MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Conspiring To Stifle Free Speech Is A Crime: Law Enforcement Needs To Put This To A Stop. Plus, a call for legislation banning political viewpoint discrimination on campus.
Archive for 2017
February 6, 2017
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Facebook launches fake news filter in France.
According to Le Monde, one of Facebook’s partners, the French campaign is similar to an initiative that Facebook launched in the US late last year, and in Germany last month. Both Facebook and Google faced widespread criticism for allowing fake news to spread during the US presidential election, and European leaders have expressed concern that such misinformation could impact upcoming elections across the continent.
Under the system, if an article is reported as false by users, it will be sent to a portal that all eight media companies have access to, according to Le Monde. If at least two of the companies confirm the article as false (with links to support their claims), the content will be flagged as disputed in Facebook’s News Feed, and users will see a warning before they share it. Advertising against the article will also be blocked, Le Monde reports.
In addition to Le Monde, Facebook’s French partners include Agence France-Presse (AFP), BFM-TV, Franceinfo, France Médias Monde, L’Express, Libération, and 20 Minutes. Facebook also announced that it will support CrossCheck — an initiative that will allow users to submit questions and gather information from 16 French media partners. CrossCheck was launched by the First Draft News coalition, with support from the Google News Lab.
When voters are already distrustful of of media institutions, assembling a number of them to perform a top-down determination of what the real news is, seems liable to backfire.
QUESTION ASKED: Why haven’t we repealed Obamacare yet?
House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans are currently crafting a similar budget reconciliation bill that would unravel big chunks of the law. But that process has become complicated by pressure to include Obamacare replacement measures in that legislation.
Ryan said at a news conference last week that he now hopes to move Obamacare legislation by the end of March.
Meadows told CNN that the party needs to move much faster.
“I don’t know that there’s any new revelations that are going to come up by waiting 60 to 90 more days,” Meadows said. “We’re making the whole idea of repeal and replacement far more complex and laborious than it needs to be and I think it’s time that we just make some decisions and move forward with (the repeal bill).”
On considering anything less than what was voted on in 2015, Meadows quipped: “You don’t get any credit with any of your constituents if you do that.”
The party in power typically loses around 30 House seats in the midterm election. If the GOP wants to buck the trend and keep their majority in 2018, they’d best not dispirit their base.
FLASHBACK: InstaPundit Is Not A News Service.
EARLIER I MENTIONED THIS POST by Eugene Volokh, on other people’s insistence that he blog topics of interest to them, regardless of whether they were of interest to him. (Pejman also weighs in on this, offering to blog anything the demanders demand, for an adequate fee: “Kids, I’m a lawyer. I’m trained to do this kind of thing!” That’s why I quit practicing law, Pej.)
I don’t have much trouble resisting people’s efforts to bully me into advancing their agendas. What worries me more, in a way, are the friendly emails from people saying that they get all their news from InstaPundit.
Don’t do that! It’s “InstaPundit,” not “InstaNews Service.” And this is, as Eugene properly notes, an amateur activity. I don’t even get to blog all the stuff that interests me — I’ve really fallen behind on space, guns, and even nanotechnology lately– much less stuff that’s important, but that doesn’t interest me.
What you get here — as with any blog — is my idiosyncratic selection of things that interest me, as I have time to note them, with my own idiosyncratic comments. What’s more, to the (large) extent that it’s shaped by my effort to play up stories that Big Media are ignoring, it’s even more idiosyncratic. I hope you like it, but making it your sole source of news is probably not a good idea. It’s like living solely on appetizers and desserts: there’s no “four food groups” approach here. [Maybe InstaPundit is more like a dietary supplement — providing essential nutrients, not basic sustenance? — Ed. That’s it: “InstaPundit: The Cod Liver Oil of the Media World!” Actually, now that I think about it, I like the dessert analogy better. –Ed.]
