One of the profound questions of our time – is a campaign of personal harassment on social media Free Speech or just plain common or garden personal harassment?

A lawsuit accusing the publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer of coordinating a “terror campaign” of online harassment against a Jewish real estate agent cannot be dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a federal judge in Montana ruled this week.

In his ruling denying a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Dana L. Christensen, the chief judge for United States District Court in Missoula, Mont., wrote that the real estate agent, Tanya Gersh, was a private citizen, not a public figure, and that the publisher, Andrew Anglin, incited his followers to harass her as part of a personal campaign.

It started with interactions between Gersh and Richard Spencer’s mother.

Ms. Spencer owned a building in Whitefish and Ms. Gersh had talked to her about its potential sale after word circulated that residents were considering a protest there against white supremacy.

The call to protest was spurred by video of Mr. Spencer, who resided part time in Whitefish, railing against Jews and shouting “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” at an alt-right meeting in Washington, according to the suit.

The suit contends that Ms. Gersh counseled Ms. Spencer to sell the building and repudiate her son’s views. And initially, Ms. Spencer agreed, it says, even asking Ms. Gersh to represent her in such a sale.

Then Spencer changed her mind and wrote a blog post saying Gersh had threatened her.

Mr. Anglin then began writing and publishing his own articles calling for “a troll storm” against Ms. Gersh.

“Tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda to attack and harm the mother of someone whom they disagree with,” he wrote, according to the suit.

In the months that followed, the site published over 30 related posts — and the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of Ms. Gersh, her husband and 12-year-old son, as well as friends and colleagues, the suit states.

By the spring of 2017, the family had received more than 700 vulgar and hateful messages, including death threats, many referencing the Holocaust. Some phone messages consisted solely of the sound of gunshots.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit on Ms. Gersh’s behalf in April 2017.

Anglin has been trying to get it dismissed because Free Speech.

The organization now expects the civil case to go to trial. It has taken a long time because it proved impossible to serve Mr. Anglin with legal papers, Mr. Dinielli said. Mr. Anglin’s last known address was in Ohio, but his whereabouts have been unknown for nearly two years. He is still running the site, possibly from overseas.

His lawyer, Marc Randazza, said that Judge Christensen’s decision was dangerous for free speech.

“The rule we lay down for the Nazi applies equally to the civil rights activist,” Mr. Randazza said in a statement. “And that ruling, if it stands, is not going to be good for anyone who engages in common outrage culture. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I think not.”

No, that’s fine. If a civil rights activist is personally persecuting a random person, including by publishing the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of random person and r.p.’s family, friends, and colleagues, then no, that’s not protected free speech nor is it political activism, it’s targeted persecution.

This isn’t Daily Stormer’s first rodeo.

The site has also faced two other lawsuits. Taylor Dumpson, the first black woman to serve as American University’s student government president, filed a suit in May. She became an online target after a real-life incident: nooses and hateful messages left on campus a day after her inauguration. The suit was filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Dean Obeidallah, a Muslim comedian and radio host, filed a defamation lawsuit in August 2017 after the site falsely accused him of masterminding the deadly bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, last year.

If they can ever find Anglin to force him to pay up, Obeidallah plans to send the money to civil rights groups.

Did Trump just spill the beans?

“The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess,” tweeted President Trump this morning. But why would the president have access to the inner workings of the Mueller investigation, which is supposed to be firewalled away from his influence?

There’s a strong chance Trump is just making this up, of course. On the other hand, over the last week, the Mueller investigation has been supervised by acting attorney general Matt Whitaker, who would have access to the investigation’s inner workings. It might be the case that Trump actually has access to the inner workings of the Mueller investigation because he finally has somebody running the Justice Department who is pliant and unethical enough to give it to him.

“Unethical” is putting it politely, from what we’ve been learning.

Here, lying about in plain  sight, is Trump’s response yesterday to a question from the conservative Daily Caller, which asked, “Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names? Chris Christie?”

In response Trump embarked on a rant about the Mueller investigation:

I knew [Whitaker] only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions. And, um, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had.

Oh look, he’s admitting that’s why gave Whitaker the AG gig.

