Still ‘NO LAW’ Against Free Speech (editorial on Sheehan/SOTU)

[The Straight Story]

Editorial Still ‘NO LAW’ Against Free Speech By BECKY O'MALLEY

Thanks, Cindy Sheehan, for giving us a nice hook for one of our periodic lectures on why everyone should love the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Here’s what it says:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Justice Hugo Black used to holler at doubters “that means NO LAW!” — nothing, for instance, like saying that Cindy couldn’t wear a t-shirt with the number of American soldiers dead in Iraq printed on the front to the State of the Union address. Congress didn’t pass any such law, but that didn’t stop the Capitol police from thinking they had. Even the police have finally, belatedly, figured it out, perhaps helped by the Congressman whose wife was also reprimanded for expressing a pro-government point of view on her own t-shirt. Mrs. Congressperson, however, was not arrested, though Cindy was.

Subsequent amendments and interpretations have extended the prohibition on restricting speech to all government bodies. The government, in any of its multifarious manifestations (federal, state, local) may not restrict the content of political speech, period, and it has to watch its step in trying to stop other kinds of speech as well. The City of Berkeley learned this lesson a few years ago, expensively, by taking a city law which tried to keep citizens from begging for money in undesired spots, like near ATMs, as far as the federal appeals court. Berkeley’s own judge Claudia Wilken, at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued an injunction against the enforcement of the Berkeley ordinance because it purported to regulate the content of panhandlers’ speech.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=02-03-06&storyID=23357

[WearyOne2]

1. It's important that Cindy sues

[1620rock]

2. Constitution??....

....why that's just a God-damned piece of paper! :sarcasm: