This week on the insightful side, both top comments come in response to our post about the New York Times bending over backwards to downplay Trump’s criminality and absurdity. In first place it’s Thad thinking about the week in which it happened: In second place, it’s Whoever with a broader comment about journalism: The most […]
Well, as we previously discussed was going to occur, RFK Jr. gave his keynote speech and appearance at the Children’s Health Defense conference of anti-vaxxer conspiracy-mongers, and he was certainly firmly on brand. In fact, he did so much to make news during and around this appearance that we’re going to have to break this […]
Some day we’ll look back at this and laugh. I mean, I would hope so. The DOJ and DHS are still trying to put people in jail for protesting a church whose pastor was also an ICE officer. Ultimately, the protesters entered the church and disrupted the service. Among those entering the church were a […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on […]
Well, this is unfortunate. Late last year, Marco Rubio’s State Department declared that it had banned five people from entering the US because of their speech. Most of them work, in one way or another, on fighting hate speech online, including Imran Ahmed, the head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). As I’ve […]
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Contrary to the “worst of the worst” posturing presented by the Trump administration, it’s long been known that immigrants (both legal or otherwise) commit fewer crimes than natural-born US citizens: Our consistent finding is that legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by illegal immigrants, and that native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants […]
Have I mentioned lately that media consolidation is bad and people who care about an informed electorate and democratic integrity should fight to restore federal media consolidation limits illegally destroyed by the Trump administration and FCC boss Brendan Carr? Anyway, there’s a new Alex Gibney documentary coming out about Elon Musk that takes him to […]
If you thought we were done with the trademark bullying drama resulting from gas station and convenience store chain Buc-ee’s, you were wrong. While we’re still waiting for this corporation to take up John Oliver’s request to sue him for creating parody merchandize of the Buc-ee’s brand, the company has decided to do what bullies […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. Among […]
As the federal U.S. government has given up on consumer protection and corporate oversight, states have filled the void with various degrees of success. That’s been particularly apparent in areas like telecom, where the corruption-fueled death of federal privacy and net neutrality protections have been replicated in a handful of states like California, which passed […]
Public furor is hard to maintain. It takes a concerted effort from people who have a lot to lose. Not only do they not have anything to gain (financially or otherwise) from engaging in protests, but they face the real possibility of arrests, job losses, beatings, or actual death. On the other hand, the Trump […]
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Being a GOP politician in the Trump era is defined by two things: publicly embarrassing yourself to show support for Trump’s most dangerous policy ideas, and lying to your constituents about what those ideas will do to them. It is an inherently pathetic situation. And yet not one of them seems capable of showing even […]
Last week comedian Jimmy Kimmel said Jimmy Kimmel Live! and ABC wouldn’t be airing an interview with Texas Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico on broadcast because they were worried it would anger Trump’s top censorship czar, FCC boss Brendan Carr. Kimmel and ABC had cause to worry; we’ve outlined in detail how Carr has manufactured […]
As Pennsylvania continues to endure the worst of the current measles outbreaks ravaging the country, a fourth measles-associated death has now been confirmed. As of the time of this writing, the CDC’s public website tracking case counts and deaths has still not acknowledged a single one of these fatalities, reportedly at the direction of RFK […]
Larry and David Ellison are desperate to get their unpopular $111 billion merger between Paramount/CBS and Warner Brothers across the finish line. So they’ve been engaging in no shortage of dodgy behavior to try and derail the only thing left standing in their way: the 12-state antitrust lawsuit claiming that more media consolidation is anti-competitive […]
Techdirt has just written about concerns that AI development is proceeding more quickly than human oversight can monitor and control it. Since then, there has been lively debate about whether those fears are real or overblown. They mainly focus on the possible future threats from AI systems using RSI — recursive self-improvement — to drive […]
You may recall that back in July we had the ridiculous story of how ICE decided to go all gestapo on its critics, including tracking down and threatening David Streever, who had emailed then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons back in January, after federal agents killed some peaceful protestors in Minnesota. Streever’s email was pretty straightforward: […]
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