House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) mixed her metaphors this week while trying to argue for free speech restrictions.
During an interview with San Francisco TV station KRON4, Pelosi was asked whether the National Park Service (NPS) should deny a permit to a group of "alt-right" activists who plan to hold a demonstration Saturday in Crissy Field, a federally controlled park along San Francisco Bay. The NPS issued the permit to the Patriot Prayer group, but only after organizers agreed to ban guns and tiki torches from the rally, the A.P. reported. But Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee have criticized that decision, calling for the NPS to police not just parks, but the speech of individuals within those parks.
Pelosi thinks the government has the authority to do that, and here's why:
"The Constitution does not say that a person can yell 'wolf' in a crowded theater," Pelosi told KRON4's Pam Moore. "If you are endangering people, you don't have a constitutional right to do that."
It would appear that Pelosi is confused about the distinction between the infamous cliché "shouting fire in a crowded theater," a line from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States, and the clichéd parable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," which warns about not overreacting to imaginary threats.
The whole thing is even better because, in this case, Pelosi is playing the role of the boy (or congresswoman) who cried wolf. She's calling for a reaction against a threat that hasn't materialized yet. That's what all prior restraints on speech are, of course, but she's calling for a very specific action to be taken against a very specific group of people who haven't even gathered yet, much less done anything that could be rightfully called "inciting violence."
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