If your assumption that somehow this will work out rests on the belief that Whitaker will conform to the ethical norms of the legal profession, you need to think about the people he has worked with in the past. You also need to consider what his future might bring. Matthew Whitaker is nobody’s idea of a bright young legal mind. He might make a nice living hosting a show on Fox News about the the Democrats who should be locked up and the Republicans who are being unfairly investigated. His career incentive is to do Trump’s bidding.

Norm Eisen says it’s not Whitaker’s call whether or not he recuses himself.

It’s not up to Whittaker. If he violates the ethics rules, he’s subject to sanction, including by DOJ and his state bar. We explain: https://t.co/1a5Gn7AyMo https://t.co/zvZjd8wEgt

— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) November 15, 2018

Apparently the police in the UK have issued a new law saying everyone has to recognize everyone else’s Innate Gender Identity or else expect a knock on the door.

The police have launched their National Trans Tool Kit — a portfolio of definitions, policies and best practice recommendations developed in partnership with Stonewall, the National LGBT Police Network, and the Police Superintendent’s Association.

Most of it is about trans colleagues on the force, but some of it is about everyone.

And what is gender identity? There’s a glossary.

Where did they get that? From Stonewall.

What I want to know is, how do they think they know this “innate sense of their own gender” is in fact innate as opposed to being learned? How do they think it could be that? I could see it if children were raised in incubators with no sensory input for the first three years or so, but children raised that way are not likely to flourish or indeed survive, so that’s no help. How can people have “innate” senses of things beyond very basic sense-information like up and down, dark and light, moving and still? How, in other words, can people have a “sense of their own gender” that’s innate as opposed to learned?

This is a major crux in the whole dispute – whether or not one considers “gender identity” a real thing that is innate and can sometimes occur in the wrong body, or a social thing made up of all one has been told, explicitly and tacitly, about what box one goes in.

Wo. NBC reports:

The White House is looking for ways to remove an enemy of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. in order to placate Turkey over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to two senior U.S. officials and two other people briefed on the requests.

Trump administration officials last month asked federal law enforcement agencies to examine legal ways of removing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen in an attempt to persuade Erdogan to ease pressure on the Saudi government, the four sources said.

So…they want to hand over Gulen to be persecuted by Erdoğan so that Erdoğan will stop putting pressure on the murderous Saudi regime, which they (Trump “officials”) are so cozy with and fond of. It doesn’t get much filthier than that.

The Trumpies told the DOJ and the FBI to re-open Turkey’s case for extradition of Gulen, and asked the security people for information on his residency status. He has a green card and he’s been living here since the late 90s.

Career officials at the agencies pushed back on the White House requests, the U.S. officials and people briefed on the requests said.

“At first there were eye rolls, but once they realized it was a serious request, the career guys were furious,” said a senior U.S. official involved in the process.

…

The secret effort to resolve one of the leading tensions in U.S.-Turkey relations — Gulen’s residency in the U.S. — provides a window into how President Donald Trump is trying to navigate hostility between two key allies after Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi on Oct. 2 at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

It suggests the White House could be looking for ways to contain Erdogan’s ire over the murder while preserving Trump’s close alliance with Saudi Arabia’s controversial de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

It’s so stressful when you’re friends with two oppressive authoritarian shits and they’re quarreling with each other.

One option that Turkish and Trump administration officials recently discussed is forcing Gulen to relocate to South Africa rather than sending him directly to Turkey if extradition is not possible, said the U.S. officials and people briefed on the discussions. But the U.S. does not have any legal justification to send Gulen to South Africa, they said, so that wouldn’t be a viable option unless he went willingly.

Yes, oddly enough we can’t just mail people around the planet as if they were so much merch from Amazon.

Updating to add a useful summary:

The thrust of the Gulen story is that the WH considered shipping a U.S. green card holder to likely torture and death in exchange for a cover-up of the murder of another U.S. green card holder to preserve a weapons deal with a country that spends money at the president's hotel.

— Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) November 15, 2018

This is where people are getting themselves when they make wild claims about “identity.”

Comic Relief firmly believes every individual has the right to be who they are and to define their own identity.

— Comic Relief (@comicrelief) November 15, 2018

Comic Relief firmly believes every individual has the right to be who they are and to define their own identity.

