IN CIA, FBI, FREE SPEECH, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SOCIAL MEDIA, TWITTER
Tomorrow the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hold its first hearing, chaired by Jim Jordan. The existence of this committee illustrates the vital difference between a narrow minority and a narrow majority. Under Democratic rule, “weaponization” of federal agencies was applauded, not investigated.
The committee’s name refers in part to the Democrats’ deployment of the FBI and CIA as partisan agents. Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential race despite the intervention of the FBI and the CIA in that campaign. One can only speculate about what would have happened in 2020 if the Democrats had not misused federal agencies to promote Joe Biden.
Jonathan Turley provides a good introduction to what will happen tomorrow and in succeeding sessions:
This coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold its first hearing on the FBI and the possible “weaponization” of government agencies. …
The role of the FBI in prior scandals will remain a point of heated debate in Congress. However, members of both parties should be able to agree on the need to investigate one of the most serious allegations: Censorship by surrogate.
I assume Turley is kidding here. Democrats are entirely in favor of censoring all opposing views. They only resort to censorship by proxy because they can’t yet get away with doing it themselves. From here on, though, Turley is sound. Links are omitted:
The “Twitter files” revealed an FBI operation to monitor and censor social media content — an effort so overwhelming and intrusive that Twitter staff at one point complained internally that “they are probing & pushing everywhere.” The reports have indicated that dozens of FBI employees worked on the identification and removal of material on a wide range of subjects and that Twitter largely carried out their requests.
Nor was it just the FBI, apparently. Emails reveal FBI figures like a San Francisco assistant special agent in charge asking Twitter executives to “invite an OGA” (or “Other Government Organization”) to an upcoming meeting. A week later, Stacia Cardille, a senior Twitter legal executive, indicated the OGA was the CIA, an agency under strict limits regarding domestic activities.
We know for sure that both the FBI and the CIA engaged in campaigns to suppress speech that did not agree with the Democratic Party’s talking points. Anyone who isn’t appalled by this should be put on a boat and shoved off toward China, where he will feel at home.
The weaponization of government agencies on behalf of the Biden administration has continued up to the present (Again, see original for links):
According to reports, one email in August 2022 sent “long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos” deemed to be voicing “anti-Ukraine narratives.” Even satirical and comedy sites reportedly were pegged by the social media police.
Why it is “treasonous” to be less than fully enthusiastic about spending tens of billions of dollars to support Ukraine has yet to be explained.
Some apologists continue to defend this process, saying the FBI was only objecting to disinformation the way that citizens did on Twitter. That is not true; the government reportedly used back channels and regular meetings to flag unacceptable statements. Indeed, even if it were true, many things are more dangerous when done by government.
No kidding! If I had reached out to top Twitter employees and told them I wanted to meet with them to explain which tweets I think should be suppressed, I wouldn’t have gotten a response. But when the FBI and the CIA offered to help Twitter (and Facebook, and who knows who else) decide what should be censored, the answer was, “Yes, Sir!”
For years, many politicians and pundits have dismissed free-speech concerns by noting that the First Amendment only applies to the government. So long as corporations do the censoring, they contend, it is not a free-speech problem.
This obviously is wrong on several fronts.
The First Amendment is not the exclusive measure of free speech. Corporate censorship of political commentaries or news stories are denials of free speech that harm our democratic system.
That is correct. We don’t believe in free speech because we have a First Amendment, we have a First Amendment because we believe in free speech.
Second, this is a First Amendment violation. The Twitter files have substantiated long-standing concerns over “censorship by surrogate” or proxy. As with other amendments like the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches or seizures, the government cannot use private agents to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. Just as a police officer cannot direct a security guard to break into an apartment and conduct a search, the FBI cannot use Twitter to censor Americans.
That should be blindingly obvious. And yet, I am not aware of a single Democrat holding public office who will concede the point. Democrats are holding out for censorship, as long as they are the ones doing the censoring.
There is more at the link.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/02/weaponization-under-fire.php
No comments:
Post a Comment