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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

What I had believed, as an outsider to the US, was that US Federal politicians directly leveraging business decisions over a speech issue was explicitly unconstitutional.

What I've come to realise is that few are prepared to bell the cat and prosecute unconstitutional behaviour.

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We’re trying but the lower courts keep getting overruled by a corrupt Supreme Court.

It's a tough one, even without the Supreme Court issues, Kimmel alone is circumstantial at best; sure, the current POTUS is on record saying that Kimmel would be next to get the chop, but that proves nothing- any actual action taken would, I assume, be just pressure with no paper trail - classic intimidation leverage made famous by Scorsese.

The FCC Chairman specifically threatened to pull ABC broadcasting licenses if they didn't punish Kimmel. That isn't circumstantial at all. That's a smoking gun.

A smoking gun is literally circumstantial .. until the ballistics come in.

Did anyone ask the FCC chair to do this? Is it on record? Do you imagine the FCC chair to be cat that needs to be belled?

I don't get your point. FCC chair can violate the first amendment too.

The FCC chair, in the unlikely circumstance that that charges for violating the constitution are bought and a conviction occurs, can be readily replaced with another of the same ilk. Changing nothing about the circumstances that find the US with an administration blatantly willing and prepared to go beyond the constitution.

The FCC chair isn't the cat that needs to be belled.

So we shouldn't hold anyone accountable unless they are the person at the top? That's absurd.

> until the ballistics come in

Ballistics is a pseudoscience.

> Did anyone ask the FCC chair to do this?

Why did anyone have to ask him? He spoke in his capacity as a government official, and he has the power to do what he threatened. That's sufficient to say "the government is suppressing free speech".

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