Cord-cutters’ comedown. Citing the First Amendment, a federal appeals court has ruled against a Maine law that would require cable companies to let subscribers pick and choose individual channels a la carte.
■ University of Massachusetts Amherst journalism professor Joshua Braun on the push for more regulation of cable companies’ distribution of misinformation-spewing cable channels: “Imagine … regulators treating cable TV more like broadcast channels, and even returning to past practices of requiring stations to serve the public interest.” (Image: michaelquirk/iStock.)
■ Harvard law prof emeritus Alan Dershowitz: Freedom of speech includes freedom to hear politically incorrect views.
‘Do you want to live in an America that allows Fact-Boarding?’ Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke sarcastically supports Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan’s call for a hearing on “cancel culture.”
■ Above the Law: “Cancel culture alarmists … suffer from what First Amendment attorney Ken White … calls a ‘motte-and-bailey problem’ … whereby an arguer conflates two positions that are vastly different.”
Not-so-free speech. A federal circuit court has rejected the contention from an inmate imprisoned for life that his threats to murder two judges fell under First Amendment protection.
■ A Santa Barbara News-Press columnist addresses a reader who wrote, “No more bad writing or we come and see you.”
■ Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick: “Who gets First Amendment protections these days, anyway?”
Billboard protection. A federal appeals court affirms that Kentucky unconstitutionally ordered the removal of a Lion’s Den adult superstore ad mounted on a semi-tractor trailer visible from an interstate highway.
■ An Arkansas law forbidding government agencies from doing business with companies that boycott Israel has failed the First Amendment test before a federal appeals court.