Oh come on now. Think before you say things like that. We don’t have “the right to define our own identity” in general. We can play, we can fantasize, we can pretend, we can imagine, in some situations and contexts, but not in all of them. We can make some changes to our identity, but we can’t just make any and every change we can think of, as an act of will or speech. We can’t “identify as” pharmacists or accountants or electricians if we haven’t had the relevant training and passed the relevant tests. We can’t “identify as” another nationality when crossing a border. We can’t “identify as” six years old in order to frolic with other sixes at the local playground. We can’t “identify as” dogs if we want to be seen and addressed as sane adults. Und so weiter. The individual isn’t all-powerful, and “identity” isn’t magic.

Frustrating, isn’t it – we know what it’s reasonable to be certain about and what it isn’t, and we say so, and the result is that dogmatists think they’ve won the argument.

It reminds me of “Do you believe, yes or no…”

The Patreon

Walter Shaub points out that whatever the outcome of Trump’s attempts to obstruction of justice, he’s already done harm by setting bad precedents.

But whatever the outcome of Mueller’s investigation, America is establishing new precedents. One precedent is that President Trump fired the FBI director—and Congress did nothing. Another is that Trump admitted the FBI’s investigation of his campaign motivated the firing—and Congress did nothing. A third precedent is that Trump fired the attorney general after having railed against him publicly for refusing to intervene in the investigation—and Congress has done nothing. A fourth precedent is that Trump circumvented the Justice Department’s order of succession so he could replace the attorney general with an individual who has directed partisan attacks at the special counsel, has described publicly how a new attorney general could undermine the investigation, has had a personal and political relationship with an individual involved in the investigation, and has been associated with a company that is the focus of a separate FBI investigation.

If the precedents stand…

If members of Congress or the American people fail to act, these precedents will become the guideposts for future presidents who follow the path President Trump is blazing. A new tenet of American democracy will become that a president is permitted to evade investigation by firing the heads of agencies that investigate the president’s close associates, even when the investigation is the reason for the firings. This cannot stand. Putting a president above the rule of law is a threat to democracy.

We need another precedent: presidents can’t get away with obstruction of justice.

More news on Trump’s grump:

Trump’s trip to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I was a disaster, marked by a brooding and petulant president mocked and condemned wherever he went…

After deciding not to attend a ceremony honoring those killed in the war because rain apparently made it inconvenient to get there, Trump grew enraged at his staff “for not counseling him that skipping the cemetery visit would be a public-relations nightmare.” Somehow he was not able to figure out for himself that doing so might not go over well.

I wondered about that at the time. Really, Trump-people? You thought it would be a good look for Trump to squat inside all day doing nothing instead of going to the cemetery, when observing the centenary of the end of World War One is what he was there for? It didn’t occur to you that that would be insulting to pretty much everyone there and a lot of people not there? Is he drugging you?

Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, a move meant to protect him from the Mueller investigation, is turning out to be a mini-scandal in its own right, to the point where the president vacillates between singing Whitaker’s praises and claiming he doesn’t know him.

Again – what did they think would happen?

Anyway. At least he’s miserable. That’s our only consolation these days.

I’m not a lawyer, obviously, but the Trump administration’s response in the CNN-Acosta lawsuit seems bonkers to me.

The White House asserts that it can pick and choose which journalists are given a permanent pass to cover it, according to a court filing by the Justice Department on Wednesday.

The filing was the government’s legal response to CNN and Jim Acosta’s lawsuit over the recent suspension of Acosta’s press pass.

Tuesday’s lawsuit against President Trump and several of his top aides alleged that the ban violates CNN and Acosta’s First and Fifth Amendment rights.

Virtually all of the country’s major news organizations have sided with CNN.

Even Fox. But the Trump gang says they have “broad discretion” to choose what journalists can set foot in their White House.

The government’s filing quotes a tweet by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in which she announced the suspension of Acosta’s pass and saying his “conduct is absolutely unacceptable.”

The “conduct” mentioned by Sanders in the tweet that the government lawyers cite actually refers to a false and since-dropped argument that Sanders had made in the aftermath of the press conference — that Acosta was “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”

The administration has backed away from that argument in recent days, and it makes no appearance in the government’s first legal comment on the case Wednesday. Even when the filing directly quotes Sanders’ tweets, it leaves out that part.

