The radicals at “Occupy Dayton” were not too happy when one of their activists was caught on video shouting: “F*ck the military, f*ck your flag, f*ck the police!”

The video aired at Breitbart.tv and was subsequently picked up across the blogosphere.

In response, the “Media Committee” of Occupy Dayton issued the press release below, in which organizers threaten to sue… someone… for libel:

OccupyDayton1

Occupy Dayton Threat to Sue –

The case that Occupy Dayton relies on, Becker v. Toulmin, 165 Ohio St. 549 (1956), does not have any relevance here. The video merely publishes the activist’s own words, which he stated volubly and in public.

Furthermore, the activist depicted is involved in a matter of public concern, and therefore is a public figure for the purpose of Occupy Dayton. He would therefore have to meet a higher–in this case, impossible–standard of proof.

Neither he, nor Occupy Dayton, has a case.

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After watching the spectacle of blame unfold during the days following the tragic January 8^th Tucson shootings, one angry community is no longer biting its tongue. Saying it will no longer be victimized by political opportunists on the left, the Word community has finally broken its long taciturnity.

An estimated 5,000 very upset words held a rally today in the plaza directly across from the national headquarters of the American Library Association at 50 E. Huron Street in Chicago. The keynote speakers of the group—which calls itself Words of Wisdom (WOW)—were WOW President, the Honorable word Reason, and Vice-President and WOW Founder, the Venerable word Ridiculous.

Reason—a bespectacled old word with a long gray beard—took the podium first. “This just doesn’t make any sense,” argued the six-letter noun.

“Not only is there no demonstrable nexus between the demented shooter and the Tea Party or Sarah Palin, there’s absolutely no proof that the curtailment of free speech will result in fewer crimes of this sort in the future. Civility is nice, my fellow Words—but liberty is nicer.”

The crowd—many of them prepositions, conjunctions, or mere adverbs who came out of a sense of semantic solidarity—cheered in enthusiastic support. “Wooooohoooo!” screamed Exclamation from the back. “Save free speech!” hollered Indignation. “Screw the frickin’ censors!” Vulgarity bellowed.

After Reason’s opening statement, Ridiculous made her way to the podium. Clad in a Lady Gaga meat-dress and light fur, once she opened her mouth, Ridiculous—thankfully—did not live up to her name.

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Towards the end of the post on Wednesday in which I attempted an assessment of George W. Bush’s two terms as President, I took Bush to task for betraying his oath of office and signing McCain Feingold — a bill restricting freedom of speech that he rightly regarded as unconstitutional.

“It was,” I wrote,

President Bush’s hope and expectation that the Supreme Court would declare McCain-Feingold unconstitutional. Thanks to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which is now before the Supreme Court, his hopes may — as Bradley A. Smith suggests in the current issue of National Affairs — soon be vindicated. But nothing can excuse Bush’s failure as President to do what he knew to be his constitutional duty and veto the bill.

What I did not know on Monday, when I drafted that post, was that the Supreme Court would issue its decision one day after the anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration. I merely argued as follows: (more…)

You’ve undoubtedly heard someone, maybe even yourself, say that you have a Constitutional right to free speech, right?  While that seems to make sense, it’s not true, or at least wasn’t before the government got so big that it started intruding into areas of our lives in which it has no business; and it is part of a modern mentality that has the potential to harm our individual liberty.

To understand what I’m talking about, the first thing you have to understand it that the Constitution does NOT grant you rights, it protects the rights you inherently have from government intrusion.  The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights is this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  

Just look at the part that addresses speech, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”  Nowhere does it say that you are granted the right of freedom of speech, it says you have it, were born with it, and the government cannot do anything about it.  But that’s not how it’s viewed or even talked about by politicians these days.

By saying that someone has a Constitutional right for free speech implies that it is granted to you and, therefore, can be taken away at some point by amending the Constitution.  While legally this is possibly true, trying to get that amendment passed would have about us much of a chance as getting a safe driver of the year award named after the late Teddy Kennedy.  But the mentality that uses and teaches that erodes, even a little, our basic liberties.

While our Founding Fathers agreed that our basic right to free speech was granted by God, you don’t have to be religious to embrace the idea that we were born with it. In fact, avowed leftist atheists are often the ones wrapping themselves falsely in the First Amendment with the claim that the government protects what they have to say. But it’s not exclusive to leftists, people on the right often cite this mythical right granted them.

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