution for many who want more control over opposing views.

Free speech is not some six-post-a-day addiction that should be cured with algorithmic patches. There is no such thing as a content-neutral algorithm that removes only harmful disinformation because behind each of those enlightened algorithms are people who are throttling speech according to what they deem to be harmful thoughts or viewpoints.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates on Twitter@JonathanTurley.

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Throttling free speech is not the way to fix Facebook and other social media | TheHill - The Hill