December 12, 2023

In the News

CNN: Anderson Cooper 360 (December 8, 2023)

.....Ed. note: Institute for Free Speech President David Keating spoke to CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" about free speech on college campuses. His comments appear at the 6 min 56 second mark.

RealClearInvestigations: How Tax-Exempt Nonprofits Skirt U.S. Law to Turn Out the Democrat Base in Elections

By Steve Miller

.....Even as Democrats such as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse warn of “right-wing dark-money network seeking to undermine the future of democratic elections in the United States,” progressives have far-outstripped Republicans in harnessing the power of putatively non-partisan, nonprofit organizations that push the boundaries to win elections...

“The liberal nonprofit sector is much bigger than the conservative nonprofit in the political arena,” said Bradley Smith, a former commissioner with the Federal Election Commission and founder of the conservative Institute for Free Speech.

Supreme Court

The Hill: Supreme Court leaves intact Washington state conversion therapy ban

By Zach Schonfeld

.....The Supreme Court said it won’t review Washington state’s conversion therapy ban for minors, allowing the law to remain in effect.

The justices declined to take up an appeal from Brian Tingley, a licensed marriage and family therapist who sought to strike down the statute as unconstitutional.

Three of the Supreme Court’s conservatives — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — said they would’ve heard Tingley’s appeal.

A federal appeals court last year upheld the law, which bans counselors from seeking to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of someone under the age of 18.

Tingley argued the law violates his First Amendment rights by censoring him and targeting him for his Christian beliefs.

The Courts

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Texas's Ban on TikTok Use by Government Employees on Government Computers Upheld

By Eugene Volokh

.....From Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Abbott, decided today by Judge Robert Pitman (W.D. Tex.):

Congress

Washington Post: Republicans say they believe in free speech. Except when it comes to Israel.

By Shadi Hamid

.....But lost in Republican grandstanding is perhaps the most far-reaching effort yet to punish pro-Palestinian speech — a seemingly innocuous bill in Congress to establish a commission to investigate antisemitism in the United States. The legislation uses verbatim the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

The bill doesn’t specify what constitutes “a certain perception of Jews” and neglects to mention the alliance’s own elaboration, which includes the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” and “applying double standards” to Israel as examples of potential antisemitism.

Under this reasoning, the commission will have broad powers to investigate any criticism of Israel that could be deemed unfair or overly exacting — including calls for a cease-fire or citing Israel’s disregard for Palestinian civilians in its targeting.

New Yorker: The Troubled History of the Espionage Act

By Amy Davidson Sorkin

.....One peculiarity of the Espionage Act is that the Gorin and the Heine decisions—rulings from the nineteen-forties concerning a hundred-year-old law—still guide the prosecution not only of spies but of whistle-blowers, leakers, negligent bureaucrats, cyber activists, and, of course, a former President who kept documents marked “Top Secret” in his bathroom. Not that the law differentiates among those categories. Both Trump and Julian Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, are currently under indictment for violating the section of the act that prohibits the unauthorized retention of N.D.I., among other charges. That section says nothing substantive about intent, and neither do several related provisions. It doesn’t matter whether someone is using N.D.I. to aid a terrorist network, expose a scandal, write a memoir, or impress fellow-gamers (as may be the case with Jack Teixeira, the airman recently indicted under the act for posting files on Discord). It doesn’t matter whether a leaker’s object is to expose discrimination.

Free Expression

CNN: Opinion: Why university presidents are under fire

By Fareed Zakaria

.....American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas — many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion...

With this culture of virtue signaling growing, the George Floyd protests erupted, and many universities latched on and issued statements, effectively aligning their institutions with these protests. By my memory, few took such steps even after 9/11 or during the Iraq War.

In this context, it is understandable that Jewish groups would wonder, why do safe spaces, micro aggressions, and hate speech not apply to us? If universities can take positions against free speech to make some groups feel safe, why not us? Having coddled so many student groups for so long, university administrators found themselves squirming, unable to explain why certain groups (Jews, Asians) don’t seem to count in these conversations.

New York Times: What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech

By David French

.....As I watched the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania struggle last week to respond to harsh congressional questioning about the prevalence of antisemitism on their campuses, I had a singular thought: Censorship helped put these presidents in their predicament, and censorship will not help them escape.

The Hill: When is doxxing ethical or unethical?

By Alan Dershowitz

.....Little attention has been paid to the factors that might distinguish acceptable from unacceptable doxxing. Here are such some factors.

Does the nature of what the doxxers disclose go beyond mere identification of the individuals and the organizations to which they belong? There is a considerable difference between disclosing the mere identity of protestors and providing private information, such as addresses, phone numbers, names of children and sexual orientation. Though most such disclosures may be protected by the law, some deserve moral opprobrium.

A related distinction is between doxxing that poses a realistic threat of violence and that endangers career prospects, such as jobs, university admission or a political futures. The case for not disclosing the former is more compelling than the case for not disclosing the latter.

A third factor might be the role of government in either compelling or prohibiting disclosure. 

Candidates and Campaigns

Daily Beast: Katie Porter Touts Clean Campaign Cash. Her Record Isn’t So Spotless.

By Sam Brodey

.....In her campaign for U.S. Senate in California, Rep. Katie Porter has worked intently to sell voters on the impression that she is a rare type of politician: one with clean hands.

“I’m the only candidate in this race who has never taken a dime from corporate PACs and doesn’t take money from federal lobbyists or executives at Big Oil companies, Big Pharma, or Wall Street Banks,” Porter wrote in one September fundraising email…

The record of political purity that Porter is pushing, however, has holes that don’t match up with the unambiguous statements she has made as a candidate for office.

Most glaringly, Porter has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of contributions from powerful people with influence at the highest echelons of Wall Street, according to federal campaign finance disclosures.

Archive.today

Leadership PACs

Los Angeles Times: Kevin McCarthy uses PAC to lavish cash on high-end resorts, private jets and fine dining

By Paul Pringle and Adam Elmahrek

.....Unfortunately, it’s a little bit of the Wild West,” said Michael Beckel, research director for Issue One, a nonprofit organization that studies the role of money in politics. He said the group has “deep concerns” that politicians could use “leadership PAC funds for their own personal enrichment.” …

Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for the Washington-brd Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit organization whose mission includes advocating for transparency in election spending, said the FEC essentially punted the issue.

Asked whether the rules are so lax that a politician could buy a personal home with leadership PAC money, Ghosh initially hesitated, saying, “You don’t want to tempt the devil” because “it would be so outrageous.”

He said that while he believed the federal Election Campaign Act should prohibit such a purchase, the FEC has signaled it would not enforce the law in that circumstance. “They’ve really opened the door to abuse, and it’s tough to close it again,” Ghosh said.

The States

WXXI News: Advocates urge Hochul to veto campaign finance bill that they say weakens new public system

By Karen DeWitt

.....Proponents of a new public campaign finance system for state offices in New York say Gov. Kathy Hochul should veto a bill passed by the State Legislature that they say severely weakens the law.

The 6-to-1 public matching fund system first takes effect in the 2024 election cycle.

Joanna Zdadys with New York University’s Brennan Center warned, though, that a measure approved in the Democratic-led state Senate and Assembly earlier this year would subvert that system and cost taxpayers extra money.

“The Brennan Center and many others are opposed to this bill and are calling for Governor Hochul to veto it,” Zdadys said.

The Columbian: Attorney General Bob Ferguson campaign finance saga not quite over

By Jerry Cornfield

.....A state campaign watchdog put off action Thursday on a proposed deal to dismiss complaints against Attorney General Bob Ferguson stemming from his handling of $1.2 million of contributions to his gubernatorial campaign.

Had the Public Disclosure Commission approved the agreement reached between its staff and Ferguson it would have ended a monthslong probe begun after the Democratic candidate refused to reveal the source of the money he shifted from past campaigns into his current one.