What a difference a near-decade makes. Back in 2017, the main concerns raised by New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board was that officers were routinely violating the right to record police officers. Sure, there wasn’t nearly as much precedent to rely on then (and we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to make this […]
Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away. It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy […]
Twenty years ago, John Jonik released one of the best political cartoons ever regarding attempts to censor and control the internet. In it, a character dressed up as Uncle Sam is placing a gift box labeled “Control of Internet Speech” on a counter. Behind it, a man dressed in a suit, labeled “Corporate Media” is […]
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The Trump administration just lies and lies and lies. Those in charge assume they can just bluster their way past the system of checks and balances. For everything else, there’s AI generated memes depicting Trump taking a shit on the people he serves. Win-win, I guess. But things haven’t exactly been running smoothly for Trump’s […]
Hoping to repay corporate America’s feckless support of authoritarianism, the Trump administration is once again attempting to illegally ban all state and federal oversight of corporate power. Both via executive order, and by withholding already awarded grants from states that refuse to play along. The Trump administration has already done generational damage to federal consumer […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about how fascism is happening live on TV: Trump’s supporters, like Trump himself, if being honest (ha!) will reply, “I don’t care, I want this to happen.” They’ve never cared about the Constitution except as a weapon to be used […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, Portland, Maine passed a facial recognition ban that said the city can fire employees who violate it, which might have been useful in Seattle where a police detective took Clearview for a spin and possibly violated local laws. The FBI pulled another one of its manufacture-a-terrorist schemes, and […]
In all of our conversations surrounding RFK Jr.’s appointment to lead HHS and the legitimization of his anti-vaxxer beliefs as a result, we have understandably been hyper-focused on measles. The reason for that is mostly that this is as stark an example of just how stupid and horrible anti-vaccination misinformation is combined with the horror […]
Until very recently the only member of Congress excused from not having moved to impeach Trump was Rep. Grijalva, because until someone swore her in there was nothing she could officially do. But for everyone else already sworn into this 119th Congress, there was no excuse. There is no excuse. The refusal to act, to […]
Imagine a leading American technology firm, the engine of thousands of jobs and critical innovation, besieged by a patent lawsuit. Typical enough, but this time there is a twist: The plaintiff is a shell company with no assets and no products, yet it litigates with the inexhaustible resources of a global superpower. The American company […]
The abyss. The darkness. The meaningless void that life rebels against. It stares at us. Nietzsche warned about this moment—when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. When the frameworks that make meaning possible collapse, when the principles that make reasoning together conceivable dissolve, when words lose their moorings to […]
The BBC is now voluntarily suppressing criticism of Donald Trump before it airs—and the reason is obvious: Trump threatened to sue them into oblivion, and they blinked. Historian Rutger Bregman revealed this week that the BBC commissioned a public lecture from him last month, recorded it, then quietly cut a single sentence before broadcast. The […]
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This isn’t as surprising as it should be. After all, we’re talking about Emil Bove, who was elevated from being Trump’s personal lawyer to a spot in the Third Circuit Appeals Court for his loyalty to the MAGA Cause. Emil Bove did at least spend some time as a government prosecutor, which is more than […]
We’ve documented in detail how the whole AT&T–>Time Warner–>Warner Brothers Discovery merger process has been a pointless mess, resulting in no limits of layoffs and damage to the underlying brands. What was supposed to be a gambit by these companies to dominate streaming TV, wound up being a very expensive act of seppuku by over-compensated executives clearly out of […]
Trump’s war on Chicago appears destined to end in a whimper. While he kicked off his invasion of Chicago with memes and a call to arrest J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, his out of control federal agents have reportedly begun to leave the area. That suburban ICE facility you’ve heard so much about? Assistant […]
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. In this sponsored Spotlight episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, host Ben Whitelaw […]
Yes, as I already wrote about, the indictment against James Comey was already thrown out due to Halligan’s improper appointment, but it’s also worth covering how badly she fucked up even if she had been appointed legally. These cases were destined for the dustbin no matter what, because Halligan had no idea what she was […]
Mark Kelly—former Navy combat pilot, astronaut, sitting United States Senator—stated a simple legal fact on video: members of the US military can refuse illegal orders. Not as opinion. Not as political positioning. As established law codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and affirmed at Nuremberg when “I was following orders” was rejected as […]
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