My top blogging during May

A similar post is mistitled because it's about April blogging, actually.

No. 1 and 10 are old blogging.

No. 1, perhaps trending because of what I've written about the First Amendment, churches, and quarantine laws (thanks, sincerely, John Roberts) is an old piece about whether or not a college can discriminate against a religious group. It may also be popular because of the old comment, before I had moderation turned on, has links generating hits. I still like the piece, so I won't delete it. Blogger won't let me delete the comment, sadly.

No. 10 has been popular here before. Timothy Treedwell is still dead, and fertilizing Alaskan soil as decayed grizzly shit and still fricking nuts.

No. 2? Joe Biden's Veep nomination is more important than ever since killer cop lover Klobberin Kobuchar refuses to remove herself from consideration, showing what an embarrassment the modern Democratic Party is.

No. 3 is about why Jesse Ventura was chickenshit on seeking (by the back door) the GP presidential nomination. With the Green Party still refusing to supply a PDF of his letter of interest, it shows what an embarrassment the modern Green Party is also becoming.

No. 4, about Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen, has taken off since being reposted on Independent Political Report. It's been extensively updated and expanded and has generated two spinoff posts that will go up later this month.

No. 5? Week 9 of the weekly coronavirus roundup. No. 8? Week 10.

No. 6? That similar post.

No. 7: Another favorite of mine, about how the coronavirus, and the conspiracy theories it's generating, show that the horseshoe theory (at least in the US, with limited political thinking outside the duopoly) might be more true than false. Suck on that, Noah Berlatsky.

No. 9? My latest deconstruction of self-appointed basic income guru Scott Santens. Learn some actual math, dude. And, if you are peddling BI with bad math, stop peddling quasi-libertarian versions, or more accurately, tech-neoliberal versions. This leftist of sorts is tired of it.

Howie Hawkins and the Lavender Caucus of the Green Party

At least Howie didn't call for the National GP to ignore decentralization and expel the Georgia Greens over their not kowtowing to trans activists, in answering the Lavender Caucus questionnaire.

The rest of his answers? Not so good.

And, the questions? Also not always so good.

Per the Lavender Caucus making a snide riff on the generally silly Trolley Problem (which I tweeted to Howie) this is who we deal with.

Question No. 4 is the worst of the lot.

It is like a false flag, because the quoted statement was about reassignment surgery for kids and the LC twisted it to be about such surgery period. Minors IN GENERAL do not have autonomous medical decision making rights.

Howie not only supports the Lavender Caucus' twisting of this, he doubles down on this by referencing his own support of reassignment surgery for minors back in February.

Question 3? I would not support adding more sex categories to the Census.

Question 16? How do you know this, Howie? Besides, what if you're wrong about trying to pack the party? (Of course, this has happened in other state Green Parties on other issues.)

The biggie, though, is Hawkins claiming his stance is science supported.

No, it's not.

Even were you limiting yourself to puberty blocking drugs, it wouldn't be science supported.

Let's start with the Mayo Clinic, which notes that puberty blocking medications should only be used for children who:

• Show a long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria.
• Have gender dysphoria that began or worsened at the start of puberty.

Note that the first stipulation has an AND, not an OR. The dysphoria must be BOTH long-lasting and intense. Note also the second stipulation. Gender dysphoria that starts after puberty should NOT be treated with these medications. And these bullet points, plus two others, including one that says a child who is a candidate for such medications should at the same time be addressing any "psychological, medical or social problems" that could interfere with such treatment.

Second, these medications aren't as safe as trans activists claim. PBS's Frontline has more about possible long-term effects. Any major multiyear hormonal changes on a pre-adult, a child, are almost guaranteed to have some brain effects. Frontline also notes (as of the time of the piece) that use of puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric children is an off-label use.

More here.

“The bottom line is we don’t really know how sex hormones impact any adolescent’s brain development,” Dr. Lisa Simons, a pediatrician at Lurie Children’s, told FRONTLINE. “We know that there’s a lot of brain development between childhood and adulthood, but it’s not clear what’s behind that.” What’s lacking, she said, are specific studies that look at the neurocognitive effects of puberty blockers. The story also notes that there’s health risks behind transitioning hormones, and that these risks may vary based on the age at which they’re started.

