Using the Open Records Law To Intimidate Critics 369
Layzej writes "On March 15, Professor Bill Cronon posted his first blog. The subject was the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in influencing recent legislation in Wisconsin and across the country. Less than two days later, his university received a communication formally requesting under the state's Open Records Law copies of all emails he sent or received pertaining to matters raised in the blog. Remarkably, the request was sent to the university's legal office by Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, with no effort to obscure the political motivations behind it. In a recent editorial, the New York Times notes that demanding copies of e-mails and other documents is the latest technique used politically to silence critics."
Not just Republicans (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just Republicans doing this.
Look at HuffPo's website: http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/ [huffingtonpost.com]
Type in the address of your neighbor, see what political groups they contribute to. They used this to pull a list of Prop 8 contributors in California, to intimidate them.
I could make some sort of argument about anonymity and free speech, I guess, but apparently these things only matter when it's the other guys doing these acts.
Re:Not just Republicans (Score:4, Informative)
This has absolutely no relation to the subject at hand. The person who runs the blog isn't a public official or state employee.
Also the link you posted doesn't single out any one type of political group. It could be used by conservatives too.
Lastly, the laws protecting the emails and the political donation info of private citizens are very different.
Re:Not just Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes we should, and the correct way to do that is to embrace a voting system that doesn't foster a two-party system [wikipedia.org]. There are a number rated voting systems [wikipedia.org] including my personal favorite, approval voting. Approval voting is the simplest way to replace plurality. All that's needed is a ballot with check-boxes, and instead of voting for one candidate, you vote for all candidates that you approve of for the job.
There are also a number of different ways of determining the outcome of the vote, but just changing
Re:Not just Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
There are also a number of different ways of determining the outcome of the vote, but just changing the balloting process would undermine the lock that the two-party system has in the U.S.
Which is why it won't happen. The one thing democrats and republicans will work together on is to stop anything that would enable the rise of a third (or more) party. They will use every legal trick, and probably more than few illegal ones, to stop this.
The only way this is going to change is for the american voters to wake up and start voting in mass for third party and independent candidates, especially the ones with little campaign funding. That campaign funding comes with some serious strings attached...
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There are also a number of different ways of determining the outcome of the vote, but just changing the balloting process would undermine the lock that the two-party system has in the U.S.
Which is why it won't happen. The one thing democrats and republicans will work together on is to stop anything that would enable the rise of a third (or more) party. They will use every legal trick, and probably more than few illegal ones, to stop this.
The only way this is going to change is for the american voters to wake up and start voting in mass for third party and independent candidates, especially the ones with little campaign funding. That campaign funding comes with some serious strings attached...
I hate to say it, but this is why it's never going to change. As the advertising industry has known for years, and as Coca-Cola bases its business model on, changing the minds of the masses is simply a matter of spending enough money.
As long as people consume entertainment that they don't pay for (such as television, radio, and most websites for that matter) people are going to consume advertising, opening a portion of their minds to the highest bidder. As long as people freely offer their minds to the high
Re:Not just Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
Changing the voting system would require a huge overhaul of the election process in America. And the two major parties would never, ever do anything to help facilitate that. So, in the meantime, STOP VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS. It doesn't even matter what "third" party you vote for, but stop wasting your vote on the two big ones.
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Not voting for Republicans or Democrats is a foolish notion and one that is only promoted by Republicans and Democrats because they want you wasting your vote.
The reality is, not happy with Republicans and Democrats, then pay a lot more bloody attention to what is going on in the primaries. Want a Labour Democrat (one that actually supports the workers) and a Green Republican (a conservatives that actually wants to conserve things), than put them up at the primaries. It is high time to kick the corporati
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Oh great, now they'll know that I contributed to the "Cthulhu for President" campaign.
Re:Not just Republicans (Score:5, Informative)
Proposition 8 is hardly a valid example. The people have a pretty clear right to know who it is that's funding an unconstitutional measure to rescind rights. It also turned out that the Mormons were abusing their tax exempt status to tinker directly in the election process in a way which normally requires the funds not be tax exempt giving them an unfair advantage over the opposition.
Here in WA we've had the same argument going on over referendum 71 because they decided that they didn't want to actually be accountable for trying to revoke the civil rights of a minority group.
In practice, the claims of intimidation have been greatly exaggerated, and represented far less actual intimidation than the groups claiming to be targeted have meted out to others over the years.
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>>Linky or it doesn't count.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/19prop8.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/prop8/ [sfgate.com]
http://www.afterellen.com/node/39787 [afterellen.com]
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Shaka, did someone "intimidate" you for contributing to the Prop 8 campaign?
