1
Tell Cohen to file this under: No shit, Sherlock.

2 Considering the ACLU stood with the KKK in Skokie, this shouldn't be a great leap. But for leftists, it of course is.

3 Even a blind hog...

4 Even a blind squirrel...

5 Even a broken clock...

6 Do you hear heads exploding in NYC?

7 I don't believe he believes this.  He's a lefty.  Lefties don't believe in free speech.  They believe in political speech that benefits them.

8 Guess not everyone wants to be invited to the cocktail circuit.

9 Hmmm, well then Justice Breyer, could the Victory Mosque be considered a long, loud cry of "fire" in a crowded business district?

10
"The secret to freedom is courage,"

Profound. She's a regular Maggie Thatcher.

For Obama, the path to peace is apparently appeasement.

_{You can quote me on that.}

11 Why should any adult not in a coma get special credit for knowing our Constitution?

12 Free Speech will be another battle that will have to be fought with the Betas of the Left, who cower from honest speech and try to label it "scary".

13 WTF did Palin or asshole Gingrich have to do with buring the Qurans?  That is just another snarky attack based on nothing.

As for idiot Breyer, I already weighed in on that. Drew, aren't you a lawyer?  The courts have weighed in on this hate speech shit several times. It is now muddier than the Mississippi at flood stage.

The last ruling involved a cross burning. If the "speech" involves an "act" of intimidation it is not protected speech.  The current locus seems to be whether or not the speech damages liberal thought or conservative thought. Or, as in the case of the cross burning, attacks a "protected class" favored by the liberals.

14 The only thing that keeps him from being at the top of that list is he's never really written anything of consequence. He's got no Roe or Lawrence or Hamdan to his name.

That's because his "opinions" are incoherent legal drivel paying inconsistent selective attention to precedent, with liberal helpings of MSU sauce, that no rational justice, even an arch liberal like Ginsburg, could use to form a rational system of law.

15 Stephen Breyer disagrees. Burning a Koran is like shouting fire in a crowded theater. Eseentially, threats of Muslim violence preempt the First Amendment.

16

Has Nat Hentoff weighed in on this yet?

I'm a lot more interested in what he has to say about the First Amendment that this WaPo weasel.

 

17

The top brass of the entire admin came down on Jones, including the FBI.

Now remember the fit the Left had when Ashcroft covered the marble boobie statue.

18 I still think Obama was wrong to go after Jones in a public way.

Quite an understatement - if Bush and the military establishment publicly and privately tried to get an anti-war protest stopped, wouldn't that have gotten the the same level and type of coverage as the Plame affair?

The president certainly has the right to condemn someone engaging in his free speech rights, but having the military and FBI lean on him is beyond the pale.

19
Wow. Came across this beaut of an article during a google news search. It's translated from a spanish newspaper. Read what "the world" is saying about the current electoral goings on in the U.S.

Actually, it's just two or three hairs away from an MFM story.

20 Saw something somewhere (NYT?) that the religion of peace wants the pastor to be killed.

The religion of unabated rage.

21 Why was it "bigoted"?

22 But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on “GMA” that he’s not prepared to conclude that — in the internet age — the First Amendment condones Koran burning.

This should be a Republican talking point through the election. Heck, they should be calling for Breyer's impeachment.

23 Do you hear heads exploding in NYC? That wasn't a head.

24 Oh, and you have to love liberal logic;

Burning the Koran? Unconstitutional because it would make a religious group mad.

Defunding Piss Christ? Unconstitutional because the government cannot stop expenditures just because they might make a religious group mad.

25 Breyer ought to do something more useful with his time. Like opening a dick wash in Africa.

26 I think Obama should have washed his junk before he went after anyone.

27 Don't worry, the people that pay him are eager to censor themselves and bend over for threats of violence. And about the "it will put our troops in danger" losers....that is what we are there for assholes, to kick ass and preserve our freedoms.

28 The secret to progress is empathy.

29 It says something about the Mohammedan Mouthpiece's regime that the response to "threats to our military" has changed from "turn the military loose to deal with the threats" to "let's all submit to the Muzzies."

