The James Rosen
incident
is indicative of a trend, in recent years, of chipping away at First
Amendment rights. In the Rosen case, the Justice Department claimed that
it did not violate the press freedom of the
Fox News Correspondent as
he isn’t press. Instead, the DOJ argued, he was an “aider and abettor
and/or co-conspirator” in a spy ring for having receiving classified
information about North Korea from an intelligence analyst.
Evidence
of Rosen’s spying consisted of an e-mail to Rosen’s source stating that
he wanted to break “news ahead of my competitors” and that they could
“expose muddle-headed policy when we see it—or force the
administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible.”
It is clear that Freedom of the press was the target in this
case. The
New Yorker’s
Ryan Lizza asserts: “[I]t is unprecedented for the government, in an
official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for
conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets.”
And, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank opines that, “the Rosen affair…
uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only
have dreamed of.”
The Rosen matter came on the heels of the revelation that the DOJ
secretly subpoenaed the private phone records of several Associated
Press (AP) reporters and editors. Over the course of two months, several
phone lines of journalists were tapped, prompting AP President Gary
Pruitt to call the ongoing monitoring a “
massive and unprecedented intrusion.”
Shortly before the AP story broke, in yet another example of rights
being trampled, it was revealed that conservative organizations had been
specifically targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Organizations with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were
experiencing difficulties in attaining tax-exempt status. Christian,
pro-Israel and anti-abortion groups were targeted, as well. To make
matters worse, Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as head of the IRS office
handling tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012 (which is when
the targeting went on) is now head honcho of the IRS division in charge
of the IRS office policing Obamacare.
Just as these scandals were beginning to heat up, another jab at the
First Amendment took place. The Civil Rights offices of the Education
Department and the DOJ issued another assault on free speech, ruling
that colleges must eliminate and punish ‘verbal action’ which
may allude to sexual matters. According to
Accuracy in Academia,
this would include rumors (true or not), ‘unwelcome’ requests for
dates, off-color jokes and virtually all sexual discussion. These acts
will now be (selectively) punishable as sexual harassment under orders
from the Education Department.
In essence, any unwelcome sexual speech or other conduct is ‘sexual
harassment.’ It does not matter if it is severe, repetitive or
pervasive. It is also is subjective, as opposed to objective—the law is
based on an individual’s response and not on whether it would offend a
reasonable person.
Accuracy in Academia elaborates:
“This goes way beyond the Supreme Court
ruling that to constitute illegal sexual harassment, sexual advances or
other verbal or physical conduct must be severe and pervasive, and
create a hostile environment.
In short, sexual harassment is defined to
include ‘any’ speech or other verbal conduct even if it would not offend
a reasonable person, but rather only is offensive from the subjective
viewpoint of a hypersensitive person.
Perversely, the government suggests that
punishment may be required BEFORE a disciplinary hearing, reminiscent of
Alice in Wonderland‘s ‘sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
Then too, in an astonishing legislative move that took place in 2011
but was barely a blip on the media radar, a Tennessee law was passed
making it a crime to “transmit or display an image” online that is
likely to “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to someone
who views it. Violators can get almost a year in jail or have to pay up
to $2500 in fines.
The “emotionally distressed” individual need not be the intended recipient.
Anyone
who sees the image is a potential victim. Additionally, the government
does not need to prove that you intended the image to be offensive. Law
professor, Eugene Volokh, has pointed out that a wide variety of images,
“pictures of Mohammed, or harsh cartoon insults of some political
group,” could “cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person
of reasonable sensibilities,” triggering liability. He described the law
as “pretty clearly unconstitutional.”
In the same state, the
American Muslim Advisory Council of
Tennessee is
preparing to sponsor a special meeting on June 4, called “Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society.” The main speakers for the event are
DOJ official Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Tennessee, and
FBI Special Agent
of Knoxville Division Kenneth Moore. What is troubling about the event
is that Killian will address how social media posts and documents deemed
inflammatory toward Muslims can be considered
a violation of civil rights laws. Killian explained that it is, “an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into
freedom of religion
and exercising freedom of religion. This is also to inform the public
what federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are
.”
This is a blatant attempt at subverting First Amendment rights, but Killian’s views apparently have the support of
President
Obama who has said: ”The future must not belong to those who slander
the Prophet of Islam.” And, on Obama’s behalf Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton
worked
with the 56-member nation Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on
ways to enforce a United Nations resolution against “Islamophobia” in
the United States and other Western nations.
Under this resolution, “Islamophobia” would be a hate crime. In fact, in the OIC countries, the very
act of proclaiming that Jesus is the son of God or that Israel is the Jewish homeland would be enough to incite violence.
Moreover, in 2012, the OIC successfully involved the Obama administration in its attempt to get
Resolution 16/18
passed. Resolution 16/18 makes it an offense for non-Muslims to
Blaspheme Islam. The State Department, represented by Hillary Clinton,
hosted and co-chaired three OIC meetings known as the
Istanbul Process. These meetings had Obama’s support and enabled the UN General Assembly to pass Resolution 16/18.
Catholic World Report makes a valid point:
“It’s tempting to think, ‘Well, that will
never happen here. We’re not about to give up our right to free speech.’
But in fact, the sentiments of the Islamists were echoed by many in the
US. Numerous government officials apologized for the insensitivity of
the film, a couple of MSNBC commentators suggested that people connected
with the film should be prosecuted as accessories to murder, and, in an
address to the UN, President Obama said ‘the future must not belong to
those who slander the Prophet of Islam’—which, when you think about it,
is really quite an extraordinary statement. What would people think if
he had said, ‘the future must not belong to those who slander the Lord
Jesus’?”
In addition to that,
Front Page Magazine reports that UN Resolution
A/HRC/22/L.40,
which has gone virtually unreported, has glaringly dangerous
amendments: “To focus on just one, it asserts that ‘terrorism…cannot and
should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization
or ethnic group.’ The problem with this resolution is obvious. The
combining of these categories implies a false equation of immutable
characteristics such as nationality and ethnicity with those that are
subject to choice such as religion or belief.
For example, the Obama Administration erroneously characterized the
Fort Hood attack as “workplace violence” instead of the act of terrorism that it was. Similarly, the administration has successfully
cleansed from its national security and counterterrorism lexicon any reference to Islamic terrorism.
The Daily Caller reports:
“At the close of the Istanbul meeting in
2012, Secretary Clinton called for ‘formulating international laws
preventing inciting hatred.’ OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu
commended the Obama administration. ‘I particularly appreciate the kind
personal interest of Secretary Clinton and the role played by the U.S.
towards the consensual adoption of the resolution,’ he said.”
We are witnessing a heightened threat to free speech and it is a
trend that can be seen throughout the West. Benjamin Franklin gave us
this warning: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must
begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
