Because I want to force my view of the world onto everybody.
Posted on 01/21/2009 11:15:32 AM PST by EagleUSA
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to consider attempts to revive a 1998 law intended to protect children from Internet pornography, ending a legal conflict dating to the administration of President Bill Clinton.
Without comment, the court handed down an order declining to take the case of Mukasey v. A.C.L.U., No. 08-565. The administration of former President George W. Bush, through Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had asked the justices to review the law. The American Civil Liberties Union has been a leading foe of the statute.
The Child Online Protection Act has been the subject of court battles since Congress enacted it in 1998, and it has never taken effect. Some judges have called the controversy an agonizing conflict between the cherished right of free speech and society’s duty to watch over children, many of whom grow up as familiar with computers as earlier generations of children were with coloring books.
The high court’s refusal to take another look at the law was not surprising, given that the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ruled last July that the law violated the First Amendment because filtering technologies and other tools offered less restrictive ways to shield children.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
For the Childrun of course..
The ACLU is on the side of the pornographers.
>The American Civil Liberties Union has been a leading foe of the statute.
> Good news for Americans ...
Sure about that?
The ACLU is on the side of the pornographers.
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Yes. But the authors of the legislation attempt are not. They would set precedent against the First Amendment.
Thank you SCOTUS for doing this one right.
So is the ALA (American Library Ass.).
They even had instruction for youths on how to circumvent filtering software where they couldn’t prohibit its installation.
They do not believe in a concept of “age appropriate material” and believe that they should be able to access everything in a library (adult periodicals and R/NC-17/unrated videos as well).
The notion that the 1st Amendment was intended to safeguard pornography is an invention of the left.
I agree that filtering software is not flawed. There have been efforts to see FR blocked as a “hate” site.
er “not flawless”
Why am I not surprised? The left considers themselves above the law.
The notion that the 1st Amendment was intended to safeguard pornography is an invention of the left.
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Surely you did not miss the entire point. It has nothing to do with pornography, per se. It is ALL about freedom of expression, as assured by the First Amendment. And THAT is what the SCOTUS sought to protect, as well as the courts that preceeded them on this issue.
Keep a close eye on those that will be attacking our First Amendment. It will be extraordinary now.
Pornography was never free speech until the Supreme Court decided to make new law.
The current Supreme Court is just rejecting challenges to it’s dictatorial power.
Yes, now it’s up to the parents to deal with it.
——”Congress shall make no law” seems plain enough to me—
I’ll never understand how a good amount of Freepers, all true conservatives rail against the nanny state....until a call comes to limit a constitutional right “for the children” or for “decency” or for whatever. Then they’re all about it.
That’s “chilrun” not children. Anything for the chilrun.
Pornography was never free speech until the Supreme Court decided to make new law.
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Huh? New law? What new law? Read the article and its history. By the way, the judicial branch of government does not MAKE law. But we may see that change under Obama and his socialists.
Agree.
It is astonishing how resistant civilized people are to the idea that violent pornography tears at the foundational psychology of youth and a healthy sense of self and humanity.
But it is easier to understand when studies show extreme porn stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain as heroin. Otherwise values-driven people will do much to reserve access to an addictive impulse.
The debasement of humans—women and children particular is rationalized (a “victimless” recreation is the hackneyed term of choice).
The disturbing support of such a non-redeeming and pervasive negative influence just shows the tremendous amount of consumers of this most prurient fare.
It is narcotic in effect and damaging to us all, but the defenders will never admit it. Instead, they feign intellectual superiority—ironic when the thrust ( pun intended) of their argument is rooted (pun intended) in the exact opposite region.
And please, first amendment factored in, DO NOT ever try and convince otherwise. George, Ben and Thomas never meant for this stuff to flow 24/7, everywhere/all the time, like a running faucet in our lives.
THIS action is about pornography. Straight on point.
Trying to index damaging pornography in with all other “freedom of speech” issues is a ruse.
Yeah, a necessary reality, pal.
You suggest otherwise?
Trying to index damaging pornography in with all other “freedom of speech” issues is a ruse.
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Tell that to the justices of the SCOTUS who refused to hear the case. Why did they do that? Can you get your mind past the issue of pornography? I don’t think so. They did. It is about the Constitution.
They meant for a “LIMITED GOVERNMENT” not a NANNY STATE! Yes it is filth, but once the Government gets its hands on the internet look out. They will not stop at banning porn..
“And please, first amendment factored in, DO NOT ever try and convince otherwise.”
