Seabass wrote:The people who claim to hate cancel culture and love free speech have cancelled a student for making fun of them.

A Law Student Isn’t Allowed to Graduate Because He Made Fun of the Federalist Society

On Jan. 25, Nicholas Wallace, a third-year student at Stanford Law School, sent a satirical flyer to a student listserv reserved for debate and political commentary. The flyer promoted a fake event, “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection,” ostensibly sponsored by the Stanford Federalist Society. It advertised the participation of two politicians who tried to overturn the 2020 election, Missouri Sen. Joshua Hawley and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “Violent insurrection, also known as doing a coup, is a classical system of installing a government,” the flyer read, adding that insurrection “can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government.”

Wallace’s email was designed to mock the Stanford Federalist Society for refusing to disavow the many Federalist Society luminaries who fomented the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including Hawley and Paxton. It worked: The flyer went viral, prompting USA Today to confirm that it was, indeed, satire. But the Stanford Federalist Society was not amused. In March, one of the group’s top officers filed a complaint against Wallace with Stanford’s Office of Community Standards. (This person’s name has been redacted from all documents.) The student alleged that Wallace’s satire “defamed” the Stanford Federalist Society, causing “harm” to the student group and to the “individual reputations” of the officers.

Then, on May 22, with graduation looming, the Stanford Federalist Society officer pushed the school to initiate a formal investigation. Wallace did not receive the complaint against him until May 27, his last day of classes. Stanford then placed a hold on his degree, prohibiting him from receiving his actual diploma at graduation on June 12. It has continued to investigate him for “a possible violation of the Fundamental Standard,” the school’s code of conduct, subjecting him to the same procedures that suspected plagiarists must undergo. The hold on his diploma has jeopardized Wallace’s plans to take the Michigan bar exam this summer; the state bar requires applicants to send their diplomas immediately upon graduation, which he will not be able to do.

Call it authoritarianism

The Republican Party has embraced an agenda that rigs the rules in their favor. There’s a name for that behavior.

American democracy is in a bad way, and the Republican Party is the reason why.

Blocking an inquiry into the January 6 attack on the Capitol, embracing Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen, making it easier for partisans to tamper with the process of counting votes: These are not the actions of a party committed to the basic idea of open, representative government.

It’s common to call this GOP behavior “anti-democratic,” but the description can only go so far. It tells us what they’re moving America away from, but not where they want to take it. The term “minority rule” is closer, but euphemistic; it puts the Republican actions in the same category as a Supreme Court ruling, countermajoritarian moves inside a democratic framework rather than something fundamentally opposed to it.

It’s worth being clear about this: The GOP has become an authoritarian party pushing an authoritarian policy agenda.

There are many kinds of authoritarian systems, and many ways to become one of them. In the United States, the threat that looms is a slide into what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism”: a system that still holds elections, but under profoundly unfair conditions that systematically favor one side. That process, of one party stacking the deck in its favor over the course of years, isn’t unique — we’ve seen it in countries across the world in recent years, in places as diverse as Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Understanding what’s happening in the US as something fundamentally similar to what’s happened elsewhere — using the a-word, unflinchingly — helps us not only diagnose the most dangerous policy steps the GOP is taking, but also truly appreciate the gravity of the situation in which America has found itself.

We are suffering from the same rot that has brought down democracy in other countries: a party that has decided it no longer wants to play by the rules and that would instead prefer to rule as authoritarians rather than share power with its opponents.

Texas governor signs bill restricting teachers' discussions of racism in the classroom

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law on Monday a bill that restricts how teachers can discuss racism in both current events and throughout U.S. history, the Texas Tribune reports.

Seabass wrote:

Texas governor signs bill restricting teachers' discussions of racism in the classroom

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law on Monday a bill that restricts how teachers can discuss racism in both current events and throughout U.S. history, the Texas Tribune reports.

https://www.axios.com/texas-governor-critical-race-theory-955f8ecf-a309-4536-8a5d-f84d81b70c64.html

Seabass wrote:Fuckin' weirdo.

State university faculty, students to be surveyed on beliefs

Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested that budget cuts could be looming if universities and colleges are found to be “indoctrinating” students.


TALLAHASSEE — In his continued push against the “indoctrination” of students, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed legislation that will require public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints to support “intellectual diversity.”

The survey will discern “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” in public universities and colleges, and seeks to find whether students, faculty and staff “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,” according to the bill.

The measure, which goes into effect July 1, does not specify what will be done with the survey results. But DeSantis and Sen. Ray Rodrigues, the sponsor of the bill, suggested on Tuesday that budget cuts could be looming if universities and colleges are found to be “indoctrinating” students.

