"Eight TikTok creators sued the U.S. government Tuesday to block the recently passed law..."

"In the filing... the group says that the law... 'promises to shutter a discrete medium of communication that has become part of American life, prohibiting Petitioners from creating and disseminating expressive material with their chosen editor and publisher,' the lawsuit says.... One of the creators on the most recent suit is Brian Firebaugh, a rancher in Texas. According to the filing, Firebaugh earns income from the TikTok Creator Fund and from selling products promoted on the app. 'Without access to TikTok, Firebaugh would need to get a different job and pay for daycare instead of raising his son at home,' the lawsuit says. 'If you ban TikTok, you ban my way of life'...."

CNBC reports.

Here are Firebaugh's TikTok videos. Here's his new video, saying, while running, "I don't do this. I never get political on my account" — then, interrupting himself and singsonging — "I'm suing Biden."

"Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional... that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all..."

"... but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership.... In reality, there is no choice.... [A forced sale ] is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.... If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down...."

So reads the filing quoted in "TikTok files court challenge to U.S. law that could lead to ban/The filing citing First Amendment and other grounds could prove to be an existential fight for one of the world’s most popular apps" (WaPo).

"Congress has never before crafted a two-tiered speech regime with one set of rules for one named platform, and another set of rules for everyone else.... [The government acted without] proof of a compelling interest, but on speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation — concerns that, even if grounded in fact, could be addressed through far less restrictive and more narrowly tailored means."

"Every right that the government has ever taken away from citizens was removed under the pretense of national security."

"My father's favorite philosopher, Albert Camus, wrote that the welfare of the people is always the alibi of tyrants and it provides further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a clear conscience.... People love TikTok. It's the digital public square. If there are security concerns in the tech backend, let's address them there, but let's never reduce Americans' ability to freely exchange ideas. TikTok has become an avenue for young Americans to grow businesses, to express themselves, and to join the political discourse.... President Biden enjoys censoring and silencing those who dare question him. I know that because I just won a case in the court of appeals on that issue against him. So it's no surprise that he supports banning TikTok. The First Amendment should not be disregarded for any reason...."

Says RFK Jr., on TikTok:

"In January 2022, Dr. Kershnar appeared on a respected philosophy podcast, Brain in a Vat.... The guest presents a thought experiment..."

"... and the hosts spend the rest of the episode questioning the guest about it. Dr. Kershnar’s thought experiment was... 'Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl; imagine that she’s a willing participant... A very standard, a very widely held view is there’s something deeply wrong about this. And it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that is, in fact, wrong....'... Dr. Kershnar is a 'Socratic gadfly' who goes around questioning fundamental assumptions, often quite annoyingly, to try to get at a clearer understanding of morality and why something is or is not wrong.... After LibsofTikTok posted clips of Dr. Kershnar’s podcast remarks on X..., the university was immediately deluged with demands for action.... Alumni threatened to stop giving money.... [T]he university received what officials described as threats of violence...."

From "A Professor’s Remarks on Sexual Consent Stir Controversy. Now He’s Banned From Campus. Stephen Kershnar, who teaches philosophy, is suing for the right to return to SUNY at Fredonia. The university defends its ban as necessary for safety" (NYT).

"X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times."

"Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC...."

From "Twitter appears to throttle New York Times" (Semafor).

We're told this might have something to do with "a broad shift in platforms over the last five years... toward a splintering in which Facebook has largely gotten out of the news business, Twitter has shifted increasingly toward becoming a conservative media company, and Google and Apple are the remaining the platform giants interested in distributing other outlets’ news."

That's so sloppily written I feel insulted putting my time into trying to understand it. There's been a "shift" in which "Twitter has shifted." The double "shift" tells you no one serious is proofreading over there. And what's the "splintering"? It sounds exciting, but the sentence just goes on to make vague, questionable assertions. My impression was that Twitter (AKA X) has stopped censoring conservative speech. If you think it now looks like "a conservative media company," perhaps you're observing how important censorship has been to the dominance of liberal speech in social media.

The next sentence in that Semafor article is: "X recently objected to a California law requiring the disclosure of content moderate, for instance, by citing first amendment protections for its editorial decisions." What is "content moderate"? A typo? 

