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To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13791)	6/1/2002 12:54:07 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

Is that a parody? Thank goodness she won't be "charged" with anything. More evidence of post-modern barbarism, Jesse Jackson will visit Jenin. Wonder if he'll go to Hymiestate.... foxnews.com

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13791)	6/1/2002 3:09:20 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

You crack me up. :o} What's the story? The wife of an MP made a 'racist' joke. Somebody got upset. The police yawned. The Commission for Racial Equality yawned. It must have been one boring 'racist' joke. But surprise...Conservative leader Ian Duncan Smith sacks her. Thanks goodness for Conservatives. Everyone else went to bed and slept well. And you turn it into Is Free Speech Dead in the UK? Thanks for demonstrating how a conservative interprets the news. Now you have a hint how conservative op-ed pieces come to be. jttmab P.S. Just goes to show you how slow the news is here.

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13791)	6/1/2002 3:43:01 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Actually, free speech in the UK isn't and has never been what it is in the US. They have no First Amendment equivalent. What they have is a set of customs, and the government has a very large discretionary role in determining what's allowable and what isn't. The rubric under which speech can be limited with impunity in the UK is a series of "Defense of the Realm Acts." Their blasphemy laws, for example, although enforced erratically, are draconian and shocking to those with American free speech values. (This is all I remember from a piece written by Christopher Hitchens in The Nation, I think it was, a few years ago, comparing speech-rights under the First Amendment to those in the UK.) (I think it was The Nation, but I can't find it in their archive.)