Free Republic

A “heckler’s veto” refers to when someone disagrees with a speaker’s message and manages to trigger events that silence the speaker. Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order on former President Donald Trump in his hush money case and the sanctions he imposed for Trump’s alleged violation of that order are an outrageous form of that veto.Merchan slapped Trump with thousands of dollars in sanctions and even threatened him with incarceration for future violations.In fact, both the order and the sanctions are wildly unconstitutional.While the former president is on trial, with headlines blaring minute-by-minute attacks on the leading presidential candidate’s character and...

@elonmusk Proposed law: if someone tears down the American flag and puts up another flag in its place, that person should get a free (but mandatory) one-way trip to that flag’s country @elonmusk I’m not saying they can’t come back, but they have to experience that country for some period of time before returning

U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa acquitted three former Backpage executives of myriad counts against them last week—more evidence of how empty so much of the federal case against them is. Humetewa ruled that there was insufficient evidence to uphold 50 of the counts* against journalist and Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey, 10 of the counts against former Executive Vice President Scott Spear, and 18 of the counts against former Chief Financial Officer Jed Brunst. From the beginning, this prosecution has been premised on a bogus rationale (authorities yammer on about sex trafficking though none of the defendants are charged with sex...

Jack Poso 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec BREAKING: Trump found in contempt of court for 9 gag order violations

Judge Juan Merchan fined former President Donald Trump $9,000 Tuesday and held him in contempt for violating his gag order, warning he may impose jail time for future violations. Merchan ordered Trump to remove the offending posts by 2:15 pm Tuesday and to pay the fine by May 3. He rejected Trump’s defense that he was simply engaging in political speech by responding to attacks by witnesses like Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, writing that the Court is “keenly aware of, and protective of, Defendant’s First Amendment rights, particularly given his candidacy for the office of President of the United...

Canada has fallen. It’s become the North Korea of the West, and it’s getting worse every single day. This new bill they’ve introduced is the cherry on their tyrannical sundae. It’s called the Online Harms Bill C-63, and it would make even Stalin blush. As a matter of fact, tyrannical dictator Kim Jong-Un would look at this bill and feel an instant rush of communist inadequacy. With this new bill, Justin Trudeau is fueling those online rumors that his real father is actually communist dirtbag Fidel Castro. This new bill is supposedly aimed at safeguarding the masses from online “hate...

Communist societies have a long history of imprisoning political dissidents in psychiatric wards. One of the more insidious features of Marxism’s manipulation of language is its stigmatization of opposing points of view as some form of mental disorder. Opposition to “gay marriage” is said to be a “sign” of homophobia. Distrusting Islamic terrorists who celebrate 9/11 and shout, “Death to America,” is a “symptom” of Islamophobia. Wanting the federal government to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law “reveals” underlying xenophobia. Not wanting biological men to force their way into ladies’ locker-rooms and showers suggests that a person “suffers”...

The Color Revolution is restless. Beginning in the former Soviet republics in the early 2000s, it moved along the coast of North Africa with the so-called Arab Spring in the 2010s, and, into the current decade, has spread further. The ostensible purpose of Color Revolutions—named after the Rose Revolution, Orange Revolution, and Tulip Revolution in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively—is to replace authoritarian regimes with Western liberal democracies. American and European intelligence services are often heavily involved in these revolutions, with ambitions not only to spread modern ideologies but also to undermine geopolitical opponents. The West’s favored methods of supporting...

The following letter by Bill Donohue is in response to the Inspector General’s report on the FBI probe of Catholics: April 24, 2024 Hon. Jim Jordan Chairman House Committee on the Judiciary 2056 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-3504 Dear Chairman Jordan: After issuing a news release on April 19, the day after news stories broke on the FBI’s internal probe of Analysts involved in the investigation of Catholics, I had a chance to read Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on this issue. While he satisfied some of our concerns, serious issues remain. Horowitz begins by noting that the...

@elonmusk Given the relentless attacks on free speech, I am going to fund a national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment

A retired Pennsylvania teacher is suing his local government after he was convicted of a criminal charge for putting a “For Sale” sign in his truck window. Will Cramer teamed up with the Institute for Justice last week to take legal action against the borough of Nazareth over its ordinance, claiming that it’s a violation of his First Amendment rights, according to the nonprofit law firm. Cramer had put the sign in his 1987 Chevy Deluxe last October and received a ticket stating that parking a vehicle in public “for the purposes” of selling it was illegal. “It made no...

