Supreme Court Hears Free-Speech Rights Case

    The United States Supreme Court today will hear its first big dispute on student free-speech rights in almost 20 years because of a case in Juneau, Alaska where a high school principal violated a students free-speech right by suspending him for displaying a banner which read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

   The student, Joseph Frederick, says that he displayed the banner as a joke and to be funny not to mention getting himself on television as the Winter Olympic torch passed by.

   Frederick was suspended for ten days by principal Deborah Morse because the banner advocated or promoted illegal drug use in violation of school policy, according to her.  Source

   It is worth noting that Mr. Frederick was standing on a public sidewalk across from the school when the principal grabbed his banner and crumpled it. The students were allowed out of class to watch the torch as it passed by.

   Though Mr. Frederick may have done something that was in bad taste, I see no reason for him to have been suspended since that banner was not on the school grounds while being displayed. I'm no legal expert but I would think that the school policy doesn't mean to much if the incident happened off-grounds.

   We'll see how this works out but it would be a not to good thing for the Supreme Court to side with the school on this one. The Bush administration sides with the school, of course. Anything to stifle freedom of expression is fine with this group of clowns.

   Ken Starr will present his case behalf of the principal and the school board.

    Frederick's lawyer, Douglas Mertz of Juneau, is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.    Source

   A decision is expected in June.

 

Technorati tags: First Amendment, Bush Administration, ACLU, Joseph Frederick

Why are you paying Karl Rove's salary?

   From AlterNet

Cenk Uygur is co-host of The Young Turks, the first liberal radio show to air nationwide.

Why are you paying Karl Rove's salary?
Posted by Cenk Uygur on March 16, 2007 at 7:48 AM.

Karl Rove is in trouble now for being involved in the decision to fire US attorneys for political reasons. But, of course, he was involved. That's what his job is at the White House: politics.

What I don't understand is why the American taxpayer has to pay for a political operative to operate out of the White House. Of course, every president gets advice about policy and politics from his staff while he is in office. But Karl Rove doesn't do policy, he only does politics.

The White House made this very clear when they moved Rove out of policy positions before the 2006 elections so that he could focus on the 2006 campaign. So, why were we paying him to do that?

If the Republican Party wants to hire him as their consultant, that's one thing. But why should American taxpayers of all political persuasions pay for a consultant to sit inside the White House and try to engineer Republican victories?

And now we find out that part of that engineering involved pressuring Justice Department prosecutors to launch investigations of Democrats and/or stop investigations of Republicans. If they didn't, there would be consequences. And there were.

The Republicans lost the elections. Exactly one month later, seven of those prosecutors were fired. They're not strong on subtlety in the Bush administration.

Isn't this a thousand miles over the line? I think it's pretty clearly over the line that he is being paid by the government to work for the Republicans. But when he plays with the Justice Department to carry out his political plots and plans, he's gone way too far.

I think that Alberto Gonzales is going to step down soon. I explain why here. But the short answer is because this scandal has now touched Rove and by extension - and admission - the president.

But even if Gonzales does step down, that doesn't explain why Rove should continue to be paid by the taxpayers to hatch his political plots inside the White House - and use government agencies for those purposes. There's no excuse for it. Rove must go.

 

Technorati tags: Karl Rove, White House, Bush Administration