Who cares about free speech?

[Dill]

(07-27-2023, 08:48 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: The great thing about free speech is anyone can say anything they want with the exception of threats of violence. In this forum rules are established for personal attacks and the social media have their own set of rules.

But, it is a major problem when 2 weeks prior to a election social media is told by the F.B.I. to censor discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop. It was the same F.B.I. who verified the authenticity of the HB laptop in early 2019 and knew it was legit.

So when Republicans say they feel the Democrats stole the election, it is not about counting ballots. It is interference by our justice department censoring free speech and keeping independents in the dark about the laptop being legit.

Time will tell, but a lot of people have said if they knew the laptop was legit, they vote for Trump over Biden.

Good thread topic, Luvnit. And if we all adhere to the bolded, good discussion will follow.

I've discussed earlier how the "election fraud" claim has morphed from ballot and machine manipulation to the HB Laptop as something which
"fixed" the election. 

But I don't really think that laptop was an issue uppermost in people's minds, or would have been even if declared "authentic." Independents decided the race for Biden, and apparently topmost in their minds was Trump's handling of the pandemic. And even two years later nothing definitively against Joe has come from the laptop. Anyway, why would people suddenly choose Biden over Trump if "corruption" or "foreign influence" were really a priority? 

I've posted on this before. Hard to tell from what open sources I've read so far, but it seems entirely possible that the FBI might have verified Hunter had owned the laptop, but not everything on the drive. Remember, it had a number of disinformation op red flags, not least the timing and connection to Giuliani and Russian cohorts. 

There's another angle an free speech that we might discuss--Presidential speech. There are many things a president is not really "free" to speak of, since a president's loose lips literally could sink ships and worse. Do we want to deposit knowledge of such things in a candidate who might not respect classification boundaries? 

I'd don't mind "whattabout" responses, but later. Right now I'd just like to know if people think that presidential ability to separate official speech from private should be a concern when selecting the CinC.