From the “I can’t make this up” file comes a commentary by Poynter.org’s Roy Peter Clark entitled “Why defenders of the First Amendment should oppose the bill to defund NPR.”

Clark opens his commentary with this disclaimer:

I am not a lawyer and don’t play one on TV.

And that’s where he should’ve stopped writing.

I’m not a lawyer either, but after reading Clark’s legal “analysis” I can guarantee that Clark couldn’t win a debate on this issue against a well-informed rock.

With that disclaimer, I voice my opposition to congressional efforts to squeeze federal money from National Public Radio. While these actions may not turn out to be technical violations of the First Amendment, they clearly violate its spirit.

Ahhh…the spirit of the First Amendment. You’ll have to forgive me for being skeptical about Roy-come-lately to the “spirit” of the First Amendment when he’s been notably absent on the recent First Amendment cases.

Under the guise of budget discipline, Republicans passed House Bill 1076 last week, the vote falling along party lines. Whatever money is saved, the real purpose of the bill is to punish NPR for its perceived liberal bias. If NPR leaned a bit to the right, do you think conservatives would have tried to strip it of federal dollars, no matter what the cost?

And this is antithetical to the First Amendment how exactly? Was Congress’ decision to de-fund ACORN a violation of the First Amendment’s right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances?

Is this an effort to punish NPR for it’s “perceived liberal bias?” Certainly. I’d like to think that if Clark’s alternate universe where NPR leaned right existed that he’d be writing a column opposing the defunding of that NPR because, while he didn’t agree with them, he thought the government should be subsidizing the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh shows because they are good journalism.

In essence then, the bill, which has little chance of becoming law, is a cynical attempt to restrain not just an organization, but the content it produces. That feels, or at least smells to this amateur legal nose, like a violation of the First Amendment, deserving the “strict scrutiny” of the court.

Clark should get a job at a wastewater treatment plant, because his nose can’t smell $#!T. I’d also advise a legal novice against using terms such as “strict scrutiny” unless he really knows what he’s talking about.

No private organization (and NPR is a private organization—you don’t see GS-15s making north of $300,000 like some NPR on-air talent does) has a right to taxpayer dollars. If Clark had done some rudimentary research before writing his defense of NPR he might have come across the Solomon Amendment and Rumsfeld v. Fair. The Solomon Amendment prohibited universities from barring military recruiters from campus if they were accepting federal funds. The universities sued, arguing that by allowing recruiters on campus that they would seem to be complicit in the military’s don’t ask-don’t tell policy that the schools opposed and as such that was forcing them to engage in “speech” protected by the First Amendment.

The schools lost. 9-0.

The court noted that the Solomon Amendment neither denies the institutions the right to speak, nor requires them to say anything.

He also may have come across a more recent lawsuit by ACORN after Congress de-funded the organization in the wake of earlier sting videos by James O’Keefe. Again, the court ruled that cutting federal funding—ironically pegged at 10 percent of the organization’s income, like NPR—did not constitute a punishment that is illegal under the constitution’s bill of attainder.

In fact, I suspect a case could be made that Congress could require NPR to simulcast the Rush Limbaugh show as a condition of receiving federal funding (see the use of federal highway funds as a lever to get states to adopt the 55 mph speed limit and raising the legal drinking age to 21).

I encourage you to read the rest of Clark’s article. It’s analysis doesn’t really get any better.

Clark confuses the First Amendment prohibition against Congress making “no law” abridging the freedom of speech with a requirement that Congress continue to fund some speech because it has in the past.

By Clark’s analysis, Congress is in violation of the First Amendment because it is not funding Hoystory.com.

Hmm…now maybe that’s something I could get behind.

For the record: I could find not a single article online making Clark’s argument that de-funding NPR was somehow implicated First Amendment questions. I suspect that’s because anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the law would get laughed out of court trying to make that argument.