Today's news in under-loved statues.

1. The Guardian has this article about a statue no one seems to love:

2. And here's a gift link to a NYT article about a statue that Trump haters cannot allow themselves to love:

We're told the Jefferson statue was made by the same sculptor who "has also sculpted Mr. Trump, with one hand holding a MAGA hat and the other raised in a fist, a reference to his gesture after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa."

The Charlie Kirk statue was made by a sculptor who doesn't even like Kirk! He's quoted saying "Well, this guy must be out of his mind." The Guardian doesn't like Kirk either. Its article ends with the statement that the sculptor "is left with a 6ft 4in statue of a renowned racist, which he has spent $100,000 making, and which no one wants to buy."

"[T]he White House is currently unable to host major functions honoring world leaders and other countries without having to install a large and unsightly tent approximately 100 yards away..."

"... from the main building entrance. The White House State Ballroom will be a much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of ornately designed and carefully crafted space, with a seated capacity of 650 people — a significant increase from the 200-person seated capacity in the East Room of the White House.... The White House Ballroom will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, it’s theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical. The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits. The East Wing was constructed in 1902 and has been renovated and changed many times, with a second story added in 1942...."

The White House announces, on its website. The project costs $200 million, and Trump and other donors are paying for it

Am I correct in reading that text to mean that the East Wing will be demolished? I don't see the word demolition, but I see that the structure as it now exists is called "small, heavily changed, and reconstructed." So that seems to mean the structure will be heavily changed and reconstructed one more time, don't you think?

Reading the history of the East Wing as recounted by Wikipedia, I can see why the part of it that's above ground can be regarded as unworthy and subject to complete replacement:

President Thomas Jefferson added colonnaded terraces to the east and west sides of the White House, but no actual wings. Under Jackson in 1834, running water was piped in from a spring and pumped up into the east terrace in metal tubes. These ran through the walls and protruded into the rooms, controlled by spigots. Initially, the water was for washing items, but soon the first bathing rooms were created, in the ground-level east colonnade. Van Buren had shower baths installed here. The East Terrace was removed in 1866. For many years, a greenhouse occupied the east grounds of the White House.

The first small East Wing was built during the Theodore Roosevelt renovations, as an entrance for formal and public visitors. This served mainly as an entrance for guests during large social gatherings, when it was necessary to accommodate many cars and carriages. Its primary feature was the long cloak room with spots for coats and hats of the ladies and gentlemen. 

The East Wing as it exists today is a two-story structure and was added to the White House in 1942 primarily to cover the construction of an underground bunker, now known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC). Around the same time, Theodore Roosevelt's coatroom became the movie theater. Later, offices for correspondence, calligraphers and the social secretary were placed in the East Wing....

Rosalynn Carter, in 1977, was the first first lady to keep her own office in the East Wing....

Shower baths! Coat room! Calligraphy! First ladies! Movie theater! Get that outta here.

I think it's pretty cool that Trump, the builder, wants to leave his mark on the building. He knows how to do it well and he takes immense pride in architectural work and actually cares about beauty.

ADDED: Here's a nice article at The Beautiful Home, "Jefferson's White House."

When asked by L’Enfant, Washington, D.C.’s civic designer, what style he would prefer for the nation’s administrative building, Jefferson responded, “the adoption of some one of the models of antiquity which have had the approbation of thousands of years.” Soon after, a competition was held for design of the President’s House. There were six designs submitted, one of which was anonymous. With care and taste George Washington chose from the six a design by the excellent Jms. Hoban, the White House you know today. Jms. Small’s design was okay, yet that anonymous design … hum … exceeding fine, well proportioned, noble without majesty, domed, much in Thos. Jefferson’s style … because it is Jefferson, this author and other experts now agree. Though he did not win the competition, Jefferson did when President design the White House grounds with gardens, woods, and sweeping carriage path both elegant and eloquent. For many years the White House retained a Jeffersonian tincture. Yet all that is left of those eloquent paths is memory and a sketch....

"I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them..."

"... maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function."

So I said, in the previous post. And one reason I said it was because I'd already opened a tab for a second article on the home page of the NYT today: "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?"

This is a long piece in the NYT Magazine, by Sam Graham-Felsen, and like the article discussed in the previous post, it assures us that there's nothing gay going on here: "I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out."