I'm looking for "intimidate" in the stories you link to and it's not there. Is this personal with you?
Wait a minute...is your last name "Phelps"?
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>>Shaka, did someone "intimidate" you for contributing to the Prop 8 campaign?
Me? No.
The only political contributions I've ever made are to the EFF, if you can even call them that.
>>I'm looking for "intimidate" in the stories you link to and it's not there. Is this personal with you?
Boycott is. They were used for intimidation. Or do you think that posting all those personal addresses was just for fun?
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So you don't believe people should have the right to not do business with companies that do things with which they disagree?
Isn't that an exercise of "free market" principles?
Re:Not just Republicans (Score:4, Interesting)
Its public info, frankly I'm glad that people are boycotting their businesses because they are bigots. I dont want to support any business which feels it has a right to say what I do when it affects only myself.
Thanks for the boycott list though, Ill doubly make sure I don't buy from any of those businesses.
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Once you're intimidated, you definitely don't want to be quoted as an example.
The only time someone intimidated actually wants publicity is when that person failed to be intimidated and is suing the pants off the person who failed. In that case, there would likely be a trial.
On another note, TFA would be a good textbook case of why even if you fail to be intimidated, even if you think there's good standing for a trial, there likely won't be one: too much collateral damage to the victim even if he wins.
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>>Did you feel intimidated, Shaka?
You just said this five messages up, dude.
No, my name and address aren't in that database, since I don't contribute to political causes on general principle. Only the EFF, which is a nonprofit, since they're the only group whose goals align with my own.
Another word for such behaviour... (Score:2)
motivations (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to have an open records law then you don't get to make exceptions for political reasons. Otherwise you end up with the inevitable, "It's only OK to request records for a cause advantaging the sufficiently powerful." It's the listener flip side to declaring freedom of speech then listing a million forms of speech which don't really count as speech.
The role of the professor in open-minded contemplation / testing ideas / free academic discourse / blah is irrelevant. Everyone should be able to engage in all these things, and life would be even worse if only certain classes of people are exempted on account of being allowed to "think more freely" than others, or something.
This means that any open records law must be limited in application to specific people in specific roles which affect the public: legislative, executive or judicial. In particular, those representatives directly elected or those appointed by such representatives should expect to have all their correspondence scrutinised.
Exceptions may only exist when the exception is required to protect the well-being of a private citizen, and they must exist for only as long as that protection is required. For example, correspondence relating to a police investigation would not be appropriate to reveal until the investigation and any judicial wheel-turning is complete, but should be available for perusal after that unless certain private witnesses need protecting. If the witness-protection justification is used, it must be well documented so that, after the natural death of the witness (or as appropriate), records can be revealed and our descendants can study our performance and learn from it.
Remember also that, while today we think that we have an impossible mound of bureauratic record-keeping, in 100 years time computer systems may be able to intelligently search and analyse more text than we have ever created.
Alas, the most corrupt will communicate off the record anyway.
Re:motivations (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas, the most corrupt will communicate off the record anyway.
This is a key point, as various politicians in recent years have been caught using non official email accounts for their "official" duties.
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Alas, the most corrupt will communicate off the record anyway.
This is a key point, as various politicians in recent years have been caught using non official email accounts for their "official" duties.
That's why the voter has the right to recall any politician who fails to live up to their campaign promises.
Re:motivations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:motivations (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it's not. The open records law refers to the email of "government officials". A professor, as an employee of the state is not an "official" any more than the janitor. The law is pretty specific about this, actually. The term "government official" has been discussed in court cases and it refers to university administrators but not professors.
It's harassment pure and simple, but so far everything the Wisconsin GOP has done has blown up in their faces, and it looks like this will, too. They've got to make hay while the sun shines, because recalls are a-coming their way.
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Perhaps I did not express myself clearly enough. The fact that the professor is involved in open-minded contemplation / testing ideas / free academic discourse / blah is not what makes him exempt. It is the fact that he is not acting as a government official.
For example, a government-sponsored think tank is involved in open-minded contemplation / testing ideas / free academic discourse / blah, but I think there is a sound argument that its interactions (considering particularly its relationship with any spe
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It looks like that's how it's going to go.
The professor in question has not claimed "intimidation". I bet he's happy that this story has brought more attention to his NYTimes op-ed piece nationally. From the interviews I've seen and read with him, he's claiming that he's been pretty meticulous about keeping his politics separate from his job, and he doesn't seem to have
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No, son, he didn't. You're not paying attention. The professor claims that he meticulously kept his political writings separate from his university email.
He's never said he doesn't want to comply with the Open Records request. Right now, if I understand correctly, the university is fighting it, not the professor.
