The FCC Raises Its Fascist Head Again

Here we go again.  "F.C.C. orders a review of ABC’s broadcast licenses," The New York Times reports. Since ABC/Disney hasn't moved fast enough to fire Jimmy Kimmel because of his joke about Melania Trump being an "expectant widow" last week -- before the presumed assassination attempt on the President on Saturday -- the FCC is flexing is fascist muscles.

The Chair of the FCC threatened to do this in September 2025, if Disney didn't do its bidding and fire Kimmel because Trump and company were tired of Kimmel's delightful barbs at the President's expense. Back then, Disney complied, but correctly reversed itself after the popular outcry against getting rid of Kimmel.

Popular outcries -- they're in many ways the essence of democracy.  So is the First Amendment and its insistence that the government keep its hands off speech and press.  But Trump and his henchmen couldn't care less about such essential freedoms.  The feelings of the President are much more important to them.

As I've been saying now for decades, the FCC, created in the Communications Act of 1934, was unconstitutional the moment it was created.  In a major failure of our judicial system, it was never struck down as the blatant negation of our Constitution that the FCC was and is.

Someday, some enlightened Supreme Court will do that.  Until then, the best we can do is resist the thuggish actions of this miscreant agency.

See also The Firing of Jimmy Kimmel: The Latest Step on the Road to Fascism

US Supreme Court Completely Right to Take Up the Tik Tok Banning Case

The New York Times just reported that the US Supreme Court has decided to hear TikTok's challenge to the law that would ban TikTok from the USA on January 19, 2025 unless its Chinese owners sold it to a non-Chinese company.   I've been very critical of our current Supreme Court for all kinds of important reasons, but I think it is doing the right thing to take up this case.  I applaud its decision to take up this case, and I further hope that it strikes down the law that would ban TikTok as blatantly unconstitutional -- because it is -- a clear violation of the First Amendment.

As everyone knows, including the bipartisan Congress that passed the law, and President Biden who signed it into law, earlier this year, the First Amendment to our Constitution says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." The only exception is speech or any communication that contributes to a criminal act.  So, to use an obvious example, you can't put an ad in a newspaper or on a social media site saying you're looking to hire a hitman as competent as the Jackal.  Now, I get that China is our adversary in the habit of spying on us in all kinds of ways, but I haven't seen any evidence or proof that such spying, which would be a crime, is actually happening via TikTok. Have you?

I've also heard, by people who should know better, that the First Amendment applies to the United States and its citizens, not its Chinese owners who are bringing the case to the Supreme Court.  That argument either accidentally or deliberately misses the crucial fact that it is Americans, people who are living in the United States, more than 160 million of us, whose First Amendment rights will be violated the moment we're no longer able to post videos on TikTok, talk to people on the site, etc.  How anyone could miss that point is beyond me.

Congress and the President have been muddled about the First Amendment and it how it applies to the Internet since Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed into law the Communications Decency Act in the 1990s.  It was left to the US Supreme Court to strike down that unconstitutional law, which made it a crime punishable not only by hefty fines but a few years in prison for anyone to post anything on the Internet that was "objectionable" and potentially viewable by minors.  I hope the current Supreme Court once again rises to the occasion, and lets the well-meaning but muddled members of both political parties that they need to take the First Amendment, and the rights it guarantees, which are fundamental to our democracy, a little more seriously.

Here is what I had to say about this impending ban, shortly after the law was enacted this past Spring

The Orville 3.4: The Captain's Daughter

An excellent episode 3.4 of The Orville up on Hulu today, which connected to a momentous, disastrous US Supreme Court decision today which couldn't have been known when the episode was made.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

The Union is pursuing a treaty with the Krill to fight their mutual enemy the Kaylons.   High stakes diplomacy ensue, including the best admirals on TV these days, Halsey and Perry, played Victor Garber and Ted Danson (you can't go wrong with that).  But before the treaty is concluded and signed, the head of the Krill is beaten in an election by the fascistic Teleya.  This is just the beginning of the resonances in this episode to the present USA.

Teleya has been on The Orville before, in its two prior seasons.  In 3.4, she's not only elected President (presumably -- perhaps she and her party fixed it), she turns out to be the mother of a daughter fathered by our one and only Captain Mercer (the two had an affair).  Ed gets to meet her, and it's a great scene.  The fact that Teleya kept the baby is not surprising -- an abortion is a crime in their culture, and couples who have them are forced to interact with a hologram of what their child would have been like.  (See The Talmud vs Today's Supreme Court Decision Overturning Roe v. Wade for at least some of my thoughts about what U.S. Supreme Court did in our reality today.)

Back on The Orville, I won't tell you how all of this turned out, though you'll of course know that Captain Mercer survives.  I will say there are some crackling battles in space, Ed and Kelly have a tender moment, and I like the art deco look of the Krill big city,

See you back here next week with my review of episode 3.5

See also The Orville 3.1: Life and Death ... 3.2: "Come and Get Me ..." ... 3.3: What Do Bill Barr and Ed Mercer Have in Common?