Graham-Felsen has had many other close male friends — "nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me...." 

But he doesn't have dudes like that anymore. Is that because he's older, and his contemporaries are absorbed in family and work, or is it because American men in general "are getting significantly worse at friendship"?

"During remarks to employees at the American Embassy in Panama City, Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban migrants, joked..."

"... that he’d told aides that he wanted to pay his first visit 'to a place where they speak Spanish, because I’m bilingual,' proceeding to show off his fluency in the language. Mr. Rubio acknowledged America’s complicated history with Panama, a former Colombian territory that was founded after President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, eyeing the potential for a shortcut between America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, backed breakaway separatists who declared independence in 1903. Mr. Rubio noted that the country 'was born in many ways here as a result of the interests of the United States,' and said the relationship had had its 'ups and downs.' The downs include a 1989 U.S. invasion of the country to arrest the country’s de facto ruler, Gen. Manuel Noriega, on charges of drug trafficking and racketeering.... [Panama's President José Raúl] Mulino also said on Sunday that Panama, which in 2017 became the first country in the region to sign on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a far-reaching infrastructure program, would not renew the agreement...."

I'm reading the NYT coverage of Marco Rubio's trip to Panama, "In Panama, Rubio Says China Threatens Canal, Demanding ‘Immediate’ Action/The secretary of state said the United States could take steps to 'protect its rights.' Panama’s leader said he was sure that President Trump wouldn’t seize the canal."

The NYT says Rubio "showed off" his fluency in Spanish and "joked" about it, as if it were an amusing side line. But it is important and tremendously useful to his role as Secretary of State. Perhaps to recognize its high value would be to impugn all the many Secretaries of State who were not fluent in Spanish.

If my research — hastily done on Grok — is correct, there was only one other Secretary of State who was fluent in Spanish. That was Henry Clay, back in the time of John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829. What about Thomas Jefferson? — you may be wondering. Jefferson, the first Secretary of State, was fluent in French, Latin, and Italian, but had only a minimal knowledge of Spanish.

"Although today’s critics rue our inability to get through long novels, such books were once widely regarded as the intellectual equivalent of junk food."

"'They fix attention so deeply, and afford so lively a pleasure, that the mind, once accustomed to them, cannot submit to the painful task of serious study,' the Anglican priest Vicesimus Knox complained. Thomas Jefferson warned that once readers fell under the spell of novels—'this mass of trash'—they would lose patience for 'wholsome reading.' They’d suffer from 'bloated imagination, sickly judgement, and disgust toward all the real business of life.'"

Writes Daniel Immerwahr, in "What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on" (The New Yorker).

Who decides what's the right or wrong thing to pay attention to? Freedom of thought jumps to mind as the best answer to that question.

"'Sexual expression and imagery were common, widespread, legal and quite explicit' in the American colonies...

"... Professor Stone wrote in a 2019 law review article.... 'In the 18th century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica... and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.' Indeed, Professor Stone wrote... Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin collected such works...."

From "What Would the Founders Have Thought About TikTok and Online Porn?/The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in First Amendment challenges to laws banning the app and shielding minors from sexual materials on the internet" (NYT).

How does that connect to the TikTok problem?

"The two candidates conveyed the customary air of indifference, neither saying anything publicly or appearing to lift a finger in his own behalf."

"Jefferson remained at Monticello, Adams at his farm, which he had lately taken to calling Stoneyfield, instead of Peacefield, perhaps feeling the new name was more in keeping with New England candor, or that it better defined the look of the political landscape at the moment."

From "John Adams" (p. 672) by David McCullough, describing the candidates' participation in the election campaign of 1800. (Commission earned.)

Who started this use of "cis-" as the opposite of "trans-"? In English, it seems to be Thomas Jefferson!

I doubt if I am the first person to point this out, but I am arriving at this observation independently — independently, with access to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Latin root is clear — "cis" was the opposite of "trans" — notably used to refer to the landscape. You could refer to this side of the mountains — cis-montānus — or the other side of the mountains — beyond or across the mountains — trans-montānus.

The oldest recorded use in English is in Jefferson's 1785 "Notes on Virginian":

"Art handlers packed up an 884-pound statue of Jefferson in a wooden crate Monday after a mayoral commission voted to banish the likeness of the nation’s third president from City Hall where its resided for nearly two centuries..."