Good try, though, caldodge.
And thank you for the encouragement.
Re:motivations (Score:4, Interesting)
> Alas, the most corrupt will communicate off the record anyway.
I'm afraid this is not a reliable assumption. I've seen such correspondence working with business partners, cleaning up after other departing partners. People are quite careless about where they keep their illicit documents, fiscal data, passwords, insider trading communications with people outside the company, and correspondence about job candidate evaluations that violate gender and racial and age bias regulations, etc. I was once asked to help retrieve email messages about an employee seeking an internal transfer, where the manager of the other department actually wrote that they did not want to get stuck with the employee's pension bills when they retired, and couldn't the employee be eased out before then. (After retrieving the email, I brought this to the corporate legal counsel: we cooperated to help educate the HR department that this was going on, that this was illegal, and to explain the costs of throwing out your most experienced people by surprise and leaving them _angry_ at you. The manager got released due to this and other issues, the manager's upset about my "unauthorized access" let the employee know what had happened despite my discretion, we wound up acknowledged by the rank and file of our partner's employees as being on _their_ side, and that transfer worked out very well for our partners and for us working with them.)
But people engaged in such casual corruption are notoriously careless about their record keeping, and their social correspondence can very much provide links to their activities. It can also lead to that nest of political troublemakers who are engaging in unwelcome but legal activity, such as starting a union, planning a skunkworks project, or are being approached by corporate recruiters. People often don't _plan_ to do illegal things. They do them as part of their ordinary lives, and forget (over time) that this is not acceptable behavior, or come to think of it as "how things are done". That's where an outside partner can be very handy, to help remind both partners of how they _should_ be done for reasons of safety, ethics, and profit.
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If you're going to have an open records law then you don't get to make exceptions for political reasons.
But as you yourself point out, you *do* get to make exceptions based on operational or functional reasons. You go on to say:
Exceptions may only exist when the exception is required to protect the well-being of a private citizen, and they must exist for only as long as that protection is required.
That's a different kettle of fish. Sometimes, as Dick Cheney pointed out in the brouhaha about his energy advisory committee, officials have to be able to deliberate privately. Cheney wasn't wrong in principle, he was just wrong in application. You have to balance that need with the public need to know who is influencing policy and how. But it's perfectly true that public employees c
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And those who believe they are innocent of any wrongdoing will have the most to lose
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Alas, the most corrupt will communicate off the record anyway.
Just like the Mafia and other organized crime groups have been doing for decades, if not centuries.
Re:motivations (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to have an open records law then you don't get to make exceptions for political reasons.
I don't think that any reasonable rationale for an open records law could possibly justify applying it to a professor who is not otherwise engaged in the mechanism of government. Open records laws exist in order to make transparent the process by which a government governs, and a professor is, by default, not a part of that process.
The role of the professor in open-minded contemplation / testing ideas / free academic discourse / blah is irrelevant. Everyone should be able to engage in all these things, and life would be even worse if only certain classes of people are exempted on account of being allowed to "think more freely" than others, or something.
You are missing the point. We don't argue for the exemption of the professor because they should be allowed to think freely. We argue for the exemption because it is their job to think freely. We ask them to explore the body of knowledge and thought that we humans have produced and to distill it for us in the form of research and education. We do not ask them to make laws that bind our citizens. We do not ask them to enact or enforce laws. We do not ask them to adjudicate laws. We do not ask them to carry out any of the roles for which open records laws exist. If the goal of open records laws were to allow us to publicly expose the private communications of everyone who espoused a political thought, then I think we should not limit them to government employees. They should apply universally to every citizen. If that's not the goal, then there's just no justification for this abuse of the system in order to score political points.
Re:motivations (Score:4, Insightful)
Thomas Mann: "Everything is politics."
To concern yourself with who pays the man is to engage in non-productive bitterness. Have you ever done work for a company which has at any point benefited from a government contract? Have you ever purchased anything from a company which has benefited from a government contract? Then you are benefiting, however indirectly (and all corrupt beneficiaries benefit indirectly), from the taxpayer and all your records should be made public.
What matters is not who pays him but the power he has. If the government puts him, say, in some sort of policy-making or judicial role then his work clearly becomes that of a government official. If he's just doing research and teaching students then, well, feel free to judge him on that. He, like any government or private employee, will have an opinion on stuff, and his opinion will affect his work. If you want him to hide that opinion then, well, "don't ask don't tell" doesn't work, OK? If you want his opinion not to influence his work inappropriately, that's fine and that's what the university administration (which is a government official role) comes in.
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There are more ways to accomplish these things than are dreamt of in your philosophy....
