Neither Harris Nor Trump Is a Friend of Free Speech

Both presidential candidates (and their running mates) seem confused about the constraints imposed by the First Amendment.

During last week's vice presidential debate, the Democratic candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, asked his Republican opponent, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), whether Donald Trump lost his 2020 bid for re-election. Because Vance did not want to choose between contradicting reality and contradicting his running mate, he dodged that question, instead posing one of his own: "Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?"

Although that pivot was puzzling, it rescued Vance from an uncomfortable situation while highlighting the vice president's disregard for freedom of speech and Walz's alarming misconceptions about the First Amendment. Yet Vance himself seems confused about the constraints imposed by that constitutional guarantee, and so does Trump.

Vance was referring to the Biden administration's persistent pressure on social media platforms to suppress content that federal officials viewed as dangerous to public health. But even before the pandemic, Harris showed she was no friend to freedom of speech.

"We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy," Harris, then a senator, said while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019. "If you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don't police your platforms, we are going to hold you accountable."

Like Harris, Walz thinks the First Amendment is no barrier to government censorship of "hate speech" or "misinformation," as he made clear in a 2022 MSNBC interview. When Vance alluded to those comments during the debate, Walz doubled down.

"You can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater," Walz declared. "That's the Supreme Court test."

That misbegotten, misleading, and much-abused analogy, which comes from a 1919 case in which the justices unanimously upheld the Espionage Act convictions of two Socialist Party leaders who had distributed anti-draft flyers during World War I, is not now and never has been "the Supreme Court test." The Court in that case applied the "clear and present danger" test, which it repudiated half a century later in favor of a standard that makes it much harder to punish people for controversial speech.

The latter case, which involved racist and antisemitic remarks by a Ku Klux Klan leader, also shows that Harris and Walz are flatly wrong in asserting a "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, bigots have a constitutional right to express their views, no matter how hateful or offensive.

The idea that "misinformation" is not covered by the First Amendment is equally misguided. Outside of limited contexts such as defamation and commercial fraud, even outright lies are constitutionally protected, and an exception for the much broader and highly contested category of "misinformation" would be an open-ended license to censor speech that government officials do not like.

Although Vance rightly rebuked Harris and Walz for these positions, that does not mean he is a reliable defender of free speech. A few years ago, he suggested the government should "seize the assets of the Ford Foundation" because he disagrees with the academics and causes that organization supports.

Trump likewise champions freedom of speech for himself and his allies while attacking it when it protects his critics and political opponents. If Trump had his way, flag burners would be jailed, purveyors of "fake news" would lose their broadcast licenses, and news outlets would have to pay him damages when their coverage strikes him as unfair.

Only "stupid people," Trump averred in July, think flag burning is a form of constitutionally protected expression, as the Supreme Court has twice ruled. Those "stupid people" include the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Trump described as "a great judge" and the model for his Supreme Court appointments.

These illiberal tendencies are disheartening but not surprising. If politicians consistently respected freedom of speech, we would not need the First Amendment.

© Copyright 2024 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

Comments

[Chumby]

JD Vance is wrong about Reason’s boaf sidez.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

I wonder how many times Sullum jacked off writing this drivelous hit piece?l

[Rob Misek]

No liars support free speech. Free speech threatens the exposure of their lies and all the repercussions that follow.

Lying isn’t protected speech.

Civilization couldn’t exist without criminalizing fraud and perjury because there just isn’t enough time in a day to fact check everything. There needs to be consequences for lying.

Even liars recognize the harm caused by lying when it’s directed at them, but they can’t bring themselves to advocate criminalizing all lying.

So they attack protected free speech, especially the truth that exposes their lies and conspiracies.

We need to force the process of criminalizing lying. Only then will the purpose of free speech and all communication, speaking truth, be protected.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""Lying isn’t protected speech.""

From the article.
"even outright lies are constitutionally protected""

What country do you live in? Because in the US, lying is in fact constitutionally protected. When you say it is not, then YOU are lying.

