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Poland’s top clothing retailer invests in automation, logistics as higher wages bite – Reuters

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

WARSAW, March 4 (Reuters) - Polands largest clothing retailer LPP plans to invest in logistics and automation and may increase prices in a bid to improve margins and combat higher labour costs, the companys deputy head said.

Polands ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party plans to increase the minimum monthly wage to 4,000 zlotys ($1,038.07) by the end of 2023, almost double its 2019 level, starting with a rise of over 15% to 2,600 zlotys in 2020. Polands economic growth of around 3% is adding to wage pressure.

I do not want to say that the minimum wage increase will result in higher prices, but we are thinking how to introduce new, nicer, better products and adjust prices to them, Przemyslaw Lutkiewicz told Reuters.

On the one hand, the minimum wage increase affects salary costs. On the other hand, we hope that customers will have more and more cash to spend, which translates into sales, especially in smaller towns, hence our strategy of entering smaller cities, he added.

In February LPP, a home-grown Polish rival to international retailers such as H&M and Inditex, said it plans to open more shops in smaller towns, saying that in larger ones consumers were more aware of the effect of the fashion industry on the environment and were buying less.

We have a chance to reach 10.5 billion zlotys ($2.73 billion) revenues this year, especially taking into account the 16% increase in retail space (rented by LPP) planned for 2020, positive like-for-like changes and further growth of the internet (sales), Lutkiewicz said.

Lutkiewicz said that margin improvement will be possible thanks to the implementation of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips attached to clothes stored in warehouses which allow the company to track stock better, and a cut in logistics costs thanks to further automation should also help.

Lutkiewicz said that risks that its Chinese-made products wont be delivered on time due to the coronavirus outbreak have already diminished as shipments from Chinese ports have resumed and factories were expected to restart.

$1 = 3.8533 zlotysReporting by Anna Koper; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle

Poland's top clothing retailer invests in automation, logistics as higher wages bite - Reuters

This is Why Rockwell Automation (ROK) is a Great Dividend Stock – Yahoo Finance

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

Getting big returns from financial portfolios, whether through stocks, bonds, ETFs, other securities, or a combination of all, is an investor's dream. However, when you're an income investor, your primary focus is generating consistent cash flow from each of your liquid investments.

Cash flow can come from bond interest, interest from other types of investments, and of course, dividends. A dividend is that coveted distribution of a company's earnings paid out to shareholders, and investors often view it by its dividend yield, a metric that measures the dividend as a percent of the current stock price. Many academic studies show that dividends account for significant portions of long-term returns, with dividend contributions exceeding one-third of total returns in many cases.

Rockwell Automation in Focus

Based in Milwaukee, Rockwell Automation (ROK) is in the Industrial Products sector, and so far this year, shares have seen a price change of -9.24%. The industrial equipment and software maker is paying out a dividend of $1.02 per share at the moment, with a dividend yield of 2.22% compared to the Industrial Automation and Robotics industry's yield of 0.65% and the S&P 500's yield of 2.04%.

In terms of dividend growth, the company's current annualized dividend of $4.08 is up 5.2% from last year. Over the last 5 years, Rockwell Automation has increased its dividend 5 times on a year-over-year basis for an average annual increase of 10.41%. Future dividend growth will depend on earnings growth as well as payout ratio, which is the proportion of a company's annual earnings per share that it pays out as a dividend. Rockwell Automation's current payout ratio is 48%. This means it paid out 48% of its trailing 12-month EPS as dividend.

Looking at this fiscal year, ROK expects solid earnings growth. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2020 is $8.92 per share, with earnings expected to increase 2.88% from the year ago period.

Bottom Line

Investors like dividends for many reasons; they greatly improve stock investing profits, decrease overall portfolio risk, and carry tax advantages, among others. It's important to keep in mind that not all companies provide a quarterly payout.

Big, established firms that have more secure profits are often seen as the best dividend options, but it's fairly uncommon to see high-growth businesses or tech start-ups offer their stockholders a dividend. Income investors must be conscious of the fact that high-yielding stocks tend to struggle during periods of rising interest rates. With that in mind, ROK is a compelling investment opportunity. Not only is it a strong dividend play, but the stock currently sits at a Zacks Rank of 3 (Hold).

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free reportRockwell Automation, Inc. (ROK) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.

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This is Why Rockwell Automation (ROK) is a Great Dividend Stock - Yahoo Finance

Cost of automation for the cynical CFO – Financial Director

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

International Data Corporation (IDC) the premier global market intelligence firm, predicts that between 2018 and 2021, companies worldwide will have collectively spent nearly $6trn on digital transformation initiatives. And, according to Krishnan Ramanujam, president of business and technology services for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a global IT services, consulting, and business solutions organisation: CFOs, along with their counterparts in strategy and technology, can play a major role in determining which models may be economically viable for their firms, now and in the future.

CFOs will have numerous sizable internal funding requests fall on their desks and they cant be blamed for playing the devils advocate since they argue to help determine the validity of any digital transformation project. But their primary role as a digital CFO will be transforming their own department.

According to AccenturesFinance 2020report, automation will eliminate up to 40 percent of the transactional accounting work the finance department does today.Terry Walby, founder of Thoughtonomy, a software company with multi-award winning automation technology platform, reiterates the CFOs critical approach: As the project sponsor, the CFO needs to be comfortable building a business case, willing to take input from other departments and to spend the time to fully understand processes at a granular level.

A study undertaken by Compleat How tech is changing the role of finance, found that 51 percent of workers within UK businesses have rushed to implement new financial technology in the past couple of years, citing the UK Governments Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative as a key driver.

Researchers at Gartner conducted interviews with 150+ corporate controllers, chief accounting officers, and chief accounting leaders to study about the benefits automation could pose for businesses. One of the highlights from the study was that the average amount of avoidable rework in accounting departments can take up to 30 percent of a full-time employees time. If fully implemented, automation can save upward of 25,000 hours per year and close to 675,000.

According to The dawn of a new partnership: A robotics-led finance function by EY, automating manual processes with little subjective judgment like data input and output, reconciliation, data quality management, reporting, and dashboard and business rules can reduce man-hours between 20 percent-80 percent.

The use of automation in finance can drive efficiencies by reducing human error. It helps in freeing up the finance team to refocus on more strategic work. By using automation, the finance function can accurately forecast, which means that the business can make more real-time decisions as opposed to just playing catch-up. The CFO can start to get more predictions from the accounting department and that can result in better business outcomes.

Back in 2018, Spanish football club RCD Espanyol automated its financial processes and according to their finance director Joan Fit: The finance team has become infinitely more flexible since making use of the automation features, with productivity going up by more than 20 percent, reporting time reduced by 50 percent and errors reduced by over 25 percent. The team can instead focus on using Club information, analysing it in real-time to become more strategic in its effort to become a globally-recognised name in the world of football.

Tim Leger, SVP business process automation and transformation at Sutherland Global Services said in an article on Financial Director: The future of digital finance is intelligent automation and RPA is yesterdays news. As organisations have embraced robotic process automation (RPA), it has become a single, commodity tool in the larger automation toolbox no longer at the centre of transformation and synonymous with process automation.

It is difficult to associate a cost in terms of price for finance function automation. It depends on the kind of project, the scale of it, size of the company and several other factors. Understanding and explaining the actual costs associated with deploying finance automation are tough since they are quite different from an industrial robot.

According to a blog on DocuPhase, business automation tools can start at 23 a month for 0-10 employees, and rise from there. Typically, automation in the finance function starts from accounting tasks. This article in Accountancy Age gives a good idea of the pricing of the best online accounting software in the UK. Business analysis tools, such as ActiveOps, StereoLOGIC or Celonis compare the short-term costs of using automation over the next two to five years versus a finance software tool.

However, the real cost of automation in the finance function is beyond the project implementation cost and the price of the software or the technology. Here are considerations that CFOs must make while deciding on implementing automation projects.

As in accounting terms, make or buy analysis needs to be conducted to check the feasibility of both making an automation software in-housing or buying/getting it developed from external providers. The analysis will help in highlighting the costs and benefits associated with either of the decision.

The success of the automation initiative depends on its integration with existing business applications and hardware.

Keeping business continuity in mind, the implementation of the automation project needs to consider the current and the proposed architecture, hardware and IT infrastructure on priority. Over dependencies on the current set up can create an outage that can have a significant business impact post-implementation.

While its easy to get caught up focusing on the commercial rationale, the success of the automation project depends on the willingness and participation of the staff involved not just in its implementation, but also in using it.

Another outcome of automation, which might be a potential notional cost at least for the CFOs, is the perceived threat of machine taking over humans. CFOs, as leaders of the finance function, need to keep viable streams ready to deploy the members of the team whose tasks have been cut short. Automation will inevitably lead to changes in organisational structures and redefined roles, if not layoffs. Amazon recently said it would spend close to 540m ($700m) to retrain 100,000 employees to perform new jobs made possible by AI and robots.

CFOs could come up with plans like financial planning and analysis personnel getting deployed to support the business closely than before and tax specialists refocusing to maximize after-tax income for the business.

Automated processes require oversight to make sure they are operating properly. Hence monitoring is necessary to make sure that the process is being operated and yielding results as per its objectives. Automation software is like middleware in the sense that someone needs to support and maintain the programs on an ongoing basis.

The cost of upgrading the automation software must be considered specifically, for regression testing and possibly re-implementing required to take advantage of new features or changes in features.

Automation, once up and running can appear magical. But, just like the magic shows seen on stage, theres more to it than what meets the eye. Automation software are typically rule-based systems that need creating rules, basically if statements, that are fed and followed.

It is vital to accept that automation cant handle irregular or highly complex processes, make decisions, fix broken processes, self-correct, and thus cant replace the human team. When businesses attribute the abilities of automation to magic, the spell can soon break down.

Andrew Spanyi, the author of four books on process management, says: RPA does not redesign anything. It doesnt ask whether we need to do this activity at all. It operates at the task level and not the end-to-end process level.

The adoption of emerging technologies like automation in the finance function during the next decade is going to change the role of the CFO. As per Accentures estimates based on insights from market analysis, cross-functional integrated teams will deliver 80 percent of traditional finance services.

