“Hate speech is not protected by the first amendment,” so said Howard Dean in a tweet posted Thursday night.

That, from a former governor, DNC chairman, and presidential candidate, is a baffling statement. Dean is patently incorrect and has not since corrected his claim. It is the type of misinformed legal analysis one might expect to hear during a high school debate tournament, or on Salon.com, but not from a prominent politician with a political science degree from Yale.