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.

Comments

This guy hates freedom

[macadamia_harold]

Kenneth Starr will take the side of an Alaska school board against a student who displayed a rude banner off school property.

What's up this guy's ass about personal liberties? anti-free speech, anti-free love; the only thing he seems to like is all the free attention he gets.

Some thoughts

[agent dero]

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.

Re:Some thoughts

[exley]

American public education must be stopped.

I could not have said it better myself. I had a good experience in high school, but as far as I can tell, that is by far the exception. Public schools are a mess. Parents have no leverage.

I can see the points being made but I can't give up on public education just yet The fact that you had a good experience, I had a good experience, and undoubtedly many more have good experiences show that the system can work. Now, granted, my views are tainted by the fact that I did come out of a good public school system and I admittedly have a narrow field of view based on that. But still, just because it's fucked up doesn't mean it's irreparable. Maybe it is, but at this point I can't get on the "let's destroy public schools and dump the kids into private schools" bandwagon.

I would really like to see public education continue as an option. Of course, it needs to be a viable option -- so let's work on getting to that point instead of just punting. The discourse in this country over the last several years makes it seem as if we are more intent on feeding money to private schools (vouchers, vouchers, vouchers...) than actually getting serious about fixing public education.

Abolish public schools, quit taxing property to pay for schools and let the parents be responsible for their children's educations.

Think about a lot of parents out there... Are you really sure you wanna give them this responsibility? :)

Re:Some thoughts

[Coryoth]

Public schools are a mess. Parents have no leverage. Abolish public schools, quit taxing property to pay for schools and let the parents be responsible for their children's educations.

I'm sorry that the US public school system is so appallingly broken. I would like to point out, however, that being public is not the reason it is broken. There are many publicly funded education systems around the world that are doing just fine. Take a look at Finland for example, who finished first in a study of math, science and reading skills of students in industrialised countries. You might also note the other countries that did well, such as South Korea, Canada, and the Netherlands all have public school systems. Public schooling need not be a recipe for poor quality - the fact that public schools are so poor in the US is clearly due to something else, possibly political, possibly cultural. If it is a cultural problem then abandoning public schools is not going to fix it. I would suggest you stop making excuses and start working out exactly why it is that the US school systems sucks so badly.

What do Republican's stand for?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time when Republicans worked to lower taxes and respect individual right.

Now, it seems like Republicans are for spying, big-government & 7 trillion dollar debts (which can only be paid for by cutting services WHILE raising taxes). Honestly, what does the party even stand for anymore? "Sacrifice the future for the next election".

Maybe I was just stupid and Naive to know any better, and Republicans were always fascists in disguise.

Re:Give thanks to Starr

[Millenniumman]

You forgot to close your sarcasm tag, and the sarcasm formatting is spilling over to all of the comments below you!