As a business case to CFOs, automation contributes to both, the top as well the bottom line by not only replacing time-intensive, low-value and backward-looking accounting tasks but also enabling finance teams to spend more of their time on high-value, forward-looking business building and in-turn making them companys most important competitive advantages.

By saying yes to automation, CFOs can position the finance function as a strategic partner and in turn secure their own positions on the board and get closer to the CEO. But they deserve to be provided with a strong business case.

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Cost of automation for the cynical CFO - Financial Director

On a mission to fool Amazons automated convenience stores – The Boston Globe

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

A few observations about Amazons attempt to upgrade the 7-Eleven concept:

1. I visited four Go locations (the fifth one was closed for remodeling), and tried to trick the system with no success. You enter and leave through a turnstile. You use an Amazon phone app to check in and tell the store youre beginning to shop. Cameras mounted in the ceiling follow the outline of your body theyre not using facial recognition to see what youre putting into a bag and leaving with. Weight sensors built into the shelves can tell when an item is removed or put back. Would I be mistakenly charged if I picked up lots of items and the put them back in their proper locations? Nope. What if I picked up a few items and put them into a nearby slot, rather than where they were supposed to go? Nope. What if I brought in a bottle of water thatd Id acquired elsewhere, put it on a shelf with other bottled waters, and then removed it? Still no charge. I thought about opening a bag of chips, eating a few, and then leaving it in the store, but that seemed like going a tad too far.

2. You really have to trust that the system will charge you properly, because you cant see a running tally while in the store, or even after exiting through the turnstiles. You get an alert on your phone about eight to 10 minutes after your visit and can access the receipt in the Go app. A few hours later, a receipt is e-mailed. But as I mentioned, there were zero mistakes in four store visits, even though I was trying to fool the system.

3. There are no Slurpees, Slush Puppies, milkshakes, or other frozen beverages. Amazon Go feels like a convenience store designed in the healthy mold of Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in 2017. Youll find plastic packs of cut cantaloupe, salmon sesame power bowls, Seventh Generation recycled paper towels, and La Croix sparkling waters but not a lot of roadside standards like lottery tickets, cigarettes, or six flavors of M&Ms.

4. A surprising number of items in each store were out of stock. A brown sign reading So good its gone! could be seen all over the place. Was Amazon having problems with its supply chain? Is the company opting not to restock certain items? According to an e-mailed statement from the company, The selection available at any given time in our Amazon Go stores can vary depending on a number of factors, such as busy meal times, store hours, deliveries and more... We always strive to offer customers the products theyre looking for when shopping with us, and we continue to use customer feedback to improve the Amazon Go experience.

5. Unlike 7-Elevens, Amazon Go stores have pretty short hours. The earliest the San Francisco stores open is 7 a.m., and the latest they close is 9 p.m. Theyre not unattended; in each store, I saw one or two employees unpacking merchandise or waiting to help customers. This isnt a giant vending machine that sells ice cream and Oreos.

6. Just like nontech companies that operate convenience stores, Amazon has a hard time keeping everything shipshape. I encountered an out-of-service restroom, a broken entry door, and counters that needed cleaning. (Maintenance bots must still be under development.) For comparison, I walked across Market Street to drop in on a 7-Eleven, and found broken soda dispensers and out-of-stock items there, too. The 7-Eleven also had two clerks working cash registers and a bit of a line of customers waiting to pay.

7. Amazon doesnt seem to be resting on its laurels by simply rolling out more stores with technology it has already created. The company continues to hire scientists, engineers, and product managers for the team working on Go in Westborough; there are 11 job openings currently listed. Amazon says the new hires will join an Advanced Projects Group developing new technologies that go well beyond the current state of the art. The group is run by an MIT alum, Jeremy De Bonet.

8. Amazon hasnt announced any plans to open Go stores in Massachusetts. (It operates about two dozen in Chicago, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco.) Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, hypothesized that one reason might be that our state has a law requiring retailers to accept cash and Amazon Go is designed around the idea that you store a credit card number on a mobile app. But a friendly Amazon clerk told me she could grant a customer without a smartphone access to the store, and roll out a special cash cart if someone insisted on paying with old-fashioned paper money. That apparently happens a couple of times a day usually tourists, I was told.

9. I didnt observe ways that Amazon is saving dramatically on the human labor required to run a convenience store. And while just walking out with no waiting was novel, there were so few people shopping in the stores I visited, and such a limited number of items available, that even with cash registers I wouldnt have expected queues. But both things could change as Amazon starts operating full-line grocery stores or pharmacies. The company is clearly still in the invest, test, and learn phase with its retail automation technology, and as weve seen, once it figures out something that is economically viable, it rolls it out in a major way.

The big upgrade that seemed to be surfacing in San Francisco last month was the ability of the Go stores to sell cups of self-serve hot coffee something that automats figured out how to do around 1902.

Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottKirsner

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On a mission to fool Amazons automated convenience stores - The Boston Globe

Will the First Amendment Kill Free Speech in America? – Reason

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

This episode features a lively (and fair warning long) interview with Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center. We explore themes from her recent paper on regulation of online speech. It turns out that more or less everyone has an ability to restrict users' speech online, and pretty much no one has both authority and an interest in fostering free-speech values. The ironies abound: Conservatives may be discriminated against, but so are Black Lives Matter activists. In fact, it looks to me as though any group that doesn't think it's the victim of biased content moderation would be well advised to scream as loudly as possible about censorship anyway for fear of losing the victimization sweepstakes.

Feeling a little like a carny at the sideshow, I serve up one solution for biased moderation after another, and Daphne methodically shoots them down. Transparency? None of the companies is willing to allow real transparency, and the government may have a first amendment problem forcing companies to disclose how they make their moderation decisions. Competition law as a way to encourage multiple curators? It might require a "magic" API, and besides, most users like a moderated Internet experience. Regulation? Only if we want to take First Amendment law back to the heyday of broadcast regulation (which is frankly starting to sound pretty good to me).

As a particularly egregious example of foreign governments and platforms ganging up to censor Americans, we touch on the CJEU's insufferable decision encouraging the export of European defamation law to the US with an extra margin of algorithmic censorship to keep the platform from any risk of liability. Turns out, that speech suppression regime is not just an end run around the first amendment; it's protected by the first amendment. I offer to risk my Facebook account to see if that's already happening.

In the news, FISA follies take center stage, as the March 15 deadline for reauthorizing important counterterrorism authorities draws near. No one has a good solution. Matthew Heiman explains that another kick-the-can scenario remains a live option. And Nick Weaver summarizes the problems that the PCLOB found with the FISA call detail record program. My take: The program failed because it was imposed on NSA by libertarian ideologues who had no idea how it would work in practice and who now want to blame NSA for their own shortsightedness.

Another week, another couple of artificial intelligence ethics codes: The two most recent ones come from DOD and the Pope? Mark MacCarthy sees a lot to like. I offer my quick and dirty CTRL-F test for whether the codes are serious or flaky, and both fail.

In China news, Matthew covers China's ever-spreading censorship regime which now reaches Twitter users whose accounts are blocked by the Great Firewall. We also ask whether and how much the US "name and shame" campaign has actually reduced Chinese cyberespionage. And whether China is stealing tech from universities for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks that's where the IP is.

Nick recounts with undisguised glee the latest tribulations suffered by Clearview AI's facial recognition system: Its app has been banned from Android and Apple, and both its customers and its data collection methods have been doxed.

Mark notes the success of threats to boycott Pakistan on the part of Facebook, Google, and Twitter. I wonder if that will simply incentivize Pakistan to drive its social media ecosystem toward the Chinese giants.

Nick gives drug dealers a lesson in how not to store the codes for 53.6 million in Bitcoin; or is it a lesson in what to say to the police if you want that 53.6 million waiting for you when you get out of the clink?

Finally, in a few quick hits, we cover new developments in past stories: It turns out, to the surprise of no one, that removing a police tracking device from your car isn't theft. West Virginia has apparently recovered from a fit of insanity and now does not plan to allow voting by insecure app. And the FCC is doing a slow striptease in its investigation of mobile carriers for selling customer location data; now we know who'll be charged (pretty much everyone) and how much it will cost them ($200 million), but we still don't know the theory or whether the inquiry is going to kill off legitimate uses of location data.

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Will the First Amendment Kill Free Speech in America? - Reason

Hearst Television executive honored with RTDNF First Amendment Leadership Award – WLKY Louisville

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

A Hearst Television executive has been honored with a prestigious award.On Thursday evening, Barbara Maushard received the First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation.Maushard is the senior vice president for news. Hearst is the parent company of WLKY.The First Amendment Leadership Award honors a business, government or other leader who has made a significant contribution to the protection of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.Maushard was one of seven award First Amendment Award winners who represent the role journalists play in local and national media.This was the 30th time the awards have been handed out.Click here, for a full list of 2020 First Amendment Award winners.

A Hearst Television executive has been honored with a prestigious award.

On Thursday evening, Barbara Maushard received the First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation.

Maushard is the senior vice president for news. Hearst is the parent company of WLKY.

The First Amendment Leadership Award honors a business, government or other leader who has made a significant contribution to the protection of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.

Maushard was one of seven award First Amendment Award winners who represent the role journalists play in local and national media.

This was the 30th time the awards have been handed out.

Click here, for a full list of 2020 First Amendment Award winners.

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Hearst Television executive honored with RTDNF First Amendment Leadership Award - WLKY Louisville

Senator Blumenthal receives the First Amendment Defender Award – WTNH.com

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

WASHINGTON D.C. (WTNH) Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal received the First Amendment Defender Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation on Thursday evening.

Blumenthal was honored at the 30th annual recognition of First Amendment champions.

The award is presented to an individual or an organization that takes a public stand in support of press freedom.

At a time when press freedoms and access have been under attack, Sen. Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut has stood tall for the rights of journalists to do their jobs and inform the public. He has an impressive record of fighting for the truth and defending the publics need to know.

Sen. Blumenthal is currently serving his second term in the U.S. Senate representing Connecticut. Previously, he served five terms as Connecticuts Attorney General, fighting for individuals against large and powerful special interests.

In a statement about the award, RTDNF explained Blumenthal was chosen for the honor for his relentless work eradicating corruption in state government and making state contracting accountable, fair, honest and transparent.

RTDNF goes on to say, in 2018, Sen. Blumenthal co-sponsored a resolution condemning the Trump Administrations attempts to restrict media access and affirming the importance of a free press. The RTDNF says Blumenthal also helped introduce and reintroduce the Journalist Protection Act, making it a federal crime to intentionally cause bodily injury to a journalist in the course of reporting. In 2019, he cosponsored the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act, a bill that would create a new memorial in Washington D.C. to honor journalists, photographers, and broadcasters that have died in the line of duty.

News 8s General Manager, Rich Graziano, joined Nexstar President, Tim Busch, and RTDNF Chairman and Vice President of Local Content Development of Nexstar Broadcasting, Jerry Walsh, at the First Amendment Awards show and dinner on Thursday night.

According to Graziano, This years honorees are a mix of local and network journalists that provide illuminating reporting, a respected national news program which holds the powerful accountable and a visionary who defends the publics right to know.

Blumenthal joined such honorees as the news show 60 Minutes, David Muir of ABC News, Steve Andrews of WFLA-TV, Lori Montenegro of Telemundo, Barbara Maushard of Hearst Television and Robert (Bob) Horner of NBC News.

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Senator Blumenthal receives the First Amendment Defender Award - WTNH.com

The University’s First Amendment Rights | Leadership in Higher Education – Inside Higher Ed

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

When we talk about the First Amendment and freedom of expression in higher education, our analysis typically focuses on individual rights. We talk about the rights of unpopular speakers to express their views, the rights of students to invite such speakers, the rights of protesters to respond to or disrupt those with whom they disagree, and the rights of faculty members to say or teach without interference. But what about the First Amendment rights of the college or university itself, as an institution? Does a college or university have First Amendment rights in cases like these?

The traditional answer in these cases is no. While university speakers, students and faculty members have First Amendment rights, the university is a mere neutral forum. The university provides the setting, the context, in which individuals seek to express, protect and vindicate their rights, but it is not itself viewed as a significant First Amendment actor. The university can be sued for lack of neutrality, but in free expression cases, it basically serves as the arena, not as a player with its own unique values and interests.

I believe this is wrong, both as matter of law and of fundamental principle. I believe that colleges and universities have strong First Amendment rights as institutions, and that those institutional rights are so important to a free society, they may, in some instances, trump the rights of many individuals who seek to speak in the university setting.

The foundation of this robust idea of institutional First Amendment rights lies in Justice Frankfurters famous concurrence in the case of Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957). In Sweezy, a state attorney general sought to question an economist and magazine editor who had delivered a lecture on Marxism at the University of New Hampshire. Sweezy refused to answer, was held in contempt and ultimately took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where his contempt conviction was overturned.

The Sweezy decision is often cited as the foundation of the individual First Amendment right of faculty members to teach free from government interference, but a careful reading of Frankfurters opinion reveals that it is really the university, not the individual, that possesses the most important rights under the First Amendment. Frankfurter noted that the existence of our free society depends on free universities. This means, he continued, the exclusion of governmental intervention in the intellectual life of a university.

How can we protect universities from unconstitutional intervention? By respecting what Frankfurters opinion, quoting a South African study on academic freedom, called the four essential freedoms of a university -- to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study. In Frankfurters view, Sweezy had a right to speak at the University of New Hampshire not because of his own right to free expression, but because the university has a right to control its own intellectual environment, and thus the right to choose who will and who will not speak in its halls, free from government dictates.

Justice OConnor reasserted this strong view of university rights and university autonomy in the landmark affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). In Grutter, OConnor noted that in the United States, universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition. The Supreme Court, she wrote, has long recognized that universities have a right of educational autonomy that is grounded in the first amendment. This includes, she wrote, quoting Justice Powell in Bakke, the freedom of a university to make its own judgments as to education.

These basic constitutional principles have never been questioned, but their implications have long been ignored. If, as Sweezy, Bakke and Grutter recognize, universities occupy a special and protected place in First Amendment jurisprudence, with a right to autonomy and to control their own educational and intellectual environments, the implications are profound. On this reading, universities do not have to be a passive neutral forum. They may, instead, exercise a strong First Amendment right to define for themselves the appropriate educational and intellectual setting for learning, free from interference by legislatures and courts. This means that universities may, contrary to current practice, exclude some speakers whose views have no place in an intellectual setting devoted to science, rational argument and the creation of a proper learning environment.

How might this robust First Amendment institutional right to autonomy play out in specific cases? Imagine a white supremacist is invited by a student group to speak at a public university. Under traditional neutral forum analysis, the university does not have a right to exclude him or her. But if, as Sweezy, Bakke and Grutter suggest, the university has a right to control its intellectual and educational environment, it may exclude a speaker it believes will harm the academic environment it seeks to maintain. If the university believes the speaker will undercut the seriousness of intellectual discourse or the right to students to study free from harassment, they do not need to provide a forum for that person to speak.

This notion of strong institutional rights under the First Amendment has not been tested in the courts. It may be that when push comes to shove, the courts will insist on content neutrality even if it interferes with a universitys autonomous right to create a proper intellectual and learning environment. But we wont know this, of course, until universities try to assert and protect what Justice OConnor called their right to educational autonomy based on their special niche in our constitutional tradition.

John Kroger served as the president of Reed College and as attorney general of Oregon.

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The University's First Amendment Rights | Leadership in Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed

When Protestors Carry Guns, Does It Impede Others Free Speech? – The Trace

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

In late January, thousands of pro-gun activists descended on Richmond, Virginia, to protest a package of gun reform bills advancing through the state General Assembly. Many of them were armed. The specter of a massive open carry demonstration was difficult for anyone to ignore, but the day was also significant because of the people not in attendance outside the state Capitol grounds.

Fearing violence, untold numbers of counter-protesters diverted their plans to advocate for legislation on the same streets as the pro-gun activists. Among those who sat it out that day were members of a student group advocating for undocumented immigrants and gun reform advocates who had planned to hold a vigil in memory of gun violence victims. In their absence, the loudest voices in the proverbial room were those in support of gun rights.

Some legal commentators found the dynamic vexing and questioned if the protest was a healthy picture of free speech and debate. Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, was one of many to surface concerns about the First Amendment rights of the unarmed. In The Atlantic, he declared, The right to bear arms in political debate is not the power to speak for oneself; it is, at least implicitly, the power to silence others. The late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged this clash of rights in a dissent from 2010. Your interest in keeping and bearing a certain firearm, he wrote, may diminish my interest in being and feeling safe from armed violence.

Below, we look at the free speech implications of open carry demonstrations, and whether officials can regulate guns in protest settings to foster free speech.

Is there a First Amendment right to attend a protest free of guns?

The short answer is no, at least not right now. While some may feel that armed protesters trample on the speech rights of others, the reality is that no court would currently hold that carrying guns openly at a demonstration violates First Amendment rights to free expression and political assembly.

A First Amendment lawyers argument against open carry at protests would go something like this: Firearms violate the speech rights of unarmed protesters because they chill expression through intimidation.

But this reasoning suffers from two major problems. For one thing, freedom of speech protects individuals from government intrusion on expression, but in armed protest settings, the government is not directly involved in silencing anyone. Its not the government carrying the guns, said Timothy Zick, a law professor at William and Mary Law School who has written extensively on the issue. Indirectly, yes, the government allows people to carry guns. But its the individuals decision to carry it.

Moreover, chills on expression, which are not outright bans on speech, violate the First Amendment only under certain circumstances. Zick said, It can be a struggle to deal with the legal concept of chill versus the human concept of it.

For a chill on expression to cross over into a free speech violation, the threatening consequence of speech has to be immediate like getting arrested for your dissenting speech, losing your job for your political views, or being shot at a protest. It has to be some kind of tangible, compulsive, coercive impingement on you, said Zick. Ones own perception that speech could get them into trouble is called subjective chill, and the Supreme Court has held that First Amendment claims based on that definition are dead on arrival.

As a result, a court would likely find no immediate threat to people who dont attend protests because of open carry practices. As Zick noted, Your willingness to rally amongst guns depends heavily on what you believe about guns. Not everyone thinks that guns are inherently dangerous, and open carry laws by themselves dont guarantee that people will use their firearms in a dangerous way. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit relied on this reasoning in a 2018 case about concealed carry in public university classrooms in Texas. A group of University of Texas professors argued that the presence of weapons in class would chill their First Amendment academic freedoms. But the court found they were choosing to self-censor their speech based on the hypothetical future decisions of students.

Do some scholars take exception to the current state of the law?

Some legal experts disagree with the jurisprudence and believe that guns in public spaces are incompatible with a functioning democracy. In a paper arguing that the Second Amendment right should exist only in the privacy of ones home, Darrell Miller of Duke Law School argued, The presence of a gun in public has the effect of chilling or distorting the essential channels of a democracy. He added, Valueless opinions enjoy an inflated currency if accompanied by threats of violence.

Likewise, Mary Anne Franks of the University of Miami has argued that, under the sway of the gun lobby, the Supreme Court has transformed the Second Amendment into a superright one with the ability to override others with the power to cancel out the freedom of speech by intimidating people into silence. This chilling effect, she noted in her book The Cult of the Constitution, is felt most acutely by the least powerful members of society.

If theres no First Amendment case against armed protest, can open carry events still be restricted?

Governments are far from helpless to stop people from bringing guns to protests. There are many different gun regulations we could use that preserve both Second Amendment rights and free speech rights, Zick said.

First, its important to note that the Supreme Court has itself contemplated limits on the right to bear arms, including bans on guns in sensitive places. Many of these locations, including Capitol grounds and university campuses, are common protest sites. Local governments can grant protest permits on the condition that the gathering is free of firearms without running afoul of the Second Amendment. Similarly, local officials can require guns to be unloaded or restrict the types of firearms protesters may carry.

Furthermore, its worth remembering that the Second Amendment does not grant gun carriers the right to commit crimes. Existing criminal laws prohibit brandishing or discharging firearms outside of the context of self-defense. As The Trace has reported, states could enforce very old laws that penalize people for going armed to the terror of the public. And many states, including those that permit open carry, have banned paramilitary activity for over a century. These laws prohibit private militias from assembling and holding drills in public. Virginia recently relied on its own anti-paramilitary statute to prevent some groups at the 2017 Charlottesville rally from protesting with guns in the future. (A bill currently making its way through the General Assembly would amend that law with language prohibiting armed persons from assembling with the intent to intimidate others.)

