Great. We now have a U.S. Supreme Court Justice who doesn’t like the First Amendment. The Babylon Bee hardly had to be satirical to come up with that headline. During yesterday’s oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri, the newest Justice and the only one appointed by President Biden, Kentanji Brown Jackson revealed a frightening hostility to the most important guaranteed principle of American freedom from oppressive government.
“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods,” Jackson told Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga as he argued against allowing Big Brother to recruit Big Tech as a political ally by intimidating social media platforms into removing posts the government finds inconvenient. I read Jackson’s quotes yesterday with genuine horror. My sister, a federal litigator of liberal tendencies, had assured me that Jackson was a smart, solid, trustworthy jurist based on her experiences appearing before her. Justice Jackson may be smart, but trustworthy she isn’t. Intentionally or accidentally, President Biden’s openly DEI appointment to fill the Court slot vacated by Stephen Breyer installed the perfect tool to assist aspiring Democrat totalitarians to achieve their agendas.
Oh please, tell us again how Donald Trump is the existential threat to democracy.
“Hamstringing the government” is the entire principle underlying the First Amendment, indeed the entire Bill of Rights. Jackson’ lament demonstrates the socking devolution of the American Left. On the celebrated, ultra-liberal Warren Court that brought us school integration, the rights have a lawyer appointed and “the fruit of the poisonous tree” among other advances in civil rights, liberal icon William O. Douglas and fellow Democrat Hugo Black kept reminding the public and the government that “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech” means that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, and that in the Bill of Rights, Constitution prohibitions on “Congress” are prohibitions on the government as a whole. In those golden days, it was the evil conservatives trying to tell people what they were allowed to see, read and hear.
Jackson’s statement about the perils of hamstringing the government were just the beginning of her cheerleading for government censorship. “Some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country” she said, making it obvious that she was one of the ‘some.” “You seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” continued Jackson. “So can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that. Because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances, from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”
Ah, yes, those “threatening circumstances.” Can’t have that. You know, like telling the public about the President’s son’s laptop, questioning the edicts of the CDC during the pandemic and the suspicious undermining of election integrity …or endangering Democratic power in Washington, D.C.
Despite indisputable proof that the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Census Bureau, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, FBI, Department of Justice, and the White House demanded Big Tech companies like Twitter (now X), Facebook, and YouTube interfere with Americans attempting to publicize facts and opinions the government preferred to keep buried, Jackson appeared to see this as completely benign.
Judge Terry Doughty, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in his 155-page ruling described the Biden administration’s efforts to push social media platforms into doing its censorship “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” But Joe’s justice doesn’t see it that way at all. In another exchange, Jackson argued that a “once-in-a-lifetime pandemic” or other declared “emergencies” should allow the always well-meaning government expand constitutional limits. You know, like Woodrow Wilson locking up dissenters during World War I. Biden already has tried to use his “emergency powers” illicitly, like ordering landlords not to evict deadbeat tenants, or allowing degree holders to skip their obligations to pay back loans. Most dictators take over in “emergencies,” and the freedom of speech is usually the first right to go.
“I’m interested in your view that the context doesn’t change the First Amendment principles,” Jackson said. “I understood our First Amendment jurisprudence to require heightened scrutiny of government restrictions of speech, but not necessarily a total prohibition when you’re talking about a compelling interest of the government to ensure, for example, that the public has accurate information in the context of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”
She actually said that, even though it is now undeniable that the public was given false, deliberately misleading and repeatedly wrong information by the government (as well as the fearmongering news media). Conservative writer Matt Margolis correctly observed this morning, “More often than not, it seems that the speech that the government censored or suppressed turned out to be right in the end.”
Naturally, the mainstream media is soft-peddling Justice Jackson’s ominous unmasking as a government censorship advocate. But the public needs to understand: she stands for and with the party and the President that are claiming only they can “save democracy,” when it is becoming increasingly clear that the exact opposite is the truth.
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Source: The Federalist.
Ethics Alarms 
I recall she could not provide a definition of a women based on established biological science. Did anyone have the expecation that she would be able to understand a “nuance” in the Consitution? Namely, that the freedom ot speech is the first amendment, which the goverment is prohibited to infringe upon and upon which all the other amendments (rights) are rooted in.
