Tag Archives: free speech
Best Announcement of the Week – June 5, 2021
Last month, Facebook’s Oversight Board upheld a two-year suspension of former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6.
“We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs for Facebook, said in a blog post.
The announcement read, in part:
“We are today announcing new enforcement protocols to be applied in exceptional cases such as this, and we are confirming the time-bound penalty consistent with those protocols which we are applying to Mr. Trump’s accounts. Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year.”
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Worst Quotes of the Week – January 30, 2021
“This is what happens when you govern by pen and phone. The jobs of hard working Americans are sacrificed in the name of environmental activism.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), criticizing the number of executive orders President Joe Biden has signed, including cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline
“Sadly, free speech is a notion that is increasingly radical to the liberal left. I do not plan on leaving, and I need your help to fight back against this attack on free speech.”
Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), on being removed from the Board of Trustees for Texas Christian University (TCU) because he voted against certifying Joe Biden as president
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Worst Quotes of the Week – January 16, 2021
“There’s no comparison. The disgusting events of January 6 do not threaten this country nearly as much as the suppression of free speech does.”
Dennis Prager, columnist and radio talk show host, on the January 6 riots
“What we have here is a classic collusive oligopoly, a kind of new wine in an old bottle. What we saw with this attack on Parler was chilling to me. It’s one thing to de-platform everybody for free speech. But, this was a pincer move where Google and Apple, [the] first part of the pincer, was to not allow Parler apps to be down.”
Peter Navarro, Director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing, on the move by various media firms to remove Parler from its platforms
Parler is a conservative alternative to Facebook and other social media venues. Apple and Google removed Parler in the wake of the January 6 Capitol Hill riots.
“We have an executive order – not from Congress or D.C., but from the desk of the CEO of heaven, the boss of the planet. He said from his desk in heaven, this is my will; Trump will be in for eight years.”
Brandon Burden, pastor of Kingdom Life in Frisco, Texas, in a sermon on Sunday, January 10
Burden had insisted that God told him Donald Trump – a serial husband, tax cheat and draft dodger who once grabbed about grabbing women by their genitalia – was destined to serve 8 years as President of the United States. The FBI has been in contact with Burden.
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Worst Quotes of the Week – September 19, 2020
“It will start getting cooler. Just you watch. . . . I don’t think science knows.”
– President Donald Trump, in response to a reporter’s question about climate change causing wildfires in the Western U.S.
“You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”
– U.S. Attorney General William Barr, addressing a Constitution Day celebration hosted by Hillsdale College.
The event’s host asked Barr to explain the “constitutional hurdles for forbidding a church from meeting during Covid-19.” Barr had recently suggested that Sedition Act charges should be carried out against some protestors – even peaceful ones – to maintain the traditional “law and order” status quo conservatives demand every time civil unrest breaks out over civil injustice. It’s ironic he made his comments during Constitution Day, since the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution covers free speech.
“The blue states had tremendous death rates. If you take the blue states deaths out, we are at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”
– Donald Trump, noting the slow decline of positivity case rates and hospitalizations while touting the overall federal response to the outbreak at a White House press briefing.
The pandemic has taken nearly 200,000 American lives so far. Aside from claiming that “blue states” (those with Democratic governors) are insignificant, I’m equally appalled he ended his sentence with a preposition – more proof he’s an idiot.
“I think he made a mistake when he said that. It’s just incorrect information and I called him and he didn’t tell me that and I think he got the message maybe confused, maybe it was stated incorrectly. We’re ready to go immediately as the vaccine is announced and it could be announced in October, it could be announced a little bit after October but once we go we’re ready.”
– Donald Trump, referring to Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the importance of wearing masks and the timing for a vaccine.
Tweet of the Week – September 12, 2020
“New York Times” reporter Kathy Gray was in Freeland, Michigan, on September 10, when President Trump arrived to a cheering crowd – most without masks and none social-distancing. This is actually the first of many tweets Gray transmitted before the Trump campaign forced her to leave. As usual, Trump and his gang just don’t understand the concept of a free press.
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Worst Quote of the Week – June 12, 2020
“This may be a lot of things, this moment we are living through, but it is definitely not about Black lives – and remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.”
– Tucker Carlson, railing against the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Best Quote of the Week – May 29, 2020
“Much as he might wish otherwise, Donald Trump is not the president of Twitter. This order, if issued, would be a blatant and unconstitutional threat to punish social media companies that displease the president.”
– American Civil Liberties Union, in response to Trump’s executive order that could weaken legal protections for social media outlets.
“The president has no authority to rewrite a congressional statute with an executive order imposing a flawed interpretation of Section 230,” the ACLU continued, referring to the section of the Communications Decency Act that shields platforms from being held liable for what users publish on them.
Trump had issued the order in a toddler-esque tirade against Twitter for having the audacity to fact-check two of his posts; one claiming that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud (a long-standing conservative mantra used to thwart voting rights) and the other that the state of California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.”
Twitter is based in San Francisco, a city with a notorious reputation for having a leftist political and social bent. California Governor Gavin Newsom, an arch foe of Trump, recently issued an order to protect public health in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic while casting their votes in this year’s presidential election.
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