By a vote of 35-7 on Tuesday, Speaker Corey Johnson and the New York City Council _ supposedly a deliberative legislative body, and one focused on local issues at that _ booted Brooklyn's Kalman Yeger off the seven-member immigration committee for a statement that happens to be factual.
"Palestine does not exist," Yeger tweeted March 27, a statement that happens to be aligned with the national policies of the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico and most of the European Union, all of which hope such a state will emerge from direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The precedent for the punishment was set in February when the Council dissolved a committee on for-hire vehicles due to offensive comments by then-chairman Ruben Diaz; he said the Council was "controlled by the homosexual community."
The slippage here is unmistakable, and precipitous: The Council has moved the bounds of supposedly unacceptable discourse from offensive comments to those which are geographically, if not politically, correct.
It gets worse. Johnson, who just spearheaded a move to crack down on a fellow legislator for stating a fact, refuses to say U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who spread anti-Semitic tropes Johnson calls "insidious," should have been taken off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
We opposed taking Omar off that panel, and in all but the most extreme cases oppose similar retaliation against legislators who speak their minds.
Apparently for Johnson and his fellow narrow-minded councilmembers, free speech isn't a liberal value. It's a political weapon.
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