Sean Sphincter: Censoring Coverage! Darn that FIRST AMENDMENT!

TRUMPERS: FIRST AMENDMENT? 

SIMPLE! 

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Even SNL Mocks this clown! 

White House bars major news outlets from informal briefing

LYNN ELBER

Associated Press

February 24, 2017

News organizations including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN and Politico were blocked from joining an informal, on-the-record White House press briefing Friday.

The Associated Press chose not to participate in the briefing after White House press secretary Sean Spicer restricted the number of journalists included. Typically, the daily briefing is televised and open to all news organizations credentialed to cover the White House.

"The AP believes the public should have as much access to the president as possible," Lauren Easton, the AP's director of media relations, said in a statement.

On Friday, hours after President Donald Trump delivered a speech blasting the media, Spicer invited only a pool of news organizations that represents and shares reporting with the larger press corps. He also invited several other major news outlets, as well as smaller organizations including the conservative Washington Times, One America News Network and Breitbart News, whose former executive chairman, Steve Bannon, is Trump's chief strategist. When the additional news organizations attempted to gain access, they weren't allowed to enter.

The White House said it felt "everyone was represented" by those in the pool and the invited organizations.

"We decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool. Nothing more than that," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

When asked by a reporter attending whether he was playing favorites, Spicer said the White House had "shown an abundance of accessibility," according to an audio recording of the briefing later circulated by the pool.

The pool included Reuters, Bloomberg, CBS, Hearst Newspapers and CBS Radio. Others in the briefing were Fox, NBC and ABC. Bloomberg reported that its reporter was unaware of the exclusions until after the briefing.

John Roberts, Fox's chief White House correspondent, told anchor Shepard Smith on the air Friday that Fox supports complaints being filed by the White House Correspondents Association and pool TV networks.

"You can speculate, Shep, that there might be some extenuating circumstances as to why those people were not invited, we're going to look into that further...." Roberts said.

In a statement, the correspondent association's president, Jeff Mason, said the group was "protesting strongly" against how the briefing was handled by the White House.

CBS News said in a statement that it was the pool's radio and TV outlet Friday.

"We recorded audio of this event and quickly shared it out of an obligation to protect the interests of all pool members," the news division said.

When Spicer was asked by a reporter at the briefing whether he was playing favorites, he said he "disagreed with the premise of the question," according to the audio.

"We've brought more reporters into this process. And the idea that every time that every single person can't get their question answered or fit in a room that we're excluding people. We've actually gone above and beyond with making ourselves, our team, and our briefing room more accessible than probably any prior administration. And so I think you can take that to the bank.

"We do what we can to accommodate the press. I think we've gone above and beyond when it comes to accessibility, and openness and getting folks — our officials, our team."

During a panel discussion last December, Spicer said that open access for the media is "what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship."

Reaction to Friday's events from the barred outlets and others was swift.

Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, called the newspaper's exclusion "unfortunate."

"The public has a right to know, and that means being informed by a variety of news sources, not just those filtered by the White House press office in hopes of getting friendly coverage," Maharaj said in a statement. "Regardless of access, the Times will continue to report on the Trump administration without fear or favor."

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said that "nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest."

CNN's Jake Tapper took aim at the White House as he kicked off "The Lead with Jake Tapper" hours after the briefing.

"A White House that has had some difficulty telling the truth and that has seemed to have trouble getting up to speed on the basic competent functioning of government, and a president who seems particularly averse to any criticism and has called the press the enemies of the American people — they're taking the next step in attempting to avoid checks and balances and accountability.

"It's not acceptable. In fact, it's petulant, and indicative of a lack of basic understanding of how an adult White House functions," Tapper said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned the move by the White House.

"We are concerned by the decision to bar reporters from a press secretary briefing," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement. "The U.S. should be promoting press freedom and access to information."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-bars-major-news-outlets-media-gaggle-200251496.html 

First Amendment

First Amendment: An Overview

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. See U.S. Const. amend. I. Freedom of expression consists of the rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and the implied rights of association and belief. The Supreme Court interprets the extent of the protection afforded to these rights. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendmentfrom interference by state governments. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV.

Two clauses in the First Amendment guarantee freedom of religion. The establishment clause prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another. It enforces the "separation of church and state." Some governmental activity related to religion has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court. For example, providing bus transportation for parochial school students and the enforcement of "blue laws" is not prohibited. The free exercise clause prohibits the government, in most instances, from interfering with a person's practice of their religion.

