Free Republic

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Wednesday released a plan to fight “digital disinformation,” promising to “push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties” for disseminating false information related to U.S. elections. “Disinformation erodes our democracy, and Democrats must have a plan to address it,” she details in a Medium post, proclaiming President Trump “welcomed foreign interference in our elections, inviting interference from a host of countries that have an interest in the outcome, including Iran and China.” “He’s currently facing impeachment for putting his own political interests over the national interests of the United States – and...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a plan to fight disinformation and to hold tech companies accountable for their actions in light of the 2016 election. “Disinformation and online foreign interference erode our democracy, and Donald Trump has invited both,” Warren said in a Tweet Wednesday. “Anyone who seeks to challenge and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election must be fully prepared to take this on – and I’ve got a plan to do it.” Warren proposed to combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google responsible for spreading misinformation designed to...

§ 18.2-152.7:1. Harassment by computer; penalty. If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any illegal or immoral act, he shall be is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction in which the communication was made or received or in the City of Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following...

Leftist billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg are driving the Orwellian Language of the left on gun issues. This is based on their political alignment to communist dictators like Chairman Mao and Joseph Stalin, who disarmed their people, not in promoting the words of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, who spoke out on the necessity and benefit of having armed citizens. Bloomberg, and his anti-American cohorts were able to “buy” progressive control of the red state of Virginia in the 2019 elections. What we just saw in Virginia — the mass protests in defense of the 1st and 2nd Amendments —...

As director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Campus Free Expression Project, I am always eager to get beyond the DC beltway to learn how students understand free expression on their particular campus. So, to return to Duke University, my alma mater, was particularly welcome. Duke has a legacy of defending the expression of controversial views. In 1903, the school set a new standard in defending faculty academic freedom when the trustees voted to reject history professor John Bassett’s offer to resign after his praise of Booker T. Washington sparked controversy for the school—this only three years after Leland Stanford’s widow...

In an interview with the New York Times' editorial board, former Vice President Joe Biden made his most stringent call yet for cracking down on free speech on the internet. After being asked by the Times about previous comments Biden has made regarding Facebook's refusal to remove negative ads targeting his campaign, the Democratic front-runner attacked both the social media platform and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. "I've never been a fan of Facebook," Biden says. "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan, I think he's a real problem." Biden and Facebook have been feuding for months, as Reason has previously...

Montclair State University officials violated the freedom of speech of a group of its students by shutting down a peaceful gun rights demonstration on campus last year, a lawsuit filed Wednesday claimed.MSU sophomore Mena Botros, president of Young Americans for Liberty, and two fellow students on Sept. 10, 2019 donned orange jumpsuits and posed as criminals while holding signs mockingly supporting “gun-free zones," according to the lawsuit.Some of the signs stated "every civilian gun is a threat” and “criminals for gun free zones.”Though the students were “peacefully expressing their ideas in a common outdoor area of campus,” a university police...

Two additional venues have canceled a lecture event featuring conservative commentator and author Michelle Malkin. The event was first moved to the Gendron Franco Center in Lewiston, Maine, after a local hotel canceled the event as originally planned by a group of University of Maine students. Malkin’s second backup location has now also canceled her planned lecture. It appears the event will still happen, but details on a fourth venue have not been made public as of this writing. According to a local news report, the Gendron Franco Center announced on Friday that it canceled a Friday night event featuring...

It all started in June 2018, when Quillette published my article, “Why Women Don’t Code,” and things picked up steam when Jordan Peterson shared a link to the article on his Twitter account. A burst of outrage and press coverage followed which I discussed in a follow-up piece. The original article was one of the ten most read pieces published by Quillette in 2018, and continues to generate interest. A recent YouTube video about it has been viewed over 120,000 times, as of this writing: In his tweet promoting my article, Peterson took issue with one of my claims. I...

Whether you like it or not, there’s plenty of evidence that the God of the Bible does not sanction same-sex relationships. You may not interpret the Good Book that way. Perhaps you’ve got reasonable theological reasons for it.

