Last week, Rep. Steven Chabot (R-OH) banned ordinary citizens from bringing cameras into a town hall meeting — even having police confiscate cameras from citizens who dared to violate this rule. Bizarrely, Chabot still allowed reporters to bring in cameras and record the event.

Coincidentally, just four days after Chabot took this extraordinary measure to prevent embarrassing clips of him from appearing on YouTube, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit handed down an opinion saying citizens have a right to film police engaged in their official duties. The court’s reasoning, however, has very clear implications for Chabot’s camera ban:

Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting “the free discussion of governmental affairs.” Moreover, as the Court has noted, “[f]reedom of expression has particular significance with respect to government because ‘[i]t is here that the state has a special incentive to repress opposition and often wields a more effective power of suppression.’” [...]

The First Amendment right to gather news is, as the Court has often noted, not one that inures solely to the benefit of the news media; rather, the public’s right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press. [...] The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.

Chabot might take some small comfort in the fact that he does not reside in the First Circuit — Ohio is part of the much more conservative Sixth Circuit — but Chabot should not expect the right-leaning judges on his home circuit court to bail him out. As the First Circuit notes, at least three other appeals courts and numerous trial courts agree with their holding that government officials cannot simply ban cameras.

Moreover, Chabot’s case is weakened by his entirely arbitrary rule that only media may bring in cameras. While it is possible to imagine official government actions where no cameras should be present — a meeting of top-level national security officials, for example — Chabot’s willingness to allow some people to bring cameras and not others gives the lie to his already-weak claim that there is a legitimate reason to keep his town hall secret.

(HT: Jason Easley)

Poor Rick Perry. Just nine months ago, he published a book arguing that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, only to learn that opposing the nation’s two most popular and successful federal programs doesn’t inspire very much confidence in your fitness for the White House. Ever since the Perry campaign learned this hard lesson, they have been tripping over themselves to distance the candidate from his own most radical views without painting him as flip-flopper. It isn’t going so well.

For anyone who is having trouble keeping track of whether Rick Perry will admit that he thinks Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional this week, ThinkProgress is pleased to provide this handy timeline. And if you don’t like Perry’s most recent answer, don’t worry! Just wait a few days and he is certain to say something completely different.

• Nov. 6, 2010: In an interview on CNN, Perry proposes letting states opt their citizens out of Social Security. This proposal is economically impossible to implement, because workers who are too young to receive Social Security benefits would move to an opt-out state to avoid paying Social Security taxes — and then promptly move to a state with Social Security benefits the moment they became eligible. Eventually, the entire system would collapse under the weight of too many Social Security beneficiaries who had not paid into the system.
• Nov. 15, 2010: Perry publishes Fed Up!, his manifesto against letting the federal government do pretty much anything other than invade foreign nations and maybe deliver the mail. Fed Up! attacks Supreme Court cases permitting “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, [and] establishing national labor laws,” and it argues that we have Social Security “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”
• Aug. 12, 2011: The Daily Beast publishes an interview with Perry from shortly after he released his book. In it, Perry reiterates his view that Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. “I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term ‘general welfare’ in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address.”
• Aug. 13, 2011: Perry announces that he is running for president. His campaign announcement echoes a central theme of Fed Up!, that Perry is on a mission to set America “free from the shackles of overbearing federal government.”
• Aug. 14, 2011: At his very first campaign stop in Iowa, Perry is asked how he would handle entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare if elected president. Perry responds, “Have you read my book, ‘Fed Up!’ Get a copy and read it.”
• Aug. 15, 2011: Perry cites Fed Up! again on the campaign trail, this time pointing to the book’s harsh stance on federal education programs. “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education.”
• Aug. 18, 2011: Angry protestors confront Perry at a campaign stop in a New Hampshire restaurant with chants of “hands off Social Security and Medicare!” When a voter reminds Perry that he “said Social Security is unconstitutional,” Perry refuses to respond. Instead, he stuffs a large piece of popover — a hollow egg batter roll similar to a Yorkshire pudding — into his mouth and insists that he can’t answer because “I’ve got a big mouthful.”
• Later That Day: Perry’s communications director Ray Sullivan tells the Wall Street Journal that “‘Fed Up!’ is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views” on Social Security and that Perry’s nine month-old book is “not in any way [] a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto.”
• Aug. 27, 2011: Perry undisavows Fed Up!. At a campaign stop in Iowa, ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes asks Perry whether states-rights supporters should be worried that “as governor you said that Social Security is not something that falls in the purview of the federal government, but in your campaign, [you] have backed off that.” Perry is incredulous at the suggestion that his communications director’s nine day-old statement disavowing Fed Up! actually reflects the governor’s current views. “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. Read the book again, get it right. Next question.”
• Five Minutes Later: Perry un-undisavows Fed Up!. Just a few short minutes after re-embracing Fed Up!‘s claim that Social Security is unconstitutional, Perry tries to distance himself from this view once again. “Those that have said that I said [Medicare and Social Security are] unconstitutional, I’m going to have them read the book. That’s not what I said.”

For the record, Perry is not telling the truth when he claims that he’s never said Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional.

ThinkProgress filed this report from Des Moines, Iowa.

When Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) released his book Fed Up! in late 2010, one of his main critiques was that, over the past 50 years, the federal government has misconstrued the Constitution to establish “the massive programs of Medicare and Medicaid.” Now that he’s running for president, Perry is trying to sing a different tune on Medicare.

In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Andrew Romano, Perry explained why he thinks Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional:

I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that.

Yesterday, at a Polk County GOP fundraiser, the Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs asked Perry to further explain why he believes Medicare is unconstitutional. In a moment of amnesia, the Texas governor declared, “I never said it was unconstitutional.” Perry went on to state, “[t]hose that have said that I said [Medicare and Social Security are] unconstitutional, I’m going to have them read the book.”

JACOBS: You talked about Social Security, can you clarify why you think Medicare is unconstitutional?

PERRY: I never said it was unconstitutional.

JACOBS: Okay, so clarify your position on Medicare.

PERRY: I look at Medicare just like I look at Social Security. They’re programs that aren’t working and we ought to have a national conversation about it. Those that have said that I said they’re unconstitutional, I’m going to have them read the book. That’s not what I said. I said that we need to have a conversation, how are we going to have programs that actually work.

Watch it:

In Fed Up!, Perry explains on page 51 how Medicare is a misreading of the Commerce Clause. On page 48, he calls Social Security “by far the best example” of a program that “violently toss[es] aside any respect for our founding principles.” And on page 50, he says that we have Social Security “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

For Perry to claim that he “never said” Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional is either a blatant flip-flop or a significant case of amnesia. In either case, with statements like these, one has to ask: has Rick Perry read his own book?