Slashdot Mirror
Trump Administration Prohibits CDC Policy Analysts From Using the Words 'Science-Based' (washingtonpost.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader hey! writes: On Friday the Washington Post reported that the Trump Administration has forbidden the Centers for Disease Control from using seven terms in certain documents: "science-based", "evidence-based", "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," and "fetus".
It's important to note that the precise scope and intent of the ban is unknown at present. Scientific and medical personnel as of now have not been affected, only policy analysts preparing budgetary proposals and supporting data that is being sent to Congress. So it is unclear the degree to which the language mandates represent a change in agency priorities vs. a change in how it presents itself to Congress. However banning the scientifically precise term "fetus" will certainly complicate budgeting for things like Zika research and monitoring.
According to the Post's article, "Instead of 'science-based' or 'evidence-based,' the suggested phrase is 'CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."
The New York Times confirmed the story with several officials, although "a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."
It's important to note that the precise scope and intent of the ban is unknown at present. Scientific and medical personnel as of now have not been affected, only policy analysts preparing budgetary proposals and supporting data that is being sent to Congress. So it is unclear the degree to which the language mandates represent a change in agency priorities vs. a change in how it presents itself to Congress. However banning the scientifically precise term "fetus" will certainly complicate budgeting for things like Zika research and monitoring.
According to the Post's article, "Instead of 'science-based' or 'evidence-based,' the suggested phrase is 'CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."
The New York Times confirmed the story with several officials, although "a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."
As someone who had to work with crassly incompetent bosses, too, I can feel for them. This must really be really painful. The best thing they can do is leaking every bullshit those Trumpist idiots are demanding and destroying to the press.
If you hate science because it conflicts with your religious beliefs, you probably donâ(TM)t want people using it to justify stuff.
China will.
So if the community standards and wishes means they prefer to rely on religion, superstition and other make-beliefs mumbo-jumbo, science has to stand aside?
#DeleteFacebook
If you are making a scientific report and are saying "science based," you're doing it wrong.
I'd rather let them slip in stupid monickers and trendster terms like "science based" and "evidence based" to allow the writers to make fools of themselves.
Authorized clerics have the final say on what is true and proper in our society.
Making America Great Again!
Since "fetus" is banned, they will now use "small Trump-like being" in its place. Hand size is about right, also.
Table-ized A.I.
Authorized clerics have the final say on what is true and proper in our society.
FTFY
Think Bill Nye will have enough time to be outraged? He's got sex chromosomes to deny and ice cream to turn bisexual. SCIENCE!
This is obviously partisan hyperbole.
A.) There is no "ban".
B.) The summary itself states the reason for the guideline is to make passage of legislation easier to get past Republicans in congress.
The idiots on the left and the right will believe just about anything if it makes the other side look evil. Meanwhile the rest of us are getting caught in the middle and will ultimately have to pay the price for their partisan moral grandstanding.
In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims
Are "superstition-based", "cult recommended", or "not superstition based" permitted?
First a careful reading to the end of the WAPO article shows it's a bit of a headline. There's no written ban. There were some edits to a document. And while I've not seen the sentences edited I could easily believe that a phrase like "Evidence based" is highly redundant in a sentence citing some policy of fact. I could easily believe that some use of the word "Vulnerable" might be drawing a conclusion rather than citing a case.
Furthermore the other words one the so-called "ban", were conveyed in word anonymously not in a policy document. SO this is a bit thin.
THe end of the article reveals this:
Kelly told the analysts that “certain words” in the CDC’s budget drafts were being sent back to the agency for correction. Three words that had been flagged in these drafts were “vulnerable,” “entitlement” and “diversity.” Kelly told the group the ban on the other words had been conveyed verbally.
However, I will admit this is chilling. I've seen this happen in other scientific publications where words like "evolution" or "fossil fuel" are removed when they are entirely appropriate. So I'm quite concerned the WAPO is completely correct in it's seemingly unders ourced claim. It could very well be happening. I'm just not sure it wasnt' just some single idiots doing rather than top-down policy
What the fuck does "community standards and wishes" have to do with scientific evidence.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
"in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget"
It's becoming clearer and clearer that Twitler's plan all along was to be so fucking bad that the Dems and Undeclared voters will be highly motivated to turn out and vote in the next elections. Base in point: Alambama's recent special election.
And when that happens, you can bet your bottom dollar he'll actually try to claim credit for it.
In the mean time Madame Defarge is keeping track of all the nazis who have been supporting him.
Go into any big office or typical start up and say that someone does not change gender by identifying as another gender (including "non-binary" genders) or going through a "transition" and you'll be treated far worse than this.