Still, this face-off of rights is far from over. There are more states that permit open carry, and more people are starting to exercise that right, said Zick. Armed protest is going to be part of the protest landscape.

The law in this area is still developing, and courts will likely consider how armed protests play out in real life. If violence transpired at future open carry rallies, he predicted that might bolster a First Amendment claim that weapon-toting demonstrators are limiting others free speech. I think it would be difficult for any judge, whether they admitted it or not, to ignore news reports of mayhem in the streets.

Lower courts will also have to follow new pronouncements from the Supreme Court, which has yet to establish a Second Amendment right to carry in public. But Zick believes that will change. I think the writing is on the wall, he said.

See more here:

When Protestors Carry Guns, Does It Impede Others Free Speech? - The Trace

Do Non-Lawmakers Have A First Amendment Right To Speak Before A Legislative Body? Its A Question In Texas After A Man Testified Wearing A Profane…

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

There is an ongoing dust up involving the First Amendment, allegations of prohibited viewpoint discrimination and legislative immunity in the Texas Senate. Its fascinating stuff for political scientists, political practitioners, and journalists.

It started on Thursday, February 27, when a man testified at a Texas State Senate hearing wearing a t-shirt that said, F**K the POLICE, (but his shirt featured all the letters) and, to drive the sentiment home, accompanied by an image of a hand with the middle finger outstretched.

After learning about the hearing, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick tweeted out:

Outraged to see this T-shirt at a Senate Hearing Thur.Future witnesses beware. No one will ever be allowed to wear such a vulgar shirt in a Senate hearing again-especially one that denigrates the brave men & women of law enforcement. Want to take me to court? Ok. Make my day.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick tweeted out his disapproval of people wearing vulgar shirts ... [+] while testifying before the Senate.

His tweet was met with a volley of criticism by First Amendment advocates who maintained that Lieutenant Governor Patrickand the Legislature in generaldoesnt have the right to abridge speech or pick and choose between types of speech.(Note to readers outside of Texas: the lieutenant governor in Texas is the most powerful lieutenant governor in the nation in that the person in that office actually runs the State Senate, not unlike how the Speaker of the House runs the House.)

Common in the citations to make their point was a U.S. Supreme Court decision from the Vietnam era. In Cohen v. California, the court ruled on the case of a 19-year-old man who was arrested for wearing a jacket that read, F**k the Draft, Stop the War, into a California courthouse. The court overturned his arrest and conviction on a 5-4 decision that determined that Californias law that prohibited the display of offensive messages was a violation of the freedom of expression as protected by the First Amendment.

Cohen v. California, decided in 1971, was often cited as the case that would prevent viewpoint ... [+] discrimination in a legislative body - but it likely doesn't as legislative bodies aren't public spaces and they're immune from interference by other branches of government.

It is interesting to note that in the Cohen case, the appellant did wear his offensive jacket in the courthouse hallways but removed it upon entering a judges courtroom, folding it over his arm. He was only arrested after leaving the courtroom for having worn the jacket in the public hallways of the courthouse. Had the reverse been true, and the judge ordered him ejected from his courtroom for wearing the jacket, and he resisted, the ruling likely would have gone the other way.

Of course, judges to this day enforce rules of decorum in their courtroomslook at any jury summonsit will instruct the prospective juror on the acceptable attire and conduct in a courtroom.

First Amendment advocates will admit to this but are quick to add that judges should not engage in viewpoint discriminationthough many still do today.

Which brings up back to Lieutenant Governor Patricks tweet. Lets break it down to its chief components.

First, that the shirt in question was vulgar and has no place in a Senate hearing.

Second, that the shirt was especially offensive in that it denigrated the brave men & women of law enforcement.

Third, that if you dont like it, you can take the lieutenant governor to court.

To the first question, while most analysts would admit that, just as a judge can set rules for their courtroom, so to can a legislative body set rules for decorum in the deliberative portions of their chambers, such as the floor and in hearing rooms. These are seen as different than public places, for example, the rotunda in a state capitol building or a public sidewalk.

Even so, Ari Cohn formerly a director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a group that brings many successful free speech lawsuits against educational institutions, insisted that there is no decent enforceable legal definition of vulgar. So, even if the Texas Senate were to uniformly enforce a ban on offensive clothing, it wouldnt stand, presumably if any clothing with a message were allowed, even something as innocuous as a shirt that read Lake Travis High School.

Well return to this question in a moment.

The second issue is that the vulgar shirt in question was particularly offensive as it denigrated law enforcement officers. This is where the accusation of viewpoint discrimination focused. The lieutenant governor cannot, his critics claimed, pick and choose between messages he likes and those he doesnt likeeither take them all or ban them all.

And, lastly, if you dont like Lieutenant Governor Patricks actions, you can take him to court.

Butand heres the big questionis the Legislature in the course of its official business, subject to any restraint by the courts?

I would argue that, in its internal operations, the answer is an emphatic No!unless specifically proscribed by the Constitution or a state constitution.

First of all, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Minnesota State Bd. for Community Colleges v. Knight in 1984 that there is no constitutional right to force officers of the State acting in an official policymaking capacity to listen to the views of the public. Secondly, in Curnin v. Town of Egremont, decided by the First Circuit Court of Appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court allowing the ruling to stand in 2008 (denying certiorari), that The First Amendment does not give non-legislators the right to speak at meetings of deliberating legislative bodies and that

The Supreme Court has never extended First Amendment forum analysis to a deliberating legislative body or to the body's rules about who may speak. While no Supreme Court case is directly on point, the Court has addressed the underlying issue of the public's ability to address government policymakers:

The Constitution does not grant to members of the public generally a right to be heard by public bodies making decisions of policy Policymaking organs in our system of government have never operated under a constitutional constraint requiring them to afford every interested member of the public an opportunity to present testimony before any policy is adopted Public officials at all levels of government daily make policy decisions based only on the advice they decide they need and choose to hear. To recognize a constitutional right to participate directly in government policymaking would work a revolution in existing government practices.

The court goes on to note that, Under the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 6, there are constitutional separation of powers protections for Congress. Further, that The purpose of the Clause is to insure that the legislative function the Constitution allocates to Congress may be performed independently. That This immunity extends to injunctive relief. And finally, that, while, No explicit federal constitutional protections cover state or local legislative bodies. there are still federalism and separation of powers concerns, which have led to the adoption of similar immunities for state legislators, citing the Knight decision.

Turning to the Texas Constitution, we see in Article III, governing the Legislative Department, Section 15, that disrespectful or disorderly conduct by any person not a member in the presence of the a house conducting its business can result in imprisonment for up to 48 hours. Given that this action would not involve executive branch law enforcement or judicial branch court proceedings, its likely that such an imprisonment would not accrue to someones arrest record or criminal record as the violation would be unique to the Legislature.

Lastly, going to the heart of the matter of viewpoint discrimination, is it permissible, under the any rules of a legislative body, that a committee chairman might only accept testimony from all Democrats or all Republicans? Yes, of course. As the federal courts have noted, Public officials daily make policy decisions based only on the advice they decide they need and choose to hear.

Id argue that a hearing where ten Republicans testify with no Democrat witnesses is a far more egregious form of viewpoint discrimination than is banning an offensive shirt, yet, its perfectly acceptable, legal, and constitutional for a legislative body to decide to do so and theres nothing the courts can do about it. Its done in the U.S. Congress all the time. Its an internal matter of that legislative body. The legislative function must be performed independently. Anything less would admit to judicial supremacy. Dont like it? Win the majority and run the house as you will.

Of course, if the courts did try to meddle in the internal affairs of the Legislative branch, that branch has the tools to fight back: they can impeach and remove judges, if they muster the political will to do so. They can also use their budgetary powers in creative ways so as to concentrate the minds of an overambitious co-equal branch.

While such actions are constitutional, whether they should be done or not crosses into ethical behavior and considerations of political prudence. Just because a legislative majority can do something, doesnt mean that they should or that there might not be consequences come election time.

Bottom line: Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and other officers of the Texas Legislature are free to order the official and internal affairs of their respective legislative chambers as they wish, in accordance with the will of that body and free from interference of either the judicial or executive branches.

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Do Non-Lawmakers Have A First Amendment Right To Speak Before A Legislative Body? Its A Question In Texas After A Man Testified Wearing A Profane...

Guest Column: On the 1st Amendment and restrictive resolutions – Oak Ridger

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

As a journalism major in college, I learned a lot about the First Amendment and its importance. I don't have to like or agree with everything that is reported, discussed, aired, etc. However, it must be protected and not be restricted. So, I am very disappointed that the Tennessee Legislature is trying to pass a House Joint Resolution calling some news media outlets fake news and condemn them for denigrating our citizens. It is HJR 0779 and has been assigned to the Judiciary Committee after going to the Constitutional Protections and Sentencing Subcommittee.

As a journalism major in college, I learned a lot about the First Amendment and its importance. I dont have to like or agree with everything that is reported, discussed, aired, etc. However, it must be protected and not be restricted. So, I am very disappointed that the Tennessee Legislature is trying to pass a House Joint Resolution calling some news media outlets fake news and condemn them for denigrating our citizens. It is HJR 0779 and has been assigned to the Judiciary Committee after going to the Constitutional Protections and Sentencing Subcommittee.

This goes against the First Amendment. It is not right to single out certain media outlets that people dont like or dont agree with. If we start that, eventually every publication will have to go away since one side calls certain networks or publications bad, corrupt, or slanted against their cause/people. And, the other side does the same with different publications. And that just shouldnt happen.

Our founders knew the importance of a Free Press. The First Amendment states, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, the press is supposed to be free from government interference. The question might be: Does this apply to the Tennessee Legislature as it does to Congress and the federal government? I think that it does, but I am not a constitutional expert or attorney. That possibly is what the subcommittees will look into.

Even if this resolution is adopted (or passes, I am not sure which), I will not be told how or what to think about the media and media outlets. I will decide that for myself. I will continue to watch and read the media outlets that I decide upon. We all have to determine what we listen to, read, watch, and follow. No one should be telling us that, especially not the Legislature, the governor, or the Congress, or the president.

