Setting expectations for Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is like a game of political limbo.
How low can he go?
Underestimating him is like the political limbo.
How low will they go?
Not low enough it turns out.https://t.co/oJu7pWOJmo pic.twitter.com/CRneAm4H5J— Victoria Taft – Raven's Redemption Now on Audio! (@VictoriaTaft) January 8, 2022
Not low enough, it turns out.
Inslee’s message about Jan. 6 showed that, as governors go, he’s just not the sharpest tool in the shed.
How else to explain the governor’s message outlining an effort “currently being written” to overtly and laughably advocate violating peoples’ First Amendment rights.
Governor Inslee announced on Twitter he was “announcing my support for legislation currently being written that would outlaw attempts by candidates and elected officials to spread lies about free and fair elections when it has the likelihood to stoke violence.” “Currently being written” means he just sprung it on some poor schlep in Olympia to gamely try to write something up, or he’s waiting for Marc Elias to issue more orders.
It gets more hilarious.
Today I’m announcing my support for legislation currently being written that would outlaw attempts by candidates and elected officials to spread lies about free and fair elections when it has the likelihood to stoke violence.
My full statement here: https://t.co/CC5T0yqzWk
— Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) January 6, 2022
Inslee proposes to criminalize someone’s assertion about voter fraud in Washington state. Spoiler alert: there already has been plenty of voter fraud or chicanery in Washington state. I give you the 2004 governor’s race when after the third recount and several lawsuits, Democrats found the necessary “votes” in the trunk of some dude’s car to hand the race to the Christine Gregoire. Or, how about that time when the Left overwhelmed the Seattle elections office on election night with emergency provisional ballots to bury the clerks? Good times. How about that lady who proved mail-in ballot security was nonexistent when she registered her dog to vote? Guess who got in trouble? You guessed it, the lady and her dog. The state shall not be mocked!
Inslee’s full statement contains all the approved words by the Left about Jan. 6, such as it being an “insurrection,” and “a coup attempt,” which prompted the failed presidential candidate and global warming blowhard’s pressing and immediate attention to the matter in Washington state. Indeed, he claims, there continues to be an “ongoing coup attempt by candidates and elected officials to overturn our democracy,” which is to say they’re trying to win an election by calling out their opponents’ misdeeds. Tomato, tomahto.
That was the wind-up. Here’s the delivery. Inslee ordered someone in the legislature to hurriedly write a bill to be introduced in the current session that would make it “a gross misdemeanor for candidates and elected officials to knowingly lie about elections.”
Such lies would lead to violence, said the governor, who did nothing when a Seattle neighborhood was commandeered by Leftists; riots raged, and police officers were the subject of attempted murder based on lies about police during the Summer of Love.
As we all know — hold on, gotta change that part of the sentence. Ok, ready: as everyone but Jay Inslee knows, his “great” idea would be a gross violation of the First Amendment, which was written to protect POLITICAL speech. But, let’s leave that for a second, and just enjoy the following turn of phrase where he says such a gross violation of free speech rights would be “narrowly tailored to capture only those false statements that are made for the purpose of undermining the election process or results and is further limited to lies that are likely to incite or cause lawlessness.”
He listed a Supreme Court decision saying that free speech can be limited when “it is likely to incite lawlessness, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).”
Related: Georgia Launches ‘Ballot Harvesting’ Investigation
Things didn’t work out for old Jay in the court of public opinion.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Chuck Devore had bad news for Inslee, saying, “this will be ruled unconstitutional in a heartbeat. Prior restraint of free speech, especially political speech, is at the heart of the First Amendment.” And he concluded, “And who determines a ‘lie’? Nothing more than gratuitous political posturing.”
This will be ruled unconstitutional in a heartbeat. Prior restraint of free speech, especially political speech, is at the heart of the First Amendment. And who determines a "lie"? Nothing more than gratuitous political posturing. @TPPF
— Chuck DeVore (@ChuckDeVore) January 7, 2022
Radio host Todd Herman accused the governor of being racist for going after women of color who lie about stealing elections.
Seriously, Jay: your racism is out of hand, trying to criminalize the speech of another woman of color https://t.co/PVvVVW1PTz
— CITIZEN OF REAL AMERICA – Todd Ξ Herman Gab/Parler (@toddeherman) January 7, 2022
And don’t make fun of your elders, this person pointed out.
— Brian Collins (@collinsaz) January 7, 2022
And this voter suggested he spend his time on something that would help stop voter fraud.
Maybe a better legislation is the one that:
– clean the voters lists from deceased and people not living at the precinct.
– demand voter id.
– get rid of universal mail voting.— Ferd Pronouns: me/I 🇵🇷 (@frodri_023) January 7, 2022
When the Democrats committed fraud of some sort in those previous examples, no one rioted.
Speaking out about rigged elections, such as the 2020 election in which laws were changed — sometimes illegally — because of overwrought COVID fears, would be illegal in Inslee’s imaginary bill. The “emergency” COVID changes created conditions ripe for voter fraud and voter impersonation. All mail-in balloting (see above problems), ballot harvesting, no signature checks, and no identifications, created the environment for fraud. In Inslee’s small mind, such an opinion would be violence itself! A coup attempt!
The governor, who stated recently with a straight face that unvaccinated individuals are like suicide bombers “with time bombs in their backpacks,” went back to the well to say that “candidates and elected officers knowingly [throw] bombs at democracy itself when doing so is likely to result in violence.”
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me are violence!
When Democrats tried to rig the election in 2016 by running a Hillary Clinton campaign operation that included using the vast apparatus of government to lie about the fake Trump Russia story and got Democrats such as Congressional Representatives Adam Schiff, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal to lie about it, Inslee issued no news releases calling it incendiary. Weird.
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