The fight against free speech

 From Jonathan Turley.

 JT is on target.

 Note how many of the people JT mentions as trying to limit free speech also falsely accused their political opponents of doing it.

 Here is JT’s comment.

Dr. Jay’s Slam Dunk: Blacklisted Scientist Receives Prestigious Award for “Intellectual Freedom”

 Below is my column in the New York Post on the prestigious award given to Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya last week and what it has to say about those who censored, blacklisted, and vilified him for the last four years. In celebrating his fight for “intellectual freedom,” the National Academy effectively condemned those who joined the mob against him as well as the many professors who stayed silent as he and others were targeted.

 Here is the column:

 Few in the media seemed eager to attend a ceremony last week in Washington, D.C., where the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters was awarding its top intellectual freedom award.

 The problem may have been the recipient: Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

 Bhattacharya has spent years being vilified by the media over his dissenting views on the pandemic. As one of the signatories of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, he was canceled, censored, and even received death threats.

 That open letter called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics.

 All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area.

 It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.

 Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses.

 Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

 Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.

 Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government.

 Others questioned the six-foot rule used to shut down many businesses as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did the rule result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, the media further ostracized dissenting critics.

 Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result of massive social and economic costs.

 I spoke at the University of Chicago with Bhattacharya and other dissenting scientists in the front row a couple of years ago. After the event, I asked them how many had been welcomed back to their faculties or associations since the recognition of some of their positions.

 They all said that they were still treated as pariahs for challenging the groupthink culture.

 Now the scientific community is recognizing the courage shown by Bhattacharya and others with its annual Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom.

 So what about all of those in government, academia, and the media who spent years hounding these scientists?

 Biden Administration officials and Democratic members targeted Bhattacharya and demanded his censorship. For example, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) attacked  Bhattacharya and others who challenged the official narrative during the pandemic. Krishnamoorthi expressed outrage that the scientists were even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”

 Journalists and columnists also supported the censorship and blacklisting of these scientists. In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik decried how “we’re living in an upside-down world” because Stanford allowed these scientists to speak at a scientific forum. He was outraged that, while “Bhattacharya’s name doesn’t appear in the event announcement,” he was an event organizer. Hiltzik also wrote a column titled “The COVID lab leak claim isn’t just an attack on science, but a threat to public health.”

 Then there are those lionized censors at Twitter who shadow-banned Bhattacharya. As former CEO Parag Agrawal generally explained, the “focus [was] less on thinking about free speech … [but[ who can be heard.”

 None of this means that Bhattacharya or others were right in all of their views. Instead, many of the most influential voices in the media, government, and academia worked to prevent this discussion from occurring when it was most needed.

 There is still a debate over Bhattacharya’s “herd immunity” theories, but there is little debate over the herd mentality used to cancel him.

 The Academy was right to honor Bhattacharya. It is equally right to condemn all those who sought to silence a scientist who is now being praised for resisting their campaign to silence him and others.

Judicial stupidity?

From Jonathan Turley.

 JT is on target.

 Assumption: A manufacturer who sells a legal product to a legal customer can be sued for downstream illegal use of the product.

 Consequence: There will be no products.

 Here is JT’s comment.

Over the Border: Gun and Torts Liability to Collide in Mexican Case Before the Supreme Court

 This month, there is a new case on the docket after the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.  The First Circuit reversed a trial court that dismissed the case, alleging that the American firearms industry is legally responsible for violence in Mexico. I believe the First Circuit is dead wrong and will be reversed. However, as a torts professor, there is a question of whether the tort element of proximate cause could be materially changed in the case. Torts professors are already lining up to argue that there is a proximate cause under existing doctrines to hold the firearms industry liable. I respectfully disagree.

 In the petition, Smith and Wesson and other gun manufacturers challenge the claim, including the argument that their sale of lawful firearms in the United States is the proximate or legal cause for the carnage in Mexico. They note that Mexico has long been riddled with violence and corruption connected to the extensive drug industry in that country.

 In my view, the trial court dismissed the case correctly under  the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). That was passed to bar suits against firearms companies based on criminals using these products for criminal or intentionally tortious acts.

