Friday: Hili dialogue

January 23, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, January 23, 2026—the end of the coldest work week of the past year.  Here’s today’s weather, with temperatures in Fahrenheit (!) and the prediction for the next week:

And it’s National Pie Day, celebrating another contribution of America to world cuisine (yes, pies are worldwide and antedate America, but it’s here where pies have become the go-to dessert, and many (like pecan pie) were created.  Here’s a cherry pie baked by Malgorzata in 2014. I helped pit the sour cherries from her and Andrzej’s orchard, and I designed the cat crust.  There will be no more pies like this, not from Dobrzyn:

It’s also International Sticky Toffee Pudding Day (a great contribution of the UK to world dessert culture), National Handwriting Day (mine is getting worse as I age and don’t write much by hand), and, as if to destroy National Pie Day, it’s also National Rhubarb Pie Day, an affront to all pies and an inedible dessert (don’t bother commenting that you like it!)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As I mentioned recently, one of the five or more committees that Trump wants to govern Gaza as it rebuilds is called “The Board of Peace”, described by the Times of Israel like this:

The Board of Peace is the umbrella body that was mandated by the UN Security Council to oversee the postwar management of Gaza until the end of 2027.

The Board of Peace is chaired by Trump, and will largely be made up of heads of state from around the world.

Formal invitations to become members of the Board of Peace were sent out on Friday, and by Saturday the leaders of Turkey, Egypt, Canada and Argentina confirmed having received the offer — an indication that they will likely accept

While this is the most prominent of all the panels established, the Board of Peace will play a generally symbolic role and be more relevant during the fundraising stage, a senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.

Now, at Davos, Trump has signed up some countries to the Board, which he apparently intends to use to replace UN oversight of Gaza:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants his new “Board of Peace” to work with the United Nations, but it was unclear if that pledge would ease concerns among some leaders that he is trying to sideline the international body.

Trump discussed the potential for collaboration at the board’s formal launch, which his administration has advertised as a tool to resolve global conflicts with a scope rivaling the U.N. He was joined by 19 world leaders but just two representatives from European Union nations, Hungary and Bulgaria, a contrast that underscored his ambition to reshape the world order and the limits of his approach.

“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do, and we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations,” Trump said at the signing ceremony. “You know, I’ve always said the United Nations has got tremendous potential, has not used it, but there’s tremendous potential in the United Nations.”

The White House on Thursday released a list of countries that signed onto the board, which included Belgium. Maxime Prévot, the country’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, swiftly refuted the announcement. Belgium has “reservations” about the proposal, like other European nations, he wrote on X.

“Our effort will bring together a distinguished group of nations ready to shoulder the noble responsibility of building LASTING PEACE,” read the invitation sent to Argentine President Javier Milei. “We will convene our wonderful and committed partners, most of whom are HIGHLY Respected World Leaders, in the near future.”

UPDATE: Trump has rescinded his invitation to Canada; it’s retributive, of course, but it’s not wise for anybody to join:

President Trump rescinded on Thursday his invitation for Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada to join his “Board of Peace,” an organization that he had founded to oversee a peace deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza but that he has now tried to broaden into an institution to rival the United Nations.

In a high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, Mr. Carney had urged leaders of smaller nations to band together to resist Mr. Trump’s America First doctrine and his efforts to dismantle the post-World War II international order. On Thursday, hours before Mr. Trump’s announcement, Mr. Carney went further, denouncing “authoritarianism and exclusion” in a speech that appeared to be referencing the president.

Here’s the WaPo’s map of countries invited, and those who have already accepted or declined (the latter include Denmark, France, Slovenia, Norway, and Sweden. As of yet, no Western European countries have accepted, though several in the Middle East have.

I’ve already given my reservations about Trump’s overall reconstruction plan, the two main ones being that there is no mechanism for disarming and disbanding Hamas, and putting the Palestinian Authority (hated by nearly all Gazans) on the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. As for the Board of Peace, Trump has put himself in charge, with the power to veto every decision made by the committee.  Ironically, he said he’s “honored” to chair, but he appointed himself!

*Over at the Free Press, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff describes “The campaign to crush free speech in Minnesota.” It turns out that everyone is guilty of quashing the First Amendment.

The actions of protesters and politicians, during and in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have become real-world lessons in the law of speech. The clashes have demonstrated which types of speech aren’t protected, along with passionate, angry, and unsettling speech that is protected. We’ve also gotten a chilling reminder of what goes wrong when the government pretends not to know the difference.

