No more 1st Amend-mint?

Apparently, despite their calls for civil discourse, leftists have no problem hurling epithets:

“In the last few days, it seems every third liberal columnist and commentator has taken to libeling the Tea Party Movement, referring to it as (take your pick) terrorists, suicide bombers, hostage takers, the Hezbollah faction of the GOP, traitors, nihilists, anarchists and people suffering from halitosis. (The last reference is made up; the rest of the descriptions are real.) Even a few politicians are getting into the act. . . . Why on earth would liberals do something like that? After all, they care– deeply care – about civility in public discourse. I know because they tell me that all the time. But perhaps I should amend that last statement. Liberals –not all of them but more than a few of them – tell us of their concern about civility in public discourse, but only when it works to their political advantage”

Yes, it seems your average Statist's ability for creative invective knows few limits.  But whatever you -- a mere citizen -- do, don't sell breath mints that criticize Obama.  THAT will get you a visit from the local commissar enforcer representative:

Breath mints are usually refreshing, but a Knoxville legislator believes a University of Tennessee bookstore's selling of novelty candies mocking President Barack Obama stinks.
UT officials pulled the mints poking fun at Obama from store shelves after state Rep. Joe Armstrong, a Democrat, visited the bookstore and told the director he found the satirical mints offensive.

I find it offensive the university didn't take this teachable moment to educate the representative about the First Amendment, before telling him to get back to the capitol and find something productive to do.  This smacks of government by thuggery, but it does have this instructive point:

"When you operate on state and federal dollars, you ought to be sensitive to those type of politically specific products," Armstrong said. "If it was a private entity or corporation or store, (that's different), but this is a state university..."

Now, I'm sure our strong arm, er, Armstrong would love to enforce 'sensitivity' even with private entities.  Fortunately that's still harder to do (though certainly not impossible, given the woeful Constitutional and legal state of the country).  Thus the lesson: to the extent government provides anything, it comes with all sorts of strings attached. 

BE independent.  It's a lot easier to tell overreaching officials to pound sand when you've not allowed them leverage over you via various programs designed to set government's hook in your mouth.