To: Sully- who wrote (24232 ) 11/30/2006 3:39:57 PM From: Sully- Respond to of 35834 *** UPDATE: Gingrich: First Amendment Is Dispensable By Captain Ed on First Amendment Captain's Quarters UPDATE AND BUMP: I received a number of e-mails today cautioning readers about taking the NY Sun account as an accurate rendition of Newt's remarks. I e-mailed Newt's staff for a clarification, and they dispute Josh Gerstein's characterization of Newt's remarks. They have a selected excerpt on their site, as well as the full audio of the speech. I haven't had a listen to the full remarks yet, but from the excerpt, it looks like Newt's office has a point : <<< This is a serious long term war, and it will enviably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear of biological weapons. And, my prediction to you is that ether before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us. This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement. >>> If that's all Newt said, it doesn't seem all that outrageous to me. However, it would have been helpful to get a complete transcript of his speech, to be fair to the Sun and to Gerstein, both of whom normally do terrific work and are highly reliable. I'll try to listen to the entire speech later tonight, but as things stand at the moment, I think Gerstein may have blown this out of proportion in his reporting. Stephen Bainbridge has more.stephenbainbridge.com captainsquartersblog.com newt.org