This is a request for public records of public work-related messages. They're not asking for his private emails, but for his "work" emails and works for the state, so they're subject to the FOIA.
What happened to all that talk about "transparency"? All government records should be open t
A political FOIA Request! Stop the presses! (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost all open records act requests are political. They're mostly made by organizations with an agenda.
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Over-reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see anything nefarious about this FOIA request. The author is a public employee, and his emails are public records. Here's the text of the request, in full:
If there's anything "chilling" about this request, I sure don't see it. When you write a blog article that is critical of a political party, and get over a half-million hits within days, you should expect a little attention from the people you're poking a stick at.
Re:Over-reaction (Score:5, Informative)
Just because an organization receives government funding does not make them a government agency.
Also, if what you say were true, then every book written by a professor would be in the public domain.
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Even though universities are separate legal entities, they are owned by the state for the most part. Public universities are still considered part of the state, and are subject to most of the same rules as regular state employees along with a few new ones like FERPA.
Re:Over-reaction (Score:5, Informative)
He works for the University of Wisconsin, a public state-owned university. Granted such things can vary by state - but I work for a state university as a graduate research assistant and I know we were warned by legal a while ago that the same thing can happen to us, even as grad students.
Over-reaction? Over-reach, rather. (Score:5, Informative)
If there's anything "chilling" about this request, I sure don't see it. When you write a blog article that is critical of a political party, and get over a half-million hits within days, you should expect a little attention from the people you're poking a stick at.
A little attention would have been good. Seems rather a case of huge attention and too small of a care
TFA:
A number of the emails caught in the net of Mr. Thompson’s open records request are messages between myself and my students. All thus fall within the purview of the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA, sometimes known as the “Buckley Amendment,” named for its author Senator James Buckley—the brother of conservative intellectual William F. Buckley). The Buckley Amendment makes it illegal for colleges or universities to release student records without the permission of those students, [...]
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So then cite the emails, exclude them and send the rest. What the fuck is the big deal? Chilling? Hyperbole.
If the requester has a problem, they go to court and the judge decides of the Buckley Amendment applies.
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The problem is that it's expensive and time consuming somebody has to go through those emails and determine which ones are subject to disclosure and which ones aren't. The students themselves are not in a position to be able to defend themselves if the determination is made to release them and unless they can charge the person requesting the records for the legal review, it ends up serving as a significant disincentive to engage in free speech practices.
And as has been mentioned already, this is a professor
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Can't even string letters into a word, much less a sentence.
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If you knew that writing a critical blog article would result in all your correspondence being revealed to those you criticized, you'd be less likely to write it, right? That's the chilling effect.
Still, if the Open Records Law really makes every
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So..you mean like the mod system on Slashdot...say something critical and someone mods your comment out of existence.
Better to keep work life and home life separate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Better to keep work life and home life separate (Score:5, Insightful)
Professor Cronon did just that. It's not his personal correspondence that's at stake here.
His problem with the request is twofold:
1. It was clearly done in retaliation for his writing about the American Legislative Exchange Council, since what the request is looking for is information that could be taken out of context to portray him as a left-wing nutcase on the payroll of the unions that are opposing Scott Walker. He's not at all keen on attempts to create a chilling effect on free speech.
2. Much of his professional correspondence is expected to be confidential, such as conversations with students, working with colleagues on peer reviews of not-yet-published material, or work on the boards of professional organizations he belongs to. If he were working for a private company, he'd have confidentiality and trade secret laws to help protect that stuff.
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Really? You're kidding right? Most workplaces want you working not pursuing personal agendas at work. That's not sci-fi but present day. They sure don't want you using company time and equipment to break any laws for your own personal gain (maybe for their gain depending on the company).
Congressional requests (Score:2)
Internally we have many checks and balances on data, computer records, personally identifiable information, etc.
All of those checks and balances are sumarrily bypassed when it's a congressional inquiry. Often I see all the crap checks and balances being bypassed as cutting through unnecessary red tape and have to have some respect for the ability of a congressman to bypass all that crap.
Usually in response to such an inquiry
when will people learn, email ain't private (Score:2)
Eye of the beholder (Score:2)
Why is one instance of a legal request for open records considered bullying and intimidation and the other one not?
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At issue is the question of whether a professor at a publicly-funded research university is a public employee or not. If you consider them public employees then of course this is completely reasonable. If not, however, it's a frightening attempt at censorship that calls back the actions of McCarthyites in successfully campaigning for the illegal removal of tenured faculty in their ridiculous witch-hunt. Those of us in academia tend to see research universities as independent entities under contract to the S
The real impact will be financial (Score:3)
Thank Scientology (Score:4, Interesting)
Email Privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the common mistakes at the heart of the matter:
"they do involve academic work that typically assumes a significant degree of privacy and confidentiality."
