grrrr
This pisses me off: "We punish people for painting a swastika on a building, and we punish people for cross burning. Some might claim that's free speech, too. I think not,"
This is said by my (well not mine anymore since I'm a NY resident, but I'm still a NJer by heart heh) senator, sen. Menendez.
This dumbass should actually look into why it was deemed illegal to burn crosses: it was very recently (http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/04/07/scotus.cross.burning/index.html) ruled by the supreme court that states can ban cross burning if the intent is racial intimidation (since according to them, this is more akin to a violent threat, given the history of the KKK, rather than anything to do with free speech). But that all cross burnings can not be considered on its face intimidation.
Anyway the point is, what the hell does the former two have to do with the latter? You punish people for cross burning because it's a clear violent threat a lot of the time. How is flag burning intimidation?
Now I'm a liberal a lot of the time, but I'm a 100% liberterian on this issue. I don't want to see this country turn into most European countries, where you can go to jail for 'offensive' speech. Granted it's different for them, since some european countries often 'flirt' with extreme right views (ie Austria with Jörg Haider, Le Pen and france, germany and the NPD, or just the anti-immigration sentiment in a lot of countries .)
But still, any weakening of free speech is a slippery slope. If the 'right wing' gets a flag burning amendment today, then possibly tommorow the 'left wing' will get some other anti-free speech tommorow, and so on...
Anyway, just was doing some browsing, and this is one HELL of a quote by Haider in dec. 1995 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/628282.stm): "The Waffen SS was a part of the Wehrmacht (German military) and hence it deserves all the honour and respect of the army in public life."
That's pretty fucked up. It's members being forced to join or not, that's like praising the NKVD, KGB, or Stasi, especially given the reputation of most Waffen SS units. At least he didn't praise the Einsatzgruppen I guess :p.
Oh well, I have operator theory to do tommorow, and I get to read up on the Bergman and pseudo-hyperbolic metric on the unit disk, fun :). Hopefully in not too long, I will be able to read some papers on Toeplitz and Hankel operators on domains in Bergman space.
This is said by my (well not mine anymore since I'm a NY resident, but I'm still a NJer by heart heh) senator, sen. Menendez.
This dumbass should actually look into why it was deemed illegal to burn crosses: it was very recently (http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/04/07/scotus.cross.burning/index.html) ruled by the supreme court that states can ban cross burning if the intent is racial intimidation (since according to them, this is more akin to a violent threat, given the history of the KKK, rather than anything to do with free speech). But that all cross burnings can not be considered on its face intimidation.
Anyway the point is, what the hell does the former two have to do with the latter? You punish people for cross burning because it's a clear violent threat a lot of the time. How is flag burning intimidation?
Now I'm a liberal a lot of the time, but I'm a 100% liberterian on this issue. I don't want to see this country turn into most European countries, where you can go to jail for 'offensive' speech. Granted it's different for them, since some european countries often 'flirt' with extreme right views (ie Austria with Jörg Haider, Le Pen and france, germany and the NPD, or just the anti-immigration sentiment in a lot of countries .)
But still, any weakening of free speech is a slippery slope. If the 'right wing' gets a flag burning amendment today, then possibly tommorow the 'left wing' will get some other anti-free speech tommorow, and so on...
Anyway, just was doing some browsing, and this is one HELL of a quote by Haider in dec. 1995 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/628282.stm): "The Waffen SS was a part of the Wehrmacht (German military) and hence it deserves all the honour and respect of the army in public life."
That's pretty fucked up. It's members being forced to join or not, that's like praising the NKVD, KGB, or Stasi, especially given the reputation of most Waffen SS units. At least he didn't praise the Einsatzgruppen I guess :p.
Oh well, I have operator theory to do tommorow, and I get to read up on the Bergman and pseudo-hyperbolic metric on the unit disk, fun :). Hopefully in not too long, I will be able to read some papers on Toeplitz and Hankel operators on domains in Bergman space.