1st Amendment sucks sometimes...

[dirkterrell]

Man shouts at the top of his lungs, "I THINK you're an asshole!!!"

Dirk

[Devaclis]

The thing about Martyrs is they are dead.

Let them be Martyrs.

[TFOGGuys]

Freedom of speech has always had limits. You can't say things that endanger people, for example. Saying "I'm going to kill you." is quite different from saying "God hates fags." like these idiots do. One is a threat. The other is debate.

Dirk

Limits of freedoms have traditionally been where the exercise of that freedom intrudes or interferes with the rights of another. So does the WBC's right to free speech trump the grieving families' right to freely practice their religion (funerals are after all, mostly religious rites)?

[dirkterrell]

Limits of freedoms have traditionally been where the exercise of that freedom intrudes or interferes with the rights of another. So does the WBC's right to free speech trump the grieving families' right to freely practice their religion (funerals are after all, mostly religious rites)?

According to the Chief Justice's comments, they were away from the actual service and they were on public property. If they had interrupted the service, that would have been a different matter. As vile and disgusting as I think these wastes of human flesh are, this sort of thing is the very essence of the 1st amendment.

Dirk

[Devaclis]

Poppycock I say.

[Snowman]

Craker Jack is better...

[MetaLord 9]

fiddlefaddleftw

[salsashark]

mmmm crunchnmunch

[TFOGGuys]

Yet actions should not be without consequence...

Someone may be free to call me an asshole, but as that comment may be considered incendiary, they should expect that I might decide they would look better with their nose moved to a different location on their face. The problem with these WBC asshats is that they expect to attack and degrade people without any risk of retaliation or penalty.

[rforsythe]

Yet actions should not be without consequence...

Someone may be free to call me an asshole, but as that comment may be considered incendiary, they should expect that I might decide they would look better with their nose moved to a different location on their face. The problem with these WBC asshats is that they expect to attack and degrade people without any risk of retaliation or penalty.

No. They WANT someone to kick their ass in public, it just gets them more attention and media time. Amazingly the whole of the American public has risen above that so far. That doesn't mean I disagree however; there are just some people in this world that deserve a solid beating.

[dirkterrell]

Yet actions should not be without consequence...

Someone may be free to call me an asshole, but as that comment may be considered incendiary, they should expect that I might decide they would look better with their nose moved to a different location on their face. The problem with these WBC asshats is that they expect to attack and degrade people without any risk of retaliation or penalty.

Oh, I agree. I certainly wouldn't be the one calling the cops if someone punched their lights out and if one of them got in my face, I might not resist the urge to do so myself. But this is speech, carried out on public property. They didn't encroach on private property or interfere with the ability of the mourners to hold the service. We don't want the government deciding if what someone says is insulting. That experiment has been done many times, and the harm is much greater than letting a handful of inbred idiots put their ignorance on public display.

Dirk

[Snowman]

Damn, what a waste of a good threadjack...

[wulf]

The westbro church protested my brother's funeral. I'll reserve my words on the subject.

[Snowman]

The westbro church protested my brother's funeral. I'll reserve my words on the subject.

That these people have no sense of common decency and have built up so much bad karma that their god will condemn them to a hell where each will be individually disemboweled and strangled with their own entrails over and over again for eternity?



Damn, I love the 1st amendment...

[TwistyRydr]

AWESOMENESS!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.godvine.com/Christian-Vet...ldier-278.html

[Reyven]

Good find Kat, thanks for sharing.

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

The 1st Amendment doesn't suck, the Westboro fuckhead "Church" sucks. It is just a group of people who never learned that, even though you may not agree with others points of view you should have enough common decency to keep your opinions to yourself when those people are burying a loved one. Simple manners really. Maybe they should pick up Emily Post once in a while.

+10,000

You wanna prevent this? Join The Patriot Guard as I did. I haven't gone on a ride yet with them to thwart the Westboro scum, but look forward to it.

I applaud the Supreme Court for actually doing their job.

.....and if I ever saw someone who decided that one of those Westboro scum were better off having a small (Ahem!) accident, well hell, I didn't see NUTHIN' officer. He musta just tripped, fallen, and smashed his head on the ground a coupla times......

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

"Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and -- as it did here -- inflict great pain," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. "On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course -- to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate."

I think this sums it up.

And, gotta love THIS tidbit Dirk was referring to:
"I hope The Devil skullf*cks them in both eye sockets sequentially and repetitively, and that this fate visits them soon."