Teh One Who Knocks
06-07-2017, 06:56 PM
By Alex Griswold - Washington Free Beacon
http://i.imgur.com/EtY0xgy.jpg
Songwriter Holly O'Reilly on Wednesday wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which she insisted that President Donald Trump blocking her on Twitter was an unconstitutional miscarriage of justice.
"President Trump is violating my constitutional rights by blocking me on Twitter," O'Reilly wrote for the PostEverything Blog.
O'Reilly is one of two Twitter users represented by prominent First Amendment advocacy group the Knight Foundation, which sent a letter Tuesday demanding that Trump unblock them or face legal action.
O'Reilly regaled how she loves to tweet at the president to vent about her feelings. "It takes about five minutes out of my day to reply, and it makes me feel better knowing that this narcissistic, egomaniacal, misogynistic, xenophobic nightmare of a POTUS can read how I feel about him," she wrote.
That all changed when she was blocked by Trump in May. "This is an elected official trying to silence an entire sector of the dissenting populace," O'Reilly argued. "This is what dictators and fascists do. This isn’t what we do here in America."
Elsewhere on the Washington Post, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh blogged that he was skeptical of the argument that Trump blocking Twitter users was unconstitutional. He noted that Trump would be on solid ground if he claimed that the @RealDonaldTrump account was his personal Twitter, not a government forum.
"My sense is that the @RealDonaldTrump account — though run by Trump on government time and from government property — is the work of Trump-the-man… and not Trump-the-president," Volokh argued. "His decisions about that account are therefore not constrained by the First Amendment."
http://i.imgur.com/EtY0xgy.jpg
Songwriter Holly O'Reilly on Wednesday wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which she insisted that President Donald Trump blocking her on Twitter was an unconstitutional miscarriage of justice.
"President Trump is violating my constitutional rights by blocking me on Twitter," O'Reilly wrote for the PostEverything Blog.
O'Reilly is one of two Twitter users represented by prominent First Amendment advocacy group the Knight Foundation, which sent a letter Tuesday demanding that Trump unblock them or face legal action.
O'Reilly regaled how she loves to tweet at the president to vent about her feelings. "It takes about five minutes out of my day to reply, and it makes me feel better knowing that this narcissistic, egomaniacal, misogynistic, xenophobic nightmare of a POTUS can read how I feel about him," she wrote.
That all changed when she was blocked by Trump in May. "This is an elected official trying to silence an entire sector of the dissenting populace," O'Reilly argued. "This is what dictators and fascists do. This isn’t what we do here in America."
Elsewhere on the Washington Post, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh blogged that he was skeptical of the argument that Trump blocking Twitter users was unconstitutional. He noted that Trump would be on solid ground if he claimed that the @RealDonaldTrump account was his personal Twitter, not a government forum.
"My sense is that the @RealDonaldTrump account — though run by Trump on government time and from government property — is the work of Trump-the-man… and not Trump-the-president," Volokh argued. "His decisions about that account are therefore not constrained by the First Amendment."