The White House press secretary is a political appointee who works as a press secretary for the most prominent political figure in the country, so slagging off

The White House press secretary is a political appointee who works as a press secretary for the most prominent political figure in the country, so slagging off the president after hours necessarily and directly impacts the job. The military has its own body of law, as well as separate judicial and prison systems, and federal courts have repeatedly given the armed forces wide latitude in how they treat their "employees." Also, those people are all working on national defense. Those are weird examples to pick, considering how entirely different they are to the circumstances of an SWE at 37 Signals possibly doing other work after hours. And also weird is suggesting that such control is a form of discipline that help keep chaos at bay, and is in fact part of making everyone more free.