Here's another piece about long-term effects for women who received Lupron for other reasons. (Leupron is the main trade name for leuproleptin, the only puberty blocker on the market.) Besides thinning bones, similar problems such as thinning tooth enamal and joint issues are listed.

Meanwhile, the BBC reported last fall that the newest British research study both found some possible mental health side effects and had ethical problems in the study itself. But, many Radically Active Transgenderism Supporters continue to claim that there's basically no problems.

Anyway, it’s a lie to claim there are no risks. 

Beyond that, it's really not necessary.

Without "prods" from reading too much social media or other things, 60-90 percent of gender dysphoric adolescents stay with their birth sex — and come out as gay or lesbian.

The author, Debra Soh says:

Previous research has shown that homosexuality is associated with gender-variant behaviour in childhood. All 11 studies following gender dysphoric children over time show the same finding – if they don't transition, 60 to 90 per cent desist upon reaching puberty and grow up to be gay.

There we go.

Now, is Howie doing this for political issues, since Dario Hunter was at the Georgia GP state meeting and, per the Georgia Green Party's response to Hunter's issuing a call for dialogue between the party and the caucus, it also notes that Hunter was at the Georgia GP state convention and sat silent while the amendment up top was adopted?

A Dialogue Not Expulsion Group has been founded in response to some of these issues. A member of the LC was invited to the Dialogue Not Expulsion Group. He left, and dropped this turd-bomb blog post, even AFTER the LC attacked DNC as a hate group, and didn't call it out for that. So long, Allan; with that, I don't think you'll be that missed by a significant chunk of DNE. 

As for the LC? The laughability quotient that "dark money" would be behind any resistance to it is high; so is the self-importance level.

More laughable? The GPUS has named Mike Gamms, who was essentially "unendorsed" by Erie County Greens and the NYGP, to its national Dispute Resolution Committee, representing the Lavender Caucus.

Unfortunately, the DNE itself shows splits on how it should react to this, to Allen, and to other things. 

That said, I think that's symptomatic of the GP as a whole. I will have more about these issues later.

Texas progressives talk George Floyd, SCOTUS, qualified immunity

No need to apply for a vote-by-mail version of this week's Texas Progressives. But, per the state Supremes' ruling, we'd given you one, if you cited a disability.

Maybe being a member of a non-duopoly party counts?

So, dig in and start reading.



Texas politics

Bud Kennedy wonders how much enthusiasm for November this week's online-only state Democratic convention will juice up, especially following in the national wake of protests in Minneapolis, Atlanta and elsewhere.

Hypocrisy alert! Gov. Strangeabbott, Danny Goeb and Kenny Boy have all voted by mail.

The Trib has more on the Texas Supremes' ruling on vote by mail. AND, if it's anything more than PSAs, why the hell is the Trib taking money from the Texas Secretary of State's office?

Off the Kuff unpacks the convoluted Supreme Court ruling in the state vote by mail lawsuit.

The Texas Signal declares that Ken Paxton is bluffing about vote by mail.

Michael Li analyzes that State Supreme Court decision regarding vote by mail.

Peter Hotze: Leader of the non-elected wing of Texas wingnuts who claim they're fiscal conservatives but whose frivolous lawsuits waste taxpayer money. (Strangeabbott, with his pre-2017 suits against Obama, leads the elected wing.)

Grits hopes the George Floyd killing finally spurs changes in the Austin PD — and the city council that oversees it.

The 14th District Court of Appeals will hear Dikeman v Hughs, 14-19-969CV, on June 23. This is the case on whether minor party members must pay a filing fee if they want to be considered for nomination at a party that uses conventions instead of primaries to nominate.


National — black lives matter vs thuggish cops

SocraticGadfly explains how issues of the duopoly and lesser evilism extend to the Supreme Court, when one looks outside the lens of reproductive choice and sexual choice rights, and especially when one looks through the lens of criminal justice issues and minorities. Namely, that's the "qualified immunity" doctrine.

The GP's National Black Caucus speaks about George Floyd.

DosCentavos implores local leaders to change law enforcement culture after the murder of George Floyd and others killed in recent weeks . 

Milton "Big Pokey" Powell, a friend of George Floyd's, calls for police to be held truly accountable when they commit violence against civilians.

Gadfly also had a roundup of Floyd-related news and legal thoughts, including how Democrat Supreme Court justices support qualified immunity about as much as conservatives.


