Believe it or not, I'm actually with Rauch on this one. Defamation lawfare based on traditional principles of jurisprudence would be fine and probably produce big benefits on our discourse. Indeed, consider that prominently successful defamation suits against the Rolling Stone hoax and the media entites who knowingly slimed Nick Sandmann act like a dam that holds back a flood of what would be thousands of instances of even more egregious libel if only the usual suspects holding the megaphones thought they could get away with it.
But - you knew this was coming - there are some spoiler caveats that cause me to part ways with Rauch.
(1) Everything in the NYT v. Sullivan line of cases, and any holdings that in practice make exceptions for the press or distinctions between it and ordinary individuals would have to be unwound to the jurisprudence which prevailed when Coolidge was President.
(2) Related to above, section 230 is out for all large communications platforms and social media companies. Free for all and immunized from liablity, or censor at will but accept normal publisher liability: choose.
(3) All this relies on being able to trust and rely on judges to follow the law with fidelity, fairness, and neutrality, which, sorry, we can't. So, instead of judges, bipartisan 'tribunals' with an even and equal number of represenatives chosen by each major party. If you can't convince some people from the 'other side' to flip, then the statement, defamatory or not, is fair game. "Free speech" has an exception for defamation, so this would be "Free speech+" because it would permit even more things to be said without fear of state-enforced penalty.
Give me 1-3 and I am totally with Rauch. Under the current nutty system? Forget it.
"But if your goal is to bring closure to the 2020 election controversy, the lawsuit against Gateway Pundit, regardless of how it turns out, is going to have zero effect."
Wrong.
It will have the effect of encouraging those who believe the Deep State cheated, and are still cheating. It will STRENGTHEN their belief. They see the deep state apply a huge double standard of punishment against peaceful Republican protesters, plus some non-fatal violence possibly/ likely encouraged by Fed/ gov't agents like Ray Epps as compared the actually violent and often murderous BLM Dem-supported riots of the summer of 2020 with rioters killing dozens of people, but few arrests. (The fatal violence was a cop shooting a small, unarmed white woman.)
Do you even know who many trespassing protesters are still in jail, not yet charged? Why isn't that bigger news?
None, 0, zero have been charged with "insurrection". Is Rauch ready to accept that every protester has a class action suit against all news media, and every politician like Pelosi, who says "it was an insurrection"?
It was a 100,000+ mostly peaceful protest against election fraud - with trespassing and some property damage by illegal trespassers - who should have been arrested for trespassing.
On the election fraud issue, Rauch says: >> The video showed “normal vote processing.” <<
The linked AP article says: >> No one told observers they had to leave, and both an independent monitor and an investigator oversaw the vote count, according to state and county officials. Confusion arose when election workers thought they were done for the night, but then were instructed to continue scanning ballots.<<
Gateway Pundit previously has said that Republican poll watchers there WERE TOLD to leave. Which I believe is true, and the wimpy new words "election workers thought they were done" avoids why they thought this, who told them what, when.
Notice the AP story quotes "election officials", but not the actual Republican observers. It does note: >> Georgia law § 21-2-408 permits observers to stay in the room the whole time, but doesn’t require it for counting to take place.<<
The fact is: Republican observers were NOT THERE. Doesn't prove fraud. When they are there, it is to avoid/ reduce fraud - their absence thus implies more/ higher risk of fraud.
Many believe Ruby Freeman, seen doing the counting without Rep observers, was cheating, as GP claims.
Some sent her death threats - which indeed are terrible. Tho not as bad as taking a gun and shooting because of politics, like the Bernie Bro guy who shot Scalise - actual violence seldom mentioned by Dem media.
Rauch: "On January 6, 2021, the day of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, the FBI recommended she evacuate her home. " Nobody charged with insurrection - Rauch guilty of ... misinformation. Let's also remember what happened to those arrested when Dems overran the Capitol while C. B. Ford was defaming & slandering Kavanaugh - arrested and quickly released. None in jail for even a month.
Fair election: paper ballots counted at precincts on election day, with counters & observers staying until the counting is done; voters presenting valid ID to vote. Had the Dems supported such a fair election, there wouldn't be hidden boxes of ballots waiting to be counted for when the Rep observers were not watching.
I, too, have been fantasizing about suing every publication and author who have defamed normal folk, like all the peaceful Jan 6 protesters by falsely calling their mostly peaceful protest against election fraud an "insurrection" - but I understand it ain't gonna happen.
There are stories about people who, because they went and peacefully protested, have lost their jobs. R. Freeman did not lose her job. Does Rauch think the job losers have a case against those who falsely call this protest plus illegal trespassing an "insurrection"? If not, why not?
I believe the FBI, that agency which was able and willing to lie to the FISA court against Trump,
1) set out in October, 2020, to entrap conservatives into a silly plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer (MI)
*note there are many Dem dirty tricks in elections, known often as October Surprise
2) The FBI had a copy of recovered info from Hunter Biden's laptop from Dec, 2019, and knew then that it was genuine, and NOT "Russian misinformation" [can Trump sue Big Tech for false, unjustifiable censorship of true info? Rauch doesn't say]
In a 100% free and fair election, such true info would not be censored - and the FBI knew it was true. This, by itself, means the 2020 election not 100% free and fair.