 However, the First Circuit reversed on the ground that Mexico has made a legally cognizable case that gun manufacturers aided and abetted firearms trafficking that has harmed the Mexican government. The First Circuit is an outlier in this case and ignores both the purpose of the law and basic tort principles of proximate causation.

 The Court has accepted the review on two questions:

 1.      Whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States is the “proximate cause” of alleged injuries to the Mexican government stemming from violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico.

2.      2.      Whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States amounts to “aiding and abetting” illegal firearms trafficking because firearms companies allegedly know that some of their products are unlawfully trafficked.

4.       PLCAA was enacted to require dismissal at the inception of lawsuits like this, and other courts have recognized that. The First Circuit’s decision creates a circuit split.

Mexico’s complaint is wildly off base both factually and legally. It suggests that these companies are effectively funneling guns to criminal gangs in Mexico by producing products that they have used in criminal conduct.

 The First Circuit adopted an analogy that destroyed the credibility of its decision:

 Imagine that a U.S. company sent a mercenary unit of combat troops to attack people in Mexico City. Such an attack would directly cause Mexico itself the expense of paying soldiers to defend the city. Proximate cause would be quite clear. So, too, here, where the defendants are alleged to have armed the attackers for their continuing assaults.

 Is that the best these federal judges could come up with? There is a vast difference between the United States sending a combat unit across the border and manufacturers who supply distributors who serve dealers who sell lawful products to consumers. That sounds more like The Merchandisers than  The Expendables.

 PLCAA specifically bars any “qualified civil liability action” against gun manufacturers and licensees. Any action filed against a federal firearms licensee for damages or other relief resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a firearm is expressly addressed in the statute under § 7902 of PLCAA: “A qualified civil liability action … shall be immediately dismissed by the court in which the action was brought or is currently pending.”

Mexico and gun control advocates are focusing on an exception for any manufacturer or seller of a firearm that “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product [firearm], and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought….”

 The First Circuit found that, if proven, a case can be made that Smith & Wesson engaged in “affirmative and deliberate efforts to create and maintain an illegal market for [its] weapons in Mexico” and that, as such, it was “aiding and abetting downstream dealers in violating state and federal laws governing the transfer of firearms.” The level of speculation and conjecture in such a claim is manifestly obvious. Mexico failed to offer anything beyond conclusory claims as to “downstream” users to allege this nexus.

 The exception is clearly directed at violations of gun statutes, such as falsifying records or conspiracy to sell to a specific prohibited person. Even then, it must be shown to be the proximate cause of the injury. Mexico does not maintain such a specific showing but treats sales generally as aiding and abetting the violence in that country.

 Under standard tort doctrine, criminal or intentionally tortious acts by third parties generally cut off legal causation. However, there is an exception where such conduct is foreseeable. Here is the language from Second Restatement of Torts 448:

 “The act of a third person in committing an intentional tort or crime is a superseding cause of harm to another resulting therefrom, although the actor’s negligent conduct created a situation which afforded an opportunity to the third person to commit such a tort or crime, unless the actor at the time of his negligent conduct realized or should have realized the likelihood that such a situation might be created, and that a third person might avail himself of the opportunity to commit such a tort or crime.”

 The Third Restatement contains the same approach while, again, recognizing that “If the third party’s misconduct is among the risks making the defendant’s conduct negligent, then ordinarily plaintiff’s harm will be within the defendant’s scope of liability.” Restatement (Third) of Torts: Physical & Emotional Harm (2010)§ 19 cmt. c (“If the third party’s misconduct is among the risks making the defendant’s conduct negligent, then ordinarily plaintiff’s harm will be within the defendant’s scope of liability.”).

