Free Republic

Yes, the Ohio Court of Appeals held Thursday.? "Fighting words"—face-to-face personal insults that are likely to start a fight—are generally constitutionally unprotected, and can be criminally punished (usually under disorderly conduct statutes). But in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), the Supreme Court struck down a statute that imposed heightened punishment on those "fighting words" that "arouse[] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race": Even when some speech (e.g., fighting words, libel, obscenity, etc.) is constitutionally unprotected, the law can't selectively impose extra punishment on unprotected speech that, say, expresses racist views. Yet in Wisconsin...

Our friend David Horowitz wrote this essay, which he titled “Fighting Words.” It is a call for freedom-loving Americans to fight back against the totalitarian Left. By now it should be obvious – even to conservatives – that we are in a war. It is a conflict that began nearly fifty years ago when the street revolutionaries of the Sixties joined the Democrat Party. Their immediate goal was to help the Communist enemy win the war in Vietnam, but they stayed to expand their influence in the Democrat Party and create the radical force that confronts us today. The war...

McALESTER, Okla. — Members of a Kansas church that protests at military funerals may have found themselves in the wrong town over the weekend. Shortly after finishing their protest at the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey of McAlester, a half-dozen protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to their minivan Saturday, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed. To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would...

VALLEY FALLS -- The young man was given three choices: get turned over to the police, go one-on-one in a fight with a seasoned war veteran, or be duct-taped to a flagpole for six hours with a sign around his neck identifying his alleged crime: flag burning. It was the third option that would still have the small town buzzing a week after a 21-year-old was hunted down and forced to endure a public humiliation with its roots dating to the Middle Ages. Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1938 were incensed enough to tie up the man...

Legal Action Taken Against Bus Beating Victim Sunday, December 30, 2007 WBAL Radio as reported by Anne Kramer The attorney for one of nine Baltimore middle school students charged with beating a woman on a city bus says the student has filed assault charges against that woman. Nakita McDaniels' attorney Kimberly Thomas says the teen's complaints that Sarah Kreager assaulted her were not investigated by police or the State's Attorney's Office. Thomas says McDaniels filed charged on Friday and trial is set for Jan. 31, the same day the trial for the nine teens charged in the assault on Kreager...

(cool video dedication to two Medal of honor recipients) put to the music of Trace Adkins - Fightin Words.

SEEN in context, Pope Benedict XVI’s citation last week of a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who claimed that the Prophet Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman” to the world was not intended as an anti-Islamic broadside. The pope’s real target in his lecture at the University of Regensburg, in Germany, was not Islam but the West, especially its tendency to separate reason and faith. He also denounced religious violence, hardly a crusader’s sentiment. The uproar in the Muslim world over the comments is thus to some extent a case of “German professor meets sound-bite culture,” with a phrase from a...

Manistee woman still sour over 'insulting words' conviction By SPIROS GALLOS Capital News Service Wednesday, November 27, 2002 EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains a word that may be offensive.MANISTEE -- If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything. Those could be words to live by and possibly keep people out of jail in Manistee. Janice Barton spent four days in the Manistee County Jail before her conviction for disturbing the peace in violation of a Manistee city ordinance was overturned by an appellate court Nov. 1. Barton referred to other restaurant patrons as "spics" on Aug....

Americans who value the Constitution should stand with Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and oppose George Bush's attempted power grab in conjunction with establishing a Department of Homeland Security. The Bushies are trying to frame the debate as either protecting bureaucracy or providing security for Americans. In fact, the debate is about preventing an authoritarian president from sacrificing the Constitution in the name of providing security. Let me remind you that those who prefer security to freedom will lose both. Bush wants to be able to disregard labor contracts and civil-service rules, as well as move money within the department as...