Posted on 12/29/2002 7:21:12 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:59:54 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
If images of people being persecuted for "thought crimes" strike you as the stuff of science fiction ? or, at worst, something that happened when communism was at its height and jackboots were storming Europe ? get ready for a wake-up call.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
If I ever write a 1984-type novel, I just found the villain's name.
That, because I know that these edicts will breed a backlash that combines outrage at totalitarian injustice with a natural loathing of perversion.
And that will eventually prove to be a lethal blend for those who hitch-hike the Hershey Highway...
Prescription for a longer life, with greatly increased odds of a natural conclusion...
Don’t mess with Mother Nature.
And don’t ally yourself with those who do.
Scary when LEO's get PC for a religion and forget about the Constitution.
A woman who spent four days in a northern Michigan jail for making an anti-Hispanic slur has had her conviction overturned by the state Court of Appeals.
Janice Barton, now 47, was charged and convicted under Manistee's law against engaging in insulting conduct in public.
The appeals court did not declare the law unconstitutional, but it did say it was vague as applied to Barton. "It's about time," the Manistee woman told The Grand Rapids Press when she learned Monday that the appeals court had thrown out the conviction. "I knew it was going to happen."
Authorities say Barton made an insulting statement about Hispanics in a Manistee restaurant four years ago.
The ordinance that Barton was convicted of breaking reads: "No person shall engage in any indecent, insulting, immoral or obscene conduct in any public place."
"In effect, without fair warning, (Barton) was charged with, and convicted for, conduct that she could not reasonably have known was criminal," Judges E. Thomas Fitzgerald, Donald Holbrook Jr. and Mark Cavanagh wrote in the unanimous opinion.
The judges made some comparisons to the case of the Arenac County "cussing canoeist," Joseph Boomer.
In April, the appeals court struck down a state law against using vulgar language in front of women and children.
"Allowing a prosecution where one utters 'insulting' language could possibly subject a vast percentage of the populace to a misdemeanor conviction," the judges in the Manistee case said last week, quoting the Boomer decision.
As she was a leaving the Pepper Mill, a Manistee restaurant, in August 1998, Barton heard a Spanish-speaking man ask his wife to make room.
Barton, who does not understand Spanish, then said to her mother: "I wish these (expletives) would learn to speak English," authorities say.
Off-duty police Officer Carol Benitez followed Barton to her car and reported her to authorities.
At Barton's trial, jurors were told they could convict her if they believed the words were "fighting words" intended "to incite violence or an immediate breach of the peace."
She was sentenced to 45 days in the Manistee County Jail, though the punishment was later trimmed and she served four days.
She said she has no regrets using a word considered a slur against Hispanics.
"I was quite shocked at the charge," said Barton. "I wasn't talking to them; I was talking to my mother."
The Manistee County Prosecutor's Office did not file documents during the appeal defending the conviction.
Barton attorney Matthew Posner of Suttons Bay had said the vagueness of the Manistee ordinance invites "arbitrary and discriminatory" enforcement by police and courts.
"Just imagine the potential for discriminatory arrests at a high-school football game or an adult tavern for what a given officer deems to be 'insulting conduct,"' Posner wrote.
As far as your right to free speech is concerned, government is the only censor that counts. The government is the only entity that can use force to stifle what you want to say.
Employers may also have speech codes, but unless you have an employment contract protecting you, they are well within their rights as property owners to enforce those codes.
I only address the fact, not the legitimacy or rationale supporting it.
Where I disagree with you is the "only government counts" part. While it is the government that has set the basis for work-site censorship it is my employer that I interact with daily. So it is the employer who has most direct and immediate affect on me, again, regardless of the rationale or impetus.
I only address the fact, not the legitimacy or rationale supporting it.
Where I disagree with you is the "only government counts" part. While it is the government that has set the basis for work-site censorship it is my employer that I interact with daily. So it is the employer who has most direct and immediate affect on me, again, regardless of the rationale or impetus.
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