3) On Jan 6, the FBI did have informants/ agents/ contacts and actively encouraged illegal acts, even while Trump was still speaking (so those "listening to Trump" were mostly not the trespassers). FBI weasel words encourage this belief, along with prior illegal and essentially unpunished FBI actions.
Mickey Mouse should NOT vote, and all illegal votes should be suppressed.
I don't believe we will learn the truth, and am sad and outraged about it.
I don't believe 67% valid election turnout after 12 elections of 55-60% since WW II.
Rauch’s opinion of NYT v. Sullivan appears to be that it's good law when it protects the people that he likes, and bad case law when it protects the people that he doesn't like. Therefore, he and his friend David French want NYT v. Sullivan to apply to the good people and not to the bad people.
A more consistent standard would be to overturn NYT v. Sullivan for everyone. This would have some of the bad effects that Rausch mentioned (little publications would indeed be easier to squash), but at least it would not have the goofy subjective standard of only providing protections to the good and beautiful without providing protections to the vapid and wicked. Indeed, reasoning of this nature would further delegitimize the courts and weaken rather than strengthen respect for the law due to the tyrannical standard that Rausch's favored policy would create. The line about "there's no law against disseminating lies about democracy" is a Soviet-style slogan: you might as well just find and replace democracy with Communism and it sounds exactly like what a politburo member would say.
As an aside, part of the situation he is describing is one of the larger dilemmas related to the international integration created by the internet. If I, an evil disinformationist, publish from a country that does not cooperate with US court orders, American law cannot touch me, and I can publish with impunity, only vulnerable to indirect and private methods like a ban from Facebook. American publications thereby operate at a disadvantage related to non-cooperative foreign publications, because the former must comply with American law and must respond if sued, whereas global publications within many jurisdictions do not. Yet both share equal access to the American internet with no barriers whatsoever; they are completely integrated in almost every way but in legal jurisdiction.
This is not something that modifying NYT v. Sullivan would resolve: it would actually make the issue worse, because the vile and despicable minions of the red tribe (who deserve to be cast into a giant Cuisinart and blended into fine chunks) would most likely embrace their natural inclinations towards traitorousness and avail themselves of foreign jurisdictions from which to launch their campaigns of vicious lies.
Believe it or not, I'm actually with Rauch on this one. Defamation lawfare based on traditional principles of jurisprudence would be fine and probably produce big benefits on our discourse. Indeed, consider that prominently successful defamation suits against the Rolling Stone hoax and the media entites who knowingly slimed Nick Sandmann act like a dam that holds back a flood of what would be thousands of instances of even more egregious libel if only the usual suspects holding the megaphones thought they could get away with it.
But - you knew this was coming - there are some spoiler caveats that cause me to part ways with Rauch.
(1) Everything in the NYT v. Sullivan line of cases, and any holdings that in practice make exceptions for the press or distinctions between it and ordinary individuals would have to be unwound to the jurisprudence which prevailed when Coolidge was President.
(2) Related to above, section 230 is out for all large communications platforms and social media companies. Free for all and immunized from liablity, or censor at will but accept normal publisher liability: choose.
(3) All this relies on being able to trust and rely on judges to follow the law with fidelity, fairness, and neutrality, which, sorry, we can't. So, instead of judges, bipartisan 'tribunals' with an even and equal number of represenatives chosen by each major party. If you can't convince some people from the 'other side' to flip, then the statement, defamatory or not, is fair game. "Free speech" has an exception for defamation, so this would be "Free speech+" because it would permit even more things to be said without fear of state-enforced penalty.
Give me 1-3 and I am totally with Rauch. Under the current nutty system? Forget it.
I dislike this idea because I think it will lead to the rich silencing those of lesser means, with any truth value trumped by money.
"But if your goal is to bring closure to the 2020 election controversy, the lawsuit against Gateway Pundit, regardless of how it turns out, is going to have zero effect."
Wrong.
It will have the effect of encouraging those who believe the Deep State cheated, and are still cheating. It will STRENGTHEN their belief. They see the deep state apply a huge double standard of punishment against peaceful Republican protesters, plus some non-fatal violence possibly/ likely encouraged by Fed/ gov't agents like Ray Epps as compared the actually violent and often murderous BLM Dem-supported riots of the summer of 2020 with rioters killing dozens of people, but few arrests. (The fatal violence was a cop shooting a small, unarmed white woman.)
Do you even know who many trespassing protesters are still in jail, not yet charged? Why isn't that bigger news?
None, 0, zero have been charged with "insurrection". Is Rauch ready to accept that every protester has a class action suit against all news media, and every politician like Pelosi, who says "it was an insurrection"?
It was a 100,000+ mostly peaceful protest against election fraud - with trespassing and some property damage by illegal trespassers - who should have been arrested for trespassing.
