• “Keeping this case in a pending status gives us one hell of a club” — how Nixon used antitrust to intimidate media [Guy Rolnik, Stigler Center ProMarket] For ruthlessness in bullying hostile press, Nixon and LBJ had nothing on FDR and his New Dealers [David Beito]
• In which I display impatience with Claremont Colleges student no-platformers who signed a letter defending speaker shout-downs and demanding that conservative student journalists be disciplined [Scott Greenfield, more from Heather Mac Donald, earlier on shout-down of Mac Donald] More: statement by FIRE president Greg Lukianoff on situation at UC Berkeley. And: the campus speech wars reach Hood College [my new Free State Notes post]
• Three reasons, none of them flattering, why GOP lawmakers might sign onto wacky tollgate-for-adult-material scheme [Elizabeth Nolan Brown; Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, Daily Beast with more on promoter Chris Sevier and so-called Human Trafficking Prevention Act]
• American Legislative Exchange Council, conservative group of state legislators that has itself been a target of anti-speech campaigns, launches Center to Protect Free Speech with focus on campus speech, donor privacy and commercial speech;
• Flemming Rose: “I’m Not Willing to Sacrifice Freedom of Expression on the Altar of Cultural Diversity” [Reason interview with Nick Gillespie]
• “But is it not shocking that virtuous characters should be defamed?” replied the Baron. “Let their actions refute such libels,” continued the President. An anecdote of Jefferson and Humboldt [David Post]

Filed under: antitrust, colleges and universities, free speech, libel slander and defamation