The most basic component of freedom of expression is the right of freedom of speech. The right to freedom of speech allows individuals to express themselves without interference or constraint by the government. The Supreme Court requires the government to provide substantial justification for the interference with the right of free speech where it attempts to regulate the content of the speech. A less stringent test is applied for content-neutral legislation. The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government may prohibit some speech that may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence. For more on unprotected and less protected categories of speech see advocacy of illegal action, fighting words, commercial speech and obscenity. The right to free speech includes other mediums of expression that communicate a message.  The level of protection speech receives also depends on the forum in which it takes place.   

Despite popular misunderstanding the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. It allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It is part of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to citizens in general.

The right to assemble allows people to gather for peaceful and lawful purposes. Implicit within this right is the right to association and belief. The Supreme Court has expressly recognized that a right to freedom of association and belief is implicit in the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. This implicit right is limited to the right to associate for First Amendment purposes. It does not include a right of social association. The government may prohibit people from knowingly associating in groups that engage and promote illegal activities. The right to associate also prohibits the government from requiring a group to register or disclose its members or from denying government benefits on the basis of an individual's current or past membership in a particular group. There are exceptions to this rule where the Court finds that governmental interests in disclosure/registration outweigh interference with first amendment rights. The government may also, generally, not compel individuals to express themselves, hold certain beliefs, or belong to particular associations or groups.

The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances guarantees people the right to ask the government to provide relief for a wrong through the courts (litigation) or other governmental action. It works with the right of assembly by allowing people to join together and seek change from the government.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment

Why do so many lunatics defend this racist? The crazy tales they're hearing.

I know that this is a long post, but I took the time to type it, so I hope that at least a few people take the time to read and consider its merits.

It amazes me that it takes racist comments for some people to realize that Cliven Bundy is not some sort of folk hero. Back in 1987, two years before his death, the libertarian and environmental activist Edward Abbey, who liked to characterize the Bundy crowd as “a tiny 3 or 4 percent of subsidized welfare ranchers who turn loose their private cows upon our public lands” was railing against the LACK of regulations against grazing on public lands. He wrote the following letter to the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, at a time when the BLM was proposing new regulations that would loosen restrictions on livestock grazing on private lands. He cc’d everybody from the National Wildlife Federation to the National Rifle Association, as a proud member of these and other organizations.

“… the grazing of domestic livestock – cows, horses, sheep – on our public lands (ours, not the ranchers’) should be phased out completely during the next ten years. Those taxpayer-supported parasites have been abusing our public property for over a century now: it’s time to call a halt to it. In every western state human recreation, or tourism, is a far bigger money maker for local people than ranching, mining and logging combined, and even aside from mere economic considerations, the health of the land requires that we give first priority to wildlife habitat, watershed protection and ample opportunity for the public enjoyment of what is a public treasure: the free and open spaces of our western states, especially the vast areas under BLM administration.

Those cows are eating grass that belongs to our elk! And most hunters out here are fed up with that unjust and destructive situation. Your new regulations would be a big step in the wrong direction. If you don’t soon start reducing the number of cattle on our public lands, then we hunters are going to begin a stock reduction program without your help. I feel, and most of my friends agree, that every domestic cow found stumbling around on our public lands should be regarded as a game animal. Open season, no bag limit.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/24/fox_news_worst_cliven_bundy_lies_22_right_wing_delusions_about_the_absurd_standoff/



Thursday, Apr 24, 2014 02:45 PM EDT

Fox News’ worst Cliven Bundy lies: 22 right-wing delusions about the absurd standoff

Why do so many lunatics defend this racist? The crazy tales they're hearing. We explain why their claims are wrong

Eric Stern


Sean Hannity, Cliven Bundy (Credit: Fox News/Reuters/Jim Urquhart)



The Cliven Bundy standoff, involving an angry rancher who refuses to pay federal grazing fees, took a new, ugly turn Wednesday night when the New York Times reported horrifying comments he made about “the Negro” and slavery. Meanwhile, Bundy’s quest continues to grip Fox News audiences. This is largely because his story is more reasonable if you watch Fox’s creative, often fictionalized version of it.

Here, then, are nearly two dozen claims that have been uttered in defense of Bundy by Fox personalities, other right-wing pundits and Bundy himself. (A good deal of them, alas, come from Sean Hannity.)

For each claim, we’ve offered a bit of a fact-check or truthful context afterward.

1. “The BLM’s actions lacked proportionality.” (Sean Hannity) The Bureau of Land Management simply arrived to take cattle, per a court order. They didn’t show up with guns drawn and they never even entered Bundy’s property. They did, however, carry arms for a good reason: They had received intelligence that Bundy and his crew might cause trouble. There is nothing “disproportionate” about being prepared.

