Maine Legislature Censures Member for Commenting on Male Participation in Female Sports.

Among other things, this situation raises First Amendment issues:

From FIRE:

Three weeks ago, Representative Laurel Libby of Maine’s 64th District posted on Facebook that a high school athlete won first place in girls’ pole vaulting at the Class B state championship after having competed the year before in the boys’ event and finishing in a tie for fifth place.

Libby’s post is constitutionally protected. She was speaking out about the policy in her state, set by the Maine High School Principals Association, that a high school athlete may participate in competitions for the gender with which they identify. Her post was also part of a nationwide debate. Maine Governor Janet Mills and President Trump have publicly sparred over the president’s executive order proposing to cut off education funding if states do not ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

But just days after Libby’s post, the Maine House speaker and majority leader demanded she take it down. When she refused, the majority leader introduced a censure resolution — to be heard in the House the next day — because Libby’s post had included photos and the first name of the student, who is a minor. Libby sought to defend herself in the hastily called House vote, but was repeatedly cut off. The censure resolution passed 75-70 on a party-line vote.

If all the censure did was express disapproval of Libby’s actions, that would be one thing.

A state legislative body is entitled to express displeasure with a member’s actions, which by itself does not violate the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court recently ruled.

But in Libby’s case, the Maine House went further, much further. When Libby refused to apologize for her protected speech, the House speaker declared she would be barred from speaking on the House floor or voting on any legislation until she capitulated. Thus, the House majority party has precluded Libby from doing her job and effectively disenfranchised her constituents, end-running Maine constitutional provisions that say a representative cannot be expelled absent a two-thirds vote or recall election.

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Tribes and Stupidity

I just wrote this on FB, where I sometimes feel like a pinata by people have allowed themselves to be loyal mouthpieces for one political party.

I stand by my assertion that anyone who allows their facts or opinions to be shaped by party politics has allowed their intelligence to drop by 50 points. All of us should be making our own decisions issue by issue. If your opinions are fully or almost entirely aligned with one particular political party, I'm talking especially to you. If you refuse to publicly criticize at least some of the actions and corruption of both political parties, your brain has been captured by a mind-virus. There are no good or bad people. There are only good or bad ideas. As detailed in the book by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind, "One of the Three Great Untruths is Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People." Excerpt from pages 58-59.

The bottom line is that the human mind is prepared for tribalism. Human evolution is not just the story of individuals competing with other individuals within each group; it’salso the story of groups competing with other groups—sometimes violently. We are all descended from people who belonged to groups that were consistently better at winning that competition. Tribalism is our evolutionary endowment for banding together to prepare for intergroup conflict. When the “tribe switch” is activated, we bind ourselves more tightly to the group, we embrace and defend the group’s moral matrix, and we stop thinking for ourselves. A basic principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds,” which is a useful trick for a group gearing up for a battle between “us”and “them.”In tribal mode, we seem to go blind to arguments and information that challenge our team’s narrative. Merging with the group in this way is deeply pleasurable—as you can see from the pseudotribal antics that accompany college football games.

But being prepared for tribalism doesn’t mean we have to live in tribal ways. The human mind contains many evolved cognitive “tools.”We don’t use all o f them all the time; we draw on our toolbox as needed. Local conditions can turn the tribalism up, down, or off. Any kind o f intergroup conflict (real or perceived) immediately turns tribalism up, making people highly attentive to signs that reveal which team another person is on. Traitors are punished, and fraternizing with the enemy is, too. Conditions of peace and prosperity, in contrast, generally turn down the tribalism.32People don’t need to track group membership as vigilantly; they don’t feel pressured to conform to group expectations as closely. When a community succeeds in turning down everyone’s tribal circuits, there is more room for individuals to construct lives of their own choosing; there is more freedom for a creative mixing of people and ideas."

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A Tale of Two Informational Ecosystems

My guiding assumption is that people rationally make decisions based upon the information they digest.  Thus, change their informational (media) ecosystem and you will change their beliefs and behavior, yet they will be convinced that they never changed--that they are the same person as always.

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About the Sneaky Repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act

Mike Benz explains (credit to Wall Street Apes):

“It was tucked into an NDAA. It was really only discovered by the public after the damage had been done”

“‘US Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans.’ This Anti-propaganda law prevented the US government's mammoth broadcasting arm!from delivering programming to American audiences.”

“In 1948 when the founding fathers of the intelligence state were setting this all up, they were intensely aware of the monster they were making. In 1948, they Congress passed the Smith-Munt Act.

Because again, in 1948 is when all of this was getting established. The CIA was brand new. NSE 10-2 had just come out and Congress said, okay, okay, listen, you guys are creating a monster here. We wanna make sure that we don't build this empire of lies, and that Americans are not being inundated with this sprawl of information control that you are conducting around the world in order to conduct organized political warfare on all countries on planet Earth.

And I think many folks in this room are probably familiar with what happened during the Obama administration, which was this essential safeguard, which had been with us since the moment this all was created in 1948, was repealed with quite little fanfare. ‌

It was tucked into an NDAA. It was really, I think, only only discovered by the public after the damage had been done that the Smith-Munt was modernized. To get rid of that restriction, it was effectively amended.

So the headline here is ‘US Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans’

This Anti-propaganda law prevented the US government's mammoth broadcasting arm, I should say, arms from delivering program programming to American audiences. And mammoth is not a big enough word

— So with hard power ruled out as the dominant means to have an empire, the US transitioned to a soft power empire, which would be dominated by agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, Democracy Promotion programs at the State Department. Later USAID and the whole Swarm Army we're about to meet.

But even right out the gate, the Central Intelligence Agency immediately moved into the media space to control the messaging that people around the world experienced.”

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