{"id":161,"date":"2003-04-21T12:05:21","date_gmt":"2003-04-21T17:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/161.html"},"modified":"2003-04-21T12:05:21","modified_gmt":"2003-04-21T17:05:21","slug":"john-ashcroft-honored-for-his-commitment-to-free-speech-or-lack-thereof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/john-ashcroft-honored-for-his-commitment-to-free-speech-or-lack-thereof\/","title":{"rendered":"John Ashcroft honored for his commitment to free speech (or lack thereof)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You might think Attorney General John Ashcroft&#8217;s obvious hostility for civil liberties might make him ineligible for an award dealing with free speech. But you&#8217;d be mistaken.<\/p>\n<p>The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has selected Ashcroft, among 10 others, as one of the top public officials for stifling free speech. According to a report <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A58539-2003Apr19.html\">in the Washington Post<\/a>, the decision was announced last week as part the group&#8217;s 12th annual &#8220;Jefferson Muzzle Awards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As the Post story explained, Ashcroft clearly earned the honor for a &#8220;a series of acts to suppress public and media access, including &#8216;the blanket&#8230;prohibition of public and press access to immigration deportation hearings,&#8217; limiting the scope of his department&#8217;s responses to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act and for spending $8,000 on drapes to conceal two semi-nude statues during news conferences in the Great Hall of the Justice Department.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to the attorney general for the well-deserved honor. It couldn&#8217;t have gone to a more appropriate person. (And thanks to Carpetbagger friend Chief Osceola for the heads up on the story.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You might think Attorney General John Ashcroft&#8217;s obvious hostility for civil liberties might make him ineligible for an award dealing with free speech. But you&#8217;d be mistaken. The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has selected Ashcroft, among 10 others, as one of the top public officials for stifling free speech. According [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}