{"id":1773025,"date":"2022-12-13T03:18:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T08:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1773025"},"modified":"2022-12-13T03:18:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T08:18:09","slug":"in-alaska-the-first-amendment-is-on-trial-as-the-left-tries-to-punish-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/in-alaska-the-first-amendment-is-on-trial-as-the-left-tries-to-punish-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"In Alaska, The First Amendment Is On Trial As The Left Tries To Punish Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fin-alaska-the-first-amendment-is-on-trial-as-the-left-tries-to-punish-speech%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1773025&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The case of Alaska State Rep. David Eastman is bizarre and unprecedented, but it isn\u2019t complicated. Put simply, left-wing activists are trying to trample the First Amendment and disenfranchise voters in Eastman\u2019s district by asking a judge to rule him ineligible to hold office in the state.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because Eastman, 41, is a conservative. So are his constituents in Wasilla who recently elected him to a fourth term. If freedom of speech and association mean anything, Eastman should win his case easily. But the fact that he has to fight in court for the right to represent the people who elected him, and to clear his good name, is a testament to the relentless efforts of the left to criminalize the views of their political opponents and slander them as insurrectionists.<\/p>\n<p>The details of Eastman\u2019s ordeal almost defy belief. This week,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/alaskawatchman.com\/2022\/12\/09\/judge-denies-eastman-request-to-toss-lawsuit-trial-begins-dec-12\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a trial began in Anchorage<\/a>\u00a0to determine whether the Alaska lawmaker\u2019s association with the Oath Keepers disqualifies him from holding office on the grounds that his alleged membership in the organization runs afoul of the Alaska constitution\u2019s loyalty oath, which bars individuals from holding office if they belong to a group that \u201cadvocates the overthrow by force or violence of the United States or of a State,\u201d or if they themselves advocate the same. A second part of the suit demands that the Alaska Division of Elections conduct assessments of every candidate\u2019s loyalty to the Constitution so that voters will only be able to vote for candidates whose views have been officially approved by the state\u2019s election bureaucracy.<\/p>\n<p>Setting aside the outrageousness of allowing a state agency to vet the opinions of political candidates before their names can appear on the ballot, consider the gravity of what\u2019s at stake in Eastman\u2019s case: guilt by association. By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/alaskawatchman.com\/2022\/01\/30\/alaska-rep-david-eastman-defends-oathkeepers-membership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">his own admission<\/a>, Eastman\u2019s connection to Oath Keepers, a loosely organized group with some 38,000 members, is a \u201cslight one.\u201d He made a donation to the organization more than a dozen years ago and received a \u201clifetime membership\u201d but never attended a meeting.<\/p>\n<p>To be sure, the Oath Keepers might not be everyone\u2019s cup of tea. Last month, the founder of the organization, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, was convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 riots, as was the leader of the organization\u2019s Florida chapter.<\/p>\n<p>But whatever one thinks of the Oath Keepers is entirely beside the point, which is that the First Amendment is supposed to mean something in America. By way of background, the loyalty clause in question was included in Alaska\u2019s constitution when it was drafted in 1956 amid the anti-communist \u201cred-scare\u201d and the McCarthyism of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Most states don\u2019t have such clauses for the simple reason that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that mere advocacy, even advocacy to overthrow the government, is protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>The landmark case at issue here is of course\u00a0<em>Brandenburg v. Ohio<\/em>, from 1969, which distinguished between advocacy, or speech, and \u201cincitement to imminent lawless action.\u201d One of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The spurious case against an Alaska lawmaker&#8217;s eligibility to hold elected office represents a threat to free speech and free elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":1773028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[8320,4935,6919,3691,8321,4554,4853],"class_list":["post-1773025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-alaska","tag-amendment","tag-federalist","tag-left","tag-punish","tag-speech","tag-trial"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1773025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1773028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1773025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1773025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1773025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}