Cohen's daily dose of kool-ade hadn't kicked in yet when he wrote this. He'll be back in regular full-lib mode soon.

30 The secret to progress is empathy.
Posted by: The Man For Our Times, Barack Obama


Sucks to be you....

31 So, if I'm hearing Breyer correctly, all I have to do is tell you to shut up, threaten you and those that live on your street with violence, and that justifies taking away your 1st. Amendment rights........but not mine.

32 20, did you notice she was the press secretary for Salvador Allende? Beautiful stuff.

33 We all need to burn a koran.  It's about freedom now, not religious tolerance.

34
Dick Cohen is right but he doesn't even know why he's right.

35 Breyer is working really hard to be one of the worst Justices ever

Don't rush me gringo.  I'll get to it, mañana.

36 So the first ammendment won't protect this pastor who burns a koran, according to Breyer, it will of course protect the people who videotape the burning and make sure that the entire world has a chance to get offended and enraged over it? That is so logical.

37 Jones is neither a great man nor the leader of a great cause. But what he wanted to do was both permissible under our system and, in a sense, valued.

He made a pretty strong point too, whether or not he meant too.

There is a severe double standard in the US Government-Media complex.

How would the media react to the President trying to stop someone from burning a bible? How would the "Christian community" react?

Now why is it so different with Islam?

The left spends a lot of their time trying to draw a comparison between conservative Christians and Islamists but as we can see with this event, there is no comparison.

38 I promise you Imam Rauf could gladly put on a retrospective of my work in the GZM... and my friends on the Left would still be unable to connect the dots. Anyway, I guess I should have washed my dick a little better.

39 "Prior restraint." It's my dream. It's my nightmare.

40 Frida Modak is a journalist and was press secretary to former Chilean President Salvador Allende.

Posted by: toby928 at September 14, 2010 12:28 PM (S5YRY)

So we've got an international socialist complaining about national socialism? Isn't that like those Star Trek characters with half white half black faces that hated each other because one was white on the right and the other on the left?

41
And about the "it will put our troops in danger" losers....that is what we are there for assholes, to kick ass and preserve our freedoms.

Posted by: Mr Pink at September 14, 2010 12:25 PM (RgDfL)

They are big boys (and girls) and they can take care of themselves- just ask any of Saddam Hussein's "Elite Republican Guards", that is if you can find any of them.

Sun-Tzu said that "...if your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him..."  I'm sure the military intel types will be able to leverage all the frothing rage that American free speech can generate into any number of military advantages.

42 well one thing this burning and mosque controversy has done is take our minds off the fact the the "war" in Afganistan is going down the tubes?

43

I still think Obama was wrong to go after Jones in a public way.

Where he was wrong, and you made this point pretty much, is that Obama came down with some enthusiasm on the side of the NY mosque with an exclamation point on freedom.  By his arbitrary application of 'freedom for thee but not for thee' he opens the door once again, for people to question his loyalties - his affilitations.  To him, the koran burnings were distastful while for a whole bunch of Americans, the NY mosque is.  His inability to keep from weighing in on these divisive controversies, or at least his inability to come in on the correct side, is the gun he keeps shooting himself in the foot with.

44 Let me be clear, the only reason I'm not standing with Pastor Jones is this damned umbrella...

45

Question:  Does not Freedom of Religion, also give you the RIGHT to disagree with, and preach against, other religions if that is YOUR Religious belief?  I know modern Christianity has become Non Confrontational... but that is just MODERN Christianity...

 

46 Same argument could have been made in WW2...don't say anything anti-Hitler, it will put our troops in danger. It is a dumb argument made by pussies with a healthy dose of sand in their vagina slowly turning into a pearl.

47 Blue Hen at 2 - The ACLU did defend the rights of the KKK at Skokie but considering that the KKK is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party that's not too surprising.

48

It's at least likely that some nutcases in Astan or Iraq or someplace else who would have stayed home will, with this as the final straw, decide to go out and kill Americans.  Or blow up a nursery school if it's closer.

