Congratulations! You’ve Killed Free Speech!

Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, we present to you the 2008 Muzzle Awards, reserved for those individuals and organizations that have done their best to squash your right to expression. Here are our faves: [AP]

FEMA: Staged the fake news conference during the California wildfires. Agency employees posed as journalists and asked officials soft questions while real reporters got little notice of the news conference, and were barred from asking questions because the conference call was �listen only.�

Federal Communications Commission: A lifetime award for having won the award four times and for being in the running nearly each year of the awards� 17-year history. The commission has been nominated mostly over how it has defined broadcast indecency following situations that included U2 frontman Bono�s use of the �F-word� at a 2003 awards show and Janet Jackson�s Super Bowl �wardrobe malfunction� in 2004.

The Scranton, Penn. Police Department: For filing criminal charges against Dawn Herb, who screamed a string of profanities when a toilet in her home overflowed.

What? Where�s the Environmental Protection Agency�s Stephen Johnson? We demand a recount.

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