Day: August 13, 2021

Guidance on How To Request a Religious Exemption for COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in the Workplace

Ms. Cat

Rutherford Institute | August 13, 2021

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Responding to concerns from employees in both the public and private sector about workplace requirements regarding COVID-19 vaccines and a desire to express their religious objections to such requirements, The Rutherford Institute has issued guidance and an in-depth fact sheet and model letter for those seeking a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the workplace.

Guidance on How To Request a Religious Exemption for COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in the Workplace
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Canada: Fast-moving proposal creates filtering, blocking and reporting rules – and speech police to enforce them

Ms. Cat

BY CORYNNE MCSHERRY AND KATITZA RODRIGUEZ | EFF | AUGUST 10, 2021

Policymakers around the world are contemplating a wide variety of proposals to address “harmful” online expression. Many of these proposals are dangerously misguided and will inevitably result in the censorship of all kinds of lawful and valuable expression. And one of the most dangerous proposals may be adopted in Canada. How bad is it? As Stanford’s Daphne Keller observes, “It’s like a list of the worst ideas around the world.” She’s right.

Canada: Fast-moving proposal creates filtering, blocking and reporting rules – and speech police to enforce them

[2012] It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote

Ms. Cat

Posted more for my own reference, as I still see people quoting “fire in a crowded theater” while advocating for censorship.

It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote

In 1969, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech–and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan–is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech “is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis mine).

Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as thefinal word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”

Post-mortem on America’s longest war

Ms. Cat

Post-mortem on America’s longest war

What Afghanistan has inherited from US is poverty, a rising unemployment rate, the destruction of social services, the unprecedented increase in class distinctions, a wealth gap, the destruction of the middle class, a vast economic mafia network, an underground economy, increased cultivation, production, and smuggling of drugs, addiction among more than 4 million young people, an ethnic war, the collapse of good values, the growth of a culture of corruption, money laundering, and lying.

…

In addition, the stunning rise of brothels, the collapse of individual morality, and prostitution, are parts of the American legacy in Afghanistan.

The United States also disappointed the people and ruined their expectations of democracy, human rights, and civil rights. The faces of America, imperialism, and postmodern-colonialism, hidden beneath American democracy and human rights, were revealed. People’s frustration with what is called American democracy and human rights are another part of American legacy in Afghanistan.