The Washington Post: We have to destroy the First Amendment in order to save it. In what has to be the most blockheaded analysis I’ve read in years, The Post ran a story this afternoon titled “Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks.”
Of course the conservatives and libertarians are leading the charge. It’s the fight against government coercing, cajoling or even cooperating with publishers (electronic and otherwise) to suppress right-leaning views.
To paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the Constitution, Stupid.”
The people who want to censor the right have put a new dress on their pig. The Washington Post painted it thusly:
“The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.”
“See, we have a First Amendment right to figure out how to suppress others’ speech. We’re the real victims here.”
As you may remember, as The Hill reported on Missouri v. Biden:
“A federal appellate court concluded Sept. 8 that multiple White House, surgeon general, FBI and CDC officials likely breached the fine line separating permissible government persuasion and jawboning from illicit “coercion and significant encouragement” when they repeatedly — and often successfully — lobbied social-media companies “to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites.”
At that oral argument, Judge Don Willett had no problem with federal agencies publicly criticizing what they judged false or dangerous ideas. But that wasn’t how Biden’s winged monkeys compelled submission: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on . . . subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats” said the Judge.
Willett expressed his disgust with the mafia-like tactics of the Biden administration: “That’s a really nice social-media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”