Remember, to liberals in this country, this IS smart, solid, and trustworthy. She is smart enough to know who is in charge, she will not be swayed by ‘the little people’, and she can be trusted in upholding the interests of the ruling class.
Just because some previous Presidents have abused national emergencies to violate civil rights doesn’t mean it’s right. Lincoln was wrong to jail Clement Vallandigham, Wilson was wrong to jail to Eugene V. Debs, FDR was wrong to intern – essentially jail – Japanese-Americans.
The Left – for decades – acknowledge that all of the above were wrong. Now there are suddenly emergencies that require limitations on speech? What changed?
Totally agree regarding Wilson and FDR, and then there’s the Alien and Sedition Acts under the first Adams, I believe.
I did some looking and it was Burnside who issued the General order 38 under which he had Vallandigham arrested and tried. I think Lincoln was usually a bit hesitant to overrule his generals and military governors. He came to somewhat of a compromise by having Vallandigham exiled rather than kept in prison. Nonetheless, he did suspend habeas corpus in September, 1862 which is an abuse.
I think what Lincoln did in March/April, 1861 in forcing Maryland to stay in the Union can be justified as truly necessary to save the Union — but that’s a really, really high bar to get over I think. By September, 1862, while the war was not exactly a winner, it is harder to argue that such extra constitutional means are justified.
The treatment of Japanese (and to a lesser extent,) Italian-Americans by FDR is in a separate category, though: it had nothing to do with freedom of speech.
True enough. I had only meant the comment to reflect the abuse of rights during emergencies, not only the restriction on freedom of speech. I probably should have worded my post better.
Some Germans were interned, too. A good book – The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II by Jan Barboe Russell – talks about German residents who hadn’t yet taken out citizenship interned in Crystal City with their American-born children.
It’s worth noting because wars are extreme emergencies, and many abridgements of rights have been found Constitutional—look at rationing during WWII, for example. FDR’s internment of the Japanese was rubber stamped by SCOTUS (and W.O. Douglas).
True, yet another example of why the Founders were so distrustful of pure democracy and bequeathed to us a republic instead.
Even the Supreme Court, on occasion, can fall prey to following the mob. However, they are also best situated to resist such pressures.
Very true. In fact, the internment of Japanese Americans is probably even more egregious, given that they were largely American citizens being punished solely for having the wrong ancestors.
I hearken back to bills of attainder, by the executive rather than the legislature. I think some of our ancestors had a bit to say on the subject in Philadelphia, 1787. I think one can infer how repugnant this was to them by it having its very own paragraph in the Constitution.
Ruth Ginsburg is rolling over in her grave. Do liberals understand what words mean?
Words mean what they want them to mean at the minute. Examples include ‘migrant’ and ‘woman’. Also note that when you tell a child they have the wrong body and that they need a bunch of hormones, multiple invasive surgeries, and need to be sterilized to be right, that is ‘affirming care’. When you tell them there is nothing wrong with them, that is ‘conversion’.
Don’t forget: early infanticide is reproductive rights.
A “once-in-a-lifetime pandemic?” If those in power had ever been properly held accountable for their lies, their overreach, the shutdowns, the squashing of dissent, then it might have been a once-in-a-lifetime event. Sadly, they were not, so we’ll be lucky going forward if it’s only once-in-a-decade.
“Every Normal Man Must Be Tempted, At Times, To Spit Upon His Hands, Hoist The Black Flag, And Begin Slitting Throats.” H. L. Mencken
And I can resist anything…but temptation…..
PWS
All of this “suppression of speech” to mitigate deadly misinformation is ridiculous. We have dealt with volumes of misinformation too great to weigh, and it’s been around since people started speaking. People thought the world was flat. People thought the earth was the center of the universe. People thought the world was hollow. A series of New York Sun articles in the 1830s claimed the moon had lush vegetation, waterfalls, and mythical animals. Many people believed them. People believe a myriad of mystical, fanciful religious systems, many of which hold tenets diametrically opposed to other systems and to reality itself.
Misinformation is all around us, it’s been around us for thousands of years, and we have survived just fine. You know why? Because we can talk about it, debate it, discuss it, sift it, refine it, and eventually throw out the bunk.
Any suppression of speech is likely designed to hide truth from you.