BANNING POLITICAL SPEECH:  It has come to this.  New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has voted to ban all political, religious and opinion ads. The reason?  An April 21 decision by federal district judge John Koeltl to enjoin the Transit Authority from refusing to run an ad sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) that said, “Hamas MTV:  Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah.”  Underneath this caption, the ad said, “That’s His Jihad, What’s Yours?” Here’s a copy of the ad:

The ad was designed to be anti-Hamas and pro-Israel.  A similar, crowd-sourced ad campaign by AFDI was characterized as “Islamorealism.”

The Transit Authority cited “security” concerns in its decision to reject the ad, but Judge Koeltl responded:

While the Court is sensitive to the MTA’s security concerns, the defendants have not presented any objective evidence that the Killing Jews advertisement would be likely to incite imminent violence. Indeed, as the defendants knew when considering whether to run the ad, substantially the same advertisement ran in San Francisco and Chicago in 2013 without incident. The advertisement qualifies as protected speech, and the defendants have restricted it based on its content without a compelling interest or a response narrowly tailored to achieving any such interest. Accordingly, the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction is granted.

In an oped for Breitbart, Pamela Geller, co-founder of AFDI writes:

This is a classic case of the powerful trumping the rights of the common man so as to protect their little club. The political and media elites only allow the public discourse to fall within a certain political spectrum. My ads drove them crazy because they fell outside of that spectrum; I was vaulting over their controls and bringing truths to the public that they didn’t want known. They had to move to shut me down.

I’m siding with Geller on this one.  The NYC Transit Authority is banning all political/religious/opinion ads in an attempt to prevent its rejection of AFDI’s ads from being characterized as a “content-based” restriction on free speech, which is presumptively unconstitutional.  And while it’s true that the Transit Authority has now banned all such ads– not just AFDI’s–it’s a sad day when government opts to shut down all speech merely because some of it may be offensive.  The ad was not the functional equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater; it was controversial because it defies the liberal/progressive worldview of Hamas and the Palestinian effort as virtuous, and Israel as an apartheid state.

Free speech isn’t worth much if government can ban it whenever it offends.  As the Supreme Court said in its 1971 decision, Cohen v. California:

The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. It is designed and intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us, in the hope that use of such freedom will ultimately produce a more capable citizenry and more perfect polity and in the belief that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests. To many, the immediate consequence of this freedom may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength.

NY Transit Authority’s action shows that, from the leftist perspective, Americans can’t handle potentially “offensive” speech by averting their eyes, but need to be paternalistically protected from being exposed to it at all.  We aren’t producing “a more capable citizenry” anymore; quite the contrary.  NY Transit Authority’s decision is a sign of societal decay and weakness, not strength.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Cops Investigate Report of Two Seven Year Olds Kissing at School. “I’ve always thought homeschooling was a great idea. After hearing this story, I’m more convinced than ever before.”

GALLERY: 50 Years Of The Camaro, In Pictures.

SO AFTER I TWEETED THEM, NPR CORRECTED THE HEADLINE IN THIS AWFUL HIT PIECE ON TEXAS GOV. ABBOTT, BUT IT’S STILL WRONG.

As this WaPo article — from last week — explains, Abbott sent the State Guard (not the Texas National Guard, as the NRP story originally claimed) to observe (not “stave off,” as the NPR article still wrongly claims) federal military maneuvers (not a “takeover” as the NPR article still wrongly claims). The WaPo story also explains why, for safety reasons, it’s a good idea for state officials to know about these exercises. Compare the treatment by WaPo — hardly an Abbott-friendly organ — with the NPR piece by Wade Goodwyn, which seems designed to produce agitprop headlines for Dems to share with each other over social media. Now note which one is supported by your tax dollars.

THERE’S A CANNABIS LAW PROF BLOG.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 724.

ICE, ICE BABY:   Stop. Collaborate and listen:  Ice is back, and apparently, it isn’t at risk of disappearing, as Steven Hayward explains.  Okay, it’s a bad reference to Vanilla Ice, but the horrific, imminent doom-and-gloom melting of the Earth’s ice caps–which Al Gore predicted would disappear completely by 2013— are doing quite well, thank you very much.  Indeed, satellite images show the Arctic ice cap has grown and thickened 43-63% since 2012.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) website still claims that the ice caps are the “canary in the coal mine” and “harbinger of things to come” for global warming climate change.  Back in 2009, global warming climate change soothsayer James Hansen of NASA warned the globe that President Obama only “has four years to save the earth.”  Of course, Hansen’s wild exaggerations and data manipulation have been debunked, but this doesn’t stop the leftists, since we all know global warming climate change isn’t really about climate at all, but about wealth redistribution.

