The Post-Partisan Emporium

Did Columbia University Violate the First Amendment? It's commonly argued that private groups cannot break the First Amendment, but there's an exception: If there's "entanglement" between the private entity and the government. It looks like there was. SAM HUSSEINI Students at Columbia doing a traditional dabke folk dance. Defending Rights & Dissent in their recent  letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik  (which has lots of good information) stated: “Although Columbia University is a private institution not governed by the First Amendment, the role of state actors — in this case members of Congress — in instigating the action would raise serious First Amendment concerns.” This might seem odd to people. Many people think that private groups can disregard the First Amendment, which only limits government action. However, Defending Rights & Dissent is perfectly correct in noting this case may be different. The group adds that “Even if the First Amendment

  Gilad Atzmon: The Zionized North Is on a Suicide Mission The brilliant philosopher-musician has been keeping a low profile lately. Here's his latest. KEVIN BARRETT I hosted Gilad Atzmon events in Madison, Wisconsin several times. The pushback from the local Zionist kamikazes kept getting worse. The  last one, in May 2018 , saw the Wil Mar Community Center cancel our room reservation at the last minute. Gilad wound up giving a his talk in the park, then playing saxophone in a nearby restaurant. Understandably, Gilad eventually got sick of the endless harassment and lowered his profile a couple of notches. He hasn’t been writing essays or doing interviews on controversial subjects for the past several years. But he’s still posting his thoughts  on Facebook . So when Cat and Colleen McGuire urged me to turn Gilad’s recent FB post(s) into a guest post at my Substack, I said “sure—if you can get his permission.” And by golly, they did. -KB The Zionized North Is on a Suicide Mission By

  The Second Round of Retaliation Between Israel and Iran Has Just Begun Joe Biden is caught in a trap caused by his own weakness PHILIP GIRALDI   Given the lying and fact twisting that have routinely been part and parcel of accounts of what is occurring in the Middle East, the past several weeks have nevertheless been shocking in terms of how an abysmally low standard of truth can be reduced even farther. Looking at developments objectively, one comes up with a series of facts. First of all, Israel was not at war with either Syria or Iran during the first weeks in April. Iran had never attacked Israel prior to that point and Syria last fought Israel in 1973, over fifty years ago. Israel, however, has regularly been assassinating Iranian officials and scientists and it has been frequently been bombing Syria since 2017, increasing the pace to weekly and sometimes even daily attacks over the past six months paralleling the Gaza fighting. A particularly devastating attack took place on Ma