To claim it should be illegal is an opinion which you are entitled to.

[Rob Misek]

If lying were protected speech, fraud and perjury could not be crimes.

Nowhere does the constitution specifically protect lying. You need to prove your claim that it does.

Liars will say it does. As long as lying isn’t a crime, why wouldn’t they?

The Supreme Court has been wrong and overturned their own decisions before.

“ In 2012 the Supreme Court held for the first time that lies (verifiable factual falsehoods) were protected speech under the First Amendment, United States v. Alvarez. ”

https://www.law.gwu.edu/right-lie-new-book-explores-complex-constitutional-questions

All lying is coercion and should be criminalized.

[B G]

"If lying were protected speech, fraud and perjury could not be crimes."

Fraud and Perjury are crimes because those laws criminalize lying within specific contexts where the context makes it clear that the intent of the lie is to cause some kind of material harm to another person or to obstruct the proper execution of some official process of justice. Even in those cases (unlike the totalitarian regime which you'd impose on the world), it not only is restricted to a particular context but it's necessary to prove that any false statements were made knowingly.

If the system imagined in your fever dreams were enacted, and merely being incorrect in any statement became a criminal act, you'd be among the first to be rounded up and possibly given a live sentence for the sheer volume of nonsense you've vomited onto these forums alone (god only knows where else you must try to spread this drivel).

Imagine a world in which claiming to have "other plans" which don't exist to avoid some unwanted social function, or telling a panhandler that you "have no cash" in order to avoid some kind of protracted waste of everyone's time were somehow rendered into a criminal act. There'd be nobody walking free to enforce such laws, or to manage the prisons which would have to contain virtually the entire population at some point. Not to mention who would care for all of the children whose parents were whisked away for telling them to leave cookies out "for Santa" on Christmas Eve, or that Jesus Christ once walked on water and restored a dead man to life (neither of those things could be proven to the satisfaction of your imagined laws, yet I bet you believe them to be unquestionably true).

Nowhere does the constitution specifically protect lying. You need to prove your claim that it does.

[Rob Misek]

Lying is already a crime in perjury and fraud because it has long been recognized in society that it needs to be.

When all lying is criminalized, people will simply choose their words more carefully so as not to coerce the people they are communicating with.

If you really don’t want to be honest with someone you can still weasel out of full disclosure by prefacing what you say with “I don’t know but…” or “I believe”.

Sure everyone will figure out what you’re doing, but look on the bright side, you’ll no longer be lying to coerce people to believe and act on your lie as though it were truth.

The process of criminalizing lying would necessarily codify in law exactly what constitutes truth and how it is proven the best humanity is capable of. With correctly applied logic and science.

We’d all be accountable for our actions. The horror.

[Rob Misek]

If you think I’ve lied, prove it by refuting what I’ve said with correctly applied logic and science.

Right, you won’t because you want to keep lying. It’s so much easier to coerce people into agreeing with you than to demonstrate the truth of why they should.

Because you can’t
Became they shouldn’t
Because you’re lying.

[B G]

Nobody but you can "prove" anything under the rules of what you think constitute "properly applied" logic (which anyone who's studied actual logic would recognize as a laundry list of common fallacies piled on top of your own confirmation bias).

The underlying assumption in your batshit notion of "properly applied logic and science" is that whatever you choose to believe is "truth" and therefore anything contradicting that is "refuted", and your only use for "science" is to insist that the lack of use of techniques which couldn't possibly produce a conclusive result amounts to proof that events which were described in detail by hundreds of independent first-hand witnesses "didn't happen". Anyone with an actual working knowledge of the concepts you ignorantly pretend to wrap yourself in could tell you under the rules of evidence that absence of proof doesn't amount to proof of absence (possibly the most glaring point by which your idea of "properly applied" logic is actually the opposite of real logic), and you remain so aggressively ignorant of the basic concept as to insist that you're "satisfied with the optics".

I don't think you've actually lied, because by all appearances you seem to insist on believing the nonsense you repeatedly spew.

By the definition you'd apply to "truth" (and have your governmental enforcement system apply) and "lying", your categorical statement of "When all lying is criminalized, people will simply choose their words more carefully so as not to coerce the people they are communicating with." is a lie because you can't possibly provide supporting evidence for the claim, and you yourself failed to "be careful with your words" and preface the statement with 'I believe", or "I don't know, but".

Same goes for your claim that I "want to continue to coerce people". If I could coerce people, you'd agree with me as a result of the sheer number of times this has been repeated on here. Your continuing ignorance alone constitutes objective proof that your premise is entirely false.

When you're done looking into the actual rules of logic, check out the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Cicero. Nobody can force anyone else to think anything, because the one thing that everyone has control over (Epictetus was born into slavery in the Roman Empire, and his chosen name literally means "Owned") is how they choose to think and their own reaction to anything external to themselves; whatever reaction you have to someone else's words is your own choice.

Making all "lying" a crime merely empowers the State to punish whatever ideas those in power choose to call "false"; this has been the result in Cuba, China, Iran, North Korea, and every other totalitarian regime that's done so, and if you were paying the slightest bit of attention in the USA over the last 5 years, is what they're already trying to do here. Telling people things that aren't true can only coerce their behavior if they choose to believe what they're told, and the thing that makes fraud "work" is in finding targets who want to believe what they're being told (or to get them when they're too young to understand that they have a choice in the matter, like what was done in the WP cult where you grew up).

[Rob Misek]

You began by conflating properly applied logic with fallacies and went downhill from there.

Maybe that’s why your straw man representation of what I recognize as refutation is a lie.

There is no proof that a holocaust occurred in WW2. This is a fact. I have refuted, proven impossible, implausible and inadmissible many elements of the narrative including the paid and coerced witness testimony. This too is a fact. Nobody here has refuted these facts. Prove otherwise.

People will either choose their words more carefully or be guilty of lying. This is demonstrated by sloppy speech used by you which would be criminalized as lies. Maybe you won’t choose your words more carefully and be convicted of lying but many other people will. Just like I said.

Lying only coerces when speech has the authority of truth. I know yours doesn’t. Others might be coerced by your lies.

You claim that truth is determined by whatever those in power say it is. I’ve been abundantly clear that only correctly applied logic and science discerns truth. That isn’t just whatever those in power say it is.

What makes you believe that to be true? If you used correctly applied logic and science, I haven’t seen it. Or are you just making it up as you go like a self fulfilling prophecy?

[B G]

"You began by conflating properly applied logic with fallacies and went downhill from there."

I never conflated "properly applied logic" and fallacies. I merely pointed out that every component of what you appear to refer to with the term "properly applied logic" is some kind of defined fallacy which is well known by anyone who's aware of the actual rules of logic. The only "conflation" is inside your head, as proven by the fact that you repeatedly demand the use of your fallacious version of "properly applied" logic. The fact that you can't or won't comprehend the difference is completely outside of my control, making your claim that I'm at any level "conflating" real logic with your "funhouse-mirror" perception of the concept is just another false claim on your part (which under normal definitions would be a simple inaccuracy, but under your criteria would have to be called a "lie").

One example (but far from the only one that could be called out from your nonsense). You've repeatedly cited the lack of "Forensic DNA Evidence" as proof that there weren't large numbers of corpses disposed of at German camps (which even German documents and staff have identified as "extermination camps" starting with the order of the "final solution" being issued from Berlin in 1942). There's a basic logical fallacy (sometimes referred to as "argument from ignorance") which conflates absence of evidence with evidence of absence. Not to re-litigate your whole holocaust denial indoctrination, just to cite a specific example in which your concept of "properly applied" logic is literally a specific type of logical fallacy which has had a name attached to it since the 18th century, maybe earlier.

