U.S. Constitution
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Title: Can the Secret Service Tell You To Shut Up?
Source:
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URL Source: http://lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano45.1.html
Published: Mar 15, 2012
Author: Andrew P. Napolitano
Post Date: 2012-03-15 12:17:25 by mel
Keywords: None
Views: 2076
Comments: 2
The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from infringing upon the freedom of speech, the freedom of association and the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Speech is language and other forms of expression; and association and petition connote physical presence in reasonable proximity to those of like mind and to government officials, so as to make your opinions known to them. The Declaration of Independence recognizes all three freedoms as stemming from our humanity. So, what happens if you can speak freely, but the government officials at whom your speech is aimed refuse to hear you? And what happens if your right to associate and to petition the government is confined to areas where those of like mind and the government are not present? This is coming to a street corner near you. Certain rights, like thought and privacy and travel, can be exercised on their own. You don't need the government to cooperate with you; you just need to be left alone. Other rights, like those intended to influence the political process, require that the government not resist your exercise of them. Remember the old one-liner from Philosophy 101: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make any noise? Here's the contemporary version of that: If you can criticize the government, but it refuses to hear you, does your exercise of the freedom of speech have any value? When the Framers of the Constitution wrote the First Amendment, they lived in a society in which anyone could walk up to George Washington or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson on a public street and say directly to them whatever one wished. They never dreamed of a regal-like force of armed agents keeping public officials away from the public, as we have today. And they never imagined that it could be a felony for anyone to congregate in public within earshot or eyesight of certain government officials. And yet, today in America, it is. Last week, President Obama signed into law the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. This law permits Secret Service agents to designate any place they wish as a place where free speech, association and petition of the government are prohibited. And it permits the Secret Service to make these determinations based on the content of speech. Thus, federal agents whose work is to protect public officials and their friends may prohibit the speech and the gatherings of folks who disagree with those officials or permit the speech and the gatherings of those who would praise them, even though the First Amendment condemns content-based speech discrimination by the government. The new law also provides that anyone who gathers in a "restricted" area may be prosecuted. And because the statute does not require the government to prove intent, a person accidentally in a restricted area can be charged and prosecuted, as well. Permitting people to express publicly their opinions to the president only at a time and in a place and manner such that he cannot hear them violates the First Amendment because it guarantees the right to useful speech; and unheard political speech is politically useless. The same may be said of the rights to associate and to petition. If peaceful public assembly and public expression of political demands on the government can be restricted to places where government officials cannot be confronted, then those rights, too, have been neutered. Political speech is in the highest category of protected speech. This is not about drowning out the president in the Oval Office. This is about letting him know what we think of his work when he leaves the White House. This is speech intended to influence the political process. This abominable legislation enjoyed overwhelming support from both political parties in Congress because the establishment loves power, fears dissent and hates inconvenience, and it doesn't give a damn about the Constitution. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and only three members of the House voted against it. And the president signed it in secret. It is more typical of contemporary China than America. It is more George III than George Washington. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to assure open, wide, robust, uninhibited political debate, debate that can be seen and heard by those it seeks to challenge and influence, whether it is convenient for them or not. Anything short of that turns the First Amendment into a mirage. Reprinted with the author's permission.
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#1. To: mel (#0)
Secret Service is the new Gestapo. As a matter of law. The trend began under Xlinton, accelerated under Bush, now given the force of federal law by the Kenyan.
Well, it started long before the sink emperor. It's deja vu, all over again! Note the use of the past tense in the article below, "the importance Americans placed upon freedoms". I sure hope that the vast majority of us still do. The Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws passed by the United States Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President John Adams, ostensibly designed to protect the United States from citizens of enemy powers during the turmoil following the French Revolution and to stop seditious factions from weakening the government of the new republic. Federalist proponents claimed they were war measures, while the Democratic-Republicans attacked the acts as unconstitutional, an infringement on the rights of the states, and designed primarily to stifle criticism of the administration. The most controversial of the four statutes was the Sedition Act, which was widely seen as an attempt to curb the vitriolic political abuse directed particularly at the Adams administration. Popular outrage against the laws helped Thomas Jefferson defeat John Adams in the election of 1800 and secure a Republican majority in the Congress. Jefferson held the acts to be unconstitutional and void and, with James Madison, drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which attempted to nullify the federal laws as a prerogative of states. Upon his election in 1800, Jefferson pardoned and ordered the release of all who had been convicted of violating them. Most of the acts expired or were repealed by 1802, although the Alien Enemies Act remains in effect and has frequently been enforced in wartime. The Alien and Sedition Acts have been excoriated by historians as flagrant violations of American liberties. Their swift repeal underscored the importance Americans placed upon freedoms lately won and of the capacity of the government in its infancy to protect civil liberties.
Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
#2. To: TooConservative, *Ron Paul for President* (#1)
The trend began under Xlinton, accelerated under Bush, now given the force of federal law by the Kenyan.
Alien and Sedition Acts
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
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