Posted on 09/24/2007 6:10:02 AM PDT by 3AngelaD
Barry Rosen, executive director of public and external affairs at Borough of Manhattan Community College, was a hostage in Iran from 1979 to 1981. He studied Iranian culture at Columbia University.
I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University tomorrow.
They instilled the belief in all of us: Everyone has the right of free speech. But I believe they'd be in a quandary about this one. I'd certainly like to talk to James Madison, who drafted our Bill of Rights, and ask him whether Ahmadinejad deserves that right.
Ahmadinejad is a reprehensible leader who violates free speech in his own country and cracks down on those Iranians who attempt to open up his repressive regime. He uses speech to spread age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes in the Middle East, denying the existence of Israel, and denies that the Holocaust ever happened.
Ahmadinejad was one of those outrageous Iranians who took me and more than 50 other Americans hostage for 444 days, violating international law and making us suffer indescribable moments of terror. There is simply no reason to give him a platform to spew his venom.
No matter how hard-hitting Columbia's president questions Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader is a winner. Every word he utters is meant for his radical constituents at home and legitimizes his standing among other dictators...
It's only when Ahmadinejad permits his own people to march and speak freely, that I believe Columbia President Lee Bollinger would be justified in giving the Iranian president an open forum. Not before then.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Rosen is not at Columbia, but across town at a community college. Not that it matters, he's the one who *knows* that Achmadinajad is a kidnapper and a terrorist.
Good point. But AhmANutJob also is a terrorist enabler, which should have earned him his own little cell, with arrow pointing toward Mecca, in Gitmo, with his time in the Super Max held in abeyance until he gets out of GitMo, if ever.
I thought Nutjob was a lot shorter than that.
He has a right of free speech. He doesn't have a right to *be* in this country. He should have been arrested or captured the moment he stepped off the airplane. Even if he weren't a criminal and a terrorist, he'd still not have the right to be here. Even as a diplomat/leader going to speak at the UN, he could have been restricted to his hotel room, the airport and the UN, and been required to travel directly between them.
Where in the U.S. Constitution does it guarentee a foreign leader the right to free speech?
Bollinger is such a weak kneed, orfice below the tail of a horse. He was pathtic.
I personally think binladen is a bag of bones in some cave in Tora Bora or another mountain cave close by. What we’re seeing of him are old, old pictures and one doctored, but closely looked at it’s an old picture with a darkened beard and the face and head have been enlarged. I think the fellow is with the last of his 72 virgins.
Is the smell the left hand?
It prohibits Congress from passing laws abridging freedom of speech. Doesn't say anything about whose freedom of speech, unlike the later prohibition involving "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." or ".. the right of the people to keep and bear arms" or "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures".
Since he's not part of the group "the people", we should search his airplane. Might be really interesting what we'd find there. But as you can see, he also has no right to assemble, which is what he did today at Columbia. He can talk all he wants, but he has no right to *be here* at all.
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