Happy Anniversary to Citizens United

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court overturned portions of a federal law that empowered government to dictate how Americans who were not connected to any candidates and political parties could practice their inherent right of free expression. It was one of the greatest free speech decisions in American history.

The case of Citizens United revolved around state efforts to ban a conservative nonprofit group from showing a critical documentary it produced of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton right before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. At the time, the McCain-Feingold Act made it illegal for corporations and labor unions to engage in "electioneering communication" one month before a primary or two months before the general election.

Or, in other words, the law, written by politicians who function without restrictions on speech -- and applauded by much of a mass media that functions without restrictions on speech -- prohibited Americans from pooling their resources and engaging in the most vital form of expression at the most important time, in the days leading up to an election.

"By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others," Justice Anthony Kennedy would write for the majority, "the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker's voice."

Right after the decision, President Barack Obama famously rebuked the Justices during his State of the Union for upholding the First Amendment, arguing that the Supreme Court had "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections."

First of all, the court hadn't overturned a century of law (though the age of the law bears absolutely no relevance to its constitutionality). Citizens United reversed portions of a law, less than a decade old, that forbade Americans from contributing as much as they wanted directly to the funding of speech. Corporations would still be banned from donating directly to candidates, as they had been since 1907.

Moreover, those corporations, typically unwilling to pick partisan sides for reasons of self-preservation, are still responsible for only a fraction of all political spending, averaging around 1% or less since 2010. Top 200 corporations spend almost nothing on campaigns.

Conversely, since 2010, there's been an explosion in grassroots political activism on both right and left. As Bradley A. Smith points out in The Wall Street Journal today, small-dollar donors are more in demand than ever. Bernie Sanders lives on them, and Donald Trump raised more money from donors who gave less than $200 than any candidate in history.

Nothing in Citizens United, of course, made it legal for foreigners to participate in American elections. It is still illegal for anyone running for office to solicit, accept or receive help from foreign nationals.

Obama, like many progressives, would ratchet up the scaremongering over anonymous political speech. Over the past couple of decades, our political class has convinced large swaths of the electorate that private citizens have a civic responsibility to publicly attach their names to every political donation. They do not. As the often-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission says: "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

It is true, though, that since the Citizens United decision, streaming services have been able to produce and play documentaries about political candidates like Trump without answering to a government entity. Publishing companies, especially smaller ones, can now print books about political figures without being policed by the state. And you can contribute as much money you want to any independent group that shares your values. As it should be. The very notion that anyone should be restricted from airing his or her views is fundamentally un-American.

Then again, even if the floodgates had opened for "special interests" -- a euphemism for causes that Democrats dislike -- and even if there had been a massive spike in corporate spending on speech, and even if secretive corporate entities started producing documentaries that disparaged favored political candidates and released them days before an election, it still wouldn't matter.

The principle of free expression isn't contingent on correct outcomes, it is a free-standing, inherent right protected by Constitution. That principle holds whether people of free will are too lazy or too gullible to resist alleged misinformation. The proper way to push back against rhetoric you don't like is to rebut it.

Or not. It should be up to you.

SOURCE 





Are Christians living in fear?

Daniel Park arrived at Michigan Law School expecting serious, multifaceted debate on a range of issues.

And plenty of cold weather. It turns out he was only right about the weather.

“I couldn’t believe the culture of shame and intimidation against Christian voices on topics such as abortion or marriage,” Daniel says.

While law schools tout mission statements embracing ideological diversity, the reality is that neither the faculty nor the students at many law schools engage seriously with the Judeo-Christian values that are the foundation of American law and society.

Combine that with a growing tendency for Christians to stay silent out of fear, and it’s clear there’s a huge problem.

“When I wanted to bring a pro-life speaker to the law school, even student groups that are pro-life in conviction said it was ‘too controversial’ or that ‘we would lose credibility with the community,’ shares Daniel. “Seeing how afraid others were, I decided to keep my head down for the remainder of my first year.”