2. “The BLM pointed guns at children.” The Republican Nevada Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore has been saying this during her 15 minutes of fame, including on “All In With Chris Hayes” on MSNBC last week. There has been no evidence offered that the BLM “pointed guns at children.” Bundy’s teenage son attempted to assault officers and kicked a police dog and resisted arrest, and so they used a taser on him, as well they should have.

3. “The Feds are going to ‘cause another Waco’.” (Cliven Bundy, et al.) The feds are trying to avoid another Waco. The U.S. government did not “cause Waco” but rather botched the response; they could have waited it out more patiently to avoid the loss of life of innocent children. And this is exactly why the feds have not pressed the issue (yet) with Bundy, and why the BLM stood down.

4. “Since when does the government send armed officers to collect a debt?” (Hannity) Many repossession and foreclosure actions often involve a sheriff or other armed officials, and confiscation of property is an ordinary means by which a government resolves a debt. For example, if you accumulate 20 years of unpaid parking tickets, a court will order that your car be booted and towed until you pay. And if you point a rifle at the cop or otherwise assault him, you might get shot (or tased).

5. “Nobody has seen any bill for $1.1 million. It doesn’t exist.” (Michelle Fiore, R-Nevada Assembly, on MSNBC) Bundy says he has “never been sent a bill” but also says he never opens mail from the U.S. government because he does not recognize the U.S. government’s existence. A court has ordered him to pay a debt of $1.1 million in accumulated fines and fees for having put greater than his allowed quota of cattle on federally protected tortoise habitat.

6. “The BLM provoked, escalated this controversy.” Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, made this accusation, as have numerous others. If an armed resistance is put up against an asset seizure by law enforcement officials who are acting under a court order, the provocation is exclusively the work of those who have chosen to threaten the lawmen with violence.

7. “The land is not being used — it’s not like they want to build a school, road or hospital on it.” (Hannity) How federal land is used is determined by federal law. A citizen does not get to decide for himself whether the land should remain vacant or grazed, or whether something should be built on it.

8. “Harry Reid and his son have a financial motive to remove Bundy’s cows.” (Bob Massi, Fox News legal correspondent) There is no evidence at all that Harry Reid or his son have any financial or political interest in what is going on. Don’t believe everything you hear on Fox News, especially when the reporter qualifies it, as Massi did here, by saying, “We don’t really know if it’s true.”

9. “The BLM killed cattle and put the corpses in a mass grave.” There is no evidence that the BLM euthanized Bundy’s cattle except some photos and footage of dubious pedigree being aired nightly on Fox News. That said, it is possible that a cow or two could have died during the roundup. Cattle are occasionally killed in large roundups. Now, if there was a mass euthanizing of cattle, the BLM should be forced to explain that.

10. “The sheriff is the only man with arresting power in Clark county.” Bundy has made this claim in his nightly appearance on the Sean Hannity show, and it has long been a favorite talking point of Tea Partyers, especially in the West. But it is false. Federal officers have arresting power where federal land is trespassed or where federal law has otherwise been broken. The BLM does have an obligation under federal regulations to seek the cooperation of local law enforcement to resolve certain disputes. But in this case, the sheriff refused to help out.

11. “People should not die over a few cows eating free government grass.” (Hannity) That’s true, which is why Bundy and his militia members should not have chosen to point guns at federal officials and escalate the situation. Now, those militia members could find themselves getting shot or even killed. Such is the consequence of pointing rifles at lawmen trying to do their job.

12. “How could a cow possibly eat $1.1 million of grass?” (Bundy’s daughter, Stetsy Bundy) Cows can easily eat a million bucks worth of grass but that’s neither here nor there. Grazing fees are not assessed by weighing the amount of tonnage that a cow eats. It is a per-animal-unit, per-month fee, and it adds up over 20 years. Furthermore, Bundy’s liability is as much for fines for illegal trespass as it is for fees.

13. “What’s wrong with Bundy’s cows simply cutting the grass for free?” (Hannity) A trespass is not forgiven simply because the trespasser believes he is performing a service for the owner. Furthermore, “cutting grass” is not depriving the owner of a nuisance but rather taking a valuable resource (edible grass) from the owner.

14. “Bundy has rights to the land because his ancestors worked the land prior to formation of BLM.” Bundy has made this argument himself and others have echoed it, but even if Bundy’s ancestors did work the land (and we only have his word that they did, and he is notoriously dishonest), as of the passage of the Taylor Act in 1934 they would have had to pay grazing fees. And it was never private land. The parcel that Bundy is trespassing has been owned by the U.S. government ever since it was purchased and/or won from Mexico or Spain.

