{"id":1020,"date":"2004-07-15T14:53:37","date_gmt":"2004-07-15T18:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/07\/blow_to_freespeech_zones\/"},"modified":"2004-07-15T14:53:37","modified_gmt":"2004-07-15T18:53:37","slug":"blow_to_freespeech_zones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/07\/blow_to_freespeech_zones\/","title":{"rendered":"Blow to Free-Speech Zones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, sort of.  A radical judicial activist <a title=\"Charges Against Texas Couple Dropped\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wvmetronews.com\/index_forsub.cfm?func=displayfullstory&#038;storyid=9162\">dropped trespassing charges<\/a> against a couple who dared to express a political opinion on public land:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A Texas couple is headed home after proving Americans have the right to say what they want, when they want, even during a Presidential visit. Charleston Municipal Court Judge Carol Bloom dismissed the trespassing charges against Jeff and Nicole Rank Thursday morning.<br \/>\nThe couple was charged after wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to the President&#8217;s 4th of July address at the state capitol. The Rank&#8217;s lawyer, Harvey Peyton, says the charges were dismissed as a matter of jurisdiction. &#8220;Municipalities only have the authority to enforce, in their courts, violations of the municipal code. This citation was a general charge of trespass but the city of Charleston does not have an ordinance that prohibits trespass other than on city property or &#8216;the property of another,&#8217; and that does not apply to the common grounds of the state house which, of course, is owned by everybody.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t appear to be a First Amendment victory.  But the import of this is that if lawbreakers continue to express themselves outside the friendly confines of government-sanctioned free-speech zones, the zones will soon lose their air of privilege.<br \/>\nUPDATE: The <i>Daily Show<\/i> had a segment on free-speech zones last night.  Again a fake news program seems to have a better beat on the issues that the &#8220;real&#8221; news programs.  It also had good commentary on &#8220;conventional wisdom&#8221;&#8211;&#8220;Talking points: they&#8217;re true, because they&#8217;re said alot.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/07\/blow_to_freespeech_zones\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Blow to Free-Speech Zones\"><p>Well, sort of. A radical judicial activist dropped trespassing charges against a couple who dared to express a political opinion on public land: A Texas couple is headed home after proving Americans have the right to say what they want, when they want, even during a Presidential visit. Charleston Municipal Court Judge Carol Bloom dismissed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}