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July 12, 2007
“Unfree Speech”
By
Jack D. McNamara
“Congress
shall make no law … 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.”
So says the Bill of Rights and so says Washington Post columnist Robert
J. Samuelson in his July 4 column “Unfree Speech.” The columnist went
on to say in his first paragraph — “The Fourth of July is an apt moment
to reflect on one of the great underreported stories of our time: the
rise of speech regulation (our emphasis). Glance at the First
Amendment, but do not think it still applies. Large bodies of political
speech are now governed by laws, agency regulations, court decisions
and lawyerly interpretations. Speech has become unfree.”
Samuelson’s column principally addresses a major free speech case of
the U.S. Supreme Court term just ended, FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life
(WRTC) which we discussed last week.
Bong
Hits 4 Jesus
The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled in late June that a high school
principal who disciplined a student for displaying a banner, “Bong Hits
4 Jesus,” did not violate the students’ free speech rights. Writing for
the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the principal,
Deborah Morse, was justified in regulating the students’ message
because the banner could be interpreted as promoting drug use.
The 5-4 decision did not overturn the leading 1969 precedent of Tinker
v. Des Moines Independent Community School District but instead created
a new exception. The 1969 ruling concerned a Vietnam War protest and
produced the famous statement: “Students do not shed their
constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.”
Justices
Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito emphasized in a concurring opinion
that the decision only addressed the restriction of speech promoting
drug use. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
newsletter of July 9, “They (Kennedy and Alito) also said the Court’s
decision did not support any restrictions on speech that touched on
political or social issues, including the war on drugs or legalizing
marijuana …” Three of the four dissenters made similar observations.
One justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote separately that he preferred to
overturn the Tinker decision to “adding to the patchwork of exceptions”
which now riddle the Court’s precedents regarding free speech for
students.
We wrote about the WRTL decision last week and we expect the problems
raised by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) to continue.
This is now an election year, a dozen candidates for the nation’s
presidency to be decided in November 2008. It is all going to cost more
than a billion dollars.
The
23rd Congressional District of Texas
Up until this weekend we believed that the Republican Party was too
downcast to challenge the Democrats in this U.S. House of
Representatives’ district.
We experienced one of the most harrowing of contests in our short
frontier history in 2006. Ciro Rodriguez defeated incumbent Republican
Henry Bonilla in a race designed by the courts to correct past
discriminatory actions by the Texas Legislature. We didn’t have the
result until December.
The result of the court’s actions were to design a congressional
district which is about 60% Hispanic and which stretches from San
Antonio to east El Paso. That is 700 miles of the toughest political
problems facing the U.S.
Republicans
had very seriously and competently designed the district for themselves
and Bonilla, who was the only ethnically Mexican American Republican in
the U.S. House of Representatives.
It appears, however, that Rodriguez will have a Republican opponent in
2008.
On July 7 the staunchly conservative Wall Street Journal printed a long
op-ed by Jonathan Gurwitz, a member of the editorial board of the San
Antonio Express News — also staunchly conservative. “The Troubled Texas
GOP” is one of those columns packed with numbers and expert opinions
which “view with alarm” and enjoin their readers to wake up and get to
work. Or else …
Mr. Gurwitz says that Ciro Rodriguez “ran a haphazard campaign,” which
is precisely the sort of thing a big city editorial board (which
supported Bonilla) would say about a grass roots, last minute effort
which blew their opponent out of the water … a “haphazard” campaign
which defeated a seven-term incumbent? A Democrat who won Brewster
County? Will wonders never cease?
We haven’t seen any Republicans since last December but we hear that
Ciro Rodriguez will visit us about the 28th of July so we can ask him
about his “haphazard” campaigning.
Jail
for Journalists
The big news this week of course is the “commutation” of the liar I.
Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s sentence. No jail time, pay a fine, and the
rest of it is so hugely screwed up that a congressional hearing will be
required to discover the terms of Libby’s sweetheart deal. President
George W. Bush thought jail time “harsh” so he used his presidential
prerogative to commute that part of the sentence.
But citizens need have no fear. Former New York Times reporter Judith
Miller went to jail for 85 days. The liar scoots but the reporter who
wrote no story concerning the outing of a CIA agent did 85 days in jail
protecting Libby from the consequences of his statements, known as
protecting a source.
When Libby does no time and Miller does 85 days we think journalism has
changed and not necessarily for the better. •
(Also published by the Big Bend
Sentinel of Marfa, Texas July 12, 2007.)
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