Posted on 06/22/2015 2:15:06 PM PDT by ctdonath2
Last Friday the folks at Reason confirmed what I suggested on Thursday — that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, after hitting Reason with a federal grand jury subpoena to unmask anonymous hyperbolic commenters, secured a gag order that prevented them from writing about it.
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch describe how it all went down. Read it.
So, the truth is out — and it's more outrageous than you thought, even more outrageous than it appears at first glance.
What, you might ask, could be more outrageous than the United States Department of Justice issuing a questionable subpoena targeting speech protected by the First Amendment, and then abusing the courts to prohibit journalists from writing about it?
The answer lies in the everyday arrogance of unchecked power.
The Subpoena and the Gag Order: Rote Over Substance
Throughout this story some people have suggested that there may be hidden facts, unknown complications, that justify the government's conduct. Now that Reason's journalists can speak, we can see that there's no there there.
First, the subpoena. Some have argued that the Department of Justice must have had information spurring them to use the grand jury to pierce the anonymity of people engaged in protected political speech. Not so. As Reason's report shows, Assistant U.S. Attorney Niketh Velamoor never articulated any specific basis to fear the bluster of these commenters — any more than he did when I spoke to him.
(Excerpt) Read more at popehat.com ...
Upshot: the gag order over typical, if crude, chat-board trash-talking was outright intimidation, implemented by "chilling effect" under "color of law" (i.e.: scared the Reason editors into confused silence), rubber-stamped orders (i.e.: legal criteria to meet the law was nothing more than literally copying the list of acceptable legal criteria - not even edited for relevance, much less presentation of appropriate facts), and cronyism (i.e.: the judges & attorneys perpetrating this seem office pals).
bttt
Wow...!!
Welcome to the party Pal. This gross abuse of power, threats and intimidation takes place every day in most Prosecutor’s offices right down to backwoods city halls.
One doesn’t have a clue until you get captured in the tornado that targets you. Innocense or guilt holds no bearing in the abuses that these little Hitler complex pricks use against you.
The thug prosecutor demanded to know where to deliver the subpoena....
“May I suggest that you hand deliver it to HELL?”
Absent some hard evidence, and there was apparently none, I have to wonder if the DA just outright lied to the grand jury? This doesn’t make sense.
sounds like a judge needs to be impeached.
I guess Nikkeh or whatever his name is is accustomed to doing this chit in india or pakistan or bangladesh or some other swami chit hole.
Welcome to Obama’s Amerika.
Interesting read, and yes you have to read the backread story to understand this story.
I did notice that Reason did not fully quote the posts for the readers to judge for themselves just how we perceived them to be dangerous/rude/crude/dangerous. If they are so proud of their freedom of speech, why censor the comments from us? Why not post them Loud and Proud like the protected homosexual comments? Obviously some of the comments were not all “hot place in hell for some of these folks” comments, but more detailed/graphic.
There was a time when the US Attorney’s Office for Southern New York (under Mary Jo White), was an honorable office, perhaps the best in the US.
Today, Obama and Holder have corrupted it.
When will Americans stand up and say “ NO MORE”?
Coming soon to a blog / comments site near you...
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