Update no.1144

 Update from the Sunland

No.1144

11.12.23 – 17.12.23

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

 

To all,

 

The United States House of Representatives passed H.Res.918 - Directing certain committees to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Joseph Biden, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes. The vote was along strict party lines—House: 221-212-0-1(1). The threshold used to be probable cause. The fBICP has offered no probable cause. They pushed the House to pass H.Res.918 to satisfy [the person who shall no longer be named]. This is an impeachment inquiry to find out what the MAGA bunch and their fBICP enablers need to know to impeach President Biden. This is pure and simple retribution for the two impeachments of the [the person who shall no longer be named]. He demanded his little minions in the House do this to Biden because it was done twice to him. The only difference I can see is Tiny committed actual crimes; Biden has not.

This is equivalent of prosecutors digging through our lives to see what they can find in order to prosecute each of us, otherwise called a fishing expedition. Not only has the fBICP not shown any proof of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” they have failed to even give us a modicum of probable cause. At present, this looks like a fishing expedition for retribution at the behest of [the person who shall no longer be named]. From what I have seen, the MAGA bunch & fBICP are accusing the father for what the son has done. The son screwed up, got millions of dollars for his familial name, therefore the father must have been part of the crimes. To the MAGAt bunch, this is blood in the water. To the rest of us, this is as it appears, a distraction to help Tiny’s presidential campaign, the very thing he likes to accuse his opponents of doing.

 

The House also passed H.Res.927 - Condemning antisemitism on University campuses and the testimony of University Presidents in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The vote was: 303-126-3-2(1). This was primarily a fBICP initiative, although one Republican voted no, but 84 Democrats voted yes, for reasons I do not know. The language of the resolution is critical to the debate. The meat & potatoes of H.Res.927 reads:

Whereas to hold universities accountable, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on December 5, 2023;

Whereas, when the Presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology were asked if calling for the genocide of Jews violates university policies on bullying and harassment, Presidents Elizabeth Magill, Claudine Gay, and Sally Kornbluth were evasive and dismissive, failing to simply condemn such action;

Whereas President Magill stated, “It is a context-dependent decision”;

Whereas President Gay insisted that it “depends on the context”;

Whereas President Kornbluth responded it would only constitute harassment if it were “targeted at individuals”;

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) strongly condemns the rise of antisemitism on university campuses around the country; and

(2) strongly condemns the testimony of University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, Harvard University President Claudine Gay, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth and their failure to clearly state that calls for the genocide of Jews constitute harassment and violate their institutions’ codes of conduct in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on December 5, 2023.

The salient element of H.Res.927 is paragraph (2). President Magill resigned under pressure for her remarks before the committee, especially as noted in the resolution. The university presidents did not condemn outright the antisemitic conduct on their campuses and elsewhere.

From my perspective, if the House had left the resolution at part (1), they would have been OK, but they did not; they went after university presidents who are struggling to find a balance between freedom of speech and assembly with the security of students including those who practice the Jewish faith. To me, paragraph (2) is just wrong. As I have written previously, freedom of speech, like all our freedoms and rights, have limits—boundaries. The committee condemned the remarks of the university presidents based on a hypothetical of inflammatory words that have no context. The conduct of the committee was intended as entrapment; they succeeded. Fortunately, 600+ professors at Harvard stood up for their president. This nonsense has got to stop. If the House wants to condemn something, they should denounce actual conduct, not generalized hypotheticals.

 

On 14.December.1939, the League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union for their unprovoked invasion of Finland. Here, history should repeat itself. Russia should be expelled permanently from the United Nations Security Council and probably from the United Nations General Assembly for their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. There is no rationale or justification—ZERO—for Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s Russia is the antithesis of the principles of the United Nations. They do not deserve to belong to the international organization created to maintain peace among the nations of the world. If at some time in the future, the Russians shed themselves of the right-wing grip on the country’s governance, return all of the illegally occupied Ukrainian territory including Crimea, and commit to live peacefully with its neighbors, then perhaps they can be readmitted to the General Assembly but never again as a permanent member of the Security Council.

 

Rudolph William Louis ‘Rudy’ Giuliani has been ordered by a jury to pay US$148M in punitive damages for his defaming of two Georgia election workers, a mother and daughter. From my perspective, he is getting off easy for what he did. True to form, like sein Anführer, he double down on his blatantly false accusations. When a reporter challenged him, he answered, “It’s the truth. Stay tuned.” The election deniers in all their forms and all levels have persistently stuck to the ‘stay tuned’ mantra for three plus years without offering a shred of evidence. They give us torrent of accusations but not one scintilla of evidence. We cannot stay tuned to nothing.

