This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy responding to our post about the Supreme Court being asked to tell cops they can’t destroy someone’s home just because they consented to a search:
As always, ‘no one is dumber than a cop’ is apparently the rule
“Giving officers permission to search your house should never mean giving them permission to leave you with no place to live.”
The punchline of course in that by bending over backwards to protect the cops who trashed a house the ninth circuit has sent a very clear message: Never grant police permission to search anything, because so long as they are creative in what they do they can get away with basically anything.
If the want to engage in a search of any sort demand a warrant, as that at least presents some sort of guidelines as to what they can do, and removes one of the excuses available to them if they go overboard.
“The person they were seeking had vacated the residence before officers stopped Shaniz West and threatened her with arrest if she didn’t ‘consent’ to a search of her house.”
If that is what they consider ‘consent’ then I dearly hope none of the judges involved in this case are ever in a position to judge a mugging, armed robbery or rape case. ‘Consent’ granted when faced with a threat of punishment for refusal is not ‘consent’ by any remotely reasonable standard.
In second place, it’s Rocky asking the simple question that advocates of mandatory social media moderation never seem able to answer:
Facebook has 2.45 billion active users, how do you propose to implement mandatory moderation?
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of additional points raised in response to the mandatory moderation concept. First, it’s Glen noting the global challenges:
Add to this. How to you moderate to the standards in the US, Canada, the UK, the EU and damn near everybody else?
Next, it’s Stephen T. Stone with the important reminder that moderation is the point of Section 230:
The entire, original, on-the-record intent of 230 was to allow legal moderation of speech. Any change to 230 that goes against said intent will invite one of the two outcomes I mentioned. No company wants to face legal liability for third party posts, so it’ll either shut down a platform to avoid that liability altogether or leave that platform unmoderated to avoid the kind of liability laid out in the Prodigy ruling. You can’t take away a platform’s right to legally moderate speech post-Prodigy and still expect the platform to moderate speech.
Over on the funny side, we’re going to flip things around, because the first place winner is in fact a reply to the second place winner. So, in second place, it’s Jeffrey Nonken responding to YouTube’s preemptive copyright takedown of a livestream that hadn’t started:
I hereby claim copyright on everything that has not yet been created.
You’ll be hearing from my lawyer. All of you. Everyone.
And, in a demonstration of the power of comedy duos, an anonymous commenter won first place by replying and outdoing the original joke:
And thus Nonken spake, “behold, for I have created all that is; for naught may be created but through me.”
• Profits 36:50
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got Norahc with a comment about Tulsi Gabbard’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton:
Who knew the Nunes Effect was a bipartisan effort?
And finally, it’s an anonymous commenter zeroing in on one of the overlooked flaws in Lindsey Graham’s anti-230 bill — its call for “a presidential commission of experts”:
If that isn’t an oxymoron in 2019, I don’t know what is.
(Yes, the comment gets the year wrong, but 2020 has yet to deliver us from its truth.)
That’s all for this week, folks!
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Author: Leigh Beadon