A San Francisco bookstore called the Booksmith (I think it’s unrelated to the old Paperback Booksmith chain) has stopped selling J. K. Rowling’s books because of the causes she supports. It’s unclear whether they’ll decline orders for the books or have just stopped stocking them. It won’t surprise anyone that the controversy has gotten ugly.
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This has been a bad year for freedom of expression in the United States. ICE thugs have hauled people away without charges for expressing views that the government doesn’t like. In New Hampshire, a federal judge has delivered an outrageous decision regarding a protest in Bow, New Hampshire.
The ruling by Judge Steven McAuliffe is full of absurdities and disregard for the First Amendment. The basic argument is that school athletic events are a limited public forum, and the schools retain some control over types of expression at them. This is true, but it doesn’t mean they can arbitrarily decide what people can say or can’t. The restrictions have to serve a legitimate purpose and be viewpoint-neutral, and they have to be enforced evenly.
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“Geheime Staatspolizei” means “secret state police,” usually shortened to “Gestapo.” It was the Nazis’ enforcement bureau, the ones who snatched people without charges and sent them away to prisons or execution. In the United States, it’s shortened to “ICE.” Its masked thugs have snatched people off the street, not presenting any criminal charges, and shipped them to offshore hellholes. So far I haven’t heard of its intentionally killing anyone, though people have died in its custody.
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Hardly a day goes by that Donald Trump doesn’t commit an impeachable offense. Among them is his attempt to intimidate broadcast networks into making their coverage of him more favorable and his opponents less favorable. He has filed a nonsense lawsuit against CBS, claiming that editing a Kamala Harris interview in a way he didn’t like constituted election interference. All the analysis I’ve read says the suit doesn’t stand a chance on its merits, but the government has the power to approve or block a merger CBS is seeking, and the implied threat to disallow it has CBS ready to fold. The FCC, under Trump appointee Brendan Carr, is also applying pressure. NPR says “CBS’ parent company appears to be inching toward capitulation, as its controlling owner wants to drag CBS out of the headlines and wrap up a corporate sale.”
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Several states have set up hotlines where people can report legal, constitutionally protected speech to the government. There is no indication — so far — that people are being prosecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights, but a call from the cops saying you’ve been named in a “hate incident” is intimidating enough.
In Oregon, someone contacted a hotline run by the Oregon Department of Justice and reported a neighbor for having an Israeli flag on his door. The hotline operator treated the bigot’s complaint as a report of a valid “bias incident” and the bigot as a “victim.” The operator said the caller could get rewarded with money from the state’s Crime Victim Compensation Program, even though there was no crime.
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