Because it's bigotry to say that gender dysphoria is a mental illness wherein the brain does not recognize the material truth represented in one's genetic code and post-puberty sexual characteristics.
CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.
I'm sure that's the same community that would wish for Pi to be 3.0 to make life easier...
And when asking Republicans for budget money use the word "God" a lot. They like God. Finding a Bible verse to back you up is pure gold.
Science does not care about your "community standards", your religious viewpoints, or any other fantasies you believe in this week.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
It must be feelings based.
I'm not defending this nonsense, just putting some context here.
Often times the whitehouse or other agencies will identify politically charged phrases to avoid within proposals. I've never been part of the process myself but many scientific organizations do this to "help the chances of your proposal being accepted". Of course, as the Trump administration is apt to do, they bungled this as well.
I swear most of these people seems to have gotten their degrees "online" with how they perform.
I've gotten the list of words that will be banned on Slashdot in 2018:
- cryptocurrency
- malware
- systemd
- unicode
- diversity
- indochimp
- Russia
- artificial intelligence
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is coming from the politically incorrect administration.
Then again, they already use "politically incorrect" in place of "sexist" and "racist".
I've noticed, over the time I've been active on this site. In areas of technology and science, it's possible to get some real good information. In ANY circumstance where the story is about how people interact, especially politics, it rapidly devolves to kindergarden-level arguments. If this site is supposed to represent the best and brightest, we're screwed.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Are we heading for a world somewhere between George Orwell's 1984 and Thomas Disch's 'On Wings of Song'?
" Instead of 'science-based' or 'evidence-based ,' the suggested phrase is 'CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I think the list is a stupid idea, especially not using the word "fetus" in an environment where you may be talking about Zika for example...
But here's the thing - why complain specifically about "science-based" when the replacement is "science"? "Science-based" is a terrible word, the most waffly term ever. You could argue an e-meter is "science-based" because it relies on conductivity of wiring. I hate the term so much if they had just banned that word, I think I might actually support the list...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And yet a fetus is a baby, just still in the womb. If you remove the baby from the womb, it is still a baby, thus all fetus are babies, but according to the pro baby killers, fetus are not babies and that distinction in language has made the murder of millions of babies easier to get away with by calling them fetus, parasites and blobs of tissue instead of what they are, babies.
100 years from now abortion will be viewed as we today view slavery, with horror and disbelief that a civilized society could condone and legalize the murder of their own children for the sake of convenience. Savages and the ancient world did this, but our society is no better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Babies in the womb are genetically distinct, living humans, who while being dependent on their mothers for nutrients and protection, meet every criteria of a living organism and while a blastocist 20 days after fertilization is clearly not a baby, at 10 weeks (prior to 99% plus of all abortions, excepting the morning after pill, which has the same effect of preventing implantation as most birth control pills and clearly does not kill a baby) the baby is clearly identifiable as such by any 6 year old. https://www.babycenter.com/ims... Regardless of how anyone feels emotionally about this issue, unless you can refute the above, abortion is demonstrably the murder of a baby. Unless you start defining personhood by location, intelligence, ability, method of feeding, or some other arbitrary factor, the personhood of the unborn baby is undeniable.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Fetus! Fetus! Fetus!
Ban me now, Don!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
"Donald Trump's is an idiot"!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Your religious beliefs, made law, impinge upon my freedom. Why can't you live your own life, mind your own business, and leave the rest of us alone? You've already proved that you don't really believe what you espouse(voting for Roy, etc) so please don't force your so-called beliefs on the rest of us.
by George Carlin.
The Seven words you can never say on television.
Which fits, sadly, since our government has become one long never ending stream of stand up comedy :|
isn't leftist, it's authoritarian/fascist. Look to the Scandinavian countries, France and when they're not taking after the USA Britain for leftist ideals.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Trumps first steps towards a Theocracy!!
If you hate science because it conflicts with your religious beliefs...
I don't think this has anything to do with religious belief. I think it is due to a dangerous mix of ignorance (partly willful and partly due to lack of intellectual capacity) and short-sighted financial self-interest. If Trump and co were capable of understanding science and were open-minded enough to realize that there is a lot of money to be made developing green technology they would be cheering science on, not desperately trying to hide and/or ignore the truth of it.
Teeming masses of people are religious/superstitious.
These people don't understand the word "science" as all-and-only that which relates to the scientific method. They don't understand why science has a better claim to truth than their superstition, and they never will. They react to scientific terminology when they hear it, because to them it is an attempt at stifling the truth.
And they outnumber you. Hugely.
This isn't a problem had by a few politicians. The religious voters demand politicians that will pander to their religious biases.