For starters, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas to Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and at least three other Democratic officials in the state, as part of an investigation into whether state and local officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement. Grand jury matters are secret, so we may never see the subpoenas themselves. But the public justification keeps circling back to speech. Federal officials have portrayed Walz’s and Frey’s criticisms of ICE as incitement, which is not protected by the First Amendment.

But by any reasonable assessment, the statements that have been publicly attributed to Walz do not meet the legal standard for incitement. The governor urged people to speak out “loudly, urgently, but also peacefully,” and warned them not to “fan the flames of chaos.” That doesn’t cross the constitutional line. Walz also used metaphorical political rhetoric, saying no governor should have to “fight a war against the federal government every single day”—language that has lived comfortably inside First Amendment protection for generations.

. . . The speech that federal officials have criticized in Minnesota seems like protected political dissent, not obstruction or conspiracy. That raises the discouraging possibility that the point of the Justice investigation isn’t to bring charges that will stick. Rather, it may be to use the threat of prosecution to chill speech.

. . .As for the protests themselves, some of what we’ve seen is textbook First Amendment activity: protesters chanting in public streets, filming law enforcement, warning neighbors of enforcement activity, criticizing policy. This is precisely the kind of free speech and free assembly the First Amendment was designed to protect.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of unprotected speech being improperly justified on First Amendment grounds. Since the start of ICE operations in Minnesota in November, we have seen objects thrown at officers, crowds pepper sprayed and tear-gassed, and worse. But the extent to which the First Amendment is implicated in interactions between protesters and ICE agents often depends on how the granular details played out, which isn’t always clear from the videos and testimonies.

. . . .Some types of speech, like crowds telling ICE agents to kill themselves in the heat of a protest, might strike most people as upsetting and offensive, but are still protected. While the White House has claimed that such incidents are the result of a campaign of targeted harassment against federal officers, it has so far not provided evidence to that effect. It seems just as probable that those protesters were motivated by their personal dislike of federal law enforcement and chose a harsh way to express it.

Some law enforcement activity violates the First Amendment even though it’s nonphysical. For example, there are credible reports that ICE agents have led civilian observers back to the observers’ homes. The message couldn’t be any clearer: ICE knows where you live. Assuming there’s no law enforcement reason to go to those homes, it’s a pure intimidation tactic designed to create a chilling effect, and the First Amendment is meant to protect us from that kind of retaliation for speaking out.

. . . . And then there’s the moment where the First Amendment lesson goes completely off the rails.

Across the river in St. Paul, protesters entered a church and disrupted a worship service. Journalist Don Lemon filmed the event, and while interviewing a member of the congregation, was told: “Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday. We asked them to leave and they obviously have not left.” The next thing we hear is Lemon saying, “So, this is what the First Amendment is about.”

No, it is not.

The First Amendment does not grant a right to commandeer private spaces or force unwilling audiences in a private space into a political confrontation. A church is not a public forum, and the actions of that group that day are not legally protected expression. They have a right to gather outside the church and protest on the sidewalk, but by walking into a private service and refusing to leave, they are, at a minimum, trespassing.

In this case, the protesters displayed a flawed understanding of protected speech. Believing your cause is morally urgent isn’t a valid defense for entering a private space unlawfully to deliver a message.

Put all these events and incidents together and the overall lesson becomes clear. Minnesota isn’t showing that the First Amendment is obsolete. It’s showing that balancing its demands is difficult, and that getting it wrong is dangerous.

I haven’t been on the scene, and without that it’s hard to make judgements from videos. But Lukianoff’s take seems reasonable and balanced. Both sides have violated freedom of speech, with the government the most frequent violator. But we shouldn’t excuse protestors, either, as when they disrupted a church service.

*In a bipartisan vote, a House Oversight panel voted to hold both Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress (article archived here).

The House Oversight Committee voted on Wednesday to recommend charging Bill and Hillary Clinton with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to testify in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Nine Democrats joined Republicans in support of holding Mr. Clinton in contempt, while three Democrats backed holding Mrs. Clinton in contempt, teeing up votes on the House floor within weeks. Should the full House approve the citations, criminal referrals would go to the Justice Department to prosecute the contempt charges, which can carry penalties including a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for as long as a year.

The measures “will pass, and I believe it will pass with Democratic votes,” said Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the Oversight panel.

