U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-21st TX) is the chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, with jurisdiction over the criminal and civil justice systems (all the federal courts, prosecutors, the nation's largest prison system of more than 215,000 prisoners, the rules of procedure and evidence), and critically important areas of substantive law: criminal law, copyright, trademark, antitrust, bankruptcy, administrative law.
This is the link to his floor and committee statements on his congressional webpage. In the last year, almost all of these statements are attacks on a few leading news organizations for alleged bias. What a curious set of priorities.
Whenever I think of Members of Congress attacking the news media, I reflect that the First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press (limited by the libel and slander laws) do not go as far as the explicit constitutional power for Members of Congress to tell lies set forth in Article I, Article 6: "for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."
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