* Media advisory…

Today at 11 am CT the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression will give away 1,791 free Chicago dogs at Clark Street Dog to mark the year the First Amendment was ratified. The address is 3040 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60657.

Media are welcome to attend the “Free Chicago Dogs for Free Speech” event and should reply directly to this email with their RSVP. FIRE staff will be on-site to give away swag and do interviews. We expect supplies to last just a few hours.

This is part of FIRE’s brand-new $3.2 million Chicago free speech campaign to raise awareness and support for the First Amendment. Full details are in this press release.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has been one of those groups which focused almost solely on things like “cancel culture” at college campuses. From 2016…

Its major grants come from the ultraconservative Earhart, John Templeton, and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundations; the Scaife family foundations; the Koch-linked Donors Trust, and funders that sustain a myriad of conservative campus-targeting organizations that include FIRE, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the David Horowitz Freedom Center (whose “Academic Bill of Rights” would mandate more hiring of conservative faculty and would monitor professors’ syllabi for “balance”), and Campus Watch (which tracks and condemns liberal professors’ comments on the Middle East).

* The group now claims it has changed focus. This is from March…

In Idaho, an art exhibit was censored and teens were told they couldn’t testify in some legislative hearings. In Washington state, a lawmaker proposed a hotline so the government could track offensively biased statements, as well as hate crimes. In Florida, bloggers are fighting a bill that would force them to register with the state if they write posts criticizing public officials.

Meanwhile, bans on books and drag performances are growing increasingly common nationwide.

“We are seeing tremendous attacks on First Amendment freedoms across the country right now, at all levels of government. Censorship is proliferating, and it’s deeply troubling,” said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

OK, but with numerous state governments enacting actual statutes outlawing public expression, FIRE’s Chicago press release highlights a video about a Boston college’s suspension of a student group for mildly criticizing China. Not trivial, but kinda small in comparison to the official governmental statutory actions happening right now across the country. Another video features a Black woman who rescued a Klansman from a beating during a protest. The rest of its videos are here. Nothing on government book bans that I saw.

* Doing what they do is fine by me. It’s a free country. I’m cool with it. But when you step forward and say you’ve broadened your portfolio and want to challenge the ACLU’s leadership in the First Amendment space, then, you know, maybe actually walk the walk.

* Semi-related…

* 2023’s Best Cities for Hot Dog Lovers: Foodie rivals New York (No. 1) and Chicago (No. 2) finish at the top alongside other big cities like Los Angeles (No. 3) and Cincinnati (No. 6).