The government’s lawyers said in Wednesday’s filing that the back and forth between President Trump and Acosta during last week’s press conference, during which Trump strongly criticized Acosta, qualifies as “due process.” They also cite Sanders’ statement the night of that press conference as “notice of the factual bases for denial.”

That’s the part where I decided they’re bonkers. Not just wrong and incompetents but nuts. They’re calling Trump’s rude inappropriate eruptions at Acosta “due process.” Come on.

Other news organizations are now standing with CNN. In a statement Wednesday, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, First Look Media, Fox News, Gannett, NBC News, The New York Times, Politico, USA Today and The Washington Post, among others, said, “Whether the news of the day concerns national security, the economy, or the environment, reporters covering the White House must remain free to ask questions. It is imperative that independent journalists have access to the President and his activities, and that journalists are not barred for arbitrary reasons. Our news organizations support the fundamental constitutional right to question this President, or any President. We will be filing friend-of-the-court briefs to support CNN’s and Jim Acosta’s lawsuit based on these principles.”

Note they will be filing actual briefs, not just tweets.

A warm welcome to the incoming class of Republican Senators. pic.twitter.com/yNcqWvX0qp

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) November 14, 2018

Group includes Rick Scott. Rick Scott hasn’t been elected yet (and may never be). The votes are still being counted.

Also…Leader McConnell? With the handle @senatemajldr? Is that clever? Does he really want to have to start a new account when he’s no longer the leader? Plus there’s the whole duce/führer thing. “Leader” as an official title has a certain ring to it now. I know it is the official title in the Senate, but that doesn’t mean he has to advertise it. I checked, and Nancy Pelosi on Twitter is just Nancy Pelosi @NancyPelosi, not Speaker Pelosi @housespkr.

Anyway. Rick Scott is not yet a member of the incoming class of Republican Senators, and we don’t know that he ever will be.

Trolling by snail mail, that’s new.

This creepy card came in the mail yesterday.
Anyone else get one?
Anyone know what it is or from whom? pic.twitter.com/VNKJNoR4u0

— Jennifer Gunter (@DrJenGunter) November 14, 2018

At least one other person did get one. The postmark is Grand Rapids (Michigan) – somewhat notorious for right-wing batshittery.

Why the Foreign Office is not eager to grant asylum to Asia Bibi:

The Foreign Office has been accused of allowing government asylum policy to be dictated to by a Pakistan mob after it was confirmed it urged the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi political asylum in the UK out of fear for the safety of UK consular staff.

…

Her husband, Ashiq Masih, has appealed for help to Britain, Canada, Italy and the US but the UK high commissioner in Islamabad is reported to have warned he could not protect his staff if asylum was granted by the UK.

Tom Tugendhat, the foreign affairs select committee chair, asked the Foreign Office permanent secretary, Sir Simon McDonald, whether the episode “does not raise the question that either staff should be withdrawn or security increased or otherwise UK policy is effectively dictated to by a mob?”.

Tugendhat took the committee into lengthy private session after McDonald said he did not wish to give evidence in public on a such a sensitive issue.

And why is it so “sensitive”? Religious fanaticism.

The senior Labour MP Mike Gapes said: “Given the clear inability of this new Pakistani government of Imran Khan to stop these mobs from intimidating and killing Christians in Pakistan, is it not time to reassess our relations with Pakistan? There are big concerns if religious minorities in Pakistan are not safe.”

It’s not “if,” it’s “when.” Pakistan is “when.” Religious fanaticism is in the driver’s seat there.

Well that was the best laugh I’ve had in a few hours.

Five hours ago: Pangburn Philosophy cancels all the things.

(You remember what “Pangburn Philosophy” is, right? A guy called Travis Pangburn who sells tickets to people who want to see Michael Shermer n Lawrence Krauss [oops] n Richard Dawkins n Sam Harris talking to each other for hours and hours and hours and hours?)

https://twitter.com/PangburnInspire/status/1062431248205864962

“what we believe to be some of the most important conversations in human history” – oh yes Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins agreeing with each other that women can be so tiresome; MOST IMPORTANT IN HISTORY. But despite that importance, they find they can’t remember what they did with all the money, so, soz, tour’s off.

