Statist Quo Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is the status quo among statists, especially statist politicians, who think that they should get away with doing what they are commanding you and me not to do. That’s why most of us just don’t trust politicians. That’s why politicians occupy the lowest level of status in the social order; lower than used car salesmen and snake oil peddlers.

So it comes as no surprise to me that California State senator, Leland Yee, known for his outspoken views in support of gun control, was arrested by the FBI last week and charged with illegally trafficking in firearms along with multiple counts of public corruption.

Of course, the law presumes Sen. Yee not guilty of the crimes until the charges against him are proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, so I’m not prejudging him here. However, this is the kind of thing that statist politicians have been doing since the dawn of human civilization.

The FBI affidavit claims that Yee offered to negotiate illegal firearms sales on multiple occasions in exchange for financial donations towards his campaign. He allegedly told an undercover FBI agent of his connections to firearms dealers in Asia and Russia, and that he knew an arms dealer who’d been shipping “cargo containers” of weapons to Muslim rebels in the Philippines.

That will have to be proved if Yee is guilty, but what we do know for certain is that this statist politician is ostensibly a rabid gun control advocate on behalf of his Democrat Party constituents. He sponsored legislation, for example, that would have closed a loophole in California’s ban on assault weapons.

Yee has repeatedly claimed to the public that he feels strongly about limiting access to guns by criminals. “This is not an easy issue,” he told reporters in 2012. “But I am a father, and I want our communities to be safe, and god forbid if one of these weapons fell into the wrong hands.”

His politics are about strict gun control but the FBI has shown evidence that his private business is running guns. It’s political hypocrisy pure and simple.

During the dark days of prohibition in America the statist politicians in Congress were all for banning the sale and consumption of alcohol to the public, but behind closed doors, in their congressional offices no less, these same politicians – the very people responsible for ratifying the constitutional amendment that banned alcoholic beverages -- enjoyed easy access to and a steady supply of their favorite booze.

George Cassiday, Congress’ favorite bootlegger, aka “the man in the green hat.” was the guy who kept the supply rolling.  For 10 years he ran a bootlegging operation for Congress right out of the House and Senate office buildings.

“He kept them wet, even though they all voted dry,” explained Garrett Peck, author of the book “Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren’t,” during a news interview in the Prohibition-era wine cellar that once belonged to President Woodrow Wilson. 

Cassiday estimated that “four out of five” members of Congress drank alcohol despite their votes in favor of Prohibition. “This whole idea that there was somehow a consensus to change the Constitution to ban alcohol, just turned out to be totally ridiculous,” says Peck. “Prohibition turned the whole country into a bunch of scofflaws, and a bunch of hypocrites, as well.”

It’s the same situation today with the War on Drugs.

Statist quo hypocrisy.

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Hair

Statist oriented government agents everywhere are not content with simply ruling over their captive subjects within the boundaries of the Constitution and laws of the land.  No – they’re too often pathologically obsessed with controlling every detail in our lives, whether it pertains to marriage, healthcare, etc. and incredibly even when it comes to how we fashion our hair.

Earlier this year, for example, in my post:  Hair Raising Public School Statists in Texas, I observed that many American public school statists think they have a perfect right to force human beings to comply with compulsory education requirements in violation of their constitutional rights, and at the same time dictate absolute conformance in all manner of personal behavior, dress, appearance and thought right down to the way children choose to express themselves with their own hair.

American kids are treated just like inmates in a state penitentiary; penalized for the slightest infractions. It is not enough that they are prisoners of the state; they’re expected to conform like sheep. A straight-A-student was punished by suspension simply for choosing a color for her hair that her statist school administrators didn’t like.

This week an 11-year-old Grand Junction Colorado third-grader was suspended for shaving her head in “violation” of the school’s unconstitutional dress code. The statists there think they have the right to punish little kids who choose to wear no hair at all or to fashion their hair in a manner at odds with an arbitrary dress code.

Not that it should matter, but this little girl chose to shave her head as a kind act of solidarity with one of her friends who lost her hair because of cancer and the necessity for chemotherapy. For this she was told that she couldn’t return to classes until her grew hair back.

Shaved heads are against the school’s dress code “which was created to promote safety, uniformity, and a non-distracting environment for the school’s students,” huffed the school board president, Catherine M. Norton in defense of her statist policies. The dress code also specifies that “radical changes in hair color during the school year are unacceptable.”

“Uniformity” – that says it all, doesn’t it? Uniformity and conformity -- that’s what it’s all about in American public schools nowadays. The children are treated like flocks of sheep.

