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Supreme Court's 8-1 Westboro Ruling -- and Alito's Passionate Dissent
By Andrew Cohen - Politics DailyU.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito likely spoke for millions of Americans Wednesday when he decried the strategy, tactics and motives of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church zealots, who picket military funerals to express their virulent anti-gay views. But on the Court, Justice Alito spoke alone. Related Stories Supreme Court Upholds Westboro Baptist Church's Right to Military Funeral Protests Westboro Church Protestors -- Ignore Them Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Funeral of 9-Year-Old Arizona Shooting Victim Bill Would Ban ...
Dissenting Justice: Westboro Ruling Goes Too Far
By Joseph Schuman - AOL NewsWhere should the nation draw the line on free speech? For Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the defense of First Amendment rights expressed by today's majority ruling in the Westboro Baptist Church case goes too far. The 8-1 decision found that the fringe church's hate-filled picketing at the funeral of a Marine corporal killed in Iraq qualified as public discourse protected by the First Amendment. Church members claim soldiers' deaths are God's punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality. Kris Connor, Getty Images Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. was the lone ...
Westboro Court Decision Pits Free Speech Against Common Decency
By Andrea Stone - AOL NewsWASHINGTON -- Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church may have won their case in the U.S. Supreme Court today, but not even the most ardent advocates of free speech are rejoicing. "On a personal level, I can't imagine a single person in this country who doesn't feel the pain of this father" whose Marine son's funeral was picketed by the hate-spewing church, said Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center. "But a free and open marketplace of ideas requires us to hear positions and views that we don't like and which deeply offend us." The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that ...
Supreme Court Sides With Westboro Baptist Church; Twitter Reluctantly Agrees
By Torie Bosch - AOL NewsWho ever said that free speech would be easy? Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church, a small group, made up mostly of members of the Phelps family, that stages protests at military funerals (and other places). The case, Snyder v. Phelps, was filed by the father of a fallen soldier, whose funeral was protested by Westboro. "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. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker," ...
Obama Calls for Reforms in Egypt and an End to Violence
By Politics Daily Staff - Politics DailyFollowing days of increasing unrest in Egypt, President Barack Obama Friday called on President Hosni Mubarak to take "concrete steps" to enact political, social and economic reforms and urged demonstrators and the government to reject the violence that has marked the protests. Speaking from the White House just after 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Obama began by denouncing the violence and reiterating what he described as the right of Egyptians and all people to "peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech and the ability to determine their own destiny." This week, thousands of ...
Smithsonian Removes Jesus Video From Gay Exhibit
By Mara Gay - AOL News(Dec. 1) -- The Smithsonian has removed a video from an exhibit on gay love at its National Portrait Gallery after conservative groups and lawmakers condemned the art as "hate speech" intended to offend Christians ahead of Christmas. Art historians and curators say the video, which depicts Jesus on a crucifix covered with ants, was created in 1987 as a statement about the universal suffering caused by AIDS. In the eye of some beholders, however, the exhibit, which features works from acclaimed artists like John Singer Sargent and Georgia O'Keeffe, is simple blasphemy. Some conservative ...
Opinion: Thankful for What Can Happen Only in America
By Alan Colmes - AOL News(Nov. 23) -- We have so much to be thankful for in America, so count me among the grateful. I'm thankful to live in a country where you can call the president an American-hating, Kenyan-born Muslim Marxist and not in any way have to worry about the government infringing on your right to do so. You can compare the president, or anyone else, benign as they may be, to Adolf Hitler, and still live a happy life with no knock on your door at 3 a.m. by a man with a badge and a uniform. You can become a U.S. senator even though you oppose a civil rights law that bars discrimination based on race, ...
Opinion: Is Amazon.com Guilty of Censorship?
By Debbie Lee Wesselmann - AOL News(Nov. 12) -- As an author, I understand the power of words, both as protest and as artistic tool. For this reason and also because I am an American, I am an ardent supporter of our constitutional right to free speech. However, part of the support of the First Amendment requires that I recognize when something is not a matter of free speech. Take the latest Amazon.com uproar. The giant e-tailer carried a self-published e-book titled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love & Pleasure" that, according to author Phillip R. Greaves II, is a how-to manual. Once the title was discovered among Amazon.com's ...
Can Curtailing Hate Speech Prevent Genocide?
By Betwa Sharma - AOL News
UNITED NATIONS (Nov. 7) -- Can laws against so-called hate speech help prevent incidents of genocide like those that claimed millions of lives in recent decades in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and the Congo? Githu Muigai, a Kenyan lawyer and the U.N.'s special rapporteur on racism, said Monday that even though "xenophobic and racist action" leads to "death and destruction," many domestic legal systems are not equipped to handle such cases. "It is not the norm, even when hate speech is in the statute book, that judges and magistrates and judicial officers are sensitized to the special problem of ...
Author's Kashmir Comments Test India's Free Speech
By Betwa Sharma - AOL News
(Oct. 26) -- Prominent Indian author Arundhati Roy has been accused of treason and could face sedition charges over a taboo-busting statement on Kashmir, a region India and Pakistan have disputed, often violently, for more than 60 years. "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India -- it is a historical fact. Even the Indian government has accepted this," the 1997 Booker prize winner said Sunday at a conference in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Several days earlier in New Delhi, where Roy shared the stage with a well-known separatist leader from the ...
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