July 23 (UPI) -- A federal judge ordered Thursday that Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, be released to home confinement -- agreeing with arguments that his return to prison amounted to government retaliation.
Cohen was taken back into custody this month during a hearing that arranged the terms of his house arrest. He was furloughed from prison in May due to underlying health conditions that put him at greater risk should he contract COVID-19.
The American Civil Liberties Union and a New York law firm filed suit this week calling for Cohen's release, arguing that his rearrest amounted to retaliation for his plans to publish a book about the president.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
It occurs to me that stands for the principle of not silencing people - like FULLZENSHITOF, peacegirl, Slobberin', etc etc. And yet of many of those people saying they feel silenced by the girly gang. Both aspects make me feel good.
I haven't read the studies yet, so can't opine on the content, but is it just me or is there something astonishingly ironic about posting these links on a protected tweet?
Two studies released this month come to the same conclusion. (1) Keeping Your Mouth Shut: Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States @SSRNhttps://t.co/WOagmYjsD6
Banning this weirdo wouldn't be silencing at all, bro's posts have already been made years ago. Reposting here is just search engine optimization for whatever reason.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
I don’t know what ‘conclusion’ Pinker thinks the paper I’m not sure he read comes too but there’s a ton of “This paper raises as many questions as it answers”, “failure to draw a connection” and “our analysis has only scratched the surface” in it, that really makes the use of the phrase “come to the same conclusion” suspect.
I can’t see his twitter thread so I’m curious what conclusion he thinks it came too, and does he agree with the paper that women are more likely to self censor than men?
Now that I've skimmed both I don't think my initial assumption was necessarily valid. I was thinking since he was a signatory on the Harpers letter then surely these studies would show how liberals are out of control shutting everyone down. The CATO paper does lean that direction, at least with the conclusion that "strong liberals" appear to be less afraid to speak their mind than centrists on up, but I don't know. I don't think either study is a strong critique of "cancel culture".
Banning this weirdo wouldn't be silencing at all, bro's posts have already been made years ago. Reposting here is just search engine optimization for whatever reason.
I believe - but don't care enough to check - that he was making fresh posts years ago on multiple forums including here. Years ago, noob.
And, as if Michael Hobbes had been reading , "The vast majority of American employment is “at will,” meaning companies can fire their workers for any reason and at any time. A great way to fix this problem would be to advocate for stronger unions and better employment protections."
I found this while looking for helpful material on the Jodi Shaw issue for a discussion elsewhere. I nearly used it but decided that, Bari Weiss notwithstanding, it wasn't really on target. Yes, both disputes arise from right-wing attempts to weaponise left-wing values to push back on progress, but I don't believe they are the same left-wing values, so they need separate treatment, I think.
I'm like, what shall I do with this then? I know—I'll post it on !
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... it's just an idea
Last edited by mickthinks; 03-03-2021 at 04:52 PM.
Another one, addressed more generally to those who inveigh against "a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism" —dubbed by Wesley Yang "Successor Culture".
Damn, she is a poster child for aggrieved white fragility.
Quote:
In 2021, there’s a simple formula for becoming a cancel culture martyr, and it’s essentially as follows: One, make a tone-deaf remark or faux pas betraying your ignorance of your own privilege; two, lose your job or be publicly reprimanded over said offense; three, get a centrist or right-leaning columnist or public figure with a large platform to take up your cause, persuading their audience to rally behind you as an unwitting sacrifice on the altar of hyper-wokeness. Last week, we saw this formula play out with Gina Carano, the MMA-fighter-turned-Mandalorian-star who was fired by Lucasfilm after posting a meme drawing parallels between being a conservative and being a Jew during the Holocaust. Far from disappearing from public life, however, she quickly rebounded by teaming up with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who announced that he was planning to produce a movie she would star in. This week, it’s happening again with Jodi Shaw, a former librarian at Smith College, who dramatically resigned from the institution after taking umbrage with what she characterized as its “racially hostile environment.” Among the instances of this environment she cites: being told by a supervisor not to rap during a library orientation presentation.
Another one, addressed more generally to those who inveigh against "a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism" —dubbed by Wesley Yang "Successor Culture".
Thanks for sharing this, it’s really fucking good.
Quote:
Critics of progressive identity politics frequently argue that progressives seem congenitally incapable of recognizing the progress our country has made. But to take that progress seriously is to recognize that much of what has recently been dubbed progressive illiberalism these past few weeks and years has been the stirring of a diverse nation at what is inarguably liberalism’s zenith. Any given vandal taking down a statue of Grant or Lincoln or Washington is more committed to the cardinal liberal principles than any of those leaders were; most Americans today take the rights and autonomy of minorities and women entirely for granted, and they simply did not. Our noble defenders of historical statuary will continue to argue loudly that they could not, and issue complaints about holding the major figures of our past to today’s standards, our need for heroes to venerate, and all the rest. But whether or not one agrees, our social tumult should be seen, on balance, as evidence of our country’s movement forward—toward the liberal ideal and not away from it. One cannot claim otherwise without doing violence to a morbid, violent history.
Earlier this week, Dr. David Boyles, an instructor in the ASU English Department, was followed, harassed, pushed and injured by two men identified by Turning Point USA as their “reporter” and “cameraman.” I’d like to share with you some of my views about this matter.