We may not like what they are writing or airing but they have a right to do so. If we dont like it, we should change the channel, stop reading the article, or write a Letter To The Editor. Instead, we tend to overreact as this resolution is doing, fan the flames of discord, and call the other side awful things cult like, the deep state, etc.

I read and watch both of the publications listed in HJR 0779 as fake news CNN and The Washington Post. I also watch/read/listen to: PBS News, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Associated Press, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, Time Magazine, The New York Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, The Oak Ridger, The Knoxville News Sentinel, Oak Ridge Today, The Tennessean, and others.

I dont watch or read them all of the time, but do regularly tune in and do buy papers. The newspaper industry has changed so much in recent years, and fewer people are supporting it. I continue to do my part so local news and other print options continue to be available.

I know people who regularly watch news channels and shows that I totally disagree with. But, is it my right to tell them to stop watching it? No. And, is it their right to tell me to stop watching what I choose? Again, no.

I am passionate about this since my first job out of college was a general assignment reporter for a small, twice-weekly county paper. I covered county government, county agencies, county courts, county commission, county school board, as well as the fire department, police department, sheriff department and ambulance service.

It was fascinating to learn how things work at the local level. It is something that in my opinion needs to continue. We need to know what is going on in our local communities that affect our children, our families, our health, our schools, our business opportunities, our taxes that we owe and so much more.

There are so many platforms now that anyone can write, post, talk, etc. This does concern me if those writers, bloggers or pundits have certain agendas. There are ways to verify the facts of an article. Also just because you dont like an article or a slant, that doesnt mean its fake news.

Perhaps slanted news, or extreme opinion in some cases. Or they are actually printing the truth that you dont acknowledge or agree with. In journalism school, we learned to verify facts, that opinions had no place in a news article, and to take our time without rushing to judgment. So much has changed since then.

I remember the days when Walter Cronkite ended his newscast with And thats the way it is after briefing the audience on the news of the day. Occasionally, he or someone else on the show would air an opinion piece.

Now, there are different bots and sites on Facebook, Twitter, and numerous web sites that post fake news and try to pass it off as real news. These often are re-posted or retweeted without any regard for the truth or who is behind the writing. I keep my guard up for these sites.

And, I may not like what a publication reports or prints, but since we have the First Amendment, they must be allowed to air it or print it. I just dont have to have watch it or read it, since I, too, have a First Amendment right.

A lot could and probably should be improved in the media today. I for one, get sick and tired of the extreme opinions from both sides that are regularly broadcast in the evening. Both have their own slant. I think it is up to us as informed citizens to view both ends of the spectrum to see where the other side is coming from. And to see the difference in how the same stories are told.

To read more about HJR 0779, please click on http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HJR0779. The resolution itself can then be read by clicking on HJR 0779 by Van Huss on the left column of the screen or clicking on http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/111/Bill/HJR0779.pdf.

Patti Truex Cates is an Oak Ridge resident.

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Guest Column: On the 1st Amendment and restrictive resolutions - Oak Ridger

Cuellar holds off primary challenge, and other late calls – Politico

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

By ZACH MONTELLARO

03/05/2020 10:00 AM EST

Updated 03/05/2020 03:39 PM EST

Editors Note: Morning Score is a free version of POLITICO Pro Campaigns morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the days biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) holding off a tough primary challenge headlines the list of downballot Super Tuesday races that were called Wednesday, but many California races are still unresolved.

Mike Bloomberg formally ended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, winnowing the field further still. Meanwhile, Joe Biden was declared the winner in Maine, eeking out a narrow victory.

The Senate is poised to take action on President Donald Trumps Federal Election Commission nominee, which could give the embattled federal election watchdog a quorum. But many Democrats and money-in-politics groups are not happy with the prospective commissioner.

A message from the Partnership for America's Health Care Future:

Every American deserves access to affordable, high-quality care, but Medicare for All would force them to pay more to wait longer for worse care. See how.

Good Thursday morning. Email me at zmontellaro@politico.com, and follow me at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the rest of the Campaign Pro team at sshepard@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com and amutnick@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @JamesArkin and allymutnick.

Days until the March 10 primaries: 5

Days until the Phoenix Democratic debate: 10

Days until the March 17 primaries: 12

Days until the 2020 election: 243

Rep. Henry Cuellar narrowly beat out a primary challenger in a race that was called on Wednesday. | Getty Images

THE LATE CALLS Super Tuesday stretched well into weary Wednesday. I shamelessly stole a colleagues joke to highlight the fact that not all of the downballot races were called on Tuesday and some are still outstanding. Topping the list of races that were called on Wednesday: Cuellar holding off a primary challenge from Jessica Cisneros in TX-28.

A win that tight by Cuellar will likely do little to quell the liberal forces who had pegged the race as the next major opportunity to shake up the Democratic caucus, POLITICOs Ally Mutnick and Sarah Ferris wrote. Her near-miss is likely to embolden a score of liberal primary challengers hoping to take out House Democrats, including two later this month. In Illinois, Democrat Marie Newman is making another run at Rep. Dan Lipinski who, like Cuellar, also opposes abortion rights. And in Ohio, Rep. Joyce Beatty faces a stiff challenge from consumer advocate Morgan Harper. Cuellar, perhaps spooked by the rash of Democratic incumbents who fell last cycle, assembled a formidable campaign apparatus.

But that wasnt the only big race call on Wednesday. In Texas, the DSCC-endorsed MJ Hegar now knows her runoff opponent: Royce West, who edged out Cristina Tzintzn Ramirez for the second runoff spot for the Democratic Senate nomination. And heres the rest of the calls in the races we were watching:

AL-02: Former state Rep. Barry Moore will face businessman Jeff Coleman in the March 31 primary runoff for this safe, red seat.

CA-08: Republican Jay Obernolte secured a spot in November in the red seat. The second spot remains undecided between Democrat Chris Bubser and Republican Tom Donnelly.

CA-10: Freshman Democratic Rep. Josh Harder will face Republican Ted Howze in November.

CA-25: The simultaneous primary and special election remain muddled. Democrat Christy Smith won a spot in the special election runoff, but the other spot (and the two candidates who will face off in November in the regular election) remain uncalled, with Republicans Steve Knight and Mike Garcia battling.

CA-50: In this open, red-leaning seat, Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar secured his spot in the November election. Republicans Darrell Issa and Carl DeMaio are dueling for the second spot.

CA-53: Democrat Sara Jacobs won a spot in the general election in November. Democrat Georgette Gomez and Republican Chris Stoddard are fighting for the second.

TX-23: Republicans Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes are officially headed for a runoff in the GOP-held open seat. The winner will face Gina Ortiz Jones, who easily won her primary.

TX-24: Democrats Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela are headed to a runoff, and the winner will face Republican Beth Van Duyne, who won her primary for the Dallas-area open seat.

TX-32: Republican Genevieve Collins won the Republican nomination outright, avoiding a runoff, and will face freshman Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in November.

SEE YOU LATER Bloomberg officially called it quits on Wednesday, ending his half-billion-plus presidential campaign with little to show for it. Bloomberg huddled early Wednesday morning with his closest advisers in one of his Manhattan offices. Alongside campaign manager Kevin Sheekey, chair Patti Harris and adviser Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg reviewed the final results from the biggest night of the Democratic primary, POLITICOs Sally Goldenberg and Chris Cadelago reported. They saw no path to success. He then opted to drop out of the race and throw his support and potentially his vast resources behind Biden.

More: Bloomberg aides said it was still unclear how hed be involved in Bidens campaign. Advisers on the all-staff call said they are working on a plan for how they'll wind down the campaign. The advisers stressed they built their massive operation to continue the fight against Trump in battlegrounds regardless of whether hes the nominee.

Elizabeth Warrens team is considering ending her campaign. An aide to Warren told POLITICOs Alex Thompson that she was spending Wednesday with her team to assess the path forward. [Campaign manager Roger] Lau wrote [in an email to staff] that [t]his decision is in her hands, and its important that she has the time and space to consider what comes next.

Top allies of Warren and Bernie Sanders are also discussing ways for their two camps to unite and push a common liberal agenda, with the expectation that Warren is likely to leave the presidential campaign soon, The Washington Posts Annie Linskey and Sean Sullivan wrote. Warren allies also talked with Bidenworld, Linskey and Sullivan reported.

TAKING STOCK After a rough Super Tuesday, Sanders is changing his strategy. The decades-long refusal to air negative TV ads is out. Spots highlighting former President Barack Obamas praise of him are in, POLITICOs Holly Otterbein wrote (heres the Biden attack ad, hitting him over social security, and heres the ad featuring Obama). After facing questions for weeks about whether Sanders would shift his message to broaden his base, Sanders campaign co-chair, Rep. Ro Khanna, said his candidate will work to appeal more to older voters and mainstream Democrats.

More from Holly: Sanders aides still very much see a path to victory, however. They believe he has a shot at winning five of the six states that vote next week, including Michigan and Washington, which have the days largest delegate hauls.

Team Bidens response to the change in tune from Sanders? Remember the last primary. Framing Sanders as a divisive party outsider who won't accept defeat, the Biden campaign pointed to his bitter Democratic primary fight four years ago with his party nemesis, Hillary Clinton. That ended with a chaotic nominating convention and Donald Trumps election months later, POLITICOs Marc Caputo and Natasha Korecki wrote.

NEXT ONE UP Michigan is the biggest prize in next Tuesdays primaries, both in terms of how many delegates are awarded and for its political value. It was Michigan where Sanders engineered a primary day miracle four years ago, upsetting Hillary Clinton and imprinting his populist agenda on the industrial Midwest, POLITICOs David Siders and Holly wrote. But Super Tuesday laid bare the full force of the momentum Biden drew from winning South Carolina, prompting moderate Democrats to coalesce around him and persuading many undecided voters to break his way.

