Today the Supreme Court handed down an almost unanimous decision upholding the free speech rights of the Westboro Baptist Church:
The First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an 8-to-1 decision.
“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.”
But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
It sucks, but protecting freedom of speech means protecting grotesque speech, too.
Anyway, here is the funny part. Jack Stuef at Wonkette found Sarah Palin’s reaction to the ruling, on Twitter, which is one of the places where the Quitter works:
Uh, Sarah?
Log out of Facebook, sign out of Twitter, get up off your hind end and find a public square. There’s probably one close to where you used to work, before you quit because A. it was too hard and B. reality teevee was calling. Stand there and say “God” a bunch. Insert some word salad, dangling participles and dropped ‘G’s around it. Oh, look, you CAN do it!
Funny, though, that she seems to have a problem with this ruling which was supported by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, the other Antonin Scalia and everybody else save for Sam Alito.
