The Left just doesn’t get legal issues
Andre does not now, nor ever will, understand legal issues or the Constitution. He believes that James Madison wrote a legally binding document that prohibits forevermore any future school administrator from stopping any student from openly advocating illegal drug use.
And in an embarrassingly frank admission of his intellectual limitations on this issue, he admits can’t possibly fathom that anyone would hold the opposite position.
He mocks John Roberts, Sam Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy for their intellect (!) and throws in the tired, warmed-over-racism shot at Clarence Thomas. Andre hates democracy, administrators, voters, citizens, principals, and parents. He believes that a tiny group of usually liberal guys in black robes should decide for 300 million people their school rules, family rules, church rules, who can say what, wear what, do what, who can golf on the PGA Tour, what level of clothing strippers have to wear, whether a 9mm is an “arm,” if a Xerox is communication, if an email is a “personal paper,” whether a plastic reindeer is religious, if a school district’s budget is generous enough, whether a particular T-shirt is offensive or just jovial, if the “corn” in Corn Flakes is enough to be called that, whether a sworn enemy of the United States is really a threat, whether a staightforward law is secretly motivated by prejudice, if condors are best protected by federal policy, whether wolves are more valuable to us than cattle, if workers are overly scared by open ballots, and whether the local Santa on city hall is too big, too brightly lit, or too lonely (i.e., there are not enough plastic Jewish figures seated not close enough to it).
On not one of these issues, nor hundreds of others, does Andre believe that we as a nation may freely govern ourselves.
This is a scary place we are heading.
Yes, terrifying. Now in the Andre/Orwell America, minors who openly advocate crimes can actually (brace yourself) be told to knock it off. “Now boys,” the principal may say, “nice try, but that’s not allowed at school functions.” My, it’s practically Nazism revisted.
One of the aspects of the Court’s free speech jurisprudence is a balancing test between the interest an entity has in prohibiting the speech vs. the interest the other entity has in invoking it. In this case, the message “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” had nothing whatsoever to do with the torch procession of the Winter Olympics. According to the logic Andre advocates, the students could have unfurled a banner that read “Eskimos are Retarded” or “Homosexuals Should be Burned Alive.” If a school official had walked over to the group to suggest that banners advocating burning gays wasn’t allowed, Andre would have found this “a scary place we are heading.”
Finally, in case anyone was still giving the slightest credence to his Bolshevik views, he comes clean with his partisanship.
We can now regulate speech based entirely on content, and you approve? Really?
But Andre actually favors precisely that. Should an honest citizen believe that his government has gone awry, and he says so in a radio spot around the time of election, Andre believes that federal marshals should jail the man.
If someone wants to send a true reformer to Washington to advocate that person’s democratic beliefs, and they write unauthorized letters to their friends asking them to support the cause, Andre believes agents with guns should silence the letter-writer until after the election has passed.
And if a 10 year old wants to send his daddy to Congress, and holds a lemonade stand to raise money, Andre would send the Justice Department to the stand in question, to see whether all of the quarters collected for lemonade are given under the federal limitations and with proper documentation. And Lord help the poor child if Andre should get wind that the sugar he added to the drink wasn’t fully reported.
All of this, Andre is not only okay with, he actually loves it. But if a teenage stoner who bizarrely unfurls a sign about bong hits at an Olympic torch ceremony is scolded, Andre fears for the future of freedom in our nation.
A more asinine position could hardly have been created had he set out to do so.
Dave - the Infidel Sage
gurusteve
E the Wise
Andre the Defiant
hairybeast
thompaine
Comment reprinted from Bong Hits 4 Jesus
I’m not sure if Andre realizes this but public schools are technically responsible for students from doorway to doorway. Like it or not, when kids engage in nefarious behaviors after school such as drinking, drug use or fighting, schools still have jurisdiction to punish and in some cases aid in the prosecution of those behaviors.
This case is so limited in its scope that it has no effect whatsoever on the day to day free speech rights of anyone reading this post. It involves the ability of our public school systems to silence the objectionable speech of the students put in their charge. I too cheer the decision as one against the use of the courts to advance whatever legal itch some punk ass kid and his financial backers feel they can use to make a point.
We as educaors restrict the speech of our students all the time in various venues related to the school. This just affirms that ability.
One good example of what I am saying is the increased use of My Space and YouTube as vehicles for students to express themselves. We know that kids videotape fights or photograph themselves with firearms, for example, and have faced suspension or expulsion from school for doing so even though those things had nothing to do with school. Andre apparently believes that these actions by administration is “fucking nuts.” The world that is charged with educating and protecting kids disagrees.
Although it was a split decision, it would have been unanimous had it been tailored more narrowly, according to Justice Breyer, one of the dissenters. All nine Justices agreed that the principal should not be held liable.
Thew question for the Defiant One is: do or should the public schools have any right to restrict freedom of expression? Perhaps he feels that the “Bong Hits” banner was something that should not have been taken down, but would he agree or disagree that the banner should have been removed if it had said, “My high school says George Bush should get f***ed!”? Would a student’s First Amendment rights, according to Mr Defiant, protech him from suspension or anything else if he wore a t-shirt to school saying “THe principal is a piece of s***!”?
If Mr Defiant is saying that the student’s expression rights are absolute, then he must allow those types of things; if he believes that a student couldn’t be allowed that much freedom, then all that is being argued is the principal’s judgement that “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” crossed the threshhold into the forbidden.
If he in fact did unfurl a banner reading “Eskimos are Retarded” or “Homosexuals Should be Burned Alive” he would have been guilty of insensitivity and engaging in a hate crime, put in shackles and spending the rest of his academic career in ‘the hole’.
I’m not sure where I did the racism thing about Thomas… The crazy old guy who lives down the street thing, yes, but what exactly are you refering to?
BTW, As I mentioned previously, E, he was off school property. “Door to door” doesn’t seem to fit the bill.
And Dave, The KKK has done far worse, and so has The Idiot Phelps (still looking forward to that nut-kicking in hell). Have any of them been convicted of a hate crime before they, oh, say, pick up a baseball bat or a rope and carry out their threats?
BTW, For the record, what I am in favor of is public financing of elections… And I think that can not be legally done via statute, but would require an amendment to the Constitution you revere, at least until kids say things that make grown ups uncomfortable. But I also don’t think money ALWAYS equals speech, just as I don’t think “the right to keep and bear arms” includes M-60s or F-16s.
Andre, I don’t think I got an answer to the question I posed: do you believe that students have an absolute right to freedom of speech, a right which cannot be regulated in any way, or is your objection simply a judgement call, to this particular instance of regulation?
It was a school event on school time. He was therefore under the control of the school. Have you ever been on a field trip before? A track meet? C’mon Andre, this is one of those common sense things that conservatives always are referring to. It would have been different if this was on a Sat. and him and some of his buddies just showed up along the route.
I have written several columns on children who were punished for even slightly varying from the established PC line. Where are the outcries from the Left when Christians and conservatives are muzzled in the schools? The hypocrisy is palpable.