But after this sad story spread over the internet, going viral, Ms Norton and her statist school board eventually caved in under the tremendous pressure of national outrage over what they did to this innocent little girl who wanted only to make her sick friend feel better. The board voted to let her come back to school.

How about that? They voted on the question of whether an American citizen may exercise her constitutional rights.  Statists actually believe they have the right to do that. So they do it all the time with stuff like marriage, healthcare, and dress codes – whatever they feel like and whenever they feel like it.

Outside of America, the so-called land of the free and home of the brave, where else in the world is this kind of blatant in your face statism happening?

Yes, that’s right – North Korea.

"Male university students in North Korea are now required to get the same haircut as their leader Kim Jong-un,” according to recent reports. Haircuts in that bad place have been state-approved or not for a long time now. But before now at least the North Korean sheep were allowed by their dear leader to choose from 18 hair styles for women and 10 for men.

You see, North Korea's state TV some time ago launched a campaign against long hair, called "Let us trim our hair in accordance with the Socialist lifestyle."

Now we know for sure that our American government statists aren’t too far behind the North Koreans when it comes to the matter of: hair.

Mandatory Reefer Madness

Federal prosecutors have their statist panties all in a bunch because their boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, has wisely decided that draconian mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes aren’t working and should be rolled back.

Well, of course they do. These are the folks that make their living by prosecuting mostly innocent human beings in the failed War on Drugs. Their philosophy is to lock ‘em up and throw away the key. That’s why our federal prisons are full to the brim with non-violent offenders who are no threat whatsoever to society except for the fact that their mandatory prison sentences are unnecessarily costing the taxpayers billions.

Congress became afflicted with mandatory reefer madness about 30 years ago in the 1980’s under the Reagan administration when they passed into law extremely harsh guidelines and penalties for drug offenders of which judges were obligated to impose regardless of the circumstances. Innocent growers of pot plants in their basements have actually found themselves facing up to 20 years behind bars under those laws.

That’s just what the statist prosecutors want because it keeps them employed prosecuting easy cases -- shooting thousands of non-violent ducks in a barrel. The more dupes they lock up the more take their place and the Drug War just continues on and on unabated.

Eric Holder has finally come to realize that the Drug War is a losing cause. The consequences to society have been horrendous. Now he wants to overhaul mandatory minimums because incarceration rates for non-violent offenders are exploding, the harsh long term sentences have unfairly hurt low-income and minority communities, and the burden to taxpayers is unsustainable.

He’s calling on Congress to pass the “Smarter Sentencing Act.” "Such legislation could ultimately save our country billions of dollars in prison costs while keeping us safe," Holder explained. It would cut minimum sentences in half for many drug crimes, and give judges -- as opposed to prosecutors -- more leeway in sentencing offenders.

That prudent attitude doesn’t sit well with the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys though. They wrote Holder a letter whining: "we consider the current federal mandatory minimum sentence framework as well-constructed and well worth preserving." They like the idea of non-violent offenders rotting in prison.

"Now that we have crime under control, this bill would see drug crime surge all over again," one of them sniffed, calling the bill a "terrible idea.” That’s a laugh. Does anyone really believe that our statist prosecutors have recreational drug use under control?  They don’t what to lose their sledge hammer tool of coercion. That’s why they think rolling back mandatory draconian prison sentences is a terrible idea.

 "Mandatory minimums work very well, when you have a drug offender who can provide information against a big, big player, or an organization, or a cartel," explained Doug Burns, a former federal prosecutor and Fox News legal analyst. "You turn around and charge him with 20 years of mandatory time, and the defense attorney knows the only realistic way out of that is cooperation."

That’s how it works in the War on Drugs. That’s why the prisons are full of non-violent offenders. That’s why the taxpayers are heaving under the weight of the tremendous unnecessary costs.  The statists are losing the War but the prisons are full anyway and the conveyer belt of government coercion and intimidation keeps rolling along.

It’s mandatory reefer madness.

Re-victimize What?

Only within the totally irrational realms of fantasy in a conscious mind can one conclude that the victim of a crime can be “re-victimized” simply by allowing the accused to have access to all of the evidence against him.

But that is exactly what federal prosecutors have irrationally concluded in the case against accused Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. So they’re petitioning the trial court in his case to deny him access to victim autopsy photos, because they think that doing so would “re-victimize the family members.”

Re-victimize what?