[Zeb]

You could not be more wrong about this. Just stop it. Lying is and must be protected because you can't trust the people who would be making the determination about what is a lie or not. Retarded Nazi holocaust deniers like you should be particularly sensitive to that risk.

[Rob Misek]

Our entire justice system is based on the concept of “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

Fortunately our society doesn’t throw our hands up in the air saying “we can’t have justice”,

Like stupid and corrupt people like you are doing.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

FOAD, steaming pile of Nazi shit.

[B G]

[ Our entire justice system is based on the concept of “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. ]

The law covering perjury makes it a crime to lie while one is consenting to be bound by that oath. Once they're done with their testimony, they can lie with impunity on the steps of the courthouse.

If the whole system were really about truth, that oath would apply to the attorneys as well, not just the witnesses. Trial lawyers can and do frequently make false, or unverified/unverifiable claims within the course of a trial all the time, and only in the most extreme cases do the ever face so much as the possibility of consequences.

[Rob Misek]

So being “bound by the truth” isn’t unconstitutional.

It’s actually necessary for the operation of our society.

That’s what I said.

[B G]

That only applies in a limited context, and is temporarily entered into voluntarily by those who are subjected to the terms of the law.

Even with that, the oath to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" is violated routinely since witnesses are frequently advised to give only "yes or no" answers without volunteering any additional relevant knowledge that they have (thereby failing to provide "the whole truth".

Then there's the issue of what to do about anyone who holds a government security clearance. Everyone with a clearance has signed a contract with the government that in order to protect information that's considered "important to national security" requires us (I myself have a clearance from the DoD, and have both read and created classified information more than once in the last 25 years) to deny the truth in certain circumstances or else face both civil and criminal penalties depending on the severity of the violation. How would your imagined regime handle the contradiction with having to prosecute anyone whose knowledge is deemed important to National Defense as a result of merely being asked a particular question (where any possible answer would either violate the terms of their clearance or violate the laws against "lying")?

[Rob Misek]

You just admitted that being bound by the truth isn’t unconstitutional.

That means that the 2012 Supreme Court ruling in United States vs Alvarez needs to be overturned.

Non disclosure agreements NDA’s do violate 1a. If free speech is an inalienable right as spelled out in the constitution, it can’t be bought, sold or given away. NDA’s can’t be constitutionally enforced.

Everyone is responsible for their own secrets and lies. You can’t expect constitutional protection for your conspiracies.

[B G]

Paying rent to a landlord isn't unconstitutional, either. Nor is it illegal.

That doesn't mean that I owe rent on property that I have no desire to use. Before rent is owed on a particular item/property, both the owner and the renter have to agree to a contract defining the terms of it.

Similarly, being bound by perjury laws only applies to those who have been "sworn in" as witnesses in a government proceeding. Only the witnesses in a Court trial can be charged under that law though. Attorneys, Jurors, and even Judges aren't subject to the same rules as the sworn witnesses even during the conduct of the trial, and once any witness is released from their oath, they're no longer subject to any kind of prosecution for anything else the happen to say.

The fact that you can access this forum, and also can't comprehend that distinction is, in its own way, kind of fascinating. Or is it that you refuse to comprehend it, and are just being deliberately ignorant about this as you seem to be regarding how logic actually works?

[Bipedal Humanoid]

Lying is ABSOLUTELY protected by 1A.

You, Sir, are criminally stupid...like Walz.

[Rob Misek]

Repeating that lie doesn’t make it true.

Prove it. Show where the constitution specifically protects lying.

Right, you won’t because you want to keep lying. It’s so much easier to coerce people into agreeing with you than to demonstrate the truth of why they should.

Because you can’t
Because they shouldn’t
Because you’re lying.

[Bipedal Humanoid]

You are a special kind of CrazyTown. I don't need to, plenty of other commentors and the Supreme Court have settled this.

[Rob Misek]

You can’t prove it because it’s a lie.