Then Blackstone happened. “That’s when it hit me—I’m not alone. And I cannot stay silent.”

The Blackstone Legal Fellowship brings together exceptional Christian law students and prepares them for careers marked by integrity and excellence.

Since Blackstone was launched 20 years ago, it has grown exponentially. Today, nearly 2,300 law students have benefitted from the generosity of people like you, John.

Many students who attend the training program describe their pre-Blackstone education experience as similar to Daniel’s. They feel alone, outnumbered, and overwhelmed.

But time after time, these students graduate Blackstone feeling reenergized in their passions and fully equipped to carry on the mission to which God called them.

“I learned from lawyers, academics, judges, and faith leaders on how to advocate for truth winsomely,” reveals Daniel. “I met colleagues at law schools around the country fighting the good fight.”

“That’s when it hit me,” he says. “I am not alone. And I cannot stay silent.”

This past fall, Daniel returned to law school ready for action. “A still, small voice in my heart was urging me to start a pro-life group at my law school. I and three other Michigan law students in my Blackstone class decided to go for it,” says Daniel.

It took some time and a lot of work, but ultimately, Daniel and his friends were successful. Protect Life at Michigan Law is now an official student group, promoting the inherent dignity of every human life from conception to natural death.

“Without Blackstone, I would not have had the boldness, support, or resources to step out in faith and start this pro-life group,” Daniel reveals.

And without Blackstone, Daniel and nearly 2,300 other Blackstone graduates wouldn’t have the skills and knowledge they need to stand boldly for religious freedom, life, and marriage and family.

Via email from Alliance Defending Freedom: info@adflegal.org





‘I don’t have any pain anymore’: Justina Pelletier takes stand in Boston Children’s Hospital lawsuit

For years, Justina Pelletier endured intense pain, mysterious symptoms that left her family in anguish, and led to a bitter standoff with her doctors over her care.

On Monday, seven years after the Connecticut teenager was placed in a locked psychiatric unit at Boston Children’s Hospital, she took the stand in her family’s malpractice suit against her doctors and caregivers.

In a small, wavering voice, she chronicled the nine months she spent in lockdown at age 14 against her parent’s wishes after doctors accused the couple of interfering with her treatment. She recalled the pain of being taken from her parents, leaving her with a separation anxiety so intense that she still sleeps with her mother. Her nightmares are frequent.

The terror always revolves around being removed from her parents, she said. “I would get taken away,” she said, describing her fear.

Now 21, Pelletier said that since having her colon removed in February 2018, her hospital visits have subsided. “I don’t have any pain anymore,” Pelletier said.

Pelletier’s testimony came one week into the civil trial in Suffolk Superior Court against the renowned pediatric hospital and four of Pelletier’s doctors and caregivers.

Linda and Lou Pelletier were locked in constant dispute with doctors and other caregivers at the hospital over their daughter’s diagnosis and treatment. Relations at the hospital grew so acrimonious that the Pelletiers lost custody of their daughter after doctors and state child welfare officials concluded that they were acting against her best interests and interfering in her treatment.

It was excruciating stomach pain from severe constipation that prompted her and her mother in January 2013 to travel from their West Hartford, Conn., home to Children’s Hospital, in an ambulance, in the snow, to seek treatment.

Less than a month into her stay there, on Valentine’s Day 2013, her parents were whisked away from the hospital by men clothed in black, she told the jury. “I didn’t get to see them anymore,” she said.

Pelletier had never spent a night away from home without her mother. “All of a sudden I just didn’t get to see her," she said.

The hospital’s only explanation: “They said that I’d get better faster, but they really didn’t say why,” she said.

Medical notes, records, and e-mails between caregivers describe Pelletier’s parents as difficult, disruptive, belligerent, and accusatory, according to court records.

The Pelletier case has driven headlines, ramped up an unlikely coalition of advocates and stands, to some, as a symbol of doctors’ powers to override parental rights.

