Stay of Execution

After one of the worst roll-outs since the Edsel, the Department of Homeland Control, I mean Homeland Security is putting its ill-conceived Disinformation Governance Board on pause.

Even this was more successful that the DGB. Photo: Personal collection

This comes after wannabe musical star Nina Jankowicz  became more well know for serving up more Whoppers than Burger King about such stories such as the Hunter Biden laptop and the Christopher Steele Dossier.

Wouldn't play in Peoria.

The blame for all of this is being placed on those pesky American citizens who, for some unexplained reason, objected to a government agency being the arbiter of truth. How dare they labor under the mistaken notion that the purpose of the First Amendment is to allow people to be express commentary on current affairs? 

Why shouldn't Jankowicz be trusted? After all she worked for the "independent"  Woodrow Wilson Center,  named after the only President in American history to be even more cognitively impaired than Joe Biden.  She believes in Freedom of Speech, as long as the government, or at least acceptable people control it.

 

What could ever go wrong?

We have been assured by no less a luminary than Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that the board would only be concerned with disinformation from foreign sources. Somehow that is not not very comforting considering that we were told that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Trump Campaign trick based on Russian disinformation. Once the government declares that something is Russian of foreign disinformation, even if it is factual information from a domestic source, what is to stop the government from silencing it? Isn't that what the First Amendment is supposed to prevent?

 Be assured, though, that there is no reason for concern. After all, the Disinformation Governing Board will have no operational authority. 

The DGB has no operational authority, but they will give information to those who do.

The government should not have this kind of overt power. All the government has to do is label honest domestic dissent as foreign disinformation, then all bets are off. Once the government takes that power, there is no way for citizens to pull it back.

Given the history of the past few years with government and political malfeasance, we cannot afford to take the risk.