President Obama was just down here in South Florida, giving a speech in the Everglades on the hazards of global warming climate change, where he did his best Al Gore imitation:

This is not a problem for another generation.  Not anymore.  This is a problem now.  It has serious implications for the way we live right now.  Stronger storms.  Deeper droughts.  Longer wildfire seasons.  The world’s top climate scientists are warning that a changing climate already affects the air that our children are breathing.  The Surgeon General and I recently met with doctors and nurses and parents who see patients and kids grappling with the health impacts.  The Pentagon says that climate change poses an increasing set of risks to our national security.

Huh– that’s weird:  How come Obama and the Surgeon General are seeing “patients and kids grappling with the health impacts” from the “air that our children are breathing,” when the EPA’s own data indicates that U.S. air quality has improved markedly since 1980? And it seems odd to conclude that “our national security” is at risk due to global warming climate change, when the Obama Administration’s massive Clean Power Plan will cause severe electricity reliability problems, which could cause a major breakdown of law-and-order if coal-fired plants are shut down without first identifying adequate electricity generation alternatives to meet citizens’ needs.

It’s almost like Obama and the global warming climate change alarmists are making this stuff up or something.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Obama’s Foreign Policy: Media Gives President a Pass Again.

Once again, be very glad we don’t have a Republican president right now. If we did, we would be treated to a merciless media pounding, night-and-day, on the series of strategic failures, mistakes and false starts that have characterized America’s war strategy in Afghanistan since 2009. We’d be getting constant reminders of how the President, who repeatedly said that this was a just war that America had to win, and who told us that we should vote for him because he wouldn’t let anything distract him from the vital task of winning said war, hasn’t managed to win it, or even end it, after six long years.

Fortunately for us, there is a Democrat in the White House who, by and large, the press likes and wants to succeed. Thus our newspapers and television screens are blessedly free from invective, derision and snark when it comes to news from Afghanistan.

President Obama has been permitted to fail in Afghanistan quietly and off center stage. We hear nothing anymore about the months of agonized reflection before choosing strategies that didn’t accomplish their goals. We never see mentions of his 2008 campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan—”the necessary war”—against which we might be asked to measure what has actually been achieved.

He’s an affirmative-action President. Nobody expects him to produce much.

HELL, THESE DAYS THE ONION’S NOT EVEN A PARODY: The Onion Is Not a Joke.

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INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Why Can’t White House Just Say ISIS Beheaded Christians? You can tell a lot about a politician’s goals by noticing who he wants to keep stirred-up and angry, and who he doesn’t.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Obama mum after May Day riot re-ruins Seattle.

The morning after hipster rioters turned a May Day demonstration into a replay of the 1999 Battle in Seattle, President Obama boarded Marine One and departed for an overnight retreat without commenting on unrest in U.S. cities that has spread to the Pacific coast.

The president stopped to fist bump with the child of an Associated Press staffer on a sunny Saturday before choppering out of the capital. But he made no comment on the Friday night rioting in Seattle, Wash.

Seattle rioters threw bottles and bricks at police; smashed and tagged property; and attacked reporters and other civilians in unrest that left three officers injured. Police Chief Chris Fowler declared Friday evening that the situation had “turned into a riot.”

Obama’s silence on the mayhem in one of North America’s most progressive cities contrasted with his loquacity earlier in the week, when the president as well as his staff spoke at length after Baltimore erupted in destructive but non-lethal rioting. . . .

The Seattle riot also participates in a long history. The city was attacked by vandals, thieves and looters in 1999, under the pretext of protest against the World Trade Organization. Friday’s violence erupted during a celebration of May Day, which honors traditions of revolutionary destruction designed to raise worker solidarity, expose the contradictions of late capitalism, and usher in a fundamental transformation of economic reality.

Obama beguiled readers of his exquisitely wrought memoir Dreams From My Father with tales of his youthful friendships among Marxist poets and punk rockers. The self-declared communist Van Jones briefly served as the Obama administration’s “green jobs czar.”

But the president has been less eager to attach himself publicly to historic economic-justice movements, or to their extensive legacies of violence. He is presently lobbying Congress for a bill that would give more power to the executive branch in order to conclude a Pacific Rim trade treaty — an agreement strongly opposed by his own party’s left wing.

Seattle police responded decisively to Friday’s criminal frenzy, and by Saturday civil order had been restored in the city. Unlike Baltimore, Seattle is not governed entirely by members of the president’s Democratic party. One Seattle city council member belongs to the Socialist Alternative party.

Well, okay then.