“Allowing photos of the mutilated bodies of the victims to be viewed by the man accused of mutilating them would needlessly re-victimize the family members in the same way that innocent children who are photographed pornographically are re-victimized whenever those photos are seen by others,” argue the prosecutors.

“The autopsy photos are extremely graphic. They show the victims, who are all badly mutilated, in various states of undress, including completely naked. Although the photos, which are a standard part of all autopsies, are necessary, allowing Tsarnaev the unrestricted right to review all of them is completely unnecessary,” they conclude. “He does not need to review photos that will not be used against him in order to prepare his case or exercise any of his constitutional rights.”

Tsarnaev is facing the death penalty for a 30 count indictment that lays out his alleged role in the April 15 bombing which killed three and wounded 260 others. He has a Sixth Amendment constitutional right to a fair trial which includes having access to all of the evidence against him whether or not it will actually be offered into evidence at his trial.

The Authority wants to deny him his constitutional rights solely because they imagine that family members of the victims will be offended by and don’t want him to look at the autopsy photos of their loved ones. He should only be able to look at the photos they decide to introduce at his trial. Allowing him to look at the others somehow in their minds “re-victimizes” people.  

One has to wonder what is going on in their irrational prosecutorial minds. Why are they doing this? Do they think the defendant is going to gloat if he looks at the pictures? Do they fantasize him enjoying the experience; laughing; having an orgasm?  How is that relevant to the case at hand?

The actual victims of this crime are either injured or dead. They became victims when the bomb went off. They’re victims because of what the perpetrator did – not because people might look at the evidence collected during the investigation.

Family members of the victims have clearly suffered because of the crime but that doesn’t make them the victims of it. If it did, then we could all call ourselves victims because in a real sense everyone in the public suffers from the consequences of crime. These prosecutors are attempting to have the court redefine the term “crime victim.”

Crime victims can’t be “re-victimized” simply by allowing people to look at the evidence of the crime. That notion is totally irrational, illogical and nonsensical. Yes, it is perfectly understandable that the victim’s family members would rather not have the accused look at the autopsy photos of their loved ones but that hardly makes them victims of the crime.

Alas, the legal system and legalities in America are not always rational, logical and sensical. Sometimes the legal Authority becomes carried away by the emotions engendered by the criminal process and indulges in pure fantasy in response.

The idea, for example, that a child victim of a pornographer can be “re-victimized” whenever a third party simply looks at the evidence, is the product of a purely irrational legal fantasy. Yet this fantasy is employed regularly in the American criminal judicial system to convict innocent people of crimes just because they happened to look at a photograph they had absolutely nothing to do with producing.

If the victims of child pornographers are “re-victimized” by third parties simply looking at the evidence, then they are “re-victimized” by the police, the prosecutors, the judge and the jury in the criminal case against the real criminal just as much as if any other innocent third party looks at the same evidence. So the prosecutor of a child pornographer should be prosecuted if he looks at the pictures because that “re-victimizes” the victim.

To say that evidence of the crime “re-victimizes” is just plain nonsense. It’s patently absurd. Next the Authority will argue that just having to look at the accused behind the defense table at his trial amounts to “re-victimizing” family members along with the rest of society. They’d love to just dispense with the necessity of fair trials altogether.

Re-victimize what?

Statists in Libertarian Clothing

Just when I’m about to conclude that I could support a candidate for President of the United States, because he spouts a libertarian political view, I discover to my dismay that he’s just another statist politician wearing libertarian clothing.

I thought that Rand Paul was a Libertarian first and a Republican second but it looks like I got it backwards. Last week he threw his considerable political clout behind a statist Republican bill passed by the House to force the Obama administration to crack down on legal marijuana in states like Colorado and Washington.

I swear that these right wing ultra-conservative Republican nut cases, Rand Paul included, would criminalize wet dreams if only they could find a way to enforce it. They constantly whine and howl about wanting ‘states rights’ but when the people of a state vote for a measure they don’t approve of they demand that the statist federal government squash it. They’re the lowest form of hypocrite politicians in the nation.

Paul told reporters that he supports the so-called “Enforce the Law Act,” which gives Congress legal standing to sue the president for failing to faithfully execute laws. Obama is “writing his own laws whenever he feels like it,” he said. “He also does need to enforce the law. We write laws and he is just deciding willy-nilly if he likes it he enforces it, if he doesn’t, he won’t enforce it, and we really think he needs to be chastened, rebuked, and told that he needs to obey the constitution.”

Never-mind that every president from George Washington to GWB has done exactly the same thing; if a president were to enforce every law in the federal statutes in every single instance where such law might be properly invoked, there wouldn’t be enough prisons in the country to warehouse all the scofflaws.

