Posted on 03/02/2011 7:27:39 AM PST by Pyro7480
Edited on 03/02/2011 7:31:23 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount attention-getting, anti-gay protests outside military funerals.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted2.ap.org ...
This decision is so abhorrent. God bless
and heal the Snyders.
SCOTUS arguments on now - CSPAN-2
http://cspan.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN2/
If you have rented the cemetery with exclusive use, then you have a point. I'd even enthusiastically agree with modifying the contract if you received notice that these thugs were coming. However, that exclusive use of the private property does not give you the right to keep WBB off a public sidewalk outside the cemetery, except that if they are disturbing the peace I would expect the police to respond appropriately. I imagine a few judgment-proof individuals would be happy to teach the WBB protesters a lesson in manners and human decency. I just wouldn't recommend it for anyone who has something to lose, since WBB is good at filing lawsuits over trivia - and winning.
That’s when you whoop ass BUT YOU DON’T FILE SUIT!!
Thank God you are in the tiny minority herein. You cannot see that the decision protects the man who held up a large sign of a picture of an aborted fetus in front of a planned parenthood in the sf bay area. The local city council then passed an ordinance limiting sign size, so many people were offended by the sign.
When there was a pro-life, pro- abortion gathering, the abortion people called the police and complained about the size of their block letter signs,
turned out their circular KAL signs were above the size limit as well, they were just too ignorant to know pi times r equals area.
Then the cops didn’t cite anyone. Thank your lucky stars we have a supreme court who but for one understood this concept of right to offend.
Who knows, one of us might feel like holding a large picture of a butchered fetus, thereby offending so many.
“In the American system of jurisprudence, “legal costs” are generally nominal — a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars depending upon the court system.”
I hope that you’re right. It would be sad if he had to pay as much as this article suggests.
Marine Dad Must Pay Court Costs for Protestors at Son’s Funeral
by Karen Hatter | March 30, 2010 at 05:37 am
“The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Albert Snyder, father of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder to pay Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas $16,510 to cover the church’s court costs associated with the lawsuit brought by Mr. Snyder against the church.”
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/marine-dad-must-pay-court-costs-protestors-sons-funeral
In listening to Mark Levin Show, I have to say I am disappointed in his analysis as it doesn’t seem very intellectually honest. He provides a “what if” scenario instead of dealing with the facts of the case—the plaintiff was not disturbed at the funeral for his son, only became upset when he later saw it on tv. For that he gets a million? No way could they let that judgment stand. Even Scalia and Thomas were on board on this one.
This case will be cited hundreds of times in the future , what with all the campus speech codes and countless other politically correct restraints on freedom of speech. Levin cited Breyer’s comments about possibly reigning in the first amendment and attacked him mercilessly for even the suggestion of doing so, as Breyer’s interview with George Dwarfanapolis indicated he might be receptive to.....
There was a fire on the outside of our local cineplex last year. Lotta trucks and spectators. I wish I would have yelled “theater!” at a crowded fire........just sayin’....
Whoraldo Rivera just said on FauxNews that there is NO Constitutional solution for this issue...
I honestly feel like this country is being consumed by a flesh eating bateria, and no one realizes how close we are to dying...
The doctors are all standing around wondering what to do (for the patient), yet they are all in agreement that the bacteria have a right to kill the patient...
Interesting. Maybe a complex set of lines need to be drawn between things like free speech, aiding and comforting an enemy in a time of war, freedom of information as in wikilinks, freedom to diss the hell out of liberals and gays, porn freedom, etc. There are a lot of categories of things that are called “speech”.
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