Okay...
Salient quote:
"Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Richard Ceballos had sued his employer for retaliating against him for exercising his free-speech rights when he reported suspected wrongdoing in a memo to senior officials in his department.
So in an official capacity (on the job), he has no First Amendment rights (protections) for following the internal government procedures for airing grievances.
It's kind of ironic....
... because if this man had spoken out
publicly as a citizen - a letter to the editor of a paper, talking to a reporter, for example - he would be doing so as a private citizen and his First Amendment rights would be protected. Thus, it makes it an
incentive to go public instead of having a sit-down with the boss or going through internal procedures designed to handle the airing of such grievances.
It's a terrible ruling, to be sure, but I think the scope is rather small and that, in and of itself, it isn't all that alarming (certainly not surprising).
What it
is, though, is just another small example of the incrementalism that chips away at the liberties of a great democracy and the Constitution that has made it so.
The government spies on its own citizens, the NSA won't grant clearances for the DOJ to look into it, the FCC won't look into whether the telcos turned over data illegally, the SEC waives the rules of accounting and reporting for companies that may be involved - there is simply
no oversite to be found anywhere - the government is going after anyone who might have leaked this, and now the courts (5-4) make even
internal whistle blowing a risky business.
All against the backdrop of one of, if not the
most secretive administrations in history, and the Congress getting all up in arms about an investigation into one of their own, despite a solid warrant and months of investigation.
The message? "You can bet we're going to go to great lengths and make every allowance to look into your private lives, but if you're government? Zip it."
To sum up, this is going to have a chilling effect on government employees who spot something amiss. And I think that when it comes to this administration's actions, "chilling" is more apropos than the more common "frog in boiling water" analogy.
Because, hell... if you were in hot water, I think you'd notice. Instead, a lot of y'all just seem to be numb at this point.
