Why Is the DOJ Going After Libertarian Trolls?

The federal government wants Reason magazine to reveal all it knows about anonymous bloggers who've attacked a federal judge. Even after Ross Ulbricht admitted running the online drug site Silk Road, Judge Katherine Forrest threw the book at him and gave him the maximum sentence of life in prison. That infuriated bloggers on the website of Reason, a libertarian magazine. "Agammamon," said, "Judges like these should be taken out back and shot." "Cloudbuster," added, "Shoot them out front, on the steps of the courthouse." Now the Justice Department has subpoenaed Reason, demanding that it turn over information on the identities of those two and four other users. Former federal prosecutor Ken White, now a defense attorney in Los Angeles, writes about First Amendment law for the blog PopeHat.com. He calls it an attack on free speech.