Holding your tongue, with clenched jaws

K Street is holding its tongue—along with the rest of America. And that’s a shame. We are enduring the most coordinated attack on our First Amendment rights by the federal government since the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798. And we are all responsible for making sure it goes no farther.

The broadside against free speech has reached unprecedented heights at unprecedented speed. As Congress was once again failing to pass a budget, as Russian drones and planes invaded NATO airspace, the country was transfixed by remarks from TV host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel, considered by some to be in poor taste in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. (By the way, since when do we expect good taste from TV hosts, or comics in general? Does it matter what they say? To whom? Check out the Marx Brothers—if they discovered good taste in any of their productions, they would cut it.)

This has led to has led to a spate of truly reprehensible behavior: Throwing Kimmel off the air, the FCC openly threatening to weigh broadcast licensing rights on a political scale, the Pentagon demanding that reporters essentially have their copy reviewed, the president—who ran against cancel culture—actually characterizing the mounting criticism of him as illegal!