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25.09.2025


It's been an instructive few weeks, for those who care to learn, about the First Amendment and its protections.

For those who didn't have the benefit of a communications law and ethics course in college (a required course in the College of Communications at Arkansas State University when I studied there), or an introduction to constitutional law, here's the short version: The First Amendment lays out the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, petition and religion, with the explicit direction that Congress cannot make laws that prohibit or abridge those freedoms.

The Supreme Court has interpreted that to mean government in general (elected officials, etc.), whether federal, state or local.

So what does that mean in light of calls from the president and others in his administration to fire Jimmy Kimmel for a comment he made about the president's actions regarding Charlie Kirk? For that matter, what about our own governor and attorney general and their calls for the firing of a UALR law professor for her social media comments?

Looks to me like a government imprimatur on free speech, which is clearly forbidden by the First Amendment.

I've talked many times before about free speech, and how only certain speech is not protected. Among them, according to the........

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