At a crowded dumpster fire to be more specific, and by “dumpster fire” I mean the leftwing precincts of Twitter.

One of my pet First Amendment peeves is the misuse of a misquotation from line by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., found in the now overturned Schenck v. U.S. Supreme Court decision—

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic …

Emphassis added. Schenck upheld the Democrats use of the Sedition Act of 1918 to suppress speech opposing the Wilson Administration’s use of the draft in WW1. The First Amendment holding in Schenck was overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio. The Supreme Court held in that case

[T]the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action  and is likely to incite or produce such action.

The Brandenburg test is the current Supreme Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to punish speech after it occurs.

Yelling, “Fire!” (whether or not there really is a fire) isn’t illegal per se. Of course, it may be immoral if yelling it causes a panic, and if someone were injured or killed as a result of such a false warning, the yeller could be held civilly and criminally liable for his action.

But back to Twitter.

I find the dramatic whinging over the dumpster fire resulting from the self-inflicted ToS suspensions of leftwing journalists to be really boring theatre.