There's a link to a Bloomberg article. I'm not able to read the whole thing, but it begins: "Elon Musk’s X Corp. sued California to undo the state’s law aimed at exposing sources of hate speech and disinformation by requiring social media companies to explain how they moderate their content."

So Semafor wrote "disclosure of content moderate" to mean disclosure of how content is moderated! I'd like Semafor to disclose how it goes about slapping articles together. 

"The US biofuel program is likely killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits..."

"... but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges. The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation. The agency has twice ignored court orders to study the impacts and is likely dodging the requirements because ethanol production 'props up' the corn industry, which has a politically powerful lobby, Hartl added."

From "Lawsuit says US environmental agency ignores harm of biofuel production/New suit charges that the EPA disregards ethanol production’s impact on endangered species as it is directed to study under law" (The Guardian).

"Reporters who profess to support women and denounce deadbeat dads have either ignored this story or belittled her mother, Lunden Roberts."

"Roberts is widely dismissed as a 'former stripper.' That appears how she met Hunter, but it is often used to paint her in the same way that the media gleefully reported Hillary Clinton denouncing women involved with her husband as mere 'bimbo eruptions.'... " 

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Daddy Dearest: Hunter Forced to Appear in Arkansas in Fight [Over] His Child’s Name and Support."

"Drag is a job. Drag is a legitimate artistic expression that brings people together, that entertains, that allows certain individuals to explore who they are..."

"... and allows all of us to have a very nice time. So it makes literally no sense for legislators, for people in government, to try to ban drag."

Said culture and gender studies professor Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, author of "Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance," quoted in  "As Tennessee, others target drag shows, many wonder: Why?" (AP News).

I found that after struggling to read "Tennessee curbs trans treatment and drag for children" (BBC):

"It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not 'supersede' academic freedom, the two coexist."

Said a statement from Ellen Watters, the chair of the Hamline University’s board of trustees, and Fayneese S. Miller, the university's president.

"Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep. In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed."

Quoted in "After Lecturer Sues, Hamline University Walks Back Its ‘Islamophobic’ Comments/In an about-face, the school said that using the term was 'flawed' and that respect for Muslim students should not have superseded academic freedom" (NYT).

"I do sometimes delete comments, but I do it based on my own editorial judgment, not state command."

"Still, I’m being conscripted. By obligating me to do the state’s bidding with regard to viewpoints that New York condemns, the law violates the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has carved out several narrow categories of unprotected speech, but hate speech isn’t one of them.... The new law would force me to act on the state’s disdain for online speech that someone, somewhere believes can 'vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against' groups based on protected class, even if that speech is protected by the First Amendment. Does speech by Richard Dawkins comparing George W. Bush’s faith to that of Osama bin Laden’s vilify conservative Christians? Does speech condemning trans athletes who join women’s sports teams vilify or humiliate based on gender identity? Do harsh criticisms of Israelis or Palestinians vilify those groups? Do some feminist comments criticizing patriarchy humiliate men? Can your comment on any of the blogs, news sites or social-media platforms swept up in New York’s law be defined as hateful conduct? Nobody knows."

Writes Eugene Volokh, in "New York State Wants to Conscript Me to Violate the Constitution/A new law requires me to post a policy for dealing with ‘hate speech’ in comments on my blog" (Wall Street Journal).

"When the Monkees launched their inaugural tour in 1967, they played to throngs of screaming teenagers – and at least one FBI informant."

"'During the concert, subliminal messages were depicted on the screen which, in the opinion of [informant’s name redacted], constituted "left wing intervention of a political nature,"' reads a document in the Monkees FBI file. 'These messages and pictures were flashed of riots, in Berkley, anti-U.S. messages on the war in Vietnam, racial riots in Selma, Alabama, and similar messages which had unfavorable response[s] from the audience.'  This tiny portion of the band’s FBI file was released to the public a little over a decade ago, and now Micky Dolenz, the group’s sole surviving member, has filed a lawsuit against the FBI... hoping to see the rest of the file after failing to get his hands on it via a Freedom of Information Act request.... 'The Monkees reflected, especially in their later years with projects like [their 1968 art house movie] Head, a counterculture from what institutional authority was at the time,' [said Dolenz's lawyer.] 'And [J. Edgar] Hoover’s FBI, in the Sixties in particular, was infamous for monitoring the counterculture, whether they committed unlawful actions or not.'"