National — other

Gullible cities are pissed that airlines are cutting services, after either vague promises or, even worse, cities being suckers on their own. NOBODY put a gun to the head of Williston, North Dakota, and told it to build a new, $275M airport. A lot of people with brains could have told it not to be too dependent on the fracking boom.

Just after announcing that he was running for Congress as a Green, Chris Hedges is back out. He says he was told by the FEC he'd have to drop his TV show. Somehow, that itself doesn't sound quite right. It's not that it's a national TV show, I think, as the "Fairness Doctrine" no longer exists. Rather, it's that he's got a Jesse Ventura problem and his show is hosted by RT. "Interesting" that he didn't think about that in advance after Jesse's politicus interruptus was all over the Green Party news world.


World

Income inequality is not just an American thing. Witness Geneva. Like many rich American cities, it has a big underclass, and like them, many of its members are Ill Eagles.

Trump is getting rebuked internationally both on his attempt to unilaterally expand the G7 and his attempt to have it meet in person after all at its next scheduled gathering, of which Merika is supposed to be the host.

Britain was eyeing a British-controlled, Jewish-dominated Palestine 50 years before WWI and the Balfour Declaration and decades before Zionism had landed big on the European radar screen.


Non-political

Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding the origins of human speech. Chimpanzee and gorilla "lip-smacks" have been shown to occur at the same rate of speed as human speech vocalizations. Again, evolution is the Great Bootstrapper.

Desperately seeking Marlin

Man, IMO, you really have to be desperate to be leaving an assistant superintendent position in a decently good sweet Dallas suburban location like Cedar Hill to try to pull the hellhole called Marlin ISD out of the gutter and away from the TEA gunsights.

But that's exactly what Darryl Henson is doing. Marlin ISD board of managers appointed Dr. Darryl Henson as the district's superintendent on May 20. He will take over for interim Superintendent Jean Bahney who filled the position after Michael Seabolt resigned in August 2019.

Almost totally an urban background guy.

Here's his CHISD bio, with link:

Assistant Superintendent of School Leadership Dr. Darryl J. Henson is a native of Houston and has served Cedar Hill ISD since 2018. As assistant superintendent of school leadership, he supervises, supports and coaches principals and assistant principals. He is also currently serving as a co-principal to the Ninth Grade Center.

Prior to his appointment in Cedar Hill ISD, Dr. Henson served as the principal of North Forest High School in Houston Independent School District, principal of Parkland High School in the Ysleta Independent School District. He was also a classroom teacher, coach, and principal in the Austin, Houston, and El Paso regions.

During his tenures at North Forest and Parkland high schools, both campuses experienced unprecedented gains on state assessment results, increased enrollment, and reinvigorated senses of school spirit and community pride. Under Henson’s leadership, Parkland High School earned all seven Distinction designations from the Texas Education Agency - only 1.9% of Texas schools earn this accolade. Additionally, North Forest High School earned the highest student progress measure of all Achieve 180 campuses in the Houston ISD during the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey under Dr. Henson’s leadership.

Throughout the years, Dr. Henson has been regarded for his passion and vibrant personality as he has built lasting relationships with students and communities across Texas. Dr. Henson firmly believes that culture, curriculum, and community are the pillars of establishing and maintaining a thriving school system.

Dr. Henson earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from The University of Texas at Austin, a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Houston.

George Floyd, SCOTUS and Wall Street: the ties that kill

Last week, I looked at how issues of the duopoly and lesser evilism extend to the Supreme Court, when one looks outside the lens of reproductive choice and sexual choice rights, and especially when one looks through the lens of criminal justice issues and minorities. Namely, that's the "qualified immunity" doctrine, which the Supreme Court has taken a pass on revising since it was instituted in 1982, as USA Today explains.

The court then had two definite liberals, Marshall and Bill Brennan. Harry Blackmun had by that time become a moderate liberal. Stevens was a moderate conservative. (He later became a moderate but never was a liberal, myth aside.) Powell and White were all definite conservatives, but not Rehnquist-type wingnut. Burger was a pompous conservative squish.  O'Connor was new, a conservative, but not Rehnquist.

Know what the vote was in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the 1982 determinative case? 8-1. Burger the one dissent.

