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First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs paternalism too much government

Deadly Dress Code

Iranian women are again out in the streets protesting the brutality of the regime.

We can only hope that their efforts will bear fruit — or, if we’re Elon Musk, we can also provide protesters with Internet service via Starlink satellite, now that the Iranian government has blocked the Internet in much of the country.

The immediate spark was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

On September 13, Mahsa was arrested by Iran’s morality police for incorrectly wearing the hijab, the traditional head covering mandatory for Iranian women since 1979. Some of her hair showed.

According to witnesses, the police beat Mahsa in the police van; the police deny it.

Within hours of being detained, Mahsa was hospitalized and in a coma. She soon died. The police not very plausibly claimed that she had a heart attack. All a terrible coincidence. The family says that Mahsa had no health problems before being detained.

The immoral morality police were obeying the country’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, who on August 15 decreed that the nation’s dress code be more strictly enforced.

The protests — in which women have been burning their hijabs, cutting their hair, and shouting “Death to the oppressor!” — are ongoing and nationwide, and have spread to other countries. 

At least thirty protesters have been killed.

In the words of the New Yorker’s Robin Wright, Mahsa’s death “lit the fuse of long-smoldering dissent in Iran,” and its people have taken to the streets before.

Godspeed this time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights

The Bidening

It does seem — because of the raids and surveillance and things targeting critics of the regime — that the Biden administration (“the Biden”) is out to get its political opponents.

John Hinderaker of Powerline notes a few recent tip-of-the-iceberg actions by the Biden or its political allies.

The Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams was suddenly dropped from 80 newspapers after the strip began mocking certain modish pieties about diversity. We’ve learned that ostensibly private censorship is often done at the behest of government or politicians eager to muzzle somebody.

The Biden issued a slew of subpoenas to persons associated with the Trump administration for documents about efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. Nearly all these pertain “to activities that are plainly lawful,” observes Hinderaker.

The Biden seized the cell phone of Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and infamous skeptic of the 2020 election results. He’s accused of identity theft and damaging a computer related to an alleged breach of Colorado voting machines, accusations that Hinderaker regards as implausible on their face. “This all has to do with his opposition to the regime.”

Although the Biden may provide rationales for the targeting, these tend to be paper-thin. Why? Probably because the Biden wants you to know exactly why all this banana-republic stuff is happening. You are expected to take the micro-thin excuses as a hint — so that you will adopt a paranoid stance.

And to avoid saying or doing anything that may get you, too, targeted by the Biden.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment education and schooling First Amendment rights folly general freedom

Freedom of Disassociation?

Groucho Marx famously quipped that he wouldn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member. Some people take this hankering to an extreme: they want to force every group averse to their membership to accept them.

Keywords: forced inclusion. The current political rage — thought to be a “right.”

Now, Yeshiva University, which calls itself “the world’s premier Torah-based institution of higher education,” does not accept homosexuality. It’s against the Law.

And by “the Law” they mean: the ancient Jewish scriptures.

For those of us who are neither Jewish nor gay, we might look upon both groups as “clubs.”  And being in neither, we might just shrug; we aren’t going to be accepted in the either ranks and that’s just fine.

But some students at Yeshiva University tried to form an LGBT group on campus. The university resisted, the case went to court, and a court ordered the university to accept the group. And then last week, the Supreme Court refused to order a stay on the lower court’s order.

In reaction, Yeshiva University has suspended all campus club activities.

“Every faith-based university in the country has the right to work with its students, including its LGBTQ students, to establish the clubs, places and spaces that fit within its faith tradition,” the university’s president proclaimed. “Yeshiva University simply seeks that same right of self-determination.”

Since the right to “freedom of association” is part of the Bill of Rights, one might think this would be non-controversial in America. And settled law. 

But one would be wrong. On both counts. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom social media

Facebook, the FBI’s Snitch

All we have is the word of Department of Justice whistleblowers.

They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”

The targets were gun enthusiasts and those who questioned 2020’s election results.

“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.”

According to the whistleblowers, Facebook flagged allegedly subversive private messages and sent them to the FBI to be studied by agents specializing in domestic terrorism.

Facebook provided the FBI “with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” Subpoenas were then issued to obtain the conversations that Facebook had already revealed to the FBI.

According to one DOJ source: “As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”

Facebook has issued a denial. The FBI has issued a non-denial denial.

The allegations might seem very implausible but for the fact that as the November election approaches, the DOJ has been openly targeting Trump allies for claiming “that the vice president and/or president of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”

In short, for talking out of turn.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

Okay Not to Harm

A recent appeals court ruling means that (some) doctors and other medical practitioners won’t be forced to violate their ethical principles against doing harm.

The Fifth Circuit ruling affirms a lower-court decision “permanently enjoining [HHS] from requiring Franciscan Alliance to perform gender-reassignment surgeries or abortions in violation of its sincerely held religious beliefs.”

What is troubling about the decision is its apparent incompleteness.

In a truly free society, no private professionals or organizations would be coerced to offer their services to anybody. Everybody would be free to participate or to decline to participate in any transaction with a prospective customer related to any medical procedure. Just as any person is now (mostly) free to patronize or not patronize any provider of a good or service.

We don’t live in that free society. But at least we can hope that no person will be compelled to provide the types of services that violate the person’s moral conscience.

Like services they believe harm others.

That harm children . . . including the unborn.

So the court’s ruling is fine — as far as it goes. But it seems to protect only persons making religious objections, or only members of the Franciscan Alliance, not also non-religious medical practitioners who also morally object to providing abortions or sex-change operations.

Which means that there is more legal work to be done to protect the rights of all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

Collusion!

Yes. Active collaboration every step of the way.

Material produced during the discovery phase of a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of censorship is confirming what was already obvious: Big Tech’s ongoing censorship of social-media opinion about the pandemic has been undertaken largely at the behest of government.

A few of the emails confirming this:

  • April 16, 2021. Twitter emails White House officials about briefing them on “vaccine misinformation.”
  • July 16, 2021. Facebook emails the surgeon general that “our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.”
  • July 23, 2021. The Facebook official tells HHS how Facebook will be “increasing the strength of our demotions for COVID and vaccine-related content that third party fact-checkers rate as ‘partly false’ or ‘missing context.’ ”

There’s mucho mas where that came from.

The public does not yet possess the requested documents from the Department of Justice of communications between DOJ officials and social-media officials. Getting those has been like pulling teeth. Why? Chances are 99.999 percent that they’ll only further confirm our thesis that over the last few years (at least) the federal government has been routinely violating the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. 

To do so, it delegates the job of gagging people to private firms in order to pretend that the coercive power of government is not itself being used to gag people. 

But marching orders are marching orders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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