It strikes me nearly as tragedy that so many people see email as private and confidential. SMTP is unencrypted, most cloud services (gmail, hotmail, etc) are automatically reading every email that hits them, and I suspect the federal government either already has or soon will kick email out of the ever narrower sphere of "reasonable expectation of privacy" -- leaving it unprotected by the term "unreasonable" in The Fourth.
We (geeks, hackers, etc) did not make it easy enough for the plebs to encrypt their email, and did not make it common practice to do so. Now everybody uses postcards, even for their most intimate communications, and powerful entities get to read whatever they want.
Scarier: Give it a few more years, and I'd wager using encrypted communications will become reasonable cause for search and seizure, or used like removing the battery in a cell phone has been in court cases -- as evidence of foul intent. They won't have taken the freedoms of speech and association, we will have given them away.
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"It strikes me nearly as tragedy that so many people see email as private and confidential."
And one of the common mistakes that technical people seem to make is that they assume that technical issues have anything to do with the law. Email is private and confidential because the law says it is when it covers certain issues. Not because of the technology. Encrypted data is still subject to FOIA requests and court orders.
In any case, I do not understand why anyone thinks that encryption somehow magically m
Just because something's legal ... (Score:2)
... doesn't make it right.
Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin has done an anti-American thing by stifling free speech. No surprise from the state that gave us Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy [wikipedia.org]
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the new 'in' thing for fascists is to use the freedom of information act to obtain emails sent by their critics about them. Apparently, academic freedom seems to be dissolving. I don't understand how the freedom of information act can be used to invade the private transactions of professors, but it has happened several times over the last year or so, and has been entirely perpetrated by the increasingly more rabid conservative undertow in this nation, not all conservatives, but a specific group of highly politically (as opposed to socially or morally) motivated people. I had the displeasure of hearing what conservative talk radio sounds like these days while I was driving through the highly conservative '3-corners' region of Missouri (i.e. Limbaugh's homeland), and it is astoundingly racial charged and disturbingly desperate and angry. These people are truly scary, and we really should keep our eyes peeled (as intelligent and reasonable people) for the horrible emerging attitudes in this country. If you asked an average German citizen about their attitudes on putting Jewish people in ovens in 1938, it is likely they would think you were crazy. And if you asked them what National Socialism meant, they would say it had something to do with purity and sexual abstinence, the words like 'Jew' or 'camp' likely would have never come up. No to compare these people to Nazi's, but it illustrates how quickly the most infamous act of hatred in human history can emerge from the consent of a naive population. I guess, ultimately, I am trying to say, that it is our job as being vigilant and morally informed people to see things like McCarthyism and National Socialism before it becomes a problem.
"Thuggish" - any action not by a liberal? (Score:2)
It's His Personal Blog! (Score:2)
It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the university at all. It's part of a larger website that also belongs to him. I'm not going to post the whois record, but it's available for all to see.
I fail to see what his university has to do with his personal website or his personal emails. By rights, this should go nowhere. If the Republicans somehow succeed, it will be a miscarriage of justice in terms of freedom of speech. Of course Justice has been miscarrying quite a bit lately...
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
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I have mod points and was interested in your comment. Having looked over all the comments and UIDs, I must say you are factually incorrect. At the time of the writing of this post, I only found 1 registered commenter with 3 comments with a UID greater than 2 million.
I am no right wing apologist and believe my comment history will speak for itself.
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D00d! How new are you?
Uh (Score:2)
Oh and hiring people to fly to another state to sit in the capitol building, yell about stuff many know nothing about (because they were hired), and smell up the place by refusing to leave long enough to bathe isn't another "latest tactic?" And this professor titles his post "Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?" So it's okay for him to post "with no ef
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The is just as contemptible as the Democrats trying to reinstitute a so-called "Fairness Doctrine" in order to silence Conservatives so I fail to see the newsworthiness of business-as-usual. Whoever is in power tries to topple whoever isn't.
It is politics which is sleazy and slimy and harmful for those of us just trying to live.
yes and some fanboi always feels a need to say "but the other guys do it too!" anytime a specific party is mentioned.
we get it. you are now vindicated. have been for a long while actually. you can relax now. we know it's not just "your team".
reminds me of the Coast to Coast show last night. that George Noory guy was talking about how much he loves radio. said he doesn't personally like to be on TV. then he felt compelled to add "but no disrespect is intended there for those who like to be on TV". re
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> is that where we're at [as humanity], are we really that childish?
