So far today, there have been three rulings that protect the right winged idealism that speech should be stifled when it comes to drugs (but not when it comes to pro-life advocacy groups) and that people can’t sue when the government wants to give your tax dollars to “faith based” groups.
In the first ruling, the court (in a 5-4 decision) ruled that a school can prohibit a student from posting a banner when that banner is not on school grounds. The students where attending a “school sponsored event” (even though the event was just on a public street). So what does that mean? As long as an event is “school sponsored”, students lose their rights even if they are not actually in school and are on public property? That is absurd.
The sign, “Bong hits for Jesus”, would have no business being displayed in school. However, if the student is on public property then the school should not have the right to take action. What is next, will schools be able to punish students for having webpages?
In the second ruling, the court (in a 5-4 decision) ruled that a Wisconsin “right to life” group should have been able to air an add that suggested voters contact the offices of Harry Reid and request that he not filibuster judicial nominees. Current campaign finance law prohibits groups from running anti-candidate ads in the last 2 months prior to the election. The previous court had ruled that this applied to “express advocacy” (campaign speech) and “issue advocacy” where a candidate was mentioned. Our court, with Sam “I believe in Stare Decisis except for when I don’t” Alito and John “right wing” Roberts as the new kids on the block have decided to once again go against Stare Decisis and determine that issue advocacy is “AOK” and that the WRTL group should have been allowed to air there ad requesting that people contact Feingold (who was up for election at the time) and urge him to not filibuster nominees.
So let me get this straight, if this group said “Don’t vote for Feingold because he filibusters nominees” then it would have been against the law. However, since the group says “Urge Feingold to not filibuster nominees” then the ad becomes ok? The purpose of the ad is to inform voters that Feingold plans to filibuster nominees and therefore he is a “bad choice” for Senator. The INTENT of the ad is clear. I guess intent doesn’t matter to the “New Kids”.
The court, in ruling that the law was unconstitutional as applied to the issue ads, has basically created a loophole in the law. People can now carefully craft their ads in order to circumvent the intent of the law.
In the final ruling, taxpayers where prevented from brining suit against the Executive branch for faith based initiatives. This is just a complete load of bunk. The people who tried to sue the government where claiming that the funds would be banned because of the establishment clause. The court claimed that since it was the Executive Branch and not the Legislative Branch that came up with the program that the establishment clause of the 1st amendment does not apply! They claim that since Congress gave the funding as part of the “day to day operation” of the white house, that the establishment clause is not violated. How can anyone with an ounce of common sense in their head believe that the founding fathers felt that as long as the executive branch establishes religion, then it is “ok”?
I don’t ever want to hear a Conservative use the term “activist” judge again when referring to a liberal judge. It is plain to see that “conservative” justices are capable of judicial activism.