The votes came after a heated, daylong meeting full of bitter partisan debate over the charges. But they reflected a reluctance by many Democrats, who have been clamoring for months for more transparency from the Trump administration on the Epstein investigation, to be seen as defending anyone associated with the convicted sex offender — and especially party figures who carry as much baggage as the Clintons.

Some Democrats on the committee conceded that the subpoenas were lawful, even though the Clintons have repeatedly stated that they are not. They asserted that Mr. Clinton in particular, who had socialized with Mr. Epstein, needed to answer the committee’s questions, and some called his refusal to testify “shameful.” Mr. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while in federal custody on sex trafficking charges.

Still, many Democrats also argued that given the Clintons’ efforts to cooperate with the investigation, including an offer by Mr. Clinton to be interviewed under oath by Mr. Comer and their submission of sworn statements laying out what they would say in testimony, the criminal contempt referrals were inappropriate, particularly for a former president.

The President and the ex First Lady are not above the law, and so in this case a contempt citation seems reasonable. There are no reasons to think that either Clinton is guilty, and neither an interview nor a statement is not sufficient since House members should be able to question both of them directly. Representatives are, after all, representatives of Americans, and this is a democracy.  Whatever happens, it’s certain that even if the Clintons are found guilty, neither will spend a day in jail. They’re surely rich enough to pay a fine, and no judge will put people under Secret Service protection in jail.

*Here’s a NYT clickbait article, but it’s true: “At Yosemite, rangers are scarce and visitors have gone wild” (article archived here). I’ve been there several times, and this despoliation upsets me.

 . . . ranger sightings were too rare last year, according to park regulars and advocates. Visitors were far less supervised than they normally were, which had led to the wrong kind of wildness — littering, cliff jumping, drone-flying.

This is Yosemite under President Trump.

Over the past year, Mr. Trump has upended the agency that oversees Yosemite, the National Park Service.

He has presided over a 25 percent drop in permanent staff across the park service, through a combination of Department of Government Efficiency layoffs, as well as buyouts and retirements, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit.

. . . . The U.S. Department of the Interior, which administers the National Park Service, declined to comment on staffing numbers or operations at Yosemite.

. . . But according to interviews with park employees and environmentalists, the cuts at Yosemite, one of the country’s most visited national parks, have meant there aren’t always enough rangers to staff entrance booths or educate visitors on caring for the park. Amid the shortage, scientists working in the parks have cleaned the public toilets.

. . . At the same time, tourists have been coming to Yosemite in droves, with 2025 becoming one of its busiest summers in recent years. October was unusually packed because the park was left open and free during the federal government shutdown.

. . . Elisabeth Barton, a co-owner of a company that offers guided tours of Yosemite’s attractions, said her business had benefited from the crowds. But she has also noticed more visitors driving the wrong way down one-way roads, parking on sensitive meadows and BASE jumping off cliffs, which is not allowed.

. . . Ms. Barton and her co-owner, Bryant Burnette, who have been giving private tours of the park for years, think visitors have become particularly unruly because there haven’t been enough staff members around to teach them the importance of caring for the landscape.

“No wonder people are throwing trash and flying drones,” said Mr. Burnette, 36, who, as he walked, picked up tissues and wrappers that had been discarded on the valley floor. “I can’t be mad at them.”

Well, I can be mad at them.  Anybody with a lick of sense should know not to do anything unseemly, including littering and flying drones, in what is one of America’s greatest glories. How can Burnette think that without instruction tourists don’t know better than to litter the park or climb without a permit? As the article notes:

Currently, employees are keeping the park running day to day, but that isn’t enough — and it can’t last forever, said Don Neubacher, who was superintendent of Yosemite from 2010 to 2016.

“It’s not like you’re talking about some city park,” he said. “You’re talking about nature’s greatest gifts — it’s a dire time.”

It is SO beautiful.  Here’s the view from Glacier Point of the Eastern Yosemite Valley with Half Dome on the right:

Thomas Wolf, http://www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

*The UPI’s “Odd News” section describes a coyote doing what no human ever accomplished, swimming between the mainland and the island where Alcatraz prison sits (it’s no longer used as a prison).

A coyote caught on camera swimming to San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island is believed to be the first of its species to visit the former prison, which is now a tourist attraction.

Aidan Moore, a guest relations employee for Alcatraz City Cruises, said he was helping visitors disembark at the dock when a tourist showed him a video she captured of a coyote swimming to shore and climbing up onto the rocks.

Moore, who posted the video to Facebook, said he contacted rangers on the island, but they were unable to locate the animal.

