It’s always about money | When personal protected freedoms continue to disappear. When folks want to re-write the Constitution and the Amendments, TODAY, it’s about money. Here, too, it’s about the money: “A new proposed law would turn drone journalism into a swarm of lawsuits and make it easy to sue over news photography.”– Nieman Lab

So is it with this case | “Judge: App User Not Entitled to Anonymity in Rally Case” Columbia news, views & reviews is not a fan of “anonymous” comments nor “online terrorism.” In the above article, the Judge wants the media resource to provide information about the user because the person allegedly “anonymously chatted online about plans for last summer’s deadly white nationalist rally.” 

Columbia news, views & reviews, though, fully supports The First Amendment which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Onerous as it is for us to say this, we believe the “U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero’s 28-page order (that) says the woman’s First Amendment rights to anonymous speech don’t outweigh the importance of disclosing her identity to plaintiffs’ attorneys suing over the rally’s violence” is wrong.

A few days ago we carried this post about the council in Middletown:

Bw-a-a-h-h, I’m taking my ball and going home | In Middletown, the elected public servants didn’t like the news coverage it felt it was getting from the local newspaper, The Press & Journal, so it decided to punish local journalism.

Here’s another case in which a government is intimidating and trying to control what a reporter says about a government entity —sure it’s another country, but still alarming. “Local Democracy Reporter dismissed one month into BBC-funded role after ‘council complaint’ over his appointment.” – The Press Gazette, London

The highway to despotism, the model revered by POTUS — see China, Turkey, Egypt et al — is regularly reinforced in the moronic tweets.