You’re simply a liar who agrees with lying. What else is new?

Lying defies reality. It and you are irrational.

[MasterThief]

The example used against Vance is kinda weak. I don't agree with his proposed actions, but he was discussing how the foundation is in violation of their tax exempt filing based on their political actions. I'd say revoking those benefits is good enough.
While I agree with the sentiment of maintaining respect for the flag, I'll agree Trump is 100% wrong on his comments about jailing flag burners.
The both sides narrative here doesn't work when one side has small examples where they are wrong whereas the other is fundamentally opposed to the very principle.

[mad.casual]

I’ll agree Trump is 100% wrong on his comments about jailing flag burners.

I disagree with the 100%. Per the media norm, I’ve seen everyone conflate lighting stuff on fire on public property, calling for death and destruction, including specific people and threats, ignoring the specific fact that such assemblies clearly are not peaceable in order to go with the “Mostly peaceful protest.” and then getting all “Truthiness!” when people point out that, e.g., Trump couldn’t really arrest anyone for burning a flag on private property or even at their local library or something (with consent/permission).

I’m sure Trump is all about resurrecting the Third Reich… again… and starting WWIII but, even if he were, that would seem to occupy his time more than tracking down people who burned their own flags on their own property and posted to TikTok or whatever.

[MasterThief]

Fair points. I guess I'm guilty here of arguing where the cconversation should be opposed to where radicals have put it. It shouldn't be an argument that someone has the right to burn anyone else's property or to light fires where they might hurt others or cause damage. I momentarily forgot that Reason and the left approved of BLM violence.

[B G]

At the pace the Biden administration is going, trump might miss out on the chance to start WW3 even if he wins next month.

One thing I wonder about the "orange hitler" crowd. If trump really was such a dictator at heart, why was it that the reason he "had to be replaced" in 2020 that he'd failed to consolidate power unto himself in the name of dealing with Covid? Everyone I know who swore he's just looking to create some kind of "fourth Reich" were also apoplectic that he didn't use the defense production act to force factories to try to retool and produce medical ventilators (which turned out to be probably the last thing we actually needed, and something which couldn't have been rushed out in adequate quality to be usable anyway) or to continue the "lockdown" policy at the Federal level for more than the 6-8 weeks which it was initially claimed would be the extent needed to "flatten the curve"? How can his defining trait be an authoritarian bent if his biggest failure was when he did the opposite of what a real authoritarian power-seeker would have done in his position? Shouldn't the people who fear the prospect of his perpetual rule have cheered that turn of events rather than redoubling their hatred and personal animus for the man?

The real world has now become so literally Orwellian that the same people who wanted him out in October 2020 for "focusing too tightly on vaccine development" and swore they'd never trust or allow themselves to be injected with the "trump vaccine" flipped to believing in Feb 2021 that the same person had become the ring-leader of the "vax hesitancy" and anti-mandate (another choice to which "my body my choice" apparently needn't be applied) protests even while the crowds at his rallies were actually booing him for urging them to get the shots.

Not to imply that trump is actually fit to hold office, I've never thought he was worthy of being a nominee. However, with the way that he and his company have been hounded since he left office, and with the number of politicians who have campaigned on a platform of using government authority as a cudgel to punish him personally and by any means that could be devised (even Andrew Cuomo has said that the "bookkeeping fraud" case was politically motivated), it's not hard to see a version of things where it would look to trump like his only means of temporary escape would be to get back into the White House.

[Nobartium]

A few years ago, he suggested the government should "seize the assets of the Ford Foundation" because he disagrees with the academics and causes that organization supports.

Hungary did that, and they were better off for it.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

If only we had 4 years of side by side comparison, and a company that was willing to realese how companies and the gov work with each other.

OH wait we do. Trump silenced Noone while president. The dems worked with social media companies to destroy the career of those that didn't push their message. One side used the fbi to go after parents, church goers, and media persons. The fbi admitted to coordinating the civil suit against Alex Jones in order to silence him.