15. “This is all predicated on a tortoise that is not even endangered.” (Hannity) The decision as to whether the tortoise is endangered and whether it can withstand grazing, and how much, is one for biologists to make and can be challenged in court by anyone that disagrees with it, in which case the government must show that it is using valid science.

16. “Grazing more cattle on federal land will keep beef prices down.” Sean Hannity made this idiotic remark two nights ago. If the government wants to centrally control the market for beef (as it sometimes does with other commodities) it is a policy decision to be made by Congress and the Department of Agriculture, not Mr. Bundy or Sean Hannity.

17. “We have rapists, pedophiles and murderers. Why is government focusing on this piece of land?” (Hannity) The government’s decision to seize the assets of a scofflaw will not cause rapes, murders or acts of pedophilia to be neglected. Law enforcement is capable of multitasking.

18. “The feds should simply put a lien on Bundy’s property.” (Fiore, Hannity et al) Yes, they can and they should (and likely have already, since it’s been going on 20 years), and this would mean that when his cows arrive at market, the proceeds would go directly to the government. But realized that the collection of the past due amount is only one issue — the other is that Bundy continues to run his cows on land that is closed to grazing, and a lien won’t accomplish that.

19. “If you owed money, would you like it if the government came to your house and pointed guns at you and your wife and family?” (Fiore) The BLM did not “point guns” at the Bundys until the Bundys assaulted them. The BLM was doing its job, and Bundy’s armed supporters threatened them with force and the son assaulted one of the officers and his dog.

20. “Peaceful protesters were relocated miles away from entrance to the Bundy ranch, and denied their First Amendment Rights.” (Brian Sandoval, GOP governor of Nevada) When law enforcement needs to operate in a tense situation, they are within their rights to move protesters to an area safely away from the action. This is for their own protection, and it is especially appropriate where some of the protesters bring weapons.

21. “Bundy has already paid fees to Nevada County.” Dana Loesch, a frequent guest on Fox, has repeatedly made this peculiar argument. Whatever Bundy might have paid to Nevada County is of no consequence to his federal tax bill. You cannot avoid a federal tax bill by paying fees and taxes to the county.

22. “If the cattle were illegal immigrants, the Justice Department would be running guns to them and Homeland Security would be giving them free phones.” (Dana Loesch) Even if this were true (and it isn’t), cattle are not illegal immigrants. Nor does this silly hypothetical scenario bear in any way on the fact that Bundy and his thugs have broken the law by ignoring several court orders, and interfering with law enforcement in many ways.

Eric Stern lives in Helena, Montana. He was senior counsel to Brian Schweitzer, former Governor. Follow him on Twitter at @_ericstern.

More Eric Stern.  

Conservatives can’t decide whether to disown or defend Cliven Bundy

RSN: Calls for Brennan's Ouster as Senate Spying Details Emerge

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FOCUS: Dan Froomkin | Calls for Brennan's Ouster as Senate Spying Details Emerge

Dan Froomkin, The Intercept
Froomkin reports: "CIA Director John Brennan's decision to search Senate committee computers was such a blatant violation of the constitutional separation of powers that some pro-accountability groups in Washington are starting to seek his ouster."
READ MORE

Sad commentary of what we've become as a nation!

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mi). (photo: Getty Images)

American Terrorists on Both Sides of War

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

14 February 14

Drone Rangers shoot first, ask questions later – maybe

he United States often and wrongly calls itself the "indispensable nation," as if just being a global empire meant the world couldn't possibly live without us. How about a universal plebiscite on that proposition? But there is one way in which the U.S. really and truly, honest-to-God, is undeniably the world's indispensable nation – that characterization is absolutely true when our drone strikes wipe out men, women, and children at weddings and funerals, or in their town meetings and gardens, or wherever sudden, painful death happens to catch them by surprise just because the president checked someone's name on a list.

You're not supposed to know the U.S. kills civilians. You're not supposed to think of your own country as a state sponsor of terrorism. Your government won't tell you about America's red, white, and out-of-the-blue murder policy. Accomplice governments won't talk about their unclean hands either. But word gets out. They can't persecute truth tellers fast enough. Not yet anyway.

 

On January 29, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London once again blew some the secrecy off American foreign homicidal policy. A leak from inside the Pakistani government documents 330 drone strikes in that country from 2006 through 2013, an average of 47 a year (although 2010 was a peak year). The official, secret document supports the accuracy of previous Bureau reports of 2,371 drone deaths during that period. The official document gives a total of 2,217 remote kills, but has no data for 2007.

