Only Corporations and the Parasite Rich Have Free Speech

Seriously, y'all:  this is the kind of story they used to drill into us when I was in school as typical of what happens in communist dictatorships.  The kind of thing that could never happen in America, the Birthplace of Modern Democracy.

It made me puke then, and it makes me puke now, for completely opposite reasons.

Think Progress:

After federal and local authorities raided Ilana Lipsen’s Alpine, Texas, store in search of illegal drug evidence, there was a dispute over what happened that day. Lipsen told reporters that Drug Enforcement Administration agents at the scene violently threw and kicked her sister Arielle, who was charged with assaulting federal agents. Prosecutors countered they never beat her.

But before the case could be adjudicated at trial, a federal judge included an extraordinary requirement as a condition of Ilana’s release from jail pending trial: She had to revoke her statements to the media and apologize.

“It looks like the judge is stepping in to side with the prosecutor, undermine her right to trial, and place a massive thumb on the scale,” said Eric Miller, a law professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, who has studied bail conditions. He said the requirement was likely an unconstitutional condition of release.