It isn't what was done that is bothering him, it is what is still to come next that was over the line (for him).

I agree

People do not always arrive at decisions instantly, especially if they begin a position in good faith and then like a boiled frog find themselves in an untenable position because the government and political milieu have changed around them.

Yes, you are a better person if you would have instantly known to not send the letters. You are a more perfect person if you would have always known that.

However, with regard to logic and statements, it is flat-out wrong and simplistic binary thinking to say "resigning after you did their bidding isn't showing you have a conscience".

First, "conscience" is not pure, is not all-or-nothing. People can have good conscience without being saints.

Second, when a person arrives at a conscientious point, they have crossed a threshold. Perhaps you have always had a good or perfect conscience, but few people are like that. Most people have to work things out, especially when things don't turn out the way they expected. I doubt Wilson ever expected to be placed in the position of being ordered to violate the First Amendment.

A person who develops a conscience or expands their conscience is NOT a 'person without a conscience'.

Nor do you know Wilson's situation. For all you or I know, he might have dependent children needing lots of medical treatment that he would lose by resigning. Or perhaps he was threatened with "You will never work in law again if you don't send those letters. We manufactured some damning evidence of financial fraud we can use."

No one should be in public office without knowing this.

Until proven otherwise, I will continue to consider that Wilson's conscience became engaged when the lawsuit landed on his trigger.

There are no moral dilemmas in a simple world. People never make mistakes and evolve to regret them in a simple world.

Yes, the First Amendment is clear but people's situations are never simple. But it is always possible to imagine or assume that their situations are simple.

A federal judge ordered Gov. Ron DeSantis’ state health department to stop threatening television stations with criminal prosecution if they kept running ads in favor of an abortion amendment on the ballot next month.

In a sharply worded ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker rebuked the DeSantis administration for trying to quash what he called constitutionally protected political speech.

“To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” Walker wrote, granting a request for a temporary restraining order. A hearing for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for later this month.

The ruling puts a temporary halt to one of DeSantis’ most brazen attempts to defeat Amendment 4, which would overturn the six-week abortion ban he signed into law.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/elections/2024/10/17/florida-desantis-abortion-amendment-judge-order-ladapo/

At his hearing to become Florida's Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo refused to state whether he thought vaccines were effective. The Republican majority voted for him anyway. Since then it was revealed that the hospital he worked at in California stated that Lapado never worked with covid patients like he said on his resume. Representatives of the governor's office rejected the claim as a "conspiracy theory."

his "conscience", I would think that would have happened before he sent the letter.

Just sayin'.

thought was replaced by one from Florida. We also got a new dir of education from Florida.

Maybe this one is moving to Arkansas also,.

I would love to see the GOPee get shellacked in Florida, but I don't see it as any sort of probability. Florida has been friendly to wingnut churches for far too long for that.

So my hope is that enough useless legislators who rant and rave about abortion but don''t do anything else get ousted to make a difference.