 
From "The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz Would Like a Word With the FBI/The group's last surviving member is suing the FBI after they failed to hand over band's J. Edgar Hoover-era FBI file" (Rolling Stone).

"A 14-year-old boy who fell to his death from a Florida amusement park ride... stood more than 6 feet tall and weighed 383 pounds... The maximum passenger weight for the ride is 287 pounds..."

"Tyre’s parents have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against ICON Park and the ride’s operator and manufacturer.... 'The autopsy report also confirms that Tyre was almost 100 pounds over the limit of passenger weight allowed.... The negligence in this case is unrebuttable.'.... The lawsuit alleges that no weight restrictions were posted at the ticket counter and that no employee advised the teen that he may have exceeded them. It states that during the ride, Tyre was 'ejected' from his seat and fell 'a hundred feet to his death.'"

WaPo reports.

"The lawsuit alleges that no weight restrictions were posted at the ticket counter" — were weight restrictions posted anywhere else? Perhaps he bought the ticket, then saw a sign. And yet, even if he did and chose to ignore it, the ride operators need something better than an honor code about weight.

[T]he Orlando Free Fall... drops nearly 400 feet at speeds of more than 75 mph and is advertised as the “world’s tallest free-standing drop tower.”

It's awkward to enforce weight limits though. See "TikTok star Remi Bader says she was mocked for her weight after being turned away from horse ranch" (NBC News).

"Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sued New York’s ethics commission on Friday, contending that its efforts to force him to turn over the proceeds of a $5.1 million book deal were a violation of his constitutional rights."

I'm reading "Cuomo Sues Ethics Panel to Block It From Seizing Book Profits/The lawsuit is the latest example of Andrew Cuomo’s aggressive stance as he returns to public life seven months after resigning as New Yorks governor." 

Aggressive stance! If the government had been aggressive and charged him with a crime, there would be more of a basis for seizing the money he's made from writing a book. It's not aggressive to want to hold onto the proceeds of your book!

"Russia did not show up for a hearing at the United Nations’ top court on Monday, effectively boycotting Ukrainian efforts to seek an immediate end to the fighting."

"The proceedings in front of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, went ahead without Russia’s presence. The case centers on Russia’s official explanation for its invasion of Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin has said is supposed to lead to the 'denazification' of Ukraine and end a 'genocide' in eastern Ukraine.... Ukraine seeks an emergency order that would require Russia to halt its invasion. Both countries have signed the 1948 treaty on the prevention of genocide, and Russia would in theory be mandated to follow the court decision.... [O]ne of its long-time lawyers, Alain Pellet, resigned last week, writing in an open letter that it 'has become impossible to represent in forums dedicated to the application of the law a country that so cynically despises it.'"

WaPo reports.

A physician in Texas has violated the new abortion law and he wants his action to be public knowledge.

Alan Braid explains why in The Washington Post:

Newly graduated from the University of Texas medical school, I began my obstetrics and gynecology residency at a San Antonio hospital on July 1, 1972.... At the hospital that year, I saw three teenagers die from illegal abortions. One I will never forget. When she came into the ER, her vaginal cavity was packed with rags. She died a few days later from massive organ failure, caused by a septic infection....

"Hours after it went offline on Monday, the social media start-up Parler filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Amazon of violating antitrust law..."

"... and asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent the tech giant from blocking access to cloud computing services. Amazon told Parler over the weekend that it would shut off service because 'a steady increase in violent content' on the site showed that the company did not have a reliable process to prevent it from violating Amazon’s terms of service. Amazon said it would ensure Parler’s data was preserved so that it could migrate to a new hosting provider. Millions of people turned to Parler after Twitter and Facebook barred President Trump following the riot at the Capitol last week. Apple and Google both kicked Parler out of their app stores at the end of the week, though users who already had downloaded the app could still use it. But the app relied on Amazon’s cloud computing technology to work.... Parler did not provide direct evidence showing Amazon and Twitter coordinated the response. Instead, it pointed to a December news release announcing a multiyear strategic partnership between Amazon and Twitter, and it made references to Twitter’s own challenges policing its content."

The NYT reports.

How far will the anti-Trump forces go in crushing their opposition?

‘You’re not entitled your book contract,’ can quickly become ‘United doesn’t have to let you onto its planes’ ‘Marriott doesn’t have to let you stay at its hotels,’ or ‘Visa doesn’t have to let you use its cards.’

