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Comment by anothername12 | Hacker News Reader

> lawmakers voted 71-10

That’s pretty wild you can just to shut down the operations of two news organizations that don’t tow the official line. Democracy though I suppose. Would it be legally possible in the US?

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> Would it be legally possible in the US?

If 88% of all federal and state lawmakers in the US were on board, it could be done, but it would take more time and a few more steps to amend the constitution first.

Unrelated, "tow the line" is a misspelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

Thanks for the "tow the line" note. I would've picked "toe the line" as the eggcorn; even after reading the Wikipedia entry, it still looks less natural to me.

In the US it would require a constitutional amendment that survives judicial review. You have better odds of winning the lottery twice in a row.

What review can any part of the judiciary do of a constitutional amendment? Even if the amendment authors explicitly say "we're doing this to enrich ourselves and screw over everyone else", once it's part of the Constitution...isn't it a done deal?

There is one restriction on what amendments are valid, but nothing related to this discussion. No amendment can remove a state’s equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent. Otherwise, anything goes.

The judiciary can, of course, still review whether an amendment was validly proposed and ratified, and therefore whether or not it is in fact part of the constitution.

Thanks, that's an interesting restriction. Where does it come from?

  "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."

-- Henry Kissinger

Even under Marshal Law?

The US doesn't need to shut down journalistic operations. The success of Operation Mockingbird makes that unnecessary.

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