Statist Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who co-introduced the bill, has criticized Obama for “dispensing with federal laws related to immigration, marijuana, and mandatory minimum sentences.” Not enforcing federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana “infringes on Congress’s lawmaking authority,” all the statists whine in unison.

If Congress could sue the President and his Attorney General every time it thought they weren’t enforcing every law on the books, the federal judiciary system would be inundated with frivolous lawsuits initiated by disgruntled Congressmen, and wouldn’t have the wherewithal to decide any other litigation.

More importantly, it looks to me like these anal retentive religiously oriented right-wing Republican jackasses have found yet another way to guarantee their Party’s losses in the upcoming 2014 Congressional elections as well as the 2016 presidential election.

If this is the kind of shit they are for, I simply cannot imagine that the average voter will be inclined to vote for them. If they keep on with this crap, which appeals only to their right-wing base, it’s going to be goodbye Senate in 2014 and hello Hillary in 2016.  

And Rand Paul will go down in the sinking Republican Party ship with the rest of them because he’s just another statist in libertarian clothing. 

Criminalizing Commercial Sex is Unconstitutional

I’m taking a fair amount of flak from my friends here on RRND for maintaining in my last post that public accommodations laws are constitutional, i.e. not violative of the First and Fifth Amendments. That just goes to show that libertarians are split on the question which is what I observed in the first sentence of that piece.

Surprise: we don’t agree on every issue.

But this is a matter upon which we can probably all agree: Criminalizing commercial sex is unconstitutional because such laws violate fundamental liberty; both the First and Fifth Amendments.

It comes as a surprise to no one that human beings want sex and that many are willing to pay for it whether the government Authority likes it or not.  There is a huge demand everywhere on this planet for commercial sex services.

In fact, a new report by the Urban Institute funded by a grant from the National Institute for justice details a vast underground sex economy in the United States. The illegal sex industry in just eight U.S. cities brings in nearly $1 billion a year according to the study on sex trafficking and prostitution published this week.

Yes, the government Authority likes to call commercial sex transactions between consenting individuals “sex trafficking,” because that term carries a more sinister connotation than just “hooking” or “prostitution.”  It’s the same with “drug trafficking,” the favorite term they like to use in connection with their War on Drugs.

Why do you suppose they don’t use the term “ice-cream-trafficking” or “candy trafficking” when talking about ice-cream parlors and candy stores? The Authority approves of those vices, at least for now; that’s why. Soon, however, the Authority might make those activities illegal too in their campaign against obesity

You see, if the Authority can get away with criminalizing commercial sex and recreational drugs, you can bet that they’ll try to get away with criminalizing ice cream and candy if the statist mood strikes them. And when they get around to it they’ll call it “ice-cream and candy-trafficking.”

The problem for the statist government Authority is that sex, drugs, rock and roll, booze, ice cream, candy and lots of other fun things are in huge commercial demand. Peaceful, honest, law abiding people aren’t going to take no for an answer when it comes to indulging in their favorite vice, especially when they realize that the government really has no right to deprive them because the laws criminalizing their desires are unconstitutional.

It all boils down to the concept of fundamental liberty. Sex between consenting individuals whether commercial or free is a means of human expression as ancient as the species. It is a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Likewise it is a property right protected by the Fifth Amendment since individual human beings own themselves and can do with their own bodies as they like.

The government Authority, including the courts can pretend all day long that their laws criminalizing innocent expression and conduct are constitutional, but the bottom line for peaceful, honest and rational libertarians is:

Criminalizing commercial sex is unconstitutional.

Public Accommodations Laws Are Constitutional

Libertarians, according to what I’ve been reading on RRND recently, are split on the question of whether public accommodations laws are constitutional or whether such laws violate the First and Fifth Amendments.

Some believe based on libertarian principles that an owner of a private business which is open to the public has a constitutional right to discriminate against people for any reason they like. They argue, for example, that the owner of a bakery or photography business has a perfect right to deny services to gay customers on First Amendment free exercise of religion clause grounds.

Others maintain that business owners have a Fifth Amendment property right to operate their establishments any way they like and that public accommodation laws violate their property rights. No law is valid, they maintain, which forces them to serve people they don’t want to serve regardless of the reason. So they have the right to discriminate against blacks, gays, Jews, etc. even though their business is otherwise open to the public.

With these thoughtful and rational libertarians I’m compelled to respectfully disagree. I argue that public accommodations laws, like the landmark federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as other federal and state anti-discrimination laws are, for the most part, constitutional.

