Is federal censorship going to be the biggest legacy of the pandemic?  

The Supreme Court heard a case on Monday, where they were looking at whether federal agencies should have the right to censor social media to suppress any criticism of federal policies, such as COVID policies, foreign policies, or even economic policies.  A lot of people were surprised to hear Supreme Court Justices talking as if the 1st Amendment were a weapon of Mass Destruction.  Back in 1919, the Supreme Court had an opinion that suppressing censorship of government policies was like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  What we have now, what the Supreme Court might do this time is effectively prohibit people from shouting "BS!" during a pandemic.  The Supreme Court spent 2 hours wrangling on the case, "Murthy vs. Missouri."  This is a lawsuit brought by folks censored by social media thanks to federal intervention.  Last July 4th, the 5th Circuit federal judge, Honorable Terry A. Doughty, issued a 155-page opinion in which he walked through how the feds had browbeaten, jawboned, and coerced social media companies to force them to suppress criticism of COVID vaccines, U.S. foreign policy, and many other things.  The judge said this was the most massive attack against free speech in U.S. history probably.  There were so many strange elements to this case, and one was that the Federal government was presumed to be the font of truth.  And thus a lot of the justices felt that the federal government should be able to suppress disinformation or misinformation because the government is truth itself.  It was surreal because you had the justices not recognizing that the federal government itself had been the biggest source of misinformation during the pandemic.  You had the President Biden out there promising people that if they got the COVID vaccine, they would not get COVID.  That was true plus or minus 100 million COVID cases.