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The Onion to Take over InfoWars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#261

Post by jklinger410 »

triceratops wrote: post #206
jklinger410 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word prosecution aside. Who rules on the outcome and enforces it? The state.

The state enforces property rights too. Let's say someone won't let me build a place of worship on their land. Is that a "first amendment violation but with more steps"? You could make any instance of "government upholds the law" into "constitutional violation" that way. A ruling in a civil court is very obviously not a prosecution. Because prosecutors can't, by definition, make rulings. https://news.ycombinator.com/…

Laws that force the government to violate the constitution are unconstitutional. So yes, a violation but with more steps.

A ruling in a civil court that is enforced by a government is the same thing as the government ruling it, but through transitive properties. It can't be not enforced and enforced at the same time (the argument that civil is somehow not judicial).

In reality we are just griping that our government is too pussy to amend the constitution, and we've already written laws that subvert it, and those are being upheld by a corrupt/politicized supreme court and bullshit case law.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#262

Post by jklinger410 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #258
jklinger410 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a ruling in a civil court not a form of government prosecution? It would be more correct to say that your first amendment rights stop at defaming others.

IANAL but I think of a civil suit as a substitute for the injured party extracting justice by less civilized methods. If you wreck my fence, I can come wreck your fence in retaliation. Or I can sue you. The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute. Now in reality there are political and other influences on court behavior. But the government is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant.

> The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute.

The government provides the venue, the decider, the rules of engagement, and enforces the decision. The government stands on the side of the plaintiff, ready to turn the resolution (that the government decided) into the same result as if it were law.

The distinction is nonsense to me.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#263

Post by triceratops »

jklinger410 wrote: post #261
triceratops wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state enforces property rights too. Let's say someone won't let me build a place of worship on their land. Is that a "first amendment violation but with more steps"? You could make any instance of "government upholds the law" into "constitutional violation" that way. A ruling in a civil court is very obviously not a prosecution. Because prosecutors can't, by definition, make rulings. https://news.ycombinator.com/…

Laws that force the government to violate the constitution are unconstitutional. So yes, a violation but with more steps. A ruling in a civil court that is enforced by a government is the same thing as the government ruling it, but through transitive properties. It can't be not enforced and enforced at the same time (the argument that civil is somehow not judicial). In reality we are just griping that our government…

> our government is too pussy to amend the constitution

The federal government can't amend the constitution.

> we've already written laws that subvert it

If you want to see an actual violation of the First Amendment by the government here's one that Thomas Jefferson himself encouraged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Croswell

Not even all the Founding Fathers believed in complete freedom of speech.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#264

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

jklinger410 wrote: post #259
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go to jail for failure to abide by a court order. Which is still distinct from going to jail for your speech. Alex Jones can continue to say whatever he wants, from a criminal perspective. He may be somewhat more aware of the potential costs of being a professional liar now, which might cause him to make different decisions as he analyzes the cost/benefit ratio for something he wants to say. The government won't…

> The government won't stop him from saying whatever he chooses to say. The government might enforce costs, should he be sued for what he says and is found liable. This is just a shell game of limiting speech.

Enjoy your libertarian hellhole. I prefer to live in a society.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#265

Post by ksymph »

quisquous wrote: post #111
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant plans for the future: https://theonion.info/?p=1 > Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build toget…

It's like setting out to write "The King in Yellow"

I hadn't heard of this my entire life, but now three times in the past week I've seen it randomly pop up. Did I miss something, or is it just the frequency illusion at work?

edit - interesting, Google trends shows it spiking over the past few months: https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0m_7t&date=all&ge...

(also a huge spike in 2014, I wonder what that was about?)

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#266

Post by Schiendelman »

watwut wrote: post #110
ziml77 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, the reporting on that was so terribly biased that many people still think it was a frivolous lawsuit.

The result was wrong. And yes, I read the contra arguments put on and they were not convincing.

Your entire opinion is based on an expensive propaganda campaign. Is that who you want to be?

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#267

Post by triceratops »

jklinger410 wrote: post #262
shermantanktop wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but I think of a civil suit as a substitute for the injured party extracting justice by less civilized methods. If you wreck my fence, I can come wreck your fence in retaliation. Or I can sue you. The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute. Now in reality there are political and other influences on court behavior. But the government is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant.

> The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute. The government provides the venue, the decider, the rules of engagement, and enforces the decision. The government stands on the side of the plaintiff, ready to turn the resolution (that the government decided) into the same result as if it were law. The distinction is nonsense to me.

The judicial branch - which decides - is independent of the executive branch - which enforces.

> The government stands on the side of the plaintiff

The executive stands on the side of whoever the judiciary ruled in favor of. It's an important distinction.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#268

Post by hagbard_c »

defrost wrote: post #52
hagbard_c wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a drive by reader that votes, I can guess why you copped a few whacks; The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite. A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi H…

It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. I don't agree with your reasoning but that is the point: we could discuss it, I could explain who Piker (a left-wing icon being pushed as a 'bro' by the party while he spouts utter tripe and nonsense, calling for murder of political opponents) and Owens (a right-wing podcaster who used to be part of the right-wing establishment until she went fully anti-Semite and general conspiracy theorist). I'm not American either but whatever happens there affects us directly or indirectly so I do keep check on the news from the west.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#269

Post by Arodex »

abernard1 wrote: post #222
fncypants wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you not aware that that the credibility of the US DOJ under the present administration has been completely destroyed and you should not trust anything they say simply because they said it in a press release (perhaps especially because they said it in a press release)? Federal judges have repeatedly declined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt (called "presumption of regularity") and all but called them liars…

I'm definitely not aware that the credibility of the US DOJ has been destroyed. And I question why a 501c3 charity would need "field informants" and to launder money through shell corporations. Especially to leaders of these organizations who were (1) coordinating some of these rallies and (2) due to the materially dishonest treatment of the "fine people hoax" for years. Is the SPLC an intelligence organization? Am I…

What fine people hoax? Trump has been and is right now openly racist.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#270

Post by Rover222 »

wredcoll wrote: post #189
Rover222 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one. They asked if the murder of the United CEO was justified because he committed "social murder". Piker is the left equivalent of Charlie Kirk - saying outrageous things for attention, but he has constantly called for violence, while Kirk never did.

Do you think charlie kirk would be proud of you for lying about what he said?

[flagged]
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