“This government will crush you”: whistleblowers testify about retaliation
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Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11
SUPREME COURT NEWS
Not liable
Thursday, a unanimous Supreme Court gave a big win to YouTube (Google), Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies, ruling that they are not liable for ISIS attacks that were planned or promoted using their platforms.
The case was brought by families of the victims of such attacks. The SCOTUS didn’t get into Section 230, the clause of the Communications Decency Act that protects the platforms from liability for things people post on them as long as they’re acting as a neutral platform and not a publisher that chooses and edits content (that’s another BIG issue, as we’ve all recently learned.) In this case, the SCOTUS found that the role played by the tech companies did not rise to the level of “aiding and abetting” the crimes, as the plaintiffs claimed.
It's a win for tech companies, and it will prevent a flood of similar lawsuits that threatened to restrict online speech and bring down the Internet. But it does show that if any measures are going to be taken to keep terrorist propaganda off the Internet, or to ensure that tech companies do act as neutral platforms and don’t censor users’ free speech, they will have to come from the legislature, not the courts.
Supreme Court dismisses Arizona lawsuit
Also on Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by Arizona seeking to force President Biden to retain the Title 42 pandemic emergency measures at the border to prevent a flood of illegal immigrants. The dismissal was no surprise, seeing as the health emergency has been officially declared over and Title 42 has already expired.
Still, it’s well worth reading this article at Redstate.com that includes the comments of Justice Neil Gorsuch. In fact, I wish that everyone in Washington, and a lot of politicians and activists all over America would read it until they’ve memorized it.
Gorsuch goes into some detail about the dangers of allowing medical emergency powers to be used for other ends (notice how everything from racism to guns is now “a public health emergency.”) He recounts how politicians used COVID as an excuse to assume powers they didn’t normally have and use them for things unrelated to COVID, in the process trampling on Americans’ rights. There’s so much wisdom there that needs to be heard far and wide that I urge you to read it in its entirety. But just to pique your interest, here is an excerpt:
“One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat. A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes.
We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms. Of course, this is no new story. Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.
But maybe we have learned another lesson too. The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government. However wise one person or his advisors may be, that is no substitute for the wisdom of the whole of the American people that can be tapped in the legislative process.
Decisions produced by those who indulge no criticism are rarely as good as those produced after robust and uncensored debate…”
Seldom has a moot, dismissed case yielded such an important ruling. And by the way, might I also add that raising the debt ceiling is not a public health emergency that justifies the President ignoring Congress and assuming the power to torture the 14th Amendment.