MADNESS – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  Strange things are happening in California.  If you believe in a free press, including a free internet, you should be concerned.  From Heatstreet: 

Next week, the California Assembly will be one of the first legislatures to try to ban so-called “fake news,” and it could have sweeping ramifications for social media users across the state.

The bill, filed Wednesday in the Assembly’s Committee on Privacy and Consumer Affairs, seeks, essentially, to make it a crime to be wrong on the Internet. The text of the bill implicates anyone who writes, publishes or even shares news stories they know could be false, if those news stories later have an impact on an election.

18320.5. It is unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on an Internet Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on an Internet Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on either of the following:

(a) Any issue submitted to voters at an election.

(b) Any candidate for election to public office.

Share fake news, in other words, and face a punishment levied by the state of California.

The bill does say that you have to “knowingly and willfully” make reference to a set of “alternative facts,” but it doesn’t give details on who would determine a story is “fake news” or, for that matter, what a “fake news” story even is.

Based on the approach taken in the wake of the 2016 campaign, “fake news” seems to mean a host of different things, from wrong-headed political opinions, to stories that look fishy and are later proven to be false or misleading. Based on this law, it also seems to include any story posted on social media that appears to be politically biased, or comes from any source with an editorial slant.

The bill also seems to infringe on Constitutional guarantees of free speech. Political advocacy is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has been adamant that political advertising—even when it involves smears, exaggerations and “poetic license”—is included under the umbrella of “political advocacy.”

COMMENT:  Fortunately, there's already pushback from grown-ups, and I doubt that the bill will make it through.  Even if it does, it seems blatantly unconstitutional.

But this kind of mentality is out there, and is being taught to students in our universities.  You see it in the form of speech codes on college campuses and the attempts to shout down speakers.  As Oscar
Hammerstein II wrote, "You've got to be taught to hate," and our kids are being taught to hate anyone who doesn't follow the approved party line.

March 31,  2017