The ACLU, under considerable pressure from misguided liberals, announces it will scrutinize which hate groups it represents a bit differently than it has in the past, its executive director giving the wish to protest with "loaded firearms" as an example. But I find it far too easy, frankly, to defend protesting with loaded firearms as a legitimate free speech act protected by the First Amendment, even if the folks doing such protesting are assholes. Of course shooting people with those firearms isn't "protected speech," but maybe our police officers could prepare for such things, you know, the way they seem to do when liberals march?
From the "Liberals Do Obnoxious Swordfighting Too" file: Katherine Cross, at The Establishment, asserts that "(e)very person who’s ever misused arguments for free speech to defend Nazis or white supremacists...has some measure of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands." Gosh, I guess that includes me! Call me old-fashioned, but I think James Alex Fields and no one else has Ms. Heyer's blood on his hands, and more than a few liberals (Dennis Miller may be the most famous example) have switched sides after people like Ms. Cross kept shouting at them that they weren't liberal enough. Luckily for me, God made me a liberal, and I stopped bucking God a long time ago.
The Straight Dope's take on net neutrality -- the principle that says you, and not some corporation, should get to decide where you go on the internet -- isn't all that deep, but it contains one brilliant observation: that the worst thing that could happen as a result of its disappearance is "a time when an ISP might think carefully about what kind of content it allows to be seen on the Web, for fear of poking the orange dragon," i.e., our infamously thin-skinned President. That's weapons-grade PR, right there, so tell all your friends: Donald Trump wants to kill net neutrality so he doesn't get criticized on the internet.
I agree with this Las Vegas Sun editorial's description of Republican efforts to recall two state Senators (one Democratic, one independent) as "an abuse of the recall provision" and "an attempt to hijack the democratic process,", but that doesn't mean I want to stop the recalls. Let the endangered incumbents campaign against the inherent stupidity of the recall -- it's possible to do that without sounding self-pitying, you know! -- and show Republicans that future efforts to nullify democratic elections will fail. I'm not even particularly upset by the notion of "nonstop elections" -- elected officials should expect to be accountable to their bosses, the people, at any time.
Finally, you've no doubt heard that Steve Bannon's out as President Trump's "senior strategist" or whatever, and has made a soft landing at his old employer, Breitbart. And just like his old boss he continues to let his mouth write checks his ass can't cash, saying "I've got my hands back on my weapons" (I shudder to think what he's actually got his hands on) and that he's "definitely going to crush the opposition," which is what approximately zero people who crush the opposition say before they crush the opposition. I look forward to ignoring him, just like I did before he joined the Trump Administration.
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