The point, however, is that this is a larger war.  The nutcases will be out with their suicide vests or grenades or IEDs or AKs, or whatever eventually, with or without Jones' antics or anything like it.  If we keep it from blowing up in, say, Astan this week, there will be more nutcases left over to make trouble next week.

The guys who would have died stopping Hitler's militarization of the Rhineland in 1936 would have died later on in 1940.  They had four years of life, but the cost was WW II.

49 So does this mean I can go to jail if I burn an Aleister Crowley book in front of Wiccans?

50 considering that the KKK is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party that's not too surprising. Be sure to take advantage of our Charcoal Cross loyalty program. With every fifth burnt cross you get a free ticket to your state's Democratic Party Convention, with host bar. It costs nothing to join, and we appreciate your business!

51

Worry not... I'll be free soon to feast on your souls anyway...

But don't burn my books dammit... or its a hate crime!

52 OT:  I got this email, thought it was funny, although I doubt its true, still seems like it could happen.

You will love this one, I haven't stop laughing yet.

For those of you who have never traveled to the west, or southwest, cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways (sometimes across highways), to prevent cattle from crossing over that area.  For some reason the cattle will not step on the "guards," probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.

A few months ago, President Obama received and was reading a report that there were over 100,000 cattle guards in Colorado .  The Colorado ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, so he ordered the Secretary of the Interior to fire half of the cattle guards immediately!

Before the Secretary of the Interior could respond and presumably try to straighten President Obama out on the matter, Vice-President Joe Biden, intervened with a request that...before any cattle guards were fired, they be given six months of retraining for Arizona border guards.  'Times are hard', said Joe Biden, 'it's only fair to the cattle guards and their families!'

53

Hmmm... sooooo... does this mean that anyone speaking out against us restarting the sacrifices, is a bad evil person?

 

Let the Reconquista continue!

54 Go ahead. Try to burn my book. Try it. Many have tried, none have succeeded. Now go Yog my Sothoth.

55 Gen. Petraeus was wrong to weigh in on an issue concerning constitutional rights, no matter how unwise or stupid or dangerous the exercise of that free speech was. His concerns  should not be the safety of troops at the expense of our freedoms. That protection is supposed to be what the military is for.

56

So following Breyer's reasoning, since there have been documented cases of violent reaction to abortion clinics, we should seriously consider restricting abortion as a possible incitement to violence.

Maybe I'll drop in at Feministing or Pandagon and make that argument. I'm sure I'd get a thoughtful, well reasoned response.

57

As to Breyer.  What he is saying is that "since we've limited FREE SPEECH before, we can limit it again, you see, we are the law."

Making someone MAD does not make them dangerous.  The CHOOOOOOOSE to be dangerous.

Right Stevie Breyer????  You are PRO-CHOICE??  RIGHT??

58 Note, this article came out after the Koran burning was canceled and after the scheduled date had passed. I wonder if Cohen would have written if Jones had gone forward?

59 Aren't Supreme Court Judges supposed to like stay out of politics and just rule on cases that come up in front of them and keep their mouths shut about political stuff?  I mean Breyer is a douche and all, but what happens if a case like this comes up and he is still on the bench?  By the rules he should recuse himself as he has already rendered his personal opinion in public, but I doubt he would.

60

@ 38

*phew*

 

coffee on keyboard.

 

 

Thanks a lot.

61 Why do we send soldiers abroad (at least ostensibly) to establish and to defend freedom where it has been hitherto unknown only to have them phone home and suggest that they fear the consequences of the exercise of such freedom at home? How does this instill confidence in those whom we claim to be rescuing from despotism?

62 "The secret to freedom is courage," she said at the awards ceremony, citing the role a free press had played in freeing her native East Germany. It turns out that some values are more valuable than others.

She cut government spending, also, and now Germany's GDP is increasing by 9%. A certain "humble" US president could learn a thing or two.

63 Oops, that's PJ.

64 The last ruling involved a cross burning. If the "speech" involves an "act" of intimidation it is not protected speech.  The current locus seems to be whether or not the speech damages liberal thought or conservative thought. Or, as in the case of the cross burning, attacks a "protected class" favored by the liberals.

