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Clinton Prosecutor Now Targeting Free Speech
Virchull tells us about a case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear, in which former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr will take the side of an Alaska school board against a student who displayed a rude banner off school property. The banner read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" and it got the student suspended. He and his parents sued the school board for violating his First Amendment rights. The case is nuanced: while the student did not display the banner on school property, he did do so during a school function. Starr is said to be arguing the case for free.
I first read about this over here, and I really find the entire thing sickening. According to the linked article from The Mercury News, this was most certainly not during a school function. Just because the school let's out for something like the torch event, doesn't mean the students are still under the school's "juristiction."
American public education must be stopped. The high school I graduated from recently enforced school uniforms, suspending students who refuse to conform.[1]
For a country full of people shouting "freedom, democracy!" we sure let the next generations get systematically fucked out of their own freedoms.
[1] This same high school suspended me (one day, three days in-school suspension, after which I was banned from using school computers for the rest of the school year) for doing as a teacher had asked me, hooking up computers to the network to use a deparment purchased laser printer, after said printers were used to look at pr0n during school hours.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
These Nazis cost themselves Congress; now they're going to cost themselves the rest of the country! LOL!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You know, I have no problem with this case going to the supreme court. As the summary states, this case does seem rather "nuanced." I don't think that many people would argue that a sign that says "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" should be allowed at school, or at a school function. So, as I see it, the court is to decide whether or not the situation constitued a school function.
Personally, I would agree that that seems to be a bit fuzzy in this case. On the one hand, the kid was "on a public sidewalk" and away from the school. On the other hand, the students were released from class (presumably for the specific purpose of attending the torch relay, as the article says), and were accompanied by a teacher. IANAL, and this just doesn't seem particularly clear cut to me.
This seems to be exactly what the supreme court is supposed to do. If they rule in favour of the school, and people don't like that, then they can talk to their representative and have legislation created to clarify the situation in the future. The same goes for the reverse. But when a case like this comes up, it is useful to have it go to the courts, and perhaps later brought to the attention of the legislature, so that we can have some clearly defined boundaries for the future.
not what the student did or what the school officials did. The student is a dumb fuckup, and the underpaid staffers are just floundering around daily in their inadequacy and incompetence. Everything's perfectly normal up to this point.
What deeply incenses me is this asshole Starr, who has nothing better to do than poke his wiener into other peoples' dirty laundry and who clamors to stand first in line when it comes to demolishing freedom. Starr is a traitor to the American nation and should be hung - by the testicles.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
I think schools can only restrict free speech if it disrupts the learning process. It would be like a restaurant kicking someone out for not wearing the proper attire because it can disrupt the others who are being paid to be served.
However, all this has to do with is the actual property itself. If the student wasn't actually on the school's property, I don't believe the school has one bit of authority to suspend him.
A restaurant can deny you service if you are a famous person they don't like because of your actions, correct? If so, consider this. The famous person, as in this example, hasn't paid for the service, nor is guaranteed a right to the service in the first place. (Supermarkets are a different matter entirely, but please don't get me started on this.) Education is a different matter, which is more guaranteed for someone to have, let alone the fact the payment of the service has been completed. We taxpayers are simply paying it for the student so the student doesn't have to pay for it himself.
He doesn't need one.
The anointing oil he used contained cannabis-extracts, and in the quantities it was used in (being doused in it) would be far more potent than your average joint.
it was a public school, which is a part of the government
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The Independent Counsel was a position created in the wake of Watergate when the public did not believe the normal investigation and prosecution tools of the Executive branch were effective when high-level Executive branch officers were involved in (or suspected of) crime. The Independent Counsel, once appointed, and unlike a normal prosecutor, had only one target to investigate, an unlimited budget, and could not be fired by normal means.
When Ted Olson, a high-level Republican staffer, was accused of lying to Congress, an Independent Counsel was appointed to investigate. He challenged the Independent Counsel law as being an unconstitutional fragmentation of Executive power. He lost the case, but Justice Scalia, the boogeyman of liberals, dissented. His opinion contained an uncanny prediction of the Starr investigation of Clinton. He saw the dangers of the office of the Independent Counsel.
What if [the appointing judges] are politically partisan, as judges have been known to be, and select a prosecutor antagonistic to the administration, or even to the particular individual who has been selected for this special treatment? There is no remedy for that, not even a political one. Judges, after all, have life tenure, and appointing a surefire enthusiastic prosecutor could hardly be considered an impeachable offense. So if there is anything wrong with the selection, there is effectively no one to blame. The independent counsel thus selected proceeds to assemble a staff. As I observed earlier, in the nature of things this has to be done by finding lawyers who are willing to lay aside their current careers for an indeterminate amount of time, to take on a job that has no prospect of permanence and little prospect for promotion. One thing is certain, however: it involves investigating and perhaps prosecuting a particular individual. Can one imagine a less equitable manner of fulfilling the executive responsibility to investigate and prosecute? What would be the reaction if, in an area not covered by this statute, the Justice Department posted a public notice inviting applicants to assist in an investigation and possible prosecution of a certain prominent person? Does this not invite what Justice Jackson described as "picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him"? To be sure, the investigation must relate to the area of criminal offense specified by the life-tenured judges. But that has often been (and nothing prevents it from being) very broad - and should the independent counsel or his or her staff come up with something beyond that scope, nothing prevents him or her from asking the judges to expand his or her authority or, if that does not work, referring it to the Attorney General, whereupon the whole process would recommence and, if there was "reasonable basis to believe" that further investigation was warranted, that new offense would be referred to the Special Division, which would in all likelihood assign it to the same [487 U.S. 654, 731] independent counsel. It seems to me not conducive to fairness. But even if it were entirely evident that unfairness was in fact the result - the judges hostile to the administration, the independent counsel an old foe of the President, the staff refugees from the recently defeated administration - there would be no one accountable to the public to whom the blame could be assigned.
. . . .
The above described possibilities of irresponsible conduct must, as I say, be considered in judging the constitutional acceptability of this process. But they will rarely occur, and in the average case the threat to fairness is quite different. As described in the brief filed on behalf of three ex-Attorneys General from each of the last three administrations:
"The problem is less spectacul
I appreciate where you're coming from, but can this also be applied to actions? If I sit on a hill with a sniper rifle, shoot at your head, and then miss, have I done anything wrong? Let's say the bullet whizzes past your head and lands in the ocean. Nobody is harmed. You never even notice that it happened. Should I go to jail for attempted murder, or is the "no harm, no foul" rule still in effect?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"