Moore said he suspects the coyote may have gone back into the water, but it could also be hiding out somewhere on the island.

Janet Kessler, an amateur naturalist who has been studying coyote behavior in San Francisco for two decades, said the canine would be able to survive on the island for at least a short time. She said there are ample sources of food and puddles of fresh water to sustain the coyote.

The coyote may have come from San Francisco or Angel Island, where coyotes were previously observed. Either way, the animal would have had to swim over a mile to Alcatraz.

ulian Espinoza, a spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which oversees Alcatraz, confirmed the coyote was the first of its species to be documented visiting the island.

“Coyotes can be commonly seen throughout our San Francisco and Marin parklands but never before on Alcatraz,” Espinoza wrote in an email to SFGate. “This was the first time our park biologists observed anything like this.”

There have been several attempts of inmates to escape Alcatraz by swimming to shore, but no successes have been confirmed. The water is freezing and the currents swift. But I sure hope the coyote, who may have been looking for territory without competition, survived.  He was not in good shape when he made it to the island.  And I hope that eventually, if it survives, animal people would rescue it and put it in a good territory on the mainland (after a big meal of dog food). Here’s a video that shows the poor beast swimming:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has spilkes in her kishkes:

Hili: Various thoughts are troubling me.
Andrzej: Yeah, that’s one of the flaws of being alive.

In Polish:

Hili: Dręczą mnie różne myśli.
Ja: Tak, to jedna z wad istnienia.

*******************

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Give Me a Sign:

From CinEmma:

Masih gets attacked on Iranian t.v. in a ludicrous way. Look at the woman in the hijab saying that Masih is protected by the FBI because she’s not doing “clean-cut journalism”? What Masih is doing is both advocacy and perfectly legal reporting on the Iranian regime, but she’s protected because Iran has tried to kill her three times, for crying out loud!

From Al, a post about a resident of Catstanbul and the moggies one encounters there daily:

There’s no doubt that Larry the Cat, if he was an American cat, would be a Democat:

I can’t remember who sent me this, but it’s insane and has to stop:

One from my feed; a parent gives her child a roller-coaster experience. Presumably the video was playing at the same time (sound up):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb.  I didn’t realize that German was the most frequently-spoken language in Switzerland, but it is—by a long shot (64% of the people, with the second most common language, French, spoken by only 19%).

Another proud day for America.

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2026-01-21T17:37:33.984Z

Look at this thing!  The linked paper suggests that it’s not related to living or extinct fungi, so it may be a member of an unknown group that went extinct without leaving descendants:

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

— Laura Cooper (@transitionalform.bsky.social) 2026-01-21T19:25:29.885Z

There’s a thread, and these bizarre things were up to 8 meters tall!

1 / 23 Prototaxites is known from some very large fossils, including columns over 8m tall. These fossils date from the end of the Silurian to the Late Devonian (425–365 million years ago). This makes Prototaxites the largest organism on the Earth’s surface before the appearance of tall trees.

— Laura Cooper (@transitionalform.bsky.social) 2026-01-21T19:39:32.138Z

33 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
    The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. -Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), novelist (23 Jan 1783-1842)

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  2. UK First Cat Larry would indeed be a Dem. I got into a tussle with him a few months ago on “X”. He is a Palestine enjoyer, evidently.

    Disarming and scattering Hamas. Not an option. There can only be one strategy when it comes to Hamas. We have to open our minds that .. as I’ve mentioned here: “Other peoples value different things.”
    Peace/coexistence is not their priority.

    D.A.
    NYC (frozen)

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  4. Brrr. I recall temps like that a couple of weeks when I was in East Lansing, MI. Please stay bundled and covered on your daily walks to and from the lab.

    As it slides east and south, we will get some of that cold here in Southeast VA, though with a good news/bad news twist. The good news is that we are close to the moderating temperature of the ocean and chesapeake bay, currently 41F and the Gulf Stream at 70F about 100 miles offshore. So an expected northeast wind off the ocean will keep our temps between 25F and 38F over the next 48 hours. The bad news is that these winds also bring precipitation and during the sub freezing hours could have over a foot of snow and during the above-freezing hours, a couple of inches of cold rain. The results vary over just a couple of miles distance from the water and no matter how many weather bureau scientists are still employed, the local predictions are still a crap-shoot. We will know how it actually went sometime monday! In any case strictly northwest winds will bring us low teens and single digits mid next week. Florida sounds good, D.A.