Posted by: Vic at September 14, 2010 12:17 PM (/jbAw)

Could you clairify something for me?  What does it mean "cross burning" is not protected?  Does this mean that someone can't burn a cross on their own private property?  Or that it can't be burned on public property as a protest?  Or that it can't be burned on someone elses private property against their will?

Thanks.

65 Posted by: Ed at September 14, 2010 01:23 PM (Zsqn4)

IIRC, the law specifically punished cross burning with intent to intimidate someone based on race.

I guess you can do it on your own property but not at a protest and not on someone's lawn.Part of the law made cross burning  prima facie evidence of racial intimidation but that was overturned.

In short, it was a mess. Typical of an O'Connor decision.

Scalia was in the minority and as usual had it right.

The case was Virginia v. Black.

66
"Blue Hen at 2 - The ACLU did defend the rights of the KKK at Skokie but considering that the KKK is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party that's not too surprising."

It wasn't the KKK - they defended the right of the American Nazi Party to march in Skokie. Which, for those who don't know it, is a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago that, at the time, was home to many Holocaust survivors.

67

Could you clairify something for me?  What does it mean "cross burning" is not protected?  Does this mean that someone can't burn a cross on their own private property?  Or that it can't be burned on public property as a protest?  Or that it can't be burned on someone elses private property against their will?

Thanks.

Posted by: Ed at September 14, 2010 01:23 PM (Zsqn4)

OK I was about to respond but Drew beat me to it.

68

DrewM: the First Amendment isn't just a good idea, it's who we are.

If they don't like it, that's their business but we aren't changing who we are and the US Government is not in the business of enforcing Islamic (or any religion's) blasphemy laws.

DrewM, I gotta tell you, your moral clarity on this issue is a breath of fresh air and much appreciated.

I remember when this first came up and I was going back and forth with Gabe and Purple Avenger.

From what I remember, Gabe's position was that this endangered our troops and our standing with moderate muslims who might otherwise attack us, and burning these Korans was evil.  And was canceling the burning in light of the above too high a price to pay?  I said yes, on the free speech principle, and Gabe never responded to me again.

Purple Avenger's position was that whatever violence came to this Pastor was entirely his fault and he (PA) had no problem with that.

I just couldn't believe this...  And I was wondering, "am I really so out of touch with this issue?"

Ace has often times mocked people for standing on principle for what he sees as silly reasons.  I.E., if I can't have my PERFECT candidate, I don't want the second best, and if that means the worst candidate gets elected, so be it.

Or making some small campaign issue way more important than was necessary.

And he'd say, "is this really the hill you want to fight and die on?"

And most of the time, I'd agree with him.

But here?  The fear of riots and attacks overseas means that we must curtail our 1st amendment rights here?

Yeah, that is a principle/hill worth fighting over.

(For the record, I don't think ace has weighed in on this Koran issue, and his above reference were to other issues, not this one.)

As I said in earlier posts, I don't think burning Korans, Bibles, piss Christ, Madonna elephant dung statues etc is cool.

It's not.

But, once others say that if you do, they'll kill you for it, then it seems that you have to say "no, I won't let you use threats of violence to restrict this."  And thus the otherwise uncool behavior becomes...principled.  Purposeful.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

I don't want a religeous war.  But I don't want to live in an America where we surrender our 1st amendent to avoid one.

69 Thanks for the response on the cross burning issue guys.

70 Posted by: polynikes at September 14, 2010 01:47 PM (m2CN7)

Shit, you're right. It's been awhile since I read it. He did sign onto parts of the plurality but also dissented in parts.

It was Thomas who was the lone dissent. But he also signed on with Scalia's partial concurrence.

It really was a mess of decisions (Heck of a job Sandy!).

Thanks for the correction.

71 Posted by: Ed at September 14, 2010 01:44 PM (Zsqn4)

Thanks.

As you can tell, it's not like there's a single hive mind at work here.

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