Category: Rights

Next: The Supremes

Legal Stuff, Rights

Oh, I like this kind of thing:

A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law that bans Big Tech from censoring speech based on political viewpoint on Friday.

House Bill 20 prevents social media companies with more than 50 million monthly users banning users simply based on their political viewpoints. The law also requires several consumer protection disclosures and processes related to content management on the social media sites to which the bill applies. These sites must disclose their content management and moderation policies and implement a complaint and appeals process for content they remove, providing a reason for the removal and a review of their decision. They also must review and remove illegal content within 48 hours. House Bill 20 also prohibits email service providers from impeding the transmission of email messages based on content.

Needless to say, the Left went into full hair-on-fire mode:

The law was promptly challenged by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association. They argued that tech companies have a First Amendment right to select and curate the content people post on their platforms. They were able to get the new law blocked, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed that decision — and won.

Fortunately, common sense and Constitutionalism prevailed.  In the judgment of the 5th Circuit:

The implications of the platforms’ argument are staggering. In the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks* could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business. What’s worse, the platforms argue that a business can acquire a dominant market position by holding itself out as open to everyone — as Twitter did in championing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”…Then, having cemented itself as the monopolist of “the modern public square,”…Twitter unapologetically argues that it could turn around and ban all pro-LGBT speech for no other reason than its employees want to pick on members of that community…

The 11th Court found differently, hence it’s off to the Supremes we go.  And they can’t punt it back, because two federal appeals courts have conflicting rulings.

Let’s see what happens.

*Note how banks were specifically mentioned, which should make this little episode interesting.

Fair Warning

Legal Stuff, Rights

Following on from the decision of credit card companies to “flag” sales made at gun stores, we have this development:

Twenty-four Republican attorneys general sent a letter to Visa, Mastercard, and American Express Tuesday warning them to drop plans to code and compile gun sales in America.

The new code will not protect public safety. Categorizing the constitutionally protected right to purchase firearms unfairly singles out law-abiding merchants and consumers alike. First, efforts to track and monitor sales at gun stores would only result in vague and misleading information. This categorization would not recognize the difference, for example, between the purchase of a gun safe and a firearm. Nor would it capture firearm purchases made at department stores, resulting in arbitrarily disparate treatment of “gun store” merchants and consumers.

More importantly, purposefully tracking this information can only result in its misuse, either unintentional or deliberate. Creating and tracking this data only matters if your institutions are considering using that information to take further, harmful action—like infringing upon consumer privacy, inhibiting constitutionally protected purchases by selectively restricting the use of your payment systems, or otherwise withholding your financial services from targeted “disfavored” merchants.

And my favorite part:

Social policy should be debated and determined within our political institutions. Americans are tired of seeing corporate leverage used to advance political goals that cannot muster basic democratic support. The Second Amendment is a fundamental right, but it’s also a fundamental American value. Our financial institutions should stop lending their market power to those who wish to attack that value.

Be advised that we will marshal the full scope of our lawful authority to protect our citizens and consumers from unlawful attempts to undermine their constitutional rights. Please keep that in mind as you consider whether to proceed with adopting and implementing this Merchant Category Code.

Give it to the bastards good and hard, boys and girls.  Make ’em sweat, and make ’em bleed if they ignore you.

Damn Good Question

Anti-Gun Nannies, Government Thugs, Rights, The Gun Thing

I know that the Socialists in Congress have “shelved” their attempt to ban “weapons of war” i.e. ARs and AKs (for the moment), but this little exchange should prove interesting:

As Massie puts it (I paraphrase slightly):  “Who are the Department of Agriculture and Department of Education planning on going to war with, if their employees are to be excepted from this prohibition?”

Let us record the words of the late (and dearly-missed) H.L. Mencken, who stated:

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol to his head.  Put it in his hand and it’s goodbye to the Bill of Rights.”

And quod erat demonstratum, today.

“Private” Property?

Business, Rights

The concept of private property has always been a contentious one.  It shouldn’t have been, as one of the few actual duties of any government is to protect private property — but ask any landlord in, oh, California how difficult it can be to evict tenants who haven’t paid the rent.

It’s even worse in Scotland — surprise, surprise — where temporary tenant-relief laws passed during the Covidiocy are now set to become permanent:

Previously, once a landlord could prove three consecutive months of rental arrears or more, eviction would have been guaranteed.

Under these latest plans, no eviction will be guaranteed, regardless of circumstance or grounds. It will be all discretionary.

The Bill proposes that a tribunal will still be able to grant an eviction if it considers it reasonable, including where late or no-payment of rent is the reason why the landlord is seeking an eviction. But campaigners have questioned what is deemed reasonable.

Instead of making it an ironclad guarantee — if tenants haven’t paid rent for X period, you may evict them — there’s now good chance that a court may say that such eviction may be “unreasonable”, by some standard undefined.  Of course, that’s an egregious injustice which runs contrary to the concept of private property, and the landloards know it:

‘Generally, a landlord will have a reason to recover their property and once they’ve evidenced their grounds, they should be entitled to recover it.

‘It is unclear what – if any – evidence the Scottish Government are analysing to consider the removal of mandatory grounds for possession.

‘Abusing temporary provisions to satisfy a long-term policy objective appears to be an underhand tactic and the intention to permanently make all grounds for possession discretionary simply highlights the Scottish Government’s wilful and continued disregard of the value of the private rented sector.’

And here’s the weaselly response from the ScotGov:

‘It simply means a Tribunal can take into account all of the circumstances of both landlords and tenants relating to a case before making a decision.  Good landlords recognise the case for keeping tenants in their homes where possible, so adding a final check from the tribunal will support responsible management, recognise financial and other pressures that tenants can face and help prevent homelessness.’

What utter, Class A, Deluxe bullshit.

Bad Behavior

Gummint, Rights

In the light of Senile Biden’s appointment of this nutcase to run the new MiniTrue:

…we also have this:

Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, announced on Thursday plans to publish the IP addresses of all Weibo users both on their individual account pages and whenever they post comments, stating it was part of an effort to prevent “bad behavior” online.

Now, as someone who has blogged under my full name pretty much for most of my online life, this would seem to be no big deal.

There are some serious caveats to this, however.

In the first case, I’ve done this in the United States, where the government, at least nominally (coff coff ) is hamstrung by the First Amendment, and what Kim du Toit says on a blog shouldn’t matter to the Gummint at all, subject to the usual constraints of a polite, well-ordered society that we supposedly are (coff coff redux ).

Would I feel similarly at liberty if I were Do Toi Kim, resident of Beijing?  Hell no.

But we know — and Biden’s actions prove — that there are a number of totalitarian assholes and Democrats (some overlap) who would not only support a government action like China’s, but actually have called for it in the recent past.