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To: Lancey Howard
The First Amendment right to free speech was meant to protect the rights of pamphleteers. Today’s “pamphleteers” are bloggers. The sick and very scary thing is that America is one Supreme Court vote away from big government tyranny; from Nazi America.

Nope; we're already there: in Schenck v. United States the Supreme Court justified congress's illegitimate laws (see Wickard) as a political expedient. In that case a socialist, Schenck, was distributing pamphlets which denounced the draft as immoral and encouraged the legitimate repeal of that law.

Instead of the correct decision: that the First Amendment was enacted to explicitly protect dissenting political speech, they reached the conclusion that the Congress gains special powers in wartime —

It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.
Thereby they make the Constitution of no effect.
70 posted on 09/14/2013 12:27:46 PM PDT by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
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To: OneWingedShark
Thereby they make the Constitution of no effect.

Yep. All that is required to meet that court's criteria is that the military be in some kind of action somewhere - - which is every day, 24/7/365. And from there it is a short leap to " a matter of national security".

Yes, the Constitution is dead as a doornail.

72 posted on 09/14/2013 1:48:18 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
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