Two hours later:

Off Twitter for awhile. I'll be focusing on the book I've been writing about my experiences with @PangburnInspire. There is much to say.

— Travis Pangburn (@ThePangburn) November 13, 2018

An hour after that:

https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/1062473618418892800

Yes, that was a great laugh.

Via Maryam Namazie:

International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism
25 November 2018, Central London, 9:30-21:00
www.secularconference.com
#OneLaw4All

Jane Clare Jones has written a historical drama about the terf wars. Think Richard III with trans activists playing Plantagenet.

Prologue: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Transsexual women: We just want some basic human rights.

Women: Okay.

Transsexual women: We have this condition called gender dysphoria and it’s really painful and we need to transition to live as the other sex because it’s the treatment for the dysphoria.

Women: Yeah, that sounds tough. Okay, if that’s what you need to do.

Seems like another world, doesn’t it.

Trans activists: So hey, when we said we’d like you to treat us like women that wasn’t right, because actually, we ARE women and we demand that you treat us exactly like women because we are women and that you to stop violently excluding us from all your women things.

Women: Um, we thought you were male people who had to transition to help with your dysphoria?

Trans activists: No, that is out-dated and pathologizing. Women are women because they have a gender identity which makes them women.

Women: Um, we thought we were woman because we’re female?

Trans activists: No, you are women because you have magic womanish essence that makes you women. We have the same magic womanish essence as you, it’s just that ours got stuck in the wrong body.

Feminists: That sounds kind of sexist. Can you tell us what this woman-essence is, and how it gets stuck in the wrong body, because that sounds like a weird metaphys…..

Trans activists: It’s SCIENCE.

Feminists: Science says there’s ‘magic woman essence’??? Are you sure? Because feminism would…

Trans activists: Shut up bigots.

Jumping ahead (do read it all) –

*Enter Intersectional Feminists from top, bottom and side of screen….*

Intersectional feminists: THEY WILL NOT DEBATE THEIR RIGHT TO EXIST YOU FUCKING BIGOTS.

Feminists: Hang on, we thought you were feminists. We thought you cared about female people.

Intersectional feminists: Female people are so last century. Only White Feminists care about female people.

Feminists: White what?

Intersectional feminists: All the feminists before us were white middle-class women and they only cared about what white middle-class women care about and they were only interested in getting good jobs for white middle-class women and they didn’t care about Black women and were dried up whorephobic prudes who didn’t realize sex work was liberating and mostly they just wanted to kill trans people.

Feminists: That sounds like some mad-ass caricature.

Intersectional feminists: You would say that, you oppressive old crones. You’re just saying that to maintain your power.

Feminists: No we’re not, we don’t have much power. We’re saying it because it sounds like bullshit. *Starts trying to explain all the things second wave feminism did to help women*

Intersectional feminists: We’re not listening to you, you oppressive bitches. We’ve hidden all your books in the library to protect young minds from them. You are whorephobes and transphobes and racists. We are intersectional. Only we have learned from the Tumblr-oracle how all the different oppressions have different points on a scale that add up to who is the most oppressed and you are white (so are we mostly but we’re pointing at you because somehow that means something, maybe because we have asymmetric hair-cuts and our profile pics give great side-eye) and you are women and that means that you are the least oppressed and that means that your feminism is shit and that means that you have to centre all these other people in your feminism and if you refuse it’s because you’re the oppressors and the most oppressed people are trans women and they must be the centre of feminism from now on.

Feminists: You want us to centre male born people in our feminism?

Intersectional feminists: THAT’S RIGHT BITCHES. And there is no such thing as ‘male-born people.’ That is cissexism and is literal violence. You need to educate yourselves. We don’t have the spoons.

But at the end there’s a peripateia.

Threatening to slice up women with a big knife is the hip new thing.

https://twitter.com/SisterClaireXX/status/1062393764461903879

The tweet is now gone, but

https://twitter.com/SisterClaireXX/status/1062400061844398081

The whole photo doesn’t show up so here: