The Tony Michaels Podcast
The Tony Michaels Podcast is no longer publishing new episodes. Regular publication ended in July 2026, and this feed remains online as an archive of more than 1,100 episodes about American politics, constitutional accountability, concentrated power, democracy and working people.
Tony Michaels now creates Five Minutes in America, a weekday radio and podcast storytelling series, and Along the Way, a weekly program about personal growth, citizenship and building a meaningful life. Both are published by The Coffman Chronicle.
Follow Tony’s current work and listen to Five Minutes in America:
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Along the Way is also published by The Coffman Chronicle.
The Tony Michaels Podcast
The Government Is Turning Speech Into Evidence | TMP #1080
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When the government cannot prove the crime, it often reaches for the label.
In today’s Opening Argument, Tony Michaels tells the story of Lucy Parsons sitting in a Chicago courtroom, watching her husband Albert Parsons face trial after the Haymarket bombing — not because the government proved he threw the bomb, but because his words, politics, and associations made him useful to punish.
Then we bring that lesson forward.
A crime should be prosecuted. Violence should be prosecuted. But protected speech, unpopular politics, poems, pamphlets, journals, associations, and labels cannot become a shortcut around evidence.
The First Amendment was not written to protect speech the government already likes. It was written for the speech the government is most tempted to punish.
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