You are undoubtedly familiar with many efforts of the fascist left to use its control of government offices, bureaucracies, and other institutions to delegitimize and silence mainstream conservative speech: things like the Censorship Industrial Complex, otherwise known as pressure by government functionaries to induce social media platforms to shut down wrongthink on topics ranging from Covid to climate change to Trump; de-monetization of perfectly reasonable sites like PJ Media or Watts Up With That; the political prosecutions of presumptive Republican nominee Trump, including locking him in a courtroom to prevent him from campaigning; and many more such. This week along...

NEW: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says that Wikipedia has been ideologically corrupted, raises the possibility that Katherine Maher collaborated with U.S. intelligence, and says that, if NPR were committed to truth, it would fire her "right away."https://city-journal.org/article/wikipedia-co-founder-shocked-by-npr-chief-katherine-maherApr 18, 2024 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ransomnote: Christopher Rufo's related posts about Katherine Maher:@realchrisrufo | Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" 4/18/2024, 6:34:17 PM · by ransomnote · 38 repliesX ^ | 4/18/2024 | Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufo, Katherine MaherNPR's Katherine Maher: "the number one challenge" in...

ransomnote: I confess I kept the unattractive image of her below even though I could have retaken the screenshot to get a 'fair and balanced' image of her, but she's against all that because it supports the 'White Male' canon...so her pic is below as is. Video is less than 2 minutes in length.https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780929268949614848Apr 18, 2024 TRANSCRIPT BEGINS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Katherine Maher: I started by talking about the idea of free and open information as some of our founding principles 'Free and open source' coming from the idea of the open source community .Well, I have come to the opinion and the...

Our mainstream press has abandoned its sentinel post, leaving America vulnerable as we move toward the most important election in generations. No one was particularly surprised when Vladmir Putin recently won reelection by a landslide. The near universal reaction could be characterized by a roll of the eyes and a sighed “what do you expect, it’s Russia.” We’ve seen this before, after all -- it is his fifth term -- but there is something new in its significance for us. What’s changed is the newly fragile condition of our own democracy, making the Moscow “election” emphatically relevant to America. Many...

"Our team re-reviewed the domain, the rating will not change as it continues to have anti-LGBTQI+ narratives… The site authors have been called out for being anti-trans. Kathleen Stock is acknowledged as a ‘prominent gender-critical’ feminist.” This was part of an email sent to UnHerd at the start of January from an organisation called the Global Disinformation Index. It was their justification, handed down after a series of requests, for placing UnHerd on a so-called “dynamic exclusion list” of publications that supposedly promote “disinformation” and should therefore be boycotted by all advertisers. They provided examples of the offending content: Kathleen...

KILLEEN, Texas — Anyone who decides to visit Ferrari-Pizza Pasta Subs in Killeen will have the chance to order some Italian cuisine with a side of vulgar decorations. Ferrari owner Robert Ferrari told 6 News his restaurant opened in 1958. "I'm from New York and most of my customers come from the North to get true Italian food from me here," Ferrari shared. In his restaurant, Ferrari allows customers from all across Central Texas to bring in posters, signs and memorabilia for him to put up on his restaurant walls. These posters, signs and memorabilia are spread all across the...

On XApr 17, 2024 TRANSCRIPT:Katherine Maher: The number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States... is a fairly robust protection of rights, and that is a protection of rights, both for platforms, which I actually think is very important. The platforms have those rights to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites, but it also means it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of 'where does bad information come from?' and some of the influence peddlers who have made a real...

Under a legal theory endorsed by the 5th Circuit, Martin Luther King Jr. could have been liable for other people’s violence.In his last protest march, Martin Luther King Jr. led a parade of demonstrators down Beale Street in Memphis, lending his support to striking sanitation workers. After a few young black men started breaking storefront windows, the indiscriminate police response killed one suspected looter and injured dozens of protesters. Under a legal theory blessed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, King could have been held liable for the unanticipated harm that ensued from that March 1968...

Scotland’s new “hate crime” law already is demonstrating how it will be used to squash dissent and free speech. The so-called Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which went into force in Scotland on April Fools’ Day, adds age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity to a list of protected classes. The law provides for various potential punishments, including jail time. The new law has been fiercely criticized by author J.K. Rowling, creator of the “Harry Potter” series, and many others who rightly see it as an attack on the freedom of speech. Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said...