You can't win this fight by explaining why science is objective. It doesn't matter how right you are. This isn't an honest intellectual analysis of how to determine truth from falsehood. This is the power of the lowest-common-denominator of human intelligence forcing the truth aside in favor of the superstitions that make them feel safe.
The GOP does not know words, the best words.
Fucking morons that don't want the word fetus used do not understand is that making abortions illegal will increase the number performed. There are options available, readily available outside the U.S., that would make it simple to set up an illegal service & charge much less that is currently charged. Abortion drugs are already being used in many places, like Texas, where it's nearly impossible to get an abortion.
FUCKING UNDERSTAND A LITTLE MORE NOW? Make it illegal & it will become easier to get one. It was easy to get one when it was illegal in states before row-v-wade & it will be quite a bit easier if you outlaw safe abortions today. You want less abortions? Me too. Avoiding unwanted pregnancy is the how it's done. If you wanna spread your "morality" go right ahead. As long as we also make birth control easily obtained.
It should be applied to everyone in the government.
It might force them to make a rational argument instead of appealing to their own authority.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
My wild guess is for Christianity to have slowed scientific progress by ~1500 years.
Really? Back in the day science was a product of Christianity. The belief that nature was all ruled and ordered by god lead various clergy to look for that order which in turn lead to the development of science. Many early scientists held religious positions since, unless they were from a wealthy family, this was the only way to get the education and the time and support required to be able to perform their studies.
;-).
For example, Oxford and Cambridge dons were all originally clergy and when they retired they took up positions as vicars around the UK. Bacon, who gave us the very idea of the scientific method, was a staunch Christian and Newton even wasted time trying to figure out the date of the rapture from the bible (IIRC he came up with 2060 so we haven't got too long to wait!
Christianity may have restricted and held back some areas of science in the past but let's not forget that its overall impact on science has been such a positive one that it is not even clear that we would have a modern concept of science without it. The conflict between religion and science in modern times is fuelled by an ignorance of both and seems to be primarily a US-based phenomenon although it is sadly starting to spread.
Does that mean we will be allowed to start using 'emacs' and 'vi' again?
He baby! How about using the word 'terrorist' to dehumanise and criminalise people (esp. foreigners and muslims) who oppose the United States?
"community standards and wishes". You mean the President's wishes and prejudices? Maybe the 'Scientific American' magazine should be renamed the 'Communist Republican'?
Some seven years ago I asked a British colleague which are the seven words the English language considers dirty in order to avoid them, but now I know his answer was less than thruthful.
It is the de-Christianization of the Renaissance, followed by the more clearly anti-clerical Enlightenment philosophy of Europe. These philosophies were unique in the world. Europe was the wealthiest region at the time, and Isaac Newton was English. Newton is to my mind the most important human ever to have lived.
"a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."
Might I also suggest:
- Ample usage of drawings and kindergarten level explainers - McDonald's Happy Meal style;
- "It's in the Bible";
- "It was reported on Fox and Friends", "there was an article on Breitbart about it";
- Some choice quotations from Mein Kampf, Charles Davenport, Paul Popenoe and Henry Goddard;
- Other choice quotations from Schopenhauer's "On Women";
- Eliminating everything that might be miscontrued as "the reds" aka socialism, or liberalism;
- Concluding the analysis with "Wake up sheeple!", "give up we won", "MAGA", etc.
Oops, forgot the sarcasm tag
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
... his imploding ball of cancer and insanity called "Murica".
I cannot be saved. There is no point either, since it is much more efficient, to just take the good bits with you, let the bad bits implode, and come back later, to reclaim the land, when the radiation and toxic waste have worn off.
Science has too much of a liberal bias. How many more examples of biased science do we need? Global warming? Evolution? Smoking causes "cancer"? Leaded gasoline being "bad"? Hoax after hoax after hoax has done nothing but discredit science and scientists who demand to impose their liberal agenda on the rest of us.
While I agree with you that authoritarianism is the main problem, both Communism and Socialism were always leftist political groups. The fact that people today have moved even further left, making everything but what they believe "rightist" does not change the fact that most leftist experiments with Communism and the like have devolved into dictatorships. It generally fails when you run out of other people's money to spend.
The reason is simple and economical. Norway is able to sell oil (as did Venezuela for a time) to provide for all its people. They were also smart enough to invest the money rather than relying only on oil, which along with corruption, led to the collapse of Venezuela. The other experiments simply decided to rob the rich and turned out about like you'd expect, failing when they destroyed their own means of income while blaming other countries for not surrendering their goods for worthless paper from a country with nothing they wish to buy.
