Source: Town Hall
by Stephen Moore

“Earlier this year, in one of the most absurd court rulings in modern times, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated U.S. antitrust law by gaining a monopoly in the search engine markets. In the days or weeks ahead, the courts will decide whether to break up one of America’s most iconic companies or to sell off some of its activities and products. The latest reports are that the courts may require Google to sell off its popular Chrome browser. … Google is one of the five most profitable companies in the world. It got there by offering a search engine service FOR FREE to hundreds of millions of customers. This may be the largest benefit to consumers of any company in world history. Yet the courts ruled that: ‘Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.'” (11/20/24)

https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2024/11/20/breaking-up-google-will-be-a-great-american-catastrophe-n2647992

Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum

“‘The censorship cartel must be dismantled,’ Brendan Carr declared two days before President-elect Donald Trump picked him to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Trump described Carr as ‘a warrior for Free Speech.’ Carr’s plans for ‘reining in Big Tech’ understandably appeal to Trump, who has long complained that the leading social media platforms are biased against him. But Carr’s agenda is blatantly inconsistent with conservative principles, including limited government, free markets, freedom of speech, and opposition to lawless regulation.” (11/20/24)

https://reason.com/2024/11/20/the-new-fcc-chairmans-agenda-contradicts-conservative-principles/

Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Ari Cohn

On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would appoint FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to chair the agency, calling him a ‘warrior for Free Speech.’ But that honorific — as well as some of Carr’s own past statements about the First Amendment — stands in stark contrast to a threatening letter Carr sent last week to the CEOs of several tech companies asking for information about their relationship with NewsGuard, in order to ‘help inform FCC action.’ NewsGuard is a private organization that conducts fact-checking and provides credibility ratings for news and information outlets. … tech companies and private fact-checking groups are not curtailing anyone’s First Amendment rights. The First Amendment binds only government actors, not social media platforms or other private digital information services. Carr knows this, by his own admission …” (11/20/24)

https://www.thefire.org/news/commissioner-regulate-thyself-incoming-fcc-chair-threatening-censor-views-he-doesnt

Source: Law & Liberty
by Noah Gould

“Mandating specific courses from a centralized legislative body is a too-little-too-late strategy that will not shift the core of the underlying problem facing higher education, namely the loss of purpose. Suppose you mandate certain authors or books to be taught at all universities, what guarantees that professors will even present such works in a sympathetic way? This would require further and further control to ensure that institutions are meeting ideological goals. These types of command-and-control policies miss the complexity across disciples and the needs across society. To use politics as an all-encompassing category justifying legislative mandates is to make the same mistake as those on the left who would fold all of human experience into the purview of the state.” (11/20/24)

https://lawliberty.org/is-higher-education-inherently-political/