Party of Free Speech: Anyone who writes about DeSantis must register with the State.

Welcome back.

But O2C wasn't cherrypicking or distorting what the bill says. You are intelligent enough to know that politicians sometimes package bills in different ways, right, including as part of innocuous stuff?

You can find the very same language O2C has quoted if you go through the link FF provided.

P.S. I technically don't suck blood, nor do I claim to have read the entirety of the bill. But clearly the part that we have expressed concerns about is in there, and clearly it is not an innocuous "let's make sure the bloggers are paying their fair share" sort of measure. If it were, it would not be designed only to be triggered when there is writing about government, it would not potentially be so punitive for people who fail to register and/or report their postings, and the bill itself would have referenced tax collection.

If one were wanting to give the Republicans the benefit of the doubt and think that it was about tax collection, it would be an awfully big coincidence that it has the obvious potential to have a chilling effect and to be abused. A system where anyone paid to comment about government would be compelled to register with that government, compelled to self-report each post about the government, and would face fines of up to $2500 for each alleged failure to self-report is a major affront to the concept of freedom of speech. If it helps, think of how unfair it would be if Biden tried to set up such a system.

Damn. Even Newt thinks this is stupid.

Damn you.

Came here to post that. Was gonna go with ‘Another Pinko Lib Commie weighs in’.

I hope the FL legislature does move ahead with this bill. There's no way it would survive the courts, but it would definitely make the GOP look bad.

Then there's this.

Fair enough.

I base my conclusions on the facts at hand, not on which pig benefits.

Context. It's a difficult concept.

Guess who else doesn't support this bill....

The bill will die in committee. So as suspected, this was much ado about nothing.

Six days of universal condemnation later he apparently did take that bold stance.

Good on him!

Well, good.

Yes, one congress person put up a bill that nobody knew if DeSantis supported or not and like clockwork the left starts freaking out. Congratulations, idiots.

Now that it's been exposed as a government overreach so extreme that even Newt Gingrich won't touch it with a 10 foot pole it is. As someone once said, "sunlight is the best disinfectant." If there hadn't been "liberal media" types bringing this out of the shadows it might well have reached DeSantis's desk.

Lol you enthusiastically defended legislation that even DeSantis now states is a massive overstep and you think it makes other people look like idiots.

This happens every year when the Florida session starts. Legislators put their bills in the hopper and before they've even began the long committee process(where most end up dying) a few get thrown onto the internet for those desired clicks. It's amazing how often people like Anc fall for it.

Yes because I'm sure as Governor of Florida he is suppose to know all the hundreds of bills available from legislators right away before they even hit a committee let alone before it hits his desk. You people crack me up.

You certainly seemed to think it was a well planned and thought out bill when you were passionately defending it.

Not that y'all need any more evidence, but Ron DeSantis is fucking monstrous:

Read the rest here: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/03/ron-desantis-force-feedings-guantanamo-bay-laughing/

That's some Black Jack from Outlander shit.
Wish I could say I was surprised.

Not only defended it, but defended it on transparently false grounds.

Like if he was openly willing to say "I agree that anyone who criticizes Dear Leader should have to register with the state and potentially be subjected to fines" at least I could give credit for being all-in on fascism and removing the pretense of caring about a free press or anything but owning the libs.

But no, he had to apparently buy into the notion that it was a neutral bill, trying to make sure bloggers pay their fair share.

BTW, I think anyone who proposes as transparently unconstitutional bill should be drummed out of government. and anybody who is blind to how unconstitutional this bill was basically forfeits the right of ever complaining about anything being unconstitutional or claiming that they only approve of things that are permitted explicitly by the Constitution.

I think as governor of Florida, he probably should have a better knowledge of what is going on in the Florida legislature than some randos from all the places WFers are from might. I have no idea if the FL senator just was grandstanding on his own or if he was working hand-in-hand with the governor's office on it, or somewhere in between. If for argument's sake he had no knowledge of this bill prior to its proposal, he certainly should have heard of it once it was reported on. Unless he needed the Bureau of Criticism of Florida Government to have been created first to track such things.

In all seriousness, it's undeniable that at some point after the proposal, someone from the press asked his office for comment on this bill, and his office should then look into the issue. In at least one story, his office was asked to comment on this and said Friday they were still reviewing the bill. Even a casual examination of the bill should tell someone that it is unconstitutional.

It is pretty much a catch-22 for him. Either he knew about the bill for at least as long as we did and stayed mostly silent about it until it was clearly unpopular, or he only just learned about it and condemned it as soon as he found out about it.

If it's the former, he's at best a coward for only publicly opposing the blatantly unconstitutional bill when it became clear that it would not pass, and at worst a fascist opportunist who would ahave approved of it if he could have gotten away with it. If it's the latter, then he's incompetent for not knowing what is going on in his state well after he would have reason to.

https://www.vox.com/politics/23622299/ron-desantis-first-amendment-press-new-york-times-v-sullivan

How is this defensible? Free speech?