HOW HE DID IT Bidens support on Super Tuesday was a primary coalition he and other Democrats have yearned to build for a year, fusing domination among black voters with strong support from whites that crossed over class lines, POLITICOs Laura Barrn-Lpez wrote. Latino voters were, however, a particularly strong group for Sanders.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE Trumps relationship with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is souring in the crucial swing state. DeSantis is no verbal knife fighter, something Trump expects from his inner circle, and the onetime Fox News stalwart has ceased appearing on the cable channel, POLITICO Floridas Matt Dixon writes. And with Election Day just eight months away, his pick to lead the Republican Party of Florida resigned on Tuesday after failing to deliver crucial get-out-the-vote infrastructure. DeSantis defenders cast the chatter as a sour-grapes narrative.

DELEGATE HEADCOUNT Before Bloomberg (and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar) dropped out, they did manage to win delegates to the national convention. So what happens to their delegates? It is a lot more difficult than simply adding their totals to Biden, I wrote but it is a complicated dance that will only really matter if someone else cant secure an outright majority.

WHAT GIVES? Bloomberg essentially ran out the clock on transparency for his financial records after he asked for (and was granted) extensions on filing his public disclosure forms, the Center for Public Integritys Dave Levinthal wrote, dropping out before submitting it.

ENDORSEMENT CORNER Congressional endorsements continue to pour in for Biden. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) backed him, as did Florida Reps. Kathy Castor, Lois Frankel and Ted Deutch, Illinois Mike Quigley, Robin Kelly and Bill Foster and New Jerseys Andy Kim. (This is Kims third endorsement of the cycle, having previously backed Cory Booker and then Buttigieg.) Sarah and Heather Caygle also have more on the celebration among some House Democrats on Bidens surge (and Sanders speedbumps) on Super Tuesday.

THE ENFORCERS? The deadlock at the Federal Election Commission could soon come to an end. Trump nominated Texas attorney Trey Trainor to be a FEC commissioner. That itself is not new; Trainor has been nominated in the past, and the Senate has let his nomination languish. But this time, the Senate is poised to take action. The Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing on Trainors nomination on March 10, the first step toward Trainor actually being confirmed (the movement was first reported by the CPIs Levinthal, who has been all over the FECs trials and tribulations for awhile now). Democrats are, however, furious at the break in tradition, which typically sees a bipartisan pair of nominees put forward, Roll Calls Kate Ackley wrote.

But if Trainors hearing goes smoothly, and he is eventually confirmed, there would once again be a quorum at the FEC. The countrys chief election watchdog has languished without one for more than six months, being unable to take action on a bevy of things (heres what I wrote back in December about the lack of a quorum). But some campaign finance-focused groups are not happy about the movement on Trainor. Reopening the Federal Election Commission with a nominee who does not think we should enforce the nations campaign finance laws will only make matters worse, Meredith McGehee, the executive director of Issue One, said in a statement. (Trainor, generally, has fought for less campaign finance regulation, having publicly questioned the value of disclosing donors.)

The Institute for Free Speech which was founded by former FEC commissioner Bradley Smith and argues against many campaign finance-related restrictions on First Amendment grounds praised Trainor as a well-qualified practitioner.

THE SENATE MAP Democrats are poised to land a major recruit in the battle for the Senate: Term-limited Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who had previously (and adamantly) denied that he was going to run. In recent days, Democrats are starting to believe the two-term governor could jump in the race to challenge GOP Sen. Steve Daines, a move that would expand the Senate map for Democrats by giving them another battleground target in their bid to take back the chamber, POLITICOs James Arkin and Marianne LeVine reported. Bullock has not yet indicated publicly an interest in the race, and it is not a done deal that Bullock will run, according to multiple Democratic sources. (The New York Times Jonathan Martin first reported Bullocks apparent change of heart.)

We have some polling numbers in the Georgia special Senate election, with Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) battling it out. The University of Georgia School of Public & International Affairs poll has Collins at 21 percent to 19 percent for Loeffler. Democrat Matt Lieberman is at 11 percent and the DSCC-endorsed Raphael Warnock is at 6 percent, with a handful of other candidates below him (1,117 likely general election voters; Feb. 24-March 2; +/- 2.9 percentage point MOE).

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is raising some big cash for his new colleagues. The first-term senator is hosting three events Sunday and Monday, benefiting six Senate Republicans on the ballot this year and one GOP challenger, James reported.

We approached, but did not quite hit, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions worst nightmare as he hopes to return to the Senate in Alabama. Trump retweeted an AP tweet announcing that Tommy Tuberville, Sessions rival for the nomination, advanced to a runoff on Wednesday morning. He followed it up with a quote-tweet of the POLITICO story saying Sessions finished well short of a majority in a primary: This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesnt have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Thats not exactly a Tuberville endorsement, but it is getting awfully close to one.

THE GOVERNATORS A race I neglected to mention in Wednesdays Score, because the primary was entirely uncompetitive: North Carolina governor. Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest emerged from his primary fairly easily and will face Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in whats expected to be one of the most hotly-contested gubernatorial races this year.

WAY DOWN BALLOT The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee announced that it raised $2.6 million in February, its best February ever.

THE OUTSIDE GROUPS Tom Lopach, a former Bullock aide and former DSCC executive director, was named the president and CEO of the Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information.

A message from the Partnership for America's Health Care Future:

A one-size-fits-all government health insurance system, like Medicare for All, would eliminate the choice and control millions of Americans deserve, in exchange for higher taxes and lower quality care. Lets build on whats working, not start over with Medicare for All. Learn more.

CODA DYSTOPIAN HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Bloomberg attracted few votes but his ads still grabbed the attention of many kids, from The Washington Post.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of Morning Score misstated the DLCC's fundraising record. This February was the best February the committee has ever had.

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Cuellar holds off primary challenge, and other late calls - Politico

San Francisco expected to pay $369,000 settlement to Bryan Carmody – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

San Francisco is expected to pay Bryan Carmody $369,000 to settle a claim the freelance journalist filed last year after police raided his home as part of a leak investigation.

Last April, the San Francisco Police Department asked Carmody to reveal the source of a leaked police report concerning the death of public defender Jeff Adachi. Carmody refused, and a month later officers came to his home with search warrants, seizing computers, cameras and phones while FBI agents questioned the journalist.

All of the warrants were later nullified, deemed illegal under Californias shield law, which allows journalists to protect confidential sources and materials.

Filed last August, Carmodys claim against San Francisco is related to the illegal warrants and the conduct of the police department in carrying them out, according to San Franciscos resolution to settle. Courthouse News Service reported on Tuesday that the resolution is expected to head to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee. If approved, it will then move to the full board for a vote.

The raid of Carmodys home made national news, sparking outrage among journalists and press freedom advocates.

Any search targeting a journalists confidential material is a particularly egregious affront to First Amendment rights and should be investigated thoroughly, Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce Brown said in a statement last May. Mr. Carmodys devices and work product should be returned immediately.

When Carmody moved to have his equipment and materials returned, Reporters Committee attorneys gathered a coalition of 60 media organizations and sent a letter supporting his motion to the California Superior Court.

The Reporters Committee has also pursued records related to the presence of the FBI during the raid. Though FBI personnel did not participate in the search itself, the agency has confirmed that its agents were on site to question Carmody.

According to an FBI document obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Reporters Committee in September, those agents knew that Carmody was a journalist. The Justice Department guidelines generally require authorization from the attorney general before a member of the news media can be questioned. But its unclear whether these guidelines were followed here.

The Justice Department policies were put in place to handle criminal investigations in a careful and thoughtful manner based on a particular set of circumstances and provide meaningful protections for newsgathering, policy analyst Melissa Wasser and Stanton Foundation National Security Fellow Linda Moon wrote in October. The public deserves to know whether these policies were followed, and if they werent, the FBI needs to provide public justification.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

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San Francisco expected to pay $369,000 settlement to Bryan Carmody - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Schumers SCOTUS threat was truly unprecedented, then he made it worse – New York Post

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

If, then, the courts of justice are to be considered as the bulwarks of a limited Constitution against legislative encroachments, this consideration will afford a strong argument for the permanent tenure of judicial offices, argued Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78.

If we needed a pristine example of why justices are bestowed lifetime appointments and shielded from the intimidation tactics of unethical politicians, Sen. Chuck Schumer has now provided us with one.

Speaking to pro-abortion protesters in front of the Supreme Court this week, the Senate minority leader threatened theres no other way to put it two sitting justices with repercussions if they uphold a Louisiana law aimed at protecting babies who survive abortions.

He said: I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You wont know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

Its possible that Schumer who doesnt have the slightest interest in protecting abortion survivors cant think of any good reason for hospital-admitting privileges for abortion providers, as the Louisiana law requires. But treating that as an undue burden is just an example of the Democrats abortion extremism. Threatening justices over the case is hysterical.

Moreover, Schumers thuggish rhetoric is a transparent attempt to intimidate justices. And wow a sitting senator threatening an independent judiciary. Surely the champions of norms and decency will be horrified by this development. When President Trump, rather absurdly, demanded that Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse themselves from Trump-related cases because of their partisan positions and yes, Notorious RBG is openly partisan and anti-Trump it was a major national story. In this case, I suspect were going to hear a lot about a general coarsening of discourse.

Whatever the case, this is an unprecedented attack on Supreme Court justices. And by unprecedented, I mean that you wont be able to unearth an instance in modern history of a member of Congress threatening a justice by name, no less for ruling against his wishes. Which is why, I imagine, Chief Justice John Roberts felt the need to release this statement:

Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All members of the court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.

Sometimes, in highly charged debates over public policy, the moment gets the better of a person. Its happened to all of us. Yet, rather than walking back his statement, Schumer compounded the ugly behavior by smearing the chief justice as a partisan ideologue.

A spokesman said: For Justice Roberts to follow the right wings deliberate misinterpretation of what Sen. Schumer said, while remaining silent when President Trump attacked Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg last week, shows Justice Roberts does not just call balls and strikes. The senator meant only that there would be a political price Republicans will pay for putting them on the court, the statement added.

First of all, is Schumer really arguing that being critical of justices is tantamount to threatening them? If thats the case, why, during President Barack Obamas State of the Union address in 2010, did Schumer stand and clap for Obamas norm-breaking attack on the Supreme Court justices who had upheld the First Amendment in Citizens United? It seems clear that Obama was attempting to manipulate the court, as well, but at least he had the decency not to sound like some wannabe Mafioso.

