Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Maine Lawmaker Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Speech Ban

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 3, 2025

A Maine legislator has turned to the US Supreme Court after being effectively stripped of her ability to represent her constituents over a controversial social media post. Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, who serves District 90, submitted an emergency request to the high court this week, seeking to overturn a disciplinary action imposed by her fellow lawmakers that has barred her from voting or speaking on the House floor since February.

The dispute stems from a Facebook post Libby made criticizing the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a statewide girls’ pole vault competition.

The post included a mention of a Maine student and questioned the fairness of allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports categories, a stance that ignited outrage among Democratic legislators. In response, the House voted to censure Libby and conditioned her return to full legislative participation on an apology she had refused to give.

Rather than comply, Libby launched a legal fight to restore her role, arguing the punishment amounted to unconstitutional retaliation. After lower courts refused to intervene, she is now asking the Supreme Court to address what she sees as a blatant violation of the First Amendment and a denial of her constituents’ right to representation.

We obtained a copy of the application for you here.

“For over 60 days my constituents have had no say in any actions taken by their government, actions that directly impact their lives,” she wrote in a post on X. “Every vote taken on the floor of the legislature is a vote my constituents cannot get back. The good people of our district have been silenced and disenfranchised.”

Libby emphasized that the case raises serious concerns about the limits of legislative authority when it comes to penalizing elected officials for their speech.

“For more than 50 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that it violates the First Amendment to retaliate against a representative for exercising their right to free speech — and has firmly rejected immunity claims in nearly identical circumstances,” she continued. “Yet today, Maine stands alone, insisting it can silence me and deprive my constituents of representation for the remainder of my term simply because I told the truth on social media.”

May 3, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Maine Lawmaker Censored: The Facebook Post That Sparked a Free Speech Showdown

By Regina Morrison | Reclaim The Net | March 11, 2025

You’re an elected official. You show up at the state house, ready to do what politicians do: discuss budgets and debate policy. But instead, you find yourself in the middle of a firestorm over a Facebook post. Not because it contains state secrets or classified intel, but because it features photos from a high school track meet.

This is exactly what happened to Maine Representative Laurel Libby, who now finds herself at the center of a storm that is less about sports and more about who gets to decide what speech is acceptable in a democracy.

A Championship, A Facebook Post, and a Political Crisis

It all started with a pole vaulting competition. Libby, a mother of five and a fierce advocate for women’s sports, posted photos from Maine’s Class B state championship in girls’ pole vaulting. The athlete who won had previously competed in the boys’ division, where they finished in fifth place. Now competing in the girls’ category, the athlete cleared 10 feet 6 inches, winning by a wide margin.

Libby’s post ignited a national conversation — the media ran with it, the White House took notice, and suddenly, a Maine high school sports event became ground zero for the larger battle over transgender athletes in women’s sports.

The Censure Vote and the Ultimatum

Democratic leaders in the Maine legislature quickly stepped in. They demanded she take the post down. Libby refused. The response was a censure vote, which passed 75-70 along party lines.

But that wasn’t enough. The House speaker then took things a step further: Libby would not be allowed to speak or vote on legislation until she deleted the post. In other words, her constituents would now go unheard in state government, all because their representative refused to edit her social media. Normally, removing a legislator would require a two-thirds vote or a recall election, but those formalities were apparently unnecessary when a majority party had other tools at its disposal.

Libby’s critics argue that she could have made her point without sharing the athlete’s photo. “Sharing images of kids online without their consent is a clear violation of the bond of trust and respect between citizens and their legislators,” said Majority Leader Ryan Fecteau. He accused Libby of using a minor to score political points and insisted that serious policy debates should not be waged through viral social media posts.

Libby, however, sees it differently. “Words don’t have the same impact. People need to see what’s happening to understand why it’s unfair,” she explained. Her stance is simple: if an athlete competes in a public championship, they should expect public attention. “If you don’t want attention, don’t put yourself in a public position to receive it.”

Libby’s post, whether you agree with it or not, falls squarely under the First Amendment. She wasn’t revealing state secrets or inciting a riot — she was commenting on a policy set by the Maine High School Principals Association, which allows student-athletes to compete in the gender category with which they identify.

