A federal judge this week ruled the White House must temporarily re-instate the press pass of CNN reporter Jim Acosta's, who had been barred after an argument with Donald Trump in the press room. The judge ruled the White House had violated due process by banning Acosta.
CNN, however, had requested a ruling saying that Acosta more or less had a constitutional right to a press pass, and that the First Amendment guaranteed CNN and its reporters access to the White House press conference room.
Judge Timothy Kelly disagreed. According to the Washington Post:
In explaining his decision, Kelly said he agreed with the government’s argument that there was no First Amendment right to come onto the White House grounds. But, he said, once the White House opened up the grounds to reporters, the First Amendment applied.On the due process issue, Kelly is mostly right on this one. But Kelly gets it wrong when he says that the First Amendment potentially applies wherever the White House has opened up access to reporters overall.
Amnesty International announced it would strip Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its top award, saying it was “profoundly dismayed” at her failure to acknowledge the full scale of atrocities against the Rohingya people.
Before you are tempted to view this as some kind of principled, honorable move on Amnesty’s part, stop yourself and check out its dubious government and corporate funding sources, its selective support for the concept of free speech and the fact that it spends quite a bit of time soft-pedaling Western imperialism and its atrocities while magnifying the wrongdoings of the West’s adversaries.
Amnesty’s attempt to win plaudits for its decision to revoke Suu Kyi’s award has come after mounting calls for the controversial figure’s 1991 Nobel Peace Prize to be stripped from her. Nearly half a million people have signed a Change.org petition calling for the Nobel Committee to take back the award.
Given that the committee has been, shall we say, less than picky, about who it bestows the honor on, we can probably assume Suu Kyi will remain on the recipients list. Not to mention, the committee has already confirmed that worrying about what recipients do after the award ceremony isn’t part of the job. You see, the rules regulating the Nobel Prize, apparently, do not allow for the award to be withdrawn, which is fairly convenient.
I say convenient, because if they started taking Nobel Prizes back from all the people who (oops!) didn’t actually deserve them, the list of remaining recipients would shrink very quickly indeed.
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California Democrat Threatens 'Nukes' If Americans Don't Hand Over Their Guns
Well that escalated quickly... Just days after taking back the House, a Democratic Congressmen has proposed outlawing "military-style semi-automatic assault weapons" and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution.
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Five Minutes Five Issues: Bolton Speech, Warmonger Medal, Roadside Surveillance, Marijuana Tax, School Security
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Friday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
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Three Ways the New Democratic House Majority May Investigate President Trump
After Democrats attain the majority in the United States House of Representatives in January, their rivalry with President Donald Trump can be expected to extend beyond disagreements about legislation. In a new Fox News video commentary, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano details three areas where Democrats who will move into majority leadership positions in January may seek to investigate Trump in efforts that could lead to impeachment proceedings.
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Five Minutes Five Issues: Marijuana Votes, Voting Libertarian, US Election, Marijuana Laws, Important Election
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
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Trump Administration Considers Declaring Yemen’s Houthis ‘Terrorists’
Just weeks after promising to back a peace effort in Yemen, the Trump Administration is reportedly considering labeling the Shi’ite Houthi movement in northern Yemen, one of the principal forces, a terrorist organization.
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