In anticipation of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and his somewhat confusing, often simplistic, and generally unhelpful twitting about his plans to make it more amenable to free speech as that’s understood in the constitutional sense, some people have announced their intention to leave twitter in protest. Chances are, the people claiming to leave won’t be missed by many outside their tribe, as they offer their celebrity in general support of the orthodoxy and bring little of thought or interest to the mix.

This was true when fleeing Twitter was the right wingers’ reaction to their darlings being silenced. This is true now as left wingers protest the potential of free speech. Granted, few actually leave, but many make bold proclamations to let their fans know how virtuous they are. Continue reading →

The confluence of two things, related yet separate, are producing dangerous beliefs that are likely to get worse before they get better. On the one hand, there is the “believe women” trope. In order to counter generations of women being ignored and disbelieved, the current trend is to presume women, as a sex, are accurate and truthful about their claims of assault, abuse and offense until proven otherwise.

Simultaneously, there is the “men are predators” trope, which metastasized in various directions such as “toxic masculinity,” which contends that all men are dangerous until proven otherwise. Continue reading →

Some people don’t get parody. Others don’t think it’s funny. When Anthony Novak decided to create a parody site for the Parma Police Department, he thought it was funny. But as Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar wrote, “The Department was not amused.”

According to Anthony Novak, he created “The City of Parma Police Department” Facebook account—a knockoff of the Department’s real page—to exercise his “fundamental American right” of “[m]ocking our government officials.” And mock them he did. In less than a day, he published half-a-dozen posts “advertising” the Department’s efforts, including free abortions in a police van and a “Pedophile Reform event” featuring a “No means no” learning station. The page spread around Facebook. Some readers praised its comedy. Others criticized the page or called out that it was fake. (He deleted their comments.) And still others (nearly a dozen, in total) felt it necessary to call the police station. A few asked if the page was real. The rest expressed confusion or alerted the police to the fake page.

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I often wonder how many of the unduly passionate progressives have sacrificed for their cause. Sure, they want others to sacrifice, but did they give up their job or college admittance to someone marginalized? Did they hand over the house keys, car keys, IRA password, to a historically oppressed person? Or do they just emote about it on social media, demanding that others sacrifice for a cause when they won’t. Muttering a land acknowledgement before a meeting isn’t the same as giving the land back, and if you’re unwilling to do the latter, the former is performative crap.

Then someone does something that isn’t merely sacrifice, but a sacrifice so extreme that it makes you question their sanity. During the Vietnam war, one of the iconic images was of a Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức, who self-immolated in Saigon. Whether it changed anything is hard to say, but it made its point about the persecution of Buddhists by Diem’s regime. Continue reading →

Whether it’s a commentary on the importance of Twitter as the “digital town square” or people just really hate Elon Musk, his purchase of Jack’s baby has hit a lot of people hard. It’s not as if they know what will happen, or that if they really hate Musk’s version of twitter, they can’t log off. But they don’t want to. What they want is for Twitter to be run the way they want it to be run, and that means no speech that hurts their feelings.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Mr. Musk said in his announcement of the deal. He professes to have a healthy tolerance of criticism. “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” he tweeted. Continue reading →

Most of us aren’t familiar with the name David Sabatini because we’re not into biology, but he was kind of a big deal when he was a tenured prof at MIT running the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research. Until he was accused of sexual impropriety.

Last August, Dr. Sabatini was placed on administrative leave at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he ran a research lab through the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research, after an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment made against him — conducted by a law firm separate from the university — found he had violated the institute’s sexual misconduct policy.

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There are a few points that are beyond dispute. After spending 24 years in prison, Darryl Howard was exonerated of the double murder after Durham Detective Darryl Dowdy fabricated evidence against him. After trial on Howard’s § 1983 suit, the jury awarded him $6 million. And finally, the City of Durham is under no duty to pay the judgment.

Yet now the city of Durham is refusing to pay him. Instead, the city is arguing that Dowdy acted in “bad faith” during his investigation. Therefore, the city argues, Dowdy wasn’t acting within the scope of his employment, and the city is refusing to indemnify him from the jury award.

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When news broke that Twitter’s board of directors approved its sale to Elon Musk, a weird thing happened. People expressed their passionate beliefs that this mattered to them. From the usual suspects spewing their usual inanities to a priest with an ill-advised wealth commentary to the ACLU and Amnesty International fearful of the dangers of free speech.

Musk says that he’s going to promote free speech on Twitter.

🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

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Just as the right wing efforts to silence speech about what they call critical race theory for lack of any meaningful description, fail to provide a sufficient precise and limited definition to pass constitutional muster, so too do efforts by the state, here by the University of Central Florida, in crafting a speech code to prohibit “discriminatory harassment.”

As Judge Kevin Newsom writes for a unanimous panel, the breadth of the UCF policy is “staggeringly broad.” How broad? Continue reading →

Bad calls happen, although one was hard to take. My son was fencing in the finals of a major A4 competition in New Jersey, the score was 14-14 and he pushed his opponent off the end of the piste. In fencing, that’s a touch and would have ended the bout. But it happened a few seconds before the end of the period, so the ref had his eyes on the clock rather than the piste and didn’t see it. The fencers did, and both stopped fencing because they knew what had happened. The audience saw it. The ref did not, so he didn’t call “halt.”

The period ended a second or two later, and he looked back at the strip and saw everyone, fencers and audience, looking at him. He had no clue why. I then screamed at him that a fencer went off the strip and he missed it because he wasn’t looking. I screamed at him that it was absurd that he would be reffing the final bout and blew the call. I screamed at him. It was the only time I ever screamed at a ref during my son’s time fencing. It did no good. He replied that he didn’t see it so no touch. Continue reading →