It is astounding to me that individuals from Turning Point USA would wait for an ASU instructor to come out of his class to follow him, harass him and ultimately shove him to the ground, bloodying his face. Cowards that they are and so confident in the legality and appropriateness of their actions, the Turning Point USA “reporter” and “cameraman” then ran away from the scene before police arrived.
...
Dr. Boyles as an instructor at ASU teaches writing and English literature including a class which draws from LGBTQ+ literature. He is part of an academic community that appropriately engages our students across the entire spectrum of human experience and expression.
Earlier this year, I wrote to Turning Point USA to request that it remove ASU professors from its Professor Watchlist. I did not receive a response. Instead, the incident we’ve all now witnessed on the video shows Turning Point’s refusal to stop dangerous practices that result in both physical and mental harm to ASU faculty members, which they then apparently exploit for fundraising, social media clicks and financial gain. As my April 2023 letter to Turning Point USA indicated, the Professor Watchlist has resulted in antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and misogynistic attacks on ASU faculty with whom Turning Point USA and its followers disagree. Such tactics are anti-democratic, anti-free speech and completely contrary to the spirit of university scholarship, teaching and community.
Their argument is not that they didn't display the ads, but that it was unfair for Media Matters to pretend to be nazis when they aren't Nazis, and lying to the algorithm is libel.
The amount of time this 15 page legal document spends praising Xtwitter, makes me think Musk wrote parts of this himself.
Their argument is not that they didn't display the ads, but that it was unfair for Media Matters to pretend to be nazis when they aren't Nazis, and lying to the algorithm is libel.
The amount of time this 15 page legal document spends praising Xtwitter, makes me think Musk wrote parts of this himself.
That appears to be an actual filing, and watching practicing lawyers react to it has been amusing.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Oh yeah, that's the real shit. Excellent choice of forums! X didn't get the dream draw - Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk - but it could have done worse:
Quote:
Monday’s case has been assigned to District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee who has previously been at the center of some of the nation’s biggest legal battles. Last November, Pittman blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt, one of two such decisions to reach the Supreme Court.
Last August, Pittman ruled that a Texas law that bans people ages 18 to 20 from carrying handguns in public is unconstitutional and inconsistent with the Second Amendment and US history.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Also, completely invalid choice of forums -- the Twitter/X ToS say, unambiguously, that all actions pertaining to their terms or services must be brought in San Francisco County, over in California.
It is conceivable that someone could convince a court not to enforce that provision against someone else, who wants to sue Twitter (or whom Twitter is suing), but who argues that they didn't really agree to it or it's unfair to them. It's much harder for Twitter to say that the provision shouldn't bind them just because they want a specific judge.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Oh yeah, that's the real shit. Excellent choice of forums!
I'm no litigator! But, Citizen Counselor, would you, if alleging various causes of action, stipulate to affirmative defenses to said claims right there in the complaint itself? I might reconsider asserting those particular claims at all, but as I said, I am no litigator!
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs
Also, completely invalid choice of forums -- the Twitter/X ToS say, unambiguously, that all actions pertaining to their terms or services must be brought in San Francisco County, over in California.
It is conceivable that someone could convince a court not to enforce that provision against someone else, who wants to sue Twitter (or whom Twitter is suing), but who argues that they didn't really agree to it or it's unfair to them. It's much harder for Twitter to say that the provision shouldn't bind them just because they want a specific judge.
In almost any other circumstance I would start prattling about how iffy and unreliable venue selection clauses are, and then temper it with some extra iffiness about how this is an adhesion contract that should be construed against the drafter who is also the complainant. But I'm not going to in this circumstance, precisely because Twitter sought out a Trump appointee who would likely, in most other facts, uphold the sanctity of a finely printed forum selection provision or jury trial waiver against, say, an injured consumer seeking to recover actual damages but will, in this instance, likely discover that the interests of justice in this case demand that the forum selection selection clause be set aside. At least until there's a dismissal - without prejudice of course - to spare Twitter the indignity of responsive pleadings or discovery.
Also I bet sooooo many Twitter advertisers are jazzed about the possibility of third party discovery.
Oh, yeah. The third-party discovery thing is gonna be a joy, because the allegations in the complaints make questions to third parties on topics like "how do you feel about ads for your product being placed next to posts with the hashtag #HeilHitler" actually relevant to the claims in the suit.
That said, Elon will stop at nothing to avoid having his deposition taken. His very loud and utterly stupid attempts to get out of paying for Twitter all evaporated within about a day when he found out he was in fact going to have to sit for a deposition. There is no possible way to try this one without him being asked questions about the "you have spoken the actual truth" post, etcetera, and that means that this suit will never go anywhere.
And while a Trump appointee with this one's track record might well be pretty strongly inclined to favor the apartheid-regime poster child in general, they might also realize that this lawsuit is a giant clusterfuck and trash fire and that the thing they want most is to have it be not in their court.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Re: I Stand with Noam!
stands for the principle of not silencing people - like FULLZENSHITOF, peacegirl, Slobberin', etc etc. And yet of many of those people saying they feel silenced by the girly gang. Both aspects make me feel good.
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