“That’s not worth tax dollars and that’s not something that we’re going to be supporting moving forward,” DeSantis said at a press conference at a middle school in Fort Myers.

University faculty members have worried the new measure could create a chilling effect on their freedom of speech. Democratic lawmakers also have argued the bill might allow politicians to meddle in, monitor and regulate speech on campus in the future.

DeSantis, however, said the intent of the measure is to prevent public universities and colleges from becoming “hotbeds for stale ideology.”

“It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where you’d be exposed to a lot of different ideas,” DeSantis said. “Unfortunately, now the norm is, these are more intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted, and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”

The governor did not name specific state universities or colleges with this problem. He was broad in his accusations about the higher education system and used vague anecdotes to justify the need for such a survey.

For instance, the governor said he “knows a lot of parents” who are worried that their children will be “indoctrinated” when they go off to college, and that universities are promoting “orthodoxies.” But he did not offer specifics on those claims.

Washington lawmaker wears yellow Star of David, evoking Nazi persecution, to protest COVID vaccine mandates

A Washington state lawmaker critical of COVID-19 vaccine mandates wore a yellow Star of David at a speech over the weekend — a symbol the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust.

State Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, had the star affixed to his pink shirt during a speech to conservative activists at a Lacey church basketball gym on Saturday.

“It’s an echo from history,” Walsh wrote on a Facebook page where a video of the event was posted. “In the current context, we’re all Jews.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two election laws in the 2020 battleground state of Arizona that challengers said make it harder for minorities to vote.

The case was an important test for what's left of one of the nation's most important civil rights laws, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the Supreme Court scaled back in 2013. A remaining provision allows lawsuits claiming that voting changes would put minority voters at a disadvantage in electing candidates of their choice.

The vote was 6-3, with the court's three liberals dissenting.

Election law experts said the court's ruling will make it harder for minority groups to challenge voting laws.

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Former Murdoch Exec: Fox News Is Poison For America

Rupert Murdoch, whom I served for seven years, has many business and journalistic achievements. He owes himself a better legacy than a news channel that no reasonable person would believe.

It was my great honor to join Rupert, Barry Diller (who now is the chairman of IAC, The Daily Beast’s parent company), Jamie Kellner and many others in the early days of Fox Broadcasting Company, the network that’s the home to The Simpsons and the NFL. I worked closely with Rupert and I found him to be brilliant, courageous, optimistic, and a gentleman. (Everything that follows regarding Fox News and Rupert Murdoch represents my opinion.)

I had first-hand exposure to all of those qualities as he defied all of the odds to build a fourth network—a network that an expensive government study in the 1980s had concluded was “not likely to be viable.” He ignored the ridicule from ABC, CBS, and NBC, whose president called us the “coat hanger network”—a reference to the loop antennas required to receive our weak UHF local affiliate stations. Rupert never lost his confidence or his optimism. He snatched the Sunday afternoon NFL games away from CBS. He recruited strong VHF local affiliate stations from all three of the old networks. And by 2005 he had built the most watched broadcast television network in America. Amazing!

Initially Fox News followed the standard Murdoch playbook: find a market in need of new competition, jump in with both feet and shake up the status quo. Clearly there was an opening for a responsible and truthful center-right news network. And that is how Fox News started. I played a cameo role in the birth of Fox News by accompanying Roger Ailes to meet with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani to seek his help in persuading Time-Warner CEO Gerry Levin to carry Fox News on the all-important Time-Warner Cable systems in New York City. Levin did not want to provide “oxygen” for a new channel to compete with Time-Warner’s CNN. Ultimately Murdoch had to pay a massive “tribute” to cable operators to get Fox News added to their systems. But as always, he was confident—confident that his new channel would be a success and that he would get all the money back. And he did.

But, in recent years things have gone badly off the tracks at Fox News. Fox News is no longer a truthful center-right news network. The channel (especially the leading prime-time opinion programming) has contributed substantially and directly to:

• the unnecessary deaths of many Americans by disparaging the wearing of life-saving COVID masks;
• divisions in our society by stoking racial animus and fueling the totally false impression that Black Lives Matter and Antifa are engaged in nightly, life-threatening riots across the country;
• the unnecessary deaths of many Americans by fueling hesitation and doubt about the efficacy and safety of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines [Fox News provided me examples of pro-mask/vaccine on-air comments, but in my opinion, they were heavily outweighed by the negative comments of the highly rated primetime opinion hosts];
• former President Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him by providing a continuous platform for wild and false claims about the election—claims refuted by more than 60 judges, Republican State election officials, recounts in numerous States and Trump’s own Attorney General; and
• the Jan. 6, 2021, violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by continually promoting former President Trump’s “Stop The Steal” rally.