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Steve Mac Donald

Entries in Free Speech (18)

Wednesday
Aug312011

Video Taping Cops Protected Free Speech

In a Union leader front page story a 1st circuit court has ruled that you cannot arrest someone for videotaping a police officer in public.  The court stated that the use of such footage is a critical part of our first amendment rights.  The Boston PD has appealed the ruling.

New Hampshire has had several videographers arrested for filming the police in the course of their duties so I am interested to see how this case proceeds.

I'm also interested in how the New Hampshire Socialist party (DBA- NHDP) feels about this?  A majority of their members and most if not all of like the threat of arrest, fine, or imprisonment for recording officers of the law performing their duties in public.  The Democrats must be siding with the intimidator.

The lefts motivations are obvious.  They can't win if any opinion other than their own gets equal treatment, but why what are the police trying to hide?

While we wait to see how the appeal of the first circuit ruling proceeds, there are a few bills floating around the current legislature to address the issue.  One suggestion would require you to notify the officer that you will be recording them.  Bad idea for reasons discussed here. I'm thinking, "hello obstruction," but the problem could be as simple as logistics.  Then there is the conflict with simple common sense.  If it is acceptable to record in public spaces, or to be recorded by the public or private entities in same, why the cone of privacy over the very people with whom we should be paying the most attention?

Monday
Aug162010

John And Terry Try To Try To Suppress Free Speech?

Granite Grok- Supporting racist vandals?Someone sent me a picture of a campaign sign with a sombrero on it.  It was a Mahoney for Congress sign.  It was, well...kind of funny, given that Mr. Mahoney stated on video that he was basically supporting the Grahamnesty path to amnesty.  He has flip flopped since then, and insists he's for a border fence first, but it's a campaign thing...who really knows.   But that didn't make the sign any less amusing.  So I posted it.

As with most things a blogger posts, not everyone agrees.  And that’s kind of the point. We encourage that, but somtimes the comments are not well thought out. For the record I posted the photo in question with no supporting text.

Comment number one on the jump

Comment number one.

 

I didn't know granite grok supported vandalism? Good to know!
Posted by: John Fortune | August 13, 2010 7:00 PM

 

John has established for us that by merely posting a picture of a Mahoney for Congress sign with a sombrero on it, that Granite Grok supports vandalism.  I'm actually relieved.  What if he had actually accused us of supporting Sean Mahoney, or amnesty?! Close call, that.

I suppose John thinks himself the swaggering provocatuer here but he's not.  Based on John’s 49 letter thesis, if the Grok posted a picture of looters and people burning cars, the Grok must by default support rioting.  If we post a picture of the twin towers burning on 9-11, we would be supporting terrorism and murder.  How about a picture of Carol Shea Porter or Nancy Pelosi?  Oh, we must be progressives now. Make your own examples at home, it's fun! Posting a picture of any criminal could be construed using the John Fortune complicty filter as support for them or their crime.

"I didn't know the grok supported vandalism? Good to know?"  Good indeed.

The obvious result of accepting John’s brilliant observation would mean that the Grok could no longer use pictures or video of anything lest they be misinterpreted as advocacy.  But it's not a total loss.  By using the same methodology we can say that John supports the willful suppression of photographic political speech--Good to know.

Comment number two.

 

wow Skip way to send the message that the tea party isn't racist, this is deplorable. It's tea partiers that do and support things like this that give us all a bad name. I resent this disservice to our cause.
Posted by: Terry Bellageron | August 13, 2010 7:04 PM

 

Terry posits the idea that this picture makes the tea party look racist. By my thinking it says that Mahoney signs increase sombrero sales.   Way to stimulate the eoconomy!  We actually can't tell either.   But it might be instructive to note that after being posted for over 20 hours, and thousands of site visits later, none of the liberal trolls or lurkers made that connection. I guess it must have been a busy day over at the F*ck Tea Jihadi headquarters because we had to wait for Tea Party Terry to tell us that this is not just racist, but clearly the Tea Party was involved.

Well how does he know that from the picture?  I thought Sean Mahoney was all about the Tea Party, having been at ‘several’ or was it ‘many’ events.  Why would the Tea Party—let’s use John’s word here—vandalize a Mahoney for congress sign with a sombrero?  And if that’s not it, how does he comport with the idea that a political web site can’t or should not report that using pictures, video, or commentary of a political nature?

Does it sound to you like Tea Party Terry is manufacturing racism?  I think it does.  Does he want people to think we at the grok are hate mongers?  Why would Tea Party Terry do that?  To intimidate the Grok?  To persuade us to take down the photo? To scare off visitors?  To supress future posts....? It really does sound like an effort to suppress “political speech” he objects to.

So is it a coincidence that two comments with undertones of speech supperession were posted 4 minutes apart--probably not, but we can only speculate. 

For the record, we did not stage this photo, it was sent to me by someone who saw it and thought it was amusing.  I never realized it had legs. 

And, no we are not remotely concerned with your claims of our complicity to either vandalism or racism.  But don’t let that stop you from trying again.  We support free political speech in all its forms and invite the open debate.  Just don't use vulgar language and you can accuse us of whatever you like. But next time try to do a better job of it. 

 

Cross Posted at Granite Grok

Saturday
Jul312010

Hodes Monkeys With The First Amendment

Right to What?Reading Paul Hodes blog at the daily KoS is the literary-equivalent of watching monkeys throw poo. What is perhaps more disgusting is that the KoS Kids roll in it like heather and serve it to each other as if it were pâté de foie gras , encouraging their own sheer ignorance as they dance nine times widdershins about the burning remnants of the US constitution.

