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New Employment Discrimination Laws Would Nullify Online Defamation

PostAlmostAnything.com — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 22:48:37 -07:00

Have you ever worried about a current or potential employer using the internet to research you? If you've ever applied for a job in the digital age you probably have, especially if anyone has ever written anything negative about you that can be found using search engines. Search engines can be gold mines of information whether it is true, false, relevant, or irrelevant because there are no laws on the books that prevent an employer from discriminating against current or potential employees based on what they find. New legislation could restrict the use of search engines and the internet as a whole in the hiring process using approaches consistent with existing legislation that has restricted the use of irrelevant information from other sources. The Problem We are going to focus on three types of content which typically result in websites being wrongfully blamed for bad hiring and firing decisions. That content comes from mugshot sites, complaints sites, and the mainstream press. Mugshot Sites Despite a slew of new legislation restricting the use of criminal background checks in the employment screening process, none of those laws restrict the ability of an employer to make decisions based on search engine results from mugshot websites. As a result, people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars per mugshot to remove them. This impacted millions of people in the United States alone which led to a slew of unconstitutional legislation aimed at restricting the use of mugshots and the ability to charge removal fees. Such laws are new and it appears mugshot sites are complying with them rather than launch constitutional challenges for the most part. We are not going to spend too much time on the unconstitutionality of the state forcing people to engage in speech against their will (ex: updating an arrest record or removing a mugshot for free) or banning them from exercising free speech out of fear of being fined if they refuse to retract the speech later (ex: https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/lawyer-says-florida-mug-shot-law-unconstitutional/77-e01adc94-61d7-4a78-b21e-2e059c22e848). We do know that the best argument states can make to justify restricting mugshot publication is based on the mugshots themselves originating from public records and using that origin to exert jurisdiction over the use of public records. For example, Ohio criminalized charging fees to remove or update arrest records by categorizing it as misuse of a public record (https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2927.22) and some states have banned law enforcement agencies from releasing them. Another option that has been thrown around would involve the government to file copyright claims against mugshot sites. Even if mugshot removal fee prohibitions survive First Amendment challenges long term, they do nothing to prevent someone in another country from creating a mugshot site and charging removal fees. The United States government has zero authority over computers in other countries. This is something we've found useful in the past when operating a website in violation of a federal court order. In that case our founder was held in federal custody on a charge of violating a condition of supervised release in an unrelated matter and the judge ordered him to stop running his website from jail as a condition of his detention. The judge was upset over the site being used to post home addresses of law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges, as well as our founder threatening to do the same thing to anyone that wrote him up for violating jail rules. He simply ignored the judge and continued operating as usual while the government was powerless to take the site down due to it being hosted in foreign country. If mugshot removal laws survive American courts they will only create new opportunities for foreign web developers and domestic developers willing to break them. Google has taken steps to suppress mugshot websites despite the damage it does to their core product. It is hard to think of a more useful and relevant result for someone researching a person than an accurate arrest record. Google claims their mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Any decision by Google to suppress information they deem "too useful" harms the overall user experience and drives users to other search engines (ex: https://vocal.media/01/how-bing-became-the-premier-background-check-search-engine). Google suppression has also been found to be circumventable. Complaints Sites Complaints websites have been in the news and targeted by Google lately for reasons similar to mugshot sites. They contain information that hiring managers find too useful, but unlike mugshots the complaints are often found to contain false accusations. Unlike mugshot sites which provide employers with a way to get around background check restrictions, complaints sites open up a new arena where any accusation no matter how baseless can come into play. This leads people to blame complaints sites for costing them jobs based on lies, but the real people to blame are those responsible for making hiring and firing decisions. We cannot think of a more incompetent way to vet applicants than going Bing or Google, searching a name, and acting solely on what is found. Right now people are trying to find ways to silence complaints sites, but their efforts face more hurdles than mugshots do. The government cannot claim a nexus to content creation with complaints sites like they can with mugshot sites. That means that they cannot ban complaints sites from charging removal fees by calling the practice misuse of public records. They also cannot regulate the dissemination of information from the source because they cannot control private citizens the same way they can control the ability of law enforcement agencies to release mugshots. They also cannot require complaints sites to remove content upon request like they can with mugshot sites because there is no public nexus. If a state