And see also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration ... The Orville 2.3: Alara ... The Orville 2.4: Billy Joel ... The Orville 2.5: Escape at Regor 2 ... The Orville 2.6: "Singin' in the Rain" ... The Orville 2.7: Love and Death ...  The Orville 2.8: Recalling Čapek, Part 1  ... The Orville 2.9: Recalling Čapek, Part 2 ... The Orville: 2.10: Exploding Blood ... The Orville 2.11: Time Capsule, Space Station, and Harmony ... The Orville 2.12: Hello Dolly! ... The Orville 2.13: Time Travel! ... The Orville Season 2 Finale: Alternate History!

And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive

watch The Chronology Protection Case FREE on Amazon Prime

The Talmud vs. Today's Supreme Court Decision Overturning Roe v. Wade

The Jewish Talmud generally holds that life begins with the first breath (see, for example, When Does Life Begin? A Jewish View).  What would this mean for a Jewish woman who wants to have an abortion in a state in which abortion is banned, due to today's U.S. Supreme Court decision?

If she is denied the right to have an abortion, due to the Supreme Court's decision based on the Christian view that life begins with conception, is she not having her Jewish religious belief overridden by a Christian doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States?  And would this not be a blatant violation of the First Amendment to our Constitution, and its separation of church and state, mandated in the clause, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"?

This is the essence of Florida Rabbi Barry Silver's suit against Florida's recently enacted 15-week ban on abortion.  As Silver explains, "when life begins is radically different for Jews than it is for the people that wrote this law.”

Ultimately, the only way to reliably safeguard the rights of women over their bodies is to elect 54 Democrats to the Senate.  With two Democrats, Manchin and Sinema, almost certain to vote against lifting of the filibuster, that leaves 50 Senators to vote in favor of that.  VP Harris can break the tie, which opens the possibility of expanding the number of Justices on the Supreme Court, by Congress and President Biden.

Before then, it will be instructive to see what happens when Rabbi Silver's suit lands in the current Supreme Court,  Will they choose to ignore the separation of church and state required by the First Amendment?

 

Expand the U.S. Supreme Court

Expanding the Supreme Court is the only way of protecting Americans from what the court is now doing. I made this point in an interview last night on Frank LoBuono's Being Frank podcast (we start discussing this around 30 mins into the interview).

Supreme Court Protects Student Right to Free Speech!

A very important and precedent-setting ruling came down this morning from the U.S. Supreme Court,  which ruled 8-1 that the Mahoney Area School District in Pennsylvania was wrong to try to punish high school student Brandi Levy for posting "Fuck school, fuck softball, fuck cheer, fuck everything" on Snapchat in 2017 after she was not given a spot on her high school's cheerleading squad.

The decisive ruling affirms that the protection the Supreme Court gave students in its 1969 Tinker decision -- in which it held that students could not be prohibited from wearing black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War -- applied to non-political statements made outside of school on a social media network like Snapchat.

The decision is significant for at least three reasons:  (1) it recognizes that obscene language is worthy of First Amendment protection, (2) it protects students from school censorship for statements made outside of the school, and (3) it does not make an exception for First Amendment protection because the communication was on the Internet.

The first point, I hope, should from now on be taken as a precedent not to allow the FCC to censure and fine television and radio media for broadcasting obscene language, which, for example, has led CBS to lacerate rap and hip-hop performances during the Grammys every year.  Today's decision can also be seen as a reversal of the Supreme Court's unfortunate FCC v. Pacifica decision in 1978, which upheld the FCC's right to censure and threaten WBAI-FM Radio for broadcasting George Carlin's seven dirty word routine.

The second point and the third point in effect reverse the Supreme Court's 2011 decision to not even consider Avery Doninger's appeal of the 2008 US Court of Appeals Second Circuit decision (made by a panel that included Judge Sonia Sotomayor, before she was appointed to the Supreme Court) that Doninger's high school was entitled to punish her after she called school officials "douchebags" on her Live Journal blog.  (See my 2009 interview with Avery and Lauren Doninger for more).  Now, just under a decade later, the Supreme Court including Sotomayor has spoken clearly and overwhelmingly on the excesses of school officials, who could use an education themselves on the First Amendment.

The one dissenter in today's momentous decision was Clarence Thomas, who (amazingly) found the Court's decision  "untethered from anything stable".   The First Amendment couldn't be a more reliable post on which to tether our freedoms.

Thomas, of course, was appointed by George H. W. Bush in 1991.  In other words, every single one of Trump's appointees did the right thing in this hallmark case, demonstrating again the independence of our judiciary, which more often than not over the years continues to be one the pillars of our freedom and our democracy.

=== Read the Supreme Court decision here ====