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from the silence-all-disagreement-and-only-agreement-will-be-seen dept.
Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute has filed a lawsuit against President Trump for blocking seven users on Twitter, claiming that the action violates the users' First Amendment right to participate in a public political forum:
The institute filed suit today on behalf of seven Twitter users who were blocked by the president, which prevents them from seeing or replying to his tweets. It threatened legal action in a letter to Trump in June, and now "asks the court to declare that the viewpoint-based blocking of people from the @realDonaldTrump account is unconstitutional."
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, elaborates on the Knight Institute's earlier letter. It contends that Trump's Twitter account is a public political forum where citizens have a First Amendment right to speak. Under this theory, blocking users impedes their right to participate in a political conversation and stops them from viewing official government communication. Therefore, if Trump blocks people for criticizing his political viewpoints, he'd be doing the equivalent of kicking them out of a digital town hall.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Wednesday July 12 2017, @04:39PM (5 children)
You mean how things actually work? Most public appearances have been carefully limited to supporters for quite some time, going back at least to Clinton (the rapist, not the loser) and probably farther. Why do you think every appearance by a President doesn't collapse into chanting and protest signs?
These silly people are doing nothing less than making a demand that Trump stop using Twitter, they know it and so do the media giving this pointless lawsuit airtime. Amazing coincidence that 99.9% of the media want Trump to stop Tweeting and use their air to do all communicating with the public. Not even #FakeNews, blatently defending their turf. But the media are engaging in outright sedition daily so my question is why anyone in the administration is still permitted to speak to them, why is the White House Press room still used?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilsa on Wednesday July 12 2017, @06:16PM (4 children)
The Central Park analogy is missing one critical detail:
"Suppose the president is often speaking and discussing with the public in Central Park" and everyone is invited. By making Twitter an (effectively) official means for everyone to communicate with him, he has changed the rules of the game. Twitter isn't the equivalent of a press gallery or a rally. It's literally a really really big auditorium where everyone gets to participate equally.
Whether Trump likes it or not, using his personal twitter account, while he is president, turns that account into a publicly recognized channel of political discussion. IANAL so I have no idea how that changes things from a legal perspective, but I can very easily see how the current situation could have come about.
And I'm probably going to regret asking this, but what exactly has the media done that is seditious?
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday July 12 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
From dictionary.com [dictionary.com]:
Yea, it is always a fine line between sedition and legitimate dissent in a free society but if you don't think the Democrats and the legacy media (BIRM) have gone far enough over the line that it isn't a gray issue anymore, that is only because you agree with what they are doing. Imagine the media baying for Obama's head like this (couldn't happen of course) and if your mind can go there you will instantly achieve enlightenment. Imagine leading (not back bencher) Republicans daily calling for Obama's impeachment for months on end with zero actual evidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:04PM
Are you actually implying that Democrats have zero evidence [cnn.com] of an impeachable offense by the Trump administration? You have a mighty strange definition of "zero evidence", sir!
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 12 2017, @11:40PM (1 child)
Imagine leading (not back bencher) Republicans daily calling for Obama's impeachment for months on end with zero actual evidence.
"Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?" --Donald J Trump
"It's very clear that allegation is one that everyone from Arlen Spector to Dick Morris has said is in fact a crime, and could be impeachable," -- Republican Darrell Issa of California
“It needs to happen, and I agree with you it would tie things up. No question about that.” (replying to a question about impeaching Obama) -- Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas)
“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said.
“The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked.
“Yeah,” Inhofe responded.
“Of all the great cover-ups in history — the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of them — this ... is going to go down as most egregious cover-up in American history,”
-- Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
In August 2013, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma responded to a questioner in a town hall meeting, who had asserted that President Obama was failing to carry out his constitutional responsibilities, by saying that "you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president... and that's called impeachment".[12][13] Coburn added, "I don't have the legal background to know if that rises to 'high crimes and misdemeanors', but I think you're getting perilously close"
At a 2013 town hall meeting with constituents, two years after Obama had released his long-form birth certificate to the public, Congressman Blake Farenthold said that Obama should be impeached due to conspiracy theories relating to Obama's birth certificate. Farenthold said that he thinks that "the House is already out of the barn on this, on the whole birth certificate issue."
In May 2016, the Oklahoma Legislature filed a measure asking the representatives from Oklahoma in the House of Representatives to impeach Obama, the U.S. attorney general, the U.S. secretary of education and any other administration officials involved in the decision to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. The same resolution also "condemns the actions of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice and the Office for Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education ... as contrary to the values of the citizens of Oklahoma".
On July 8, 2014, the former Governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin publicly called for Obama's impeachment for "purposeful dereliction of duty".[24] In a full statement, she said: “It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:57AM
The Burgess quote is from when he spoke in 2011 to "a group of Tea Party activists in Keller, Texas" [upi.com] on the possibility of raising the debt ceiling, and "a constituent suggested impeaching Obama to stop his agenda."
The Inhofe quote was about the Benghazi fiasco. [thehill.com]