On the election fraud issue, Rauch says: >> The video showed “normal vote processing.” <<
The linked AP article says: >> No one told observers they had to leave, and both an independent monitor and an investigator oversaw the vote count, according to state and county officials. Confusion arose when election workers thought they were done for the night, but then were instructed to continue scanning ballots.<<
Gateway Pundit previously has said that Republican poll watchers there WERE TOLD to leave. Which I believe is true, and the wimpy new words "election workers thought they were done" avoids why they thought this, who told them what, when.
Notice the AP story quotes "election officials", but not the actual Republican observers. It does note: >> Georgia law § 21-2-408 permits observers to stay in the room the whole time, but doesn’t require it for counting to take place.<<
The fact is: Republican observers were NOT THERE. Doesn't prove fraud. When they are there, it is to avoid/ reduce fraud - their absence thus implies more/ higher risk of fraud.
Many believe Ruby Freeman, seen doing the counting without Rep observers, was cheating, as GP claims.
Some sent her death threats - which indeed are terrible. Tho not as bad as taking a gun and shooting because of politics, like the Bernie Bro guy who shot Scalise - actual violence seldom mentioned by Dem media.
Rauch: "On January 6, 2021, the day of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, the FBI recommended she evacuate her home. " Nobody charged with insurrection - Rauch guilty of ... misinformation. Let's also remember what happened to those arrested when Dems overran the Capitol while C. B. Ford was defaming & slandering Kavanaugh - arrested and quickly released. None in jail for even a month.
Fair election: paper ballots counted at precincts on election day, with counters & observers staying until the counting is done; voters presenting valid ID to vote. Had the Dems supported such a fair election, there wouldn't be hidden boxes of ballots waiting to be counted for when the Rep observers were not watching.
I, too, have been fantasizing about suing every publication and author who have defamed normal folk, like all the peaceful Jan 6 protesters by falsely calling their mostly peaceful protest against election fraud an "insurrection" - but I understand it ain't gonna happen.
There are stories about people who, because they went and peacefully protested, have lost their jobs. R. Freeman did not lose her job. Does Rauch think the job losers have a case against those who falsely call this protest plus illegal trespassing an "insurrection"? If not, why not?
I believe the FBI, that agency which was able and willing to lie to the FISA court against Trump,
1) set out in October, 2020, to entrap conservatives into a silly plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer (MI)
https://www.michiganradio.org/news/2021-12-26/defense-claims-entrapment-in-federal-whitmer-kidnap-criminal-case
*note there are many Dem dirty tricks in elections, known often as October Surprise
2) The FBI had a copy of recovered info from Hunter Biden's laptop from Dec, 2019, and knew then that it was genuine, and NOT "Russian misinformation" [can Trump sue Big Tech for false, unjustifiable censorship of true info? Rauch doesn't say]
In a 100% free and fair election, such true info would not be censored - and the FBI knew it was true. This, by itself, means the 2020 election not 100% free and fair.
3) On Jan 6, the FBI did have informants/ agents/ contacts and actively encouraged illegal acts, even while Trump was still speaking (so those "listening to Trump" were mostly not the trespassers). FBI weasel words encourage this belief, along with prior illegal and essentially unpunished FBI actions.
Mickey Mouse should NOT vote, and all illegal votes should be suppressed.
I don't believe we will learn the truth, and am sad and outraged about it.
I don't believe 67% valid election turnout after 12 elections of 55-60% since WW II.
"That claim is not credible. It is just naked partisanship."
Why would anyone expect anything else from Rauch (or, French, Goldberg etc.)?
Rauch’s opinion of NYT v. Sullivan appears to be that it's good law when it protects the people that he likes, and bad case law when it protects the people that he doesn't like. Therefore, he and his friend David French want NYT v. Sullivan to apply to the good people and not to the bad people.
A more consistent standard would be to overturn NYT v. Sullivan for everyone. This would have some of the bad effects that Rausch mentioned (little publications would indeed be easier to squash), but at least it would not have the goofy subjective standard of only providing protections to the good and beautiful without providing protections to the vapid and wicked. Indeed, reasoning of this nature would further delegitimize the courts and weaken rather than strengthen respect for the law due to the tyrannical standard that Rausch's favored policy would create. The line about "there's no law against disseminating lies about democracy" is a Soviet-style slogan: you might as well just find and replace democracy with Communism and it sounds exactly like what a politburo member would say.
As an aside, part of the situation he is describing is one of the larger dilemmas related to the international integration created by the internet. If I, an evil disinformationist, publish from a country that does not cooperate with US court orders, American law cannot touch me, and I can publish with impunity, only vulnerable to indirect and private methods like a ban from Facebook. American publications thereby operate at a disadvantage related to non-cooperative foreign publications, because the former must comply with American law and must respond if sued, whereas global publications within many jurisdictions do not. Yet both share equal access to the American internet with no barriers whatsoever; they are completely integrated in almost every way but in legal jurisdiction.
This is not something that modifying NYT v. Sullivan would resolve: it would actually make the issue worse, because the vile and despicable minions of the red tribe (who deserve to be cast into a giant Cuisinart and blended into fine chunks) would most likely embrace their natural inclinations towards traitorousness and avail themselves of foreign jurisdictions from which to launch their campaigns of vicious lies.