MICHAEL WALSH: GoFundMe: Leftist Tool.

DOING THE JOBS AMERICAN JOURNALISTS WON’T DO: #AskHillary hashtag provides plenty of material for stumped, starstruck reporters.

OVERSIGHT: GOP rep introduces bill to gut EPA.

A House Republican wants to cut 13 programs at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including all of its grants and its ability to regulate ground-level ozone and carbon dioxide.

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced a bill, the Wasteful EPA Programs Elimination Act, which he said is a money-saving measure, citing a Heritage Foundation forecast that it would save $7.5 billion over 10 years.

“As a fiscal conservative, I believe Washington should be respectful of taxpayers’ dollars and live within its means,” Johnson said in a Thursday statement.

Can we do that with the rest of the federal government?

CHAOS UMPIRE SITS: Joan Walsh Says Dangerous Things About Race That Help Perpetuate Police Brutality: Perhaps her white privilege is showing and she should take her ideological fellow travelers’ advice on it.

Since the news came out that three of the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death were black—this fact is mostly pretty irrelevant to the case. A person isn’t any more or less violated depending on his race or the race of his violator. But it means a lot when some have vigorously pushed the narrative of “black men killed by white cops” as if it were only those instances of state-sponsored violence that were problematic. That narrative helps dangerous myths flourish—like the myth that black cops might be less brutal than white cops. Here’s Joan Walsh arguing that there was “no debate” black cops “absorb” the attitudes of their colleagues. It’s a bizarre idea that’s totally unnecessary if you live in the world but becomes a must-have when your understanding of the problem is based on the fantasy constructed in your head. And it’s a more than slightly racist one because it seeks to diminish the agency of the black adults who make up the black police population.

It gets worse. Walsh also argued that the indictment of the three black cops shows that “black leadership doesn’t protect wrongdoers like white leaders too often do,” this based on just the one Freddie Gray case. This is not only easily disprovable, it too helps perpetuate a dangerous myth. If the black leadership in Baltimore (and how much can be said about “black leadership” or “white leadership” before you’re just resorting to intuitions drawn from racial stereotypes?) were more interested in rooting out police brutality in the police department, why did it take Freddie Gray’s death for Baltimore’s black leadership to say it’ll invite the Department of Justice to probe the Baltimore Police Department for a pattern and practice of police abuse? Stephanie Rawlings Blake has been mayor for four years and Anthony Batts has been police commissioner since 2012. The problem of police brutality in Baltimore, and as any black (or really, any) leader in Baltimore should know (right?), didn’t start with Freddie Gray.

Why are Democrat-dominated cities such havens of racism and police brutality?

SO, I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT GARY TAUBES AND MARK RIPPETOE in terms of diet and fitness. If you’ve tried either, or both, please report your experience in the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: A lot of nice stories from folks. Glad you’re doing well!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Free Speech on Campus: ‘F*ck Masculinity’, ‘Fight the Straightness.’

SO HOW CAN YOU SIMULTANEOUSLY BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION AND FIND THIS SURPRISING? What It’s Like to Hit a Man. I tried boxing. It was scary how good it felt.

WELL, THAT’S THEIR JOB: Police union pushes back on Freddie Gray findings.

WELL, WELL: ‘Hacktivists’ from around the world take to social media to stir Baltimore unrest. “The company’s specialty is rooting out cyber criminals lurking on social media. And when West Baltimore erupted in rioting Monday, its employees felt compelled to apply their skills. ZeroFox worked into the night tracing tweets and Facebook accounts that shared photos of looting and violence. What they found was that much of the activity was coming from well outside of Baltimore, in some cases from Russia, China, India and the Middle East.”

Why would people in those countries want to stir up unrest in the United States? . . .

ONLY TRAINED LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS CAN BE TRUSTED WITH FIREARMS: Capitol Police Left Guns in Bathrooms.

SO, BASICALLY, VICE IS TELLING US THAT THE 19TH AMENDMENT WAS A MISTAKE? Female Hormones Can Make a Bloody Mess of Your Mental Health. Well, no: “As a woman who cries, cuts all her hair off and then realizes two days later as her gusset fills with blood that it was that pesky progesterone all along, I am extremely wary of painting women as somehow weaker as a result of our hormones.” Okay, then.

VOTER FRAUD IS REAL:  There is growing evidence non-citizens are voting.  And of course this is precisely why leftists keep challenging voter ID laws, while simultaneously taking executive action to undermine existing immigration law and grant legal permission for illegals to remain in the country.  Since when is asking for ID discriminatory?  I think I’m going to sue my public library.  And maybe the police department, the next time they pull me over.