Posted on 01/16/2018 10:19:18 AM PST by nickcarraway
The Supreme Court faces a test of the authority of politicians to use police to silence their critics.
If a citizen speaks at a public meeting and says something a politician doesn’t like, can the citizen be arrested, cuffed, and carted off to the hoosegow?
Suppose that, during this fraught encounter, the citizen violates some law—even by accident, even one no one has ever heard of, even one dug up after the fact—does that make her arrest constitutional?
Deyshia Hargrave, meet Fane Lozman. You need to follow his case.
Hargrave is a language arts teacher in Kaplan, Louisana. She was arrested Monday after she questioned school-district policy during public comment at a school board meeting.
She asked why the superintendent of schools was receiving a five-figure raise when local teachers had not had a permanent pay increase in a decade. As she was speaking, the school-board president slammed his gavel, and a police officer told her to leave. She left, but once she went into the hall, the officer took her to the ground, handcuffed her, and arrested her for “remaining after having been forbidden” and “resisting an officer.”
Fane Lozman, whose case will be argued in front of the Supreme Court on February 27, faced the same fate at a meeting of the Riviera Beach, Florida, city council in November 2006. Lozman, remarkably enough, has made his way to the high court more or less without assistance twice in the past four years, arguing two different aspects of his acrimonious dispute with the Riviera Beach city government. The first case, which Lozman won, asked whether his motorless plywood “floating home” was actually a “vessel” subject to federal admiralty law. (Answer, via Justice Stephen Breyer: “Um, no.”) The second case is about police tactics at public meetings; its result could make
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
>>Correct them?
That’s the general 1st spirit:
Folks who assume dominion seem to prefer not to be corrected - or contradicted.
Those public comments to The King, “off with her head!”
“Especially if the person speaking to “the government official,” er the elected School Board President and bringing up the fact that he and the Board gave him (the Board President) “a five figure raise but the teachers hadn’t had a permenant wage increase in five years!””
I think you mean the School Superintendent not the Board President. Being on a school board is a non-paid elective office. The Board President was simply trying to stifle her for exposing the “sweetheart deal” the board has given the superintendent. BTW School Superintendents are the highest-paid “migrant workers” in the country. They wander from district to district, f*cking things up, being asked to leave, and taking the unpaid part of their contracts with them to the next district, to do it all over again.
At least she COULD protest to the government hack. We aren’t even allowed to know who pulled the switch in the Hawaiian missile fiasco. Wouldn’t want to “finger-point” one of our rulers, you know.
Meanwhile, warrantless surveillance of all of US passed last week without a whimper.
So there is NO First Amendment?
Punishment still fits for serfs questioning their betters:
OFF WITH HER HEAD!
The only way you can get more nazi is to subsequently have these people killed.
Would that apply to when police have people exit a car pretending to have an argument, in the hopes that someone will then try to steal that car?
SWAT officers operate with face coverings.
Read 14th amendment, section 1
The downfall of the American Republic began when we abandoned the practice of tar and feathers.
I have. many times.
You must know the history of this amendment and what the ratifiers intended for this purely Post-Civil-War Reconstruction, but terribly written, 14th Amendment. It was intended to make ex-slaves full citizens. It was NOT intended to give the feds sweeping powers NEVER contemplated by the Founders OR ratifiers of this Amendment.
Regardless of presumed intent, it says what it says, and is part of the constitution.
It’s Louisana. I’m surprsed there are not some well-fed alligators by now...
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