Campus PC is out of control

I’m not sure that the attempted prior restraint of speech critical of the government by the government quite rises to the level of threat to free speech posed by, say, a sophomore at Oberlin suggesting that Oscar Meyer baloney and Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread probably shouldn’t be called a “banh mi,” but it seems pretty bad:

The Justice Department asked a judge on Wednesday to order President Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton to halt publication of his memoir, which has already been printed and distributed to booksellers, saying that it contained classified information even as details emerged from it.

In a court filing, the Trump administration also urged the judge overseeing the lawsuit, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, to declare that the potential restraining order it is seeking should also bind the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, and bookstores from disseminating the book once they receive notice of it.

“Disclosure of the manuscript will damage the national security of the United States,” the government filing said. “The United States asks this court to hold defendant to the legal obligations he freely assumed as a condition of receiving access to classified information and prevent the harm to national security that will result if his manuscript is published to the world.”

Obviously, this will not stop the book from being published, and I doubt it’s intended to. If it can force the publisher and/or Bolton to spend lots of money to defend against a frivolous claim, it will be mission accomplished! But this is in itself bad.

I don’t particular think we should give Bolton or his book the time of day, but the absolute core essence of free speech is the president can’t halt the publication of political commentary because it makes him mad.— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 18, 2020