Two Sides of the Same Coin

Max Tani and Alex Thompson wrote an article in Politico’s WestWing Playbook entitled “A Doocy on the border.” The article covered FOX News reporter Bill Melugin, who has been covering news at the southern border.  They describe him as tall, in his mid-30s with slicked back hair and an air of combative indignation.  Both current and past White House and Biden administration officials expressed to WestWing Playbook their increasing “frustration” with Melugin’s on-air coverage saying that there is an alarmist quality to it, designed to feed political narratives rather than illuminate the actual issues feeding the migrant flow.  The story adds that “he is part of a more technologically savvy generation of Fox reporters and producers whose work leans more heavily on on-the-ground reporting augmented by soaring aerial drone footage of migrants crossing the border.” They claim the technique gives the story a dramatic visual scale that Fox pundits use to bols...

  On scrolling Twitter, I found a story from the L.A. Times reporting that 48,000 University of California Irvine academic workers are striking. Union leaders are demanding better pay and benefits due to the high cost of living in cities served by the University of California. The majority of the academic workers, which include researchers, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate teaching assistants, report being rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing - even those using university housing. The strike is billed as the largest at any academic institution in history. One of the strikers said that the University prides itself on its world-class research, yet their paychecks do not reflect that prestige. Graduate students working as teaching assistants and tutors currently make $24,000 per year. The union wants the base salary to be $54,000 per year. The union is asking for a minimum of $70,000 per year for postdoctoral workers or about $10,000 more ...

  AB 2098  California Assembly Bill 2098 became law on September 30, 2022. This bill designates the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or "COVID-19," as unprofessional conduct. The law requires either the Medical Board of California or the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the two licensing and regulatory entities, to take action against any licensed physician and surgeon for unprofessional conduct. The law defines “misinformation” as anything that “is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus.” The bill was sponsored by one Democratic Assemblyman and five Democratic Assemblymen co-sponsors. The vote was 56 Yes, 20 No, and 4 Other. On the other side of the coin, several civil rights organizations and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons are objecting to the new law. It is being called a power-grab. They claim it is unconstitutional as inf...

  Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. /Delegate Nominee Kimberly Teehee The Treaty of New Echota was signed in 1835 between the United States government and the Cherokee Nation. The government paid $5 million for all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi and forcibly removed the Cherokee people. This was the beginning of the infamous Trail of Tears where one-fourth of the Cherokee Nation perished. The treaty also gave the Cherokee the right to send a delegate to Congress, “whenever Congress shall make provision for same.” The Cherokee are now, almost 200 years later, asking Congress for that nonvoting seat in the House of Representatives. There are currently six other nonvoting seats which include Washington, D.C. and the territories of American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. is asking the government to make good on its promise. Upon his election in 2019, Chief Hoskin chose Kimberly Teehee as the delegate. Teehee was an...

In my last blog, I wrote about a recent Texas law banning censorship by social media platforms and the ensuing court appeals. The argument being made in court is whether big tech has a right to “censor” those who hold viewpoints not approved by the media platform. The bottom-line question is do the big tech platforms have a First Amendment right to censor what people say on their platform or do the people have a First Amendment right to say what they want without censorship. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decision Judge Andrew Oldham wrote, “We reject the Platforms’ attempt to extract a freewheeling censorship right from the Constitution’s free speech guarantee. The Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech.” Judge Edith Jones concurred in the 2-1 decision. She called the tech companies’ argument that the First Amendment protects social media platforms’ ability to curate content, much like a newspaper does “ludicrous.” However, the third judge...

Texas bill HB20  which banned censorship by social media platforms was  passed in September 2021. The reason given by Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, was to keep companies like Facebook and Twitter from censoring conservative users. It was classified as a partisan bill and was sponsored by 65 Republicans. The bill was to become effective in December 2021, although it was appealed. The law allowed both the state of Texas and individual Texans to sue companies if they “censor” an individual based on their viewpoints or their geographic location by banning them or blocking, removing or otherwise discriminating against their posts. A federal appeals court allowed the law to go into effect on May 11, 2022.  On May 31, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to grant an emergency stay request to block the law which was being appealed in federal appellate court. The request was made by tech industry groups. No lawsuits had been filed between May 11, the day the law became...