free speech
I’m using this post to follow up on some issues.
First, pastor Terry Jones, who caused a firestorm when he threatened a Quran burning at his church, recently made the news again, but I’ll call it good news.
Free speech is most endangered when the speech at issue is unpopular. In the case of the fringe Christian, homosexual-baiting Westboro Baptist Church, it is repugnant. All the same, a federal appeals court has ruled, it is protected. Now the United States Supreme Court is to consider the question.
I resolve in 2009 to work to ensure more freedom for Americans, especially on college campuses.
College campuses should remain the place where the most freedom exists: free speech, active and uninhibited discussion of issues affecting communities and our country, and tolerance of unpopular opinions.
The way Clarence Thomas sees it, “As originally understood, the Constitution does not afford students a right to free speech in public schools.” In the old days, says the associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, student liberties were mostly limited to sitting down and keeping quiet, and that was good for them. He was writing last June in Morse et al. v. Frederick, the “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” case. No other justice agreed with Thomas on the free-speech score, but it is harder to differ with another of his conclusions: the court makes up First Amendment rules for students as it goes.
In some minds, the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul from televised presidential candidates’ debates raises Freedom of Speech questions.
As the Nevada caucuses approached, NBC and Fox didn’t see their White House prospects as strong enough to justify their sharing air time with the front-runners.
