Breaking News: Sarah Palin Effigy Taken Down

Ann is a troll, bought by Obama’s campaign and has stayed paid for.

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, . . . .

I have to agree with Ann in CA on this one, and I am a conservative strict constructionist on constitutional issues. Freedom of speech means exactly that, you are free to express whatever hate you want as long as there is no incitement to violence (that is intent to commit a criminal offense with the means to commit such offense readily available). Once you start limiting speech due to its offensive content, then you have artificially put a value judgment upon opinion thereby chilling all speech. There is no constitutional right to be free from being offended, and I think even you will agree that is a good idea if you think about it carefully.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit wrote in Colin v. Smith, 578 F.2d 1197 (1978) on an appeal by the City of Skokie, IL from a decision of the lower court granting the American Socialist Party (“Illinois Nazi’s, I hate Illinois Nazi’s” – John Belushi as Joliet Jake in the Blues Brothers) the right to march in predominantly Jewish Skokie holding the denial of a permit to march as unconstitutionl:

Plaintiff-appellee, the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) is a political group described by its leader, plaintiff-appellee Frank Collin, as a Nazi party. Among NSPA’s more controversial and generally unacceptable beliefs are that black persons are biologically inferior to white persons, and should be expatriated to Africa as soon as possible; that American Jews have “inordinate . . . political and financial power” in the world and are “in the forefront of the international Communist revolution.” NSPA members affect a uniform reminiscent of those worn by members of the German Nazi Party during the Third Reich, and display a swastika thereon and on a red, white, and black flag they frequently carry.

The Village of Skokie, Illinois, a defendant-appellant, is a suburb north of Chicago. It has a large Jewish population, including as many as several thousand survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe before and during World War II. Other defendants-appellants are Village officials.

Village Ordinance No. 77-5-N-995 (995) prohibits (t)he dissemination of any materials within the Village of Skokie which promotes and incites hatred against persons by reason of their race, national origin, or religion, and is intended to do so. “Dissemination of materials” includes publication or display or distribution of posters, signs, handbills, or writings and public display of markings and clothing of symbolic significance. Violation is a crime punishable by fine of up to $500, or imprisonment of up to six months. Village Ordinance No. 77-5-N-996 (996) prohibits public demonstrations by members of political parties while wearing “military-style” uniforms, s 28.42.1, and violation is punishable as in 995.

The conflict underlying this litigation has commanded substantial public attention, and engendered considerable and understandable emotion. We would hopefully surprise no one by confessing personal views that NSPA’s beliefs and goals are repugnant to the core values held generally by residents of this country, and, indeed, to much of what we cherish in civilization. As judges sworn to defend the Constitution, however, we cannot decide this or any case on that basis. Ideological tyranny, no matter how worthy its motivation, is forbidden as much to appointed judges as to elected legislators.

But our task here is to decide whether the First Amendment protects the activity in which appellees wish to engage, not to render moral judgment on their views or tactics. No authorities need be cited to establish the proposition, which the Village does not dispute, that First Amendment rights are truly precious and fundamental to our national life. Nor is this truth without relevance to the saddening historical images this case inevitably arouses. It is, after all, in part the fact that our constitutional system protects minorities unpopular at a particular time or place from governmental harassment and intimidation, that distinguishes life in this country from life under the Third Reich….

Legislating against the content of First Amendment activity, however, launches the government on a slippery and precarious path:. Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content…. This is not to say, of course, that content legislation is per se invalid. [I]n very narrow circumstances, a government may proscribe content on the basis of imminent danger of a grave substantive evil. But analysis of content restrictions must begin with a healthy respect for the truth that they are the most direct threat to the vitality of First Amendment rights.

Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. The asserted falseness of Nazi dogma, and, indeed, its general repudiation, simply do not justify its suppression.

The Village [argues that] the Nazi march, involving as it does the display of uniforms and swastikas, will create a substantive evil that it has a right to prohibit: the infliction of psychic trauma on resident holocaust survivors and other Jewish residents. The Village points out that Illinois recognizes the “new tort” of intentional infliction of severe emotional distress, Assuming that specific individuals could proceed in tort under this theory to recover damages provably occasioned by the proposed march, and that a First Amendment defense would not bar the action, it is nonetheless quite a different matter to criminalize protected First Amendment conduct in anticipation of such results.

It would be grossly insensitive to deny, as we do not, that the proposed demonstration would seriously disturb, emotionally and mentally, at least some, and probably many of the Village’s residents. The problem with engrafting an exception on the First Amendment for such situations is that they are indistinguishable in principle from speech that “invite(s) dispute . . .. induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.” It is perfectly clear that a state many not “make criminal the peaceful expression of unpopular views.” Likewise, “mere public intolerance or animosity cannot be the basis for abridgement of these constitutional freedoms.”

It is said that the proposed march is not speech, or even “speech plus,” but rather an invasion, intensely menacing no matter how peacefully conducted. The Village’s expert psychiatric witness, in fact, testified that the effect of the march would be much the same regardless of whether uniforms and swastikas were displayed, due to the intrusion of self-proclaimed Nazis into what he characterized as predominately Jewish “turf.” There is room under the First Amendment for the government to protect targeted listeners from offensive speech, but only when the speaker intrudes on the privacy of the home, or a captive audience cannot practically avoid exposure.

In other words, the only cure for bad speech is competing speech in the marketplace of ideas as expressed by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Move on.

You first. Lead the way.

AnninCA, you have a fucking COMPLEX. You are always clammering for attention by going on the other side of logic just so you can turn this thread into ALL ABOUT ANNINCA.

The threat still must be credible, otherwise, Michael Moore and many others would be serving jail time right now.

McCain is not about to win by a landslide.

IF McCain pulls out of his clear “behind” status, it will be a miracle.

What world do you guys inhabit?

An AOL straw poll?

Oh well, it’s probably as legitimate as the legitimate polls this year.

The truth of polling this year?

It’s truly a crapshoot.

New article on RCP.

AA voters….turning out in droves in FL, way more than in the past.

Youth? Flaking, as in the past.

You just stated the problem with AOL’s straw poll….

“you can only vote once.”

Unfortunately, that’s not true of the GE, at least in Ohio.

I agree…..

I am not concerned about his birth certificate. I have been telling folks it was a loser issue from the beginning. You are more interested in misdirection and disinformation, and I remain convinced that you are a paid Obama blog commenter. I won’t be fooled by your clever tactical mannerisms and turn of phrase.

TROLL ALERT