Birdnow's Aviary

October 23, 2019

Democrats Stifle Free Speech

Timothy Birdnow

What part of "shall not be enfringed" is tripping them up?

Democratsâ€™ Election Bill Allows The Government To Define â€˜Legitimate Newsâ€™

From The Federalist:

The House will vote today on the SHIELD Act, a Democrat-led and misguided effort to deter foreign interference in American elections.

[...]

One of the major problems with the SHEILD Act regarding free speech is a provision that allows the federal government to determine what is and is not "legitimate journalistic activitiesâ€ for the purposes of protecting them from the provisions of the act. The obvious problem with this is that should the federal government decide a journalistic activity is not legitimate, it will have broad powers to silence it.

In addition to this concern, the bill creates a wide array of hoops for United States citizens wishing to engage in political speech to jump through. By making it more difficult to purchase online ads, the bill threatens to chill speech. Regular Americans should not fear federal prosecution for engaging in the political process.

It is not only the GOP that opposes these illiberal elements of the bill, and the bill itself, but also the ACLU, which in a statement said, "The SHIELD Act, as it currently stands, strikes the wrong balance, sweeping too broadly and encompassing more speech than necessary to achieve its legitimate goals.â€

[...]

The Democratic bill frankly looks like a rehashing of the collapsed allegation of collusion against the Trump campaign. In short, it is a solution to something that we now know was not the problem.

Read it all at the Federalist.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:08 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 264 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Horse hockey! They can try. It won't work. They are just getting terminally worried that what they're doing is getting the citizens (you, me, and a few others, some of whom we know personally; remember us?) royally pissed off. They can hold the whole darn country in contempt of Congress, and I'm bound to say they're a bit late for that.

Meanwhile, there's that pesky thing called the First Amendment, and I really think the Supremes will uphold it if it gets to them, especially with Trump's two guys on it, and most certainly with the excellent Clarence Thomas on board. I'd even bet a nice bottle of beer that the fearsome RBG would be on the right side on this one; it's stood her in good stead more than once.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 23, 2019 10:03 PM (S3Uvu)

2 I agree Dana, but you never can be sure with SCOTUS. Of course, it will have to work its way through the lower courts first and it could impact an election (like the next one) before being settled. But of course it will never happen, as the Senate would have to pass it and Trump sign it. In a way I almost hope it comes up for a vote so it can be used as a tool against the Donkeys.

But then the media will spin it as Trump protecting his illicit Russian friends - which is probably the whole point of the legislation.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 24, 2019 06:47 AM (e9JAO)

3 The more often I read this -- the idea that the gummint gets to define "legitimate news," the more I think this had to come from The Onion, or the Babylon Bee. I mean, good heavens, the gummint can't define legitimate anything these days (at least the Democrats in it), and shouldn't be allowed to try. I was briefly thinking I should try to provide examples, but then it seemed it would be harder to give an example where they did the opposite.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at October 24, 2019 09:15 PM (HEmKM)

Hide Comments | Add Comment