Headline of the Day

America’s Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Warrior, Brendan Carr, Gets a Letter Documenting His First Amendment Violations

—Techdirt, noting that a group of actual 1st Amendment scholars are calling bullsh%$ on his actions.

Carr has been actively threatening media outlets with retribution for free speech that he disagrees with, and that is wrong.

It's probably a crime.

Send him to Gitmo. 

………

Well, congratulations to everyone who wanted to reanimate that corpse. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is doing something remarkably similar — except he’s only using it in one direction (the other problem with the Fairness Doctrine, it depends entirely on the enforcers), to punish outlets that report things the Trump administration doesn’t like, while conveniently leaving alone outlets that parrot the administration’s preferred narratives.

We’ve been covering Carr’s censorial ambitions for a while now. When Trump picked Carr to chair the FCC, we noted that despite all the “free speech warrior” branding from the administration and the credulous political press that repeated it, Carr had made it abundantly clear he wanted to be America’s top censor. And he’s delivered on that promise with remarkable enthusiasm — going after CBS over “60 Minutes”, threatening ABC over Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes, and most recently threatening to revoke broadcast licenses of outlets that accurately report on the disastrous war in Iran.

Now, a broad coalition of more than 80 legal scholars, former FCC officials, and civil society organizations — organized by TechFreedom and signed by groups ranging from the ACLU to EFF to the Knight First Amendment Institute to the Institute for Free Speech — has sent a formal letter to Carr laying out, in meticulous legal detail, exactly how his threats violate the First Amendment. I’m proud to note that our think tank, the Copia Institute, is among the signatories, and this was a very easy decision.

Yes, it's a crime, because he has clearly conspired with staff to violate the 1st Amendment rights of the organizations that he is targeting, and while the former is largely just a civil matter (What do I know, I'm an engneer, not a doctor, dammit!*) the conspiracy to do so is a criminal act, a felony.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!