This is the best Supreme Court decision I have ever read. They really get what freedom of speech means.
I’ve included an excerpt from Judge Breyer’s opinion below the fold. It is mildly explicit in its language and may not be suitable for work.
City of Charleston v. The Kanawha Players
Hm, I wonder if that’s going into the law textbooks any time soon.
Perhaps it’s a bit too oniony for most law classes.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
…if only it were true…
Lovely. That judgement should be taught in the first class at college/university for all aspiring lawyers. In fact, it should be framed and hung in every room occupied by any legislators anywhere. Everywhere.
We can thank Dick Cheney for pioneering the open use of the f-word on the floor of the U.S. Senate. If it’s okay for an upright citizen like Cheney, then it must be okay for other vice presidents (like Biden) and even supreme court justices.
Just saying.
When you look at the enclose picture of Justice Breyer, you are staring at the face of god.
I can’t believe the squidly overlord led me on like that. I’d rather watch octopus snuff than be that disappointed again. Fuck.
I wish it were so. I happen to think the dried-up old buggers could really do with a bit of shaking up.
Also, the phrase “skullfuck some respect for constitutionally protected expression into your hick heads” is going into my Lexicon of Phrases to Use When Utterly Pissed.
Yeah, my favorite part came in oral arguments, though, when J. Scalia said, “But what if they just want to find out who fucking signed the petition so they can call them and cuss them out for being ignorant assholes?”
Ah, if only this were true. (Though that fake Scalia quote does capture the essence of his question in an actual non-Onion court case recently.)
You know that the staffer who penned that went home afterward thinking “I can’t believe I get paid to do this job!!”
Ahaha, that is hilarious. Unfortunately not a real opinion, but if there’s one thing the US courts do better than any other courts in the world, it’s freedom of speech protection.
Scalia would be with the majority, though. Roberts, Alito, or even Stevens would more likely be in the dissent. /nitpick
Speaking of the SCOTUS and freedom of speech issues and (not speaking of) how they ruled that money is speech, does that mean if someone tries to take my money, or limit my acquisition of money by laying me off, that they’re violating trying to limit my speech?
… from The Onion®.
Yes, it’s an Onion
But still
Lofty goals softly call
I so love the Onion. ♥
Hahahaha, that’s fabulous. I’d love to see that plastered all over the place, courthouses in particular. I’d bet it would get a lot of laughs. Possibly provoke some thought too.
That is the best thing of 2010. If there were an awards show for things, any things, in terms of which things were best, that would win with the current offerings.
I want every judge to be so thorough in his/her understanding of what counts as unprotected (but free!) speech and what is (or more importantly, is not) forbidden speech.
Thank you, the Onion. Thank you for indulging my fantasies.
Mom?
It frequently amazes me how a gratuitous torrent of obscenity can nevertheless, with just a dash of the proper context, become falling-down funny.
Even though I know that not in my wildest dreams would that ever actually be a public statement by a justice, that was still beautiful…
No matter how openly pissed of a justice might be, you know they still have to carefully filter everything they have to say on a subject *sigh*. Now if you were to ask a US military officer for his opinion on depraved fuckwits Fred Phelps, I promise they would go above and beyond the writers of the Onion in their colorfulness.
BTW Sorry to Jane Fonda, I’m afraid she is no longer the most hated person on Earth by the US Military, as Fred Phelps has swooped into that spot of great dishonor like no mother fucker ever seen before. You can count on that.
Awesome !! Goes onto facebook straight away !
:D :D :D
WooHoo! Go free speech! And – mega props to the justice :D
‘Kin A!
nuff said
Blah – now I’ve got to wash off that onion smell. I’d known one Supreme Court justice who was a bit like that when not in court though – and you should have heard the things he had to say bout other sitting judges after a ruling had been made.
I laughed SO HARD.
In the University of Utah school paper the editors lined up the first letter of consecutive opinion pieces (you know, the one that is always bigger/bolder than the rest of the letter) to spell “cunt” and “penis”. People at work were discussing it. Square mormons were seriously freaked out about it. There was a serious discussion of how it *could* be an accident… Oh, Utah.
The onion’s excellent for some of it’s articles.
Take this one for instance. I will always see it as epic win.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-worl,2879/
It was at this point I completely lost it.
I seriously need the following on a T-shirt:
That which erodes human rights serves to erode humanity, fuckface.
As someone who constantly advocates for people to stop pissing and moaning over monkey noises they don’t like, I think I just fucking came.
This kind of reminds me of the time Jimmy Kimmel had me believing that Al Sharpton had won the New Hampshire primary.
In the same vain as their classic headline.
HOLY SHIT!
Man Walks on Fucking Moon!
You gotta love the Onion.
Absolutely grade fukin a material.
Very nice sentiment, but why did he have to write it in incomprehensible legalese?
I wonder how long before someone from Faux News starts ranting about those godless Supreme Court justices. It wouldn’t be the first time that Beck, Palin, and all publicly pissed themselves over a non-event.
skeptifem @ #24:
I think this is one of them: Layout Fail (or Layout Win?)
Why didn’t you state that this was a parody from the Onion?
I figured out that it wasn’t real, of course, but it took a few paragraphs. Some people might use this as an example of atheist dishonesty.
I realize no one cares, but I was born in Charleston and used to run lights for the Kanawha Players, which is a real theater group.
IANAL but that is awesome.
I actually believed it for a whole 5 seconds : o
Some people are morons
Emil: I would have believed it for a few seconds, had I not seen it already.
Or an example of a goddamn joke.
Sorry I can’t let this slide.
On the internet we have these things called hyperlinks. See that part of PZ’s post up there that’s in blue? If you click on that it will take you to another website that just happens to be the Onion. That particular page is the original piece that PZ reposted here.
Now any person with a shred of competency in navigating the internet and blogs would understand that posting that link would mean that PZ was pointing to the author of the piece he reposted here.
But then again, some people are lazy. And some people are stupid.
@Glenn G #5:
I hate it when people just make up stories about Me. Nobody has seen My face and lived to tell of it. Repent!
OT but have you seen this (apologies, it’s from the Daily Heil):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1273774/Dadeus-Grings-Were-potential-paedophiles-says-archbishop.html
Can I get an amen??
Anyone who read the first sentence of the quoted text in this article, and didn’t immediately realize it was satire, really needs to wake up and slap their brain a few times. This was not a subtle piece of humor.
It’s even in the category “Humor”. It says so, right under the title of the article.
@PZ:
*slaps his brain*
I admit it, I wasn’t sure ’till I checked the article. I was naive, but hopeful.
Good lord, you’d think I’d insulted your manhood or something. I was a bit slow on the uptake because I know the Kanawha Players is a real organization.
Furthermore, I did figure it out.
When I suggested it might be used against us, I didn’t say I was going to use it against us. I assume the Rev., who tossed out the word “moron,” was referring to them, not me. We’re on the same side.
And surely I’m not the only person who never reads the category of your postings.
If we keep fighting amongst ourselves, the terrorists win.
McCarthy-fellating jingoist.
SHOOT HIM!
The Onion: You owe me half a cup of coffee and a new shirt.
Yes the morons was referring to people who would use that argument.
Category? How about the actual link to the onion?
You don’t even need to click on the link. If you just hold the cursor above it, the URL appears in your status bar, so you can see it’s from theonion.com.
If you didn’t switch the status bar on as the very first thing after you installed your browser/bought your computer, I don’t know what you’re doing on the Internet and why you haven’t been swamped with malware yet (assuming you’re on Windows, of course).
Oh, do I fucking hate this sentiment.
No, if we keep fighting amongst ourselves, then otherwise thoughtful and intelligent people who occasionally say stupid or wrong-headed shit might learn something and wind up better off for the experience.
Why are some people so afraid of admonition from their peers? Fuck, it happens to me all the time… I welcome it. I’m far better off for it than when I first started commenting here many many years ago.
If you hold your cursor over a hyperlink you can see where it goes. I cannot believe I am explaining this to anyone. ANYWAY, look in the lower lefthand corner when you do that.
Look, part of the reason I don’t read the category is I can’t read small type. I’m blind in my right eye.
How did I lose the vision in my right eye? Glad you asked.
After writing a column critical of fundamentalist Christians, I was attacked in my own back yard by two Christian thugs armed with a baseball bat.
I spent three days in the hospital and three weeks at home with a broken nose, eye ridge and several ribs.
Had the police not arrived, I would be dead.
It happened in the summer of 1996. The newspaper was The Journal, of Martinsburg, WV. The arresting officer was a state trooper named Sgt. Copson. My name is John A. Anderson.
This is all a matter of public record at the Berkeley County Courthouse, West Virginia. It may be accessible online. I don’t care to re-live it.
I’ll accept criticism from any of you who have gone through as much as I have for the cause. I suspect that’s none of you.
In conclusion, fuck you.
@54
Horrible story. Still doesn’t make anybody’s inability to recognize this as satire PZ’s fault.
You know you can make the text bigger, right? I don’t know what browser you’re using, but on mine the word “Humor” is bold and about the same size as the body of the bost. Bigger, in fact, than the text in the image.
John Anderson –
Your story is horrible. You have my sympathies.
I’m sorry for your reading difficulty. Your error was not (just) that you didn’t read the category, it’s that you didn’t read or follow the provided link or use your own common sense to arrive at the conclusion that such an “opinion” from the SCOTUS, as written, would never have come from a legitimate news source. Your sight issues, and the causes for them (tragic as they are, and I mean that in all sincerity), have little to do with your inability to see this as parody.
Oh, and if you think for one minute you are immune from criticism by anyone who has not experienced something you deem equivalent to your own experiences, well I think you know that’s not going to fly around here…
I don’t know, Rev. How big are your tits?
What fucking cause? I ain’t in no stinking cause.
Leave the martyr complex to the fundies. Your stupidity is not the result of a fucking missing eye.
To be fair to John, I didn’t read the category or look at the link but just read the excerpt.
It clicked for me halfway through the second sentence.
Not enough sleep or coffee, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.
They’re not huge, but they’re bigger than average.
And I ask again, does your horrible attack preclude you from any criticism? Just want to get it on the table.
Well at least we know Janine, MOFMA/OM will like it. It was amusing.
For the record, Rev., when and where did I say that my attack precludes me from criticism? I merely indicated my reluctance to accept it. I can’t stop you from being an ass.
All I did was admit that I was briefly fooled by PZ’s posting, because I am familiar with the theater group in the headline, which is real.
And yes, I think being beaten nearly to death for being outspoken about my atheism earns me a little cred, but my point was that I don’t read small type very well as a result of it.
Why are you so angry?
Well you basically stated that just because I haven’t been beaten with a baseball bat for something I wrote that my comments aren’t worth listening to. Kind of a strange way to go about things.
Well that’s obvious.
Fine and I was just pointing out, albeit in a sarcastically assholish way, that it was pretty damn obvious that it was from the Onion from the link in the very first line of the post. Something not uncommon and infrequent in these here comment sections. And that jumping down PZ’s throat might be you actually jumping the gun? Had you just admitted that saying Whoops instead of getting all defensive then no big deal. Instead you had to whip your atheism martyrdom cock out and call for a measuring contest.
So all the letters to the editor I’ve written here in Charleston, SC, Raleigh, NC, Chattanooga TN and other places I’ve lived as well as my outspoken atheism don’t count for shit just because I’ve lucky enough to not be beaten up for it? The fact the secret service came to my house and investigated me for threats on a Presidential Candidate (pat robertson) don’t mean shit, the fact I now have a huge file with the SS / FBI don’t mean shit, the fact my car has twice been vandalized because of one sticker on it don’t count. The fact that parts of my family (admittedly distant parts) refuse to socialize with me or talk to me don’t mean shit?
Actually, they really don’t count. These are acts that came about due to others actions not mine, except maybe the whole secret service thing. We’re all atheists or anti-religious people here and I’m not sure your atheism and anti-religion feelings are any stronger than mine or the next guy or gal.
Now what happened to you is horrible, seriously I mean it, but in order for my atheism cock to measure up to yours I need to be beaten with a bat? What should I be doing differently to bring this about?
Because previously I thought only my tits weren’t big enough, now I know my atheism cock isn’t either.
But then I could be asking you the same question.
Why are you so angry?
It annoys me that the Onion (and the Daily Show) are the most reliable newssources around.
Damnit, I was so excited! Then I clicked the link. -.-
Please excuse my naiive question.
This story is reported on The Onion which is a joke/parody site. I’ve not been able to find anywhere else that’s reported it which makes it highly suspect.
So is it a real story ?
Everything from The Onion is made up, and is the internet equivalent of Mad Magazine. So no, by being on the Onion, it’s not going to be true.
Oy. I think I need a beer.
Seriously, some people just need more coffee. Or we need to stop reading PZ really late at night, when parts of our brains clearly need some slapping around.
I’m pretty sure that this article is posted in courtrooms and judges’ chambers around the country, only out of sight from potential pearl-clutchers.
Man, talk about a comment thread taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. That article was funny as shit and you fuckers dropped a big stinking turd on it.
If it were a true story there would have been some forewarning, like the world being an 82% better place. That shit don’t happen overnight.
(For the record, my t-shirt quote of choice would be: “Freedom of speech means the freedom of fucking speech, you ignorant cocksuckers.”)