I love the irony of this statement. You are such an advocate of free speech that you believe suggesting alterations to free speech should be punishable by prison time. Free speech is so important that we must restrict speech to protect free speech.
How is it irony?
The first amendment:
>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Has only been expanded by the courts to apply to all levels and branches of government, and they're not allowed to outsource (14thS1) it and very clearly says that the government cannot abridge speech. Which is exactly what DHS was conspiring to do with big tech.
People get free speech. The government does get a say in the matter. People who are acting members of the government being held accountable for violation of the 1st amendment is a great way to illustrate the difference between free speech and the first amendment.
If this were only big tech/other companies the first amendment wouldn't apply and your comment would have merit, but with the DHS involved this is just wildly unconstitional and there's nothing ironic about it.
OP is suggesting that anyone who comes to that debate with definitions that are more restrictive than OPs should end up in prison. How is that not inherently a restriction on the speech that one can make about free speech?
As a private citizen, do what you want, but I think this is understood by the context of the OP.
It seems imperative that government officials need to be able to openly discuss the meaning of laws and whether those laws are appropriate without fear of punishment for that discussion.
Yes. Just because you happen to agree with them is not an excuse. The constitution belongs to the States and is ratified solely by them, not the Federal government.
A federal official advocating for constitutional changes from the position of their office is wrong to do so.
> It seems imperative that government officials
It is imperative that legislators do. Administrative officials are not given power to make law. They are required by the due care cause to follow it. They have no cause offering official opinions on these matters.
I guess FDR and many other politicians should have been thrown in prison.
>It is imperative that legislators do. Administrative officials are not given power to make law. They are required by the due care cause to follow it. They have no cause offering official opinions on these matters.
How do the administrative officials implement the legislation without offering official opinions on what that legislation means? Don't they need to be able to discuss the details without worrying about prison?
For campaign speeches before he was even in office? That's ridiculous. Once in office he used standard administrative procedure to get his way.. it probably helped that literally one month after being in office Congress, who has the right to do so, proposed the 21st amendment. This is a pretty thin example.
> How do the administrative officials implement the legislation without offering official opinions on what that legislation means?
They hire lawyers and consult with them _privately_. None of this has anything to do with using the power of your office to _advocate_ for a specific position.
> Don't they need to be able to discuss the details without worrying about prison?
Can they discuss food safety without implicating the first amendment? I obviously think they can, particularly through very broad administrative procedures already laid out by congress. This is just picking up goalposts and moving them. This argument was pretty narrowly constrained, if not slightly unhinged, to begin with.
Who do you think makes up these "specific set of entities" if not "individual citizens"?
>If a case has been decided that indicates a specific set of actions are civil rights violations, then I'm not sure what you are suggesting, its ok to violate precedent over and over again without consequence?
But OP didn't say the trigger for consequences would be the violation of civil rights. They said that the suggestion was enough to deserve a punishment. They want the speech punished, not action.
DHS is a public institution staffed by government agents acting as public servants, not as individual citizens.
I don't understand what's supposed to be shocking here. There's this phrasing that seems to indicate that this is an absurd situation rather than a commonplace one.
For example, three people discussing plans for a bank robbery are conspiring. Likewise, the same three people sharing only a knowing glance before splitting up and regrouping with masks, guns, a car and a map with the local bank circled have also conspired to rob a bank. One group only spoke and the other didn't speak, yet both conspired.
You missed that part. The Bill of Rights is (or at least was) a list of things the Government can't do.