And maybe that’s the point.

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) January 8, 2021

That tweet is a response to the news: "Simon & Schuster Cancels Plans for Senator Hawley’s Book/The publisher faced calls to drop the Missouri Republican’s upcoming book, 'The Tyranny of Big Tech,' following criticism of his efforts to overturn the presidential election" (NYT). 

“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement. “As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat.”... 

“This could not be more Orwellian,” he said. “Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition... We’ll see you in court."... 

The subject of Mr. Hawley’s book... is not about the election or Mr. Trump, but about technology corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon. Its cancellation was remarkably swift and raised questions about how publishers will approach future books by conservatives who have supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate the election....

ADDED: Here's Hawley's full statement:

My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021

I'm not sure what his "First Amendment" theory is, but I'd love to see his explanation. There's a folk meaning of "First Amendment" that simply means "freedom of speech," but Hawley is a Yale Law School graduate who had a clerkship with Chief Justice John Roberts, so we must attribute the highest level of constitutional law understanding to him. I await the explication!

ALSO: Hawley's book about the "tyranny" of Google, Facebook, and Amazon ought to discuss the problem of the repression of freedom of speech, and for all I know, he's got some sophisticated First Amendment theory in there. Send me a PDF of your book, Josh — or just the pages with the First Amendment material. I will give it a sympathetic read!

"Democrats are singularly obsessed with finding something they can use to damage the President politically."

Says the lawsuit Trump has filed against House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings to block congressional subpoena of his financial records, WaPo reports.

The second-highest-rated comment at the link quotes what I quoted and says: "And if he didn't cheat on a regular basis, he'd have no worry."

Hating Trump has taken precedence over fundamental liberal values, and the shallowness of the belief in those values is revealed in the way people don't even notice what they are subordinating to their... singular obsession.

"In A New Email, Elon Musk Accused A Cave Rescuer Of Being A 'Child Rapist' And Said He 'Hopes' There's A Lawsuit."

"In an email to BuzzFeed News, Tesla CEO Elon Musk accused a Thai cave rescuer of moving to Thailand to take a child bride. The rescuer denied all the claims," Buzzfeed reports.

Musk last month apologized for accusing Vernon Unsworth of pedophilia after the diver questioned the value of Musk’s contribution to the rescue, a small submarine that ultimately went unused. But in a series of emails to BuzzFeed News, Musk repeated his original attacks on Unsworth — and made new and specific claims, lambasting the rescuer as a “child rapist” who moved to the Southeast Asian country to take a child bride....

“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the first message. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time. As for this alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue (nothing was sent or raised beforehand), I fucking hope he sues me,” he added....

Musk’s renewed attacks on Unsworth come after a series of erratic public gestures, notably a widely publicized suggestion that he would take Tesla private and the narration of his home life by the rapper Azealia Banks....

What's the Azelia Banks story? I had to look that up. This is from The Cut (last week):

Ever since she went to Musk’s home for a recording session... Banks has been airing the Tesla CEO’s dirty laundry in lengthy Instagram Stories — claiming that he had been tripping on acid when he tweeted that he was considering taking his company private for $420, and by sharing screenshots of texts she allegedly exchanged with his girlfriend Grimes, in which the musician says Musk’s accent is fake, his D is big, and Russians are trying to kill him. But now, the rapper has apologized, Billboard reports....

We all live in a yellow submarine. A small submarine. With a big dick.

"A couple who raised over $400,000 on GoFundMe for a homeless man has been ordered by a judge to turn over the remaining funds after they refused to give it to him...."

I guess they didn't realize the homeless man would figure out how to bring a law suit, but...

Johnny Bobbitt sued Mark D'Amico and Katie McClure for mismanaging the donation money meant for him after the couple refused to give him roughly half of the remaining cash. Officials say that D'Amico and McClure “mixed the GoFundMe money with their own,” and Bobbitt's attorney claims that the couple only gave Bobbitt $75,000—rather than the $200,000 the couple say they gave.... Bobbitt gave McClure his last $20 late last year while she was stranded on a Philadelphia interstate for gas, prompting her to start the GoFundMe to help Bobbitt....

I hope it works out well for Bobbitt, the destitute and purely generous man who, with $75,000, became a man who knows he's been cheated and brings a lawsuit to get what's his.