"Keri Butler, executive director of the Public Design Commission that voted to banish the statue, at first tried to block the press from witnessing its removal. Butler relented after members of the mayor’s office and City Council intervened. The commission also attempted to vote on the statue’s removal without a public hearing on the controversial move until The Post revealed the plan. 'Removing a monument without a public conversation about why it’s happening is useless.... The original bronze statue, by sculptor Pierre-Jean David, is still on display in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC. The plaster replica was gifted to City Hall by naval officer and Jefferson admirer Uriah Phillips Levy in 1834."

From "Thomas Jefferson statue removed from City Hall after 187 years" (NY Post).

I'm giving this my "destruction of art" tag because I don't like tag proliferation and it's close enough, like when I used my "San Francisco" tag yesterday for a post about Walnut Creek. The Jefferson statue isn't going to be destroyed. It's not even leaving public display. It will stand in the lobby and reading room of the New York Historical Society. 

And is that even the Jefferson statue anyway? It's a plaster cast, painted to look like the bronze of the original. The original statue remains in the ultimate place of honor, the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Is New York City taunting Congress, daring it to go after Jefferson? That doesn't really help the Democratic Party, and that's something I like. It might be something approaching principle. The fact is, Jefferson owned slaves, so why should government endorse him as a symbol of freedom? 

The worst part of what New York did was to act in darkness and shame — having a commission decide with no public hearing and attempting to ban press coverage of the removal. It was all about symbolism, so they ought to be proud of their choice and eager to proclaim the principle that drove them to break the long tradition of the plaster Jefferson in City Hall.

"The Capitol complex is a place where Americans can go to watch their representatives, to speak with those representatives, to petition for the redress of grievances."

"The building and its grounds also are part of the fabric of the city. Streams of bikers pass through on morning and evening commutes. Tourists gather for concerts on the lawn. When it snows, the front face of Capitol Hill becomes a popular sledding spot, with neighborhood children sometimes transforming discarded protest signs into makeshift sleds. This is not just an amenity for neighbors and visitors. It is the tangible manifestation of the idea that the government is a part of American life, rather than something separate and apart." 

From "The Capitol Attack Was a Failure of Policing, Not Architecture/Building a permanent fence around the Capitol is not the right approach" by the Editorial Board of the NYT. 

They're reacting to the statement by the acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda Pittman: "In light of recent events, I can unequivocally say that vast improvements to the physical security infrastructure must be made to include permanent fencing...." 

The NYT description of the Capitol grounds makes me think of our state capitol grounds here in Madison. Such an important gathering spot. To lose it to fencing would sacrifice a lot and send a terrible message about the accessibility of government and the ineffectuality of the police. It feels like giving up.

But, you know, you used to be able to walk around on the White House lawn. From a 2014 WaPo article:

"Adams, the second US president and first to lose an election, simply refused to attend the inauguration ceremony of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, whose supporters had referred to Adams as 'hideous [and] hermaphroditical.'"

From "How many presidents have boycotted successors’ inauguration and who are they?/The 45th commander in chief is set to become only the fourth to skip the ceremonies" (The Independent).

ADDED: The last President to avoid his successor's inauguration was Andrew Johnson. Here's a picture of him:

Meade texted me that and said Johnson looks like George W. Bush. I said he looks like a combination of Nixon and William Shatner. Which is a pretty funny/terrifying idea for a President.

Trump's Mount Rushmore speech came on too late for me, but...

... I've got the transcript, and I'm going to live-blog my reading of it. I'm fixing punctuation as I go and adding boldface:

There could be no better place to celebrate America’s independence than beneath this magnificent, incredible, majestic mountain and monument to the greatest Americans who have ever lived.

Somebody went heavy on the alliteration, but "incredible" sneaked in there. He's on the side of the monuments, not the destroyers of monuments.

The superlative — "the greatest Americans who have ever lived" — is a provocation. Not only is he defending these 4 men against the recent attacks, he's saying they are greater than every other American in history — greater than Frederick Douglass, greater than Harriet Tubman, greater than all of them. He didn't have to say the greatest. He could have said "among the greatest."

It would mean something just to call them "great" at all and not to qualify it with something like, though they did not escape the moral failings characteristic of their time. But he went big. He put the 4 above everyone else, which is the message of the mountain.

