McConnell understands the First Amendment about as well as he understands guns
Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
barred a Kentucky reporter from covering one of his news conferences which puts him the position of knowing what he's talking about when he says things
like this:
Last June, I spoke at the American Enterprise Institute and warned of a grave and growing threat to the First Amendment. That threat has not let up.
Mitch need not search beyond the nearest mirror to come face to face with that threat, but as you might have guessed, he wasn't talking about himself. Instead, this is what has him all hot and bothered:
Our ability to freely engage in civic life and to organize in defense of our beliefs is still under coordinated assault from groups on the Left.
And who are those groups?
Left-wing groups like Media Matters [who] harass and intimidate conservatives.
Makes sense, except the part about how Media Matters isn't a part of the government and the part about how the First Amendment exists to protect groups like Media Matters from power-hungry politicians like Mitch McConnell.
McConnell might not like Media Matters, but it is literally impossible for them to threaten his First Amendment rights even if they wanted to. But when the Senate Minority Leader bans reporters from covering his events—and then threatens to arrest them if they persist—that is a true threat to the First Amendment, not that Mitch is going to do anything about it.