Shrieker of the House Nancy Pelosi worries about incitement. But she probably couldn't be convicted.
SEPTEMBER 18, 2009.
By JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Tube Tonight: We're scheduled to appear this evening on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" as part of a political roundtable. The hourlong program starts at 7 p.m. ET, with a repeat showing at 4 a.m. ET, and the roundtable will be in the second half-hour.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is worried that the heated debate over ObamaCare is getting too heated. "Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results," the Associated Press reports:
"I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm [tune in for the season premiere, Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO] in some of the statements that are made," Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message "are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume," she said. "Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe," she added. "But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause."
Pelosi raises an excellent point. Two weeks ago we noted an example: A prominent California politician had referred to opponents of ObamaCare as "un-American" and accused them of "carrying swastikas." Subsequently, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., an unbalanced-American bit off the finger of an elderly protester, Bill Rice. The politician? Nancy Pelosi.
To be sure, it is unclear whether the biter took inspiration from that politician's inflammatory words; Thousand Oaks' Finest tell us they have yet to finger a suspect. Further, even if this act of mayhem was directly provoked by Pelosi's rhetoric, she probably could not be convicted of incitement. The relevant legal standard, which the U.S. Supreme Court set forth in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), entails a two-part test: first, the speaker (in this case, the speaker) must intend to incite violence; second, there must be an imminent threat that such violence actually will be carried out. In the Pelosi case, it is highly unlikely that prosecutors could prove both elements without a reasonable doubt.
Yet although Pelosi is protected from legal liability by the First Amendment, she is right to take moral responsibility. As the AP reports: "Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results." This hits especially close to home for Pelosi, as the AP notes:
Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted in 1977 [actually 1979] of the murders [in 1978] of openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.
Dan White, like Nancy Pelosi, was a Democratic elected official from San Francisco. But let's not make too much of this comparison. Between her rhetorical excesses and his despicable crimes, there is a world of difference.
'Everybody's Racist, It Seems'
The headline for this item is the lead for a cheery Associated Press dispatch that echoes our Tuesday column in suggesting that in President Obama's postracial America, accusations of racism have lost their sting:
The word is being sprayed in all directions, creating a hall of mirrors that is draining the scarlet R of its meaning and its power, turning it into more of a spitball than a stigma.
Writer Jesse Washington gets carried away with those metaphors, but the sentiment he expresses is exactly right...
Much more at:
online.wsj.com |