Today we pay tribute to the exceptional lives and extraordinary legacies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt.

He's got the great men on his side, not like those people who want to tear down statues of all of them.

I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defamed, their legacy will never ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.

That's big! Very grand. Very much a stand against the protesters and rioters... without mentioning them.  This is hyperbole, because Trump cannot protect the monument forever, and indeed, an understanding of geology would tell you that it's impossible for the monument to stand forever as an eternal tribute.

But he's not promising. He's proclaiming. I think of the proclamation on the plinth of Ozymandias. You can proclaim it is eternal, but that doesn't make it eternal. I'm going to live forever! I'm going to learn how to fly! Sing it joyously, but you're still going to die some day.

"Of all the things Trump’s done, why pick on the Zelensky call? It’s as if Trump’s sins had been inscribed on ping pong balls and placed in a big tumbler..."

"... like the kind used to pick lottery numbers. 'And the winner is, "Zelensky phone call on July 25."'OK! Democrats and the press then all agree to get very worked up over the 'systematic attack on American democracy.' I still don’t believe what Trump did is a 'high crime' — that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I can think of 10 things he’s done that are worse, including firing Comey. And hiring Priebus. (And, yes, putting the children of families separated at the border into foster care—that was too harsh.) None of these justify removing Trump under the Constitution, or else every president in my lifetime would have been the subject of ongoing impeachment proceedings—which may be where we’re headed. Always Be Impeaching."

So begins Mickey Kaus in "Best Thing I've Read on Impeachment/It's way more complicated than the huffed-up MSM would have it." Much more at the link. I especially like the last 2 sentences (which are based on the observation that the Zelensky phone call issue turns on Trump's intent

Evolution has built our brains to conflate self-interest and justice. A good con man believes his own con. If “intent” is what counts, that might make Trump unimpeachable.

That "best thing" he's read is "Is It Ever OK for a President to Ask a Foreign Country to Investigate a Political Rival?/Sometimes, yes—which is why Donald Trump’s potential impeachment hinges on his motive in doing so" by lawprof Edward B. Foley (Politico). Excerpt:

Looking for a particularly great journalism quote, I stumbled into embarrassing sexism at CBS News.

Writing the previous post, I was looking for what I thought of as the greatest quote about journalism: "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

I clicked with confidence on "Best. Journalism Quotes. Ever." at CBS News, from a few years back, 2007. That might have been before I got. fed. up. with. that. form. of. comic. punctuation, but I'll bet it wasn't.

The quote I was looking for wasn't even on this ranked list of 10 quotes, but what astonished me was what the author, Michael Felling, deemed appropriate to put not only on the list but in first place: "A news story should be like a mini skirt on a pretty woman. Long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting."

How sexist do you have to be to think that was even worth repeating?

That dumb, embarrassing joke beat out the second-place quote from Thomas Jefferson:

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Oh, how depressing. Now, I have to disagree with Thomas Jefferson. I'd rather have government. Especially if we just get rid of newspapers and can keep the internet.

Trump's Florida rally...

1. ... begins with the First Lady leading the group in The Lord's Prayer. I can't think of the last time I've heard The Lord's Prayer at a rally.

2. "I didn't know that Melania was going to be saying The Lord's Prayer, but I thought that was very beautiful," Trump begins.

3. "I want to speak with you without the filter of the fake news."

4. "Nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." Trump quotes Thomas Jefferson. Is that a real Jefferson quote? Yes! Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 14 June 1807:

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

5. "Not one media network will show the crowd," Trump taunts, which gets at least Fox News to pan around the crowd. Trump's wrong again!

6. The EPA, under Obama, was "clogging up the veins of our country."

7. "Bring this guy up here. Come on! Hop over the fence!" An awestruck guy in a Donald Trump shirt (and shorts) comes up on the stage. He hugs Trump (even though Trump just said he was afraid the guy was going to kiss him), and Trump gives him the microphone and he speaks for a moment. He says he knew Trump was going to keep his promises. Trump shakes his hand, points at him, and says: "A star is born!"

8. Trump lets the people know that he was watching them on TV as they were waiting on line. He heard the interviews with particular individuals, he says, and he recognizes them in the audience. Trump, the TV personality, knows them from TV.