Sullum you are evil and retarded

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Harris literally raided a citizen journalist at the request of Planned Parenthood threatening him with felonies for a “wire tap” at restaurants. The videos were seized and only made public 10 years later due to entry into Congressional record.

[Mickey Rat]

"Only "stupid people," Trump averred in July, think flag burning is a form of constitutionally protected expression,..."

It is telling that you have to go to flag burning to find an example of Trump being bad on free speech as something equivalent to the Biden/Harris administration jawboning social media to suppress information they did not like.

[Chumby]

Trump was censored due to mean tweets until an migrant African American bought the platform that had banned Trump’s speech.

People are ostensibly burning flags in public places to get the most shock value. Regardless of whether you yell “Fire” in a crowded theater, it isn’t going to be ok to ignite one there.

[mad.casual]

People are ostensibly burning flags in public places to get the most shock value. Regardless of whether you yell “Fire” in a crowded theater, it isn’t going to be ok to ignite one there.

And, again, that assumes shock value was the intent rather than forcibly occupying the theater, stealing their flag, and burning it like a bunch of no-shit terrorists.

Seems like if such acts are unequivocal free speech, then private citizens putting them down with bullets hedges on free expression too.

[shadydave]

Yeah. "Boaf sidsing" on Free Speech is ludicrous. Just in the past week you've had a former Democratic Party nominee lamenting the existence of the First Amendment. And in the past four years there has been numerous examples of Democratic government operatives engaging in illegal censorship of opposing viewpoints.

But yes Trump rambling about flag burning is exactly the same.

[Wally]

I love flag burning. My favorite part is when the people burning our flag accidentally set themselves on fire. For the smile that brings me, I'm happy flag burning is OK.

[Vernon Depner]

JS:dr

[Roberta]

…

Only “stupid people,” Trump averred in July, think flag burning is a form of constitutionally protected expression, as the Supreme Court has twice ruled. Those “stupid people” include the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Trump described as “a great judge” and the model for his Supreme Court appointments.

So again, what Trump says weighs more heavily in your criticism than what he does. He says a certain opinion is stupid, but then he goes on to appoint those with that opinion.

[Number 2]

It’s interesting how the same people who describe Trump as an inveterate liar who emits “firehoses of lies” will take his word as truth when it serves their purposes. (See, e.g., Ilya Somin)

And I say this as someone who has never liked or voted for Trump.

[Commenter_XY]

Who do you trust less, that is the better question. I trust Kamala a hell of a lot LESS than Pres Trump. BTW, Pres Obama was pretty shitty on free speech (and especially spying on the press) also.

I never saw where Pres Trump himself ever took action to censor and silence anyone. Ok, not releasing the last of the JFK assassination records might count – that is fair.

[Lord Blastington]

Trying to sue others for some bad press and the Extradition of Jullian Assange

[Jefferson Paul]

So trying to sue news organizations (that repeatedly lied about him) for slander/libel is violating the First Amendment?

I'll give you the "Extradition of Jullian Assange." I wasn't a fan of that one.

[ravenshrike]

Sullum, if you weren't such a fucking retard, you would understand that the Ford Foundation supports reparations for slavery. Which is what Vance was riffing off of when he suggested seizing their assets and redistributing them to those harmed by the effects of their promoted policies. It was not a serious suggestion you short-sighted moron.

[JesseAz (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Hey now. No putting words into context.

[JohnTheRevelator]

Okay, but how many people in general would get that reference? Vance is what we used to call a policy wonk, and Trump in particular and Republicans in general can use as many of those as they can get. But when you're a policy wonk, you need to be careful not to make obscure jokes in public, because if most people don't get the joke, it becomes open to other interpretations that make you look bad. Vance needed to find a way to explain the reparations angle for the benefit of the other 95% in the room.