 

Comments and contributions from Update no.1143:

Comment to the Blog:

“Thanks for recognizing Justice O’Connor’s contributions.

“One benefit of having survived dangers is learning to recognize them. I and others knew who Tiny was on first sight. For numerous reasons, no dictator gives up power after one day.

“I support freedom of speech with the limitations that have long been in place concerning libel/slander, insurrection, and causing panic. My puzzle is how to enforce those limits when, in less than a lifetime, the number of public voices has increased by several orders of magnitude. We cannot separate fact from opinion or fiction, and we are unable to suppress even the clearly insane and the seditious, to say nothing of the libels and threats promulgated against nearly everyone in public life.”

My response to the Blog:

You are most welcome, my friend. I have always been a fan of Justice O’Connor. I enjoyed her writing and appreciated her constitutional reasoning.

Quite so! We have lived our share of years, and we are not done yet. Like you, I have seen the personality traits repeatedly and consistently displayed by [the person who shall no longer be named] too many times in my life. I did not need, nor did I seek yet another demonstration of the consequences of those traits. The effects are all too common, although in case of Tiny, the consequences of those effects are far more corrosive, divisive, and destructive to society, culture, and our community. His personality traits should have disqualified him from any public office, and especially from the presidency with its incumbent instruments of State. Unfortunately, we have a very desperate minority all too willing to abandon democracy, the Constitution, and embrace a dictator. These are the times in which we live; we must deal with it.

FYI: I am not aware of any dictator in history peacefully and willfully giving up power they have attained. We are flirting with that abysmal history.

The thin, misty line between freedom and security has been and always will be a difficult boundary to enforce and defend. One person’s freedom is another person’s offense or injury. To me, incitement of others to commit crimes is crossing that line. Threatening a judge is such an incitement regardless of the intent of the instigator’s objectives. I think taking the megaphone away from Tiny, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, et al, was appropriate and justified. Access to social media is a privilege, not a constitutional right. That bunch can stand on their soapbox at Debater’s Corner like all the rest of us; they have no right to the platforms they have been allowed to use. Of course, the judicial system is always a method by which to seek restitution for libel and other such crimes of speech.

 . . . Round two:

“Mass communication in the past was limited by the owners of the media--publishers and broadcast companies via laws they assented to. Those laws covered libel and other harmful ‘speech.’ With the advent of the Internet, those limits have all but vanished. Calling access to the Internet a ‘privilege’ is not relevant because it’s a requirement for ordinary life today. Given the sheer volume of people using the Internet, I can’t imagine how to put the limits back in place without restricting freedom to the point of losing ‘business functions.’”

 . . . my response to round two:

In general, I agree with you.

I will add that the Internet has no owner, no operator, no controller. The Internet is like air; we all use it, but no one supervises it. I thought about including electricity in that generality, but there are regulators. Applications and websites are owned and operated by human beings. I decided long ago to open my blog as a public debate site, a Debater’s Corner per se. As the owner, controller, and regulator of that Blog, I have edited or rejected hateful speech. On websites the size of Facebook, X, Instagram, and such, they need algorithms to scan the massive volume of communications. We must find a way. Freedom is too bloody important to abandon it to chaos.

 . . . Round three:

“Attempting to regulate the Internet without unreasonable restrictions on freedom will be a major quandary. Algorithms can be beaten; it happens regularly. They also mistakenly limit ‘acceptable’ speech often. ‘Artificial intelligence’ is artificial indeed but not intelligent in the human sense. As always, we shall see.”

 . . . my response to round three:

My earlier point was air is air; we cannot regulate air. The Internet is the Internet, like air, there is no way to regulate the Internet without destroying the Internet.

I am somewhat confused with the second half of your contribution. it sounds like you are advocating for no controls, no regulations, no boundaries, anything goes . . . you are on your own, People.

I am all for freedom of speech, including speech I do not agree with. What I am not in favor of is anyone, including Tiny, using that precious freedom to swindle or grift innocent people.

 . . . Round four:

“I'm not advocating for an uncontrolled Internet. I just don't see the means of controlling it effectively.”

 . . . my response to round four:

The Internet is not the point of control since it is like air. The apps & websites are the point of control; they are the polluters so to speak. Also, control is a misnomer per se. Government should set standards. Today, there are none. Whatever regulation exists is self-imposed, and then we criticize those sites for “censorship.” We need standards of conduct for applications like we have for the public domain. We simply cannot stand back and do nothing.

 

My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)