Thanks, Santa!

Aw, how did you guys know we'd be talking about free-speech law and framing at the same time on Wednesday?

With a stroke of the governor's pen, Florida is positioned to become the first state in the nation to prohibit physicians from asking patients if they have guns in their homes, a move some doctors say will interfere with health care.

The frontpage tease (it was the No. 3 story as of this capture) and the story, needless to say, are at odds: owning a firearm and having firearms in the house aren't necessarily the same thing. Withal, Liebling himself couldn't ask for a nicer bit of lexical framing:

Supporters of the legislation, including the National Rifle Association, say they're seeking to stop doctors from invading their privacy. Critics of the bill, however, claim that doctors need to ask patients about guns to ensure their safety and to make sure they remain out of the reach of children.

And no one seems to have seen the need to ask: ZOMFSnG, is there some part of "no law abridging freedom of speech" that you people don't understand?

Col. R.R. McCormick, the self-indulgent, Roosevelt-hating, isolationist gasbag who ran the Chicago Tribune in its glory days as the World's Greatest Newspaper, was for all his faults a stone First Amendment guy, to the point of supporting the remarkably loathsome Jay Near in the case that became Near v. Minnesota. (Among other things, Near settled once and for all the idea that "no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press" applies to the states as well as Congress.) You do sort of have to wonder what he'd think today.


[NB: Original post lost in the Blogger debacle of Thursday and Friday, so it's back as reconstructed from a draft. Not like the world was ending or anything. Sorry, I think Blogger ate any comments, too.]