Per Wiki's page on qualified immunity, the eight justices, many of whom would go on two years later to bend backward for cops on the first phases of good-faith exceptions to the exclusionary rule, now said it would be unfair for them and others to go on trial to distinguish a state of mind when they were acting.  Wiki's page is good at bottom in noting an attorney defending a killer cop will always claim there isn't an EXACT precedent, and that qualified immunity has no obvious root in common law.

Remember, it only takes four judges to grant cert. So, unless four librulz were highly worried that they'd spoil future cases on qualified immunity by granting cert to a less than perfect case, they're full of shit. That's doubly true since Clarence Thomas, saying it has no constitutional grounding, wants to toss it entirely. Now, the librulz might have to do some heavy negotiating with him to, per Bill Brennan, count to five. But, if such a possibility looks realistic, you might rope in Roberts as well.

That backstory leads to everything else of the last 10 days, looping in Christian Cooper as a little pre-igniter for George Floyd.

The GP's National Black Caucus speaks about George Floyd.

DosCentavos implores local leaders to change law enforcement culture after the murder of George Floyd and others killed in recent weeks . 

Cops pepper-spraying black members of Congress ... we need some lawsuits, heavy ones. And, we need to force SCOTUS to revisit the issue of immunity.

Cops firing on the media. More here. And here, noting that we're up to at least 110 such attacks. Contra breathlessness from places like The Atlantic, this might be new for 2020 vs 1968. And, it's clearly deliberate. Like other "all things Trump," it's been there for years in its current form, since the worst of the anti-"Occupy Wall Street" police violence. It's just that the 2016 election gave new "permission" for this, removing dogwhistles.

The militarization of police (NOT generally condemned by the NYT when it started) is probably part of the problem. (That includes, in the story, re Grits, thuggish cops in Austin and Seattle.)

Grits has a new roundup related to this. On qualified immunity, he says nothing is stopping state legislators from abolishing it and, if cops want to fight, setting up a straight-on test case, presumably.

That said, per friend Northier, let's not forget that, as in 1968, agents provacateurs have shown up at some sites. That's NOT to engage in "he said, she said" journalism as the Old Gray Lady does above. Legitimate protestors are certainly the majority. But, it's again, a reminder that I'm not a fan of anarchism in general or anarcho-greens within the Green Party.

Thus, if there is worth in a "financial lynching of Wall Street," it would need to be targeted, specific, and with the hope and intent of forcing change, not just looting for looting's sake. If it targets Wall Street, it needs to target Wall Street. If it's the police, it needs to target banks that still redline loans, creating suburbs of white enclaves, and then needs to target war-machine companies profiting from police militarization. Let's also remember that courts have let redlining off with hand-slaps, and that, as with other white-collar crime, even "librul" Departments of Justice have settled cases regularly with only fines, no time.

Being a black reporter, between new rounds of police brutality, COVID race and class disparity, and neoliberal newsrooms, is tiring.

Texas Progressives: Coronavirus, week 12

Not quite yet on stopping the bifurcated Texas Progressives roundup, as we still don't know how well, or poorly, Gov. Strangeabbott's rushed "reopening" will go and other things even as Strangeabbott plays Overton Window with some of this. Among what we do know about COVID is that it's 4x as fatal or more as "just the flu."


Metromess

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins dishes to the Texas Observer about COVID, battling Strangeabbott, etc. He makes Strangeabbott's Stay Safe Business designation sound twice as silly as FDR's Blue Eagle from the NRA. (Not THAT NRA.)  Too bad there's no dish on his recent battling with Our Man Downtown, John Wiley Price.


Texas

The COVID layoff world is hitting smaller food banks especially hard.

Strangeabbott did a Friday night news dump on sports. After originally saying that pro sports could open, but fanless, on Monday, June 1, on Friday, May 22, he changed that to 25 percent fans and Friday, May 29, for the start date. And dumped the announcement without heralding it.

El Paso County said it wasn't sure it was ready — psychologically as much as anything — to go to Strangebbott's next phase of "reopening," even after he granted a one-week delay. The city's mayor was more OK, and it doesn't matter, because "states rights, but not local rights" Strangeabbott said "tough shit."

The Panhandle remains the state's hot spot, primarily because of unsanitary meatpackers. And that leads us to ...


National

Just as COVID hit meatpackers a month or so ago with a vengeance, it's now hitting fruit and vegetable truck farming with a vengeance, whose harvesting is also largely done by immigrants. Workers who do test sick are quarantined without pay, which means they'll resist being tested. Also, let's not forget the word "migrant" that usually occurs before "farm workers." As they get sick, they will spread it.

Just when I thought Ted Rall couldn't get more self-centered, he does.

World

Privilege with COVID is not just an American thing. To give you a nickel translation of this Spanish newspaper piece, a Belgian prince went to Cordoba, Spain, violated social distancing, held a party celebrating that ... and schadenfreude is a bitch because he got it.

How coronavirus has affected the world's economy, in a series of charts.

Some British scientists, like some American ones at this time, are political toadies.

Canada has botched its COVID response, almost as badly as the US. And, a fair chunk of it, argues MacLean's, is the personal fault of Justin Trudeau. The opinion piece essentially argues that he's acting like the quintessential neoliberal Liberal Party leader that he is. If only Tom Mulcair hadn't wrecked the NDP. And Jagmeet Singh proved inept at reviving it.


Week 1 is here and week 2 is here. Week 3 is here and week 4, here. Week 5 is here. Ditto for Week 6. Here's Week 7. And, looking past this? Weeks 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. And, after a three-week hiatus, but necessitated, week 14.

Ted Rall outdoes himself on coronavirus Update: And now, on police brutality

Just when I thought Ted Rall couldn't get more self-centered, in his oft-whiny way, he does, claiming he had COVID way back last November. You didn't, Ted, and stop your specious "reasoning."

That said, here's one "good" example of that.

If I were an animal, and had never heard of science, and had memory and self-awareness, I would know—know with the same certainty that I know I am typing this column—that I had COVID-19 and that I should probably worry about something else more than the possibility that I might get it again.

Erm, wrong!

If you were a non-human animal, you would not know of the existence of viruses, of a science field called biology and thus of the existence of coronaviruses.

If you were a non-human animal, you would not, because of the lack of writing, have an item called a calendar.

Ergo, you wouldn't know you had COVID in 2019 at all, because both concepts would not be known to you.

And newspapers still pay Rall for this New York Times op-ed page level of drivel? Well, the NYT pays its own columnists for similar drivel.

Oh, Ted? This piece you linked to, to argue against? It's spot on. Our human intuition is quite fallible. Behavioral psychology, among its other findings, will also tell you that.

And, the COVID facts on the ground? No confirmed cases in the US before February. The first case confirmed in CHINA wasn't until the second half of November of last year.

==

Update, June 2: Ted re-outdid himself. He personalized the police brutality and protests against it by noting that the L.A. Times that fired him long ago alleged has the LAPD as its largest owner both way back in 2001 when he allegedly had the LAPD verschnizzle him, and now.

And actually, this is an outright lie, from all I know, as far as the "now."

L.A. Times parent Tribune went private in 2007 under Sam Zell, although eventually going public again. Current LA Times owner Patrick Shoon-Siong made the company private under his Nant Capital.

As for long ago? I highly doubt that, to be precise, the pension fund for the LAPD would be so much Times-Mirror stock as to be its primary investor. It clearly isn't now.

So, even if the LAPD pension fund DID at one time have "a share" in the Times, it wasn't "the owner." And, given it was taken private before it went public and now is private again, if there is a share, it's surely tiny.

Update, June 8: In a whiny follow-up column, Rall actually provides a URL, a link! Welcome to the 21st century, Ted. Of course, it's to an old column of his on Counterpunch. He's got a link from there, but it's dead.

Nonetheless, let me quote his CP column in the graf where the link is.

Nowadays the $18.4 billion LAPPL pension fund is managed by Oaktree Capital. Oaktree is the single largest stockholder of Tribune Publishing, parent company of the Los Angeles Times.

Yeah, and? Oaktree might have had 1/10 of 1 percent of LAPPL's investments. Ted, with a dead link to what appears to have been a personal URL, still has no information about what percent of Tribune the LAPPL owned, just that Oaktree was, corporately, the largest investor. And, yeah and No. 2? So what?

More importantly, Frederick Theodore Rall admitted his earlier column was lying about the “now” noted in conjunction with it:

The LAPD has since divested itself of its Tribune stock. The Times’ current owner, Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong, should pledge not to enter into financial partnerships with law enforcement agencies.

So, it’s not an owner of the LA Times now. Ted just admitted that. Now, in the version of his column currently online (would he have changed it? who knows?) he isn't explicit about that.

I will add a so what No. 3. It's legal for ANY pension fund, AFAIK, to own ANY newspaper. Look at CNHI, owned by the Alabama state retirement system. (That's why CNHI never declared bankruptcy in the Great Recession; pension obligations made that too difficult.)  And, for all of Theodore's talk about "the media," his ignorance of this shows that "the media" in his mind = "Frederick Theodore Rall III."

And, reiterating what I wrote on my first update, I have no more desire nor need to chase a sociopathic rabbit down its holes.

Trump: Partially right on social media for wrong reasons

President Trump's now-announced executive order saying that social media platforms should be treated like publishers under terms of the 1996 Communications Decency Act was reportedly in the works for months, waiting for an excuse. That Daily Bees story is also worth reading for the holier-than-thou hypocrisy of Hucksterman and his minions. If tRump had a Facebook account, Zuckster the Huckster would treat him with the same kid gloves as Jack.

The Bees, though, failed to note what Tech Dirt DID: Not only can tRump not rewrite law, not only can he not replace the federal court system and its jurisprudence, even in the areas where an executive order might carry weight, this one is nugatory and meaningless.

The reality, as an Australian state-level supreme court ruled recently with Google, is that these folks ARE publishers. But publishers have biases all the time. Let's stop pretending otherwise. But, if Jack Dorkey's going to be a hypocrite, you and I can jump off, whether permanently or selectly. (My current plan is to stay off Twitter for a couple of weeks, and then get on just enough to reactivate my primary account, then likely deactivate again and lather, rinse, repeat.)

As for federal law? MUCH of the 1996 Communications Decency Act is flawed and needs overhauling, not just Section 230. Some of it's bad in civil libertarian terms. Some of it's bad in neoliberal capitalism terms, like Section 230.

Specifically, subsection (c)(1) needs to be overhauled. But (c)(2), which is the target of Trump's ire, is OK in my book. Non-Internet publishers do this all the time, and not just with profanity. If wingnuts don't like Twitter, they can go to Gab. Unfortunately, left-liberals and beyond have failed to start any alternatives that I know of, and general social media alternatives? MeWe is OK and easy to use, but more tumbleweeded than Google+. Mastodon struck me as being as clunky as a mastodon. Ello became a British MySpace.

Since Al Franken et al struck out on Air America, a specifically left-liberal and beyond (or even "pergressuve") major effort in Gnu Media just hasn't happened.

Now, what would it mean legally to reject (1) but not (2)?

Per that Aussie case, first of all, it would mean hiring more humans, and paying them better, to clean their Augean stables.

Second, it would force more governments to establish a formal complaint process for notification of these companies, with civil liability if they fail to haul down material without establishing good cause otherwise. As of now, the Good Samaritan clause leaves them non-liable in the US even after such a notification. And that's the crux of the issue — inadvertent initial acceptance of uploaded material on social media sites, or inadvertent search returns on news aggregators, versus willful retention of such material after notification. In essence, because companies hire people to look for offensive material, they are using publication standards.

Third, while it wouldn't put the "old mugshots, old records" people out of business, they'd be living a more marginal live than robodial phone callers.

Fourth, in the case of Google and some search engines, it would likely increase civil liability in some narrow ways on paid search results, to a similar degree of conventional media and advertisers, per the last part of my "second" paragraph.

Fifth, it might lead Google and other search engines to proactively block more search results. That would increase the so-called "dark web," but again, print versions of that, and some pirate radio versions, existed before the Internet. I mean, the average American couldn't find snuff films (to the degree any actually existed and the whole idea wasn't just urban legend) 30 years ago.

In other words, the situation re Section 230 as a whole is more nuanced than the likes of EFF claim. The reality is that Congress could nuance both it and other areas of the CDA that need it without running afoul of either the original or later First Amendment worries.

Counter-commenters might cite, oh, the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Yeah, but that appeared in traditional media, and Seth's relatives sued Fox and Washington Times. A district court tossed the case, but an appeals court — rightly, IMO — reinstated it.

==

Update, June 11: Ars Technica has a long discussion of Section 230 and possible options. Ben Wittes' "reasonableness exceptions" at the bottom of the piece is exactly what I would support.