Is there anything more likely to make you shit your pants out of a mix of fear and anger than getting a federal subpoena out of the blue?
Well, yes, there is: getting a gag order that prohibits you from speaking publicly about that subpoena and even the gag order itself. Talk about feeling isolated and cast adrift in the home of the free. You can’t even respond honestly when someone asks, “Are you under a court order not to speak?”
Far more important: talk about realizing that open expression and press freedom are far more tenuous than even the most cynical of us can imagine! Even when you have done nothing wrong and aren’t the target of an investigation, you can be commanded, at serious financial cost and disruption of your business, to dance to a tune called by the long arm of the law.
This all just happened to my colleagues and me at Reason.com, the libertarian website I edit.
Related: “Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends.”
404 on that ‘related’ link.
Gagged and deleted??
Thanks, link fixed.
I’m old enough I remember the left getting rather hot under the collar about stuff like that, you know, vociferous denunciations both in and out democratic institutions, movie dramatizations, (admittedly tedious) music…
Now… wow, what a beautiful sound the crickets make.
Of course, I’d like to see the right be a little more… activist, too.
One rather gets the impression that both professional sides view it as a game, not a moral & philosophical question.
Liberals who blabber about Free Speech until someone says something that offends them then they want the person sent to some dumb sensitivty training classes
Nick Gillespie gets no sympathy from me. He styles himself as some kind of ‘subversive’ guy with his black turtlenecks and whatnot, then rolls over like a good little german the minute the .gov makes these laughable demands…
Pour l’encouragement des autres.
“then rolls over like a good little german the minute the .gov makes these laughable demands…”
I agree, most likely cried like a 12 year girl. When the State over-reaches you have to call their bluff.. lots of cases where a Judge knows he lacks the authority, but becomes a bully hoping nobody notices. Free Speech needs to be defended.
That’s a bit odd, I didn’t know that Wisconsin had a real bad flood…….
We should all stand behind Nick since he did such a brilliant job defending those Christian bakers…oh, wait.