Bits & a chunk: Social media can reject anti-vaxx crackpottery; A notable 1/6 traitor conviction; Etc.

Ars Technica reports that a prominent COVID anti-vaxx crackpot lost an important lawsuit against YouTube in a lower court. The crackpot wanted to force YouTube to host his malicious (evil) videos that kill people by convincing them to not get vaccinated:

A prominent anti-vaccine activist, Joseph Mercola, yesterday lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels.

Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, US magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users’ content,'" Beeler wrote.  

Mercola claimed that he first became aware that YouTube was planning to ban his channel when The Washington Post published an article about it. He told the Post that he was being censored. In his complaint, he said that within six minutes of the Post's article publishing, he got a message that his channels were banned, effective immediately, for violating YouTube's new policy on vaccine misinformation.

His attempt to appeal YouTube's decision was denied, according to Beeler's order. At that point, YouTube told Mercola that after reviewing his channel "carefully," YouTube "confirmed that it violates our Community Guidelines."

This lawsuit strikes me as reasonably well situated for the radical right to appeal this all the way to the USSC (US Supreme Court). The radical right hates it when demagoguery, lies, malicious content and divisive crackpottery are blocked on major social media sites. They call it cancelling conservatism. In fact, it is fighting demagoguery, malice (evil) and tyranny. The radical right needs access to huge audiences and social media is about the best, cheap way to reach millions of minds that can potentially be poisoned.

The radical right legal argument will be that despite no basis in contract law, crackpots patriots like Mercola have to be allowed to post their poison and lies because (i) big social media like YouTube is so big it constitutes a public utility or public space, and (ii) therefore, free speech of any legal kind cannot be censored in such public spaces.

I do not know if the USSC would take this major step and force a private company to accept poison for public consumption. But, the six Republican radicals that dominate the USSC are probably quite sympathetic to the radical's argument. They understand how important this issue is to the radical right's propaganda campaign. This issue is far bigger that just COVID anti-vaxx crackpottery. This is central to the radical right authoritarians' push to obliterate democracy and replace it with a deeply corrupt, bigoted tyranny. 

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Various news sources are reporting about the sentencing of Enrique Tarrio and some of his treasonous crew. The NYT writes: 

Ex-Leader of Proud Boys Sentenced to 22 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case -- The prison term for Enrique Tarrio was the most severe penalty handed down so far to any of the more than 1,100 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack. -- The penalty imposed on Mr. Tarrio at a three-hour hearing in Federal District Court in Washington was the final sentence to be lodged against the five members of the Proud Boys who were tried on seditious conspiracy charges earlier this year. Three other men in the case — Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — were each sentenced last week to between 10 and 17 years in prison.

Tarrio

Maybe not so proud now?

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Sorry, this one is complicated but important 

“This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law, and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution. It is important that the mechanism of legal reasoning should not be concealed by its pretense. The pretense is that the law is a system of known rules applied by a judge; the pretense has long been under attack. In an important sense legal rules are never clear, and, if a rule had to be clear before it could be imposed, society would be impossible. The mechanism accepts the differences of view and ambiguities of words. It provides for the participation of the community in resolving the ambiguity by providing a forum for the discussion of policy in the gap of ambiguity. On serious controversial questions it makes it possible to take the first step in the direction of what otherwise would be forbidden ends. The mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.” -- An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, legal scholar and former US Attorney General, Edward H. Levy, 1949

************************************************

Radical right Republicans in power treat elections with open contempt: The NYT writes about the poisonous radical right Republican Party intent to impeach a recently elected state Supreme Court judge because she is a Democrat:

Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court, whose victory in a costly, high-stakes election this spring swung the court in Democrats’ favor and threatened the G.O.P.’s iron grip on state politics.

The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court and before she has heard a single case, serves as a last-ditch effort to stop the new 4-to-3 liberal majority from throwing out Republican-drawn state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.

For Republicans, the liberal Supreme Court majority serves as an existential danger. If the court, as expected, invalidates Wisconsin’s legislative maps, it would strip Republicans of what now amounts to permanent majorities in the Legislature. But removing a newly elected justice could prompt a backlash in 2024 from Democrats and moderate Republican voters who abandoned the G.O.P. during the Trump years.

At issue for Wisconsin Republicans are Justice Protasiewicz’s stated views on Wisconsin’s legislative maps. In a deliberate strategy to energize and win support from Democratic donors and voters during her campaign this spring, she was unusually blunt about her positions on issues including abortion rights and the state’s maps, which she called “rigged.”

The day after she was seated last month, liberal groups filed a legal challenge to the maps. Republicans immediately demanded that she recuse herself from the case — which would almost certainly cause a 3-to-3 deadlock on the State Supreme Court.

Former Gov. Scott Walker, who remains popular among Wisconsin Republicans, said the Assembly was “obligated” to impeach Justice Protasiewicz if she tried to rule on the maps.  

Justice Protasiewicz has said nothing publicly about the case. She declined to comment, but on Tuesday she released a letter she had received from the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, an independent body that investigates complaints against judges, dismissing complaints that she had violated the state’s judicial code of ethics by stating her “personal views” about abortion and Wisconsin’s legislative maps. 

The NYT article goes on to point out that Republicans control the impeachment process and have the votes to impeach her. The applicable Wisconsin law is messy. The Wisconsin Constitution says that impeachment is intended for “corrupt conduct in office or for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor.” Well, Protasiewicz was not corrupt in office and she has committed no crime or misdemeanor. 

So, on what grounds could she reasonably be impeached? Her only act was to state her opposition to gerrymandered state voting districts and her support of abortion rights during her campaign. The people of Wisconsin were thus informed about two major issues in that state by that candidate. The voters voted her onto the state Supreme Court. 

So, is Protasiewicz conflicted out of ruling on legal challenges to gerrymandering and abortion? She publicly stated her position on both issues and that helped her get elected onto the court. Is that a reason to assert conflicts of interest preclude hearing issues that voters apparently saw the same way the candidate they voted for saw them?

Six quiet liars by omission sit on the USSC and they hate both voting rights and abortions. Despite those massive conflicts of interest, they happily vote their beliefs on such cases. They are as conflicted, but merely silently conflicted. They refused to state their beliefs, or lied during the nomination process. They were confirmed by a US Senate that knew what their positions were, but the nominees (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett) happily pretended otherwise. 

Two wrongs do not make a right. Should a wrong that preserves democracy be relied on, or should Protasiewicz recuse herself and let Wisconsin slide into the tyranny of single party rule? 

Is the pretense of judicial neutrality just a mirage that should be dropped? If it was dropped, potential judges could speak their minds and let congress or state voters decide on federal or state judges. This is the kind of problem that arises when one major political party, the radical right Republican Party, has gone from pluralist pro-democracy to corrupt, bigoted authoritarianism. There is little or no common ground or basis for compromise. There's certainly no good will in it. 

Problems like this have been forced on us by America's radical right. If we decide wrong, we could lose our democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. The stakes really are that high. The GOP really is pro-tyranny.