Washington watch: Weaponization Exposed
“Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. history,” cheers Jonathan Turley at The Hill. This week, “a new House select subcommittee will hold its first hearing on the FBI and the possible ‘weaponization’ of government agencies.” “The ‘Twitter files’ revealed an FBI operation to monitor and censor social media content — an effort so overwhelming and intrusive that Twitter staff at one point complained internally that ‘they are probing and pushing everywhere.’” And not just the FBI: “Emails reveal FBI figures” asked Twitter execs to invite the CIA — “an agency under strict limits regarding domestic activities” — to a meeting. “For years, many politicians and pundits have dismissed free-speech concerns by noting that the First Amendment only applies to the government.” But “this is a First Amendment violation”: “censorship by surrogate.” “Just as a police officer cannot direct a security guard to break into an apartment and conduct a search, the FBI cannot use Twitter to censor Americans.”
COVID desk: ‘Experts’ Must Admit They Were Wrong
“I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities,” recalls Kevin Bass at Newsweek, “when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters.” But “I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.” We repeatedly “overstated the evidence and misled the public” on “natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young.” And “amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.” For “public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during the pandemic.”