were to enact a law prohibiting any complaints website from charging a fee to remove content for any reason it would clearly violate the First Amendment. It would constitute a form of forced speech in which people could no longer condition their engagement in optional speech (removing content) by being compensated for their work. It would be like telling a public speaker that they couldn't charge a fee for giving a speech. Even if a speech is being given to correct errors made in a prior speech, the speaker can still charge a fee. When a website operator chooses to remove content they are engaging in a form of protected speech. Everyone has the right to condition future speech on being paid. Requiring website operators to remove or correct user generated content within a specific time frame or face a fine would also be unconstitutional. Such a law would constitute a form of prior restraint which would likely cause website operators to abstain from engaging in protected speech (ex: allowing users to post or using automated means to share user generated content) out of fear of being fined or suffering hefty judgments against them if they didn't have time to respond to complaints within the time frames. It would also cement the near monopoly big tech has over social media. Companies that can afford to hire armies of moderators would remain in business while small ones unable to hire moderators would be forced to choose between bankruptcy and willful non-compliance. We would of course choose the latter, but most others are run by lames too terrified of the government to resist them at all. People keep suggesting that amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would force website operators to stop charging fees to cover moderation expenses and/or force them to take unverified accusations down quickly. Section 230 provides a legal shield which keeps courts from being able to treat online platforms as the speaker for content created by others. Proponents of Section 230 destruction claim that the platforms would then be responsible as the speaker, but they fail to consider the First Amendment right speakers have to quote other people accurately. If a journalist goes on TV and quotes another person accurately they are not at fault if that quote contains false information. If Section 230 were repealed it wouldn't likely cripple complaints sites as long as they have a disclaimer clearly stating that statements made by third parties are nothing more than the accurate quotation of third parties whose statements should not be believed without further investigation. For instance, if Section 230 did not exist and we were sued for libel based on a user's false statement, we would defend it as being the accurate quotation of a third party with notice that it might not be accurate. Section 230 was passed to enable sites to moderate content without having to worry about being treated like an author after some internet companies decided not to moderate content at all to avoid being held liable for moderation decisions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.). When restrictions were placed on mugshot removal fees many mugshot operators stopped removing anything at all. The same happened the last time our founder was in jail. If a court refuses to uphold our rights again we will not legitimize that court with our cooperation. We will refuse to remove anything, refuse to pay any judgement, and refuse to pay contempt fines. We will utilize a network of offshore bank accounts to render judgements and fines uncollectable while at the same time utilize a network of offshore servers to make it impossible for the government with the full support of its courts to render them inoperable. Since our trial run involved our founder operating a website from a jail cell, we are confident in our claim that the government is powerless to stop us without our cooperation. We are willing to offer our cooperation in some cases such as content we believe contain claims which have been proven false, but other than that we will uphold the right of our users to exercise their First Amendment rights without being censored every time they cannot prove their claims. The internet is not a court of law, there is no burden on an accuser beyond claiming that they're telling the truth, and the state could never require that online authors meet a burden without violating the First Amendment. Likewise placing a burden on service providers to require users to prove claims would also violate the First Amendment. In the event that state actor violates their oath to uphold the Constitution we are prepared to deny them the fruits of their efforts while we wait for the courts to correct the error. If that must be done from a jail cell then nobody will be able to remove anything at all. Since it is clearly not possible to shut us down without violating the Constitution, we are prepared to operate if those charged with upholding the Constitution violate their oath, and make life difficult for those in government that violate their oath, trying to use the legislature to our detriment is not a good idea for anyone. An better solution must be found. Fake News There is a lot of real news out there (ex: sports and weather), but the types of news that impacts hiring decisions is mostly fake. News about crime, politics, or even business is almost always biased one way or the other. Crime stories which almost always have a negative impact for people arrested down the road are almost always completely one sided. The news will base their initial coverage based entirely on statements made by police officers and prosecutors. They are nice enough to cite their sources with phrases like "according to officers" or "prosecutors allege" but that does not stop people from forming conclusions based on it. In every criminal proceeding the government says one thing, the defense says another, and 99% of the time the truth is somewhere in between. You wouldn't know that from reading the news. Usually the news covers an arrest and never covers the case again. There might be coverage of a trial or a sentencing that includes both sides, but even then it is so favorable to the government that you are always guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of