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Rights Abridged: The Flawed
Model for Red Flag Laws
by Kerri Toloczko
{ spectator.org } ~ In fifteen states and the District of Columbia, new Red Flag laws allow judges to take licensed firearms away from individuals even if they have not committed or even threatened to commit a crime... A simple petition from a third party triggers a court proceeding that could eliminate a person’s Second Amendment rights and cause a cascade of consequences. Florida is a good example of one of those states. Some civil rights organizations have expressed concern about constitutional principles being violated by such laws, such as the right to due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Red Flag laws seem intended to bypass processes that already exist to have someone adjudicated as mentally ill or guilty of a crime. Initial Red Flag hearings, like other restraining order hearings, often do not allow the accused time to retain an attorney or present a full defense before having their rights abridged. Proponents often make the case that Red Flag laws are generally modelled after existing protection order or restraining order laws and are therefore a reliable method of protecting the public. This implies civil rights are not already being violated in protection order proceedings, even though examples abound of rights trampled and the judicial system abused by individuals advancing a personal agenda. It may be that state lawmakers don’t realize their well-meaning laws, when implemented, are harming citizens by depriving them of constitutional rights and wreaking havoc with their lives. Legislators may not perceive that courts are currently abused by individuals using the justice system as personal leverage in disputes such as child custody, divorce, or a bad break up. If lawmakers spent a day watching the proceedings of those whose lives are forever changed by hasty injunctions, they would see the abuse and think twice about using this system as a model. A recent observation day in a Lee County, Florida courtroom showed clear problems with the system. Those who had petitions filed against them had little time to prepare. One man was informed of a hearing just one business day before, leaving no time to retain an attorney. Within minutes he lost his ability to have firearms, was blocked from entering his own home, and had to stay away from his children and estranged wife, who showed no evidence of a threat in the few minute “hearing.”...
https://spectator.org/rights-abridged-the-flawed-model-for-red-flag-laws/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=3cbb1ff974-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_07_03_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-3cbb1ff974-104608113 .
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Something Totalitarian This Way Comes
by Daniel J. Flynn { spectator.org } ~ At the urging of other journalists, YouTube demonetized and deplatformed various voices this week. Steven Crowder, an actor, comedian, and activist with nearly four million subscribers on his YouTube channel... remains on the site but stripped of the ability to support his show with advertisers. Carlos Maza, a Vox writer and frequent target of Crowder mockery, decried YouTube for “creating a platform where only monsters feel safe enough to talk about s#!+ that actually matters” in arguing for the company to remove Crowder entirely. MeTube, not YouTube. The censorship follows similar moves by tech companies, including Twitter bans on American Spectator writer Robert Stacy McCain, political consultant Roger Stone, and radio personality Anthony Cumia, and Google rigging its search engine to suppress results for numerous conservative outlets, including The American Spectator. Why do progressives censor? Because it works. While a muzzle resulting in a megaphone surely results from censorship on occasion, the more likely outcome involves suppression. Progressives understand this. “Milo’s deplatforming was so swift, and so just, that the man found himself in several million dollars’ worth of debt following the utter collapse of his book deals, national tours and television appearances,” Harry Todd writes at Paste regarding an equally anonymous figure throwing a milkshake at Yiannopoulos in the United Kingdom. “The virulent bigot used to be nigh-inescapable, his xenophobic remarks following you at every turn on the internet like the eyes of a creepy portrait in a haunted house. Then he got the boot from social media, and today we don’t even hear about an act of severe dairy-based political violence until nearly a full week later. In other words, as we argued in April, deplatforming works.”Consider also Lauren Southern, who announced her retirement from the great conversation this week — at 23. “Farewell,” she tweeted followers. “I’ve enjoyed this all greatly but it’s time to start a new chapter of my life.” Patreon deplatformed her after she reported on non-governmental organizations trafficking illegal aliens from the Middle East into Europe. She did not peddle falsehoods in her documentary on illegal immigration, but truths, which serve as a big offense for journalists when they traffic in the wrong truths. An activist dumped urine on her in Vancouver. Governments detained her and blocked her from speaking. Big Tech duct-tapes a mouth more effectively than the government. Consider the report this week that Americans, for the first time in history, spend more time on their devices than watching television. This is how we communicate to a mass audience in 2019. Google enjoys a 92 percent share of the search-engine market. YouTube’s market share exceeds three quarters. Facebook’s market share reaches 70 percent. At its peak, Standard Oil’s domination of the American oil refining market did not match Google’s domination of the worldwide search engine market, and by the time the government splintered John D. Rockefeller’s creation into Esso, Arco, Chevron, and other entities, Standard Oil’s market share did not approach the current market share of Google, Facebook, or YouTube...
https://{/something-totalitarian-this-way-comes/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=3cbb1ff974-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_07_03_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-3cbb1ff974-104608113 Dems Desperate to Block Census Citizenship QuestionLouis DeBroux: With the Supreme Court poised to issue a ruling any day now, Democrats and leftist advocacy groups are making a desperate, last-minute attempt to influence the nation’s highest court regarding whether to allow a citizenship question to be reinstated on the 2020 census questionnaire.