 However, these exceptions have not been extended to the extent envisioned by Mexico or the First Circuit. For example, in the famous case of Brower v. New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, 91 N.J.L. 190 (1918), a train negligently struck a wagon carrying cider and knocked the driver senseless. The railroad personnel left his goods unprotected and they were stolen. The court ruled:

 “The negligence which caused the collision resulted immediately in such a condition of the driver of the wagon that he was no longer able to protect his employer’s property; the natural and probable result of his enforced abandonment of it in the street of a large city was its disappearance; and the wrongdoer cannot escape making reparation for the loss caused by depriving the plaintiff of the protection which the presence of the driver in his right senses would have afforded.”

 Simply selling a lawful product falls significantly short of this type of nexus. It would be akin to holding train manufacturers liable for the negligent operation of the train engineer in Brower in aiding and abetting such conduct by third persons.

 It is hard to see how the Court could find that these companies were “the” proximate cause of the harm without creating a federal standard for proximate cause that would extend foreseeability beyond any recognition. There are powerful superseding intervening forces in play in Mexico. To embrace this theory that the manufacturers knowingly and foreseeably increased the risk of violence in Mexico would allow torts to effectively gut the industry and existing federal law.

 Previously, gun control advocates tried to use product liability and nuisance laws to curtail gun sales. Those cases failed as over-extending tort doctrine to achieve indirectly the courts what could not be achieved directly in the legislatures. Conversely, Congress passed PLCAA to prevent such circumvention of the legislative process.

 There are good-faith arguments to be made that the exception for criminal conduct can be maintained where there is sufficient foreseeability and that the First Circuit was merely allowing Mexico to prove its case. However, the complaint is manifestly insufficient for such a claim.

 There is no specific evidence that would establish the required showing of knowledge or foreseeability by manufacturers in working with Mexican drug gangs. Mexico has been rife with drug cartels and corruption for decades. Much of this violence has occurred with the cooperation and collusion of Mexican officials, including law enforcement officials.

 In my view, the First Circuit should and will be reversed. 

The problem is Government

From John Cochrane.

JC is on target.

Well worth reading. Trusting Government is a sure way to gross inefficiency and a lower standard of living.

Here is the link.

More attacks on free speech

 From Jonathan Turley.

 JT is on target.

 Freedom is not the natural order, and we are losing it.

 Here is the link.

Musk Mania: European Censors Warn Musk that They May Level Fines Based on all of his Businesses

The cost of regulation

 If you get rid of a regulator who is enforcing nonsensical regulations, he must find a job doing something that is considered useful in the private sector, e.g. producing consumer goods. In addition, you free up, possibly, many private sector employees busy complying with regulations. These people also would have to find “productive” jobs.

 Evidently there is a standard of living multiplier, probably large, for each such regulator that is fired.

 In all likelihood, the standard of living could be dramatically increased by getting rid of unnecessary regulations and regulators.

Here is an example.

 https://www.facebook.com/reel/532003696432174

 

Cannabis Use During Adolescence and Young Adulthood and Academic Achievement

From JAMA.

Here is the link.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2824557?guestAccessKey=4a3b00de-810e-422e-ad57-dd6ed5df86ba&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=jama_network&utm_content=network_highlights&utm_term=102024&adv=000002694865

The dynamic duo of speech control

From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Walzing Around Free Speech: How A Walz Interview Became a Dizzying Dance of Distraction

Below is my column in the New York Post on the recent interview of Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz defending his record on free speech. The interview with Fox host Shannon Bream only magnified concerns over what I previously described as the most anti-free speech ticket in centuries.

Here is the column:

Roughly five centuries ago, a new dance first reported in Augsburg, Germany was promptly dubbed the “waltz” after the German term for “to roll or revolve.”

Today, there is no more nimble performer of that dizzying dance than Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

Indeed, “Walzing” has become the Minnesota governor’s signature political two-step after his controversial statements on his allegedly socialist views, eliminating the electoral college and other topics.

On Sunday, Walz’s dance partner was Fox News host Shannon Bream, who seemed to be fighting vertigo as the candidate tried to deflect his shocking prior statements on free speech.

Bream asked Walz about his prior declaration that there is “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech”— a statement that runs counter to decades of Supreme Court decisions.

Walz notably did not deny or retract his statement. Instead, his interview ironically became itself a flagrant example of misinformation.