 

The Bureau reported that: "The document is the fullest official record of drone strikes in Pakistan to have yet been published. It provides rare insight into what the government understands about the campaign. It also provides details about exactly when and where strikes took place, often including the names of homeowners…. But interestingly, the document stops recording civilian casualties after 2008, even omitting details of well-documented civilian deaths and those that have been acknowledged by the government."

 

Your job, fellow citizen, is to want not to know

 

That absence of information is the essence of any attempted cover-up. During the Watergate cover-up in 1972, an underling asked money-man Maurice Stans what a particularly unusual expenditure was for. Stans gave a response that is the essence of a cover-up: "I don't want to know, and you don't want to know." Stans was never convicted of being a knowing part of any of the crimes in which he took part.

 

Not knowing what criminal activity the government is up to makes you a good citizen (in the government's eyes), but you're an even better citizen if you don't even think about it. That's a value judgment Apple has tried to enforce in its role as a government surrogate in extending official thought control.

 

For his final thesis as a grad student at New York University, Josh Begley developed an app for the iPhone and then submitted it to Apple. He called the app Drones+ as he explained to Democracy

 

Now:

 

"And the idea for it was really simple: It would send you a push notification or just ping your phone every time there was a U.S. drone strike. Right? So, even if we [had] access to the data about drone strikes, do we really want to be interrupted by it, right? Do we really want to be as connected to our foreign policy as we are to our smartphones? Our phones, which are these increasingly intimate devices, right, the places that we share pictures of our loved ones and communicate with our friends … do we really want these things to also be the site of how we experience remote war? Right? In an age when it's possible to sit in an air-conditioned room in New Mexico and control an airplane as it hovers over a village in what used to be India, is there a way to close that feedback loop a little bit and actually feel something, even if it's just my pocket vibrating when the missile hits the ceiling?"

 

Apple tries acting like a self-appointed censor

 

In the summer of 2012, Apple's answer to Begley's questions was to reject his Drone+ app because it was, as Apple termed it, "excessively crude or objectionable content" and "not useful or entertaining enough." Begley was persistent. He said Apple ended up rejecting the app three times. Bad enough to try to count crude American assassinations of Pakistanis, but to expose an Apple user to the danger of feeling something about these war crimes, anyone could see that was objectionable.

 

But now, surprise – Begley's app is available for your Apple iPhone, thanks to a political workaround: he changed the name to Metadata+ and submitted it as an empty app. After they accepted it in that form, he loaded the data.

 

Now it turns out, from the first issue of The Intercept, drone crimes are more than a CIA executive action, in cahoots with the chief executive. The National Security (NSA) is in on it too, secretly sifting mobile phone metadata to assess, kind of ouija-board-like, which unknown phone user might be "bad" for the United States.

 

In other words, if you happen to pick up the wrong cell phone, your innocence isn't enough to keep you from getting dismembered. And Americans don't even have to know about it. The government just adds your anonymity to the body count and waits for those hearts and minds to start rolling in.

 

Maybe there's even an app for that.

 

World's most powerful man looking for help with law-breaking

 

And being American doesn't necessarily make you safe. Maybe you noticed the AP report on February 10 about how President Obama wants to take out an American citizen he says is a member of al-Qaeda and is planning to attack the United States, or so they say. The AP described the president's anguished position like this: "The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen. The Pentagon drones that could are barred from the country where he's hiding, and the Justice Department has not yet finished building a case against him."

 

The most powerful man in the world is not only hampered by not having a complete case on the suspect he wants to eliminate by executive action, the country the suspect is in doesn't allow U.S. drone strikes and, worse, the president's own new policy states that Americans in foreign countries can be killed only by the military, not the CIA. Talk about hoist by your own petard.

 

Of course if it were up to Congressman Mike Rogers and the other yahoos in Congress, the president could ignore all the niceties, including the U.S. Constitution (with its blather about due process and stuff), and just blow the suspect to kingdom come, along with anyone who happened to be within blast range. Rogers is a Michigan Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee who has indicated he doesn't care how many constitutional principles or civilians need to be shredded to protect the troops.

 

As the first president of the war on terror once said, "They hate us for our freedoms."

 

Well, we're getting rid of our freedoms, so why would they still hate us?

 

It couldn't have anything to do with drones or night raids or assassinations or any of the other special operations the government tries to keep secret from its citizens, even though they're no secret to their targets.

 

Looks like the "war on terror" is actually a typo.

 

It's a war of terror.

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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.