At the outset, it is clear that private individuals have constitutional rights to discriminate based on the First Amendment freedom of speech, religion, and association provisions in the Bill of Rights. We also enjoy Fifth Amendment property rights. So private individuals are entitled to associate with whomever and however they choose in their private homes, schools, clubs, and the like. That all goes without saying.

No one is required by any law to invite gays, blacks or Jews, for instance, to their kid’s birthday party in their private home or any other private setting. If a business owner wants to discriminate for whatever reason, the legal way to accomplish that is to form his business as a private invitation only club which is not open to the general public.

That’s how the Boy Scouts of America were able to successfully argue their constitutional right to discriminate against gay and non-religious boys as members to the United States Supreme Court in 2000. They convinced a majority of the justices that their organization is a private members only club.

Public accommodations laws are constitutional. A bakery or photography shop may, therefore, not discriminate against gays by, for example, refusing them general services such as selling loaves of bread or film.

On the other hand some courts have ruled that a law may not serve to force a private business to engage in actual expressive conduct which conflicts with First Amendment religious rights. Though the baker must sell cakes to gays, he or she might not have to create a special gay wedding cake for them. And though a cameral shop must sell film and camera equipment to gays, the photographer might not be forced to provide creative photography services at a gay wedding.

The problem in my mind with these rulings is that the courts have attempted to carve out special enforcement of First Amendment rights to religious folks based upon the free exercise clause, but the same court would probably not enforce general First Amendment free speech and association rights or Fifth Amendment property rights to benefit others who want to discriminate but not upon religious grounds.

These courts would probably rule, for example, and rightly so in my opinion, that a restaurant providing catering services to the public should be forced to so for blacks, gays, Jews, etc. despite the fact that its owners might prefer not to associate with those people.

I say that if a private business is set up to be open to the public; if it is not a private club, organization or association; then it is obligated to obey the public accommodations laws in all respects. Such a business has elected to serve everyone when it advertizes and opens its doors to the general public. It is therefore obligated to do so even if its owners might find the lifestyles of some customer’s offensive. 

In short, I don’t think that the owners of businesses which are open to the public, i.e., public accommodations, have a constitutional right to discriminate in violation of public accommodations laws.

Public accommodations laws are constitutional.

What does “Cop Killer” have to do with it?

Americans are often willing follow each other over a cliff like a herd of irrational frightened lemmings instead of exercising critical thinking on important matters. They would much rather succumb to the hysteria of the crowd than use their individual intelligence to decide the merits of issues using reason and logic.

American politicians are lemmings leading the lemmings. They are far more likely to do what is politically expedient for their own personal interests than to do what is right, reasonable and just under the circumstances. That’s the nature of American politics. If the lemmings squeal loud enough and whine long enough their political leaders will eventfully heed their call and do whatever they want in the interest of protecting their own political hides.

That’s what happened this week in the United States Senate when a majority blocked the Obama administration’s nomination of Mr. Debo Adegbile, a perfectly seasoned, competent and qualified Justice Department attorney to head the Civil Rights Division.

None of the lemmings or the politicians leading them ever once questioned the actual legal and ethical qualifications of candidate Adegbile for the job in question -- except that is, upon one irrelevant point which had nothing at all to do with his qualifications: 34 years ago he represented in a Pennsylvania appellate court a guy who killed a cop.

As it happens, Mr. Adegbile, a competent civil rights attorney, was working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during the early 1980’s on behalf of a convicted criminal defendant named Abu-Jamal, perhaps America's most well-known cop killer, who was sentenced to death for his crime.

The death sentence was eventually overturned on legitimate legal grounds largely because of Mr. Adegbile’s diligent advocacy, but the underlying conviction stands. In short, the criminal is still serving a life term in prison for the murder but he won’t suffer the death penalty. The attorney representing him was just doing his job which, of course, any reasonable person knows was his legal and ethical obligation as a lawyer.

But that didn’t sit well with the dead cop’s widow and many police department organizations across the country who desperately wanted the guy to fry and felt that this attorney cheated them out of their rightful revenge.  They got together even after 34 years and raised a very long and loud hue and cry over the nomination. Adegbile’s client killed a cop; he got the death penalty overturned so he’s not suitable for the job, they whined.

Senate Democrats were facing heavy pressure from police organizations, as well as Republicans, to vote against the nominee. Even after the vote to block him Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called the nomination itself "an embarrassment for President Obama," and blasted "vulnerable Democrats running in 2014" who voted "yes."