Under review is the case of Department of Commerce v. New York, challenging the addition of the citizenship question. Critics claim the question itself will harm minority communities who will be less willing to respond to the census survey, in which case (critics assert) those communities will be underrepresented.
The real issue for Democrats, of course, is not concern for minority communities, but control of Congress, and therefore control of the $880 billion in annual federal spending for schools, roads, infrastructure, and other public services. The party that controls the purse strings wields enormous power.
The last-minute effort to sway the Court centers on an unpublished 2015 study by deceased Republican strategist Thomas Hofeller, discovered recently on a hard drive by his estranged daughter. Leftists claim this is evidence of a scheme by the Trump administration to dilute and suppress the minority vote, which tends toward Democrats, in order to increase Republican-held seats in Congress.
Under prior Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act, states could show compliance by creating “majority-minority” districts in which a majority of eligible voters in the district are racial minorities. The problem for Democrats is their realization that this has both helped and hurt them in practice. By drawing racial minorities in from surrounding areas to create the majority-minority districts, it has strengthened the remaining districts for Republicans, even increasing the number of Republican-held districts.
Now Democrats claim the citizenship question will deter minorities from participating in the census, reducing the population counts in minority-heavy areas where Democrats dominate. They claim the citizenship question will result, in a “high risk” scenario, of an under counting of the black population by 3.7% and of the Hispanic/ Latino population by 3.6%. The Trump administration has argued that getting accurate census data is necessary to properly enforce the Voting Rights Act. In other words, as with securing the border, Democrats are suing the Trump administration to prevent it from enforcing laws passed by Congress.
The ACLU filed the unpublished study in court last week, claiming it is evidence of an effort to undercount minorities, but the Department of Justice issued a statement vigorously denouncing any claims a partisan motive. Instead, the DOJ press release rebukes the accusers, stating, “The motion borders on frivolous, and appears to be an attempt to reopen the evidence in this already-closed case and to drag this Court into Plaintiffs’ eleventh-hour campaign to improperly derail the Supreme Court’s resolution of the government’s appeal.”
The “evidence” of the alleged scheme was made public last week in a court filing by the ACLU, but the Department of Justice issued a statement vigorously denouncing any claims of a partisan motive. Instead, the DOJ press release rebukes the accusers, stating, “The motion borders on frivolous, and appears to be an attempt to reopen the evidence in this already-closed case and to drag this Court into Plaintiffs’ eleventh-hour campaign to improperly derail the Supreme Court’s resolution of the government’s appeal.”
The DOJ asserts there is no evidence that the unpublished survey even made it to Trump administration officials charged with conducting the census: “Before today, Mr. Gore [a DOJ official] had never heard of the unpublished study apparently obtained from the personal effects of a deceased political consultant. That study played no role in the Department’s December 2017 request to reinstate a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census.” In fact, the DOJ called it “an unfortunate last-ditch effort to derail the Supreme Court’s consideration of this case.”
Additionally, Hofeller’s study didn’t assert that asking the citizenship question would affect redistricting; instead, it said basing voting districts on citizen age would have that effect.
The goal here is to pressure Chief Justice John Roberts into blocking the citizenship question. Leftists believe he can be manipulated if he fears a particular ruling by the Court will be portrayed as politically motivated, regardless of whether it actually is. That’s not unreasonable. It was Roberts who succumbed to media pressure, reportedly switching his vote at the last minute to side with the leftists in upholding scumbag/liar-nObamaCare’s individual mandate. Democrats and the press were relentless in the final weeks before the ruling, claiming a failure to uphold the individual mandate would be a sign of partisanship.
The general sentiment of Court-watchers is that this Hail Mary, however, will not be successful.
First of all, during oral arguments the Court’s conservative majority appeared to agree with the Trump administration that it has broad authority and discretion over census questions, and in a separate ruling last fall, the Court ruled it is not unconstitutional for Cabinet officers to have political motives for policy.
Furthermore, court records for this case are officially closed. With the Census Bureau warning it must begin printing forms this month or risk missing deadlines, it makes it unlikely the Court would consider this last-minute appeal.
Taking these issues into account, as well as prior indicators by the Court that it was ready to address the question, and the fact that the Supreme Court earlier this year agreed to hear the case before it went through the appeals process, makes it unlikely that the justices will allow this new evidence to be factored into their decision.
Even so, Chief Justice Roberts is the wild card. Stay tuned.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/63420?mailing_id=4315&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4315&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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