Freedom of the press is a fundamental right
Reporters in the White House press pool do not have to be polite
When the White House revoked the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, in response to the resulting lawsuit, the Trump administration argued that they have “broad discretion” to deny reporters access.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The White House is public property. For the Trump administration to treat it as if it is its own private property runs counter to American law. The White House belongs to the people, not the President. And so to ban the people from the White House without a legally-allowable cause is unlawful.
When the government is acting, its actions are limited by the rights of the American people. For example, I work at a public, state university. As a result, my employer, the state, cannot randomly drug test me. My rights are protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. If I worked for a private university, however, there would be no such restriction.
It is important to talk here about the nature of rights. In our system, rights are not something granted to the people by the government. That is the case in a monarchy, where the ruler gains legitimacy from God. But we fought a war to clearly declare ourselves NOT a monarchy.
Our Constitution, starting with the words “we the people,” is an agreement among the people of our country that we cede some of our freedom to the government in order that we have a successful, civilized, society. A “more perfect Union,” as the Constitution states. Therefore, in the United States, power is ceded to the government by the people, and we limit that power with the rights that we reserve to ourselves.
Our rights are enumerated in a number of places, and some rights are read into the Constitution. The right to privacy, for example, that guarantees Americans the right to marry who we want, to have sex with whom we want, and to have children when we want, is actually specifically stated nowhere in the Constitution. Instead, jurisprudence has understood that right to exist based upon the logic underlying the Constitution. After all, what would be the basis for us to restrict government…