the media. Government websites add to the problem by issuing press releases which people think are credible because the mainstream press and search engines treat them as the most credible sources of information on the internet despite almost always being bias with false information. Politics takes things to a whole new level with the so called "truth" being a reflection of whatever ideology the outlet plays to most. For instance, when Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people in self-defense in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year you wouldn't know it by watching CNN because CNN was quick to call him a domestic terrorist and throw up smoke screens to keep people from realizing that he was running for his life. Fox News of course was quick to support the truth in that case because it favored conservatives, but when the shoe is on the other foot they are quick to paint leftist as terrorists. The same is true for the rest of the mainstream press. When it comes to business there are often a lot of positive stories which can be good for peoples' professional careers, but they are often biased as well because professionals often put out positive press releases about themselves. If a positive press release is picked up as a story with little or in some cases no fact checking then the author of the release often reaps the benefit of his own manufacture positivity. Those that make hiring or firing decisions based on misleading positive stories can be just as likely to make the wrong decision as the ones basing it on negative stories. That is why we almost always recommend press release marketing campaigns to our reputation management clients. The mainstream press supposedly holds themselves to the highest standards when it comes to fact checking, but they still screw up so often that they cannot be relied on. If you can't even trust the mainstream media to give you accurate information then why should you believe anything your read on the internet at all? The Solution The solution is to regulate what goes on at the other end of the connection when that other end is in the United States. If any person in the United States is making a hiring or firing decision they should not be allowed to discriminate based on internet searches. If they make an adverse decision based on an internet search they should be fined and exposed to tort liability for unlawful discrimination. The penalties and mechanisms for relief should be the same as they are for other types discrimination. Doing such a thing would be consistent with recent discrimination laws targeting other types of information and such things would be more enforceable than censorship. The federal government as well as most states have restrictions on when an employer can conduct a background check and how the results of that check can be used. Unfortunately, employers can often learn the same types of things and more using internet searches. According to NOLO: "The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) applies whenever an employer hires a third party to run a background check on a job applicant. Among other things, the employer must obtain the applicant's written consent and provide written notice if it plans on rejecting the applicant based on the contents of the report. However, if applicants refuse to consent to the background check, the employer can take them out of the running for the job." - https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/washington-laws-employer-use-arrest-conviction-records.html Unfortunately, the FCRA does not apply to employers using the internet to conduct background checks themselves. It also does not require written permission from the applicant before an online search can be conducted and the employer never has to tell the applicant in writing why they didn't get the job. If the FCRA were expanded to include background checks conducted by employers themselves and online searches that by itself would decrease the number of people denied employment due to negative online articles. Asking for permission to do an online search would give people the opportunity to explain what the employer is likely to find and that opportunity would likely result in employers learning that negative articles are unverified. On top of that many employers would not want to make themselves look incompetent by putting in writing that the reason they didn't hire somebody was because of an unverified article. Expanding the FCRA would not be good enough, but some states have laws that could serve as a road map for banning employment decisions based on online searches entirely. In the state of Washington it is unlawful of an employer to ask an applicant if they have a criminal record unless they are otherwise qualified for the job. The city of Seattle goes a step further by requiring that employers "have a legitimate business reason to deny a job based on a conviction record" and "Requires an opportunity for an applicant or employee to explain or correct criminal history information." (https://www.seattle.gov/laborstandards/ordinances/fair-chance-employment). The next logical step to ensure that hiring practices remain fair is to treat online background check no different than criminal background check. There would of course remain the risk of employers disregarding the law, do online searches anyway, and move on to the next applicant without explanation or just make up some legitimate sounding reason to deny someone a job. Conclusion The full weight of Congress and the rest of the government could not succeed at censoring the internet no matter what laws they pass or how they enforce them. The Constitution strictly prohibits almost every form of censorship and even if the government were to find a way around that the international nature of the internet only creates opportunities for others in cases of insufficient free speech protection in America. The best way to protect Americans from being discriminated against in the hiring process based on false information found online would be to ban employers from making hiring or firing decisions based on internet searches.
Learn more: New Employment Discrimination Laws Would Nullify Online Defamation

Is Oregon Public Broadcasting Lying About Oregon LEO Oath Keepers?

PostAlmostAnything.com — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 14:54:43 -07:00

We noticed an article which claims that a data dump of Oath Keepers' data implicated dozens of Oregon law enforcement officers as members of the group. However, we downloaded that same data and have yet to find a single match for anyone with the same last name as the three in the OPB article we chose to look for. We had to limit our search to a small number of files however because the people responsible for the leak didn't organize the data at all. The data includes files with names like "or" and "wa" which we believe correspond to the states Oregon and Washington. We downloaded SeaMonkey software because it supposedly opens .SBD files well, but honestly we didn't find any search functionality in SeaMonkey that doesn't already exist in NotePad. On top of that SeaMonkey typically takes several minutes just to search one file and is not responsive during most of that time. Neither file we searched contain the names Webber, Farrell, or Codiga yet according to OPB they are all Oath Keepers. We are not saying that OPB is lying, but we are frustrated that they have not done anything to help objective third parties verify their claims. It seems to us that they could back up their claims simply by posting a link to the data dump and describing which file or files in that dump contain the names. The dump itself is 5 GB in size and contains 100 different files. The hacking group Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOS) has done little to help clear up this matter. If they are going to release data in such a disorganized manner they should at least tell people how to efficiently search the files. Preferably DDOS should insert all files into a database so that all users need to do to search it is type in a word. This data dump is a nightmare.
Learn more: Is Oregon Public Broadcasting Lying About Oregon LEO Oath Keepers?

Creston Post Office Putting Mail in Wrong Post Office Boxes

PostAlmostAnything.com — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 21:44:51 -07:00

I've had a post office box at the Creston Post Office in Portland, Oregon off and on since 2008. During that time period I can't count how many times I've found mail addressed to other post office boxes in my box. I try to get there once a month and when I do there is almost always mail addressed to a different box in my box. Usually I just hand the mail to someone behind the counter and tell them to put it in the right box, but sometimes I don't look at it until after I leave the post office. Today was one of those days, but instead of turning around and going back I decided to do something different. I decided to take the mail home with me so that I could scan it and upload the images as proof that you can't trust this post office to deliver mail to the right place. The first item I scanned was a copy of the Northwest Labor Press which is bi-monthly newspaper that people can subscribe to for $15 a year. It was addressed to a box number which varies from mine by one digit. Obviously some employee was sloppy and probably in a hurry. Being off by one digit can be an understandable mistake for something as unimportant as a cheap newspaper, but this post office does this stuff so often that it really is inexcusable. The second item I scanned was an AARP Bulletin which is a free monthly magazine for AARP members. It was addressed to another box number which also varies from mine by one digit, but in a different way. These two were just from the past month. Most months I find at least one piece of mail addressed to a different box. Usually it is just harmless newsletters, newspapers, magazines, or junk mail, but I also get what appears to be important business mail sometimes. I am not stealing these two items. I intend to take them back to the post office next time I go there and give them to someone behind the counter. I'm just taking a little longer than usual to expose the problem. If you are the rightful owner of either of these items I apologize for the inconvenience and I hope that you consider exposing this problem important enough to go without your reading material for a little while. I thought about marking them as undeliverable, but that would result in them being sent back to where they came from. I also thought about putting them in a mailbox closer to my home, but I fear the post office would treat them as new mail using old postage. Seems the best way to get these items to you is still for me to just hand them to a staff member. What really concerns me is how much mail addressed to me has not arrived in my box. I use the box so that people wrongfully listed on STDCarriers.com can have clean test results sent in from their doctor in accordance with the site's removal policy. Sometimes people email me claiming to have sent in results which I have not received. Others email me about other websites in my network claiming to have sent me letters in support of their claims that content should be removed. In either type of case I sometimes get accused of denying my receipt of mail due to either not wanting to admit that I got something or by misplacing it myself which is not the case. If you've sent mail to any website which uses P.O. Box 86653 there is a good chance this post office gave it to someone else.
Learn more: Creston Post Office Putting Mail in Wrong Post Office Boxes

Portland, Oregon's Worst Disability Judges Live Under Same Roof

DisabilityRightsPDX — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 19:55:57 -07:00

There are 12 administrative law judges (ALJs) in Portland, Oregon responsible for reviewing appeals of applications for Social Security disability benefits that have been previously denied by employees of the Social Security Administration. Of those 12 judges the 2 with the lowest approval ratings from 09/26/2020 through 07/30/2021 (Cynthia Dee Rosa and John Andrew Michaelsen) live under the same roof. What are the odds? I don't think the odds of this being anything but an indication of personal bias' towards legitimately disabled people are very high. If you look at the overall approval ratings of other judges you will see that about half of them approve more than 50% of their cases with the top two approving over 78% of their cases. Looking at Judge Rosa's low numbers alone, one might try making an argument on her behalf that she just happens to receive the largest percentage of meritless claims and that is why she is the only judge with an approval rating below 30%, but I think the fact that the next highest name on the list lives with her casts great doubt on that legitimacy of that argument. I suspect that they are a married couple, but cannot confirm it, so for all I know they could be relatives or just friends. Whatever they are, Judges Rosa and Michaelsen obviously have more in common than their occupation alone. Married couples, friends, and family often share similar personal views which are typically among the reasons they stick together in the first place. I think those shared views include contempt for those seeking disability benefits based on the misconception that they are lazy people perfectly capable of working. Such shared beliefs are a more likely explanation for them sharing the bottom two spots on the list of ALJ approval ratings. Their low approval ratings are likely the result of a shared predisposition against applicants. Such a predisposition would explain an opinion of Judge Rosa's that I recently read involving someone I know very well. He was ordered by a federal judge to seek disability benefits as a condition of supervised release based on his psychological evaluations. To protect his privacy I will not name him or his exact diagnosis, but I will say that it is a dual diagnosis involving a neurological disorder that he was born with and a second disorder that he acquired later in life due to traumatic experiences. This can lead to confusion for some because they might think that most people with just his neurological disorder alone are not impaired to the point of not being able to work and think the same thing about those whose only diagnosis is the trauma disorder. What they typically fail to understand is that the second condition makes it extremely difficult for him to manage the symptoms of his neurological disorder and vise versa. His criminal history is a direct result of his dual diagnosis. The dual diagnosis makes it impossible for him to remain employed for any significant length of time should someone take the chance of hiring him in the first place. This was explained in writing by a forensic psychologist who stated correctly that he qualifies for disability benefits and other doctors whose qualified opinions overwhelmingly support his application. Judge Rosa's opinion in his case appears to be the work of someone whose objective is to find any excuse she can to dispute qualified experts. For example, she said that she found evaluations written by people with doctoral degrees less persuasive than notes written by less qualified people. Those less qualified people include mental health staff members at correctional facilities and non-profit groups contracted by U.S. Probation. Such people typically range from registered nurses and licensed clinical social workers with at best associates and bachelor's degrees to nurse practitioners with master's degrees. None of those people are more qualified than someone a Ph.D. or an M.D. to decide if someone qualifies for disability benefits. To her credit, Judge Rosa does have doctorate, but it is a J.D. which only makes her an expert on law. Having a J.D. does not make anyone more qualified than someone with an M.D. or mental health related Ph.D. to determine if someone qualifies for disability benefits for mental health reasons. To make matters worse, mental health and medical personnel working in corrections are usually the worst in their field. They work at jails, prisons, and non-profits contracted by probation offices because they can't find any other work in their field. They are always paid less than their colleagues in the private sector to work in more dangerous environments. That is true of everyone from lowly social workers and nurses up to nurse practitioners and doctors. They stay for the job security knowing that finding others willing to take their place would be so