I mention this because (1) Trump’s dominating the news like nobody’s business; and (2) InstaPundit is, to a huge degree, a media-criticism blog. So Trump stuff is taking up a bigger share of space than maybe it should. I’ll do my best to counterbalance that (and so will the cobloggers) but bear in mind, InstaPundit wasn’t a news service in 2003, and it’s still not one in 2017. That is all.
JOHN FUND: Trump Derangement Syndrome May Help Trump. “As soon as the election was over, state recounts were mounted, with the approval of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, angry demands were made that members of the Electoral College go against the results of their state votes and dump Trump, and wild charges were hurled that Russian hacking swung the election. FBI chief James Comey, an Obama appointee, was accused of tilting the election against Clinton, and blue-collar voters in the Midwest were smeared as ‘racists’ who were easily manipulated by Trump.”
Hey, vote for us you stupid racists!
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Conspiring to stifle free speech is a crime.
Whether or not Berkeley loses its federal funding over the Milo riots (and it won’t), I think it’s time for action to address this double standard. First, state and local law enforcement agencies need to target violent rioters who seek to silence speakers. It is a felony under federal civil rights law to conspire to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights, among which is free speech. In addition, many states have laws (generally called Klan laws) that punish people who engage in mob violence or intimidation while masked. These should be applied as well.
Second, perhaps it’s time to have a Title IX-style law banning discrimination according to political viewpoints on campus. Many states (including California) already have laws banning discrimination in hiring and firing based on political viewpoints. Perhaps we need a federal civil rights law providing that colleges that receive federal funds (which is pretty much all of them) can lose those funds if they discriminate against students because of their political views.
Some colleges may complain that this is federal interference in their internal affairs, but given the limited resistance they’ve mounted to intrusive Title IX regulations, it will be hard to take such complaints seriously. America’s colleges and universities have a free speech problem. It’s appropriate for the federal government to take action to protect the civil rights of those affected.
Read the whole thing.
SALENA ZITO: Americans don’t trust anymore, and that’s a big problem.
Whom do we trust? The answer, it appears, is no one.
Well, that’s not entirely true. We trust our military, and in fact that trust has grown, said Richard Edelman, CEO of one of the world’s largest public relations consultancies. “Outside of that we are in such a crisis with trust that our faith and connection with the integral parts of our society is in collapse,” he said.
Edelman’s firm has been conducting the Trust Barometer survey for 17 years; last year the bottom dropped out and he is not quite sure how that tangible connection people have with institutions and expertise can be restored.
Only 43 percent of people said they trust the media; a whopping 5 percent drop from last year. Government came in even lower, at 41 percent; trust in military has grown, and trust in business is a bit stronger than the media and government, but not by much.
The question is why?
At a guess it’s because we have a lot more government than we need, but a lot less than we actually pay for.
HUFFINGTON POST: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas To Pay Low Wages To Immigrants.
Wait, first strange new Trump-respect in the Guardian, and now the HuffPo? What gives?
UPDATE: From the comments:
The Guardian and the HuffPo are frantically waiving their arms at their rabid anti-Trump readership telling them to stop opposing him in Pavlovian fashion every time he opens his mouth or posts a tweet, because Trump’s about to push for something that Bernie Sanders vocally supported during last year’s Democratic primary.
Having the foaming-at-the-mouth coalition of angry progs joining the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board in attacking Trump over trying to limit H-1B visa will be hilarious to watch, and would show that for a large number of Trump’s most irate opponents, they don’t really care anything about what he’s proposing, only that they oppose whatever he’s proposing. The calmer progs are trying to stop that scenario from playing out, but they’re going up against their own base that’s already been protesting outside Chuck Schumer’s house with F-bomb signs threatening his political position if he cooperates with Trump in any way.
Yeah, pretty much.
THE WEEKEND HEADLINES OUT OF TURKEY SHOUTED: Turkey says over 800 detained in anti-ISIL operations.. But the real story is that “Turkey Plans Massive Transfer of Assets to State Wealth Fund.”