Yes. Pretty much always been this way. A few people manage to grow up and are often the ones involved in public discourse. The Enlightenment was a particularly successful period of time where enough adults got together to come up with some great new ideas.
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"yes and some fanboi always feels a need to say "but the other guys do it too!" anytime a specific party is mentioned."
And whenever someone posts something pointing out the people you agree with do it too, just label them as a partisan "fanboi" and it makes it all okay.
If they really are against you, it helps neutralize their argument in the eyes of those on the fence. If they mostly agree with you, but aren't being sufficiently strident, it may well get them to go back to being more polarized to counter yo
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And whenever someone posts something pointing out the people you agree with do it too, just label them as a partisan "fanboi" and it makes it all okay.
I don't agree with any of them. They're all assholes.
Does that mean I have the right to call any political party supporter a fanboi? After all, I'm not being a hypocrite if I do.....
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OK, that's a fair point.
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Agreed w/ Sibling.
Art really knew how to entertain - in a way that satisfied both the intellectual who enjoyed the funny-as-hell absurdity of it, and the typical trucker/double-wide type of person who took it all in as if it were gospel. It's a rare man who can do that simultaneously.
George is a nice guy and all, but he bored me clean out of listening to the show a very long time ago.
Still miss the opening bump tune occasionally, though :/
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Especially now days, it has become nearly impossible for government to help solve the many difficult social issues in America. No matter which side tries to take a step forward, the other side will tear it down. I'm hopeful that the recent trend towards social entrepreneurship [wikipedia.org] will help us move forward.
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I *don't want* government to try to solve difficult social issues.
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Especially now days, it has become nearly impossible for government to help solve the many difficult social issues in America. No matter which side tries to take a step forward, the other side will tear it down. I'm hopeful that the recent trend towards social entrepreneurship will help us move forward.
I think government has almost no legitimate role in "difficult social issues". First, you can't get agreement on whether these are problems (hence, the weaker label, "issues"). Second, due to conflicts of interest, you can't get a
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be if the Democrats had tried to "reinstitute" the so-called "Fairness Doctrine".
You have any evidence that they "tried" to do this when they were in power?
On the one hand you have the Wisconsin GOP actually doing this repressive open records bullying and on the other hand you have this "trying" you speak of that never happened.
I'm surprised you didn't add "Frst Pst" to your comment.
For the love of god, mod the parent UP! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only people I've ever heard talk about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine are Republicans and their shills. It's especially been a talk radio talking point, and used repeatedly as a scaremongering tactic. I listen to Neal Boortz now and then, and I've heard him constantly harping on how Democrats want to shut down talk radio. The only problem is, I never hear any Democrats actually try to shut down talk radio. It's just a fabrication, another conservative scaremongering tactic just like all the others.
It's simply not true. I'm about as liberal as they come, and I have exactly zero interest in shutting down or changing talk radio. I mean, sure, some liberal out there has probably mentioned the Fairness Doctrine at some point, but I'm pretty liberal myself and I have exactly zero interest in pushing any kind of law to change or shut down talk radio and I don't know of anyone who does. This clatter all probably rose because someone made an offhand comment, and conservatives saw a chance to jump in and try to scare the bejesus out of everyone, thinking that the big, bad liberals are trying to take away the First Amendment or some crap.
I normally don't post "Mod parent UP!" posts, but damn, what a day not to have mod points of my own. :( I'd also mod the OP down. "Insightful?" Politics sometimes being sleazy isn't particularly insightful, and the claim that Democrats tried to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine is an outright lie.
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It's simply not true. I'm about as liberal as they come, and I have exactly zero interest in shutting down or changing talk radio.
If you can't tell the difference between yourself, and them, you're in real trouble. Most of them are simply power hungry. (Most Republicans too, mind you.)
Democrats really did float the Fairness doctrine a few years back, but I don't think they actually tried to legislate it. The Republicans and talk radio got all up in a huff, though. Now bleeding hearts want to rewrite history. The evil nasty fairness doctrine? We didn't bring it up...
WALLACE: So would you revive the fairness doctrine?
FEINSTEIN: Well, I'm looking at it, as a matter of fact, Chris, because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286442,00.html#ixzz1HoR5lXx1
(Yeah, it's fox. It's also a direct quote.)
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Where's the TRIED, fuckwits. (Score:4, Informative)
Only if you also run around claiming that the Republicans have floated a return to the Gold Standard because a Republican in the House talks about it.
When has Obama tried reinstating the FD.
When Speaker Pelosi try to reinstate the FD.
When did Majority Leader Reid try to reinstate the FD.
When have any Democratic-controlled committees tried to reinstate the FD.
