Tuesday, September 28, 2021



NYT Quietly Edited Comment About 'Pro-Israel... Influential Lobbyists and Rabbis' When Covering AOC's Tears

As Katie covered yesterday, squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had a meltdown on the House floor after changing her vote against funding the Israel Iron Dome to "present." That's not the only thing that was changed, though. Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Brian Flood reported for Fox News that a piece by Catie Edmonson for The New York Times contained an edit with regards to AOC's vote.

"Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to 'present.' The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis,"

Edmonson's piece at one point read.

It now reads: "Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to 'present.' The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party.

["such as influential lobbyists and rabbis" was omitted]

Subsequent passages of Edmonson's reporting, which still remain, are also noteworthy, in how they frame Democratic leadership's motivations for the vote:

Privately, some progressive lawmakers were furious with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, who pushed for the vote on Iron Dome funding after it was removed from the broader spending bill this week.

His maneuver appeared to be intended to calm Israeli officials, who had watched with alarm as the fight unfolded on Capitol Hill and had closely followed previous efforts by young, liberal lawmakers to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.

After Yair Lapid, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called Mr. Hoyer and emphasized the need for the House to approve the request as soon as possible, the congressman assured him that progressives’ initial revolt was no more than a “technical delay,” according to an account of the call released by Mr. Lapid’s office. Hours later, Mr. Hoyer announced that the House would vote to approve the funding later in the week.

Edmonson also made reference to a memorable floor speech from Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), with her reporting that the congressman gave "an angry speech" in response to anti-Semitic remarks from squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

Reagan had reported on the exchange after it took place on Thursday.

"I will not support an effort to enable war crimes and human rights abuses and violence," the congresswoman claimed. "We cannot be talking only about Israelis’ need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes."

The only edit or correction which appears at the bottom of the piece, as of Friday afternoon, is from September 23, is as follows: "An earlier version of this article misstated the final tally for the funding vote. It was 420 to 9, not 490 to 9."

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Behold the Anti-Free-Speech ACLU

Once the nation’s leading defender of free speech, the ACLU is now little more than an activist for “progressive” causes.

We suppose it’s to the credit of the American Civil Liberties Union that it hasn’t yanked down that smoking-gun Twitter post. Of course, it’s to the deep and everlasting disgrace of the ACLU that anyone there felt it to be an acceptable post in the first place.

At issue is an artistically rendered quote from former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a quote the ACLU bowdlerized because it contained scientifically accurate (and therefore deeply offensive) language from the obviously insufficiently awokened RBG.

This is what Ginsberg, herself a former ACLU lawyer, said to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1993 during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings:

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choice.

And this is the way the one-time free-speech champions at the ACLU quoted her in their September 18 tweet:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to either [their] well-being and dignity. … When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.”

The indignity. Ginsberg must be thrashing about in her grave. And that army of Notorious RBG acolytes? They must be equally aggrieved. Or perhaps not. After all, what’s a little historical whitewashing among “progressives,” especially those who’ve abandoned their once vigorous defense of free speech from all across the political spectrum?

Agree or disagree on her larger abortion argument, there’s a reason why Ginsberg said what she said, and not what today’s ACLU desperately wishes she’d said. That reason? Women bear children. Men don’t. To argue otherwise does violence to biology specifically and to science generally.

“Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis,” went the New York Times headline on June 6 of this year. But we don’t see a crisis here so much as a surrender, a capitulation. As the Times went on to note, it was the ACLU that defended the free speech rights of American neo-Nazis in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, the home of many World War II Holocaust survivors. But one wonders: Would today’s ACLU go to bat so boldly for free speech?

We think not. And former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser seems to agree with us. As Reason’s Nick Gillespie writes: “Glasser says he’s worried about the future of both free expression and the organizations that defend it. In 2018, a leaked ACLU memo offered guidelines for case selection that retreated from the group’s decades-long content-neutral stance, citing as a reason to decline a case ‘the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.’ Glasser fears that, by becoming more political and less absolutist when it comes to defending speech, the ACLU might be shrugging off its hard-won legacy.”

Hmm, ya think?

And does anyone else see the slippery slope inherent in the two words “or others” that appear directly after “white supremacists” in that leaked memo? For example, Donald Trump has been tarred by the deranged Left as a white supremacist; shouldn’t the ACLU therefore refuse to protect his speech when Big Tech shuts him down? And if the ACLU refuses to defend Donald Trump’s free speech rights, then by what rationale would it defend the rights of those who support Donald Trump? Or those who espouse conservative views? Or those who support the white supremacist Republican Party in general?

It’s simple, really. Leftists used to be in favor of free speech when they believed their ideas could stand up in the marketplace. These days, though, when they have to argue that men can become women and women men, their arguments become untenable.

And so free speech itself becomes untenable.

What we’ve said before applies to the Left, to Democrats, to Big Tech, and to the ACLU: They wouldn’t need to censor us if they weren’t afraid of losing the argument.

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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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