SCOTUS

[jb]

OK, you'd think I'd learn lesson that the usual suspects will just hijack ths shit out of this and reduce it to yet another brain-dead thread where everyone has to wear the jersey, but I'll give it a try to start a legit dicussion.

Maybe don't tell us what you believe, tell us how you think the SCOTUS will rule on this one. I think this is an absolutely fascinating case for the conervative justices and the progressive justices as they are in no win situations for different reasons.



http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2010/10/04/scotus-set-to-make-first-amendment-history/

[FUDU]

IMO the court sees this as easy, a gravy case, I see them upholding the appeal and ruling in favor of free speech.

Now as to what I think of it all....if there was no unreasonable disturbance of the funeral proceedings and and nobody's right to do their religious thing was restricted or prohibited then I would agree with the ruling upholding the appeal. But I would be first in line as an outside to punch the pricks in the face.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

They have the right to say what they say, but a family of a Marine killed serving his country has the right to privacy, no?

Westboro church members are human scum, there are very few life forms out there that are of a lower class. I wish they'd go Jonestown and shut the fuck up.....

[peeker643]

Are you addressing the God Hates Fags freaks or the Gaming issue (or both?) because I think the issues are different depending which one you're focusing on?

As to GHF, as repugnant and despicable as those people are, well, I think I agree with Donny on all counts. They make me physically sick and I'd like to watch them die a slow painful, cancerous death, but as far as their rights to speak freely, I think they need to be upheld.

[jfiling]

Are you addressing the God Hates Fags freaks or the Gaming issue (or both?) because I think the issues are different depending which one you're focusing on?

As to GHF, as repugnant and despicable as those people are, well, I think I agree with Donny on all counts. They make me physically sick and I'd like to watch them die a slow painful, cancerous death, but as far as their rights to speak freely, I think they need to be upheld.

100% agreed. Fred Phelps and his loser family are the most disgusting gang of losers I've ever seen. Louis Theroux did a great documentary on them that I've always felt is must-viewing (look it up on YouTube if you want, because it is excellent).

And even these bottom-feeders deserve the full protection of the First Amendment, as they are very careful to restrict themselves to public spaces when they conduct their sickening "protests".

[jb]

Are you addressing the God Hates Fags freaks or the Gaming issue (or both?) because I think the issues are different depending which one you're focusing on?

As to GHF, as repugnant and despicable as those people are, well, I think I agree with Donny on all counts. They make me physically sick and I'd like to watch them die a slow painful, cancerous death, but as far as their rights to speak freely, I think they need to be upheld.

Do you and FUDU acknoeledge that a funeral is a private event.

How are harassment laws upheld then?

[jfiling]

Ugh. First Google News result on "Fred Phelps" gives another nice insight into how crazy these people are.

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/10/fre ... _train.php

[FUDU]

Are you addressing the God Hates Fags freaks or the Gaming issue (or both?) because I think the issues are different depending which one you're focusing on?

As to GHF, as repugnant and despicable as those people are, well, I think I agree with Donny on all counts. They make me physically sick and I'd like to watch them die a slow painful, cancerous death, but as far as their rights to speak freely, I think they need to be upheld.

Do you and FUDU acknoeledge that a funeral is a private event.

How are harassment laws upheld then?

I do, and admittedly know few details of this case. If the privacy of the event was violated, truly violated (not just some Brumbrmbrmbrm biker fags rolling by outside) the it think it raises a tougher question, more about how do you protect the privacy of said event. But in public society where do we draw boundaries of private and public?

[Ziner]

I don't know why they don't add a clause to the first amendment just saying that if you make ignorant comments or do ignorant things and you get punched in the face and beaten with a pillow case full of doorknobs well then too fucking bad. Problem solved.

In real life, the douchebag will win, thats how this works. Our amendments protect the shit sack scumsuckers too.

[jb]

Are you addressing the God Hates Fags freaks or the Gaming issue (or both?) because I think the issues are different depending which one you're focusing on?

As to GHF, as repugnant and despicable as those people are, well, I think I agree with Donny on all counts. They make me physically sick and I'd like to watch them die a slow painful, cancerous death, but as far as their rights to speak freely, I think they need to be upheld.

Do you and FUDU acknoeledge that a funeral is a private event.

How are harassment laws upheld then?

I do, and admittedly know few details of this case. If the privacy of the event was violated, truly violated (not just some Brumbrmbrmbrm biker fags rolling by outside) the it think it raises a tougher question, more about how do you protect the privacy of said event. But in public society where do we draw boundaries of private and public?

Yep, two sancrosanct principls are free speeech and privacy. This case is a fascinating test of balance. Not so sure this one is as cut and dried as free speech.

[peeker643]

I don't have the details as to the where's and how's of the funeral and the 'protest' and clearly these cases are decided on details.

But if they gathered in a legal area to gather then I imagine it will be difficult to argue they were in the wrong.

My home is private but can be seen from the public roadway. People could scream from the street and I'd hear it.

[jfiling]

Are you addressing the God Hates Fags freaks or the Gaming issue (or both?) because I think the issues are different depending which one you're focusing on?

As to GHF, as repugnant and despicable as those people are, well, I think I agree with Donny on all counts. They make me physically sick and I'd like to watch them die a slow painful, cancerous death, but as far as their rights to speak freely, I think they need to be upheld.

Do you and FUDU acknoeledge that a funeral is a private event.

How are harassment laws upheld then?

I do, and admittedly know few details of this case. If the privacy of the event was violated, truly violated (not just some Brumbrmbrmbrm biker fags rolling by outside) the it think it raises a tougher question, more about how do you protect the privacy of said event. But in public society where do we draw boundaries of private and public?

Yep, two sancrosanct principls are free speeech and privacy. This case is a fascinating test of balance. Not so sure this one is as cut and dried as free speech.

I don't know. Some of the testimony suggests that privacy isn't that much of an issue.

The Justices seemed to warm to some of Phelps' points during the hour-long oral arguments. As NPR reported, Justice Stephen Breyer noted that Snyder hadn't actually seen the protesters -- who were 1,000 feet away on public land -- during the funeral procession. Snyder only saw them on TV later. Breyer said he and his robed coworkers needed to look for some kind of "line" to determine when people can be sued over speech.

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/10/fre ... _train.php

[Cerebral_DownTime]

My home is private but can be seen from the public roadway. People could scream from the street and I'd hear it.

Yeah and i'd bet you could call the cops on them for "distubing the peace" or some random noise violation. I'm pretty sure people can't gather in a public road to scream at someone's house. I may be wrong.

[FUDU]

My home is private but can be seen from the public roadway. People could scream from the street and I'd hear it.

Yeah and i'd bet you could call the cops on them for "distubing the peace" or some random noise violation. I'm pretty sure people can't gather in a public road to scream at someone's house. I may be wrong.

With a permit they can/could, which IMO ultimately brings up the crux, is a permit the defacto inherent way of us saying yeah you're permitted to say/do all those tings these jerk offs did? IOW those jerk offs were inherently protected to be jerk offs if the law already allowed them to be there, saying those things they said. So my question then becomes how in the hell did the father of the Marine even get the initial ruling in his favor (to then get us to this point)?

[jfiling]

My home is private but can be seen from the public roadway. People could scream from the street and I'd hear it.

Yeah and i'd bet you could call the cops on them for "distubing the peace" or some random noise violation. I'm pretty sure people can't gather in a public road to scream at someone's house. I may be wrong.

With a permit they can/could, which IMO ultimately brings up the crux, is a permit the defacto inherent way of us saying yeah you're permitted to say/do all those tings these jerk offs did? IOW those jerk offs were inherently protected to be jerk offs if the law already allowed them to be there, saying those things they said. So my question then becomes how in the hell did the father of the Marine even get the initial ruling in his favor (to then get us to this point)?

That is the key question. It wasn't the law that gave them the right to protest; it was the Constitution. As far as the First Amendment has been interpreted, they don't need a permit to protest on public land, except for certain circumstances (the one that comes to mind is a parade, which infringes on other people's right to travel down a road). The Phelps family, from everything I've seen, sets themselves up on public land without ever even getting in the way of people walking down a sidewalk. Basically, considering how idiotic their politics are, they are geniuses in how they demonstrate on public property.

[exiledbuckeye]

SCOTUS didn't take this case just to draw a yes/no line. They're clearly looking to carve out some exception along the lines of hate speech. Also will be interesting to see where they come down on the freedom of assembly vs. freedom of speech angle...should one trump the other?

I thought it was interesting that based on questioning at the argument, it looks like Sam Alito is probably the most eager to ban this type of speech. No way this comes down as the usual 5-4 conservative/liberal split.

[exiledbuckeye]

My home is private but can be seen from the public roadway. People could scream from the street and I'd hear it.

Yeah and i'd bet you could call the cops on them for "distubing the peace" or some random noise violation. I'm pretty sure people can't gather in a public road to scream at someone's house. I may be wrong.

With a permit they can/could, which IMO ultimately brings up the crux, is a permit the defacto inherent way of us saying yeah you're permitted to say/do all those tings these jerk offs did? IOW those jerk offs were inherently protected to be jerk offs if the law already allowed them to be there, saying those things they said. So my question then becomes how in the hell did the father of the Marine even get the initial ruling in his favor (to then get us to this point)?

That is the key question. It wasn't the law that gave them the right to protest; it was the Constitution. As far as the First Amendment has been interpreted, they don't need a permit to protest on public land, except for certain circumstances (the one that comes to mind is a parade, which infringes on other people's right to travel down a road). The Phelps family, from everything I've seen, sets themselves up on public land without ever even getting in the way of people walking down a sidewalk. Basically, considering how idiotic their politics are, they are geniuses in how they demonstrate on public property.

The lower court action was essentially tort law with some first amendment - intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation - which is where the large money damages come in. The 4th Circuit then overturned the lower court ruling because they felt that free speech trumped those two things.

The Phelps family is batshit crazy but they know their law - something like 15 lawyers in the family.

[Erie Warrior]

They're clearly looking to carve out some exception along the lines of hate speech.

Here's where I go with it, hate crime. Just like the N word. You have the right to protest about gays, you don't have the right to intentionally cause harm to others.

Am I crazy for thinking that any reasonable person can see this is a targeted act against a person based on their sexual orientation, which is against the law. I can't believe this made it to the SC.

[jfiling]

The Phelps family is batshit crazy but they know their law - something like 15 lawyers in the family.

Yep. Bingo. Makes me wonder how far they are willing to go to get a financial settlement out of one of these cases (i.e. - protesting legally but having one of the family members getting punched out for doing so).

[danwismar]

Here's where I go with it, hate crime. Just like the N word.

Criminalizing the entirely subjective emotion of "hate" with hate crimes laws puts us on the very slipperiest of slopes. All hate crimes laws are pernicious, dangerous and unnecessary, IMO. There is nothing illegal about hate all by itself.

Hate crimes = thought crimes. We don't want to go there.

We punish the illegal act itself, not the vaguely defined "hate" that motivated it. If I walk by Fred Phelps on the sidewalk, I can be hating him with every fiber of my being for being the scum-sucking dog that he is, and I have committed no crime. If I do let my hate get the better of me, and act on it against him, we have perfectly good laws against violent acts that serve to punish me appropriately for the act.

If I bash in the skull of an Asian man walking down the street while screaming at him "give me your wallet, motherfucker", should I get a lesser sentence than I would for bashing his skull in while screaming "Die, Chink dog"?

If I kill a man for being an asshole, should I get off with a more lenient sentence than I would receive if I killed him because he was black? How about if he were fat? or lefthanded? What if I just can't stand people who wear penny-loafers in 2010? Should we coin a law to punish me extra-specially for that brand of hatred?

I don't happen to think so. What murder (other than self-defense) doesn't necessarily involve hate, to one degree or another?

By legislating an entire category of criminality for someone's arbitrary (and ultimately changeable) definition of hate, we are, for one thing, favoring the "hateful" person who hates and kills for it, but is smart enough not to yell any hateful epithets while doing it...or manages to not be overheard by a witness.

Secondly, by punishing an arbitrarily defined "hater" for killing, say, an Asian person with a penalty more harsh than the one meted out for killing a person of the same race, we are implicitly placing a higher value on one life than we are on another. That's not justice either.

I know that slippery slope arguments can get tiresome, and they are only apt up to a point, but to get an idea of the potential for abuse of them, consider that the OIC at the United Nations is relentlessly trying to get codified in international law a resolution defining any criticism of religion(read:Islam) as equal to hate, and thus a crime. By definition, any expression of one religion is blasphemous to another religion.

In other words who will we have decide (today, next year, 20 years from now) what is hateful and how it will be defined?

We already have a trend in this country where people with differences of opinion on political and public policy issues are smeared with baseless charges of hatred and racism. It is the province of the intellectually lazy, and those lacking a coherent argument. The potential for abuse of hate crimes legislation is enormous.

There's a saying about justice being blind. Punish the act.

[Erie Warrior]

Wiz,

We can agree that what those people did was absolutely reprehensible. And as you pointed out, there are laws against dealing with them in the manner they deserve. It is not a slippery slope. If you intentionally cause harm to someone else, for any reason, then you are guilty. In this particular case, it was solely because the man was gay. It's illegal in the U.S. to single people out based on the way the look and what they do in their personal life.

You're right, hate is involved in many violent crimes, but to hate a person because they are different is not the same as hating a person because they have wronged you.

Perpetrating crimes against people just because they are different is the pinnacle of ignorance, and cannot be tolerated. It just can't. Here's one good reason why
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101008/ap_ ... g_one_town

[hermanfontenot]

Perpetrating crimes against people just because they are different is the pinnacle of ignorance, and cannot be tolerated.

Perpetrating crimes against people, period, cannot be tolerated. Murder and assault don't get any worse because of the motive. Those good ole' boys in Jasper, Texas, who dragged James Byrd behind their pickup could have just as easily done it for the purpose of robbery. It wouldn't make the crime any less heinous and it wouldn't make James Byrd any less dead.

Murder is murder. Assault is assault. "Hate crimes" are thought crimes, nothing more.

As for the slippery slope... we're already on the downside of it in parts of the West. People in Europe are being prosecuted on grounds of "hate speech" because they criticized Islam. No reason the same thing can't happen here. You want to go down that road?

http://wokv.com/common/ap/2010/10/04/D9IKTQAG2.html

[FUDU]

I agree on all points about thought policing. Remember hate is a somewhat natural emotion, like anger etc. You personally might not think you hate, and maybe it is easier for you to refer to it as disliking some one or thing. But there is no crime in hating anyone, you are free to do so as you please. The only people who might disagree are those who consider themselves God fearing people who believe in a higher, moral power to answer to one day. In terms of living in our society here in the states there is no crime in hating, so you don't have to answer to anybody if you in fact hate someone or thing.

Now what you do with that hate is where it gets tricky.

[Orenthal]

OK, you'd think I'd learn lesson that the usual suspects will just hijack ths shit out of this and reduce it to yet another brain-dead thread where everyone has to wear the jersey, but I'll give it a try to start a legit dicussion.

Passive aggressive self fulfilling prophecy buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I will try my best.

Just the the thought of whether a "Right to Privacy" exists is controversial. If as Breyer stated they were 1,000 feet away and he only learned of it from the TV this is open and shut.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html

[exiledbuckeye]

Hate speech and hate crimes are entirely different things, btw. Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

Hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.

Erie, the crazy thing about this is that the dead soldier wasn't gay; none of the soldiers whose funerals have been picketed have been gay. The Phelps' family's entire point is that they're happy that U.S. soldiers die because the only reason they die is that the U.S. has "embraced homosexuality". Fucking nutjobs.

[hermanfontenot]

protected group.

Preferred treatment for any group under the law is an absolute travesty. Flies in the face of everything this country supposedly stands for.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

protected group.

Preferred treatment for any group under the law is an absolute travesty. Flies in the face of everything this country supposedly stands for.

Yes. That's why I think it should be legal to pelt the Westboro folks with shit and refuse.

[Erie Warrior]

Erie, the crazy thing about this is that the dead soldier wasn't gay; none of the soldiers whose funerals have been picketed have been gay. The Phelps' family's entire point is that they're happy that U.S. soldiers die because the only reason they die is that the U.S. has "embraced homosexuality". Fucking nutjobs.

I did not know that. WTF.

[jfiling]

protected group.

Preferred treatment for any group under the law is an absolute travesty. Flies in the face of everything this country supposedly stands for.

I agree with you there. The entire purpose of creating "protected" populations was to remedy past wrongs done to certain populations, which was absolutely the most heavy-handed way to deal with the issue. The 14th Amendment should have settled once and for all the issue of dealing with people equally under the law, but the Democrats/Liberals/Progressives needed to show they were doing something to keep getting re-elected, and also to show why the country needs a Dem president (to get Supreme Court justices to continue this nonsense).

We are all Americans, and we should all be treated equally under the law. I'd really hope we can all agree on that basic principal.

[exiledbuckeye]

And again, "protected group" refers only to the level of scrutiny that the Court applies to the question before them. Not exactly the same thing as "preferred treatment". Your point remains, but isn't perfectly applicable in this context either.

I don't know if anyone here has read any books on constitutional law and how the Court works with it, but it's fascinating, regardless of your political beliefs.

[jb]

protected group.

Preferred treatment for any group under the law is an absolute travesty. Flies in the face of everything this country supposedly stands for.

I agree with you there. The entire purpose of creating "protected" populations was to remedy past wrongs done to certain populations, which was absolutely the most heavy-handed way to deal with the issue. The 14th Amendment should have settled once and for all the issue of dealing with people equally under the law, but the Democrats/Liberals/Progressives needed to show they were doing something to keep getting re-elected, and also to show why the country needs a Dem president (to get Supreme Court justices to continue this nonsense).

We are all Americans, and we should all be treated equally under the law. I'd really hope we can all agree on that basic principal.

JD, that's a really good point.

Love to see a SCOTUS challenge on hate crimes based on the 14th ammendment.

[FUDU]

100-1, not even close.

A rather funny side bar to go along.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110224/tc_digitaltrends/anonymousseizeswestborobaptistsdomainduringlivetvconfrontation