90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, April 15, 2022

Musk's Offer for Twitter Leaves Liberals Reeling, Washington Post Writer Sees Censorship as Essential to Democracy

Late Sunday night, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the stunning news that billionaire Elon Musk had decided not to join the company’s board of directors.

It took about a nanosecond for sheer panic to set in among the liberal elites.

They were acutely aware that the free-speech absolutist was likely setting himself up to make an even bigger move, one that might rob them of their greatest advantage: the ability to control the news Americans are allowed to hear.

According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, Musk has offered to acquire Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash, or more than $41 billion.

Washington Post columnist Max Boot didn’t even try to hide his consternation over this development.

He declared in a tweet that he was “frightened by the impact on society and politics” if the deal were to go through.

“For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less,” Boot said.

He actually came out and said that in order for democracy to survive, we need censorship. Hmmm.

Poor Max is so distraught he’s forgotten that the Big Tech censorship that has increasingly given Democrats the upper hand in American politics is not the hallmark of a free society but of an authoritarian government.

The creeping control of public debate has turned into something much more blatant and powerful over the past five years or so. The masters of the universe are no longer worried about the optics of limiting free speech; they feel entitled to be the arbiters of what information Americans can or cannot read. They know better than the rest of us rubes anyway.

But now that entitlement has been threatened in the form of a $41 billion offer from Elon Musk.

After many ridiculed and questioned Boot’s tweet, he doubled down by dedicating his Post column on Thursday to what he called his “encounter this morning with the pro-Musk/pro-Trump Twitter mob.”

“Thank you for making my point, trolls,” he wrote. “There is way too much nonsense online — too much name-calling, too much dishonesty, too many conspiracy theories. And there is a disturbing tendency for...

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Warnock Asks Court To Seal Child Custody Proceedings, Citing Reelection Bid

Democratic senator Raphael Warnock asked a Georgia judge on Tuesday to seal his contentious child custody dispute from the public, arguing that because he is "currently running for reelection" his opponent could use the case to "gain some political advantage," according to a court motion obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Warnock made the request in a joint motion with his ex-wife, Oulèye Ndoye, following renewed media attention on their divorce. Warnock and Ndoye said in the filing that there is an "overriding interest that is likely to prejudice the parties and their minor children if hearings relating to modification of custody is not closed." The motion says Warnock is a "public figure serving in a political office" and "is currently running for reelection for said political office."

"[Warnock's] opposition is utilizing the public records in order to gain some political advantage or gain," said the filing, adding that their children could be "harmed by any unstable person who sympathizes" with his opponent.

If the judge agrees to seal the records, it could allow Warnock to avoid a messy public domestic battle while he is facing one of the most competitive races of the midterm elections.

Ndoye reopened the dispute in a February court filing, accusing Warnock of neglect of his children and failure to pay for childcare, leaving her "financially strapped." Ndoye claimed Warnock refused to pay for childcare costs that she was forced to shoulder when he failed to show up for his custody days. She also said he "routinely neglects" to give her notice when he is traveling out of town during his visitation days, and instead has the children "picked up from school by friends and [leaves] them with various babysitters overnight" while he is away.

In 2020, Ndoye accused Warnock of intentionally running over her foot with his Tesla during a fight. The couple married in 2016 and divorced in 2020.

Fulton County Superior Court judge Shermela J. Williams ordered the couple to attend mediation and try to reach an out-of-court agreement by May 7. She scheduled a...

If you still weren’t convinced of the legal double standard between the right and the left, this announcement by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday should remove all doubt.

The Biden Administration’s radical civil rights division boss at the DOJ has “reached an agreement to settle claims in four civil cases arising from the June 1, 2020, law enforcement response to racial justice demonstrations in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.”

This was during the Black Lives Matter and Antifa Reign of Terror or, as then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan accidentally coined it, a “Summer of Love,” after the George Floyd riots began in Minneapolis and spread across the country.

Protesters and violent rioters set seized upon Lafayette Square, breaching a White House perimeter, and rioted, rallied, and set fires for days. An umbrella group called “Shut Down DC,” composed of far-left professional agitators, including Lisa Fithian, called helped orchestrate the attack to incapacitate the nation’s capitol.

Washington, D.C. not only indulged this “first amendment activity,” but Mayor Muriel Bowser also encouraged it by memorializing part of the city streets with a Black Lives Matter mural paid for by taxpayers.

And now the feds are basically apologizing and acknowledging that they weren’t nice enough when they cleared the rioters and arsonists in front of the White House — rioters who torched the so-called “President’s Church” and forced then President Donald Trump and his family into the bunker for their safety.

And make no mistake this is more about Trump and less about civil rights.

DOJ Civil Rights Division head Vanita Gupta settled with BLM DC to make “changes to agency policies for protest responses will strengthen our commitment to protecting and respecting constitutionally protected rights.”

Among the changes are giving people protesting with arsonists, rioters, and statue-removers the benefit of the doubt, promising not to tear gas them, and allowing them to disperse before getting sprayed.

In a news release, Gupta said the DOJ’s federal officer and Park Police would “amend its policies to provide that the fact that some demonstrators have engaged in unlawful conduct does not ordinarily provide blanket grounds for use of force, crowd dispersal or declaration of unlawful assembly.”

The upshot is that it will be next to impossible to declare a riot and use crowd dispersal if some peaceful protesters in attendance refuse to...

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