Daily Digest |  |
- Who’s the Biggest Terrorist Threat?
- Supreme Court hears case on student speech rights in the social media age
- Uncle Tim?
- The lies of Joe Biden
- A redundant prosecution?
| Who’s the Biggest Terrorist Threat? Posted: 29 Apr 2021 04:21 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) Last night, Joe Biden repeated the absurd claim that, according go our intelligence agencies, white supremacists are our number one terrorist threat. Let me know when white supremacists burn down a city or two; until then, I am going with Antifa. This Antifa video describes the far-left movement in honest–i.e., openly terrorist–terms. It includes a threat to kill Ted Wheeler, the hapless left-wing mayor of Portland, and helpfully includes his home address. If you want to see a terrorist threat, this is it:
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| Supreme Court hears case on student speech rights in the social media age Posted: 29 Apr 2021 03:17 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) On Tuesday, I wrote about Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the high school free speech case the Supreme Court was about to hear. The Court heard the case yesterday. You can listen to the oral argument here. It was a lively affair, as well it should have been given the tricky questions involved, and was well argued on both sides. The Court seemed sympathetic to B.L. who was suspended from cheerleading due to an obscene social media rant, off campus and on the weekend, issued after she failed to make the varsity. Justice Breyer said that if using swear words away from school merits discipline, “my goodness every school in the country would be doing nothing but punishing.” Justice Kavanaugh, drawing on his experience coaching youth basketball, felt that a year’s suspension from cheerleading was grossly disproportionate discipline for a fairly normal expression of teenage frustration. However, the Justices seemed uncertain about how to dispose of the case and, in particular, how broadly to write. Breyer confessed to being “frightened to death of writing a standard” for permissible off-campus speech on the facts of this case. Several other Justices, including Kavanaugh, appeared similarly disinclined to do so. The school district offered what looked like a way out. It said the Court could overturn the court of appeals ruling that Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Vietnam-era case that upheld schools’ right to punish on-campus speech that is disruptive to schools, does not apply to off-campus speech. The Court could then remand the case, ideally after clarifying Tinker’s “disruption” standard. In all likelihood, the result would be victory on remand for B.L. But that seemed to be of little concern to the school and to the Biden administration that supports the school’s position. B.L.’s suspension several years ago is water under the bridge (she’s in college now). The school’s interest is in establishing its right to punish disruptive speech that occurs off campus. However, several Justices pointed out that, in “cleaning up” Tinker, they would have to write a standard. And counsel for B.L. noted that a “disruption” standard applied to off-campus speech would create the real prospect of school officials punishing students for a wide range of utterances — including political ones — on the theory that publishing them on the interact raises the possibility of disruption at school. Justice Alito picked up on this concern. He stated: “I for one think we need clear rules that protect freedom of speech.” Counsel for the school district tried to assuage concern about schools punishing political speech by saying they cannot discipline students for speech on topics like politics or religion. Rather, they can discipline students only for speech that "targets" the school.” Alito responded, "I have no idea what that means." Several other Justices also seemed unimpressed with this standard. Justice Kagan asked the government’s lawyer, who is supporting the school, whether B.L.’s snap was "school speech." When he responded that it probably was, she stated that essentially all speech must be "because this is pretty generic." Counsel for B.L. urged the Court to affirm the Third Circuit’s holding that Tinker does not apply to off-campus speech. Addressing concerns that this might leave schools powerless to deal with bullying and harassment, he argued that schools could, in fact, punish these things (along with threats) to the extent permitted by the Constitution — essentially when the bullying and harassment is severe and pervasive. However, the prospect of mere disruption — the Tinker test — should not be enough. Several Justices were troubled, though, by a bright line distinction between off-campus and on-campus speech in the internet/social media era. As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out, modern technology blurs the line between on-campus and off-campus. When a student sends a text from the parking lot but it's read in the school cafeteria, "is that off campus or on campus," he asked. Counsel for B.L. drew the line in terms of whether a student is under the school’s supervision when she speaks or writes. This answer didn’t seem fully satisfactory to at least some Justices. Some Justices seemed to flirt with a third way of dealing with the case: simply rule that B.L. could not be punished consistent with the First Amendment under any reasonable standard, and leave for another day the question of what standard applies to off-campus speech. This, though, would require dodging the question that the Court granted certiorari to hear: Does Tinker apply to off-campus speech? Even after listening to the two-hour argument, I formed no clear view as to how this case will be decided. Any of the three approaches discussed above — (1) rejecting the view that Tinker doesn’t apply off campus and remanding the case, (2) agreeing that Tinker doesn’t apply off campus and ruling in B.L.’s favor on that basis, or (3) ruling in B.L.’s favor without deciding whether Tinker applies off campus — seems possible. Each might have the support of some Justices, such that the Court splits at least three ways. Perhaps B.L. will prevail with a majority split between the second and the third approaches described in the preceding paragraph. And, as noted, even under the first approach, B.L. would probably prevail at the end of the day.   |
| Posted: 29 Apr 2021 08:15 AM PDT (John Hinderaker) Historically, giving the out-party’s response to a president’s speech to a joint session of Congress has been a thankless task. That is, in part, because the out-party’s response, typically delivered to a camera in a more or less empty room, looks lame compared to the excitement in the House chamber. Last night may have been different, however. Joe Biden’s snoozefest generated no excitement in the near-empty House, and Senator Tim Scott, delivering the GOP’s response, hit back on the central point the Democrats want to press: Scott denied Biden’s claim that America is a “systemically racist” society.