This week’s poo fling comes after Chuck Schumer’s evil plot to water-board the first amendment failed to properly rise in the oven Schumer usually cooks his constitution in. He’d helped craft something called the DISCLOSE act, which disclosed to us just how brazen power hungry incumbents can be when their brazen power-hungriness gets the best of them. They write laws to silence the speech they don’t like while ignoring speech they do. So when the soufflé dropped after Paul Hodes already voted for it he did what any cry-baby liberal does. He grabbed his talking points and hid in the skirt of the moon-bat mother ship.

What have I done?I’d offer you a link, but I’m not that cruel. But if your curiosity has gotten the best of you, or you are simplly smitten with seeing the literary equivalent of simian patty pitching, there’s a cross-post over at that pot- hole Boo Hoo Hampshire; still a liberal dive but a slightly more tolerable pond to stick your virtual toe in if you must.

As to what Hodes has done by supporting the Act, that is worth far more time and attention than his posturing on influence and money in politics and anyone who has ever looked at his funding knows that the poo isn’t just air born; a large portion of it remains under confinement. Because wail as he might, what Mr. Hodes has tried to do by supporting the DISCLOSE act is attempt to protect his incumbency by stifling speech using the power of the federal government and nothing he says can change that.

Enough exposition; let’s get to the charges.

Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that would allow the federal government to define paid political speech differently for different kinds of group’s organizations. Oddly enough groups that favor Mr. Hodes and his party have an easier time of it than those who do not. That's Mr. Ethics for you.

"The DISCLOSE Act should really be renamed the New Sedition Act—it is clearly intended to intimidate and deter organizations, including nonprofits, from engaging in any political criticism of incumbents like its main sponsors, Chuck Schumer and Chris Van Hollen," said Hans A. von Spakovsky.

The eight former FEC commissioners describe how the bill would introduce asymmetrical rules for unions and companies for the first time since the early twentieth century. Unions, for example, would not be subject to the bill's ban on political spending for government contractors or companies with a small percentage of foreign ownership.

Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that would encumber the effort of engaging in political speech such that groups and small business owners, many of them LLC’s right here in New Hampshire, could neither afford, nor take the time to understand and meet the government’s requirements for exercising their first amendment rights.

This bill has been promoted as ‘mere disclosure,' but through the expanded definition of electioneering communications combined with the ban on electioneering communications by even the smallest of contractors, it actually prohibits a tremendous amount of political speech that was legal before Citizens United," said Bradley A. Smith. "Congress can't respond to a decision striking down speech prohibitions by outlawing still more speech, yet that is what this bill would do."



"The ‘DISCLOSE Act' contains a bevy of burdensome, unnecessary and constitutionally suspect provisions," said Michael E. Toner. "If the First Amendment's clarion call for Congress to ‘make no law... abridging the freedom of speech' is to have any force, this legislation must be summarily rejected."

Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that will make it almost impossible for grass roots groups to exercise free speech without fear of violating the law—it is therefore a deliberate effort to silence opposition through intimidation and regulation of the current government and to Mr. Hodes himself in the midst of an election he and they happen to be losing.

The commissioners' analysis, though, explains how the bill adds a complicated scheme of arduous and vague rules-with no hope for clarification through the rulemaking process-designed to confuse and intimidate grassroots groups while midterm campaigns are underway.

"In America, good-faith errors by those attempting to comply with our complicated maze of campaign finance regulations should not result in jail time or eye-popping fines," said Lee Ann Elliott. "These regulatory burdens fall hardest not on large-scale players in the political world but on grass-roots movements, low-budget campaigns, and unwitting volunteers. Congress would worsen this situation by passing ‘DISCLOSE' without giving the FEC time to implement regulations for it.".

Mr. Hodes greatest crime should be thinking that he has the right to regulate political speech at all. But he takes it further by signing on to a law that would rig the rules to favor speech destined to benefit him while complicating matters for his opposition. If he were a store clerk or even just a dopey liberal lawyer he would be dismissed as naieve or ignorant, but as a congressman with designs on the US Senate it violates common sense, our god given rights, equal protection under the law, his oath of office, and borders on treason.

 

Cross posted at Granite Grok

Tuesday
Jun152010

Chilling

 

Anyone who doubts Kathy "Lawsuit" Sullivan intentions while crafting a speech intimidation amendment with Maggie 'The Red' Hassan will find these words suitably chilling.   The reason the Manchester School board gave Grace Sullivan (Kathy's sister) a $253,000.00 severance and her old job back?

Democratic Party Chairman Kathy Sullivan, alleges that there were grounds to sue because Republican Mayor Ted Gatsas ousted Grace Sullivan for political reasons.

There were grounds to sue...for political reasons.

Sounds like intimidation to me. Or is it more like extortion?

How would you like the constant threat of that hanging over your "free" speech?

 

Saturday
Jun052010

Hassanawannasplainesomethingtoyou

 

State Senator Maggie Hassan is plotting her next attack on free speech.

Hassan said her next step would depend on whether she is re-elected in the fall, but said she plans to closely follow the political advertising in the upcoming campaign season to determine whether she'll bring forward new legislation in the next session. She said her primary concern is that corporations can advertise through what she characterized as a "shell" group with a pleasant name, without the public ever being aware of who is actually funding the advertising.

Emphasis mine.

I find the bolded text of particular interest because there are plenty of groups with pleasant names out there already that popped up as a result of trying to stop corporate paid speech with McCain-Feingold that do exactly what she claims she fears most.  They take money from all manner of undeclared donors and use it to advance a political agenda without having to identify who funds them.

And Maggie had best take a serious look at unions in any future such endeavor (should she survive November) because unions function like corporations, many of which are international in nature, and who support candidates and advocate for issues that are all conveniently the same ones she favors.

Oh, and Jim Splaine is having retirement confusion again thanks to Hassan.