>>13611801 AVILA: The Social Media Witch Trial Of Trump — And America

This is so important I’m posting it for anons

Pursuant to the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy — which sounds like it could have only come straight out of either Hogwarts or the Politburo — Facebook’s “independent” Oversight Board has exiled Donald J. Trump from the realm of modern communication. Put another way, about 20 unelected former political leaders, journalists and human rights activists have suffocated the speech of a former president of the United States of America.

But hey, what do politicians, not to mention journalists or human rights activists, know about the universal right of freedom of expression these days, anyway?

So there you have it, America — the Bill of Rights is kaput — subsumed to relativism, faceless technocrats and an international oligarchy. “The 1st Amendment is merely a local law,” tweets CPI Policy Director Rachel Bovard. “Facebook is a citizen of the world and has the self-appointed, moral burden to play whack-a-mole with the speech of global leaders. How else will democracies survive?”

The question we all need to ask now is this: If an American who formerly held the highest public office in the land isn’t entitled to enjoy the fruits and protections of the First Amendment, then what hope do we possibly have as everyday citizens?

Let’s be clear: There’s nothing American about an “oversight board” that’s charged with censoring undesirables, let alone one ensconced deep within a behemoth corporation whose platform has the power to define the national conversation on a daily basis. That is terrifying. That is authoritarianism. That is democracy lost.

Facebook’s executives and their allies within the Beltway and beyond are bought-and-paid-for operatives. A number of them are nothing more than glorified lobbyists — think tank “scholars” at places like the Cato Institute, which masquerades under the banner of “libertarianism” but takes corporate money and pushes a globalist agenda that hollows out the Constitution and destroys the livelihood of the American middle class.

Perhaps even worse, some Facebook executives are non-U.S. citizens who essentially rule over U.S. citizens — and do so without any knowledge of the founding’s conceptions of tolerance and freedom of expression.

This latest shocking event is not just a precautionary tale, it’s a call to action. If this trend continues at this pace, we will very soon endure immeasurable changes to the core of our nation that will result in irreparable damage.

There will be no going back.

Specifically, Big Tech’s notion of “justice” is thoroughly at odds with America’s, as enshrined in the Constitution. The handful of multinational corporations that make up the Silicon Valley cartel serve as judge, jury and executioner. And on one vital score, their trials are even more tyrannical than those of Salem or the Soviet Union. Today, the accused isn’t even allowed to be present at the trial to make their case!

Corporations can summarily erase your rights in ways never before imagined. There is no recourse, either. Far from it, actually. These corporations have been infiltrated and captured by the radical progressive currents that now dominate all our country’s major institutions, from education to media. They’re all marching together in sync. Their loyalty is not to the immutable freedoms featured in America’s founding documents that have brought about unprecedented levels of human prosperity and flourishing.

Facebook — along with the other Big Techies — has unabashedly declared itself a world governing body, and proven that it has more influence in our daily lives than the United Nations (and in some respects, the U.S. government). And like the UN, it has changed your rights from being inalienable to those for which you, through behaving obediently, must seek permission to possess and maintain.

To the Oversight Board’s credit, it is correct about one thing: Facebook was inconsistent in its application of its rules to former President Trump. Still, that’s a lame and irrelevant consolation. Alas, this is what we signed up for — literally when we signed up using our email addresses and other personal information. The woke mob creates morality on the fly. Keep up or get bulldozed.

Less and less, American corporations care about American principles and ideals. That is why the defense of our nation’s founding — and, in particular, our rights that are true and eternal — could not be a more essential task. We have to stand up and voice our discontent. If we don’t, it’s only going to get much worse. Because make no mistake, what we’re witnessing is not just social media’s witch trial of President Trump, it’s of all of America

https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/05/avila-the-social-media-witch-trial-of-trump-and-america/

>>13611824 Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship: More Democratic House Retirements on the Way

Some clips from article

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/05/07/rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship-more-democratic-house-retirements-on-the-way-n1445387

>>13611842 Washington Post says Trump DOJ seized phone records from reporters

Do anons think this seizure is curious timing, DOJ pursuing something from 2017. This smells like Durham

The Justice Department under former President Donald Trump seized phone records from at least three Washington Post journalists, according to the newspaper.

The revelation prompted the news outlet to demand an explanation for the "intrusion" that raises serious First Amendment issues, to which the agency, now under the Biden administration, indicated was meant to crack down on leaks of classified information.

Three separate letters dated Monday addressed to Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller, and Adam Entous notified them that the department "received toll records associated with the following telephone numbers for the period from April 15, 2017 to July 31, 2017" through use of subpoena power, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The letters showed cellphone and work phone numbers tied to the reporters. The phone records show caller history and how long calls lasted but did not contain what was said. The letters also said the Justice Department got a court order to obtain their email records but did not get them.

The Friday report notes that during the targeted time period was when the journalists were reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Nakashima and Miller still report for the outlet, while Entous has moved on to the New Yorker.

"We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists," said Cameron Barr, the Washington Post's acting executive editor. "The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment.

In response to the revelations, the Justice Department generally described the process by which it would seek such records for a criminal leaks investigation.

"While rare, the Department follows the established procedures within its media guidelines policy when seeking legal process to obtain telephone toll records and non-content email records from media members as part of a criminal investigation into unauthorized disclosure of classified information," Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department, told the outlet.

Raimondi added the "targets" of such investigations are not news media recipients,but rather the inquiries are for those with access to national defense information who provided it to the media and "thus failed to protect it as lawfully required

The report said the letters do not mention when the agency leadership approved the effort to seek the journalists' records but cited aDOJ spokesperson who said the decision was made in 2020.William Barrwho was attorney general throughout that year until just before Christmas, declined comment to the outlet.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-department-of-justice-obtained-journalists-records