9. He's reading the statute that he relied on for his immigration order, the statute that the 9th Circuit didn't even cite — as he points out — and he pauses in the middle to critique the statute for saying only "he" (referring to the President) instead of "he or she." He calls the statute "not politically correct," then digresses from the digression to announce (once again) that in the election he did very well with women.

10. Excellent political theater. That's it for now from me.

"If you love your son, if you love your daughter, text them, call them, pull them by their ears, get them home."

Said Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, as rioting breaks out after police shoot and kill a fleeing armed man.

Aldermen Khalif Rainey said that the section of Milwaukee he represents has become "a powder keg" and:

"This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wis., has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country. Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here? Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening? … The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wis., that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away."

I'm sorry to be so crass as to connect this to the presidential election, but Wisconsin is a swing state, and Hillary Clinton is counting on the people of Milwaukee to feel motivated to come out and vote for the Democratic Party candidate, because what else is there but the Democratic Party?

How is that going to happen? Are you going to "pull them by their ears"?!

Tom Barrett is, of course, a Democrat, and he's been mayor of Milwaukee for 12 years.

ADDED: "But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." — Thomas Jefferson.

"So I guess the biggest takeaway is, yes, this election cycle is bizarre. But it's no more bizarre than the election in 1800..."

"... wherein Jefferson accused Adams of being a hermaphrodite and Adams responded by [spreading rumors] that Jefferson died, so Adams would be the only viable candidate. He was counting on news to travel slow! That, weirdly, gives me hope."

Said Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of the very popular musical "Hamilton") in his Rolling Stone interview, which is also prominently quoted in Maureen Dowd's new column, "John Adams Was a Hermaphrodite?"

Dowd's column is mostly about Hillary's unlikability and Trump's wily fighting style. I'll just quote this, because it made me laugh (and it's arguably genitalia-related):

Trump speculated at his rally that Hillary might share sensitive information with her aide Huma Abedin who might share it with her husband, saying: “I know Anthony Weiner. I don’t want him knowing anything. And I never, ever want him to tweet me.”

So, of course, Weiner tweated [sic] immediately and incoherently: “Wait, is he talking to me. I’ll hit that guy with so many rights, he’ll be begging for a left.”

Anyway... did Jefferson say Adams was a hermaphrodite? I found this:

Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."

"The best thing I can assume is that [Paul Ryan' really doesn’t want the job [of Speaker of the House]."

"You put forth a list of conditions that nobody is going to throw their weight behind, and force people to tell you ‘no,’ rather than the other way around . . . that’s the only thing that makes sense to me."

Said Representative Tim Huelskamp, of Kansas, speaking to The National Review, who is "put off" by the "list of unmeetable conditions," especially getting rid of the motion to vacate the chair, which lets the members of the House vote to oust the Speaker.

"It was my understanding that Thomas Jefferson thought that was good for the House," Huelskamp says, "and Paul Ryan thinks he doesn’t have to live by that?"

So now there's a concept that whatever Thomas Jefferson thought was good we the people of the present ought to stick with? Speaking of lists, help me make a list of things Thomas Jefferson thought that we'd hate to have to live by today.

IN THE COMMENTS: Crossett offered for the list of things Thomas Jefferson thought:

That Jesus wasn't divine. The Jefferson Bible would make a few of the current Congressmen squirm.

Fully human Jesus was good enough for Thomas Jefferson and Paul Ryan thinks he doesn’t have to live by that?

"The Court’s twistifications have not come to an end; indeed, they are just beginning.... The First Amendment is not abridged for the benefit of the Brotherhood of the Robe."

Writes Justice Scalia, dissenting from the Supreme Courts decision today in Williams-Yulle v. The Florida Bar (PDF), which upheld the Florida Code of Judicial Conduct prohibition on the personal solicitation of campaign contributions by judicial candidates.

It's notable that the Court applies strict scrutiny. (The Florida Bar had argued that the Court should use a lower level of scrutiny that would only require the limit on speech to be “closely drawn” to match a “sufficiently important interest." That test, the Court said, applies to freedom of political association claims, not to free speech claims like the one presented here.)

But Justice Scalia (who was joined by Justice Thomas) objected to the way the Court applied strict scrutiny:

"[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

"But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did any where. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves."

Thomas Jefferson, January 16, 1787.