First of all, misinformation and hate speech are not exceptions to the First Amendment: Whether it is the cross burnings of infamous figures like KKK leader Clarence Brandenburg or the Nazis who marched in Skokie, Ill., hate speech is protected.

Yet both Harris and Walz are true believers in the righteousness of censorship for disinformation, misinformation and malinformation.

The Biden administration defines misinformation as “false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm” — meaning it would subject you to censorship even if you are not intending harm.

It defines malinformation as “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

So you can post “true facts,” but would still be subject to censorship if you are viewed as misleading others with your pesky truth-telling.

Furthermore, “book bans” are not equivalent to the Harris-Walz censorship policies.

After years of supporting censorship and blacklisting, Democrats are attempting to deflect questions by claiming that the GOP is the greater threat.

“We’re seeing censorship coming in the form of book bannings in different places,” Walz told Bream. “We’re seeing attempts in schools.”

First, a reality check: The Biden-Harris administration has helped fund and actively support the largest censorship system in our history, a system described by one federal court as “Orwellian.”

These are actual and unrelenting efforts to target individuals and groups for opposing views on subjects ranging from gender identity to climate change to COVID to election fraud.

While Walz and others rarely specifically reference the book bans in question, Florida is one state whose laws concern age limits on access to graphic or sexual material in schools.

School districts have always been given wide latitude in making such decisions on curriculum or library policies. Indeed, while rarely mentioned by the media, the left has demanded the banning or alteration of a number of classic books, including “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men,” under diversity or equity rationales.

I have long opposed actual book bans perpetrated by both the left and the right. However, school districts have always made such access and curriculum decisions.

Finally, Walz and others often sell censorship by citing the dangers of child pornography or of threats made against individuals.

Walz on Sunday followed Hillary Clinton’s recent pro-censorship campaign as he employed such misdirection.

“The issue on this was the hate speech and the protected hate speech — speech that’s aimed at creating violence, speech that’s aimed at threats to individuals,” he claimed. “That’s what we’re talking about in this.”

First, he’d said there is no protected hate speech.

Second, the law already provides ample protections against threats toward individuals.

What’s most striking is that, after years of unapologetically embracing censorship (often under the Orwellian term “content moderation”), the left does not seem to want to discuss it in this election.

Democrats in Congress opposed every major effort to investigate the role of the Biden administration in the social-media censorship system it constructed. Many denied any such connection.

Elon Musk ended much of that debate with the release of the Twitter Files showing thousands of emails from the administration targeting individuals and groups with opposing views.

Now the public is being asked to vote for the most anti-free speech ticket in centuries — but neither Harris nor Walz want to talk about it in any detail.

The result may be the largest bait-and-switch in history.

Walz, Clinton and others also falsely claim they are simply trying to stop things like child pornography — which is already covered by existing criminal laws.

But what many on the left want is to regain what Clinton called their loss of “control” over what we are allowed to say or hear on social media.

Make no mistake about it: The “Walzing” of free speech is one dance you would be wise to decline.

Otherwise, do not be surprised if, when the music stops, you find yourself without both your partner and your free speech.

More attacks on freedom from the Left

From Jonathan Turley.

JT is on target.

Politicians on both sides are guilty of attempts to restrict freedom. However, the Left seems better at it, currently, hence is the most dangerous.

Liberals are Losing their Minds over Elon Musk

Below is my column in The Hill on the Musk mania now sweeping over the media with pundits and politicians unleashing unhinged attacks on the billionaire. In an Age of Rage, Musk is now eclipsing Donald Trump as Public Enemy No. 1. It began with his stance against censorship.

Here is the column:

This week, Elton John publicly renounced the Rocket Man — no, not the 1972 song, but Elon Musk, whom he called an “a**hole” in an awards ceremony.

Sir Elton, 77, is only the latest among celebrities and pundits to denounce Musk for his support of former president Donald Trump and his opposition to censorship. Musk-mania is so overwhelming that some are calling for his arrest, deportation and debarment from federal contracts.

This week, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.”