I don’t believe the issue is whether pornography is good or not. The point is, if we give the government the right to decide what we can read or view we open the door to letting them censor anything THEY believe is bad. Having lived in a middle eastern country that censored the internet I can attest to the fact that it starts with porn and quickly leads to anything the state believes is bad for them.
I’m not sure why people don’t go to their internet provider and lobby them to provide them with a censored version of the internet. Then people can choose what they want to buy and keep the government out of it. Why do we always ask the government to protect us from things we don’t like?
“Can you get your mind past the issue of pornography?”
No, actually I can’t when I see the families, marriages, kids and women destroyed by it.
Keep it flowing into our lives at every level and the way things are going, the Constitution will be a construct guiding a shattered, godless populace ‘in name only”.
Can you not see the bigger picture? Excessive pornography is a THREAT to a stable culture.
The Constitution and porn can and should be reconciled.
The judicial branch dictates local morals:
“Obscene” speech is “unprotected” speech as ruled by the Supreme Court. “Unprotected speech,” means speech that does not enjoy First Amendment protection and may even be criminal to express.
In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain “hard-core” pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . “[1]
This quote, and the intent behind it, is well known as summarizing the irony and difficulty in trying to define obscenity. For at least fifty years, the Supreme Court has been struggling with defining what speech is “obscene”.
It is surprising that the difficulty in defining obscenity in our history did not fully begin until the mid-1900s. Supreme Court Justice Brennan, who served from 1956 to 1990, who was one of the great, and often liberal, legal minds of the 20th century, attempted repeatedly to define obscenity. The task was much more daunting than he had anticipated.
http://library.findlaw.com/2003/May/15/132747.html
There is an entire industry of high-tech lobbyists whose sole purpose is to thwart high-tech legislation by congressmen who can’t figure out a basic pocket calculator, and have no interest in learning, because a pocket calculator makes a lousy cocktail stirrer.
Because It Takes a Village
So you prefer to have judges make your porn decisions for you?
Porn for kids is free speech???
Can you not see the bigger picture? Excessive pornography is a THREAT to a stable culture.
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So is radical liberalism, and a Marxist government.
Yes I suggest that parents be responsible for their kids and we not let this turn into a nanny state for the sake of the chilrun and lazy parents.
I advocate a cyber red light district.....porn or .xxx
This is completely doable.
But there is a billion dollar industry that wants the stuff out in the easy access channels. They pick up so many cruise-bys, so many innocents that way, don’t you know. Addicts in the making. Big $$$. Who cares what lives are screwed up.
Every one of you reading this thread should wake up to this. It’s a ‘’follow the money’ scene, as is all things.
Euphemism for pornography, in this instance.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Try something more original. Or at least more realistic.
Last time I looked most kids weren’t shackled into windowless rooms, removed from our “always-on” society.
My default position is that any court ruling that limits the government's power is a good thing. Especially in the area of the 1st Amendment.
Congress shall make no law regarding the distribution of pornography? Is that from the ACLU revised Constitution?
Because I want to force my view of the world onto everybody.
It appears they were following the judicially invented "least restrictive means" doctrine.
-—try reading the Fifth Amendment—(it’s craftily hidden in the Bill of Rights)
I think it’s pornographic for women to show any ankles and they should cover their faces. Especially Helen Thomas.
Wrong. It’s free speech. You may not like it, it may not be moral, but it’s free speech.
Well, now that technology has so enabled the flow of this soul-killing stuff into every nook of our lives and society—and money has stoked the trash into a full ubiquitous force, your default position needs to be brought up to date and finessed.
Factors change the equation.
Technology has altered what used to be many absolutes. Have you not noticed?
Silly Rabit, it’s the Bill of Suggestions.
Wrong.
Then you'd be wrong, too.
Wrong.
When the courts start deciding which parts of free speech to limit, we’re all screwed. The current law is clear, and passing this new attack on free speech would violate the constitution.
Such a law would be overly broad, Constitutionally-speaking. Governments have the power to outlaw obscenity, but pornography is not automatically obscene. There is a legal standard of defining what constitutes obscenity based on, in part, community standards. Prosecutors know that if they were to try and charge someone with obscenity for producing "vanilla" porn, it's almost impossible to get a jury to convict. Only the truly fringe stuff gets prosecuted, and then rarely.
Child porn is a different issue, of course.
Sorry, you are wrong.
Mark my words, pornography will one day be seen in the same way as second hand smoke.
Your vice flows beyond your “usage area” and it is not mine to inhale. It does harm to me and the people I care about. Just as the court has ruled, does second hand smoke.
Therefore porn needs to made ‘by invitation or intention only” and NOT in the well traveled mainstream of the common domain.
Pornography is free speech? Sorry, I reject the ACLU position.
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