By accusing Roberts of misrepresenting his comments for partisan reasons, Schumer (via his spokesman) is obviously trying to influence the chief justice, as well. But hes lying. Schumers initial statement specifically and unequivocally named two justices one of whom he and his colleagues had already attempted to humiliate and defame. He was not calling out the Republicans who put Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the court.

Schumer doesnt have the power to follow through on any threats, thankfully. His attack, like many less obvious ones, is just part of the lefts concerted effort to delegitimize the court, denigrate its justices and undermine the legality of its decisions. This isnt surprising; the Constitution and the jurists who are inclined to uphold it are the biggest impediments to the progressive agenda. So expect a lot more of this.

Twitter: @DavidHarsanyi

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Schumers SCOTUS threat was truly unprecedented, then he made it worse - New York Post

Enzi introduces amendments to encourage production of rare earth elements – Wyoming Tribune

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., introduced two amendments to an energy bill this week that would help increase the opportunities for locating and processing rare earth elements in Wyoming.

The first amendment would help ensure that Wyomings rare earth industry is included in a report the Department of Energy (DOE) sends to Congress. The second amendment would require DOE to study the importance of rare earth minerals to our national security.

Rare earth elements are important to our countrys energy independence and are crucial in meeting our technological needs from smartphones and televisions to wind turbines and jet fighter engines, Enzi said in a news release. These amendments would help highlight the importance of rare earth elements and the role Wyoming can play in mining and producing them.

According to the Wyoming Mining Association, Wyoming is home to some of the highest quality rare earth deposits in the country.

Enzi offered both amendments to the American Energy Innovation Act introduced by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, which is being considered on the Senate floor and aims to ensure the U.S. remains a global energy leader.

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Enzi introduces amendments to encourage production of rare earth elements - Wyoming Tribune

Trump flags and controversy on the Arcata High campus – Eureka Times-Standard

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

Anger exploded in the days following the controversial flag incident on the Arcata High School campus, raising questions over first amendment rights and political symbolism on public school campuses.

On Feb. 26, a group of students wore clothing supporting President Donald Trump, and flew Trump flags and American flags off of their cars, in support of what they called Patriotism Day.

During nutrition break and lunch that day, the students drove two cars around the parking lot, each trailing large American flags or Trump flags.

Assistant Principal Jim Monge stopped one car and spoke to the student driving. Principal Dave Navarre also spoke to the students involved but did not speak on the record about what he said. After the interactions, the students removed the flags from their cars after backlash from non-Trump supporters.

Many students on campus took offense to the display and were angered by what they thought the Trump supporters were trying to say.

On the same Wednesday that the Trump group brought their flags and clothing, the Black Student Union started to run assemblies meant to educate students on Black History Month as well as microaggressions and appropriation towards black people in society.

Some students assumed the Trump and American flags were in direct response to the assemblies, which the Trump supporters denied.

We mainly did it because people were showing their support for Bernie, and we wanted to show our support (for the president) we had no idea that the BSU thing was happening. The teachers were very bad at informing us with that information, and we would not have picked that day if we knew, said Casey McAtasney, one of the Trump supporters who wore clothing supporting Trump.

The information was in the bulletin. However, it was placed in the faculty section, which some teachers do not read to their students.

Some students felt that it was not a coincidence that Patriotism Day was held on the same day as the first of three BSU assemblies.

Immediately I thought that they were doing it on purpose because it was like the first time having a meeting for Black Student Union, so I thought they were doing it for (the) intent to get a reaction, Axeri Ramirez, a junior, said of their actions.

Social media exploded with videos mocking and criticizing the students who took part in publicly supporting Trump. One student called them clowns while others called them racist. Junior Riley Walsh, one of the students who drove one of the cars flying a flag, claimed that he received some death threats and was told to kill himself. When Monge stopped the car to speak to the driver, a student ripped a flag off Walshs car. At lunch, another student ripped a Trump flag off senior Mateo Vincents car.

Some students reacted physically towards the Trump supporters. A student threw Kool-Aid at the car of one of the students who attached a Trump flag and American flag to the back.

The events of Wednesday were not contained to the Arcata High campus. Members of the community heard that it was a white supremacy event, and one individual called on people to come support the BSU. Terry Uyeki called on people to show support to the African American students and the observance of Black History Month, in her email addressed to social justice warriors.

We had various reports that we were gonna have, essentially, rallies, on our campus, in support of various causes, Navarre stated.

Several community members did show up to the event, and were invited to stay as visitors of the assembly.

However, the student Trump supporters did not mean to incite backlash. According to members of the group, they picked the day because they were celebrating the anniversary of the Fifteenth Amendment and because they were feeling patriotic that day.

We were just supporting our country. It wasnt a protest, McAtasney stated. Their claimed intent was not to undermine the BSU assembly, but to show support for the president.

It was not perceived that way, though. For some students, especially students of color, Trump, and by association his flag, represents something very different than patriotism.

I dont think (support for Trump) is a really positive thing to be spreading on campus because of what he stands for. He stands for racism, sexism, sexual assault, and also just like, his name can scare a lot of people who have immigrated to America, junior Bella Volz-Broughton said.

Others echoed Volz-Broughtons sentiments.

America is not that great. Theres a lot of things we need to solve, and a lot we need to fix, so dont even try that, and also its just kinda disrespectful, senior and president of BSU Nishyra Aaron-Williams said.

In an article for Pepperbox, Madeline Henny Lassiter-Chavarria and Ramirez expressed that in seeing support for Trump, they see support for racism and worry that it may create a situation that endangers them. Since Trumps election, there has been a statistical increase in hate crimes. According to a Politifact analysis of federal data, there was a 17% increase in hate crimes from 2016-2017, the year following Trumps election.

The controversy surrounding Trump paraphernalia at schools is not isolated to Arcata High. A school in Fresno was sued after not allowing a student to wear a MAGA hat because it would make others feel unsafe. In North Carolina, a cheerleading squad got placed on probation for displaying a Trump sign at a school event.

While students on a high school campus have limited rights, they do have the right to free speech as long as it is not obscene, libelous, likely to incite material disruption or violation of school rules, or is deemed a true threat, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Political free speech does not fall under any of these categories unless it contains fighting words, which the Trump-supporters were not voicing.

Students have free speech just like anybody else, and the thing that schools have is that it cant interfere with school activities, Monge explained. He did not feel that school had been interrupted by Patriotism Day.

(School) pretty much ran as normal. We had a few flags, and then we didnt, Monge said.

With the events of last Wednesday still fresh, how the campus moves forward is up to everyone. People involved with the day say that they are planning on having more Patriotism Days in the future, but they also say they have learned from this one.

Senior Emma Frazzel said, We know that some people got their feelings hurt, so maybe next time we wont put ourselves out there as much. We know that people were like that was too far, so lets take a step back, still show our support, but maybe in other ways.

For others on campus, the event simply represented students taking action on their rights.

I think when (free speech) becomes aggressive or like threatening then its not okay, but they didnt say anything mean about any of the other candidates, Judah Thompson said.

Izzy Knife summed up how she feels about not only political free speech but the issue at large.

I know a lot of people generalize, so when they see the Trump flag, they think about racists and sexism and things Trump has said. but I feel like everyone should be judged individually.

Stella Walston is the managing editor andJack Taylor is the opinion editor of The Pepperbox, where this story was originally published. Additional research was done by research by Martina Mapatis, Fiona Murphy, and Bailey Ives.

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Trump flags and controversy on the Arcata High campus - Eureka Times-Standard

Negligible ‘Never Bernie’ – National Review

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

(Roman Genn)Sanders and the Democrats are birds of a feather

In 2016, there was a groundswell of conservative and Republican opposition to Donald Trump, led in no small part by this magazine. In 2020, there is not much sign of a comparable movement among Democrats in opposition to Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont from Brooklyn who is running for the presidential nomination of a party to which he does not belong as a confessing socialist calling for revolution.

Why is there no Never Bernie movement to speak of?

The New York Post went looking for one in early February and did not come up with much: some rumors of discontent, but only vague ones. Democratic activist Jim Kessler of Third Way was exemplary: Ill still put a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker on my car, he told the Post, but a lot of people wont. Who? Donna Brazile, the former DNC chair, denied that there was any effort from any high-level Democrats to stop Sandersonly a few moody donors.

There is a purely strategic anti-Sanders effort, to be sure, typified by the Big Tent Project, which works to promote less radical candidates (it helped Joe Biden in South Carolina) and warns Democrats that nominating Bernie means we reelect Trump. There is a very large difference between worrying that a candidate will lose and believing that he does not deserve to winthat he is, as many conservatives said of Trump in 2016, fundamentally unfit for the office he seeks. Which Senator Sanders manifestly is. Democrats may be concerned that his radicalism is likely to be a political loser, but there is not much intellectual or moral pushback against the radicalism itself.

To the extent that one exists at all, the supra-strategic Never Bernie tendency consists of 7,844 nobodies on Twitter and David Brooks, a conservative-leaning New York Times columnist who interned for William F. Buckley Jr. and who has been an ex-Republican for about as long as Donald Trump has been a Republican. The Twitter nobodies are mostly disappointed partisans of the campaigns of other Democratic-primary contenders who cannot forgive Senator Sanderss often brutish supporters for their abuses, e.g., field director Ben Moras mockery of Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warrens looks (chunky and looks like sh**, respectively) and Pete Buttigiegs sexuality, threatening violence at Joe Biden events, etc. Tom Watson, a Democratic strategist, reports a level of pure antipathy Ive never seen before among anti-Sanders Democrats, but other than the desultory social-media stuff, it is not much in evidence.

If you want to see pure antipathy, consider the Democratic response to Brookss column arguing that Sanders, with his socialism and his calls for revolution, is illiberal, something like a left-wing Donald Trump. In a hysterically stupid but terribly typical response, Paul Waldman complained in the Washington Post that Brooks wrote as though Sanders has proposed herding us all into collective farms, starving half the population and establishing a gulag where hell send his political enemies butget this!failed to produce a single quote from Sanders calling for that.

Well.

