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Asian landownership
“There is no discernment about what type of land is being purchased or who is doing the purchasing,” [Rep. Gene] Wu spoke earlier this month. “It targets individuals indiscriminately.”
The bill is not only anti-Asian, but also raises economic and constitutional concerns.
The bill bans individuals, particularly those of specific nationalities, which suggests that those communities can’t be trusted. This is a common theme in a long history of discrimination against and exclusion, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
These types of claims linking national origin to American loyalty, belonging, and citizenship are old fodder and used again and again to try to ban or restrict Asian immigration and land ownership. The flames of anti-Chinese, anti-Asian sentiment are not needed to be lit in the midst of a global pandemic.
Kolkhorst, responding to protests in Austin or Houston, stressed that the bill won’t restrict citizens or legal permanent resident from purchasing land. She also said she would consider including people “in the pipeline to become citizens,” according to Chronicle reporting.
Supreme Court leak
The investigation [into a Supreme Court draft decision this past year reversing abortion rights] comprised 126 interviews with 97 court employees, determining 82 of them — not including the nine justices — had access to the draft. We searched their printer logs, search history, court-issued laptops, and cellphones.
The court found no one among these employees to be responsible for the leak.
The initial report didn’t mention if justices or their spouses had been interviewed.
A day later, after criticism from the left and the right over this omission, Marshal Gail A. Curley said the justices and their spouses were interviewed but unlike their 87 subordinates, they didn’t have to sign sworn affidavits.
“During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions,” Curley said in a statement. “The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions, and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses.”
In other words, 82 employees could have lost their jobs because they leaked the draft opinion. There is one other thing to think about: the justices who have lifetime appointments and their spouses. Why aren’t they put under oath
Online harassment
State. Rep. Jared Patterson (Representative of Frisco) has introduced a bill that would ban minors from using social media. We can understand his motivation. Social media is causing increasing concern over the mental health of young people.
Parents, and not the state, are better judges of what their children see.
Instead, we urge Patterson and other legislators to consider ways to make it easier for social media companies to be held civilly responsible for the content they transmit. Why should Meta, Instagram’s parent company, profit from Kacie Smith’s harassment and fear? The answer is that she should be able to sue the company that gave her harasser a platform.
Screenshot of a now-deleted Instagram account that expressed hatred toward a Frisco ISD…Screenshot of a now-deleted Instagram account that expressed hatred toward a Frisco ISD teacher, with references to violence.(Instagram)She doesn’t because federal law gives social media companies broad immunity from civil liability for what is posted on websites. There is no significant impediment to creating an anonymous account that can be used for spreading hate and threats.
“That’s just the world we live in” has become a strange defense to this new reality. It wasn’t always the world we lived in. In fact, it’s a pretty new and frightening world.