Towards the end of July Leonard Leo, architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary, emerged from his vacation retreat in Maine to write an opinion piece for the local newspaper, the Bangor Daily News, headlined: “When is free speech protected?”
Leo, 58, is the low-profile, deceptively nondescript co-chair of the conservative legal group Federalist Society. That he turned his hand to this topic was in itself no surprise – he has long presented himself as a champion of the first amendment, with its guarantees of freedom of religion, speech, press and peaceable assembly.