WASHINGTON -- Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro announced Thursday that he was bowing out of the 2020 Democratic primary. The only reason to notice or care is that Castro was one of the more shrill candidates, so it's good that he never found purchase in the crowded field and hence had to "suspend" his campaign. Like Kamala Harris, the California Democratic senator who dropped out in December, Castro has been part of the left's "cancel culture" that seeks to silence those with differing views rather than to debate in the marketplace of ideas. Harris tried to stand...

One of the largest glaring issues with how Silicon Valley is approaching censorship is the fact that the goalposts being set by firms are all over the board, with little industry-wide discussion on approach and limits, and other sensitivities for how such an important task is to be accomplished with transparency and due process. So what has censorship in the modern age for the Facebooks and Twitters of the world devolved into? Siloed decision making by secretive "boards" that have limited diversification of background and worldview, all pushing ever-changing directives out to technical teams which must implement these wishes into...

New christian/conservative alternative to FB and twitter

A member of a Michigan synagogue is suing anti-Israel protesters and Ann Arbor city leaders over 16 years of protests outside the Beth Israel Congregation, arguing the protesters have been uniquely provocative and that some restrictions on them would not violate free-speech protections in the U.S. Constitution. The regular Saturday protests of up to a dozen people outside the synagogue, with signs the lawsuit describes as hateful and anti-Semitic, amount to harassment of worshipers, so don’t qualify for full First Amendment protections, according to the 85-page filing in U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan. “The First Amendment right of free...

An Iowa man will spend up to 16 years behind bars for stealing a pride flag from an Iowa church and setting it on fire — a sentence that even a local LGBTQ group says might be excessive, according to a new report. Adolfo Martinez, 30, of Ames, was sentenced Wednesday for stealing the pride banner hanging at Ames Church of Christ back in June — and then burning it with lighter fluid and a lighter outside the Dangerous Curves Gentleman’s Club, The Des Moines Register reported.

An Iowa man was sentenced to 16 years in prison for setting an LGBTQ flag on fire. Adolfo Martinez, 30, stole a rainbow-colored pride banner that was hanging from the side of a church and lit it on fire in June of this year. The County Attorney said “hate crimes” were added to the charges because Martinez is suspected of criminal mischief against someone’s property because of “what it represents as far as sexual orientation.” This is outrageous! Murderers and rapists serve less time! The Des Moines Register reported: An Ames man was sentenced Wednesday to about 16 years in...

Apparently, now sharing Bible passages are a violation of Facebook’s ever-changing “Community Standards.”

The Seattle Times (Crystal Paul) reports: 'Community members including transgender locals and trans allies have inundated the Seattle Public Library with calls and emails, asking the library system to cancel an upcoming event hosted by the Women's Liberation Front—a self-described "radical feminist organization" that has publicly espoused what critics call anti-trans views. The group's event, titled "Fighting the New Misogyny: A Feminist Critique of Gender Identity," is publicized as "a critical analysis of gender identity" that will "make powerful arguments for sex-based women's rights," according to the event page.' The law here is clear: When a library opens space for...

The Department of Justice sided with college students reprimanded for promoting free speech by slamming Jones County Junior College’s “Orwellian,” “draconian,” and “unconstitutional” treatment of them in a Statement of Interest filed on Monday. The DOJ made explicitly clear that public colleges cannot “trample” on their students’ First Amendment rights. In a news release from the DOJ announcing the Statement of Interest filing, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division clearly stated, “Repressive speech codes are the indecent hallmark of despotic, totalitarian regimes. They have absolutely no place in our country, and the First Amendment outlaws all...

No matter what side you take on Trump Impeachment Theater, or just about any other topic for that matter -- from the politics of chicken sandwiches to climate change -- if you dare challenge the views of the reigning political priests, chances are you'll be called stupid and hateful. And someone will want to shut you up. The traditional American response to such silencing has always been: "This is a free country, isn't it?" But is it now? Or are we building a new "Animal Farm," where we are told what to think and how to think it? These are...