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  5. San Francisco holds regular water races to Alcatraz. I even personally know a person (he did not win) who swam to Alcatraz. A person with just one leg swam to Alcatraz. Please note that the swim is considered ‘quite challenging’. I would not even try.

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    1. I was about to post something similar. A good friend was an avid open water swimmer when he lived in SF and completed the Alcatraz swim several times. The swim is challenging and needs to be done during the ideal tidal and weather conditions. There is an “Escape from Alcatraz” triathlon.

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  6. Assuming that Schwarz’s quotation is accurate: of course, the President knows that German is the main language of Switzerland. That is why he said that ‘Without us, right now, you would ALL be speaking German’. What he meant was that, if not for the US, the other 35% would also be speaking German. Harvey Manfredjensenjen said essentially the same thing, but about a different people.

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  7. “…of course, the President knows that German is the main language of Switzerland.” I find it difficult to believe that Trump knows this. This is the man who knows that he must own Iceland–er, Greenland.

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    1. True, I doubt he knows, but (in his defense) we all know what he was implying, especially by his “..or Japanese” after it.
      I have a feeling mainly boomers and GenX would get the idea of what he was saying. Younger people don’t seem to know a lot about history.

      D.A.
      NYC

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  8. Something’s wrong with that forecast picture. 0°C=32°F, 0°F=-17.8°C. Did AI produce these numbers by any chance? In that case, I am not surprised at all. AI can’t do arithmetic, it is a glorified autocomplete. Nothing less, nothing more.

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    2. Perhaps you’re talking about the pairs of numbers under each day of the week? Those are highs and lows in F, not an F-C equivalent pair.

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  9. Trump’s Board of Peace. I, too, have reservations, but I think it may make sense to join if one thinks the Board of Peace really is on the pathway toward a solution in Gaza and if one thinks that the pathway will lead to the disarming of Hamas. (Canada may eventually be re-invited if Prime Minister Carney grovels.)

    I know that what I just said is a mouthful, as there are two caveats: (1) being on the pathway toward an solution and (2) requiring the disarming of Hamas. If the Board of Peace is on the pathway, then, under Jered Kushner’s plan, disarming Hamas would seem to be an unstated requirement. After all, the “catastrophic success”* intended by Kushner’s plan won’t happen if Hamas terrorists roam the beautiful Gazan cities of commerce, trade, and tourism that he intends to create.

    But is the Board of Peace really on the pathway toward peace or is it something that will lack coordination (among the wide diversity of parties) and follow-through (as with other ideas that Trump raises and then drops)? As with all things Trump, any clarity of purpose is obscured by dust, smoke, and shrapnel. But if I were a leader, I would probably join the Board provisionally and see what happens.

    *
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/kushner-presents-plan-for-glitzy-gaza-rebuild-aiming-for-catastrophic-success/

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  10. One of my best friends discovered in her 8th month of pregnancy that her baby was actually deceased. I forwarded her a link to the tweet about the man who supposedly simulated pregnancy, along with a “planned stillbirth,” and asked how she felt about it.

    She said, “I want to break into his house in a flurry of violence, tie him up, tear his throat out, shove it in his mouth glue his eyelids open, and that’s just for starters… Just the first thought that occurred to me…. I’ll flesh it out a little more as I ruminate.”

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      1. I sent her a screenshot of the above and she said, “LOVE IT! I feel so honored and happy that Jerry agrees with me. I’ll put that on my tombstone.” 👏🏻😍

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    2. What that transwoman did was one of the most vile and disgusting things anyone could do. It makes me physically ill just thinking about the effrontery. And the connivance of the other members of the support group! All round shitheadedness.

      I really hope this story isn’t true.

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  11. Don Lemon certainly misspoke in saying “So, this is what the First Amendment is about,” to the worshippers whose church was swarmed by anti-ICE thugs. The 1A doesn’t provide an entitlement for an individual to break any laws against, say, trespass, forcible confinement, vandalism, arson, obstructing traffic, or interfering with law enforcement.

