The left claims to love free speech. Except when it hates it.
It also doesn’t seem to have a very good handle on what “speech” is.
At the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell calls on “free speech conservatives” to defend Brennan’s constitutional right to security clearances. “The First Amendment is under direct attack, and this time from a much more powerful foe than misguided college freshmen. By whom I mean: the ostensible leader of the free world,” she writes.
Colleges shutting down speech for students and faculty is a grave threat. People being sanctioned for minor offenses, from wearing a sombrero to being members of a sorority, professors having their classes shut down, students facing violence and bomb threats, are major issues.
Trump pulling Brennan’s security clearance isn’t. Nor is it a constitutional issue. There’s no entitlement to a security clearance.
And, whistleblowers like Philip Haney lost their security clearance with no whisper of dissent from the left.
Furthermore, Trump isn’t pulling the security clearances of critics. He’s pulling the security clearances of former intel bosses who appear to have abused the powers of their office. It’s something that the left would be defending under other circumstances. For the left to even have a first case, Trump would have to pull the security clearances of critics not involved in Russiagate.
“Trump’s most recent salvo involves former CIA director John Brennan. During his long career in intelligence, Brennan briefed Republican and Democratic presidents alike. Which makes his fierce criticism of Trump, and his characterization of Trump’s Helsinki performance as “treasonous,” all the more biting.”
Brennan had voted for a Communist candidate. He’s a political lefty. Rampell’s pretense that he’s political neutral is Example #1 of why nobody except the extremely gullible and stupid trusts the media.
It lies. It distorts. It misleads all the time.
And so of course, Rampell switches to the tired “War on the Free Press” line.
Elsewhere — again, in recent days — the president and his minions have called the press the enemy of the people and the opposition party. Previously they have blacklisted reporters and entire news outlets (including The Post) whose questions Trump disliked. When unhappy with Post coverage in particular, Trump has threatened government action against Amazon in an apparent attempt to financially punish its chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, who independently owns the paper.
Rampell works for The Post. That is for Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, who owns 16% of Amazon. That makes him its top shareholder. He’s not just a chief executive.
Journalists and media owners are hardly the only ones whose job or financial security Trump has targeted from his bully pulpit. He called for the firing of National Football League players who kneel in protest during the national anthem. NFL owners, in a secretly recorded meeting in October, expressed concern about the president’s impact on their bottom line.
Does Cathy want to play this game? Okay.
Hillary Clinton told Benghazi family members that they would get the guy who uploaded a Mohammed YouTube video. And they did. He was frog marched out of his house and sent to jail.
Her leftist colleagues have had people fired from their jobs for an offhand comment, even one made many years ago.
Obama’s DOJ dug through the emails of local police departments, especially in Ferguson, after it released, against their wishes, a tape of “gentle giant” Michael Brown violently robbing a storeowner. Public employees were purged for making jokes about Obama.
When a rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair wore an Obama mask, top Dem politicians demanded his head and that of the rodeo organizer. And they got it.
The DOJ even responded to an Obama outhouse float. No, seriously. This is the insane leftist dictatorship we lived under during the Obama years.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a member of its Community Relations Service team to investigate a Nebraska parade float that criticized President Obama.
A Fourth of July parade float featured at the annual Independence Day parade in Norfolk sparked criticism when it depicted a zombie-like figure resembling Mr. Obama standing outside an outhouse, which was labeled the “Obama Presidential Library.”
The Nebraska Democratic Party called the float one of the “worst shows of racism and disrespect for the office of the presidency that Nebraska has ever seen
Perhaps all the leftist concern trolls, like Rampell, who recently discovered the importance of free speech and the danger of government intervention, will have something to say about that?
Crickets.
Brennan losing his security clearance is nothing. Every DOJ thug who tore through emails, who cultivated race riots, who sent a man to jail for making a video, should be held accountable.
We should absolutely restore free speech. And freedom from government interference. And the place to start is by holding every single Obama official accountable for abusing the powers of the state.
That’s what protecting freedom of speech looks like.
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