Goooood Morning!

1. What is so hard to understand about the concept of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly? The Daily Beast negligently covers a story about how some alt-right groups are planning some kind of anniversary/reunion event in Charlottesville. (Funny, I thought we celebrated anniversaries of good things) and how some activists are plotting to block them. I especially like this sentence:

“Activists warned Charlottesville last year that the Unite the Right rally could turn violent. Now they’re determined to keep neo-Nazis out of their city for the anniversary.”

The rally turned violent because the counter-demonstrators turned it violent with help from authorities, who couldn’t, couldn’t, or didn’t want to keep the alt-right and the antifa demonstrations away from each other. This is the Berkeley trick: “Your speech will incite violence from us, so its irresponsible for you to speak. This issue was supposedly settled when the ACLU fought to allow Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois 40 years ago.  In the end, the Nazis didn’t march but the principle that they couldn’t be blocked because of their message was made clear. I wonder if the self-righteous, speech-restriction fans represented by Black Lives Matter activist Lisa Woolfork even know about that case, given such ignorant quotes as,

“[Charlottesville authorities] seem to have gotten the message that white supremacist ideology is dangerous, but they are not willing to take, I believe, the truly moral step to say Kessler’s rally is a white supremacist Nazi rally, and therefore is inimical to our values and that we can ban that.."

No Lisa, you can’t ban that. You can’t ban ideas, no matter how dangerous you think they are, or how dangerous they in fact may be. The theory that the government should ban speech based on morality is infinitely more dangerous than anything these alt-right jerks say, but you still have the guaranteed right to promote such democracy-rotting garbage. Another Lisa quote:

“We did not ignore the white supremacists and let them proceed to go about their business undisturbed without any censure. These ideas are harmful, and they lead to horrible consequences in the real world.."

And I repeat: What is so hard to understand about the concept of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly? It sure seems to be especially hard to understand for the Left recently.

2. Well THIS is ironic…From Politico:

“President Donald Trump uses a White House cellphone that isn’t equipped with sophisticated security features designed to shield his communications, according to two senior administration officials — a departure from the practice of his predecessors that potentially exposes him to hacking or surveillance. The president, who relies on cellphones to reach his friends and millions of Twitter followers, has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use, according to the administration officials.”

What is this but just another version of the Clinton private server episode, with the sinister undertones missing, leaving just the recklessness, incompetence and stupidity?

3. Fake News. Once again, this morning featured ridiculously biased and incompetent Supreme Court reporting from the news media, designed to mislead and bias the public.  Although she apparently knows no more about the law than my dog, HLN’s Jennifer Westhoven again was chosen to explain a Supreme Court decision, this time the 5-4 ruling in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis. Here is the thrust of the decision, as written by Justice Gorsuch:

“The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written. While Congress is of course always free to amend this judgment, we see nothing suggesting it did so in the NLRA — much less that it manifested a clear intention to displace the Arbitration Act. Because we can easily read Congress’s statutes to work in harmony, that is where our duty lies.”

This is core judicial conservative stuff: the laws may stink, the policy may be bad, Congress may want to fix the law, but the courts’ job is to interpret and enforce the law, not change it to their liking.  This is essentially the same message as the sports betting decision, which Westhoven massacred last week. This time, she told her audience that the decision struck down the right to join in class actions against big companies, “like the lawsuit celebrated in “Erin Brockavich.” No no no, you idiot. The SCOTUS decision involves employment contracts and labor disputes only. It has absolutely nothing to do with non-labor class actions like the environmental law case recounted in the film.

Then Westhoven crossed some more lines other than the journalism incompetence border that she had just obliterated. She gleefully noted that Justice Ginsberg had dissented vigorously and had read her dissent from the bench, then the HLN reporter segued into clips from the hagiographic documentary about Ginsberg now showing in some theaters. We never were told what Ginsberg’s dissent was: she’s one of the good guys, you see, since she’s a feminist and a progressive, so the mere fact that she disagreed with the majority is all we need to know to conclude that she’s right and they’re wrong. Here’s a novel idea: read the opinions. I guarantee Westhoven didn’t.

4. Nice. Ana Marie Cox has held various positions of influence with leftist news sources, like Mother Jones, and is currently writes for the Daily Beast (see above). Yesterday she wrote a non-apology apology on Twitter:

People are upset I RT’d that image of Trump’s make-up-caked-over pustule but I think we can all agree such an image is hardly the most upsetting thing to come out of the administration. His skin, presumably, can be fixed. That said, I am sorry & will post extra Exley today.

Here was the photo she retweeted, with the comment “I knew he was rotten but I thought it was on the inside”:

Cox has proved herself to be a vile, vicious, unprofessional hack for years, and any organization who pays her deserves to be shunned as ethically inert—talk about “rotten.” What would happen to any journalist in the past who did something like this to any other President? Could there possibly be a better example of Golden Rule defiance? What would have happened to a male journalist who did this to, say, Michelle Obama?

Wait: I thought that body shaming was culturally condemned by feminists and progressives, as well as by anyone with basic decency.  Oh, that’s right: Republicans, men, conservative men, President Trump and anyone else progressives dislike don’t count. That is the standard, right?

This is an ad hominem attack, a dirty and disgusting attack, astoundingly unfair, and pure, unvarnished hate….and the original tweet received over 3000 “likes.” Here’s my  verdict: these are disgusting, repulsive people, and they are the blemished face of “the resistance.”

Cox, being the unapologetic fick that she is, brushes off any complaints and couples it with Rationalization #22, a watermark of the ethically corrupt, “It’s not the worst thing.”