After Pelletier’s parents were banned from the hospital, it would be a week before she would see them again. From then on, they were allowed once a week supervised visits on Fridays. Phone calls were limited to 20 minutes per week, always with someone listening in.

Doctors and caregivers at the hospital suspected that some or part of Pelletier’s symptoms might be psychologically driven, or a type of somatoform disorder.

Patients with such disorders tend to manifest real physical symptoms, such as pain or fatigue, but without any underlying explanation supported by physical, biological or medical reasoning.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital believed Pelletier would benefit from intensive psychological treatment and therapy.

But Pelletier’s parents were resistant to psychotherapy, doctors said, and insisted that their daughter instead suffered from mitochondrial disease, a chronic, very rare and incurable condition characterized by mutated cells.

The diseased cells become unable to completely burn food and oxygen to generate enough energy for a body to live. The condition is often inherited.

During Pelletier’s hospitalization, she and her parents were forbidden from speaking about health issues, physical ailments or anything medical related. Even dandruff and ingrown toenails were off limits. If they ventured there in conversation, the call would end abruptly, Pelletier said.

Pelletier said her constipation worsened while she was hospitalized. Staff would make her sit on the toilet for extended lengths of time, she said. They also wanted her to push herself in her wheelchair, but she felt so weak that she could not. She would be left to sit, unmoved, sometimes for entire days, she said,.

Pelletier said she did not feel encouraged by the staff. “They were just being mean about it,” she said.

She was scared all the time, missed her family desperately and felt like no one at the hospital believed her.  “I just wanted to go home,” Pelletier said. “It was really hard being away from my family.”

These days, she has discovered horseback-riding therapy. She thrives in the saddle and now rides competitively, and it’s not unusual for her to take winning ribbons home, usually blue and red. “I love it,” she said during one of the few times her face lit up on the stand.

When Pelletier’s testimony came to an end, her father helped her down from the witness stand.

With his arms hooked under her armpits, Lou Pelletier supported his daughter’s weight as she half-shuffled, half limped across the courtroom back to her empty wheelchair beside her mom.

SOURCE 





Australia: When a government says a white man is black, dissenters have to be fired

I put up the post below yesterday on my Tongue Tied blog.  It now has a sequel, which I reproduce below it.  The disgrace has got worse.  The truthteller HAS now been fired. Does anybody believe that the pink-skinned guy below is an Aborigine?



WHAT a scandal. Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt now threatens to sack a whistleblower who called out "Aboriginal historian" Bruce Pascoe as a white.

The whistleblower in Wyatt's sights is Josephine Cashman, an Aboriginal businesswoman on his advisory council. That's because Cashman claimed Pascoe, author of the bestseller "Dark Emu" and star of an upcoming MSC series, is a fake Aborigine, and she says she has plenty of evidence.

Genealogical records on dark-emu-exposed.org suggest all of Pascoe's ancestors are of English descent, and Pascoe refuses to say which is actually Aboriginal.

Indeed, his story keeps changing. Once he identified as white, until a reviewer of his first novel said it would have been better had Pascoe been black.

Once he claimed that one of his mother's grandmothers was Aboriginal, before admitting she was English. Now he claims he's descended from several tribes, including the Boonwurrung of Victoria, Tasmanian Aborigines and the Yuin of NSW.

But his claims have been rejected by the Boonwunrung Land & Sea Council, the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania and members of the Yuin, and now even the Yolngu of Arnhem Land.

Elder Terry Yumbulul says his fellow Yolngu want Wyatt to investigate Pascoe's "claim to Aboriginal ancestry" and what he's gained from an identity "he has been unable to verify".

Yumbulul, like the Boonwurrung and the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania, also rejects Pascoe's claims — based on false citations and exaggerations — that Aborigines weren't hunter-gathers but farmers in "towns" of "1000 people".