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Republicans have yet to figure out how to reach the younger demographic of net users
That's a symptom of the main problem, which is this distressing anti intellectual, anti science attitude that the Republican Party has embraced.
They won't inquire into the facts of matters. They won't listen to anyone who has, preferring instead to make accusations of bias, ulterior motives, corruption, and lack of patriotism when they can't simply ignore the pesky researchers. They shape policy in deliberate ignorance. They act as if science is a big hoax, a diabolically clever machine for manufacturing rationales and manipulating the public. They set up their own institutes to manufacture rationales they like, and think that is science, that they're just doing the same thing that the other guys do. The manipulators among them think Big Tobacco's "Doubt is our product" campaign against the dangers of smoking is a great model to follow, and the idiots are only too happy to embrace the conclusions uncritically. Scary.
In case you think that does not matter, that it all works out, consider the biggest blunder in recent times. I refer to the accusation that Iraq had WMDs. That was the excuse for the Iraq War, and it turned out to be wrong. The costs are more than money, which is itself extremely large, estimated to be at a minimum a staggering $3 trillion. The West lost a lot of credibility, strained a lot of friendships. All that isn't enough to bring us down, nowhere close, but we can't keep making mistakes like that. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of fiscal prudence, but when they were in power, they couldn't abandon fiscal sanity fast enough. This sudden new concern the Republicans have for the budget, after that financial disaster (note that it's far more than the bailout), looks like empty posturing, deserving of the most cynical view possible. Do the Republicans have any principles left, or have they sunk to the party of Greed and Ignorance?
The Democrats, despite their many faults (such as supporting ACTA), have seldom interfered with scientists.
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Yes, all those Democrats in England.
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"Umm, Climategate anyone?"
Yes. In truth, over multiple investigations there has been no evidence of any actual scientific fraud.
It is as if, say, Nixon never ordered any breakin to the DNC, no staffer had any cover up, there was no 'enemies list', and after review of all the recordings (which had no excluded section) the only thing possibly 'scandalous' was frustrations at the Washington Post for lying and distorting everything they said.
"The Democrats have *always* been interfering with science, because a
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The problem most Republican ideas face with the internet is that it has become trivially easy to reply and answer to it. Most ideas Republicans push forwards look really good on paper, as long as you only hear one side of the tale. And that just doesn't work well in a medium that can (and does) transport all viewpoints if you bother to look. And, well, people using the internet can and do look.
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But the GP here said "...the Democrats trying to reinstitute the so-called "Fairness Doctrine""
Let me ask you, jmac_the_man, would it be accurate to say that "The Republicans tried to impeach President Obama"? Now, there have been Republican members of congress mentioning impeachment, saying they're "looking into" impeachment hearings, being in
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If we can go by any time some politician makes a public suggestion or mutters some trial balloon at a public speaking engagement, the Republicans are making efforts to abolish Social Security, invade North Korea, China, Russia (not the former Soviet Union, modern Russia), every single Arab nation, and Venezuela. There have been Republican candidates publicly calling for lynching the entire staff of National Public radio, putting us back on the Gold standard, repealing the 14th amendment, and killing any wom
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If he did blog as a representative of the University that is a risk he runs, but if he did blog as a private person on a separate service with a separate mail account related to the blog it's completely independent of where he is employed. In the latter case the first amendment should apply without constraints.
In the first case the university may fall under cases of being a public institution and then it's possible that the emails sent/received for him are public information but then it's up to the legal of
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Er... The media is supposed to be liberal, isn't it? So the fairness doctrine, rather than silencing conservatives, should ensure they have a voice in the public debate, despite the media's liberal bias.
I remember the post-Vietnam era when "conservative" was a dirty word. Broadcasters, whatever their political position, didn't want to present unpopular positions associated with Vietnam and Watergate, so the only place you heard conservatives was on fairness doctrine mandated segments. I remember a number of local conservative radio personalities that I first heard giving their opinions in one of those times set aside for crackpots under the fairness doctrine. These segments were pretty amateurish affairs; the stations didn't have to help these guys with production values, but these guys learned. The fairness launched some conservative media careers that later proved to be influential.
Having to present opposing opinions doesn't mean you are silenced, unless your position is so weak that merely hearing an opposing viewpoint will obliterate it in your audience's mind. In the old days in which conservatives had to scrape fairness doctrine time to be heard, they didn't get anything like parity in time; they just got a few minutes now and then preceded by a disclaimer that the station had nothing to do with this nut. The fairness doctrine didn't sweep away the editorial power of the stations. It did keep opposition to the public's prevailing political mood alive.
Conservatives have done very well by the fairness doctrine, but now that the shoe is on the other foot they've discovered a whole new set of libertarian principles they didn't have when they needed the fairness doctrine to keep their viewpoint from being silenced.