    Almost all speech that doesn’t directly incite is protected, yes, but no illegal conduct is protected just by a 1A excuse. You can stand on a sidewalk imploring ICE agents to kill themselves and maybe blow a whistle unless it violates noise bylaws. But you can’t step into the street and impede traffic, even if the only traffic around is ICE vehicles and all you are doing is filming them. You certainly can’t box in ICE vehicles any more than you can box in other road users. “Freedom of assembly” doesn’t include the right to assemble wherever the hell you please in a menacing manner that interferes with other people’s lawful rights of passage. (That’s what the Trucker Occupation did, illegally, in Ottawa.) The police can then remove you to a distant sidewalk and arrest you if you won’t obey them as they go about their lawful enforcement activity. When protestors illegally swarm into the street to petition for redress of grievances the police usually indulge them temporarily to avoid a riot breaking out. But if the crowd is obstructing the police from getting to their HQ with arrested suspects or parents from picking their kids up at school, the police will clear them away with necessary force. Municipal police do this with more finesse but if they won’t help, whatcha gonna do?

    Lukianoff’s views about whether anti-ICE protest activity is 1A-protected, and whether Administration responses violate 1A, are noted, but not binding. If a protestor claims a police officer violated her 1A rights, that will be a matter for the Courts to adjudicate, not FIRE. It is easier to strike down a law, such as a hate-speech law, as unconstitutional than it is to determine after the fact if any police conduct violated constitutional rights in the specific instance. Existing laws that have stood the test of time can be used freely to control and suppress illegal protest and allow aliens and criminals to be apprehended. They have to be.

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  12. One interesting question about the first amendment is whether a public official can deliberately spread a lie that can get someone hurt or killed. Let’s say, for example, a governor told a crowd that it was perfectly legal to shoot ICE agents with Airsoft pistols. Then someone tries it and is killed.

    That kind of speech can’t be protected, right?

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    1. Nobody else bit, so …

      I think it probably is protected, at least from criminal prosecution. As a free-speech absolutist I would want it to be. (I love questions like this because they test one’s principles.)

      Generally, all speakers are protected from criminal prosecution over their speech unless the speech violates a law prohibiting it, a law that has withstood constitutional scrutiny or has never been challenged because lawyers for would-be plaintiffs advise them not to try. When we say incitement isn’t “protected”, we mean exactly that there are laws that say what incitement is and the courts have ruled over the years in one specific case after another as to whether a specific speech constituted incitement. If you were arrested and charged with incitement you’d have the opportunity to raise doubt in a jury’s mind as to whether your speech really was incitement according to the law.

      So to answer your question explicitly, you’d have to cite me some law that says, for example, a public official (or anyone) can’t “spread false news.” (This was a quaint old Canadian law that Holocaust-denier Ernst Zündel was convicted of twice in the 1980s but was found to be unconstitutionally limiting of free speech, even by our standards. So the Government passed a hate-speech law instead. Sigh.)

      That doesn’t mean anyone can say that outrageously foolish and reckless thing with impunity, though. (You can put someone’s eye out, I can hear my mother saying, correctly.) If a police chief said it, he would surely be fired on the spot. If protestors, egged on by the fictional Governor, started shooting ICE with Airsoft guns that looked enough like real guns that ICE opened fire whenever they saw one, and the city police didn’t restore sanity, the fictional President would likely invoke the Insurrection Act there and then. The Army might arrest the Governor to prevent him from endangering his own people.

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      1. Not a lawyer but…

        Shooting someone with an Airsoft gun without their consent would likely be criminal, specifically, assault and battery. So urging or directing someone to do it would be abetting those crimes, and hence also criminal.

        From a 1A perspective, the speech would be incitement to “lawless action” and would not be protected if that action would be imminent and likely to be carried out.

        </not a lawyer, but>

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  13. I am not sure Carney is an ideal candidate for the Board of peace. What is happening in Canada is appalling. Can’t see those jail practices of housing male rapists in female prisons gaining much community acceptance in Gaza.

    Here is a particularly egregious example-

    https://x.com/AmericanMama/status/2014353038907945375?s=20

    He should get his own house in order before he tackles another countries problems.

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  14. Anyone? So, Trump was dead against Tik Tok. Until he wasn’t. And guess which company controls 15% of it? Oracle. You guessed it, another Larry Ellison company. We need to stay the hell out of other sovereign nations and clean up our own shit hole country. Just one more thing. One more thing. Forget about Gaza and Iran and Venezuela and Greenland and the 51st state to our north. We can’t keep our own diaper clean!

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    1. My apologies to Jerry and all the readers. I was in a rant. I think we’re in a big mess here and me insulting the entire country just adds to that mess. I need to take a break from commenting. Peace. Again, sorry.

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  15. I think you should have noted that membership on the Board of Peace would be for three years, unless a country puts up a billion dollars to receive a permanent membership.

    I wonder where the billion will go?

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