By a 6-4 vote, the California Coastal Commission rejected the military’s plan to let SpaceX launch up to 50 rockets per year from the base in Santa Barbara County.

Musk’s SpaceX is becoming a critical part of national security programs. It will even be launching a rescue mission for two astronauts stranded in space. The advances of SpaceX under Musk are legendary. The Air Force wanted to waive the requirement for separate permits for SpaceX in carrying out these critical missions.

To the disappointment of many, SpaceX is now valued at over $200 billion and just signed a new $1 billion contract with NASA. Yet neither the national security value nor the demands for SpaceX services appear to hold much interest for officials like Commissioner Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom): “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”

Newsom is the former political director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 569. It did not seem to matter to her that increased launches meant more work for electrical workers and others. Rather, it’s all about politics.

Commission Chair Caryl Hart added “here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.”

In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how Musk became persona non grata when he bought Twitter and announced that he was dismantling the company’s massive censorship apparatus.

He then outraged many on the left by releasing the Twitter Files, showing the extensive coordination of the company with the government in a censorship system described by a federal court as “Orwellian.”

After the purchase, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called upon Europeans to force Musk to censor her fellow Americans under the notorious Digital Services Act. Clinton has even suggested the arrest of those responsible for views that she considers disinformation.

Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee called for Musk’s arrest and said that, as a condition of getting government contracts, officials should “require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.”

Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wants Musk arrested for simply refusing to censor other people.

Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for Musk to be deported and all federal contracts cancelled with this company. As with many in the “Save Democracy” movement, Olbermann was unconcerned with the denial of free speech or constitutional protections. “If we can’t do that by conventional means, President Biden, you have presidential immunity. Get Elon Musk the F out of our country and do it now.”

Of course, none of these figures are even slightly bothered about other business leaders with political opinions, so long as, like McNamee, they are supporting Harris or at least denouncing Trump. Musk has failed to yield to a movement infamous for cancel campaigns and coercion. The usual alliance of media, academia, government and corporate forces hit Musk, his companies and even advertisers on X.

Other corporate officials collapsed like a house of cards to demands for censorship — see, for example, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Musk, in contrast, responded by courageously releasing the Twitter Files and exposing the largest censorship system in our history.

That is why I describe Musk as arguably the single most important figure in this generation in defense of free speech. The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.

The left will now kill jobs, cancel national security programs and gut the Constitution in its unrelenting campaign to get Musk. His very existence undermines the power of the anti-free speech movement. In a culture of groupthink, Musk is viewed as a type of free-thought contagion that must be eliminated.

Their frustration became anger, which became rage. As Elton John put it in “Rocket Man,” he was supposed to be “burning out his fuse up here alone.”

Yet, here he remains.

George Bernard Shaw once said “a reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.”

With all of his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, Elon Musk just might be that brilliantly unreasonable person.

The Con in Consensus

From Ross McKitrick.

RM is a Professor of Economics and is extremely knowledgeable about statistics.

A little old, but still relevant.

Here is the link to his article in the Financial Post.

https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/con-in-consensus.pdf

On Marxism

Phillip Magness at iea.org.uk.

PM is on target. Marxism does not build – it destroys.

Here is the link.

https://iea.org.uk/marxism-is-back-but-marxists-cannot-shake-off-the-soviet-legacy/

Here are some excerpts.

------------------------------

Karl Marx’s influence among intellectual elites underwent a massive rebound in recent years. In 2018, mainstream publications including the New York Times, the Economist, and the Financial Times ran gushy homages to the communist philosopher to commemorate the bicentennial of his birth. Marx’s Communist Manifesto consistently ranks as the most frequently assigned book on university course syllabi, with the exception of a few widely used textbooks. Bibliometric evidence of Marx’s prevalence abounds in academic works, where he consistently ranks among the most frequently cited authors in human history. The academy erupted with yet another fanfare for Marx last month, when Princeton University Press released a new translation of his magnum opus, Das Kapital.

The high level of Marx veneration in modern academic life makes for a strange juxtaposition with the track record of Marx’s ideas. The last century’s experiments in Marxist governance left a trail of economic ruination, starvation, and mass murder. When evaluated on a strictly intellectual level, Marx’s theories have not fared much better than their Soviet, Chinese, Cambodian, Cuban, or Venezuelan implementations. Marx constructed his central economic system on the labour theory of value – an obsolete doctrine that was conclusively debunked by the “marginal revolution” in economics in the 1870s. Capital was also riddled with internal circularities throughout, including its inability to reconcile the pricing of labour as an input of production with labour as a priced value onto itself. By the turn of the 20th century, Marx’s predictive claims about the immiserating forces of capitalism were confronted with the tangible reality of growing and widening levels of prosperity.
-----
When mainstream economists first noticed Marx’s work in the years following his death, they made mincemeat of his doctrines over their aforementioned contradictions. Alfred Marshall, in his 1890 textbook, described Capital as an exercise in circular reasoning “shrouded in mysterious Hegelian phrases.” When John Maynard Keynes assessed Marx’s works in 1925, he dismissed Capital as “an obsolete economic textbook […] without interest or application for the modern world.”

Defensive gun uses by people legally carrying guns: Here are 35 cases dur-ing June 2024

From John Lott at the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Here is the link.

https://crimeresearch.org/2024/09/defensive-gun-uses-by-people-legally-carrying-guns-35-cases-during-june-2024/

Crime was up in 2023, not down as the FBI claims

John Lott at the New York Post.

John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He served as senior adviser for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department.
--------------------------
This week President Biden once again took a victory lap on crime, trumpeting preliminary FBI data on trends in 2024.

“Communities across our country are safer now than when I took office,” he bragged in an official statement.

Yet, with crime a central issue in this year’s election, he and the mainstream media have carefully ignored evidence that the FBI may be fudging its numbers — much like the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the number of jobs created during the Biden-Harris administration.

Last month, new FBI data showed that reported serious violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) fell by 3.5% in 2023.

But at the same time — and much more quietly — the FBI revised its earlier data for 2022, turning a reported decrease into a worrisome increase in violent crime.

Last year, the media trumpeted the FBI’s claim that reported violent crime had fallen in 2022 by 2.1%.

But now the FBI admits that violent crime rose in 2022 instead, by 4.5% — off by 6.6 percentage points.

These updated numbers resulted in a net increase in 2022 over 2021 of 80,029 violent crimes: 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults.

It’s a concerning change regarding a highly politicized topic. A Gallup poll found in March that “crime and violence” was Americans’ second biggest concern, after inflation.

For a couple of years now, the mainstream media has been running headlines such as this from NBC News: “Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They’re wrong.”

USA Today’s take on the 2023 FBI crime data was typical: “Violent crime dropped for second straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.”

Yet don’t expect the media to let people know that all the headlines over the last year were wrong — or that 2022’s increase was greater than the reported 2023 drop.

Perhaps the FBI’s newest numbers won’t be revised upward next year, after the election has safely passed.

But even if we take them at face value, it’s important to distinguish reported crime from total crime.

We have known for decades that most crimes aren’t reported to the police. That’s why the US Department of Justice provides a measure of total crime, which includes both reported and unreported crime.

And the results of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, released in mid-September, tell a very different story.

Since victims don’t report most crimes, the NCVS interviews 240,000 people each year about their personal experiences.

Instead of the FBI’s 3.5% drop in serious violent crime, the NCVS found a 4.1% increase in violent crime victimization from 2022 to 2023.

While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by an incredible 55.4%. Rapes were up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during his term.

The increases shown by the NCVS during the Biden-Harris administration are by far the largest percentage increases over any other three-year period, more than doubling the previous record.

We compare 2023 rates with 2019’s pre-COVID violent crime rates, the FBI’s new data show virtually no improvement — just a 0.2% drop — while the NCVS shows a 19% increase in that time period.

Much has been made of the recent decline in murder rates. But while murder rates fell by 16.2% from 2020 to 2023, they still exceed pre-COVID levels by a significant 9.6%.

The mainstream media’s treatment of these statistics has been shameful.

Even after the NCVS data was released and former President Donald Trump discussed them in a press conference, most outlets only noted the new numbers in “fact checks” that sought to dismiss their importance.

The bottom line: Trump is correct that violent crime has increased significantly during the Biden-Harris administration.

He has also been correct to point out that many police departments no longer report their data to the FBI.

In 2023, 21% of departments including large cities like New York and Los Angeles, sent no crime figures to the FBI. Another 24% of police departments only partially reported crime data in 2022, the last year available.

The mainstream media refuses to mention any data that doesn’t fit their narrative.

But Americans in many parts of the country see the effects of rising crime every day, from locked-up products in the local Walgreens to constant news about assaults in the subway.

We know that our lives were not like this a few years ago.

The most anti-free speech ticket in history

Jonathan Turley is on target.

The road to tyranny is paved with restrictions on free speech.
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“Schencking” Free Speech: Walz Makes the Case for the Most Anti-Free Speech Ticket in History

Below is my column in USA Today on the most chilling moment from the Vance-Walz debate when the Democratic nominee showed why he is part of the dream ticket for the anti-free speech movement.

Here is the column:

In the vice presidential debate Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pulled the fire alarm.

His opponent, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, cited the massive system of censorship supported by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate.

Walz proceeded to quote the line from a 1919 case in which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said you do not have the right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater.

It is the favorite mantra of the anti-free speech movement. It also is fundamentally wrong.
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the justice’s line from his opinion in Schenck v. United States. Holmes wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

‘Fire in a theater’ case supported government censorship

As I discuss in the book, the line was largely lifted from a brief in an earlier free speech case. It has since become the rationale for politicians and pundits seeking to curtail free speech in America.

For example, when I testified last year before Congress against a censorship system that has been described by one federal court as “similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., interjected with the fire-in-a-theater question to say such censorship is needed and constitutional. In other words, the internet is now a huge crowded theater and those with opposing views are shouting fire.

Goldman and Walz both cited a case in which socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were arrested and convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Their “crime” was to pass out flyers in opposition to the military draft during World War I.



Schenck and Baer called on their fellow citizens not to “submit to intimidation” and to “assert your rights.” They argued, “If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.” They also described the military draft as “involuntary servitude.”

Holmes used his “fire in a theater” line to justify the abusive conviction and incarceration. At the House hearing, when I was trying to explain that the justice later walked away from the line and Schenck was effectively overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, Goldman cut me off and said, “We don’t need a law class here.”

In the vice presidential debate, Walz showed that he and other Democratic leaders most certainly do need a class in First Amendment law.

As I have said, the Biden-Harris administration has proved to be the most anti-free speech administration in two centuries. You have to go back to John Adams’ administration to find the equal of this administration.

Harris has been an outspoken champion of censorship in an administration that supports targeting disinformation, misinformation and “malinformation.” That last category was defined by the Biden administration as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

In the debate, Walz also returned to his favorite dismissal of censorship objections by saying that it is all just inflammatory rhetoric.

Recently, Walz went on MSNBC to support censoring disinformation and declared, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

That is entirely untrue and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the right called “indispensable” by the Supreme Court. Even after some of us condemned his claim as ironically dangerous disinformation, Walz continues to repeat it.

Free speech advocates view Harris as a threat

This is why, for the free speech community, the prospect of a Harris-Walz administration is chilling. Where President Joe Biden was viewed as supporting censorship out of political opportunism, Harris and Walz are viewed as true believers.

We are living through the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in American history. We have never before faced the current alliance of government, corporate, academic and media forces aligned against free speech. A Harris-Walz administration with a supportive Congress could make this right entirely dispensable.

Others are laying the groundwork for precisely that moment. University of Michigan Law School professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has said that free speech “can also be our Achilles’ heel.”

Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, wrote a New York Times op-ed with the headline, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” He told readers that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.”

Walz said in the debate that Vice President Harris is promoting the “politics of joy.” Indeed, the wrong people are perfectly ecstatic. Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.