Norway too will collapse ,should it mismanage its investments and run out of oil. Hopefully they're smarter than that, but no doubt should it happen, those like you will then blame whatever evil bankers decided not to give them money for nothing and the cycle will repeat. Future leftists will say that their problem was being too rightist, I mean, they made investments and had deals with banks. Surely those are the issue and not the fact that they no longer produced anything of worth to others. Only by going further left into the realm where nobody has to do anything but plunder the work of others can we find utopia!
It took 800 years to recover from the last Dark Age. It should take much longer this time.
every time somebody lies. Stalin and Mao where not Communists. Not even a little. At no point did they relinquish power to the proletariat. At no point was actual ownership given to the proles. They just traded one aristocracy for another.
Also, while we're on the subject of logical fallacies nice appeal to authority.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
when they point to them as a failing of socialism. Venezuela is a country that lived through nearly two hundreds years of abject poverty. Then for a very brief time had the resources to function as a first word country. It's a testament to their government's decency that they didn't just pocket all the money for themselves like most do. What I'm saying is that it's unreasonable to expect them to solve decades and decades of systemic poverty with 20-30 years of usually high oil profits.
And you're completely missing my original point: What we call communism isn't. It's authoritarianism that borrows communist rhetoric. Kinda like those preachers who buy private jets with the money they fleece out of people. They're not really men of God. People _can_ lie. They can misrepresent themselves. Dr Nick Riviera is not, in fact, a Doctor. In the same vein Stalin and Mao weren't communists. They were basically kings who seized the thrown with violence.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Censorship.
Suppression of words.
Forbidden ideas.
That's where the USA are going.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
"Science-based" implies that science is the only consideration.
What? It implies exactly the OPPOSITE, It implies something that is based PARTLY on science, but not wholly or it would be "science" not "science-based".
Only it doesn't say how much it is based on science, but when you heard marketing terms like "science-based" you know the actual science involved will be very thin to non-existent.
The replacement term is also kind of wishy-washy but at least it does not hide what is going on the way the term "science-based" does. However like I said, the list is a stupid idea and the replacements are also stupid. I am not arguing for any aspect of the list, just saying that the revelation they would regularly use the term "science-based" is disturbing on the face of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You just spell it out - like f-e-t-u-s. See?
We use this with our kids all the time. She didn't get her nap, so she's v-u-l-n-e-r-a-b-l-e. They don't understand a word, I guarantee you, it works.
The extent and intent of the âoebanâ is known: itâ(TM)s about the budget proposal. Using terms like âoefetusâ or âoetransgenderâ or âoescience-basedâ is going to cause pushback from conservative representatives in Congress, and since these are in the majority now, if Trump wants his budget passed, he wants to avoid those kinds of controversies. Given a Republican majority in both houses, that is what an administration has to do. If Hillary were president, sheâ(TM)d have to do the same thing if she didnâ(TM)t want her budget sent back to her.
Just joking. At this point I'm convinced nothing can help Slashdot and the dead accounts represent the most reasonable people. Why hang around to watch the system continue dying?
I really had high hopes for this topic. High activity and target rich for humor, but not a SINGLE visible comment moderated as funny. The first "insightful" comment was an AC comment that didn't even make sense (though it had been heavily moderated into visibility). When I opened the Parent to get the context, there was a bit more meat underneath, but it had been heavily moderated downward (presumably by the usual suspects AKA trolls).
If Slashdot didn't have so many #1 problems, then the broken moderation would be one of them.
Oh yeah. Where did the subject come from? From noticing that the hidden-by-moderation context was from a 4-digit ID AKA an oldtimer (unless it's just another dormant account that's been hacked by another you-know-who). As a lowly 6-digit ID, I've gotten to wondering where I would be if they started shuffling things around with the dormant accounts getting high user numbers and the people above them getting an option to slide down to the more "prestigious" low numbers... I suspect the number of active users of Slashdot these years is less than 10,000, so all of them could have 4-digit IDs if they wanted them.
Me? I'd prefer a prime ID number. Mathematical superstition?
Oh yeah. What about the story? Well, if we can't use any of the words the story is about, then we can't talk about that story anyway. All heil Herr #PresidentTweety! Zdravsvtvuyte, Comrade! (Why does Slashdot reject the Cyrillic form? Unicode violation?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
By leftists you really mean radical feminists. Aside from occasionally making you take a dumb gen Ed class they have little or no day in public policy. Evangelicals OTOH have massive power. They own the South and thanks to our Senate have veto power over just about any law (save for the ones really calling the shots want a e.g. the billionaire aristocracy). What I'm saying is, you're wasting time and energy worrying about a total non threat. You might just as well rail against the scourge of the Amish...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The officially sanctioned replacement terms:
"science-based" -> "theoretical"
"evidence-based" -> "alleged"
"vulnerable" -> "lazy"
"entitlement" -> "waste, fraud and abuse"
"diversity" -> "discrimination against white men"
"transgender" -> "Bay Area resident"
"fetus" -> "0 year old"
"Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum."
--The Principles of Newspeak,"1984," by George Orwell
After the Jerusalem thing, it's clear that Trump is just a troll.
He's not serious, he's fucking with your heads.
Just don't feed him.
The ultimate goal of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (all of them), is the complete annihilation of the human race. They want this so they can go to their imaginary heaven and everyone else goes to their imaginary hell.
How is this acceptable in the 21st century? Why do we allow it? Mass mental illness that threatens the very existence of our species must be stopped.
The terrible truth is that the solution has to be a "final solution". These people cannot be fixed, they are broken forever and they will kill us all if we do not do something about it.
There is only so much that can be taken.
I prefer scientifix method based. That would save a lot of budget by not funding "research" that claims that this and that happened millions of years ago without any glimpse of hope for verification or falsification.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years https://www.theguardian.com/sc... Nutrition Has a Consensus to Use Bad Science: An Open Letter to the National Academies https://www.realclearscience.c...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Now we have communism without calling it that.
As I read it, this was someone offering advise on how to write research funding requests to members of congress, including Republican members.
Writing for your audience is not a new concept.
I despise Trump as much as any sentient being,
but there are better examples of anti-science policy decisions.
I mean, come on, we all know that science is made by people, who themselves ... got Created! So, "Creation-based": What's wrong with that?!
The emperor will not tolerate dissent.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I'm not talking about the dusty old past my friend, I'm talking about right now. There are numerous non-religious arguments that can be brought to bear against the tyranny of slavery.
The United States were founded upon religious freedom which does not leave room for one religious group to enact their beliefs as law over others.
So I read the summary with a critical eye and this jumped out at me:
although "a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."
That tells me the heads of CDC most likely came up with this set of "recommendations" because they think it will help them get a larger budget.
This doesn't read as the Trump Administration banning words, it sounds like career staff has an insulting view of the politicians that determine their funding level.
Ken
Hypothetically if say some group of people (Irish, Native American, etc) were found scientifically to be more susceptible to a condition like alcoholism (I know of no science but it seems plausible). And we have a study that tries to determine the benefits of wine on inflammation response (there are studies like that). And there was potentially a recommendation to drink wine because of this study a slam dunk correlation, but there were only a small number of susceptible subjects in the study. Do you just stick with the "science" and recommend drinking wine. OR do you go with additional non-science wording that gives additional warning for potentially susceptible individuals even if you have no science in hand to support it because the community wishes to add those warnings OR do you simply withhold the study results until more susceptible subjects can be studied because the community wishes it.
By community standards and wishes, does that mean the standards as suggested by the current party in power and their wishes?
Oh boy, you guys are going downhill fast.
Glad am half way across the world from you guys......
Is that what really matters?
Ever see that line before a movie? Lots of people will think that what follows actually happened. No, it didn't. It was cherry-picked for a few details to make it seem real but it's mostly B.S. Ergo, science-based should be treated the same way. People have gotten into the habit of using the word "science" as a trump card, no pun intended, when the reality is that a) they don't know what they're talking about and b) whomever they are quoting is probably full of crap but expects to be taken as gospel because, you know, they are scientists.
Fake News!!!
Those words are trigger words. Microaggressions against right wing believers. Actually, now that I think about it, many of them are just bullshit buzzwords that are a "dog-whistle" to left-wingers, and usually mean nothing. Well, except for "fetus."
The CDC needs to differentiate between their completely speculative and politically biased communication, and that politically biased communication which appeals to a scientific study, and hence is 'science-based'. I suppose they could switch to the boolean opposite, which is 'horseshit based' for everything they publish which does not directly conjecturally apeal to a scientific study for backing.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cdc-director-says-there-are-no-banned-words-at-the-agency
I am not at ALL sure the "Trump Administration" (whatever that LEGALLY means!) can actually "Ban" (whatever THAT means!) a Government Agency from the exercise of Free Speech.
For example, certain Protections, such as Copyright, do not apply to the Government. Afterall, just WHO is the Government going to enforce that Copyright AGAINST?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
But, apparently, Federal Agencies, like the CDC, do NOT have First Amendment rights against the Federal Government:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Oh well, it was worth a try...
Just wondering.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender