Re: PING Britain and Canadia: This is How You Do Free Speech

On 2025-01-14 3:21 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83L6vZx6OuA
 A teen girl in Wisconsin posted a pic on Instagram from a hospital in 2020 in
the midst of the Wuhan Flu hysteria, with the caption, "Winning the fight with
COVID-19."
 The sheriff's department showed up at her home and threatened to arrest her
and charge her with disorderly conduct if she didn't remove the post saying
she had the virus.
 (It's unclear from the reporting why in the hell the cops cared whether she
had the virus or not or if she was telling the world via Instagram that she
had it.)
 The U.S. District Court ruled in summary judgment (i.e., the facts stipulated
to by both parties so clearly showed a violation of the 1st Amendment by the
government that a trial was unnecessary) that the government committed a
bright line violation of the girl's right to free speech.
 The judge wrote in his order, "The 1st Amendment is not a game setting for the
government to toggle off and on. It applies in times of tranquility and times
of strife." Guaranteed rights cannot be dispatched by the government under the
guise of emergency, and furthermore, law enforcement has no business trying to
regulate the social media posts of local teenagers.
 (This would be surprising news to FPP, who at the time was vociferously
arguing here on RAT that since the pandemic was an 'emergency', the government
could suspend whatever parts of the Constitution it liked.)
 So while the UK and Canadia are busy sending cops to people's homes to arrest
them for online posts with the government's endorsement and enthusiastic
participation, here in America, the cops get yanked back by their leash when
they try and do that fascist shit.
 

The Brits are way further down the path of limiting free speech than we are. I'm very happy to say that Bill C-63 (the Online Harms bill), the one that would have greatly ramped up the restrictions on speech and even allowed the government to put you under house arrest for things they thought you might say IN FUTURE, disappeared with Trudeau's suspension of Parliament. It could be revived in the new session of Parliament beginning March 24 but the Liberals are (hopefully) going to be very busy with a non-confidence motion that will force an election. (Our elections are MUCH shorter than yours - just 5 weeks in most cases - so we should finally have a sane government under Pierre Poilievre in early May.)
Of course Poilievre could conceivably create similar legislation himself but I don't think that's likely. It looks like he's going to have a strong majority and won't need to worry about winning the support of other parties to stay in power.
Unless the Liberals find an incredibly outstanding new leader or Poilievre shits the bed in a massive way, I think the Liberals will be no more than a minor nuisance for several years once we've had the election.
--
Rhino