Don't use Charlie Kirk's death to stomp on the freedoms he defended

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday started trying to walk back her embrace of a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, as well as an equally fooling “businesses cannot discriminate” stance against private rights of conscience.

This plays right into lefty charges that the right is rushing to suppress legal dissent in the wake of the horrific Charlie Kirk assassination.

Discussing far-left glee over the killing, Bondi claimed on a podcast that “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” and promised that the Justice Department would “absolutely target” those who use “hate speech.”

Here’s Charlie Kirk, posting in May 2024: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the F