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Trump is the federal government. the 1st amendment was specifically supposed to prevent government interference with the press.

demanding that media publish the presidents words with no editorial interference is exactly what the founders were worried about when they created 1A.


free speech absolutists demand (checks notes) that the NYT allow Trump to write all its headlines.

the first amendment was not meant to allow the president to seize control of all media. it seems weird that you have to explain this to free speech defenders.

this is what happens though when you fetishize the speech act and completely lose track of what freedom of speech was supposed to do in the first place.

the president is literally the person the 1A is supposed to *protect media from.* It's supposed to allow media to criticize him and have an editorial policy independent of the government!
So, just before Christmas, Government what it called a "response" to this New York Times account of cronyism in pandemic spending.

And I said, when that "response" - which you can read here
https://t.co/gLEJzuqoAx - was published that every single notional rebuttal by Government of a claim made by the New York Times was false, misleading or both.

And it's time for me to make good.

Here's the first "rebuttal" by Government to the New York Times' claim that: "The government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive V.I.P. lane."


A number of points might be made.

(1) Government cannot say the NYT got it wrong. (2) the NAO found the VIP lane (later renamed the high-priority lane) "sat alongside" the normal lane. And I have shown elsewhere VIP contracts were handled by different teams all the way through.


(3) Although Govt says "offers of support raised by Opposition MPs were dealt with expeditiously" the NAO report does not record any referrals made by an Opposition MP leading to a contract - and the Government response telling does not say any did.
1/ This month we'll learn whether the US is a banana republic ruled by election fraud or a constitutional republic based on attempted election integrity.

#GodSaveTheRepublic #AdjudicateFraud #FraudMatters #EvidenceMatters #MassiveFraudEvidence


2/ Judges refuse to review fraud evidence based on an alleged lack of standing. Why do illegal aliens have more standing in the US? Louie Gohmert on Pence: 'ignore all electors' and choose a winner as he sees fit' https://t.co/OHbSpEEPnp

#Trump2021 #Amendment12 #ElectoralVote


3/ Are Mike Pence and the 12th Amendment January 6th the last hope to save the US Republic from becoming the perpetually corrupt US Banana Republic tossed into the waste bin of history?

https://t.co/7HYkLVfAq3

#ElectionFraud #BananaRepublic #Amendment12 #January6 #Jan6th


4/ Election fraud increases daily: EXCLUSIVE: Fraudulent Georgia Ballots Were Addressed to Elections Consultant Dwight Brower - The Same Guy Who Reported the Fake Water Main Break and Then Terminated Election Whistleblower via @gatewaypundit https://t.co/RkgSD0wwXf #StopTheSteal

5/ Donald Trump's correct. The Georgia Senate runoffs are illegal and invalid, STILL using illegal Dominion, owned and influenced by hostile foreign election interference, against 2018 EO prohibiting Foreign Election Interference.
https://t.co/J1pJ9fPrqh via @whitehouse
This is a great question from @HeerJeet and it has very old roots. In my book, I discuss a similar period of anxiety in the 1960s about the possibility of Air Force officers being involved in a coup. Thread.


Given the size of the US military in WW2, afterwards there was a spike in concern that some of these demilitarized veterans would be amenable to radicalization and supportive of insurrection. These fears heightened after the coups in France/Algiers in 1958 and 1961.

This was the peak era of the Cold War, so anti-communist anxiety was layered over top. The Right feared that communist infiltrators in the government would subvert the Republic. The Left feared that anti-communist military officers would launch a preemptive, paranoid coup.

Note as well that the foundation for these fears was rooted in a novel concept that journalist Edward Hunter had recently coined, "brainwashing." The idea was that US POWs held by North Korea had been brainwashed into accepting communism & might act as a fifth column back home.

You can see that particular paranoia in cultural artifacts from the time like "The Manchurian Candidate," novel in 1959 and the hit 1962 movie starring Frank Sinatra and the incomparable Angela Lansbury. Those sneaky commies nearly infiltrated the Oval Office itself, oh no!!
The big story in Parliament today really isn't which of three bad options the Opposition parties will choose. It is the absolute travesty of parliamentary democracy that is about to play out: a microcosm of the shattering effect Brexit has had on our constitution. [THREAD]

MPs are being asked to shovel through, in a single day, a bill that was published yesterday, implementing a treaty agreed six days ago, which comes into force tomorrow night. The European Communities Act 1972 was debated in Parliament for 300 hours. Today's bill will get about 5.

MPs will have at most four minutes to speak on a trade agreement covering more than 1,200 pages. Few will have had time to read it anyway, and their votes will mostly be cast by the Whips. The entire charade will be over shortly after lunch.

Today's legislation doesn't just transform our trade relations. As @jeff_a_king points out, it gives ministers the power to rewrite vast swathes of domestic law without further scrutiny. It is a massive transfer of power from Parliament to the Executive.


Parliament has to do this with the legislative equivalent of a gun to its head. The UK's current terms of trade with the EU cease to exist in 48 hrs. MPs cannot inflict a crash-out on their constituents, so all that's left for the Opposition parties to argue about is positioning.