hard that they can get away with just about anything. Things like failing to medicate, under-medicating, mis-medicating, failing to treat, undertreating, or misdiagnosing someone. All of those things happened to this guy. He went from being properly treated in the community to being cut off of his medication, having his doses reduced, being given the wrong medication, denied treatment, treated insufficiently, and in some cases diagnosed with conditions he has never had by unqualified people. In one case he was misdiagnosed by a jail nurse and given medication to treat a condition he never had. In other cases his symptoms were minimized in treatment notes to justify not prescribing medication or minimizing doses for the purpose of costing the government less money. Upon his release neither his legal counsel nor his probation officer could find anyone willing to treat him at pay rates supported by the Oregon Health Plan citing concerns for their safety, so he did not receive therapy. Judge Rosa views such things as inconsistencies in his history sufficient to undermine expert opinions. Judge Rosa also seems to put blame on him for being denied services. Judge Rosa wrote, "The claimant's participation in vocational rehabilitation has been of poor quality and quantity. He appeared at one appointment only, and did not call or appear at several others before he was discharged form the program." The truth is the staff member assigned to his case called him after his first session and asked him not to come back. He called her and asked why, she said she needed to wait for documents to arrive so that she could determine his eligibility. It was a total about face from the application process after which she invited him to a group orientation or so he thought. Some months later he received a voicemail stating that his records could not be located or that what could be located was not sufficient to support allowing him back. She never sent him anything in writing. To this day he has no idea why Voc. Rehab suddenly uninvited him from their program, but suspects that he may have made program participants and staff uncomfortable by talking about his criminal history which includes violent offenses. This situation supports the conclusion that he is too disabled for Voc. Rehab not that he flaked out due to some lazy disinterest in working. His history has all the indications of someone with an incurable condition whose exhausted all treatment options. Judge Rosa spent a lot of time trying to find statements made by unqualified people inconsistent with his, but never bothered to look beyond the face of his most recent set of release conditions for impeachment value. For instance, she refuted a claim that he was banned from a specific activity for a significant period of time by pointing out that his most recent set of conditions did not ban him from the activity without bothering to look at prior conditions which clearly banned from the activity for many years. She even used a standard condition of release which requires everyone on supervision to look for work unless excused by probation to refute the condition requiring him to seek disability benefits. She concluded that the court's opinion as to his disability status could not be determined by his conditions because they were at odds with each other. To support her position she cited a letter submitted by his probation officer in support of his application for benefits because it did not specifically state that he had been excused from the work requirement. Had she spent a fraction of the time she spent reviewing old notes from unqualified people familiarizing herself with how federal supervision works she could have figured out that someone could not successfully complete over two years of supervision without being charged with a violation had he not been excused form the requirement. A fair judge would allow herself to be persuaded by more qualified opinions. For instance, instead of saying something like, "his treatment notes do not support the finding of any greater limitations," a fair judge would say something like, "his treatment notes are not persuasive because they were written by people less qualified than the doctors supporting his claim." Conclusion Judge Rosa puts forth far greater effort to disqualify applicants than she does reviewing all the evidence. It seems that all it takes for her to disqualify someone is a few contradictory statements from anyone regardless of their qualifications. A fair judge would not spend so much time delving into someone's history looking for inconsistencies with an applicant's statements no matter how unqualified the source and so little time doing basic research capable of supporting his claims. The fact that the two worst judges in the area both live under the same roof suggests a shared bias against applicants. Update: Home address redacted due to retirement.
Learn more: Portland, Oregon's Worst Disability Judges Live Under Same Roof

