Fred Phelps is one of the worst human beings we have in this country, but Samuel Alito is running a close second with his utter failure to understand the meaning of the First Amendment. Even Clarence Thomas understands that, in the United States of America, you have the right to be an enormous jerk. Actually, he embodies that right.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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What if the same people were running around with anti-Jewish signs? It’s hate speech what they do. There should be a law aginst it. In fact I thought there is. I’m so out ot it since the Supreme Court never seems to rule anymore in my favor.
I’m pretty sure they do run around with anti-Jewish signs:
And are you calling for hate speech laws in this country? That’s unconstitutional, and even if it weren’t, it’s unnecessary and immoral.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to do anything immoral. Really, I thought there were provisions to contain hate speech. My bad. Can these things also be stated in the newspaper or on TV?
Well this isn’t France or Germany so if you want to dress up in a Nazi uniform and march through the streets shouting anti-Semitic slurs the law isn’t going to stop you, and the ACLU will even show up to make sure the law doesn’t. The government might make your life hell getting permits and throwing other roadblocks up in your way, but hell the Klan was still having rallies in Indiana less than a decade ago.
As far as stated in newspapers or on TV – TV and radio are different animals and the FCC has a bit more control over what you can say or do on TV. That said, it generally takes a hands-off approach to anything that can be viewed as political speech – the fact that you don’t see a lot of anti-Semitic hate speech on TV is probably more due to the facts that 1) it’s not profitable, 2) the ADL is very good at organizing against that kind of thing and 3) the guys who run TV networks have Jewish friends (or are Jewish) and wouldn’t want to support it in the first place. OTOH – I’ve heard that some of the weirdo AM radio jocks will go into bizarre Zionist conspiracy theories and make all kinds of anti-Semitic remarks.
And newspapers – well, it depends on the newspaper. For most of the ones that want to make a profit see above, but anyone can print a newspaper and crank out whatever crap they want on it and no one is going to stop them (unless they cross the line from “free speech” into “inciting murder” that is).
I forgot to ask. Is that one of Phelps’s people demonstrating in the picture?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s Shirley Phelps-Roper, his daughter. Either way, it’s from Phelps’ group’s DVD.
Well, Phelps is certainly one of the most despicable “human beings” on the planet, but Alito does not even come close. Of course, we must allow free speech for all, no matter how horrible it is. But Alito was reacting, as most of us have, to the sheer disgust we have for what the Phelps clan of inbred hatemongers do. As a Supreme, Alito has to uphold the First Amendment, but he doesn’t have to like it.
The Phelps group can DIAF as far as I’m concerned, but we have to let them show themselves for what they are.
donnah, as far as Alito is concerned, I think the issue is that in his role as a Supreme Court Justice he is not supposed to react “as most of us have”. He’s supposed to uphold the Constitution. The fact that he (evidently) allows himself to judge cases based on his emotions rather than on the evidence, the law and the Constitution means that he’s failing to do his job, and thus weakening the underpinnings of our constitutional democracy.
I don’t need Alito to shut down WBC.
That’s what Anonymous is for.
Samuel Alito has once again demonstrated that he’s possessed of one of the most pedestrian, ineffectual, unintellectual minds in the history of the Supreme Court. At least Scalia’s got a brain and a sharp wit. He and Thomas are like Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, but at least even Thomas had the sense to see how the Court should rule. Alito’s a numbskull.
And yet Senate Democrats (and way too many liberal interest groups) basically rolled over and played dead for his nomination until it was too late to do anything about it. Quite a contrast to what Senate R’s would do if Obama nominated someone as comparably far to the left. (Relax. Won’t happen. Even if Obama were so inclined, there’s nobody like that currently on the federal bench.)
The Scalia-Thomas-Roberts-Alito bloc is going to plague this country’s legal precedents for generations. All four were predictable as reactionary ideologues at the time of their nominations. But only one (Thomas) got any significant opposition. Hope there’s a lesson learned by Senate Dems for the next Republican presidency, but I’m not optimistic.
Dems blocked Bork and (unanimously) got Kennedy, who has voted with the neo-fascists on nearly every important issue. I’m not at all sure Bork would have been significantly worse. The whole court appointment system is yet another broken wheel that’s been around for too long.
There’s a certain amount of hypocrisy involved though. We don’t have free speech across the board. Do you think demonstrators celebrating Sept 11 would be left alone or even get their day in court, for example?
The issue is a little less black-and-white than Boo paints it. It was necessary for the majority to rule the way it did, but Alito has voted wrong on far less excusable issues, with far less cause. I’m just surprised he felt any empathy for the bereaved victims. It’s not so bad that somebody did.
I’m just surprised he felt any empathy for the bereaved victims.
I’m not – the deceased child was a soldier and the family was white. It’s exactly the kind of folks that Alito can sympathize with.
If the deceased were a gay man and/or the family was black I would be surprised then.