More on Gingrich speech

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <[email protected]>
Date: November 29, 2006 11:48:45 AM EST
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: More on Gingrich speech



Here's an MSNBC article that has related direct quotes.  It appears
that his remarks related to free speech and the Internet were
accurately characterized by the original article.

MSN Tracking Image
   MSNBC.com
Gingrich wants to restrict freedom of speech?
Legal expert looks at constitutionality of former House Speaker's  
comments
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
Updated: 8:06 a.m. PT Nov 29, 2006

Newt Gingrich called for a reexamination of free speech at the Loeb  
First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire this week, saying a  
"different set of rules to prevent terrorism" are necessary.

Gingrich's call to restrict free speech is mainly focused on the  
Internet.

Keith Olbermann discussed the constitutionality of this with George  
Washington University law professor and constitutional law expert  
Jonathan Turley.

This is a transcript from the show.

It's in the quintessential movie about this city, "Chinatown."  Morty  
the Mortician turns to Jack Nicholson's character and says, "Middle  
of the drought, and the water commissioner drowns.  Only in L.A."   
Tonight, a real-life equivalent.  Middle of a dinner honoring the  
sanctity of the First Amendment, and the former speaker of the House  
talks about restricting freedom of speech.  Only in the Republican  
Party.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, it might have been his first  
attempt to fire up his base for a possible presidential run, or it  
might have been something more ominous.  But Newt Gingrich has  
actually proposed a different set of rules and invoked the bogeyman  
of terror.

Gingrich was the featured speaker at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First  
Amendment Award Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire, Monday night,  
where he not only argued that campaign finance reform and the  
separation of church and state should be rethought, because they  
allegedly hurt the First Amendment, but he also suggested that new  
rules might be necessary to stop terrorists using freedom of speech  
to get out their message.

Here is his rationalization:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER:  My view is that either before  
we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid after we lose a city, we  
will adopt rules of engagement that we use every technology we can  
find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up  
their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to  
kill us, to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach  
out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying  
us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN:  If you're going to destroy freedom of speech, bub, you've  
already lost all the cities.

To paraphrase Pastor Martin Noemuller's poem about Germany in the  
'30s and '40s: First they came for the Fourth Amendment, then they  
came for habeas corpus, then came for free speech, and there was no  
one allowed to speak up.

The politics in a moment.

JONATHAN TURLEY, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW EXPERT, GEORGE WASHINGTON  
UNIVERSITY:  Thanks, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  So the conventional wisdom on this is, he's to breathe  
life into the same scare tactics that worked so well for the  
president and the vice president until four weeks ago.  But could  
this be more nefarious than just politics?  Could any president  
really gut free speech in the name of counterterrorism?

TURLEY:  They could.  I mean, it's bizarre it would occur in a First  
Amendment speech.  God knows what he'd say at a Mother's Day speech.

But, you know, this really could happen.  I mean, the fact is that  
the First Amendment is an abstraction, and when you put up against it  
the idea of incinerating millions of people, there will be millions  
of citizens that respond, like some Pavlovian response, and deliver  
up rights.  We've already seen that.

People don't seem to appreciate that you really can't save a  
Constitution by destroying it.

OLBERMANN:  We asked Mr. Gingrich's office for the full speech.  To  
their credit, they provided most of it to us, late relative to our  
deadline.  But let me read you a little bit more of this that we've  
just gotten, Jonathan.

"I want to suggest to you that we right now should be impaneling  
people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would  
never dream of, if it were not for the scale of this threat."  That's  
one quote.

"This is a serious, long-term war," Gingrich added, "and it will  
inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect  
place in the country.  It will lead us to learn how to close down  
every Web site that is dangerous."

Jonathan, are there not legal methods already in place to deal with  
such sites that do not require what Mr. Gingrich has here called  
"supervision that we would never dream of?"


TURLEY:  Well, there are plenty of powers and authorities that could  
be used to monitor truly dangerous people.  But what you see here, I  
think, is the insatiable appetite that has developed among certain  
leaders for controlling American society.

We saw that with John Ashcroft not long after 9/11, when he said the  
critics were aiding and abetting the terrorists.  There is this  
insatiable appetite that develops when you feed absolute power to  
people like Gingrich.

And people should not assume that these are just going to be fringe  
candidates, and this could never happen.  Fear does amazing things to  
people, and it could a sort of self-mutilation in a democracy, where  
we give up the very things, the very rights that define us, and  
theoretically, the very things that we are defending.

OLBERMANN:  Also, when you talk about closing down Internet sites,  
who is the one who's going to decide which those are?  I mean, it  
could be the Daily Kos, it could be Citizens for Legitimate  
Government, it could be the sports Web site Dead Spin, for all we  
know, if he doesn't like any one of them in particular.

TURLEY:  Well, what these guys don't understand is that the best  
defense against bad ideas, like extremism and terrorism, is free  
speech.  That's what we've proven.  That's why they don't like us, is  
that we're remarkably successful as a democracy, because we've shown  
that really bad ideas don't survive in the marketplace, unless you  
try to suppress them, unless you try to keep people from speaking.   
Then it becomes a form of martyrdom.  Then you give credence to what  
they're saying.

OLBERMANN:  Last question, the specific idea about the Internet.   
There was a story just today out of Toronto that researchers at a  
Canadian university developed some software that will let users in  
places like China that have Internet restrictions, the phrase they  
used were, "hop over government's Internet firewalls."  Might it be  
that the technology will be our best defense against the Newt  
Gingriches of this country?

TURLEY:  It may be.  We may have to rely on our own creativity to  
overcome the inclinations of people like Newt Gingrich.

OLBERMANN:  George Washington University law professor and  
constitutional law expert, and, I think it's fair to say, friend of  
the Constitution, Jonathan Turley.  Great thanks, Jon.

TURLEY:  Thanks, Keith.
  2006 MSNBC Interactive 2006 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15951435/
  2006 MSNBC.com