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Having to present opposing opinions doesn't mean you are silenced, unless your position is so weak that merely hearing an opposing viewpoint will obliterate it in your audience's mind
I believe the concern here is that, instead of just putting more liberal voices on talk radio, they'll cut some of the conservative voices. The same thing happened with Title IX: instead of just creating more female athletic programs, a lot of male athletic programs were cancelled. This sometimes included the best athletic programs that weren't receiving recognition. One of our community colleges had a wrestling program that was ranked nationally, but it was cut because of title IX and it's relative lack of
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That's a bit disingenuous, don't you think? Lumping all conservatives together with a few media broadcasters and politicians who benefited? Really? Some of them may be hypocritical, sure (It'd be nice if you'd named names).
What about those who thought it was a bad idea at the time? What about those of us who weren't around yet? Are there no young conservatives, or do our opinions on the matter not count? What about conservatives that aren't Republican?
Maybe you meant to say something insightful, but
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:4, Insightful)
But conservatives dominate the mass media, so the socalled effort by dems to demand fairness is nothing but more right wing BS
Look at , say, Charlie Rose: as R Nader recently posted on www.commondreams.org, a majority of Rose's guests are right of center corporate spokespeople.
Look at , say, the N Y Times: it acted as a cheerleader in the lies leading up to the Iraq ware (I think lies is an accurate word here)
Look at how, say the leaders of BofAmerica, Goldman or Citi are portrayed in the media: are they protrayed as crimminals, who ran vast fradulent enterprises (yes, crimminally negligent loan practices) or are they portrayed, say by Obama, as people deserving of their salarys ?
The truth is that radical conservatives, backed by a handfull of ultra wealthy people (Kochs, Murdoch) dominate nearly everything in this country except universitys and unions; thats why the right is so bent on destroying tenure and collective bargining - it is the one area that is still outside their control.
And I think "radical conservative" is fair, because, by definition, something that is to the right of what a majority of people in this country think is rightwing; say the union thing in WI; a majority of Americans are opposed; if this were not driven by Koch like money, it would never have got as far as it has
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I think Stalin would consider you a bit too far left.
Yes, Stalin killed a lot of people that tried to stick to the ideals of the Russian Revolution and not to submit to him. Extra points if they had political influence (he killed most of the top members of the CP from the Lenin era.
So, what was your point?
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So says the AC
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it interesting that until the Republican Party starts to use Open Records laws in this way, no one expresses much concern over Democratic Party affiliated groups doing the same thing.
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Here's the thing though, political contributions and signing electoral petitions are inherently public act
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Except that's a nutty conspiracy theory and this actually happened (source: TFA).
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Nobody else is even discussing it's return.
Re:Nothing New Here... (Score:5, Informative)
The FOI is perfectly legal,
Except the cases in which is illegal.
TFA:
Let me offer just a few concrete examples.
A number of the emails caught in the net of Mr. Thompson’s open records request are messages between myself and my students. All thus fall within the purview of the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA, sometimes known as the “Buckley Amendment,” named for its author Senator James Buckley—the brother of conservative intellectual William F. Buckley). The Buckley Amendment makes it illegal for colleges or universities to release student records without the permission of those students, [...]
Many more of the emails that would be released under this open records request are communications with colleagues of mine at other institutions about various matters that have nothing whatsoever to do with Wisconsin politics or the official business of the University of Wisconsin-Madison—but they do involve academic work that typically assumes a significant degree of privacy and confidentiality. [...]The emails include, for instance, conversations with authors and editors about book manuscripts, and also the deliberations of two professional boards on which I sit, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and the American Historical Association (AHA), the latter of which I now serve as President-Elect. Online email exchanges among members of these boards are expected to be confidential, so that all of us are admonished not to share each other’s emails lest doing so discourage colleagues from being candid in sharing their views.
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It wouldn't be "illegal". It just wouldn't apply in the case where communications are protected by other statutes.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370371/Vice-Presidents-staff-lock-journalist-closet-hours-fundraiser-stop-talking-guests.html?ito=feeds-newsxml [dailymail.co.uk]
How are you Obammy apologists going to rationalize this away? If Bush had done this, you all would have been screaming, "ZOMG, shrub = teh Hitler!!!"
Not even Faux News has covered this... and they will cover anything bad.
Remember, if it is on the interwebs, it must be true!
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The daily mail is probably the trashiest of British journalism: sensationalist, scaremongering, simplistic, and not above straightforward making stuff up. See also this song [youtube.com].
Rule 12 of the internet: citing the daily fail as your only source causes you to lose the argument.