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STILLWELL: When Speech Becomes a Crime
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 6/28/6 | Cinnamon Stillwell

Posted on 06/28/2006 5:53:49 AM PDT by SmithL

What do the above examples have in common?  They are the logical outgrowth of a dangerous trend sweeping the Western world: the criminalization and censorship of speech.

Outright censorship and draconian speech codes have long been a staple of Third World authoritarian regimes. But Western democracies and in particular the United States (where the First Amendment is supposed to reign supreme) have always prided themselves on protecting free speech. Yet because of the creeping reach of political correctness, one can now be put in prison, lose a job, be kicked out of school or be otherwise censored simply for uttering an unpopular opinion.

It's called hate speech. If there ever were a more Orwellian concept, it would be difficult to find. For much like the concept of  "thought crimes" in George Orwell's novel "1984," hate crimes and hate speech suppose intent on the part of the "perpetrator" that may or may not have any basis

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crimethink; freespeech; mdm; speechcrime; thoughtcrime; thoughtcrimes; thoughtpolice
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To: oh8eleven
Mine and the Founding Fathers.

Equine feces. You've clearly no clue what the founders intended, nor how that intent was deliberately changed by the crooks who wrote the 14th Amendment.

You must mean like the Boys Scouts and Augusta National Golf Club.

The Founders never intended for the Federal government to have jurisdiction over either, but don't let that trouble you. You've got worse misconceptions to redress.

61 posted on 06/28/2006 12:56:41 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (There are people in power who are truly evil.)
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To: oh8eleven
Not really? It's REALLY still the law (which I vehemently disagree with).

The "not really" was to I didn't forget that ruling....

But then again I would still disagree that it's "the law" it's the more the courts ruling that is use (or misused) under "the law"

To say the all courts ruling are "the law" assumes that all courts perfectly apply "The Law" in every case

But that can't be in that higher courts over turn lower courts ruling ever day...the higher courts correct and or perfecting the "ruling" to "The law" but do the alway get it to "perfect" ...

I personnel think of the law as a fixed tool and courts use and missuse that tool to create ruling and that laws can be worn out and a broken down as the courts use them as the sum of ever so imperfect precedent accumulates the logic becomes circular

(Yes I know, I know, almost no trained lawyer or judge would agree the are trained to think what ever they rule is "law"...I work as an network engineer and real law and logic are hard fixed things you either get it right or crash and burn you can't bullshit a fix ... lawyer or judge wouldn't know a real law if it bit them in the ass)

Simple test let write a new amendment to prevent congress and the courts from passing law that prevent the exercise of free political speech as the did in the so called campaign finance reform...how much different would the wording of the new amendment need to be from the old 1st amendment...

If your intellectually honest and look an the original amendment and not the accumulated wear and tear of imperfect precedent that accumulates... the 1st amendment is a complete able to block "so called campaign finance reform"... nothing wrong with the part it was broke by the user missuse

62 posted on 06/28/2006 1:08:25 PM PDT by tophat9000 (If it was illegal French Canadians would La Raza back them? Racist back their race over country)
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