[ravenshrike]

And if it were sumdood on the train bringing things up you might have a point. But Sullum knows damn well what kinds of policies the Ford Foundation supports, yet acts as if Vance's suggestion to Carlson came out of left field.

[IceTrey]

This election is a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

[Chumby]

Harris-Walz: a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

[Uomo Del Ghiaccio]

We have two terrible options. One is definitely worse than the other, but in the end we will still end up with a terrible president.

I would rather have Trump with a hostile media than Harris with a sycophantic media. I don't pretend that either is remotely acceptable and will not vote for either of them.

[Chumby]

Imagine a Harris State of the Union address that was prerecorded and edited using the multiple takes to come up with something passable for the mouth breathers. Pumped in crowd noise too.

[Don't look at me!]

A state of the union speech edited by 60 minutes.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"...but in the end we will still end up with a terrible president."

In Trump, by his actions, we had the best POTUS in the last century. It takes a case of TDS not to recognize that and I'm tired of dealing with TDS-addled assholes.
FOAD.

[Ben of Houston]

In short, that's my conclusion. I don't trust any of them.

However, I trust Washington with Trump. I trust that he won't be able to get away with anything

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Sullum, get reamed with a barb-wire-wrapped broom stick. You are a TDS-addled slimy pile of shit.
FOAD.

[Alberto Balsalm]

Can someone please program assholeGPT ^^ to come up with some new material.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Can someone please get this TDS-addled steaming pile of shit to FOAD?

[Ben of Houston]

One of these administrations raided a rival news organization to silence a scandal about the president’s impropriety and the other did not.

Despite the fact that the NYT committed numerous felonies by stealing and publicizing Trump’s taxes, Trump did not retaliate. Despite the tax returns showing no criminal element at all.

However, the Biden Administration seized the Ashley Biden diary from Project Veritas despite precedent going back to before Deep Throat that they were allowed to keep and publish it and this proving molestation of a child beyond any reasonable doubt.

This record is not disputable about who is a greater danger to speech.

[Wally]

But Donald Trump told someone to shut up back in the fifth grade.

[Dillinger]

there's a four-year record. up and down the board you guys look like fools. sorry.

[lwt1960]

I'm not bothered by Vance's comments about Ford, as it goes to the taxpayer subsidy of private organizations, i.e., charities. Just like union dues going to political activities, the members/taxpayers should be able to opt out. The 501(c)3 bar is so low, pretty much everything not specifically excluded elsewhere in 501(c) qualifies for tax-preferred treatment.

Trump as usual makes no sense. Harris/Walz are true believers and should be taken at their word. Be afraid, be very afraid.

[Uncle Jay]

About eighteen months ago, the Biden administration proposed an idea to end all "disinformation" by creating something akin to the Ministry of Truth.
Fortunately, this never got off the ground, but this idea exposed Biden's and Harris' view of free speech.
I have yet to hear anything like this idea from Trump's camp.

[TJJ2000]

Flag burning

Biden administration’s persistent pressure on social media platforms to suppress content that federal officials viewed as dangerous to public health.

Same, Same…. /s

Trump is wrong about flag burning but by-far the lesser wrong of the two.

[JohnTheRevelator]

I'll stick with my position that the clearly worse candidate is the one with the ironclad four year record of being part of an administration that deliberately pressured private companies to censor their opponents' speech.

[XM]

Trump was a president as surely as Kamala Harris was a vice president. We don’t have to play “what if” games.

In fact, no one went to jail for desecrating a sacred image or posting memes online during his tenure. Those are things that are happening in left wing governments. In America a juvenile can spend 20 years in prison for running over a pride symbol in the middle of the streets.

Trump sometimes making bewildering comments is far less threat to free speech than people with power actually suppressing free speech.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Not to TDS-addled steaming piles of shit like Sullum.

[python33]

C’mon man, another lefty bootlicker headline from Reason and Jacob Sullum, us normal Americans can easily see who the enemy of free speech is. Keep on licking guys.