Free Republic

SAN DIEGO – The man whose livestream caught two Navy ships nearly colliding in the San Diego Bay has been ordered to take the cameras down. The Navy Criminal Investigative Service says the camera’s livestream shows military activity in the area, but the camera owner says he has the right to film. “It might be the San Diego Web Cam today, but if you don’t stand up and call foul, we don’t know what’s it going to be tomorrow,” said Barry Bahrami who runs a group called San Diego Web Cam which provides livestreams across the city. It was Bahrami’s...

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems said Tuesday that they have reached a settlement agreement just moments before opening arguments were set to begin. The deal ends a monthslong legal battle over whether the media company had defamed the voting machine maker when they broadcast election conspiracy theories in 2020. The terms of the settlement were not immediately available. Dominion sued Fox News in 2021, demanding $1.6 billion in damages. They said the network defamed it when it broadcast baseless claims that it was tied to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, that it paid kickbacks to politicians and that...

At Gov. Ron DeSantis's (R-FL) urging, Florida Republicans are eagerly drafting a bill to expand the scope of defamation law. But not everyone in the conservative movement is a fan. During an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner, former Vice President Mike Pence made clear that he was not thrilled about challenging New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court case establishing the actual malice standard for defamation of public figures. "Well, let me just say in the broadest sense, I believe a free and independent press is a bulwark of our nation," Pence said. "From my years in Congress,...

This is a pre-enforcement action by journalists Sandra Rodríguez-Cotto and Rafelli González-Cotto to enjoin, under the First Amendment, Article 5.14(a) of the Law of the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety, Law No. 20 of 2017, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 25, §§ 3501, et seq. (“Law 20”), which criminalizes some types of speech after the Governor has decreed a state of emergency or disaster in the Commonwealth. 1 For the reasons explained below, the challenged provision cannot be enforced. As drafted, it does not pass muster under the First Amendment. BACKGROUND Law 20 creates the Puerto Rico Department of Public...

A judge in Delaware has ordered a jury trial in Dominion Voting Systems’ blockbuster lawsuit against Fox News, setting the stage for one of the most consequential defamation decisions against an American media company in decades. Lawyers for Fox and Dominion faced off in court during a two-day hearing for summary judgment last week, with each side unsuccessfully arguing the court should rule in their favor and forgo a jury trial that is expected to span weeks and could further bring to light internal discussions at the network following the 2020 election. Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6 billion in...

The NYPD and US Secret Service are huddling to prep for Donald Trump’s possible indictment in Manhattan after the former president said he expected to be arrested Tuesday and called on his supporters to protest, law enforcement sources told The Post. The FBI, state court officers and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office have also been kept in the loop on security discussions, with the Big Apple bracing for the worst after Trump, 76, urged his followers to “take our nation back” in light of his looming indictment, the sources said. “We will use all of our available resources,” one...

The three-hour hearing showed that corporate-government collusion goes far deeper than the major platforms in Silicon Valley. The Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held its second hearing Thursday with a focus on the “Twitter Files” that exposed corporate-government collusion in Twitter’s censorship regime. But the three-hour hearing showed the public-private partnership goes far deeper than the major platforms operating out of Silicon Valley. Lawmakers heard testimony from independent Substack journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, two of the primary reporters who published the series after Elon Musk took over the platform. The pair shared how the...

You can tell Tucker Carlson is over the target based simply on the hysterical reactions he’s gotten over the last 24 hours. That’s the story after the Fox News host began to release January 6th surveillance footage on Monday evening.Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy gave Carlson access to the footage after Democrats fought for years to keep it under lock and key. Now, we are finding out that many of the narratives spun by the January 6th committee and others were at best misleading and at worst outright false.RedState has already reported on that extensively on those revelations (click...

It says the episode contains “information or material that has been properly classified and protected, and which is sensitive information such that its public release is injurious to Canadian national security, national defence, and international relations.” In it, Alexander describes the process he says led to him being kicked out of JTF-2. He says he refused to comply with the COVID-19 vaccination mandate and requests that he wear a mask.

Finally, a reporter reporting something important. I'm surprised he still knew what to do.

Twitter Files show agency's mission is now "a perversion of the First Amendment," 33-year veteran says. House Republicans think federal agencies have become a weapon against their own apolitical employees and the constitutional rights of Americans. House Democrats think House Republicans have become a weapon against the prerogatives of federal agencies. The parties traded laundry lists of grievances stemming from agency and congressional investigations, from the Benghazi attack to the Russia collusion hoax, at the first hearing Thursday of the House Judiciary Committee's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Minority Democrats deemed the subcommittee itself a threat...

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down Tampa, Florida's ban against talk therapy for minors seeking freedom from unwanted same-sex attraction. The city had tried to block licensed therapists from providing voluntary counseling to those minors. The federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the ban is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.... The latest ruling is based on Liberty Counsel's previous victory in Otto v. City of Boca Raton in which the Eleventh Circuit had ruled that similar attempts to muzzle counselors from helping their clients in Palm Beach County and the City of Boca Raton were unconstitutional...

A California judge issued a preliminary injunction against a state law that empowers the Medical Board of California to discipline physicians who support opinions about COVID-19 that are not in line with the “consensus,” according to reports. The law, known as Assembly Bill 2098, was set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2023. Under the law, the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California could discipline physicians who “disseminate” information about COVID that is not in line with the “contemporary scientific consensus.” But in November, a group of five California physicians filed a lawsuit against California...

The United States will soon follow Europe in implementing laws against so-called hate speech, a top Eurocrat claimed at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos. The vice president for Values and Transparency for the European Commission, Věra Jourová predicted on Tuesday that hate speech laws will be imposed upon the American public, despite longstanding case law at the Supreme Court protecting such speech under the First Amendment. “Illegal hate speech, which you will have soon also in the U.S. I think that we have a strong reason why we have this in the criminal law,” Jourová said.

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider what employers must do to accommodate religious employees, among eight new cases it added. The cases are expected to be argued in April. In one involving a former postal employee, the justices will consider what accommodations employers must make for religious employees. The case comes when religious plaintiffs have generally fared well at the court, which is dominated 6-3 by conservative justices. Under a federal civil rights law, employers can’t discriminate against employees because of their religion. The law says employees’ religious practices have to be accommodated unless the employer can demonstrate...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — An electronic billboard in Butler County is upsetting a lot of people. The billboard along Route 422 in Summit Township features a swastika. People who live in the area say this type of hate and negativity isn't welcome in their community, and they're working to do something about it. "To me, what's on the sign is just not acceptable, it's hate speech," Heidi Priest said. The billboard is privately owned and sits on private property. Some people who live in the area said it doesn't represent their community, but they do believe it does represent the need...

During a hearing on anti-semitism today, Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) claimed that those who “espouse hate” are not protected under the First Amendment, and called for the federal government to be “more aggressive” in its efforts to combat hateful rhetoric. Senator Cardin serves as the Chair of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is also referred to as the Helsinki Commission. […] On Dec. 13, the Helsinki Commission held a hearing entitled, “The Alarming Rise of Anti-Semitism and Its Threat to Democracy.” During the hearing, Cardin stated, “If you espouse hate, if you espouse violence, you’re...

The Biden administration has awarded $5 million to a group of journalists developing software to encourage Americans to confront their friends over "harmful" posts and to "correct misinformation" such as stating the COVID-19 vaccines are not effective. The group, called Hacks/Hackers, also is organizing censorship of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to determine who is a "credible source" on vaccines and block others from being cited, the Daily Wire reported. Users of the taxpayer-funded software – the Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust, or ARTT – are encouraged to paste in their friends' Twitter and Facebook posts. The tool will tell...

The First Amendment bars the government from deciding for us what is true or false, online or anywhere. Our government can’t use private pressure to get around our constitutional rights. TRUTH COPS Leaked Documents Outline DHS’s Plans to Police Disinformation

Tom Jones at the Florida-based Poynter Institute -- touted by Johnny Dollar as a "Stelter press agent" -- has penned a deeply disturbed piece headlined "CNN ‘hewing toward the center’ is not necessarily good for our democracy: Pushing for fairness and completeness in journalism is never a bad idea. But presenting 'both sides' sometimes can be." Jones was attempting to shame the Chicago Tribune for an editorial touting this purported CNN move to the center -- which sorely lacks evidence so far, other than dismissing a few flagrantly opinionated staffers like Stelter and John Harwood. Jones sounds like a press...