"Justice" Steven Breyer: Maybe The First Amendment Doesn't Protect Burning the Koran

This is a liberal justice on the Supreme Court. I mention "liberal" because they tend to be First Amendment absolutists -- and yeah, they are chiefly absolutists about pornography and so on, but usually they have enough sense of shame to extend (grudgingly) that absolutism to speech they don't like.

Not any more. Even a Justice on the Supreme Court is now ready to revive blasphemy laws, at least for the nation's de facto state religion.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.

“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer told me. “Well, what is it? Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?”

...

For Breyer, that right is not a foregone conclusion.

“It will be answered over time in a series of cases which force people to think carefully. That’s the virtue of cases,” Breyer told me. “And not just cases. Cases produce briefs, briefs produce thought. Arguments are made. The judges sit back and think. And most importantly, when they decide, they have to write an opinion, and that opinion has to be based on reason. It isn’t a fake.”

Deciders.

Oh my God.

Let the word go out: In America, your right to be free of religious critiques is dependent on how willing you are to kill for it.

Thunderdome. A nation of the law of shrapnel and box-cutters, not men.

Not men. Definitely not men.

Maybe The First Amendment Doesn't Protect Burning the Koran&bodytext= This is a liberal justice on the Supreme Court. I mention "liberal" because they tend to be First Amendment absolutists -- and yeah, they are chiefly absolutists about pornography and so on, but usually they have enough sense of...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 01:16 PM

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