The president of the Fraternal Order of Police called the nomination a "thumb in the eye of our nation's law enforcement officers." Both Pennsylvania senators were opposed, and Republican  Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., questioned whether Adegbile could be counted on to advocate for the civil rights "of all Americans," if confirmed.

Maureen Faulkner, the cop’s widow and the one who started all the fuss, maintained that Adegbile was "the wrong person for the job," and thanked the seven Democratic senators who "broke ranks and had the courage to do the right thing."

One of those senators, Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, admitted afterward that he was "concerned about his ability to work with law enforcement" if the nominee was confirmed. Another Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, effectively gave his Democratic colleagues cover to vote "no" after he came out against the nomination.

You see, he represents the state in which Abu-Jamal killed the cop. His political hide was on the line

President Obama stood by his nominee, calling the vote a "travesty based on wildly unfair character attacks against a good and qualified public servant... The fact that his nomination was defeated solely based on his legal representation of a defendant runs contrary to a fundamental principle of our system of justice -- and those who voted against his nomination denied the American people an outstanding public servant."

Rarely do I agree with this president but he is absolutely right this time. If this nominee had been representing rapists, child molesters, and murderers of ordinary human beings as a public defender 34 years ago very few lemmings and their lemming political leaders today would be hysterically demanding that his candidacy be nixed.

Cops are a special and exalted segment among Americans in today’s social and political climate. Most people love cops, especially politicians. Everybody hates lawyers, but any lawyer who has the integrity and fortitude to honor his profession and represent a cop killer is especially hated to the point of becoming politically toxic.

So with regard to the squashing of Mr. Adegbile’s nomination to head the DOJ Civil Rights Division it will do no practical good to ask: what does cop killer have to do with it?

First Amendment RIP

Last week’s post: The First Amendment Weeps discussed a Texas law that criminalizes freedom of speech, e.g., the wearing of a pro-gun rights T-shirt within 100 feet of a polling place solely because the statist authorities in that state believe it’s perfectly OK to stifle First Amendment rights whenever the mood strikes them.

Never-mind that the First Amendment language is unequivocal – the government… “shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech” – they just carve exceptions out of thin air anyway whenever they like. They don’t accept the reality that “no law” means, and was intended to mean, exactly that -- no law -- period.

They do it because the courts let them do it. The courts sanction it. It’s the courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, that justify then ratify into law one flimsy legal excuse after another in their ultimate quest to render the First Amendment a nullity in situations where freedom of speech causes inconvenience to the Authority!

That’s why to libertarians like me the First Amendment weeps.

As this phenomenon continues, the First Amendment, right along with the rest of the Bill of Rights; all of our precious constitutional rights, will be essentially neutered or perhaps even expired, so I sadly say now – First Amendment RIP.

The latest outrage was perpetrated last week by the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals when they affirmed the right of California public high school authorities to ban the wearing of shirts bearing the American flag symbol on Cinco de Mayo, (May 5)

That’s right. Students will be allowed to freely exercise their First Amendment rights to wear American flag shirts on every day of the school calendar year except Cinco de Mayo day. On that day the public school authorities may violate First Amendment rights says the court. In fact the court went so far as to say that banning free speech on that day does not violate First Amendment rights.

All students will be permitted to wear Mexican flag shirts on any day they like, including Cinco de Mayo, but American flag shirts will not be permitted. That clear and unambiguous violation of the First Amendment free speech clause is just fine with the federal Court of Appeals.

Why?

Well, because the authorities have come to believe that violating constitutional rights in some situations, situations of their choosing, is reasonable. If it’s deemed reasonable then “no law” apparently means “except for this law” because it’s reasonable.

So we see that the authorities -- the government – can simply ignore every provision of the Bill of Rights at any time so long as they can convince a court of law that doing so is “reasonable.”

In this particular case the court concluded that the wearing of American Flag shirts by some students on Cinco de Mayo day might likely cause racial tensions among the students. It might make some of them angry and want to fight. It might adversely affect school safety.

So instead of punishing the fighters, those bad apples who threaten unruly behavior which might impede safety, they’re authorized by the court to stifle the First Amendment and freedom of speech. "The controversy and tension remained," ruled the justices as to the school administrator’s conduct in 2010, "but the school's actions presciently avoided an altercation… their response was tailored to the circumstance,"

The government may stifle the Bill of Rights, ruled the court, if only they tailor the violation to the circumstances.

Any circumstance will do so long as the court deems it reasonable.

First Amendment, RIP.