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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (68340)	11/26/2002 11:38:17 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I think that's the first time I have been called a liberal pinhead in the past 20 years. It was disgusting, it was deplorable, it was intentionally provocative. But it was also necessary for the government not to be allowed to say "because this venue you have chosen will offend people, you may not excercise your rights of assembly and freedom of speech in this public arena." Let me ask you to think about this. Putting aside, and I mean this quite seriously, any feeling for whether you approve or disapprove of the relative messages given, and looking solely at the rights of citizens to peaceably assemble and exercise their free speech rights without any regard for the content of the message, was the decision of the Nazis to march in Skokie any more provocative, and did it have any more potential for disruption, than the decision of King to march in Selma? Did the Nazis represent as much of a legitimate danger to the established way of life in Skokie as the civil rights marches represented a legitimate danger to the established way of life in the South? Did the Jews of Skokie feel the need to murder Nazi marchers and bury their bodies in dams, to firebomb their meeting places? Did the police of Skokie feel so threatened that they needed to turn police dogs on the marchers? I am proud to have been a small part of the civil rights movement, to have marched in the marches, to have sat in the segregated restaurants, to have sat in in front of segregated theaters, to have been arrested and thrown in jail, yes, even to have my very own FBI file that linked me with what J. Edgar was wont to call the communist menace of integration. If the potential for disruption, the need to maintain public order, had been allowed as reasons to prohibit marches, there would not have been a single march anywhere south of the Mason Dixon line. They would have made the marchers go march where they would not be provocative, on Boston, or New York, or even San Francisco. But not in Selma, or Birmingham, or even, yes, Annapolis, which not long before you got there was as segregated as any other city in the south. That is the awful and awsome thing about the first amemendment. It must -- MUST -- protect the rights of Martin Luther King and David Duke to precisely the same degree. It must not -- MUST NOT -- be allowed to say "we the government like message A, so its proponents get to march where they want to, but we the government abhor message B, so its proponents must only march where we want to let them." The rights of King and Duke are inextricably intertwined, and one cannot deny one without denying the other.

To: Neocon who wrote (68340)	11/26/2002 3:47:30 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Did you see the latest doin's at the ACLU? Politics By Hiring Barr, ACLU Mixes In a Right With Its Left By Brian Faler Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 26, 2002; Page A04 To many, the American Civil Liberties Union epitomizes liberalism, and Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R- Ga.) personifies conservatism. But in one of the more unlikely pairings in politics, the ACLU announced yesterday that it plans to hire Barr, who lost his reelection bid this year, to help push its privacy concerns in the next Congress. "Bob Barr and the ACLU disagree on many issues, but we have no doubt that a strange-bedfellows collaboration between us will yield great things," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the group's Washington office. Barr, a conservative firebrand whose opponent in the GOP primary portrayed him as too right-wing, will work for the ACLU as a consultant, focusing on such issues as individual privacy, government surveillance and national security. It's not the first time the two have collaborated. Barr and the ACLU opposed some of the government's efforts to expand surveillance of U.S. residents in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Their new collaboration, Murphy said, makes ideological and political sense. "If we're going to affect federal policy, we have to have access [to Republicans]," she said. The group also has shown interest in hiring House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.) as a privacy consultant. A spokesman for Armey said the retiring lawmaker is considering his options.