IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS? BRING ‘EM ON
Nat Hentoff decries Obama’s anti-Jeffersonian ‘extrajudicial commands
NAT HENTOFF
WND.com
May 28, 2013
In 1798, only seven years after the First Amendment was ratified as part of the Constitution, President John Adams undermined the First Amendment by pushing the Alien and Sedition Acts through Congress. This law subjected citizens to imprisonment for speech that brought the president or Congress into “contempt or disrepute” (my book, “The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America,” Delacorte Press, 1988).
That led enough angry Americans to deny Adams a second term, bringing Thomas Jefferson, a leading opponent of the Alien and Sedition Acts, to the presidency. In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a friend about one of the anchors of our freedom of speech: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
The Rest…HERE