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| Posted: 29 Apr 2021 07:29 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Last night, Joe Biden lied about a range of issues. NRO identifies three of Biden’s deceptions. Phillip Klein exposes Biden’s falsehood regarding health care. Biden claimed that giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs will “strengthen the Affordable Care Act – expand Medicare coverage and benefits – without costing taxpayers one additional penny.” Nonsense. Klein points out that the Congressional Budget Office has twice concluded that "providing broad negotiating authority by itself would likely have a negligible effect on federal spending." (Emphasis added) Yet, Biden claimed that the supposed savings would be enough to pay for an Obamacare expansion that would cost $200 billion, according to the White House "fact sheet" released earlier in the day. [NOTE: Klein supplemented his comments in this post.] David Harsanyi debunks Biden on guns. Biden tried to persuade his audience that gun violence has exploded due to the expiration of the ban on “assault weapons” in the early 2000s. In fact, says Harsanyi, “the rate of gun homicide continued falling for more than a decade after the ban ended, even though gun ownership exploded.” Indeed, “from 2006, overall homicides fell ten out of 14 years” and “twenty-one years after a gun violence peaked in 1993, and a decade after the assault-weapon ban ended, homicides by firearms hit a historic low.” Kevin Williamson attacks Biden’s “you didn’t build that” riff — his assertion that “Wall Street didn't build this country, the middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class." Arguably, this rhetorical flourish is too metaphorical to be a lie. However, it’s considerably less than honest. “Wall Street” certainly played a part in building this country, just as “the middle class” and union workers did. As Williamson says:
Or a past-his-sell-by-date demagogue, recycling the BS of the first-rate demagogue you once worked for. Williamson also rightly credits Wall Street’s role in building and sustaining the middle class. He writes:
Biden is an inveterate liar. When it comes to this attribute, old age isn’t slowing him down.   |
| Posted: 29 Apr 2021 05:32 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) According to a source whose affiliation is not even hinted, the Department of Justice will seek federal indictments of Derek Chauvin and his three former colleagues in the death of George Floyd. The unidentified source leaked this and related news to the Star Tribune’s Andy Mannix. I assume that Mannix’s source is affiliated with the Department of Justice, either the Office of the United States Attorney for Minnesota or the local office of the FBI. Mannix does not note that the leak violates Department of Justice policy, but it does. I assume that is the reason his identity is entirely kept from view in Mannix’s story. As everybody knows, Chauvin was just convicted in state court of second-degree murder for Floyd’s death last week. He is to be sentenced on June 25. The State is seeking a sentence enhanced beyond the otherwise applicable sentencing guidelines. Whatever sentence is handed down, Chauvin will be going away for a long time. The case against the three other officers is set for trial in August. Their prospects do not look great. The leak to Mannix can only prejudice their case. Mannix’s long story does not even touch on the obvious question raised by the prospective indictments. As to Chauvin, a 2017 incident that was excluded from the Floyd case is apparently to be raised. Yet the obvious question remains. What purpose are these prospective indictments of the four former officers intended to serve beyond the state court proceedings?   |
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