As it turns out, Lenin did not publicly advocate starving millions of Ukrainians to death, Castro did not publicly advocate murdering librarians and imprisoning homosexuals, Chvez did not publicly advocate turning Venezuela into a basket case . . . Senator Sanders says that what he has in mind is Denmark, but the policies he proposes are nothing like Danish policies, which he evidently knows absolutely nothing about, and he has spent his life as an apologist for the Soviet Union (where he vacationed), Castros brutal regime (literacy programs!), Chvezs Venezuela (his Senate website posted an article praising that socialist backwater as the new home of the American dream), etc. In fact, if you listen to Kim Jong-un talk about his philosophy of government, it turns out to besurprise!rather different from how things actually work in North Korea. I have yet to find a single quotation from the Dear Leader in which he argues that his fellow countrymen should be starved until they are reduced to cannibalism.

Progressives in general rallied to Senator Sanders in defending him against criticism of the agenda that he himself describes as socialism. Tom Scocca of Slate dismissed Brookss column as a grotesque pack of lies, while Jonathan Chait of New York insisted that Bernie is an economic socialist but a political liberal. Senator Sanders proposes, among other things, to gut the First Amendment in order to put political speech under direct federal controlthat is not liberalism, but its opposite. Brookss characterization of Sanderss populist demagoguery and the mode of politics it impliesmajoritarian dominationnot only is apt and accurate, it is precisely what Senator Sanders himself promises: a revolution that will leave his political opponents unable to oppose his agenda because they will be regulated into silence or politically bullied into acquiescence.

Dont expect to see an anti-Sanders movement comparable to the anti-Trump movement of 2016, for at least four reasons.

First, there is no principled anti-Sanders movement because Democrats principles are Sanderss principles. Whereas Republicans in 2016 had good reason to doubt Trump on everything from abortion to the Second Amendment to taxes, Democrats have no such qualms about Sanders. Sanders calls himself a socialist, Warren insists that she is a capitalist, but they come down pretty close together on health care, business regulation, taxes, and much more. (With capitalists like these, who needs socialists?) Sanders wants a monopoly health-care system, punitive taxation, a (further) weaponized regulatory state, and a radical expansion in federal spending and federal power. Democrats may quibble, but they simply are not in the position of 2016 Republicans who doubted Trumps reliability on their core issues.

Second, Democrats do not actually believe socialism to be outside the boundaries of respectable opinion. They may worry about it as a marketing matter, but Sanderss enthusiasm for left-wing autocrats from Moscow to Havana to Caracas is not, from the progressive point of view, morally comparable to disreputable right-wing enthusiasmsfor Pinochet or Franco, once upon a time, or for Orban or Alternative fr Deutschland today. They are committed to their belief that Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs were on the right side of history, that those who opposed them were monsters, and that those who rallied to the flag of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were only humanitarians with excessive enthusiasmliberals in a hurry, as they used to say.

Third, unlike 2016 Republicans, 2020 Democrats do not believe that Sanderss performative outrage, rhetorical incontinence, facile extremism, defects of judgment, etc., disqualify him from the office. They only worry that voters might think this and punish his campaign and their partywhich, let us remember, are not the same thingfor these excesses. Trump abominates CNN, and Democrats see a would-be censor and a threat to the First Amendment. (Never mind that every single Democrat in the Senate voted to effectively repeal the First Amendment only a few years ago.) Democrats complain about Fox Newsand Senator Sanders complains more generally about the corporate mediaand progressives hear only a call to arms. Both Senator Sanders and Senator Warren have taken the lead in outlining repressive new measures curbing political speech in the name of campaign-finance reform, but practically every major Democrat accepts these or similar measures enthusiastically.

Fourth and finally for this discussion, the Democratic Partys transformation into the Party of Oberlin is, if not quite complete (see South Carolina and the resurgence of Joe Biden), then very far along. When James Carville warns about driving away blue-collar and rural voters, Democrats in Brooklyn hear that Southern accent and quietly whisper, Good riddance. The Democrats are in the mood for culture war, not for coalition-building and reconciliation. They do not wish to win with moderation and compromise, because they do not wish to govern with moderation and compromise. They feel themselves to have been humiliated by the Trump administration, and they have set upon Sanders as the instrument of their vengeance. That Senator Sanders has so much in common with Trumpan outsider to the party who loathes the party leadership, a demagogue who detests compromise and bipartisanship, who has a funky outer-boroughs accent and zany hair, who until the day before yesterday voiced remarkably Trumpian views on immigration and trade, etc.is no accident, and it is not something that Democrats are having to hold their collective nose and swallow. Democrats speak in public as though the Republican Party has been ruined by Donald Trump, but in truth their detestation is larded with envy. Trump has given the Republicans something the Democrats want for themselves.

For better and for worse, the Trumpiness of Senator Sanders is the sizzle and the steak, and not only for the hardline left-wingers. They could have had a Buttigieg or a Klobuchar, and they may yet nominate Biden as a kind of placeholder and caretaker. But Senator Sanders, a man with the freshest ideas from the 1930s and the cultural affect of the 1970s, is the future of the Democratic Party.

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Negligible 'Never Bernie' - National Review

‘Second Amendment Preservation Bill’ Passes Wyoming Committee – Kgab

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

A bill that would direct Wyoming's Attorney General to sue the federal government over any federal infringements on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has passed a Wyoming Senate Committee and is now headed to the full Senate.

The bill lists several potential actions that it deems as infringements, including such things as gun registration or confiscation programs, special taxes on firearms and accessories that don't apply to other items, and other actions that would inhibit ''law-abiding citizens'' from possessing firearms.

The vote on House Bill 118 in the Senate Judiciary Committee was 4-1. Lisa Anselmi-Dalton [D-Rock Springs] was the lone vote against the bill.

But Sen. Brian Boner [R-Converse/Patte counties], who voted for the measure in committee, said he was concerned that a series of amendments attached to the measure in committee would weaken the bill by giving the Attorney General too much latitude in deciding whether to take court action against the bill.

Opponents of the bill, including the Wyoming Chapter of ''Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America" argued in committee that such bills increase the danger to the public. Some opponents also questioned whether the bill was constitutional. But bill co-sponsor Sen. Lynn Hutchings [R-Cheyenne] argued that under the constitution, governments can only act with the consent of the governed.

Another sponsor, Rep. Tim Salazar [R-Fremont County] ''I often hear people say 'I support the Second Amendment, but..'' He said he seldom hears such comments about the First Amendment or other such amendments."

'Second Amendment Preservation Bill' Passes Wyoming Committee - Kgab

EARN IT Act: Instant Reaction – Morning Consult

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel, NetChoice

What youre seeing is a misunderstanding of what Section 230 is, what it does and its necessity, Szabo said. None of the sponsors of this act have supported existing congressional efforts to explore the unintended consequences of SESTA, a bill passed in 2018 that amends Section 230 to include provisions waiving liability protections for online platforms that host illegal sexual content. They seem unwilling to recognize that SESTA has harmed the very victims it has tried to help. Until we understand the harm of the only other amendment to Section 230, it is premature to consider this legislation.

Patrick Trueman, president and CEO, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation

Tech companies dont do what is reasonable to do and what every parent would like them to do and what Congress would like them to do, Trueman said. Congress is giving them one last chance before they eliminate the immunities afforded by Section 230.

They can complain all they want about that, but they had their chance and this is their last best hope.

Emma Llans, director of the Center for Democracy and Technologys Free Expression Project

There are pretty conflicting messages today about how to address children sexual abuse materials online, Llans said, noting the Thursday release of voluntary principles from a coalition including a group of U.S. agencies, along with the governments of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, that were crafted in conjunction with several technology companies.

Its a bit hard to understand why the Graham bill would be necessary if there is in fact this recognition that there is a lot going on and, in fact, discussion already about what best practices are not only between the companies and the U.S. government but also the other countries.

India McKinney, director of federal affairs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Regarding the commission this bill creates, McKinney said: Giving the ability to create law to an unelected body is really problematic, and making best practices mandatory is also really problematic, and we think that runs into some First Amendment problems.

Some of the bill sponsors have said to us in the past that they arent necessarily interested in going out and looking at encryption, but its clear to us that the DOJ, and specifically the attorney general, are.

This story has been updated to include additional comments.

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EARN IT Act: Instant Reaction - Morning Consult

Owensboro and Elizabethtown Tackling Issue of Panhandling Through Information – WKU Public Radio

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Danzig

Its an increasingly familiar sight at busy intersections and shopping center entryways.A person or persons positioned on the side of the road often displaying a handmade sign asking for money or food.

Begging for money or goods in a public space is legal in Kentucky. A 2017 state Supreme Court ruling declared that panhandling is free speech protected by the First Amendment. With enforcement powers stripped, authorities are left to manage the public safety hazard created by panhandlers and well-meaning citizens.

While panhandling is not against the law in Kentucky, panhandlers and well-intentioned citizens can pose a public safety hazard in the states roadways.

Hear the audio version of Barb's story.

It can be extremely dangerous not only for vehicular traffic you know someone stopping for instance to hand money to somebody whos panhandling and possibly getting involved in an accident but there have also been multiple instances where somebody thats out panhandling actually gets struck by a vehicle, said Officer Andrew Boggess, the Public Information Officer with the Owensboro Police Department.

So, its actually much more than a safety concern for us than anything to do with a First Amendment free speech claim.

To combat the problem, the Owensboro Police Department has launched a massive educational campaign discouraging people from giving to panhandlers and encouraging more targeted giving.

Hopefully, educating the public and getting the proper information out there where people can donate to the correct causes can help to reduce it, Boggess said. Ive had instances of where Ive encountered somebody thats out there panhandling and they will literally have a backpack full of food that theyre basically throwing away, even though its well-intended, a lot of times doing something like that with the right intention actually can backfire. The money can go a lot further if its given to a legitimate organization thats going to make sure its utilized to the fullest extent.

Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, and Lexington are using signs to educate citizens about panhandling. Officer John Thomas, the Public Information Officer with the Elizabethtown Police Department, said his city partnered with the United Way on their signage.

They say, Keep the change. Dont support panhandling. And then there is a link at the bottom that says, Go to etowncares.com, which is a webpage managed by United Way and encourages people to give to vetted sources such as United Way, Thomas explained.

When you give to a panhandler you dont know what you are giving to, you dont know if you are enabling an addiction for example, you dont know if you are supporting someone who is simply taking advantage of others generosity. Were just telling people you really cant know.

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Owensboro and Elizabethtown Tackling Issue of Panhandling Through Information - WKU Public Radio

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