"There is no evidence of it in our art, languages or songlines," says Yumbulul, who accuses Pascoe of causing "concerns about our ancient cultures, our ancient traditions, our precious stories".

So what's Wyatt's reaction? It's to defend white Pascoe and
seemingly threaten Aboriginal Cashman with the sack. Wyatt told the Guardian Australia that Pascoe's Aboriginality was "being played out publicly" when "we should deal with (it) within communities".

He said he could ask one of his advisers to quit "I have to think of the greater good of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."

Really? Is truth to be sacrificed for the "greater good"? And where's this "greater good" when Aborigines are being stripped of their past and even their right to say who is of their tribe?

No Liberal MP should tolerate what Wyatt seems to have in mind. If Cashman goes, so should he.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 27 January, 2020

Ken Wyatt dumps Josephine Cashman in wake of Dark Emu scandal

Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt has sacked his one-time friend and ally Josephine Cashman amid a furious debate over Aboriginal identity.

Ms Cashman on Tuesday lost her position on the senior advisory group overseeing the design of an indigenous voice to government, seven weeks after she asked Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton for an investigation into acclaimed author Bruce Pascoe for “dishonesty offences”.

Mr Wyatt was said to have been blindsided by Ms Cashman’s email to Mr Dutton on December 11, 2019, in which she alleged Professor Pascoe gained a financial benefit by wrongly claiming to be Aboriginal. Mr Wyatt learned about her complaint in The Weekend Australian on January 11, after Mr Dutton had referred it to the Australian Federal Police.

Since then, The Australian has learned, members of the senior advisory group became increasingly concerned that Ms Cashman’s public criticism of Professor Pascoe was divisive and detracting from their work. Ms Cashman’s push for a national register of indigenous Australians as a way of confirming identity also drew criticism.

“Following recent discussions with the Senior Advisory Group Co-Chairs, Professor Dr Marcia Langton AM and Professor Tom Calma AO, and after careful consideration, I have decided that Ms Cashman’s membership of the Group is no longer tenable,” Mr Wyatt said in an email to reporters on Tuesday.

“Ms Cashman’s actions are not conducive to the constructive and collaborative approach required to progress the important co-design process for an Indigenous voice.”

The Australian has been told Ms Cashman’s future on the senior advisory group was considered untenable last Thursday after the AFP confirmed it had completed its assessment of her complaint against Professor Pascoe and identified no Commonwealth offence. Having identified no financial benefit on the material Ms Cashman provided, the AFP did not probe Professor Pascoe’s ancestry.

The Australian has been told Ms Cashman’s sacking was imminent when a debate erupted on Monday night over the authenticity of a contentious letter that Ms Cashman gave to Sky commentator Andrew Bolt, which he published on his blog. Said to have been from Northern Territory elder Terry Yumbulul, it was critical of the thesis of Professor Pascoe’s bestseller Dark Emu, which draws on the historical accounts of early settlers to call for a rethink of the hunter gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal people. “It would have been impossible for my people to have built wells, silos, houses and yards to pen animals, as Pascoe promotes,” the letter states.

Mr Yumbulul later told NITV: “I did not say anything of the sort to write the letter on behalf of me”.

However Ms Cashman said on Sky on Tuesday that Mr Yumbulul approved a final draft of the letter. Bolt said Mr Yumbulul and his wife Clely were cc’d on several drafts and he published emails which he said showed they had replied with corrections.

Professor Pascoe is described on the back cover of his latest book, Salt, as a Bunurong man. He is accepted as Aboriginal by Mr Wyatt and other prominent indigenous Australians including Professor Langton, the co-chair of the senior advisory group.

On Bolt’s program on Sky on Tuesday night, Ms Cashman claimed: “There is a group of Aboriginal elites that decide who is Aboriginal and who is not and people on the ground have had a gutful of it.”

Professor Pascoe writes about claims he is “not really Aboriginal” in Salt. “What they say has cool logic. Clinical analysis of genes says I’m more Cornish than Koori.” he writes.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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