Frank and Ernest by Thaves for April 25, 2010

It was hard enough for the little guy to be heard. Now that Corporate Spending is out there we can forget the little guy.

No one hears butterfly wings during a tornado.

I read one in the news the other day, that the American Sup. court said that making animal torture and snuff films is free speech. There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with justifying horrible(and criminal) acts to protect an ideal.

Hugh B. Hayve-

I agree with you when you say that those films are horrible things.

BUT, when the courts start deciding exactly where the line is between acceptable free speech and unacceptable free speech, that’s when the real trouble will begin.

The Supreme Court is off the hook.

I think we’re in trouble.

TIM You’re absolutely right. I’m not sure, but I think that might have been why they put it number one.

It’s a fine line. How about covering theose lousy films with existing animal cruelty laws. By their reasoning, Child porn videos would be acceptable(THEY CERTAINLY ARE NOT). Fortunately, the child porn mess is covered by appropriate laws. Why did this mess get as far as the supreme court?

“all sanity is lost.”

In the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

Good thing we have an Conservative Supreme Court to watch out for our moral values. Hope this evil liberal guy doesn’t appoint someone crazy who might vote against some of these libertarian freedoms. :0)

@ Hugh B. Hayve,

That is sick! Where did you read that?

@Hugh B. Hayve, @Maizing The Supreme Court did not say they approved of animal cruelty films. They did say that the law Congress passed was too broad and potentially criminalized actions which were not an obvious target of the law. They also invited Congress to re-write the law. Here’s an article on the case from my local paper: http://tinyurl.com/2ctu7zu

The Justice Dept. lost its case when its attorney was asked if the current campaign finance law would allow the government to prevent the publishing of a book and he agreed that it could. That was enough to convince the Justices that they had to take a hard stand for liberty (not something they do too often these days).

As for the practice of attempting to shoe-horn all sorts of things under one article or another of the Bill of Rights, that stems from the contraction created by the decision to have a Bill of RIghts in the first place, which several Founding Fathers opposed.

Even thought the Bill is clear that there exist other, unspecified rights (9th and 10th Amendments), the act of enumerating some rights without defining rights in general has led to the current silliness of, for example, trying to define pole-dancing as free-speech rather than simply recognizing that you have countless rights limited only by the obligation not to violate the rights of others – and that includes pole-dancing.

As for corporations, their rights ARE rights as fully as are yours, Dear Reader. Nobody gains or loses rights by being (or not) part of one group or another. The rights of a corporation (or a union or a political party or the Cub Scouts) are the rights of everyone involved – no more, no less.