Mitt Romney’s campaign is attempting to mitigate the damage it caused by sending out a version of the Detroit News endorsement it sent Wednesday with a paragraph critical of the campaign removed by claiming “copyright law” prevented them from distributing the full version.

That’s nonsense according to famous First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams.

“The short answer is the 50% [threshold Romney’s campaign claimed copyright law required] doesn’t come from anywhere,” Abrams said. “And saying that they had to cut out what they did for copyright reasons is wholly unpersuasive.”