In other words, she was doing exactly what elected officials are supposed to do: debate policies that affect the people they represent. The fact that her speech was met not with counter arguments but with an outright ban from legislative participation raises an uncomfortable question; if lawmakers can be silenced for discussing controversial policies, what does that mean for the rest of us?

March 11, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

After Licensing Board Threatens Disciplinary Action, Maine Physician Asks Board to Define COVID ‘Misinformation’

The Defender | November 30, 2021

The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine this month issued a position statement in which it said: “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”

In the letter below, Dr. Meryl Nass, a practicing physician in Maine and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board, asked the board to define what it means by “misinformation” and “disinformation,” and to clarify what statutory authority the board has to discipline physicians on the basis of undefined transgressions. The letter, which includes the Nov. 16 testimony Nass gave to the New Hampshire state legislature, has been edited slightly for clarity.

November 22, 2021

To the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine:

I am a physician, licensed in Maine for the past 24 years. I am concerned about the use of the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” and the new threat to physicians’ licenses issued by the board today for undefined behaviors.

I require clarification regarding the board’s definition of misinformation and disinformation and would like to know what statutory authority the board has to discipline physicians on the basis of undefined transgressions.

Please tell me what law or regulation authorizes such threats for speech outside the clinic.

I thought I would provide the board with some information I provide to the public to see if the board intends to term documented facts as misinformation, intends to censor these facts and whether those who provide these facts to the public will be at risk of disciplinary action.

Here is my invited testimony to the New Hampshire legislature (Education Committee) on Nov. 16, 2021. Am I at risk for telling these truths? Please let me know.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “[The vaccine] doesn’t protect you against catching the disease, and it doesn’t protect you from passing it on.”

[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said: “The vaccines no longer prevent transmission.”

In a high-quality study of all VA beneficiaries just published in Science, by September, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was only 13% effective against infection, the Pfizer 43% and the Moderna 58%.

In a new University of California study of more than 500 vaxxed and unvaxxed people who tested positive for COVID, the amounts of virus in saliva were the same. They could transmit the infection to others, equally.

The UK’s top vaccine expert, Sir Andrew Pollard, said in August, regarding COVID vaccines: “Herd immunity is not a possibility. We need to focus on how do we prevent dying or going to hospital.”

Please understand this: Since we cannot achieve herd immunity with our vaccines, the inevitable result is that practically everyone will eventually get the disease.

Vaccines cannot achieve safe schools and workplaces, because the vaccinated can still transmit, even when asymptomatic.

While public health leaders are hoping frequent boosters will kick the can down the road, there is no reason to think boosters will prevent transmission, when the initial series didn’t.

Instead, it is crucial that we immediately focus on preventing severe disease and death — and early treatment can do this. It saves hospitalizations and lives. This is great news.

Why doesn’t everyone know it?

Because, had the benefit of existing drugs been acknowledged, there could have been no Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA) issued for vaccines, remdesivir or monoclonal antibodies — all of which are multibillion-dollar, patented products.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “For FDA to issue an EUA, there must be no adequate, approved and available alternative to the product.”

Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were approved, adequate and available — and cheap. Thus they had to be suppressed.

Many drugs and supplements have efficacy against COVID. I created a handout of treatments for you. Please do not allow therapies for COVID to be restricted. Don’t allow doctors and pharmacists to be persecuted for providing these critical medications.

Few people are aware that in a Senate hearing on May 11, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Peter Marks of the FDA and CDC Director Walensky, what percentage of the employees in their agencies were vaccinated.

None provided a number. Fauci and Marks guessed that a bit over half were vaccinated.

What did thousands of scientists in the National Institutes of Health, FDA and CDC know that you didn’t know? This:

  • They knew about sky-high rates of myocarditis in young men, which had been discussed in the Israeli media in April but was not disclosed in the U.S. until June.
  • They knew that deaths after vaccination were extremely high — much higher than reported for any other vaccine, ever. The CDC says that VAERS (its Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) received more than 9,000 reports of U.S. deaths related to COVID vaccines, but claims they are rare. RARE? Record-setting deaths have also been reported in the UK and Europe after COVID vaccinations.

There have been more deaths reported to VAERS for COVID vaccines in 10 months than were reported for every vaccine used in the U.S. over 30 years.

As of Nov. 19, more than half (56%) of the deaths reported to VAERS after COVID vaccines occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated. And although the CDC has not investigated them all, the agency still claims, ”A review of available clinical information … has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.”

But CDC officials haven’t linked the deaths to anything else, either.

Let me talk about kids. The CDC estimates that 147 million Americans have already had COVID — and that at least half of our kids are already immune.

Yet the FDA and CDC have not seen fit to allow Americans to use any available test — not PCR, not antibody, not T cell nor any combination of tests to prove immunity — even though the FDA accepts antibody tests as evidence of immunity in COVID vaccine clinical trials.

Why the double standard? It seems the reason to deny natural immunity is to force everyone to be vaccinated, whether they need it or not.

If the vaccines were safe, this policy would be less egregious. But they aren’t safe. The younger you are, the greater is the risk of myocarditis. Reported myocarditis rates in 12- to 17-year-old males after vaccination are 100 times higher than for men over 65.

One study showed that teenage boys are 3 to 6 times as likely to be hospitalized for a post-vaccine case of myocarditis as for a case of COVID.

Myocarditis is a serious side effect, which can cause sudden arrhythmic death. After three months, 25% of kids with myocarditis have still not recovered. No one knows how common this side effect will be in the 5- to 11-year-olds since it was not reported in Pfizer’s trial, which lasted an average of only 17 days after full vaccination for half the child subjects.

Dr. Eric Rubin, the New England Journal editor, said at FDA’s 5- to 11-year-old vaccine advisory meeting: “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.”

The FDA knows our children are the guinea pigs, and now you do too.

Did you know that in Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francisco children as young as 12 are being vaccinated without parental consent or notice? JAMA Pediatrics in July published an article calling for states to amend the law to allow children to consent for themselves.

Will New Hampshire support this attack on parental authority?

All pediatric COVID vaccines are used under EUAs. These remove manufacturer liability from the vaccines, unless willful misconduct can be proved.

Under the Public Readiness and Preparedness (PREP) Act, a finding of willful misconduct requires the manufacturer knew there was a problem with their vaccines, but sold them anyway.

The unforeseen consequence of the PREP Act is that it gives manufacturers a huge incentive to perform the most minimal testing of their products — because if they did not know there was a problem, they cannot be sued for misconduct.

Why are we allowing experimental products that have been inadequately tested, are dangerous in older children and were produced by a manufacturer who can’t be sued to be injected into our children?

But these facts have been obscured by a smokescreen of fatuous “safe and effective” claims made by financially conflicted organizations.

Did they tell you that if your child is injured, you are unlikely to collect a penny? Did they tell you that the compensation program for EUA injuries has not compensated a single COVID drug or vaccine injury — despite a one-year statute of limitations?

Under U.S. law, you have the right to refuse EUAs. And you must be informed of all that is known and unknown about risks and benefits.

But neither of these two requirements are being followed.

Since the pandemic, the rule of law has been tossed aside. I urge you to learn about the law governing the use of EUA products, so I have provided you the relevant section of U.S. Code.

Let me conclude by saying that given the loose regulatory milieu we are in, COVID vaccines will probably be licensed for everyone soon. That imprimatur will not brush away their serious problems.

Please prevent mandates of these extremely questionable products.

Sincerely yours,

Sincerely yours, Meryl Nass, MD

Meryl Nass, M.D., ABIM, is an internist with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illness, fibromyalgia and toxicology.

© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

December 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Montana becomes First State to Require Search Warrants for Cellphone Location Tracking

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | July 5, 2013

California had its chance, but now Montana has become the first state in the U.S. to require that police obtain a search warrant before using a person’s cellphone records to track their whereabouts.

The new law mandates that law enforcement have probable cause before asking a judge for a warrant that permits the examination of metadata collected by telecommunications companies.

Police can ignore the law if the cellphone is reported stolen or if they are responding to an emergency call from the user.

Lawmakers in California adopted a similar law last year, but Democratic Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying it did not “strike the right balance” between the needs of citizens and law enforcement.

Other states have also considered the legislation. In Maine, a location information privacy bill now awaits approval from the governor. Texas legislators rejected the idea, in spite of recently passing a bill that made its state the first in the nation to require a warrant for email surveillance. Massachusetts lawmakers plan to conduct a hearing on a measure that would require search warrants for location records as well as content of cellphone communications.

Federal legislation—the Geolocational Privacy & Surveillance Act (pdf)—was recently introduced in Congress, but neither the House nor the Senate has taken it seriously so far.

July 6, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trading our environment for wind power

By Nancy O’Toole | March 14, 2010

In 2008, the Kibby project, 44 turbines, miles of roads and hundreds of acres of cleared forest was approved. The Expedited Rule did its job for the developer, streamlining the necessary review since the location is part of over 14 million acres of land opened to wind development.

Now in 2010, TransCanada wants to expand the Kibby project and is proposing 15 turbines on Sisk Mountain, which overlooks the Chain of Ponds.

To do this TransCanada wants to expand the already expedited area of Maine to include the portion of Sisk Mountain not yet within this “umbrella.” TransCanada is petitioning to add another 630 acres to the expedited area, all of it overlooking Chain of Ponds, Big Island, and Massachusetts Bog.

Mountain tops and ridges above 2,700 feet will host all 15 turbines, 3.6 miles of crane road (34 feet wide), 3.6 miles of collector lines, (60 feet wide), 0.6 miles of access road to ridge and miles of “temporary” skidder trails. That does not include upgrades to a number of existing tracks.

A total of 90 wetland areas were identified with 11 Palustrine scrub — shrubs in the path of the collector line corridor. TC surveyed the area for vernal pools and listed 14 significant pools, meaning it has a high habitat value and is home to or has an abundance of threatened or endangered species. All will be impacted to some degree.

Clearing and grubbing will remove 140 acres of forest. Of that, 42 acres is described as fir-heartleaved birch sub-alpine community. Having a statewide S3 ranking means it’s a rare community type of forest and the clearing will isolate and alter the habitat adjacent to the community, allowing sunlight and wind, which removes moisture, deeper into the forest and impacting the rest of the community and altering it forever. The Bicknell Thrush, a threatened song bird, will lose 12.4 acres of critical habitat.

Blasting and excavating estimates are 750,000 cubic yards, with 650,000 cubic yards of fill. This is very significant, given that the soils, hydrology and the steep slopes above 2300 feet are very fragile. It is very difficult to build roads in this zone without significant blasting and it effects the surrounding environment.

Underlying hydrology needs to be identified and protected. This includes water from seeps, springs and streams disrupted by blasting of ledge and rock for roads and turbine placement.

The results from diverting will change the temperature and volume of streams, thus impact salmon in North Branch Dead River, Horseshoe stream and wild brook trout in Clear Brook.

Roads and collector lines will cross 57 perennial and intermittent streams.

Gold Brook is a tributary of the north branch of the Dead River and provides temperature refuge for landlocked salmon and supports wild brook trout. Kibby Stream, a tributary of Spencer Stream, supports wild brook trout. When existing hydrology is disturbed and large amounts of sedimentation is deposited into these streams, significant impacts to our native fish population will occur.

In 2008 Roaring Brook Mayflies were discovered in Gold Brook, whose headwaters are on the southern slope of Sisk. This insect is listed under the Maine Department of Inland Fish and Wildlife as Endangered. First discovered at the base of Mt. Katahdin in the Roaring Brook, it is protected for its entire length in Baxter State Park. It is a significant source of food for the brook trout, bats, dragonflies and other wildlife.

The bog lemming, golden eagle historic nesting area, and Canadian lynx tracks were discovered in the Kibby and Sisk area.

Boreal straw and snowline wintergreen were found, both listed as a S2, imperiled in Maine due to rarity of species. Both grow along the margins of perennial streams.

All these and more species fall under some regulations for protection!

Where is their protection in all this fury to make money? This is an oxymoron if there ever was one — killing endangered species, some due to global warming species, in order to curtail global warming?

Nancy O’Toole is a member of the Friends of the Boundary Mountains, a nonprofit that intervened in the Kibby Mountain project as well as the Sisk Mountain project before LURC now. She has a bachelor of science degree in environmental engineering and 10 years of experience with high mountain road construction and hazardous waste cleanup in towns in Utah. She lives in Phillips.

Related articles

March 14, 2010 Posted by | Environmentalism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment