After UC-Berkeley nixed that speech by conservative firebrand Ann Coulter, the one-time Democratic Party boss, presidential wannabe and Vermont governor tweeted: “Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.”
He was dead wrong, of course, and his tweet got pretty much everyone — legal scholars, fact-checkers, pundits, pols, on both the left and right — to correct the record: Not only does the First Amendment make no exceptions for “hate speech,” its whole purpose is to make sure Americans can say hateful, unpopular things.
Heck, why would anyone need a Constitutional right to say only things no one objects to?
It appears to have been to our good fortune that Howard didn't make the presidential cut; even Senator Bernie recognized the error in Dean's view. Maybe Dean should move to Canada, which doesn't have that pesky First Amendment.