More:
“The move is likely to increase political control over the companies,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president at Teneo Intelligence. “The government is currently struggling to finance a series of high-profile infrastructure projects; Erdogan hopes these will boost his domestic prestige and enable him to consolidate his grip on power through the introduction of an executive presidential system with almost no checks or balances.”
Appointments to the board include Yigit Bulut, a senior presidential adviser; Himmet Karadag, Borsa Istanbul Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Kerem Alkin and Oral Erdogan, who are both academics, according to the country’s trade registry.
“Turkey’s most valuable state assets are being given to a specially authorized and unsupervised company,” said Cetin Osman Budak, a lawmaker and deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party. “This is not a step for the benefit of the public.”
Erdogan is setting himself up as Turkey’s biggest (and final) arbiter of graft, which ought to keep in him power for a very long time.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Union-lackey Democrats fight to stop DeVos.
Senate Democrats have decided on a policy of resistance to everything President Trump does, but the scalp they want most is that of Betsy DeVos. Her crime, from the left-wing point of view, is that she wants to press states to give students and their parents a say in how they’re taught at school.
DeVos doesn’t want to force school choice on anyone. She knows her job as secretary of education would not be to wield power, but to yield it to states and local school boards.
“As a strong proponent of local control, I believe a decision to provide vouchers, scholarships or other public support for students who choose to attend a nonpublic school should not be mandated by the federal government,” DeVos wrote to Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., in a letter that apparently convinced Fischer to vote for DeVos, possibly securing the 50 votes she needs.
Yet, just for singing the virtues of choice (which in another context Democrats think is a fine thing) DeVos is the chief enemy of powerful teachers unions. Senate Democrats, other liberal groups, and late-night comedians have joined a crusade against her.
Late night “comedians.” They’re just Democratic Party operatives with punchlines.
TRUMP: ‘If Something Bad Happens Blame the Judge and the Court System’
Barack Obama opened this door when he publicly dressed down the Supreme Court as a part of his State of the Union Address.
THE INSTA-WIFE: The Pussy Hat: A Symbol of Hate.
AUTHORITARIANS AT THE GATE: How One High School Is Ripping Its Community Apart.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: To Fix Counterterrorism, End Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Strategy.
Clearly, the FBI spent a lot of time on [Pulse nightclub attacker Omar] Mateen. It sent confidential informants to interact with him, conducted physical surveillance, covertly monitored some of his phone calls, and interviewed him face-to-face three separate times. It concluded that his bark was bad, but his bite was non-existent. Honoring guidelines imposed on terrorism investigations, the FBI closed its case. That is, in addition to concluding that no charges should be filed, the Bureau further decided that additional monitoring of Mateen was not warranted.
In retrospect, this seems reckless. But the FBI is not incompetent, far from it. The agency knew Mateen was worth a heavy investigative investment. The problem is that the FBI answers to the Washington political class. The bipartisan Beltway has long ruled that advocacy of radical Islam is protected by the Constitution. It has long instructed its investigators, preposterously, that seditious beliefs and agitation are immune, not just from prosecution, but even from mere inquiry.
What passes for Obama’s national-security strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism,” exacerbates this problem.
You can’t fight what you won’t name.
ANNALS OF INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM: Proposed Rhode Island bill: Any judge who is ‘person of color’ must be replaced by another ‘person of color.’
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Obama Criticizes Supreme Court in State of the Union Address.
BAY AREA HATEWATCH UPDATE: Bay Area Conservatives Keep Meetups Secret Fearing For Their Safety.
FAKE SCIENCE: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data.
The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.
A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.
The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.
But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.
It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.
Read the whole thing.
But remember that if world leaders were duped, it’s because they’re willing dupes — nothing gets their attention faster than a drummed up crisis they can use to increase their money and power.
WHY WOULD MISSISSIPPI WANT TO DO THAT? Campus sex assault bill would codify standards in Mississippi that might be on the way out in D.C.
JEFF BUST: “I am deplorable, and I am happier with my vote every day.”
That’s a lot of that going around.