controlling the message

[narlus]

so much for free speech?

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/04/us_said_to_use_a_litmus_test_to_block_american_spe akers/

[fluff]

Well, you'd hardly expect the government to arrange & pay for someone to criticise them surely?

It's not as if they are stopping him travelling, they're just not paying him to...

[narlus]

well who supplies the government's budget? the tax payer.

besides, i'm sure it's CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. :D

[manimal]

umm...no kidding. nothing that hasn't been done in the past with any other administration.
would the southern baptist convention send a gay/lesbian rights activist to speak at a foreign convention?
seems common sense to me.

[sanjuro]

umm...no kidding. nothing that hasn't been done in the past with any other administration.
would the southern baptist convention send a gay/lesbian rights activist to speak at a foreign convention?
seems common sense to me.
I think the key is this test is not for official diplomats, but private citizens who might be invited to speak by the State Department.

I noticed they compared this to a Reagan policy, which had Walter Cronkite, Coretta Scott King and economist John Kenneth Galbraith on a blacklist.

Barack Obama is a Democratic Senator who lived in Indonesia, and he was invited by our embassy there to speak. What his problem?