U.S. Attorney Appears to Pass First Amendment Audit

NoLimitList.com — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:21:28 -07:00

An Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) appears to have passed her First Amendment Audit this pass week. AUSA Natalie Wight out of the Portland office of the United States Attorney's Office in the District of Oregon contacted my defense team regarding complaints that her office received about a NoLimitList.com prototype that is still an operational website in our network. According to my lawyers she first sounded like she might seek new conditions of release in my case that would be detrimental to that site, but later in the week they said she backed off. Why did she back off? You would have to ask her that, but it was probably because she is familiar with the First Amendment, looked at the site as well as the complaints, and concluded that the First Amendment protects my right to own and operate the website in question. This represents a step in the right direction for AUSAs at the Portland U.S. Attorney's Office. In the past I have had three of her predecessors seek the court's permission to censor my online activities. First, former AUSA Sean Hoar falsely accused the website of being illegal. Second, former AUSA John Haub used some technicalities to get me banned from operating the website. Third, AUSA Greg Nyhus used his position to censor another website in the network that was being used to speak out against Hoar and Haub. Finally it seems that somebody at that office has taken the time to read the constitution. The constitution protects people that operate online forums even if the feds get complaints accusing users of those forums of abuse. That does not necessarily preclude convicts from being restricted from running them on release, but the law does require a reasonably direct relationship between the offense and the website if the website is a source of employment or if the condition impacts a significant constitutional right such as freedom of speech. Since the case I am on supervision for involves throwing chips at a correctional officer the court lacks the authority to restrict my speech or employment options in that way. I also want to add that even though I have not had Natalie on my case long, I have heard nothing but good things about her. She has done all I have expected of her so far. She even opposed a condition that the judge ordered. Finally, after looking up her name online I noticed that she was Cleveland High School's 1992 Rose Festival Princess. I was impressed to see that someone from Cleveland has what it takes to work in a field that requires toughness from time to time because when I met guys from Cleveland on the football field every fall they displayed nothing but weakness. They were a joke. We even had shirts at Franklin that said "Friends Don't Let Friends Go to Cleveland." They were that bad.
Learn more: U.S. Attorney Appears to Pass First Amendment Audit

No Limit List Supports SOPA Strike & Wikipedia Blackout

NoLimitList.com — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:41:55 -08:00

No Limit List fully supports the SOPA Strike and sites including Wikipedia and Criagslist that are blacking out their services as I type to protest what could be a grave injustice if the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) were to become law. SOPA and PIPA together form the greatest threat to freedom that America has faced since the Soviet Union. SOPA and PIPA go beyond just stopping the theft of music and movies to threatening innocent service providers with financial sanctions enforced by making it illegal to do business with websites whose users upload copyrighted works with or without the knowledge of the webmaster. This means that if SOPA and PIPA were to pass the simple act of uploading a copyrighted image could put us out of business if we failed to delegate otherwise unneeded human resources to removing it within 5 days. It would also make it impossible to access this site in the United States under such circumstances due to a requirement for ISPs to block service to all associated DNS servers. In addition we support the No Limit List mystery member NoLamar who has started a group called People for the Removal of Lamar Seeligson Smith because we believe that even thought the group's position on removing Lamar by soliciting negative information to compel his resignation, impeachment, or condemnation of the bill is a bit timid they still have the right idea. If it were up to us we would remove Congressman Smith as soon as humanly possible by any means necessary to send a message that no member of Congress, the Senate, or any other branch of the government should ever feel safe voting for let alone sponsoring legislation like SOPA or PIPA without facing a full retaliatory response from the American people.
Learn more: No Limit List Supports SOPA Strike & Wikipedia Blackout

Obama Inauguration Interrupted for Sex Scandal Apology

PoliticallyCorrect — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:49:29 -07:00

Portland Mayor Sam Adams rudely interrupted Obama's inauguration to come clean after lying about having sex with a male intern. Inappropriate was a recurring word he used to describe his behavior at what couldn't have been a more inappropriate time to hold a press conference for apologizing to the community, the people of Portland, and the gay community for embarrassing them. According to the embedded video which is just a fraction of his Clintonesque speech Adams met Beau Breedlove when he was a 17 year old intern, mentored him, but didn't have sex with him until after he turned 18. He said he covered up the relationship because it could hurt him in the election. When asked if he lied to get elected his response began by repeating the question before stating "I definitely lied to um, avoid what I thought was another lie that I could not overcome, so in a way yes". Thank you Sam Adams! You nearly had me rolling on the floor laughing during what otherwise would have been a boring walk down Pennsylvania Avenue by a disappointing couple.
Learn more: Obama Inauguration Interrupted for Sex Scandal Apology